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 invest in growth without taking massive risks. We're diving into how to manage the downsides of big decisions. And trust me, you want to hear Mic's take on the conversation that steered him away from a $1 million mistake. Plus stick around for when we discuss how to navigate your next growth chapter, even if you're really comfortable right now. How do you think about risk whenever you're making key decisions in the business?

Mic Rizk: The other elements of risk that aren't just finance, so the time and energy, I think that's something to really consider.

Ben Lynch: If we stay as we are, what are we missing out on as well?

Jack O'Brien: That's the value of coaching is to call out irrationality and to call out fears or avoidance behaviours.

Mic Rizk: And I want to balance that out with it's absolutely okay to have seasons of maintenance in your clinic.

Ben Lynch: It comes from a place of ego. Someone else has done it, then why wouldn't I want their advice?

Mic Rizk: We just sat there looking at each other laughing after the conversation saying that was probably a million dollar conversation. This person could have charged a million dollars for that conversation.

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. All right, we're back. It's episode 383. We're closing in on 400. My name is Ben Lynch. We're joined again by the physio that loves to take investment risk. Yeah, it's in his name. Welcome to you, Michael Rizk. How are you doing, buddy? Hello. Hello.

Mic Rizk: Yeah, sunny Melbourne. Sunny Melbourne.

Ben Lynch: That's an oxymoron. Yeah, 15 minutes and then it'll be wet. I got my rain jacket. needed everywhere you go in Melbourne, even inside. And we're also joined by the sultan of spreadsheets, the guy that's angling for the yellow wiggles job. It's Jack O'Brien. Jacobin, you are filling the feed on the socials, but notably, a few comments. A few comments. Let's go there. There's so much going on.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, there is. Before we do, Ethiopian Natural from Josie Coffee today. Very good. Ordered some coffee from Stitch. Actually, listeners, the good people of Clinic Mastery, stand by. Stand by because we may have some good coffee for good people coming down the roasting pipes. I'll say no more, but you may just have some good people, good coffee on the way in. What do you reckon, Benny? Love it. You had me at coffee. Okay. Well, I'm going to just share my screen. Now, this is on a computer. If you're watching on YouTube, Instagram, as you would know, doesn't look very good on a computer. But Mic, I need your opinion here. We've had some trolls. We've had some trolls in the comments. And so we're talking, there's a reel on Instagram here where we're simply asking clinic owners, are you above or below 60K a month in revenue? That's all, just a fun little poll, if you will. And out they come. There's folks here like, oh, healthcare for profit, yay. And people whinging and complaining. There was a really good one in the last couple of days. And they said here, this is a critique of clinic owners. And this troll said, these people would let someone die if they couldn't afford to pay. So he's basically criticizing private practice clinic owners. And that got me. This is like someone attacking my children. Am I right? You have crossed the line. So I'm going to jump in. And I said, oh, so you know them personally, do you? You can't come here and speak about our community like that. These are clinics for good who genuinely care. And so I'm curious. Like, what's the go with these trolls? Why do people have such a problem with private practice clinics making a profit off healthcare? Now, no one gets into it to make a profit, and we don't love the idea that we're profiting off people's pain, but what do you think about these trolls, Mic? I don't know.

Mic Rizk: I think that they're people in pain. I've been there. I think if you're having a hard time or your lens on life is negative because of whatever circumstance, it can often be expressed. And I know when I'm not in a great headspace, I will leave below the line comments or I've been in places where I've done that in the past on a post that I disagreed with. And if I was to read that today, I'd be like, what the hell were you thinking? Was that even you? I try to have empathy and grace for them. But in the same time, it feels deeply personal because we know how much people in clinic mastery care and how good all these people are and how much they care for their teams and their patients. And most of their profit goes straight back to their patients or their team. So it's, yeah, it's hard to read.

Jack O'Brien: I think that's what got me. It was this person was criticizing the abstract clinic owner without knowing who the human is behind this avatar. And I'm like, to a T, every person that I know of in the Clinic Mastery community genuinely cares about people. and we have to charge fees so that we can afford to pay the best people on our teams and invest in the best quality equipment. I'm like, you cannot have a crack at the character of a clinic owner who is trying to help more people. That is ultimately why we're getting this game. And people having a go at their character, I'm like, that's crossing a line for me. Benny, what do you reckon?

Ben Lynch: Yeah, maybe a couple of things very practically. I think the question you asked those folks was revenue, so it wasn't profitability, and they're two very different things. So, maybe I could go to school on that. The next one is around risk. Being a business owner, small business owner, you take on an incredible amount of risk. We touched on that on the previous episode, right? of, is it still worth it? Because part of that question is, it's not a not-for-profit, it's not a government-led organization. We're here for small businesses, and so often we know those small business owners are barely earning a commercial wage, which just doesn't stack up against the risk that they take on investing in clinic fit-outs and rent and investing in their team. They're ultimately trying to do it to get to a point of sustainability financially, especially for them and reap some of the rewards. But ultimately, as you said, Mic, you end up reinvesting and reallocating back into growing the clinic, new tools, new tech, new equipment, new fit outs, new locations to be able to help more people in the community. I can also empathize to your point, Mic, around there's there's a lot of headlines, especially in Australia at the moment, around some of the fraud, waste and abuse in the NDIS. And obviously we're seeing a number of sort of pullbacks there, but what gets the headlines are these really bad cases. And so I think that probably shifts a lot of the public perception around you know, private healthcare and, um, maybe people that just read the headlines don't realize, okay, there's a lot of really good people doing great work for their communities and actually struggling to be sustainable and profitable. And they're questioning whether it's worth continuing and we're losing great health professionals, um, to the fact that it is hard to run a business. So yeah, J.O.B, it's not nice to say, um, when folks are throwing away at it.

Jack O'Brien: The trolls come out, but I will share this one actually more of a positive news story. Shout out to ESSA, Exercise and Sport Science Australia. Doing a ripper job. The various associations have varying degrees of success or productivity online. I just love this one from ESSA getting actually a local federal minister or member rather near me. So it's good to see Dan Repicoli here, though he wears probably different colors to me. He's a legend and he's standing up for exercise physiology. I love that ESSA are garnering a whole bunch of public support. They're doing some fun stuff on their Instagram. They're talking about, they're getting funny memes and getting stories from patients around exercise physiology and so just a shout out to ESSA. I think they're doing a stellar job. But there you go. The tax on exercise physiology is an absolute farce. The government will charge a tax on one health profession and not others. And I know this applies across others too, but particularly exercise physiology. Well done, Essa, on trying to get that fixed.

Ben Lynch: Keep the main thing the main thing as an association, right? Help your members thrive. None of these fringe topics. Focus on the core of your membership. Well done, Esa. Anyway, let's continue on the thread of last conversation, which struck a chord with many clinic owners that listened in where we talked about, is it still worth it? There was a story of a clinic owner who had listened to that and in the week prior, a few team members resign, and they were literally asking themselves that question. A good member of ours, who's been a long-term member, said, I was right in the depths of that trough that you spoke to going, is this even worth it? I think they'd lost three or four key team members. And it was like, it was really good to just come back to that conversation and talk through it We spoke a lot about the return on investment. Nick, you gave those four categories, right? Time, money, meaning, and freedom. They're all somewhat intertwined. The other side that we didn't talk a lot about is the risk element. I think with any investment, there's risk and there's return, right? And so I'd be interested just to unpack a little bit more about how you think about risk. Because in many respects, that's actually one of the key things you need to learn to get better at assessing or weighing up when you make investments, whether that's the risk to hire your first person. So often the clinic owner is like, oh, can I afford it? What's at risk here? Literally, if I hire someone and have to commit to paying their salary, or if it's a new location, or if it's a new piece of equipment in the clinic and there's quite a big capital expenditure, There's always risk. And what I think is often missing is your ability to actually think through it and make a informed decision about whether this is worth pursuing as an investment for the return that you design. Nick, maybe you don't see yourself as risky, but I definitely see a few things you do. And compared to me, perhaps I'd say you've got a higher risk tolerance. So I'm really interested. How do you think about risk whenever you're making key decisions in the business?

Mic Rizk: It's interesting because I had a lot of close people around me say I have a really high risk threshold or I'm like action risk-taking. But when I was like reflecting, I've always had a really stable base and foundation. And like I would actually say that's low risk tolerance because I've never done or taken an action that's high risk in a place where If it didn't work, I would be in trouble. So that's actually inversely, that's a low risk tolerance. And I was reflecting this with Andy, my accountant. He's like, Mic, you're into all this weird stuff. And I'm like, yeah, but I always had a stable job. I always had a stable clinic. And even when I started my clinic, I had another job. And even now, as a clinic owner, I have multiple other income sources, which means the risk I take is actually not that risky because if it completely blows up or goes into the negative, I've got a stable base. And the classic example might be crypto, right? Like a very high risk volatile investment. But I only do that because I've got such a stable base with a property and a stable base with shares. So, I don't actually view that action as a risk. Whereas some people might be their first investment is crypto and I would think that that is crazy. And same as a clinic. If you're starting a clinic, I did that in a very low risk way. I was lucky to have an employer who said you can work with us three days while you go and start that thing two days. Even now in clinic mastery as a consultant, like that serves as a lowering of risk threshold for me. If my clinics blow up tomorrow, I still have a great job with wonderful people that pays well that I love doing in clinic mastery. So, when I kind of reflected on this, I'd be interested in your perception of that. I'm like, yes, I have taken risks, but very calculated and never in a place where if it went wrong, my personal circumstance would be less than or my family would be less than. So I throw that back at you.

Ben Lynch: And I'm going to throw it straight to Jack, because J-O-B, I think you would probably consider yourself less risky than Michael Rizk but I love that context that you provided there on how you view it. How have you viewed it, Jack, even yourself as a business owner? How do you assess risk amongst considering returns?

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, I really respect that with Nick and maybe it's the challenge of public versus private and we all see the high-risk plays but we often don't see the stability or the foundation or we have that bias to forget the history of years or decades of building security behind us. So, I definitely appreciate that. It's interesting different stages and phases of life too, right? And we're actually facing this in one of the not-for-profits that I sit on the board of. When you get to a particular size, whether it's organizationally or personally, where your mindset shifts from, I need to grow this thing to, I need to protect this thing from going backwards, and there's a real inflection point, and that's going to look different at a different dollar threshold for every person in every organization. And I think it's really important that we acknowledge that exists and perhaps be really deliberate and intentional about how we think about it. That could look like a clinic that gets to, you know, a decent revenue mark, maybe you're doing three or $4 million a year in revenue, and you suddenly start to think about your marketing in terms of I need to just sustain cash flow versus I actually need to grow through to the $5 million a year mark, which is another threshold where there's scales of economy. The notion of continue to grow versus protect and not shrink. Growth is different to not shrinking. I think for me personally, Benny, I think a lot about the asymmetric return or risk. If the opportunity for growth and investment is quite large, but the opportunity for downside is quite small, there's an asymmetry at play there. In some regards, it's hedging your bets. For me, that's a key criteria or key test that I think about.

Ben Lynch: One of the guys, Howard Marks, a legendary investor, wrote a book. I'm blanking on the name of the book, but he talks about risk quite a bit. And he defined risk, I believe it was like the probability of loss. And it was a really interesting just frame. And financial loss was his framing. And for me, that gave me a little bit more clarity to go, okay, what's as best as you can assess, where are all the areas that we might lose here? We might lose time. We might lose money. Hopefully, we're not losing reputation. We don't want to put that at risk. There's some great stuff from Warren Buffett that talks about you know, would we be comfortable if this got out of this private room and was on the front page of the paper as a way to really help quickly assess something that may feel a little bit risky. I've often come back to that as a really simple heuristic, but I like thinking of it as the you know, what are the ways that perhaps this could lose as best as you can assess it? There's always blind spots and sort of things outside of your control, the black swan type event like COVID. And then in a similar way to what we did last episode where we talked about the fear setting and Tim Ferriss did a really great TED talk on this, is kind of just writing those things down. Like if that played out, what would I do? and or what could I do to prevent the magnitude of that risk hurting me? So one of the things really practically that we see our clinic owners not do and then therefore advise them to do is set up their bank accounts so that they know every dollar has a purpose. You've spoken about this a lot, Jack, so that each week or each fortnight, I'm allocating the money that comes into that trading account to the respective liabilities that we have so that I know that I'm looking at the money rather than looking for it to the degree that it's sort of coming in at the volume that you need. It just helps you start to manage the risk is so often we get clinic owners come in and they're just the cashflow squeeze is very real and then they're looking to find ways out of that that just cause a lot of stress and then maybe they're less likely to take some. risks moving forward because they feel, oh, I got a little bit burnt on that play to move to a new location or buy that piece of equipment or hire that new team member. So, Mic, have you found yourself coming to some process that you do? Is it a set of questions? Is it a reflection? Is it a conversation? How do you actually go about assessing the risk before you make decisions?

Mic Rizk: Yeah, I think that's really good. The other elements of risk that aren't just finance, so the time and energy, I think that's something to really consider. I just written here in our chat that a lot of owners are looking for other opportunities or a second clinic or a second service that comes with time and energy and knowledge gaps, which is also a downside Not directly financial, but it will cost you finances in the end. The example I had, I think we touched on it last call, was we had a clinic owner who had the option of opening a Pilates studio and she'd never done Pilates before or building an extra room in her clinic to service an extra one and a half physios. And so in my mind, building the thing you already know is much less time and energy risk. And you know all the numbers, you know all the finances versus going into a Pilates studio with a whole different working population and a whole different set of knowledge and a whole second site. That's one question I would ask myself is like, is there a knowledge gap here, a time or an energy risk to this as well? Because often if we stick to our primary service, it's a lot easier and that mitigates the downside. and the fear setting. I think the fear setting is a key thing I do. What would this look like in the worst possible circumstance if it all went belly up and I was left with a $100,000 or $200,000 debt, would I be okay?

Jack O'Brien: It's interesting, mate. It reminds me of that notion of absolute risk versus relative risk, the Pilates studio versus the clinic room. I think about a clinic I visited over in Perth a couple of weeks ago that had some space and they're like, What should I do? And we've just struck up a great relationship with a sauna provider. Shout out to Zaviat Norga Saunas. And there's this dormant space in the clinic where you could install a sauna and generate a couple of hundred bucks a week, pay off this sauna in a couple of months, and then you've got a cash flow generating asset that is passive, low maintenance, and profitable cash flow asset versus more Pilates space, which comes with, can I fill it with new clients? Can I staff it? How do I bill for that, whether it's clinical exercise or not clinical exercise? And so, something might sound risky, but it's always a question of, well, compared to what? And so I think clinic owners, that's a worthy concept. You know, we think about it when it comes to recruiting and hiring. It's like, oh, should I do marketing? Like marketing is risky. Putting money into Google ads and investing in client mastery marketing, the agency, or investing in Facebook meta ads is risky. Yeah, okay, sure. But also, sitting back and waiting for new clients to walk through your doors and having white space and wages to pay with no revenue, that's risky too. So, what's the bigger risk here? Sit back and wait or actually do something that's within your agency that has a very high predictability of results? Not guaranteed, but high predictability.

Ben Lynch: It's like, it's all relative, right? That's a good point. You're sort of provoking for me opportunity risk as well, Jack, is that if we stay as we are, what are we missing out on as well? The risk of some of the upside. I've personally found it really useful as a risk mitigation strategy to have really good advisors and frequent touch points with advisors around me because essentially that's what you're looking to do is say, hey, you've been where I want to go. you've seen the road ahead, you've navigated some of the big things, and I want to essentially avoid those risks or prepare to navigate and handle them in a way that's the least duration, the least magnitude, so that we can get to the desired outcome. And so I think For a lot of clinic owners, when they find themselves in a spot of bother, you can often look and say, well, to what degree have you actually had any contact regularly and proactively with a set of advisors, your accountant, your business coach? Somewhat a business partner even, we're just ships in the night sort of passing, would never sit down and talk through these things. So, so much can actually be mitigated by having proactive conversations with the people around you and having people around you that are also going to be able to call you out on some of the thinking that you have around certain decisions to be able to challenge your thinking, to add some constraints. There's real value in being able to do that, so I would definitely encourage people to lean into the support that they have. If they don't have enough support, then find that. Perhaps we are a place to help you out.

Jack O'Brien: To that point, if I was to summarize what you were saying there, Ben, you're saying that advisors help you see around corners? Yeah. It's like they've been there, done that, they're ahead of you, and they can see what's coming. And really, what is risk? Rizk is uncertainty about a future outcome. And so if you can partner with a coach, mentor, consultant, advisor who has been there, done that, and can see around the corner for you, it gives you greater certainty. about the future outcome. And so, yeah, absolutely get a coach, get an advisor. It's super critical.

Ben Lynch: Because you guys, if I invest in, say, an advisor in this instance, accountant, business coach, whoever it might be, and I'm going to pay somewhere between $15,000 and $30,000 a year. Let's use that as a window. And if all I got was I shortened the time it took for an outcome that I might otherwise get, but I did it with less headaches. You could think of it that or you could think of it, how's it going to grow sort of my own income. There's different ways that you could approach it. But if you approach it from maybe a risk mitigation perspective, That could be quite useful. Mic, maybe without disclosing some of the absolute specifics of a recent conversation just before this call, I'd love to know some of the questions you were putting to someone who's advising you about where you're going and how you might think of that in the context of risk and some of the decisions that you might make as a result of that.

Mic Rizk: Yeah, we just had a one hour conversation with someone who's done everything that we would love to do in our future. And we just sat there looking at each other laughing after the conversation. That was probably a million dollar conversation. Like, like, this person could have charged a million dollars for that conversation. And you would consider it because there's just things that we didn't know. There were things we were thinking the wrong way about. And I think about coaching a lot, what you just said, Benny, there. If you're paying $15,000 to $30,000 for an advisor, my feeling is when you have an advisor, you probably experience $300,000 or $400,000 calls a year. And it might be, have you looked at your induction in this way? Have you asked these interview questions? Have you considered this is how you train a therapist around PVA instead of just talking about numbers? Those little shifts in a clinic multiplied over time, literally hundreds and thousands of dollars of revenue. So when you compare that to a $15,000 or $30,000 advisory, yeah, I think my question back to you guys is, often when we start, we're really scarce around that. We have a scarcity mindset to coaching because it seems like an expense that's not needed. But almost everyone who's third, fifth, tenth year in business says, no, I would absolutely pay $30,000 for that advice, even if it just shortens my window, or it's one or two conversations a year that saves me $200,000 to $300,000 a year. I think we all get to that place. But how do you get to that place when you're in startup? That's what I've become interested in. How do you express that value to someone in startup to just drop 30 grand on coaching? Because that feels like the biggest thing you'll do.

Ben Lynch: I remember this conversation with Andrew Zachariah, who leads up the coaching team here, runs PhysioFit. We're on a bus from the Melbourne airport into the CBD, and we're heading for one of our events. This is maybe in 2018, 2019. I said, why did you guys engage support? Because you are clearly hard workers, hustlers in making things happen. Like, you know, you could have done it yourself. And he said, we felt like we could do it. It might take us three years, but getting the support meant it could be done in 12 to 18 months. And that was effectively the timeline. They're like, we're actually paying for time because we know the mistakes have been made and we can just. basically implement the system and get the results far sooner than we otherwise would ourselves. I think probably that's the experience I've heard a lot. I'm interested in your perspective, Jack, speaking with a lot of those early stage clinics that are typically in our elevate support where they do go, I've been trying to do this by myself for 12 or 18 or 24 months and I realize I actually just need some help. Maybe there's an element of health professionals tend to be very smart people, they've applied themselves really well at school, gotten into a program and you're expected to know the answers yourself and go and find things out yourself. And maybe that just carries through into business. Like sure, surely it can't be that hard. You know, you just serve a bunch of patients and you do a good job and they refer and then all of a sudden your books are full. It's usually once you get to hiring that first, second person, you lose one of those people that they go, oh, this is a little bit harder than I thought it was. So maybe you can't really change too much. There's folks that are open-minded to that, or they just have to get the scar tissue themselves before they realize, I need some support.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, it is a bit like that and I think we're also a product of our environment, right? And investing in coaching is a very different value exchange or even service exchange compared to healthcare, right? If we think about healthcare, it's cash-based usually, particularly in private context. Someone comes in, they hand over their credit card and they receive some therapy and usually we think about it rightly or wrongly, we think about it in 30-minute increments. And so it's like this very short time to value or time to return. It's like, I pay $130, I get a 30 minute therapy session, I feel instantly better. And coaching and the game of business is not like that. The game of business is non-linear. It's quite complicated or complex or even wicked if you're familiar with those theories of complexity. It's complex. It's not linear. There are many factors. There's a long time to see return, but return can often be 1, 2, 5, 10, 20x return. And so, I think we often struggle with comprehending that. Does that make sense?

Ben Lynch: Well, yes, and I'm interested, Mic, the conversation that you just had, do you think a younger Mic would have understood the value of that conversation or not?

Mic Rizk: I think, yeah, I don't know if this is just me or this is all business owners, but yeah, I think you have a scarcity mindset at the start of starting a clinic and you, yeah, you don't often You don't often see the multiples of that conversation, maybe because you haven't had the experience yet. You haven't had a poor induction and a team member that has a misaligned expectation because you weren't clear. You have to experience that to go, I understand why I need an interview and induction now. I've gone through a business partnership separation and I remember Shane coaching us saying, you need to be really clear on your position descriptions and we're just like, why? Everything's working. So yeah, it's naivety and lack of experience. I wonder if there's any way to pull that forward or you just have to experience it to know.

Jack O'Brien: I think it is part of it is that's the value of coaching is to call out irrationality and to call out fears or avoidance behaviors. It's like, no, no, this is actually important. You don't understand or you can't conceive why this might be important today, but just trust me in three months, six months, three years time, you'll see the value of that or you need to take this opportunity. You might feel like it's an irrational risk at the moment but let me tell you that it's actually quite a low risk. You know, we often have this conversation around growth. It's like, ah, growth feels hard and I'll speak to those clinic owners in their early stages. You know, growing from a solo operator to employing your first therapist, you are growing by 100% headcount. You know, from one to two feels like the hardest growth. because you are literally doubling the humans on your team. And if we compare and contrast that to a clinic owner who has 10 team members, hiring their 11th is only a 10% growth. It's 10x easier, but it feels harder at the time. And so, sometimes you need a coach and advisor to go, you need to do this. or you should really avoid this type of behavior. It's helping us balance out the irrationality because we don't know what we don't know and we haven't been where we haven't been. Something that also came to mind, Benny, is we're often blinded by our own context, right? And these days, I recently sold exited from my clinics and I often, you know, mused to myself, if I had a clinic, what would I do? You know, like, so we were thinking about this in the context, again, of some of our trusted partners. We've got some flagship partnerships recently. And one of the first things I would do is I would install something like Preve straight into my clinic tomorrow. I have, I cannot comprehend. I sit here like virtually shaking clinic owners. Like why on earth have you not implemented HaltH and Preve and Ava and why are you not selling pillows? Why don't you have a sauna? I would be doing these things all tomorrow. Why are you not getting someone else with the expertise to run your Google Ads for you? stop thinking about it and do it. Maybe I have the luxury of not having a clinic and it's all well and good that this is a little bit of an intellectual exercise now, but honestly, it's a great lens for clinic owners to think through. If I wasn't in my own personal shoes right now, what would I tell myself to do? And that's probably a good thing to think about because business is business, right? Clinics are clinics are clinics. That was a question for you, Mic. A clinic is a clinic, right? Say more about that.

Mic Rizk: Yeah, a clinic is a clinic. What I've written in our chat is I got to a point as a clinic owner where you surrender to advice from people who have done it before you. And the ego statement is your business is not special. And it took me a long time to get to that place and to surrender to people who see things that I don't see and do things better than I do. And I have to keep reminding myself that my business is not special. It will grow the same way every other business has grown. And you need to be open to the advice from people who have done it before. And once you have that mindset, it's just like, of course, I'm going to pay for that advice. Of course, I'm going to take that meeting. Of course, I'm going to listen to Jack because he's seeing things that I'm not seeing. And it takes some time to get there. We all think our clinic is different and our clinic is special. And yes, it has our fingerprints on it and it has our context and it has our philosophies. But if we're talking about growing the business, your business is not special.

Ben Lynch: It comes from a place of ego. Because I think if you actually remove ego, you go, someone else has done it and done it better than I have done it. then why wouldn't I want their advice? Why wouldn't I want their context, their learnings to help guide me do what I do? So I think a lot of it is actually trapped in the identity, the ego piece. Because to your point of surrendering, it's saying, okay, someone has done this and I could probably learn from them. Why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you do that? Why wouldn't you do that in picking your accountant, your HR provider, your business advisor and coach? People are there, their jobs are literally to help you grow, but you want to do it yourself? It's kind of like, why?

Jack O'Brien: Okay, so here's an interesting lens, right? In healthcare, we're taught, generally speaking, to only lean on therapies or interventions that have a greater than 95%, you know, whatever the statistical thing is, you know, p-value greater than 0.05. And so, we typically will try and lean towards interventions that have a very high degree of confidence of impact. And in the game of business, it is usually less than 50% chance that something will work. And the point is that we try 10 things and two work disproportionately. Maybe Benny, you can speak to this when it comes to that venture capitalists and angel investors. They'll invest in 10, 20, 30 businesses and they only need one to work because the return is outsized. And so perhaps as clinic owners, my encouragement to you is Not every intervention has to work every single time, but the point is that you apply many interventions and one or two will work in an outsized return or result. Benny?

Ben Lynch: Yeah, it's a great way to approach businesses. You're always experimenting. on what works. We know there's a number of things that are pretty guaranteed to work in any clinic. I would say there's a selection of those, like how you nurture your patients in a care plan. Sure, that's going to be slightly different from one clinic to the next, but the fundamentals are true across clinics about how you communicate those things and enroll a client into their care plan. I can't say I've seen a clinic implement those sorts of things and it not work. So, I would come back to, you want to test those things, you also want to test a bunch of other pieces. On our previous conversation, Mic, you alluded to a cohort of people that I think are really interesting to speak to. That is the clinic owner that's reached some degree of comfort. They have navigated the season of overcoming a number of challenges, getting their business to a point of relative stability. and fulfillment on the time, money, freedom, meaning piece for them. They say some version of, I'm just going to sit back and enjoy this, or I don't need to keep working on my business anymore. They're comfortable, or they're going, actually, I don't want to take any more risk because I've gone through those seasons where it's been really tricky. How do you support that person? Because I feel like maybe they haven't learned the lesson quite fully. That what got them to here was their ability to size up some risks, to invest in some changes, some support, some tools, some equipment, whatever it may be, and get return. That they clearly haven't, in my opinion, learned the lesson of what has helped them get to here. Not saying that you need to just keep growing to infinity, But they seem to take their foot off. They almost dial back some of the great skills, arguably, that they have installed and practiced to get to this point. So, Mic, touch on that, because you brought them up last episode. The clinic owner that's comfortable, but maybe unwilling to change things because they're comfortable.

Mic Rizk: Yeah, I think Jack's shared some age-old wisdom there that if you're not growing, you're dying. And I want to balance that out with it's absolutely okay to have seasons of maintenance in your clinic and maybe the growth is coming from somewhere else. It doesn't have to be I'm driving profit, I'm growing profit, I'm growing revenue, I'm growing new patient numbers. I don't think any of us suggest that. It's absolutely okay to enjoy the fruits of your labor. And I think not enough clinic owners actually do that. But it's probably having the consciousness and mindfulness to make sure that you're always growing in some area. It might be self-development. It might be your leadership capacity. It might be how you run your team meetings. It doesn't always have to be revenue and profit focused. It might be your time at home. It might be someone to pull you up and say, how have you structured your week? Are you actually becoming a better human for your family, a better mom, a better dad? And again, I think people who've done it as long as we have, we see that that actually brings returns back into your business. in a roundabout way. When you're improving your health and you're improving your presence with your kids and you're improving your relationships, it might feel like you're working less but you're actually growing the business. So it's probably just having that. That's where an advisor is helpful. It's like when we say always growing or if you're not growing, you're dying, we don't mean you need to be growing 50% revenue every year. Some part of you needs to grow. I think that's the human condition.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, I like that, mate. Like some part needs to grow. It might be revenue, it might be profit, it might be time, it might be impact. But the point is that business naturally erodes, right? And I liken it to a garden that you can work hard to establish the soil and plant the seeds and water them and grow and the trusses and all of that is critical and there comes a point where you can sit back and smell the roses. But if all you do is smell the roses, the weeds come quickly and the seasons change. And this metaphor is going to break down somewhere. But the point is that in business, we cannot just take our foot off the gas in perpetuity. because patients just will stop showing up or new tech will arrive or a team member leaves. Like in really simple terms, your business at some point will require you to attract more ideal clients. Your business will require you to recruit more health professionals and whether that's to grow or to simply not shrink, you'll need to recruit. There'll be new tech. There's new tech now that wasn't available 12 months ago, 2 years, 5, 10 years ago. And if you simply decided not to grow, you'd be still on paper notes and paying 20% for an admin team and you would be out of business. And so it's, think of it less of like grow or die, which is very binary. I'm guilty of saying that. So it's just a cliche folks, you know, cool your jets a little. But think of it more like gardening, right? You can sit back for a little while, smell the roses, but we need to protect against the weeds and we need to keep investing in planting fresh seeds. Do you like that, Benny? Weeds and seeds?

Ben Lynch: Weeds and seeds. I love it. I think we should pick up a conversation next time about the role business partners have played because each of us have business partners. And I think to some degree, I at least think of that as de-risking business for me, is having other people that are literally invested in the success and bringing their skills and their talents to the business. So I think we could come to that. Um, I love what you were saying there, Nick. And I think we did an episode on this probably a year or so ago about defining what growth means. And you nailed it perfectly. I remember an advisor of, of mine said, you know, I said, ah, you know, we're looking to grow. And he said, well, what do you mean when you say grow? And it was exactly to your point, Nick, like define it. And he said, you know, define it. And are there different types of growth? And are there seasons where actually growing is not the best thing to do? And how does that relate to some of the definitions that you had put there? So I think so much of this for me comes back to being super intentional and conscious about whatever you're trying to do in any given season. And that's where we see people run into trouble is that they're like, I've got all these problems. You know, I need help with this. Okay, let's help solve that. But what are you actually trying to build towards or grow towards? Like, what are some of the meaningful outcomes you're working on? Because we could install a bunch of different systems with you. And I so often use the analogy of therapy. When a patient comes in, we're not trying to do every possible intervention that we have learned about. with them. We're trying to understand the meaningful goal that they have and design what's the simplest, easiest, perhaps most sustainable path to get them there in the shortest period of time. The same is true in business, I think, and you can only figure out the how if you know why. I think that's important. Why am I trying to do this this quarter, this year, this decade? Defining growth is a great point, Mic. Maybe before we do wrap, just to wet the palette about what might be to come in our conversation about business partners. Mic, just provoke some thoughts here around how you've thought about having a partner in business. We've got a community that have, there's plenty that do have partners and we can talk a whole show about how to work properly with partners. You mentioned some of those things, position descriptions, agreements, and so on and so forth. There's also a big cohort that don't have business partners and they're going solo, but maybe are open to the idea of having someone on board. How do you think about business partners in the context of risk and investments?

Mic Rizk: I think of it so differently now to when I started. I think most business partnerships are bought out of convenience or friendship or just two great therapists. Like, yeah, we can do this. We got the same values. Let's go for it. You're surrendering 50% of your equity and profit, which is completely fine when you're 50-50 and you're both clinicians. But what inevitably happens to most partnerships is you then start taking on different roles that isn't as easy as trading time for money. And that's where I would say every partnership needs to have an independent advisor. someone who can say, what are our roles here? What are our position descriptions? Is each partner still being super valuable to the business in their own way? And it's not going to be equal. It's never equal. It's crazy to think equal, much like a marriage. So, I think an independent advisor who's been there and done that is the most powerful thing. And for those who don't have partners, I would encourage them to lean on the previous snippet. I think you need to be more generous with your advisors. Because in another world, there's a version of you that's got a partner that's paying 50% of your profits to someone. You have the advantage of retaining all of that but being able to pay industry experts at each time point you need it and that's not necessarily your partner. Your partner doesn't always have the expertise you need at the time. So I think people who are solo have a huge advantage and I would encourage them to be free with how much they invest on their advisors and those with partnerships need someone independent to say, hey, are we both working in the best interest here? Do we both have clear position descriptions?

Jack O'Brien: I'll echo that absolutely, Mic. There's benefit for the solos and the partnerships. I'd say this, Benny, that there's an old proverb that one can put a thousand to flight, two can put 10,000 to flight. If anyone knows where that reference is from, feel welcome to let me know. The point is there that we can do more together. That old adage is if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. is critical and I think it was often put to me that you can have your whole pie or you can have a smaller piece of a larger pie and think of the impact the larger pie can have. Maybe there's a few little heuristics. I think I get it like as a type A high achiever, we all get good marks at uni to be health pros. We think we can do it ourselves. Yeah, maybe you could, but it's so much more fun and joy, fulfilling to do it with others, to go together, to share in something bigger than just yourself. There's a lot of intangible joy and return in that.

Ben Lynch: Guys, thank you so much for sharing your lens on risk as part of investment and part of the bigger conversation about is it still worth it running and owning a clinic. If that's something you're contemplating, please make sure you get your ticket for the Grow Your Clinic Summit 2027 in Adelaide in March. This is going to be the focal point of that event. Whether you're looking at a full or partial exit to bring team members along the ride with you, or you're just looking for a really great business, the fundamentals will still apply. Mic, Jack, thank you so much. You can head over to clinicmastery.com/podcast for all of the notes J-O-B's sharing on screen, the summit. Come and grab a ticket.

Jack O'Brien: Join us. There's limited tickets for non-members, so we will see you there. If you need help, email me, jack, at clinicmastery.com. See you next time. Bye bye. Bye bye.