Dr James: 0:10

How many of us dentists feel like we’re unbelievably busy in our own business, whether we’re associates or whether we are principals, there doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day. How come there are some people out there who seem to achieve what we can achieve, and more, and yet we also know that they have the same amount of hours in the week than us. So if we could just explain it away by the fact that they had more time, well, that would make a whole lot more sense. But we know that that’s not the case. Everybody’s got 168 hours in the week. How does something get out of them? How does something get more out of them versus others? Well, it’s all about understanding how you can scale yourself up in your own business, and that’s why we’re looking forward to this podcast today with Mr Chris Brown, and we’re here to talk today about everything and anything and everything, getting your time back, and Chris himself is a business coach who helps entrepreneurs with this specific thing, and that’s why I’m really looking forward to this. Chris, how are you Delightful?

Chris: 1:08

how are?

Dr James: 1:09

you, I’m amazing man. So, Chris, I know this is your first time on the Dentists Who Invest podcast. It would be lovely, I guess, if we had a little bit of intro, a little bit of an intro just to kick things off. And then what I’d love to get into was what you were showing me just off camera beforehand, which is your six step process bang, bang, bang, bang bang which you know can help a entrepreneur take themselves out of their business and get a little bit of their time back, which is really cool great stuff, fantastic well, thank you.

Chris: 1:36

It’s lovely to be on the podcast, so thank you very much um, yeah brief intro to me.

Chris: 1:41

Uh, I’ve owned and ran my own businesses. I’ve purchased one, sold two, worked for 3i in the bank of england very much around helping businesses to scale, helping um owners um to kind of achieve the goals that they wanted to achieve. I’ve worked for POCs and I’ve also worked for much smaller organisations as well. So often you find that you’ve got much bigger organisations and people might think that the challenges are different and they’re actually not. It’s about focusing on certain key areas, which is really key, so that’s really critical.

Dr James: 2:15

Lovely Joghly. Well, do you know what? I’m sure a lot of the dentists that are in the audience, and certainly dentists that I’ve met as well, can attest to the fact that we’ve become extremely busy in our own business. Obviously, we’re an associate. So an associate is somebody who’s employed by a dental practice Chris, I’m not sure you’ve heard that terminology before and a principal is somebody who owns a dental practice. So an associate is always going to be, is always going to be well, they’re going to be exchanging time for money, at least to an degree, because they’re working for someone else.

Dr James: 2:45

Principal has scope to separate time and money. However, a lot of principals have their sleeves rolled up doing dentistry day-to-day in their business or the admin side of things. So, guys, what I’ll ask everybody in the audience is to please keep an open mind. We’re here to talk about this stuff, which is hypothetically possible. It’s all about being yourself and doing yourself and whatever makes you happy, and if seven days a week of dentistry is fine, is what you want to do, that is. But at least, when you know this stuff, what it means is you can make an active choice to stay as we are or potentially switch things around a little bit so we have more time for our kids, family, everything along those lines, Chris, does that sound about right?

Chris: 3:25

Yeah, yeah, very much so. Yeah, that summarizes it very well, Thank you Lovely, jovly.

Dr James: 3:29

Well, listen, I know that if you scour across the internet and Twitter and Instagram, everybody’s got their five-step formula for this and their seven-step formula for that and things along those lines. But it just so happens we have a six-step formula today, and that doesn’t mean that it’s the formula. We’re not trying to flog anything here, so to speak. It’s just a methodology that you’ve found works over the years, right, Chris?

Chris: 3:54

Yeah, speak. It’s just a methodology that you’ve found works over the years, right, Chris? Yeah, so action coach has been going for gosh, uh, over 30 years now, before I suppose even things like business coaching even existed. So, um, yeah, what we’ve tried to do is to simplify it and look, you know, being long enough in the tooth, um, there’s no point in terms of that, um, but it’s. Simplification of running any business is critical, and helping business owners to make simple, regular step changes is critical. So, yeah, keeping it really simple, manageable, I think is really important as part of working with our clients as we go through a sour six step process.

Dr James: 4:28

Lovely, and you know what I’m going to jump in with a fun factoid. Do you know where the expression long the tooth comes from? This is for the dentist in the audience you probably know this but also for yourself as well, Chris. No, not a clue. No, it’s interesting because with time, you get what’s known as recession, in that your gums shrink down the surface of your tooth and they retract towards the root aspect of the tooth rather than the crown. They retract towards the root aspect of the tooth rather than the crown.

Dr James: 4:56

so what that means is it has the effect of making your tooth appear longer, so when you’re old, obviously this process has occurred, so you’ve got recession on your teeth, where the gum is shrunk and it appears longer. So therefore you’re said to be longer than tooth. Anyway, I don’t want to pull proceedings away from what we’re supposed to be talking about today. You just reminded me of that and I looked it up one day because I was curious where it came from. Anyway, let’s jump into the six step formula, shall we? Yeah, of course, okay.

Chris: 5:17

So again, simplifying the process, and it’s about kind of giving business owners the scope to be able to focus on the things that they wanted to get from the business in the very first instance. I often find that business owners really become or individuals who are running business and part of others, they become so caught up in the day-to-day element of what they’re doing that actually you know they start in a thousand a day, which is kind of touching on the point you mentioned. So breaking that down into simple, manageable steps is a critical part of that process.

Chris: 5:51

And we’ve done that so we’ve got those six steps process and we’ve done that. So what? The first? We’ve got those six steps and we talk about mastery. So when we talk about mastery, we talk about eliminating the chaos so this is step number one is that’s correct right, yeah, yes, yeah, and that’s fundamentally focused on four key areas.

Chris: 6:08

Firstly, destination where do you want to go? Great question to ask when we talk about that is what does your business look like when it’s finished? No one would build a house, for example, without a clear view of what their house would look like when it’s done. And yet we don’t apply that mindset very often with a business.

Chris: 6:30

What does it physically, what will it be like when it’s finished? And what I mean by that is when you’re living the life you want to be living. What will your business be part of what you do? And that’s really key. So, for example, how many business owners truly have written goals that covers the next five to ten years? Do they have a vision, a detailed business plan that’s used and a 90-day plan that’s used by the whole team?

Chris: 7:02

So when you start to break that down the destination bit that’s so important because if we don’t know where we’re going to, how on earth do you know how to get there Then we focus on. A key element for our clients is getting them to work on the business and not just in it. We talk about a minimum of two and a half hours a week to work on their destination, working on the business, how to get to where they’re going. Also, we know when we’re all really, really busy, we often neglect ourselves as individuals. So actually it’s just as important to spend at least two and a half hours a week on the business owners working on themselves, whether it’s listening to podcasts, reading books, going to the gym, eating healthily. And actually, something that struck me is when business is hard or business is difficult. It’s just as important to spend time being present with your family and as part of that process it’s sometimes in very stressful situations, it’s making you leave your phone or leaving stuff that’s going to detract from you but really be present with your loved ones.

Chris: 8:10

So that’s important Again delivery supply quality consistency, with, with, with your loved ones. So that’s important again delivery supply quality consistency. Okay, how we’re measuring consistency? Now you may say in the world of dentists that’s a difficult thing to do, but but actually, what kind of experience are our clients seeing okay, and how good are we at us, the service that we provide? Um, and have we systemized process and procedures? What I mean by that is is there information? So if your practice nurse were to leave tomorrow, could you get in with a practice nurse to fulfill the job? And they know exactly what the job is, what they’re required to do. So systemization is really key.

Chris: 8:51

And then the final one in mastery is finances. So, monthly P&L balance sheet, reviewed cash flow forecast Do you know when your break-even point is? Okay, debtors, creditors, profit margins and then applying KPIs to that, it really surprises me the amount of people who run a business and who are not 100% focused on their finances of their business. So, yeah, that’s, that’s basically that’s the mastery section awesome.

Dr James: 9:20

So that’s and listen, here’s the thing, right, because that is the basics. Yet how many of us actually do those and do those? Well, yeah, that is the and I can even hear your words are sort of resonate with me, because I’m like, yeah, I do that, but I could do it a lot better, definitely. And I’m going to imagine, as we ascend these steps well, we really just have to, you know, like, really draw a line under each and every one in order to proceed to the next level, and how many of us can put our hands up and say, actually, we’ve nailed each one of those four things?

Chris: 9:53

yes, it’s really interesting and I think you know, specifically in the professional services sector, individuals go away, get their qualifications, then come back, may work for somebody for a period of time, then go and take their own practice or start to do their own things, but all of a sudden, the, the, the. If you imagine a magician spinning plates, okay, you know the dentistry bit, the the doing stuff with teeth. Teeth might only be 10 or 15 percent of the overall requirement of the managing director of a business, because, let’s not forget, if you own a practice, you’re the managing director, your sales, marketing, hr operations and finances. So there’s huge amounts of cover in all of this. Now, let’s not be daunted by that. But the key thing is, putting it off and not addressing it can only be detrimental to the business.

Dr James: 10:45

Awesome, brilliant. So let’s proceed on to step number two. How does that go? So that’s niche.

Chris: 10:52

So again, professional services, services. Look at the wealth management sector, for example. It’s so easy for businesses to be me too. Okay, how do you differentiate? What is your usp is? Is it true usp or do we think we know what that is? Okay, guarantees, um, if that’s possible. But how are we? How, how we, as part of that usp and our differentiation, how we, how we then position ourselves with our prospective clients or existing clients, that we would truly differentiate from people around us? Um, what do we got a written marketing plan? Do we test and measure our strategies? Test and measure is key. I’ve worked with some clients who spent a fortune on Google Ads, for example. Very, very quickly. You spend a huge amount of money, but how do we know that it’s successful unless we’re testing and measure that? Have we got a database of clients, regular prospects in a client communication? So again, how are we managing inbound leads and capturing them and then turning those into the right client, or even knowing what our perfect client looks like?

Chris: 11:58

Conversion ratio is a key. So what are our sales targets? The sales process, the sales process has to sit somewhere. Just because it might be a small organization doesn’t mean it should be ignored, and I think you ignore that at your peril. What is your average sale? Are you looking at regular price increases? Often we’re not great as business owners at putting prices up. We kind of think we’ll alienate the staff that we have.

Chris: 12:23

And what are our upselling strategies? So kind of detailing those as well is key. Then we’ve got number of transactions. So I’ve got regular contacts, VIP loyalty schemes, members clubs how often do our clients buy from us? And then finally, in the niche section, it’s back to margins again. So our gross and net margin, what’s our most profitable activity? And then once we start to understand where the majority of our profit then sits, oftentimes it’s the old iceberg theory, isn’t it? 80% of your income comes from 20% of your clients. What are we then doing to broaden that scope to find more individuals that are most profitable clients? And the final one in this section is the effects of discounting.

Dr James: 13:05

So actually what does?

Chris: 13:06

if you give away 10% as a discount, how does it actually affect your bottom line, for example? So it’s really key that we’re kind of nailing those strategies.

Dr James: 13:15

And that is a big one that dentists did a lot of off, that’s for sure, at least what I’ve seen out there, the discounting side of things anyway, because it’s very tempting. It’s very tempting, but yes, anyway, okay then we look at leverage.

Chris: 13:28

So it’s people in education. So how often we’re training our staff? Okay, in professional services businesses there’s a requirement to have a standard type of training, but actually what do we teach? Helping them with regards to other parts of the business, so key?

Chris: 13:41

element there phrase appraisals and productivity and service. Also, how are we improving? You know, how do we analyze, improve? What does an improved business look like? If we have a baseline and we understand that we’re doing X and we’re a baseline and we understand that we’re doing x and we’re doing that really well, but unless we’re making regular increments, one percent movement in one percent improvements makes such a massive difference over a long period of time. So again, how are we as a business gradually moving forward and maintaining consistent standards? So what’s the baseline of what we think is appropriate?

Chris: 14:22

Starting to then look at things like daily, weekly, monthly meetings around our accounting processes from a profitability perspective and also, does everyone in the business know the KPIs? Okay, let me look at systemization. So how-to manuals where can we automate routine tasks? Ai is having a massive impact, as we’re all aware, in small businesses. So are we making the most of that? Are we really starting to leverage on that?

Chris: 14:46

And then documented workflow, so our processes are we using the best systems possible? Are we minimizing the amount of time that we are spending on doing simple tasks? And that’s really interesting Working with a client just recently, we were able to take out 30% of his diary on a weekly basis just in administrative tasks A lot of time, huge, huge amount of time, and I think often the mindset is is if we’re working hard and we’re doing lots and lots, then we’re being successful. You know, warren buffett has the same amount of hours in his day as I do and yet he’s he’s made, he’s amassed, a slight, slightly large portfolio of cash, so clearly he’s very good at doing that himself. You can name these really successful people over and over again, but fundamentally, all we’re talking about here is about documenting our processes, making us becoming more effective and taking you as the principal out of day-to-day stuff that you gradually get yourself pulled back into a key element of that process.

Chris: 16:00

Okay. Then we look at team. So how we’re getting the right people often a massive challenge of keeping and maintaining the teams. Keeping the right people, finding the right people, um, and and keeping that, and so many times that comes down to a number of factors. It’s the age old instant, isn’t it, where you see, no end of times, things like linkedin? Or you know the reason why keeping that, and so many times that comes down to a number of factors. It’s the age-old incident, isn’t it, where you see, at no end of times, things like LinkedIn?

Chris: 16:20

Or you know, the reason why someone doesn’t stay with you stays with you isn’t because you send them pizzas and beer on a Friday in the office, but you’ve worked them for 70 hours the previous week. It’s how you bring them on and how you value them as individuals. So, with that in mind, you know what’s your retention. Are you monitoring your recruitment systems? Do you have the right people on the bus? For those who haven’t read the book, we talk about having the right people in the team. Now, if you imagine a bus on its travel, people get on and off.

Chris: 16:49

So it doesn’t mean that just because the team of people that you’ve got now is the people that you’ll get to when you reach your destination. But, fundamentally though, have you got the right people on the bus for now? Okay, why do good people join your business and why do they stay? Often, we overlook the fact that we don’t ask the questions. You know, why do people enjoy working at your practice? Why do they want to stay Now? Clearly, they’re not going to tell you if they’re going, but actually, it’s really really key that we understand about retention of good people, company culture, written points of culture, physical environment, mutually supportive team Something that we, something that often gets massively over missed, and it’s with business owners of multiple sizes, of varying sizes, sorry, celebrating wins.

Chris: 17:34

How many of us, truly, when we have a really good month, let people know I had something in the post from work. Actually, I had a really good quarter and I got some brownies in the post. I mean, it’s not completely unsolicited, arrived completely out of the blue, but it was just a great way for them to show me that what I was doing was appreciated. So how are we looking at the ways in which we manage the people that we work for and celebrate the good stuff, because we spend enough time, don’t we, worrying about the stuff and covering over or dealing with things that don’t go well. So then we have leadership and management.

Chris: 18:10

So what’s the structure, the amount of companies that don’t have a leadership log chart? Okay, what are the KPIsIs? Regular one-to-ones, but being disciplined about that. The six keys to winning team are strong leadership, common goals. What are the rules of the game? An action plan, support, risk taking. So you know, is this going to be beneficial and making the right choices, as we do? A hundred percent involvement, inclusion and continuous learning. So it’s about this constant involvement as a business amazing man.

Dr James: 18:41

I’m loving how systematic this methodology is. So is that rep? That’s wrapped up step three. Have I got that?

Chris: 18:49

right. So that’s taken us to team. So that’s the step four. So by the time we get to step five, we’ve got a synergistic business. Okay, and how do we know that’s the case? Well, the acid test of this is it’s a commercial, profitable business that can work without you. So, in effect, we’ve got to a stage where a business owner can go on holiday for four months, not pick up their phone, not answer any, and come back to the business in four months’ time and the business has continued to grow and there’s been no issues.

Dr James: 19:22

That is the dream right there, so hard to get to Agreed.

Chris: 19:26

Agreed, and it’s this constant involvement, and then the final stage is results. So then what?

Dr James: 19:34

what we’ve helped. We’ve helped a business owner to get to a point where they are, they’re able to be entrepreneurial.

Chris: 19:40

They’re using their own money to make investments because they’ve been able to amass that. Accordingly, they may be built a property portfolio or they’ve got whatever that might be. Also as part of this process, we’ve then helped business owners to then make uh, to build multiple incomes from a portfolio. Let’s say so clearly. You know, enabling somebody to get incomes from their business whether they decide to keep the business in time or to sell it it’s kind of irrelevant at this stage.

Chris: 20:09

What it’s creating is a passive income from you. We’ve maybe established other passive incomes as well. How about you could franchise it, or whatever that might be? But fundamentally we’re at the result stage there, where the business is working for you and you’re then reaping the rewards accordingly amazing.

Dr James: 20:25

I love that and that’s the. That’s the end goal 100 yeah that’s the end goal right there, and I guess. So, if we could, if we, yeah, do you know what would be nice if we could just have like a little recap of those six levels, of course?

Chris: 20:38

Okay, so that’s mastery, eliminating the chaos niche. Okay, we then look to leverage. We then focus on the teams, the synergy and then results.

Dr James: 20:50

Amazing. And how long does that process usually take, from day zero, let’s say and I get that it varies based on the business and it might be a tough question to answer.

Chris: 21:00

Yeah, it’s dependent upon the amount of hours that the business owner is prepared to put into the business. By the time we get to results, they are spending 10 to 15 hours a week working on the business because they have the time to do so. To start out, with a lot of business owners when we’re really at the very early stages of mastery, you know five hours a week literally feels like they’re losing a limb with the amount of time that’s taken for them initially. But actually, as you’ve systemized it’s, it’s really interesting. I reckon within six months you’ve now got people that have cleared well, based on my clients, so that’s 40 to 50 percent of their diary of activities based around stuff that is not revenue generating. You know you take. You take them with admin stuff and you’ve got them focused on.

Dr James: 21:48

You know where they need to be going so hard to do, by the way, because I even look back on my life not even that long ago, I’m gonna say three to four months ago and I had a coach or a mentor and he said to me you’re doing way too much the low leverage stuff and at the time I was like, nah, I don’t think I am, I don’t think I agreed with him, I couldn’t see it. But I’ve been through the process of having someone give me feedback and having this initial knee jerk reaction to reject it, but allowing that to wash over me, not listening to it, allowing it to wash over me, taking it into account, then doing my very best to listen to that person, and actually the number of times that it’s shifted my beliefs and how I see things is truly phenomenal, and that I I, I try very hard to be that person, and it’s. It’s hard to take sometimes, do you know? Because basically someone’s saying to you actually everything that you’ve done to this pop, this point, could have been done so much better, and that’s hard to take if you’ve been in that zone for like five years. However, I guess what I’d like to say is it’s like you know, uh, okay, cool, I can either accept that and move past it, or I can continue to stay there.

Dr James: 23:05

But again, I really don’t hope. I really hope I’m not coming across as anything other than looking out for people whenever I’m saying these things. It’s just, these are little psychological. What’s a good word for them? Uh, how can we say, uh, you know, like a psychological bias? Basically, that is us humans that we have to overcome, and it’s just worth acknowledging these things when we’re receiving new information. Focus on the high leverage stuff. The stuff is going to move the needle, not the admin. Delegate that and systemize it it’s bizarre.

Chris: 23:39

Well, it’s not bizarre, it’s interesting. You, you talk about when, when we call this a point of power. So if we, if we use blame or we create excuses for stuff, then it puts us at a negative point of power. Okay, and actually, you know, can blame the economy, you can blame this, you can blame that, but fundamentally it makes no difference because it’s not going to change the situation. Whereas if we move the point of power to a positive, where we take some accountability and then we act and we can make changes.

Chris: 24:12

The advice that this individual gave to you was coming from a place of trying to help you, wasn’t it? You know, it wasn’t to upset you, it wasn’t to, you know, tell you you’re rubbish or do what you do right, because there’s no good. Um. But as human beings, and also depending on stage of life, I think sometimes we push back on that the more the older that we get, which I think is a bit of a challenge. But there’s a great quote from jimohn. It says don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better, don’t wish for less problems, wish for more skills. And I love that because you, just you then start to take ownership and go actually okay, that’s enough yeah, I do need to make some changes, you’re right.

Dr James: 24:50

I’ll go away and do it true, so much of it is mindset, so much, but it’s not set. Yeah, you can ask yourself if you know somebody’s done it. You know what can be done and you just have to figure out how to do it effectively, rather than say, hey, this can’t be done, or rather than say I’m different or something along those lines. In reality, it’s a better belief that serves you more, as in more likely to achieve that outcome, if you believe that you can also achieve it because someone else has already done it. You just got to find the way. You’ve got to search for the way, rather than constantly saying I can’t do this, it can’t be overcome, everything along those lines. I’m just curious. You know we talked about the high leverage tasks and the low leverage tasks just a second ago. You got any frameworks for deciding which is which. Which things do we delegate and which things should we keep in terms of continuing to perform those tasks ourselves? Yeah, very much so.

Chris: 25:39

So actually, the way we would start with that is first of all list everything you do, okay, and I mean everything and then what we can then do is to assign time against the, the actions that we do on our, let’s say, on a weekly basis, because oftentimes the weekly stuff is repeated, isn’t it over that period of time. So first of all you start with that, then you start to look at right, okay, so this is what I’m spending my time doing.

Chris: 26:05

The critical thing that we then have to look at is actually how much of this is important, how much of this can help me get to my goal, or how much of this is detracting from that.

Chris: 26:28

Your target turnover is two million pounds okay, and then you divide that into an hourly rate.

Chris: 26:30

All of a sudden, when you can then start to see that you’re spending 40 hours a month at an hourly rate of, let’s say, I don’t know, a thousand pounds an hour, I’m spending 40 hours.

Chris: 26:42

Your cost to you, your business opportunity cost, is 40 hours, more or less 40,000 pounds of lost opportunity, for example, whereas if you can then start to focus on the stuff that gets you more revenue, the stuff that you need lots of experience and you can make lots of revenue from, actually, it becomes really clear as to where you should be spending your time and where you’re wasting your time, and if you could employ somebody whether it’s a virtual assistant or whether it’s an admin person to take away some of this stuff. That’s the first bit. The next bit is that how much headspace it takes up. We all operate a kind of droid-like element when we’re doing our admin and the kind of tasks that we’re talking about, but they fill our headspace where actually, if you can outsource that to somebody else to do, all of a sudden you then start to have so much more room for other stuff and that’s the real big win. I would suggest.

Dr James: 27:42

This is the thing it’s very hard to envisage how you can use that time better if you’re just constantly fighting fires. You kind of have to experience taking yourself out of that to understand how you can actually get more out of those hours by doing other things. But the problem is that if you just continuously go through these repetitious behaviors that you’ve been accustomed to over the years, you never actually fully appreciate how much you will gain by stepping away from those things and delegating them.

Dr James: 28:12

yeah, 100 chicken and the egg right, kind of like chicken and the egg.

Chris: 28:15

Yeah totally agree. But if you use that in a sporting analogy, if you look at any ball, any team-based, team-based sport, you have the younger individuals who are around giving you all the energy. But then why is it the individuals? Why is Messi paid what he’s paid? Okay, it’s experience, okay, okay, so it’s a football analogy. I don’t really understand football, but wrong shape ball for me. But it’s true, right. Experienced people bring this aura with them, okay, and they just come in, they just come and do a job and then come out again. It’s like swan like. So the same is true in this instance. Experience tells us that spending more time doing one task that generates more revenue is hugely more relevant than doing stuff the way you think. You’re really helping out on the lower admin stuff, but actually you’re crippling your business by doing so agreed, Chris, thank you for being so generous with your time, wisdom and knowledge on today’s podcast.

Dr James: 29:11

I would like to point out that this podcast is actually relevant for associates as well as principals, because we are a business and there are things that we can develop on that front, and the sooner we start regarding ourselves like that is, the sooner we can start to figure out how we can operate more like a business. Not because money is a be-all and end-all, but it does actually allow us to get a little bit of our time back as well and be more effective in terms of results. Chris, if anybody wanted to reach out to you off the back of today’s podcast, how would they be best off doing that?

Chris: 29:39

um, drop me an email. My name, my email address is chrisbrown@actioncoach. co. uk, and, for anybody that wants it, I’m prepared to offer you a free 60-minute coaching session if they wanted to do that.

Dr James: 29:51

Sounds fun. Chris, thank you so much for your time. We’ll be seeing each other again very soon, I’m sure. Great Thanks for your time. Lovely to have seen you.