By the time you read this, I will have had surgery and will have commenced the post surgical recovery process. Being the impatient, ambitious and highly driven person I am, please pray for my husband and son who will assume most care responsibilities for me during this time.
Now that the surgery is done, I will have finished the aggressive part of treatment for my breast cancer. I’m giving myself some time to recover. I will need to relearn quite a lot about my body as it has been through A LOT in the last 10 months.
Since February when I was first diagnosed, it feels like there has been a lot to contend with. While the circumstances I have lived though I would not wish on anyone, I do think what 2020 has demonstrated is that if we as health professional business owners are serious about doing this work, then we really need to make sure we are creating businesses that serve us.
One of the questions I ask every new client I work with is “what do you need your business to do for you?”
What I need Purple Co to do for me is to fund my lifestyle. In 2020 it has been able to do this. What may surprise you to learn is that in the past 31 weeks, I have been unable to work at all for 10 of them. And most days I was lucky to work 3 hours, with some days getting 90 minutes out of me was excellent!
And yet, the revenue of my business grew and the profitability, well that was outstanding. I actually questioned my accountant to make sure the figures were correct.
I had no intentionality around how to cope with this situation. What I did have was 10+ years of doing the business of health.
I was asked in an Instagram post ‘what did I do to achieve these results?’ This was my answer:
- Mindset: No one is dying this year.
- Strategy: If I have only one hour a day I can work, what are the most important things for me to do? (Email management isn’t one of them!)
- What do I want to do? What do I need to do? And then make sure what I need to do is what I want to do.
- Trust the people around you when they say ‘we’ve got your back Jo’.
This isn’t something that I’ve been able to accomplish in the past six months. This is 10+ years of learning what it takes to build a business that serves me. And during that 10 years how this business serves me has changed.
I’m looking forward to being able to share these insights with my Daring Dozen community (this is a high level mastermind group) and in the You the Entrepreneurial Clinician group coaching community.
Please know that our communities need us, and we have incredible demand for allied health and mental health services in Australia, in NZ, in the USA and in Great Britain. If we are not intentional in the way we look after ourselves then the people who need us will not receive the care they need.
I’ve done the work on this – please let me help you.
I thank all of you who continue to reach out and check in, who send me Coffee porn, words of encouragement, who send gifts and cards, who let me know that you miss my LIVE episodes of This is Private Practice.
If you are interested in exploring a group coaching opportunity please head to You the Entrepreneurial Clinician
