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Private Practice Startup Podcast
Episode 159: Run Your Business Like Clockwork
00:36:24
Mike Michalowicz
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- [00:02]
Narrator
Welcome to the Private Practice Startup podcast where we help ambitious private practitioners across the globe to brand themselves and grow their dream practices. We chat with successful private practitioners, business coaches and marketing experts, bringing you tons of practice building Ninja tips. Visit privatepracticestartup.com for awesome resources, attorney approved private practice paperwork and our signature marketing E course. Here are your co hosts, Dr. Kate Campbell and Katie Lemieux.
- [00:31]
Katie Lemieux
Hey there startup. Hey startup nation. Welcome back to another episode of the Private Practice Startup podcast. I am super stoked and excited and for those of you who have listened to us, when I get excited, I get really anxious and I my words. So I'm just gonna take a deep breath before I tell you who our guest is today. But if you actually listened to our podcast last week, you know who our guest is today and he is a return guest and we're really excited to have him here. But before I tell you who it is, we hope you guys joined us last week as we interviewed Sarah Sarah Gershon on four mistakes you might be making on your therapist website. So you're definitely going to want to listen to that because your therapist website is the place that people most often are first introduced to you. So you want to make sure you have a high quality, high converting website. And if you are new here, what a great podcast to jump on for a first time guest. And if you are new here, we want to gift you our A to Z cheat sheet, the essentials for building and growing your dream practice. Head over to PrivatePracticesStartup.com, head over to the Resources tab and download your A to Z cheat sheet which will also include five days of practice building emails and support to really get you started. All right guys, I'm really excited to announce our guest today. He is a returning guest and he is the author of many, many books to include the Toilet Paper Entrepreneur Pumpkin Plan. He was on Our Previous Episode 119 as we talked about profit first surge and today we're going to be talking about clockwork. So if you finally guess this author and amazing guest, it is the one and only Mike Michalowicz. So, Mike, welcome.
- [02:08]
Mike Michalowicz
Thanks, Katie. Hey Katie, how you doing?
- [02:10]
Dr. Kate Campbell
Hey.
- [02:11]
Katie Lemieux
Hi.
- [02:11]
Dr. Kate Campbell
Great to have you back.
- [02:12]
Katie Lemieux
It's a great way to end our Friday with you and start our weekend. So Mike's mission is to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. Like I said, he's the author of all those awesome books. I just finished reading the Pumpkin Plan and I really love how you take metaphors and analogies from beehives to pumpkins to toilet paper and really just make a book out of them and educate people. And Mike loves helping business owners be wildly successful and giving his colleagues crazy nicknames. So please join me in officially welcoming Mike back. Mike Michalowicz, everybody.
- [02:43]
Mike Michalowicz
Yeah, I am into those nicknames. Like, I give everyone nicknames. And, you know, it's funny. Like, people are like, oh, that's kind of just a goofy thing, which is true. But also, it's actually a strategy. And I'm not that coy, but it's. You build an affinity. So there's this one colleague I had that I called Heels, just because she always wears, like, stilettos to work. And she would call me and say, hey, it's heels. And we were just talking one day. She's like, you know, it's really fun that I have this bond with you through this stupid old name, and it ties back to stories. So just a little strategy there. Nicknames done appropriately can actually bring a lot of affinity between people.
- [03:20]
Katie Lemieux
It's funny as you say that in reading the Pumpkin Plan. Just finishing that this week, you had reference. I don't remember what it was, but you've called someone liar. Liar. I'm like, that's so funny because I say liar. Mick Liarson.
- [03:30]
Mike Michalowicz
Oh, I like that. That's even better. I gotta remember that one.
- [03:34]
Katie Lemieux
Yeah. There are just so many places in your books that I just totally feel like I know you and relate to you. I love your hysterical stories. And the Pumpkin Plan. You were talking about how you and your wife, if left to your own devices, you would get lost in a hotel.
- [03:48]
Mike Michalowicz
Yeah. We were not the best at navigating things. And when you put the two of us together, we typically disagree with the wrong direction, and either one of us is wrong. I'm usually more wrong than her, but too funny.
- [04:02]
Katie Lemieux
And I think you had said you'd have to be, like, airlifted out of the hotel just to find your way. Something like that.
- [04:06]
Mike Michalowicz
It's not that bad, but I do use a little poetic license at times.
- [04:11]
Katie Lemieux
Too fun. So today we're here to talk about clockwork, and it's really how to make your business run like clockwork. So share with us how you kind of got the concept for this book, and why was it important for you to share this with others?
- [04:22]
Mike Michalowicz
Yeah. And it's something Katie, you pointed out to her already. I use a technique called biomimicry. It's a new term to me. I actually didn't realize I was doing this. But basically, biomimicry is where we Observe something that's happening in nature and then translate it to a human application. And what I found is there's a lot of learning that Mother Nature's already had that we can just borrow. A classic example is the invention of Velcro. Velcro was invented back in the 1920s, I believe. A scientist was looking to make something that sticks together, and you can peel it apart, stick it together, peel it apart without it getting sticky. That was the key. And he was walking his dog through the woods, notices these burrs on his dogs, takes the bur off, is able to reattach the bur instantaneously, and says, this is doing what I want to do. Puts that burr under a microscope. And he saw that nature figured out this hook system. It simply is fur and hook. And that's why Velcro is a fur and plastic hook system. So what I do in my books and Clockwork is I wanted to find what makes businesses efficient. And I found specifically in nature, beehives are extraordinarily efficient. They can scale very quickly. Sometimes you'll see a bee flying around your window, and the next day there's a massive hive. So how do they do this? And what I did was deconstruct their simple rule set, converted it over to what businesses do. And while that's not the entirety of the clockwork system, it's a significant component of it.
- [05:41]
Katie Lemieux
Interesting. We actually do a lot of what you're talking about in therapy. So utilizing metaphors and analogy and when we talk about it in a different context is like, we can kind of get so involved in that context. And then when we bring it back to the context, what we're trying to talk about or demonstrate, it's like, oh, yeah, that makes perfect sense. And it's easy to get.
- [05:59]
Mike Michalowicz
Yeah. And you know what happens, too, is it takes down the defenses. Exactly right. If I said, oh, you should do this, and you should do this, like, who the f Are you guys? The freaking shirt you're wearing. You're not. You know, I'm not gonna listen to you. And it becomes a confrontational thing. If I talk about a third party that's outside the room, particularly when it's nature, then we can see it as storytelling, and we can make the links ourselves. And they probably teach some therapy, I assume, in some version of it. But when a person comes to a conclusion themselves, they see it as much more trustworthy than being provided that advice by a third party. So that's one reason storytelling, particularly of inanimate objects, meaning not inanimate but non human is much more easily absorbed by the listener than any alternative in my experience.
- [06:42]
Dr. Kate Campbell
Totally.
- [06:42]
Katie Lemieux
And I know that you referenced your shirt, and since we're on a podcast, you actually have to tell people who's on your shirt.
- [06:48]
Mike Michalowicz
On my shirt is a guy in a cheesy sports coat. He's a chubby guy and he's leaning forward and he's looking at you and saying, I'm a motivational speaker. My name is Matt Foley. That's how he talks on the show. So this is Matt Foley from Saturday Night Live. And the reason I wore this, I had a meeting with my publisher today and I have a new book coming out in 2020, and they want to put together a speaking series for me and had all the suits come in and I'm like, what will totally shock them. I'm like, I'm going to throw on my motivational speaker shirt and wear a pair of flip flops in. And, you know, they weren't taken aback because they're kind of used to me by now. But it was just a fun conversation piece.
- [07:30]
Dr. Kate Campbell
Before we dive into clockwork, I want to hear a little bit. Can you tell us a sneak peek about your book that's coming out in 2020?
- [07:36]
Mike Michalowicz
Oh, yeah. Actually, you may really dig this because it ties into therapy. I think what I found is the biggest challenge facing entrepreneurs is that they don't know what their biggest challenge is. So they usually go arbitrarily around the business to urgent and apparent issues. Oh, this is obvious. We should fix this and fix that. But they're all over the place, I think. Actually, I'm convinced now there is a sequence of things we need to resolve and simply getting the sequence right. So I've developed a compass, if you will, for the entrepreneur to narrow down exactly the direction they should head in and the one thing they need to fix next. So the book title is called Fix this Next. But what I think you may find interesting is that based upon Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and what's fascinating about Maslow's hierarchy of needs is he argued that there's a base level of physiological needs that we have that if they're not being addressed, we'll always revert to. So even though we have multiple levels of needs, I believe his argument was there's five levels of needs. If the base isn't being addressed, we revert to it. And once it's being served, we actually escalate or climb back up to the higher levels, including the highest level, which is self Actualization. I translated this into an entrepreneurial level of needs and found that, sure enough, every business has a base level of needs. And if it's being ignored, the business is in trouble. The one thing that I found out that we need to be very aware of is we are behaviorally wired into ourselves. Our instincts are good for ourself. If I walk down a hallway that's dark and I get the heebie jeebies, I should turn around, I probably will be murdered. Like, those instincts are good, but we are not wired neurologically into our business. But we act like we are. Like, oh, my instinct says do this, my instinct says do that. It's my gut. And our gut gets us often in a direction, but not necessarily the right direction. So this tool I developed works with our instinct, complements it confirms, affirms our direction or actually gives us a new direction to pinpoint our challenge and fix it. And I've now had roughly about 100 businesses go through this process and sure enough, they're experiencing faster growth than they ever have prior using the simple tool.
- [09:31]
Dr. Kate Campbell
How exciting.
- [09:33]
Katie Lemieux
Awesome.
- [09:33]
Mike Michalowicz
I'm so pumped. This may be the most important work I've done. I'm just hoping I've made the effort, that it's delivered well enough. I think the concept is there, I think the content is there. I just, I really gotta make sure that it's a great book and digestible.
- [09:48]
Katie Lemieux
I gotta ask, how do you come up with these, like, topics, like, are you, are you like, sitting around pondering things and saying, I gotta fix this issue? Like, how does that happen?
- [09:57]
Mike Michalowicz
There's aha, moments. Like one happened at like 2 o' clock this morning. I woke up and I'm like, I gotta write this down. But really the essence of it is I asked my readers, what's the next challenge you're facing? I have a compendium now of about 40 concepts, but 25 that I think are important. And now I'm just prioritizing them. So I asked people to read my most recent book, Clockwork. I say, what do you face now? And I don't know. I don't actually. I know I'm having problems. I don't know what it is. I heard that enough times that that triggered, okay, this is the next need.
- [10:24]
Katie Lemieux
Very cool. I'm looking forward to that. One of the things that I absolutely love about your books is there's such a great deep psychological component that you talk about. And do you have like a BA in psychology or Masters? Because you add so much in there.
- [10:37]
Mike Michalowicz
Which is like super dangerous. So, you know, I read many of the books I have. There is a book called Therapy for Dummies and I do that. Actually. I go through therapy myself, so I'm always kind of on the side trying to glean what's my therapist doing so I can get some of these ideas. But I have a passion for behavioral psychology and realize that mastery of our mind, quite frankly, is mastery of everything.
- [11:01]
Katie Lemieux
One thing I wanted to ask you. I'm glad you brought that up because when I was reading Pumpkin Plan, you had. So your, your background though is technology, right?
- [11:07]
Mike Michalowicz
Yeah, yeah, my skill set.
- [11:09]
Dr. Kate Campbell
Yeah.
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Katie Lemieux
But you had a. You have or have, I don't know, a company in behavioral health, is that correct, regarding technology or something like that?
- [11:17]
Mike Michalowicz
No, no, no. I, you know, I did invest in a business that we did behavioral web design for.
- [11:23]
Katie Lemieux
Okay, that was it.
- [11:25]
Dr. Kate Campbell
Gotcha.
- [11:25]
Katie Lemieux
What happened to that business?
- [11:27]
Mike Michalowicz
I sold it. But, you know, minor transaction. I've had two exits from companies that were substantial sales, but that one was. I was trying it, but it wasn't really my passion. And I think that was a big aha moment for me. I really believe that we need to line actually something greater than passion but purpose into our businesses and that business. While I was making money, it was a slog. I wasn't excited about it. But when I really got honed in on what my life's purpose is, as I defined it for myself, being very clear what I needed to do. And I devoted myself full time to being an author. I do invest in other businesses. I have equity stakes and I'm a figurehead for some of them. But I'm a full time author now.
- [12:06]
Katie Lemieux
Cool. So let's talk about clockwork.
- [12:11]
Mike Michalowicz
Yeah, let's talk about.
- [12:12]
Katie Lemieux
Where do you want to start?
- [12:13]
Mike Michalowicz
It's an awesome book.
- [12:15]
Katie Lemieux
It is an awesome book.
- [12:18]
Mike Michalowicz
Here's where I'll start. I found that most businesses get stuck in the stages of the 4D mix. And so what I explained in the book is there's four levels of a business and the entrepreneur needs to navigate through these. While the business needs to do a mix of all these things, the entrepreneur needs to elevate themselves to the highest level of these 4Ds for the business to run or scale healthily. The first level is called doing. So every business must be doing work. This is the delivery of our services or product, but it's also the work that supports it. Marketing, invoicing. The vast majority of what business does is doing. And when an entrepreneur starts the business, therapist or whoever we are Usually doing all the work. The next level up is called the deciding phase. And this is few businesses get here, but when they do, they often get stuck here. Deciding is where you start to hire employees or colleagues. And they come in with that incessant stream of questions like what should I do now? And what should I do now? And in the beginning it's great, it's relieving that they really want to learn for the first couple weeks. When it's two months later and they still have questions, it's like, are they idiots? Like, what's wrong with these people? Why can't they learn? We've controlled all the thoughts. They come in, we give them a task, we're task rabbiting. But they come back to us from a decision for a decision. And the problem is best kind of the analogy is there's a Hindu goddess named Kali. It's a female head with eight arms. And that's what we become. One mind controlling all the arms of the business. And it restricts growth because that's what we can't do anymore. In fact, we can't wait until our employees wrap up the day so that we can start working and work through the night. It's insane. Sadly, most businesses get stuck here. There's a reason why most businesses don't have more than three employees. It's because the owner is making all the decisions we need to elevate to the next D. The third D is called delegation. Delegation is not the assignment of tasks which most people think it is. Delegation is the assignment of outcomes. What I mean by this is there is a specific outcome or emotion or feeling we want to deliver to our clients or whatever the scenario is. It's the ultimate outcome we want to achieve. We then give our our employees the liberty and the empowerment to make decisions around it. In fact, when they come in and asking us what should we do, we have to have the fortitude to say, I'm not going to tell you, I want you to do it. I hired you for. It's on your shoulders, that brain of yours. You go decide. Here's the biggest key to this though. We need to support all their decisions. And they're not going to make all good decisions. They're going to make some bad decisions. It is a trap to stop them from making a bad decision. Say, don't do that, that's totally wrong. Do this because then we've reverted back down a level to deciding we're starting to control decisions. So allow them to have enough rope to hang themselves effectively, which by the way we do for ourselves. As a business owner, I make mistakes constantly. I don't like fire myself. I just say, oh, shucks, that wasn't the way. Let me try again. We need to give our employees that liberty. The highest level then is called designing. This is where entrepreneurs, I believe, if you want to scale business, must aspire to achieve. Designing is where we have clarity on a vision or outcome we want for a scenario or for our business. That grand vision we have, it's then the choreographing of the resources to get there. And here's the deal. Here's the special secret sauce to this one. Clarity on the vision and talking about is important. Getting your people and your vendors and even your clientele marching toward that in a choreographed way is significant. But everyone must be winning on that path. The biggest opportunity is with our own employees. With my own team, I came out, this is last month or the beginning of this year. I came out to start off that quarter and told my employees, we're gonna do $10 million in revenue this year. I was all jacked up. And it was like this ho, hum, boring response, like, why aren't you guys excited? And my team is very candid with me. We have great rapport, I feel. And they said, mike, because you get the new car and the new house at 10 million, why would we care? And that's when I realized we all have our own individual dreams as business owners. My dream is at $10 million. My colleague Amy here, her dream is flexibility and work. Kelsey, she wants to be able to go on sabbatical and serve the world. She sees a greater purpose in being of service to poor communities. Mike just wants to learn entrepreneurial skills. And once I understood their individual visions and dreams, now we work on their pathway in their job to also achieve their dreams. And that's become the ultimate motivator to design the outcomes that I want for our company.
- [16:26]
Katie Lemieux
That's beautiful. I'm reminded as you talk and as we've read your book, there's a lot of validation for us in what we do. But I remember when I was working in behavioral health agency work, and the ability for your team to be like, wow, you trust me? Is an awesome feeling. You know, that they feel that and experience that. And I know Kate and I had a situation with our va. We have a VA in Africa, and she made a mistake in regards to some intellectual property and someone got it for free or whatever. But she, like, immediately owned it and was, like, willing to pay it back. And instead we said, no, you make mistakes.
- [16:59]
Dr. Kate Campbell
That's okay.
- [17:00]
Katie Lemieux
And we rewarded her with, you know, like, a bonus. We said thank you for, you know, your. Your owner owning that, and it's really cool. And what's also really cool with our VA is she edits our podcast, and by listening to our podcast, she has started her own business. So it's just really cool to have that impact on your team. They're not just employees, you know, they're people with big visions, and they want to do good things. And for you to be able to support that, that's just. I don't know. For me, that's the chill factor.
- [17:24]
Mike Michalowicz
Yeah. Ultimately, listen, we're all the same. We're all just human beings on our own journey. Maybe we're in different parts of a pathway, but it's a big infinite loop. We have a big Styrofoam or foam stick here, and it says ass on it. Ass is an acronym, by the way. Stands for the Amy sorry stick. Amy has a propensity, always say, I'm sorry I made a mistake. And we're like, we revel mistakes. So anytime she says sorry, we start hitting her with this foam stick. It's like, don't be sorry. Reveling the fact that. So that's one kind of fun way to embrace mistakes are a good thing. It moves us forward, and it's empowering our team.
- [17:58]
Dr. Kate Campbell
Right.
- [17:59]
Katie Lemieux
And also allows us the opportunity to look in our system, like, what's not working? You know, I think it's, like, information for us to do better, you know, and one of the things that, you know, sometimes, obviously we get complaints about our business or something that we didn't do. And for me, it's always like, wow, thank you for inspiring us to do better. You know, that was an opportunity for us. You know, once I have my cry and pissed off, whatever I'm going through.
- [18:20]
Dr. Kate Campbell
I have to walk the dog for.
- [18:21]
Katie Lemieux
45 minutes and breathe that type of stuff. But, you know, when we can step back and look at it from a different aspect.
- [18:26]
Mike Michalowicz
Yeah, I love that.
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Katie Lemieux
So one of the things that you do talk about in the book is the qbr, which is the queen bee role. And I definitely want you to share that. And we. We've utilized that obviously, in our business and really defined our qbr. So please share a little bit about.
- [18:40]
Mike Michalowicz
Yeah, so that. That's the part that specifically came from Beehives. And what I found is Beehives follow a very specific rule set. It's actually only two rules. I mean, you can't get More simple than this. Every beehive knows or is programmed to protect the production of eggs. Because in a beehive, the survivability and thrive ability of the hive is all based upon egg production. Bees live very short lifespans, but it depends on the species. Some of them live four weeks, some can live maybe up to six months, but that's basically it. So there's a lot of, you know, turnover in beehives. So every, every bee knows egg production needs to hum along. Now, as a pun, but the bee that produces eggs is called the queen bee. People confuse this and say, oh, you're saying the queen bee is the most important bee and that's not true. The most important bee is all the bees. The most important function is egg production. In fact, if the queen bee fails to produce eggs, they just get rid of her and they spawn a new queen bee. Every bee knows they have a job. So if egg production slowed down, they can heat or cool the hive based upon temperature. They rub their wings together to generate friction and heat, or they flap their wings to form a form of air conditioning and cool the hive. They will do different things and moving eggs and stuff to optimize production. That's rule one. Rule two is once egg production is coming along, then they revert and do their primary job. But they're in the see something, say something mode. If egg production slips, they revert back to rule number one, produce eggs. Every business has a singular function that our business success is hinging on. And sadly, most businesses don't know what it is. Therefore, most businesses are just jumping around to all different things and are wondering why we take three steps forward yet two steps back. It's because we're not humming along on the most critical factor. Here's how you find your business. And actually it's something I didn't include in the book because I've really refined it. Subsequent to the book. Hopefully I'll re release a revised and expanded edition one day in the future. But here's a shortcut that's not even in the book. Shortcut's this. Define first what your big promise is. Meaning what is the biggest guarantee or commitment? What are you trying to be world famous for to your clients? And this has to be one thing. The example I use in FedEx is FedEx's biggest promise is to deliver packages on time. That's why we use FedEx. And yes, they do ship, they do packaging services and they have a print shop and so forth. But delivering packages on time is the number one promise. We all have to have that. And if you don't know what it is, simply ask your customers, why do you buy from us? And look through the. For the common theme. Is it comfort? Is it confidence? What's the biggest one thing? Once you know that one thing, then peel back the only one layer and say, what's the activity? It's always a doing level activity that makes that one promise a reality. I know there's many things that deliver on, but what's the one most important thing? And for FedEx, it's logistics. Logistics makes packages to get delivered on time. Now FedEx does customer service and other things. All those things are important, but they're not the qbr. They're not the number one thing. The QBR is always the one thing that delivers on the promise. And my expectation is this. If FedEx said, you know, starting today, we're really going to ramp up customer service, we're going to be the most friendly company ever. And, you know, don't worry about the logistics. Packages will find their own way overnight. I think FedEx would be in risk of going out of business. I could see the headline news saying, you know, fedex friendly has no idea where the packages are. You know, we would never buy from them. Now the thing that's interesting is if FedEx did reverse, if FedEx says, all we're going to do is deliver packages on time and we're going to close down our customer service department, we're not even going to answer the phones. The headline one week from now is, can't get hold of FedEx, but your package is being delivered on time, every time. Will FedEx go to business? Unlikely. Because they're known for package delivery. Yes, they'll struggle a little bit and there'll be some negative pr, but they won't go out of business. This is the same scenario we have. Once we know our big promise. It's that one activity, our laying of eggs, that must always be humming along. And if you mess up in other areas, yeah, there may be some people quibbling about that on Yelp or something. But overall, your business will thrive. If you compromise the qbr, your business is over. So master the qbr. Have everyone aware of it. Have everyone in the see something, say something mode. And sure enough, your business will start to scale a lot more effortlessly because, you know, the one thing you need to do.
- [22:49]
Dr. Kate Campbell
Nice.
- [22:50]
Katie Lemieux
So, I mean, I could just, you know, totally be enthralled by everything that you talk about, but I don't want to. I want to make sure we honor our sponsor and just take a quick break for our sponsor. So let's just do that.
- [23:00]
Dr. Kate Campbell
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- [24:32]
Katie Lemieux
One of the things, Mike, I think our audience might be thinking because we do have a mixture of people here who are in the scaling of their business and going into different areas of their business. But we have many solo therapists, entrepreneurs. So how do you help them kind of understand, you know, when they might not have all these team members or employees? How do you help them understand the QBR and how to begin to work towards that?
- [24:54]
Mike Michalowicz
Yeah, great question. So you're already serving it. If you're a solopreneur solo therapist, there's no question you're doing the work that's delivering on that big promise. So you still go through the same process. Define what are you, what do you want to be known for? And listen and you have the right not to scale. Like you don't have to have 20 therapists working under you if you don't feel called to. And that's a different business, you know, operating 20 therapists, operating business is different than being a therapist. So I want to be very clear on that. And you have the right to choose what speaks to you, you. But no matter what, you can bring a significant efficiency. So know what the QBR is. I mean, know the big promise, the big promise you're delivering to customers. Then know what is the activity that you're doing that's supporting it. And then make a hire. Make a hire that can take away all the other type of work. So as an example, say your big promise is a degree of confidence that customers just feel absolute confidence they can share, really stuff that they would never share with anyone else. And they know that it's, it's, it's buttoned down. And I know this is true for all therapists, but that's what your reputation hinges on. Then you would start setting up a scenario about that. Maybe even you put sound buffers in your windows and over, you know, all your walls and so forth to even, you know, take it to an extreme level. So that's what I'm talking about when it comes to qbr. But then look at all the other activities you do, the invoicing, insurance processing, which must be a freaking bitch, and all these other things. I just assume, I can't even imagine for that. Hire someone. I believe the first hire, if you don't know who the first hire should be, every business owner should make is hire a personal assistant. Every second you're sent mowing the lawn or scheduling your kid's dental appointment is a second you're not delivering on the qbr. So if you don't know where to get started, hire a personal assistant. They can be part time or whatever, but let's alleviate that work from you so you can focus on the QBR work, the important stuff.
- [26:40]
Katie Lemieux
I love that because, you know, Kate and I often talk about how when we first started in business, we did all the wrong things. And you know, we talk about that when we talk about outsourcing, especially as we talk about business. We're always talking about outsource your personal life too. You know, whether it's like you said, mowing the lawn, the pool, the cleaning, some people, I've heard people even pay like someone to iron their clothes. Like, who cares? You know, just do it so you can focus on other things. But not only that and not like drive yourself into your business, but also really do the things that you love, whether it's your family or mission work or whatever it is.
- [27:12]
Mike Michalowicz
That's exactly it. And I think some of us, a lot of Us have resistance to. It's like, oh, I'm giving the menial work to other people. But what you're doing is you're freeing yourself up to do what you're talented and passionate at. And quite frankly, you're giving the opportunity to other people that are talented and passionate that work. So it actually is an optimization for both sides to give away work that is not calling you to do to be done.
- [27:33]
Dr. Kate Campbell
One of the biggest things that really freed up the group practice that I own and freed up my time and energy is hiring an assistant. I call her our client care coordinator and she takes all of the intake calls. She does, excuse me, all the admin stuff. And to have someone who has taken all of that off my plate has freed up a tremendous amount of time. And that's one of the most important roles as a qbr, is really protecting. So I can be involved in some of the higher levels of the business and more of the design elements, which I enjoy so much more. And she's so good at what she does and she really feels so passionate about making sure that each person gets paired with a specific therapist that is going to be such a great fit for them. So it's very rewarding for her. And then it just, it's freed up things. So much I know I shared with you before we hit the record button that I just took my longest vacation ever and everything at the business was just running like clockwork.
- [28:27]
Mike Michalowicz
Hey, no postcards. I just want that to be known.
- [28:30]
Dr. Kate Campbell
I know. So it was really exciting to be able to experience that and businesses running seamlessly. I'll actually be taking a maternity leave, which I haven't announced on the podcast. Surprise, everybody. I'm pregnant.
- [28:42]
Mike Michalowicz
Is this the big reveal just now?
- [28:44]
Dr. Kate Campbell
Big reveal.
- [28:45]
Mike Michalowicz
Did your husband even know yet?
- [28:48]
Dr. Kate Campbell
I'm 20 weeks, so I'm halfway through the pregnancy. And I'll be taking a maternity leave from my practice for about two to three months, which is the longest time that I'll ever be removed. But knowing that I'm able to test how the business is running from having all these systems in place, it's just so exciting so that I don't have to kill myself working through maternity leave like I did with my first son four years ago. So I want to thank you because this stuff really does work.
- [29:14]
Mike Michalowicz
You're welcome. And there's a great lesson here. You know, we in Clockwork, I talk about taking a four week vacation. And the whole goal of the four week vacation is to remove yourself from any active input into the business. You're totally disconnected. So the business can run itself because everyone will be taking a version of a four week vacation, either planned or unplanned. So it could be a pregnancy, which is a celebration, but it could be a sickness or some other problem, something unplanned for, unexpected. And if you haven't prepared for it, it will devastate your business. And that's why I argue everyone's got to get on this fork vacation immediately. It's not about the vacation component. It's about removing the business dependency upon the owner. If you're carrying the business on the back and you break your back, business is done. If the business can run without you and you take vacation or you have a pregnancy or something disastrous happens, now you have a somewhat of a cash ATM continuing to support you because it's not dependent upon you.
- [30:10]
Katie Lemieux
So that will be part of our discussion since, you know, when Kate goes on maternity leave, we got to continue to look at our systems and things like that. So I'm not, I'm not taking on all of the stuff, right?
- [30:20]
Mike Michalowicz
No, no, no.
- [30:21]
Dr. Kate Campbell
Yeah, that's not happening.
- [30:22]
Katie Lemieux
No, no, no, no. I'm just saying that's a continuous conversation that we have. And one of the things I think Kate and I do really well, one part of our business is because the QBR that we've identified is content creation, right? Because that's really what we're about. And part of that is because, not because, but we show up, we do the podcast and we're involved in that.
- [30:40]
Dr. Kate Campbell
So there is a big part that.
- [30:41]
Katie Lemieux
We'Re involved in the business. And the other thing that we just experienced that I think is really cool and I know we haven't talked about this, but because we've created systems, you just utilize kind of the same system. And we actually then turned it over to our VA and said, okay, you already know the system because we use this for podcast now create the same system, using it for the videos and the content creation. And Kate had just told me, she's like, oh, did you see like Ruth created the system? And I'm like, no, I didn't see it.
- [31:04]
Dr. Kate Campbell
That's awesome. That's so cool.
- [31:08]
Mike Michalowicz
I'm walking a similar path, right? So content creation, I'll refine a little bit is also my qbr. You know, I started off with what is my big promise. And my big promise is to make entrepreneurship simple. That's my commitment to simplify the experience of entrepreneurship. So that's the promise the QBR delivers on, that is content. Specifically, it's books that make entrepreneurship more simple. So it's writing of books. Then I realized, okay, that's my qbr. I'm doing all the work. But here's the problem. The day I'm sick or maybe I get pregnant, I won't be able to write the books and the whole business, like a balloon deflates. So I said I need to get out of doing the qbr and I started the process. What I've done is supplemental books. So Profit first, for example, is one of my books we talked about. I now have, I think it's eight or nine derivative versions of the books. So there's profit first for chiropractors, profit first for dentists, hopefully one day, profit first for therapists. But there's other authors now that are writing these books and out there speaking on it. I still derive revenue, benefit from it and the growing brand exposure, but I don't need to carry the torch anymore. So even if you're doing the creative side, there's always ways to extract ourselves from doing the QBR ourselves.
- [32:17]
Katie Lemieux
Mike, what do you want our folks to take away from your message today?
- [32:22]
Mike Michalowicz
So I'll tell them they got to take a vacation and a real one, you know, not the hey, let me take a break from the business and do a workcation, you know, where I tell my kids, I'll be with you later this morning, but I'm going to work from 6 to 8 before anyone wakes up. You end up working from 6 in the morning to 8 o' clock at night. Like that is not working. We need to disconnect from the business. So the big ask that I think that people can do is take a four week vacation. Not today, not tomorrow, but schedule it out a year and a half to a year from now. Because what's going to happen is a mind shift. You're going to say, oh, I got a commitment now I've made. I have to stop asking how am I going to get things done? And I'm going to start asking who can get things done. So just commit to that, ask that new question and you'll be on a trajectory for a business that runs itself.
- [33:09]
Dr. Kate Campbell
I think Katie is frozen. We actually, I don't know if you. Well, for those of you who are listening, you can't see the color, but it looks like I'm podcasting at night because it is like black outside. All of a sudden this huge storm came and I think Katie, she just texted me that the Internet went out and lots of thunder and lightning. So we live in South Florida, it's summertime here. This stuff happens. And so we'll just keep rolling with the podcast. So that's awesome. I know. Mike, you've also got a giveaway for our audience today, so could you share with us?
- [33:40]
Mike Michalowicz
Yeah, I do. So I've compiled all my books. I have free chapter downloads from all my books. I've also prepared all of my Wall Street Journal articles I used to write for the Wall Street Journal. All of them, plus video content. So I've created about 70 videos now that I can drip out to you of one, at the most two minutes. Very actionable tips. So they're all available for you if you go to mikemotorbike.com that's my website. That was my nickname in high school and Mike Michalowitz is too hard to spell. So mikemotorbike.com and there's a big orange button up there. It says get the tools. Click on that and I'll email you all that stuff immediately.
- [34:13]
Dr. Kate Campbell
Awesome. And we'll put the link for your website in our show notes and all of that good stuff. So thank you again so much for coming on for round two. This is awesome. And I'm really excited about your new book coming out in 2020. So once that is launched, maybe we'll have you back on for round three.
- [34:30]
Mike Michalowicz
It would be an honor. It would be an honor, Kate. Thanks for having me. And please tell Kati I send my best.
- [34:35]
Dr. Kate Campbell
Yes, I will. Thank you guys all for listening for being here. Another episode of the Private Practice Startup. I wanted to give a quick superhero start out Startup nation superhero shout out. And this comes from Julie Smith Merriman. She says these ladies are the bomb trendsetters in the biz. Full of enthusiasm and wisdom. They are truly living. Their passion is they helped us build and scale our businesses. I am stoked about their new products. Who wouldn't want to learn from fun and intelligent women? Thank you so much, Julie. That is so awesome. And we appreciate all of you guys for listening on the podcast. Thank you for being a part of Startup Nation. This is why we do what we do. So thank you for continuing to be our inspiration. If there's a topic that you guys would love to hear on the podcast, please let us know. And we would love to be able to produce that content for you. You'll want to make sure you listen for next week. Our episode with Michelle Hardman talking all about the referral network hiding in plain sight. So that will be a great episode as well. And I hope you guys have a great inspired rest of your week. We'll see you on the next podcast. Bye everybody. Thanks for joining us on the Private practice startup. Visit theprivatepracticestartup.com for awesome resources, free trainings, attorney approved private practice paperwork, and so much more. Sam.