When you have a practice, it is easy to spend nearly all of your time working in the business: treating patients, answering questions, completing charts and dealing with whatever needs your attention that day.
As much as you need to be in your practice, it also needs you to work on the business.
Set aside one protected hour each week as your CEO Hour. In this hour there are no patients, charting or routine administrative work. Instead, that hour is used to step back and look at your practice as a whole.
Review your numbers. We’re at the end of 2026 Q3. How are revenue and expenses tracking? What areas of your practice generated the most profit? If you sell products or herbal medicine, how have those sales gone?
Look at your systems. Are your processes creating more or less work for you? Do your systems help you to stay focused on doing what you love best in practice? Or are they creating a grind?
Consider your marketing and referral relationships. What marketing avenues were most fruitful? What’s something you need to let go of? What can you double down on and invest more of your time and resources into?
Walk through your patient experience from the perspective of someone encountering your clinic for the first time. How does the new patient feel entering your space? Are you able to make recommendations with confidence? Are your patients following these recommendations?
Then ask yourself one question: What is one thing I can improve this week that will make the practice better next week?
You do not need to overhaul your business every month. Small improvements made consistently over time compound.
As service-based small business owners, both roles matter; the practitioner cares for the patients, and the CEO builds the practice that makes that care possible.
Give your business the same intentional care you give your patients. One protected hour a week can be the beginning of a stronger practice.