EP045: Changes to Grow Your Practice with Sachin Patel

Welcome to the Perfect Practice Podcast where we share the most innovative strategies to help you build a successful functional medicine business, attract your ideal patients, serve your community, and get paid what you're worth. Each episode is packed with practical steps that you can take to immediately grow your influence and serve more people. Our mission is to share golden nuggets from successful practitioners, technology experts and innovators from around the world. Your host, Sachin Patel, is a functional medicine and success coach, international speaker and best selling author. He's calling in all his favors to bring this information to you so you can create your perfect practice.

Hello and welcome to a very special episode of Perfect Practice. Today we're going to do things a little bit different. I'm actually driving in the car. I've got about a 20 minute drive or so close to the airport here in Toronto. I'm going to a meeting where I'm going to be discussing some of the benefits of medicinal mushrooms. Now, you might be wondering, why am I doing this from the car? Well, I just got really inspired. I had a conversation with a couple of kids that came to my house and I also wanted to share some of the things that I've been learning over the last few weeks. Have gone to a few different conferences and masterminds and I've also hosted a mastermind with my team that I think is going to provide you with a ton of value and insight so that you can look at your practice through a different lens and see if any of this lands and start applying for it. Because I believe what you believe, which is the world needs more functional medicine practitioners doing more functional medicine and empowering their communities with healthy lifestyle changes, dietary changes, and also environmental changes so that they can create their best life not only for themselves, but also their children. And so you're listening to this podcast because you want to be better at delivering that and creating that amazing world that you've got up in your mind and in your heart. And my goal is to help you. If I can help you move there faster, then I'm going to do whatever I can to make that happen. And that's why I love doing this podcast. It's my way of, you know, taking the muck that's around in my head and putting it into words in the hopes that it helps you advance your reach and help more people and, you know, put more positive karmic currency out into the world. So, as I mentioned, a couple weeks of travel, I actually had my first trip to Sedona, which was super awesome. We stayed at an enchantment which my wife booked, and it was well worth the trip out there. Four days in Sedona was really magical, something that we both needed and really enjoyed. And then the other thing too that I did was I did a three day, you know, growth strategy with my team. So we had a mastermind with our entire team, all 10 of us, and we basically took our business apart and reassembled it. Knowing what we know now, and sometimes, believe it or not, it's actually easier to start over than it is to fix something. So despite knowing everything that I know and everything my team knows, it's oftentimes easier to build something from scratch. So that's the benefit that you have of tuning into, you know, podcasts like this, and hopefully you're getting guidance from all kinds of different people and implementing what you feel lands for you. But, you know, the benefit of starting fresh or not having anything built out just yet, sometimes that can feel frustrating. But the good thing is that you haven't built something that isn't working right. And so sometimes, you know, Joe Polish taught me this and I feel it's very true. Success traps are the hardest traps to get out of. So something might be working and sometimes it's working just good enough so that you could get by and nobody's upset, but it's not living up to what, you know, the potential is for you and what the potential is for your practice and what the potential is for your community to experience what you have to share. So I thought I'd share some of the highlights that came to mind with my practice. And I also wanted to share a story as I was leaving right before this meeting, which means I'll probably be a few minutes later than I thought I was going to be. But as I was leaving, there was two kids that came to my door. They appeared like his. One was quite young, one was probably in his 20s, and they were from Sick Kids Hospital, which is a local hospital here in Toronto that thankfully we have because, you know, God forbid anyone's child gets sick. We want a place where they can go and they can get world class care. And they were coming and asking for money because they need more funding for cancer research and, you know, all that good stuff. And, you know, I just came right out and I shared with them that I'm happy to support their cause, but in a different way. And I explained to them a little bit more about what functional medicine is and how it works. And then all of a sudden, one of the, one of the gentlemen who was there, he Asked me I knew his wife and that I looked familiar. And I said, well, if you're. He said his. I'm sorry, not his wife, his mom. And his mom is a holistic nutritionist. And I said, you know, I recognize the name. I don't recognize the connection here because the name was familiar to me, but the person wasn't. And, you know, I brought him a copy of my book. I said, let me give you a copy of my book. And as soon as he saw the book, he's like, oh, my God, my mom has that book at home and she wanted you to sign it. And she came to a conference. She didn't know you were speaking there, and she was unable to get it signed because she didn't bring it with her. So I gave him a signed copy of my book. So not only did he get to hear my functional medicine spiel on, you know, how to keep kids healthy, but he also got a copy of a signed book for his mom. And in the book, I actually told her that she should be proud of her son. So a really cool story there. And had I not said anything, then that connection would have never been made. So it was amazing that, you know, I did that. I was actually kind of impressed with myself. My wife was, you know, high fiving me. She was kind of impressed. She's like, you know, that's what you call a fearless leader. And, you know, I kind of share this. Not to edify myself, but I share this, you know, because I want to know how many of you would have done the same thing, right? How many of you have that same sort of courage and conviction of your message that when somebody from, I don't want to say the opposite team, but, you know, somebody from a different team comes and asks you and for help, for something that you can help people with, what do you do? So I offered to go and speak there, I offered to come and educate there. I offered my time, which was worth far more than what some people would donate. And I also offered a solution to these children, right? And so, because that's because I believe in what I have to offer into the world. I believe in what you have to offer into the world because we offer the same thing, which is love, compassion, and root cause resolution. And. And so ask yourself, would I have done the same thing? And if the answer is yes, then good for you, and the answer is no, then it doesn't mean you didn't want to. But maybe the courage is something that's missing, and courage is basically the fear. Our Courage is overcoming our fear of rejection or loss. And I realized that I had nothing to lose except helping, potentially helping these kids. And at least I helped that one kid that came to my door because I got a copy of my book to his mom. His mom's gonna go nuts when he tells her this. He was so excited. He should have seen it. I took a selfie with him as well, so I'll share that on social media. Anyways, fun story. Thought I would share that. I hope you get a good smile out of that. And just know that opportunity to share a message exists around every single corner. And it's our job to fight fearlessly for that message so that who knows whose ears that lands on and what level of influence and impact something like that could have. And I hope I show these kids to really stand up and be courageous for what you believe in. Right. So anyways, hope that resonates with you. Now let's. Let's go through some of the things I learned over the last few weeks that I thought I would share with you. A couple of updates that you might notice on our website is we changed our discovery call process. And instead of just making the discovery call available to anyone and everyone, because we like to do that, we don't like to be a practice that excludes people, but we realized is that some people didn't read or they don't read, or they refused to read. And so now instead of having just a simple survey, they fill out and schedule an appointment. We actually have an application process. And one of the key questions that we asked on the application that you can implement into yours is, you know, we get lots of people applying to be patients in our practice. Why should we choose you? And it's interesting to see the responses that we're getting. So far, virtually everyone that's filled out the survey has been a good lead for us, a good prospect that we can help which is most important. And secondarily, they're willing to help themselves. So it seems to be working in a positive way. Another change that we made is we became very clear with who we want to serve. And the whole team came up with designing the avatar of our practice. And not just the avatar, but also the attitude of the avatar in our practice. And that goes a long way. You know, somebody who resonates with our team and our team's values is somebody who we can increase value for. We can only increase value for people who share the same values as we do. And even after that weekend, I actually had to let go of One of my biggest clients, because they had some unrealistic expectations, and their expectations, being unrealistic, were stressing out the entire team. So, thankfully, I don't do this for money. I do this because I love doing this. I gave her her money back with a big smile on my face. Felt bad for her because I don't know where she's gonna get someone to deliver the results that she wants in the timeline that she wants. But, you know, the good news is, is that, you know, she's found a solution that suits her needs, which is going in a different direction. And I found a solution that suits my needs, which is going in a different direction. And guess what? I still love her. I have no negativity at all whatsoever towards her, and I knew that if I was not able to meet her expectations, that the relationship would have gone south. So, thankfully, I'm able to preserve the friendship and the relationship and also hopefully wish her well so that she can find the person that she's looking for. So that was another thing. Right. And it's important for me not to share that story with you again, not to edify myself or. But to share with you that sometimes this happens to us. And, you know, we have to take the right measures to protect our team, to protect ourselves, to protect our own energy. Because, you know, let's face it, when you work with somebody whose expectations are difficult to manage or timelines are difficult to manage, it drains you. You know, you lose sleep over that and you feel like, you know, your confidence goes down and your level of certainty declines. And that's not fair to you. It's not fair to the next person that you're going to. To talk. Talked right after that person or even the day after. Right. Sometimes this can have a lasting effect on us. So we got really clear with who our avatar was. We also practiced something that I learned from Joe Polish as well, which is the willingness to blow up anything that isn't serving you anymore and letting go of things that are no longer serving you. Maybe projects you've got on the chopping block that need to be eliminated altogether. There's probably a dozen things that you'd rather not be doing, but you're going to try to force yourself to do, and you're never going to get them done. So they just stay on your to do list, and you feel defeated all the time. So think of some projects that you need to ditch. We also shortened our intake form, so that was pretty good. We took about, you know, 10 or 15 pages off of our intake form due to redundancy. So that should streamline the process a little bit for clients. And we're going to be updating the EMR that we use. We're waiting for an updated release that includes multiple practitioners from Practice Better, and they're going to be launching that here pretty soon. And once they do, it's going to be a game changer because they've got an amazing platform. If you're a solo practitioner, check out their platform. It's called Practice Better, and the website is practicebetter IO Let them know I sent you and I'm sure they'll hook you up in some way. I don't really have a formal agreement with them, but I know them quite well and I've been helping them and their team developed a software that's outstanding for you guys. So check them out if you're looking for a new ehr. It does everything. I've been, you know, really drilling some of my clients that are using it, and none of them have had anything negative to say about it, which is the first time ever. And we've gone through multiple EHRs and EMRs to try to make all of this work. And it just combines so many awesome, you know, things in one place. It integrates with Zapier, which means it integrates with virtually everything else that's out there. There's an online education portal that's built into there. There's an app that goes with it. You can send push notifications. It does pretty much anything and everything you want it to do. And we're going to make sure it gets even better because we're going to be providing our input. So that's another thing that we're going to be changing. We also changed some of our internal policies and created some standard operating procedures. So if there's anything that, you know, you're doing regularly, then you want to create a standard operating procedure around it. We actually do this in Google Drive and Google Docs, because they're living documents that can be edited at any time, which allows you to, you know, make updates on the fly as you need to. So that's another thing that we did. And if you've got a team, if you're more. If you're more than one person, then you should be having masterminds at least once a quarter, if not more than that, where you're discussing some of the strategies of your business, where you're trying to, you know, really go deep into your business and ask your team members how you can make your business better. Using their input. Not just with you thinking you know what's best, but with your entire team working together and collaboratively. And here's what happens when, when your team is receptive, when you're receptive to input and feedback from your team, then your team can help you build the practice. And guess what? When it's, whenever it's somebody else's idea, they usually hold themselves accountable to that idea or to that concept or that project that they're putting on themselves. And it gives you a chance to see what these people are made of, right? Gives you a chance to let them show you how much the business or the practice and what you do means to them. And by giving them that opportunity, they're able to grow. They're able to, you know, expand their role and expand their influence in your organization. So lots of cool things that you could be doing, you know, and lots of great ideas can come from these type of mastermind type of interventions. So make sure you're using more and more of them. And this is something Napoleon Hill said over and over, that the mastermind is a super valuable way of growing your business and identifying problems and nipping things in the bud. It's also great to get your team together if you have a team to connect outside of the work environment. So we had everyone over at my house. Some people slept over. So it was a really fun, you know, almost like a vacation type of deal. And we learned a lot. We actually had big post it notes. They were all over the walls and we were drawing on them and stuff. We defined our avatar. We defined what living proof means. We also started with the end. And the end is somebody who is a raving fan. And we reverse engineered what that process looks like for them. We looked at the entire life cycle of our clients. So not just taking them from being a patient and getting rid of their health challenges, but also what happens after that. You, how do we help these people continue to grow and expand and become the absolute best version of themselves is if all we do is we let them go back to their own free reign after they're done getting quote unquote healthy. What does that even mean? You know, health is a constant evolutionary journey. And even if you are healthy, whatever that means, you're still looking to evolve emotionally and spiritually and mentally. Right? It's like an onion. You gotta keep peeling the layers, so to speak. So, you know, we designed a three year master plan for our clients instead of a six month master plan which was focused strictly on symptomology and Diagnosis. Now we're moving in the direction of, okay, how do we create abundance and vitality and financial prosperity, spiritual prosperity, the prosperity of our consciousness and taking that to a whole new level. Those are the things that we want to work on with our clients. So the vision became much more clear with our team, and that's what getting everyone together in a room can be helpful for. I also learned that there are certain people on our team that want to contribute more. Right. And they have more bandwidth that they're willing to contribute to the mission. And that was really great to see people step up. And it was great to get all the A players in one room. And that brings me to another topic, which is every organization should strive to have A players. A players only like working with A players, and they only allow you to hire A players, whereas B players only hire C players. And they actually don't like working with people who are better than them, and they don't like being quantified and they don't like necessarily being measured. So make sure your team is filled with A players and make sure that everyone on your team wants to go to the same, you know, win the same championship or go on a rocket ship to the same planet. Because if they want to go somewhere else, then it may not be the right fit for them, right? And that doesn't make them bad people. It doesn't make you a bad person. It may not be the right fit if somebody wants to go to Mars, but you're designing a rocket that's going to Jupiter, it doesn't make you better, or it doesn't make the other person better or worse. It's just a different trajectory that both of you need to go in in order to achieve that goal. So keep that in mind as your team is evolving and growing. You know, are people in the right roles? Are they the right fit? Is this the right time? You know, and also keep in mind that sometimes we're going to plant a seed in the soil and the soil is going to grow, right? And that's what needs to happen to that seed, is it needs to grow. And so allow your team to evolve, allow them to expand in their role. Make sure you're surrounded by A players, A players, like working with A players. They want to win the championship. They're going to do whatever it takes. They're going to stay overtime if they need to, they're going to come early if they need to. You know, they're in it to win it. They're not in it to get second place. They're in it to go all the way. So that's another thing that you want to be mindful of in your business. So lots of nuggets. I hope you got some value out of this. I actually have to run here at my event. Lots of love to you. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Something Different. Let me know. Give me some feedback. If you like it in the car, if you like it from me in the studio, the energy is probably a little bit different. I don't have any notes in front of me. I'm just. I'm just freestyling this and I'd love to hear your feedback. Anyways, talk to you soon. Love to you all. Bye.