WP143 | 5 Pitfalls of Bootstrapped Practice Owners with Neal Samudre
Bootstrapping your private practice can feel like a badge of honor—gritty, independent, and determined. But that hustle can quietly turn into burnout if you're not scaling with strategy. On this episode of the Wise Practice Podcast, Neal Samudre joins Whitney Owens to unpack the five biggest traps that trip up bootstrapped practice owners—and how to break free from them.
If you're tired of spinning your wheels or stuck in solo mode, this conversation is your roadmap to building a thriving, sustainable practice with less stress and more freedom.
1. Prioritizing Money Over Time and Energy
In the early stages of your practice, you're probably watching every dollar. That's smart. But Neal warns that many practice owners never shift from this money-first mindset—even when it no longer serves them.
At some point, your time and energy become more valuable than your cash. Sometimes, taking a temporary hit in profitability (like hiring help or investing in infrastructure) can lead to massive long-term gains because it frees you up to work on the parts of the business that actually drive growth.
As Neal puts it, “If you’re aiming with a bow and arrow, you have to pull back to launch forward.” The same goes for your business.
2. Filling White Space Just Because It’s There
Once you begin to see fewer clients, you’ll likely find gaps in your calendar. For many bootstrap-minded practice owners, the instinct is to fill that space with team meetings, admin work, or more tasks.
But white space isn’t wasted time—it’s your secret weapon.
Neal emphasizes the importance of protecting unstructured time so you can think strategically, reflect, and plan. That’s how you spot problems before they snowball. That’s how you lead instead of react. Whether it’s a walk around the block or a quiet hour to brainstorm, that white space can lead to your biggest breakthroughs.
3. Getting Caught in the Delegation Trap
“Delegate more” is the default advice for scaling a business, but Neal says it’s incomplete.
Yes, delegation helps. But many practice owners stay stuck as the final decision-maker for everything. Even when tasks are handed off, their mental energy is still tied up in checking, strategizing, and steering.
True growth comes from offloading—when someone else owns the results, the strategy, and the decision-making. That might look like hiring a leadership team or bringing in expert help (like Neal’s team at Practice at Scale), but it always means freeing your brain from being the bottleneck.
Whitney shared how this plays out in her business: “I don’t even have to follow up anymore. Every week I get an email saying the blog is done, here’s the link, here’s the tip—it’s all handled.” That’s the power of offloading.
4. Treating Team Members as Task Managers Instead of Leaders
Delegating tasks is a start—but if that’s all you do, your people will never rise to their full potential.
Neal encourages practice owners to view their team as a leadership incubator, not just a set of hands. When you empower team members to make decisions and take ownership, you don’t just build a stronger business—you build a culture of excellence.
If you treat people like task managers, they’ll clock in, do the bare minimum, and check out. But if you treat them like leaders, they’ll innovate, solve problems, and help drive your vision forward.
5. Avoiding Risk Instead of Embracing Experiments
Finally, Neal highlights a common mindset trap: wanting to know something will work before trying it.
But growth doesn’t come with guarantees.
Too many practice owners overthink themselves into paralysis, afraid to invest unless they know the exact ROI. Neal encourages adopting an experimental mindset. Try things. Test. Learn. Fail forward.
Every decision is an investment—of time, money, or energy—and every investment carries risk. But failure isn’t fatal. It’s often your fastest path to clarity.
TL;DR — How to Scale Without Burning Out
If you’re bootstrapping your private practice, you’re not alone. But Neal’s advice is a wake-up call: what got you here won’t get you there.
To build a thriving, sustainable practice, you’ll need to:
Reclaim your time and energy
Protect your creative space
Offload (not just delegate)
Cultivate leadership on your team
Embrace experimentation
Scaling isn’t about doing more—it’s about doing less of the right things.
Show Sponsor Arc Integrated
This episode is sponsored by Arc Integrated — a company that has truly transformed the way I lead. I’ve personally worked with Arc Integrated, and Michael was my business coach. He helped me restructure my leadership approach, delegate more effectively, and create systems that gave me fewer headaches and more time to focus on what matters. As a result, our team just had our best month yet — and I can confidently say that stepping into real leadership made it happen.
Arc Integrated specializes in helping leaders navigate change with confidence. Through personalized coaching, leadership training, and strategic planning, they help reduce stress, enhance communication, and build emotional intelligence within teams.
Visit arcintegrated.com/coaching to schedule your free leadership consultation. You’ll walk away with tangible strategies to drive the success of your practice.
Neal Samudre’s Resources
Links and Resources
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[00:00:00] Whitney Owens: This episode is sponsored by Arc Integrated, a company that has truly transformed the way I lead. I've personally worked with Arc Integrated and Michael was my business coach. He helped me restructure my leadership approach, delegate more efficiently, and create systems that gave me fewer headaches and more time to focus on what matters.
As a result, my team just had our best month ever, and I can confidently say that stepping into real leadership made it happen. ARC integrated specializes in helping leaders navigate change with confidence Through personalized coaching, leadership training, and strategic planning, they help reduce stress.
Enhance communication and build emotional intelligence within teams. Visit arc integrated.com/coaching. Schedule your free leadership consultation. You will walk away with tangible strategies to drive the success of your practice. Hi, I'm Whitney Owens. I'm a group practice owner and faith-based practice consultant, and I'm here to tell you that you can have it all.
Wanna grow your practice. Wanna grow your faith, wanna enjoy your life outside of work, you've come to the right place. Each week on the Wise Practice Podcast, I will give you the action steps to have a successful faith-based practice while also having a good time. Now let's get started. I.
[00:01:20] Jingle: Where she grows your practice and she don't play.
She does business with a twist of faith. It's Whitney Owen and Wise Practice Podcast, Whitney Owen and Wise Practice
[00:01:35] Whitney Owens: Podcast. Hello friends and welcome back to The Wise Practice Podcast. Where faith meets strategy in helping you grow a sustainable and meaningful private practice. I'm Whitney and I'm so glad you're here in today's episode.
This interview was awesome. Like hit pause and take notes. Kind of awesome. I had the pleasure of interviewing Neil Undre about the five pitfalls of bootstrapped practice owners. Now, when he first told me that he wanted to talk about this, in my mind I was thinking, okay, great. This seems like a good topic.
But you know, we're trying to grow without spending a lot. This is really more for the solo practice owners. Those starting out, this was small group practices and yes it is for you, but it's also so much more. This conversation I. Took a turn that I wasn't even prepared for in a good kinda way. Neil didn't just talk about the early days.
He actually zoomed in more on the mindset traps. So it's not just about saving a dollar here or here's this cool tool that you could use. It was more about our mind and how we can level up as practice owners. So whether you're solo, maybe you're building a team, maybe you have a full-fledged group practice.
Honestly. This podcast interview hit home for me. I saw myself on so many different levels of what he said, especially in areas I'm currently working on in my group practice. But I don't wanna give it all away. You gotta listen to the episode. I. And before we do that, can I just take a moment to tell you how cool it is that I met Neil in person at the Wise Practice Summit last year.
He applied to be a speaker and after I read his application I was like, I have got to meet this guy. That connection has turned into real friendship and eventually I hired practice at scale a few months ago. This is the business that he founded. Their team has seriously leveled up my group practice. It just goes to show you that in-person events aren't just about learning, they're about transformational relationships.
You never know what partnership, idea, or new stream of revenue is gonna come from a conversation with somebody else. And so I want you to get ready for this insightful interview. I want you to consider joining us in Greenville this October for the Wise Practice Summit. And you can meet Neil in person.
But till then, I'm gonna let you meet him on this podcast where he's gonna chat with us about the five pitfalls of bootstrapping it for practice owners.
Hello, hello, and welcome to the Wise Practice Podcast. We have a returned guest with much to give to us today, which is Neil Sare. How are you, Neil?
[00:04:23] Neal Samudre: Doing fantastic. I'm glad to be back on.
[00:04:26] Whitney Owens: Yeah, it's exciting and you have a second child on the way.
[00:04:32] Neal Samudre: I know. By the time this episode airs, she'll probably be here.
[00:04:37] Whitney Owens: Yeah. You'll be like smuggling up and listening to your interview on the Wise Practice podcast.
[00:04:41] Neal Samudre: Oh man, I can't wait.
[00:04:44] Whitney Owens: It's gonna be wonderful. So awesome. Okay, so why don't you, um, tell us a little bit about yourself and then we're gonna jump into talking about pitfalls with bootstrapping. I.
[00:04:54] Neal Samudre: Yes, so my name is Neil and I live right outside of Nashville, Tennessee with my wife, and we have one toddler and one baby girl on the way.
So we can't wait for that. I. But I am the founder of a business called Practice at Scale, where we are pretty much your fractional growth team to helping your practice scale. We do marketing and operations tasks as well, but we wanted to set up a firm that helped practice owners offload as much of their practice growth as possible, put their practice growth on autopilot so they could.
Focus on what they love doing most. And so that's what I do with most of my days. I also have a practice group, practice with my wife and I am the author of a book called Start From Joy. I have my hands in multiple, multiple things, but I, at the end of the day, I love helping practice owners.
[00:05:59] Whitney Owens: Yeah, but does, even though it can be hard to juggle, it's sometimes a lot of fun to have a lot of different things that we're doing.
[00:06:05] Neal Samudre: Oh, there's a reason why I have multiple things I'm doing. It's, I just follow my joy. Mm-hmm. Like I am passionate about entrepreneurs, practice owners, communities. It's all tied together with this singular message of helping improve the joy for change makers and communities. So I feel deep resonance with what I do.
[00:06:27] Whitney Owens: Yeah, totally. Well, when we were jumping on, we were talking about, you know, what topics to discuss, and I love this idea of the five pitfalls of bootstrapping for practice owners. We've all been there.
[00:06:40] Neal Samudre: Oh yeah. So here's where this idea came from, Whitney. I've been talking with so many practice owners who they wanna reach the next level of growth for their private practice, but they still have that bootstrapping mindset.
Which is essential when you're starting, right? You have to bootstrap your growth when you're just starting, but eventually you, you reach this inflection point where if you want to reach the next tier of growth, you have to recognize the pitfalls of that bootstrap mentality and let it go. And so I wanted to expose some of those pitfalls in this conversation.
Does that sound good? That sounds so great. Awesome. Awesome. Well, you could probably relate to this one, Whitney. Number one. The one of the top pitfalls I see with practice owners is that they never make this shift to understanding that their time and energy is more important than their money.
[00:07:44] Whitney Owens: Hmm. Tell me more about that.
[00:07:46] Neal Samudre: In the beginning, you're trying to manage your cash flow and be profitable, and you're making decisions about investments based on money. But after a certain time period, you might take, need to take a few steps back on profitability for a month so that you could take a massive leap forward. That leap forward often comes because you reclaim your time and your energy and you could focus on other parts of the business that you love.
But what I see with a lot of bootstrap practice owners is that they. Never make that shift in their understanding, and they're only looking at the numbers, only looking at the money, and they never ask themselves, what's the return that I'll get with my time, with my peace, with my energy, and how much output could I deliver to the business if I have that reclaimed time and energy.
[00:08:49] Whitney Owens: Mm mm-hmm. You know what I mean? Yes. I, I think that's so important. I see that a lot with practice centers too, you know? And so it'll be like, well, do I have the money to spend on this thing? And I'm like, well, I think you could have the money, but also want you to think more about how would you feel if you weren't doing that thing anymore?
I.
[00:09:11] Neal Samudre: Absolutely. Mm-hmm. Like the, the truth of the matter is you might have like a less profitable month, right? If you invest in some sort of service. But the time and the energy that you would get back and how you invest that back into your business is what will set your business up for success.
[00:09:33] Whitney Owens: Hmm. It is so true.
I, I've actually been thinking about this more recently. Um, I don't know if I told you about this, Neil. I hired a fractional integrator. You did? It sounds amazing. Yeah. And so I had my first meeting yesterday and it's very expensive, but I kinda was like at a point of like, okay, I could keep doing all the things I'm doing and be pretty stressed as things have really grown.
Or I can make this investment and get, you know, get things more organized, have more peace. For me, it was more about peace of mind. Like I could feel less stressed by bringing someone in to implement the things that I just haven't had time to implement. I.
[00:10:13] Neal Samudre: Absolutely. See you're living out this principle.
You know, one thing that I've been reminding a lot of practice owners about lately is that, especially as we are in the summer and many practices are experiencing the summer slump, it's that if you were taking aim at a target with a bow and arrow, you have to pull back in order for that. Arrow to just slingshot forward.
And this applies to business because sometimes we have to be willing to take steps back. Yeah. Like sometimes we shouldn't have that dip in our cashflow because we are investing in something that's just gonna launch us forward. Exactly what you're doing with the fractional integrator.
[00:10:55] Whitney Owens: Mm-hmm. I have always found that I, when I invest in something, usually it's coaching, but even other services, it's usually when I make a big financial investment in something and take a big risk that there's great reward.
[00:11:09] Neal Samudre: Absolutely. Absolutely. So should we move on to the second pitfall?
[00:11:14] Whitney Owens: Yeah.
[00:11:15] Neal Samudre: So second pitfall, filling up your white space on your calendar. So here's the context of this. So many practice owners, when they're bootstrapped, they're still seeing clients and they're doing everything else in their practice.
Mm-hmm. But as you grow the practice and you start to see less and less clients on your calendar. There's still this like tendency with a lot of practice owners where they wanna fill up that white space on their calendar just because they're not seeing clients. They want to fill it up with doing something or meeting with people on the team.
But if you're trying to grow to the next level. You need more white space on your calendar because you need that time to be creative and strategic about your business and the direction where it's going. Do you resonate with that?
[00:12:09] Whitney Owens: Deeply. I'm not good at it.
[00:12:13] Neal Samudre: Exactly. It's something I'm working on who is good at it?
I mean, a lot of entrepreneurs, founders, we start out as doers and it's hard for us to make that shift. Mm-hmm. But this is something that I need to remind myself of often is I need more white space on my calendar so that I can. Go on thinking walks. I do a lot of thinking walks,
[00:12:39] Jingle: uhhuh, where
[00:12:39] Neal Samudre: I'm like strategizing, brainstorming, coming up with new ideas.
I take a lot of voice notes. My team gets a lot of voice messages from me on those walks. But you need more times like that so that you don't end up several months down the road and you're like. Wow. I did not have my eyes on this problem in my business, and I wish I set my business up for success months ago so I wouldn't be in the seat that I am today.
When you don't have white space on your calendar, you're building a very reactive business rather than a proactive business.
[00:13:18] Whitney Owens: Yeah. Well, and I love your example that you just gave, because white space doesn't mean you have to sit. Alone in a chair. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like it could be going on a walk.
I mean, for me, as you know, my Enneagram lover self, um, Enneagram ones do much better out of town. And so even though I'm at Disney World, maybe with my kids running around like crazy, I can get some of my most refreshing moments that way because I'm just not bogged down with being at home and being at work.
You know the responsibility. Yes. But I'll still get great ideas about my business even though I'm literally busy. Probably more tired than I've been in a long time running around at Disney World.
[00:13:57] Neal Samudre: Oh yes. This is something I talk about a lot too, but distance provides clarity. You know, when you're away from your home, away from your normal routine, that's often when I get my best ideas.
I.
[00:14:11] Whitney Owens: Yeah, I just went to Chicago about a month ago with my mastermind group and we, you know, we meet regularly online every week and then we try to get together in person once a year. And we met yesterday and multiple members of the group have had some huge wins since. And I'm just looking at it going, wow, like these were all results of when we met in person and like we didn't talk business the all the time.
We went and did a lot of fun stuff, but it was like we were able to be refreshed and renewed and come up with ideas and talk about 'em, and now they're all coming to fruition. So we made a big investment of going all the way to Chicago, paying for hotels, hotel. But now it's like we're actually making more off of the stuff that came up while we were there.
[00:14:55] Neal Samudre: Exactly. You understand it. So I wanna move on to pitfall number three.
[00:15:00] Jingle: Yeah.
[00:15:01] Neal Samudre: Okay. This one's interesting. It's getting caught in the delegation trap. Now, let me explain this. Most leadership experts say if you wanna grow, you need to delegate more, which is true. Right, but the problem with delegation is that you still own the results.
You still own the thinking, the decision making, the strategy, and you're still accountable to those results. It still takes up the mental load in your brain. And so I see so many practice owners who. They're in this bootstrap mentality and they understand that they need to delegate more, and they're delegating.
They're like managing their admin or practice manager, their intake coordinator, their clinicians, and they're just delegating a bunch of stuff to them, but at the end of the day, it still requires their brain and their mental effort. With that being said, there's a difference between delegation and offloading offloading.
Is when other people are accountable to the decisions, the strategy, the results, it's able to come off of your mental plate so that you can invest that mental energy into another part of the business that you love and that you're more skilled at. You see people who get caught in the delegation trap, they're still holding all the strings, they're still managing everything.
But offloading is when practices scale, and this could look like bringing on a leadership team. It could look like empowering those leaders. It could look like working with different agencies, firms, consultants, where they're able to take. Both tasks and all the decision making guesswork strategy off your plate.
It can look like so many different things, but you have to shift from just delegating where you still hold all the strings to more offloading.
[00:17:15] Whitney Owens: Mm-hmm. Again, that one resonates.
[00:17:19] Neal Samudre: Yeah. You've done this in your practice.
[00:17:21] Whitney Owens: I was literally thinking about this this morning when I was getting outta my car at work and I was thinking about someone I needed to follow up with.
I was like, oh, if only everybody could be like this other person. I was thinking about my clinical manager, who's excellent and really does follow up so well with everything. I never have to wonder if he followed up
[00:17:41] Neal Samudre: exactly
[00:17:42] Whitney Owens: because I see that he does it. And so I have gotten to a point where once I give him something, it's gone.
But there's some other people that I'm like, I gotta follow up with them and make sure they did their job. And it gets so
[00:17:53] Neal Samudre: old. You have to tell them what to do. You know, and if you have, if you build a culture where you have to tell people what to do in order for them to do something, that, that's a bottleneck, that practice is not gonna scale because it's still dependent on your brain.
And this is why we need to shift to offloading, empowering leaders, getting those A players who can take something, uh, without you having to think about it and run with it.
[00:18:25] Whitney Owens: Well, not that we're here to do a commercial, but this is, honestly, you didn't know I was gonna say this, but I work with practice at scale and I would say that is one of the best things for me about it is I don't have to do anything and I now have the like assurance now that it's gone for a couple of months, I'm like.
Know that it's gonna happen, like I'm gonna get an email. I think it's, I was just telling somebody else about this. I think it's every Monday, maybe Tuesday. Monday or Tuesday. Yep. I'm always gonna get an email from Caleb and it's gonna say, you know, this is the blog that was done. Here's the link to go look at it.
It makes it so easy that I can link to the workbook. Here's the work we've done. Here are a few tips. Have a great week, so I know I'm gonna get the email. I know the blog's gonna be written. I don't have to follow up and sometimes. I guess I maybe would go back and make sure the place did the work I've hired them to do, but because I get the email, I don't even have to do that.
Exactly. It's already right there. They are doing the follow up and telling me that they did it. You know, I love that. And so like my practice is leveling up and I, you know, I've put a lot of money into SEO and all that work. It's making a big difference. And I don't have to write the blog. I don't have to learn.
SEO, it's just done right there for me. Exactly.
[00:19:44] Neal Samudre: Perfect example of offloading. Mm-hmm. And that, it's funny that you say that because every client that we have says the same thing, that the biggest gift of working with us. Is that they get to offload practice growth so that they could focus on stuff like team leadership, clinical care, and that's was our goal.
When we started practice at scale, we were like, how can we help practice owners offload as much as possible so that the practice truly scales? Like, you don't have to handhold us, you don't have to micromanage us. It's, we know what to do, we execute on it, and we do it on autopilot.
[00:20:22] Whitney Owens: Yeah, definitely.
[00:20:25] Neal Samudre: So wanna move on number four.
Yes, so, and I'm gonna land the plane here soon. I have five, but they kind of tie in with each other. Number four is viewing your people as task managers instead of leaders. And this relates with number three of getting caught in the delegation trap, but practice owners who are bootstrapping. They get caught in that level one of delegation where level one of delegation is where you're just delegating labor and level two is what offloading is.
It's where you delegate decision making. That's when you have leaders and other people who own stuff for you. But when you're caught delegating labor, sometimes practice owners who come from this bootstrap being background, they never move beyond seeing people as just. Labor and task managers and seeing them as leaders instead.
And what that ends up doing is, number one, it limits their potential 'cause they could have leadership potential in them. But number two, it still puts you in the driver's seat. You have to be the one who drives the growth of the organization. And it also, uh, breeds this. Clock in, clock out culture instead of the one that just raises the standard.
'cause if you view people as task managers, then people are gonna come in, they're gonna do their work and they're gonna go home and that's it. You know, but if you choose to view your practice and your people on your team as a leadership incubator, like your practice is a leadership incubator, you know the people on your team are leaders in their own way.
Yeah. If you can cultivate that in people that now you have this culture that's constantly raising the standards and you have people who are not just clocking in, clocking out, but they're thinking about how can we improve the practice? How can we we improve our clinical KPIs? How can we move the ball down the field here?
Yeah. Do you know what I
[00:22:48] Whitney Owens: mean? Yeah, definitely. I've actually been thinking about this topic too, so, so I was thinking like when you're new and you hire an intake person, it's not just about answer the phone, get people scheduled, you're teaching them. How to take over the intake area. You know how to be, how to think about things like, you know, we're going back to our intake person and saying, Hey, look at these calls and tell us why you think these people aren't turning over.
What can we do differently? Instead of us just being like, do this, do this, do this. We're empowering that person to take that ownership. Right? Yeah. And would we empower our therapist or whoever works for us to take ownership? They're actually becoming a part. Of almost owning who we are. They're bought into the culture.
They love who you are, and so you're actually retaining people longer, having a better company culture when we do give them those leadership responsibilities. Absolutely. And you know, I.
[00:23:48] Neal Samudre: I was talking about the practice owner the other day, and this is just a good example of this in action, but they've totally adopted this shift, like they view everyone on their team as leaders.
And so they set up this, I think it's weekly or biweekly training, and they call it leadership lab. Okay. And they are pouring into the personal development of their team. It's optional, but if you want to grow into this leadership position in the practice, you have to attend these leadership labs. And I love this idea.
They're viewing their people in the right way and they're giving them the opportunity to rise to the opportunity. Mm-hmm. Or rise to their potential.
[00:24:33] Whitney Owens: Yeah. Yeah, and, and I think what I found fascinating about our conversation today is like, with all these things. That you're bringing up, they're deeper level concepts and they actually apply when you're starting.
Yep. All the way up. Like, and no matter how big you are, because everything you're saying to me now are all things that I'm still working on. And I have a la a large group practice, you know, so, so I love, I love that we're constantly learning. We're constantly learning how to create leaders, how to give away more, how to trust people more as well.
[00:25:04] Neal Samudre: Absolutely. Should we move to the final one?
[00:25:07] Jingle: Hmm.
[00:25:08] Neal Samudre: Okay. Final one. Not having an experimental mindset.
[00:25:13] Jingle: Hmm. A
[00:25:14] Neal Samudre: mindset that's like, let's just try it. Let's try it. I've talked to so many bootstrap to practice owners who overthink everything to death, you know, and I, I'm kind of like that too, where I really want to have.
The data going into something and think something through before moving forward. But I'm trying to adopt more of this experimental mindset where I might fail. Like if I invest something, it might be a quote unquote failure. Mm-hmm. But. It moves my practice forward because I always learn, I always get the data right, and there's just too many practice owners who wanna know where they're gonna land before they take the leap, right?
They want to know what the outcome is going to be before they try something, and nothing is guaranteed there. Everything is an investment. If you. Learn from it. You just have to understand that like failure, quote unquote failure is not fatal. And it's definitely not bad if you learn from, uh, what you did.
Mm-hmm. But you have to have an experimental mindset if you're gonna grow.
[00:26:39] Whitney Owens: That's right. I, I agree. Everything's an experiment in our business and we're collecting the data to see if it works or not.
[00:26:45] Neal Samudre: It's kind of. Exactly like a lot of practice owners who have that bootstrapping background, they wanna know the answer before they go into something.
And I mean, I, I don't think this just applies to practice owners. This is a lot of people, right? Yeah. But you're never gonna know the answer before you try something. And at the end of the day. You just have to have a good enough gut sense to say, let's try it. If it doesn't work, then we have the data.
Mm-hmm. If it does work, then this is really gonna set our practice up for growth.
[00:27:25] Whitney Owens: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well I have a dear friend who has tried many ideas lately that haven't been working out, and he was feeling pretty discouraged and he was like, okay, I'm gonna try this other thing, and it worked. Then he filled up something in 12 days and you know, is making a lot of money.
And it's like, yeah. For all the things that didn't work, you were figuring out what you needed to do that was gonna work.
[00:27:49] Neal Samudre: Exactly. And without an experimental mindset, you would've never landed on that one thing.
[00:27:54] Whitney Owens: Mm-hmm. It's all about open mind and curiosity about what we do.
[00:27:58] Neal Samudre: Yes, yes. I think I'm more open to having an experimental mindset because of all my studies on joy.
Hmm. I think an experimental mindset of let's just try it, is critical for having a mindset and a posture of joy because it's fear and anxiety that will really. Hold you back if you just keep listening to that voice.
[00:28:26] Whitney Owens: Mm-hmm. So that brings me back to my very first conference that I hosted. Tell me about it.
Yeah. And I remember being like, I really wanna bring people together, just Christian, Christian business owners, you know, and be able to talk about faith and the way we run our business. But I was scared to death. Yeah, like, is anyone gonna sign up and I gotta make this investment into these hotels? And you make the investment not knowing if you're gonna get the money back.
It could be a huge flop, but every year I. People come and people are excited, and I'm like, what if I had never done that? Like, and I, I hear stories like, hey, it was at the summit that I decided to start a group practice and now I have three therapists. Or it was at the summit that I met this person that's now my accountability prayer partner that I reach out to every other week and my business.
And like, if the summit hadn't been created, these things would've never happened. If I had been like, oh, I'm not even gonna try this. It's too much risk, it's too much fear. I wouldn't have had something great.
[00:29:28] Neal Samudre: There you go. Yes. That's a perfect example of an experimental mindset because you went and tried it.
Now look where we are.
[00:29:38] Whitney Owens: Oh no.
[00:29:39] Neal Samudre: Perfect.
[00:29:39] Whitney Owens: So speaking of the summit, you're gonna be there with us. Oh yes. I'm a sponsor. That's right, that's right. So could you talk a little bit about practice at scale and what you do and how you're involved at the summit?
[00:29:54] Neal Samudre: Yes. So I am a gold level partner. Mm-hmm. I got that, like elite status there.
Uh, but at practice, at scale, we really want to help practice owners put their growth on autopilot and. The idea for this came from my background. I was a former CMO Chief Marketing officer before we started our practice, and I was really helping lead the charge of these eight figure brands, helping them scale, come up with marketing strategies.
And after I left my last CMO gig, I didn't really know what I wanted to do and I looked to my wife. Who's a mental health therapist, and I was like, we should start a group practice. You know, I know the marketing and operations side of things. You know the clinical side, you're the clinical director, I'm the marketing and growth person.
And that turned out being one of the best ideas ever because we grew really fast and we were super systematized. We had all of our SOPs, everything was organized. Uh. The other day, like my practice or my wife just onboarded a new clinician inside the practice or two new clinicians. We hired like two at a time and they were like, man, the way that your practice runs, I.
It's so different. It's so systematized, it's so clear, it's so supportive, and we just love what we built. But in doing that, I looked around and I saw so many other practice owners didn't have what we have because there were so many practice owners who were doing everything themselves. They were that bootstrap practice owner.
Who was spread super thin. They were wearing the marketer hat, the CEO hat, COO hat. They were doing everything. Whereas our practice grew so fast because my wife was able to offload marketing and growth to me while she focused on clinical care and team leadership. It was because of that that we both.
Stayed in our zone of geniuses and were able to grow the business. And so I wanted to build a firm that offered this to other practice owners is like, Hey, offload your growth to us and we know. What marketing strategy to customize to help your practice reach the next level. We know what operational things that need to be in place to build up a good foundation for scale in your practice, and we're going to help you with those things.
We're gonna be that done for you. Growth team. We're gonna handle your Google ads, your SEO, your um. We have tools and SOPs around different marketing and operational items, all the supplementary things outside of SEO and ads, and we customize these things for you because no practice is the same. Every practice is different and everyone is in a different area where one strategy might not work, but another strategy will.
And so we'll double down. Uh, on that strategy. And so basically we are your fractional done for you growth team, that scaling partner that helps you reach the next level. And so if you're a practice owner who wants to reach that next level of practice growth, uh, and you really do want to offload. More things.
Then you can find me@practiceatscale.co, and we can jump on a call. I can look at your SEO, your ads, what you have going on, give you a nice audit around it, and customize a plan to help you reach the next level.
[00:34:01] Whitney Owens: That's great. Love it. Love your story too. And uh, I do see this as being like a sweet spot for you in the way you work with practice owners.
[00:34:11] Neal Samudre: Absolutely. It is awesome that I have a practice, so in doing this work, I know what works for practices, whereas a lot of practice owners, they work with agencies and firms who. Don't have a practice. They're not practice owners. They're like marketers or other people, you know? So I, I love having that background.
[00:34:36] Whitney Owens: I hear you on that. And, and the therapy world is just different than other businesses. It really is. Hmm, definitely. You know, as you were talking, I was just thinking, gosh, if I hadn't started Summit, I wouldn't have met you either. I know, right? And it was through last year's event and you applying, I didn't know who you were, but I thought your application was awesome.
And I was like, I gotta meet this guy. And you were a keynote and now I work with your company. And I just think that speaks to the importance as for taking risks For sure. And also going to in-person events like that is where we really truly connect, make new, like we make the connections, new business ideas, and we partner with people that can help us level up.
[00:35:19] Neal Samudre: Exactly. I believe practice owners really do need to make an effort to show up to events because I feel like there's so much of a danger in this space where. People get caught in a bubble where they're just only operating with their practice. They never meet other practice owners who've been there, done that.
And that's a risk to your business, especially if you want to grow that business, because if you're not exposed to other people who can speak into your business or people who had experience, then you're just stuck with your perspective, which will eventually become a bottleneck.
[00:35:59] Whitney Owens: Yeah, so I have attended three conferences in the past five weeks.
Oh, I know. And so I'm just sitting here thinking, okay, the first one was when I went to group practice at scale. Wait, I just said that wrong. Oh my gosh. I just put
[00:36:18] Neal Samudre: scaling
[00:36:19] Whitney Owens: and your practice all in one. Here, there's your name for your conference when you're ready. The group Practice scaling Summit. Yeah.
And yeah, and it was like through those connections, I actually have made more business. Through that. And then I went to the LPCA, that's like the local conference for the state of Georgia. I had people sign up immediately for my membership community, had some great conversations, inspired some people, and that was really cool.
And then I went to my husband's method, the Methodist church conference, not thinking that would really do anything. But the guy in front of, like, for my business necessarily, I love going to the conference and supporting the work of the church. But anyway, the kid, guy in front of me turns around and goes, oh, you're a therapist.
Can I schedule right now? I literally pulled out my laptop and scheduled him on the spot with one of my therapists, and I was like, oh my gosh, just by me being here, I just made business and I wasn't even trying to. So I think there's something so powerful about our presence. Absolutely.
[00:37:15] Jingle: All three of 'em.
[00:37:18] Neal Samudre: It's crazy, man. I am very excited to be at the summit this year, and in fact, that's like. The only like therapy conference event I'm going to this year because obviously baby, but also it's like I can't miss it. It's not good.
[00:37:40] Whitney Owens: Aw, thank you. Well, I try and it's gonna be great. So we're gonna be in Greenville, South Carolina at the Grand Bohemian Hotel, right on the river, woo, October 9th through the 11th.
So if you're listening and you're like, dang, I need to connect with people and I wanna meet Neil, you can just go to the table and pick his brain and talk to him in person. So get a ticket@wisepracticeconsulting.com. You can click Summit and get your tickets and learn more about it.
[00:38:07] Neal Samudre: Awesome.
[00:38:09] Whitney Owens: Well, thank you so much for coming on the show and I look forward to giving you a big hug when I get to see you in person in a few months.
[00:38:15] Neal Samudre: Man, I can't wait. Thanks for having me on.
[00:38:20] Jingle: So click on follow and leave a review and keep on loving this work we do with Whitney Owens and The Wise Practice Podcast, Whitney Owens and The Wise
[00:38:34] Whitney Owens: Practice Podcast. Special thanks to Marty Altman for the music in this podcast. The Wise Practice Podcast is part of the Site Craft Podcast Network. A collaboration of independent podcasters focused on helping people live more meaningful and productive lives.
To learn more about the other amazing podcasts in the network, head on over to site craft network.com. The Wise Practice podcast represents the opinions of Whitney Owens and her guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only, and the content should not be taken as legal advice. If you have legal questions, please consult an attorney.
