Six things you need to do now to grow your practice in 2019

Feeling stalled in your practice? Looking for ways to expand? Perhaps you’re just starting and want to find ways to increase your clientele. I’ve come up with a list of six things you can do to get you on the road to achieving goals and creating more success. There are a gazillion things you can do, but I’ve focused on five that I believe will help you with to get organized and move forward.

• Create partnerships-– An ofter undervalued means of increasing referrals is your connections to others in your local community. If you have a well-developed niche, look for persons, organizations, businesses whom you can provide support or educational services based on their needs. Example–if you work with children, consider partnering with community centers where kids spend a great deal of time. You can offer to groups, individual sessions, and family work. Think about your target audience and where they spend time naturally–church, coffee cafes, schools, barbershops. That will help you to find partnerships. Remember, it is always important to think about how you can be of value to your partnerships. Marketing should be a give and take arrangement.
• Get your financial books in order– Your business is only as healthy as your financial statements. If you don’t have a solid idea of what your revenue is versus your expenses, you’re not in good financial health. You cannot make decisions on expansion if you don’t have an accurate set of books. Hiring a bookkeeper is worth the additional expense no matter how small your practice might be. Stop avoiding dealing with issues that you don’t like or feel proficient in managing. If you don’t have this skill, hire someone who does.
• Stop comparing yourself to others– Your journey is yours alone. Comparing your process to another person has the potential to thwart any forward movement because inevitably you’ll feel like you’re not doing as much or should be doing more. This is the one time that I will encourage you to stay in your own lane! A steady pace will ultimately get you where you want to be.
• Deal with your fears or they will own you–  Look, let’s face it, all of us struggle with some sort of angst about stepping outside of our comfort zone. In part, it’s human nature. However, when that fear controls us and stops us from moving forward, it’s a problem. Learning how to act in spite of your fears is what will help you to conquer them. Often the concern is of the unknown. My challenge to you is to ask how you are equipped to lead a client beyond anxiety if you’re unable to do this for yourself? Ok, now what? Stop making excuses and chase your dreams! If you need help, it’s out there in abundance.
• Set goals for each quarter and at the end of the quarter assess your progress. Make your goals specific so you can easily measure them. Here are some examples of specific goals– increase the number of sessions you perform in a month from 60 to 120, blog once a month for the next three months, speak on a topic of interest to your target audience two times in the next three months.
• Create a system for everything— To improve how you conduct business, see clients, organize your finances, try to put systems in place. Having good organization for your practice will make it a lot easier, less stressful and your daily operations will be smoother. Get an electronic health record software. It doesn’t matter how small you are. Having all of your records organized makes sense. If you’re ever audited, you will have no fears that your notes are all present and contain the necessary components. Get electronic funds transfer set up with each insurance company. Not only will you get paid quicker, but you’ll also be able to track payments and denials easily. Use a virtual phone system that sends voice messages to your email. This will decrease the chances of you missing messages from callers. Find a bookkeeping system that integrates with your bank (i.e., Freshbooks, Quickbooks). Organize your calendar. Carve out time to do notes, return phone calls, have meetings, see clients, take a break and set reminders. An electronic calendar can be your best friend if you’re super busy. You can set it to sync with your phone or tablet so matter where you are, you’ll get a reminder for an upcoming appointment. In our line of business, privacy and confidentiality are crucial to make sure all of your systems are compliant with the expectations of the HIPAA laws.

If you need help with any aspect of building your practice, let us know by emailing cliniciansofcolor@gmail.com. We offer consultation to professionals who want to learn how to grow their business without stress and worry.