[00:00:01] When you started your group practice, you did so with a vision. Maybe you seized an opportunity without planning to by saying yes to someone who wanted to intern or work for you. Maybe you’ve always known, though, you wanted to have a group practice and you couldn’t wait to start building out your team and moving into that leadership role. Either way, you are the leader of your group practice and no one else can replace you in that role. This is also true when it comes to your financial leadership. 

Welcome to the Money Skills For Therapists podcast, where we answer this question: How can therapists and health practitioners go from money shame and confusion, to feeling calm and confident about their finances and get money really working for them in both their private practice and their lives? I’m your host, Linzy Bonham, therapist turned money coach and creator of the course Money Skills For Therapists. 

Hello and welcome back to our special mini podcast, Money Skills for Group Practice Owners. Today I’m going to talk about financial leadership in your group practice. I want to start this episode with a really simple idea. You can delegate tasks, but you can’t delegate out your leadership. When you started your group practice, you did so with a vision. Maybe you seized an opportunity without planning to by saying yes to someone who wanted to intern or work for you. Maybe you’ve always known, though, you wanted to have a group practice and you couldn’t wait to start building out your team and moving into that leadership role. Either way, you are the leader of your group practice and no one else can replace you in that role. This is also true when it comes to your financial leadership. 

I know that money is probably not your favorite part of your group practice. A love of finances is usually not why we go into school to become therapists. I see so many group practice owners happily digging into mentoring their employees or trying their hand at marketing and networking, but wanting to pretty much ignore the financial side, thinking that if they make those other things work, then the money is going to work itself out. But the bad news is, it won’t. So what many therapists do is hire a full service bookkeeper or an accounting service. And then they feel like they did what they were supposed to do. The finances are taken care of. But that is also not true. 

Going back to my first point, you can delegate tasks, but you can’t delegate out your leadership. And this is what I see happens when we try to think of bookkeeping as a substitute for us stepping up and learning money. You get all sorts of reports from your bookkeeper each month, and maybe they even explain them to you sometimes, but you still have no idea what they mean. Sure, all the information is in one place now. That is a good thing. The task of bookkeeping is done. But you’re still as confused and disempowered as ever about your group practice finances. 

I know several successful business owners, including group practice owners, who, despite having built large businesses, feel like a total hot mess financially. They have bookkeepers and accountants who give them reports, but without having the knowledge and the confidence to understand what they’re seeing and to do something with the information in front of them, they can’t really make money work for them. They can’t even connect with their own success. Because when you look at the numbers, the numbers are meaningless to them. Are these good numbers? Is there money here to hire someone? Am I paying myself too much? Am I paying myself too little? This is why I don’t believe that group practice owners just need to be the CEOs of the group practices. They need to be the CFOs. What is a CFO? The CFO is a Chief Financial Officer. That’s the person who looks at the numbers deeply, understands the information in front of them, and can make strategic moves needed to reach their business goals. 

So what are those goals for you? Is it buffers in all of your bank accounts? So you don’t need to hold your breath when you run payroll? Is it finally being paid well? Is it having the big picture perspective on your numbers that means you don’t privately burst into tears after one of your best clinicians gives notice because you know that financially things are actually going to be okay? Those things are all possible when you build your CFO skills and confidently step into the financial leadership role that is already yours, but that you may not be fully claiming yet. So what does real financial leadership look like in group practice? It looks like many things, and that includes being able to read financial statements and understand exactly what they mean. Because we still want you to delegate tasks, and bookkeeping is a task. 

So I’m all for therapists trying their hand at bookkeeping to start and in Money Skills For Therapists, which focuses on solo practice. That’s very, very important. So I want you to have some knowledge of how to do bookkeeping. But as the group practice leader, quickly that’s going to be a task that you delegate to somebody else, even internally. But you need to be the one who can make meaning out of the numbers, even if you’re not doing the task of putting the numbers together. You’re the one who looks at it and understands what it is telling you. That is part of what looking like a CFO looks like. It also looks like running your practice with a vision and a plan because you know where you’re going and why. You know how many therapists you ultimately want to have on your team. You know what their fees are going to be. You know the wages or the fee split that you’re going to have with them. You know how many clients you want them to be seeing each week. You know what your monthly overhead is going to look like. And you know what you can start spending money on when you hit different milestones. 

When you have that perspective of where you’re going, you understand, okay, when I get to this point, I’m going to give myself this raise. When I get to this point, we’re going to be able to have that second office location that we want. You can actually see where you’re going and what can happen when you hit those different points. It looks like having buffers in all the right places so you can weather the natural ups and downs of business without worrying about running out of money. And this is really, really important. And it’s a step that a lot of people like to skip, but that is part of being the CFO is having those beautiful buffers to alleviate your anxiety. It looks like having a good regular CEO and CFO paycheck, so you’re paid well for the work that you do and know that you can keep receiving that paycheck even if client sessions are down for a couple of weeks or during the summer or during the winter holidays, because you’ve set up money to make sure that that paycheck keeps coming. It means having the ability to zoom out and see the big picture in your business so you don’t get stuck in the weeds with your numbers. 

You understand what numbers are important. You understand how to put them in perspective, and you don’t get caught up in the little decisions or the little details anymore. All of this together will give you a sense of safety and stability. It will let you feel proud of running a group that really reflects your values. You’re going to feel less like you’re playing a game of whack a mole and more like the empowered CEO and CFO, that financial leader of your group practice, with a confidence and a paycheck to reflect the leadership and vision you bring to the table every day. This practice was born out of your brilliance and your vision, and you want to enjoy it rather than dipping in and out of owner’s remorse, wondering if you made a huge mistake. 

You could forevermore pay a full service accounting firm 600 to 800 bucks a month, which is 7200 or 9600 a year, or a fractional CFO for those of you with bigger practices, fractional CFOs, people who can come in and try to bring this financial expertise to you, charge 3000 to $5000 a month. Seriously. And even with that, you can still feel confused and disempowered about your group practice finances. Or you can join me in Money Skills for Group Practice Owners and do the work that’s going to allow you to deeply understand your numbers. So when your just-does-your-books bookkeeper or team member shows you a report, you know exactly what you’re looking at, what the numbers are telling you, and what strategic actions need to happen to keep you on track with your financial and your practice goals. It’s your business and your vision. 

No one can steer the ship better than you can. So it’s time to learn the skills to step confidently into your CFO role and lead your practice with intention and clarity. Would you like my support in confidently owning your financial leadership role? The Money Skills for Group Practice Owners course is about taking you from feeling like an overworked, stressed, and underpaid group practice owner to being the confident and empowered financial leader of your group practice. You can click on the links in the show notes to learn more or to book a discovery call with me to chat about whether the course is right for you. I’d love to connect with you about it. 

The application window is open right now for Money Skills for Group Practice Owners for our January 2024 cohort. If you are hearing this, it means that this is your chance to apply to join me in January to work together for six months to help you become the empowered financial leader of your group practice. Click on the link in the show notes to learn more and to apply today.  

Thanks for listening today.