Ben Lynch: G'day, good people. Welcome to the Grow Your Clinic podcast by Clinic Mastery. Here's what's coming up inside of this episode. This episode will be right up your Allie if you're looking to take more holidays from your clinic without it falling apart when you're gone. We're diving into helping your team step up so you can step back. And trust me, you want to hear Bec's take on handling resignations while she was on holiday. Plus stick around for when Bec discusses her approach to using holidays as a way to decrease her workload when she returns.

Bec Clare: And that's something that I learned prior to going on maternity leave, is just prepping the team for what's to come. Only our leadership group will be able to contact me on WhatsApp, and when I see their name pop up on WhatsApp, I know they need me, of which they did a couple of times while we were away.

Ben Lynch: Revenue's going to drop massively while I'm away, and that's going to put some financial stress on me.

Bec Clare: I was like, we're up for another mass exodus. We're up for another complete rebuild. I don't know if I can do it. Business is doomed. We're done. So yes, I was there to help our ops manager. That's the only person I spoke to about these resignations, and we're a team of 30.

Jack O'Brien: Do they get after it and look for more? Are they hungry? Or are they just looking to do the minimum required?

Ben Lynch: I'm hungry right now. I should have had lunch. Before we dive in, today's episode is brought to you by AllieClinics.com. If you're the kind of clinic owner who loves to feel organised and stay ahead of the chaos, you'll love Allie. Think of it as your digital clone. It's the single source of truth for all your 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. All right, here's episode 380. My name is Ben Litch. I'm back with Bec Clare. Woo! The crowd goes wild. Everyone's been sending in their messages of love for Bec. We love Bec. We love Bec. Well, Bec, you haven't been on the pod for a while because you've been international. You've been in Vietnam. I'm looking forward to hearing all about that. You look up and about. And Jack O'Brien, Jacobrin, back in yellow, not back in black. Looking good.

Jack O'Brien: Welcome here. Good people merch. I'm interested whether we sell these, Benny. So if people are watching YouTube and you want some good people merch, just send me an email, jack@clinicmastery.com. There's a little bit of AI in my inbox these days, but we might be able to tee something up. Well, if there's enough interest, we can do a drop, I think is what the cool kids call it.

Ben Lynch: Uh, we did a merch drop. I think it was circa 22 or 23. And, uh, all of the profits we put towards Opportunity International, this was aligned with our retreat and our summit event. So I think, why not? Let's do that. Buy some merch and it goes to a good cause. Let's do that, JRB. We just, we're live syncing this, sorry. What do you reckon?

SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, great. Yeah, Bec said she loves it. So Bec, if you could sort out the Shopify page, that'd be great.

Bec Clare: Consider it done.

Ben Lynch: I actually was going through our Google Drive yesterday and came across a whole bunch of that stuff, Jack, so that's why it was top of mind. How is your time away? We're going to get into, in this episode, some of the things that you needed to set up, some processes, some team stuff to allow you to go away for how many weeks? Six weeks?

Bec Clare: We were overseas for five and a half and away from the clinic for six and a bit.

Ben Lynch: Yeah.

Bec Clare: Wow.

Ben Lynch: So we are going, we are going to double click on that Jadby. I'm getting a lot of folks say they love the double click. They want to go deep on topics. So we're going to double click on that Bec and go into it further. Um, but yeah, how was it? Just give us some of the executive cliff notes. What was it like?

Bec Clare: Oh, incredible. It wasn't our first rodeo to Vietnam, but we did a little bit differently this time. We decided to do more sort of Airbnb stays, stay out in the community, shop at the local markets, cook for ourselves, that sort of thing. So it was different. And traveling with a toddler is a different sort of holiday anyway. It definitely taught us some skills.

Bec Clare: That's a polite way to put it.

Bec Clare: It's not really a holiday. I'm not so sure. You get a holiday from other things.

Jack O'Brien: It's an adventure, not a holiday.

Bec Clare: That's right. That's right. The one thing I did do, which was really cool, is I bought Audrey a little digital camera. And so we've been able to see the trip through her eyes, which has just been so special. And there's this cute photo, I'll have to share it. It's one that I took of her and she's got the camera pointing back at me. And so when you lay the two together, it's just so special. But it's been really cool. She went around, she took pictures of all the things that were important to her. So there's lots of photos of mum and dad. There's lots of the motorbike because she loved the motorbike. There's some of the kitchen and just really cute little things as well along the way. So definitely resilience building for that period of time, but we absolutely loved it. Not only did our suitcases come back a little heavier, but we have two, so the food. Can say we didn't know.

Jack O'Brien: You know what would be interesting, Bec and Ben, would be like the point of view glasses, like the meta AI Oakleys. Obviously, you know, put your tinfoil hat on if you're worried about AI and you know, blah, blah, blah. But that sort of thing aside, from a kid's perspective, but also from a clinic perspective, like I would love to see a day in the life of a chiro or a speechy or, you know, something like this. It'd be so much fun. Navigate all the patient privacy things. Look, add it to your content stream. I don't know if anyone would be interested in your day in the life of Benny, though. That may not be as interesting.

Ben Lynch: It's definitely not interesting, that's for sure. I don't really move from this chair. Coffee count, might be. The coffee, the coffee count. Yeah, maybe I could talk through the beverages that I'm having. I reckon, Jack, I had someone come through my Instagram feed who's doing that, like a physio or a chiro, the point of view glasses. I love that idea. Well, after a recent episode, perhaps it was the last episode, I talked about this asset that we have for members. It's called the Mentors Academy. Now, so often we get asked, hey, do you have any TED Talks, YouTubes, podcasts, books that you recommend that our team listen to or consume about relevant topics like confidence, leadership, communication skills, patient experiences, or by the way, I've been waiting for this book to come available for ages. It's called, if Disney ran your hospital, nine and a half things they would do or something like that. And it's like, it's always been sold out. It's coming. I'm waiting for it. I can't wait for it. Fred, someone, someone, he did a TED talk and it was fantastic. Anyway, side note, Mentors Academy is a resource that we have for members. And as soon as the episode dropped, I had Rose, Michael, and Kate DM me in Slack and say, Hey, Ben, you just mentioned this. Can I get a copy? And I sent them a copy. So members tuning in, if you're interested in that, hit me up, but also there are so many amazing tools, resources, and assets that we have for members. If you're working on a really important project right now and you're wondering what we might have, you're not sure where to look, send me a message in Slack. Hey Ben, this is what I'm working on. Do you have anything that might help? I will gladly help you. J-O-B, before we dive into things and grill Bec on a number of important items, what's on your desk?

Jack O'Brien: number of things. A big welcome to our latest members. So many legends joining the community. What do we got here? Carla has joined us in Elevate. Matt at Cairo has joined us. Carmen, a psychologist, has joined us in the Academy. Levi has joined us in the Academy. It is all happening. We are helping clinic owners with their marketing. on the agency front, and so there are clinics signing up everywhere. Also, big shout out to James, physio who has graduated from Elevate to the Academy. Essentially, for those clinics who come to us in those early stages and phases, Elevate is absolutely the right program. Once you hit a certain point in your clinic growth journey, usually give or take that 40 grand a month mark, it's time to graduate more support, more sophistication, and for you as a leader to level up. James has recently graduated. Kudos, mate. Welcome to Welcome to the Business Academy. And what else can I tell you? Benny, I'm off to Perth in six days' time. We are bringing the Grow Your Clinic perspective to the West Coast. So that will be Wednesday the 26th of August. I am speaking at the Australian Hand Therapy Association Conference on the 27th and I'm going to visit as many Perth clinics as possible. in a 48-hour window. So if you're in Perth and you want to shout me a call, now I'll shout the coffees, but you can, if you host me, I'll shout the coffees. Ping me jack at clinicmastery.com and I will find a way to get to your premises. I love it.

Ben Lynch: And what is it, the 8th of September, J-O-B?

Jack O'Brien: Yes. I'm coming to Adelaide. Clinic owners getting coffee in Adelaide, September the 8th, 7 a.m., Henley Square. Again, coffee's on me. Come and rack up my tab and I'm going to go for a walk on the beach and have some fun. We are running a workshop with Callum and the team from Preve AI on the 22nd of September. Uh, we, uh, like nearly 50% sold tickets to the grow your clinic summit in March, 2027. Goodness me. Uh, and some of the, some of the, I'll tell you what, Benny and Bec, some of the things that we are cooking up behind the scenes for Allie will blow your mind. Like, here's what I reckon when the team over Anthropic see what we've built, they'll go, we need, we need that. Like it's that level. so. Yeah, we'll back it up. Look, Anthropic are on the ropes. I think they'll take anything at the moment. But nevertheless, we are cooking in Allie. My goodness gracious me. Come and join us over at Allieclinics.com. That is Allieclinics.com. 30 days free trial, no credit card required. You can improve the performance of your practitioners. Allie is the tool that improves the performance of your practitioners. Come hang out. That'll do. That's my word count for the day. I'm done. Jack, I'm impressed.

Bec Clare: I don't think you actually took a breath.

Jack O'Brien: No, that's what happens when you have pre-workout a couple of caffeine gum things. Actually, I need to show you some caffeine gum.

Bec Clare: I saw your socials yesterday, Jack. That looked interesting.

Jack O'Brien: For those watching.

Bec Clare: I'm not at all caffeinated, so I've got to try some of this. I'm not sure how I end up.

Jack O'Brien: Purple sour candy energy drinks will change your life. What is that?

Bec Clare: It's rocket fuel. Joy in a can. I'm sorry.

Ben Lynch: Joy in a can. My goodness.

Bec Clare: The smell of those, I just can't. I agree with you, Bec. It's too visceral.

Ben Lynch: I agree. It's like a walk down Hindley Street if you've been in Adelaide. You can feel the sticky carpet. Gross. I agree with you. Gee whiz. Anyway, let's, let's get into it. Bec. So many clinic owners would love to take a holiday, maybe just a week, let alone six weeks. But. They often don't for several reasons. One, they feel a sense of guilt leaving their team. Two, they feel like everything's going to blow up when they go away or they've had that experience and they're scared to do it again. And I know you've had a few hiccups while you're away and I want to talk about the resilience and the things that you put in place to navigate through that. Or they just feel like financially I can't or time-wise I can't do it. We know how important we speak so often about the importance of rest, resetting and coming back sharper. Beyond that, I want to talk to some of the things that you feel you needed to have in place in the weeks leading up to going on break. And so many of these things you've actually developed over several years. It's not like you clicked your fingers and made it happen, but let's just go back to, you know, you're heading away. What are some of the things that you do to prepare so that you can go away with a sense of calm, maybe confidence that things are going to keep working despite your absence?

Bec Clare: One thing I do do is the week prior to leaving is I try and clear my calendar of as much as possible to try and almost… You're saying like an extra week?

SPEAKER_05: You're saying an extra week?

Bec Clare: Maybe I took seven. Oops. I try and clear it as much as possible so that I can be there for my team and I try and almost create an environment where they've started the process so it's not just they're now leading the clinic as I'm taking off out of the country. So it's almost like this soft lead in this little bit of a runway that they start actually actioning things that I would normally do with me still there. And that's something that I learned prior to going on maternity leave that was really helpful is just prepping the team for what's to come so that they don't feel like suddenly it's the first time they're actioning something. without me standing or sitting beside them or available by Zoom. And it's just started to get them in the mindset, started to get them to flex that muscle and they were just ready for us to leave. They're like, yeah, we're confident we've got this now, Bec, you can go.

Ben Lynch: So, uh, dare I say it, is it more like some fire drills being run? Like, here's what happens if things- Gee, I wish I had. If things go haywire, here's what we're going to do. Um, yeah, just talk us through what, what are some of the things you plan for in that clear week? Or is it sort of, you just see what bubbles to the surface and you react as it does?

Bec Clare: It's evolved over time, so what we did last year in our week leading up to, essentially I never took most of those tasks back. And that's been my goal every holiday, is what can I delegate and empower the team to do, stretch them in new ways for leadership roles and progress their careers, because ultimately that's also what it's about. My freedom comes from their progression. and their leadership. Essentially, I haven't taken those back. This year, it looked entirely different. This year, it was jumping on a Zoom call with our accounts coordinator so that she knew exactly how to lodge for payroll tax. Now, she's taken payroll tax. It was jumping on a call with our accountant so that they knew how the baths needed to be prepared. So, I'm aiming every time I go away to come back with less to do.

Jack O'Brien: So, Bec, I've got a question for you. I'd imagine there's clinic owners who are listening along going, You're telling me team feel confident like that they're ready for you to go. That would be the thought going through the head. How do you, so I would say the tendency for a lot of clinic owners is to put a little suffix at the end of all their statements like, but if you struggle, just give me a call or if you need me, just call me. If you need me, just send me a message. How do you restrain yourself from saying that?

Bec Clare: Yeah, that's been a huge leadership learning and what it came down to was that I tried to picture what version of leadership I wanted in the future. And so I actually talked to my team about that now and I go, look, my version of success is that we're going to take this number of weeks, this number of weeks leave. I'm going to be here for my daughter when she needs me outside of her daycare commitments. I want to be a really present parent. So therefore these things that we're going to go through together or that I'm going to add to your position description. I need you to be able to do those independently without you needing to call me. I will be here should you find it really challenging, but let's practice them now so that you are independent and confident at doing those things. So I actually talk about the fact that I don't necessarily want to be accessible. It's also about finding the right people who want to actually be independent and autonomous from you and finding people who thrive in that environment that don't need me to hold their hand.

Jack O'Brien: What are those characteristics of people who want to be autonomous? How do you filter for that?

Bec Clare: They have shown and taken initiative. They've led projects before in maybe previous roles, but you can see usually in your first few weeks with a new team member that they're asking curious questions. They're looking around going, Hey, I've seen this thing. Could you show me how to do that? Because just in case you're not here, I want to know how to do that. That's the question that I look for.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah. Yes. It's initiative, proactivity, kind of aware of maybe the complexities, you know, it's like they don't just see life through their simple position description. That's it.

Bec Clare: They're asking for more. You come back after going to a meeting and they've done an extra task that you didn't necessarily give them that's not on their JTAS or their ASANA. You can just see them genuinely involved. Uh, even in a meeting, they might ask you an extra question about, oh, can you give me more context about that? I want to understand that more. So they're, they're curious, right? And they're leaning in and they're lifelong learners versus just saying, this is my position description and these are my blinkers. That's. all I'm going to do as part of my role.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, it's interesting because it reminds me of a couple of principles. I think about Adam Grant a lot, who's a wonderful author, and he talks about givers and takers. He's written a great book. I've heard another couple of folks mention this concept recently. It's like, listeners, you don't even need me to define what a giver is and what a taker is. We all know And it's like, we want a team full of givers, right? And it's like, again, you don't need me to define it. If I ask you, what is a giver? You know what a giver is. And that's the sort of folks that we're looking for. I think Adam Grant puts it this way. He's like, do you need to tell someone to stop work? Like to go home once they've clocked off? Do you need to tell them to like woo back a little bit? Or do you whinge about them that they don't work hard enough? It's a really simple distinction of hunger. Do they get after it and look for more? Are they hungry or are they just looking to do the minimum required?

Ben Lynch: I'm hungry right now. I should have had lunch.

Jack O'Brien: It's like a Beyonce song, doesn't it? Oh yeah, it's crazy.

Ben Lynch: Bec, um, two things come to mind. Uh, where have you landed in terms of like practically being available? Uh, you know, via Slack, via email, via phone call and some of the expectations. Different people like to have different levels of engagement. I don't think there's any one right way to do it. Some people like to have their finger on the pulse more than others. Others are like, do not bother me. You won't be able to reach me. Um. So I'm interested in where you've landed there on that. Um, maybe let's go there first. Where have you landed? I'll come to J.O.B. cause we, I think each have very different perspectives on this.

Bec Clare: Comes from some restraint and I've had to actually try to practice this to have a genuine break because I'm the type of person that likes to have my finger on the pulse. So it varies. There'll be periods of time during the holiday where I'm completely MIA, except for my leadership group. I am always available to them via a specific channel. It's WhatsApp. So only our leadership group will be able to contact me on WhatsApp. And when I see their name pop up on WhatsApp, I know they need me, of which they did a couple of times while we were away.

Ben Lynch: Broadly. Just clarify for me here, Bec, is this a regular leadership chat channel or this is like, While I'm on leave, this is a unique chat that I'm using.

Bec Clare: Correct. Yeah. Unique chat while we're away.

Ben Lynch: Yeah, because the temptation is you see another message from another thing and you're like, oh, click on that. All of a sudden you're back into work mode and you're just, you know, remote. Okay. That's interesting. You've got a very quarantined, isolated chat specifically for while you're away that's different from the day-to-day because you're using Slack. Is that what I'm hearing?

Bec Clare: Correct. Because Slack is so native. I pick up my phone and… Every time you pick up your phone, you check in certain order. It'd be interesting to audit this. You go to certain apps in a certain order. And so Slack is just native to being part of what I check every day, irrespective of whether I'm at work. So I actually have the practice of moving Slack on my phone so that it actually is a conscious click versus it just being part of a pattern that you follow on your screen. And I move our chat with our leaders to WhatsApp. I try and break the pattern. I actually have to forcefully break it because it's just, I'm that finger on the pulse person.

Ben Lynch: Nice. Okay. Well, um, mine is, I don't have Slack on my phone at all. Um, especially, um, I'll tell you why in a moment, but where, where do you went?

SPEAKER_05: You can do it today. Take control. Hit the widget. Delete it.

SPEAKER_01: I'm sweating, Ben.

Ben Lynch: There's no right or wrong. We're all different. We're all different, but I'll add context, Jamie.

Jack O'Brien: What's yours? It's finding what's right for you. So for me, I think of the board governance principle of NEFO or NYFO, depending on how you pronounce it. And the principle is nose in, fingers out. And so the point here is you want to retain line of sight, right? You want to be proximal to what's going on, but get your fingers out, stop touching things. And so for me, what I don't want, and one of the things that often is a point of, I'll say stress, maybe that's not quite the right word, but I don't love coming back from a holiday and needing, back to your point, of needing like another week off to go through inboxes. I would actually, it's more relaxing for me to keep my finger on the pulse rather than entirely disconnect and then have to spend a week reconnecting. Now, of course, there's times to check out, et cetera, but the principle is nose in, fingers out. Don't touch things, but be aware of things. That's helpful for me and my state. Yes. Yes. Is the governance principle.

Bec Clare: I want to double click on a couple of things on that there. In that I was actually speaking to another business owner about this and they were like, but I, I love my work so much. I'm so passionate about it. Like I get that. So am I. I actually don't switch off fully on a holiday. I get to a point that I'm, I'm happy and I'm content and to know whether I'm there, the ideas start to flow. Are you seeing the blue sky more than being reactive and having a heart sort of going, right? That's how I know that I'm in holiday mode. I'm not the type of person just completely switch off. That's just not me. And it doesn't make me relaxed and always trying to get to that point stresses me out more. And so I've just realized that that's who I am. And to your point about, a point about NEFO, Jack, the one thing I did do on this trip. was I did a Slack audit. So while I wasn't communicating on Slack, I was still having a little peak. But what I was mindful of was fingers out. So I went through and I muted almost every Slack channel. So I may as well not be on there. Pretty well everything is muted so that someone actually has to tag me to alert me to something versus just seeing incidental chatter that I then get involved in for no good reason. My team are perfectly capable. In fact, they thrive when they just have the space. But I kept putting my fingers in where it wasn't needed.

Bec Clare: Therefore, mute. Everything's muted. Very interesting. Um, my, I feel like.

Ben Lynch: I'm less of a control freak than both of you. Steal energy.

Jack O'Brien: I'm not going to bite.

Ben Lynch: I'm going to observe everything everyone does to make sure they're doing it.

Jack O'Brien: I'm also catching people doing the right thing, Benny. Oh, okay. Oh, that's what you tell yourself to sleep at night.

Ben Lynch: And this is the great thing, right? We're all very different. For one, I don't have Slack and email on my phone. My thought there is that they are not urgent forms of communication. If someone needs to get in contact with me, they call me and I make sure my number is readily available. But I think there's enough of a barrier there for people to go, Is this really worth a phone call? Maybe I'll just put it as a message and he'll get back to it later on. And in the absence of actually knowing who to go to in my absence about things like this, I think that's the important thing. When you go away, you say, hey, if you've got any questions about this project, this area, this is the person to go to, or this is the place to go to, And if you need me beyond that, absolutely feel welcome to give me a call. That's okay. I'll be available. I'll pick up the call or I'll return the call. But I'm not checking in on email or Slack because for me, I feel non-urgent pieces of communication. And I will then go back straight into that work mode of thinking about things. And I really enjoy and find it valuable to switch off and switch gears. to totally relax. So they're some of my approaches to it. Again, everyone's different. I typically find, like your point, JRB, around coming back to the swollen inbox and the swollen Slack. What I've found useful is that I will, and I probably picked this up from you, Jack, of having the extra day and also setting that expectation. So if my holiday ends on the Friday, let's say, then I've got the weekend, technically. I'll typically spend that Sunday really preparing for coming back Monday or Jack, you've used previously the example of just set the expectation to folks that you're coming back on the Tuesday, but you're back on the Monday and you're just getting up to speed with Slack and email and whatever the case may be, a great day to kind of get back into the fold. There's a lot of assumptions obviously that we're making here around the size of your team, the support that you've got in your team, et cetera. I realize maybe for an earlier stage business where business only where it relies heavily on them, maybe they don't have some of these, you know, abilities as such to rely on other folks to escalate to while they're on leave. So that's where it's, we've all, you know, tried different things at different times and some have worked, some haven't.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, and I'll say to that point, if something needs to be escalated, make it clear. We've spoken a few times, I think, in previous pods on cascading communications or helping our team understand how frequently we might check something. The reality is, for many clinic owners listening, that you will be the chief or solo decision maker, and that's okay. That's normal. We can evolve out of that over time. You may let your team know that I will check my text messages twice a day, and I might check my Slack every second day, and I might check my email once a week, for example. And if a bill comes in, just send it to me via email. If the place is literally on fire and you've just called Triple O, then you're welcome to call me, right? And for everything else in between might be slack. So the point is there, you can set up structures that mean you don't have to feel like you are forever checking in and that things will be appropriately prioritized for you.

Bec Clare: Very nice. To the point of, you know, we're assuming a certain size of clinic here, right, for holidaying. This also started from taking little long weekends. Like we started just being unavailable for one day, either side of a weekend, and then it was two days. So the, the team also learned to grow and we felt comfortable with how well the team would adapt to us not being present. Cause sometimes it often comes from the clinic owner going, well, what would my team do? We'll just do one day. What if you just had a couple of little long weekends here and there? Start somewhere. And this was actually a conversation I was having with a member yesterday around, well, how do you get to a point where you can take six weeks? Well, it certainly didn't start there. It was a series of little long weekends and then maybe a week here and there to be able to get up to that point. But the point is that our team take four weeks leave a year, plus their public holidays and maybe all of their sick leave, and maybe they have more leave entitlements than that as well. And yet often as business owners, we don't even take one week, yet we're also carrying the decision-making of the business and the risk and responsibility. So we're carrying a whole lot more, yet we're taking less rest and renewal time. That's wild. Yes. So start to build your capacity to do that irrespective of the size of your team.

Ben Lynch: Before going on leave, Bec, maybe this is the recent leave or just generally going away. I think there is a degree of fear that clinic owners will have. Fear about, um, you know, missing out on something, fear about what might go wrong, the significance, the magnitude of those things going wrong. Maybe in sort of like a risk mitigation sense, a lot of the preparation is how can I go away and things at least go all right, go okay, and there's varying degrees of that. So I kind of just want to prepare for like the big things that might really hurt or suck. What are some of the things going into leave that you're thinking about as big items that could be needing your attention while you're away and you're trying to do your best to prepare for it? Is it things around payroll? And you say, well, I'm going to continue to do that. Is it things around performance management? Like what are some of the big things that maybe you do spend more time thinking about preparing for stressing over before you take leave? And then therefore you try and prepare, you know, systems or team members as best as you can.

Bec Clare: Any sort of emergency, fire, flood, of which we've had flood in the last 12 months, a car accident. We've got mobile team members. So what happens if someone's involved in a pretty significant incident? What if someone resigns? That's the biggie, right? But you go, well, normally, because as a clinic owner, you feel like you've also got to be there to manage it. You've got to be there to manage the exit and transition, but you've got to be there to help preserve culture. Yeah, there's some of the big ones where you go, what if I'm not there? What would happen? And it does. They do happen while you're away. Life keeps happening irrespective of whether you are present in your clinic on leave for whatever reason out of the country. Yeah, they will happen. And they do happen. It's a good one. We had three.

Ben Lynch: Well, we can talk, uh, to varying degrees about that. I think that would be a useful one because plenty of clinic owners have had that experience and it's not ideal. Uh, or they'll be scared of that experience happening while they're away. Uh, the other one is I, I certainly hear a lot of clinic owners feel this sort of pressure of like, Hey, I'm not going to be there to support maybe some of my practitioners, especially young ones, in being productive. And so I'm kind of scared that utilization is going to drop massively while I'm away, revenue is going to drop massively while I'm away, and that's going to put some financial stress on me. And so they're thinking of those things. So fill the books and then maybe maintain the team, not grow the team. Let's go to resignations then. Just talk us through, you know, when a potential crisis like this happens, if you'd classify it as that, what are some of the things you've found useful in navigating it, especially while you're on leave, you're remote, maybe you're out of town internationally. What are some of the things that you've found useful in navigating circumstances like that?

Bec Clare: Yeah, always remain calm. Certainly I didn't in this last leave break. I had my little, yeah, my little freak out. We all do it as business owners. You go, Oh my goodness, what am I going to do? Particularly when you have the number we did in quite close succession. I lent to, even though we had told our coaching team that we were on leave, we still reached out to our coach. We reached out to our support network and we said, okay, how do we stay grounded as leaders when we can't be there to sort, clearly something's going on. Okay, let's, let's just take a break. Let's just breathe for a minute. And let's also come back to some reality around these. And it's just recentered us because from a distance you can catastrophize a situation that would have ordinarily happened with you there or not.

Ben Lynch: What was going through your mind? Yeah. What was going through your mind? Oh my goodness.

Bec Clare: So for those who have followed the podcast previously, and I've walked through our post COVID mass exodus, as we call it in the clinic, I was like, we're, we're up for another mass exodus. We're up for another complete rebuild. I don't know if I can do it. Business is doomed. We're done. And it took some very good coaching to sit me down and be like, just look at me. Look at me, Bec. This is not a catastrophe. It's three in three weeks. Yes, that looks bad, but it's also, let's zoom out. How many other resignations have you had this year? Well, none. So it's three in eight months. They've all just come at the same time when you're not in the country. That's a great reframe. Great reframe. And they also said, look, to be honest, do you want to be dealing with these resignations in the blisteringly cold, rainy, flooded Adelaide right now? Or can you turn your laptop around and show me that pool? That seems like a very good place to be dealing with those resignations. I was like, okay, true. So it didn't take much, but it did take some coaching because naturally you go, my baby, my business is struggling right now and I've left my team there to navigate this all on their own. And that seems scary. And the team did a cracking good job. Um, we just went into full blown recruitment mode. We were already recruiting. We're always recruiting. We just took it up another level. Um, we've already got four who'll be coming and joining us next Tuesday and another three in the pipeline. So. It depends on how you want to look at it and what action you choose to take. We could have made this a complete and utter catastrophe of which everyone else on the team would have felt, or we could break it down and deal with each one individually, all of which were isolated, had nothing to do with one another, and crack on, and we're better for it. You never like losing people, but as leaders, we're better for it.

Ben Lynch: J.O.B., I remember ages ago you said to me when someone puts in their resignation, there's two R's. Do we retain them or risk? It was like, are they a culture risk maybe?

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, well, I mean, that principle makes sense. If it sounds wise to the listener, then yes, I did say that.

Ben Lynch: Sounds like a model that you've really thought through.

Jack O'Brien: Look, there's a few models going through my mind, a few alliterations at any given time. That makes sense, right? When a resignation is tendered, we as the clinic leaders need to make a judgment. Is this something that we can reverse? Is this a person that we do want to save? Do we want to pull out all stops? Well, we're going to push come to shove, we're going to get rid of them eventually anyway, and we just let this happen on their terms, not ours. This is true for any resignation, and so that's worth considering, but I also think Almost every resignation, well, every resignation, we need at least a week's notice, if not two, three, sometimes four weeks. Usually, the person resigning can be a little bit flexible, particularly if there's a few dollars on offer for them to stick around. If you're on holidays, you can just acknowledge acceptance of the email and say, we'll revisit this conversation when I return from leave in a couple of days or a couple of weeks time. You can just kick the can down the road. That buys yourself some time to stay on holidays or to do some investigations to consider whether we want to let this person go or we want to pull out all stops to solve what their problem is underlying. It's an important consideration.

Ben Lynch: And I think that's where, Bec, you're alluding to what is the impact on the culture on the rest of the team, Jack, when you said, I think you said risk as one of the components there. Because it might be like, ooh, okay, this person could really have a bad influence on the rest of the team, especially while I'm not here. Or even if you are there, they've put in their resignation, you might, hey, decide and come to an agreement that it's better to wrap this up sooner rather than later.

Jack O'Brien: I mean, I've had resignations where you're like, okay, I accept your email and today will be your last day. Like that's it. You don't need to come in tomorrow and we pay out their leave period. And you know, that's a little bit confronting for a lot of people. And the first clinic owners, the first time you do that, you'll feel like the coldest person on earth, but it's okay. The world continues. The sun will shine. Sometimes we just need to part ways swiftly because there is a real culture risk.

Ben Lynch: And so Bec, how do you, how did you, how have you managed that recently when these come through? Is it about comms, getting on the phone, you're doing a Zoom, you're sending a message? How did you manage that sort of permeating through the culture, the rest of the team?

Bec Clare: Yeah, so Ben, you touched on it earlier in the episode around support for our team is who do they go to when we're not here? So, um, our admin leaders are part of the practice leaders program. Our mentors are part of mentor mastery here at clinic mastery. We also have, um, we have coaching with. our coaches here, but also with Jem Fuller. So we made a support network available for them to particularly assist with things like culture. So yes, I was there to help our ops manager. That's the only person I spoke to about these resignations and we're a team of 30. I acknowledged the team member and I said, look, really sorry to lose you. I'll leave you in Emma's very capable hands. She'll keep in contact with me. And I was out. And then it was just Emma and I having conversation. And so it was really controlled. And then I encouraged the broader leadership group to lean on those resources available. I said, so if you're struggling, jump on that call, reach out to this person. And they all did. And so I had reports back from our support network to say, your team reached out when they needed it. They were incredible. They came with solutions. They were ready to deal with this. And your culture is really strong. And so it made me super proud, but I did set them up with people that they could go to so that I didn't have to be that person. And that came from practice from going on maternity leave. So often it comes off the other learning from another holiday or leave period.

Ben Lynch: Yes. I liked your point earlier of like, it didn't start with, you know, five or six weeks. It was long weekends here and there. And so often when we talk with clinic owners and run them through the process of the coming off the tools framework that we have, where you sort of go from maybe you're consulting more than a full-time caseload. And you're bringing that back so you can spend more time on the team and on the business side of things. One of the great things is just to block out a small period of time and then make that slightly bigger and then slightly bigger and then slightly bigger. It doesn't sort of happen overnight. It's okay to chip away at it.

Bec Clare: And the same goes for support. If you have a vision to have that time away where you're not the contact person, have your team enrolled in these programs and have them attending regularly, participating, leaning into those programs so that they're flexing that muscle already so that they know they've got a support network to go to when it's not you. And in fact, encourage them even when you are there in the next room or you are still in the state that they've gone to that platform first to seek some guidance from a community of like-minded people that can help them with their role and they come to you with some of those solutions and suggestions. We have to help teach them how to lead. Often they've got the cultural part, they've got the energy, but we actually have to teach them how to lead through our vision and values.

Jack O'Brien: It's an interesting point, Bec, right? Because we want our, the first time a team member reaches out to your business coach, for example, you don't want to be in crisis. Like you want them to have practiced on something a little more trivial.

Bec Clare: And have a relationship.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Ben Lynch: we've spoken before about just in regular mentoring sessions of our team, including the 1-3-1 method, where they outline what's my one problem or my main problem. What are my three solutions to that problem that I can think of? And then which one would I recommend that we take or the one that I think I'm going to use? And so culturally. If that's part of your standards for how you support your team and get them to show up as problem solvers, because so often clinic owners will say to us, it always feels like the monkey's on my back, like I have to deal with all these problems. So if we make that cultural change ongoing, then when crises like this happen, Ideally, they're already used to, here's my three suggested solutions and the one proposed one that I'm going to take. Certainly a very practical framework alongside of just very clearly the Rolodex, here's who to go to if you need support in these different areas over time, and I'm always available via WhatsApp, phone, email, whatever the case may be.

Bec Clare: And to that point, a really subtle, subtle thing to actually action prior to going on leave is have someone else added to some of your accounts with your suppliers that can talk to them from a point of authority. Your phones go down. Make sure you have someone listed who's in the country who has a verification code who could talk to someone. Have them added as a contact on your insurance policy in case they need to talk to someone. There are little things that you can set your team up for. So that when there's a crisis mode, you're not trying to scramble and work out how to actually have that phone call from somewhere else.

Ben Lynch: One of the great forcing functions that we're all leading to here is actually taking a week off because it immediately surfaces the problems or challenges in your business or definitely the acute ones. so that you can solve them and make the business even more sustainable. So often people will say to us, I can't take a break because a lot of things are, you know, maybe reliant on me or I need to be here for these things. Actually taking the break forces those things to be done by other folks or allow you the time in that week off, whether it's rest and relaxation or actually gives you a week to work on systemizing those things, creating the training for those things. It's actually one of the best things you can do for your business development is like get out of the clinic, be largely unreachable for a week, and then it forces you to figure out what things need to be solved moving forward. All right, well, let's land the plane here. Folks who are tuning in on the Spotify, come over to YouTube, or if you're on Apple, come over to YouTube as well. We're posting a whole bunch of content regularly, probably seeing J-O-B's face everywhere on the socials at the moment, plenty of good content coming out from you. And you can head over to clinicmastery.com/podcast for all the show notes. And also, J-O-B, people can send us a message, a voice message. Tell us about that again. You released that the other day.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, head to our Instagram bio. There's a link there to what's called a speak pipe. You can send us a voice memo. Get your voice on to the podcast. Ask us a question and we'll be here to answer it. Alternatively, if you're not that confident in public, send us a comment on Spotify. We will check those out. And as always, appreciate any reviews, ratings, and forward it to a colleague. There's so many clinic owners out there who could benefit from this. So do us a favor and please forward this on. We have thousands of listeners to the podcast every month, but every single one helps. So thank you for forwarding this.

Ben Lynch: Nice. Bec, Jack, thanks so much. We'll see you on another episode very soon. Bye-bye.