Grow Your Clinic

Shane Davis: Overwhelm to Clarity, Powerful Strategies and Rhythms for Clinic Owners to Thrive | GYC Podcast 290

• Shane Davis • Season 5 • Episode 290

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In this episode, we chat with Shane Davis, co-founder of Clinic Mastery and owner of Profeet Podiatry and Profeet Shoe stores. Shane, recognised for his expertise in scaling teams, shares essential principles and practices that have driven growth in his businesses and those of countless clinic owners he has supported. 

The discussion highlights the importance of analysing profit and loss statements with a focus on benchmarking, strategies for retaining and engaging therapists to boost productivity, and tips for clinic owners to find clarity and productivity amid the chaos of managing multiple responsibilities. 

Tune in to gain valuable insights on how to effectively grow your clinic.

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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, Welcome to the Grow Your Clinic podcast. My name is Ben Lynch. In this episode, I'm in conversation with my business partner, Shane Davis. He's one of the co-founders of Clinic Mastery and also owns and operates Profeet Podiatry and Profeet Shoe Stores. He has over 100 team members and Shane was known as the connector, the supporter, the person to go to when it comes to scaling and growing teams. Here's some really important principles and practices that he shares in this episode. Some really fundamental, no matter what stage of business that you're in, that have been key to helping his businesses grow and helping dozens of other clinic owners that he supported grow their companies as well. We discuss your profit and loss statement, how to analyze that thoughtfully, purposefully as a clinic owner and make good decisions with benchmarking at the core of it. We discuss how to retain and engage your therapists so that they increase their utilization and are more productive. And also how to find the flow and rhythm as a clinic owner when you feel like you're juggling so many different plates, maybe it's a little overwhelming. How to find focus, clarity, and productivity. All right, let's join the conversation with Shane now. Shane, when a clinic first comes to you, they're needing some help and support to grow their clinic. What is it that you like to do to understand their situation, assess their business, and I love starting with a new business and I think what we have evolved over time to be able to create at Clinic Mastery is the business orders, is to be able to understand their business, absolutely, and where the mechanics of where their business has been, where it is now, and where they want to go. But also, in addition to that, being able to understand where they are as a person, what does life look like outside of their business, and understand what the business is doing as a vehicle for providing those outside of business type outcomes for them as a human. I'll often and quite quickly get to understand their journey as a person, understand what life's like outside their business, what hobbies do they enjoy, what does family life look like, what does their I'll say activity and health habits look like just so I can really get to understand where some of those current pain points might be for them and therefore where the opportunities or high priority solutions might be in a mentor or coaching session that I have with them because often they might come looking for a particular solution in business but the solution actually comes at a much higher level than that from a personal standpoint to be able to develop good strategies, to be able to develop good habits and good structures, to be able to get into good overall life flow, not just in business but overall life flow. Taking a holistic look really is what I really Did you know that you could send an email to helloatclinicmastery.com and request a free assessment of your clinic and get a report that outlines detailed action steps for how you should sustainably grow based on the findings? Just send an email to helloatclinicmastery.com and we'll organize a time with one of our growth specialists to review your clinic and outline the path to sustainable growth. All right, back to the episode. In those pain points that you mentioned, are you referring more so personally rather than business? Like I have a need to recruit and it's hard for me. Are you saying that that audit reveals more of some of those personal things and what are some of those things The reality is there's a variety of pain points. Sometimes they are business, sometimes they're personal, sometimes a combination of both and often both flow so much into each other. But it's really being able to Seeking first to understand before we're understood, as Stephen Covey says, is one of his seven habits of highly effective people to be able to define the solution. We really need to first define the problem. What is the problem? What is the opportunity? I'll say often that question that I'll often use is, what does a normal week look like for you? And someone will jump into, I work this day, I work that day. And I'll really get, I suppose, quite mechanical and quite technical around, yeah, what time do you wake up? What does your morning routine look like for you? What does your exercise or activity look like? What does your family look like? What does that structure look like to enable best flow, best habits to What else do you like to look at? If you start looking through the schedule, talk us through some of those questions that you like to use to really understand beyond A great question and I have probably adapted it from what I learned from you is when you're at your best, what does your day look like? What does your week look like? And so they'll start quite broad brush as I described earlier, but it's about then, one of the actions in some of those initial sessions might be for them to actually complete their default diary, to actually complete their diary so we're really clear with what happens at certain stages of the day, what time do they get up. There's a little quiz which is called the Morningness Eveningness quiz, which looks at when we're at our most productive. And for some people, that absolutely is in the evening. I think straight to Andrew Zachariah and to a degree, Daniel Gibbs. And they're definitely at their best in the afternoon, evening. others, Jack O'Brien comes to mind, I definitely resonate with the schedule. But yeah, definitely from a morning perspective, more productive, more in tune in the morning. And so that's when I'll do my best work. But being able to understand that people are different in that way, and not everyone has to join the 5am club. So really adapting what This episode is brought to you by AliClinics.com. If you want a single place for all of your policies, procedures, and training, Ali is where to go. You can test it for free. You can download our library of policies, procedures, and training in three clicks of a button, immediately share it with your team, and see whether they've read it using the custom acknowledgements function. This is great for compliance purposes. You can also upload police checks, working with children, CPR and first aid, professional indemnity insurance, and make sure that you have all the compliance docs that you need to run a good business in one place, not scattered systems, making sure everything's efficient, and you never have to answer the same question twice. This is the brain outside of your brain, a key tool in helping you grow your clinic that's less reliant on you. You can test it for free. Go check out allyclinics.com. All right, back to the episode. What are some of the things that you find personally in this stage of life, in this season, that help you be at your best? Maybe some examples are really good for folks listening in, watching on YouTube, to hear what you found good, because to continue on this thread. One of the things I've learned a lot from you is specificity is so important in trying to create sustainable change, whether that's desire statements, which we can go into in a moment, but talk us through some of the things that you personally find quite useful As part of the expert sessions that we're running in Clinic Mastery in the Business Academy, I run the personal productivity expert session. And I find that description a little jarring. I definitely wouldn't call myself an expert in the role always and all learning. I think we're on a journey of learning. But in saying that, I I think it all comes from preparation and so being able to prepare what my, if we start from a macro perspective, what do I want my life to look like? And we talk a lot about desire statements, writing those in IM language, in those various, say the eight pillars of life, whether it be our health and wellness, our family life, friends, it might be me time, holidays, might be growth and learning, it might be finances, but really understanding in each of those areas, what do I want life to look like? And so, being able to write I am statements, seeing yourself in that moment in X amount of time. I think a good starting point is to be able to think two or three or four years ahead, what do I want life to look like without barriers of I can't achieve that or can't achieve this because of reducing those barriers and what do we really want life to look like, what's ideal for us. The extension of that is being able to write down what you want your friends to say about you at your 90th birthday. How do you, what do you want your legacy to be? How do you want to be remembered? And I know for me, and I have done a lot of work with GEM4 on this. I know for me, my I am statement is I'm an active, positive, generous, grateful, open-minded, resilient, action-taking human. And so I essentially utilize that as a filter for the actions that I take each day. again, on a holistic or global perspective. But then drilling down into how do we make that super practical, it's then what does my and our family yearly plan look like? when are we, you know, what are those big blocks of time? It might be, what are the holidays that we're taking next year? I don't know, for us to be able to spend time in Queensland with my two brothers and their family is really important to us. Being able to go to the snow with friends and to be able to have that active holiday, you know, with our kids and our family as well, and being able to go to Danila Quinn in December again with a few other families are really important blocks or pillars of time for us to invest as a family. So, we really set up that calendar, that perpetual planner and know a year in advance what we're doing. And again, a lot of that has come from learnings that I've had, say, from Jack O'Brien. And a great place to start is always having your next renewal time, which is an alternate way of saying holiday, your next renewal time booked in. before you finish this holiday or this renewal time. But this is just an extension that by mapping out what does that overall year look like a year in advance, then we'll generally bring it back into what does the next four weeks look like. And we have a weekly planner, certainly for our team at Profeet, where they're able to map out what does their day look like, Monday from 5am through to I think 9 or 10 AM, 10 PM, sorry, that we've got on the weekly planner, Monday to Sunday, and then the various lists in terms of action lists or to-do lists. I'll often get asked, what's the best medium to keep your to-do list on or to your calendar on? I think the vehicle doesn't really matter. I think the two key principles being, number one, is that there is a single source of truth. And I know for me, that is my Google Calendar, where everything feeds into my Google Calendar. And that is absolutely my single source of truth. So if someone says, do you want to go away for the weekend on the 27th of January? I know I'll be able to go to my Google Calendar. and our family calendar will be in there, our work commitments will be in there for Profeet, for CM, et cetera, so that I know I can say with confidence, this is, yeah, I can come or no, I can't because I've got another commitment on. Number one, having that single source of truth. Number two, with that calendar is that it gets used. So you can have the prettiest calendar in the world, but if it doesn't get used, it's probably not the right vehicle for you. So for me, I have a hybrid model where I have that GCAL, if that makes sense, which is my single source of truth, but I use physical mediums. I'm very much a kinesthetic learner. And so being able to have our big one-year calendar that's up there where I can see it, but Flick can see it, the kids can see it. Yeah, there's something really tangible about that for our family. Oh, look, this is with, you know, two weeks until we go to Denny as the example. There's something really nice about that. And secondly, with the weekly planner, I on a Monday, more early on a Monday morning, will plan out what my next four weeks are every Monday. So I know it's just really it helps with the habit of looking at what is coming up in my calendar, in my diary, in my Gcal. I write it down and yes, there's some double handling that but it's more the habit of doing it each week for that half an hour to 45 minutes. It helps to bring those future actions forward to now to know that, hey, there's a double up that's happened over here and I need to action that here or we're going away in four weeks time, I need to start getting my list ready for the things that I need to do now rather than it be something that happens reactively in the last week and causes mental overwhelm, which is again what I see a lot of in businesses So, desire statement, writing, I am, language. Can you give us an example? There are a couple of points there that you mentioned that you use as filters, all really practical, which we'll just touch on as we progress. But the I am statements, could you just maybe give an example or expand on that for someone who's perhaps never done this before, maybe Yeah, I think it's all iterative. And I think that it, it all comes down to, to mindset and really being able to see yourself in that position at that time. And I think it's really helped. It helps to work on the subconscious by if we're able to, uh, say those affirmations as I am. For example, I am can come in different forms, but I ran a sub-330 marathon in October 2023. And that would be something that was on my desire statement as an example, probably three or four years prior to actually doing it in October 2023. So, the alternative and what we see a lot of is, I want to run a marathon, or I want to have three locations, or I want to go on a holiday to Europe. and there's a lot of uncertainty in that statement compared to I am or I have or I ran a marathon, a sub-330 marathon in October 2023. that's quite definitive and it's quite affirmational and if we're saying those things then both consciously and subconsciously the actions that we take around that particular outcome are so much more deliberate is what we see and what we find. Probably the iteration is being able to challenge what we'd normally write on a goal sheet to be more certain, to be more affirmational, to you introduce this as part of how you support, nurture, take care of your team and teams, right? And it's something that you advocate other clinic owners do. I've certainly heard a number of them say, oh, my team would never do this. Or, you know, they do their first run of it and they get met with resistance or really short answers, like couple of words for each. Can you expand on some of the things you found useful in rolling it out to team members so that it becomes an important anchor Sure. I think there's definitely different ways to be right and what works for us in our team may not work for every team and I absolutely understand that. I think to start with, if we're rolling out desire statement or life by design as an example with our team to be able to support them both professionally and personally because I think they are so closely linked. Work is really a vehicle a lot of the time to be able to achieve those life or personal outcomes that an individual has. So, in saying that for the business owner or for the leadership team or for the mentors who are rolling out the life by design or desire statements with their team, number one, it needs to come from a place of care. It needs to come from, absolutely, I want to be able to support my team member in this. It's not just a tokenistic, tick the box, I'm going to do this exercise because Shane told me to or Ben told me to at Clinic Mastery. They really need to be invested in wanting to be able to help support their team or the team members to achieve those outcomes. I think if it doesn't, if they're not invested, honestly, they don't care, but it's not necessarily a priority for the business owner or for the leader. I think that just really shows through or resonates or the vibrations that it gives off to the team member, it shows. Start off by making sure that it is what you want to implement with your team member or with your team. Secondly, it's actually being able to frame it and so to be able to say like from a goal-setting perspective, we're going to do this to be able to help you to achieve both your professional outcomes and also the personal outcomes for you in your life. I'm really curious in terms of goal-setting, and it's okay if you haven't, but have you done any goal-setting before, whether it's at school, at university or now? Yeah, have you done goal-setting before? And usually go, yeah, I've done a little bit. Great. And in terms of your goal-setting, have you got your goals written down or are they more in your head as to what you want to achieve? And most people will say, oh, they're in my head, but I kind of thought about them. Great. Well, a start is for us to be able to get them written down together so I can both support you and hold you accountable to being able to achieve these outcomes and goals for you both professionally and personally outside of work as well. And I'll also just say that often what we see is it can be a little bit scary writing these goals down as to what's going to happen in two or three or four years time. And that's super normal. But what I also want to say is Your goals can change today, tomorrow, next week, next month, next quarter, next year, whenever they can change. And so they're not sitting in concrete. And what you write down today, it's absolutely okay for those goals to change or to iterate over time once you get more clarity on what you actually want, depending on where you're at in the journey. Yeah, again, there's no right or wrong, I don't think, in terms of goal setting, but being able to pre-frame that goal setting from a place of care and that it is okay for these goals to change and you're not setting these in stone are a couple of good I suppose, pre-framing type statements you might say with your team before you actually get them to roll out their whole desire statement. And you might just get them to pick out two or three of their priority sections on their desire statement as a starting point. and they may choose the easy ones. They may choose, let's just say, family time and they may choose health and fitness. They may choose some growth and learning or work career goals and that's okay. Usually, they'll come back and I'll say they'll be a bit fluffy. It'll be, I want to achieve this or I want to grow into a senior practitioner in four years' time. And we'll really look to iterate that and to drill down into, have you heard about SMART goals being specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-orientated? How does that go when we run it through that SMART filter? Oh, yeah, it's not quite specific, not quite. et cetera, et cetera. Drilling down into what does that ideally look like as a senior practitioner? What are some of the things that you've done? What are some of the things you're doing at that time? What will success look like for you in terms of your career at that particular point? Instead of, I'll probably just use the, I want to lose weight as part of a health and fitness goal. At that time, what does it, you losing weight, what does that actually mean to you? Oh, I'm able to. I'm able to, for lack of a better example, I'm able to run the park run each Saturday. Also, I'm able to play tennis twice a week with my friends, getting really specific with what are some of those critical drivers or what are some of those actions to be able to get you what I've found is that therapists by nature and perhaps also by some of their training and conditioning are quite good at uncovering these details with their patients or clients, doing a subjective history and assessment to find out what their problem, their pain, their ailment, their disability means to them to set pretty meaningful goals. And I certainly know a fair few clinic owners that feel like this is quite a foreign thing to do for their team. And that may be true in the sense that they haven't ever done it with their team, but to back themselves that they've got this sort of skill set and interest to be able to elicit these types of meaningful responses from someone in front of them, right? One of the things that I see a lot with clinic owners when they do their own desire statement is that finances come up quite a bit as like one that they tend to write with more objectivity, more specificity, because it's kind of like it's probably a little bit easier than some of the other areas in that sense. Like I can say how much I want to earn in what time period and maybe my debt position or my bank account position. Once you get an understanding for someone's financial goals, clinic owner that is, let's continue down that line. Take us through how you begin to really assess where they're at financially and then starting to make some of those practical gains or inroads in progressing along that desire statement I'll answer that. I think just if I just go back one step in terms of it can seem overwhelming as a business owner, as a leader to implement desire savings with your team. You made a really important point there of number one, having done it yourself. Having done it yourself and knowing what it feels like to write those things down because I think you can use that from an empathy perspective to be able to pre-frame what you're doing with your team member. Secondly, I would not suggest doing it as a whole team activity. Let's get together at a team day and all do our desire statements because that can be a little overwhelming. You definitely want to be able to get the reps in, but get the reps in by doing the desire statement activity with your ideal team member. with the person who you know, you've got, you know, you like, you trust and the feeling is mutual to be able to go through that together and get them to give some insights into what it was like, things that worked well during that process and things, you know, they think you could level up on for the next time and work your way through the team one by one like that, rather than trying to do it with your, I'll say your hardest team member or your team member who's on the brink, That's probably a pretty tricky place to start. So just from a practical perspective, yeah, I think some of those insights can help business owners or leaders to actually roll out that goal-setting activity. In terms of your question around getting an understanding from a business owner's perspective of their financial position and how the business is going or doing, There are so many metrics that we can look at and that people share with us in their business audit. If I look at what do the best do in terms of the business owners that I have worked with and do work with, it's being able to get clarity by looking at their financials. And if I look at, again, what a lot of our great business owners do in the community, they're on online accounting systems, usually zero. We say it's the best and the easiest to work with, both for the business owner, I'll say for the accountant, and also for us from their consulting or advisory team. And so that business owner will invite me in as a Clinic Mastery Advisor into their zero and we'll go through their financials. We'll actually have a look at their profit and loss over certain periods. We'll look at year on year, look at their profit and loss, look at their balance sheet, look at, again, those financial documents and seek first to understand how they're currently utilizing those financial documents a lot of the time. At university, we're not taught how to read financial statements and the once a year accounting meeting that we have with our accountant or over email, I'll say are pretty confusing or we're only getting answers to the questions that we ask quite specifically. It's never really an education session around what we should be looking for in a profit and loss statement or in a management report or in a balance sheet. to be able to make good decisions in our business. Yet what they actually need is education around how to read financials to be able to best support the decision making in the business. So, it's a great place for us to start as their clinic mastery consultant or mentor to be able to go into firstly understanding where they're currently at in terms of their knowledge base. What do they normally look at? When do they normally look at it? What do they see? What are some of the insights they've got at the moment? What are some things they want to acknowledge themselves for? And where are some opportunities or some areas they want to focus on? And often that uncovers a knowledge gap. And a knowledge gap, again, is completely okay, but we can help to level them up or to skill them up to be able to understand from an allied health business owners perspective. what we can look at. So that can start with looking at their current reports and also being able to build out specific management reports with appropriate benchmarking to know this is where my revenue can be or should be for the size of my business. And also looking at what my practitioner expenses should be, combination of wages, superannuation, work cover, or rewards or incentives or commissions, etc. What that should be as a percentage of my revenue. What my occupancy costs should be as a percentage of my revenue. Again, for example, rent, utilities, outgoings, etc. What my admin percentage should be. What my support service expense should be. What my marketing percentage should be. Looking at what those benchmarks are so that we can then help to uncover, okay, so our marketing spend at the moment is at 12% when realistically, we'd like to be for a sustainable business in around that 4% to 5% mark, give or take. It really helps us to clarify where are those knowledge gaps and by extension, be able to help the business owner through that education process so they can make good informed I got a favor to ask. Would you mind reviewing and rating this podcast, please? It helps us attract great guests and partnerships from companies who want to do business with you, and we can negotiate the best possible deals and discounts so that you can grow your clinic sustainably into the future. Just open up your podcast player and hit the review. It looks like 70% of you use the Apple podcast player to listen into this show. So next time you open up the show, can you give us a review and rating? Every single review counts and we are so grateful for it. All right, let's head back to the episode. It's a great point. I remember you walking me through the process. years and years ago of opening up Xero with a clinic. And you look at the profit and loss, and so often it's in a default state that is A through to Z. You've got advertising next to admin or accounting. And so what you're really suggesting is having these categories and groupings of expenses that fit into a certain bucket of your business, occupancy, marketing, admin, and then being able to benchmark how you're doing at the moment and compare seasons, you said previous financial years and previous months and even quarters to get a sense of where you're at. It is quite a revealing, vulnerable position to be in if you're not overly familiar with numbers and everyone starts there at some point, right? And makes that sort of progression I like how you framed what are the best doing. For those people that are early on in their journey, when it comes to numbers, looking at the financials side of their business, what do you see the best doing in the sense of being able to kind of condense or accelerate that time period to being some version of competent or at least confident in navigating the numbers? If they're coming from a lower base, what are some of the more practical or quicker things that you'd suggest someone do? Is it just a matter of frequency? Is it a matter of looking it in? Like, yeah, what are some of the things that someone's hungry to Yeah, take more ownership and control over their numbers and feel confident. If I answer your question of what are the best doing? Yeah. The best, similar to what we spoke about earlier with preparation, the best have great rhythms in place. the best have great rhythms in place for themselves, for their exercise routines, for their health routines, for their work routines, for their family routines. The best have those rhythms in place. At work, they've got great rhythms in place in terms of their mentoring schedules, their CPD schedules, their meeting schedules. and they've also got great rhythms in place in terms of reviewing their dashboard as an example, coming through on A11y, coming through on their spreadsheet, in their practice management software, whether it be Cliniko, Knuckles, Sploce, etc. It's having good rhythms at looking at those numbers and understanding what are the things I want to acknowledge myself for and what are the areas that I need to focus on a level up in. And so, if we're just asking those two questions and by extension, we do the same thing with zero and looking at our monthly financials, if the one action we take is to be able to book in an hour each month to be able to review that P&L, ideally against a budget that we've set out for the year. And I say the budget, you know, positive connotation of the word, not we're constrained by budget. It's a budget really is a guesstimate or an estimate of what is going to happen based on essentially data driven, hypotheses really. And then when we're reviewing those numbers at month's end and we're comparing to budget in this scenario, we're able to look what needs to change for next time. Is it the actual revenue number or is it the spend number as an example? And therefore, what are the actions around that? Or is it the budget needs to change for next year in this particular period? If we're always looking at that and I go back to the question of what are the best doing, the best have real clarity over their numbers. The best are clear with where those levers are in their business because they're in their numbers, they're understanding what those numbers are and they're able to make good informed decisions based on I like the reference points that you've offered and I think they're really practical because you've probably seen this a lot where a clinic owner says, okay, well, I've put the time block in. open up my zero in this, then what do I do? What should I look at and how should I look at it? Do I just kind of mindlessly sort of scroll through things? How do I spot this? Especially if it's new to me, perhaps I'm not yet trained or learned in finding those things and spotting, ah, yeah, that needs attention. I guess there's no substitute for just repetitions, right? And doing the do. But to just capture the categories is a good reference. Like when they're set up, you've got something to look at and reference. You're not just kind of scrolling down the lines, maybe going to the bottom right corner That's exactly right and you're right before. I'd say it's from accounting fees down to work cover or zero is usually the way that a standardized P&L is set up and we absolutely keep that for tax purposes, for the accounting purposes. The management report though is different and that's where we're able to have that categorization. And so we're able to see at the end of the month, the end of the quarter, the end of the year, the end of the period, we're able to see as a percentage of our revenue, we ideally want to see our marketing expenses at what's called 5% or less, and we're seeing them at 8% or 9%. And so the great thing about, so we're seeing this overspent in advertising or marketing. The great thing about Xero being online being the click of our fingers and that's compare that to even 15 years ago where you were taking a shoebox full of receipts into the account once a year and you're having a really It's a opaque view of your business because you're not able to do these things in real time. Whereas you can, we can, I can then have a look and click on the number of let's just say we've spent $8,000 in that month instead of $5,000. We click on the $8,000 and we see in there that we've For example, that we've spent way too much on a sign. We've spent $6,000 on a sign when we budgeted only $1,000 for signage for the year. Now, either the spend needs to change, as I said, in which case we're like, okay, we need to reign this in or our budget needs to change, we need to increase or optimize the budgeting for that next period, that next financial year as the example, but you're able to go in there and see line by line what that$8,000 is made up of to be able to investigate, do your little private When it comes to reconciling, Are there any principles or practices that you recommend? Because I think looking at these numbers and reviewing them requires up-to-date clean data, things are going well. That's often not the case, especially if someone isn't in there routinely on that regular rhythm. So what are some of the things that a clinic owner listening in could take back to their bookkeeper, or even if they're doing their books themselves, as to some best practices around keeping the books accurate and tidy when it comes to zero I'll go back to the rhythms conversation, but having clear expectations of the bookkeeping team as to when we're reconciled to the end of the month by. For us, I know that for our team and our bookkeeping team knows that our previous month needs to be reconciled by give or take the fifth of each the Okay, so it's the 5th of December and we want all of November to be fully reconciled by That is correct. And that is so that I can look at the reports and get into my rhythms of meetings with, I'll say, the leaders in our teams to be able to have those review meetings of the November month or of the November year to date, knowing that everything is reconciled and up to date. So that's number one, having clarity and expectation around when things are reconciled by. Number two would be implementing good systems around how your receipts are reconciled. So whether that be using the Xero app or utilizing Dext as an example, making sure that you're using systems that help your bookkeeping team to get those things done. Thirdly, the sooner that a business owner can not be doing their reconciliation, the better. Do you still need to have oversight over it? Absolutely, but you don't need to be in there and reconciling every receipt. That's a great thing to be able to, I'll say, outsource, whether it's to a bookkeeping team or for your accountant who may have a bookkeeper alongside them, or having bookkeepers internally in your team, which we're grateful for our bookkeeping. team that we have internally, it's not something that you as a business owner would or should be doing long you spoke to when you analyze the numbers, there are certain levers that you'll be able to identify, especially when you become quite skilled, you know your business really intimately. But I'm sure there are things that are just universal, quite applicable no matter the stage or size of clinic, the location of the clinic, right? That you could pick up, identify, make some decisions on, take some action and hopefully see some changes. What are some of those levers for folks listening in that maybe they can open up their zero and perhaps look for, or even if it's decisions that they could be making to The biggest asset in our business are our team. And as much as they show up in the expense Rows or the expense column in terms of wages, superannuation, work cover, et cetera, they're our biggest asset. By extension, they are our biggest lever to be able to produce more revenue by helping, I'll say, more humans appropriately within their scope of practice. So being able to the single biggest opportunity often is being able to make sure that we're optimizing the efficiency or utilization of our practitioners. And I, I do think in allied health in general, we undervalue this undervalue the service that we provide and, uh, I don't have a specific solution to this because I do think it's across a number of professions that we need to progress the value that we provide and how much it costs to come for a particular service. so that the professionals who have gone to university for give or take three, four, five years across their various professions or more are remunerated appropriately. And so, it's often the case that, you know, for example, two of my brothers are electricians. The electrician who gets paid through their apprenticeship, gets paid through their, you know, caught three years of doing their apprenticeship and then goes on to being able to earn often more than a physiotherapist or a podiatrist or a psychologist or an occupational therapist. EP, myotherapist, osteopath. It's frustrating because that person who's done an allied health degree and has invested four years of their own life working part-time at Maccas whilst living on two-minute noodles and, you know, living a pretty bare-bones life trying to fund themselves through university, finds himself at a point where someone who's, again, been paid through those times, as an electrician is the example, gets paid more than that. And that I think is the opportunity for us as allied health professionals to make sure that we're valuing the time that our clinicians and our practitioners spend with clients. Number one, making sure our appointment fees are appropriate and that we're continuing to progress those and in line with where they should be. It costs a lot to get someone to come out to fix a PowerPoint, have a look at what that call-out fee is. Reflect on that the next time you go to do your price update in your clinics and make sure we are collectively progressing those prices because that really I'm not saying it's the only thing, but that can help to keep great people, great practitioners in our professions for longer. Yeah, if we're able to continue to provide value and show value as well. So, that's number one is pricing and number two is utilization. It's being able to make sure that we have available time and that we value that time in the diary, value that white space so it's available to consultations and so rather than just put, I'll say, another CPD in there or another meeting in there or another block of admin time, really look at how well are we utilizing that time and what are the outcomes that we're getting from it. Because for every, call it, hour of admin time that we put in a day, that could be, give or take, one to two clients or patients that could have been seen in that particular spot. So being able to review our diary systematically to make sure that we've got efficiency and opportunity for our clients to book in, which creates the win for the clients because we can help more people, a win for the practitioners because they're able to generate more revenue in combination with consultation fees and therefore be remunerated more appropriately as well for their professional output. great point. One of the challenges right now that we're seeing in the community, it's also a timeless challenge, but it's quite topical right now, is a version of recruitment and retention. Recruiting great therapists and being able to have a compelling offer for them, part of that is the financial side, there's a whole lot of other things that matter as well, but that is going to be a key part of their decision. So being able to offer something that is going to compete and hopefully seal the deal, but also to retain quality team members and provide them with a pathway for progression. So sort of linking in here that leadership culture, team mentoring and support in the finance side, when you look through something like Xero and consider some of those strategic decisions around pricing as a really practical thing and how they all work in concert together I think is a really great connection piece that you've made here for those folks that So often get caught up in the day-to-day, whether it's emails or Slack messages or the next project or system that's changing. So often I hear clinic owners say, you know, I want more strategic time. We've just touched on a couple of really key, you know, connective tissue pieces of team culture and then financial sustainability of a business. I think that's really terrific insight. They're really practical as always. What we've covered here, I've taken a bunch of different notes, you know, desire statements and making sure that they're specific. I am, you know, in the present using the 90 year old at my 90th birthday. That was such a profound exercise, right? You and I both did that a version of like our legacy statement, you know. how will people talk about me at that age? That's a really impactful thing. Leaning into the calendar and your specific time blocks for getting into a rhythm. That's probably the thing that stood out for me the most. I know you even seeing your massive oversized planner the other day was something that you absolutely live and breathe. But You almost can't stress it enough. Like when you get into good habits, it just helps so many other things click into gear personally and professionally. So I'm mindful for those folks listening and watching here, not to just skip over like, I know that, or I've done that. It's like, one thing you always say is how well are you doing it? And what are the best doing is just a beautiful little anchor point and phrase to connection of the budget specific categories, your rhythm for checking that, having the principles and practices around reconciling and staying up to date. So when you do that analysis, you're looking at accurate numbers. all the way through to knowing the levers to pull in and a great way to tie those two together is your team, biggest asset, well-stated and reframed from liability or an expense item. Shanna, we've cut a lot of territory here. I'm sure we can go deeper on each one of those points in subsequent podcasts. But is there a final note for today that you would really hope that listeners and viewers take away and I think it's hard to drill it down into just one thing, but I think if there was one super practical action that they can take, it is to find that version of a calendar that works for them, find that version of a daily schedule that works for them from the time that they get up and I literally have wake up in my calendar to going for a walk, to then getting ready, to then doing my prep for the day, to then getting into my, I'll say meeting rhythm or working rhythm, right through to doing Monday night footy training with Jack as an example, through to date night with Flick, but being able to have that schedule Yeah, really drill down and it's okay. We should never miss a date night if that makes sense. It's okay to reschedule it or to massage where it is. If we're committed to those big blocks in our diary, don't just cancel on them, reschedule them again if you need to, but don't cancel on them. Being able to set up and be proactive with your schedule, I think helps to fall into so many other positive habits in your life, but also by extension, having that physical calendar up. Your kid's life, your family's life, your partner or your friends, you see that It is a bit infectious is what I see. One final little note is being able to use emojis in your calendar invite. If there's one thing you want to do to be able to stand out a little bit, even your own calendar, using emojis in your calendar invite. Colorization, but using emojis, I think just brightens up your calendar instead of looking at just black and white back-to-back sessions or Very practical as always. Well, you can catch all the show notes and links to some of the things we discussed in this episode at clinicmastery.com. And we look forward to seeing 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 www.clinicmastery.com forward slash podcast. And please remember to rate and review us on your podcast player of choice.