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 looking to navigate the uncertainty of the changing NDIS landscape. We're diving into the decisions you can't avoid. And trust me, you want to hear Hannah's take on managing clinic finances ahead of funding cuts. Plus stick around for when we discuss how to focus your marketing to diversify clients' dreams.

Ben Lynch: Give us a read, what's the sentiment in the community at the moment? I think we're all keen to talk about what is in our control today and what we can actually do. What are you advising NDIS clinics in particular around their marketing?

Hannah Dunn: There's a lot of practices that are basing their funding models on being able to do a 15 hour functional capacity assessment. You're not going to be able to do that anymore.

Jack O'Brien: The concept of charging someone for an email makes me feel uneasy.

Hannah Dunn: There has been previous teams that we know of who have closed their doors and then blamed NDIS, so I think that can feel scary.

Jack O'Brien: Because I don't know anyone who wakes up in the morning and goes, yes, can't wait to meet audit requirements.

Hannah Dunn: Let's go back to the client care and about what does that mean for client care.

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 364. I'm back. Ben on the line. Yeah, they tried to kick me out, but I'm back. Ben who? Ben who? Yes. The slow talker. The slow talker. That one. Anyway, again, joined by Jack O'Brien and Hannah Dunn. Good to see you both. Hannah, we actually asked this of Beck the other day. I feel like we should ask you too. What are you reading or listening to at the moment? Is there anything Jack told us about the war stories and books that he's loving at the moment? What are you into?

Hannah Dunn: Not as fun work things. So the diary of a CEO, I'm reading and my reading is much slower than my listening and my listening, I'm listening to Main Street Millionaire. Stay tuned.

Jack O'Brien: In that conversation, actually, I took action, which I'd encourage all listeners to do, and I thought, I need to get into some business reading. What could I read? Andrew Daubney, on a recent episode, shared about Steven Pressfield, who's one of my all-time favourite authors. The War of Art is Steven Pressfield's book. Not the Art of War. No, that's the Chinese one. The War of Art. Anyway, Pressfield's recent book is called, excuse the French, if you've got kids, mute it in three, two, one. It's called Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be. Very crass title. Yeah. Nevertheless, it's a really interesting read about getting the work done, overcoming resistance, and get yourself where your future self needs you to be today. Nice. There you go. I also want to share a comment. We've had a listener comment over on Spotify. We have a bunch, but a recent one from Andy says this, and folks, if you're listening, we'd love a Spotify comment, a review rating wherever you listen to these podcasts. Andy says, I love your podcast. They're great. The concept of charging someone for an email makes me feel uneasy. This would be in the context of NDIS, my assumption. What do you charge? If it's for a report, then I kind of understand, but if it's just to check in on a patient to see how they're doing and providing great care, then surely that's part of the fee for having an appointment. So, interesting comment. Andy's from the UK, so appreciates things might be different, but we might get to some of that billable versus non-billable impact face-to-face time over the course of today's conversation.

Hannah Dunn: I definitely think that's such a good one to come back to, for sure.

Ben Lynch: Let's do it. I think that's awesome. Email charge. Well, to tee it up, J.O.B., is it all right to skip a couple of announcements and go straight to the heart, or do you want to do some announcements?

Jack O'Brien: Oh, I love a good announcement. You do? The Clinic Mastery Summit, Adelaide, March 2027. You can email me, jack@clinicmastery.com. We have a literal handful of tickets for non-members. Or if you want to be a member, again, email me, jack@clinicmastery.com. No AI in my inbox. You get me, the real human. We'll see if there's a fit, if nothing else will help, and we'll have made a new friend. So reach out. We'd love to hear from you.

Ben Lynch: Very nice. Well, we are going to talk about a number of timeless business principles, no matter the season, no matter what's changing. Let's put a bit of a package and a wrapper on it, which is specifically around the NDIS. There was an announcement recently from Mark Butler, the Minister for Health here on the future of the NDIS. And while there are a number of points that were addressed, there's still probably more questions than answers. And it leaves a lot of fear and uncertainty in the community. We're going to talk a little bit about that in a moment. And I think what's important for us to look at is Not to blow it out of proportion, but to be just good disciplined business operators at this point with what we know today, what decisions or actions ought we be taking to create a sustainable business. That's always been our MO. How do you create a sustainable business? That's sustainable financially, sustainable for you as the business owner, and everything in between. Hannah, let's just pick up because you're living and breathing this very specifically. Give us a read. What's the sentiment in the community at the moment and maybe even by sort of an extension of you and how your team are thinking and feeling about what is known, but also dealing with the uncertainty that's been presented?

Hannah Dunn: Yes, I think the uncertainty is a big thing because we know that it's one of our basic human needs around certainty. And so that is where that challenge is for teams at the moment. And I think there has been previous teams that we know of who have closed their doors and then blamed NDIS. So I think that can feel scary. And so that's probably where I like to try and close some anxiety around often those businesses that have closed over the last five years is not NDIS. It's because of mismanagement and it's been that they didn't know how to bill properly or they had too many overheads in another area. And so while there has been media previously around businesses closing their doors due to NDIS, we see many businesses thriving in NDIS. And so I think what the fear is now is what are these changes going to mean and will there really be businesses closing because of NDIS? And I think the answer may be yes to that question, which I think can be scary. But the real answer is we don't know. We don't know what it's going to look like. We don't know what the other options are going to be, what thriving kids is going to look like. We have some hints at what it might look like, but we don't have all the answers. And it is a watch and wait, but it's also about what is in our control, which I'm, yeah, I think we're all keen to talk about what is in our control today and what we can actually do.

Ben Lynch: When you say hints at what Thriving Kids is, do you want to just give us some of the headline bullet points?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, that we think that it's going to be a block-funded model, that it won't be like NDIS being ongoing funding, that it will be for a set number of sessions to achieve a set goal and that we also are unclear whether that will go to private practices or whether that will go through not-for-profits or even at a time they were talking about whether schools would be managing that and who they would be having coming in. So, it's just unclear as to who will be able to access it, but just ensuring that we're aware of what we can access.

Ben Lynch: Speaking of access, it sounds like they've mentioned registration versus non-registration quite a lot. They've hinted at tiered pricing or funding structures based on or reflecting different levels of registration. Some of the details remain unclear, but directionally, it seems like there's some degree of compliance or registration that they're hinting towards as a way to maybe better control or audit or quality control. Who gets funding access? Is that how you're reading into it, Hannah, and then Jack and Keen on your thoughts around how people are, the sentiment. So Hannah, on the registration piece.

Hannah Dunn: So I think there is a bit of panic around registration, but I also think that for the last whatever number of years, five years, people have spoken about it being whether a registered provider will be included and whether non-registered will get dropped. And that has been a talk for a long time, which is why DOTS has remained a registered provider with a very small period where we stopped registration and determined that we should get it back. And so I think at the moment we don't want to race into registration. The process can be really expensive. We just got our quote for our renewals due and it's $6,500 for us just to get the audit process done for a mid-year, which is where they're just double checking us doing what we said we were doing, opposed to a mid-term audit, instead of it being an actual full audit, which was closer to $15,000. So, it can be a really expensive process and not one that I would race into because at the moment we don't know what that will look like. It could be a completely different registration process. So, you could go and spend all this money and the registration process may end up being through APRA or through someone else. And so, like with Medicare, we have to be registered for med health care plans through OT Australia. Who knows if that's what it's going to look like. There's different registration processes that may be in place, but again, we don't know. What I would say is there's things we can do to get ready for registration rather than launching straight to a registration.

Ben Lynch: We're going to go there in a moment, J.B. What have you…

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, I'll echo Hannah in the sense that we've been here before, right? This is the type of conversation that we've had. Should you be registered? Should you not? There's seasons where it's felt like everyone's getting registered and so I need to keep up and there's seasons where it feels like everyone's leaving or abandoning and I need to get out. And so it's really easy to be tossed to and fro by the sentiments of the day. I think Hannah's point there around what can we do to be a healthy and sustainable business is key. And we've talked about this in the context of selling your practice. Whether you want to sell or not is somewhat redundant. And in this conversation, whether you want to get registered or have to get registered or not is not the question. What is the really important decision is how can you build a healthy, strong, resilient, robust clinic. So that if and when you do decide or choose to register, then you're in a great place. And if you choose not to register, you're in a great place. And that looks like having strong culture, amazing client experiences, documented policies and procedures and housing that all in a place where it's accessible. These are the trademarks, the hallmarks of healthy, sustainable practices. That's what clinic owners need to focus on today is health and sustainability.

Hannah Dunn: And Butler spoke to registration, but spoke to it in the context of supported individual living, independent living units and in relation to personal care attendants and support coordinators. It wasn't specific to allied health. And even though it hints that it may be something that is coming to allied health in the future, it's not something that we can see being in place for the next 12, 18, potentially even 24 months, I would say 18.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, anything else is speculation, right?

Hannah Dunn: Yes.

Jack O'Brien: What he spoke to is specific and everything else is speculation. And speculation is a… It's a stressful place to live, Ben, right?

Ben Lynch: Absolutely. I'm wondering how you balance, because J.B., we've talked about just in case versus just in time in a number of different contexts. Previously speaking about people wanting to put a whole bunch of policies and procedures and systems in place into their clinic, you know, just in case I have this scenario pop up and it just sort of adds to the workload. And really the question is, is that the thing you should be focused on right now? But for those that are going, okay, I hear what you're saying. Don't rush into registration, which is good to hear from you, Hannah, because you are registered and you've paid it and you're just cautioning people, which I think is sage advice. But what can I do? You said get ready is what I heard. You could get sort of audit ready or registration ready. Just practically, what does that mean? Because a few thoughts come to my mind of like, do I go and see what sort of requirements there are for registration and just start doing them anyways, putting in some of these policies and processes anyway without going through the formality of registration, but having it there. in case at a certain time in the future we do do it, knowing that it's just good business practice. Is that what you mean by ready? Just expand on that.

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, absolutely. So yes, getting ready in the sense of ensuring that you understand what your policies and procedures are, because we know that an audit for NDIS looks at your policies and procedures. Do you have the fire exit map up on your wall? Like all of those details, that you should have for WorkSafe and for your just running a robust business but potentially fall to the wayside when you're working on client care. And so someone actually asked in our community on Slack in our NDIS channel around what should they prepare for an audit. And the question is very broad because it sort of depends on what you've already got and where you're at. what will happen when you go for an audit is that you will get information on what you need to prepare. Then they will also give you information on what was missing when they've done the audit and give you a set amount of time to actually get those things in place because no one's out to shut you down. They're out to support you to get in line so that you can do the work that you want to do. And so what I would say is have a look at your policies and procedures. Maybe you can talk to Claude, chat, Google and see what are the common policies that you need. But this is stuff that we would want you doing anyway, if it is getting ready for sale of your business or getting ready to just have a business that is ready to sell or be audited.

Jack O'Brien: Okay, so here's a mindset shift that I think is helpful in this conversation's context, is let's not be clinic owners who are tick box compliant ready, but let's take a look at like, this is a chance to level up my practice. This is a chance for me to get ahead, stand out. And so it's not a, yes, on a superficial level, it's around policies and procedures. But if we were to level up our thinking, it's actually back to the core essence of why Clinic Mastery exists, to transform your client experiences, to lead inspired teams and ultimately amplify your impact. That's why we exist and ultimately that's what you should be thinking as a clinic owner. How can I transform the client experience away from this dispense of service? to really providing functional progress for participants that have needs. How can I lead a team in an inspired way that is supportive and nurtures their career progression and keeps people in the profession? I hate seeing people drop out and change careers after three to five years. It breaks my heart. As clinic owners, that's the mindset shift. Yeah, sure. It'll be compliance and audit ready if and when the day comes. But more than that, you're building a clinic for good and that's how you want to wake up and get excited because I don't know anyone who wakes up in the morning and goes, yes, can't wait to meet audit requirements. That's not how we live.

Hannah Dunn: And also, I think you speak to a really good point there, Jack, about let's go back to the client care and about what does that mean for client care. And what it actually means is that we are not going to have to do functional capacity assessments at the rate in which they're currently happening, which take up so much time. And what they tell us is what the client can't do at the moment and why they need funding. What the shift is, is looking at results. and what are the outcomes that we're working on so that we can be really focused on the outcomes and so that is a shift that you can make in your practice today. Let's stop focusing on what the child or the client or the participant can't do but what we want them to be able to do and how we're going to get there and how long that's going to take because that's the data that is going to return to getting funding and we know that now. We know that it's not going to be the deficits that we were focusing on before.

Ben Lynch: I think this relates to non-NDIS clinics too, in a massive and obvious way. I think if you speak to most health professionals, there's some version of like, we want to get outcomes for our patients. That's why we do what we do. It's like, well, to what degree are you tracking that at the initial assessment or new client visit? And then how are you tracking progress along the way towards it? It's just a great first principle model of care. In my mind, I always come back to some of the systems, is that filtering through or changing the structure of your initial assessment or whatever you term it? Is it changing the treatment plan, like the physical document or management note that you write and the layout of that structure? How you actually, maybe you've already set up. these things and so it's not new. But for those that haven't entertained it, they go, cool, I understand what you're saying, but what practically do I do to actually apply some of these things?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, I think we can get so bogged down in the ability to get through assessments quickly and just doing a one size fits all. I think we're really going to have to make sure that we're individualized right from the start on what those goals are and how we're going to achieve them. And also just getting that data so that we can get more familiar and consistent with giving sort of approximate timelines on what we would expect something to do. I think the thing that for us in our paediatric world, parents hate and commonly get is a session note that states what happened in the session. They're like, I was there for the session. I know what happened. What I want to know is what are the steps forward and what was the differences that you saw in that session? We don't just want to have observations. We want to have comparisons so that we can make a distinction between what we wanted to see and what we are seeing and how we're going to get to what we need to be seeing.

Ben Lynch: So, do you think that- Well, Hugo. Hugo.

Jack O'Brien: Who's Hugo? Hello, Hugo, if you're listening. I think there's a real shift here for particularly NDIS clinics and we've seen, I'll say the non-NDIS majority clinics, as in those who are majority private oriented, they've often made this shift already and they're thinking less about how can I How can I stay in the lane and how can I get out of the lane and break what we've always done? I think there's this trap or this logical fallacy where we fall into like, this is how it's always done. This is how insert profession does it. It's like, come on, it's time to revolutionize how we deliver therapy. Break some of the norms and the rules. Don't break the legal rules, but break some of those self-imposed cages that we've put on our therapies. When we talk about client experiences and filling books and attracting more clients and diversifying our income streams, How many NDIS-majority clinics' websites are vanilla and old and I can't even make an appointment. I tried to book my child in for a consult the other day. You can't do it. It doesn't explain things. It's not client experience first. In a world where we're going to need to stand out more, where we are going to have to differentiate not just on our service provision, but our client experience, now is the time to think outside the square, accelerate your learning and growth, and develop your clinic into something that is robust and differentiated.

Ben Lynch: It's a great point that you bring up, Jack and Hannah. I'm interested in your thoughts here. Broadly speaking, a lot of NDIS clinics have had a luxury of so many clients, a wait list being built and not having really to do as much marketing or effort to attract that client load in comparison to other funding streams. And that's sort of just a broad comment, but what it is now starting to reveal when there's this uncertainty of client flow coming in, it's like, What do I do? And marketing hasn't been a capability that's been developed in a lot of these clinics. And maybe the reliance has been purely on a couple of key relationships. And now it's like, how do I actually diversify my marketing? And how do I actually invest in different avenues for client attraction? What are you sort of hearing, seeing, advising NDIS-based clinics in particular around how they need to be getting on the front foot with some of their marketing changes?

Hannah Dunn: I think previously we could choose how we serviced clients. There were clinicians that felt like it was cheaper to rent a room and do clinic-based therapy because of the time in which it takes. We know that Thriving Kids is talking about natural environments, seeing kids in their homes, kinder schools. So, looking at the way in which you provide service, is it, again, what you were saying, Ben, just the way that we've always done it, or do we need to really think about it? Now, this is something I've thought about 10 times over doing a rant on social media about, but I feel really frustrated, and I'm sure there's many that do, that Thriving Kids is like, we know the evidence is in home and in their natural environments, and NDIS is like, Joke's on you, we're not funding you the same amount to go and do community visits. So the example of that is that DOTS used to have, we used to have, we have four clinic rooms in one location and we always had a fifth therapist working in the community. So we always have one more therapist working in a number of rooms and we were in the community every single day. When NDIS said we're only going to pay you half the amount for the time that someone's on the road, we had to say, is that financially viable and what are our limitations there? And so we had to come up with some guidelines around what that looked like. Now we're in a situation where we're saying, well, we might actually have to take that cost and just wear it so that we can prove that we actually are providing service in what the Thriving Kids means to look like. And so I think while we've spoken about policies and procedures, the other area we really need to be aware of is our finances, which is around what is the cost of us putting in services? What is the cost of us? You know, there's a lot of practices that are basing their funding models on being able to do a 15 hour functional capacity assessment. You're not going to be able to do that anymore. What does that mean for you? A lot of adult services where that is the only thing that they do for their clients. And so what does that look like? And that could be, you know, non NDIS clinics as well, thinking about how do they link in with other services? How do you connect? Because there is going to be opportunities for a lot more referrals and potentially if there's a key worker model, those networks are going to have to be really strong.

Ben Lynch: It's a great point about finances. We'll come back to that, especially when we come back, revisit the email and charge for a bit. I want to come back to that. The new patient side of things, J.O.B., you support so many clinic owners and you mentioned that about the website. As an example, you find someone online and it's really hard to book or get on a wait list as another example. What are you advising NDIS clinics in particular around their marketing and how they think about, allocate towards, take on different activities to attract or even diversify some of the funding streams that they do access through their marketing changing?

Jack O'Brien: When it comes to marketing strategies or tactics, everything can work. It's finding out what will work for your practice and part of that is science and part of that is art and experimentation. Again, to the point of limiting beliefs, how many of the types of clinics out there are so comfortable with the security blanket of waitlists and at the risk of bursting bubbles, waitlists don't exist for the rest of us. In the real world, it doesn't exist. Really, it's a function of supply and demand. And so, we need to be creating content and marketing that stands out and differentiates your clinic. What makes you different from someone else down the road? How do communities and families get to know you, like you, trust you, become familiar with you? How do you help them understand some of the challenges and pain points they have and the solutions that you can provide to make a difference for them? And so we really need to get out of our shell, break down what we've previously depended on and it's time to start building brand and building reputation and trust with the communities that we're a part of. Now, whether you choose to do that through organic socials and content or paid marketing or continue referral relationships, all of those things can work. It's what will work for you in your scenario.

Ben Lynch: We'd often start, Joby, with an audit of current new client sources. You sort of break down over a period of time where do we currently get clients from and perhaps we haven't nurtured or put a lot of effort into those sources. And then perhaps look at what is our budget on a monthly basis and maybe over the next quarter for marketing or advertising to attract clients. There's budget that's also maybe not as obvious, say, in your financial statements, that is leadership time. So maybe therapists that have a portion of their week allocated to leadership hours we've talked about before, that some of those hours are maybe mentoring, but some of those hours are maybe allocated towards referrer partnerships with the school, the kindergarten, whoever it may be. But just talk us through what should someone be doing? We help with clinics navigate what's right for them, but just for those that aren't yet members of CM. Just talk us through how you would actually think about finding where to start or where to renew their marketing approach.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, so there's a couple of lenses that you can think through when you're renewing your marketing approach. You can think through what am I doing that works that I can do more of? Or what am I not doing that I have a high degree of confidence could work? And in that bucket, it's helpful to think through what is intent-based marketing and what is brand-based marketing. So intent-based marketing is finding families, participants, community members who are ready to book or ready to buy is the technical term. Buying healthcare doesn't really fit our ethos though, right? So who is ready to book? And let's get in front of them. They're buying Journey. They've maybe done some research. They're aware of their pain points. They're aware of their shortfalls and they're ready to make a decision. That's a great place to market. To be there where people are in their what's called the zero moment of truth is what Google termed it. So being there, that could look like search-based marketing like Google Ads. That can look like refining some of your organic SEO or GEO, Generative Engine Optimization. How are you showing up in Claude or ChatGPT? And there are particular behaviours and actions that you can take week on week, month on month, so that you're appearing in those LLMs and AI models. It looks like paid search and investing in Google ads predominantly. It could then look like less intent-based and more brand-based. Can we show up in Meta, Facebook or Instagram? Maybe organic, maybe paid. And what's our content strategy behind that? Can we be present on YouTube and other places where people are doing their research or other forums and Facebook groups or Reddit threads? So there's a myriad of ways that we can go about this but really it takes knowing your ideal client super well, knowing what they're thinking, what they're feeling, who do they trust, what are they looking for and being there in their moment of need.

Ben Lynch: in my singular experience as a consumer of OT services for one of our kids. I think I maybe shared a little bit about this before. We just did a local search of an OT. We don't have NDIS funding, but we're looking to get some OT for one of our kids. And I was really surprised of the listings on Google. It's like, here's the Google Map listings. JB, we were talking about this the other day. And it listed three to five folks. And I went naturally straight to the one that had, or there were two that had the most reviews on there, and then went to their website, and there was quite a difference between the websites and the experience. We inquired at both and then one was like, oh no, you know, we've got a wait list and the reception experience was really poor on the phone. And it was made very obvious when we called the second place and the reception experience was like so warm and inviting and made it super easy to book. But yeah, just in terms of how easy is it to update your Google business listing? How is it to put some relevant photos if there are reviews, you know, obviously mindful of whatever restrictions you have around getting those reviews and where those reviews are from. And then your website. One of the things that I remember one of the clinics in the community doing was when they reviewed their website, it was really hard to book. They had one booking page. And the action that they made was they put the book now button on every page and in multiple places on the page and made it super easy for whoever was visiting to book. Now, whether people need to actually inquire or jump on a wait list or fill in some forms prior to booking, okay, there's some nuance and subtleties here. But if you were auditing your own website, and you can even get clawed, as an example, to audit your own website and say, tear it to shreds, like, where is it not working? Of the traffic that is currently coming, let alone if we actually bring some ads and more traffic towards it, how easy is it for people to make a booking or inquire or get a callback, whatever your system is? Hannah, you said yeah and nodded. Have you gone through this process before? I remember there was a thread internally where we're talking about sort of roast our website and socials. That was quite funny. But how have you navigated making booking or joining a waitlist or getting a callback easier for people, as Jack said, who have intent, they're actually looking to work with you?

Hannah Dunn: Yes, we put a request an appointment form on our website, which did make it easier. People could put it there because I know that people find it hard to put booking links sometimes on their website in OT or physio, not physio, but OT space, speech space. because it can be quite complex or different, the things that they're coming for and the initial appointment versus ongoing, etc. I think we need to stop using those as excuses and think about what are the different ways that we can be doing those bookings online. What's the information? How can we be accessible? So is it a request an appointment form? You also can book an appointment with DOTS that we have restrictions on. It has to be an hour that it's a parent consult. Um, there's lots of different things that you could be doing to be able to get. People to be accessible. And when Jack was talking earlier, I was thinking we just have to break down the barriers that are in place between an interest and a booking, because there are so many barriers with so many places and we need to ensure that our client connection team are well-trained and they know how to hand over to a clinician when the questions get too deep. And just what does that look like?

Ben Lynch: It's a great point I remember working through with a speech clinic, predominantly NDIS, and just looking at the intake process and the booking process and just how many layers or steps there were, which was all friction. And understandably, this is where we go back to, I did that session at the summit talking about requirements, like make the requirements less dumb was the first principle of the five that SpaceX used to find a lot of the efficiency. It's come from a good place, okay? There was an issue with a client several years ago, so we added this step or we added this form or we added this screening and so on and so forth. But we so often see this bloat or this friction that's been built up. And one of the key things actually for getting bookings is, can you remove friction? at least from the end user's perspective or the prospective client. There might be friction on the back end for you, but how do you make it easy for someone that does land on your website to say, hey, I'm here. I want some help. I need some help. So I think these are controllable things. Coming back to the premise of this, right, is amongst all the uncertainty, we want to emphasize just good business fundamentals that should be true no matter the season, no matter the funding source. It's like how easy is it to book an appointment or register your interest with your service?

Jack O'Brien: There might be 10, 12, 15, 87 steps to your intake process, but that doesn't mean that the inquirer has to complete all 87 steps straight out of the bat. How do we make it easy for people to start relationships with our practice? Maybe we think about it that way. Here's a question for clinic owners. When was the last time you visited your website and had a look at it through the eyes of a parent or a consumer or a participant? When was the last time you felt what it's like to go through your clinic's process? Why don't you mystery shop the phone reception at your own clinic and see to your point, Ben, is it really warm and does it make sense? Because we get so familiar with these things in our practices, right? them day in, day out. It just rolls off the tongue. We know the lingo. We know what comes next, but the person inquiring has no idea what comes next, and they're dealing with all the nerves and anxiety and uncertainty, and they may have their own functional or intellectual limitations. Great point. How often do we, to quote the great Shane Davis, take our shoes off and put their shoes on? Maybe that will just highlight to you, hey, there's a couple of actions that you can put into place in the next couple of days or weeks. There's your action list. Don't worry about what Minister Butler says. Fix your client experiences and watch that help you get one step closer to a more robust business.

Hannah Dunn: And it's not just the onboarding process. It's all those touch points along the way as well to make sure that you're tidying up. And for me, the most powerful thing I've done recently is jump into our admin role and just have a go and see about booking a client myself to see where the challenges were. And there were definitely things that I picked up that I was like, why, like, why are we copying data into this spreadsheet? because our software doesn't do it. And then we were able to say, well, actually, if we change the way our software is set up in this area, it will do that. And so if you can jump into those roles that maybe you haven't touched for a while, or even just sit and watch, as you were saying, Jack, with a phone call to check it. But even just if you're in the clinic, really observe what's happening.

Ben Lynch: And again, that's just a good thing to do periodically. I remember being in the clinic and jumping on the front desk as well and you would be like, ah, you know, I keep hearing the reception talk about this problem and now I get to see it. I'm like, no wonder there's a problem. These two or three things are happening that shouldn't be happening. That just happens. That just happens from that bloat, we tried to fix a problem, we did, but that caused two or three other steps that needed to happen and so on and so forth. Hannah, you raised another point about finances just before. One of the great sayings that we have here is better to be looking at it than looking for it. You can apply that in a number of different domains. We recently talked about recruitment and being able to have a bunch of applicants, a database of applicants you've had before that you would keenly reach out to again when an opening happens. But in this instance for finance, I think so many people feel more comfortable, more certain, because a lot of the uncertainty, I think if you unpack, unpack, unpack, unpack, you get to the stress point, which is finances. You know, if the funding's cut off and the caseload drops and then I'm paying the therapist and da-da-da-da, you go down and you go, at the end of the day, a lot of it is financial at the core. There are a number of things that you can be doing in the way that you handle the money, you set up your bank accounts, you do your financial reporting. Humble talk that Marcio gave recently on the pod was like, I rated myself 10 out of 10 in finances until I saw what other people were doing and realized what a 10 out of 10 might look like. So just talk us through what are you doing? What are you advising a lot of clinics to do to get the financial certainty?

Hannah Dunn: Yes. We were just talking about this in a mentoring session with a couple of people this morning and around like we've been really lucky with NDIS and that, you know, success can breed laziness. And so really thinking about what is the cost of our team? Do you get to know your numbers? Like I know, and Ben knows that, and I've said this before, that when I joined Clinic Mastery as a member, I hated numbers. It took me years to get into them, but now… A lot of convincing. But it took a lot of convincing.

Ben Lynch: But we all have that journey. I think me too. Jack probably was reading spreadsheets out of the womb, but you know, for most of us, it's a journey, right?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah.

Ben Lynch: Yeah. Tell us a little bit more about that.

Hannah Dunn: Expose yourself to the numbers, whether you feel comfortable with them or not, and use your advisors to not just be giving you the bottom line, but understand what is happening there. The things that I think people can do today is understand what is a practitioner costing you? Are they part time? We were talking about what is the tipping point? This morning we were talking about what is the tipping point for the number of days in which you allow someone to be on your team? Because if someone is working two days and someone is working five days, The cost of splice registration doesn't change. It is the same amount. It is the same amount to take them to the retreat. It's the same amount to have your team days. It's whatever, what are those costs and where's the tipping point? So really understanding your rolling break even, but also from beyond that, like what are the other costs that just don't change based on head or that you can reduce by having one person instead of having two or three people holding one full-time role? And so I think understanding numbers from that perspective, but also understanding from a billing perspective, um, and if we link into the emails here around, what do we charge for? What do we charge for? Well, I agree that it does feel not great charging if you're emailing to just connect and check in on a, on a client, but if you're adding value. Yeah. You're not just saying, Hey, Hannah, how are you going? Yes. It's like, are you adding value? What is the value you're adding? Are you giving your clinical expertise in that correspondence? If the answer is yes, then yes, we should be charging for that. If we are booking an appointment, then no, we can't be charging for that. And maybe that is why we want to get that off emails so we're not going back and forth, back and forth, where we just jump on a phone call that will take less time than those back and forth emails. So really understanding where is your time going for your team as well and what is that really costing you.

Jack O'Brien: To the point around knowing your numbers. This is a really critical mindset shift, is that in an AI world, you need to know your numbers better than ever before. And what I mean by that is we must be skilled at sense-checking AI, because it's one thing to shove a spreadsheet or a P&L into an AI model. And look, how many times does it get wrong? It gets simple mathematics wrong, let alone the interpretation thereof. And so we as clinic owners must be astute. We must have the trusted, experienced advisors around us to sense check and fact check these models. Because what I'm seeing is clinic owners outsource the trust to AI which is unproven to get it right and proven to hallucinate. So be critical of how you use these tools. Now, is there a place for them?

null: 100%.

Jack O'Brien: We're seeing the best clinic owners double down and use AI productively. But if you are, in an elementary sense, uploading and blindly trusting, you are going to get found out and it is not going to be pretty. So double down on how you are sense checking, fact checking, and getting the right trusted humans around you.

Hannah Dunn: It's a bit like when we talk about, um, marketing agencies and those sort of areas where if you've got no idea, then you don't know how to evaluate whether it's effective or not. But if you educate yourself around what is happening, then you can work better with that agency to be able to support you to understand how that works. And the same thing with accountants or with financial advisors, if you don't know what you don't know, how do you know that you're not getting what you're saying or what Marcio said in regards to rating himself 10 out of 10. And I think what we also see is people panicking and cutting costs where costs actually are going to add value to you with coaching. And so you see it as a bottom line. as a number that you need to, that's a quick fix that's going to solve it. But I think what we say often is what is, or Jack says often and now we copy, what is the cost of inaction? And so if we have someone who says, right, I'm going to get rid of this, this coaching now, Then what's that going to look like in six months? Were you holding yourself accountable before? Probably not. That's probably why you're benefiting from coaching. And we know that the best are having coaching because people need support and need to be able to have someone on the outside. Because again, we don't know what we don't know and we need someone to open up our blinders and let us know what we don't know.

Jack O'Brien: Well, think about even in a really simple context, like in a sports world, if the rules change and so there's a different playing environment and the salary cap gets a little bit squeezed or restricted, you don't sack your coaching team. You double down on the support required to not take advantage of, but make the most of these fresh opportunities. That's the way to look at it. We're not looking to cut and take advantage, but we're looking at how can we get ahead while everyone else zigs, it's time to zag. And that's super important, particularly when it comes to knowing our numbers. It would be similar to just taking an exported CSV, throwing it at some statistician from the uni who lives down in the basement library, and they can spit you out all of the stats that you ask for. But unless there's the experience and the knowledge and the layers of understanding, that's the key. It's the layers of understanding and being able to apply it in your own context. It's one thing to receive generic slop advice that isn't, it's just a string of letters and sentences strung together. It's another thing to be able to apply it in the way, as in the capital, the way of your clinic in an aligned values way that we have high degree of confidence that will work because it has worked before.

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, what's the story behind those numbers is really what I want.

Ben Lynch: I think a couple of the things I found most useful in my own personal journey having come from quite a low base, no base in terms of finances, right? And feeling a lot of those things, as you said, Hannah, as well, early on. Oh, numbers aren't my thing. I'm not really good with the math and still get corrected at times, but still leaning in and going, number one, Jack, you summarized this beautifully once in an immersion that we did, it's still available for members in the learning portal, all about finances, beautiful place to start, was every dollar has a purpose. And what that practically looked like in my mind was having separate accounts in the bank account so that this little account here is for tax, this account here is for super and leave, this account is the everyday trading account, and this account over here is for the zombie apocalypse or savings, whatever it might be. And then moving the money on whatever frequency, if it's fortnightly or monthly, into those accounts so that I'm not touching money that was for tax because I'm going to make a mistake and I had made mistakes with commingling funds. It's such a simple, controllable thing to go, huh, we don't have anything in the savings or zombie apocalypse account. Okay. What if I had a $10,000 buffer? Would that make me feel more certain? Absolutely. So that was a really great controllable one. The second one was. Exposure therapy, man. Like getting into zero and going, oh, if I just do it frequently, I begin to just even understand how to navigate the menu. Know where that report is. Oh, know how to add the filter and the dates. If that's where you're at, that's okay. We all start there. And then being able to structure those things into the categories, better to be looking at it than looking for it. We've talked about this previously on the pod. You go in there and you look at your profit and loss and admin is next to advertising. And they're two very different things. So how can you structure those categories? It's quite simple. You don't need to do it. Get your accountant, maybe your bookkeeper to do it for you or a practice manager. And then you get to start to look at, as you said, Hannah, some of the expenses and some of the income in groups of categories. How much am I paying these therapists rather than just having wages and super and admins co-mingled with therapists? And it's like, no, let's separate those things out. So it's much easier for me to spot those things. And by doing it frequently, you become comfortable and break down some of those barriers of No, this is pretty simple. I know that's how much I earned and this is how much I'm spending in these areas. And if I was to spend more, what's the chances that I am able to earn more? Or maybe we're overspending in certain areas and it's time for me to dial that back. So for those folks that do feel like finances are not my thing, how could you increase your exposure more frequently? Get someone trusted advisor in your corner. and separate the money. I think that helps quite a lot just practically. And stop looking in your bank account every day. You open your banking app and you're like, how much money is in there? That's not going to help your stress levels.

Hannah Dunn: So we're just asking for 1% better.

Ben Lynch: Yeah, exactly. So look, there's a lot to continue to cover here across the changing landscape in the NDIS, and we will continue to add some commentary and opinion around it, whilst also trying to just balance not being hysterical and freaking out. Like, what are the timeless principles and practices to run a sustainable clinic? That's what we want to do. And if anything else, this is an accountability, it's a call to action if you're in the NDI space. To go, maybe you've put your head in the sand or you kicked the can down the road, whatever you want to call it, and you know you should have been more in your finances, you know you should have been doing a bit more in your marketing. Just use this as a good catalyst to get you in doing those things, the controllables. Hannah, thank you so much for your insights. J.O.B., as always, you can head over to clinicmastery.com/podcast for the show notes and previous episodes. where we share a lot of good stuff for free. If you're not yet a member, consider joining us or at least go and binge a whole bunch of podcast episodes and get to understand how we might be able to help you and action off the back of these episodes. Bye for now.