The 5 Things I Would Do Differently If I Was Starting From Scratch

• 00:00:00 – Introduction.
• 00:02:36 – When you start a business, it’s a roller coaster.
• 00:04:18 – How do I know this? Because I made the exact same mistakes when I opened my first clinic back in 2015.
• 00:09:32 – The importance of getting clear on your “why”.
• 00:11:47 – Comparison is the biggest thief of life.
• 00:16:20 – Why you need to be aware of your team’s needs.
• 00:18:05 – What is a “galvanizer”? What is a founder?
• 00:20:33 – The monkey on the shoulder is holding you back.
• 00:25:21 – If you want to play a bigger game, remember you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
• 00:27:55 – What to do when you’re at the top of your business.

You’re listening to Treat Your Business with Katie Bell, the podcast for health and wellness business owners that want a need to give their business the treatment plan, it needs a treatment plan that will create more time back in your life, more income and more confidence when it comes to running your business. I’m here to share with you bite sized episodes full of tried and tested tips from my own real experience of growing a successful physiotherapy and wellness clinic. And from working with many businesses to do the same. The treat your business podcast is sponsored by hm DG. Marketing is always one of the top three issues for clinic owners that I speak to. It’s too expensive and complicated. They’ve had issues in the past, or they just don’t know where to find a trusted expert. It’s always said only recommend products or services, you’re confident in using yourself. Well, when it comes to marketing, we use HMD G for our own clinic, they’ve proven to be exactly what you’d want from an agency. As a specialist, they understand the industry, they’re responsive and always deliver, we can’t recommend them highly enough, head to HMD g.co.uk. To find out more. Welcome to this episode of the treat your business podcast. Thank you for joining me, this week, we are going to be talking about the five things that I would do differently if I was starting out from scratch. And the reason that I’ve chosen to talk about this is because people often see success and see results is a linear kind of process. That’s that’s an upward trajectory. And when you’re comparing yourself against other people, you can often be mistaken that, Oh, they’ve got to where they are. And it’s been really easy for them, or they just seemed to have success upon success and growth and growth and growth and look at where they are now. And we all compare ourselves even, you know those people that say, Well, I don’t look at anything, there is always an element of you might see somebody you might look at somebody’s life, and sometimes a part of you just make that immediate comparison. And I wanted to kind of share, I guess, vulnerability on this podcast and, and reassure you that I am an old person, and I live a, you know, a relatively normal life. And success comes from not always just an upward trajectory. You start off, you grow a bit, you’ve got challenges, it drops off, it grows again, it drops off. And it’s a little bit like a roller coaster. At Blackpool Pleasure Beach, one of sometimes I would say, a really, really harsh or really, really tough, scary roller coaster. So I wanted to kind of think about when I started my business. And this is really important. If you are a business owner that is or somebody’s thinking about starting your own physiotherapy clinic or, you know, a Sports Therapy Clinic, maybe you’re somebody that is sort of two or three years in and things are feeling tough, you’re feeling burnt out, you’re feeling exhausted, you feel like you’ve created a monster. And you’re spinning lots of plates and can’t sort of can’t sort of make headway. Or maybe you’re somebody that’s listening to this who has a really established business owner. And but you’ve kind of lost the love for it or you’ve lost that drive. And you’ve lost that kind of the reason why you’re running this business. So when we first start out, and I’m sure you’ll resonate with this most clinic owners studio and as adopt this kind of all hands on deck approach to their business. So a part of this is because many of us are controlling twosie ASMI being one of them. We insist on doing everything ourselves because we can get it done quicker, faster, better. But not only that, we often start our business without a clear marketing plan. We start our business without our a clear financial forecast. Or knowing our margins or really understanding our numbers. We often start not really having a clue where the next client is coming from. And this is a big problem because without direction, or a clear plan of action, you actually become the biggest barrier to the growth in your business. And how do I know this? I know this because I made these excellent, exact same mistakes when I opened my first clinic back in 2015. And fast forward eight years, my life I can reassure you and my business look extremely different. But looking back when I first started, I remember my why being I was working for somebody else in private practice. I loved being physio. I felt that I’d grown a reputation within our area in our community very quickly. I’d got a lot of clients, I people you know, I’ve got waiting lists. People wanted to see me I developed a service and I loved what I did, but I didn’t feel fulfilled. I felt like it kind of reached my ceiling. And without ultimately charging more, which I didn’t have a huge amount of impact on because I was the business owner. And without just literally seeing more clients and working more hours, I couldn’t see a way how I was going to get my income and my sort of the opportunities and the things that I wanted to do with my life. I didn’t see how I would realise those. So I knew my wife felt unfulfilled. And I didn’t feel like I was, I felt like I was, I guess I got a bigger purpose. Now, when I opened the clinic, did I have a business plan? Did I check off? Did I know all my numbers? Absolutely not. And I distinctly remember working with one of my very, very gorgeous clients called Terry, and I hope Terry’s listening to this. But Terry is like a wizard. And I used to see him for treating his osteoarthritic knees. And he was always so interested in my business. And you’ll all resonate, you’ve got some clients, and they just really, really care about you. And he used to work in a big corporate firm, he was amazing at what he did, but he was a numbers guy. And he used to say to me all the time, Katie, you need to know your numbers, you need to be tracking this and do it. And I used to just think, oh my goodness, Terry, I am so bad with numbers. But I quickly quickly recognise that without this, I’d got clue what my business was doing. I didn’t understand the margins, I didn’t understand what the growth was or where the growth was going to come from. I didn’t know whenever I needed to recruit, I didn’t know what elements of the business I needed to push forward. I didn’t actually know if we were making money or not, because by looking at your business bank account doesn’t have any reflection of whether you’re making money or not. So Terry was like the the person that really got me using spreadsheets. You know, I now am obsessed, I love numbers, I run my business through numbers by numbers, numbers dictate most of the actions in our, in my businesses. So I made these mistakes right back at the beginning. And one of the first things that I I needed to get clear on was what your business is here to serve you and not starview. Most of us, you know, maybe leave an employed role. Because we don’t feel fulfilled, we want more time. We ultimately want to be the creator creators and curators of our own life and freedom and flexibility and opportunity. But when we come into a bought a business, we don’t have a clear plan, we jump on the treadmill. And before we know it, we’ve created a monster and it’s doing nothing at all in terms of serving you for income, time, energy, freedom, flexibility. And, and I know that that kind of hits home for a lot of you listening because, you know, we’re coaching clients all day long. And these are some of the really big pain points that they have. So, first of all, establishing your why at any stage of your business there isn’t it is never too late to reconnect with why you’re doing this, if your business permanently is not serving you in some aspects, it’s never too late to change it. If your business is not serving you at all, it’s never too late to stop and really look at what is most important for me because for me, your business facilitates your life, your life does not fit into your around your business. And I had to get clear on what my personal values were. I needed to understand what really creates gave me joy. What get what what what a lot of kind of excitement to the work that I did. And for me, Matt, some of my personal values to share them with you would be for example, adventure and travel. Now, when I first started my business, I was doing six political days a week. Do you think I can go on adventures and travel when I’m working six clinical days a week? No. So there’s an instant disconnect there that I have created a business model that doesn’t actually align with my personal values. So that it felt hard, it felt tiring, it felt exhausting, I was massively close to burnout. Another one of my values would be experience. So I absolutely love experiences, whether it can be top class chefs, you know, at the top of their game in Michelin star restaurants have just been to Thailand recently. And we went on a private culinary tour with a tuk tuk driver who drove a very high speeds and took us to crazy places that we ate unbelievable food. And it was a completely different experience. But I’m here for experiences. If I were in parties, if I have dinner parties, if I do anything in my life, I love to give people experiences as well. It’s really important to me. So in my business, does my business align with one of my values of experience? Well, yes in a way that I want to create an amazing experience for all of my clients and customers that come through the door. But also does my business allow me enough time to go and add experience all of these experiences? Well, in the early days, no, it didn’t. So understanding what is personally really important to you. And one of the tools we use is this values ranking tool. And it’s amazing because it gives you all your your six values, and it gives you them in order of kind of importance almost. And then we start to look at well, what what do you like about your business? What elements of your business currently serves you and what elements of your business currently starves you and works against some of those personal values? So getting clear on your why is so important at any stage, if you’ve gone through a period of growth, and then you’ve lost that, that kind of reason? Because you’ve hit your goals? And you’re like, Okay, well, what am I doing it for now? So constantly asking yourself these questions, is really important, I will do it on a yearly basis, because I like to go set on a yearly basis. But you can, you can do it at any point, okay. And there’s almost, there’s almost not a point where you could do it too much, because, as I said, your business is there to facilitate you having the life that you want to lead and to ultimately live, enjoy and have a fabulous time. So answering these questions, asking the why earlier, would would have allowed me to align my core values with my business, and set some really healthy boundaries with my clients. But instead, what I was doing was saying yes, to every client that came my way, I was working more and more hours than I wanted to, etc, etc. So my second kind of step in terms of how I would if I was to do it again, what I would do is, I would listen to one person. Now, you’re going to listen to this podcast thinking that I’m about to sell you our coaching. And I’m absolutely not here for that. What I’m here to say is, there are so many fabulous people out there, and we all have a place in the market space. But there are 1000s of free business podcasts, there are 1000s of blogs, there are 1000s of YouTube videos out there, there are millions of reels, there is so much information out there. It’s information overload isn’t it. And sometimes when when we’re trying to take that next step in our business to reach these bigger goals. We, our ego is always looking for distraction, because our ego remember, is there for survival. It’s not necessarily there to allow us to thrive. Okay, so if we know that our ego often is looking for experiences, reasons, justifications why we wouldn’t go to that next level, we wouldn’t step out of our comfort zone and try and hit those big goals. So we can start comparing ourselves and with comparison, comparison is the biggest thief of life. We start thinking, Well, I’m not good enough, well, I’m not there, or I’m not visible enough, or I don’t do what they do. So I can’t possibly make that happen. Or I’m not their personality. So why would I be able to make myself a success. So sometimes comparison can act as a good thing because it can strive that competitive nature I have that one of my sort of key skills is competitiveness, it is a strength, but it’s also a weakness. It has got me to where it has got me to be very successful in my in my both my businesses very quickly. However, the weakness is I can compare if I allow myself to and I can compare and then think, well, I need to be doing what they’re doing. And it can lead me astray. And it can be that shiny object syndrome. So I do not follow anybody else’s physio practice, okay, I do not I do not know what anybody else is charging. I do not know what anybody else is doing within our local area, because I need to just do me and they need to just do them. And we need to stay on our own paths, okay, because there is enough space for all of us. So, there is lots of useful advice. I’ll be honest, there’s a lot of rubbish out there as well. And when I was first starting out, I made the mistake of trying to listen to too many conflicting opinions. And this led to this kind of analysis by paralysis. So I was overthinking everything. And frankly, I was doing sort all about everything because I was too in the business, I wasn’t able to step out at any point. And it was only after that I hired my first business coach, who was still a very good friend of mine today. And I hired her very, very early on in my business because I recognised that for me to get to where I want it to be. I could do it the hard way. I could waste length of time waste loads of money and waste loads of energy, or I could just find somebody that’s walked the path already, learn from them implement and get to where I want it to be. So after I had my first business coach, I literally tuned out to everything else. I implemented her advice that one person’s advice. I stopped comparing. I stopped trying to look for the next solution, that kind of magic pill that’s going to take me from where I am to where I needed to be and I I just really focused in on what she was, what her method was and what she was doing. And this kept me accountable that gave me the confidence in what I was doing. Even when I was probably having one of those weeks where you feel like you’re a failure and you feel like you’re not getting anything, right and you back in and you’re doing too many things. And you set these barriers and then all of a sudden, they’re gone. And you’ve said yes to those patients, and you’re back to square one, we all have those weeks. So my second step is to listen to one person, get rid of some of those distractions that might act as a kind of paralysis tactic for you or another reason why you might be procrastinating. My third tip is to ask for help sooner. So most clinic owners, I know we prefer to do everything ourselves. I was no different. I was a massive control enthusiast. And for the first year of really my my clinic, I was a little bit like circus performance performer in Cirque du Soleil. So you might often walk into my treatment room clinic room and I could have a pair of marigolds on because I just need to clean the toilets. I equally could be answering the phone with my my rebels or I could be laying the plaza studio, I could be beating the physio I could be doing some acupuncture. I mean, it was all going on. Okay, I was a receptionist, I was the bookkeeper. And although I look back at this time with kind of those two, I look back and it’s funny memories. Yeah, I do. Because you know, there’s a part of me, that looks at business. And when people say, oh, you know, we just got everybody in straightaway. And we delegated everything we just got to where we are because you know, we’re amazing dinner there. Actually, there is always an element in people’s business that they just need to craft, they just need to get into it, get the marigolds on and, and just do the do for a little bit. I don’t think you need to do it for very long. But all of us have been there and done that. And actually, I can look back and think that I don’t ask my team to do anything that I was not prepared to do myself in the early days. But if I was starting again, I would have hired at least one part time member of staff way sooner than I did. Now what I thought I needed back in when I started was I needed another physio I needed another classes instructor and I absolutely did. But what I now recognise, and some of you might have done some personality profiles before some of you have might have, have listened to the six working geniuses. We all the more that you can analyse and know yourself, the more that you can see what you need on your team. Now, if we take the six working geniuses by Patrick, I want to say the Cioni or something fabulous, probably pronounced it awfully. But anyway, he’s got a great book, he also writes The Five Dysfunctions of a Team Googler. And he has come up with a framework which talks about these six working geniuses. And we, within within us we are we have two geniuses, we have two competencies, and we have two frustrations, okay? Now the more that I got to know myself as a person and as a leader, as a business owner, I started to recognise that I in his framework, I would be one of my top geniuses is a galvanizers. I am the cheerleader cheerleader, I am the person that rails, the team gets the energy up, pushes an idea forward, often is involved with the creation of the idea so one of my my geniuses would be the inventor, so I’m creative. I’m the visionary. And I, I want everybody on board with my idea. Okay, if you if you go with colours, I’m a yellow. Alright. For those of you that might have done the the I am a high personality test. So I am the person that drives these ideas forwards, okay. Now, my, my my frustrations, so things that don’t naturally come, don’t come naturally to me would be enablement and tenacity. Okay, and wonder now, I won’t go into all of these because that’s a whole nother podcast, which is just maybe think I’m definitely going to record on about this. So tenacity is somebody that is a Completer, finisher that gets the project over the line, no matter what, quite often creators and visionary people, I’ve got all the ideas, but then don’t necessarily want to be the ones that go and implement it. That’s an enabler. That’s so that’s the work be. That’s somebody behind the scenes that does the do. Okay. As a as a galvanizers. I am an inventor, I think about the ideas. I think they’re amazing. I get everybody on board with them. I don’t really want to be the one that implements them. And I also think, as the Creator as the visionary, everything can be done like everything is possible. And sometimes I don’t necessarily understand the detail and the time things take to improve Because in my head, we can just do it all today, like, can we just make that happen now. So that what I needed in my business, when I look back now, knowing who I was, and knowing who I am, I needed that implementer I needed that person that was going to come in and do the due, and free me up of all of that stuff that was taking a lot of bandwidth to me. Because for me to get things over the line and need to come up with all the processes and systems will just takes forever doesn’t bring me joy. It’s hard work. It’s slow, it takes me ages to do it. I just want to keep pumping out great ideas. And I want to then get my team on board with those ideas. So my third tip here is ask for help but but actually, it’s know what you’re great at know what your genius is, are. You really like key strengths, and then start to look at where your holes are. Because that’s what you need to hire. That’s what you where you need to go and get help. And that person might be a an amazing VA, or PA. Okay, it might be somebody that is going to offload, you have a lot of administration. So it frees you up to grow the business and take the business forwards. So as to help sooner, but really understand where the gaps are in your kind of personality in the way that you work. And what way what those holes are that you need to fill first. My fourth step is to upgrade your mindset. Starting your own business is a massive, massive achievement. There’s no doubt about that you are in the minority. But if you want to continue to grow your business, we’ve got to realise what got you here won’t get you there. So your old way of thinking, or your current way of thinking has got you to where you are now. But it won’t help you achieve bigger and better things. So part of up levelling, and part of reaching for bigger goals, and go for that next level is you have to uplevel your mindset. And a good place to start with this is to challenge any or all of those limiting beliefs that come up. So if I said to you, okay, well, what what’s your goal? And you said to me, well, Katie, I’m making 5k a month. And I want to make 15k a month, as soon as you say that, and you own that and you connect to it. Here we go. The monkey on the shoulder starts talking, and it starts saying things like, oh, yeah, but what if, what if I make 15k a month? And then everybody thinks about it for the money? But what if I make 50k a month? And it’s just really hard work? And actually, I’ve just got more clients and No, no more time. And it’s just more of what I don’t want. But what if I, what if I don’t make 15k a month? What if I’m a failure? What if people think I’m a failure, then I’ve got to tell everybody that I never made it? What to make all the money and lose it all? What make why could I do that? I’m just a physio. I’m just an osteopath. I’m just a chiropractor. So here we get the monkey on the shoulder starts holding you back. Remember, it’s there to keep you in your comfort zone not necessarily allow you to thrive and take that big leap of faith. So it sounds we will, okay. But if you want to achieve big things in business, you’ve got to believe in yourself like that has got to be no questions around it. Because if we make decisions from a fear placed mindset, we will we will always hold ourselves back. If we make decisions from a place of abundance, you just make it a huge shift. It’s like this is non negotiable. There’s no Plan B, this is what we’re doing. So overcoming my long standing belief in the early days was that I could only make money when I was treating a client. Me overcoming that was a massive game changer. because it allowed me to hire more people. It allowed me to recognise that my worth in the business might have been 100 pound an hour when I was seeing a patient. But actually, if I stepped out of the business and went and grew the business, the potential for me to earn the business was far greater than 100 pounds an hour. So this encouraged me to stop trading all of my time for money and figured out ways of generating revenue without having to dig my elbow into somebody’s buttock and treat their sciatic nerve, I would just like to add that all their tight glutes or whatever it was. So we’ve got to uplevel your mindset. And I often think like I have people that I’m inspired by. And I remember when I first worked with my coach, and she was a massive inspiration to me, she was playing a much bigger game. The minute in my coaching network that I became the biggest fish in that pond. And I’m not saying that to brag, okay, I’m just saying that’s what happened. I did the stuff she told me to do. I’m a massive tell me what to do. I’m just gonna go and do it. And don’t struggle with getting in my own way very often. Which I think is another reason for that kind of speed of have success and growth and results in both businesses. But when I became the biggest fish in that pond, I had to go and find a new pumps efficient and play it. Because you have to be constantly inspired. And my fourth, this leads me on beautifully, like I plan this podcast. My fifth step is that if you want to play a bigger game, you’ve got to remember you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And I massively agree with agree with Jim Rohn. Who said that quote, If you spend most of your time with people who are constantly complaining about the cost of living about the increasing energy prices about time that can petrol has gone up. All the food shops gone up, like Yeah, I know it has, okay, fine, or flaky clients or people around you that are that are like, really negative people. I link them to if anybody is a Harry Potter fan. They’re like the Dementors in Harry Potter, they, they like suck your spirit out your energy. We all have those people in our lives, okay. And sometimes, you will say to me, well, that’s easier said than done, Katie, but some of those people are my family. There’s no judgement that, okay, it’s just they’re in a place and their mindset, and you’re in a different place in your answer. But you have to take the balance. So if you say to me, well, there’s some people that I literally can’t spend any less time with, because I actually live with them, then that you need to spend more time with people that uplift you that up level you that are playing a bigger game than you that inspire you. So whenever I come across a situation in business, and I’m getting myself in a tizzy about it, or I’m thinking, oh, you know what, what I think of these people that inspire me, women in business that inspire me, and men in this business that inspire me, but specific people, and I think what would they do in this situation, and it instantly makes me make different decisions. Because you’ve got to think about the B do have principle for me to have that next goal for me to get to that next level, I can’t be, I can’t be the same person and do the same things. Otherwise, I would have already got there. So looking at somebody that inspires you and thinking, what would they do in the situation? Would they stop spending money on their marketing in the middle of a of a recession? No, they would absolutely not. They will become even more visible, and they would keep moving forward and pushing forwards on that trajectory, because they have that 100% confidence in their credibility, and they’re going to get that and nothing is going to stop them. Nothing’s gonna get in their way. So thinking about people in your life, or if you don’t know them yet, could you go and find that network. And this is why being in a mastermind being in a group being in a in a coaching programme, whatever coaching programme that that may be works because it holds people accountable, and you are surrounded by people who are playing a bigger game than you. And when you become the top of that game, you need to go and then find the next thing. Those people will help you to achieve your full potential of business as a business owner and business being a business owner can be a lonely place cancer, it can be somewhere where you feel like you’re the only person that really gets it, you don’t particularly want to take it home with you, when you do take it home, they don’t really get it, they give you advice that you don’t really want to listen to, because they’re not in it. So those people will really encourage you to think bigger, they will encourage you to be to have that confidence in your own ability and that self belief. So my advice would be to find a group of people who have already achieved what you want to achieve and hung out with them. Could be a person, that was what I would prefer or virtually, and watch how much your business grows in the next year. And I cannot tell you how like, how much changing your energy around this will change your environment, change your results. If you want to. If you want to change your business, one of the things that loads and other coaches out there, me included my mindset coach tells me go and change your environment. Don’t Don’t wait for somebody else listen to the day said don’t wear who you want to be now dress for who you want to be in the future. Change your energy change your environment. Level any area of your life that you can right now, because it’s giving you that change in energy that is I am I am on my way to bigger things. And with our upgrading our mindset and playing this bigger game, my final thought here is about upgrading your thermostat chip turning it up. So most of us, we start out in business and we may hit a an income goal or we may not even have an income goal, but we get to a certain level that we can’t seem to break through into the next level. Okay and that is because you have a certain set of beliefs around money that is holding you where you are now your thermostat is set to that level. If you want to go make more Money, you’ve got to really look into what beliefs you have around money right now that’s holding that thermostat at that level. And if you want to go, if you want to attract more money into your life, you have to be good about talking about money, you have to be okay about making money. And you have to see that money is purely a transaction that allows you more freedom and opportunity and for me to be able to help more people on a bigger scale. So check in with where your thermostat is set up. What beliefs do you have around hitting that bigger goal or that next step? Because that is what you’re going to have to uplevel if you want to go there. So in my summary, number one was get clear on your why. Number two was listen to one person turn off those distractions. Number three was to ask for help and ask for help sooner. Number four was to upgrade your mindset including turning up your money thermostat. And number five was play a bigger game, spend time with people who are playing a bigger game than you are. I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode. Thank you ever so much for listening in we come week i i get to see kind of, you know how many people are listening in. And I know that most of you are tuning back in Week and Week. And you’re you’re really excited about each episode that is being released. I would absolutely love it. If you would take the time to write me a review, like it, share it. And it really, really helps other business owners get to hear this as well. And get to benefit from some of this advice and be inspired and be motivated and feel like they’re in a safe place around people that get it that anything is possible. So thank you and I look forward to seeing you on next week’s episode. Thank you for listening to treat your business with Katie Bell, the podcast that tells you what you really need to hear. And now when it comes to running a successful business in the health and wellness industry that gives you the time, money and freedom that you are wanting for access to our free workshops on how to get more clients in your business, how to make more income in the next 30 days. And to get more time back in your business unlife head to our free Facebook group today. Treat your business or head over to thrive dash business coaching.com All of the links are available in the show notes.