[Interview] Ari interview about increasing efficiency if private practice

Hello and welcome to Podiatry, practice Mastery, done felt. So here I have already here and we're going to be talking about how to optimize your Podiatry practice. Thank you. So, tell me a little bit about, I think we originally heard from you from Dean Jackson and Joe polish. And I think they originally recommended some of your, some of your work with in terms of optimizing, and if people want to listen, they can read your books. Could you explain kind of how

you got into this? But have you worked specifically with any, with any medical practice or medical Medical? Practitioners. Oh, yes. I have worked with many both. I've worked with private hospitals. I've won. So, I also work as a volunteer as an EMT. So, I have seen that side of the hospital system and medical profession as well. And continue just want regular basis, and there's an enormous founded and efficiency there. So, yes, I have dentists doctors, chiropractors.

You name it? Okay. So let's let's let's talk a little bit about What's some of the low-hanging fruit for some of us that because basically this will be a whole bunch of Private Practice. We all own our own practices. We're all trying to get more efficient, do more things. See more patients, earn more Revenue but or something, so the You know, sorry, you're breaking up really badly and I don't know why. I don't know if it's on my end or not. It looks like I'm okay. Amen.

Hang on a second. Okay, let me try joining from my from my phone and see if that helps at all. Okay, because otherwise, it's breaking up too much. We try to close everything down here, too. House looks the same except the fake background looks good. Okay, good. Well, I can actually hear you now, so that's good. Yeah, alright. Okay, so Some of the low-hanging fruit managers. Do you wanna start over? You want me to pick up? That's fine. Yeah, pick up. Where we left off there. Okay.

So one of the things that is sort of low-hanging fruit for most businesses, but particularly comes out in the medical profession is the sort of like customer Journey. Customer experience if your will, right? And so, you know, just like there are thousands of doctors that do what you do and, you know, offer that service and thousands of people that do what I do.

Like one of the ways that we differentiate ourselves is with my opinion with content and then with the A customer experience both of which were things that sort of go out the window when people get busy content. I really I can't stress enough the importance of creating content and because that really, in my opinion again differentiates you. Because it shows your perspective, your opinion and it is one of those things where it's like, I just can't sit down

and write a blog post. I can't sit down record a podcast, whatever. But one of the big things that that I have done with automation is created processes, whereby you can record a quick video and that turns into blog. Posts and tweets and podcasts and YouTube videos and all sorts of things completely automatically. So with, you know, 32 seconds to a minute of effort.

You can create a month's worth of content and then on the customer Journey side of things, you know, one of the one of the really common things that for some reason, dentists particularly seem to do is that the end of their day, they will call every one of the patients that they saw that day just to check in and say, oh, you know, dr. Simon Says, want to make sure you're feeling well. Will you know, it takes, Maybe a minute two minutes.

Each one is usually maybe eight to twelve patients a day. And I remember speaking at an event where was all dentists and I asked you, how many people do that? Like 80% of the room, raised their hand. It's like and, you know, raise your hand if more than one person ever answers the phone and nobody raised their hand and say, okay, so and you leave voicemails, right? Yeah. It's like, okay, raise your hand if anybody ever calls you back and nobody raised their hand.

Now, that doesn't mean it's not valuable and there's mean it's a good thing. However, They can get that sentiment across and accomplish that without actually taking the time and to do that. So there, for example, there's a tool called slide broadcast, which is a ringless voicemail tool that allows you to send voice mail directly to someone's phone without it ringing and you can accomplish the same result for both parties using a tool like that in a completely automated way. In that case.

The doctor just has to record one message each week or each month, whatever they want to do in terms of rotation. Say, hey, it's dr. So-and-so. Just want to check in. Are you doing? And then their assistant can just hit a button or even even automated without having to have an assistant to it that calls all those people, you know, 8:00 that night and leaves that voicemail again. It is a genuine result that

you're trying to reach. Steve you want to do it and then that doctor can go on focus on other things and that's a significant chunk of time to. We found about a half an hour or an hour maybe. Every night of the sort of the customer Journey. Yeah, those are great. That I think is an easy one to fix. Now. A lot of these. Are you still you? Because I know when I read the other stuff, it was like, if this then that and now there's a

new one out there to automate. And everyone seems to be almost packaging these. And now paying for the same thing, like making content, putting it in a pod coast and others other things. Automatic for you. Do you still like, put the little pieces together and do it on your own? Do use outside services like that? It was I think I told you that's one of my frustrations as I do one of these. And, you know, I can put the same thing on anchor. I can put the same thing on YouTube.

I don't like driving the description, but it just, it just takes a little bit of time and I've tried using VA as fancy hands. All the other stuff is just kind of a pain, you know. Yeah, so you always try to avoid using people when possible, right? Because people are going to sort of bring some complexity and error Shiva. I wouldn't use fancy hands for anything. Ever fancy hands used to be amazing. You surprised. Yeah. No, I used to recommend fancy

hands all the time. But at some point several years ago, the quality. Honey, just like fell off a cliff and let me I mean it's unfortunate honestly because they were real Pioneers but like I wouldn't have fancy hands. Like tell me what the alphabet was at this. Okay point and so there are lots of other services that can do.

That kind of thing. There are Services, especially as that, but you know, if you if you're willing to spend a half an hour, you can set it up in an automated way using tools like zapier repurpose that IO and I actually have a Blog. Post on medium that people can see that has a lot of detail around that specific one. And it really walks you through how to set it off. So, you know, if you're reasonably intelligent, which we have to assume you are if you're an MD, set it up. Great.

No, I think that's because that's awesome. Because I think a lot of times we try to throw money at things and without thinking, and working a little bit. You can make a system that automates, you still use follow-up then, because that's what I use mostly for reminding me to call my wife, by our flowers, call my post-op patients. I still use that for a lot of things, especially the SMS section of it. That's the most, that's the best part.

The email section. Someone else can do Boomerang or something similar. But the SMS is what's King for me? Yeah. What other what other tips you have so follow up? That is great. And so I I don't use. Yes, so I don't use follow-up then just because that functionality is built into Gmail now, but if you don't use Gmail, then yes follow up. That is still my recommendation. I don't like Boomerang because it doesn't work on mobile.

So follow up that more from anywhere is really, really easy, you know, and as you've seen that works really well to defer things to a specific time that you're going to deal with them in a more effective manner. So, that's definitely a big one. The other one is IFTTT as you sort of allude to a for, as a

sort of more basic. Socata mation platform, but what I like IFTTT for is for idea capture, you know, all entrepreneurs, all business owners, get business, again, ideas all the time and many of them don't capture them in an effective way. Running them down in a notebook is usually not something that's going to actually get it done. So we're like I can say to my alexapril604 don't want to say it because she'll respond right now in any room of my house.

I can say like, hey we add this thing to my to-do list for my my my Because I think is what it is. And then that will actually make a card in my Trello board with that thing which is done through IFTTT. And then at the end of the night, I can go into Trello and sort of sort through all the different ideas that I've captured throughout the day and actually, like, you know, put them into action. That's a, that's a good one.

How about scribes? What are your thoughts about scribes in terms of documentation of notes for doctors? What was our whatever notes scribe like using a scribe in your practice versus typing notes? Yes, so that's that is a really good one. So, you know, they're it depends on the car. How to practice obviously, you know, some doctors have more patient notes than others or what your kind of dealing with. But yes, that is a really good

one. There are some really good services that can do it really cleanly, in an automated way, like, otter .a ISO Auto, like the animal fodder that AI, which I really like. But yeah, there are there's, there's medical scribe services that are hipaa-compliant that you can do recordings with and things like that. They don't really live in the room. Obviously and those things can be outsourced, very effectively as well and then they can put all that information into your

EMR obviously. Yeah. How about in terms of as a doc, in terms of marketing automating marketing, like you talked about creating one piece of content and then just some people recommend that others say old that. It was the old Brendon burchard recommended that and now everyone's changing their their philosophies all we can't use the same content over in a lot of different places. What are your thoughts on that

yesterday? Those are the same people that say, like, you can't do the same content everywhere. So I'm just not going to do content right now. Like, I'm so dumb. How does that work? Right. Sure.

It some point. It'd be great to have that, but at the very least, we know for the most part that most of the algorithms, like they're going to look at how much you're boasting, how often you're posting and obviously, like, we don't want to just Spam services, but if you're posting, once every six months, like you're not going to get very much attention, no matter how good your content is. Hmm. I see what you mean. Yeah, because we're not doing to that extent, that we're going to

get. People are going to notice. No one's going to look. You think they're looking at multiple platforms. They don't if they're using, Twitter, they're looking only at Twitter, absolutely Instagram

and things like that. Let's talk about getting away from actually making our money as doctors seeing patients and looking at some other opportunities like as an entrepreneur Amazon, you know, the Amazon Marketplace, where you can sell stuff kajabi to create your own courses, developing your own YouTube channel, and making money on YouTube. Any thoughts to any of those that ring ring something in your head? So I think that Tick Tock is like the platform for a lot of

that kind of thing right now. I was so I have installed and deleted Tick-Tock nine times on my phone because I tried it. I hated it. Try it again in like was almost like disgusted by it. And I and now I love it. Now. I like I finally like have gotten it and I really like it and for me a lot of it is emergency medical stuff, some medical stuff in general and then woodworking content because I do a lot of woodworking.

So Oh, I love say talk now and I do get a lot of, there are a ton of products that I end up buying now from table, talking services, like gifts for my wife, things for the house, and it's all coming from Tick Tock. So the algorithm Tick, Tock is amazing. And who is this doctor? Dr. Mike, you know, is like the number one doctor on YouTube and also on Tick-Tock. Now, you don't have to be that for it to me, you know, matter for you or for to make to make

an impact. If you want to make ad Revenue, obviously if something is the most followers, For a lot of people are really is that exposure and maybe if you're a doctor that has your own products, then it's a really good platform for that, kind of thing to be able to sell it. So Amazon is tricky in my opinion. You it depends what you're selling. It depends how you're doing it, it can be an enormous time suck for not a lot of return, but there are certainly people to do

that for fun. Like, my wife is like, an expert at shopping at. T.j. Maxx and home goods and stuff like that. And there are always times where we'll find. Find things that are words. Like I love you can sell this for like a 60 dollar profit on Amazon. So there's that I think courses or still really big so like I am actually just in the process now of filming my third round of courses with creative lives in a huge Marketplace for online learning. Not just because the pandemic.

But certainly that accelerated things. So and and I think people are always looking for ways to improve their health and wellness without going to a doctor, you know, of course. Some courses are a good one, as well as Punjabi. I think is very complex. I would I would look more like a platform like skillshare or you to me that has a really great built-in audience and an easy

way to create their own content. And also, I would say, like, don't get held back by thinking that you need to have like a great studio with a mic and lighting and everything, and that's why you're not producing and content. Some of my most successful courses have been filmed on a handheld gimbal with my phone walking down the street in Brooklyn. I like that.

What I really like about what you said is they already you're going to a platform that already has an audience because my challenge if I make a heel, pain course on kajabi. If I don't have an audience, I don't have anyone looking at it and they already have their own audience. So I think that's key when you do it that way. Let's talk about using your optimize automate and Outsource

kind of as a thinking tool. So I'm a, you know, If you don't, you're still in to teach a coach, I still think about Thinking Tools a lot. And so I'm like, oh, how can I apply this one once a month? I'm going to have it. Remind me once a month with follow-up then do. And I'm going to make a little worksheet, optimize automate Outsource and kind of work through some of these things in my practice to make it better. So how would you go about doing

that? In terms of just writing on a piece of paper or any other kind of workflow of like actually you could any we get ideas as entrepreneurs, but we don't Implement them. Yes, right. Absolutely. And I appreciate you sending me that impact over, by the way. I'm not so interested your coach mostly just because I don't travel right now, but I'm a big fan of Dan and everything that he's created. That the so the framework is, is the order is really important.

So, optimize then automate then, Outsource a lot of people reverse that, but try to Outsource first, right? As you said, throw money at the problem, right alive, you'll try to throw people at a problem, you know, and if you do that, if you take an inefficient process and hands it off to another person. At the same time you're doing that and expecting them to actually produce a better

result. It's like asking for failure, you know, so we need to optimize first which means looking at how we do what we do now, identifying the processes that we go through, where the resources headed, how much time we spend on different things. How much money and once we sort of shine that light and efficiencies arise that we can start to eliminate inherently after that. That's what sort of look at automation.

So we want to create systems and processes that were placed with those people do well before every game to a person because At that point, when we do get through Outsourcing because we need to, we're Outsourcing stuff that somebody can actually engage with and sink their teeth into, and really bring value to

and feel empowered. Yeah, and so, would you so what's so optimized, would you put that into like a unique process type of a thing or just anyway, just write down what the process is just, a little step one step two, step three and then any improvements you would do or an impact filter or you know, I'm just I'm not maybe that's just my mind said. What tools do I use drugs? I did my journal like a journal it. Okay, let's look at this process. Hawaii do content for patients.

I do one. I do one YouTube per week for my YouTube. And then how do I then send it to every everywhere else? Now? Sometimes I get hung up and I don't know what you do when you get hung up. Let's say, okay, I theoretically know I can send this to Twitter to everything else. But then I'm like, I get stuck. And I waste time thinking how the heck can I get out of this stock? Well, right. So a lot of the experience of overwhelm the people. Have is because they don't know

what's causing overwhelmed. So, sometimes just having some identification, awareness of what that information is or like what the data is or whatever. Around us is actually really helpful and that control serves as an antidote to stress in many places. And so, the example I did sort of the imagery. I was like uses. You can't read the label from inside the jar. So we need that opportunity to sort of get out shine that light the writing the process is an interesting one.

So a lot of people do that. The right down across is no, give it to somebody else to do. But the problem with that is that they end up writing down processes that include heuristics and shortcuts that they have in their brain that they haven't explicitly identified. And then it doesn't work very well.

So what we actually want to do is show somebody how to do a process and then ask them to write the check list and when they write it we have them give that to somebody else and have them actually run through the process which will never ever Work It Never Dies but now what happens is we get a very granular chance to correct issues. So, you know, just the person this third party is to step 3 where it says, you know, open open the patient's Charter from

the EMR, right? And this person is like, which chart how do I access it? Right? Yes. Okay. So instead of saying the person started should be, like open this link, click this link the password and access information is In this folder in your password manager, right? And then we get to step 7. And it's like, okay, now attach the, you know, pigeons x-rays their imagery, and right. Well, where, where our where's the imagery? Where do we keep that? Alright?

Yeah, we have that on the shared drive. So now you're the one. So what we do is we go through that now and we've now in this step by step and now you end up with a process that you have. Now shown works not just at the secondary level, but at a tertiary level which means that you could literally grab somebody off. Treat have the money for that process and what you've not done is eliminated training. That's that's key.

That's I learned this from you. When I use, when I used to use fancy hands, I sent them to do something and they came back with me and whenever it was a Google doc and I actually added stuff, right? As they were doing it and they fixed it and they could do it a lot easier, but that's that's key. I think. Wow. That's great. Well, thank you. I think, I think we've covered enough here. I that was a great tip here. If people want to learn more about you. How are you? How do they do that?

Everything is at less during dark. Calm. Cool. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time and sharing your tips. Thanks for having me.