This month, my clinic turns 15 years old.
And it’s wild to say this, but… I feel like I’m just getting started.
In these last 15 years, I’ve:
– Provided over 25,000 treatments
– Built (and then consciously downsized) a 15-practitioner mega-clinic
– Created courses and programs that now support practitioners all over the world
– Learned to stop overworking, overgiving, and undervaluing myself
So for the month of August, I’m pulling back the curtain and sharing 15 honest lessons I’ve learned as a practitioner and clinic owner—truths I wish someone would have told me when I was burnt out, undercharging, and trying to prove I was “professional” enough to be taken seriously.
I’ll be sharing a few each week, and today we start with 5 of the most pivotal ones.
✨ LESSON 1: Being “fully booked” isn’t always a flex.
I used to see 16+ people a day. One 30 minute lunch. Always running late, which coincidentally happens when you have no breaks to pee in the day.
I thought I was being a hero. “Osteopathy for EVERYONE!”
But in truth? I was dissociating. I was numbing out to survive a pace I never should’ve accepted for myself.
Eventually, I learned that giving that much—energetically and physically—was actually costing my patients more than it was helping them, and costing me WAY more than I ever realized at the time.
✨ LESSON 2: Overgiving isn’t noble. It’s a boundary leak.
I used to do 6–7 pro bono treatments a week.
I made up rules like “you only pay once a week even if I see you twice.”
Then I went away, had a locum cover me… and those same patients getting multiple free treatments from me paid my locum full price for EVERY treatment they got in one week—and did so happily.
That was my wake-up call: They weren’t the problem. I was.
I had taught people I didn’t need to be paid. And it was time to stop.
✨ LESSON 3: The most dangerous practitioner isn’t an inexperienced one—it’s an underconfident one.
I left school thinking I wasn’t good enough.
That I had to prove myself with every session.
Now I know: every patient who lands on my table is meant to be there.
Not for the future version of me—but for who I am right now.
The fact that they are on my table means they are supposed to be there - and my job is to do my very best with exactly the skills and abilities I have TODAY.
