Ben Lynch: Oh, yes. Oh, what a stitch up. For those that aren't watching right now, Hannah has donned the suit, the bow tie, the shirt. Well played. Well played. 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 definitely advocate the zombie apocalypse account.

Jack O'Brien: Time and time again we see the best clinic owners, like you Hannah, pay attention to the minutes. Because now, when we're all getting squeezed, minutes matter.

Ben Lynch: So are you seeing people, Hannah, question whether being registered with the NDIS is the right thing to do moving forward?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, absolutely. We're seeing heaps of services deregister.

Jack O'Brien: We see turbulence all the time and there is a good way and a better way to lead and all this rises and falls on leadership.

Hannah Dunn: And happy end of financial year. We will cry into our receipts.

Jack O'Brien: Tax-deductible champagne. This episode will be right up your alley if you're looking to diversify and grow your income streams. You'll want to hear Hannah's take on how resilient clinic owners are navigating the NDIS changes. Plus, Jack helps describe the forecasting process to better understand your finances.

Ben Lynch: Before we dive in, today's episode is brought to you by AliClinics.com. If you're the kind of clinic owner who loves to feel organised and stay ahead of the chaos, you'll love Ali. Think of it as your digital clone. It's the single source of truth for all your clinic's policies, systems, and training. Test it for free at AliClinics.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. Welcome to another episode of the Grow Your Clinic podcast. I'm back again with my underdressed co-host, Jack O'Brien. I'm too underdressed. And Hannah, just looking slick, like you're about to go to some silver service restaurant in Melbourne, some sort of highfalutin fancy place. You're looking the part, well done. Well, J.O.B., what's come across your desk today?

Jack O'Brien: I don't necessarily have news, but it's every, on the Wealth Dynamics profile, I'm a lord, on disc, I'm a C, and today is the day that we love. As of the recording, it is June the 30th, end of financial year. I said this morning on our huddle, Ben, I've been deep in the sheets with you. Spreadsheets, that is. Spreadsheets. We're doing all things budgeting and having a lot of fun in the spreadsheets. And a financial year for those who celebrate and acknowledge this day. I hope you have a lovely day.

Ben Lynch: So let's dive in. Hannah, a lot of NDIS clinics are freaking out at the moment. There's been maybe a few months of freak out really about new rules, regulations coming down the pipe. People are wondering, how is this going to affect me? Before we dive into some of the practical things that NDIS clinics can do, do you want to just tee us up with what are some of the headline changes that have come to be or that have been announced recently?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, so the biggest one, I'm going to take this off while we're chatting. The biggest one being that there has been a change in the travel and what we can pay or charge for travel. And so that's come down to 50% of our time. And as I said to our families, essentially as allied health professionals, we are worth our full rate when we are in clinic. And we are only worth 50% of our rate when we are driving, which is absolutely crazy because I'm sure everyone knows we don't pay our team 50%. We're not paying 50% of our rent. There's all those overheads. I'm not paying 50% of admin. And actually, it's our community visits that take a lot more preparation to get ready for and we're not able to charge for those booking of appointments and so it is really disappointing to see that that's one big change that's come through. The other changes being that physio podiatrist and dietitian have reduced their hourly rate. And then we've also had a levelling of the fees across all states. Some states had a loading to try and support them to recruit to those areas. And just that services were harder to find in those areas, so to incentivise services to be there. So they are the big changes that are coming through. And I think also, like we're seeing a lot of petitions, but there's starting to be a bit more understanding as well around the impact on registered versus non-registered providers as well.

Ben Lynch: Talk to us about that. What are some of the differences that you're hearing and seeing?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, so for those that don't know, registered providers are required to stick to the price guide, whereas non-registered providers have a little bit more freedom to charge as they would like to. There has always been that they can't see NDIA registered. There's three different ways that NDIS participants can be registered, either NDIA managed, self-managed or plan managed and so previously unregistered couldn't see NDIA managed but they could see the other two and they could charge what they want. Another change that's coming through in this price guide that we're not a hundred percent clear on and there's mixed information out there is whether plan-managed families can be charged a different rate, whether it's unregistered or a registered provider. And so that has never been the case, but there is some language in this price guide that suggests that maybe they can't. But the general feeling is that it's just that the plan manager can't pay above that amount and that there may be able to be an out-of-pocket fee. So still a lot of confusion out there.

Ben Lynch: Yeah, it's still being worked out, right? And a lot of conversations happening in our Slack community with members, various Facebook groups that are around the place. This is not the first time something like this has happened. If anyone's listening in or watching and they're not part of the NDIS, maybe you're one of the clinics that tune in from the UK or the US or Canada, and this is not part of what you do. Or you're in Australia and this is just not part of the funding source that you access. there are still some principles at play that are highly relevant to you in looking at the diversification of your income and revenue streams that we want to unpack today, whilst also speaking directly to some of the NDIS announcements and strategies for navigating this. J.O.B., we've seen this play out, whether it's in the Medicare space, whether it's in being a preferred provider of a health insurer, And just over long periods of time, you tend to get squeezed. This is not new behaviour. When you get access to these funding sources, you will get squeezed. And we spoke about this in 2020 in the Grow Your Clinic book. So this is only going to get harder and more restrictive for clinics. So I want to look at what are some of the short-term things that we can do. Some of the medium term, but perhaps the most salient point is where is your business going to be in three years, in five years from now? Because I just see too many people reacting in the moment and never actually zooming out to their business model for the future. So JRB, in talking to those clinics that perhaps don't access the NDIS but have similar funding models that make up a large amount of their revenue streams, how do you go about helping them understand or diversify those income streams?

Jack O'Brien: I think when it comes to thinking about a diversification of income streams, really what we're trying to do is engineer and architect a clinic that helps us help the right people. And so if you're passionate about working with kids with congenital disorders or lifelong presentations, then this is a real and meaningful presentation for you to consider the NDIS changes. If you want a clinic that helps a broad spectrum of patients and presentations across your community, then you do want to be thinking about, do I want private patients or NDIS or Medicare or WorkCover? And so really it comes down to who is your ideal client and how are we best able to serve them? And there was a season where if you want to work with kids with significant disability, then the NDIS is and was a great way to do that. that shouldn't necessarily change. That ideal client doesn't change. The way they access your services or how that is paid for and remunerated might shift. We're seeing some clinics look more towards a private or a hybrid gap type model or adjusting the types of clients they want to work with. So I think really you want to conceptualise who do we want to best help? What role do we want to play in the lives of those we want to help? and then we make sure that the commercial considerations line up. And so, yeah, that is true across all different funding mechanisms.

Hannah Dunn: I think some of the challenges with NDIS is that unlike Mediheal, it's not a rebated service. So it puts such so much pressure because so many of the clients that we see are locked in to these prices and there's not a lot of opportunity to diversify beyond that in some client groups. But there is opportunities to diversify how we're accessing those kids. We might be accessing them at the moment through one-on-one therapy, but if we can create a relationship with the school and the school has some Department of Ed funding, or kinder, for example, where we can service kids in the school because the school is now paying for it, or kinder is now paying for it, or they're paying for a group program, there is other ways or other environments that might be able to fund the service that you are providing, even if they do have NDIS funding that may be limited.

Ben Lynch: So are you seeing people, Hannah, question whether being registered with the NDIS is the right thing to do moving forward?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, absolutely. We're seeing heaps of services deregister. I think a lot of services were deregistering. I think it's like there's only about 20% of services that were registered even before these pricing cuts came out. And it's mind-blowing that it works against you being registered, because being registered is, there is at the moment, not really any advantage other than being able to see NDIA registered clients. And in different states, it seems to be a bigger or smaller proportion of the population who is. And so it's hard to find what the benefits are at the moment to staying registered, other than future proofing in that if the NDIS turned around and said, we're only going to support registered providers, then there would be a hustle to get registered.

Jack O'Brien: And I think on that Hannah, maybe it's an interesting one for us to clarify. Historically, or when I say historically, previous to some of these recent changes, I would have said to clinic owners, if a large percentage and maybe even a majority of your clients have significant disability, which is usually what qualifies an NDIA type patient, that's when to consider registration. But if you don't work with a major and significant disability or you don't work with NDIA patients, then the cost-benefit way out, the cost-benefit consideration of registration probably means it's not worth registering or it's worth deregistering. Would that type of advice still ring true for you?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we are a registered provider, but we're constantly considering whether we want to remain a registered provider. At the moment, it's really holding out to see whether there are any changes that come through in the future. It might not be in this round, but at the moment, we're still trying to make it work with staying as a registered provider.

Ben Lynch: And so what are some of those things that you're doing to make it work? You did a fantastic presentation to the members here at CM the other day with Melinda Weber and spoke to some of those practical considerations or changes. Can you speak to some of those that are worth considering?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, absolutely. So I think the really ones that people took a lot away from is making sure that we're charging travel as being from door to door. So the travel is the time in which you get in the car and are driving. It is not the time that you're packing the car or that you're signing into a school. That is indirect time or non-face-to-face client time. So making sure that we're not just billing all of that as travel, because there is different rates, we need to make sure that we're truly billing what is travel versus what is non-face-to-face time. And then the other one was just around making sure that indirect time or the non-face-to-face time is being billed accurately. So previously, a lot of clinics would say, oh, it's an hour to write this report or an hour and a half. and if it took them an hour and they quoted an hour and a half they'd reduce it to be the hour price, but if it took them two hours and they'd only quoted an hour and a half they generally weren't charging that extra half an hour. And so it's important that families understand that the NDIS have told us as providers that we need to be charging true to time and so making sure that our clinicians are charging true to time. And so that might be having something printed out next to your clinicians so that when they're doing indirect time, they can just jot down the name, jot down how long they're working on it, and then later in the day be able to add that invoicing in or whatever it is.

Jack O'Brien: I really like that, Hannah. That's something that I've taken from you and helped other clinic owners with. And even just to substantiate that or to quantify that, Benny, for listeners, if that's maybe an hour or so, say an hour and a half across the week that was previously billed as travel, but actually should be non-direct patient time. What we're talking about there is give or take $150 a week now in this new pricing arrangement, which is $7,500 a year per clinician. And so, if you've got a team of four or five clinicians, we're talking about $30,000 of lost revenue that we can otherwise ensure is continuous through our clinic. So, this is really neat. Some people go, oh yeah, but travel and indirect and it's just minutes here and it's minutes there. That's fine. It's $30,000 worth of minutes here and minutes there. That's what we're talking about. And that's what we see the best clinic owners do is they pay attention to the minutes because now when we're all getting squeezed, minutes matter.

Hannah Dunn: And previously, we were really able to say, like, absolutely, we'll come out to the school and we'll do the sessions there. But now it's really thinking about what, why are we going to the school? Why are we going home? And this will increase the quality of our service as well. Like, is the goal school-based? And if it is school-based, and we're in the classroom, and we're supporting something that's school-based, then it's clinically justified. if it's because something's happening in the home, it's clinically justified, but is it that we're just seeing some families and children in there, or clients who are adult clients maybe, in their home due to convenience and it not necessarily being because that is the environment in which it needed to happen.

Jack O'Brien: And when you say convenience, you mean it's convenient for the patient or participant, which is, that's important. That is participant-centered care, but ultimately that's only one part of the consideration of access to services and sustainability of therapy.

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, absolutely. And then also like just other strategies around like blocking clients together so that you're not out going to the school three or four times in the week, seeing what groups you could run maybe, and really auditing what is it that you're using your time for.

Ben Lynch: Who are you seeing in clinics lead this initiative to really audit where the opportunities are? Because when there's chaos happening, there's a great opportunity for people to get into the details and understand, okay, how do we be more efficient? Arguably, you could say, these should be happening anyway. This is just good business practice, but we're now being forced into it because of some of these changes. Who leads this? Who's the point person? Is it, hey, clinic owners, buckle up, get in there? Is it practice managers? Is it senior therapists? Who are you seeing as the point person for facilitating these changes and making sure that they're sustainable?

Hannah Dunn: I definitely think it's us as directors getting in there, but providing systems for our teams to be able to look at their calendars, to be able to make those clinical justifications in mentoring sessions with the senior OTs. It's a whole team event, really. We're seeing a lot of panic from families feeling like sessions are going to end straight away, like understanding that our clients, that everyone's going to work with you around what is the best solution here. And it may not be what the preference is, but it might still be the high level of care.

Ben Lynch: Sorry to interrupt. How are you communicating to patients to avoid the panic?

Hannah Dunn: We personally at DOTS, we did an email out with a video attached. So I recorded a video about the changes and what that meant for us as a clinic. It was a very short 15 minute video that I then did dot points about underneath and just said, understand if you don't have time to watch this, here are the key points, but there's further explanation in the why in that video. There's been like maybe five families who have said a service is going to end tomorrow. No, they're not ending tomorrow. We're going to work with you around that. I think we need to make sure people aren't panicking. And as Jack said, like, make sure we know our numbers because what you don't want to do is go and cancel your community visits because they're going to be at half the travel rates, but then have empty spots in the diary that are going to be at zero rate. So, yeah.

Jack O'Brien: That's really good, Hannah. Like, In states of panic like this, we've got to resort to how do the best lead. And I get so inspired by seeing what happens amongst our clinic mastery team, you know, led by yourself and Melinda on the NDIS front amongst others, and the dozens of clinic owners that are learning how to lead through these times of uncertainty. What that means is creating a little bit of distance between stimulus and response It means over communicating, doing videos and emails. I'm sure you're communicating calm to your therapists. There's principles of leadership in times of uncertainty. And like you said, Ben, this is not new. Maybe this price adjustments new, but we see turbulence all the time. And there is a good way and a better way to lead. And all of this rises and falls on leadership.

Ben Lynch: So Hannah, with your team, what is the nature of the message that you've been sharing with them?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, the message has just been that these are the changes. We're going to work within them. We're going to see what we can do. These are some strategies that we've come up with, getting their feedback. We know there's some questions around whether there's some flexibility with, for example, if it's a school five minutes away, can we still go there? And so we have, we're just continually providing that feedback. I've got a team leader meeting after this. We'll do another video back to the team. We've done a post to say, what are your questions? We'll answer them. in that meeting, so just making sure we're available to answer those questions. I think, like we've spoken about Mel Webber, and I know for her clinic, they've taken a different approach with chatting to their families, that it's, I'd say Mel and I are quite different in the way that we manage things and neither right nor wrong. And we've made it quite a big point and quite like announcing, I think, and don't quote me because I'm not 100% sure, but I feel that Mel is taking a quieter approach in regards to people are aware of the changes. It's just another day in business, nothing like they're already charging all of those things. And I guess we are already charging all of those things. It's just that the travel rate changes and some clinics like ours have a higher percentage of home visits and others have a lower percentage so it doesn't affect as many clients. So absolutely, Jack, no right or wrong and different ways to do things, but ensuring that the calm is there and that the communication pathways are there and those themes are definitely flowing through for both of us and that there's definitely been communication to teams for both of us.

Jack O'Brien: It's a great leadership skill. An author that I follow says that in times of chaos or uncertainty like this, our job as leaders is the CRO. You might be the CEO normally, but in these times you're the CRO, that is the Chief Reminding Officer. And so we need to keep front and center. We need to keep the main thing, the main thing. We need to keep majoring on the majors. And that is that our participants are why we do what we do. and that we can find an opportunity in amongst the chaos. And we need to remind our team, we need to remind our families, and we need to remind ourselves that we will navigate this and there will be an opportunity despite the problems that are front of mind.

Ben Lynch: My financial brain went to chief revenue officer, but I like the reminding officer. That is good. But revenue is also super important in these times, like you were saying, Hannah, of charging appropriately. On that financial front, how do you get clear on your numbers during this period of time so that you make sustainable decisions. Joby, talk me through, what are some of the principles, maybe even the specific assets that you like to lean on to forecast the impact of some of these decisions? Then I'll come to you, Hannah.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, I think, and I'll let you speak to the rolling break even how you use that. A key point I think that is important for us to consider is that the revenue of our team members, of our practitioners often is tied to their remuneration. And so this change could have a very real impact on the ability of our team to generate revenue and therefore their rewards or remuneration that are tied to it. And so they have a material incentive to ensure that the sustainability of their revenue continues. And that can quite simply look like finding an extra half an hour, hour or two in their week. It might be that this is the time for us to encourage our team members to pick up things like Ali or like Heidi or patient notes, ClinIscribe, Evability, whichever one you use, like lean into AI so that you can make yourself more productive and so that you can help more people in your week. So keeping your revenue high and encouraging our practitioners to be well-utilised, to be efficient and productive with their time, then I think will be the key one because there is often a material impact on their remuneration.

Ben Lynch: Tell me if I'm reading wrongly here, JRB. But is it time for those clinic owners that have maybe sat with an underperforming team member and just let them ride along to have the hard conversation? Because what we're talking about here is we need to boost the productivity and efficiency of our team members. And so maybe for some, it's time to have the tougher conversation and to lean into those team members that aren't pulling their weight.

Jack O'Brien: I think so. We see it time and time again with clinic owners inside our community that maybe they've tolerated or lowered their standards for some of these team members that aren't performing optimally. They're performing, but maybe not optimally. And now they're going, right, I'm going to find in the learning portal how to have these challenging conversations. How can I lead a team member towards productivity and efficiency? What resources do I need? What leadership skills? What conversation scripts can I find inside the Clinic Mastery Learning Portal to be able to help me level up? Because it's crunch time. If we don't break even on this particular practitioner, their job is no longer sustainable and none of us wants to have that conversation. So we want to help them level up. And I think the rolling break even is a key tool, a key asset that we provide. I'm curious, Hannah, do you use it and how do you use it in your clinic?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, we do use it. And we look at what we use it for, what is really happening. So we'll put in a scenario where we put in how much we're paying all the practitioners and admin team and what our average monthly costs are. And then we'll put in what is their true amount that they are hitting on average over the last six months or however long they've been with us as their impact hours or their KPIs. And then we'll see what that looks like. And then we'll do another tab that we'll have a look at the same scenario, but put in what it would be if they hit what we'd expect them to hit as a number and how that changes over. And so playing around, it also helps when you're looking at whether you bring on another team member to see where you'd need to get them up to, or if you took a team member out, let's say someone's going on mat leave, or you've got an underperformer, what that would look like and the impact that that underperformer might be having on your team. It's trickier when you've got different rates for different professions, well not for professions but for a person. So one person who is going to be at $193.99 is their average fee and then sometimes they're going to be out in the community so it will be down an amount. We ended up having it ends up being one full-time role for us at that community rate. So we're able to sort of put one person at that lower rate and pretend that that's their full-time role and then add those other four days into the other four practitioners who really have that. But Jack, that might be some maths that's better done with you. It's not me. Yeah, clearly you didn't say me. I'm not on that. You had bought him too.

Ben Lynch: I'm very happy for you to take it, Jack.

Hannah Dunn: I think the other thing that Mel and I have both spoken to, but Mel's really highlighted, is that we're not expecting there to be more money in individual plans. So we have to be creative on how we are actually charging this extra time. And so what we don't wanna do is just all of a sudden be charging every family an extra 20 minutes per session, because one, we wanna be able to show the evidence of what we're doing for that, and it's not sustainable that every family would necessarily need an extra 20 minutes. But also it means that these kids or clients are gonna run out of funding a lot faster. And so it may be that you look at getting more creative with your sessions. For example, you were already charging them an hour to be with them, for example, maybe that was made up of 45 minutes of direct and 15 minutes indirect. But now we're thinking, well, what if we're more flexible in that time and a family's with you for half an hour and then says, Oh, look, I need you to do this visual schedule. I need you to call this person. And you say, no worries. How about we end the session early today at 30 minutes, and I'll use the other 30 minutes for that indirect time so that it's not the 45, 15, and then another 30 that we're having to add on or another 15, and it's going to drain that funding quickly.

Ben Lynch: You also spoke to maybe front-loading plans. Is that correct? Can you elaborate on what you mean by front-loading plans?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, so there's been a lot of change in the way that plans are being written as well. So we're seeing plans come through with these funding periods. And so the default we're hearing is three monthly periods that are over a 12 month plan. And so what that means is that if someone is getting $12,000 of NDIS funding, that it's getting broken up into $3,000 lots in the first funding period, second, third and fourth. But what we also know is that the funding periods we've been told will roll over to the next one. So one, if there's, if we use $2,000 and there's $1,000 left, it will roll over. So we've got $4,000 in the second one. But what is not happening is it's not rolling over at the end of a plan. and so it won't roll over plan to plan, it will just roll over within that plan. So what we don't want to happen is have funding left over in quarter four of that funded period because we'll lose that funding. So it's safer for families to request to have front-loaded plans where maybe we put $4,000 in the first one and then Jack will work out what the rest of that is divided over the last three quarters or four and a half or whatever it is that the family advocate for. And we're hearing families can advocate for longer funding periods too, but it's been made very clear by NDIS this time that it is a family's responsibility to advocate for that rather than a clinician in our reports or anything like that. So it's all really new and it's all up to interpretation, but that's our general understanding at the moment. There was something else that came to mind about that funding period, front-loading. I'm not sure. Jack, were you going to say something too?

Jack O'Brien: I was not. I mean, I've always got something to say, but not necessarily on that topic.

Ben Lynch: I know. I was going to ask, Hannah, how are you thinking about maybe the mid to longer term? Let's call it 12 to 36 months from now. Maybe you're not, and that's okay. But how do you think about where your business is at or even coach other businesses, especially in the NDIS space, about where they're going rather than just living sort of announcement to announcement or reaction to reaction. So how are you thinking about it and how do you encourage others to think about it?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, I think we need to read between the lines and just see if there's anything that we can pick up from the changes. I think just the rolling break even is really good at showing you what your expected profit is and where the gap is and how much room you have to move as well. And seeing what you would need to do by certain dates about what the revenue needs to be. And for us, we're a single discipline practice. And one thing that plays on my mind is like, what if they say key worker models coming in and we're only going to support multidisciplinary practices, for example, because then they can support all of that together or if there's networks that needs to happen. So I've definitely had conversations with speechy psychs, physios to say, like, if overnight it turned out that way, what would that look like for us? And so just thinking like, and that's probably not going to happen, but like just thinking through all the scenarios that potentially could happen and making sure that we're ready for sort of anything

Ben Lynch: to happen. The famous TED talk for our work week, Tim Ferriss, was about fear setting. And it was such a good one because it was the opposite of goal setting. You know, where are we going to be? How big are we going to be? How many team members? How many locations? Etc. He said, what if instead you grabbed all of your fears, the things that are keeping you up at night, or you're thinking a lot about, and you actually started to write out how you would address them. It's a version of risk mitigation. But to your point, Hannah, I think that's where you can go a little bit crazy as a clinic owner, because you're dealing with so much. And if they are just ruminations that are happening, make time for purposefully documenting and thinking through these things. Like, if this happened. Might be a low probability event. But here's a couple of things that I could come up with right now as to how I would address it. And, you know, you could take that to ChatGBT and plug it in as well and it will give you some really great starting points. There's every reason for clinic owners not to just be frazzle-dazzled, waiting for the next announcement, and carve out an hour, have a cup of coffee or a tea, because Hannah doesn't drink coffee, and start to think through some of those things. So I think the fear-setting idea is really valuable in these times and anytime as well. I agree in that.

Jack O'Brien: Now, you need to invest an appropriate amount of time in your fear setting and hypothetical scenario building. You don't need to go down the rabbit hole, but you need to do enough that you have alleviated some uncertainty. I'm no psychologist. For those psychologists listening, forgive my crudeness here, but the point remains true is that anxiety is fear about an uncertain future. And so the more certainty we can create around different scenarios in the future, the less anxious we need to be in the present. So you might not be able to completely articulate what the future looks like, but time and time again, we see the best clinic owners like you, Hannah, have an understanding of if this scenario happens, I can do this. If that scenario happens, my opportunity is here. And so, you know that whatever cards are dealt your way, you've got to play ready to go. And that is the art of good leadership. I'm just so inspired by the NDIS-type clinics in our community that are putting opportunities in their back pockets, proverbially, so that when the chips fall, they're ready to go, whatever card is dealt them. They're not going to sit back and whinge and complain. proliferate these Facebook groups with complaints. It's like, no, no, no. The best are getting it done. They're doers who make stuff happen. Yes, advocate. Yes, share knowledge. I'm not against those things, but ultimately the best clinic owners lean into community and they make it happen.

Ben Lynch: Well, it's a great point about control what you can control. And one of those things like just really simply and practically is, are you building that war chest of finances so that you can weather a potential storm of a couple of weeks, a couple of months? So we definitely advocate in your bank account, having that cash allocation of the zombie apocalypse account. as Andy Wang, our friend at Clarico calls it, or you can call it whatever you want, someone called it a sunshine account, I remember, to me the other day, that having those funds available also allows you to make more abundant decisions or not be so scarce, you know, anxious in the moment when you've got, you know, set aside a month, three months, six months of operating expenses.

Jack O'Brien: And the point there is optionality, that when the crunch comes, you've got options, which often will set you aside from our colleagues, competitors, whatever you want to call it, who don't have any option but to do X. The best clinic owners are building optionality into their finances, optionality into their referrer sources. funding sources, types of clients they work with, even types of team members, to your point, Hannah, of single discipline or early career, you know, expertise in their career, build optionality into your business. And so that way you're not at the, you know, the whims and mercies of the scenarios and circumstances around you, but you have a level of control and you can control what's in your circle of influence. Hannah, does that resonate for you?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I was definitely thinking when you were talking just about that sense of control and needing to see what we can action to be in our control. And it does just create that calm. And I think we know when we're panicking that our frontal lobe is often offline, like our rational brain. And so if we've already got some of those options, we're going to be 10 steps ahead because we're not going to be in that panic where we can't think through.

Jack O'Brien: That's so good. Like, you know, for clinic owners, practically, maybe have a list on your desk or have front of mind. When I feel myself in that sympathetic state, so I feel my frontal lobe disconnect, you know, what are the one, two, three things that I can do? Maybe it's, you know, make a cup of coffee, get outside, call a mentor, do some breathing exercises, revisit my desire statement. How do I get back in that parasympathetic leadership state rather than this fight, flight or anxiousness?

Ben Lynch: It's a great point. I think to some of the fundamentals that we spoke about at the opening of today, it's like so often we will drop the ball on our marketing efforts, we won't allocate the budget, and then all of a sudden we get hit and squeezed with clients in the diary and we need new patients, or we don't have potentially some appropriate reactivations or check-ins, the client nurturing side of things in place. We don't have the mentoring structures or frequency to have the conversations with the therapist before they become underutilised or underperforming. We don't allocate the money to the bank account where we should have those savings. We take it out and then go spend it, get a tax bill. We haven't met with the accountant. I come back to all these fundamentals. It's definitely nuanced by the context if you're in an NDIS clinic by these announcements. But the fundamentals have never changed and never will. And so I think a lot of the call to action for any clinic owner that's feeling a little stressed in the moment about a number of different things is, how well are we doing the controllables and the fundamentals every single week? and there's just an abundance of opportunity here for that to be done despite the uncertainty that we have. So the forecast side of things, just to let everyone know, you can jump over to clinicmastery.com. We've got a free resources section where you can get the rolling break even and plug in some of those different scenarios that you mentioned, Hannah, to see the financial consequences and impacts of different scenarios and different decisions. That might just help you with making a clearer decision. Hannah, I want to ask you about the client mix side of things that you mentioned earlier. How are you going about making that decision? It sounds like you're contemplating it at the moment. You're seeing a lot of clinic owners contemplate. What does the future mix of our client base look like? Just talk us through whether you've arrived at a decision or not. How are you thinking through the client mix at your clinic moving forward?

Hannah Dunn: We have diversified a couple of years ago in seeing more physical clients and making sure that the training and the PD is there, like kids with cerebral palsy and those sort of conditions rather than just autism or ADHD population. So that was one thing we did a little while ago, but I think also just yeah it's tricky like it's just about the environments and also around like the different services that we provide whether it's professional development or mentoring for parent like parent information sessions or PD teachers those sort of things is mainly what we've done I know there are other services who have gone into niche areas where they just see physical clients, which allows them to build that wait list and be known as specialists and go into those areas.

Ben Lynch: And that's physical injury as distinction. Yeah, physical disability. Intellectual physical disability. Yeah, that's that's an interesting distinction around pivoting kind of the ideal client, as you said, or client type that you want to attract.

Hannah Dunn: I think it's the, sorry, I was going to say, I think so much of what we've spoken about today is like linked back to NDIS, but it's so relevant for so many different areas. So like, you've got your sports physios down the road, you've got whatever, your musk physios, I don't know what they are. You've got paediatric physios, for example, though, and like a whole range of different services that are around to tap into footy clubs or whatever. And it's the same with any of these services. I think being able to link in with your hospitals or whoever your referrers are. And it's, again, what you were talking about, Ben, around that marketing side of things and just making sure that you're well known for that marketing front and being forefront of mind and being the person that answers the question when the paediatrician has a question that you're the one that they flick the email to to say, is this an appropriate referral for OT or is this an appropriate referral for psych? Where would we go for this diagnosis?

Jack O'Brien: I love that. And there's two ways to think about marketing. If you're an NGIS majority clinic, you can panic and go, Oh, I don't know what to do. I've never had to do this. I've always had a wait list. And how many people are now realising they subconsciously found a lot of security in a wait list. So, you can panic that you now have to do marketing or you can go, I get to do marketing before all of the rest of my competitors or colleagues in the space. There's a greenfields opportunity for you to double down, triple down on your education Learn how the best of marketing, what are the best doing with referral relations or Facebook ads, Google ads, creative content strategies, utilising AI, social media. The fields are ripe for harvest. So it's like now is absolutely the time to attract more of the ideal clients that you want to work with. Don't panic that you never had to do it. Embrace the opportunity to be a first mover and invest in your own growth for the sake of your clinic's longevity.

Hannah Dunn: Something that happened to me on the weekend is I got a text message from one of my OTs who's on maternity leave at the moment, and she sent me a screenshot and said, have you seen this? And I was like, oh, I met my daughter Pippa's basketball and I'm watching that. I get this message from Emma and I think, oh, what haven't I seen? And it's a Facebook post from a parent in a group that's on Facebook saying, what are we doing about DOTS closing off all school visits as of the 1st of July? And I was like, oh my gosh, this is a Facebook group that has so many of our families in it. And I think while I really dislike being in those, like I really love being there as a support, but I think that's the space for the parents to communicate. But when something like that comes up, I think, oh, is this my chat? Like, do I jump in here or do I leave this? we had lots of families in there commenting and making comments to say they're not stopping it on the 1st of July, they're working one-on-one with families like it's okay and I ended up posting in there but and just saying like what we'd said I linked to the video said anyone's welcome to watch it here's our email reach out to us we're happy to work one-on-one and we're not leaving you stranded because there was comments like oh we've just booked in with them we've been waiting ages and There was a real sense of fear. And I think we talk about all those traditional marketing strategies as well. But I think that is another form and being having your finger on the pulse, like knowing where your clients are, knowing if they're going to be saying, hey, just wondering if there's any physios that anyone recommends. And while you don't necessarily want to be in there recommending yourselves, it's great to see other people recommending you and being able to respond and say, thanks.

Ben Lynch: It's a great point. Even just the action of having these are the marketing activities that we're going to do this month written down. You can get better at it over time. Don't try and find the perfect structure, but just start with something. Start with a budget allocation, Jack. You and I were in the sheets, as you said, early this morning. the spreadsheets, of course, just so we clarify for the third time. We're in the spreadsheets and doing this for ourselves, but we help clinic owners every single week do this, right? And to your point, Jack, traditionally, we've seen, or typically, a lot of NDIS clinics have a waitlist, and that's a whole set of other issues. But now so many are coming to us saying, I don't have a waitlist. I've got to go find clients. So Budgeting for that is super important. You know, what are you going to spend on ads? What are you going to spend on maybe some salaries in here? If someone is looking at the new financial year as we close this one, this financial year, Joby, where should they start just even as a starting base for allocation to marketing in their P&L? They open up Xero, the accounting software, they look at their budget, they look at their P&L, and they can be a marketing category. How should they think about allocating to that?

Jack O'Brien: It was probably a couple of different angles. So this might resonate differently with different folks, but you could think about allocating a percentage of your revenue to marketing or to new client attraction and acquisition. Broadly speaking, think about the circa 5% range. If you're currently at zero, one, 2% of your revenue would be a nice place to start. For some clinics who are in aggressive growth, that number can be higher than 5%. The other way to think about it would be, what are you willing to pay to acquire a client or what are you willing to invest to acquire a client? And that might be, I'll use round numbers, but say you're willing to invest $100 to acquire a new client. And so you need an extra five new clients a month. Well, let's add $500 a month to our marketing budget. And then the third way to think about it would be dollars in zero, but also time. Will I allocate as part of my CEO director role, one, two, four hours a week of referrer nurturing and not just referrer nurturing, but partner relationship development? How can we embed and entrench ourselves in the community that our patients spend their time and trust? So there's broadly three ways to think about it, Ben.

Ben Lynch: Hannah, would you add or nuance anything to that about how you're thinking about it, or are you seeing some of the best NDIS clinics navigate their marketing investment to attract more new patients?

Hannah Dunn: No, I think Jack's spoken to a lot of it. I think the thing that I learned the most, Jack, from you and the team is just like, what is considered marketing? Like your Seek ads are considered part of that budget, your Facebook ads, like not just thinking that it's Facebook ads. And I think just the other being that you might feel like you've sort of saturated the market a little bit already, but there may be clinics at the moment who aren't traveling anymore. And so, family needs clinics who are closer to them. So, there's big opportunities to get your brand back out there and in front of people at the moment.

Ben Lynch: Really good couple of books, How Brands Grow by Byron Sharp, just happens to be an Adelaidean. I didn't know, literally in our backyard, we have one of the most recognised marketing institutions in the world. I mean, not that I can claim anything. I mean, I've done nothing, but I'm from Adelaide. So there you go. People usually take the PI double five out of Adelaide, but it's good for wine and apparently marketing. So check out how brands grow. But to your point, Hannah, it's like Coca-Cola keep advertising saturated, saturated the world. So, it's like, I hear that a lot as well, Hannah is. People are like, oh, I feel like we've reached everyone. No, you haven't. And even if you have, they need multiple exposures to have that availability mentally before they engage your services. So, keep at it. That's a really great point. Well, as we look to draw this episode to a close, I always like wrapping with a key insight, a key action that you would advise clinic owners listening into this to take or to have. Hannah, where would you start with that?

Hannah Dunn: Um, I think just knowing what your options are, and I think just being really clear on what you are going to do and being comfortable with that. I think we make decisions sometimes based on others or based on policy or funding. And so making sure that during this time, you still stick true to your values and true to the way in which you see your practice growing or diversifying.

Ben Lynch: Nice, Jobe.

Jack O'Brien: Two things come to mind. Communicate and learn. In times like this, you need to over-communicate and reinforce communication in concentric circles. I think about our team, our clients, and our community. We must over-communicate in these times of turbulence to our team, clients, and community. And now is the right time to triple down on your learning. to invest in yourself. You can't shrink your way out of a challenge. You can't shrink your way towards growth. You must invest in your growth and now is the time to get ahead.

Ben Lynch: I'd say quadruple down. I'm going to go one more than you. Ah, just an inside joke. I think we mentioned it in the Palm Cove episode, didn't we?

Jack O'Brien: We did.

Ben Lynch: Double down. Why don't you triple down? Why don't you quadruple down? Anyway, we'll get ahead of ourselves. Mine would be… I agree with both of you. I would add Time. If you have time allocated in your week, if it's a Monday morning to Friday afternoon, where it's two to three to four hours, where you can thoughtfully do these things, use the rolling break even to forecast different scenarios, to do the marketing activities, to make sure you're across your accounts, you're doing a lot of these fundamentals. I think that's one of the critical drivers to getting a lot of the outcomes and doing a lot of the do. So I would definitely encourage any clinic owner to find an extra two to four hours that they could quarantine to make these decisions about the future of their business. And if you need help, if you need guidance, reach out because we just happen to be pretty brilliant at helping you do just that. In fact, Joby, we've got a couple of new members that have joined us in the last week. A little shout out to them.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, I just wanted to acknowledge Chris, a podiatrist, Tom, a physio, Barbara, a upper limb hand therapist, Genevieve, who is in cosmetics. Adam is a physio. There's so many clinic owners jumping into both our Elevate and Business Academy programs. So welcome to those folks. And we work with anyone in allied health anywhere around the globe. So If you need some help, if you want to know what it is that we do, just get in touch. We can point you in the right direction, provide the info, have a conversation, see if you're a fit for us, if we're a fit for you, and we can take the logical next steps from there.

SPEAKER_00: Beautiful. And happy end of financial year. We should have a drink to celebrate. Who drinks champagne? We will cry into our receipts.

Jack O'Brien: Tax-deductible champagne.

Ben Lynch: Hannah, Jack, thank you once again. We'll see you on another episode next week. See you guys. Bye bye.