The Secret to Building a Rockstar Team (And Why It’s Everything)

[00:00:00] Welcome, you're listening to the GrowOrtho Podcast presented by HIP. This podcast is dedicated

[00:00:07] to orthodontist who want to stand strong in their market and be leaders in their community.

[00:00:13] Now onto today's show.

[00:00:16] Dr. Michael Neal, thanks so much for coming on the GrowOrtho Podcast today.

[00:00:20] Thank you so much for having me, Luke.

[00:00:22] Absolutely.

[00:00:23] For those listening and watching, give just a brief introduction of yourself and what

[00:00:29] you do.

[00:00:30] I'm a practicing eye doctor.

[00:00:32] So what's an eye doctor doing on an orthodontist?

[00:00:35] Well, I built a system, an automated system to hire people without using resumes for your

[00:00:41] practice.

[00:00:42] And my practice too.

[00:00:44] It's all based upon strengths and talents.

[00:00:46] And we've been doing this throughout the US and Canada now in over 40 states with nine

[00:00:53] different healthcare professions.

[00:00:55] We've been able to crack the code on how to get terrific A-player team members into your

[00:01:02] dental and orthopractices.

[00:01:04] How do you get into medicine, private practice?

[00:01:08] How did that come to be?

[00:01:09] Well, started off.

[00:01:10] Let me see, private practice.

[00:01:13] My wife started the practice originally back in, was it 2002, I guess.

[00:01:20] And I joined in 2008.

[00:01:25] Our practice burnt out.

[00:01:28] We lost everything.

[00:01:29] Everything but a stapler if you can believe that.

[00:01:31] Whoa.

[00:01:32] Stapler.

[00:01:33] It's like the office space.

[00:01:34] Oh God.

[00:01:35] It was crazy.

[00:01:37] That was a nightmare.

[00:01:40] It was a multi-year nightmare.

[00:01:44] So I joined then, took over the practice.

[00:01:48] Got it back up and running.

[00:01:50] Took over the management of the practice and growing it.

[00:01:53] The one consistent problem that we always had was HR.

[00:01:57] And that's kind of a global catch all phrase nowadays.

[00:02:01] The real issue was getting the right team members on board.

[00:02:04] And we were hiring wrong.

[00:02:06] So we were hiring wrong for years.

[00:02:09] Until I essentially joined a, well, for lack of a better term, an entrepreneurial leadership

[00:02:16] group.

[00:02:17] And what I noticed in that group is that they had a large team of very nice, wonderful

[00:02:23] serving type people.

[00:02:26] And they did a terrific job.

[00:02:28] Kind of light bulb went on.

[00:02:30] And for me, the light bulb was, well, these guys can do it.

[00:02:33] Why can't we?

[00:02:35] What are we doing wrong?

[00:02:36] Consistently banging our heads against the walls, getting team members that leave that

[00:02:40] aren't performing properly, that aren't just thought or not high performers.

[00:02:44] Not even medium performers, most of them.

[00:02:46] So we were doing something wrong.

[00:02:48] We just didn't know what right looked like until then.

[00:02:52] And that was kind of the start of maybe there's a better way and then I dove in from

[00:02:57] there.

[00:02:58] And I've dealt with this in my own business.

[00:03:01] You start to believe, I think that people are only on this level.

[00:03:05] And you make excuses around that.

[00:03:07] I remember being at a mastermind as well and the other agency owners kind of called us

[00:03:13] out and was like, no, it's you guys.

[00:03:17] That was probably in like 2019.

[00:03:19] It's hard to hear, isn't it?

[00:03:21] Yeah, it's hard to hear.

[00:03:22] But it's typically right.

[00:03:27] And we're still talking to people who have hiring issues and people come and I can't

[00:03:32] keep them.

[00:03:33] And I do understand that since COVID things have gotten more complicated, however, I don't

[00:03:38] hear any of the practices with docs, with the right mindset and they're on the up and

[00:03:45] up.

[00:03:46] I don't hear any of them complaining about team finding people.

[00:03:51] And so I find that very interesting.

[00:03:53] What are some of the things practically that you started to experience in the practice

[00:03:58] or knowing that you had a need for high-perform team members?

[00:04:03] What were some of the things that y'all were going through that kind of had you guys pulling

[00:04:08] your hair out?

[00:04:09] You mean the bad stuff?

[00:04:10] Yeah, essentially.

[00:04:11] Yeah, maybe some of the bad stuff or maybe it wasn't even bad.

[00:04:16] It was just break points, you know, and you could get past it.

[00:04:21] I think that the main thing that we realized, we had every conceivable problem.

[00:04:28] So first of all, we were hiring to try and help people.

[00:04:36] And we were extrapolating the doctor approach to taking care of people, to hiring people.

[00:04:42] And I'm telling you, to your listeners, if you're doing this, it is categorically

[00:04:48] the biggest mistake I think you can realistically make without knowing it.

[00:04:53] We were trying to help people improve themselves, get a leg up, get their life together.

[00:04:59] All they need is one break.

[00:05:01] You know, I just needed to take a chance on me and we were doing it.

[00:05:06] One after another after another.

[00:05:08] And it was disastrous.

[00:05:11] It was awful.

[00:05:12] The cold, hard facts behind hiring come along the lines of you want performers.

[00:05:21] You want people who can wake up in the morning, go to work, utilize their talents and strengths.

[00:05:27] Don't really think much of anything when they're performing incredibly well and go home

[00:05:33] and then repeat it the next day.

[00:05:35] That's what you're looking for.

[00:05:36] What we got instead is what we were hiring for.

[00:05:40] So that was people that were not performers.

[00:05:43] They were always looking for somebody to give them a hand help.

[00:05:47] We were essentially treating our interviews along the lines of how we would treat patients

[00:05:55] and it was disastrous.

[00:05:56] We did that for several years, not really figuring that well, you know, it was learned helplessness

[00:06:02] in a lot of ways.

[00:06:03] No matter what we did, we got the same results until I was shown that there not only was

[00:06:08] a better way to do it, but it was systematized and it was predictable.

[00:06:14] And you could get these results over and over again by following a system essentially.

[00:06:20] That's what that particular group showed me.

[00:06:24] Then I turned around and created a system which was their system better and improved upon

[00:06:32] with all kinds of stuff.

[00:06:34] Just to get a state of the practice before implementing this system, I'm sure you guys

[00:06:40] were not necessarily hitting your goals or you were getting stuck or maybe it was one

[00:06:48] step forward, two steps back.

[00:06:50] What was that like in the practice?

[00:06:52] We were hitting things all right.

[00:06:56] Walls with foreheads, you know, face palming, you name it.

[00:07:01] All kinds of stuff.

[00:07:02] Why did this continue to happen?

[00:07:03] I mean, I just go back to thinking about those days and it was a merry go round.

[00:07:10] It was a revolving door.

[00:07:11] It was the mouse on the exercise wheel.

[00:07:13] It doesn't matter what way you're going to describe it.

[00:07:16] We never really got anywhere until we made the changes and what we did in our practice

[00:07:21] is we rated everybody when we started this process.

[00:07:25] Everybody got rated on traffic light.

[00:07:27] So green yellow red.

[00:07:28] The reds were replaced first.

[00:07:31] Green yellows and we kept two people out of 14 people.

[00:07:35] We moved from 14 full time people to 10.

[00:07:40] We cut four positions.

[00:07:42] Our practice went up 50% in gross revenue for less people and our net income more than

[00:07:49] doubled.

[00:07:50] Stop and think about that for a second.

[00:07:51] That's crazy.

[00:07:52] The average net in ortho is between 30 to 40%.

[00:07:56] So that's a dangerous spot to be in.

[00:08:00] Because at 1.5 million, you're making enough to have a very comfortable living almost everywhere.

[00:08:06] If you want to grow from 1.5 million to let's say 3 million, you have to change what

[00:08:11] you're doing.

[00:08:12] Who the hell wants to change when they're making 800,000 bucks a year?

[00:08:17] They don't have to change anything.

[00:08:19] They just have to continuously show up for work and slog through the day.

[00:08:24] Right?

[00:08:25] Exactly.

[00:08:27] We were at a level where I understand that.

[00:08:31] However, when they do make the change in mindset and get rid of the team members and replace

[00:08:38] them with these A players, you're not doing one and a half million bucks anymore.

[00:08:42] And you're not a 30% net.

[00:08:43] You might be 40, 45%.

[00:08:45] Our practice is in the top 10% of 1% in America in terms of net income per our gross.

[00:08:54] And we got there because of the team.

[00:08:55] It is not because of the genius on the other end of the Zoom podcast, I'm not that guy.

[00:09:02] It's the team that delivers these results.

[00:09:04] I'm preaching the converted a little bit, but when the front desk person in your book has

[00:09:10] the opportunity to book another family to come in that day or not book another family

[00:09:16] to come in that day, what's an A player do versus what's a C player do?

[00:09:22] And all that money goes straight to the bottom line because it's just, that's the variable

[00:09:27] right to the bottom line.

[00:09:28] So the biggest change I think out of everything was a switch flipped in my head knowing that

[00:09:36] it could be done differently, that there was a way out and that we could hire people for

[00:09:41] their natural talents and strengths so that they would utilize what they're naturally

[00:09:46] good at.

[00:09:47] Instead of, you know, you got to contrast this to something, right?

[00:09:51] So you contrast it to, they have a great personality, big smile.

[00:09:56] They show up for work, you know, whatever you decide to look for in an interview, that's

[00:10:02] what you bring in on those team members.

[00:10:04] The real, one of the massive learning experiences from this is that as a doctor interviewing

[00:10:10] team members, especially younger team members, it's just a colossal waste of time.

[00:10:15] It doesn't do much at all other than have them tell you what you want to hear with

[00:10:20] the big smile on their face or nervous as heck or deer in the headlights or all those types

[00:10:25] of things.

[00:10:26] Being a doc, flattered intimidates most people in an interview.

[00:10:29] The fundamental issue is that the format itself is flawed.

[00:10:33] An interview between a very senior person and a very junior person is always going to yield

[00:10:38] anxiousness, you know, just all kinds of things like that.

[00:10:42] And especially in the younger generation, they struggle with anxiety and all those types

[00:10:47] of things.

[00:10:48] So it just doesn't work.

[00:10:50] The turning point for us was that we were able to create an assessment process that used

[00:10:57] psychometric assessments to determine what a person was good at.

[00:11:01] And if you have no idea what any of this stuff is, it sounds like witchcraft and all

[00:11:05] that.

[00:11:06] Well, the fact of matter it isn't, there's ways to accurately predict what a person is

[00:11:12] outstanding at, good at, all those types of things.

[00:11:15] We can predict their stress tolerance level.

[00:11:17] We can predict how they deal with systems and processes following details and procedures,

[00:11:24] all of those types of things.

[00:11:25] So what ended up happening is it took a couple of years and a lot of kicks at the can before

[00:11:31] we were able to get build a process that looks for all of those types of things in a potential

[00:11:37] team member.

[00:11:39] And then we started using email to contact those team members and guess how well that

[00:11:46] worked?

[00:11:47] But it's a disaster.

[00:11:49] For anybody listening, if you're using email to contact potential candidates for your

[00:11:55] healthcare practice, I got to tell you, stop.

[00:11:59] It doesn't work.

[00:12:00] Whatever results you're getting, you will 10X them by texting these people.

[00:12:06] Maybe more.

[00:12:07] In our particular case, it wasn't 10X.

[00:12:09] It was a lot more than that.

[00:12:10] Email was completely dysfunctional.

[00:12:12] What ends up happening is you ask the folks, do you have email?

[00:12:14] Yes.

[00:12:15] Yes, always yes.

[00:12:17] Ask them level one follow up.

[00:12:19] Do you check your email?

[00:12:20] What's the answer?

[00:12:22] Sometimes.

[00:12:24] Well, the answer from most of them in an interview is yes.

[00:12:27] Second level follow up.

[00:12:29] How often?

[00:12:30] Well, once to twice a week.

[00:12:32] That was the answer we tended to get.

[00:12:34] And once it's twice a week, that's complete garbage.

[00:12:37] It was once a week if that usually seven to ten days is what we found out.

[00:12:41] So a seven to 10 day response cycle during the hiring process will get you exactly nowhere.

[00:12:45] Now, you flip it around and you look at how fast they respond to their text messages.

[00:12:49] And it's almost instantaneously.

[00:12:52] So what we ended up doing is we built an entire system to email these candidates and we

[00:12:57] have to scrap it.

[00:12:58] We have to stop, pause, and build an entire texting system to reach out to these candidates

[00:13:05] because email flat out was a disaster.

[00:13:09] Now can use email for corporate hiring, for hiring doctors?

[00:13:13] Of course you can.

[00:13:14] That's at a different level.

[00:13:15] But on the team member, potential team member side of things for a practice, it just doesn't

[00:13:20] work.

[00:13:21] So that's when we move to a texting model.

[00:13:24] And your test specifically, I mean there's things like disk, Myers-Briggs, predictive index

[00:13:31] we use.

[00:13:34] How is your test maybe similar and also different?

[00:13:39] Disk and Myers-Briggs, more personality testing, they're not only not going to

[00:13:45] give you the results that you're looking for but they can be misleading because they're

[00:13:49] taking you down a path that is almost a false start in terms of what you're looking for.

[00:13:55] And what I mean by that is we approach it completely differently.

[00:13:59] So we approach it with an end result in mind.

[00:14:02] Each of the positions in a healthcare practice is different.

[00:14:05] So we have different end results for each different position.

[00:14:08] For example, how many billers do you know that are warm, bubbly and friendly and you would

[00:14:16] super stress tolerant and you would love to put them at your front desk?

[00:14:18] Very few.

[00:14:19] Bingo.

[00:14:20] Right.

[00:14:21] So if you have the same type of algorithm that you use that term, that you're looking for

[00:14:27] a biller that's identical to what you're looking for in a front desk or a dental assistant

[00:14:32] or anything like that, you're going to be barking up there, wrong, wrong tree.

[00:14:37] We can all agree on that.

[00:14:38] What we ended up doing was creating position specific algorithms to exactly who we're looking

[00:14:45] for.

[00:14:46] And this took a while and it took a lot of trial and error and feedback.

[00:14:50] The main thing is feedback.

[00:14:51] So this was rolled out to our practice than our friends practices and then now we're

[00:14:58] in almost 40 states in the US and Canada, nine different healthcare professions.

[00:15:05] So we've got these algorithms down for what makes a terrific person in each of the specific

[00:15:11] positions.

[00:15:12] And of course, there's some variability.

[00:15:13] We'll pick on front because it's universal.

[00:15:16] So a high volume practice, you're going to need somebody who is terrific with high transactional

[00:15:21] capabilities.

[00:15:23] They're terrific with potentially working with team members because it can't just be

[00:15:27] them at the front desk and stress tolerance.

[00:15:29] Let's not forget that.

[00:15:31] I started, you're never going to believe this but believe it or not, before I got into

[00:15:35] healthcare and as an eye doctor, I was a secretary.

[00:15:40] I was terrible.

[00:15:41] This is back in the days of alphabetizing and filing stuff.

[00:15:45] It was ridiculous.

[00:15:46] And my strengths and talents, thank God we're not for that position.

[00:15:49] It is a position that is extremely hard with a practice to fill.

[00:15:53] Now flip that around to a low volume practice, more concierge, warm, friendly, huggy, you know

[00:16:00] what I mean?

[00:16:01] That type of practice.

[00:16:02] It's for a completely different type of person at the front desk.

[00:16:07] And so it all depends on what type of practice that we're dealing with.

[00:16:11] Imagine a symphony, right?

[00:16:13] You've got all these different individual instruments and an individual instrument might

[00:16:17] be a particular type of assessment.

[00:16:20] It's looking for X and then another instrument is looking for Y.

[00:16:23] And when you use all of these at once, end up with noise.

[00:16:27] You know, you're not playing music per se.

[00:16:29] And so what we ended up doing is testing different types of assessments.

[00:16:34] We brought some in, we got rid of most of them.

[00:16:36] We had to create some from scratch, which was a heck of a chore.

[00:16:40] But now we're at the point where the first thing that we do in these assessments is we're

[00:16:45] looking for people with what we call a healthcare mindset.

[00:16:49] And the healthcare mindset is, you know, do they like to help people?

[00:16:55] Do they like to serve others?

[00:16:57] Do they have an issue to have?

[00:16:58] And they are, they're reliable.

[00:17:00] Do they have honesty and integrity?

[00:17:02] There's a whole bunch of sub components to that because let's just say for example, you

[00:17:09] don't have a healthcare mindset.

[00:17:10] How long do you think you're going to possibly last in a practice?

[00:17:14] Dentistry, ortho, super hard.

[00:17:17] How long are you going to last if you don't actually like helping people, right?

[00:17:22] So you know, we're both nodding our heads here for the audio listeners, of course.

[00:17:29] Without that in mind, these folks are going nowhere.

[00:17:32] And they're going to completely waste your time going through interview process and that type of thing.

[00:17:35] For orthodontist and dentist watching, listening and they're wondering, okay, I get it.

[00:17:41] You know, I'm struggling with my team, with leadership.

[00:17:47] To be honest too, there's a lot of practices out there who don't really know they're struggling.

[00:17:55] The team kind of holds the keys to the kingdom and the doctor we find in many cases kind

[00:18:03] of has to go along with what the team is saying, which also keeps things very flat.

[00:18:09] The way you describe that practice, the tails wagging the dog.

[00:18:13] That's very concerning.

[00:18:14] And I've been there.

[00:18:15] Been there done that got the proverbial t-shirt to work with us in a practical role.

[00:18:20] The first thing that a client gets from us is the concept of talent certainty.

[00:18:28] Okay, what I mean by that is you start working with Bill my team or the company we started for this.

[00:18:36] And now any position in your practice that you're looking to hire for, it's unlicensed.

[00:18:43] We don't work with licensed positions generally.

[00:18:45] There are some rare exceptions to that but unlicensed positions.

[00:18:49] We will be able to fill the position within a reasonable period of time with somebody who

[00:18:55] is terrific at their job.

[00:18:57] A or B player.

[00:18:59] We do that through using these assessments.

[00:19:02] So I told you about the mindset assessment.

[00:19:04] We measure their speed of learning so that you have people who are essentially terrific

[00:19:09] at learning very, very quickly.

[00:19:12] We're measuring performance factors.

[00:19:13] I alluded to a couple of those.

[00:19:15] How they work with each other.

[00:19:17] How they're motivated.

[00:19:19] Then we're also measuring a bunch of things like how far away are they from their practice?

[00:19:25] These are nuts and bolts logistical things because if they're 20 miles away and they

[00:19:29] got to pass 10 other ortho practices or dental practices on the way, this probably isn't going

[00:19:34] to work out long term.

[00:19:35] We're looking to see how long they're going to stay at your practice for.

[00:19:39] We want to know things like can they actually work the hours that are posted.

[00:19:45] To back that up a little bit.

[00:19:46] The way this works in practicality is to start the phone call.

[00:19:49] Very honest phone call with one of our team members and you tell them about your practice,

[00:19:55] you tell them works and all.

[00:19:57] Here are the problems we've been having.

[00:19:59] Here are the things that are going great.

[00:20:00] You're the wonderful things about our practices, the challenges, etc.

[00:20:03] Our team members have heard virtually everything.

[00:20:05] Then what they do is they will figure out which jobs you're hiring for, write the job

[00:20:10] descriptions, and then we post it to 22 different job boards.

[00:20:14] That is a wild difference between what a practice normally does.

[00:20:19] The reason it's done that way is that you have to cast the absolute widest possible net.

[00:20:25] Why?

[00:20:26] Well, the way our model works is we're not looking for the needle and the haystack.

[00:20:33] What we do instead is we take a stack of needles and we're removing all of the ones that

[00:20:38] we know can't do the job.

[00:20:40] Okay, there's only going to be a couple left over.

[00:20:43] Of those ones that are left over, we know can do the job and then they go through our

[00:20:49] assessment process and that's how we know that they can do the job and we know that they

[00:20:53] can not only do it from a strengths and talent standpoint but they actually have the ability

[00:20:59] to show up for work during the hours that you're offering that type of thing.

[00:21:03] We also send them a one-way video interview.

[00:21:06] We're not only running them through these assessments but there's a real world check

[00:21:11] where they do a video interview and we're assessing how they respond to the questions.

[00:21:16] Not necessarily the answers themselves, but there are a massive amount of intangibles

[00:21:20] that our team members are looking for from those video interviews.

[00:21:25] It doesn't matter what the person looks like if they're like, that's irrelevant.

[00:21:30] We're looking for things like how do they represent themselves?

[00:21:33] How are they carrying themselves?

[00:21:36] There's a whole bunch of stuff like that.

[00:21:38] Once that's all done, our team will send over the finalist candidates to the practice

[00:21:43] to choose from.

[00:21:44] At that point, you can go any mini-minimummo and you're going to get a better outcome

[00:21:48] than what you're used to by far.

[00:21:50] Each of the positions is guaranteed and they're guaranteed for 90 days so if a person leaves

[00:21:56] for 90 days for any reason, you just give us a call back and they're replaced for free.

[00:22:03] That's the quick summary of what it looks like to work with us.

[00:22:07] I see a lot of businesses have no filtering process so they'll put a job up and then

[00:22:13] it's like some people say, I'm not getting anybody to apply and then we'll log into their

[00:22:18] indeed and there's hundreds of people.

[00:22:22] But regardless, let's say you get 100 people, how are you going to interview all those

[00:22:26] people?

[00:22:27] Doctors are busy and so we've even suggested if they don't

[00:22:33] ask for a video answering these questions that they enable the voice questions on indeed

[00:22:41] and at least you can hear the person's tone, tempo, their caliber of response.

[00:22:49] You have to do something on the front end because then otherwise what are you looking

[00:22:54] at before you waste your time to get on these interviews that you even said are typically

[00:22:59] not super beneficial?

[00:23:01] We reject almost 97% of people going through our process.

[00:23:07] Now, it's shocking.

[00:23:08] In terms of a time saver, what you just described to me sounds like a cataclysmic nightmare

[00:23:15] having to go through those people because I'll tell you from our experience, at a minimum,

[00:23:23] 95% are a complete waste of time and 5% are a moderate waste of time, mild to moderate

[00:23:32] a waste of time.

[00:23:33] That's how I describe it from a clinical standpoint.

[00:23:34] Here's how we solve this problem.

[00:23:35] When a candidate applies for a position on one of the job boards, remember I said,

[00:23:40] told you all about that texting system?

[00:23:42] Well, as soon as they apply within five seconds their phone bings and they get a text asking

[00:23:47] them to thank you for applying for XYZ dental practice.

[00:23:55] We'd like you to go through the assessment process and it's all worded to get people

[00:23:59] to do this and it does an incredible job of getting people to take these assessments right

[00:24:05] off the bat a quarter of them don't.

[00:24:08] Well, some folks have said, well, you're missing out on anything.

[00:24:12] We just categorically ruled out the extreme time wasteers.

[00:24:15] They're gone.

[00:24:16] They don't want to lift a finger.

[00:24:18] They want to get paid to do nothing.

[00:24:20] Welcome to my practice, I'm not going to pay you to do nothing, get the heck out.

[00:24:26] The ones that go through the assessment process, at each step when they don't make it through,

[00:24:34] we gently exit them out of the process.

[00:24:37] If they don't pass the mindset, if their speed of learning is too low, there's a couple

[00:24:42] other trigger steps where they would exit our process.

[00:24:46] When they're done the process, that's when we send them for the video interview and

[00:24:51] only a handful get that far.

[00:24:55] In terms of the practice itself, and this is where I want to be crystal clear, the practice

[00:24:59] up to this point has done exactly one phone call with our team member to go through the consultation

[00:25:08] discussion as to what the practice needs.

[00:25:10] They haven't lifted a finger past that.

[00:25:12] There is no time wasting.

[00:25:13] You can have one of the consultation calls in 30 minutes.

[00:25:18] Then you get an email on a regular basis describing where the process is at, and as soon as

[00:25:26] we get a candidate, and this has happened, the fastest has ever happened, it's under 24

[00:25:31] hours.

[00:25:32] Obviously, that's not normal.

[00:25:34] But as soon as we get a superstar candidate, we send them over to the practice and we

[00:25:38] tell the practice, you got to jump on this.

[00:25:41] You have to move very, very quickly.

[00:25:43] This person is terrific.

[00:25:45] They want to work with your practice.

[00:25:46] Let's go.

[00:25:48] The reason being is that it wasn't very many years ago.

[00:25:52] I would say easily before COVID, you could take your time on these candidates.

[00:25:59] You could essentially have a committee hire these people.

[00:26:02] Folks were candidates were putting up with that.

[00:26:06] We'll say now in our practice, if we have to fill a position,

[00:26:12] we will have a response to the candidate within two to three hours.

[00:26:16] It's that fast.

[00:26:17] We do not want to lose any superstar to any other position because we weren't able

[00:26:23] to decide fast enough.

[00:26:25] But on the other hand, by the time they get through to that level and our process, we

[00:26:30] know they can do the job.

[00:26:31] It's just simply who the best fit might be for the practice for that position.

[00:26:38] There's another completely unexpected thing that comes from this.

[00:26:41] Let's say they have two positions open and this happens all the time.

[00:26:48] In our practice, we have incredibly specific data on this.

[00:26:52] About 50 percent believe it or not.

[00:26:55] Half of the candidates who apply don't get the job they applied for in our practice.

[00:27:00] We switch them to something else.

[00:27:02] The reason being is they have no clue.

[00:27:07] What their strengths and talents actually are.

[00:27:10] When they apply for job A, we look at their strengths and talents.

[00:27:15] They say, well, no, no, no.

[00:27:17] This person would be terrific at job B.

[00:27:21] Let's move to some things around and fill the position at job B.

[00:27:27] Sometimes we still continue looking for job A.

[00:27:29] Sometimes we move somebody internally.

[00:27:31] We have all kinds of options.

[00:27:33] That allows us to get the, you know, there's that old saying, getting the right people on

[00:27:39] the bus.

[00:27:40] That's terrific.

[00:27:41] That's straightforward with Billed My Team.

[00:27:42] Getting the right people in the right seats on the bus, that's where the spectacular

[00:27:48] results start to happen.

[00:27:50] That's what we're able to do as well with Billed My Team.

[00:27:52] Yeah, it sounds extremely rewarding.

[00:27:55] Not only can you start to take a deep breath and relax a little bit as an owner, but

[00:28:03] you're getting people in the right seats on the bus that you can actually grow in

[00:28:10] mentor and appreciate that.

[00:28:13] I would assume also, you know, keeping this team or these team members as much easier because

[00:28:21] they're in a role that they enjoy and there's probably a mentorship or growth plan that

[00:28:26] can be rolled out and it makes complete sense based on where they're at and where they

[00:28:31] could be.

[00:28:32] The standard model of hiring is round peg square hole bigger hammer where we just take

[00:28:38] somebody who's not good at the job and coach them to be better, to be better.

[00:28:44] But look, I'm flat out telling you after doing this, you know, throughout the country, thousands

[00:28:49] of times it doesn't work.

[00:28:52] You healthcare positions require a very specific type of person to be successful at it.

[00:28:59] And you move a little bit like imagine a bell curve, you move just a little bit off to

[00:29:03] the side on each of the on either side and you're going to end up with a massively increasing

[00:29:08] failure rate.

[00:29:09] It's why people are leaving your practice if you're having troubles with that.

[00:29:13] You might be the best doctor ever.

[00:29:15] You probably are.

[00:29:16] But in the more empathetic doctor you are, the further you should stay away from hiring.

[00:29:20] We're not looking to help people in the sense of what what Amy and I went through early

[00:29:25] on with our practice, we're looking to hire people who can perform.

[00:29:29] Something else I love to say not my idea, but A players, they have to work with other A

[00:29:37] players.

[00:29:38] Okay.

[00:29:39] A player will tolerate a B player, but they'll leave their job because of a C player.

[00:29:44] They're out.

[00:29:45] Now they know they can get a job somewhere else.

[00:29:48] There's zero concern from those people.

[00:29:51] If you're a practice, you mentioned early on where the doc is kind of concerned about

[00:29:57] the team members.

[00:29:59] The practice essentially running the doctor over.

[00:30:02] Well then you got some problems.

[00:30:05] And how build my team addresses that type of practice is through methodical search to replace

[00:30:13] the low performers.

[00:30:15] And what a doc transition low performers out of their practice.

[00:30:18] Well the ones that do end up with vastly lower stress, much more free time and they make

[00:30:24] more money.

[00:30:25] I've seen that over and over and over again.

[00:30:28] What do the three have to do with each other?

[00:30:29] Imagine running your practice where you're not taking stuff home at night.

[00:30:33] You're not stressed out.

[00:30:34] You're not sweating bullets picking up your phone on Monday morning to see who's nodding.

[00:30:40] You don't walk into your office looking for that envelope on your desk or somebody gives

[00:30:44] your resignation letter, been through all that.

[00:30:47] We don't deal with that stuff anymore.

[00:30:48] Anytime somebody gives their notice in our practice which does happen there is no way to

[00:30:53] stop that from happening by the way.

[00:30:55] Healthcare positions have a, they're not transient but they have a level of instability to them

[00:31:01] because people who do these types of positions are generally younger folks.

[00:31:07] Maybe they're not the breadwinner in the family.

[00:31:09] The spouse moves gets transferred.

[00:31:11] There's a million scenarios like that.

[00:31:13] So you will always have people leaving your healthcare practice.

[00:31:16] That's the unfortunate fact.

[00:31:18] The only thing you can do to combat that is look at each time a person leaves as an opportunity

[00:31:24] to improve the person in the position.

[00:31:27] So you know, you call Bill my team.

[00:31:29] Here's what we liked about Suzy or Joe and here's what we didn't like.

[00:31:34] Let's tweak what you guys are looking for this time around to get somebody who's an even

[00:31:38] better fit for our practice.

[00:31:40] And that's how we think about things.

[00:31:42] It is literally that, it's not clinical but it's that methodical in what we're looking

[00:31:48] for.

[00:31:49] Incredible.

[00:31:50] So for those who want to find out more, what's the best way to get in touch with you?

[00:31:57] It's pretty straightforward.

[00:31:58] Just go to buildmyteam.com.

[00:32:00] Now you may think well, what does an eye doctor have to do with ortho or dentistry?

[00:32:06] I mean we hire for dentists all the time.

[00:32:08] We last week we brought on our another ortho client.

[00:32:12] A private practice is the same thing in ortho dentistry, eye care, audiology, dermatology,

[00:32:18] plastic, all the different healthcare practices that we have.

[00:32:23] They're all very, very similar.

[00:32:26] What makes dentistry and ortho even more special is that we need to really focus on getting

[00:32:35] extremely welcoming people in because there's a massive level of anxiety to go to some

[00:32:40] of the, you know, to some of these visits.

[00:32:43] And so that's part of our algorithm.

[00:32:45] Again, we know this and if you hire these types of people properly and methodically, you

[00:32:53] do get these types of results.

[00:32:55] So that's where we're pretty excited about it but buildmyteam.com and then simply schedule

[00:33:01] a consultation, pop it on your calendar because everything's calendared for all of us.

[00:33:06] And we would be super excited to help.

[00:33:09] Incredible.

[00:33:10] Well thanks so much for taking the time to come on the grow ortho blog.

[00:33:13] Thank you, Luke.

[00:33:14] Balmyne, thank you.

[00:33:16] Thanks for listening.

[00:33:17] If you'd like to learn more about hip or any of the topics in this episode, send an email

[00:33:23] to helloathipcreativeink.com that's helloathtipcreativeinc.com or jump over to our website

[00:33:34] at hip.agency.