130: Connecting your associate to your why

Helping Associates connect their why to your why. That's today's topic on the KC CHIROpulse Podcast, brought to you by Kats Consultants here in the studio. With me today is Dr. Troy Fox. I'm Dr. Michael Perusich. We are your hosts for today's journey, talking about how to make the associateship really work. Mm-hmm. And we've all. Um, I shouldn't say all, many of us out there have had associates and we've had probably some good experiences. We've had some bad experiences and, you know, over the years I think we've really had an opportunity to kind of step back and really see kind of what happens when an associate, uh, an associateship kind of breaks down. Mm-hmm. And a lot of times, Troy, I think it's because the doctor owner has their why. And the associate has their why, and when I say why, it's, why are you in practice? Right. Why are you, why do you come in and do this every day? And the two “why's” never meet. Mm-hmm. Two why's make a Right. But Right. How do we, how do we get the two why's to connect together? It's almost like there's two visions that never come to full fruition together. I think, and I've thought about this a lot. I, and, and I think about the mistakes I've made in practice with associates. Mm-hmm. Me too. I know. Shocker, I've made a mistake or two in my life. All right, so write it down. I did, um, we got chakra's anonymous. Yeah. So, so I think when we look right at the beginning, I think here's, here's the problem. Number one, when I'm bringing an Associate doc in, I think I sh I, I need to be brutally honest about where I see my practice right now, where I see it going and what I'm trying to get out of this. Even if it scares that associate doctor off. Because the point is that a lot of times I think we sugarcoat things. Oh yeah, I think you can make a lot of money doing this. When in fact you're going, well, I think you can make. $30,000 a year for the first six months, and then after that, it'll improve. Quite frankly, until you develop a patient base and start seeing some patients, you're not gonna make any money unless I supplement you and I'm not really feeling like I want to do that. That's a real honest conversation rather than like, yeah, I think you can make some pretty good money at this. What, when would you like to come on board? You know? So I think sometimes we have to be honest, but at the same time, I think that the associate docs have to be honest about what they're looking for as well, rather than just, Hey, thank you for the opportunity. I'm excited to come work for you. How about go ahead and finish that sentence by, and I'm expecting to make $120,000 the first year out of the gate with full insurance benefits for myself. Dental vision I'd like my cell phone paid for, and I'd like two weeks of vacation and all my continuing ed paid for. Wouldn't that be nice to know upfront? So I think that conversation upfront is what sets the stage as we start talking about the whys and, and, and then we can start talking about why we want this to happen and, and what the particulars are. But I think we have to be brutally honest upfront. I, I think you just nailed the head. Nailed the head of the, nailed it on the head. Good grief. Yeah. Uh, it's expectations. You've gotta have solid expectations from both of you to begin with. Yeah. And as the doctor owner, you've gotta look at how much does that doctor need to produce to pay for themselves. Mm-hmm. Unless you're just so busy that you're wanting and willing to turn over a bunch of business to 'em, and you're willing to lose that revenue outta your pocket. And if you are willing to lose that, what's it worth to you percentage wise, right? So you have, you have to know upfront what you feel like what you're giving to them is worth, or if you're just giving them a space to practice. Then you shouldn't be charging them an arm and a leg. You should be charging them chair rent like another barber would. Right. Right. You know, so you gotta figure out what you're doing. Are you charging chair rent or are you feeding them patients? Right. And you've, and what's that worth? You've also gotta understand what the associates expectations are. Mm-hmm. You know, if you're a high volume diversified practice and the associate wants to do, uh, low volume, Uh, soft tissue work and rehab and those kind of things. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Your two visions aren't going to meet up very well. You may not be in good marriage, so you've really gotta have those expectations. There needs to be some common ground in those expectations, and there needs to be some major understanding. And part of that understanding is that the associate understands what they have to produce and. Part of the other side is the owner needs to understand what they need to do to help that production happen. Mm-hmm. And so the, the, the two sets of expectations absolutely have to marry up with each other. I, I've got so much I wanna say about this. I think this is a good Yeah. Spot to, uh, hear a quick word from our sponsor. (SPONSOR AD) So let's take just a quick break and, uh, we'll be right back. We're talking about. How to attach and connect the doctor owner's. Why with the associates why? We'll be right back. All right, everybody, here we are back. We're talking about the associates, why versus the doctor owner of the clinic. Why and how we bring those two together. Andrey, we talked about expectations. You're the one that said it first, and I think that is so spot on. And. I know we spend a lot of time, um, teaching and training doctors how to create those expectations and how to have those expectations, conversations, and how to monitor whether or not you and the associate continue to match up on, um, expectations as the process goes and mm-hmm. It's a little tricky because you're not growing at the same rate. Right. You know, you as the owner, maybe you've been in practice for 15, 20 years or longer mm-hmm. And you're not growing like you did in your first five years. You know, think, think back, how fast, how hard did we work? How much did we grow in those first five years? Right. Were we still doing that 20 years later? Well, kind of, but you, you know, there's, there's just, you're in a different spot. You have different energy levels. Mm-hmm. Here's the other thing that happens. There's a real tendency for the associate to get discouraged as time goes along. Mm-hmm. Because, yeah, everybody in, especially if you're in a smaller town, everybody in your community knows the owner of the clinic. Right. And that's who they wanna see, and they don't know the younger associate, and so, mm-hmm. Part of the expectations have to be, Doctor owners, you need to be helping that new doctor develop authority within the community, right? And so you literally have to take 'em out. You may need to do some health talks and have them chime in and help, and then eventually they're doing them on their own, but you're gonna have to have the expectation that you've got to help make them. Uh, give them authority and, and help ingratiate them into the community. Not only your practice community, but your town community at large. And so it, it's not the panacea that I think a lot of doctors think it is that mm-hmm I'm gonna bring this associate in. I'm gonna take, you know, 20 patient visits a day off me. I'm gonna be able to take Thursday afternoon and Fridays off. And no, I'll be honest, probably for the first six months you're gonna have to work a little bit harder than you have been. Because I hear a lot of me, me, me from doctors when they talk about bringing an associate in, quite frankly, you, you hammered another point, just absolutely perfectly. You're gonna have to take time to develop this doctor. They have great doctor skills. They have never been in a lot of cases in practice by themselves, have no idea how to run a practice. They have no idea how to connect with the community that they're in. And you're plugged in. So it's your job to make sure that you help bring them to fruition, because isn't that what you asked for? You're the one that said you wanted an associate in your practice, right? Right. So I get frustrated with docs that say, well, yeah, I let an associate come in and it was a disaster from day one. You know, he just didn't go out and do what I thought he was gonna do, or he was unhappy with what he was making. So you didn't communicate, you didn't do anything to help at that point because you were already burned out, tired, and needed a break. Well, right. I think you can hang on for another six months until you get the other doc up to speed and actually help them be successful. You help them be successful, you'll be successful. Exactly, and that's really, that's really a key. Now also be aware that if you, if, if you have a bird in your nest that you're nurturing to the point of where they can fly, be aware that they may eventually fly. Yeah. Associates aren't permanent fixtures in your practice, so you have to be aware of that upfront as well, that it's not a permanent fixture. You may get to a point where they mature enough that they decide they want to be you and they're gonna go off and do it themselves. And power to 'em. If you, if you have enough ability to, to get an associate doc to a point, it's like a child moving out of the house and being on their own. You should be proud of 'em. Not angry at 'em at that point. Right. Right. Either that or you better make 'em a, a partner in the clinic at that point if you want to keep 'em around. So, I, I, I was just gonna say that if you want mm-hmm. To engage them long-term. Yes. And they're good. Yes. You're gonna have to Yes. Pony up and, and, uh, make them a partner with you. And, in fact, one of our coaches did that, and they, yeah, they've had huge success. Now they have multiple clinics and, you know, so Right. If you do it right, if you set the expectations. Mm-hmm. If you keep them engaged, if you develop them and you constantly readdress those expectations and monitoring the metrics together to making sure it's growing in the right way, it's gonna be a positive experience in most cases. Right. Yeah. I think you're absolutely right about all those, and I'm gonna throw in one other small caveat Yeah. That you've gotta look at when you wanna work together. When you look at your why's, is your why in your practice directly tied in with your philosophy, your practice philosophy? Well, yes it is. Do you have a bandaid philosophy or do you have a wellness philosophy, or are you more rehab oriented philosophy if, if you come in and you're a rehab oriented practice, And I'm basically working in a practice next to an airport. That's a franchise that typically deals with patients that just come in, hit and go, hit and go when they're coming in/out of an airport. And I move into your rehab based practice with that same attitude that I'm gonna catch people that are on the run because they're travelers or whatever, whatever my philosophy is, you know, I've got the traveler philosophy and I come into your practice and you're more of a treatment schedule, rehab practice, and I don't adopt. Unfortunately, you're gonna have major, major sparks flying in that practice very shortly. So you also need to make sure that you have a cohesive, uh, philosophy about what you want to do with your patients because they're not your patients. They're not my patients. They are patients, right? So when I work with another doctor, there are patients that we're working with. We have to have a cohesive philosophy and we have to mimic one another in what we say and do exactly. So very important with that as well. No, those are all great points. Those are all great points, and I think this is a topic we could keep going on, but one last, one last thing that I just wanna throw out there is doctors, if you're gonna bring on an associate or you're thinking about it, or that's something you think you're gonna do in the future, spend some time thinking inward about what your why is. Because when the better you know your why, the more likely you are to find the right associate. Yeah, for sure. So, all right, great topic. Uh, if you haven't done it yet, go to Katsconsultants.com. Go check us out, see what we do. On the homepage, if you scroll all the way to the bottom, is our brand new annual midyear annual review, an annual midyear review that we do every year. You're gonna want to check it out because in there we talk about a lot of the things that are happening with the economy and so forth. And how you can insulate your practice a little bit from some of those things. And there's all kinds of just great jewels in there that you can just implement almost immediately in your practice and see some major changes. So, We, uh, thank everybody for listening today to the KC CHIROpulse podcast. As always, and remember, we're brought to you by Kats Consultants. Troy, good to see you. We'll see everybody next time. Yep. See you around next time everybody.