There is a wonderful quote that I love… “If you don’t change where you are going, you will end up where you are going”.  Now, that is a great plan if you are really happy with where you are going… but if you have hit complacent mode or are just stuck in your routine… stuck in bad habits… think about whether those are the places you want to continue to go in your practice or in your personal life.  What are you going to do in 2017? I have put together some steps to help you get organised early on and make a plan for this year.

How are you travelling with leading your practice? Are you headed in the right direction? Are you leading with purpose? Coming up to the end of the year, what is in the diary? I hope that you have planned some time to reflect on the year and plan the coming year. If you leave this until Christmas, you might find it a bit hectic, and if you leave it 'til the New Year, you miss the opportunity to plan early so you can hit the ground running!

Sometimes we need a lift in life.  In the busyness of everything, it can be easy to fall victim to self-doubt, and your inner critic. When this happens, we tend to focus on the negative things, the stress full things, because they gravitate towards us.  You can get into these little ruts before you know it, and suddenly things become harder than they need to be.  To get the best out of your day, you need to attract the positives.   If you are confident in yourself, and motivated, you can seriously get a lot more achieved, and what’s great is you can use this energy to bring others along with you.  Your mood is infectious, so let’s make it an inspiring mood. It’s not a bad thing to need a pick me up, sometimes the hard thing is knowing where to find it! 

When I work with fellow allied health professionals, I often hear people say, “I am not sure where I am headed” or that they started a practice and are finding it hard to plan for where they might end up, having never been in practice before. I get that! Sometimes, it can be hard to work out where you are going if you have not been in that situation before. But a vision for your practice is really important. How to write a good one? Glad you asked!

If you try to run an allied health practice as an extension of what a public health service is, you might find yourself in difficulty. An allied health private practice is actually a small business, and the quicker you can get your head around that concept, the better your practice will be. I talk to many allied health practitioners, and so many who run a practice do not see themselves as a business owner or even a business leader. Well, guess what? You are a small business owner!

When I started working in private practice 11 years ago, clients were referred, they were seen, they were written about, they were billed, they were compliant with rebooking, and they had good outcomes. Like many, I assumed their good outcome in my opinion means they had a great experience. But did they? – No, most likely not always!