Paeds Biz E-Magazine - May Edition 2017

PAEDS BIZ

... HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR PRIVATE PRACTICE May2017

HIRING?

HOW TO WRITE DYNAMIC JOB ADVERTISEMENTS

LET’S TALK ABOUT FEES

WHY YOU’RE WORTH MORE THAN YOUR HOURLY RATE

CYBER CRIME IS ON THE RISE IS YOUR DATA SAFE?

AN INTRODUCTION TO

CATHY LOVE Allied Health Business Coach Speaker Author Occupational Therapist Hello, I am Cathy, the editor of the Paeds Biz emag. I am the director of Nacre Consulting, a cool business with a weird name that provides services to disability service providers, parents and children.

From the Overflowing Desk of Cathy Love...

Nothing beats a couple of weeks holiday. The hard work preceding the break paid off, I have come back to projects in flow, clients booked in and, best of all, conference tickets selling. My return to work ‘to-do list’ was prewritten; I now know to trust my judgement with this list, documents are filed in order to match the list. It may be overkill for some, perhaps, but it keeps me focused and productive. Despite three weeks of the team being in the four corners of the globe and with 20-hour time zone differences between members, our communications ticked over as usual. Trello kept the mile-high pile of tasks organised and Slack linked us with instant messages, many of which were hilarious travel tips. Whilst away, I glanced at email most days, no big deal.

Essentially, I can work anywhere. Ah, the loveliness of being self-employed!

May is marvelous. It’s one of the full billing months and it should be a strong income month for you. With two months to EOFY it is also a good time to get started on the 201718 budget and adjusting procedural systems as required.

Our article on how to avoid the shoe box of receipts will be of interest to you. Thank you, guest writer Amanda Fisher.

This edition also features articles on how to write powerful job adverts, keeping your data safe on line, and customer service excellence. With the new financial year looming, we also talk about fees.

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For those of you who are first-time readers, I work as a specialist Allied Health Business Coach helping clinicians run their own profitable and powerful private practices.

I have started, grown and sold a large multisite private practice and now readily share what I know with others. We energetically offer workshops, blogs, web events, conferences, networking events and coaching. The podcast is coming early 2017.

I am a professionally trained coach and a registered Occupational Therapist with thirty years of paediatric experience. Yes, I still enjoy my clinical work and providing clinical coaching to individuals and teams.

Each month we write up news, practical tips, business information, and more. This year we are promoting support businesses and a broader range of guest writers.

Suggestions from our readers for topics, writers and content sources are always welcome. Our readership is now international and we would love for you to share Paeds Biz with your colleagues.

Curious about my business name? Nacre, pronounced {Nay-Ka}, is the process by which pearls are made. A seed, held in a shell, gradually builds up layers of resilience and iridescence as it is exposed to natural forces.

And so the same is true for ourselves, our teams, our businesses and our clients.

I believe that we all have endless possibilities for unique growth and brilliance.

Partnerships are the name of the game. I am working hard to meet and chat with people who know and support allied health professionals. Whilst the caffeine consumption associated with coffee meetups can be overwhelming at times, the commitment to working together to support allied health professionals strong and evolving. I have made great connections with HR, marketing, financial, IT companies, I intend to nurture and enjoy these relationships. Look out for them as guest writers, event partners and speakers in future editions.

Conference preparations continue. We are so proud to be able to provide Australia’s only private practice conference.

It grows every year and has positive industry support. The full program is available to view here. We look forward to having you in the room and taking part in the discussion.

There are only a limited number of tickets so hustle up and register here today.

Have a great month everybody, read up, keep moving forward, and come and say hi at the Paeds Biz Conference.

CONTENTS 02 From the overflowing desk of Cathy Love Meet Cathy Love 04 How to write great job adverts Get the best applicants!

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05 Paeds Biz Conference Your chance to win the golden ticket!

06 Avoid the shoebox Guest Writer - Amanda Fisher 07 COVER FEATURE: Let’s talk about your fees You’re worth more than your hourly rate

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08 Private Practice Coaching 09 Cyber crime and data safety What you need to know to keep safe 10 Noticeboard 12 Induction: No customer service component Guest Writer - Cate Schrek 13 Private Practice Secrets Podcast Becoming Chief Book Social Media 14 Event Calendar 15 Advertise with us

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16 The Wrap

HOW TO WRITE:

GREAT JOB ADVERTS

At the moment, there are a lot of therapists across the country that are leaving old jobs and starting new ones. So, recruitment is now a frequent management activity for business owners. How do you make your advert stand out from all the others? How do you attract your next ideal teammate? Here are some tips to get you started.

Seek.com.au have a section that helps advertisers write up strong advertisements. They suggest using simple yet punchy language, using succinct bullet points, providing bite-sized chunks of information and spacing content well on the page. Check out more of their doable suggestions on their site. A quick google search will lead you to many other and varied business pages with great tips, take a moment to check these out too, and hunt out what resonates with you and your business vibe.

Write up the benefits of joining your team. What’s unique about working with you and your team? You work hard to define your clinical services and stand out as the specialist provider of choice.

The exact same principles apply to attracting staff. Take a moment and list the ten things that make you a stand out as an employer.

Examples include team meetings, fortnightly supervision, in house and external professional development opportunities, incredible therapy resources, access to your specialist experience, peer mentoring, reputation for a coach approach, generous remuneration, or perhaps it’s the lolly jar, coffee machine, and onsite parking—all of these things matter. It’s a clinician’s market. Experienced clinicians are spoilt for choice and they readily compare not just jobs but the complete professional work experiences.

“Small and medium practices are competing against the big guys and need to lean in with professional job descriptions.”

Succinct and detailed job description. Provide an email address inviting applicants to get in touch for a copy of the position description. The JD has to be amazing, small and medium practices are competing against the big guys and need to lean in with professional job descriptions. Beg, borrow and steal, copy and paste and send it for peer review and, better still, HR approval. I have written about these previously and the topic will be included again in our June edition.

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Support and performance management. Briefly outline the induction and subsequent support and performance development opportunities your business provides. This is particularly relevant for newer graduates and those wishing to assertively develop their careers.

Team Vibe. Outline the size, makeup and general vibe of your team. Write it up just the same way as you would speak about it. Ideally, your next new teammate needs to be an effortless organizational fit. So start with the end in mind.

“The mission is to ensure your advert stands out by a mile and for all the right reasons.

Include your logo, website and name.”

Be the one, the eye catching standout. A quick glance at Seek and similar platforms reveals how vanilla and same - same job adverts are, groan. The mission is to ensure your advert stands out by a mile and for all the right reasons. Include your logo, website (now is a good time for a website update) and your name. Make a statement about your clinical and business experience, perhaps you are becoming a sought after employer. Excellent, stake your claim. Succinct sentences, dot points and a call to action are all required.

Every new advert deserves a facelift!

How will you update yours?

What will make yours remarkable?

PAEDS BIZ CONFERENCE

FROM STRESS TO SUCCESS

TICKETS ARE LIMITED & THEY’RE SELLING FAST

BOOK YOUR TICKETS NOW

Details Friday 16th & Saturday 17th June 2017 Oaks on Market, 60 Market St, Melbourne 9.00am to 4.30pm Two days of Private Practice Business Know How, Inspiration & Networking.

The program looks incredible: - Digital marketing including SEO, Add Words and Social Media - HR Issues and managing risk across your workforce - Leading your team to clinical excellence - Online information security - Service excellence and consumers rating your service - Current and future trends in private practice - Occupational Therapy Australia and Speech Therapy Australia present: The state of the nation for children with disabilities and private sector services.

- Considerations when developing telehealth services - NDIS trends and trade secrets - Developing recurring income products

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Golden ticket competition.

All attendees registered at COB Friday 26th May will go in the draw for this fabulous prize. Pls check that this date matches social media comms.

- Friday June 16th conference accommodation at Oaks on Market.

- One hour post-conference coaching with Cathy Love.

- Full suite of downloadable business documents, plus a couple of special extras.

- Free access to conference videos.

- Invitation to a podcast interview with Cathy Love’s Private Practice Secrets.

The odds are good, this is a niche practical private practice conference.

Register now and be in the draw to win the golden ticket.

AVOID THE

SHOEBOX

How to Automate Receipts & Eliminate the Shoebox WITH GUEST WRITER, AMANDA FISHER Do you have a pile of receipts that you accumulate over the course of the year, which are put in the proverbial shoebox?

Or perhaps it’s a file or in-tray or basket rather than a shoebox.

This pile of receipts is then handed over to your bookkeeper or accountant who wave their magic wand over it and produce your business activity statements and income tax returns.

The challenge with receipts is making sure that you keep them and that you can find them all. More often than not, what happens is that receipts go missing or get lost and can’t be found.

There is a solution to this problem which is to automate the recording of the receipts. There are online systems available like Receipt Bank and, funnily enough, there is also a company called Shoeboxed.

How you can throw away your receipts.

I will use Receipt Bank as an example, but they all work pretty much the same. When you’ve purchased some items for your practice, you can take a photo of the receipt and it will automatically be sent to Receipt Bank. The photo of the receipt is kept within the Receipt Bank system. This means that after you’ve taken the photo, you can throw away the physical receipt.

Automating regular receipts.

Within the Receipt Bank system, you can set up rules that will apply to the same type of receipt whenever you send through a new image so that every time you load a receipt from that business, the system knows how to allocate it.

Integration with accounting system.

These types of systems integrate with your online accounting systems like Xero, which eliminates any double handling of your receipts.

If you’re like most people who struggle to keep their receipts, consider using Receipt Bank or Shoeboxed or a similar system to take an image of your receipt, automate the processing of the payments, and ensure that you have the records for all your expenses. And all of this with the added bonus of being able to throw away those pesky receipts.

www.amandafisher.com.au Amanda is a trusted advisor to business owners and a leading expert in applying technology and systems to improve efficiencies, increase profits and enable informed decision-making.

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LET’S TALK ABOUT YOUR

FEES

The fee conversation is one I have daily with my coaching clients. We provide so much more than ‘just a therapy session’ yet we don’t assertively manage and communicate our worth and our fees. In this article we discuss our time, our fees, an annual fee review policy and the issue of fee schedule equity for all clients.

We are more than our hourly rate. I discuss this constantly with my business coaching clients. To deliver a 30-minute session for $90, there is nearly always at least 15 minutes of prep time and an additional 15 minutes of note writing—in fact, often there is more. Yes, I am eyeballing … the speech pathologists here. Plus there is travel, overheads, and, worse still, staff costs. Add to this a 10 or 15-minute break between session … The math is simple: you are working at a rate that is more like $30 - $50 per hour. Essentially you have bought yourself self a job—albeit one that gives you some control and flexibility—but no paid leave or superannuation.

Solutions include tightening up your prep time and writing notes during the session. Adjusting your fees and or shifting clients to 45-minute sessions. Yes, they will be fine, there will be less rush, and you may be surprised how well small children pace themselves across a longer session.

“How often do you put your fees up?

Do you have standard operating procedures for implementing this?”

Annual fee review. For years I increased our fees 5% on the first of July. This made budgeting easiest, as I have static hourly rates for the full financial year and no mid-year variations. This was a policy and there were procedures to implement it. How often do you put your fees up? Do you have standard operating procedures for implementing this?

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“Is it equitable to bill different clients different rates, all because of their funding scheme?”

Equity across all clients. Is it equitable to bill different clients different rates, all because of their funding scheme? Whilst some funding schemes demand additional effort are your systems now efficient enough to accommodate this in your daily business as usual. I am interested to hear that private practices are leveling out their fees for all clients. The NDIA line item of therapy supports $175 and has provided a bench mark that many are applying to all clients. Several times I have heard that the practice has set their fees at less than this and applied the rate to all clients, even those with NDIS funding. This has provided their business with a competitive edge by being less expensive in an increasingly crowded market. Interesting.

Breakeven analysis. This may be a task to share with your bookkeeper or accountant. This task is to look at your hourly rate and deduct all the expenses associated with delivering that hour service. It is important to know this, it’s a critical business metric that needs to be measured and managed.

Adjusting mental habits, session times and lengths, expenses, and other factors that you and your accountant will identify could increase your profit margin.

What is your fee review and increase policy?

What are your thoughts on flat fees for all clients?

What are you really earning per session?

BOOK A FREE 30 MIN CHAT UTE TODAY

PRIVATE PRACTICE COACHING

• How could a private practice coach help you?

• Need a hand with policies and procedures?

• Where is your business plan up to?

• Not sure where to start with marketing?

• Keen for some people management ideas?

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Cathy Love is a specialist business coach who helps paediatric private practitioners run powerful and profitable businesses.

As a private practice pioneer in the 1990’s, Cathy started, sustained and sold a successful seven figure business. She understands the lurking fear of failure, the stress of being an under-skilled manager and never having enough time to do anything well. She gets the loneliness, the worry and the frustration of being chronically over worked and under recognised.

Through her coaching programs, her clients gain skills and confidence to develop business plans, policies and procedure manuals, manage and lead people, develop innovate products, understand profit, market their services and install strong processes. They get their management mojo kicked into gear.

Do you want to be left feeling energised and significantly more confident in your ability to assertively manage your business?

FURTHER READING: www.acsc.gov.au www.staysmartonline.gov.au

CYBERCRIME AND DATA SAFETY...

‘Computer security, also known as cyber security or IT security, is the protection of computer systems from the theft or damage to their hardware, software or information, as well as from disruption or misdirection of the services they provide.’ Wikipedia.

Nowadays, so much of our business and data storage is cloud based. The risk of a data breach for any company, large or small, is increasingly. Interestingly, there is thinking that smaller companies are an easier target as their OT security systems are likely to be less sophisticated. Match this with the sensitivity of the data our businesses have and the mind boggling issues arising from a cyber security breach. Here are some of the issues that can arise and suggestions to help protect your data.

Website and social media accounts being hacked, contaminated, or access being denied. I personally have had my entire website copied by an overseas company—it can happen. Luckily we noticed quickly and the hackers were promptly shut down. Content could be re-written, links changed, misleading posts issued, and more.

What would you do?

Data base, client data, and communication systems being hacked, leaked online, mishandled by staff/contractors, or held for ransom.

This has massive implications for clients, staff, business owners, day-to-day business activities, and reputation. Recovery costs and possibly fines, and litigation may apply.

Insurance and Coverage. Have you ever checked the extent to which cybercrime is covered in your professional indemnity policy?

It may be worthwhile to check. There are companies that provide additional insurance and support in regards to this.

What can you do?

Antivirus software and Firewalls. Ensure that your computers are continuously monitored and that you have protocols in place for when a virus or external threat is detected. Consider the risk of

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your team bringing in data on USB sticks, as they may contain viruses.

What is your back-up procedure, recover and restore plan?

Ensure your data is backed up constantly to a trusted and privacy compliant device or location that is isolated from your workplace.

Strong passwords. A strong password is still believed to slow down hackers. Ideally, follow the guidelines and persist in generating strong 8+ character passwords using non-words, mixes of upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols. Change your password on a regular basis. Avoid storing hard copies in a safe.

Allocate only senior staff or business owners to add, delete, or reset passwords. Multi-tiered security to authenticate access may become increasingly necessary.

Protect mobile phones with PINs and limit the amount of personal and business information stored on them.

Treat any Wi-Fi network your business does not control as insecure.

Become aware, both individually and as a team. Keep an eye out for spam and ‘phishing’ emails or text messages that try and lure you to provide your details, passwords, banking details, or other sensitive information. Look for the padlock symbol in your browser and the ‘https’ at the start of the website address when visiting unfamiliar sites.

Record everything in a Cyber Security Policy and Procedure.

Take responsibility for educating your team and demonstrate that you take all aspects of cyber safety and cyber security extremely seriously. Provide training and maintain expectation and vigilance.

Check your Professional Indemnity insurance policy to determine the level of cover, if any, it provides for cybercrime.

Check with your software providers the measures they have in place for cybercrime prevention.

Last Pass manages your online life, passwords and security, so that you don’t have to. With this app, you can say goodbye to sticky notes and note books covered in dates and passwords. Last Pass fortifies your passwords. Only you will have your master password to your encrypted vault, not even Last Pass can get in there.

Are you curious about my new email signature?

It was produced with Wise Stamp. We are new to Wise Stamp and are loving it. This app enables you to quickly and easily develop amazing professional email signatures. It provides a vast variety of templates, apps and designs that suit any business. They claim this increases your chance of replies, increases social reach, and generates more clicks. All of this is well worth it, for a few dollars per month.

The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8:00 AM), by Hal Elrod (2012).

This book is an Amazon bestseller with over 1200 five-star reviews.

The Miracle Morning gives you the best possible morning ritual to set you up for a quality, high performance day, even if you are a committed night owl. It is increasingly becoming an international movement endorsed by renowned business influencers. One to check out.

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Mindset, by Carole Dweck (2006).

From her clinical psychology practice and research interests in motivation, personality and development Dweck has written a phenomenal book. This book discusses the differences between people with a ‘fixed’ mindset versus those with a ‘growth’ mindset.

In a fixed mindset, people believe their intelligence and talents are fixed traits that will ensure their success. In a growth mindset, people believe their most basic abilities can be developed with dedication and hard work. This creates a love of learning and creative resilience ideal for success. A masterful classic and a must-read.

Subscribe and listen to us - now on iTunes!

The outstanding guest list includes; allied health business owners, digital marketing specialists, accountants, HR advisers, writers, virtual assistants, IT specialists, friends, social media guru’s, possibly family and other generous folk she hasn’t roped in yet.

It takes a village to run a private practice. Finally we gather the tribe, harness collective wisdom and elegantly deliver it all direct to your earbuds. The plan to is share up all our private practice stories, business know how, wins, challenges and pearls of wisdom. The episodes are conversational, short, informative and practical.

BOOK YOUR FREE 30 MIN SESSION SIMPLY BY CLICKING HERE PAEDS BIZ 11

THE INDUCTION PROCESS:

NO CUSTOMER SERVICE COMPONENT

WITH GUEST WRITER, CATE SCHREK

Cate Schreck is a regular contributor the Paeds Biz emag and will deliver up her awesomeness at the Paeds Biz Conference in June 2017. In this edition, she writes about the need to build customer service training into the induction process. Thank you, Cate Schreck, for sharing your marvellous experience and wisdom.

Often induction processes consist of a tour of the workplace, a focus on the hard skills (technical skills) required in the role and time to read policies and procedures. This leaves out a vital component of onboarding a new employee; your customer service standards, which should include reference to soft skills (people skills).

The soft skills of your team are what customers assess when they determine if the business provides excellent service. It may be the response time for emails and calls, the tone of emails, what is and isn’t said during phone calls, and more. New employees need an induction process that confirms the customer service standards of the business, the soft skills required, and the support options that are in place to help them achieve those goals. In this article, I offer some solutions that allied health business owners can instantly implement to ensure that their new teammates are confident and capable customer service professionals.

Put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard. Have clear customer service standards that are written down and relevant to the role. These standards need to be discussed during the interview, defined in position descriptions and contracts, and explained in your policy and procedure manual. This builds layers of knowledge and expectation and documents that clearly articulate standards serve as a reference your new teammate can return to.

Provide a mentor/buddy for your new employee. You are busy and possibly not always available for your new recruits. A buddy can provide the experience, answers and experience on your behalf. It is also a great way to build team work and collegiate

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spirit.

Schedule regular Service Excellence conversations. Dedicate time for a new recruit to ask questions and for you to assess their customer service skills and knowledge. As little as 15 minutes once a week will help keep them customer service focused. Part of the induction process should include time with your practice administrator. Whilst their customer service skills will be a little different, they are still very well placed to coach and share examples.

Hard skills before soft skills. If possible, allow new recruits to learn the hard skills of a role before they interact with customers. Once they are familiar with technology/equipment/processes, they will find it much easier to concentrate on their soft skills (people skills) when interacting with customers. Many businesses plan for shadowing and co-working, this is a great way for new teammates to see how it is done and align their customer service skills with the way you want it all done in your business.

What adjustments are required to the customer service aspect of your Policy and Procedure manual?

How do you coach customer service skills across your team?

Author Bio Cate is the Founder of Lightbulb Training Solutions (LTS) and is known for designing and delivering workplace training programs that educate and motivate staff to work together in harmony and provide consistently excellent customer service.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN!

At. Long. Last. Our podcast is recorded, edited, prettied up, loaded onto a cloud and in the first week of May released on ITunes. All very exciting and slightly terrifying at the same time. I believe that the stories of private practitioners is fascinating and a story that needs to be captured and shared. We can all learn so much from each other and a podcast makes the sharing a bit easier.

Whilst it is a bit awkward listening to my umms and errs and clunky interview attempts the stories are really cool. Huge thank you to the brilliant guests who have put up their hand

for Season One conversations. The guests include speech pathologists, financial planners, customer service consultants and occupational therapists. Their business stories are shared, struggles admitted and proud moments celebrated. Lots of hints, tips and suggestions are shared up throughout all the conversations.

We invite you to click through and listen to Private Practice Secrets. A new episode drops every Monday for ten weeks. Yes Season Two recordings are under way. Enjoy.

FOLLOW US AT...

Click on the links to follow us today

Buy your copy today Want the Kindle edition

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EVENTS CALENDAR Cathy Love will live present her current best thinking and answer questions about Practice Management Software, Strategies for growing your private practice, Twitter, Pinterest, Planning your social media posts, Time Management and Productivity Strategies for Paediatric Private Practitioners.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

Join us for a lunch and learn event on the first Tuesday of the month at 12.30pm Melbourne time. There is room at the virtual lunch table for all. Think convenient, niche, bite sized, Q&A professional development without the internet, accommodation and travel hassles.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

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KEEN TO REACH YOUR

TARGET MARKET? We have had quite a few enquiries about advertising in our emag. Such a good idea, why didn’t we think of that?

From February we are selling advertising space. Your one-eighth-of-a-page advert will be seen by up to 3200 paediatric allied health professionals.

Paeds Biz is a perfect way to promote your clinical supervision services, online store for therapists, online courses, software. We may even get our favourite graphic designers, accountants, practice management software providers profiling their wares.

Our mission to help private practitioners, the rates are uber reasonable. We can do the art work for a small additional fee. Find out more today.

Please email info@nacre.com.au and let’s make this happen.

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Next month’s edition will include: • Why you need a default diary • Turning difficult conversations into postives • EOFY prepping • Investing in your management self

About Nacre Consulting

Done and dusted, thank you for taking the time to read on through.

Wishing you all a marvelous May. It is one of the few months that we have full billable days, no school holidays, so get out there and make magic happen.

As many of you know I am the founding director of Nacre Consulting. A cool business with an unusual name. Nacre is the natural process of a little seed, held in an oyster shell whist it grows, layer by layer, into a brilliant unique pearl. This process takes time, special conditions and forces of nature. And so it is true for ourselves, our businesses and the children and families we serve.

More about my clinical supervision, parent coaching, teaching and private practicing coaching services on my website: www.nacre.com.au

See you at the Paeds Biz Conference in June!

FOLLOW NACRE CONSULTING ON SOCIAL MEDIA If you are curious about my specialist private practice coaching services you are most welcome to get in touch, find out more and experience a 30 minute complimentary session: cathy@nacre.com.au