0:00:02 - Mark Henderson Leary

Welcome to Practice Freedom. What if you could hang out with owners and founders from all sorts of healthcare private practices, having rich conversations about their successes and their failures, and then take an insight or two to inspire your own growth? Each week on Practice Freedom, we take an in-depth look at how to get the most out of both the clinical side and the business side of the practice, get the most out of your people and, most of all, how to live the healthy life that you deserve. I'm Mark Henderson Leary. I'm a business coach and an entrepreneurial operating system implementer. I have a passion that everyone should feel in control of their life, and so what I do is I help you get control of your business. Part of how I do that is by letting you listen in on these conversations in order to make the biggest impact in your practice and, ultimately, live your best life. Let's get started. Welcome back. Practice leaders. Got another one coming at you Great conversation with Jessica Jones, who we don't really talk about this until the end but, as a leader, understands what it is to grow from one practice to 22 practices, with a visionary that she's chasing around trying to grow, and successfully did it we talked about at the end. 

I think that's worth listening to, getting to the end, because it wasn't all roses there and that's her background. So think of her as kind of integrator in that sense. I mean she does a lot of consulting and helps people from all the life cycle, from some, you know, deciding to break out on their own to really trying to scale and run the practice and is a coach is a coach to these folks, so is really in the ear and sees what's going on in the practice leadership. But we talk about a lot of different things tactically a lot of things around cash pay, misconceptions around what that is and how to build value, that you know you can be cash pay and Medicare at the same time, and what that looks like, really focused on this. The concepts of doing less to grow and what that looks like, and the visionary mindset and all the different mindsets that go with that. So take a listen and give us some feedback. Love to love to get the feedback on this. She's got a lot to offer. 

We went long. So yeah, I apologize for that, but I thought everything we talked about was good and useful. If you're stuck, don't forget, I'm happy to help If you're feeling frustrated. If you're listening to these episodes and you're like I don't know what to do with this. That's not good. Let's have a conversation. Practicefreedomcom slash schedule. We'll take a few minutes to get you unstuck With that. Jessica Jones, please enjoy. 

0:02:30 - Jessica Jones

I mean I see so much of that happening that it's just breaking my heart. All these practitioners. I mean I literally had a practitioner say to me you know I'm a good artist, maybe I'll go into art, like no, just because you know she's right now overworked, underpaid, trying to figure out how to get out of it and into her own practice. 

0:02:48 - Mark Henderson Leary

What a beautiful way to start this. So how bad is it when you see people frustrated? 

0:02:55 - Jessica Jones

It's really bad right now. You know, I was just at a training seminar for a revenue stream that I was helping one of my clients add and it was filled with a room of people that I mean for lack of a better term, I would say it's almost. It's not almost as though, like they literally have PTSD from just the system the overworked, underpaid, underappreciated and they're looking to get out and so definitely wanna get them into a practice that they can be passionate about, that they can, you know, move into full time and replace and exceed their income. 

0:03:33 - Mark Henderson Leary

And so when you say the room, you're talking to these people who are kind of burned out. These are people currently in institutional situations or they're on their own private practice. 

0:03:41 - Jessica Jones

Yeah, they're people who are getting trained in a protocol so that they can start their own clinic, and so, of course, the people I'm talking to a lot of the people I'm talking to who are currently in a practice, are seeking help, saying you know I'm burned out, you know I'm getting 60% of what I'm bringing in, I'm being forced to see too many patients not give the care I want to provide, not do the things I want to do, and they're looking to get out and feeling like it's too hard. And it's not too hard. You just need you know, you need the passion, you need the guidance and you can make it happen. A lot of people that I start to work with who are in that scenario we can even start with part-time, one day a week, two days a week, until they can give up their contract. 

0:04:32 - Mark Henderson Leary

So lots there. So two questions that come to mind, one at a time. One is what does the journey look like to start filling the bucket on how to run a practice? And another one is how far does it go? How often do you see people who just want to work from themselves as opposed to really want to make the transformation into entrepreneur? So hold that question for a second. Let's go back to the first one. Okay, a hundred percent of the healthcare professionals I've worked with, talked to, had conversations with, will freely admit, talk about, be almost proud of. I've got so many years of education, I'm a master of the craft and they've told me nothing. I learned nothing in my education about how to run a business Nothing. Then it's sort of like well then the pregnant pause is. So then what? What are you going to do about that? What do you see people do about that? 

0:05:27 - Jessica Jones

Yeah, well, that's. I mean, that's exactly what I'm helping people do. You know, with the medical practitioners coming into practice, ownership I'm teaching them every step. I mean I literally had somebody find me and say I'm reading Business for Dummies right now. That's how much I want to do this and how little I know, and it's okay. I think it's literally drilled into practitioners not to understand the business side because they just want them on the treatment side. But it's 100%, as you said, of the practitioners I work with, maybe 99.9%. There is a rare practitioner who really has kind of all of it together right. And of course I know I'm sure some of your audience is chiropractic. There's a certain segment of chiropractors who definitely have the business side, but for the most part everybody needs the business support and is looking to get that so that they can build their own business. 

0:06:31 - Mark Henderson Leary

Yeah, so do you find some resistance? Because one of the things that I found that's built into the mindset is all the education is taught to fill their heads with answers, and so for a decade they're taught to be the answer people, not the question. People and leadership. We're going to business. It's asking questions and finding out the answers and iterating, and it's this sort of laboratory environment test, test, execute, adjust. And so there's I think there's this weird pressure to say, like once, the humility is unavoidable, unavoidable. I don't know what I'm doing, running a business, but there's sort of this lack of habit that is like, okay, but let's go ask some questions, let's go be an amateur, let's go learn from the best of how to run a business. There isn't really that modeling and that appetite and that habit to say like, okay, now I'm going to get humble and stay humble as a leader, manager in the organization. It's like, well, quick, give me the answer. 

0:07:32 - Jessica Jones

And so I can go do this at the same level. How do you see that transformation in the mindset? Yeah, for me. So I'll say two things. So I've got, you know, some people who work with me who are very much willing to admit. Listen, I want to do this and I do need help on the business side. I need to know how to price, I need to know how to package and, for the most part, the challenge I see from a mindset perspective is they want to spend a lot of time with their patients. They're tired of these like little 15 minute appointments and they don't necessarily want to ever have to ask for money and they're often in a situation where they are, you know, having to put a money mindset hat on. So that is a lot of work that I see that needs to be done. 

0:08:16 - Mark Henderson Leary

You know, it's just drilled into them. 

So I love that. That's probably just a good segue into like what I believe is your core. I believe that there's two main levers to pull in scaling a healthcare practice. One is in the capitated model we got to figure out how to maximize the reimbursements, but that only goes as far as it can go. Sometimes you run across like a little loophole, but that's usually temporary. The only way to manage a successful business that I see in a capitated model is to manage to efficiencies and figure out like what are the things that were wasteful in our spending? And we can create margins by being bigger, more efficient, process driven, and so that's the efficiency mindset for those capitated models that I see effective. 

The other way is well, what value can we offer that people will pay money for? That will totally disregard that capitated system. There is no capitation on value. If I can add more value, there's always somebody who will pay for it, if the value is really there, which of course is. And I guess I want to call this out, because I think when we think of cash pay, which is where we're going, I think people think of it as just I don't know, it's branded, it's like it's just not insurance, and I think that's the missed opportunity to think of it that way. It is inelastic or no, it is totally elastic. Value it is let the fair market offer you value exchange as opposed to like, oh, I'm taking on the risk of making people pay out of cash, now I'm competing with insurance and all that kind of mindset. If you're thinking apples to apples like, I'm gonna do the exact same work I did, cash pay as opposed to insurance because the headache is lower, that is a complete mindset miss on value for service. So go. 

0:09:57 - Jessica Jones

All right. So what I would say to that is you know, when I say cash practice, I work with many providers who are still in the insurance model and it's talking about adding cash revenue streams. It's the injection that isn't covered. There can be very lucrative practices set up based around Medicare things that are covered by. 

Medicare right, I mean very lucrative. So cash-based practice doesn't necessarily mean you're totally out of insurance. In fact, I would say one of the things that I find some of my practitioners have the most difficulty giving up is Medicare, because you know, once you opt out, it's seven years and it's a nervous feeling and you don't need to opt out. You can offer things that are cash-based because they're not covered and because you know that your patients are going to massively benefit. It's going to provide some value to them that you know they're not going to receive necessarily going to a traditional provider. So they're able to get it at your practice without necessarily people even being aware of it in the traditional practice. Setting Make sense, yeah 100%. 

0:11:08 - Mark Henderson Leary

So this kind of triggered me back to that second question I tabled, which is an entrepreneur to go from working for yourself. So I want to be out of a system that's taking advantage of me and I just want to have rules that I understand. That's a different part-time model. To go work for a better company model is different than I. Have a vision that we could do something really big here and I think that when you start talking about that cash pay value model, there's some real thought work there. Potentially it's a lot more than just like in the exam room figuring out what they, what I would add to this exam that isn't covered there. 

I think that the burden starts to get really large to say like, where's the industry going? What? How big an impact could we make if we had, if we cause? There's a scale effect sometimes like you can't just do so. I'm going to start adding this. I'm going to let you talk about buying equipment. I'm going to buy this big old piece of equipment for me. Like, well, that's not gonna work if we're. We need 10 people in here or five, these five physicians or whatever for this, the scaling. And so you very quickly start to push the responsibility to be like. Well, is my role here leader of the business, or is my role here individual healer? And I'm sure there's competition there? But what percentage of people you start working with who are like i'm'm sick of the system, to like you know what. I could really make a difference here and I want to grow this to something significant. How do you see that unfolding? 

0:12:32 - Jessica Jones

Well, you know, it really varies practitioner to practitioner. I have, you know, most many of the practitioners I'm working with are really, you know, they're starting and then I'm actually helping them figure out how do I take a step back and hire people and let other people get involved, because now I'm getting too big for me, right? And then do I bring them in under my you know, credentials, you know how do we deal with that. So that's a great problem to have. But then I do have, ironically, there are some practitioners who really get like a big vision and the mistake I see them having is they have this vision and they're like, oh, I can add this and I can add to this and I can add that. 

0:13:40 - Mark Henderson Leary

And then I can just bring it in and you're the main provider or not. Every step of your practice has to run, and it has. And it's a sophisticated piece of machinery that doesn't just go on intuition, it goes on management and that's the, that's the unspoken or untouted discipline that needs to be built into the business and that visionary exists. 

0:14:00 - Jessica Jones

The three roles I was going to talk about that as well and probably get a time to yeah, everybody needs to know what you're doing and everybody needs to be on board for their piece, and that starts with the person who answers the phone and sets the appointments. Can't expect them to be setting appointments for you if they don't know the latest thing you're bringing on board. There needs to be a whole you know everybody's on board with everything you're doing. 

0:14:25 - Mark Henderson Leary

Exactly right. So, as that founding healthcare provider, there are the three roles and I say this all the time and people are probably people who have heard this a bunch and know how much I talk about this, but the people who haven't been exposed to the three roles is really, the light bulb goes off. I'm the doctor, I'm the provider, whatever, and it's my practice and I need to run it. That language seems very intuitive, but it's like well, okay, you're running out of bandwidth. Yeah, oh yeah. If this practice gets really successful, are you going to have more time or less time? Oh, lots less. I don't know how I'm going to make this work. Okay, is it possible that there's more than one job here? I, okay, is it possible that there's more than one job here? I don't know. 

And the three jobs turn out to be individual healer, business leader or, in my operating system language, we call it the integrator, which is really that business administrator, make sure the business runs. The manager of managers. And then there is this visionary leader, which is the one out in front, who really sees the big picture, got 20 ideas a week, 19 of them not quite baked yet, but really impatient, really wants to move the organization forward. So like which one or two of those are you? Because if you're trying to do three, not only are you running out of time, but you're going to be stepping on your own toes. The visionary in you is going to want to move forward fast, and the integrator sort of business operator is like but we're out of money, boss. 

And then the individual leader is like I got to go take care of this patient and so like there's somebody waiting in the waiting room, so I'm actually out of bandwidth, so you have to start choosing which one you're going to let go of. And I more often than not, but not always occasionally, particularly in things like chiro or anesthesiology or things like where it's like you know, I don't, I like it. 

I don't love seeing the patients with like plastic surgery, it's like no, no, yeah, this is Mike, I'm in the craft. But so most of the time there's a gravitation towards that visionary leader when you know what there's big things we could do here. I help one patient at a time, which is great, and I need to do that ongoing because that's how I stay sharp. But if I, as a visionary leader, could help 40, 80 patients a day, 160 patients a day, you know, thousands of patients a week by running an organization that sees what I see, that's the biggest impact that I could make. And someone else can be back there managing the dollars and the people and the hard conversations that I'm not that great at. 

0:16:43 - Jessica Jones

Well, it's funny you say that. One of the things that comes to mind when I hear you talk about those three roles and how they're often in that one person right. I'm always talking to people about scaling back to grow, and good is good enough. These are two things that are constantly being drilled in, because I see my practitioners at least trying to allow somebody to come in and support them in the individual functions of the practice, but then they say, oh, this isn't how I would do it and they can't let go of certain tasks. And that's a huge problem because you cannot grow if you don't let other people do things and let them make mistakes and not do it the way you do it. Well, you know. 

0:17:31 - Mark Henderson Leary

Yeah, the trick with that though and I agree 100% is there is a push and pull between delegation, empowering, allowance of imperfection as a teaching tool, as an empowerment tool. Frankly, letting people fail a little bit is how they kind of get their heightened sense of awareness that like their agency and they have to get better, which is a contradictory feeling, sometimes with high standard of excellence. 

0:18:01 - Jessica Jones

Yeah, but mistakes are how people learn to do it the right way. And if you're not allowing people to make mistakes, or you're being punitive or worse, off-boarding them because they made a mistake and hiring again, you're only hiring somebody who's bound to make that same mistake, instead of benefiting from the fact that you have somebody now who's made a mistake. They've learned from it, they've grown from it, it and they're not going to make that mistake again. So right. 

0:18:27 - Mark Henderson Leary

So I see it go both ways right. I see people who just they're perfectionists by nature, they won't delegate. They, if they do, it's like a millisecond between delegation and like intervention, they take away all that agency. The other side, it's like well, there's this scarcity mindset. Well, we've got a surgeon, they they're not that great, but if we don't fill, how much revenue is tied to that person? I don't know how to have a hard conversation with them. It's like well, you better figure out because you are messing with God's work here. You really have a responsibility to make sure you're not doing any real harm here by allowing a bad surgeon to continue that work. 

And so I do think there's that paradox and building the language and skillset is very hard to do. That visionary leader needs that integrator type who knows how to navigate. Hey, no, this is a learning opportunity. They're getting it. You know they upset that person, but they learn to apologize and now we're better off. And then they're okay. No, no, we actually have an unqualified healthcare provider in the situation. We need to get them off the field right now. But that's not necessarily easy to manage as a visionary leader who's kind of binary, like it's either good enough or it's not, and so I guess the reason I want to drive this point home is that some of the people in listening to this are like I totally get it, and other people are really lacking the language to know the difference between micromanagement and low standard of excellence and understand there's a lot of territory between micromanagement and low and high standards of excellence. That can really take some time to develop, and getting the right people on the team is a big part of that. 

0:20:03 - Jessica Jones

It is, and you know, I think it's also. You know, something that just strikes me is, as we're talking about micromanagement, just as I see people firing somebody too quickly who's made a mistake, I also see really high quality achievers leave for another opportunity under micromanagement because they're just, they don't, they don't have the opportunity to show their value, right. I'm sure you see that, oh yeah, for sure as well, and that's how you lose the best people, right, by not letting them have some opportunity to shine. Everybody wants to. I think we're born with an innate need to do well, right? We smile, you know, when people smile at us, we keep doing what we're doing as babies, 100% Because we want to, you know, oh yeah, we want to win. 

0:20:56 - Mark Henderson Leary

Make people happy. We want to be useful. We want to be useful. We want to be successful Exactly. We want to feel appreciated 100%. 

0:21:02 - Jessica Jones

So if you don't give people an opportunity to shine and get that reward and they're a high achiever, high quality person, that's a person ideally you're recognizing that you've got that person and you're not going to lose them over not allowing them to do some things their way, and it's only going to benefit the practice, it's only going to help things grow. 

0:21:22 - Mark Henderson Leary

Yeah. Now, one of the challenges I see with that, though, is there is a. There's a contradiction that we overlap around when we didn't set good expectations, we did not clarify what we wanted. Well, and we said you're a good person, I trust you Go get it right and don't ask for help because I'm very busy. And we come back a week later, a quarter later, and it's like what did you do? You broke everything. I was like well, I didn't know what you wanted. I did my best. You said don't bother you. I knew I was bothering you, and so it's a mess, and what that creates is you gave somebody an impossible job. 

There's a very different instruction set between here. Do these handful of tasks that are doable, it's proven. We know how to take care of this person, and here's what the job looks like, and I'm going to allow you to make some choices on how to do it. Well, that is not the same thing as please figure it out and don't break it and make sure it's perfect. That, and if you do the first one which is very common in those visionary leaders and those individual contributors who kind of figure it out as they go to under inform terribly and then get burned by setting someone up to fail and feeling like, see, I gave them all this responsibility and they just blew it. It's like, see, I gave them all this responsibility and they just blew it. It's like, no, no, no, that's not what you did. Yeah, you absolutely sabotaged the system and now you've got a wrongly wired system of how to delegate and you don't trust people because you feel like you were burned in the past. 

0:23:00 - Jessica Jones

Yeah on that, and you know this is a little segue, but where my head goes with this is it reminds me of those visionary leaders who love to make changes. They've got all these ideas, and so, instead of making one change at a time, they bring in like 10 different things, and so if the organization goes up or down, they don't know how to attribute which thing caused the success or the decline, and so no different than delegating. 

You can't delegate and just jump a pile right. You give people room to show that they can do something with one project and then you build upon it instead of just saying here do everything Because you said, oh, I broke everything. 

Well, no, you don't want to give somebody an opportunity that can cause a significant issue in the practice, right? You want to give people little opportunities to grow and then that's how they grow, and then you can scale up how much they're doing. No different than adding ideas and concepts and changes to the practice. I strongly advise people, one thing at a time so that you know from measurement how to attribute if it worked or didn't work. 

0:24:14 - Mark Henderson Leary

Totally agree, and I do think that there's two things that you want to watch for. One is the Peter principle and the non-Peter principle. You see, everyone loves the story of the receptionist, doorman, garbage collector who grew to be the CEO. Everyone loves that story. Right, it is not the norm. I hate to break it to you. It is not the norm. It's not what happened. Do not count on that. Do not like pick your lowest paid employee and say that's the next CEO. That is not how this is going to unfold. 

So you can and should see those star performers and really when you find them, you keep running with them until you get there, Cultivate it, but be ready for when you got them out ahead of their skis. And maybe that's not the end of the road for them, Maybe you got to take a step back and train and coach. But really I like that you said one thing at a time. It's not like and I and I a lot of this is sort of my projection of my bad leadership in past lives it's like, oh, they did that one thing. Well, that means they'll do everything. Well, I'm done. 

Nope, that's not how this works. You got to manage. You got to stay engaged, one at a time, and every single quarter, every single week, whatever your pulse is, you've got to say what were the objectives that we set together and what percentage of it worked, what percentage of it didn't work. And you're setting rocks in EOS. That's how we do that to some extent Scorecard on a weekly basis, like what's working and what's not. And because I think the discipline you got to really realize is that in any given week, any given quarter, some percentage of what was attempted didn't work Every every period forever, and if you don't have the mindset and appetite to measure those type of things on a regular basis, then you're not a manager and that's okay. 

You might be an individual healer, you might be a visionary leader, and those are very important things to have. As a visionary leader, you don't try to have that patience, but you need somebody in the organization who has that ability to check back every week, every month, every quarter and analyze the results repetitively. 

0:26:15 - Jessica Jones

Yeah, I'm just thinking of. I was just speaking yesterday with one of the nurse practitioners in one of my practices. She's sending me all this stuff and the owner's asking her to do all of these. Excels, yeah yeah, yeah. 

And you know, I could have, you know, done it for her, but instead we shared a screen, I put on a recording so that I could send it to her, so she could go back to it, and I showed her how to do it. And she is off to the races now. Right, but it's an example of, I think you know, one of those things where you've got somebody just handing it down and that person didn't feel comfortable right, and we'll address that separately. But that person didn't feel comfortable saying, oh my gosh, I need help with this or I don't know how to do this. But if you show me how, I'll be great, right, and once I learn I've got it, it's all set. And so there's there's so many different problems we could unpack there and it might be too, too big to get into. Well, I like that. 

0:27:14 - Mark Henderson Leary

It reminds me of my friend CJ Dubé who is also an implementer, like I am, but she's been doing this a long, long time and I asked her, I interviewed her on the podcast a long time ago. She's a master delegator. You got like a million kids and a million grandkids and just managing this very, very complex life, and I said what's the secret of delegation for you? And she said two things clear expectations of what done looks like. That's the end of the line. Clear, clear, clear, crystal clarity of what I need to be done and absolutely enough to get started. This is where you start and I think that's such a good formula because the enough to get started is highly variable. Right, Like I've never used a spreadsheet before. It's totally different than like grab a template and get going. Or there's a sample one I worked on last quarter. Go pull it out of the file server, I'm good enough. So enough to get started. And what done looks like is very poetic simplification on how do you really delegate. But you really have to understand both. 

0:28:10 - Jessica Jones

Yeah, I love that. I'm going to use that actually I hope you don't mind Of course, of course. 

0:28:18 - Mark Henderson Leary

Yeah, it's public domain now that. Cj recorded it on the podcast. 

0:28:22 - Jessica Jones

I love it. I love it. Yeah, enough to get started, but what does done look like? Yeah, that's so clear and such a great example of how to pass off a project. 

0:28:31 - Mark Henderson Leary

But what's funny is like I can pass that wisdom to you. I'm still bad at it, like I'm really bad at it. Well, it's hard, right, I'm like just make it perfect. Like you know what. Everybody knows what perfect looks like right, and so I have to have the right yin to my yang. 

Like my practice manager, she's somebody we have a great relationship. We understand that I want to move fast and she's better at pulling out the questions and I know to have the patience and she knows to leverage her superpower to ask lots more questions about. So when you say done, what you mean three weeks from now, like okay, so an outline is this going to be? Will there be pictures? Like walk me through. This event you think is no big deal. Like how you say this is going to be easy. When you say easy, what do you mean? So this really draws out a lot of the what is done look like that for me was just kind of oversimplified dramatically, and so having a great relationship with someone who can help you draw that out and pull the language out, that's not intuitive. 

0:29:30 - Jessica Jones

Well, and that can take time, right, I'm sure you've been working with her for a long time and so she gets you and she knows, okay, right. 

0:29:37 - Mark Henderson Leary

Yeah, we've been working together a year and a half, but that does not tell the story of all the failed attempts I've had before that. 

0:29:44 - Jessica Jones

Yes. 

0:29:45 - Mark Henderson Leary

Lots of iterations. 

0:29:47 - Jessica Jones

But it is hard to do. I mean, I literally have a handout that I send you know. Delegation strategies for perfectionists, right? 

0:29:53 - Mark Henderson Leary

Yeah, oh yeah. 

0:29:55 - Jessica Jones

Because it's especially in the medical field, it's so common. Of course you're, of course you're an. You know, I don't know that you know perfectionist is overused or type A, but of course you have a level of excellence that you expect in everything Right and you do have to let it back off of it a little bit and it's incredibly hard for practitioners in particular, and so when I get this a lot because-. You know you make a mistake in surgery and it's not going to go over. Well, yeah. 

0:30:32 - Mark Henderson Leary

So I guess a lot, because when I'm pushing my visionaries to delegate more and let go of the how this is going to get done, there tends to be this sort of collapse of conviction Like well, I guess I'm going to let it get broken, and they don't intuitively have a sense of what bumpy is, as opposed to not at all the vision I was thinking. And so I try to teach them like the culture cannot compromise that. Use your core values. You never compromise your core values, your purpose you never compromise your purpose. The three-year picture for where this organization is going to go what's that going to look like? 

You never compromise the impact you can make and how amazing this is going to be. How exactly are people are going to get there? You let them experiment and if they're getting off the track, you get them back on the track or get them out of the organization. If they're off the track, they skin their knee and they say I get it, I'm back on. That's what you want, that's healthy. So you have to sort of think a little longer game. You know, never compromise the long game future. Do let things kind of stumble, let people trip along the way, but then get them back on the path, as you know, as makes sense. 

0:31:51 - Jessica Jones

Yeah, you know I love I again another segue, but I love how you say that, because you talk about, you know, compromising the core values and you know keeping the long game in sight. And you know one of the things I know we've talked about or I mentioned to you, is how I see a lot of practitioners bringing in these revenue streams or equipment that ultimately get them into trouble. Right, they've got a successful practice, it's profitable. They get this device Now they've got this big lease and it's not converting to money and so often it's. A salesperson came in talked about how great it is, how in demand it is, how you just need two patients a month to pay for it, but what they? 

fail to think about is does this fit what I'm passionate about? Does this fit the goals I have for my practice? Does it fit in with my patient profile? And so often the answer is no and I say, well, if you're not passionate about something, why would you mention it to your patients? Right? You're not going to, it's never, it's not going to be effective. You've got to bring things in that fit you and your vision and your values and everything about where you're seeing this practice go right. 

0:33:04 - Mark Henderson Leary

So what do? 

0:33:05 - Jessica Jones

you, so I love say more about that. 

0:33:07 - Mark Henderson Leary

Let's dig into that, like some lessons learned, exact case studies. Yeah, I mean, I've got to tell you often. 

0:33:13 - Jessica Jones

Yeah, I know I'd have to change a lot of the names, but you know, like you know, it can be a number of things you know, like just disjointed, like I have somebody who came to me excuse me, and she was she added vaginal rejuvenation and tattoo removal all in one month. 

I'm like and and this is a practitioner who literally said to me I'm literally thinking of just quitting it all and getting a real estate license. I'm like whoa, what's happening here Now? This is, you know, she was introduced to me right at this point. I mean, she was clearly broken, right. And she, you know, she struggled in the pandemic and then just had somebody come in and then, and you know, a couple of people come in and sell her a bunch of different things that she thought were going to be her savior, instead of sitting back and having confidence in herself and saying, what can I do to get through this? And, you know, live beyond this. You know, what are the things I can do that are going to benefit me, benefit my patients, that I feel really good about. 

0:34:26 - Mark Henderson Leary

That's a great story and I want to even go back into it. I'm not moving off it, I just want to in context, when I work with organizations who are interested in adding products that do fit their vision. Even adding them too fast is impossible to execute on. You have to slow things down to make sure that you are executing on what you've already got in play, and if you don't love your life because your business is in chaos, it's very normal. 

So this person, you know if they're listening to this podcast. If you're thinking like I added these two services, totally normal when. 

0:34:58 - Jessica Jones

I was in IT services, we would always do. 

0:34:59 - Mark Henderson Leary

We would love the vendors would come to us. You sell this product. You're going to make all this money. We just add these things and we would always underestimate not just the effort and time but the money we'd have to spend in just learning and not doing other stuff. And when we finally calculated what it would cost to implement and learn and educate and market a new service, a new product, something like that, we were always like is that number real? That couldn't be real. That's hundreds of thousands of dollars to add this product. And when they just said it would just start selling it tomorrow and it was like no, that's really how you have to think of it. So if you're trying to add your way to grow the business, that just means you're normal. But you said something about scaling back to grow. Say more about that. 

0:35:42 - Jessica Jones

Yeah, so for her, I mean it's different for everybody. I mean for some people, you know, just a different example for some people it's that feeling of I need to be everywhere and do everything and it's, you know, it's the way to grow. And when I go through a process with them of you know what they believe is working, what they believe isn't working, what they enjoy doing, what they don't enjoy doing, and we talk about removing some of those weights off their shoulders, I have yet to see it not result in growth, and the reason is you can't be everywhere and be doing everything and be successful. You've got to, you know, pick something and grow. So I don't want to get off track because I can get into an example of that with marketing. 

0:36:29 - Mark Henderson Leary

I love that I actually have an idea of doing less to grow. That's a great subject Like dig into that. 

0:36:34 - Jessica Jones

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So you know you can't be everywhere, you can't do everything. So it's kind of scaling back and looking at what happens and just focusing on two or three things that you're doing that are working well for you and letting everything else grow. And if you focus in on those two or three things and let go of the three other things, just the micro focus on those three things ultimately leads to higher success. 

0:37:01 - Mark Henderson Leary

Give me an example I'd love to make it tangible, like two or three things big things, small things. 

0:37:05 - Jessica Jones

Yeah, oh well, you know for some. So this is, I do want to get back to the equipment, because that's a whole different scale back to grow. But for like, let's say, you know, there's a lot of practitioners like I have practitioners feeling like I've got to be on TikTok, I've got to be on Facebook, I've got to be on Instagram, I've got to be on Instagram, I've got to be on YouTube, I've got to be on LinkedIn, and you know it's like okay, no, no, no, no, no. You pick the platform that makes the most sense for you. 

Of course, it does need to align with your patients, right, but you don't need to be on all social media outlets. It's impossible to do well and be everywhere without a significant, you know support structure behind you, right, or team. So I really work with a lot of people. I don't know where they got into this belief where they had to do everything and they had to be live on Facebook and videos on TikTok and webinars and all of it. And, yes, all of those things individually can be very beneficial, but trying to do them all simultaneously is usually not going to lead to anything other than burnout and frustration and aggravation, and so we look at all of those lists and we remove things and it varies by person, but we definitely we cut that list to very small number of things. 

0:38:26 - Mark Henderson Leary

And there's always somebody, some hustler, out there who's like on all the channels, making you feel like I'm not doing enough, because I know those people like they're going 20 hours a day and they're like on everything and that is not a life. That is not sustainable, that is not. That's not effective in terms of at all the bang for the buck. 

0:38:46 - Jessica Jones

No, you can't compare yourself to everybody out there. You have to focus on your vision, your mission and just stay on track. I mean, you know, of course there's always going to be somebody out there who seems like they're doing it all, but you don't know what's in the background there either. So I wouldn't, you know, judge yourself based on that. You don't know what's going on there, and so that's another. You know big thing, I get people constantly comparing this person opened up and that person opened up. It's like competition is okay, there's enough people out there. Competition means that people need what you're offering. Right, right, right. That's all it means. It's a good sign You're doing the right things. People need what you want, people want what you're offering and people need what you're offering. 

0:39:30 - Mark Henderson Leary

So go back to equipment and or focus on things that we're trying to provide. 

0:39:33 - Jessica Jones

Yeah, equipment so many people. I've just recently I've had a number of people who there's a lot of great salespeople out there and there's a lot of conferences where people are selling devices and people are going and saying, oh my gosh, I'm not going to say what this is, but I literally had somebody tell me that they were told it would be an ATM machine in their business. Well, work is always going to be a four letter word. There's no such thing as something you just bring in and you can just convert it right away. If there were, every single person would be offering it everybody. And so you got to be careful and you got to really evaluate. And there's a lot of pressure tactics and unfortunately I've come across people who find me after they've succumbed to those tactics and thankfully somebody refers themed to those tactics and thankfully somebody refers them, which I greatly appreciate and I help them kind of unravel it. 

And you know, it's just a different process depending on what it is, but usually it's okay. 

It's either deciding what are you doing that actually fits with your practice and how can we make that profitable, and you might just have to say in some cases you just have to say, okay, I bought this and it's not working, I'm either going to have to take a loss, resell it, return it and the lease whatever, and we'll help unravel that contract right In some way shape or form. I mean it's just. But then we're going to focus in on okay, so how do we get you out of the hole that you dug when you did this right? And that's possible too. So I hate to see people feel like hope is lost because they got into a little bit of a hole. Things can go up and down and with some focus and recommitment to where you really want to be and to what you really want to be offering, you can definitely overcome those mistakes right. Just like we talked about earlier, mistakes aren't failure. It's how we learn to do things better and do things the right way. 

0:41:35 - Mark Henderson Leary

So I'm curious about specific examples You're thinking about, like a specific piece of equipment that somebody bought, and what did they do instead? Like we got this equipment, it's going to be a laser, it's going to be amazing. Piece of equipment that somebody bought, and what did they do instead? Like we got this equipment, it's going to be a laser, it's going to be amazing, and it's like nobody doesn't fit. So we didn't did something else instead. Like what do you? What actually happens? 

0:41:50 - Jessica Jones

yeah, so. So in one instance we we shut down some, some some of the equipment streams and, you know, negotiated with the company to return them? 

0:42:02 - Mark Henderson Leary

What industry? Not industry, but what type of practice? 

0:42:08 - Jessica Jones

Yeah, so this is. I don't want to call out the particular equipment company, but I would say that there's definitely some very high-priced things out there, with like great salespeople who make it seem like okay, this is going to be amazing. 

0:42:21 - Mark Henderson Leary

This is skincare, this is cardio. 

0:42:24 - Jessica Jones

So it's a combination of things. It's, you know, some of it's aesthetics. 

0:42:28 - Mark Henderson Leary

So definitely aesthetics, definitely aesthetics, so equipment for aesthetics yeah. 

0:42:34 - Jessica Jones

Aesthetics, you know. Also, sexual health, I would say, has a similar you know kind of equipment thing going on. Right, but different reasons, different reasons that these equipments don't work right. Some of it is like not a protected marketing area, and so now there's just it's. You know, it can be that the equipment is actually low cost, but there's just too many practitioners that it's been offered to, you know, in the same building and you know it's. That is a situation where somebody is going to take off and make it really successful, right, but other people are going to falter if it's not what they should be adding to their practice per se. 

0:43:14 - Mark Henderson Leary

Yeah, I mean we've talked about this enough that like the pattern is quite kind of clear that to me the mindset is we're just looking for a quick fix. You know the metaphor of we're gonna pill, we're gonna pill, Quip is a pill. 

0:43:25 - Jessica Jones

I love it. Yeah, it's almost like desperate. I don't know, I can't say it's desperation, it's just kind of like, but in some ways it is. And we also, I think we started this call saying I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say a lot of practitioners have have what I would refer to as PTSD, and it's just this. I want to help people, but I need to get out of this corporate situation that isn't working for me and I want to do something that allows me to get back to my roots and get back to my passion. And this is what I like to do, but not knowing how to do it, they might be, you know, just grabbing onto something that sounds like oh, this is how I can make money so that I can get out of here and start this. 

0:44:10 - Mark Henderson Leary

Yeah, Right yeah. 

0:44:12 - Jessica Jones

And hit the ground running, but the tools aren't there and the platform isn't there for success. 

0:44:18 - Mark Henderson Leary

Yeah, having this idea of and I guess I get it. Sometimes you're in an industry and you're like there's a million dollar laser and it fits right in with the vision and I'm just scared to take on a million dollar note. I get that. That's a different thing, though that's a different thing than like who's at the door. Somebody's selling me something. It's going to make a lot of money. Yeah, take it, give me three. 

0:44:40 - Jessica Jones

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's that going to look like? Yes, it looks so easy. Absolutely, I'll do that. 

0:44:47 - Mark Henderson Leary

So where do you steer these people? To ground them? What's that language? To make them feel that they're making an? 

0:44:53 - Jessica Jones

impact you know it really is. It's not so different than I mean. It's certainly different based on each unique scenario, but it's really kind of like the motivation to stay the course, not give up. You can get out of this. Let's work on scaling back, getting rid of what isn't working or finding a way that it does work if that's the appropriate thing, right. But you know like, for example, some of these devices just are subpar and aren't even comparable to somebody who really this is what they do and this is all they do, and they've got this equipment. That's crazy, like you know what I mean. 

So you can't necessarily make a go of it, the loss and just focusing on okay, well, how are we going to reframe your brain and move towards profitability and success and passion? And if you're going to focus on that, you will dig out of this hole. And it also has to do with you know it's reframing and focusing, but it's also marketing, right? If you're not marketing, you're not going to be, you know, necessarily able to dig out of the hole, like you do need to invest in getting the word out there that this is who I am and this is what I do, and this is why you should come in to my practice, right. Yeah, and marketing. You know another thing I have to say everybody wants to know marketing, marketing, marketing and everybody thinks it's. You know spending this much money everywhere, everywhere. Marketing is every opportunity you have to get your name out into the world and that can be introducing yourself. You know so many practices. 

0:46:43 - Mark Henderson Leary

I have. Having patients and clients leave your office. That was the best experience ever. That's marketing. 

0:46:48 - Jessica Jones

Yes, absolutely, and you know it's also you know, hey, sending a letter to the PCP, like, hey, you know I saw your patient. They said it was okay to share records with you. This is who I am. This is what I'm doing for them. You know, I believe in communication and continuity of care and all of these great things. And you know, by the way, if you have other patients, I'd love for you to consider referring them to me as well for this. 

0:47:19 - Mark Henderson Leary

Yeah, that's actually one of the earliest questions I've challenged my clients to. I say challenge, I'm going to ask the question. Are you? Where are your patients coming from? Are they coming from self-selection? They're going to find you because they want a provider in this area. I mean, urgent care definitely has that kind of thing. Like you don't ask for a referral for urgent care, you, where am I, where is the nearest one? 

0:47:41 - Jessica Jones

And you self-select for whatever reasons that satisfy you and is it open at this time of night? 

0:47:45 - Mark Henderson Leary

Yeah, exactly, but a lot of healthcare. They're second or third in the value chain and they're especially specialists and unique things and they are not self-selected by a patient. They are 100% or very close to it by a referral situation. And if that's the case, you have to teach I teach my clients that that's not your pay, you're not your patient, that's your customer, that's your case you have to build a relationship with them, you have to market to them. 

Now. Part of the marketing is taking care of the patient, but the patient isn't in the process to later and you got to take care of them with all the same purpose and really that might be your purpose. Your purpose it might be to take care of the patient, but your marketing and your customer to serve them is to understand that you got to go take care of a doctor who now feels like you're part of the solution to their needs, which gives you the privilege to then take care of these patients, and that can be the entire game changer to figure out, do we need more relationships with these type of primary care positions or whatever it is in the value chain? Relationships with these type of primary care positions or whatever it is? 

0:48:43 - Jessica Jones

in the value chain? Absolutely, and you just said something that we had yet to touch on until you just said it, but it's so important and you know, you think it goes without saying, but it doesn't. Providing excellent care is, you know, and you can't let it go without saying, because that is everything, that's your reputation and that is what you're going to build your foundation upon right, and it all starts from that. And then you've got the raving patients who are telling everybody you've got to go to this practice and they're willing to put a review out there. 

0:49:20 - Mark Henderson Leary

You mentioned that, because I don't talk about that as much as I used to. When I first got into the healthcare side, I had this model that I discovered and encountered called the three perils of private practice. Had a lot of P's in it, so had to write it down, and the first peril was the lifestyle impact. Like it's going well, so well. I hate my life, and that is really those three roles Like. Am I an individual healer? Am I a visionary leader or am I an individual healer? Am I a visionary leader or am I trying to run a business? And one or more of those is making my life harder than it needs to be and my home life is therefore not being as rewarded. 

0:49:52 - Jessica Jones

So I got to solve for that. 

0:49:54 - Mark Henderson Leary

The second one is this is apparently a business and I got to figure out what that means Operational excellence, process leadership, management, all things that go with that, including the leadership of physicians, which is very difficult to mindset, to shift, but it has to get fixed. And the third one is exactly that we're here for a reason. We're here to take care of patients, right, and sometimes there's this assumption that we're just doing that. But we oftentimes sort of commoditize and put it on the shelf, hope it takes care of itself. Because I'm fighting fires in the first two and so we have to make sure we're looking at all three of those and giving them their due time to be solved, to really manifest the vision. 

0:50:34 - Jessica Jones

Yeah, absolutely, and yeah, that's exactly right and providing care. I think we've said this already, but I always have to go back to this because it starts with the person answering the phone and every single part of the practice that a patient touches is patient care. 

0:50:54 - Mark Henderson Leary

Absolutely. 

0:50:55 - Jessica Jones

I can't tell you how many practices are losing patients because their receptionist just is off-putting. Oh my gosh. 

0:51:01 - Mark Henderson Leary

Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. 

0:51:02 - Jessica Jones

So yes, so true I love my doctor, but I hate that person on the phone. I can't stand it. I'm going to find a different. 

0:51:08 - Mark Henderson Leary

I'm going to find a different provider. Like seriously, and I that, just to me, is I think it's just bad peer mentorship, the blind leading the blind. You know it's a. Healthcare 1.0 was just sort of like this very simple mindset of there's a doctor hidden in the back and there's somebody in the front who's just trying to, you know, get the phone answered. We did that as long as we could. Then it went all institutional, massive scaled and didn't really change the customer service aspect. But we got a lot more data and now we're like this healthcare 3.0. It's like, hey, what if we held this to the same standard of excellence of every other business, including the dry cleaner? And so let's just make sure that we're all friendly, built into the culture, and it's really cool to see how a simple thing like that can totally change things. But it's also kind of humbling. It's like, you know, this is a hundred years we've been doing this and we still don't know how to like be friendly when somebody walks in there. 

0:51:56 - Jessica Jones

Well, and you know this is one of the harder, harder parts of it for you know, definitely the practice owner and everyone involved. But there's also a point where you know sometimes we do have to off board or terminate somebody who just is not coachable and is not going to work, and that's often one of the largest ways to scale and quickest ways to scale is bringing the right fit into the role 100%. 

0:52:22 - Mark Henderson Leary

That's absolutely right. 

0:52:24 - Jessica Jones

So I and I always feel like you're doing somebody a favor when you you know people say, oh, if I, I feel like that person isn't happy where they are. Oh, right, exactly, and they're going to do better somewhere else and they know they're not doing a good job. 

0:52:37 - Mark Henderson Leary

Oh, and it's killing their soul A hundred percent. It's one thing if it's like the first couple of weeks, which is a whole other thing, but most of the time that's not the issues we're encountering. We're seeing how long has this person been underperforming? I don't know. Two years. You don't think that? 

0:52:55 - Jessica Jones

they have been falling short. 

0:52:58 - Mark Henderson Leary

They have no idea that they've been falling short and there's nothing that when you finally let them go or move them to a different position, it's like oh my gosh, thank goodness yeah. 

0:53:08 - Jessica Jones

Yeah, that's exactly right. 

0:53:10 - Mark Henderson Leary

So you said so many things that inspired so many responses to me. I have just been going and going. I want to be respectful of your time. What have we missed? What do you want to make sure we've covered? 

0:53:19 - Jessica Jones

Oh my gosh, we've been, we've been, we've got, we have covered quite a bit. I think you know my. I think we've hit on scale back to grow. Be thoughtful about bringing on revenue streams. Whether it's equipment or a new treatment protocol, make sure it fits you and it fits your practice and it fits your patients and you can be passionate about it and it's cohesive, right? It's not like the opposite of everything else you're doing Typically. You know it's like I, like I mentioned that. That's a real, that's a real story. You know vaginal reconstruction and tattoo removal in one month. 

0:54:03 - Mark Henderson Leary

So what was the primary practice before that? 

0:54:06 - Jessica Jones

It was chiropractic. 

0:54:07 - Mark Henderson Leary

Wow, I would not have guessed that. I'm glad I asked that. 

0:54:12 - Jessica Jones

But then the other thing is you know, you talk about, you know I have surgeons who are adding cash protocols to their practice, right yeah, and we talk about it. But they tell me that surgery to them is like breathing air, it's oxygen. So they've got to be doing the number of surgeries that they're doing and so it's balancing. You have to ask yourself the tough questions, because you know what is going to make you happy, because if you're giving up happiness for the business, it's not going to work Exactly, and if you're giving up happiness for the business, it's not going to work, and if you're giving up balance for the business, it's not going to work. 

Now, does that mean you're not going to be working your butt off to get this thing up and running? Absolutely. You're going to initially have to invest the time and energy, but it'll be worth it. You've got to have that vision of why am I doing this and what is going to be the reward once I put this into it. Right. 

0:55:10 - Mark Henderson Leary

Exactly right. 

And so you said something that's important though that it's not the only option to be the leader. You can be the individual healer and I do think so few people are aware that there is any more options other than mom and pop and institutional. Now I get there's a gap. There's a massive dearth in what we could have in great entrepreneurial companies in that midsize. But there are not none and if you look around and find them, it's like there's so many Like the organizations I work with are like we're trying to find the best ones, but best certainly People don't even know that there's these great midsize organizations that you can work on. So People don't even know that there's these great midsize organizations that you can work on. 

So if you realize you really don't want to be an entrepreneur, then don't despair. But don't shop at the hospitals and you don't have to hang a shingle. If that's not your deal. Search around. There's very likely somebody who could do that. 

But you have to ask the question are you caught up in the vision and do you want to balance this individual healer role with being a visionary? 

And if so, you got to wrestle through that and it might be some days of surgery, and not five or six, it might be one or two, but if it's really five days of surgery, then what you want is a great visionary leader which you'll have to go find and go get in there and be a workhorse for them. And it'll be a great marriage Finding your role and some people they're like you know what I don't want to pick with Scalpel ever again and I'm not really that fired up by vision. I really think the numbers are amazing. Then you should be the integrator for an organization who needs that yin to that yang, that really great visionary who's got a lot of passion and cannot get it on the ground, because they're always starting new initiatives and they need somebody to help slow them down. And so all three of those roles are available out there and in combination to some extent, although that integrated role doesn't combine with the other two very often. 

0:56:55 - Jessica Jones

And just as you mentioned, you know, as you mentioned, like be the healer and bring in the business side. There's plenty of entrepreneurs looking for a medical director. Yes, so I mean that's some. You know there's a massive opportunity. That's how people ask me all the time how did you own 21 Medical Practices? I had a client who said, oh my gosh, like you've got such the corporate experience After years of a couple years of working together, said, why don't you partner with me on this? 

0:57:26 - Mark Henderson Leary

And we started and we grew. So where did it start? How? 21 medical practices? I assume was the end, Yep. 

0:57:33 - Jessica Jones

That was so. Oh, it's a long, do you have time? So you know it started with one, one practice and you know, just, we, really you know we, we, we had the niche and we were growing. And you know to the really, you know we had the niche and we were growing, and you know to the point that we started and hired and trained a phone room and we got to 15 clinics. What type of clinics were these? These were men's health clinics. 

0:57:59 - Mark Henderson Leary

Oh, nice, okay, so like testosterone? Therapy that kind of stuff. 

0:58:02 - Jessica Jones

Yeah, yeah, all of it, Tri-mix, wave, everything. But very frankly, I make no secret about this. He was a great client but as a business partner we were in mediation quite a bit Because he had some ideas that were just kind of over the line Okay all right, all right. 

And not cool, and so we were able to sell and we're still in communication. He still refers people to me. I mean, we made it through, but then after that, I said I'm going to keep on doing this, and I got to six clinics and I had diabetes reversal clinics, men's health, weight loss six clinics and I had diabetes reversal clinics, men's health, weight loss, and at in 2016 and 17,. I said, wait a second, I never sought to. I've always loved helping people grow their practice. I never sought to be an owner. Why am I doing this? Cause I was still helping people outside of my practice and I was still, you know, I was an absentee owner and I was doing. I had to scale back to grow, so I sold all of my practices and since 2017, I've been helping people start their practice and grow it, and so that's. 

0:59:19 - Mark Henderson Leary

That's awesome. That's the backstory. Such an invaluable counter. There's so many like investor friend who says, like the last, as an investor, the last thing I need is somebody with an idea Like that's not what they're missing. I need people who can execute and get things done. And so when there's all this potential having somebody like you who can get involved and say like we're gonna scale this back and we're gonna execute, we're gonna make progress, we're gonna bring it to life by filtering out the distractions, filtering out the things that are not adding any value. 

0:59:48 - Jessica Jones

Yeah, and recognizing if something's not working and being willing to let it go. Yes, yes. Why do you hold on to it? Why? 

0:59:57 - Mark Henderson Leary

Absolutely. 

0:59:59 - Jessica Jones

It's a good thing to acknowledge and say this isn't working. I'm just going to move on. It's okay. If you're clinging to something that's anchoring you down underwater, let it go. 

1:00:12 - Mark Henderson Leary

Yeah, yeah for sure, and I think that is as a visionary leader myself. By saying I don't mean I'm Steve Jobs, I mean in the category box of being on the visionary side of that, as opposed to the integrator execution side. 

1:00:26 - Jessica Jones

You can claim it, you've got it. 

1:00:28 - Mark Henderson Leary

It's the idea of, you know, trying things, that's not hard, stopping things, that's hard, but we're invested in that. It was going to be great, it could be great. We got to cut that one off. We got to let go and figuring out how long is long enough. Cut that one off. 

1:00:46 - Jessica Jones

We got to let go and figuring out how long is long enough. When I was. You know, I always tell people all of my clients, you know in November we start to do this process of what are the things we learned this year that we want to repeat and what have we learned that we don't want to keep doing. It's part of the process, because I do subscribe to the belief that every year we're new because we've had 12 months of experiences that have changed our core of who we are and what we know and our knowledge of how we're going to move forward. 

And as human beings, we can't learn something and then keep doing it the wrong way. Once we've learned it's wrong, right? So let's put it down on paper and agree these are the things we're not going to keep doing. And then here's the steps we're going to take to achieve the goals that we're going to set for the next year, right? So it's not just writing down and creating the goals, it's what are the three to five things under each goal that we need to do to achieve it? And then, under those three to five things, what are the three to five things that we're going to do against this action item to make sure that we do it. 

And so you know, I don't want to get too deeply into it because I do respect your time as well. But you know, when you're setting a goal, you can't just set a goal and say, okay, I've got the goal. I mean you can, but are you going to? How likely are you to achieve it? Now, write the things you're going to do to achieve it. More likely right Now. Write the things under those items that you're going to do. I'd be hard pressed to think that you're not going to be successful if you do all the things that you put into place. 

1:02:20 - Mark Henderson Leary

Yeah, there's a lot there as well. I mean, what I do with my clients is we're setting the one-year goals, which are those big goals three to seven, hopefully closer to three. They're going to put us in position to make that three-year picture real. Then we're going to chunk that down into quarterly chunks of that. We call those rocks the three to seven things we're going to do in the next 90 days. They're going to move us towards those goals and it's a rinse and repeat thing. 

You know, some large percentage of those things are going to get done. Some of them we're going to either agree weren't good choices or didn't get done for whatever reason. We're going to reboot them, any number of things. But the idea is to keep marching forward and measuring that progress and learning what the obstacles are and starting to build this feeling of you know, when we make a plan, we tend to do it, we tend to follow it. So you start to the importance and impact and the agency of, like you know, don't just say random stuff, because that's end of what ends up being what happens. 

1:03:10 - Jessica Jones

You know, think hard about the things we're going to do because that's actually what we're going to do be thoughtful and be engaged. Yeah right, don't don't expect the team to do it. Everybody's got to have their hands in it. Yeah, exactly right. Look, we've covered a ton. 

1:03:23 - Mark Henderson Leary

I'm super respectful, super grateful for all we covered and happy to have future hands in it. Yeah, exactly right. Look, we've covered a ton. I'm super respectful, super grateful for all we covered and happy to have future conversations as well. 

1:03:30 - Jessica Jones

Me as well. This has been. Thank you so much. I've loved getting to know you and getting the chance to chat. 

1:03:36 - Mark Henderson Leary

Thank you for sure. What's your passionate plea to entrepreneurial healthcare leaders today? 

1:03:42 - Jessica Jones

Oh my gosh. My passionate plea If you're overworked and you're feeling like giving up, like some of the practitioners I'm honored to work with, who are really feeling their passion and drive for medicine going downhill, please don't give up. Invest in yourself. Find a coach that resonates with you, who you feel you can work with to get back to your passion, whether that means starting your own practice, seeking a new way to practice passionately, whether it's partnering with that corporation who's looking for medical direction or bringing your vision to life in some other way. Find your coach, invest in yourself and don't keep feeling stuck because you're not stuck. We can always pivot and grow. 

1:04:27 - Mark Henderson Leary

Love it so awesome. Totally agree with that 100%. If somebody wants to continue the conversation or see what you're up to, obviously we'll put this stuff in the show notes, but what's the easiest way to kind of follow you and find you? 

1:04:38 - Jessica Jones

Yeah, so I do practice what I preach. I also scaled back to grow and I'm not the person who you're going to see posting every day on multiple social medias. You can find me on my website, build your Cash Medical Practice. I absolutely will give anybody a one-on-one half hour to an hour to talk about where you are and where you want to go. You can book an appointment with me there. You can find me on. Linkedin is the other place that I'm most most available, and you can email me, jessica, at buildyourcashmedicalpracticecom. Awesome, awesome. 

1:05:13 - Mark Henderson Leary

Well, that's our time for the day. Yeah, so let's, let's wrap this up so you can get going. But, like, if you're listening to this episode and you found this useful, please share it with somebody who else, somebody else who also might find this useful. Because, as we've talked about, and the common theme is that in the healthcare entrepreneurial world, there's just not as much of the basics being done as as possible. Don't assume that people know this stuff. So let's fill that gap with this valuable information. 

Also, just give us the feedback. We love every little bit of feedback you can give us. Giving us the, the speak pipe, the voice memos super helpful, super cool. But all the ratings, any feedback, shooting us emails all that's great. And, of course, if you're stuck, don't ever stay stuck reach out to whomever makes sense. But if you want my consultation as to what the next step could be to creating that high value culture where you love showing up, you love doing that work and you want to have a high impact organization but you don't know what the next step is, please don't stay there. Don't stay stuck. Practicefreedomcom slash schedule to get a few minutes with me to talk about what a first or next step could look like that's our time we will see you next time on Practice Freedom with me, Mark Henderson. 

Thank you.

‍