Your Words Can Open Wallets

Andrea Watkins (00:04):
Well, hi there. I am Andrea Watkins, and if you're listening to this while juggling three patient calls, checking in a couple patients, taking a payment, selling skincare, and trying to catch your doctor in between procedures, you might be working in an aesthetic practice.

Blake Lucas (00:18):
And I'm Blake Lucas and this is Practiceland. This is not your doctor's podcast. Welcome back to Practiceland. I'm your host, Blake Lucas. We know you love it when we talk about money on this podcast and today's story starts in beautiful La Jolla, California where one team change the way they talk about money and watch their numbers climb by 58%. We're talking to the leader of this practice that is really good at talking about money. You may recognize her and it turns out cashflow follows conversation and that's what we're unpacking the science and the soul of making affordability feel effortless. Joining me on our panel today is Eva Sheie, founder of The Axis, a content marketing company helping aesthetic brands turn authentic conversations into trust. Welcome back, Eva.

Eva Sheie (01:06):
Hello.

Blake Lucas (01:07):
And we also have Bridgette DeBrino, CEO of Belvara Collective who brings over 15 years of experience in operations, clinical care and growth strategy for aesthetic practices. Welcome Bridgette.

Bridgette DeBrino (01:19):
Thank you. So excited to be here.

Blake Lucas (01:21):
And of course you may recognize Janelle Robinson, the COO of La Jolla Cosmetic Surgery Centre where she's seen a 58% lift in financing applications from 26% of consults last year to 50% this year just by changing the way her team talks about money. I really want to dive into that, but welcome Janelle.

Janelle Robinson (01:42):
Thank you.

Blake Lucas (01:43):
Eva. I know Janelle really well and her practice for a very long time, so I'm going to hand the reins over to you to let you start asking some of the questions today if that's okay.

Eva Sheie (01:53):
I got it. What I just thought of was this funny thing that Marie used to say, and so the reason Janelle and I know each other and know how each other thinks so well is because we both have been working for Marie Oleson over the course of our careers, and there's a funny Marie saying called, the story goes that she'd be walking around the office and someone would say, Hey Marie, what are you doing? And she'd say, looking for 5%. Do you know that one, Janelle?

Janelle Robinson (02:22):
Oh yes. I was wondering which one you were going to come up with because there's a lot of Marie.

Blake Lucas (02:27):
There's many.

Janelle Robinson (02:27):
Yes. Just looking for that 5%. Yes, I've heard that.

Eva Sheie (02:33):
Yes. Why does she say that though?

Janelle Robinson (02:37):
Because that 5% makes a huge difference.

Eva Sheie (02:40):
She would say if you could make a 5% improvement in one area, it could represent 250,000, half a million dollars in revenue over the course of a year, and so why wouldn't you look for 5%, but you actually found 58% and so we should really tell Marie you cracked the code.

Janelle Robinson (03:00):
Well, it wasn't 58% in the conversions, but it was still a huge growth. And yes, we did. We found that, and so I'm excited to share more about that.

Eva Sheie (03:10):
When you started, you were not the COO in the beginning. How did you get started in the practice and can you give us that story? So good.

Janelle Robinson (03:21):
Yeah, I started as the marketing coordinator and eventually worked my way into being a patient coordinator, which was really a nice transition because as a patient coordinator, when that phone rings, I really understood what it took to get that phone to ring and I had a deep respect for that caller and I took the quality of calls to another level. So now in my role as COO and managing the patient coordinator team, it is helpful because when I'm speaking to them and coaching them and introducing new methods, a lot of them are things I did and I know they worked. I think too, at least I hope they respond a little bit better hearing from somebody who's lived and breathed in a day in their shoes. So yeah, that journey really was helpful in being able to oversee the team now.

Eva Sheie (04:35):
Did you find yourself experimenting with the way you talked about money when you started speaking to patients?

Janelle Robinson (04:41):
All the time. All the time. Even just something as little as introducing yourself to the patient at the rooming process versus them coming to me at the end. If they hadn't met me when they first checked in, it was just like, oh, who are we walking to see now? Instead, if I roomed them from the beginning and passed them off to the nurse and doctor, when they did come to me to talk about the money, they were like, oh, you again, I was a familiar face instead of this. Oh, I'm going to this person who's going to deliver this scary news to me. And so we now do that to this day because I felt that difference. And the coordinators now report too. Yeah, that is a big difference for us. And so yeah, I would try different things all the time, just whatever made that conversation more comfortable, not just for them, it's more comfortable for us too.

Eva Sheie (05:45):
Was that kind of process experimentation built into your practice culture already?

Janelle Robinson (05:50):
Oh yeah. We're always reinventing ourselves and I think because that's always been at the core of who we are, people are always expecting something to change and they're open to it. Sometimes people are resistant to change, but we are always thinking of new ways to do things.

Blake Lucas (06:14):
I think all adults are resistant to change. I think from my experience it's it's so hard to get people to get out of their way, so to embrace change that is absolutely admirable.

Bridgette DeBrino (06:25):
One thing that stood out that you said is that it made them more comfortable and you or the team more comfortable. And while we talk about change, we just said it can be difficult or uncomfortable, but if you are striving to make things more seamless and easier and natural, I think that's such an important part of sales and connecting with a patient. If you truly believe it and understand it and want to offer it as a solution, they're going to feel that difference. So sometimes we get so caught up in what we should be doing, we miss what we could be doing, and there's just such different energy with how we deliver that. And I loved how you shared that. I can see why you're seeing such huge growth with that type of an approach.

Janelle Robinson (07:13):
And not making it just a list to check off and a criteria that they need to cover. Exactly.

Bridgette DeBrino (07:20):
And didn't you experience the fact that you started in one department and then evolved into another and then evolved into another? It had to have been incredible to see how one built onto the other. And did you find that you would take resources from where you started and then bring it into this new segment and then vice versa as you got more engaged perhaps with patients and hearing their verbiage and hearing how they were expressing things and what their concerns were, you probably could have taken that back to marketing and implemented it.

Janelle Robinson (07:52):
Absolutely. Yes, I did. And because there's so much on the front lines that you want to share that people are asking about, people are asking a lot about this type of lipo and it's so helpful for them to know that. And so I ask the team now still, what is it that you're hearing? What is holding people back or what do you think are some of the common interests or trends? So yeah, definitely that was helpful.

Bridgette DeBrino (08:23):
Have you found specific things that can help you to train your team with those thoughts in mind? Because when you experience it and feel the difference in how it's helped you in your career, how do you then bring that back to the people you're overseeing now so they can experience that as well?

Janelle Robinson (08:41):
So if anybody knows managing people, you can ask them to do something, introduce a concept, provide the training in all of the tools, but it really down to accountability and follow up and follow through. That's where I've learned over the years you've got to offer that continued support because they're going to go try it on a new concept and it's not going to feel right the first time. It takes practice to get more comfortable with it. And so we talk at our weekly meetings about how is that going? Tell me an example of when you did it and it didn't feel right or when it did feel good. Another thing that is very time consuming, but we've really invested in the last year is listening to the phone calls and we created a call evaluation that is very specific about not just mentioning something but how you mention it. And so definitely there's the follow through, but yet the accountability portion that really forces them to try it out because sometimes we all fall back into what's more comfortable and we start getting in a routine of how our calls are, the order they're in and how you do them. And so trying out a new method is intimidating sometimes, but if your call is going to be listened to and evaluated and we're going to be talking about it nonstop, there's that extra nudge and push to really embrace it.

Eva Sheie (10:29):
If they feel like something's not working for everybody, I don't mean I'm uncomfortable and I don't want to do this, but Janelle, you really told us to do something and it's failing. Do you feel like they feel safe enough to tell you that?

Janelle Robinson (10:46):
Yeah, definitely. And I think the biggest thing when you introduce a new concept is that you find the why in it for them. Because if you just say this is something that's going to boost conversions or have people utilizing payment plans more, it's not very motivating for the person and really at the end of the day you're trying to make their life easier too. And I mentioned that earlier and it's like this is going to feel once you get it down, it's going to feel really good and it's going to feel really easy and you're going to notice the results, which inevitably they benefit from too with some type of bonus structure. So you just remind them that this is for them. But yes, absolutely we go through how is this feeling and we make modifications if necessary. But yeah, you do have to be open to something not working.

Bridgette DeBrino (11:54):
Do you find that you're able to provide a generalized framework and then you can have different approaches work within that framework, or do you find that you tend to hire the same or a similar personality for these specific roles who maybe talk or express themselves the same way? Or do you find that you can have polar opposites but still accomplishing the same goal?

Janelle Robinson (12:20):
I have struggled for so many years on what is the right personality for patient coordinator because it's also such a detail oriented role where you have so many things that you've got to make sure you do to help them prepare and make sure nothing slips through the cracks, and you have to be really disciplined to follow the processes in terms of the follow up that we recommend. But sometimes those types of people are not the most outgoing or naturally engaging. And so that's where providing some, you provide the framework, but you also give examples of what would that look like to if you're asking them to share a story or to develop some rapport like pulling from previous experiences and giving them examples. Depending on if you're talking to a mom, share another mom's story, and so it doesn't have to be your work, you can kind of pull from someone else. And so really just providing those tools and different scenarios if somebody isn't naturally as strong connecting with people because that is a big part of the patient coordinator role is the connection piece.

Eva Sheie (13:46):
You have me thinking about mirroring a little bit, Janelle, and I think it's something in sales that is overlooked or it doesn't come up until you're kind of down the road of being in a role like that. And I noticed it when I called a practice for myself for an appointment a couple of weeks ago that the very clearly 20 something year old person on the phone, everything I said, she would say perfect. And by the end of the call I was like, I cannot hang up fast enough. I do not belong in this practice.

Janelle Robinson (14:21):
Well, and if you did a call evaluation or listened to the call and if she listened back with her manager together, I mean she probably doesn't even realize how she's sounding. And that's another thing that's been really helpful is actually listening together to the call because we all think we're doing the right thing or doing a good job, but you don't really realize how that ends up sounding, and so it's really helpful for them to hear the calls too.

Blake Lucas (14:52):
Yeah, we've implemented that on our side, just on our customer service side of it and through coaching and we sit down and we listen through stuff and I mean it's amazing how you just have the moment to stop and go, okay, let's think about where we are in this conversation or what's happens up until this point and start asking questions. How do you feel like you're doing in probing for information and getting the information that you need? And then do you feel like you're presenting something too quickly and just trying to get to the answer without really showing empathy and listening? Do you think they're with you? Go through all those different things and then they can hear it. You can literally hear it like, no, I didn't do this, or No, I did great here and that's why I like this conversation went well. But you can start to pinpoint those exact moments in the conversation where you lost them, where obviously if you're just in the conversation, you're not going back and listening. It happens too fast sometimes for people to catch. If they don't have that, they're not listening for it while they're going. They maybe don't have the experience like that 20 something year old may not have enough experience under their belt yet to hear when they've lost someone in the conversation.

Eva Sheie (16:03):
I was just scheduling an appointment

Blake Lucas (16:06):
And it's just like, oh, but if you hear it, you're like, this person did not want to talk to you. And they're like, wow, I had no idea. I thought I was being so nice. And it's like

Bridgette DeBrino (16:14):
She probably did. I love how you're using questions though to dive into that conversation with your team, find out so much more. Oftentimes they may bring up something we could have missed. Just because you may be overseeing something doesn't necessarily mean that we catch things a hundred percent of the time either. So by facilitating a conversation versus just a directive, I think it allows for both parties to be able to potentially expand and explore and really make it better because, well, I heard this or I interpret it this way, and then you can really get down to the nitty gritty and it feels like you're building something together collectively and working towards it, which helps us to be more natural how we started that conversation.

Blake Lucas (16:55):
Absolutely. I think for me, what I try not to do is be the subject matter expert in that conversation, although I may have in my mind this is exactly what I need and what I want and I'm not hearing it and I don't want to just tell them that right if it's delivered to, and most adults are not going to receive that well. They're already, most people's walls go right up. Once you start to be critical of whatever it is that they did, they're going to get defensive. It's just a natural reaction. So to help get around that is to not to be necessarily the subject matter expert in that moment and be the all-knowing entity in that conversation, but rather try to get it out of them. Love that. It's almost this inception type of idea. It's their idea.

Bridgette DeBrino (17:46):
Yeah,

Blake Lucas (17:47):
You're just asking questions and then they're like, yeah, that did sound like this, or it did sound like that. And they're like, yeah, how could we have done that better then? And then they give it to you and you're like, that's perfect. That's exactly what we're looking for. Let's move on. They already kind of know the answer. It's Socratic method almost, or it's like they already know the answer. They just need you to ask the right questions to get it out of them.

Janelle Robinson (18:08):
And they'll own it much more when they're the ones that identified it. Yeah.

Eva Sheie (18:13):
Does this process of listening to calls with people that you work with ever reveal other things about who they are?

Blake Lucas (18:21):
That's a deep one.

Bridgette DeBrino (18:22):
Very much yes.

Janelle Robinson (18:22):
It's a very hard process. I think overall we're really impressed with the quality, but it's interesting because from the beginning when we first started listening to now, it's already significantly improved because they are well aware that we've done this and we've kept up on it. Sometimes it's like we say we're going to do something, we do it, but we don't really, it kind of ends up falling off and because we've been really consistent about doing these on a weekly basis and then doing shout outs for calls that go in the training file, it's almost like they're working towards their call being in that I want my call to be in the training file. And so I feel overall, I'm mostly very impressed with how it's going, but I think it's because the act of us overseeing this that's improved the quality.

Eva Sheie (19:30):
I want to point out the shout out thing because I myself have been the recipient of the shout outs from your practice because sometimes patients will say that the podcast, your podcast, I mean, they're welcome to listen to practice land too, but when they listen to the La Jolla cosmetic podcast and they come in and say, it was this episode or it was this topic, or I heard one of your doctors talking about this thing and I knew they were the doctor for me, those shout outs get passed along to me and they're the number one most important thing about the work I do because I know that I'm having an impact.

Janelle Robinson (20:06):
Yes, yes. It's so huge. And then you're more motivated to keep doing it because it was acknowledged, recognized, and it made a difference. And that again goes back to why you're doing something because it feels good.

Eva Sheie (20:27):
So we're here because you made a change that you could hear implemented by listening to calls, which was that last year 26% of the people you had coming in for consult had applied for a payment plan, and now the number is 50%. And so how did you get from 26 to 50 in less than one year?

Janelle Robinson (20:51):
So the first thing that we did was we changed the way we talk about financing on the phone. And it's not just about asking, it's about having an, everyone wants this approach. So that's where I came up with an acronym for them, the coordinators to really use as a reminder. And then when we have this criteria on our call evaluation, it's not, did you just talk about financing? It's did you use this approach, which we call the ease approach, and we want them to do it in a way that says, everyone does this. This is just part of our process. And share a story about, I know you mentioned you may not use a payment plan, however, a lot of people do come in and later realize that they want to take advantage of the interest free and just it feels a little bit easier for them to move forward.

(21:59):
If you apply prior to your consult, then we can have a comprehensive discussion. You don't even have to end up using it, but you can at least be able to visualize what all of your payment options are, and you can share a story about somebody who didn't think they were going to use a payment plan and then ended up having some unexpected expenses with their kids or this or that, and you're just normalizing it and saying, everyone asks about this. Our patients love our payment plans. One in three of our patients end up using them. And then it just creates this instant comfortability for the patient to talk about it more. And on some of these follow-up sessions with the coordinators, when I've asked them how is it going, because we want them to also do the payment worksheets with the quotes. So when I've said, oh, did you do a payment worksheet for all of your consults yesterday?

(23:00):
And they'll say, well, no. So-and-so said they didn't want to finance, but you still have to do the worksheet, still have the conversation, still put it in front of them because you never know something could change and you want them to have this in the back of their minds as a crutch or a backup. So yeah, we are kind of hitting it at all angles. We updated our appointment confirmation email to say, step one, fill out your registration forms. Step two, apply for this soft inquiry check, however we worded it. But it's in there as just like it's a part of the process. It's not if you to apply, here's a link. It's kind of like a presumptive approach. So yeah, we have been talking a lot about how that feels when they're introducing it on the phone. And it's definitely made a difference in not just the amount of people that come pre-approved or have this as a means to pay, but it's improving our conversion rates and inevitably we're not just meeting our goals this year, we're exceeding. So it's been really exciting to feel like it is contributing to our ability to fill the surgery schedule and which is a win-win for everyone.

Blake Lucas (24:33):
I really love that. I think it speaks to how people love options and when you get to that moment where you can talk about the cost to have multiple options in front of you where if you want to pay cash, of course you can do that, but then here are these monthly payment options that are also available to you now, having that already done by the time you get there as opposed to, Hey, here's the cost. And then you could apply for financing if you want, but if you have all those options available, all of a sudden that changes the conversation, I think. Do you feel like patients feel that in that moment or is that where you're seeing is the difference maker in that moment?

Janelle Robinson (25:10):
Yeah, because think about if you deliver a quote without the payment scenarios alongside it, you might say, and here are some of your payment options. Would you like me to let you know what your monthly payment would be or would you like to apply? And it's like a barrier then for them. And then do they want admit that they want to look into that and is it a bad thing if they say they do, it's just an extra step and instead you're presenting it to them, this is a totally normal way to pay. And here they can immediately visualize what that would look like on a monthly basis. And if you had them apply ahead of time, it's actually they then print the payment scenarios specific to them and what their APR that they qualified for, which is even a bonus

Blake Lucas (26:08):
That's even better.

Eva Sheie (26:09):
I can say just from looking at the calculator a ton this week that my reaction to everything is that's all. No matter what number I put in, I'm like, that's doable.

Janelle Robinson (26:23):
And it could just be a portion of it too.

Blake Lucas (26:26):
It doesn't have to be the full amount. You can put this much money down and then finance the rest or do a payment plan for the rest.

Eva Sheie (26:34):
So you have your coordinators fill out a sheet for every phone call.

Janelle Robinson (26:39):
We sort of intentionally organize the sheet based on how we want the flow of the call to go. And so the demographics are supposed to be last. I don't want you asking somebody's address, date of birth and all of that unless you really establish the report. So all of the notes and everything like referral source, how did you hear about us? All of that is in the beginning. And then there's a lot of lines for them to take their notes. And back to the open-ended questions that you said, Blake, it's like you don't even have to sometimes go over things. If you just ask a really open-ended question, you can check off most of what you need to accomplish in the call. And I've said, don't lead the call with the date of birth. It's so off putting if that's one of the first things you say. Because if you just ask them, tell me about your breasts, they will usually tell you their age right out of the gate because some people say, oh, I like to know the age. And it's like, well, they'll tell you I'm 34, I just breastfed two children and I'm done all of that. They'll sort of divulge it naturally. And so you don't even have to then sometimes ask all of those things. And so it's kind of just hunker down on your sheet and just have a girlfriend chat with them and take your notes and hopefully it's less, you have to ask them later.

Eva Sheie (28:15):
So when you are trying to introduce a change to the way that that flow goes, are you actually changing their worksheet, which sounds like it's a bit of a script, but not a word for word thing.

Janelle Robinson (28:27):
I do. We've changed the worksheet several times and for the financing that is on the section year where they give the ballpark, and we've even encouraged them to give ballpark monthly payments too. But ultimately where we ask them to do the ease approach and that concept, we don't have the, it's more just if you're going to talk about financing, this is how we want you to talk about it.

Eva Sheie (28:58):
I know you're the pioneers of the ballpark. You told us at the beginning that you had it on the website, gosh, 15, maybe more than 15 years ago. We know from a lot of the work we've done with Marie that when people are prepared for the price of their procedure, ahead of their consultation, they're twice as likely to schedule on the day of consultation. So you're setting yourself up for everyone up for success when they know that number ahead then, so with ease, which is your acronym, EASE, which I know because you sent it over ahead of time, that's where we're taking that sort of preparedness approach to the next level. But I think it would be interesting to know what EASE stands for, and if you don't mind defining it for us, I hope you're not giving away trade secrets here.

Blake Lucas (29:48):
Yeah, this is the secret sauce.

Janelle Robinson (29:50):
No, it's fine, because it really EASE in itself speaks for itself and for them to remember. Everyone asks, Assume interest, Share a story and Empower the choice. We want this to be an easy discussion, but we also want to remember that when they're telling that story or introducing this concept that they normalize it with a patient. Everybody wants to know about our payment plans and they can share a story about a patient and how they found it helpful, and you just assume they want to hear about it, and then it doesn't have to be awkward. You just assume. And again, it makes it less intimidating for the coordinator too when they're having that money discussion.

Bridgette DeBrino (30:53):
Now, after they fill out this sheet with all this data around this patient, what happens to it? Are you uploading it to their chart? Are they putting it? Are they typing it out at that point, taking a picture? How do you use that moving forward? Do other team members tap into it?

Janelle Robinson (31:10):
Yes, we do upload it to the chart, but then we also have it, we inevitably upload it later to the chart, but we have it physically out, so when they check in, the coordinator can review the sheet. They do input the notes and the appointment details too, which now we're actually getting AI summaries from our phone calls that make it easier for them so they don't have to type up all of the notes from the sheet. But it is helpful to refer back to, especially when somebody's looking back to see what was the original thing that they called about, just in case the discussion went beyond that. We can circle back on the initial driving reason for the call.

Eva Sheie (32:00):
How did your team react when you introduced this? The EASE?

Janelle Robinson (32:05):
They were a little overwhelmed at first because I feel like we already have pretty tall orders for the new patient calls.

Blake Lucas (32:15):
I'm sure.

Janelle Robinson (32:17):
So yeah, they were definitely like, oh my gosh, this is another thing I've got to think about covering. And really it's not meant to be another, it's really meant to be a tool and to be helpful, and you already are having this discussion about pricing and how they're going to pay. It's just a matter of switching how you do it to make your life easier, really.

Eva Sheie (32:45):
Did the surgeons, you have six surgeons, right? Did they notice any difference when you changed this?

Blake Lucas (32:51):
They're busier.

Janelle Robinson (32:52):
So yeah, they're busy. Yes, that is the change. They just didn't know why or how.

Blake Lucas (32:59):
Yeah.

Janelle Robinson (32:59):
Yeah. No, they haven't said anything. I mean really usually no news is good news. If they start to feel like they're seeing quarterly qualified patients, you usually hear about it. So I'll take that as a positive. I haven't heard any complaints about the quality of their consults.

Eva Sheie (33:20):
That's the dream right there. There's a podcast that I listen to a lot, and it's more of a business podcast, but there was a recent episode where this person who has acquired, he was just a genius at scaling and sales and has acquired I think hundreds of companies now, and it's called The Game. If anybody's curious and wants to listen, if you like sales strategy, it's really useful. And there was an episode where he was talking about himself, his own behavior, and he said when he changes something, he admitted, I'm a tinkerer. I like to mess with processes and I like to try to always make them better. And that's the dream, that's the goal. You're always making things better, better, better, better. But he noticed that when he made a change, it actually would have the reverse effect and they would struggle for several months, I think he said three to five months of serious process pain because the change caused them so much, it caused them to slow down so much. And so then he said, well, I decided next time I want to make a change, I'm going to write it on a piece of paper and put it in my pocket, and if a month goes by and I still want to make the change, then I might ask someone else, do you think we should do this? So he basically handcuffed himself for making changes until he was absolutely sure that he wanted to go through the pain to get to the other side. And so I wonder if this resonates with any of you guys and in your own work that have you ever questioned whether making a big change? Obviously this one was worth it, Janelle, we wouldn't be here if it hadn't worked out fine, but I'm curious what you all think about that concept.

Bridgette DeBrino (35:16):
I'll chime in there.

Janelle Robinson (35:17):
I can definitely see that happening. I mean, especially for example of a software change. Anytime you do that, I mean that's a given, but you do you kind of throw someone off and add sort of extra clutter in their mind to be able to focus or just a change in the workflow? Yeah, I could see that. And maybe that's where extra training to get their comfort with it before they're trying it on with the patient doing role playing and things like that. So other people are sort of the Guinea pigs and not the patients.

Bridgette DeBrino (35:58):
I think too, you said something important. He paused and he sat with it for a minute and then he brought it to somebody else on his team and he let them sit with it for a minute. And oftentimes when you have individuals who want to push an organization forward, they tend to have a lot of energy and excitement and they get excited about a change and they're just like, let's go. Let's do this. And excitement is important because it's momentum and it creates that movement to help people to carry on, but we can lose consistency through that excitement and then that change becomes so much more stressful and we lose sight on why we're even bringing change into the conversation to begin with. So if the change is to support a goal, and if we can get clear on a goal and maybe have three things that we're working on throughout the year, then when you bring these changes up, if that change aligns with one of the goals, it's easier for the team to get aligned with it and it will make sense for them to make the change because it's leading towards something that everybody agreed on at the very beginning.

(37:11):
If it isn't aligned, then maybe we put it on the back burner and we let that be part of next year or next quarter or whatever the case may be. But having everybody buy into it and making it feel like it's a collective decision, I think can oftentimes help when deciding whether or not change is worth it.

Janelle Robinson (37:28):
Well, and if you don't introduce something that maybe has legs to stand on, you're going to start losing credibility when you introduce the next thing.

Blake Lucas (37:39):
Yeah, I think there's so many lessons that PatientFi learned early on in its life that we look back fondly on now, but they're just decisions that we made that were very reactive. We would get feedback from providers or from patients. And for us, one of the greatest assets that we've ever had is that we can move quickly. We have an amazing development team. We have really intelligent leadership that can course correct or change and pivot and move very, very quickly. But one of the harder lessons that we had to learn is there needs to be more nos. There needs to be a thousand nos for every. Yes. I think it was a famous thing that Apple used to come up with is that, yes, we can do that. We can almost do anything that we want to do when it comes down to it from a technical standpoint, but should we do it?

(38:35):
And so we learned some really difficult lessons very early on that like, Hey, yes, this might make the experience incredibly easy and super, super fast, but then it creates all of these problems on the backend that all of a sudden now we're doing all this cleanup and it's maybe wasn't the right thing to do from a business standpoint and really detrimental to the business and creating so much extra work. Now when we are faced with those things, and we have an amazing ad board of provider consultants that help us and we bring things to them and we use them as a sounding board, which I think is incredible, and then we go back and forth and then we have discussions internally and those get heated. They can at times what's always constructive, which I think is incredible. And so we can come out of those conversations knowing that whatever decision we decided to move forward with was the right one.

Eva Sheie (39:32):
Janelle's point earlier about making sure you follow through and bring it back around to full circle when you do make a big change with people is not lost on me, and I am thinking about working somewhere that was pretty amazing, and things were going in the wrong direction, and they did the right thing, and they came to the whole company and said, what do we need to do? Everybody chip in your ideas so we can turn this thing around. And everyone went, oh, this is amazing. You're listening to us finally. And so we had this huge effort to identify all the things that needed to happen. And then guess what happened after that

Blake Lucas (40:16):
Company turned it around?

Eva Sheie (40:17):
Nothing. No, Blake?

Blake Lucas (40:21):
Oh no, there's no happy ending to this one.

Eva Sheie (40:23):
There is not.

Blake Lucas (40:25):
Oh, no. You always hope

Eva Sheie (40:28):
There might still be someday we hope. I don't know.

Janelle Robinson (40:33):
It's so important for morale for people to feel like that we do care about their feedback and that we do listen. And it's funny because I've actually been sitting on an idea for a couple of months and when you said, oh, what are you going to do next? When you gave that example, because actually an overthinker. So I have been sitting on something for a couple months with the way the coordinator team is structured and I've ran it by them. This is what I'm thinking about doing and gotten their feedback, and they all seem to think it would be really helpful. So yeah, I'm just going to flush out a couple of things, but when you do get their feedback, there's so many different perspectives that you don't consider. I have my objectives that I'm trying to accomplish, but they do think of things that you don't think of and it can really help you fine tune something so that you're not discovering those things like you mentioned Blake, these unintended consequences later. So yeah, I think that it is a very good way to go about a change.

Bridgette DeBrino (41:53):
And I really liked how Blake mentioned that the conversation can sometimes get heated or there could be a lot of information behind it. There's a book that I was introduced to that I absolutely love, the Five Dysfunctions of a Team or something to that effect. Oh

Blake Lucas (42:07):
Yeah,

Bridgette DeBrino (42:07):
It talks heavily about how important it is to be able to sit in a room with your team and disagree, and it's not a matter of being defensive or trying to protect your ego. It's quite the opposite actually. It's bringing up these different perspectives. It's bringing up different ways of thinking through things and talking about psychology. We don't always know the nitty gritties of people's personal builds and where they're coming from, and they may have never had an opportunity to have somebody encourage them with their ideas or their perspective. Maybe they always got shut down. Maybe they think that they are not smart enough to speak up in the room and oftentimes are some of the most brilliant insights you could possibly ask for. So just by fostering that encouragement and allowing people to feel comfortable to have conversations, whether they agree or don't, I think allows for so many beautiful and incredible insights that we can then to Eva's point, take action on. Because if we don't, we're just sitting there talking, there's nothing more exhausting than that, then that is not that we have defeated the purpose. Yeah, absolutely. So it's definitely important to be able to foster that type of a community.

Eva Sheie (43:27):
Janelle, I want to just close this out with one final question, which is of course, what were the results of implementing EASE? Not necessarily how many dollars, but is there a percentage increase? I think it struck me when you said that what we're hearing from most practices is that we're in dire straits, and it sounds like you're doing better than a year ago.

Janelle Robinson (43:51):
We are. We're not just exceeding our previous year, but we're exceeding our goals. And we have seen a shift of more people utilizing payment plans than paying cash. So if there have been any concerns from patients with the affordability or what's going on in the economy, this has provided a tool and just getting it more out there and in front of them, it definitely has impacted our conversions.

Eva Sheie (44:26):
If I could throw one more thing in for all of you to consider, there's something Janelle said to me on a podcast years ago, similar topic, but it was more about how to get patients to think about allowing themselves to say yes psychologically. So if you've got the money part figured out, you know how you're going to pay for it, you're halfway there. The other one is allowing yourself to do something like have cosmetic surgery for yourself. And I've sat with this idea of Janelle's for years because what you said was, why would you save money for five years to do this when you could do it now and enjoy it for five more years? And that one, I understood it when you said it, but I never really felt it a hundred percent in my body. This logic makes sense to me because I've been trying to repeat it back to other people, and it just happened because my sister and her family, they live in an amazing house.

(45:29):
It's completely fine. They did not need a new house, but there were things about it that they didn't love. All of us could probably look around our house and go, oh, I wish that room was bigger or whatever. And they decided to give up their 2% interest rate and get into a bigger house, better house with a better layout and a better yard and a better neighborhood, and take this 7% interest rate. And so we had this conversation where she was like, we just didn't want our kids to not enjoy living in an amazing house because our interest rate was two and instead of seven, we were sacrificing this happiness that we could have for a very short season. All of us with kids know that they're only going to be little for this what seems like forever when they're babies, right? You're like, this is going to be an eternity. It goes by so fast. So now I really understood what Janelle meant when she said that about financing or payment plans, is that if the thing that you want to give you joy is looking a different way or feeling a different way about your body, you should enjoy it for as long as you can and not delay it for something

Janelle Robinson (46:48):
And don't wait for all of the stars to align. I mean, think about if your sister would've waited until the interest rates go down, or a patient waited until they had the money saved up, and then by the time they get the money saved up, they just have a crazy busy year and their kids are in a ton of activities, and now they can't afford to be out recovering. I mean, it's like if you've got the time, just do it. And you can make it work with a payment plan if you're financially not quite there. So yeah, it really is hard to have that all work together sometimes.

Eva Sheie (47:26):
Final wisdom from Bridgette, what do you got?

Bridgette DeBrino (47:30):
I think collaboration and consistency, just really striving to bring clarity to the conversation can make a huge difference. And I love how Janelle's team is incorporating that clarity from step one, and then they're carrying it through the entire process and then tying that clarity to the entire team through the different processes that you've built out just with the forms and implementing it into the software. So I love that I can see why you've doubled you exposure to opportunity.

Eva Sheie (48:06):
Andrea Watkins always says clarity is kindness, and that's what that means.

Bridgette DeBrino (48:11):
I love that. I love that.

Blake Lucas (48:13):
Well, Janelle, thank you again for your time today. I think there are some amazing things that our listeners can take back with them just right away and implement. So I'm very excited about getting this episode out to everyone. La Jolla is doing some really interesting stuff online. Where can we follow you guys for more to kind of see what you're doing?

Janelle Robinson (48:33):
Yeah, follow our Instagram page forward slash LJCSC, and we've got a variety of things there that are really exciting to see.

Blake Lucas (48:44):
Amazing. And listeners, if you have a question for any of our guests, feel free to send us a message on practicelandpodcast.com. We love the interactions that we're getting from you and we're implementing them in future episodes, so please do not hesitate to reach out to us. But stay fabulous and we'll catch you next time. Bye-bye

Janelle Robinson (49:05):
Bye.

Blake Lucas (49:08):
Got a wild customer service story or a sticky patient situation? Send us a message or voicemail if your tale makes it into our "She did what?" segment, we'll send a thank you gift you'll actually love. Promise no cheap swag here.

Andrea Watkins (49:20):
Are you one of us? Subscribe for new episode notifications and more at practicelandpodcast.com. New episodes drop weekly on YouTube and everywhere you can listen to podcasts.