Ben Lynch: Oh, hello.

Jack O'Brien: Hello.

Ben Lynch: I remember the- The shirt on? What, are you going to a funeral or something? The zebra print. A funeral would be black. Not white. Going to a cocktail function. Wedding. Baptism. Baptism. Here is Beck. Beck is not here. He was Beck. He was Beck. 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 streamline your processes. We're diving into the 1% improvements to grow your clinic. And trust me, you want to hear Beck's take on how to get your team on board with stepping up. Plus stick around for when we discuss the list of things each of us would work on first. Let's give folks some of the practical 1%ers that we'll often look at improving. How we welcome a client.

Bec Clare: This tweak to a phone script doesn't seem like a lot, but if you do that across the board, game won, right?

Jack O'Brien: The best clinic owners do these three things when it comes to 1%ers. They think about mastery. Dan Gibbs often says to us internally, right, small cogs turning big wheels.

Bec Clare: And the principle here is the way we do the little things is the way that we do everything.

Jack O'Brien: What happens in those first 20 seconds has a massively disproportionate impact on clinical outcomes.

Bec Clare: The game here is to look after more people and deliver amazing client experiences.

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 helloatclinicmastery.com with the subject line podcast, and we'll line up a time to chat. All right, let's get into the episode. It is episode 354. My name is Ben Lynch. I'm again joined by Jack O'Brien, previous physio clinic owner at Tetheris Physio Plus. J.O.B., you're back from some holidays. How was the trip?

Jack O'Brien: Konnichiwa. Ohayou gozaimasu. I had a wonderful time in Japan sampling all the 7-Eleven food delights, the snow of Niseko. It's good to visit a few clinics, actually, and good to be back in the saddle. Tax deductible. That's what he was looking for. It was a work trip. If the ATO is listening, it was a work trip, primarily.

Ben Lynch: Primarily. Bec, also joined by Bec Clare, owner of Physio West here in Adelaide, two locations, team of 30-odd. Bec, how are you doing? What's happening in your world?

Bec Clare: I'm doing super. Had a great weekend. It was a long weekend here in Adelaide, just gone, including the wedding anniversary as well, so we got a nice little dinner date out, so it was lovely. Beautiful.

Ben Lynch: Of course. We had the race that stops the nation, the Adelaide Cup. Oh gee, it's always a blast. Don't go anywhere near the racetrack on that day. It's chaos. It's chaos. Well, before we dive in, J.I.B., I've got a couple of things. We've got heaps of new listeners Welcome, if you are one of those. If you're not familiar with CM, we've been in this business for 10 years. This is literally our 10th year of supporting clinic owners to grow their clinics sustainably from recruitment through to marketing, systems operations, client experience. And we primarily do that through our consulting work in a program called the Business Academy. That is for the bigger clinics, maybe a sort of 40, $50,000 revenue per month or bigger. You've got multiple practitioners. And then for those that are just starting up early stage clinics, we have our elevate program where you might be under that benchmark, two or three team members, and you're looking to grow. We also help folks with marketing in a done for you Google ad service. If you don't really want to get behind the scenes in Google ads, I don't know about you, but that's me. So we outsource to an awesome service run by Peter Flynn, who's part of the team here who can run your Google ads and help you acquire new clients. Or if you're looking for a trusted provider, we have a network from accounting, HR, legal, and lending. Just send us an email, jackatclinicmastery.com, and he'll be able to connect you with one of those support services. But thank you if you're a new listener. And for those members that are listening in, kudos to you. Well done for putting this in between your coaching sessions. It's a bit of accountability and inspiration as well. J.B., I'll throw over to you before we dive into the episode.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah. Hey, if you're a new listener, welcome. We would love your honest feedback. If you could give us a review or rating on Spotify or a Google review as part of Google Maps, that would be amazing. Let us know what you think. Five stars. Five stars would be wonderful. A quick shout out to a couple of new members who have joined the community and Allie members as well. Hopefully, you've seen my viral video on Instagram, me having a conversation with ChatGPT about Allie. I want to welcome Emily. who's in regional Australia. Welcome to the Business Academy. We love our country folk. This great land of Australia has so many rich personalities across our great land. Literally. We've had a number of new members from the US and UK apply to join and join our broader community. Mitch is a podiatrist who has joined recently and Allie Trials have gone through the roof, Ben. Yes. So it is free trial, 30 days, no credit card required. Head to alieclinics.com. That is alieclinics.com.

Ben Lynch: Well, today we're going to be talking about one percenters. And I think most clinic owners, when they think about growing their clinic, perhaps they default to some of the bigger moves like new locations, new services, big marketing campaigns, new recruits. And often it requires that. But we also see quite regularly that inside of clinics, growth actually comes from doing dozens of small improvements that we call the one percenters. Dan Gibbs often says to us internally, right, small cogs, turning big wheels. Small changes to systems, admin, communication, client experience, they might seem minor on their own, but when you compound them across a team, across a year, they can have massive impact. And this is actually an area where great practice managers really shine. They're kind of close enough to the day-to-day to see the friction, the inefficiencies, and the little things that slow a clinic down. So, today, Bec, you really wanted to talk about the 1% improvements that can actually grow clinics, the kind of changes that are simple but maybe overlooked. So, do you want to just elaborate a little bit more on the 1% or the marginal gains framework that you use and you help other practice managers use in their clinic? Yeah, absolutely.

Bec Clare: We've been chatting about this in the Practice Leaders program, which is available for all of our Academy members. We'd love to see your practice leaders, practice managers, clinic. Leads, admin leads in there. It's an awesome community of around 200 practice managers and leaders. So, it's a fabulous community and we're all about those marginal gains and collaborating together and learning from what others are doing so we don't have to reinvent the wheel. But the marginal gains theory in part comes from Team Sky, which is the British cycling team and I've actually run this content.

Jack O'Brien: Did someone say cycling? Jack, what?

Bec Clare: I need to hand over the mic at this point. Why am I talking about cycling when Jack, you are the guru. Well, it comes, and I've just run this content for my team and in the Practice Leaders program around really understanding what it means to lean to and look at sport. We can see the very best at what they do on that stage. This story is about the British cycling team. They were a team that from 1908 to 2008 had won just one Olympic medal. They were really looked at as Well, they should have been elite, but they weren't. To the point that sponsors didn't really want their logo on their bikes. Happy to sell them the bikes, but gee, we don't want to be associated with you. You're not successful. In 2008, they hired a gentleman by the name of Dave Brailsford, who is now Sir Dave Brailsford. Cueing here that they've been successful off the back of this. And Dave's role or mantra coming in was, we're going to look at all of the tiny things. So the one percenters across the board will leave no stone unturned. They did the obvious, like look at nutrition, look at the seats, but they also put their outdoor riders in indoor suits because they were more aerodynamic. They split test the massage gels and creams to see what would be most effective for recovery. They looked at sleep so that all the riders had a sleep test and those pillows came with them on the road. They had a five-year goal of having a British cyclist win the Tour de France. They did that in three years. And then they won the next three out of four. And in the next Olympics, they won 70% of the medals available for cycling by just changing really small things. one percent across the board and digging really deep to where it wasn't obvious. And so I think for clinic owners and for teams and for practice managers, it can seem like, oh, this little thing or this tweak to our SMS template or this tweak to how we welcome a client, this tweak to a phone script doesn't seem like a lot. But if you do that across the board, game one, right? The game here is to look after more people and deliver amazing client experiences. And so I think being able to picture that from a sporting perspective really helps people understand and unpack just how meaningful small things can be.

Ben Lynch: JB, you've spoken about this before in the unreasonable hospitality example, where they actually looked at the best restaurants. And I think the question was sort of the opposite, not what do they do maybe that's like incrementally better, but what's like a 1% that they don't do. And I think they use the example of they have this extensive wine list, but no beer list. And they're like, well, we want to offer an extensive beer list and have a beer sommelier come around and help you with that dining experience. And they give a few other examples. But how do you, JB, think about instilling this marginal gains 1% mindset into the team and that it actually carries through into action?

Jack O'Brien: Yeah. Well, you took the words out of my tab. I've got the Unreasonable Hospitality shared here on screen. Wonderful book. If you're listening along, please grab this on Amazon Audible wherever you shop or Booktopia, support local, all those things. Unreasonable Hospitality, Will Gadara, owner of one of the most wonderful restaurants in the world. And one of the things I love about this book is that their aspiration was to be a for Hattered Michelin restaurant, a four-star Michelin restaurant. And if any of you are in the food game, you would know that four stars doesn't exist. It only goes to three. But they wanted to create a whole new category of what it means to be hospitable. When I hear marginal gains, it's like, yeah, you're right. They're one percenters. They're not monumental. They're marginal. They're the little things on the fringe. And it reminds me of And maybe we're going to coin this term, this is maybe a new CM phrase, that these 1%ers, they are the eighth wonder of the world. They're the eighth wonder of the allied health world. It's like compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. These 1%ers are the eighth wonder of what it looks, you know, the seven degrees in clinic mastery. This is the 1%er that makes all the difference to your client experiences. And, you know, I think often it's not about doing more. necessarily, it's about doing different or how can we iterate or tweak what we're already doing. You know, I was obviously just in Japan, I've just come back and Ben, you've spoken about this for over a decade now, but I noticed it at play when we were in Tokyo that whenever they are handing you back your credit card or handing you back your cash change or handing you a receipt, it's done with two hands. All the time. Every time. And so, in a clinic context, it's only subtle. But if you're handing someone back their health fund card, you don't just slap it on the counter and slide it back. It's, you know, can we present it? If you're a clinician and you've got a management plan, do we present that with two hands? You're already doing it with one, so just do it with two. And it's these subtle things that create compounding experience over time. It's not just compound interest, it's compounding experiences.

Ben Lynch: I love this. There's so many rabbit holes and threads to pull on here. The first I want to go down is, you mentioned a really good point, J.B., of focusing on the one percenters. How do you straddle that line between people keep getting stuck in these really small things that don't really make a difference. You know that analogy of the jar, and you fill it up with sand first, and then you put the stones and the rocks and the pebbles, and that's not really the right order. I'm sort of cutting to the chase here. Other folks do it way better. And if you search for it online, you'll find some really good examples. They often use it in a life, putting what matters most first. And in that example, it's like put the rocks in than like the pebbles and then the stones and then the sand. Just use that visual reference. How do you then make sure that You're not got all these team members working on small things that clog up their day and actually they miss the main thing, which is greeting the client or rebooking the client, et cetera. Beck, how do you straddle that of presenting this notion of the 1% improvements, but also not getting stuck in the weeds, so to speak?

Bec Clare: I think it, it's the way in which we frame it that the 1%er is about being 1% better in the way that we do things every day. It's not about changing this one thing by 50%. And I think that's where people get really stuck is that they go, this thing needs to change a lot. Therefore, I need to take a deeper dive into it. Let's subtly tweak it. Have we delivered that script with. greater purpose, have we trailed delivering that with two hands, as Jack said, the management plan. So it's about. Understanding what is a little bit of that versus having to unpack the whole system, which is where we get really stuck. And I see practice managers, particularly where we say, Hey, we're looking for 1% improvement. We'll try and unpack the entire system. all the time because they're so details focused. And it's also why they're really good at their job is because they like the details, but it's about helping them go, okay, what is one thing that could improve?

Ben Lynch: But I can understand that because you're like, I don't want to do a superficial job. There's that other saying, if you're going to do a job, do it properly. So I can see how they're like, if I need to fix this email nurturing campaign that goes out to clients on an evergreen frequency, should I just do the first email or should I do each one of those emails a little bit? How do you start to make trade-offs there on what's the right scope actually? give that scope to people or you do allow them to define it for themselves?

Bec Clare: It would depend on the person, to be honest. If I know that this person might go down a rabbit hole, some team members are just inherently good at picking the one thing and running independently. But if I know that a team member has shown a history of going down a rabbit hole, I'll be more directive in how I want them to go about that marginal gain. And it's the coaching that becomes part of that. We go, okay, can you see what we've done here? We've just changed one thing without unpacking the whole thing. That's what I'm looking for you from you for the next time we go to do this. So using that teaching as a coaching moment to help them get to a point where they can do it themselves. but I'll be quite directive with the team member in that initial phase.

Jack O'Brien: Something that's helped me in this context is thinking about that when we say one percenters, we're talking about a literal handful, a very small portion of your work day or your work week. So, if you try and do everything, you'll do nothing well. So, let's keep it small. And I heard this principle of you want to think about 80-20 rule and then apply the 80-20 rule to the 20 percent. Now, forgive me for the mouth spin. It's less than three weeks until our event. But it's, you know, how do we take what is 20% of the 20%? It's actually four. So, you know, there's probably like three or four things that you can think about consciously and that you can work on in your clinic that will be the small cogs. We only need three or four small cogs. that move the big wheel. Keeping that number small and then thinking about them like gates. We've all just watched the Winter Olympics in some version. When you're skiing downhill slalom, you're going downhill, you're doing the same thing, but you're hitting the gate. How do we make sure we pass through the gate and tick the box each time because that's the smoothest way down the hill. It's not just a tick box thing or it's not majoring on the minors. It's just passing through the gate and doing the same thing consistently.

Bec Clare: Jack, I think the major 1% opportunity for practice leaders is helping their team get to a point of consistency. That's the big one that I see time and time again.

Jack O'Brien: What do you mean, what do you mean consistency?

Bec Clare: That team members across the board can deliver that script for your clinic, no matter who finds them. That every late notice is dealt with in a consistent framework. um, that everyone rebooks in a certain way. Like you do the Physio West way, you do the Terrace Physio Plus way, like we've got this methodology. And I think that's also, you know, if you lean to sport or you lean to hospitality, um, what Will was aiming for is that everyone came in, yes, they had a unique experience when they dined at his restaurant, but they had a consistent level of performance that underpinned all of that.

Jack O'Brien: That's the magic. That's the art, right? How do we make sure it's consistent but not robotic? There's riverbanks. It's not locked into a cookie cutter. There's gates and riverbanks so that people, you're right, whether they see practitioner A, practitioner B, receptionist A, customer service B, that there's a consistent experience that isn't robotic. And there's a bit of art in that and a bit of time and practice. It's actually a lifelong pursuit, right, Ben? When you're trying to craft experiences, it's continually iterating and improving.

Ben Lynch: I think that's, you know, in our name, mastery is about the continuous improvements that you're making. It's never kind of done. What was going through my mind, and Jack, you and I have spoken a lot about this over time from 37signals and Jason Fried, which is a bit more of a like a product development space, but I think a lot of principles carry across. And they so often talk about this, what's our appetite for investing in this thing, you know, this product change or service change. And it's quite a different mindset to the traditional, which is we need to fix this and it will take us as long as it does. It's almost constrained based thinking. So what was going through my mind on the 1% is that these might be things that there's a principle or a rule that we're not willing to invest more than a half a day or an hour. These are the sorts of things that you get. done what you get done in an hour and no more because naturally the scope, because kind of what we're discussing and debating here is scope, because you could go to all of the emails that go out to patients, as you're saying, Beck, and that takes three months to get around to it with all the other disruptions in the role. But actually what we're saying is you've got two hours on Monday morning. that are available. We don't want to spend any more than that. And the objective is to improve perhaps the emails that patients get to increase the open rate and action rate, whatever that may be. You've defined kind of success and you've scoped it with some constraints. Riverbanks, as you said, Jack of like Yet, when deciding on what to do and how much to invest, we don't want this to blow out and take forever, which is what we commonly see. Bec, how else do you start to add some of these constraints so that they don't blow out in scope?

Bec Clare: I think it's coupling the one percenter with progress over perfection. So it might be that you chip away at one email a week, right? But we're making progress. That one email is better than it was last week and then the next one and the next one and the next one. Whereas a lot of clinic owners and their practice managers will hold off, they'll pause all communication and go, no, we need all of these comms to have the same theme, have the same feel and we press go again and we relaunch. Let's just subtly iterate. And that's almost the one percenter coming into our progress over perfection. Because I have to say, nothing's ever going to be perfect, right? Because we're living in a world where things change so rapidly, whether that be technology or what people expect from an experience. And we want to be, that's how we grow. So I think the moment we try and hold off on things until they're absolutely perfect, Yeah.

Ben Lynch: It doesn't work. My concern as well, and this is where it depends is such a good point and the context matters and what our objective is is so important. My concern is we build a Frankenstein clinic where we're essentially building one thing and then the next thing and then the next thing. And if we'd actually spent just a little bit more time initially scoping out what does done look like or what does success look like or what are we actually trying to achieve, then we might actually identify a more sustainable path to get there rather than just what's in front of us. So how, Jack, do you straddle that where you're not just building bits and pieces and then going, oh, actually it's a bit clunky, it's a bit Frankenstein?

Jack O'Brien: I think it's both and. There is a case for strategic thinking or long-term thinking beginning with the end in mind and deliberately architecting what we want to build and achieve. But also, something that we've learned from the software and product development space is you don't necessarily know what step six looks like until you just get started with step one and step two and follow your nose. What that practically means for clinic owners, practice managers, senior clinicians listening here today is you want to do both and. You want to start with some long-term architecture and then we iterate from step one to step two to step three and then we, in a sense, refresh everything, clear the cache, delete the history and go again, maybe year on year, And that gives you a chance to have both long-term and short-term perspectives. That wonderful book of thinking fast and slow, it's both and. And that's the art form of great leadership. When you pigeonhole yourself into, oh, I'm just a big picture, head in the clouds person, or I'm just a pragmatist, get stuff done, you're missing it. There's a tension and this is a skill that we coach clinic owners through of thinking fast and slow, long and short, one step and five steps. You need a coach sometimes to help guide that thinking skill.

Bec Clare: Jack, I think that's really. Why it's so important that in our coaching skill and resources that we use our 120 day plan, we use our 12 month plan, we use our three year painted picture and then our desire statement. We're essentially coaching here, the thinking fast and slow. So we can see past what needs to happen today and the little bits and pieces to where are we actually going so that we prevent Frankenstein, um, and we can evolve past that.

Jack O'Brien: You know, I think, Bec, when it comes to getting an external perspective, you cannot get this from ChatGPT or Claude or insert the next buzzword AI software. It doesn't exist because it can't think like this. It's about both and. It's holding two things in tension at the same time. And it's practicing that skill over time from someone who's been there, done that, got the t-shirt and understands the nuances of the healthcare landscape in 2026, not like it used to be done or not just in this one profession box, but across allied health. That's what clinic owners need in today's current climate, particularly in a time of AI influence, particularly in a time of some Instagram influencer who paid a bunch of bots to boost their following. There's gurus on every Instagram corner. What you need is a trusted advisor who's got the runs on the board to add to your thinking.

Bec Clare: Jack, it's so true. I was on coaching sessions this morning with members and to be able to talk some pain points around follow-up calls for clients who have cancelled. I said, you know what, I've actually just had this conversation in our clinic with a clinician who found that really challenging. So we should be able to unpack that lived experience and as coaches and consultants, we've been there or we're still doing it in our clinics and here's what's working.

Jack O'Brien: Right. And Ben, can you maybe speak to the notion of groupthink and resisting groupthink or bring independent thought to some of these things? Because I know sometimes when we talk about one percenters and marginal gains, it's like, oh, yeah, that's a great idea. That's a great idea. And we just end up in this confirmation loop. how can we think about independent thought as it pertains to 1%ers?

Ben Lynch: It's an interesting point because perhaps in the admin function, Bec, correct me if you're wrong, but there's such doers typically in the admin function that maybe at times they've received some instruction from the director or the clinic owner and they're just doing it. They haven't perhaps given it much thought and they have such proximity to the client or the front desk, the reception team, the practitioner team as well and how they interface if they actually took a little bit of time to think through, what is the problem I'm trying to solve? What is the outcome I'm trying to achieve here? What does done look like or success look like? Really simply, for instance, it might just be that more of our new patients open the emails that we send them so they come prepared for the first appointment. Great. So we're going to measure success by how many open it and maybe how many click on the thing or fill in the form. And so we're just looking at, okay, I'm going to work on that email or the script that the phone call had before so that we say, hey, you'll receive an email from us. It's really important you read it, click on the link, fill in the form, whatever the case may be. And then we can track that in the subsequent week. So much of that is actually just being clear on what is the purpose, as you've said, Beck, or the objective or the outcome. And what I love is, and the connection point in my mind to the Sky example, the British cycling team is, they had objectives, they had the goals and the Tour de France. How you get there can be a little bit messy, as you said, Jack, of like, you don't know step six. But we know where we're trying to go. So that might be we know the type of experience we're trying to provide clients or the type of experience we're trying to provide the team. And it's not probably going to be a straight line. We're going to kind of zig and zag and course correct and be off a little bit. But if that is clear and that is true, then it's easy for us to go, well, this is a 1% change in alignment with that. You know, we might notice that we're getting a lot of the same questions on the front desk for new clients or returning clients, and that's clogging up the phones or the emails. So then we're trying to solve for that problem in our comms beforehand. So just being intentional about the problem that we're trying to solve. J.O.B., and I'm interested in both of you around maybe some of the one-percenters that you would go to. Maybe, obviously, if we had a clinic in front of us, we could uncover what's going on for them, but I'm interested in that. Before we go there, J.O.B., speak to that clinic owner that's maybe a little bit skeptical of all this. You spoke of the two hands handing over. It's like, yeah, that's cute. That's nice. That's not really going to make a difference for the patient outcomes and experience. Good therapists do that. What's your response to those folks that see this as maybe fluffy, superfluous?

Bec Clare: Why did I get the invite to the podcast? We should have invited Grant.

Ben Lynch: See, I want to ask Jack as a physio, we often have a little joke of physios are very skeptical folks. That's all right. It gives them a superpower clinically. But just talk to this side of it, J.O.B., because you've lived it, you've worked with so many clinic owners addressing this. You're like, this is important. How do you address the fact that maybe they dismiss this as not needed?

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, and I would have been that guy, that clinic owner that goes, this is a bit superfluous. Is it really? How can I measure it? Now, you can ask all the questions. You can have all the doubts, and doubts are okay. I had them. We all have them. It's what you do with those doubts and explore them that differentiates you. What I would say is that we would all expect ourselves to be world-class clinicians and be able to deliver high-quality healthcare outcomes. But healthcare is not simply an objective measure, an asterisk star that you can put on a goniometer and measure the 10 degrees of range of motion. If that was the case, we're just delivering a commoditized service. What differentiates world-class clinics from just another good healthcare service provider is the experiences that we create for our clients. And we know there's a bunch of evidence, there's a massive range of evidence that suggests when we create great rapport, good therapeutic alliances, when we create environments where nervous systems are appropriately regulated, that patients get better health outcomes. And so these are mutually dependent things, outcomes and experiences, experiences and outcomes. And in isolation, one or two little one percenters won't move the needle. But when you compound them over time, again, it's the eighth wonder of the world, when we compound these little things over time, not only do you differentiate yourself from the other clinic down the road, which is critical in a 2026 era when anyone can throw up a website on Lovable and get some content from ChatGPT, you need to differentiate yourself. And we do this through experiences. And then practically, how will we know this works? When you use your tools like A11y or your old school spreadsheets, if you're that way inclined, you can measure the impact of client experiences tangibly on your P&L, on your dashboard, specifically usually through your PVA or the lifetime value of a client. Secondarily, you can measure it through your NPS, the Net Promoter Score. What is the experience that our clients feel? Tertiary, you can measure your word of mouth referrals and how excited are your clients to recommend your service to their family and friends. So there's a number of different ways that we can measure this. But ultimately, our patients don't just remember how much range of motion you improved. or how you decrease their score on a therapy assessment tool. They remember how you made them feel. And so when you're thinking about which one percenters to roll out in your clinic, I'd encourage you to think about what is a marginal improvement for you that has a monumental impact on the recipient. And it can It's unreasonable in the way that it blows their mind, in a way that creates this rapport and affinity for your practice.

Ben Lynch: I love the distinction there, and if this is like a little one percenter for practice managers or the whole team, hopefully and ideally, that they're constantly asking themselves, how does this improve the patient's experience? Like, what a great default thought to have. You know, how would I write this email different or this SMS or this phone script or this process? How does this make the patient experience better? Beck? Let's go to some examples here. We've littered a few throughout. I'm interested for you as well, JRB. Let's give folks some of the practical 1%ers that we'll often look at improving. Maybe we can't articulate exactly what the improvement is because it depends on how it's set up currently, but where would you be looking first of all at improving the admin slash patient experience. Bec, let's start with you.

Bec Clare: I'd be leaning to the principle in Will's book, Unreasonable Hospitality, again. An exercise that we did at a team day was I laid out a table with a whole bunch of dishes on them and the team were outside of the room when I did this. They then came in and I said, what do you notice about the table? Now, the table was perfectly set. white tablecloth, the glasses in the right place, the cutlery in the right place. And they examined this table for quite some time and they just could not pick it. And it wasn't until I turned the dishes over and all of the labels were facing the same way. So the principle is you turn the dish over because you're curious about where this beautiful cutlery or crockery came from and you can see the label and it's facing you. And the principle here is the way we do the little things is the way that we do everything. So when you ask me then what would I systemize in a clinic, I would systemize something like a task list, something like a SANA or Trello. Take the bulk of the work out of your team's head and into something that they can follow no matter who is on, it's consistently delivered, which frees them up for the experience element. When it's out of their head, they can focus. Ben, you're right here in front of me. I'm going to care for you and give you the experience like no other. I'm going to give you your management plan with two hands. It creates that freedom because they're not thinking about, oh, my next task that I've got to remember to do by this due date is. It's just all there. That's the big one that I see is low hanging fruit for clinics is systemizing their task list.

Jack O'Brien: I love that. JB, what about you? Where would you go to? I would go to one verbal communication cue and one non-verbal communication cue. And so when it comes to the verbals, I would think about how many times can we use someone's name when we're communicating with them. You know, they say the sweetest sound in the universe is the sound of your own name. The bigger conversation here is being intentional and deliberate with every word that you use. So it's not just, g'day, how you goin'? It's, Beck, welcome, it's lovely to see you today. Right, it's leading with their name and it's being deliberate about the words that we use. And then when it comes to the non-verbal cues, and we're talking specifically about client experience teams here, when it comes to the non-verbal cues, what if you could stand up and get above the countertop that is classically in clinics? Or what if you could close your laptop What if you could push the keyboard and the mouse to the side and turn and face someone? What if we could shake hands and maybe when we shake hands we hold our own elbow? Because there's a nonverbal cue in how we communicate. So one verbal and one nonverbal cue from an administrative perspective. And then the same is true for clinicians. I love what Mick Risk at iMove Physio talks about, one of the coaches on our clinic mastery team, of in your clinical notes, taking some personal social history. Can you write down the names of their children or their dog or their coffee order? And when they walk in and say, Ben, lovely to see you. Why don't you take a seat? And by the way, how did Tommy's basketball game go on the weekend? It's like, oh, he remembers my son's name and that he played. It's those little verbal cues. It's when we open the door for someone and welcome them in, when we let them sit first, or how do we posture ourselves? Do we change our hands or our arms?

Bec Clare: Jack, the one percenter on the name, if we've got the name down pattern, we're using that all the time. The one percenter on that is does that patient have a preferred name? You've just mentioned that the sweetest sound is our own name. Not when you call me Rebecca. That's what happens when that happens. So it's Beck for everyone and that familiarity. So preferred name or have some cues around pronunciation so that we get that sound is exactly how it's meant to sound for that person's name. That's the iteration on the 1% that we're talking about. How can you go one better? Right.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, I mean, that's something I learned, I think, with you, Bec. It's like, it's not Bec and Grant. Grant is Bec and Grant, and that's very South Australian, but that's okay. That's how it rolls. Well, do you dance or do you dance? Well, that didn't put the date in, does it?

Ben Lynch: I love both of those contributions. My mind went to the new patient experience and then management plans. Even just in our conversation, we're so used to talking through management plans or treatment plans in a physical form like a piece of paper or a PDF that's sent to the client afterwards. Even just, do you have that? and slash what information is on that management plan there. To your point, Jack, if you captured some of those meaningful goals or history about the patient that you can reference here. Number one, does every client have a physical management plan, either delivered digitally or in person, of what their treatment's going to look like over the next subsequent visits, according to the therapist's best recommendation? Number one, that gets straight to it. The other one was around the new patient side of things. That's where there's probably peak anxiety or stress, depending on the context that you're in. Obviously, for the psych clinics that we work with, it's going to be much bigger maybe than, say, in a physio clinic where it's an MSK injury. Or for the parents of speech and OT, kids who need some support. How can we literally empathize with our clients? We've heard so many of their questions and concerns over time, and I love a little quadrant, which is like, what do they think, feel, say, and do at this point, before they come into the initial appointment, during, and post? And what could we do to improve what they think, feel, say, and do? How can we minimize some of the stress or the miscommunication? So I go to, in a similar way to UJB, like what are the emails and SMSs that go out beforehand to make it super clear? Here's exactly what to do. We'll walk you through the whole process and then the relevant sort of induction or orientation of a new client. So I would first go there and the management plans, but I reckon together we'd make a really good consulting team.

Jack O'Brien: You're right, Ben, and sometimes because we repeat these things over and over and over, we perhaps get a little complacent or we think it doesn't matter. But when you go and participate in some novel or new service or experience, you really start to notice, oh, they didn't say that, or I wish they showed me this, or I'm uncertain at this point in my journey. And so this is where it's important for our teams to realize that when we say, Rebecca, Beck, Welcome to the clinic, lovely to see you. Feel welcome to grab a seat on this seat or that seat, down the hallways, the bathrooms, and if you'd like a refreshment or a bottle of water, the fridge is over to your left. That feels very rote when you have to say that 17, 27, 47 times per day, but for Beck, Those words really matter. Every word that you said carries weight and significance. So we have to remind ourselves that this really makes a difference for the patient, their state, and therefore their clinical outcomes. What happens in those first 20 seconds has a massively disproportionate impact on clinical outcomes.

Ben Lynch: It's a good point. We've often talked about using scripts and they can sound robotic if they're delivered in that way. But how often do we go along to a movie or a play or something like that? And you're not thinking, oh, they're reading lines from a script because it's how it's delivered. And it can make you feel a certain way. So part of the admin training that we've spoken about before, Beck, is how do we actually do this with a level of mastery so that it's not robotic? It's not just a laminated piece of paper that sits by your monitor and that you run through. You want it to actually sound really personable. And they're the guardrails that you spoke to, J.O.B. of how do we support patients in a really consistent manner. One of the ways that we actually do this internally, I really love this from Dan Gibbs, is that about once a month we get this list of process improvements So he'll actually just say, we changed this, we modified that, we deleted this, we added that, and these are all the little things that perhaps we don't necessarily see or interact with daily. But they're the small cogs turning the big wheels, and there's often 1% changes, or these are the 1%ers. So I found that a useful process in itself, a little feedback mechanism once a month to know what processes have improved around here.

Bec Clare: Then what I think that does as well is create a culture where change and improvement is inherent. And so I think publicizing and talking about the things that have been changed, even if they're that 1%, is we create a culture where we're wanting to improve day in, day out, and we can celebrate those things. So whether it be once a month or at your team day, running an exercise where it's like, okay, what's, what's different from this time last team day, list all of those things. Okay. What do we want to achieve between now and our next team day and set some goals and some bigger picture around those. And I think it really fosters that culture. And to your point, Ben, we spoke earlier in the podcast around how do we help our team not get stuck in unpacking something or going really deep dive down the rabbit hole on this, but continually iterate is create that culture and that framework for that.

Ben Lynch: And it's also evidence, right? If they see, oh, these, these do seem like, you know, quote, small changes or process improvements, and they see the evidence of that, then perhaps that also helps them understand, oh, it doesn't have to be super big. There was a change to a single email and how it was worded or insert whatever that change is. So I like that. And it keeps it top of mind as well. Like you said, Beck of. This is just what we do. Things continually change. I love that. There's even some ideas for myself about how we do that even better internally of sharing those things. This is helpful for everyone. Well, as we look to wrap here, are there any other key notes? I'll go to you, Jack, and then to you, Beck. I think as people think about this, perhaps the most important thing is that they have this alignment, that this is the type of clinic they want to have, a clinic where we do look at the one percenters and try and improve them over time, that we know it's an iterative game. It's about mastery, continuing to get better. It's never kind of done. So I think, if anything, that's like the keynote. And we love sharing these stories and finding these stories because They create this beautiful narrative to come back to, to anchor back to in our language. Like how often do we internally talk about the Dave Brailsford, the Sky Team, right? And everyone instantly knows what that means. And it just helps us when we do drift away from those things to just come back, recentre. Oh yeah, let's do those process improvements. So, Joby, as we look to wrap here, are there any other keynotes you would emphasize for listeners on how to improve the 1%ers in their clinic?

Jack O'Brien: The best clinic owners do these three things when it comes to the 1%ers. They think about mastery and you commit to a lifelong process of mastering and iterating and refining your client experiences. Number two, you think about change management in your leadership and your team. It's not that our team don't like change, it's they don't like how we do change to them. So we think about, and then thirdly, we think about exposing ourselves to new experiences. Pay attention when you go to a new restaurant or a new hotel or a new healthcare provider or a new dentist or a new mechanic. Observe what you experience and what you don't experience and how that can apply in your clinic. And ultimately get an extra set of eyes, ears, hands for folks who've been there, done that, got the t-shirt and can help train your skill around the leadership of client experiences.

Ben Lynch: Bec, what about you? How would you sort of wrap and highlight?

Bec Clare: I feel like I should say no more because that's just beautiful. Thank you, Jack.

Ben Lynch: Well played, and this is something we're going to continue to dive into more and more, especially from an operations or an admin side. How can we really help those team members, Beck, which you're super passionate about? How can we help them grow with the clinic as well? So much of our emphasis is on practitioners, and understandably so, they're super important. But our admin teams, our practice managers, have such a huge opportunity to level up as well. So, we're going to dive deeper into that. Well, you can head over to clinicmastery.com forward slash podcast for the show notes here and all previous episodes. There's also a whole bunch of free resources on the website. Grab a copy or if you want to just get to implementing things, call Jack. Give him a message, jackatclinicmastery.com and you can talk through how you actually create sustainable change with us at your site. Beck, Jack, thank you again for another awesome podcast. We'll see you soon. Bye-bye.