2019 has been an incredible year of professional growth. My practice has grown exponentially – a good, no make that – great problem to have – but when you are a sole practitioner, too much growth too fast can bring some pretty big growing pains.
This year I was finding myself more and more drowning in the weeds. As a sole practitioner, I’m the one scheduling, re-scheduling, following-up on emails, answering the phone and doing consults, marketing, networking, working odd and crazy hours and doing all the things that keep my practice up and running.
But did I mention the errors I was making? Like, having the receptionist text me saying “Your 4:00 is here.” And then: “Oh, and your other 4:00 is here.” Or telling a client I’d email them something and then completely forgetting to do it until three days later I’d get an email saying, “sorry to bug you, but can you send me that thing we talked about in session?”
Yikes.
Full disclosure: last month, I made a huge appointment screw-up and lost a great new client – she was super-mad and I don’t blame her one bit. But instead of beating myself up (which I admittedly did for a full afternoon), I knew something had to change. And fast.
After whining and crying about my life to a trusty mentor, she suggested I hire a business coach.
I’m in a women’s entrepreneurial networking group that meets monthly here in San Antonio, and a woman in that group recently launched her own coaching business. Her name is Robin and since we already had an established relationship, I knew that she’d be up for the task of looking at my business practices and helping me tweak where needed.
And to help me get my business shit together.
Off the bat, she told me this: you’ve got to get your calendar under control. It has to be automated. No more excuses, just get it done. I use Google calendar, but it only sent appointment reminders to me, so if I was off (or if my client input a wrong date), there was no check or balance system in place. I’m currently in the process of using a new calendar system through www.therapynotes.com and it’s already a game-changer, sending automated appointment reminders and confirmations (which yours truly was doing, sporadically at best, and obviously not doing it well). Eventually a link will be added to my website so clients can schedule or re-schedule themselves 24/7 without my direct involvement.
Another problem was my crazy schedule. Most days I work 8-8 with a few breaks in the day but my schedule was killing me. I also began adding 7:00 a.m. appointments to accommodate my busy business executives. I was never home to eat dinner with my family and when I was walking through the door at 8:30 or 9:00, I was certainly not my best self. Robin told me to allocate, at most, one or two nights a week for late appointments for my “grandfathered” clients, but offer only daytime hours to any new clients.
Robin is coaching me on other aspects of my business and helping me plan and strategize for future goals (stay tuned!!) that I’ve been too overwhelmed to think about, much less implement. She is helping me narrow my focus as well as develop a timeline/schedule of action-steps and realistic deadlines (which this procrastinator desperately needs).
So my advice to any fellow practitioners, or small business owners struggling with either growing your business or simply keeping up with your current pace is this: getchu a business coach, and getchu one now. It is an invaluable investment in your business and yourself. My only wish is that I’d done it sooner!
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