Ep. 225 What Urgent Care Owners Revealed At The First-Ever Industry Mastermind

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Hey, what's going on everybody? Glad to have you back for another episode of Walk-Ins Welcome brought to you by Patient Care Marketing Pros. I don't say that near enough. We love helping you grow your clinics. Today, we're going to be doing a recap. No interview today. No interview. We expected one. It got rescheduled, but that's okay. That gives us actually an opportunity to talk about our clinic growth mastermind that we just came off of. But before that, updated news. We were talking before this episode. I know, right? This has nothing to do with urgent care.

There you go. No, we we just got off of last week, we had several clinics in town here in Birmingham and we did our first ever clinic growth mastermind. And I will tell you for those who were planning on coming and didn't get a chance to make it, you should have been there. It was good. And we understand some of that couldn't come just because of, you know, a crashed airplane. I'm talking about the ones who

wanted to come and never even Yeah, it already considered but yeah, someone that couldn't come there was logistics that nobody could have predicted. Right. But no, yeah. So for the ones that were thought about it, like I'm not gonna do it. I will say it was so first ever event for us to put on now we have been attending a mastermind now for years. Six years. 21, right? Yeah, so five. I actually know I think it is six years because we became seven FA 2021. So right.

Anyway, so we've been attending a mastermind like this model after four years. And I was telling Nick, I was like, I've forgotten like that first time we went, everything felt foreign and just overwhelming. And this is how this works. And this is kind of wild, you know, all the things. So here we are introducing this to urgent cares. And the same reaction was happening. There were a lot of, wow.

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didn't know that was going to come up in conversation. It was good though. It's amazing to me. I guess if I were to identify the biggest takeaway of the event, because there's so much that happened that was fun. The biggest takeaway be that everybody shares a similar problem. Doesn't matter your size. And it's you not answering your phone, but that's another story. That's most common problem that came up. that and just some operational efficiencies that were, you know, sure they want, but it's just not happening.

And there was the questionable like employees were like, Hey, we're not here to fire people. But you know, let's have a really certain somebody got fired by the end of that. Yes, like, so if you need a group of people to tell you, this person probably should go. It's one thing. It's one thing for me or Michael to tell you to fire somebody because because that's because they're toxic. Yes. Well, okay. Y'all don't run a clinic. All right. That's fine. That's fair. True story.

But when there's, you know, 12 other clinics that are in the room looking at you going, you need to fire that person. Yeah. All of a sudden it becomes super real. You know what mean? Yes. So like it's a real thing. Where's the breakthrough? There was definitely breakthrough. Some breakdowns maybe. But, but what, so kind of explain the mastermind from a pure, like how did it go down? One, thank you to Hannah. Hannah is the mastermind behind the mastermind, right?

So we want the mega mine behind the mastermind, which is funny, but she did all the logistics. She got everything and organized. I mean, she had everything and it went really well. I was actually a mess up, which we'll talk about. was wondering if you were even going to bring that out. I wasn't going to say anything. No, I'm the mess up, which is just kind of fantastic. But anyway, so like it went really well. We had some people that couldn't show. Welcome to event life. Like that's just the way things go at events.

But the conversations were real. They were good. It was just an experience that we were hoping would happen and did. so to kind of give you guys like what happened. So everybody showed up on a Monday evening to do a little, we have a little reception party going on. And then Tuesday morning by 9 a.m. we had started and Nick had started off with the conversation, kind of set the table what this day is all about.

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And it was a lot of understanding like this is not me teaching this is not you. We're not here to teach you we're here to engage with you and discuss and solve problems with you because we believe that this industry thinks everybody is a competitor because we hear that. Now for those who are listening I don't think they're competitors. You're unique because most people in this industry even if the urgent care is a competitor but they don't have a location near you for 50 miles they're not your competitor.

heck, one is five miles away is kind of a competitor. But the reality is, as we learned, everybody's got the same problems. Everybody's trying to find solutions. And as we've heard, and we've experienced ourselves is good just to hear like, I'm not on this boat alone. So that was cool. So you did your your part. My spiel spiel. You were I can hear it coming off of your tongue. You were on time. Almost caught you.

My Alani-do almost became your Alani-do. You were on time, which made Nick laugh. Right on time. And people even applauded you. was great. And then I came up, and I was not on time. And I remember telling Hannah, was like, Hannah, there's only like 10 slides. I don't know if I can make this last an hour and half. We'll find out. Two hours.

later. Literally. Yeah, so almost. And so it was one of those. this is there's a lot of the questions that we had in the slides triggered a lot of conversations. And I wasn't I was there to control conversations. But we have some talkative people in the conversations were good. So I wasn't going to like say, hey, shush, I got to go to next question. Like, no, this is good stuff. And so I wouldn't look at Hannah.

as I should have been looking at her. And so she moved her way to the back of the room beside you, which was funny. And she stared at me and she's like, I wish you'd gone see this video, but she's like sitting there hitting her hand on the on her wrist, like, come on, like you're burning time. She's holding up my iPad with a number of sheets. And she's taking the timer to the hand, keeps resetting it. And I was just like, oh my gosh. And then, and then the nail to the coffin there was she deleted like my slides.

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Well, the slide is like a real working slideshow. Yeah, it was a canvas deck. Yeah, it was live. You can just watch the slides disappear. So I'm like clicking through. look up like, well, that's after the break. Where's the break? And I look back. She just stares at me like, okay. And then I just keep going. Well, so we have to give some context to that because yes, you do enjoy having the conversation. Apparently, real quick though.

I view myself as an introvert and then Hannah's like, no, you just like to talk. You want us to feel bad like you don't like to talk. I said, I guess so. No, I think the microphone brings down the barriers for you. does. does. But it gives you that opportunity. I will say this in your defense. We put enough slides in there in case our attendees didn't want to talk. Yeah. Because I have to understand they don't know what they're coming to.

y'all don't know what you're coming to. We don't know what to expect. do the best. We've been to a we've been to 15 or 20 of these now, right? Minimum, yeah. Not clinic, but just masterminds. So we understand the rules and the engagement and the value and the value and the preparation. Like we understand all of that because I was reminding Nick of like our first time at a mastermind. They asked for these numbers like we don't have an easy way to get into these numbers. And now it's like, yeah, here it is. We don't have to look for it. Right.

Right. But we prepare for our clinics and our doctors, our owners to not really engage. We prepare for the non engagement. It helps when we get some engagement. And over time, that engagement cranks up the more comfortable people get with each other. So where's the defense? OK. Well, I started the day with people still fairly uncertain of what to do and how to talk. Or what is it to be about? Yeah. There was no real clear

I don't know how this works because I've never been to one. And I'm sitting in the underneath the brewery right now. And all of a sudden, all of a sudden, one conversation or one comment or one concern sparks an outbreak of chatter. And I was able to control it to a degree because it was still a level of discomfort. Well, by the time you would come up, that was after launch. had already. That was after break. After break, we had had had

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hors d'oeuvres and drinks the night before, I had already set the table, people had already started to let the walls come down and have their comfort levels, you know, it come out, right? We come back from break and people wanted to talk. They enjoyed it so much that they had the opportunity to say things that they had things to say all of a sudden. And my discussion questions were like, very thought provoking. Well, yeah, it was very like, crap, right? Type of conversation. And so

Yes, but just to sum that up, went very I didn't say over. I just had to I was forced to skip a bunch of content, which they didn't care. They didn't notice it didn't matter. Just like click click. Oh, that's all gone. Now I'm going keep going. I'm very flexible. we but we landed on lunch on time. It's all good. So the first half of day was us kind of opening them up, getting some conversation going, hitting some like pain points, getting the pain points out.

Because we know, like we've talked to enough of you guys, like we understand your pain points pretty well. And there were some nuances that we heard the first time, which was pretty interesting. And then had lunch, it was a good time. And then came back and we did the actual hot seat. the mastermind. it was to us is the most important part because it allows every attendee to speak. So we did the one thing, focuser. Yeah. So

Coming back from lunch, we spent what, 20 minutes? 15 maybe? 15, 20 minutes, yeah. Just saying, okay, we spent the whole morning identifying struggles. You're not gonna leave this mastermind able to solve 30 problems. No, never. But you can solve one. So we did a one thing focuser and what this allowed people to do is on a sheet of paper that we had stolen from our mastermind. They don't care. They don't care, they gave it to me.

We have that. What is the one thing that you're trying to solve? What are three things that you're considering? And the notes for you to deliver that conversation on your hot seat time and write down the notes and solutions that your peers are giving you. Not me, not Michael, not my team, your peers, problems they've already solved or have solutions for or struggles that they share with you. And I'm telling you what, that mastermind round table.

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was fantastic. The square table that was round. Yeah, that's right. That's that's rectangular round table. PS2 round. No, but it was it was because you could tell no one there had ever done that before. Yeah, because they felt like they were stumbling a little bit. And we had to like, we had to coach them up for a minute and just say, because we even had it where you know,

If you if you're here with somebody don't sit by them because we want to hear their own unique problems We don't want to hear a confirmed problem that you and I are terrible about this because I'll look at you like hey man, what are we trying to say? and we don't want that like we want to avoid that because I It there's a lot more value that comes out when there's a problem That's more important to me than to you and vice versa that I can get some feedback on So you can see it like kind of struggle with that, but the one and I'll just to anybody that's listening

One thing, Focuser, it is what's my problem, my concern, what are solutions that I'm looking for, or I'm sorry, what are solutions I'm considering, and then the rest is note taking of what the people are saying. So, and then we set it up where you, the goals that we give you, depending on the size of the group, it's like seven to eight minutes. And it says, here's my problem, and here's what I'm considering, and then the conversation start. And then the goal is,

by the end of that seven or eight minutes, they already have a solution or a path to a solution that could solve their problem. it looked a lot like firing that one. The one solution was there's somebody you have got to get rid of toxic. Yeah. Another solution is there is a, know how we did that too, because that particular clinic and I'm not naming any names. This was just fun to watch is the people that were there, but I'm being so generic, right? I was like, here's what, here's what

the group told them to do. The group told them to do this. I wish it was my idea. They said, hey, everybody at the same time, write down the name of a person that you're thinking of, and then on the count of three, show your answer. And they all had the exact same answer. And everybody goes, yeah, that person's got to go. And that left no opinion. I mean, they all were on the same page, just somebody had to pull the trigger. Yeah, it's real.

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And you know, and I think another one that was really interesting. you know, we also had some clinics that were firing all cylinders, right? But then they admit it's like, yeah, we have lost this much, like we have like a 10 % collection rate on this particular service. And we've just kind of ignored it. Like, well, if you're having any type of like, you want more profit, there's your easy answer right now if you just fix that collection problem on that one particular service. So

Like these are just obvious things. But why does that matter? Because when you're in your business and your clinic on a daily basis, you know these problems, but you never focus on them. like even in our now we didn't quite do this. We may at some point want to. We didn't say everybody put your phone in a basket. We didn't quite do that. But it was pretty much distractionless. Like we had them for over two hours of just pure focusing on this thing. And it was amazing. Like, yeah, I guess I really should do something with this. Yeah.

And then we, you know, getting that feedback and that confirmation like, yeah, you really should. And here's what we would say, try to do. Like I was even learning because we're trying to learn to write like trying to understand like, where's some key points we've never heard of. And one those real fascinating about the rural clinics where you can become certified. And it's super duper easy. And all of sudden, your, your reimbursements go up, right? Because you're, you're offering to your US your USDA certified clinic and all and like that's

you can do that. And then I was like, yeah, we've been for years. hey, and then also, how more season is like, I'm going to message one of my clinics. It's like, this would be a great opportunity. we can help. And this goes back to the competition thing. All right. Yeah. We have a clinic out of or a clinic, we have a agency out of Oregon that does what we do. Ira, I don't even care. I was a great guy.

There was a time where I would have considered him my competition. I consider him a friend and a referral partner. Yeah. Right. We have another one that isn't in our mastermind, but I learned the skill and the lesson in the mastermind to be able to look at Ryan this way over at Cummings. Right. And they do medical marketing as well. And I'm like, here you go. This is out of scope for us. Let me get you over here. So instead of looking at all of these people that do what I do as my competitor,

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we're raising each other's flags and they're doing the same for us to a degree, you know, but what I'm saying though is what if clinics that were down the road from each other five to seven miles were having conversations with each other regularly that didn't look at each other for a way to stab them in the back, but for a way to elevate them. I even, one like real life example, we were talking to one of our clinics about in the mastermind was like, said, we have a dedicated X-ray tech.

So we can do x-rays 365 days a year. And one, that's awesome, because not many urgent care students can say that. said two was you should talk to your neighboring urgent cares that don't offer x-ray and get a relationship. So when there is x-rays needed, they can just, hey, come down the street. We have a relationship with these guys and they'll do the x-ray for you. You win, they win. And then probably you'll pick up that patient again later. Or their clinic.

Order, right? Just imagine you build a friendship with somebody who may want to get out and they have a thriving location and because of the trust you've built with them, all of a sudden you're like, I want out of the game. I don't want to just shut my doors. You guys have been good to I don't want to be bought up by somebody. Do you want another location? You already know us. You already know our clients.

I mean, just imagine the possibility that's that's that that is honestly it's not buying this guy because I watch it happen all the all the time in the agency world where I watch one guy burning out in his agency, sell his agency to Samuel Klein. I know you don't know who that is, but Samuel Klein then buys his agency. He gets out and gets free of his agency. And this guy is buying up agencies and thriving. Yeah. Right. They both win because they instead of looking at each other as a competitor, they look at each other as a as a friend, a referral partner.

opportunity however you want to look at it. Anyway, that was the point of the mastermind in the first place is not everybody's a competitor. No. And I think they were finding that because there was even after that, I don't know if you know this, even after the mastermind because like the rural thing, they there was a request from a CSM saying, I connect this clinic owner with that clinic owner because they have questions about the rural? Right. And they said, Absolutely. And then we joked, it's like a mini mastermind.

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where yes, they're not competitors because like competitors because they're literally in different states, but it's the they have the same challenge. Sure. And they should talk. And like for us, that was terrible. But we win because we are that connector among these clinics. But so the mastermind, we go to the hot seat stuff and it was super interesting, super fascinating as we talked about. Once that's over, we had a game. So we had a game where we had interesting questions presented and it was taken as like a spin off a leadership game.

But everybody rolled a dice, we had color coded questions, we asked the questions to the whole group. It was like speed questions, right? So was like every two minutes we're doing this over over again. And it brought out some other conversations and so forth. It was real fun. And then the final bit, which to me, I know this is like your favorite part at 7FA is the implementation. Yes, the implementation roadmap is my favorite. So the implementation, I'll let you explain it.

We have all these ideas, all these things, and we have this one thing focuser. we're trying to, what we're trying to do is just narrow down their attention span down to one thing that really matters. And then the implementation workshop is the framework to get it done. So talk about that. Okay. So it starts with me asking the question, if I could wave a magic wand, all the problems that were in front of you today, if I could wave a magic wand and that one problem that you've identified that could be solved would make the biggest impact on your clinic, which one would it be?

That's the one thing that you need to take away and go implement. In 90 days. In 90 days, right? So that was part one on the implementation roadmap is to, of all of your problems, which one do you really want to solve? Which one do you really want to take away and put into practical application? Thing number two is set goals behind it, right? So putting a goal over the next 90 days and then end of 2026. So where do you want your patient count to be? what you name the goal. It doesn't even have to be a patient count goal.

although we know that patient volume drives everything. Initially, I was just thinking, write down a patient goal, volume per day that you want to hit in the next 90 days. Take whatever it is, add that number, boom, there you go. Now what is that at the end of 2026? Okay, now, let's set the carrot and the stick, right? What is the thing that if you hit this goal, you're going to celebrate either with your team or you're going to celebrate yourself. celebrate. I will tell you this, when we hit a million dollars in our agency,

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I went and got my pilot's license. Okay. That was my big carrot. That was a big goal. That may not be a big goal in the clinic space, but that is a massive goal in the agency space, right? That's your first really, really big milestone. Yep. Okay. All right. Well, great. What are you going to do if you miss your goal? Well, let me tell you what. Just look at the calendar real quick. You see I don't have any hair, right?

I've missed my goal so many times. It doesn't even grow back anymore because it was going to be shaved my head, but it won't even grow back. I've missed so many goals, but let, let, let me tell you this though. And this is important, Michael, you know, this to be true. The goal that I missed, I only just missed it, which means I was so much further along than if I had never set a goal in the first place. Right. And I think that's the big thing that people miss when they're setting their goals. Our goals should be attainable.

they should follow the SMART goals, specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bound. Right. So they should be a SMART goal. But also put, once you set that SMART goal, put the goal just out of reach, just out of reach. Because if you shoot past your attainable goal or shoot for the moon. Yeah. There you go. Artemis 2. That's right. That's right. Hey, that's a good segue there. So shoot for the moon, but you break through orbit. Yeah. Right. Maybe we didn't make it to the moon, but we broke out of orbit for the first time in

50 years or however long it's 1972, right? 1972? So 54 years. All I'm saying is you miss 100 % of the shots that you don't take anyway. Oh yeah. All right. So you might as well take some shots and the shots ought to be down range. Yep. And it's, you know, I think sometimes people are afraid to set goals or they, know some people are like, what's the point?

I think there's ego attached to it. I mean that sincerely because it, cause that would be personal for me. I don't want to set goals that I can't I'm being real with you right now. I don't want to set goals that I can't hit because I want to be able to get to that goal, check it and be like, look what I did. Great. You're a big fish in a super tiny small pond or maybe even a fish bowl. Right.

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There you go. because your small goals are going to get you flush. you go. Setting those huge goals, though, huge isn't even the right term. The goals that are just out of reach, they're attainable, but it's going to take some work. I would say setting impactful goals. I like that better. When you know if you hit this goal, it allows something to happen that couldn't happen before. For us, when we hit our first million, yes, it allowed some things to happen. One, a confidence boost, like everybody wants that.

But two, it allowed us to say, hmm, okay, so we are doing something right. We're about to really screw up our systems to make it go further. But I think we have a somewhat of a formula to go with. And then we can keep going and keep going and add more people, make more impact. you know, then with time deciding on our niche and all this stuff. Well, so Michael, where are we going from here on the mastermind? What is our destination? What are we thinking? What are we tossing around?

Yeah, so I mean, I know that we're looking at right now and quarterly virtual masterminds, which is where we want to keep people engaged. Because as we've learned from our 7FA friends, they have three master three in person masterminds a year, we were not there yet. But they also have these monthly virtual ones. Well, we're almost there. But we're going to do a quarterly virtual one, where it's not just to the people that showed up in person is to our people that we invite.

and allows us to have a virtual hot seat every quarter for 60 to 90 minutes to help you hash out problems with other urgent cares. And particularly mostly other owners of urgent cares, which is a big deal. that's a phase. Other phase is Hannah is super excited to have this event again. So we are in process now of setting and scheduling our next in-person event for next year.

and we did get feedback from everyone and it sounds like the time of year we chose was accurate. So dates are coming soon. Chances are it will be next spring is our guess. So yeah, I love it. Well, the goal had always been because we've been thinking about this for at least a year, if not going on two years and feared it. Yeah. Legitimately like I don't I remember when Yacine said this is what it takes to make an event and then you stood up

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You convinced me. don't want to do this. said that in a room full of people. She goes, what is your takeaway? Well, granted they threw the microphone to me. didn't ask for it. will always talk. I always answer your question and I will do my best to be polite, but truthful in front of 200 people. Okay. What is your takeaway? Well, you just told me what I'm not going to be doing, which is funny that you brought that up because I had a meeting with Yacinea and Josh today. Yacinea showed up to our coaching call.

Yeah, she wanted to know how it went. Yeah, yeah, it's a big killer. And she would be my coach for the mastermind, like showing me how to run events and stuff like that. Because she is a master at that. And boy does she care about y'all and you don't even know her. Yeah. That's, I have to tell you, there's people, listen, if you're a clinic out there, there's people in our world that care about you that don't even know you. Yeah. Which is wild to me. Yeah. So it's a greater good. Well, her question wasn't how did you do?

Her question was, hey, how did your clinics do? How did they receive it? Did they get value out of it? Were they able to put it into action? Was there takeaway something that was going to be impactful to their business? Her, who is in the plumbing and HVAC space and the agency space, cared about how your clinics are operating. just, you know, that's an abundance mindset that we're plugged into. And I just appreciate that so much. I mean, it's real though, because

As we've always said, leadership is a lonely place. there are many a times where you urgent care owners, operators, you're in a spot where you have nothing no one talk to, or you're afraid to talk to them because you're afraid of the feedback you might hear. Right. And we're trying to create a space where that's okay, where you can have those conversations and make better decisions, or just make more informed decisions based on what your peers are saying. And the best part is they're experiencing the same problem.

Absolutely. So it's just a huge thing that I don't think we I don't I'm curious as to why we're the one of only ones have done this so far in urgent care space haven't quite figured that part out yet. But but I'm glad it happened. I'm excited for the next one. Right. It's going to be good. We'll let you know when the dates are coming up. I'm sure we'll have pre-registration from the standpoint of just put your name on the list to get notified of all the details and we will drop that whenever it's ready. I don't want to put a promise on that or a date.

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But we will be doing this again in 2027. We'll let you know about upcoming mastermind events that we'll be hosting quarterly that you were talking about. We have to plan those out. If we're going to do something, we want to make sure it's of high value and delivered in an excellent way to you. Especially if it's brand new to us where we're trying to figure it out. So give us a little bit of mercy. That's right. That's right. as always, shameless plug here.

If you are struggling getting new patients through your door, give us a call. We want to help you with that. Patient care marketing pros exist to help you get more patients deliver better care, get repeat visits, scale your clinics. That's, that is all cohesive with the clinic growth mastermind with walk ins welcome the podcast and with patient care marketing pros the agency. Yeah. I walk ins welcome wouldn't exist without it. Correct.

All of it is this synergistic. Walk-ins welcome would not exist without Yosinia and Josh. That's a point. Because we were told in this mastermind, master or 7 of a mastermind, you should make a podcast because your niche needs you. Yeah. Okay, we'll try. And then here we are. Yeah, I wish I could tell you this was some professional brain trust, but it's not. All right, Michael, what else for this one?

I think that's I've enjoyed just having a nice conversation about what's happened. You know, we have things we have the UCA coming out the UCA Chicago event coming up, which is super exciting. We have to talk about that when we get back. And then we also get to talk to Dr. UCA president. Sellers? Dr. Sellers? Yeah, yeah, he's talked to him on the post. the recap. The recap. We did a lead up and we'll get him on a recap. And he'll be coming back as well. Summer is coming. So summer is going to be interesting. And we have a webinar coming up.

is our favorite subject front desk training. So that's coming up to as well. Can't wait to talk to you guys about that. I've learned some new things while talking to lots of our urgent cares and some adjustments to be made. But so if you remember our front desk training from a year ago, I got you a new version coming up now. it. All right. Well, hey, thank you for listening. Smash that subscribe button. Please subscribe. We like seeing the increases in subscribers. And when we go to in person events, we get to hear from you directly, which is super fun. It is fun.

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But until then, we'll catch you next week. Go out there. Keep doing what you're doing because what you're doing matters. you.