During the scaling phase there’s a number of things that you need to do, but the first thing is five mindsets that you need to master. The scaling phases from $100,000 all the way to $1,000,000 practice.
Five Mindsets That You Need To Master In The Scaling Phase:
1. Remove Hats
The first mindset shift that you need to master in the scaling phase is that the very thing that got you to six figures is the exact opposite of what will get you to seven figures. For you to get to that scaling phase it took wearing lots of hats, reducing risk and just taking on as much as you can. You were a workhorse to get to that six figures. Now the very thing that’s going to get you to seven figures is to take those hats off. It’s a change in mindset, where you’re taking hats off and asking yourself why am I doing this when the use of my time is better served over here. So when you master this mindset it’s going to help you continue to scale.
2. Replace Yourself
You want to replace yourself with people, systems and automations. Ask yourself what it is you’re doing and how do you teach someone else to do this. How do you give them feedback on how they’re doing and then how do you pull yourself out.
3. Automate your Marketing
So often the $0 to $100,000 range private practices will do all of their own marketing and bootstrapping. You want to set up automations. This can look like automating your Facebook feed, automating all of your Google Ads or having a company oversee it. This can also look like having an assistant that sends out regular press releases, or you can bring on a marketing person or a photographer to your team so that they can be creating content that’s regularly going out to attract your ideal client.
4. Understand Lifetime Value of a Customer
Many private practice owners don’t understand this, it’s really simple: imagine someone comes to see you eight times and you charge $100 per session. That means that that person is worth $800. Should they come two times over the next few years after they’re done with counseling, that would mean that they’re worth $1,000. Lets say about 20% of people will refer a friend, that now means that that’s an extra $200. Now the lifetime value of someone is $1200, so if you put $100 into getting a new client through Google Ads, Facebook Ads or local advertising and you only get one client from that, that’s totally worth it because you spent $100 to get something that the lifetime value is $1200
5. De-emphasize Yourself
The final mindset for scaling a practice is to de-emphasize yourself. In every situation focus on emphasizing the business and the people rather than yourself. For example, in a staff meeting rather than focusing on something you did for the practice, what you want to do is have people tell stories of what they did. Maybe they networked with a new attorney and that attorney then referred people to the practice. Maybe someone wrote an article for the local newspaper or someone was interviewed on radio, having them talk about it, having them be the hero and having you be the guide is one of the best ways for you to grow a team that really looks out for each other and it scales.
How You Can Level Up
The owners that I have seen level up the fastest are those that slow down, those that slow down enough to innovate, to create and to focus on what’s most important. When I was at Slow Down School last year, an event I put on for my Next Level Mastermind folks, I saw people slow down and clarify what they needed to be working on and get rid of everything else. With that extreme focus they were able to get to that next level so much faster than everyone else.
If you’re interested in joining Next Level Mastermind or any of the other services we have for private practice owners, head on over to www.practiceofthepractice.com/apply
Joseph R. Sanok, MA, LLP, LPC, NCC
Joe Sanok is an ambitious results expert. He is a private practice business consultant and counselor that helps small businesses and counselors in private practice to increase revenue and have more fun! He helps owners with website design, vision, growth, and using their time to create income through being a private practice consultant. Joe was frustrated with his lack of business and marketing skills when he left graduate school. He loved helping people through counseling, but felt that often people couldn’t find him. Over the past few years he has grown his skills, income, and ability to lead others, while still maintaining an active private practice in Traverse City, MI.
