How To Keep, Attract And Retain Top Talent In A Difficult Market

Welcome to the Practice Profit System podcast. Do you own a cash-based practice? Are you looking to start one? Tired of working endless hours and still not making enough money? Want to fire your insurance company? Then you're gonna love our podcast. Each episode is full of insights and proven strategies to grow your practice to 7 figures and more, allowing you to take more time off, make more money, and no longer have to take insurance reimbursements. Plus, get a free copy of my book, The Anatomy of a 7-Figure Medical Medical Practice, where I detail my entire journey to creating my own 7-figure practice. Just go to www.srpmedicalmarketing.com/book. You just pay $7.95 in shipping and handling, and you'll also get over $1,197 in free bonuses. That's www.srpmedicalmarketing.com/book. Now, on to our show.

Welcome to the Practice Profit System. This is Matt Gallogly, and on today's podcast, I have a question for you. Are you struggling to keep good employees? Are you having a hard time finding great employees? Or are the employees you have just not getting the job done? You just wish that they would actually do what you want them to do. Well, that's today's topic, so you're going to really enjoy this on the Practice Profit System. So let's talk about employees. In today's market, at the time of this recording, there's over 6 million people who have left the workforce. I want you to think about that. 6 million people have left the workforce. And do you want to know what segment of the workforce is losing the most? It's the folks that are— it's traditionally women that are leaving the workforce. And it's traditionally women who are women of color, ethnicity. Non-Caucasian that are leaving the workforce and folks that do not have a college education. So what do you do about this? If you're a medical practice, there's a pretty good chance that you rely on one or multiple of those segments to either run your front desk, be an MA, and you're finding it really, really hard to find really good people. Well, first and foremost, you're not alone. This is an epidemic that is actually going on in the country right now. This is a net result of COVID There's a lot of reasons why this is going on because of COVID but just rest assured it's going on and it's going on across the country. I know this because this week is what I call coaching week. And on coaching week, what I do is I do a 45-minute call with each one of my one-on-one clients. These are folks that are in private client group. They pay me anywhere between $24,000 in excess of $50,000 a year. In some cases, we actually do a profit share Or a rev share split based on the increase. And I wind up owning a percentage of their practice in our management company. But the real important part of this is a lot of my clients, like I said, over 50% of them this week, this was the main topic. Things are going along great, business is booming, and all of a sudden 1 or 2 people just up and leave, or they are trying to find replacement people. They're scheduling interviews and people are not only not showing for the interview, But they'll interview somebody who's great, make an offer to them, and they ghost them. Why? Why is that? And what do you do about it? Well, the thing you have to understand is once you get over $50,000 a month— and I really want you to set this in your mind— if you're just opening right now, or you're listening to this, you're thinking about opening, or you're doing about $25,000 a month, understand when you get to $50,000 a month, your practice actually becomes— get this— a personal development company. I'll explain this to you in just a moment and why this is so important, but I want to give you a little bit of background and a little bit of context. So when I had my own practices, if you're a longtime listener to this, you've probably heard this story multiple times, but the reality is, is that we grew really, really fast. Within our second month, we were doing $130,000 a month. By our fourth month, we were doing $200,000 a month. By the time we reached our seventh month, I hit 2 locations. And each were doing, one was doing about $125,000 a month, one was doing about $200,000 a month. And my mentor and my longtime coach, Rob Berkeley, told me something in one of our calls. And what he told me was that I now own a training and personal development company. And it struck me as really odd. I'm like, I don't own a personal development and training company. I own a medical practice. That's the business that I'm in. And then later on that week, I went to dinner with a mentor, lunch with a mentor friend of mine. We would have lunch about every 6 to 8 weeks. His name is Byron. And Byron at the time had 25 med spas located in Texas, Arkansas, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. And he told me something really, really interesting one day over sushi as we're sitting there and I'm kind of talking about some of the growth challenges. And this man had a tremendous amount of wisdom and he told me, he said the biggest mistake he made in the growth of his business was he waited to create Training. Now, I'm not talking about training about how you inject. That's certainly part of it. I'm not talking about training about how you open, how you close, checklists, all of that. I'm talking about the training of the people. And he said, I think it was around number 8 or number 10 location that he finally decided to create a centralized training location at his main property outside of Charlotte in Ballantyne, North Carolina. And he said the opening of that training facility where he would bring people in from all over the country to train, was one of the biggest positive impacts that he made in his business. In fact, he said the biggest mistake he made was not in opening it, but in waiting to open it. Now, when he sold his practices and took a big chunk of money and retired down to the beach, over time, the group that bought it got rid of the training center, and there's been a decline in the, in the practices, or in the revenue and the profits of the practice. Now, you can't sit there and say it was just specifically that. but you can certainly infer it. And see, in today's market, what people want is they don't just want a paycheck. They don't just want to be paid well. They don't just want time off. They want to know that you care about them. And the development of your team, not just in their technical skills, but more so in their mental skills, their mindset, is a big game changer. It's a big, big difference. So this last weekend, I have a team of about 5 staff members. A lot of them are international. I have people in Kenya and I have people in Venezuela and Nigeria. That's where a lot of my staff reside. And we get together on a Zoom call every single Monday at 12 o'clock. And we go over our numbers, we talk about what we're working on and what are the things that we're going to get done, all of that. And I did a training on what I call the ultimate personal development training. And that's what I taught on this last Monday. Well, the response to it on the team was astounding. I was blown away at something that I take for granted, that I've done a lot of work on, is my own personal development. They thought it was the most amazing thing that they've ever experienced. Now, mind you, they actually don't get a lot of— they have just as much exposure and access to a lot of this stuff as we do, but they said no employer had ever taken the time to actually talk to them about these things. I called it The Ultimate Guide to Personal Success. And I'm going to share a few of those snippets with you. But before I do that, I want to give you some more context on that. This is how important this is. If you've ever bought anything from Lululemon, you know what I mean, the black stretchy pants, the yoga pants, highly recommend that you go listen to or read Chip Wilson's book, the founder of Lululemon, his book. And he actually their first 2 weeks of any new employee, they sent them to Landmark Forum and they had to go through Brian Tracy's Psychology of Personal Achievement. Okay? And that was their first 2 weeks. And he said that one thing made the biggest positive impact and change in their business. It actually lit their people on fire. And what I want you to understand is your people haven't been through the work and the development that you have been through. And most people are living lives of quiet desperation. They don't know how to change the trajectory of their life. They're not us. And so it's really important that you understand that your job isn't that they're going to work for you for the rest of their lives, because they're not. Your job is to take them when they come in and make them a better citizen and a better member of society to when they leave. Now, you might be saying, yeah, but Matt, I pour this time and energy into people and then they leave me. So what? That's not the point. Like, Look at it this way. It's another way of healing people. It's another way of making people feel better. I mean, you are in medicine, right? This is a form of medicine. It's mental medicine. It's just not— we're not talking about being a psychotherapist. Okay. And so here are a couple of key things with regards to the Guide to Personal Success. Now, I'm not gonna be able to go deep in each and every single one of these. I'm gonna give you kind of a flyover. There's a positive response and we get a lot of downloads on this, I'll do more of this. So, or just contact our office and say, I want to know more. Okay. So here's the first thing I want you to understand. Anything can be learned, mastered, and developed.

Anything.

I'm not a doctor. You know that. And I always tell my doctors, I never could have made it through med school. And you want to know what they all say to me? Sure you could have, Matt. You could have made it through med school. You just would've had to buckle down. That's all. You're smart enough to have done it. Now, I don't see myself as smart enough to be a doctor, but a lot of my doctors go, you'd make a great doctor. I'm like, you think I could actually handle organic chemistry with my ADHD? They're like, no, you'd find a way to do it. And that's the lesson I want you to have. You may not have any training in business. You may not think of yourself as having any training in business, but you can do it. Unquestionably, you can do it.

You can learn it.

If you made it through organic chemistry and basic anatomy and advanced anatomy and all these things and understand prescriptions and all this stuff and all these 5-syllable words, You can learn to become great at business. That's why you're listening to this podcast. The second thing is, you have to quiet your inner critic. Now, the inner critic, everybody has an inner critic. Some of them, it sounds like your mother. Some of them, it sounds like your father. Some of them, it sounds like Sister Mary whatever Callahan. Some of it's your neighbor, your grandmother, a second-grade teacher, whatever it is. Everybody has an inner critic, and that inner critic takes over our mind and our thoughts quite a bit. Now, I don't care what form of ancient texts you read, but every single one of them talk about being able to speak into an existence or thinking about the things that you want versus the things that you don't want. Well, the inner critic is exactly that. The inner critic is designed, as Steven Pressfield says in his book, The Art of War, they are the resistance point. Okay? You have a job to quiet that inner critic. You cannot succeed with an inner critic. Now, we all have them. You just have to learn how to minimize them. Now, the third part, and I'm going to tie these next 2 together, is picture a bigger, brighter future. Now, I am a former PGA golf professional. I'm 54 years old at the time of this recording. I've been playing golf since I was 6 years old. I never played on tour, but I'm a pretty decent player. Okay? And even though I don't play as much, that much anymore, I play maybe 2, 3 times a month, I can still go out and shoot in mid to high 70s. Why? Because I have the power and the ability to think through my round of golf. I may not hit it as well as I used to, but I think about the result before each and every single shot. And one of the— guess what? Every single time I stand behind the golf ball and I look at my shot and I envision it, I never envision it going badly. If I do have that picture of the shot going badly and that is the predominant thought, guess what happens? The shot goes badly. Okay? So you have to picture a bigger, better, and brighter future. 4, you got to be honest about where you are right now. Most people, they— I never want my clients to hit 100% of their goal. I always want them to hit about 75% of their goal. I always want them pushing themselves and striving to hit more. But you've got to be honest about where you are right now. And then you have to understand your why, why you're doing this. And again, I'll go deeper on some of these in future podcasts. And you have to go 7 levels deeper on that why. Now, The last one that is part of this, the 7th one, has to come down to a basic philosophy and concept of I have. That's how I live my life. And I've lived my life this way pretty much since in my early to mid-30s. And the story goes like this. As you know, again, if you've listened to my podcast, I used to be in the real estate space. We used to do Pre-foreclosure deals. We had a funding company. We had a training company. We did deals all over the country. And the interesting thing was that things were going great. And then this little thing called the Great Recession hit and all the money dried up. And I got wiped out. I wound up having to go personally bankrupt. I think my bankruptcy filing, I think at last count was something like 62 pages. That's a lot, by the way. And it was a real demoralizing part of my life. Now, I come from a family where I have a mother who's got very strong opinions about things, and she will tell you what her opinion is. She passed away about 4 or 5 years ago. But the thing about this is that she was my inner critic. She was hypercritical of me for this failure, and I should really just give this stuff up, and I should go get a job at a bank and get my MBA or something like that. Certainly not looking for pity, but I was pretty upset about this and had a lot of other friends that were going through some very, very difficult times. They had families that were being supportive of them. I did not, at least that larger family, my wife at the time was very supportive. My kids are very supportive, even though they were very young. But I remember being very upset, but then I understood, well, wait a second. What if that environment that I was in growing up is actually a blessing? What if the fact that my mom was being hard on me was a blessing? Because that's actually where I get my resilience from, is I get it from her. She's an incredibly resilient woman, or was an incredibly resilient woman. Overcame lots and lots of her life— in her life, went on to become a successful businesswoman with nothing more than a high school degree, who had raised 6 kids at the age of 48, had to go back into the workforce, and became very, very successful in business. And my dad died when I was 13 years old, and everyone's like, oh my God, that must be so awful. But is it really? Again, short version of this, dad dies, we have to sell the house, we moved to a townhome on a golf course. I wind up working in the bag room, get really into golf. Get mentored by Charlie Carpenter. Wind up going to golf school. Da da da da da da da. Meet my first wife there. Have three amazing kids, right? The point of this is everything that happens or doesn't happen is a blessing. This is number seven. What if everything that has happened so far is a blessing? Nothing is ever good. Nothing is ever bad. It's we get to determine whether it's good or bad. I choose. One of the things that I have learned, and I continually teach my clients this, is everything is good. Everything. When something happens to us, only 1% of it is actually what's happened to us. The other 99% is how we decide to use it for our benefit and our fuel. Okay? So when you understand this component, you have to understand your staff is going through a lot of these same things, but they don't have the access to this kind of education, or they're not They have access to it, I should say, but they're not necessarily going out and looking for this. Your job, part of your job, is to train your people every single week, not just in the nuts and bolts of what you do in the practice, but in the mental development of themselves. That's key. And, you know, one of the key things that I look for in people on my team is they have to have a heart for growth and education. If they don't, they don't work for me. And if they do, then they're going to do great. And so remember this, your ability to get great people— because one great person is worth 2 average people, okay? Your ability to get great people isn't just about what you pay them. It's not about the benefits. It's not about the signing bonus. It's not about competing with the hospitals. It's about the development of the person. Show them that you care, develop them, make them better. Well, somebody once said, well, what happens when I develop them and they leave me? Well, okay, would you rather have a bunch of people that you haven't developed that never leave? Because I would rather have people that I continually develop that do great, great work and they go into bigger and better horizons because that's a piece of our business, a piece of our practice, a piece of our culture going out into the world, making the world, as I like to think, Just a wee bit better. So there you go. That's it for today. Hope you enjoyed it. As always, take the time, rate us 4 or 5 stars. I hope, I hope you love it. Post a comment, share with your friends. It's been really fun to watch the growth of this. You're part of something great. Our downloads are gonna be well in excess of 300 this month, up from 212 last month at the time of this recording. Keep up the great work. Keep sharing it. Thank you so much. Have a great— by the time you're gonna get this, I think Thanksgiving is already done. So. We're going to be heading into the holiday season, so a great holiday season for you all, and I look forward to talking to you soon. Have a great day, everybody.

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 week.

Thank you.