How to Find Freedom by Putting People First with Bob Herrmann

Welcome back to the podcast. Today's guest is living proof that when you grow up in Arizona with a Jersey attitude, an 11 year old hustle can lead to something amazing. Meet Bob Herman. He's a CEO and that stands for Chief Energy Officer of Team4Kids Pediatric Therapy. Bob's entrepreneurial fire was lit by a baseball coach, and he's been swinging for the fences ever since. Alongside his wife Lisa, he built a practice that now spans across Arizona, serving thousands of children in Arizona's West Valley. And while his business is booming, his favorite part, Watching kids laugh and play in the clinic. Because therapy should feel like recess. With results. So from mindset to mission, Bob's story is all about the power of smart adjustments. The ones that most people ignore. The same ones that lead to big, big wins. So grab your glove and get ready. This episode's going to be a great slide.

Well, Bob, thank you so much for being on Willpower. I am so excited about our episode today. So tell the audience a little bit about yourself and your business and really the passion behind it.

Yeah, thanks, Will. I'm excited to be here as well. We, my wife and I, Lisa. Or sorry, my wife, Lisa and I, yes, we started a home health business about, about 22 years ago. I've always had an entrepreneurial spirit, actually, that goes back to when I was little and I was on an all star team. And I remember sitting there with the player. His dad was the coach. And I asked his dad, I said, you know, well, how is, how is your dad out here in the middle of the day coaching baseball?

Yeah.

And he goes, oh, my dad's a business owner. I really didn't think any of it. And then he had a party at his house. And now this is growing up in Jersey. So the guy is out there during the day coaching kids in baseball. We get to his house, and back in the 80s, in Jersey, if you had a swimming pool, that was pretty cool. But this guy, his pool wasn't above ground, it was in the ground.

Oh, wow.

And he drove a Trans Am. So here I am, Trans am. I'm an 11 year old, I'm living in Jersey, and this guy is my new baseball coach. And all I remembered was he owned a business. So I always had that entrepreneurial spirit growing up. And so when Lisa graduated from grad school, I had met, we sat down. I've always been a very risk adverse. I'm sorry, risk tolerant.

I was gonna say, you seem like.

A very tall risk tolerant. She's always been risk adverse.

Yeah, right.

And I said, hey, let's start a home health company. She was working in the schools full time, doing home health part time. And she's like, you're crazy. I'm not doing it. And finally I said, hey, I've got my business doing investments and, you know, in finance and insurance, and. And she said she didn't want to do it. I finally talked to her and I said, just start the business. I'll help you. So I helped her. And about few years went by, we decide, okay, now we both own businesses. Let's start a family. You know, it's a great thing to do. So we said, okay, let's add a new home.

Let's give that to your business.

And so I realized at the time that working in investments, I always told people that if your goal is to retire in life, you want to travel down that road together. Yeah, if you're married. We were married. One team, one dream. And I realized that here we were in two different vehicles. I had my business, she had her business. We're starting a family. And I sat there and said, okay. She. Since she was a little girl, she wanted to be an occupational therapist. I didn't want to take that away from her. But I said, we need to focus our efforts on one business. So I put my investment stuff on the side, on the back burner. I kept my licenses active for a few years, but then we really dived into, okay, here we have this pediatric home health business. Let's identify what our street, our strengths and weaknesses are.

Right.

And let's go after it together. And we did that. I focused on the back end. I became a master at the scheduling and the billing side, and she focused on the front side, the patient care. And once we put our heads together and focused on, you know, and I feel like this works in business and in a marriage.

We'Ve never looked at each other's weaknesses and put each other down. We've looked at each other's weaknesses and used our strengths to support them.

Interesting perspective, because that's a dramatic difference. If you have any relationship and you're. Or working as a team, whether it's a home team or it's a work team, understanding that, like, I've got things to contribute, but they do, and that we want them to be alternate. We don't want to have the same strengths. It doesn't really help each other in that regard. Remember, freedom isn't just possible. It's kind of the point. If this episode helped you laugh, learn, or at least cancel one meeting, go Ahead and hit subscribe. Share it with your overworked friend and leave a review. I read every single one, usually while avoiding emails. Want more behind the scenes stuff? Then hit us up on the socials. Now go delegate something and take a nap. You've earned it.

We took each other's strengths. Like I being a scatterbrain. She's misorganized. She's never once come to me and say, you're scattered. What's wrong with you? She just helps me with that. And so being able to do that, we started the home health business that continued to grow, but then the great recession hit and this is like 2007.

Ish.

Yeah. Our, our, our. Our income dropped by about 75% over 90 days.

Wow.

Because all of our eggs were in one basket with this home health company as one single payer in the state. And so we started identifying okay at that time. Now our youngest son was just born. And so we started to look ahead. And I said, okay, once he gets to kindergarten, we need to do something different.

Yes.

And so that's when we started looking. We lived out in the West Valley, started looking at different options. I said, okay, let's actually open up a brick and mortar pediatric therapy practice. There really wasn't anything in the West Valley area. And so in 2013, we opened up Team4Kids.

I didn't realize you'd only opened up in 2013.

Yeah.

Amazing.

Yep. And you know, we never had the goal to set out. Today we have seven locations. We see 13,000 kids a month. And it was never our goal to be the biggest privately owned, you know, pediatric clinic in Arizona. It was never our goal to have seven locations. Like if you had told me back in 2013, Bob, you're going to have seven locations and see 13,000 kids a month, I would have told you you were crazy. And there's no stinking way I'm going to do that.

It didn't sound fun back.

It didn't sound fun because when your business is small and you're starting out and you're putting in 60 to 80 hours a week and you're grinding, the thought of doing that times seven just isn't possible.

Right.

But people don't realize that as you grow a business the right way, you become more. Your freedom, independence, compounds and grows with it.

That's a great point. Because, Bob, as we, as we look at growth, freedom is about having the space to do what we love. And in the book, buy back your time, Dan Martell talks about how he helps people get Free who are just drowning in their businesses. And once in a while, he'll talk to an owner. Like, he's like, what did you do today? He's like, dude, I just. I surfed all morning. I've got no plans this week. And he's like, well, no, you missed the point. Like, the point of having freedom is to fill it with what you love doing. And that's what you were saying, is that you were able to find a love for going to seven locations in that, like, progressive kind of way. Because when you were doing what you were doing at one location, that wouldn't have been freedom. That would have been hell.

No, it was. We were, you know, Lisa was treating literally open to close five days a week.

Yeah.

And, you know, but through all that, as much as we worked, we still had time for our boys. You know, we both coached them in baseball and football, the PTO present at their school, when they were in kindergarten and third grade.

Right.

And that was during starting the business. So, you know, we always made sure that we worked hard and played harder.

Sure.

And I think that one of her greatest strengths is her time management and ability to stay focused to tasks that I used to fight it. Like, I would always, you know, I don't want some thumb over me. I'm a business owner. I'm Mr. Wild and Free. But then I realized I embraced her strength of having that. That focus of being able to have a schedule and task oriented is what made us successful. And to this day, you know, without her, none of this ever would have happened.

There's so many episodes that we could do, Bob, because one of the things I've appreciated about your business is the culture that you've built, the team. I've gotten to know your team. They're just phenomenal people. Kim, Jessica, like, all these amazing people. Your boys are phenomenal. I just. I think it's. And you've got so many other projects that you're doing. It's not like you're doing just one thing, but you still have time to travel. You still have time to coach your boys, you know, or help them build a masonry fireplace like you did recently. Like, there's this balance that you have that I think everyone's kind of looking for when they're listening to this podcast, for the most part, because they're in this stage of, like, they think of freedom as binary. I've got all. I can't breathe at all, or I've got so much time, I don't know what to do with. You're a proponent of creating space and then filling it with things that you love and growing it. And so I think part of the magic of your company is the fact that you and your wife are so complimentary that you have that ability. Because I think where a lot of people get stuck who are listening to this is that they're alone. You had your wife as the clinician and you were the business end of it initially. And now you're both a lot of things. But, but that's pretty powerful stuff for you. So let me ask what for you, what's the passion behind it? What's. What drives you personally around.

This drives me is watching the people around us grow.

The team.

The team, which is where your culture comes in. Whenever I come across a practice owner and they say, I don't want to grow my business.

I always have like a, like a weird look because. And they're like, well, I don't want to, I don't need a big team. And I always tell them, I go, if you don't want to grow your practice, you're being selfish. You've already gotten what you want and that's why you have. They struggle with retention and struggle with cultures because they're trying to maintain and keep what they have. When you look at, you know, our practice eight years ago, we had a, we had a girl come to us, college student, her name was Kayla. And she gave us a proposal on why we should hire her as a part time therapy aide. She was going to school to be a teacher and we had contemplated having a therapy aid and pediatrics. You know, it's, it's a little different. You know, when you have a tech aide, you know, for billing and stuff, you don't make there no revenue.

Right.

And so I, so. But I was so compelled by her presentation and her letter and saying why we should hire her part time. I looked at Lisa and I said, we need to hire this person. And Lisa's like, what are we going to do? I go, everything. She said, let's try it. Well, Kayla came on board, worked with us as a part time therapy aide, going to school to become a teacher. A few months later said, you know what, I don't think I want to be a teacher anymore. I want to switch to the admin. So we moved her into a pcc. Then she became a receptionist. Then she became our admin location lead as our team started to grow. And then from admin location lead, we opened up a second location. Now she became our admin department lead. She oversaw every Single department. We grew to three, four locations. And then we moved her into the role of. I realized that as we grew, I had to keep delegating. That's one of the biggest struggles of business owners. They don't delegate.

No. That's the key to freedom is delegation, education and automation.

You have to delegate and trust. And so then she moved into the role of our executive assistant. And you talk about giving us freedom, like having someone that we trust to help with the day to day operations of the business and your lives.

Yes. Executive assistance is very personal.

At the beginning, she was an executive and personal assistant. Like she was running errands for us. Now we have both. We have an executive and a personal assistant. So Kayla became our executive assistant. And I realized after every year in December, Lisa and I sit down and we make our goals for the next year and we look at our organization, our org board and say, okay, what's going on in our company? What do we need to improve? What do we need to adjust? And I looked at all the jobs that Kayla was doing and I said to Lisa, I go, she's not an executive assistant. She's our operations director.

Wow.

Everything that she was doing from like she negotiates all of our. Every year, she gets us higher rates.

You got to be kidding.

With insurance companies. She handles all of our contracts. All, everything. She does all that, all the books. She's the one who communicates with our cpa. I said, she's the operations director. So now she's the operations director of the company.

She sounds amazing.

Started out as a part time therapy aide, but that, that's what motivates me in our business is when I can have someone like being able to create more leadership positions is my motivation. We have the dream life. We have everything we need. When people ask me, why do you want to grow more if you have everything? I go, I'm not. I never did it for me. It was never for me to become the largest clinic in Arizona. It was to be able to give back.

Yeah.

Jen, who is our clinic director, we, she worked for us part time in home health before we even opened up Team for Kids. And I, and I said, lisa, I go, Jen's the kind of person we want to start this company with. So we sat down with Jen. The building was under construction. It's in, it's in the summer. There's no lights, no air conditioning. It's like the most. It's the worst place to interview somebody.

Yeah. You're not impressing anyone.

We're sitting at a Folded like a square table you've, you know, you'd find in somebody's closet and chairs. And we sat down and I asked Jen, I said, what do you want? You work in the schools. You work part time for us. And she says, I'm stuck and I can't go anywhere I want. I feel like I can give more to my profession as an slp. I feel like I can do more, but I don't have that avenue right. And I looked at Jen, I said, well, Jen, if you trust us, you already work for us part time. I said, my goal is to build this business to where you can be that person. You want to be a clinical director. And she said, yes. I said, well, if you trust us and you come build this business with us, you will be a clinical director. Well, she started out as an slp, didn't know anything like just treating in the schools. She then became our speech lead. Mastered all different types of feeding.

From infants to being a lactation counselor. Grew up, went through our speech lead, same path as Kayla, our speech department lead, and then clinical director. And Lisa and I were finishing up. We have our annual review we're doing on Monday. And Lisa and I literally spent 20 minutes yesterday trying to find, because you have to go, okay, what are you good at and what do you improve at? We literally could not find anything for.

Her to improve on.

She's just a rock star, you know, clinical director. We actually had joked and went back to something when she was first starting with us. And we said, here's an example of why you're a great leader because here's something you struggled with, you know, 12 years ago, and you have mastered it. And you're the best at our company at it now.

It's so amazing because your passion lies in the key to delegation and creating freedom, which is turning our heart towards our people as our primary customer. I think that's where clinicians get in trouble when they're owners and they don't have a bob or a business like thought process because they see their patience is where the end all be all is. And it's not. It's the team that's the privilege of being an owner. I didn't really understand that as much until I sold my practice. When I sold my PT practice in 2018, the biggest thing that to this day that I ache on is the time I used to spend with those executive council members, those five men and women that became that family team that would have taken at least a nonlethal bullet for each other. Like that is special and it comes from trust. My favorite book of all time, Speed of Trust. Stephen Covey for business, hands down, because you've mentioned it a dozen times. How trust is needed to give to people and then in return, when you can trust people, how they promote. I mean, my gosh, how many jobs did Kayla have in your company? I think you mentioned eight. How long has she been with you?

Eight years.

So. Oh, eight years. Eight jobs. Eight years, but just going up. And if the company's not growing, there's not space for them to grow. So you're not out there wanting more and more money. You're out there creating more opportunity and it results in money. But you reinvest that into your people. But you do that by trusting, delegating and realizing that your job is to help them find their next job. That's amazing. So your passion is a powerful tool and I'm excited that people are hearing this because it's rare for someone to see someone in your position as you're there. So how do you see the private practice business from an operational perspective? Since you're a business minded person, you clearly see this business differently. How do you think you see it differently is probably a better question than say a clinical owner.

I think the way that I've always viewed it is looking at the long game of the big picture of you have to put, if you put your people first, then the profits follow.

So people first. People first.

And when I say people, that is your patients and your employees.

Yeah.

That you should never make a decision based on money.

Okay.

You know, we, over the years, you know, when we first started, we, we invested everything. The business was always self sustainable from the get go.

Yeah.

But we always, the first three years, invested everything back into the business.

Got it.

As the business needed more. And so I think, you know, for us to be able to step back, look at the big picture and the long game. You know, a lot of times my team jokes with me that I'm patiently impatient, you know, because you know, I understand the long game and you have to play the long game and be patient with it. But then I want my results now.

Yeah.

Like once I make it, like I will take a long time to make a decision on something. But then once I make my decision, let's go. Get out of my way.

Yeah.

Because I will run through walls to okay. Accomplish it and achieve it. So you know, being able to do that I think is what is really what's helped us did it. You know, it keeps Lisa, keeps me Grounded and makes sure that, you know, my wild and crazy ideas don't go too far off.

But, yeah, you know, I just have to pause here for a second and just highlight. Lisa.

Yeah.

You know, it's so awesome for me to see someone talk about their partner and spouse with such regard. You can just feel that. Bob, what does she mean to the business?

She is. She is the heartbeat to the business. You know, she. You know, we are like most people, opposites attract. So, you know, like, if you were to ask her to do a podcast, she probably would have, you know, curled up in a ball and said, no, thank you. You know, she's been asked to be interviewed back in the day on, like, radio stations and TV shows, and she would just politely decline. It's not her. Not her style, but she is the most honest. Most men, most people say it's about their partner. Like, oh, she's amazing. I love her, but she truly is the most selfless person on the planet. She never asks for anything. And the respect that she gets from our team.

It'S super powerful. It's uplifting because she's just. She's an amazing woman who is 100% selfless. Not only the business, but her husband and her two boys, and now our three, now three dogs went from two to three. Again, my idea, not her to have.

To pick up the stray.

To pick up the stray dog. You know, that's one wandering the streets. It was tugging at my heart. And just like everything else in life, she said, I believe in you and trust you. Let's make this work.

She's your ride or die.

She really is.

And she brings her own flavor to it. And it's really. I think what I want to highlight just publicly on the show is that we had lunch a few weeks back, and you said the exact same thing. The most selfless woman you've ever met. And I think that's leadership. You know, one of my favorite things I heard once was that the leader who's the most effective is the one who loves the most. And it's something so powerful because, I mean, that might not resonate with a lot of men as like, oh, that's true. But no, it is. Think about the football coach or the. The individual that has the greatest impact in your life. Maybe love look like Bert singeing your eyebrows to say, you can be better. But with other. Other times, it's service, but it's that intention to support and care and have another person grow. That's what. That's what leadership is, right? So she embodies that. And I can see where the two of you have created this magic formula and why you're so successful in it. So let's get into freedom, because I think a lot of our listeners are really wondering, how do I get to where Bob is at? And I think one thing you said I want to highlight to all you rock stars is it's like eating an elephant. It's one bite at a time. What you said earlier, I just want to highlight, is if you think about eating a big elephant all at once, you just don't even want to do it. You couldn't be hungry enough to care. But little by little, we change as we grow with these steps, and then freedom emerges from that. So what was a breaking moment for you that made you realize in your journey that you had to free up more time?

I would say the breaking point was being.

A little more acceptance of my ideas. Aren't always the best ideas interesting. I think as business owners, we were all wired a little differently, and I think differently is the PC way of saying it. You know, when you say to somebody rational, hey, do you want to go work 100 hours a week and be broke? Because that's how most businesses start out. You know, there's no rationality to that at all. So for me, it was accepting that. And it also goes along the lines with trusting your team that your ideas may not always be the best.

Right.

And being able to trust people and understand that, you know, they might have better ideas and better ways to do things, and that's okay. And that's why you have them surround you, you know, know you don't. The one last thing I ever wanted, I didn't want to have a bunch of yes men or yes women.

Right.

And I feel like, you know, what Lisa and I have built is we now have a team that they, if they don't agree with what we like, we actually require, as they, as employees, climb our ladders of growth, that they have to do a peer review of Lisa and I.

Really?

Yes. And so. And it's very humbling. And it's. And it's very like we also. Part of that process is we make people come to us with things they don't like or agree with, necessarily agree with in the company. And we have a conversation, nine times out of 10, we make a change based on what they recommended. But, yeah, to climb our ladders of growth, they actually have to peer review Lisa and I.

Doesn't that take confidence? I think it exudes another leadership quality of confidence when you go to somebody who's working on your team and saying, I want to know what I could be doing better and not have it be fluff. I've had that before where people didn't feel safe enough. They're like, oh, you could care less. It's like, okay, you know, but like, when you have someone go, yeah, when you're. This policy is ineffective and you keep pushing it, and I think it's really hurting people, you go, whoa, thank you. But you have to have confidence, because I think where a lot of insecure people show up is they don't want to hear that stuff. They're already feeling invalidated from the many times they've been quit on. And so they don't want. I don't want to be open to that. So that is when you. That was a pivotal point for you, when you realized, my ideas aren't always the best. Other people can contribute and should contribute, and then they own the idea that they contribute, which makes it easier to adopt and implement. Yeah, that's awesome.

It's their idea. You can hold them accountable. Just like Stephen Covey says, you can't give somebody an idea and tell them how to do something, and if they don't do it right, it's on you because you made them do it your way.

I love that guy, by the way. By the way, Speed of Trust is his son, Stephen Covey, which was interesting. Okay, so what is something that you've implemented in your practice that has freed you up recently? Like, what's something you've done recently to free you up, you know, recent?

Well, I would say that the big one, it kind of ties back to the last question of your ideas may not always be the best.

Yeah.

10 years ago. So we started out doing paper charts like most practices.

Just like me. Yeah. Yeah.

Nowadays it's a little different. There's many different electronic formats. So we started out on paper charts. It was extremely efficient. We, you know, we went to. I sent my marketing team out to the doctor's offices. We found out what they liked and. And didn't like in reports, and we designed our reports to look like exactly what the doctors. It was genius.

So smart.

We. That's why to this day, you know, we are the number one referral source in the West Valley of Phoenix. Because the doctors love our reports. Throughout the time, we even now, our emr tailored them to what the doctors wanted. So I had this. As our company grew, paper charts went from being efficient to cumbersome. Like overnight, my admin team was spending over an hour every single day pulling charts. I was a genius. I made OT blue. I made speech red. I made PT green. I made feeding yellow. So, hey, this is a simple system. And they would have to pull all the charts, stick them outside the room for the clinician at the night before. So when they came in, they had their stack of charts ready to go, Right. And it became extremely inefficient and cumbersome. All these little things I was doing were, you know, we were billing in this platform. We were doing a paper chart here. We were using Google Calendar. And I had this bright idea because, of course, I'm the owner, my ideas are always the best, and I'm going to create my own emr.

So you create. Is that right?

I. Well, I started to. Okay, this was, you know, again, it comes back to, you know, Bob's dumb idea number 2197. As a successful business owner, you have to be humble. Know when your ideas are dumb or you don't have good ideas. Well, that was after. After spending $30,000. And this, you know, 10 years ago was a lot of money. A lot of money. Now 30,000 for sure.

It is.

And I didn't have a workable product, and I realized it was demoralizing my team.

Wow.

They were getting frustrated because I was. They were the guinea pig. Like, hey, they fixed a bug and they'd go and use it and it would crash like a plane without wings. And they were like, you know, my team would, like, come up, like, look like they had bedhead every time they would use this system. And I was like, what am I doing to my team?

Yeah.

And I finally had to step back and go, so I've always been a huge fan of Ray Kroc.

Oh, yes.

When you look at McDonald's, it's fried dead cow parts with cheese and you wash it down with paint remover. I mean. But yet it's a business system that's so successful that teenagers and old people that didn't plan for retirement can run it. Yeah, It's a system.

They plan for 300% turnover because their systems are so automated, they can replace every roll three times in a year. And it. It doesn't drop a dime. No, no.

So I was always fascinated. I really. I took a step back. This was part of our annual review. And I looked at Lisa and I said, I'm trying to reinvent the wheel. Why am I trying to create an emr? So she said. And she said, she was like, hallelujah. Like, you're finally listening to me, you know?

Yeah.

And. And so I said, okay, so let's do some demos. We did eight years ago, we did every demo under the sun for every single EMR that was in the pediatric business.

Yeah.

And we did some of them two and three times. I'm not going to mention names of the crappy ones because they, honestly, they were all inferior. Except for one. Everyone we went to, either the admin side loved and the clinicians hate or the billing side loved and the admin didn't like it for sure. And so then we come across Raintree.

Raintree.

We do the demo and my clinicians are like, we can get on board with this. I'm running the billing side. And I'm like, super excited.

Yes.

And. And so. And then Kayla, at the time, she was running the admin tide. She's like, when can we get started?

Yeah.

And so that really was like the big eye opener for me as a business owner that not all my ideas. Now I take credit for switching to Raintree, so maybe some of my ideas.

Are good, you know. Yeah, but you're not rebuilding another Raintree. And what's cool about that, if I can jump in, is that what I want the audience to know, is that Raintree is what. I'm a huge fan of Raintree. The customization of that is insane. And you took the same creativity in building out, like your own emr. You decided to pivot the idea. You didn't get rid of it. You pivoted it into, like, hyper customizing Raintree. And when we were connecting a while back and you were sharing with me some of your automate automations, it blew my mind. Like, it truly is. Like, for you, I would have to change dramatically in order to even compete with what you've already done inside of range free. Because it's so efficient the way that you customized it. So I love that you've pivoted into that space. But you didn't. You didn't just blindly keep pushing through and go, come on, guys, let's keep staying on this drowning trip of ours.

No. And the biggest thing at the beginning, my eye opener was when I met with Raintree. You know, of course I had all my ideas. This is what I want because I was gonna create my own EMR and blah, blah, blah, and my implementation specialist, which was Jessica at the time.

Yeah.

She challenged me. She said, this business system's been around for 20 years. I'm like, I've never heard of you. We're the greatest kept secret in EMRs.

Yeah.

It's all 100% referral. So she said, trust me and trust Raintree. Don't try and change anything for six months. And it was the hardest thing for.

Me to do because you're just a mover and a shaker. You like to change. Yeah.

And she says, trust me. She goes, I've been in this business for 20 years. She worked at Raintree for 20 years. She said, Trust me, let's use it for six months. And then if you want to change stuff, you come back to me and we'll change it. Right. You want. And I listened to her. So we didn't. We just use it the way it was. But we invested in learning every facet to maximize how to use it. Which in return allowed us, to this day, we now configure it and tweak it for all these amazing shortcuts. Things like our doctor's note that every time, every single non daily note automatically gets sent to the pediatrician.

Yeah.

And it's in the format that my pediatricians have told me they want, wanted.

Which, by the way, when you said that earlier, that kind of blew my mind. I'm hoping everyone who's listening, rock stars, are picking up on even these subtle, amazing decisions like interviewing the doctor to find out how they want their reports. Like these things that we just don't even think of because there's a fear. But if we were really there to serve, it would be like, well, what else can I do to serve you? That would be a normal question to think of. And then what you've done is template it in range rate where now it's just. It's there.

Yeah. One of the biggest things the doctors told us was don't put any medical history in the report. You're not telling us anything. We don't know. They go, all we want to know is, you know, and they have hypertension.

Thank you.

Behind the door, what's wrong with the kid and what are you going to do to fix it? That's all they want. They go, we don't. We don't. We already know about the premature. We already know all the allergies the kid has. Leave that in the medical chart, but don't put in the report. So like, our evals that go to doctor's offices are two to three pages.

Wow.

Re eval progress notes are one page.

Super bullet point to the point.

And they love it. And they sign the bottom of it and it comes back to us. And that's our sign. Plan of care.

Yeah, because they're drowning in paperwork, too. They want an efficient, like, high level. The most important stuff they need to know, what do you think? And this is what I want to do. Do you agree with it or not? So that's really cool that you were able to position yourself in a way to be open to change, but pivoting your. I think it's a little bit of eating humble pie, because you have to be courageous enough to make a decision. You have to be bold enough to say, let's start an emr, but humble enough and meek enough to go, yeah, let's pivot this into something better. Which you did. And now you've been with Raintree for how long?

Uh, we've been with them for eight years.

My gosh.

Yeah.

Yeah, they're. They. They are still kind of one of the best kept secrets. Other EMRs, I think, have incredible marketing, like, loud. But what they consistently deliver on is producing happy clients who know how to use their system. So. All right, so continuing on with this freedom idea, is there any part of your business where you feel limited in feeling free? I'm curious about this.

You know, I would. At this point in our stage, I don't feel limited in any. Any part of our business. Like, we're blessed to have a great leadership team.

Yeah.

That has really stepped up. Like, they're amazing. You know, a year and a half ago, my mom and my stepdad fell ill, and I had to drive an hour and a half each way to the hospital. And my. Our team just stepped up and said to me and Lisa, we got it, and I was gone for a month. Like, not even stepped foot in the office. And, you know, I was able to do that because of those decisions, like, range. But more importantly, because we had the team in place that said we got this. And ironically, for Christmas that year, they gave us suitcases that are embroidered with the company's logo, and they said, you at least need to travel more.

Wow.

That was our. That was our Christmas gift from our leadership.

And.

And so, you know, to this day, every time we go to the airport, even, like, we do everything we can because it's the Carry on size. We're like, how can we fit it in the suitcase that has the company logo on it just so we can take it? It was a reminder of the gift.

They gave us, and there's nothing more special. For me, this might be a little patronizing example, but, like, when my. When my sons make me something of a gift, it's. It doesn't even matter. What it is, it's so much more meaningful. And that's the only way I can, can relate to when I've received very thoughtful gifts from employees or executive team members because they're so thoughtful. And I think it's a reflection of. Once we put trust in people and we can help them grow, they realize that's rare. Yeah, it's. It's almost like the sixth love language is like personal development. If I can help you become a better leader and help you achieve more success. And that's not financial base for the right people, but there is financial elements to it. They come back and they just having that kind of. It's not common. It's not common. And it shows so much about them as wonderful human beings for being able to be committed to something bigger than themselves. To me, that's one of the most under appreciated across, across all kinds of companies. Is that like executive level position because they are entrepreneurs, they own it without owning it. And they. And so when they have an owner who's able to really understand that they can thrive and giving them that space to be successful, everybody wins. All right, so what are the. So let's pivot a little bit more into tech and tools. Like in your case, what tech and tools do you guys use a team that you think are vital in creating space and time for your company?

We really focused this year on streamlining and getting more involved with, you know, tech and AI. And I would say that the top ones would definitely be Google Chat.

Yeah.

And Gemini, which is a major component of Google. You know, when we have meetings with our team, you know, it records it, it gives you a transcript and a summary so you don't take notes.

Never.

And if one of our leads is missing, they just have to go back and read the notes in the transcript. So it's beautiful. You know, using, yeah. Google Chat, using, using canva, lumen 5, trainual synthesia. All these different apps that have just been able to take the business again to more of an industry.

You said a lot of apps there. What, what's, what are some of the key ones you think people should know about?

I would say Trainual Synthesia. Synthesia is, it's pretty powerful in making training videos.

Then the Lumen 5 is that like hey Gen. Yeah. So like these are, these are like AI humanoids that you can, or you can clone yourself and they have voices.

You can do either. You can do voiceover. Like for my wife, the most selfless person on the planet, she just turned 50 and she never asks for anything, literally. And she mentioned me last year. She goes, I think I want to go to Switzerland. So like it, like you're on it. I was on it. So my sister in law is the greatest travel agent in the planet. I said, hey, I need your help. I go, I need to plan a trip to Switzerland. And so she helped me plan. We're leaving next month, beautiful three week trip. But I took, I typed out what I would want to say like to my wife about the trip and I sent that off and it came back as a 3D explainer video, animated. And like they, and I gave them pictures of what me and Lisa and I looked like. And then we got this video and it shows us like landing in Paris, eating crepes hype, backpacking through Switzerland. This was.

I made the video, literally it took me 10 minutes to create the content. Whereas back in the day, if I were to try and go into like PowerPoint, try and do something like this with animated video, it would have taken me 16 hours.

When you say animated video, are you talking about like it was a cartoon?

Yes, it's an explainer cartoon video of two cartoon people that looked like us sitting down at the Eiffel Tower, backpacking, eating chocolate, going on a cruise up the Rhine and made the video. When I did, I little. I took it. The next step is I actually did the voiceover.

You did?

I did the voiceover. So it was actually me talking in the cartoon about her and I going on this adventure for her birthday.

What was it like when she got that?

Oh, it was, it was, it was awesome. We had a small little she's. Because she's very quiet, reserved. She told me two rules for her birthday. No surprises and no big party at the house. Cuz I always throw parties at our house.

I feel like my wife and your wife are the same person. Yeah, that's so funny.

She loved it.

So she, she saw that, did she? Was she emotional?

Oh yeah. She was bawling, crying and. Yep. She was just, she was. And it's one of the things that's, I cannot keep secrets from her. And I, I was so stressed out. Like I'm like, you can't look at my computer and I like hop on the phone and run away. And I felt awkward because I don't keep anything from her. And I finally had to tell her. I go, I'm planning your birthday present, so please if you see me run away on the phone, that's what it is. Or don't go to my email. And she was good. She didn't check her email, didn't look at my email or nothing. But I told her after I gave it to her, I go, I am never planning a surprise for you again because it was too stressful. I'm just gonna tell you about it. This is what we're doing.

So. So I think that's a good one. I don't think most people and I've been obviously we're later in the season of recording these episodes. I don't think anyone's mentioned. I know no one's mentioned that. So I'm so glad you talked about that. The other one you mentioned is Trainual and I want to highlight that because I'm good friends with Chris Ronzio who is the founder and CEO and he has really revolutionized that software and he is also speaking at our event in March and he and you use Trainual? Yes, I've had a lot of smaller practices really bite against any sort of training software. So just for the record, training is software that you put in your policies and procedures in and it helps your people self paced go through and it tracks how they're being trained. So how do you use training? Well, like what, what has that done for your company?

So prior to using Trainual, our, our orient, we have a very structured orientation. One of the things that we've always done is a new, we call them new teammates on a, you know, play on the company name team for kids. But we don't have new teammates.

And I don't like the word staff either. I always tell people staff is affectionate.

Don't ever call somebody that's like a piece of meat.

Exactly.

New teammates that after 90 days they, part of the process is they sit down with me and I have all these questions they thought ahead of time like how did the orientation go? What we could have done differently. So we really heavily invested in that first 90 days of a new teammate. And I realized that as great as our system was, it wasn't consistent across departments that our speech team had their own little ways of doing orientation from our admin, from our aba. And for a business really to be successful and improve synergy, you have to have consistency. And so what train you allowed us to do is instead of having one person talk about Google Drive and chat with this team, it's now all done through a video. So everybody's watching the same video. The other beauty of it is truly Trainual takes the content and creates quizzes.

Yes. And there's AI bots in there now that will take what you've put in there. First of all, if you don't even know what to put in there, you can use it to create.

It'll create it for you.

But if you've got Google Docs and things and you upload them in there, it can create quizzes in like in seconds.

And so you're able to track your new teammates going through orientation all like we have like right now we have it set for on the clinician side in their first 90 days. We understand that it's like drinking water from a fire hydrant when you're on board at a company.

Sure.

So we have certain things that we want done now, but then there's also certain things that can wait or you want refreshers. Well, we have it set up on a timeline in trainual that it pops up and it's already on there built into their calendar that on week five, oh, I've got to do these things. Look, the company already put on my calendar instead of giving me a patient and now I log in to train you and I do that refresher. So it took our department leads who were in charge of orientation from taking about 17 to 20 hours a week to do new orientation orientation for new teammate that their time is actually only three hours a week. And the beauty of it is that three hours is more intimate and collaborative with our new teammates versus them sitting up in front of the room. This is Google chat. This is Rain Tree. You know, this is how you call out sick. They're not doing any of that. It's all handled. And just. Yeah, the feedback that we've gotten from our teammates on that, they said the system was as well oiled. We've had people that have come to us from Fortune 500 companies and say this is the best orientation I've ever been through. And so that's been the big takeaway is freeing up our leads to have more quality time with their new teammates versus just speaking to them.

This is something that you still hold. I remember from our discussion that the projects that you focus on are meant to free up the people who freed you up. It's this cool symbiotic relationship of you guys trust each other, they're doing things to free you up and then you, you turn around and you help them train you all. I have seen it fail because people don't have the support to create the content and then they don't reinforce it. Those two things have to go together. It's not a. It's kind of like hiring a va. You can hire someone, but if you don't train them on how to do things, they don't know what to do. So same with software. Same with a lot of AI stuff. But when you put those two things together and you have the right support and the right software through training. My favorite thing I had from employees is that they'll join the team and say they'll get the welcome video before they even show up on their first day. Showing them the company, purpose, vision, values, the org board, who to talk to, where to park. They show up the first day, they're like, I've never, I've never been this like, aware of feeling included like I did with you guys. And it's automated. It just happens.

It happens. And you can keep track of it. You know, it was really cool. We, on the clinical side, we, we set up videos within it that show a. You know, actually what they'll do is a new clinician. They'll actually watch a video of a real therapy session.

Wow.

And then they'll, they'll get the training on how to use Raintree and then they'll go into the range retraining database. And now the cool thing about their database is it's actual real clients. You just, you're not messing with it in live.

Wow.

So they'll go through, they'll type up the note and then part. The trainual pops back in, says, okay, let's compare what you typed to what the therapist who actually did that session typed.

Come on.

And then it says, and it asks them, did you use this shortcut? Did you use this quick phrase? Because all the stuff in Raintree, you get a note done in two to three minutes.

Yeah.

And so then it asks them, did you do all this? And then. Yes, yes. And then it says, okay, you've mastered the daily note of Raintree and moves on to the next training.

So this is the cool. See that you just illustrated an application that I think would give people some more mass around what this could be. Because when you have that automated, you know, versus like having a human being sit down and watch their note, read their note, compare, they're doing that in real time and it gives them that self pacing and they still feel the support and connection because of that. All right, Bob, so what's the best business purchase under a hundred dollars that has saved you, that's freed you up or saved you hours?

That would be the staples button.

The staples button?

Yeah, it was a button.

Oh yeah, yeah.

That was easy.

That was their commercial. It was their commercial, like 10 years.

Ago, we had them all over the admin area, especially when we were. When we were in implementing Raintree. You know, it was. That was. It was. It was almost like the mantra of the office. If you did something, you just hit the button. That was easy. You know, there's nothing hard in life if everything's easy. So.

So do you think that, like, changed their mindset?

It completely changes everyone's mindset. And even if somebody did something, you know, that they were struggling or was difficult and you pushed the button, it completely changes their perspective on what they just did.

It's so funny how we spend so much time in leadership just talking about mindset and when we talk about freedom, which is the whole focus of this podcast, is helping free free you up. It's mostly mindset based. I have a whole episode that the listeners have already heard in this series that talks about, like, number one, you got to start thinking differently, because it's the way we're thinking. If we're stuck, the way we're thinking isn't getting us free. And so just having those little, like, tactile. Easy. Yeah, that was easy. We're conditioning ourselves. One of my favorite things comes from Benjamin Hardy from the book Gap in the Game. It's a Dan Sullivan book as well. He talked about the research of when before we go to bed at night, if we jot down the wins from the day. And this is not revolutionary, but the study is, if we jot down all of our wins, our subconscious is the last thing our brain remembers. So when we're sleeping, our subconscious starts rewiring to look for success. And so when we wake up in the morning, we're immediately looking for other things we're doing that's well. And the more wins we see, the more wins we achieve. And it creates this, like. So I think that's what it was with the easy button. It's like this, you know, oh, I won, I won, I won. And all sudden they're like, I've been. I've been winning a lot today. And then they start becoming winners who think like winners. That's a great answer. Okay.

We also used it back in the day anytime we scheduled a new patient. So, like, if somebody was sitting up front and they heard that button like, oh, new patient, new patient, new patient. Like, okay, we're bringing in.

So it meant, like. I meant, like, growth as well. Kind of like, I'm winning and I'm growing. That's really neat. Do you still do it?

No. We moved on from the button. Yeah.

Yeah, I think there's something about changing those things out too.

There is, yeah.

Because then it becomes like, this is a weird thing that we do versus.

Like it becomes tone deaf to it.

Yeah. They get accommodated to that signal. So with your freedom, you're an interesting person, Bob, because you have. And you're free to talk about whatever you're working on. And I want you to, if you can, if you can't, that's fine. But like, you've got so many things that you're working on and there's a lot of really cool things you do for fun. Like, let's talk about things you do for you or your family when you are free. What do you do in those cases where with that flexibility that you have.

Now my greatest joy with my boys is playing golf.

Yeah.

You know, and I actually before we started the family, I was a scratch golfer.

Were you really?

I was. I still. Then I started the business, then I started the family and I put golf on hold. You know, I had the boys. My first passion in life was always baseball, but I had to quit playing baseball in high school to get a job. I had to support myself.

Yeah.

So when Lisa and I started the family have two boys, I coached them in baseball, coached them in football. And so I put golf on the back burner. I probably played once every three or four years.

Yeah.

And then once our boys got to high school, I stopped coaching them and I went back to being a dad. At that point I was like, all right, I've taken them as far as I can take them. And then so three years ago, for my birthday, Lisa got me a brand new set of golf clubs. And she said, I want you to start golfing again.

Such a sweet, thoughtful gift.

And so then as the boys, you know, they. Our oldest just finished college baseball. Our youngest just graduated high school. He started playing golf with me a little over a year ago. And being able to play golf with them as, you know, young men, young adults. Young men.

Yeah.

They're 18 and 21 that, you know, they actually listen to what I'm saying when we're out on the golf course and just that quality one on one time, it's the best thing in the world, you know, now it's, you know, even have time for a full round. We'll just go to the driving range and hit some golf balls and, you know, B.S. son and dad.

It's.

So if we're not traveling somewhere, which that's typically what we're doing, I'm taking the boys to the Driving range.

And what a greater. That's the team that matters most is our family. Having had nothing but sons myself, there's something really cool about adult sons and interacting in a space that's shared. It's indescribable. So that's neat. That's what you're doing with your free time there. So let's kind of pivot. Obviously, the season's about AI versus va. Is there any other AI software that you would want to highlight? Is there any other AI tools that you think are amazing? You mentioned a handful, but is there any other just.

No. I think we hit on the nail on the head of the ones that we're using right now. I mean, there was obviously the obvious 1. Chat GPT.

Yes.

That my wife calls my side chick.

So that's funny. My team has actually told me the only person that my wife should be worried about is my Chat GPT. I have, she has a name and like we have a relationship actually.

I actually. And I would challenge anyone to do this. If you have Chat GPT, invest in the paid version. But then after you've been using it for a few months, ask Chat GPT to peer review. You, wow, the stuff that you put in there. And it was, it was, it was amazing. I said, I said to Chat GPT, tell me about myself. And they said, you're a focus driven leader who cares about others. And I said, okay, tell me something to improve on. And it was like almost too quick.

Like it's been waiting for you to ask that question.

Yeah, it was. And so, and I, and it basically said, you know, you are very passionate, but you're all very quick to answer things. And basically I always ask it, can you rewrite this to be more passionate? Can you write this to be more, you know, more understanding or more bold? And so, but it was interesting. I would challenge anyone listening to this to go ask Chat GPT based on your content you've put in there to ask Chat BT what Chat GP what they think about you.

Yes. And so I was curious to see if you use Chat GPT or Gemini just because you are a Google product and Gemini's investment is getting. But I've spent so much time already in Chat GPT, I think it's one of those things where the more you spend time with it, the more powerful it becomes. And what I have found is that my experience efficiencies are starting to go exponential. I'm completing projects this week that would have taken me with ChatGPT six months ago, probably weeks I'm finishing them in hours because it remembers every discussion I've ever had. And I'll say as long as I'm asking the right prompts, it's really starting to build things out on a much more aggressive scale. So I encourage everyone to get the paid version. There's also a company version, which is super cool, that we just started with, where everyone in the company has their own ChatGPT account, but the central one remembers everyone's. And we can create marketing bots and sales bots or whatever we want that we can instruct to serve all of our team. So as my Kayla or Tony are feeding it with their questions and serving it in that way, when I go in there, it will remember my team's work and help my work improve as well. So I think that's a great piece. You obviously are working with virtual assistants in the company. How do you feel AI and virtual assistants work or don't work together?

Well, I think they come each other. My biggest, you know, when it comes to AI, a lot of people are apprehensive. You know, they're scared of it. It's something new. And, you know, they're. They also feel that maybe it might be replacing their job at some point. And I don't believe that. You know, my. My approach, and this is my and Lisa's, you know, our vision and our approach to AI with our company is that if you think about building a house, imagine building a house today without power tools.

Tools. Oh, forget it.

A carpenter had to use a saw. He had to use a hammer. It would take him forever. But what do they have? They have power saws. They have drills. You know, all the technology. Well, that's what AI is doing. It's making your job you have now more efficient and easier. It's a whole lot easier to build a house now with a nail gun than it was with a hammer.

Yeah, totally.

And so that's. That's always been our approach. Some people get scared off and say, oh, AI is the future. It's going to replace jobs. I don't believe it's to. It's going to make jobs efficient, and for every job it replaces, it's going to create more jobs.

Yes.

You know, it. There's so that part, I think, when you embrace AI and it took me a while to embrace AI at first I was like, oh, this is just a fad. It's not, you know, this was like last year. I'm like, no. And I realized, no, it's not a fad. It Can. It's the power tool to, you know, to help you build something in so.

Many different ways, too. Power tool in thinking, a power tool in creation. And certain aspects, videos now are being produced. Like you just created that animated video. You know, I would say that my experience has also been the same with VAs. People are scared of it. They're worried about replacing jobs, but it's the same thing. These are two things that are coming together as the fastest growing trends in healthcare to really free people up to do what they're really meant to do. And so as you worked in both of those spaces, what would you say some of the pros and cons are working with VAS?

I think the first, again, similar to the ChatGPT, I was always against using VAS. I've always been a, you know, a pro American labor. I want someone, I want them in my office. I'm a human.

You know, in healthcare, you want eyes to look at eyes, which is one.

Of the reasons why we've, you know, in our practice, our receptionists do not answer phones because when a parent brings in their kid, if you. And we also don't have the glass, if they walk in and you're on the phone or you're behind a piece of glass, you might as well stick your middle finger up at that parent, say, what I'm doing is more important than your kid.

Yeah.

And so I've always felt that strongly of we have to have that human component. And so that went a lot. So I always fought the idea of having a virtual assistant.

Yeah.

But now, you know, we realized that in our business, after the pandemic, you know, even hiring became very challenging. Finding someone that wants to work 40 hours a week is not the easiest thing to do.

Amen.

And so I got to the point, I was like, okay, as much as I love America and I want to hire Sally from across the street to come work at my team for kids. Sally doesn't want to work. I'm going to go find someone that does want to work. And no matter, they could be, you know, down the road or across an ocean, you know.

Thanks for tuning into the Willpower podcast, as always. This is Will Humphreys reminding you to lead with love, live on purpose, and never give up your freedom until next time.