What I Learnt Consulting with a 20-mil Revenue Business

A couple of weeks ago, I sat down with a couple of decision makers for a health business that does 20-million per year in revenue. If you're an aspiring clinic owner who feels inspired by a business that does 20-million in revenue / year, let me assure you that this post will set some realistic expectations and more importantly, provide insights that you can reverse engineer right now. 

If you'd like to watch the video version, check out below. Otherwise, keep reading!

The three most important takeaways from this blog are:

1. The bigger your team, the harder it is to solve problems. There are problems that emerge in bigger teams that do not exist if your team is small. For example, if you lead a team of three people... you might be able to speak to each of them individually. However, if you lead a team of 100 people, you most certainly will not be able to do this. This means you will have to rely on other tactics to relay something as simple as a procedural change.

Here are three ways you could communicate to 100 people with the same message.

Option 1: Send out a mass email with a video and/or resources 
Option 2: Talk to your regional managers and/or clinic leader teams to relay the message and enforce the training
Option 3: Get everyone in the room and make a group announcement

Now let's break down some simple problems that will emerge from each of these options.

Option 1: Do you have any good writing skills? How do you know if your staff will even open the email? Will they even read it and use the resources?
Option 2: Do you have the respect of your managers? Are you able to speak clearly and articulate your thoughts? Do your managers have the ability to relay the message accurately? Otherwise, you're just playing a game of Chinese whispers.
Option 3: How do you get everyone to turn up? Can you speak well in front of a public audience? 

Can you see how the sheer size of the team increases the scale of the problem? The same problem that could be addressed in a small team cannot be addressed the same way in a much larger team. And that's why, if you have the luxury of a small team right now, it's generally a good idea to set the core foundations right whilst imagining it to be useful at a scalable level. 

And fundamentally, this experience has taught me the importance of reduction, not addition which brings me to the next point.

2. Addition is the enemy as you grow. Adding procedures and steps to a business 'sounds' good in theory - after all; look at all this content! But in reality, 'adding' without crucial thought makes everything worse because an SOP of over 100 pages will be read by absolutely nobody.

Perhaps a useful example would be going overseas with 20kg worth of baggage. Assuming you are not bringing any souvenirs for the people there, do you think you'd rather pack all 20kg or leave plenty of space for what you might take on during your trip?

If you start your trip off with 20kg already, you will be forced to throw things away or sacrifice things you do want to bring home because you have already exceeded your limit. As your business grows, you will be forced to add new components to make sure it constantly flourishes and your team is looked after. Without these systems, your business will implode and/or quality control goes out the window.

This could look like an initial consultation structure, sales processes, a marketing framework and/or clinical pathway education. But the value isn't in how 'long' the process is per se, but the effectiveness and simplicity of it. 

If you wanted to create an initial consultation structure to onboard new hires, and you created a 5 hour video series that shows step by step how the initial consult will go... I'm sorry to tell you this, but it's probably never going to work.

And I can tell you very quickly why.

Because if you hired 100 people, I can guarantee only a select few will truly pay attention to the 5 hours. And of those that truly pay attention, I'm confident they'll remember at best, 20-30 minutes worth of content.

That's why  although addition is necessary as your business grows, you can't 'add' something for the sake of adding. It's much more valuable to 'add' only what is absolutely essential and effective. This type of thinking is what has driven the recent success of my book, which focused on only four strategic touchpoints in an initial consult that drove at least 80% of results. 

I know there's plenty more I could talk about, but more is not as effective as less. And that's why less is more. And the driver of less is simplicity. 

3. Simplicity is absolute key. Making things complex doesn't scale across a company with many people. You might be able to get very technical with ONE person, but if you're talking to 50 people... how are you going to ensure that they even do two or three things well?

I never fully understood the use of slogans and acronyms, but if there's anything I've learnt about the recent American political landscape, it's that  they are effective. If I asked you what the Republican Party's slogan is since Trump came into power, most of you reading this would say 'MAGA' or Make America Great Again. Now I personally have very little interest in the ongoing political affairs of the United States, but as an example, I can't fault is effectiveness.

And this message has spread to billions of people around the world. Why is this important? Because if you have 10 people working in your clinic, whatever you create in processes needs to be memorable AND recallable without much effort. 

For example, one of my current clients has a treatment approach called RAM, which stands for Release - Activate - Modulate. It's a musculoskeletal approach that favours exercise physiologists, physiotherapists and chiropractors. Now during onboarding, all he has to do is explain the acronym 'RAM'. It's easy to remember, it's only three words, and if he were to teach this to 100 people in the future, I'm certain 80-90 of them will remember.

When it comes to something else, like my online conversion framework that I've taught successfully to all my students thus far, I call it the Triple E (EEE) framework, which stands for explore, empathise and educate. Now here's the kicker - I spent more time coming up with the acronym than explaining the actual skill itself. 

Why?

Because it's harder to make things memorable and simple, than to make them complex and forgettable. Usually, the more catchy / memorable or simple it is to follow, the more time has been spent refining it, like a samurai sword. 

So what does this mean for you?

If you're a small clinic owner right now with the intention to scale, you are in the luxurious position of dealing with small-scale problems. A large scale problem is not where you want to be, and to prevent multiple large scale problems requires large scale thinking while you are still small scale.

If you have a small team, you have the time to refine processes so they almost appear too simple. And you can test it out on new hires to ensure their effectiveness. Whatever training process you create, just ask yourself this:

Will this work if I showed this to 100 people at once?

If the answer is not a clear 'yes', then it's probably not good enough - yet. 

If you are a clinic owner looking to scale and you'd like to chat more in depth about this, I do free 30-minute strategy calls where I can point you in the right direction. And don't worry, it's not a secret sales call, because if you do like what I tell you, then I'll share with you how we could work more together.

Wishing you success,
Phil