MASTERMIND: The Game-Changer NDIS Clinics Can't Ignore in 2025 | GYC Podcast 298

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In this episode of the Grow Your Clinic podcast, Hannah Dunn, Jack O'Brien and Ben Lynch dive into the recent changes to the NDIS and their implications for health clinics. They discuss the shift from having waitlists to facing uncertainty in appointment diaries, as many clinics are experiencing a decline in client numbers. Hannah shares insights from her experience at DOTS, highlighting their strategy of keeping waitlists open, even with long wait times, which has allowed them to maintain some demand at popular locations. The conversation focuses on attracting new clients and families amid these changes, providing valuable perspectives for progressive health professionals navigating this evolving landscape.

Join us as we explore strategies to adapt and thrive in the face of uncertainty.

Timestamps
[01:10] NDIS changes affecting clinic operations.
[06:10] Client loyalty and experience.
[08:40] Client attraction strategies.
[11:27] Alternative income sources in clinics.
[17:04] Building a brand presence.
[19:51] Panic hiring and brand damage.
[24:04] Employee retention strategies.
[26:11] Documenting pathways for growth.
[32:34] Culture and profitability connection.
[36:56] Impact hours vs. billable hours.
[38:40] Impact hours vs. billable hours.
[41:46] Impactful productivity in healthcare.
[45:39] Impact versus profit in clinics.
[49:17] Planning with clarity and specificity.

What You'll Learn:

📈 NDIS Changes: Understand the recent shifts and how they affect your clinic's appointment diary.

🤝 Client Experience: Discover the importance of building loyalty and creating raving fans.

🏆 Recruitment Strategies: Learn how to attract and retain top talent in a competitive market.

💬 Impact vs. Billable Hours: Shift your focus to the meaningful impact your team has on clients.

🌟 Culture Matters: Explore how a positive workplace culture drives profitability and sustainability.

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► http://facebook.com/clinicmastery

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Transcript

0:00

J.O.B., we still can't see you, but you're here in spirit and in voice. Yeah, I'm here. I'm good. You're 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 episode. We have an exciting docket today. We're going to kick off with NDIS changes in particular, specifically the read we have on the community around what this means for them, attracting new clients, new families in particular. A lot of clinics have had wait lists up to this point. They've had the luxury of being able to almost pick and choose who goes into their diaries. But I'm certainly hearing a lot of folks say we're freaking out at the moment. the changes, there's a little bit of uncertainty, and perhaps we're thinking about what does that look like in our appointment diary. Hannah, you're living, breathing it. What are you experiencing? What are you hearing about, one, the changes, and two, the impact on the I think there's massive changes on Diary. We're absolutely hearing the same thing, that people don't have waitlists. I think one thing we did differently at DOTS that other people may not have done was we left our waitlist open. So even if it was a 12-month wait, we still took those names and had them there, which has meant that we still have a little bit of a waitlist at our more popular locations. At one of our sites, we don't have a waitlist. It's a newer And so it's bigger rooms as well, more capacity there. And so I think when we don't, if we've closed our wait lists and we've reopened them now, or we're looking for new referrals, we need to really think about getting more strategic and going back to what those of us who were here before the NDIS were doing and relying on our referral networks and diversifying our streams of income and not setting our practices up just to rely on one funding It was a while back and there are a lot of changes. So JB, you also noticing it in the sort of startup early Yeah, I guess I spend most of my days speaking with those in our elevate community, the startup solos, those establishing teams. And so I think where it used to be really obvious for clinic owners to start up and they'd end up with a waitlist fairly quickly, or at least fill their own books very quickly, it's not as easy as the promise used to be. And it's funny, you see the full circle, Benny, of clinic owners having to come back and go, well, now I have to work hard to attract clients. They're not just going to rock up with a full plan, full of funding. I need to have something unique about my clinic. I need to have a niche that I want to help clients with, et cetera. The more the fundamentals of business, which perhaps, um, Not that it wasn't necessary when the NDIS was raging a couple of years ago, but it's definitely on the forefront of Broadly, I would say a lot of NDIS clinics haven't really had to invest money or time in a lot of marketing efforts, especially digital stuff. Maybe they had some relationships, but like you said, Hannah, they were you know, poorly nurtured or, you know, in the background compared to some other activities. So I'm certainly noticing that. Did you know that you could send an email to hello at clinic mastery dot 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. All right, back to the episode. One comment that struck me from someone recently was they thought that it was a bit fear-mongering that all these changes are not really going to lead to much difference on the ground floor. But I'm just not hearing that from anyone. Hannah, what have you seen in your own clinic and in other clinics? Talk to some of the numbers Yes, definitely. We're seeing a lot less funding being allocated to each individual participant. So there used to be a lot more funding, which meant that you could book them in and foresee how long you were going to have them for on that plan. So if it was a 12-month plan, the funding definitely allowed for 26 sessions over that period of time for OT and for speech and for psych. which means fortnightly. Sometimes it might have been 22 sessions, which meant fortnightly plus a couple of cancellations. Whereas now we're getting plans that are 12 months long or sometimes six months and only have enough for maybe 10 sessions in that period, which means we're having to go back and re a lot more time spent for advocating for clients who need additional funding, which means we're having to use that those hours that we'd want to use directly with the client on indirect report writing. And I think also just with families, with there not being those wait lists, it has a flow on effect to family having more choice and control. So if we had sort of a mediocre service out there, parents were sort of really happy to sort of have an OT, even if they felt like maybe it was 100% right for them. Whereas now they've got their friends saying, we've got this great OT over here, and they've actually got availability, you should move to where we are now. So we're seeing families move a bit more freely and not have that same weight or I find that fascinating, right? Because maybe rewind the clock a couple of years and it was like patients didn't, Maybe there wasn't a high degree of loyalty because you just go wherever has got availability. Maybe a participant in a family sitting on three or four or five wait lists, and they'll just take any spot available. What you're saying, though, now is that clinics need to focus on that client experience and building that loyalty so that a client doesn't just jump Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Also having someone available to answer those calls because previously it was okay to say leave a message and I'll call you back in three days and then you can call them back and say send them out that paperwork. Now you need to be someone on the phone answering those calls and Right. So I think this is fascinating because I'd imagine, or at least in my observation, and Benny would be curious what you're seeing, this new scenario, it's not novel, right? This has happened before, but it can either create a lot of fear and uncertainty and instability for clinic owners, or you can choose to look at it with eyes wide open. This is an abundant opportunity to create loyalty and client experiences and get the team really geared up to take great care of their families. Benny, I'm sure that's how you would see Yes. This is not the moment to bury your head in the sand. probably when there is some uncertainty of like, what are the changes? Are they waiting to be finalized? Or how does that flow on to me? I do see a lot of people just kind of waiting, waiting for that certainty, or in that waiting, they're just trying to read as many forums on, you know, Facebook groups or in our Slack community. It's like, this is the time to act and go back to the fundamentals, because those things aren't changing, which is, you know, in your P&L, we've spoken recently on the podcast, like, what is your marketing budget? What is your allocation there? How are you going to deploy that in different areas? and to get started on some of those things, especially on the client attraction side to those client services side as well. Like what are we doing at our next all team meeting or an all hands meeting, whatever it is to start to level those Well, it's the little one percenters, right? And this is what gets me excited in chatting with a clinic owner where before perhaps some particularly NDIS majority clinics were, I'll say hamstrung by recruitment in a lot of regards. Now, to your point, Hannah, you can stand out just by answering the phone. There's plenty of low-hanging fruit there to wow a new client or family to answer the phone, to roll out the red carpet. This is go time and it's really low-hanging It's really exciting. Sorry to interrupt. A little lag there. It's her cam from South Australia. Don't judge me as it just crosses the plains. 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 alieclinics.com. All right, back to the episode. Hannah, let's speak to some of that low-hanging fruit, like you mentioned there, the phone. Let's run through some of the list of things that you would look at in a clinic who's maybe freaking out at this. Where Yeah, perfect. Exactly where I was headed. So I think that with the opportunity to, like one of our basic human needs, creating certainty, it's not just creating certainty for our team, but creating certainty for our communities as well. And if we're seen as standing up and providing, I don't know if it's a free information session or whether you're doing an email out or in your new... Whether it's the providers as well and saying here is a snapshot of the upcoming changes that we've heard about. This is how we're addressing them. This is how we'll ensure that your care remains the forefront of our priority. Whatever it is that you're doing to ensure that you're that voice of reason and calm. is gonna help you again stand out differently. I think it also, to Jack's point about creating excitement and opportunity is our teams are sick of the same clients and the same NDIS reports and all of those things as well. And so by diversifying our income streams, we also diversify the opportunities for our teams to work in different ways, whether that be through different funding or different client groups or with Just to explain, what are some of those alternative sources that you speak of, like, practically is outside the NDIS? What are some examples you're seeing come through your clinic or that you're looking to target? Yeah. So for some people, it may be if you're thinking about an additional location, maybe you're thinking about locating in a higher socioeconomic where you may get more privately paying families. It may be through Department of Education where you can access some funding through the Department of Ed in relation to doing some observations of whole classes and providing feedback to teachers that way, doing some professional development, or potentially other grants that other people have got. We've had kinders who have grants to set up sensory rooms, for example. There may be a whole range of different places, and you know my favourite place, Chathoopty, will give you lots of ideas if you put in there. Tell me about funding grants that are available in this area that could target an OT and then supporting people to apply for those grants and being there ready to Yeah, there's no shortage of ideas, right, available to you. It's about being able to prioritize and implement effectively. The recruitment side you touched on, we've seen, I'll say broadly, you go back, what, 18 months, two years, felt like new graduates could dictate terms to a clinic owner, what they're earning and the package they are getting. We'd certainly hear a lot of clinic owners say, it's hard, it's highly competitive, what I'm having to deal with. I'd say the narrative seems to have shifted. Is that what you're also hearing and seeing? I'm noticing a lot more clinic owners, number one, perhaps not looking to recruit as much because they're trying to boost the utilization of their current team, going, I'm just not going to add headcount and have a whole bunch of underutilized team members. just anecdotally notice a few people be okay with even losing some team members because they've been running at a half sizzle. Do you know what I mean? And it's been costing them. So I've noticed one, less of an appetite broadly to recruit and or number two, it feels more in the power dynamic I think Clinic owners now, in my observation, need to be more deliberate and measured with their recruitment. Where, again, a couple of years ago, maybe you would just take anyone with a degree and a heartbeat, sign them up, lock them in, because we had waitlists as long as our arms. That's not so much the case now. And many of the other disciplines, if you're listening along, maybe you're an NDIS minority clinic, you have had to have hiring triggers and algorithms and formulas to determine when it is sustainable to hire. Now the NDIS majority clinics need to have these formulas in place. When is it sustainable for us to hire? When will we reach break even on that practitioner? When will we reach profitability? Do we have a caseload that suits their clinical interests? So it's more thoughtful in that sense. That said, Hannah, I'd be curious what you're seeing. There's still not a heap of, like the talent pool isn't super deep or Yeah, I think that's my experience too. And I think you touched on a really good point about those listening who aren't NDIS being the majority of their caseload. They are our friends and our colleagues that we need to rely on and talk to about what they have done over this time. And it's such a good wealth of knowledge for us to seek support as well when we're having these changes and maybe not experienced it previously. We're definitely seeing more increase in the number of applicants who are applying for jobs or who are reaching out without there being a live job available. And I think the other thing, Ben, that you spoke to before about people not recruiting as much is also previously when people could dictate and come and say, look, I'm going to do two days a week and people would say, OK, no worries, we'll take them on. We're now recognising that having three two day a week is so much more expensive for us as an organisation than to have one full timer who can do that work and so I think organisations now are getting a bit more strategic and trying to get people who are full time or four days a week and having minimum days rather than taking people on for one day here and that$193.99 not being increased in the last five to six years has really meant that people need to really get strategic because there was another audit that was done externally by Deloitte that actually showed that the running cost of a private practice was now $205 or $210 an hour, whereas when they previously did it and advised the NDIS on the rate, it was at that $193.99. five years ago so we know that even from the external audits that have happened and that we are running at losses at times so we need to make sure that we're making sure that those numbers make sense and we're not throwing money out the door when we're doing things like having three people in It's interesting, Hannah, and even back to the point of attracting families and participants with plans now through to recruitment, the summation that I make and see is that businesses need to get back to the fundamentals of business, specifically around building a brand and the presence in the community from a participant perspective and in the therapist, clinician community. building a brand that people know, you need to be known, you need to be liked, you need to be trusted. We as clinics need to show up more and be present more to attract ideal clients and attract ideal team members. Again, previously wasn't too much of a driver. Now, it must I've got a favour 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. Benny, you're the brand expert. Can you speak to that brand element? Yeah, I was going to actually ask before I go into it, what do you see people not I'll ask you, Jack, because you brought it up. And then I'm interested in Hannah's perspective. We so often focus on what are the best doing, which is great, but sometimes people don't even know that they're doing the wrong thing or not even addressing the thing that they ought to. What does it look like to be falling behind on The first thing that comes to mind would be showing up inconsistently or too late and not doing the proactive work when they've got time and capacity and waiting until it's urgent to try and then get desperate. It's like, I'm not going to post consistently on social media or engage in a content strategy And then six weeks later, we've got white space in the diary and the questions come through of like, what can I do to fill my books this week? It's like, well, if you had done what we coached you to do six weeks ago, we wouldn't be having this conversation, would we? And the same is true of recruitment. It's like, ah, we need to recruit tomorrow. Well, you needed to start building an audience of applicants six months ago. Now, we're not going to point fingers and blame. We're going to start today and do what we can with what we have. But to answer your question specifically, it would be putting your head in the sand and not doing the proactive things when we've got capacity. It's not building the, not planting the tree before we need the wood. Hannah, Yeah, definitely. And I think one thing that we spoke to a lot of members about was not panic hiring. So just because you had a space available, not just bringing on anyone, because we know how much that can damage our brand, having someone who's not aligning with our values. I think now it's the same thing with the client group. Let's not panic and just accept any referral that comes in. Let's make sure we're sticking to our brand, make sure we're sticking to our expertise, or we're going to really damage that relationship and that brand that says we are having bad experiences because we're saying Yeah. I think when it comes to that hiring, like we are so often critiquing and helping clinic owners with their recruitment documents and collateral, things like what does your CCAD say? Is it specifically attracting the type of clinician that your clinic needs? Is your landing page clear? Is your application process thorough? At what gates have we got for clinicians to step through and when we can refine those parts of the process, then we, we attract good people who My mind is blown when people say to me, yeah, we got this great candidate and then we sent them an email offer. I'm like, you emailed them the offer? Like there are such small things that we can do to like pick up the phone, jump on a Zoom call, like meet them for coffee, like whatever it is to celebrate that rather than those small missed opportunities. And it's the same thing about looking at our client journey, looking at our team journey. What do all of those touch points It's a really great point, Hannah. Another similar one is I sent the contract via email and that person freaks out about a restraint of trade clause or something about the salary that they didn't understand the reward structure and maybe attached to it. So great point around picking up the phone, having something in person or a Zoom meeting is fantastic. What we're screen sharing here just to connect some dots and add some literal color to this, Cliniko, the patient management software, did a survey of all of their users back in 2021. A little bit old now, but maybe as a reference point for us. The Australian Physiotherapy Association also did a workforce consensus report. The Speech Pathology Association also did one circa 23 or 24, but I think you had to be a SPA member to get access to that. They didn't give me one. Duh. If you are a SPAR member, I'll happily accept an email with one of those reports. I think I find these useful as a reflection tool, like it's going to be highly nuanced on the ground floor, but it helps you start to understand what people might be looking for, at least what they say they're looking for, and why they might leave. So we're currently looking at, the question was around, what would cause you to leave your current workplace? 23% said a better workplace culture. 12% said more flexible hours. 31% said more money. 10% said to be closer to home. And 23% said other. And then the other question that they asked was what has contributed to you staying with this practice this long? Just to mention a couple of notable ones here. 28% is I enjoy working with the team here. 19% is my boss is excellent, and 18% is the work culture is excellent. As you look through these, J.O.B., then I'll come to you, Hannah. What are you sort of taking from this that practically a clinic owner could apply, obviously nurturing their current team and keeping them engaged in their role, but also looking I heard it said once, I'm not sure who to attribute this to, but when it comes to money and employees and team members, money might be a reason that people leave, but it's rarely the reason people stay. And so the way that we should think about that is we need to provide salary arrangements, remuneration that satisfies people. But people will not stay at a job that is high paying and they do not enjoy their boss team or culture to reference those responses. So it's almost like we just need to handle the money thing. Sort that out, pay well. We don't want to be bottom of the barrel, pay well. But beyond that, the reasons people actually stay are culture, a boss that's invested in a boss. No, we don't use that word around here. The report did, we don't. But a leader who is invested in their team, a culture that is deliberate and proactive and progressive. And there's so many little one percenters, again, that we as clinic owners can do to stand out. Folks, it's not hard to stand out as a clinic owner. There's little things that we can do to make work meaningful for our team, enjoyable, fulfilling. And so get creative. Think outside. What are the best doing? What's different? What can you add or change about how you lead so that your team members are engaged and proactive? I Just getting it down on paper, like pathways, like with those pathways, getting that written down, it's not just good enough to say we've got really great pathways. It's about a visualisation of being So that's a good point. Benny, what's the quote that you and I have been talking about I feel like there's a lot of quotes that we toss around. as we put on our philosophical hat. I think clear writing is a reflection of clear thinking We have all these grand ideas and we go to conferences and summits and we talk about the idea, the concept of pathways, Hannah, but get on paper, your IP is only valuable if it's out of your brain and on the screen in front of you to visually represent it. And the act, Hannah, of visually representing, whether it was in the written form or graphic form, of representing your pathways and progressions forces you to think clearly, forces you to think linearly, forces you to get better and more articulate and more deliberate with our leadership principles. Has that been your experience, Hannah, in like documenting Yeah, absolutely. Like documenting our pathways was a game changer for us. And it really meant that people could see the progressions, could see where they could head. It structures conversations around pay progressions. It structures conversations around where am I going to next like this? No question about, you know, is there opportunity for growth? What are those opportunities? Is there side steps that maybe don't take on leadership roles, but take on projects? Or what are those opportunities? People, I don't think, want to be in a workplace where they're coming in seeing clients nine to five. in a paediatric OT space, but I think also in lots of different clinic spaces, they want the opportunity to be able to maybe provide some supervision, maybe present PDs or be a guest on a podcast or whatever it is. Yes, that is very true. Actually, the APA workforce consensus report, shares a number of really good insights around that. Even if you're not a physiotherapist, I'd encourage you to take a read. It's freely available on their website around career pathways and what people are looking for in particular. Where do you start, though? What have you found useful in supporting clinic owners, Hannah, when they're starting from scratch, because you've worked on it quite a lot over a long period of time. I've certainly had those conversations with clinic owners and they want to do it, but they see it as this massive task where they need to know all of the details, every single detail about every single pathway before And you're like, okay, so where practically do we start? Because otherwise they're crippled by the enormity of pathways that it can be. Are we saying fake it till you make it? Yeah, absolutely. Share the realities of how you do it. I'm interested in I think also going back to what you were saying earlier about we talk a lot about what people are doing well, like what the best do, but what are those who maybe aren't sitting at that level doing, and I wrote down a few things there that just in relation to delegating, like I think they are doing it all, they're not delegating and they're not trying to find those pathways and having the confidence to sort of step back and just seeing that their team can do it. So I think the best thing you can do if you're looking at what is the next step is to sit down and really think about what are all the tasks that you're doing and what are the tasks that you'd like to delegate. and what are the roles that are missing? Like where are the supports needed in your team? And then that can sort of start to create a role. You can go back to basics and just do those traditional roles in which it's like, do we have supervisors? Do we have mentors? What are we calling those? level of people? Am I doing it all? Am I starting to get other people to coach other people in the team? Is there an opportunity to diversify a stream where they're specializing in a certain caseload? What are the opportunities? And asking your team. You can't learn more than asking your team what they want their pathways to be. And that Bingo. Took the words right out of my mouth. Yeah. I was going to say, Documenting and creating pathways isn't some abstract intellectual exercise. Just start with the people you've got and what is their pathway. And that becomes the pathways of your clinic. And really pathways are a starting, a step-off place. They're the starting guide. And we ideally want to customize them for each and every individual. in our team. So practically speaking, if you have team members, create a pathway for them. We want to imagine here as we engineer these pathways, imagine what could be next for our team. and document that. And the same is true for applicants. We want to kind of reverse engineer what a pathway could look like for an applicant in our clinic and crafting a vision of their future for them really creates an affinity with us as their employers. So yeah, make it really human. Pathways for the people. That I think you touched on a really good point Jack in regards to like it's not just like it's absolutely your current team but also in interviews like it starts right from there like even if you're not going to hire the person who's in front of you let's say you've got four candidates and you've got one role it's so powerful to ask a question of what's something in your current role that you'd hope to have in this role or in a previous role that you've had that you'd hope to have in this role or what's something that you didn't get in your previous role that you're looking for in Good culture is profitable. Right. We, we know that recruitment and retention and losing team members is incredibly costly for clinics. And we know, we know the data tells us that poor culture leads to lost productivity, inefficiency, leakages. And so, you know, this, this stuff isn't just like pie in the sky, nice to have feel good, kind of, oh, it's nice for you guys to talk about. No, no, no. Good culture is meaningful. A, because people matter. And B, because ultimately it's profitable, which means sustainability for our business, sustainability of employment for the health professionals and team members involved, and sustainability that we can continue to help those participants and clients in our community. So profitability matters That's a good point. Our friend and colleague Tristan White has a book called Culture is Everything. We used to give this out at various events and whatnot. It's got a 19-point checklist, I think, about culture, because I know people talk about it in different ways, but a really practical one is to get that checklist and rate yourself against that, find areas to improve. One of the sayings that I had in defining the recruitment ecosystem was to sell the career, not the year. Just a nice little play on words, which maybe is something for people to keep in their back pocket, because losing candidates over $5,000 or$10,000 difference in the salary package on the first year. Essentially, that's all it is. On SEEK, you put up the job ad, here's the salary, here's what you get. I guess the assumption is this is what year one looks like. But to be able to future pace people into subsequent years with some of those pathways, that we'll get clearer on this over time through learning about one another, exploring what you're into, what you find flow in, how you want to contribute. We can work on really personalizing these pathways as we go forward. So I found just keeping it really simple, there's four or five we outlined I think five or six in the Grow Your Clinic book, which you can get for free as a PDF and even check some of those out and use them as a starting point in your career pathway definition. One of the places that it came from for us, I remember, a talk with Shane Davis here at CM where he was like, you know, when you go into McDonald's, and I think this is back 15 years ago, at McDonald's they used to have that piece of paper that was maybe A2 and it would sit on your tray and it would outline the steps from like, you know, flipping burgers through to owning one of the franchises. It was this nice little visualization, to your point, Jack, that was captured really simply. But as you're sitting down eating, maybe with the kids, you can say, yo, kids, look at what you can do here at McDonald's. It was really simple. And I think that's a great way as well, a great visual asset to add to that. One thing I've found useful is tell them, show them, involve them. So many people tell them through their job ad, you wordsmith it, you try and get really creative. But if you can then show them, kind of like the show and tell, like, can I see a video? Can I see an example of this? can we meet via Zoom virtually and you show me how it works if your mentoring is the thing, like we do great mentoring or we do this certain methodology of practice. And the idea of being involved, because if you can physically experience that, they come in, do shadowing observations, if they are able to sit in remotely, perhaps in one of the CPD sessions or mentoring sessions, but I'm involved in that process, just like crystallizes the whole experience and like gives great evidence and proof. So we're just adding more ways to make them feel what they're going to feel as part of the team. So A couple of things there as we flow on. Broadly, the docket that we've got here, a good little anchor point for clinic owners thinking about how to grow their clinic sustainably is, what am I doing to fill my books? What am I doing to grow and support my team, the culture that both you Hannah and Jack have spoken about? What am I doing to boost cashflow and be a good steward of the financial resources that I have? And then what am I doing to transform client experiences and create raving fans? They're kind of the pillars that we talk about here at CM. So broadly, the docket is following that today. So we're up to the boost cashflow side. And one of the, Really cool things, Hannah, that you spoke about at the CM Summit was impact hours versus billable hours. And this ties in actually quite nicely to culture. Do you want to tear us up and Yeah, definitely. I think it's just language as a whole can have such a massive impact on culture throughout the whole clinic, but also around the focus of what we're doing. And I think when we talk about billable hours or indirect and direct hours that our team's focused on that receipt at the end of the session, whereas when we change the language and we talk about them being impact hours, we're more so cognizant of the impact we're having on our families and the impact that we're having on the community or the child or the school and how can we impact them more. And I think it also allows us to create language for parents who may not see the value without us explaining why we're doing that indirect time. You know, there's a lot of missed opportunities in NDIS for a lot of clinics who aren't billing for that indirect time. They're not billing for the phone calls to the teachers or whatever it is. But when you talk about it being a billable hour and say, I'm going to call the teacher and I'll be billing you for that time, versus I'm going to call the teacher, we're going to use some of the impact hours for that, it's going to have a flow on effect to be able to allow that teacher to do X, Y and Z. It's more in line with what our clinicians are passionate about. And it flows through in interviews that you were talking about before, Ben, in relation to so often the clinics that we work with will say, oh, in interviews, I don't really talk about like their targets or their KPIs or and I'll say, oh, why not? And they're like, oh, because then we might scare them off. We're already creating that negativity around having to work and having to be profitable or sustainable. And so it's important that we are honest and transparent and that we are clear as kind as our favourite Renee Brown tells us. So we want to make sure that we've got language that resonates with our team that is focused on the areas that we want to focus on and Impact Hours is one of How did your team take that announcement, that change of language? Maybe more importantly, what resistance points did you have when you rolled it out? Because the people that get it, they're easy. They're easy work. I think I've got a pretty great team and they're pretty on board and excited about the change. I think it's also about the way you present it. When you're presenting these changes to your team, it's not just an email to the team to say, hey, we're going from billable hours to impact hours, make sure you change the language. a whole culture shift. It's changing and updating our hub so that all the language throughout the hub is updated. It's about presenting it with a Canva presentation or whatever it is when you're doing that. So, for an example, getting up in front of the team at a culture day that we call team time. and saying to them like oh my gosh guys we've been so crazy in referring to these hours as billable like as if we are doing billable hours let's really value ourselves we're having a massive impact on our clients and let's focus on what we're actually doing it's absolutely about the impact hours it's not about billables it's we are having an awesome impact and we want to recognize you for that and let's do that through the language Joby, you and I talk a lot about language and its accuracy or substitutions that we can use. Maybe the skeptic is like, it's all fluff. I'm the skeptic. You know, let's call it what it is. I think of the great, you know, community adjusted EBITDA of the war. Oh, bloody hell, what's it called? WeWork. If you haven't seen that TV show and documentary series, that's fantastic. But yeah, let's speak to the skeptic, which you do play really well. Talk to us about approaching language and being I love it. I love what you're talking about there, Hannah, because if I'm picturing myself as the clinician on your team, as the physio in the DOTS world, and my immediate thought was, well, it challenges me to go, is my time being impactful? Or am I just pushing paper and sorting staplers and rulers and pencils? Or am I doing something productive and useful with my time? Because that's what I want to come to work and do is be productive, have an impact. I don't just want to show up and have an empty diary so that I can scroll Instagram in my quiet time. I want to make a difference. That's why we all got into this health professional game. And correct me if I'm wrong, Hannah, but you mentioned you've got an amazing team. I know you do. Probably framing things up as impact hours would maybe help some of those who are less motivated to be productive, would probably help them self-deselect because it's only the high impact players that are going to want to thrive in Yeah. And I think also like when they're making that phone call, it wasn't like, Oh, I've got a bill for this. It's like, I'm actually having an impact on this client and I should value that. And so that's been a big shift in being able to bill essentially for those indirect tasks that NDIS is set up to do. And I think that while we might not love the way the NDIS is set up, we have to, play ball with the way that they've structured it. And so I think it's about continually coaching our teams around the language they use with families, around the revenue, the streams in which people have for challenging that as well. We strongly encourage our families if they're not happy with the way that something needs to be built or the cancellation policy, for example, to say to them, have a chat to NDIS. Like, this is the way it's set up. And so I think all of that language needs Yeah, I love that. So I'm thinking about the clinician that maybe sits like I am, sits back a little bit and goes, I see what you're doing. You just want me to move from 22 billable hours to 24. And so the opportunity there, I think, is for us as clinic owners to go, yeah, we want to have more of an impact. Yes. That's like unashamedly, yes, we want to have a bigger impact. And by the way, here's what we can do to make that easier or more achievable for you. Here's some of the support that we're providing for you as clinicians. Here's some of the tech and AI, whether that's Heidi or whatever else we're using to make it super easy for you to have a greater impact. Here's the flows. Here's the systems, the scripts. This is what we're doing to make your life, to make these targets and this impact more achievable. Have you coupled that notion of impact with like tech Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing I was going to add to that, Jack, as you're sitting back and saying to me, like, what are you doing with these extra two hours? I'm saying to you as well, like, it's also an awesome opportunity for me to work with you to be able to hit those targets for us to be able to increase your wage, which is my ultimate goal to ensure that you're being rewarded for the work that I know that you're already doing, but may not be billing for. And so pulling out those calendars and looking at them together and reducing that overwhelm I think is really important. Now I've forgotten the actual question that you asked me though. Tech, tech. Oh, tech, yes. Yeah, absolutely. We're using Heidi. We haven't put it in place for everyone. We've allowed people to opt into it because some people felt that it was too much of a change for them at this stage and that's okay. We've got our early adopters and They're in there doing it and then at our team meetings we've got a header point that each team meeting we ask how the team's going with Heidi and we get all those good news stories that helps get another few people trying it. We definitely, that and templates are critical, having really good templates, making sure the templates work. There's a few glitches with Sploce with templates not formatting tables and it doing a few funny things at times, which I know they're working on. And so we've taken some of our templates offline onto Google Drive so that we can use those a bit more effectively. So just making sure those little things work that aren't taking up the time and working with your team to ask them what are the things that are not billable that are It's a really good distinction. The emphasis on the outcome of the work done is not make money, it's make impact for the people that we serve and the billable is just a fair exchange for that outcome being delivered. for them. Really nice. I'm mindful of time as we look to wrap here. Might just go around the horn and ask what have you read recently? What have you learned recently? I might kick us off with, I did the most riveting exercise whilst on holidays. to download the ASX listed reports Did you have insomnia? Did you need to get to sleep? You got insomnia? Oh, I tell you what. So Healthier are a group of clinics. They were listed on the stock exchange and then got bought by a private equity group, I believe. We have a partnership actually with Healthier and some education there. But I thought it's always interesting. You don't often get publicly available insights around clinics. We, of course, get a lot of insights around clinics because we live and breathe it and work closely with hundreds of clinics. But I thought it'd be interesting to see from a more public perspective how they think and write, to your point, J.O.B., around, yeah, clear writing is clear thinking. I thought it'd be really interesting to dissect how they were looking at the business leases circa 2023, Well, I'll challenge your ASX public reports. And I spent my Easter break cataloging my entire Kindle and physical book library. I need another spreadsheet in my life. And so I cataloged the library. I've actually got some really interesting wide reading over the last couple of weeks around Easter and Anzac Day. So what have I got here? I've started the J.R.R. Tolkien series. So I read The Hobbit and I'm onto The Lord of the Rings, first book. I am reading a family book on how to raise great kids. And I've been rereading the E-Myth as part of a group book study. And the key learning that I came back to in the E-Myth, they were talking about planning and the mentor says to the bakery owner, I forget their names, but he says, You can't know everything, but you can know most things. You can predict most of the things that have happened to you were known variables that we could predict. And so clinic owners, you don't need to stick your head in the sand or be anxious about a possible future. We can know the majority of what's going to happen in a short term, at least. And so that means the priority should I'm not as exciting as you two. If they were exciting, we'd set the bar low. No, I think there are so many books that CM recommends all the time to be reading, and I'm on to one of the big ones being Scaling Up, The Martyring the Rockefeller Habits. And so I just think revisiting those ideas that flow through what you talk about all the time on the podcast and being able to make sure that we've got the right people in the right positions and making sure that our systems and processes are really well done and that they're simple and clear and that people can relate to our Very nice indeed. Constantly learning is the way to be. Sharpening the axe. Well, Hannah, Jack, thank you so much for your insights. Looking forward to this becoming a staple on the pod, getting your perspectives and insights. Thanks for tuning in. If you're listening, come and check us out. Subscribe over on YouTube. All the show notes are on clinkmastery.com forward slash podcast. We'll see you on another episode very soon. Bye bye. 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