You started your own practice for the freedom. 

To practice medicine your way, work with the patients you actually want to see, and build something that’s yours.

And then… the admin hit.

The forms. The tracking. The never-ending list of tiny tasks that somehow keep multiplying. Back when you were employed, all of this just happened behind the scenes. Now? It’s your responsibility. And if you’re honest, it’s not just annoying, it's slowing your progress down.

In this post, we’re tackling it head on. 

I’m sharing three mindset shifts that make admin easier to deal with, plus the simple, practical strategies I use (and teach my clients) to actually stay on top of it. 

Because the goal isn’t to love admin (I’m not a miracle worker).

It’s to stop it from being the thing that keeps your business stuck.

Why admin hits differently when you're the boss 

When you run your own practice, you're not just a clinician anymore. 

You're wearing multiple hats, often all in the same day. 

There's the subject matter expert hat (the medicine), the sales and networking hat (making sure people know you exist), the bean counter hat (watching the books), the creative hat (branding, programs, new revenue ideas), the people manager hat (contractors, vendors, anyone who helps you run the show), and the CEO hat (the big picture decisions, the strategy, being the boss of yourself and your business).

And then… there's the admin hat.

It's arguably the least glamorous of all of them. And it's the one that trips people up the most. I see it constantly with my clients — the admin starts to pile up, it becomes overwhelming, and then quietly, almost subconsciously, it starts stalling their progress.

Not because they can't do it. But because they haven't made peace with it yet.

So let's do that now.

Three mindset shifts that make admin bearable 

1. Admin is a necessary evil (and you signed up for it).

When you decided to start your own business, you volunteered for this. 

That's not said to be harsh. It's said because owning it changes everything. 

Back when you were employed, there were literally dozens of people handling the tasks you never even knew existed. Now those tasks are yours, and the buck stops with you — legally, financially, operationally. Accepting that is the first step to actually dealing with it.

2. Being the boss means doing things nobody else wants to do.

This is especially true when you're a solo practitioner or running a very small practice. 

There will be moments where there's no one to hand something off to, or no one qualified enough to trust with it. And you'll have a choice: ignore it, outsource it, or learn it yourself.

 My strong recommendation is to understand how things work before you hand them off. Outsourcing before you understand a task might save you time in the short term, but if that relationship ends or that person becomes unavailable, you're back to square one… except now the stakes are higher. Knowledge is protection.

3. If admin feels overwhelming, you're probably overcomplicating it.

This one surprises people, but it's almost always true. When I dig in with clients who feel buried by administrative tasks, there's usually an invitation to simplify processes hiding underneath the frustration. Think crawl, walk, run — not sprint out of the gate. 

Admin tasks are often sequential, meaning one thing has to happen before the next. Trying to do everything at once creates a bottleneck. Keeping it simple keeps the momentum going, and momentum is everything when you're dealing with tasks that don't energize you.

Simple strategies to take the sting out of admin tasks

Once you've made peace with the fact that admin is part of the deal, the next question is simple: how do you actually get it done? 

Here's what I've found works for me and for the clients and community members I work with every week. 

• Body doubling. 

This is a technique used widely in the neurodivergent community, but it works for everyone. The idea is simple: you do focused work in the presence of other people. 

In my community, I host a weekly Friday Focus Club — a Zoom call every Friday morning where clients and members of the Female Founders Accelerator show up, share what they're going to work on, stay on mute, and just get it done together. No one pretends it's exciting. But people show up every week because it works. Having others around (even virtually) signals to your brain that it's time to focus. And knowing there's a dedicated time each week for the annoying tasks means they don't pile up and they don't bleed into everything else. 

If you're not part of a community like this, there are also virtual coworking spaces online where you can book slots and work alongside people from around the world.

• Change your environment. 

Working from home every day in the same space is a productivity killer for a lot of people — myself included. When I was writing federal and state grants and needed to produce 40 pages in two weeks, my strategy was to camp out at a coffee shop all day with my headphones on. 

Something about being in a busy, public space made it easier to stay focused and bounce back when my mind wandered. A library works too. Anywhere you can be around people without needing to engage with them. Bonus points if you can sit in the sunshine or meet a friend afterwards as a reward.

• Use your calendar like a contract with yourself. 

Block the time, name the tasks, and then honor that block. If you set aside 30 minutes, stop at 30 minutes. This sounds counterintuitive, but it's about building a trusting relationship with yourself. When you keep pushing past the time you committed to, your brain learns that your commitments aren't real. When you honor them, it learns that you follow through. And that makes it much easier to sit down and start next time.

• Pay attention to what annoys you most. 

The tasks that make you angriest are worth examining. Sometimes there's something underneath the frustration that, once addressed, takes a lot of the charge out of it. And once you know which tasks drain you the most, you can plan around them. Pair them with something you enjoy, do them during your Friday Focus block, or put them first so they're not hanging over you all week.

• Automate or outsource once you understand it. 

There's a right time to hand things off, and it's not before you understand what you're handing off. But once you do understand it — once you know its value and how it fits into your business — then absolutely ask yourself whether it can be automated or delegated. A virtual assistant, upgraded software, smarter systems. These are all on the table. Just come to that decision from an empowered place, not a desperate one.

But here's what I keep coming back to: we chose this path. 

The freedom, the creativity, the ability to build something on our own terms… we chose all of it. And the admin came with the package. The clinicians I see thriving aren't the ones who love admin. They're the ones who stopped letting it win. 

Ready to stop letting admin run the show? Listen to this week's full episode for the complete breakdown. And if admin is just one of the things keeping your business stuck, let's talk. Reach out at [email protected]. I'd love to hear where what you’re navigating.