Get ready to conquer the challenges of owning a group practice! This episode promises a deep dive into the issues practice owners face and provides practical solutions to turn these struggles into learning opportunities. We unpack major hurdles such as lack of knowledge and underestimation of administrative workload. We underscore the necessity of a comprehensive business education and mentorship, strategic financial planning and operational planning that can help you build a resilient and sustainable practice.
Do you fully understand your practice's financial health? Unravel the intricacies of group practice financial management with us, as we highlight the destructive consequences of financial mismanagement and discuss the benefits of specialized financial assistance. You'll learn about the profound impact of a comprehensive financial assessment, recognizing your financials, and identifying areas of strength and opportunities for improvement. Dealing with changes in the healthcare system and market also comes into play, and the importance of staying updated through research, mentorship, and continuous learning.
Lastly, we address the elephant in the room - administrative burnout in group practices. We shed light on the profound importance of having the right systems and processes in place, delegating tasks, and continuously evaluating your situation. Hear us out on the importance of self-care for practice owners, proactive steps in business planning and leadership skills. Remember, you are not alone in this journey, and together, we can navigate these challenges and grow. Tune in to transform your struggles into stepping stones to success.
Get ready to conquer the challenges of owning a group practice! This episode promises a deep dive into the issues practice owners face and provides practical solutions to turn these struggles into learning opportunities. We unpack major hurdles such as lack of knowledge and underestimation of administrative workload. We underscore the necessity of a comprehensive business education and mentorship, strategic financial planning and operational planning that can help you build a resilient and sustainable practice.
Do you fully understand your practice's financial health? Unravel the intricacies of group practice financial management with us, as we highlight the destructive consequences of financial mismanagement and discuss the benefits of specialized financial assistance. You'll learn about the profound impact of a comprehensive financial assessment, recognizing your financials, and identifying areas of strength and opportunities for improvement. Dealing with changes in the healthcare system and market also comes into play, and the importance of staying updated through research, mentorship, and continuous learning.
Lastly, we address the elephant in the room - administrative burnout in group practices. We shed light on the profound importance of having the right systems and processes in place, delegating tasks, and continuously evaluating your situation. Hear us out on the importance of self-care for practice owners, proactive steps in business planning and leadership skills. Remember, you are not alone in this journey, and together, we can navigate these challenges and grow. Tune in to transform your struggles into stepping stones to success.
My group practice is struggling. My group practice is failing. I don't know if I want to do group group practice anymore. I need to dismantle. I don't know how to figure this out. First of all, if that is you, I want to say first, let's take a couple breaths. This is very hard. It's very, very hard to do what you're doing and I commend you and I believe that if you want to get it out of a struggling place, if you want to continue and are willing to put in that work, you can absolutely do that. You can save this. Having a group practice, growing the group practice, learning how to be a leader, learning how to figure out the ins and outs of group practice, growth and leadership and sustainability.
Speaker 1:It is I mean, we didn't go to school for that right. It is hard. It is hard and I'm so glad you found this episode and this podcast and I can't wait to dive in and to talk about those common struggles so you do not feel alone, so you can maybe pinpoint and gain some more understanding and awareness around. Why are you facing the challenges you are right now? What are those challenges and how are they impacting the success of your practice or the struggles in your practice. Okay, so I hope you can leave this episode with some awareness, with some knowledge, with feeling less alone as we go through the very common challenges and the solutions to those challenges and where you can get started to get out of yourself, get yourself out of that struggle. But, again, struggles are normal. You are doing a great job and, yes, we could be doing better. So let's learn about how to do that, roll up our sleeves and get into this episode. So the success of group practice owners can really vary widely, widely vary, I'm sorry, based on individual circumstances, based on your knowledge base, based on there's a lot of different things, right? So it's it really widely varies depending on where your group practice is at, where you are, what you have done and where you're at in the process.
Speaker 1:However, we're going to talk about the very, we're going to talk about the common reason, so those several common shared experiences that contribute to the challenges and potential failures of some group practice owners and some group practices why people dismantle, why people the practice fails, why they can't keep up, why it's not sustainable, why they need to shut their doors or why they don't want to just don't want to do it anymore. Okay, so these are the most common ones. So you are most likely, if you're listening to this episode, to find out why you're struggling. You might raise some awareness that, hey, this is a common thing that other people experience too. It is a common one. So there are a lot of solutions to these. These people have figured it out before. Right, these are common.
Speaker 1:Or maybe you're listening to this episode because you want to avoid those struggles and be aware of those struggles so that when they come up if they come up, you know how, what to do. You can be aware that that is a struggle, it is a barrier, and you maybe build more resiliency around it so that it doesn't catch you off guard and you can have some tools to move through it. Okay, so you can really face these different challenges that we're going to go over by just simply by it being your first time, by not having that experience, by being new to it, by maybe not having mentorship, who can kind of help you avoid these common pitfalls or these just common challenges? Also, you can face these challenges because you fail to plan as well. You fail to look at things you need to look at. You maybe avoid some certain, avoid certain problems. Maybe you don't have systems in place right, so some skills skills based too can absolutely cause you to fall into this trap. And also, sometimes you grow too fast and you can't keep up with the growth right. So when you're growing your practice, maybe you're doing really well and all of a sudden you're facing all these challenges and your practice is really struggling. There also can be a lot of things outside of your control as well, so, but whatever reason is that you are facing it, we want to understand what you're facing and start to move in a direction of moving out of that struggle, fixing it, finding those solutions, acknowledging that it is a problem, it is a struggle, it is a challenge and there's help out there for you. There's things you can do if you want to move forward and not dismantle, and keep being resilient and grow your group practice into the group practice of you and your clinicians and clients dreams, to open up your doors, the doors to so much more and pursue that passion of group practice ownership, okay.
Speaker 1:So challenge number one that we're going to talk about is inadequate business planning. Okay, so many professionals are skilled in providing that clinical care, but they lack necessary business skills or business experience to run a successful, sustainable practice year in and year out and moving forward into the future. Without a solid business plan, without the understanding of outlining of the goals and where you want to be, without having those strategies, without having that financial projection and understanding, without having the how-to's, a group practice can really struggle to achieve sustained success, sustained growth, sustained contentment right? So we have to constantly be looking at our business, working on our business and be business planning. And this can be inadequate when we are not looking at it, not evaluating how things are going, not looking into how we can do things better, not growing those pillars of the practice. Right, there's certain pillars to the success of the practice. So if we're not looking at things, we're not getting feedback, we're not getting support, we're not continuing our learning, our education and our mentorship really big, then we can really fail to plan and fail to understand the business how in the ways that are essential to having a sustainable, a sustainable, successful and balanced relationship with our group practice. Right. So, inadequate business planning.
Speaker 1:And what are the solutions to that challenge? Now, number one business education and training. And when I say business education and training, what I really want to specify on is or really want to call out or call in to start when it comes to your education and training is. Number one is having a business mentor and I have a podcast on this. If you're interested then I would listen to that and all the benefits of having a mentor or multiple mentors, learning from them going through those programs, having someone you can consult with, to learn from who have been there. Right, we want to collaborate with a business consultant, with an advisor, with someone who's been there, with someone who has been where you have been, who's gone through those hardships, who specializes in what you're doing, who has built those systems, who have gone through those problems, who can help you to see into the future, give you their experience, give you their knowledge so that you can avoid, maybe, some of the barriers that they had. So you can save time, money, energy, emotional well-being. Right, there's nothing better you can do than invest in your own learning to create a better business, right?
Speaker 1:And if your arguments there can be objections to not wanting to have that investment and put it into business coaching, you absolutely that is that business coaching is an investment. It's an investment. It is not a cost that you will never see again. So, even if you're struggling, if you don't have, you know the profit you want. Then the profit that you do have, or the means that you do have, you want to put into into mentorship because that can help you get out of it quicker and just save money and help you to see more money coming into the business and just save you yeah, save you time, money, energy. It's just.
Speaker 1:I consider it absolutely an investment and someone who does business coaching myself consistently, no matter where I am at, I cannot speak higher of it. When I've been in hard places financially, good places financially, regardless, that is the last thing to go. Now, the last thing I'm gonna do is drop business coaching and, honestly, when I'm in the hardest spots, that's when I'm doing more business coaching. Okay, learning from others, not reinventing the wheel, not spending. I want to save as much time as I can, get out of it as quick as I can and save myself the emotional burden right. So business coaching is going to absolutely assist in developing those business plans the strategic experience, business plans tailored to your practice's unique needs, because they have had that experience right. So absolutely essential when it comes to helping you with inadequate business planning is to get a mentor, invest in business planning. I can keep going with this, so I should stop and move on to the next one. But business education and training, absolutely so. Mentorship programs with those mentorships, courses from those mentors learn, learn, learn, learn as much as you can get your hands on. Learn, ask questions, utilize those people who have been there before.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the next challenge I want to talk about when it comes to the success of group practice, ownership is oh gosh, this is so important and so emotionally taxing lack of leadership and management skills. So for you yourself as the leader, as the business owner, but also for your leaders on the team, the people who are in leadership roles, that lack of leadership and management skills are going to create compounded problems, and the way to solve it is always to get through to the root and empower, learn how to be a better leader, manage better and teach those in leadership positions to be able to meet those requirements. So you can? Yeah, because it impacts every piece and part of the puzzle when it comes to having a group practice right. So leading a team requires strong leadership and management skills, and these are skills, but it also requires the right, fit person in those roles, issues with communication, conflict resolution, team coordination all can really negatively impact to each practitioner, the clients, the practices, atmosphere, just everything, the ins and outs, the inner workings of the group practice.
Speaker 1:So, if you are listening and you have not read books on leadership, got mentorship, asked for feedback from your team, learned management skills, looked at this, had a, have awareness of this, that absolutely is a blind spot that you want to look at, no matter how hard and uncomfortable, right away, right away and consistently and consistently. So that is the next challenge and we're going to talk about the solution to that, and there's multiple solutions. These are not all inclusive, but if you feel you are lacking leadership and management skills or the people in those positions are lacking leadership and management skills, then we absolutely need to invest in training and growth. When it comes to leadership and a lot of this is experienced to you know you need to go through all the different experiences of being a leader and learn from them and take care of yourself as you build that resiliency, as you build that foundation of understanding and as you investigate solutions to it and grow as a person and a leader. Okay, but we can absolutely find training, whether it's books, programs, mentorship, to help us to focus on how to be an effective leader, how to be a trusted leader, a safe leader, and learn skills like effective communication, conflict resolution, ways to best support the team, team building, decision making skills right. And I have a whole other episode about making tough decisions that you should listen to as a, because this is a huge leadership skill Okay and false. And you can also learn to foster a culture of continuous learning within your practice, encouraging yourself, your team members to attend leadership workshops, conferences, seminars and just consistently develop your understanding and your skills when it comes to leadership. And a lot of this also comes to personal growth. So I would even add here therapy work on your relationship skills, your understanding of what it is to be in relationship, what comes up that are barriers or that are scary. Maybe you need to be a little bit more vulnerable and communicative, but there's some things you need to look at as far as why that might be a barrier to look at at all, because of maybe some personal experience and personal things to you. So I would add, absolutely therapy taking care of yourself, investing your time and taking it very seriously to take care of yourself while you are also learning and training and getting mentorship in leadership. Okay, again, this can be so many different podcasts, just I mean there's podcasts just on leadership. Highly recommend listening to those as part of your training, but this is absolutely something that's essential.
Speaker 1:Okay, so so far we went over the challenges that most people face when their group practice is not doing as well as they would have hoped or they're really struggling, and so far we talked. We chatted about inadequate business planning and lack of leadership and management skills. The next very common thing that I see is financial mismanagement, financial misunderstanding, lack of financial support from professionals right, maybe they don't have. Maybe you don't have any people on your team that can help you with that. Maybe you're not looking at the finances, which is a problem. Okay so, financial mismanagement, financial lack of knowledge group practices involve various financial aspects right, billing, insurances, expenses, revenue, being able to withstand tough times, knowing what's going to happen in the future and having safeguards in right Benefits for your team. I mean group practices and taking care of Taking care of other people, taking care of a team, taking care of more clients, doing more billing, growing, which is always going to increase expenses right, we need to understand business financial management.
Speaker 1:If you have poor financial management, you're not looking at your numbers, you're not aware of your billing processes, you have inadequate billing processes, you have failure to manage your cash flow. It can all lead to business failure, financial instability and not being able to continue, not wanting to continue, not seeing how you can continue. Right, it is Such an important thing and it's so hard because very you know we get, we go from solo to group practice and many times we don't have the knowledge we need or we jump in without mentorship and you don't know what you're you don't. You don't know what you don't know. And If you are not a financial, if you're not aware of the financials which you won't be stepping into it, you can get yourself into Problems. You can make poor financial decisions. You can promise things that you cannot afford. You can take on expenses that you cannot afford. You can maybe grow too fast. You can.
Speaker 1:It's very common to not understand the cash flow, to know if you have a stable and sustainable profit margin or safety, like cash safety, and I don't know why. I can't, I can't explain this, but, like you need backups. You need to be able to withstand those hard times and you don't haven't been through those, so you just don't know. So, anyways, this is really really big and I want to talk about the solutions here. There are multiple solutions, but the the first one I would say is absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 1:You want to have Someone who is trusted and you always want to be monitoring this right and seeing how they do when you have a new person Joining your team. But you want to have outsourced financial Management people. So, number one, an accountant. Number two, financial advisor, to help you to understand what's happening with your financials, with your books, because you're busy. You're busy growing and learning about how to be a group practice owner and growing your team right, and All these things are happening financially and you need someone who knows what they're doing to bring these things to you and say, hey, we need to consider this, hey, we need to look at this, or if you have a question financially, who are you gonna go to? You can't just go to yourself. You have to go to someone who who can understand these numbers and can help you to make informed Business decisions that are in going to impact your financials. Okay, so you need specialized people. You can also, in addition to an accountant and a financial advisor, you can get a bill, or it is someone a bill, or that you trust a bill, or that's communicative.
Speaker 1:I would also suggest knowing how to do billing, because it's tough that that's such a pillar and if you don't know what's happening, it's hard to be able to Monitor, evaluate and just keep an eye on how billing is going right. But having a bill or an, or a bill or billing team would be very helpful as well. Okay, have understanding insurance how to get better reimbursement, how do you to get coverage for your clients right those are financial pieces as well. Insurance is a financial piece, although you're you know it's more of working on coverage and understanding how to, how to bill for that and get coverage. That's important because that's going to impact your financials and your revenue and your cash flow substantially. Right, and I have a bunch of episodes on that. I'll continue to make episodes on billing and in insurance and my journey with that and Some helpful tips and what to consider, but that's absolutely part of this. Okay, so this can really help you to make good business decisions, streamline your financial processes, have check-ins and improve your revenue management, your cash flow management, your understanding of those numbers. Okay. So so that first solution is Going to be that Financial help from those important team members.
Speaker 1:The second one is that you want to be able to whether you're on your own or working with others highly suggest working with others. You want to be able to conduct and understand comprehensively the financial ins and outs of your practice. You want to be able to conduct a comprehensive financial assessment of your practice, be able to understand what's going on, review your revenue streams, review your expenses, be able to make decisions with that, understand your billing processes, your cash flow and identify and you want to do this because you want to be able to identify the areas that are going strong, the areas that need improvement, the areas that need complete Improvement, the areas that need abolishment and just redo. You want to be able, you want to always have awareness and to be assessing and improving and understanding and this is financial management is Like unavoidable. You, you have to look at it and everyone at different parts of their practices, all right at different parts of their journey, do this at different times.
Speaker 1:It you may be someone, you do it right from the beginning and you really keep a close eye on it. Some people keep too close in of an eye on it and maybe you worry a bit too much. And then there are folks that avoid and they don't look at it, and then they're caught off guard and they're surprised by some of the decisions they made. So we are not we. We did not go to school for finances, at least I don't think a lot of. A lot of you did right, and so how can we expect us to know what we're doing? We have to educate ourselves, read books, use mentors, have a team absolutely essential to your practices success.
Speaker 1:Okay, next challenge is going to be failure to adapt, failure to adapt to changes, to needs, to the market, to the client, that the changes of your client needs. It's always the health care industry, which most likely you're in as a therapist or a dietician, a psychiatrist listening to this podcast. It's you're in the health care industry and it's constantly evolving, with changes to regulations, insurance, reimbursement, reimbursements, patient preferences Always changing right, so we need to be able to. And also, not only is the market and the specific market always changing, especially if you take insurance, but also just your business is going to be changing. You're growing. You're not going to do things the same way you would have done in five years ago because you know more now.
Speaker 1:So group practices Usually fail if they fail to adapt to changes, if they fail to look at those changes head-on, get uncomfortable and keep up and and Look at that struggle, look at that change to remain competitive, relevant, successful, sustainable, providing the necessary services, remaining, continue to meet, you know, all quality care and just have quality Systems in place and best practice in place. So, failure to adapt to market changes, but also failure to adapt in general and be able to shift and pivot and look and Assess and make changes. We have to make changes. If you are not making changes, your group will fail. We were growing. It should not look the same way it did last year or the year before or the year before. We have to know that we're gonna learn, we're gonna change and that's absolutely where we should be. Okay, that's what it's supposed to look like.
Speaker 1:So, of course, what can you do? You need to invest in an understanding, like ongoing marketing, market research. You want to stay informed about these insurance changes. You want to Communicate with other providers to understand these. You want to consistently get my mentorship. You want to be educating yourself on these regulatory changes, industry changes. You want to. You want to be up to date on those changes, right, and how you can do that is going to be investing in ongoing market research, which is to be in groups with other providers, have a mentor and To stay informed Okay, consistently educating yourself.
Speaker 1:The next one is there's so much to this one because, when it comes to adapting, we need to be resilient, we need to be okay with change, we need to be effective decision-making, decision-makers, we want to be good leaders, we want to be constantly assessing, we want to plan for the worst, and I have podcasts on all of these, right. So this can be a very large conversation, as all these points can be. But another solution is we really want to be able to develop the strategic plan. We want to be strategically planning for Changes, for changes in the market, for changes with the team, for changes with insurance, changes with client-based systems, emr outreach, new team members, delegation, new leadership, right. We need to be assessing, adapting and planning so we can adjust, whether it's adjusting our services, our marketing, our way of doing things, our operations on the back end, so we can respond to an evolving healthcare system, evolving team, evolving dynamics, evolving systems All of these things right. So I would say, for that challenge of failure to adapt, whether it's to market changes or other things, we need to be constantly raising awareness, constantly assessing, not avoiding it, but looking at it and getting the support needed, whether it's through mentorship, continued learning, feedback, personal growth. We need to do it. It will absolutely. We can't have success without that.
Speaker 1:Okay, the next challenge that many people face when it comes to group practice owning and why businesses fail is ineffective marketing. Right, of course, not getting not effectively marketing to our ideal clients or failing to bring in enough clients to fail to satisfy those clients. We have right. Ineffective marketing, ineffective branding, ineffective outreach, ineffective flow of our customers is absolutely going to result in an unsustainable practice. If we're growing, right, we have to be growing to and growing our client base, to be able to grow our team. So we need to be able to establish a strong brand identity, effectively communicate our practices, value, to be reaching out to our ideal clients, to be seeing how we can make our services more accessible. All of those things and everything in between Effective marketing, right. So what can we do? Well, we want to again have a comprehensive plan. We want to have a diverse portfolio of like how we market, having a clear audience, having clear branding, having different warm and cold marketing channels, have a budget to continue to put into outreach and marketing, and we want to make sure the plan aligns with bringing in our ideal client and aligning with our practices values as well. Okay, so we want to have a plan that is diverse, first and foremost, and to get into more specifics there.
Speaker 1:You know what are you, what are you doing? Are you reaching out to reaching out If you're a dietitian? Are you reaching out to doctors? Are you reaching out to therapists? How often are you reconnecting with people you've connected with in the past? Are you connecting with new folks? Are you getting into the community and doing education? Are you reaching out to doctors to help them to understand your symptoms that your ideal client might be experiencing? So you're raising more awareness around that condition? Are you doing ads? Are you doing Facebook ads, google ads? Are you bringing in the right people with those ads? Do you have a Google manager? Do you have an outreach coordinator to help you with those things? Does your team do outreach? Are you promoting that?
Speaker 1:Now, that was a ton and I definitely will do other episodes on that, but that is really important to consider, because I consider that one of the pillars to to group practice ownership is is the marketing and outreach to continue to bring clients in, to have a sustainable practice, to continue to help your ideal client. That's what you're there for, right? So you need to be visible, you need to make sure your presence is known, and that's hard. It becomes easier the more understanding you have, and consistency is key there. Consistency is key and then when you have those practices in place, you should be tracking those metrics. How are your Google ads doing? Are you just wasting money in Google ads? Are you actually converting those inquiries into clients? Is that at the ideal client? How is your website traffic? How is your social media engagement that you have been, that you have been investing in? Okay, how are those those warm handoff referrals and where are they coming from? Right, you want to be able to adjust your strategies based on that performance data. So we need the data and we need to be marketing that Okay.
Speaker 1:The next piece and I guess this it can go under the finances and not plan not having effective financial management. Something that falls under this could be, but also I'm considering it separate is the high overhead costs, the hot, having large expenses that you cannot keep up with. So, group practices they can have higher overhead costs due to a lot of different reasons. Right, they have due to administrative staff billing. You know if they take insurance they need someone to do their billing, they need someone to onboard clients. You have different facilities and facility expenses that you have. You know your leases for your different office spaces.
Speaker 1:If you have multiple offices in different locations, you know that's going to, of course, add up and so there's just, there's always added costs that can continue to add and add. And if you're not aware of those and if revenue does not offset those costs and we don't have a stable, safe profit margin, right, then we can absolutely be compromised, the practice can absolutely be compromised and we can't, we can't continue to do something that's not sustainable, right, we won't be able to survive, we won't be able to provide services, to be able to cover those costs, to be able to take care of our team. So if you, your expenses are high, your overhead costs are high, you don't. If you don't know the cost, if you don't know your profit margin, if you don't know your revenue and you're not aware of those things. This absolutely can cause failure because so it's. It's like this.
Speaker 1:There's this misconception and and I believe it's a misconception but people go into group practice ownership thinking that when you start hiring your team and growing that you are going to have better profit Wrong In the long run. Yes, you can absolutely do that and by growing is expensive. There are so many costs that come in to play when you are growing and if you want to take good care of your team and have W2 employees and be able to do benefits and continue to do raises and provide other resources, right, there's gonna be a lot of expenses. So people think that you know when they hire their first, second, third, third person, they're going to start to see a difference in profit. But I absolutely couldn't contest to when I hired my first person, second person, third person, fourth person I was. I was losing money, I was able to take care of them, but I wasn't. I absolutely wasn't making the money I could as a just on my own. So you have to keep growing and this might not be true for everyone. Everyone has different. You know. You might have contractors, you might. There's just you, just practices are different, right. So that was my experience is not everyone's experience, but I it is everyone's experience.
Speaker 1:I could say that if you have a do, if you have W2s and employees and that's the direction you're going in according to your values, your beliefs, your desires it is expensive. It is expensive and as you grow, those expenses will build. And you, you want to consider those costs and you want to consider the direction and the number of clinicians and how big your team, how big you want your team to be in order to sustain their growth and be able to be profitable, because that's an important number, that to reach if you want to be able to be sustainable, if you want to be able to have a profitable group practice, and so lots and lots to consider here. I'll stop there. I'll make that into another episode because I can see myself droning on about this for a while. So I'll do a whole other episode about that one.
Speaker 1:Okay, so how can you take care of high overhead costs? First, I want to say effective decision making. And so by having a strategic plan, by having a mentor who has been there before, by having a financial team that can help you. You want to. It's hard to go, it's hard to decrease the expenses after you implement them. You either have to decrease the expenses if you get into a hard position, or you have to continue to grow, which may not be available or possible at that point, or maybe it's not something you want to do, so it's hard to go back and adjust that. So you want to just be in a place where you are supported to be able to make good decisions in the first place. Okay, by being aware of your expenses, by making good decisions with the support you need and continuing to learn more about that and having awareness around that.
Speaker 1:The next challenge that you can experience that can hinder success in group practice ownership is legal and regulatory challenges, and I'm sure just hearing that it's scary. It is scary but it's absolutely something you can learn about and navigate with support and the right resources. But a lot of times group practices fail due to the challenges when it comes to legal items and regulatory items. So navigating healthcare regulations, compliance, compliance with having W2s and a team and being a S corp, all the legal issues, all of those can be really complex. So failing to understand them, adhere to them, can lead to a lot of difficulties, a lot of scary things fines, penalties, penalties, closure right, because you're not complying and you're not aware of what you need to be aware of to remain legit and legal. So, of course, what is the solution gonna be? Here? You absolutely want someone to help you with those legal aspects of the business from day one A mentor who can help guide you in who you might need to consult with. And then, of course, consulting with legal experts like attorneys, who are gonna specialize in not only healthcare law but also employee law and help you to understand the regulations, the requirements, and help you to make sure you're in full compliance and understanding with your responsibilities as a business owner, as a healthcare practitioner. Okay, so with that help, you can develop the compliance checklist, you can have more understanding, you can review, you can make sure you're up to date, you can have that support, you can know what trainings you need to do all of that. So having a mentor and a legal consultant, like a legal expert in that area and attorney, is going to be super important to not let that be a barrier to your success.
Speaker 1:The next challenge in oh man, this is such a challenge that people don't I don't think they realize what they're getting themselves into is underestimating administrative workload, and this happens because managing a group involves significant administrative tasks, right, such as scheduling, billing, record keeping, supervision I mean it goes on and on and on to support your team and to support those clients, and many times people underestimate the time and effort that's required to fully support that. So sometimes they think they can. Group practice owners think they can free up their time and they can be a little more out of the day to day. That is not true. Maybe later, but it absolutely adds time because you're supporting a whole other team member and there's a lot more involved in having your larger practice. You have more people, you're gonna have more clients, and many times people underestimate the time and effort required for these tasks and it can lead to a lot of inefficiencies, barriers. Yes, it can be super tough and really tough on the business. So you don't wanna underestimate your administrative workload and if this is something you're doing, that's okay.
Speaker 1:Again, all of these have solutions. We just have to figure out what the best solution is for you. So what can you do? First of all, we want to immediately start getting systems into place. We wanna know our SOPs, we wanna know our processes and we wanna get these on paper and evaluate them and make them more efficient and effective. Okay, so you want your systems of how to do things in a time-saving way, in an efficient way and in an effective way on paper, and we wanna create those. If we're not creating those Now, if you are under, if you have underestimated your workload, this might be time to delegate, if you have the means and there's a whole other episode about delegation but this might be a perfect opportunity to say, hey, I can't do this on my own, I don't wanna do this on my own.
Speaker 1:It'd be more, I'd be more successful, the practice would be more successful with help and if you can take it out of your budget, out of your own pay, and bring on someone to help you, that is going to free up your time, energy to continue to grow in the direction you want to grow. So absolutely delegate. Something else I would do is, if you have underestimated your workload, consider where you can, where would be the best use of your time right now. Make a list of what you're doing. Ask yourself, what can I do less of? And you wanna consider your energy, financials, all of that but what can you do less of so that you can do more of something else that's gonna help you to get out of this stuck place. And so, for example, as I mentioned, if you need to delegate and if you can delegate, it's absolutely something you should do.
Speaker 1:So if you're in a place where you are overwhelmed, you don't have a lot of time and maybe you're seeing, maybe you have one provider, they have a full caseload, you're mentoring them, you're doing the billing, you are doing the intake, you're doing all of the business stuff on the backend, right, and maybe you are seeing 15 clients yourself Assessing your situation, assessing your finances. I would assess okay, should I delegate? Should I reduce my clients? What am I able to do? And if you're a tiny practice like that still, and you only have one person, you might not be able to really drastically reduce your client load. But what you might be able to do is afford a part-time biller or a part-time scheduler or a part-time or even full-time VA and virtual assistant to help you with those tasks.
Speaker 1:Okay, so write it down. Write down what you're currently doing, consider your financial plan and ask okay, I'm gonna have to change some things. How can I get out of this situation? Where is the best place to invest in order to help myself do that and maybe you wanna continue these 60-hour work weeks that you're having and maybe you can and your cup is filled up enough to do this for another three months and then make a plan to get out of it in three months. But in these next three months maybe you're hiring someone else so that you can soon be able to hire a full-time biller or the full-time VA.
Speaker 1:Okay, so consider your options. This is a big one, but I wanted to give you a little bit some examples here for how to help yourself out of this administrative workload that you underestimated and maybe didn't consider. Additionally, I kinda wanna add it under this one. I would say that systems are not having the correct systems in place like not having a thorough understanding of how your billing is done, how your onboarding is done, and having a time-efficient, consistent way of doing that. That's going to really hurt your energy, your time, maybe hurt the clients that are coming in. That give them a bad experience, right.
Speaker 1:So you really wanna consider your systems in all of these different parts of your business, and a lot of times when you're starting a group practice, you're kind of flying by the seat of your pants. You have so much to do and it's hard to look at all of these different pieces and really make them as efficient and effective as possible. And it's easy to have all those blind spots because you're one person show or a two person show and maybe you don't have the time to ask how can I be more efficient, how can I be consistent, how can I assess these processes? But as soon as you can put systems into place, handbooks into place, how-tos, sops, you absolutely wanna do that yesterday, you wanna do that from the beginning. Okay, the next challenge is gonna be stress and burnout, and this is the last one. I wanna end with A huge challenge in why people discontinue and stop their practice is because it's really hard and people usually burn themselves out and the stress is really high with running a group practice, being a leader, with growth, with the financials.
Speaker 1:The stress and demands of managing a group practice can absolutely lead a lot of folks to burnout, and so we really wanna prioritize taking care of ourselves and taking care of our practice, and the way we can do this is, I would say again, I always bring this in, but I would have a mentor to help you to feel less alone, to help you reduce the stress by helping you do to build things into your practice that are gonna reduce stress energy, time, financial burdens right, so we can reduce the stress by having more knowledge, more education and someone helping us out, so absolutely that. But also by taking care of yourself from the beginning, having those self-care practices in place, having a work-life balance and prioritizing, prioritizing that, implementing that into your life as much as you can, as much as you can, getting the help you need by delegating, really addressing that from the beginning. And so funny. So I, when I started, I took I was in this program of how to build like a solo private practice, so just how to, how to be a private practice clinician. And when I did, one of the tenants was self care, like right away, like consider self care right away because it will absolutely catch up to you, and I was like, oh yeah, that's for later. And I go back to that and I wish I would have taken it as seriously from the beginning. So as I developed the practice, I developed that alongside of it and I took it as seriously because it's very serious for you personally but it also very seriously can impact the growth, the direction and the feel of being a business owner. So do it from the beginning.
Speaker 1:If you are new to this, if you're considering group practice, if you're only have one clinician or two, I shouldn't say only, that's a really big first step. Good, good for you, that's awesome. But if you are smaller and wanting to grow, if you're there or if you have 50 clinicians, this is very, very important because at any time, burnout can hit or you can be at the though it could be stress adding and compounding to a place where you don't want to do this anymore and you have to dismantle your group practice because it's not worth it to you anymore. So you absolutely this is preventable. So we need, we want to prevent this because we're doing this, because we are passionate about it and we have a lot of goals, and so we don't want an inability to take care of ourselves or not making that important and high on our to do list be the thing that takes us out. Okay, well, that was a lot.
Speaker 1:I hope you felt less alone by hearing all these different challenges and again I want to say there absolutely are solutions. I provided you some for each, but you can get out of this. There are solutions to it. Hang in there. Don't give up. Don't make decisions when you're struggling. This is a time when you don't want to be making decisions in the hard times and the stressful, high emotional times. Okay, so take a breath.
Speaker 1:Find people who have done this before who can help you, who have been in this position and have gotten out of it, to build your resources, to build your knowledge base and to get that support so that you can get out of this place where you're really struggling and your business might be failing or you want to shut it down and get into a rejuvenated rejuvenated place, because you can absolutely do this. This is very, very hard. You weren't born with these skills, but you can learn it. You can do it. I believe in you, absolutely. I have been to all of these, probably all of these places that I have mentioned today.
Speaker 1:All of these challenges right, and you can get yourself out of it, but it's very normal to experience these. Yeah, we just want to move forward in the direction of continuing to take care of ourselves and grow and learn, and not have these take us out. So, anyways, with that, I just want to end by saying I am here for you, I am with you. You are not alone, and by taking these proactive steps to improve these, these different aspects like business planning, leadership skills, financial management and all these other critical areas, you can absolutely navigate the complexities of this effectively with support, with that knowledge base. I absolutely believe in you. So, until next time, continue being the badass you are. No, you are not alone, and this, too, shall pass in the way it needs to. Okay, I'm here for you and I will see you next time.