Thriving 7 Days To Go Don’t Miss Out On This Exciting News!

Katie Bell: [00:00:00] Hello everybody. Welcome to this episode of the Treat Your Business podcast. I am Katie. And as always, it’s great to have you here today. We’re diving into a topic that is really. is really important, very central to my upcoming book, Thriving, which we’re going to be talking about. But the biggest thing I think is the gap when I’m talking to clinic owners.

So I have lots of conversations on a weekly basis with clinic owners who are looking for more support. And This and the, mindset are the two things that are always missing when we talk. And inevitably, I think every conversation ends up going back to this. So I think it’s really important that I dedicate a episode to it.

So I’m going to be talking about building, the foundation. That you need for [00:01:00] success in your business. I want you to imagine that just a tree can’t thrive without healthy roots, your clinic can’t grow without this strong foundation. So you can have short term success. You can have moments where it feels like it’s moving forward and you’ve got some great team and then slam, something else comes in and takes you out.

And, or you feel like you, you’re the worst paid person in the business at the end of the day. You’re the one doing the most amount of hours and the business actually is not serving you. So I’m going to explore some of the key lessons from my book and why these foundational principles are a must for you as a clinic owner looking to build a really sustainable and thriving business.

Welcome to the Treat Your Business podcast with Katie Bell. I am Katie and this is the place to learn the strategies, tactics, tools, and mindset needed to build your clinic or studio into a business that gives you the time, money, energy, and fulfillment you want and deserve. My team and I work every day with [00:02:00] overwhelmed and exhausted clinic owners like you to shift them from a business that is a huge time and energy drain and is not giving them the income they want, to confident clinic owners that are making money, saving money, and giving back.

And getting time back in their lives. So if this sounds like something you want, let’s dive in. This podcast is sponsored by HMDG, the leading digital marketing agency for clinic owners in the UK.

Let’s start with the tree analogy. If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that I love using trees as a metaphor for your clinic success, because here’s why. A tree’s health depends on its roots and its trunk and the branches all being beautifully healthy. The roots anchor the tree, they absorb the nutrients, they provide the stability it needs so it can grow tall and strong.

And in your clinic, your roots are your foundation. This is how you show up as a [00:03:00] leader, how you rate your personal performance on a day to day basis. And really what your, the core systems are, the values, the clinic’s mission and the vision, the processes that keep your operations running smoothly, the team culture that nurtures growth and resilience.

Without strong roots, the tree just topples. In fact, I am recording this today in the worst storm ever. I literally feel like my house is going to take off. Likewise, without a solid foundation, your clinic is very vulnerable to the challenges. You will have staff turnover. It is normal part of running a business.

Welcome to running a business. You will have times of financial instability. You will have client dissatisfaction. You will have moments of self doubt. That is normal. And if you don’t, you’re not playing a big enough game. Said with love. So when you invest in building strong roots, you’re setting yourself [00:04:00] up for that longer term success.

Let’s get into some of the key lessons from Thriving that is launching, did I tell you, in a week’s time, 14th of January. If you are not already on the priority list, make sure you are, I’m going to tell you why you need to be on it. But, it’s, Thriving is about learning. No, it’s not, I didn’t want to create a book that just talks about all the other shit oh you just need to do this for your marketing, or you just need to do this when it comes to hiring team members, or you just do it’s just dead easy, just do this, and this, and all will be fine.

It’s not about that, and anybody that tells you it’s just about those things, or missing out all the other really important stuff. I want you to think about, if I met you in a bar, and we were sharing a glass of champagne, and I said, what’s your name? What you do? And I, and you told me like, oh my name is James and I run whatever physio business in, [00:05:00] in Sheffield.

If I, my next question to you was, okay, amazing. What are your guiding principles that shape every decision that you make in your clinic? Like your values? I need you to be able to instantly say our values in, in my clinic are everyone matters. Authenticity, empowerment, and exception.

But we are always exceptional. We deliver exceptional services. With that clarity, you’re like setting that kind of foundation, that layer for the business that she’s this is how we run our business. This is how we show up. They’re not just words on a wall. They’re embedded in how you treat your clients, how you hire your team, how you lead and manage your team.

They design your services. They allow you to set the right boundaries. They allow you to have the right value attached to your services. So if you don’t have clear [00:06:00] values, you’ve got to take those, that time now to define them. Like they’re the roots that keep your clinic grounded and you can have values that are really important to you in your business, but also in your life.

So for example we have values in Thrive and we have values in KB. Now there’s a lot of similarities between them Because it’s me leading both of the businesses, so there’s going to be a huge impact there. But also I then have personal values and some of my personal values are about like, I don’t know if this is a value, but I’m just going to go with it for a minute.

If I’m going to go into a bar and you serve me a drink out of a thick rimmed glass, I am never going to come back to this bar again. Can’t bear it. Cannot bear it. Also can’t bear, When people think it’s appropriate to wear scruffy clothes at certain events. And I’m like, when did it become [00:07:00] fine that we all just lower our standards and just be slobs?

I mean I’m talking from the heart here guys, just go with me, you know what I’m like. I’ve got high standards, I am very demanding and that’s just it. I get this from my mum and dad, my mum particularly who also has Very high standards. She is a mix of Hyacinth Bouquet and Mary Poppins on heat. Mum will walk into my kitchen, instantly remove the tea towel that is hanging on the oven like handle thing, and launch it across the kitchen, in a funny way towards the utility room because she’s she’s basically telling me that kitchen towel, Katie, is not okay.

And then she will iron another one in an inch of its life so it’s crisp and clean and then re hang it. That’s the display towel. Cannot be used for anything else, apparently. Obviously my husband likes to to to, really piss me off and use it for everything else. But [00:08:00] that’s the kind of like those things for me, high standards, professionalism.

Like not just lowering your standards to fit in is. super important for me in my personal life. So I am okay going to a bar. In fact, I’m going to tell you a story. I’m going out with my friend tomorrow night and we go to a great, it’s great Italian, it’s really buzzy, it’s great atmosphere, and they have a wine list and then they have a, I don’t know whether they call it fine wines or there’s a posh word for it, but when you order from that list you get a really nice glass.

And so sometimes I would order from that list or maybe sometimes I wouldn’t because whatever, I’m not really bothered. I just want nice wine that I like and it might be on that list or that list. But what I will always say is, with a smile, would you be willing to serve that wine in those wonderful, fabulous wine glasses that you’ve got over there?

And every single time they go, of [00:09:00] course we can. And they bring me over two wine glasses, which makes me extremely happy because I’m drinking them, not out of. A wine glass. It’s not, the other ones are not bad, but they just they, impact my feeling and how I want to remember my nights. It’s really important to me.

Things in my house and how my house looks are really important. My environment is very important to how I show up. Some of these values for you personally also have to, your business has to serve those values. You know if your values are freedom and flexibility. They’re really important to me. Then what I can’t create is a business that is so structured that I don’t have any freedom or flexibility because that directly does not align with why I’m trying to create the life that I’m trying to create.

So I’ve totally gone off on a tangent there, but I want you to really think about what’s really [00:10:00]important to you and business personally, professionally. Because they’re the roots that, they’re the roots that are going to keep your clinic grounded. They’re the, they’re going to be the things that you have to look back on and go, Whoa a minute, I have just got this whole list of things, but that actually is moving me away from what is most important to me.

So I want you to think about if we met tomorrow and we were having a conversation, what is like, why, how are you showing up? What is it that you want your clinic to be known for? Because then any staff issues, any issues that’s going on in the business, you can be like, but that isn’t. That doesn’t align with our values.

So I, I therefore have to deal with it. Okay. So that’s number one. Some other key lessons within the book is about, systemizing your operations. So [00:11:00] consistency is key. Anything that happens in your business more than once needs an SOP. It needs a process. It might be onboarding new clients. It might be managing your appointments.

It might be the process that you want your clients to go through in that initial assessment. It might be how you follow up with patients. It might be having clear systems in place for your end of month bookkeeping. Systems don’t just make your life easier. They create a better experience for your clients and your team.

You’ve got to imagine that you are like a version of McDonald’s, your McDonald’s franchise, and Within your clinic, behind every door, you want the same level of service, of delivery, and everybody is meeting those values all the time. You want to nurture your team, so I’m going to talk a lot about team.

being one of the very important supportive branches in your clinic. You are only as good as the people that you’ve got around you and you all deserve to have world class people around you. [00:12:00] Your services and your client relationships ensure your clinic stands tall so you’ve got to invest in your team’s growth well being.

You’ve also got to have the time to invest and nurture your team. So many clinic owners I see start bringing team on, they’re still working 60, 70 patient weeks, and they haven’t got time to manage their people. And so we’ve then got team members who feel like they may rule the roost, feel like they’re in charge, feel like they’ve got you over a barrel and there isn’t really another way round it.

So having enough time. You can’t grow your team. You can’t nurture your team. You can’t grow your business between client appointments. I’m also going to talk to you about measuring what matters. One of the biggest mistakes I see clinic owners make is focusing on the wrong metrics. Revenue, super important, obviously, but client retention, staff satisfaction, operational [00:13:00] efficiency are really important.

So there is a whole chapter dedicated to what you should be measuring within your clinic and using that right data to guide your decisions. Your decisions in your business need to be based on your numbers. Yes, we can also have an element of the heart in there, but we’ve also got to be led by the head and what the numbers are telling us.

So this is just a little kind of teaser of what is coming in the book. And you might be thinking, Katie, this all sounds great. I’ve got all these immediate fires to put out. And that is when you are focusing on the branches of the tree and you’re just trying to fix the branches over and over again.

And you forget about the trunk and the roots. And without strong roots, you always, you’re always just going to be fighting fires. When your foundation is solid, everything else becomes easier. I promise you. You’ll have less self doubt, you will still have self doubt. I still have self doubt. [00:14:00] You will have less team issues, but you will still have team issues.

You will have less problem patients, but you’ll still have problem patients. Because that’s what running a business is all about. But you’ve got more resilience. You are much more clear about who you are, what you’re great at doing, and you are getting rid of all the shit that you are not great at doing, and you’ve got people around you to plug those gaps and support you.

Foundations are not glamorous, my friends. But they’re what makes those bigger wins possible. And think of it this way. You would I remember when we did our house extension in COVID. Oh my goodness, what a stressful time. We were living in the cellar. Not living in it, but we had a, chest freezer, a kettle and a microwave on the top of the freezer for 16 weeks.

I had no hot water and heating. It was in COVID. My house is filled with builders, the whole world was locked down, I don’t [00:15:00] think you could access bars at that point life was tough, and Everything in my whole house was being ripped up, changed, floors coming up, roofs coming off, walls coming down.

We added 70 percent square foot to the whole of the house. So you can just imagine it was utter carnage. And I remember having to pay the groundwork bill and it was something outrageous, like 70 grand or 80 grand. And I was like, guys. I am really not sure what this 80 grand is for, because so far I can’t see anything.

And it was like, the, what do you call it, the drainage, the foundations, the concrete that was being poured in, the, oh my goodness, the stuff, the diggers, the grad wagons, all of that stuff. It, you wouldn’t build a house without laying that solid foundation first and a lot of your time and your [00:16:00] energy in your business can sometimes feel when you’re putting those foundations in place like, I’m not seeing any, I’m not seeing any fruits here.

I’m just not seeing it. But week by week, Day by day, you start to then reap those rewards, because then you start to get walls, and then you start to get a roof, and then you start to get a plasterboard in, and then you start to get plaster on, and you’re, you don’t build Rome in a day, you don’t build a wall in a day, you build it brick by brick.

By Brick. And this is the same for your business. Your clinic deserves the same care and the same attention that you would give to a house build. So how does all of this tie into my book? Thriving is designed to help you build and strengthen those clinic roots. The stuff that you all forget to do or we neglect because we get so busy fighting fires and fixing the branches.

I promise you it’s packed with practical advice, loads of real life examples, lots of wonderful success stories from our clients and real actionable steps [00:17:00] to create a clinic that thrives. I hope you know by now that I absolutely just want to deliver value on things like this. So when you read this book, you’re going to learn how to align those values and that, that purpose for maximum impact.

You’re going to get tools to systemize operations, free up some of your time. You’re going to discover strategies to build a team. You’re going to learn how to be a more resilient, robust, strong leader, and create a team that’s invested in your clinic success just as you are. You got to start with the roots.

That’s why this book is a must read for you as clinic owners. There’s lots of I encourage you to have a journal with the book because there’s lots of things that I ask you to just think about, take notes about and have that moment of reflection. It’s a real time that you can think about working on your business.

Now we are, I’m thinking we are six days away from the moment that this podcast goes live this session goes live. [00:18:00] We are six days away from launch. I’d love you to be on the priority list. That means you’re going to get 50 percent off the book. It means you are going to get access to the book on a digital copy.

So you can get started reading straight away for all of you, all of the eager beavers out there. And you’re also going to get access to a book in action workshop where I’m going to bring the book to life. You’re going to get me live teaching you some. amazing stuff that’s going to help your clinic move forwards.

So scroll to the bottom, go to the show notes, get yourself on the priority list, share it with anybody that you can because it would mean a huge amount to to me and my team. We’ve put an enormous amount of work into this book. So I just want you to remember just a tree needs healthy roots to thrive, your clinic needs a strong foundation to succeed.

So define your values, We’re going to systemize your operations, we’re going to nurture your team, we’re going to track the right metrics, so you’ve got sustainable growth in your business. I hope today’s episode was useful for you. Take the next step, join the [00:19:00] priority list for Thriving that launches in six days time and it’s your opportunity then to really get those foundations in place and then put all the other layers on top.

Thank you so much for listening. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please share it with a fellow clinic owner. Please leave me a review. It makes a huge difference to other people being able to access this. And here’s to building strong roots and a thriving clinic in 2025.