Decrease Staff Turnover In Your Practice

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Hey everybody, it is Matt Gallogly with another episode of the Practice Profit System, and I am here with the lovely Adrienne Lloyd. Did I pronounce your first name correctly? I forgot to do that and say it right when we were doing our pre-talk.

You did.

God almighty, that's so good, because you know, with the last name like Gallogly, like, you just become really self-conscious about getting it right. So, well, cool. So you might be wondering what, uh, she is doing on this call. We're going to spend about 30 and 40 minutes today, and we're going to talk about leadership. You might think, ah crap, I don't want to hear about leadership. I want to learn how to do more peptides or make more money. I'm going to tell you right now, leadership— everything lives and dies on leadership. And I'll just tell you my own personal belief: if you want your company to grow, you got to grow first. And that starts with your leadership ability. You can't expect your people to outgrow the level that you're at. And I'm sure Adrienne will dive into that. So let me tell you a little bit about her. She's, um, she works and helps with healthcare leaders and practice owners decrease turnover because none of that's happening anymore right now, right, Adrienne? Everybody's staying right where they are. Maximize results with engaged teams and optimized She is a recovering healthcare executive for over 20 years. How's the detox going? Is it okay? It's a process.

It's a process.

She was in leadership roles at the Mayo Clinic, at Duke Health. She was Chief Administrative Officer at Duke Eye Care, right down the street from my clinic in Raleigh. But she has spent most of her career helping turn around organizations while driving integrations, building teams, all that good stuff. And she has generated over $250 million in financial improvements. So I figured we could probably learn a thing or two from her. And, you know, the whole thing about what we do here at the Practice Profit System is it It ain't about me, it's about you, because I want you to have access to the best information. I want you— as I tell my doctors, it's incumbent upon us to save society because Lord knows the insurance companies aren't going to do it. So we're going to talk about a couple of things, right? We're going to talk about reducing staff turnover, optimizing workflows, maximizing revenue, patient experience. But I want to talk about leadership first. Why is leadership so important?

It's so important. I think not only leading yourself, I guess, first of all, to, you know, knowing who you are and where you, where you can best serve. is so important. So I think that's one of the things I always start with with clients is like clarity around who they are and where they're going and what do they enjoy doing. Because I think a lot of times we take leadership roles, we want to make a difference, but it can be easy to get stuck in doing things that are not either things that we necessarily have to do or things that we enjoy. And so I think keeping that in the forefront, but really leadership, it's so important to just have that clarity with your team of the vision of where you're trying to go, setting anything from setting expectations, you know, what do you want What do you want that patient workup to look like? What do you experience, you know, what experience do you want your patients to have as they come through the practice? And so having leadership strengths and skills, ability to communicate, I think particularly around challenging conversations, having that clarity, but also holding people accountable so that you can get them engaged in the work that you're doing. And as you mentioned, turnover, I mean, I'm seeing rates of 20 to 25%, and ultimately people are spending so much, I'm seeing practice after practice spend so much money on recruitment, but people are not focusing on the culture that they already have that's going to keep both those new people they're bringing in, but the current ones from, you know, engaged and leaving and really functioning at that high performance level.

So yeah, if you have a leak, it really touches everything. You got a leaky bucket, you don't want to pour more water in, you want to fix the leak, right? Isn't that kind of the standard idea?

It should be, but I'm hearing— I just spoke at a meeting a couple weeks ago and I asked, you know, what was the number one problem? And I was doing a talk on process improvement and workflows, but I was like, how many of you are struggling with And they said, you know, they're struggling with wait times and all that stuff. But I was like, what's your top issue? And all of them raised their hand and said, you know, turnover and recruitment. And they're just spending— but I'm seeing a lot of them, people who are starting and leaving after 2 or 3 months.

Why are they leaving after 2 to 3 months?

I was actually talking to this group about it, and out of probably a little over 100 people, they had at least, I'd say, close to half of the room raised their hands that they had had someone leave within a few months. That they didn't really want to leave. And occasionally, it's a person who you just made a bad hire. You know, you thought they were going to be great. They oversold themselves in an interview. You learned how to ask a better question next time, and you kind of chalk it up to experience. Like, there's definitely those. But I think it's really sad when you spent the time, you think you've got that kind of prize employee, and they're walking out the door and taking the job down the street. And it used to not be. So, I think they're leaving now. A, there's more options. Particularly at those frontline levels, whether they stay in healthcare, they go work at Starbucks, you know, they don't have to stay.

Starbucks pays a lot of money.

So, I think, yeah, so I think there's more options, and it's just become more socially acceptable to job hop. So, I think there's, there is a piece of that. But I think ultimately, people come into cultures wanting to be successful. And when the culture and the processes aren't clear, so they don't know what's expected of them to be able to do a good job, like, how will I know I've done a good job? That's a piece of it. And then also having the processes in place to support them doing what they're doing, because the managers are, you know, spread thin, the team leads are spread thin, they don't have time to be elbow to elbow with a new employee. And so, one of the things I've been talking a lot about probably the last few years, but particularly now, is creating kind of standard work, you know, so people know, like, how does this job need to get done? You know, those kinds of training tools, because I think there's just not— sufficient onboarding and training. And when people don't feel supported, particularly your high performers, I know I would feel scared that I'm not going to be successful, so I might as well leave before I am told to leave. So I think that's a huge piece of it is just not having clear expectations or supportive processes and training to really help people be successful.

Yeah, I think everybody is stretched so thin. I think you hit the nail right on the head. Their managers are stretched so thin. It's kind of like, oh, crap, I forgot Judy is starting today. What time is she going to be here? Shit, I have a meeting. Tell you what, just have her fill some paperwork out and have her hang out by the front desk for a couple of hours. Before you know it, it's 4 o'clock. You're like, Judy, I'll get with you tomorrow. You don't set up her email, right? You know, and Judy just isn't feeling— or James or whoever, right? They don't feel like they're part of the team, right? Isn't that kind of—

Right. Yeah, absolutely.

Why is it so important for someone to feel— why is that first couple of days so stinking important to get somebody really Engaged.

Yeah, I think it's so important. And honestly, I, you know, in my prior, um, you know, days, I've definitely made that same mistake. Even, you know, somebody I was hiring on where you're just— you get distracted and it's easy to happen. But that's— so I've been there, done it.

Um, guilty as charged.

I'm coming from a place— I know I'm coming from a place of no judgment because I've seen most everything or stepped in something. But it is so important because, you know, I always want to feel valued and I don't care You know, I'm, I think I'm the gen like YZ or XY. I don't know. I'm somewhere in the middle. The ones where we had cell phones, but like, you know, they were the bag ones.

Those are great.

I love those.

Those were awesome. I wanna go back to my flip phone and I miss my BlackBerry like there's no tomorrow.

I know. I don't necessarily believe this whole, like, you gotta treat X generation different. I think it, yes, there's some nuances, but I think at the core, most people want to feel like they're making a difference. They wanna feel valued and appreciated for what they're doing. And they want to feel connected and able to be successful. I don't think most people show up to work wanting to do a bad job. They don't want to have, you know, that feeling of fear that someone's going to talk to them about a mistake they made. Most people want to— you have about 80% of your teams usually that middle high-performer group.

Mm-hmm.

And then your high performers, your top 10, and your low performers are, you know, usually your bottom 10 or so. But, you know, most people really want to do a good job. And so having those first couple days, you know, set up in a way that they can feel just valued and appreciated. And I think that's important too with your current team members is making sure that they understand, like, listen, we have put in the work to find the— who we believe are the right people to join the team. It will make all of our lives better if they can be successful. So, we want to make them feel welcome. And it can be hard for a team that's had a lot of turnover for them to— it's like another new face, right? Like, how long are you going to stay?

When they're on the island, it's kind of like, you know, you know, the replacement guys in the Army, you know, during World War II. Like, they never learned their names because they didn't want to, you know, when they got killed in the first couple of days, they didn't want to know their names.

I know. And I, so I do think there's some of that, you know, like, there's, there's definitely, I think, some recurring trauma that we've all had when you've had that much turnover. And so of course our staff feel it, but I think it's important to, you know, have them engaged of like, you know, we want this one to work. We want to give each new person coming in deserves the benefit of the doubt that every, you know, the first one did. And so, really just having that connection is so important. And then, and I also think onboarding and training, you know, people are like, oh, we've got the orientation days. It really should be a process. It should be continuous.

Yeah.

I think we, that's the other mistake we make is we dump so much information on them in the first few days and expect them to know everything in a week or two, and it's just not feasible. So, Really hardwiring that throughout everything we do, I think, is so important.

When I bring people in our organization, I tell them— I usually wind up hiring people that are like me, kind of hard-charging, right? Imagine that, a team of a lot of people like me. I try to find people that follow details better than I do. But be that as it may, I tell people, I'm not interested in where you are in 9 hours. I'm interested in the path you're on for the next 90 days. And I really— I've learned to set and manage the expectations. And that's kind of what you're saying, right? You've got to really— do you recommend giving like a timeline or a game plan of like, this is what I want you to learn week 1, and this is what I want you to master week 2, and things like that? Do you go that far?

Yeah, I think if you can, absolutely. I don't think any— I think all those things are very beneficial. I realize most practices are starting with nothing. So if you don't feel like you have time to write all that out, A, Maybe there's somebody who recently went, who, you know, some new employee who you consider a high performer, you might be able to have them create a draft for you. So I always encourage leaders to— I don't want— I think that's the other thing about leadership. I have been and tried to be the leader where I felt the pressure to figure it all out on my own. And I really want, you know, if nothing else, you know, before I, before I leave the earth, like, I want leaders to really shift the Like, how do you really give that— some of that responsibility and decision-making and, like, input, like, give it back, give that power back to your team? Help create the vision where you're going. It's still our jobs to, like, maintain that forward momentum and keep it on the same path and all those things. But the actual tactical, like, how do we create the change? How do we make things work?

Mm-hmm.

Our teams know much better than we do. Like, they just— because they live it every day. They live those nuances of interactions with the patients at the front desk and the scheduling and all the things. So really giving, you know, you could have someone who's new create some of that draft for you, but if you don't have an actual plan or don't feel like you have time right now to do that, then the other thing would make sure that you have some type of regular interval that you're meeting with the employee, you know, when they start. And I think it's all of us are like, oh yeah, we know, do that, but it can fall through the cracks. And there's many employees that I've talked to where they may not meet with anybody or they just meet with the HR person. You know, once in 30 days.

And that's not really meeting with somebody. No offense to HR, but that's not really— that's just basically them telling you not to screw up or date anybody at work.

Yeah, I think having a regular check-in with your team, whether that's weekly or monthly, but then also if there's someone you can assign as another staff or leader to help kind of partner, mentor, kind of a buddy type, train-the-trainer approach, some of those kinds of things. Have the trainer then be one who's helping bring on the new employees. I think any of those models can also be really helpful.

You know, it's interesting, when we were doing it in our clinic, we were sky— like, business was insane, right? And I'm like, you know, going grayer and grayer by the day. And I remember sitting there with my controller going, damn, we got to really create systems. And, you know, we need to hire more people, we're opening up this other clinic, we really need to go through and create all these checklists. And my office was right behind the front desk, and literally we had 2 front desk people and we had like 50, 70 phone calls a day coming in. I mean, place was insane.

Yeah.

And I hear Paulina Go. And Paulina was kind of— she was great. She became kind of my right hand of creating systems. And she spun around in her chair and she goes, you mean effing this? And she hold up a clipboard. And I go, what is that? And she comes in, she goes, I've already created the GD checklist. I'm like, oh, problem solved.

Let me take a look at it.

A couple of modifications, but this is pretty good. I go, when did you do that? Because I got— she goes, I got tired of burning through people left and right, right?

Yeah.

Front desk is a high-stress job.

She goes, She got tired of explaining it.

She goes, I got effing tired of people quitting.

Well, and it's like, it happens so much. Well, and depending if practices are doing testing and all of these kinds are— I've worked in a lot of— I've worked in ophthalmology, GI, radiology, and some other OB-GYN. And so some of these other surgical specialties too. And if you're doing imaging or testing or anything like that, really just having— it's like a competency checklist, those protocols. Not only, but the number of groups on the side that I work with, that's like, I'm like, well, do you have this written down? Or how do you— it's a 40-page manual. So the 40-page manuals have to go. It has to be discrete information that's bite-sized. If you're doing, you know, I encourage people to like do videos. If you're doing a training, record it and then break it up so people can find like, how do I check in like this specific type of patient? And they can go and watch that like 2-minute video nuance about how they have to do that thing versus— find that information in that 20-minute segment, you know? So, you know, yeah, maybe you need a video editor or something for a short time, but somebody probably on your team can do just breaking those things up and making it just real, really easy for them to access when needed.

Okay. I'll use a guide.

Because they don't wanna go to their managers. They don't wanna ask us. They don't wanna ask us.

They shouldn't go to us. They should be able to, I want people who have the ability to find the resource.

Right.

We do the exact same thing. Like every training video is under 5 minutes. Everything we do, and I've, look, I've done a bunch of startups, so I'm a little bit ahead of the game on But everything we do, when we do something once, we document it, and we document it with video and visual flowcharts. Rarely do we ever write out, do this, do this, do this. It's all flowchart. It's all visual.

Yeah.

So let's talk a little bit about how practice owners and leaders, how to create change and evolve, an evolution in their teams and practice. Because, you know, I think that's a big challenge that we're really facing today. Healthcare From my perspective, is changing faster during— it changed faster during the pandemic, and, and that's here to stay, right? There's been a lot of evolution, and quite frankly, the people that we work with, the doctors that we love so much, change is a little bit hard, right? They like their ways and they like their systems, and they know I'm not offending them. How do you create that sense of evolution and change in a practice? How do you create that culture, if you will?

Having been through the turnaround efforts more than I would like, I often found— I said I found myself in these positions where I was like, I should have asked better questions when I interviewed, but I'm I might not have taken the job sometimes.

Track them.

But I learned a lot. You know, I really, I ended up calling, so I use the term a day zero conversation, where really it's like a full reset of whatever's happened in the past is in the past, but like today is day zero. So, getting alignment around like where you're going, you know, this is where we are, this is where we need to go, creating things from, you know, communication, kind of like compacts ideally. You know, how are you going to work together across your leadership team if you have multiple people involved? And then how are you going to kind of agree to communicate with each other, kind of those non-negotiables, both productivity and behavioral standards that you really want to incorporate in your practice? Getting clarity around that for yourself first, but then bringing your team into that conversation. I think a lot of times as leaders too, we, with good intentions, we try to protect our teams. You know, finances start dropping, we don't want to freak anybody out, we don't want people to jump ship. But at the same time, we need to be transparent and vulnerable with them to say, Here's where we are. I'm not trying to scare you, but here's where we are. We need to make some changes because if we don't, we are going to be having issues. Or, you know, I want to be able to give you guys raises, but I also need to make sure that we're able to keep the lights on. And so, and getting there, then getting their input and getting their ideas around those changes and really having them, you know, I love— I started, you know, 10+ years ago talking about Lean Six Sigma process improvement. I would speak on that. And then now I still speak about that, but I usually start with If you don't have clarity around where you are and where you're going and getting engagement from the team with that, then you can do all the process improvement work you want, but it's just not going to stick and you're not going to get the results that are possible. So, really getting clarity, creating those, like, standards, expectations, and then getting your team engaged to help really create those results with you, it's going to get them more engaged and hopefully reduce the turnover more because they're going to be more excited to stay.

Okay. listeners to this, they're smaller practices, they might be doing less than a million bucks a year. I know we have quite a few that are multi-locations, but they may have only 12 people. Even with something that small, does that apply? I mean, I know you're working in these big hospital groups and things like that, but is it, is it equally as important to be doing this? Can't you just have a conversation with Frank in the hallway? So, because that's usually how more organizational change happens between patients.

I know.

I think there's a huge benefit to having a structured conversation. You can have a full 5-day retreat, which nobody has those But, you know, you could have a full day or 2 retreat, or you can have just, you know, take one of your regular staff meetings. Hopefully, you're having some kind of regular interaction. Take the place of that. And literally, it's about crafting a story, you know, crafting the story of where we are, where we're going, here's why we need to make changes, here's where I need help. You know, I don't know all the answers as a leader. You don't want me to come up with all the answers because, A, I'm not— it's going to take me too long, and B, you guys are better at it than I am.

Yep.

And then just, you know, really using even a brainstorming You know, technique just to really create, get those ideas on the table, and then you can create priorities. I think a lot of times as leaders, again, we have the best of intentions, but I know I've done this too, where you get all these ideas from your team, and then now it's on your shoulders to act.

Can't stay there.

And it's just not possible, and it gets overwhelming, or you get distracted by the 14th fire of the day. And so, really having these conversations, and depending on how much time you have, sometimes it may take a Well, it'll take more than one. But, you know, having— tell the story, brainstorm, get their ideas, set the expectation with them of, I want you guys to help us, you know, resolve these, kind of do some priority work with them, and then create some, you know, even straightforward action plans of— I always use the— this is by Kerry Patterson from Crucial Accountability, but, you know, who is going to do what by when and how do we follow up?

Love that.

So that there's some expectation, because if And making sure, as a leader, your name should not be the who in most of those. It really should be—

It should never be. It should never be the who, right?

And if there's too much on everybody else's plate, then you've just got to prioritize. I think we just— we're afraid to say no. So using some of those tactics can help you say no, or at least not right now. Like, these are the things we're going to focus on first, and then we'll come back. But I really do think that structured conversation is so important, not only to have to really think through it, but also to have the team there together. So they're connecting through that process and that experience.

How do you—

which you don't get in the way.

How do you determine, cuz you know, I think a lot of times people try to do too much, right? I'm sure you see that like the project board is 37 things, right? And they're all half-built bridges.

Oh, I hope.

Right.

Love those.

Yep.

How do you determine what is the most, is, is gonna be the most impactful? Like how do you whittle that list down to really kind of zero in on the most important thing?

I actually, one of the tools I'll use with, with brainstorming is like once you've got the ideas on the table, kind of group them together so you've got some, order to the madness, because hopefully you got a lot of feedback. But then really going through just an impact-effort matrix and saying, like, how much of an impact do we think this is going to have? Is it going to improve our workflows, allow us to see more patients, make a difference financially, make our work life better, whatever that is? How high of an impact do we think it's going to have versus how much effort is it going to take us? And so those things initially that are going to be kind of that sweet spot of the high effort versus the low impact, you know, at least pick a few of those and get started on those. 'Cause part of change management too is just getting some momentum.

Yep.

Um, or with anything, you know, you know, our side too, like taking that first, that first step is always the hardest. So really getting some momentum there is really important. And, um, then from there you can create action plans for those things that are gonna take a little bit more effort or need more time.

You know what's funny is, um, tomorrow we're recording this a month before it's released. So tomorrow we do our quarterly meeting with our private client group. So those are my top clients. equity partners, you know, people that have multiple locations, all that fun stuff. So we meet quarterly and we do a half-day planning day, right? And I just created that matrix for them about helping them determine what projects. And it was just what you were talking about— high impact, effort. I just want to confirm what you're saying is most people try to take the ones that take a lot of effort that have low impact, right? When really, go find the low-hanging fruit. Because if you can Get something that's going to give you a 60% improvement. It's better than a 20% improvement. It doesn't have to be 100% improvement, right? I mean, just make some progress, right?

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I think there's a couple tools that I like from Lean Six Sigma that are good. Even just doing a waste walk and walking around your practice with your team, or having your team do that to identify, like, where are those areas that we have too many supplies, or, you know, we're transporting patients or forms or specimens, you know, longer distances than we need to, doing some of that work. And then also just even organizing things in a consistent way so that all your exam rooms are set up so you don't have to go searching for items. Some of those things even can save, you know, just mental energy and ultimately money in terms of time and possibly supply expense as well. But, you know, even some of those things can really be helpful just to— because I think those visual can be really important. So I like to include one or two of those things as I'm making changes.

You know, we were talking about creating that culture of change and creating that kind of that culture of evolving. Do you have any final thoughts kind of where you want to land on that and just kind of what you're talking about your experiences with Six Sigma and just kind of really getting people up to speed?

Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of tools like Lean Six Sigma. I think, you know, some of my favorites, I was just saying about, you know, 5S, kind of really keeping everything organized in the similar way. You were talking about you did that with your exam lanes, which I think is great. We did that too at Duke. I mean, essentially, you want to save time so that you can just open that top left drawer and people know exactly what's there. They don't have to look at it. And then, so any of those visual things I think are really helpful. And then also just process mapping, you know, really taking the time to think through, like, what are all these steps that the patients go through or in your employees? You know, we did this when I was working with Mayo Clinic GI, and we mapped our— endoscopy process, and it was 216 steps. And really, there were only 3 value-added steps. I mean, we went into great detail because, you know, you can go through—

That's a lot of opportunity for error.

Exactly. Well, from the time that we looked at the process, from the time that— it's also important to think about, whenever you're doing these changes, A, to think about your start and endpoint. Like, what are we actually trying to tackle? Try not to eat the elephant. You know, bite-sized. And so you also want to have pre-data because you want to be able to celebrate success stories. And I think I've also made this mistake where you jump right in, you're so excited to get started, you don't take the time to get data, and now you make a change and you're like, do we actually make a difference? I don't know. Or how much did this save us? And, um, I think that's very important too in smaller practices and even all the way up to the big ones when you feel like you can't afford to take the time.

Yeah.

To do a project or to work on an initiative. The more that you can say, you know, we actually took, you know, X amount of time, a couple of days, or, you know, we broke it out over whatever amount of weeks, but we were able to save this, you know, either enhancing the patient experience, cause, you know, saving revenue, whatever that is. And so, you know, but the process mapping, so we had 216 steps from the start point in that scenario was the time the patient called for the appointment all the way until they got their final test result after the colonoscopy. And so, but the good, from a value-add perspective, the patient really cares about the result. the procedure, and we said, okay, they want sedation for everything.

Yeah.

But the rest of it is on the table to say, you know, do we even need to do this step at all? Or how can we do it better, more efficiently with less resources or different resources? And so once you're able to think about things like that, then you can get time observation data. You can get some of those discrete things that can say, yeah, we've gotten, you know, 100 prescription refills in the last 2 weeks. Like, how much time is that taking? Does that need to something, we need to hire a nurse. We need to hire a pharmacy tech is another resource I've used before. Like, just thinking differently. So really taking the time to kind of think through that and doing it with your team or even having your— if you're the physician and you're seeing patients, have your team have a little bit of training on how to do that. They can get things started. You can come in and add input, go back, see patients, kind of bounce in and out. You get lots of different ways to do it. Yeah.

And that's what I was— my whole point of before we got cut off was Mike, who was going to school to be a PA. He was 35 years old and he had spent 15 years in the military and did 9 tours of duty as a Green Beret.

Wow.

And he just, he basically took it upon himself. He's like, this can be better. And it was like, it was, you know, Adrienne, there was a moment in my business life and I've been an entrepreneur. I, you know, my first business was at 16 with a car wash at the country club.

Awesome.

Right. You know, I'm 54 at the time of this recording.

Yeah.

I've been in this space for a long time and it was really the first time, and this was 8 years ago.

Yeah.

That I finally was able to kind of like let go and let other people do that. When I did that, my business went like this, right? When I focused on developing me and then developing my team, as we were just talking, right, you know, working with coaches and things like that. I mean, to this day I work with coaches, never ends. I mean, I'm, I'm a former PGA golf professional and I have a guy I work with every 2 weeks on my golf game. I mean, it never stops for me.

So yeah. And I tell people all the time if I'm interviewing them to be someone I'm coaching them because we— I think it's an interview for the coaches interviewing the, you know, the client and vice versa, the clients interviewing the coach. But I'm like, if you don't hire me, that's fine, but you don't hire a coach who doesn't have a coach. Like, because if someone's not growing and developing themselves, then, you know, they need to be continually growing and challenged if they're gonna kind of help you too. So—

My stepson asked me, because, you know, I've got all these books, right, all over here, right? And he goes, have you read all of those? And I said, yeah, but that's only 10% of the books that I've read.

Yeah. Yeah.

You know, this is an ongoing process. I mean, if you could see, I won't move my camera around, but if you could see my desk, I have 3 books going at any one time. I mean, I spend significant amount of time going through stuff every day. It's just part of our, part of our business. Um, okay, so let's shift gears here. Uh, I got a question for you about, so you actually, we've been talking about process improvement and Why it's important and all of that. But you're also going to be working on— you've got a book and a software company that you're working on. So of course you do, because, you know, it's something else to do, right? Why not? You know, a couple of kids, you know, why not? Yeah, yeah, throw it. I heard a dog in the background.

Well, um, so, you know, you go from a 60 to 80 hour a week job to, you know, not that entrepreneur life is slow by any stretch. It's been a huge, huge curve, but Yeah.

So by the way, before we dive into the book and everything, what's been the biggest challenge for you from going from working in a corporate environment to being on your own? What's been the biggest challenge, the hardest part of the learning curve?

2 things. Mindset, just continuously understanding like where you, you hold yourself back when you don't have external pressures to meet deadlines. Because in organizations, like, there was always something coming or, you know, other people coming to you. And, um, really as an entrepreneur, you are setting your own expectations and then having to hold yourself to them. So that's been a process. And, but I also think it's an adjustment to just go from like a larger organization to being— I do have a team of, we're at 6 right now, but, you know, it's, it's still an adjustment to kind of go from leading hundreds of people and, you know, 12 hours of meetings some days and those things to being— to having quiet, learning what to do with the quiet and actually making sure that you're focusing on those priorities versus just as we're talking about, you know, you're leading yourself and you're leading your team in a whole different way. So.

Yeah, it's been a long time since I've been in corporate America. It's been 25 years. But Tuesday I had one call and it was like at 6 PM. Yeah, you know, you just have to be incredibly disciplined. And my Katie works from home too, my wife, and she's like, so what do you got on today? I'm like, I gotta— I can't let myself wander too much. I've got to be incredibly focused on just my projects. And yeah, it takes a lot of discipline. Tell us about this book you're in the process of— it's coming out in spring of 2023.

Yes.

And the reason why I said that is I'm then going to hold you accountable to make sure it's out Spring of 2023, not spring of 2024.

Fair enough.

So what's it about? What are you going to be sharing with people?

Yeah, it's— so it's actually called Stop Leading Alone. And then the subtitle is Start Building Teams That Lead With You, which I, you know, as we were talking about earlier, I really just think that as a leader, particularly in healthcare, there's just so— we feel we're given so much responsibility and weight, but we also put it on ourselves. And so really just shifting that, because I know what it's like to be, you know, literally 60, 80 hours some weeks. still feeling like you're not moving the needle. And to be able to shift that where you really can create that vision, engage your team, and get them involved, you can make just so much more. Not only can you make financial and operational changes and see the numbers start to move, which is always great, but you really start to feel like you can walk into your practice, your organization. And when somebody's knocking on the door, like my, you know, I used to feel my like stress level go up because it was like, what now? What has happened?

Yeah, they never stopped by to say, hey, you want a donut? No, it's always, Frank did his show today. Yeah.

Yeah.

And, if they did have a donut, you were really in trouble. But, yeah. So, going to where you're like, oh, okay. Hey, John, how are you? What do you want to talk about? And, that was really huge and being able to shift that. And so, I have a coaching and training program that I do that's called the Day Zero Blueprint. And, I was talking about the Day Zero conversations to really help people kind of walk through that journey and have the training and the support to be able to do that. So, the book definitely has alignment with those concepts and a lot of the tools that I use throughout that program just to really help people both get clarity of where they are and where they want to go, and then bring their team along with them so that they can all work together to create that environment that, you know, that family feel, if you will, even if you are a large or small organization. And because I want people to also be able to have time for themselves and what they're passionate about, whether it's their family or other hobbies or— friends or networking or, you know, giving back to the community, whatever they want to do. And, um, you know, really you've got to, you've got to be very intentional about that. As, as we know, time is precious. So that is what it's about.

Very cool. Well, I can't wait to— now, will you do us a favor? When the book is ready, will you let us send it out to our list so people can absolutely get a copy of it and all that good stuff? Because I look, I'm a, I'm a big believer of the big tent, right? Like, yeah, some people are like, why are you having— she's, she could be a competitor. No, the My— our mission is simple: help you, right? I help you, that's good enough for me, right? And if they wind up working with you and that benefits them, I'm all in, you know. And then let's talk about this AI. What, uh, what's this that you're working on in your lap? And what is this, just like—

I know, no, um, yeah, so it's optimizedflow.ai, and it is a software solution that will actually measure staff workload in really time-based elements so that you can look at both Productivity, like performance-wise. So as you set that expectation of someone working up X number of patients, or, you know, different— but it doesn't just look at volumes, it actually ties it to different types of patients because we know a patient's often not a patient. So really having those kind of information to be able to look at your high, middle, low performers so you can address accordingly and support accordingly, but also project your staffing needs, which is very helpful. as you take on new initiatives, you're trying to grow, or if you do have multiple locations to really be able to assess where are you using your resources, where do you need resources. And I have some other phase 2, phase 3 things that I think it can help with more of, you know, space resource utilization and even template design and those kinds of things for our schedules and that kind of stuff.

But software is an interesting beast. I have, I have my own SaaS and every day it's like, it's going to cost how much to make that addition?

Cost. We've partnered with the tech incubator groups that they have a lot of great resources, and then definitely anticipate lots of ROI. We know, I mean, if you can optimize your staff and add another patient or even add, you know, the programs that you're helping people with, there's just a lot of opportunity to increase that margin and also, again, reduce the stress, reduce the lack of knowledge. Data is power, so being able to see where your resources are. That's so important.

It's huge. So we got a couple more minutes here. Um, so I just— to really one last— this is gonna be kind of a left-field question, but I always like to do this to people. So you put in that you love to travel, right? That's one of your favorite things to do. What's your favorite place you've ever been to?

I love— I mean, I do love the Caribbean, so that is a huge, huge pull, but I, I probably say Spain.

Where in Spain?

I really loved, uh, Sevilla. Sevilla. Yeah. Yeah, it was just the architecture was beautiful. Um, and that trip too, we ended up going to like Granada and Cádiz, and it was just gorgeous. But I didn't make it over to Barcelona. I've heard Barcelona is also amazing, so that's on my list, and a few other places.

But I have been to that. I've been to both. So yeah, Spain's gorgeous. Spain's absolutely beautiful. And favorite place to get— favorite place to travel here in the US?

In the US, I do love St. John, but I know that's kind of off the coast. Yeah, that's in the In the States, like mainland side, would probably be more Southern California.

Yeah, Southern California is gorgeous. Just don't want to pay the taxes.

I lived in Arizona for 6 years, so I do love Scottsdale and Phoenix too.

But except for in August. August, it's not—

yeah, August, July, really. Yeah, really June through September, it's kind of touching.

A little rough, kind of like November through February or March up in Minneapolis. Um, all right, so how do people get in touch with you if they want to find out more? Where do they go? A couple of different resources. Do they want to talk with you? Where do they find you?

Yeah, absolutely. We have our website, optimize-healthcare.com. And then I also have included a Bitly link. So bit.ly/AdrienneLloyd, and that will get you kind of to a form. You can select some options and get on a call with myself or a member of our team to talk about kind of a variety of things that we do and really just free time to figure out what's the most important thing for you to work on for your practice to really move the needle.

Perfect. So that's optimize-healthcare.com, right?

Correct.

Yep. And then we've got the— I'll put the Bitly in the show notes so people have it so that way, because some people— you and I know what a Bitly is. Some people may have no clue. Um, so, well, great. I, uh, any final thoughts here that you want to share with people? Any bits of wisdom you want to drop on them?

Uh, I, um, maybe to repeat, but, you know, just again, as a leader, you don't have to figure it out all yourself. You do have to show up, you do have to paint the vision, you do have to continue, you know, to chart the course. But really, the more that you can kind of bring your team into those, those difficult situations you may be dealing with or where you need their involvement, I think that creates better results, but just more engagement, which is going to hopefully reduce turnover as well and create more sustainability. So we want you all to be successful and help. There's more than enough, as Matt said, like there's more than enough need and healthcare, um, for everyone to be successful and for people who do what Matt and I do too to be able to help because there's just, there's so much opportunity. So we really want you guys to be successful.

Yeah, I agree. I mean, look, the future of our country really is dependent on great healthcare, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, this, you know, and, um, I don't believe in one answer, you know. There's, there's a lot of different ways to get to the promised land of great health and, uh, I'm certainly not going to sit here and say that hospital groups and insurance companies and pharmaceutical groups, there aren't some things that they do great stuff, right? I mean, there's some amazing— there's some been amazing advancements. And yet I also think that we need to make sure that there's a voice for those that want to operate outside of that traditional environment because people like me want it. So there's a lot of us. So nice to have you on there. And, um, thank you. Again, check it out, check her out at optimize-healthcare.com. That's optimize-healthcare.com. And if they're in Chapel Hill, that's where you are. And no, we did not coordinate we're Carolina Blue for those of you watching on the YouTube stream. So, but thanks so much for coming. I appreciate it.

Thank you for having me. Yep, I appreciate it.

Thank you so much for listening. If you liked this episode, take a moment and share it with your fellow medical professionals or post a positive comment And rate it on wherever you just listened. Now don't forget, you can get a copy of my book, The Anatomy of a 7-Figure Medical Practice, for free. Just pay $7.95 in shipping and handling. Plus you'll get over $1,197 in free bonus material. Simply go to srpmedicalmarketing.com/book. That's srpmedicalmarketing.com/book. Thank you so much, and we'll see you next time.