Four Important areas to understand while building your group practice

We founded our group practices, the Belmont Centre and the Vaughan Relationship Centre. We have to admit, it was not easy. We learned how to develop my practice the hard way with a minimal budget and winging it through the legalities around contracts, employees, and ethical obligations.

Throughout our journey, we learned the four essential things to hone in on, while building your practice:

Analyzing your business strengths and weaknesses

Taking on a new business venture that centers around a passion can be quite a vulnerable process. A part of that vulnerability is knowing what you’re good at and what you might struggle with. As clinicians, we are generally people-pleasing and have the ability to build a positive rapport with others. This might make networking or client building a breeze for some. As humans, we are also consumers. We spend a lot of time looking at advertisements and websites and soaking up information, so this might mean designing a website by knowing what you like to see comes naturally and is easy for you.

When it comes to determining weaknesses, many people don’t want to feel the negativity associated with feeling “weak” or struggling. Not everyone is business savvy. Making important decisions, especially around a subject area that is new to you, might be extremely tough. Dealing with legalities or finances is extremely important, but not something everyone can succeed at.

You might not even know your strengths and weaknesses, because you don’t even know what is involved in building a business at all - and that’s ok too! It’s not even a matter of being good at something, but knowing what it is you’re good at, and what you might need support with.

Determining the right Model

Will you have someone rent in the building where you will house your practice? Will you have independent contractors that work under your practice’s name? Maybe you’ll have direct employees. Deciding on what your business model looks like is important so you can build your practice around it.

Before you can even decide what your model will be, you have to understand the positives and negatives of each. You need to truly understand what each model looks like in terms of finances, logistics, legalities, and business operations. And while one might seem to be the most optimal business model, it’s important to be certain, so you prevent unnecessary financial loss having to rebuild your business once it’s already taken off.

Know your numbers

There are many rewards that come with being a clinician, but let’s be completely honest, financial rewards are also important. Your business will (hopefully) become successful, so understanding the numbers behind your business is imperative.

Keeping your business profitable is what is going to keep you afloat. Many clinicians are not business people, so they don't know how to assess the health of their business finances and make decisions from a business mindset. Without having a grasp on HST, banking, margins, and all things finance, you risk losing your business and a substantial amount of money.

Managing your business efficiently

One thing we often hear from clinicians who are creating their own practice is how hard it is to juggle it all. As a clinician/business owner, you must wear many hats; you are CEO, Manager of Operations, Clinician, VP of Finance, and the list goes on. Taking on all of these different roles can mean you’re not putting 100% into everything but spreading your 100% across every position you’re responsible for. This often leads to burnout out and when you’re the one who is responsible for your business, burnout is often not an option.

Understanding how to be effective and efficient within your business can make or break its success.

Amanda Bacchus and Andrew Sofin partnered to build the Private Practice Consultants. We have both built practices from the ground up by making and fixing mistakes. We’ve done it before and want to help you avoid making the same errors we did. We have created four monthly workshops based on these four important areas to help you build a successful practice. For more information and how to enroll, visit our workshop’s webpage. Allow our mistakes to be your lesson.