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. We start every retreat with vulnerability because it creates trust. Creating a space for people to share creates connection.

Hannah Dunn: My kids are going to start cooking dinner.

Ben Lynch: Oh, yes, great and weird. When we're at our best, what are we doing? It's not just in business. It was like, for so many, when I'm at my best, I've got date nights scheduled in with my partner every week or every fortnight.

Jack O'Brien: That really summarises the essence of the retreat. You should get done in four or five days. What my other wives take, four or five weeks, or four or five months. The time compression and the velocity, it's super challenging.

Ben Lynch: This episode will be right up your alley if you're wondering how we run a retreat to align your team to the vision of the future. You'll want to hear Hannah's take on how vulnerability unlocks team connection. Plus, stick around for when Jack shares a personal story about when a retreat led to a resignation. Before we dive in, today's episode is brought to you by AllieClinics.com If you're the kind of clinic owner who loves to feel organised and stay ahead of the chaos, you'll love Allie Think of it as your digital clone. It's the single source of truth for all your 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 helloatclinicmastery.com with the subject line podcast, and we'll line up a time to chat. All right, let's get into the episode. All right, so we're in Palm Cove. Normally, we've run Noosa retreats for the last four years.

Jack O'Brien: Yes.

Ben Lynch: Testing out the heat in the Pyramid Cove. It was 26 degrees the other day, cold home. It was nine degrees. I thought, doing a tough down south thing. Let's do a bit of a debrief. We started the week with a team retreat for the CMT, and then we flowed into a member retreat. Maybe just off the top, what's a highlight for you, Joben? And we'll go to you, Hannah.

Jack O'Brien: I just love breaking bread with the team and sharing meals. We make it a point to invest in memorable meal experiences. And so that's a whole lot of fun. And typically around our meals, we have a key question conversation starter and it always gives you a great insight into the team members that you usually work with, you can actually play with and have some fun. So our meals and insightful questions.

Ben Lynch: What was the question?

Jack O'Brien: Well, there's a variety of questions actually that came up. I mean, conspiracies as an evening look.

Ben Lynch: I don't understand where I knew you were going. If you want an entertaining conversation at dinner, ask someone about their conspiracy. So there was that.

Jack O'Brien: We also got like, what car would you be if you were a car? And I… I miss that combo. I also miss that. and survive. Who would get voted off first and who would win? Very controversial.

Ben Lynch: Well, people were hesitant to say who's going to get voted off first, but very quickly tell you who would win.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, I was a middle of the pack. I don't think I was getting voted out, but I wasn't winning.

Ben Lynch: What about you, Hannah? Highlight for the week that was.

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, I think just coming together, like we as a whole team at CM only come together twice a year. And I think that moment when we first all arrive is just so special to see each other. It's like no time's far. It's like a family reunion. It is absolutely like a family reunion, yeah. And just flowing on from that, the morning walks that we do, whether it's our members retreat or our team retreat, you just learn so much professionally, but also personally about. one another.

Ben Lynch: Did you get to every morning walk?

Hannah Dunn: Every morning walk?

Ben Lynch: Ah, yes. So did I, Hannah. Did you? I had a rest day somewhere. I was going to be like, every second day is a rest day. Didn't make the diary. Yeah, I think the connection, actually between the sessions or the formal structures, I just love, we've used the Bono quote, the Bono from U2, where he mentions the music happens between the notes, like between the sessions, just the ad-hoc conversations that come out of it. The conversations that so often happen like this in someone's room after the day, you chew on the fat, and they often become really insightful and go down rabbit holes.

Jack O'Brien: Well, it's interesting, right, because it is intentionally unstructured, and if you looked at the Well, what are we going to be doing in that time? It opens the floor for the organic, but intentional, relational building.

Ben Lynch: You would both see this with, like, clinic owners doing their first culture day, as we call it, or team day, and they pack the schedule so full.

Hannah Dunn: Yeah.

Ben Lynch: What are some of the things that you've learned about setting up a structure for team events that have allowed for those organic conversations to happen?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah. I think also like the depth that you can go when you don't jam pack, what we see is just that skipping from one topic to the other, but creating those intentional moments like you spoke about with the breaking bread or the meal times. For us at DOTS, one thing we do at our team days or culture days, is that we have a rotating roster of who brings Morning Tea, which creates the conversation about what they brought, and they're like, this is, you know, whatever my grandma taught me to make this, or this is why this is my favourite.

Ben Lynch: We have some- You get them to tell a story of why they brought it?

Hannah Dunn: Not specifically.

Ben Lynch: You know, because if I bring two jams, it's not much of a story behind that. That's really cool, if there is a story creating that context.

Hannah Dunn: Yeah. And like last time, I felt like sometimes we end up with too much food and I was allocated to bring something last time. And so we were going to our Werribee clinic, which is, you know, an hour drive for some of our team. And instead of bringing morning tea, even though I was on the morning tea roster, I bought little travel home packs for everyone, like a little snack for them to have in their car. What was it? A Freddo frog. like a whispy, like a, I love lollies and yeah. I can't remember what else I put in it.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah. Great. I think you mentioned there the ability to have enriched deep conversations. One thing that I noticed that we did this time that maybe we haven't done previously was I like the run cheap, tight. I remember a time we were doing a vulnerability exercise. It went into morning tea time, but that's okay. You can be flexible. The food's not going to go stale if you're seven minutes late. And it allows us to give everyone the time to have the conversation. I really value that.

Ben Lynch: Let's tee up the vulnerability exercise that we did on Saturday. Saturday, with the team. It's all a bit of a blur. It's teared up, I think, as to the importance. We spoke a little bit about that, why these things matter, and how you encourage clinic owners actually to frame up these types of activities so they get their team to engage in it and not kind of shut off immediately. What have you found work, Jadabee, when it comes to getting the vulnerability, the connection piece happening with your team?

Jack O'Brien: Yeah. But Pat Mancione talks about in the five dysfunctions of a team, like vulnerability is the foundation of trust and trust is the foundation of functional teams. And so vulnerability exercise isn't a one and done, once off. It is ingrained in the fabric of every culture day, of every retreat. And so what it does, we start every retreat with vulnerability because it creates trust. It allows people to self-control how much they share or don't share, and that's a really important piece. And it creates an environment where I can share, you can share, and we trust one another with that vulnerability. And therefore, when we get to the next parts of the retreat, for us this week, it was about standards and expectations of lifting the bar. It's based on a foundation of trust. Everything revolves around trust. If you don't have that, as Lencioni says, you can't have robust conflict. It's difficult to come to agreement, commitment, and ultimately results. Trust.

Ben Lynch: Let's double click on the, uh, double click, triple click, triple click. We've been talking about, you know, people will say, uh, let's double down on it. And it's like, I don't think you're being ambitious enough. Let's triple down on it. And then someone said quadruple down. Uh, anyway, that's for a couple of the, you know, bros, right. Um, Do you have an experience? Share as much or as little as you can, because a lot of people are fearful, I know the story, of an outcome like you had, and won't do it, or they'll hesitantly do it and come to set up the space. So, can you just talk a little bit to that?

Jack O'Brien: It's trickery. But we embrace triggers. So the long, the short version is, was beginning my journey of building strong culture, and wanted to do a vulnerability exercise was perhaps a little bit to trigger happy. And we did an exercise where individuals weren't in control of the feedback, both positive and negative about themselves. And so my lesson was, when we start with vulnerability, it must be self what happened is an individual who didn't have a robust personal framework to handle vulnerability and feedback found it really confronting and ultimately struggled emotionally, ended up resigning a couple of weeks later in a blaze of glory. And so the lesson was vulnerability must be self-controlled, never However, you can get to a place where we can speak candidly, not just about ourselves, but about one another. That's not first base though.

Hannah Dunn: Yeah. And why not E in that whole group setting?

Ben Lynch: Correct. It's a good point because that's the fear of a lot of people is, what if I do this and I have team members leave or get upset? So how have you found your journey through creating that space for the team?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, absolutely. One of the pieces of advice I received from one of the coaches was when I first did the vulnerabilities cards, was to potentially set up a couple of people with the information of what we were doing to get them to go first, to sort of set the tone. And so that that wasn't necessarily widely known that there was one or two that had pre sort of thought about some ideas given the heads up given the heads up but not by much like just by the start of the day um or the day before picking the right people you know who those people are on your team and just allowing them to choose how deep they go but at least sort of having set up what might be where we're headed the first person to turn level if you just run through when people are being safe.

Ben Lynch: And so you purposely choose the first person?

Jack O'Brien: And Simon would say that the leader goes first. The leader determines the pace and you model and exemplify the vulnerability that you're expecting from the rest of your team.

Ben Lynch: I really like those distinctions of creating a space for people to share, creates connection. I feel like the conversations are so much richer off the back of that when we're going to get coffee or going for the walk and say, hey, that was really interesting to hear about what happened personally for you, tell me more or what happened. And to your point, we just kicked off as if no time had really elapsed and everyone's back, connecting as they would. Okay, so we then sort of wrapped up the team retreat. As you said, Jack, we went through some standards of ourselves, which is a great place to start. Create the connection, the vulnerability. We can share the thorny bits and then figure out what do we do. We then float into the member retreat. Maybe do you want to just set the scene, Hannah, for how the member retreat has worked. We've really refined it over a number of years, but for those that have never been to a retreat, maybe you just want to paint a picture of what it looks like

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, definitely. In regards to structure, that we have our members make a choice to invest in the week to come down and so they would kick Monday off at around two o'clock and just straight into some implementation time and just What did we do on the first day?

Jack O'Brien: We did get some progress there. We did get some progress. Yeah, we broke a whole lot of it. Separate goals, design statements.

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, did our design statements. Yeah, made sure that everyone was really clear on their plan and where they wanted to head. And just having that purposeful time where we know that we have that opportunity to review in a year and making sure that that happens. And then as you spoke about the structure of the days from there, we have a dinner on the first night where we all get to connect. and really start to get to know each other. I do think it's really valuable having land units that we have and that that is something that is a small detail that can be missed.

Ben Lynch: I've forgotten Jack's name multiple times.

Hannah Dunn: Yes, I've called him Ben a few times over the weekend.

Ben Lynch: People do confuse me and Dan a lot. We do look reasonably similar, especially if you just hit the icon on Slack. Yes, name tags do now.

Hannah Dunn: Yeah. And then like a panel session led by you Jack, where there's a specific topic that we think will be valuable to the whole room.

Jack O'Brien: What was the topic? Personal flow and productivity. We launched the Monday with desire statements, the Tuesday morning with personal flow. But if you don't have a clear sense of where I'm going and what I'm working towards, and if you're not personally productive and in flow, working on the wrong thing. So setting the scene, getting this space between your ears, crystal clear, focused, and levelling up. I love the retreat room because it is a room of elite clinic owners. Not in a pretentious sense, but in the sense of a purpose-led, focused, execution-driven, whole humans. And that sets the scene for great business progress as a result.

Hannah Dunn: And one thing that we haven't touched on is that there's a lot of directors in the room, but there's also a couple of practice managers or team members who have come with their directors, which creates an amazing environment to learn from other areas.

Ben Lynch: You've done that a number of times.

Hannah Dunn: Yes.

Ben Lynch: Yeah. What have you found particularly useful? Because there are some sensitive things that you're discussing.

Hannah Dunn: Yes.

Ben Lynch: Yeah, have you found that to work so that it is most beneficial in the investment you're taking them out of the clinic for a period of time as well as yourself? What have you, what have been the key criteria you've used, get my words out, you've used to sort of reason through making that investment?

Hannah Dunn: So, just jumping back to the structure, then we have implementation time, lunch and implementation time, which is where it can feel like what are you doing in that time. And the pre-work that we do, to your question just now, is around ensuring we've got a really clear project that we want to work on while we're there. And so that dictates who we want to bring and when we want to bring them. And what it means is you have this week of being full of a room of coaches where there's no time delays in asking questions. So you can smash out the project while continuing progressing. And the other thing I love that we did this time round was just at the very beginning on the Monday, posted like key ideas thread so that we weren't getting distracted by the other ideas. We had somewhere to dump it.

Ben Lynch: Great. Yeah. You could go back and like, that's a little shiny ball that I won't tackle now, but I'll put it in my thread for later. I think just the threads in general were super good for at the start of the day, what's your outcome and intention? And then at the end of the day, what did you achieve? And just this sort of anchoring back to progress. It keeps you accountable, but it also makes sure you make the most of this time, this investment away from family, away from the team, away from the clinic. So yeah, really powerful.

Jack O'Brien: I think that's something we've done more deliberately this year than any previous years. Yes, this is a retreat and it's time to recharge and enjoy tropical North Queensland in winter and partake of food and the relationships. But you're here to get stuff done. We're not here to muck around. We're here to execute and we're not going to work It's like, we're going to work hard and play hard, but you better believe we'll win.

Ben Lynch: There are a few who played very hard, especially last night. It was great to see them this morning, still rocking up a little dusting, but they had super fun. What are some of the projects that you saw being worked on this week or that you helped out? Because I saw a number of common projects that people wanted to work on.

Hannah Dunn: So one of the ones that I did with Louise when she came, she worked on our hub and just getting all our policies and procedures in order. And so, that was one of the ones that we saw a little bit. A lot of dash-boarding and getting in the numbers and understanding numbers.

Jack O'Brien: But not just setting up a dashboard. It's like really intricate, complex analysis and understanding more about the intricacies of their business. Yes. And probably the extension of the dashboards was financial literacy. seeing clinic owners get deep into Xero and budgeting and forecasting and modelling and getting a real comprehensive grip on the finances of their business and personally, actually, quite a lot of personal finance. It's true. Because we are more than just business owners. We lead families and we want to lead legacies.

Ben Lynch: Well, we did a family session and we did a personal productivity session and a personal finance session. Is there any other session? Design statement. Just kind of like your compelling vision for the future.

Hannah Dunn: And then the other session we did was around the exit strategy, maybe your business.

Jack O'Brien: Point of valuations. Pathways. These are the conversations by the poolside. So there's an optional poolside insights. It's really learning from what the best do. And I think that really summarises the essence of the retreat.

Hannah Dunn: Yeah.

Jack O'Brien: This year particularly is like, what are the best doing and how do we anchor ourselves up to what's the best at doing it? collaborating and show me yours and let me pull out my spreadsheet or my personal family routines or what are the tips or tricks, the mindsets, what are the best to do?

Hannah Dunn: And as Shane was saying, like it's a poolside session that we had six. We said come to a maximum of two. We don't want you getting distracted by the next idea. But it's not a session where us as coaches are being recorded. We're just having like a really natural chat with these members who've invested the week and just being able to really flow through what their specific questions are while also having a little bit of structure around what we're talking about.

Jack O'Brien: I love it because sometimes retreats can tend towards the abstract or tend towards thinking or conceptualising, and that's part of it. It's, you know, blue skies and palm trees and cocktails. That's important, but it can't just be that. It has to be progress. And we want members, and today we experienced members leaving the retreat with a done list, not a to-do list, but a done list that they're proud of. high degree of confidence that their business hasn't just incrementally improved but has taken a magnitudinal leap. It's not just incremental, it's a monumental stretch forward. If you get done in four or five days, what might otherwise take four or five weeks, four or five months, the time compression and the velocity like you mentioned, it's supercharged.

Ben Lynch: Well, when you're talking about a clinic owner creating a pathway for a team member to buy in, I mean, in a week, that's just huge. It's really exciting for them on a number of fronts. It started the week, and you mentioned it before, about being around people who have high standards and who show up and want to actually do the work. That's what I love. And what's different about the retreat is that you've got people here who are really taking it serious. They're also having time to play and acknowledge the progress that they've made. I've learned so much just from the conversations, even between us and like the team. even just like little mental, you know, I love a mental model, like how to think about things so that you're sharper. How many times we quote that parable or story of the sharp and the ax before you cut the tree. That became quite a through line for me in this retreat. And when you're around people who are thinking at different levels or in different ways than you in different departments, You learn very quickly what's going on. I'm interested, what's a key lesson or insight? It might not be new for you, but something that's come back to the forefront of your mind after this week and being around some amazing people. What are you leaving with as a key insight?

Hannah Dunn: That my kids are going to start cooking dinner. Oh, yes.

Ben Lynch: Right. Weird. I miss that talk.

Hannah Dunn: Jack mentioned it to me on a morning walk. Well, that's what his kids do. But that flows into, I think, just like Walk, my husband and business partner have flown in that have really structured our calendars. a lot more over the last two years. And even levelling that up for this year again was probably one of my key insights about how specific the details are going to be in that calendar as well, getting the emojis in there.

Jack O'Brien: I think for me, it's been about sharpening my thinking and really chunking down projects. And so being very deliberate before I decide to do a block of work? Why am I doing this block of work? What's the expected outcome? How confident am I in that? So really the reasoning and critical thinking skills of planning, preparing, so that when it comes time to go, like foot down, go, and there's a very clear definition of done. We've been using that phrase a lot around the pool. You need to define done so that you know when you are complete and you know what that outcome is expected to live on.

Hannah Dunn: And that was a really common thread in what we were coaching members about this week was around ensuring that your diary doesn't say work on business, that it has in there the specifics of what you're doing and a timeline. Like if you're booking a client in for five sessions, book yourself and if your project's going to take five weeks to do.

Ben Lynch: It's a great point or admin, you know, business admin, the first thing they go to is their inbox with 15,000 unread emails and you get lost. And that's the great thing about seeing, you know, we have a laugh about, you know, calendars and paper diaries versus online diaries. The lesson I take from it is People have different preferences and different things work for different people. So long as there are some core principles that you're practicing, like have the details, get aligned with your partner, business partner, life partner, whoever it is. And have one calendar. Yes, where it all goes. My key insight is just coming back to thinking about decisions, similar to you JB, from really extreme positions. to really stress test it. Typically over time, we've talked on the pod before, my default is like, there's only positive, there's only upside and we're going for this. But to almost get a bit of a 360 around, even if you're asking really kind of silly questions that take you off in tangents, I find it just helps sharpen up

Jack O'Brien: to then andy back to what decision we need to make and i've thought through some alternatives so that we can adjust if things go wrong and you know on that the health professionals are really good at thinking like that yeah if we are deliberate in our practice is what we are describing is uh testing hypotheses yeah we all know the scientific method but sometimes we discard it when it comes to business thinking yeah but no we can be scientific we can and it's a skill yes a skill test it and make sure our reasoning is thorough.

Ben Lynch: So one specific question, practical question that was raised yesterday at our technology and AI conversation in healthcare was What am I not prepared to lose when it comes to an existing system? So often we're like, oh, I'm frustrated by these things. So I look for the different patient management system, the different email system, et cetera, without actually going, oh, if we move, we're going to lose these critical pieces. And am I prepared to lose them or can I substitute them? That, just for me, was a really practical example. We've got some decisions to make about our tech stack. I thought, I'm going to use that one in particular, quite practically.

Hannah Dunn: And also consolidating of all of those, like, is it possible to use your Google Calendar for your Asana stuff instead of having Asana as well? Yes. It was really, yeah, that's what we're definitely going to be thinking about.

Ben Lynch: being okay not to have all the bells and whistles of a system and go, it's not perfect, no system is, but it gets the core job done.

Hannah Dunn: And it's a less system, it's all in one place. And I think the retreat as a whole really allows us to the, what am I saying, Ben? You don't know what you don't know. And so it allows us to have that brain dump of all these areas of our business that we didn't even realize we needed to touch on until we heard someone else talking about it. And while staying focused on the project this week, it has given a number of projects to continue on with throughout the rest of the year.

Ben Lynch: I love it. It's inspiring, that's for sure. And the immersion helps. I think everyone should have a moment in their year where they can immerse themselves in their business and stop kicking the can down the road with those meaningful things, and even do actually drive growth. So yeah, this is a key part, as you said on the opening day, Jack, of our collective calendars, this moment in the year to really recenter a line

Hannah Dunn: gsd yes yes and i just really want to highlight that i have three kids at home yeah and so it is an investment it is a logistical nightmare my husband is part of the business and he comes to the retreat too and so we have grandparents staying at our place we've got our village taking our three different our three kids to three different education places so different schools different kinders And we have Bec who brings her baby and brought her together. There's lots of ways to make it happen. And so we are absolutely here to support you to see how we can make it happen.

Ben Lynch: It's a really great point. I know my mother-in-law has come up to help my wife with the four kids during this time. Yeah, we so often reflect on the family sacrifices and contributions of others as well. Plenty going on for you as well at home.

Jack O'Brien: It's great to see people go, it's not I can't, but how can I? I know a member flew in her daughters, I saw arrive and they're having a family holiday on the end. Some members Partners came, life partners came and some participated and some didn't, whether they had a ticket or not. So, so many creative ways that particularly mums, but all of our members have been able to think creatively in how to invest in themselves.

Ben Lynch: and their business. And to your point of like it's a big investment for you, like you've got Wok here, so there's you need that village to come, but the alignment that you would get through this week and like you said the family calendar and so it almost makes family life better when you go back. And so for a week of some complexity and logistics, how much better is family life for you in the weeks to come?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, absolutely. And Wok and I always take one of the nights, even though we get a little bit of FOMO, we embrace the JOMO and the joy of missing out. And we go out for dinner, just the two of us. And it's just a really nice time to connect and, yeah, like really appreciate what we've done for the last 12 months. Love that.

Ben Lynch: I'm inspired by hearing your story and so many others on the team about, you know, to your point, Jack, when we're at our best, what are we doing? It's not just in business.

Hannah Dunn: Yeah.

Ben Lynch: It was like for so many, when I'm at my best, I've got date nights scheduled in with my partner every week or every fortnight. Yes. and show me your calendar. Is it actually in there?" And yeah, that was a great opportunity for me. I'm like, awesome.

Hannah Dunn: And just on that, I was going to say, like, Dan showed me a photo on Saturday of his two girls going to their dance concert, like, or their competition. Like, he's not there, but he's still, like, he gets to share that with all of us, which is something we might not have seen. And Shane's son won an award today. Yeah, getting to see photos of that. those sort of connections. Yes, there are sacrifices but there's also the great win of getting in that routine at home.

Jack O'Brien: And they stack up over time. I was speaking with some members looking at some of the feedback today and members that have come year on year on year say this is a key boulder in their annual plan and they've got so much more out of their third and fourth retreat than they did from their first And so it's kind of a principle of like, when was the best time to plant a tree? Or when was the best time to attend your first retreat five years ago? The next best time is the next one. And stack upon stack upon stack, you get better each time you level up. So just start now.

Ben Lynch: That quote of, it doesn't get easier, we get better, or we need to get better, just sort of rings true for me. That is mastery, right?

Hannah Dunn: Right. Yes.

Ben Lynch: Well, this has been a really great debrief to hear of all the wins personally, and also for members to understand the structure of it. We weren't sure if we were going to pull this off, but I'll have the podcast, so hopefully people can hear it and they can see us. And it's good that we'll be back in the studio very soon. Thank you for wishing us to do this, and in particular, I was like, I'll pack this stuff, we're doing the podcast. So yeah, this is really good. Thank you. Awesome. I'll see you on another episode very soon. That is really good. Good debrief. I didn't know where it was going to go, but it went all the good places. End.

Jack O'Brien: End.