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 control of your clinic costs. We're diving into financial decisions to release your money stress. And trust me, you want to hear Jack's take on key actions to improve your situation fast. Plus stick around for when we discuss cost-cutting versus investment-making decisions you need to consider this financial year.

Jack O'Brien: You've got to start with good data. That means getting good grip on your zero.

Ben Lynch: The common thread with all of the clinic owners that are having the financial freakout is some degree of distance from the actual numbers themselves. And I think the devil's in the detail.

Jack O'Brien: It is a flaw in thinking to assume that when someone shadows you, they just will figure out how to do what you do. For a clinic owner, what do you typically advise around the outstanding accounts? 10% of your monthly revenue. I'm voting for a shift in clinic owner culture that we look at utilisation on a financial perspective, not a time perspective. I'll credit you indirectly, probably inspire.

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 clinics, 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. Here we go. What do you think of my shirt? Oh, I like it. Do you? I approved. I approved the design. Jack often comes to me and says, hey, can we approve this? Hey, look, most of the designs got approved, didn't they? It was all good.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah. I might still have printed one or two that was disapproved, but that's okay. We can navigate that a different day. Actually, you mentioned if folks are Come along. Join us on YouTube, Spotify and leave us a comment. I've been checking the comments. There's not enough comments, Ben. So, I'm lodging a complaint to the audience at clinicmastery.com that we need more Spotify comments. Give us some takes. Let me know what you think of my merch or just generally what you think of the beta on the podcast. It is good fun.

Ben Lynch: In a similar vein, I have this note on my desk. I have two notes actually, post-it note. This one says, move quicker after Shane Bennett was he was on my coattails just saying come on you got to move a little bit quicker on some of these things so that's been a little bit of feedback some radcan for me and I noticed the other day Joby as I was doing a lengthy Claude code session that I thought, you know what, if someone was watching me work right now, I think I would just have the resting bad face. I'll leave it at that. And I was like, you know what, I need to smile more when I'm looking at the screen, you know, at editing a document. So I just have this little note that I put here that just says, smile. And I found myself like, ah, this is more enjoyable. This is more fun. But these are some little things that are sitting on my desk. at the moment as well.

Jack O'Brien: That's a little throwback to the great man Tony Robbins, I think, isn't it? Is it? Like your psychology follows your biology or something like that?

Ben Lynch: Yes, yes, yes, yes. Your state, your physiology is key to your state. So, I've found, hey, don't take it so seriously. Smile, have fun doing the thing you love doing. Anyway,

Jack O'Brien: That reminds me, Allie Abdaal is one of my favourite YouTubers and his book, Feel Good Productivity, wonderful book. But it speaks about that, like how can you make something feel good? So maybe, I don't have a poster note, but I do have this little protein pudding. It's just changed my life. If you're watching along, Mingle, you know Mingle the Seasoning? Do you use those when you're cooking? Yes, love it. Love it. They have paired up with these protein puddings. This is tiramisu and they have a cinnamon donut. The macros are good. It's dietitian approved. I spoke to my friends at Bite Me Nutrition, Jenna and Jono. Get amongst the mingle protein puddings, tiramisu or cinnamon donut. I feel good. I'm just going to nibble while we talk.

Ben Lynch: You're just going to have that fantastic. We have the bagel seasoning. My wife makes these wonderful bagels and the bagel seasoning from Engel is beautiful. Well, we're going to be talking a lot about controlling costs or thinking about costs and some observations we've made this time of the year. which is end of July and we've just come off the back of the end of the financial year here in Australia and we notice every year there's a bunch of clinics, right, that have this finance freak out. They've typically met with their accountant and they've realized maybe the year didn't go as well as they'd liked or typically it's a little bit slower for a lot of clinics this time of the year in terms of getting new clients or clients through the door, back in through the door. and they kind of freak out a little bit. They're in this sort of cash flow squeeze or they're not as profitable. And there's so many decisions that they've made that have kind of snowballed to this point. I want to unpack this, J.O.B., for the clinic owner that is feeling a little bit freaked out by the financials and maybe projecting into the future going, hey, third-party funding cuts, NDIS, wage increases with the award. I'm feeling this squeeze. We're seeing this on various Facebook groups. We're seeing this within our own community of clinic owners that are feeling a little bit concerned about the financial situation in their business, the sustainability of their clinic as a business. We should unpack that. Before we do dive in, any notifications on your end, and then we're going to pair this up for members. So often members are listening into the pod in between their coaching sessions. We're going to pair this up with a couple of areas for you to go in your membership suite and library to complement this episode really nicely. But notifications on your end, Joby.

Jack O'Brien: A number of notifications actually. One thing that people won't be aware of is some of the development that's happening behind the scenes with Allie. So Allie helps to mentor your team, dashboard, your data, house, your resources. And so a11yclinics.com is a place to go for that. I had a coffee and a tram ride and a sandwich with the dev team at Allie yesterday. They're Newcastle locals. We met up in person. I dug the developers out of their cave. They saw the sunlight. I told them the sun is not a monster. If anyone can quote that movie, please feel welcome to jump in the comments. Do you know that movie, Ben?

Ben Lynch: Yes, I'm blanking on it.

Jack O'Brien: Yep, head over to the comments. The sun is not a monster. Anyway, the dev team are working on some new features that will help clinics to navigate the HR and award changes, the changes that are rolling out for October 1, the Health Professional Support Services Award. So, Allie will help clinics to navigate that. Other notifications, I have literally just closed the workshop with Sara from the people plug-in where we got the HR expert advice and hot off the press. We confirmed that we're going to run another members only session with Sara in the lead up to October 1 and so there'll be a deep dive immersion masterclass for our members. If you are not a member, you can become a member. I'm going to tell you how to do that in just a minute and you will be able to join these folks. Who have I got here? Karlina joined the Business Academy, Matthew joined Elevate, Jenny joined the Business Academy, Bec joined the Business Academy. We have a number of folks who have joined us, our marketing agency for Google Ad Support and to build websites. be building websites. It's happening. So, Houchi has joined us for Google Ads, Dr. Rachel, Steph, Lisa has joined us, Lucia, Melody, Jake have joined Elevate. It is all happening. There's more notifications, but I feel like that's the end of my little two-minute rant. I'm not supposed to speak for more than two minutes. It's good.

Ben Lynch: It's great seeing some long-standing member wins as well in the wins channel and shared amongst the consultants as well. There's hitting some massive milestones. Darren getting his course internationally recognized. Oh, plenty to celebrate. And for folks tuning in that are members, there's a couple of sessions that are really going to help complement this episode. On Wednesdays, you can do Understanding Your Numbers with Kate Hawkes. That's the expert coaching session alongside your one-on-one in the Business Academy. You'll also find some use for those NDIS clinics. We have the session each fortnight with Bridget Osborne on the expert coaching session. schedule as well as growing your paediatric clinic with Chris McDonald and if you do want a second opinion on your accounting, we have Andy Wang, the accountant. He is available to you fortnightly on a Tuesday to answer your accounting questions.

Jack O'Brien: Speaking of Andy, clinic owners, you may need to think about getting your clinic valued based on the budget changes and capital gains forecasted changes that are not yet legislation that when it comes to capital gains, it may be worth, in fact, it is worth you investing in a valuation for your clinic. Andy and the team at Clarico do so. So, we can put you in touch. Again, jump in the comments of this on Spotify, YouTube or Send me an email, jack@clinicmastery.com. There's no AI in my, well, I can't say that anymore, Ben. There is AI in my inbox, but there is still a human and I will humanly respond to all of your emails, introduce you to Andy and you can get your clinic valued. So there you go.

Ben Lynch: Very nice. Well, we put out these notifications because we publish this show for free every single week and hopefully it provides some great value for you in your clinic. If you need any help, please do message us jack at clinkmastery.com. So, JRB, let's go into some of the trends that we are seeing with the financial side of a small cohort of clinics, but it always seems to peak around this time of the year, every year. We've seen these patterns play out. We've been in the game for a decade now and running clinics beyond that as well for much longer. So, When someone comes to you in this sort of state, this frenzied state of like, ah, you know, I'm freaking out whether that's, you know, they've been squeezed from a cash flow perspective, maybe they've lost a couple of team members recently, therapists notably have a bigger impact. Where do you like to start? Where do you start to unpack, to understand where they're at so that you can provide them some solutions to, you know, feeling control and make some sustainable changes?

Jack O'Brien: Well, this is such a boring answer. I'll blame the question. It's a boring question. But you got to start with good data, right? And so that means getting good grip on your zero, making sure your zero is laid out effectively and we can interpret it with a management and progress lens. not just with a tax lens. And so we're not talking about editing the substance of what's in your Xero account, but rather editing how the data is presented. In fact, looking at some stories here, Brett, an osteoclinic owner, was freaking out. He's like, ah, my cost of sales, my wages, my therapist wages are 55%. I've heard you guys speak on the podcast. Anything over 50% is unsustainable. and our coach was able to go along with him into his Xero account and we were able to layer in some of the AI tools that particularly Pete Flynn is building and rearrange the layout to identify that there was simply a data presentation error. And this is someone listening along like, oh, so what? Something was categorized wrongly. Yeah, but here's why that matters. I'm starting to sound like ChatGPT. This is why it matters is because It was impacting the way Brett, this osteoclinic owner was making decisions, multi-site owner and was making decisions based on a poor data point. He was actually very profitable and quite sustainably profitable and therefore could invest in more tools for his team and invest in marketing confidently because he knew his cost of sales or his gross profit margin was actually healthy. So he was making poor decisions based on poor data. Once we got the data clean, we can make better decisions. So that's the long answer to the question of where do you start, clean data. And if it's not financial data, then it should be performance data and you get that from Allie that integrates with your practice management software and we can clearly understand what your PVA cancellation DNA rate is. When we know the data, then we can make decisions.

Ben Lynch: So, with all the changes that are happening, have happened, that impact various clinic owners to varying degrees, one of the things that they are in control of is their costs. The things that they choose to spend their money on, and we've discussed at various times the nuance around a cost versus an investment, how to look at different things, perhaps through different lenses. But that is something that you can control, right? How do you think about, how do you guide a clinic owner to take control of their costs so that they can be more profitable into the future?

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, okay. There's not just income and expenses or you use the word cost. There's not just income and costs. We must think about costs and investments or rather costs or investments. And so the distinction is that a cost is a dollar leaving your pocket that does not generate revenue or cannot be attributable to revenue growth. An investment is something that should have a return. And so the distinction often we use is a lot of our occupancy costs are simply that, they're costs or expenses. Electricity, whether you pay a lot for your electricity or a little bit for your electricity, I don't think anyone's paying a little bit, but whatever you pay for electricity does not change your revenue. And if you contrast that, probably the easiest one to comprehend is Google Ads. If you spend more with Google Ads, you will generate, well, you should generate more new clients. Get the help of Clinic Mastery Marketing, our agency done for you ads that is working for hundreds of clinics now. If you spend more on the right Google ads, you will generate more income. If you spend less on those ads, you will generate less income. That is an investment versus the electricity costs. So you got to think like that straight out of the gate.

Ben Lynch: It's an interesting distinction around the return on investment. Let's go through the occupancy sort of category that we talk about and rent and where you choose to have your clinic. you mentioned that you see that more as a cost than an investment. Could it be an investment, though, if you're saying, hey, we're actually, we could reposition our clinic into a different suburb, enter a different market geographically, and that could lead perhaps to growth? I mean, maybe it's not the sole thing that's going to be attributed to the growth. You're going to do a number of marketing initiatives, etc. But could you see where we rent or where we own most clinics are renting the spaces that they're in as an investment? You can. Of course, you can.

Jack O'Brien: That's a once-off decision though and so once you've decided, then it's incumbent on you to manage that cost as best as possible, negotiate the rent down, blah, blah, blah. Maybe contrast that with ongoing decisions. Now rent, of course, is an ongoing transaction but it's a one-off decision. rather than say marketing activities or coaching and advice, some advice activities that can be directly attributable to a gain. A good accountant is another example of an investment. A good accountant should be able to substantiate their fees, maybe they're six grand, eight grand a year, whatever it is. And, that has saved you $40,000 in tax or minimized your tax by $100,000 or whatever the case may be. So, good advice should be able to substantiate a return. The challenge with rent in particular, Benny, is how do you substantiate that? Maybe the rent on a high street place versus out in the boondocks. Maybe you can attribute that but often, you can have a wonderful clinic on a high street and if you don't do the right marketing or you don't provide a wonderful client experience, well, that rent wasn't a good decision.

Ben Lynch: Yes, yep. I've found over time, and you and I have discussed this at length over the podcast, for those that are new to the pod, welcome. Go back and check out some of the past episodes where we've covered different topics here around targets and analysing your P&L. We even did a walkthrough. of that, I found in my own journey, literally, as you said, opening up Xero and just getting familiar with what is on the inside, quite literally, whether that's the menu or the layout, maybe use QuickBooks or Maya, whatever the platform is. get in there frequently and take a look, have an intent to understand as you've often said, Jack, the narrative behind the numbers. So, you know, you can often click on, you're in the profit and loss and you click on one of the numbers and it'll take you into, well, here are all the things that were reconciled into this area as you were saying. And I can go, oh, wow, we're spending X amount on these subscriptions, whether they're clinical subscriptions like a busy track for our patients or the patient management system or the AI receptionist like Ava. And we can see those subscriptions that are there and we go, okay, that's how we get to that total number. And then where does that sit overall in the business? And perhaps there are certain percentages that you're trying to achieve, many of which we've discussed over time. I found just getting familiar, it was almost like that exposure therapy. of being in it and going, oh, it's not so daunting for me to actually see these numbers and understand them. And to your point, how often, I mean, do we even in our own zero find, oh, that could be allocated to a different area and all of a sudden it starts to change the total and the percentage. To your point about Brett changing the layout.

Jack O'Brien: I mean, to answer your question, every time we look, you can change something because that's the human nature of how things are. I've actually got another story here. Megan, a clinic owner, interdisciplinary, large team. She's been doing it for a long time. She's very experienced. To make good decisions, we used our rolling break-even calculator and our hiring calculator, hiring planner, and we were able to show her what the dip would look like and ultimately what the upside of hiring would look like because there was a lot of uncertainty. Yeah, but when I hire, it costs me X dollars. How long will it take to break even? What's the upside? And some of those specifics, a worst month cash dip of about $4,500 but ultimately an upside of over $60,000 a year in profit. And so having independent eyes can be super helpful to be able to pass that out and then having the right tools and the right guidance. helps to make a decision that otherwise probably wouldn't have been made. Yes. Therefore would have missed out on $60,000 a year in profit for the clinic.

Ben Lynch: I feel like the common thread with all of the clinic owners that are having the financial freak out is some degree of distance from the actual numbers themselves and I think the devil's in the detail. I think We'd be hard-pressed to find a clinic owner that is routinely inside of their Xero, routinely looking at their dashboards like in Allie, that's understanding what's going on, understands where they're at with their accounts outstanding, that is in this cash squeeze or in this financial hardship position. It's very rare that that's the case. Would you agree that if you have a regular rhythm of looking at these numbers and you have a familiarity of them, it's unlikely you're making unsustainable or perhaps poor decisions?

Jack O'Brien: Certainly. Yeah, you're exactly right. I think the opposite is true. I'd be curious on your observation here as well that sometimes health professionals in business have a proclivity to be so in the weeds that they get that analysis paralysis. They start interpreting and analysing all of these ratios and data points that ultimately don't change decisions. Data is only useful when it leads to decisions. And so, sometimes we avoid data entirely and therefore we avoid making the decision. Yes. Or we get so in the weeds of the data that we forget that unless it informs a decision, it's actually a waste of time. What do you say to that?

Ben Lynch: Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. There's definitely that cohort of folks that are spending way too much time in these numbers and overcomplicating it. We've talked a lot about that in a KPI sense, a key performance indicator using a tool like Allie or a dashboard that they've got understanding all these different ratios and it's like what revenue is the practitioner bringing in if you were to simplify it down significantly. So, what I feel is, if you're getting into those routinely, you build familiarity, you build confidence, and then you realize, Okay, my strategy is really the allocation of these resources, money and people and time towards achieving certain outcomes. So, every time you actually dive in to these numbers, to your point is, what decision is it informing or helping you create or make? That's key. I feel like getting into the numbers is strategic time, is working on the business. You know, in quotes, a lot of people will say, I want to spend more time working on the business. I think this is a really good place for you to begin rather than just opening up the bank account and going, oh, how much money's in there? And either feeling like, yes, we're flush with cash or we're not. Actually getting into these numbers is super important. I think the other thing that I've learned on a lot is, to your point earlier about having a great accountant and asking the really naïve, silly questions and going, hey, just explain this to me so I really understand it. More than explain it, I find it really useful visually for me. So we'll often screen share, we'll walk through a spreadsheet with different formulas and you go, oh, okay, I can see the flow that you're talking about here. I don't have to just fully conceptualize it, you know, through what you're saying to me. So I find that particularly useful too.

Jack O'Brien: I agree, mate, and there's this interesting duality, a tension that clinic owners need to think about. Like, oh, well, if I could just ask my accountant, then I don't need to do it. Incorrect. You do need to do it because you need to build the reps and get familiar, upskill yourself, but you also need to know that that is still incomplete. You need a wise old proverb says, there's wisdom in a multitude of counsellors. And that's why it's helpful to have an accountant and maybe a financial advisor, a business coach and an expert session alongside like multiple coaches who have visibility because everyone will see different things. Even then, still, we had this case recently inside, we had a bit of a leadership meetup with some of our coaching team and we have built an incredible tool, an AI-powered tool for our members that we're about to roll out that helps to analyse your zero. And we did it on a test clinic who has a number of eyes on their financials and our tool was still able to spot trends that were otherwise invisible. And so the point here is yes, you still need to get your reps in, and yes, that will be incomplete. And yes, you need that wise counsel, and yes, you need the tools, but you need the counsel to be able to synthesize the tools. And so this is how the best make good decisions. This is how the best make advances in their clinic towards sustainability, profitability, and this is how you get beyond the squeeze. We're all feeling the squeeze. It's what you do with the squeeze that really makes a difference.

Ben Lynch: A couple of things here that have come to mind after you mentioned that. One of the things I would go to with a clinic owner is what are the accounts outstanding? What do you need to get in? You've already delivered the services. What's outstanding? You and I have spoken about various benchmarks over time here. That is something that I would get an admin or maybe it's the clinic owner to get on top of and get that money in the door, especially if you've got a squeeze. In terms of just benchmarks there, JRB, what do you lean towards? Obviously, having none is the ideal because we've delivered the service. You don't walk out of the café and say, I'll pay you back in 30 days. Of course, there are third-party payers in healthcare. It's slightly different, but just to say that the ideal is zero. So then close to zero is the next best thing. But for a clinic owner, what do you typically advise around the outstanding accounts?

Jack O'Brien: So just make it better than what it is. So that's the internal comparison. But if you want to benchmark, aim for thinking about what is your monthly revenue. So let's say round figures it's $80,000, maybe you're a million-dollar-a-year clinic. Your monthly revenue is $80,000. Your outstanding accounts at any given point in time should be at least less than 10%. Ideally, again, closer to zero. And so that means if your clinic's doing 80 grand a month, your outstanding accounts should never be more than $8,000. And so you might be able to chase some of those that are really outstanding and overdue. But another really simple thing, and I spoke about this at our recent meet-up on the Sunshine Coast in Meridjador. We had about 40-odd clinic owners in the room with a lawyer. And so this is lawyer verified that you could just change the terms on your accounts. So often, we're beholden to insurance companies or third parties that say, oh, we'll pay on 30-day terms or 45-day terms. Just change your invoice, folks. Make it seven days. Make it a due on receipt. And at that point, it means that they're overdue very quickly and you can chase it with more haste. So yes, but to answer your question, 10% of your monthly revenue.

Ben Lynch: I really like that and I know various times, clinic owners have asked, you know, we've got 30 days and 60 days and 90 days and they're different amounts and what are you saying, hey, just total it all up. Whatever that dollar figure is, we're aiming for less than 10% of our average monthly revenue there. Great example. The other thing, it's a subtle, simple, practical, controllable, change that you can make today is clinic owners that actually get those invoices out on the day of the service delivery. we've seen a number of clinic owners, probably in the tens of clinic owners in the community, who just made that subtle change from, hey, we used to just invoice at the end of the month or maybe the end of the week, and now we're doing it at the end of the day that that service was delivered because the clock starts ticking from that point. So, such a simple thing for you to change and well, again, coming back to, it's in your control. The other one is underperformance. I've noticed a bit of a trend, J.O.B., in some of the commentary and pain points that a number of clinic owners are having in the community when it comes to where they're squeezed financially as the clinic owner. because they have maybe a couple of underperforming team members that they're just not willing, perhaps, or able to turn around in their performance or go through the appropriate performance management, perhaps even to phase them out. They're sort of just accepting this underperformance I'm talking about. I saw a post even today a number of team members on this clinic owner's team that are sitting at half utilization and their rebooking rates are hit around 50, 55%. It's just unacceptable. It's unsustainable, quite frankly. These are not necessarily overnight changes, but just talk me through how you bring up and say, look, this may be the wilful blindness area that you have, like you need to address this underperformance of team. How do you go about bringing that up with a clinic owner and coaching them through, you know, turning it around or, you know, going your separate ways?

Jack O'Brien: Well, I'm going to answer your question with a question. Define underperformance. You alluded to utilization, but who am I to assume? How do you define underperformance, Ben?

Ben Lynch: That's a really good point. I know we've had a great conversation with Sara about this using the Uber framework. Go catch that episode where we looked at outputs and outcomes of the role. So we're referencing here outcomes, which are How utilized are you? What is your revenue? How does that compare to your targets that you've set for those therapists? A lot of clinic owners haven't set them and therein lies some of the faults. And the B and the A is behaviours and attitudes. The stuff that you might ordinarily associate with and quote culture. Does this person follow the values and operating principles that we have here at the clinic? So, go catch that episode. But I think when we're talking about the outcomes of a therapist, I think it's important. One, do you even have targets? Are those targets clear to the therapist? Have you spoken about those regularly and routinely? Have you documented those conversations and looked at perhaps behaviours and attitudes that need to change, perhaps some of the outputs that need to change. But let's assume that in this instance, we're looking at underperformance as they're really behind on their level of utilization. I know a lot of people like to use that and you and I have discussed and debated which stats to use. here but let's say someone's employed full-time but they're really only seeing clients half the time and they're not a new graduate, they haven't just started at your clinic, they've been there for, you know, let's call it a year or more and they're just not seeing enough patients or they're not doing enough billable services, perhaps you can bill for things that are non-face-to-face and they're just not covering really their costs or they're basically a break-even. This is a therapist that you've perhaps even tried mentoring, giving them more support, more training. How do you help that clinic owner navigate, look, this person is really costing you quite a bit?

Jack O'Brien: Look, in simple, hot take, utilization, I want to say I'm voting for a shift in clinic owner culture. that we look at utilization on a financial perspective, not a time perspective. I'll credit you indirectly, probably inspire, but I'm the one, the table at that. I've brought the motion. So let's assume utilization is financially based, i.e. the salary is $100,000 and they need, they're not generating enough. They need to generate more dollars. I mean, in simple terms, we've got two leaders to pull. bill more hours or cost less in salary. So, ideally, we probably don't want to adjust their hours if we can. No clinic owner wants to reduce the employment of their team, generally speaking, of good people. And so, if you want to increase the revenue, well, there's a couple of ways to look at it and what I would do or what I would coach a clinic owner through in the first instance is go to Allie and let's look at some of the clinical performance indicators. And so we can start to see, is this a rebooking issue? Is this a cancellation issue? Is this a new patient flow issue? What is the real challenge here? Is this an average dollar per consult issue? And then we can tailor the intervention according to the specific challenge. If that clinic, if that clinician is rebooking really well, has a really healthy PVA, low cancellation, low DNA, they're just not getting enough new clients through. Let's work together to generate more new clients. Both the clinic can do things but that practitioner, if they've got space in their diary, they can also do things to attract more new clients. So you've got to get really specific on definitions and what the root cause is. You need to do a root cause analysis and work out what's the actual issue here and then we tailor our intervention to specifically move that outcome.

Ben Lynch: Okay, nice. So what I'm getting here, if we combine our collective thoughts, first, are the expectations clear? Like, do you actually have position description? Do you have a KPI framework? Do you have a contract? Do you have the salary outline? Do you have all of those HR docs clear? And are you anchoring back to elements of those in your regular one-on-ones? Because that's going to be important. Then, as you said, understand reality, actually dive in to figure out their current clients per week, new clients, average fee, etc., and then diagnose the root cause to understand what the issue is or where the best lever might be. in terms of some of the numbers. I guess part of that is also understanding what's the problem? Why isn't this therapist quite hitting their strides? Is it a confidence thing? Is it a capability thing? What's the mix of those? And then we're tailoring the solution. And I think documenting that really clearly moving forward and saying, this is what we're going to work towards. I think often if we take maybe that Jocko Willink principle of extreme ownership, I really like that concept of, I'm going to assume this is my fault as the owner or the leader or the manager, etc. That I haven't been clear enough or that I haven't had the relevant structures in place to support them. Even if I have had some degree of that, it's like, what if this was meaningfully better? Therefore, I'm going to install those changes, and if after whatever, one to three to six months, things haven't improved with these new changes, then I can say, I gave it my best to try and support this person, turn them around, but it hasn't happened, and we've got to find a way to go our separate ways. Okay. Next, I said I had three things. The first was the outstanding accounts. The second was the underperformance of team members. And there's always subtleties and nuance in that. I think we've sort of addressed different elements there. The third one is going back onto the tools. Here's something that you've probably found over time, I would imagine, in your coaching. I have too. We so often talk about coming off the tools and maybe at some points we've been misunderstood in that we're saying, Absolutely. Stop treating clients as the clinic owner. Kick your heels up. Have this business run without you. Cocktails on the beach. And that is absolutely not us. We're about creating clinics for good, high impact businesses. Something that really lights you up and brings you a lot of joy and that means different things to different people. But one of the key things as part of your progression as a clinic owner is that you do need more time in your week to manage a lot of these things, the finances, the team, the systems, etc. to work with your advisors to create sustainable change. You can't be serving clients 60 hours a week like Darren was when he first started with us eight years ago and now look where he is. You do need some portion of your time allocated to those things. But there's a period where for some clinic owners who have a therapist background, actually going back and seeing and serving more clients for a portion of their week is what their business needs, especially if they're in a financial squeeze. Whether that's because they've lost two therapists overnight and there's this big gap, Or they're just the team is not performing and you need to set the example. I'm interested in your take on that, JRB. It's not something that necessarily we would jump to because there's a whole bunch of logistics associated with that, coming back online, the comms to patients, comms to team, etc. But I do think for some clinic owners, it's a thing that their business needs for them. and that they need to do. What's your take on that?

Jack O'Brien: This is good, right? Because sometimes we get a little bit too myopic in how we view things like, oh, you should come off the tools. It's like, no, no, you should do what's success for you. You should do what's right for you. And in some instances, that looks like reducing your clinical hours. In some instances, that looks like resisting the temptation to come back on the tools. I know too many clinic owners who jump back on the tools at the first hint of challenge and it's like, no, no, You're just a little bit too comfortable there. So, it's actually prioritizing what is the right thing for your clinic and for you personally, regardless perhaps of philosophy or ideology that comes alongside it. So, that was a little bit of a verbose answer. I'd say yes, that it must be approached with intent. And what I mean is it should be a band-aid, it should be a short-term solution. This isn't a long-term fix. But we also need to be humble enough as clinic owners to go, you know what, I will clean the toilets if I have to. I will treat patients if I have to. I will, you know, do some of the phone answering if I have to. I'm not above any of these tasks. It's what does my clinic need most at this point in time in order for us to continue to be sustainable towards amplifying our impact. that may look like jumping on the tools and to your point, showing the team how it's done. I know a number of clinic owners who have resistant team to AI. If that were me, I'd be jumping in, doing a week of AI consults and going, see, it's not that hard, folks. Here's how we do it. Let me help you. Let me support you. Let's overcome these barriers together. When someone says, I just can't do any more than 22 clinical hours, billable hours a week. Get on the tools and show them that you can comfortably punch out 30 clinical hours or you can punch out six clinical hours a day in an eight-hour day. You can do three hours before lunch, three hours after lunch and maintain your health and longevity. So sometimes we've got to shock how it's done. And not from a pejorative sense of like, look how good I am, but hey, let me show you, let me help you with some of these mindsets that this isn't possible where it actually is and we can support you to make that happen. It helps more people and it probably helps you as a clinician feel more fulfilled, more financially remunerated, and ultimately more satisfied with what you do.

Ben Lynch: thing that we often would do inside training a new therapist is there's kind of the tell them in a sense, then there's show them, then there's involve them. We've talked about that in a number of different contexts. It's a nice little blueprint to follow. And part of that is what I'm hearing is perhaps if we've told them about some of the new tools and tech that are going to help them out, Part of the show them might actually be some of these demonstrations or a deeper richer experience which is involved them you know shadowing a consult co-consulting with you and you go oh actually i see how you move around the room how you prepare the patient how you prepare the room And I realized that there are just these little inefficiencies that are snowballing that are making me run behind or not have enough time for my notes to be done, and so on and so forth. I've found the biggest gains in my career have been shadowing a high-performing or highly effective, highly efficient therapist and going, wow, okay, It wasn't magnitudes different. There were just these subtle things that I did differently that you go, I see how you save time without rushing the consult or rushing the patient that just you pick up through experience, hopefully. So I think that's a great way to get the team on board.

Jack O'Brien: On that, though, I see clinic owners who absolutely should have their team shadow them because they're incredible. These clinic owners are incredible at what they do. They've often, for one reason or another, become a clinic owner because they're a genius and they're beyond the bell curve. They're at the top end. It is a flaw in thinking to assume that when someone shadows you, they just will figure out how to do what you do. Like, osmosis happens inside cells, it doesn't happen inside consult rooms. So you can't just assume that people pick this up. We need to nurture and mentor through these things. We need to show them that, see that one percenter. When I said this script, I said it this way. Or when I moved around the room, I did it very intentionally in this way, not that way. And do you think you'd be able to fit that into your flow and how are you going to roll that out? And all right, we've learned two or three things this morning. I'm going to go and practice those two or three things this afternoon. And then let's debrief for two minutes before we go home this afternoon, this evening to get on top of it. We need to be really intentional with how we do this shadowing. And then I guess finally on that point, Benny, and you might see this, we see young or junior clinicians come into a shadowing environment with their proverbial arms forward. And you go, oh yeah, but the research doesn't say that. Or, oh yeah, you do it your way, but I do it my way. That like stubborn, prideful, unteachable, unhumble, whatever the opposite of prideful is. How do you advise a clinic owner to have that person shadow you?

Ben Lynch: where appropriate, I think, if they're taking more of an active role rather than a passive role, and that looks like a version of co-consulting. So, to your point, I've definitely seen those consults happen where, yeah, the therapist is literally sitting down, kind of in the corner of the room, watching. What do they call those meetings?

Jack O'Brien: Don't answer that.

Ben Lynch: And I think there's such a great way to get them, you know, depending on the profession and how you work, this is like they're standing up, they're walking around the room, they're helping with the patient, whether it's a child or an adult, they're actually actively involved and perhaps you're even throwing to them with questions, again, where appropriate for the patient in navigating that I'll just say for the bigger clinics of which we work with quite many of them, I'm talking clinics with 30 to 50 to 100 team members across admin and therapists. It's unlikely that that level of clinic owner is going back onto the tools in the sense of treating patients, but it might be something different where they're going back into a management capacity of a specific function, specific location. Maybe they're taking on marketing operations or something, a project even. because someone's left or they're just getting their finger on the pulse. There was a great article that came out maybe two or three years ago from Paul Graham from Y Combinator about Founder Mode, later got sort of picked up and popularized by Brian Chesky from Airbnb. And they just talked about the difference between micromanaging and Founder Mode being deep in the details. And so there's a wonderful article, I'm going to butcher it here, but for those that are interested, I would encourage you to just Google that and have a read of that article, where it was just this call to action of like actually getting back into the details as a founder, as an owner, so that you understand what's going on in your business. Removing some of that, I don't know, filtering or middle management where you actually understand acutely what's going on back to your point, Jack, of like diagnosing, understanding the reality so you can diagnose the root cause and the issues here. and then have a point of view or offer some solutions for the interventions and the changes that you prescribed. I come up with two more as you're talking because I had three, but I come up with two more that we often go to, which is leave and your leave policy and your scheduling of leave. and your rostering, notably of admin. I'll bring up these two instances where we worked with a clinic owner and they had just started working with us. literally were in the first one to two weeks and are freaking out because they hadn't had a process, they hadn't had a policy for approving leave. And they had a team, if I recall, of about 12 therapists, these are in the MSK world, and I think about eight of them were going to take circa six to eight weeks leave over the middle of the year. And it was just going to cause a massive crunch on the clinic owner who did get thrust back into seeing clients and going from essentially zero to seeing close to 60 to 80 individual appointments in a week. They hadn't had That's no joke. They did not have a cash buffer for their leave. We so often talk about have a separate bank account where you allocate according to your leave liabilities and they were just in this real pickle of a scenario. And so, I so often think back to these again The whole premise of this conversation today is what is within your control? What are some of the decisions that you're making today about some of the costs, the investments that you're making? The decisions that you have around leave are so important, especially for your therapists that are income generating. If anything, it's just a call to action to have a policy, have a process in place for your leave approval to make sure you don't get put in a position like that owner was, which was really tough. The other one was rostering. And I remember Jazz, we put this in the book where I think it was Jazz Hulls had the $22,000 a year saving in the rostering of admin where they just become a little bit sloppy in allocating hours to admin. And it's only a couple of hours each week, but it accumulated to $22,000 of efficiency gained, again, over what they could control, which was the rostering of some casual admin. To actually audit, back to your point, Jack, What is the reality? What is the need of our admin coverage on the front desk at various times during the week? It's a two to three hour activity to take stock and figure that out maybe with your practice manager and go, well, this is the ideal diary of our admin and our reception. Let's roster people on accordingly. And they found a massive cost saving. So Perhaps part of the intent of this conversation was for us to just illuminate there's so much within your control here and notably around the cost side of things and the decisions associated with that that can actually give you some cash and confidence. in the near term. Well, we might wrap this episode. J.O.B., folks can head over to clinicmastery.com/podcast for all the show notes here and go check out some previous episodes where we've gone deep on team performance, financial management and plenty more. You can eat it up at clinicmastery.com. We'll see you on another episode very soon. Thanks, Jack.