Building your business: a first-hand perspective

So what should you focus on to allow and encourage growth of your business in that first year? I have found it to be leadership, building the right team and management of the business.

Your leadership and creating the right culture to attract and retain the best team is so important. However, you can’t do it alone – you need to work closely with the team of people you have around you, so that your workplace culture is built from your ethos and values, but is inclusive of those of your team members, too. You all need to be singing from the same hymn sheet.

Your team’s ability to deliver the consistent service that is going to gain you your reputation in your first year is hands down the single most important thing that will lead to your business growing. Spending time with your team, empowering it to develop the practice with you, allows you to set the vision, and whether you realise at the time you are doing it, you are setting the grounds for you company culture.

Building a winning team

Those first key team members, I often call them “Generation One”, are the building blocks of the rest of your team. When your time runs out (number of minutes in the day), it will be the Generation One team who coaches Generation Two on how “we do things around here”.

It may be that you have worked with team members in a previous job and know their work persona well. You place a lot of trust in your starting core team and it is important they have passion and enthusiasm, and share your values and enthusiasm.

Much like how your client base will naturally grow as long as you get the service bit right, you team will grow easily if you service your staff well. Your team enjoying their job and feeling appreciated and valued will be your biggest advertisement to others in the industry.

Recruitment can be exhausting, but is essential for growth. It can often feel like you don’t have time to write a long job advert. Often, that task of “recruit another RVN” is sat on my to-do list for four weeks, even when I know I am likely facing another four to eight weeks of living out their current job notice period once I find them.

So, in that moment where you realise you want to recruit, here are my top three tips for quick recruitment that will take you less than five minutes and cost you nothing:

• Ask your team members (all of them) if they have worked with anyone previously who would suit the team and might be looking to move jobs.

• Post a fun team photo on a social media post/story, telling your followers that you are recruiting.

• Put a text out to friends in the industry and let them know what you are looking for.

If you get the reputation as being a good work place it will naturally lead to easier recruitment. Building a happy work place requires thought and effort.

Hire slow, fire fast is a phrase I think of often. You should take your time when bringing someone new into your business, no matter how much you need that extra pair of hands. If you are not sure about a potential hire then carry out that extra trial day, let the team spend time with them so they can see what they think.

On the flip side, if you feel a member of staff is not working out, you must do right by your team and restore harmony by letting them go. You will notice the relief among your team instantly.

It can feel very lonely dealing with the HR processes between hiring and firing (induction, training, reviews and performance investigations) and so I would recommend having an external provider who can guide you and support you (I used Eight Legal and found its support invaluable).

If you have some staff turnover in year one, by choice, don’t dwell on it. However, if staff start leaving in your first year of operation not by your choice, you have to look within – quickly. From day one you must find time in your day to day for a private discussion with each team member and find out what is going on at ground level. Time to listen can allow you to predict and shape the future and help identify problems earlier, allowing you to implement changes that prevent staff from leaving.

You and your team are the reason your clients are coming to see you and recommending you to their friends, which is why building the right team is a fundamental in year one and beyond.

Controlled growth

In your first year you do not have large amounts of cash available for marketing, neither do you have the time to organise it. So where do you get clients from? Word of mouth is cost free and effective; all you have to do is provide a brilliant service.

Assuming you have chosen an appropriate location for your practice, if you are delivering excellent personal service to clients your client base will surely be on a upward trajectory. However, you should be cautious that the angle of this line is not too steep.

Growing too quickly with unpreparedness will lead to chaos and an inability to keep your reputation (your most valuable marketing asset). Growing is inevitable – the tricky part is choosing how much time you need to consolidate.

What is it you need time to do?

• Time for your team to bond and learn how to work together before the flow of the river runs too fast. Every time you add a new team member you will notice a period of adjustment where the team finds a new flow.

• Time to recruit more (and the correct type) of team members takes time out of your daily hours; interviewing, writing job offers, inducting, training – all these aspects should be apportioned the relevant time.

• Time for the smoothing of operations and logistics – “oh, we don’t have a set process for that”.

Many of these tasks can be delegated to key trusted team members; write them a brief and be very specific about what it is you need. Delegation, or learning to let go, train, develop and empower the team so that day-to-day operations are spread out, is essential if growth is to be maintained and mental health assured.

Sustainable growth

In your first year, you become so enveloped in the day-to-day running it is hard to continually think and plan for the future. Predicting when you may need to increase your team ahead of time, keeping a close eye on cash flow while writing new standard operating procedures you never knew needed to be written. Variety is the spice of life. Practice life is like a train journey – so many things can derail your start-up success if you do not take the time to think about where your train is going.

• Priority management – this is one of the hardest aspects of year one. You are trying to be everything to everyone and it feels impossible to assign a priority order. Every two weeks I would encourage any practice owner to block themselves a “systems day” to have a look and review what is happening in all of their systems – home, work, personal hygiene? Give yourself breathing space to get everything out of your head, and on to paper, and plan how to tackle everything in the days that follow. The practice depends on you being well and functioning, so give yourself the courtesy and priority you deserve – and a shower.

• Continuous improvement – clinical quality improvement and day-to-day adjustments in logistics can feel like a faff and almost “unimportant” when you’re trying to make sure everyone will get paid in month five, but your team will want to make sure they are doing a good job. Try to take time to discuss clinical matters and review cases. Planning in just 20 minutes once a week at the start of a day adds up to 2 full days over the year. Don’t take on everything at once, just choose one clinical thing to discuss per week and find the best way of doing it.

• Cash flow and KPIs – monitoring multiple KPIs can be overwhelming, but getting into the habit of looking at a few key elements will help you keep on top of cash flow, turnover as well as staff, variable and fixed costs as a percentage of turnover. If I could only look at five figures a month it would be:
  
  • Turnover
  • Cost of staff
  • Cost of goods (know as variable costs)
  • Cost of business
  • Active client numbers

Practice owners will wake up knowing it is a) wholesale bill day, b) VAT payment day or c) staff wages day. “Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity and cash is reality” is a fact I know to be true; the possibility of not having enough cash for the large outgoings is by far the most stressful experience of year one.

Before you buy that wish list piece of equipment in month nine, think about saving a month’s expenses (or as near to it as possible) aside in a business saver for a rainy day. The mental breathing space that a reserve fund allows you is invaluable and prevents excessive worry; allowing you to concentrate on other things.

There is a key and common theme linking building your team, growing your client base, and business growth… your valued and enthusiastic team. If you are not sure how to boost team happiness, here are my top three tips:

Carry out a team track survey. Giving your team an opportunity to complete an employee Net Promotor Score allows you to track progress and get vital anonymous information about what the team thinks you should be doing more and less of. I use an external provider for this (Onswitch), so it happens every six months and is not dependent on my time.

• Sit down in protected time every 12 weeks with every team member; even with no agenda, you will be surprised what comes from an informal chat with open-ended questions.

• Set aside one working day annually to get the whole team together and allow group thinking; focus on team ideas, team bonding and energising the business. It might seem like a tough decision to close the practice for a working mid-week day, but your gains will make up for it.

If you are thinking about opening a practice or maybe you’re in the thick of it and you want to grow your business, for your business to grow you must focus on the core elements of leadership, your team and managing the business – all of which are “thriving in practice” themes laid out by SPVS.

So, what are the top three take-home action points to grow your business in the first year?

• Get the right people in place
• Grow steady
• Think about where you are going, and watch your cash.