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71 | Your Regularly-Scheduled Business Breakdown
180 Plays10 months ago
If you stay in practice long enough, you'll have a business breakdown. These are periods where you're rethinking or restructuring at the highest level. During this time, things can get worse before they get better. In this episode, Camille discusses the inevitable disruptions that occur when you make big changes and shares her personal experiences of navigating a challenging time. She offers insights into how to manage these periods of upheaval and come out stronger on the other side.
Key Points:
- Introduction to the Episode (00:00:01)
- Understanding Disruptions in Clinical Practice (00:00:39)
- Having a full business breakdown is never fun, but it's something you can count on every few years.
- Navigating the Breakdown (00:02:11)
- An example from Camille's most recent business breakdown; perspective can help. It's okay and normal for this to happen, and you can get through the seemingly unending bits and pieces.
- Tips for Managing Business Tasks (00:04:24)
- No one feels fully prepared to deal with business disruptions. Keep a list of what needs to happen. Check things off. You'll get through it eventually whether you stress about it or whether you don't stress about it. Get help if you're stuck.
- New Podcast Platforms (00:08:06)
- The podcast will (hopefully!) be on YouTube as well as the standard podcasting platforms going forward. Check it out and let me know if you see it there!
In summary: Business disruptions are normal and you can manage them. Really.
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Premise
00:00:01
cfsage
Hi there. Welcome to In the Clinic with Camille. My name is Camille Freeman. I am a clinical herbalist and nutritionist. And in this podcast, in this show, I share little tips and tidbits behind the scenes peaks at things that might be helpful for other practitioners to know about doing this work. So, here we are.
Format Changes and Episode Naming
00:00:19
cfsage
You may notice that things are a little bit different in this podcast right now, and I'm going to explain why in this episode. I thought about calling this episode, Things Fall Apart, after that famous book by Pima Shodron. But then I thought, you know what, that's a little traumatic Camille.
00:00:35
cfsage
I'm not sure we need to go quite that extreme.
Disruptions in Clinical Practice
00:00:39
cfsage
But what I have been doing over the last few months, you might have noticed there hasn't been an episode recently. And what's been happening is that it feels kind of like my practice has Been taken apart and I'm having to re put it back together. It's not necessarily a bad thing. It's a complex thing. And so it's just been a lot of admin, a lot of behind the scenes things all one after the other. And I wanted to give you an inside
00:01:08
cfsage
scoop on that because over the years, I've noticed that this happens every so often. And it took me probably 10 years to realize, oh, this is just a normal part of the progression of running a clinical practice, probably running a business in general, although most of my experience has to do with working with myself and other people who have clinical practices specifically. But it seems like what happens is every so often, every couple years, the whole thing kind of comes apart of the seams, often on purpose, not accidentally, but you get into a place where you're like, wow, this is really complicated.
00:01:46
cfsage
And then you figure it out and you make your way through and you go along for another few years and then it all kind of falls apart again and you have to fix it. So I wanted to share one experience of that mine so that when this happens to you, maybe you will have a little bit more perspective than I did the first few times that happened to me and you'll be able to navigate it a little bit better. So let's talk about what's been going on.
Shifts After Leaving University Position
00:02:11
cfsage
First of all, some of you know this, but in February, I left my position as a university professor, where I've been working for almost 17 years. I had already gone down to halftime, but I left for good in February. So that's been a big shift.
00:02:28
cfsage
And it triggered a bunch of other things in my practice, which are great. Everything's good. I'm really enjoying being out on my own. And there's just a lot of behind the scenes work happening. The other big thing that's going on in my practice right now is I'm changing to being taxed as an S corp. This sounds incredibly boring. Try not to drift off here. That's not talking about this. What that means is that I put myself on payroll, and there's a bunch of tax things that need to happen like I have to file with the Virginia Employers Commission and I've got to call my accountant and I have to meet the lawyer and I got to figure out a reasonable salary for myself
00:03:11
cfsage
And there's just a lot of forms and paperwork and phone calls, which I hate. I really don't like to make phone calls. These people don't text. I have to talk to them in person. So all of this is happening, and it seems like every day there's a new thing, you know, as a part of this process I had a lawyer review a bunch of my forms and of course they all had suggestions and updates which means every single form that I ever use for anything needs to be updated.
00:03:41
cfsage
So all of this is happening and I'm, you know, sorting through it little piece by little piece and it's okay. And I know I'll probably forget some things and I'll have to go back and update them. But this is an example of how everything sort of spins out of control a little bit. And then you have to slowly rein it back in. And like I said, it seems like this happens every few years. Some of you felt exactly this way when you were forming your business where you're like, Oh my gosh, I've got to File here and submit this form and get insurance and do my website. It's that sort of feeling where you're like, there's so many things and you feel more or less not prepared or qualified to do any of them, but somehow you do it. Okay. So that's what I'm talking about.
Managing Business Overwhelm
00:04:22
cfsage
And the message that I have for you today is that as far as I can tell, nobody really feels prepared to deal with it.
00:04:32
cfsage
And the best thing to do is just keep a running list, even if it's a complicated, messy, not very logical list, but just all the little things where you're like, okay, gotta do this, I need to do that, I should think about that, I should look into this, I should Google that, just keep it somewhere and start going through them. For me, the most helpful thing is, after having been through a couple cycles of this, is realizing that it does all get sorted out over time. that I can stress about it or I can not stress out about it. But eventually, one way or the other, all these things are going to sort it out. So maybe, will you have to pay a small late fee for being late on something because you didn't realize it? Probably. That'll happen every now and then. That's okay. That's just part of doing business is that sometimes you miss something. And usually, the government or whoever it is will send you a form and say, hey, you missed this. FYI, here's what you need to do.
00:05:25
cfsage
Okay, that'll happen and then you'll learn better for next time. Or maybe you'll say like, I think I need some help with this and you'll reach out and you'll hire somebody or you'll call somebody or you'll go to the Small Business Association or the local co-working space or something and find somebody who knows what they're doing and get them to help you. Sometimes paid, sometimes volunteer. Maybe you'll meet somebody who's interesting and helpful to know maybe I'll make a friend or maybe you'll just have the sense of accomplishment of like okay I figured this out even though I didn't know what I was doing I found somebody who helped me know what I was doing. The benefit of this doing this sort of decentralized just like blowing things up a little bit and then putting them back together every now and then is that you really do get a chance to
00:06:11
cfsage
look at things individually. And it's been my experience that things, when you put them all back together, they're better than when they were before. Sometimes it's like cleaning out a closet or sometimes it looks way worse in the middle. It looks 10 times worse than it was when you started. But by the time you finish, it feels more organized and you've gotten rid of a bunch of stuff and you kind of know where things are. And it's like, oh, okay, this is This is way better, but you got to get through that really not great part in the middle. Alright, so hopefully this has been not depressing and not overwhelming, but helpful for you to understand that this is probably going to happen to you. Maybe you'll
Acceptance of Business Disruptions
00:06:50
cfsage
decide to change your niche and everything will need to change or maybe you'll realize you know something you want to change your whole business name or you'll decide to go from being a sole proprietor to an LLC or you'll move to a different state and there'll be new protests protocols and processes that you have to do or whatever those are all examples of these periodic sort of Blow-ups that you then sort through slowly one strand at a time while I will add Maintaining everything else that's going on in your practice like seeing your clients and doing your marketing and promotional activities and writing your newsletter Whatever else it is that you're doing. Okay, so
00:07:30
cfsage
If this happens, when this happens, remember, it's normal. It is going to happen. It's just a matter of what the system or what the scenario is that's going to blow your business up a little bit. It's going to happen. You're going to get through it, even if it feels kind of yucky in the middle and it feels overwhelming. It's just a matter of time. It's just a matter of slowly, slowly, slowly going through those things and that there's help available as you do it. But anyway, it's going to happen. It's going to happen. All right.
Transition to New Podcast Platform and Closing Remarks
00:08:00
cfsage
So bringing this back to the podcast.
00:08:03
cfsage
Some of you, maybe, will be watching this on YouTube. Because one of the things that fell apart at the same time as I'm doing this whole S-Corp situation, I found out that the podcast service I've been using, which is Spotify for Podcasters, they're changing things up. And they used to have a system that's very easy. I would just log in and I would talk for a little while. I could click a couple buttons and like add my intro and add a little music and then Ta-da! It was done. As an FYI, I don't do any editing or anything. I just, like, talk and post. That's my podcasting process. And they took that away, and it became much more complicated. There's, like, another service involved, and blah, blah, blah. It had involved, you know, sound boards and things. And I'm like, I can't. I don't need to get involved with that.
00:08:50
cfsage
So what happened is I'm using a different service now. I had to move the whole podcast to a different place. And this new service that I'm using, which is Zenkester, in case anyone's interested, it comes with the option to do video at the same time. And they'll just publish the podcast to YouTube, as well as all the podcasting channels. So I thought, Okay, why not? I'm probably gonna have to like brush my hair every now and then if I'm gonna do video on my podcast, but maybe it'll be helpful. This, if I do everything correctly, will be the very first podcast episode that goes up on YouTube. So if you prefer to watch something on YouTube versus listen to it on your podcasting platform, then you should have that option. There's nothing fancy on the YouTube just so you know.
00:09:42
cfsage
It's just a video of me sitting at my desk. But anyway, maybe some people prefer that. So the podcast is now going to be available going forward as a video or an audio. And we're going to see how it goes. I haven't figured out how to add music or intros and outros yet to this new system. So it's just a video or an audio of me talking. But anyway, that's what's been going on with my life. That's my little spiel to you about how things are just going to explode a little bit in your business every so often. And that's normal. It's expected. It's hard. And you're going to come out stronger on the other side. Okay, so have a really wonderful rest of your day. I hope you have enjoyed listening to this and come back and see me another time. Talk to you soon.