Making Changes in Your Practice: How to Make Sure Your Independent Practice Meets Your Needs

The Business of Psychology

Making Changes in Your Practice: How to Make Sure Your Independent Practice Meets Your Needs

Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. Today for our final episode of the current series we're going to be talking about how to adapt your practice when your needs as a business owner change, or you realise that your practice isn't meeting your needs anymore.

Full show notes of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Psychology Business School: Start & Grow and Coaching

Is this the year that you take your private practice seriously? Maybe you are just starting out or perhaps you want to grow your practice with a team or passive income. Whatever stage you are at, I would love to support you. For new practices, I have our group coaching programme, Start and Grow where you will find all the support, resources and knowledge you need to create an impactful and rewarding practice.

https://psychologybusinessschool.com/psychology-business-school/

For more established practices come and take a look at my coaching for growth packages. I have a couple of spots left for individual coaching so let me help you get 2024 off to the best start possible.

https://psychologybusinessschool.com/1-to-1-coaching-for-mental-health-professionals/

Links & References:

'But What Can I Do? Why Politics Has Gone So Wrong, and How You Can Help Fix It' by Alastair Campbell

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

Getting What You Need From Your Practice

One of the joys of private practice is being able to adapt your work to suit your life and the challenges that you might be facing. Many of us go into private practice because we really need that flexibility, maybe because of caring responsibilities or something else. Certainly for me, that has always been the driving force behind my practice.

And recently, I've had to become more flexible than I ever thought was possible in my work. I've thought really long and hard about what I want to share about that, and why I want to share anything about it at all, and I've debated this back and forth a lot in my mind. But I've decided that I do want to share some of that particular struggle with you, because, frankly, I know a lot of us go through similar struggles, and it can feel so isolating.

I know that I found myself looking at other people's content on social media and just feeling really sad and a bit lonely because I can't help but assume that their lives are so different to mine. I get that comparisonitis, and I want to make sure that I'm not contributing to that problem, because I'm sure if you look at my social media, or you read my emails, or you look at my website, it might seem like everything's rosy in my life, and like my business is always flourishing. And I don't think that's helpful, and I don't think it's healthy, and it's not a culture that I particularly want to contribute to.

So I'm hoping that by honestly sharing with you some of the struggles that I've been going through in my personal life, and how that's impacted on the business, that I can give you a bit of hope if you're going through a difficult time, or you have been through a difficult time, and you're wondering how your professional life can emerge from something that's quite challenging.

The first thing I'm going to do is say a little bit about what's been going on for me, and then I'm going to talk you through a framework that I've used with my coach and that you can use for making decisions about what to do in your business when you need or want to make a change, either in response to stuff in your life changing or just every year as you adjust your goals and your priorities.

Okay, the personal bit. The bit I'm probably going to edit loads of times! I'm not going to go into too much detail because it concerns my children and they're not really old enough to give their consent for that, but the bit that I want to be honest about here is the impact on my business, so you need to understand a little bit about the context. My two older children, quite simply, are not fine in school. Really, really not fine. And to be honest, that came as a real shock to me. But it probably shouldn't have, because looking back to when I started this business, it actually was because my eldest was never fine in nursery, she just couldn't tell me that was, why she was ill all the time and not eating. So, in a lot of ways, this business has always been about the fact that my children need me to be around a lot and they're not necessarily able to make use of full time school or other child care options that might be available to some families.

Now my kids are seven and five and a half and I've got a two year old as well. The older two are really struggling to attend school regularly and that has meant that my working time has become really, really erratic. In the first year of them struggling, I could never really predict when I was going to have a day like today, where I've got a quiet house and I can record podcast episodes and speak to my coaching clients and do high quality teaching and therapy work. Or when I was going to have a day when my whole day would need to be spent making sure that they were safe, trying to regulate them, and putting a lot of energy into my kids. I didn't know what to do about that lack of predictability, and if you've been a coaching client of mine over the past 18 months or so, you've probably been aware that I've had to cancel things quite often. I've had to move things around at short notice. And if you know me in any capacity, personal or professional, you will know that that's immensely stressful for me. I really value customer service in my business. Whatever I'm doing on whatever side of my business, whether you're a therapy client or whether you're a member of my alumni membership in Psychology Business School, I always prioritise being there when my clients need me, being able to respond to emails, being able to turn up for appointments on time, all of that stuff that, when you analyse your business values, certainly for me, they're really core to what I care about in my business.

Because I was taken by surprise by how much my kids struggled, and there's a lot of toxic positivity out there (a lot of people kept saying to me “oh it will get better next week because we've got less disruptive stuff happening at school” or “oh it'll be all right in a few weeks time once they settle”, there was a lot of “it'll be all right in…” such a short time frame) and because I don't like making a fuss, and I really hoped it would be alright, I kept going along with that for longer than I should have. And instead of making some difficult decisions in the business, I just kept trying to reschedule things, rearrange things, and make it work, without making fundamental changes to the business. And that was terrible for my clients, it was terrible for my stress levels, and ultimately, it was terrible for the income in the business.

This is something which not that many people who talk publicly about business will talk to you about, but my business took a real hit. Because I was unable to see people when I was supposed to see people, I was having to give refunds out. I suddenly had to cut back all of my therapy client work. It just was a mess, and it really wasn't good for anybody. So I about six months ago, I realised that I needed to take control of this situation and I needed to fundamentally change my business to fit with this new pattern of life. That meant having some really difficult conversations.

Essentially, I've managed to create space that is protected, so I know that my husband or my parents will be around to provide childcare in the event that the children are not in school, on a day and a half per week. That is the time when I do all of the work which other people are depending on. That's when I see all of my therapy clients, it's when I see my coaching clients, and it's when I do calls for my members within Psychology Business School. That's really alleviated the stress for me because I know now that that time will not be compromised. I will not have to reschedule. And it means that if the children are unable to go to school on the days of the week that I don't have that back up childcare, yes, it's inconvenient because I don't have time to do the paperwork or maybe record a podcast episode that I wanted to do, but nobody's getting let down as a result of it. I've got that freedom to just take a deep breath and give them what they need on those days, and that has been massive for me.

The business is now getting back on track in all respects. Everything is growing again, but it has meant that I've had to change the way that I approach the clinical side of my business. And you might have seen that I have started rebranding my practice. It's now much less about me and more about the brand, which is Know Your Mind Consulting or Know Your Mind Psychology, so you can go and check that out if you're curious.

I've really leant into the corporate side of my work, and the reason for that is twofold. Firstly, corporates don't really mind whether it's me or one of my associates delivering the work, whether that's training or individual work. Secondly, I recognise that I do have a lot of skills in marketing and selling and building the relationships that you need to make corporate work successful, but what I'm really short on is the protected time to deliver that work myself. So doing corporate work allows me to do the creative side, I get to do the marketing, which I'm quite good at, I get to do the creative bit of creating trainings and proposals and packages that will meet the needs of those organisations, but it doesn't necessarily matter whether it's me or another psychologist that goes on to deliver that work.

It meets my needs in a lot of ways, but it took me quite a long time to actually figure out what would meet my needs and how I could have a business that fits into the really limited resources that I have at the moment, so I wanted to share today the framework that I used to get my head straight and figure out what changes I could make and what levers I could pull in order to get the business back on track.

Also, I need to say that this isn't a short term fix and one of the hardest things for me was making decisions that I knew would lose money in the short term. I'm mentioning money a lot in this because my income is crucial to our family and that means that I always have to think about protecting that income. I know that's not always the case, so although I'll talk about income a lot during this, income doesn't need to be your objective, but it may be, and it's okay, and you should never feel ashamed if you really need to prioritise that and think about that. But I did need to make some decisions which would bring a short term reduction in income, and I knew that they would, and they did, in order to bring in longer term gains. That has been really frightening, and I'd really recommend, if you're going through something like this, seeking out support for yourself through that process, whether that is honest and frank discussions with your partner or other important people in your life, or whether it's a business coach or a therapist that can help you deal with that anxiety and create a plan, where you really look at the finances and work out what you can afford to do and how quickly you can afford to do it. Because working that through was really important to me and I think my mental health would have suffered much more than it did if I hadn't taken the time to do that.

The Framework

The framework that I used to make these big decisions, and that I use with my own coaching clients when they're looking to make a big change in their practice, is loosely based on the Objective Strategy Tactics Framework, which you will probably have heard talked about in lots of different contexts. It's out there in business literature quite a lot, if you read Alistair Campbell's book, ‘But What Can I Do?’ which I really recommend, but I think we have to adapt it for the context of our particular type of small business.

The Objective Strategy Tactics Framework is just another way of making sure that your actions match your values, but that distinction between strategy and tactics is really useful. Like I said, I've added a little bit to it, so I'm going to talk you through it now and share a bit about how you might be able to apply it in your practice if you're making a big decision.

Objective

This part is all about why you're considering making a change or taking any action at all. What do you want more of or less of in your business? For example, do you want more income? Do you want more time for self care? More flexibility? And you can combine objectives, so long as they affect each other directly. For example, you might want more income and more flexibility. Or you might want more income and to prepare for your EMDR accreditation. Objectives don't always need to be about money; another one that I often see is around maintaining income while doing more fulfilling work.

Those are some good examples of objectives and it is so crucial to be really clear on why you're taking this action before you go any further at all.

Capabilities

This next step is one that I've added into the framework and I've called it capabilities. This is about evaluating your current capabilities. What are your skills? What are your abilities? For example, are you really good at tech, graphic design? Do you have past experience that can help you now in this particular situation? Is it that, like me, you're quite good at marketing? Are you good at writing? What do you have already within you or within the business that you can use to support your ideas?

Also think about resources. Have you created something in the past that you could repurpose and use in a different way now? Have you got systems and processes in your business that work really well? Do you have team members that have particular skills and abilities that you could use in a different way going forward?

You also need to think about what's possible for you at the moment. What barriers are you facing right now or what enabling factors do you have going on for you at the moment? I often find it helpful to think about this in terms of seasons. Is this a season of my life in which I should be expanding and enthusiastically growing my business? Or is this a season for consolidating, maybe prioritising self care and enjoying what I've already built?

Also under capabilities, I like to think about how much financial resource I have available. How much do you have available at the moment for investing in developing new or building on existing capabilities? For example, are you in a position where you could hire somebody to help you? Or are you in a position where you could book in some coaching sessions or attend a course that would enable you to develop a new capability within the business?

Once you've evaluated your capabilities, and you know what your objective is, you're then in a position to choose a strategy.

Strategy

A strategy is just a statement of the simplest way of achieving this broad objective that you have. For example, if the objective is more income, then you could choose a strategy of gaining more therapy clients, of developing a passive income stream, or taking on associates. These are all different strategies and you have to pick the one that best matches your objective and your capabilities.

For example, if your objective was more income and flexibility, and one of your capabilities is that you have great management skills and great admin processes, then it might be simplest for you to look at building an associate practice. If however, you have the same objective but your capabilities are around marketing and social media, then you might consider creating an information product instead.

If your capability evaluation shows very low capacity at the moment because there's something major going on in your life, like there was for me, it's really important to choose a strategy that's going to be easy for you to implement and then set your goals according to that situation so that you're not setting yourself up to try and do something which is not right for the season that you're in at the moment.

Tactics

The final stage is tactics. This is the bit which most people jump into far too quickly, because this is the practical steps that you take to make the strategy happen. For example this could be your marketing plan, your practical steps that you need to take to get that online course up and running. Basically anything that you need to do to make the strategy a reality. That could be your plan for posting on TikTok, but it could also be your plan for building the capabilities that you need. So it could be training courses that you need to go on, research you need to do to find the right coach, any steps you need to take in order to make the strategy happen.

Mistakes

Now this all sounds really simple when you lay it out like a framework, but most people, myself included, make mistakes when we try to do this. The biggest one which I see most often in my coaching clients, and that I have done most often personally, is failing to review honestly what our objective needs to be in our practice, maybe because we don't want to accept it.

I am very, very guilty of believing that I am the bionic woman, and that I can keep going with something which might be working in lots of ways but is actually completely unsustainable given what's happening in my life. I've done that many times and it has led me to the brink of burnout many times.

What I've really learned from that is that we need to spend a lot of time getting the objective right and being really clear and honest with ourselves about what we need from our business, because if you skip over that bit, you will end up with a strategy and a tactical plan which just drains you completely.

The other common big mistake that people make is struggling to say no to stuff that doesn't fit the strategy and the tactics that you've chosen. An example for me might be, if I'm talking to a corporate stakeholder about something and they've got an idea of what they would like and it's something that I would love to deliver myself, I would really enjoy going in and doing that work. Maybe they want face to face coaching sessions in their office building in London and I know I would love that, I know I would really enjoy that work. I know I could do a good job of that work and they're willing to pay a lot of money for that work, which would make a big difference to the bottom line of the business. But it doesn't match my capabilities...