Why running a business is really fecking hard with Katie & Michael

• 0:00-Welcome and Introduction
• 3:10-The Reality of Hard Work
• 6:30-Misleading Industry Advice
• 11:15-Importance of Consistency
• 15:45-Valuing Your Time
• 19:20-Pricing Strategy
• 22:30-Leveraging Team Strengths
• 27:10-Continuous Improvement
• 31:00-Real-Life Examples
• 35:20-Final Thoughts and Wrap-Up

[00:00:00] Katie Bell: This week, I’m excited to welcome Michael Schumacher back to the Treat Your Business podcast. Now, I get to see all the data behind the scenes on our podcast, and these episodes are always the most popular. Me and Michael decided to record this episode because we spend many a call, a Zoom, a chat, a text message, sometimes ranting, sometimes chatting, sometimes laughing about various things that we see going on within the industry.

[00:00:28] Katie Bell: And you will know, having worked with probably myself or listened to me over the weeks and many of you work with Michael in HMDG already, that we are super passionate about this industry and helping clinic owners thrive. Excuse the pun, no pun intended. On this week’s episode, we got together to do it.

[00:00:51] Katie Bell: On a bigger scale, so you guys could actually hear what we talk about. And this week’s episode is talking about why running a business and running a clinic is really fucking hard work. This episode does come with a warning. We don’t hold back. There may be some swearing, so I know some of you listen to this on your way to drop the kids off on a Wednesday morning when it goes live.

[00:01:14] Katie Bell: So if that’s the case, perhaps we’ll Choose a different time to listen to this episode. But it’s very valuable, and we talk about lots of things that we’re seeing in the industry, and we just call some stuff out, and we talk actually about how you can do things differently, and why there isn’t a magic pill when it comes to running your clinic.

[00:01:32] Katie Bell: So let’s do this.

[00:01:34] Katie Bell: Hi Michael, welcome back to the Treat Your Business podcast again for, I do not know how many episodes we’ve been doing this for now, but a few times.

[00:01:43] Michael Schumacher: We have done, I don’t know now, probably four or five.

[00:01:46] Katie Bell: Definitely. And by, by me telling you this, I know that this is going to make you feel great, but your episodes that you appear on are always the most listened to.

[00:01:56] Michael Schumacher: Yeah, people say this, and and I’m always like, why was I not this popular at uni? When I was a young, single man.

[00:02:04] Katie Bell: You’ve put it into your prime now, now I’m popular

[00:02:06] Michael Schumacher: and I’m in it.

[00:02:08] Katie Bell: You’ve got nothing, you can’t do anything with it. No,

[00:02:10] Michael Schumacher: damn it.

[00:02:12] Katie Bell: Okay we we often get on the phone together, or on emails, ranting and just generally talking about things going on in the industry, and things that we’re hearing, and behaviours that we’re seeing.

[00:02:24] Katie Bell: Gurus coming in and promising the world and delivering absolutely nothing. So we decided we’d record this episode about this kind of famous magic pill principle that a lot of people think is out there. And I’d love to tell you that you found it and I found it, but we haven’t because it doesn’t actually exist.

[00:02:43] Katie Bell: So let’s talk about how running a business I’m about to swear everybody, so if you’re listening to this on a Wednesday morning when it is released on your way to school with the kids in the back of the car, turn us down on this and listen to it when they’re not in the car because it’s going to be some swearing going on.

[00:02:58] Katie Bell: Okay, so we’re going to talk about why business is really fucking hard work and why there are no quick fixes.

[00:03:04] Michael Schumacher: Yeah. And you said that there’s no magic pill. There is. And it’s Really fucking hard work. That’s my and, it’s something I obviously speak to clean cleaners five a day at least.

[00:03:16] Michael Schumacher: And you do the same thing. And something that’s been really bothering me recently Because I’m sat there and I, I see all the Instagram adverts and all the TikTok adverts. And everything seems to be, it’s so easy to make money. It’s so simple. Do this, buy my course and make a million pounds or use my magic pat patient accelerator system.

[00:03:36] Michael Schumacher: Mavis started my patient accelerator in just three weeks. She’s made an extra 40, 000 pounds. No, she hasn’t. She hasn’t made an extra 40, 000 pounds. What you’ve probably done, you’ve got a really bloody busy doing free appointments and now she’s off her feet, making no money at all, other than paying you tons of money.

[00:03:52] Michael Schumacher: And it seems I come from a very corporate background and I am all about money, but for me, money comes from good products. It isn’t what my aim is to create a great product with HMDG. We want to create a really great product. And the money will follow. And it seems like it’s now the other way around.

[00:04:11] Michael Schumacher: It’s how do we make money? And it’s not about that. And particularly in healthcare. And I say it all the time, magic accelerator programs, patient blueprints, everyone’s out there essentially ripping off clinicians. And by the way, I don’t blame clinicians for falling for it.

[00:04:27] Michael Schumacher: I remember at uni having zero money and, someone comes along and says, you can earn this much money by it. You can afford for it. I get it. But it annoys me when we get those clients and they come to me and they’ve said, I’ve just signed up, I signed up for this thing. I spent 7, 000 and I’ve had three patients and I don’t know what to do and I’ve got no more money left.

[00:04:46] Michael Schumacher: At that point, there’s not much we can do. And I think people have to remember, It really is hard work. And, whether it’s someone that comes to you and says I want to run my business more optimally I want to make more money, or I just want a better life work, work life balance, or they come to us and say, I want marketing and I want more patients, the first thing I say to them is that’s absolutely fine.

[00:05:09] Michael Schumacher: But this is going to be really hard work. You can’t just get a, there’s no silver bullet where you say, Oh, I put spots money in, and there we go. We’ve got an extra 10, 000 pounds in the bank. I had a good example of a client who said, I need an extra hundred appointments this month. And I said, I don’t think you do.

[00:05:27] Michael Schumacher: And he said, why? How many, what’s your retention rate? You said four. I said, can you handle 400 appointments next month? No, I can’t. So a lot of the time you don’t even know what you’re looking for and you’ve got to do the opposite. You’ve actually got to streamline the business and optimize that before throwing loads of patients into the business.

[00:05:44] Michael Schumacher: So yeah, that’s what I want to talk about a bit today, because we both see it and it’s incredibly annoying. And I think that a lot of people need to really listen and really understand that it is hard work. There are no magic bullets. You’re not just suddenly going to become rich overnight. And take our advice, because I think we both agree, when you see something on the internet that promises you something, It is not true.

[00:06:15] Michael Schumacher: It’s just not. If you come to me and you say, I want to be marketing, I’m going to tell you, do your marketing. We will do an incredible job. And if you work really hard with us over the next six to 12 months, you’re going to see however many more patients you want, that will happen. But you’ve got to work with us.

[00:06:32] Michael Schumacher: You’ve got to do things as well. And I can give you a couple of examples. I’ve got a client who opened up about, so it’s October. So what’s that seven, eight months ago, eight months ago. They’re now doing 30, 000 revenue per month. And I’ve got a client that opened three months ago who’s now making 9, 000 revenue a month.

[00:06:53] Michael Schumacher: And both of them, they worked their socks off. They did everything that I told them to and my team told them to. Everything, to the T. And they’re flying, they’re doing brilliantly, and they’re at between sort of 25 and 35 percent profit as well, which I think most people could dream of. And that’s another thing, listening to us.

[00:07:13] Michael Schumacher: One of those clients, We were looking at, how can we increase things without spending too much more money? And so he said, let’s open on a Sunday. And he said, that’s a really great idea because no one else in his area is open on Sunday. And he did. No questions asked. He just did it. And guess what?

[00:07:27] Michael Schumacher: He’s chocker Sunday. He needs more clinicians on a Sunday. And I hear this all the time. I need the day off. It’s too much like hard work. Now, of course. This isn’t something you do in 10 years time, but there are periods in business where you just have to work hard. And I think you saw my article. I was on one of those once in a lifetime holidays, what, two months ago?

[00:07:51] Michael Schumacher: I was in the Philippines on, imagine Robinson Crusoe, there’s this deserted beach with palm trees and sand. It was beautiful. What was I doing? I was writing an article on work ethic and working hard. And you can go and look at that Go on HMDG. co. uk and you’ll find it. And I think that’s what I really want to get to is it’s important to work hard.

[00:08:10] Michael Schumacher: You will get the results. Don’t listen to those gurus.

[00:08:15] Katie Bell: I think when people talk about working hard in business I’m in the middle of writing something at the moment. I can’t tell you anything about it, but you will all find out about it very soon. But I’m in the middle of writing something and this first thing that I was starting to write about was me running my clinic 10 years ago.

[00:08:30] Katie Bell: And I described myself as, do you remember being a kid? Did you ever do this? Like my parents took me to the circus. When I was like a little girl and it was like one of those old like they had like animals in the circus. I don’t even think that’s allowed anymore is it? We went to this old school circus and this fabulously dressed woman in tights and a pair of like short shorts and waistcoat and a hat.

[00:08:55] Katie Bell: was selling the tickets on the gate, and then the next minute she’s the trapeze artist, and then at halftime she’s selling the ice creams, and then as you can finish you can see her like feeding the animals, and she’s definitely going to be cleaning the motorhome caravan things that they’re living in.

[00:09:10] Katie Bell: She was like everything in this place. She was such a hard worker, and I describe In this chapter that I’m writing at the moment, if that was me in the clinic at the beginning, I was like the circus performer. You would walk in, I’d be on my hands and knees with my rubber gloves on and cleaning the toilet.

[00:09:27] Katie Bell: Then I’d be having to teach a Pilates class. Then I’d be having somebody with acupuncture needles in. Then I’d be answering the phone, trying to do the accounts. And

[00:09:33] Michael Schumacher: Do

[00:09:33] Katie Bell: you know what, like you look back and go, would I do things differently? But there are times in business where you just have to graft your bollocks off and you can’t, it is not sustainable.

[00:09:45] Katie Bell: We’re not saying it’s sustainable, but there’s times when you have to work hard and then there’s times when you have to work smarter and you have to look at how you systemize and create better operations and processes and scheme around you with absolutely crucial to have the right people around you to continue and grow.

[00:10:02] Katie Bell: But when somebody asks you to open on a Sunday, because you can see there’s an opportunity, because you’re entrepreneurial, Michael, and you’ve got that vision, and somebody says, okay, I’m going to do that. And they reap the rewards. Those are the people that make those sacrifices in the short term that go on to, accelerate their success and one of the things that we’ve we’ve actually done only this year, we’re 10 years old, but this year I slowly turned around because you get on a hamster wheel and you get in a cycle of stuff and I was like, what can we closed on back holidays?

[00:10:35] Katie Bell: The whole

[00:10:35] Michael Schumacher: world is

[00:10:36] Katie Bell: off. The UK is off. Most people would need an appointment because they’re off work. Let’s just open. And what that actually meant for all my employed team who were like I don’t actually want to take that bank holiday off because I don’t have kids and it doesn’t really mean anything to me to be off on that.

[00:10:52] Katie Bell: I’d prefer the day off somewhere else. They were super happy. We were rammed in the bank holidays in May because we were the only clinic open. And you will look at your revenue generation in a day times that by eight bank holidays in a year. That is a lot of lost revenue.

[00:11:09] Michael Schumacher: It is, and we see the same thing at Christmas.

[00:11:11] Michael Schumacher: Those clinics that are, everyone says Christmas is really slow. It’s not if you’re open. If people aren’t on a holiday, Christmas is really bloody busy. And in Street Listener, there are we work with least, at least 20 people who are million pound plus clinics. And they’re sat there, and they’re like sitting back, suffing their little Bambini or whatever it’s called.

[00:11:31] Michael Schumacher: Lambrini, or what they drink. They’re subbing their little drink. I’m just, I’m a beer man then.

[00:11:37] Katie Bell: I could tell.

[00:11:39] Michael Schumacher: They’re like, yeah, I’ve got a pretty chilled life. And that’s absolutely right. And we work with those people. But every one of them, they’re like, We’ll say, holy crap, I remember what it was like when I started up, and it wasn’t easy, and I worked my socks off.

[00:11:52] Michael Schumacher: And I think that people, and those people, by the way, they still need help. We work with them, right? They still need help. They still want to do things, whether it’s improving their brand getting great awareness, making sure that they stay competitive. These are all really important things because there’s too many little kids around the corner grabbing all your patients and, but they still need help, but they just need something that’s slightly different. And I think also you get a lot of, I’m finding a lot of people who are coming to us saying, I’ve got a problem and it’s a little bit like, I mentioned this before we got on, it’s a little bit like me coming to you, presenting with a big swollen ankle, real bad Achilles kind of issue, nothing, no tear or anything.

[00:12:31] Michael Schumacher: And you say this is what we’re going to do. We’re going to do one, two, three, four, five. And then the guy says, actually, I’m not sure I should do that. I think it would be a, be better if, and we’re getting a lot of that at the moment because they’ve read a book on business. If someone is on your site. They’re there for physio. They’re not sat there going, Oh, I wonder what this fella does.

[00:12:52] Michael Schumacher: No, we’re here for physio. Anything you do that gets in the way of them booking an appointment is a bad idea. And again, the gurus are charging thousands and thousands of pounds to push free appointments and push all this nonsense and make it work for nothing. And actually, it’s like me saying When’s the last time you were on the locksmith site?

[00:13:12] Michael Schumacher: It was when you were locked out. Once that one day going, come, let’s go on a locksmith site and see what’s going. No, and again, I see this so much and it’s just so much bad advice and they all charge so much money and it really annoys me. This is why we send people, sort people like you because it’s just, it.

[00:13:30] Michael Schumacher: When it’s, what’s that old saying, it’s too good to be true, it normally is. And that’s what it is. And the same goes on marketing. We’ve got people who I don’t want to name names in case I get you sued. But there are gurus out there at the moment. I keep calling them gurus because they tend to, Tell everyone that this is how you do it.

[00:13:52] Michael Schumacher: This is the only way. And I think there are always multiple ways. And I think it’s very different. If you have a small three room clinic in Hockney, it’s very different to having a 10 room clinic in Birmingham, right? It’s just a whole different ballgame. But they always said, this is the way, this is the way of doing things they charge.

[00:14:09] Michael Schumacher: But the funniest thing was one of them is at the moment is, 2 million pound clinic in this area and looks at his website. And his appointment’s at 40 pounds. It’s quite a poor area. And I thought, wow, what’s two million divided by 40? And the staff, he had two staff. I’m thinking, oh, hold on a second.

[00:14:28] Michael Schumacher: So people often ask me, like, how do you know who I should choose? Like, how do I know if someone really knows what they’re doing or not? Do your research. Go and speak to other clients. Don’t just listen or watch a little thumbnail of a testimonial.

[00:14:43] Michael Schumacher: Go and look at that client. Go and speak to them. When people come to us, our client list is actually on our website. You can just go and look at any one of the 800 whatever clinics it is. Click on the logo. Just give them a call. What are they like? How good are they? Because we know we can support what we claim

[00:14:57] Michael Schumacher: not that we claim anything other than we’re going to do a really good job. Yeah, I think if we can at least discourage just one person signing up for a 4, 000 a month deal with someone and wasting all their money and having to start all over again, then this podcast has been worth it.

[00:15:15] Katie Bell: And what makes me sad when people come to us with those stories is that they weren’t in the cash position to do it in the first place.

[00:15:23] Katie Bell: And it’s put them in an even worse position that you’ve got to then try and recover from. And we know we work with clinic owners that are time poor or extremely overwhelmed or spinning a million different plates or cash poor. And they sometimes, Michael, in desperation, they make these decisions because they’re trapped.

[00:15:46] Katie Bell: They’re in that fear state and they think that this sounds like it might be the answer to my problems. And I get that people do genuinely feel like that. And we’ve got a lot of that I

[00:15:58] Michael Schumacher: agree. It happens all the time. And that’s why I don’t blame people. Like I always say, this, the business is like going on a diet.

[00:16:04] Michael Schumacher: Transcribed Growing your business and making it all work, it takes time. And if someone comes along and you’re 50 kilos overweight and it’s your wedding in six months, and someone says, Hey, take this magic green tea and it’ll make you lose weight. It’s only a thousand bucks. You’re going to buy it. And we’ve all been in, whether it’s financial situations or trying to go on a diet and lose weight, it’s really hard.

[00:16:25] Michael Schumacher: And it’s really easy to just go and take the shortcut and maybe this works. And I’ve done it. And where you’re like, oh, I’m gonna drink celery juice for a week. And then what happens when start eating normal food again? You blow up bigger than you were before. And that’s a great analogy for business because when you do those things, you may see some kind of return in the short term, but ultimately it’s not sustainable and you can’t keep spending that kind of money.

[00:16:50] Michael Schumacher: That kind of money and just doing free appointments. And I

[00:16:53] Katie Bell: think with business it’s about, it’s, sustainability comes from a place of consistency. And I think people say to me, how did you grow so quickly as a clinic and as a coaching company? And it was through consistently showing up every day, putting the work in.

[00:17:12] Katie Bell: Doing the really hard stuff, being on holiday and having to continue to work. And I’m not saying that is what we want to do forever. You all, I, Michael, we want to be able to create freedom and flexibility in our lives, but you have to start somewhere. And then you have to put systems in place that create consistency in your business.

[00:17:32] Katie Bell: From a marketing point of view, from a sales point of view, sales point of view has to be a process in the same way that you go to Mcdonald’s Whether you go to mcdonald’s do you even have mcdonald’s in wimbledon? Probably not.

[00:17:43] Michael Schumacher: No, we do

[00:17:44] Katie Bell: Okay yours will be a much more

[00:17:47] Michael Schumacher: It’s for the americans when they come Yeah,

[00:17:50] Katie Bell: of course But if I come to mcdonald’s in wimbledon or I go to mcdonald’s in sheffield i’m getting the same burger I’m getting the same milkshake i’m getting the same.

[00:17:58] Katie Bell: It’s all the same because they’ve got processes in place You And that allows consistency in a product and in a brand. Doesn’t mean it has to be cold and not warm and not friendly and, you can still have all of that, but you’ve got to look at bringing ways that you can create consistency into your business so that you then can free yourself up and have more time.

[00:18:21] Michael Schumacher: And there comes a point where you earn more money and then you can hire people. I had another client who one of the gurus said she was 60 something percent of the revenue of the business. And he said, you need to stop working in clinic and you need to work on the business. Not when you’re 60 percent of the bloody revenue, you don’t.

[00:18:36] Michael Schumacher: She’s Oh, I’ve got no money. I need to do marketing. No, you don’t. You need to go back into clinic, get yourself up and then we can hire people. And it’s just this extraordinary advice that people are giving, but yeah, there comes a point where you’re doing really well and, let’s speak to some of the bigger clinics out there.

[00:18:51] Michael Schumacher: It comes to the point where you’re doing incredibly well. Now it’s wonderful. And you’ve got people, you’ve got processes, but if you’re not continuing in innovating and working hard to make sure you’re staying on top, the amount of businesses I see going downhill because they can’t be asked to paint their clinic, haven’t done it in 10 years.

[00:19:07] Michael Schumacher: It’s no. You have to make sure you stay competitive. You’ve got to still work hard and I’ve got a, we’ve both got very successful businesses. I was up at four this morning. I was working. I haven’t stopped. I actually stopped 15 have a hair wash because I didn’t have time. You still work hard because you have to innovate.

[00:19:28] Michael Schumacher: You have to think about staying ahead of people. You’ve got to think about how you can improve, how to maybe increase profitability. So it isn’t that the hard work suddenly stops like many people believe. Again, there’s no magic formula for passive business. I hate it when people call. Passive income.

[00:19:44] Michael Schumacher: Good luck. There’s never a passive income. It’s always hard work, wherever, whatever stage you’re

[00:19:49] Katie Bell: at. It’s also about, Michael, I think what you do really well in your business is that you probably hate this phrase, but I’m going to tell you anyway. We call it like the zone of genius. So it’s about getting clinic owners.

[00:20:04] Katie Bell: Like we’re all wired in different ways. We’ve all got strengths in different areas. I know what I’m really good at in Thrive and in my physio clinic. I know what you’re really good at and you know what you’re really good at, because that’s the elements that you still have a hold of in your business.

[00:20:18] Katie Bell: Now, you have a big team around you, but you have removed yourself from the stuff that A, does not light you up, that you really don’t care about that. And you’re not good at, because we can’t be good at everything. The benefit of. Grafting it pulls off on your first start is that you become very quickly aware of and who you need around you to take you to that next level, if that’s what you want, because not everybody wants a team and that’s okay as well.

[00:20:45] Michael Schumacher: Yeah, a hundred percent. I think that’s super important. And we had a funny few months back, we had a person a client who we got rid of very quickly. You said to one of the girls, it was to Gabby actually, I think. He said I want to, don’t want to talk to some little girl. I want to speak to the babe, Matt.

[00:21:00] Michael Schumacher: And obviously goodbye, end of conversation. But I was thinking to myself, she’s way better than I am at that. Otherwise I wouldn’t hire the bloody wage earners. Are you mad? Why it’s that you hire different positions and it’s absolutely right. And I once something from a back in the corporate days don’t do anything you’re too expensive to do.

[00:21:21] Michael Schumacher: That’s the other thing. Yeah. Don’t, I’m too expensive to be, I don’t know, cleaning the floors. My time can be better used to make more money. Now again, at the start of the business, you do, you mop, you clean, you do everything. There comes a point where you have to start thinking about, okay, where can I take stress time off?

[00:21:38] Michael Schumacher: And then also I need more time myself. You can’t work 20 hours a day for the rest of your life. You need To have that work life balance and, how can you achieve that?

[00:21:48] Katie Bell: Yeah, and part of running a business is to allow you that. That is why you do what you do, being rich is about having the ability to enjoy all the experiences and all the things that you want your life to have in it.

[00:22:02] Katie Bell: It’s not necessarily about money, it’s about money providing you the opportunity to do all of those great things in your life. But to get to that point that there is going to be peaks and troughs of everything in all the time and you feel like it’s completely relentless. And then there’s moments where you become the bottleneck to the growth of your business.

[00:22:21] Katie Bell: And I’ve had this, I had this in, in, in my physio clinic, I was the bottleneck to the growth of it because I was clinical six days a week. I was the majority of the revenue earner, as as you’ve just mentioned before. But what the wrong thing would have been to just remove myself completely from that and think that my revenue was just going to suddenly appear overnight from other clinicians.

[00:22:40] Katie Bell: I had to put a growth plan in place which involved revenue going up and my clinical time coming down over a period of time.

[00:22:47] Michael Schumacher: We had a, we talked about it before, I had a clinician who was exactly that position and I said put your price up to 175 for 45 minutes. He went what? I said put it up. So he did.

[00:22:59] Michael Schumacher: And the idea was He was going to earn just as much money, but he could spend half the time in clinic. Of course, what happened was he phoned me up and he said, I’m making two and a half grand a day. It’s amazing. I know that’s not the point. You’re supposed to, you’re supposed to not, but anyway, but the point is there are sometimes some quite simple things you can do, which is put up your price above and beyond what your other clinicians are at, tier pricing and those sorts of things.

[00:23:21] Michael Schumacher: So

[00:23:21] Katie Bell: that you’re directing more of the work to. The other people within your clinic. That’s a great strategy. I tried that strategy as well and then all my clients just paid my increased price and I was like, shit, that strategy didn’t work. I’m still as busy as ever

[00:23:34] Michael Schumacher: because we’re good at what we do. I would be surprised if there’s any single person listening here that if they put their price up by 20 pounds per session, wouldn’t get exactly the same number of patients, if not more.

[00:23:45] Michael Schumacher: I’ve never, ever seen it where appointment numbers went down everyone. And we’ve done this with a lot of clinic owners and the money always stays the same. The number of patients always stays the same. The revenue goes up very quickly.

[00:23:57] Katie Bell: And I think thinking about going back to the bottleneck and making sure that, like what you just said, Michael you become too expansive to do certain jobs and that doesn’t take away the importance of those other jobs because every job is super important in your, within your clinic or within your company.

[00:24:18] Katie Bell: Not, one is not better or worse. They just have different values associated to them based on what can drive revenue into the business.

[00:24:26] Michael Schumacher: You could be sitting there doing your own books for two hours in a day, or you could be in clinic. Now a bookkeeper would cost you 15 pounds. You could have just made 150 pounds and now you’ve made an extra hundred and thirty five pounds.

[00:24:39] Michael Schumacher: So it isn’t, it’s not that you don’t need to do your books. Now that’s a silly example, but you get the point. It’s, where can I leverage other people who are maybe better at it or who are going to cost less to do that job where I can focus my energies to grow the business? I, two years ago, I wasn’t doing a podcast.

[00:24:57] Michael Schumacher: I’d be talking to a bloody customer now. Customer’s got other people to talk to. I can do this stuff.

[00:25:03] Katie Bell: Because we’re leveraging our time and we’re seeing where our time is best spent. And then you, we have to protect that, don’t we? In Thrive, we have roles and responsibilities of all our different people.

[00:25:14] Katie Bell: And we also have something that we have to protect, which is basically my job is to make this company visible. And my job is to be the front end person that’s on delivery, live events, masterclasses, hosting, podcasts, all this kind of stuff. But that takes energy. It takes time. It takes content creation, takes creativity, vision, thinking.

[00:25:34] Katie Bell: And so I can’t do that if I am coaching every hour of every day because then I become the bottleneck. And I was that last year and I’m teaching our clients how to remove themselves from that business. And. in the areas that they should and need to because they’re not wired to do those sorts of jobs.

[00:25:52] Katie Bell: So I have to then show how I’m doing it as well.

[00:25:55] Michael Schumacher: This is the biggest bugbear for me. We get clients coming to us all the time. We say yeah, I’m looking to change up my marketing. I want to get better. And I say, okay, great. Who’s doing your marketing?

[00:26:04] Katie Bell: I

[00:26:04] Michael Schumacher: am. You are. Look I know a little bit about physio.

[00:26:08] Michael Schumacher: I work with physios. I’ve done a lot of CPD with physio matters and therapy live, those products I’ve been on, but I’m not treating someone like, and also I know how to use a spreadsheet. I’m not doing my year end accounts. And there are too many people that are doing things in house that they really should not be.

[00:26:25] Michael Schumacher: And I think partly that’s because they’re really scared. Who do I give my marketing to? Here we go. I’m going to get into a bit of a promo here. Who should I give my marketing to? I’m really scared about HMDG, obviously but you do, there’s that, that, that kind of need to hold onto things and we all do it in life.

[00:26:40] Michael Schumacher: I think I really like doing that. It’s really important to me. Cause a lot of the people that hold onto their marketing are fiddlers. They love to fiddle and they stay fiddling after they join us as well for a bit. And I’ve done it where I’m like, Oh, maybe I should do that. Can I really trust someone else to do it?

[00:26:53] Michael Schumacher: But I think that’s where people need to start outsourcing more, whether it is accounting or marketing or it could even be a VA for admin. It could be, it doesn’t matter, but you’ve got to start thinking about using your time and using your resource more wisely.

[00:27:08] Katie Bell: And I think it’s valuing your time. I think we hugely undervalue how good we are, how, what impact we make on people’s lives.

[00:27:17] Katie Bell: We, we went on a recent retreat. We took the whole team KB went on a retreat into a beautiful barn. And we were there, we’ve been open 10 years and we were there to up level our mission, vision and values. And we talked a lot about that we feel our job is to transform people’s lives. And whether you think, okay that’s a bit of a bold statement.

[00:27:36] Katie Bell: And I was like we’re not here just to play a small game. We do transform people’s lives. Whether it’s big transformations or small transformations, them coming into the clinic with a sore shoulder and then going home and can sleep through the night. That’s a transformation for somebody. Whether it’s big or small.

[00:27:50] Katie Bell: But it’s about, I think, in your, Hi, everyone. In your, how can I describe this? In your clinic, it’s about not playing small and it’s about really owning what we do as an industry and how good we really are. And when you own that, you then start charging what we should be charging.

[00:28:09] Michael Schumacher: This is a whole topic in its own right.

[00:28:12] Michael Schumacher: This is me off. I said to someone who’s a very successful clinician, I said, look, you’ve got to put your prices up. She said, 2. 50. My friend you’ve got to, you’ve got to put them up 20. You’re brilliant and I don’t know if I’m worth it. Oh my god, so if you want to hire me for a day, this is not HMDG race for our marketing, but if you want to hire me for the day, you’re not getting me for less than three and a half thousand pounds plus fat.

[00:28:33] Michael Schumacher: Why? Because if my target is to do, I don’t know, let’s just say my target is to make you 50, 000 pounds, I’m not doing that for 100 pounds. I also value my time and I also know how valuable I am. And I don’t shy away from that. I know what I can do. I’ve now spent years in this industry. I understand clinicians.

[00:28:52] Michael Schumacher: I can I’m pretty good at what I do. Now, the idea that other clinicians or clinicians can’t be as confident. The other thing is, if it, I know sometimes people look at your stuff and say, God, it’s so expensive. So what you’re telling me is you want to take your 750, 000 clinic to a 1.

[00:29:09] Michael Schumacher: 5 million clinic and you’re not willing to spend 10, 000 on that? Fuck off. Honestly. Yeah, because

[00:29:13] Katie Bell: that return on investment, tell me where else you get that return.

[00:29:18] Michael Schumacher: My accountant says to 1, 200 plus that, maybe a little bit more. But it probably saves me a hundred grand a year in tax. I’m like, yeah, I’ll pay for it.

[00:29:29] Michael Schumacher: And so when you take that into a clinical space, if I come in and I can’t go out with the kids, I can’t walk properly, I’m on tons of drugs because the pain’s so bad and they’re not bloody helping either. I can’t work as hard as I can. Let’s imagine as a business owner, let’s imagine you couldn’t work.

[00:29:46] Michael Schumacher: How much would you pay to fix that? And I’m on that. I had a chat with a clinician a couple of weeks ago who I said to him, he’s a really good guy and a good client, and I said to him, why do physios send patients home to exercise? He said, we don’t. I said everybody does. I said, we don’t. When someone comes in, I say this is your problem.

[00:30:10] Michael Schumacher: The most optimal way of fixing this is this, then you’re going to see Joe, he’s going to do some rehab with you you’re going to come in for 20 minutes to do your exercises on the Wednesday, then you’re going to do your exercises here, then we’re going to do a bit of gym work, then you’re going to see a physio, and that’s 15 sessions or 20 sessions or 30 sessions.

[00:30:27] Michael Schumacher: That’s not over treating. He calls it the Cristiano Ronaldo system, which is if you’re Cristiano Ronaldo, you’re not being sent home by the physio, you’re going to be looked at, you’re going to do a tier of bits there and so on and so forth. And he says, but if you don’t want to pay for that, not if you can’t afford it, because let’s be honest, they can all afford it, it’s priority.

[00:30:48] Michael Schumacher: If you don’t want to pay that, you want to take the responsibility on yourself to do those exercises, We’ll still help you still get a great service, but you need to be responsible for your own rehab and how quickly you get better. And if I tell you now that most patients don’t do their exercises and they stay, in a worse state for the next few months on average.

[00:31:11] Michael Schumacher: What do you want to do? And he said, 60 percent of patients actually say, yeah, let me do the Cristiano Ronaldo. And I think that’s a really good example of being confident and saying, you know what, this is what I’m worth. And by the way, he charged, he charges 140 pounds a session and his sessions are 45 minutes and he’s in Birmingham.

[00:31:28] Michael Schumacher: So it’s not like it’s in London. And by the way, chiropractors have got this down, chiropractors are charging two, three grand. Like it’s insane. Absolutely insane. But they’ve got it down. I say insane because they’re the ones I’m talking about, the really dodgy ones who can cure asthma. And by the way, we have some amazing chiropractic clients, by the way, just in case you’re listening.

[00:31:47] Michael Schumacher: I love you all, you’re amazing. We just don’t like dodgy ones. So yeah, I think it’s really important that you know your value and you understand, like we always say, we’ve talked about it before, it never means test your patience. You don’t know what someone’s worth or also how big the problem is to them.

[00:32:01] Michael Schumacher: Maybe they’re the sole earner in the business or in their, in the household. And if they don’t work, kids don’t get fed. Now it’s a problem and I’m willing to spend on it. Yeah, I think it’s a, imposter syndrome and all of those things are crazy and it needs to stop, but you can say it’s a bit like, you can tell people not to, Think things, but they will always think.

[00:32:23] Michael Schumacher: Until you prove them otherwise. And you put their price up, and they’re like, People are paying. Yes they are.

[00:32:29] Katie Bell: That is like the, what makes a really successful clinic owner is, and, people might shoot me when I say this, it’s really nothing to do with your clinical skills. Really. It’s not. I agree. It’s to do with all of this. It’s to do with self confidence, self belief, your value, and then obviously you need to not be doing sham treatments and you need to be compliant and, qualified and all of those things.

[00:32:56] Katie Bell: But we put so much Strength on CPD qualifications that just going to do another course on shockwave or shoulder or the back and then think that you’re going to make more money as a result of it and you’re not.

[00:33:08] Michael Schumacher: No, and I’ll say something really controversial. Do you know who the most successful organization of all time is when it comes to fixing MSK injuries?

[00:33:19] Michael Schumacher: Without, with the least number of sessions.

[00:33:22] Katie Bell: No.

[00:33:23] Michael Schumacher: It’s the NHS. Do you know why? People get better by the time they’ve seen them. It’s true, right? People drop off in their 20 week period. They’re all better. And we know that’s the case. What people really want, and I’m a patient as well, I get this. People want reassurance.

[00:33:40] Michael Schumacher: They want to understand. They want to be educated. What’s wrong with me? Am I going to die? That’s why you go to the doctor. It’s reassurance. in the world. I’m going to help you. Being a nice person being personable, understanding the patient, having a great patient journey within the clinic, understanding, when to push the patient, when not to push the patient.

[00:34:02] Michael Schumacher: So yeah, clinical skills, and by the way, yeah, I’ve been involved with physio matters, therapy lives, so I know that clinical skills are hugely important. So

[00:34:10] Katie Bell: important, but

[00:34:11] Michael Schumacher: it’s not the

[00:34:12] Katie Bell: only thing.

[00:34:13] Michael Schumacher: It’s not the only thing. And I think people do sometimes forget that, clinicians forget that. But yeah, I, overall, I think if, just be sensible when it comes to a lot of this stuff when we’re talking about marketing or sales or whatever the case may be.

[00:34:29] Michael Schumacher: It’s again, I always use diets, balanced diet works every time. Having someone tell you, you must do it this way and it’s going to make you millions of pounds is not going to work.

[00:34:38] Katie Bell: And consistency. If you eat light shit, consistently, you will be overweight. If you eat pretty well, 80 percent of the time, and you run your business pretty well, 80 percent of the time, it will be consistent and

[00:34:49] Michael Schumacher: sustainable.

[00:34:50] Michael Schumacher: I was once working as a personal trainer, and I’d work really hard during the week, and I got myself a Domino’s. My brother used to work at Domino’s, often in the day, while he was a student. And I got this big tandoori Domino’s, and I came back in on the Monday, and he was like, how are you doing? And I was like, I had a Domino’s.

[00:35:07] Michael Schumacher: And he said looked it up online and he got me on a treadmill and he said, I want you to run off 3, 600 calories. Let’s see how That would take

[00:35:15] Katie Bell: you hours and hours.

[00:35:17] Michael Schumacher: Holy shit. And I learned very quickly. That it’s way better to have a little something each day than 3, 000 calories in a single day.

[00:35:26] Michael Schumacher: And think that consistency is important. Be consistent. And that’s that, I will remember that one for life.

[00:35:34] Katie Bell: There you go. What a fabulous way to finish. Don’t eat your Domino’s at the weekend. That is a great analogy for your business.

[00:35:40] Michael Schumacher: Or a little one. Maybe a little

[00:35:41] Katie Bell: one. Eat the little one. Exactly.

[00:35:43] Katie Bell: Michael, thank you. It’s been an absolute pleasure. As always, and listeners, I hope you’ve really enjoyed me and Michael just to in the cut around some of the crap that we’re seeing going on, but how we can support you and how we can, encourage you to be consistent in your business and know what you are worth.

[00:36:00] Michael Schumacher: Can I just do a quick plug on two things? Cause we talked about it earlier and I think we read it. We talked about pricing and increasing prices. We did a really cool article. So just go into HMDG and have a look at that pricing articles. We go into pricing models, different types of pricing, how we can do pricing.

[00:36:16] Michael Schumacher: And I think you agree with all of it as well. Yeah, I

[00:36:19] Katie Bell: do. Yeah.

[00:36:20] Michael Schumacher: And that’s an interesting one. And the work ethic one, it’s really funny. It’s me ranting on a beach in the Philippines about how some bastard won’t do any work in his clinic. And yet here I am working on the holidays. Yeah. So go and have a look at those two articles.

[00:36:35] Katie Bell: There you go. If you want a continued laugh, go and read Michael’s articles on on his website. Michael, come back again because everybody loves these episodes. Thank you.

[00:36:43] Michael Schumacher: Brilliant. Cheers, Katie.

[00:36:45] Katie Bell: I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode. It’s always great to have Michael voice his opinions in the way that he does so well, and I really hope that you’ve got lots of value from everything that we talked about. And I would just love to have one more minute of your time to allow you to just indulge me for a second about a very exciting thing that is happening.

[00:37:05] Katie Bell: It’s an industry first event on the 25th of October 2024 at the Hilton in Coventry. We have chosen the Hilton in Coventry because it’s the middle of the country and having looked at AA Route Planner a bazillion times, it is the most Central place we could find, we could get all of you together. So just indulge me, if you aren’t already on the waiting list, or you haven’t already got yourself on the waiting list, and you know why you need to be at these, this event, then just keep listening for the next 60 seconds.

[00:37:37] Katie Bell: This is a one day live event for clinic owners, whether you’re a physio, an osteopath, a sports therapist, maybe you are a massage therapist, this is for you. And it’s about discovering how to transform your clinic So you can help even more people, because that’s why we do what we do, but use much less of your time, because every clinic owner I speak to are completely time poor, and consistently take home 4, 000 or more every single month.

[00:38:05] Katie Bell: This is about our industry feeling like they are pouring their heart and soul into their clinics and having very little to show for it at the end of each month. And this is not just me guessing, this is me having real, honest, open conversations with you all week in, week out, month in, month out for over four years now.

[00:38:24] Katie Bell: And there is a repeating pattern and there is no judgment, but there needs to be something done about it. This is for people who feel like You’re the worst paid person in your business, even though you’re working the most. It’s for those of you who feel like you’re relying on word of mouth referrals and you don’t really know what marketing you should be doing in your clinic, and it’s for all of you who feel like you’re buried in appointments, admin, clients, writing exercises, doing your notes late at night, trying to send that last email, just saying, just one more email and then I’ll be with you, just one more email and then I’ll make tea.

[00:38:57] Katie Bell: And for those of you who feel like, when is all this hard work and commitment actually going to give me a better quality of life that I thought running a business would give me? Here is how I see it. You have one of three choices. You can keep doing what you’re doing and hope things get better.

[00:39:13] Katie Bell: Number two, you could throw in the towel, you can jack it in, and find something that gives you more free time and money, but you need to accept that it won’t be doing what you love. And if you’re anything like me, you are completely unemployable. Can I say that with love? I am completely unemployable. I could not go and work for somebody else.

[00:39:32] Katie Bell: It’s not in my nature. It’s not in my wiring. It’s not in my skill set. And that is the same as you guys. Or number three, we could embrace a new way of doing things by attending Clinic Growth Live. This is gonna talk to you and show you and educate you and help you see how you can work way less hours without it impacting what you pay yourself.

[00:39:56] Katie Bell: It’s gonna be about showing you how you can become that clinic owner that drives the business forwards and not just a badly paid employee. It’s going to show you how you can enjoy reliable, hands off marketing that predictably generates inquiries and bookings. And it’s going to show you how you can build that great team and become a clinic owner, not just a practitioner.

[00:40:17] Katie Bell: And most importantly, get you all paying yourself more than you are doing now, and consistently. We have sponsors, we have partners at the event, we have exhibitors there. There are no tickets available, depending on when you’re listening to this podcast. I’m recording this in July, and our ticket sales go live on the 22nd of July.

[00:40:41] Katie Bell: But we have an early bird waiting list. Now this is an exclusive access to our early bird ticket prices when they get released, you’re going to know about it first. You’re going to get a time pool clinic owner calculator which is going to help you instantly win some time back in your clinic. You just get that as a result of signing up to the waitlist.

[00:41:02] Katie Bell: You are also going to get Exclusive discounts. You’ll enjoy a massive 50 percent discount on tickets, but this is only going to be available for 48 hours to those of you on our waiting list. There is limited availability. I fully expect this event to be a massive sellout. I want you to think about being in a room with 200 other clinic owners where you can mastermind, you can be inspired, you can be motivated, you can uplift your energy, you can get yourself out of your business and work on your business.

[00:41:36] Katie Bell: And there is nothing to pay now and there is no obligation to purchase a ticket once they go on sale. But by joining the waiting list you’ll receive notification of when they actually do go on sale. I personally would really love to see you in the room. I think the only excuse you have of not coming is if you are getting married on that day, or you’re being christened, or something like that, where they probably can’t move the date.

[00:42:02] Katie Bell: But other than that, I would love to invite you to Clinic Growth Live. Think staging, think lighting, think sound, think Masterminding at the highest level, make massive changes in your business. For some of you who jump on the waiting list and go for the VIP ticket, you’re going to get an implementation session with me.

[00:42:21] Katie Bell: So you’re going to actually get the stuff done that we are going to learn on the day. There is so much exciting opportunities there for you. So before you leave and go on to your next job in the day, head to the link in the show notes to join our waiting list.