Ben Lynch: Oh, thank goodness. I bet Jack. Well, you definitely bet him because he's not coming. It's just you and me, Hannah. Yes. Jack's on holiday. I think he barely works, really. G'day, good people. Welcome to the Grow Your Clinic podcast by Clinic Mastery. Here's what's coming up inside of this episode.

Hannah Dunn: You don't pay them in culture, you pay them in dollars. We've got a spreadsheet up on screen. For those on YouTube, you can see this quite clearly. What is the revenue that someone's brought in? What are the rewards that we've paid them? What's their salary that we've paid them? We'll talk about lots of those numbers today.

Ben Lynch: Have a note section and then an action section. What is the summary in a sentence or a paragraph for this therapist? New grad, took a while to get started, but they're hitting their strides. What are the best doing?

Hannah Dunn: And they're reviewing what their year in review looked like.

Ben Lynch: I would hope that you're not leaving it to once a year to review these numbers, but it's a great anchor point in your year.

Hannah Dunn: I actually now fill out a version of our year-end review each quarter. Great.

Ben Lynch: This episode will be right up your Allie if you're looking to get real clarity on your team's performance and make next year feel easier. We're diving into the practitioner year-end review. And trust me, you want to hear Hannah's take on the one metric owners consistently overlook. Plus stick around for when Hannah explains why busy is one of the most misleading signals in a clinic. 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. So, we're going to get stuck into practitioner year-in-review or therapist year-in-review, depending on how you talk about it. But first up, I'm just going to give a couple of wins and acknowledgments to folks that have integrated their clinic with Allie. We've got Tom, Anna, George, Sam, Dana, and Renee sent this really nice message in. My first impressions of Allie is that it's a fantastic way to see trends without having to wait hours for exports from Nookal which I very much appreciate, but most importantly, it'd be fantastic for therapists themselves to be able to see their own progress with individual goals, which is what we've always wanted to work towards. This saves me a huge amount of time building and updating Microsoft Power BI dashboards. So thanks, Renee. That's really good to hear of your progress. go check it out. It's now available for Splose, Nookal, Halaxy, and Cliniko as well. What we're going to touch on today, Hannah, is related to using Allie, though you don't need to if you're using your own spreadsheets, or just analysing data from your patient management system. We're going to put it into context put the year in review essentially into context for each individual therapist. But I might just tee this up. As we get to this end of the year, I think most clinic owners are hanging out for a break. I typically hear they're not starting anything new, it's closing a lot of loops, and they're just looking forward to a couple of days to breathe. slow down and kind of think about the year that they've had and start to plan for what the new year's going to hold for them. I think you're hopefully celebrating some of the wins and progress you've made. Maybe you've hired, you've expanded to a new site, maybe there's a bunch of client wins that you've had. But there's also a time to reflect on, okay, what hasn't worked or what didn't go to plan or what didn't I get to that I thought I might at the start of the year. And I think what we want to do today is provide clinic owners listening in a structure to complement their year-end review, a bit more of an objective way to figure out what's happened. And especially at a team level, how can we support the humans on our team, our practitioners in particular, because they're the engine room, to really grow with us into the new year? Ideally, reduce some of the clinical reliance on you if you're still consulting as a clinic owner, but also to grow those team members as well. So, I want to throw to you, Hannah, and say, when you get to reviewing the year, in particular around therapists, what's the first thing you look at?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah. So a few years ago, Clinic Mastery spoke to us about a year interview document. And so we're really looking at, um, what is the revenue that someone's brought in? What are the rewards that we've paid them? What's their salary that we've paid them? And really looking at all of those numbers. Um, we'll talk about lots of those numbers today, but, um, one thing we also break down is what portion of their role was as a leadership role. So what are we paying leadership hours for? and what are we paying clinical hours for? Because sometimes it can look like the percentage is a bit lower, but also important for us to know what we paid out for our leadership hours as well, and whether they're being utilised well, which is subjective, and just making sure that we've got accountability there though.

Ben Lynch: You've spoken to this a number of times on recent episodes around therapists, typically, that also have a leadership role. It can look like a number of different things, right? You have clinical supervision or mentorship. They might have a portfolio that is around CPD or training. They might have something that's more operational around some of the systems or the tech that you've got involved. Whatever it is in a clinic, they've got some part of their week allocated to things that are not client-facing or client-related, but to support the extended team. And so often you've highlighted, what are the optics that we have over that time? What are they doing? And how would we justify the spend on that moving forward? Or at least assess, what are we getting for the return on investment of time and wages that are there? Do you think this all boils down to what's effectively the last column in this spreadsheet, which is the percentage? Or are we overemphasising that too much? Which is essentially, how much did I pay this team member? And how much revenue did they generate? What's that as a percentage? Now, for contractors, it's pretty obvious. It's whatever you've got as your agreement. But for employees, It's a little bit different. It's maybe not as obvious and this puts it into perspective. So do you think we overweight that final column, which is the percentage paid to team members?

Hannah Dunn: I think the percentage paid is a good marker to understand in all of its context. It brings all of those numbers together and gives you one consistent number to look at across all of your team. Because sometimes you can look at one person who's paid $80,000 and one person who's paid $100,000. And the 80,000's actually brought in 120,000 per quarter. and the 100,000 is brought in 100,000 per quarter. And so it can look like the person's not performing or whatever it looks like. But I think then looking at those percentages allows us to know where we've got a bit more wiggle room. But also I think looking at what is the actual dollar amount that's being brought in, because I think sometimes that number helps us rationalise as well whether that's enough to sustain the business or what that looks like.

Ben Lynch: It's a really good point. I think what we're trying to do is maybe take away some of the gut feel about this. When you put the year in review and you're like, that person is crushing it or doing really well in their role, and this one feels like they're not performing as well. What we're trying to do is just add a layer of objectivity for you to assess how they're actually contributing. Now, it is quite commercial, this lens that we're taking. There's maybe some of the, you would say, subjective – it's maybe subjective, I'm sure there's a way you could add some data to it – about the contribution to culture or the team, or this person really adds at this new location where we've got a whole bunch of new grads. I don't want to say this is the be-all and end-all, but it's certainly a key component that's often overlooked, is what is the commercial reality of the contribution that each team member has made, specifically when we look at therapists?

Hannah Dunn: What I do think sometimes is overvalued and used as a bit of an excuse is, this team member is so good for our culture, I know they don't bill a lot, But you don't pay them in culture, you pay them in dollars and we need to, while yes, it's great to have those people, we also need to make sure there's a minimum standard that they can also achieve. They're not mutually exclusive, so being able to get that person up and running while also being able to support the culture is super important.

Ben Lynch: This is a really great point. I'm looking forward to unpacking this with you as we head into the new year as well, specifically around culture. A lot of clinic owners coming to us saying, you know, I really want to get my culture right. Or maybe they've got a location that's fantastic and they want to replicate that at another location that just doesn't seem to be as good. And they're just wondering how to do it because it can often seem maybe a bit intangible, a bit fluffy on the margins, a bit sort of too feel good. And how do you actually put your finger on the pulse? I'll just digress for a moment. For those that are listening in, come and check us out on YouTube because we're going to talk through this analysis that you can do. We've got a spreadsheet up on screen. For those on YouTube, you can see this quite clearly. We'll work through each of the columns. I've mentioned this HR expert that I was speaking to recently. And we got talking about culture. So often they're brought in to help turn around the culture or help team members that are underperforming transition out to a new role or a new company to performance manage them. And I said, you know, you would have thought and discussed culture a lot with business owners. You said, yeah, I got one of my, sorry, my mentor advised me to go away and actually deeply think about what this is, what the root cause is, what is culture actually, and write deeply. and then distill it down to one page, one paragraph, one sentence, and one word. And they came back with one word, which was standards, which is way more practical in my mind, because it's like, what is the standard we're willing to accept when it comes to client care? Do our appointments run on time? How regularly do they go behind time? What's the standard we're willing to accept for clients' assessments and reports being completed on time, and what is the quality of those things? What is the standard we expect for CPT and training, maybe the preparation or pre-reading or the questions that are answered? What's the standard we expect for rocking up on time and closing up? And so much of culture, which can feel a little bit intangible or permeates everywhere, is just brought back to, what's the standard you've got in this area? What are you willing to accept? And where's that line when you actually call it out and say, hey, that's not the way we go about it at this clinic? So it's a brilliant point that you labelled on there, and I have as well, Hannah, around standards. What are the standards that you have? So I think what we want to look at here in the review is what are the standards we have had this year? Because by and large, we've accepted this. And what are the standards we want moving forward into the new year when it comes to some of those clinical excellence indicators like rebooking or cancellations or new clients, patient visit average, utilisation, all of those things that make up the client journey. So here we are looking at this spreadsheet. We've got our practitioners. We've just got a couple of examples over here to the left. Allie, Jenny, Danny, and Sally. We've got our new year goals. Clients per week and revenue. Now, probably Hannah, in your case, you would look at service hours. Would that be the metric?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, impact hours.

Ben Lynch: Yeah, over clients per week. So we want to nuance this based on the clinic, right? You run an OT clinic. It's quite common in sort of speech, OT, psych, maybe to emphasise service hours, perhaps utilisation. In a musculoskeletal sense, maybe even in like a dental GP sense, we're looking at clients per week, individual appointments. So we've got our goals for the new year individualised, and then we start to get into the actual data. Before we go sort of cell by cell here, Hannah, is there anything else that you've added into your analysis when you look at individual therapists and the year that they've had?

Hannah Dunn: I mentioned splitting out those leadership versus those hours in regards to the year-end review, the hours of project work as well, because we also look at with that project work, what has happened. We have systems in place to monitor the outcomes for those. I also look at, no, I think the rest of what we've got is the same. Yes. We do just record what their salary expectations are based on their desire statement, just to have that in front of us as well, which is just copying that over. Great.

Ben Lynch: And just to clarify what you mean by that is, here's what they earned this year, actual, and here's what they want to be earning at some point in the future, so we can see the discrepancy. And we've talked in previous episodes when we can identify what that number is for an individual therapist and understand the meaning behind it, send the kids to a certain school, relocate and buy a house somewhere, get married, go on a honeymoon, whatever it is that they want to save for and invest for, the meaning behind their yearly earnings number. then it's much easier to mentor them to that number.

Hannah Dunn: Yes. And the other thing we've done just from a formatting perspective, but I think it's valuable, is that we put our full year team members at the top. So those who were with us for all 12 months. And then we put our part-time members who were there for the whole time or that they started later, but are part-time members. And then we just put any ceased employees down the bottom. Because I think it's important to have a look at your part-time employees as well. Because I think if we've got three part-time employees versus one full-timer, that can add to costs as well. Yeah, it's a really great point.

Ben Lynch: And you can get a lot of what we're showing here inside of Allie makes it super easy to collate this data just automatically. What we've got here is just a consolidated view on this spreadsheet. So I love that you're distinguishing or making the distinction between full-time, part-time hours. You're also distinguishing between leadership hours if they have that in their role as well. So, for those listening in, we have the goals for the new year. We have clients and then revenue. Then we go to the actual data. What's happened this year? So we have revenue, appointments, average revenue per appointment, the did not arrives, the clients that did not show, the amount of new clients, the client visit average or patient visit average, how many clients don't have upcoming appointments. These are clients that have dropped out of care or been discharged from care. We have their rebooking rate, cancellations, their cancellation rate or percentage. And then we move into some of the HR or payroll related data, which you would find typically from your Xero platform or Myob, whatever you're using, QuickBooks. So we've got annual leave hours. the annual leave dollars, how much have we paid for those annual leave hours, the amount of normal paid working hours and their pay for those hours, the sick leave hours as a total number, and then the amount of money paid for those sick leave or personal leave hours, the amount they've been paid in rewards or commission bonuses, And then the amount going to their super fund or their retirement fund, depending on where you are in the world, if you contribute to that. And then the total amount of money that we've paid as a clinic to this team member. And then we calculate the percentage. This was the column that I was referring to just before. where it says, how much should we pay this person? And how much did they bring in? And what was the percentage? It's effectively like a gross profit percentage per practitioner. If you're paying a contractor, this is going to be the agreed amount. Let's say you pay them 60%. You know that's going to them. But for employed practitioners and therapists, we need to distill it down like this and then capture it as a total number over here.

Hannah Dunn: And the other thing is that when we bring someone on, we will say to them, this is your salary, but, or here's also a rewards program. And it's ambiguous as to what we're going to pay them in rewards. And so this gives us the actuals of what their actual percentage is, inclusive of all of those rewards.

Ben Lynch: It's a really great point, Hannah, here, is with just trying to get context for how each practitioner, therapist, has contributed over the course of the year. Now, I would hope that you're not leaving it to once a year to review these numbers, but it's a great anchor point in your year to take a snapshot of the year overall, because some people might have, as you said, started partway through the year, Perhaps they're a new graduate and they're building up, and so the start of the year was a little bit slow, but they finished the year strong, and so we want to take a snapshot of the overall year. I want to give you something that Andrew Zachariah here at Clinic Mastery, who leads up the coaching team, had pointed out when doing this review. I want to read from his analysis. He said, there's a couple of different avatars or archetypes that you might identify when doing this in your therapist list. He said, the first is your busy senior therapist. They kind of look great on the surface, they're often predictable, but they might have some hidden upside, and we're going to find some subtle changes. Second is the quiet high performer. They've got some really strong fundamentals in client retention. They take good care of the new clients that do come to them. And they're sort of low noise, low irritation for you. And this might just reveal to you, especially if you've got multi-sites or perhaps you've got less to do with the day to day, that they actually come to the surface in this analysis. The next is the solid middle. They're kind of reliable, but they are the biggest opportunity for growth. I often find it's this middle layer that they're going okay. They're not really causing you any issues, but they're not a star performer. But if we are able to identify how they've performed and where the opportunities are into the new year, this could quite meaningfully unlock some growth for them and for the business. And then you've got those. trickier ones that maybe are obvious, maybe at a gut level or intuitively you know that they're causing some challenges or have a lot of growth to undertake and need a lot of support moving forward. Perhaps they happen to be a new graduate earlier on in their career or they're just someone that's struggling for various reasons and they need more support. I think off the back of this, and I did this exercise with a clinic recently, Hannah, I just got them to, over to the far right, you can see this scrolls quite a way across, is just have a note section and then an action section. Like, what is the summary in a sentence or a paragraph for this therapist? You know, new grad, you know, took a while to get started, but they're hitting their strides. Or they're a senior that's progressed into a leadership role, and so some of the fundamentals have gone down. Or the percentages increase, but don't take that as a negative. It's just we've taken them offline for a little bit. Then I got them to put an action section, which just says, what are we going to do with them in the first three months of the new year? We're going to focus on one to three things. How else have you taken an analysis like this and made sure that it doesn't just become you just gathering data and looking at the numbers, but that it actually leads to change?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah. I think also being really honest about your, with your team sometimes about what you've been looking at and how those numbers have come through and the sustainability of that. And so the why behind why you're working on certain areas. And I will also compare those numbers. Oh, it's another opportunity to review the calendars and just see where that downfall might've happened to sort of work it out yourself before you go and have a chat with the practitioner themselves. I think the other good information it gives you is it gives you a standard to sort of look at your next recruits. So if you've got a new grad that sort of took a bit of time to sort of build up, it gives you a bit of a benchmark to know what to expect with your next recruit. And it just allows you to also see like sometimes you might be paying a team leader I don't know, 120,000 and then you might have that sort of level three therapist where they've been with you for sort of four years and they're feeling more and a bit more effective and thinking about what is the difference here and why are we seeing one of our more experienced clinicians not performing in the same way as that middle tier. So just really, I love the notes section. I'm going to add that in. But being able to use the data, we always say the numbers give us the information, but there's data behind it that tells us a story. And so we need to go and find out what is the story behind these numbers and where do they come from.

Ben Lynch: Especially if you've got a leadership team or quite a large team, maybe there's multiple owners in the team, the notes section and the action section are really great contexts because they are the narrative behind the numbers, as you said. They help you figure out, okay, is this something for me to be concerned about? Is this something for me to act on? Or is it more like, hey, we're going all right, here's the context. and a play on. We're clear on what's happening moving forward.

Hannah Dunn: We are across three locations as well. We use our year in review just to look at the individual. We don't actually look at them split over three locations, for example, but we use our zero to do that. So for our zero, we will split them so that we can see what costs have gone to which clinic. But for this, we're just looking at the practitioner themselves. Yeah, just overall. Yeah. which you could do it either way. You could split them out and have them as individual people, Belinda 1, Belinda 2, or Belinda Footscray, Belinda Werribee, and then put them that way, or you could just combine them. Depends what your data is easier to grab.

Ben Lynch: When you go through this process of having this conversation with a clinic owner recently, and I don't think there's a right or a wrong, or there's many ways to be right, as we'd say, but do you go into it with a question or a clear outcome? Or, perhaps, do you go through the analysis and kind of hope things are revealed to you as you go? Because I do see a lot of clinic owners now with, say, Allie as an example, and historically with spreadsheets, that might tend to go for the latter, which is to open up their data source and peruse through it. And maybe things are revealed to them by having a look. And I think there's merit in that. But I also think having the first point, a question, an outcome, a decision you're looking to make, clearing your mind before going and looking at the data is a great way to maybe speed up the process, but also perhaps look at it with a more critical eye rather than just hoping things are revealed to you. I'm interested in how you go about it. Is it a bit of a mix? Do you tend to favour one more than the other?

Hannah Dunn: I feel like I'm going to disappoint my dad with this answer, like you with this answer. I feel like we go into this particular data set with what will we find rather than a specific answer or specific question. But when we're going to something like Xero and reporting, we often have a specific question around where can we save dollars? What can we do? But with this one in particular, I find that things generally reveal themselves. It's a bit of a… It's just a different look at the data to what you may traditionally be looking at in that you're really looking at what are those numbers individually. I actually now fill out a version of our year-end review each quarter because I write in what rewards people have in a spreadsheet. I write in what rewards they've got and it sort of gives me that up-to-date yearly view up until the point that we're at. So I find that really helpful.

Ben Lynch: So, you're using that to process reviews, as in figure out the dollar value that will be paid out?

Hannah Dunn: I'm using it when I look at their rewards program, and at each quarter, when I look at how much we're paying them in rewards, so if it's $3,000, then I just write that $3,000 in next to the clinician, and if there's a pay increase, then I look at that amount too. And then it adds it all up towards the end. And it just takes a quarter of each quarter's salary to add together so that it makes it a yearly amount if you've had a pay increase.

Ben Lynch: I think that's a really great frequency to look at it is once per quarter. A lot of clinics will run a bonus reward structure that runs quarterly. Some do it a lot more frequently, but that seems to be pretty normal from what we've seen. And I think quarterly is a great opportunity for you to adjust again, as we discussed before. You don't want to get to the end of the year and go, oh, you know, I kind of knew this was happening underneath the surface, but I didn't actually do anything about it or I was too busy to do anything about it. But it does give you that opportunity to go, all right, what's the intent for the new year? What's the plan, the development plan, the growth plan for the individual on the team moving forward?

Hannah Dunn: We hear so much from the people that we mentor in CM about feeling overwhelmed and feeling like there's so much to do all the time. And so building it into your quarterly rhythm doesn't make it feel like a mountain. It just makes it feel like just something else that you tick off at that time and just part of your day.

Ben Lynch: It's a really great point. There's so much to do. We've talked about the end-of-year checklist, the start-of-year checklist, adding this in, which would fit into the end-of-year checklist, have I done my practitioner therapist year-end review? I think these things are intended to help you make better decisions moving forward. make life easier as you move forward rather than feel like you're overwhelmed or chaotic. It's an interesting point. I certainly get it and feel it as well. You've got so much on your plate, but you also need to create time to do this so that you make better decisions moving forward. For folks that are getting to the end of the year feeling like there's a lot on the plate, we get it. If you can make time to do this, I think your analysis of the year will be a hell of a lot better.

Hannah Dunn: What's the, um, in the four hour week or whichever book it is, cause I'm never good at remembering who says what. Um, the, if you, you know, invest sort of 10 minutes at the start of your day to plan out your day, you get an hour back and it's like that with the team. If you can invest this hour or whatever the timeframe is to, you get this done, you're going to get so much more back financially and in time. It's such a good point.

Ben Lynch: And you probably credit me for a lot more stuff than I actually do because of my memory. I look very favourable if Hannah's talking about it. Very generous. Maybe it was like, eat that frog or something like that, you know, start your day. But nonetheless, I think it's a great way to begin the day. One of the things that we do in the daily huddle here at CM is, who do you want to acknowledge? Because a lot of work goes unseen and, you know, people don't get the acknowledgement. That's okay. That happens with a big team. So we like to celebrate progress or success. Someone else, give them a shout out. And then secondly, what's your priority for the day? And so in a similar way, and we always having to come back to, don't go through your task list or priorities. It's priority. It's just one. It's just the one thing that you are going to focus on and get done today. So similar to your point. And whenever that's not done, I feel this kind of clunky start to the day. I don't know if you do too, but getting super focused, it just helps massively through your decisions. I assume you write that out in a paper diary when you're getting that up. Actually, I put it on my Google calendar just as like a 15 minute or 30 minute time block, just at the start of the day, like this is my priority. So because I'm referencing my calendar regularly throughout the day, I'm always like anchored back to, oh, that's the thing. For listeners who are new, we've had a laugh and debated paper diaries versus digital diaries, but whatever works. Whatever works, hey? Isn't that where we got to? Yeah, or a combination, but whatever works. Or I'm right. So as you forecast into the new year using an analysis like this, what are some of the things that you come up with? You find yourself creating or deciding off the back of this. Now you said you do it quarterly, but maybe have you got a couple of examples of things that it's led to for you and your team this year?

Hannah Dunn: Yes. These aren't this year, but there are things that it definitely has led to. Like when you find inefficiencies, like when you look, when you have this view of your team, like sometimes you think, this practitioner is smashing it, like they're doing so well. And then you get to the year interview and you're like, holy moly, they're not smashing it as much as I thought they were. So sometimes that can, well, this year it did result for us in looking at our training around how to bill for indirect time for our clinicians and about how we communicate that to family and ensuring that we re-communicate that and make sure it's really clear. And that we also provided some scripting for therapists for when they are unsure or when pet families are unsure. And so that is one thing that came about. So ultimately we were looking at how can we better invoice? And the reason for that was because some of our practitioners might not have been at the level in which we thought they were. Other things that have come, a lot of calendar management stuff has come out of it. So we all have lunch at the same time across the day. We all start either, we all start on the hour. All our appointments are run on the hour. We don't allow people to have a 9.30 appointment. And you know, if you're currently in a clinic where you just work with the family or the client on what time they want to come in. Stop it. No, don't. But also we found it to be more efficient. Do what I do. No. Whatever works, as Ben would say. But for us, that is something that has made it a lot more streamlined. So we've been able to look at how it works. I think for some of the members that we've worked with, we've looked at the fact that no one's achieved rewards. So if no one's achieving rewards, then is there something that we need to change with the rewards program? Or is there something else? And usually if no one is achieving it, then it's that there's something we need to do with the rewards program. So it does highlight those sorts of things. The other thing it can highlight is that a team has a full part-time team and that can sometimes be really tricky with, you know, you're paying per head for some things like insurances and um, team parties and culture days and PD budgets. And so sometimes it's a lot more expensive to have multiple people. I stumble over sometimes because I think it is always, but sometimes you do need some part-timers, but it's about a balance. So it helps us as coaches as well, see your team and see what that looks like as well. It's a great point.

Ben Lynch: I was just having this conversation the other day with Shane Bennett, part of Move Beyond. They've just merged with Marcio's clinic, Movement 101. Now they have, I don't know, ridiculous amount of therapists, like 160-odd. And one of the key metrics that they use Two, in fact, I just wrote them down, was the full-time to part-time ratio. That's one thing that they look at regularly. And then secondly is the new client to full-time equivalent ratio as well. Because they want to know, and they have their own benchmarks here of, have we got sufficient new client inflow for the amount of full-time therapists that we have? And if that starts to sort of dip below, then they know they've got to look at their marketing side of things more purposefully than they otherwise do. And they also know that culturally that he made this point. He said, when we get out of whack on the full-time to part-time ratio based on their own internal benchmark, they do notice that culture suffers. And so that's a key one for them, obviously with a massive team like that and the blending of two brilliant teams together now through the merger. Yeah, that's kind of critical, especially as you create this new one org chart and company. Yeah, there are two that I thought of you when you mentioned in the practitioner year in review, adding some of these other numbers as reference points and ratios, just add to the context of your, and feed into the decisions you're looking to make.

Hannah Dunn: And we always say in coaching, like, you need to put things through your own filter. And so it's awesome when we hear back from members and from the community as well about things that they're measuring so that we can also put them through our filters. And, you know, we'd be keen to hear what others are measuring if we've missed things. Yeah, absolutely.

Ben Lynch: Send it in. I've seen a couple of massive clinics, larger than 150 practitioners jumping onto A11y recently, and I've had a number of conversations with them about some of the different metrics they're looking to capture and understand their big org chart, because you're not as proximal to your team in a state like that versus you've got three to five team members. Not that there's any sort of size that you need to be. Just to emphasise that, we always talk about creating a meaningful clinic for you. And I always point out the difference between, say, Daniel Gibbs, one of the co-founders here at Clinic Mastery, regularly on the pod, team of like three to four practitioners at any one time, but it created the structure and the freedom for him that he so desired and loved. And then you got Shane Davis on the other end, the other co-founder of Clinic Mastery with, I don't know, 15 locations, sports medicine stores, shoe stores on top of podiatry clinics. And he's able to do it, and that suits his style of going about things, right? You've created three clinic locations. I'm sure you're continuing to expand, but one service, OT. So everyone's running their own version of success, as we say, but I think it's always good to get bits of inspiration from other clinic owners' journeys.

Hannah Dunn: And I think the practitioner in review is so good to do if you've got three on your team or you've got 50 on your team with the data coming in. And it's just one of those things that is, what are the best doing? And they're reviewing what their year in review looked like. And so we want to instill those values and instill that practice while you've got a bit more time maybe, or while You can see the numbers. You probably don't have more time when you've got less practitioners sometimes. Sometimes you do. But just being able to get that into being a habit is so important. Great point.

Ben Lynch: And to channel Shane Davis who often say it doesn't have to be bigger. but it can be brighter. What's our brighter version of the new year moving forward? One of the things – we've just wrapped up our leadership retreat. Again, we were going to do it in February, but no one's schedules could align, so we actually pulled it reasonably early to November because we only did the first or the more recent one in August of this year. And one of the questions that we had for ourselves was, if we made the best possible start to the new year, what would, quote, success look like at the end of March? And we've shared that on the pod before, and it created a really great discussion around, okay, what are some of the tangible measures of progress? What are some of the scope of works that we would then pursue to get to there? I think off the back of a year in review, which is what we did in our own lens, not a clinic lens, you're able to come up with some of those questions and answers. What would success look like for this therapist by the end of March? If they got off to the best possible start, what would we see and what would they be doing? As you frame up 2026 at DOTS, how are you thinking about the start of the year? What are some of the discussions that you've had, some of the questions you've asked your leadership team?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah. So for us at the moment, we feel like we've got quite a stable team with our policies, procedures and doing documents like a year in review. And so for us, the next year does look like, um, growing into two different locations. And so when we look at that though, again, like you spoke about before, we want to make sure that there is that new client influx to be able to have that. So for us, it's really about relationship building and looking at those connections, looking at marketing for this next 12 months.

Ben Lynch: That's so good. In, in a similar way, I remember, uh, an advisor consultant challenging me. Cause we were talking about growing and they said, when you say growth, what do you mean? And like specifically, objectively, what do you mean? Because. At different points, growth means different things. You might say, okay, we're going to grow new locations. We're going to grow our revenue. We're really going to focus on that. And I know a few clinics that have pursued that growth. What that meant was at the expense of profitability. So we're going to grow through revenue by acquiring some other clinics or we're going to feed in a lot of marketing and we're going to see the profitability sort of 12, 18 months from now. For some clinics, it's like, we've been on that train and now we actually need to see the dividends, the distributions come back to us as owners. So, we want to go for profitability in this period of time. And so, I always find that a really useful framework when people sit down and do this to say, when I say growth, what do I mean by that? and there's probably going to be a very specific objective, tangible measure that's going to mean more to you in this next period of time than another version. That's interesting to hear you talk about. We're going to grow through location, geographic expansion, In order to do that successfully, we need to be really capable at marketing to generate the new clients. And even in that, like that to me sounds like a really great singular high value strategic focus. I'm sure there's plenty of other things that you'll do throughout the year. But how do you go about sort of documenting that or sharing that with the team? Is that as simple as it is or have I oversimplified it?

Hannah Dunn: No, I think it's really important because the thing I wrote down here was just systems. Like what I wanted to talk to and what came to mind is that when you do your year in review, it's so important because you can feel overwhelmed by being like, there's all these projects I want to work on. Yeah. Having one central document in which you record them, whatever that system is, so that you're able to write down what those projects are, because you're not going to be able to work on every single one of them. And like you've said, you need to break it down into steps that are achievable. for us to achieve those locations, we need to market, we need to recruit, whatever those things are. So having that central document. And then with change management training, it's really important that you then have a plan on how you're going to communicate it, when you're going to communicate it and who needs to be informed. Sometimes we can overshare with our teams. Sometimes we undershare. Sometimes we give too much detail when we are sharing. Other times not enough, which can create uncertainty. So just making sure that you've got really clear plans. And I think it's just like for me, I just visualise, you know, putting your foot on the brake. You know, I go 110 Ks an hour. And so I definitely, for my team, the feedback in their days have been, you know, we need you to slow down because it's too much for us. And while this wasn't the first thing I mentioned for next year, we are diversifying from NDIS like every other clinic. And yes, that's a major project. But when you asked me, it wasn't the first thing that came to mind, probably because it's not the one I'm most excited about. It sounds hard. Yeah, sounds hard, but these are the things that, you know, we've all got lots of projects, but it's about being able to prioritize them, being able to look at the data and see what's going to have the most impact and be able to really plan for them and use your team to support the ability to grow into whatever area it is and being clear on what those expectations are.

Ben Lynch: I think I'm excited for us to cover this in the new year is projects. Because like you said, you listen to a podcast like this, you work with your coach or consultant, you read a book, you get excited like, we're going to do this. And actually what we've found is clinic owners with that entrepreneurial spirit have sort of a go-getter attitude. They're problem solvers. So there's a system for this, a policy for that. They're fixing problems. But you get down the road and you realise you've kind of built this piecemeal clinic or this kind of Frankenstein clinic. You've got all the bits and pieces, but it's still a bit clunky and growth should feel easier as we mature. But it actually feels a bit clunkier. Maybe you find yourself answering the same questions over and over again. It keeps coming back to you and you're like, but hold on a minute. I've done this before. I've set these things up. And what we've realised is that it's actually about designing the operating model. I think the current state of your clinic is a reflection of the operating model that you have. And in order for growth to feel easier, you need to redesign the operating model with purpose. And when you go kind of bit by bit, system by system, you end up with this kind of, yeah, Frankenstein clinic is a great visual, rather than seeing the whole and going, How does the whole model actually work coherently together and reinforce one another? How did the pay structures that we set our team up on ensure that the client experience and client journey gets done brilliantly well? And if that's not working, how can both of these come together and reinforce one another? So we need the operating model to work really quite well. So I think we can go to some of the, how do you make decisions around projects? How do you pick the right one? Because we're all resource constrained. I bet, you know, people are listening at like, if only I had an extra team member, if only if I had the practice manager, if only I had the extra therapist. The reality is whether you've got a team of one or 100, everyone is saying that. Yeah. Like every clinical, it's like, if only I had this person, we could do more. So actually you, you realize it's your ability to make decisions. Like, what's the right next thing to be doing? And so much of this analysis here feeds into the context through which we make decisions. So I think we could go into that. I've got a number of things to share around that. Secondly, just to capture this, because we love a good book recommendation for folks, is playing to win. Playing to Win. It's a book by Roger Martin, and what it does is it very practically spells out how you can structure a strategy for growth – again, depending on what growth means for you – in a one- to three-page document. And what I love, I think it's in that book, talks about a strategy is not a plan, and a plan is not a strategy. And so actually getting clear to your point, Hannah, of like, this is the source of truth anyone on our team could see. Strategically, this is the intent where we're going. And then the plan for the next 90 days is over here. This is practically what we're going to do in alignment with that. So it sounds like that's what you've worked on, the strategic intent, the expansion, and then you've put that in like a spine document, or you're going to? Um, sure.

Hannah Dunn: Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. Um, yeah, we just sit down with our leadership team and really work through what do those steps look like and what, where are we going and have Canva documents really. And you make it pretty. Yeah, we make it pretty on Canva. Classic OT look. Yes, correct. So we like to have it digitally, um, and on Canva and you can share it so easily. That's true. That's true. Yeah. And work on it together. Um, yeah, so. That's very nice.

Ben Lynch: When it's done, when it's beautified, um, it certainly gets received a bit better, I think. Yes. I found that I love going down that line. I always then procrastinate or the thing takes longer than it ought to, even with the beautiful Canva templates. And I've just reverted back more recently to just like a doc. where I can just structure it black and white, and then I can hand it off to someone else to beautify it. Because otherwise it'll take me an inordinate amount of time to get done. Well, that gives us a really great sort of anchor point to wrap this episode, I think. How do you use the year in review to assess the practitioners who need more support, those that are crushing it, and then plan what do you do in the new year, especially how do we start strong? Yeah. And then specifically, what does the year look like? What is the strategic intent? How are we going to grow? Brighter, not necessarily bigger, though it can include both. It does for you by the sounds of bigger by expansion. Yes. And then what are some of the key decision-making filters for deciding on the projects that we pursue? Because we're all constrained by resources, time and money. and knowledge, so you've got to figure out what truly is a priority, not priorities.

Hannah Dunn: And I think, um, while we say that we want to delegate things, like the year-end review is for the directors to do if you- Great point. And you can hand it over to someone maybe to put the data in, but I think you need to be involved in it until you truly understand it. I think that's probably one of the biggest things that we see it fall down. And then in regards to feedback to team, Whether that comes from the director or if there is one chain in which you can provide that feedback to their mentor and then their mentor is able to provide it on, but just being really clear about what those pathways are for communication, whether it's about what changes are happening or the feedback to the team member.

Ben Lynch: Very nice. Well said. I think, um, this is super important to be involved in. Well, if you've made it this far in the episode, thanks so much for tuning in. You can head over to clinkmastery.com forward slash podcast for all the show notes and links. And we will see on another episode very soon when Jacobin's back in the desk, at the desk. Yes. I hope he's enjoying his leave. Bye bye. Bye.