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 your practitioners aren't doing the 1%ers that you expect of them. We're diving into how to improve the behavioural standards in your clinic. And trust me, you want to hear Mic's take on the recruitment and induction process that sets expectations clearly from the start.

Mic Rizk: Witnessing our standards and seeing what our team members do on a day-to-day basis, like going to do a talk for a run club, that might seem unusual for some clinics but it was normal for us. You're running an ad, what does the ad look like? Do you change that up? You can go to iMove Physiotherapy Instagram and it's got this beautiful photo that we love of our team running across the bridge. So often they're like, if I push too hard and they resign. often seen clinics become more profitable when they lose a team member. If you actually fully embrace this concept, always recruiting, then you should have some optionality. Specifics are the key. So instead of saying great pay or great CPD, what specifically can you speak about?

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 clinic's policies, systems, and training. Test it for free at AllieClinics.com. And in other news, applications are now open to work with us one-on-one at Clinic Mastery. If you want support to grow your clinic and bring your vision to life, just email 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. We're back. It's episode 378. My name is Ben Lynch. I'm joined by Michael Rizk. Owner of iMove Physio and the Physio Apprenticeship. Mic, how many clinics, how many team members you got these days?

Mic Rizk: While I was in Japan, we just opened Burley Heads in Queensland, a running room up there. a clinic in Pitch Street Mall, Sydney with Hocker. It's like a concept store where Hocker, the running brand, wanted to have a running physio in there. That's exciting for us because it could lead to some big things. We've got nine clinics now and 47 team members. We know that because we're trying to figure out, should we do a local retreat or go to Bali again? And it's probably cheaper to go to Bali now than doing the head count.

Ben Lynch: I used to work at Joggers World here in Adelaide and in Joggers World in the city, and they had a clinic there, but I prefer sports, run by Adam Wiles and Andrew Maitland at the time. was part of the team and also part of the CM community. It was really good, really great. Adam Wiles would come down as a podiatrist and work on the shoe floor. I think it might have been sort of over the lunch hour most days and I guess it was a good feeder into generating new clients for him, I assume. But it was also cool as I was studying podiatry at the time to be able to bounce off and work together from shoes through to podiatry insights. There you go. That's cool with Hocker. Yeah.

Mic Rizk: I think it's Hoka. Hoka?

null: Hoka.

Mic Rizk: The Australian would just be like, yeah, Hocker.

Ben Lynch: Yeah.

Mic Rizk: I feel like I should know this. Yeah, you probably should.

Ben Lynch: Hey, that must be going all right. I went to the football the other night to watch the Crows lose to Collingwood, which I was thrilled about because I'm a Port Adelaide fan. Sorry, Crows fans. Not sorry. And I saw Hocker advertised massively throughout the stadium, so they must be doing good things. Maybe your partnership is just spurring them along. Cool. It's cool. Today, we're going to talk about standards, we're going to talk about culture. Essentially, we often hear clinic owners that will say to us, hey, my practitioners are just not doing the one percenters. The things that go around a consult, before a consult, the client care stuff, maybe the marketing stuff, they're just not doing it and I want them to do it. How can you help me? And we had a little text message exchange. I just want to read this out for listeners, because I often love a bit of a Nick rant, and I feel very privileged. I hear a number of your great, passionate speeches. Maybe that's a better way than phrasing a rant. So, I asked Micey, have you got a bee in your bonnet that would make for a really great episode? You know, things that you're seeing and hearing, you coach a lot of clinic owners. And he's like, yes. Let's talk about how you create great standards and being a hub for your profession. Notably, the standards start at the recruitment phase and the induction phase. of a new team member's journey. So let's go there. What do you mean by that? Why the recruitment and interview step of a team member's journey? Why do you start there when it comes to standards and what practically do you mean?

Mic Rizk: Yeah, I hope it's helpful because I think we've been through periods where we've had team members who just doesn't feel like it's working. And then we've had periods where just everything's green lights, everything's humming. And I was reflecting on those harder times and the differences. Yeah. And I think it also comes back to the always recruiting. And when I reflected on the differences between those periods, when we were having lots of grads and lots of physios come to shadow at our clinics and being that recruitment hub, being a place that others in your profession looked up to. They almost by osmosis would see how the team interacts and how they engage and what they do. And a lot of those people would then two or three years later interview with us and they would remember that time and they would recall that. And I realized there was a period in time where we stopped offering that, where we stopped having people come through and witnessing our standards and seeing what our team members do on a day-to-day basis, like going to do a talk for a run club. That might seem unusual for some clinics, but it was normal for us. And when we had people seeing that happen, They got to the interview and it's almost like they were referencing that. They were like, Oh, I love how you guys go and do X, Y, Z. But if someone hadn't had that exposure, that would feel quite foreign. Um, so that was the first point is like people and clinics who are struggling to recruit. I think seeing if you can become that hub where you get, uh, professionals coming to your clinic to shadow and see what you do.

Ben Lynch: That's a really interesting distinction on solving a recruitment challenge by actually opening up when maybe you don't have a job available. You're saying, come to our clinic and get an experience for the profession, especially as an undergrad, you're still going through your study. Do you open that up to people who are already in the profession as well, or is it just cut out for university students?

Mic Rizk: Yeah, both. I'll shout out Chris Calabrese from Momentum Physio in Tra La Laugen in Victoria. I still don't know how to say that. Apparently, there's an extra La in there. It's hard to recruit physios and podiatrists. It's even harder if you're rural and he's committed to this process of going to talk to the unis, doing webinars for the unis and inviting the students in. but also inviting first and second year physios to his clinic to shadow. And after three years of doing that, he's now over-recruited and gets to pick the best team members. And three years ago, he couldn't recruit. He wouldn't get a response to his job ad. He would only get overseas candidates. So that's been a little secret to our recruitment, but also raising the standards. Practically, we always have a job ad running. So we're spending $5 to $10 a day on meta. We're always on Seek and our professionals advertising body. So we're getting applicants all through the year. And when we don't have a role, we're inviting those applicants to come and shadow. So, if you do that for long enough, you'll solve your recruitment challenge and probably more what today is about some of your standards challenges as well.

Ben Lynch: There's so much to unpack there. The $5 to $10 a day on meta, just through Facebook, it goes into Instagram as well. You're running an ad. What does the ad look like? Do you change that up? How often do you change it? Is there some messaging or offering that you've put together? Share the details so that we know.

Mic Rizk: You can go to iMove Physiotherapy Instagram and it's pinned post in our top left right now and it just says hiring physios for Gold Coast, Melbourne, Sydney and it's got this beautiful photo that we love of our team running across the bridge at retreat which we feel like is just that's so us and you know, that just represents our brand. You get a feeling of who we are with that. It says, join the physio team going places. While you join us, we have a pathway to 120 to 150K without dying. So we have a bit of fun with it. World-class CPD. We actually pay world leaders to present to us and your style, you would like using world-class tech, you believed in balanced physio, which isn't giving squats for 52 weeks, and it's also not avoiding hands-on, so we're starting to speak to our values in the job ad, which is going to attract the physio that we want. Because there'll be physios that are really exercise-based and do give squats, and they might go, oh, like, here's an ad that's saying we expect you to use hands-on. And that might seem odd to some physios, but there's a lot of physios that don't do hands-on now. Um, we spend five to $10 a day on this. It's a $3,600 commitment. We're getting applicants when we don't need to hire. And throughout the year, these applicants are shadowing with us, uh, for when there will be a position. And this, this means we solve a recruitment problem and we get the best applicants who know our standards and our values. So when we do come to recruiting, it's like upholding a higher standard. So that's, that's been a big secret of ours for a long time.

Ben Lynch: And so when people apply or reply to that ad, what's the process? Do you say, hey, we don't have an open position right now, but what you can do is come and shadow and learn from the team joining our CPD? Is that the offer that you put to them?

Mic Rizk: Yeah, exactly. If there is no positions, we tell them what's coming up, so we might be opening a clinic here or there soon. I'll say, we would love to keep your resume on file. In the application, they've sent us a video, by the way, so it says you have to send us a video answering the question, why ask, why now? So we get to see them, which is fun. Yes. And then I send them our CPD calendar, which is mapped out for the year. And I say, this is our CPD calendar. You are welcome to any of these sessions on a Wednesday. And if you can't come on a Wednesday, you're welcome to come to the clinic for two or three hours on any day. And most of them say yes, even when they are looking for other work. So that's been cool. It's been a really helpful process.

Ben Lynch: It's one of the great distinctions that we've had several years ago. I think this was in the COVID era when it was really hard to recruit. there were, it felt like an employee's market. We had new grads coming out trying to negotiate $110,000 salary as soon as they started. And here we are working with the clinic owners going, what do I do? I really need to fill this spot. Am I just going to have to pay them that? And It just felt like they're on the back foot, but it's also classically the narrative that clinic owners are on the back foot. Someone resigns or they expand to a new site or location, they go, all right, now's the time to hire. And one of the fundamental things that we change about the clinic operating model for clinics we call it the CM way, is that you should always be recruiting. That doesn't mean, as you said, you've always got a job available where they could start next week or in a couple of weeks, but that you're doing the activities to generate the awareness first that you even exist because there's so many clinics. The interest and then perhaps even the consideration where they come in, they do some shadowing or they put their hat in the ring and formally apply. So, I love that change. Like you said to Chris, now he's got this abundance, but also it took some time, right? You said over the last three years. So, it's a long-term play, but now he's got more than he can manage. So, we talk about sustainability. What were some of the other key things that he had done? You said working with the universities, getting in there, doing webinars. And that led to folks shadowing as well. Were there any other things that you picked up in Chris's journey? And big shout out to him for his success.

Mic Rizk: Yeah. And there's two moments that stood out to me for Chris. The first time he held a webinar, he only had two candidates come and he was really disappointed and maybe a sense of embarrassment. And those two people ended up telling everyone, but those two people now work for him. So, it was a really nice… It starts with one or two. And I don't forget that as clinic owners, because the first time you go to the uni, you might not get that many people. Just like the first time you post on socials about your team or your clinic, you might not get that many views, but it only takes one or two. And if you can do it consistently for one or two years, it'll work. The other thing The other things that Chris did well, I think he did the combo of going to the uni for their open days, but also offering up online webinars. And you can message, often the students will have an Instagram page or a Facebook group. So I often say, if you can find one or two people at the uni that are part of the student body, Sydney Uni, as an example, has SUPS, which is Sydney Uni Physio Society. There'll be one or two key people in that. And if you can engage with them, you can kind of bypass the uni as well and just get the student body engaged. So he did that really well.

Ben Lynch: when you're reading out your ad before that you're running, it was very you and you have a very authentic way of communicating. Were there any things that you feel you've done or you've advised other clinic owners to be able to really express who they are on the page, in the ad? to resonate with folks that are ideal candidates, that are values aligned, that are perhaps philosophically aligned with how they practice as well. Because you and I read a lot of job ads, we see a lot going out, and hey, we're all great writers now with Claude or ChatGPT helping us out, but so often it all just sounds pretty stale and very similar, quite vanilla, right? So just talk me through your process of breaking it down, the brand, the tone of voice, the angle to attract people that you really want to work with and maybe by extension what you've done with other clinic owners so they can run with that level of authenticity to attract people that they really align with.

Mic Rizk: I think that that's actually a real challenge and a real fear for clinic owners because I've been writing about physio for a long time, and I've had a page for a long time, and that's a lot of practice of saying the values and the things that make us unique. And I think a lot of clinic owners feel like they don't have anything unique, or they're not as loud or as big as some other brands, and that's hard, because then you don't know what to write. So the questions I ask them is, What makes them uniquely them? Why did they get into the profession? What styles of treatment do they love? Who do they follow? And specifics are the key. So, instead of saying great pay or great CPD, what specifically can you speak about? So, if you have great pay, is that because you have a really high base salary? And you can be the anti here and say, we don't do commissions, we give you a great base salary. On the flip side, you might have a low base salary and a great commission, so you can say something like, busy physios get rewarded above industry standard. You've got to know what makes your clinic unique. If you follow a certain treatment methodology or even people in the industry, I would mention that in the end. Like we love Laura Mosley's teaching. We love Maitland's teachings. Mentioning those specifics rather than just saying CPD, that starts to get you down the path of what makes you unique.

Ben Lynch: I like that. That's just adding just a little bit more of specificity to it and saying, well, tell me a little bit more about that when you say mentoring or training or pay, like, just give me a few more specifics on it. Because it may not be all that different to other people, but we do see they kind of stop at this headline like, we have fantastic mentoring and training and you'll get a CPD budget. You're just saying, hey, go a little bit further and add a few more details to this.

Mic Rizk: Yeah. What did you do for CPD? Who came in and presented? How often is it? Give examples and stories. So, examples and stories paint the colour. Like, do you have a story from your clinic of a CPD? Or, you know, like our story that I love telling is in COVID. Mike, our massage therapist, didn't get supported by the COVID grant. So, every physio in the team sacrificed $50 from their own pay to pay Mike. Like, that's a real story and it tells you our history. And if that's in a job ad, that's going to really stand out. So, try to think of real life examples. One that comes to me is a patient, a chair broke in one of our clinics. The patient fell and cut his head open on the wall. That's the text message I got in the morning. So, freaking out. Shit, did we pay our last insurance bill? And the physio cancelled her next two patients, put the patient in the car, drove them to the doctor, made sure the stitches went in, took them to the head scan. That's a story that I would tell in a job ad because it shows the compassion, the care and empathy of the team members. So, as that was happening, I was thinking of the next job ad. That is awesome.

Ben Lynch: And every clinic owner is going to have those stories, right? Even if it's of their own patients, you know, something that happened, something remarkable or something that happened on the front desk with the reception team. They're going to be able to pick up a story there and be able to use that and just show the human side of things. Otherwise, it just reads very boringly and is very standardized. So, I want to get to, in a moment, turning around existing team. This is all well and good. I am on the same page with you here about starting at the recruitment process as to who you bring on the bus is perhaps the most important decision that you make for your future culture. And we talked about culture at length here, especially with Sara from the People plugin, and I love her distinction of it's just standards. Like, what are the standards you're willing to accept? Not what's on the wall, but what do you just accept? And that's standards of clinical notes, standards of appearance, standards of how they treat one another, just your standards. And that just makes it a little more tangible for me rather than the fluffy stuff, but the good stuff of retreats and all the cool things that culture can be associated with. So, I want to get to turning around some of the existing team members. But let's stick with, for the moment, you're bringing on new team members. We've got this philosophy of always recruiting and sort of this pipeline of future talent that we're staying connected with, that we're getting engaged in the clinic even before they start by shadowing and being part of CPD. Just talk me through parts of the interview process, the screening process, where standards come up. You said to me, hey, Sometimes these team members that have shadowed with us are coming to us and saying, I remember when we did the collab with the running group and they're bringing that up. That's awesome. But are there things that are part of your process that you control, that you ask, that you screen for in interviewing or just in the screening process when deciding on who's the next best person to join your team?

Mic Rizk: Yeah, I think we have a three or four part interview process that we try and stick to. The first one is effectively coffee or pub catch up at Zoom and see how they interact and see how they engage. We've been getting better at screening for language. We actually made our last hire based on iLanguage versus WeLanguage. It was a really hard decision. Just expand on that. Let's double click. The person we said no to. was phenomenal, like ticked every box that you'd want in a young, active, experienced physio, running background, running clinic, and like we're a running clinic, just like every box was ticked. But we just picked up a lot of, there was a little bit of eye language. So like, I did this, I didn't like that about my last clinic, I've built this list. Uh, and the, and the other candidate who had come to CPDs and rucks where we closed for the afternoon and hung out with the team. So third time she applied for us and she was using we language, like when we're in a team where people are doing the right things, we can build something special. And it's just like huge contrast and that we actually just. Which both candidates met the team and the team actually picked the other candidate and that's actually never happened before. So I actually went and met with my team and I said, hey, I've got this person just ahead. You guys have this person just ahead. Can I just share with you like what I picked up on with language? Because they weren't across that. And maybe she only did it with me. So I actually went against the team for probably the first time in a long time. And this team member has been absolutely outstanding. And I was so happy because I was worried. I was really worried that the team wanted the other person. But we language. And I think that's part of the hungry, humble, smart rubrics that Bid has shared with us when you're hiring. So looking for that language.

Ben Lynch: So, once you get in to induction, so they've joined the team and now we're inducting them, we're onboarding them, talk us through the process there for you introducing, reinforcing some of the standards that you have.

Mic Rizk: I think, again, I'm only sharing this because we went through, I think, a period of non-ideal team members and team members who found it hard to keep the standards. And just before that, everything seemed fine. So I really reflected on it. And I think it was the quality of the induction. And this probably happened when I moved away from the clinics as well. So it was a big realization that induction is a huge piece. I felt like if I wasn't investing three to four hours in induction, that's what led to the non-ideal outcome. And that became hard because I moved states. So, we went right back to beefing up the induction with a hands-on component that would happen with a senior physio in the clinic. That was two to three hours a week of hands-on component and treatment mapping and how we treat certain conditions the iMove way. And I was doing an online induction which focused on our culture, our values, our story, and our standards. And that's what my online induction is with them where I just meet with them on Zoom. And I don't think it's till we beefed both of those up that we kind of regained the standards and where we were, I would say, four or five years ago. So talk to me then, talk to me about the standards piece that you speak to those team members about. What are you actually covering? In our induction, there's three columns. There's the clinical, which is what they're going to do in the hands-on session, covers treatment mapping, clinical stuff. The middle column are the leadership and mindset videos that we've loved over time and I asked them to watch one of those and put their key reflections down and what they think they're great at and potentially what they need to work on. So that's full of videos like Simon Sinek and Robin Sharma and Brene Brown. So, we're introducing them to the stories and the videos that our culture has watched over time. I think that's a really valuable piece.

Ben Lynch: Absolutely. And just to pause you there for a moment, we've often been asked this question. And so, members listening in, send me an email or slack me, ben at clinicmastery.com or slack me. We've created a list of all of those videos segmented by like Leadership, Confidence, Client Experience, etc. TED Talks, YouTubes, Books, etc. And we've just compiled a massive list of those because we often get asked for them. So yeah, hit me up for that. So yeah, so you've got clinical side of things as a column. a stream if you would a stream of development then you've got like leadership and mindset as a stream and then there's a third one. What's the third one?

Mic Rizk: That's standards and mind percenters. Yeah. And just, yeah, like what did those, what does that include? Week one is our six, we have six key time blocks. And we were talking about Allie earlier, so it will say, time block number one, patients without upcoming appointment. a hyperlink, they click on that hyperlink and it opens up Allie, where the video of how to do that lives. So there's a Loom video of a team member sending a patient with that upcoming text to a patient and where the template lives. And off of the Loom video, there's also a document, a SOP, which Loom produces for you now. So very clear, they can see exactly how to do it. And we expect that time block to appear in their diary. So, we set our six key time blocks. One is social media. One is following up brand new patients from the day before. One's patients without upcoming. There's two or three others which are coming to mind. But that's week one is like these are the six things that we believe makes great therapists and we're allowing six half an hour or three hours of your week to be dedicated to that. So you have 35 clinical hours open and three hours for the clinic admin. And we monitor for that through induction. So I expect to see those in there after week one of induction.

Ben Lynch: Do you feel that there's a way you communicate the 1% apiece that's been integral to people actually following through and getting them done?

Mic Rizk: No, but I think I got soft on leadership and I noticed a period where they weren't quite doing the things I was asking in induction. And that was an early warning sign to me. And it was poor leadership. of kind of letting that go. And yes, it's overwhelming when you start. And I think I've just been a bit more firm with it and maybe pre-framing that. It's like the induction will be, you'll be learning a lot. It'll be fast. I don't expect you to like have memorized all of this 100%, but I do expect you to have the time blocks in and have watched the videos. And I have noticed that if people weren't doing the things that I'd asked in week one and week two, almost always they turned out to be our team members that either didn't stay on or struggle all the way through. And I needed to have a more difficult conversation earlier.

Ben Lynch: How do you straddle the line between micromanaging and just holding standards?

Mic Rizk: I think it comes in the values piece and the values and story piece and knowing what makes your clinic unique. So I'm very good at now at articulating, hey, we pay our team members 40% of revenue plus super. That is generally more generous than most clinics. We do that so that our physios can be in the top 10% of physios in Australia as far as pay compared to the APA workforce consensus. On the flip side of that, there's five or six things in the week that we need our team members to do to sustain this model and contribute to the model and contribute to growth. So, I'm kind of presenting the realities, the pro and con, the trade-off. But again, because they've experienced that, maybe they've been around us and they've shadowed, they see the team members doing this and it almost feels like, okay, this is normal in this culture. So, I'm articulating what it takes to be great in our model and what it takes to be in the top 10% and this is what's needed. But it's also very realistic. I am very clear that those three hours will be in your week. I don't expect you to do them outside work. And I think that's refreshing to hear for young physios particularly.

Ben Lynch: And they're booked into the diary in the week in advance so I can see next week this is my time and I might move it during the week just depending on how things go or is it kind of set this is the time allocated to the admin duties?

Mic Rizk: Yeah, that's a good question. That's worth looking into. So we have at the start of someone's journey, we put the six time blocks. in a space or a day where they're not working, just so it's really clear and it's stacked up. And we say, look, at the start, you're unlikely to be 100% full. So I want you to slide them in to when you feel like you can do them and you've got the energy. As you start to approach 45 and 50 patients, it's probably better practice to have those set in your week and they don't move and then your patients fall around them. So that's how we manage that.

Ben Lynch: And when you said not working, you mean they're not consulting with patients, they're still employed, they're at work, but they might not be seeing patients in the early days. Is that correct?

Mic Rizk: In the early days, we'll put it like, as an example, in Cliniko, they don't work. If they're not at work Thursday, they just live there so they can be seen quite quickly. And then we drag them into where they're doing them.

Ben Lynch: It's a really interesting point. And this is where the subtlety is for folks listening. Often we've talked about clinic owners who have a different structure to you, Mic, and they're going to have more admin and reception support, as an example, and each clinic is different. But clinic owners who've put that unavailable time in the diary for practitioners ongoing, it could be daily, it could be on one day per week, but it's a large chunk. And speaking of standards slash expectations, the therapists become used to that time being offline. And then they get to some point where they go, ah, they're not seeing enough patients. And I've blocked out this time. Now I need to take it back. Or I can't have it weekly. Maybe it's got to go to fortnightly or to monthly. I want to just remove it entirely. Because the reality is you're going to have some did not attends, some cancellations that happen. and it's unlikely to be fully utilized anyway. So, in those moments, I want you to put in the admin tasks that you need to do rather than block them out ahead of time moving forward. I see how you frame that up from the very beginning. I have seen people probably go to the extreme on that where all of a sudden they're having problems actually with profitability and expectations of therapists actually seeing the relevant or right amount of clients in their week for it to be sustainable.

Mic Rizk: Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. I think, again, it comes down to knowing your model, which might even come right back to knowing your numbers. If your therapist can't see enough patients in the other 33 or 34 hours, I would say there's a problem with the modelling. You're probably not charging enough. And I would really encourage not to take those time blocks away. And I've just seen more success when those time blocks live at the same time at the same week. But just because of habituation, it's very hard to ask a physio to do a task 9 a.m. Monday and then expect the same task to be done 3 p.m. Friday or however it moves around. So I think consistency is better and most team members report they like that.

Ben Lynch: Yep. Yep. That's a good point of all of the, all of the stories and advice we share is like, we often say, run it through your own filter. Yeah. Of your own model, your own business, your own team and the context that's there. Just as we extend on this a little bit more. Turning around team members that, you know, aren't upholding the standards. I hear that clinic owner in my head saying. all well and good. I'm not recruiting at the moment, so perhaps I haven't got the ability to change it on the front end with who comes in, but I will next time. But I've got several team members right now, and it feels like me against them. It feels like I'm trying to drive standards. I talk about this stuff at the team meeting. I bring it up in maybe our one-on-ones. I'm just not getting the cut through. I'm not getting the traction, and I feel like I'm nagging them. How do you support that clinic owner that's in that position?

Mic Rizk: I think that's the hardest thing in business. I don't have a perfect answer for that, but it's a hard place to be and I think it's made harder because we know we can't recruit quickly and we have a fear that if we have this hard conversation or we rub someone up the wrong way and they leave, At the least, it's going to take six to eight weeks to get someone on. That's at the least. That's if you find a good candidate quickly, and that's usually not enough time and you lose the handover. It's really hard.

Ben Lynch: It's a great point you bring up about the fear. So often they're like, if I push too hard and they resign, there's all these second, third order consequences.

Mic Rizk: I like to go into the nuance of it. So when I'm working with clinic owners, I think they're the questions I like to start with is like, what happens if you lose this team member? Do you have someone ready to come through? It's very often that when When someone's not doing something, there's either a mismatch of standards, or they simply don't want to, or they feel there's an injustice there, and that's already gone too far, and it's often hard to mend. And it very rarely leads to them improving, and most of the time it leads to them leaving, either via the owner or they self-select out. So it's a really hard place to be. So I think rather than hard and fast rules, I like to ask those questions like what would happen if they leave? Can you take the load? And if they can take the patient load or if they do have other people, I think it's like an orange light to go a bit more direct and a bit firmer.

Ben Lynch: Yes.

Mic Rizk: But if you're just starting out and it means losing your first team member and you've got no one else to see 40 to 50 patients a week, I do think you have to be a bit more gentle with it, which is probably not the best leadership answer, but it's a real reality of what would happen.

Ben Lynch: That's a great point. I like your lens on the great, I think, TED Talk by Tim Ferriss, who wrote The 4-Hour Workweek. Maybe you had shared this a few years back, you know, the fear-setting session that he did, instead of goal-setting? sort of the opposite of like invert it of like, okay, let's look at what could go wrong here and let's actually just spell it out because so often it just lives in your head and you kind of overthink it perhaps or you're scared of the boogeyman. It's like, hold on, it's not that bad. If someone resigned, okay, what are two or three things we'd do? It might mean you jump back on the tools in your consulting more or you would allocate more hours to that part-timer. Okay, now all of a sudden we feel like we've got some optionality which is often what helps you navigate what feels like a bit of a rock and a hard place sort of position. The other thing that you jogged for me was the lead by example. So often when I've heard a clinic owner say this to me in a consulting context, typically I would say they're a little bit distant from the day-to-day, meaning that perhaps not even present within the clinic. And it's just something that they're picking up on when they do drop into the clinic once a week as an example. And so my first thought is, hey, there might be a season or a period where you just need to be boots on the ground. And you just need to be there setting the standards, setting the vibe, and being there to support the team through the course of their day. And then if you are absolutely unable to do that, one of the things that I've often used as a bit of a heuristic is, is there a culture champion? Obviously, to your point, if you're one therapist plus one, you may be in a trickier position. But if you've got a bigger team, what I'm often looking for is who's someone on the team, the best, maybe of the worst, if you're really stuck, but who's the next best person to carry the culture, who's maybe more receptive to change, who would understand it if you spent the time talking through it with them. that could help you sort of create their standards level up. day-to-day by just, you know, showing up a little bit differently or it's not all coming from, you know, quote, mum and dad. And that might be a receptionist, that might be a practice manager, it could be a senior therapist, but I'd often look for and have asked clinic owners, is there someone in the clinic that we could kind of be a disciple of some of these changes here and help us roll them out or revisit them? I think they're kind of three things really practical, as you said, the fear setting, the lead by example and the culture champion to be able to help catalyse some of these changes. Probably one of the notes that I think we've been alluding to here is that so often these things take time. There isn't often a silver bullet unless it is quite literally and sometimes this is the case By removing a cancerous team member, by having them move out of the team, you actually see all these other team members lift and rise up. So that could be a potential option depending on the context of your clinic. It's always best to get some HR advice on how you manage those things. Just reach out to me, ben at clinicmastery.com and I'll connect you with the team at the people plugin. Is there anything else there that's sort of coming to the surface for you, Nick, when it comes to turning around tricky teams or team members on the standards pace?

Mic Rizk: No, I like what you brought up. I've often seen clinics become more profitable when they lose a team member because of the other adjustments. They might have to ask another team member to do 10 hours more. The owner has to step in. And what actually happens is you can see the same amount of patients on less wages for a period. So if you look at it like a sprint. can be a way to deal with it mentally. The other antidote is going back to the always recruiting. By always recruiting, you'll have less fear because you will have applicants and that can take away a bit of the fear. If you have no applicants, that's a dark place to be and losing someone. And then what came up for me was guilt. I've realized for me that particularly not being in the state, there was a guilt of like, wow, these team members are trying hard. I know everyone is trying their best. They're working 38 hours a week. They're coming to my clinic to work for me and I'm not even there. And I carried a bit of a guilt of like, Oh, you know, is it a big deal if they miss their social media day? Like they're doing such a great job and I'm not even there. Like it's hard for me to lead by example. So if that's a feeling that other clinic owners might feel, I think I just want to like, I know what that feels like, but it's not a good answer. That's only going to lead to a bad place. You have to uphold the standards because A players only like working with A players and The last piece that you brought up for me was the culture champion. Something we do in our induction is we show what it looks like to do a 50 or 55 patient week. what the diary looks like, where the 1% is for, and what pay that equates to, and how that person got there. So we actually give a snapshot of, for us, it's Josh. He's been consistently seeing the numbers that we need at our clinic and consistently doing the 1%. And to show that snapshot in induction of like, this is where we want you to be, and this is how we're going to get there. And it also frames up Joshua as someone who can help. So yeah, that was a nice insight you brought.

Ben Lynch: The know your numbers piece was key there in terms of the scenarios and the optionality. You said it really well. actually having a team member move on, you might be fearful of for a number of reasons, but actually it ends up being better for you financially as a clinic. Also provides some opportunities for other team members to step up, potentially earn more depending on how you pay them by working with more clients. And that's where it was coming back to that regular rhythm. of how well do you know your numbers and how well are you scenario planning, we use a tool called the Rolling Breakeven developed here at CM to help you know those answers very quickly and easily. So members who are tuning in, if you're considering any of these options, make sure you've got the most recent version of the Rolling Breakeven, head into the portal there, grab your copy and make sure you've got all the current stats to help you work through these decisions. It becomes very clear, very quick. And I love that sort of meta point of this whole conversation, Nick, of, hey, if you're faced with turning around the existing team members, and it's a bit of a challenge, well, if you actually fully embrace this concept, this principle of always recruiting, then you should have some optionality into the future of going, I don't fear so much, perhaps, if this non-ideal team member that I've supported to try and turn around actually moves on and finds another place, another opportunity, because I've got a pipeline, I've got a database of folks that have put their hand up and said, I'd be keen to work as part of your clinic. Feels like the sort of meta note to put a bow on this episode. Any sort of parting points from you, Mic? Any resources you'd suggest folks tune into or go and visit maybe to help them navigate from here, which all comes back to how do we support our team to do the one percenters, to carry the standards that reflect the culture that we ultimately want to have here at the clinic?

Mic Rizk: Yeah, I'm probably going to end on don't fade the induction period and your first probations. Make sure they're booked in because often I see clinic owners that it looks good on the surface because the new team members integrating to the culture and they're busy, but it's some of those deeper one percenters and standards that when the clinic's busy, you might not look at because everything feels okay. Maybe the action from this is review the induction, review the always recruiting principle, but make sure we're looking at those standards at 12 weeks, at three months, at six months, because that's the time to get it right. And that was definitely the contrast, the period we went through where we didn't have the team members hitting the standards and me moving away versus the focus we've had now on those standards and actually meeting about them at the three and six month mark. So that's, yeah, I'd hope every clinic owner reviews that.

Ben Lynch: Nice way to end. Well, folks, tuning in, you can head over to clinicmastery.com/podcast for all the show notes for this episode and past episodes as well. And just an encouragement again for members tuning in to get all of the detailed content and systems, the calculators, all inside the learning portal that take you much deeper on this topic and give you everything you need to plug and play into your business. We'll catch you on another episode very soon. Thank you. Bye bye.