HOW TO BUILD YOURSELF OUT OF YOUR PRACTITIONER BUSINESS

Listen to the show or download it as a podcast using the MP3 player below. 

Whether you’re a hairdresser or physiotherapist with a particular skill set that clients love, you need to put systems in place to make sure your business - and clients - are less reliant on you.

 In today’s episode I talk to a Darron, a physiotherapist who specialises in face and jaw pain. He’s one of the best at what he does and has built himself a brilliant niche. But he’s a victim of his own success; he works too hard and wants to spend more time with his family. I discuss how he’s changing and advise him that he needs not only to put systems in place but change psychologically to hand over the reins. 

You will learn:

• How creating a business around your skillset can be incredibly rewarding but also limiting - and what to do about it
• How, as a practitioner, your desire to help people can limit your business’ ability to make money
• How to put systems in place to pass on your skills to a team
• How to deal with clients who only want you and no-one else!
• How you need to deal with your ego when taking yourself out of your busine

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Perry Mardon

Welcome Darron. So I'm really looking forward to the interview with you today. I think our listeners and viewers are going to get a lot out of it because we're going to be concentrating on how you have been building yourself out of your physio practice. So you're not on the tools all the time. And I know from our discussions that you are quite entrepreneurial. And I'm really interested to see where you're going in the future as you build yourself out of the business, because I've got a sense you'll go on to bigger, grander and greater things. 

So welcome, Darron. And just quickly, how long? What what got you into being a physio in the first place? 

Darron 

Well, first of all, thank you for asking to interview me. I'm really honoured that somebody is interested in my story. I've been a physiotherapist for... I graduated in October ninety three in Johannesburg and I didn't get straight into physiotherapy after school, I finished school in nineteen eighty six. And it took me some time to actually get into the course about the time I got into the course I was really hungry for it and always had a passion for working with people and helping helping people through the mechanism of human touch, medical treatment etc.. 

Perry 

So of interest Darron how old were you when you first sort of noticed that you had that interest. 

Following a Long Held Passion

Darron 

I was probably in my late teens, probably in the first part of high school, and I was quite into gym at the time and would you know, would get the regular injury and there was physical therapist around the corner. Family, friends and I would frequently attend her practice for treatment. I always that kid that at family gatherings all the uncles and aunts would come past, sit down and say, come, come, rub my shoulders because you got good hands. I think I felt comfortable doing that early on. 

Perry 

I'm smiling. You can see that I'm smiling because I think pretty much every osteopath, physio, sports massage therapist when I ask them how they got started it's pretty much the same thing. They were playing sport, had injuries had a great interest in it. 

By the way, Darron the listeners and viewers, probably don't know this, but I also have a real profound interest in what you do and what people that work on the body do. A similar story. I played rugby all my life as an adult. I played rugby till I was 44 stupidly and I got very damaged body. So I had spent years, I'm still in fairly good nick even though I've got that damage because of all the corrective exercises and things that I've learnt to do over time because of people like you. 

And by the way, congratulations on your country's win in the World Cup rugby. 

Darron 

Yes, thank you. It was an awesome one. 

Perry 

It was absolutely awesome. I agree I didn't see it coming to be honest, I thought England were going to steamroll them, but we'll move on from that. Yeah. Congratulations. So obviously. And what got you to Australia, South Africa young physio... What brought you to Australia?

Leaving South Africa

Darron 

I had a lot of concerns about the long term future of South Africa. From a political and economic perspective, but more so than that was an immediate sense of day to day danger. 

And my girlfriend at the time, who is now my wife, was actually very, very nervous a lot of the time out in public. And we were just living with way too much anticipatory stress that something would happen. And we've had people in our close circle of friends and family that have been unfortunately badly affected by violent crime. And so I just decided that as a newly married person before I would establish myself professionally, it was better to begin life elsewhere and Australia was a natural choice as I had some close friends who had already immigrated to Sydney and Melbourne. 

And we chose to come to Melbourne, which was an awesome choice and it was similar in many ways, it was similar professionally although I did have to requalify, you know, the seasons where summer sports were similar and there was a there was a lot of familiarity that made Australia a much more logical choice than, say, somewhere like Canada or the US. 

Perry 

Definitely. Okay, great. And then, you know, early stages here you are on the tools and on the tools you would have learned a lot because you're working on people. 

And by the way, I can see that you have a very structural mind, meaning... so I've worked a lot with engineers and I can already tell you have a mind like an engineer. So engineers, think in structure, does that make sense? 

Darron

It's funny you should say that because I've got two sons. One is 20 and he's in his first year of engineering. And my youngest son finishes his VCE next week and he is applying for engineering. And both of them are very math, science very, very skilled in those areas. 

Those are areas that I feel I have no skill in at all. But I do agree with you. My mind very much works according to systems and structures and boxes and logic. 

Perry 

Yeah. Funny, I just want to say too, you know, like, you know, with our work and you know, people know I can kind of read them and you know, it's a bit out of the box. And so one of the things is that the engineers that come up... I've trained some engineers as coaches. Now, I have a couple of people involved with GHC Engineering in a coaching and training capacity... that have been through our coach training and the engineers they actually really love this work. Once they get over that, what is this? How does he know this? Or how do we know this about people? 

Because the personality is a structure. It's quite easy to work out. Once you understand the ego is just a structure. We won't go into that now, but it's a structure. It's easy to identify. And if a person has this particular belief system, this particular emotional pattern, you're kind of guaranteed that they will also have these patterns in relationship to the defining bottom line pattern. So if it's a trauma pattern as an example, it can it can rearrange the psychology or the systems of psychology to protect that person from ever feeling or experiencing that trauma again. It is a structure. 

Okay, so Darron we're about business today. And so here you are, on the tools, you're learning lots about the human body. When did you decide that you wanted to get off the tools and work on your business or in our model what we call start to move into ‘conductor’. We are not a resource in the business, but you are a controller of resources, which is, of course, an entrepreneurial step. 

Identifying a specific niche

Darron 

So I think I probably need to take a few steps back to paint a little bit of the picture in order to fully answer your question. When I first graduated in physiotherapy, I worked for an awesome physiotherapist in South Africa who unfortunately is no longer with us. And at that time of my first job, she was already treating jaw pain condition. 

So we were putting gloves on and working inside the mouth. And she basically said to me, if they're muscles, bones, joints, ligaments then physios, can treat, it doesn't matter where it is on the body. The principles are the same. 

And so always felt that that was part of practice. When I came to Australia, however, I realised that there were very few people actually treating jaw pain, face pain from a physiotherapy perspective. I went on to study an additional qualification for cranial sacro therapy that actually comes from the osteopathic profession. 

And part of the more advanced work with that is working inside the mouth on muscles and bones, etc. So I guess it was a confluence of a number of factors that got me really interested in niching my work to head, neck with particular focus on jaw pain. So I realised quite a long time ago from a commercial perspective, it wasn't being catered for. Therefore, it was less competition for that particular subset of patients. 

But more so than that, the actual experience of helping somebody with pain in their head and their jaw. It's so much more gratifying than helping somebody who has a sore shoulder or an ankle. And I don't doubt for a second that people who are badly afflicted with shoulder or ankle pain must be eternally grateful to the person helping them. I just felt that the level of satisfaction that I got the level of gratification that I received from patients was next level compared to the other stuff I had been doing and that really, it was the start of me digging a very deep professional hole for myself, because as the practice started to grow and we even branded the practice so that it was specific. 

So I have a general practice called More Than Physio’, which is a multi-disciplinary practice. And then I set up Melbourne TMJ and Facial Pain Center, and it was necessary to do that because when I would approach somebody in the medical or dental world as Darron the Physio from More Than Physio, they paid me only lip service. There was really no follow on of referrals. 

But the minute I gave the practice in a name that sounded specialised and appropriate, they took me more seriously. So it was an interesting experience for me to see the psychology of it as well. 

But then what happened was I had to live up to that expectation because if was calling myself Darron from Melbourne's TMJ special practice then I’d better well know everything that there is to know or that I can learn about that subset of patients. 

And it was actually quite freeing to give myself permission to not have to read every article that came to my attention without anything that didn't have anything to do with jaw face problems. 

So I actually felt very liberated not having to spread my focus so wide. Instead, I allowed my focus to go really deep. And so I just...anything that I could read or do, I travelled back to South Africa and spent time in the practice. I was the only Australian physiotherapist that went to the international conference on Facial Pain Disorders in Las Vegas in 2014. 

And I couldn't get enough. I just couldn't get enough of learning and skilling up in that area. But alluding to what I said before, I dug a very deep hole for myself because as the practice grew, so I had to expand my day and my consulting hours to fitting in these new referrals. 

Perry 

Darron oh, I'm just gonna go back through what you said. I'm going to unpack this a bit for the audience because there's so much in what you've just said. There's just so much. I'm excited because this is great. This is really good. Okay. 

First thing. One of my clients whose name is John Anderson, and he's now kind of a premier, a business person in Australia, he runs a company called Freedom 360. They've been very, very successful. But when I first started with him, he would've been about 18 at the time. I've worked with him for about 15,16 years. 

And I worked with him and that point, he wasn't scaling,he wasn't even thinking like that. He moves into a niche as a copywriter and he really, really became a top copywriter in that niche. And in his words, he's very thankful for what he and I did together in the early stages because he, like you, I'm gonna get to this in a second. He's able to charge more than he would if he wasn't a specialist in the niche.

But as he said, he became a victim of his own success, which is what you are talking about. And I'm just gonna bring this back a little bit, because there's two, I reckon, a couple of important business lessons here. And there's a psychological lesson here. The first thing is. I actually got a psychological aspect, first of all, because when you're communicating, I can see I just loved when I could see this. You've got the practitioner part of you and the practitioner part of you loved learning the special information about this niche. So when you talk about it, there's a joy in that. But not only that, the strategic part of you, the business person in you could see that that niche, that deep niche, that narrow, deep niche becoming a specialist in that will allow you and you even brought this in when you said the name, when you use the name TMJ, what was the name again for this part of the business? 

Darron 

Melbourne TMJ And Facial Pain Centre. 

Perry 

Right. So, I mean, that's just perfect branding for that niche. So in many ways, you've been textbook perfect, right, in the sense of identifying in the niche, it's something I tell my clients to do, identify the niche, be positioned as the expert in that niche. And you've done that perfectly. Well done. That means you get referral clients. That means that, you know, you don't have many competitors. 

That means that you will build up a name and people start talking about you. And as you said, you even get professional credence. Possibly doctors hear about what you do and are quite happy to refer and things like that, correct? 

Darron

Yeah. It's interesting because sometimes the patient will come and they'll say 

‘I was referred to you by my dentist’. And yet I've never heard of the dentist's name before. So I think the reputation of the practice at least has spread beyond just our locality or beyond me as a practitioner. 

Perry 

Now, with that out of interest, could you charge more? 

Darron

We do. 

Perry

Yeah, of course. So again, that's just a key lesson that I always teach my clients. And one of the things that we always communicate about is what you want is niches that are high need niches, high need niches and a specific niche is a high need niche where the high need niche has access to dollars. And we can bring it down to a pretty simple metaphor in a way. If I've got a cold, I don't care who I go to, rather just go to the local naturopath. But if I've got cancer - I am going to seek out the leading specialists in cancer, whether I'm going to the natural therapies, I'll be doing both, conventional and natural. That would be my approach. 

But I'll be seeking the leading people in both those niches or in that niche from a wellness perspective, natural perspective and conventional medical perspective. 

That means because it's a high need for me. I've got cancer, a high need. I'll do anything I can to overcome cancer. And I've just seen my wife go through that. I think she'll do anything she can. So you have really sort of fulfilled that perfectly high need niche. Now, some of them will have money some won't but regardless, because you're a specialist in that nich, you can charge more, build a name in that niche and dominate that niche. 

But then, as you said, the next part is so well done. But you become a victim of that. So can you share a little bit about what that meant?

Darron 

So over the years, I have got to the stage where I've needed to train additional physiotherapists to work alongside me in that part of the practice. The income reduction into the whole practice was still very, very much dependent on me. 

So of nine therapists, not all of them are physiotherapists and not all of them were meeting TMJ conditions, I was bringing in 40 percent of the income of the entire practice. And the 60 percent being generated by the rest of the team wasn't unfortunately enough to meet overheads. And so I was in a very tricky position because I literally relied on my personal exertion, being patient consulting to actually keep the doors open in practice. 

As a Practitioner, you ARE the business

Perry 

And out of interest, Darron. So, I mean, that's incredible, 40 percent. Right. You got nine team members, but you're bringing 40 percent. Who was responsible for the marketing for those other services? And they weren't specialising in TMJ I take it?

Darron 

No. So that included remedial massage, clinical pilates, general physiotherapy, exercise physiology. 

And so to answer your first question, I was the one responsible for the marketing, I was the one where the buck stopped for everything. But I had absolutely no time to do that because until I started this journey, I was consulting, literally consulting 60 hours a week. 

And that also meant leaving home at 7:25am in the morning to ensure that I got a car park. We don't have that provision at work. So fighting for a car park, meaning needing to get there very early and on Monday to Thursday only getting home between 8.30pm and 8.45pm at night. 

Perry 

Great. I just want to slow that down again for the listener. This is really important or someone that's watching it. 

So we you know, we've coined the term victim Darron's a victim to his own success. Because the more successful his marketing, the more well-known he becomes, the more clients he has. 

And the moment he has more clients, he now has no time to run a business, to do the marketing. 

He has actually been taken out of the entrepreneurial game at this point. 

For a lot of people in your industry Darron, so people that have got into a business that is practitioner orientated and practitioners are passionate people about what they're doing to serve clients. 

That's what they got into it in the first place for. Yeah, they wanted to make money, but all you guys and girls that do what you do, you do it because you love to help people. What I've seen often at this point. And by the way, it's usually at this point where someone like myself gets involved to sort a business out because a business has had some success. 

But as the as the owner gets more trapped in the business cash flow gets reduced because marketing's not happening and often what we'll see is feast and famine cycles for practitioners in that position because they can go out and market but their marketing means that all their time is taken up servicing clients so the marketing doesn't happen. 

And then all of a sudden, once you've finished servicing all those clients, you realise you’ve got no more clients coming in. 

This might not be for you, but this is typically what would happen. And now I'll have to rush back out there and do another cycle of marketing, right. 

There are ways of getting around that for practitioner businesses. Now, like when we work with them, we put in place automated marketing systems that just happen without the practitioner owner because then that lead funnel is just happening consistently whether the practitioner business owner is working, sleeping, what have you, so that sort of takes care of that. 

But the other thing I want to say is at this point, for a lot of people that have got into business based on something that they love to do. I would observe they start to lose their passion for it because this is too much pain now in what they're doing, they're just working too much. They've got to carry a business, they've got to market got to look after the books. They got to make all those other decisions, run teams. Did you get to that point where you just felt like... 

Unsustainable Work Patterns

Darron

Yes, absolutely. So, I mean, it's been happening for a long time. I got back from our two week annual holiday in January last year that's January 2018. 

And I said to my wife at the time. I don't know if I can actually sustain this for another 50 weeks before the next break. I was feeling very, very fatigued and and quite desperate because I had my 50th birthday looming in June 2019. Only eighteen months down the track. And I said to her that I need to get to that point and feel like I've got a much clearer picture of what my exit strategy is going to be down the track, as well as have made some major work life balance adjustments that were very, very overdue. And so I was determined to actually make those things happen. 

Perry 

So that was a catalyst at that point, to go looking at other models of running a business that could still serve people but you have more free time. Correct. You're earning what we consider more a passive style of income. 

Darron 

Well, maybe ultimately at the moment, I'm still putting in reasonably big hours, but I have managed to significantly change the whole nature of my business, the whole back end of my business, 

Perry 

Which we're gonna get into. We're going to know how. 

Darron 

Yeah. 

How to build yourself out of your business

Perry 

When I say that passive, but that is the goal, that's still the goal, isn't it, so that you can have more time off. You might be well able to be away from your business and still earning good dollars. 

So once you had that catalyst experience out of interest, did you have an idea about how you could build yourself out of the business. Develop more scalability in the business?

Darron 

I think that I've been on a journey of self-discovery for a long time. And that's why, in fact, I first met you a few years ago when I went to the wellness summit and there were many people consulting to the healthcare industry with their various models. And I didn't really do anything very proactive at the time.

But I've been I've known this to be an issue for a long time, but I haven't really freed up my focus, to, and I probably didn't feel the need quite as acutely as I did in the last couple of years where I really felt quite jaded and also somewhat regretful that I feel like I've missed out on so much of my children’s growing up because I've had to be the provider and my wife works with me in the practice on the admin side. So it's really one source of income. And the buck stops with me. 

So there was that overwhelming sense of responsibility to be that provider. And I knew that if I put myself in the diary I would get the bookings. 

So, you know, it's easy to feel like you're fulfilling that responsibility. And that's something that I'm still needing to come to grips with as I've come off the tools more and more and facing the eventuality of completely not consulting, I have to completely change my sense of self worth. 

On the one hand, I feel good about how many people I can help, that fulfils my need as a person, as a professional, as somebody here to lead some kind of footprint, but also on the other side is to be the provider for the family. But it's come at a really big cost, a time and focus cost that I have unfortunately made. Not being as present as I could have been. 

The Responsibility to be the provider

Perry 

Yeah. Oh, a couple of things I want to say to that. Oh, actually, I had a party, just a small party probably about five months ago and I had some really good people at the party and one of the ladies said, I want to talk about the silent epidemic. 

I’m like ‘What's that?’ And she goes, no one talks about the pressure men feel to provide. And anyway, everyone was drinking there, everyone was drinking, and she had about two minutes and someone else took over the conversation. But I just remember that struck me. I went away from that thinking about that. And I thought it is something that's not talked about much. And especially in this day and age, all the female challenges and issues that communicated about for good reason.

But what you're talking about... that weighs on men's minds, providing for the family responsibility, providing for the family. The other thing I want to say that I've observed with you and this is true for a lot of what I consider good hearted people to get into business. 

There's a problem. So if you're a pure business person and fortunately, I've worked with a lot of pure business people and I like that because I've learnt a lot from them. A pure business person goes into business from the perspective of ...and this is generally wealthy people which have been fortunate to learn from... they can still be goodhearted, they still want to serve clients but they go in with the concept of building a business. Right. Building a business separate from them. Whether that's a watch business that makes watches. So set up from the stop to run without them. That's what they do. 

A practitioner. They're already set up to undermine themselves on a business level because they come into business loving helping. And so what we've seen I've already seen this in you today when we're communicating. You have a practitioner self and your practitioner self feels it gets the most, the greatest intrinsic reward from helping the person that's right in front of you. 

OK, you're getting it, the business part of you, so that part can win out and the business part doesn't. And then you'll suffer on the business level and then you'll suffer on the family level. 

So oftentimes the internal conflict for someone like yourself or someone like me is how we navigate those parts of us that get this intrinsic reward. From the serving the person in front of us. That traps us, and that's not good for business and that's not good for family. 

And coming back to what you're saying. So when you start to make the shift, there's actually a strong psychological shift and you've got to inspect yourself and see yourself, because what you tend to do is you want to go back and be with people rather than building the business, because building the business means, ‘Well, I'm not getting any intrinsic reward from people.’ 

But the truth is, your business is maybe helping more people. Out of scale. Right. So the more successful you are as a business person, I can see you smiling. You get that you actually help more people, but YOU don't feel that in the same way. 

And this is what I often see or drag a practitioner back into...and undermine what they're actually trying to achieve from a business perspective. Does that make sense? 

Darron 

Yeah. In fact, in my conversation with Daniel, who is one of the owners of the organisation that I have managed to achieve this limited success with, when I say limited, I don't mean that in a negative way. There's a lot more to still do. But the very first question he asked me in an interview on the phone call was how many people can you currently help? 

And I said, well, probably 90 to 100 a week. Half hour appointments. And that's the problem, is that I'm killing myself in the process and I need to find a solution for this. You know, for this lack of balance. 

And he said to me, how many more people do you think you could help if you taught others to do things the way you do them? You don't have to be the person actually physically treating that person in order to be providing help to them through a team of people who you can train.

The 'penny drop' moment...

And although I've kind of known that on some level, it was a real kind of table slap moment for me or penny drop moment for me to realise that that can be the only way forward. But, you know, making that happen is easier said than done. And as you say, I'm learning to adjust my sense of self worth and recognise it in other ways rather than have to physically be treating a patient. That's the hard part where I'm at now because I'm now having those conversations with my patients. But you know. Today is the 7th of November on my last day on the tools is the 23rd of December. So that should cut back significantly in just 18 months. 

But now this is where the rubber meets the road because people are starting to say, ‘but you'll still see me, won't you? You're not going to abandon me are you? I've been coming for so many years, I've been loyal and nobody treats like you do.’

Perry 

And oh ho, as you can see, I love this!

Darron

This is the hard part. 

How to hand over your clients to your team

Perry

This is it. Yes, I like it when you said this is the rubber meets the road. I loved it. I love this. This is textbook. I love the guy’s questions, by the way, very smart that he asked you that cause that was smart OK. I love you can see I'm jumping up and down here.

I find this subject incredibly intriguing because again the principles of building yourself out of the business are actually really simple. 

In fact, if you knew these principles when you were younger and, I’m going to use this word, addicted to working with the client, you had to do that. 

That's how you got your expertise. But if you weren't, you would have found it quite easy to build a business that DOES run without you having to be there all the time. All right. What you've done is now based on your expertise, you built yourself into the business and building yourself out of the business again, the principles are fairly simple to understand, but it's what happens here. It's the psychology. So in that. Oh, so if we break this down, I'm going to just go to another example here. So I work with, it would have been about 10 years ago, a superstar salon owner, hair salon person, 

OK, now really interesting because all the different niches that I've ever worked in and helped build people out of their businesses, the style of people is really different. 

So this guy, you don't find him in the wellness industry. 

This guy's a prima donna. He works with models. He gets asked to go and if there's a movie star in town, he's got to go and primp their hair up and he's full of himself. 

Right. Really nice guy I like him because he's extroverted. But as you can see, you don't get that style of person in wellness. 

This is a perfect style of person you'll find in hair salons. You don't find them in beauty salons, but in hair salons, you can have that really extroverted personality. 

So he's a what we call a ‘star profile’. And he built his business' name on his star profile. And he had two or three staff members and they would charge less. 

And he charged more for his services. And he was a star and he loved the adulation. But the same thing. He got trapped. And he asked me to build him out of the business. 

So I start to put stuff in place and I observe he was at the point that you were at. We actually got him out of the business and he couldn't stand it because once he got himself out of the business, the one thing of the things we had to do, by the way, was change the branding away from his name as a star. You had yet you can't see right now, but Darron's nodding because he would've been doing this. 

We're getting to some of the technical stuff in the second. 

By the way, Darron just gonna quickly ask you, would you do a second interview with me? I just think there's a whole bunch of good quality info that we can extract from this. Would you do a second? Good. Okay, good. 

So, yeah, You've got to transfer. He had to transfer his star status to his team and he had to build his team up. Now, with someone like you wouldn't have too much of a struggle with that. You'll struggle with something else, which we'll get into in a second. 

But he struggled with that because his ego had spent so many years being adulated that in some secret way in an unconscious level, he actually wanted to undermine building his team up because he felt, well, if I build my team up, I'm not the centre of attention. 

So not only that, but I'll go to the next thing which is something you may experience. So in the handover over, first we're building the team up, I would get him to say they're better than me. They're actually better than me. Which he found really hard to say. But the handing over of clients he had to address what you were just talking about. But you're the best, you're this, you're that and they are attached to you. So what I observed with that was. That he was also guilted. So the clients would guilt him into not leaving them. Now, when I say guilt and this is really important. I'll address this myself, by the way. So, clients can make us feel like we're the only ones that can help them. 

Does that make sense?

And if you've been treating clients for a long time, that's probably how they feel. And so when you have to start backing away from them to hand them over to your team it's a hard thing because you're the only one. You're the only one. You're the only one. And that's another psychological thing to get. Or am I? Maybe I am. And I think this is ego oftentimes. And we have to see that because if you're moving to a more business disposition, you just don't need that ego because it undermines what you're trying to do as a business person. Does that make sense Darron? 

Upskill your team

Darron 

And what we've done is, first of all, in my training of my team and this was very early part of the journey that I undertook with this organisation, which I mentioned to you before, it's called Clinic Mastering Trust. They are health related so they don't work with anyone outside of health and they're all business owners in their own clinics that have done this journey. 

What they said to me is, if you are wanting to start reducing your hours, you need to make sure that you have proper induction and training systems in place that are consistent. That there is a system. 

And being very focused in on systems and very logical and structured in the way that I operate, I've basically created a replicable training system which includes videos, everything so that I can consistently give training experience and keep it as close as possible until I decide to change it. 

And so what the line that I've taken with my patients is, those more difficult ones, I've had the physiotherapist that I feel is most appropriate sit in and shadow me on a treatment and have offered to then sit in on the first treatment that the physiotherapist performs for that same client, when I had the most difficult situation where people felt like they were being abandoned.

But what I've said to the physio patients is that I've made myself, my skill set redundant. I've taught everything that I know to these therapists. What they don't have is my years of experience.

But I spend one hour every week with each of them, mentoring them. And that's what I can now bring to the team and to the practice is that I can support these therapists so they can become great therapists in their own right. 

But with the structure of treating in a fairly consistent way so that the experience of treatment when people come and see somebody new, if they can't get in to see me, even in the interim while I'm still here is that they're not going to be faced with a completely different experience, which is the whole kind of movement. You know how in the book. 

Perry 

Darron, I want to unpack what you said. There's just so many gems in what you've just communicated. Absolute gems. OK. So first thing. I loved how you communicated about how you built your systems out and your what you call your induction and your training. So you've actually, by the sounds of it, built your training system based on video. So even your training can run without you being there. Is that correct? 

Darron 

Somewhat Yeah. 

Perry

Smart. OK. So for those watching like. Yep. 

Automate your systems

Darron

Yes, if a new therapist comes in, you know how I will make the training spreadsheet available to them and say ‘follow through the steps that tells you what the key objective is, what the key indicator so that you've understood it and then watch the attached video.’ So all the heavy lifting is done. 

I still spend hours upon hours with them, one on one shadowing me. You know, I really invest so much time and energy into them. Which was what feeds into the fear then of well, somebody can take this in. 

Perry 

Wow. Wait, wait. Yeah. I'll address this straight away. Actually, I want to address this quickly. 

What what Darron's pointing to and we'll probably get into this in our second interview where we'll really dig deep into some of this stuff. First of all Darron's talking... he's creating what we call a ‘mini me model’. So mini me model is Darron is training more Darron's. Right. So they could service the clients. 

Darron 

I believe they've got a name it that Perry and I'm not sure based on what you said earlier, whether that's a good or a bad thing. But I've actually called my approach the Goralsky, that's my surname, Craneo, means skull mandibular method, The ‘Goralsky Carneo Mandibular Method’. 

Perry 

Well I like that you've done that because I think it's and I do know because we had that conversation before we entered the interview that maybe one of your next moves is taking what you're doing with your practitioners now and then, modelling that, scaling it, potentially you could take it worldwide. 

And so it's different when a scalable training is based on a person's name. Then when you're working with a client one on one. So as an example for me, with my business Darron. Because my business is personality driven it's OK to have my name on it because my structures, once a client comes to us there's so much scale in what we do that I'm not getting trapped by using my name.

It may have implications from an exit strategy perspective, but they are things I'm aware of and took into account when I took this approach. 

So sometimes naming will really help positioning at that next level because the positioning is based on who you are, your expertise, your years of training. So I think it works for that type of business model. Just coming back to what I want to warn people of and it's something that Darron has already sort of hinted at he's afraid of, ‘mini me’ models, are in my opinion, the worst of the scalable models. 

Now they're the worst of the scalable models, sorry Darron. So, when you're growing and scaling a business, the less people you have involved in that business from an IP perspective, the safer your business is. 

What do we mean about I'll just be clear for those... I'll just break that down even more. I know you understand Darron this is more for the listener here. 

As an example, in my business, if I train out a hundred practitioners or 20 practitioners in what I do. I'm not training them to go out there in the world and teach and coach, I need them in my business. 

That means I'm relying on them to serve my clients. Already there's a risk factor because there's a huge difference between software and human beings. Software if I buy the software, yes, it can break down it gets fixed. I never have to worry about that software running off and starting up their own business or running off or being sick or underperforming. 

Now we have done really incredible recruitment systems that really help a person who's employing define someone's value system. So we're really good at building teams out and making sure that we've got the right people on the team. But regardless, even with the right people on your team. Helena gets pregnant. 

Software systems don't get pregnant. And so just to bring this even to a more grounded way. So when we talk about software system, so educational content is an example where people are paying for education that's software driven and there's no risk in that. And so you're probably right to fear elements of your model. 

And you have a right to I can see why. But another thing and I'm just going back because you did communicate some absolute gems. So here Darron is he's got his training for his practitioners coming to his business and he's handing his clients onto these practitioners. Now. Right. This is this important. 

So he's developed IP, it's training IP. And as I said before, so that training IP is using his own business. But that can be reconstituted to sell to people all over the world that training, he can he can build a following and an expertise and reach hundreds of thousands of people, through taking that information he's using in his present business and remodelling it commercially out there and to train others, and he'll charge them a training fee as an example. 

The other smart thing is in Darron's training, he's committed to as much of it as possible to paper and to video, which means that when he's asleep one of his practitioners will be doing that training. And so this kind of leverage it means he does the work once and he's building assets. 

This is this is what we call leveraging time. So as a Darron gets more free time, he can leverage time. Now, let me explain what leveraging time actually means; when Darron works with a client one to one, there's no leverage of time. There's no added value to the business, really other... well he'll get repeat clientele from that and people will say he's done a really good job and he'll get clients right but he's actually trading time for money. There's not much leverage in it. 

When he does the books and I hope he's not, there's no leverage in that. When we move a person from technician stage to conductor stage, we really educate them about leveraging time, which is what you've done. So leveraging time is you build assets. Now, those assets will make money without you. You put the time into building the assets so it makes the money without you.

So this is...you get that Darron? I'm just going to show some of the listeners what I mean by that. So as an example, I bring myself in here. A webinar. If I spend five hours developing a webinar, I've got a webinar out there at the moment that's lead genning for me. And that lead gens to me while I'm asleep, I'm awake, that was leveraging time because that's an asset that keeps producing for me. 

If I set up a new software system that handles lead flow effectively and, you know, I might spend 30 hours doing that. But that system will work for me for ever. I can be asleep and that system's working for me. That's leveraging time. And all entrepreneurs understand leveraging time because that's what builds out the value of the business. So it's really there's one other thing as you just said, so many good things. 

Leveraging Time

Darron

Can I make a comment?

So what we talk about very early on in this academy process is having $10, $100 and $1000 per hour tasks. And most practitioners are starting off doing a majority of their time doing $100 hour tasks. Because that’s your consulting. $10 hour tasks are unforgivable. That's doing something that's not producing an income that's somebody else's probably better to do, which is what you're saying I cannot do in books. And we don't spend any of the times, you know, doing $1000 hour tasks, which is exactly what you're describing, is the value of that hour will produce a return on the investment beyond just that face to face consulting time. So would that be analogous to what you're saying. 

Perry 

Oh, it's exactly that. So said it saying the terminology they use. So we use terms like ‘highest dollar productive zone’. Right. Lowest dollar productive zone, similar things. The other brilliant thing that you said before, which I loved, is how you are able to package your story to hand the clients over. So as an example. ‘These guys have been trained by me, these guys I've spent hours and hours building their skill sets up’. 

This is what you're able to tell your clients that are wanting to hang on to you. And you've got your strategy that... and I'm going to sit in with the first one with you

And if there's any real issues or challenges they can't handle, I'll be there for you is probably another thing that you might say. So these are ways that you start to hand clients over. I just love the way that you communicated that.

Transfer of trust

Darron

We call it transfer of trust.

Perry

Transfer of trust. I love that.

One of the things I do, because there are some similarities. My team, who are really adept like yours, really adept at what they do. My skill set in reading someone, they can all read people. But I am just lightning fast. So when people first start with us, I'm going to be spending time with them. Really getting to understand and help them. One of my coaches will sit in with me, usually it's Georgina and she's we're both working with the client. 

Then Georgina takes him through our foundational training processes. And after that, I'll come back in once Georgina says, I'll come back in. And at that 

stage, they have developed themselves and I'll come back in and use my expertise core skill set to read them to help them identify the next stage of development as a business person. So this is from the psychological perspective. 

And so. So in doing this same thing, there’s a transfer of trust and I still get to use my core expertise which I enjoy doing and it really serves the client and really serves the coach. 

And then the coach will work with them on that next developmental phase, which I've helped identify quickly with my ability to see what's happening for that person. 

And in that, I still like that because we are a human driven business and I have a huge interest in my clients. So I still get to touch base with my clients that I'm working with in group format every week, that I'm training every week. 

But I get to spend that time with them. I get to know them as people from a patterning perspective. And that helps me get that fulfilment that you're talking about from my practitioner level as well without being bogged down. 

So we've worked out how to use all our core skills to get the most for the client. 

Darron, I'm aware of time. I would like to wrap this up. I actually have to because I have to go coach a client. 

Yeah, I'd be really interested in continuing this and I'm sure the listeners would because we've actually sort of dug out some goldmines. But I want to get into some more of the technical things that you've been doing and how you doing it. So I'd like to do this again. And as soon as possible. I mean, if you can mark next week, same time I'd be really keen.

Darron 

Just have to check my scheduling because I have all my mentoring with my physios back to back the whole of Thursday and I rescheduled something for this morning, so I'm just got to see if that's possible. But otherwise we'll just find another time that works. 

Perry

No problem. Look. I really honestly from the bottom of my heart really enjoyed working with you today. I just. Yeah. It's just fantastic. And I just think the listeners will get a lot from this. So. Yeah. Thanks a lot for taking the time to do this today.

See you next time. Catch you. 

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