When Is The Right Time To Hire

Welcome to Pelby biz podcast. I'm Dr. Kelly Alhui. I have grown and established brick and mortar practice in Northern Virginia called Ortho Pelvic Physical Therapy and also founded Pelvibiz, which is an online business consulting company that helps healthcare providers make more money and be healthy while doing it, especially in the pelvic health realm. And let's get into today's episode.

Today I'm going to talk about when is the right time to hire. I know most of you guys have asked me this question a lot, so I wanted to make a podcast on it on when is the right time to hire. So let's get right into it. So number one, I always say there is no like perfect moment in time. We're going to be like, yes, I need to hire necessarily. Okay, there can be some of those moments, but a lot of times it's not just going to be this like up, it's your green light. You should go higher right now. It's a process and you kind of have to see into the future ish and have massive belief to bring on a new hire. So for some of you guys that are starting out, there are a little bit of gold standards that I have personally come up with after coaching hundreds of pelvic health therapists. I always say when you hit, if you're a solopreneur, that means you work for yourself and by yourself. Okay. Once you hit anywhere between 15 to 20 patients, that is when I say you should hire your first admin and or therapist at that time. Okay. And a lot of times you're going to have to probably hire both at around the same time. There could be weeks apart, two weeks apart, three a month apart. But a lot of times they come together because at that point, if you are seeing 15 consistent patients a week, you also have to run a business. And at that point you're probably also potentially missing some calls if you don't have an admin. So I personally, how I did it is I hired an admin and then one week later I hired a pt. So that's personally how I did it. Was that the right way? There is no right or wrong whether or not you want to hire a therapist first, you want to hire an admin first. But I can tell you if you do hire an admin, that admin should be a massive return on investment. Because even if they answered two calls that maybe you weren't able to get to that month, they converted those patients. Each patient is probably around $2,000, maybe sometimes more that's $4,000 that's going to pay for that admin salary that month. And some you're making profit because they were actually able to answer the phone to maybe when you couldn't because you were out marketing or because you were treating a patient that week. So you have to look at hiring as an investment instead of, oh my gosh, I'm dumping money out and I don't know if I'm going to get anything back. And if you are just dumping, dumping, dumping money away and you're not seeing the return, then maybe the person that you hired is not the right fit and we need to let them go. Okay, so that's the first thing I would say. Now if you are a provider and you have multiple therapists on your team and let's just say each provider sees, let's say a full time provider sees around 35 patients a week. When you get close to around 30 patients a week, I am hiring, then I'm putting out an ad. It takes about three months for us to find in general a pelvic health OT pt, you know, anyone in that realm. It's going to take about three months for you to find that person. And it could even be longer, it could be shorter, it just depends. But that's on average, so that's also something to be mindful of. Now most people will ask me at this point, Kelly, do I hire part time? Do I hire full time? What's happening here? What do I do? If you're, if you're not as risk adverse, then I would just pay them per client that they actually see. So that way there's no risk to you. There's really no risk for them. They just need to keep their schedule full so that they get paid and you can provide them those clientele. Now the negative to that is maybe this person is only in your clinic 15 hours a week. So sometimes if they're only in there for that long, they're not necessarily bought into the culture. And sometimes that can be a problem because maybe you need to train them more on packages, maybe you need to train them more on the method. Maybe you need to train them more on just how you actually treat and how we can collaborate and treat kind of cohesively together. Right. But they're only in there 15 hours a week. So you don't have much time after they see patients to even connect and collaborate. They're just there kind of working for you and not they're not as bought into the company and that could be a problem. Down the line when you need everyone to be on the same page. So that's the negative to it. Like I said, the positive to it is you're just, you're not losing out on any money. You're only gaining profit from them because you're paying them, but also getting money coming in the door. Okay. I personally like to go, I'm very risk adverse, so I like to go full time. And the reason why I've had many part times, I've had many full times, they're more bought into the company. You can have a better culture in general. And I don't always see like a blank spot as a negative. I see a blank spot on a schedule as an opportunity to do more training, to, to do more uplifting, to create a better human. So I don't look at it like we gotta fill this spot because, you know, we gotta have revenue coming in. Yes, we want to fill that spot. But sometimes, especially when I have new therapists on, I really like to take those opportunities to cultivate and shape more of what they're gonna become and like really invest in them and give them whatever they want, you know. So looking at it that way, I think is important. Clearly you need capital coming in, but I personally like to do full times because it creates stability as well in the company. So like a part timer, they could go by tomorrow and then you don't have anyone. And I always say if you don't have two, you have zero. And what I mean by that is if you don't have two therapists or you don't have two admin, or you don't have two managers, you have zero. Because if that person goes, who is going to fill in this spot? A lot of times it can't be you. Maybe it could be you, but do you really want that? So is your company set up in a way that if there is a man down, even if they're sick for the day, they didn't leave the company, but maybe they were sick for the day. Is there someone that can actually take over that role? So in smaller companies, like most of us, everyone has to be, I always say, like a Swiss army knife. They got to be able to do multiple roles. Now that's not their job every day, but they have to be able to step in if a team member is down for the day. So I think that's important in setting up things. Like, let's just say if I was doing admin, maybe I wouldn't hire a full time admin. So now here's kind of the opposite that I found. And with an admin, maybe I wouldn't hire a full time admin because if that admin is all of a sudden sick for the week, I have no admin. So instead why don't I hire an admin for 20 hours, another admin for 20 hours. That way if someone was sick or on vacation or needed time off or whatever else, they can sub in for each other. So I think that's also really important to have because now I have two people instead of just I'm relying on one person. Same thing for my manager. I have a manager and then I used to have manager and then it would be me. But if the manager is out, I sometimes couldn't go into that role. So now I have a chief operating officer that now it's me, chief operating officer, then I have my manager and then I have admins and PTs and OTs. Okay? So there's a chain of command that if someone is out, who's going to take over if I go? Like if something happens to me, my chief operating officer will be the one that takes over. Okay, so you should have backup for yourself because if you don't have backup for yourself, then you're really playing with fire. Because if you, I mean, God forbid, if something were to happen, you would get sick, it's game over. Like is your company going to run? So I want to know, have you trained someone else to run your company? That's really important. So you know, if you haven't and you need help, like please reach out because this is what I do to be able to get my time back. This is why I was able to go to California for a whole month. And my clinic grew while I was in California. I had no communication with them. There's systems and hierarchies and community building that has to happen. If you are not in the day to day of the business every single day, or if you're trying to project and get out of the day to day and not be, you know, treating patients one on one every single day, how can you do that? And who are the people that you need in place? I always think this is important too. You should ask yourself instead of how do I do that? You should ask yourself who can do that? Who can do that better than me? And you hire people that actually can do the job better than you. You just have to have the vision. That's why you're the leader. You have to have the vision to see what you need help with. But you don't necessarily have to do the thing. You can create the system and you can say, hey, I need the system to have this outcome. But you don't have to physically say, okay, these are the steps of the system. Like, you don't even have to know the steps of the system. You just have to say, this is the outcome that I need of the system that we're trying to create. And I need my manager to then do all the details and create the system or my admins to do the same thing. So that's part of being the visionary and being the thinker of the company is you've got to lead the company in a direction that continuously progresses and with progress, you got to be the one that looks ahead and says, hey, this hire is going to be super beneficial because this is the direction that we're going. And they have this skill. When I just hired both my admins, they have lots of social media skills. So I need that because the direction I'm going is going to be in that realm and I thought that's a bigger asset. So I need them to be able to utilize social media for me so that we can get out there more. So that's how I think of that. Also. I think this is important belief, being able to truly trust yourself and believing yourself to know that like, if I hire this person, I can fill their schedule, we can get there, it's massive. You have to have massive belief in these people. Okay? So I think that's important. I would also say audit what has worked in the past. So let's say I'm going to hire a therapist and I'm scared to death because I'm like, oh my God, I got to pay their salary and I hired them full time. Like I got to pay their salary. What am I going to do? And I am then going to audit what I have done to build a schedule. So for me, workshops work very quickly, very fast. For me, I can fill someone's schedule within two weeks, a brand new therapist. So what I'm going to do before that therapist comes on is I'm going to have lots of workshops so that we can fill that person's schedule. And that's what I'm going to do. Okay. Because I believe in myself because I've had history of it and B, I've audited to see what has worked for me. Okay. Again, cultural fit I think is really important. And then let's see, I would rather, I think this is another good point. I would rather be overstaffed than understaffed if you are overstaffed, it's actually a better problem than if you're understaffed. If you are understaffed, let's just say from the therapist realm, like, you would have all the leads coming in the door. But if you don't have any therapists, you cannot grow your practice. I mean, you really can't unless you start doing, like, group stuff online and all that kind of stuff. But if you're in the model of treating one on one, you're stuck. So I would much rather be overstaffed and have openings so that when people want to cancel or switch schedules, that then you have some flexibility to then be able to move people than to be stuck. So I think that's important. That's a very important lesson I've learned. Again, if you don't have two, you have zero. That goes right into it of the fact that be overstaffed and understaffed. It will make you be able to sleep at night. It'll bring stability to your company. And stability. When you have stability in your company, it just gives you freedom, it gives you time, it gives you comfort. Like I said, it makes you sleep well at night, all those kind of things. So I think that's the lesson. So when is the right time to hire? It's a really good question, and hopefully I have answered some of that for you guys. There's many different variations to it, but I would say, you know, what I've said here is pretty much kind of the standard, and hopefully you guys have learned something and you hire smartly and be able to get people that actually give you a return on your investment. I think that's the biggest thing. So, bye, guys.

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