Grow Your Practice from the Inside Out: The Mindset Behind Business Growth
It’s been said that owning a business is one of the greatest courses in personal growth.
Isn’t that the truth?!
Not only are there logistics to growing your practice and one day scaling it — who to hire, what systems to add, what EMR or clinic software to use (and more). There’s also the emotional work of being in business. How do you react when things aren’t easy? When a client ghosts you? When you have decision fatigue? Questions about how you see yourself, handle stress, and feel about your dreams will come up for you as a business owner.
Things can become especially challenging when money gets involved. How do you feel about making more? Is it greedy? Are you ready to be responsible for the livelihoods of others? These are the intangible aspects of business growth you’ll come face-to-face with.
I had two great conversations that informed the advice you’ll read here. One with Dr. Josh Wagner, Chiropractor and now educator, speaker, and teacher to other chiropractors who wish to become the go-to doctor in their communities. The other with acupuncturist Amy Mitchell, an entrepreneur, and clinic founder who followed her heart, left the city, and is now making more money with more freedom than ever before.
“What we know about scaling your practice is that mindset precedes action,” says Dr. Wagner.
You have to have a certain thought process before you can expand or grow your practice sustainably. So if you’re stuck and feel like you’ve hit a business plateau, keep reading.
4 uncomfy truths about the mindset work needed to grow (and scale) your practice
Uncomfy truth #1: To grow your practice, you need to think like a business owner first, and a practitioner second
“The typical practitioner is entering the business world, but they weren’t prepared for it. If you can’t keep the business open, you can’t serve anyone,” says Dr. Wagner. You might have received a weekend or one-semester course on operating a business, but this isn’t enough as you continue to grow. “It’s the practitioner's responsibility to seek out [additional] mentorship or coaching.”
“You’ve graduated with the skills and credentials to help people heal, but that’s only one piece of the puzzle,” he adds.
Uncomfy truth #2: Real growth happens when you work on your business, not just in it
As a practitioner, the main model you’re taught is to trade your time for money. You see clients in exchange for a fee, perhaps increasing that fee as you gain experience. This is what’s called working “in” your business. To grow and expand your private practice, you’ll have to step outside of the day-to-day operations and see the big picture. What’s your revenue and expenses looking like? What are your 3 to 6-month growth plans? Who do you need to hire to make the next phase happen? That’s working “on” your health and wellness business.
📘 And if expansion’s on your mind, check out our article on how to expand your services, which shares insights from clinic owners who’ve been through that very shift.
Uncomfy truth #3: Expanding your practice requires going inward
“Anywhere you have fear and uncertainty, your business will confront that. It’s going to come up. If an area in your business isn’t working, are you blaming, pointing the finger, or are you looking at yourself first? Where am I perhaps sabotaging this? Where am I dropping the ball?” says Dr. Wagner.
Ah yes, the most uncomfy truth of all. Dealing with your stuff. You’ll have to go inward to learn who you are, what boundaries you need to set, and what you really want to build for your business and your life.
Uncomfy truth #4: Facing your undeserving beliefs is important to grow your practice
“Every area of your life has a unique and distinct deserving belief,” explains Dr. Wagner. You can have a strong deserving belief in the area of relationships, for example, but an undeserving belief in the career realm. Or the reverse, you can believe you deserve financial success, but struggle to believe you deserve a long-term loving partnership. Josh notes that our deserving beliefs have been shaped by our “upbringing, childhood, and unique experiences.”
Unsure if you’ve got undeserving beliefs about your career, business, or money? Reflect on these questions to see what comes up.
- Where in life or practice are you experiencing the most stress?
- During the time you’re most stressed, what is the primary emotion you experience? Is it anger, anxiety, or fear?
- Where did this emotion show up in young life?
If you’re able to reflect on these questions and face your undeserving beliefs, you’ll have a much better chance at aligning yourself with the next phase of your business growth.
Amy Mitchell’s story below is a perfect example of how deserving beliefs can change the way you approach decisions in your business.
How Amy’s deserving beliefs helped her break through a 10-year plateau
Now, let’s meet Amy Mitchell, MS, L.Ac. A superstar entrepreneur, medical clinic founder, and acupuncturist who applied what she learned in school to become fully booked (with a waitlist!) in under a year.
“We had two days of business training in my four-year Masters level program,” she explains. “I followed step by step exactly what they told us to do to get to 100K revenue in one year. I was booked and had a waitlist. I did that! I had a model they taught, a structure, and a dream.”
What else led Amy to this success?
She credits it to a core deserving belief: there is enough to go around for all of us. There were enough patients, enough money, and enough people to serve. This abundant mindset helped her approach relationships with positivity and openness. She built trusted relationships with mentors and peers. With one mentor in particular, Amy expressed gratitude often by calling her, asking her for help, and saying thank you. As a result, this mentor sent Amy patient after patient.
The second influential mindset Amy had was trust. Trust that the right patients would find her and work with her long-term. “I deserve patients who are right for me” is a sentiment she expressed often. “This is someone I’ll know for the rest of my life,” another.
Both beliefs fundamentally impacted how Amy ran her business. Just as Dr. Wagner says, “mindset precedes action.” Amy Mitchell has certainly proven this to be true.
The mindset shift that helped Amy grow her private practice
Here’s where we hit a little snag in the story. Because Amy put so much trust in her patients and their needs, she stopped listening to her own gut. She found her perfect clients and heard their declarations of loyalty: ‘We only want to work with you!’ they’d say. And she allowed this to be true, despite what her heart was telling her. For ten years, she plateaued in her business because she continued to see clients 1:1 and resisted her urges to expand and hire.
Amy was working too much “in the business” instead of “on the business.” When you’re working hard just to survive and serve clients, you often can’t make time to think about what you want or need. But eventually, the call to make a change became too loud to ignore. Amy wanted to leave the city she lived and practiced in. Her dreams were to build a home on a plot of land and move there with her family — all while running her private practice remotely. But she couldn't see how this would be possible. Her clients needed her and only her. How could she best serve them if not in the clinic?
Amy embraced one more deserving belief: she could serve her patients in their best and highest good while also stepping away from seeing them 1:1. “Letting go finally allowed me to scale my business and have the life I dreamed of,” she says. How did she have this conversation with her dedicated clients, you might be asking? She chose enthusiasm. She spoke excitedly to clients about their new team of acupuncturists. When scheduling, she didn’t ask clients if they’d be okay to see a new doctor, she gently told them, “I’m not available. Let’s schedule you with [another doctor] on this date and time.” This worked well, and slowly, everyone made the shift.
When Amy followed her desires, her business did not decline. In fact, she had her biggest financial month, and the success continued.
“Now, it's been three years where I've been running my business remotely. I run my team semi-remotely now. I realized my dream of buying land. I live in the country on 10 acres!”
Amy learned to trust her instincts above all else. If you work with a coach or take a business program that recommends an approach that doesn’t quite feel right for you, Amy suggests taking their advice with a grain of salt. Learn and listen, but also let go of perceived expectations. It’s essential to have mentors you trust, but not to hold their opinions above your own. Your business decisions should feel aligned with you.
If you’ve hit your own business plateau, you’re likely up against your deserving beliefs. Josh and Amy both encourage you to do the necessary inner work required to move to the next phase of growth. No doubt, it will be uncomfortable.
Thankfully, there’s a silver lining.
“Your deserving beliefs are moldable. You’re not stamped on the forehead with them for life. Wherever you’re at now, it’s not set in stone,” says Dr. Wagner.
With compassionate awareness and inner work, you can address your undeserving beliefs and create the practice (and life) of your dreams.
Find Dr. Wagner online at DrJoshWagner.com/BookGift and Amy at MitchellFamilyAcupuncture.com
📖 This article was originally published in volume 2 of Front Desk magazine and has been modified and updated.
