Improving Your Practice's Hiring Process by Turning It On Its Head with Dr. Micheal Neal

On today's episode Dr. Michael Neal of Lakeside Vision and founder of Build My Team joins the podcast to discuss the lessons he learned and process he built to hire better team members for optometry practices. 

We dive into:

• What's wrong with the conventional ways of hiring
• Why resumes are the worst place to start the process 
• Why experience can actually be a red flag
• How to streamline the hiring process 
• Aligning natural skills and abilities of candidates with the role you're hiring for
• And so much more!

This was a fantastic conversation that should help you think differently about a common pain point in private optometry practices. Ultimately, a more streamlined hiring process and a better team around you can help provide a better, more enjoyable day to day practice ownership experience.

Have questions on anything discussed or want to have topics or questions featured on the show? Send Evon an email at podcast@optometrywealth.com.

Check out www.optometrywealth.com to get to know more about Evon, his financial planning firm Optometry Wealth Advisors, and how he helps optometrists nationwide. From there, you can schedule a short Intro call to share what's on your mind and learn how Evon helps ODs master their cash flow and debt, build their net worth, and plan purposefully around their money and their practices. 

Resources mentioned on this episode:

• Build My Team
• Education Hub
• Jim Collins - Getting the Right People in the Right Seats Over Time
• EOS - Right People-Right Seats

The Optometry Money Podcast is dedicated to helping optometrists make better decisions around their money, careers, and practices. The show is hosted by Evon Mendrin, CFP®, CSLP®, owner of Optometry Wealth Advisors, a financial planning firm just for optometrists nationwide.

Transcript

Evon: 0:04

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to The Optometry Money Podcast, where we're helping ODs all over the country make better and better decisions around their money, their careers, and their practices. I am your host, Evon Mendrin, Certified Financial Planner(TM) practitioner, and owner of Optometry Wealth Advisors, an independent financial planning firm just for optometrists nationwide. And thank you so much for listening. On today's episode, I have a fascinating conversation with Dr. Michael Neal. Uh, he and his wife own an optometry practice in Pennsylvania. And he's the founder of Build My Team, which provides an outsourced hiring service to healthcare practices. And what I really loved about the conversation was how differently he sees the hiring process from the way it's always been done, mostly learned through his own experience, his own pain points in his own practice. And the topic of finding and hiring and training and retaining team members has long been a pain point that I've heard and seen in Optometry. So I hope this conversation will help you to think differently about the hiring process in your own practice. And hopefully in the end, improve your day-to-day experience as a practice owner. And it certainly has made me think about it differently for my, even my own business. And you can find all of Mike's information in the show notes at the Education Hub on my website, www.OptometryWealth.com, as well as all the other content and episodes that we've done. While you're there, feel free to schedule a no commitment introductory call, where we can learn about what's on your mind financially. And we can share how we serve optometrists, solve those very same issues all over the country. And without further ado here is my conversation with. Dr. Michael Neal. And welcome back to The Optometry Money Podcast. I'm your host, Evon Mendrin. And today's episode I am excited to have onto the podcast Dr. Michael Neal. Mike, thank you so much for, for coming on.

Mike Neal: 2:09

Thank you so much for having me, Evon. I'm excited to, have our conversation today.

Evon: 2:13

Yeah. And you and I were connected and as I prepared for the conversation, I, I listened to other interviews you've done. I looked through your, your work and your processes and, and all of the stuff you've done. And I, I got more and more excited to have you on because you have such a unconventional way of thinking about the hiring process and of looking at candidates and bringing on new team members to an Optometry or healthcare practice. And you think about it differently than how things have always been done. And, and I feel like that part of the business of a, of the Optometry has been a big challenge. I, you know, from what I've seen and heard and the conversations I've had at least since 2020, of finding good team members and being able to keep them. But that's a challenge that every business has, has faced for all of time. And you know, when you look at, it's a big challenge for Optometry. When you look at any Optometry practice's profit and loss, one of the largest investments in the business is gonna be people, both associate doctors as well as non associate staff members. And it takes a significant amount of investment in people to generate every dollar of revenue. So it's, it's an important topic. So, I'm excited to, to have you share your story and the way you look at these things, with the audience here. But I, I think, a good place to start is just talk to us a little bit about your background. You own an Optometry practice with your wife, you are the founder of Build My Team. talk to us about where you're located, about your practice and what eventually got you to, to start, another business in Build My Team.

Mike Neal: 3:52

Well, thanks. yeah, I mean, boy, oh boy, it, it certainly has been a, a ride, been in practice since 2001, that my, with my wife and I, she founded the practice in 2002. So we've been at this for a while. And in, 2017, 2016 I was in executive coaching. what that did was opened up my eyes to the fact that, there are other ways to do things. And, you know, in Optometry we just continuously. We're trained on the clinical side of things with virtually nothing. And, now actually nothing in terms of practice management. So we're located out in the northeastern Pennsylvania rural area. it's a, a practice that, we just don't have people generally with experience applying team member wise. We, you know, we're medical and I, you know, standard glasses, contacts practice, but, boy, what ended up happening over the years is this, this story is gonna sound the same as so many of your listeners. We had terrible times, terrible, terrible times with, with team members, staff. I don't like the word staff, but at that point they were staff. We didn't have a team by any stretch of the imagination. We had every colossal problem you can imagine. And, you know, it was in that executive coaching at the time. Just sitting there scratching my head saying, these organizations are fantastic. What the heck are they doing differently than what, what we are at the practice? And, it turns out they were doing a ton differently. And I, I ended up, analyzing their process, realizing that it's not just one thing. There's a whole host of, of things that each of these companies were doing. And looked at what we were doing at the practice and essentially realized we were doing the whole thing upside down. We were hiring people, we were selecting team members for our practice, essentially in an upside down way. And we were getting, the, the results that we were getting were just, they just demonstrated the fact we were doing it all wrong. And that's what, caused the, the start of Build My Team. You know, necessity's, a mother of invention, and boy, there was a whole lot of necessity

Evon: 6:04

So you, you, uh, this business Build My Team basically came out of your own experience in solving this really big, really big pain point in your own, your own practice. And so let's, let's dive into that.'cause that's, you know, a lot of the meat and potatoes of today's conversation is you talk about how your practice, and I think many other practices, and I would say businesses, I think this sort of transcends just healthcare, but. You know, how do you, how did you see that the way you were doing it was upside down? What were some of the, can you describe like the way you were hiring and what was wrong with it, or what did you see could be improved?

Mike Neal: 6:42

Well, boy, where does a guy start on something like that? Like when I tell you it's, it was upside down. That's not an exaggeration. you're, I'm not, an academic. I'm not, somebody who's talking about things from a, you know, the ivory tower. I, I'm a doc. I mean, I'm seeing patients, We we're just seeing a lot of patients we're dependent 100% on team members. That's our model. I'm not a a doc who goes in with one or two Z people and and can practice. There are docs who do that, and boy, they have a, a life that's very different from mine on a professional level, but I'm a hundred percent dependent on the team. So what we were doing wrong in a nutshell, we were using resumes, we were trying to hire experienced people, and we were, letting somebody who's extraordinarily empathetic, empathetically the entire process. Those were the top three. We hit the trifecta on do not do the following, and we're like, Hey, this is great. Let's go do those three things. And we got terrible, terrible results. So that's how I would sum that up with the top three.

Evon: 7:45

Okay. And when you say by leading the process, meaning someone within your own practice had an empathetic nature, was the one leading the hiring process, right?

Mike Neal: 7:55

Yep. My wife, totally fantastic on the doctor side of things. Patients adore her. and she wants to help people. That's, that's what she was put on earth to do. She's gotta help patients all day long. and do not take this the wrong way. There is nothing wrong with that. That is what it's supposed to be on the doctor side of things. That's what makes you fantastic. However, when you have that type of, approach to to life, you have to stay the heck away from the hiring process. And that's not gonna, that's not gonna win me any friends with the listeners on this podcast. But the, the truth of the matter is, the more empathetic you are, the more you will be manipulated by the people that you are trying to hire and the worse results you're going to get. We have seen that throughout the country. There are almost no exceptions to that rule. It's frustrating, but obviously there are, you know, we've created ways around that.

Evon: 8:49

Hmm. So let's, I, I wanna dive in more into the other, the other points you made because resumes and experience, let's, let's start with resumes.'cause, you know, I, I'm not, certainly not in healthcare, but almost every hiring process I've been a part of, either as a candidate or within the business that I've worked at, started with resumes. The first step was the gathering of resumes from all the different sources that you can get.'em, maybe there was a cover letter there with some interesting questions that should be answered, but almost every process started with the gathering of resumes and then the, the whoever was involved would spread the resumes out and look at the resumes and, and go from there. And not only that, all of the, I, I feel like all of the advice towards candidates, meaning people who are looking for jobs. And resources and even services and tools start with like preparing this perfect resume of, of the formatting, of the font, of wording things correctly or describing things correctly so that it's like this SEO experiment to get your resume to stand out among this pile of, pile of resumes. So where does that go wrong? Why shouldn't the process start with resumes?

Mike Neal: 10:00

Because a resume is nothing more than momentum and inertia for hiring. That's what we're used to

Evon: 10:07

Mm-Hmm.

Mike Neal: 10:08

Think. Okay. Let's do a little thought experiment here. Think in terms of the resumes that are sitting, like for, for the docs and practice managers listening to this, the resumes and that are sitting on your desk right now. What do they tell you about the person?

Evon: 10:23

Not much. It tells you, I mean, it tells you maybe where they've been, where they've worked before, where they went to school. Some skills they list on the paper, their ability to format a document. I mean, other than that, really not, not much else.

Mike Neal: 10:39

So why would you base the next 10, 20,$30,000 of your practice, expenses slash revenue on a document that was prepared by somebody you don't know, you've never met before? You have no way to verify the accuracy. Why would you do that?

Evon: 10:59

IWI don't have a, I don't have a reason to say you should,

Mike Neal: 11:03

Well, the the answer is because you don't know any other way to do it. That's the way that is done, right? And that's where the inertia and the momentum come in. So, let me get off my, high horse here. The reason that the the resumes don't work is that they are not accurate. They do not tell you what. A person is actually good at, there is no section on a resume that tells you my strengths and talents as a candidate. It tells you a work history. It tells you possibly their address, very little else. So what these other organizations were doing, like Disney, the Four Seasons, I pick on those two companies because they've got incredibly robust hiring policies. you know, with Disney, you go to Disney and everybody's happy. Well, how the heck do they get everybody to happy? Easy. They hire happy people. Okay. It's not any more complex than that. Where it gets really challenging is how do they identify those happy people? And that's what we were able to do with Build My Team. It's through assessments. There's an entire industry called Psychometrics, which is measuring, essentially measuring people's strengths and talents and different parameters about their performance in the workplace. As an optometrist, I had no idea this even existed. Well, it turns out it does. And these companies are using them incredibly successfully. They're extremely well tuned instruments to identify talent and specifically the type of talent that you're looking for. So what I did is I took, some time, in over a year and analyzed the heck out of these hiring processes. Created A process for our practice, which was rudimentary, by all means rudimentary at the time, and just kept fine tuning it one applicant candidate after another after another. So, for example, at the time we were using, email. Well, I will categorically tell you email does not work for hiring in a healthcare practice. Why? you have to use texting. And the reason being is that the A players and the candidates that you want move so quickly nowadays that they aren't waiting, they're not going back and forth on email. The cycle time for email is too long. the, the A players, these terrific team members, they're not checking their email on a regular basis. Candidates will tell you that they do in an interview. Most certainly you ask'em if they have email. Yes. How often do you check it? All the time. Great. What? Twice? Three times a week. Sometimes that was the response we got when we surveyed these people. So we had to move to a fully based, text model. And by, by using the texting model, we were able to cut the timeframe down to seconds. And that's what's required nowadays in order to get the great team members. So going back to the assessments, we ended up building a system that, we can, on the, on the Build My Team side of things, we write the job description for a candidate, sorry, for, a client. We publish the job description to 22 different job boards. Okay. Now the, the job description is written in terms of what the candidate's contribution would be in the role, what, how, you know, how much good they're going to do for the, the people in their area, the world, et cetera. That's huge with, with, especially with younger people. Now, they want to make an impact on the world. We take those job descriptions. they include things like the hours of the practice, all kinds of, stuff. We publish them to over 22 different job boards. And the reason that's done is because we have to get the maximum number of applicants as possible. the way, if I back up a little bit, the way I would describe this hiring process is that it's an upside down pyramid. Okay, we're taking, imagine a funnel that's probably a more, more apt metaphor. You've got a massive funnel at the top. You're pouring everybody you can possibly pour into the funnel. And then at the bottom outcome, the, the A players, you know, the, the great team members that you want, and these high quality people, they are rarely who you think they are. That's one of the shocks of this whole process. They're rarely who you actually think they are. and so,

Evon: 15:17

Why? is that? Why? Why is it rarely who we imagine they would be?

Mike Neal: 15:23

Well in eyecare specifically, we are generally conditioned to want experience. that is something that in our model with Build My Team, and this is gonna be a again, a little bit, outside the norm experience is somewhere between a pink flag and a red flag. It, it's, I love the term pink flag. Just heard that earlier, this morning actually. But it's something where you, you draw it, it draws attention. now experience when you're an A player is amazing. However, experience when you're not an A player and you're, you're, telling everybody you are can be catastrophic to a team. Okay? They come in to a practice, well, the practice does it this way. They say, well, we used to do it that way, and it worked pretty well. Well, guess what you gotta do now, doc. You have to try and unlearn something from a human being that doesn't want to unlearn that something because it works really well. So now you've got, an uphill battle to begin with, and they have no interest whatsoever in unlearning the whatever it is that you need them to unlearn. And by the way, this doesn't just apply to one thing. This is all over the place. So now your effort is spent on getting that person to learn your process, your systems, instead of immediately, trying to excel within the position. And as we all know from, you know, no pun intended, but from experience, it doesn't work most of the time. And that's where a massive amount of frustration comes in. So flip that around with the Build My Team approach, we're able to identify people who, when they don't have experience, and the vast majority of our candidates don't, they come on board. I'm sorry. They apply through our process. The first thing they do is they get a, a link sent to their cell phone. And the reason it goes to their cell phone, as I mentioned earlier, is this happens within five seconds. You hit, you click a link on the job board to apply to the job. five seconds later your cell phone bings. And that includes, a link to go through and walk through our assessments. Now, with these assessments, the, about a quarter of people don't do them. Okay. So you're saying, well, boy, that, that's a bummer. Uhuh, uh, that's a quarter of people who didn't read your job description. They have no interest in ever working in a dental practice. Oh, wait a minute, you're an eye care practice. Yeah, but they didn't read, so they have no clue about any of this stuff. They would've categorically wasted your time. They're out, they're out gently. It's a, you know, a, a very polite process. But they leave the pro, our hiring process. Next thing they do is we, run them through a, a healthcare mindset assessment. We want to make sure that they're caring. Individuals that want to help people. And so you scratch your head and say, well just wait, wait a minute. Doesn't everybody who apply to a healthcare practice wanna help people? Nope. The minority do. very small, minority do. And so those folks are immediately removed from our process. the ones that make it so far, we measure, their speed of learning. And this is critical because they have to have, a speed of learning that is appropriate for the position. So what do you mean by that? Well, let's say they're super smart. How long do you think they stay in a healthcare practice?

Evon: 18:38

I don't know. I feel like I would want to hire the smartest person available for, for the job. is, is that the case? I feel like that's not, I feel like that's where we're heading.

Mike Neal: 18:47

it's the case for about one to two months. Sometimes you'll hit three, then they're bored and they leave. So counterintuitive, right? Yeah. It doesn't, you of course, I want the smartest people. No, you can't do it that way because they're gonna leave. So on the other end of that spectrum, we all know what happens when the, the person is, challenged intellectually. That doesn't work out either. Those folks are next to impossible to train. So what we're looking for is a sweet spot. We want somebody who's, and we, we've defined this. We want somebody who's essentially, very, you know, learns very quickly, but will still be engaged long term. Because the key to these hires is to get people in place who have natural strengths and talents in the position. And I can't stress this enough, they wake up in the morning, they go to work, they're being asked to do something that they don't think is a big deal whatsoever. They can accomplish a heck of a lot more, as an a player than, than, Two, I've even seen three people accomplish, and they don't think it's a big deal. So they bring these natural strengths and talents, they learn very quickly. The next things we're looking for are a bunch of characteristics about them. And, you know, imagine, since we're talking to so many, optometrists and, and you know, eye, eye care folks, imagine how you think in terms of, let's, let's pick on glaucoma, you know, glaucoma treatment. in the old days it might've just been IOPs treat'em or not. Well, now it's a whole battery of, of, assessments that you do on, on a glaucoma patient to determine if you need to start treatment, continue treatment, modify treatment, et cetera. Well, it's the same with this. We're looking for the different strengths and talents for the candidates, but we're also measuring things like their stress tolerance. For example, average, one of your average clients, Evon, the type of practice that they have, do they need folks at their front desk who have high stress tolerance or low stress tolerance?

Evon: 20:41

High stress tolerance, I would imagine wearing, wearing some armor there.

Mike Neal: 20:45

Armor. Exactly. medieval armor, you know, ready for jousting or Kevlar, whatever it might take. But the point is they need armor. We can all agree on that. Now, there are some practices that we have as clients where it's very mellow practices, easygoing. That's a cinch for the front desk person because they don't need armor. They can wear a light t-shirt and get away with everything. for, for the, higher volume practices, especially medical where patients never understand their insurances, you need the full on battle experience. So while still being friendly, while being able to, do 12 things at once, you know, those types of things. So we're looking for all of those characteristics and we have, a couple pages of these characteristics, if they were to be printed out that we're looking for. So each of these different things that we're looking for. Imagine that like the glaucoma analogy. You have an algorithm for certain different types of, of glaucoma. You're gonna treat, primary open angle. One way you're gonna treat low tension another way, but it's different for each type. And it's the same with people. The type of person who's gonna make an excellent front desk person is not the type of person who's gonna make an excellent biller, is not the type of person who's gonna make an excellent, optician. And each of these different positions has characteristics that make them fantastic. And one of the things we learned through, Build My Team process, and this, this shocked me personally, I'll use our practice as an example. Almost exactly 50% of people who applied for a job in our practice didn't get that job. They got another within the practice. These are the finalist candidates I'm talking about. Yeah. After they go all the way through the process. So. They what ha what ends up happening is they have no idea what their strengths and talents are. And so they're applying for a job because they think they might be a good fit. When after we actually run them through the assessments, we say, no, you wouldn't be a great fit there. Don't get depressed or bummed you're, it's not that you're not getting the job, we have a better one for you. Oh, wow. The light bulb goes on. They've never heard that in, you know, in when they're being hired, before almost all the time. So it's a terrific fit when something like that happens. And just stepping back to the, the process, because I obviously get excited about this. once the all these characteristics are determined, then what our software does behind the scenes is it gives the candidate either a thumbs up or a thumbs down. That is the, That is the outcome of the hiring process through Build My Team at the almost final level. And the reason I say the thumbs up, thumbs down. when I started this conversation, I was talking about some my wife who's, very empathetic to help people. And what what we learned about this after all of the, the years of hiring is that the more empathetic you are, the further you should stay away from the hiring process. However, most docs, they're the only ones or the practice managers are the only ones. Where our software, I think from, from my standpoint, on the owner side of things, of the practice, one of its greatest benefits is it removes the emotion from the hiring process. It's gone. It's a thumbs up. So with Build My Team, we take these people who are the, the semi-finalist candidates, they're sent a one-Way video interview. Okay? And what that means is they get sent another link. 95% of these people complete these video interviews, believe it or not. Now you think in terms of actually hiring people, when was the last time you had 95% of people show up for your interview? We do. That's the na, the nationwide statistics. And it's, and it's actually climbing a little bit. so the one-Way video interview, our team reviews that. And the way they review it, they're not looking necessarily for what the answers to the questions are. It's the how, how are they answering these questions. it gives us a massive amount of, kind of soft information about these candidates. So we know they're, they're A players. We know that they can do the job by the time they do the video interview. What we're looking for, I. Is this person going to properly represent the practice? Now, it doesn't matter if they're male or female, if they're green, pink, purple, none of that stuff matters. and I truly mean that it is completely immaterial to the decision. We want to see if they're taking this seriously. Are they dressed up? are they, you know, did they represent, would they represent your practice with respect? do they have a sense of humor? Are they funny? Are they serious? Are they all these types of things? And each of these types of candidates, you know, some practices are a little bit more serious, some practices, staff, the place of amateur comedians and everything in between, right? So it's a, it's a, a decision that the practice can make when these finalist candidates are sent over as to what the best fit for the practice is.

Evon: 25:45

So by, by this point, no one has actually talked with a candidate, like a, a one-on-one conversation. I mean, it's, they're going through this seemingly it sounds like, sort of automated process. And even the interview is a, a one-way asynchronous video interview, right? There's been no time and energy spent from the, I guess it would be the, your clients, right? The practice is hiring you, but really from any, anyone to having to interview these people. One-on-one, right?

Mike Neal: 26:15

They have, the, the way it would start is a quick, discussion with our team members about what type of position they're hiring for. We call it a consultation call. So somebody's interested in never having to hire a person again, which is me. Pick me, I'm, I want nothing to do with that. Build My Team, staffs our practice. the way to do that is to have the consultation call, and then from there our team does everything. So. Between the consultation call and the finalist candidates you have, a we give a, a weekly update. You can read an email, don't read the email. That's up to the client. Some do, some don't. What they're looking for is the end deliverable from our company, which is called the Insight Report. And the insight report is a couple page PDF that tells you all about the candidates. there's a discussion with our team members, as to which they would recommend for the practice based upon our experience. And they have, they have a colossal amount of experience hiring in healthcare. eyecare in particular, absolutely colossal by the, the, way I would describe it is what they do in a morning. Most practices do in a year. Hiring wise. So it, it's, and it doesn't matter what gremlins or skeletons your practice has, we've seen, seen it all. so the, the long answer to what you're asking is virtually no time whatsoever. You can, through the Build My Team system, you're soup to nuts. End to end hiring, can be under an hour for a candidate.

Evon: 27:43

And I'm comparing that in my head again to other, the way it's been done, right? It's gathering your resumes, it's looking through resumes, it's going for a first interview, then a second interview, then talking. You know, it's, it's a lot of time spent and energy going through that process. And, and what you're saying is, well, you don't need to necessarily spend a whole lot of time and energy, you know, if you can, you can do a lot of this the way that you're describing it. And what, what kind of stands out to me is that, you know, firstly as. The owner. I, I guess from the owner's perspective, you need to know yourself and whether you are the right person to be going through that hiring process or not, right, the right person to be leading that process or not, or whether it should be outsourced or not Outsourced, delegated or, or outsourced like, like you said. Uh, then the other, the other thing you need to know is that, is you need to know what role you're hiring for and what characteristics you should be looking for for that particular role. What, what are the skills? What are the, psychological characteristics? You know, what, what are all the things you would look for in the ideal candidate specific to that role? And you are describing this process, as you mentioned, like a funnel, as you're casting as wide a net as possible, sifting through these candidates by these different questions, pulling out their natural skills and abilities. Pulling out their, their, the, psychological characteristics, their ability to learn, their, their stress tolerance, all these different things to sift out their skills and abilities and characteristics before finally getting to these, these A A players, A team players. And in your experience, has led you to figure out what exactly these traits are that lead to a, a team players, and, and that's sort of the, is that sort of a good summary of that whole process of, of what you're trying to do?

Mike Neal: 29:34

It is. Absolutely. And there's two things I want to touch on. One is speed and the other is cost. I. So, you know, this being The Optometry Money Podcast, I feel completely comfortable talking about, about both because time is money. if a doc is, you know, well, you're gonna know better than anybody what a doc's time is worth per hour in terms of gross income and, and net income as to what they generate. You think in terms of the doc side of things and good grief, a doc should have nothing to do with hiring team members other than associates. it, it's so costly to the practice as a business to have the doc focusing any time on that versus optimization of the practice, growth of the practice, you name it, all those types of things. the second is a practice manager and a lot of the practice manager's time is overlooked or minimized by a lot of the doctors. Well, we'll just have Sally or Susie or whomever do it.

Evon: 30:34

Hmm.

Mike Neal: 30:35

In my experience, practice managers prior to coming on with Build My Team are spending, you name the fraction between a quarter to, a third of their time on hiring process and they hate it. I have yet to meet one that actually is interested or loves doing this. in fact, that used to early on in Build My Team. That's one of the questions I first asked a a person when they called. do you love hiring? And the answers were, I should have written them down. They were spectacular. But, the one fellow said, I'd rather have flaming bamboo shoved under my fingernails, you know, and, and, that type of thing. So what can a practice manager be doing to improve the net income of the practice? Well, the answer is a ton of stuff, but they'd never get to that point because they are a professional firefighter. They're putting out these hiring fires and these, staffing issues all day long. So the way to get them to do that, it's not gonna happen overnight, but, to get them to focus their time on the building of the business is to remove the time that they have to spend on the firefighting. And the only way to do that is to simply change how you're hiring and getting better people. So that's the, you know, the one aspect of it. The other is speed. And this is where our Build My Team system is unparalleled. it, it is just simply unequal because it's a completely automated system. So under, you know, even with practices that are doing, hiring themselves and doing a, a decent job of it, from a speed standpoint, you, you have to treat A players differently. When they apply, they want to hear back very quickly. They want to hear back decisively. They want the practice that they're applying to, to have their act together to be completely organized. These are people who don't care if they work in an eyecare practice. Dental practice, chiropractice, general medicine, they don't care about any of that stuff. They like the concept of healthcare. They like the stability, a doctor's a doctor to a lot of them. And when your practice doesn't have its act together from their perspective. Okay? Now this is from their perspective, they move on. They're onto the next practice, you

Evon: 32:44

is it.

Mike Neal: 32:45

get them.

Evon: 32:46

Is it because they're so easily able to apply for other jobs and are so easily able to hear back and, and accept other job offers while, you know, if you're not taking advantage of speed? Is that why, why, why is it so easy for them to move on?

Mike Neal: 33:02

Because they are incredibly desirable to other practices. And they know that now, they're, now the, the A players that, that, that we find generally are unaware of their skillset and their, their strengths and talents. And that's what makes it incredibly special because we can get these people into practices. Not, it's not an extreme cost by any means. Most of the time it's less than what you're willing to pay. I know that sounds really odd, but we see this all the time. They, they don't realize that their strengths and talents are special for that position. And so we bring them in. They're, they do incredibly well. But, but to back up, you have to be decisive. And this is where the automation software, has a massive advantage. let's say they're a single mom, kid's sick. They're, they're up at midnight, one in the morning, before they start work the next morning. They want their life to change. They start applying for jobs. Well, they apply at, you know, one in the morning. Guess what? At one plus five seconds, their cell phone buzzes, Build My Team's hard at work. They go through the assessments. They're done by 20 after one. They go to bed thinking, well, that was really neat. These guys have their act together next morning. they get a link, from the, for a video interview. They do that video interview before they go for work. And, that video interview process usually starts around 5:00 AM I. MST. Like Middle of America so that we can catch these folks before, before they go to work the next morning or whatever they're doing the next morning. And that way we can have the video interviewed a little later on that morning, that afternoon. And within a day the decisions made. This is in a or faster, by the way. It's as fast as we could possibly do it. here's an A player move. We get, get in touch with the practice. Hey, these guys are, this person's terrific. Get them in for an interview. So with a couple hours later, they get a, a text back saying that they want to come, asking'em to come in for an actual in-person interview. Think of, think of that like you can do that on a Saturday night. And by Monday morning, the practice is asking you to come in for an interview as soon as Monday afternoon. Okay. The days of hiring slowly and firing fast are over. I will categorically tell you that since Covid it's done, if you do that, you will be stuck in the mud and there's nothing that's going to change that other than, you know, becoming more decisive about it.

Evon: 35:33

And I, I wonder how much of that is that practice owners don't have a whole lot of information to go on about each candidate. I mean, you're bringing in a whole lot of data, right? They're taking these assessments or you got video interviews. You're able to really get to know a whole lot about these people. but if all you have is a resume and maybe an interview where, you know, people are answering questions in interviews in a way to beat the interview sometimes. So, you know, there's sometimes not a lot unless you can read people really well and in one conversation there's not a lot of information for that owner to, to go off of and making a really big decision. So I wonder if part of that is why decisions are made so slowly.

Mike Neal: 36:14

Well, and that was me to a t. it's my wife to a t. Like I'm a decisive person, but still I want more information and I want it simplified and spelled out to me, about hiring people. And what I got instead was a resume and a person who is desperate to get a job, who would sit across from me in an interview and tell me whatever I needed to hear to get the, the job right. That's what I was used to. I was also used to deer in the headlights where you're talking to the, the candidates, talking to the, the big old doctor and didn't have much to say at all. So those are some situations that were ridiculous. Now, through the, using the insight report and all of this incredible information we have about the candidates. Yeah, believe it or not, especially for the younger candidates, we will know more about them from a strength and talent perspective by far than they know about themselves. And the evidence of that is when they apply for that, the job A, they're moved to job B over 50, approximately 50% of the time. So, yeah. So when you have that level of specificity about a candidate, it's obvious your decision making capabilities go to a completely different level. This is a, a one to two orders of magnitude better. The, the resume process is worse than a coin flip. Our process finds, it, it's so accurate that we reject approximately, depending on the position. Approximately 97% of people. So again, that funnel rejects about 97% of people. And that time savings alone right there is worth a, a small fortune or a practice. but it's also the decisiveness. Without the speed, you can't get the A players without the data about the candidates. You don't know who the A players are. And so when you end up approaching, hiring with pure performance in mind, this is a system that delivers the performance and our, you know, Build My Team guarantees it because it's, it's very straightforward for us to do that. If a candidate leaves a practice for any reason whatsoever, within 90 days, they're replaced for free.

Evon: 38:28

Wow. Can this, as, can an assessment like you use with candidates be gamed? Meaning like, can they look at the questions and ask, how would this owner hire, you know, employer? Want me to answer this question for this role? I mean, is that something that can happen as well?

Mike Neal: 38:45

Yeah. that's why there's a whole bunch of stuff baked into the process looking for that. Oh, yeah, absolutely. In fact, the first thing we do, the healthcare mindset is there's no, it's not a yes or no, it's a comparison. The engine itself, to assess their mindset is a comparison of where they are now versus where they want to be. Sounds a little esoteric and, and, in reality it's not. But there's no game ability to it. So we, we remove, about half of the people who start the application process immediately before they even get into those further assessments and, Again, part of the process that we have is looking for that. So the, the psychometric industry has different ways to, you know, I guess raise a flag about that. And then of course, we have the video interview on top of it. Plus, when a candidate goes in for the actual, interview in person, like some of our clients don't interview in person. They tell our team members to send the best person over and have'em start Thursday. most practices will interview in person. So what our team will do is give, a couple questions to clarify with the person, you know. And, and use your judgment, doc. You're used to people talking to people all day long, but here are three things we'd suggest you clarify and get to the bottom of it.

Evon: 40:05

Hey, everybody just want to say thank you for listening to the podcast. If you've enjoyed the podcast. It would be so helpful if you can leave a review at Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. It gets the word out to other ODs that may benefit. And it helps me to learn how to make it a more and more valuable resource for you. If you have any suggestions or topics for future episodes or questions you'd like answered on the podcast. Shoot me a note at podcast@optometrywealth.Com. Again, thank you for listening. And back to the episode. Yeah. And, and the way you describe the whole process, it, it feels not too different from the process of marketing to patients and trying to bring in ideal patients into a practice. I mean, you're, you're marketing to them, you know, you're potentially casting a wide net, but hopefully through the process, you're able to filter in and bring in the ideal patients that fit your practice. And like, do you see the, the process of bringing in good team members sort of as if like a practice should be marketing on the one hand to patients, and then on the other hand, to potential future team members. Like how, you know, when you're putting together websites and when you're putting together, the job description and when you're doing all this stuff, like, do you see that, we will call it top of funnel stuff? Like do you see that sort of as like marketing towards potential team members?

Mike Neal: 41:33

I, that's a fascinating question. Um, right off the bat, what type of re reviews does your practice have on Google? Okay, Google if, if your practice is like a, a 3.0 out of five,

Evon: 41:47

Yeah.

Mike Neal: 41:48

there's some challenges there. If it's a 4.5 diminishing challenges, you know, what they're looking for. What the team members want to do is make sure that the practice has their act together. And, you know, we have some practices that struggle with that because of the team members that they have. And that's something we, we have, methods to work through as to how to improve those reviews and get those team members. So you're, you're basically fighting, a little bit of a, two front war for a little bit until one gets under control. And like I said, we, our, our team members have ways to, to change that and improve it. The, the second thing is, um, as far as marketing, no, I, I don't believe that's necessary because the Build My Team approach cast the widest possible net and we're not looking for people with experience. we want folks who can come in with the natural strengths and talents to be a terrific fit, very long term, and they learn incredibly quickly. So is there some training that's required? Yes. does it take long? Absolutely not, because these people learn lickety split and, you know, you only have to teach'em once type thing. So I would say no, the marketing is unnecessary. That money, you know, that budget, if you will, would be vastly better spent on other things within the practice or net operating income to the, to the doctor,

Evon: 43:13

Yeah. I, I guess I, I, I guess what I'm thinking about is, you know, in, in the practice's public image, the communications of their brand and their story and the way they market themselves to patients, I just, I wonder if they should also think about, you know, future candidates that join this team will also want to see this and know our, know about our business and know about, you know, how we're communicating to patients. And I, I just wonder how that plays to that. And I, I want to ask about experience.'cause our, our, I think our, our gut instinct is to find the most experienced, most, as you mentioned, the smartest candidates for a particular job. And you're saying rightly so, that with experience comes, I don't know, baggage, it comes maybe old habits, different ways of doing things than a particular owner may want to do things, old ways of doing things where there's more, modern ways of doing things, you know, with experience comes stuff that's hard to unlearn and hard to teach new things into. So does that change based on the role that you're hiring for, meaning like an associate doctor versus, versus opticians versus billing and, and front desk? Like, does the experience factor away differently for different roles? Is it, is it sort of, you know, where does that fit in with the different types of roles you might hire for in an Optometry practice?

Mike Neal: 44:42

Well, I wanna touch on two things, as far as the roles go, and then maybe we go back to what you said about the marketing. One more, thing. The, with the roles we don't, hire for licensed positions. Now, there are some exceptions with opticians, but we we're not our prac or, Build My Team does not hire associates or, or, doctors that type of position. The, and the reason being is that you're going to have very few candidates applying for those particular positions. Now we do have a, the ability to assess different, doctors who are applying, but that's done at a different level. it's a completely different approach that we have for that, that approach is done to find out what they're naturally good at, the information's given to the practice. And, I. You, you don't reject based on that. You take that information and figure out how to, optimize their performance within the practice. Okay? So it's a different way of doing things. But with regards to, to the experience side of things, I, I simply cannot stress this enough that if you hiring approach is based on looking solely for experience, we're we're not a good fit for you as a client, or as, as a, as a company because that's not what we do. Our why would you pay an optician 30 bucks an hour when you can get somebody who is dying to help people see better, naturally has the strengths and talents to do it is coming from a$15 an hour position. You offer them$17 with a path to, to Earn$20 within six to, to nine to 12 months. I'm just pulling these numbers outta thin air. But our, our consultants will suggest different, dollar amounts because we ask the candidates, we're asking them what out one of the questions is what hourly rate would you hope to, to get? And we're, we're asking a bunch of these questions behind the scenes as part of this process so that we know who the people are that are going to stick long term. And that type of person who, you just exceeded their expectations by getting$17 instead of$15. And a lot of the areas of the country, that's the case. If you're out in California, that doesn't apply too low. But, now you've got somebody who thinks, oh my goodness, this is terrific. You guys are actually going to help me learn a new career. And I get to help people all day long. Yeah. Certainly some people are upset, but that's not as bad as my last job where I was working in a grocery store, at the deli counter and people threw their ham and cheese in my face while screaming at me. Do, do you know what I mean? Like, these are people coming from different positions where, being an optician would be terrific compared to where they were at before versus now here comes the, the other side of the coin. I've been an optician for 20 years. I know how to do everything there is to know in optical. I have the lenses that I've used for a long time. There's new technology. Sure. But, you know, my stuff works great and I do realize you want me to try this stuff, doc, but you know, my stuff works great and, You know, if you don't really like that, I'll go down the road for probably, 50 cents an hour more. Now, I wanted to mention one thing. As part of our process, we look at entitlement. Now, the practice owners that are listening to this, that have built their own practice, will probably have a similar response to I do on that. I'm anaphylactic allergic to entitlement. Okay? If you're applying to our practice and you, if we get a whiff, just a whiff of, of our practice owes you like, it's you're God's gift to working in eyecare, we're moving on to the next person. You may very well be. We may very well be, be making a mistake that you are the best thing since sliced bread. We're outta here. Okay? The reason being that type of mentality, which we see with a, it's correlated much higher with folks with experience can be caustic to, not can be, is usually caustic to a, a practice culture because this person doesn't, they follow some of the rules. They follow a lot of the rules. They're not a team player. That type of person is going to, to cause big, expensive, hard to solve problems within your practice and it's never worth it. So that, that short term, high that you get from getting the, the proverbial experience person on board. What happens if things took two to four weeks longer, six weeks longer, but you can get a person who loves the job, brings a, brings terrific energy and strengths and talents to your practice. And now there's, they're planning on staying for a long time because you've helped them become a better person, you've helped their family, et cetera, et cetera. It's a completely different approach. Now, there's one caveat to this whole, this whole thing. Sometimes you get people who are A-players, superstars, and have experience. Well, guess what? as a, on a client side of things, your phone's gonna ring. We're calling you get this person in for an interview. Yeah, I know it's 11 o'clock. We'd love it if you call them or texted'em. They should be there by one because this person's gone. They're going to be gone by tomorrow. You have to move immediately. This is an HR positive hiring emergency. Now, those are few and far between, but that's where the, we call it that pink flag. If that happens, we move immediately. So experience doesn't, it's not always a negative, but the, the eyecare industry is focused primarily on hiring for experience, and that's why the eyecare industry continues to struggle because you get exactly what you're asking for when that happens.

Evon: 50:42

Hmm. Yeah. And you mentioned that, you know, hiring issues can cause expensive or bad team players can cause expensive problems for the practice. And in other conversations I've heard you describe that you know, a players will leave because of C players like you, your. Problem hires can cause your best hires to actually move on, sort of, you know, exponentially increasing the issue.'cause now you have to hire, you have to replace that, that bad hire with, with someone new, but also your other really good team members because they, they've moved on for other, other opportunities. So I, I, I thought that was really interesting. And I, I feel like the gut sort of reaction is that it's least costly to hire for experience because they will more, they will be more quickly be able to get up and running it. It's, it's, it's a, it's less time to train them. They know what they're doing. They can hop in, get started, get to work, and the training period is less costly. But as you've described, well yeah, you have to untrain all this stuff that you don't want and retrain, reprogram the stuff that you do want and. Along with that can come a, a lot of these other issues, it sounds like what you're saying is that first and foremost the right skills and natural skills and abilities for that role and the right mentality for that role. And if they are quick learners and you can train well, they can just as easily get up and running in that role and be better team players and stick around longer because you've matched their natural skills and abilities to that.

Mike Neal: 52:21

you, you hit the nail on the head. at the first part of that, A players want to work with A players, they tolerate B players and they will leave their jobs because of C players.

Evon: 52:32

Mm-hmm.

Mike Neal: 52:35

There are virtually no exceptions to that. Now, most practices that are performing at an okay level financially will have a couple A players if they're lucky. Do, and you think about it in terms of how much work are they doing versus the rest of the team while they're doing most. They're doing most of it, and this was something I just categorically struggled with. Before the Build My Team approach, because we would get those A players in and they were, let's face it, they were treated like primadonnas. The practice would collapse without them, we would have all kinds of problems. it caused almost a two-tier approach to the practice culture. And, Frank Tuffy, he's our, he runs Build My Team, and also oversees our practice. He has a 30 year, career in operations. Professional operations, not healthcare. So this is all, his approach to team management is just purely performance based and getting people to perform is what he excels at. One of the things he did when he first came on, overseeing the practice was, he created what was essentially an Excel spreadsheet that had looked it, imagine a traffic light. Honestly, that's what it looked like to me. When he showed it to me, I was like, oh my God, this is, this is crazy. red, yellow, green. So he took each person within the practice. What color were they? Green, red or yellow, sorry. green, yellow or red, as it were. And the people who were red were, that was his first move, is to replace those people. Now, there was one exception to that we had, like they were replaced and we, we went from c, d, e players, good lord, even f to upgrade. They were all upgraded. Okay, now this is, this is really out there. Most of the docs like, are you kidding me? Did somebody actually do this? Well, I'll tell you a little bit about our net income percentage in a bit and why and the outcome that this caused. But one of the people wasn't replaced. She was moved from one job to another, where a job she was terrible at and constantly on the the like, should we keep her, should we not? She was moved to a job that was solely a match for her strengths and talents. And I'm, I'm going to categorically tell you, she's perfect in that role, I wouldn't change a thing. she's our patient coordinator, the, the most empathetic person I've met in a very long time. she will do anything for patients and we all absolutely love working with her. But she worked at the front desk before and it was a disaster. Couldn't ask for money, couldn't get copays, like, just a, a disaster. So it shows a, she's a great example because it's very polarizing how she went from, you know, the old saying as zero to hero. I mean, she's a true hero in her role now, and she's the same person,right? She's just as wonderful a person, but she was not being asked to work in her strengths and talent, and it was the wrong role for her. So these, going back to the, a-player side of things versus the experience, the, the, the difference is training and a lot of practices, get very nervous about the training side of things. Well, I don't have time to train them. Yes, I know that. Absolutely. you don't have time to train people. You're about to fire three weeks from now or three months from now because you're struggling with the same learned helplessness that I was. I just wanna go home. I'm so tired, right? I mean, that's what I was dealing with. I'm just so tired, right? And you're trapped in your practice. You got loans out the wazoo, you got a lease that you signed, you're just tired. You don't know what to do. So you want to go home, spend a time with your, your spouse, your kids. That's tomorrow's problem. Okay? Well, it's not tomorrow's problem. What you can do with these A players is you spend a little bit of time with them, give them some homework. They're gonna do three times. This hap I can't tell you the number of times this has happened. When we were first getting this going, they would come back to work the next day with three times the homework I gave them done already. I'm scratching my head like, well, they're already caught up. What do I do? Right? that got infectious, which was really exciting.'cause finally I was like, Hey, that light at the end of the tunnel tunnel's, not a freight train anymore. Like maybe there's a little bit of light at the end of this tunnel here. So, ended up. This was a suggestion that was made by somebody else. It wasn't my bright idea, but as these people are learning, I had them document it. And so they get on Google, documents or whatever it's called, and they're, they're typing out these systems and processes that they're learning as they go. And they thought it was great because they got to write the manual, you know, air quotes. and they got to define all of this. And I would read this document, think, well, this, you know, this is incredible. Now, if they leave in the future,'cause everybody does, sooner or later we have something where the training cycle is, is next to nothing because they have a manual already. Right. And so within one hire, we were able to dramatically cut the training cycle because we brought in smart people who could naturally do the job. And we gave'em a book to read that says, here's what you do. Instead of, and this is the worst, instead of somebody giving their two weeks notice, you're forced with a gun to your head to hire as fast as humanly possible. Because after those two weeks, which we all know, they check out after a couple of days anyway, you're not going to be able to transfer that knowledge. So it was the, the singular point of documenting the roles, that was able to dramatically change how we approached being able to hire these people without experience. And now I gotta tell you, I would not go back. I have no interest in ever going back unless the person with experience is an A player.

Evon: 58:32

Got it. Wow. And I, hearing you talk and just now I am, I'm remembering things. I've read about putting the right people in the right seats and, and, fitting everything you're describing, fitting people to their natural skills and abilities to the right role. And what I think what's hard, especially when you want to do right by this person, these candidates you're working for, and you're hearing their stories, whether it's manipulative or not, you know, it's, even if it's entirely sincere, you want to help help these people if you, especially if you are extremely em empathetic. but I think what's, what's lost, and I think what's hard to see is that long term, not only is that, is putting the wrong, wrong person in the wrong seat, bad for the business, I. But it's, it's, it's a disservice to that person as well because you are putting them in a role where they won't succeed long term. you're putting them through stress that that is probably unnecessary and eventually they'll end up leaving anyways. So you are, when you're fitting the right people in the right seats, you're not only doing your business a, a service, but you are doing these people a service by moving them onto other opportunities that are a better natural fit for them. So by, by, filtering out those candidates earlier in the process, I mean, you're, you're really doing a long-term service to them by not putting them in a position that they're not a natural, a natural fit at. Like, do you, do you agree? Do you see it the same way?

Mike Neal: 1:00:01

Oh, the right seats on the bus is critical for performance. but it, it happens before then. You need to have a bus and, you know, with. With our practice before Build My Team, we had all kinds of different modes of transportation. I think we had a group of people riding unicycles. It was terrible with flat tires, but had no training wheels. But we know we got to the stage where we had a bus and then we started to get people into the. The right people on the bus. And then, like I was mentioning, 50% of them applied for the wrong jobs. Well, that's moving'em from one seat on the bus to the other seat on the bus. And then, you know, when you get these team members, you can actually give them goals and they actually achieve it. You don't have to babysit you. You're not like you, you don't work with an A player the same way you do with somebody. You need to babysit. You tell them the, you know, here's what I, the way I describe it, is. I got these people on the bus and then I told them where I wanted them to drive the bus. I didn't tell'em how fast to drive the bus. What I did was instead focus on putting guardrails on the road. And what I mean by that is, you know, I told them everything we do at our practice is done for term, what's in the best long term, care of the patient. So everything is, first of all, I define long term. And, and this is where, a lot of practices falter. They're, they're focusing on the firefighting. Okay, so with a Build My Team approach, we have a concept called Talent Certainty. And this changes the entire game. How do you run your practice if you knew that within a reasonable period of time you could find somebody as good or better for each position, you're certain that you can get the talent that you need to run your practice. and when you start to take that approach, and that's a really. Awesome mindset shift, then you do things differently. So for example, instead of, what am I hoping to not fight a three alarm fire a month from now, you think in terms of, well, six to 12 months from now. I don't want to have these types of problems anymore. I don't want to have these types of culture problems anymore. I want to start moving everything towards the right people on the bus, the right seats on the bus. And when that happens, the you, you just wake up one morning, you're like, oh yeah, I haven't had to do firefighting for a little bit. Oh yeah, it's been like a a month. There's no fires. What do I do with myself? Well, what you do is you focus on fire prevention. And you, you, you focus on things like let's, have the team, you know, in downtime let's, brush up those manuals and become living documents.'cause there's always change in healthcare, you know, and the team members that we, we bring on with Build My Team, they love to learn. So that's, that's a positive to them, right? we're, we're simply no longer firefighters. We become Smokey the Bear, you know, we're fire prevention people and it. What you end up noticing by doing that is you now have time. The magic most incredible, thing that a doctor can possess is time. So you're not spending your time on the firefighting. You tell your team members, here's, the direction, you know, here's the map coordinates of where are you gonna drive the bus. Don't go off the road. And what I mean by that is I'll tell folks, you have leeway to make decisions in this position. If you need to come to me and ask me for permission for every single decision, you're not gonna be in this job for very long. I. I don't want that. I want you to make decisions. I trust you to make decisions. However, and here comes the, the, and, and I want you to make them within the following boundaries. Okay? So for certain things, you, you can, you know, you can pull the trigger on buying what you need from Sam's Club. but you're not going, going to institute new practice management software without, you know, a serious multi-level discussion with me and I'm using two exam, two extreme examples there. But when you do that, you can start to sit back and you realize that you have your team being able to do things that you couldn't do before. And this is what I alluded to before, net income. So our net income, and I've said this publicly, it more than doubled. In our practice, and this is something that folks just flat out don't believe me when I say, and it wasn't that we were horrendous before. We weren't great, by any means average. Um, but it more than doubled. So why did it more than double? Well, I'm in a mastermind right now and, next week I'm heading out to it. I looked at a bunch of the other practices numbers, all confidential numbers, so I won't say anything specific, but I noticed we're spending less on people. Then they are, and we did a quick back of the napkin analysis on that. And it's not that we're spending less on a dollar for dollar standpoint per hour. We have less people. They say, well, you know, okay, whoopty do, their practices are bigger. Uhuh per patient encounter. We have less people. Why? Well, because we have a players on the team. We might have a couple, you know, B pluses, but in general, we don't have, we don't have a single C player on the team. and did a little more digging,'cause I expect to be called on this. But these guys are, are, Great. They're gonna call me on this stuff. We have four less people than we used to. We went from 14 people down to 10 net income. I don't have that statistic off the top of my head. I'm sorry. gross income went up dramatically, but our net income doubled approximately. Doubled with four fewer people. How the heck is that possible? Right. Well, I'm telling you that when this whole bus thing, I didn't invent this, the, the whole thing was invented in a regular business that had nothing to do with healthcare. So the, the learning that I got out of this over the last, I'd say two years, business is the, the word business in eyecare is a bit of a four letter word. Well, I'm not in business to make money. Okay, let's be crystal clear about that. Now, please follow me on this. I'm in business to provide maximum value to our patients and in terms of value, what do they come? Why do they walk through our front doors for while they want to see better and they don't wanna go blind? That's what patients tell me. Right. So translation is they wanna see, in an optimal way. You know, some of'em, some are fine to seeing, okay, I don't get that. But, you know, they wanna see well and they wanna make sure that their eye health is protected. So that's how we provide maximum value to our patients. And we do everything in a long-term fashion. So now we have team members that are on board with that. And that's what they live and breathe. And I'm telling you definitively you want to get in big trouble with, with me, you don't do those two things In our practice, we will have a very difficult discussion. Well, truth is I don't ever get to that point because I see a slack saying that this person was, was just fired. That's happened to me. shocking. I get a, a slack from Frank saying that this person was just terminated. And I look at my slack and I'm like, oh my God. All those old feelings, the terror, you know, the terror just comes in and then I realize, okay, calm down. It's not like it used to be. Build My Team will fill this position with somebody better and there's gotta be one hell of a story behind this for something like that to occur. And it turns out the, the three times that has happened, absolutely one heck of a story that occurred. and so the. From my perspective on the practice ownership side, I don't wake up Monday morning scared to look at my phone. I. Okay. And the anybody who is, is actively running a practice knows exactly what I'm talking about. You pick up your phone Monday morning and it slides outta your hands onto the floor from your bedroom because your hands are already sweaty. You know, this is, this is, I'm laughing, but good Lord, it's so nerve wracking and like, who's not showing up today?

Evon: 1:08:39

Yeah.

Mike Neal: 1:08:39

Right. we don't have that problem. Sure. We have some people who are sick. I mean, we're recording this in January in the middle of the, the winter in Pennsylvania. You got, you got people who will be out sick and stuff like that, but it's nothing like it used to be. and. With with that, with the concept of talent certainty combined with the dramatic net income increase, our practice can now afford to make extremely long-term decisions. We are not running in any type of scarcity, we mentality, or terror or anything along those lines. What does that translate to for me? Well, since we started this process in 2018, more or less, it was somewhere 2020, late 2021, early 2022. Now, keep in mind that's about four years-ish, three to four years through covid, least enjoyable time in my career as everybody else's. It became fun. Showing up for work is now fun. It's enjoyable. We laugh. we have a great time. we're joking. We're, and you know, the thing is like the humor part does not come. You can't, you can't make your team happy. Okay. I hear this all the time from, from docs. well, we, we bought. We took'em here, we bought'em this, it was pizza day. Nobody seems to be happy'cause he got the wrong people on the bus. Okay. Take your pizza money, take your vacation money, spend it, on getting the right people on the bus. And when you do that, everything else starts to take care of itself. And I'm, I'm, you know, I'm talking about this and there are gonna be a lot of people just like shaking their head. However, there'll be some people that want to, want to try it and, I would argue are courageous enough to switch their mindset or at least be open to switching their mindset and giving it a shot. that's what we do. That's the entire purpose. and that's essentially how we start with practices. They're, they can, you know, they can be tired of spending all the money. they can be tired of the time investment and not getting the results. They could just be sick and tired of doing it themselves and, and, wanting a better approach. So from the Build My Team standpoint, what was delivered for our, our practice personally is something that's achievable for our client practices. so long as they have the mindset that you hire for strengths and talents. You put the right people on the bus, you put them into the right seats on the bus, you put the guardrails up, and then you get out of the way and you let them do their jobs. those are the pillars of, of what, make our process essentially special.

Evon: 1:11:39

I, I appreciate you saying all that. And I, you've, you've touched on what my final question was gonna be is what did you know, reflecting on how this impacted you and your own practice, what did it do for you in your relationship with your business and showing up each and every day? And what you've described is you, you enjoy the ownership experience more. You enjoy the day to day, more, less stress, less time putting out fires, more time to spend on other more valuable things that you could spend time on as a practice owner. clear financial rewards for making these important decisions in the business. You're able to generate more revenue with the, same dollars because you have a great team in, in the business. So, all things I think. I would imagine most, if not all practice owners would like to see in their own businesses is being able to stress less, to enjoy it more, and to think more long term, and to use their time and energy in ways that are, are more meaningful to their business and more enjoyable to them. So I, I appreciate you sharing all that and, appreciate you coming on. I mean, this has been great for me personally as a business owner who will soon hire, like I, it's made me think a lot. it, it's made me look back with fresh eyes at past, hiring experiences that I've seen and been a part of and, and looking forward and how I thought about that. And I, this is a pain point in, in so many practices that I'm having conversations with and just probably will forever continue to be an important topic and challenge for any small business. So, I appreciate you sharing this because it's, it's important to think through these things differently and to look at'em with fresh eyes and to try to improve the way we've always done things. So, I appreciate all of that. And where can people find and follow and learn more about what you're doing?

Mike Neal: 1:13:29

Sure. easiest thing to do is to go to BuildMyTeam.com, our website and schedule a consultation. they're free consultations, they're done. It's all scheduled so that, your time is respected and, the. The process of working with us is extraordinarily affordable. It costs far less to do to work with us than it does to, do it yourself and your practice. the fees are fixed. There's not a, I'm asked that quite a bit. There's not a percentage based upon how much the person costs, nothing like that. it's, it's really quite, well, our pricing reflects the fact that it's highly automated. I'll, I'll leave it at that. And again, It's all guaranteed. we have done this over and over and over again throughout the country, eight different healthcare professions. we're, you know, and we're, we're pretty good at it because of the fact that we take, the feedback we get from the hires. We incorporate it into our, our loop. We have a feedback loop, and so we just continuously get better and better at it. And that's something I'm really proud of. We get to help a lot of practices get out of this mess that they're in and change the, you know, the average, the average day for a practice owner just becomes better and better and better, the, you know, the higher quality team that you have and, that's exciting.

Evon: 1:14:49

Yeah. Well, I, I appreciate it again, for the listener. Appreciate your time and listening today. We will catch you all on the next episode. In the meantime, take care.