Grodzki - Building your ideal private practice: a guide for therapists and other healing professionals

Y oure in private practice, or ready to start one. You love the work you do with your clients. But today, loving your work and being a talented professional isnt enough to insure the success of your practice; you also need to be an enthusiastic, talented businessperson. As a business coach who specializes in helping therapists and other healing professionals achieve success, I want to show you how to build an ideal practice one that is both highly profitable and personally satisfying at the same time.

The notion of having an ideal practice that is simultaneously profitable and satisfying may seem like a pipe dream when you are wondering whether your practice can withstand yet another slowdown in client referrals, increasing professional competition, or an unpredictable economic marketplace. Overcoming the challenges you currently face in order to build a thriving practice means knowing what to do, but more importantly, it means knowing who to be. By who to be, I mean taking a frank look at yourself and making some necessary shifts in your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors so that you become an alert, savvy, skillful businessperson. From this position it is easy and natural to take the steps to create the private practice you desireyour ideal practice.

My goal is to help reinforce your business awareness by showing you ways to strengthen your emotional, cognitive, and strategic capacities. During the past four years I have coached over six hundred therapists of all professionsa diverse range of practitioners including physicians, psychologists, social workers, counselors, personal coaches, nurses, energy healers, chiropractors, massage therapists, physical therapists, acupuncturists, and body workers. (For the sake of simplicity, throughout the book I will use the terms therapist and therapy generically to connote a wide variety of professionals and their professions. When I use these terms, please know that I am speaking to you, regardless of the nature of your professional training.) In the process, I have learned one undeniable fact: How your practice performs is an accurate reflection of you, as the owner. It will be strong where you are strong and weak where you are weak. Taking an honest, careful look at your existing practice will show you precisely where you need to make changes within yourself. My job is to show you how. Throughout the book, I will show you how you can make changes:

• emotionally, by developing the right kind of internal and external professional support;
• spiritually, by designing a compelling business vision that upholds your integrity;
• cognitively, by adopting an entrepreneurial, antisabotage mindset;
• strategically, by identifying and implementing the actions that generate a flow of referrals, boost profits, and add value to a small practice; and
• creatively, by charting a course to keep you and your practice on the cutting edge of your profession.

If you are like many other therapists I coach, you will notice that the more you change in these directions, becoming a stronger businessperson, the more your practice improves, becoming more profitable, organized, and resilient. You will attract quality clients, retain them longer, and run a smoother operation. Your list of complaints will shrink as you resolve your business problems with less stress. You may find that with your practice in such good shape, you relax and do your best work ever as a therapist. All of this is a natural progression, based on making specific changes within yourself that get reflected in your business and your craft. Along the way, you will probably recognize that you have refined your ability to stay focused and remain optimistic, even when others worry. And these days, in the workshops and classes I teach, I meet too many talented professionals who feel very worried.