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. Out of these three, do you think one matters more than the other? Fill your books, boost your cash flow, grow your team. It'd be to grow your team.

Bec Clare: What we did this year was using some AIs. We put our fee schedule into AI and said, hey, can you benchmark us against what the industry is doing at the moment?

Ben Lynch: What are some of the actions that you think are really essential to prioritise when it comes to boosting cash flow?

Jack O'Brien: Mentoring is a skill and we can't just expect the best clinical therapists to be our best mentors.

Bec Clare: Have we optimised how we are reactivating existing raving fans?

Jack O'Brien: This is why we do what we do. This isn't ones and zeros and buttons on a website. This is making it easy for people to get the care that they deserve and for us to amplify our impact.

Ben Lynch: This episode will be right up your Allie if you're looking to step back from the day-to-day. We're diving into the top three things to do in your business time. You wanna hear Beck's take on how co-consulting is developing their therapists rapidly. Plus stick around for when Jack surprises us with his number one recommendation about growing your team in 2026. 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 helloatclinicmastery.com with the subject line podcast and we'll line up a time to chat. All right, let's get into the episode. This is episode 341. We're back into the new year and we're going to get straight into it to tee it up because Coming back from the Christmas break and New Year break, a lot of clinic owners do some quiet thinking, some reflection about the year ahead. And one of the most common things that we hear when folks come back online is a version of, hey, I've been thinking about the new year and I want to step back from the day to day so that I can work more on my business or perhaps spend more time with the family that each of us have spoken about. But I think there's a bit of a catch. We see owners, when they create this space, They're actually not entirely sure what to do with it in their diary, because we're so used to filling the diary with consults. Jenny Smith is at 9 a.m. on Monday morning, and we show up, and we're there, and then we've got back-to-back appointments, and then the case follow-ups, and so on and so forth. But often when you get that business development time, it's unstructured, and then it's not used particularly well, or it gets used for emails and Slack, and it's not particularly productive. So I thought we should talk a little bit more about this mental model that, JRB, you've been instrumental in defining and simplifying for clinic owners when it comes to their business operations time, about how they should think about it, how they should approach it. And by these three things, number one, fill your books, boost your cash flow, and grow your team as a couple of key outcomes and focuses for your week. So perhaps to kick us off, JB, do you want to just expand on what each of those things mean and what they look like?

Jack O'Brien: When we talk about filling your books, really, there's two components to that. If you think of this like a three-way Venn diagram, each circle in the Venn diagram has a few extra circles around the outside of it, so to speak. When we talk about filling your books, yes, it could be new clients. It might be through paid strategies or free strategies. But it also refers to your client experience and how we're ensuring we see our patients through the completeness of their care. So it's filling your books with existing clients and with new clients. And the same is true when we talk about growing your team. That might mean growing your team in a numerical headcount capacity and recruiting and adding new people. Or it could look like growing the humans that are already on your team and helping nurture and retain and create good people. And then thirdly, we talk about boosting your cash flow and really this speaks to efficiency. How can we improve the operations, the processes, the policies, the cash flow and financial management in your business? that health clinics typically will oscillate between needing more new clients or needing more capacity and more therapists and the pendulum kind of swings. You get more clients, now you need more therapists. We recruit a therapist, we need more clients. And underpinning all of that is cash flow management and the profitability and sustainability of your clinic.

Ben Lynch: But so Beck, in your week, where do you find yourself being most comfortable or allocating more time than the other? I think we all have this place where we feel more comfortable, more capable, perhaps from our experience. Of those three, where do you personally spend the majority of your time and how do you think about that in the course of your entire week?

Bec Clare: Mm. Probably in terms of my role specifically and the way that we've structured our leadership group is I would spend most of my time in probably the boost cash flow area. I'm the systems person, the mechanic, ensuring that those things are ticking over. And then I'd spend some of my time in the grow the team, both from a recruitment perspective. I've spoken to this previously on previous episodes that It's time locked into my diary recruitment so that we're looking at great candidates versus looking for them. So it's just part of our routine all of the time. And I just love helping and continuing to build the culture of our team. So I'm constantly looking at how do I grow the humans around me? That's ultimately my why. That's why I get out of bed in the morning. I want to leave that legacy as a leader. So I love spending time in that space. So I'm probably spending most of my time between those two. The filled books we have Based on our leadership structure, there are other team members really championing that at the moment for us. So I try and keep my hands out of there as much as possible, even though I like it still.

Ben Lynch: Okay, so predominantly around boost cash flow and grow your team. I like that distinction of the recruitment side. We've spent a few episodes recently talking about that. Just to connect those previous episodes with this one here, Beck, in terms of the time allocation, do you find that it's fairly standardized week on week, month on month, or does it flux depending on where you're at? four hours every Monday. Just talk to us about the specifics of the actual time allocation.

Bec Clare: Absolutely. So routinely, it's one to two hours a week. So it's a relatively small time block if you think about how many hours we spend working on our business. And really, it's about continuing to nurture those relationships that we've got out in the community. And then it does fluctuate. If we need a therapist now, I want to be spending more time with those people. And I also still want to be turning over what looks like some paid ads, more out in the community. So depending on the hiring season, we do our hiring season for our early career therapists quite early. So we're doing that in June every year. We want to pick up the very best early career therapists.

Ben Lynch: And June because here in Oz, people are graduating circa November, December, starting in January. So just to paint the calendar there, you're getting about a six-month lead on the new graduates graduating.

Bec Clare: I think our new graduates for this year also had contracts signed by August.

Ben Lynch: Okay. That's a really good insight.

Bec Clare: Yeah.

Ben Lynch: Okay. So, and also just to pick up, you said nurturing people out in the community. Do you mean therapists that have like previously applied for roles or therapists you know you're sending them a message on LinkedIn or email or SMS? So you're just keeping the relationship active?

Bec Clare: Keep the relationship active. Also, those team members who might have moved on from our business and they might still be connected. Say they've moved overseas or they're traveling to Australia or they're doing something, they've moved on and either we would welcome them back or they've moved on and we've still got a great relationship with them. They've got like-minded peers who we still want to talk to. So it's about continuing to be warm and fuzzy with everyone.

Jack O'Brien: I love that. It's so underrated, nurturing your network. It's something that I personally found I did really naturally, though I'm not the extroverted supporter type. I know that our business depends on good people. I recall in my first years of owning my clinic, this is a decade ago now, we're looking at how do I stay in touch with everyone that I went to uni with? Not that they want to come and work with me now and not that I've got a job now, but at some point in the future, there might be a position available. They might be the right person. And I need to have farmed and nurtured that relationship for years and years. So it's something that kind of a lot of, some folks will do organically, but I think there's a real key action in there for others to pick up and make this a part of your rhythm.

Bec Clare: What I like doing there, Jack, is nurturing the relationships because I genuinely want to nurture that relationship with another human. And then when we happen to then post on our socials or on our LinkedIn or something, we've got a job ad, they're like, hey, I really like speaking to Becca. I really love speaking to Jack. Why wouldn't I apply? Or I'm just going to share this to my community. I very rarely will need to send a message like, hey, so we're recruiting. Do you want to apply or know someone you know? They've seen the ad and they often just reach out.

Ben Lynch: Yeah. Very interesting perspective because I am the opposite of both of you. I put in little effort. In fact, I'm feeling really bad at the moment because I've got two text messages from long-term friends sitting there for over 10 days that I haven't replied to. Mentally, I replied, so I'm not sure if they pick up on telepathy or not. But I am just, I do not do this. So for the folks who are listening in, watching in here, and this is not your natural inclination, I'm with you, I hear you. I also see the value in doing it. Perhaps my approach is more strategic in the sense of I have a need, I have an intent, and so I'm going to make the relevant investment. So I could be better at this, and I love your approach to doing it, J.R.B., just speaking to you even today on the phone. just hearing what you're doing, you know, greasing the wheel and networking as well is just like, ah, you know, I'm sure you've trained yourself there, but you do it really well.

Jack O'Brien: Thank you. It's a really important distinction. This is not natural. It is trained to become natural over time. So it's not forced anymore. Here's an interesting distinction, because there'll be two camps of folks listening along here, and I was talking with a friend of mine who is really the opposite of me. Actually, when we talk about Myers-Briggs, he's an ENFP, I'm an ISTJ. We are like oil and water, which complements so- Are you talking about me? No, I'm talking about Dave. There's no chance you'll be listening. He was saying, when I hear, Jack, that I'm scheduled into your calendar to be reached out to, That initially made me feel like, geez, does he not remember me if I'm not in his diary? And so there'll be the, quote, extroverted people, people listening along who think, how on earth could you schedule someone into your diary? Can't you just remember them and reach out to them? Yeah. Dave's revelation was that, oh, right, if I do matter to Jack, he's gone to the extent of scheduling me, and that shows the significance of the relationship. And so it's really easy for us to fall into our own biases of going, oh, well, if they schedule me, I'm not important. Or conversely, if they schedule me, does that mean they forget about me? is do what works for you in a way that ultimately shows value to the other person. But the point is that you get it done, whether it's spontaneous or scheduled, people matter.

Ben Lynch: So Jack, out of these three, do you think one matters more than the other? We look at fill your books, boost your cash flow, grow your team. If you've got someone that's pretty time poor and they're going, just tell me the one to focus on or I've only got time to do one and do it well, what's your answer to that?

Jack O'Brien: Well, that's a chicken or the egg question, right? I'm curious on Bec's answer though. I won't make you go first, Bec, because I know you're like me, you like a bit of time to think about it. Thank you, Jack. I'm just thinking as I kill time here. My answer would be to that question, Ben, I would say if you could only do one, It'd be to grow your team. And that is because as we develop our team, and particularly nurturing and developing the humans on our team, then they can go about filling their own books with their existing caseload better or attracting new clients. Their productivity will improve cash flow. So, Bec, I'm sure you've got something to add to that, but if I had to pin the tail on the donkey somewhere, I'd be pinning it on growing your team.

Ben Lynch: I like it. And I'm going to come back to you, JB, for the highest value actions you would do in order to do that after we hear you, Beck. Do you agree with Jack that growing your team is the number one of these three things, boost cash flow and fill your books, to focus on for clinic owners?

Bec Clare: I really do because also in terms of boosting cash flow, you can do things like, say, increase or update your fees. But if your team need the confidence in their skills to be able to do that, then you need to have grown them first. I will, however, challenge Jack, I guess my answer would be, what would happen, rather, if I didn't do something in the next 90 days? So if I didn't take one specific action in the next 90 days, what would be the result? What might break? Because if you're seriously time poor and you've only got, say, the hour, if I didn't do this, what might happen?

Ben Lynch: Putting those constraints on you is a really great mental exercise, even if they're silly, unrealistic expectations or constraints. It's just so good for being more resourceful in your thinking. So, whether you've got a leadership team or this is just all on you, it's a great way to do it is to say, if I had to solve this problem or get this outcome in a month or 90 days, what one would I do or what would I remove? And just go through the mental exercise of thinking about this more deeply. That's a brilliant way to do it. So you're going with grow your team. I love both of the cases that you've made here around grow your team. I do wonder, though, how many clinic owners are saying, well, I have invested a lot in my team. I do give them the mentoring and the support, the supervision, the CPD. I am there for them to answer their questions, but I'm still battling to get time or money through the door. to allow this to really shoot through some growth barriers that I've got for myself. So I absolutely agree, that is super important. And I can see how it relates also, JB, to one of your points around fill your books, which is around existing clients. And they're probably going to be 80 to 90% of what you do, yeah? The other 10 to 20 are new clients coming in. So I think perhaps, as we now start to drill down on the specifics you would do, I would want to channel the grow your team very purposefully. what actions are we going to do and for what outcomes? Like you said, Beck, over a constrained period of time is a good way to think about it. Whether you pursue it in that way, it depends. For instance, we're going to increase utilization by 30% in the next 30 days, and that requires really intensive mentoring. Okay, that might be an extreme version, but at least it's a sharp version of how you'll allocate your time. So, J.I.B., when you think about growing your team, you've said this is the priority, or at least I would recommend to most clinic owners as the rule to choose this one. It obviously depends on their circumstances. Then what are your go-to pieces of advice for what they should focus on as the key inputs to get those outcomes?

Jack O'Brien: Well, really the way I'm thinking about it is if your eyes are on growing your team, I'm thinking about the barefoot investor analogy of the firehose. So growing your team is the firehose and getting those mentoring sessions frequently, consistently in the diary is key. And then you could point the firehose wherever you like if we need to boost our cash and improve our efficiency. increase our average dollar per appointment or sell more product, we can point our team mentoring at cash flow management. Or if we're not nurturing our clients and the experience is lagging, we can fill our books by nurturing our team around filling our books. Same is true of new clients. So the input is making sure there's regular mentoring happening with your team members And really that fire hose or that gazelle-like intensity, for those playing bingo at home, that gazelle-like intensity really then guides the learnings, the lessons, the actions, the behaviours and the attitudes along with it.

Ben Lynch: So, when you talk about the mentoring side of things, I often think too, Who needs support right now on our team and how the support we provide them is different to their peer? Who might be crushing it and cruising along? Perhaps the point here is not everyone needs the same level of mentoring support as one another at the same time. It sort of fluxes in different seasons. So if I'm understanding you, we're looking at each team member, how they're doing, who needs more support, and what that support ought to look like to get them to a certain outcome. So you're essentially creating an individualized treatment plan, management plan for your team members to work them towards a result just like you would in therapy with a client?

Jack O'Brien: In essence, yes. I'd say yes. And it's a personalized growth plan because we want to be continually growing, right? We're lifelong learners. We're readers, leaders, all those, you know. What are those things called? Phrases? Tropes? Yeah. I don't know, tropes usually in the negative sense, but whatever.

Ben Lynch: Some of the times it's like, yeah, they're learning a lot. They're not doing anything with it.

Jack O'Brien: Right, right.

Ben Lynch: You know what I mean?

Jack O'Brien: So I like to think of it in our clinic of there's always some general things that we're all focusing on and there's some personal things that you're focusing on. And so it might be that we're all thinking about our initial consult scripting and phrasing, but you specifically, Therapist B, you're thinking about the rebooking process at the end as well. And Therapist C is thinking about how they present their management plan. Therapist D is thinking about how they condense their objective assessment. So they're not doing 97 minutes of assessment and we can condense that down. So there's general and personal for everyone. There's always a growth plan for everyone though.

Bec Clare: the cadence of ensuring that they're in the diary and the commitment to those is really important. What I've seen the very best do is they book them in the diary and they consistently go about running those sessions, even when the diary appears to get a little bit fuller for that clinic owner. What we conversely don't want to do is put them in the diary and then shuffle them around and it makes the team member feel like they're less important. And I think it's when that then happens is they come less prepared to those mentoring sessions. They action less as well. And so then it's this self-perpetuating model that neither of you sitting in the room feel like it's very important.

Ben Lynch: Yes. And to that point, you raise the element of actions and the accountability to them getting done. This is something that I've seen a lot over the last few years in working with people coming on to Allie, and one of the reasons we installed the actions and notes there is I see a lot of mentoring sessions go really well. There's a lot of connection, rapport, there's clarity about what's going on, but we meet again in a fortnight or four weeks and you look back after a series of these and go, what's actually changed? Not much. Have the behaviours, have the habits changed? Can we see progress? No doubt there's value in the connection between the mentor, the mentee, the supervisor, the supervisee. But what is the tangible progress of these mentoring sessions? Because we've talked about the cost of meetings in previous episodes, you know, an admin meeting or a leadership meeting over the course of the year, tens of thousands of dollars, maybe even hundreds of thousands, depending on how big and how offline those therapists are. But mentoring is a classic case where it's just a catch-up or we just talk about, you know, the tricky case. Now, you know, therapists need support with that. But if you truly audited a lot of clinics and how they're doing their mentoring, a lot of it's not really accountable to progress. They're sort of support sessions. And I'm not saying they're not needed, but it's also getting the balance of making progress, as you said, Jack.

Jack O'Brien: I mean, I loved some of the distinction on the language that you used just there. I would suggest clinic owners and mentors within teams should, if you're doing this already, that's okay. New year, new you. We don't call them catch-ups. anymore or they're not calls. These are intentional sessions that are around mentoring session or it's a growth session or it's a level up session. This isn't a casual catch up. We need to make progress.

Ben Lynch: Great point. I think there's a couple of elements that we've spoken to previously that make this work, and this is a nice little sort of rabbit hole we're going down here because we said there are three key things that you ought to think about when allocating, quote, admin time, a lot of people call it that, or business operations time, and they are the outcome of filling your books, boosting your cash flow and growing your team. Specifically in growing your team, it's the addition of new team members recruitment, the nurturing or mentoring of the existing team so that they grow in their capabilities and competencies, and then the retention of those team members towards pathways and career progressions with you at the clinic. And you're really lasering in here on the mentoring component of the additional three components related to grow your team. Beck, that was Jack's answer. Did you also have that as the key high value action you would do to grow your team or was there something else that you were going to talk about?

Bec Clare: I would add that mentoring can also look a little bit different in that something we've implemented this year, and we're eight days in, and it is already off to a flying start, we can already see the tangible outcomes of this, is co-consulting. So a mentor jumping into sessions instead of a formal mentoring session. And the distinction here is for our clients, it's a co-consult so that the team member who's essentially being mentored doesn't feel like they are being watched or that the client might then want to book in with the more senior therapist. We actually frame it. We've got a social media post going on about it this week. And our senior therapist is also having a lot of fun, so they're still consulting in some ways. and their mentoring at the same time. What we've already noticed is that confidence in language has changed. Assessment, we are now aware of where our clinicians might need that extra support and we can tailor their ongoing mentoring to that. Language starts to change. We've already seen changes in our PVA. Now, something like your PVA, your patient visit average, you typically see that change over a longer period of time, but we're already starting to see trending that is showing us that eight days in this is already working. Increased pre-booking rates, increased number of patients booked in in that two to four week window from now. So we want to also be looking at, in terms of filling our books, it's not just tomorrow that we're looking at, it's what does the ongoing or future diary look like ahead of now.

Ben Lynch: specifically they're looking at the stats or are they looking at the diary or both to determine that?

Bec Clare: Yeah, both. So we are looking at the stats, absolutely, and we're also looking at how full the diary looks for that clinician.

Ben Lynch: Yep. It's a really good sort of indicator, isn't it? Rebooking rate and then seeing those bookings in the diary in four weeks from now, as an example. That's one of the stats that are available to you in Allie, is the appointment count four weeks into the future. So you get to see how full is the diary rather than skimming through the calendar and trying to look for white space in there. It just shows you in a really clear number and the trend. I'll link this to a model that I like to use, which is tell them, show them, involve them. So, when I heard you say that, Bec, of we get them to co-consult, and maybe another version is just shadowing. That's maybe a bit more passive, but telling them would be in a mentoring context. So, how are you going with your caseload? Or, talk me through the clients that you saw this week. Showing them might be pulling up the management plan or the case notes and actually showing, these are the things I'm doing and we're getting more and more specific. A richer experience, a better way to identify the detail needed to diagnose and make the plan for their growth and development. But to then involve them. physically, just takes that experience to a whole new level. So I love that if we're trying to create more cut through, I think that's a great model. Start with Tell Them, Show Them, Involve Them. We've used this in a recruitment context before of Tell Them as the job ad, Show Them might be videos and images. workshops, webinars, involve them is like they come and they might shadow, they might be there for a CPD, but they get that experience of what it's like to actually be on the team. So, I like that. So, co-consulting is one of your key things you're testing. How will you determine whether this has been a success or a durable success? sustainable success, if you would, in say three months from now? There's early positive signs, but how will you sit back maybe at the end of the quarter and know whether we're going to continue with this?

Bec Clare: So there'd be a couple of metrics that we would be looking for. Ben, we'd be looking for an increase in our PVA at the three-month mark and that it's trending towards where our goals are as a clinic and how we want to treat and how we want to provide care. The second is in terms of team member engagement and retention. We've also found that already the feedback from team members is like, this experience is unreal. I'm not sure I can get this anywhere else. And so that's been really nice. The shadowing distinction, Ben, is a really important one. We were doing shadowing in 2025 and what we did find, it was quite passive. either the mentor or the mentee sitting being quite sort of removed from the consult. The reason and the distinction of calling it co-consulting is it's genuinely, hey, can you have a look at this hip? I'm finding this. They're actually talking to one another and learning in real time. And so the mentor might say, oh, do you see what I'm seeing here, Ben? And we're going to now move to this test. So the learning is happening live with the patient. Clients love it. They're saying, oh, I'm getting two physios for the price of one. This is amazing. And what we're then also doing after the sessions is asking three questions. What's been most impactful about co-consulting today? What's been your key insight? And what are you going to implement as a result?

Ben Lynch: great questions to ask and to refine it as you go. It brings up an interesting point, J.O.B., around mentoring and its effectiveness and assessing are the mentors actually creating tangible growth. Perhaps some of the obvious ones would all go to our utilization, revenue generation. Are we seeing those things trend better? Maybe some of the other sub, I'll say tier two stats of like rebooking and cancellations and those things getting better. How else would you make an assessment whether the mentoring that's being provided at a clinic is actually effective?

Jack O'Brien: It's tricky, is the short version. I think you're right in saying there are different tiers of ways we could measure this or different metrics. We could measure it different ways depending on what we're trying to achieve. If it was a really commercially focused season, then we might look at utilization or you know, dollars per consult or something along those lines, maybe we're in a real client experience focus. And so it might be things like cancellations, DNAs, which classically would not be considered the responsibility of the therapist, but it really hinges on the trust and the relationships, the rapport that's established. So, we could look at it commercially, we could look at experientially, we could also look at it from the- Like NPS, the Net Promoter Score as an example.

Ben Lynch: Correct.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah. And ultimately, PVA is the truest expression of patient satisfaction, really. Do they continue to return? And then finally, we could look at it from the perceived value of the therapist on our team. And so, if we were to objectify that, it might be things like, I can hear it in the comments already, but things like measuring sick leave is a really important metric. E, NPS, employee, NPS, churn of team members.

Ben Lynch: Which, just to labour on, just for a moment, JB, is where a team member would say, how likely are you to recommend a friend or colleague to work at this clinic?

Jack O'Brien: Ultimately, employee satisfaction, yeah. Yeah. If you're a large team, you could look at churn or sick day rates. Or we could just look at perception of value. We could ask our team, how valuable is this for you? Or from a CSAT type perspective or satisfaction perspective, how disappointed would you be if this mentoring was to stop? those types of maybe more subjective measures are really important indicators of how well our mentoring is going. And I'm curious if anyone else has got perspective on that, but also a little thought that came to mind as you both were speaking is Mentoring is a skill and we can't just expect the best clinical therapists to be our best mentors. We have a responsibility as clinic owners to invest in their growth and development as mentors inside things like mentor mastery, providing them with the coaching and the books. And you cannot expect positive results from your mentoring if you're not investing in your mentors as a business owner.

Ben Lynch: It's a very good point around the best therapist doesn't make the best mentor. We've covered that on a previous episode as well, so you can go back through the archives and uncover how we explored that, some of the measures, some of the things you can do to see if you've got the right therapist in the mentoring role.

Jack O'Brien: Right. And just to make it explicitly clear, when I talk about Mentor Mastery, Mentor Mastery is a program that Clinic Mastery provides clinics in our business academy. We provide Mentor Mastery and our Practice Leaders program. These are concurrent complementary programs for your clinical mentors to coach them in their mentoring and your practice managers or admin team leads in their coaching and mentoring. It's kind of like you get three coaching programs for one inside the Business Academy, just to make that explicitly clear if listeners were unaware.

Ben Lynch: I'd love to zoom out to boost your cash flow in a moment, but if I'm understanding this correctly so far, the question I put to you both is, You've got this clinic owner who now has time to work on their business. Instead of filling it with reactive things like email and Slack, we're going to give them this model of thinking about what part of your week is allocated to filling your books, what part of your week is boosting cash flow, what part of your week is growing your team. And specifically growing your team is one of the ones to prioritize the most. And if we're to look at the highest value action, here it is, the mentoring And then in your case, Beck, specifically going a layer deeper on that, the co-consulting element to improve the confidence and competence of that therapist so that ultimately they can see and serve more people in their day, in their week, and be more productive. And that's going to drive overall clinic growth. Okay, so let's zoom back out. Boost your cash flow. What are some of the actions that you think are really essential to prioritize when it comes to boosting cash flow? Bec, this is your domain. You said, I spend a lot of my week here. So, what are some of the key elements? And I know you cover a lot of this in the Practice Leaders Program with practice managers typically taking a lot of this on their plate in their week.

Bec Clare: Absolutely. Two key areas that I would focus on is ensuring we have scheduled fee updates. And I've been quite purposeful with my language there versus a fee increase. It is scheduled because it should happen routinely either throughout the year or annually. And it's an update so that we are coming into line with things that have changed in the marketplace. It's not an increase, increase hits the hip pocket for our clients. It's an update. So I'd ensure that we've at least done one scheduled fee update. What we did this year was using some AIs. We put our fee schedule into AI and said, hey, can you benchmark us against what the industry is doing at the moment? And it said, okay, here is where you're at. You're this far off the pace. And we went, great. Now we know what to increase our fees by.

Ben Lynch: So we've spoken to that one specifically, obviously in a physio context, they came out with that report a couple of months back. We shared that on the pod specifically. They also referenced some other professions in that report, Joby, that we unpacked. So you could go check that out. That's good. So you've linked it to some research on where the market is at for similar services.

Bec Clare: Absolutely. And the second part that we'd be looking at is ensuring that our system around payment is there. We want to look at our inflow and our outflow. So inflow is the money coming into the business, outflow is how you're spending it or how you're investing in things. We want to make sure that the timeframe between those two things is as small as possible. so that we're not having to have outflow without it first coming in. So we'd be looking at ensuring that payment terms are really tight, that we're sticking to payment terms, both paying our suppliers but also ensuring we are paid on time, and wherever possible, payment on the day. This has been low-hanging fruit for a number of clinics we're working with in the Practice Leaders program. where they might be waiting 48 hours, 72 hours, weeks for payment. And we just go, why can't that happen on the day? There's now great platforms that can help us do that. Even if you're out in the community, there'd be no reason why you couldn't get payment on the day for the vast majority of the services. That's going to have a significant impact on boosting cashflow.

Ben Lynch: Just a couple of those platforms to shout them out?

Bec Clare: Health. I've been chatting with Health recently. How do you fill that, Bec? H-A-T, H-A-L-T, H, capital H.

Ben Lynch: Did I butcher that? Word health minus the letter E. Yes. Yep. There you go.

Bec Clare: Awesome platform to be looking into. You've also got things like Stripe, High Caps Go.

Ben Lynch: If you're doing like a home visit, an outreach visit, if you're in a satellite clinic location, have something so you can take payment immediately. Absolutely. Would you add to that because you are always in the spreadsheets managing the accounts, this is something that you love doing. Is there anything you'd add to that or nuance to Beck's contributions around one, fee updates, scheduled fee updates, excuse my language, and secondly, the payment terms, suppliers and also getting paid yourself.

Jack O'Brien: Two things come to mind. One, more conventional and in line, I'd say products. How can we sell more products? And if you can focus your attention on the margins that you're getting and the way we're integrating products into our client journey, that is a wonderful way to boost your cash flow in a profitable way. We can boost cash flow in a profit neutral or sometimes a costly way. Yes. And ultimately, let's boost profit and products is a great way to do that. The more non-conventional way, if I was to sit down and boost my cash flow, I would say, what am I currently investing in that I'm not getting the juice and the squeeze from? Specifically, if I'm investing in coaching and mentoring, how can I get more out of that? How can I execute more, not consume more, but do more? If I'm investing in software, and I think about a conversation I had with Houtan from Clinic Apps recently, legend guy, legend product, and he said, look, most clinics are utilizing about 20% of the feature set. And I'm sitting there thinking, well, if I want to boost my cash flow, I'm going to crank it up to 80% of Clinic Apps features. I'd have a high degree of certainty that that will result in better cash flow, better productivity for my team, better lifetime value and average dollars per consult, reduced admin spend on phones and communications management. Get more out of the things you're already paying for.

Ben Lynch: Really great point. I think there's a conversation to be had as well with your accountant. If you've got a really good accountant, they can help identify some opportunities for your cash management. And Beck, you raise a really good point really about the timing. Andy Wang has been terrific from Clarico in articulating this and helping people understand the timing of things. Just simple and subtle things that we often see an invoice come through to the front desk and receptions responsible for paying that. And in perhaps an attempt, a good faith attempt to be efficient and tick off the to-do list, they pay these bills that may be due in seven days or 14 days or 28 days, whatever it is, and that can put us in a cash flow squeeze. And so it's really important to always pay our providers by the terms that we've got. But we don't need to do it any sooner, I think, if you're looking to manage your cash flow. And ideally, we're looking to extend some of those terms where possible, maybe just by another seven days or 14 days, just to ease some of that burden that can help massively. So, I like your point around the timing of those things. If we shift gears, if it's all good to wrap up, boost your cash flow and go to fill your books, JOB emphasize some of the things around client retention or client nurturing that they see through their care plan that they've been recommended. You said that more eloquently than I did. The other side is acquisition of new clients and this is often an afterthought. I think a lot of clinic owners only get to this when they're in a bit of a pinch and they go, the books are looking a little bit sparse or I've just hired and all of a sudden I don't have enough clients or that wait list we had, we've now kind of whittled it down to not much and I need new clients. So I think there's a real key point here that Clinic owners in 2026 need to better prioritize client acquisition and how they're going to do that because there are some strategies that are reasonably effective at getting short-term results, but don't bet on that. You want to play the long game, the sustainable game. So, J.O.B., talk us through, fill your books from allocating time in your week to key activities and key investments you'd recommend every clinic owner take to get this outcome.

Jack O'Brien: If I'm thinking about filling my books, I want to know for the, let's say the hour of work that I put into it, how many new clients do I need to generate for my hour of work as the business owner? And so you might have a two hour block or a four hour block, but let's play it out. How many new clients do you need to generate from that? And that might be, I need to generate, you know, let's say 10 new clients from this hour of work. And so that might look like nurturing five referrers, sending off five emails, voice messages, video messages, text messages. That might look like creating three reels and then amplifying and boosting one through Meta Ads Manager to create more community awareness and ultimately mental availability so that you come to mind when your community needs you. Maybe you're going to spend an hour optimizing your website to increase your website conversion rate, which is physical availability. And if we can boost that website from 2% to 5% over the course of a month, that's 10 more new bookings captured. So be explicit on the outcome of the investment of your time.

Ben Lynch: I like that. Two things, three things come to mind for me is one, have a target. I think we probably hear a lot of clinic owners say, I need more new clients. Not good enough. If I give you one, will that be enough? So specificity is key because then secondly, we can determine the budget. We could maybe go A to B or B to A here, but if we say we need an extra five new clients a week, and we know that it typically costs us $100 to acquire a client, then we can start to work out a budget as well and say, okay, then how are we going to invest that budget? Is it all through Google or all through meta-ads? Is it some division between the nurturing that you said, Jack, and so your wage is considered as part of that budget? And then I like that distinction as well of the input and output. What I mean by that is the input of changing the website, changing your clinic website to improve the output thereof or outcomes specifically of conversion rate. We get 2% of people that hit the website or this landing page or this offer, and we want to get it to 3% or 4% because that'll result in the five bookings we need. And then it's very clear for you to say, I'm focusing on this week or this month rather than try and do 17 things and kind of not know where you're trying to get to.

Jack O'Brien: I agree. I think though some of that is a little bit, what's the word? You're kind of guessing or hypothesizing perhaps is a better thing. My hypothesis is or I have a good degree of confidence that if I was to improve the call to action buttons on my website, it would improve conversions. Yes. Now, you've got to test your hypotheses. We're always playing the science game. We're all mad scientists as clinic owners. Sometimes, you can have confidence that if I work on this, I'll get that result. Other times, we're making bets, ultimately, with a degree of confidence that the work will get the results.

Ben Lynch: What I love about it though, Jack, whether you track it to the nth degree of accuracy, The model of thinking is the powerful thing. Rather than just blindly go, I'm going to fix my website, and then that scope goes from, well, I was just touching up the homepage and now I'm doing a full rebuild, and I'm thinking about spending 20 grand to get all rebuilt. It's like what I love though is even just having that model of thinking allows you just to sharpen up the scope of work. We spoke on perhaps one of the most previous episodes of scope of work blowing out massively, and that all happens to all of us. So being clear on, okay, I want more new clients. I think I can optimize my website because there's plenty of traffic. It looks like it converts at 2% to a booking and I want to get it to three or four, let's see it in 90 days if it's changed. But even then, I would know intentionally when I have that hour of time to work on fill your books, I know, okay, I'm trying to get the website to 3% from two and I'm working specifically on this page and I need to make it more obvious to book in or easier to book in. I don't know, for me, I know it's not that simple that clients go through this very logical sequential journey to book in, but what it does is it helps me scope my work a lot better than just going, I'm going to fix my website to get more bookings.

Jack O'Brien: This is the skill and a discipline of some of the best clinic owners and business owners is that they continue to remind themselves of these things and remind yourself of the value of what you're doing. Because it's really easy, and Beck, you can attest to this, to fall into this slump of like, I cannot be bothered optimizing my website again. It's words and buttons and ones and zeros on a code. Who cares? No, no, no. When you sit down and do 45, 50 minutes work on your website, you're creating a path for five more new clients that have a lifetime of $1,500. That hour of work is worth $7,500. And so I'm going to put the blinkers on, get focused, put away slack, close the door, put the phone out of sight and out of reach, and this 45 minutes is $7,500 worth of fixing a button on a website.

Bec Clare: I think that's where clinic owners often miss that ROI thinking, for this hour of my time, I want this return for it. And I love where we're going with this in terms of optimizing. We're talking about buttons on a website, but I'm also thinking in terms of filling our books, have we optimized the client experience? Have we optimised how we are reactivating existing raving fans and having them refer in to us? And also, how are we optimising referrer relationships? So say we're a speech paeds OT clinic, right? And we've got a school or we've got other healthcare professionals referring in for OT, but they're not referring in for speech. We've already got a great relationship here. They already trust us. Can we optimise that relationship so they are referring for the full suite? If you're MSK clinic and you're doing some workers' comp work or early intervention, are you also doing their pre-employments? Like, let's optimise the suite that can fill the books.

Jack O'Brien: I love it. I'm also in that vein of reminding ourselves. When I sit down and do marketing work, when I've got my clinic owner hat on, I'm reminding myself of who is the human that will consume this, who are the person. I've been out of clinic ownership for a couple of years now, but I can still think of Charlie, the DVA vet, or Kathy, the middle-aged mom who hurt herself going skiing in Canada. I can think about Chris, the CrossFitter, who I work with, and my content would be geared towards these days. I'm watching videos of clinic owners, the types of people we help. It's the Marians and the Andreas and the Hassans. I'm watching these videos. I had photos of my patients in front of me to remind myself, this is why we do what we do. This isn't ones and zeros and buttons on a website. This is making it easy for people to get the care that they deserve and for us to amplify our impact.

Ben Lynch: It's a really good point around writing, shooting, recording for someone. It's a really important point, and we've spoken before, and we're going to go into more depth this year around the client journey from them first finding out about you all the way through to booking. And it's never quite as logical or sequential. Sure, some people probably have that journey, but for the vast majority, it's, you know, mix of different touch points and connection points with you to know that you might have a solution for their healthcare problems. So what we're really looking at here is But there's a finite resource, which is your time as an owner. So often, we're in reactive mode. We don't have the structure. And if we do have the structure, it's very easy for the scope to blow out from, okay, I am focused. I want more new clients. I'm going to work on my website. And that blowing out to 90-day project with no clear outcome and maybe a whole lot of money spent on it. to just saying, how do you just sharpen up? I think of that, would it be a parable of the guy cutting down the tree in the forest, two guys, and the first guy goes off and sharpens the saw for a couple of hours and then comes back, whereas the other guy got straight into it and started sawing. and the one who took the time to sharpen the saw cuts the tree down quicker. And so I think so much of what I see are clinic owners going into projects without taking the moment to sharpen the saw, which is get super clear on what does success look like, even scoping down and saying, I'm not willing to spend more than four weeks on this thing. How can I, to your point, Beck, earlier of the constraint-based thinking, What if I only had a week to work on this? What if I had to get the result in two weeks? It just helps sharpen up before you start doing the thing and it bleeds out massively because there's only so much time that you do have. We don't have big corporate teams to help us. We are small businesses, so we have to be very deliberate about the use of our time and money. So that's, I think, perhaps one of the call to actions here as we put a wrap on this episode, is to give you some of these mental models, these principles for how to think about doing the thing, because that'll serve you at any point in time, rather than say there's only one way to grow your clinic, because there's not. But if you thought about allocating your time between fill your books, boost your cash flow, and growing your team, and then defining what success or progress looks like, then you could decide on the highest value action to take. Maybe we've covered some of those today, or you can check previous episodes or subscribe and tune in every single week because we're going to provide you with those what to do. JOB, before we wrap, are there any keynotes that you would add for clinic owners who want to make sure that while they've got some insights from here, that it leads to change and progress in their clinic? Get in touch.

Jack O'Brien: Reach out. This is not a one-way conversation. I like that. Ema, jack@clinicmastery.com. There's no AI in my inbox. You get me. So that is jack@clinicmastery.com. Maybe make the subject podcast. There are multiple folks. So you're not going to be the only one. There is handfuls of clinic owners every week reaching out this way. So do so. Ask questions. We'd love to point you in the right direction. You don't have to recreate the wheel. There are so many clinic owners and our team, our community have figured it out and there are many ways to be right. Let's help you get there faster.

Ben Lynch: I like it. Beck, you've offered some incredible insights here today about how to think about this. I particularly love the constraint-based thinking approach. Is there anything else as a keynote before we put a wrap?

Bec Clare: I think what happens is when clinic owners and clinicians come off the tools, they lose their structure. So this is about putting the structure back in to your week. Yes.

Ben Lynch: I love it. And I would emphasize not only time structure, but the mental structure for how to think about using your time effectively.

Jack O'Brien: I'm a Cobran. Yeah, yeah. I'm coming back. I'm going for number four. It's a bonus. John Farnham. Look, I was a little bit shameless with the plug there before, but if I was to be specific, something that comes to mind is extreme accountability. Maybe we didn't touch on this today, but to Beck's point, clinic owners become a law unto themselves and the drift happens. Something that I still practice and I find the best clinic owners do is they create extreme transparency. and accountability and honesty with their mentor or with their colleagues, their peers and say, I'm working on this. Here's the outcome. Kick my butt if necessary and celebrate with me when it's done. But here's what I'm going to do. Get accountable. It's the difference.

Ben Lynch: I love it. I called you this morning and said, Jack, I need your accountability on a couple of things. So we walk the talk here, folks. All right. Well, that's been another fantastic conversation with you both. I'm so pumped for what we're covering this year, not only on the pod, but some amazing things happening for members as well. This is going to be the best year to be a member with Clinic Mastery. So I'm so excited for our members. You can catch all of the show notes, clinicmastery.com forward slash podcast. Go along there. Listen to all of the episodes that we've got. Binge it, eat it up, and we'll see you on another episode very soon. Bye for now. Bye-bye.

Bec Clare: Bye-bye.