CEO Corner: Kim Walsh of Practice Better on Fixing Fragmentation in Health & Wellness
The Practice Better CEO spoke with Athletech News about the platform’s goal to build an “all-in-one” solution for health and wellness professionals
Practice Better offers a platform for health and wellness professionals to manage a range of services including scheduling appointments, managing billing and payments, and providing telehealth and messaging.
The platform was co-founded in 2016 by Nathalie Garcia, who created Practice Better to solve her own challenge of building a client-centric nutrition practice sustainably. Since its founding, Practice Better has evolved into a comprehensive practice management software solution for health and wellness practitioners, with over 10,000 customers in over 70 countries.
In April, the company secured a $27 million growth investment led by Five Elms Capital. The next month, Practice Better hired Kim Walsh, a former global vice president at HubSpot, as its CEO to lead the company into its next phase of growth.
Athletech News spoke with Walsh about her new role, Practice Better’s strategic priorities and goals, and her thoughts on the health and wellness industry.
Athletech News: What are your biggest priorities since taking over as Practice Better CEO?
Kim Walsh: I really want to focus on building out the Practice Better team in order to become a world-class place to work and top employer of choice. Most of this starts with recruiting and hiring A+ talent who are deeply aligned with our mission to empower health and wellness professionals to help millions of clients live better lives, and our vision to become the all-in-one platform and community of choice for health and wellness professionals looking to learn how to start and scale their businesses to have a greater impact on their clients. This starts with a strong team that has the ability and drive to double down on product integrations and further our market differentiation strategy.
ATN: What differentiates Practice Better from similar platforms?
KW: Practice Better is an all-in-one practice management platform. However, unlike our competitors, we aren’t just a platform for the practitioner. We focus on empowering accountability, communication and collaboration between the health and wellness professional and their client. Our reasoning for this is rooted in our mission to empower health and wellness professionals to help millions of clients live better lives. Practice Better is focused on ensuring clients are seeing results and giving health and wellness professionals the time back in their day to focus on what they love to do: serve their clients and see a positive outcome.
ATN: What are the biggest challenges facing the health and wellness industry?
KW: The biggest challenge facing the industry today is that it’s fragmented. There are a lot of tools out there that offer solutions to a number of different challenges. But having too many options can overcomplicate the process. This is why Practice Better is so focused on being the all-in-one platform and community of choice for health and wellness professionals. We’re doing this by prioritizing product development, recruiting the best employees and going after this emerging health and wellness market with the speed that customers are asking us for.
ATN: What are your short- and long-term goals for Practice Better?
KW: As mentioned, my short-term goal for the business is to really focus on building out the Practice Better team so we are positioned to not only meet our objectives but exceed them. As for long term, my goal is to continue building a company and community that will stay true to our mission and serve both the health and wellness practitioners and their clients. Our goal as a company is to offer wellness practitioners a clear pathway toward building a great business and ensuring a positive outcome in their clients’ lives.