Issue link: http://cp.revolio.com/i/142672
You need some guidelines before you assemble your team. You may want to decide on therapies to offer and then match practitioners to the clinic menu. Or you may want to create a good mix of colleagues and be less concerned about what, specifically, each one does in the treatment room. Discreetly begin to talk to other CAM practitioners about who would like to become part of a multidisciplinary clinic and carefully sniff out their reputations with other colleagues. Many successful group practices have only massage therapists, or dermatologists, for example. Your relationships with others in your organization are seriously important. There's nothing quite so miserable as wrangling a crew of egotistical therapists. For your staff, you provide inspiration, creativity, tolerance, and tireless optimism, especially in the early months. You, the founder, the motivational powerhouse, set the pace. What philosophies do you want to represent? Would you allow a questionable therapy on the marquee if you really, really liked the therapist? ("Maybe if they brought in an avalanche of cash," your inner Bill Gates pipes up.) Will you offer classes? How about a holistic learning center with adult education sessions? Spa facilities, hair salon, gym, juice bar, child care? Overnight accommodations? These all sound plausible, and all have worked somewhere, sometime. So, what else can you do to increase profit without working harder? Of course, the more rooms you rent, the more income you make. Yet there are other services that do not involve selling therapy by the hour. Let your investment create return. You can rent a large classroom, especially in off hours, for extra income. One common guideline is that your floor space should be occupied at least 70 percent of the time your premises are operating. If you include innovative equipment, you may be able to add income without involving much of your own hands-on time. Sauna, steam cabinet, infrared, heat treatments—all make money just by being turned on. Your center should be the Swiss Army knife of clinics—always just the right tool for the job. The financial goal is to seek ways one can, say, put in half the effort and get threequarters of the desired result.