I was chatting to a physiotherapist this morning; she’s in the process of opening her third practice.

One of the challenges she faces in scaling her business is that physiotherapy, like other personal service businesses, is frequently built on personal brands. Her clients like her. They don’t want to be treated by another physio in her practice. This is not a problem that’s unique to her, or to physiotherapy. This often happens with small businesses where there is no distinction between the founder and the business at the start.

For the entrepreneur, I think that one way to break free from this inertia around individuals and leap into the scaleable momentum of a business brand is to create expectable, repeatable experiences that are separate from the personality of any one individual.

For instance, I can imagine a physiotherapy practice where every customer is Champion. I imagine that most people who need physiotherapy either injured themselves playing a sport of some kind, or are recovering from some sort of serious accident or surgery. It’s not hard for me to picture someone on one of those journeys as Champion.

So I can imagine a customer, a Champion, walks in the door, they get a High-Five. They get a High-Five from the receptionist, their physio, and anyone they pass in the corridor.

Because they’re a Champion, and Champions get High-Fives.

When the customer is greeted, everyone calls them Champ, “Hi Champ, great to see you today”, because everyone knows the Champ, and everyone is excited to see the Champ.

When the customer sits down in the physiotherapy room, their therapist, whoever it is that day, always starts by saying, “Right Champ, let’s see how we can help you on the road to victory today”, because that’s the road all Champions are on, and the job of the people in their corner is to help them get there.

And when the customer leaves, they’re told, “You’re doing great Champ, you’re gonna win” and they’re given another High-Five and a chocolate medal.

The idea is to create an experience for that customer, the experience of feeling like a Champion. When they leave the physio, they should feel like they’re going to conquer the whole world.

And if an entrepreneur can create an Experience that their customer loves, they’ll go back, and not to be treated by their favourite physio. They’ll go back because every time they do, they feel like a Champion who can conquer the world. They feel that way because of the Experience Design, and it doesn’t matter who treats them.

A well designed Experience is repeatable, which means it’s scaleable. I know that it doesn’t matter which of the three (or ten, or fifty) Champion Physio practices I go to, I’m going to get what I love, the feeling of being a Champion.

If you have a small business, start thinking about how you can design an Experience that your customers will identify with rather than having them identify with people (like you). You can’t scale people, including yourself. That means you’ll never be free. You can scale Experiences.

If you’re thinking of starting a business, design the Experience right from the beginning. Make the Experience the star of the show, not you. Try and be invisible if you can. If you let customers believe you’re important, they’ll only ever want to deal with you. If you put the Experience front and centre, you’ll set yourself up for freedom.