The Practice of Therapy

Gordon Brewer
right, at least. Yeah. So yeah. So what are some other other mistakes that you have noticed that people will make

Paul Wright
mistake for was ineffective. I'm super unsupervised systems. I'm a Systems guy. I'm really the system that the whole idea of how to run a woman in practice the book and the platform was all based on functional systems that you can measure and control in your business. Because you see it all the time in in health businesses, they say it's a it's a system following up patients. And you'll say, beside your team, are you following up your patients? Oh, yeah. But unless you've got a system in place for it, and a way to track it, and a way to measure it is good enough. It's happening or not? So. So we created one minute practice as a way to measure this as a way to control the steps in the business, let's say an allied health if someone comes to a to a physical therapy practice. Now one of the things that have to happen in that process, they have to fill in their paperwork, they get a report, they get a follow up phone call, they get rebooked. Do you know, all those things happen? So we created a platform that measures that can let you see from anywhere in the world if that's happening or not. Otherwise, Gordon, you don't know if it's happening. So so the owner is putting a system into into place, you've got to put a system in, but then you have to have a way to measure it. And want to know whether it's being done or not. Otherwise, because you can see what happens otherwise go and you've got to be at your practice all the time. So So creating systems that are trackable, measurable and visible, from anywhere in the world means you should be able to log into something and see did that happen? Yep, yep, yep. And that's the one minute practice. We've got clients now. Like we log into their systems, we log into their systems from anywhere in the world. And in one minute, we can go okay, that's going yep, yep. Okay. And we know that the things being done, but as you can see, if you haven't got that, or some way to track it, you're going to have to be at your practice all the time, listening to what the paper and saying that make sure they're doing it. Right. And that's, that's the mistake. So good systems, but putting systems in that are trackable, measurable, and you know, whether they're happening, yeah,

Gordon Brewer
yeah, you got to base it on data, not on feel, you know,

Paul Wright
what's ahead, analysis removes argument. Like one of our one of our classes go and we all in our world, in physical therapists physio world, every new patient gets a written plan, like a written report. So if you came and saw one of our practices, we would you would get a written report, and it would start at the bottom. Gordon, for you to get back to your gardening. You need to see us twice a week for next two weeks. And that's the plan that goes out to the front desk, the front desk books, those consults in in advance so so then that's a non negotiable step, Gordon? And if so, I can know if, if you didn't get one of those plans, I've no there was a system failure. So and the classics I got all my team together years and years ago, and I said to them, there was only one time where a patient does not get a written plan when they when their initial concept is any one situation. And they all talk about all I said What is it? Are they have to go and see the surgeon? No, because you still need a plan. The plan is to go and see the surgeon that come up with these things. There's no there's only one situation. So what is the patient dies during the consultation? That's the only talk. Yeah. And I think and it got a laugh. Yeah. But then the next day ensuring weeks if someone didn't get a plan, I'd say gee, sad news about Mrs. Johnson yesterday. What do you mean will Chava see died during the consultation? It gets got a laugh as well. But but but it only got a laugh for a few days because if I had to say it again, there was a problem with That team member, right. And if they weren't going to do that, if they couldn't do that, what was their chance of doing anything else. And that's the idea of having a business that runs without you is having systems in place that are not negotiable. Right? That's the next one is an interesting one. It involves knowing your numbers well enough from your accountant. So mistake is actually in it's counterintuitive mistake a lot of health business owners make is they, they use their accountant to do their p&l for them their profit or loss. Now there's, there's a, there's a caveat here, most accountants don't even give you a good profit and loss. Because their job, their job is not to give you a p&l, their job is to keep you out of court and help you pay as little tax as possible. So your p&l is not something that we that your accountant gives us, it's actually a down and dirty money in money out analysis in your business that only involves the real business cop. So it's a different set of books, to what you what you get from your accountant. Because your accountants got things in the car, there's leases, there's probably the cleaner for your home, there's the trip, you took to some conference that you wrote off, that really wasn't a conference, you know, there's all this going into your account version. So we want a down and dirty profit and loss, money in money out only business expenses, and a calendar month in calendar month out too, by the way, because then you have an idea about how your business is performing. And the other thing to add Gordon, you need a representation of your consulting hours. We talked about freedom score earlier, when we do in practice ology in one minute practices, if you know how many hours you do consulting, we use a formula, we multiply that by the replacement cost. So what's it cost to replace you as a therapist, let's say it's 50 bucks an hour. If I do 10 Consulting hours per week, in my in my one minute practice, profit loss, that's 10 times 50. So it's 500 bucks, right? That your accountant will tell you to, you'll be paying you a different amount from your account, because that's a tax decision, and dividend or what are you drawing from the tax perspective, but the accounts version doesn't have an allocation for how much consulting you're doing. That's why it's a different set of books. I didn't want to lose you. But yeah, it's the idea of what's your consulting input into the business as a therapist, as you're just treated as one of the therapist that's going to be in your p&l? Yeah, make sure that's part of it.

Gordon Brewer
Yes. And that that makes sense on several levels, and in particular, just thinking about, for most, most of us and allied health fields, the most valuable thing that we are our number one product is our time, and, and our expertise. And so if you're not getting a good return on the investment of your time and your expertise, you're not going to be able to stay afloat.

Paul Wright
Right. And it's actually when we started doing our I'm not saying it to you pay yourself 500 bucks a week, your accountant will determine what you pay. That's, that's a taxation system. So you'll that that'll be in your account regardless, but for your down and dirty practice, profit and loss, you get paid $500, if you do 10 hours at the replacement cost is 50 bucks. Now, that's all that's in there. Because what that lets you do God and we saw this historically, it's really hard to stop allied health professionals from consulting, or from seeing lots of patients and clients because they're so used to the old sell dentist story, if you're not drilling, you're not billing. So, so in so in the world of the allied health professional, if I'm not seeing clients, I'm not profitable. But what we want to try and show them is there comes a time in all health businesses, where where you're better off not seeing clients, and you're better off marketing and recruiting, training your team working on the systems. And the only way we could do that was to show them over time, we dropped their own consulting work. So we dropped their consulting hours. And we saw that other time, they might have started out doing 50 hours a week. And then we're going to 40 and 30 and 20. And now they're doing almost no consulting, but they are as profitable if not more profitable now than when they were doing 50 hours consulting. Right. There was no way to show them that it worked, which was to show them this this down and dirty p&l analysis. Yes. Because they don't they don't think there's a cost they will if I'm if I'm doing this session, I've made 200 bucks. Yeah, it's trading that time for dollars. But as we know at what point is that no longer good use of your time? Right, right. I started my beautiful wife Helen. Yeah. She says, The Lord needs mine are doubt that that's now I've got too much important things to do. The knowing the Lord. I'm worth $7 million an hour Yeah, but you're sitting on the ledge or too intelligent. Yeah, but it's the principle that doesn't fly sometimes. Right? It's the principle.

Gordon Brewer
Yes. So what are the what are the last two, the

Paul Wright
last two was last two is, is ineffective recruitment systems or just not effective recruitment systems. If you want to have a practice that works without you, which if that's your goal, you need to have a continuing ongoing recruitment process, because the worst time to recruit is when you need somebody. It's counterintuitive again, because you'll make rash decisions and you get someone you don't want. So you've got to structure your business. So it is you're always recruiting. And you have to accept the fact Gordon in business that people aren't going to stay forever. One of my mentors said businesses, business and team members are like a train journey, people were going on at a certain stop, and then they'll get off at a certain stop, but they're not going to go all the way to the end, but they didn't go away going on at the start. That's it's a train journey for them. And you have to understand that. And one of the challenges for us, and it's, it's a little bit when we when we, when we say like, my job as an owner of the business of the health business, is to make my team members replaceable. It's It's terrifying to say to them, but my I can't be vulnerable if you get sick, or if you leave, I can't that can impact my business. And my job, as the owner of the business is to make you replaceable. But but on the other side of the coin, your job as a team member, is to make yourself irreplaceable. And that's the game we play aren't my jobs to try and replace your job to negatively replace. Let's get on with it. Yeah, and and I think that comes back to, to the role of your business and the business's role, it's a serve me, the owner, the team will get great value out of the time with us and they'll learn a lot and I'll make it a great place. But then are they going to move on and do something else that's good now or start their own business or whatever, that's fine. Right? But the business is there to serve me and what I want to do that's we sometimes get caught up. So having great hiring systems you've got to have and the final mistake I see a lot of owners make they don't package this services will good. They're selling session by session, they're selling stress management, session one the next session the next session are their selling fix your need for the for the marathon it's a session by session deal. Best professionals now packaging the service into an outcome rich program. So it's this it's the six weeks to a stress free life. It's the it's the run a marathon in under four hours program. It's the it's the migraine free computer workers program, what it's a package. Yeah, whatever your outcome is and packaging your your product your product into that package and deliver that service. Then what happens you find the owner of the X Y Zed migraine program. Can you see Gordon I can no longer be compared on price because I'm the person with the X Y Zed migraine program. Got the ride might treat migraines, but he hasn't got the X Y Zed migraine, private. I've got it. So naming it, giving it a benefit rich title helps you a lot in terms of in terms of branding yourself branding your expertise, and makes it very difficult to compare you on price.

Gordon Brewer
Yes. And that goes that goes straight back to kind of the second point you made, which was really identifying what the client needs or what the what the patient needs. And, and really, yeah, you're right, packaging it in some some sort of way that solves their problem for them.

Paul Wright
See that. They don't want psychology service. They don't want mental health services. They don't want physiotherapy, they don't want car practic. They don't want osteopathy. They don't want any of those things. They want the solution to their problem, right? They want to be able to walk without pain, or they want to be able to live a happy life. They they want that outcome. They don't they don't want the service. So we fall in love with the product because that's what we're trained in. Right that you fall in love with the market and the outcome they want that but we did it with our businesses, but what do people want? Well, a lot of our clients want to run a one minute practice. Practice that is easy. They don't want they don't want to 60 hour a week practice that's hard to sell. Right? But they want a one minute one. That's yeah, that's what's the outcome. That's what you want to get. Right? Right. Kind of get and kind of give you one to finish because there is a time. Yes. One of the biggest mistake that I think we can make in business is is putting a monetary value on your family time. Now when a tort now if you're in a time for service model, so if you if you work Friday afternoons, and you can see for clients at 200 bucks, a client is 800 bucks. Now the problem that we have in allied health is we'll think well, these 800 bucks, I can I can make 800 bucks, or I can attend my daughter's swimming carnival. Same week. And the mistake we make is we play that game, we put a monetary value on that to an 800 bucks over here, or do I go to my daughter swimming carnival. And that's Arkin, that's a big mistake. You can't put a monetary value on, on that swimming carnival. And it's stupid to even think about doing it. As I said, I have four daughters. Now they've grown up. And we've got such great relationships with their four daughters, because we spend so much time with them. They don't mind seeing the army now because he's we had a good relationship and it was great. But you can't go back and do that. It's it's it as I say, you don't lie on your deathbed wishing had done more work. Now I'm not. It's easy for me in the golden chair to say, well, you don't need the 800 bucks. Maybe you do but but work your weekend, charge more catch her out as to something but make that a priority? Because you'll remember the swimming carnival. You won't remember the patients?

Gordon Brewer
Yes. Absolutely true. Yeah,

Paul Wright
we do. What are we every year mates and I got why. And I get away with it. There's a group of blacks 20 years, we've gone away every year. And just last year, and one of them said, he rang me so I can't make it this year. So why not? High profile Doctor, this guy like he's a big flyer. I've got this important list. I said, don't be so ridiculous. I said you're coming. He said, Well, you might as well think about, what are you going to remember? He said, What do you mean? I said, Are you going to remember the clients you saw? You're gonna remember that list of patients. Or you're going to remember seeing Wayne disappear over the handle Barbies quad bike into the river. What are you gonna remember? Now he came, and of course, wine would have the head. So when when we get together now, what do we talk about? We talk about wine going over the handlebars? It's a class, it's that what are you going to remember? Right? I remember the patients are gonna remember what you did that time even those times with their family, you can't get that back. I'm not guilting you into it. But just just be aware there's there's a price to pay for that. Business serves you. That's the deal.

Gordon Brewer
Yeah, this is great. Yeah, Paul, this is this is this is really good stuff. And I'm so glad that we got a chance to talk about this, because this really speaks to the heart of kind of my mission with the practice of therapy is helping, helping helping clinicians really succeed in their practices, but also have a practice that fits their lifestyle. And I think these are important things to, for everybody to think about. So I want to be respectful of your time and tell folks how they can get in touch with you if they want to learn more about you and the One Minute Manager and among one minute practice rather, and, and all of that sort of thing,

Paul Wright
or the best. Just go to go to my practice ology.com. So my practice ology.com forward slash quiz. Okay, and we've got a quiz there that you can get, you can do this to do a check of your business. But the important thing on that when you get the quiz, there's also a link that will be sent to you with a copy of the how to run a one minute practice book. And it's got all the things I talked about today. You know, the two simple read it's PDF version. It's not it's not 1000 Page tomb, it would be ironic if I had to run a one minute practice book took you three days to read. Simple read simple ideas, and it is all the there's the p&l analysis, action plans, marketing, there's all the resources in there as well the link link to that. So just go to my practice ology.com forward slash quiz, opt in there. You can also register for our monthly webinar at my practice ology.com Find out how we do things that practice ology but my practice ology.com forward slash quiz. And if you want to connect with me on the socials, I'm I'm a user of LinkedIn. That's my platform. So check out check out Paul right. Newcastle send me a connection request say I was on Gordon, this is the Gordon's podcast love to hear from you.

Gordon Brewer
Yeah, we'll have we'll have links in the show summary in the show notes for all of this. Well, Paul, thanks again for being on the podcast. And I hope that we'll be able to continue our conversation again in the future.

Paul Wright
Love to love what you're doing, man. Happy to be part of it. Thanks.