Michael Rizk: Nearly Losing My Clinic 4 Times - What I Learned | GYC Podcast 294

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Timestamps
00:00:00 - Introduction to the Grow Your Clinic Podcast
00:00:23 - Michael Rizk's Instagram post - four big mistakes and what he's learned
00:03:12 - Finding resilience in business challenges
00:06:34 - System changes to help avoid past mistakes 
00:11:20 - Lessons that were learned
00:14:04 - The importance of family & community support
00:15:42 - Business challenges and personal growth
00:20:40 - How every failure leads to significant positive changes
00:22:30 -  Leaning into difficult conversations in business partnerships
00:26:34 - How failures can be avoided with the right advice
00:30:00 - Adapting from business mistakes and taking action
00:31:26 - There are no silly questions

In this episode we discuss Michael Rizk's Instagram post that gained a lot of traction for it's honesty and empowering message on the realities of being a Clinic owner. Michael shares his journey of resilience, recounting four significant setbacks that forced him to start his clinic from scratch multiple times. From a hefty $120,000 fine due to a missed superannuation payment to navigating personal problems and a business relationship break down, Michael highlights the emotional toll and commonality of such struggles among health professionals. The conversation emphasises the importance of support and community in overcoming business challenges, resonating with many clinic owners who have faced similar trials. Tune in to hear invaluable insights on resilience, leadership, and transforming client experiences in the face of adversity

What You'll Learn:

💰 How to rebuild your clinic after significant financial setbacks

📈 The importance of community support and mentorship

🛠️ Effective systems to prevent costly mistakes

🧠 The power of the story you tell yourself in tough times

🤝 Navigating difficult conversations in business partnerships

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Transcript

0:02

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, So a few weeks ago, Michael Rizk you posted on Instagram, I think Facebook as well, and it got a lot of traction. For those listening in, I'm sharing my screen. Come and join us on YouTube. Hit subscribe, follow the videos, follow the pod. But I'm sharing my screen and something we do time to time on the pod. This is the post. You're going to make it. About five years into our clinic, we got hit with a $120,000 fine from one missed superannuation payment. It accrued and compounded over time. This was all of our savings gone. Number two, Pre-COVID, a divorce meant I had to either sell my clinics or front up the equivalent amount of capital. Number three, then COVID hit, which drained whatever savings we had left. Number four, a business partner split meant we either had to use all of our cash reserves or get another loan to buy out our partner. The heading of this post was I had to start my clinic from zero four times. Before we get to the lessons, Michael Rizk you've been Oh yeah. No, that's good. I like, I get emotional listening and reading it back. Yeah, but I feel like when I talk to clinic owners as well, It's a really common story. There's, you know, there's two or three really big ups and downs in our journey. So I think that's what resonated is that maybe most of us have been through something like It's certainly got a lot of traction, a lot of people reaching out to you privately, also on the post as well. We are in a privileged position, both you and I, to support clinic owners. Over many years we have done now, we're approaching 10 years of doing this and The stuff we get to hear and see are some of the most vulnerable things. A lot of clinic owners don't have a space. They don't have peers. They don't have a partner, perhaps, to share this with or who truly understands it. And so we love celebrating the highs, but so often are helping people through tough times like this. what I loved and I haven't read it out but let's unpack it a little bit more what you've learned because I think we hopefully reflect on these challenges and the successes and identify some of the things that maybe you've contributed or at least that we can take from it to build our character move forward for inevitably the next time. So let's start with number one here you put in the post what I've learned. Number one, you've built it once, you can build it again better. Talk to me about that lesson. Add some tonality, some context, and in I think that was probably me trying to convince myself to keep going. But Yeah, if we've ever had these big hits in business, the one thing you can take away is that we got to that point, like we got to a point where we had 100k in savings and we were really proud of that after three or four years running a clinic. So I had to remind myself, that the systems and frameworks and the infrastructure we put down is what got us into that position. And that wasn't gone. It was just the money that was gone. So it took a lot of positive self-talk and I did believe we could build it again. And I think being in a community really helped as well because we had lots of business owners around us where similar things or worse things have happened as well. And we get the privilege of watching them rebuild. I And with that, is that just internal dialogue, maybe something you wrote on your mirror or the back of the toilet door? Like what practically happens apart from maybe reflecting on, okay, you know, I can do this. Is there anything that you've changed about the way you think or act in your day or in your week to There was a few reflections I had. I really lent into support of the SAM community. I was asking, maybe not specifically for this, the first super bill that we got, but I just realized we have so many great business owners around us. And what's really cool is you can ask anyone for help. And when you ask anyone for help, they always help, right? It's often that we just don't ask. So that was a big thing. And I think leaning on my mentors who are predominantly online, actually, I found myself going back to Alex Hormozi a lot in the more recent period. And his origin story was I think his business failed three times before he created this multi-billion dollar thing. And he spoke in a YouTube short about having a conversation with his now wife, Layla, saying, look, you can leave me, like, we're totally cool. I would understand if you left me, but I've just gone to zero for the third time. And like, knowing that someone like that went through something like that, it kind of just, was sad to hear, obviously, but also buoyant because you know that people can do it again. So just leaning on the really good 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 hello at clinicmastery.com and we'll organize a time with one of our growth specialists to review your clinic and outline the path to sustainable growth. Right, back to the episode. In terms of the super payment that accrued and compounded over time, What's since changed in your system to ensure nothing like that happens again? Because whether it's this or a version of, and we unfortunately hear it all too commonly, is the unexpected tax bill. And now I think Most of us on the team have had that experience, but now say there should never be an unexpected tax bill for a variety of reasons, especially your connection with your accountant. But talk to me about what mechanically have you changed so that something like this doesn't happen and catch You know how you carry your scars with you and then you become like probably hyper anxious, like that's me now. And Andy Weng can speak to this, our awesome accountant at ClaroCovid. We've created an email system where he tells me everything at the end of the month. So he says this is your IAS payment, this is your upcoming BAS payment, this is your company tax amount based on the profit for that month. this is your payroll New South Wales installment for the month, this is how much you need to put aside for leave if you want to keep a leave account separate. So that really negative experience kind of threw me into hypervigilance and then I'm like I need to know all these numbers month on month and I need to go to my accountant and bookkeeper and ask for it because it's probably not normal practice to ask for it at least that frequently. And I actually think we've created a great system now. And for the added cost of the time of the bookkeeper and accountant to put that together, I think it gives you peace of mind and makes sure you don't miss anything. So we've become really structured and vigilant with our finances, which actually helped all four dot points in this post. This episode is brought to you by allieclinics.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 alieclinics.com. All right, back to the episode. You know, someone once said to me, you know, the the most famous ancient Greek philosopher, Anonymous, once said some version of, you know, you don't rise to the level of your goals, but fall to the level of your systems. And talking about, OK, through some of these lessons, what are the systems that we have in place? Sounds like Andy's almost become some version of a CFO, a fractional CFO for you in terms of, and that's a really smart thing. I like that point because so often, like two things come to mind. Number one, we often get asked, you know, what should I expect from my accountant? And typically, prior to people asking that question, it's like I kind of get them to do my tax at the end of the financial year. We like to have a much more, you know, predictable, consistent meeting rhythm and communication rhythm like you're getting a month for email. And then sort of the second thing is seeing it as an investment, like the trade off there of maybe a few extra hundred bucks or a thousand bucks over the year, but to save a potential. Headache, that's probably putting it lightly like this is so worth it. Let's go on to lesson two, you put this in the post here. which is the biggest difference between successful clinic owners and others is the story you tell yourself. For example, one story, I'm never going to make it. I've been doing it for so long. Another story could be, wow, how resilient am I? And my clinics are making it through this. Imagine the next season. It takes a little bit of introspection to come to that conclusion. And I like that point. At least my interpretation of your point was I don't know, some version of, I'm talking myself into this, you know, of like the positive version of it. Just talk us through this lesson and what this now means for you in Yeah. I think what was clear is like, I wasn't doing this well through that. through that three-year period, business was extremely hard. We So it was... Not sleeping, not Not sleeping, going through the business partner separation, wondering where we're going to get capital to do this, and all the messiness involved. And I think that just needs to happen as well. It's really easy to have all the motivational quotes and all the books in the back of your mind when things are going well. And that was actually my reflection of this period is like, that stuff really resonates with you when you're going well. But when you're going not so well, it's really hard to accept that advice and accept your level of ownership. I think something clicked at some point in time, and I don't know why it did or how it did, but I probably did come back to the Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willick, the book, which was like, there's a lot about this I can't control, but there's a lot about it I can control. And when I looked at my week, I wasn't doing the things that I was doing three years ago. And I could have said, it's because this is happening, this is happening, and this is happening. But I just wasn't even doing the things that I could control. And I don't remember how or when that happened, and maybe it took months to get into that zone, but I finally kind of pulled out of that. And maybe that could be done quicker if you could identify that you're not doing so well, or you can speak to someone or speak to your mentor in CM. or your partner. And at some point in time, when I came back to those principles, everything just became easier. I'm like, well, I can do this and I've done it before, but what was I doing before? And am I doing that now? And then I just started to see little wins again. And the wins that you're in control with were really helpful. That was my experience of it. But I do remember like two or three years there where I wasn't feeling that way. I wasn't feeling I've 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. What was the experience like at home? Because you got two kids under two, your wife Saranga runs her own physio clinic separate from the iMove crew. I think I'm very lucky that I knew I also had a secure level of security that potentially a lot of business owners don't have and you don't have in your first three to five years when that first super bill hit us. I didn't, I wasn't in this position, but there was something driving where I knew, you know what, if the clinics didn't work, I would be okay. So there's a level of security to that. I also call myself out that I think that that potentially making me lazy as well. Like when it's not for survival, when it's not life or death, like it is when you're in startup, you can kind of lean on things a little bit. I have, I have other roles, right? Like I get to mentor and coach and guide in clinic mastery. I have an education program. So I noticed that in myself as well. Um, The other thing I noticed when I was at my worst, I was comparing to other clinics. That was a real thing that I noticed. I was like, how can I be mentoring clinic owners? And my clinic's doing this badly. I really noticed that thought come up for me in that period as well, comparing to other really successful clinic owners. So that was not a helpful thought. And you can identify it, but it's also not easy to get out of it. And then a little bit of imposter syndrome with that. I'm guiding these multi-million dollar clinics and I could close my clinic tomorrow. That was Probably looking at what I did have. Because at the end of the day, we had We had a good period there where we weren't profitable, but I still had a business that was running and I had a great team culture and we were paying the bills. And I'm doing it from a different state with two kids under two. And I lived in Japan for three months. Like there were like, there's some pretty special things in that. We just weren't profitable. Um, but also if I reconciled that I was in Sydney and I was able to go to my clinic two or three times a week and I wasn't away for three months and I wasn't raising two kids under two, then things probably could have been going stronger as well. So that's hard to do, hey, when things aren't going well, is to look at what you do have and what has been created. And I think there's a lot of business owners in that spot where they're paying themselves maybe a physio salary. And the question comes up is like, why did I do this when I'm just paying myself what a physio could earn? But it's the potential of what the future could be. It's like, well, your salary could double and you could have more freedom as well. So while the now isn't so great, there's always that upside. So maybe I started to focus more on the stuff that was going well. Sounds like you did in terms of focusing on what you can control and also acknowledging or celebrating some of those wins as small as they might be, which I think is super important, especially if you're in a tough time. It might be that, hey, I followed the time block that I allocated in my diary and did that important activity or I, you know, made the content to post for my marketing or publish the job ad, you just sort of start to focus on the really small things and Yeah, I did. Yeah. Yeah. And some sometimes it's detrimental to your mental health to be around people who are doing really well when you're not. And I also found hearing from some of those like like an Alex Samosi that I found myself comparing like, holy crap, how has this guy done this? But then to hear from someone like that, that only three years ago, he went bankrupt three times or whatever it was four or five years ago, that's really helpful, which is maybe why this post resonated because I think people look at us as our clinics are perfect or their clinic mastery. So everything must be going so well, but we've all had these periods in all of That's the business life that is the life experience, right? You know, someone's crushing it in one area of their life and falling to pieces in another area. I mean, we're all we're all human. I think what I love is that you were talking about taking some inspiration from the community, but predominantly perhaps support from the community. It's an interesting tension, right? of seeing what others are doing, and you only see the tip of the iceberg. But everyone forgets that when they're looking at the Instagram reels or, you know, the posts, you know, they're hiring another three team members and I can't even get one or I'm not ready for it. And there's that tension of, you know, taking inspiration from someone else. I think it's like those parts resonate with what you feel you're truly capable of doing. So you feel inspired in some capacity. But also they're not beating yourself up that you're not there yet. Because I often share this with clinic owners on like a consulting session. where they do say, you know, I've seen this other clinic doing all these things in the WINS channel. I'm like, I won't say this exactly to them, but if I'm working with that person that they're referring to, in my mind I'm going, you have no idea what's actually happening inside that clinic. You don't know the stress, the burden, the family stuff that's happening. You're just seeing the WINS. I think it's important to celebrate those wins because there's so much crap that happens. In this post, you are curating some flowers in the garden. It's like something sprouted. It's not looking all dead and barren. I'm going to celebrate this thing grew, even if it's a weed. There's growth. So I think it's important to take inspiration in doses with what can I control. I think that's a really great point. It probably resonates with my experience personally, but also working with so many clinic owners. When they get sort of down in the dumps there, so often their commentary is around all these other things that they can't control or can't influence. And when they just sort of narrow their focus to showing up, doing that thing, you know, that also compounds over time. So that's a perfect sort of segue into the third lesson that you documented here, which was every failure led to significant positive changes Yeah I think easy to see in hindsight and maybe all this stuff can do is close the gap when you're going through the rough times. I was reflecting on it as like we know all this stuff inherently we see all the quotes all the time but if we can close the gap of when we're feeling not so great to pulling out of that rut again that would be my hope for me the next time to go through that is like not spend three years in it or three months in it and close the gap a little. And this is one of the things I think can always help, which I think we all inherently know, but we had an amazing shift in our financial structure because of that. We had an amazing shift in my focus. I identified there's one thing our clinic needed, was we needed five extra new clients every week for each of our clinics. And then all I did, even if I only had four hours that week, that's all I did. I just did that for four hours. And then from focusing on that, it just led to those small wins that you were saying before. And now we've got a great Facebook ad system in place, a great email and text campaign system in place. And I think conversations, probably from two of these examples, like having difficult conversations is a thing that's come up again for me. It's like knowing that if I'm feeling a bit funny, there's usually a difficult conversation that needs to be had with a team member or business partner. So I think the three really big positive changes that have come from Being able to lean into that discomfort and have the tough conversations is Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think. The business partner one was probably the biggest one, like having that hard conversation. There's a few clinics in Clinic Vasturi that are business partnerships, and it's not easy to navigate. So just having those difficult conversations, if they weren't had, then you never get out I'm mindful of keeping some things in confidence here, but just let's double click on that for a moment on approaching the tough conversation with your business partner, former business partner. How did you approach that or what were some of the things that you found allowed It probably, it probably wasn't handled as well as we, we both like, uh, I think we tried to lean on the community and come back to position description. What can I do? What can you do? Is that worth our time and money? We tried to keep it to that. But again, this was a significant learning for those who are in business partnerships. We never had a really strong position, description or contract in place. So it made these conversations and assumptions a lot harder. There's assumptions on both parties about what both business partners will do, what they're willing to do, what happens when their life changes. Like I had two kids in that period. Um, so the learning there, yeah, probably coming back to some of that contract stuff, position, description stuff, which makes this easier. Um, then, then it was just being brave and having the conversation that we felt like something was off, which we did. The hardest part was negotiating the business value and the buyout, which I think everyone struggles with. I don't think any buyout happens with both parties completely agreeing. But again, we had really good help. We had really good help with consultants who specialize We used Anthony Hurst, who's really experienced in valuing businesses and putting the multiple on it and figuring out what directors' wages should be set at. So Yeah, it's such an interesting thing, like you and I have both been part of directly or indirectly seeing a bunch of business partnerships dissolve, break up, move on. Most are tricky. Some are pretty seamless. And to your point earlier around, you know, easy to take the advice or the quotes when it's going well. Often when business is going well, we don't need those sorts of things, or we feel like, ah, you know, we'll get to it someday. And then when you do need it, it kind of, yeah, hits you square in the face. And you can always make up for that lost time or structure. But it's something that, yeah, we try and do pretty regularly from some sage advice from Shane Davis, who was on a recent episode of Business Partner, who has multiple partnerships and really taken a lot of great words of wisdom, as we all have from Shano, around how to try and be proactive and continue to revisit some of these key docs. Not to say that we've got it perfect, but that that regularity is something that much like you, Mick, I wouldn't probably have navigated to unless I had, you know, someone like Shano in the corner. So yeah, great, great reflections. And then finally, The final lesson that you had put here was every failure could have been avoided or softened with Yeah, I think even just going back to what Shane does so well, we've implemented that now with our guys in ProfitShare. And we got a really sharp position description together. And now we revisit it in that meeting every fortnight. It's like, these are the things we set out to do. How are we going with them? How long are they taking? What's the framework behind it? So even having that experience has created a much better structure. And it's even created a meeting agenda for our new team members. So that's been a good learning. Yeah, I feel like all of the things that have happened here are potentially avoided or softened with any mastery advice or advice from community and listening to it. Well, I think Shane was guiding us at the start. And he's like, get your position descriptions together. We're not doing that. We're growing a business. And the super stuff, like having the right accountant where you can ask those questions and just say, I know this is painful, but I really want to know these numbers each month rather than at the end of the year. So like all of those situations, avoidable. And I think we bring all those lessons into CM now really well. Like we try and set up those financial rhythms from day one. We try and set up It's a great point around having the right advisors around you to be able to share their wisdom. I certainly know that I went through four or five different accountants and kind of felt really dumb. and also a version of, I didn't want to ask questions or didn't even know what questions to ask in the early days, and felt like if I was asking them questions that it was like distracting from their time, like it wasn't particularly valuable to them. And perhaps also a version of me thinking, oh, they're going to bill by the minute. And so it's about being efficient here, hand over the receipts and go for it. So what I particularly love, we've had Andy on the podcast, a good friend, good advisor, and developed quite a niche for allied health. That's Clarico Accounting, for those that want to check him out and the team. is he's such a great educator. I find that really useful of explaining things and visualizing things. I don't know about you, but accountants would talk numbers and they'd just be flying past me like Neil in the Matrix, dodging wisdom in a way. Not the right outcome. I should be eating it up like a Pac-Man. But in this instance, I really found Andy just able to explain things, visualize things. What I mean by that is share screen with a spreadsheet and talk through how these things match. But I love that you've developed these systems. None of us are going to escape the mistakes in the future or the challenges, the things we don't see coming. COVID, a great example, a bad example, however you want to look at it, at that. But I think so much of experience is actually making sure you reflect on those periods and learn the lessons and that they translate into changes and actions, you know, systems, not that they're going to be perfect moving forward, but hopefully When things happen, like you mentioned, you're like quicker to adjust, quicker to adapt. It doesn't take three months or three years. It's like three days, maybe three minutes for you to change your state, focus on the right things or, you know, engage a system or engage an advisor, whatever that may be. So I really appreciate it. I think everyone knows you to be so open and vulnerable about your experience as a business owner, as a physio in particular. And this post just resonated with so many people. And you're sharing a lot more on the Clinic Mastery IG. Just give us a bit of an insight for your inspo and some of the things you're Yeah, come on over. I'm doing more stories and answering questions and I enjoy it. I enjoy the true stuff because I know when I was starting my business, it was refreshing to hear and I don't mind sharing. And I find that when I share that, people really open up and share their stories and then we can help people better. So yeah, you can come over and Jack and I will answer your questions over there. One thing that just came up for me as you were saying that was a video from Simon Sinek who said he's like sitting in a boardroom and he feels really dumb because he would always ask a really simple question. He's like, is it just me or does no one understand this? And again, it was like one of those online mentors who isn't afraid to ask one more question or ask a silly question. And I think that annoys some of our professional advisors, but I'd encourage people It's a great point. Well, Mick, thanks so much for sharing so candidly as always. And thank you folks for tuning into another episode. We would so love and appreciate if you tune in regularly to give the show a rating on your chosen platform. It looks like Apple and Spotify are where most of you listen in to the episode and a growing audience on YouTube. come and join us over there. We not only do the podcast, we do a whole bunch of instructional how-to videos on how to grow your clinic, led by Peter Flynn. So come and join us, immerse yourself in the content. More than that, take action on some of the things that you hear. As Mick, you said, small bits, every day, every week, compound over time. And we'd love to hear your success. Mick, we'll see you on another episode very soon. Thank 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/podcast and please remember to rate and review us on your podcast player of choice. See