A way to generate £2k more a month… that you never thought about!

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Would you love to make an extra 30, 000 in your clinic in the next financial year? Are you struggling to recruit great people into your business? Are you tired of recruiting new grads, spending loads of time, effort, energy and money on them for them to not really perform or stay very long in your clinic?

Well, if the answer is yes, then listen to this episode.

[00:00:28] Katie Bell: Welcome to the Treat Your Business podcast with Katie Bell. I am Katie, and this is the place to learn the strategies, tactics, tools, and mindset needed. To build your clinic or studio into a business that gives you the time, money, energy and fulfillment you want and deserve. My team and I work every day with overwhelmed and exhausted clinic owners like you to shift them from a business that is a huge time and energy drain and is not giving them the income they want to confident clinic owners that are making money, saving money and getting time back in their lives.

[00:00:59] Katie Bell: So if this sounds like something you want, let’s dive in. This podcast is sponsored by HMDG, the leading digital marketing agency for the Clinicare is in the U. K.

[00:01:09] Katie Bell: Harris, a huge welcome to the Treat Your Business podcast. Thanks, Katie. Great, I’m so excited to chat to you. Harris, we met recently at a Physio First day, didn’t we? And we were sharing a really great conversation about what your role is in Physio First, what my role is in Physio First, and we are both a commercial strategic partner, is a very swanky term.

[00:01:33] Katie Bell: Carys, I’m so grateful for you giving up your time to come onto the podcast and talk to, because I loved our conversation and I thought there’d be so many clinic owners that could benefit from talking to you and understanding what your, not new business, but your newer business can offer clinic owners.

[00:01:51] Katie Bell: So you, Carys, you have set up Cygnets. Which is, am I right in saying, a business that supports clinic owners in bringing students on placements and how we can diversify our income, monetize that, how we can support them in a better way, how we can future proof our industry.

[00:02:11] Carys Roberts: Absolutely. And also prevent problems from happening with placements because that’s always a concern, especially for business owners.

[00:02:19] Carys Roberts: We’re quite protective and rightly so of what we’ve built.

[00:02:22] Katie Bell: Yeah. And until I spoke to you, Carys, I’m going to be totally transparent. Students in my brain, because I’m a clinic owner as well, and I know you are as well, so you get this, don’t you? And I talk to clinic owners that are so time poor.

[00:02:36] Katie Bell: Students, for me, were just like a ball lake. Oh yeah. So I’m just like, ugh. Every part of me was like, I need to give back. I need to be able to offer these placements and have these students with me. But I felt like there was going to be loads of paperwork I needed to jump through and processes and systems and what if, excuse my language, what if they were shit, and, aren’t great with my clients, and then I’ve got this professionalist and we don’t You know, we’re charging for these services and it all just then caught completely overwhelming in my head and in full transparency, I thought, yeah, that’s not, that is not a something that I can deal with right now.

[00:03:12] Katie Bell: And I’m just going to move on to the next thing in my business. And it was only through talking to you that I was like, I didn’t, A, I didn’t know your service existed. If I did, what a game changer that would have been to helping more students come through to us on placement, but actually me doing it in a better way.

[00:03:28] Katie Bell: And also potentially earning money from it.

[00:03:31] Carys Roberts: Absolutely. And I’m not going to lie. I’ve run a very transparent business. Some of them are shit. It is sometimes a ball ache, but what I’ve done, I’ve been there. I’ve done that. I’ve had over 500 students come through a variety of the workplaces that I’ve worked in elite sport, through my own clinic voluntary placements that we’ve run at charities.

[00:03:54] Carys Roberts: I’ve been through a lot and you don’t get that many without having a few issues and there are issues out there and just like staff, you have staffing issues. It is no different and just because they’re students doesn’t mean you’re going to have more than that than you have with your staff, necessarily.

[00:04:11] Katie Bell: But I guess what we’re going to learn from today’s podcast. You’re going to tell us, aren’t you? You, you create systems, you create processes, you create ways that we know how to deal with that. So you can learn how to manage any of those issues. But also one of the things that I remember us chatting about at the Physio First event, you said to me, recruitment is a really big challenge in our industry right now.

[00:04:34] Katie Bell: And I was like, yeah, it’s another one of those ball aches that just stop. It’s hard work to try and find great people. And you said, but by bringing students in, you’re future proofing your clinic because lots of these great ones turn into great practitioners. That then want to come and work for you when they’ve qualified.

[00:04:56] Katie Bell: So you’re lining them up almost of wanting to come up. I was like, I’ve never even

[00:04:59] Carys Roberts: thought of that. Absolutely. Cause I, you can try various models of recruitment and there are various things out there. There’s some great other commercial partners with physio first that help with this.

[00:05:10] Carys Roberts: But actually, until you really work with somebody, you don’t ever fully know, really. And having the students on placement, they are never going to get the knowledge you require them to have in a six week placement for running their own caseload in your clinic. However, you can see if it’s a possibility that they can get that knowledge.

[00:05:31] Carys Roberts: You can see what personality traits they have that you think you could work with or not. And I have solely recruited from my placements for the last couple of years. And it’s put us in a really good position. In that, we know the people, we know their shortcomings before they start with us.

[00:05:50] Carys Roberts: We’ve already got a training plan and progress plan in place for them because we, we start that as part of the placement and then we carry that on. The clients have already met them. So in terms of continuity of care, as well, if they’ve seen them on their placements and they’ve seen us teach them and they’ve made a really positive impression on the client’s then quite happy to go in and see that person.

[00:06:14] Carys Roberts: Oh, I know they’re good because I almost had a taster session with them when they were on placement. So it’s helped me offload some of my clinical caseload. into it because people have met those people before, which is great. And I love that. And I’m happy if my patients are happy with all the members of my team.

[00:06:32] Carys Roberts: I’m really happy with that. That’s a real positive. And through the placement. Because you get tariff funding, which I’ll come on to in a little bit, it’s almost a try before you buy, but you’re earning revenue from it as well. So it’s a great way to pay for that time of having that almost, you would still put a probationary period.

[00:06:54] Carys Roberts: Period in, you would still do everything you’d normally do, but it’s almost like a pre probationary period with them being on placement. And don’t forget on placement, they’re really worried about marks. It’s quite a high pressured situation. You do see they can’t hide their personality for six weeks. And, I really advocate for any of my placement providers to really put them through their paces, see what they’re made of, push them.

[00:07:20] Carys Roberts: We should be anyway, we should be pushing students outside their comfort zone and pushing them to the highest level we can in clinical practice. And that looks different for different students, arguably, but that really gives you a great insight. into them as a future workforce member, whether that’s immediately after they’ve finished their placement as a physio assistant or a receptionist in your practice, great roles for them to come in and keep in touch with things, or whether that’s five years down the line where they come back and say, I’ve gone away, I’ve got that experience you suggested to me and I would love to work for you in your private practice.

[00:07:59] Katie Bell: There’s so many avenues, isn’t there? And so many ways that it can impact your business so positively. Yeah. And I think, Charis, we also have a little bit of a responsibility to these students because we’re all students. Oh, yeah. I don’t know about you, Charis, but I particularly remember some of my placements.

[00:08:19] Katie Bell: I wouldn’t wish them on anybody. No, exactly. So the experiences that I had were utterly dreadful. But also, the ones that I did have they made me the practitioner I was. They’re life

[00:08:30] Carys Roberts: changing. A placement can be life changing. And, I’ve had, we, so as part of the Cygnets modeling that we do, it’s very process driven, data driven, just like your Thrive support, we have strategy, it’s about mindset, everything like that.

[00:08:47] Carys Roberts: We, we get student feedback after each placement and it can be completely anonymous. So they can feedback because I want true data of how they found the placement and that gives me data to feedback to the educators to help the educators develop because there’s always room for improvement.

[00:09:06] Carys Roberts: And also to the universities about how they prepare students and what students need. Suit certain practices and what doesn’t, but the feedback we get on that, and just verbally as well, some students say, I would never ever want to work in private practice. It is not the environment for me. And I’m fine with that.

[00:09:26] Carys Roberts: They say I’ve learned a lot, but I’ve just realized it isn’t what I thought and I don’t want to do it. I’d rather than figure that out then than four months into employment, like I’ve had previously, where it’s. Too much hard work and they go. And you’ve invested so much time, effort, money, it can potentially affect your business reputation if the quality of care hasn’t been, all of that.

[00:09:49] Carys Roberts: And then a lot of the time what we get is, I was thinking of dropping out the course, but now you’ve reminded me of why I want to be a physio. Or I hadn’t even thought that I might go in. I didn’t realize how much you did for people in private practice because, the majority of their placements are NHS based and I think, we can all agree that I don’t think there is a great understanding of the private sector from some of our NHS colleagues of where we fit into the healthcare system, and I don’t mean to say that controversially, I just think you get used to the environment that you’re working in.

[00:10:26] Carys Roberts: But it does mean that if students are only having that NHS experience, none of that will ever change if more private practitioners don’t take them into their practices. We can’t rely on the unis to change their teaching. They have set curriculum. Unfortunately, a lot of them are downgrading the manual therapy time in favor of more research based modules, it is what it is at the end of the day.

[00:10:55] Carys Roberts: And I’m not, I won’t get on my soapbox about all of that, cause that will take up the whole of the podcast. But we all know, like you said Katie, those placements, placement experience to me is one of the most important experiences a student can have, whatever industry you’re in. It’s that real life work based experience where you see some of that theory does translate, but sometimes it doesn’t, and you need to change your mindset around, what the patient’s telling you is just as important as what you’ve read in a book or you’ve read in a research article.

[00:11:31] Carys Roberts: We can’t keep moaning as a profession that the quality is going down and that recruitment is a problem if we’re not all willing to take a little bit of a chance to try and improve those things. And I, I’ve seen it firsthand within my own clinic and I’ve seen it with some of the other providers that I’m working with that the way there is a way that we can help change that through student placements.

[00:11:57] Carys Roberts: So tell us then, if I’m now like, cause I’m in now, I’m thinking, this sounds good. This sounds like I’ve got out of my own way a little bit. I’ve just, stepped back and thought, okay, there’s maybe an opportunity here. I’m in my visionary seat. I’m in my entrepreneurial seat and I’m thinking, okay, how do we make this work for the business?

[00:12:15] Katie Bell: As well as how do we give back to our industry? How do we up level? The quality that is coming out of the universities to protect this industry for the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years.

[00:12:27] Carys Roberts: Absolutely.

[00:12:28] Katie Bell: So I’m in, right? I’m sold by what you’ve said so far. But now I’m still thinking, this still sounds Like loads of work and loads of effort.

[00:12:36] Katie Bell: And I don’t know how I wouldn’t, I don’t even have time in a week to think about this, how am I going to now have time for students? So this is where Cygnus come in, comes in. Absolutely. Tell me about it.

[00:12:48] Carys Roberts: So over the years with integrating it into my own business, I’ve tried and tested many different models of taking students, how we prepare them, how we get information about them.

[00:13:00] Carys Roberts: Each university works slightly differently. I’m not going to lie, it’s a nightmare out there. Okay, it’s not standardized as really it should be. What I’ve built over that time are processes and procedures and a solution that fits whichever university it is, whatever type of student it is as well. Whether that’s sports therapy, physio or whether it’s, one of our other allied health professions, depending on your clinic model, you might have that Other professions working alongside you.

[00:13:32] Carys Roberts: So what we do is take that sting and remove the barriers to businesses from taking students. So you want to do it, but you’re busy. Okay. In a big hospital, you would have a placement coordinator. Who would liaise with the unis, they’d complete the paperwork, they’d quality assure across, making sure the educators had done their courses, they knew what they were doing, the students were getting onboarded properly, all of that.

[00:14:00] Carys Roberts: That’s basically what we do. But, The different wards are the different businesses. Okay, so they’re the different providers. They’re the different businesses, the different clinics. And me and my team at Cygnet, we will liaise with the universities to complete the university paperwork. Obviously, we need to have a sit down with our providers.

[00:14:20] Carys Roberts: We want to understand their businesses. We need a certain level of information from them to be able to complete the paperwork. Initially, yes, that’s what we’re There is a bit of that because we truly want to understand and make sure that what we’re setting up is bespoke to each individual business that we’re working with.

[00:14:38] Carys Roberts: So we’ll do all the paperwork for you. And what we’ve got is a, Building library of resources. My MSK, mainly predominantly MSK clinic, we’ve got some anatomy videos. We’re working with the fabulous John Hobbs, who is like the anatomy king for anatomy and palpation, because that’s a big area the students are struggling with across all unis.

[00:14:58] Carys Roberts: So we go where are they struggling? Let’s develop our own resources that we can share amongst our practices. Wednesday afternoon, my senior physio at Swan Physio does in-service training. Now, that’s for us, but also for our students so that we have a graduated program to allow them to do the hands-on.

[00:15:19] Carys Roberts: Now we’ve been streaming that virtually and some other clinics that have got students at the moment have been attending that. So geography isn’t. A complete barrier. Other people might want to do their own program. Absolutely fine. We’ve all got our own ways and students integrate into your team.

[00:15:38] Carys Roberts: So they will come round. They don’t have to have their own caseload. You can just take them with you into your treatments. And if I’m honest, a lot of them aren’t capable of having their own caseload. Okay, I used to give them one and it caused more problems than it was worth. They learn so much by just observing and I think as clinicians we feel like we’ve got to teach them everything.

[00:16:01] Carys Roberts: You can’t in the time you’ve got them and you can’t at the level that the majority of students are coming into placements at. But that’s where it brings me on to what else Signets offers. We will prepare the students. So we have a set process where as soon as we get the allocations, we take them through, we get them to sign confidentiality contracts.

[00:16:22] Carys Roberts: We get them on a kind of a SharePoint portal where there’s information you want them to read before they come on placements. You tell us what they need to know before they come to you. That’s it. And we will make sure that they have been signposted and are reading that before they come out. I personally have a meeting with them six weeks before they come and lay down the law and understand that they need to appreciate they are going into a very privileged position into a private business and that they need to be prepared for it.

[00:16:53] Carys Roberts: So we have a set of. Onboarding process and preparation process. It also gives us insight into the students. If there’s a little bit of an issue starting, we’ve got an idea and we can let you know as the business owner. We just need to keep an eye on this. Might iron itself out. We’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, but let’s just keep Just keep an eye on it.

[00:17:19] Carys Roberts: So I’ve failed quite a few students over the years and I’ve learned, from everyone and I don’t fail them lightly, but if they need to fail, they get failed. And from that, I’ve learned some warning signs and some ways to prevent it. And it’s not overlapping with any HR, but it is a bit HR y and it’s, but it’s very much geared up to the kind of the placement model.

[00:17:44] Carys Roberts: Again, if you have a problem student, I will help you sort that problem student out. Whilst meeting, I know all the processes and procedures from the unis, so I know how to protect your business from that student putting a complaint in against you or anything like that, because, that is out there and it can happen.

[00:18:03] Carys Roberts: But if you need that support for a problem student, that’s what you get.

[00:18:08] Katie Bell: This just sounds absolutely amazing, Carys, and I want to just take a moment to say well done, really well done, because you’re a clinic owner, you’re a busy person, and this is something, that is developing and growing at pace all the time, and I know what it takes, but you’ve really You’ve seen an opportunity and you’ve seen where the industry needs support and you’ve ran with it and created this incredible level of support.

[00:18:34] Katie Bell: So I just want you to own that for a second, that you are doing some amazing stuff. You really are. Okay, I’m in. I think this sounds like a great idea. You’re now telling me that basically you’re going to do The kind of preparatory work with me and for me, we’re gonna be able to have that support network when we’ve got the student in terms of what we are giving them and teaching them and things that we’ve got to get them doing and learning.

[00:18:59] Katie Bell: And then if there was to be a problem, you are there to help navigate. Those potentially slightly more difficult students. So I can see so many benefits to the clinic owner here. And I think one of the things that you’ve touched upon is that this is a tariff.

[00:19:17] Carys Roberts: Money. Yeah. We probably should, we should have led with money, really.

[00:19:21] Carys Roberts: Shouldn’t we? Money side of it now. I’m quite happy to share my clinic figures, and I did this at a Physio First event, and I think it really resonated with a lot of people. I’ve built up, and I would not advocate any clinics starting at this level. You need to build up to a certain number of students once you get used to integrating them, once your staff have got used to it, your clients.

[00:19:45] Carys Roberts: Just like any business strategy or change. You don’t go full hog to start with. You have a progressive way. So now in my clinic, we take between six and eight students at a time. Now we do have space and we do have people that are used to the processes and procedures. To be honest with you, that’s not that much more work than taking one or two.

[00:20:08] Carys Roberts: Okay. Because of the modeling that I’ve put in place. Now, people won’t believe that. They’ll think I’ve got Pinocchio nose coming out. It is once you get used to it. Okay, and We generate an extra 30K of revenue a year through placement tariff money because of the numbers we take and that we pretty much take a placement all of the time.

[00:20:33] Carys Roberts: But most clinics where they take three students, which is the minimum number I would say is viable to make it work. So I’ve mapped all this out. You’ll love it, Katie, cause you’re a numbers girl as well. There is a level where it’s worth doing or not worth doing. Three students sounds really scary and that’s where, people get a little bit put off, but I will talk you through that on an individual basis if people chat to me.

[00:20:58] Carys Roberts: And by the time I’ve said that, people can see what, how it can work within their business, which is great. But three students can bring you in an extra few thousand pounds a month to your clinic. For me we don’t, it’s not. I haven’t got my yard, my yacht parked in the yard outside or anything like that based on student placement money, but we’ve got a rehab gym.

[00:21:23] Carys Roberts: Okay. And from a business point of view, that doesn’t generate us a massive amount of revenue like our treatments do, but I love having that facility. It allows us to take on more complex cases in clinic. It allows us to do more courses. It has a business value other than pure revenue generation. But the student placements help offset that a little bit.

[00:21:48] Carys Roberts: And that’s a space we can go and give them to go and do a rehab program with a patient and do things. The way I look at student placements, a few years ago it was, A nice to have, and I was doing it out of the goodness of my heart. Now it is an integrated part of the diversification of my revenue generation for my business, as well as my recruitment strategy.

[00:22:10] Katie Bell: Amen. It’s a win.

[00:22:12] Carys Roberts: If you want to, I don’t know that many people wouldn’t want an extra couple of grand a month without, I can

[00:22:17] Katie Bell: definitely tell

[00:22:18] Carys Roberts: you

[00:22:19] Katie Bell: they all need it because we get on a lot of calls and they are not taking home the money that they ought to by running a clinic. And all the hours that they work because their cash flow is poor and things are tight and margins are low.

[00:22:31] Katie Bell: So this is a way of diversifying income. It’s a way of influencing your recruitment and having that kind of almost lineup of potential people, not only having a lineup of potential people, but having great people that you’ve already basically done the interview process with. whilst they’re doing stuff in your clinic, so that when they do come on board, they are ready to rock and roll.

[00:22:57] Katie Bell: They don’t take 6, 8, 12 months to get, get going in your clinic and get seeing a clinical caseload. You’ve done the preparatory work with them, haven’t you? And they like you, they know you, they trust you, they’re bought into your values. You also get paid as a result of it. And if we use signets, all of the complexity and all of that paperwork that quite frankly frightens any business owner to death, because we are not those sorts of people.

[00:23:22] Katie Bell: We don’t like admin. Yeah. You do all that

[00:23:26] Carys Roberts: for us. We do all the spreadsheets. We do all the forms and they are pretty horrendous. I have to reward myself with Haribo when I sit down to fill them out and I’m quite familiar with them and I’ve got a great process, but the Haribo is key. Probably the other thing I haven’t mentioned is, this integrates into your clinic.

[00:23:44] Carys Roberts: Placements do integrate into your clinic. You, we all have to do CPD. They’re a great way of showcasing your own CPD, but also they’re a way that I If they’re having to teach, I know those students are asking them the questions that I want them being asked, to keep on top of current practice and to keep their anatomy fresh.

[00:24:07] Carys Roberts: So it’s almost like it integrates as your own internal in service training, CPD program, just by having them around and doing some teaching.

[00:24:16] Katie Bell: And, they need the opportunities, they need to be around people in clinical practice who are, we are inspiring, we are motivating, we are creating incredible things in this industry, we are transforming lives, we are impacting people on a massive level and I was a student and so are you car.

[00:24:35] Katie Bell: And I knew I didn’t wanna go and work in the NHS from exactly, from the minute I qualified. That was not gonna be my route. No. And I was very unusual because I’m quite old now, now a lot of people are not just going down the NHS route. A lot of clinician lots of graduating physios are opting to go into private practice, aren’t they?

[00:24:56] Carys Roberts: They are, and recently, as part of, because there’s lots of different placement models out there, and again, I tend to draw from all of them when I’m designing the placement model that’s right for the businesses that I’m working with, but I did a leadership placement in association with PhysioFirst back in March, and as part of that, we did some data collection from students and from educators to help build resources that would be useful for both, and one of the questions we asked is, Where do you want your placements?

[00:25:24] Carys Roberts: What do you want to do on graduation? And there was a very high percentage that said they did not want NHS, purely NHS placements, and they did not want to go and work in the NHS. Now that student group, don’t quote me on all the research stuff, but it was postgrad students. So it was your sports scientist, your sports therapist, your biomedical degree graduates that were doing a two year.

[00:25:50] Carys Roberts: Physio conversion, as I like to say, the master’s pre reg in physio. There’s a lot of places doing that now. Our students know where they want to go. And it’s like you’ve said as well, Katie, they know they want a work life balance. They know what they want. And a lot of them, that isn’t necessarily the traditional route for physio.

[00:26:12] Carys Roberts: That we think of and placements are a big part of that to show them if what they think they want is, or actually there’s something else there. So there is demand for private placements.

[00:26:25] Katie Bell: So if somebody is all in on this now, Carys, they’re really excited by the potential opportunity, the diversification of, revenue generation giving back to the industry, recruitment, all of the great, amazing stuff we’ve talked about.

[00:26:37] Katie Bell: How do they, like, how do they, what’s the next thing they need to do? How do they reach out to you? To have a conversation. Lovely.

[00:26:43] Carys Roberts: For Physio First members, there is an option of a 30 minute consultation with me as part of their membership, because I’m a commercial partner like yourself, Katie. If they go onto the Physio First members area, they can have a little look and there’s a link to my diary and they can book in.

[00:27:00] Carys Roberts: Okay. If they’re not a Physio First member, if you visit the website, which is if you Google search Swan Physio Signets, the website will come up because it’s a couple of pages held in my clinic website. That’s got all the details on because obviously people are thinking how do I charge for this?

[00:27:20] Carys Roberts: You don’t pay me anything unless you take students. Probably a dodgy business model. It’s all on commission base because that’s how it needs to be that for it not to be a barrier for clinics to take students. So all of the costings are there, all of the bits that I’ve spoken about and much more is on there about how it works and what I offer.

[00:27:41] Carys Roberts: So yeah, the best way is to book an online consult into my diary and let’s have a chat. Let’s have a 30 minute little bit of a chat and then move forwards from there.

[00:27:52] Katie Bell: Amazing. And I really hope people do encourage us because I think there’s so much more we could be doing and there’s so much opportunity here for clinical owners to, to support students in the right way.

[00:28:01] Katie Bell: But, and but, make it work for them and their business as well.

[00:28:06] Carys Roberts: That’s it. And, it’s not just, oh, they fill out this paperwork and you can take them on placement. It’s advice on how to integrate it to look at bettering your business model. Our patients love it. They absolutely love it. Love the fact we’re a teaching practice.

[00:28:22] Carys Roberts: The ones that don’t, we have a different process for them. But again, that’s all things that I can help clinic owners with. And I’m a fellow JNAP user, Katie. It’s fantastic. Cause we basically, we send out a survey before each appointment. Do you want a student in or not? And that gives us a heads up before that patient even arrives, which is great.

[00:28:42] Carys Roberts: And then they give feedback afterwards because JNAP’s functionality allows us to do that, which is brilliant.

[00:28:48] Katie Bell: Harris, it has been an absolute joy talking to you. Thank you so much for your time.

[00:28:53] Carys Roberts: Thank you so much for having me on, Katie. I really appreciate it. You’re welcome.