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✓ Welcome  |  The Clinic Audit  |  By Winnie Wu

A clinic that runs on autopilot.

Most clinic owners are told to work harder, hire sooner, market more. Then the team grows and somehow the days get heavier, not lighter.

There are five stages of clinic ownership, and at each stage you need to focus on different things to get ahead. The problems owners encounter within a stage are very similar — and after coaching hundreds of allied health clinic owners in Australia, Winnie built this interactive tool to help you work out where you're at, and what to focus on now.

Complete the diagnostic process used for every clinic that comes through The Clinic Project. Time to get clear on your data, and set some goals.

With Winnie Wu · Women's Health & Musculoskeletal Physiotherapist, running three businesses in four working days. Founder of The Clinic Project, Papaya Clinic and Movement Laboratory.

Start here · Watch this first

Intro video goes here. Swap CONFIG.introVideo for your Vimeo, YouTube or Wistia embed URL.

Two minutes on what this is and how to get the most out of it.

Book a call with Winnie → Or work through the audit first — it makes the call twice as useful.
Winnie Wu presenting at a Clinic Project CEO Weekend, beside The Clinic Project banner
CEO Weekend, Sydney · The Clinic Project
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The Clinic Audit

Let's audit your clinic, shall we?

How to work through this
  • Answer what you can, skip what you cannot. If you are unsure of a number, that is an answer too — it tells us what nobody is measuring.
  • Real numbers beat good guesses. Have your P&L or Xero open if you can.
  • Everything saves in this browser as you type. Close the tab, come back later, pick up where you left off. Nothing is sent to me until you choose.
  • Your summary builds itself at the bottom, ready to copy into your booking notes.

Already know you want to talk? Book the call now — then come back and do this before we speak.

01

Let's get a feel for where you're at

Four questions · pick 2–3 for each

Before the numbers, the priorities. There are no wrong answers here — but what you pick, and what you leave unpicked, tells me more about your clinic than an hour of small talk would. Choose the two or three that apply most. Being selective is the point: everything can feel true, and the call works off what is most true.

Why I ask: owners tell me what is wrong easily, but rarely what "better" actually looks like — and the fix for "I want a proper wage" is completely different from the fix for "I want a month off."

Selected 0 of 3

Why I ask: where your hours leak tells me which stage you are really in — a diary problem, a team problem and a money problem are three different clinics.

Selected 0 of 3

Why I ask: what gets measured is what gets managed. Most owners are surprised how short their honest list is — and "none consistently" is a completely normal answer at certain stages.

Selected 0 of 3

Why I ask: this is your priority list, in your order — and on the call I will tell you honestly whether it is the right order, because sometimes the thing you want first depends on a thing you have not built yet.

Selected 0 of 3

Why I ask: your own treating hours are billable hours like anyone else's — they count toward what the clinic can earn. They also tell me how much of the engine is still you personally.

02

Your organisation structure

Who is actually in the building, and who holds the standard

Headcount and FTE are different numbers, and the gap between them is where a lot of management time quietly disappears. Eight part-timers and four full-timers can bill the same hours — but one of those clinics is far harder to run.

Why I ask: I build teams to one leader per six practitioners. Past that, standards drift, decisions bottleneck back to you, and the people who need coaching quietly stop getting it. Leadership includes anyone genuinely holding a standard — a practice manager, a senior clinician with real authority — not just a title.

Your ratios appear here once you enter your team numbers. I build teams to 1 leader per 6 practitioners.
03

The numbers

Your ceilings, and what last month says against them

Here is the thing nobody tells clinic owners: your revenue has a hard ceiling, and it is set by two numbers — the space you pay rent on, and the practitioners you roster into it. Whichever is smaller is your real ceiling. Most owners have never put the two side by side, which is why growth plans so often mean "work harder" instead of "fix the constraint."

Room waste covers changeovers, gaps and no-shows — 15% is my default, adjust if you know yours. Billable hours are set at 35 per full-time practitioner: roster someone for 38 and, once you account for the non-billable entitlement hours you are still paying for, they can normally bill about 35.

Enter rooms, hours and FTE above and your two ceilings appear here.

Now last month against those ceilings. A clinic can look busy, loved and successful from the waiting room and still be quietly underpaying its owner. One real number is all I need — the workbook does the comparing.

Why I ask: on its own, last month's revenue is just a number. Against the ceilings above it becomes a diagnosis — how much of the clinic you have already built is actually being converted into income.

Enter last month's revenue — and rooms, hours and FTE in section 02 — and I will show you what the same clinic earns at full practitioner capacity and at full room capacity.

Why I ask: I aim clinics at 55% gross — what is left after the direct cost of delivering care. Below that, growth just makes you busier, not richer.

Pick one

Why I ask: we aim for 25% net, inclusive of the director wage. Your practitioner wage for the hours you treat counts as clinical cost like any other practitioner — the director wage is what the business pays you to own and steer it.

Pick one
So what should the brackets look like?

My ideal clinic, as expense brackets

Margins are not luck — they are what is left when each line item sits inside its band. This is the P&L shape I hold my own clinics to:

Team wages40–50% of revenueYour biggest line past Startup. Over 50% is the red zone — that is a rostering or fee problem wearing a wages costume.
Rent & occupancyUnder 10%Higher is fine only if the rooms are actually full — which is why the capacity calculator above matters.
Your director wage$80–100k+ paid firstA real wage, adjusted for tax strategy — not whatever happens to be left over.
Gross profit55%+What remains after the direct cost of delivering care.
Net profit25%+ including your director wageWhen wages and rent sit in their bands, this stops being hope and becomes arithmetic.
04

Where that places you

Your stage, your summary and your next step — one big picture
Your stage on the Clinic Scale Pathway

Fill in sections 01–03 and your stage appears here.

Fewest clinics get here ↑
↓ Where most clinics sit
Swipe to see what comes before and after

"Structure gives you freedom."

The hard part is done

Here is your clinic, on one page.

Here's your summary — copy it and save it somewhere so you can fine comb it.

This sends your summary and answers straight to Winnie, so the call starts already knowing your clinic.

Let's jump on a phone call!

If you're ready to grow your clinic and looking for the right support and coach to help you get there, let's chat. I'll review your summary and give you the best advice on how best to work with me.

Pick your time — and paste your summary into the booking notes.

Winnie Wu, founder of The Clinic Project
Hi, I'm Winnie

I'm in the thick of it, same as you.

I've built four clinic brands from scratch and helped hundreds of clinic owners get out of the trenches. I launched two of my three businesses at five months postpartum with my second baby.

I'm not glorifying that. I just know what it takes to push through the discomfort — and that a business should support your life, not the other way around. That part is non-negotiable for me.

I'm the only allied health business coach who…
  • still runs clinics
  • still studies — Masters of Pelvic Health, graduating 2026
  • manages clinics running over 100 classes a week
  • created multidisciplinary integrative health protocols through research
  • speaks at industry events
  • won the 2026 Patients Choice Award for Outstanding Allied Health Professional, recognised by Patient Australia
  • won 2023 Mentor of the Year, Australian Physiotherapy Association
  • is ultra sharp on patient experience — priming, automations and systems
  • will never choose commercial gain over care quality

Through restructures and new launches, I have still taken three to four months off every year to travel and see family across different continents.

My mission: clinics that deliver exceptional care, priced for value, that nurture and sustain their teams, carry diverse income streams to reduce risk, and become the vehicle for impact, choice and freedom for their founder.