Discover a comprehensive guide to scaling your therapy practice while maintaining your sanity. Learn effective strategies to delegate tasks, optimize processes, and prioritize self-care, ensuring a balanced approach to business expansion.
One day you’re taking the leap into solo private practice, thrilled to be free from the world of agency work and community mental health…and then the honeymoon phase is quickly over. If you’ve felt like being in a solo private practice isn’t as rewarding as you expected, you’re not alone. Many therapists who start their own practice find themselves facing challenges such as feeling overwhelmed by being “on” all the time as the business owner and practitioner, finding themselves on edge with short fuse both during and after sessions, and feeling like the payoff both sanity-wise and monetarily is disproportionate to the amount of work you put in day after day.
…but it doesn’t have to be that way. I have a course called “Building with Balance” that takes you through lessons where you’ll learn how to completely transform your practice and avoid burnout. With the course, you can have a comprehensive guide of how to go from an overwhelmed solo practitioner to a group practice owner who confidently and calmly manages a team. I’m not only an expert in this field, but have also used this process of expansion in my own group practice development and scaled it to 7 figures!
The Importance of Delegation
Delegating tasks is essential when starting a group practice. But, before you can delegate you need to know what you’re delegating! Start by first identifying what tasks you perform in a week. This needs to include everything from administrative work to billing and marketing. A helpful next step is to categorize the tasks by labels such as administrative, operational, and marketing. Then, evaluate each task. Which are able to be delegated, and which are tasks that only you can perform? Some may be able to be delegated but require special skills such as graphic design or IT, so it’s important to make sure you hire the right support staff. If you haven’t considered looking into virtual assistants, this might be an area to start with to relieve some mental load for yourself.
Building a Team
Another aspect of delegating as you scale your practice is building a team of therapists who are also aligned with your vision. In the first lesson of my course “Building with Balance,” you can learn how, when, and who to hire. As you strategically hire therapists who align with your vision, you’ll want to define your vision and your practice’s core values to understand what qualities and characteristics you’d like your team members to have that will align with your practice’s philosophy. In the course, you’ll also learn nuances of effective recruitment strategies, thinking about what your ideal candidate is like, conducting interviews, and retaining therapists who align with your practice’s culture and vision.
Optimizing Processes
In “Building with Balance,” you’ll also learn more about optimizing your practice’s processes to increase efficiency and impact. By streamlining your administrative tasks with technology such as automated scheduling systems, billing and invoice software, and client communication tools, you can optimize your time and make space for other tasks essential to do manually. Additionally, this creates standardization for procedures to ensure both consistency and quality within your practice.
Tired of manually performing billing and schedu ling? Learn how to optimize and streamline these processes in “Building with Balance,” a course I created from my own experience and expertise. The course includes templates and lifetime access to all of the incredibly valuable included content.
Prioritizing Self-care
As therapists, we know the necessity for prioritizing self-care to reduce the risk of compassion fatigue and burnout. When scaling a group practice, self-care is even more vital to create sustainable practices. The biggest questions when it comes to self-care are typically how and when to practice self-care. We believe self-care is more than just checking off a box to meditate each morning (though we do love that practice!) but it also includes a lifestyle of prioritizing yourself in line with your goals and values.
When navigating a large undertaking such as scaling a group practice, it’s easy to fall into the trap of “always working.” It can feel like there’s “just one more thing” to do when operating without clear goals and expectations. A major component of self-care with scaling a group practice is developing a rhythm for regular breaks associated with achievable goals. This rhythm also often incorporates small moments of self-care throughout the day in addition to larger chunks of time dedicated to caring for oneself. These smaller self care moments can include activities such as breathwork, going for a short walk, unfollowing social media accounts that are not helpful, engaging the five senses, and unplugging from technology for even a few minutes. Additionally, continuing to engage in enjoyable hobbies and activities is vital to help with grounding and centering oneself in familiarity while in the midst of transition.
Having a supportive network of like-minded professionals can be a major game changer when it comes to this undertaking! Join the Building with Balance Community to get instant access to the step-by-step plan to scale your practice while connecting with a community that completely understands what you’re going through.
Balancing Business Expansion and Quality of Care
One of the other questions we receive often is how to balance your current practice while also expanding it, without sacrificing quality of care. Continuing to hold high standards and boundaries for your practice is an important factor. This may mean more energy and time dedicated to interviewing and hiring your team members, but we can assure you that this dedication to high standards will pay off for you as a practice owner as well as for your clients.
Set goals and limits to how much you increase client load at a time as you onboard clinicians and pair them with clients. Give your clients space to give constructive feedback and engage them even outside of sessions through newsletters and social media posts to the community that communicate your dedication to the quality services you and your practice provide. As you onboard quality clinicians, as a group owner it can pay dividends to invest in consistent professional development and staying up to date with industry trends. By providing relevant services, you communicate to clients that you are working to reach them and are open to flexibility.
A Holistic Approach
We’ve merely scratched the surface of strategies and insight to scaling your group practice. It’s our goal to help clinicians develop clear visions, navigate challenges, decide on marketing and business strategies, build a quality team, and gain insight into financial strategies all while creating a foundation for stability and happiness for you as a professional.
To learn more in-depth strategies and receive support from fellow professionals, sign up now for the “Building with Balance” course. It might feel tempting to try to continue this journey alone but as we tell our clients, having a balanced approach to change involves leaning into support systems. This support system is carefully designed to give you the tools and knowledge to let your practice grow and thrive without sacrificing quality or your sanity in the process!
Building With Balance is $127 for lifetime access to the step by step plan you need to scale your business into a group practice. And just to make your life easier, you can join for just 2 payments of $67.
For $67 you can get access right now to all the lessons, the 3 fill-in templates to make growing smooth as silk, and 90 minutes of masterclass insights to leave you feeling confident and inspired about your next steps.
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