As an Owner Growing Your Business Means Doing Less
I’m convinced that a business grows when owners do less. Not less work or time, but fewer total activities that they are responsible for completing.
How many of you see clients and still take out your own trash? Who wants to call insurance companies at the end of the day after seeing a full caseload? Time is a limited resource. In fact, it might be the scarcest resource of all. When you evaluate your activities for the day and the time it takes to do them, you often make concessions. Yet, not all activities are equally important to growing your business.
Growing Your Business By Managing Your Time – and Activities
The successful entrepreneur will minimize, delegate, or choose to eliminate activities.
This is what my coach, Jess Tyson, from Don’t Panic Management has been trying to get me to understand for about six months now. In the beginning, when we first started consulting services with her, I was doing all the activities to run a growing business. I was the webpage designer. I hired people. I trained assistants. I did payroll. I did marketing. I held all the sales calls and completed all the contracts. As time went on, the number of employees grew, and the number of contracts grew. The number of customer service calls grew, and the payroll accounting became more complex. My systems were too labor-intensive to grow and scale just as the business was growing and scaling.
And the main problem was that I was the person blocking progress. If everything needed me to touch it, then the business grew at the speed of my time, energy, and attention. My time was used by whatever priority was on fire or in danger of causing bigger problems. Knowing I was limited in all three areas, I reluctantly delegated activities.
Delegating and Growing Your Business
I can still remember the first major activity I delegated to an assistant and then saw results. I delegated Facebook posts to Colleen. A few days later, she was posting excellent pictures, and we were getting views. An important company and marketing task was done, and I wasn’t the person carrying the load anymore. It made me think “Why did I wait so long to delegate this task?”
When I experienced the results and relief of delegation I truly understood what a benefit delegation can be.
Running a Business is Complex – and Time Isn’t Shrinking
Every week I talk to business owners who are in the same place that I was six months ago. Time is not shrinking. Yet, the complexity of running a business has increased to the point where we’re frustrated that things fall through the cracks. We have nagging feelings that some things aren’t getting done.
Fortunately, Move Forward Virtual Assistants provides many of the services that are left undone, such as scheduling, managing emails, and voicemails, verifying insurance benefits, and many of the other administrative tasks to help keep therapists’ calendars full. I’m incredibly honored when somebody chooses our services to help them build their business. I love the emails that tell me, “Why did I wait so long to delegate this task?” But we’re not the only service out there that therapists need to grow and scale their business.
Growing Your Business With Scale-Up Summit
That was the reason for the Scale-Up Summit held in October 2020. I know I couldn’t survive and grow without the help of several other businesses providing professional services to therapy offices. I realized there were other services that could help therapy offices grow their business. So, in early 2020, we got together to share with private practice owners how to scale up in 2021 by using services to support them.
The Summit targeted topics or issues growing business owners experience. The topics were:
- Determine your Direction
- Decide on Delegation
- Dial-in the Digital
- From Dream to Done.
Whether you’re in need of consulting services, phone services, accounting services, or support services, Scale-Up Summit has something everyone can take away as a private practice owner. From HIPAA-compliant communication technology to SEO consulting services, there’s always more to learn. A summit like this is an opportunity to learn in a safe location, which is especially important right now!
Scale-Up Summit Resources
Find all the speakers and links to their services and videos on our Scale-Up Summit Video Page. The 11 free videos are chock full of ideas and services that will help your business scale up in 2021. As I like to quote Jess Tyson from Don’t Panic Management, “You can do it yourself or you can grow. You can’t do both.”
Are you ready to grow? Then find a service that can support you and help you deliver sustainable growth for 2021 and beyond.
Still not convinced about growing your business with support services? Read these blogs to find out how you can grow your private or group practice by delegating, outsourcing, and hiring a business consultant.
James Marland
James Marland has been working in mental health and social services for over 20 years. He earned a Masters in Ministry at Lancaster Bible College, and a Masters of Business Administration from Shippensburg University. During his time in the mental health field, he experienced the power of teamwork, a positive work environment, and a caring culture. One of the best pieces of advice he learned was “no one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” He currently works at Move Forward Virtual Assistants helping to strengthen private practice owners through support services so they can build their business.
