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practice growthWhen I was actively building my practice a few years ago, I never really gave much thought to the information I’m about to share with you.  I assumed that simply hitting a certain volume in my practice was the highest pinnacle of success possible, so that was exactly what I set out to accomplish.  What I now realize is that my vision for what was possible ended at phase 2, which I’ll describe below.  This caused me a great deal of struggle and confusion, as I couldn’t figure out why I felt constrained and imbalanced after hitting my goals for seeing a high volume of patients.

Regardless of your current level of practice development, the 3 phase break down I’m about to share with you is one of the most important concepts to grasp as a practice owner.  This is especially true given the rather tenuous nature of the economy and the fact that most practice owners simply can not rely on external support structures like a 401k or pension plan to ‘save’ them when they are ready to retire. I invite you to give this information some serious consideration and take action on creating a vision that supports the actualization of all 3 growth phases.  You have to clearly see this within your mind first, then develop an action plan and timeline for achieving each level of development.

Phase 1 ~  The Start-Up Phase

This is typically the first 2-5 years of your practice.  During this time, you’re going through all the necessary challenges of building a sustainable and stable practice.  The main factors involved in the start-up phase are:

  • building confidence and self-worth
  • developing your marketing and client attraction skills
  • educating clients effectively
  • getting a handle on practice management and the many details of owning your own business

Most small business owners (about 80%) never make it out of the start-up phase.  This is because they are deficient in one or more of these skills.  In my experience, the #1 practice-killer is a lack of attention to and focus on marketing.  In this day and age, it’s very difficult to run a cash-based practice relying solely on word of mouth.  You need to have marketing systems in place that ensure you’re generating a specific number of leads per week, along with a marketing funnel that effectively converts those leads into paying clients.

The benchmark for success in the start-up phase is that you have been able to create a stable practice volume and your business is consistently making money.  There’s a sense of rhythm and predictability to the weekly schedule, one that allows you as the practitioner to relax and settle in and trust the process of being an autonomous practice owner who can’t rely on the stable paycheck. While the numbers vary depending on the goals of the practitioner,  you have typically passed through the start-up phase when you are consistently seeing 20-30 patients/clients per week.  This number could be a bit more or less depending on the overhead and expenses of the practice.

Phase 2 ~  The Expansion Phase

As your practice stabilizes and your reputation in the community becomes more solidified, the next challenge you’ll face is based on scaling your practice upward so that you can continually increase your practice volume and income.  During this phase, the goal is to go from 20-30 patients per week to 50+ patients per week.  The first practice I ever worked in was seeing over 600 patients per week.  While this may sound wildly successful, it was apparent that there were obvious limitations in their business model.  All of the practice owners worked 60+ hours per week and they were always trying to figure out how to not only sustain, but keep growing what they had created.  There was an underlying anxiety about maintaining this practice volume that seemed to generate a high level of distress for everyone involved.

While the owners were likely pulling in a high 6 figure income, they were enslaved by their business.  There was very little joy or freedom in it.

As another example, I took my practice up to 50-70 patients per week during phase 2, which was as much as I could personally handle.  I had cracked the code on attracting new patients, and felt like I could do so at will.  While this was exciting and rewarding, it also required a tremendous amount of effort to maintain.  I’m all for hard work, but it has to feel sustainable and energizing.  When there is a constant feeling of being drained with a low-grade quality of stress, it’s a red flag that something is off.  Even though I very much enjoyed my practice and my patients, I became increasingly concerned that I had created a business that felt more imprisoning than liberating.

The truth of the matter is that most phase 2 practice owners share similar feelings.  Making money and treating lots of patients is great, but if it requires the vast majority of your personal time and energy to pull off, is it really worth it?  This is a question that every phase 2 practice owner has to seriously confront.

The main factors of the phase 2 practice are:

  • Learning how to manage and delegate
  • Stepping into more of a leadership role
  • Having an excellent word of mouth referral process
  • Utilizing at least 1-2 lead generation strategies to attract new patients (usually internet marketing and advertising)

Phase 2 poses more sophisticated challenges than the start-up phase, as the practitioner has to tap into their creative resources to figure out how to make the practice they have created sustainable and enjoyable, with endless room for financial growth.  Personally, I went through a period of exhaustion in phase 2 that nearly caused me to shut the door on my entrepreneurial pursuits altogether.

The irony is that vision for success we set for ourselves in phase 2 often leads to adrenal fatigue, stress, and a rather dissatisfying home and personal life.  We find that we have to give everything to our business in order to sustain it.

Phase 3 ~ The Freedom Phase

Now, we are truly entering some rarefied air!  I would estimate that less than 2% of the small business owners in existence enter phase 3.  Remember that 80% of small business fail within 5 years (the start-up phase), and 96% go under within 10 years (the expansion phase).  The other 4% who make it are, from what I have observed, divided as follows

  • 3% manage to sustain the expansion phase, constantly working on driving in new business, scaling up their practice income, and working very hard to sustain what they have created.  These people are typically type A over-achievers who have an unusual level of ambition and will power that can fuel them through the challenges of the phase 2 business.  They don’t allow themselves to experience burn out, as this practice owner would perceive it as a sign of weakness.
  • 1% tap into the freedom phase

What is the freedom phase?  It’s when you have structured your business so that you have the option to work in it as much or as little as you please, without it having any impact whatsoever on your income or financial security.  If you still want to see 100 patients per week– great!  If you want to take a 6 month sabbatical and travel the world– no problem!

How is this possible?  Let’s look at the most common scenarios of a phase 3 practice:

  • Hiring associates and managing a wellness center ~ In this case, the business owner has a team of practitioners working within their clinic who handle the vast majority of the client interactions.  This allows the practice owner to work ‘on’ the business rather than ‘in’ the business.  While it is possible to create a phase 3 business utilizing this approach, the vast majority of practice owners who have associates are still stuck in phase 2.  They often feel anxious about leaving the practice, fearing that the whole thing will essentially crumble without their continuous guidance and leadership.  They also have to manage their associates on a regular basis, keeping them on task and accountable for the growth of the practice.  Only the practice owner who has incredibly tight practice management systems in place can take as much time as they want away from the practice without it negatively affecting their bottom line.
  • Real Estate Investing ~ Some practice owners have purchased a building that is literally a goldmine, as it skyrockets in value year after year.  Given the state of today’s commercial real estate market, this is pretty rare, but it does happen.  The practitioner has a clear asset in place that they can rely on to secure their financial future.  In other cases, the practice owner takes up real estate investing as a hobby and ends up with a few investment properties that are producing positive cash flow, which is one of the purest forms of passive income.  Personally, I tried real estate investing and it was a total disaster.  The problem is that most practitioners are not ‘hard-wired’ for real estate investing or aggressive stock trading.  These activities simply don’t resonate with who they are and what they value.
  • Productizing your knowledge ~ Okay, now we are getting to the strategy that I find to be the most exciting, rewarding, fun, authentic, and profitable phase 3 business model for holistic practitioners, coaches, and healers:  Information Product Creation.   This is the model that I embraced to help me transcend the phase 2 limitations and experience true freedom as a business owner.  In this model, you create your own product line that showcases your knowledge and passion and you use the internet to attract a worldwide audience of raving fans who support your work.

Creating information products is an absolutely fantastic way to create multiple passive income streams, free up your time, leverage a much larger target market than is possible in your local area, and potentially create a ‘one to many’ model that allows you to serve large groups rather than individual clients.  The financial potential of this model is exponentially greater than even the most successful phase 2 practices, as there is no limit to the amount of people you can serve and the products you can sell.  Not to mention, the risk factor is way less than taking on associates or investing in real estate or the stock market.

If you’d like to learn more about this, go ahead and click the link at the bottom of this post to watch a video I made about my journey from phase 1 to phase 3 and how I can help you accomplish a similar outcome as a practice owner. You’ll see that this video shares some details on a group coaching program I am offering called InfoProduct Mastery which starts in mid-April.  This truly is my favorite subject to coach on; it’s the one I am most passionate about because I have seen personally what it can do for your quality of life.  This is such an important subject.. one that I recommend that you don’t overlook.  Having a phase 3 action plan is absolutely vital to your security and fulfillment, whether it’s through information product creation or another approach.

If the information I share in this video ‘hits home’ for you and this program feels like the right fit, you are welcome to join us!  Please keep in mind that I am only taking 10 people into the program.  Right now, there are only 6 spots left… and literally thousands of people are reading this blog post right now so I do expect it to fill up very soon (that’s not marketing hype– it’s just the truth!)

——–>       Click here to watch the InfoProduct Mastery video now     <——–

to YOUR practice freedom,

Kevin Doherty

Dream Practice Coaching