E736 | How Alison Taylor Went From Clinic Owner To Sofware Unicorn

In this episode of the PT Entrepreneur Podcast, Doc Danny sits down with Alison Taylor, the co-founder and co-CEO of Jane, a clinical practice management software company based in Vancouver, Canada.

Alison shares her fascinating entrepreneurial journey. Raised by two clinician parents, she initially pursued a career as an English teacher but never ended up in the classroom. Instead, she opened her own physical therapy clinic despite not being a clinician herself. This experience led her to co-found Jane, a software solution designed to streamline clinic operations, which has since grown into a major SaaS company.

Throughout the interview, Alison emphasizes the importance of intentionally building company culture, especially as Jane has scaled to over 500 remote employees. She discusses how crucial it is to define and uphold core values deliberately, rather than letting culture evolve organically. New employees at Jane participate in "newbie meetings" where Alison and her co-founder walk them through the company's values, making it clear that everyone has a role in shaping the culture.

The conversation delves into the differences between running a small business clinic and scaling a tech company. Alison explains how she and her co-founder had to transition from being hands-on doers to learning the nuances of people management and delegation. She also touches on the challenges of maintaining high standards and attention to detail as the company grows.

Alison provides valuable insights into the physical therapy industry, noting how each clinic often possesses a unique "soul" and culture that is vital to nurture. She contrasts the typical insurance-based PT model with her experience running a cash-based, multi-disciplinary practice that sublet space to various providers.

The discussion further explores the complexities of selling a clinical practice, the dynamics of roll-up acquisitions in the industry, and the importance of preparing a practice for sale well in advance. Alison shares her perspective on the differences between the tech startup mentality, which is often focused on growth at all costs, and the small business approach she and her co-founder took with Jane.

Towards the end of the episode, Alison discusses Jane's current product roadmap and future plans. She highlights their focus on expanding into areas like functional medicine, medical aesthetics, and enhancing the overall patient experience through technology. Alison's passion for continuous improvement and evolution shines through, as she stresses the importance of not settling for the status quo.

Throughout the conversation, Alison also opens up about personal topics such as work-life balance, dealing with grief, and the significance of self-awareness and emotional intelligence in leadership. The interview offers a comprehensive look at Alison's entrepreneurial journey and the unique culture she has cultivated at Jane.

Podcast Transcript

Danny: [00:00:00] Hey, real quick, if you're serious about starting or growing your cash based practice, I want to formally invite you to go to Facebook and join our PT entrepreneurs Facebook group. This is a group of over 6, 000 providers all over the country. And it's a pretty amazing place to start to get involved in the conversation.

Hope to see you there soon. Hey, are you a physical therapist looking to leverage your skillset in a way that helps you create time and financial freedom for yourself and your family? If so, you're in the right spot. My name is Danny Matta. And over the last 15 years, I've done pretty much everything you can in the profession.

I've been a staff PT. I've been an active duty military officer, physical therapist. I've started my own cash practice. I've sold that cash practice. And today my company, physical therapy business helped over a thousand clinicians start growing scale, their own cash practices. So if this sounds like something you want to do, listen up, cause I'm here to help you.

What's going on? Doc. Any here, the PT option or podcast. And today I'm just like, honestly, I'm super excited. The reason I have a podcast is because I like to talk to smart people and learn from them. And [00:01:00] today. We get a chance to talk to Allie Taylor, who's the co founder of Jane and co CEO of Jane.

So double CEO, which is interesting. I'd like to dig into that. Who, and Jane, if you don't know, it's a clinical practice software management company. It's based out of Vancouver. So our North Vancouver,

Alison: Canada. Yes. Some people think Washington. When they hear that

Danny: there's a Vancouver, Washington didn't even know.

Alison: Yeah.

Danny: It's not Washington. We're talking about Canada. And what's what I was telling you this before we got started is. What I found interesting, and by the way, I've actually never used Jane in my practice. Like we started with we used MindBody primarily before we sold our practice, which was clunky for a practice like that, not necessarily my favorite, but once you get into a software, like it's really hard to switch.

Anyway, I actually have no direct use of it, but many of our clients use Jane and I've really never heard anything bad about it. I've always heard people really positively talk about software, which is fairly rare, honestly, when it comes to software. But as I started digging into you a bit more.

I just, I realized like there's a really [00:02:00] interesting story in your sort of like entrepreneurial journey to go from here. Here's basically my 30, 000 foot view. If you don't mind me just like laying out there,

Alison: I would love that.

Danny: Okay. So I see someone who was raised by two clinicians, which I think I would love to learn what you learn from them because that's probably fascinating parents.

Someone that went to school to become an English teacher, but didn't become an English teacher and open a clinic without being a clinician and then started a software company to help their own practice, but then turn into a SAS company that's grown into a massive company. Like it's not a small company.

And All of those are like really interesting changes in someone's life that don't really correlate directly in some ways. Is that, does that summarize it, to some degree, at a really high level?

Alison: Yeah, I've never heard it summarized quite in that way, where it does seem like it's quite non sequitur, like this just, but

Danny: with a

Alison: plan there.

And it also makes me realize why, like my daughter is 16 and is trying to figure out what do I want to do with my life? And I'm like, this is so unfair that we force our children to decide that. Oh, yeah. 16 years old. I'm like, what do you don't even know what [00:03:00] exists out there in the world.

Danny: Think about that.

You go, you graduate from college and now you take this for your degree to go do something. And you may not even know what you're interested in.

Alison: Even at 42, I'm always like what's my next act after this? Like, where am I going after this? We're never done growing up or making decisions about where we're going to go in life.

I think.

Danny: It's interesting. And, to, to your credit, the company that you have with Jane, it seems to have such a interesting culture for a tech company in particular. And I'm assuming obviously you drive a lot of that and if you were to describe Jane, like the culture of Jane how would you describe, what that feels like and what is really important to the company?

Alison: Yeah, I could talk about culture for a long time because I have found that to be a really interesting puzzle scaling humans. So we have 500, just over 500 people working at Jane now and we're, yeah, it's, it is a lot and it's quite distributed. We were all, we were an in person culture before COVID and then everyone else did not know what was going to happen during COVID.

So we all just picked up our [00:04:00] computers, took them home with no real plan thinking it would just be a few weeks. So we all like plants. The fridges still have food in them. Like we just didn't do anything. We just went home and then that just kept going. And you're, we were talking before a little bit about the COVID experience, but we were, we had half of our clinics that couldn't work at all if they were in manual therapy and then everyone was struggling to get online.

So we were also signing up a ton of people. So we had some people shutting down, some people trying to get online. So we were, it was a real sprint during COVID. And then we scaled humans, Just remotely from there and then we try to get everyone together in person, but scaling people has been a really fascinating challenge because it's almost like your own, you create your own little, it's like anthropology, it's like your own little community of people and we're existing mostly in an online world and so creating a sense of like you're all staying at home by yourself at your computer all day.

There's no one around you, but you need to create a team feel so you have to very [00:05:00] intentionally figure out how to. Scale a group of people that feel connected, even though they're all completely apart and alone at home. And then also you want to try to scale everything about the company and your values as a company.

And people talk about mission vision values all the time. And Trevor, my co founder, we had to first write our values out for some sort of business class. We did like when Jane was quite small, we did a little incubator startup thing, and we were so busy because we were. Understaffed because we grew our we grew Jane like a small business so we only hired people when we could afford to hire them so we would sign up customers and then we once we had enough to pay someone salary would be like who gets them do you get a developer or do I get a support person like we'd fight over the salary and so we were always so busy we were just flat out busy and so this business class was like let's do our vision mission values and we're like we need to go and do some work like this is outrageous that you're asking us to spend time doing this but then we wrote them.

In protest, but we also just wrote what we loved [00:06:00] about the way we were working, and then we've scaled around those for the last 10 years, really. So we it was in protest, but then they become actually quite central. So every time we have people come on board and join the company, we do a newbie meeting. So Trevor and I go through all of our values with them, and we explain what they are.

And then the big thing that I like to say to people is you don't get to consume a culture. You create a culture. And so you joining now means that we have a different company than we did before you joined. And the only way for us to actually build a culture that we're all like, is that we all align on what we want to create.

We all understand what it's going to look like and why. And then we're all doing it in every interaction with each other, in our interactions with our customers, that we all just build a culture. It's all just the behavior of a group of people. That's what a culture is. And so you can't come into this company and get a culture.

It doesn't work that way. So if you join for the culture, you have to understand what it is. Then you have to help create it now that you're here. And so I think starting people off like us doing it means we're like, we're very serious [00:07:00] about this. Like we want everyone to behave this way. And then we also say that when people are brand new to the company, That they have a better view on whether the values are still being lived out in real life because people who have been here for a longer time, they might be coasting.

We know that we've we know we were like that for a long time. And I'm sure we'll get back to that. But new people don't have that history to lean on. So we also ask the new people to tell us if you think we're standing up here and saying all of this, and you're rolling your eyes at us, and you're just like, this is, this is very, we say it shouldn't be aspirational.

This should be what we're living. Then let us know. And we'll try to, Figure out what's going on. So I think that's like a huge part of building a culture. I wish I'd done that in clinics at values early on and being like, this is what we stand for. Cause every culture is so different. Like you, I call clinics have souls.

I'm sure you, I think you've said, you've listened to everything I've said. So I'm sure you've said, you've heard me say that before. But I love the clinic environment is so unique. And I don't know if people are always [00:08:00] aware that their clinic is super unique. Every clinic is so unique. You walk in the door, it's like the decor, the colors, the way that the front desk treats you, the style of person that you see, like everything creates a feel for these community clinics.

And I just, I like, I love visiting them, but people, It's hard to distill sometimes your own, but if you have friends and family and colleagues, they could probably tell you more, like more easily than you could tell yourself. What's so unique about my practice and then try to build some values around that and hire people and build on it.

Danny: That's interesting. I've heard you mentioned your dad's practice as being like a place that was like a fun environment. People would stop by and they just wanted to chat and hang out. And it's so funny. I started laughed out loud because it, that reminded me of the practice that we had, which.

We had for 10 years and then we ended up selling to our one of our clinicians that had been there the longest, who's absolutely doing an awesome job with it the last couple of years. And it's just even us, like my wife and I will go, she had an appointment this morning actually. And she was there for three [00:09:00] hours what would you do for three hours?

It's just it's hung out. I had an awesome time. And like that, that feel that people have can be intentional. I think sometimes we it's, you stumble into it, you just Oh, this is just how I am, but I agree with you. I don't think that we spend enough time really thinking about that.

And I actually don't know if you can have, if that's your first business, I'm not quite sure if you can have enough perspective to even know how important that is when you're just so busy trying to not go out of business,

Alison: yeah, that's true. But even in the way you lay out a clinic space do you have a communal gym area?

Do you have a communal treatment area where people are going to be chatting intermingling? Or do you have only closed treatment rooms? Like this all makes a huge difference in the way that people experience the space. And then that's where that's how Jane started was because then I felt like the website was expensive.

An extension of that. So I'm like, I need my website to feel like my practice. I, when the people that's their first experience is going to my website. And so I didn't want to use an online booking site that didn't match the way that I was trying to build this experience of the practice I was opening.

And so my co [00:10:00] founder Trevor was building, he was doing my website and branding for me. And I was complaining a lot about the online booking experience. And essentially I just, I was pregnant with my third. When I was opening the practice, there's never a good time to have children. There's never a good time to start a business.

I will tell you that. So just do it whenever you're thinking about it, you should just do it. Never is there going to be a perfect time for either of those things. But he was like let's just build online booking into your website because it was just awful. And then I also needed electronic charting because I didn't have enough Space to put paper charts.

This is how long ago I was opening a practice. The paper charts actually were something that we were considering, but I just didn't have, I needed eight income generating treatment rooms to make the space work. I think I, I have an ed, it was 1800 square feet. So I think similar to your practice.

Danny: Ours is about 1800 square feet.

And it actually, it's interesting. So you basically, you like subleased to contractors, it sounds so these are not like your staff. This is, you basically created a space for people to be able to work with people. And that was [00:11:00] like the business model. Is that right?

Alison: Yeah, it was. So my parents were both physiotherapists.

They had the kind of employee percentage based style of practice. And at the time physio was very like, I it's changed over the years. I'm sure, I don't know how long you've been in practice, but it's changed, especially here in Vancouver. It's changed. A lot over the last 30 years but they were doing staggered booking, a lot of staggered booking and also a lot of sports treatment.

And then I, there were some therapists that wanted to work more in the one on one style that I had gone off on that leave. And I was like, I could probably, I was running the practices at the time, I think three, two practices, and I was like, I could just open a little clinic. Give you a little space and do one on one and then the only space that was available was much larger.

And then I just started talking to people about this other model that was more just room rental, which seemed a lot simpler. Especially if I want to have multiple disciplines under one roof, which I don't, is that common in the, for you and it, like we see a lot of Cairo with a massage therapist, but [00:12:00] there's not a lot of interdisciplinary practices.

Danny: Yeah. I wish there. I. They're not as common. I wish they were, whenever I was in the military, we had these clinics called troop medical clinics, and they were basically like mini hospitals. And I actually like really missed it whenever I left because I could walk down and talk to the sports med doc or I could walk over and talk to a, General practitioner about some systemic thing.

I thought might be going on or I could go talk to mental health And or I could go walk down here's blood work I could pull labs like so it was all in one place and I didn't really know the difference because I just started my career there But when I got out of the military, I found it quite frustrating to then not everybody was under one roof but I had to basically like That people that I wanted to be a part of my ecosystem and I do feel like it would be very good collaborative way of doing it, but I don't know.

I don't know if people are a bit more if they're going to go out on their own, like they're on their own. There may be a bit more entrepreneurial, a little bit more, don't play well with others as well. So I'm not sure what the difference is, but I don't see them as much. It definitely exists, but not nearly as much as like small, cash based practices where there's a couple of providers, but

Alison: there's multiple [00:13:00] physios often working under one roof.

So let me have different niches. Yeah, they can, but there is still this weird inter like competitiveness between the same type of practitioner within a clinic to get caseload depending on how, if you're starting up, it does make sense though, to bring different disciplines into one space because then you can have that collaborative care.

You're also not competing. You get in tech, they call it wallet share. They have I'll just say SAS tech business. There's a terrible terms that I just can't. I always try to find a more human term to explain it, but essentially they're not going to come see two physios, but they wouldn't maybe see a physio and a chiro and a massage therapist, and now all of that can happen under one practice.

So they might be doing that in different practices, but they could be doing it under your practice. I'm curious about the idea of trying to help people expand into thinking, maybe we should talk about this with your business coaching, but expanding into more multidisciplinary because it gives them the ability to serve the same population, but with more services, instead of always trying to find a bigger population to serve.

Danny: I will say I've [00:14:00] seen that I've seen a transition a little bit more like this. So if you didn't even my sister in law is a functional med nurse practitioner in the Baltimore area, and she has a subleased office inside of a. Clinic that actually do their clients bars that we worked with years ago, and they've grown into a space that basically it looks more like a gym, but it has treatment offices connected to it.

So what I see actually more now, if you talk like multiple disciplines is it's usually physio. It's usually some sort of strength and conditioning and nutrition as well, those three together, it seemed more often. And then I'm starting to see functional med go more into that, but there's also weird practice act stuff where sometimes if you're an MD in particular, like there can be things you have to be aware of in terms of like you potentially, you definitely couldn't hire certain MDs like in certain States and others you could, or maybe they would have to have ownership potentially of the business in certain States.

So it's state to state can be very different.

Alison: Yeah, that's true. There's lots of business rules around who can and can't own medical clinics.

Danny: Yeah, it's really highly regulated. Canada must be like that, the same way.

Alison: Yeah, it is. But you, that's the [00:15:00] other, because mine wasn't a single discipline, I could own it as a business owner.

Danny: Oh, I see. You also didn't have a license. So that's the other thing too, is like the fact that you have a license can actually be a negative in some ways.

Alison: Yeah, just an English degree.

Danny: Yeah, which is, communication basically, right? You're learning how to like use words to communicate with people, which is probably the most important thing we can learn.

Alison: Yeah, I have a minor in psychology and my major is in English lit. Actually, I just I love literature. I love what it teaches you. I think everyone should read fiction just to learn. People think fiction is sometimes a waste of time. I meet a lot of people in the business world that only read nonfiction and I'm like, I've learned just as much, if not more from fiction novels than I have from nonfiction.

Danny: I think, so one of my, one of my mentors is a guy that is teaching a lot in our space. And he is really big on. Sci fi and learning from sci fi, and so like he, I remember he was like, dude, you got to read Dune and this was years ago. And I was like, what, like a sand planet? You mean, what does this have to [00:16:00] do with me teaching for you?

Like it's nothing. And he was like, it has everything to do with it. Just read the book. And and it is interesting. You see these parallels between these worlds that people make up in their mind. And really it's an expression of what they see in, in, the current sort of world that they, maybe extrapolated as positive or negative.

Alison: Yeah,

Danny: exactly.

Alison: Margaret Atwood is a Canadian author. Oh, Handmaid's Tale. Do you know that whole thing? Anyway, she wrote a trilogy of a post apocalyptic apocalyptic trilogy, the Mad Adam trilogy. And her dad is a scientist. And she took a lot of stuff in the book is just from the like journals that she'd see or she would read.

And then she pulled it out. Imagine if that continued, imagine what would happen then. And it's a great trilogy. Just if you like sci fi, not for the business world, I should think of a better business world. That one's just very I fear I'm a huge, Star Trek next generation for leadership for it.

They're incredible. That show it's really,

Danny: so you've learned everything from leadership from Star Trek. This is this is funny. No, I think it's, it is interesting how you can, I draw [00:17:00] parallels for basically anything. Like I could literally be, I can have a conversation with somebody and I'm like, Oh shit, this connects here or here.

And it's funny that sometimes like when we get to. I guess like this area we think we need to learn more about, or, if it's like these very specific skills, I just need to learn how to write better copy and marketing and wherever. And if you want to learn how to write better copy, read people that are writing all kinds of different

Alison: things.

Yeah. If you want to be a better writer, you should read a lot.

Danny: Yeah. Or write a lot, like actually write things out in the styles that you like. And, and so I think that, the variance of learning from what I've found, The people that I, I feel have done a really good job in business in particular and can solve problems that are really challenging.

They tend to be well read in like many different disciplines or they have a variance of experience, right? So maybe they grew up they moved a lot or they had to learn another language to live somewhere else, or they were around like different groups of people constantly. And they just, you They see things differently, right?

Their worldview, and yours is, it seems very broad. Like you seem to have a very interesting sort [00:18:00] of approach to everything. How do you think you ended up getting that way? Are your parents just lifelong learners that are into all kinds of stuff, or is it just like you came out of the end of the world this way?

Alison: You're just asking the nature nurture question. That's very like a deep biological psychological. I think it's both. I think my I think it's definitely both. My father was he toured Japan in an opera. He's obviously a physiotherapist. He was in plays, and We were exposed to a lot of the idea that you can do anything you want to do in life.

Nothing is unavailable to you was definitely something that my father demonstrated. So I think that this is why I've never actually been employed. I've always been my own boss. Cause I always think I, it could be better. I'm always just it should be better than this. It should be better than this.

I always believe that there should be a better way of doing something. I think that makes me a hard employee. I think I've just appointed myself like boss of this company. And then no one has. Said anything about it so far. So here we are. This is, we're like, [00:19:00] but the, I am dissatisfied with just status quo, I think.

And so I think when you're just satisfied where you think some things could always be better, you naturally do become a learner because I also think information is available to me. So like my. My dryer broke and I was like if I call someone, they're just going to diagnose it. So I may as well get started on that.

So you go on YouTube, you start looking it up. I'm like, okay, this isn't working. This is working. Then you start taking it apart. And I'm like, oh, it's just the heating. Then you just. The unknown seems unknowable until you start to learn about it. And then once you know it, you're just like, Oh, that actually wasn't that hard, but people often don't take that first step in from turning it from the unknown into the known, and then we don't value our own knowledge enough.

Like we always undervalue what we do know and overvalue what we don't. So interesting.

Danny: I wonder for you in particular, because like the, if I look at technology development, it seems daunting because I'm not a designer. I'm not, [00:20:00] I don't code. I don't know shit about the numbers behind all this stuff.

I don't understand the matrix. The thing is, it seems so daunting for someone to go that direction. And for you, it seems yeah, From what I heard you say on a podcast that like, for you to get this sort of like web design with the the scheduler built in, like it wasn't, it's insignificant amount of money.

It was like tens of thousands of dollars for you to do that. So but you did that from the get go with a business that like, I never, ever would have thought Oh, I have to have this I've got to do this. That's a big swing you take really early on. So like for you, it seems like you, you take pretty big swings.

Like what makes you so comfortable that you're willing to like, Just take a big risk on yourself like that when so many people aren't willing to do anything like that's risky at all.

Alison: Yeah. It's funny. I'm actually quite, I'm not I'm not, I don't have a high risk tolerance, which I think is interesting.

Like I worked at the clinics, getting paid through the clinics for a long time, working for free for Jane until Jane could afford to pay a salary. And then I went full time, but I have three kids and I'm not one of those. [00:21:00] Actually, my in laws were entrepreneurs that were just like, what's the next big thing?

They would mortgage their house. They would put it all out there. They would try so that's not my style. And actually the word entrepreneur used to scare me. And it wasn't one that I would have used to describe myself. I was just solving problems. Like I was like, this is just a problem I have. I'm going to solve it.

And then other people also have this problem. So let's just offer it to them as well, but it's also partially why we've grown our business the way we have in the tech space, which is we never spend more than we make

Danny: and

Alison: still do that because I want to pay people's salaries. I came very close once to missing peril and clinic.

When I was transferring a loan over, so one loan was being paid out by a different loan, but there was somebody who had anyway, there's a paperwork they had to sign basically, and they were just not signing it. And so the new loan was supposed to be paid out, but I couldn't get it released and payday was coming up and I was just like, this is, I'm going to miss payroll if we don't get this paperwork done and I've never been so stressed in my entire life.

So this was like. I [00:22:00] refuse. I'm like, I refuse to ever put myself in a place where I'm not sure if I can make payroll or not. It's just, who wants to feel that? These are people's lives. This is important. So I'm actually not, I wouldn't say that I am comfortable with high risk situations.

I, I'm, I always think about what's the worst that could happen. And if that's okay, then that's fine. And then what's the best that could happen. And then hopefully that's pretty great. And so as long as I'm comfortable with the worst that could happen I'll try it or I'll do it, but if I'm not comfortable with what's the worst that could happen, then I have to find a different plan.

Danny: I find most people focus on worst case scenario, they're like, Oh my God. And then usually it's not financial it's, which is interesting. It's really more it's how they're going to be perceived by their colleagues and their family and their friends. Now they're like, Oh shit, you failed, you, Oh, you try to do this thing and you couldn't make it work.

And you had to go back and get a job, right? Like that. I think that's like the thing that stops a lot of people. But the thing that you said is you have to also think about what if this does work?

Alison: What if it does work? You have to go both.

Danny: Nobody does that. I, no one [00:23:00] actually thinks.

Holy shit, like what if this does work and I love what I do and I make more money and I have more time freedom and like as soon as you get people thinking about that, I think all of a sudden the fear of the downside in most cases, as long as it's not incredibly like dangerous, obviously it gets outweighed.

But I think very few people actually let themselves think about what if this works, how awesome would that be? And I don't know why, but that is a big sticking point.

Alison: I think people also often go too far into the future. Like you you, so even with Jane and with everything, you have your big goal, like you'd have to know where you want, where you're trying to go, but your path, like I call it kind of a mountain.

I'm like your path up the mountain. There's a million of them. So say you want to go and open a practice. So your goal is I'm going to open a practice and I'm actually, your goal is probably, I'm going to have a successful thriving. Cash based practice, whatever it is, I'm going to have these multiple therapists working with me.

I'm going to be able to take 50 percent of the time off, but I'm still going to have income, whatever your big goal is. And then people sometimes just find that it's too overwhelming. Like, how am I ever going to get there? But often if you [00:24:00] just say that what's the first What's like the next step you would have to take to do that?

What's the first step or the next step? They know, they can totally tell you the next step I'd have to do is this. I'm like, okay, now go do that. Like that, go do that and see what happens. And then figure out what's the next step that you'd have to take because you learn all along the way. Like you're learning every time you do something new, you get more information.

And they're like that didn't work. So now I, but now I learned something. What did you learn? The bank turned you down because of this reason. So you're like, okay, I gotta go fix that. And I'm going to go to another bank or whatever you learn along the way. And if that's never a waste of time, I think even if you end up not succeeding and having this opening this business and doing this whole dream, I guarantee you've learned something along the way that's changed your perspective in life or you'll later in life, you'll be like, Oh, that was actually really awesome that I learned that people do MBAs, which I think is.

I think it's weird to do an MBA. I'm like, just go open a business. You're 100 percent going to learn more if you take that tuition and go start a business than if you spend it at school learning kind of [00:25:00] theoretical things about business. Although I've never taken an MBA, so I shouldn't say that.

Danny: I haven't either. I guess I guess if you could have You had the knowledge, but you somehow you could get it without having to pay for it and then apply it to a business. Maybe that'd be an ideal situation. But I feel like for me, what I've learned in business is so interesting when I talk to people that, that go through MBA programs and, they'll talk to me about technical sort of things that maybe I don't understand as, as well, as far as like financial modeling is concerned or accounting terms and things like that.

But, if I'm like, dude, have you ever been like rejected by somebody that, that you literally try to get to. Pay you money for something and they're like, no, not yet, just fucking wait.

Alison: Even even having to let people go

Danny: Oh yeah.

Alison: The first time it's, you look, there is a nice, there is a way to do it well in a way that protects the relationship.

And even when like when therapists leave your clinic or practitioners leave your practice, I always think it's weird when people are all, Like cagey about it. And they're like I'm not going to tell anyone where you're going. And they create this whole like big drama around it. [00:26:00] I'm like it's patient choice.

The patient's going to find out where they go. So why are you burning a bridge there? Like I've had practitioners leave and come back to practices that I've managed. I'm like, you support them. You wish them well, you tell all their patients where they're going. And then sometimes they come back later and they return to your practice now, more capable, experienced therapists, and they return later.

Okay.

Danny: Yeah,

Alison: it's just I don't know why people are so scared. There's a lot of like fear mentality and that's the same with the failure. Like you can have a fear mentality or you can have a success mentality. And I think fear mentality, I don't like making decisions through fear mentality. I think that you end up making poor decisions often.

So it's hard.

Danny: Like on the fear side, the first clinician that we hired I guess it was probably two years in. A little bit longer than two years in, she left to start her own practice. And in, and honestly, a lot of it was honestly our fault. Like looking back on it, like we just didn't really give her a clear.

A clear growth trajectory. We didn't really, we [00:27:00] didn't really give her much of anything. She was actually awesome. So what happened was she was great at what she did. We didn't need to like, Give her a lot of mentorship because she was just really good. And that to her meant that we didn't really care about her.

And so it ended up like a great lesson learned for me. But I remember when she left, it was like, I actually felt like really. Frustrated because she only went a short distance down, down the road. It's like a mile and a half or something like that. And and she was awesome.

And I had spent so much time with her as, a new grad coming out of school that I, that for me, I was like, Oh, it felt like personally really hurt. But then I thought to myself, I really liked this person and I don't want this person to. I want this person to do really well. Like they're a great person and they're a great clinician.

They're going to help a lot of people. So I think when you can look at the transition of folks in more in the terms of not the business side, but like the actual person and as well as their capabilities and as a clinician to help other people, that helped me a ton, but honestly, it was a hard transition.

I think that's what's really hard for people in the like business to business or the brick and mortar space [00:28:00] when, it's close and it's really close to home and sometimes that's scary for you.

Alison: The thing is, people think that these things are opposed, but I bet by having a good relationship with her, and she's a great therapist, she probably filled up her own caseload, and then where is she going to refer people to?

Back to you, if you have a good relationship and you're a mile away. She's going to be like, I'm full, but I know this great practice down the road. Why don't you go check out? I know that You might have hired a new therapist to fill her, to take her spot who maybe needs help filling a caseload. Or like you said, everyone has different niches.

I'm going to say it your way. I would say niche, but I will say niche because I think

Danny: I want to say it in Canada. They say niche, or is that just like internal? That's how you're supposed to pronounce

Alison: it. There's both ways. I don't know if it's Canadian. My parents are British. So I say some things weird, like Vaughn,

Danny: no proper, I think is the, that's where it came from.

I think we bastardize it quite, quite a lot.

Alison: So I'm going to say mine's the correct version when I go for

Danny: it.

Alison: Niche. Yeah. Or maybe that's because we have French. That sounds like a French pronunciation. Anyhow. But yeah, I think this is the same as when we say we like treat our team well, and we treat our [00:29:00] customers well, and we also want a successful business.

Sometimes people think I have a, as we scaled, I've tried to do frameworks. So rules don't work very well because as soon as you are outside of the very defined rule set, people like can I do this? And you're like, Yeah, you have to. They just ask every single question every single day. Can I how about this?

How about this? It's not on the rule list. So you're just constantly having to say yes or no. And so especially as we scaled to more and more people, frameworks are much more successful. If you can create a framework that helps people think through things properly, then You're not having to do as much of the answering every single thing.

So when people are thinking it through a decision that they have to make at the company, I wanted them to think through more than one solution. So on one side of this grid, I have solution one, solution two, solution three, solution four keep going. Don't stop at your first one. And then in the columns I have, the first is the individual.

So you, is it good for you as a person? And then the second is the team. Is it good for the team? The third is is it good for the customer? Fourth, is it good for the company? And often people don't think about the [00:30:00] company when they're making their decisions because it's not a normal thing. And then when they go through each solution, I want them to think about okay, this is good for me.

Is it good for your team? Is it good for your customer? Is it good for the company? And if you can say yes to all of those, why would anyone say no to your idea? Like you've just solved every problem. And so if, and sometimes the solutions will wait more heavily on different parts of that, but it's like helpful for people to be able to get out at and I'm like, and if you don't know, go ask questions until you can fill out this grid.

And then when your solution works for everybody, then we're going to obviously do it because it's good for everybody. Creating like these frameworks of thinking are just a lot more. Helpful in the whole scaling process. But I do think that being kind to people who leave and having good relationships is good for your business.

And so people think that when, if you're like. If you try to make that hard for people, you're somehow meeting some in some need in yourself where you feel hurt. I feel hurt that this person left. I'm gonna be a big jerk to them, but that's actually bad for your business. So and you obviously said that you rose above it [00:31:00] on the humanity side, which is awesome.

It's also good for business. If you leave in on good terms with people, they're more likely to continue to refer. They may come back. You're, Your brand is going to be stronger in the community because this person is going to have had a good experience with you. There's so many things that are better for your business if you do that.

So if you can connect them all together, you can

Danny: think about it's not even business, right? It's just like the. It's, I just, I think a lot of people are selfish, frankly, I think a lot of people just do, and I get it, especially when, listen, when you're going into doing your own business, you're, it's scary.

So if it was me and let's say you're listening to this and you have a clinician leaving, they're fucking scared, like they're scared, they don't know what's going to happen.

Alison: Yeah, the unknown.

Danny: Yeah, they don't know. So they're going to make their decisions based on what's best for them. 100 percent of the time.

But you as somebody who is in a position that, is in a much more stable position. You have much more experience in my experience, if I do the thing that I think is the frankly, just right thing to do. [00:32:00] And it always works out for me long term a hundred percent of the time. And even in the short term, it can feel like, cause people, People will take advantage of people.

There's no doubt about that. But just putting yourself in a place where, you're doing the right thing longterm, whether that's a hard thing to do or not, whether that's talking to a patient that, I remember I had a conversation with a patient and she had what sounded like clearly a systemic kind of issue associated with a new drug that she was taking and she had shoulder pain.

And. I told her, I go, I don't think you need to come see me. Like you need to go see your clinician that prescribed this to you. I think this is a con associated with that. I don't think you actually have a shoulder problem. And she got really angry. She was like, my friend said you could help me with my shoulder.

And you're telling me to go back to my doctor. And I try to explain to her. That is

Alison: me helping.

Danny: Exactly. But at the time she was angry and I tried to explain to her and eventually, anyway, she goes back to see her doctor. And she emails me a couple of weeks later and she was like, Hey, I just want to say, I'm sorry.

And thank you for doing this. Like my shoulder pain is gone. And I never saw this lady one time, not once as a patient, but she referred like over a dozen people. I think of that, but you know what? I needed that visit at the time, bad but [00:33:00] again, I agree with you. I think you have to do the right things for people, whether they're moving on, whether they're joining your company, whatever it is, but that's hard to do, and you also have to have a lot of self awareness.

You have to have a lot of self discipline, honestly, to not just be like, screw it. Let's do the easy thing. So like, how do you cultivate that though?

Alison: It's the short term versus long term thinking, because maybe the easy thing would have been to take her on as a patient, but you wouldn't have fixed it.

Because no way it was created by the drug. So long term, you would have had an unhappy patient that was like actually actively a detractor of your services out in the community. So you made a short term decision to like forego the Fee that she would have paid you on that day and but the long term of that is much better.

We did the same with Jane. I often would say to people. I don't think you should sign up for Jane. Like Jane, you were not going to make you happy if I'm doing a demo and I'm doing 3 work arounds to make it work for you. So early, especially early on in Jane story. We didn't have like memberships or packages or there was a lot of The mind body kind of stuff that we were not good at.

And so I was doing a demo for this guy. I'm like, I think you shouldn't, I don't think you should sign up for [00:34:00] Jane. I'm like, I'd love to put you on a, our newsletter, you can hear about what we're doing and how we're expanding and our feature set as we grow, maybe one day we'll, I hope one day we can work together.

And he was mad. He was like, but you don't want my business. And I'm like, no, I just actually think you'll be unhappy if you sign up for Jane. And I don't want that. I really do want every. Everyone working with Jim, we want to be delighted. Delight's a big word. We talk about delight a lot. We're actually, I just need to define delight even more intentionally as we're scaling.

So people understand what it means. Cause sometimes delight people think that they like what they're doing, but I'm like, no, the delight has to come from the user. If the bar is the user's delight, how do we create delight? And so I was just like, we would turn them away. And so even still for demos and everything, I expect our team not to close every demo.

That's like the closed term. I'm like, I would rather see. We need to know, was this a demo? Was this someone that was actually going to be a good fit for the product? And either we need to say okay, we're going to close those problem gaps for that group of people who are using the, who are using Jane, or we need to try to tell these people, we're [00:35:00] not the right fit for you.

You should go see that therapist down the street TMJ or whatever. I don't do that. You should go see that person down the street. Like we need to say that's fine. But then when you have a problem with your shoulder, come back to me because I'm awesome with shoulders. Yeah. I've heard

Danny: is tell me if the stat is right.

I heard you say 80 percent of new referrals new business that comes into Jane is referral based. Is it, is that still around the same amount? Hey, sorry to interrupt the podcast. I have a huge favor to ask of you. If you are a longtime listener or a new listener, and you're finding value in this podcast, please head over to iTunes or Spotify or wherever you listen to the podcast, and please leave a rating and review.

This is actually very helpful for us to get this podcast for more clinicians and really help them develop time and financial freedom. So if you would do that, I would greatly appreciate it. Now back to the podcast.

Alison: Yeah, it's, you know what is fascinating is, so as we, we started in Canada, obviously, and as we've grown in certain areas, it's either, yeah, it's either they were referred by somebody that's used it, [00:36:00] or now they've used it somewhere else.

Or they see it as online booking and use it. So like they're having a delightful experience somewhere along the way. And then the way that we started growing, especially in the U S is actually like Facebook groups that have Canadian and U S practitioners. And so someone would say, what are you using?

They'd be like, We use Jane and we love it. And this is what I say all the time. I'm like we spend a lot of time working with our existing customers, trying to create delight so that because that's just how we wanted to do it, but when the result of that is that when someone says, what do you use, they say, Jane, and I love it.

And that's what I'm like. You put so much work into getting to that moment so that it's Jane and I love it. And that's what you need. I'm like, I just need people to say Jane and I love it. And then we're good. Then we're good. That's what we need. And we just wait for those moments to happen.

Cause like you said, changing softwares is a huge pain in the ass. Like Huge. And especially in larger clinics where you have all the administrators and then you have all the practitioners and then you have and change is really difficult. So even if I have to do something, 20 clicks to do [00:37:00] it, but I can do it in two seconds.

And I don't even know where I'm doing. I just do. I know how to do it and I do it versus like the new, even if the new system is eventually going to be better that transition time people. Complain and you know what? It's like being a clinic owner. You were mentioning this before, like clinic owners.

It can be scary. It can also be very lonely. People think you're just like pocketing cash. They all do their back of the napkin math. I'm like this is how much everyone's making. And then I'm like, it's expensive to run a practice. And people don't know all the costs. So they do their back of the napkin math, but they give you, they bring all this money in for you.

And then their costs calculation is completely wrong. And then they think that you're just pocketing everything. And I'm just like, Oh, it's just painful. Cause you're just like, I worked so hard to provide you this great work environment.

Danny: Yeah, no, you're right. That is actually it's so true, especially in cash based practices, because insurance, it's confusing intentionally in a lot of ways.

You don't want your clinicians to know they're like what they're generating because they're going to do the math on it. And there's a lot of other expenses there as well versus the [00:38:00] cash based practice. But yeah, you're right. It's, they don't even take into account the payroll taxes you have to pay to have margins

Alison: are small.

Yeah. And I think I talked to a lot of owners about just being unapologetic about that. You're like, I took a risk. I'm opening a practice. I'm like, this is the margin that I want to take home. I like 5%, 8%. I'm not doing all of this. For just like my to be the same as you like I'm taking a risk. I'm a business owner.

I'm opening a practice like and just figure out what your messaging is. But don't be like, you can be unapologetic about taking a percent as a, as an owner of a business. Otherwise, I think people just. They feel guilty about it. And then, I don't know, it's a very difficult conversation. Not a non

Danny: profit.

My wife ran non profits, and it is a It's not a non profit.

It shouldn't be. Like, I remember she was making like 32, 000 a year working so many hours. Nights, weekends, like I know. It was crazy. And it would literally was more it would have been more expensive for her to go back to work and us put our kids into daycare, [00:39:00] the two of them, then for her to stay home.

And we're like, we're literally lose money by you going back to his job. So although I think

Alison: that I'm going to just tell you, that's what the wrong math to do. And I, because it's not the woman's salary minus the childcare's cost. It's the combined salary of the household, plus the future income that can be generated by someone advancing in their career, plus the independence of the mom and the woman, if she ever needs it financially.

So I, I have a problem with the math of the mom's salary minus the childcare. That's not how it works. It's both salaries combined.

Danny: I appreciate that perspective. And luckily for me, my wife is such an awesome operator that she came into our practice and squared it away to a point where it was like, awesome, way better than I could ever done.

So it was an interesting fit. She didn't have experience in that, but her running nonprofits translated so well to running a practice. And all of a sudden she was like, Oh my God, I have a book. Budget that isn't 97 percent of every dollar going out to the mission, which is awesome to be in a nonprofit like that.

But I think the challenge for a lot of people is their relationship with money as well. [00:40:00] And like for them to take money for something they like is hard, but also to feel like they're making more than other people they're working directly with that's a hard thing too. And associating that with the risk they're taking is maybe not always there.

So I don't know, did you ever struggle with feeling that yourself?

Alison: I think it's because I'm not a practitioner, so it's different for me because. A lot of practitioners who are owner operators are getting, they're just making their percent of their billing, like whatever they're reading, but they're not taking anything if they're not working.

Like it's usually just like very connected to the hours that they're working. And so I think it's important that clinic owners pay themselves a salary as a clinic owner that's separate from the amount that they make when they're working. And some people just take a higher percentage or they take all of it, but I'm like, you need to have a, built in a salary that's just based on Owning the practice.

And then I think people also do have a hard time connecting, wanting people to be better, that like care side of the profession with the money side of the profession. They feel like they, they battle against each other. Like [00:41:00] what, I think people. I've been to practitioners before who won't say come back, they'll just be like, you can just probably do these on their, on your own.

Cause they're worried about telling me to spend money. But I, as a patient now feel uncared for. I'm like, I actually really want you to tell me to come. Like I'm here cause you're the professional. So I want you to say, okay, you're going to need six day visits to really do well. Like I have all these exercises.

You can do them at home or you can come in and I'm going to help you and supervise you and make sure you're doing them properly. So that Whatever, fine, give them choice if you really need to, but people, they have this weird thing where they don't want people to feel like they don't value their own knowledge enough.

Like you are knowledgeable. I'm here for, because of your knowledge, I would like to feel cared for, especially in this world. Oh my goodness. People want to be cared for. So I'm like, if you tell me to come in six times and care for me. And while I'm here, talk to me about my injury and touch my, touch me and then help me do things properly.

Because I'm not going to do my exercises at home. Are you kidding me?

Danny: No, I hear you. The compliance side is tough. And also, you basically described me to a team when I opened my practice. Here's what I [00:42:00] would do. I would get somebody in, and in 60 minutes, I would go through probably 180 minutes worth of shit that I thought they needed to know just because I wanted them to feel like The

Alison: value.

Danny: Then I would write out a program for six weeks that I would send to them with all these videos that I would link of me, like putting all their videos together of what they needed to do. I would send it to them. And then I would say, if you feel like you need a follow up, just click here and we'll get you scheduled.

And you can schedule a visit. Oh, and

Alison: don't leave it. This is when I was working in the front, nothing made me more mad than when a patient would come out and I'd be like, when do they want to see you again? Oh, I'm not actually sure. I'd be like, are you kidding me? I'm like the you should know.

So I believe you should either know you don't need to come back or you should know exactly when you need to come back. And so this net, this maybe I would just just wait. And I would just go back and be like, when do you want to see this person again? I can't believe you're not telling them.

And don't send they need to, it should be so clear. This is the other thing about people, I think they underestimate their admin staff. I'm like, if you go to your admin staff and you ask them, what's the best what are these people good at? Who should we book with [00:43:00] these people? Why is this person not rebooking?

They're going to know, they're going to know all the reasons. No, it's like people really underestimate. I think they, they want stats. I want reporting. I want all these stats and reports. I'm like, just go talk to your admin staff. I'm like, they're going

Danny: to definitely have a pulse on it. If they have a good office manager, man, they are worth like so much more than their salary.

Like our office manager. We have so many people, she's still there. Like she's been at that practice for eight years and she is we'll come back just to They'll set up a visit just so they can talk to Claire for a few minutes on the way in and out and like she's just like such an interesting person like she literally had a husband that was in a jam band that followed around Grateful Dead and she used to make burritos in like a truck and then she worked on a blueberry farm and then she was like a stenographer in courtrooms.

And then eventually she like became a CrossFit coach and we hired her. And I'm like, what in the world? Your backstory

Alison: is crazy. I can't believe you kept her eight years somewhere. It's she's, she needs a new challenge all the time.

Danny: But she can relate to anybody because of like the experience that she's had.

And [00:44:00] somebody like that, they also was like high emotional intelligence. She was a waitress as well. I think that's actually I was a waiter and I was fucking huge being able to talk to anybody and just sometimes take shit from people and just

Alison: build rapport really quickly in service and hospitality.

Yeah, I totally agree. But I think that is a undervalued position. And even with Jane that's probably software. They're probably like, can you replace this person? I don't have to pay this person. I know I don't like that. I don't like it either.

So I, it depends. We have a lot of people who are writing a solo practice and then I'm like, okay, I like I get it that you're trying to do this on your own.

Or maybe you have a completely remote telehealth practice. Then obviously that's different. But I do think admin staff are undervalued. I actually did a whole talk at the, at a conference once about this with like, how to be a good, Receptionist basically like how to read like you rebook people and all the things and that whole no one should walk out not knowing when they need to be seen again.

That's just poor form. But yeah, it is [00:45:00] shockingly beneficial to the practice to have really good admin stuff. It's also hard to find them because the really good ones tend to be. They go off to do something else like it's hard to keep them. So you either need to. So it seems like you're the trade off is always like mediocre staff that stay a long time or amazing staff that only stay a year.

And then you're always having to rehire. So that's a

Danny: good point. Yeah, that it's I agree with you on that. And there's certain things that people do well that are superpowers and everybody has their kryptonite to, and from what I found is just Most people, they just want a really like fun place to work where they feel like they're making a difference in other people's lives and that's what we do on a daily basis.

And that's something that I don't think that we even understand how enjoyable it is. Like when you go from being a courtroom stenographer. Oh, yeah.

Alison: Literally

Danny: people get over back pain, and be a part of the process. It's it's my retirement

Alison: plan. I'm going to go work reception. Tell me if you have an opening.

Danny: Yeah I'll let you know. It's not my practice anymore, but yeah, I'm down if you want a job. I'm like, I

Alison: want to go work the front desk again. It was so fun. It is so fun. Like just helping people. And, I had this [00:46:00] 98 year old woman, I think come in to the practice once. And she was just like, I was like, Oh what are you here for?

And she's just I can only lift my shoulder here. And I'm like, you are like 98 years old. She wanted to get her full range of emotion back. I'm like, yeah. I'm inspired by you right now. This is incredible. The show is so cool.

Danny: I feel like that is one thing that maybe we don't keep enough perspective with I do miss about being in the clinic.

I haven't treated a patient in a couple of years, but I think about people like that, or like I had this guy that was, A competitive baseball player and he was in his mid eighties and he hurt his shoulder slight stealing second base He literally came in to see me because he was still in second base slid headfirst and caught his shoulder weird Sliding and also his name is like he has like the name of a astronaut.

His name was buzz I was like, dude, you're like the coolest person that i've ever met. Tell me how I can I know people

Alison: are You know, it's like there's a program at some of the libraries where you can take out a human book. So it's like people who have had certain life stories and then they do these events where you can go and just sit and people will just [00:47:00] tell you their story, a human book.

And I feel like this is true for literally every human on the planet. So those newbie meetings that I talked to you about at the beginning, we used to try and do the values in one Meeting. But then we started with these like questions and we ask people what their first job was. It's a fascinating question.

It's always an interesting story. And we were, it took so long to get through people's stories because they were so interesting that we had to turn it into two meetings. So the first meeting now I just like do a human book for each person that's joining. And also, do you know the book how to win friends and influence people?

Terrible name. This

Danny: book. Yeah.

Alison: Yeah, the name is problematic because it sounds like how you're manipulating people, but it's actually just a lot of like social skills. And he says in that book that you'll need to find one piece of connection between you and another person to build like this, to just have empathy and relationship.

It creates a connection and it can be anything, something so small. So if you sit in a group and talk about your stories, people are like, Oh, like all of a sudden they're like, Oh, I am like that. And then you've created this like [00:48:00] connection, connecting moments between a group of people. If you ask the right questions, Sometimes icebreakers are terrible, but they can be very terrible.

So I also like to acknowledge that when I'm doing them, I'm so sorry that we're making you do this right now, but trust me, hopefully it's going to be somewhat enjoyable.

Danny: Yeah. I think it's fascinating to be, cause you have so many people you're bringing on. 500 people in, I feel like the one thing that I really enjoyed learning was there was an article that you were in that was about leadership and it was like five things, leadership that you have learned and you were sharing these sort of bullet points on, but one of them, it was manager support being bottom up versus top down and really the manager being what would be considered like support to this team of eight to 10 people that are above them.

And I came from a world, it was the military that was literally top

Alison: down, very top down.

Danny: Dude, you didn't even you don't even have an opinion. It's this is it. And if you don't follow the orders, you're in trouble. And I think that's actually a, in that environment, I understand because there's like a lot of things you don't even know.

You don't

Alison: have time to think.

Danny: Not really. And when you look at, when you look at this other the other side of it, [00:49:00] like a company where it's very different in terms of what the job is, like that makes so much sense where it's, you're in support of these people and making sure that you can make their life as easy as you can.

And I think of the same way with clinic owners, where it's no, you're, you got this wrong, man. Don't get mad at them because they're not doing X, Y, and Z like what can you do to take things off their plate to make them be like the best clinician ever and they can focus on that because that is like what's going to drive people back in the door.

So like

Alison: they're providing actual like service of the practice. The thing about clinicians and practitioners that also helped me along the way managing them because they're hard to manage. We're hard to man like practitioners are hard to manage.

Danny: Why do you think that is?

Alison: Because to be a very good, to be a good practitioner, you have to believe you can heal people.

And I actually think that creates a certain, there's a certain personality of person who the best therapists are the worst to manage. They, it's just the correlation just exists. And the reason is that they really have to believe in what they're, they have to believe they can heal people. And I think that comes with a certain level of It's like a personality.

So that means that they're when you're dealing with [00:50:00] them in that like difficult managerial way You should just also appreciate that. That's what fills their schedule. That's what makes their patients happy. That's why they're a successful practitioner I say this to my children actually to almost everyone and to myself when I need to be kind to myself our personality traits Are not good or bad.

They're on a continuum and our personalities either come out in a really productive helpful way for us in life or often that same trait will come up in a negative way in other parts of our lives and all we're trying to do is learn how to use it in the positive way. So when it does come up in the negative way, instead of being like, Oh, I wish I wasn't like that.

You can actually say Okay. I didn't do my best work there, but that part of me is also why I'm so good at all these other things. And so instead of being mad at yourself, you can just be like, okay, I gotta keep reigning that part in, but it's also why I'm so good at all these other things. So just giving yourself a little grace.

And I think that's true for practitioners, the ones that are hard to manage. They're also usually very good at their jobs. So it's a balance.

Danny: It's an interesting way to frame it too. Cause it's I [00:51:00] assume you're a competitive person, just most people that have or have accomplished a lot in business, they tend to be like, they like to win.

They're competitive and. And, but then also typically like we're not good losers and like we can get, and also can rub people the wrong way if you're like really competitive too. So I see what you're saying where it's it's your superpower. Your kryptonite is in the same thing, right?

So yeah, it's nice. Are you reframe that yourself? The reason I suck here is because I'm good over here. So I'm good over here on this side. It's going to be awesome.

Alison: Exactly. Or just like sometimes you just have to accept that about yourself, too. It's just some of the things I'm never gonna be good at that.

So let's make sure I'm not put in a situation where I have to do that because that's just something that doesn't work well for me. I am. I have strong. I have strong feelings. I am. I have. I'm a feeler. And so if something happens where I have strong feeling, I have a 24 hour rule where I can't respond.

So I can't do immediate responses on slack. I certainly don't engage in social media. I think social media arguments are dumb. I don't think anyone should be on out there. [00:52:00] Arguing on social media. It says a lot more about you than it does about whatever you're posting about. But I give myself a 24 hour role and that's worked really well for me.

So then, but cause by the time I get to 24 hours, I can bring them more. I can bring more parts of my brain online and then be like, okay, let's have a more measured response. And it's like what you're talking about, where at first you were really hurt that this person left, but then you're like, but if I care about this person as a whole, but the hurt always starts.

First, and then you need to like, wait for the rest of your brain to come back online. And so sometimes you just have to put yourself in rules for yourself. But also that passion I have is why I don't, I want Jane, like the bar for Jane is high. What does delight look like? No, that's not good enough.

There's a whole passion side that, Is good. And then it's also hard because then people feel like I'm, I can be hard to please I don't praise people enough. Cause I'm always excited about what the next thing is that there is to fix. I'm working on that.

Danny: The details was, there's this Walt Disney quote that I love.

It's there's no magic and magic. It's all in the details. That's it. [00:53:00] So I think anytime that I ever go to a business that they literally, they give, they really care about. The little things, and that's hard because it's hard to scale that. It's actually really hard to scale that. And I think

Alison: it's super hard to scale that

Danny: 500 people all remote with code, backing everything up, right?

Like the details of that. And also the details of how these people are having conversations or how they're interacting with clients, or if they're at a trade show and how they're interacting at a booth or something like these are all little details that you don't have any control over anymore, right?

Not necessarily like day to day, this person, so yeah, now you have to scale past that. So like for you. How do you it's your reputation. They're representing Jane, and that's probably something that was, you gotta grow past yourself, but how do you manage maintaining such a high demand on detail at scale when there's so many people and there's so many things going on?

Alison: Yeah, it's I often say that delight is in the details, which I don't know, every time I say anything and then I go in the world and I hear seven other people say it, and I'm like, I made that up. But there's nothing. So I'm like, I made up a lot of things that a lot of people have already made up.

Or that I [00:54:00] probably heard somewhere and stole that I didn't realize it. So I'm bad at giving credit. But that's actually, it's been a huge struggle for me. I'm a doer. And also that flips, that we were talking about flip to org chart, where it's you're, we're all just supporting the people doing the work.

So probably 60 percent of our team is doing a hundred percent of the output work. That's our support team actually talking to customers. That's our, the product org or the dev org actually building the product that we're shipping out to customers. And then everyone else is like managers or, accounting or HR, or either all supporting this organization.

Nothing really exists without that top layer. So because now I'm leading through layers, like leading through leaders, I find that first of all, extremely challenging. And also it took me a long time to think that this is worth doing. I want to be talking to, I think picking up the phone and talking to customers is the most important job.

So it feels embarrassing sometimes to be like, I don't really do

Danny: that.

Alison: No, I wish I, we were going to conferences pre COVID. I, now it's very tricky to [00:55:00] balance, manage life and work. Especially tricky right now. Very personally, actually, I just lost the father of my children died a year ago this week.

So it's yeah, it's like a whole new, Challenge actually. So I was, yeah, sorry. I'm just, see, I told you I'm a feeler. You're going to get all that.

Danny: I feel terrible for you. I feel the same stuff. I can't imagine cause that just adds, that's life and life happens no matter whether you run your own business or you're not.

And it's you can hit it. Yeah.

Alison: Yeah. So that's also been, it's lovely though. When you share that with people, everyone's going through their own thing. And then, so I bring that to work. This is, but like I, I had, I had, I tried four business coaches and every time I would talk to a coach, he'd be like, I think he'd, they'd built these careers for themselves as coaches.

I think coaching like white men CEOs. And so they'd be like, you just have to be vulnerable and share your true self. And I'd be like, I don't think that this is the message I need. I'm pretty sure I'm, I do. I think I, if anything, I do [00:56:00] that too much. Like maybe I'm a little far on that edge. And I'm like, this isn't working for me.

I was like, I just thought I was uncoachable. And then I finally tried a fifth and I usually like finish sentences that people are saying. So if someone's talking, I'm like yeah. I finished the sentence. I'm already ready to like respond. But I think two or three times she finished the sentence in a different way than I was expecting.

And I was like, Oh, I love you. You are a good coach because you're just shifting my thinking. Okay. Bye. And so finally I was like, okay, yeah, anyway, but she was not just saying you need to bring more yourself to work. I'm like, no I do. I bring a lot of myself to work. But when you do that, people share a lot of their stories.

And it's just like very cool to get that connection with your, in a personal way with your team. And then trying to extrapolate that out into that bigger story where you care about these people, not just while they're at your company, but beyond that into the rest of their lives too.

Danny: Yeah. Would you say, I think for me, what I've found is people are the absolute best part of any business [00:57:00] that I've ever been a part of.

And as well as the most frustrating part, it reminds me of kids. Like kids, I've never been more frustrated than some shit my kids have done. And I've never been more awesome, like proud than stuff my kids have done. So you basically have 500 children at this point that are, actually

Alison: parenting and managing is very similar.

I think there's like a huge overlap. I was like, I shared a business book where you compare the two. What did I learn from managing a business and growing a business that I bring to parenting? What did I learn in parenting that I'm bringing to business? They're very similar in many ways because you're just basically trying to grow a happy, healthy, successful group of people.

And that's the same idea. But I think it's Kanye West who said more money, more problems. And then he's bring on the problems, bring on the problems. And I'm like, this is what more people, more problems also feels like that, but you're like but that's what we're doing. We're trying to scale this thing.

So some of the good problems to have, they're all good problems to have. Because they mean that you've, created something

Danny: I totally agree. And it's, and it [00:58:00] seems like a really interesting culture. And I was telling you this before, just I'm around a lot of tech industry people here in Atlanta with just, there's just a huge incubator area here.

A lot of people coming out of Georgia tech. As well, they go straight into BC back companies. And I remember I got asked to go talk at Georgia tech as I was the token brick and mortar guy. I didn't know I was so I showed up and they, it was like, tell me what it means. What's it like to have profit, dude?

What's it like to, you have a building? What's that like? And I remember I felt so out of place. It's what is going on? And all of them were like, yeah, these numbers, this is going to happen. Then we're going to hit this exit. And I'm like what if you don't? And you're like we lose these people's money.

And then we go on and do something else.

Alison: The past profitability. Oh my gosh. That whole, do you know, I can't even tell you coming from small business, try not understand this world was very confusing and they all act like it's normal, but I'm like, this is not really normal. Like every other business in the whole world operates in a completely different way, and then this tech world.

It's very strange. And so we didn't, we just built the same way we built a small business, [00:59:00] which is very reasonable. And we built a tech company that way. And we were honest people that are, it's very confused by us, but I'm like, but I'm confused by you. This is the way that business, like we need to make money so that we can pay for everything.

And then we should have profit. We need to have profit because that's what a business does. Like a business is supposed to make money. And. When you're doing that, like we had, so we had a lot of constraints scaling Jane and we watched people around us just like they made millions of dollars in, and we have investors, but we didn't take investors because we needed money to scale the company.

We took investors to get Access to more like information and help. And cause we've never done this before. And so we've. We've had investors along the whole way and they're so awesome. Like I just absolutely love working with them. And for we're trying to hire a chief growth officer right now.

So they will, they'll help us go out and either get recruiters or recommend people out of the networks. Like it just connects you to a world that you just didn't have access to before, but we didn't do it for the [01:00:00] burn money so that you could spend a ton of money to grow. But it's a whole different, it's a whole different world.

And we are, we were very confusing to people and we had to push back a lot during that like growth at all costs era. And now it's shifted because things changed. And so now that it's shifted, people are like, Oh, tell us more about how you've done this. I'm like, just go talk to any small business owner.

That's how we did it. Just talk to any other business. We're just doing it like a normal. A normal way. It feels like to us, but it's not normal

Danny: with, it's the inverse correlation to interest rates and how cheap money was right. Cheap money was chasing fast growth. And then now I see interest rates are higher and it's oh yeah, profits really important.

And if you don't have if you don't have EBITDA, that looks good in comparison to your gross revenue, then yeah. Like they don't, there's no interest in your business at all because it looks like it's a sketchy business to invest in, which is so different than, even a few years ago when these multiples were like crazy high and people were just chasing growth at all costs.

Alison: Is that the wrap, the rollup clinics thing? Is that true for that? That's how the clinics were being valued.

Danny: And this is, [01:01:00] yeah, I've learned more and more about this world. Just as we've helped more people, us actually sell practices. And yes, the same thing has happened, but the, what I didn't understand, and this is, I'm not trying to nerd out on the finance side of this, listening to this we

Alison: have an audience of people that might be listening.

Hello. Yeah. I forgot for a second doing this conversation so much,

Danny: but here's what I've noticed is People that are smart with math, like these, anybody that is an investment banker and or they're raising capital or they're trying to buy a private business in a lot of, in a lot of cases, what they're doing with these clinics is they're basically, they're getting to them to a certain point where they're, I think they're called like a portfolio and the EBITDA is high enough where it puts them in a different bracket as far as their multiple is concerned.

So they might get a business at three to four EBITDA multiple that's like a physical therapy practice, but then they with another dozen and now that puts them above a certain amount and now they're going to trade at an eight. So they basically like double, triple their money just by actually like cobbling together and you have no idea when you're selling it, you're just like, Oh, okay, whatever.

Cool. I want out, but [01:02:00] there's a lot of value in that. And it's honestly just understanding math and being able to. I get turned down a lot, and piece those together.

Alison: People could self organize that for sure. Like you could do like a land assembly essentially You can assemble clinics together and then take them to market but it is it's very tricky to sell a practice I think I went through that process with a My dad's clinic a couple of times where there was like chains that wanted to buy and I learned this is what I say like you learn so much so then I read through every single one of the documents they sent and I was like Yeah So they were actually, the offer they were giving them was stock based on like potential, basically trading value, not the current trading value of the stock.

And they just, I just feel like really, I feel like clinic owners were like your heel, like healthcare practitioners and very little time on technology, very little time in business. You certainly haven't been trained or learned any of that. In school, and I think it's almost a predatorial. It feels to me sometimes.

Danny: Yes,

Alison: it's very confusing. The [01:03:00] terms if you don't really look through and don't understand that you don't understand that you're getting ripped off sometimes, and there's the earnouts and all the way. Anyway, I just it makes me a little bit sad. But I also know that clinic owners have the profit margins are usually small because you haven't done a lot of work to try and ensure that you have a profit margin.

So making a clinic margin Actually like valuable enough to sell at a reasonable so that you can retire or there's a math to it So I don't I hope you teach that as part of your course Yeah,

Danny: we definitely do and but I mean they have to be big enough to where there's enough revenue, right?

That's the thing like we recently helped a practice sell earlier this year. There was a complete, it was Full cash offer sale actually to a retired physical therapist that had sold practices. So this guy was just a patient and he came to this practice and the guy had set it up to where it was basically he wasn't treating anymore.

He had done a really good job of building out the systems of the practice. They had a really strong clinical leader in place already. And they were in, they're in a good market, right? So when you looked at it, like he ended up getting, it was like a four or five X of EBITDA, [01:04:00] but he also had something that he could run from another city.

So when he set it up, it was like, Oh, this is a

Alison: Yeah. So frequently the owner is like the only thing holding the business together. So if you sell and leave now, everything disappears. Like all the profit margin is based on the owner. Working within the practice. So yeah, that makes it a lot harder to sell or you have to sell early with an earn out so that you can, they can replace you over like a couple of years.

You have to know you want to sell before you're wanting to sell and then set it all up. Yeah. It's super challenging. I talked to somebody once he was talking about how it's a real pendulum where it's like, everyone gets bought up and goes into these roll ups. chains. Everyone gets sick chains and pulls out and own practices again.

Where

Danny: more common in insurance It's funny. My first ment actually. So he was part A group that ended up they ended up growing and acquiring up I think at the time they had 26 or 28 practices in the texas area. They sold it to a big a big group of [01:05:00] other practices and eventually that sold it sold for a lot like multiple nine figure sort of range I don't know what percent he owned everybody but it was a good bet like he ended up doing really well and he actually just opened a a clinic that is in, it's a very interesting clinic.

I I haven't even talked to him about this yet. I just saw this recently. It's a physical therapy behavioral health, like mental health and ketamine clinic. Oh yeah. And it's going to be a, it's going to be like all under one, one roof. And I

was like,

this is fascinating, but he basically sold. And then eventually now he's doing this sort of like very niche.

I'm changing terminology for you, by the way, niche clinic. Oh, you

Alison: just did that for me. Thanks. I'll say it to you. Say that's interesting. I feel like they, I think there's a heat. I think massage is also undervalued in the like human touch,

Danny: right?

Alison: It's so powerful. Like non sexual human touch is just something that people don't get a lot of in adult life.

And I think massage is just it's just so powerful. There's a lot of studies linking it to The treatment for depression and, but it's just undervalued and understudied and under, it's not understood very well.

Danny: Manual therapists kill it. [01:06:00] Like the retention rate on a good manual therapist, whether it's a, a manual physical therapist, chiropractor or massage therapist, whatever.

It's like you develop such a strong bond with people. I completely agree with you. There's something to be said. And like the research is debatable and people that are like very. Exercise driven will always, talk shit about people that are mental therapists and vice versa. When really it's like a combination is healthy, but just put your hands on somebody.

If you do that and they feel, they're like, Oh my God, I feel comfortable. Like you can literally just even assisting somebody, if you're not, if you know what you're doing. You can feel them relax. And they're just like, Oh my gosh, like what's going

Alison: on. I think people like, especially in school, everything that you study is so based on the physical component of the body, like the musculoskeletal effects of everything.

I don't like the psychological component is huge. Obviously so kangaroo care, like they know that babies that get skin to skin do better. Tipping you put your, if a server puts your hand out, their hand on you, you tip more like there, we are human beings that need physical touch. And so if you go and stick someone on [01:07:00] like a hundred machines, walk away and then like they leave, you're just, you're actually just never going to get the same, I think, benefit as if you actually do put your hands on people in a non creepy way, not

Danny: in

Alison: a let's just be clear on what that's don't do that if you're going to be creepy. I have had a few creepy experiences with therapists before where you're just like, please don't. This is not working for me.

Danny: Yeah, you're professional. That's, but you're right though. There's definitely some, somebody said for that and you make an incredibly strong connection.

And a lot of people, that's enough to build a full caseload off of just on their own, which. If you're looking at, I see that a lot in massage therapy more than anywhere else where I don't, I think it's harder for them to grow past themselves because it's so it's you, I have to see you, my friend says you only, right?

And like to scale past yourself, I've found that seems to be even harder than our profession.

Alison: I think massage therapists though, if they understand why they're good, they can teach it to other people. But yeah, and BC is different to we have the our training for a massage therapist in BC is 3000 hours.

It's a very [01:08:00] different world than other places. Like we, I think we have the best trained massage therapist in the whole world.

Danny: Wow.

Alison: So that was one of our first markets for Jane, because they were so underserved because they're clean owners here. They can make a hundred grand a year. Like it's a great profession.

And they work very closely with Kairos and physios and other, like they're considered. So we once had a speaker come up, we were, I was at one of the conferences for BC massage conferences and a speaker came up from the U S and was like basically trying to convince the whole audience that it was good to understand like the medical And it was like, no, your audience this is not, this whole audience considers themselves like medical practice and they are very, there's a lot of like post like cancer treatments and like huge, it's a huge thing in BC and all across Canada.

Danny: Yeah, that's cool. No, there, there's definitely differences there. We've had a, we've had the opportunity to work with a handful of Canadian practices and, it is interesting to see the difference in practice act. And even recently I was in Europe, I was working with With one of my one of my mentors for a few days in [01:09:00] Milan.

And we had 30 different coaches and clinicians from seven different countries that were there. And just to learn about how a massage therapist in Hungary is working with people versus a natural path in Austria, or Italy. And and they also there's Italians do not fucking work out by the way, like the hell, like there's no

Alison: pizza keeps us.

I was in Italy. That's all we ate every restaurant. We're just like, did they do the pasta course and then they do the main course.

Danny: Totally.

Alison: Of course it's just the appy.

Danny: Yeah, no, you're right. And it's just like a lot of walking, smoking, gelato, and pasta. And they're all like, Relatively healthy looking so like they don't need gyms.

And so I was talking to like clinicians there and they're like, yeah The performance physical therapy thing doesn't really fit here unless you're working with athletes and in that case, I'm like, oh wow That's interesting. Like we actually have to work really hard not to be obese for a number of factors Yeah, it's really messed up.

Yeah, I've taken a hard look at our own food after I got back and I was like, wait a second, something is off here. We have all these things that are allowed in our food, but not in like other countries food. And [01:10:00] only place in the world that has a market for Ozempic is the freaking, U S for the most part, like everywhere else it doesn't exist.

So anyway, I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole because we don't have that much time. And I actually like, Definitely want to be, grateful for your time and we can leave it here. I do want to leave with one thing though. First of all, thank you so much for the conversation.

This has been a lot of fun for me just to be able to learn about Jane and learn about your experience. And hopefully everyone that's listened to this has got as much out of it as I have, but I'm interested for you You're, you're growing this company. What's it, what's the end game for Jane for you?

What's a win for you? What's a home run. If you can call it a shot, what does it look like before you go on to your next thing you're going to do? I know it's funny because we didn't intend to do this. Like it really was just to solve my own problem. And then I thought we were just going to be selling into BC and then it scaled from there.

Alison: But a win. What is a win to me? I think if someone wants to ask me the opposite, if Jane just like never just stayed the same now, this is steady state. We never change from here. And you're just running this business. I'm like, I would be so bored. Like I would have to [01:11:00] leave. So I would just be like, I can't do this anymore.

I can't just do the same thing over and over again every day. So luckily, The thing about scaling a company like Jane is that there's a billion problems to solve, like a billion problems all the time. There's always more we could be doing. So as long as I think we're expanding and growing and continuing to evolve as a company and as a team and our customers are delighted and there's always more to do, I'll be happy.

Right now, I think pure medical where our big eight, like our features that we're building right now, there's a lot of the labs and the facts, which I've been trying to get facts into Jane for five years. And I can't believe it's taken this long, but

Danny: that's the thing. Who knew?

Alison: I just my dentist and they said that they get that, like the scam facts.

They get the, I'm a prince and I have all this money. I need to get out of the country. I

Danny: need a loan. Wow.

Alison: Don't you think that's incredible? So I went back to my team and it's like building facts. I'm like, guess what? This is very relevant to the world. Okay. I was supposed to get [01:12:00] scammed. They don't have fax service, but I think like that functional medicine you were talking about.

And then we were starting to also work with people who are the medical aesthetic space is really fascinating because a lot of people from primary care from MDs and nurse practitioners, people who are doing injectables in here. Realize that they can go into private care, have more control, make a little more money.

And I actually have a family member that did this. He was a GP and he's semi retired and has gone into kind of medical aesthetics. And he said, he spends a lot of his time telling people to do a little less than they want, but he said, he just makes people happy constantly. He said he used to just make people sad.

Like they would just come to me, be sick. It was like terrible. And so in his, like just the end of his career, now he's getting to just make people feel really great, which. I think was, I thought was really interesting

Danny: lifestyle medicine. I know so many practitioners that are medical doctors that are just tired of reactive healthcare and they want to be a part of talking about movement and sleep and nutrition and stress management [01:13:00] community.

And it's yeah, of course you should do those, but you don't have time in a hospital or in a clinic where you're seeing 60 people in a day, so I see that happening and that, that trend happening in real time. I think it's going to be much, much bigger over the next five, 10 years.

Alison: And COVID burnt a lot of people out.

So there's that. And then, so that's right now, our focus is just on continuing to evolve. We're doing a lot in the patient side, which I'm excited about patient communication and the patient relationship. So I think that could be a hundred percent better than it is now. Everything could be better.

So next year, I think our theme is going to be MVP to MDP, which is minimal viable product. Product to minimal delightful product. So it's a lot of going through and making sure that everything that we're doing has made it to the delight bar. And the delight bar is always changing because the expectations continue to increase and delight just means that you've exceeded the expectation of the consumer basically.

And if the consumer keeps expecting more and more, you're, if you don't move your delight bar up, you're going to be failing. So just making sure that we're hitting that in as many places as we can, once we get these big eight features out of the way, they're going to be, I think that's the most of the product market fit [01:14:00] problem.

In the big eight. Anyway, that's a lot of words, but

Danny: you listen, you like what you do. You like the challenges you get to face. I think for a lot of people they don't feel that way, they don't feel content without being complacent, which is a difficult place to stay and to grow into.

So it's, I've really enjoyed, just getting a chance to chat with you and like I said, hopefully everyone listening to this has as well, I think what you've done with the software company is really impressive if anybody has. A practice and they're looking to get an EMR, which you really should versus try to document it on a Google drive is but it's really, it's very worth, it's very much worth looking to Jane everybody that we know that uses it really likes it.

And that's not that common in software. Most people bitch about software because it's just it's usually whatever, it's something you have to use. So anyway, I think part of the job

Alison: you hate the most, it's like the running of the business and the documentation. What are the things that.

Clinic owners hate the most running the documentation. I don't know why anyone likes us at all. I'm like, we basically spend all the time you spend with Jane is doing the things you hate the most. So that we, that anyone ever feels delighted feels like a real win to me. I'm

Danny: like, yeah, that's a funny, that's [01:15:00] a funny way to put it.

Cause it's you're right. It's the things that we dislike, but have to do, just to be able to do the work that we do. So anyway, Ali, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. This was a lot of fun for me. And yeah, hopefully we get a chance to chat again sometime.

I feel like I. It'll talk you for another hour and a half, but for now we'll call it. We'll call it quits.

Alison: Okay. Thanks so much for having me.

Danny: Cool. You got it. See ya.

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