The Confidence Curve
The Confidence Curve is a podcast that explores the dynamic journeys of successful professionals who have scaled organizations and left lasting legacies. Hosted by Ashley and Rick Bowers, each episode delves into the challenges, victories, and lessons learned. Through engaging conversations with leaders across industries, this podcast offers listeners valuable insights, practical advice, and inspiration to confidently navigate their paths—whether in business, leadership, or personal growth. Join us as we uncover strategies that build successful careers and impactful legacies.
The Confidence Curve
Unveiling Strategic Growth in Medical Staffing
What if you could confidently navigate the complexities of healthcare consulting?
Join us on the Confidence Curve podcast as we welcome Stefan Van Der Heyden, a visionary entrepreneur from Arizona, who transforms the landscape of healthcare consulting and virtual assistant solutions. Discover how Stefan's journey from medical administration to founding Health Operation Solutions & VirtueStaff reveals untapped potential in medical consulting and recruitment. This episode promises insights into the art of aligning healthcare professionals with the right organizational cultures, addressing burnout, and the strategic trends shaping the future of the industry.
We explore the intricacies of making impactful matches between clients and virtual assistants, drawing on Stefan's experiences in overcoming recruitment challenges. With a focus on building success metrics for Virtue Staff, we discuss the importance of strategic planning, the role of quality assurance in reducing turnover, and the satisfaction gained from improving operational relationships. Stefan's candid insights into intentional spending, system adaptability, and client feedback illuminate the entrepreneurial journey, highlighting the grit and confidence required to scale a business effectively.
Finally, we touch on the evolution from a business idea to a thriving company, emphasizing the critical phases of onboarding and strategic development. Stefan shares personal anecdotes about taking calculated risks and recognizing the value of one’s product, offering aspiring entrepreneurs valuable advice on fostering growth and confidence. This episode is rich with actionable strategies for personal and professional development, encouraging listeners to embrace the challenges of entrepreneurship with open eyes and resolute determination.
Welcome to the Confidence Curve with Ashley and Rick Bowers, where personal and professional journeys define the art of scaling with confidence. Whether you're a business leader navigating change or someone seeking personal growth, this podcast offers insights and actionable advice to help you thrive. Now let's dive into today's conversation with our incredible guest.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Confidence Curve podcast with Apex GTS Advisors. My name is Ashley Bowers and my husband, business partner Rick Bowers, here to host today. We want to welcome our guest Stefan. He's a serial entrepreneur with a couple of different businesses and we're super excited to have him here with us today. And if you'd like to kick it off, tell us a little bit about you and both businesses.
Speaker 3:Sure, sure.
Speaker 3:So thanks for having me. Good to be here. So yeah, you know, I guess background about myself. I'm from Arizona. We're here in the Valley, right. I grew up here Honestly never really saw myself being a business owner and things like that.
Speaker 3:Honestly never really saw myself being a business owner and things like that. You know, went to high school Red Mountain, asu, nau lived in the Valley, ended up getting a job in medical, you know, non-clinical, more of like admin assistant and then just kind of like worked my way up from there, worked for different clinics, different roles. Ended up merging with a bigger company here in the Valley and kind of ran their specialty divisions Right. Ended up merging with a bigger company here in the Valley and kind of ran their specialty divisions right. So from there what happened is a lot of my day-to-day stuff was, like I said, operational things right, making sure we were functioning well, being Switzerland between corporate and the physicians and the clinic and things like that. And what ended up happening is we wanted to expand, right. So it was kind of my portion to go out, find new practices, bring on more doctors, things like this. In a lot of those conversations, a lot of private practices in the space, knew where I worked and also kind of felt my experience and said, hey, could you actually just we don't want to sell, we kind of want just advice, right?
Speaker 3:So about seven years ago started doing independent consulting for medical clinics anything from primary care, specialty, chiro, pt, you name it and then just kind of grew over time what the big demand came to be was recruiting, right. So, hey, do you know a nurse, do you know a surgeon, this or that? And I did, and I think at the time I would just connect them through the retainer I had. And it was just, you know, good to be good to my clients, right? A colleague of mine said hey, do you know how much you know XYZ company paid to bring on their new neurosurgeon, he told me. And he was like, oh my gosh, I'm like I'm stepping over a lot of money. So naturally progressed to doing a lot of recruiting rather than just project based consulting. And now to this day we have HealthOp, we have a few different pillars. Like I said, still project-based consulting Recruitment's a huge aspect of what we do now, mostly Arizona. We have a few national partners and things like this and we have some cool stuff in the future works and really our mission at the company is to give resources. You know that we wish we had Most. All people here have worked in health care, worked in clinics non-clinical and clinical Kind of felt like a lot of people weren't up to just help one another in the space.
Speaker 3:Everybody thinks they have secrets, but everybody's doing the same thing. They just don't talk about it. So that's always our mission there. What happened to my second venture and journey was basically a lot of our health care clinics were offshoring a lot of work and weren't satisfied. I knew a couple of people that had their own virtual assistant kind of companies did well and said, hey, you know, talk me out of this, I'm thinking about doing it. And I was like listen, we're already in recruiting. Like how hard could it be to find people from around the world? Turns out it's a totally different animal, but we figured it out and so a lot of our clinics utilized us. And then they said, hey, I got a realtor, I got a CPA, I got an attorney, I think they could use somebody. And the messaging got kind of mixed right, like why is HealthOp giving an attorney, a virtual assistant? So started a new pillar called Virtue Staff and yeah, that has a unique mission as well. You know that we can get into as well.
Speaker 4:But I guess that's as abbreviated as I could do, if that makes sense, great. Okay, so you basically are providing resources, consulting services, different opportunities and things to the medical professionals, and sometimes it was things that didn't exist at the time, so you had to create some of this. And so what gaps or challenges did you identify in the medical community that led to the creation of really HealthOp?
Speaker 3:So it was. It was a mix of a couple of different things, right? It's like, you know, there's like this stigma that goes around in the consulting thing, Like, and you know a lot of people say hey, like a lot of um practices that start up don't know business, they know medicine and like, to be fair, like I don't know how to do heart surgery. You know what I mean, and I can't even say I started my business perfect right off the bat, Right? So I think what happened a lot was there was just gaps. You know, starting a company, you know, depending on how you start, terms of funding, timelines, things like this just need to get going, you know, and, with that being said, not everybody does everything right. Most people don't and so we tried to fill in gaps of what they needed, without, I guess, hiring someone that just wanted to learn it on the fly or things like that.
Speaker 3:And, conversely, with recruiting, you know like I've had to work with recruiters in my corporate life and it was a nightmare. I mean, like people changing resumes, selling them on a job where it's not actually that poor candidates, extremely expensive. It was just like a nightmare, you know. And so, really, like I said, I looked at stuff and I said how do I wish I had it. What resources do I wish I had Even new grad physicians coming out like we try to help them with, like even some contract review, right, Knowing what you can and can't, redline Things like this, that's just again it felt like no one was helping and we just said, hey, what are the things we can help with that we're qualified to help with and that's how we built it out, so that kind of makes sense.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Looking at, you know today's economic environment and all the different changes and things that are happening. You know, a lot of times business owners and leaders like okay, if unemployment rates are going up, then you know, all of a sudden we should have more candidates. Or if we're going to have struggles in the economy, people are going to become available and, as we know, when we're looking for candidates and trying to find the right people, you know, yes, there are people available, but it's not always that perfect candidate that becomes available. It's not necessarily an employer's market or an employee's market. What advice are you giving right now, both to your candidates as well as to the companies that you're serving?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's such a great question, right, and like I think that sometimes we joke that if companies invested into maybe some of these other you know cultures or company branding or things like this, that they might need to use us even a little bit less, you know.
Speaker 3:But you know the job market. Everybody says there's a shortage and there is. It's not as much as people say. And, like you, know the job market everybody says there's a shortage and there is, it's not as much as people say. And, like you said, it's more so finding the right person.
Speaker 3:I will say that the reason people end up using recruiting and a lot of our clients actually have talent acquisition built in, so it's not just people without a recruiter in house the thing with us is that year round, we're looking for people that want a better opportunity, right? So, like I used to tell people, the people you want aren't applying. Like, let's be honest, you know what I mean. And that's where, like headhunting, recruiting, things like this comes in. Conversely, maybe there's some roles you get flooded with candidates and you know, for instance, in the medical community, like medical assistants, like MAs, even with us, through application booking, the appointment reminders leading up to the interview, everything like that 80% will no-show. And so now you're paying an office manager, administrator, hr a lot of money to wait around for no-shows and hopefully they're good about using their downtime, but who knows, right?
Speaker 3:So different roles have different problems, but what I always tell people is that you don't need us unless you need us. So if you've got a good thing going, you're getting the talent you want, the volume you want, you don't really need us. But if it comes to a point where you say, hey, like and you know this better than anything, I need high-level talent to put my company at the next level, that's where we come in. Conversely, people say I'm just not getting anybody at all. That's where we come in, because you've got to realize that year-round we're just having conversations, people applying, people referring over people we meet with networking. So when we meet so many people and build those relationships and someone needs someone. You know, listen, we do spend a lot of money on ads and things like that every month to get candidates. But I mean, you got to do both.
Speaker 3:And for a company. It's really expensive to do that. You know it's very expensive and so not all of them do it right, or it doesn't even make sense for them to do it a certain size, you know.
Speaker 2:But I feel like the strategies change. You know, what you should put in it. You know, in one month, six months later, even on LinkedIn and some of the different you know portals, the way in which candidates are.
Speaker 2:You know being attracted to the different ads can change over time as well, and what they're looking for and and things like that. What are you finding kind of at the top, maybe like three things that candidates are really considering the most important when they're making a decision about where to go? I mean, obviously, financial compensation. There's a certain need that everybody has and it needs to meet that need, and you know inflation and things like that, that need is increasing. But beyond that base compensation, you know what are people really looking for today?
Speaker 3:It's a great question, and the way that we try to find that out is anyone that's a recruiter or consultant with my team that's talking to candidates gets training on how to do these interviews, because our interviews are non-traditional. We start right off the bat saying, hey, my whole goal today is to learn more about you and what you're looking for. I'll talk about the position in an open format. I'm not going to sell you on the position. I'm going to be as transparent as I can, because it doesn't do you any good to get somewhere you don't want to be. It doesn't give the employer any benefit of getting someone there that doesn't want to be there, right, and, like you said, sure, everybody wants to make more money, right, but, um, and it'll, it'll vary by the role, once again, um. So let's talk physicians, for instance, right? Um, depending on the specialty and the type of physician, um, it's going to depend a lot more than compensation. One thing you'll find a lot right now is patient load, um, so, and a lot of people in the healthcare field are probably like rolling their eyes or laughing or things like that. So, um, because, listen, we, we do have employers, and this is kind of getting into the other side of healthcare, which is a whole other conversation. But, um, we clinics that see, I think, what a lot of people consider higher volume, especially if they're a new grad. Right, it's going to be hard for me to see 20, 30 patients a day, and it depends on the model of the clinic, of what that looks like. Granted, some clinics give resources like scribes and things like this, others don't. You talk about the acuity. So how sick are these patients? You know, say, in primary care. Well, you know, what kind of demographic am I seeing? Is this a rural healthcare clinic? Are these a lot of non-compliant patients? And so a lot of times they'll say, hey, what's the patient volume and what support do I get? You know, that's one of the things A lot of people do want now an administrative role, which signifies to me some burnout in healthcare, right. So we have a lot of people do want now an administrative role, which signifies to me some burnout in health care, right? So we have a lot of physicians saying, hey, is there an admin component? More and more people want a medical director role, yeah, which is interesting for sure. And again, physician-employee burnout's a whole other topic, but it's real in healthcare, you know, and so I think that on the physician side, that's definitely it.
Speaker 3:You're seeing a lot of 410 schedules. You're actually seeing some people. I actually met with a CEO of a local hospice company. Everyone at their company works 32 hours a week but gets paid 40 hours a week. So it's interesting stuff like that that you have to compete with, you know, and so it's. It really varies by person. That's what we try to understand, because we get both sides of it Like I've worked the non clinical side. We have people on our team that are clinical and, just like anything, we try to meet in the middle and understand what works best for both people.
Speaker 4:So it kind of varies in the middle and understand what works best for both people. So it kind of varies. With all of that that you just said, how do you kind of get a feel for what the culture of the organization or the physician's office? How do you get a feel for that when you're interviewing the potential prospects to go in there and figure out what that match is? How does the culture piece come to play?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's such a good question. So over time a lot of our business we get is actually referral right, it's word of mouth, it's hey, I know someone that could use your help. And if we're talking recruitment side especially, you know a lot of these clinics like healthcare is a big, small world. Everybody knows everybody. There's no doubt reputation gets around, but we actually take our time to visit a lot of these clinics. If we're able to, we'll spend a day inside the clinic to see what it's like.
Speaker 3:To be honest, we've also turned down clients for just certain reasons that we don't think it's a good fit. We don't like to feed people to the wolves, if you will. And so for us, we try to protect ourself as a company by and we have the luxury to to be a little bit more picky with our clients, right, we kind of analyze turnover rates within the people we send over. We openly ask them what's your turnover look like right now? Why do people want to work here? So one way we kind of protect our candidates is being a little bit more selective with our client, with our client, and you know we tell a lot of our candidates to hey, we can only vouch so much for the culture because we're not embedded in the clinic right At the end of the day, like, whoever it is.
Speaker 3:Like you need to go visit that clinic, right, so say you're an NP, pa, md, do whoever. Don't take our word for it. Like, go meet, don't just take a tour of the facility, say where am I going to be working? Who am I going to be working with? Can I go to that atmosphere? Right, don't bring me to the corporate office where everything's good to go. If I'm going to be in Timbuktu and there's no support, like can I go see it first, you know? So we really always advise that and we're really clear on that. Like, hey, like definitely go visit. This is what we can tell you, but you need to make the decision yourself. Um cause, once again, we do not sell people on positions, yeah, so shifting gears a little bit back to health op.
Speaker 4:How, how have you built or enhanced the culture within your own organization?
Speaker 3:Listen, we're, we're a small company, so like we're very selective with who we hire. We are so selective, you know, and um, and it feels like it's a hot market right now, but we get consultants and recruiters coming to us, like very often, to be honest, and it's cool because it kind of like feeds the beast, like when we're interviewing all day long, my recruiters know, hey, this is, this is someone you want to talk to, and I'll make time out of my own schedule to meet with them, right, and so I think we just listen. You know, with time, everything changes and goals change and things like this. My plan has never been for HealthOp to be a publicly traded billion dollar company. Right, we're already further than I ever saw myself being. In general, I'm very thankful every day for you know what we've built as a team, who my team is, and so, with that being said, we do have the luxury with scaling as needed, as I will say, you know, and we do want to grow, we do want to get bigger, but I'm very thankful that, through our network and through what we do, we are pretty naturally able to just bring on people that resonate with our culture, and we're pretty specific and analytical with what this role entails, what the future of that role is.
Speaker 3:I think there's certain roles where people want a nine to five, and I'm okay with that. I think a lot of like business owners, startups especially want everyone to grind. I want them to grind 24 seven all the time being this with me. There's roles that need them. There's roles that don't all the time be in this with me. There's roles that need them. There's roles that don't, and you'll actually do yourself a favor if you find the roles that don't and find someone that values that work-life balance and so all of these things we try to take into consideration, right, so it's careful, we're very careful with who we bring on for it, and that's the easiest way to do it. Hardest thing to change is a culture, and that's why you know there are certain bounds. We don't step over with clients in terms of trying to change a culture.
Speaker 2:So obviously you have, you know, health ops and virtue staff. Are there other verticals in the future for you, Because you know, obviously being able to be this successful in the health care arena it's a very difficult arena, a very technical arena. Are there other verticals in the future and, if so, can you share what people might be looking for from you in the future?
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's some I can share and some that we're working on. So I do think that the trendiest thing, not just in healthcare, is AI, and a lot of healthcare clinics are looking into AI, how to do it HIPAA compliance, right wrongs, good solutions and not. We're starting to build out a little bit of a space for it in not necessarily just recruitment. We use AI in our recruiting efforts, but I think a lot of healthcare clinics can improve in a lot of ways by using AI appropriately, and so we kind of have that focus for the future. I think there's going to be a new position called chief AI officer. Everyone has a CTO and things like this. I think chief AI officer is going to be a thing. So, if we can kind of be ahead of the curve a little bit, I'd love to do that. And yes, there are a couple other pillars that we'd like to get into that we're working on for next year that, if they come to light, we'll kind of talk about.
Speaker 4:But that's one example.
Speaker 3:that's a hot topic, but I think it's really cool and I'm not the perfect person for that. We're actually trying to find more people that know more about AI and healthcare. We've talked to a lot of device and product companies out there, but I'd love to move into that space.
Speaker 4:It's an interesting space. It's something that I use almost every day in business and I know you use it quite a bit as well. But I find myself having a conversation with ChatGPT, and today I was working on a project and I was like, oh, I don't think he liked my response to that, because I felt like the response that I got back from ChatGPT was a little bit negative. This is interesting how it's kind of growing and and I feel like they learn your, your trends and the different things that you do. So it's it's something that you have to embrace it, because you're going to get less left behind if you don't. So it's just it's a powerful tool.
Speaker 2:It's a little bit scary, but you just got to go for it sometimes yeah, chris johnson, the ceo of lane tara lever, and now he has a company called tomorrow today, which is an ai consulting company, and, um, he was teaching a peer advisory group that I'm a part of and he was like good morning, thank you. And all of a sudden I'm like do you need to be that polite? Like what are you doing? Is this a part of your strategy?
Speaker 2:he goes at some point I feel like it's going to come back and it's going to be a benefit. So yes, it is a part of my strategy and so it was kind of funny of just having that whole conversation as you look on the virtue staffing side and kind of what have been some of the big wins that maybe you starting out in that space thought would be a bigger obstacle for you than maybe what they were or kind of that value, because you hear about virtual assistants and that kind of service so much and people sometimes are afraid because of you know the training or the turnover or how do we know that we fit? So what is it that's unique about the service offering that you have and how you work with your clients in that space?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, so great question. So I think a few things. There is like one, something that we didn't expect coming from the recruitment space was just the sheer volume, right, I mean it's, it's incredible. I mean like we actually pumped the brakes so we could do more. But we have, and recruiting with, you know, some inbound, granted, but a lot of headhunting, recruiting to where it's like we are just bombarded by the amount of applications, and so, you know, something Rick and I were actually talking about was like, hey, like some of this testing, like you know, I go back to the days where you had to like walk in and there was like a kiosk to apply at the store, right, you know, and you had to take a test and assessment.
Speaker 3:but you did it because you wanted the job. You know obviously the job market's not like that now. But man, we've had to build in so many assessments and then refine those assessments and then even after that say, okay, like out of the people that pass, how do we refine that? So, like, even using a brand new ATS, the ATS we used could not handle some of the automations and testing features we needed. So now you can only imagine anyone that's built out an ATS. It's not as bad as maybe Salesforce or things like that, but I mean it's a build out you know, and so we had to then find a whole new ATS system.
Speaker 3:we had to go through the testing progress process what integrates? And, like I said, thank God I have good business partners, because there's no way I could have done it. It's just too much you know.
Speaker 3:So, anyway, going back, basically we had an influx of people and it's always been important to us to deliver a valuable service. And it's funny, because recruiting and virtual assistants I think both get a bad reputation for a good reason. To be honest, you know what I mean, but that's kind of always been my passion thing is like it's like maybe something people say but don't mean. But you know, we saw something that could be done better and we actually did it, you know. And so before we started Virtue Staff, we had used virtual assistants. I know what these companies are like. I mean, we did a bunch of trials with different ones and, um, you know, what really did it for me was the impact, you know. So we have a virtual assistant that works with us to this day. His name's Nathan. He's incredible, I mean, he's amazing, you know, um, and it was really seeing the impact on Nathan's life that actually made us full dive into it.
Speaker 3:Um, because, uh, the virtual assistant industry, um is very saturated. Um, a lot of people just do it, get somebody in that checks the boxes, pay them about half of what we do and then just expect the churn Difference with us for one, we're very selective. A lot of places say 1% get approved. I'd like to see what their numbers are. I bet it's not 10,000 a week and 1% of that. But out of those as well, you know they get a life-changing opportunity. I mean, we're paying them double what other agencies are, and so you can only imagine that what we saw in HealthOp was the best match with someone that has the opportunity for something better and they're excited and wherever they're going has an opportunity for them and it resonates, and wherever they're going has an opportunity for them and it resonates. It's this win-win thing, and now, with Virtue Staff, we want to make as many win-wins as possible. You know the job market's so tough in every realm that for basic tasks and things like this, it's hard to get somebody, even for $20 an hour, that you can rely on. It's not going to leave you. You know much less someone that thanks you every day for the job they have.
Speaker 3:So it was really cool to be able to say okay, how do we find the best, how do we keep the best? And then how do we identify them for the right client? Believe it or not, one of the processes that takes the longest for us is after we've done. A discovery with the client is finding someone that matches all their boxes. So all this ingesting and testing, we have a lot of it somewhat automated some AI, some not some manual, but for the most part that gets done pretty flawlessly.
Speaker 3:It's then going to our database of people that are approved and saying, all right, who's the best for you? That actually takes some serious time just because of the volume, but once we do it, it's so cool. I mean the impact like gives me chills. Thinking it's so cool. I mean we have VAs that say, hey, listen, like went for a run the other day, got a hole in my shoe. First time in my life I left this side between shoes and groceries.
Speaker 3:We have companies say, hey, my wife and I were going to counseling because we're working on this company together is driving us apart. We got this VA like our relationships and better than ever, right. Not to mention they're saving like 20,000 a year per person, right, and the person's super thankful. So it's such a cool thing. It's very different, but in all the reasons, in summary, we're very selective, right, we're all about the perfect match. We pay them more and we believe in the impact. We actually take our own proceeds and do relief programs in the countries we source from. You know, and that's why it's Virtue Staff right is we have virtues and things like that and that's been a really cool passion project. You know, it's cool to see these businesses save money, have better work, have the success stories, get to hop on calls with their assistants and they're just so excited, like it's so cool.
Speaker 2:It's so cool. That's amazing. You probably touched on a little bit of what your answer would be for this next question. But just curious, when you and the leadership team you know, when you're looking at, you know both companies, how are you guys measuring success? How are you looking back, you know, at your current year and understanding, you know what, what you got right, what you want to get better the next year and kind of what that next stretch goal is for the organization and keeping that in balance with you know lives and work-life integration and all those sorts of things.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a great question and I think that over time we've gotten better at planning and like this is totally your world.
Speaker 3:I should be asking you what we should be doing to be honest and you know, with the size of our company, we are smaller, you know. We, you know, granted, could do better at some of this stuff. But you know basic things and my two business partners are also really good at this and helping identify what we should plan for and things like this. But I know one thing this year we're going to say is, even on a basic thing, like it sounds silly, but what do we do right, what do we do wrong? You know, turnover on both sides is always a big thing. The virtual assistant industry, of course, is notoriously high turnover. We have very low turnover compared to our competitors, which is awesome, and we always try to increase on that. So, for instance, recently, earlier in this year, when we were looking at turnover, we said, hey, we could do even better. Let's build a quality assurance program. So we built that because that was super important to us. Right On the health op side, more so, what we look at?
Speaker 3:Certain things like time to fill. You know how long have we had this requisition open? Are we getting? You know we have guarantee periods. Are we making sure a certain percent are guaranteed periods? Are both our candidates and clients happy? Things like this, of course finances. You know we're a bootstrap, both companies are bootstrapped, so we grew slow over time. And with slow growth comes being very intentional with every spend and every move you make. And maybe, fortunately and unfortunately, it comes a lot with doing the job yourself and then giving it to others, and that takes time and refinement. But looking back, I wouldn't have done it any other way, nor do I know how you know.
Speaker 3:So you know, without taking on an investment, really having to budget, saying, hey, we have, you know, all this money, we need to make sure we pay back and are on target and things like this, thankfully we're cashflow positive, like very quickly, on both businesses and we're able to say, hey, who's our next hire, where's our next investment? If it's not hires, do we put it in marketing, do we put it in quality assurance and how does that kind of flow through the company right? So those are some basic things, but I would be also open to like what your feedback would be on some of that stuff.
Speaker 2:Like, but I would be also open to like what your feedback would be on some of that stuff, like what are you kind of seeing? You know what? One of my favorite things to do and this is super simplistic, but is a stop, start, continue. And so similar to like what do we do? Right, you know, what do we need to do differently?
Speaker 2:And I love stop, start, continues on organizations as well as departments and more behavioral right. Like what are the behaviors we want to stop, what are the behaviors we need to start, what are the behaviors we want to continue? And you know, historically, regardless of size of organization, we would do staff surveys and then, from that feedback, that would give us information as to the stop, starts and the continues of the organization, and then we would feed that back to our teams and talk about like, hey, this is the stuff we're going to commit to, we want you to hold us accountable, and then when a team member may have a little bit of a performance challenge and we just need to redirect they're really strong and we want to make sure that we're managing them up we would also use the stop, start, continue. And so it didn't feel as punitive right, it's not a corrective action or a write-up or a performance plan, but it's the same thing we use on the company. It's the same thing we use about how to talk about how we want to improve and change the way in which we're doing something. Um, so it's always one of my, my favorite go-to pieces, and then I think it evolves over time with the size of the company.
Speaker 2:I don't think there's any, you know, one perfect answer. Um, I, I am a fan of the entrepreneurs operating system, eos, and running through kind of that meeting, management and some of those processes. And then, of course, we use stages of growth inside Apex, which is an entrepreneurial model, and looking at what are those very specific things based on the number of employees that you need to really get right at each stage of the organization. And I think just continuing to pull in different best practices and what works for your company this year might look different for what works for next year. And and that's okay and keep it really nimble.
Speaker 2:I always say strategic planning should be really, really messy and there should be things everywhere and up on the wall and lots of ideas flying around, because then it allows your execution to be more of a straight line, right. But if you're too rigid in your planning process, then chances are you're going to be all over the place when you're trying to execute it, because you haven't thought enough of what could go wrong, what could go different, what the options are. So I like to make a mess and have lots of Post-it notes everywhere.
Speaker 2:We had them all over our living room on Tuesday actually doing our planning for our business with our team, and we have 16 feet of window, um, on our back patio, and so it was covered in post-its and flip charts, Um, and so, yeah, I think it's more about taking the time to think strategically, um than it is the process you follow. You know, um, it's always nice to have a guided process, but, uh, just taking the time to do it and to think about it and to reflect is really, really important in my view.
Speaker 4:And I think another thing that we do is really listen to the client and what does the client want? And it's not just the head person, it's the entire team. So when you bring that whole group of leadership in, or whatever level you want to go to in, you get so much more buy-in in the process. Whatever level you want to go to in, you get so much more buy-in in the process. I was talking to a prospect and they're like yeah, we used a consultant and I felt like we were going to do whatever the consultant's plan was and it ended up being stuff that we knew wasn't right, but that's what the consultant was forcing us to. And so it's really having that ability to say what does the team see, what does the organization see, and then going forward with that.
Speaker 3:That's interesting too because like I'm curious how you guys balance that, so like sometimes we'll do a practice startup, so like we just went through a discovery literally last week and we kind of have like a checklist thing, like you know, like pick your own journey, you know, like like baseline, like do you have this figured out, yes, no. If no, do you need help?
Speaker 3:like a very basic discovery type of a thing, and typically you guys know what's is typically what they want help with, and what they need help with don't always match, and we try to meet in the middle. So how do you guys deal with that where you're like, oh my gosh, I just wish you would do that. Do you walk away from the client? Do you kind of give in? What does that look like for you guys?
Speaker 2:I think the model we use is called stages of growth. In the two is a two-day intensive that we have organizations go through, and so with that there are actual diagnostics on the organization that the leadership team responds to, and so you're sitting in the room then for a couple of days with the leadership team and you're going through their responses and their business fundamentals and, um, that's like builder protector, non-negotiable rules, 27 challenges, and it's all based off research of 650 companies that were small businesses at the time and why did some succeed and why did some fail? And so, kind of, what were the things that they were focusing on during the different stages, stages being purely defined by the number of employees that they have in the company. And so what that does is it kind of bubbles up all of those fundamentals that it's like if you focus on this, then you're actually going to solve that problem. That's really bothering you, right? But it's coming from the entire team and it's grounded in data, and so it's really hard to look at it and say, well, we don't actually need to fix that. And now, don't get me wrong, there's always, you know, there's the best practice and how. You know where we are today and how close can we get to that best practice tomorrow? You might not go from zero to a hundred or from 50 to a hundred. You might, you know, just go up 10% and do it just a little bit better that next year.
Speaker 2:But that's what's really interesting when I was leading a large organization acquisitions, technology changes, leadership changes all in the same year and had about a 35% growth year that year, and we went through this process and we had 120 items up on our wall of things we needed to fix, and I literally walked out like I don't even know where to start right. I mean, it's one thing to know that your operation is imploding because you've grown so much. It's another thing to see 120 sticky notes all over your boardroom wall right, and we really needed to take our foot off the gas and slow our growth down and it just really wasn't an option. And we received 90 days to kind of work through it, and so the leadership team stack ranked it and we just started like lining them up and knocking them down of you know, most important and biggest impact and ended up being that those 90 days were the first quarter of 2020. And had we not gone through that process. I don't know that we would have survived the growth that we actually had during COVID. Right, it really prepared us. So, you know, everything happens for a reason.
Speaker 2:But that's really the beauty of the model is because it has those diagnostics and you can really sit down and take a look to your point about clients. Yeah, if someone's coming to us and they're like, well, no, this is my problem, I just need you to fix this. And a lot of times from a CEO, it's a person or a department right, they're like they're not leading right or it's this issue. Um, that's just not where we start and so we're probably not the right fit, just like you said.
Speaker 2:You know, it's nice to be able to be selective and making sure that we can make the impact that are true to our core values as well, because we really just need to let the organization speak and see what's there so that we can make the right changes. And likewise, we're not going to come in with something that's pre, you know, determined of. You need to do all of these things Like we probably have some ideas based on what's on the board and what you need to fix, but we need to hear if that's actually what's impacting your organization or not.
Speaker 4:Being able to actually accomplish stuff like that really has to do with the culture that we talked about earlier. And how well does the leadership team communicate? How much trust is there amongst the leadership team? Are they transparent? Are they open to saying what's on their mind versus trying to be tentative and and not say it in a way that could get them in trouble or something like that? And so when you have that open communication, the constructive conflict in the conversations, that's where you really can say this is a great idea. I'm glad we kind of bounced back and forth on this to get to that point, and so it's. It's really a culture bit that really helps people. And so, with everything that you're doing and the processes and those kinds of things, the other question that I was going to ask before we kind of start to wrap up was do you do an onboarding process with either health op or virtual staff to kind of help them get onboarded and off to a good start with the organization?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So on health op side, if you mean like a candidate starting with their employer, we typically don't, right, there's a lot that goes into that and we're typically not involved in that onboarding. When a client onboards with us, there is a little bit more onboarding there between the client and us, with the virtue staff as well. There's kind of phases, right. So usually someone comes to us, depending on what stage they're at. There's sometimes a first and then a second call. So the second call is more of like hey, have you thought through these things? Usually one thing we ask is like hey, is this like a role that exists? Okay, if it does exist, good, you've had someone you know that it's possible. If it doesn't exist, have you done these things Like, is this like kind of a pie in the sky thing You'd like to do it Like? And this kind of lets us know the level of the position. Right From there we try to set best expectations and then we say, okay, we got it. I think that this does make sense. Let's move forward.
Speaker 3:We pick the candidates, they do interviews, they pick whichever one they feel best is. We do a brief onboarding with them and then we check in. We say, hey guys, is it going good? Do you need help? We actually work with business coaches that will actually help them on how to delegate, how to work with the, and a lot of them actually get that for no cost by working with us. It's usually one call, but it's a great place to start, and we have other things that are like downloadables or guide yourself and principles and things like this. So, yeah, we really try to help them set themselves up for success once they're started, but even before they started, we've talked, we've talked people out of of getting one. It's like hey, like I don't think this is a good fit.
Speaker 3:You know, what I mean. It's just you know it's not good for anybody.
Speaker 2:Yeah so yeah. So obviously, the podcast is all about the confidence curve and helping entrepreneurs scale their businesses. So, talking to yourself several years back, um, you know, seeing that gap, seeing where you could make an impact, and having a passion and a desire to take the leap. To someone that's considering making that leap, what advice would you give them?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:There's got to be an on the spot question.
Speaker 3:I know I know, I know, you know a lot of my answers are going to have to be so biased because I only know what I've experienced. You know what I mean. I was able to transition by keeping a W2 role and trying it. I think this is like the training wheels of what consultants and things like this are still doing.
Speaker 3:I still think that's a great place to start. I think what happened next is when that was. All I was doing was I heard someone say there's a difference between having an LLC and building a company, and you kind of get what I'm saying, yeah, right. And so from there I said, ok, what do I do? Because I'm making money, you know. And then another two or three years ago I was kind of in this place where I was doing a good job, you know, but it still wasn't a company company. I didn't have a ton of employees, we had some help and things like this, and I had lunch with somebody and he said listen, man, you just got to decide I was like well, listen, I'm about to, I'm about to have my first kid. My wife was pregnant at the time. I can't give up. I can't give up my security.
Speaker 4:What if it?
Speaker 3:doesn't work and he goes. That's why you do it. You have no choice but to succeed, and I think that he knew or saw something in me enough to believe that. And so listen, it'll never be perfect right away. Right, Definitely, take calculated risks. It'll never be perfect. I think, know yourself. I think make sure you have at least a little grit. I don't think if you don't know, if you look at yourself and you're honest and you say I don't really have any grit, I don't think starting a company is for you to be perfectly honest you know, and then just kind of go from there.
Speaker 3:You know, I see a lot of people get analysis, paralysis. There's nothing like just doing it. You know what I mean. And, of course, make sure you have a product that's legitimate. I'm not saying just jump in and sell people whatever. Yeah, but um, like you said, having the confidence right, that's number one. And, um, identifying someone does need what you have. It's a great place to start. I can't imagine these companies that just go into something they've never done and just wing it. I have no idea how that works, but if you've got something valuable, step number one is just sell it three times and deliver on it, and step number two is just know you can do it and figure out how to do it more.
Speaker 2:I think Don't look back right. No Well, thank you so much for being here with us today. We really appreciate it.
Speaker 3:If our listeners want to get a hold of you, what's the best way? Yeah, you know, health Operations Solutions look us up. If you're a medical company looking to hire or you just kind of need some help with operational starting up things like that even exits we'd love to help you. Virtual assistants, anyone that has some duplicatable, repeatable tasks or a specific role. You're having a tough time finding someone. I mean, we got the best so you can reach out to us.
Speaker 2:So healthopsolutionscom, virtustaffcom, and you can also look me up on LinkedIn Stephan Vander Hayden, all right, thank you so much We'll be sure to tag you in all the posts as well, so people can get a hold of you easily. But we really appreciate you being here and best of luck.
Speaker 3:Yeah and thank you both for having me. It's been great.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Thanks for tuning in to the Confidence Curve. We hope today's episode left you inspired and ready to embrace your journey confidently. Remember whether you're leading a team, growing your business or pursuing personal growth, each step forward builds your curve. If you enjoyed today's conversation, don't forget to subscribe, share and leave us a review For more insights and resources. Visit us at apexgtscom. Until next time, keep climbing the curve.