Ep. 168: Are You a Thermostat or a Thermometer? Leading Your Clinic with Intent

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What is up walk-ins welcome fam. We are glad to have you back for another episode as always. We're here to help you get more patients deliver better care get repeat visits scale your clinic. Michael. Hello. Hello. It's one of our first non interview episodes in a while. I know man. When we really look at the camera. Hey we don't have an interview today. That's kind of fun. We've been on a tear right. Yeah we've been on a tear for a while. Hope you guys have been enjoying it. We've been enjoying it. It's been great information coming to the table.

Also, I loved having Dr. Miller on because, you know, being a client, we can hear his backstory. And we always get exposed to the story like we didn't know that was a thing, Andy. That's kind of cool. I'm glad that we were able to help you there. Absolutely. Stuff like that's really fun. But no, we're back doing a regular episode today, which is totally cool. But the best part is I don't know what we're about to talk about. Nick does. So whatever I'm about to say for the next 20 minutes was...

None of it was scripted at all. You know, honestly, we very rarely script it out. I'll come up with some questions. But anyway, let me ask the rhetorical question and then we'll dive in a little bit. How's your year going so far? How's it going? Like, how's your clinic doing? Is it doing what you want it to do? I mean, it's it's been respiratory nightmare season. Yeah, I know. It's been so fast thing that flu took forever to get here. And then it came here like.

crazy with one of our clients. She was really funny. She's out of Oklahoma and she's like, well, we're like number two, the nation for flu, which I'm glad we're number two for something. We would just be number one for urgent care. That's our goal. But it just made me laugh because like her attitude is real funny. Lord. Anyway, so I wanted to talk about a little bit about how your year's going. Think about we've kicked off January. We're well into February now.

For us, the Q1 is just crazy around here. Q1 is a fun, challenging, my gosh. It is, it is. It's kind of hard to predict. I mean, we know something's, here's what I know about January, change is happening. Whether we want it or not. Mostly we don't. Mostly we don't, but it's happening. Check out your marketing people in the marketing industry during January.

Hard time. you what I've learned is the general business owner gets shiny object syndrome like crazy and they want to try it like nevermind everything is working well. They just want to try new things for whatever reason. Or like, you know, I'm just going to see what happens. Or you have team members that are looking for new opportunities. Yeah, right. you know, there's changes in the industry.

or there was a flu season that was delayed and now you're getting pummeled by it internally for you, right? Yeah, which actually I think about how January is a challenging time in the marketing world. But I do wonder if it made it worse because any of the urgent cares I wanted to talk to us in January couldn't because they couldn't get above water or all the flu coming in. And I'm curious if like late February, early March when flu kind of chills out just a little bit, we'll start hearing a lot more conversations.

Well, before we get into everything, I'll just start by saying like, I'm not struggling mentally or anything like that, but this, this is the, this season is where I would, if I'm going to struggle, would have the most mental stress. Yeah. Right. And that's been real this season. I, know, just in digging into leadership, I let's do a lot of leadership podcasts. I let's do a lot of books. I'm still going through some training, on pilot stuff and just, there's a lot of mental things going on.

And I came across this video and I wish I could remember the name of the guy that was talking, but it hit me really, really hard in a challenging, positive, check yourself kind of way. And he asked the question, I'll ask you this question, because you're not going to know the context. I don't think it's, are you a thermometer or a thermostat?

So thermostat is where you change the temp, the thermometer is where you check the temp, right? You got it. So here's the deal. The thermostat, I'm sorry, the thermometer tells you the temperature of the room. The thermostat tells the room what the temperature is going to be. Yeah. Right. So that's the question. Are you a thermometer or a thermostat? Are you walking into your clinic and are you reacting to the temperature of the room?

Are you reacting to what's going on with your patients? Are you reacting to somebody quit? Are you reacting to your patient volumes being either skyrocketed or are they falling apart? Are you reacting to Google removing all of the 300 reviews? that controlling your emotions or are you walking into your clinic and saying, whatever happens today, I'm going to change the temperature to what I want it to be. There you go. Right. And so wanted to dig into that a little bit because

Like I am challenged by that because there are days where I'm a thermostat and there are days where I'm a thermometer. Right? Yeah. I it's not consistent. I mean, I guess ultimately like when you're the thermometer, emotion drives the decision. Right. And then when you're thermostat logic steps in most of the time. Yeah. Logic, will, willpower. Or future seeing, you know, what, like this is something that's happening, but I know it's going to happen.

and we're just going to prepare for that instead of reacting to this. That's right. but I mean, I think at the end of the day, I think everyone has the monitor moments. Now for those who have to monitor moments all the time, I think there's a bigger challenge. I think that's where a lot of coaching and stuff comes into play. But, and I do think people who are pure thermostat people, think they may like empathy. Well, I mean, it's a real thing, right? reacting to your environments or

setting the tone for your environments. know, there's there's there's people that I've met that are incapable of having a bad day. And that's cool, by the way, it is. also, I'm like, are you real? Like, are you a real person? Are you like because I'm I've met some of those people in there at this moment, like, so what's going to break you? And are you going to be the one that gets broken and then goes on a killing spree? Like it really falls apart. Yeah, just falls. What is that movie? Anger Management? Yeah, right.

He's

right? Because one of them are external and the other one is I think it's external and internal. But let's talk about the external things. if I'm walking into the office, I'll take Tuesday, for example, or was it Tuesday I took off? The one day you take off. The one day I take off, I'm getting questions from one client about why all of our reviews are disappearing. Texting me instead of like the proper point of contact on the team, which is fine.

I don't mind talking to people, I like trying to take a day. literally was going to get a massage with my wife. yeah. Just to even know what you're doing. Yeah. I was just trying to spend some time. Did you actually get it? I didn't enjoy it. Your mind. Sorry. doesn't mean I couldn't turn it off. couldn't turn it off. But this is a great example. Like all day long, I was a, I was a thermometer, right? Cause I was getting that. I got a message that one of our team members is going to be moving on to another company and all leaving on good terms, but that

still something to deal with. I got to come back to this. Yeah. Another one asking for pricing stuff. Right. Another one is shooting me a text about some other thing. I was getting, I was getting the, first of all, most people don't come to me all the time anymore. Like it's pretty rare. I think you have some of the like OGs that come to you. I do. And then on my day off, I don't take a lot of them, but

Well, I am so determined. I and you've seen this when I take off, if I get it, which I really don't get anything from anybody these days. But if I ever did, it's like screenshots into some somebody here and say, OK, thanks. I mean, which I did some of that. Yeah. So I did some of that. I didn't personally talk to any clients on Tuesday. Yeah. But they were talking to me. Right. And that's OK. Like, again, I'm not mad about it. It was just one of those things where.

I was at that time, I was reacting. Now I had started the day, a thermostat. I had said, I might go in near my phone today. Like there's no need for me to do that. I'm spending time like, know that phone was just boiling. wasn't that Heather said, Hey, listen, we're going to that spa. need you to go to your phone and reply yes to whatever it was. Okay. Whoopsie 37 notifications later.

Right. So that's what triggered me to even go to my phone. I had it put away. I wouldn't do it near it. need to do what I do and just when I'm gone, I actually disable my app notifications. Yeah. So I don't see them. Yeah, that should have. Yeah. But I wasn't even like, I wasn't even taking my phone with me. Does that make sense? I had no intention of even keeping my phone near me that day. I even put in our Slack messages that if you need to get to me, y'all might want to call Heather. Yeah, I remember that. Because that was...

I and then you met and I'm actually get afforded email from you. Well, that was because that was because of all the notifications I was getting when Heather said, Hey, I need you to get our appointment on your phone. got a text message. This brings back this brings back work life balance conversations. Well, that one the one notification that turns a pretty cool, nice day to a hot and heavy, like miserable day. And it's just real. That's right. It is real. And it's so hard to turn. I mean, even, you know, business owners want the hardest because you're like

what's going on. I want to know. But I mean, in the urgent care space, there are some, I wouldn't say life and death things that could be happening, but very impactful things could happen. That's right. I mean, but think about, I'm talking about myself right now. I don't mean to make it all about me. So just think about it from the clinic. Maybe you have somebody that just left you a one-star review because maybe somebody on your team didn't do their job the way you would have trained them because they were having a bad day.

And then maybe you found out that one of your payments didn't come through from the payer, right? Or got delayed. Delayed or denied, canceled, whatever, right? And so you're trying to treat a patient, but your mind is on, man, I've got to pay my bills and I've got to pay my team. And you can't help as a clinic owner or still thinking as a business owner. just can't. You can't separate. Or maybe one of your team members that you really needed there didn't show up that day or called in, right?

And it could be for a totally legitimate reason, but you still have to, you still have to respond to all of that. Right. And those are the things that can start shipping away at your temperature. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's real. just the slight lighting that, that's like, you know, what a frog and bowling water thing. One degree at a time. You don't even realize it until it gets too hot. Man, it's just a nice bubble bath until.

until he gets that one degree and then you're boiling a fog. Right? Yeah. I'm with you on that. So those are some of the things that, that trigger me and likely trigger. mean, even if you, Michael, I don't know about you, but what happens when you go home and Addie's running laps and Courtney's at her wits end. That's pretty common. You know what I mean? Well, I mean, it happens to me when I go home and you know, Connor has gotten into an argument or, know, Preston is at a bad day because you know, he has autism. So like,

He's had a bad day and something's happened there or, you know, Samuel got bullied for some stupid reason at school or, you know, somebody dies, you know, you name it, right? Like, you, you go home to circumstances that all of a sudden have changed your temperature, right? So what are some ways that you can become the thermostat? Right. In my opinion, one have a set of core values for yourself.

for your family, for your business. It's often easy for me to deal now with situations based on our core values because I have guardrails in place. make decisions based on, here's the best way to say it, I've already pre-decided in just about every area of our business. Yeah, and it gets you down the right path quickly and then whatever variation it is, it doesn't matter because it's in the guardrails at that point.

But you the whole entire predetermining things is so important. Because I mean, you can't predict every situation. No. But there are some core things, like you said, some core values that will push you in the right direction. So you won't just pull your hair out and just say, I don't know what to do at all. Right. Because I mean, we always say action is the best cure for action. Action cures fear. Action cures fear. right. I do think some of that temperature or the thermometer side is the fear that creeps in.

that goes with it, right? Because the fear triggers anxiety, triggers stress. So like, let's say you had a, you know, we have a team member leaving. Well, that kicked in a little fear. What am I going to do with these clients that they're talking to? Well, I say it used to be fear. Now it's just like, oh, I got to hire somebody. Yeah. And so like we, when I, cause I got the notification before you did. Right. And, um, or the conversation.

So I was already like 10 steps ready to go. But I purposely actually I purposely got that far before I forwarded to you. And it goes was basically like here we go. go. Yeah. So we got these things I knew what our general rule like knowing that we're replacing a role right. Not just having a whole new one. It's all new and it's a whole conversation. But like if someone's leaving we have a replacement role process basically. I was raised.

Pull the trigger. like in the past when these when we've had these situations because we didn't have things prepared in place already. Yeah. Like one redundancies. Yeah. Two processes. Right. You know, we didn't have these things set up before. That used to be a freak out moment. Where now I mean, hey, we're good. I mean, that's the first time I think where something like this has happened in the company where I was like, OK, yeah, we've been here, done that. Yeah. We know what the expectations are.

the risk or whatever. And we know where to take it. so and I think the only very and talk about variations, the only variation we had on this particular situation is that we made some minor adjustments to a description. That's right. And then fired away. Well, and you know, when contracts come up, and you're wondering whether or not people are going to renew or whatever upgrade downgrade, however, it's going to look, you know, we've put retained earnings in place to take the pressure off.

of those kind of situations where in the past it would have hurt a lot. the now we're just... Control the temp. That's right. We got it. Like we're in control of that. I like the way you said that. Control the temperature. Yeah, because I mean, think about it this way. So like your retained earnings as your business should have. 101 right here. If you're an urgent care, you don't have any retainers. You don't know what that means. There's some more things you got to learn. Get some appointment. Yeah. We can help you there. But anyway, so like, yeah, when you have like a...

multiple degrees in your thermostat of retained earnings where you can easily adjust up and down to fit whatever's going on. It's easy. It is. And so, I mean, that's been like a push for all of us, right? Like we've moved, we may, you have to make commitments these things, right? You can't just not have a plan, just throw money into a savings account and hope it works. Like you got to be intentional. I mean, that's just simple, like paying off debts and collect savings. And we were intentional, like, let's get to this point.

Cool. Now we have confidence here. When you get to that point, there's confidence over there. so, but yeah, I think like that routine learning, it's a perfect thermostat tool for the financial side of the business. Well, and I just, we've learned on going on, we're not quite, but going on seven years of business, everything runs in seasons. Yeah. Everything ebbs and flows. And there are some predictable seasons. There's some delayed seasons. Yes. Flu season.

Blue season delayed some stuff. Yeah, that's right. So, you you have to be able to plan. But if you have a plan in place for those things, employee turnover, patient volume, reviews may not be where you want them. Yeah. Like you name it. The payers getting paid back, all these kinds of things. If you have a plan in place, you have now become a thermostat instead of the thermometer. Right. Well, and I think too, cause one of the challenges, cause you may say, I don't think I'm a thermostat.

Well, if you have people that are, if you have your people that are nervous to come to you about a large problem, you're a thermometer or you, you, your thermometer is too often, because what they, you've, you've trained some bad behaviors and you didn't mean to. So like, if I came to you, like I don't, to my knowledge, I don't think there's anything that I can't come to you about and have a fear of reaction. Well, I certainly hope not.

But I I used to be in that world for a long time where the fear of the reaction was greater than the problem itself. so that's a real challenge. That is not unique to me, right? That happens all the time. So because I think a lot of business owners, some are very hot tempered, right? Because they're like, they're driven. Well, I'll put in quotes of driven. They're just like hot tempered. But

But the reality of it is, if you have people that are just terrified to come to you with this problem or tried to cover the problem up, which is even worse technically, you have a reaction problem that you need to correct. Which means you have a thermometer problem because you're just reacting to that super hot temp and you're letting everybody see it and nobody wins. That's right. And then sometimes if you're like, I don't think so, well, look at your turnover rate. If your employee turnover rate is pretty high and

assuming you do an exit interview. if you don't do exit interviews, you'll never know what was in their mind. Because most exit interviews that I've done now here, they'll just tell you to act like it is because they have no recourse. Yeah, I was going to say once they're not concerned about their job anymore, they tell you anything you want to know. Yeah, or in one scenario, he's like, I'll tell you if you give me a beer. I was like, here you go. Crack that beer open handed to him. Right in front of him. Which was fantastic, though he wasn't getting enough positive reinforcement from us. Yeah.

And you know, now, but we've corrected that. Yeah. And we have more focus on like, I think everything has been a learning. Like there's always a learning nugget from anyone that leaves. I get the other day. Like there's some type of thing like, could have done that better or we know not to do that again. That's right. And so, and I even with the person leaving now, like, there's a couple of things I learned from that. yeah, that's good. Another way to move over to the thermostat side of things is to have.

clear action goals for every part of your business that needs action oriented goals. Right. So what I'm talking about is like, I want to go from 30 patients a day to 50 patients a day. And I've got to play. Here's the budget I'm going to spend on marketing. Here's the team I'm going to put into place. Here's the timeframes. want to hit these goals. A goal without a plan is just a wish.

Yeah, right. Well, or this might or the mindset, we're gonna increase our patient volume by 20%. What are you gonna do? Like when you come to the new year? Yeah, I want to increase our revenue by 20%. What are you gonna do to make that happen? Yeah, nothing. It's just gonna happen. It's just gonna happen. Yeah. And I'll say is in the urgent care space, a bit of that could be true because of demand, but because like a COVID could show up and that'll totally fix your revenue problem. But the reality of it is if you're it's just like anything else, you keep doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different result.

is called insanity or it's basically called just dumb. That's just not how the world works. A lot of external environments would have to change that. yeah, if you're like, have a clear goal, but I have no action behind it, it's just nothing's going to happen at all. But if you have a clear action plan to go with it, and you have key points, deadlines, all the things, you line up those goals, and then you push for it, it's amazing what can happen.

Three goals you should be working on in your clinic. You should be working on increasing or maintaining or some form of your patience per day. Your door-to-door times. Getting that at the time frame that you want it. think 45 minutes seems to be the ideal time. Yeah, like a 35, 45, like just something under an hour. Yep, under an hour, more than 30 minutes. Yep. Right.

Making sure that you're getting your net promoter score out there either in the form of Google reviews or just you know, asking your patients. Those are three things that you can work on. But if you have a goal for those areas, you know, you could have a goal for retained earnings. You could have a goal for profit. At this point in our business, we have a saying around here that that revenue, profit greater than revenue, right? Yes, profit is because then like revenue is a cool, ego, fancy number.

But the profits where it's at because you could have the same amount of profit at a million dollar revenue as someone who has a hundred million dollar revenue. You got the exact same profit, which, they get to do a lot more things. Well, sort of. But at the same time, they're a stress level. Arguably, the more revenue you make and you're not increasing your actual profit dollar amount, the more stress you're under. That's right.

because you're trying to make something happen that's just not happening. That's right. But if you've got a plan in place, even if you miss your goal, you have a plan. And so at that point, you're not in a reactionary mode. You're setting the temperature. Hey, listen, I get it. We didn't hit the goal, but we have this. We'll make it up here. I can come in with some confidence. I can come in with some poise when I know that I have things in place. Now I want to make another comment here that every thermostat

has a thermometer built into it. Yeah. Okay. That's what triggers it. That's right. Exactly. So you're, you may always be a thermometer, but you'll sometimes be a thermostat with that thermometer built in. It's just going to happen. Are you going to let that thermostat kick on? Or are you going leave it off? Well, it's also a pretty good litmus test, right? So here's, here's what I know for sure. Am I turning on the heat or am I turning on the air? Yeah.

Right. Or is this just one of the days that I'm going to crack the windows? Right. So the point I'm trying to make, is off the panel. And I tell my wife this, this is going to sound like I'm pandering or like she's smart as a whip. OK. But that's like when when I know it's going to be getting cold, like super cold. But right now it's not. I'm like, you need to start lowering the temperature slowly and gradually.

so that we don't break our system when we go from 70 degrees to 30 degrees, which happens in Alabama all the time. Happened this week. Exactly. Right. But if we knew it was coming again, the, the, the, the, we knew that the thermos, uh, the, the thermometer was going to change. could start adjusting the thermostat slowly to meet that. Yeah. Right. We did it. Like, well, it's one of things I do when I, when you start to see the

Here comes the 90 or 100 degree weather out of nowhere. usually at night, I'll punch it down to get that temperature to come down really easy. So then by the time the temp starts going back up, it doesn't have to fight as hard. Exactly what I'm saying. Like it's just not constantly running the fan, killing your energy bills. You've slowly brought it down or, you know, into the summer, slowly bring it up. But it's a good indicator that that thermostat, that thermometer built into it.

it be time to take a look at some of your maintenance before it starts spiking. So anyway, a lot of allegory, that kind of stuff. But the point I'm trying to make is it's a pretty good representation of your business. Like, are you a thermostat? Are you a thermometer? Are you reacting to things all the time? And then ask yourself these questions like, what's going on in my clinic? Clinics, if you have multiple, like what's going on that's causing me to lose sleep at night? What's causing me to come into the office or come into the clinic frustrated? What's causing me

or elated and happy. Like there's that side of it too. You could just be like through the roof. Yeah. What's that triggering point that makes you feel great. Right. And remind yourself of that. That's right. think for us here, like adding new clients, especially urgent carers that care about what we do, like that's very exciting to us. We enjoy that. We love our current clients, but we love bringing on new clients. And it's just, it's fun to us. We have fun all around with our clients.

That's what I want to challenge you on this week is to first self identify which one Emma like, I setting the tone? Am I setting the temperature at my clinic? Am I, am I being that foundation that my entire team needs from me? or are they telling me who I'm going to be today based on how they like, y'all got that one person in your clinic that no matter what you say, she's a Debbie downer.

And there's no positive thing that can come out of her mouth. And you already know that you're going to walk around the other way on the desk, just avoid that person. you find yourself avoiding that person. See what I mean? And then there's also that person that you go to because no matter what you say, in our office, his name is Philip. No matter what you say, he's going to find a way to bring out the best in the situation or the person. point I'm trying to make is like,

you have some consistent people in your office. One's going to take you down. One's going to bring you up. Hopefully you don't deal with the Debbie Downer for too long. You get that person, hey, we need to ship up or shape up or ship out, as they say. And then you need to find a way to edify that one person. But keep an eye on that super positive person because they could be on the edge of a poppin' too. You don't know, right? Yeah, can break. Anyway, I them don't break.

I want to challenge you. Go be the thermostat, understand that the thermometer is built into it, and then don't react to the thermometer. Prepare for it. Yeah. There you go. like you said, preparing. You're looking at the forecast, right? That's it. And you're seeing what's coming. And I think if you're an urgent care, it's been in the business for a while, you know what those seasons look like, and you've got to prepare. We all know that summers are challenging. Yeah.

go instead of having like a frustrated look at it, look at it as an opportunity and prepare for it. Like I would even say, because we know a lot of our urgent cares, they use the summers to also like recondition their clinics and maybe add some new equipment. Like kind of just prepare for the heavy season. It's hard to make big changes when you're just slant with patients. It's just hard. And so like if you're saying to yourself, you know what, this summer, instead of me just being annoyed and closing down hours and all these things, I'm going to put some money back so we can do these things during the summer and have

fun with it and control the temperature. love it. Well, listen, one of the things that you can do to help us control our temperatures, leave us a review. That'd be super cool. come visit our webinars. We'll have some webinars coming up. We'll make announcements about that. think we come up February 27th, believe. February 27th. I did a little pre-roll, so I don't know if it's going to hit on this one or a different one. But no, our goal is, of course, to do a monthly webinar for you guys. We're putting out our weekly podcast. We have new content we're putting out soon.

I'll be talking to UCA in May, which will be a lot of fun about the front desk. Even talked to a guy yesterday that his entire company is training that front desk to make them more profitable. We're hoping to have him on the podcast. I've got a couple of other guests that we're lining up for this awesome podcast. I want to thank you for listening. I want to thank you for leaving that review and sharing this episode with another clinic that may need this kind of content. We appreciate you listening and we'll see you next time. See you.