Running a Sustainable Practice

These transcripts are AI-generated, and spelling may not be 100% accurate (especially for names, places, and methodologies).

 

I think in terms of well being

like

a massive thing that I’ve learnt over these 12 months is really going

you actually need to look after yourself

like you know

we go through that growth and journey when you’re a clinician

and you learn you know

it’s never worth burning yourself out for one person

if you burn yourself out you won’t be able to help everybody

you sort of forget that when you go into business

and you sort of just be everything to everybody

and you forget that life is made to live

and not to serve every other person except for yourself

and that’s what so many of the people I talk to fall into that trap of

I’ll sacrifice and that’s

you know all of the way up I was having of

do I want to drive two hours every day

like I built this business

we got it to a point where I didn’t need to do that

why would I choose that moving forward

so it’s been really interesting

it’s actually helped my mind frame very helpfully

 

Hello everybody and welcome to The Healthy Business Lab Podcast

where we interview amazing allied health business owners

to learn their insights pick their brains

get the gold nuggets

and share amazing insights and stories with the community

and today I’m super excited to have Alyce Svensk

she is The OT Coach Australia

welcome to the show Alyce

thanks Craig

thanks so much for having me

so on our podcast again

giving a bit of an insight as to your background

your profession I’d love for you to

share a bit of your backstory in as much as

you’ve run your own practices and now you’re in the coaching space

I’d love to give you a little bit of a highlights reel of

what that journey’s been like for you

yeah it’s been interesting

next year will be 15 years of practice

just have to say that

cause I’ve accidentally all year been saying 15 years this year

it’s next year so I’m a pediatric occupational therapist

and I went straight into private practice

so I was at UNI and was like

I want to work with kids that’s definitely what I want to do

and was really purposeful with my early part of my career

spent the first five years in different practices

building my skills and clinical reasoning

and all of the things

with a long term plan that I always had in my head of

I wanted my own practice I wanted to build a team

I wanted to build the skills of people around me

and which led to me opening my practice in 20

I had my practice open for nearly eight years

so that was called sensational start

and through that we had about 50 employees across those eight years

we had 15 therapists we had lots of therapy assistants

lots of admin staff over the years

and we hosted about 30 students as well

so with that practice had three clinic spaces

we had three different locations

got it to a point where I had a fantastic practice manager

which

really allowed me to be able to have a second arm of the business

which was the coaching and training

so I’ve been providing external supervision and training

probably for the last 8 or 7 years

sort of started the business and then

just had a little side gig

I guess of doing external supervision and training

I developed a workshop called The Art of Paediatric Therapy

it’s now in its 8th year

and ran that around Australia

I used to go with OTA

and then fly me to different locations across Australia

and I reckon I’ve trained probably 3,000 OTs through that

which is really cool so been having lots of OTs yeah

so really cool through that

I guess it developed my confidence and experience

of working with so many different OTs

that I started to get a really good understanding

of what everyone’s challenges were and what that looks like

and upskilled further as a supervisor

and sort of that naturally led into business mentoring

and other therapists in that same boat

I sort of probably in 2021

I started a secondary business

Alyce Spence Consulting but rebranded it to be the OT Coach Australia

that was an interesting process

and then we got hit by what I call the perfect storm

start of last year it’s really tricky to hire

it’s very tricky to hire therapists

and we had a couple of my fantastic girls decide

they were ready to move on to their next wonderful careers and ideas

and had to decide what I was going to do

do I pivot and go back into the business

do I stop doing the other side of the business

that was at that point my whole case load was supervising and training

we had the three clinics

do I want to keep driving and going down to the clinic

like do I want to go back to being a full time clinician

like all of the things

so many options at those sorts of points to be able to explore

absolutely and I guess like reflectively

it’s been a really good decision that I made

like it took me a long time as a business owner to stop saying we

and start saying I like we did this and we did that

oh no like it was mostly me and it was just like my good team

but you know it was mostly me

and so I had to decide what I wanted to do

and had to consider what I want to do

family wise and how much do I want to work and what will that look like

and so made the very hard decision of closing the practice

and we had sort of six months to navigate

shutting that down effectively

and slowly transitioning our clients out

and being quite purposeful with our team

and where they went and what their next steps were

so that was a lot it was a big year last year

had to keep running the other side of the business

so that I had somewhere to land and some money coming in

and all of those things so it was a lot

but getting to this end of it now

and with the NDIS changes

and with the ongoing threats to paediatrics

and all of the things in this foundational support space

I am very glad that this is where we’ve landed

and it allows me to fully lean into the OT coach

where I’m training

and mentoring and supervising therapists all over Australia

it’s sort of the same same but different

and now I just get to be everyone’s cheerleader instead of having to

like also navigate all the changes internally

that’s so cool and it’s such

a breath of experience that you’ve shared

that you’ve experienced across I guess

the allied health space

and the continuum of going through each stage and phase of that

what I love to get the stories of as well

I’m interested in your insights

having done that of with your skill set as an OT

we always talk about here on each stories on podcast

of how we can leverage that in looking after ourselves

as a business owner be able to run a good business owner

whether it’s in practice or whether it’s coaching or wherever it is

we need to look after ourselves

so that background and OT also gives an interesting space

which I know on our first chat

we touched upon this a little bit

that just came up from organic conversation of you mention of hey

I know that I’ve leveraged some of my skills and those trainings

to be able to do all those things that you’ve just touched on there

I’d love for you to share a bit more on that with our listeners

yeah I guess as an OT

you’re constantly thinking about what do we do

why do we do it what’s important

that can get so skewy when you own a business

and when suddenly you’re responsible for all these other people

and it’s really hard as a therapist

like a few things I found quite tricky being a therapist

which I think would be easier if I wasn’t a therapist

I am a really kind boss like I am so kind and helpful and I’ll help

help help

help help

but that sometimes gets tricky

if you have to then have a more direct conversation

and actually you just need to work

and that’s hard because I’m programmed to help

like I’m programmed to make things easier for you

so that was something I had to learn over time as well

and something now I’m a lot more mindful of

supporting our therapists

when they’re moving into leadership and business roles

to not do therapy for their team

and instead just have clear expectations and clarity and expectations

you know all of those things

I think in terms of well being

like

a massive thing that I’ve learnt over these 12 months is really going

you actually need to look after yourself

like you know

we go through that growth and journey when you’re a clinician

and you learn you know

it’s never worth burning yourself out for one person

if you burn yourself out you won’t be able to help everybody

you sort of forget that when you go into business

and you sort of just be everything to everybody

and you forget that life is made to live

and not to serve every other person except for yourself

and that’s what so many of the people I talk to fall into that trap of

I’ll sacrifice and that’s

you know all of the way up I was having of

do I want to drive two hours every day

like I built this business

we got it to a point where I didn’t need to do that

why would I choose that moving forward

so it’s been really interesting

it’s actually helped my mind frame very helpfully

and it’s been able to

I guess like I run a workshop about setting up private practice

and now I talk about pivot points and like

what would happen if you had to exit

and are we thinking about this from the start

because no one that I know goes into a business with an exit plan

no one is going oh

at some point this might not work

but that’s the reality of the space we’re in at the moment

like you might have the best and we had the most amazing practice

we were at the peak we had the year before this happened

we had literally the best year we had ever had

had amazing practice manager

you know everything was just going fantastically

so if it can happen at that point

it can certainly happen at more trickier points

and we’re in a really sticky

tricky point in the NDIS world at the moment having to go

I actually need to make sure throughout whatever happens

that I am okay and that’s really important and

that’s more than just going

oh I do some meditation every morning

it’s actually going am I setting my life up for success

or am I accidentally working myself into the ground yeah

I love that and just that little point there of am I OK

I talk a lot in what we do here

are we feeling safe secure as a human being

and what are the parts of that

that actually filter down to our everyday decisions

our everyday actions and are we being intentional with that

and I think tying into that

your notion not there of thinking of what is an exit plan

and again it doesn’t have to be a 10 page document that you dot out

but at least having an idea of what are the options

what would it look like what could it look like

I love the fact that you’re having

those prompts for people to think about those things

because it cannot make massive shifts in again

the design from the start

and the quicker you get a great design set up

it makes everything else flow so much easier doesn’t it

and I think it’s important right

like I remember when I started the business when

I had a therapist say to me I’m going to be here till I’m like 45 sorry

what do you mean like I don’t want to be here that long

I don’t plan to be here that long

oh my gosh wow

so that was another little added bit I added into the web shop

like what’s your 10 year plan

what’s your 20 year plan because if you start employing people

this is meant to go like this is meant to continue on

but if you’re someone like me

who gets a bit bored and likes to jump to different things

now I need to build that intentionally into the business

and I need to have ways to meet that need

because if I accidentally set up a business

that now has this whole team

and everything like that it’s quite tricky to pivot out

but if I know that that’s what I’m thinking about

I’ll set it up in a different way

I’ll set it up in a sustainable way like that

now thinking about lease periods and things like that

we had a six year lease we were halfway through a six year lease

that we had to continue paying until somebody took that over

like stuff like that I remember

I had a big chat with a colleague when I was signing on to that lease

and going okay

worst case scenario what’s the worst case scenario

and he’s like you can make $1,000 a week

you can pay that but when I got to that point of like

just paying $1,000 a week for an empty premises

not cool not something I want to be doing for another three years

absolutely not

so but all of those things I think are just so important to consider

because oftentimes we’re not prethinking those things

and we’re committing to these long term scenarios

when actually we’re in quite a state of flux

like we don’t have control in this allied health space

we don’t have the big picture control

you know if you’ve had a price freeze for seven years

there’s not much I can do about that

like I can’t magically make money come out of other areas

where in other businesses

like I often think about this in other business spaces

where you can control what your hourly rate is

and those sort of things we’ve got more levers we can play with

but this is quite tricky so I guess again

having that long term plan of okay

what does that look like I was going to say one of my colleagues

she was telling me she always has in her head at any one point

how much would it cost her to shut down

it’s like that is such an interesting way to think about this

but it would be good to have that idea

because people don’t realise it cost money to close

like you have to have you can’t just exit with no money

it actually cost a stack of money to shut something down

hundred percent and I think I need to be talking to this

connection of yours because again

that’s music to my ears of that thought process

I know we have a conversation

cause we believe wholeheartedly in forecasting and

cash flow forecasting and those sorts of things

but it is that hundred percent at the end of every financial year hmm

what’s the cash that you need

because at the end of the day

you’re going to have a tax return historically

you don’t have to pay it until may next year quite often

but what would it be

we need to have the cash to be able to pay that today

so therefore how we planning for that that notion idea again

some great little prompts there of things to thought about

how much is it going to cost to do XYZ

or what would it look like

is a great way to frame it at the end of the day

thank you for sharing those

and I guess I’d love to already started

I love the pre framing as well

but then you know

we love to talk about experiments in business terms here

around experiments that you’ve had that have gone well

or you’ve got learnings from and the like

and especially you’re in a very interesting phase now

I could hear from that earlier introduction that you gave

there was lots of little experiments that were firing off and evolving

even from between today and when we had our very first chat

I’m curious as to what are some of the experiments

that you’re working on you’re learning from at the moment 

I think that’s the I always think about this

I often go why do I know that something will work oh

that’s because I talk to hundreds of OTs all of the time

so that person’s already done that I’ve heard how that played out no

I’ve already actually seen this play out somewhere else

I find that really interesting and then on the flip side

I’ve built a business from scratch

so I’ve actually done all of the experiments

I’ve done all the failures

I’ve done all of the things I know

like at one point we signed on a lease for a clinic

and the therapist who was meant to take on the lease

walked into my office and quit

the next day she didn’t even start sick

I just signed a lease for you to work full time in

and we’re not going to have anyone down

you know like

so I’ve done all of this which is why like

I try and put all this out there in the different trainings that I do

because no one you don’t know this stuff

like if no one tells you

you don’t even know these are things to be worried about

like a good example would be say somebody came in and like

hey Alyce

do you know what I’m a speechy I’ve got you a case load over here

it’s an hour away and I just go follow this shiny line over here oh

now I don’t have that OT okay

well what does that do to me

so now like

I try and teach people to just have a conscious thought around it

and come back to what are we aiming for

and where do we want to go it’s fine to have those experiments

but it’s a well thought out experiment

it’s not a reactive experiment of

oh cool

great idea oh

actually not sustainable and you can do that

I just really like that step of stop

is that okay I want to give that a crack

you know that conscious thought

knowledge is power

it’s a choice you’re making that is hundred percent okay to go that way

but if you don’t know that there could be a downside of that decision

that’s where I think that that’s really tricky

yeah I love it

and so I’d love for you to sort of break that out even a little bit

what I’m hearing is in essence

you basically you design your experiments

and it is literally you know

you think of year 8 science that

we always out

we don’t use that stuff in school that we’re not

we’re on the space science

but that idea of following an experiment of having well

you’ve got to have a hypothesis notionally

you’ve got to have a an idea or plan of how this plays out

well then

and then what are our benchmarks to mark against that

how do you go about that process

how does that look in your mind

I just have a really quick brain

that just thinks about every possibility at the same time

so currently Chat GPT is my best friend and we just flush out like

okay what would that look like

so that can be a real challenge though

because I do have really solid

I guess industry knowledge

it can really put a dampener on my actual ideas

because I’m coming in for example

I’ve got a new membership that I’ve just released

and in my head I’m like

well is it worth it

like Pediatrics is fully shifting

I know there’s a space for it

but if I’d launched it two years ago

it would have been a much wiser decision

that was when everything was thriving

blah blah blah

so that sort of stops me from doing that thing

even though I know it’s a good program

even though I know it and it has gone okay

but again

too much knowledge because if I had just blindly jumped into it

it might be a little bit more easier to do it

like one of my big experiments

I guess I did the podcast

so we’ve got a couple of podcasts

the one that I do the coaching confidential

I sort of had that in my head

it’s essentially a podcast series where I have an OT

come on they remain anonymous

so we come up with a bit of a fake name

and we have a mentoring session

so it could be a business coaching session could be

is not as usual clinical it’s more typical like hey

I’m struggling with self management or time management

or case load management things like that

and so the reason why I wanted to do that because again

having the experience of working with so many people

I was having the same conversations day after day after day

and these people feeling so alone

like no one else had ever gone through that journey

I’m like that they have I’ve talked to like six of them this week

then having that idea of like

let’s make this podcast

as a space where they can go and listen to that

and not have to pay for mentoring and supervision

and things like that I probably a lot of my

learnings have come through

all the free things that I’ve done over the years

and now having to go I can’t keep doing things for free

like now when the business is just me

and there’s no other income aside from what I make

I can’t just do all this stuff for free

and that’s really nice that I want to

so the podcast was sort of a way to do that

now Craig and I were just talking at the start of this

I still edit my podcast and I hate it like nothing else

it is not my skill set whatsoever

but I can’t hand it over cause I still need to listen and make

sure that what we chat about is appropriate

and I’m happy with the content that goes out

so it’s in this little bit of a catch 22 at the moment of like

I really dislike the process

I love the session I love what it goes out as

but that after piece is actually highly annoying

I was talking to somebody about

them editing it and they’re like

yeah you can just listen after I’m like

that still takes my time so I may as well just do it myself

like that’s actually of no benefit to me whatsoever

but when I was starting that process

I really cause I hated the editing so hard

I was like I can’t do this again

like it’s just I absolutely cannot do this again

but then the experiment worked and when the series was out there

I got a stack of referrals of people coming through

and it was a way for me to go

this information’s there

like I don’t need you’cause another thing that I’m not great at

I’m not very good at those discovery calls because I Craig just go

Craig do you know about this and this and this and this

and let me just give you all the answers and I just want to help you

and off you go you know all of the things when now I think I go

listen to the pod like that’s how I work so if you want to work with me

you can just come on over and we can get going

instead of me having to do that big introduction

and here’s how we work and this is what I offer instead I can go ah

so it was a interesting experiment

I guess during that one initially the first season

I didn’t think it was particularly well received

but we’ve actually just done a little trip around Australia

meeting different people and they’re like

I listen to the pod I listen so you know

just really scattered and yeah

really nice I guess so it is interesting

I’ve done lots I’ve tried many

many many different things and I love that

and obviously sharing the podcast

cause we’re on one of those right now

and as I’ve shared

with yourself and our listeners as well

this is very much an experiment for mine as well

and it has been hundred percent eye opening

that I love to have conversations with great people hey

I get to do that as well as share some information and knowledge

and cause you do listen back to the episodes

like you’re picking back certain aspects of it and going

oh yeah and then again

I’m improving my skill set of just being out of

think and talk on the spot a bit better

which is something that I definitely want to improve on

and knowing that

I usually like to think of things and go back and sit away

and dwell on it for a while

and then come back with a response later

it’s like okay cool

there’s so many benefits

and I think finding those things in business again

by doing different experiments and having an idea of well again

what I’m going to do how long I’m going to do it for

what do I need to know whether this is working or not

and I’ve talked about this being 100 episodes

but I’m like

we’re 25 odd episodes in roughly and we’re sitting here going

there’s already been benefit

because I’m having great conversations with great people

and I’m learning and my business is evolving as a result

I think a lot of it is you know

aligning why are we doing the thing that you’re doing

so I’ve been reflecting this

cause I’ve got my really big workshop

and there’s a lady called Becky Eakins

and she does some training around setting up self up for freedom

so it’s really

her work is moving you away from the direct clinical work

and into self paced programs

things like that and I’ve been thinking about that

but I get really bored so one of my friends was like yeah

you’ve done that like you’ve done out of peas yeah

eight years ago like I could run that now with my eyes closed

that’s like I can still do it

I still love it

it’s not the thing that I’ll keep on doing for the next 10 years

so really

learning to lean into your different energy and interest levels

I don’t have it here at the moment

but I have a whiteboard

with all of my projects that are on at the moment

and I was thinking when I show that to people they often are like

oh my god that’s so much that’s half my brain

that’s not even like

the majority of the things that are going in the brain

they’re just the active projects that I’ve got going

then you flip the whiteboard over the other side

hundred percent where are they up to and what’s happening

but I need that level of novelty

cause otherwise I don’t feel like I’m progressing forward

and I don’t really know what progressing forward even looks like

but that’s what’s been interesting in this 12 months of recalibrating

completely cause when this was a side business

and the main business was the practice

whatever I did was fine

when now I’m having to think about being a bit more intentional

and where am I going and what do I want it to look like in five years

particularly with such an industry shift is really difficult

and again

I just think this would be so much easier if I didn’t know that

I was just like blindly hitting the sand going

I can do whatever I can make it whatever I want

but I find that very hard

it’s fascinating I know I have conversations here at home around that

knowledge is brilliant

but also there is times where I go

I wish I could just bury my head in the sand about it

because it’ll be so good to just be so naive again in so many ways

imagine what you could come up with

like just whatever you want

I actually was chatting with someone about this the other day

they do AI work I was saying

so do you have to stay abreast of what other people are doing

she’s like it’s actually much better

that we don’t pay attention to what anyone else is doing

and just stay in our own lane

I was like that is actually so interesting

cause then because I wondered

why do we get such repetition across all these things

cause surely in my head I’m going

I’m keeping an eye on what they’re doing over there

and how they’re sort of navigating there

but to stay true to your purpose

it’s probably better if you don’t do that yeah

which circles back to what you were saying earlier

that whole idea of self and being aware and intentional

yeah with everything we’re doing

so if you play that that kind of makes sense

and the more we’re like that

our own brilliant ideas and thoughts come out

and again we

all we need to do is to work through them in our own way

and have a framework around that

and therefore then we can assess it

and it’s not assessing it with the outside world

it’s assessing it with what we thought was going to happen

did it do and did we get some of the outcomes or learnings

that we were after in the first place

I am I wrote an ebook earlier this year about reframing

success in business particularly allied health business

because it’s so difficult to feel like you’re being successful

depending what your measure is

so for some people you might be looking at a profit

like you look at big business and they’re looking at the profit

and that’s the measure of success

where because I work with so many solo therapists or little practices

just trying to go but actually success for you at this point

like from a financial perspective is just that you’re getting paid

how sick is that

like you’re actually paying yourself because I think again

people assume this is such a linear pathway and having done the work

it is not in any way that so getting to a point where you can go hey

I’m getting paid properly sick

that’s actually amazing that’s so good that’s actually progress

that’s a goal that I’ve met or I’m choosing

cause I think a lot of solo therapists often forget

I’m doing my clinical work in this period of time

like I have to remind them

but yes the money you’re pulling out is what you

were getting paid when you worked full time

so theoretically you should still be doing full time hours

you’re just choosing to smoosh them into a 9 till 3

or a 9 till 1 like whatever is actually working for you

and that’s where the benefit is and that’s what you wanted

we’ve achieved that how great is that

but we lose that measure

I love that and I think

that sort of segways nicely into what we love to always share here

is some of those transformative outcomes of the work that you do

and that you’ve seen in that evolution

of talking with some of these people again

even just hearing it in your voice

it’s like hey

you can actually pay yourself now

and you can pay yourself the same as what you’re doing here

but it looks probably more aligned to what you are yeah

what you want to do with what your wider lifestyle is

I’d love to here here

one or two examples of those transformations

that you’ve been able to get

with the coaching

from leveraging all that vast experience that

you’ve had over the years into what you’re doing now

I think something that I really believe

and what I’ve always sort of taught to

regardless of what it is is clarity and confidence

helping you to know what you know know what you don’t know

but know what you’re meant to know

I often think sometimes will start someone

might start with me and it’s a bit might be a bit intense right

like you might not want some hard truths given to you

you might be wanting to come to just say

this is really hard and we need to tease out and go

you’re actually not ready to make changes

that’s fine but also

you need to know that changes need to be sort of in the forefront

I guess for most people

one of the big workshops that I run now for the

setting up your private practice is

as a starting point we need to know what you’re meant to pay yourself

so that’s like that’s a bit that everyone comes in going

I need to draw us like I need to draw a salary or a certain amount

and and when I figure out what my hourly rate is

needs to be based on that and my overheads

that is transformative

because so many people go into business not knowing that

and they just come in and they’ve watched

I was in a practice and they made one 93

and I only got paid such and such and blah blah blah

and then by the time I talked to them

they’re like yeah

but now I’m getting paid heaps less working so much more I’m like yes

correct remember how you had supervision

remember how you had admin support

like you’ve now not factored any of that into the fabric

of your business

so I ran a workshop last week about how to bring on admin support

and just giving people that information to go

oh I have options and I actually need to decide what works best for me

it’s not a recipe it’s not a one size fits all

it’s I had a um

colleague that I was working with recently

and she’s working an insane amount of billable hours like

and she loves it absolutely loves it

where I’ve got other colleagues who hate it

they don’t want to sit on a high billable hour

so for her to stay there we need to bring in admin support

and probably pretty decent quality admin support

but the other person who’s going

I just want to do like 15 hours a week and I need admin

well you can’t afford it

you actually aren’t making enough money to bring in admin support

let’s talk about how that might look

so I think it’s more I’d say

the transformation is the clarity that they’re making

the right decision that fits for them

for what they’re purposing to move towards over any specific thing

I had a business coach years ago who was like

you need to tell them if you work with you

you’ll make this amount of money

I’m like oh no

thank you not my vibes whatsoever

what I will absolutely not

not me but I can help solve your problems

like if you have a problem

we can problem solve it really easily

like I can help navigate through that

so I think a lot of people like main things would be seeing themselves

making sure that they’re not doing more detriment to themselves

by bringing on staff members

being really purposeful with the decisions that they’re making

would be the main ones that we see yeah

I love that and of what I’d written down in much shorter hand

and you can catch later with you

with the way that you explain it there

but I just went

awareness equals transformation

and it was that’s what I was just hearing as you were sharing that just says

it’s amazing’cause again

some of the things you touch on there are similar to what we do with

some people some business owners and the like

but that seeing that light bulb just with a

that simplicity of knowing how much you need to pay yourself

and therefore buy default

then how much this business actually need to make yeah

like that could be light bulbs because it’s not

not what accountants

you talk about or tell people they shouldn’t do their tax stuff

but you sort of think that they help you with things

but they don’t and so having coaches like yourself

potentially they don’t have that industry awareness either to go

so I had a colleague recently where the accountant had said yeah

I you’re on target to make 180 and I was like

no you’re not

I still got I don’t know where they’re

where are you pulling that number from

we’ve got Christmas holidays coming up

we’ve got these like dead periods

you just told me you’re going on four weeks of leave

like I know your figures

there is no chance that is where we’re heading

she’s like how do you know that

I’m like cause I’ve done this

what I don’t understand how they didn’t get there

because they don’t know all the other factors to take into account

yeah I love that

and we could have another whole five episodes on that particular topic

but we might come back to that maybe in next year

I really appreciate what you’ve shared here today

coming to the end of

the session here today but I’d love for

they got so much knowledge there

I love for you to share

where’s the best places for people to find you across the podcast and

socials or where are the best places for people to connect with you

yeah, come and listen to the pod

that’s a good one it’s The OT Coaching Confidential

that’s a nice easy one to start with

there’s heaps of really cool stuff in there

like I’m thinking about going out for myself

I’m midway through so just some really easy listening stuff

I have a website theotcoach.au

that’s probably the other next bit

and then if you’re a pediatric

OT who happens to be listening to this

I’ve just started a membership

so that’s really cool

but I am hoping my next little project is to do a practice manager one

so a one where practice managers can come together

and have a space to learn

and grow and share so some cool things in the works too

that sounds so good and obviously

we’ll put all those details into the show notes

and any future ones that come up

we’re always happy to update notes and the like

and as this podcast evolves as well

we’ve got awesome

great people like Alyce that we’ll likely have back again

because again

such a breadth of knowledge

that as we delve into things in certain specific areas or niches

we’ll get some of our our guest back again

once again thank you very much for your time on the podcast today

yeah so so helpful with all the knowledge that you’ve shared

thanks again no worries

thanks so much for having me

okay, so that’s a wrap from The Healthy Business Lab podcast

for another episode and as always

like, subscribe

and keep being across

all this great content that we’re sharing from all our guests

see you soon

Running a Sustainable Practice

Episode No: 23

Guest Name: Alyce Svensk

Summary

In this episode of The Healthy Business Lab, Craig Minter chats with Alyce Svensk, The OT Coach Australia, about her journey from pediatric occupational therapist to business coach. Alyce shares the wins and challenges of running her own practice, the lessons she learned about self-care, and the importance of clarity and confidence in business decisions. She also talks about why having an exit strategy matters, the value of experimenting in business, and how coaching can create real, transformative outcomes. This conversation is packed with practical tips and encouragement for allied health practitioners looking to grow their businesses while staying grounded.

Episode Highlights:

00:00 – Alyce’s shift from OT to business coach
02:48 – The role of self-care in running a practice
06:15 – Why planning an exit strategy matters
09:40 – Learning through simple business experiments
13:22 – How coaching builds clarity and confidence
16:50 – Tips for creating a sustainable, healthy practice

Connect with The OT Coach Australia:
Website →  https://www.theotcoach.au/
OT Coaching Confidential Podcast https://www.theotcoach.au/podcasts/ot-coaching-confidential 
OT Unplugged Podcast  https://www.verveotlearning.com.au/podcast 
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/alyce-svensk-the-ot-coach-australia/

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