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Anne 💡 Gray

Anne Gray is a business consultant, MBA graduate of GIBS, and co-founder of Grow Your Healthcare Practice — a business education and coaching platform built specifically for healthcare professionals running private practices in South Africa. I have been inside enough messy boardrooms to know the real problem is almost never the obvious one. The same is true in healthcare practices, in start-ups, and in businesses that have outgrown the version of their founder that built them. I work with founders who are excellent at their work, and find that building the business around it turns out to be a different skill set entirely. If you're a healthcare practice owner: the podcast, the free community, and the mastermind are for you. If you're a small business owner who's hit a ceiling: you're in the right place too. Writing about business, leadership, and the work behind the work.

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Is your new idea actually going to make money?

Hello Reader There's a particular kind of work that feels incredibly productive. Building. The new programme. The group offering. The workshop you've been thinking about. The resource that could eventually become another income stream for the practice. So you start squeezing it in. An hour after your last patient. A Saturday morning. A clinical slot you deliberately leave open so you can finally make some progress. And slowly, the thing starts taking shape. There's just one question that...

Hello Reader A practice owner is frustrated with her admin person. Things aren't being followed up. Certain tasks keep falling through the cracks. She's constantly checking whether things have been done — and increasingly wondering whether she hired the wrong person. So we ask her a question: “Have you ever written down exactly what her job is?” Not explained it in a conversation when she started. Not kept a list in your own head. Actually documented the role — what she owns, how often it...

Hello Reader, A practitioner we work with spent months cycling through practice management platforms — trialling one, comparing pricing tiers with another, asking in group chats about a third, booking demos for a fourth. Weeks went by. The comparing continued. The patient numbers didn't move. This is what we call The Systems Before Strategy Mistake — and it's a far more common trap than most practitioners realise, mostly because it doesn't feel like avoidance. It feels like being thorough....

Hello Reader She hit her income goal. Crossed the number she’d been chasing all year. By any measure, the practice was doing well. So we asked her a simple question: where did the money go? She went quiet. She genuinely didn’t know. This is what we call The Numbers Blind Spot, and it’s far more common in healthcare practices than anyone likes to admit. You’re earning. The invoices are going out. The accounts look okay, broadly, at a glance. But when you actually sit down and look at the...

Hello Reader She told us she didn’t do any marketing. Then, in the very same breath, she described driving out to schools to chat with teachers, hosting workshops for parents, doing home visits, giving talks to grade sevens and their moms. She had 450 contacts who responded every single time she posted something. She had referrals coming in steadily, month after month. She just never called any of it marketing. This is what we call The Visibility Paradox, and it shows up constantly in...

Hello Reader A practice owner received a referral from a well-known corporate. Reputable name, exciting opportunity — the kind of client that feels like validation the moment it lands in your inbox. She jumped straight into the assessment, delivered a thorough report, and then waited. Six weeks later, she still hadn’t been paid. The patient was waiting to return to work. And she had no purchase order, no signed terms, and no leverage to push the payment through. This is what we call The...

Hello Reader A practitioner we work with had been seeing patients for years. She was good at her job. Her patients loved her. Her diary was filling up. So when we asked her what her business was actually working towards, the question caught her off guard. “I just want to help people,” she said. Then, after a pause: “And maybe… not feel so stressed about money.” That’s not a mission. That’s a wish. This is what we call The Busy But Blurry Problem, and it shows up in healthcare practices more...

Hello Reader We want to close this first series of emails with the pattern that is, in our experience, the most invisible — because from the outside, everything looks fine. The diary is full. Patients are coming back. Revenue looks healthy on paper. But you're exhausted. You're carrying the whole practice on your back. And the version of yourself that arrives home at the end of the day isn't who you wanted to be when you started this. You're not building a practice. You're keeping one alive....

Hi Reader There's a type of practice owner we work with regularly who is, by almost every measure, exceptional. They spot a gap in the market before anyone else does. They build something meaningful from nothing. They pour themselves into it — the vision, the early patients, the brand, the energy. It's impressive to watch. And then, just as the practice needs to be managed and grown, something shifts. The operational detail starts to feel heavy. A new idea appears on the horizon. The...

Hello Reader A pelvic health physiotherapist received a message from a patient. The patient was frustrated. The exercises weren't working, she said, and she needed a new plan. The physio checked her notes. She had seen this patient once. In February. That familiar sinking feeling — did I not explain this clearly enough? — settled in. Here's the truth: it wasn't a clinical failure. It was a communication gap. And it's one of the most common — and most costly — gaps in private healthcare...