1% Better Challenge

A few articles ago, I wrote about the importance of getting just one percent better each day in any aspect of your private practice. Here is the cliff notes version of that article: I talked about how overwhelming starting and growing a private practice can be. There are so many items that feel daunting, like marketing, for example. It sounds simple, but it's not. Many therapists, including myself, are tempted to give up on these big items that could really take our private practices to the next level. Or, we may not even try and just assume we can't do it. I mean, that is what I did with marketing for a long while. You know, like Google Ads, SEO, and all that stuff? I assumed I couldn't do it. It felt way too overwhelming, so I didn't even try. However, I was turned on to the "1%" better approach after reading the first few chapters of "Atomic Habits". I now have a fully functioning Google Ad running, I am blogging weekly to build SEO, and my practice is headed in a direction I didn't think was possible. But this article is not for me; it's for you. Well, it's for us. I want to challenge each of you. Yep, I am looking at you, private practice owner. I want to challenge you to pick one area that has been overwhelming you or that you have been putting off, and let's make a plan to get 1% better at it each day this week. Also, this challenge is not without a reward. At the end of the article you will find the challenge details as well as the cool stuff you can win.

Using the 1% better approach

Let's first talk about how we can actually get one percent better at something in private practice. This is fairly abstract. Let's go through a case study, if you will, and by the end, you should be able to apply the one percent better rule to any overwhelming aspect of your private practice or small business.

Identify The Overwhelming Task

The first thing you need to do is identify the task that is overwhelming you. In my case, it was marketing and advertising. I am not just talking about PsychologyToday listings, but Google Ads and SEO.

Decide if it is Worth It

The next thing you want to do is spend some time thinking about whether or not this is a worthwhile endeavor or if it truly is a waste of time. In this case, I knew that marketing was beneficial. What business doesn’t advertise? However, I was overwhelmed because I didn't know much about marketing. I didn't know the lingo, skills, techniques, etc. Additionally, learning about marketing was going to require time that I didn't feel I had. Notice I said "feel" because this wasn't true. My conclusion was that it was worthwhile to learn marketing because it would help my business grow.

What are the Barriers?

Next, you want to think about the barriers and whether or not they are as overwhelming as you think, and in which ways you could overcome them. Let's start with my lack of knowledge about marketing. It's true that I wouldn't be able to become an expert overnight, but this doesn't mean that I couldn't learn a little bit over a long period of time. I was stuck in all-or-nothing thinking. By challenging this, I began to see the value in starting off slow.

In relation to this, it's true that I don't have time to spend multiple hours per day studying marketing. Heck, I don't even have multiple hours per week. But could I spend 15 minutes a day? Yep! After sitting down with my calendar, I actually saw that I could invest a few hours per week in 15-30 minute chunks. Why not start there? Even if I could do 5 minutes of learning, why not? Isn't this better than 0?

You can see I was beginning to open up a pathway for myself to get better at marketing.

Develop a Plan of Action

Next, I developed a 1% better game plan. In other words, what would it look like to get 1% better every day? This part is subjective and may take some trial and error, but this is what it could look like in the context of my marketing example.

Spend 5-15 minutes a day consuming introductory content about marketing (i.e videos and articles). Next, begin to use the 5-15 minutes to research marketing firms that could help with marketing endeavors (i.e. read reviews). Next, engage in free consultations with those agencies over the course of a few weeks. Next, continue to review and read up on marketing content (5-15 minutes per day). Finally, decide on a company to work with and begin working with them.

In this example, you will notice that I only spent a small chunk of my whole day on marketing stuff, but over time, I went from feeling overwhelmed to having an ad up and running. All along the way, I was learning about marketing.

You will also notice that getting 1% better is not just about doing it yourself, but may also involve collaborating with other people. In this case, through my learning, I understood I would benefit most from an outside agency's help. Even this was knowledge I learned from getting 1% better each day!

The Challenge!

So, what are you going to get 1% better at this week? Marketing, scheduling, organization, task management, billing, credentialing? What has been overwhelming you?

Here's the challenge: Subscribe to my YouTube channel and leave a comment either on this blog post or on the video stating what you plan to get 1% better at. At the end of October, I am going to randomly select one person from the comments who will win a free 6 months of membership to my consultation group as well as this mug I recently designed. Let's get after it!