Why Systemization is Crucial for the Success of Your Medical Practice with David Jenyns

2023-09-02 | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErVNYkKui-4 Transcript YouTube English auto-captions. [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] welcome to another edition of bootstrap MD this is the podcast for healthcare and physician entrepreneurs I say this you know I only say I'm eager to talk with my next guest but this one is really I've been really eager this is like uh really turned about because the last time we actually chatted was probably weird saying just before the call play 15 16 plus years ago I mentioned that when I left uh practice my in my medical practice back in 2004 I got involved in entrepreneurship internet marketing and helped start co-founder software company that allowed me to speak uh not only in the U.S I got to go to Asia and I got to go to Australia and that's where I met my next gentleman at a seminar and I think David you probably were just out of college you're just getting started your your company but we'll get into this but at the time you know he was a he was starting his SEO uh SEO system um your search engine optimization company and he grew that to be one of the most trusted digital agencies which is not known as Melbourne SEO Services he became a CEO but then he decided to step back from the operations and they hired another CEO and from that he found out that he was a systems devotee and that he was able to find a process that worked for his business and he thought he could be able to share that with others and he founded system Hub and systemology which is actually a best-selling book that I happened to pick up which kind of started this whole podcast uh introduction and conversation today he has a mission to free all business owners worldwide from the daily operations of running their business recognized as a high achieving entrepreneur you'll find many of his keynote presentations on YouTube including tedx word camp and pro blogger I'd like to introduce to the program Mr David Jennings David how are you doing hey Mike yes an absolute pleasure to be here and a boss from the past now blast from the past but but as I mentioned it was um I mentioned at the beginning I own about uh different Med spas and weight loss clinics here in Southern California uh we've got 20 plus employees managing different locations I thought I did a pretty good job in organizations but I could always improve and I just happened to go on Amazon and I'm looking at books on operations you know we got Gina Wickman and other books that I've read and then your book came out like oh I know that name where I know that name and then I searched it was like oh I met this young man back in Australia and if I remember I guess we could talk about it um you were I believe attending it or attending one of the contrasts where I spoke at and maybe I think you're just at the beginning of starting your agency yeah I'm trying to remember which event it was it might have been a Frank Kern event or an ebbdale event uh but yes you are kind of one of the uh original uh ogs uh in the internet marketing space always loved the work that you did so definitely a pleasure to um to join with you again but since then like that was kick-started my career with the digital agency I ran that business for 13 years or owned it for 13 years and I worked in that business for about 10 of those years and it was that final transition as we found out we were pregnant and I realized I'm turning into potentially being a workaholic dad unless I start to change something and that was a real turning point for me and I stepped back and really looked at how do you remove a business owner from the day-to-day operations and tested a lot of assumptions and misconceptions that I had as I hired the CEO and really stepped out and that's when I discovered my true passion is to help business owners do the same now I mentioned on the call you know I have many uh people who listen to my program most of them are Physicians some of them have their own practice or maybe they are a a widely regarded employee in their practice but for those who are the the practice owners um here in in the states as someone who's starting up a practice you know their Physicians so they're seeing all of the patients but then they're also maybe doing some of the marketing they're doing their finances they're paying the bills uh and I know you've been known for helping kind of systematizing different types of practicing businesses where can they even like start the process of actually taking themselves away because for many it just seems like a foreign concept yeah that's definitely the first question people say is well what do I systemize first because quite often I'll have the discussion with the business owner and they all agree that systems and processes are important and to build a business that works without you you need them yet for whatever reason people don't make the space to do it or they say oh I've tried to do that in the past and it doesn't quite work and they just haven't made it stick and that's what traps them in their business because a lot of business owners like you said if they're The Physician who knows how to look after the client and they've always done that they don't necessarily see the difference between knowing how to do the job or The Thing versus running a business that delivers the thing and so there's a difference to running the difference versus doing the job or running the business versus doing the job and once we kind of have that breakthrough and we both go yes you know what systems and processes are important then it's like well where do you start and the process I've got is uh I think I call the critical client flow and it helps to identify what are the 10 to 15 systems that help you to deliver the core product or service and you do need to find somewhere to start because it's very easy to get overwhelmed with the hundreds of things that go on in your business and you want to systemize everything and you want to have checklists and processes for everything and then you're like oh well now I don't really know where to start um but something to kind of keep in mind is this idea that just because you don't systemize it doesn't mean it's going to magically stop happening in your business it's already kind of happening your business is already kind of running so that kind of helps to take a little bit of the pressure off and then it becomes a game of the 80 20. we just have to think about well what are the essential systems that we can start with and oftentimes with this critical client flow exercise it's just about identifying the primary target audience the primary product or service and then the linear Journey that that client and the business goes through to deliver the product or service so how do you get their attention what happens when the inquiry comes in how do you then book them into the system how do you once they come in what are they doing inside the waiting room once they go in and they visit the doctor like that bit with the doctor maybe there's certain things where he's taking notes on the patient and how does he close out that consultation and they go back out to the receptionist and they book in their next appointment so it's about mapping out that linear journey and creating systems and processes or not even creating it's about capturing what's already being done because again a lot of the practices that you probably work with they're already running they've already got clients things are kind of already working it's just sometimes it's very dependent on a particular team member maybe heavily dependent on the business owner or maybe there's a receptionist who always books patients in and if she's away sick on Thursday then we're not able to book patients in because no one else knows how to do it as well as Jenny does and it's it's just about identifying those critical systems and capturing what's being done so that becomes the new state ended or the the base level as a doctor I wasn't used to asking for help especially when it came to subjects outside of medicine but then I found physiciancoaches.com in an instant I found hundreds of experts to help me in all aspects of life on areas I was afraid to ask dealing with burnout starting a side gig money management even help with my marriage and the best part nearly all experts are Physicians themselves after reading their profile in a quick chat I knew I found the right Mentor for me at physiciancoaches.com help from professional colleagues is just a click away [Music] how hard is it because you know I'm sure you've been there as well where you you end up saying you know what it's just easier for me to just do it on my own right you know I I've had this where um I've had a medical assistant and we have it processes when they have a question they talk to the the nurse that that's there but what ends up happening is they end up calling me because the medical assistant says you know what she's busy and it's just easier for me to get an answer to you how do you stop how do you stop that process is um but also in addition to that how do you feel like you know it's just easier for me to just do it by myself because it just takes too long for for me me to to give it to somebody else because no one can do that I can it's definitely a process that happens over time you don't just wake up one morning and go oh I've got a systemized business it ends up being a change in culture in the organization and you each time issues come up once you've got the framework right you're you're locking that process down further and getting those answers in a central location so at the start it feels a bit like whack-a-mole and there's always something popping up and you're trying to fix it at the system level so that you capture the way it's done for next time so there's quite a few things that need to happen you have to train the team to look to the system or the process first to try and help solve their own problems that's part of it and and as a business owner you need to really encourage the team members to try and help to solve their own problems and the other thing to remember is depending on the skill of the team member especially when you're getting started out and you're just putting some of these processes in place you capture it's almost like the blue skies version of if if nothing goes wrong and the client says exactly what they need to say or exactly the way that we would like it to go then here is the process that captures that and new team members train on that very basic process and that's just how they cut their teeth and then any times there are variations to that that's when it gets escalated to a more senior team member who can help to solve that and that's the process where that new team member then starts to learn how to handle exceptions and the process is just a great way to get someone started and then we start to build in some of those variations into the system so it very much is a an organic process that grows over time and there's a lot of persistence required here and most of that resistance also comes from the initial staff because it's if you're introducing this new idea of systemizing and they're like well we've always done it this way why do I need to change the way that I'm doing things and that's where that resistance comes but as you start to get some of these processes in place and you get over the hump when new team members come on board that's all they ever know they just know that the first thing before they go to Mike or before they go to the boss or whoever it is to ask the question you first need to consult the systems and see is there already an answer there and it's it's training that early on which is critical and that starts to change the culture what advice would you give because you know we it certainly probably easier if you are the CEO or the owner of the company but for many they may just be an employee they might be a high-ranking employee let's say at a hospital and they see some you know inadequacies in the way that they they are doing things perhaps they get a appointed to some type of committee but just like you said maybe they're at a hospital that's doing new this for 80 plus years you know Dave just let you know in the medical industry we still use fax machines so it's a very slow moving yeah in in some of these uh dinosaur type Industries what would you say to them in terms of I guess persuasion into into like identifying like here are the here are the problems that we're having that are costing you money and time um a great book uh obviously uh systemology but another one in the medical space they've got quite a few is that checklist Manifesto right um and there's I think the first thing that needs to happen is you need to get some of the key people in leadership to go yes I want to do this it doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to be the ones doing the documentation in fact oftentimes your higher skilled team members are the most busy and it's not the best use of their time to be documenting the process but they do need to believe in it support it create space for it lead by example with it so I think that's first thing you need to try and get some key team members on board uh and helping them to understand that all problems in the business or in the hospital or practice or whatever are actually systems problems like at the root of it that's just a mindset and the way that I think about business and it just helps me to realize that the problems are solvable like what is it that has gone on that has occurred this problem or made this problem happen can we trace it back and then can that system be re-engineered to solve that problem once and for all so it's trying to get that thinking and helping them to understand that the systems improve everybody's situation that's probably the other big thing oftentimes when business owners introduce the idea of creating systems and processes people think oh am I going to lose my job are they looking to replace me are they trying to capture what I'm doing whereas it needs to be reframed so that the team knows that this makes your job easier it means that you can go away on a holiday and have a week off and know that the boss isn't going to be calling you up every second day asking you where that client patient profile is or whatever it might be the idea of having systems and processes means that team members can step in and out so that you can have a restful break and when you come back you can hit the ground running or for other team members you need to let them know by building a systems culture here this helps you to move up in our organization because you can capture some of the key tasks you're doing and then start to delegate down which then creates you know space for you to work on higher value tasks so a lot of it has to do with getting the buy-in from the team and helping them to understand how it benefits them individually and then trying to get some examples together of how it works like if I was a staff member and I was wanting to try and do this or maybe I'd try and get systemology or the checklist Manifesto into the hands of the right people and then I might start to solve some of my own problems with systems so that I can showcase that and say wow you know we had this problem this is what I did this is now going to solve this problem once and for all hey we should now try and do more of this around the business so somebody's listening to this and say hey David this sounds great but let me tell you in my company we've gotten Margie here and she's been doing this for you know 20 plus years and I've asked her to do a few things and she's not budging you gave us some examples of like hey you know maybe this is part of the team this is part of the mission but is there some things that you also identify doesn't mean you know is it a new title is it does it require them to get a raise or is it identifying people who like you know what whatever we do they're not really with the program and maybe it's time Margie has to say goodbye yeah you definitely want to give the team members uh as much chance as possible to jump on board and support them and you say hey this is what we're doing if you are looking to change the culture though some people will start to self-select out and in the early days um that might mean maybe a team member isn't the right fit as I said moving forward it makes it easier when you're recruiting new people because you can project this stuff right up front you know when someone looks at a job ad maybe you link to a system or a process and say these are the types of things you're going to be doing or maybe in the interview process you ask the questions that help them know that you're a systems driven organization so that moving forward this will cease to become a problem but it's it is the ones that are already in the organization it's that Margie who's been doing that role for however long and you have to think about how to support them through it starts with helping Margie to know how this improves her situation and there was a little window there it's less there but it is still there um it's never been easier to actually change the culture in an organization than right now because everything that happened with covert you can just blame it on Covert which is ah we have to change the way that we're doing things because you know there's a chance that you might need to be off sick because or or you know carers leave because someone in your family gets covered and I want to make sure that things keep running smoothly so by the time you come back you can hit the ground running so there's a couple of ways and techniques like that that you can put forward this idea that this change is necessary and you give them every opportunity to jump on board and support it there's other little techniques like you want to make it easy on the team members because sometimes great team members are really really busy in fact usually all great team members are busy so you want to make the process of documentation and capturing what they're doing as easy as possible we have a thing we call a systems Champion where we suggest a business identifies the systems champion who really drives this initiative who naturally is a very organized person systems driven person and you you have that person work alongside the knowledgeable worker you have her or him work alongside Margie and you record Margie doing her tasks and then they're the ones who do the documentation and then Margie all she has to do is proofread and double check so there's a couple of little tricks like that to lighten the load and make it easier and help Margie see this is a good thing but there have been times and I've worked with companies that have just found team members that have been so resistant that they've moved on but if you head down this path and you make things very transparent and open so the whole team can see like when you're assigning tasks and you've got a system or a process attached to it and then if things aren't being followed it actually makes it much easier to enforce because you say oh we have a way of doing things here and this is what it is and I don't care if you have the system or the process open or not if you're executing flawlessly but if you're not executing flawlessly then you need to have the system or process open until you're following our particular way and then once you've got that way down it's it's okay and we just do that for consistency so it's um just building up the muscle because at the start there will be some challenges and resistance and you just have to get good at dealing with it but I feel like business owners are um you know as long as they get this and they get bitten by the bug and they keep sticking with it they'll get the result you know technology has certainly changed I mean talk about 2006 to to now right things have changed we've got you know chat GPT video streaming Zoom calls like this and perfect quality I'm talking to you in Australia you know great quality it's amazing but with technology it gets a little bit more confusing and more intertwined and I I guess specifically what I'm looking at is the way that we interact you know with different employees you know case in point uh with my staff as I mentioned we got multiple locations we were using Skype for a lot of our communication then I turned into texting and then it turned into uh you know little email and Skype and texting and now we're using slack and there's some already pushback on on on slack what is what is the role that technology plays into systemization is it a is it a curse or is it a benefit for us um I think the best way and I often go back to my SEO days to think about how Google would systemize things and the way that they did it they would start off they'd come up with this hypothesis and say oh we believe that if we make this change to the algorithm then it's going to improve search results and so once they've come up with a hypothesis they then write it in and they start running some tests and then they have humans on the other end of that who review the result and then go oh is this good you know there's we've got the quality search guidelines and we make sure that things still meet with that and it's delivering a great result and um okay this is looking good let's now program this into the algorithm and fully automate it and roll it out for everybody because our hypothesis was proven correct so as Google is you know like probably extremely systemized as we would imagine and they're driven by a lot of tech they still start off with human automation first the human comes up with the idea they roll it out and they do the manual checks and all of that happens before before they roll it into the technology so I always suggest with people um you you systems and processes are almost like that that version one and you don't need a where you can you don't need to roll in too much Tech to start with just make it um as as Lo-Fi as possible and then over time you can introduce Technology Solutions where you might go oh this chunk can now be replaced with this software tool and so that's just one premise that I keep in mind but I'm technology is great and we see obviously a lot of changes you mentioned with AI and you know we see it in our space where we focus on systems and processes and using chat GPT can help to accelerate the documentation of process you know we do a loom recording and we take the transcript and we feed it into chat cheap ET and it can help to create version number one of a system or a process the human still comes in afterwards and polishes it up and makes sure no steps are missing and gets it saved into the right location and all those sorts of things so a lot of but those tools are they just make your best team members even more efficient but they're not necessarily a replacement um it just means that your best team members can work on more things um but yeah I definitely think they're uh is once you figure out your way there's a lot of huge benefits that can be gained by replacing chunks of work with uh software that can streamline the process in in in in your experience and and again I'm going to talk about you know we talked about covet and with cobit came the zoom meetings right everybody was doing zoom and it seems now I'm on a zoom call every single day yes yeah we're in a systematology because that could it help with that are you do you encourage more meanings how how do how does that work because I know about you I seem like I'm on my whole day is full of Zoom calls all day one two yeah look there are a few things that can make the zooms more effective like one of the tools that we use um is we want to make sure that it's very clear what action items come from a meeting and who's responsible it's almost like taking minutes and some of the new technology um can help to speed that up I mean transcribing a call that you might have feeding it into chat GPT and asking it to pull the action items and who's doing them and then having some sort of summary so that way we're making the most of those calls and then the way to think about it is developing a process off the back of that so that way you can have an admin assistant or someone step in behind you that follows a process to make that as easy as possible for the higher skilled team members who might be on those Zoom calls um but but we definitely struggle with that Zoom fatigue and running meetings all the time and you know you have a certain amount of time booked in and oftentimes the meeting will expand to the space that you give it so I think having a clear agenda on what it is that you're there to talk about and oftentimes shortening the meeting down is better like rather than going oh we don't know how long this is going to take let's book out 45 minutes or an hour sometimes you're just better off going for shorter to be more efficient um but yeah I don't have like a magical cue rule unfortunately for that one yeah yeah it seems like it but you know when you have systems and processes hopefully you don't always have to be on the meeting and not everybody in your organization needs to be on it that I mean that's what I've learned it's like why am I on this one yeah yeah now um I I know you're very busy you work with a lot of these top businesses and um but I did want to kind of and just on on a personal note is that you know one of the ways that you know I started my practice was you know I read the email and you know the one thing if everybody remembers from the email is that the one phrase is like you got to work on your business not in your business and in your book systemology you talk about um your meeting with actually meeting Michael Gerber and then actually working with him can can you can you talk about that because it's a fascinating story yeah I but I look back now and it just feels like the universe was smiling on me or something it opened this huge opportunity for me I was in the digital agency and uh I just kind of realized that we were pregnant and I'd taken a bit of time off we focused on systemizing and I plugged a CEO in and I was in that sort of transition after our first was born thinking about oh what am I really going to focus on here next and then completely out of the blue I get an email from Liz Delia Gerber and I didn't know the first name but I knew the surname and Liz daddy Gerber was is Michael's wife and she reached down she said oh call me and she just had a phone number now this is completely random out of the blue I had zero contact with them before that like you I knew the e-myth and had been a big fan of Michael's work so I called it was first thing in the morning for me which was their afternoon because they're based in California Carlsbad and I I got through to her straight away and she said oh um do you know my husband you might have heard of some of his work and I'm like yeah I've heard of Michael Gerber and she said well he's launching the last book in his emit series called beyond the e-myth and normally we go through harpercollins but for this book we wanted to completely maintain the rights and have full control so we've decided to self-publish and she said I happen to come across your book which is the first book I've wrote called Authority content oftentimes when I have a business I'll write a book which captures some of my core ideas and she read Authority content watched me do the book launch from afar on the other side of the world she said I don't even really know how I found you I think it was on some YouTube video or something and she said I loved what you do did and I was wondering if you'd like to do the same for Michael and I said well I don't really launch Books but I would love to work with Michael and I thought I'd focused on systemizing my business and I had the CEO I went all in on this book launch for Michael I wasn't working in the day-to-day of Melbourne SEO services at that point in time and I had um just over three months to launch Michael's book and pretty much burnt the candle at both ends I was chatting with uh Michael and his team and was Delia and it was amazing to see how quickly doors would open when I just mentioned Michael Gerber's name oh Michael's got this book launch that's coming up and I lined up a truckload of podcasts for him and helped to orchestrate a lot of the um the the launch campaign for it and it was a huge success the book was his first book to get a number one bestseller in 24 hours and as part of kind of like the final celebration I he invited me to the dreaming room which was an event that he runs uh and I'd flew myself in a couple of the team over that had helped me do the launch and I went through the dreaming room with Michael and at the end it looked earlier said oh look we've got a mastermind because Michael's a little over 80 now and he's thinking about the legacy of the e-myth and what they're going to do with it and she said oh would you like to stay on for a mastermind we're kind of talking about the future of the e-myth and you know of course here I am in Carlsbad California I said I'd love to and then at the 11th Hour um she said oh we've been trying to get Tony Robbins to facilitate the room um but he we just can't make it line up and we don't really have an MC and she just said it as an aside and I said oh look if you don't have anyone to emcee the room and you get stuck I'd be happy to emcee the room and she said I will leave it with me and then the next morning she comes around she goes you know what if you'd like to do it you can because they were quite impressed with the book launch that I did and here I am standing in we're in this super Swanky hotel and he had the presidential suite and I'm sitting in his room and they've got these cameras all lined up and everybody's sitting around on the couch and I'm standing in front of the room with a flip chart as we're kind of mapping things out and masterminding um and I just remember almost like having to pinch myself and and thinking three months earlier I had zero contact with the Gerbers and here I was standing at the front of the room guiding this Mastermind and it was just like a magical carpet ride and at the end of the day Luz Delia said look we've been so impressed would you consider running the Emir companies because Michael had been winding down and I was just my mind at this point you know Smoke's coming out my ears I just I couldn't believe uh just this crazy rider was on that they didn't need me to move to the states and I just couldn't get that over the line with my wife um so I had to decline but it's just been great to keep those doors open and chat with Michael and he ended up writing the forward to systemology and I told that story and it's just been a bit of a game changer for me as far as um not only getting to work with Michael that was quite an experience but then also just him giving systemology the blessing because it's almost like the how-to guide of the e-myth like the e-myth like you um impacted me quite heavily and uh I kind of felt like the Amy told you the how like the Y2 not the how to and I kind of feel like I wrote systemology to say and here's how it's done so that was yeah most definitely one of my wildest uh stories well it is a great story it's a great book I encourage you all to pick up systemology uh wherever you go I found it on Amazon and uh it's it's been tremendous uh David uh again thank you for your time any last minute thoughts uh you know any advice you have for maybe the struggling physician practice owner out there I mean what's the first thing that they can do to to to get started and maybe organizing their practice a little bit better I just hope that we lit the fire inside the physician to go this is possible and you might have tried to systemize in the past and it hasn't quite worked maybe it was the approach that you followed but everybody even if you don't see yourself as a systemized person you can still own a systemized business there's just a framework and a process that you have to go through and it's definitely worth it it is challenging but to build a business that works without you to step out from the day-to-day operations to grow and scale just like Mike has you need to have systems and processes you've you've got to nail this it's that important and we've got a framework that works and so yeah I'm hoping that that's enough for someone to go oh I'm going to give this another look and I can do this and exactly and just to talk about it too it's like you know when you have a business the ultimate goal of the business is to sell a business and having spoken with private Equity firms they're looking for systemization right they that's what they they want to do they want to make sure that if they're in it that that business can run generate Revenue without the owner David once again thank you thank you for your time and it was definitely a pleasure to have you on the show today please result mine thanks Mark and thank everyone for listening as always as an entrepreneur you're gonna have your ups and downs but if there's one thing you could do your business whether it's you know start getting more leads getting more organized in your business and keep moving forward [Music]