7 Things to Consider Regarding the Growth of Your Business

08 Jul 2018

Many practitioners wind up finding themselves caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to growth.  Don’t we all want our practices to grow?  Well, therein lies the double-edged sword.  What are the things you need to consider when it comes to the growth of your canine rehab business?

1)How busy are you?  Firstly, is this a short-term thing (i.e. Are you always busier in a certain time of year?) or has this growth been steady and consistent?  If the latter, then you may need to do a simple calculation.  Look at your (or your clinic’s) total available bookings, and the actual bookings.  If you are running at about 80% booked, then you likely need to start looking for someone to help you out!

2)Assess what kind of help do you need.  Could YOU, yourself, see more patients if you had an assistant?  Then you look at hiring an assistant – someone who can carry out your treatment plans, or run your UWT, or provide front desk coverage, or schedule appointments.  Do you want to continue to treat by doing most of the treatments yourself?  Then hire a second person who can take on a caseload and assess and treat as needed.  You need to do some math here – will hiring someone bring IN money and lighten the load on you, or just lighten the load on you?  

3)Do you want to make more money (or the same amount of money) but don’t want to work MORE or perhaps want to work less?  Then raise your prices.  Raising your prices might make some price-sensitive potential or existing clients balk at using your services.  However, it just might backfire as well.  A price increase can sometimes set you apart as being ‘better’ than competition as well!  (You’d have to try it and see!)

4)If it’s time to hire, are you ready to become an employer (i.e. if you own the business)?  You’ll want to look into how you would structure your business to accommodate employees (i.e. wages versus commission, deductions, taxes, insurance, benefits, training, etc., etc.).  Do you even want that?  If you are prepared to hire… then be sure to take your time and hire correctly.  Have a multi-step hiring process:  Get the resume, send a questionnaire, make a phone call to ‘just ask why they want to work at your clinic specifically’, do the interview, invite the top candidates to shadow you for a couple of hours and see how they interact with clients and dogs.  THEN make the offer.

5)OR, if it’s time to hire (and you’re not the boss) … how do you convince your employer you need help!!!??  This might be tricky.   The best bet would be to do a little math and put together a document or spread sheet to show how adding another person to the ‘rehab team’ could boost the bottom line.  An employer will want to know or see how adding another employee will help with income, not just your sanity.  While the latter is important, it’s harder to fight for when it comes to a dollars & cents discussion. 

6)Do you need full time or part time help?  Honestly, it’s been my experience that if you are able to hire someone part time with the potential to grow into full time, that give you the most flexibility with your business.  Growth isn’t always linear.  To help build a new caseload, be prepared to have a marketing strategy ready to go to get your new person filled in with new clients.  However, if hiring an assistant, then you’ll need to be sure to allow plenty of time for training as well.  (Verbal instructions, as well as written documents, or perhaps videos can help to get a new assistant up to speed faster!)

7)Have the guts to make a change.  Change is scary!  However, if you want some more time to yourself and/or deeper pockets, then you need to take a leap of faith.  

Well, there you have it!  I hope this helps!  I know that a few of you are having growth dilemmas!  So hopefully these suggestions will help you to think about what you need to do!

Happy growing!

Cheers,  Laurie