Ben Lynch: G'day, good people. Welcome to the Grow Your Clinic podcast by Clinic Mastery. Here's what's coming up inside of this episode. This episode will be right up your Allie if you're looking to get more time to work on your business. We're diving into how to make progress even if everything relies on you. And trust me, you want to hear Hannah's take on the list of quick wins she focuses on for busy clinic owners. Plus stick around for when we discuss how to get control of money and time with a few easy changes.

Hannah Dunn: The best have a calendar that their team don't have access to. Sometimes we find people putting things in to look busy because they feel they have to justify their time to their team.

Ben Lynch: So many of these clinic owners in this type of position, you've probably seen this I remember, opening up someone's zero and there were 1,200 unreconciled items.

Hannah Dunn: Even like celebrating that as a win, like it's such a win that we know that that is there now. We didn't know that before.

Ben Lynch: What are some of the things that you're looking to do to get some reasonably quick wins around numbers?

Hannah Dunn: even if you can just learn how to run a profit and loss.

Ben Lynch: I felt way more in control of my week when my Monday mornings and my Friday afternoons have no meetings.

Hannah Dunn: That's the biggest killer of time. We do it because we always have.

Ben Lynch: Before we dive in, today's episode is brought to you by AllieClinics.com. If you're the kind of clinic owner who loves to feel organized and stay ahead of the chaos, you'll love Allie. Think of it as your digital clone. It's the single source of truth for all your clinic's policies, systems, and training. Test it for free at AllieClinics.com. And in other news, applications are now open to work with us one-on-one at Clinic Mastery. If you want support to grow your clinic and bring your vision to life, just email hello@clinicmastery.com with the subject line podcast, and we'll line up a time to chat. All right, let's get into the episode. It is episode 368. My name is Ben Lynch. I'm joined by Hannah Dunn, director of DOTS and OT service in Melbourne. Though you're in my neck of the woods, catching up with some colleagues.

Hannah Dunn: Yes.

Ben Lynch: In the great state of South Australia.

Hannah Dunn: Excited for a wine tour. And there's a festival on in Adelaide, apparently.

Ben Lynch: It is the festival state.

Hannah Dunn: Yeah.

Ben Lynch: I thought that stuff sort of stopped around March, but okay. Is it down in McCarranvale?

Hannah Dunn: I don't know. Look, I've got no info. I said to everyone I was very happy to just say yes to anything I didn't have to organize.

Ben Lynch: That's the best, isn't it? Just rock up. Someone else is organizing everything. Yeah. They're one of the best. Well, it's just you and I today and we're going to tackle a problem that we hear so often and that I specifically heard as recent as last week when we had a new member join us in the Business Academy. And he was saying, you know what, I just don't have much time, much time to implement, much time to learn. But I actually had spoken to him a year earlier and he said, you know, our business is growing and maybe we'll need you at some point. And it's gotten to the point where he's like, I just don't have time to think, time to scratch myself kind of thing. And my wife is practice manager and operations manager is just feeling totally burnt out. They've got a very small team. It's just them plus one other. No problem really getting clients come through the door, but they're at this point where it's like, there's just no time to work on the things I need to do to grow the team, to secure up some of those marketing streams of new clients, to get on top of their finances. And I thought it'd be really cool to go through your experience, my experience, and also how we might navigate coaching someone like this, because it's such a common narrative. someone like this comes to you, you have your first meeting, walk me through what you would go through to understand the situation and sort of navigate defining some respite for this clinic owner.

Hannah Dunn: Yes, it is so common and we hear it so often from the people that we coach, even halfway through coaching or whatever the timeframe is where people just feel overwhelmed and just feel like they've got to stop doing some things. But what I would usually say to them is, what's going to change? Like, how are we going to solve this without coaching? if it hasn't changed here, what's going to change? And really being really practical and saying, let's pull up the calendar. Are we putting out spot fires constantly? Like, what is it that's making us feel like we don't have time? Because I guarantee that if something else urgent came up, you would find the time to fit it in. So why is it that we can't find the time for coaching, for working on the business, for recruiting, whatever that might be? And so when we pull up the calendar, Often retrospectively, it looks like there is time in the diary and that's where it feels like there's been spot fires or things like that. And so really the first thing that I would do is just really work out what are the tasks that you're doing? So an audit of your time, what are the tasks that you're doing that make you feel like you've got no time? And then looking at, can we time block for those things? What we see happen is that people move those times because they think something else is more important. So really starting to learn about this is so important that we can't move it and treating it as important as though you were mentoring one of your team. Would you move an appointment for one of your team? No. And so then we can't do that. And sometimes they will say, yeah, I do move appointments for my team. And we go, okay, well, we're going to stop that too, because that tells our team that that's not important.

Ben Lynch: Great point. Great point. You and I are the same. I would go straight to open their Google calendar or whatever calendar they use, and we would look at what's happened and what's coming. One thing I like to do is say, okay, you might feel that you don't have a lot of time now, but let's look in four weeks or six weeks from now. Because usually there's some gaps in your diary at that time frame or we'll just find the time frame that there are gaps. And just rule it out, block it out. Even if you don't know what you're going to do, I want you to know that that's kind of the light at the end of the tunnel is, oh, I know on this date in the future, I've got the morning off or the afternoon off or the day off to work on these things. I find it interesting as well to ask, like, why do you reschedule those things? Like maybe to your point, to some degree, they're like, ah, you know, something more urgent popped up. I like to unpack it and actually find out maybe they're not the best in the morning. Or maybe they're better in the evening or vice versa. Or maybe they're better on a Friday afternoon and they've been trying to do this thing on a Wednesday morning and it's just too busy in the clinic. So I'm like, let's work with it and put it on a Friday afternoon when you perhaps want to have, you know, an easier end to the week or whatever the case may be. So, okay, we both agree on find the time, audit the time that's happened before. And then you're also saying the task list as well. Do you want to just like elaborate a little bit more on the task? What are you trying to find out? What are you looking for?

Hannah Dunn: I'm looking for what are the things that are low value tasks that you're jumping into that you might not actually need to be jumping into, or what are the problems that you're solving that maybe if we had a system or a process or a training that we could avoid doing those things? Where can we stop putting our time? Because if on Monday that time was free, why on Thursday and Friday all of a sudden were there things to go in there? Did we not?

Hannah Dunn: Yes.

Hannah Dunn: predict those things needed to happen, or are they just things that ate up our time? Because we all know that we'll fill the time that we have, and so if we haven't scheduled our prime properly, then there's a saying that someone else will schedule it for you. But I think the other thing that I wanted to touch on is, Ben, you mentioned that we'll get them to pull up their calendar, whether that be a Google Cal or a Splose calendar or whatever that is. And I think if we talk to what do the best do, the best have a calendar that their team don't have access to. When you're the director and your team has access to your calendar, sometimes we find people putting things in to look busy because they feel they have to justify their time to their team. What we don't want you doing is doing tasks that don't need to be done. would say that we don't want our team seeing our calendar and seeing blank spots and thinking, oh, I'll just use that time. Like, oh, I've got a clinical question. I'm just going to come and see you at that time. What we want is a system that allows our team to reach us in a time in which we can then schedule the time or We don't want other people booking into our calendar. Other people might say, use a calendar link, have certain days or times available, whatever works. But at the moment, we just don't want people having a full range of being able to access you and your calendar and you feeling like you have to fill it.

Ben Lynch: Great point. What you prompted for me as well in a similar way is communication channels and just setting some really clear expectations around what they're used for. And probably I'll just go straight to what is and what is not an emergency. There's two parts to this in my mind. One is the owner, the director actually not looking in or logging in and looking. Like if the first thing you do in the morning is open your emails, open your slack, open whatever. you're immediately in reaction and on the back foot. Now, you might say, well, there are problems to solve. Someone couldn't access the computer system or they couldn't get into the building. Those things are serious bottlenecks that need to be solved. That, in my mind, is like, that's a phone call because I need urgent help. I'm not going to rely on you actually seeing an email or a Slack message. So I always look at how can you control some of the notifications. and messaging platforms that you're using, more often than not, people are just saying email notifications pop up, Slack notifications pop up, bing, bing, bing. I'm like, I don't know how you concentrate. So I realize different people operate differently, but to your point of like preserving the time in the diary, I'm like preserve the time in the sense of your focus of what you're looking at. So, and these are pretty actionable. things to do right away. You don't have to wait weeks to do it. And some of that might be also a conversation with a team member or a bit of training if you do get a little bit of time to help them figure out, well, how do I solve this without bringing it or escalating it to you? You know, we've talked about delegation of authority before, as an example, if it's under 500 bucks, once offer ongoing, then solve the problem, I trust you, or insert whatever parameters. Okay, so you're auditing the task list, you're auditing the calendar, is there anything else that you start to go to for some immediate quick wins to release this perceived pressure of, I don't have much time, because that's essentially what you're alluding to is like, there is time. It's just, you're not, you're not controlling it as well as you could do. So what else are you going to, to help this clinic owner immediately?

Hannah Dunn: Uh, finding a quick win, which the four hour working week is a really good book around utilizing your time. And, um, it talks to like mission critical tasks that are going to create that dopamine hit, that success and feeling successful. And I think if we can even carve out half an hour where we say, like, let's get this done. And even in a coaching session, like starting a task, if we can, we know sometimes the hardest part is getting the task started. So if we can actually provide, there are so many resources and structures that you've created Ben in the Kajabi. Yes. So even if we can pull up one of those videos to watch and we say, this is a template, save it in their folder and it's started, then it feels much easier to actually achieve. And if we're accurate about the time in which it's going to take, like half an hour to watch this and start this project, it can just feel so much easier. And if we can do that and. Um, we were actually talking to our team yesterday about working with parents and, you know, sometimes as a therapist, you want to provide like three or four recommendations because you feel like that means you know what you're talking about and you're doing a great job. But actually with parents, we often just need one thing and one thing only because there's so much on their plate. And once we get that success, we're actually going to have better outcomes. And it's the same with our diaries. Like if we can just focus on one thing and that little step to get the win and the success, we're going to have so much more success in the long run.

Ben Lynch: It's a great point. And those listening in, I want to cover a number of different areas, a number of different action points, but by all means, don't do them all. Perhaps just pick one or two, as you're saying, and actually follow through on them. One thing that became apparent through the conversation with this clinic owner as well is They don't look at their accounting software zero. I'm not even sure they've logged in. And so for me, this highlights, okay, you haven't spent the time understanding your numbers. That adds another layer of pressure because they're just not sure how well they're doing. So I think the default is, I'll just keep working harder, seeing more clients, because then I know, you know, we should be all right.

Hannah Dunn: Thank you.

Ben Lynch: The bank account looks like there's money, I've been able to pay the bills, but I actually don't know how we're going. And so they cannot confidently say, oh, we can recruit and we can hire, which clearly is one of the key high value activities this clinic owner needs to do. So they need to carve out some time to do that. But let's talk about the money side of things because so much of the stress is around time and around money. What are some of the things that you're looking to do to get some reasonably quick wins, even if that's clarity, not necessarily the bank balance goes up, around numbers and understanding your numbers for a clinic owner?

Hannah Dunn: Yes, and we all know that I hate numbers or I hated numbers and I'm much better with them now. But I think the first step, even if you can just learn how to run a profit and loss and have a look at what is the revenue that is coming in, the next step later down the track is we'll look at that by practitioner. But at the moment, just have a look at that your profit and loss is actually accurate and that you can see actually what is the profit looking like. Well, it's a great point.

Ben Lynch: To interrupt you, sorry, so many of these clinic owners in this type of position, you've probably seen this, I remember opening up someone's zero and there were 1200 unreconciled items going back a couple of years. So we couldn't even look at the up-to-date P&L to know the business because it was just so out of date. So that's one of the things, right? You would want to have up-to-date books. So you're going further on the understanding your P&L. How do you do that? Because they're starting from such a low base, typically, like we all did.

Hannah Dunn: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I think just like you said, it can feel really overwhelming, this stuff, when you open up your zero and there's 1,200 unreconciled items. But just even celebrating that as a win, it's such a win that we know that that is there now. We didn't know that before. Now what we need to do is look at what is the next step for us to achieve that. Is it that we're going to get a VA to support us? Can we connect you with one? And so it's about us blocking out that, you know, ideally two hours where we can to have a project to work on. But we're not saying that you have to know exactly what that is, that if you're in this position and you've got a coach, they'll guide you through what to use that time for, but at least you've got that. Or if you've got two directors in your company, making sure that you've got Like one of the things that I work with first off is making sure that our directors are meeting with each other, that the owners of the business have time to meet, because that is often the first thing that goes. And that also you've got time to look at the numbers. And so it may be that you just put an hour of finance in your diary, but that each week that is a different thing that you're doing, but you're just starting to upskill yourself in those areas. And just thinking about what are those mission critical tasks. Like, yes, it'd be great to have our values up on the wall, but is that going to make a difference in the same way? Yeah, great point. Looking at our zero.

Ben Lynch: Great point. Yeah, there's these elements that are like the painkillers and then the vitamins. We often talk about the pain. What do you need right now to release some of this pain of the time pressure you're feeling or financial pressure? What are the vitamins maybe? What are the things you're doing proactively to set you up for three months, six months, you know, three years? The other one on the finance side that I'll often come to is the outstanding accounts or the accounts receivable. Like you've already delivered the services, you're owed the money and it's not in the bank account just yet. That often is one that a practice manager or a receptionist could do and perhaps by the end of the week, they've actually recovered a few thousand dollars which is really helpful in just easing some of that cash flow strain that perhaps you're experiencing. What about prices? I know maybe this isn't as common in some clinics. But raising fees is often and typically for a lot of clinic owners, something they did years ago and maybe they're not sure when the next time is to do it. How do you navigate updating fees in alignment with the improvement in service and training and facilities and tools and tech that clinic owners have made? That's often the piece they miss in justifying, actually, I'm worth a little bit more. How do you have the conversation around? fees and specifically are there different fees that you like to focus on first in changing? Yeah. How do you approach that?

Hannah Dunn: I think it's easiest if you are, I mean, for us, we always do it as a whole clinic change, like all our fees, but if we were looking at one fee, the easiest fee to change is your initial appointment fees because those people don't have a preconceived idea of what you're going to be charging and then looking at your session rates. I think the thing is that there are a lot of limiting beliefs out there around fees and around how much we charge, including in those NDIS clinics where they say, but we can't increase the rate. No, you can't increase the rate above $193.99 for OTs and I know physios and things are less. You can make sure that you are accurately billing though, because that is where we often see the difference. And so it's always about the number changing. Sometimes it's about ensuring the time that we're allocating to that service is accurate and that we're not doing an hour and a half on an hour charge. or similar to that, or we're not providing a whole lot of resources that we haven't been able to charge for that are taking up a lot of time. And you talked to, or I'm not sure if you talked to or prompted this thought, but just around the communication when you talked about this clinic owner whose partner is a practice manager, What we often find is that the communication pathways aren't there. So there's not a set time in which they're doing their meeting for an hour a week or half an hour a week or whatever is needed. So what happens is that, you know, five times a day I come to you, Ben, and I say, Hey, about this, Hey, about that. And I interrupt your flow. When, if we can consolidate that into one meeting and we just have a brain dump, either channel, notebook, whatever works for you. And then all of that comes to the one meeting for an hour. Then that streamlines our day in communication too, because your attention is just like the phone going off and buzzing or notifications. It's all those constant interruptions.

Ben Lynch: It's a great point that one of the things that drops out of the diary is the routine meeting and the structure to that meeting, especially perhaps a husband-wife couple, which they are in running the business or in your case that you mentioned of other directors, co-owners of the business. So important to have that routine, that frequency of communication. You raised a good point in my mind as well. We often ask the question when you're at your best, what are you doing? Like when you felt most. in flow, productive, you know, really enjoying your work. What are some of the things that you've set up in your workspace, in your environment, at home, in your structure and your schedule that have facilitated that? And it varies in the answers from clinic owners, but things might be that, well, I'm getting to bed at a reasonable hour. I'm going to the gym, you know, three times a week. I've got date night scheduled with my spouse. I'm spending time with the kids purposefully. It might be that I have a clean office space. Whatever that is, we often look at what are some of the things that have set you up to succeed or win in the past and how can we make sure that they're intentionally put in your day and your week moving forward. Are there any other things that you find, again, about releasing some of this bottleneck for the clinic owner that's feeling so time pressured that you go to or that maybe you've found just personally super useful?

Hannah Dunn: Yes. I think for me, it's super useful not being in the clinic. I love going in, I love seeing the team, but it's so disruptive. Great point. Yeah. You have conversations, you want to chat. I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm a chatter. And so not only do I affect them, I affect me. And so it's not as fun being at home, but it's way more productive. You could almost make a drinking game out of the amount of times I say um. Just, yeah, feel like that is being a big change. And I know that's not possible for everyone, but even if you can block out three till five and then you go home at 2.45 or 2.30 so that you can do a couple of hours at home, we're not saying four weeks at home necessarily.

Ben Lynch: One of the more extreme versions, this is one that I've sort of evolved over a number of years and Mel Webber adopted it behind me. I have the clouds on one hand and the dirt on the other. The clouds sort of that high level vision and strategy side of things and the dirt is just doing the work. I found that For myself personally, I felt way more in control of my week when my Monday mornings and my Friday afternoons had no meetings. It felt like I was able to start the week with a sense of proactivity, even just defining, these are the things I'm going to do this week. Rather than straight into meetings, then there's Slack, then there's email. And by Monday afternoon, I feel like, whoa, the week is like, caught me off guard. And then on a Friday afternoon, it was the ability to close loops, to finish things off, to make sure that we rounded out the week. I've evolved that periodically over time where different weeks on a fortnightly rhythm have had a bit more of a zoom out, a clouds week, and a bit more of a zoom in, a dirt week. Are there any things that you've evolved in your structure? We've talked a lot about calendars before. that you personally have found really useful for finding that flow in your week or your month.

Hannah Dunn: I used to coach, so I have had three jobs at times and so that has been DOTS, Clinic Mastery and then a lecturer at La Trobe Uni and then also mum to three. So at times I've found like just ensuring that everything is time blocked. Now I don't do La Trobe, I've just got CM and DOTS and the kids and so my Monday is The morning, same thing, have nothing blocked in there in the sense that that is my time to get on top of everything, review my calendar. And as we know, I write out my calendar in a paper-based diary. And I'll never forget when I first started doing this and Shane Davis was like, it's Wednesday, why on earth would you fill in Monday and Tuesday? I'm like, because that's my week. He's like, that's gone. That's called time wasting. And I was like, yeah, true.

Ben Lynch: Well, I disagree because, let me jump in here, one of the things that you said before was like auditing your week.

Hannah Dunn: Yes.

Ben Lynch: I find it incredibly useful. It's like the reverse of time blocking and almost time auditing where you go back and you go, oh gee, I wasted or I spent a lot of time on these things. No wonder I didn't make progress on the thing I said I wanted to do.

Hannah Dunn: Having that time structured has been really valuable to know that that's the time in which we do that. We set ourselves up for the week. And then Tuesday is my, I do not work day. I have my son at home and that is that day. And so then Wednesday is my clinic mastery coaching day. And I previously used to have, and this is what we find with so many people that we coach. This is a key thing that causes disruption is being too flexible to our clients and our team about when we can meet, you have to structure your time and say, no, you have to tell them when you're available, not them telling you so that you can say, I'm only available for coaching on Wednesday. I do a couple on Thursday, but only on Wednesdays. And therefore they will find a time to fit into that time, whether it be coaching clients. For DOTS, for example, all of our appointments run on the hour. We don't have family saying to us, can I come at 1015? Can I come at 1030? No, you cannot. You can come at 10 or 11. There's no in between for us. And that has streamlined and reduced the workload for conversations so much. So there's systems you can put into place from a scheduling perspective. And then Thursday is mainly D.O.T.S with a little bit of CM in there and Friday is all D.O.T.S. And so just time blocking and instead of jumping from one task to another. And people we work with sometimes will do Monday is finance. Like I don't do the policy procedure stuff then Thursday is my policy procedure day. Whatever works for your brain, but time blocking is absolutely key and back to back so that you aren't having little 15, half an hour blocks where they're just not useful. You can't get into things if you can condense the time to be back to back.

Ben Lynch: I often have found myself trying different things over time, finding what works, what doesn't work, recommending things to people, they say that worked, that didn't. And it's made me think, one, you've got to just keep testing different things to find out if it works for you, there's no silver bullet. Two, I've often gone back to very simple structure of who, what, when, where, why and how. If there's struggling with clarity or progress, it's like, who needs to help me? Maybe I need, to your point about the coaching side, it's like, I actually need accountability. I could just keep kicking the can down the road on this thing, but I actually need someone to say, hey, have you done it? Have you got it done? Do you need any help? Or who should not be in the room? To your point of like, maybe I'm not physically present in the clinic because the who, the team, is around at that time of day, and it's actually distracting me, which means I'm not able to do the thing that's on there, mentoring or training, that helps them in the long run, so it's actually a distraction. So it's like, who needs to help or who needs to be removed from this because it's a blocker? You know, when is best and part of that is like, when do you work best? And like Andrew Zachariah, he's a night owl. He's going to be up to like one in the morning and he is at his best there, sorry, in the evening. he's best in the evening. I love getting up in the morning, so I often find how we structure the week when you are at your best. What are you doing specifically, as you said, like is it finance or is it systems? How are you going about doing that? Is that in-person, online? There's a few other characteristics. Probably the thing that I think people who are most time-pressed miss and overlook is actually having a key objective or outcome that they're actually working towards this week or this month, maybe is a reasonable Goldilocks timeframe. And I'm interested to actually unpack for you because this type of clinic owner that I was speaking with last week, it's like everything feels like a priority. How do I actually decide what to work on in those time blocks if I'm able to get the time block in my diary? How have you gone about actually deciding on, because I think this is so much of experience in business as a clinician as well, is you know what not to do as much as you know perhaps what to work on. I think that comes down to actually going, I know this thing is going to move the needle.

Hannah Dunn: Yes.

Ben Lynch: So take me back as well into your own experience of the messiness of transitioning from like full-time clinician to business owner and actually figuring out what's worth working on.

Hannah Dunn: Yes. I do. Like what my transition was, was having a baby and I just had no choice. Like, and I will put that example to people and say, let's pretend that you are going to have a baby or you have a parent who is unwell or There is a deadline in which it just it's not possible to keep going. Like there's an emergency. What are we going to do? You know, NDIS is another emergency in the sense of like you're going to have to find time to change your business model if you want to be sustainable. And so you're going to find that time. We know these clinic owners are going to find that time. But how would you have done it before? It's exactly what you just spoke to about. What is it that feels important that I can still let go? so that I can continue to work on whatever it is I need to work on. And so I love the 120-day plan that CM have a template for. But what I also will say to team members is, or to people that we're coaching or to my team itself, It doesn't matter what the structure is of how you get these ideas down. We just need it out of your head and down. We need a system and whatever that system is so you can keep track of your jobs. For us, for our management team, we have a jobs list and it is a spreadsheet. We type in so that we're accountable. That's how we hold ourselves accountable. We pull it up each week. And yeah, sometimes it's like, I did not do that. And other times it's like, yep, smash that, got that done. Yeah. Updated that. Yes. But it's just about find the system that works for you. Scrap paper, having everything written down is fine as a starting point, but then we need a system that you can access from anywhere. We don't need it written on a whiteboard in one office if you're at three different offices, because that's not going to help us. Um, maybe if that's the way your brain works, taking a photo so you've always got it on your phone, whatever it is that you do, it needs to be with you at all times so you can adjust it and work on it. And as you said, Ben, what is going to have the biggest effect on everything else? So how do we choose a task that's going to actually impact some of the other things? So if we choose to look at finance, well, that's going to help with recruitment. It's going to help with us understanding what we can budget for marketing. It's going to help all the different areas. Whereas if we, and if we choose marketing, maybe that's going to help with recruitment. It's going to help with finance. It just depends on what is the needle in which you said that you need to move. And sometimes that's hard for us to tell you, you need to work that out yourself. But it's just, yeah, really looking at also, is there just some quick wins that may not be as valuable, but that will give you the dopamine hit that you need to keep going.

Ben Lynch: It's a great point because so often you can overanalyse it and feel like, oh, there's a right way to navigate through this. There's a right set of steps and depending on what we're talking about, perhaps there is, but maybe it's just actually making some progress rather than continuing to plan about it. Actually just open up the additional accounts in your bank account so that you can move the respective money So you're not spending the tax liability. You've set aside super and leave and you've set aside a reserves account and you're like, okay, cool. Even though it's five bucks here, 10 bucks here, I now have clarity. I've got some structure and that took me all of 30 minutes to do in my lunch break. Super easy to set up.

Hannah Dunn: I was just going to say, just quickly going back to those meetings, if you were to ask me what's the single biggest thing that changed my practice from back then, it absolutely is who is in those meetings. And the advice that I was given by either Shane Bennett or Tony Beecroft or someone was if you need to repeat the information to someone who wasn't in the meeting, then they should have been in the meeting. But if you don't need to repeat it to them and it's only one little thing that's going to take five minutes, then they don't need to be in the meeting. And so there are times in which Belinda and I think, oh, we really need Louise in this. And so we just call Louise and say, can you jump in for the first 10 minutes of this meeting? And so it's about having the trial and error of systems of what works, but get as many, you want to have the least amount of people possible in a meeting.

Ben Lynch: I agree. I agree. You want death by mating, which I think is actually the book. Someone referenced that recently, the Pat Lencioni, I think it was a Pat Lencioni book, Death by Matings. Yeah. We've toyed around with matings a number of different, I think all of this is just testing different things and seeing how they go and knowing that there are seasons as well within, like something that we did two years ago is no longer relevant now or not as effective now. So everything's continually being assessed and reassessed and adjusted. That's just the nature of business.

Hannah Dunn: That's the biggest killer of time. We do it because we always have.

Ben Lynch: Yeah, absolutely. The questioning of why does this thing exist in the first place before we actually try and optimize it, streamline it, automate it, is just one of those great reference points is, does this thing need to exist in the first place? I love the point and obviously you had the, what you might term like a forcing function, actually a real catalytic event to make the change, which was having said, I think you were referencing before, having a baby.

Hannah Dunn: Yes.

Ben Lynch: For those people, so often we're trying to have the conversation where, okay, maybe you're not having a baby, but how can we make this happen? Because to your point earlier on, if something did happen, it was thrust upon you. Then you would find a way to get through it and make it happen. COVID is another great example that affected everyone. And I remember speaking with Dan Gibbs about the coming off the tools process that he essentially documented his journey and looked at what he would do differently. But the number one thing that he always came back to was having a date in the diary where it's like, no more or this is the significant line in the sand moment where I go from full-time to half-time or whatever it is to zero or insert whatever. And I want to nuance this with folks listening in that still love seeing patients, they love the clinical care side of things. you know, do your version of success. We always champion that. It's just, okay, some things do need to actually change in order for you to spend the more time mentoring the team, recruiting the next generation, doing the marketing, whatever. So, you absolutely need to put a date. You had a due date, quite literally, to work towards, but others can still take the principle there of have a date and work towards it.

Hannah Dunn: And I think that's such a common thing that we see is the people we're talking about are the ones who are saying, oh, this therapist was sick, so I took on their clients for the day. Like, what if you were interstate? You would not have been able to do that. And so what would you have done? And it's hard to say no to money, but it's also, it's the short term view because your longterm view is if you use the time for what it was paying for, you're actually going to make a whole lot. more money than you were just by that direct money on the day. Great point, great point.

Ben Lynch: Let's just touch on a thread there of the NDIS that you brought up. It sounds like there are a number of clinics that, okay, maybe there's some unknowns still moving forward, but maybe they're sitting on their hands kind of doing not much.

Hannah Dunn: Yes.

Ben Lynch: Do you want to just speak to that clinic owner that is in that space right now? Maybe they are a little bit freaking out about some of the uncertainty that's there.

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, I think this is the first time that you and I have spoken since there has been more information, I think, that really indicates that private practices won't be the ones getting the Thriving Kids funding, that it will be going to not-for-profit government organisations. And so that is what New South Wales has announced and if you're not all over that because you're in another state maybe then that is something to have a look at. And I believe that Western Australia's announcement came out yesterday which I haven't had a look at yet but we will get to. It is a really scary time. If you're a PEDS clinic who doesn't work with kids with physical disabilities and you're working with those level 1, level 2 autism kids is your full caseload and they're under the age of 8 and Essentially, it feels like a lot of doom and gloom. I would say to you, you need to look at your numbers. Run your reports on how many of your kids truly are 0 to 8, because you've got clients that are 9 to 18. So you need to book out in your diary time to really look at your numbers. And that is about your client demographic. And then once you know the true situation, which for some of you will be very scary, and we know that, essentially we're going back to a system that we had previously by the sounds of it, which was the early intervention funding, which We know that there were families who still needed care. We know the wait lists were over 12 months, 18 months long. So there is still going to be a need. We need to make sure that we're visible and that we are retaining our clients as best as we can and looking after the ones that we have, but also starting to have the conversation, starting to get scripting for your team around what are they going to talk to their clients about now. because they're going to be freaking out too and some of our families don't even know what is about to hit them. And so it's just about really thinking about what's the current situation of the business if all those clients were to go, then how are we going to diversify our services and what does that look like and how are we going to ensure that we remain sustainable during this time. And yeah, it is absolutely scary, but what is scarier is putting your head in the sand and continuing to just see clients all day to try and build up that revenue now.

Ben Lynch: What are you seeing in terms of the diversify, um, client streams broadly? I realize it's quite nuanced per, per clinic and where they are, but what are you seeing some of the best start to do differently already, or even if it's in their thinking?

Hannah Dunn: Increasing the age ranges in which they're seeing is one thing that we're seeing. Increasing the offerings of services, so bringing on different disciplines, building networks.

Ben Lynch: So just to interrupt, so if they're, you know, a significant amount of their caseload is in that sub eight years of age, shifting that window to an older demographic. That's what you're saying.

Hannah Dunn: Yep. Yeah. So instead of saying we transfer clients at 18 years old, maybe they're saying, let's try and retain these clients until 25 and maybe we're going to bring on an adult therapist who can support that as well. Or really going back to what we did pre NDIS, which is a lot of the networking and getting our brand out there and building those connections and just. really getting better known and also changing the demographic in which they're seeing. So seeing more physical clients, doing more training in those physical areas. It's just about what percentage of your clients actually won't be affected anyway, because they are those CP clients or clients who have a lifelong disability. It is hard to listen to all the information out there and there are some key places to sort of get that information and that might be different for different disciplines, but we've spoken about the DSC website before and that is just a really good place and there are some, I know Jack's like get out of the Facebook threads, but as long as it's a Facebook thread that you know is creditable, like there's some OT ones, the OT community and NDIS practice one for example is where, you know, we definitely go to and there's certain people that you know really always are on the policies and know the policy and that sort of thing. So if you know who those people are, then that's who you want to be following or really reaching out and talking to your colleagues in your profession about who are they listening to, where are they getting the information.

Ben Lynch: Yes. We did a previous episode unrelated, I think, to the NDIS and it was titled growth through shrinking. And so the emphasis of that episode was around that growth doesn't always need to look like more headcount, more locations, more services. It can, but perhaps that's the default people think in terms of how they grow their clinic. Growth might be in sort of a different market or clientele as part of the pie chart of what you currently see moving forward. It might actually look like you're able to grow profitability by actually shrinking some of those other arms to your business. And that perhaps moving forward for some folks, that's okay that you might've had a big team and multi-site and actually with some of these changes impacting you so much that it could look meaningfully different in one to three years from now, what your clinic looks like. So I see it as a… as an opportunity for those clinic owners in particular to think about what does their version of success look like again? What are some of the things that truly matter to them about moving forward? Because this is a bit of a forcing function, an external event that you can't control, you just have to react to. But maybe it gives people an opportunity to rethink what they really want from their business. Maybe they've grown something that's overly complex and maybe actually coming back down in headcount and how they operate could lead to a better business, however they wanted to define that. I don't know what your thoughts are on that, but I can imagine a bunch of clinics ending up in that spot. They find a path that is fulfilling and rewarding for what they do and don't just default to, well, I'm closing down as you and I have previously discussed, maybe people blaming the system for that. But what's your take on that for those clinic owners that are going to be significantly impacted by these changes and what the future looks like for them?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah. I think that it is, I do want to acknowledge it is really scary. And I do, I, you know, I am angry about some of the things with NDIS in regards to, you know, we've, we've always done the right thing. We've always been registered. It's never served us well to be registered. And it's not going to, by the sounds of it, serve us well now, which is what it seemed like it might do. And I think there's a lot of anger out there. And, you know, as I spoke to at the summit, we can feel angry. We can have our emotions. We can feel let down, but that's not going to change our outcomes. It's now time to put that to the side and look at what are the facts and what's fiction and what is feeling. And we now need to come up with our plan. We need to look at where are we going to go? And as you said, Ben, like the thing I have missed so much as an NDIS clinic, is the connection that I used to have pre NDIS with all the local service providers. Like we used to have networking events. We used to catch up way more. We were subletting rooms in heaps of locations. And we had to pull all that back into one space because we just had so much admin overhang we had to comply with NDIS for. And there were so many referrals that it became a low priority task to make those connections remain in place. That is something I'm super excited to go back to. That is what lights me up. That is what I'm really excited to do. And yes, it puts more time on the non-billable stuff, but it leads to billable activities. And I also think the NDIS has allowed for anyone to jump into being in private practice and to start a clinic and that hasn't led to high quality care at times. And so I think it's exciting that it is going to lead to us having to actually retain clients due to people paying privately more and that we're going to be able to really look at those client journeys and make sure we're doing the right thing and all those things that do light us up and that haven't been the weight that we've had to hold with NDIS at times. And so I think it is exciting to, even though it can be absolutely overwhelming to sit down and look at your numbers, the exciting thing is to really draw out what do you want your practice to look like And as you said, Ben, yes, that might be less headcount or that might be less locations or that might be more of something different. And so that is a super exciting place to be as well, even though it's not by choice. It is just really exciting to be able to relook at what it looks like. What is not exciting is that there are going to be kids that miss out. But we need to look at ways that we can get them service. Is it through more groups? Is it through more education? Is it through doing online information or training? What is it that you can, how can you get to these kids? And I was talking to, um, some colleagues recently or to my team yesterday at our team day. And when I started DOTS, my dream was to have DOTS, the company, as well as a not-for-profit. And when NDIS came, there was not as much need for the not-for-profit. And the reason I wanted to have a not-for-profit was because there were all these kids that were missing out. And pre-NDIS, we did do a fundraiser and we did raise some money and we were able to give some kids some free sessions. And that was incredible. But then there didn't seem to be as much of a need and my time had to go into NDIS. I'm super excited about potentially revisiting that and looking at that. And there are all these little opportunities that while it feels heavy at the moment, hopefully we can find these opportunities and change the direction of where we were headed.

Ben Lynch: Yeah, well said. I think, as you mentioned, it's incredibly tough and challenging even in your own experience, and you're seeing that as well across peers and colleagues and people you coach. But there's also a pragmatic element that you're like, well, it's not really going to change much. You go through that. What are we going to do? We've navigated challenges before, COVID being a big one, where we're all forced to adapt very quickly. So I think for those clinic owners that navigated that period, perhaps there's some things you can draw on that allowed you to navigate through those really tough periods and just know that A lot of other people are going through it at the same time, and there is some wisdom to be gained by being part of a community, being in the right forum chats, getting your advice from the right providers as well to just settle some of that uncertainty. Okay. Well, we covered a lot of great ground here in this conversation. There's a number of actionable points for people who are feeling really pressed in their time. For those that are feeling a little bit pressed with their numbers or want to understand their finance and numbers more, a couple of key actions there. There's some previous episodes that we've done that go into this in more detail, so go check them out. And for the members tuning in, there is just a mountain of great stuff to help you understand your numbers inside the learning portal. Well, Hannah, we might put a bow on it. Thank you so much for your contribution. Thank you. All right, we'll see you on another episode very soon. Bye-bye.