Visualisation: achieving your practice ownership dreams

Rana Al-Falaki shares how one new practice owner used visualisation to power through overwhelm and build a practice on purpose.

Buying your first practice is meant to feel like arrival. You have finally made it. The keys are yours, the chair is yours, and so, in theory, is the direction of travel.

For Dr JS, the reality felt rather different. Weeks into ownership, she was full of vision but short on traction. She had inherited a team, a set of systems, and a culture that had nothing to do with her. Every idea she raised was met with the same quiet resistance: ‘We’ve always done it this way.’ 

She wanted to build something distinctly hers, yet found herself firefighting instead of leading, and increasingly unsure where to even begin.

She knew she needed a practice manager or business development manager who shared her vision. She knew the team needed direction. She knew what she wanted the practice to become. What she didn’t know was how to get there from where she was standing: overwhelmed, second-guessed, and quietly worried that ownership might feel like this forever.

‘I thought once I owned it, I’d finally have control,’ she said. ‘Instead, I feel like I’m asking permission from my own team to make changes in my own practice.’

The overwhelm of ownership