Hey Friend,

If you're like most practice owners and hearing professionals I work with, you're great at what you do—but there's only so much of you to go around.

You're staring at the glass ceiling of your income, and wondering how to break it without breaking yourself.

Your plate is full and some days it feels like your stress is at the max.

How could you possibly add more to achieve a higher income?

The answer?

Don't add. Subtract.

How?

Time leverage.

Time leverage is all about achieving the biggest and best results without a huge investment of personal time and effort.

The bonus?

When you take the actions I describe below, not only will you increase your income and decrease your stress, you'll also create a more consistent and positive patient experience!

Here are five ways to harness this concept to take your practice and personal income to the next level.

1. Automate Like a Pro

Every time you find yourself repeating a task, ask yourself if you could automate, systematize, or delegate it.

Tasks that could be automated in your practice include but certainly aren't limited to:

•  ​Database nurture and marketing ​ 
• Feedback collection and review generation
• Online scheduling, reminders, and form delivery

Even if automating some tasks doesn't directly increase revenue, it frees up you and your team to get away from the minutiae and focus on higher impact activities.

2. Systematize to Simplify

Systematizing isn’t as flashy as automation, but it does the same job.

For example...

• Rather than manually onboard every new employee, build a system of videos, checklists, scripts, and templates for them to work through.
• Create and track KPIs for transparency, performance tracking, and strategic decision making.
• Build a pre-recorded mini-course with daily use and care and communication strategies. Prescribe it to new patients to complete during their onboarding as a new hearing aid user.

Every activity that happens in your practice is a system...but most of them live in the head of you or a staff member.

Get them out of your head and into a system that your practice can use whether you're there or not.

3. Delegate (But Don't Abdicate)

Some tasks are important, and you're great at them...but you simply aren't the person who should be taking your time to do them.

Delegation is about putting tasks in the hands of people who can do them more efficiently—and sometimes even better than you.

It's also about freeing up your time to focus on your Zone of Genius.

Examples?

• A busy practice owner hires a VA to manage their email inbox and coordinate day to day personal responsibilities.
• An overbooked practice cross-trains the front office personnel to check in hearing aids and complete basic troubleshooting to open the audiologists' schedules.
• A solo provider hires an answering service to pick up their calls so they can focus on activities that grow the practice.

Delegation frees you up to focus on what you excel at.

The key - don't abdicate.

Delegating means that you're empowering someone else to perform a role to your standards, and you're providing them the support, resources, and accountability necessary to do so.

Abdicating is dumping a responsibility on somebody else and walking away. It leads to disappointment, inconsistent results, and frustration for everyone involved.

4. Get Your Fee Structure Right

Many practices struggle because they don't have a clear strategy around optimal fee structures.

Frankly, there’s no easier way to generate more revenue in less time than simply fixing how you price the products and services you already provide.

This could mean:

• Repackaging your services to reflect the value you provide and removing the focus on hearing aids
• Shifting your service fee model to increase cashflow and optimize practice revenue, ensuring you're getting paid for the services you provide
• Dropping unprofitable insurance plans
• Increasing fees to appropriately reflect the level of care and value you deliver

If your fee structure strategy is suboptimal, it's an anchor on your practice's growth.

With a few small shifts, you could create immediate growth with little to no negative impact on your treatment acceptance or patient satisfaction.

5. Productize

This is the holy grail for service businesses that want to scale.

Take my consulting practice for example.

When I was getting started, practice owners would come to me with a problem, I would create a custom proposal, and when I delivered my services they were unique for each individual I worked with.

This meant that I was re-inventing the wheel with every client.

It was time-consuming, and I didn't have a prescribed process to take my clients through that I knew would work consistently.

Then productized one of my core services.

I developed an evidence-based case presentation training program called ​The Patient First Method​, and delivered a consistent series of trainings, resources, and in-person sessions.

My clients consistently got practice-transforming results, and I was able to be more efficient with my time and energy.

When you productize your services, you're combining everything we've talked about thus far.

A productized solution is a pre-determined set of products and services that are designed to solve a specific problem.

Productization means systematizing what you offer and how you deliver it. That creates opportunities to automate and delegate. It also allows you to standardize pricing.

A well-packaged productized service increases patient confidence, increases perceived value, and reduces operational complexity.