The Private Practice Success Podcast

81. Is Private Practice Really Worth It, Given Everything Going On Right Now...?

• Gerda Muller • Episode 81

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Episode 81, is a VERY different kind of conversation. This isn't an episode about the latest strategy, a new framework, or another list of things you should or could be doing in your practice.

Instead, it's about the question so many practice owners are asking themselves right now and that is ...

Is private practice REALLY worth it?

So, if you've ever caught yourself thinking, "Maybe it would be easier to just go back to solo practice.." or "I'm not sure I can keep doing this..." ... then this conversation is one you’ll want to hear.

In this episode, Gerda explores the realities of private practice ownership, why it can feel incredibly challenging at times, and most importantly, why she still believes that it is ABSOLUTELY still worth it.

In this Episode, you will learn (among other):

  • Why so many practice owners are asking: “Is it really worth it?”
  • How industry changes and pressures are impacting practice owners behind the scenes.
  • How reconnecting with your motives, values, and support network can help you through challenging seasons.

Who this episode is for:

  • Practice owners who are feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, or weighed down by the constant pressure, regulation changes, and uncertainty of running a practice.
  • Anyone questioning whether private practice is still worth it.
  • Business owners feeling stuck and needing a reminder to keep going.

Tune in for an honest and heartfelt conversation about the realities of practice ownership. If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed or even questioning your path, this episode is your reminder to pause, reconnect with what matters, and remember why you started it in the first place.

Here to help you build a practice you can’t stop smiling about 😍

Want Gerda's Help with your Business?

Gerda helps allied health group practice owners go from overwhelmed, overworked, and underpaid to fully empowered and financially thriving. If this is you, then make today the day you reach out. Complete this super short Triage Form here bit.ly/triageformpps and Gerda will personally reach out to you. 

Here to help you build a practice you can't stop smiling about :)

Connect with Private Practice Success & Gerda here:

 Well, hello there, spectacular private practice owner. My name is Gerda Muller, and you are listening to the Private Practice Success Podcast, and this is episode number 81. 

Today, we are not going to be having our usual conversation. So usually when we're chatting, there is a lot of how to, there is a lot of strategy, there's a lot of tactics. Today, we're going to have a different type of conversation. Now, don't just switch off and go, "Ooh, this is not going to be helpful," because, I can guarantee you these types of conversations are just as valuable, if not more so, than all the strategy, tactics, and how-to’s that I can share with you. Because if we don't address the stuff I'm going to talk about today, nothing's going to work for various different reasons, it's just not going to work, or you're just not going to do it, so we need to have this conversation, so please bear with me. 

I've decided to talk about this because I've been reflecting on the conversations that I've had with practice owners over the last two to three months. So generally, when somebody reaches out to work with me, I will offer them a 30-minute complimentary call just to hop on a Zoom and have a chat. I'm very aware that a lot of people are reaching out to me at the moment that haven't worked with me previously, so they don't know me from a bar of soap, and I know that it's a big step for people to go, "Yes, I'm going to share with you, Gerda, the most vulnerable side of my business." And sometimes they want to first see who Gerda really is. And of course, they don't get to know the whole me in that 30 minutes, but we do our best to connect, to chat, to generally talk about what's been happening in their businesses, where they want to get to, and whether I'm the right person to help them get there. And if I can, I'll, let them know, and if I can't, then I point them and refer them into another direction of somebody that I believe can help them and might be better suited to help them. 

And I've had quite a lot of these conversations over the last two to three months. More than normal. And there has been this very clear trend in one specific question that has kept popping up, and sometimes people just start the call with it. They just go, "This is where I'm at, Gerda." And sometimes it's one of those bombs that gets dropped at the end of that 30-minute conversation. You know, like sometimes like some of our clients would come into therapy as a psychologist, and they just blurb everything out in the first minute, and it's like, "Okay, now we know what to work on." And then you've got those other clients that wait until the 50th minute of the clinical hour, and then they tell you what they actually should be telling you and what the real issue is. It's like, "Oh, okay." But anyway, that happens to me as well, because we are all still human, even though we are business owners.  And this is a very common question that people have been posing to me, and I thought, "You know what? If this is something that comes up so often, I think that people more generally are also probably sitting with this question." 

This is a question that can be really hard to admit. It can be really hard to say out loud, so I'm going to say it out loud today on your behalf, because this is what I'm here to do. I'm here to help you. And we need to say it out loud in order for us to acknowledge it and then to deal with it. And the question is this: Is it really worth it? Is private practice really worth it? Is it worth it to keep the doors open and to keep struggling, to keep pushing through and onward? Have you had that thought lately as well? Maybe it's one of those things that pops into your head, like at the end of the day, when it feels like your cup is runneth over for the 10th time today and you've just had enough. Because I can tell you people are thinking it. 

People are asking that of me. Is private practice really worth it? Would it not be better to just go into solo private practice rather than having to try and run, manage, and not even talking about growing, just maintaining what I have as a group practice owner is already so hard. It feels like I take three steps forward, I take freaking 10 steps backwards. Is it really worth it? Solo practice feels so much easier right now.  A lot of group practice owners right now are dreaming of the days they were in solo private practice. Or they might be thinking, Maybe I should just get a job at a school, get a job at public mental health, get a job somewhere else so that I can just work my 9:00 to 5:00 and not have to get off the official clock at 5:00 and then keep on worrying all through the night until I put my head down on the pillow, and then tomorrow morning when I wake up, the first thought that pops into my head is, 'Am I going to have money to pay the bills today? What is the government going to throw my way again today?'" 

And my answer? I want to give you the answer. My answer that I give people is 100% yes, it is worth it. 100%. Because I do believe it is, and I experience it to be worth it. And I know that it can sound easy for me to say it. Guess what? Next year my group private practice will be 20 years old. 20! Geez Louise, it makes me feel so freaking old. But I told Ash earlier in the week, "We better start planning what we're doing next year because that's going to have to be a huge celebration." Like, two decades of The Psych Professionals, and we are still here, and we are not freaking going anywhere. In fact, we are planning on expanding. So I most certainly believe it is 100% worth it. And again, it's like, easy for you to say, Gerda, you've got a lot of history behind you. There's a lot of work that's been done in your business. Maybe you have only been doing this 10 years, 5 years, 3 years, 2 years. I don't know. But honestly, irrespective of how long you've been in private practice, even for my business, it is not easy out there. I can tell you that now. It's not easy. It's not smooth sailing for my business. It's not. 

So if you're looking at my business or any other practice, maybe in the location where you are at, or you're seeing them post on social media and you're thinking to yourself, " They must be doing so much better than me," it doesn't mean that they are. Because you don't know what their profit and loss statement looks like. You do not know how much debt they have. You do not know of the headaches that practice owners having to deal with. You do not know how insecure that practice owner is feeling, how they are feeling like a failure, like a freaking imposter, and that things are going to fall apart any minute if they stop running on this freaking hamster wheel that they've created for themselves. People are feeling like that out there. And then you throw into the mix the freaking government that is acting currently, maybe not just currently, but on an ongoing basis now, that they absolutely despise private business, making it harder and harder for us to do what we are here to do. And private business plays an incredibly important role in the economy, and small business owners even more so. 

Small business is the heart and soul of the Australian community, and the government is making it harder and harder and harder for us, and it can be very isolating as a small business owner because all these things are being thrown at you, and you just need to absorb, absorb, absorb, problem solve, problem solve. And then there's still this perception in the broader community of, well, if you're a business owner, you're the boss. You're like the bad boss, the unscrupulous boss that's just lining their own pockets. But meantime, people don't understand that that's actually not the case. And there's all this history of us versus them, workers versus employers, which is not helpful, and yes, I'm sure that there's a lot of bosses and a lot of businesses that have taken such advantage of their workers that are unscrupulous and that aren't good, and they shouldn't be operating a business, but that most certainly isn’t the group private practice owners that I get to talk with on a day-to-day basis. 

A lot of these practice owners are females. They are mothers. They carry so much on their shoulders every day. They not only have the responsibility of a business, but they also have a responsibility for their family, being a mom, being a wife, being a partner, a sister, all those other life roles that they take so seriously. And it's becoming incredibly hard to juggle those two parts of our worlds right now. When every day you open up your phone, there's a new newspaper article of a new regulation or something the government has brought out that's just making it harder for us. I'm not even talking about the NDIS mess. Not even talking about that. All I can say is I'm so grateful that I never, ever registered my practice as an NDIS service provider. I would literally need to be forced to register before I do, because people are being held freaking hostage by the NDIS pricing guidelines. And I've spoken about the NDIS before, there's an episode somewhere if you want to go and listen, go and find it and listen to it. 

So there's a lot of practice owners that are feeling incredibly broken out there right now, and asking this question, "Is it really worth it?" And I want to ask you to think back of why you started your practice in the first place if this is you. What was that motivation? What was that reason for taking that leap? Because I know that it took a lot of courage to take that leap - a lot, because I had to take it. I had a full-time job, and I had to take the leap. I know what it feels like. So what is it that encouraged you or pushed you to do it? I know for me, it was first and foremost flexibility. I, yes, had a full-time job, I was on maternity leave, and I just couldn't see myself going back to a full-time job where I had to drive round and round Queensland to various different offices. I was the area manager of an employment organisation that had government funding at the time, and I just couldn't see myself doing that. And I said, "I need flexibility. I need to be able to set my own hours, to decide what days I work and what days I don't." And that's why I went into it. 

It's really important for us when we have these days when we wobble, where we need to remind ourselves what were those motives? What were the motives for getting started? And have I achieved that? Because yes, for me, I have. But you might be going, "Yeah, maybe it was flexibility for me as well, Gerda, but there's freaking no flexibility. I'm working more and harder than I did when I was employed." Because that's the truth of it, and I've been there as well. That was me the first four years of building my group private practice. Yes, I still got to take time off if I wanted to. Go and do duties at the tuck shop, go to the swimming carnival, but it always meant that I had to do catch-up. That when the kids were in bed, I had to stay up until midnight, 1:00 even, in order to get work done so tomorrow morning I can show up at the practice and be the best version of myself as a psychologist or as the leader of my business. It was freaking tough. 

I am now in my 50s, and I couldn't do it again. Luckily, I was young when I started. That was 20 years ago. I do not have the energy to do that now, and if you are also my age, you will get this, it's, it's actually incredibly frustrating not having that energy, because I love what I do. And I feel like if I could still work until midnight and 1:00, I can get so much shit done. And I'm not talking about stuff on my to-do list, I'm talking about achieving big things. Opening up another two locations this year, maybe another 10 if I could actually work now the way I could work back when I started the group private practice. So there's, there's been a bit of an identity shift and an acceptance there that, as you get older, you go into menopause and all of that lovely things, that things change for you. And that's why it's important to have a team that is there to help and support you. But I digress. 

I want you to think about,  What were those motives? And if, let's say, something motivated, like flexibility, you go into private practice and you're not feeling that right now, then of course you're going to be asking yourself, "Is this really worth it?" It is a natural question to ask, and it will be natural to feel like, "Hell no. Hell no. It's not worth it. I am now even worse off than I was previously." So I get that, and I want to validate and normalise that that is okay to feel that. But I also want you to step into your values, in terms of what it is that you value, not just today, not just yesterday, but into the future. What are those values that you are really aligned with? And you need to know what those things are. I'm not just talking about the values you have on the website for the practice. What are your personal values? 

So for me, it is independence. I do not want to depend on anybody. I do depend on people, like at the practice, I've got amazing team members, but one of my important values is to be able to be independent, to be able to do things for myself, very important to me. Also, freedom. I want to have freedom. Freedom of time, financial freedom, energetic freedom. And thirdly, I want to have a choice. I always want to have choice, and I want to have as much choice as possible. And those are the three things that have seen me through the hard times of being a business owner. Of going, " I don't want to work for a boss. I don't want to work for an NGO. I want to be independent in what I do and in the decisions I make, in what I'm creating here at my practice at The Psych Professionals." I want to have that independence. 

Over the years, I've often thought, "Gerda, why don't you start a charity, an NGO, because you would save so much freaking money on tax?" But I could not report to a board of directors, which you need if you have an NGO or a charity. I couldn't. I would feel so enslaved having to run all my decisions past a board of people. Couldn't do it. I'd rather just pay the tax than do that, ? So for me, having a company is aligned to that value of independence. Having freedom, and not having to ask somebody else what my day needs to look like, where I'm going, what I need to do, is incredibly important to me. And then having choices. I get to make the choices in my business. I also get to ask the people around me to help with those choices. And those are the things that help me through difficult times in my business. Because again, like I said earlier on, my practice is not immune to the challenges in the industry right now. It is not immune to the challenges that we face as business owners. It's not immune to all the new legislation that is still on its way and changes that's still coming. So I still have to navigate all of those things. 

And sometimes, you know, yeah, you wonder what's behind door number two. Is there maybe a better option on that side? And yes, I will admit, I have opened up door number two. I've even opened up door number three. But then I ask myself, "What do I see behind that? Is there independence? Is their freedom and is their choice? And if those three things, all three of them aren't there, I'm not walking through that freaking door. So I just politely close it. And that's what I like because I know I've got a choice. I know I can do other stuff. But I choose not to. And the moment I make that choice that I'm not walking through this door, I step back in this calm sense of, ‘Okay, so this is where I'm at. This is where I choose to be, and now I'm going to step into knowing that I can problem solve anything. You want to throw another thing at me, government? Or whomever is in charge throwing stuff at me, NDIS, whomever it is, I will solve this problem. You will not beat me. I will ensure that my business is the one that survives. You will not cripple my impact. You will not stop me from doing what I'm here to do. I am here to help more people in better, more effective ways. That's what we do at The Psych Professionals. 


At The Psych Professionals, we help people live the lives they deserve, and you will not stop me from achieving that, and then I can tell you nothing will stop me. Doesn't matter what's going on. I will make a plan. It's not just the Gerda - I, I, I, I, I. It's me and I rely on people like Ash, Chelsea, the people in my world, my accountant, my own business coach, people that can rally around me and I can bounce ideas off them. They act as my sounding board. They can play devil's advocate, and together we can come to a place where I can make the decision that's right for my business, and when I do it in this way, I can tell you it is worth it. I'm not saying it's easy because it's not. It's not easy. Business isn't easy. Yes, we want to try and make it easier. Yes, when we know the right strategies, and the right tactics, you're going to get there faster and it's going to be easier if you've got somebody in your corner that has been through what you're going through, they can point out those are the pitfalls. "Don't do that. Look out for that. This is about to happen." So it can help prevent you needing to learn things the hard way. And I can tell you that's not freaking fun. Because that's how I had to learn through a lot of blood, sweat, and tears the hard way and some freaking lessons I had to learn not once, not twice, but three times. 

So there are things you can do to fast track your growth and to speed up getting to where you want to get to, and to make the road a little less freaking bumpy. But it's still going to be bumpy. Even if you've got all the advisors in the world, it's still going to be bumpy because none of us can tell the future. We can try and predict it. We can try and project it. We can try and plan for it. But we can't see what's going to happen tomorrow. So you need to accept that things are going to go wrong, but that's okay, that's the nature of business. It's why I'm always saying to my people that I work with, " We want to make business as boring as possible." As boring as possible. Because all the other external factors will be making it “interesting.” So let's not add to that. When you can make business boring by having clear frameworks, systems, processes, policies which you follow, when you've got a great team in it. When you follow your own plan, then business can be boring. And then when the paw-paw hits the fan in the community, in the industry, in government, in the funding streams, now you've got the bandwidth to deal with that shit. Okay? So important. 

So if you've been sitting with that question, I hope that this has given you some food for thought. My purpose of this is to ensure that you do not think that you are alone here. Because you are not the only one thinking it, and it doesn't mean that your business is failing for thinking it. When people talk to me and they ask me that question and I tell them, "100% it is worth it," then they ask me, "But how do you know, Gerda? Because I can't see it, and here is my situation." And they explain it to me. But the thing is this, when you work in your own business, you are just too close to it, and I've experienced that myself. Like I said, the first four or five years of my own practice, I thought I was doing everything right because I researched. I tried to do my utmost best, but things were still not working, and it's because I was just too close to it. I couldn't see what I couldn't see, and I didn't know what I didn't know until I had somebody come in with fresh eyes - the fabulous Nathan, who was my very first business coach, and he could just go, "Oh, this, that." He gave me a shopping list of stuff that I had to fix, and I went, "What?" But he could see it. 

It's very similar to when you do your initial consult with a client. When they're telling you their history, what they're going through. I don't know, but this is my experience as a psychologist. In the back of my mind, I'm already going, "We need to address this. We need to address that. We need to do this. We need to do that, this, that." I have this whole running list happening in the back of my head of what can be helpful for this person. And they can't come up with it because that's their life, they're immersed in it, and then it's hard to see. So it is so powerful when you can have somebody in your corner, like a business coach and mentor and consultant, that can go, "Okay, let's have a look at what's happening here. Have you noticed this?" Or, "I'm noticing that. Have you dealt with this? You need to deal with this." And it can be incredibly informing to see, ah, that's where the gaps are. 

I would hate for you or anybody to close down your practice because you decide it's not worth it. Don't do it until you've actually reached out for help. Now, you can reach out to me, but I'm not the only person doing this. There's a lot of people to choose from that you can go to. If I'm not your cup of tea, find somebody else, but just find someone. Do not try and be a martyr, and do not tell me you don't have the money for it. This is an investment. If you invest money in getting some business coaching, you will get a return on it because it is freaking worth it. It's worth it in terms of time, in terms of energy, in terms of money, in terms of impact. It is worth it. But if you want to achieve those results, you're going to have to be humble. You're going to have to eat humble pie and say, "I need help. Please help me." 

Me doing that in January of 2012 changed the trajectory of my life. Not just of my business, of my life. I can tell you, if I did not put up my hand in January 2012, I don't think my business would be here today. I do not think it would've been there come 2015 actually, if I'm honest about it. It was a very bitter pill to swallow for me, and it was a freaking expensive pill to swallow. I paid twenty-two hundred dollars. That's $2,200 a month back in January 2012. You can get business coaching now for cheaper than that. There's no reason for you not to put your hand up and get help. Because if you do, you will be able to achieve whatever makes this worth it for you. You will be able to achieve those motives for why you went into this initially. And I'm going to tell you right now, it won't happen overnight. It will not happen overnight. 

Do not be unrealistic and say, "This business coaching thing isn’t working." And you know the other thing that really annoys me, is when practice owners engage in business coaching, and then they give themselves such a hard time for not doing all the things. And it's like, you get to set your own pace. Stop being so hard on yourself. Stop criticizing yourself. Stop thinking that, "If I engage in business coaching, I need to attend every little session. I need to do every freaking module. I need to look at every policy, checklist, template. I need to read every letter." No, you don't. That will actually make things worse. That will just lead to overwhelm. And it's because they think, in order for me to say yes to invest this money - which is really you as a person, because you think it's you, whereas really it's you, yes, but it's actually your business and your future that you're investing in - in order for that to be worth it, that investment, I need to extract a lot of value from it, which is correct. That's still all true. But the value doesn't lie in doing every module, every training, attending every live Zoom. That's not where the value lies. The value lies in extracting what you need right now. 

The way that I always explain it to my Private Practice Success Academy Members is that, for example, if you work with me, we kick off with a one-on-one 90-minute Kickstart Strategy Session, where we really deep dive into your business. I follow a very similar process to me as a clinician, as a psychologist, which I am still today, where you get a diagnostic assessment, it's a questionnaire that you complete. You show up, and I ask you lots of questions. I do, like, a case formulation, basically, and then I tell you your six-week plan. What do you need to do? What do you need to do over the next six weeks in order to kickstart the progress within your practice based on the goals. So we'll talk about your goals, all of that type of stuff. And then I will tell you, "Okay, so this is what I need you to do, and this is where you can find the resources, the tools for implementing this plan." So you don't have to reinvent the freaking wheel, because who's got time for that? And those resources live within the members portal. 

I always tell my members that you need to look at the portal like a library. You're not going to go to the library and take out every freaking book that's there, right? It's impossible to read everything, and you'll go crazy trying to read it all, and you won't have time to live your life or do anything else. And it's the same with the portal. There is a lot of information in there because I work with practice owners from Level 1 to 5 and beyond, and each practice will need something different. 

So I will prescribe to you, for lack of a better word, this training, this resource, this policy to implement in your business, and I will tell you which one it is. So you need to go and take out that book as if it's a library. That's all. That's all you need. And as long as you take that, you go through it, you implement it, you tell me where you get stuck, and if you get stuck, we tweak it, and we fix it, and we review it, and we tweak it some more, and then we go, "Yes, it's doing what it needs to do, now we move on to the next thing." That's where you get the value. That is how you extract value. Not trying to do all of it. Because it's like, "Oh my God, I'm paying for this, and I need to do everything." That's not value. That's overwhelm, and overwhelm leads to procrastination. Procrastination leads to you feeling like a failure. Procrastination leads to you having a really bad experience, which we don't want, and it means you're not achieving your goals. And then you get back to that place of, "Maybe I don't deserve having this business. Maybe I'm not good enough to have a business, and maybe this is just not worth it." And I don't want you to get there. 

Alrighty, I know I've gotten a bit passionate as I've been talking through this, and I know some of the parts can come on a bit strong. But you know what? When I record these podcast episodes, I just imagine sitting with one practice owner over a coffee or over a cocktail. Those are my two drinks of choice. It's either a coffee or it's a freaking cocktail, one of the two. And I imagine sitting with a practice owner and having this conversation, so I talk very freely. I talk very openly, transparently because I want this to be of help to you. 

Thank you so very much for tuning in. And as always, remember that I am here to help you build a practice you can't stop smiling about 😊

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Gerda Muller

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