Scarlett Solo USB-8: 0:37

Hey guys, today's episode is finally the episode where we're going to talk about how owning my own private practice was literally never my dream. And it's something that I've really wrestled with over the last almost two years since opening is, it's been really hard to come to terms with the fact that most of my friends, fellow entrepreneurs, um, everyone seems to have always had this dream of owning a business, whether it be digital, or a brick and mortar, or healthcare, or something. And that just never happened to me. And I want to start off this episode by saying that if that's not you, that is okay. You will grow to love it, you will find whatever it is you're supposed to be creating, and everything will work out. Because To me, nothing seemed possible, especially opening up my own practice in any kind of business. I was the type of person that definitely could work for others. I love to follow rules. I am an extremely organized person. I've had many jobs throughout the years and I've loved them all. I love management. I love all of it. and so for me, when it came to the fork in the road where I had to make a decision for the next phase of my career, I felt really limited because of the location where I practice. And the next logical step for me was to open my own private practice, which again, never in the cards. If you would have asked me as a kid, if I would ever be a business center, I'd say no. All throughout undergrad, grad school, even after grad school, it was just never, ever. Never a desire for me.

Scarlett Solo USB-9: 2:05

You don't have to do what's expected of you and what the norm is. You can truly create something that is designed for you. this episode was actually inspired by the Founders Journal, which is one of my all time favorite podcasts, by Alex Lieberman, the co founder of Morning Brew. I have yet to find a podcast that really targets me the way that this one does, and they had an episode this past summer, I believe, That is called navigating career pivots and the word pivot. Yes. Always makes me think of the friends series, if you've ever seen that episode, but I think it's important to accept career pivots and to also let it take you to the next level. So for me, I was faced with a career pivot in the spring of 2022 I could just feel it kind of rocking my world and I was hesitant, I was resistant, I did not want to follow through with it, but it kept tugging at me and I started to realize that I wasn't being fulfilled I had to make a change. it was really hard because I loved my boss, I loved my job, I loved my patience, but I knew around that time that I had to unfortunately make that big jump. because of where I practiced, my options were pretty limited. With my skill set and background, there just wasn't a lot of career opportunities in my city. So that left me at that fork road that I mentioned where I had to make a decision and I ultimately realized that that decision was opening up my own private practice. And so I sat down literally to bare bones, pen and paper, and decided to just write what are some of the things that inspire me. What do I love about being a chiropractor? What do I love about health care? What are my skills? What are my weaknesses? And I kind of put it all together and I wrote out this pretty robust business plan, that ended up taking a lot of time. But I'm so glad I did it because during those several months of creating my practice on paper, it helped prepare me for the actual hard stuff that was yet to come as far as actually creating a business that was going to be sustainable. I think in another episode, I'm probably going to dive into my business plan a little bit more in depth and go segment by segment and just kind of talk about how I built it. I looked at some templates, but I decided to kind of tweak things and make it my own. And to this day, my business plan is guiding a lot of my practice decisions mixed in with statistics and reports. So we'll definitely do that. I think it would be really, really helpful if that's something that you would like to hear, go ahead and shoot me an email or message me on social media about what you're looking for. And I'm happy to touch on it in an episode. So for me. I started out as an associate chiropractor, like most people do, just like a lot of us healthcare providers, we work for other people a lot of the time. And there's nothing wrong with that. I enjoyed it. I loved it. I got to the point with both of my associateships where I did not have to take on as many new patients because my patient base was full. It was a great place to be in practice. and like I said, I just had the best patience ever. So I was pretty surprised and realized I was going to have to overcome a lot of fears and challenges when opening up my own practice. I knew nothing about business marketing. I barely knew how to network. Finance and taxes were some of the biggest things that I had to overcome and I tried to embrace that change head on. And the reason why this podcast really inspired me is because it touches on the importance of being a newcomer and how fresh perspectives are okay to have. When I was first writing that business plan, I kept thinking I needed to be like other people. I needed to be like other practices. And then I sat down to do my market research on chiropractic practices in my area and I quickly realized I don't have to be like them at all. sitting down and really honing in on what I was good at and maybe finding a problem in my community that I could solve was ultimately the most important thing, making sure that you're creating a practice that gets you fired up in the morning to be a part of, you know, when I did all of my training at my VA hospital on the East coast, I was fired up for work every single day because of the way I feel about the veteran population. That is a really special demographic for me. And so by being immersed in that population and in that setting, Work was a privilege and I wanted to make sure that whatever private practice I created, I wanted to feel the same way. I wanted to be excited about going to work every single day. If kids don't rave you up, for example, don't create a pediatric practice. If internal medicine doesn't do it for you and you want a more specialized niche you probably need to make a change. And this goes for a lot of fields, One of them that comes to mind is nursing. It is so important in nursing to make sure you're choosing to work on a floor that represents you and what you feel fulfilled and called to do. There are so many avenues in a lot of healthcare specialties, and it's really important to choose the one that makes you excited to go to work every single day because patients can tell. Trust me. So I think it's really important to embrace the pivots as they come. Sometimes that can look like some cognitive dissonance and becoming uncomfortable at work or no longer having that excitement every single morning when you go on in. And it's important to act on it. So a lot of the times that comes with preparation. Now I didn't get a ton of preparation when I decided to make all these changes. I recommend taking at least six months. Stay at your current job if it is a safe environment and you feel comfortable doing so. Stay there while you plan your exit, while you plan your practice. I also learned right away that you are going to have people that disagree with the way that you choose to run your practice. They're going to think that what you're doing won't work. They're going to think that what they're doing is better. They're not going to support you. And I think that was a really hard realization for me. I shared my business plan with a lot of people. I was constantly on phone calls trying to learn from other people. And to be honest, most of the feedback I got was negative. Oh, that'll never work in your city. Or, why would you do that? No one does that. And at first, I let it get to me. And then I realized I really needed to stick to the things that really got me excited and I'm so glad I did because now that business plan has led me to make incredible decisions for my practice and our quote unquote model that would not work is currently thriving and has been so well received not only by patients but also a lot of the people that I'm networking with, other chiropractors, other healthcare providers, And we're really taking the community by storm just trying to promote evidence based care and value based care. And it's been really incredible to watch and I want to remind us that as health care providers it can be super easy to stay within our health care bubble. What I did was I got outside of that bubble Mostly because of the negative response I was getting about my business plan. And I decided to learn about business and entrepreneurship and marketing and all of these things from non healthcare businesses. And I'm so glad I did that. It's one of the best things I ever did. Founders Journal, the podcast that I've mentioned in this episode so far, is one of the hallmark ways that I learned and gathered ideas and became inspired to do so. So for example, I knew I wanted my practice to be based on putting patients first, value based care. patient based care. I wanted to set parameters for my providers in my practice. I want every provider in my building to have a max cap of patients that they see per day. That way patient care is the ultimate most important thing. In order to do that, you have to really know your systems in and out. And remember when I decided to open up my own practice, I knew nothing about these systems. So it was really important for me to take some time before I open to learn how to run statistics, to learn how to run reports, to learn how to process this data and make valuable decisions for my practice. And because of the time and energy I put into that, that made it possible for me to set these parameters of cap to patient visits per day and make sure that I am still generating enough profit in collections every single month to not only cover my overhead, but obviously succeed and profit on my business. Contrary to popular belief, I think you can be ethical, you can put patients first, and you can keep the lights on, and more. You can be a successful practice generating collections per month that is extremely sustainable and successful, and you can follow the rules. You can make sure that you are delivering the best patient care possible and getting great results with your patients. So that is what I set out to do. And again, a lot of people said, Hey, that's not going to work, but guess what? It is. It's kind of funny. It makes me think of the field of dreams. I'm sure most of you have seen that video, but they say, if you build it, they will come. And I truly believe if you treat people well, They will come. You will be creating an environment where patients are patients for life, not just a one and done situation. It doesn't mean that they're gonna need you all the time, and that's okay. You want to create a practice where people are excited to be a part of it. They know whenever they need something, you are the go to location, and they're going to send their friends and family to you. The number two types of referral types in my practice are going to be internal referrals and then medical referrals. You want to make sure that whatever practice and business you're creating is the talk of the town. Everybody wants their friends to go there and everyone wants to refer to you because of the quality of care that you are delivering. I want to touch also on some really great advice that was given to me when I first moved out to Michigan. I went from the hospital sector to private practice, and that was a really big shift for me. And to be honest, it was a tough one. I learned very quickly how different my profession is in the state of Michigan. As we know, scope of practice and general perception in dealings with any specialty can vary state by state. And for me, this place was just tough. It didn't really seem like a great fit for me at first. I had an incredible mentor named Dr. Nate Hinkle Dye, who is a chiropractor at the VA hospital in Des Moines, Iowa. And he gave me some really great information. He said, Why don't you take a look at your community? Take a look at Grand Rapids. Take a look at your situation. Right now it looks like a barrier. How can we change that barrier and make it something to be desired? Something to inspire you? Treat it as an opportunity. An opportunity to make something out of a bad situation. And I took that information and that advice and I literally ran with it. He was right. There wasn't anyone in my area doing what I wanted to do with the private practice. And this was years before I knew I wanted to open. But I have stuck with that advice. It has really guided me and allowed me to focus on what truly matters. If you are currently at a job where you are struggling to get up in the morning, every day is just kind of a job, I really want you to look around and think, what can be better? What do I have to do to make things better? It could be a leadership role within your same company. It could be a position change. It could be an entire company change. It could be going from W2 work to private practice ownership, depending on your field. Any kind of change I think is a good change, and it's important for us to listen to ourselves and listen to the emotions that we're experiencing. I don't think private practice is for everyone. But I never thought it was for me either and now I'm really happy looking back that I did it. Our two year anniversary is coming up at the end of this month and I'm just overwhelmed with emotions when it comes to that because we've accomplished so much. In almost two years we have grown from a team of one to a team of seven now and it's just really Humbling. To look back on everything that we've gone through, everything that I've learned throughout this process, and know that I'm creating something that is going to serve me well as a person, as a provider, all of the patients that we've been able to help, now me creating a team and being able to be a part of other people's lives that way as an employer, and I'm proud to just continually learning I think is the biggest inspiration piece of it all. As healthcare providers, that is what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to learn. We're supposed to grow. And this is a great way to do it. And a lot of what I did when I was working on creating my practice was something I like to call e learning. So even if I wasn't actively reading a tangible book, I made sure at least once a week I watched a video on YouTube or a podcast episode was listened to, a blog post was read. Something happened where I knew to put my focus on something new that would benefit my practice. Too often we get really comfortable and we don't grow and that is inside healthcare and outside healthcare. There are so many small businesses that never strive to be better and make changes. It's easy to get comfortable. So if that is you and you feel like you are currently getting comfortable, I implore you to think back on my story, see how far I've come and try to get uncomfortable. It's important to be uncomfortable in order to grow, and there's a lot of growth to be had in our careers. We are fortunate enough to work in health care where, yes, we have really challenging days and things are not always fair, But we get to wake up every single day and make a difference and I think that's important. So once again, I recommend checking out the Founders Journal. It's the best podcast ever with Alex Lieberman. I'm just such a big fan of him. And again, this episode was inspired by an episode of his, which is called Navigating Career Pivots. Highly highly recommend. Thanks for listening to today's episode.