Gain clarity and direction for your private practice by setting income targets, identifying your purpose, evaluating risk, and selecting the right business model to guide sustainable growth and long-term success.
So the reason why it's so important is that it makes us confront challenging questions, including the why, why am I doing this? Why am I spending this money? Why am I taking this leap of faith? It is imperative to answer now. Sooner than later, it provides clarity and a relationship to your purpose, expectations and goals, process names, and metaphoric destination.If you're taking a road trip tomorrow, some people are the type that is like, I'm just going to drive.
The problem is that you have no way to measure your effectiveness or success when you don't have an end destination.So in defining your vision, you're essentially having at least a starting point of where you're trying to go. The GPS and journey are created based on that vision. That's how we set up your strategic initiatives. That's how we support you in getting to the end goal. It is the starting point and ending point for your business venture.
So strategizing for a successful private practice is so important. As Henry Ford said:
Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.
We evaluate some ingredients when defining success in private practice. I go into a room, and I ask them what private practice success means to them? And I hear it all. I've heard live on a beach in Hawaii with a drink in my hand. I've heard clinical outcomes and patients being changed. I've heard it all, but ultimately this list is what I've found the most common ingredients in evaluating and defining your success.
If you're not committed to creating quality, you're going to have a hard time in this industry because there's plenty of non-quality. Differentiation in today's environment is essential, and Quality Clinical Outcomes is one of the best differentiation strategies.
That's how I know I'm a success. You see, I've got many clients that say, Brandon, you're doing a great job.
This metric is fundamental; we're going to talk a lot about it. Understanding money is coming in to measure how you can afford and cover your cost every month.
You want to keep the lights on, don't you. Profitability is needed. That's important. There is a business behind this, even though there's a purpose.
I hear this all the time, I'm tired of working for someone else. I want some freedom. So I want to give you a little bit of a heads up. It might get worse before it gets better. The first five years of launching an entrepreneurial venture are usually your 60 70 hour workweek, but I have people that work more hours, but their work-life balance is better because they're like, I control it. I make a choice. Ultimately, depending on your private practice scale, your work-life balance will be impacted by it.
We measure our success every day by how many visits we did, how effective we were, and our productivity. That's a standard and ingredient to success.
Where am I today versus next year? All of you should be starting to name your goals, and growth will be part of it.
Great ingredient. Yesterday I got five new referrals that tell me something, Brandon; you're doing something right when people are referring you this much business.
Financial freedom, evaluating, and tracking your progress into financial success is an essential ingredient.
is something that often gets missed, but it's so important. Last week, as I said, I was in New Jersey, and I was with this tremendous private practice. I ultimately had to reinforce to the private practice owner that she valued her team, but she didn't necessarily realize how special they were. A team's quality reflects how good you are because you're attracting people to play in your orchestra.
Being a leader in efficiency is so important. Being able to accomplish a lot in a little amount of time, that's an essential ingredient, wouldn't you think?
And then the last thing is a more physical ingredient. Still, that quality state-of-the-art facility, if you're looking at a clinic or a facility, is often a sign of success because it ties into revenue and investment in the business.
So the other thing we want to look at is the attributes that contribute to you being a successful entrepreneur. I want you to start to look within yourself, identifying the entrepreneur within you. Each and every one of you probably came into this world into this business, not identifying as an entrepreneur, but identifying as a clinician, as a healthcare professional. Well, you're about to embark on a whole another identity, the identity of an entrepreneur. Here are some of the attributes that I find are very important and contribute to being a successful private practice entrepreneur.
You embody the role of a change agent so important. You have to be able to know how to pivot when the time comes. Every day I wake up, and I evaluate, is there anything I need to re-look at and pivot because change is essential in today's recipe for success.
You have to accept responsibility for your failure. Don't dwell on it, but accept it. I embrace it every day, and believe me; I've failed. I've failed big time, but my failures are what brought me to today. And the failures of my clients have brought me today. Some of you may have failed, so embrace it, take responsibility for it, and steamroll forward.
So three, I want you to have a transformational perspective. I want you to step out of a clinician's shell and look at how you can transform the world through your vision.
You always have to be learning. You wouldn't be here if you weren't a learner, but I'm telling you every day, I want you to learn something. One of the things I've told my clients when they participate in my workshop is focused on one module at a time, but maybe reflecting daily in spending one week where you just focus on that module because you always will learn something different.
Stay humble to a fault. This is so important. If there is anything that I strive for every day is to be humble. My mother named me, my middle name was merit, and I always asked what an exciting name. Why would you name me Merit, Brandon Merit Seigel? She said, Brandon, I want you to be a man of merit. To me. Merit is about humbleness. One of my recipes for success has been that. And again, I wake up every day with that, understanding that my role in transforming the world starts with humbleness because that's how I connect with people.
So the next thing I want you to know is that you have to maintain a results-oriented philosophy. You have to hold yourself accountable.
Results and accountability are so important. I want you to set goals and measures for your progress.
And then I want you to set boundaries. You can't do it all. You got to set boundaries, and you have to hold your team accountable. The number one mistake that I find entrepreneurs make is they micromanage the team because they don't know how to hold people accountable and set boundaries. And today is a new day for you. I want you to do that.
You need to be a forgiving person. Your team, clients, and partners are going to make mistakes. Forgiveness is essential. So embrace forgiveness as one of your tools for being useful as a private practice entrepreneur.
And last, but certainly not least. This is a team sport. I've never met an entrepreneur in my life. Who's been successful without a team. You must be team-oriented. Even if you're a sole practitioner, you still have to be team-oriented. Even if you don't employ the team, you must be team-oriented. There are times where you have to rely on others, strategic partners, vendors that you outsource to friends, family, clients, physicians.
This world is about building and empowering a team to create success.So I always get asked. Brandon, if you were to ask me one question, what would it be in defining the private practice entrepreneur within you? And this next question is my number one. And I remember the day I asked my mother-in-law, who is an occupational therapist and a private practice owner, this question, and she actually couldn't answer it. And it has held her back from success.
So are you ready for the big question? Here comes The Million-Dollar Question.
I love asking this question. No question makes a clinic squirm more than this question. They look at me; they roll their eyes, laugh, and it's because they feel guilty. They get into the healthcare field to create a difference, but you're becoming an entrepreneur, or you're already an entrepreneur. And if you can't answer this question, I can't help you build your vision.So I ask you again, how much do you want to make? Because that's going to be the driving force of how hard we work, the decisions we make, and the direction of where we're going to go. Okay. There's a big difference between being a sole provider and earning $70,000 a year. And you come to me saying, Brandon, I want half a million dollars net in my pocket every year. Well, that's a whole another create. Anything's possible, but you have to name it, and we have to strategize to get you there.
The next question is fundamental because this is the most underestimated question. How hard do you want to work? Some people say, Brandon, I want to work a 40-hour workweek. I said, okay, well, I hope that the last slide shows you that initially if you only want to work 40 hours, you're not going to make half a million dollars unless you know the way you can call me and tell me, but I've yet to find it.It takes a lot of hard work in entrepreneurship, whether you're a sole provider or a giant private practice, or a technology company. So we have to name realistic expectations for your work concerning that last question.
And this is another one that you may start in one direction, and you may transfer or pivot, so to speak, but are you a sole practitioner or an employer? And that's a crucial question to understand. So Sole Practitioner is you, yourself, and I. You don't want nurses, assistance, and you don't want someone answering your phones. It's all you.Now an employer. That's a whole another ball of wax. And so today, I'm preparing you for both, but you can pivot to be an employer if you want. Something I also want to let you know, though, is that there are four initial questions when you're developing this vision.
And the four questions that I want you to ask yourself are your net income goals for the next year, three years, five years, and ten years?Saturday, I was with an entrepreneur, and he was preaching to me about how he worked 70 hours a week. Well, my first question is, are you working smarter or harder? The next thing he told me is for the last 18 months, he has not made a dime. I said, you're doing something wrong. He said, what do you mean? I told you didn't do the initiatives before you launched your practice before you launched your business. The whole reason you're going through this course is to prepare and start a new venture or transform your current venture.Your net income goals are essential.
When my mother-in-law launched her first practice, she worked three part-time jobs while building her private practice because she knew she didn't want the pressure not to have income coming in.So naming your net income is essential. Whereas when my mom launched her first business, she was net profitable because she built her business with the idea that revenue from day one, net profitability from day one. It is important, so name your goals. What's your risk tolerance. It sometimes takes money to make money, but there are ways to be creative without it.So knowing your risk tolerance, if you're a sole practitioner, there's less risk than if you employ 80 people. I employ 80 people at one time. I employed over 300 people; that's a lot of risks.
In recent years, I've decided that my risk tolerance is now I like to stay under a hundred employees because over a hundred employees, some compliance factors make it more challenging. And there's a target that gets on your back sometimes.So for me, under a hundred employees is my risk tolerance. You may be five employees. You may be no employees. You may be, you know, Hey, Brandon, I just want to do something as safe as can be, but I will tell you the greater the risk, the greater the reward, ask any entrepreneur.The next questions are something that I ask every single entrepreneur:
Let's name your why. Right now, you should be writing down what your why is. And the final question in my four initial questions for developing your vision. What's your end goal. Are you going to work for your company, or is your company going to work for you?A sole practitioner works for the company. And what I mean by that is that you go on vacation. Your business stops springing in money. When I go on vacation, I've got 80 employees working for me. I've got the measures and the structure in place to hold everyone accountable, but the revenue keeps rolling in. So name now, you need to know it.
So let's start to define the business model. There are several types of business models in healthcare. Not everyone will be name today, but I'm going to name the big ones for you.
Let's start with "Brick and Mortar" You may have an outpatient clinic. You may have a center-based therapy environment within this brick and mortar. Whether it's storefront, office-based, you know, it could be a trailer. It could be a motor home. Even I've seen traveling brick and mortar, but you want to know that some of your funding in this business model may be:
These are all different aspects of what you may find from funding in this type of business model.
The next is a popular one in healthcare, and I find many clinicians get into this, and that's staffing. You may be staffing hospitals, nursing facilities, home health agencies, schools, Native American reservation contracts, mental health centers, corporate wellness. Apple uses a staffing company to come in and provide healthcare services and a lot of other services related to healthcare. So that might be a business model that you look-into.
There are several aspects of what people classify as home health. And so you want to know what that means to you. I typically define home health based on your licensure. You're getting licensed as a home health agency. Whereas I find many people in the community and the world will say anything delivered in your home as home health, but typically there's licensure related to home health. And I find a lot of the time home health is nursing based on your doctor's orders, and then there are allied health services connected to it, but I've seen it all.So I want to give you an example of when people think it's a home health model, and I would call it a staffing model. I've found that there are Occupational, Physical Speech therapy companies. And all they do is Occupational, Physical, Speech therapy.
And they vendor those services to a licensed home health agency.That was business model 2, which was a staffing contract. When you're doing home health, you're often accepting private insurance, PPO, Medicare, military funding, all the things that I outlined in your brick and mortar, but in-home health licensed basis, that is a business model that you may be looking at private pay again, state funding. I owned a home health agency with my family, been through it, and it is a different business model.So if you're going down that route, you want to understand it's not the same licensing. It's not the exact compliance as a rehab facility, as an outpatient clinic, et cetera. So really do your due diligence. And those are things that we help with as well. If you ever have questions, you know, Brandon, the entrepreneur's plumber, is here to support you.
The next business model I want you to understand is the community-based program. Funding may include something similar to what we've already discussed. Still, you're delivering the services and a community-based facility. Maybe you're partnering with a facility. I've worked with nursing facilities where we were their community-based vendor. Those might be things. Some of them might be skilled; some of them might be non-skilled but still healthcare-related.So start to think outside the box; what's your business model. You may start with one business model and add multiple. In the last nine years, we had school-based, home health, outpatient clinic, community-based, and rehab based. I've seen it all. So you don't have to stick with one, but I always say, start with one, be successful and then pivot and add, differentiate as you go.
