Accomplishing your goals and bringing your vision to fruition is easier when you have a guide that outlines prioritized actions with a succinct implementation plan.

Establishing and running a successful weight loss practice requires flexibility, skill, and determination. Your goals and frustrations will vary as your practice grows and evolves. As a result, your implementation plan and tactics will need to change as well.

Whether you call it a blueprint, master plan, or game plan for success, you will tend to accomplish more in less time if you have a customized plan in place for your weight loss practice — one that addresses your goals and current stage of growth.

As your goals change and your practice evolves, you can update your plan and/or even decide to reinvent your plan if necessary, as many experienced with the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Change can be good, and having an effective plan in place will help you manage necessary change, adapt quickly, and minimize uncertainty for you and your team.

While turnkey programs are great and available for weight loss practitioners, there will be aspects of your practice that require additional systemization and customization. If you are interested in creating your very own blueprint for your bariatric business success, below are the benefits of having a blueprint as well as step-by-step instructions for establishing your plan. In fact, anytime you have a frustration or problem in your practice, you can follow these steps for easier and quicker results. When you take the time to include your team, you will find your practice is able to accomplish goals faster with more creativity, excitement, and commitment.

Benefits of Establishing a Blueprint for Bariatric Business Success

There are many advantages to creating a blueprint for your weight loss practice. Whether you are an entrepreneur, part of a multi-specialty group practice, or health care organization involved in the field of weight management, you can enjoy the following benefits:

1. Strategic Planning: A blueprint allows you identify your ideal market, assess competitors and establish a clear roadmap for accomplishing your goals.
2. Operational Efficiency: A blueprint can streamline processes and workflows. By optimizing operations, you can provide high-quality services to your patients while maximizing team talents and profitability.
3. Clear Communication, Actions & Role Delineation: A blueprint can clarify preferred methods of communication throughout implementation, and specify prioritized actions, deadlines, and roles for each team member. It also provides a way to track progress during team planning and implementation meetings.
4. Opportunity to Scale and Grow Faster: A blueprint can help you design a scalable business model that accommodates growth.
5. Specific Marketing Strategies: A blueprint allows you to define your ideal patient and brand messaging. This allows you to guide effective marketing strategies so you can attract new patients, help them get to know you, select you over competitors, and refer others to you after a positive and transformational experience.
6. Risk Mitigation: A blueprint requires market research and identification of regulations and potential challenges so you can proactively address any issues and minimize risks.
7. Onboarding/Training/Cross-Training Simplification: A blueprint ideally includes systemization of processes and creation of a well-choreographed patient and team experience. These systems are documented (written and/or video) and provide you with great resources for onboarding, training, and cross training team members.
8. Well-Defined Success Metrics: A blueprint gives you a map to follow and includes metrics by which you can monitor progress and goal attainment. Regular measurement allows you to proactively respond to unforeseen issues, trends, or setbacks.

These benefits cannot be underestimated. They can make the difference between spinning your wheels or gaining traction so you can serve more patients while enjoying predictable progress and growth.

Creating Your Blueprint for Bariatric Business Success

The steps outlined below are inclusive whether you are establishing a new practice or service line, or if you are simply addressing a frustrating aspect of your practice that needs improvement. Your blueprint can create the structure to accomplish both. These tried and true steps outline the nitty gritty of blueprint creation — and for those of you who love to jump into action, below is your guide:

1. Executive Summary: This is an overview of where you are now, where you want to be, along with the challenges and potential benefits of plan implementation. The executive summary also includes a high-level overview of your business model and viability of the plan. Finally, it outlines specific goals/desired outcomes along with a timeline for accomplishment. This summary should be concise and engaging. The rest of your plan will provide additional supporting information and details.
2. Current Status: Your current status includes a market analysis and self-evaluation in order to clearly outline your strengths and potential pitfalls that may affect a successful outcome.
3. Systems Review: This section can relate to one or more of the systems your plan is addressing. For weight loss practices, the primary systems that need to be in place include your team, your care coordination, your marketing, your finances, your revenue streams and your metrics for tracking and reporting your progress.
4. Business Priorities: Since a full-blown blueprint can be overwhelming, this section identifies what your initial priorities are. Essentially, what the actions in the plan will address.
5. Prioritized Action Plan & Implementation Timeline: This includes actions related to your business priorities that will get you the results you desire. List actions for each priority and then organize them in a spreadsheet or document that can be shared with essential team members. It should include the specific action, date for completion, responsible parties and a way to notate completion. This can be used for assessing progress and keeping your team on track.
6. Summary & Next Steps: The end of the document includes a brief summary reiterating the goal(s) to be accomplished and next steps for implantation once the document is reviewed by your leadership team/team members.

This may sound a bit overwhelming. However, after seeing such blueprints implemented successfully hundreds of times, when created/implemented with intention and follow-through, you can feel confident it will work for you as well.