5 Key Habits for a Successful Practice

This episode focuses on five essential habits that successful practice owners must adopt to thrive in their businesses. By emphasizing clear goals, effective cash flow management, time management, strong client relationships, and continuous education, practitioners can create a balance in their professional lives while elevating their practices. 

• Highlighting the importance of setting clear financial and operational goals 
• Detailing the implementation of a cash flow management system for informed decision-making 
• Discussing time management techniques, including prioritization and time-blocking 
• Exploring strategies for nurturing client relationships through active listening 
• Emphasizing the need for continuous education and upgrading skills 
If your practice needs help getting organized with its finances or just growing your practice, head to therapybusinesspodcom to learn how we can help.

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*Intro/outro song credit:
King Around Here by Alex Grohl

Chapters

• 0:00 Key Habits of Successful Business Owners
• 7:36 Improving Habits for Business Success

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Being a successful practice owner is all about having strong habits. There are certain habits that all those thriving practices have and that they are implementing, both in their business, their personal lives and in serving their clients and their team. Well, not long ago, I recorded a video outlining these five habits, and so I wanted to share that with you today. I'm going to talk through each of the key habits and how you can implement them into your business. My name is Craig and I'm the CEO of Desi Financial Coaching. Our goal is simple to help you run a therapy practice that is permanently profitable. If you own a solo or group practice, we're here to help you build a business that creates more time, makes more money and serves more people. This is the Therapy Business Podcast. Successful business owners have one thing in common they all have habits and routines baked into their daily lives and in their business. Today, I'm sharing five habits with you that every successful business owner should have. Now, when running a business, you can be pulled a hundred different ways, and it can be really, really hard to stay focused on a linear path forward. That's why successful business owners have habits baked into their daily lives to make sure that the business is growing, that they always know exactly where they stand. Now, as we've worked with business owners over the years, we've noticed five key habits that are really necessary in order for a business to thrive and grow. The first habit every business owner should have is having clear goals, specifically with finances, you have to know what your target is. What is that revenue goal? What are you trying to achieve? What's that client number or the amount of products you're going to sell, or the amount of services you're going to sell in a given time period? Now I recommend having goals in both short and long term. So where do you hope to be? Maybe in a year from now. Then stretch that out to three years, five years, possibly ten years. Where do you ultimately want? Now? This can be really important because if you're a solopreneur out there, do you hope to one day have a full team of employees running the business while you're looking at the day-to-day? Or do you possibly just love doing what you do, where you're doing the day-to-day work and you just want to be a self-employed person who doesn't have staff but really just does your craft and gets paid to do it? Getting clear on what you want down the road can really help with decision making today. Once you have that big vision, that long-term picture, sometimes it's easier to start there and then start rolling back. If I want to be here in 10 years, where do I need to be in five years in order to be making progress toward that goal? Then where do I need to be in three years, one year, where should I be this month? What should I be working on today, this week, in order to move me forward toward that goal?

Speaker 1: 2:33

The second habit that successful business owners have is they have a cash flow management system and they use it Now. It's no secret, if you've watched any videos before, that I'm a fan of the profit first cash system. That's the system that we teach our clients so they can put it into their business and always know exactly what's going on with their money, where they stand every single day and how they can prepare for the future. Now, a cash flow system is different than an accounting system. You need bookkeeping, you need something logging what's happening to your money, but a cash flow system allows you to engage on the day to day so you can make decisions, moving forward With Profit First. It recommends opening core bank accounts and separating your money into separate bank accounts so you know exactly where you stand in categories like operating expenses or an owner's pay. It also makes sure that you're prioritizing your taxes, saving for those and profit Habit.

Speaker 1: 3:20

Number three is effective time management. Successful business owners manage their time well. Now, this can be on their daily schedule, but it also comes down to tasks. An effective business owner prioritizes important tasks above the mundane. It's easy to get bogged down in checking email and doing little tasks that really are not in your wheelhouse or tasks that you should be doing. What we recommend is sitting down and looking at those big picture moves that you're talking about, those goals that you set, and what could you be doing to move that boat forward, and is it something that you could delegate or is it something that you should be working on Now? If you don't have people to delegate to, we always recommend virtual assistants as being that first hire, because you can delegate some of those tasks that really you shouldn't be spending your time doing, so that you can focus on revenue generating tasks. Now, when it comes to managing your tasks every week, every day, sit down and prioritize your big three. What are three things that you're going to focus on that. If, at the end of the day, you have accomplished them or you have made strides toward completing them, you can consider that day a success. Now, of course, you can do more than three things in a day, but if you can really outline three core things that your attention needs to be focused on that day, you're going to see amazing results and huge strides in your goals.

Speaker 1: 4:28

And then the last piece with time management is time blocking. Time blocking is taking your schedule and putting chunks of time dedicated to certain tasks, whether it's client meetings, whether it's time for you to learn or work on professional development. Maybe it's time for you to reply to emails or to do personal tasks and, yeah, you probably wanna time block some breaks in there as well. Time blocking goes on your calendar in these chunks of time so that you can see what your focus should be on during that time. And it makes sure that your week is balanced, that you're giving some attention to all the areas that really are needed, and also, if you have staff, allows them to look at your calendar and see what are you focusing on during this time. If somebody needs to meet with you, they know. Okay, well, this time is really carved out for creative processing so I can't plug a meeting in there. But on Tuesday mornings he has time scheduled for meetings. I can plug you in there. You can even go so far as time blocking your year, which I'm a big fan of plugging in important and making sure that my life is balanced across the year ahead as much as you can balance it when looking that far in advance.

Speaker 1: 5:25

The fourth habit that successful business owners have is prioritizing client relationships. In a service-based business, it is so important that your clients and customers are well taken care of and you should be constantly looking at ways to improve that relationship. The best ways to do that is to engage in active listening. Ask your clients what do they love most, what do they wish you were doing more of Now. A lot of times clients don't want to tell you the negative. If they like you, if they are happy with you, they may not tell you the things they wish you were doing differently, but sometimes if you ask questions like what do you love about our service, if they share that, that can sometimes hone in on. What are they appreciating? What could you maybe do to increase that or do more of it to really strengthen that hope. You can also ask your clients why did they leave past vendors or why did they choose you over your competitors? This will really highlight things that are lacking in that industry that you know. Hmm, I could probably do that better. Or maybe we're not doing it and we wanna implement it more, because that is really the reason that they chose you over someone else.

Speaker 1: 6:22

And finally, habit number five is continuous education. Successful business owners are always learning. They're engaged in courses, they're staying up to date on their industry trends, they're working with other business owners and they're hiring coaches to help them become more and more successful in the areas where maybe it's a weakness or where they just really need an extra set of eyes, extra set of hands on deck to help propel them forward. Now, as we talk about cash management, I recommend having an account set aside for training and development. This can be used for conferences, workshops, masterminds, hiring a coach. You should always be improving in all areas.

Speaker 1: 6:56

I have a marketing coach that I work with and engage with regularly. Once or twice a month we have meetings to focus on my marketing, because I know that is essential to my business and it's also an area that I'm not a full on expert in, so I need someone speaking into that. I'm also part of multiple mastermind groups of other business owners in my industry and some different industries where I can bring problems to them. I have other people as a cohesive mind who have my business's best interest at heart, who can speak into it. Too often we're too close to the problem to really see what that problem is, and having those resources around us can actually help tremendously, and you'd be amazed at how you can invest money in a program like that and how it can really provide an ROI quickly.

Speaker 1: 7:36

So there you have it five habits that every successful business owner is doing. I challenge you to find a thriving business that doesn't have an owner who's doing these habits. Now, as I outlined those habits, is there an area of weakness for you? I know there's some for me. What I suggest you do is really lean into that and start focusing on making that a priority. If you're looking for help in improving one of these habits, that's what we do. Not only do we help businesses improve profitability and implement that cash flow system, we also help them with their time management, with providing systems and processes in their business so it can grow faster and become more efficient and, of course, a business that runs in a way that helps support your lifestyle, because too often that falls to the wayside. Thanks for joining us on the Therapy Business Podcast. Be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with a practice owner that you may know. If your practice needs help getting organized with its finances or just growing your practice, head to therapybusinesspodcom to learn how we can help.