Are you running a practice or building a business?

The years of education and credentialing to get to where you are today was staggering. You subjected yourself to all that, hopefully because you loved what it would allow you to do. You loved the thing itself. The law. Financial management. And all that work allowed you to build a career for yourself in that field doing what lights you up.

And yet, there comes a point in many careers where you, the entrepreneurial few, step out and decide to make a business of your own. To dream of a future where you are able to influence and serve more people than your own time would allow. To build a business that would scale your impact.

In truth, though, you build a practice … but not a business. Not yet.

One isn’t intrinsically better than the other, it’s more a matter of being honest about what you have and what you want.

A business can eventually run without the owner. A practice revolves around the owner.

• If you stepped away for six weeks tomorrow, what would happen to your revenue?
• Is your firm growing because of your reputation specifically, or because of your systems?
• Do you have someone who can make real decisions without you in the room? Or, put another way, are other people empowered to make decisions on their own?
• Five years from now, do you see yourself doing more of the same, or will your work have evolved?
• Does your firm have a life of its own, or does it end when you do?

I understand that all those years of education probably didn’t include how to build or run a successful business. It’s not your fault the transitions from expert to practice owner to business owner weren’t seamless and obvious.

They’re not. The journey is required. First you must learn and excel, second you build a practice, third and finally you build a business.

If those questions tell a story of someone whose practice only works because they’re in it … that’s not a failure, it’s just a step on your journey. Knowing that you’re on a journey and that you haven’t reached the destination yet is the critical realization here. You can’t change what you haven’t yet acknowledged.

Is your practice or your business what it is because you designed it that way, or because it just happened while you were busy serving clients?

Hit reply or reach out and tell me which question hit hardest for you.