We had our annual full team day out of the clinic a couple of weeks ago.
A great day was had by all. Heaps of fun and such a different feel from the last one which was the craziest one ever in late March where we had it on a Friday and had to only choose 10 people to attend and if we had it the day after we would have only been allowed 2 people.
At that stage my commitment to the team was a small dip followed by a big boom. My commitment to myself was to reshape the business to be more mature and more professional.
So what have I done the last 3 months to achieve this?
- My mindset – in a challenging state personally (not due to COVID but moreso sleep deprivation from 2 young kids) I have led by conserving my energy, focusing on the important things, leveraging through my key leaders at work, meeting with them regularly and coaching/guiding them and helping them keep their heads right. I have given myself ample thinking time, often taking much more time to think about big decisions I would normally move quickly on. I have made more big decisions than normal these last 3 months. And above all I have maintained my good habits.
- My business strategy – I have literally gone back to looking at what services we need more, $/hr/room, and focused on the mature and professional reshaping of the clinic. We have a Clinical Psych starting next week, a 2IC senior admin to support Ruth starting the week after, I am further cutting back and our May was a record month for the clinic with June not far behind. Oh and our record revenue week ever was last week without me in the clinic which Ruth Woollett was very pleased to report to me.
- Marketing – we have focused almost solely internally. Really worked on plugging gaps in diaries of therapists with low PVAs through a mix of clinical and non clinical mentoring. Our go-to has been our VIP client facebook group and our strategy relationships with local businesses. A couple of my real marketing coups that were well received were campaigns offering free physio to existing clients who sadly lost their jobs, local business shoutouts where we supported and promoted other local businesses, and maintaining humour and keeping things light and fun on the facebook group. These posts got the most engagement.
- Team – I have refocused with all of our key team about what they and I want and need between now and xmas. We have shed a couple of team members who have self deselected due to either performance or behaviour during this difficult time. I have recruited a couple of great new team members that fit my mature/professional mantra. I have continued to “always recruit” and feel like the majority of my work building this dream team will be complete by xmas this year.
- Systems – Ruth and I have tinkered with our induction system and added to it with new team members starting, we obviously had a chance to update our disaster management plan(!!) and we have really fleshed out the automated clinical therapist systems in our clinic due to high volumes of good quality content coming out from various experts over the last few months. Have had a huge focus on clinician and admin training and already see it paying off in client results and retention. With Ruth’s new 2IC starting her system will be stress tested, but will set her free within 3-6 months.
So it was nice to cap it off today with my team after a high ropes course and some burgers and drinks. Here is a nice shot of the fitter members of the team who completed the ropes course.
