Even back when I was the only treating therapist in my cash-based private practice, I still had a team of at least two part-time assistants to help keep my business and stress levels in order. And as my practice grew, I learned the critical value of knowing when it is time to hire so I have the support I need before a crisis unfolds. The importance of having built out a stellar team of employees, including other cash-based physical therapists working for me, became so obvious during very difficult times. 

I had reduced my patient-care schedule to only seeing patients on Wednesdays when my twins were born. And 7 months later, when they both received the diagnosis of Type 1 Spinal Muscular Atrophy, the fact that my team had already been carrying the practice forward and were able to continue doing so was the most important characteristic I’ve ever built into my business.

Even if you want to be a solo practitioner, you should still have a team. Do not remain in the risky situation of your practice being completely reliant on only one person, even if that person is you. I’ll also say before we dive into the meat of this article, that recruiting and hiring are two different things. The time to recruit for your practice is always “now.” Don’t be like so many other business owners that have zero pre-qualified candidates for a position when they are scrambling to find good help. Most business owners hire fast and fire slow, even though it really should be the opposite. Continually networking and recruiting solid talent will set you up for huge success when it comes time to actually hire. Don’t worry, if you’ve created an amazing place to work, many people are totally fine with you letting them know that they will be the first to know when you have a position available. But going through part of the interview and vetting process ahead of time and having a handful of solid candidates ready to contact when you are ready to hire is an absolute game changer.

So with all the above said, I’m now handing this article off to one of my stellar staff members to give actionable details of when it is time to hire, and some key resources for attracting and hiring the best candidates for your private practice.

Being on your own in a private practice can be stressful

Once you’ve gotten your new practice off the ground and things are going well, it probably won’t be too long before you begin to wonder if it might be time to hire some help. Obviously there’s only so much a single person can do, so the more successful your practice becomes, the more difficult it will be to get everything done well. This balancing act can be tricky to manage, especially if you’re already feeling stressed and overwhelmed!

Another consideration is that as a one-person operation, there is a risk associated with having your business entirely dependent on you alone. What happens if you get sick or need to take a block of time off for some reason? Can your practice continue, even for a month or two, without you? For this reason alone, growing your business enough to support some additional staff can make it a lot easier to sleep at night.

Choosing the right time to hire for your cash-based practice is an ongoing challenge

The decision to hire isn’t only faced when adding that first employee or contractor. You’ll need to choose the right moment each time your practice outgrows its staff. You don’t want to wait so long you become desperate and inclined to hire the first person who falls in your lap. But hiring someone too early and then having to let them go is terribly expensive—in terms of wasted salary and training—for a resource you ultimately lose.

So how do you know it’s the right time to look for help?

7 signs it’s time to hire for your private practice

1. You’re turning away business. If your schedule is jam-packed and new prospects have a significant wait to get a consult, hiring someone will actually generate money you are currently losing. In addition, if you’re too busy to pursue promising opportunities because you’re buried in routine tasks, that can represent enormous losses over time. It makes little sense for a practice owner to be answering phones instead of working on a marketing plan or developing better ways to provide value to their customers! Building a team can allow you to get things off your plate so you can focus on the things that you want to be doing.
2. You and your staff are overworked. Is your team getting burnt out and losing passion for the work? If that overwhelming workload is expected to remain stable for the long term, it’s time to think about hiring. Remember hard work and financial payoff are not always correlated… there’s more than just working hard that goes into creating wealth and your dream lifestyle.
3. The quality of your customer experience is suffering. If you said yes to #2, it’s only a matter of time before being stretched so thin means things are rushed and getting sloppy. Are there complaints? Are you losing patients? Since a cash-based physical therapy practice is under heightened pressure to provide outstanding value, you can’t afford to let quality slip.
4. Your practice doesn’t have all the right skills. When there is a viable market for services that your current team isn’t equipped to offer, hiring the right person can enable the practice to become more comprehensive, competitive, and profitable. 
5. You can write a specific job description. You need to be seeking a targeted set of skills and experience one can reasonably expect to find in a single person who would be interested in that sort of work. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can find a “unicorn” that can and will do everything! And if you can’t figure out what sort of help you really need, maybe it’s time to hire a coach instead.
6. Your practice can afford the investment. Are you ready to cover the salary, benefits, and training associated with a new team member? Run some numbers that project the scenario you wish to create so you can see if you’re really ready for the investment. 
7. You are ready to let someone take ownership of the job. Will you give someone whatever training they need and then let them actually do the job? Don’t underestimate the ability for smart, passionate people to be able to do things well—or even better than you.

Hiring made easier for your cash-based private practice

Once you’re sure it’s time to start looking, how can you make that process as painless as possible? After all, since you’re already short-staffed, you don’t have time to read through mountains of resumes only to interview disappointing candidates. And nobody wants to deal with the high turnover and wasted effort that comes with bad hires!

As a private practice owner myself, I’ve personally faced all these challenges. I knew there had to be a better way to find motivated, skilled people who would be invested in helping me build my businesses. So I created my own time-saving, automated system for identifying and attracting top talent. And now I’m sharing that knowledge to help other practice owners take the pain out of searching for talent.

It’s all included in my new Automated Talent Attraction and Hiring Course.

The Automated Talent Attraction and Hiring Course teaches you exactly how to: 

• Use free Gmail filters and Google Forms to AUTOMATICALLY filter out low-quality candidates, bring only top talent to your attention, and complete half of the interview process for you.
• Craft a great job description that will attract the best candidates and turn off those that would be a poor fit.
• Create a written interview through which candidates are forced to show their true colors rather than the perfectly packaged version you’ll find in their resumes. 
• Effectively review and evaluate those written interviews to uncover potential ‘red flags’ and get a realistic picture of each candidate.

You’ll dramatically reduce the time, effort, and frustration associated with hiring.

Click here for more information on the Automated Talent Attraction and Hiring Course, and get started building the team of your dreams today!