[JOE SANOK] We brought together all of our checklists, videos, and other free things in one spot, so you don’t have to opt in all over the place just to get another checklist. We’ve put it all together over at pillarsofpractice.com. Whether you’re just getting started or have an established group therapy practice, we have a free e-course for you. As well, we have eight-minute experts, which are short eight-minute videos around specific topics completely free. So if you want to take your practice to the next level, head on over to pillarsofpractice.com to get access to our free e-courses. Again, that’s pillarsofpractice.com to get all of those free e-courses. This is the Practice of the Practice Podcast with Joe Sanok, session 822. Welcome to The Practice of the Practice Podcast. I’m Joe Sanok, your host, and I am just so glad that you’re here today. One thing we often do on this show is as we’re helping you start, grow, scale and maybe even exit your private practice, we like to talk to people from other fields that are closely aligned, that are different but similar. If we just stay in our own silo and we just learn from ourselves we’re not going to get nearly as far as if we partner with people in branding or in other types of private practices. That’s why I’m really excited to have Dr. Daniel Bai with us. Dr. Daniel is the CEO of one of the most highly regarded business training companies for healthcare providers. He was a consulting and coaching dropout while he tried to learn best practices in business because most of the trainings at the time were outdated, clunky, or downright sleazy. Dr. Daniel, welcome to the Practice of the Practice Podcast. [DR. DANIEL BAI] Hey, Joe, good morning. I think we’re going to have some fun today. Thanks for having me today. I appreciate it. [JOE] I love as we were talking before we got rolling we were chatting about this idea of really great clinical work and then also really great business work and how often that’s in conflict. So that’s the theme for our show today. But I would love to hear a little bit about your own story of how you got into business, a little bit about your background before we dive into some of the tips and discussions we’re going to have. [DR. DANIEL] You got to. I’d be happy to. It didn’t start out well, Joe. I am a chiropractor by trade, and so I had these dreams of lollipops and unicorns now, one day I’m going to hang up my shingle and everything is going to be fine. That was the lie that I was told in school, and I have no problem saying that. I shoot at the hip and if something’s not right, I like to say it and if something’s great, I like to say it. But school did not provide me any preparation on what the real world was going to be like after I graduated. So I went out and set up shop and two years in I thought about exiting. I remember that day because it was a very depressing day on a February morning in New York City, I’m sitting in an empty office with all this passion about what I wanted to do and how to serve my patients and the results I wanted to get and all these what I call pipe dreams back in the day. I found myself online looking for part-time work. I mean, I even dealt in a poker room, underground poker room in New York City after I got off work at seven till four in the morning. At one point on the subway back, I literally broke down in tears and I was like, this is not the way it was supposed to be. This is not exactly how I imagined it and I thought about exiting the profession completely and taking a complete something completely different. So I had to really take a deep look on what was missing because I knew what wasn’t missing. What was not missing is the fact that I knew exactly how to take care of the people that I’m supposed to take care of. I knew that I really love the work and I really did, and I still do. There something else was missing and it wasn’t until I realized that I was missing a critical component in the business aspect that was making me come to a point where I wanted to quit completely. That’s how it all started. This was back in goodness, 2002, 2003 when I first started. [JOE] Well, and I do want to say to the audience that Daniel and I we’re going to talk honestly in raw today for sure. So there may be, we don’t know because we’re at the beginning of the interview, but there may be some language that if you have kids in the car that you may not want them to hear. We’ll try to mark the episode if we do go there. So what did you do next after you realized, oh my gosh, like you go get a degree and you think you’re going to have this practice and then next thing you know you’re dealing poker? What were some of the next steps you took at that point? [DR. DANIEL] The first thing I had to do was, and this was, I had a great mentor too at the time, and it wasn’t until I started listening to him where he told me some things I did not want to hear. Number one is a term that we use in the profession, but also in the business world, is that feel isn’t real or feel ain’t real. I didn’t really know what that meant until we looked at some numbers. What we found that is that I had a good number of people that were finding me, so new patients and new leads and new, whatever you want to call it, they were finding me. But at the end of the day at the time, we calculated that less than a quarter of them were actually saying yes to my best recommendations and staying on and doing what I needed for them to do, for us to get the results that we needed. So you can only imagine the amount of weight on the business because if we had, let’s say, 10 new patients that week two or three of them were only staying on and becoming patients. That was really tough to swallow because I also had an issue with rejection. I couldn’t wrap my head around why someone would say no to me and if they did say no to me I used to go home literally and take it so personally, like it was a personal attack on me and that was unsustainable. That’s the first place that I looked. Now we’re talking about that really bad four letter word, Joe sales. I got to tell you, I was so averse to that because all I always thought was that sales was sleazy. It was something that was designed to manipulate people, to make them do something they truly don’t want to do, tricking them into buying more things that they truly don’t need, want or care about. So that was my very antiquated view on sales but I knew I had a sales problem because the people that were coming in weren’t saying yes and my product and service were great. So there was that disconnect so I’ve had to gulp and say, maybe I have a sales problem and so I ventured into my profession and said, I have a sales problem. You could only imagine the amount of hate mail that I got for even, just saying that word remotely. This is back in 2003. It wasn’t in my profession. I looked at all other aspects of consulting and coaching and someone to help me with this and there was nothing to be found until I went outside the healthcare industry to have someone help me learn about this concept called sales and it was nothing that I thought it was initially. [JOE] So what did you, how did you learn about sales, because I think that very few people in private practice will even think it’s a sales problem. They may say, yes, I have, people aren’t reading my blog posts, they’re just not calling. I have a networking problem. But the actual sales, like labeling it that you’re right, very few people I think would use that term, what did you, like, where did you go for help with sales? [DR. DANIEL] Well, back then I went to the source. I went to, I remember Googling sales training and I remember the first guy who popped up with Zig Ziegler. Do you remember him? [JOE] Oh man, know, like, and trust and what did he have his like, car university or something like that? [DR. DANIEL] Yes. Well, back then his, I don’t know where he is now, what he’s doing but back then his biggest clientele were like car salesman, real estate agents, pharmaceutical thing and those industries. I was like, oh gosh here we go. Like, here’s the sleeze ball talking about sales and how to trick him. Okay, whatever. But I reluctantly picked up one of his first books and I read it cover to cover. Frankly what I’ve learned from him over the next couple of months and years was this concept that sales isn’t something that you do to trick someone into doing something. Sales is actually the quickest way to connect a problem and a solution. It has nothing to do with trickery. That’s what all the bad press about, bad sales is what we get. So we’re thinking sales is bad sales. And there is bad sales. There’s people who trick people into doing things they truly don’t want to do or can’t do or selling you lemons when they’re telling you that this thing is worth millions. But true sales is consultative. It’s helping the person across from you figure out what is it truly that they want and then if you can provide that positioning yourself in a way that you are going to be the solution to that problem and brass tax, like that’s what sales is and that was my introduction back in the day. [JOE] Yes, over and over I’ve heard people hate to be sold to, but they love to buy. [DR. DANIEL] Oh, no doubt [JOE] And just that idea of people are always trying to improve their lives, whether it’s buying organic food instead of non-organic or going to a massage therapist versus not. People are always buying and it’s just a matter of helping them figure out what’s the best solution for them. So when you think about sales and you think about how that applies to private practice, what are some like core principles that you think every private practitioner needs to know about sales? [DR. DANIEL] Oh, boy, where do I start? I think I’ll start here is number one, at least in my industry, and now that I pop my head out into others, this is a very common problem, is this concept we talk about called STFU. Do you know what that stands for? Joe? [JOE] STFU? I don’t think so. [DR. DANIEL] Okay, well, you might have to bleep this one. It’s shut the F up. We talk too much. We talk too much. Typically when we are talking, what that actually means is that your patient or your client across from you is not talking. All too often because there’s so much anxiety about putting yourself in a situation where you want you to look like you know what you’re doing, you’re confident, you’re, you’re ready to serve, you’re doing your thing that we overcompensate that insecurity by talking over our patients and explain to them how great we are and what this service or procedure is going to be, how it’s going to be beneficial instead of letting our patients dictate exactly what they want and then making that fit not the other way around. So we’ll start right there. I think we talk too much. I think we don’t ask the questions that allow our people and our clients and patients to really express what it is that they want and in doing so, there’s always going to be a disconnect if that happens. [JOE] I want to dig into also that idea or mindset that we started at the top of the show with, of business and good clinical work being in opposition to each other. Talk a little bit about that mindset and what you see when you do your coaching work. [DR. DANIEL] Sure. The dilemma that many healthcare practitioners have is that if I’m working on the business, that for some reason, if I’m working on the business, it’s taking away from the service that I’m providing. So, for example, one of the really bad mental states that I see in our industry is, oh, I want to grow my business and I want to do these marketing things, and I want to do these systems, implementations, et cetera, et cetera. They’re always afraid that that’s going to look like from the outside, oh, this person is only worried about making money, and that’s a bad look. I agree. But that is so far from the truth. The marketplace does not look at you unless you actually are doing that. They don’t look at you as someone who is looking to squeeze every dime of every person that comes in. On the other end, if all you’re doing is worrying about the service that you’re providing, which should be one of the top things, but not the only thing that the business end of it starts to be ignored, and we don’t do the typical business acumen fundamentals that we need to do to grow and sustain a practice. [JOE] What are some of those basic business things that you think most practice owners need to have as a skillset? [DR. DANIEL] Well, number one, on the sales and marketing side is, and I see this all too often, is not identifying with a specific pain point, a specific problem. I see a lot of generic things, for example, if let’s say you’re a chiropractor, you’d say, “Hi, my name is Dr. Dan and I’m a chiropractor, and I can help you feel better.” It’s so generic. We need to augment that. So very few people are going to be able to really get relatable to feeling good, so how about this? How about we change our messaging to be very specific to very one particular person? If we can talk with that level of specificity, we’re actually talking to someone out there that can relate to our particular message. For example, we teach our clients is don’t talk about something that’s generic. Let’s augment it. How do we augment that? Well, that could sound something like what, I heard a story the other day that a person woke up and literally could not put both feet on the floor, doubled over in pain. You have the four kids that are asking for mom and mom can’t even make it into the bedroom. It doesn’t sound like you and then take it from there. So that type of specificity in the messaging is one of the fundamental, I guess concepts and constructs of sales and marketing that we’re trying to teach. [JOE] it’s interesting you say that. There’s actually an auto repair shop that’s on the other side of town, and they, every single day change their sign. It’s like the hand where you have to put it up there. There’s not like an electronic sign and, but it’ll be so specific, like, did your air conditioner stop working today? Or are your tires a little more flat than they should be? Or is your car making a grumbling noise? It’s just very specific. I’m sure there’s 20 people a day that drive by and go, my air conditioning did just go out. How did you know? To just know that they’re like that specific with just things that they help with I think is a similar example, but obviously in a different industry. [RECEPTIONIST] When I had my group of practice, I was so sick of running to the lobby to see if my next appointment had arrived, or even more awkwardly to have a bunch of therapists run to the lobby when we heard the door open. Maybe you want a more discreet, stress-free way for your clients to check in. Take a deep breath. The Receptionist for iPad empowers your practice to create a zen-like check-in experience. 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[JOE SANOK] Now, tell me a little bit about other business basics that for you the average practice owner really needs to master to master that business side of growing a practice. [DR. DANIEL] Yes, and this comes to the finances and if it’s okay to talk about money, let’s talk about money. I find that many practitioners out there are very averse and they try to avoid the conversation with finances with their patients. Number one, the marketplace is super sophisticated these days. They read between the lines. They get a feel for if someone is being forthright or if they’re hiding something or if they’re uncomfortable with something. I know that a lot of your listeners are in the healthcare profession, I’m sorry, the mental healthcare profession so these are just general concepts that everyone should understand, not as a professional, just even as a human, but when a practitioner avoids the conversation of finances, that’s usually going to be a red flag. We usually teach our clients finances are just a matter of fact. It’s just a fact of life. It’s something that you should have no problems talking about and let’s just handle it. One of the ways that we screw it up, because we are uncomfortable about it, we make the presentation of the finances super complicated. This is how much it is per visit, this is how much it is for 10, 12, or whatever the care plans might be, or your treatment plans. This is how insurance work and then there’s this whole like Joe, the algorithm, I call it the insurance algorithm. It’s like watching someone write code on a blackboard, and that’s what it looks like to the patients. That type of confusion usually leads to that particular other person saying, ah I just got to go home and talk to my wife about this. I got to go home and talk to my husband or my dog or my fish, because at the end of the day, they are fatigued. They don’t want to have to figure this out right there. So we shoot ourselves in the foot because we don’t make the presentation of the finances as simple and straightforward as possible. What we like to do is try to present, let’s say the finances, if you’re a self-pay or if they have a portion that they’re responsible for, is we do them a favor and make it as super simple as possible. How do we do that? What do we model this after? Well, we’re consumers first and we had to look at how do we pick payment options? How do we decide how to pay? It’s usually going to be A, obviously prices is a factor, assuming that they feel like you’re worth the value, then the next thing would be to make the presentation of the finances down to two choices, three choices max, no other way to pay for it. Make it super, super simple instead of doing a circum-loquacious, algorithmic analysis on what they’re responsible, what they’re responsible to, needs to be, or what they got to pay at the end. It just makes it super confusing. Usually, most patients will say they need to talk about it, and we know what happens after that. [JOE] Now, for those money phone calls or discussions, is that typically before someone even comes into your office or is it once they come in for a first appointment? [DR. DANIEL] Usually, it’s first when they first come in face-to-face in the appointment but although it’s another conversation we didn’t need to have is how to handle that first phone call, which is another book we got to open. But typically what we like to do is present what we need to present first and then we end with the finances. [JOE] So on that phone call, what are a few things when someone first calls in, maybe we can walk step by step what that would look like. So if someone calls in, what do you typically recommend in regards to flow? [DR. DANIEL] When they first come in, typically the conversation is almost the same. We quote them exactly what the initial cost will be, and we give them a range if that’s how you operate but typically it’s going to work best if you have one price for the initial consultation, if you even charge that. Our front desk assistants or whoever’s working the front desk, their only job is to get them in, so they’re going to talk to them in their way, and they’re scripted. By the way, and I’ve got to bring this up too, is that anyone that’s in the practice cannot be winging it. There needs to be a template, a workflow. They should know exactly what to say and how to respond if they are saying for every scenario that they may encounter with the phone call. So once we quote in the price, we schedule them in and then they come in so we try to reduce as many obstructions or obstacles possible right up front. [JOE] So what’s that look like when you’re removing obstacles for someone that’s calling in? [DR. DANIEL] Well, it depends on, you want to role-play something? [JOE] Sure. [DR. DANIEL] Okay, let’s say, Joe, you’re going to call in for an appointment. Let’s choose an industry just to keep it fun. [JOE] I mean, I would say counseling [DR. DANIEL] Fine. So someone calls in for counseling and is the practitioner answering the phone or is there a receptionist or someone at the front? [JOE] I would say more times than not, we’re seeing people have a receptionist or an intake coordinator, not the actual clinician. [DR. DANIEL] Got it. So let’s roll. [JOE] All right. I’d call in, I’d like to schedule a counseling appointment. [DR. DANIEL] Got it. Is this the first time that you’re seeing so-and-so? [JOE] Yes. Yes, it is. [DR. DANIEL] Great. Can I have your name just in case we get disconnected? [JOE] Yes, my name’s Joe. [DR. DANIEL] What is your phone number, Joe? [JOE] I’d give my number. [DR. DANIEL] Got it. You don’t want to give your number on this podcast? I don’t know. Alright, Joe. So what is the nature of your visit? [JOE] Yes, I want to have some help being happier and to reach some goals. [DR. DANIEL] Wonderful. I think you called the right place. The next available appointment I have is Thursday or Friday. Which way works best? [JOE] Friday. [DR. DANIEL] Great. I have a 10 o’clock or four o’clock [JOE] 10. [DR. DANIEL] Got it. So I’ll have you down for 10 o’clock next Friday. I do want to let you know that the initial consultation is $140. If there’s any insurance that you need to present, we’ll take it there and if there is a billable, we’ll definitely go over that with you before we bill anything else? Would that work for you? [JOE] That works great. [DR. DANIEL] Okay, great. We’ll see you next Friday at 10. Now let’s say, Joe, at this point you have an objection or you say it’s too much, or or I didn’t want to, I want to bill my insurance. We can go over those objections if you want. [JOE] So I mean, so at that point, that’s where you would want to just go through those questions or those objections with them. When people come in for private pay, if they don’t have insurance what do you find is most helpful for clinicians to know when they’re doing those types of calls? [DR. DANIEL] I’m sorry, can you ask that question again? Sorry. [JOE] Like for private pay where they’re not taking insurance at all, where that’s not an option, are there extra maybe things that you would include in that discussion on the front end? [DR. DANIEL] No. Actually, we have the same conversation no matter how they, what type of profile they are. But our systems are really based off of the toughest ones and that is if they’re paying out of pocket with no third party help whatsoever. That’s an important distinction because I think a lot of practices have different procedures for different profiles and over time, we’re never going to be able to scale to the level we want if we have a special case for every single profile case that walks in the door. So we try to keep it as uniform as possible across the board. [JOE] I think that’s a really smart thing to think through of what systems do we have that can just be applied for everybody for their onboarding in whatever fashion they are. The last question I always ask is, if every private practitioner in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to know? [DR. DANIEL] You’d ask me this initially before the pre-con, it’s always tough because it’s, what I see across the board on practitioners that are providing a service that’s literally life-changing for most people is that I think in the hustle and bustle of every day running a business and our own personal lives, et cetera, we lose focus on the value that we’re actually providing. In the end, why do we do these things? Why are we learning how to run a better business? Why are we learning systems for a business? If we don’t stop once in a while and actually answer the question why I think a lot of us can get lost. So the bottom line is that we’re doing all these things. Why? Because we want to serve at the highest level possible, that we don’t want to waste our talents on things that could be corrected, and we choose not to. The answer to this question is the fact that if we don’t reach the people that we are destined to reach, then we’re not going to have an impact on humanity that we decided that we wanted to do before we even embarked on this mission. So the why is everything. There’s a way bigger effect on, our impact to society than how to answer a phone call. But if we get caught in the hustle and bustle and the logistics of everyday life without stopping and saying, hey, why am I doing this, I think we could potentially get lost. [JOE] Daniel, if people want to follow your work, what’s the best place to send them? [DR. DANIEL] Yes, you can follow us on Facebook or Instagram. You can go to our website www.closeforchiro.com. [JOE] Awesome. Thank you so much for being on the Practice of the Practice Podcast. [DR. DANIEL] Thank you, Joe. Thanks Joe for having me. [JOE] So what action are you going to take? I mean, for me, I think one of the big takeaways is to just make sure that our director of details, our coaching, our different things we’re doing, that we’re consistent in how we deliver the messaging and just making sure that everyone has an idea of exactly what they’re supposed to be saying and doing. That’s just going to be a better, well-oiled machine moving forward. Also we’re doing four podcasts a week. There’s a ton of amazing episodes that we’ve been doing. We were just talking on the 18th about why leaders fail in business and what to do about it. We talked about selling yourself on the 17th. On the 15th we talked about are you anxious or are you a highly sensitive person? Back on the 11th we talked about Guatemala’s garbage dumps and a lady that tried to change things for the people in Guatemala. A lot of great episodes we’ve been covering this month. Make sure you go back and listen to those ones. We also have Ask Joe every week, so if you have questions for me, you can submit your question over at practiceofthepractice.com/askjoe. So all sorts of ways to get involved, to get connected, to get the help that you need, totally for free. We couldn’t do this show without our amazing sponsors. The Receptionist is such an amazing thing that I wish I had had in my practice. The Receptionist for iPad is a simple, inexpensive way to allow your clients to discreetly check in, notify the providers that the patients arrived, and to ensure your lobby isn’t full of a bunch of stress. You can start your 14-day free trial of The Receptionist for iPad by going to thereceptionist.com/practice, and when you do, you’ll get your first month free when you sign up. Again, that’s receptionist, thereceptionist.com/practice. Thank you so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have an amazing day. I’ll talk to you soon. Special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy for your intro music. This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. This is given with the understanding that neither the host, the producers, the publishers, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.