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She took 12 weeks off for maternity leave. Then 12 weeks for a broken wrist. Her business kept growing both times.
Dr lisa griffith · RVA Chiro & wellness
Dr. Lisa Griffith
Chiropractor · Richmond, VA
A prenatal and postnatal chiropractor who built her own practice — and then had to leave it, twice, to find out if it could survive without her.
Dr. Lisa Griffith came to Racheal the way most great clients do – through a referral, during the pandemic, treating Racheal for back pain in the side door of someone else’s office. By the time they started working together, Lisa was ready to do what most chiropractors don’t: leave the safety of renting another practice’s space and build something that was genuinely her own.
She specializes in prenatal and postnatal care and she designed her practice around that client with intent. Nursing nooks. Changing tables. Baby toys. A light, airy, holistic space where new and expecting mothers walk in and immediately know: this was built for me. But building a beautiful space is one thing. Building a business that can run without you is another.
To build a values-grounded practTransition from independent contractor in someone else's practice to owning a thriving space of her own — with the team, systems, and coverage infrastructure to step away for maternity leave, unexpected injury, and eventually just vacation — without the business skipping a beat.
Great at the clinical work. No infrastructure for anything else.
Lisa came in as a one-woman show in a space she didn’t own, with systems she didn’t control, and no playbook for what happened when life – inevitably – required her to stop seeing patients.
01
Working In Someone Else’s Space, Someone Elses’s System
Lisa was an independent contractor renting space inside another chiropractor’s practice. She had no control over the atmosphere, the systems, or even the smell. She was doing excellent clinical work inside a container that was never fully hers. The pandemic made the constraints impossible to ignore – and gave her the uncomfortable nudge she needed to finally look for her own space and build on her own terms.
02
No Plan For Stepping Away
Her first maternity leave happened without real infrastructure. She figured it out as she went – a reactive scramble instead of a designed plan. In a clinical practice where patients need consistent care and you physically cannot adjust someone from a hospital bed, stepping away without a coverage strategy means one thing: the practice stops. Lisa knew her next maternity leave would be different. She just needed the framework to make it so.
03
One Woman Show
Before the CEO Collective, Lisa was doing all of it. Patient care, operations, scheduling, billing, client communications – the whole thing rested on her. There was no team to delegate to, no SOPs to hand off, no systems running in the background while she focused on clinical work. She was the business. Which meant the business could only grow as far as she could personally carry it.
“Taking that day out of my practice and just focusing on what the next quarter is going to look like has been such a game-changer. I tell people all the time — these are hard passes for me. I don’t miss this. This is a non-negotiable day out of my practice.“
dr lisa griffith · rva chiro & wellness
What the system actually did for Lisa.
Lisa came in knowing how to be an exceptional chiropractor. What she needed was the infrastructure to run a business around that expertise – one with the team, coverage protocols, and automation to survive anything life threw at it. Including two seasons of unexpected absence.
Phase 01
SOPs & Coverage Plans: Built Before Needed
The first maternity leave had been reactive. The second was designed. Lisa and Racheal built out SOPs, coverage doctor protocols, and patient communication templates well in advance – including a detailed plan for onboarding coverage doctors to practice in Lisa’s clinical likeness, not just fill the schedule. When her wrist surgery came later without warning, the infrastructure was already in place. There was no emergency. There was just execution.
“A last-minute need for coverage didn’t turn into an emergency. We had everybody lined up, knew who was covering what dates, and we made it work.”
Phase 02
The Right Tools & Automation Systems
One of the early pivots was switching to Jane, a a platform built for healthcare practices. Appointment scheduling, client management, automated reminders – all of it moved online and out of Lisa’s hands. The right software wasn’t a nice-to-have; it was the foundation for everything else. When the right infrastructure is in place, patient communication keeps moving even when the doctor doesn’t. That decision alone took significant day-to-day pressure off the entire practice.
“It was a huge relief. The right practice management system takes so much pressure off the day-to-day running of the business. Anybody in healthcare – find the right platform and don’t look back.”
Phase 03
Quarterly Planning: From Reactice to CEO
CEO Retreats became non-negotiable for Lisa – not just a planning day, but a ritual for stepping out of the practice to work on it. The 90-day framework shifted her from day-to-day reactive mode to a quarterly outlook that let her see the bigger picture. As the team grew to include two chiropractors, a massage therapist, and operations staff, that CEO vantage point became the only way to stay in her actual role – not in everyone else’s.
“Having that quarterly outlook is extremely helpful. I now look at things on a quarterly basis rather than day-to-day or week-to-week, which can get really overwhelming.”
What it looks like when a solo practitioner builds a business that doesn’t need her to survive.
When I found my space – five treatment rooms, completely wrong colors, an old attorney’s office with dark walls and serious carpet – I walked in and just knew. This is mine. We didn’t have to spend a lot to make it right. We planned it far enough ahead that we didn’t take out a single loan. And when people walk in now, they always say how good it feels, how it smells. That renovation was worth every minute.
But the harder thing was building the business inside the space. I had my second child while we were in the middle of moving in. I was pregnant, renovating, transitioning my whole patient base to a new practice, and planning my maternity leave all at the same time. The SOPs and coverage protocols we’d built together weren’t a backup plan. They were the reason all of that was possible.
"When my wrist surgery came up suddenly and I couldn't even move my hand — we weren't in an emergency. The coverage was there, the SOPs were there, my team was there. I had already done the work."
The wrist surgery was not in the plan. You can’t adjust a spine with a wrist you can’t move. I was out for 12 weeks. And the practice ran. Because by that point, I had another chiropractor in, a massage therapist, admin and operations people – and all of them had been onboarded using the same SOPs we’d built for the first maternity leave. Rinse and repeat, because the system was already proven.
That’s what shifted for me – the quarterly thinking, the CEO view. I’m not in every room anymore. I’m building what comes next. Video courses for patients. Deeper resources for the prenatal and postnatal community I serve. Projects I couldn’t have touched when I was the only one holding everything.
What changed in 2 years
Lisa’s biggest wins.
Result 01
Two Absences & Business Didn’t Stop
“The coverage doctor, the SOPs, the templates — it was all already built out. A last-minute need for coverage didn’t turn into an emergency. We just executed what we’d already designed.”
Result 02
Full Team Built Around Her Vision
Result 03
From Patient Care Hours to CEO
“Now that I’ve pulled back my patient-facing hours, I’m building video courses, creating digestible at-home care resources, developing programs for moms and babies. These are things I couldn’t have touched before.”
Result 04
Quarterly Planning as Non-Negotiable Practice
“These are hard passes for me. I don’t miss CEO Retreats. It’s a non-negotiable day out of my practice. Having that quarterly outlook rather than just week-to-week has been a complete game-changer.”
Featured Episode · Promote Yourself to CEO®
Could Your Business Handle 12 Weeks Without You?
Dr. Lisa joins Racheal to talk about what it took to go from independent contractor to a thriving practice owner — including two unplanned absences that became the ultimate proof that the systems worked. A must-listen for any service-based, in-person business owner thinking about what it would mean to truly step back.
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CEOs Building Unshakeable Businesses.
Could your business handle 12 weeks without you?
If the honest answer is no – or “I’m not sure” – that’s exactly what The CEO Collective is designed to change. Not someday. This year. Before life demands the answer from you instead of you choosing it.