Elements of a Successful Therapeutic Business

By Robyn Scherr and Kate Mackinnon

Authors Robyn Scherr and Kate Mackinnon want as many people as possible to have access to highly effective therapeutic work, which means having plenty of successful, skilled therapists to serve them. In creating their own successful businesses, the authors put their therapeutic training to use and found the same skills they employ with clients are vital to building a therapeutic business filled with integrity, consistency, and fulfillment.

This book is a focused exploration for practitioners in private practice. What you will find here is an invitation to delve deeply to discover why you do what you do, who you are meant to serve and how to inspire them, and what makes you unique in your work. Build a business that adapts, thrives, and grows with you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543972245

Book preview

©2019 Robyn Scherr and Kate Mackinnon. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Cover Image: © Tetiana Syrytsyna | Dreamstime.com

ISBN: 978-1-54397-223-8 (print)

ISBN: 978-1-54397-224-5 (ebook)

Contents

INTRODUCTION

A THERAPEUTIC APPROACH TO BUSINESS

CREATING YOUR BUSINESS CONTAINER

COMMUNICATION FUNDAMENTALS

GREATER DEPTH FOR BROADER REACH

MONEY AND WORTH

PROFESSIONALISM, ETHICS, STANDARDS AND SCOPES OF PRACTICE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

Is everything in your business exactly the way you want it?

A healthy, thriving business lives in a state of flux. Change is the constant—we can always think of at least one aspect of our business that could use fine tuning. Whether you are just setting up your therapeutic business or have been practicing for decades, it is helpful to take a fresh look at your business needs and interests.

We are delighted that you have our book in your hands. This is a focused exploration of the elements that we found are most important for the success of our businesses. If you are like us, then you do not want to spend the bulk of your time on business details. You want to be seeing clients who benefit from your work, you want your business to support the meaningful connections you have with your clients, and you want your time away from clients to be truly free.

In the nearly 20 years that we have each been in private practice, we have gotten to know scores of colleagues, and we often talk with them about their work. What we have witnessed is that people can be very gifted and skilled in the therapies they practice, and yet they struggle to develop their businesses. Even practitioners with decades of experience find that they cannot rely on their private practice to be a sustainable source of income and satisfaction.

We see business and therapeutic practice as individual parts of a whole, working together to provide an invaluable resource for clients and a sustainable income for you. After all, the biggest resource for your clients is you, so it is essential that you are well supported. Likewise, we view our colleagues as a network of support and not as rivals. Their offices may be nearby to ours, but we do not see them as competition. Rather, we can uplift and develop each other. This concept of mutual support has been essential to each of our individual successes.

We have a strong passion for the work we do, and we know that it is vital for the health of our field to have our colleagues be successful as well. We want as many people as possible to have access to highly effective therapy, and that means having plenty of successful, highly skilled therapists to serve them.

With all this in mind, we sat down and had a long conversation at Kate’s kitchen table. What was it exactly that made our business run smoothly? What made our client lists full to the brim and allowed us to sleep at night even if we had a slow week, or knew our practices had to change to make room for something new? What were the elements that made our businesses successful?

We were happy to discover that the same habits we used to build our clinical skills were the habits we used to build our businesses: focused attention applied to what we were working on, consistency in applying the skills we learned, a good deal of compassion, a light-hearted approach, and accountability for our results.

We also discovered that our treatment paradigm as CranioSacral therapy (CST) practitioners fit perfectly with the systems we put in place for our businesses. Business needs attention and time spent skill-building—just like our therapeutic skillset. We both built our businesses with the same focus on integrity and the same precise yet gentle approach that we employ in our therapeutic work.

When we realized the value of business building from a therapeutic mindset, we created an online business class for our colleagues: Elements of a Successful Craniosacral Business. We presented what we have learned, and brought in experts we had studied with over the years. Our students were enthusiastic—and those who engaged with the material created inspiring results. They told their friends and colleagues, and we continued to receive requests for our material long after we stopped teaching.

We provided our students a clear and individualized framework to identify, track, and meet their business goals. We also demonstrated how our own quirks and our very individual likes and dislikes are vital cues for how best to build our businesses. Our approach allowed us to bring a lot of fun into the process, because in each class we got to embrace our students’ wide panoply of personal styles. And we knew that if we could make business-building fun and a bit of a game, we were all much more likely to stick around to see things through.

We taught hundreds of our colleagues, identifying and addressing the most common issues that challenge practitioners. What we share here comes from our direct experiences as clinicians in solo practice—as well as our students’ experiences—reflecting on what worked and what did not. We share our missteps as well as our gems.

Therapeutic work is not like any other business. Often the issues that hinder practitioners’ success are tied directly to the containers they hold: both the therapeutic container, and what we came to call the Business Container. Our online class was based on our clinical skills and discernment. We applied our clinical skills to our business issues, and we encouraged our students to do the same.

We now want to inspire you to bring the clinical discernment, passion, and critical thinking you use in your practice to bear on your business. We provide a solid framework for you to reach the goals you set for yourself. You will have the tools to map your own unique path to success—as you define it.

While many of the concepts in this book can easily apply to businesses with employees and those that are not therapeutic in nature, our focus is on the success of therapeutic practitioners in private practice. Common business wisdom states that we must scale up to truly succeed, and that solo practice is a starting place but not a place to remain. Business experts advised us that we must become bigger to live well. They advised us to hire employees, start a clinic and then expand to satellite sites, and so on.

But we have discovered that being a solo practitioner is a perfect fit for each of us. Our private practices have become the cornerstones of our businesses, providing the income we need for the lifestyle we want. They are dependable too, which allows us to take on projects that inspire and fulfill us.

We are free to create productive and sincere connections with our clients because our business details are clearly handled. We embrace our personal styles in business, so we have a magnetic quality that pulls in clients who are a good fit for our work. Our hearts and our heads are aligned in our businesses, so we feel whole.

We have a hard time with formulaic approaches to business (and just about everything else), and we know we are not alone in this. Those of us in therapeutic work tend to have a strong non-conformist streak and high levels of creativity. What you will find here is an invitation to delve deeply into who you are in your heart of hearts: why you do what you do, who you are meant to serve and how to inspire them, and what makes you unique in your work. You will find that following our Business Paradigm will take you on a courageous journey of discovering yourself in deeper ways while at the same time growing your business. It is a win-win!

We wrote this book so you can shine and succeed, exactly for who you are. Focusing on your unique needs and strengths is in fact what we consider the key to success. We hope the material in this book provides you with inspiration and support to build your own solid foundation in private practice. You can thereafter use that foundation as a springboard to whatever it is that you dream to build.

The business approach we describe here, based on our therapeutic principles, can be applied by all of our colleagues in allied therapies and occupations. Our fellow manual therapists, such as occupational therapists, physical therapists, and massage therapists are a natural fit for our approach. Acupuncturists, energy workers, hair stylists and estheticians, personal trainers and movement instructors have also successfully used our approach. Those who see clients in person as well as those who work remotely will benefit. All that is required is dedication to your own and your clients’ growth and self-awareness, and that you are in private practice.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

This book has been structured to be read from start to finish. We lay down foundational concepts early on that run throughout every chapter, so even if you feel you have certain topics handled, we suggest you work through the entire book from the beginning.

Our intention is for you to use this book to spark a process of self-discovery, and then apply what you discover to your business practices. With that in mind, we have created a list of questions at the end of each chapter for you work through with a journal. Actively engaging with the material that these questions address is vital for creating the business you want.

We built our businesses with the support of colleagues, and firmly believe that a community of practitioners working together is a powerful force for individual success and the health of our clients. So we encourage you to form a group of like-minded practitioners in your local area. Please share ideas and support one another in problem-solving through the inevitable barriers that surface. One way to build a community is to form a book group. You could review a chapter at each meeting, and perhaps set individual goals that members are willing to be accountable for the next time you get together. Let’s lift each other up!

Chapter 1

A THERAPEUTIC APPROACH TO BUSINESS

In this chapter, we will explore being present with your business as it is in this moment. You will begin to see what makes your therapeutic business unique (not the therapy that you practice, but the business itself), and you will start to identify how your business can meet the needs of your clients while satisfying your needs as a practitioner. We also explain our Business Paradigm, how to set goals, ways to hold accountability, and how to use your sensations as a reliable guide. These are the foundational components of our approach to business building.

While there are many business-building programs in the world, they tend to follow someone’s formula of what is best for everyone, as if there is a right and wrong way to achieve success. We believe that the best way to build your business will be unique to you, which is tailored to your circumstances, preferences, and needs. We provide you with a framework of what we have found to be most effective. We also encourage you to try ideas from other classes and from your colleagues. Then we suggest that you only keep what fits you!

In our online class, it was wonderful to see the wide variety of approaches to building, growing, and evolving successful businesses. When you are acting in accord with your values and the ethical standards of your profession, there is no wrong way to go, but there is a right way for you right now. This is what we are hoping that you will find for yourself as you work through this book.

We practice CranioSacral therapy (CST), and one of the primary tenets of CST is that there is no set protocol for diagnoses or conditions. We treat our clients in the moment, as they show up, and the treatment plan evolves organically during the session. This treatment model demands that we stay aware and respond to our client’s needs as they arise.

Just like a CST session, the ways we craft our businesses have to be unique to our circumstances, to the ways we are wired, to our preferences, and to our needs. These aspects of ourselves also change over time, so it is vital that we do not simply set a plan and then run on autopilot. This may require more work at first because you will need to engage in your own self-discovery to realize what you want to create. We think that this investment is time well spent, as it guides you to create a business that you will love—one that will fit you like a glove!

FOUNDATIONAL QUESTIONS TO GUIDE YOUR PROCESS

Too many of us start our businesses, or decide we need to make radical changes to our businesses, without adequate information. We need to define just what it is that we really want or we may not be able to recognize what we need to do to achieve it or recognize when we have indeed achieved it. We also need to know where we are today, so that we can chart a course toward where we want to be. It is much easier to plan a trip to your destination when you know your starting place.

What Does a Successful Business Mean to You?

Please take some time to think about this. What is success to you today? Is it making a living seeing clients? Or is that piece covered for you and your intention is to seek new challenges?

If you are at the very beginning of building your business and your idea of a successful business is a six figure income or