Waching daily Oct 29 2018

The pro-charter, pro-privatization website the 74 Million recently

published a series of articles on the transformation undertaken by SAISD

superintendent Pedro Martinez and his team. Martinez touted the articles in a

recent email to SAISD employees and the series has been given prominence on the

district website. Unsurprisingly the portrait painted of the man who

masterminded the handing over of Stewart elementary to democracy prep even as it broke out of IR status is

little more than a fawning, and, one must suspect,

expensive exercise in public relations. More importantly, however, the series of

articles and videos lays bare the close ideological and practical relationship

between Martinez his innovation tsar Mohammed Choudhury and the school reformers

hell-bent on privatizing public education for profit. The 74 million is

the brainchild and privatization propaganda project of Campbell Brown

former NBC and CNN reporter and current advocate for the dismantling of public

education for private profit. Funders of the 74 Million include the Dick and

Betsy DeVos Family Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Jonathan Sackler of

Oxycontin producer Purdue Pharma and the Walton family foundation.

That the SAISD superintendent's greatest cheerleaders are the big business

interests with their sights aimed at privatizing the American public school

system should come as little surprise. The Broad school graduate has

relentlessly pursued a path marked by education reform measures straight out

of the school privatizers' playbook. The school board have been collaborators,

either out of ignorance that comes from not doing one's homework to learn who

these outside entities are and what they're about, or because they actually

believe in the privatization of public education and are willing to assist in

its demise. His board president and chief innovation officer have shown themselves

willing to sell out the communities they're meant to serve in order to

facilitate access to lucrative public funds for corporate education interests.

We should thank the 74 Million for laying bare the reality that SAISD

district leaders are the toast of big business school reformers. We were right:

big money interests are coming for our public schools. San Antonio is ground

zero in a school privatization offensive that has already decimated

public schools in Detroit, Chicago, New Orleans, and is currently using the

disaster in Puerto Rico to savage its public education system for private profit.

Pedro Martinez, Mohammed Choudhury, and Patty Radle

are the new darlings of the national movement to

privatize America's public schools.

That should tell you all you need to know.

For more infomation >> Who's Behind The SAISD PR Campaign? - Duration: 2:53.

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Daniel Gibbs: From Practitioner to Business Owner to Telstra Business Awardee - Duration: 20:38.

This is the Grow My Clinic podcast by Clinic Mastery where we help you deliver amazing client

experiences to grow your clinic.

We are your host today, Jack O'Brien and Daniel Gibbs from Clinic Mastery and today on the podcast,

we are talking all about Daniel's story, Daniel how are you today? Good day Jack

Nice to have you and nice to be here on the Grow My Clinic podcast. It's my first one!

Welcome, welcome. It is very exciting. There are plenty of ears listening in and really interested in your story. So let's dive right in.

Tell us, you are a Podiatrist by trade, Is that correct?

That's right, and I don't know how anyone could imagine they want to work with feet the rest of their life, right?

I don't understand.

I'm a physio by trade and you know, cutting ingrown toenails and fungus off people's feet does not sound like my idea of fun

but each to their own. So tell me then if that's the case. You know,

you know as much as anything and most health professionals as well, that it's not so much about what you're doing.

It's not so much about the feet.

It's about the people that are attached to the feet, right? Right. And as health professionals,

we all got into this because we wanted to make a difference for people. We wanted to help people. And,

and you know that really resonates with me that "Yeah, okay!"

so I chose Podiatry as my Avenue to be able to help people much like you chose physiotherapy is your avenue to help people.

Of course I wanted to be a physiotherapist I missed out by a mark so-.

Everyone wants to be a physiotherapist, let's be honest.

Everyone wants to be a physio. That's right,

but.. but you know, this is where we are. But.. but no,

I've really enjoyed being a Podiatrist and helping people

In terms of the clinic, in the clinic and and the people that I see one-on-one, but now also moving into the space where

helping other business owners as well. So it's been quite a journey to get there. Alright, so let's go back to the start.

So you started your clinic, Posture Podiatry from scratch in Adelaide. Is that right? Yeah, that's right. I

started Posture Podiatry back in

early

2009 so just after the GFC hit, and of course, thinking about

wonderful places to open the clinic. There were many signs up on the road and I thought, "Gee,

each one of these places could be a wonderful place to open a clinic." Not realizing that an indication of

a poor economy is a whole lot of "for lease" signs.

However,

going there a little green,

realizing that I wanted to create a podiatry clinic

that was the premier podiatry clinic in my hometown here in Adelaide in South Australia. And

so started up by trying to make it look nice, try to really get a good look and feel for the place and..

and really trying, and and take this clinic somewhere special.

Yeah, it's exciting. And

did it get somewhere special?

I assume that you didn't just hang the hang the shingle at the front and people dripped in. Did it take off?

Look, it did and I was really pleased with the way things were going at first and I really sort of measured

what I thought my success as a

successful health professional was in terms of how booked out I was. And at one stage, I was booked up four months in advance,

So same people up until midnight sometimes just because there were no other

times in the day to be able to see these people (inaudible).

But quickly realized that I came to a point where the business was quite heavily reliant on me,

especially when it came about time for the for the birth of my first daughter. And I kind of committed a cardinal sin here.

See I was given some really good advice at the beginning. And the advice that I was given was "Don't put your name on the sign,"

because if you put your name on the sign, then the business becomes heavily reliant on you. And I thought, 'Yep

that's not going to be me. I'm not going to- this is going to be a clinic that's going to help lots of people.

it's going to help other practitioners to be able to help lots of people and it's not going to be reliant on me. And..

there were a few indicators of that at the beginning with the equipment that we got in Iceland.

I don't know if I'm ashamed to admit this but I spent $1,000 per waiting room chair.

You know, I wanted this one clinic to really look the part, and really do a good job.

But not everyone needs to do that obviously. But.. but that's sort of the level

I was thinking, the vision that I have of the clinic. Like most health professionals, you know, they want to create something that's special,

that's a bit different, that actually helps them to to create those great client experiences and and become a successful business.

But when it came time for the birth of my first daughter, and

the doctor said, "Hey, it will be good if you took a few weeks off

to enjoy the birth and be there for your wife," and and all that.

I I thought yeah, that I mean I really want to do that, of course. That's why I created a business,

so I'd have the freedom to be able to do that, the freedom to spend as much time with my family. But I realized that I,

don't know if that business could actually survive a few weeks without me there.

It's interesting.

(Inaudible) So even if you said not to have Daniel Gibbs Podiatry and everything

revolve around you,

you didn't realize until you had a impending birth coming that everything did actually revolve around you.

Is that [inaudible]? That's right. It was that moment where things I

had to take that break. And I know a lot of people come to this point.. this point as well where either they have a

baby themselves

so they have to take a maternity leave and they're forced into this realization that the business is quite reliant on them.

All people who get to that point of burnout. Now for me It wasn't burnout;

I was very happy and motivated by seeing lots of people and being really busy.

But

there's a sensibility around running a business. A

lot of people get into business because they want to

have the freedom, to have time, to be able be in control of their own time.

And maybe an element is also that they want to be able to have more money as well be by being successful in business.

That was never a big thing for me.

It was more about having the freedom and time the ability to be in control of my own diary. But then,

realizing that by getting into business I actually lost that,

the very first thing [inaudible] is because I lost that. That was the that was the big sort of knock on the -

that reminder of what have you created for yourself. It's interesting when you say 'create for ourselves',

how often does it seem like we get into business?

But at the end of the day we end up just having a job? We work for ourselves.

We're our own boss and we're pretty crummy boss. You can't even take time off from your own job.

That sounds like where you had a job but not a business, right? Well yeah, that's right. And it's funny because

business would be a lot easier if you didn't have clients and if you didn't have staff.

Just profit, just profitably. So right. But what we do when we become business owners is we actually -

we take on a whole position description, a whole new job description

that is outside of what you've been trained for as a health professional.

You don't get trained in the in the requirements and the position of how to be a business owner.

And so often what happens is we do that the best we can as a health professional and

we do what we know. We fulfilled the requirements of being a health professional and that job description. And

unfortunately, we don't fulfill the requirements effectively of being a good business owner. And so where I was at that time

was yes, we had a good clinic. Yes. It was doing pretty well.

Yes, we were seeing lots of clients and having great outcomes, but because the business was relying on me

I didn't realize that I'd actually become the bottleneck.

It would never go beyond what I could do physically

of course. The time that I couldn't invest.

So when decisions had to come through me, when I had to sign off on things, when I had to make sure -

when I was the one reaching out to all the referrers, when I was the one doing all the meetings

you know that, that meant that I became the bottleneck. And

while I had other practitioners working there, they were kind of twiddling their thumbs and it's that common thing, you know.

I have clients that I'm seeing and I really want to be able to pass them on to other

practitioners who are working for me but the clients would come back to me and they'd say, "ah, Daniel, you know that were great.

But it's just not the same as seeing you. You know, I'd rather keep seeing you." And I think, "Oh wonderful.

Thank you, but that doesn't really help me in the long run.

I want you to be able to do better. And.. and

look once I realized that I was a bottleneck,

I had to put in place some systems to be able to enable the business to work.

Initially, while I was away for that three weeks after my my child was born,

and then from there onwards, so it was a [inaudible]

Where do you start when that's, when that you know, nine, eight, seven-month kind of deadline is in is pending,

where do you start? As a business owner, what did you do?

Yeah, so for me I had six months. And I thought in this six months,

what I need to do is I need to make it so the other practitioners

So that sorry, my clients will happily see the other practitioners instead of me.

That was my number one focus and the way I did that was I started to think of all these

scripts, the spiels that I use when it comes to introducing

treatment plans, when it comes to introducing various avenues of treatment with clients.

So for example

if I see a new client and most health professionals have a little script or a spiel that you use when you're

introducing the treatment that you're about to give them. When it comes to foot mobilization or

that orthotics or all the little things that we did in the clinic,

I had kind of a rehearsed script in my head that had been developed over 10 or so years of being a practitioner. And

these scripts, I realized were actually quite valuable and if I could write them down and

train my team to use those scripts, then effectively

my clients will be talking like me when they go and see them. And so to be less of a

difference between the care that they're providing, they might continue to see those practitioners.

So I started off by identifying which scripts we're going to be useful; new patients spiel, different treatment protocols, and..

and just sort of pick the main ones and put them down on paper and workshop those with my team.

That was the first thing. That's interesting. And there'll be a future podcast episode where we dig into those individual scripts and

also how to manage that change, and how to

train your team, get your team on board to be able to implement these scripts without it feeling robotic or forced.

So make sure you keep your ears peeled,

listeners, for those future podcast episodes on those scripts and how to implement. Was there anything else that you did as well, Daniel?

Yes, so the second thing so first one was with the practitioners.

The second thing was with the admin team.

And what I needed to do is make sure that everything that needed to be done in the day

was going to be done, without me having to check that had been done, because I

was kind of sick of putting out spot fires and I didn't want to have to

monitor and say, "Oh was this sent out? Or was this done?"

So basically what I did was I put on a poster note, an individual poster note for every single procedure in the clinic. And

it filled my [inaudible] desk at home,

which is quite a large desk and it went up the wall, and it went up the side wall and and I had post-it notes

everywhere with all these admin tasks that need to be done

in the clinic. And there were everything, from

replacing the water in the flowers, to you know,

following up on reports or you know. Just there's the important task, there's the administration tasks.

I like to kind of talk about it in terms of you've got your $10 an hour work which are the things that

you know anyone can really do like collecting the mail or

like I said before replacing the water in the flowers. You've got the $100 an hour work, which is your actual

consulting work that you're doing and then your $1000 an hour work

which is your strategic alliances. And they were the harder ones to hand over to other people

You know a meeting with a local gym where you're creating that,

uhm you know, a strategic partnership with that as a future referral avenue

but that's what we were doing. And had to actually try and work out a way to to make this work and..

and that's what we did with those systems.

So we moved from just the post-it notes to actually putting everything onto

a task list. And we've talked in previous podcast episodes about using Asana for a task list

and making sure that we can actually

you have those tasks in place.

But from the practitioners talking like me with the clients,

to the admin team, making sure that everything was being done

that was enough to get me through the three weeks. And Jack, on the back end of this three weeks that I was away,

I came back to a team that were kind of motivated

to a level where they were kind of keen to prove that the business was okay

without my heavy involvement and I could actually let the team go and things would still run smoothly. And [inaudible]

Is grateful for them to be saying that. Yeah, and to do that within six months is absolutely brilliant.

[inaudible] So the business didn't implode.

You were able to transition patients to see other therapists. You were able to empower your admin team to get everything done and

be empowered to take control of the clinic. So then what happens to Posture Podiatry after the birth of your child?

What what's the next steps then for Posture Podiatry? So the next step, we entered an era where we focused entirely on

client experience. So what happened here was because we had our

basic benchmark systems down and in place, and most things

didn't really slip through the cracks anymore,

we had confidence in the service that we were that we were delivering and so now it was time to

Really start to bring on those elements of the client experience model.

So we started implementing herbal tea, mineral salt foot baths with essential oils. We started implementing,

you know, that instead of just a normal glass of water, you know

the.. the chilled sparkling water instead with the wrought up towel and a bit of hand cream served on a silver tray.

You know

it's the little things like that that make a difference and the

responses we started to get was "Wow! If you're willing to serve this quality tea, you must be really good podiatrists!"

And and so this whole element around the service we were offering on top of the outcomes

we were getting for our clients then led to people becoming

[Inaudible]

Wowed by the experience and engaging more and becoming raving fans of the business.

That then led to us being nominated for the Telstra Business Awards and.. and we were very fortunate and very proud to be able to

have the top business in SA.

We won the Telstra Business Award for South Australia in our category here and

that's something that's really driven us to continue trying to create these wonderful client experiences and

deliver outstanding care outcomes for our clients.

Fascinating and still well known, well-regarded for that client experience and the results you get. I think a couple of important points

of note through that Daniel, before you took some leave, you had a couple of other practitioners

but just how much work were you doing in terms of maybe percentage of billables or clients seeing -

it's not as if you were on the way out already, is that right? Yeah that's right.

So over this period of developing our client experience model,

I actually went through a process of coming off the tools completely. It took me twelve months,

I should have done it in six months

but coming off the tools means no longer practicing as a practitioner or as a podiatrist in my clinic. So

when this began I was sort of responsible for about 80% of the income for the business. I was doing yeah

ridiculous hours, although I felt like it was under control, but you know, it's amazing what we tell ourselves when we're really busy, isn't it?

But 80% of the income for the business, the business heavily relied on me. Over that twelve months, I

reduced so that my

income-producing amount in terms of the day-to-day income was zero

So I went from nine percent to zero in twelve months.

But it was interesting watching the numbers as I started focusing more on that $1000 an hour work that I mentioned before.

it really did turn into $1000 an hour work. The..

the.. the business had not only

replaced my income in that time, but also had grown by 20%.

So now, here I was earning the same income as I was as a practicing

practitioner while not practicing at all, and the business had grown 20% in that time period.

So I put that down to the fact that we were

getting things right in terms of the client experience and when you deliver great client experiences and you deliver them consistently, the business

does well as a result. And

it's not always for everyone having a million dollar business or being successful

sort of on the money sort of thing.

The thing that makes me feel good here is that we're actually making a bigger difference for the clients that we're seeing.

We're able to help more people. We're able to do it in a great way. And

after winning the award and getting a few phone calls from other health professionals saying, "Hey, can you help us?"

"Can you help me?" "What did you do?" "What systems did you put in place?" so on and so forth.

It's.. it's kind of led to the birth of Clinic Mastery as we see it now. And

so I'm forever grateful for that process that I went through to do that.

It's not for everything, everyone though, Jack. Not everyone needs to come off the tools.

I think.. I think just being able to have the choice of being able to choose whether you want that freedom in your business

or not, that's the key element. If you want a consult or not consult,

you should be free to make that choice. If you want to go on holidays,

I mean, I've just been on a two-month holiday with my family,

I'm travelling in a caravan up the East Coast of Australia.

It's been wonderful time, but certainly wouldn't have been able to do that

had I not gone through the process of systemizing things and letting the business run on autopilot.

It's a it's a fascinating discussion, isn't it?

And I'm sure there'll be future episodes around your role shifting from being the senior or the primary practitioner in a clinic to

leading your team, and I guess, you know, you might have been able to help 40, 60, 80, maybe 100 clients per week as a

primary practitioner then going to lead a team that's able to deliver,

you know, hundreds of consults per week and been able to help hundreds of people per week is a shift in role.

But I've found such such a rewarding that likewise. I've just come back from a snowboarding trip in Japan

because I'm no longer bound by the diary of having to see clients directly

but able to lead and empower my team to make a difference in people's lives and create amazing experiences.

It's a.. it's a fascinating place to be, right?

Absolutely! And it's it's that speaks to my core purpose as well of being able to help people.

I can only help so many people one-on-one,

but if I can empower my team to be able to help more people

or if I can empower other business owners to be able to help more people.

It's just so in alignment with what I love doing and my core purpose, that's speaking on a selfish level here.

It's just so much more fulfilling and rewarding.

Yeah, that's fantastic.

Look Daniel, we might look towards wrapping it up there

but that's been a fantastic insight into a

practitioner who is seeing heaps of clients to having six months to get off the tools, now creating an amazing clinic that delivers these

mind-blowing experiences for your clients and that success now is multiplied across the countless clinic owners

we're able to health through Clinic Mastery. If you've been listening to this episode and you'd love to grab the the show notes. You can

can head to our website at clinicmastery.com/podcast. This is Episode 004.

You can find all the notes there. If you'd like to learn more about Clinic Mastery and how we help other clinic owners

develop thriving clinics by creating amazing client experiences,

you can find all that out over at clinicmastery.com/growmyclinic. if you found this episode

interesting, useful, helpful, maybe insightful, a little bit different today,

we would really appreciate your honest review and rating in iTunes or Stitcher or wherever else you listen.

They really help us to be able to help more people,

so an honest review and rating would be

fantastic for that. To make sure you check out the show notes and how we can help you further at Clinic Mastery. Daniel,

thank you for your time today. It's been a pleasure.

Thank you guys. And we'll be with you again soon on another episode of the Grow My Clinic podcast from Clinic Mastery.

This is the Grow My Clinic Podcast by Clinic Mastery where we help you deliver amazing client

experiences to grow your clinic.