When Growth Can Wait: Stop Trying to Grow Your Practice

We challenge the grow-at-all-costs mindset and show how therapy practices thrive by alternating intentional foundational seasons with focused growth seasons. Clear money systems, cash reserves, pricing, and processes turn revenue into real freedom instead of burnout.

• defining foundational and growth seasons
• when taking new clients harms cash flow
• using Profit First and clean bookkeeping
• building a three-month operating reserve
• choosing one top priority at a time
• systems that speed billing and follow-up
• CRM and onboarding upgrades for scale
• pricing, reimbursement realities and overhead
• sales conversion and lead nurturing
• hiring plans and the profit tradeoff

Meet with one of our coaches



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

Chapters

• 0:00 Rethinking Constant Growth
• 1:41 Freedom, Not Hustle
• 3:16 When More Clients Make Things Worse
• 4:56 Foundations Versus Growth
• 7:09 Profit Tradeoffs In Growth Seasons
• 10:19 Why You Can’t Prioritize Both
• 12:59 Financial Foundations That Matter
• 16:28 Systems, CRM, And Process Overhauls

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

It seems like every business guru out there is always preaching this hustle and grind. You have to work and push for growth at all times. But what if I were to tell you that I genuinely don't think that you should always be focusing on growing your business? Today I'm going to talk about why that is. My name is Craig, and I'm the owner of DAC Financial Coaching. Our team is on a mission to make your therapy practice 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. I remember when I started my business, I just felt this immense pressure to grow. That if the previous year, if this year wasn't better than the previous year, if I wasn't constantly taking on new clients, constantly increasing my revenue, then I was failing. And I remember listening to a lot of books or podcasts or reading books and watching interviews of these people who are just insanely successful. And that's what they're talking about. That is just you basically dedicate your entire life to growing and scaling this business. You're reinvesting everything into it and you're doing whatever you can to elevate it to that next level. But here's the thing: I genuinely just kind of felt like that didn't ring true for why I even started what I was doing. I didn't start this business to work constantly and stress about money. I started it for the freedom of time and the freedom of money. And so this whole idea of constantly growing, constantly trying to push it to that next level just didn't resonate. And as I started working with other business owners, I realized that growth is not always the answer. I remember a few years ago, I had a client and we were looking at their business, and they were so much in debt and behind with their vendors that what we had essentially determined after looking at the numbers was if they were to take on a new client, it would hurt their business. It would hurt their finances, it would push them further into the financial hole. What they needed wasn't growth and more sales. What they really needed was to clean up this money mess so that they could afford more clients, more sales, more revenue. That's what made me realize that there is really two key phases that we kind of ebb and flow between in business, and that is foundational and growth phases. What I'm going to talk about today here, because we're recording in January, we're looking ahead to the year, is we're going to call it a foundational year and a growth year. What is this year going to be for you? Now, as I'm talking about this throughout today's episode, just know that doesn't always mean it's going to have to be a year. You don't have to spend a year doing one or the other. It could be a foundational quarter or a month or a season, whatever that looks like. But we need to get those pieces in place. So sometimes we're focusing on growth, sometimes we're focusing on the foundations. So what is the foundations? This is the bedrock of our business. This is making sure that we have things in place so that we can sustain the growth, that we can take on more money and not put ourselves in a hole. We just genuinely, I think instinctively think that more revenue means problem solved. It's just if I hit this next revenue tier, if I hit this next dollar amount, then our problems will be solved. We'll be making enough to cover everything and be able to pay myself what I deserve. But what I've found is that just over time, as we grow, people turn around and look down, and it's like, okay, uh, we are hitting these revenue targets, but it feels like nothing's changed. It feels like we're the same place we were when we were making half of what we're making now. That's because the foundations aren't there. There's a lot of key elements that we need to put into place: systems, processes, different things that need to be there. Otherwise, we're not going to be able to sustain. So going back to that client, they didn't have a system or process for the debt management, the cash flow management. Therefore, they were put in this position where they couldn't take on new business without hurting themselves and putting themselves in deeper hole with their vendors. Now, growth years are going to be the opposite. That's where we're focusing our energy and our attention on purely growth. It's we're going to reinvest our dollars into marketing, into scaling, into client acquisition, into all these other pieces to focus on increasing that top line revenue. This might mean that your profitability goes down. In fact, it should. A few years ago, uh, we focused on growth in my business and we were focusing on hiring some people and taking on more clients, which meant our profitability dropped down until we had the clients come in that could sustain it. We were in reinvesting in marketing, all these other pieces. So on paper, our profit was down. That doesn't mean that it wasn't on purpose or intentional, it was just that's what it looks like. Versus a foundational year, profitability typically is going to be up because we are focusing on some key elements. It just depends on what foundations we're building. I'm going to get into some examples of what might be a foundational focus for you. If it's the finances, profitability is going to go up. If it's something else that maybe involves bringing in a consultant or investing in some software or programs, maybe that might affect profitability too. But really, growth years typically when we're leaning in, leveraging excess cash into trying to scale quickly, we're going to notice profitability likely on the PL will go down. Now, if you're using a money system like Profit First, which we recommend, then your profitability in cash won't actually go down because it's money that's going into your bank account. But those retained earnings, the dollars that might be going into savings that might uh just be sitting in your bank accounts, that's usually not going to be as high as it would if you were cutting costs or watching what you spend. Now, here's where people typically go wrong is they are trying to build those foundations while still trying to grow. And honestly, they can both happen at the same time, but they can't both be a priority, in my opinion. Yes, you can focus on building a foundation and still grow. In fact, we did. We are focusing on setting this foundation and our revenue grew from the year before. But our focus wasn't on that growth, it was on these key pieces. However, that doesn't mean we're just gonna stop trying to get sales, we're gonna stop trying to get consultations and gain clients. Of course not. It just means that that's not gonna be our primary focus of what we're gonna be spending our time, energy, and money on. We are going to do sustain it, we're gonna continue to try and leverage it. It's just not the forefront of our mind, if that makes sense. So trying to do both at the same time as priorities are conflicting because we need, if we're trying to save money, let's say you're trying to build your emergency savings as one of your systems, but you're also trying to reinvest in marketing, you could they're pulling against each other. Dollars that you want to put into savings and dollars that you want to spend on marketing, yes, you can do both, but again, that would mean that neither is the priority because if it's a priority, we're gonna be investing a majority of something toward one or the other. So if you're looking at this year and you're thinking, okay, so what are some foundations that I need so that I can take healthy financial growth? So that if I double my revenue, I'm in a financially healthy place and we can actually sustain that growth. I'm gonna walk through a few different foundational systems, some things that you might be focusing on during a foundational season or a foundational year to make sure that you can handle that. So, number one is a financial foundation. We talked about that. Having a money system would be really key here, having some kind of cash management system. Now, if you have your bookkeeping, your accounting, that is really important. If you don't have that, then you 100% need to make sure that you have some kind of accounting system, some kind of bookkeeping, some kind of track record so that you can have those reports and you can have that data for you to look back on. But we're big believers in there's two an accounting process and accounting system is different than a cash management system, and you need both. Every business should have both. Accounting systems help you look backward to see how did we perform? How did the business do profitability-wise, revenue-wise, expense-wise, previously, whether it was the last quarter, the last year, it gives you a look back. Cash management systems help you manage the money on the day-to-day and make real-time decisions. I was just reviewing a 2025 PL with a client, they finalized it, and we were looking back at the year, and we had a lot of insights that we were pulling from it and things that were really valuable and a lot of aha moments. However, we can't make real-time decisions with those. Yes, we can say, okay, this year, let's try and focus on this, but if we wait for the next PL to look back and say, oops, yeah, we didn't, you didn't quite do it again. Let's next time, next quarter, let's try it again. We're constantly looking back and it's too late to do anything about it. Whereas a cash management system like profit first, where you have multiple bank accounts and you're monitoring how much is going into operating expenses, how much is going into your salary, your paycheck, that owner's pay account, then we have some intentionality behind it. So we are managing the day-to-day there. And then we can still pull those reports to see big picture. How are we trending? How are we looking? How we're how's the business over how is the overall financial health of the business from those reports? But on the day to day, we can manage the money. Now we do a have a whole episode on the profit first system. So I recommend going and listening to that if you're not familiar with it. It is a game changer. You need a money system of some kind. And so typically, when a client comes to us to implement a money system, that's the primary focus. Again, they might still grow, but we are focusing on let's put all of your energy and capacity into setting up these accounts, building up a little cash cushion in them so that we're not constantly doing this ebb and flow feast and famine uh cycle that they feel stuck in. Another foundational uh financial foundational piece is a cash reserve. If you don't have enough cash and savings to sustain, uh, maybe a downturn in business, maybe a seasonal drop, whatever it is. I know in both physical therapy and mental health therapy, there is, since it's very relational, it's a one-to-one for the most part. If you're not seeing patients or if your your therapists are not seeing patients, then you're not getting revenue. And so those holiday weeks, we just got through with the holidays where a lot of offices were closed for one to two weeks. So having a cash cushion to sustain through those is really important. You want to have a cash reserve to cover probably, I would say, at least three months worth of expenses, and that includes your pay. We want to have a enough cash on hand that you could still pay yourself and your team and cover your expenses for 90 days if you needed to. Now, some businesses opt for more than that, but I usually that three-month mark is usually a at least good starting point to get to. If you have a lot of debt, that could be another foundational financial piece that you're looking at. So choosing to spend this season paying off debt, which means a lot of your excess funds will be going towards reducing those balances. So all of these are things where if you're looking at 2026 right now and saying, I need to build a foundation of my finances, set those targets, set some goals, set some mile markers. Is it gonna take the whole year? Are we gonna take six months to focus on this? And then put your energy and time into doing that. Another foundational piece outside of the finances would be systems and processes, going over your onboarding process, billing. Do you have a process for billing? Are you constantly behind on sending notes to insurance companies so that you can collect on them? Is your team good about doing it? Do you have an issue with scheduling, with collecting cancellation fees? There's a lot of different processes that we may want to spend some energy fixing. Now, some of those might take a year, you know, six months to a year, just depending. Some of them, like maybe collecting on cancellation fees, may just be a one to three month focus of okay, we're gonna implement something new, we're gonna try it, we're gonna track it and see are we doing better with this. Um, so overhauling a whole system. We just got through at the end of 2025 Q4, changing our CRM system, and that was took a lot of my attention. So my energy was was put into that. Again, we were still growing and I had some ad money running, but my main priority was we need to move our system over this new CRM so that we can better nurture new leads when they come in, we can better take care of our clients, we can make that onboarding experience better. So it was a priority. That foundational piece, we outgrew our other CRM. So we were at that point where if we were to take on more business, the other one was gonna hold us back and really hinder client experience, put more work on my team's plate. So, this in order for us to grow, we needed a better, more robust system that we could all manage together so that when we get more clients, when our client load doubles, we can work as a team on it, we can all access what we need to, and there's just it's it's more integrated together. Sales processes could be another foundational piece you're looking at. How are your sales? Are you closing clients? Are you converting leads? Are you getting enough leads? Is your marketing efforts out there bringing in the right kind of people? How are your sales calls going? How's your follow-up process? So if you get on a sales call and they they don't sign up for therapy or they don't sign up for physical therapy, what is your follow-up process looking look like? Are they just getting left behind or are you actually staying on top of it and following up with them to try to get them, make sure either A, they get scheduled with you, or B, they got help elsewhere? All of those are huge and important and take some time and tweaking to engage in and put your focus into. Your pricing, that could be another foundational piece. Is your pricing structured in a way that you are profitable and your team members are being taken care of? That you have funds for growth? Are you priced correctly so you have the cash you need to pay yourself what you deserve, to reinvest in marketing, all those other pieces? So maybe spending a season, again, doesn't have to be a full year, but some time into let's reassess our pricing, let's focus on sending out notes and letters that in the next 30 to 60 to 90 days are we're gonna be raising all of our clients' rates. So, and if you're taking insurance, I know you don't have a whole lot of say and what reimbursements you get. So, are you priced in a way that you can handle? And you might be looking at your expenses at that point. What is, are we is our overhead too high? Are we paying our clinicians or therapists too much? All of those pieces because we want to make sure that we are priced in a way that you have profitability and you have excess cash to cover what you need. Building a team again. I did that a few years ago uh during that piece where we are setting the the people in place so that we could take on excess growth. So if you need to be hiring some key people, this is where you might take a step back in profitability because you're gonna be reinvesting funds into that. And so instead of investing in scaling, you're now gonna be investing funds in maybe having a cash reserve to bring on a new team member until they have a full caseload and start generating an ROI for themselves. You like I said at the beginning, you are gonna ebb and flow between growth and foundational years. As you scale, different foundations are going to need to be reinforced, just like our CRM. As we reached a new point in the business, what worked for us when we were smaller doesn't work for us where we are now. And I'm sure at some point down the road, one of our other systems or processes is going to be need to be updated to support the level of business we're at at that point. It's okay and it's important to take your foot off the gas sometimes. You don't have to always be in a growth, growth, growth mindset or growth focus. You're not constantly needing to generate more revenue. Sometimes it is just as beneficial to your business to get those foundational pieces in place. Once that foundation is there, you can grow and you have it's going to be steady, it's going to be stable, and it's going to be something that is permanently profitable, which we think is incredibly important. So looking ahead, whether you're listening to this live as we are looking ahead to 2026, maybe you're just listening to this and it's an old episode and it's July right now. Regardless, look ahead. What do you want your next area of focus to be? Whether it's the year ahead, the next few months, are you gonna focus on foundations? Are you gonna focus on growth? Are you at a place where you can focus on growth? Are there things in your business that are not up to code that you need to make sure are set so that you can take on more sales? Jump into that. Set a goal, figure out, pinpoint what that area of need is and start preparing for it, start building it so that way a year from now you're looking at more revenue, more profitability, and an overall more financially healthy business. 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 therapybusinesspod.com to learn how we can help.