Hey New Patient Group nation, welcome inside the broadcast booth. Brian Wright here and welcome to season four, episode number six. Gonna be talking about squirrels, trees, and the essential ingredients to retain high-level talent today thought this would be a good one coming off last podcast. I’ve gotten so many calls. And thank you for those saying it was the best podcast not only that we’ve ever done, but they have ever heard before. And you have no idea how much that means to me. Because obviously, we sit behind this broadcast booth, I sit behind this broadcast booth, wanting to help all of you in as many ways as we possibly can. So I really appreciate it. The reason I bring that up, is if you haven’t gone back and listened to that podcast, if you haven’t listened to it yet, I want you to go back and listen to it either before today’s or immediately following today’s, because you’re going to get more out of today after having listened to the last podcast, than you will if you have not.

What I’m going to do today is, there are some stories that happen whenever you, and for those of you who haven’t seen it, the last podcast was the best marketing investment you’re likely never to make. And there’s a lot of great things that can come from that for your organization. But there are also some things that will really shed some light on do you have the right people at your organization. There are some stories that I’m going to tell you just from the past having clients in and out of healthcare. And some of you have already experienced this as New Patient Group clients, what happens when you actually go and implement that marketing investment? What happens? And it’s a little bit, it’s sad, but it’s true. It’s what all of you deal with, it’s some of the employees you have working for you. So I’m gonna tell some stories about that.

I thought it’d be fitting to do this podcast today, a lot of you are struggling to find great talent out there and with COVID, ridiculous as this is a lot of people are making more money sitting on their butts at home doing nothing, than coming back and working for you. A lot of you are just having a hard time finding good people. So it’s such an essential piece of your success is we teach out there is how you lower your stresses how you lower just that the common everyday headaches that come with running a business as an entrepreneur, how you reduce those as much as you can, while crushing the competition and not spending any money on advertising as well. That’s what our whole company is about what this podcast is about. And inevitably this goes into it, because there’s headaches hiring, there’s headaches firing, there’s headaches trying to go out and find the right people. Then you think you do, then you don’t or you do find a great person and they leave, whatever it might be.

Today, we’re going to talk about some essential things in order to retain employees, but also some essential things that you need to think about with the employees you have on whether or not they can take your business to the next level. A lot of things we’re going to dive into today, and it gets a great follow-up podcast from the last one. Hope everyone is great out there. Hope you enjoyed your Memorial Day. And hope you gave thanks to all the great men and women that fight so hard for our freedoms out there. My blessings are with you and your family. And before we get started today, let’s fire up the music.

Intermission: Now broadcasting to the world. This is the New Patient Group audio experience where doctors build their dream business so they can enjoy the heck out of their lives. And now your host. He’s the founder and CEO of New Patient Group, managing partner of Wright Chat, and international motivational speaker Brian Wright.

Brian: Hey everybody, welcome inside the broadcast booth, like I said the front, hope everybody’s doing great out there. Hope you had a blast on Memorial Day, and hope you spend it with friends and family. But first and foremost, I hope you gave prayers. And thanks to the people that really allow you all to do, and what we do as well, allow all of us to do what we love to do. It is the men and women in uniform whether they’re currently in uniform, retired, passed away whatever it might be hope you’re giving constant thanks to them, their families, saying prayers for the ones that are in the battlegrounds. And I apologize to all the men and women out there for those in this country that tried to tear you down and basically make false accusations and things like that. Just know that the majority of the humans that are in this country are vastly behind you. This goes for all of our men and women in uniform, military, navy, etc, etc, etc. But also firefighters, police, all of that, you know, even though the media and all these other clowns out there are trying to take you guys down, you know that you have their full support from the majority of the people in the United States. So ignore the media and how they make it sound like the majority, because the people who have a brain know that they’re a joke, and we appreciate every single thing you do for us out there. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to sit behind this microphone in the broadcast booth and be able to speak my mind. It’s all because of the freedoms you’ve allowed, and the freedoms you fought for your family members over the course of generations. So really appreciate that and I know our listeners appreciate it as well.

Today’s gonna be a great episode like I said on the front. You know this is a good follow-up episode to the ones that we’ve done in the past, and especially this previous one that we did, the best marketing investment you’ll likely never make. I’m just coming back from the relationship piece of this business is really cool. And I consistently say prayers and say thank you for how great our clientele is. I’m just getting back from Dr. Jep Paschal, his practice, I went and spent a couple days with him. And the day at his practice was fantastic. But I want to give a shout out to you, man, I know you listen, your family is incredibly kind and hospitable and is always very welcoming when I stay there, and I had a blast. So we cooked it up big time after we had an all-day workshop with him and his team, went back to his house as his office manager, Lisa – hi, Lisa – came over.

Her husband actually owns restaurants, and I had the honor of cooking for everybody. So it was Jep, it was his wife. It was his three kids. It was Lisa, the office manager. I guess the two dogs were there too. They didn’t eat but I’m gonna tell everybody I cook for them. Also, those dogs by the way, Jep are my inspiration of – why we just added a new member to all the listeners out there a couple of weeks ago, we brought home a brand new golden doodle. That thing looks like an Ewok in a teddy bear. It’s so cute, it almost looks fake. And in pictures, it looks like one of Braden and Madeline’s stuffed animal toys. But after being around Jep’s two dogs, I just got more and more passion and just was re-motivated to go back out and get a dog. So my wife and I were finally on the same page of which one we’re going to get. And we brought the dog home. And it’s been fantastic.

Had a great time with the Paschals there, at his house cooking, and a great all-day workshop. And that’s what’s so cool about our clientele, is the fact that they’re just people you want to hang out with. Every one of the New Patient Group clients that stands a day that they’re over themselves, they do not have the white coat syndrome. And if there is a relationship that does not go well with our company, is that we call it the white coat syndrome. If you believe that you are an exceptional clinician, and that automatically makes you smarter than everybody else, as it relates to anything nonclinical, the relationship with our company, you guys, is not going to be good. And our clientele, even the biggest names that we have are just some of the most down-to-earth, awesome people you’d ever want to meet. And I just love hanging out with them. So I really love that.

Getting ready to leave, to hop on a plane to go see Dr. John Graham in Salt Lake. And they’re actually very good friends. So Jep and John are very close friends, they actually have a podcast together. It’s called OrthoSeeds, you should check that out. So I’m going to go spend a couple of days with John Graham and his office manager, we’ll have a nice dinner, and then spend the day in the practice before flying back. A lot of great things going on, and it’s just like I said at the top, the relationships just continue to build with this company. And it’s something I am so proud of, and something that we teach all of you is that it’s all about relationships. You cannot have a successful business that sustains itself without having to dump 1000s upon 1000s in the advertising to constantly go out and shoot new deer and roundup new people to come into your practice, into your business.

What you have to do is you have to obsess over your clientele, over your patients, over your customers. And that is hard work. It’s not easy, but you have to obsess over them. Because when you do the results are so impeccable. They don’t leave or they’re unlikely to leave, your referral rate goes up. And instead of them being clients, they become fans. And that’s what I feel we have with New Patient Group. But that is also why we work so hard. And whether it be our YouTube station, this podcast, whatever it is to produce content that teaches you it’s all about the relationship. And that is also the case with how you treat your employees, is all about the relationship. If all you do is show up to work, that’s the only time you ever see them. You don’t do anything outside of work, you don’t do anything surprising, you don’t do anything special to enhance their experience. The culture does not support probably what your inevitable goal is, and that for any business owner, is to get your business on autopilot without having to dump 1000s in advertising. It’s what our whole program is about.

So there are these experiences. One, I’ve talked about it this season. It was a couple of episodes ago, if you haven’t listened to it, do it. It’s the essential ingredient that’s missing from your dream life and dream business recipe. And that one ties into inevitably, is the experience you have because that’s left out of so many culture talks is that it doesn’t start with your employees and it doesn’t start with your customers it starts with you. What your home life is like, what your business life is like, is it set up for your dream business and dream life? That’s where it starts because only then can you relay that, that enthusiasm that passion that happiness over to your respective employees.

And I’m talking about employees for a reason here because today, we’re going to talk about if you want your employees to climb trees, you have to be hiring squirrels. I’m going to repeat that again, if you want your employees to climb trees, you must be hiring squirrels and there’s a lot that’s going to go into this. Today’s not going to be a long podcast. But there are some points I want to get across. Because this is something that many, many of you even the successful practices, the very successful practices, you still have leaky holes in your boat as it comes to this. And the excuse we get a lot when I dive into this is Brian, “we have to retain Susie, make-believe name, we can’t let her go. Because there’s nobody else out there we’ve tried, who’s going to be in the mouth, we’ve got to schedule people, etc.” And I get it.

So I understand that the message today doesn’t come from left field and that I don’t understand, empathize, sympathize with the situation that you’re dealing with, where it’s hard to find people. However, as it goes back to being proactive about your business instead of reactive. This is something in a message today that I really want you to retain for the rest of your life. And we’re not going to go in-depth or too in-depth because we reserve that stuff for our New Patient Group clients, but this is gonna be high level. And I want you to keep this in your hiring methods and how you run your business for the rest of your life. First of all, let me talk about what I mean by hiring employees that can climb trees, hiring squirrels that can climb trees.

There’s a couple things here. One, you can hire – and again, I’m not calling your employees, dogs or pigs, okay, this is just an animal analogy. If you’re hiring dogs and pigs with the inevitable goal that you want them to climb the tree for your business, you’re going to spend 1000s upon 1000s of dollars throughout the course of your career, whether it be on consultants training them, whether it be on more advertising, because your conversions, not high, a combination of both, you’re going to be spending money and having high-level headaches for the rest of your life. Because no matter how hard you try, I don’t care what your culture looks like. I don’t care what the training schedule and regimen and roleplays look like. Hiring dogs and pigs, they will never be able to climb the tree ever, they’re going to get one paw up one foot up, they’re going to fall down and that’s as high as they’re ever going to get ever. Then what inevitably happens in that situation, is the squirrels that are sitting over on the side that can climb the tree, that are the high-level employees that you like, what inevitably happens is that they get frustrated, more frustrated, even more frustrated. And inevitably what happens is is you lose them.

And I see it all the time, is that the businesses have these people and they just refuse to get rid of them. And they try and try and try they try to motivate, they try to bonus – which by the way, and you all have to stop this and this is one of the hourly employee syndromes that I see out there. You should never bonus for somebody doing their job. I’m going to repeat this. You should never bonus for somebody doing their job. This is a real epidemic and honestly something that I’m going to do a whole podcast on, but I want to do a bit of this right now just because I’m on the topic, is that you do not have to bonus people for everything they do. And if you do, you do not have a squirrel, alright. That would fall into the pig and dog category of not being able to climb a tree. Alright, people should go the extra mile for you, they should do their job without being bonused for it.

Bonuses are a whole nother – if you’re watching our YouTube station, and this is your job here. But you, without being asked you go all the way up here to this level. Of course, you get bonuses for people like that. But you don’t bonus based on what their job actually is. That’s just their job. And healthcare is the only profession I’ve ever seen in my life helping that feels that they’ve got to come up with a bonus for everything to get Bobby, Susie, and Nancy extra motivated to go out and actually do what their job description is listed on paper actually is. Stop that, because that’s that’s a direct indicator, again, of not having the right people see all of this going into, or hiring squirrels. All of it goes into what internally would you walk into every single day? What does that situation look like? And if you’re hiring people that cannot do the job, no matter how hard you try, no matter what you do. It creates a culture of negativity, it creates a culture of frustration, it takes your good people and makes them want to leave. And this is a big lesson. And I’ve had a lot of companies in my life. And to this day, I’ve never lost an employee that I didn’t want to. I’m going to repeat that again a different way. Anybody that I want to stay, anybody that I find that’s good talent, helps our company a lot – they always stay.

The ones that quit, or the ones we have to let go, are ones that we should have never hired to begin with. Or they’re ones that we’re bringing in the ones that are bringing the company in some form or fashion down. So I pride myself on this company, meaning that we have an unbelievable employee retention rate with the ones that we want. And that is is how you have to look at your business as well, is that you have to have a high employee retention rate for the ones you want. You want to set your business up in a way where the crap organically leaves on their own. I’m going to repeat that, again. You want to set your business up in a way where the crap wants to leave on their own, okay. If your business is set up in a way, where you do not have the crap quitting, you need to rethink how you’re structured internally.

And this podcast today literally could go for six hours because, we could dive into HR and interviewing, and what we do with our New Patient Group clients. Today, again, on a high level is really shifting your mindset on who you have working internally. And there’s a couple of stories, I want to tell you for those that, and this is on the front end, if you’ve listened to the previous podcast, you’re going to get more out of what I’m about to say.

So I was kind of inside my head chuckling a little bit when I did the podcast last month, because there are some pretty amazing, horrific stories that come from business owners that take what I said in that podcast, and actually go and do it. And the majority of businesses report back, unbelievable team building session, can’t believe what it’s done for my organization. Now my employees are actually critiquing the customer service. Whenever we go places, they’ll turn to me and say, you know, Doctor So-and-so, “Wow. Boy, that’s not what New Patient Group teaches us. I mean, they’re terrible. They need some work.”

As a business owner, I cannot describe to you in words, how much that helps your organization, if your employees get to a level where they’re actually critiquing the experience of other businesses, boy, oh, boy, are you on the right path? Because a lot of that is just being aware of it. And if you’re not trained at a high level, and again, far beyond being, you know, “Hey, Mr. Wright,” and smiling. Far beyond that, we’re talking skillsets at a level that most hourly employees and most businesses can only dream of, is that if they’re critiquing other businesses, boy, you’re on the right path.

Well, here’s what happens whenever you implement last podcast. You’ll get that. You’re also going to get people to say thank you, you’re also going to get people to be more grateful to you because it’s culture-building sessions. Alright. It’s far beyond bonuses. It’s experiences just like I was talking about at the front end of this podcast, it’s way beyond your service. It’s way beyond that. It’s the experiences, like are you involved with the family members of the employees in your practice? Do you invite them over to your house? Do you have a cooking night? You go somewhere nice? Do you do things together? And is it something that is absolutely critical and required to be a successful business? No, absolutely not. But it is, if you want to have a successful business that’s stress-free, where everybody is close, everybody knows likes and trusts each other. No different than how your respective clientele customers, patients need to know like and trust you, you as an internal family need to know like and trust each other as well.

So this is the story that you’re also going to get. And this makes me cringe because it proves everything that we teach. This is summed up with these stories. So this was about five years ago, and about 10 years ago is when I really started heavily teaching what the last podcast was about, with that best marketing investment you’ll likely never make. And, you know, we had done it prior to those 10 years, I had done it in my own organizations internally, but about 10 years ago is when I really started teaching it outwards, you know, not just doing it for my own organization. But now we’re going to teach it and teach other people to do it. And I get this story, it was a restaurant that actually did it at the time, and it’s a local Italian place here in Houston, on the north side,out by Kingwood where I grew up. So you’ve got that. And then recently, since I’ve done that podcast, a couple of you went and did it and reported this back to your New Patient Group clients.

And the feedback on the podcast, like I said in the front end, was, “best podcast I’ve ever heard,” like, it makes so much sense something I never thought about before. And we implemented it and props to you. And here’s the feedback and it was this will show you there’s so many similarities from a business standpoint, because remember all of you, the majority of what’s happening inside your practice or when you do marketing outside your practice, it is no different than what every other entrepreneur and every other business trying to sell themselves to a consumer, is no different. There’s so many similarities and you’ve got to come outside your comfort zone and outside your box per se, to actually seek advice on those nonclinical things from nonclinical experts. Go outside your industry. Come outside your comfort zone and have people that are really going to challenge your status quo to make you think and do things differently than you’ve ever done them before.

So what they report back on, and I can’t help but laugh, because it’s sad, it’s sad but true, is that you take them to a nice night out. And they act like complete hoodlums. They get wasted, they’re screaming, they’re causing a scene. They’re belligerent, they act like complete fools, complete fools. And embarrass you, as a business owner in your entire organization. And this absolutely goes into hiring squirrels to climb trees. So, before I was talking about that, it was relating to trainability. You have a front desk and you’re going to invest in our phone training? Are they going to do it? Are they going to retain it? And do they have the ability, more importantly, to implement anything they’re learning? You have a treatment coordinator, or whoever you have in your respective organization that presents money, spends the most time with the patient throughout that given appointment. Can they learn proper sales fundamentals? Presentation skills, consumer psychology to know what to say when, how to say it, tone, verbiage, posture, presentation, all of these things? Do they have the ability to take that in and go and execute it? No different than an athlete? Does the athlete and this is what upper-level management, general managers, analytics, constantly, it’s the upper-level management, leadership team and sports organizations to monitor talent to determine can they execute it on the field? Can they take the coaching? And can they go on the field, and at what level can they do it? And if they can’t, it’s up to the organization to remove them.

So it absolutely has to do with trainability. But first and foremost, before trainability, its culture. It’s culture, and we talk about it so much. What kind of culture do you have in your organization to set everything up for success or lack thereof. And it’s also the employees, and this is a big part of what’s left out with culture training. It’s a big part of the employee’s job to help you create an exceptional culture as well. It’s not just the leadership team. It’s each individual employee as well, and how they treat their fellow family member internally. Do they go the extra mile do they say the right things etc, etc. Because if you want this organization that inevitably creates a brand of excellence in your community, and we teach everybody look, what we want to do is make you famous, period. I’m not going to be shy about it. We want to make you famous in your community, period.

We want to make you so, famous that there are people that that are 30 minutes, an hour, two, three hours away that are willing to drive to you for their appointment. But there’s a 1000 piece puzzle here in order to have that happen. There’s a reason why there’s only a few famous companies out there. There’s not many Ritz Carlton’s, not many Walt Disney, there’s a reason for it – is it’s hard. But once you get there, it becomes easy. It’s pushing through the pain, which there’s gonna be a lot of podcasts upcoming about that. If you have people that are going to go to a nice place, and for many of them, remember I talked about this in that last podcast, for many of them, that may be the first time they’ve ever been to a high-level place in their entire life. There’s a lot of people that work inside the practice environment that have never been on an airplane. So you have to remember who you have working for you and do they have the ability to carry out an experience at a level that you expect. And these are a lot of people that have never been on an airplane, never been to a five-star resort, never been to $1,000 dinner. These are the things that I talked about last time on the podcast.

So what inevitably happens when you do these things, is you see two different splits. You see people that are extremely polite and extremely well behaved, extremely thankful and they are taking it all in. They are listening to the waiters verbiage how they’re greeted when they walk through the door, how the whole experience is and how it’s made to make them feel. And they’re taking it all in. Then you have people, and I am telling you these are the exact same people that when you hire people to train them, when you do things internally, they’re the exact same people that are untrainable. Is the people that absolutely act like buffoons, when you take them to those types of places. They’re just chugging down liquor, you know, instead of sipping the wine, they’re chugging the glass, give me another one. The Pretty Woman, if you’ve seen that movie, you know, he ordered champagne the first night, she’s up in his room, and get strawberries for it. And instead of sipping the champagne and eating a strawberry, you know, she chugs the champagne, it’s like, give me another one. It’s like that type of thing is that they’re used to a certain behavior based on a certain type of experience that they understand. And it’s just a belligerent night, it’s an embarrassing night.

And I am telling you, if you do what the last podcast said, and you experienced that, the people that do that you should fire them immediately. Well, Brian, we can’t find anybody- fire them immediately, figure it out. You do it, you get in the mouth for a while. Because here’s what it is, that this essential ingredient that the keys to keeping your good employees. One of the big pieces to keeping the good employees is not you being a sweetie, is not you being a pushover, is not you saying yes to everything and smiling. That is not the key. Those ironically, are some of the keys to get your good people to constantly leave.

There’s a whole host of podcasts and things that I’m going to dive into over the course of the years here in the broadcast booth that dives more in-depth on why. But what you have to understand, and that really goes into the difference between being a leader and a pushover, and that’s a podcast on its own. Heck, that’s a three-hour on-stage presentation on its own. And you have to ask yourself, which one of those are you? Are you a leader, or are you a pushover? Because leaders would never allow somebody to work for them, and represent their organization and the experience that you expect, when they go out to that type of experience organization and act that way.

And this story, a lot of you can relate to out there. So the couple examples, the one five years ago that was outside, the restaurant I was talking about, and then also the ones I was telling you recently from people that have done this and contacted me to tell me the story. There’s a lot more of you out there sitting in your cars listening to this working out in the treadmill listening to this and you can go yep, I’ve had it, I’ve done this, we took them to a really nice place, you got two people that appreciate it, three that act like total idiots, what do I do? And this is the reality all of you face. The more you set your business up in a way that’s sticky. Meaning that if you invest money in something, the employees know, they absolutely need to implement it, or they’re out of there. If you set your business up in a way where you’re constantly giving these unique experiences to your employees, that are unexpected, memorable, unforgettable, no different than you want to do for your respective clientele, patients, customers.

The key to all of this is if you want to keep your good people, you have to get rid of the bad ones. You can’t let them linger. Don’t give me this “well, they’re great with patients, Brian, they’re just not good with Suzy and Joey internally,” you got to get rid of them. It doesn’t start with your patients, customers clients, it starts with you inside the doors, you and the team. If Nancy make-believe name stinks with the team, it doesn’t matter what she does with your patients. I don’t care what her hand skills are. That’s the other thing we get. Well, her hand skills are impeccable. That is such a health care mindset. It’s not a business owner entrepreneur mindset. It’s a healthcare mindset. We teach so heavily you got to get rid of that mindset. Okay, I don’t care what her hand skills are. If she’s a pain in the butt to your team, you got to get rid of her.

And this is how you retain the good ones. This is how you wake up one day. And all of a sudden you look across the board and Jep Paschal, I was talking about on the front end is a perfect example of this. He’s got a bigger team, very successful practice. And the team is just awesome. Every one of them is awesome. Why? Because they rid out the bad ones. They don’t sit there and go, “Well, you know, we’re not gonna be able to squeeze 17 More patients in over the next two days, if we get rid of this person. Well, you know, what are we going to do if we find-” No, they get rid of them. And they have the business set up in a way now, where the bad ones organically leave. And that is something I so want all of you to understand is that if you run a tight ship, with high-level accountability, it doesn’t make you a mean corporation, it makes you a great parent. That’s a podcast and itself also.

A great parent is not somebody that just lets their kids do whatever. No, they have strict guidelines, strict boundaries, accountability at the highest level consequence for their actions, and they raise highly productive adults, citizens. No different than a business owner. You’ve got to have this in a way, you’ve got to have repetitive training every single week block an hour, like we talk about roleplay. For 80% of that hour, have people stand up in front of their peers do the things that are difficult to constantly be moving their skill sets forward. If you have businesses set up, those are two examples of many, many, many that we teach our clients. But the point there is, and the reality there is, is that if your business is set up that way, and then every week, you’re role-playing again, and you’re listening to a mystery call, and you have visibility as a leadership team over what’s going on in your organization. The ones that refuse to get better are going to quit. And that is a positive for your organization. The ones that want to get better, the ones that are there for you, the ones that are constantly looking at themselves in the mirror saying what can I do to improve? They’re going to stay, because they have an organization that supports improving their skill sets.

And all of this goes into hiring squirrels, if you want your people to climb trees. You’re not going to take somebody that goes out to a fine dining restaurant, you know, a table for two or four type thing where you’re not getting out of there for under 7, 800 to 1000. You’re never going to take somebody there that acts, belligerent. They’re undisciplined, they’re rude, they’re loud, you’re never going to take somebody like that and turn them into a rockstar. I’m sorry, you’re just not. No matter how much you feel sorry for – whatever it may be, you’re not. What you are going to do, though, by trying and trying again and again and again and again and constantly inside your head justifying why you haven’t gotten rid of that person? In the meantime, you’re going to be an organization that loses the good people. Now I see this with my other company, Wright Chat – I see it with our agents, where we have lost a lot of people since starting that company a couple of years ago and I’m proud of every person we’ve lost because they’re every person we’ve lost we never should have hired to begin with. They were culture killer, didn’t do their job when you weren’t looking, that type of thing.

But we have the business set up in a way just like I’m talking about where they organically quit. Or we get rid of them. Even if that causes short-term headaches by getting rid of them, it’s always better long-term. Always. Which is the other piece as a business owner you have to think about – you cannot think about what tomorrow looks like if you get rid of Suzy. You have to look like you have to look at it what does six months, a year, two years from now, look like if I get rid of Suzy today? And this is not about – if any of you know me personally, I teach this a lot better than I actually go and do it. I’m kind of a big baby. You know, I don’t you know, if you fire them what’s going to happen, can they pay their bills like all these thoughts run through my mind as well. And I understand that they run through all of yours.

But the point is, this is your baby. And it’s hard to find good people and you have to set your business up in a way to support the good people. You have to set your business up in a way to support your good people. If you sit there at your weekly meeting, and you have eight employees, let’s say you have two TC’s. And you roleplay – we’ll call them Betty and Susie. And every week you show up and you take 10 minutes of that one hour and you say look TC Betty, go. And every week Betty shows initiative to get better. I’ll relate her to – so Miranda, coming from Jep Paschal’s practice recently. She is one of the best hourly employees I’ve ever had the opportunity to work with ever in my career ever. She is so obsessed with learning from us, and not just from us, just period. But when we’re there she’s taking notes. I mean, she stopped me multiple times before I walked out the door with Jep at the end of the end of the workshop day, it’s like, Alright, let’s go to these things again, what I need to work on before you come back, like that type of thing. And that is priceless as a business owner. So let’s use Miranda’s name, we’ll use Miranda instead of Betty because she’s the one, every time every week, there’s improvement. There’s engaging questions. She actually clearly wants to get better all the time.

And then you have make-believe name Susie. And every week, it’s constantly a repeat yourself session. She clearly, from her body language, her posture. etcetera clearly isn’t getting better and doesn’t care. Or she cares, but doesn’t have the ability. She literally physically cannot take the loop in her baseball swing, and ever fix it. And there’s two situations there. You have athletes, same with hourly employees, that worked their butt off to fix it, they just don’t have the ability to actually do it. And then you have the ones that could care less, don’t fix it or don’t work hard to fix it and they don’t fix it. Those are easy to get rid of. The ones that are harder to get rid of are the ones that do care. And they work so hard to fix it, but they literally do not have the ability to do it.

So you really have two situations there. But the point is here, if you constantly show up week after week after week, dealing with the same problems that Susie’s giving you, what it does is bring down Miranda. Don’t you see everybody out there? You have an employee that shows up week to week, wanting to get better and has the ability to get better, and wants to push their needle, their skill set needle forward to help your business grow. And that, by the way, is how you bonus people, you don’t bonus them on numbers. You bonus them on things that they personally can control themselves. And that’s showing up week to week, showing improvement in the role plays. And there’s a whole world of teaching that goes on in that bonus system, because it’s very, very, very entrepreneurs very different. That’s how the billionaires create bonus systems in their organizations. It’s not around numbers. It’s around self-improvement, reading the book, showcasing that you read the book with a great presentation summary in front of the team. It’s a whole nother world of bonusing. And it works so much better than number-based bonusing for a lot of different reasons.

But you have to make a decision when you clearly identify somebody as not being able to climb the tree, you have to make quick business decisions, to not have them work for your organization anymore, because that is how you waste time, efficiency, profit. You waste the great employees time, because every minute you spend with the one that’s never going to be able to get it, is a minute you should be spinning on the ones that not only are going to get it, they want to get it and they’re going to do whatever it takes to improve week to week for the rest of their life. And you can’t imagine, there is no marketing investment on the planet, that supersedes role plays with people that have the ability and want to learn. And that’s the big thing that we talk about a lot is the employee training pillar, the one thing out of the three things we do under one roof with New Patient Group is that that hardcore team training. Role-playing them on the skill sets that your competition will never commit to. But that only works if you have people that are willing to accept the training, and then have the ability to go fix the loop in their swing.

The other piece to this is as your industry adapts, which boy oh boy, is the healthcare industry adapting to a lot of changes. And for those of you who listen heavily, fans of the company, clients of the company, you know, we call this the new economy. The new economy of the better business defeating the better clinician, while unfortunate it is the reality. There’s lots of examples why, the biggest one is the consumer can relate to your nonclinical abilities far better than your clinical abilities. So the practice that does the nonclinical things at a higher level experience wise, the consumer can relate to that and they’re the ones they buy from. That’s the simple short story answer to that. If you’re the only practice in your community doesn’t matter. But now in most communities, there’s 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 there’s 25 Italian restaurants, using that analogy, within the same community.

So at that point, it goes so far beyond your food, in order to kick butt, it goes well beyond your food. And at the same analogy as a clinician. It goes so far beyond what you actually sell which is your clinical abilities. As industries adapt, you must have employees that can adapt with the industry. I’m going to repeat that. As your industry adapts, changes, does a 180, does a 360, whatever it might be, you must have team members that are able to adapt with it. Change on the fly, adjust their skill sets, adjust their mindset, be open-minded to Hey, this is how we did it five years ago, but now doesn’t work that way anymore. And boy, oh boy are all of you dealing with that from a healthcare perspective.

But here’s what I mean by that and how it relates to squirrels. If you want your employees to climb trees, you must be hiring squirrels. It applies to so many different things that I’m talking about today. And this is another one is that if you have people that are able to climb trees, and are willing to learn how to climb the tree better, every single week, whenever your industry adapts, you’re good. Why? Because now they climbed an oak last year. Now your industry adapts, and they’re able to hop over and climb the palm. Your industry adapts again, they’re able to hop over and climb the red, and then the pine, and then whatever, you get the point. And that is invaluable. Having team members, and they’re usually the same people meaning the Miranda example that I was giving you. And their whole team, really Jep’s whole team is really like this, I’m just using her as an example. The people that are wanting to get better, the people that have the ability to then not only want to, but they have the ability to actually implement it, are almost always the people that are then willing to adapt when your industry changes.

You know, five years from now, when I go into Jep Paschal’s practice, as an example, we’re going to be teaching very different things and what we do today, and this just drives me crazy for all of you out there. I don’t understand the mindset of we’re gonna hire a consultant or a company that teaches the same thing today, as they taught 15 years ago. It’s unbelievable to me that there are consultants in this industry to get paid by business owners, doctors, when they teach the same things now as they did 15 years ago. It’s unbelievable. Because you’ve got to change year to year, period. Why? The industry changes year to year, the data changes year to year, the consumer changes year to year. So yes, there’s foundational things that always work and always will. But there’s also tons of high-level stuff and lower-level stuff, that’s constantly got to be adjusted and tweaked. Which is why it’s so critical to your success that people that can adapt and switch trees and still climb them.

It was like in Miranda’s case, she’ll not only be able to adapt, she’ll be willing to do it. Oh, for the last two years, we’ve been learning that this way. Now we get to learn a new way. Cool. And she’s just, Wow, cool. I’m on board. Let’s do it. Let’s roleplay give me what you got, let’s go. And there is no better marketing investment than people like that. And I get finding them is not easy. I get it. I totally understand it, which is why your business has to be set up in a way that whenever you do, they don’t leave. And these are some high-level ways to do it. And this goes clinically, by the way. Hand skills, cleaning the sterilization room, setting up trays, handling instruments, all of this stuff, lab work, in-house retainers if you do them, in-house aligners, if you do them, whatever it may be. You’ve got to have people that are efficient at it. If you teach them something new chairside, do they implement it? When you roleplay with it, is their attitude about it? All of this goes back to retaining your great people. Nothing brings great people down more than crap. It creates so much frustration because all the time you’re spending trying to get the crap to the top. You should be spending that same attention to the ones that are already there and want to get better.

I love going into practices. Hey Brian, we’re gonna hire you and we’re going to do phone training. Or maybe they say TC training or whatever it might be. I’ll just use the phones as an example. They say, “I want you you know, we heard a mystery call to one of your practices have been with you multiple years and they’re unbelievable. That’s what we want to get to.” I say okay. All right. So, you know, let’s talk to your front desk people. So your front desk people come on, and they have no personality. They don’t even want to be there. They sound bored. They sound rude and standoffish. You know that type of thing. Meanwhile, as a business owner, you’re liike, take these people to the next level. I sit there and I say good luck.

This is the reason why our retention rate as a company is about 99% This is the reason why the results our clients get are off the charts. Really unheard of in health care. Honestly, when I discuss a lot of people don’t even believe us. Because not only are they growing at 25, 30% a year levels, they don’t spend any money on marketing, nothing. They do organic online content with us, they train their people, and then they look at themselves in the mirror from a business owner standpoint. That’s it, nothing else. But these are the type of mindset shifts they make. They realize your business has to be set up in a way, first of all, where the employees understand that they’re not needed. And what I mean by that is you can never have employees hold you hostage. If your business is being held hostage by any one of your employees, it means the business is not set up right. You have to set it up to where you if you have to let somebody go, or they quit, you don’t have to go out and hire somebody else. But even if you do, you have to understand you’re still in a better spot if you’re in that spot, then keeping somebody that’s ruining your culture, wasting your time, who knows what kind of brand they’re not helping you create out there. They’re bringing other employees down – I say all the time, doesn’t matter how good you are in the locker room or on the baseball field, if you mess it up the locker room, the clubhouse. Because inevitably, no matter how good you are three or four other players, you’re bringing their skill sets, and the ability for them to play at a high level down.

And that’s the piece that’s looked so often if you’re one of those people that have – because every practice seems to have one of these people. You know, Joey Oh, Joey is so good with our patients, hand skills are so great, but he’s such a jerk to the employees, that type of thing. Okay, we can’t let him go. Because he’s so good with the patients, we need somebody. See, what you’re overlooking is the damage Joey is doing to all the other employees’ performances, and it’s exactly what happens in sports. This guy’s incredible on the basketball court, an amazing player, total jerk inside the clubhouse. And meanwhile, players A, B, C, and D are having bad years. Why? Because of that jerk. And that’s what happens all the time. So the domino effect of Joey not being good with your team is much worse, and far supersedes the good Joey does with your patients.

Because that’s another ability – people like that don’t all of a sudden wake up tomorrow and become great culture builders. Those are people that are not squirrels, they will never be able to climb the tree. And the longer you hold on to them, and the longer you have in your mind, well, we can’t do this, we’re not able to fill this chair with a patient, we got to get people through treatment. As long as you have that health care mindset, you will always be in this spinning wheel of higher advertising dollars, lower conversion, and you as a business owner, not having as much fun as you deserve. Because that’s the fun of being a business owner. If you’re not having fun, you might as well go work for somebody else.

The inevitable lesson here is you have to look in the mirror and say, Do I have the right people? Front Desk, do they have the personality to where if I invested a New Patient Group to come in and give me phone training that’s so advanced, such high level, are they going to be able to implement? If the answer’s no, you need to find somebody that will. Same with your TC, same with your assistants, the list goes on and on. If you have a janitor that comes in at night, and hey, there’s 10 new ways to clean quicker, clean, more efficient, make everything smell better, make it match more COVID protocols for your patients, let’s say, and they can’t do it? You got to find a new janitor.

You’re gonna hop on an airplane, and there are 10 new ways to fly the plane that Joe just learned in the simulator but yet he can’t execute it flying the plane, Joe can’t be a pilot anymore. It’s no different than your practice. You can’t sit there as an airline and train Joe for the next 20 years hoping he finally goes and implements it and that’s what happens all the time inside practices. And these really sad stories of implementing the last podcast only to see – and this, by the way, these are the people that go out and act like buffoons. And hourly employees listening, we have a lot of them. Because a big part of our goal as a company is not only business and life coaching for the owner, it’s also that for the employee, because a lot of them feel stuck. You know, I mean, they’re maxed out somewhat what they’re gonna make in their career. They may not know how to ask for a raise, maybe their boyfriend’s treating them badly. There’s a lot of things that affect them too that we’d like to help, I love helping. So we’re not anti hourly employee. All of you know that.

But the reality is, is we are anti people that go out when their boss invests in an exceptional experience for them and they act like complete buffoons. We are anti-them because you have to realize that you as a business owner, that’s who you trust to carry out an exceptional experience to your clients, customers, patients. Doesn’t that scare you? And don’t you realize that nothing you’ll ever do will ever get them at a level necessary, ever. In this new economy of competition with people shopping more than ever before, to get those turned into value based buyers where you can charge more than the five others are shopping, and they still pick you. You have to do things and exceptional levels. And there’s a way to do it. And one of the ways not to do it, is retain those people. Because not only will they not be able to carry it out ever, they’re also going to get you to have high employee turnover with the people that you want to stay.

And it’s a horrible feeling, isn’t it as a business owner, oh, God, oh, man, we really love Nancy. And now she’s leaving, she took another job. Or we really love Nancy, now she’s pregnant, and she’s going to decide not to come back. Well guess what? If your culture was better, if you had more employees that could climb trees like her, she would come back, or she would be much more likely to come back. You have to have people that have the ability, that when trained the ability and the want to, to actually go and do it, you have to have people that wake up every day and help their team members climb trees, create a better culture, we use that analogy. You’ve got to have people that – and this goes back to the three pillars: culture, training, online marketing. You’ve got to have people willing to put their face on camera and shoot good organic content, because that’s what moves the needle in today’s competitive marketplace. If you have people inside your practice that I don’t want to put my face on camera, that’s not fair, do I get paid for it? Boom, you’re done. Because those are not squirrels that are going to climb a tree. That mentality will never change.

And this is where the business owner in healthcare, they got to figure out okay, let’s come up with some bonus plan for people shooting content, no. Content is your job. Now, maybe whoever shoots the most in a given month above a certain number. It’s like everyone’s got to shoot at least one and anybody that shoots above that gets entered into a contest to win something, I’m cool with that. Because that goes into their skill sets their want to their drive their initiative, and if you don’t get BONUS stuff, you should have done more content. But see, all of this goes back to the people that want to do it, the people that can do it, the people who have the initiative, the drive so on and so forth. This whole business aura is exactly what they want. They strive for it you go to an event you come back you have six new ideas, one of the best ways to get rid of your good employees is for them to go “Oh boy, here we go again. Dr. So-and-So flew to some consultant’s practice, or consultants event for a weekend came back with all these new ideas. He’s done this 25 times prior Nothing ever works. So he’s going to tell us to change, three weeks it’s going to go back to how it was, this stinks I’m out.” The bad employees the ones who can’t climb trees love if it doesn’t stick, because it’s not any more work for them. You see the difference?

Oh, Dr. So-and-so – and this is the difference in the attitude compared to what I just said, “Doctor so-and-so just went to some event but we know, nothing ever sticks in this practice. So just kind of ignore it. Let him do his thing and it’s all gonna go down the toilet. And we’ll just keep doing what we do.” You see the difference? See the Miranda’s of the world from Jep Paschal’s practice will get frustrated every single time that happens. The make-believe named Susie’s is another practice as an example. She’s going to be happy every time it goes down the drain because it’s no more additional work for her to learn skill sets to actually change and make it sticky implement etc, etc.

So you’ve got the Nancy’s of the world bring them down the Miranda’s of the world. The next thing you know Miranda gets a job that’s $1.02 more an hour somewhere else and she leaves. You have to have squirrels to climb trees. You cannot fill your system with other animals that do not have the ability to climb a tree. I want you to rethink your entire organizational hiring process, the people you currently have. You need to look in the mirror and you got to say do I have people that can climb trees? Am I hiring squirrels? Because everything I’m talking about today is essential to not only finding the right people, but then retaining the right people. It’s also essential in getting rid of the ones that will never climb a squirrel for you their entire career. Either they may have the ability, but just won’t work to do it or they don’t have the ability.

So really quickly before we end today. Just hiring a squirrel isn’t necessarily going to get you there. You’ve got to hire a squirrel BAM they have the ability to climb a tree now are they trainable to climb the tree faster, more efficient, adapt, etc, etc. So there are multiple ways we could go on and on for this. But I want today to change your mindset and how you’re looking at your people. You keeping the people that are bringing you down is only going to get rid of the good employees. You’ve got to hire the right people, you’ve got to train them the right way, and you’ve got to have the people that the initiative to get to the top of the tree and then jump to another tree and climb that one as your industry adapts. You do that, you lower your stresses, you have more fun, you have a better culture. You have people that get along Imagine waking up to work every day, you have fun. Let’s shoot some social media content. Oh yeah, that’s awesome. Let’s use our weekly meeting, walk out 5, 10 new videos. Come on, let’s do some funny things together. Imagine that type of aura, that type of culture, that you get to show up to every day. And the only way that happens is if you have employees that can climb trees. If you’re hiring squirrels that can climb trees, are the only way that’s inevitably going to happen.

Hope everybody had a great time listening today. I hope you can take this information, go back and implement it. Rethink your organization, hiring strategies, the people you have working for you now. I want you to rethink what that looks like. And I want you to always be looking for squirrels that can climb trees, do it the fastest, the most efficient, etc. And if you do, you’re going to be much better off hope you had a great time listening today. Appreciate all your support out there. Until next time, we’ll talk to you soon. Bye-bye.

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