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. Here's the idea Mindset shift. 

What do I mean? There's lots of ways you could use mindset, but I'm talking about as the practice leader, practice founder. Well, this may apply to you as practice that is freeing for you and for the rest of the people in the organization who share that passion, or should share that passion that you have. Please don't stay stuck. Reach out, get some time on the calendars practicefreedomcom slash schedule for a few minutes to talk about what a first or next step could look like for you. Anyway, let's dive in. Here's what I mean. The mindset shift I'm talking about is I think what I'm trying to describe is that evolution as a leader, from where you are now to this ideal future that I often talk about, when the roles are clear and you're not doing all the things you were doing today, you're doing some of them and loving every minute of them is not a binary shift. I mean, it's not a light switch. You don't say you know what, I'm doing the wrong job today and I'll do it tomorrow. I mean I say that sometimes there are days when it's kind of like that. But I really want to create a space around the evolution and experimentation that has to take place from day one you and an assistant to day down the line, where you're a leader on a leadership team with half a dozen best in class leaders of their functions and they have people who report to them and you've got a large enough organization that you couldn't run it by yourself and you know that, and there is no illusion that you are able to do everyone's job any longer. You have great people who are indispensable. I mean, obviously you survive If they leave. You could replace them, but not replacing them is not an option, and so I think that this challenge is uncomfortable for a long time for a lot of the people that I work with and see. 

And just to refresh, there are several podcast episodes that I've done that talk about the three seats, the three identities, maybe even that you could be struggling with. And just to recap, review, the three are, first and foremost, individual healer, and I mean first because that's where we start. By we, I mean not me, I mean you. The second one arguably I could see this happen in a couple different ways is, we'll call it an EOS terminology integrator. In non-EOS terminology it might be practice administrator, the business manager, the COO, the general manager, something that has to run the business in the capacity. That would seem yin and yang at best, opposite at worst from that individual healer role paying the payroll, making sure the leaks in the roof are fixed as opposed to seeing patients. And then there's this third one, the visionary leader, or, yeah, let's call it that I don't think I have any sort of synonyms for that that aren't distracting. And that is really this leadership role that envisions the future of the practice, that sees the impact that could be made, that very commonly, is full of passion and impatience. And, in case you're not snapping to this, which you probably are not the same as that business administrator practice, administrator, integrator type Not the same, oftentimes opposite in many ways, but yet equally important in terms of the execution and leadership of the organization, but very, very different. And so, down the line, you're in, ideally, one of those roles. Now, one of those roles could look let's go to the future, let's imagine that. So where do you go? 

Down the line, there's only three outcomes in terms of really black and white terms. You have decided that leadership's not your bag. Individual healer is your bag and you're going to have somebody else do the administration of the business and you're not going to lead the organization. You're either going to be an associate, a partner, or someone else leads the vision and you're just going to heads down, do your thing in an environment, hopefully, that you love. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Maybe it's an organization you helped found, maybe it's an organization somebody else found and maybe you work there or you sell your practice to them or any number of factors could create that and it sounds the way I'm describing. I fear that's going to sound like some sort of failure. Not at all. It is the path for you. If it's the path for you, and it is absolutely the best outcome for everybody, because there's somebody who wants somebody in that role and it's so high value People. Everybody. Because there's somebody who wants somebody in that role and it's so high valued People get paid well and they get appreciation for it, so it's a great outcome. The other side is you know what I've done my individual healing and it's great. But really I want to grow the business and practice and I am really excited, fired up about what it is to learn how to run a great business and I want to be that business administrator, general manager, presidential type. I want to run the organization. I'm going to read a Street smarts my way to my own version of having an MBA and this is great. This does happen. 

It's not as common as some of the other options, but it is totally workable. It may have something to do with the specialty you have chosen. Your specialty might not be something that gives and gives and gives uniqueness and novelty for generations. It might be something that was great for 5 or 10 or 15 years and you're like done with doing it and you want to move on to something else, totally, totally possible. Or you just found that you were in the wrong thing. You're like you know, wow, I was in a family full of doctors and so I was a doctor and you know, I love it. I love this other stuff Totally fine, very high value and just like that individual healer role. Rewards come from being in your superpower seat, and if that's you man, it's going to be super powerful. 

The third seat, that visionary leader, pairs up very often with that individual healer, and this is kind of some of the gray area. Let's just call it black and white for a moment. Though and that is the main difference is, as the individual healer, you're thinking I love the craft, I love the scalpel, I love the moments I'm in front of that patient, I love doing that work and can't imagine wasting a minute doing absolutely anything else. That visionary leader, on the other hand, might think you know what? I see some amazing changes and some amazing impact in the world and I would love to make sure that happens. And I'm not going to be able to do that on my own and I'm going to need to paint a very clear vision, paint a clear picture, enroll people in it, get everybody excited about it, and I'm going to teach them how to be there and do that, and I'm really going to be the thought leader for the organization. And how I'm going to make my biggest impact is by creating a workforce, a culture, a business, an organization or an army that can do this so much more as a group of people on the same page than I could do this individually. And so, as much as I may loved or liked what I was doing, as an individual healer, my superpower is to rally the troops and make a difference together. Make sense? I hope so. 

So, just if this isn't obvious, the individual healer and the visionary leader do pair up very often. So, depending on your specialty, again, you might totally let go of the practice and be done with it, or you might feel that some amount of individual healing and practicing of what you do is really how you're informed, and that's okay. I still think most of the most of the time, when you get clear on it. We're saying are you the visionary leader or are you the head practitioner? It's the visionary leader who holds some practice, and that's fine. A day a week, a couple of days a month, whatever it is that balances out to allow you to lead at your highest level, that allows you to live your best life, feeling like you're not sacrificing time and energy, then that's a great formula and there's nothing wrong with that as long as it checks the boxes on health. So that's the end of the line. Theoretically, that's mature, fully mature, materialized In theory. There's really hardly any end of the lines in these worlds other than like exiting the organization or dying. 

So where are you in the practice? Probably, if you're normal, you are in the state of I feel like I'm doing a little of all of that or a lot of all of that, and where do I go first? So that's just normal and a couple of things are gonna play into your mindset. One is going to be maybe I don't know what I like yet, or maybe I don't know enough about what I'm doing, and so if it's early on in your practice life cycle, you might still feel like you're not ready to be that visionary leader. It seems a little bit out to pasture. Now. It's not out to pasture, but that might be your mindset of like I still got too many chops to learn as a surgeon or whatever. And if that's fine, then go through that path and be thinking, though, where is this leading? Because I think you want to start accumulating information and knowledge and possibly mentorship. 0% wants you to rush it. Live the life you're meant to live. Go through it at the pace that makes sense. 

Don't grow the practice faster, and that's one of the things we talked about in one of my recent podcasts, dr Michael Nula. He talked about how, when he opened up his first practice, the idea of 15 locations was insane. Now, that's you. Nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that. You do not need to judge yourself harshly. You do not need to forcibly say, hey, I'm not good enough if I'm not shooting for 20 practices. That's not what this is about. Make the biggest impact possible and just honor yourself where you are, and I think that's part of what this conversation is really about Just kind of going inward and self-assessing where do I need to be, where am I right now and where do I need to be, and is there any real movement needed? There might not need to be any movement. You might be needing to do all three of those roles in a very small practice so you can understand how this works. Kind of reminds me of another interview I did where the conversation was about oh, this was Jim. 

Edwards talked about how his mode was always to go do it whatever it was in the practice. I need to figure out how to do. Oh, it wasn't practice, it was the business, just in the business. I need to figure out a market. I need to figure out how to do this. I need to figure out. And so he would take a class or get mentored or do it to the point where he understood how it worked. And then, once he figured it out, he was like, ah, okay, now I know what we need to do. And now I've done it enough to earn me the right to say that I'll get on to finding the next problem. And so if that's your path to understanding this, totally fine. 

Do you need to understand all the ins and outs of how to run a business before you can realize that you really don't want to be in a revenue cycle yourself and you really don't really want to be managing anybody at all or doing the marketing, or maybe just the budget says that you're going to be doing it for a hot second and then you're going to figure out which one of those, one day, you can outsource, and if that's the case, that is normal. And so having some compassion for yourself in that the timing is going to take, having some understanding that you might not know yet what you want to get rid of and do, so that's the process. At the same time, I guess I want to push back on the other side of the equation. Formula is purpose is not purpose built. It's built against working against you. Already there's already too many things to be done than you can do, and you are doing three full-time jobs in one, and so you are going to have to go back and say what is the first thing that someone else needs to do. 

Now, hopefully, we're getting close to you, having a full seat delegated, we're going to get that full business administrator, integrator person hired, and or we are bringing on more and more associates or maybe a partner level, and whatever there's, your strategy is to take some of the load off, making the money or being the only one who does, you know, scales the practice through production? I hope you're doing that and so working hard to do that is really important. And so you're constantly fighting the push and pull and making the choices, and some of them aren't going to go right. In fact, a lot of the ones that are the right call, you're going to ah, we need an associate, let's get a couple associates in here and you make a mistake. You think you got it, you think you nailed it and it doesn't work right for some reason. 

Did they share the core values? Did you do a good enough job sort of vetting them for culture? Did you have the wrong core values and you emphasize the wrong things? Where did that go wrong? Sometimes it's just the execution. You got to get the reps and other times it's not the right strategy. 

That wasn't what we needed. We really needed somebody else on the business administration side and really for right now I'm the practice person and if I could just get somebody who could run the business and I can be the individual healer contributor, then that's, that's a way. You know, I kind of run my practice very much like that. So that's what makes sense for me and maybe that makes sense for you for the time being. So I guess in the end, this is about understanding the uncomfortableness of being in transition, which is, frankly, most of the time. 

You're in some form of transition of the mindset and the delegation and your role and seat changes over time, and so I hope this gives you some comfort with that and encourages you to try some things, see what works and then add some discernment to like am I going the right direction or did I am going the wrong direction, as opposed to going the right direction and just stubbing my toe. 

I'm not quite getting it right and need to go back to the well and try again. Anyway, I hope that was helpful around this idea of what role I need to be in and how you should think about it. If you got more questions on it, don't hesitate to reach out and, as I always say, if you're stuck or confused or if it's anything, please reach out at practicefreedomcom slash schedule. Give us some feedback, give us the likes, give us the reviews and any questions you got along the way, and share this with anybody who might be in that transitional phase so they can share in the information. We'll see you next time on Practice Freedom with me, mark Henderson Leary.

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