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 wondering, is owning a clinic still worth it? We're diving into how to run your clinic so that it's a great return on your time, money, and effort. And trust me, you want to hear Mic's take on how to navigate out of the tough times like mass resignations. Plus stick around for when we discuss why selling and exiting your clinic is rarely a good solution.

Mic Rizk: The downside I feel of being an owner is quite limited because if everything blows up, you have the safety of a great career that you can always go back to.

Ben Lynch: We're seeing a number of clinic owners wanting to sell their clinic in a bit of a flurry, quite literally over the last few weeks.

Mic Rizk: I think a lot of owners that speak to us who are feeling like it's not worth it, they're in a trough, whether it's personally, professionally or in the business, and that's not the time to exit. Those four things mentioned, time, money, meeting and freedom, Would you expect to have all four? At a certain time in business, you should have all four. We had a whole team at a clinic turnover. The net position of the clinic after that financial year was like minus 30k.

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 clinics, 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. It is episode 381. My name is Ben Lynch. If we haven't met before, I'm an apprentice dad, four kids, one hell of a coffee snob. I think I've got a few on the panel here and co-founder of Clinic Mastery. I'm joined today by the Prince of Pokemon, a guy in search of the perfect risotto recipe and owner of iMove Physio. Michael Rizk question for you straight off the bat. Where is better to live, Sydney or Melbourne?

Mic Rizk: Sydney, hands down. When I'm speaking from experience, because I've done both, and most Melbourne people you speak to have not lived in another city, so it's not valid. It's not double-blinded, randomized, controlled.

Ben Lynch: I feel like most Melbourne folk, yes, feel like Melbourne is the be-all and end-all. I can put a vote for Adelaide, but Sydney sounds really good. And of course, we have that guy that lights up your social. His kids think he's one of the Wiggles because of the colourful shirts that he wears. He's a former physio clinic owner and my business partner. Yes, you should feel sorry for me. And you might know him as J-O-B, Jacobrin, or many other things. And we know him as just Jack. for the Will and Grace fans out there. You've just been in Perth, my friend. How was it? What was the highlight? I have.

Jack O'Brien: The jet lag is real. The Republic of Western Australia, as they called it through COVID. It was wonderful. Get boots on the ground, meet up with a bunch of clinic owners, shake hands, kiss babies. But more than anything, get amongst the clinics. I consumed more coffee in real life than is medically advisable and had a great deal of fun, met some amazing, phenomenal, good people. The good people of Clinic Mastery, it was just phenomenal.

Ben Lynch: Yeah, very nice. Well done. A few heart palpitations, I'm sure. Well, we're going to get into a really important topic today around, is owning your clinic still worthwhile? I want to get to that and unpack your own stories. We have the privilege of working with hundreds of clinic owners and over really a decade, over a thousand clinic owners navigate their journey and they always ask this question explicitly or implicitly. Is it worth it? And I want to unpack that a lot because we're seeing some really important trends that we'll get into. But J.O.B., did you want to announce anything on your desk? What news have you got?

Jack O'Brien: I just want to welcome some people. Some good people have joined us and the Business Academy welcomes Emily and Anna. If you are regular listeners, welcome to the community. Andy joined us in Elevate. Simone in the Business Academy as well. We've had a bunch of clinics jump into our marketing agency, Tom, Phil, and Lucia, and Jason. So there's plenty of folks who are making themselves making themselves a part of the community. If you want to do so, if you're a clinic owner and you're like, I want some help to grow my clinic, I need to fill my books, grow my team, send me an email jack at clinicmastery.com and we'll see if you're a good fit for us. We'll offer you the invitation to apply if so. Whether that's for doing your ads for you with Google Ads, business coaching, being a part of our community, all of those fun elements. And Ben, we sold a bunch of summit tickets recently to non-members. So if you're not yet a member and you want to reserve your place for the summit in Adelaide in March 2027, again, email me, jack@clinicmastery.com. It's by application only. So we want the room full of good people. Get in touch. I think that's it for today. Beautiful.

Ben Lynch: Well, I did a little bit of research, just a little bit, on what is the definition of worthwhile. Thought maybe we could unpack that. And Cambridge Dictionary says, something is important, useful, or valuable enough to spend your time, money, or effort on. I'm sure each of you have had this experience. I've had this experience, and I think every clinic owner we've worked with has had this experience where they've asked themselves the question, is it worth it? I'm sure you've experienced this too, where you've explicitly or implicitly sort of had that floating around. And I'm interested, Nick, when those moments have come up for you, how have you answered the question, is owning a clinic still worth it, especially when it gets tough?

Mic Rizk: Uh, I go back to the time, money, freedom, adding a fourth that Jack has given us his meaning. And so I kind of look into those four areas. Is it, is it worth my time? Is it worth the money? Is it worth the freedom? Is it worth the meaning? And I've had probably two points in my career where I've really asked that question in a very serious manner and. At all times, two to three of those were coming through fairly strongly, and it was maybe that one of them wasn't so much. At all times, I gave myself a year deadline. I'm like, you got to hang in there for a year, and if you can fix it, good. If not, get out. Every time I've had those moments, it's been fixed.

Ben Lynch: What were those two to three times where you seriously questioned it, it sounds like?

Mic Rizk: We had a whole team at a clinic turnover, including some seniors.

Ben Lynch: Meaning they resigned, they exited the clinic?

Mic Rizk: Yeah, yeah. A leader resigned and then the two juniors under that leader were slap in the face. You guys say your culture is great, these core values, I move none of that. I'm like, that's probably the hardest conversation I've ever had in 13 years. Um, and then simultaneously buying out my business partner. So those two things were happening at the same time while simultaneously, I think the net position of the clinic after that financial year was like minus 30 K. So that, yeah, that was probably the, is it worth it question for me or moment.

Ben Lynch: And at that point you said, just hold on for the next 12 months. In a way, you were sort of delaying, hey, don't make a rash decision in the moment while the heat's on. Give myself 12 months and if I still feel the answer is, yeah, it's not worth it, then make a call. Is that essentially how you navigated it?

Mic Rizk: Exactly. And I think if you're asking that question in times of pain, it's good to do so, but I wouldn't make a decision in times of pain. That was like one of the notes I had coming into this. I think a lot of owners that speak to us who are feeling like it's not worth it, they're in a trough. whether it's personally, professionally, or in the business, and that's not the time to exit. So I like the year rule. I think it's helpful. It's like don't send an email when you're angry, right? Don't exit your business when you're in a trough.

Jack O'Brien: Mic, those four things you mentioned, time, money, meeting, and freedom, would you expect to have all four, or is three out of four acceptable?

Mic Rizk: I mean, my perspective is at a certain time in business, you should have all four, but I don't think you can have the money and the freedom part in the first, you know, zero to five years. That would be very difficult. Yeah, and you might not have all four at all times. No, and maybe one of those things comes from something else. It doesn't all have to come from your business, but yeah, I think most clinic owners would derive meaning from what they do as a clinic owner originally, and then the time, money, freedom would be the more financial trade-offs.

Ben Lynch: It's interesting because I think this is where the enough part comes in for me, because you do have all of those things, but if you're dissatisfied, there's some degree of, well, I've got it, but it's not enough. So, I might have Friday mornings off, but work the rest of the week, but that's not enough time off. I want the whole day Friday, just to give an example. Or I'm earning a hundred grand, but it's not enough, and I think it's all relative to your version of enough and two other things perhaps influencing what you think it should be worth to you you know I should be earning a hundred ninety grand or two hundred fifty grand whatever it is. So it's quite an interesting framing of what is enough and so often in our coaching right we talk about. What is your desire statement? Like, let's go through, we use the wheel of life typically, which looks at finances, your career, it looks at your health, it looks at your family, relationships, etc. So, it says, okay, what do I want this to look like in the future? Typically, we use a Goldilocks timeline of three years. And then it's always worthwhile doing a version for what does that look like today. And I think this, you know, version of suffering's dissatisfaction is all in the enough part. because inherently you're looking at what's lacking compared to what, do you know what I mean? Like someone's always got it harder or working harder. So I think actually the trick here for folks is to think about what is enough in this season. I know when we say started Clink Mastery, JOB, at the very beginning of a business owner's journey, My experience was I didn't have a lot of money. I think that's true of most business owners, right? But I had a lot of time and a lot of time for family. We had a six-month-old when we started this business 10 years ago. So I had a lot of that, like I had a premium on time with family and that was really meaningful at that stage. So I think it's interesting at different seasons of life, how one of those four actually matters more to you, perhaps, that means more to you. How have you gone about thinking about this question, J.O.B., even as a clinic owner, as a business owner of CN, you know, that version of, is it worth it? Is it still worth it?

Jack O'Brien: I'll come back to that question on worth it or worthwhile. It's funny you mentioned enough. There's two books that come to mind. I'm going to screen share for folks listening. Come and join us over on the YouTubes. There's two books, and they are seemingly contradictory, but these have been formative for me. And so the first one here is a book, funnily enough, called Enough. by John Bogle or Jack Bogle as his nickname. He's the founder of Vanguard and he speaks to this challenge of when is enough enough? Quite a fascinating book. And so then the second share that I want to highlight here is another book with a very similar but a different name and this one's called Never Enough. by Andrew Wilkinson. And again, this book is so good. This is a dude who's made billions, literally, and how you end up on this chase, this never-ending chase of like, oh, there's always more. To your point, Benny, it's like, compared to who? Compared to what? There's always someone with more time or more money or more freedom. And so it really distils down this notion of like, when is enough enough? Because it might be never enough if you're not careful. And then when you say that phrase of like, when is it worth it? Like, is it worthwhile? My immediate reaction was to think about Morgan Housel and his book, The Psychology of Money. And maybe we can expand on this just a little bit more. I'm sharing the screens here for folks watching, or if you're listening, check out these three books on Amazon. Use Ben's affiliate code and he might get 20 cents kickback. We don't have affiliate codes for Amazon. Morgan Housel, the author of this book, talks about this principle of reasonable versus rational. Right? And so he says, it is far better to be more reasonable than it is rational. Rational is the cold, hard, mathematical facts. But reasonableness is very person dependent and context dependent. What is reasonable for me may not be rational. It may in fact be very irrational. But it's reasonable based on my personal context, my emotion, my situation, everything else going on. You know, maybe a really simple example of this is to hold gold as an asset is not rational if you are chasing the highest return. If you want the highest return, you might play in Bitcoin or speculative stocks or Pokemon cards or even ETFs. Holding gold is not rational. It's a very safe asset that does not guarantee you the highest returns. But I'll say for me personally, it is very reasonable for me to hold gold. In my mix of property and ETFs and business, et cetera, gold is very reasonable but not rational. And so then when I think about owning a clinic, for many of us, it is an irrational decision to continue to own our clinics or to get into clinic ownership. But it is entirely reasonable.

Ben Lynch: To that point, there's a great quote from someone that is to the effect of an entrepreneur is the sort of person that would rather work 100 hours for themselves than 38 for somebody else. To some effect, it's like, yeah, that's not rational. You could just be a high-performing physio at another clinic and earn, you know, whatever, 150 grand. Insert anything else. massive on the money side of things, but there's little to no stress outside of the work hours. Perhaps you're able to work a four-day week if you're at mixed clinic as an example there, and there's incredible balance. So I think a lot of people will weigh that up and you bring up a really good point. or frame of reference, J.O.B., in the sense of this concept of return on investment. So if we go back to worthwhile, something is important, useful, or valuable enough for you to spend or invest your time, money, or effort on. So what is the return that you're looking for? There might be a family return, a lifestyle return, a money return. an emotional return, the degree of joy or stress that you get from the investment that you make, that are worthwhile reviewing periodically. Hopefully, as you said, Mic, you're not in this really deep, dark place or there's trough and you're going, ah, it's not worth it. I want to get out. But here's why this conversation matters right now. We're seeing a number of clinic owners wanting to sell their clinic in a bit of a flurry, quite literally over the last few weeks. And Mic, you put a post in our coach's channel. I had Andy Wang calling me saying, I've got a clinic owner who wants to sell. Are you able to facilitate it? Then there were like several other messages in our Slack going off. all of a sudden there's a bunch of clinic owners for various reasons asking that question and answering it with a, I don't think it's worthwhile enough to continue. So Mic, as we just double click on this a little bit more, you had a couple of notes here around the relative nature of deciding this or answering this question around, you know, maybe a couple of good years of earning a high physio salary is the worthwhile consideration or alternative. Do you want to just take us down that line of how you've weighted up against being an employee or being an owner?

Mic Rizk: Yeah, I think I was speaking about upside and downside. So yeah, that's one, that's one part of my thought process for owners that I'm coaching and myself. So that the downside I feel of being an owner is quite limited because if everything blows up, you have the safety of a great career that you can always go back to. You may have incurred a lot of debt for an expensive fit out, but that might be the worst of it, hopefully. But a lot of clinic owners can exit their clinic without significant life changing debt. The upside though, I still think is tremendous. Like we work with clinic owners every day who are earning three, four, five X what they could earn as a physio and they have time freedom and they have lifestyle by design and they have meaning. So when I compare the worst downside, the fear setting downside to the upside, I think that's worth thinking about. Yeah, that's a big thought for me and that's something I take clinic owners through.

Ben Lynch: The fear-setting one, you're referring to the Tim Ferriss TED Talk, I think it is, where he talks about the opposite of goal-setting is fear-setting. And once you do that, sort of explore all of your fears on a piece of paper, maybe it feels less confronting and you can actually navigate through a period of uncertainty. Is that an exercise you've done or you've encouraged other clinic owners to do? Talk us through it.

Mic Rizk: What's the worst possible result that could happen here if I stay in it and I'm still not enjoying myself financially, mentally? Go through each of those scenarios, write them down. What would happen if all of my team left and I had to close the clinic in three months? What would that mean? And how bad is that result? And it's often not as bad as we ruminate on. Uh, and then do the other side too. Like I, I always believe I could get my clinic to a place where I had time freedom. I had meaning, I was doing what I loved and the income upside was, was good.

Jack O'Brien: How do you get to- It's interesting, Mic, because, like, sorry, Benny, I find that clinic owners generally don't sit in those scenarios long enough. Like, how would that actually feel? Is it as bad as you think it might be or is it as good as you think it might be? Like, play out the second and third order consequences of those scenarios and almost start to, like, feel how it will feel. Does that make sense, Mic?

Mic Rizk: Yeah, you're prompting a few things coming up for me. Like I went as deep as, do I have all our annual leave aside? If I close the clinic, would I have the funds to pay everyone's annual leave? When does my lease end? It ends in two years, but I'm giving myself a year. So I would have a year of paying the lease if I exited this business. So I was getting like real deep into cool. I could exit this business for a hundred K. I'm sure that's the absolute worst. Cause I was pretty certain I could find a buyer. And you got to go deep on that. And it was never as bad as I thought. And a lot of the time it's, I would say you're attaching your identity to it as well. I think that's the real fear is like, this is me. This is what I've committed 10 years to. What if it fails? I think most owners might feel that as well.

Ben Lynch: Do you think there's a sense that they would feel like a failure having to go back and work for someone having been a business owner? Is that what you're referring to?

Mic Rizk: Yeah, totally. I felt, I felt like a failure in my 10th year of business with a minus 30 K net profit year and four of my best team members leaving whilst coaching other clinic owners who had better clinics than mine at the time. So it's, you got to deal with that. That's something we're all going to face, a sense of identity, embarrassment. Yeah, but you got to get through that. That's part of the journey.

Ben Lynch: And part of that for you was delaying any big decisions. I often find a lot of clinic owners who are faced with this trough, as you called it, Mic, often have some pretty big, scary decisions to make. And if it's not maybe a scary decision, it's like the implementation or the action feels big and challenging. For instance, I've got a couple of examples here I'm interested in for you guys too. It's like, ah, okay, I've realized this business is not really profitable enough to support me and my family. And one of the key reasons perhaps is I'm paying my team too much. Maybe I set up this contractor model at the very beginning and it's really put me in a tricky spot. And I need to navigate from contractor to employees and maybe I've tried that and lost a few team members or I'm scared to do that. And it's not an overnight change, it's several weeks, several months perhaps of making a transition or maybe I actually need to let go of some services and therefore some team. Maybe we added all these other professions or services in to support our community and They're just costing us a lot more or maybe their locations that they've expanded to and they're having to let go of some of these things and there may be tens of thousands of dollars and maybe high emotional sort of decisions. And going through that change is tough. There's tough conversations, there's big decisions, there's potentially letting other people down as well. Hopefully we're able to underscore how we've seen it and understand how dramatic it can be navigating through these periods. And at the end of the day, you're sort of asking yourself, well, Is it worth it because I have to go through all of these hard things? I like your framing, Mic, of what's the downside of this? If we get through the next six months, well, what does that mean for the next six years? Can I actually go through this and come out the side a much better leader, a much better business owner because of it? I think part of that humility and humbling experience that I've had in my time is going, well, it's all good when it's good. Anyone can run the business when things are going smoothly and well and the team's great. That's easy mode. Actually, the reward comes from, and the worthwhile bit, in my mind, also comes from the personal development and growth of navigating those challenges and saying, at the end of the day, that prerequisite to get into physio, podiatry, speech OT, whatever it is. I remember at university, it was like, the prerequisite's like, really good problem solver. And it's like, all of these things are just problems that we need to solve in business. You know, they're different from the patient, but are you a problem solver? Yes. And some of these things are just going to be uncomfortable, but they're part of your journey and your story too. And that's worthwhile.

Jack O'Brien: It's super worthwhile. And like, let's just linger there for a minute. I was talking with some clinic owners in Perth last week. It's like when you signed up to own a clinic, whether you knew it or not, you signed up to solve problems in perpetuity that get harder and harder over time. This is the game. And you got to love the game, right? Like we don't get into clinic ownership. Look, you might get into it for some rosy, altruistic, you know, I want to sit on the beach, sipping cocktails and work from a laptop for 12 hours a week. And that's lovely. But the actual reality of the game is we're in the human game. You have people like at this stage, robots are not replacing health professionals. The key function of your role is building a team of humans that help other people in your community. And the problems that you solve get progressively more difficult. And this is it. Like, would you do it when you weren't getting paid? Because this is a game of business. It's fun. It's hard, but fun and hard are not mutually exclusive.

Ben Lynch: Interesting, Nick, you've worked with a few and you obviously put it up into the chat about a clinic you're working with specifically, not to call them out, but what is it that you found useful in navigating this conversation and kind of connecting back? I see Daniel Gibbs has done this tremendously well with members over a long period of time when they are in this trough and navigating out of it by reconnecting back to what matters there. Why ultimately like their founding story, why did you get into this? So talk us through how you've navigated those conversations with members as well and reconnecting back to what truly matters. Like why are they doing this?

Mic Rizk: Yeah, I feel like the two big reasons people feel this way is either a loss of meaning They've gone so far from doing what they thought they were good at or what they loved or what gave them meaning at the start. And that's usually to do with people because we're in the people game as Jack said. And then the connection to their why, their blue sky vision. They feel so far away from that that they can't even imagine how to get out of it.

Ben Lynch: So, how do you have that conversation, though, when someone's in that? I mean, maybe there's a parallel here with therapy and that patient that's in so much pain or illness that it's like, hey, we can't be talking over here at step 93 when they're at step 1. How do you start to move the needle towards reconnecting with that?

Mic Rizk: I go very practical. When are you excited at work? What lights you up? When are the moments where you're at your happiest? And normally, those moments aren't happening often enough because they're dealing with people issues or they're dealing with profit issues and they're so lost in the weeds that they've Stopped doing the things I love. It might be that they love treating and they've stopped treating. It might be that they loved mentoring and CPD and reading journals, but they've stopped that. It might be that they're really pragmatic entrepreneur and they like opportunities and ads and new ideas and AI, but they've stopped doing that. So I think about burnout being a moral injury, not because you've done 80 hours a week, but it's like you've you're detached from your meaning and what you love doing. And I think that happens to allied health owners a lot because they're dealing with rosters and people and new clients and wages that have gone over 50% and that feels so far from what we thought we would do as firstly health professionals and then as business owners in health.

Ben Lynch: But proactively then, what's your treatment plan here for the clinic owner? Because often it's catalysed by some big event, resignation of a whole team, some big bill they weren't expecting and they're sort of like, oh, is it even worth it? And they go into navigating. the thought process. How do you encourage them to maybe think about these things and connect with them when it is good, when it is going well? Because I do lose sight of it. There's just this drift. One degree today, you sort of play out over 18 months and, whoa, we're a long way from where we were or I was as the clinic owner. What's your sort of remedy or recommendation for helping clinic owners navigate that proactively?

Mic Rizk: I think of the micro, so like, show me your next week. Is this aligned with what we started with? Is this aligned with the things that light you up? And there's normally some very practical, significant changes you can make to someone's ideal week, even when they're in the trough. And often we have this thing is when we're in a trough, that's not the time to make the changes, but it's the opposite. If you can rejig your week, so you're more fulfilled and more energetic, you'll, you're more likely to get out of a trough. So I'll just look at your calendar the next week and often these clinic owners are still working ridiculous hours or they're consulting too much or they don't have a four or five hour time block doing the thing that they're great at in their business or they don't have strict time blocks for family and friends and leave. They haven't got their next two leaves planned. They haven't taken leave for six months. Really easy wins, the basics we always talk about. I haven't met a clinic owner who's in a trough who's doing all of those basics. So that's the micro. Uh, the macro is I connect them back to what could this look like with one or two good years. And I just love the shortcuts. Like, cause I know physio so well, a really good physio will build 250 K that's 125 K net profit. If we got two really good physios in the next six months, you've got 250 K straight back into your net profit. What would that look and feel like? And now you're consulting less doing what you love and you've got 250 K more. What would that look and feel like? So just break it down very pragmatically and then I go to the rolling break even. So we kind of start with the feeling and the micro and put a quick win in there then we connect them to the meaning and then we go like let's actually do it in the rolling break even because we've seen so many times you put it in the rolling break even it's like. Oh, that's, uh, that doesn't seem too bad. Okay. How do I have these videos? And then, and then it, it, it anchors you in action. Cause now I'm aligned to, well, all of that stuff we just spoke about, I just need to go and find two good physios. And now we're talking about action instead of anxiety and thoughts and rumination, which is like, cool. Have you been recruiting? And then that takes me back to what you started with, which is how do you stop this when times are good? That's why I'm always recruiting. If you've always got a bench, a reserve, five to 10 people ready to step up and do a kick-ass job, I reckon that's half of the challenges the clinic owners face, maybe 75% of the challenges the clinic owners. If you are losing team and that has you worried and every time you lose a team member, you're struggling, imagine what it would feel like if you knew you always had two or three great people ready to step in.

SPEAKER_03: Yes.

Mic Rizk: your leadership and energy and you stop leading from a place of fear and you start holding your standards more. So all of these things.

Ben Lynch: Jack, I want to come to you in a moment about the reminder side of things. But Mic, you bring up a really good point for those members tuning in, of which there are many. Thank you so much for tuning in between your coaching sessions. Alongside of this episode, we've got a little value pack for members and I'll put the links into Slack. So go over there and check it out once this podcast is in your earbuds. which will include a couple of things around business value drivers, assessing your clinic valuation service, the rolling breakeven, coming off the tools, which is part of that tight time freedom, and also accountant sessions with Andy Wang for our Business Academy members. So just stay tuned. For the members listening in, there'll be a little member value pack associated with this episode. Go check out the relevant Slack channels. J.O.B., tell us a little bit more about the reminding piece you just mentioned in the chat.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, I think when it comes to reconnecting with your meaning and with your purpose, it's one thing to think about it and intellectually remind ourselves and spend time going there as a cerebral exercise. Super valuable. I think there's something really valuable there, physically, practically, doing something with your physical body to remind yourself, to embody. For example, for me, impacts globally has been really important for us. We sponsor a bunch of kids and we've done a bunch of work overseas. And there was a period, obviously COVID was part of that period where we couldn't get overseas. And so it becomes this, like work becomes a grind. And so part of our family rhythm now is that we try and make sure we get over to a project every two years. Just this year, we took our kids to visit our Compassion Sponsored Kids in Thailand. And that's not just for the warm and fuzzies. That's very deliberately me getting my boots on the ground and physically seeing the impact rather than just the, you know, the proverbial check you get written every year. This year, we've made it a really deliberate action for Clinic Mastery to be boots on the ground in clinics. I went to Perth. I didn't go to Perth for a holiday. I went to Perth to rub shoulders and shake hands and share meals, break bread with clinic owners because this is why we do what we do and why I do what I do, to help clinic owners. I shared a meal with a clinic owner, remains anonymous, who said, Clinic Mastery has changed my life. I'll be forever indebted. And I want to be across the table when we hear that. I think of Lauren, who's a multi-disc speech OT clinic owner on the Sunshine Coast, has a charity over in the Solomon Islands and goes over a couple of times a year. That's not a financially rational decision, but it's entirely reasonable. I was talking to another mum, clinic owner recently, and she's like, I used to take my kids to ballet and footy training. And I'm like, do that. You're not so busy that you can't afford 20 minutes to take your kids to ballet. And then you remind yourself, this is why I'm in business, to have a little bit of that flexibility to be present for my kids at sport or whatever the case is, but physically do it. Go and visit the projects, take your kids to sport, whatever that is, physically remind yourself.

Ben Lynch: a good point of just those micro-changes, Mic, that you were talking to, and Jack, it's like, hey, what would make it worthwhile, even in the next day or week? Is it, okay, I do the pick up and drop off for the kids at school, or insert any other version? I'll come back to… In navigating this, I think it's worthwhile asking what problem are we trying to solve and maybe it relates to the time, money, freedom meaning. What's the problem or challenge with each of those that you're trying to solve? It might be, hey, we're falling short of our mortgage repayments or we're not able to put the savings away for the kids' private school or whatever the answer might be. What is the problem we're trying to solve? too quickly we're looking to get a solution in place, to feel this sense of remedy, without actually really diagnosing, okay, which part of this do we actually need to solve for? Because there could be a quicker way, a more sustainable way for us to do that. I remember, and I wrote about it in the Grow Clinic book of a member. I gave them an alias in the book because I didn't want to call them out specifically. I forget the alias that I gave them. Let's make one up, Jenny. And I remember Jenny jumping on the call and saying, I haven't been physically into my clinic for a month. because I get incredible anxiety and basically go into a panic attack. I've had a bunch of team members leave and it feels like the team has taken my business hostage. And it was a really dark place for Jenny to be in. There was some ATO debt that had built up too and it was definitely a question of this is not worth it. Actually, it was more of a statement. This is not worth it anymore. And when we looked at, you know, part of that, what are some of the things that do bring you, you know, joy or when you feel like you're at your best? And one of those was like cooking. It's like, I'd stop cooking. So we just, that was simple, controllable that we got back into the daily rhythm. and over the weekend just did a big cook-up and it was just one of those things just to allow the time and space to, I don't know, recalibrate and then start to chip away at some of these things in a way that felt manageable. sort of fast forward, what was it, three, four years, and had gone through this massive rebrand and expanded and got to a new space and loving it now. And the joy on Jenny's face and in her words and in her smile, like at the start, there was just no smile. There was nothing. It's taken her soul, basically, the business. And that's one of the great joys is, Mic, to your point, if you can sort of hang in there long enough and break it down into some manageable bits of progress, there is some wonderful things that we can bring back. It's different for everyone. And one of the points that I mentioned before around Daniel Gibbs, he often asks the question, tell me about how you came up with the name for your clinic. So often, like, they can't think about, oh, what am I going to do in 12 months or 18 months? But it's, let's go back. When you started the business, when you started the clinic, how did you choose the name that you chose? Normally, there's a bit of a story about it. And in going into that story, normally, well, here's the thing that I was hoping to achieve. I was hoping to make some progress and innovate in these therapy domains. Or maybe I worked for a few folks that were really bad bosses and leaders, and I just wanted to be an amazing place to work. And so when I started it, I thought about creating this collaborative environment where people work together to solve the problems of their clients. And that's why I came up with this name. And I just feel like I've lost that completely. And so coming back to that exercise of the original days, when you had that vision, what was it? And to your point, Nick, just reconnecting with that story, with that intention that you had. is so valuable. As we sort of connect a few D.O.T.S here, there's like a bit of a principle philosophical approach, zoom out. There's a little bit of what can I control in my day, in my week, maybe just to get things back on my terms and feel a sense of control. I think that the point you made earlier, Mic, around the sort of the relative nature of like, is it worth it relative to alternatives or relative to what I want? So how do you go about helping a clinic owner get clear on what that is? Because maybe they feel like I should be earning more money or I should have more time or it should be easier or it should be more enjoyable. How do you help them start to get clear on, okay, clearly there's something lacking, so what is it that you're wanting? And often we find they don't actually have a lot of clarity, it's very superficial. So how do you help navigate the clinic owner creating that clarity in where they wanna get to next, say over the next three to six months as part of that overall 12 month time period that you said you would give yourself to remedy the situation?

Mic Rizk: I think clinic owners are normally pretty clear on what they're missing. It's, I feel like it's either team or they're not profitable or they feel like they're working 80 hours a week. And a lot of those things can be adjusted pretty quickly without any detriment to the business. I still come back to, if we're in a trough, we have this guilt and feel like we have to be working all hours of the day and we just do busy work, not good work. Um, so I think it's focus it's alignment. It's like, you don't need to work seven days till 8 PM. Why are you doing that? Put some guardrails on your week. Get back to what you want to do. Get back to dropping your kids off at school and actually focus on four hours on this thing. That's going to help your business. And the other practical is, I just keep coming back to the rolling break even. If money is the thing, I want to plug that into the rolling break even and say, does this number align with you? Would it be worth it if you were achieving this number?

Ben Lynch: That seems to be the thing, right, is the devil's in the detail. It's like, I want to be earning more. Well, how much more? A dollar more? Okay, well, that's fixable. And I say that tongue-in-cheek because actually what's lacking so often is, well, you haven't done the detail and you don't realize that actually maybe you're only 10 to 15 appointments a week off of the number that you want. It's like, oh, that feels pretty achievable. And that's what you're saying is the rolling break evens the tool to help create that clarity, right?

Mic Rizk: Yeah. I can give an example. We had one clinic owner who wanted to pay her mortgage off in five years. and send her kids to private school. And effectively we figured out to do that, we probably needed an extra hundred K net in the business, which was an extra physio full, but we didn't have rooms. Our rooms were full. So I went to visit her clinic and I'm like, This gym space is massive. You could put a plaster wall up here, create a room and still have a big enough gym space. But the devil was in the detail. If we didn't get into how much do you need, 50 grand a year extra over five years, how many physios is that? Let's put that in the rolling break even. Oh, next problem. Actually, I don't have room. Cool. Let's build a room. Let's hire the physio. So it shows how you can go from anxiety to action really quickly.

Ben Lynch: It's a good point. JOB often clinic owners then are faced with, well, if the ultimate answer is a version of selling, that's the solution. I don't think it's worthwhile enough to continue. Or you could argue it's worthwhile in the sense I've built enough value in this that I can capitalize on it and actually have an exit. Then the question is, well, what are you going to do once it's all said and done? And two, what are you going to do with that money as well? Because I'm assuming you're going to have to allocate that somewhere. um, in other investments. And again, back to that relative nature, where else could you invest that in a way that maybe is earning 10 to 15% with a high degree of kind of certainty that you understand it, you control it, um, you know, depending on the business as well. So you kind of. get to that point where you go, what am I going to do from a career, a sort of purpose in my day? And then also from an investment perspective, if I do end up with a wad of cash and I've got to pay tax on, and then I've got to allocate it somewhere else. Well, actually it's probably worth keeping this thing. So how do you navigate that conversation with a clinic owner who's seriously contemplating it? And you're saying, that could be a worthwhile option, but here's some things you need to understand.

Jack O'Brien: You need an external perspective. You need an external voice because when you're in the trenches or in the trough as we described earlier, it's like anything looks better. But again, when you sit in it and play out what those future realities look like, it's neither right nor wrong. It's just that, is that what you actually want? Like, what are the realities of selling your clinic? You know, from almost every clinic, selling will not be a life-changing number, right? Even if you get a couple of million dollars, and that's an outlier clinic, you will pay a lot of tax and you'll invest that and maybe make you know, ten or a hundred thousand dollars a year. It's not enough to live off, right? So you're not retiring off selling your clinic most likely. You've got to get a job. Sorry, you've got to continue to provide for your family and make an income. So do you have, are you willing to start from scratch and start a startup again? Or do you want to invest in businesses and what does the risk look like there, you know? Or do you want to get a job? And everyone, not everyone, When you're in the trenches, it's easy to say, yeah, I'm happy to go and work at the public hospital for 38 hours a week and take a salary. But really, like honestly, when it gets to six months down the line, I'm not sure that if you've got that entrepreneurial DNA, It's going to be real tricky to work for someone else, or at least you're going to be a really tricky employee for someone else to manage. And so, uh, yeah, thinking about those practical realities of, of what happens if I sell and is that what you actually want? Or are you just trying to deal with the current pressures and realities? You really do need an external perspective and a long-term perspective.

Ben Lynch: Well, that's the point, right, of what is the problem, the real problem that we're actually trying to solve here. And then prescribing a solution or two or three and you're going, okay, let's do it.

Jack O'Brien: Selling your clinic isn't necessarily the right solution for the actual problem that you're dealing with.

Ben Lynch: Yep. Spot on. That requires some deep reflection, right? It does.

Jack O'Brien: And you can test things quickly. You know, like, oh, I'm not happy with how things are. Right. Well, I don't have to sell my clinic. Like, that's stage eight. What's the one thing that I can do? You know, can I change up how I work? Can I change the mix of my team, a different profession or run admin-less or integrate this tech or change up this ideal client? Can I just make a subtle tweak? that might make clear the path ongoing rather than wholesale changes that might be very difficult to unwind.

Ben Lynch: I think there are so many things that trap clinic owners into feeling stuck when they're in these spots and they're questioning whether it's worthwhile. Let's take, for instance, there's a bunch of NDIS clinics right now that are going, not sure if it's worth it. There's changes to how team members are going to be paid. There's changes to the funding. It feels like more compliance and a bit more of a squeeze. Is it worth it? Should, how do I make it worth it?

Jack O'Brien: Right. Well, it's an interesting point, right? Because it's all worth it relative to what or compared to who or compared to what. Mic, you, you alluded to this earlier. Can you say a little bit more about that comparison game? Like it's, again, when you're in the trenches, it's easy to compare to an employee who just clocks on and clocks off or someone who's got kids versus someone who doesn't have kids. Like, how do you, yeah, how do you think about that comparison game?

Mic Rizk: I think about the super human men and women who are employees at a physio clinic who have kids. I've been thinking, this is my, is it worth a question right now? Okay. Because some of our team and some of Saranga's team, my wife's clinic, they have kids and they're employees, which is bloody awesome. But it's hard. They can't do the drop-off. They can't have a slow morning and make breakfast. If they're sick, if the kid's sick or dad's sick or mom's sick, the whole week is ruined. Childcare sickness, you lose your nanny for the day. It is hard. It's inflexible. You're tired. I can't imagine what they do. They're superhuman. I have so much since having kids, my respect for employees with kids has gone through the roof. you And in the same week, all of those things happened to me and it was completely fine. I was able to move things around. I was able to shift team member meetings. I didn't have to go into a 38 hour week and have appointments on a diary. It's incredibly hard. And that comes back to Ben's analogy at the start of the season. The season for me, even if the money wasn't there of time freedom, is still huge. I still spend a lot of time overseas and I still get to have a slow morning with the kids and I get to pick up Amali two days a week. If I'm sick or Saranga's sick, our whole week doesn't fall apart. And that's huge. And that's linked to meaning because kids are meaningful. So it's, yeah, even if the money wasn't good right now, that meaning and that freedom is huge. So yeah, shout out to team members.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, 100%. Something for me that I've practically implemented, and I think clinic owners would do well to consider this, is when you do remind yourself of some of the benefits of what we do or the great things, physically do something that releases that dopamine. Like give yourself a physical high five. Like give it a bit of a fist pump or like smile. Whatever that looks like because that pattern that you start to ingrain in your nervous system really does matter. It's like those little things. I mean like case in point yesterday. Yesterday, Ben and I were on the phone. We were talking through a business deal, business transaction, and it was running over when I would drop my kids at ballet and cricket training and go for a run. And part of me was a little bit frustrated, like, come on, Ben, speak faster. I was frustrated myself. And then I hung up the phone and I stood there and I thought, I just looked around, I went, I just dropped my kids at ballet and cricket and I'm still going for a run and how good is this? And you give a little fist bump and you give it a grunt and you high five and you're like, this is, you're reminding yourself that sure, the phone call went late, what a frustration, but that's business, right? Like we get dealt things that are out of our control so many times, but reminding ourselves that this is still pretty bloody good. It's worth it.

Ben Lynch: There's a great quote from Tony Robbins, which is, trade your expectations for appreciation and see the quality of life meaningfully shift. And it comes back to that point, I think, at the very beginning of enough. And rather than seeing that from a negative, this is not enough. it's not worth the trade. Looking actually at perhaps even adjusting what enough means and realizing I do have a lot of great things. That's not to say it can't be better. Of course, there are plenty of clinic owners listening in that are doing it tough in a number of different ways. But it's all relative to what, and part of that, I think, is the internal reference point of what season you're in. And it might be okay that you're not earning what you once earned because you actually have some time freedom, as you said, Mic, that allows you to take care of a sick parent, to drop your kids off to school and pick them up, to be able to do something in your day for your own health, whatever it may be. I think it's just important as part of the sustainability. We so often talk about the emotional sustainability as well, uh, for being in business because it is. quite emotional.

Jack O'Brien: Right. And maybe it's easier to give yourself a high five when there's nice things to be appreciative of. I, again, physically shared a coffee with a clinic owner yesterday in Newcastle, JC, an amazing, amazing human. And she literally, I'll paraphrase, but she said, I'm grateful that my back's against the wall because this is where I do my best work. It's like, you know, again, acknowledging that backs against the wall is a very tough season for many of us. And, you know, some of us at the end of that, I get it. But like, when my back's against the wall, I come alive, I do my best work. What a fascinating reframe and maybe for clinic owners who don't feel that, you go, yeah, right, easy for you guys to say, blah, blah, blah. Just give it a go. You don't have to commit to this mindset forever. I want to challenge you to just give it a go for 24 hours. Actually just own that type of mindset. I do my best work when my back's against the wall. Do it for 24 hours. If you want to discard it, discard the mindset. It's a great point.

Ben Lynch: I feel like those sort of folks, maybe the version is, well, it could be worse. You know, at times of when it's been tough, I've found myself going, well, imagine if this was worse. Like, and it might be bad, but imagine if it was worse than what it is. At least you can go, okay, because it's all about the relative nature, yeah? You go, oh, this is bad. Compared to what? Relative to what? Well, if you reframe it and say, well, it could be worse, then it's relative to something a lot worse.

Jack O'Brien: And, you know, Mic, I imagine that you would feel this from time to time. You're like, oh, how many client experiences or new clients did we miss because we don't have admin? That's so frustrating. Like, oh, think of all those clients we could have helped. But you built it this way, right, for a reason. And it's got a lot of upsides as well as the downsides, yeah? Like, do you wrestle with that type of thought?

Mic Rizk: Yeah, I've got one written down here that is similar to that analogy. A lot of clinic owners are saying team members don't want to work, right? And the last five or six people I've interviewed wanted to be part-time. And I found that really interesting because these are new grads. And I actually questioned them. I'm like, hey, how are you living in Sydney and you're not living at home anymore and affording that and doing part-time work, there's a bit of a sociocultural change happening as well. There's tension between owners who expect team members to work full-time and that creates tension and negativity and cortisol. And just the recent shift for me is like, well, what would it look like if our whole workforce was part-time? That could be a good thing. What if they're happier and more fulfilled and they do their best work on four days instead of five? And I run the same scenarios with admin and I ran a similar scenario with the NDIS analogy. I put this in a rolling break even the other day. I'm obsessed with it. What if health funds stopped covering private physio? What would that look like? So every patient gets $30 to $50 back. What would it look like if we had to reduce our fee by $30 or $50 across the board? So this comes back to what you do when you're in a good time, because often we overthink we're in a bad time. I like running a lot of these scenarios. What would it look like if my whole workforce was part-time? What would it look like if health funds stopped covering? What would it look like if I had to hire admin or maybe the opposite for you, if I had to get rid of admin to become more profitable? These are all things that you can do that then don't break your expectations when you get to the trough, because you've already thought about it.

Ben Lynch: I got an interesting excerpt from the Grodia Clinic book here just to read that relates exactly to this. Can I read it for you? All right. What if I say no? Well, I'll keep going. The Mean Generation. That's the title of this section. In an article titled, The Whiny Generation, author David Martin described a handful of spoiled, self-indulgent, overgrown adolescents. He argued, We have a generation, or at least part of a generation, whose every need has been catered to since birth. Now, when they finally face adulthood, they expect the gift-giving to continue. The whiners want everything. What's their reaction when they don't get what they want? That's right, they throw a tantrum. This could be easily viewed as a summary of the younger generation of therapists coming into our profession today. However, this is a Newsweek article from 1993 and Martin is a baby boomer. Martin was complaining about the younger generation at the time, Gen X, who were born between 1965 and 1979. And there are plenty of other examples of this over a longer period of time, published in many different newspapers and articles. It's interesting, and part of this was, the message was, be careful of the bias that you bring or this sort of narrative or beliefs that you've created about this generation of young folks coming through. Now, obviously, Mic, you've got some data there of those last four folks that wanted to work part-time, which is good. I think it's interesting as we explore this What are the beliefs that you have about whether it's hiring, whether it's about finances, whether it's hard to create a good business as a clinic owner, whether it's hard to get all of those four things, time, money, freedom, and meaning. Just, I think through the course of this whole conversation, it's been a call to action to actually meaningfully reflect on some of the biases and beliefs that you've developed. about what it takes to create a business that fulfills or satisfies you along those four dimensions. And perhaps that's the most important action off the back of this.

Mic Rizk: Can I add, Benny, that a really healthy realization for me that's reduced a lot of tension is a lot of owners describe young physios like that, but that's exactly what owners want. So I wonder, it's like obvious realization, but the new generation don't want to work 38 hours a week and they want to earn as much as they can, which is why a lot of business owners chose to be a business owner. And you have this hatred or tension or like, that's not how I would do it, but it's exactly what we're asking for. So just sometimes in that thought, if you can see yourself, you can reduce some tension and work with the challenges rather than seeing everything as a problem. Cause it's exactly what we're asking for as business owners.

Ben Lynch: The comparison is relative. Be mindful of what it's relative to. Guys, thank you so much for your insights. We're going to put a wrap on this episode. You can head over to clinicmastery.com/podcast. Jacobrin has some parting notes.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, I'm going to finish with this. Benny, we've had 249 new listeners to the pod. I'm just looking at some stats now, but only 81 new subscribers. So if you're a recent listener on Spotify, click the follow button on the Apple podcast, click the subscribe button. Make sure in your feed, thank you. Welcome to those new couple of hundred that have joined us recently. Make sure you subscribe and follow. Yes. Let's put a wrap. Thanks guys. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.