The Balance Group
What does your company do?
We are a multi-disciplinary treatment centre, offering physiotherapy, biokinetics, personal training, massage, yoga and pilates. We train all our practitioners to speak the same treatment language, allowing clients to see multiple practitioners and feeling it is a continuation of their treatment without disruption. Our success lies in the fact that our clients are participants in their health journey. Treatment is not "delivered", it is developed together with the client, individualised, to the needs of the client and their unique circumstances. Weekly team meetings allows us to analyse clients progress, discuss their needs and as a team together brainstorm the best outcomes. As exercises are mostly videoed and stored in a shared cloud, all therapists can access clients progress. When pain occurs, therapists can look back at trigger points and adjust treatments.Movement is the centre of our therapies, be it strength training, rehabilitation, mobility trainign or yoga.
What is your biggest success?
We have had many successes, but these stand out:
We moved into our current, purpose built premises on 1st March 2020. When COVID hit and we had to close for a couple of months, we managed to be agile and develop online training, online consultations etc and survived financially. We did not lose a single staff member and were able to support everyone financially and emotionally throughout these months.
Our clients come to us 80% by word of mouth. Our advertisement budget is close to 0, we know that every client through our door has the potential to tell their friend how we made them feel. With a very high success rate in complicated musculoskeletal cases, we have gained the trust of our clients and our retention rate is very high. We are very proud that clients feel cared for by us without losing their autonomy.
What has been your biggest hurdle?
In our original business plan a big focus was to develop a learning and teaching centre, both for the medical profession and the public.
However, in these 5 years since opening Toni has had 2 children, changing her priorities and having to navigate this has been extremely hard. It put a strain on the business partnership. Business goals were not aligned anymore. It took a year of counselling, discussions and introspection to finally be able to communicate on the same level again. It showed us how we women have to navigate being an entrepreneur quite differently than men. And that "having it all", a successful business and a successful home life is not possible. Compromises needed to be found, priorities changed, working times reduced etc. We currently operate on a slower pace and have made peace with it (for now)
