Clinic Owners: How to Get Your Time Back

You’re seeing 50 patients a week, everyday your calendar is booked out and you think you’ve made it as a clinic owner.

But your staff turnover is high.

You find yourself always thinking about work.

You know you should work ‘on’ the business and even though you block out 4 hours a week to do so, you can’t seem to focus.

You just spend time scrolling on your phone.

Or you realise how tired you actually are and fall asleep right away.

Sound familiar?

Most clinic owners think that having the ability to see 50 patients a week AND run the business is a marker of success.

They spend 40 hours a week treating, then another 20 hours telling themselves they’re ‘working’ on the business.

Sometimes they even post a quick story or post saying how hard they work to serve the community.

This is not success.

This is a prison.

Because these are the same owners who will look back in 5 years and think…

‘Where has the time gone?’

Sadly, if you’re asking this question – it’s an indication that you haven’t thought through what you’re doing with your time.

So on this blog, I’ll show you the most important mental model that has given me back my time while enhancing the value I provide for my community.

If you want to watch a video – see below, if not; keep reading!

To fully understand this – let’s quickly define a concept.

Return on investment (ROI).

Return on investment is typically thought of as a ‘money put in’ vs ‘money coming back’. For example, a 8% ROI is making an 8% return on initial investment.

If you were to invest $100 in something, you should get $108 in return. This is 8%.

If you were to invest $1000000, you would get $1080000 in return. This is then measured against how much time it took to generate this return. Most investments that return quickly are seen as better investments.

As a clinic owner, you’re probably already thinking about ROI in these terms. But it doesn’t necessarily solve your time problem.

For example, if you were to put in $20,000/year for a marketing campaign, you will undoubtedly see new patients walk through the door. However, if you are the only practitioner – will you be increasing or decreasing your time output?

This means for a $70,000 investment, you actually increase the required hours from yourself.

If time is your main issue, is that a good ROI? After all, you’ve just lost more time.

The answer is a resounding no.

That’s why for me, instead of looking at investment through a ‘$’ lens… I look at my investments through the ‘time’ lens.

That is – how much time does my decision return to me?

After consulting multiple practice owners, and having coached several successful business people from my days as a personal trainer, I would say this mental model is unequivocally the reason they become successful.

They have the ability to see return on investment as a product of time and/or dollars. But it’s usually time first and foremost.

Now let’s apply this thinking to your business.

Does acquiring more patients for yourself… result in more or less time?

For one, your revenue will increase (yay!)

But every consult is 45-60 minutes gone from your day (boo!)

So what’s the trade that matters more to you? $130-150 in that consult… or your time?

And if you think 6 months ahead, does acquiring 20 more patients for yourself… increase or save you time?

The answer is straightforward – you lose 10-15 hours if you acquire 20 more patients.

Let’s use another example – social media marketing.

The nature of these platforms calls for new content being generated every 2-3 days to keep your profile ‘alive’.

If you decide to ‘boost’ your presence, maybe you decide to create 3 pieces of content a week.

And although this is a good idea in theory, what is your time ROI?

Let’s say you spend 60-90 minutes creating 3 pieces of content.

First of all, if it’s a shitty piece of content – no one is going to scroll onto it anyway. It’s not going to bring you new patients.

So your 90 minutes ROI on time is 0. You’ve lost time.

But let’s say you spend 90 minutes creating ONE great piece of content. A few hundred people view it, you gain a few followers and over time, you might gain a client or two.

90 minute trade to gain a few new patients is good – that saves you a few hours in the future of trying to get new patients.

That’s still not enough though – because after a few days of scrolling, your post will be lost in the wilderness of the web.

So you’ve still got to REPEAT the process again – which uses more time.

I can tell you this is true because it’s happened to me multiple times throughout my career.

This is when I asked myself – how do I turn these 90 minutes into a forever return?

I spend 90 minutes creating a great piece of content… and then I use money to boost how many people view it, forever.

So long as I spend $30-50/day on my content piece, I know it’s reaching ~2000-3000 people a day.

Now I’ve just spent 90 minutes creating an asset that will last me forever.

That is the BEST time ROI you could possibly create.

In fact, I took this idea and developed even further by writing a book, which I now spend at least $50/day marketing all around the world. This book has resulted in over 300+ sales, and many of these book purchasers have become my consulting clients.

In total, I spent 100 hours writing the book (I’m a quick writer), and it will give me time ROI forever.

The reason I tell you this is:

If your decision or action is not giving you MORE or FOREVER time back – eventually it will eat up all your time.

Developing this idea further, when you onboard your new practitioners – have you spent time creating a simple framework for how initial consultations run?

Or do you wait until you see their rebooking rates are faltering before you begin to intervene?

If you are the latter, let me show you why this is a poor ROI on your time AND dollars spent.

First, it costs you something to acquire a new customer – if your practitioner isn’t able to rebook them (within treatment ethics), then your opportunity cost will be high. That’s revenue down the drain.

Second, if you’re having the same conversation with multiple practitioners repeatedly, one hour here, and one hour there… results in infinite hours over time. So not only is the problem costing you revenue… it’s also costing you time.

However, if you were to spend 5 hours simplifying your clinic consultation process, and then another 2 hours coaching your new hire, followed by fortnightly mentoring sessions for the first 2 months…

You might spend 13 hours in total nurturing your practitioner.

But they will end up rebooking at 80-90% after the first 2-3 months, resulting in significant revenue AND not require as much input.

Additionally, with the performance boost, they’re more likely to stay in the job, saving you from staff turnover (which costs you more time).

And the best part about it? Once you develop your clinic consultation process once, you can use it forever.

I know I make it sound easy in writing – but this is honestly how all the best business owners do it.

They refine their processes until it’s perfect, then they watch it work while they spend time on the things they love.

So if you find yourself constantly short on time, remember this quick mental model.

If time input > time return; it's not worth doing.

If time input = time return; it might be worth doing.

If time input < return; it's worth doing.

If time input < return^e (time return exponentially compounds); it's DEFINITELY worth doing.