Grow Your Clinic

Shane Bennett: Essential Budgeting and Financial Planning, and Infusing Purpose into Decision Making | GYC Podcast E283

• Shane Bennett • Season 5 • Episode 283

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Can you imagine running a successful clinic without a budget? Many do, and today's guest, Shane Bennett, reveals the hidden pitfalls of this risky approach. Shane, who leads a multidisciplinary team at Beyond in Melbourne, shares his expert insights on why budgeting is crucial for maintaining cash flow and ensuring the long-term sustainability of healthcare clinics. Learn how strategic budgeting can turn even the busiest months into manageable milestones, making financial planning less daunting and more effective.

Join us as we break down the art of balancing ambition with realism in budget planning. From handling months with triple pay periods to using budget variance reports for tracking progress, this episode is packed with actionable advice. Discover how gamifying the budgeting process can make it less intimidating and more engaging, and hear Shane's practical tips for prioritizing projects and making informed decisions that drive clinic success.

Align your clinic’s mission with financial strategies and embrace the power of technology to boost patient outcomes. Shane discusses how fostering a forward-thinking culture and leveraging innovations can keep your clinic at the forefront of modern healthcare. Plus, learn the metrics that truly matter for measuring success—from net promoter scores to employee engagement indicators. This episode is your guide to mastering the financial, operational, and cultural facets of running a thriving healthcare clinic.

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Speaker 1:

This is the Grow your Clinic podcast from Clinic Mastery. We help progressive health professionals to lead inspired teams, transform client experiences and build clinics for good. Now it's time to grow your clinic.

Ben Lynch:

Welcome to the Grow your Clinic podcast. My name is Ben Lynch. If you believe that numbers are boring, we share something in common, but that is until you meet my next guest, shane Bennett. Shane leads BEYOND a team of 90 in Melbourne 9-0. That's across physio osteoporiatry and EP. Zero. That's across physio osteoporiatry and EP, delivering a really first-class experience.

Ben Lynch:

They reimagine the healthcare experience and through this conversation, we talk about how numbers are so impactful in your decision-making about growing and scaling your clinic and how it's so important for you to know which levers to pull to ultimately do that in a profitable and sustainable manner. We talk about how to budget and that most clinics actually don't run by a budget, but how to do it thoughtfully and purposefully as a clinic owner, so that you relate to it and, even if you don't love it, you know how to do it and you know how it serves you in growing your clinic sustainably. All right, let's pick up the conversation with Shane now. Love it, you know how to do it and you know how it serves you in growing your clinic sustainably. All right, let's pick up the conversation with Shane now. So one of the things that you've spoken a lot about over a long period of time are budgets and the importance of budgets.

Ben Lynch:

In fact, I don't know when, it was a couple of years back that you said it's astounding to me the amount of clinics that join the CM community. That are sizable clinics, you know, in terms of headcount, team revenue, et cetera, business success. You know, in quotation, that just don't have a budget, they don't really look at their numbers, et cetera. Why do you think people don't have a budget Like what maybe the case is? Well, we're doing okay, it hasn't bitten us in the bum yet but why is that so shocking to you that people don't have a budget?

Shane Bennett:

I think it comes about from the fact that a lot of the clinics have often started from scratch and so, as their clinic's grown, they're in the moment and it's all in their head. So they know what the bank account has to look like to be okay or not okay. They just have a fairly good level, a good grasp of what's happening cashflow-wise. So I think that's how sometimes it comes about and it's you don't know what you don't know. And so people are like well, I've you know the clinic might be profitable, I'm aware of it. Or if it's not, they're like well, I know what I've got to do, we've just got to get more clients through the door, through the door. So in some ways it's a really nice simple approach.

Shane Bennett:

Um, my mind boggles a little bit because it's so this it's so important to make conscious decisions in this space. And when it's all in your head, it it's a little bit more reactive Do we have money in the bank account or not? And it's this a budget gives you this amazing ability to see into the future as an educated guess, but to see into the future and then make some conscious decisions now when you've got a bit more of a runway to um to execute. So that's the mind boggles, because I can kind of, I guess. Having done it for years now, I can see the importance of um a budget and also how much easier it can make certain decisions that people sometimes stew on.

Ben Lynch:

There's some really nuanced and distinct points in there, because the way it perhaps catches people out is they get into a cashflow squeeze and they're like, well, actually a budget might've helped you make a decision the same decision but at a different time. Or you might have been a little bit more conservative, a better steward of the resources you do have than being maybe perhaps just abundant. Or you know, the generous version is like you're maybe being abundant. Maybe the worst version is you're just being naive and flying blind a bit reckless perhaps. So I really like how you framed it up. When you then bring it up to a clinic owner, that's like, eh, it hasn't really hurt us, we are where we are, you know we've done pretty well. Owner that's like, eh, hasn't really hurt us, we are where we are, we've done pretty well.

Ben Lynch:

What do you then? How do you approach it to sort of say, no, here's how it can make a meaningful difference to you moving forward. Like, perhaps speak to some of those decisions that they can make. Maybe that's kind of the greatest reflection of having a budget is you can make different decisions, or what categories of decisions are you looking at that? A budget really helps?

Shane Bennett:

I think this doesn't specifically answer answer that question. But for the the clinic that's not entirely sure why, or not seeing great value in why they might do it, because everything's kind of fine at the moment. Some of the examples that I use and this is where the bigger the clinic, it becomes a bit more noticeable and this does resonate with people that the bigger the clinic becomes, the more responsibilities you've got. So one there's gotta be a level of responsibility and governance on your own behalf to make sure that the people that are within your team are going to get paid and you're being responsible. But it's also the bigger you get, the bigger the difference there is between I think there's a time lag between profit and cash flow, between profit and cash flow. So you know, if you're a practitioner, sole practitioner, and you know that December, january, is quiet, then you generally notice that in your own bank account, in that descent, you know that New Year's period, in that descent, you know that New Year's period If you're a bigger company, it's that quiet period over that time may hurt you at the back end of January because you've kept paying some bills, you've paid some rent and there's, you know, bigger commitments and because of the volume of cash flow. It takes a while to realize that your cash flow has been running out of it. So you know it's a problem, but it doesn't really. Your bank account looks it's worst at the end of January rather than January 1st, when it's happening. Then throw in a whole heap of payroll and you then get to, you know mid-feb and you've got your payg from the previous month and that was a january and and it's, it's big because people were still getting paid yeah, they were just on leave and so you've still got your um payg to do. You've probably got your super accruals. If you're doing payroll tax everywhere, all of a sudden you've got these big lumpy things happening in february and you're like here I was thinking we're now turning a profit, we're a busy clinic, we have a cash flow problem now and it's because of what happened back in december, january.

Shane Bennett:

If you budgeted and you'd seen the reality of the impact of what december was going to have on your clinic and January, and you knew that back in August, then you kind of know what that firsthand, that they've realized that cash flow and profitability start to separate a bit further. And then what can happen? And this is more the fear and instilling a little bit of fear, whether that's on purpose or not. To help people do a budget is to go. You hit a point where you can't dig yourself out of a hole because of how lumpy that expense is. If there is an 80 grand bill that you just hadn't quite planned for, that's like. You can't make that up. You can't go. Go and treat 20 more patients to to get me on top of that, you just can't. So the bigger you get, the more of a pickle you end up in.

Ben Lynch:

If you haven't been planning, bigger you get, the more of a pickle you end up in if you haven't been planning the great point, and that's where just looking at the bank account or, you know, visually scanning the appointment diary is just not going to suffice as you grow. What are some of the? I think that's a really good point. One of the decisions or you know future forecasts is like a three pay period. Do you know those months as an example, or have you factored in the leave that's going to implement? Sorry, is going to affect the revenue side of things. Why are you still paying those folks? A budget is a key way for you to forecast those things out. What other sort of key decisions do you use a budget for? What have you found in your own sort of business, but also coaching other clinics to see the relevance and importance of doing it?

Shane Bennett:

there's a couple of things, but you just you touched on a really good point there around the triple pay cycle and budgeting for that. But it's also for your own state of mind that we've had those months where you look at it and you think, oh, I've just had a $20,000 loss or $10,000 loss or whatever it is, and it's a triple pay cycle and that hurts, or it might've been. It could even be say it's a profitable month, but you were just like gee, we were a lot more profitable last month than this month and it feels like you've gone backwards and you're like I felt busier when you've budgeted and you've budgeted for an entire year. Two things happen. One, if you've, if you've factored in a triple pay cycle, so if you've gone to kind of that level of of detail, to kind of that level of detail, to kind of think it's the first layer beyond a very superficial budget, that first layer is having a monthly budget that factors in pay cycles Then what might happen is you can see that in that month let's say it's May that when I look at my budget and what I've planned, we're going to have a $5,000 loss in that month.

Shane Bennett:

And you know that and you can see that, and so when May eventually rolls around and you have a $2,000 loss in that month, that's a win, that's you ahead of budget and that's a much nicer feeling than not having budgeted and just see a $2,000 loss sitting there and going, oh, that's not great. So it allows you to be that one step back, because if you've budgeted for 12 months and hopefully you've budgeted you've seen what the whole year is going to be and it's spat out a figure, a profit figure. You get this moment 12 months in advance from that profit figure to go. Do I like this number? Am I happy with this? Is this reflective of the, the time, the risk? Everything I'm going to take over the next 12 months to get there is is this stacking up. So you feel a bit more in control of the decision at that point in time, rather than getting to the end of the year and going oh, that's just why did I work this year?

Ben Lynch:

um, it's so true, because you get to the accountant meeting at the end of the year and you we hear so many times like you're waiting for the accountant to tell you how profitable you were or not and you go. Oh, and it's never good when they're like. This is where you ended up and it's not what you hoped for or expected.

Shane Bennett:

Yeah, it's just nothing you can do about at that point. So it feels like you're in a bit more control at that 12 months out, because if it's not saying what you want it to say, you get this moment to go. Well, what can I do about it? Or what do I need to do about it? Do I need to reconsider what I'm spending, in whatever category, um, or do I need to really double down and say, well, you know, our this particular service at the clinic is just not really at the level that it should be? And I can now clearly see that, yeah, and so I'm going to sit down and brainstorm what needs to be done, and it can help form a 12-month plan.

Ben Lynch:

I love that. I'm going to come back to the Oracle side of things, to those people that are like, yeah, but how do I forecast, you know, nine months, 12 months into the future with any degree of sort of sensitivity and accuracy? A plan, I think, if you think of every decision in your business, is an investment decision. It's an investment of our time to do a certain piece of work or project or initiative or system, to recruit someone or give them a pay rise. Everything is an investment decision and ultimately, I think the budget is essentially your investment plan. It is your strategic spend plan.

Ben Lynch:

Often say to people it's like literally putting your money where your mouth is. If you say you're going to do all these projects or initiatives, you're actually backing it up with. Well, here's where we're going to allocate our financial resources and our people, because to some degree, your org chart is represented in your budget. You know how many admin have we got practitioners, senior, junior, et cetera and I think it's like literally putting your money where your mouth is. I see a lot of clinics prioritize like, oh, we want to do all these projects. You know, we want to reinvent our new client intake, we want to transform our mentoring of practitioners and our CPD and we want to get all this new tech and that's all good.

Ben Lynch:

But I think they tend to lead with that and even if you did lead with it, it often doesn't make its way back to the budget as an example to actually see the impact of that, perhaps even starting with the budget and saying this is what we have and then how would we allocate it. I think you can kind of go both ways, but how do you then sort of future pace out nine or 12 months? For those people that say, well, I haven't got my crystal ball None of us too but how do I do that with a, you know, a degree? Nine months, 12 months from now? How do you answer that question for someone that is trying to pull together a financial year budget?

Shane Bennett:

I think if you get too caught up in the detail then it does become analysis, paralysis, because there's no like you are guessing. It's definitely a progress over perfection. So I do say to people that if it's their first time budgeting, just get it down. Get something down and you're allowed to change it. So I do find with clinics in their first crack at a budget, they might fix it a month in and then they might fix it three months in. Not the whole thing, but there might be one or two things that are like, wow, I was a fair way off with that guess. So that's the first thing is you? Obviously, if you're going to have to redo it every single month, then maybe it's not quite going to plan, but like, just fail forwards on it and just get it down and go from there, and each year it gets easier. But as a quick guide, it's having a little bit of a look at the previous year and going what like, did we grow? So let's just use a clinic that's I don't know, say, has two services, physio and massage. Um, looking at those two separately and saying did our massage grow or did our physio grow, can help to then determine what's going to happen the next year? Because sitting there with last year, not knowing what really happened last year, and then going, oh, we're going to grow 30% this year, then maybe that's less growth than you had the previous year, maybe it's a whole lot more. Maybe last year you went 10 backwards. So knowing that helps. Because then the question becomes I'm just going to throw 30 as my growth because I just like the idea of it. Then what are you going to do differently this year compared to last year? Because the definition of insanity is doing the same thing but expecting a different result. By putting down on a budget you're going to have a different result, but then just going through the motions and doing the same thing, you're just not going to get there. So it's a nice little conscious moment like that to go, almost a little bit of a kick up the backside to go. I want this to look differently than what it does. So what am I actually going to do about it? So it is that balance.

Shane Bennett:

Sometimes where you know we're looking at it might be a particular location for us or it might be a particular service to go. I mean I'd love it to be a bit higher, but I'm not just going to put that down on the budget, because I'm thinking of everything going on here. How likely is it that we're going to make a big impact here? Might be a particular location and we say, well, actually we're starting a new clinic here and we're doing something else over here. I would love to make that clinic grow 40% but realistically that's not going to happen.

Shane Bennett:

So a conscious decision to do that and really it is us prioritizing and saying, well, we've only got so much time and it's going to go here and here. Or for those people that have the 10 projects when you budget and go war, can we? We can't afford to do all of those 10 right, which are the two or three that are going to be the biggest levers to make the biggest difference. That's probably what we've got to do, or maybe it is. If we do these two projects first, they're going to be the biggest levers and therefore we will be able to do projects three, four and five.

Shane Bennett:

If we'd started with projects three and four, we wouldn't have got ourselves into a position to go back and do projects one and two. So very much as much as it's just numbers on a page and it's finance, it shouldn't. Maybe people will disagree with me here, but I don't think it should necessarily control all of your decisions from a from a business standpoint. But I don't think you should be making decisions without an awareness. Yeah, like play the two off, um, and then hopefully it becomes clearer which is the right decision it's a really great point of like.

Ben Lynch:

Here's the budget and we've got to constrain the work and what we do to fit that, or here's the things we want to do and what do we need to make happen from a budget perspective. You're kind of going, you know, a to B and B to A in a way to try and find the right mix of what you feel is going to be best. I think ultimate goal is to run a sustainable and profitable clinic, moving forward with a disclaimer of depending on what your goals are Like. If you're just acquiring clinics and, you know, aggressively growing maybe profitability, you kick the can down the road for a bit. But I think ultimately we're trying to get clear on the decisions and the impact of those decisions, right, so, practically for those using, I know at least Xero call it a budget variance report. I don't know what Myob and that call it, but you would run a budget variance report at the end of the month, end of the quarter, and say here's what we budgeted, here's how far off we were. How do we continue to sort of get closer to the percentage of being right or wrong or proximal or distal to that budget number? I guess we're just looking for some degree of certainty as business owners and I agree with you, when you like, called it out a few years ago, because every time a clinic works with us they do a business audit. We sort of look at a whole range of different areas in their business. The overwhelming majority will talk about their uncertainty around numbers, their dissatisfaction for the financial performance of their business and that'd be a key stressor in their life, um and in their business and yet, for various reasons, avoid going to doing something like a budget. I found it and usually I thought, well, they're just like for accountants and boring people, me not being the overly detailed person. But what I personally found really useful was almost the gamification of it, where it was like, if you want to be strategic, if you want to have a plan, then essentially the budget is your version to say, hey, if we do this, this is the outcome we expect and then let's review it at the end. How close did we get? Maybe in a similar way to like treating patients.

Ben Lynch:

I feel like people, clinic owners like, oh, I'm scared of my numbers. But if we went into the clinical realm and you're looking at like an objective assessment using a piece of technology or some assessment. You would love numbers. I don't know. You're looking at how a patient performs in a certain assessment. You would probably find a way to grade it and try and improve it. And almost you know I'm up for the challenge to try and improve this patient's result in this area. It's, I think, same same in a different way. There's different language, metrics and terms. But I find it quite cool to with that reframing of the gamification, the idea that you're almost setting yourself a challenge and like how well did we go against that? I don't know, that's that's my take on making it interesting. You're more of a numbers guy.

Shane Bennett:

You perhaps didn't have to get that excited about it I think, um, you know what, what gets measured gets improved general comment, but often it's the case. And if you're measuring your profitability, if that logic sticks and you go, well, what gets measured gets improved. That in itself is a pretty good outcome. And think of a patient. I think if they know what they're trying to achieve there's a number there Again they're more likely to go and do that exercise or get that outcome because, whatever the metric is, they're at 15 and they know that the goal is 25 and they know what they've got to do to bridge the gap. They're probably more inclined to do that rather than go.

Shane Bennett:

Oh, just go and do this exercise with no great context. It'll make you feel better. Putting a number to it can yeah, can really help. I think it also bringing back to budgets for a moment, I think also it's often our angst or stress comes in the unknown and I think for a lot of people, having a budget can just help people sleep a bit better at night. So it's being a bit more conscious and feeling a bit more in control, yeah, so whatever helps you sleep, I like it.

Ben Lynch:

I like it because your point around continuing to revisit it is almost just as important as having it, because to that person that's like well, how do I know that you know three therapists are going to resign in you know two months from now? I can't forecast that. Or you get to that point you're like well, I didn't forecast this. So you're just encouraging the consistency of looking at your numbers and, rather than just looking at the bank account, which is the end result, maybe go a little bit further down or up the workflow chain to be more conscious, as you said, you've often talked about intentional design, conscious design, intentional design, not only in budgets. I love that design, conscious design, intentional design not only in budgets. I love that.

Ben Lynch:

I'm sure your budgets are very functional and look good as well, because you're very intentional about how you do things. Where does that come from? Like? Is this something that you've evolved into as a business owner in your progression? Has it been something that's been more natural to you? And what does it mean to be intentional about what you're designing, not not just with like aesthetics, but also the way you show up and build an organization?

Shane Bennett:

I like um. Thank you, I think that's the. It's the positive to a, to a, maybe a a bigger personality trait that's got negatives to it. But the intentional bit I like um, the the. You know, the too intentional about everything could end up to over analysis and analysis, paralysis, um. So that's the.

Ben Lynch:

That's the thing we've got to be mindful of, the perfectionism, trait that we so often hear a lot of health professionals have. You know, I'm a bit of a perfectionist, so I definitely resonate with that.

Shane Bennett:

Yeah, and that's maybe the out when we're talking about budgets to go. It's okay to then readdress it in three months or six months if it's not quite right. The intentional component component, I think, to speak about our own clinic at the moment. I think we've improved with that over time, um, and I think when we saw the benefits of being more intentional, um, you then you know it. It it gathers momentum a bit.

Shane Bennett:

When I think of intentional, I think of almost making things more simple. So, if you know, if we know our why, our really simple why as a company and this I have spoken a bit about um, that you know your why is more that the heartbeat and the passion behind what you do, as opposed to the what being. You know, uh, you know we're, we're, uh, we're an allied health clinic, we're a multi-day clinic. That's, that's kind of what we do, but so does the clinic down the road and around the corner and the other 15 that are within a kilometer. It's the it's, you know, it's the why.

Shane Bennett:

When you're clear on that, you start to get clearer on who your team are going to be. You start to get clearer on what your ideal client looks like. It even starts to shape a little bit about what your clinics are going to look like, what they're going to feel like, um and so this level of what can look like as high attention to detail from the outside. It's actually simple in that there's not 400 things that we run through or filter and do the checklist and that's what gives us the intentionality of what we do. It's actually more simple than that. It's just kind of like this just a common theme and a common thread running through every decision, which then creates what looks like very clear intention.

Ben Lynch:

What is that? Why? For beyond, how do you articulate, articulate that, communicate that to the team, especially as it's so big um, you know, being intentional over so many humans, so many locations, the attention to detail can be hard to consistently get right. I without good systems, without a good culture In one version I think the clinic owner that wants to kind of control everything, but as they grow it becomes harder to control it. They're just trying to influence it, perhaps through systems, policies, culture, leadership, et cetera. So, yeah, tell me more about the beyond. Why? How do you articulate it? How do you communicate it? How do you keep it alive and thriving?

Shane Bennett:

Our why is we redefine the modern healthcare experience whilst empowering our team and supporting our community to move through life. There's three components to that. Really, we redefine modern healthcare experience. So that's really simple. That means that we think we've got to. Everything we do has got to be that. So, whether that is advancement in tech, whether that is how the clinic feels, whether it's the experience of communication before the consult, after the consult, every touch point that we have needs to feel like we're giving someone a modern healthcare experience and, ideally, we're redefining it as if they haven't had that kind of experience before. We're redefining it as in they haven't had that kind of experience before. We don't mean miles ahead and doing something that's so so far ahead that people just you know it's not at all what they thought they were going to get. It's just an elevation of of an experience they may have had previously. Empowering our team that becomes quite again, quite simple. That our structure, the way that we run things, the training, the autonomy we give team. It's like we're here to empower our team. So, with all of our systems and procedures, how do we make sure that they support our team rather than hem them in so tightly that they aren't being able to act with freedom and flexibility.

Shane Bennett:

The growth of our clinic we have had fairly strong growth over the last few years and when we look at it it became quite clear. We used to set targets and maybe targets are still a good thing. We've been talking about measuring but we used to say we want this many clinics by this year. We've become more intentional but a little more vague with with our growth now that we say we're going to grow at the speed at which our team need us to grow, because we're here to empower our team and part of that's giving our team opportunities. So that's the speed of our growth is what do our team need? And that's going to dictate, that's going to dictate our growth.

Shane Bennett:

The last bit is supporting our community, and you know that makes sense. Of course, probably you know most clinics are supporting their community in some way, shape or form, but spending a bit more time thinking about what are those ways that you can support your community. So if we look to kind of clinics for good, what are we doing other than seeing the patients that walk through the door? What else are we doing to support our community? And also, like community can mean a range of things. So for us, community means you know, our own community, as in our own team.

Shane Bennett:

Community can mean geographically, community can mean the broader practitioner community, the industries that we work within. But being able to look at that and go, if that's our why, what are the things that we're doing to support our community? Again, it might be local sporting clubs, it might be the pro bono work that we do with a particular charity. Yeah, it's a range of things, but again, I'd like to think that every single system, procedure, everything we've implemented over the last few years, when we got really clear on our why we can bring clinic that doesn't run through that filter, then like, let us know where, like we've, we've mucked up, if that's, you know, if you're seeing that, call us out, call anyone out everyone, call everyone out.

Ben Lynch:

If, if you see it kind of running off track a bit, I love how you've framed that up and I'll want to get clear on the distinction between your why, vision, purpose, mission, because sometimes these terms can be interchangeable. Your winning aspiration you've spoken about before. What I love about that is so often, you know, a version of this is created by a business, a clinic, specifically here, that you know is very thoughtful in its creation but so rarely used practically. It kind of exists, you know, in a team member's induction, maybe some collateral internally on the website, but it's such a strong primary filter through which you're making decisions and you're essentially using, you know, a word or a couple of words there to say, well, how do we do this, this thing, empower our team. What does that mean and how do we do it practically? An example perhaps as you've spoken to you know pathways for team members to move through their career with you into different portfolios or roles. I love that.

Ben Lynch:

I remember a mentor of ours saying something very similar. If you could break down the clinic mastery core purposes to support clinic owners, to amplify their impact, and support is very purposely chosen. It's like what does support look like? Well, it looks like practically these things. You know these products, these programs, these methodologies. You know what is clinic owners? Well, it's. You know these professions in these jurisdictions and what does amplify the impact. You know how would you actually articulate and and measure that. So we use that as our primary filter as well.

Ben Lynch:

The core purpose, as we call it, you know how does this connect directly to our core purpose being lived out every single day. So I love that practical application component component because sometimes these things can be like fluffy, intangible, nice to have. Um, so I love the practical application there. But, yeah, just shared sort of the distinction, because you and I've spoken before. Um, I'm overlooking the, uh, the author's name, but it's playing to win the book, I believe it is. He talks about the winning aspiration. There's like five things um, you got to get. Maybe we can pull it up. Uh, while we're here, um, how does that fit in the distinction between your? Why a mission, winning aspiration? Do you have a distinction? More so for those tuning in and trying to figure it out, because so much of this is interchangeable language.

Shane Bennett:

Yeah, and I'll probably. I'll probably get it. Get it wrong, cause we can. We can literally get caught up in the, in the language, and in the end, the simplest description for me is like what's your, what's your why, which is I think Simon Sinek is the big driver behind that. So our winning aspiration, it's the same thing as our why. I think the author of that book is Roger Martin, I believe.

Ben Lynch:

Yeah, just got it on the screen here for those watching on YouTube Playing to Win, how Strategy Really Works.

Shane Bennett:

Good book playing to win how strategy really works. Good book we a lot of. I guess the common one is is um vision mission purpose or vision mission values? Um, we to use as an example our why is what our teams see all the time and what we hope and expect. If they kind of retain anything, that's what they see.

Shane Bennett:

Our mission from our end is really just slightly more detail on our why, again, trying to keep it simple and not too fancy. But even our mission, I have to say that we don't I've just pulled it up as we've been talking. I can't say it off the top of my head like I can say our why um, and I'll already now it's. It's very similar to our, you know, to our why um. So our mission is we are a clinic that provides a wide scope of career opportunities to attract, nurture and grow high quality, fun, loving team members in an environment that redefines the experience of modern health care. This in turn helps us deliver excellent client experience to our community. We help our community, our colleagues and our team to move through life. So for us it's just a fleshed out version of what our why is, little bit more detail, which I feel like just gives a bit more substance or context, because they can. Your why can be quite floaty because it is so up in the clouds, and it's meant to be, but at some point that has to be brought down into substance and and getting stuff done. So our mission just helps give a little bit more clarity there. We think of our why as the filter that we make a decision, and then we do talk a lot about the values of our clinic and that's the framework that we work within. That's almost a set of expectations that we have of ourselves, of each other. It gives you comfort and confidence as a team member to know that you can or should be able to rely on the rest of your team to play within the same playing field. But it's not so hemmed in that it directly stipulates what people have to do.

Shane Bennett:

So an analogy we use sometimes is we hope our framework gives a guidance so that if you're in a room then the guidance is in the diagonal corner of the room there's a chair. The outcome is to go and sit on that chair. That's the extent of the framework. You've got the four walls which are your values. Going and sitting on that chair is the why or the purpose. How you do that, how you get there, that's up to you. So if you want a cartwheel over there, if you want to run backwards, if you want to run around two walls and go at a right angle, do that. If you've got the outcome and you've worked within a framework, then happy days.

Shane Bennett:

When you're too strict as a, as a company or an organization, and it's just a, what we want you to do is we want you to walk the quickest way there. We want you to walk it, not run it, and you're going to go diagonally across the room and then sit on the chair. That works until someone accidentally goes and puts a couch in the middle of the room and the person's like well, now, what do I do? I can't walk diagonally. There's a chair there or there's a couch. Do I go over it? Do I go around it? Should I sit on the couch? Instead, I might go and ask someone. Okay, that's not the outcome. That we want is where people feel like the moment there's anything that's slightly different, that they need to go and ask.

Ben Lynch:

That's a really great analogy because so often we hear clinic owners talk about there's so much reliance on me that can come through a number of forms, whether that's clinical reliance, the revenue generation that you have clinically in seeing and serving patients, whether that's operationally. Keep getting all these questions become a bit of a bottleneck for progress. You can't really go on holiday because the phone or emails are pinging, and so you're really giving a framework, a paradigm for people to think as an extension of you, as an extension, representation of the company in a way that everyone would be happy with. If you're sort of linking it back to our purpose, our why and our mission, then surely you're going to do all right most of the time. Yeah, that's really cool because in a similar way, our mission at Clink Mastery, as it is at the moment, we sort of look at it over a sort of a three to five year period At any given time. At the moment it's a three year period we're using is we're building an integrated suite of support services. So we've taken the word support from the core purpose, really emphasizing that and looking at integrated suite of support and then so that becomes a primary filter.

Ben Lynch:

And you know, recently we decided to combine a couple of different support services into one, to integrate them, and that became a really great reference point and framework for making that decision, having clarity on that mission first of all, and so I think I really enjoy how it, as you said, simplifies decision making. How do you then go about, either in like principles or practices, connecting the why stuff, the mission stuff, with budgets, because they almost seem almost at opposite ends of the continuum? One's just black and white detail budgets and then the other, as you said, can be quite big, esoteric, almost fluffy, especially if it's not used practically. It kind of becomes as a thought experiment and wordsmithing. How do you actually merge the two to make sure that's that well, okay, to that point of put your money where your mouth is, that the budget reflects us doing that particularly well, and, um, you know that is influencing the budget. How do you go about bringing those two worlds together?

Shane Bennett:

I think the more we've done it, the more organic it happens, because, hopefully, that why becomes ingrained. Um to think of some extreme, some extreme examples um, we, I know we set our budget up, we have a look and we we go. This is not looking particularly pretty for the year ahead, or not where we want it to be, and we're like you know what. What I can do here is I can fix our practitioner salaries and I can pay our team well unders. That clearly is not going to align with our filter of um supporting our team, our community. Um, or it might be we're gonna, I don't know. Let's pull all funding, every bit of funding, out of um supporting our local communities. That's how I'm going to fix the budget. I'm like well, again, it's not sitting with our why.

Shane Bennett:

So? So, first and foremost, if there needs to be anything drastic, what are the things that we can do that have the least impact on why we exist as a business? I'm just trying to think of even maybe a more practical example this actually did come up where we realised that we were talking about being at the forefront of modern healthcare and then realising that we didn't have an allocation of um of tech and equipment within our budget just wasn't a line item because not everyone will have that. But, um, we're like, well, that's a bit silly. If we're really going to talk a game here, then like, where are we allocating funding and resource for it? If we don't, if we don't allocate it, it's not going to happen. Um, so that's the, I guess the the direct transfer it's not, as it's not as conscious a decision anymore, I think, because, um, we've addressed those things over time, eg, you know a line item like that, but also it's so organic now to be thinking like that.

Ben Lynch:

Perhaps even just the prompt of reconciling the question. You know, does our budget reflect our purpose? Our mission is our purpose, our mission reflected in the budget? How could we do more of? That is even just the most important point because, like you said, it's it's continual, it's not like a one-off event. You're always trying to be better at doing it. Um, same is true for us. Like we just last week wrapped up our quarterly business review. It's sort of along the meeting, look at the last three months and compare to budget, uh, budget variance, um report and sort of look at then the next three months and you're constantly making those little course corrections how how can we do each of these areas better?

Shane Bennett:

but ultimately anchoring back to the purpose and the mission and a thought there that just came to mind that we that had a big impact was um, we obviously focus quite a bit on our um, you know, on our clinic fit outs and the design of them, and we had a really conscious thought process of going if we want to be at the visually be at the forefront of modern health care, then we've actually got to think beyond just the fit out we're doing right now, because at some point in time that's going to get dated, that's going to be not in line with the game that we're talking. And so we factored in to say, well, we're probably doing a refurb every five years, not a full, but a significant refurb every five years, but a full refurb every 10. So what does it cost us to do these and how viable is that to do it every five and every 10 years? Now, that might flow through to. Well, if we're going to do that, then we can't be charging the consult fees that we charge. We've actually got to charge a higher consult fee. If that's the kind of environment we want our clients to be in, then we need to charge appropriately.

Shane Bennett:

Or it might be well we can't do million dollar fit outs, because if the million dollar fit out dates in five years time. It's no longer in line with our brand. It just looks like an outdated, very expensive fit out. So we've got to probably tame our expense a little bit and go how do we do this with materials that are more cost effective but also do, therefore, these fit outs?

Shane Bennett:

We can't go for on-trend. We can't do things that you're just like wow, this is like this is so. Now they need to be a little bit more timeless than that so that they don't date as quick. We've got a couple rolling through now that touch wood so far. One of them's a year out from that five-year mark of doing a refurb. It does not look like it needs anything done right now, which is great. It's a good outcome. Not all clinics will land that way, but that's where our why had a massive impact on our budget and a bigger decision to make sure that it actually stacks up financially and viable longer term stacks up financially and viable longer term.

Ben Lynch:

When it comes to being on the forefront of healthcare, how do you reconcile or think about that, especially when healthcare is so, you know, evidence-based? You know there's a lot of rigor around. What is the you know the best practice? Maybe it's, maybe this is the wrong way to think about it, but perhaps it's not always on the frontier, like you have to wait quite a while to to figure out. Well, that is the best practice. There's research that has to come about, etc. So when you think about the frontier, what does that mean? What does that look like? And perhaps more, how do you go about figuring out what that is?

Shane Bennett:

So you hit on an interesting point with evidence-based and I think you know the evidence-based approach I personally take is that evidence-based medicine is a combination of quality research, anecdotal what you have experienced personally and as well in this instance, as client expectations and feedback. It's the crossover of the three is what creates evidence-based medicine, and so I think we need to if we're going to, from our point of view, talk about being at the forefront of modern healthcare. We need to be on top of the evidence, but we need to be really listening to clients and what they find helps and works, and our team need to be within reason but be prepared to test things to find out what they think works as well. Just sitting back and waiting on a really, really solid body of evidence means you are not at the forefront of modern healthcare by the time you do that.

Shane Bennett:

People have been doing whatever that research says for a very long period of time.

Shane Bennett:

So that's from a, I guess, from a clinical point of view, but also it's things like the use of tech.

Shane Bennett:

So you know, introducing equipment like Fold, or we do a fair bit of um within our women's, men's pelvic health, um, real-time ultrasound, but even you know that equipment and how much that's changed over time, from something being wheeled around on a trolley to now it's a, you know, it's a phone, or it's an ipad or or something that's um and the the um, uh, mental what it's called.

Shane Bennett:

But everything's wireless, or it's the experience of check-ins or the use of clients at our clinic get a video walkthrough of the clinic SMS to them beforehand. So we use technology in that regard so that people feel a lot more comfortable at the beginning of their appointment because, um, you know, research indicates that the more comfortable and trust somewhere someone has with us place, they're more likely to get better outcomes. So, um, you know what are the ways that we can do that from a client experience point of view, that that helps with our our outcomes. So, in every single touch point, what are we doing to be at the forefront of tech that, while still makes clients feel comfortable and not shocking in the process?

Ben Lynch:

Do you set up teams to do that? Is it your responsibility or someone else's responsibility to really embrace this and do perhaps some of the groundwork, the research, and bring it back to the team? How do you practically explore those frontiers? I would imagine to some degree your team that you've attracted naturally like that, plus part of your culture is maybe to encourage that. But practically how? How do you go about it as a team exploring the frontier? Is it a lot of travel? Do you sit in on a lot of clinics? How? How do you do that? How do you workshop it?

Shane Bennett:

my brain went into a few different areas there. That hopefully doesn't bore people too much with some of the things that we're doing. But, um, what I will say is that I think what, what made this stand out to us, was go back a few years and we realized that we fell behind on a on a few things, um eg. So this is going back a fair way now, but from converting from paper notes into, you know, computer based notes, we were a couple of years behind on that. I can't remember when we it was a long time ago, but my point being was that we realized at that point, before we were clear about our, why it was a really strong point of going. This is not kind of the clinic that I'm proud of right now. I feel like we've been a bit slow, so that's how it became a bit more of a. No, we're going to really live and breathe this and talk about this and make it happen. I think because it's at the forefront of everyone's mind, first and foremost because it is part of our filter that therefore, one you know, if you're going to talk that game, then you've got to consciously try and play that game, but because, hopefully, all of our team realise how important it is, but because hopefully all of our team realise how important it is, then it's not just myself or two people that are going and looking at these things, it's just our whole team are and should be, and hopefully we've empowered them enough for them to come and say, hey, check out this new program, or I've seen this or I've been looking into that. So we get a lot of upward pressure to do things, to change things, and you get momentum with that. So it can be hard sometimes to think, oh well, I don't get that from my team right now and you can't change that overnight, I agree, but talking enough to let people know, come to us with these ideas, say that to someone once, and they're probably not going to come to you with an idea, but when they see that behavior and culture again and again and again, and then people start doing it and they see that it's been heard and it's been looked at and regardless of whether it's done or not and hopefully there's enough wind on the board that people see that, oh, this stuff gets done. But even if it's something that doesn't get done, that there's, they can see time and effort and logic and it's explained. Hey, this is. You know, this was a good idea. It just doesn't align for these particular reasons. Or hey, we had a crack at that three years ago. This is what didn't work. You know, before you're part of our team, this is what didn't work. But if they can see that there's been a real thought process in time, then you're going to get more and more of these ideas.

Shane Bennett:

Where I went with this thought process that could be a bit bit boring, um was we have also set up an all org chart, or more functional org chart.

Shane Bennett:

That we don't necessarily have people that this is their specific job. Um, that when we have a project, we think of a project more in terms of who are the right people, regardless of what their role is within the practice, who's got a passion for this, who wants to work in this space and who makes the most sense to lead that team. I think if you always go back to job roles, then say, in my case, being CEO of the group, then any project I'm part of, people would just assume oh well, shane will take the A on that and make sure that it all happens, but I sit within project groups where I don't have the A on it. Someone else is controlling that project. I'm there if I think I can add value or if that person wants me in the team, but it's going to be driven by whoever is the best person for that, you know, for that project, and whoever's going to get the best outcome.

Ben Lynch:

So, with such a degree of emphasis on frontier of medicine, empowering team, this sort of experience around clients, this experience around team members, how do you know you're doing a good job of it? How do you measure that? How do you track that, with all this work, that it is leading to great outcomes for clients and for team members?

Shane Bennett:

Probably a few ways that we can look at it. Recommenders Probably a few ways that we can look at it. But I guess there's a few key markers that we look at. In a clinic we push fairly hard and by push fairly hard I mean it's in a follow-up email for new patients to the clinic. Is a net promoter score based on your experience at beyond. How likely are you to recommend a friend or colleague, friend or family member? By push it it means that we're not asking them 20 different things. It's just a kind of you know, if we're going to ask someone one thing, it's their experience at our clinic. So we get that kind of feedback.

Shane Bennett:

We obviously track word of mouth referrals. If people aren't, they're probably not going to refer someone to the clinic. Rebook rates, cancellation rates, that sort of thing. You've got a really high cancellation rate, then people are probably not seeing value in your practice. A really low rebook rate, they're not getting the outcomes that they want. Yeah, so there's a collective of all of those things. Help us Google reviews From a team point of view. We do an equivalent NPS. We do an EMPS. How likely are you to recommend? We do it every nine months. How likely are you to recommend a do it every nine months. How likely are you to recommend a friend or colleague to work at beyond um?

Ben Lynch:

why nine months?

Shane Bennett:

so it's not so soon that people remember what they marked it last time. Um, it was we just picked, we plucked it um as a as a number. Sometimes it almost feels like it's too long. We've definitely had periods of time where we're picked. We plucked it um as a as a number. Sometimes it almost feels like it's too long. We've definitely had periods of time where we're like we've implemented a lot of change here. Geez, I'd love to know that you know, get a climate test across 80 people as to whether they're happy about it or not. So I do wonder whether we should move it to be a bit more sporadic. Um.

Shane Bennett:

We've also been strategic sometimes where when we've um, when we've done something that um, we feel like. I'm trying to think of an example, actually, when we grew quite significantly um and it definitely felt like a different climate um, and often with that change, people realize what they're now lacking um, what they're now missing. We did a, we did an emps at that point in time, very strategically, to go. What is the like how the team feeling um after bringing on a um. We bought a practice that had a team of 26 um and it made a big difference to the size of our team, um. So, yeah, we are strategic, um, sometimes about when we do that amps not to get a good answer, to get the right answer, which is like we need to just stress, test what we've just done and see, um you know, whether we can make some improvements. A weird one I think we've spoken about this before and it's sick leave. We track that to see with team engagement.

Ben Lynch:

What are you looking for there in the sick leave? Are there certain benchmarks that you use from external benchmarks or internal benchmarks? What are you looking at for trends there?

Shane Bennett:

we like to see sick leave as low as possible. Um, we track it per per full-time equivalent, because otherwise, if you're if you're a growing team, then the number of hours in sick leave is going to grow and so it. It's not giving you a good cross-reference. So we do it per full-time equivalent. Same with headcount. It doesn't quite work because if you've got some team that are 12 hours and some that are 38, and you could have one person leave and three come in, so headcount doesn't work. It's got to be per FTA to get a true balance. Really, what we're looking at is for that to be as low as possible and as stable as possible.

Shane Bennett:

Now we know there's blips this time of year with flu, so we expect it to go up a bit. It's when you see an incline over time or an incline at a point where they kind of shouldn't be and there's no logical reason that's more what we look at to go. Why are our team feeling a bit tired or burnt out or why are they getting a bit sick? And I mean one pattern we often always see, because we track it in line with annual leave for fte often when annual leave has been low for a period of time you'll see sick leave increase slightly because people just aren't getting a break. So that's one. That's one pattern we see, but otherwise we just want to make sure that it's low. We saw some big patterns in and around COVID too unusual patterns some of them were logical, um, some of them weren't.

Shane Bennett:

It was almost trying to think when it was it was after COVID, like when, when it was really, from a COVID point of view, really dying down but people weren't using their annual leave yet because they couldn't travel overseas or people were still a little bit hesitant to jump on a plane and so annual leave was low. There wasn't the sick leave being taken because of covid, but we started to see it go up a bit, um, and we could see we're just like jeepers team it just you need to take some annual leave. Um, yeah, um, that year we decided to actually um shut the clinic entirely over christmas news which we'd never done, um, and I think we also, because it kind of triggered a fair amount of not a fair amount, but it might have been six to eight days of annual leave for team to take. We also gave them an extra day and a half. We finished up a couple of days pre-Christmas, yeah, conscious decision to try and get a whole team to have a break.

Ben Lynch:

So you've grown quite a sizable organization, especially if we put it into comparison to your typical clinic. That's out there and it's not the road for everyone, but you've definitely pulled together an incredible culture and brand. It's a well-known brand. What do you think other clinic owners get wrong when trying to navigate such a growth journey like you have, whether that's through acquiring others locally, whether that's just sort of aggressive growth on getting new clients. That's just sort of aggressive growth on getting new clients, recruiting as quickly as they can and growing headcount, perhaps locations. What do you think they get wrong most, having got plenty of things wrong myself, and I'm sure you would say so too. What do you think they get wrong or overlook when navigating such a more aggressive growth journey?

Shane Bennett:

I think the first simple answer there and you hit the nail on the head when you said it's not for everyone um, it's people that are growing that don't know why they're growing, um, and they think it's the right thing to do. Um, that's really, if you wanted a really simple answer like that's where it goes wrong. People haven't aligned it with what they want and what is, um, the best practice for them and and what they want out of out of life. Um, there is, I think, if you see this within clinic mastery, there's, there's just the best clinic is the clinic that is so purposeful towards what that clinic owner, you know, wants as the outcome. That's the greatest clinic. So, yeah, that's the simple answer In terms of for those people that do want to grow and it is aligned with what they want to do.

Shane Bennett:

Where does it go wrong or where can it go wrong is underestimating the importance of culture. So, if you're buying another practice, getting hung up in the legalities and the least sorry, the sale negotiation and ticking those boxes, but actually, like it's just that's the easy stuff, it is does this clinic align? What are the team like? Um, what level of alignment is there right now? Um, because if you don't get that right, um, it's just not gonna.

Ben Lynch:

It's not gonna work it's a wonderful note to end on, because we started the conversation really with, uh, being conscious, being intentional about what you're trying to build, whether that's through literally the budget, whether that's through the brand and the culture that you're designing, the client experience, the team experience, and ultimately it all comes back to what do you want and why are you doing this? And everyone's got their different reasons. That's why we're not big believers that there is, you know, one size fits all. There's no cookie cutter clinic. We're all about personalized experiences, getting clear on what matters to you, what matters to your family, and creating a clinic that you know suits that, because it's hard enough. It's hard enough running a business Like there's so many ups and downs. So the more conscious, the more purposeful, more intentional you are. Hopefully that leads to a more fulfilling journey rather than one that's resented crazy, stressful, anxious, because those moments certainly do happen.

Shane Bennett:

Absolutely.

Ben Lynch:

Shane Bennettett very insightful. Thank you so much for sharing um and connecting a number of dots that perhaps aren't obvious um, budgets, purpose, uh, the intentionality of, and crossover of, client experiences and team member experiences as well. No doubt listeners, viewers, viewers have gleaned something really important, if not practice, a principle that they can use in their clinic today For those tuning in. Thank you, we'll see you on another episode very soon. You can go to clinkmasterycom for all the show notes and come over to YouTube, hit subscribe and see not only the podcast, because from time to time we do share our screen and you can see what's going on, but also we're publishing a lot of useful content, how-tos on a regular basis for how you can grow a sustainable clinic, build a clinic for good, a sustainable clinic that does good for the local community and aligns purposefully with what matters to you. Shane Bennett, thank you so much for your insights.

Shane Bennett:

Thank you. Thanks for your time.

Ben Lynch:

We'll see you on another episode. Bye for now.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for tuning in to the Grow your Clinic podcast. To find out more about past episodes or how we can help you, head to wwwclinicmasterycom. Forward slash podcast and please remember to rate and review us on your podcast player of choice. See you on the next episode.