Many practice owners reach a point where they start to question themselves as to how much is enough or if they really do want to grow any more. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any line drawn in the sand that says, “This is enough. You’re done.”
So how do you figure this out?
The Deciding Factors
Perhaps when you first took over the practice or started one from scratch, you envisioned how big you would like to have it be one day. Maybe it wasn’t size but rather how much net income you wanted from it.
Some owners may have had a big vision for the one location, others may have had several or many locations in mind. And then there were those who may have simply wanted a nice, cozy little practice that generated enough income for a modest living.
Times Change
As time goes along, these initial visions may have changed with the needs and pressures of family life … both in terms of income and in terms of hours for a better life/work balance.
It is quite common for financial needs to dictate the size of practice that you need. At first, you may have thought you would be happy with a certain income level but you didn’t factor in that you would get married, have children, need a bigger house, need education funds for the future, want more vacations and so on.
Stopped in Your Tracks
Some practitioners may have run into snags in terms of the management of the practice and reached the limit of their management know-how and so the practice froze at a certain size … which was less than they had originally envisioned. Two choices are available: Let it stay where it is size-wise and be happy (compromise); or gain some executive skills to get it back on its growth path.
Grew Out of Control
Yet other owners have practices that have simply grown beyond all initial wishes and it has gotten out of control and so then the urge to make it smaller starts entering their minds. When this happens you have at least 3 choices: Sell it and become the associate (or quit entirely); suffer day after day with all the problems and be a martyr to your practice; or acquire some executive management skills to get it all under control and running smoothly.
Sometimes you have a practice that is growing nicely but starting to eat into your personal life/work balance. This may be a sign that it is time to acquire an associate to take some of the workload, thus giving you the hours that enhance your personal life.
Need a Bigger Game
Another deciding factor is that some practitioners love the game of owning multiple practices and managing them and would not be satisfied with only one. In other words, some are more entrepreneurial. To do this however, you really must have excellent executive management skills or else the patients/clients of these multiple practices may not have the best possible care. After all, the point of any practice is to give ideal care and service to every patient or client.
Make the Decision
The bottom line is that you do need to decide how much is enough. But you need to decide for all the right reasons and not compromise with what you really want. There are management tools and executive skills to help you reach whatever you want to have. You just need to decide what that IS and then gain the skills to get there.
Have fun no matter what you choose!
