Rocks: What Are They and How Do You Use Them to Build a Freedom Practice?

Align Your Practice podcast with Dr. Cliff Fisher where your best practice and life awaits you. Are you tired of running a practice on your own? We want to come alongside you with experts to help you create your dream practice in your dream life. Here is your host.

All right, Dr. Welcome back to align your practice with Dr. Cliff and Dr. Joe brought to you by align life where we want to give you the tools to find and create your aligned life. So last time, Joe, we were talking about people, this time, we're talking about rocks and meeting pulses. And so we're talking about really about traction in the book traction. And so I'd love to hear your insights on this. I know, you know, you've done extensive research and work inside of this. And we've been running it in align life for years. And so love you you'd

love to talk about I'm excited for this topic. So going over rocks, I think we should define what what the concept is of rocks if people aren't familiar with that culture. But it came from Stephen Covey, and years ago, when he when one of his books he talked about, you know, making sure we focus on the big rocks in life, whether it be relationship, your business, finance, and what he did as he had a big jar on the table. And he had a bunch of big rocks and have tons of small rocks, and he had some pebbles, and then he had some sand and some water. And he had two buckets, to clear cylinders. And the first one, he added the water first, which is if you look at life, that's kind of like the interruptions, the water that splashes you the adversities that you don't plan. So we pour the water and then you pour it all the standard. And the standard would be like interruptions, like emails, and social and all that stuff that you spend little too much time on that you shouldn't put all the pebbles in. And then he put all the small rocks and then the big rocks and like the relationship, the business the things that are going to move your life, your consciousness, he couldn't fit him in. So he couldn't get one of the three rocks. So we got to leave the two big rocks out. So to make a long story, I guess longer story, then he had the other cylinder, the glass cylinder, and he put the big rocks in the three, four big rocks and the Little Rock, smaller rocks went around the big rocks. And then the pebbles went around the little rocks. And then the sand went between all of it and the water fit in everything fit in the jar. So his point or rocks is when we use it in business is what are the big lifts, the big moves, not on tactical delivering your product, your service, but to enhance your ability to deliver the product or service in a better way more efficient way more profitable way. And those are the rocks. So sorry for the long explanation, but I thought that was good for them to do.

No, I don't think that I think that was perfect. And I think the thought on that and what rocks are we talked about rocks, because this is like a one of our love languages. And so we talked about it all the time. But they are like, just like you said, three or four big projects that you want to get done in a quarter that ultimately help you achieve your annual goals. One of the places I know I went sideways, is I would do my annual goals and then some of my rocks wouldn't line up. And then I wouldn't reach my goal. And I was frustrated versus now. Like, I have one big goal. And I have four quarters to make all of those rocks equal that one big goal. And you know, I think it was the big hairy, audacious goal. And that was what out of was out of

that. I think Jim Collins,

Yes, yep. Yeah. Jim Collins. Good to Great.

So yeah, that's a good point. And what I love about business is it, I cannot escape the experience of raising consciousness in business because you just become consistently more self aware. If awareness creates more profit because you reduce friction. So what you're saying is you started to see, I have these big projects that are not in line with his goal, which is friction through resistance. But if you didn't have the stated project for rock, you didn't document it, you didn't have a stated goal, you weren't reviewing it monthly, you would never see that like 90% of entrepreneurs out there. So I think that's a great point cliff is being self aware of the different pieces how they come together to remove friction or resistance in your business. So you can scale without not more work and more money. Not more time. Just less resistance. Right. Yeah. book you recommended you and Joe Karina on road less stupid. It's really about removing friction and just finding out that your awareness about the truth, right, just like chiropractic focus on problems or symptoms.

So yeah, and that's such a great book. And, you know, in there, it's two lessons more. It's not about making, you know, more like we want to make decisions quickly. But also we want to make decisions to say no, like, we need to say no more often. My other problem when I was doing rocks was I would have like, well, I have a big team. So I'm going to do seven or eight rocks and instead of getting three completed I would have seven or eight that were 80 to 90% done, but they never completed. So then we went to the next eight or nine. And so in a year, we never completed them. So it was always this unfinished project.

And I think when you look at a project like rock you and I just discussed the document like a call a rock charter or rock workout or something of that nature. Yeah, a lot of quantify like you said, when we use your first statement is its effect on the business. So is there dollars associated with it? Is there efficiency, what it what is attached to it as an outcome, because if you don't, I love the diagram, you look at that was called like a Gantt chart where it's like, here's underway, here's underway, here's underway, I started these six over here, I started these three, and the money's attached to the completion, you launch a program or service, you improve your customer service, whatever you're doing, the outcome is where the leverage ability is. And what entrepreneurs like you and I and the rest of the world is we get caught in looking for the new because we're not again, conscious about our awareness about its effect on the business. So we just keep doing more. So that's those of you listening, that is 30 years to pay. That's not that's not something, that's something you, you will continue to do as an entrepreneur, because it's your energy style. It's your energy. So as an entrepreneur, I think as

an entrepreneur, they say you're very unlikely to start, but you will drown.

It's so true. Entrepreneurs don't starve, they drowned because they overwork themselves. So true. So one, break that down like a rock you it's not a tactical thing you do every day, it's not. It's not something in the everyday flow, it's a way to lift the business. So I'll give a couple examples. And then we can talk through some of it, let's say, it would be like documenting your operations manual, your operations in a manual, that's a big lift. That may be when you learn this, that may be four quarters, see, what you'll do is you'll think you'll do that in a quarter, you won't get it down, you'll be upset, what you would do is say I'm going to document marketing, first quarter, I'm going to operate operations second quarter, I'm going to document and hopefully that makes sense to people listening, because every time you have a thought you think it's all fit in one rock, which is a quarter cycle 90 days, what you'll find is most of the time, there's five, eight rocks in that in that project, and it could be a year or two years. Right. Would that be a lesson learned? That's a lesson learned. I had Cliff I don't know, Heck,

yeah. Like, another great rock was like, Oh, let me bring on a new team member. Well, in my companies now it's that's a three quarter project. The first one is finding them, hiring them, and then bring them on board. And so it ends up being like three quarters, depending on where it falls in a quarter. Sometimes you can do that in two quarters, like finding and hiring can be one quarter. But onboarding is a full quarter project and it takes the place of another rock. So I don't add another thing on there thinking I can do.

That's the awareness. And I was looking at another one like we had launching a learning management system and LMS that was that was a rock launch it then we realized it's fine. The best one was one quarter architect it was the next quarter build out a course was the third quarter launch a minimal viable product was the next one. That was a year. We tried to do it like 90 days. So yeah, he's all awareness for you guys is pick something that you know can be completed in the time and make it painfully less work than what you sink into one rock. Right. Yeah.

And like in you know, we talked earlier, and you sent me the document on making him a smart rock. So a smart rock is specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. So your rocks have to be a toggle yes or no, they can't be like, oh, yeah, I think we got there. Did we get there or not get there? So you just want to

play? You know, why is it so important? Because in business not only are we overdoing too many projects that don't go to completion like you mentioned the second big pain in business is we don't keep accountability so that's it is not accountable. So like Cliff said at the end of the quarter you have to know is it completed or not completed? It's a yes or no question. It's not an almost done. Oh, I got three more things. It's YES or NO was it done? And then you the beauty of all of it to me is the rating. So it was cliff and I and we were rating he had four rocks and I had five rocks. At the end of the quarter. The leader is going to ask Joe you at five rocks. Did you complete this done? We just done you can get this done that next one not done. Not done. Okay. So you got three to five. You have a 60% Completion ratio. Cliff had three rocks and he got all three done. He has 100% Come patient ratio. Now we know efficiencies inside of teams and departments. And we know, guess what if clicked Clifton, three out of three, guess what he's probably going to do next quarter, we are who we are, we do what we do. So now I can become more self aware and more efficient and realize, and I can maybe be 80%, I could work on it. But efficient people will drive outcomes, and it's just the way they are. And then we have to all see where we're at and learn how to be more efficient to complete the rocks. So you have to have an outcome in endpoint of things. Because you said, we just keep creating new stuff and don't even realize we didn't finish because it's not documented, right?

Yeah. And to your point, you're like a good status to, like, as a company have 80% of your rocks completed, like that, you know, that would be kind of the gold standard or the aligned standard. In that space, we're hitting 80%, then that's a good thing, because there's gonna be things that come up, there's going to be, you know, like, oh, we have to roll this into the next one. It's a lot bigger project. And so to get the that integrity, right, though, with that, as soon as possible is really important.

And in the clinic setting, everyone is involved in the outcome, the clinical outcome, usually everyone, not everyone always, like a back off the CIA. But most people are involved in the delivery and the execution of a clinical experience for a patient. So you don't have probably three days that you're behind a desk with our patients in a clinic setting. So these rocks got to be small, tight, efficient ways to enhance the business. And then your office manager, or if you want to use the word integrator case manager, a leader, a care manager, whatever you're calling the leader, that's running the operations, their staff, their KPI, their key performance indicator, is how many of the team members are upset. And what percent. So if you have five team members with three rocks each, that's 15 rocks. So that leaders KPI is what percent are AppStack 15 Out of the people. And there's 10 She's running as 66% efficiency of her management, her leadership ability, because you have another 15 from her team, because that's her job. Is that being that manager? So that to me is the big change I've made is to really figure out how to assess leadership of the operator, the integrator, the office manager, what do you think that cliff? I don't know if you've used?

Yeah, yeah, no, you're spot on on it. I'm just bringing up some office managers in my offices. So that will be on there starting, you know, beginning of this next year, they've been on mine. And I've been tracking them for myself. And the hard part is, I'm a visionary. So you really want an integrator to be in charge of that, because they'll follow that up weekly. And so that's what I've been making my changes this last quarter. And it's been a lot better. And we've seen a lot better results in each of the clinics and how they're performing and producing. I like it the three I liked

for, and I had a debate with Stu friends, too, last week about this should profit beyond the manager, because I'm running budgets. So is it the CEO? Is it the leader, the owner? Or is it the manager, and I find he found more than the leader, I found more of the operator because the operators running the budget leaders not running the budget. And that's how you get squeezed the profit of the business. So I think that operators should be profit, net profit, revenue per employee efficiency of the team and number of rocks percentage completed, going off on a tangent, but that's just a little, little nugget for you guys, as you manage, but getting back to rocks,

Joe, let me like, let me just tail on that too. Like I agree with you, as long as the integrator office manager has input to how money is being spent. Because if they don't have input on how money spent, then they can't own that. And so as long as the input.

Yeah, if they're running the budget themselves, and they're making the decision, if not, it's a patronized stat. It's a very good point.

Like in an office, though, like I was like, Oh, I'm gonna donate all this money to charity, like, where this charity, I'm like, okay, cool. I'm gonna donate this. And I didn't talk to my integrator, my office manager about it. She's like, we didn't even talk about that she was I'm happy we donated that money, but that's impacting my stat. So you just want to make sure that you when you do that, you have that in that conversation with them. If you're giving them ownership.

Very good point. They gotta be able to control the outcome or you can't give that stuff. That's a great lesson for everyone. So when we're talking about rocks, we should have about like Cliff said, it's three to seven. We recommend three or maybe even to for a clinic because it's very operationally heavy, versus a company that has, you know, let's say running a tanning salon and there's some people up front and then the owner and the manager is in the back running the business. Usually in a Chiropractic Center, everyone's operating and part of the patient experience, or most All right, so you just don't have the massive access time. So you want to be a little tighter, I would say two to three rocks for the company. And then each person should have two to three rocks. Now you may have a company rock is your rock. So that's one of yours, you may have two others, but at the end of the day, everyone has two to three things that they're doing to improve the business.

Yeah, I think that's spot on. And I think less is more like we think, Oh, if we put more on there, we're gonna get more done. It's actually the opposite three is about the maximum that I found offices can focus on with the, you know, 3040 offices I work with on these. That's where the sweet spot is, is that two to three. And the other thing too, is we also on our rocks, we have a space where we call our parking lot. So if we finish a rock early, because one of the things, I don't want to stretch a rock out to 90 days, if it only needs to be 40. And so if we finish it, we want to move on and add another rock later, I'm 100% on board for that, but have the three, make sure you finish the three because those three have to get us to our final goal for the end of year.

Yeah, that's great, great point. And that's, that's such a great, I would recommend everyone have a parking lot when you're doing your strategy sessions, because you're going to want to do everything. But you'll find no one, it goes on that parking lot, or that brainstorm, list, whatever you want to call it, it's basically rocks and projects that don't have a date on them. Still there, they didn't leave, you're not losing them. And you know what's so exciting, if you finish your three rocks, you can grab another one. So don't feel like you know, so scared that you don't have enough projects, because you want to do them while you keep them on and pull them like I've said and add them if you finish your eyes.

And one of the things I really like because I have a like a dry erase a laminated piece of paper that has all my whole year. And I have all my quarterly rocks. So I'm allowed to put three in each one. And so I keep that and I'm like I can, you know dry, erase it and move it over if I need to. But it just lets you look at the whole year this thing, okay, I'm gonna get this done over this year, because I think commonly we overestimate what we can do in a week and underestimate what we can do in a year. And so having that further out view helps you get those things done, so that you can build the company in the life that's aligned and the life of your dreams. So

yeah, that's that's some that's a common statement is Oh, as humans, we overestimate what we can do in the short term and underestimate what we do in the long term. Tony Robbins said, even said, We overestimate what you do in one year and underestimate, would you wait a decade, so no matter what stage, you say, you're always underestimated the life experience. And you're overestimating the short term. So doing less getting completion, because there is this consciousness around constantly completing on time, and seeing a change in growth, your business revenue, because then you fool yourself into thinking you can accomplish anything you want, because you keep doing everything. And then you keep driving over and then you keep doing it. And it becomes this mature culture. And that's the biggest part of the business is the culture of like, we are accountable, we complete the expectation, and it drives our business. And that's a culture that could take you two or three years to refine, to be honest with you, even with these tools. So

and I think the CEO book, really, there's a chapter in there, I think, chapter eight or nine, where it talks about like changing the culture in your business. So just because it's been a certain way doesn't mean it needs to continue being a certain way.

And I would, I will put a line in the sand. When you do that, when you're talking to your team say, listen, and I've had this conversation. We're all mission base. We're all awesome people, we're doing great things for great people. But we're gonna make this line in the sand bone now about accountability or this about expectation or about our respect, or whatever it is you're doing as the leader, I would put that line in the sand and then present it and honor it yourself first, and then work on the team. Alright,

so I think that we'll wrap up this episode, what we'll do next time is we're going to go into meeting rhythms. So now that we've talked about rocks and how to build our rocks, next time, we're going to actually talk about our meeting rhythms, how we hold everybody accountable to these things, how we create them, and then we'll do an overview and just a review of traction. And then we'll get into some end of year and beginning of year things in episodes after that. So Joe, thanks for your expertise and knowledge in this. You killed it. I really appreciate you. Alright, see you guys next week.