Daniel Gibbs: How to Avoid the April Revenue Squeeze | GYC Podcast 295

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Timestamps
[00:01:08] Challenges of April trading days

[00:05:43] Financial preparedness for the holiday season

[00:09:30] Monthly momentum in clinics

[00:12:07] Challenging the status quo

[00:16:10] Winter illnesses impact on clinic flow

[00:20:10] Improving clinic activity patterns

[00:25:54] Nurturing client relationships

[00:28:30] Client care continuity and engagement

[00:33:32] Booking appointments in advance

[00:36:02] Effective leave policy characteristics

[00:39:19] Reflecting on past marketing strategies

[00:43:09] Podcast listener success stories

In this episode we discuss the seasonal patterns that clinic owners face, with a specific focus on the challenges of April and the impact of public and school holidays. We dive into how getting across your annual rhythm and calendar can help you increase your monthly revenue, and how planning ahead can allow you to grow you clinic and enhance current patient experiences. We'll show you how to implement management plans and encourage rebooking to maintain continuity of care as well as the positives of fostering collaboration between admin and therapy teams to ensure seamless client journeys. Tune in for strategies on navigating these seasonal fluctuations and ensuring the success of your clinic year round

What You'll Learn:

🌟 Trading Days: Understanding the impact of public holidays and school breaks on your clinic's operations

💰 Financial Preparation: Tips on managing cash flow and accounts receivable to navigate quieter months

👥 Team Leave Policies: How to effectively manage staff leave to ensure clinic continuity

📈 Client Care: Strategies for maintaining client engagement and treatment plans during busy and slow periods

🔍 Marketing Strategies: What to do in advance to ensure a steady flow of clients, even in challenging months

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Transcript

0:02

This is the Grow Your Clinic podcast from Clinic Mastery. We help progressive health professionals to lead inspired teams, transform client experiences, and build clinics for good. Now, So Dan, you and I were talking about the seasons of the year for clinic owners. And after doing this for a decade now in supporting clinic owners, we've seen a lot of patterns, just recurring patterns on any given month or quarter of the year. And in particular, this year, April, for our Australian-based clinics, is going to be a really crucial or challenging month. Maybe let's start there and we can dive into some of the broader seasonal patterns that we see. Tear us off about the conversation we had around why April is going Well, quite simply, April is a month where there are fewer trading days. If we look at where Easter sits, where we look at where other public holidays sit, where the school holidays sit, April is going to be a challenge. Now, historically, April has been a problem and a challenging month for a number of reasons, and we can get into that. But this year in particular, I think it's really important people prepare for April There's maybe 16, 17 days. We Let's pull it up because if you're watching, you'll subtle plug to come join us on YouTube. If you're listening into the pod, subscribe, like turn on the notification bell. Anyway, you're sharing your screen and Okay. So I've got the days of April with the weekends highlighted in gray, and then I've put in a good Friday, Easter Monday, Anzac day. Now, naturally looking at this, I think most of Australians in particular, maybe New Zealanders too, would likely take this three days leave between Easter Monday. If you've got a public holiday on Easter Monday and there's a public holiday on the Friday of the same week, you've got three days in the middle of the week. I think we just need to prepare that a lot of people are going to be taking leave on those three days because they'll be able to have an extra long weekend, especially with the Good Friday prior to that week. So that's just something to be aware of. Next thing to be aware of is where the school holidays sit. Now this is not in every state of Australia but most states will have school holidays in the two weeks leading up to Easter. So right now you've got a picture where you have school holidays and for those clinics that are quite reliant on say the Peds clinics or those clinics where school holidays are relatively quiet. We've got this, then we've got Easter, then we've got that likely leave. So that really only leaves seven trading days for April. Now, if you think about a normal month, perhaps having 20 or 21 trading days, and we look at April, now I'm not saying school holidays means you're going to be closed during school holidays, but things may be a little slim or a little different. then this is just something to be aware of. Now, we are currently in February, and so we have a couple of months to prepare. And if we're looking at what to prepare, Ben, actually, I'll ask you this, what have you been telling people how to prepare, especially for I think it's really important in a number of ways. One, that you have the cash to support yourself through that period. So definitely getting on top of some simple controllable things like accounts outstanding, accounts receivable. Number two, having the discussions with your team proactively around leave. It also calls to question what is your leave policy and process for approving leave. Hopefully you've got enough time to, one, have those conversations and two, work it out with the team. Because you don't want too many people on leave all at once, ideally. And then number three in particular for those paeds clinics where they're seeing a school-based cohort and they tend to have those lapses in that period, I'd be proactively looking at our care plans, our management plans through those periods, looking at the wait list if you've got one and how they might be able to come into the clinic during that period or we do intensives during that period. I Yeah, that's right. And some people have some really good plans for school holidays. They have group sessions or they plan school holiday programs or they're able to do things in their clinic that they wouldn't normally be able to do during school term. So if that's the case and you've been umming and ahhing as to whether to do something like that, I think this is the time to make sure that we're putting those plans into action. Did you know that you could send an email to helloatclinicmastery.com and request a free assessment of your clinic and get a report that outlines detailed action steps for how you should sustainably grow based on the findings? Just send an email to helloatclinicmastery.com and we'll organize a time with one of our growth specialists to review your clinic and outline the path to sustainable growth. And yeah, as you say, preparing financially, I think if you can, if you have the ability to just allocate a little bit extra now to potentially payroll or, um, some other bills, like you said, getting the accounts receivables down, um, making sure that, um, you know, those third party payers have their invoices ready to pay you and that you can sort of chase them up as well. If that's the case, uh, that can be good just to, just to, keep some powder dry for April. But I think that the key is not to freak out, right? So, what a lot of people will do is they'll get to April, they'll get through April and then they sort of get to the end of April and they look at their bank account and they go, oh my goodness, there's no money here, why is that? And they freak out. But the good news about April is it's followed by May. And May is actually shaping up to be a very good month this year. How Well, there's more trading because of where May sits, there's more trading days. May is a longer month in terms of 31 days in May. And so depending on your payroll periods as well, it might work out favourable too. But I think The challenge of April may be negated by the potential opportunity in May. The other thing we see in May is there's generally uninterrupted flow in the month of May. If you think about taking holidays or leave, It rarely happens in May. Some people take holidays. Of course, there is exceptions to the rule. But if you think of typical times when people go on holidays, generally not May. May is middle of the term. There's a real general rhythm of the year that happens in May. In fact, the story of each month is quite interesting when we get into it, because we've surveyed a number of clinicians or clinic owners over time. And we've asked them to give us their typical rating for what each month looks like over the course of the year. And what's the story of that month. And we sort of distill that You've captured that really neatly. Do you want to share screen and we can talk through it? This episode is brought to you by alieclinics.com. If you want a single place for all of your policies, procedures, and training, Ali is where to go. You can test it for free. You can download our library of policies, procedures, and training in three clicks of a button, immediately share it with your team, and see whether they've read it using the custom acknowledgements function. This is great for compliance purposes. You can also upload police checks, working with children, CPR and first aid, professional indemnity insurance, and make sure that you have all the compliance docs that you need to run a good business in one place, not scattered systems, making sure everything's efficient and you never have to answer the same question twice. This is the brain outside of your brain, a key tool in helping you grow your clinic that's less reliant on you. You can test it for free, go check out alyclinics.com. All Now, just to be clear on this, we're not talking about necessarily financial performance in each month, but rather the general feel of how, I don't wanna use the word busy, but I wanna use the word sort of the momentum that happens in each month, right? So if we think of January to start with, I think we can all probably relate to January. It's a quieter month, clinic owners recharge, there's some implementation of changes often in January as well. It's a time to prepare for upcoming months. There's often fewer client interactions because people are away. There's less revenue generation as a result. The typical rating out of 10 for January across multiple clinics in multiple professions with multiple types of clinic owners is, as it says here, 4.3 out of 10. On the chart, relatively low in terms of all the other months. But then January is followed by February, which they've rated as a seven. And if you think about this, I personally have, this is sort of anecdotal, but I've personally seen second week of February is when the year truly begins. And why is that? Probably because School goes back end of January, beginning of February, work goes back, things start coming back to normal. The first week of February is okay, we're settling into a new rhythm now. Second week of February is like, right, we've now settled into a new rhythm. now we can get some jobs done, we can go book our appointments with our health professionals, we've got the rhythm of school happening, now we can start thinking about what the rest of the year holds. And while that may be the case for some people, it's a clinical mass that sort of starts to build that momentum in that second week of February. So we're seeing that momentum build, there's people getting back into a rhythm, Clients are engaged now in health and therapy goals. I know I've called a couple of clinics recently and like, so what are things looking like? Oh, we've been so busy with phones this week. Again, And to be clear, you're saying that now as we essentially Correct. Yeah, that's right. And you may have noticed this, if you're listening here, you might've noticed the phones pick up around this time of year as well. So yeah. And just for those listening in, come and join us on YouTube to check out this. We've mapped it out after asking a lot of clinic owners over a long period of time, and we've mapped out the entire year and the typical story. My question for you, Dan, is You know, this is a typical story or a typical experience. To what degree, you know, do you find yourself challenging that status quo for a clinic owner and saying, well, how could January not be sort of this quiet, slow month? Like, yeah, talk us through how you position that and coach someone through, say, turning the Yeah, I think often people are really hard on themselves because they think each month needs to be better than the previous month. And if you just had your best month ever, why couldn't we follow that up with another best month ever? What's going wrong? I love that because it's so true. If you actually step back and think about it logically, that it's just going to be up and to the right every month, like improving revenue or team engagement is not true. And how many times do people just get burnt out riding this roller coaster of, you know, December was great. Oh, January, I'm Yes, totally. And we used to draw it out, you know, the peaks and troughs. And what happens is when you hit the trough, everyone gets really scarcity minded and they try and save their way out of this sort of this dip. But it's actually an abundance mindset that draws you out of the trough and back into the peaks and understanding that there are external factors that are contributing to your month. not just the things that you're doing in your clinic. And I think what this chart does is it really highlights the macro, right? So if this is the story for most clinics, most of the time, for most months across most years, then you can get a sense that we probably don't have to do much to have a good March. We probably don't have to do much to have a good May. Right, because we can see generally there are macro indicators that are going to say that these months are generally going to be pretty good. But what it does tell us is that where the macro is going to be running against you, in the months that are typically low, there's some really good opportunity here to do more than you normally would to make sure that that month is good. Because if you can buck the trend, you might be able to see a flattening of those peaks and troughs. You know, there's two ways to approach this. There's probably three ways, actually. The first way would be, what are we going to do to make our good months even better? The second thing is, what are we going to do to make what's typically a challenging month much better? And is the effort to do that worth the results that we get in those challenging months? Or number three, what do we do to do both? can we be doing to make sure the good months are better and the bad months or predictably more challenging months are less challenging or flatter in their dip? I've got a favor to ask. Would you mind reviewing and rating this podcast, please? It helps us attract great guests and partnerships from companies who want to do business with you, and we can negotiate the best possible deals and discounts so that you can grow your clinic sustainably into the future. just open up your podcast player and hit the review. It looks like 70% of you use the Apple podcast player to listen into this show. So next time you open up the show, can you give us a review and rating? Every single review counts and we are so grateful for it. All right, let's head back to the episode. So Yeah, looking at January 4.3, February 7, March 9, therapists and patients are fully involved, high engagement, there's optimism about business growth as well. And then April hits, which we've spoken about, Easter, public holidays, school breaks, illness, juggling holidays. Then we hit May, where there's generally that uninterrupted flow. This month typically rates as the best month for most clinics. 9.3. 9.3 here. Then we hit June. We've got to think sicknesses as well. We're in the southern hemisphere here. June is winter. Winter illnesses start to come into play. End of financial year admin, there's school breaks as well. It can impact the caseload. The focus here is to maintain the energy despite those challenges. Then we hit July, which is slightly lower. So again, we're now down to a 6.8, and school holidays, winter illnesses, mid-year strain, team fatigue, really important to focus on energy in the month of July. Then we come out of that into August, we start to see more of a predictable flow on the back end of the year. I think generally what we see is people get to say July, August, and they go, whoa, what's happened to the year? The year's just gone and, you know, September, October, we're starting to think about Christmas again. What? When did that happen? It felt like only a little while ago that we were thinking about that. I never want to be that person. Not because I don't, yeah, I just don't want to, I don't want to be surprised by the year because actually things are quite predictable. And, uh, and I think, yeah, if you, if we're aware of this, we And that predictability, just correct me if I'm wrong, practically speaking is number one, knowing how many And just on that, We know that with a volume of clients that are typically presenting at a clinic, if someone's away or if they're sick or if there's one less trading day, we often see a parting of the diary where it squeezes more demand onto those other days rather than a complete removal of that day. I mean, if you've got significantly fewer trading days, then it's a lot harder to get the volume of people into the diary. If someone's sick, then people reschedule, they'll then add demand to the other days around. But that demand could straddle different months as well. So it's, I think, just important to manage. reschedules, manage cancellations, make sure those appointments get rebooked, even just simple things like not booking around the holidays. You know, sometimes, sometimes it's just a natural thing to say, hey, what we'll do have a couple of weeks, you know, to get through the holidays, and then we'll get you back when the school term begins. That's it's I don't know, this can become habit when you're just in conversation with people. So, I think just keeping front of mind that we're recommending gold standard services where we're treating people according to what needs to happen rather than what the calendar looks like. But yeah, I think... Yeah, that's right. And you see this sort of flattening of the curve, sort of August, September, October, November, generally Low variability, yeah. And I think if you sort of reflect on the second half of last year, you probably feel like there was less up and down month to month that sort of was quite steady. And we often see that in the back end of each year. So 8.6 for August, 8.1 for September, October 8.7, November 9.1. And yes, school holidays slightly impact things at this time of year. And then December, this is mixed. So some have really good Decembers, some not so much. So there's a holiday related slowdown as we approach Christmas, but there's also quick, we'd better make sure we get our appointments in. And I think the clinics that do really well, ones that actively contact their clients to make sure they are working through their treatment plan despite the That's a great segue because I was going to ask, okay, if this is the typical pattern and to build on an earlier point, it's like, what do the best clinics do? And I think part of this, as you said, is asking that question of like, how do we sort of improve our best months? How do we sort of lower the dip in those challenging months or even turn them positive? Melinda Webber did a great session on this at our summit, which is actually available on YouTube. So people should go check that out, especially if you're a paeds clinic. But I think one of the things is they're looking three months ahead of where they are today, and they're putting in policies, procedures to address that. They're not dealing with just next week. So they're thinking about that January dip in October, November. They're thinking about April in January, February. So talk us through, now we're looking at a visual chart, which Well, this is just a line graph of one individual clinic, so it doesn't necessarily represent the numbers that I've just spoken to, but it's an example of what one person rated their clinic. And so just again, this is very subjective. We can use objective measures here. We can actually look at number of clients seen or appointments delivered or We can look at number of service hours delivered or utilization through each month or we can look at revenue through each month. There are numbers that you can objectively look at. This here was subjective. How do you feel? What's your best month? What's your typical story? And so, we've just done a simple using a table on a document. We just colored in the cells up from 1 to 10 for each month and it sort of gives a bit of an idea of the flow of each month. And what that does is it helps to then go, well, this is what we typically see in our clinic. This is where we think that we can have some good months, but what are we going to do to try and lift the lower months or do something different. And that might then feed into your marketing, your special offers, your activities around community engagement, whether you're delivering workshops, whether you're connecting with partners or whatever it might be that you've done to be able to help drive more activity in the clinic. That's where you can time what you're going to be doing. I mean, there's nothing worse, as you know, than doing all this activity when the momentum is good and then having people try and call your clinic and get in and they can't because it's a busy month. Right. So that's why I'm talking about timing of that activity. And the funny thing is, it's in the busy months that you're actually doing the work to try and drive more activity in the clinic for those slower months. So it's counterintuitive. Generally, what we do is we go, it's a low month or it's feeling quiet at the moment, so let's do lots of activity. But then that just makes the peak more of a peak, which then means you don't do as much activity in that peak, and then that drives a deeper trough. on the other side. If you're thinking about it in terms of the rhythm of predictability, when things are busy, that's the time to do more marketing or to do the work that's going to drive more activity in your clinic It's a great point. On the most recent episode of the podcast, we had Peter Flynn talking about marketing. And so many people will just like turn off their marketing. They're like, oh, we're busy now. And then inevitably the books dry up and they got to catch up. And it can be a lot harder and more costly. So, I like your point there around how can we find a bit more stability in the activities that we're doing to create sustainable growth, not Yeah. And it's also, I think what a lot of people do is they go, oh, there's a lot of space in the diary, we need more new patients. or we need to go out there and try and attract new clients. And yes, that's part of it, but I think there are a lot of opportunities to nurture the clients that you've currently got, the people that already have a relationship with you. And so when things are busy, this could be a really good time to reactivate some of those clients or nurture some of those clients that perhaps haven't been in for a while and have been thinking about, um, booking an appointment and say, Hey, we've got some appointments available coming up soon. Make sure you jump on those. It'd be great to see you again. Um, or reconnecting it. I mean, every clinic is different, right? So, uh, it may be reconnecting over a, an injury that they may have sustained because you know, that they've come to the end of their footy season or, or whatever sport they play or whatever it might be, or it could be, um, you know, general trends in terms of what your population of clients generally see at a particular time. And just nurturing, just getting in touch with your client base. So that can help to generate some things, but then also recommending good treatment plans with your current clients when things are busy. Sorry, I'm using that word again, busy. You know, I don't like the word busy because, you know, when you see someone and you're like, how are you doing? Is things busy? And you go, yeah, it's like, It's a badge of honor that we're all busy, but it doesn't really sit well Things are productive, but I mean, hopefully if I digress. I digress. But okay, so you're having a productive month or a productive week. Often that's when the treatment plans start to thin out. We don't recommend people come back as soon as they should, or as often as they should, or, wow, I've got a welcome room full of clients at the moment and I don't have the time to sit down and write out what we're going to do for this client. And so you say to them, hey, I'll give you a call or I'll check in with you in a couple of weeks and the appointment doesn't even get booked. Um, so these are the times just to catch yourself on the, on that sort of language and just say, look, we'll, we'll book that appointment. I'm still going to follow up with you. I'm still going to give you a call, make sure you actually follow through on what you say you're going to do. But even though it's a busy month, productive month, It's a great point that you make around the client journey and the client care. And just practically, this is a really great thing to have in your mentoring of therapists ongoing. But let's just say we're looking towards April this year and looking at school holidays and days that are not available to trade. and going with my therapist this week, we could be reviewing their caseload and looking at what management plans they have for their clients in there. So of the 30 appointments they see this week, does every single one of them have a management plan for their improvement in their health over the subsequent weeks? And if you build that habit moving into April, that's one thing to give yourself the best chance of, you know, a reasonably good April. Yes, and for those who like to see their clients discharged before that period of time, which is fine as well, it's about who we're going to be engaging to talk more about the service. Perhaps people have dropped out and you know that they weren't quite there yet or whatever it might be, and then you can plan your interactions in the lead up to April as I wanna come to the leave policy and process, just some good things that people should have there. But before we go there, just talk to involving admin teams along with therapists in being on the same page when it admin practitioners, I like to call them, because we have practitioners in the room that are doing the treatments. We also have practitioners in the welcome room when people approach the reception desk. I think that the admin practitioners, the admin team are as involved with the client's journey. They may not know what's being treated, what's being said. They may not know what's happened in the treatment room. but there's a real opportunity to make sure that the client stays engaged with their practitioner. And so rebooking, I think just also looking at the language that's used, like for example, so when would you like to book your next appointment for? That's a common thing that we hear at the reception desk. But what that's doing is it's taking away from the practitioner who may have recommended, I need to see you in X number of days or weeks. So let's book your next appointment for whenever that time is. And then at the reception desk, suddenly the ownership of that timeframe is taken from the practitioner and it's being left with the client who's then left to say, oh yeah, I want to book, or they said I should book at this time. Okay, let's book that appointment. Now, think about it this way. The same thing has happened, an appointment has been booked, right? So whether the practitioner booked it or recommended it or whether the client booked it or recommended it, in the eyes of the admin team, the thing has happened, an appointment has been booked. But there's a subtle difference here. When the client books their own appointment, I chose when that would be, I chose the time frame, me as the client and I booked that appointment with the receptionist, then the client has agency over being able to cancel that appointment or adjust it or if it's not suitable or if lunch comes up with someone they want to meet with and they decide they don't want to come to that appointment, I as a client can ring up and change that appointment because I made that appointment. Whereas if it's in the hands of the practitioner saying, hey, I'm going to see you in a couple of weeks' time, let's book that appointment. Receptionist says, hey, your practitioner has said let's book in two weeks and they're more objective or more proactive with booking that appointment. Same thing happens, the appointment gets booked. But there's less likelihood that the client's going, more likelihood they're going to prioritize that appointment. because it was taken out of their hands, perhaps less likelihood that they're gonna cancel that appointment when the time comes. So it's just subtle things like that that can lead to, it's like small cogs turning big wheels. The language and how things are rebooked at the desk can be a powerful thing. And sometimes it is literally as simple as the practitioner coming to the reception desk with the client and communicating that plan with the receptionist. I've seen it happen and it's happened before. We used to do it as well where I'd say goodbye to the patient, they'd go to the reception desk and I would write a little message so that they knew what was going to happen. But if you put yourself in the position of the client and if they see you walking out with them and communicating with the receptionist and having that appointment booked, It's just a really good way to finish off an appointment and for them to know what's happening next. Of course, we also advocate for booking a few appointments ahead of time as well, so that they're in the diary at a time that best suits the client. It means that there's less... worry about trying to find times when things are busy. It also helps for a more stable diary as well. And you know, the client is on a journey and on a plan too. And then that's booking according to the treatment plan. And that requires an admin practitioner that is actually on board with The phones are ringing. People need them. Someone walks in. There's lots happening, but there's still two or three or four appointments to book with this person they're seeing in front of them. There's a lot of work that happens on the reception desk, but that subtle shift of being part of the client's journey and really objectively booking those appointments. Okay, I'm just going to book them all for you now. I'm going to give you a list for when the times are they're done. All right, I can move on to the next thing. And the client can go away feeling like they've And like you said, in the future, at their next appointment, if they had booked several in advance, it also removes that admin burden at the next appointment. So you're kind of helping yourself in the future. And if you've got a plan to see them over several appointments, why not book them ahead of time and actually commit to that care plan? It's such a simple, controllable thing And if you just play this out, let's say that clients that you're seeing now in February are likely to still need appointments in April. then what I'd be doing is booking those appointments now. And if you think about it, well, hang on, if I book all my appointments for April now in February, then there's going to be nothing left when we come to April. That's the point. You know, we're actually trying to put a squeeze on April. We're trying to make April as busy as it can be with the few days that we've got. generate that demand and then it might be a case of, look, I need to see you in April. It is April. I need to get you in. The only time we can do it is during the holidays or the only time we can do it is at this particular time. And you might find yourself with enough demand to perhaps open a few extra shifts or to perhaps arrange to start a bit earlier or finish a bit later on the seven days that you do have in April to maximize what happens on those days, knowing that there are going to be other quieter days where you could perhaps roster off some of those times. And so just being smart with rostering, times, availability, when you expect to be busy, when you expect not to be busy, And then if you're the only clinic that's open during those three days when likelihood is most of the country is going to be taking leave after Easter and before Anzac Day, if you're the only clinic that's still open, you can mark it, shout from the rooftops, we're here, we have appointments available, come in and see us because Great opportunity. And that speaks to the leave part that we're going to come back to. I've certainly seen a number of clinic owners not have a leave process, leave policy, and really get caught out when more than half the team take leave at the same time and or put some strain on them. What do you think are Yeah, I think maybe key characteristics of a poor leave process is not being able to say no. And that's just generally how it works. People will generally organise, you know, when they want to take some holidays and then they'll ask for approval, or can I take some time off? And it's really hard to say no, because we worry that we're going to upset them, we worry that they're going to leave, or we worry that if we say no, what does this mean? How am I going to be punished by my team member or whatever it might be? So if that's the case, then it's just about having some systems in place so that you don't have to say no. And what that means is just a leave policy that maybe only one person can take leave at a time. And if someone wants to leave, then they need to organize with other team members who's going to be on to make sure that they can. Or maybe you need a critical mass of admin team available, a critical mass of practitioner team available during periods of leave. And first in, first served. Oh, sorry, they got in, they've got leave over that time, but we can offer you the week after or whatever it might be. Asking your team to get those requests in early can sometimes lead to people actually putting in leave requests that they might otherwise not have put in, which can accelerate some of those conversations. There might be a fear of actually asking people to submit their leave now. looking at ways that you can allay that fear, maybe by having a leave application form or a leave notification log or something that outlines the periods when it's okay. Some clinics I know only allow for leave in the school holidays. And I know that creates some tension with practitioners who would like to take leave during times when perhaps going on holiday is a little cheaper, you know, during school holidays. And so this could be a time where you break that policy and say, actually, we need people available during the school holidays. So if you want to take leave, maybe do it in March or do it in May. And, um, we want you to be available during April. So just little things like that that you can prepare for, have those conversations now and Well, as we come to an end of this episode, I really hope that clinic owners listening or watching are thinking, two, three months ahead, what does that look like at any stage in the year? And what can I do now to set myself up for a better version of that month than maybe typically or historically has been? Are there any other sort of final tips that you recommend people could do to help them navigate tougher months? We've covered quite a lot in terms of treatment management plans and the continuity of care, accounts receivable, we've talked about leave. Is there anything else that comes to mind that people should consider doing ahead Yeah, I just think oftentimes when people find themselves in a quiet patch, They always look for what's something new that I can do that I haven't done before. And I just want to help here by saying you actually don't need to do anything new that you haven't done before in these times. What you need to do is just reflect on what's worked in the past. What have you done that actually has made a difference? And if that's just simply asking people for referrals, or if that's just going and visiting a referrer that often sends people to your clinic, Or if it's for us, it was presenting a workshop generally after presenting a workshop, we would get an influx of new clients into the clinic. Then just do that. So it doesn't have to be brand new. It doesn't have to be untested. It doesn't have to be unproven. It just has to be something that you've done before that you can do again. So just relax. plan, you know, do something that you've done before to generate that interest. Don't freak out. That's another one. Your mindset is really important through these periods. Don't freak out because May's coming and hopefully that's enough It's a really good point. And one of the things that we had done more so for the back end of the year and the start of the year was create these checklists, you know, the end of year checklist and the start of year checklist, which are kind of things you need to do every year. at the end or the start of the year. They're just kind of typical things like get the calendar ready for the new year or organize the Christmas party or make sure that we're set and ready for that new team member to be onboarded in Jan. Whatever it is that are typical of that period. And you kind of develop your own checklist each month for that month or even the months ahead. ahead of it so that it's not you're always reacting. You Well, if you want us to just steal that down to three sections, it would be marketing or attraction, whether that's marketing for new clients or marketing for new team. And when I talk marketing, that covers word of mouth, professional relationships, professional referrers, and the external marketing that you do, whether that's social media or Google AdWords or similar. The second area is your operations, your team. What are we doing to look after our team? What are we doing to make sure that things are running efficiently? And then the third one is financial. So make sure that you're taking actions in terms of collecting those accounts, making sure we're charging appropriately, making sure we're better utilizing the diary. So if all of those activities could be put into three things, it's the marketing, the attraction, it's the delivery of your service, and it's the financials. So just work through those three. Yeah, they're great buckets to put them in. Dan, thank you so much for sharing and for those listening in or watching, I'll share my screen here. We've just relaunched our website recently and it includes a whole bunch of really cool free resources in the menu. You'll see resources, you can check out our blog. podcasts, of course, and some other free downloads. Come and check out past episodes. We've got show notes, links to all the important things that we've discussed. You can check it out here on clinicmastery.com forward slash. podcast. Dan, I'm sure we'll do plenty more of these. Thank you so much for sharing. And we look forward to hearing the stories of people who listened to this episode, did something about it, and were able to have a better month, hopefully April and many months ahead. So please always feel welcome to share what you've implemented from the podcast. Shoot an email through to Ben at clinicmastery.com. Dan, thank Thanks for tuning in to the Grow Your Clinic podcast. To find out more about past episodes or how we can help you, head to www.clinicmastery.com/podcast And please remember to rate and review us on your podcast player of choice. See