VMP 288: How To Create Systems That Grow Your Veterinary Practice With Rhys Giannarelli

Brandon 00:00:00  Welcome to the Veterinary Marketing Podcast, where it's all about how to attract, engage and retain clients to your veterinary practice using digital marketing. My name is Brandon Breshears. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen. In today's episode, we are talking to Rhys from Innovative Veterinary Management Solutions. You're not familiar with Rhys? He is producing tons of content on LinkedIn and he also has a podcast as well. But he is all about helping practices create businesses that serve them rather than becoming just an employee of the business. So we go into a deep dive today on how to create systems in your practice so that you're a business owner rather than just self-employed. We talk about different marketing aspects with building a business, including diving into membership and a few really interesting details. But Rhys owns two veterinary practices up in Canada and is really, really smart about how to become an operator that can build a business that's going to meet your goals and help to provide for you. So I think you're going to love this episode.

Brandon 00:01:11  the things that I like most about talking to Rhys is that he's not talking about things that are theoretical. He owns two practices and helps, practice owners all across the world with his consulting and things. So he has real world experience, which is amazing. it's also helpful to get answers on questions from people like Rhys, because I have never worked in a practice. I only help practices with marketing, so he knows about all of the inner workings of what goes on because he owns two currently. so I hope that you enjoy today's episode. If you have any questions or you need help with anything, don't hesitate to reach out. But without further ado, here's my interview with Rhys. Well, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast, Rhys. I really appreciate it. So for those who don't know you yet, can you give us a little bit of background of how you got into vet med and what you do right now.

Rhys 00:02:01  Sure. First of all, thank you very much for having me on.

Rhys 00:02:04  Brandon, I really appreciate it and feel honored to do so. A little bit about me. I have two practice owners. Sorry. I have two practices in Vancouver, Canada. My wife is the vets. I think that's how I fell into it. She needed a partner in managing her, but near the hospital, and I thought, I thought it would be easy. I come from a very vast background of hospitality of 27 years. I had my own cafes. Again, I thought it would be easy. And let me tell you, I was wrong. I was wrong for the first two years and I had to find out very quickly how to swim. But there were a lot of resources out there that helped me. I was able to fine tune our own metrics, as well as the KPIs of the industry, and found what worked for us.

Brandon 00:02:57  Very cool. One of the things that I think is really interesting is that you go on vacation and like, you have a fun time on vacation.

Brandon 00:03:05  I think that's actually really unique for any business owner. because you're amazing at building out systems and building a business, not just the job for yourself.

Rhys 00:03:15  And so that's that's right. You said the key word building a business, not a job. And a lot of the I preach the preach the become a business owner. Don't be a business operator. motto.

Brandon 00:03:29  Well, the thing I think that I talked to so many practices and I would say I'm trying to think about the percentages. I would say it's like 97% of the people that I talk to that are practice owners are self-employed in that they are the employee, that if they walk away, everything stops and comes to a halt. And it's the bottleneck for every single piece, including marketing, like marketing is not a system at all. It's something that they have to do or else it doesn't get done. So when you're thinking about how do we take this person who's a self-employed person to becoming a business owner, which is, I think, probably what they thought it would be like, what is like the first step that people need to think about? Especially we talk about marketing here, but I think you could apply like the same systems for marketing to all of the other aspects of the business.

Brandon 00:04:16  So what is the first thing that we need to to think about and focus on when we're trying to say, okay, we don't want to be the bottleneck that's going to hold up everything here.

Rhys 00:04:25  The first thing that I always say is, what is it that you want to achieve? Like what is your five year goal? Where do you want to go? Once you've established that and how you've, I guess, written that and translated that onto pen to paper, which you would want to find out how you want to bite that elephant into small chunks. And again, you should be building that also. But the most important thing is to be able to build a system so other people can do the things that you would normally do on a day to day. So, for instance, I'll use you as an example if I if you hired me as your assistants, you want me to do the things that you don't want to do anymore. That's how I would assume that role would be taken. But would you expect me to do the same thing as what you would do and how you would do it just by walking in? The answer is no.

Rhys 00:05:17  Your expectation is going to be very different to what you hide yourself. So you can't have an expectation of me to do the exactly the same thing that you do to your standards. So how are you going to teach me? You're going to put in a CIP or a standard operating procedures on how to do this, step by step to a standard of your liking. This is the same thing that what we do here, everything that we do, everything that we do, I mean, we're probably now 70% systemized. We will never be 100%. And that's just the way life is. And that's okay. But what I can do is be confident that if I need to replace the CSR tomorrow, I can have someone walk in and know how to input a new client just by following an SOP and that that can be accessible. And here's the next part that should be accessible within 10s. And that's how we map what some systems can be. So after you've done that, I mean, I know I've gone on a bit of a tangent or a rant, but after I've done that, then I delegate all my workout and I work on a model to delegate myself out of a job.

Rhys 00:06:29  Basically.

Brandon 00:06:31  That's, I think, the goal of everybody, right? Like that's that's what we ultimately want. when we're thinking about marketing, as far as the system in your practice, at what kind of priority do you give that with respect to like systems when you're approaching it? I'm curious, like what you think is like management and standard of care. And like all of the other things that a hospital does, where do you put marketing in? Kind of like the hierarchy of needs when it comes to systems and thinking about that. I'm curious.

Rhys 00:07:02  Are we talking about my practices? Are we talking about IBM's?

Brandon 00:07:06  I would say, your practices and also like let's say let's say we have a self-employed practice owner who is running everything and trying to keep the wheels on, and they know they need to do marketing. At what point do you think that it's kind of important to prioritize that versus other systems within their their practice? Because like when I think about marketing, for example, like the hierarchy of needs is bottom of funnel, we always have to make sure conversion is the focus.

Brandon 00:07:34  Then we can add stuff that's going to increase our awareness and evaluation. Because if conversion is solid, then I know that it's time to pour on traffic and we're going to get better results. Right? Yeah. So kind of to that effect with systems and with specifically with marketing and things. Where do you think that kind of lands in terms of like fixing the the house in Bettman?

Rhys 00:07:57  So I think where I start here is, you know, I delegated my marketing off to an RBT who loves social media. And that was the best thing that I've done because I saved myself three hours, a week doing that. And she does it in less time but understands what my needs are. So we were able to put pen to paper and say, this is what my needs are. This is our unique selling niches. This is who we want to market and this is how you want to target. I gave her all the framework to plug and play and she played with the ideas. It didn't matter what it came out.

Rhys 00:08:31  It's what I needed, the purpose of what I wanted. But she's the creative one in saying, I want to do these funny videos and I want to do these cute pictures. You know what? I don't have to pound the pavement anymore. But they did it. And how important this is, it becomes a genuine, authentic and unique marketing campaign that I didn't have. I have more of a, you know, a corporate mindset, and I didn't want to translate that throughout marketing. But these these my team, they don't have that mindset. And that was the best thing that I could have done to to outsource that to my team. So they put their touch on it. I'm not in the trenches. They are. And they want I want my my clients to see them in the habitat, interacting with their clients or their pets. And it's going to be a genuine, authentic and relatable content. So when you say how important that is, it's very important. It's our message, it's who we are, but it's how we translate that to the world.

Brandon 00:09:41  Yeah, totally makes sense when you're thinking about setting up these systems, right? You have you have your goal and your outcome. That's like where we want to be. But how many KPIs do you think you need to have between, like the goal and how we achieve success? Because I think a lot of people are probably overwhelmed by specifically like I mean, within marketing, you have things as granular as like what our click through rate is all the way up to how many new clients we have, which is kind of the broadest measure of success. So when you're thinking about building systems, how do you go about determining kind of how many KPIs you're going to focus on and how granular, granular do you think you need to get when it comes to practice owners in particular? Okay.

Rhys 00:10:24  So I have three tiers. I have a scoreboard. So the scoreboard is something that my team sees. We have five things that my team look at monthly. That's their scoreboard. That is something that like how are we doing this month.

Rhys 00:10:42  That's the scoreboard I have the data, the coach's scoreboard where I look at. You know, if we want to look at football in your in your, in America, how many touches, how many yards gained or how many touchdowns and or things like that. I don't know American football very well, but.

Brandon 00:11:05  I don't either. I'm sorry.

Rhys 00:11:06  I guess, but you know, if you if you were a coach of any sport, you have all these back and back data, the background data that you have like a database of information that you work through, it tells you a story. So how in-depth you want to get, you know, I think that I have maybe I don't know. Another 15 on top of that that, you know, core metrics that I would I would say you can go granular even further, but I feel like that's a bit of overkill for the normal practice. I'm not sure. the the other tier is something that we call a scorecard, and we use this scorecard to ensure that I can track something weekly.

Rhys 00:11:52  I know what my metrics are per week that I need to hit on an overall scale, and I think there's 9 or 10 scorecards that we can just get numbers very, very quickly on. and I know where we are within by the end of the week, basically, this is where we are. This is what we need to look at. If there's a problem. We'll have a look at that. Let's let me look at this particular problem. And you're able to nail down what what the problematic issue is if you can I mean if there's a trend there's a problem. If it's a one off, you look at it and go, let me see about that next week. If it's off again, you might raise an eyebrow. But if it continually be is off, there is something wrong and broken and that you don't have to wait for the whole year or a quarter. It's wrong within the first two weeks and you go, something's wrong here. Let me have a look at that. So in real time.

Rhys 00:12:49  So your answer, your question to me a while ago is how do can I go overseas and enjoy my time? I only have to log in to look at those. Those, 5 or 6. Sorry. Seven, eight, nine numbers and go, we're okay. And it takes me all of five seconds to do that.

Brandon 00:13:08  That makes sense. I think that's that's beautiful. when I look at marketing from my side of the thing where we're managing clients ads and things, we're looking at the overall like macro goals, and then if we have trouble in those macro issues, then we go and dive into the micro conversion problems and then we see, okay, like the the ad copy is wrong here. So we're not getting the right amount of clicks or, you know, break it down like that. So I'm, I see that it would probably be pretty similar in that And how often do you think or how long do you think you should give before you, like, really do deep dives into like what the problem is? Because I see this a lot in in advertising, especially on a daily basis.

Brandon 00:13:55  If somebody is slow in practice, like Google is not consistent with traffic, there will be swings in traffic on a daily basis. And so like one day is completely slow. And if somebody doesn't have clients coming in like they notice it and then the next day is fine, right? So how responsive do you think you should be as a practice owner to these kind of KPIs. And is it like a week trend? And if you're off two weeks in a row or what do you think about that?

Rhys 00:14:24  I give grace somewhere, some somewhere I give grace. And it depends on how far off I'm off my target. If I'm like a little bit off, I don't really blink too much. But if I'm way off and I'm severely off, I know what that bottom line, how that bottom line is going to be affected. So I get these. Do I need to worry about this. What are the other numbers? What are the other numbers. Tell me because usually they're all entwined. They're all connected somewhere somehow.

Rhys 00:14:50  And if these numbers off, then I know that that number over there might be off. But if that number is not, then I have to think to myself, have we missed collecting on an R? And do we have an I? Outstanding. Is that why my my total is down or did we, did we have a statutory holiday. Is that why my number is down. If you were to look at take Christmas and New Year's this choose the holidays. Within two weeks I'm going to be down to two days. I know that, but you know, maybe there's an increment. Whether that forced me to close. These are the stories that we need to tell ourselves. When something's wrong, is something wrong, or is there a reason behind it? You know, I my X-ray, dental X-ray broke down two days ago. So I had to cancel two pencils. I now know that my, my weekly total is going to be down.

Brandon 00:15:45  Yep.

Rhys 00:15:46  Right in, in that 2 to 2 phases.

Rhys 00:15:50  Did I make that up in, appointments. I'm not too sure yet, but I'll know by the end of the week being end of today how how he fit. But I will know within five seconds if it's red or if it's green. Those are my. Those are my towels.

Brandon 00:16:07  That's that's really cool. one of the things that I don't have a lot of insight into, because I just kind of show up and run ads for people is specifically pricing. And I think pricing was so pretty common that people don't want to be low priced, and they don't really have, most of the time, anything that's unique about their practice. Yeah. And so they just are kind of trying to command premium prices typically, and they don't want to discount and things like that. How often are you looking at price as a like function of a service of a business and like as a system of the business. How often do you think practices should be looking at their prices for procedures and things like that?

Rhys 00:16:46  So this is a this is a grenade.

Rhys 00:16:49  This is a grenade question. And I say this because you can look at it quarterly. You can look at it semi monthly sorry semi-annually. Or you can look at this annually. The the issue here is at this time I would say that our vet care is getting really expensive and we need to be conscious and sensitive of pricing our own clients out of care. It's getting to a point where we probably cannot go up in much more, because we're going to price people out of care, but if we don't, we're going to get squeezed the other way through, you know, our labs. And then the inflation of just general things just being more expensive. So we need to be a bit more creative on how we create both value to our clients. And are we asking them to pay a bit more? Maybe. Maybe not. But can we be more creative and maybe, you know, shorten an appointment by 5 or 10 minutes to fit another appointment in? Are we asking our team to work harder again? Potentially.

Rhys 00:17:59  But is it more efficient rather than harder? Can we do one less person and be more efficient. Can we use the power of AI and reduce our wage. We're offsetting cost for something else. But we just need to constantly be aware of what things cost. Once we're aware what things cost, you can able to play with that. Do I really need this? You know, dazzle of an app over here? Do I really need this thing every day? But what is my biggest ROI and what is my biggest time? Suck. What? These are the. I would look at more costs than increasing prices first, because we're already at our, I believe anyway that we are at our elasticity of increasing prices.

Brandon 00:18:49  I think that's probably true. And I see practices that continue to just raise prices. and it's interesting to see kind of what and how practices are presenting value. and I see that I'm seeing right now the rise of kind of bait and switch marketing tactics to get people in the door, like corporate groups.

Brandon 00:19:11  I'm not going to name anybody, but, I see them advertising prices of exams, and then they get bad reviews because it's upsell city, like they're just upselling like crazy. So it's a loss leader exam fee, but then it's nickel and diming them every chance they get. I think it's really interesting to get your perspective on this, but where do you think Vet Med is going to go here in the next maybe 12 months? It's hard to say. Beyond that, I see, and you're in Canada and I think you're facing inflationary pressure, probably more so than than we are in the States. But I think everyone's feeling it to some extent. So where do you think we're going to be in 12 months?

Rhys 00:19:58  I don't think corporate will stop buying or purchasing. I think it will slow down. I do think that things will come back to pre-pandemic times and where we will see a normalization of the same, just slightly increased patient visits than what it was pre-pandemic. But I think it's going to be tough for for our practices, because even though we're seeing less people, our wages won't come down.

Rhys 00:20:30  now that was stagnant there. Probably stay where they are for a few more years, but they will never come down. not in support team anyway. Maybe vets. They might get the home 200,001 50 signing bonuses anymore. They'll, you know, get to normalized and maybe hover around the 120 to 140 salary. But I don't think the support team will would move down.

Brandon 00:21:02  and they're pretty much most support teams are already at the bottom like there's nowhere to go down.

Rhys 00:21:06  That's right. They're already.

Brandon 00:21:07  There. And you know that's right.

Rhys 00:21:11  But you know our our costs are going to continue to increase. That won't stop. And I fear that we may just. The private practices may may hurt a lot more than corporates because they can wear Where the brands they we've got now online stores that are just killing the the pharmaceutical pharmaceutical portion of our business. And I know that the states have been through this. You know, for the last three, three years. And it's really hurt them. We're getting it now.

Rhys 00:21:48  So we're three years behind, but we get them now. Chewy's coming to Canada. How do we combat that? We don't know just yet. Is the answer. We don't know.

Brandon 00:21:58  definitely don't help him out when they call for prescription.

Rhys 00:22:00  Well, we've already said that. We won't we won't be filling out any prescriptions. Any. And we won't be doing anything like that. And if they want to buy from there, they can buy it from there. But we won't be. We won't be helping them out in any case. But, you know, it's really hard to say, Brandon, where the 12 months would go. I mean, I'm I want to continue to help private practice owners in being a better business for themselves because it is a business. It's not a it's not a place of work. I mean, you go there to work. It's a business. A business that you should look to sell at some point, whether it be independent ownership or transfer or to corporate. I'm not going to I'm not going to blame anyone from going to corporate if they can get generational wealth from it.

Rhys 00:22:43  And we shouldn't we shouldn't be like that at all. But if we can, if I can help them stay true and stay profitable. So that way they can have a life and support the community. That's what I'm there for.

Brandon 00:22:58  I think that's probably a I, I totally agree, and I think, you know, I know so many people who've sold to corporate groups and they just got great offers and it makes total sense. I they work really hard their whole lives. And I think that you should generate as much value from your assets as possible. And so I'm totally in agreement with you on that, that front. so I, I agree too, I don't have the insight that you do, but I think the input costs are going to just continue to go up. So supplies and devices and, you know, like your X-ray machines and everything is going to continue to go up in cost. But I think one of the ways to offset those problems are going to be reducing your client churn, reducing turnover in your practice, which is, you know, time to train people and get them in.

Brandon 00:23:51  And then also increasing the lifetime value of your clients by possibly increasing compliance per year or, you know, having a specific kind of ascension ladder that you drive your, your clients through. And that's one thing that I've been really thinking a lot about. because if it costs, let's say, cost $100 to generate a client, the more revenue you generate from that, the better your return on investment is for sure.

Rhys 00:24:16  Yeah, of course, but that's why, you know, marketing is very important because you need to be able to send a message out to your clients. You need them to know who sure you are? No. You're wise, they say, but they need to be able to trust you. And if you can get the trust through your. Through marketing in general, and put a perspective on it that relates to them and is true to who they are, you may be able to have more clients coming through those doors and taking them away from your competitors, whether it be corporate independence.

Rhys 00:24:49  But the sign has always been the strong will survive.

Brandon 00:24:56  Definitely. When when you're thinking about your ideal clients, do you map out like what an annual kind of purchase history looks like? are you thinking like, okay, they come in twice a year for exams. They do rentals once a year with the full cleaning and radiographs, and then they also do a blood panel, like, are you thinking that level of detail or is that something that is just not really thought about in

Rhys 00:25:24  Do we think about that? We track it. We don't think about it. I mean, we say, well, how many people have not visited us in the last 18 months? And we look at that and go, okay, are they still active? Are they still in the system? Can we go through them to see if they've requested records to go to another vet? So they move city? Now what does that look like. And then we can actually adjust our client list accordingly. now, I haven't yet completed 2024 because our fiscal year is January is in July.

Rhys 00:25:54  I'm sorry. So I'll look at that then. But when we do look at our client list. Yeah, I have I think we went from 3000 almost to 1700 now active. We had to go through that because after the puppy boom ever went back to their normal lives and either surrendered the pets or moved city, or went to the original vet that couldn't get sane for a year. You know that. That was the life. So did we lose half a client last year? Almost. But this is our active clients. That people still see us. So do we market. We market to them. But you know, when we say how what do we what does it look like when they come through? We do anticipate to see them twice. we have a, a membership that you can have a, an annual membership and it's unlimited exams. But we had to map 1700 clients how many times they walk through those doors. And we said, okay, if 500 clients bought this, how much would it cost us? We would still be in front because the average person came in, you know, 2.7 times a year.

Rhys 00:27:09  Yeah. So we said, okay, we would we would be in front if they only came in to 2.7 times a year.

Brandon 00:27:17  That's that's really interesting. I know that there's a lot of people that are considering membership type programs similar to that, or wellness plans and things like that. At what kind of cadence do you suggest people review that data? Is it an annual basis you're looking at, just like compliance and revenue per customer in each of the segments, or what are you thinking about there?

Rhys 00:27:36  Well, we looked at everyone who's on the membership plan and see how many times they came in. We wanted to ensure that it wasn't being abused. but I think out of the the memberships that we've sold, I think we flagged two people that came in more times than what we allowed for, not allowed, but what the system allowed for. and they were only over then by by two. So, you know, are we still in front overall? Well, the answer is yes. Yeah. Overall we're still in front.

Rhys 00:28:07  Is it still viable? Yes. The doctors were concerned with my production, my production, my production. But when we look at these numbers, we can still say to them, hey, you know, they wouldn't have come in if they didn't have this. And it's peace of mind. It's the value that we keep talking about. But it's peace of mind to know that fluffy's okay, because they ate that one grape that was on the floor or something like that. Yeah. and it's, you know, Fluffy's tired today. I can't bring it in now we will look at fluffy and say, do we need to do a blood test? But we will do a checkup first and say, yes, life is fine, go home or hey, something's wrong here. We need to do a blood test or we need to do this or whatever test that man look like. But the fact is, when and I did this in the early stages, would you have come in if you didn't have this membership? Probably not.

Rhys 00:29:05  And if I didn't spend anything today that's fine. But I did the following development time. They'll probably in. Yeah. So you know overall if they didn't spend the first two times but they did this the third or fourth time we got our money back.

Brandon 00:29:19  Got it. when you think about client acquisition, do you think to try to. Is it your goal to break even on first visit, or do you think you should try to break even on an annual visit? Or what's your perspective on that?

Rhys 00:29:36  Repeat the question for me again.

Brandon 00:29:37  Yeah. So if you have your customers, and you have, I mean, different metrics to measure their value. You have first visit value, lifetime value, annual value, things like that. Which metric do you think is most important when you are considering cost for acquisition of customers? So again, let's say your cost 100 bucks to get them in. Yeah, that first visit.

Rhys 00:29:59  A lifetime ago.

Brandon 00:30:03  if it's a hundred bucks to get them in and let's say average transactions 400 and something dollars.

Brandon 00:30:09  are you always considering the first visit value, or are you trying to get an annual value, trying to think about lifetime value of a customer. What is most important to you?

Rhys 00:30:18  Well, the lifetime value. And we're not just saying about the lifetime value of a pet, because a pet can that that client can get a pet three times in their lifetime. And it's not just about that one client. It's about the the brother, the sister, the son, the daughter and the grandchildren thereafter. I mean, we we would have grandparents come through that now. Sorry. Clients that come through that the grandchildren who now have pets have come to us. So this is not a a lifetime of one pets. This is a relationship that you're building with the client. Yes, I was the the patient as well. But the client is 70 years potentially then generational clients clients are from there. I mean we talk about word of mouth is one thing, but when I because my dad came here or because my grandfather came here, I used to come here with my grandparents when they had their dog, and we would have records of that, and we would see them grow up, too.

Rhys 00:31:21  So they would put a face to our building. And yeah, I've been here many times with my grandparents. This is something that this is ingrained loyalty.

Brandon 00:31:34  That makes total sense. I think that that's actually I've never heard anybody talk about generational clients. And but I like that perspective because it makes you value them so much more. Like if you're thinking, okay, this person's grandchildren are going to come in one day. And that's like the the benchmark that we're trying to hit for success. So I really like that as a marketer. I'm always trying to break even at first visit. Right. Because we're trying to decrease cost as much as possible. But I think from a service standpoint and systems and building out a practice that's successful, if you think more long term like that, I think you're going to always win. And so I really like that one thing that I wanted to talk to you about too, that I think you probably have a lot more of experience around than I do specifically, would be like doing alternative media like direct mail and physical mail pieces and physical reminders and things like that.

Brandon 00:32:24  I think the the trend is just to go far more digital, like probably past five years. But when you're thinking about mix of media for your practice, what do you think about traditional media versus digital media and how are you varying that?

Rhys 00:32:40  Yeah, you know, I think we're starting to see a silent shift in terms of media usage. I think that people are moving away from digital media. I'm not saying that the completely out, but I think there is an intentional shift to be off our computers or off our phones, much more to be present with our with our family. Now, we've recently the past year, I should say, took the took the roots of advertising in the local magazine. I wanted to see what that looked like. Did we get a ton of paper from it? The answer is no, but we don't know if they came in and said, I saw your magazine ad. We don't know that. But what we do know is that that magazine was in every single, shopfront in that neighborhood for free, and everyone picked it up at the local coffee shop to have a read, whether or not they said, I saw your ad or they just kept me on top of mind.

Rhys 00:33:42  I don't know. Did we see an influx? We saw an influx, absolutely. In a specific area. We don't know. we didn't we didn't track that specific neighborhood. We just tracked the area. So this, this, you know, catchment. but it was interesting because we would have the same magazines in our, you know, waiting room, and people would read it, and it was just an observation that they weren't on the phone. They were reading a magazine. So is. Is these leaflets or is this mailbox still an option? I think there is a still room for it, but I think you need to be able to pick the moment that you want to use it to be much more, you know, in-person or relatable or sentimental. it has to be a a intentional marketing campaign, not just because, like the real estate agents do. You know, I would do it because it means something like we did. The magazine actually was for the, the memberships. I chose the magazine for the memberships to do the memberships for the magazines, and we did that for the whole year.

Rhys 00:34:55  Okay. you know, I did that to digital as well, but I chose, you know, print for that reason.

Brandon 00:35:05  I think that's I think that's really interesting. I've been thinking about that more because I've had several clients that want to do direct mail. And so they'll ask me, you know, should we send out direct mail? We're going to do like 7000 homes in our area. And I'll typically say like, it's definitely effective, but I would get more refined and try to target 1000 people seven times instead of 7000 people once, because they're not going to get the same frequency. You're going to be too broad and so get much more detailed than in the States. They have this thing called Every Door Direct, which is a really cool mail system. You can choose the routes that you drop off at. but I, I agree, I think, I think there is an open space in physical media. just because everybody actually 20, 22 was the first year that, digital media beat out all traditional media options.

Brandon 00:35:55  And so, it's interesting and I think about Amazon, for example, like they send out an annual Christmas holiday guide that's just like a kid's toy guide. And if you have kids and they know you do. Somehow. I don't know how, but they do. They'll send you a catalog, and then your kids will circle everything that they want and you buy stuff from it. So I think there's definitely. I really like the the thought, though, of being intentional with it, not just being like a realtor where you just throwing stuff against the wall and they're they're the worst. Don't copy realtors. For sure. I used to be a realtor there.

Rhys 00:36:30  Oh really?

Brandon 00:36:32  It was real estate broker, too, and terrible at marketing in general. So don't copy realtors. That's a rule to live by for sure. But, yeah, I think I think that's really, really interesting. when it comes to making sure that your systems are kind of just running and things without you having to have input in them.

Brandon 00:36:57  What is your thought about having services in-house versus hiring out? And, how do you go about deciding how to do that.

Rhys 00:37:07  Which services are you talking about?

Brandon 00:37:08  For marketing services in particular? I think it's a great area for that. Or is it kind of dependent on like if you see something that comes up.

Rhys 00:37:22  you know. I feel like I'm going to give you a bit of a wishy washy answer here. for our standard Facebook Instagram, TikTok posts, I gave it to the generation that lives on it. for our Google Ads kind of SEO. I give it to someone who knows more about it than I do. And I think self-awareness is a big thing. You need to be self-aware that if you do have a skill or lack of, you need to be aware of that and give it to the people that are stronger in that department than you. The way I'll look at anything, the way I delegate anything, and I think this is a timber that you can use is if you've I have like a four quadrant thing and I have things that I love to do, things that I'm okay doing, things I don't like to do, but I have to do and things I absolutely hate doing, but I do.

Rhys 00:38:20  I look at that and then I say, how much do I get paid per hour? And I say, how much time do I allocate per each item? And I put a time for it. And then I say, okay. For my hourly wage, our time is about the hours spent on this thing per week, and then I times it by the year. And if I've spent more than it cost somebody else to do, well, that time that I've spent on it, I should, in theory, generate at least 4 to 5 times worth of that, hourly wage. Or, you know, we want to make sure that opportunity cost is always factored into everything. So if my cost is the same or higher than what it costs somebody else to do, that knows more about it than I do theory. They should have a higher, opportunity cost than I. Who knows? Nothing but just doesn't want to pay for it. So now. And I'll reallocate that time to something else that I can absolutely affect.

Brandon 00:39:18  Yeah.

Rhys 00:39:19  Does that make sense?

Brandon 00:39:20  Absolutely. Yeah, I think too. looking at it that way, is it going to help you to grow? I, I think and I've been noticing this specifically in my business that like, when I hit specific levels of, of income, if I want to try to grow revenue and things, it's usually not because of lack of opportunity, but rather lack of systems. And so I'll hit a point where, like, I just don't have the support. And so if I get past that, it'll break and then I'll fall back down to kind of the the thermostat level that allows me to have that happen. And so I think, I think so having people like you who have gone before, It's really, really valuable because you're talking out of experience and you're actively doing it. and so for people who are interested in building out systems and helping to turn their practice into a business, what kind of things do you help with? And, and how can you help people?

Rhys 00:40:20  Oh, yeah.

Rhys 00:40:22  let me just see if I can sum this up in about two minutes. if you do not have a vision or a five year goal on paper, that's your first step. Then you need to work yourself backwards in to make it, you know, very small, bite sized goals that is going to compound to get you that five year goal. So just be in mind that however you plan your goals, they are going to amount to your five year goal. But you know, yes, be realistic as well. It's okay to aim for the sky, but your goals need to be attainable and realistic as well because otherwise you don't want to set yourself about this. Set yourself up for failure from the get go. Once you've got that alone, you tend to your vision. They need to be on the same book. They need to know why you're doing what you're doing. This generation that you have in your practices right now. They need to know why they have information at their fingertips. They will not do anything without understanding why.

Rhys 00:41:20  Then, as much as I hate to say this, but you need to give them a reason to work for you, not just a paycheck, because they can get a paycheck anyway. They want to know why they want to be involved. They want to know that their opinion is included or at least heard. That's the most important part, is that they need to be heard. You can say no, but at least they know that they've been heard. Align your team with your vision. If you have core values, fantastic. Ask yourself, when were they made? Were they made with the people that still existed today, where they may be people who have already left five years ago? You just forgot about them. But if you do have them and I will make with the people that you have them. Ask yourself. Go to any team member that weren't involved in making it and ask him, can you name their core values? If they can't, your core values don't really exist. If you do not have core values, make them.

Rhys 00:42:13  Make them with your team. Are actually funny, funny facts. most of the clinics that I go into and help, their core values is more of a mission statement, not a core value. So we have to, you know, realign that to the team as well. Yeah. that's your that's your team. Once you understand all of that and you've got that in place, then you should should find out how you're going to measure your core values to your team, because that is going to give you a standard. You have a standard for medicine. You should have one for your team as well to hold everybody accountable for it. Yeah. Fast forward. after all that's done, you want to systemize your practice. You've got the you've got the people on the right seat in the right bus, singing the same song. Going to aligning with your vision. Now systemize everyone's positions so that way they can get you there faster.

Brandon 00:43:07  Totally makes sense. I think that's super clear. And, I also think that that is tremendously important from a marketing standpoint so that you can communicate your brand quickly and easily with everybody.

Brandon 00:43:21  I would bet that in most businesses that if you asked what your mission statement or vision, for the business was, you probably would just get a million different answers from everybody. So, you have to know, I think especially with marketing now, with how niche it is, you have to know not only who you're for, but also what you're against. And so, because if you try to be toilet paper and as broad as that, you know, product everybody can use, it's just not not going to be effective. And especially with how niche marketing is these days. You have to appeal to certain niche demographics that you can. It's like reverse of what you think you'd want to go for. You know, typically thinking, I want to go for as broad of an audience as possible, but you're just white noise at that point and nobody cares. And so you just don't even stand out. So I really like that. Well, can you tell me about and I've seen some of the things that you have on your site as far as tools and, and really cool tools that you've developed on there.

Brandon 00:44:19  Can you tell me a little bit about those? Because I think that'd be tremendously valuable for everybody.

Rhys 00:44:23  Yeah. you know, I spent years developing these tools not for, you know, for public use, but for my own use. And the more I, the more I started doing my own thing, the more people asked for certain resources. And like, I have a tool for that. I have a tool for that. And it became this, I don't know, this, this, this wonderful calculation that I can do. Anyone can do really within minutes of, you know, how how do you know when, what you can afford and when you. When you interview or hire a doctor. Most people say, well, what are you paying? What are you paying? Maybe I should offer that. The actual answer is what can your practice really afford? Because everyone's different. You can be low cost. You can be high touch. You could say see less or see more. They are very different, models from salary to base plus to pro.

Rhys 00:45:21  So these are all very different ways of paying our doctors. But how do you know what you can actually afford? What is your budget. We'll have a tool for that. So if you go to our website am I allowed to type in my website?

Brandon 00:45:35  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Rhys 00:45:37  I got a website, EVM as well EVM solution. So I for India, V for Victor and for Mary's solutions.org and go to backslash calculators. You'll see that there's a number of tools. One being, as I just said, what is your TVM budget? I have another one for finding out what the true cost of an employee is. Not everyone understands what goes into the cost of employee, so it's very important to understand that. I have a incentive bonus program. So if you want to incentivize your team to reach certain goals, they can get a pool of money at the end of the quarter or year or six months however you want to do it. and it's all based on hours worked tenure with the company.

Rhys 00:46:28  and goals reached. It's it's very, objective is not nothing about how much I like you or dislike you anymore. there is another one for retention. Bonus. How long have you been with the company? If you want to reward loyalty for five, seven, ten years. Again, it's very objective. I have another one here for. You know How? Like it's a budgeting system. I can effectively budget your whole practice for up to a year, and I am within 5 to $10,000 plus minus on what that looks like. So we can actually effectively map out your costings for the whole year. But what is important about this one is you can see where you are over or under the KPIs. Great to be under, but not great to be over. So we can actually tailor that towards your practice. And what is it special to you? Because you could be at dentistry, you could be equine, you could be GP or mixed. And we can we can change that ever so slightly to map it towards your unique practice.

Rhys 00:47:34  and the last one and it's more tailored towards the Canadian folk, but you can use it in the American sector. Is that a automatic fee guide? Popular. So if you were to input what your current prices are on certain items and you input what the fee guide of your VMA or area is over the last year or even two years, three years, however you want it back, you want to go. It can tell you how much a certain item has increased over year by year, and what your current price is and what you're over or under. It automatically gives you a suggested price for that. For that item, you can change it, you can go with it, you can increase it. It doesn't matter. But as long as you know there is a somewhat benchmark on how much you can actually go up. What this absolutely also does is if you find that you are way under on a item that you know, the fee guide says, and you say, oh, I can go up $20, maybe you can't, but what you can do is you're aware of it now, but what you can do is incrementally over the course of four quarters, go up 3 or 4% to get to that stage.

Rhys 00:48:47  So not many, not many people are going to ask the question, what happened to the $20? You know, it's not a massive jump. So I think it gives you a, a data based, blueprint of where you are.

Brandon 00:49:04  That's that's amazing. And I think, this is like the curse of most small businesses that when they look at either pricing or hiring, like they look at the market. And in ten years, I statistically like 70% of those businesses won't be here. So you're you're basing your bets on losers for the most part. There aren't going to be around. And so kind of sticking yourself somewhere in the middle is a recipe for disaster. And so, you know, as much as we don't. And when I say we the vendor industry doesn't want to compete on price, it's the easiest way for customers to value or gauge value. Right? If something costs $20 and something cost $30, and in their mind they're the same product, they're going to go for the $20 one.

Brandon 00:49:47  And so, I think being intentional and building out pricing systems, hiring systems, all of this is just incredibly important. So I really appreciate it. And I've seen you showed me these tools. They're really cool how they work and they're dynamic and they'll change automatically. So it does save so much time. So can you give everybody I know you have all kinds of events that you do webinars, trainings, all kinds of things. Where can people find more and how can they get in touch with you?

Rhys 00:50:15  Yeah, I mean, most actually all my information is on my website. Again, that's WWE dot Ivm solutions.org. You can find everything from events to training to there's calculators, blogs. anything that really I live and breathe on is on there. I even have resources on. If you're setting up a new practice or want to revamp your employee manual job descriptions. face training. human resource templates. They're all on there as well. So it's a I wanted to say that's a one stop shop. There's obviously things I don't do.

Rhys 00:50:56  Marketing is one of them. That's Brandon's kind of thing.

Brandon 00:51:00  Yeah.

Rhys 00:51:01  but, you know, when it comes to setting up a system, I'm, I can say I'm, I'm the only one who does it in our industry. There is an a system out there who is very specific. And that's something that I like to, be known as the, the king of or the prince of whichever. You know, you want to look at me, but, you know, that's something that I pride myself being the first on. This is the first system that is designed specifically for our industry. There's systems out there that exist. Absolutely. But they're not specific to our industry.

Brandon 00:51:32  Yeah, definitely. And having that insight, just like you said, going into it, it's so funny. I had somebody I was talking to, they were able to buy a franchise practice and they got for no franchise fee, and they had been a vet and they were like, well, how hard can it be? And they are just losing money in it because it is hard.

Brandon 00:51:51  So it's not even the same as, you know, practicing. It's difficult. So I really, really appreciate the resources that you do and all the training and your podcast too. And so we'll link to all of this in the show notes. Give a shout out for your podcast too because your podcast is great as well.

Rhys 00:52:08  Appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Brandon 00:52:10  Well, thank you for your time. And it was great having you on. We'll hope to have you on sometime soon again. So thank you.

Rhys 00:52:18  Again. Thank you so much, Brendan. I really appreciate it. Thanks very, very fun being here.

‍