How Much Are Clinic's Spending To Get New Clients? | GYC Podcast 379

How much should you actually be spending to get a new client - and how does your clinic compare?

In this episode of the Grow Your Clinic podcast, Ben and J.O.B dive into clinic marketing benchmarks using data from real clinics. They break down the median cost per new patient across physiotherapy, psychology, podiatry, chiropractic, speech pathology and occupational therapy - including why a $109 acquisition cost for a physio client can be very different from a $121 acquisition cost for a psychology client. They also explore the role of mental availability, why your content can make your Google Ads work harder, and how to use clinic performance benchmarks to identify the one metric your team should improve next.

If you're a clinic owner, practice manager, or allied health leader looking to improve your marketing ROI, fill your appointment books, increase practitioner utilisation, or build a more sustainable clinic - this episode gives you real benchmarks and practical ways to use them.


In This Episode You'll Learn:
📊 The new client, utilisation, patient visit average and cancellation benchmarks from 849 physios across 115 clinics
💰 The $109 median acquisition cost for physiotherapy - and why the $73 to $136 range matters
📈 How to compare client acquisition cost against lifetime client value and ROI
📢 Why paid marketing gives you more control over client volume - and how Google Ads fits into the mix
🧠 How content and brand awareness create mental availability and reduce the cost of direct marketing

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Transcript

0:00

All right. Hello. Hello. Hello. What do you think of I mean, it looks yellow. It says good people on it. Which I assume you are one. You're claiming to be one. I identify as one. I was going to say it suits your skin complexion. Maybe it does. What have you been doing? What's your Sun. G'day, good people. Welcome to the Grow Your Clinic podcast by Clinic Mastery. Here's what's coming up inside of this episode. This episode will be right up your Allie if you're looking to fill your appointment books with more new clients. We're diving into industry benchmarks so you can compare your progress. And trust me, you'll want to hear what it actually costs other clinics to acquire new patients using real data. Plus stick around for when we discuss the utilization benchmarks for your practitioners. I'm now sharing on my screen some physiotherapist performance benchmarks. These are de-identified anonymized A lot of the content game and the awareness game is about how do we make sure when someone's foot hurts, firstly they think podiatry and secondly they think about your clinic. Stop thinking sales, start thinking support. So it's not should we sell more product, it's like what are our clients already buying and what do they want to buy from you as someone that they trust. I love seeing it. It's the first thing. There aren't often publicly available benchmarks. Before we dive in, today's episode is brought to you by AllieClinics.com. If you're the kind of clinic owner who loves to feel organised and stay ahead of the chaos, you'll love Allie. Think of it as your digital clone. It's the single source of truth for all your clinic's policies, systems and training. Test it for free at AllieClinics.com. And in other news, applications are now open to work with us one-on-one at Clinic Mastery. If you want support to grow your clinic and bring your vision to life, just email hello@clinicmastery.com with the subject line podcast, and we'll line up a time to chat. All right, let's get into the episode. Well, just you and me, baby. Bec's still exploring the local delights of somewhere Share some of the language of the locals when you go somewhere. It's a great way to connect. There's a couple of phrases, but one of the key phrases I like to learn is, that's delicious or that's tasty. You know, when you go somewhere, compliment the waitress or the chef or whatever. Vietnam or Vietnamese is a very I was very tonal language, like front of the mouth, back of the throat, different sounds that were not classically useful, used to. Anyway, I tried to say, uh, that's delicious to one of the waitresses in Vietnamese. And she looked very shocked and kind of sheepishly giggled. And she said, say it again. She called over another waitress and said, say that again. I said, that's delicious. And, uh, and then they called over someone else who spoke English finally. And they said, what did you say? You can't say that, sir. What did you say? I said, that's delicious. She said, oh, no, no, no, no, you didn't. You said, she's delicious. And they're like, is this your wife? I was with Christina. She's like, is this your wife? I'm like, yeah. Like, that's not what I meant. I meant the food's delicious. And it was just Points for trying. It's not the first time you've put your foot in your mouth, but that's funny. Ah, well done. Well done. Well, let's get into it. J.O.B, great to be back on the call with you. We are going to talk all things numbers here, adding some context, some reference points for folks thinking about the numbers. You know, maybe broadly, we've been picking up on this sense of uncertainty, fear we discussed recently on an episode. some posts that we've seen on the socials about people talking about unsustainable clinics, whether that's changes in third party payers and their rates or the freezing of those sorts of things, whether it's team members getting paid more the upcoming changes to the award and clinic owners going, I'm not sure this is sustainable or there's much in it for me at the end of the day. And we always talk about control the controllables. You know, what are the things that you can make decisions on that you can perhaps even influence? And I think we see our fair share of folks that set the bar too low for their therapists and then have a very hard time changing it, changing the expectations of, you know, billable services or billable hours, service hours per week or appointments per week. revenue targets, and they kind of have to learn the hard way that it's not sustainable. And so one of the things that clinic owners could explore in making their business more sustainable are what are the targets, what are the key performance indicators that we set for our therapists so that they can grow and progress in their career, we can pay them more, and also that makes the clinic more sustainable. So we're going to share in this episode some benchmarks from real clinics that may give you a reference point. Now, we're going to speak specifically to marketing and then specifically to some of the client care stats for physiotherapists. We've got plenty more on all other professions, but stick around even if you're not a physio-based clinic, because some of the stuff I'm sure we'll talk about here, J-O-B, will help you have the conversation with those team members when setting or resetting those expectations. For members listening along, we'll also introduce and share where to go in the relevant resources you have at your fingertips to go deeper on this, because the podcast just gives you a little sort of whet the appetite, whet the palate type thing. wet, and where you can go much deeper in your coaching, the resources available too. But before we go any further, Joby, just to throw over to your desk anything of note that you want to share with folks. There's always lots to share. There's a couple of spots left for our August intake. So if you want help to fill your books, grow your team, boost your cash flow, and ultimately grow a clinic for good. We're here to help elevate for those clinics in their 10 to 40K a month range. Or if you're over 40K a month and you're really looking to scale up, maybe you're the bottleneck, you need to come off the tools, we need to implement some leadership. recruitment, whatever the case may be. We have a couple of spots left for August, a small number. So you can email me, jack at clinicmastery.com. No A-U, no A-I, just jack at clinicmastery.com. We'd love to have a conversation. We've had a number of folks join us in the last week or so since we were on the pod. And then also Allie, you can head over to AllieClinics.com. You can have a free trial over there. We can dashboard your data. You can house your resources, mentor your team. Ally's the place to be. What else, Ben? A number of workshops, both digital and in-person. A number of in-person things coming up. We recently did a workshop on the sunny coast. I'm heading over to Perth in a couple of weeks and we'll do a large Grow Your Clinic intensive over there. We're coming to Adelaide. That hasn't even been ... This is breaking news, Ben. We're coming to Adelaide. Well, I'm coming to Adelaide, you're in Adelaide. Well, yes, the residents seem to say. So that's coming in September. Yeah, we have a digital workshop coming with Preve, how to roll out more AI in your practice, and we're coming to the United States of America in November. There's a lot. There's a lot going on, Benny. There is. And it's all us. It's all proven, built on the Clinic Mastery way, 10 years. 10 years. 10,000 clinics in our ecosystem now. It is a force to be reckoned with, and it's what the best are doing. So come Well, what a lovely dovetail or segue into what are the best doing by talking about some benchmarks. Do you want to share screen or I feel like you would want to share. You have a share. I have a share. We can both share at one point. I'll start. Let's do this. I'm going to come here. And if you're wondering, folks, you can find what I'm about to share is publicly accessible. What Ben's about to share is privately accessible. But what we're looking at here is clinicmasterymarketing.com forward slash benchmarks. And this is really helping you understand where everyone else sits. and how you measure up. And so what I find really interesting here, if we're talking about marketing for physiotherapy, you can mix it up across different professions, et cetera, but physio, the median cost, so that's kind of the middle, let's call it. It's not an average because averages are not useful means. Medians are $109 with a lower cap of 73 and an upper cap or bound of $136. And so, $109 to acquire a new patient. First reactions, Benny, give me a blink. What's your read on I love saying it. It's the first thing. There aren't often publicly available benchmarks. This is based off of all the clinics that we work with in running their marketing for them in a done-for-you service. And we're sharing these so that you understand when you're making decisions around your marketing allocation. How much should I budget and how does that align with my targets? So we got the range there you said of $73 to $136 and the median is $109. Of course, we'd love to be at that $73 mark or thereabouts. That's where you'd love to be. But 109, interesting. I would have thought it would be a little bit lower in the sense, but it is what it is and you see these seasonal fluxes in the cost going up or down. I guess contextually it matters to you as a clinic owner when you compare it to your lifetime value of a client, on average, how much you can be Yeah, so that's looking over here again. This is just for paid media buying, paid ads, Google Ads being the predominant one here. So, of course, in a clinic across your mix, you'll get free word-of-mouth referrals and you'll get partnerships and professional referrals. This is just for paid. And we can see here that the typical fee is $129 and typical PVA of $6. Which means a return on investment of 7.1x or if that client is ultimately worth $774 to your practice for $109 acquisition cost. So, interestingly, I mean, it's quite a spread. When I look at that, 73 to 136, that's quite a spread. And so it shows me that there's a lot of opportunity for clinics to get this right or get it wrong. There's a big difference, right? Like put it this way, if a client is worth $774 and you're making a, let's call it a 10% profit margin, right? Of course you would expect to do better than that, but let's just use it for the example. You're making $77 profit at 10%, right? And if we come back to that acquisition cost, if you're paying $140 instead of $70, you're spending an extra $70 on acquisition, that's your whole margin. And so by getting your acquisition wrong, that is where you either make or break your profit. Does that make sense? Yep, it does. Do you know what'd be really cool? Can we go through a few more of those? Cause I know we've got quite a Yeah. Is that all right? Just while we've got them. So the next time we got is psychology and it is higher. It's$121 as the median cost to acquire one new patient with the band sitting at $95 on the lower end up to Which, again, you look at that in isolation and you go, oh, gee, podiatrists are paying more. Oh, it's a big range. Oh, that's a lot to acquire a client. Well, a lot is only relative. Is this podiatry or psychology? Psychology. Did I say podiatry? I meant psychology. Yes, that's right. That's right. Yeah, things are only a lot or not much in relativity, in isolation. You can't tell me that that's a high acquisition cost. You know, if I said to, dare I bring him up, the masochist Elon Musk, a tech fascist rather, if we bring up Elon Musk and I said, Elon, would you pay $121 to acquire a Tesla purchaser? He would say, of course, like that's a bargain, right? But if we went to someone selling, you know, a pair of shoes They're selling a $300 pair of shoes. Would they pay $120 to acquire a new client? No, that's a terrible use of funds. It's all relative. Are you selling shoes or are you selling a Tesla? Big difference. What I'm getting at, Benny, is in psychology, we typically see consult fees a bit higher, client visit average, patient visit average slightly higher. In this case, we see that the return is actually 21x. acquisition cost compared to back to the physio one of a return of 7.1. So sure, psychology acquisition cost is higher, but the return is three times as good. So in this case, All right. Let's skip along to, we've got podiatry, osteopathy, chirospeech, Looking here at podiatry now, $85 acquisition cost, much lower than physios, and the band even drops lower. So again, podiatrists, there's good upside, good opportunity here. Again, looking at this typical data across dozens and dozens of clinics, the return sits at 8.3. I don't know about you, Ben, but when I look at this and go typical visits is only five for a podiatry clinic. That's not We're going to add to that in a moment. We've got some physio-specific benchmarks. We also do have podiatry. We're not going to go through them today and several other professions, but that is interesting. Five, as you said, it's on the lower end, right? And just to capture here for those listening in, the range for podiatry is $60 on the low end to $135 on the high end. with$85 being the median, again, primarily through If we skip through to Cairo, quite a narrow band for chiropractors, 80 at the bottom, 100 at the top and 90 is the median. But again, PVA now of 12 compared to podiatry at 5 makes a meaningful difference Let's do speech and OT as well, and Yeah. So speeches here, we can see that the typical fee for speeches is pinned at around that NDIS gazetted rate of roughly $194. And so again, $115 acquisition cost might sound high. Again, for speeches who have I'll say traditionally, but at least in the last five to ten years, not had to pay much, if any, to acquire a client. To now have to pay $115 feels like a lot of, and maybe you need 20 new clients a month, and you go, you want me to spend how much on ads plus the management? You want me to spend two and a half, three grand? That's a lot of money. Okay, maybe it is, but when a client is worth $4,000 to you or rather $2,500, if you're going to spend $115 to get $2,300, you do that every day of the week, right? Yep. Makes a lot of sense. So that's speechy. And OT is similar, slightly lower acquisition cost for OT, but in the same ballpark, a band of $80 to $120 and a return on investment of 15x is very good for Super interesting to see these numbers here and just see where you compare, also see the range that's there in front of you. How do you reconcile the stats that we're seeing here, JOB, with some of those things? I know you broadly categorize them as free, but whether we're paying someone's salary to do those activities, whether it's a receptionist or a practice manager in navigating some of the referral partnerships with schools or kindergarten sports clubs or professionals, or whether it is some practitioners on the team allocating some of their week to do these other things that generate the word of mouth that maybe broadly we see as free. yeah, how much do you sort of read into these numbers as the cost to acquire and then put it in the context of maybe like a blended investment It's interesting. I don't particularly like thinking about the blended acquisition cost because it's not helpful. It doesn't change our decision making. Now, do we want more, quote, free clients or lower acquisition cost clients? Sure. So do the work on those acquisition channels. But when it comes to the paid acquisition, the beauty is that you have a lot more control over the types of clients, you have a lot more control on the volume of clients, and there is more science than art to it. Whereas sometimes some other things is a little bit more out of your control. So when I'm looking at this, I'm looking at what we're sharing here, particularly on OTs and speeches. The return on investment is phenomenal. Metaphorically, I'd be saying, here's my credit card, max it out, please, and fill me up. Let's go. If there's such low-hanging arbitrage, low-hanging fruit, let's do it. Now, contrast that to the podiatry clinic. I would say, look, maybe you could acquire clients for pretty cheap at 85 bucks, but I think the bigger opportunity for you as a podiatry clinic, if these numbers were indicative, is time to work on your client journey, to work on the client experience, to maximizing the care. Can we include products in our mix? So many, so many clinics are missing out on the product. We just did a workshop literally about 23 minutes ago, wrapped up a workshop with dozens of clinic owners on how to improve the revenue stream that is products. So if I'm looking at this as a podiatrist, I go, okay, yes, you should do Google Ads. But you'll get far more bang for your buck with your Google Ads if we work on your client journey, if we work on the product pathway in there and ultimately, in commercial terms, expand that What I'm picking up from you and what I love about how this is laid out is the simplicity because it helps inform the decision-making. As you said, you know, does this change my decision or how does this shape my decision? It's going to be different for you listening to go, well, what is the lifetime value of our clients on average? And maybe you want to look at that in different funding sources or cases or locations, however you want to look at that, but at least if you understand it, you can put this into context. Okay, we are spending or acquiring for this dollar amount, and how does that stack up as a return on our investment? just on the piece that you've done so well as a clinic owner, you do it well at CN, and that is the investment in maybe some of the non-direct acquisition channels, where you're going, hey, we're spending money on content, we're spending time on content, we're putting in effort on these things to build awareness that we're available, you know, build some interest in our service. How do you start to think about that in the context of some of these like direct, you know, we put a thousand bucks into Google ads and we got 10 clients back. How do you sort of pitch that and get a clinic owner to think about both of those sides of their Look, it is quite an art. For a lot of clinics, we need to see a quick return on investment. We've got white space in the diary, we've got costs, we've got a payroll to meet. Often, your paid media like Google Ads is a quicker return on investment. Spend the money, get the clients. It's a direct response and a direct outcome. There's absolutely a place for that. We do know from a brand science or marketing science perspective that if we have played the brand game and done some awareness marketing or some more indirect marketing, that it improves the cost of your direct marketing. So they're complementary, they're part of the same ecosystem. And some of the principles that underpin this is a phrase coined by Byron Sharp, a South Australian, I believe. one of the greatest. So, small pool, but nevertheless. It talks about mental availability. And so, the principle here is like when you think, oh, my foot hurts, what comes to mind? Okay, and we use foot or maybe my child is struggling at school. What is mentally available for that mum or dad at that time of the care? When my foot hurts, what does the footballer think about or the netballer think about? And so a lot of the content game and the awareness game is about how do we make sure when someone's foot hurts, firstly, they think podiatry, and secondly, they think about your clinic. And that is brand, that is presence, that is what the content game does. And sometimes it feels like, ah, I'm just slogging away at this content game, putting it out there in the ether and nothing sticks. But when someone needs to recall, you need Yeah, absolutely. I think it's really worthwhile doing and we should get him on the show. It'd be great to hear from Wouldn't it? And the way it impacts your acquisition cost directly is, if I'm the... I'll use the footballer with the sore foot. I jump on to Google and I search foot therapist, right? Maybe I don't know what I'm searching for. And a bunch of podiatry ads come up and I go, oh, that's right. I remember seeing that that podiatrist on Instagram who is running some content ads and then I search like podiatrist near me and I see someone pop up and I'm like, ah, I recognize that name. I've seen that in my Instagram feed. I, yeah, okay, I'm going to search for, you know, John Smith podiatrist. And you find, and they click on the Google ad, right? And here's the thing is like, okay, last touch attribution, we will attribute that new client to Google ads. However, it's the content game that has warmed them up, has created that mental availability so that when they need it, they can recall. And so over time, what you'll find is your cost per clicks will come down because you get a quality click, you rank better, it converts. And so the content feeds into the paid So as we transition here, I'm now sharing on my screen some physiotherapist performance benchmarks. These are de-identified, anonymized benchmarks that we have of a cohort of 849 individual physical therapists, physiotherapists, spanning 115 clinics. We're going to go through some of these, J.O.B, coming back to why does this matter? I think you take this and you often say, the grain of salt, and that is benchmark against yourself first and foremost. How have you gone over a 12-week period or a 12-month period and how can we look to be better? But we always get the question, yes, but I want to know how I stack up against other clinics. Let's explore that with you. And we're going to be sharing a bunch of these with members in detail. For those that are non-members, we'll share a little bit here on the pod so you get a sense for how we use some of this data. to inform strategy and growing your clinic in a sustainable fashion. How does this relate to your role day-to-day? Well, it factors into the mentoring of therapists, knowing where they stack up against the peers inside your clinic and against peers outside of your clinic. To some degree, it helps with being able to structure up career pathways and progression so they can earn more or be paid more based on being more productive and helpful to the community. As always, we would sort of just nuance these stats with, it's not about just racking up numbers. At the end of the stat is a consultation with a human being that needs healthcare. And it's really important that we get meaningful outcomes with them. But in the world of private practice, where we're funding these things ourselves, the facilities, the wages, the super, and all the other things, it's really important that it's sustainable. It's sustainable for you to be able to employ these folks and reinvest back in the experience, the training they get, and so on and so forth. So this is why we share some of these stats to help you understand, okay, maybe I'm lagging a little bit in these areas, or maybe I've set the standard too low, and that's why I'm feeling the pressure, especially financially and growing my clinic. So JOD, here we have some of the stats. I'll just scroll down here. We're going to start with revenue-related benchmarks, and you and I have discussed. So often clinic owners are looking at utilization, and that measures time, which can be useful because ultimately, in a very blunt fashion, we're pretty much selling time. It's a utilization game, but the ultimate sort of commercial outcome of time that's been used and used well is a billable minute or a billable dollar has been generated. So, revenue's the ultimate version of utilization. It is. So, here we look at total revenue. This is spanning a 12-week period. We've got data much longer than this, but over the 12-week period, the average revenue generated by an individual physiotherapist was $41,333. When you go to folks that are in the top 20% of earners, it's up at $60,000. Big difference. It's a big, big difference. Now you hear the statisticians and that going, you know, how do we break this down by FTE and, you know, so on, you know, years of experience, etc. We can definitely go into depth on that. But just directionally, you get a sense for the average here compared to the top 20%. What does that look like on a weekly basis? Well, the average physio is doing $3,400 if I just do a little bit of rounding. But if you're in the top 20%, you're doing 4,800. That's a big difference. Huge. What's interesting here is, and you've just completed the workshop on products and how they support the client care journey and the plan that they're going under, is that product revenue is so much lower than I thought it might be for physios in this cohort. Remember, I'm a physio. I can say this. That That is very low. I thought physios were the kings and queens of delivering good products Well, the thing is they can be, right? Because, look, I say this with respect to other professions, but the physio treats the whole of the body. It's quite a broad profession in that sense. And so, it's not like as compared to OTs who classically, I say stereotypically, only work with hands or upper limbs or podiatrists who, I don't know, is Okay, maybe it includes some knee rotation elements, but you know, I think ... I see where A range of body parts that we work with. And so, on average, talking 50 bucks a week, like for 12 weeks, is like abysmal, I'll say abysmal, right? If I can share my screen, I'm going to interrupt your share with a share here. And again, folks, if you're listening to this, please come along and watch on the YouTubes. Here's just one of the slides that I shared on the workshop. And I will not be going through the whole deck because people paid to be there. Our workshops are paid and this content is available for our members on the inside. But we need to stop thinking about how do we sell more products and more about how do we support our clients. You know, if you're seeing someone for an hour per week, and classically humans are awake for 100 hours per week, you have input into 1% of their week. And we can incorporate products so that we can influence more than just 1% of their week. Right? And it's like, so it's not, should we sell more product? It's like, what are our clients already buying? And what do they want to buy from you as someone that they trust? There's, again, a number of different slides here and scripts I liked just the framing, sorry, on that slide you had before the first one. Stop thinking sales, start thinking support. Just a really elegant reframe. And you put there around the trust, they already trust you. Do you know the thing that really stuck with me when a mentor had shared their perspective on products and sales in care? was just this line that people have already taken time out of their busy day. They've left work, typically, to come to an appointment. You know, they've traveled, they've parked, here they are allocating their time. And then they've got to go back to their busy day. And now you're asking them to go to the chemist, the store, the wherever, to go and get that thing that you could readily supply to them right then and there. you're actually costing them more time. And it was just this like, oh yeah, okay, now we're not going to have the range that a chemist's warehouse has or any other store, depending on the products, but there are some really common ones that I can make it really easy for them to be able to get and go in their day. So they're not waiting several more And I know so many patients would prefer to support you, their local small business, than line the pockets of Amazon or whatever other big box retailer. I think a couple other key components here is just by tweaking some product economics, There's an upswing of $16,000 of profit that clinics are leaving on the table. That will pay for a coaching membership for 12 months for a small startup clinic. Just your products alone could pay for a year of coaching. And to your point, we say at Clinic Mastery that you as a clinician have a duty of care to recommend products that will help people. Now, it's up to them whether they decide to invest or not, but it's our job to not withhold things that can help. And not only will it help your clients, but ultimately, as we can see previously, it will improve your revenue and improve the satisfaction of your team. When your team are looking for how do they increase their remuneration, pay, then products is a great way to improve their billings and utilization, therefore Yep. The convenience factor is big. Like you said, we're just helping people help themselves when they're at home or at work by adding, you know, relevant products and equipment, right? Okay, so let's continue on this benchmarking report that we've got. And what we're showing now is our... More around some of the appointments. So firstly, we'll start with literally appointments. These are one-on-one face-to-face appointments delivered. The average is 25 per week. The top 20% are doing 37 a week, which that's really interesting to see. I know Mic has spoken about, I think it's around the 45 to 55 appointments per week range that they have at their clinic. That's really interesting, again, to see the difference in the appointments. If we skip down to new clients, so this blends into some of the marketing stuff that you were talking about, Jack. I might go new clients per week. That's probably a better way to look at it. The average is 2.7. Let's call it 3. The top 20% are at 3.8. Let's call it 4. So the difference between 3 and 4. Getting your marketing rights, your new client acquisition rights, the difference between three weeks or four a week, ultimately can be several more appointments in the diary. Yeah, that will boost your utilization massively. The patient visit average, one that physios, I'll say broadly, actually, MSK professionals like to look at, which physio, pod, EP, osteo, chiro, there's differences between them, but a lot of them like to look at PVA, patient visit average, on average, how many visits, individual appointments, does a client return for. The average there is 13. The top 20% are We'll hold up on cancellation because that's a whole other conversation. Patient visit average, remember this is only over a 12-week period and so it will make more sense or let's say closer to reality over a longer period, but a 12-week period is still indicative. And what we see here is that the best clinics are seeing their patients more. That ultimately is the big kicker, right? And so, why is that? Well, it's because we can't help people if we don't see them. Yeah, that sounds very elementary. But the truth is that we want to help more people and there's always something that we can help someone with. You don't ever reach this peak strength phase or peak function, peak mobility. There's always something to work on, improve on, prevention, robustness, resilience, etc. And we know the best clinics that have the best rapport and that get the best results and that have really sustainable business practices are seeing patients more. Are they seeing them too much? I would absolutely table the answer no. Now, too much is, again, quite a subjective statement. We're not talking about over-servicing here. We're talking about delivering value. Ultimately, it's up to clients to decide if you're seeing them too much. They just won't come. That's true. If clients want to come, if they think it's valuable, if they feel they're getting progress, if they are willing to invest, then Finally, on cancellation rate, we're seeing that the average is around 17%, but the top 20% are at 10.5%. We often talk about being below 10% as the target is a good number to hit. It's a massive difference, right? The difference between 17.5% and 10%, right? If you're a clinic that's doing 250, 300 appointments a week, super common, it'd be roughly about where the Business Academy standard sits. We're talking about 20 to 25 appointments per week that in a poor, inverted commas, poor clinic is missing out on. That's$2,500 of revenue, and most of that revenue is already accosted for, i.e., you're already paying your practitioners, you're already paying all of your other overheads. And so that's $2,500 a week, over $100,000 per year, most of which would float straight through to the bottom line. And so the point is, by focusing on your cancellation rate, improving your client experiences, client communications, practitioner scripts, all the tech that surrounds it, content, all of these pieces, you might go, oh, it's trivial, 10%, 15%, 17%, whatever, who cares? Well, I'll ask you a better question. Is$100,000 a year profit trivial? I don't think so. And that's what ultimately this all flows through Great point, a great perspective on this. If a clinical is listening into this going, okay, that's, that's really good to be able to see where sort of this cohort of folks live, where they've landed on some of the stats. How do I bring this back into the conversation with my team? How do I start to share with them? Hey, I'm not just making up some of these numbers. So often people say to us, it's nice to hear it from somebody else, a third party, so that my team don't feel like I'm making things up or making them unachievable, unrealistic. How should clinic owners think about taking this insight from this report and then using it in their conversations or their targets with therapists tomorrow? Yeah, it's a really good point. I think being able to provide a point of reference as distinct from a comparison or a benchmark. So it's not that we're comparing you to someone else or we're benchmarking you against some abstract population study. What we're doing is just providing a point of reference along the journey of, we always want to continue to get better. And so if I'm leading a clinic and mentoring my clinical team, it's like, does anyone here want to get worse at your job? No? Okay, good, right? So therefore, you want to get better. Okay, so let's see what the best are doing. Let's find where our, I'll say, lowest performing indicator is, individually and collectively, and let's just work on that. It actually comes back to a mindset, right, of continual, lifelong improvement, lifelong learning, and how do we just get As Pete Flynn would paraphrase, how do we get 1% better every day? And so for some clinics, that might be cancellation rate. For other clinics, that might be patient visit average. For another practitioner, it might mean more new clients. And for another practitioner, it might mean selling more product. It's going to look different for everyone, but there is something for It's a good point. drawn this very messy sketch here, J-O-B, a while back. And I, in preparation for today, just was flicking through my notes and saw this. And I found this a useful way, it's a triangle for those that are listening, not watching. And it's called WIIF. W-I-I-F. And it stands for What's In It For? And then you insert me, the clients and the clinic. I feel like this provides a great, well-rounded way for you to have the conversation that's not just positioned as, well, you as the clinic owner just want to earn more money. You've obviously called that out really nicely of like, Hey, you know, see this cancellation rate actually could lead to boosting profit. Absolutely. And some of the conversation we've spoken about is the clinic being able to reinvest in tools and tech and training for those therapists to send them to CPD and courses and workshops. But also, it means investing back in the clients and the journey and the facilities and perhaps some of the admin support if you choose to have it. Not Mic. He doesn't want any admin. Or he has limited admin. I got that wrong. He told me. No, I do have admin. It just looks different. And being able to actually break it down into these different areas of what's in it for me, and typically if you can answer that from a therapist's perspective, You will go a long way to getting them on board with targets or Okay. Well, what's in it for the clinician? I want It's a great point. So there's a number of ways. I don't think there's a sort of absolute logical, sequential way to do it, but I would definitely start where you did, which was some version of, you know, talk to me about you know, your future career progression and some of the things that you want to have and don't want to have. And I think, you know, those questions of like, as a physio, as a speech, as a psych, tell me about the things you hope for in your career progression. You know, I want to learn these skills, I want to be trusted, I want to get referrals from people, I want to get good clinical outcomes, I want to have a good reputation, so on and so forth. Okay, cool. Are there ways that would be relatively observable or objective that would allow us to know whether you were making progress along those dimensions? Yes, number of word-of-mouth referrals. Yes, maybe some reviews. Yes, net promoter score is this. Yes, clients don't cancel insignificant rates out of the client care journey that I've prescribed for them. If I got a 50% cancellation rate, well, I'm clearly not doing a good enough job of enrolling those clients into the care plan that I've done for them. Okay. Clients would rebook according to the care plan that I've set out for them. Okay, good. So now we're just starting to unpack those things that you said you wanted in your career and adding some observable layers to say, yes, we're making progress along these dimensions. Then the ultimate kicker for everyone is finances. And now this may be- Not all of us are money hungry pigs, Look, it is the driving force for a lot of folk. Let me just say the primal instincts come Correct. or you start asking a few more questions, and I just want to help people, and then you get to the source and you're like, yeah, I need to make more money. I want to make more money. To some degree, you could make a case and argue that the capitalist version is that it rewards people adding value to folks, and so the more people you impact, the more value you add. provided the system is set up in a way that reflects that, you too can receive some of that value. Anyway, I say this is a medium-term solution because we know it can take several weeks to figure out what's right for you and your clinic. If you haven't already got some version of a remuneration structure that actually rewards folks for being more productive, adding more value, helping more people, then that's a really great way to make it highly relevant for therapists to say, well, you know, by crossing these thresholds, however you want to put it, by meeting these targets, by hitting these KPIs, however you want to phrase this, By progressing beyond this point, we're in a position where we're able to actually pay you more, whether that's increasing you up a salary band, whether that's adding some version of a reward, a bonus, a commission, whatever the case may be, on top of a base salary, we can do that. And so I think that adds significant, what's in it for me, relevance and importance for a therapist when we're talking about KPIs or benchmarks or laying out what their caseload and week might look like. That's what I had if I can decipher my writing. Is the internet broken again? Money, income, that's all right. What's in it for me? Yeah, progression, pay, desire statement, I may actually be able to earn more by going on a tiered fee system if you can do that. I was speaking with the clinic owner last week who was like, hey, we've got these sort of senior therapists that want to be able to earn more, but also want to change up what their week looks like. And one of the solutions was rolling out a tiered pricing system to reflect some of the special skills that they've learned. The niche client load that they've got, we feel that their fees for their services could increase because of the value that they're providing and the value they're creating for themselves in learning and being better therapists. There was a mix there. There's also some of the other elements around their role. which are their ideal day, ideal week, ideal diary, ideal client, ideal pathway, and ideal capabilities or competencies to develop, for instance. We'd absolutely love you to be able to progress and see this demographic or type of client with these specialist problems, therefore requiring specialist skills by sending you to that workshop, that CPD seminar conference and training. What we need to see in order for that to happen is for you to hit these milestones along the way to say, yes, we can make this sustainable and that to some degree unlocks or presents you with the opportunity to do so. So yeah, they're some of the points that I think we can make, we can use, sorry, to make this more relevant to individual I like it. That's awesome. Super practical and something for us all to I've deciphered some more messy writing on my page. Here's the question that I often find myself posing, which is, how do you know that you're doing a good job? Because it actually is quite open-ended, and I think eventually leads to some version of using some of these KPIs and stats. But how do you know you've done a good job? And there's a bunch of subjective stuff, a bunch of objective stuff. I think what's important is we document it, capture it for that individual, and I think so. We all want to get better. We all want to do a good job. Again, I don't think anyone wakes up in the morning and goes, I can't wait to do a mediocre job and spend more time than necessary scrolling on Instagram at work. Yes. You know, like we all want to do a good job. So I'd be actually curious, Ben, I mean, Ben doesn't know about this, folks. I'm about to surprise him. So if you're watching YouTube, watch him squirm a little bit. But if folks have particular questions about this or experiences, stories, we would love to hear from you. We would love you to comment on this episode wherever you might be listening on YouTube or Spotify. Something new that we've just implemented today is that you can send us a voice message. You can ask a question. You can chime in to the pod. And so you can head to speakpipe.com forward slash growyourclinicpodcast. I'll make sure that's all linked up in the show notes. But you can send us a voice message and you might get some airtime on the pod. Ask your question, give us some feedback, share your stories. But we would love to hear from you. Send us a voice message. on speakpipe.com forward Nice. I like it. Entering a bit of a talkback era. I think so. I think so. Yeah. It's human. This is the thing, right? Cling Mastery built on humans. Yes. Built on humans. Good people. I That's a nice surprise. I like it. Well, we might put a wrap on this episode. We've been able to cover some important benchmarks, put them in the context of some investment decisions, notably around marketing, notably around pay progressions and remuneration for your therapists. How to make that relevant. to your individual team members so that they get on board with it and just add some nuance around the mentoring framework that you might use to help them progress in their career. You can head over to clinicmastery.com/podcast for all the show notes here and check out previous episodes that relate to this like how to set targets. a detailed walkthrough of your profit and loss so you understand the marketing and the wages section of your therapist in context of the overall business performance, and many, many more other very practical episodes. J.R.B., we'll