So as our community has grown with quite a few new clinic owners this year I think it is a good time to take you behind the scenes as to what inspired me to start Ultimate Physio as a business and a community on facebook.
The year was 2015 and I went from thinking I was a great business owner to a terrible business owner in one year. This was attributable to the fact I had lost more than 50% of my team in 6 months.
My best physio left to travel the world and I was kicking myself as I didn’t even know he wanted to. This was followed by a series of bad hires – I only had myself to blame.
I remember the lowest point was where I found a good physio job applicant, offered him the position and he knocked me back, citing that it was too far for him to travel, only for him to take up a position with another physio clinic less than 5 minutes down the road.
I sat there thinking:
“Why would anyone want to work at my clinic?”
I was the epitomy of a small business:
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the whole business revolved around me and I thought “no one could do this as good as me”
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all decisions were made by me
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when the phone rang it was another patient, waiting to see me
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I wasn’t spending any time with my team
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I was in my room treating a million patients each week
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My team stayed for a while but would leave for better career opportunities
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I was on a fast track to burnout
So I thought “how do I make myself an employer of choice”?
Lucky for me I had been learning about business since about 2007 and I finally decided to put a rocket up myself and start applying everything I had learned to reverse many of the problems I had created for myself in the dot points above.
And as I turned the business and my life around I documented it, in my first book “Becoming the Ultimate Physio” and later in my second book “Build the Ultimate Physio Clinic”.
In late 2016 I decided to start this community as I wondered whether there were any other physio clinic owners out there who may have been through similar experiences to me.
I wanted to connect with others who had been through the same, and I wanted to “warn” other owners about the things I had done wrong and the consequences of my errors.
But expanding on this I wanted to show them that I had got through to the other side and that they could do it too – as so many of you have suffered from the same issues as I had.
Our community has grown and is now a living and breathing organism that exists because of you guys and I am proud as it doesn’t need me (but I hope I make it just a little bit better with my intervention).
At the root of why I produced books, courses and educational products under the Ultimate Physio banner my greatest pleasure is seeing the owners I work with navigate the challenges of physio clinic ownership that are a mirror to those challenges I have faced over my 17 years as an owner. These challenges have made me who I am and will make you who you are – but you have to survive them and 2020 first.
So that is a little about why we are here.
2020 will unearth more challenges for you in your business and your life. But there is no doubt from so many of you I speak to each week that having a supportive community is of great help right now and if nothing else it helps you be heard, ask questions without judgment and helps you make more measured decision – oh the decision fatigue we all have right now!
I want to urge you whatever you need help with right now please reach out and ask. It will reduce your burden just that little bit.
