Ben Lynch: G'day, good people. Welcome to the Grow Your Clinic podcast by Clinic Mastery. Here's what's coming up inside of this episode. This episode will be right up your Allie if you're wanting to be more profitable and you're looking to cut some costs. We're diving into the return on investment into your admin team. And trust me, you want to hear Bec's take on the opportunity for efficiency on the front desk. Plus stick around for when we discuss the key measures of performance for your admin teams.

Jack O'Brien: Admin teams are sometimes the most inefficient area of a business. We need to audit why do our admin team exist or why do we have them in the flesh?

Bec Clare: There are some things that you can be doing to make it feel more like a concierge, but you've got to hire the right people. If we had a really awesome experience with someone, we'd actually say to them, hey, have you ever thought about an admin role? We've really enjoyed your service and we'd love your type of energy and your skills in our business.

Ben Lynch: J-O-B, should you mystery shop your admin team?

Jack O'Brien: I was just about to ask you that question!

Ben Lynch: I'll beat you to it! Don't sit on the fences, you've been talented twice.

Jack O'Brien: 100% yes! Bec, would you tell your admin team that they might be mystery shopped? Yes, I would. I think I would. Good, I agree.

Bec Clare: Yeah.

Ben Lynch: Before we dive in, today's episode is brought to you by AllieClinics.com. If you're the kind of clinic owner who loves to feel organized and stay ahead of the chaos, you'll love Allie. Think of it as your digital clone. It's the single source of truth for all your clinic's policies, systems, and training. Test it for free at AllieClinics.com. And in other news, applications are now open to work with us one-on-one at Clinic Mastery. If you want support to grow your clinic and bring your vision to life, just email hello@clinicmastery.com with the subject line podcast, and we'll line up a time to chat. All right, let's get into the episode. All right, rock and roll. Let's do it. It is episode 367. My name is Ben Lynch. Great to be back with you. I'm again joined by Bec Clare, owner of Physio West here in Adelaide, one of the greatest places in the world.

Bec Clare: I think so.

Ben Lynch: Continues to get better and better. Yeah, that's it, Melbourne folk. A lot of folk just sort of envious of how Adelaide and South Australia are stealing all these sporting events, getting a moment in the spotlight. Anyway, it's good to be South Australian, bi-local, also joined by Jack O'Brien, a Nova Scotian. That's what they call yourself? Close, close. Nova Castrian. Nova Castrian, Nova Scotian, something completely different. Very Canadian. You know, you and I have something in common, quite a bit actually, from our roots, from our bases. In that, um, Newcastle and Wyala, which is a small country town that I grew up in, um, BHP, the connection there, like the steel work.

Jack O'Brien: Steel city. Steel city.

Ben Lynch: Steel cities.

Jack O'Brien: They were sister cities.

Ben Lynch: Correct. Yeah. There was like three, well, I guess it would be Broken Hill where BHP came from, Newcastle and Wyala. Anyway, that's, that connects us even more. So I was talking with someone about that on the weekend, but, uh,

Jack O'Brien: Riveting conversation, I'm sure.

Ben Lynch: Yeah, it was riveting. It was. It really was.

null: Get it?

Ben Lynch: Get it? Yes. Well played. Well played.

Jack O'Brien: I think it's got it now, haven't you, Bec? Like, rivet, steel wool.

Bec Clare: I was about to interject and say, the previous conversation we had about metal hats is really coming to the fore here. I'm really surprised now that you guys are from Steelworks. Now you know why he keeps banging on about it, Bec.

Ben Lynch: Anyway, J.B., you got a few things on your desk that are very timely this time of year.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah. We had a couple of partners at the Clinic Mastery Summit not long ago and it came to my attention that we need to mention them here on the podcast. So, if you're a clinic owner, maybe it's coming in the end of financial year, there are four partnerships that we want to make you aware of that might be useful any time of the year but particularly at this time. If you want to get your clinic valued, we have a specialized service with Andy Wang and the team at Clarico for clinic valuations, number one. Number two, if you are looking for some personal financial advice and strategy, financial planning, we've connected with the team at Income Solutions, David and Will over there. Number three, if you need any HR advice, people, culture, Sarah and the team at the People Plugin. Sarah, I mean, most of these folks have been guests on the podcast. but Sarah will be back in a couple of episodes. So excited to have her around, but the people plugin is the HR provider of choice. And finally, if you need any finance, if you need a mortgage for yourself or your team, for your house, for investment properties, if you need cash flow finance for your business, fit out finance, motor vehicle loans, whatever finance you need with Dan and the team at Rainey Financial. For any of those four, talking financial advice, HR, brokerage, or valuations, send me an email, jack@clinicmastery.com, and I'll make the human connection. These folks all understand healthcare and they know how the CM world operates. They know the types of clinic owners that we love to work with. Get in touch with me, jack@clinicmastery.com. Very nice.

Ben Lynch: So today, let's talk about an area that connects actually all of those partners from HR and finance, and that is applying a review analysis, critical lens, however you want to look at it, over the admin cost. admin investment in our businesses. Yes, Bec. Look, I think what we want to do in this conversation is nuance how we might apply a bit of a critical lens to actually assess the admin category, the admin area of our businesses. And understand is it working as well as it could be slash what needs to change for it to improve its contribution to the business and importantly the client experience overall. I think a lot of clinics will grow. And as they grow, they sort of add this admin layer that often gets bloated and a little bit inefficient and ends up costing a lot of time and a lot of money for clinic owners and especially those that would like to be more profitable. This is an area to have a discerning lens of where we could be more efficient, especially heading into the new financial year. So I want to know. As someone who is passionate about this space, who's set up a lot of clinics in this space to run efficiently and effectively, maybe take us to your 30,000 foot view of how you actually assess and review the admin function of a clinic And then I want to go deeper into some of the real practical things that you often get them to set up or change about how they're structured so they improve their contribution to the business overall. But just take us that 30,000 foot view. How would you assess the effectiveness of the admin function within a clinic to know whether a clinic owner is getting a good return on their investment?

Bec Clare: Such a great question. I have to, I'll preface this with the fact that I actually think admin teams are sometimes the most inefficient area of a business, of a clinic. They become Frankenstein. They keep adding parts and haven't reviewed others in the past. And I think it's, it's the lowest hanging fruit in terms of efficiency. So from a 30,000 foot view. How would I assess it? I come back to some percentages of revenue in terms of the investment that it's actually costing the clinic. And I'd be looking at all of the CEIs or KPIs that we're looking at generally in our clinic. Are we effective in getting people in the books? Are we assisting with the rebooking rate? Is our cancellation rate where we need to be? You don't actually need to report on a whole lot more outside of already what you're reporting on. in order to know whether your admin team's efficient. Both form one and the same.

Jack O'Brien: Bingo. I'll tap into that as well. I just jotted down quickly exactly what you described. The percentages of your profit and loss and making sure admin fits within broadly acceptable ranges would be number one. Number two, CEIs or KPIs, particularly around rebooking, cancellation rates, and NPS scores, so patient experience scores. And then thirdly, would be, are they culture accretive? Do they add to the culture? Are they net benefit, net productive to the people? You know, we're in a people game. And so our admin teams add to the client experience, they add to the clinician experience. Are they accretive to culture?

Ben Lynch: Nice distinction. Well, let's double click on a few of those. Let's go to the percentage one because it's one that we often reference and we often add nuance around it because your startup clinic or your rapidly growing clinic or your mature clinic, those percentages can look like different things even on a month-to-month, quarter-by-quarter basis or they may have hit some sort of level of maturity and stability in that. J.O.B., do you want to just set the context for this? Because this is something you've championed and brought a lot to CM is how you would look at these investment centres. And then I want to throw to you Bec to unpack it further and draw the connection between some of these KPIs or CEIs. So J.O.B., talk to us about how a clinic owner, especially across the stages of business, could think about the percentage of their revenue that they allocate towards admin.

Jack O'Brien: Well, there's two domains that we want to think about, the stage of business as you described, the startup or scaling or mature. And then we also want to think about the style of your clinic. And what I mean by that is how much of your admin do you want your clinical team to do or not do. And so broadly speaking, the range would be somewhere, this is big range, somewhere between 8% and 15%. And so if you want an admin team that does all of the admin work, and maybe you've got a practice manager, you might have an operations manager, as a director, you're hands-off, it might be maybe towards that 12% to 15% end. At the other end, if you expect your clinicians to do a bunch of their own admin, then you will have an admin light clinic, and it might be more towards 8% to 10%. So somewhere in that bracket. Now, when you're starting up and getting going, ideally, we want to have as much revenue generation as possible, and therefore a lower admin as a percentage. And over time, as your clinic matures and perhaps need more additional leadership, management, compliance work, your admin can potentially blow out a little bit or balloon a small bit. Bec, how do those kind of examples or scenarios feel to you?

Bec Clare: Yeah, for sure. Personally, we try to sit at around 12% of revenue. And now the distinction here is this is also inclusive of super. And so as those brackets and wages go up, we also need to get creative about how we look at those roles. Um, for us, the maturity factor felt comfortable at around that 12% of revenue. Um, and now also with so many great tools and technology. I think we can really lean into creating efficient admin teams and we can double click on that a little bit later. But these tools are to help aid the client experience. You can't take the human part out of it. And so where we've tried to focus our admin team is that experience and the human part that AI can't do. And so even in our design of our clinic, we champion and we have an admin team member always present. that just factors into what percentage we're willing to pay or invest in terms of it being also experience and revenue generating.

Ben Lynch: very interesting. In a recent conversation with Mic Rizk we were talking about how they have zero admin and yet still have that question and challenge of how do we make the client experience fantastic or world-class, however they want to frame that, and how do we track it to your points of net promoter score, the NPS, as a way to actually gather some of that feedback. What I'm interested in, just to add a little bit of context, and it's always very nuanced and individualized for the clinics that we work with, but what goes into that admin category? Bec, you're referencing the wages and the superannuation of the admin team members, so practice manager and receptionist. Are there any other things that we spend on that are allocated to that admin category? Because obviously we're talking about, you know, JOB, the 8 to 15%. But it depends what we actually put in there, what we actually reconcile into that. So could you just add a little bit more colour around what would go into that category?

Bec Clare: I'm fairly rigid in that it's just our admin wages and our superannuation. It does include our virtual admin team as well. Their investment goes into there. Interestingly, we have our own onsite finance team member now, I actually put her under finance and support because essentially I'd be paying a bookkeeper otherwise. That's also how I get to my 12% because these are really important humans for us to have around. And it's why I can be quite remote as a director now as well. So there is a cost and investment that we're willing to spend because I don't necessarily need or want to be as connected as I was before now having a young family. So we probably push that percentage a little bit.

Ben Lynch: based on lifestyle that we've chosen. And it's a really interesting point just for those listening in to go, Oh, I'm not sure what mine is. I'm going to figure it out. But it also depends what you're reconciling into that category, right? So just want to make sure that that's nuanced. J.O.B, is there anything else that you would add into there just to make sure before we go further down the percentage line into some of the KPIs that people understand this reference point of the allocation of revenue to their admin?

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, look, it's tricky, Ben, because it's not completely standardized, right? Every clinic will set up their profit and loss differently. There'll be some that simply have an admin team and a clinical team category, and that's it. Many clinics will also have another team expenses category and that might cover things like amenities in the kitchen and CPD and uniforms. So every clinic will look a little bit different but in order to standardize perhaps a good consideration to Bec's point is let's just consider salaries and super and you can isolate that as a percentage.

Ben Lynch: Bec, you brought up a good point around some of the clinical excellence indicators. That's our terminology for what would otherwise be known as key performance indicators or KPIs. You mentioned specifically rebooking and cancellations. JAB added net promoter score and culture accretive as well. Just layer in, because one of the things you're big on, which I love, is keeping it pretty simple when it comes to reporting. I see a lot of admin teams reporting on everything under the sun. That's like, to what degree is this even used in decision-making or actions? So just add a little bit to the reporting side, especially, I imagine, that a practice manager is providing the director or owner of the clinic to inform some decisions or ensure that we're, you know, meeting our goals for this month of this quarter. So let's go down the reporting line. Why did you say rebooking and cancellation matter for admin team members to report on?

Bec Clare: If you've got an admin team who are, you know, part of that transfer of trust triangle or the start and the end of the consultation, they are incredibly important to your rebooking rate. It's all well and good for the clinician to outline a treatment plan, but unless the admin team actually help you bring that to life, then it's not in the diary. Now you could also have your clinicians book their own treatment plans. Absolutely. There are a couple of ways you can do this. For us, our admin team take care of all of that sort of, I guess, wrap up transaction, if you like. So the reason we measure that is we want to see the treatment plan actually play out in the diary. Um, when it comes to cancellation rate, that comes down to how well is that appointment scheduled at a time where we've heard the client and their availability, their chances of coming along to that, um, as well as talking about our cancellation policy and what that looks like. Scripting as well, turning cancellation requests into reschedules. So it's really important as to why we look at those couple of numbers, um, in tandem. And Ben, to your point, does the practice manager or operations manager provide us with a report? We just use Allie and all of us as a leadership group jump in ahead of our reporting sessions and it's our expectation that all of our leaders are across where our target is and what we've achieved for the month. Trying to take out the need for our ops and our, our clinical leaders to be spending time putting together a report. I'd much rather that doing the work than, and we use something like Allie to do our reporting for us.

Ben Lynch: It's a great easy way to do it. J.B., you mentioned NPS, Net Promoter Score and Culture Accretive, to add to Bec's. And I'm interested also to come back to accounts receivable or outstanding accounts, Bec, in a moment. But J.B., just take us down. Why does NPS and Culture Accretive matter in the admin function of your clinic?

Jack O'Brien: Well, NPS doesn't matter from an admin perspective. It matters from a client experience perspective. And so, ultimately, we want our clients, our patients, our participants to love coming to our clinic and want to talk about it with their friends and family. That's what Net Promoter Score measures. How likely are our clients to recommend our clinic to their friends and family? And so our admin teams play such a highly functional important role when it comes to the client experience. And in my observation, using something like clinic apps to capture NPS a large chunk of the comments left by clients around their admin team experience. Yeah, they'll reference their physio this, or their OT that, or their psychologist this, but more specifically, they'll mention Jenny at reception, yeah, or Barb who took great care of me, or Bronwyn smiling face, I love walking in. You know, this is what they mention often. A net promoter score is really a reflection of how well our admin team's adding to the client experience.

Ben Lynch: I like it. I think it's a great way to do it, even just the completion of it. I think that's a useful thing for every new client if that's the trigger for that to go out, the Net Promoter Score. Then I think it's a good thing for the admin to be accountable for getting ideally 100% completion of that, especially in the new client context. But if it's delivered to longer term clients of ours, getting some completion rate, because that's a good part of the feedback loop on how we improve our service over time. And culture accretive, what does that mean? What are you referring to there? How would a clinic owner know? How would I know that this team member's culture accretive? Maybe is it just a vibe check?

Jack O'Brien: A little bit. In some regards, culture is subjective and nuanced and personally interpretive. But beyond that, do they add to the team? Are we glad to wake up in the morning and go to work with them? Are we excited to collaborate with them? And the reason this matters is because for so many clinics, the admin and the clinical team are loggerheads and the admin team often sees themselves as the secondary or non-important team or the clinical team lord it over and it's strange dynamic. What we want is a cohesive, collaborative team that uphold our values and our standards, that live out our culture and are aligned, and we want them around. Ultimately, does it pass the pub test? Would we enjoyably share a meal with them or go to the pub after work with them? That is a really good litmus test for are they culture

Ben Lynch: One of the questions that you've posed before, maybe this is like a James Clear type of question. Knowing what I know today, would I enthusiastically rehire this person? Some version of that is always a good test. Bec, you're nodding along. You've worked with a lot of admin teams and seen the cultural dynamic. As Jack points out, a really good one, whether it's an us versus them type mentality, this sort of fracture between the therapist and the admin, or whether it's just within the admin team itself, how do you like to look at and assess the culture of an admin team?

Bec Clare: This is something we've been working on, and I lean to Sarah from the people plugin here, who we've engaged to help us with our team reviews, of which all of our admin team are also going through that process as well. I lean to Uber, the outcomes, outputs, behaviours, and attitudes. So by having the B and the A as part of our team reviews, this really leans into the ability for our admin team to shine a light on how we assess culture. So their behaviours, how do they, um, for us as a team at PhysioWest, it's around, do they champion change? How receptive are they to change? Are they looking for opportunities? And then do they demonstrate our values and those behaviours along with the attitudes? Um, so we're really leaning into the Uber part, um, of these reviews to help us. Not just for admin team, but the whole team become more culturally aligned. But I feel like this is for us, the, the really key distinction to understanding whether our admin team is where it's at. Are they being, are they performing at a world-class level?

Ben Lynch: It's so interesting, I remember a conversation, a coaching session I had with Julian and he said, you know what, recently I've come to the distinction that our admin team are like non-trading practitioners. And it spoke to that importance in the continuity of the client's care that, as you said, Bec, okay, the practitioner has done the history, the assessment, prescribed the treatment plan, but this is like the practitioner working with the admin to make sure that that client actually books that they commit to the treatment plan as outlined by the therapist and they're working really together to make sure the client follows through on the recommendations. I thought that was a really great framing of the partnership that can happen between admin and therapists. One of the I'll say ways to assess admin and therapists and part of the budgeting that I've seen a number of clinic owners do is look at the hours of consultants. So how many employed hours do we have? And then what is the ratio of admin hours that we need to have for that? So maybe it's done on headcount at a high level. It might be like we've got three therapists and so we need one admin. I think you can go down a little bit more specifically there into the ratios and the time and even on certain days of the week where it might be busier than others. To work out how you set your roster, I think this kind of drills down into some of the budget element, Bec, where I see a lot of inefficiency or my tendency is to go, let me understand how you're doing some of your admin rostering, especially with casual team members. Because more often than not, when you actually audit the need, perhaps, of the clinic, you realize, oh, you know, on Wednesday and Friday, quote, you're kind of overstaffed. And you perhaps don't need this amount of admin hours compared to therapist hours. Now, it's always nuanced. Maybe they're adding value in other non-client facing ways. But how do you like to think about that or have you coached clinics to think about perhaps the ratio of admin to practitioner hours?

Bec Clare: I guess the vast majority fall into that sort of three is to one. I just do it simply on head count. Again, it's nuanced in that, like if you're not overly admin heavy, how much is admin, are your practitioners doing, are you in an area where admin Your appointment book is pretty routine throughout the week. You can, in fact, have people working remotely or off-site to assist you with that. I mean, you may not need them on-site. Then that can really skew the ratio, I guess. What I'd be looking at in terms of rostering, to your point there, Ben, is when is prime time? It's often first thing in the morning when the phone is ringing, people are needing to gain support to assist them with moving their appointments. Uh, after a weekend tends to be prime time. Yeah, you're right. It does sort of, you generally hit a bit of a lull on a Wednesday and again on a Friday. Um, so almost looking at when is your phone ringing? When are the heavier appointment times and when do you need a bit of a vibe check as well? Like when do you feel like the team are really. full and really well utilized, have admin team members there to be that support network for your practitioners.

Jack O'Brien: It's really important. This is a good discussion, right? Because it comes back to that we need to audit why do our admin team exist or why do we have them in the flesh. If it's just to fulfill some non-client facing or non-time sensitive work, then it doesn't actually matter when we roster them. They're just there to process finances, for example, it doesn't matter. But if they're there for a client experience function, then absolutely it does matter to be present when there's, you know, plenty of clients flowing through or plenty of clinicians on the floor. So, you know, we've got to ask ourselves the question, what function are our team playing? Are they playing a live, in-person, time-sensitive function or is it an asynchronous function? In which case, who cares?

Ben Lynch: I love that, J.O.B, that challenge because, you know, Mic mentioned when you walk into a place where, you know, quote, the admin team are really well-trained and they are high-performing in quotes, it feels like you're coming home. There's a sense of welcome and warmth and a great attention to the individual that's there. And so much of my thinking here is being provoked into the traditional one is you walk into the admin side, the welcome room, the weight room, whatever you term it, and the admin's on the phone, putting someone on hold, doing payments and billing, rebooking someone, and it can be quite a busy sort of a place to be. Especially if you're a new client, there might be some anxiety about coming to this place for the first time. Am I in the right place? I love that just catalyst, at least for me, in thinking, what type of experience do we want in this welcome space for new and returning clients? And if we've got someone on the front desk that is really doing like billings and bookings and that, do they need to physically be at the front of the building, you know, in that welcomed area? where it is quite busy and the phone's going off and you're doing all these things, or could we have someone that's basically a dedicated concierge? And so I love that. provoking thought of what is the intention of our admin team.

Jack O'Brien: And again, we just need to think about it and maybe think about some experiences that you've had recently. You mentioned the word concierge, so perhaps think back to the last couple of hotel visits that you've experienced. And you know, I'm going to get in trouble here, but let's say you go to a budget hotel and there's one person, they got like the receipt spike and paper everywhere. They're on the handphone here and the headset there, and they're trying to talk to you. you compare that somewhere else where they step out from behind the desk and they say, welcome, Mr. Leach. We've been expecting you. We're so glad that you're here today. Or I think about a restaurant experience where maybe you go and there's like, let's say the classic Australian, Chinese or Thai restaurant where there's people dining in the restaurant. I don't know why you'd do that at a takeaway restaurant, but nevertheless, there's people sitting around in their footy shorts trying to pick up their Chinese and the phone's ringing and there's Is that the type of experience we want? But then you compare it to the other end as well. And it's been a while, but if you've set foot in a bank branch recently, You know, they've really changed how bank tellers work. And some would say that's wonderful. But I've also heard commentary of like, you walk into these bank branches, you don't know where to go. There's no human, there's no obvious logical flow. And it's incongruous because you expect a bank to be logical and square and safe and secure. And when it's like really vibey, there's like a brand misalignment there. So think about what that means for your clinic. Do we want, to your point, Ben, if someone is, I'll say quote, a scheduler, and that is their role and function, For all intents and purposes, they can be in the broom closet, right? Maybe that's the quietest place for them to be and where they can be productive. Do we want receipt spikes laying around and paper and phones ringing and faxes if you've still got one buzzing? Or do we want it to be calm and inviting or personal and warm? What do we want? And design for that.

Ben Lynch: Bec, get us off our high horse and 30,000-foot view here and tell us that we're dreaming. So, practically. But we want to do this in a sense to provoke some thoughts and really shift the needle here on things. Think outside the box by doing this. But let's come back to reality, the dirt, Bec. Where are we missing the point here on the pushback that we obviously hear from clinic owners and admin teams about striking that balance of, but the phones are ringing, the emails are coming through, I need to process bookings and billings, and the next client's just walk through.

Bec Clare: Is spot on. In terms of in a dream environment, your admin team member would just be your concierge and wouldn't need to do any of the other stuff. What you're looking for is a team member who can be a swan. They've got the legs peddling under the water, they can handle that phone call, they can still be welcoming someone in with their eyes and with their expression, and they've got everything under control. I mean, you really don't need a receipt spike anymore, get on to health people. You don't even need paper anymore. So, there are some things that you can be doing to make it feel more like a concierge, but you've got to hire the right people. And more often than not, it comes down to having people who have had customer service experience and not just any customer service experience. Look for the charismatic brands that you love. Um, look for people who have worked in really good hospitality settings, not just any hospitality, really good environments where they just love that client experience. You can teach them the technical stuff. Um, Hey, a lot of AI is now able to do the technical stuff as well that's on a computer, but you're looking for that personal or concierge experience to, well, if you're going to go with having a person there, make them a really good human.

Ben Lynch: Yes, great point. And it's like another one in the bucket of hiring, like all the cultural stuff starts at hiring and that's stating perhaps the bleeding obvious. But I think a lot of clinic owners are maybe waking up to the fact that, oh yeah, maybe I rushed the hire of these, or I wasn't as rigorous, or I kind of just hired as I needed, rather than investing in some of the things that we keep talking about of always hiring. That doesn't mean you're always enrolling someone into your team to start next week. You're doing the things that attract more of the right people and actually repel more of the wrong people. Bec, when it comes to that hiring piece, is there anything that you do, and I think we can carve this off and go in another episode on the recruitment of admin team more specifically, but just while we're on it, you said looking for people that have worked in some of the companies that you admire or have great customer service. Maybe firstly, do any come to mind for you that you think represent that? And then two, how have you practically gone about trying to find those people or at least filter those people to join your team?

Bec Clare: Great question. Definitely some brands come to mind. Places like Aesop, Hague's, some of the really nice hospitality venues around us. Practically, how have I done it? In the days when I went out to dinner prior to having a two-year-old, If we had a really awesome experience with someone, we'd actually just say to them, hey, have you ever thought about an admin role? We've really enjoyed your service and we'd love your type of energy and your skills in our business. If you ever follow us on Facebook and if we're ever hiring, if you're ever thinking of a career change, we'd love to maybe have a chat. Um, so we keep it pretty personable like that. All of our ads talk to the experience element. Um, and I just get really quite fussy around who, who it is that I hire. I no longer really want to see CVs and I sit with Sammy from PhysioFit here and that like, I'd much rather a video from a candidate who can speak to me and show me their personality and their vibe and their warmth than a CV. I'm not really looking for admin skills. I can either train all of that or some AI can do it in all reality. And so many of the programs now are so logical that you need someone who can turn on a computer, of course. can't most people these days. Um, so I'm not, I'm not looking for someone who's got admin experience. In fact, I often will repel them because they come with some inherent habits and challenges that give threat to our environment.

Ben Lynch: One of the great exercises that you've shared previously, Bec, has been getting your admin team as part of maybe a team day, or at least a team meeting, to think about and share one of the experiences that they've had where the customer experience has been incredible, something that they've raved to their friends and family about, and to break it down as to what were the things that they did that were part of that experience that made it so memorable in a good way. And then to compare and contrast that with an experience that you told everyone about that was shocking. Maybe you left a really bad review, or at least you thought, this, I'll never go back here again. And so often in doing that, you realize that the difference was actually very low cost, very easy things to do, like using people's name, you know, remembering small details about them, being friendly, you know, having a smile. Are there any other things that you find particularly useful in helping that admin team see the importance or come back to the importance of the client experience? Because I so often hear admin teams feel sort of overwhelmed with the operation side. I've got to fill up these outstanding accounts. I've got this massive task list. You know, we're going to fill up this referrer. And all those things matter, but they're at times at the expense of the person right in front of them, the patient participant right in front of them and making a great experience as simple as it may be. So how do you find yourself in your own team and helping other admin teams keep anchoring back to, we're here for the patients?

Bec Clare: we've done in the past that have worked really well. To your point, absolutely. The exercise around when's been an exceptional experience, when has been perhaps a less than ideal experience, and we unpack those and we tease out what were those things and how could we do them? How could we replicate them? We also from time to time at a team day, we'll sometimes have them here on site at the clinic, we'll pretend to be clients. And so we'll stand outside the clinic and we'll enter the clinic as if we're a patient and we'll look at where the monitor is in terms of eye line and eyesight for the client. It often gets shifted back across. It's probably more ergonomic. I get it. But how can we then make sure that it's not our full focus? Um, how is our desk set up? How are we greeting people? What do we have in our space? Um, and then we walk through room by room and go, okay, what are clients seeing? Sit in the client's chair. Cause we don't often do that. Let's sit in the welcome space.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah.

Bec Clare: In the days that we used to have things like magazines or newspapers in our, in our clinics, how outdated are they? They were often the thing that didn't get updated yet. People noticed whether they were five, six, 10 years old, right? But that's still that line of thought and line of inquiry, whether you still got magazines or not. What is that next thing? What is the 2026 thing that you could be looking at from the experience lens with your admin team and getting them to feel like a patient? I think so often we forget what our patients actually see and feel, smell, like what do they hear as part of the overall experience and turning ourselves into the client.

Ben Lynch: J.O.B., should you mystery shop your admin team?

Jack O'Brien: I was just about to ask you that question!

Ben Lynch: I'll beat you to it! Yes or no, don't sit on the fence as you've been telling people. 100% yes.

Jack O'Brien: Whoever has suspected me to sit on a fence. And not just mystery shop, I would encourage you to queue up your mystery shopper with a list of criteria or things to look for and ask them to be honest. Yeah, what's the word? We ask, you know, we ask ChatGPT to roast our, you know, social media, like roast our clinic after the fact. But we, yes, a thousand percent.

Ben Lynch: Why not? What are you scared of? Great point, Bec. Do you mystery shop your admin? Do you recommend doing it?

Bec Clare: Hmm.

Ben Lynch: That's a no.

Bec Clare: Come on. That is a no. You can hear the cogs turning. We haven't done it. I'm going to do it. I'll do it for you, Bec. I'll do it for you. Yes, yes, yes.

Ben Lynch: I can understand the apprehension. You know, how will our admin team take this when they find out? And I think part of that in my mind is if you assume, and we channel the Jocko Willink extreme ownership, and that we blame the system, not the person as the default assumption that whatever comes back is the fault of the owner because they haven't set up the systems or they haven't set up the training of their team. And this is a report card on them just as much as perhaps it is a reflection of their admin team.

Jack O'Brien: Bec, would you tell your admin team that they might be mystery shopped?

Bec Clare: Yes, I would. Yeah, I think I would.

Jack O'Brien: Good. I agree.

Bec Clare: Yeah. Yeah, in previous hospitality roles before I ventured into health, we were mystery shopped all the time. It's just common practice. It's probably just not something that we routinely do here, but we should, and I'm going to do it. And our next team day, which we've got coming up, I'll queue the team up. We're going to be mystery shopped because we talk so often here as a clinic, feedback is a gift, how we want to be world-class. How do you know that? You can't self-analyze that, really. You actually need someone externally to come in, experience it, and provide you with the gift of feedback.

Jack O'Brien: I love it, Bec, and I would advise any clinic owner listening to this to think, who viscerally responded to that? I would say, maybe you don't have a culture who's ready for it yet, and that's okay. Because over time, it takes time to build a culture that is feedback-friendly, is open-minded, that sees feedback as a gift. that is robust enough to handle constructive criticism, that may not be your current reality, and that's okay. But I would encourage you to take a long-term lens, take a deep breath as a leader, and build a culture that can handle robust feedback over time. In fact, embraces robust feedback. In fact, searches it out and is a bit concerned if they're not getting it. That's the type of team culture we want. If you're not getting, you know, constructive criticism, you start to get a little bit nervous. We want teams that are hungry for feedback.

Bec Clare: So often we'll provide our clinicians with feedback. Like we will often get the reviews from patients or the complaint that that consult didn't go so well. But I'm just not sure that we get that as much from an admin perspective. Great point.

Jack O'Brien: Sorry, to make sure this is balanced and nuanced, in my observation experience, mystery shopping highlights more things to celebrate than to critique. Good point. And this is key. How do we catch our teams doing the right thing and say, Sarah, I didn't realize the extent you went to to roll out the red carpet and make our patients feel like royalty. I just want to appreciate you and know that that goes unseen sometimes, but it's not unnoticed. And we love you. You're such a key part of this team.

Ben Lynch: And to add to that, J-O-B, is that we all have our off days. So potentially it's spread over a number of weeks, a number of different people doing it as well, to think that we're going to just nail it on the day that the Mystery Shopper shows up could be heavily skewed. So I think that's worthwhile doing as a routine thing. Back to your point of ideally recruiting people with a background like Hagues in DotaSpar came to mind for me. That service is just premium. They're used to these things happening. They're used to that feedback loop happening. I remember working at The Athlete's Foot as a student, and we were told, you're going to be mystery shopped, and then that comes through. And it just meant that the standards were always high. You're always wanting to do your best work. So I think to your point, again, it comes back to some of the recruitment piece as well for your next hire. How do we find someone like that where all this stuff is so much easier to do with your team? One thing that I'll add that's a version of this, it's a subtly different one. Anna mentioned it on a recent episode. And that was where you can, as an owner, spend a day, a couple of days, or a week on the front desk. If you're able to carve out some time actually to experience it and see it, you will very quickly figure out what's going wrong and what's going right. And I think I referenced Elon Musk getting on the factory floor in that previous one, J-O-B, of figuring out where the bottlenecks are and being able to solve it pretty quickly, but also seeing where the inefficiencies are as well, sorry, and praising good work. But I would suggest owners find a time to do that as well. Bec, any other pearls here for helping if we come back to the premise of this conversation was, I spend X amount on my admin function and team members are the majority of that. There's some tools and tech and training and other things that support it. I want to know that… I guess they're doing good work and that I'm getting a good return on investment here. Slash, if I'm not, how do I improve it? We've talked through a number of different reference points that those decisions could be understood or made around where the inefficiencies or return need to be improved. Talked about some of the KPIs, some of the training, some of the hiring side of things. Is there anything else that you highly recommend clinic owners do to improve the admin investment so it's not a cost but rather an investment in their clinic growing?

Bec Clare: Chat to your team. If your team is saying, hey, I'm feeling really overwhelmed, I'm constantly busy, I'm a hamster on a wheel, something's not working. Now, it could be that it's maybe not the right people, it's not the right tech. Unpack it and understand, shadow to Hannah's point or be on the front desk with them or by yourself, but have a chat to your team. You want your admin team leaving the day feeling like they've been in really good flow and that they've been able to help people and that they're leaving happy and fulfilled. If they're leaving going, oh. that was some sort of day, something's not quite there.

Ben Lynch: And how do you do that? You said chat to your team. Mic spoke about, they have a standing meeting that happens, I think it was once a fortnight JOB, where they do this feedback loop because they don't have any admin team, or at least it's offsite for kind of bookings and telephone calls. So what are some of the things practically that you set up to get this feedback loop happening?

Bec Clare: Um, some huddles, you can host a huddle. We, we have a weekly one we try to do daily. It was too much and I get everyone aligned. So we have a weekly one. And also what I've seen from our weekly huddle is the team members who have been challenged culturally have started to lift because they can see other team members talking about what it is that they're working on, how they go about solving challenge. So you want the rising tide to lift all boats here. So huddles are one thing. Um. regular touch points or regular, some form of mentoring. And it may not be you who does it, it might be your practice manager who can have those touch points to help upskill the team, help check in as to how they're doing. There's, if, if they're genuinely practitioners or an extension of the practitioner journey and the experience that you're having is investing in those people. If they're part-time, it could be once a month. It doesn't mean to be every week, but there does need to be a touch point with them that is about them, their performance, their role and their flow.

Ben Lynch: Love that. Uh, the mentoring frequency is a really great point as to the connection, the ability to audit, see how they're doing in their role. Well, we've covered a lot of ground here. Thank you so much for your contributions, Bec and Jack. For those tuning in, you can head over to clinicmastery.com/podcast for the show notes, all the links, and go check out the partners that we've mentioned in this conversation. Tools, tech, and team support. Yeah, they're all the things that you can get to grow your clinic sustainably. All right, we'll catch you on another episode very soon. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.