WP 30 | How to Gain More Office Space with Alison Pidgeon
Welcome to the Wise Practice Podcast! In this episode, Whitney Owens interviews Alison Pidgeon, an expert in group practice and business ownership. They discuss the topic of expanding office space and the considerations that come with it. Alison shares valuable insights and tips based on her experience as a group practice owner with multiple locations.
Maximizing Existing Office Space
Many therapists overlook the potential of maximizing their current office space before considering expansion. Alison suggests sharing offices between two to three therapists to ensure optimal usage. She explains, "We have like two to three people share an office so that way it's in use like, you know, 10 to 12 hours a day... So if you're not doing that and you're thinking, oh, we need more space, like, that's definitely one way to get more client sessions in without taking on more rent." Additionally, with the increasing popularity of telehealth, therapists can work from home part of the time, reducing the need for additional office space.
Sharing office space might raise concerns among therapists, but Alison assures that setting clear expectations from the beginning can mitigate any issues. By pairing therapists with opposite schedules, they can use the same office consistently. This approach eliminates the need for complex scheduling and provides therapists with a sense of stability.
Expansion Considerations
Before considering expansion, it's essential to assess your practice's goals and culture. Alison emphasizes the importance of maintaining a positive culture while growing. She states, "I don't wanna grow just for the sake of growing... If it's gonna impact our culture in a negative way, then I don't wanna do it." Growth should be a means to enhance the well-being of both staff and clients.
However, expansion requires careful planning and preparation. Building robust systems and processes, as well as assembling a competent team, is crucial. Alison shares her own experience of outgrowing certain systems and realizing the need for a more efficient phone system. She also highlights the significance of hiring administrative staff before therapists to prevent burnout and ensure smooth operations.
As the practice expands to a considerable size, it becomes necessary to establish a leadership team. Alison advises, "Once you start to get up to like 18 or 20 therapists, you start, you need to build out like a leadership team... You just can't sustain wearing all the hats anymore." By delegating responsibilities and empowering team members, the practice can thrive and provide growth opportunities for its employees.
Logistics of Expansion
Alison shares her own expansion journey, starting with a single location in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She later expanded to the Hershey area and subsequently to Pittsburgh. While she initially rented office spaces, Alison's long-term goal was to own the buildings housing her practice. She advises considering individual goals and preferences when deciding between renting and buying.
Renting can be a suitable choice when entering a new market to ensure the practice gains traction before committing to a purchase. Once the business is established, owning the building offers financial benefits and stability. Alison's real estate background influenced her decision to own the buildings, believing it to be a wise investment strategy.
Conclusion
Expanding office space requires a careful balance between meeting the needs of therapists and clients while preserving the practice's culture. By maximizing existing office space and implementing efficient systems, therapists can serve more clients without immediately requiring additional locations. When expansion becomes viable, it's crucial to consider leadership development and hire administrative staff before therapists to maintain a healthy work environment. By carefully planning and making strategic decisions, therapists can successfully grow their practice.
Resources
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WP 30 | How to Gain More Office Space with Alison Pidgeon
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Whitney Owens: Hello and welcome to the Wise Practice Podcast. I'm looking forward to my interview today. I'll be speaking with Alison Pigeon, who is a rockstar when it comes to group practice and owning businesses, locations, all the things. So I'm looking forward to learning from her today. Um, but before we get started, I don't know what I was gonna say.
I just lost my train of thought, so we're just gonna keep going. All right. I get excited. Okay, so lemme tell you a little bit about Allison. Um, and then we'll start talking about, um, all the fun things we're gonna talk about. So in case you haven't met her, she is a dear friend of mine and located in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, um, with her husband and three rambunctious and fun boys.
Um, so she's a mama and a group practice owner. She has four locations with move forward counseling, um, the first being a Lancaster and a couple of other different locations throughout Pennsylvania that we'll talk about in the episode today. Alison also has been just a business owner of many businesses, sold several businesses, continues to make businesses, and is living the dream.
So thank you, Alison, for coming
Alison Pidgeon: on the show today. Thanks for having me. It's always fun to talk to
Whitney Owens: you. Yes. Wonderful. Well, great. Is there anything about your bio that you wanted to mention that, uh, left out or about your story?
Alison Pidgeon: No, I think we'll get into it in the interview, so yeah.
Whitney Owens: Wonderful. Yeah. I think the other thing I didn't mention was I think you have what, 50 plus employees within your
Alison Pidgeon: group practice?
Yes. Yeah. We have just over 50 employees now.
Whitney Owens: Awesome. Yeah. Wonderful. Well, I am looking forward to talking about this idea of expansion. It's something that I personally am thinking about, so I always love interviewing people and asking all my questions. Um, but also it's a question that we get a lot as consultants and understanding, um, our space and then thinking through is it good to expand?
Why should I expand? How many locations should I have? So maybe we should kind of start with the basics, um, because I see a lot of times that people don't really maximize the space they have first. Like I think they start thinking I need multiple offices. Even someone who has just started a group practice or about to start, they'll even talk about getting more office space.
So what are some of the like tips or thoughts that you have for first people thinking about office space and
Alison Pidgeon: expansion? Yeah, that's actually a very common thing that people don't utilize their office space, um, to, you know, the best of its ability. So we have like two to three people share an office so that way it's in use like, you know, 10 to 12 hours a day.
Um, so if you're not doing that and you're thinking, oh, we need more space, like, that's definitely one way to get more. Client sessions in without taking on more rent. Um, and I think too, depending on the area that you live in, People like here in Pennsylvania, people are still willing to do telehealth. Um, and we probably have like 50% wanna do telehealth and 50% wanna be seen in person.
So that is obviously a big, um, savings in terms of not needing as much office space because, um, therapists are working from home. So that's another way that we really like maximize the actual physical space that we have because even if people are working in the office, usually part of the time they're working from home.
Yeah. Well, I'm gonna
Whitney Owens: go right back to what you first said. You're using one office for two to three therapists. I think a lot of therapists as business owners think, oh no, I can't do that to people. They're not gonna like that or, and so what do you have to say about that? Do you think your therapists enjoy sharing the office space?
And then can you talk about the logistics of how you make that work? I don't know
Alison Pidgeon: if they enjoy it, but that's the way it's always been. Um, So, yeah, it's just an expectation that's set from the beginning. Like, this is not your personal office, like you're gonna be sharing it. And uh, what we've done that works really well is we'll pair up two to three people who are kind of working opposite schedules.
And so they know that they're always gonna be using that office, um, and they can put some of their stuff in there. Um, And if they need to figure out, you know, moving their schedule around because maybe they have a personal appointment or something, then they have to work it out with their office mate.
So it's worked out really well because, um, it leaves us out of like having to like manage office schedules and all of that kind of stuff. And people feel like, okay, I, I do have an office. It's may not be exclusively mine, but I know I'm like gonna be in the same spot every single time. Yeah.
Whitney Owens: That does bring comfort to people for sure.
And your admin, when they pick intake calls, they schedule first time appointments for the therapist, correct? Correct. Yep. Yeah, that's great. I know this is something we had been talking about because I was having some issues with my space and was thinking about expansion. Um, and I hadn't updated you on this part, but I ran some numbers last week and, and everyone felt like there wasn't any space.
But then when it boiled down to it, it's like, we've got room for over 500 sessions a week and we were doing 190. Yeah. And I was like, what? Like, this is ridiculous. So we actually did move to a block schedule, um, that's gonna go into effect in a few weeks. And, you know, they were a little upset about it, but then we kind of talked about, I created some flexibility within it, like how much of the space you have to use and you can pick your blocks and all this.
So, um, but I'm feeling good about it cuz it's gonna open up the ability to bring on more therapists, which is so important. So you're right. I mean, we can maximize that space a lot better than people realize. And it does set that kind of culture and tone for how we're gonna use our resources and we're not just gonna blow money away, you know, we're gonna serve as any clients as we can with what we have.
Right. Um, okay. And so, What would you say is kind of the first, maybe you're totally using your space or, well, I guess I really should be asking, are there situations you should think about expansion before you're maximizing the space you have?
Alison Pidgeon: Um, I think if you wanna move into like a totally different area where you're gonna attract a different population of people who wouldn't drive to the existing office.
So like we have an office that's an hour and a half away from our original office, so obviously, you know, people aren't gonna drive an hour and a half to come. To like a stir to go to therapy. So yeah, it makes sense to start a new office there. Mm-hmm.
Whitney Owens: Yeah. Okay. So you started in Lancaster, and how many offices do you have there?
Alison Pidgeon: Uh, we just have one.
Whitney Owens: Okay, and how many like offices? Oh, actual offices in the space? Yeah. Four. Just four. Four. Ah, okay. How many therapists?
Alison Pidgeon: We've about 12.
Whitney Owens: Okay. And then when did you move to the second location and where did you go and tell us that about that. Yeah,
Alison Pidgeon: so, so we knew we wanted to be in the Hershey area, which is like the next county up from us and is closer to Harrisburg, which is like the state capital.
So there's a bigger population there. Um, It took us a long time to find something that was suitable. I wanted to buy something. When you wanna buy something, it always takes longer. Um, so we ended up subleasing an office space, um, just to kind of get started up there. Um, I think it was back in August or September.
Um, and now since then, I found a, a office building to buy and it's being renovated, so I. Bought it, um, the beginning of February and he'll be ready in like April or May. Yeah. Um, so we'll have like eight offices up there now. Um, and then actually around the same time, I found a really good office space out in the Pittsburgh area, which we had planned to expand to.
Um, and I was looking for space for a while and then we finally found something that was, um, pretty much all ready to go. So that's, you know, best case scenario when you don't have to build out anything. Um, So that actually opened up like within two weeks of when we opened up Hershey. And that was not like, I think that's one of the things about expansion is that you always have like, you know, I set goals and make plans and I'm like, okay, we need to make sure we're like staggering out, like opening these offices or hiring people or whatever.
And then it always seems like it ends up all happening at the same time.
Whitney Owens: So is life. Yep. So I love hearing how you did this, um, differently in the sense of one of 'em you rented space. When you said August, you meant August, September, 2022. Is that correct? Yes. Yes. Okay. And so you rented for sounds like about four months, five months, and then, you know, and then purchased and the other one you went straight up and purchased.
And do you have any advice as to going one way or the other on that?
Alison Pidgeon: I really think it depends what your goals are for your practice. So for me, I've always liked real estate and if you know what you're doing, real estate can be a great way to build wealth, to save retirement. Um, and it's just, it's kind of a no-brainer to me because you need space for your business.
So why not own the building instead of just paying a landlord? So, um, I think my. My strategy now is to go into place, like if we're going to move into a different city or a different part of the state, like initially rent and to sort of make sure that the business is gonna get established and it's gonna take off.
And then, um, once it feels pretty solid in that location, then I would start looking for a place to buy.
Whitney Owens: Yeah. So what made you decide to expand? What are some things to consider? When you have just one location, you're thinking about more. Yeah. I think for
Alison Pidgeon: me it's like, The, you know, the staff is happy, the clients are happy.
I know we're doing really good work. Like who wouldn't want more of that, right? Mm-hmm. But I think on balance though, you have to make sure, um, your culture stays intact, which can be challenging as you get bigger, especially if you grow quickly. Um, so I don't wanna grow just for the sake of growing, um, like.
If it's gonna impact our culture in a negative way, then I don't wanna do it. Um, but that hasn't happened yet. Um, and I think for me personally, it's like, like I just wanna see if I can do it. Like, you know how some people are like, I just wanna like run a marathon to see if I can do it. Yeah. Not that I would ever wanna run a marathon, but, um, I understand there's some people who do and, um, Yeah, I just kind of wanna keep growing the business just to see if I can do it.
Yeah.
Whitney Owens: All great reasons to be thinking about any, um, considerations when someone's thinking about expansion that they should be like worried about, like, Hmm, you might not be ready for ex expanding if these things are in place?
Alison Pidgeon: Yeah, I think it's always about. You know, systems and processes and having a really good team built out and having, um, a good structure built out to handle the growth.
Like, so I think that's a mistake that I made that, cuz I had never done this before. I just thought like, oh well, you know, we have this phone system, let's say, and it, you know, it works for us and never imagined like maybe one day we would outgrow it, but we did. So then we needed a new phone system. Um, and just a lot like that was a lot of last year, um, just realizing we had outgrown things and needing to switch.
Systems around. And then, um, also realizing a, a big lesson for me was hiring the admin staff ahead of hiring the therapists. Um, because we did it the other way around and the admin staff got really burned out and we had some turnover. Mm-hmm. And it just wasn't a good situation. So, um, yeah. So we're like over leveraged on admin staff knowing that.
We're gonna be bringing on more therapists, um, and really closely monitoring like the ratio. Um, and then also I think once you get to, once you start to get up to like 18 or 20 therapists, you start, you need to build out like a leadership team. You can't kind of do everything yourself anymore. So that's the other part, like you may have been running it yourself and been kind of, Wearing all the hats, but then once you grow to a certain size, you just can't, you just can't sustain that anymore.
So you need to start hiring other people to manage the practice for you. Yeah, I mean, I
Whitney Owens: think that's great too because people are wanting more leadership roles sometimes within your practice, and so it keeps them around, you know, they feel like they're doing something important by running a location.
Alison Pidgeon: Yes, for sure. Mm-hmm.
Whitney Owens: So logistically, when you started adding locations, did you, you know, you're talking about your admin staff, were the calls still coming through the same phone number or did you have separate phone numbers, separate websites, or was everything
Alison Pidgeon: together? Yeah, that was another like learning curve for us.
So I started out doing separate websites and we were thinking, oh, maybe we should have separate phone numbers. And then we just realized what a logistical nightmare that is to like, maintain separate websites and then, um, have different phone numbers and what happens if they call the wrong office and da da da, you know?
So like we just decided that we were gonna have one website. And that's actually what we did last year. We like rebranded and got a new U R L and we have just one website now and we have one main phone number. So if people call in to schedule, there's just, you know, the whole team of schedulers answers the phone and Ken schedule for any location.
Whitney Owens: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. And then you said you have a fourth location. What is the fourth one?
Alison Pidgeon: Yeah, so we have Lancaster, Hershey, Pittsburgh, and then we just opened up, um, an office in the Lehigh Valley, like. A couple weeks ago.
Whitney Owens: Yeah. You're gonna have to tell me where that is.
Alison Pidgeon: Yeah. So that's near Allentown. Oh yeah.
Um, so it's like north, uh, northeast of here, about an hour and a half away from where I am in central pa.
Whitney Owens: Mm-hmm. Okay. So talk some about the hiring process. You, you kind of said one of your mistakes was hiring therapist before admin, so mm-hmm. I got that one down. Um, but what are some other considerations when you're hiring therapists at each location?
Alison Pidgeon: Yeah, so, What we did, which I think was good, was we hired staff way ahead of actually having a physical location. Um, so that way when we actually did have a physical location, we had staff to start in there and it wasn't like we had this location we were paying rent for and no staff to work in it. Um, So the only kind of caveat to that though is that if you don't know exactly where you're gonna have your physical office space, it can be hard in the hiring process cuz people wanna know like, well, where am I gonna need to commute to?
Mm-hmm. And you can't exactly tell them. Um, but for the most part, it's worked out pretty well. Um, so for us in the hiring process, really it's about, um, making sure we hire people who align with our values and, um, obviously figuring out if you know their location and our next location is a match and all of that kind of stuff.
So, I'm not sure if you have. Other questions about that in particular, but I feel like I didn't
Whitney Owens: answer. Yeah, so do you have them, um, commute to one of your offices in person or you have 'em do virtual with people that are in that town that they plan to have an office in, or how do you go about that? So we
Alison Pidgeon: give them the option basically, but we essentially want.
If they wanna work in a physical office, they have to at least do that part of the time. They can do hybrid part of the time if they want, but they have to commit to working in the office part of the time because they're all on teams based on their location or if they do telehealth. Um, so yeah, that's how we figured that out.
Whitney Owens: Mm-hmm. So if you were to hire someone, let's say for Allentown before you had the location, would they come to Lancaster or Hershey or Pittsburgh in advance and work at those offices to kind of get the experience or not? No, they just do.
Alison Pidgeon: They just do telehealth until the office is ready. Okay.
Whitney Owens: Okay, great.
Um, any other considerations that I haven't asked about when we're talking about it
Alison Pidgeon: in terms of hiring
Whitney Owens: therapists? Just in terms of expansion? Something I haven't asked. Yeah,
Alison Pidgeon: I think that, um, something that I recommend to people, um, if you're familiar with, it's a book called Traction. Mm-hmm. And now I can't remember off the top of my head who wrote it, but, um, I think there's a.
A book in that series called like Rocket Fuel and it talks about, um, people who are visionaries and people who are integrators. Yes. So if you think about a c e o as a visionary, and then like the c o o, the operations person is the integrator. Um, There's a quiz you can take online. And so I would highly recommend that, you know, if you're looking at growing and adding to your team, like taking that quiz and figuring out like who you are, because I think that can determine a lot of your, um, not only your happiness, but also what your, you know, you wanna use your strengths in the business, right?
So like mm-hmm. I thought I was a, a. Pretty good integrator and I think I am, but I think my visionary skills are, um, Better than my integrator skills. So I hired somebody to be an operations person and so we're very much like Ying and Yang. Like she does all the stuff I hate doing and she loves it. And, um, so ho honestly, I think that's been the, the big reason why we've grown so much and we've, um, done so well is just because, um, we have that.
Dynamic and I'm able to do my visionary stuff and she does the operation stuff.
Whitney Owens: Yeah, that is super helpful. Um, I'll have to take those quizzes. And so do you feel like your workload has picked up significantly with the added locations, or do you feel like because the systems and process are already going, it's, it's kind of what it is.
Alison Pidgeon: I think anytime we expand, um, it is quite a bit more work because I am still, and part of this is because I like doing this, but I'm still the one who's like physically going and like setting up the office and like I. Arranging the furniture and hanging the pictures on the walls and all that kind of stuff.
Um, and then there's just a lot of logistics around like, oh, we gotta get the internet set up. And like, I'm actually in the process right now of like making a document with my team that basically outlines like, these are all the things that we have to do when we open a new office. So that way it's just like rinse and repeat in the future.
Um, So, yeah, I'm still pretty involved in that process, but once that calms down, um, it, there's definitely, yeah. Less, less work to do. Yeah.
Whitney Owens: I love that example and kind of how you're writing it out. It, it makes me think about when you first start hiring therapists, like we're so involved in that process, but once we've done it enough times and we write it all out, we can hand it off to someone else to do the hiring and then we walk, walk in and go, oh, new therapist, you know?
Yep, yep. Definitely. Um, okay. And so sometimes what I see is, Group practices that have multiple locations in the same city. And I, when I say city, I mean maybe the actual city or the suburbs of the city, you know, not like an hour away. Just curious if you had any thoughts about that, cuz it sounds like you kind of went a different direction.
Um, but it sounds like people do both.
Alison Pidgeon: Yeah, so I think it depends on where you live and you know, if you live in a big city and there's tons of traffic and you have locations, you know, 10 miles apart, but it would take you an hour to get from one to the other then like, that makes perfect sense to me. Um, I actually had multiple locations in the same area, um, pre pandemic, and then I realized that.
Probably the best strategy going forward was to have physical locations spread out more, and then having them close to areas in the state where there was, um, like more population and then allowing the kind of the telehealth. So we have a couple telehealth teams, just allowing them to kind of cover the more rural parts of Pennsylvania.
Um, And also something I looked at too was, um, how reimbursement rates kind of, um, stacked up against cost of living. So essentially everywhere outside of Philadelphia, the cost of living and the reimbursement rates, uh, match up pretty well. And then in Philadelphia, they do not, so the insurance pays lower and the cost of living is much higher.
So for that reason, I will probably never go into the Philadelphia market, um, because it just doesn't make sense to have an insurance based practice there. So those are just the kinds of things that you might wanna look at and do some market research around. Um, but that's how we ended up going into like Pittsburgh and Allentown because they were high population areas.
And the um, cost of living is about the same as it is or less than it is here in where I am in Lancaster.
Whitney Owens: Yeah, so I'm kind of hearing, looking at where there are people that have a need, um, populated areas as opposed to areas that even though there's a need for therapy, the population is lower, so you might not be able to sustain clients.
Is that kind of what I'm hearing?
Alison Pidgeon: Yeah. Or like if you went into a really small town, you know, maybe you only need one office and is it really worth paying all the expenses for one office? Would it makes much more sense to, you know, have an have an office with six. Therapy spaces and you know, cuz there's just those one time expenses that you're gonna pay for no matter if you have one office or 10.
Right? Like the internet's still gonna cost the same amount and all of that kind of stuff. So I think it makes more sense to have larger offices further apart than it does to have a bunch of small offices that are maybe closer together or in more like rural areas. Mm-hmm.
Whitney Owens: Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about buying a building.
I know we probably could do a whole episode on buying a building, but I think it goes into this as we're thinking through that. So it sounds like the best investment is to buy because like you said, I mean, I loved all your points about saving for retirement and just having that financial stability with that.
Um, so how does someone go about buying a building? I.
Alison Pidgeon: That is a great question. So commercial real estate is very different from residential real estate. So if that's not something you're familiar with, definitely like get a commercial real estate agent, um, start reading some books or listening to some podcasts.
Um, I would also say that, um, shopping around at different banks is a really, um, important step because for some reason commercial terms for loans can be very different from one bank to another, unlike residential. Um, so yeah, just kind of do your research obviously, and, and make sure you know what you're getting yourself into.
Um, There are, like I said, quite a few things that are different about it. Um, but I find that once the office is up and going, like it's very little, very little time on my part because for example, like I'm the only tenant in the build, like the practice is the only tenant. So essentially if anything needs maintenance or needs to be fixed or whatever, the admin who's part of that office like will just take care of it.
Like she'll say like, oh, there's. This issue with the plumbing, do you want me to call the plumber? I'm like, yeah, go ahead. You know, and she meets him there and they take care of it. And I, you know, she pays the bill. And so it's, it's very little in terms of, um, Uh, you know, time and effort on my part, and I love decorating and furnishing spaces and really designing it how I want to, um, how I want it to look.
It's really important for me that the aesthetics of the office are really, really nice. Um, so that's the fun part for me. Um, what's also nice is obviously in our field, like we wanna make sure that. Space is relatively soundproof, so you can make sure you're taking those measures as well, um, to like soundproof the walls and that kind of thing.
Um, Yeah, so the first, um, building I bought, which was in Lancaster, was quite the emotional rollercoaster because we just ran into a lot of problems with the, um, renovation. And now that I'm going through it the second time, I feel like so much better prepared to know like, oh, this is just what happens.
You know, like, this is par for the course that you're gonna like run into issues. Mm-hmm. Um, so the second time through it's go, it's much, it's going much smoother.
Whitney Owens: Makes me think of having children. Yes. You don't prep for the first part and then the second time you're like, all right, this is normal. Yep. I know what to do.
Yep. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, this is a logistical question I forgot to ask. Does all the money run through move forward counseling, like one account or do you have accounts for each office space?
Alison Pidgeon: You mean in terms of the practice or in terms of the real estate? The practice. Yeah, so we do profit first. Um, so everything, yeah, so we don't keep, we're trying to figure out a way to keep track of like what the individual offices make and what their expenses are, but we haven't been able to separate all of that out yet.
So yeah, right now it just, all the income goes into one account and all the expenses come outta one account and
Whitney Owens: that's great. Yeah, I was amazed how long it took for me to realize that you need a separate business to purchase a building. Yes. You know, like in my mind I just thought, oh, I'll use the money for my private practice to purchase a building.
And I guess you technically could, you just need to move it to another business. But, um, yes. Yeah. Can you speak to the importance of another business?
Alison Pidgeon: Yeah. I mean, the, the safest thing in terms of liability is just to open up a separate L l C for your building. And they, you know, they call it like a real estate holding company.
So that way if something would happen to the building, um, You, you know, your, your business wouldn't be affected. And, and it also makes more sense in terms of, um, Taxes because the tax, um, savings for real estate is, is much better and is different than a, than a bus, uh, you know, like a service-based business.
So, um, so I pay rent every month from the practice to the real estate holding company, even though I'm just essentially paying myself. Um, and we have a triple net lease. Me, myself, and I have a triple net lease, which basically means that the practice pays for the rent, all the utilities, um, the taxes, like the property taxes.
Um, and then that is also advantageous from a tax standpoint for the practice.
Whitney Owens: Hmm. All good stuff. Nothing better than paying yourself. That's
Alison Pidgeon: right.
Whitney Owens: Wonderful. Um, any other things to add here? About expansion or about buying office space? Oh yeah, that's a
Alison Pidgeon: good question. Um, we could talk about this for a long time.
Um, I think that, um, I think a lot of times people think that when you're looking to expand, like it would be too much. Like, how could I do all of that? I'm already like doing all of this work and it's taking up so much time, but I've actually found that the bigger that we've gotten and then I'm able to hire people to do stuff.
I used to do, I actually work less. Um, and now I only do the things I really want to be doing. Um, So it's really just structuring it in a way that, um, you know, it, it helps you to meet those goals. So like kind of the old saying like, what got you here won't get you there, kind of thing. So like, what got you up to 10 or 12 clinicians is not gonna be the same thing that gets you to 20 or gets you to 40.
So you just have to embrace that you're gonna have to do things differently and change your structure and maybe change other things just to, like I said, you outgrow things and you have to figure out a better way of doing things. But yeah, I love it. Yes.
Whitney Owens: I appreciate you saying all that and such a good point about.
The more you grow does not necessarily mean the more you work, even though there are seasons for that. Um, and I, I will agree. I have found that to be the case too. As I grow and can hire clinical directors and more admin support, it makes the world a difference. Yes, for sure. Yeah. Well, Allison, if somebody's listening and they are wanting some help on expansion or wanting to get some consulting from you, what is the best way for them to get in touch with you?
Alison Pidgeon: Yeah, the best way to contact me through my work email through the practice, so it's a pigeon move forward pa.com. So it's a P I D G E O n move pa.com. And that's also our, our main website. Um, my bio is on there. Um, if you wanna check it out, it's move forward pa.com.
Whitney Owens: Awesome. Well, you're doing exciting things and I can't wait to see the fourth location up and running.
It sounds like you're kind of in that process and um, I love learning from you and I appreciate you coming on the show today. Thank you so much, Whitney.
Show Notes and Audio Production by James Marland
