In Episode 85, Gerda is asking a very important question: 

What would happen if your biggest revenue stream disappeared tomorrow?

It’s a question every practice owner should be asking. Whether you rely heavily on NDIS, Medicare, WorkCover or any other referral source for that matter, Gerda’s message is simple: if your practice relies too heavily on one revenue stream, you’re putting your business at risk.

And, if recent industry changes have taught us anything, it’s that things can change super fast.

So, what can you actually do about it?

In this episode, Gerda breaks down the actual revenue mix in her own psychology practice, shares the lessons she’s learned (the hard way), and how you can start diversifying without chasing every shiny new idea.

In this episode, you will learn (among others):

• Why revenue diversification is an important risk management strategy. 
• How Gerda’s own practice has diversified its revenue.
• How to decide which revenue streams to grow, reduce or maintain. 

Who this episode is for:
✔️ Practice owners who are heavily reliant on one funding or referral stream.
✔️ Allied health professionals who want to future-proof their business and reduce risk.
✔️ Business owners who want to make more strategic decisions about where their revenue comes from.

Tune in for a practical conversation about revenue diversification, business risk, and why understanding your numbers is the first step towards building a more resilient practice.

Here to help you build a practice you can’t stop smiling about 😍

The 2-Day In-Person 2026 Private Practice Business Intensive

For all the details or to get your ticket CLICK HERE.

Want Gerda’s Help with your Business?

Gerda helps allied health group practice owners go from overwhelmed, overworked, and underpaid to fully empowered and financially thriving. If this is you, then make today the day you reach out. Complete this super short Triage Form here bit.ly/triageformpps and Gerda will personally reach out to you.

Here to help you build a practice you can’t stop smiling about 🙂

Connect with Private Practice Success & Gerda here:

• Would you like Gerda’s help in growing your practice? Step 1 is to complete this short form HERE. Gerda will personally go through your answers and will respond asap.
• Follow the Private Practice Success Facebook Page
• Follow Gerda on Instagram
• Connect with Gerda on LinkedIN
• Join the Private Practice Success Facebook Group – exclusive to practice owners.
• Email Gerda directly at gerdam@private-practice-success.com
• Order your hard copy of Gerda’s book, The 7-Figure Practice HERE.
• Ready to work with Gerda? Send in your details HERE and she will be in touch.

 Well hello there amazing private practice owner, my name is Gerda Muller, and you are listening to the Private Practice Success Podcast, and this is episode number 85. 

It is Wednesday morning, 9:12AM. I have just made myself my second cup of coffee, so needless to say, I am well-caffeinated. And I thought, I’ve got almost two hours to spare before I meet with my Private Practice Success Academy. Today I’m talking to them on a topic called Curb the January Cash Crash, and I’m going to take them through 20 strategies that they can implement to make sure that they’ve got money in the bank come January 2027. So I’m in a bit of a talkative mood today, and I’m in the mood to talk money. This is also on the back of having just run my Private Practice Business Intensive, which was now two, three weeks ago, and the theme for this year was Future Proofing your Allied Health Business. And one of the sessions I ran with the attendees during those two days was, no surprises here, Future Proofing your Practice. And within that, there was a section on diversification of revenue streams. So I thought, you know what? I want to talk to the broader allied health private practice owner community about diversification of revenue streams.

I don’t know about you, but the word diversification has become a bit of a buzzword. I hear a lot of people talking about it, and the narrative around it has been becoming more intensive over the last couple of months. I think it’s almost to be expected, particularly with the developments within the NDIS and disability part of the industry right. A lot of people have built their businesses on the NDIS predominantly, and it’s now, ” Shit, what am I going to do?” Because people are in this state of panic and fear because funding is being cut, right? This is not news to anybody out there, and it is posing a legitimate threat, a very real threat to businesses that have been built on the NDIS. 

Now, let me just say this. Don’t think that diversification is not relevant to you because you don’t have an NDIS practice.  Right now, it is freaking important for you if your business is reliant on the NDIS. But you know what? It is important to all of us if our business is reliant on any one type of revenue stream, so this is not just about the NDIS. I think it’s just become a buzzword because of that.  Diversification of your revenue streams should not be a new concept in your business. It shouldn’t. If this is something new that you’re only recently starting to think of, then you’ve dropped the ball a little bit, but that’s okay. You can pick that ball up again. 

So the first thing I want you to accept is that diversification of revenue applies to all of us. Each and every one of us needs to look at this as an important risk management and risk mitigation strategy within your business, so this should not be new. But if this buzzword has been only now showing up on your radar, that’s a good thing because now you have no excuses to continue ignoring it. This is relevant to all business sizes and businesses that have been around for 1 month or 20 years like mine. Okay, it will be 20 years next year, so it’s 19 years currently as I’m recording this, but this concept is relevant to all of us. 

I’m pretty sure you’ve heard the saying, you shouldn’t have all your eggs in one basket, and this applies to business. Now, that might be the NDIS basket, that might be the Medicare basket, it might be the aged care basket, it might be insert whatever basket you’ve put all your eggs in right now. That’s not a good idea. So I’m going to assume that you’re with me here, that you are going, “Yes, Gerda, I acknowledge that diversification of my revenue streams is important.” 

Do You Know Your Revenue Numbers? 

Second thing I want you to consider, do you actually know what your revenue streams actually consist of? Do you actually know? So as part of the session that I ran at the Business Intensive, I actually gave all the attendees pre-work to do. So I said, “Okay, before you show up for those two days, I want you to go and run reports in your business software, and I want you to actually look at the percentages. What percentage of revenue comes from what revenue stream within your business?” And then I put in big, bold letters – Do not guess. Run the reports. Because I know we all think that we know the percentages that our business’ revenue is made of, but we actually don’t. It’s why you need to look at the numbers, and you need to look at the data. It’s so important. Many people came to me over those two days, and actually many more sent me emails beforehand to say, “Oh my goodness, Gerda, I’m so glad you gave us this homework, this pre-work to do, because I have been so surprised as to what this looks like for me.”  So I gave them a pie chart and I said, “You need to complete this pie chart, and I want to know exactly what your pieces of your pie within your practice looks like.” And it is freaking eye-opening, so I would encourage you to do it as well. Do not guess. 

Let’s look at my business. I am a psychologist. I have got a practice that’s called The Psych Professionals.  We are predominantly a psychology practice. Now, we’ve had various disciplines throughout the years, but right now 99% of the team are psychologists. So what do you think the majority of my revenue stream within my psychology practice is coming from, or is based on? Take a guess, in your mind right now, what do you think it is? Medicare? You guys do mental health care plans. People get rebates, so obviously they’re going to get a mental health care plan, referral from their doctor so that they can, you know, pay and then claim the rebate. Surely that’s the majority of your work, Gerda. I also want you to think, okay, what percentage of our revenue, of our pie chart, do you think Medicare is? So if you think about the pie chart equaling 100%, we are psychologists, what percentage of work do you think is Medicare for my business? And I want you to come up with a number. Don’t just go, “Oh, you’ll give me the answer, Gerda.” No. For this to really sink in, for you to get the insight that I’m here to give you, I want you to think of a percentage. Do you have a percentage?  Hold that for a minute because I’m going to share with you some more. By the way, thanks for playing along, because when you play along with this conversation, that’s when you’re going to benefit from this conversation. 

Alright, so you’ve got that number in your head. Would you be surprised if I were to tell you that the revenue percentage that Medicare is responsible for within my group private practice is 35%? Not eighty, not seventy, not sixty, not fifty, not even forty. Thirty-five percent. Let that sink in. I think for a lot of people that might be an unexpected number, because people just assume that as psychologists that’s what we do. Obviously you’re going to do Medicare, not so. Yeah, we do Medicare, but it only makes up 35% of the revenue stream coming into my business, because I’ve got a diversified business. Just like I would not encourage somebody to only be reliant on the NDIS for funding, for money, for revenue coming in, I wouldn’t recommend you be reliant on just any one other thing. 

Risk Diversification 

When you think about diversification, it’s not just going beyond the NDIS, it’s also going beyond Medicare, because Medicare obviously is the other big funding stream within Australia when it comes to people’s mental health particularly. So I really want you to look at your numbers and go, “What is that one thing that if that disappears tomorrow, it might sink my business?” Because if my business is reliant on one such revenue stream, then that is a big risk that I am taking. I don’t know about you, you need to think about your risk appetite, right? People do have different tolerances for risk, and if you’re going to base the future of your business on only one type of income or revenue stream, then you need to realise that this is a risk that you are taking. 

Now, obviously you can consider stuff like: What is the probability of us losing this revenue stream?” Like, what is the probability of the government just deciding that they’re no longer going to give Medicare rebates for psychology sessions? I mean, the probability is probably really low, but it’s not zero – but it could still happen because the government just does whatever the hell it wants, and we can stand on our heads,we can march in the streets, but the government will do what the government wants to do. So at the end of the day, I am responsible for the people that I employ as a business owner, first and foremost, they are my responsibility. And I need to make sure that I run a business where they are all going to have jobs, and that means having a diversified revenue stream coming into my business.  So coming back to the numbers for my practice, Medicare sits at 35%. I’m going to share with you my other numbers as well because I believe in being transparent about this.   

So Medicare is the biggest revenue source in my practice at 35%.  The second biggest revenue stream within my practice after Medicare sits at 24%, and that is private clients. So that is clients that get no Medicare rebates, they get no government funding, and they’re paying for their sessions completely out of pocket. Now, I’m wondering, are you maybe surprised at that? So we have 24% of our clients therefore, of the revenue coming in, is people putting their hand into their own pockets and saying – my mental health matters enough for me to put money towards it. I value these sessions enough to pay for it privately.  Okay, that is 24%, which is really good. 

For me as a psychologist, I have always been driven to reduce that stigma around mental health, and getting help and support for your mental health. And it really warms my heart to see that number sitting where it is, and I would love to see that going up and up, where people actually go, “Mental health matters.” Similarly, allied health matters. So our marketing that we’re putting out there across social media, when I look at that number, I go, I’m hoping that that is contributing to it. I’m hoping that this is paying off, and that the education that we are doing around this is paying off. So I really love that number, and as I said, I want that to go up. Because the more people that are willing to pay privately for their sessions with my business, the more protected my business becomes.  Because now it means I’m not reliant on somebody getting a Medicare rebate in order to come in, or to get funding, whatever type of funding it is, in order to come in. 

I will preface this with saying that not one of my three practices is in a high socioeconomic area. Because some of you might be thinking, “Oh, yeah, that’s because you’re servicing the worried well, Gerda.” No, we don’t. We don’t. I’m pretty sure there might be some worried well coming through our doors, but all my practices are in a middle socioeconomic areas. This is not the worried well paying for their sessions. These are people that are going, “I value my mental health,” and because my team is really great at engaging clients and doing excellent clinical work, their clinical expertise is high level, it means that people are getting value from the service. And if you’ve worked with me, I talk about providing a WOW customer service both on the administrative and the clinical front. And when you do all of those things, then people will put money towards it. 

Then the third biggest percentage of revenue coming in sits at 22%, and that is the NDIS. So my practice is not a registered provider. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I would really need to be forced to register for the NDIS.  Right now I can’t see any reason why I would want to. You know, I might change my mind into the future if other information becomes available, but currently we do service self-managed clients, as well as plan managed clients within the NDIS space, and that makes up 22% of the revenue coming into my practice. 

Then the fourth one sits at 12%, and that is WorkCover. We do quite a lot of WorkCover work, particularly also being known as a trauma clinic, we see a lot of those type of presentations through WorkCover as well. 

And then the remaining 7% is actually made up of eight other different streams.  In total, we have 12 revenue streams coming into the business, of which four are our primary revenue streams. I would really say three primary, because WorkCover is, like, at least 10% below the third most one, and then eight making up the remainder. But 12 in total, which really means now when we look at those numbers every year, myself and Ash, we ask ourselves, do we like these numbers? What do we want less of? What do we want more of? And then what is the plan to do that?  Because I also think the other point I want to make is that a lot of people hear diversification and they think, “I need to do something totally new,” right? Like online courses or these new big projects. 

Let me say this about online courses. Self-study online courses, you’ve missed that boat. Informational courses, that is purely information, you’ve missed that boat. Onset of AI, ChatGPT, Claude, any person can now put together an online course on any topic they choose. So I wouldn’t go that route. Doesn’t mean you can’t do online work. Most certainly you can, but people want more than just the information. They want ongoing support, okay? And if you’re not willing to offer that stuff, I wouldn’t go down that route at all, and that’s not the purpose of this conversation, that’s a whole different podcast episode. My point that I want to make here is, it’s not only about doing things that’s totally out of the box. 

I’m not discounting new out-of-the-box projects that you might want to do, but you will need the time, money, and emotional energy to actually attend to that. I always will be directing you to first start with the basics. And I know if you suffer from shiny object syndrome and you get swept up into big ideas, you know, some of our personalities like that stuff – me included, which is why I can call it out because I suffer from it myself – I will always first want to bring you back and go, “You’ve already done the groundwork. You already have certain revenue streams coming into your business. Let’s look at those numbers. What does it look like? What do you want less of? What do you want more of? And now let’s make a plan to achieve that.” I do this with Ash, as I said, every year we do this, and it’s actually really satisfying meeting 12 months into the future and go, “Holy shit, we did that.” Of course we did. We had a freaking plan. There was a strategy behind it, right? 

So it’s so important to go, “What do we want more of?” Particularly for us now, we’re looking at those eight revenue streams that make up that 7% and go, “Is there one in there, and there is for us that we want to target and, and get to 10%, because we know that that is a really good revenue stream to have, and we will know the reasons behind that.  We don’t just randomly select something. We go, based on the market forces, based on how the industry is tracking, this is why this one is something that we want to pursue. And how do we feel about the others? Do we just want to keep it where it is? Do we want less? Do we want more? And then you make those decisions, you set the goals, and then you make a freaking plan, and you implement the right strategies in order to achieve that outcome that you’ve set for yourself. 

Revenue Diversification 

The last little piece of homework that I want to give you, and yes, I’m taking the liberty to give you lots of homework and thinking to do today. But I want to encourage you to not only go and look at your percentages, so do that, but also look at what is the amount of referral streams coming into your practice? Like mine is 12 at my practice. But did you know that there are at least 35 different referral streams that you could be welcoming into your practice? I’ve only tapped into 12, but there’s 35 across allied health that you could be tapping into. 

Now, of course, some of them might not be applicable to all disciplines, but I can tell you the majority will be applicable to most disciplines. So if you’re sitting there and thinking, “Yep, I’m in trouble,” don’t stress because there’s options. And, you know, I’m in quite a lot of Facebook groups for allied health professionals, and I I do a bit of doom scrolling as well as you do every now and then just to switch the brain off, and I find it really discouraging when I see people write stuff, particularly people working in the NDIS space, where they’re just going, “I can’t do this anymore. I’m just going to close my business. I’m going to leave the industry. What other jobs are available for me?” That just hurts my heart because we do not have enough allied health professionals.  We do not have enough allied health professionals working in private practice. The need is great. The need of people out there is not decreasing, and people leaving the industry is the worst thing possible. 

I can understand. I understand how tiring it has been for a lot of people, how exhausting this fight has been, particularly when you’re fighting on behalf of the disability community. It is exhausting. But there are options. Please don’t, don’t just walk away. That is one option. But there are other options as well, and I know you might feel right now that you just don’t have the energy for it, and maybe what you do need is a break, some time away. But I want to just instill some hope today. Hope that it is possible to move beyond the NDIS as your main revenue source.  Similarly, it is possible to move beyond Medicare, or beyond whatever referral stream your practice is relying on right now. 

This makes me think of my very first job in Australia. So when I came over, I couldn’t get a job as a psychologist, but I did get a job as a counsellor. Nobody wanted to hire me when I came over. I applied for so many freaking jobs. I remember we came over, it was, like, in the middle of winter, and I remember sitting in our little unit, our furniture hadn’t arrived yet from South Africa, it was still on the container on the ship on its way. So I was sitting in this cold little unit that we were renting in Springwood on Brisbane’s south side, and I had a camping chair, and I had a box, and I had my laptop on top of this box, and that’s how I spent my days, applying for job after job, completing all those bloody selection criteria’s and not even hearing from anybody. Until one day I got a call from a place called Work Directions. Work Directions at that time was owned by Therese Rein, Kevin Rudd’s wife. 

Long story short, they hired me as a personal support coordinator. So I worked in the PSP program providing counseling to people that were assessed as not job ready, and they could have one-on-one sessions with a personal support coordinator for a period of two years before which time they would then be reassessed to see, you know, can you now go back to work? So Work Directions had the PSP tender, but it also had a job network tender. What made me think about this was that every three years they had to reapply for the tender. So we had all these offices from Southport, I started in Ipswich, and later I became the senior support coordinator, so I had to go to all the offices from Southport, inland to Ipswich, all the way to Mooloolaba and everywhere in between. I would have to visit all those offices, provide supervision, all of that type of stuff. But every year all these sites had to reapply for the tender, and if they didn’t get a tender, that whole office would close down, which meant that you only really had a job for three years, and they still hired people, but they didn’t win all the tenders every year because they would be competing with places like Serena Russo and, I don’t know, all the others. There’s so many of them out there. I mean, we’re talking years ago now, we’re talking back in 2005. I can’t remember all the names, but it’s a cutthroat business, and they would just have to close up shop and everybody loses their job. 

I think for me, just seeing people going through that just made me realise that, yeah, no, this is not a safe thing to do. Maybe that is a type of business model, but it’s not a business model that I like. It means that you only have this site for three years. Maybe if you make a lot of money, it’s worth it. But yeah, it just didn’t sit right with me. I don’t like that.   So I like to provide safety when it comes to employment to my team. And therefore it means that I need to ensure that we aren’t reliant on just one tender, just one funding stream, just one referral base. It has to be diversified. That is the type of business owner I want to be. 

I want to be responsible. I want to make sure that I mitigate the risk and I’ve got a high risk tolerance, let me just tell you that compared to a lot of other people, I’ve got a high risk tolerance. But when it comes to this I err on the side of caution, and I want to make sure that I’m not in that place. Because I’ve been in that place, and I might have told this story many, many years ago. When was this, I’m not even going to guess because I’m going to get this wrong. But a long time ago a big part 50%, of our revenue came from what was then called the Better Outcomes Program. So currently, that funding’s still out there, but it has different names depending on the primary healthcare network that administers it. So that is that funding for people that have financial constraints and/or other criteria, and if they meet those criteria, they can get funding approved, and therefore they get free sessions with a psychologist or mental health professional. Those sessions are paid at a much lower rate than your private sessions or Medicare clients would pay. 

But for us, that was 50% of our revenue because at that time my practice was located in a low socioeconomic area. so a lot of our clients could only access sessions through the Better Outcomes funding. And then the dreaded day came where we were called into a market briefing with the primary healthcare network. and during this meeting, they advised us that the way that funding was going to be allocated in the future was changing, and it was changing significantly. Both myself and my principal psychologist, Frankie at the time, was in attendance there with the PHN.  So it was a really  interesting meeting to say the least. And they basically announced that going forward, private providers would no longer be able to just register as individual service providers with them in order to access that funding, no, it’s now going to be a tender, and it’s going to go to one organisation, most probably an NGO, which that’s how it all happened, and basically you’re going to lose all your funding. 

I remember standing in the parking lot afterwards before we got into our cars, and I was just going, “Holy shit, we’re fucked.” And that was the moment that I said, “I’m never going to be in this moment ever again.” Those are the types of lessons you only need to learn once, and yeah, that was for me the catalyst. And you know what? I would prefer you not having to have that moment, because it’s not a pleasant moment. It’s an incredibly stressful moment – but it was an important moment for me. These moments are moments that change the course of your business, and you can choose to let it change the course of your business in a positive or in a negative way. 

I guess I’m just one of those people, and I’m hoping that it helps being a psychologist where I can reframe things. I also have a fighting spirit, that’s my initial response is like, “No, you’re not going to beat me. I am going to overcome this.” I also have a belief that I can figure anything out that I have to – there’s always a solution. I might not know what the answer is, which is why it’s amazing and so helpful to be surrounded by really clever people, supportive people that are in your corner. And if I can’t figure it out, I will be talking to them, because sometimes just having a conversation helps to unlock something that you can’t think of. But it was like, I am never going to be in that position again, and therefore I’m still talking about it today with you. 

So please don’t let diversification of revenue just be a buzzword in your world. Let it be something that you take seriously. Don’t panic. Don’t panic about it. But take it seriously, and just start doing one thing at a time and start with what I shared with you today. Start by looking at the data, not guessing. Don’t guess. Actually, do guess. I want you to take out a piece of paper and guess, and then I want you to go and run the numbers, and I want you to compare those two, and that is going to be insightful for you already. and then start doing something about it. 

If you want my help with it, if you want to know what are those 35 revenue streams, if you want to know what are the strategies, how do I do this, as always, there’s an open invitation for you to reach out, because this is what I do. I help practice owners with this every day, and I can help you too. So, thank you so very much for tuning in. Please do share this episode with somebody else, ideally another practice owner that you know needs to hear this message. 

As always, remember that I am here to help you build a practice you can’t stop smiling about. 😊