Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. Today for our final episode of the current series we're going to be talking about how to adapt your practice when your needs as a business owner change, or you realise that your practice isn't meeting your needs anymore.
Full show notes of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology
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One of the joys of private practice is being able to adapt your work to suit your life and the challenges that you might be facing. Many of us go into private practice because we really need that flexibility, maybe because of caring responsibilities or something else. Certainly for me, that has always been the driving force behind my practice.
And recently, I've had to become more flexible than I ever thought was possible in my work. I've thought really long and hard about what I want to share about that, and why I want to share anything about it at all, and I've debated this back and forth a lot in my mind. But I've decided that I do want to share some of that particular struggle with you, because, frankly, I know a lot of us go through similar struggles, and it can feel so isolating.
I know that I found myself looking at other people's content on social media and just feeling really sad and a bit lonely because I can't help but assume that their lives are so different to mine. I get that comparisonitis, and I want to make sure that I'm not contributing to that problem, because I'm sure if you look at my social media, or you read my emails, or you look at my website, it might seem like everything's rosy in my life, and like my business is always flourishing. And I don't think that's helpful, and I don't think it's healthy, and it's not a culture that I particularly want to contribute to.
So I'm hoping that by honestly sharing with you some of the struggles that I've been going through in my personal life, and how that's impacted on the business, that I can give you a bit of hope if you're going through a difficult time, or you have been through a difficult time, and you're wondering how your professional life can emerge from something that's quite challenging.
The first thing I'm going to do is say a little bit about what's been going on for me, and then I'm going to talk you through a framework that I've used with my coach and that you can use for making decisions about what to do in your business when you need or want to make a change, either in response to stuff in your life changing or just every year as you adjust your goals and your priorities.
Okay, the personal bit. The bit I'm probably going to edit loads of times! I'm not going to go into too much detail because it concerns my children and they're not really old enough to give their consent for that, but the bit that I want to be honest about here is the impact on my business, so you need to understand a little bit about the context. My two older children, quite simply, are not fine in school. Really, really not fine. And to be honest, that came as a real shock to me. But it probably shouldn't have, because looking back to when I started this business, it actually was because my eldest was never fine in nursery, she just couldn't tell me that was, why she was ill all the time and not eating. So, in a lot of ways, this business has always been about the fact that my children need me to be around a lot and they're not necessarily able to make use of full time school or other child care options that might be available to some families.
Now my kids are seven and five and a half and I've got a two year old as well. The older two are really struggling to attend school regularly and that has meant that my working time has become really, really erratic. In the first year of them struggling, I could never really predict when I was going to have a day like today, where I've got a quiet house and I can record podcast episodes and speak to my coaching clients and do high quality teaching and therapy work. Or when I was going to have a day when my whole day would need to be spent making sure that they were safe, trying to regulate them, and putting a lot of energy into my kids. I didn't know what to do about that lack of predictability, and if you've been a coaching client of mine over the past 18 months or so, you've probably been aware that I've had to cancel things quite often. I've had to move things around at short notice. And if you know me in any capacity, personal or professional, you will know that that's immensely stressful for me. I really value customer service in my business. Whatever I'm doing on whatever side of my business, whether you're a therapy client or whether you're a member of my alumni membership in Psychology Business School, I always prioritise being there when my clients need me, being able to respond to emails, being able to turn up for appointments on time, all of that stuff that, when you analyse your business values, certainly for me, they're really core to what I care about in my business.
Because I was taken by surprise by how much my kids struggled, and there's a lot of toxic positivity out there (a lot of people kept saying to me “oh it will get better next week because we've got less disruptive stuff happening at school” or “oh it'll be all right in a few weeks time once they settle”, there was a lot of “it'll be all right in…” such a short time frame) and because I don't like making a fuss, and I really hoped it would be alright, I kept going along with that for longer than I should have. And instead of making some difficult decisions in the business, I just kept trying to reschedule things, rearrange things, and make it work, without making fundamental changes to the business. And that was terrible for my clients, it was terrible for my stress levels, and ultimately, it was terrible for the income in the business.
This is something which not that many people who talk publicly about business will talk to you about, but my business took a real hit. Because I was unable to see people when I was supposed to see people, I was having to give refunds out. I suddenly had to cut back all of my therapy client work. It just was a mess, and it really wasn't good for anybody. So I about six months ago, I realised that I needed to take control of this situation and I needed to fundamentally change my business to fit with this new pattern of life. That meant having some really difficult conversations.
Essentially, I've managed to create space that is protected, so I know that my husband or my parents will be around to provide childcare in the event that the children are not in school, on a day and a half per week. That is the time when I do all of the work which other people are depending on. That's when I see all of my therapy clients, it's when I see my coaching clients, and it's when I do calls for my members within Psychology Business School. That's really alleviated the stress for me because I know now that that time will not be compromised. I will not have to reschedule. And it means that if the children are unable to go to school on the days of the week that I don't have that back up childcare, yes, it's inconvenient because I don't have time to do the paperwork or maybe record a podcast episode that I wanted to do, but nobody's getting let down as a result of it. I've got that freedom to just take a deep breath and give them what they need on those days, and that has been massive for me.
The business is now getting back on track in all respects. Everything is growing again, but it has meant that I've had to change the way that I approach the clinical side of my business. And you might have seen that I have started rebranding my practice. It's now much less about me and more about the brand, which is Know Your Mind Consulting or Know Your Mind Psychology, so you can go and check that out if you're curious.
I've really leant into the