Bruce BassiIn this video & article, Dr. Bruce Bassi talks about the mistakes that he made, that turned out to require much time and effort to correct. Spending extra time up front planning and preparing can save you much time and headache down the road.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- You want to choose a name, address, logo, graphics that you feel very comfortable with because it is very difficult to change them later.
- Embrace your network, especially having a mentor, as someone can teach you quite a bit about their own personal experiences and how they apply to your situation.
What are my top 5 mistakes starting a private practice?
[00:00:00] Bruce Bassi: Hey, everyone in this video, I wanted to go over what are the most common mistakes that somebody can make in private practice? What are the mistakes that I made when trying to start my practice?
My name is Bruce Bassi and I’m an addiction, psychiatrist in outpatient private practice. And in this video, we’re going to talk about my mistakes so that you don’t have to make those.
In regard to potentially making mistakes, everyone’s going to potentially make mistakes and starting a private practice. You don’t know everything that there is to know, but there’s a lot of resources out there for you to look into such as finding a mentor, going on Facebook groups dedicated to private practice entrepreneurship. And also you could potentially consider doing a course.
There’s a course available in the description of the video. I’ll put a link to that and a coupon. By doing a course. It also helps you to understand what are your strengths? What are your weaknesses, so that you can reach out to other people when needed, when you encountered one of your weaknesses before you go in too deep and make some sort of costly mistakes down the road.
It also helps to first clarify what your goals are, what direction you want to head in. And where are you want to focus your effort? What is the point of view starting the private practice?
This will help focus the direction of your work and also will help you find your niche and a potential patient coming to you understands what your area of expertise is.
Mistake #1 name changes
[00:01:08] Bruce Bassi: So, what is the first mistake I made? The first mistake I made was that I had to change the name of the practice. A couple of times, unfortunately. And it wasn’t necessarily my fault, but nonetheless, it was still was a mistake.
Certain states require that in your legal name of your business, if you’re a professional, you need to have your name and also the purpose of what the business is.
So, unfortunately I didn’t consult a lawyer first and I chose a name that actually wasn’t what it should have been, so then we changed the name and then I ended up moving from Illinois to Florida. And then we had to change the name again, unfortunately.
So it’s really frustrating because it ends up on a lot of different contracts with different insurance companies and also goes to the IRS, both of which take a very long time to fix.
And then there’s a period of time when you might be using one name with certain companies and another name with another company.
And other companies might check the status of your company with the IRS, and the IRS might tell them that the business doesn’t exist under this name. And it can cause a whole lot of confusion.
Therefore, I suggest that you spend a little bit of extra time upfront to determine the name that you really want, that you know is going to be the proper name, and you’re not going to have to change it for awhile. And hopefully don’t move for a while either.
Mistake #2: changing the address
[00:02:11] Bruce Bassi: The next mistake that I made was having to change the physical location and mailing address. And for a lot of the same reasons that I gave in mistake, number one, this can cause a whole lot of downstream issues. And this happened to me for a number of unforeseen circumstances, mainly having to move, mainly because after training, you aren’t completely settled yet. So you’re still somewhat transient after training and you’re might be moving around a lot for training nonetheless, too. But once you finally stop moving around, it is really nice to finally feel settled.
The physical location and the mailing address is going to be linked to your NPI. And for that reason, it’s going to get propagated around the internet because a lot of places and crawlers and searches are going to take that information because it’s public record and put it in their database. For example, pharmacies such as CVS and Walgreens are going to see that address as associated with you. And it’s very hard to change that.
Mistake #3: not having EPLI
[00:02:58] Bruce Bassi: Mistake number three that I made was not having APLI insurance right from the beginning.
What does EPLI insurance you might ask? That’s a really good question. I’ll do a video on that separately. But EPLI is employment practices liability insurance.
And what that means is that it covers you for anything that’s HR related.
EPLI we’ll cover you for allegations of wrongful termination, mismanagement of benefits, and workplace harassment and retaliation claims.
It’s super important, not only for peace of mind, but they also have tons and tons of free resources and a hotline that you can use similar to malpractice insurance, where you can call they’ll set you up with an attorney who can give you advice specific to your situation.
Mistake #4: not getting started early on with SEO
[00:03:34] Bruce Bassi: Mistake number four would be not getting started early on with SEO. The SEO process takes a really long time. So, if you want your practice to become big a year from now, you have to plan your SEO strategy months in advance, because it can take a very long time for search engine crawlers to crawl your website, and then have it propagate up and collect data of clicks and interaction time and how relevant and useful the content of your website is.
Also, it’s going to take you some time to understand what are important, relevant factors in SEO. And if you’re managing the website yourself, you have to continue to refine those, and take into consideration SEO feedback on your website and continue to make modifications and corrections and improvements to your website over the course of months.
Mistake #5: not having a mentor
[00:04:15] Bruce Bassi: And what is my fifth and final mistake. That’s not having a mentor. Somebody who knows the industry, somebody who can guide you, somebody who can easily answer all of your questions in just a few seconds versus you struggling for weeks and making costly errors and mistakes.
You can probably spend hours thinking about a question, something that’s bothering you, that somebody else probably already struggled with five or 10 years ago. And they can answer for you in about a few seconds.
Many people have gone through the same troubles and mistakes before. You’re not the first person to run a practice. So don’t pretend to be. There’s a lot of resources out there, both paid and free that you can utilize to your advantage so that you’re not reinventing the wheel and struggling and silence.
For me, I had this mindset that I wanted to understand everything and struggle with it before reaching out for help. And that was useful to some extent, because it taught me a whole lot, taught me about how the inner systems and inner workings of various issues and insurance companies work.
But at the same time, it also probably costs me a lot too, in the long run.
Some people say it’s the journey, not the destination. And that could be true, maybe you’re somebody who enjoys that journey, enjoys working with an idea and figuring it out.
And that can be very rewarding for some people too.
Conclusion
[00:05:23] Bruce Bassi: Ultimately, if there’s a whole lot to know in private practice.
It might feel like you’re alone and might feel like you’re struggling with nobody around and nobody’s ever done this before, but in fact, there’s help out there.
You can look at groups, you can look at individual mentorship or coaching. You can look at books, you can take a course potentially too. It might be hard to determine upfront if it’s worth it for you.
I do think that you should shop around and look at a wide variety of resources out there and find one that’s most relevant and applicable to your situation and go with it.
I hope this video was really helpful and telling you what my mistakes were when I created my private practice so that you don’t have to, when you’re making your practice.
If you’d like more videos on private practice education, please subscribe and hit the notification bell for future videos. And also give me a thumbs up or leave a comment down below. I’d love to know what you think. Thanks a lot for watching.
Leave a comment down below and let me know what you think is the most common mistake in starting a private practice. What types of mistakes do you think you’ll make when starting your practice, and what steps will you take to try to avoid those?
