Ben Lynch: Right, here he is.

Jack O'Brien: What is going on here? Well, I thought you were going to razz me for being late again. I was busy picking up my latest edition for my triathlon.

Ben Lynch: That is aggressive.

Jack O'Brien: Look, I need all the aero help I can get. I'll give you a red hot tip. No, the beard's not aero. Nothing about me is aero. But if you're listening to the podcast, come over and check out my latest edition on the YouTubes, Ben.

Ben Lynch: I thought that was a snowboarding helmet, but no, this is a bike helmet.

Jack O'Brien: It's a bike helmet, yes.

Ben Lynch: Are you really going that fast to need a helmet to help you?

Jack O'Brien: Well, I need all the help I can get to go faster.

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.

Jack O'Brien: We're doing a leadership immersion at the moment, Ben. Hundreds of clinic owners are going deep on what it means to invest in their own leadership.

Ben Lynch: There's no like blueprint of exactly this is what your clinic needs to look like. It's about creating a business that's super meaningful to you.

Jack O'Brien: Killer of team culture is artificial harmony. pretending that we're all amazing.

Ben Lynch: What is the single biggest obstacle to our growth right now that if removed could unlock breakthrough progress?

Jack O'Brien: Is fun a core value of Clinic Mastery?

Ben Lynch: Famously, I said no it isn't. This episode will be right up your alley if you're looking to step back from the day-to-day in your clinic so that you can work more on your business. You'll want to hear the number one strategic question Jack and I debated at our latest leadership retreat. Stay tuned for when we talk about the criteria to look for in your ideal team player. 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 organised 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 helloatclinicmastery.com with the subject line podcast and we'll line up a time to chat. All right, let's get into the episode. For those that don't know, Jack, you're just like a super nerd at researching things. Do you think you've got analysis paralysis or you're better at making decisions?

Jack O'Brien: I've tamed the inner analysis paralysis. You know, I like to, and forgive the crassness, if you're listening to this and this upsets you, then that's OK. If this doesn't upset you, then you're the perfect audience. But for me, I would say I have OCA, like obsessive compulsive asset. Oh, it's not a disorder. It's an asset. Tell me more. It doesn't have to be ADHD. It can be ADHD. I know so many clinic owners that thrive because of their attention hyperactivity deficits. This is an asset, right? You can just flip the switch. Look how you look at it. Not discounting, you know, some of the real clinical implications, lest we get into too much trouble. But these things don't have to be debilitating lifelong sentences and prisons, pun intended. These things can be assets in your business owner journey. Well, my analysis paralysis is now my greatest strength.

Ben Lynch: Oh, you're just leaning into it, which is so beautiful. It's a great story. And that is a great dovetail into our conversation today, because we have just ramped up a week together and we didn't kill one another. We're still standing. That's a win. That's a win. Everyone's still alive, still breathing. Funny conversation with Dan today. He's like, I'm super exhausted. Just shot to bits. And so I'll tee it up as, We've just spent a week together at our leadership retreat. We have. Thinking about where we're going and designing a really compelling future. And we're all very juiced by it, but seeing everyone in the flesh, for four days straight and their little idiosyncrasies and the way they go about doing things was quite entertaining and trying to channel that where, you know, there's a little bit of attention over here, a little bit of attention over there. It was quite interesting, especially for me trying to moderate some heavy personalities.

Jack O'Brien: Well, second greatest moderator, I think we can call you.

Ben Lynch: Yes, behind

Jack O'Brien: Well, I was going to say me, but J. That's fair enough.

Ben Lynch: I'll be behind you. So the leadership retreat we got together. So this is for anyone that is thinking, you know, I'd like to sit back from the day to day, spend more time working on my business. Maybe you've got some time in your schedule to be able to do an activity like this during the week, a weekend, a long weekend. Maybe you can carve out a week, however it is. So many people get that time and then they're not sure what to do. So we want to talk through our recent leadership retreat that we've just wrapped up, which is really a version of strategy, planning, direction, where are we going? And we want to talk through how we did it, some of the things that have worked, some of the contentious points, and really just share quite openly. So Jacobrin, maybe to kick us off, What was a big win for you this week?

Jack O'Brien: I love the balance of the head in the clouds, you know, blue sky. Painted picture, I love the balance of that and the pragmatic, yeah, that's nice, but how are we going to get there? And making sure that that aligns. I've experienced and I've seen it so many times with clinic owners is that either we get so hung up on the details, we forget to shoot for the stars, shoot for the moon, might hit the stars.

Ben Lynch: Yeah, we debated this saying, actually. Is it shoot for the moon and you'll land amongst the stars or shoot for the stars and you might hit the moon? I believe it's the latter. Well, folks can comment down below and tell us what it actually is.

Jack O'Brien: So I love the balance of, yes, the head in the cloud stuff and the rubber meets the road and all that aligns. It dovetails really nicely.

Ben Lynch: Such a beautiful word, dovetail. So to set the scene, there are a couple of things that we did that maybe set the context for the week. The first is, and you and I discussed this on a recent podcast, using a Google form, just a survey form, where it was separated into reflecting on the past, the present, and then the future. Where are we going with some questions? We'll get into some of those questions as well, because they're really useful for any business at any stage. Secondly, we ran the structure in this particular way. So we met up on the Monday, we used the Monday to look at the past and the present. Then on the Tuesday was about diverging. So this is about big, bold ideas, go lateral, just really stretch in the thinking and the ideas. And so there was a lot of discussion and debate Then on the Wednesday, it was about, okay, we've got to converge back to a central point, which is about deliberation and decision. And then on the Thursday, what emerged was the documentation and the doing. So diverge, converge, emerge. And that's where we wrap things up. to go to the form, the thinking that we did beforehand was, you know, the purpose really was How can we get some of that critical thinking, some of that independent thought, some of that time to percolate like a good coffee on the things that matter most so that you come ready? And we're not doing things in the moment. Yes, let's share some of the questions that we have here, J-O-B.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, let me share the screen. We've got the form here. You can take some inspiration from this. And so we kept our answers separate from one another. And I actually really like your distinction, Ben. I think it comes up in one of the descriptions on these questions is it's not so much about your answer to the question as the thinking and the reasoning behind the question. And it was funny because we often talk about this when it comes to hiring. I know when we're interviewing applicants, when we're screening potential team members, we're interested in what they say, but we're interested in how they say it. And so I thought that was really clever. And this primed us really well to not just show up with baggage and distractions and unrefined thoughts, but like you say, you wanna be the one that sets your standard in the response. You wanna be able to think laterally, critically, boldly. So, you can see here, we've got it split up into sections. The past, we want to acknowledge what's worked or what we've done ourselves.

Ben Lynch: Let's go into it. Let's unpack maybe a few soundbites on this and even the discussion that it led to around this.

Jack O'Brien: Well, I mean, this is great, right? Don't assume people always know or see what you do. We're a leadership team of seven. And so, you know, I know that my partners, my team put out a lot of work, but sometimes I don't actually know what that work is. I trust they're busy, productive, creative, but sometimes I just don't see it because every business has multiple facets. There isn't much you miss, J-O-B. I try not to.

Ben Lynch: Yeah, you got your finger on the pulse, but there's a few others that are a little ahead in the clouds, me included. So the question was, what do you want to acknowledge yourself for over the past 12 months in your role? Specifically at SAM, but you could do this in your clinic. And I think this relates, Jack, to whatever stage of business you're at. So, if you're a solo, I could see someone who's in Elevate as an example. They're one, two, or three team members. They could still do this. What do I want to acknowledge myself for having done? Great question.

Jack O'Brien: It sets the scene. We move on. Where do you believe you could have done better? Great opportunity for ownership, honesty, transparency. We're not looking to drop the hammer on one another. But it's okay to be honest and like we're all human after all. So don't pretend. You don't need to cover your mistakes. Let's get them out there and work together.

Ben Lynch: Yep. I found this was a really great exercise because we talk about that Pat Lencioni is it from the book, the ideal team player, humble, hungry, and smart. So the humble piece is your ability to say, guys, I dropped the ball here. Maybe I avoided responsibility over there or I lowered my standard in the way I showed up. So it's an opportunity for us to look at that and It was challenging answering that question in a number of ways, because I felt uncomfortable looking at the things where I'm like, that wasn't the best version of me.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, it's illuminating, but that's a good thing. Yeah, absolutely.

Ben Lynch: Especially in a supportive environment where everyone's like, hey, yep, I appreciate that. And everyone else is doing it as well.

Jack O'Brien: Correct, correct. And, you know, vulnerability breeds trust. It also overcomes, and this is a critical point we can maybe expand on later, but Pat Lencioni again talks about the killer of teen culture is artificial harmony. Pretending that we're all amazing, pretending everything's okay, not saying the uncomfortable truths which we're about to get to, like that fake pretentious harmony, culture killer. So, then we're moving, we'll rifle through a couple of these. What do you believe you could have done better? What distinct or intense lessons have you learned in the last 12 months? And how will those lessons guide your decisions or behaviour going forward? Super key, like what are the insights that have changed our behaviour or our thinking?

Ben Lynch: So, the thing for me, I think maybe we discussed this recently, was when people say, there's no mistakes, there's only lessons. I'm like, yes, so long as the lessons are clearly defined, understood, and the insight is taken, or the system is created for change in the future. Ideally, so we have learned from it and we avoid the next time, or we're better prepared for the next time. So yeah, this was good. Let me just add a couple of themes to the answer to that one. We're around actually just literally speed of decisions. Around our intuition was, our feeling was, this was not quite right, needed change, et cetera. And we knew that and we could have made a decision quicker.

Jack O'Brien: We chose wilful blindness or allowed our bias to influence us too much. Interesting. Who would you place in your top three best on ground performers in the CM team over the last 12 months? And again, the answer behind the answer and what specific behaviours or achievements earned your vote?

Ben Lynch: I love this because when I was reading through it, Actually seeing what others valued about those team members was really insightful. Again, all kudos to the people that have just been amazing on the team. But it was more about, in my opinion, what were the things that we were seeing as really valuable? And I'm excited to share those elements with the broader team. Hey, when we did this reflection, here's what came to the surface and what's super valued.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, great. What decisions have paid off significantly over the past 12 months and what assumptions have we made that could have limited our growth? So really challenging, yeah, our beliefs, assumptions, where was our hypothesis wrong?

Ben Lynch: And part of this, I often think so much of business is downstream of decisions and thinking. If we have a process for how we think, some mental models for how we think about things, and we're clearer and clearer on our decision-making process, that feeds into our plan. feeds into the actions, feeds into the outcomes, feeds into the review. So actually, I think so much of maturing as a business owner is learning from the mistakes, but also having a process that you're conscious of for how you make decisions. So we're really leaning into that.

Jack O'Brien: Yep. Fascinating. So that really sums up the first section, the past and leaning into some of the recent history. Okay. Well, let me bring up the share again. We'll talk through the present. Yep.

Ben Lynch: So we, we didn't go through all of the answers, um, in person necessarily. We, we cherry picked a few of them, a number of them dovetailed or bled into one another. It's become a bit of a keyword, a buzzword for us over the week. Um, but then this is day one, still day one is using a blend of the past and the present.

Jack O'Brien: And so, what's working well and what do you believe is driving that success? What uncomfortable truths might we be avoiding or downplaying that could risk stagnation or decline? And what are we tolerating in our culture that could be quietly eroding performance or trust? Really, we're trying to get people to be… I often say, be honest. It's like, it's not that we're lying, but sometimes we're selective or we're blind or we embrace partial truths. So it's like, say the thing, say it plainly, say it completely in a healthy, safe, trusting space amongst friends. This is how we create robust conversation to get to the outcome.

Ben Lynch: I think of clinic owners that know they need to be more across their numbers, but are avoiding it. They're leaving it to just look at their bank account. Perhaps they're not doing the marketing activities to attract the new patients. They know they need to do it. So this is an opportunity, again, for you to look at, you know, if someone else was looking over my shoulder, perhaps, and had a bit more of a blunt piece of advice or observation, what would they see or say?

Jack O'Brien: Yeah. And particularly the culture one and the uncomfortable truths. It's like culture is what we build, but it's also what we tolerate. And if we're accepting things that are below our agreed standards of ourselves and one another, that erodes trust over time. And that erosion of trust is a killer. Some of the ongoing questions, what is the single biggest obstacle to our growth right now that if removed could unlock breakthrough progress, not just marginal gains? And so for me, Ben, this was the linchpin of our entire week, right?

Ben Lynch: Absolutely. We obsess over the marginal gains, and I think that's super important. Jim Collins, the 20-mile march in one of the many books that he's written. I can't remember. Which one's that one from?

Jack O'Brien: I'm not sure. One of them.

Ben Lynch: Come on, come on.

Jack O'Brien: You were always sure of these things. Good to great.

Ben Lynch: Good to great. All right, let's go with that. So we're all about the marginal gains, but what this does, and so much of this big picture thinking was, and we'll get to it in a moment, that really shatter through some of the constraints, conscious or subconscious, that we have. So what is the single biggest obstacle to our growth right now that, if removed, could unlock breakthrough progress? I'll say it with a little more emphasis there, JB, a little more theatre, because the idea here is to really be bold, to really think critically about this and constrain it to just one.

Jack O'Brien: Well, that's right. We pressure tested a few. It's like, well, don't quote me, but there might be three or four potential obstacles. It's like, well, is it A or B? Yeah. It's A. Well, is it A or C? Oh, it might be. And how do you get there? What's your thinking? If you had to bet on it, what's your confidence? So what's the likelihood of success? This was a couple of hours of conversation with this question alone.

Ben Lynch: So we had to like debate, you know, back and forth. I don't really see it like that. This is how you see it. This is the added context. Okay. Creates understanding. And then we, you know, pair off or square off, you know, some different options. And then I think at this point we even did, I smashed the post-it notes, which I've still got to get rid of here. It was like, all right, grab a pen, grab a sharpie and a post-it note. What is your one thing? And then do it in silence. And then we kind of vote and reveal, which was really good to create some fun and dynamism.

Jack O'Brien: Definitely. It'd be interesting if you could find the photo or two of the sticky notes plastered on the windows and the walls. It was like a beautiful mind coming to life.

Ben Lynch: Don't tell the Airbnb host.

Jack O'Brien: So in a similar vein, which part of our business model is most fragile, where a small shock could cause outsized damage? What are we blind to? Where are we vulnerable? Where are the risks?

Ben Lynch: For a clinic, this might be like a key team member. You know, maybe there's a lack of systems and, you know, it's a practice manager where all of the systems live in their head and they kind of are the key to the business that if they left, we'd be in all sorts of problems. So again, for clinic owners, these are just great questions for you to ask yourself.

Jack O'Brien: And you want to be looking at these answers before they come at you. And I say this with a great deal of sensitivity, but there might be a few clinics that are dependent on the NDIS. And that's a really uncomfortable comment at the moment. But if your business model is most fragile, where there's a small shift one press release and things become quite vulnerable, now's the time to think critically about that and engage in the help that you need. Because here's what I see, Ben, clinic owners who have thought about this and have engaged with the Business Academy or Elevate, They're ahead of the curve. Don't be stuck behind the curve. You can thrive in an NDIS environment if you are proactive in the right community with the right support and intelligence. Don't leave it to chance where small shocks cause outsized damage.

Ben Lynch: And there's no guarantee that any of us are gonna be able to nail this and know exactly where this could hurt us, a change in the environment, but we're trying to be super eyes wide open and be thinking about things proactively. So yeah, in that case, like we're seeing the NDIS, lots of changes, lots of uncertainty, lots of fear and stress. So for those folks, it's like, how do we go, and install quality marketing to attract private paying clients or shift the types of clients that we're getting in because that could be most fragile for us moving forward. So yeah, great questions to provoke critical thinking.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, moving on, what's one thing we're currently doing that we should stop doing because it no longer serves our goal? How many clinics do we see just doing what they've always done because they've always done it because they think you're supposed to do it or you saw someone else do it? Some of these things are unnecessary complexity, which is a killer. What assumptions are we making today about our current business model that may not hold in an AI-driven future. I mean, think of a few clinics and professions where this is really critical, where they're primed not just for AI disruption, but AI enhancements. And you can really strengthen your business model, but we need to think about assumptions of that business model.

Ben Lynch: Again, the AI landscape is changing so quickly that even speaking with the tech team that build Allie, their finger on the pulse trying to stay across it, but even there, seeing how rapidly it evolves. It's causing a lot of uncertainty, but what we're trying to do is, again, just start to and then continue thinking about this, right?

Jack O'Brien: Staying ahead of the curve. If you're not growing, you're going backwards and you're dying. So, finally here, what do we believe is our sustainable competitive advantage, our moat? as of today. And this is really critical for health clinic owners because in some regards, we are all providers of services and there's not a lot that can make our service distinctive unless you're really deliberate and intentional about your brand, your reputation, what is unique about your service offering. And you need to double down, triple down on that in the mind of your community, your patients.

Ben Lynch: It's a super important point. Next.

Jack O'Brien: The future. And so, Ben, do you want to speak to constraint-based thinking, both putting on constraints and also stretching constraints?

Ben Lynch: This is one of the most resourceful ways for us to think dynamically and critically about solving complex problems, or at least just growth problems, I think is to put some constraints on your thinking means that you have to figure out how can we do this with less time or less money or less people? Or in the opposite, what if you had an abundance of time, abundance of people, abundance of money, and we've put some specifics here in these questions that are about to come, what sort of decisions would you make? as best as you can be in that sort of headspace as you think about the decisions, you realise actually so much of the way we go about it is actually because of subconscious or subconscious barriers we put in place that may or may not actually be limiting our growth. So yeah, this was about removing constraints and adding constraints to see if we could be really creative about what happens in the future.

Jack O'Brien: I'll say this is challenging for me. I'd imagine a lot of high C clinic owners were very conscientious and thorough and evidence-based, evidence-informed. The action here, the insight is to try some different lenses, look at things from a different perspective. And it's not the actual answer that matters, but it's how we get there and the thinking that it might unlock. I remember someone at our meetup, one of us, through a curve ball, suggested a name for a role that was laughable, literally.

Ben Lynch: Doctors for Six in a cricketing term?

Jack O'Brien: It blew my socks off in the most absurd way possible. And as we were all laughing and dismissing this contribution, I remember it dawned on me. I'm like, hang on guys, we can't dismiss this because that's the wrong answer, but it's the wrong answer that will lead us towards the right answer. And that's where I find constraint taking.

Ben Lynch: One of those coaching moment opportunities, right? Where it was like, okay, tell us more. How did you get here? How did you arrive at that decision? Because there might, to your point, actually be some substance behind the reasoning that, hey, let's go back to the reasoning, maybe some of the first principles you've used here. And if we all start there, maybe we arrive at a slightly different decision or a significantly different one, perhaps in that case. But we're all aligned principally on the starting point.

Jack O'Brien: And so, we talked about here, if we refined our market, what expanded or reframed market will we serve and why? I think about some clinic owners often have success sessions with Elevate members and they're a physio clinic. And I challenge them sometimes, it's a bit provocative, like, what if you added a Cairo? Or maybe there's something adjacent, or maybe there's something entirely unrelated that we could add in and you hadn't considered. Oh, I've got a recruitment challenge with osteo. Okay. Well, maybe you could consider hiring a Mayo or even an EP, or maybe it's a massage therapist. Let's refine and expand. And why?

Ben Lynch: There's a couple of elements to this when defining your market. The example before about the NDIS, where you're talking about, are we actually changing to private paying any other funding sources or client types? Let's say you work with kids. Just even for the thought exercise, what if we were working with an older demographic of people? What would need to be true then? Again, it's not necessarily in the answer, but some of the reasoning behind it. So, a couple of key areas when addressing the market is professions, as you put out, J.I.B., which naturally then leads itself into the funding types or funding sources in a clinic sense. Geography, like you might be looking at moving suburbs or expanding into new suburbs or new cities, even. or looking at different problem sets or types that you serve, injuries, illnesses, different areas of health.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, I really like it. All right, this is an anti-constraint. Yes. If we had $10 million sitting on our balance sheet, or said another way, if you had $10 million drop into your bank account, what bold moves would you advise us to invest in for accelerated growth? If essentially money was unlimited, if you were advising your own clinic, what would you tell your clinic to do? It's a great way of sitting outside of your business and passing on that advice.

Ben Lynch: And someone might say, why not 100 million or a billion? There's an element of like, it doesn't really matter that much, again, but it's provocative. And you start to think, okay, well, we'd maybe allocate in these certain ways. So you could pick any number, we just went with 10.

Jack O'Brien: If you could acquire any company to leapfrog our growth, what type of company would it be and why? So it's, again, in the notes here, it's in the explanation that is most valuable in provoking our discussions over and above any specifics. And there were some quite divergent contributions here. It's really insightful to get a gauge of where people are at.

Ben Lynch: Absolutely. I think that adds to a clinic owner going, we might acquire the competitor down the road. It might be adding services to your point. Maybe we're physio and we want a higher pod, but what if we acquired a podiatry clinic in merge? So again, it's about the reasoning and the explanation behind the answer that is best.

Jack O'Brien: If we could bring on one top expert or specialist from any field, who would it be or what role would it be and what value would they unlock? Maybe this is an advisor, a new role or function or person to bring into the team against the thinking behind such a such a question. I don't know how many of us would go, Oh, that's hard. That's impossible. That would cost too much. They would never, it would never work out. We couldn't afford them.

Ben Lynch: Yeah. Yeah. It's like we could bring on anyone because so often we will hear people say, I don't have the money. I don't have the time and I don't have the people on my team to be able to take us to the next stage of growth. So it's almost eliminating those potential excuses from some of the decisions.

Jack O'Brien: Great. A similar question, if we could partner with any global leader, person or organisation, who would it be and what impact would we aim to create together? And then we moved into some AI-specific questions. And so much of this is crystal balling, but that's okay. It's like, where are we at? What are we all seeing? Because the different perspectives can be helpful. So if we shifted to an AI-led business model within three to five years, what would our core business look like? What constraints would we face in making that AI-driven transition and how could we turn them into advantages? What for you stood out with the AI conversation?

Ben Lynch: It's a really good point around being, you know, what do we call it? Power users essentially is so critical to what we're doing. The second is being proximal to experts in their field in this area as quickly as it's changing. We feel that Having more of those folks in our camp advising, coaching, teaching is only going to help us refine how we help support, teach, guide, install changes for clinic owners as well. So we've made some big investments financially and time-wise in some products that help clinic owners meaningfully. Maybe you're listening into this and you remember you'll be familiar with Allie inside of the Slack workspace that you can tag Allie.

Jack O'Brien: Can you expand on that for the listeners who aren't a member yet?

Ben Lynch: Yes. So inside of our Slack workspace, it's where our community exists. They have the conversations, they tap into the coaches, the experts, the partners that we have to ask questions, whether it's about HR, finance and accounting, marketing. And that is the forum with which we support and answer questions for clinic owners. Allie, the software that we have, which encompasses performance management of team members, some data, resources, systems for your clinic, has also been a piece of tech that we've built. And we've merged those two together with an AI-connected agent. that answers any question about growing your clinic based on the decade worth of documents, experience, insights, and strategies that we've developed. In 10 seconds, you got an answer to a question about marketing to attract new patients, how to step back from the day-to-day so you can work more on your business. how to make recruitment less of a challenge by installing these systems in the recruitment ecosystem. So not only does it answer questions, it actually generates the assets and resources for you based off of what we've got. So yeah, for members listening in, absolutely continue to use and activate that in your account. For those that aren't yet members, hopefully this tells you the signs of that we're on the cutting edge of this. And if you're looking for support, I can't imagine a better community. If it's not us, find someone that's in your corner. We believe that every clinic owner should have a business mentor in their corner, supporting their decisions and their growth moving forward.

Jack O'Brien: I love Allie AI. Think of it like this. You can go to any of the retail AI providers, Grok or ChatGPT or Gemini, and you're A, going to get a very vanilla response that isn't personalised and customised. So can you trust it? hard to say, and it's probably just going to tell you what your itching ears want to hear. They're very agreeable.

Ben Lynch: Very agreeable.

Jack O'Brien: What we've done is we've built an AI that's trained on the Clinic Mastery way, on the systems, processes, ideology, philosophy of Clinic Mastery. And so our members exclusively have access to this in their pockets. Yes.

Ben Lynch: Just not available externally.

Jack O'Brien: No. And so it's super cool. So we're on the front edge of the curve when it comes to AI. And so how will our business look different? How will clinics look different? That was the essence of that.

Ben Lynch: And a subtle but significant one is that this is not just a chat GPT bot.

Jack O'Brien: That's pretty elementary.

Ben Lynch: Yes, it is very elementary. We actually have our own, you know, it's super secure, best practices in place. So, yeah, we're really excited that that's been available to members for the last month and we're going to continue to train it and provide it with the best in what it takes to grow your clinic.

Jack O'Brien: More on that to come, but certainly the thinking of AI. These things in AI exist, but they're not always adopted. There's a few clinic owners that are on the front edge. If you're listening to this podcast, you're probably an open-minded, abundant, progressive clinic owner. Not in the social sense, probably, but you're open to where tech is progressing towards. New things. New things. However, that's not true for everyone. And there'll be people listening who are very skeptical and untrusting of AI.

SPEAKER_01: Yes.

Jack O'Brien: Rightfully so. Rightfully so. Who maybe are comfortable in the way they do things and are not looking to AI-ify. their business in the next 6, 12, 24 months. And so we need to think about some of the constraints, the adoption. It's all well and good for us to invest in AI technology, but if the clinic owner is not ready to adopt those advancements, then we need to think about how we navigate that as business coaches and mentors.

Ben Lynch: Nice. Two more questions. I had a bit of tongue in cheek on this next one.

Jack O'Brien: So the backstory here is we initially settled on our Clinic Mastery core values, I want to say 2017 at Barwon Heads and sat around after a game of golf. What is the essence, the substance of Clinic Mastery? Who are we? How do we behave? What do we want to be known as? And there was a lot of contention There's tension in the air. There still is a little bit of tension in the air. Cut it with a knife. Yeah. It was the uncomfortable conversation of is fun a core value of clinic mastery?

Ben Lynch: Famously, I said, no, it isn't. No fun. No fun. And so I did. I did say no fun. That doesn't make it on the list. I said, what is what is the lead? What is the lead indicator? What is the lead behaviour of having fun? It would be bring the energy. So if we bring the energy, I think we fun will be a natural consequence and it will happen anyway. But having fun is not making it on the list.

Jack O'Brien: It's been a running joke for nearly 10 years now. But we still want to infuse fun, joy, having a great time into what we do. So we asked the question, if we could maximise the level of joy we had in bringing our future to life.

Ben Lynch: Joy? Hold up. Joy and fun.

Jack O'Brien: Well, joy, fun, happiness, they're subtly different. They are. I appreciated the distinction because I'm not a fun guy, but I have more joy.

Ben Lynch: You're not, you're definitely.

Jack O'Brien: I would hazard a bet. I would hazard a bet that I have more joy than anyone else on our team.

Ben Lynch: Okay. Okay. Well, I have neither of these things, joy or fun. Just a robot programming some AI. So let's get to the flipping question. Here we go. If we could maximise the level of joy and fun we had bringing this future to life, what would you advise us to do? Subtext, remember, fun is not a core value and this is just a hypothetical exercise. I thought, why not have some fun while answering that question? Because, hey, business is tough. There are challenges. There are hardships. You might be close to the bread line, as you often say, JRB. You might be navigating four team members just left, and it's almost back to bare bones and you. There's a lot of hard stuff that happens, a lot of adversity that happens. When you take all this risk as a business owner, you're paying team members, you're trying to grow, you're investing in areas with a lot of uncertainty whether it'll pay off. So can you find meaning? Can you find joy in the process? Can you enjoy the journey along the way? And so part of asking that question, and I think we do have fun, but it's just been a running joke for the last 10 years that we don't have fun as a core value. that, hey, we've got a whole bunch of really serious questions here, like, where have you fallen short? Where are we going? What's going to disrupt us? Like, it's all very intellectual, very heady stuff. But if we could make it super fun as well, moving forward, knowing that there's going to continue to be hardships, what would that look like? And where did we get to? People are like, OK, so you're going to have fun. What does that look like?

Jack O'Brien: Well, there was a range of different types of answers, essentially. Some of that we should, well, here's the summary. If you were to group it all together and grab the theme, the theme was let's spend meaningful moments together.

Ben Lynch: Yeah.

Jack O'Brien: Shared experiences. Shared experiences. Some of that was a commentary on our daily huddles and what we do day in, day out. Some of that was about overseas travel or how we gather, you know, week to week, month to month, quarter to quarter. But the theme certainly was time together and shared experiences around moments, milestones and multipliers.

Ben Lynch: Love it. Love it.

Jack O'Brien: So there you go. And then finally, if you were given an open-ended budget to invest in your own growth, what would you pursue to meaningfully level up so that you could drive us forward and why specifically that? Great, insightful question. Why did you ask this?

Ben Lynch: Yes. I think this question is going back to, how am I going to play my part in bringing this future to life? And it somewhat inherently also asks the question, where do you feel deficient at the moment? Do you know what I mean? Or maybe you'd say, okay, I'm pretty good at this, but I want to go, yeah, whatever. world class, insert your answer. But I think broadly, it often tackles some area that you feel deficient in and want to level up in. And secondly, it's a bit of a cold warms to say, hey, this is a team effort, but you've got to play your role. And if we were to help you be the best version of you, if you were to level up in a few different areas, get better, what area would that be? And then, yeah, tell us why, essentially explain again the reasoning, this is how I think it could contribute to, you know, the future for us. And again, the open-ended budget part of that question is more to just remove constraints. And a few actually put like, the top of the top sort of world-class leaders that they would want to learn from. Maybe that'll happen, maybe it won't, but at least it opens up the possibilities for it to happen.

Jack O'Brien: So really robust exercise. We didn't share our results amongst each other until we'd all submitted the form. And then we had 24 hours to read each other's responses before gathering in the room in the flesh. And so you answered blindly, you read and had some context so that we could hit the ground running and make the rubber hit the road.

Ben Lynch: Pete might have literally been blind, he had a few gin and tonics as he answered his, just to lubricate the intellectual exercise of what's possible. There was that saying that you and I were talking about, which was, was it write drunk, edit sober for the book?

Jack O'Brien: I've heard used for the book. There's a classic writing axiom.

Ben Lynch: No, we're completely sober through the whole time. But this is a must. A must for any clinic owner at any stage is to take the time to purposefully design the future that they're building by using some reflection about the past and the present to know what does that future look like so that it's compelling for you. We often say, and I use the difference between a number of people in the community and even between like Dan and Shane in the size of their respective clinics, to say there's no There's no blueprint of exactly this is what your clinic needs to look like. Maybe some people even think that we're all about growing to the moon. It's about creating a business that's super meaningful to you. Whatever that looks like, we often say your version of success. And it's wildly different between everyone that we work with. And our job is to understand that so that when we work with clinic owners, we help them create a plan that is meaningful to get there. So regardless of what stage you're in, even if you are having some adversity, some challenges at the moment, do this exercise, like carve out a day in your week or on the weekend to do this, to do some version of reflection and future pacing for that compelling future.

Jack O'Brien: Love it. What a great exercise. For those inside our community, this forms part of the resource and the intelligence of your culture days. And we're doing a leadership immersion at the moment, Ben, an immersion on top of our existing content library, where clinic owners, dozens, hundreds of clinic owners are going deep on what it means to invest in their own leadership. It is… It is elite. It's world-class training for clinic owners. The feedback we're getting is mind-boggling. And so, leadership is such a key note at the moment for clinic owners. It's a hot-button topic. Managing your team, leading, inspiring, recruiting, training, retaining, nurturing your team is the game as a clinic owner. And right now is a time to double down, triple down on your leadership development as a clinic owner.

Ben Lynch: or quadruple down?

Jack O'Brien: Maybe.

Ben Lynch: What is it? Quintuple down? Would that be the case?

Jack O'Brien: Maybe.

Ben Lynch: Well, Jabby, this has been good. To wrap up a great week, I do feel a little brain fried after the week of going deep. Yeah, I know. I know. I'm even slower than normal, which is very slow. But what an incredible week. I am so excited for the future of clinic mastery because of the incredible way that we're thinking about serving clinic owners through the life cycle of their business journey. Some of the things that are going to come down the pipes are just… So good.

SPEAKER_01: So good.

Ben Lynch: That was that was the word like we are so pumped to help more clinic owners through their life cycle and create something meaningful. We'll head over to clinicmastery.com forward slash podcast for the show notes for this episode and for all past episodes. And come join us on YouTube. Hit the subscribe button. We're putting out regular content that's super practical for you. Joby, we'll catch you on another episode with Hannah Dunn very soon. We will. Bye bye.