I know that many of you reading this will be impatient people.  Yep I know.  I’m a mind reader right. How is it I can read your mind you may ask – well I’ve been the impatient clinician in Private Practice too.

 Impatient for the rewards of all the hard work, new learning.  Impatient for the steady stream of client’s.

 Impatient for the relaxed lifestyle, impatient for feeling like you have arrived and made it as a successful, entrepreneurial clinician.

However, impatience is the antithesis of entrepreneurial behaviour.   

While the Entrepreneurial Clinician will seize an opportunity and act quickly, the impatient clinician will chase after the newest hack and the latest promise of instant success.

I see and hear this ALL THE TIME.  And I get it.  I know that part of the problem is that for many of us as clinician’s we don’t like acting fast.  We get scared about making decisions in what feels like a “quick” timeframe, yet we have this perception that to maximize the opportunities of entrepreneurialism we must be Now. Now. Now.

 No No No!

What may appear as fast, is the result of the hard work that has gone before the ability to grab opportunities as they arise.  For an Entrepreneurial Clinician to be able to make seemingly fast decisions about opportunities that appear to pop out of nowhere, the following types of attitudes and beliefs have been dealt with (in no particular order).

1. Shiny object syndrome.
2. Free, Cheap and Easy climb to overnight success.
3. Money – you accept it’s a tool, you accept it not good or bad it just is, and you have learned what it is about money that triggers you.
4. You have done the work on yourself to know who you are, and how you make decisions and how you like to take action.
5. You have a SOLID foundation underneath you, so you know that the money, the time, the energy and the opportunity will all work for your good.
6. You accept that if it doesn’t work it is NOT a failure and you just keep moving on.
7. Your sense of self is not attached to the outcome of this opportunity being successful.
8. You are content to stay in your own lane, and cheer on other’s who are doing something that looks fun, or interesting or profitable without needing to get distracted.
9. You are committed to learning. You don’t know it all, nor will you.
10. You know your numbers – all your numbers.  You have a budget and a cashflow forecast, you know how to make money work for you including the options of debt if you so desire.  (Not everyone needs to go into debt to make their Entrepreneurial practice work but sometimes it really helps to push you through the next growth phase).  Not only do you have your financial numbers in order you also have your marketing and sales ROI’s established.  You have a solid marketing system and a sales process that is working day in and day out.    You also have the people resources in your world working the most efficiently and effectively that they can for you.  In short, you have taken care of your business, so you are FREE to see the opportunities and KNOW that you have all the right things in place to be able to maximize any new opportunity.

Yeah not so quick now is it?

However, if you knew without any doubt that your finances were squared away; that your marketing and sales was working reliably and that your team was a high performing team, wouldn’t you then feel ready and able to make a “quick” decision.

 I see and hear too many people who have not learned to walk before they want to run.  They want to grow several multiple streams of income before they have mastered one.  They just keep making the same errors, coming up against the same blockages at every stage.  These issues are really common, and I see them everywhere:

1. I’ve run out of money and I’m scared (money mindset issue)
2. I’ve run out of client’s and I’m scared I’ll run out of money (marketing and sales issue)
3. I’m burned out and I’m scare I’ll never work again (energy management, lack of self-awareness issue)

I was not immune – I wasted 3 years and around $100K and countless numbers of man hours trying to do the ’I want it now, I’ve worked hard enough’ mindset.

 Back in 2013/ 2014 I was working with a sales coach.

I had received really good advice from someone I trusted who advised me that I needed to really focus on the infrastructure of my clinical practice Purple Co.  That to make the gains I wanted to make I had to consolidate, build step by step and make sure that I had built a solid foundation.  What this amazingly insightful person said made a lot of sense… until my Business Bestie started closing six figures of sales in a month and started seeing six figure months into her business.  I wanted that NOW!!!!!

So, in short, I spent $30K working with a sales coach to learn to sell high level coaching packages.  Which I’m really good at delivering.  I know I am a good practice building coach.

But I

• Didn’t have my financial foundations sorted.
• I didn’t have my infrastructure sorted.
• I didn’t have my marketing and sales for Purple Co working.
• I limited all of my earning potential onto 1 person – me. If I wasn’t delivering, then I wasn’t earning.  Sounds familiar…

 I spent hours and hours and dollars and more dollars trying to use Facebook advertising ($9K to be a nice round figure, yes, I gave FB $9K).  It was an immense waste of time for me.  Facebook advertising was never going to work for Purple Co.  In face with what I know now I can see that Facebook advertising was the last place I needed to be investing in trying to build online relationships.

 But the experts told me Facebook was where it was at… and they told me they were making a lot of money, and I believed them, and I wanted that money too!  That money was going to give me the freedom from the burnout and the frustration I could feel building up inside of me.  If I could JUST start bringing in $100K every month all my problems would be solved.

I spent hours and hours and all my financial resources trying to launch two jets at the same time.  I was stretched, my team was quite possibly confused and on top of the $30K spend on sales coaching and $9K FB advertising, I somehow made ongoing decisions that saw me spend $70K on 2 VA’s in 6 months.

 I was impatient when I thought I was being aggressive.

I was impatient when I thought I was being opportunistic.

I was impatient, and I did not have the foundations in place.

I was not entrepreneurial, I was immature.

 I was not entrepreneurial, I was unwise

 I was not entrepreneurial, I was impatient.

It has taken me 4 years to trade my way out of those mistakes.  The last 12 months, 2016/2017 was the year of consolidation.  I didn’t enjoy it, I like expansion and growth and new.  But, expansion growth and new were not going to occur if I didn’t get some of this other stuff sorted out first.

To be able to take advantage of the opportunities that were coming my way I needed to have

1. A clear decision making process that was reliable and valid based on who I was, and where I wanted to go.
2. People in my world you I could trust to tell me to pull my head in when I was leaning towards another shiny thing.
3. My business foundations secure, solid and unshakable. They are what needed to hold me up, so I could create opportunities, and serve more people, and build an amazing team.

We as Clinicians have to learn how to take risks.  But risks don’t feel so risky when we have a solid foundation underneath us.   Like when we are writing treatment plans for client’s.

When we have been working with client’s for 3-5 years, we no longer agonize (quite so much) over treatment plans.  We write them, we know most of the treatment protocols, and we trust our GUT because out GUT is made up of strong foundational knowledge, experience and Practise.  Knowledge, experience and praise create our intuition and out GUT.  It’s not magic.  Its not a DNA thing. It is practice and learning from others and letting go of the need to have arrived NOW.

 If you have made it to the end of this Blog then I applaud you because this will have been a pretty uncomfortable read for a lot of people.  However, as you would know by now, I care about the work we do and who we are as people, that I feel an incredible need to speak up on this subject.  Because its this “I want it now”, entitlement and impatient attitude that is contributing to the epidemic of burn out and poor-quality care that we are all terrified of.

We can be better than that!

You don’t need another hack dear clinician.  You need solid foundations.  Foundations that position you for growth

And those foundations, well they will look a little different for everyone.

Jo