Episode 17: Focusing On Your Strengths

What is it that you are good at? Are you doing what you love to do? Good leaders spend their time doing what they love and they are good at. In return, these efforts bring them a return on investment in their business, unlike others. Developing a team of people who support you and grow with you is key to growing your business. 

Do not miss these highlights:

01:02 We usually think we need to do it all, finding ourselves wearing all these hats

01:47 Why you need to focus on where your strengths are

02:25 You can outsource somebody who can do better, more efficient and at a cheaper rate

04:33 Just because you can do a task doesn't mean you should do a task 

04:46 As a leader you are helping your team to grow not only as a practice but as individuals

05:58 Things that we're not good at, we're gonna put off

06:32 The exercise that is going to allow you to see what it is that you like to do

11:10  The goal is getting yourself known, create revenue that doesn't require so much of your time, so you can spend your time doing the things you love

Transcript of Episode #17:

0:01
You're listening to the functional medicine business podcast featuring Dr. Deb, one of the most creative functional medicine business practitioners in her industry. She shares the wisdom and knowledge that she has gained over 25 years of functional medicine, a pioneer in functional medicine, scheduling, leadership and Practice Management. Dr. Deb has a wealth of knowledge and is eager to share to help functional medicine become more productive, and for the practitioners and patients to live better lives. Our podcast shares the good and the bad of our industry. Because Dr. Deb knows the pain you live every day building a functional medicine practice with practical tools on how to manage money, taxes and patient care. She will discuss it all with you.

0:54
Welcome back to FMBI podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Deb. Today, we're going to focus on your strengths. You know, oftentimes, it's easy for us to think we can be the jack of all trades, especially in business. When we start out in business it's usually us wearing 50 different hats. We are doing the hiring, we're doing the firing, we're seeing the patient, we're doing the bookkeeping, we're doing our own schedules, we're doing our website design and our marketing. And we're wearing all these hats. We're doing all these things. And we get into this position where we think that we need to do it all. But I want to challenge you a little bit today to think about focusing on what are your strengths? And what is it that you love to do? Because I think once we focus on where your strengths are, we can work backwards and take some of these stressors off your plate of things that you've been doing over and over and over again, that you don't really need to do because somebody else can do them better, more efficiently and cheaper.

2:05
So the first thing I want to challenge you to think about is what is your hourly rate right now? And then what is your ideal hourly rate? So for instance, if your hourly rate right now is $200 an hour, maybe you want to be $400 an hour. Okay? That is great. Now, I want you to write down on a piece of paper, all of the things that you're doing that you would have to well, let's back up, I want you to write down on a piece of paper, all the things that you're doing that are less than a $400 an hour job. Because these are the things that we can offset to someone else to do that's better and more efficient than you are.

2:51
So for instance, if you're doing your web design, you can find somebody to do web design for less than $400 an hour, we can go over to Upwork or Fiverr. And we can see what somebody is charging per hour to do this work. Most of the time, it's going to be between $40-$60 an hour for a web designer on occasion, you're going to find somebody that's around the $20 mark, and a whole bunch of other things in between, but you're not going to find somebody that's $400 an hour to design your website. If we look at your accounting, your accountant may be $300 an hour. But your bookkeeper may only be $20-$25 an hour. And your bookkeeper does all of your day to day stuff, your entries into QuickBooks, they put all of your bills in, they pay your bills, they do all the journal entries. And basically your accountant just kind of looks over all of their work at the end of the month, and makes any suggestions or corrections or move things around a little bit. So that kind of work can all be outsourced to somebody else to free you up so that you can actually do the $400 an hour work that you love to do and that you want to do. Because if you're doing work that you don't love, even though you're charging $400 an hour, I would really encourage you to take a step back and decide that maybe that's not the work you should be doing either. And maybe some of that work could be outsourced to another practitioner, where they're getting a chance to do what they love and bring money into your clinic as well. So you know, just because you can do a task doesn't mean you should do a task and we've heard people say this over and over and over again to us. But unfortunately we don't always listen to them. You know, being a leader means you're leading your team in a direction that you are, are taking them to grow not only as practice but as individuals as well. And if we don't focus on growth for ourselves, it's hard for our people to focus on growth as well.

5:07
So making a contribution to your practice should be at the highest level you possibly can. The contribution you make to your practice is making it run efficiently, automating whatever you can, finding a marketing wheel that really works, building a team of experts around you, building a team of patients that know, love and respect you and we would refer their family to you, that's when you know, you've built an amazing practice, because it's the best gift that somebody could give us is referring a loved one to us. And once we set all this up, and we identify our strengths and our weaknesses, we can now put a leadership and team and put a team in place for us in our business to grow. Because here's the reality, things that we're not good at, we're gonna put off, things that we're good at, and we love will get done right away. But it's the things that we're not good at that often time is what's necessary for the business to grow. And if you can't get it to that place, then you're doing yourself, your patients and your team a disservice.

6:20
So, sit down and really make a list for yourself about what are your expertise, what are the things that you love to do. And I would say, take a piece of paper and divide one half on all the things you love to do and you're really good at all of the things that you don't like, but maybe you're good at. And then all of the things that fit in the third column are all the things that you don't really want to do. And they could be things you don't want to do you don't like and you're not good at, you can put all of those in that one column if you want. But this is going to allow you to see like, what is it that I like to do? Now, maybe you do enjoy the marketing, the creative parts of marketing, okay, that's fine. But you don't necessarily have to do the work, maybe you create the content. And somebody else puts it all together, designing it, putting the copy in there. Or maybe you really like to make emails, so you write the copy for the email, and somebody else takes care of automating that for you. Or you like creating ideas around marketing. So you create the calendar for your marketing team, maybe you don't want to out, you don't want to actually do all the work for marketing but you want to be in charge of the ideas each month of what you do. So you create the educational calendar or the marketing calendar, as we call it. And you put the topics in there, and you decide what you want to see, I want to see two emails, one blog, one video on these topics for these months, maybe you design that part. And then you outsource the actual doing of all of those ads and tools to somebody else. That's a way that you can keep your hand in what it is that you love to do, but you're not tied into it quite as much.

8:15
Maybe the bookkeeping is really your thing. I've been in business over 20 years, I still do all the bookkeeping, I've tried to outsource it to somebody and got a kickback from my accountant, which really made me realize he was right, the bookkeeping is not something that I'm comfortable outsourcing. I don't want someone having that much control over my bank accounts in my financials. So I do my bookkeeping myself, some people don't want to do the bookkeeping. Maybe you have a spouse that can do the bookkeeping for you somebody that you really trust that you don't have to train too much to do that. But I enjoy it. It's something that I do. And it takes me about an hour and a half a month to do it. So it's not a huge time consuming thing. But it also allows me to have a finger on the pulse of the financials of my business. I know exactly how well or how poor my practice is doing by me doing the financials. I know exactly how much money is coming in when I know the patterns, and I can detect if something's going wrong really fast by doing the bookkeeping, because I know what my deposits should be each month, and each day and if each day my deposits are off, I know there's a problem, I need to go look at that. So that allows me to have that finger on the pulse of the business.

9:37
Maybe you really love doing teaching. So put a teaching program together for your clients on whatever the topics are that they need to know about. Not necessarily what we want them to know about but what they want to learn about. And you could always do a quick survey in your clinic and find out what they want more information on and then you could write a blog or do do a podcast or do an audio or do a video on this, share this with your clients. And in the midst of that you're marketing your practice. So there are a lot of things that you can do to stay tied into your business. And there's a lot of things that you can offset to other people that don't require your time.

10:18
For me, I create a lot of content, I really enjoy creating content. But I don't want to have to edit it, I don't want to have to make it sound nice, I don't want to have to make it look nice, it would take me hours to try to do that. So I outsource that to somebody else, I create the content, I hand it off to somebody else, they clean it up and post it for me. And then all I have to worry about is the content creation. And it's really, really well for me. Some people don't want to do that they don't want to outsource, they want to do it themselves. And maybe you're really good at it. And that's great. If it doesn't take you a long time to do it. Perfect. But if you're somebody that's going to get tied up on the perfection of it, and you're going to keep working it and keep working it and keep working it until months go by and now the content that you have is outdated, I would say don't do that, then just record it and hand it off to somebody else. And let the job be what it's going to be because the important part is getting your information out there getting yourself known, getting yourself clients in the door. So revenue comes in. And the whole goal of this is to create a revenue making machine that doesn't require so much of your time, so that you're spending your time doing the things you love while somebody else is spending the time that they love helping you grow and helping you become a better practitioner a better business and being coming more lucrative. And so you can leave your legacy the way you want it.

11:40
So, an assignment for you guys, is that piece of paper of what is it that I like and I'm good at it. It's easy? What is it that I like but maybe I'm not good at and it's a little harder for me to do? And then what is it that I don't like I don't know how to do is taking too much time? Then sit down, take a look at that and start figuring out a way that you can outsource the things that you're not good at you don't like and take too much time. start just by outsourcing that. And then you can start working your way back into some of the other things that maybe you enjoy, but it takes too much time from you. And just keep working it to free up your time and space.

12:21
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others. post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review to catch all the latest for me. You can follow me on Facebook at FMBI, join our free group where we support one another and share our struggles. Thanks again and I'll see you next time.