As health professionals in Private Practice, we work hard

 

The work we do with clients is hard

Creating a business is hard

Building a business is hard

NOT burning out is hard

 

We’ve all been told that building a private practice is easy

 

And we’ve been told that creating additional streams of income is easy

 

Well, maybe they are easy

 

When we are focused on just one of them.

 

For most of us, however, we need to be able to

 

Address cashflow while

we care for ourselves

so we can create multiple streams of income

(here is the unholy trinity)

 

I hear you

 

I see you

 

I’ve been where you are

I was working so hard to sell my courses, fill my groups, build a team, fill my team, do the work, do all the marketing, learn about leadership, and learn about the growth that I discovered that I was burning out inside my own health business

But I didn’t have the time to work out what was wrong, because I had so much to do

Queue the Boom-Bust cycle of all great burnout stories. Where I would work so hard, and take on more work, only to become exhausted and emotionally unavailable, so I would lose all the momentum I had built, to work myself into a  frenzy yet again

This model of work is soul-destroying and is what forces so many health professionals out of their chosen professions.

It was also embarrassing

I felt like a fraud. I was working so hard and NOT getting the results

I wasn’t sure I was cut out to have a successful private practice because I couldn’t sustain the growth that would come

I wasn’t cut out for online programs and courses, because no one would buy what I had created

I wasn’t cut out for groups or memberships because no one wanted to join the ones I had created

 

 

This is where your problem is, the elements of this trinity work against each other

 

 

1. Clients – either too many or not enough, or the cycle of too many and not enough.

This leads to lumpy cash flow and panic about money and reinforces for us our secret fear that we are not good enough and the world is just about to find out.

We are emotionally exhausted, unavailable, and don’t have the time, energy, or money to create and sell a new stream of income.

 

 

2. Burnout – how we work ourselves into the ground, expecting that if we work harder that this will somehow mysteriously fix itself.

So we keep adding more clients, telling ourselves that when this is “over” we will be able to take care of ourselves

The problem is there is no time, energy, or money to work our way out of this

 

 

3. Additional streams of income –

The silver bullet to addressing the client problem and the burnout problem except we are trying to serve clients, or we are panicking about money and we are emotionally exhausted so ummmm how do we create something new, and then have the energy to market it!!!

We will work so hard to get qualified and credentialed, we want to work with people who need our help,

Then we work so hard to get a website created

We spend money on a logo and on headshots

We watch our bank balance dwindle and fear our partner’s asking ‘when will we start seeing some money from all this education and marketing stuff we paid for’

Cue more shame

So we work to be on all the social media channels, have the right directory profiles, and yet the clients aren’t coming

Or they are flooding in

You hop from coach to coach hoping that someone has the holy grail, the silver bullet the answer to your cashflow problems

Maybe you are full – and you are constantly “fitting them in” while praying for cancelations

We become resentful, going to bed with wine and Netflix, while our brain tells us all the things we are doing wrong, judging ourselves harshly for not having this sorted out, and wondering why we can’t be like everyone else on Instagram.

We are sleeping poorly so that we have to wake up with coffee, just so we can do this all again – the cycle repeats itself and we just keep working harder.

 

You care deeply about your clients, and you carry a huge emotional load on them. What they don’t know is that you can turn up for them, but you can’t turn up for yourself.

 

You care deeply about your work, but there is a creeping fear that your competency is currently questionable. You have some nagging doubts about your competence right now.

 

You promise yourself that when you get

 

Your notes up to date

Through this “busy period”

Enough clients

Another qualified and credentialed clinician who is as loyal to my business as I am

Build a new product/service

 

Then you will start taking care of yourself

 

Yeah I get it, that was me too

The answer isn’t in another credential or another qualification

 

It’s not in another free download or a free Facebook group

The only answer is to create a business that enables you to attract the types of people you love to work with

While

You develop a way of working that nourishes you

So

You can take the natural step and build a product or service that people want.

 

Once you master how to implement integrated, proactive strategies that allow you to choose who you serve, you are no longer reactive and being run by everyone else’s demands

This enables you to add multiple streams of income naturally because your client base will be telling you what they want

This empowers you to create a business that wraps around your life rather than your life wrapping around your business

The need for healthy sustainable health businesses is growing. There are not enough people to fill the enormous needs that the people in our communities have.

 

Our governments can’t meet the need

Our agencies can’t meet the need

Our volunteer organizations can’t meet the need

 

We, as health professionals in private practice, have a role and a responsibility to help meet this need

 

If we don’t work this out – who will be left to serve the people who need our help?

Can I help you work this out?