What Are Your Goals For Your Therapy Practice in 2023
Anne 
It's important to have goals for your therapy practice | Planning now for 2023 will give you a head start for your therapy business
How do you want your therapy practice to be by the end of 2023?
I know it’s only October, but have you started to think about 2023 and what you want to achieve by the end of next year?
Many people don’t start to plan for their next year till January or perhaps March of the year! Some will start planning in December. Very few will start in October!
When I worked as a fundraiser we had longer-term, 3 - 5 year goals, and were usually planning at least 18 months in advance, if not longer. Not detailed plans but broad strokes, which became more detailed the nearer to ‘now’ we came. You will probably have a longer term outcome in mind for your practice 3, 5, or 10 years into the future. But where do you want your therapy practice by the end of 2023?
What should my goals be for my therapy practice?
There’s no ‘should’ when it comes to your goals for your therapy practice. Your goals need to be right for you and your aspirations for your therapy practice. If they don’t sit well with you, your drive to achieve them will be less than optimal to get you through those times when things don’t seem to be going to plan!
I know it can be difficult to foresee how your business will perform in the future, particularly in the current economic climate. There will be some ‘guesstimating’ and assumptions made, usually based on previous years’ performance. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t have some form of results in mind. Whether that is ‘x’ amount of profit, ‘x’ number of client sessions, ‘x’ number of word-of-mouth referrals, all of the above or something else, is your choice.
Whatever goals you choose for your therapy practice you need to have some way to measure how far you have travelled toward achieving them. And considered the actions you need to take to get you there.
One tool that you may have already used in a ‘pre-therapist’ life is S.M.A.R.T. It’s usually taken to mean that your goal is:
Specific
Measureable
Achievable
Realistic
Time-bound
Once you’ve 'day-dreamed' your goals you can use S.M.A.R.T to check out your goals and assess if they are something you can achieve in a year. As you do this you might find you think you can get part of the way there by the end of 2023 or perhaps achieve it in less than a year.
S.M.A.R.T is one tool you can use for planning the future of your therapy practice. I cover more about goal setting and planning your time and work in Module 5 of my Designing the Dream Course.
Take into account your non-work commitments
When you are considering if your goals are S.M.A.R.T you also need to take into account your life outside of your therapy business. I know it can become all-consuming when you are passionate about the work you do, but you do need to think about what might be happening in the rest of your life as you build and grow your therapy practice.
I discussed contingency planning in my blog Planning For the Unexpected. This, alongside considering your whole life activities, will help you keep to your S.M.A.R.T goals more easily.
If you want help developing your goals for 2023 you can work with me on an individual basis to help you clarify your aims for your practice, set goals, and, most importantly, take action to achieve them.
Let me know your plans for 2023.
P.S. Please connect with me on Linkedin or Facebook and Instagram.
Categories: Private Practice, self-employment