5 Key Parts of a Successful Business Plan for Your Practice

5 Key Parts of a Successful Business Plan for Your Practice

Posted by Becky DeGrossa on April 1, 2015








successful-business-plan-for-therapistsLast week, Howard Baumgarten of Smart Practice Central joined me to share his expertise with the CounselingWise community. On the webinar, he talked about the importance of having a business plan for your private practice and what goes into creating one.

One of the things I took away from his presentation was: To be successful, you need to be prepared, and you need to have a plan.

As the owner of a small business myself, I know that having a solid plan in place has been a vital aspect of CounselingWise’s growth and success. I have found that having a plan is what drives you forward and helps you achieve your goals. WIthout a plan, as Howard mentions, you are less successful.

During the webinar, Howard talked about the 11 different parts (or “modules”) of a business plan. Each part is equally important, and piece together to create a collaborative organized view of your business. Today, I am going to highlight 5 parts of the business plan. To learn about the other 6 (equally as important) parts, be sure to check out the webinar replay here.

Before we dive into the different parts of a successful business plan, I wanted to lead you with something to think about that Howard said during the webinar. He said: “Think about your business plan as a matter of survival in your professional life. Its an opportunity for you to really organize yourself, and appraise what is going on in your business.”

5 Key Parts of a Successful Business Plan

1. The Four C’s

If you are familiar with the SWOT technique (a planning method use to evaluate your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats), then the 4 C’s will be something you can easily relate to. Because he didn’t want to focus on a person’s weaknesses or threats, Howard viewed this planning method through a different colored lens.

The 4 C’s are Howard’s take on the SWOT analysis, and stand for:

    Capabilities (your strengths)
    Challenges (your weaknesses)
    Chances (opportunities)
    Concerns (threats)

This piece of the business plan is key to evaluating your practice from a personal and professional level. By having your capabilities, challenges, chances, and concerns outlined on paper, you can better plan for the future of your practice and your personal life.

Howard recommends getting a piece of paper and breaking it into four columns. In each column, write down your professional and personal capabilities, challenges, chances, and concerns. One thing to keep in mind: its okay to have the same thing in multiple categories.

2. Your Mission Statement

The next part of the business plan I want to highlight is your mission statement. In Howard’s presentation, he said to ask yourself: What is my purpose? What was I born to do? What do I really want to do? How do I want to affect the populations I am working with? What am I empowered to do?

By answering those questions, and really digging down into the meat of the reason you get up every morning, you can develop a wholehearted mission statement for your practice.

As an example, Howard shared his mission statement for both his therapy practice, and for his consultation business.

For his therapy practice, Howard’s mission statement is: Build something new in order to change something old in order to grow.

For Smart Practice Central, his mission statement is: “To raise the standard of how we do business as practitioners. Creating systems of success that are transparent to clients, colleagues, and community while encompassing the values of smart business decisions, strong ethical behavior, and clinically mindful treatment.”

One thing to keep in mind when writing your own mission statement: Make sure you are writing the statement in lay terms, and not professional/clinical terms. Try to stay away from words like ‘depression, anxiety, etc’. You are writing this not only for yourself, but also for your clients, so keep that in mind.

3. Your Services

This is the who, what, when, where, and why of your services as a private practitioner. This part of the business plan is key to giving you the clarity you need in terms of the services you provide, and the services you may want to offer in the future.

    Who? Who are you working with? Who are the populations you treat? Do you work with couples, adults, children (what age children?), teens? Who do you work with in terms of types of couples? For example: high conflict, couples about to get married, etc. Really dig deep into the ‘who’ of your services to determine what you have and what you want.
    What? What are the issues you want to focus on? If the ‘who’ is couples, what type of couple’s issues do you want to work with? Howard’s example was that he likes to work with couples that have a high degree of conflict and are tired of fighting with each other.
    Where? Where do you want to practice? Maybe you want to do a day in a doctor’s office. Maybe you want to offer therapy out in the community, or in the wilderness. Think creatively about where you want to practice, that will maximize the benefits of your services.
    When? When are you providing your services? When you are first starting out, as Howard mentioned, it could be Fridays and Saturday mornings. When you build your practice more, you can shift your hours more and more. Determine when you want to practice and include it in your plan.
    Why? For the why, you will want to see your mission statement. The why is all about your passion and purpose.
    How? How do you treat your patients? This is all about your treatment intervention style (EFT, mind-body-connection, EMDR, etc). Where are your technique leanings?

Howard says that this part of the plan is powerful. It really helps move you in terms of defining yourself and who you are. You will also draw from this part as your quick ‘this is what I do’.

As you are doing this part of your business plan, keep in mind that you will probably have 3 or 4 different sections under each of these. Answer each question for each service you do or want to offer.

4. Personal Growth

To grow professionally, it’s important to take care of yourself so you can grow personally. In order to have a healthy work-life balance, you will want to focus on 4 main areas:

    Nutrition: Are you eating a healthy, well-balanced diet?
    Sleep: Are you getting enough sleep?
    Exercise: Are you moving your body?
    Spirituality: Are you expressing yourself spiritually? This could be anything such as a religion, nature, yoga, etc.

Think of all the things that are important to you on a personal level and write them down. Personal growth is a key piece of your business plan.

5. Administration

This part of the business plan can be hard, especially if you are used to being a one man/woman show. As Howard mentions in the webinar, if you think you can run the show without any professional support throughout your entire career, you will probably be spread very thin.

As part of your business plan, you want to create an administration plan to ensure you have the help you need to build a successful practice (and keep your sanity). Think about the people who you currently have supporting your practice professionally. Then think about the people you may want to include in your group of practice professional support.

Naturally, some people may not be ready for this, so think about this part of your business plan for when you are ready. According to Howard, you know you are ready when you say to yourself ‘I am getting really sick and tired of doing this admin task, and I am now in a place where I can afford to hire someone to do it for me.’

By getting support, you free up emotional space so you can do things that you really want and like to do. This is a vital piece to your professional growth.

Administrative support includes (but is not limited to): a medical biller (if you do insurance), a bookkeeper, an accountant for tax purposes, a financial manager/adviser, an investment banker, a corporate attorney, an insurance agent, a commercial real estate broker (rent or buy), and a virtual/actual assistant.

Each part of the business plan that I discussed today is vital to a successful practice. Your business plan, however, really isn’t complete without the remaining six. To learn about all 11 parts, and to learn more from Howard about a successful business plan, watch the webinar replay here.

You can also download the Business Plan Template here.

One last tip: Don’t just write your plan and forget about it. Howard recommends going back every six or so months to revisit the plan and stick to your goals.

Do you currently have a business plan in place? Share your comments below!

   

Curses By : http://www.counselingwise.com/key-parts-of-a-successful-business-plan/