Secrets to Easy Scaling: Update Your Process Engine

Introduction to Chris Ramsey and Trainual 0:00

Hey, everybody, it's Doctor Ron. I have someone super special today that I've been following for years, actually. This is, Chris Ramsey. Oh, he is the founder and CEO of train. Your. Not quite a training manual. Not quite. Not quite a book, but it's online, so we put everything together. So it's called Train Rule. And it's something that, I used very early on, for actually, for my businesses, back in the day. And so it's, it's a leading, platform that really transformed the way that, small businesses, on board, train and scale teams.

You know, Chris is also the host of the fastest growing companies and organized chaos, which, by the way, I love organized chaos. And the author of, 100 Hacks to Improve Your Business. And, and it's been an absolute pleasure following Chris all these years. And he's on a mission to help business leaders. But, more importantly, we as physicians can really take a, take a few pages from other businesses playbooks to see how things are done. And, and it's I didn't understand how important this was until I started, Texas Center for Lifestyle Medicine started documenting processes because that was what's required for us to move at a pace that we should be moving.

So, Chris, welcome to the show. I appreciate you. Absolutely. Thanks, doctor. Ron, it's it's great to be here. Thank you for your support over the years. And, thank you for the introduction. Yeah. No problem. So, you know, today's talk, when we talk about, physician practices and some of the, the main pain points that I feel is like within over 90% of the practices, and, and I think that as doctors, I mean, honestly, we're, we're trained to be doctors. Right. And so we sort of had this, this, this heroes mentality, when taking care of patients.

But then when you get too stuck in it, other things that that come out, it's really hard to focus on and so for so for doctors in private practice is not only are we physicians, but we're also owners and operators at the same time. So becomes, becomes really hectic, as you can imagine. Yeah. But it's and it's not just physicians. It's not an uncommon thing. You know, a lot of people start a business as a technician. They're really good at the thing they do. And then you realize, oh, I own a business, too.

I need to figure out how to do that part of the job, right? Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, you know, I want to I want to start by, just kind of summarizing, we're going to talk about during in the other in this portion, the summit. Well, which is one is, employee turnover in company culture. I feel like they kind of go hand in hand. Yeah. And two, is that a lot of, you know, practice owners, don't know how to invest in systems, you know, so they invest in other things, but not necessarily systems which can make or break a business.

And another one is, there is a extremely high turnover of employees in all medical practices in the United States, especially after the or during the global pandemic. And then also physician burnout. So, 44% of docs are burnt out nationally, and it's 76% for primary care doctors, believe it or not. It's it's really crazy. And this is, this is a survey that's done before the pandemic. So I have no idea what it is now. I'm sure it's a lot higher. Yeah. And I want to talk about, working on the business versus working in the business.

Not a lot of people know what that really means, you know? Yeah. And so that's sort of the that's sort of the lay out the kind of want to want to discuss. But, you know, I want to let's start with the first one is what are what are the consequences of us as physician leaders of not having systems and processes documented? What were the actual consequences? Yeah. Well, so let's take a step back and actually define systems and processes.

Why Physician Practices Need Systems 4:18

Because whenever you pick up a business book, you know, you see those buzzwords and you think, oh, I got to work on my systems and processes. What does that actually mean? So I think it's actually the reverse, it's processes and systems because every business has process to it. You already have a way that you do things right. So a process is just a sequence. The way that you do something. It's the way that you register a patient, the way you interact with them in a visit, the way that you bill someone through insurance.

There is a sequence, a way that you do it. And you probably know those things intuitively, or your people know those things and they're stuck in their heads. And then you've got your systems, which is the technology that helps facilitate and speed up the process. And so an example I like to give is, you know, when you're driving a car and you drive on to a highway or a freeway or something like that, that is a system that was put in place to get you from point A to point B, which is the process.

So you could walk through the woods on some path and then maybe that path, if it gets enough foot traffic, they decide to pave it or they turn it into a freeway. It's a place. It's a way to get from point A to point B, and so in your business, you have these processes just point A to point B, ways to do things. Investing in systems and infrastructure is just how you handle more capacity, how you get more volume through your processes. And so when you're building a private practice, when you're a physician, you know the number of people you can serve has a cap on it.

And so if you want to scale your business and not be working so many hours, not be having so many visits, you've got to invest in that infrastructure in those systems to make your business as profitable as possible. And that's what we're all after. Yeah. And I think we're, we're we're a little beyond profit for for example, I'm gonna give you a sort of a case example. Right. So I was talking, to a buddy of mine and, and he owns a gynecologist practice and, and he's like, man, I had, you know, three of my medical systems quit, when I was on vacation, which people always quit when the boss is on vacation and, end up.

And I'm relying on my, my senior medical assistant to to train the new ones that are coming in. But she's on vacation for two weeks, and then, if I hire them, they're just going to be sitting on their butts and doing nothing, right? And so, So tell me how this can really destroy the processes and and cause a lot of burnout for the people within the company? Well, think about that idea of quitting on vacation. Like, why would someone quit while the boss is away? In my experience, it's because they don't want to face the boss.

And a lot of times when you don't want to face the boss, when you're putting in your notice, it's because you know you're leaving the company in a bad place. And so why would you be leaving the company in a bad place to take a great career opportunity? Well, it's because the knowledge of the business and what you do is stuck in your head. And when you walk out the door, you're taking that knowledge with you, and you know, it's a problem for the company. So it's if if that's the if that's the problem, we go back to say, well, how do you fix that issue?

And it's good for the employee and it's good for the company. If they can write down and codify, like what they do in the business, so that if they ever do decide to move on, they don't feel so guilty, they can actually approach you and say, I have this other opportunity, but don't worry, everything's written down and the next person will just hit the ground running, and then you feel pretty good about it as a as a business owner, I like to give this analogy of, you know, if you had the money and you could either choose to rent or buy a house, what would you do?

I would buy the house. You'd buy it, right? Because you're you're getting an asset, you know, like that's why you do that. And so if if you think about all of the knowledge, the collective experience of all of the people in your business, and you're paying for that payroll after payroll, after payroll after payroll, if you're not writing it down, you're not building an asset. All you're doing is paying salaries like rent, and you have nothing to show for it. And so the knowledge in a business is what makes the business valuable.

It's what makes it an asset. So you've got to capture what people do, and it's good for everyone. Building equity from process. I've never thought of it like that. That's that's brilliant. Actually, that's a really good analogy. But yeah, you're right. You know, if you're just kind of relying on people to do the stuff and not have it down, you don't you don't own that that knowledge. You don't own that process. It's just in someone's head or your head, and then you're literally just renting it. Yeah, that's that makes a whole lot of sense.

Yeah. I remember this before train you while I was consulting for this daycare. And I went in and I used to interview all the employees, these confidential interviews. And there was a teacher, a kindergarten teacher that was like, you know what? Over the years I've had so many opportunities to leave this business.

Building a Playbook: Profile, People, Policies, Processes 9:08

You know, the kids want to hire me as a private tutor. And I said, so why didn't you leave? And I thought, she's just so loyal. It's the best employee ever. And she said, no, if I left this place would crumble. Like, think about that burden for for any person that they feel so responsible to your business that they feel trapped. And I don't think that's good for anyone. So writing down what you do, it's good for the company, it's good for the person, and it's a productive thing. And the discussion we should all have.

Yeah, well, there's writing it down and losing your notebook. Right. And then there's and then there's writing it down digitally. Right. There's a big difference. Correct. Absolutely. So you know right. I suggest I have a I have a strong recommendation on where you write it down, but we can get to that later. Absolutely. So, you know, now the question and I can hear people thinking about this like, well, what is really the anatomy? That goes into what my playbook should really look like. What does that look like?

Yeah. So your playbook has has four things that DNA. If I want to use medical terms. Right. It's, it's it's first your profile of your company or your business, your practice. So the profile is just a snapshot of what makes you unique as a business, as a company. It's your story, your founding story. It's why you left that hospital and decide to start your own private practice. It's it's the the types of people that you serve. It's what makes you different. It's your culture, your values, your vision, your mission, all of that stuff is just the about the the entity stuff.

And that's your profile. That's the first piece. The next piece is your people. So every business has different people, and those people have different stories and backgrounds and bios and titles and lists of responsibilities. And so being able to orient your whole team to, here's who's who and here's who does what is a really important part of your playbook after that's your, your, policies. So policies are just like your handbook. It's the rules. It's the, you know, the the norms inside your business, the legal requirements.

And then you've got your processes and all those are the how to's, the standard operating procedures of how you do things. And so it's those four elements your your profile, your people, your policies, your processes. That's what makes up the whole playbook. If if you had to turn over your practice to someone else, that's how they get 100% up to speed on what you've built. So let me use a profile first. That's very counterintuitive for me because, I mean, the minute I think about a handbook, I start with processes.

We set profile first. Yeah. Why? It's totally the opposite. When you start with processes and you're training people, the first thing you're training them is on a how to on a process. You're micromanaging them. You're you're you're looking over their shoulder and watching. Guilty. Absolutely. Yeah. And so you want to give them the context of why do they even care about you? What are you what are you up to here? What do you do here? And, you know, when we first jumped on this call, you started to tell me about why your practice is unique while you're unlike other people.

Because we connect over that. There's a story element there, and you want every single person that joins your practice to have that same experience where they get to know you, they build the emotional connection. They want to work for you. It affirms what they thought about you before you hired them. You know, it says, was this a good decision to join this company? Do I fit in here? This is a culture I'm going to thrive in. That's what you're teaching someone up front. That's the building block for everything else.

Okay, well, and now now the that that builds the culture. But you talk about building experience so your experience can be scaled, at large. By documenting the pros on. I'm honestly never thought of it like that, you know, you know, there's there you invest in your customer's experience. That's a lot of the process part. But then you invest in your employee experience. And that's a lot of the profile and the policies and the people. So, you know, as a business starts, they're first trying to figure out how do I serve a customer and how do I just collect dollars and make this thing work?

Right. But as the business grows and has more people in it, now you've got to shift and say, how do I make this a great place to work? And how do I invest in my people so that they are operating consistently and building a culture together? Yeah. So I mean, that was if and I'll, you know, dude, I'm guilty. Because I started processes first and I and and it wasn't really until right pre-pandemic that we started, to change some of our staff that, I started documenting why we're doing this in the first place.

And what's really interesting is that the the tone of the culture of the company has changed quite a bit, because people were like, oh, so that's why you do this stuff or on or, you know, that's why we want to do this. And the, it became the that our monthly meetings became a lot more robust, and people were able to take the profile into their own creative energy and come up with even better systems and processes than I could even imagine. And so I recently experienced that. And so it's very, it's very awesome.

And it really takes a lot of the burnout away from me. So that's awesome. Yeah, it's a it's 100% a culture builder. And like you said, it helps people innovate and see beyond just the scope of their role. You know, if you bring people on and all you do is train them on how to, you know, punch the clock and do the, the narrow job description they were hired for. They don't understand where they fit in the whole organization. And so by investing and just training everyone on the foundations of your company, they they get the whole operation.

Like my first company was a video production company, and we would hire camera operators to film sporting events and, you know, broadcast people that would come in that were used to filming different types of events. They might zoom in on someone's face because they're trying to get all the emotion. And if they didn't understand that, no. Our video goes to the judges for technical replays. You need to be this far zoomed out. This this is the context of why we shoot this video and what everyone else does, that they couldn't do their job well.

And so you have to train people first on what the business does before you train them on what they do. Very artistic, you know. Yeah, yeah. Processes are very artistic things. So, you know, a lot of docs, including myself, especially in the beginning, you know, we didn't really invest into systems like this. I mean, we definitely didn't invest into, developing your profile or, you know, or, company's core values, if you will. Right. And a lot of times, you know, not everyone's on the same page, and we suffer major consequences of it.

So I, I've, I've tasted that pain and it sucks. So let's talk about how this can actually improve, employee turnover. So do you think documenting these processes can, can improve employee employee turnover? Yeah, absolutely. You know there's there's a lot that influences turnover. First some turnover is predictable and expected. You know some businesses or seasonal businesses, some roles that you hire. You might expect someone to come in for a residency or whatever. And they're not going to be there long term, you know.

And so some some roles have predictable turnover, but it's the unexpected turnover of people feeling like they don't have opportunity at your business or they don't quite fit in or whatever. Investing in your up front company training will weed out people earlier on. And so just as an example, you know, everyone that starts at train your they go through a really grueling interview process. And we we at any you know, we try to weed everyone out at the, at the very beginning before they're even getting an offer.

But when they make it through the front door and they're training on the company,

Using Documentation to Improve Culture and Reduce Turnover 16:58

we give them at their end of the training an opportunity to leave. And we pay for, for, payment that if it's not the right fit, they can leave two weeks after they started. And and again, it just reinforces is this the place for you? And so I think there's a lot you can do to improve your training so that you and you preempt unexpected turnover. You know, you cause that this person was likely to turn over. Let me identify that in the interview process, or this person is not going to be a long term fit.

Let me identify that in their first week or two. If people make it past that, then they should be a long term fit in your business for the expected life cycle of whatever that role is. And so, I mean, that's all well and good, but I think a lot of people are thinking about this and say, hey, I am so busy, like working in my business right now. I'm an operator. Yeah. You know, like, where do I find time to even do something like this? And how do I even start? So how do I start? Yeah, it's it's a catch 22, right.

Because, you know, investing in this stuff investing time now is going to save you time later. You know if you spend eight hours or 10 hours or 40 hours writing down a bunch of stuff in your business, short term it feels like, wow, that that was a waste of time. But when you multiply that over the five, ten, 15, 20 people that you hire and how much more efficient they get, how much stronger your culture gets, how much your retention improves, then those efforts start to dramatically pay off over time.

So it's something that you can't look at with a short term lens. You have to understand here is the long term place I'm trying to get my business to. And if I don't do this work, there's no way I'll scale to that place, you know? You know, I think a lot of, you know, physician operators kind of offering this perpetual fight or flight stance when it comes to business because there's so many unknowns within a medical practice, which I'm sure is in other businesses as well. But when, when there's a business and the talent of the business is the physician themselves and also the operator, there's what do you what do you how do you think that we should actually divert our time nationally?

Diver allocate our time, I should say, to developing things and the processes on the business versus and just just full force in the business. Like is there like a ratio. Is there like once a month or what do you say. There was there's no perfect ratio. But you know, the the way to think about it, the whole in your business, on your business thing that actually originated from a book called the E-myth Michael Gerber, he has a physician's version of that book, if you've not read it. But, he's he's become an advisor for me.

And, partner at Trane. You all. And so, one of the things I disagree with him on, actually, is that not everyone has to go from working in their business to working on their business. There's some people who would just be very happy having a lifestyle business, having, you know, a couple people and you're just in the business forever, and that's what you do. And if that's what you want, there's no problem with that. So it's really only when you're raising your own hand and saying, you know, I don't want to work this many hours.

I want to have some other physicians here in my practice. I want to support myself with an administrative team that takes a lot of the business load off of my plate. That's a decision you're making or any of the other listeners are making. And if that's what you want, then that is your rationale to go invest the time in building this sort of structure. So I don't think there's a right ratio for anyone, you know, because I've had friends that buy a business that they were never the technician of, you know, they buy a business and they're 0% in the business.

And then I have other friends that are same thing, a physician 100% in the business, and all they do is billable client time, patient time. And so, you know, there's a balance, there's a mix somewhere in between. But it starts with what you want. Oh man, that's a tough question to answer. And I think, you know, everyone watching this has sort of a different desire. Right. You know, a lot of us went to medical school for a reason. We went into residency and fellowship training for a reason. And when we did all that, a lot of times it's not what we expected.

Right? And, and our desires change. And for those of you listening out there, you know, it's okay to change your mind. You know, you know, during residency, I think a lot of us really wants to work hard and wants to work every day. Everything's service for our patients. But as we develop families and relationships and in relationships with ourselves, and especially in the current trying times where there is a huge stigma and when it comes to physicians and mental health, we really have to take a step back and reevaluate what is it that we really want.

But what's whatever it is that we want. And I believe that we have to build a system towards the things that, that plague us the most and so that we're able to engineer, either a strategy of less burnout or exit strategy or something like that. So there was there was this movie that came out, I don't know if you ever saw it or maybe saw the movie poster Horrible Bosses I saw. Yeah, yeah. And and I used to give this presentation and talking to people about, you know, isn't it the worst when, you know, as a, as the business owner, you're working all these hours and you're doing this and I put up that poster and it's like, you know what?

You're your boss, you are the boss. And so you have to write the rules for what you want. And I think it's an important reminder that everyone kind of needs to step back every once in a while. And rewrite the rules of their business. You know, if if you're if your life is trying to fit into your business, you've got to flip a 180 and say, what is the lifestyle that I'm looking for? And how do I build my business around that? Well, the if the lifestyle that we're looking for is consistent with where we're in, right now, that's one at a time to build the systems around it.

But hey, we only have 24 hours in a day and I want to sleep some of those hours. So how do I you know, I can imagine that we want to get our entire staff involved in building this, this playbook. Right. Like, how do you corral your staff to say, hey, we want to be able to build this? Do you need tips on that? Yeah. So first you need to give them a reason why you're doing it. Because if you come at your people one day and you say, hey, guess what? We're writing down everything that you do and that's all you're going to work on for the next few weeks.

They're going to be like, oh my gosh, I'm getting fired. You know, like that's that would be the first, the first thought. And so you have to kind of preload some context and say, you know, for this reason and this reason, we, we want to open an additional location, as you've heard about or we're trying to move into this bigger business, a bigger building that has more capacity, and we're gonna see this many more patients. And you've got to have some reasoning to want to do this work. And so you've got to share your vision and share your motivation with your team.

And when they hear the motivation and then you explain, this is the project, this is how we're going to do it. It makes total sense to them. But they're they're more bought in than they would be if you just said, hey, write down everything you do. So, you know, the first piece is, is just context. Again, it's just being open and being a good communicator. Now where you actually start is going to depend on what you get the most ROI out of for your business. And so if you're anticipating hiring a ton of people, you might start with that profile section, your orientation.

Because you know that if you don't write that stuff down and make a consistent experience, it's going to be a grind for your week after week or month after month, repeating yourself over and over on that same story. And so you might focus on that. Whereas if you're rolling out policy updates or something else to all of your existing people and there's some big legislation change that's coming up, then that might be the burning thing for you to focus on. And so I always try to think about what to document first in terms of what am I going to get the widest ROI on, you know, the, the like writing down what one person does in the back office that's been with you 20 years and isn't going anywhere, is less of an urgency than writing down something that everyone needs to know how to do consistently.

Right? And by the way, ROI is a return on investment for those who, wondering. And so, yeah, you're investing time as well as energy as well as money into it. So you have to know what that return asset looks like and the ROI. So it's just important picture that a lot of people kind of neglect.

Working On the Business vs In the Business 25:18

But Chris, this is this is the problem. And I think it's it's really rampant amongst physicians is that, you know, okay. So there's a doctor's mindset, and that doctor's mindset is, I want to take care of you no matter what. Right. If you bring that doctor's mindset into a business setting, say, I'm going to take care of you no matter what is subconsciously turns into I don't want to overwhelm you with more work. Therefore, I will take it on on my own, right? So so tell me what you think about that.

I think it's empathetic, first of all, and that empathy is a great baseline to build a great culture with your business. So the fact that that exists is a good thing, but you're not doing anyone any favors by doing all their work for them. You know, if if you're having to step in and do someone else's job, then chances are you don't have really clear cut roles and responsibilities, or you haven't given your team members clear priorities on what they should be focusing on. And so we do this responsibilities audit all the time.

Like every quarter at train you and what I recommend every single person in the company does is they just take us a current snapshot of everything they do. And so I can I can run through this really quick. It's a quick exercise if it's helpful for everyone. I'm going to go through it. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So really simple. Like I said just start with what's top of mind. Ask every person. You have to just make a list of what they do, what they think they do every day. Top of mind. Next, jog their memory with time periods.

So say write down everything you do on a daily basis on a weekly basis, bi weekly, monthly. They might start thinking of reports they run or meetings they have, or other things that just have that time based kids to them. The next thing is for anyone that uses, email or communication tools like that, I ask them to go back through their last two weeks of sent email. So very specific trick here. But a lot of people get junk in their inboxes. And if you look at your sent email, it shows you what you actually engage with is the stuff you forwarded to someone else for them to answer.

It's replies you've given someone, it's outgoing messages you've sent, so you can capture a lot of responsibilities in that. And then you look at your calendar or your, you know, EMR system or your task system or any other place that you're capturing work that you do. And it again, is just jogging your memory. And so if you ask every person in the office to do this, you'll end up with hundreds and hundreds of little micro responsibilities. And it provides such an amazing snapshot for each person to say, here's what I love doing.

Here's what I don't like doing. Here's what I wish someone else could do. If we're going to hire another person and you start to do this role planning, that is really a helpful exercise for any business owner to make sure that you put people in the right see it so that they're doing a job, that they're actually going to love and want to stay with you and keep doing. Yeah. And audit, actually, let's, you know, because we, we do this on a monthly, whether, two or more people have the same job. And I feel like if there's two people with the responsibility on one thing, it gets missed. Yeah.

And so that's I think that it allows us to build the hand off, and, and we actually use that through, through training, actually. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, you can find things that multiple people think, oh, they'll get it. And so no one does it right. It slips through the cracks. But then you can also find things that multiple people do, and they do it inconsistently. And you can say, well, wow, let's get our heads together and write down a consistent way to do that, because this person does it way better than this person.

Right? Right. Yeah. Best practices. Absolutely. And even within, you know, multiple physicians in their same practice, some physicians are documenting one way within an EMR and, another physician another way. And I always learn from my colleagues. And then for me, of the best practices. And it becomes a very valuable thing. And, whatever we decide on, we we put it in the playbook. So, I love it. Yeah. Until someone else finds a better strategy or faster strategy, and then we'll we'll replace it and that's it.

So I want to stop right there, because what you just said means that you've built this into your culture. You know, a lot of people think that making a playbook, writing down SOPs, standard operating procedures is a one time project. Like, I'm going to do this, I'm going to get it off my plate. That's not the case, because unless your business is never going to change again, you won't have a static playbook. If your practice is always changing and evolving and finding new and better ways to do things, then you've got to update what you wrote down or what you recorded.

And so it's something that is a cultural change, but it's amazing that you said that. So I just had a pointed out, oh, thanks a lot. I appreciate that. But you know, with, with all these changes, we have to make sure everyone's on the same page as well. Right? And without a playbook, it's damn near impossible to do so, and it's like, you know, having a meeting with everyone, expecting you want to know, but half the people are missing, right? And people have to rely on second hand storytelling. Yeah.

Which I actually find that a lot of medical practices, that's exactly how they train everything. And they've been doing that for decades. And there's script by. Yeah, I like that game of telephone. You know when when I started train you all the, the name like you alluded to came from training and manual. And so you can write down a manual, but if you don't put any effort into training then you have no accountability to know that everyone actually got it and understands it and acknowledged it and signed off on it.

And so it's definitely two halves of a coin, two sides of a coin, where you need to document the thing, you need to write it down. But then just as important, you need to make sure the person on the other side understands it and acts on it as you intend. Yeah. No. Absolutely.

Leadership, Burnout, and Delegating Well 31:08

And so I mean, as a leader and we go through these things and I used to populate the, the the original playbook, by myself, which was a terrible idea. But but once other people got on to the systems and we had a culture, like I said, we built a culture where we recognized and appreciated the way that people do things very differently and rewarded people, for having really clean processes and adopt that company on it was such a big game changer for us. You know, but speaking of, leadership, like, how do you how do you not burnout as a leader, especially in businesses?

Well, jeez, that's a loaded question. So I'll I'll answer it a couple ways. I think the first way you don't burn out is I pre schedule a ton of vacations and family time. And so the beginning of the year, I do my entire calendar for the whole year where I put the vacations and the time off on the calendar. First. And I just have random free days that I'll book for long weekends. It doesn't mean that I've booked some travel. I'm going somewhere, but I have days throughout the year that are pre-booked because then life fills in around those days.

And so I think it's a simple trick, but it's one that everyone can do to just put those days on the calendar, and then you don't get to the end of the year or the end of the month and say, oh, I didn't take any time off. So I have have those preloaded. Let's see. I have a, another trick, which is a second cell phone. So I turn off my work cell phone and use the other one when I want to disconnect and know the only people that have the number, my family and our chief of staff, if there's some emergency.

So so I like that one. But really, it's just holding yourself accountable to not burning out, not building a business that requires you to burn out. Again, you write the rules. And so if you accept commitments that you know are going to require working late hours, working on weekends, that's your fault for accepting that commitment, you know, so you have to kind of prioritize and say, how much can I get into a normal workweek? That's how much I'm going to do. Yeah. Call the non-negotiable. So you set your non-negotiables at the beginning of the year, set that time for yourself and for your family.

And it's something that most physicians neglect to do because we're not taught that way, you know. Yeah. Yes, it is. So I mean, that's simple time management kind of stuff. But I think the next big thing is hiring incredible people. Because as my business has grown, I've brought in leaders that are specialists in the different areas of the business, and they know so much more about it than I do. And so then my role becomes just guiding them and coaching them. But there aren't those burning fires that pop up because we've got this, you know, line up of firefighters that would put it out before it gets to me.

And so I think as as you build a business, you want to put that lineup in front of you so that any and you're dealing with is really the biggest, most urgent problems. Yeah, it's it's building trust and and culture within the company, to not just find those great people, but manicure those great people, into people that are even greater than themselves. And that's that's what really, challenges team culture. You know, I can't remember what book it was, but, you know, it it was talking about the perfect company.

Culture has nothing to do with bringing dogs to work. But executing at the highest level, and so that everyone's on the same page. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. And we could talk, I'm sure, the whole time about culture. But, you know, we do things over here like, again, these responsibility audits which get baked into scorecards and, you know, everybody should have a very clear sense of their current roles. And responsibilities. Everybody should have a clear sense of what their next promotion is, or their next title or, or and whatever professional development they have to do to get there.

What's what is their path at the company. And I think if you can articulate that and be consistent about having those conversations, then you're building a culture where people know there's room for growth. And if they start to question whether they can grow with the business, that's another reason for turnover to spike, because people are looking for that opportunity elsewhere, you know? Absolutely. So, I want to shift the focus to your company now, channel, who which has been with me since the very start when I started the practices in 2017, Texas Center for Lifestyle Medicine.

And it was such a simple concept, when one of my friends introduced me to train y'all. So, can you just tell a little bit background about your company? How did you founded it? And then, where is it? Is today? Yeah, sure. So, my first business I mentioned before was a video production company. We did youth sporting events in all 50 states across the US. And as I was growing that business as first a kid and then through college and then as an adult, we set up three offices. We had hundreds of camera operators and sales reps, and basically it was a logistics company.

And our success came down to, can we do hundreds of events around the country consistently and look and feel like the same brand? And so I got so passionate about standard operating procedures and, and process and technology, and we kind of hacked together this system of training our people remotely. But that started to create the building blocks for training. So I sold that business, started a consulting firm just to kind of help other business owners, entrepreneurs, physicians, and kind of across industries on how to build their business, how to build their practice.

And I saw across the board, everyone wanted this turnkey

Trainualu2019s Origin, Templates, and Final Takeaways 36:38

kind of business where, you know, everything just works and somebody can come off the street and learn how to do it, and they don't feel like the whole business depends on them. And that's where the playbook concept emerged. So and started it train you all. The software started as a prototype inside my consulting business, ran it with a few dozen clients until it was really proving value, and then that spun it off as its own company. So train you all, the software company started in 2018, which you got in before, which we were just talking about was is pretty cool that you found it when, when very few you had so been around to formally as a business for almost four years now.

And thousands and thousands of clients, hundreds of thousands of people using the product and 177 countries around the world right now. We've got a team of almost 70 here at the office, and, it's it's been a fun, fun story. That's awesome. One of the things I noticed on the training set when I log in is that there's actually templates from other people's businesses that can be shared, right? Yeah. So we built this template library because, there were things we saw, you know, almost universal across businesses like everybody does an orientation.

Everyone has some kind of handbook, everyone has some form of a sales process. And so we created like these, these guiding templates that is at least a shell that you can modify and customize for your business. And so we have a bunch of those in the system. And then over time we've given some of our consultant certified consultants the ability to, to submit templates. And now customers can submit templates if they want to look like an expert. So yeah, we can just share, and then, you know, gather businesses, ideas and playbooks and see what the best practices are amongst you know, everyone, which is which is really cool.

Yeah, I love that. And so I just want to, you know, share my story with Texas Center for Lifestyle Medicine. So everything that we do is on training, like every tiny little thing. But it's so cool because, we will have processes that forget about and then we'll go back and say, oh, yeah, we already did this, and this is great. It's like, try some times of how deep and intricate we actually get, but once it's documented, it's in there. I mean, it stays in there and we can have people kind of assigned to it as well.

And it's been a such a game changer for us. So, so, Chris, tell me, how can people find training? How can people find you? Yes. A train rule is just train you. AL.com train you AL.com. You can check it out and try the software for free. No credit card required or anything. You can find me at Chris Rock 0.com or on LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, all the places I hang out. So that's great. And the link is in the description of this video. Just go ahead and click on it and go check it out. And it's something that it's, it's risk free.

Just go and do it. Go into the system, check out some of their templates, which is actually really cool. I had a lot of fun doing that. And also play around with it and start documenting the processes and start working on these things, you know, and training is just, it's just one of the tools. And my practice is actually a fundamental tool of what we use, not just for training, but part of team culture, part of execution, and part of business planning for, you know, one year goal through your goal and five year goal.

And it's been an absolute game changer for us. So, Chris, thank you so much. Really appreciate you coming on tonight I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. This is fun. Yeah. No. And, if are a physician out there, and you're, you're having trouble with your systems and documentations, go ahead and click that link, with this video. Go sign up. You won't regret it. Trust me. Thank you. Thank you everyone. For.