Contributed post.
When you run a successful private practice, at some point you’ll likely want to grow your practice.
Image credit: Amy Hirschi on Unsplash
Growth offers numerous benefits, including:
- Letting you help more clients
- Improving your overall revenues and profits
- Helping you expand into different types of clients
- Giving your practice a stronger foundation and better future
These are all compelling reasons to pursue (and natural outcomes of) growth, but can seem challenging to achieve. While it’s not easy, achieving growth doesn’t have to be overwhelming or complicated.
It’s just a matter of using the right tactics to grow your private practice. Here are eight tips that could be more important than you think.
Grow Your Private Practice: Eight Vital Tips
1. Create a Specialty
Therapists, psychiatrists, and other professionals typically choose a specialty when they’re learning their trade, because they have a deep interest in that particular part of their jobs. You likely would’ve done this when you were still pursuing your qualifications, and it’s a natural step to take.
When you’re growing your practice, it’s easy to overlook this area. You may want to cast a wide net to get new clients just so you can grow your practice. Don’t make that mistake. Focus on your specialty, and you can bring in new clients that need that specific help. In time, you can bring in more professionals who specialize in other areas, helping you fuel your growth.
2. Pick the Right Location
One of the most important considerations when starting a private practice is picking the right location. If clients can’t easily access your space and have ample parking, they’re less likely to visit your office. Presumably you’d have already taken that into account and gone with the best premises you could afford when you first started off.
Now that you’re growing, it could be worth reconsidering your premises. You could end up finding a much better location now you can afford to spend a little more on the property. This is an overlooked factor in trying to grow your private practice, but it’s worth considering. Relocating to an area with more potential clients nearby can help expand your business.
3. Develop A Marketing Plan
When you first started your practice, you likely brought over some existing clients, helping you lay the foundation for your future growth. After a while, however, you’ll need to start advertising your practice so you can start bringing in new clients. This is essential in order to grow.
Advertising and marketing are vital for growing any kind of business. Developing a marketing strategy is a core step. Creating, implementing, and continually tuning your marketing plan based on what works enables you to figure out the most effective tactics to help drive your business growth.
4. Invest in The Right Tools
You’ll need several tools to run your growing private practice, and probably have a few of them already. Make sure the applications and systems you have in place are actually the right tools to manage your growth. If your current tools aren’t ideal for supporting your long-term growth goals, it may be worth investing in alternatives.
OT software, accounting software, and other apps will play a role in this. Take the time to actually figure out which options will help you grow your private practice and which ones may be holding you back.
5. Perfect the Paperwork
There’s a lot of paperwork involved in running a private practice, as you are no doubt already familiar with. For compliance and payment reasons, it’s vital to manage this paperwork in an efficient and time manner. While you’re an expert in your field of practice, you may not be the best with recordkeeping. Before you grow your private practice, it’s worth spending a bit of time and effort figuring it out.
By making sure the paperwork is timely and accurate, you save yourself a lot of time and hassle. Looking up client records will be a breeze, and your files will always be current. Keeping organized with your paperwork helps avoid legal, regulatory, or payment snafus.
6. Don’t Avoid the Business Side
While you entered therapy and psychiatry because you wanted to help people, that’s not the only area you’ll have to focus on when you’re running a practice—especially not when you’re trying to grow it. You’ll need to stay on top of the business side of things while you’re taking care of patients.
There are several aspects to this. Marketing, as mentioned above, is just the start. You’ll need to create positive cash flow, manage your employees, deal with payroll, and much more. Getting the business elements right is vital for supporting your growth goals.
7. Have a Clear Vision
Before you launch efforts to grow your practice, make sure you have a clear picture of what it’s going to be like—a vision of how you want the practice to be, which helps give you something specific to work toward. That vision will help you plan the exact steps to get you there.
That doesn’t mean focusing only on the positives. You’ll also need to be aware of the challenges and risks that come with growth. Understanding the potential obstacles and planning for how to overcome them will prepare you to deal with them promptly and effectively as these challenges arise.
8. Get Trained in Business Areas
While you’re already well-trained in therapy, psychiatry, or other professional focus, that doesn’t exactly equate to running a business. It’s a completely different skillset, and you’ll need to be prepared. It could be worth investing in some additional training to help with this.
Focus on the areas where you most need help, and find courses that can help you build or expand those skills. You might be surprised by how short some courses are, yet that new knowledge can have a significant impact on the success of your practice and your growth initiatives.
Grow Your Private Practice: Wrapping Up
Growing your private practice isn’t easy, but the right approach, preparation, and mindset, you can make it happen.
It’s a matter of understanding your strengths and the areas of business (like accounting or marketing) where you’ll need help to expand or supplement your skills.
The eight tips above can be very helpful in achieving your growth goals. Be prepared to spend some time and effort on these. Nothing good ever comes overnight, but it will be more than worth the work you put into it.