Set Realistic Goals

Hi this is Dave Kats with Therapist Consultants and I have a tip for you. You know you have to decide if the goals you set for yourself are realistic. I have to tell you the story, a contrast of two people that we have as clients. The first client called and said I'd like to be able to take home $100,000 a year. I said well let's see if that's possible. To take home $100,000 a year you probably have to have $20,000 in overhead.

So you really have to do $120,000 in a year. Now if you take that $120,000 and divide it by the dollars you charge per visit, let's say $120, that would mean you have to have 1,000 visits because $120,000 divided by $120 is 1,000 visits. That's how many visits you would have to have. Now if you take that 1,000 visits, and you divide it down by 50 weeks in a year, that would be 20 visits you'd have to do a week. That's realistic. It's realistic for you to take home $100,000 or a little more than $100,000 a year if you're a single practitioner and you just have a modest charge of maybe $150.

Now, the other therapist we had said, I want to make $400,000 in take-home pay. I said to her, let's run the numbers on that. And we ran the numbers just like we did on this last one, but we don't have to run all those numbers  because she wanted four times as much income as the other person. So she would need to see four times as many people. That means instead of seeing 20 people a week, she would have to see 80 people a week. When we showed her that she had to see 80 people a week, she realized that 400,000 in the state that she was in right now, was not realistic.

In fact, I would have to say that it's almost impossible. But she can hire staff, she can hire therapists, she can do other things to generate revenue like teach seminars, become a consultant, she can make the $400,000. It's just that she can't do it in the state that she's in. So when you set your goals, make sure that you're setting realistic goals. Always run the numbers and say, can I really do this at the pace that I'm going and if not, what services can I add to reach that goal? This is Dave Kats. Thanks for listening.