Zimbabwe, An Untapped Pool of Highly Educated Medical Staff to Address the Rising Cost of Private Practice

Introduction and Zimbabwe Partnership 0:00

Everyone I have someone really special means that I've known this guy for a few years now. Because we used his company, actually, at Texas Center for Lifestyle Medicine. He's, he's the managing partner and founder of SSM works. And also he runs support doctors.com. So support doctor s.com as all of us. Yeah that's right, that's right. So if you want to check it out. But he is a man on a mission. And when we talk about a mission we're not just talking about something small or small, something big here.

And, he has, really featured a group of very valuable people and we find to be a huge asset to, to our company in a country that's totally unexpected, totally unexpected. We have such a good time. And and, you know, I asked him to to come on to really talk about the mission behind the project, but also how does this fit perfectly into where private practices are going, you know, in the pandemic era and moving forward. So welcome to the summit. Appreciate it. Yeah. So, appreciate you having me here on and talk a little bit about what we do.

And you're right, I mean, our, our main objective when we founded was it all started. My partner and I got together. He's from Zimbabwe. You you mentioned about where it's at. So it's Zimbabwe and, it's the it's the last it's the last letter in the alphabet with a country of, you know, past Zambia and, way down in near South Africa. Most people are not sure where it's at, but the uniqueness that it has is you have these amazing individuals who speak the Queen's English. So we say they've got the the London accent, which was from their our early occupancy.

And that just changed in the last 30 years, 40 years. And so you have this amazing country where you've got a high unemployment, but, amazing, you know, the really differentiator is that parents put a large emphasis that they get a university education. So about 98% of our team members that we have in various channels all have university education. So they speak the Queen's English. And for us, it's a ministry where we're in a country with this 80% unemployment, we're putting people to work. So that's really our method behind our madness, if you will.

Yeah. And it's it's actually for us, it's actually working out pretty pretty wonderful. And so you know, but let's, let's talk about Zimbabwe for a second because there's a big question mark in most people's heads. And me as well. When I, when I first, when we first started talking a few years ago. So, what why Zimbabwe in particular? Well, I was actually at a Christian conference about five years ago, and I ran into, my now partner, who's from Zimbabwe. So that was the reason we ended up there. Okay.

And and so it was a little bit coincidence and we stayed in contact. He was not in this type of business. I've been in the, imaging business for the last 30 years, and he had been in the food business. And so we just we just both had a heart to, to help people. He said, hey, how can we help the people of Zimbabwe, which is his home country? And, so in a very unique way, he's from Zimbabwe and I'm from the US, but I ended up being the managing partner, and I spend most of the time at the office there in Africa as well.

But it's, it's, it was a unique opportunity and a unique experience to showcase their talents, which is quite different, as you know, from the other places where you can have virtual assistants and, and outsourcing in different countries as well. Yeah. And the culture is quite different. And the work ethic is also fabulous and quite different as, as as we experienced as well. But but let's like walk through the path a little bit because you guys started more, more in dentistry there and then, now move on to the doctors.

Yeah. Actually we we started with the generic thinking that we would just supply people with workers.

Why Zimbabwe and the Team's Background 4:00

And I started with my imaging company and I said, you know, I could use some accounting people and some logistics people started out with 2 or 3. And then a good friend of mine who's a dentist and as a matter of fact, was our first dental customer came to us four years ago and said, hey, can you do this specific task? And it was some insurance verification collections and coding. And we said, yeah, I think so. And that just exploded. So the the support desk became a channel. That's that's one of our largest, we do a lot in the real estate.

And then the, you know, you've helped us explore and expand in the, the medical side. And we believe that is one of the, larger areas. And that's where our support doctors as support doctors.com, kind of came about. Yeah. Logistically speaking. Can you kind of explain how the, most successful practices are actually utilizing the virtual assistants, from your company? You know, it's it's interesting when you when you think of remote virtual team members, most people will automatically drift to low level data entry, kind of repetitive tasks, things that they could do.

And we do a lot of that. We've got a number of those, but we've got companies that have literally we have one company that has their what they call their CFO, who's a large financial analyst, that that does all of their breakdowns for, a dental cooperative that has about 30 offices. And he's he's actually head over that. We've got people doing, marketing, logistics in the medical side. We've got them doing social media. But interesting, one of our larger dental practices has a director of first impressions.

So they literally are the first person that the patient will talk to when they call in. They're speaking to the director of first Impressions. And we've now got about six people doing that. So it's become kind of a, crazy thing. We've got one dental office in California that has a TV set up on their front, reception desk when they walk in and when you walk in, you're actually speaking to the girl that's in Zimbabwe, and she's seeing you live on the camera, so she's checking you in virtually. So, things have really, really changed in a lot of areas too.

That's that's our most unique one. But what we're seeing that being a catchy part to unexpected but very unique. But it makes sense. Right. And so, you know, leveraging assistance and virtual assistance. Yeah. We really have to get out of the mindset a little bit. So if you got someone in a CFO position that's a that's a big deal. So but as you said, these people are asleep, but most of them are college graduates right from some universities, Zimbabwe. So they have some training. And even further later on.

Yeah. I mean, we've got a number of people that have MBAs that have, you know, their master's degree and even a few would have their PhDs. And what it is, is, is Zimbabwe being that it was a British protectorate, all of the school systems were all set up on the UK, same standards. So they get a very, high level of education. Even the first President Mugabe is was all about education. When they made the transition to Zimbabwe from Northern and Southern Rhodesia. So, they just have a really high level of their the 54 countries in Africa, they have the number one literacy rate, and they're always number 1 or 2 in the university education.

So very high level, thinkers. And as you mentioned, the work ethic is is second to none for sure. Yeah. No, I, I think it's been fabulous, amongst pretty much everyone that, that we've had on our team. So, let's, let's talk about coronavirus for a second because that's kind of a big deal these days. So, I think coronavirus has really shifted the way that we, we think about medicine in general. So over the pandemic, there's been a huge number of turnover in employees, within medical facilities. And, you know, one of the other summer members, too, Doctor Hayley for.

Right, who's the head of, I mean, MDMA said that, you know, you really have to whenever that happens, we have to think not about automatically just replacing these people like a like a response, but more about how can we reinvent, how can we reinvent our current workflow processes, decrease fixed costs, and to over deliver on on health care. And I think that's were, remote assistance shine. I really don't to call them assistants remote team team members really shine. You know. And so, you know, so challenge people kind of listening to this is that if you, if you, if you have vacancies, a position, stuff like that, redefine what that position really requires and I will I'm willing to bet that a good 75% of the work that's within a practice does not need to be on location,

Expanding from Dentistry to Medical Practices 9:00

because if you think about it, you know, I got to pay for rent for the employees, benefits in the US is is astronomically high. And then there's also labor losses here too, and stuff like that. So it becomes pretty complex. And so, from a cost savings perspective, you know, getting, overseas assistance and stuff like that is just it's not only is it the crucial to the growth of of a lot of businesses, I think it's maybe required in the new future, especially with so much telemedicine going on. Right.

And a lot of practices are sort of pivoting toward, towards, towards that sort of mindset. And so I think that with what you've got going on and with your mission and, and getting really high level people and really educated people, within the country, Zimbabwe is, is, is absolutely fabulous. So let's talk about logistics for a second. So, so, so tell me, what are you kind of providing the people in Zimbabwe within the company, do they have a place to go to work or are they working from home? Like what?

How is this all happening at this time? Yeah. In Canada, to add on to what you mentioned about reinventing, that's what's happening. The there's a lot of hesitation when you said, you know, I need our, director of billing to, to be in my office setting in my, in, you know, in my desk, in my conference table. But people have started to reinvent these positions and say, you know, even even the CFO position, they said they really can gather reports. They can download reports from various offices and software and still make those reconciliation, those analysis remotely just the same as they would if they were working from home or even working in their own office.

So I think your point's well taken in that it's it's had you have to reinvent or rethink about how you work. In terms of ours, where we are now, we've got four floors in the high rise building in downtown Harare, each. So, so, it's the newest building was built in 2010, 19 floors high. So everybody comes to our facility to do the work. And so we provide the the desk, the, computers, you know, dual monitors, any required local software, obviously, like in your case with your team members and you've got multiple team members there by the way, and that that, you know, if you've got specialty software, obviously, whether it's working in the cloud or something that is loaded, that's the only requirement.

What what they do get in our office, we have two full time pastors that work for us. So we're we're is concerned not only about them having a job, but also about their emotional and their spiritual well-being as well. So we really want to invest in them when they come into the office. And we're in a class A building. So for most of these, being able to come to a place where you've got high speed internet, you've got really brand new surroundings, and we try to keep it a little bit Google ish around there.

So it's a little relaxed environment where we're we have a young, group. Our average age is under 27. So you've got this really young, you know, group of people that are coming to work each day that you want to have in a, in a very comfortable space. So now one thing we didn't talk about is, is they do work just for you. You know, this is not a call center where, they're taking calls for you and three other practices. They are dedicated and only working for you, working whichever hours you have is you and I are both on Central time, so they're working, I think for years or probably eight to 5 or 96, that they do work.

So they are they're 100% dedicated to your company in your office. That's great. And so, you know, working with working with, virtual assistants if, if, people haven't done it before, it's, it's definitely a task that you have to get used to. But once you get used to it, you're like, how do we do this in the first place? How do we how do we not do this in the first place? Right. And I'll tell you that that, so I've been working with virtual assistants in several different companies, not just the practice, but in my old marketing company.

In my consulting company, we have, real estate virtual assistants with my real estate companies. So working with virtual assistants for, for more than ten years now. And so, I have and a lot of what people don't understand is that working on virtual assistants, sometimes you don't know who you're going to get, right? Right. Yeah. Because not only that, they may they may just stop or drop, you know, without notice as well. And so, so how how does your company like screen is people, trainings people.

And what is it about your company that makes people want to want to stay and, make sure that, you know, our practice is taking care of. Yeah. The the difference is, as we allow you to select the individual. So we will ask you to come on board and, fill out a matrix of exactly the skillset you need. Hey, I need them to have an accounting background, or I need them to have some background in collections or graphic design or web design, whatever it is you're looking for. Then we'll we'll typically bring you three of the top candidates that we've selected.

We'll share a resume with you, and we'll do a zoom call just like you're doing here. You'll actually visit with them, spend time, ask them questions. And we think there's there's four key elements to keeping remote workers. Long time remote team members. If you will. One is to hire correctly, which means go through the process. Don't just say, yeah, just get me somebody. Yeah, I need a I need somebody work in my office because the culture can be different and we want you to find one that fits your culture.

So hire right. Train, train train train train. That's a big issue. This is this is just like if somebody comes into your practice

How Virtual Team Members Support Practices 15:00

and you hire them, you know, you don't you don't put them in a desk and say, okay, handle collections today. You've got to spend time training them, integrating them into your office and your culture. Make them feel a part of your team rather than just treating them as you know, here's this, person who works 10,000 miles away. They're just doing a task. Really integrate them into your office. And then the last part is, is we say give them feedback, praise them, give them feedback, let them know how they're doing.

So those four elements are really key with keeping and maintaining long term. These, remote workers in your office. Now that's great. And so let's talk about, you know, company culture for a second, because I think a lot of, medical practices, especially going through, these times, are dealing with a lot of, you know, employee turnover, especially stateside over here. And so I feel like, the company culture can be disrupted. The practice culture can be disrupted within a practice, environment. And so, so I'm curious about the company culture over in Zimbabwe, just really as a team at zoom works.

So you said earlier that you really, you know, take care of these people, right? And you offer them a lot of different things and resources. So how do you keep your, your, the culture of the company elevated and happy and resourceful? Yeah. I think the the first thing is, you know, as we all know, money is not the only objective, right? It's it's not the number one thing that makes somebody happy. And you can give them raises, raises, but it doesn't make them happy. So you have to, and we don't really control the place that they work.

We control the location that they work, but we don't control who they work for. Right? Right. Absolutely. They may work from you, and they just don't. They just don't care for you. That can make a disgruntled. So, a few things we do to help integrate the culture. Every for every 25 of our, team members, we have what's called an arm, an account resource manager. They're they're kind of a liaison and a go between between the office and your team member. So, number one, we want them. If there's a problem, you can say, you know, she's just not coming into town.

Or maybe the team member says you know, Doctor Rogers just just doesn't explain very well to me what he wants me to do. And then he gets mad at me, so they'll try to act as, a liaison to to help elevate that. That team members, work in their output. But but secondly, we really try to create the culture within our own office. I mentioned about the pastoral care. We do a lot of, with our orientation, a lot of continuing training with customer service. We do Ted talks twice a week locally to help them with issues that they're battling within their own communities.

It really is about investing in our people, investing in our team. And and we we have some turnover because the biggest piece is they're working in the evenings. Like your team members are working from 3 p.m. until midnight. We do provide transportation for them home at night. A lot of the public transportation shuts down around midnight. So we've got our own series of transportation that we take people all over the the city. And Harare is a big city. It's 3 million people. So, you know, we take a lot people, a lot of different directions each day.

It's, What how big is Houston? Houston is not, what is it? Five. Is Houston 5 million? I don't know if it's lots. That was about half as big as Houston. Let's say it's not as big as Houston, but it's probably it's probably up there. But you're right. We we we spend a lot of time on the onboarding process. And even our pastors, have to be sure and check up on each person at least once a quarter just to get a feedback on, you know, kind of a check in to see how they're doing. And, and our main goal is that the client that they're working for truly integrates them into their practice, because that's what makes everybody happy is if they really feel part of their team.

And we've got lots and lots of our, clients who actually bring them in on their, their zoom meeting once a week. You know, if they're having a huddle on Wednesday mornings, they'll turn the computer on and have that person sit in on their huddle. So they really become part of their culture and of their team. And I think that's really important in, in the work that they're doing. Absolutely. It's tremendously important. You know, and especially if, we're considering some of the, you know, students that are considering, like, leadership positions, within the practice, like you said, like a CFO or accounts manager, which I think it's every every practice you have an account manager dedicate to the patient.

And, and also, the what did you call the, the person that interacts with the patient first. Oh, yeah. The arm, the accounts resource manager. We call it a game of arms. Yeah, yeah. I think the account resource manager is very important because it really bridges the culture right between between the Zimbabwe team, as well, to the, to the US team. And so, because there's, there's always things that are big question marks when we work with, with people overseas because, you know, culture is very different.

You got to sometimes speak the language. But overall, I think it's working with the Zimbabwe team has been a very easy transition for us. But we've been doing it for a while now. So yeah, we've got two years, right. Two and a half years. Yeah, yeah. You know it's funny you think about the different positions. One just came to mind. You're familiar with like the, EOS system for operations. You know, the book traction, and we actually operate within our company. Yeah. We, yeah, we actually have, some, support people that are helping manage their EOS.

They're managing their level ten meetings and and making sure that everybody's, proceeding to, to get their rocks. And so it's, it's interesting. So you got to really expand that mind to think you could have in a big organization, most people may say, well, I don't have time for that. So have you got special projects that you need somebody to manage or help you be more like an executive assistant or a leadership person in that area? They can they can do that to help to help manage that as well. No, absolutely.

And so I think, in trying to redefine medicine, especially for the private practice doc, small to medium size, we have to think about overall costs. We have to think about decreasing fixed and variable costs within the practices, increasing that bottom line, because that's that increases profitability, which is what drives what drives the things that we want to do to make sure that we support our patients and we support ourselves and our families as well. You know, I was talking to to, to another summit member.

We're just talking about how a lot of physicians have this sort of guilt that, that, hey, we're not really supposed to make money

Building Culture, Training, and Retention 22:00

as long as take of the patients will be okay. And don't worry about anything else. But the reality is, if you if you're in private practice or, or practicing new medicines, you really have to worry about everything else all at once. And it's sometimes it can be very hard, especially with the employee turnover situation and especially, in, in, if you're working with, someone that's on your team and they get paid, you know, six and a half dollars per hour higher at this other organization. They've been with you for three years.

If you don't have your systems in place, you know that's going to be a big issue, because retraining that team member may not be necessarily possible, because that team member has created a lot of the system has been necessarily documented. So I think one of the big lessons that we learned with turnover and working with virtual assistants is that the, you know, everything we do down to, down to every action has to be documented and trained and and very and be very consistent. And so what I really enjoy about, working with the zoom works team and stuff like that is the there's, there's so trainable.

So yeah, probably more so than my, the, my the, the, the new staff that we get in the US, but not only the trainable, the attitude is like, hey, you know, we can do more like, you know, sometimes I kind of hold back because I don't know if they're overwhelmed, not overwhelmed, but once we ask for the feedback, say, hey, we can do more. So over time, we let our overseas assistants advise us on what they think the structure should be. And that turns into something absolutely beautiful, because outside looking in is always a very valuable aspect, and it really takes the pressure off of me and my staff, from, from just kind of doing everything right.

And so, so we learn a lot from that, from that experience and that. And, you know, the people of Zimbabwe is just absolutely wonderful. And every person that we've really come across has been just wanting to just overdeliver, like really overdeliver and help and be very vocal and communicative about it, the very professional. And I will tell you that most of our patients really like talking to the team. You know, you know, it's there's the Queen's English, so, so that little accent, they get the little Queen's accent, you know, the the accent.

It's the Queen's English is the little accent there. But they always really enjoy the conversation because that the in the culture that we try to provide, it really resonates with the way that the communication is. And so it's been it's been a really eye opening experience for me, obviously makes me really want to visit Zimbabwe. So I'll go with you next time. Absolutely. So and you get to go on safari at the same time. So that's oh there you go. That'll be that'll be great. And so so I want to, I want to just kind of get from you.

What what do you think you can tell our audience listening. How to start engaging in virtual assistance in general? Yeah. I think first you need to define what it is you're looking for. You know, really, really, as you said, recreate. And define what it is you're looking for. As you know, one of the big issues today is just just having people show up for an interview or finding people that do want to come to work. So that's opened up an avenue for most practices and most businesses to really, again, rethink, think outside of the box of how they're going to do this.

You mentioned about, the employees and why they're so dedicated to their work. They see this as a real opportunity to work for an international company. You know, that just going on their resume is, is is very, entertaining to them to know that. Okay. I've worked for a year or two years for a, you know, a medical doctor in Houston, Texas, that that's a big plus and never thought about that. Yeah, yeah, it's a big deal. You know, the fact that they work for it. Not many people get the opportunity to work for a large international company.

So, over there. And so I think they see the job differently. And you're right, it's amazing the number of people that have asked their team members say, what do you think we could do better? And they can give them a completely different out of the box third party perspective on ways. They might you might you know what? If you did it this way. So sometimes it's it's opening up and listening. But a way to get started is, is really define the role that you need. And what are the most important attributes that you need that team member to have, you know and are they do they need to be charismatic?

Are they going to be on the phone when their customer service skills, or I'm just needing a back office accounting person to do some analysis. You know what is it that I need done? And and then we can help mold that into some, some resumes and CVS that, Well, I had to go back to resumes, and I'm talking to CVS over there. You know, you got to use the Latin terminology for a resume. So if you hear me say that, it might resume, but, it's, it's it's not uncommon that, and that's wrong. We, we, we can have somebody up and running in as little as three days.

So if, if you said right now, hey, I need somebody to help me with, insurance, I could probably have you resumes tomorrow. You could be interviewing the next day, and then we could be starting a day or two later. So we can really, speed up the process. And and I'm sure people just really enjoy going to all the various websites and trying to find resumes and trying to find people. It's an arduous, project to have somebody do that. So the first step is, is get in touch with us, go to our website. We'll do a little live demo about how the process is.

We'll take you through the interviews. But, we really strongly suggest you go through the interview phase. You get to meet a few people and then you can make a decision. And the real benefit is you not only get somebody who wants to come to work, who who likes their job, who is excited about, the opportunity. But the savings, as you know, it's an average of probably 60% in savings, not 60% of the cost, but 60% in savings, sometimes as high as 75%. That 60% mark is is about it. Plus, you're not having to supply them with physical office space, go out and buy computers and phone systems and everything else we can tie right into your VoIP system.

So if you want them to be a part of your, voice over IP phone system, we can do that. Or we can provide them with a virtual phone. And, you know, we can give them a an area code, in Houston, a two, eight one or A713 or whatever area code they're looking for to match up so that if they have to make a phone call, they can see where it's coming from to, that's, that's, what a valuable service. And also, you know, I think the, the ministry aspect of this is really important to me, as well. So, so thank you for that.

Appreciate you for, for that. And so, you know, I think that we as physicians really need to kind of define the roles. And if you're a physician leader of you're in private practice, redefine what you think a medical assistant really means, right? Because if you think about the role and we actually do this exercise, with our zoom works team, actually, and we put every member of our team and the class category, and we wrote out on the board, every single detail of what they're responsible for. So when we got to the medical assistant column, like, we run out of room at the bottom, it just seems like it's unnaturally high.

I'm like, okay, out of this entire column, what percent of this column is something that someone virtual should be doing

Redefining Medical Roles and Workflow 30:00

because they don't have to be in the office for. And we look at this, it's about 80%, right. It's about 80. And the reason it's 80% is we switched to, to telemedicine. We have a huge chunk of our practice in telemedicine. We realized that our medical systems were reaching out to the patients are getting information. I'm like, well, we can get a virtual assistant to do this. You know, we get someone else to do this. It decreases our FTE costs for some employee costs. And not only that, it was actually better service.

You know, the virtual assistants, we can focus on, doing things virtually and then our medical assistance, they can focus on doing things that are in-person. So we over deliver value to the people that are there, and then we over deliver value to the people that are virtually. Because I see this all the time in a lot of practices that I talk to, is that you have doctors that partially do telemedicine and partially go, to, in-person on the same day. And then the medical system is trying to do phone three hours and in-person three hours and all that stuff like that.

And it just becomes a mess. So much so that doctors say, hey, just just do in-person three hours. I'll try to three hours on the phone with what's happening is that as a doctor, you're now doing things something that may be below your pay grade, which also increases your cost because you are your own employee. And so and so. Those are the things I think that that people have to really think, what the heck really is? A medical system is too broad of a term. I just think you brought up a term and, let's divide those roles and then let's make new roles and be creative about what we see.

The structure could be and, and, you know, for the people who are listening to this who's a physician leader, like ask your team, ask your medical assistant, like what distracts you the absolute most that you hate out of your day, take you from the things that that you need to get done. Put that into a separate bucket. That becomes the job description. And it's and it's or maybe two job descriptions. Right. And it becomes very, very easy. Right. And so whenever my team is trying to hire someone, especially, you know, locally within the area and the always the one question is, is it better to hire this one person for this or three people, for something that we can offer up to?

Because overall the fixed cost is about the same. So that's right. Yeah. It. Right. And so we tend to double triple down and oversee staff for what it allows us to do is scale. Now we have departments and now we have systems that we built for these separate things. So we write it down. We document the process. And this is how we're able to scale. And and I think that virtual assistants are going to be a regular part of every practice because it just makes sense. Decrease health care cost, increases value delivery to your patients, improve outcomes.

We have virtual assistants that reach out to our patients, especially with coronavirus. One of our, one of our team members reaches out to the family members of the people who passed away from Covid were severely ill. Right. And my gosh, is that is that impactful? I got sent a video last week, of a eulogy, including, you know, our our staff, our staff names, our, our company name, myself. And they actually use the patients. And they thank you for checking up on this. On my husband and you guys have been a giant blessing and that, that that was totally worth it to design a system where we can reach out to the people and over deliver on their value.

But we couldn't have done it if we didn't really break up what the medical system actually did and leverage our virtual assistants. And that is something that is going to dramatically drive down my feeling of burnout, right? Especially for that day. And it feels good for us. So I do think that the power, the power behind what you're doing and the power behind the team as it works, you know, far exceeds what I think what I originally envisioned just by by experiencing this, that makes sense. Yeah.

And that you really caught on to something that we've we've got a little catch phrase. We use it a lot because, many times in a practice, the the front line will think that, oh, they're bringing in virtual team members to eliminate my position, like they're just trying to eliminate. But in reality, what you just pointed out is the truth. We we say it elevate your team, elevate your existing team where you can leverage your growth. Because if if you if you yourself were caught up in the, you know, if you've got to make those phone calls or if you're kind of caught up in the, the lower task which are eating up your time, which are not productive for you in a, in an ROI perspective.

But if you could have somebody else doing that, that frees up their time. But think about even your medical assistance. And I love it. It's like we have people call and say, I'm meeting somebody and marketing, you know, whoa, whoa. That's a big field. You know, we got to really break that down. So medical assistant is so wide that you're right. Look at that. And I'm surprised it was 80%. That's really high. But I'm I'm sure probably 60 to 80% of that stuff all the time could be done virtually remotely.

Not only could be done as effective, but more effective as well because you've got time to focus on it. Yeah, and I think so. And we really have to appreciate that, with employee productivity, if someone is jumping in between different things, a project, you also lose time in between, because you lose focus. You have to restart things over again. What was I doing? Yeah. And, and the more and the more you try to get done in a very short amount of time, the less efficacious it becomes. Right? And so in, in reality and in you.

Right. In reality, what we did is we put the process in place of what it needs to be, where the gaps of care are. And then now that becomes that becomes a job description. Right. And then we put it to our team. I was like, how can we how can we deal with this gap of care right here for our patients and for our staff, and who's gonna take other responsibility? And then the brainstorming comes, and then all of a sudden, like within, within 2 or 3 minutes, oh, yeah, we can just do this x, y and z. I'm like, oh yeah, that's that's interesting.

I never thought about that. And that's what I really like about, what virtual team members and overseas team members have forced us into this, mindset of always, like, questioning, are we doing the right things and how can we improve on this process perpetually perpetuated perpetually? Because what worked pre-pandemic isn't working right now and vice versa, right? And so and so that's, I think, that attitude of having, an operating system where you try to reinvent the process, try to see and reductive process, seeing what works and seeing what doesn't.

That mentality over time reverberates that entire country. We're not everyone feels like they actually have a voice now. Not everyone's ideas are going to be used, but there's a respect there. And it's very, you know, not very, you know, dictatorship like. Right. It's all about more of a democracy team. Team oriented. And I think that that that really helped me develop my skills as a leader, working with the virtual team members, you know. And so, yeah, well, you you caught on, understand that. Just elaborate a little bit on you.

If you as the, the leader, just say, okay, I've divided these roles up and here's what we're going to do. And they don't buy into it. But if you set them all down like you did, make a big list and say, hey, how can I help you be more effective in your role? And and then you start dividing those up and then it's a, you know, of course,

Mission, Giving Back, and Future Growth 38:00

then it's complete buy in from the organization, which is what you need to move forward to. Yeah. And honestly, the biggest and best organizations in this world come down to that one simple concept. You know, they have a very similar culture. At some of the largest companies, the most successful companies and the, the best place to work with. But but we don't really care about them. We care about the physician practice. And for too long, I think doctors practices have a culture where where it's just very high strung.

And I think that doctors have become complacent to it because honestly, it's because the way that we actually train within, within, educational institutions through medical school and residency and stuff like that. But anyways, but the whole point of this summit is to feature stuff like this to say, hey, let's, let's try to reinvent a process that worked really well in 1929, but maybe not. So right now, you know that, yeah, we all do that. Sometimes we get stuck ten years or 50 or 75 years behind, and we've got to come back.

And I do want to mention one thing before we, get too far away from it is you, Minister, you mentioned about invest in the people, something we yeah, we did as a company and we've talked about it before, but you just want to talk about it here because it is our number one objective. We take 51% of our profits and we give it back to ministries. We're doing ministries locally. They're in Zimbabwe with orphanages. We fed over 300 families through the lockdown there for 3 or 4 months. We do stuff internationally with, with organizations like Global Action and other other ministries.

So we we and that's something else that helps. I think when our team members, know they're part of something greater than just their job or their role. So that really gets the buy in for everybody there to, to feel like they're part of something greater. And that's that's our number one objective is to how can we give back, how can we help, how can we uplift other people that are, you know, not as fortunate as we are as well? No, that's that's a beautiful, beautiful mission. So I want to thank you for that.

So as we end this, I'm going to ask you a question that I ask most of the summit, speakers, without warning. What what have you learned, very recently that you wish you knew when you first started the company? Oh, that's hilarious, because I just, Has this been reverberating on my mind? I came up with this acronym. I heard it on a podcast, but I can't I, I just a little bit, I came up with it, an acronym called Made It Made, and it says you must either automate, delegate or eliminate. And to me, that's become a mission of what I do every day because I get caught up in some task oriented things, and I look back at the end of the day and go, how was I doing that?

You know, why was why was I focused on that today? And so, I've got a virtual assistant, I've got an idea that's worked for me for two and a half years in Zimbabwe. And I'm, I'm like, could have done this better than I could. Why was I doing it? So for me, if I would have learned, years and years ago, 30 years ago to, to learn to automate things, which is kind of a new phenomenon or delegated to somebody else, or just completely eliminate it because it wasn't important. I think that would be something that's, just right at the forefront of wish I had done early on.

Okay, mate, I made it my day. Automate. Delegate. And what does it eliminate? Eliminate? Yeah. You must automate, delegate or just eliminate it, you know, so it's not important to be done. And that's it's kind of my mission to look at everything I'm doing to fall into one of those three categories. Yeah I know that's that's great. And you have a, you have a little booklet, I believe that I, that I read before about just kind of working with the team members in Zimbabwe, which we're going to actually put a link in the description here.

You have. Yep, yep, yep. Rise of the heart to see them up screen rise of the remote workforce. We've got a little we can we can download. I'll be glad to send anybody a copy. And really it's it's a small 60 page little guy, but it talks about how do you get started, how do you implement what are the keys to success. And and again, we'd be happy to to send one and doctor out and then go to Zim Works which is the m w o r x. You got to put the X on the incom or just support the.com support doctors.com, and we'd be glad to send information to you as well.

The link is going to be in the description of the video so you don't have to type it in. Just go ahead and click on it and then we'll get that through. But I will tell you that whether or not you choose them or the book actually is a fabulous guide of the essentials of working with with virtual assistants. Right. But, you know, I, I can't thank you enough for for coming on. It's been such a pleasure for conversation and working with you the last few years has been as excellent as well. So, you know, close.

I just want to ask you one last closing thought. Before you go where where do you see your company being in the next three years? Three years? We have a goal of 3500 employees in our office there. Now, we're we're about 350 now, and we've got to go, 1530, 500 and, yeah, that's one of our big, big nuggets and that we've got a, we've got a, a ten year plan as well. But but we have the resources and, and again, it's not about the number of seats we have or the impact. What we really see is that we are going to have a global impact through our organization on ministries and changing people's lives, too.

You know, this is a big deal because as you know, people working in places like Zimbabwe, one job is most likely supporting four or maybe even five members of their family could be, their immediate family, maybe even a parent. So the impact that one job has is tremendous. So three years, that's where we want to be. Well that's amazing. Well, thanks for coming on. I really appreciate your time and your insights, and I really appreciate the the mission and what you're doing. And I think you're going to hit your goal pretty easily in the next three years.

I think if you're these are just a group of the most, one of the most, like special group of people that I've, I've ever had the pleasure of, of working with and working for. Because I say working for it because you know, me as a CEO, I view myself as working for all my employees and so and not the other way around. And so very good. Great time working for them and I hope they have a great time, working with us as well. So thank you. Hey, do I get good comments? So it's good to have you do. Thank you.

Excellent. Sounds good. All right. Thank you. For.