Here’s How You Can Grow Your Practice — Without Breaking a Sweat

Try reducing your treatment hours

If growing your practice is a goal, bringing it higher up on your to-do list should be a priority.

“I was surprised to see that only about 50% of clinic owners and managers work 20 to 40 hours a week,” Scott says as we walk him through our findings.

But it’s not the total number of hours that sticks out to him, but rather what it means. “If you factor in that most [owners and managers] are clinicians and they’re spending a good chunk of that time treating patients, it leaves a very part-time person to grow the business.”

Scott’s challenge?

Try reducing your treatment hours.

Scott describes treatment hours as low-leveraged time: “Once that hour is done, there’s no cascade effect in the business,” he says.

Reducing treatment time gives you space to work on the systems that compound over time, such as building a marketing plan, setting up an operational process, or even training new staff.

For practitioners who love helping their patients, this can feel like a big ask — but it’s a necessary boundary to set if practice growth is on your priority list.

“I think [a lot of clinicians] say they want more time to work on the business. But they’ll almost always say yes to a new patient that needs help.”

Scott suggests starting small by blocking out half a day every week to focus on growing the business: “I find Friday mornings are really strong for this.”

But he challenges clinicians who are aggressively pursuing growth to take it a step further and cut their treatment hours in half.

Consider delegating or outsourcing as you grow

“Business owners, in general, are very handy. They want to be scrappy and save money,” notes Scott as we discuss the almost three-quarters of clinic owners who say they’ll tackle tasks themselves — even when they can hire or outsource.

And that’s not just limited to tasks like changing light bulbs or fixing the toilet.

Handling complaints or managing patient scheduling and billing ranked as the second most common task during the week, with 22% of clinic owners and managers saying they find it easy or “no sweat.”

While it might feel good to knock out the easy stuff first, Scott thinks these tasks should actually be the first to go from your list. That time and brainpower can be better used strategically.

“At a certain point, you actually have to get the things that you’re really good at off your plate," he tells us.

Another approach to delegation might be getting the biggest energy drains off your plate — the stuff that makes you so worn out at the end of the day that you can’t fathom spending another second thinking about the business.

If you’re not sure where to outsource as you grow, Scott recommends doing what he calls an energy audit every quarter to identify areas of opportunity.

Scott's small business energy audit

Look back at your calendar for the previous quarter and ask yourself a few questions:

• What filled your cup?
• What drained your energy (and took away from business goals)?
• How can you solve your biggest energy drains?

Make the most of technology and AI

Scott shares a test Myodetox recently ran with around 50 of their clinicians. They used an AI treatment notes tool to automatically append treatment notes to patient charts for clinicians to review.

It has saved every clinician around 35 minutes of documentation time every day. “Half an hour of documentation time, every single day, over a year period, is a massive amount of energy that people get back,” he points out.

When added up, this almost amounts to the half-day every week that Scott recommends dedicating to growth.

While AI is one way to free up time and streamline clinic operations, you don’t necessarily have to rely on it either. “It’s less about automation and more about not having to do the same work over and over again,” Scott clarifies.

Onboarding, where the process tends to stay the same over time, is a great place to start. “Any operational system that you’re showing somebody to do more than once, you should shoot a Loom video and document your processes.”

Screen sharing and video recording software that allow you to create personalized recordings, like Loom, are a convenient way to lean into technology without losing that human touch.

Use key data metrics to make business decisions

Many practice owners understand the importance of reviewing clinical performance.

The proof?

Reviewing data and reports on clinic performance is number three on the list of tasks clinic owners and managers are most likely to tackle in a week.

Where they often get stuck is turning that data into actionable insights.

Scott likens it to treating patients. If you listen to someone’s heart rate and realize it’s 20-30 BPM higher than it should be, you’ll probably wonder why that is. Did they just go for a run? Did they have caffeine?

“There’s a symptom and a diagnosis,” Scott says. “It’s the same thing with business reporting. It’s just a matter of matching the metrics to the health of the business.”

But knowing what to look for and if you’re looking at the right metrics is also important.

“Don’t overcomplicate it,” Scott cautions. Even with over 20 clinics, Myodetox’s core dashboard only has five or six key performance indicators (KPIs). “Don’t feel like you need a dashboard with over 30 different metrics,” he advises.

Every clinic is different, but Scott calls out a few metrics to look out for, including new clients, average revenue per session, and client retention.

In some cases, even a dashboard might be overcomplicating it. Actioning data can be as simple as asking customers how they heard about your clinic and using a basic Excel sheet to document it.

“At the end of the month, you can sit down and say, ‘Okay, we had 57 new clients this month, 17 came from this one gym,’” Scott shares as an example. “Can we do something to take care of their trainers? Can we [help] that gym understand our services?”

What some people get wrong about data is that they’re looking to find problems in the business to solve. In Scott’s view, it’s about taking what’s already working and doing it in a bigger way.

Spend time with business-minded clinic owners

Sometimes the lack of emphasis on clinic growth doesn’t just boil down to time in a week. Rather, it’s not knowing what to do.

Scott stresses the importance of having people in your corner and asking for help, especially for solo clinic owners who are feeling overwhelmed by the business side of things.

“It doesn’t have to be a co-founder or a business partner,” he says. “Just someone who can help you look at your business like a business.”

Scott encourages spending more time with other business-minded clinic owners. He also mentions that clinic owners tend to be more guarded than they should be.

“In a lot of other industries, competitors get together all the time to trade notes and talk about what’s working,” Scott tells us. “It’s not a winner-take-all market — there can be a lot of successful clinics in one community.”

Struggling to paint a long-term vision for your practice? Scott speaks highly of finding a coach, therapist, or even a mastermind group.

“I’ve probably done close to 200 sessions across many topics [with my executive coach],” offers Scott. He’s also a member of YPO (Young Presidents Organization) — an entrepreneur networking group.

Think like a business owner first

There’s no denying that owning a clinic is a delicate balance. It’s up to you to make the final decision about how to best allocate the limited time you have in a week.

And that doesn’t mean you need to abandon your role as a clinician entirely either.

“If the best use of your time at that moment in time is to treat a new patient, that’s great,” Scott says.

But if you’re actively looking to scale your clinic, you should also be spending time at the front desk, talking to new clients, answering the phones, and spending time understanding the patient experience beyond the treatment room.

Growth doesn’t have to be complicated, and you shouldn’t discount the value of a casual conversation to gather valuable feedback about your client/patient/customer experience.

Scott leaves us with this final takeaway: “Start thinking as a business owner first and a clinician second, versus being a clinician first and a business owner second."

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