Reduce overwhelm by planning your private practice in projects
Successful businesses don’t do the same thing all year long. They tend to work in focussed projects. This helps reduce the overwhelm and ensure that all your energy goes to something that will really help your ICAs.
To plan your projects you first need to be clear on your specialism so go back to the podcast on finding your specialism if you haven’t already given that some serious thought.
Then you need to decide on which ideal clients you want to support this year. In the training, I have been doing with the school for social entrepreneurs it has been really noticeable to me that the bigger social enterprises often service a few different groups with different projects. They aren’t trying to catch everyone with the same offer. So for example, the Heart of BS13 project has cooking, gardening and therapy projects all aimed at helping people with different needs.
https://heartofbs13.org.uk/
It got me thinking that while we need to specialise in our clinical work we don’t need to make every project that we work on fit the exact same client. For example, you might have a specialism in workplace trauma and provide therapy for people who need it, online courses for managers that want to support staff who have been through trauma and in-person workshops for students who need to learn about workplace trauma. Those are three projects you could be working on in 2021 that all relate to the exact same specialism are for target different ideal clients.
If you are running a business on your own, or with only admin support though, I do believe we should only focus on one project at a time. If we don’t it is hard to make any project as impactful as we want it to be.
So what “projects: could you focus on in 2021?
What could you do this year that relates to your specialism and would help your ICAs in DIFFERENT ways?
Brainstorm anything you can think of that might help your ICA
Eg.
Downloadables 1:1 therapy
Books Workshops
Podcasts Supervision
Online Courses Webinars
What does each project need?
We are all familiar with Maslow (1954). We need to think about the needs we have as people and business owners and the practical needs of the projects we are creating before we decide when to do them.
If you have unmet deficiency needs you will never be motivated to achieve the self-fulfilment needs.
If you need money coming into your practice quickly you will need to prioritise projects that can do that for you.
In my experience, for most of us, this is 1:1 therapy or supervision. Other projects tend to take more time to make more money as we need to spend time building an audience.
Action:
Map out your projects on a big piece of paper or white board.
Think about what you need in your business, what you need to make the project work
and how intense YOU will find the work.
This is personal so I can’t tell you your intensity scores.
For me, I find I am very drained after a therapy session (even though I love it) so therapy is 10/10 intensity. Whereas I can spend a day prepping a session like this and feel totally energised so that gets a lower score for me.
Write the needs for each one and an intensity score under the project
Pick your projects
Now pick the projects that you intend to focus on this year. For now, just choose four and make sure they are a balance of high and low intensity.
Allocate your projects to a quarter of the year depending on the needs they meet and the requirements they have.
For example, if you need money in your business fast or you need to build your expertise in an area then put getting more 1:1 work in Q1 and leave launching an online course until Q4. You can be building the audience for your course launch throughout the year.
Top tip - consider whether projects might meet each other’s needs. For example, next year I am planning to launch some online resources for mothers with ADHD at the end of the year. I don’t have an audience in that area yet so it makes sense for my Q1 project to be getting more 1:1 clients with ADHD, my Q2 project is launching a podcast and free resources for women with ADHD, my Q3 project is creating a group programme and my Q4 project is launching the online course.
This is the basics of your business plan, obviously, it will need a lot of extra information adding in as you work out pricing, logistics etc but for now it is just there to help you decide where you will be focusing your attention as we go into the new year. Most importantly, you might refine your projects but now you know your specialism and your intentions none of your marketing efforts will be wasted.
The good news is that if it feels a bit overwhelming to do this on your own I have a free webinar coming up to help you find your specialism so you can plan your focus projects for 2021.
I’d love to see you there live so we can talk about your plans so I am running it on Friday 18th December at 13:00 AND Monday 4th January at 19:30.
You can save your space here.
Plus, excitingly, I am happy to announce that we have a new course starting in January which will walk you through turning your basic plan into a fully thought out business plan and everything you need to make that plan a reality. You will hear more about that over the next few weeks when we are ready to share the details :)
Have you got your checklist yet?
Do you sometimes wake up at 2 am worried that you’ve made a terrible error that will bring professional ruin upon you and disgrace your family?
I’m laughing now but when I first set up in private practice I was completely terrified that I had “missed” something big when setting up insurance or data protection.
Even now, three years in, I sometimes catch myself wondering if I have really covered all the bases.
It is hard, no impossible, to think creatively and have the impact you should be having in your practice if you aren’t confident that you have a secure business. BUT it can be overwhelming to figure out exactly what you need to prioritise before those clients start coming in.
I’ve created a free checklist (plus resources list) to take the thinking out of it. Tick off every box and you can see your clients confident in the knowledge that you have everything in place for your security and theirs.
Download it now from https://psychologists.drrosie.co.uk/client-checklis
