Sustainable growth for mental health practices with Sean McColl

Dan King: [0:00] Hello, everyone. Daniel King here with Sean McColl. He is the founder of Trusted Business Advisors. He is a very sharp consultant to business owners of all kinds. Sean, welcome. How is South Carolina doing today? Sean McColl: [0:13] It's nice. It's a beautiful day here. Thank you. Dan King: [0:16] Excellent. I'm glad to hear it. So, Sean, how would you summarize what you do and how is it relevant for owners of mental health practices? Sean McColl: [0:24] Yeah. What I do is I help business owners, which owners of practices are, find and generate additional clients that helps them increase their overall revenue and clients, and profits rather, and do it in a quick way and often inexpensively. And I've worked with small business owners of different types over the years, and I've developed an understanding of the complex issues, that are facing most small business owners and certainly in the volatile economy we have today. And I've also developed an understanding of some of the ways to help them get to the right strategies in the correct order so that they can make their practice grow and be as effective as possible, which is ultimately what they set out to do and to help people. Dan King: [1:05] And what's your philosophy on how a typical business owner you work with can grow their practice? Sean McColl: [1:10] Yeah, a lot of times people make the mistake of thinking they have to incorporate huge changes or make radical shifts in what they're doing. And not dissimilar to therapy, small incremental changes over time that are sustained are often where the biggest results come from. So we help them to do that. And a lot of times it involves streamlining operations so they can realize the full potential of business and they can better help people, which is what they went into business for in the first place. Navigating the often complex landscape of running a business is daunting and Sean McColl: [1:42] typically juggling multiple hats and countless responsibilities. And if you haven't done that before, if you've never been the owner, it can be even more daunting. And that's where we can come in and work with them and help make a difference. Dan King: [1:52] No question it can be daunting. So I think about a lot of folks, either in our audience, who I just generally run into in the mental health business, I run into a lot of folks who are potentially stuck between the two to four million revenue mark, kind of somewhere within there. And they were able to get their business off the ground relatively quickly, but they hit this plateau and they're not 100% sure why or how to transcend it. What would be some general ways you would approach helping them figure it out? Sean McColl: [2:21] Yeah. And then that's not uncommon. A lot of times what we see is what got you here is not going to get you there. So when your practice is starting out and you're very involved in all things and you've got your hands in everything, and that's ultimately what helped you get to this point. But at a certain point, there's only so many hours in a day and you're not going to be able to do that. And so you need to be much more strategic. You need to learn how to delegate. You need to set your priorities, focus on what truly matters, eliminate the distractions, and become as efficient as possible and ultimately have a strategic plan, which is just a roadmap with a goal in mind and how you're going to get there. And you also, just like driving a car and your GPS, if there's a detour or roadblock or traffic, it happens, you acknowledge it and you figure out a way around it, but you don't lose sight of what your goal is. Dan King: [3:06] Okay. And concretely, what would be some questions that you might ask someone who is, you know, I don't think it's fair to say, what specific advice would you give someone in that situation? Because you don't know their specific case. But what kinds of questions might you ask them to help begin that journey? Sean McColl: [3:24] Well, Dan, you've got it exactly right. Again, you know, drawn a parallel with Sean McColl: [3:29] therapists, there's a lot of questions involved. So I like to say to people, I don't have all the answers, but I do need some good questions to ask. And, you know, it gets down to, you know, what are your goals and commitments? Someone might say, hey, I want to get to a $2 million practice, or I want to have this many people, or I want to have this many clients and help them. And so the first thing is, you know, what do you want out of this? Is it, you know, to help as many people as possible? Is it to, you know, work only a certain number of hours per week so that you have time for your family or other commitments or other things that are important to you? And, you know, do you want a certain number of people? Do you want to outsource certain things, you know, accounting or things like that so you can focus still on helping people working with clients? Or do you want to just work with your existing therapists in your practice and helping them reach their goals? And so it all starts on that. And then we can kind of get into more of the specifics, okay? You know, if they want to grow, how do they, enhance their leadership skills, their communications abilities, their decision-making prowess as they navigate the complexities of growing a business and ultimately being an entrepreneur. Dan King: [4:28] Yeah. It is very easy to lose sight of why you started it in the first place. And of course, your goals can evolve over time. The version of you that started the business might want different things from the version of you that's in the operator's seat today. Sean McColl: [4:40] That's exactly right. Dan King: [4:41] How would you then, so let's say, you know, you are working with a business owner and you ask them those questions and they give you an answer like, all right, you know, I want to get to a point where a lot of the day-to-day operations are taken off of my hands. I have a number two who is in place who can kind of run the day-to-day operations. We've scaled from two to say five million and, you know, we're at somewhere between 15 to 20% net margins. That's where I want to get to. Dan King: [5:10] What might your next steps be to help them get there? Sean McColl: [5:13] Yeah. So, I mean, what you need to start with is similar to building a house where you need to build a solid foundation. And then on top of that, you know, that's where you're able to move to the next level. So your long-term success, your sustainable growth, the ability to adapt to changing market dynamics, to capitalize on emerging opportunities. Maybe there's another practice that comes on the market or you meet someone who has a practice and they're looking to retire and it'd be a good fit synergistically with what you have. And you want to be in a position to be able to, you know, to bring them in or to acquire that. You also want to be able to future-proof your own business against potential threats. So these are all things we would ask them about. And then based on their responses, we'd help them craft, you know, a plan to get there. Dan King: [5:55] And do you help them implement that plan as well? Sean McColl: [5:57] We do. And a lot of it is holding them accountable. We help them figure out their goals and commitments. It's theirs to set, but we might ask them questions along the way. And then we provide the ongoing support, the encouragement. We give constructive feedback. We help them celebrate their wins and stay motivated, even in the face of challenges, which we all know there's going to be from time to time, no matter how well laid your plans are. No question. Dan King: [6:20] No question. There is no perfect plan. And every plan we come up with is going to have to evolve. And speaking of which, I know that you work with a dashboard tool that I'm sure is very useful for accountability. Could you share more about that? Sean McColl: [6:33] Yeah, so we've got something we call the Gem Start 12. It's an operating system. And what it is, is it's based on the 12 key principles that were reverse engineered from some of the biggest and most successful companies, think Amazon or McDonald's or Subway, but can be applied to businesses of any size or to a practice. And there's certain things like cutting costs. A lot of businesses lose track of expenses. They haven't audited their suppliers or maybe they're utilizing a supplier a lot more, giving a lot more business to that supplier than they did when they first started. And now they're eligible for volume discounts or breaks. And so that's a great place to start is saying, what are some of the costs we can cut? And oftentimes it's just by asking for it. But the nice thing about cost cutting is that it's immediate. If you invest in marketing or outreach, it can take time. You have to invest. It takes a while to see the returns of new clients coming into the practice, them starting to pay, getting paid by the insurance that can be three, four, five, six months or more. Whereas if you go to a supplier of, you know, maybe someone who provides office products to your office or does some sort of services or something where you're buying more of it and you ask them for some sort of considerations and they give it to you, that's immediate. That goes to your bottom line right away. And the other thing is, you know, if you save $1,000, that's $1,000 in profit. If you've got a net margin... And, you know, if 10 or 20% and you make an additional $1,000. Sean McColl: [7:57] What you're going to see a hundred or $200 at it. With the cost, you see the full $1,000 that you just saved. You know, there's also things where it may be worth looking at things, you know, where, you know, if you've got, let's say, so a patient who for whatever reason can't afford your normal rates, you talk to them about things about maybe it's a group therapy practice and you get several people together who otherwise say, I couldn't afford it, but I could afford this. And all of a sudden you're still willing to offer them something where they stay as a patient and you continue to generate revenue as well. Alliances and joint ventures, finding other people within the community who are in a position who could refer people to you and who you can refer people back to. So that's a constant source of new potential patients for the practice. Those are just some of the examples of things that we do and we help people see. None of these require huge expenditures of marketing or advertising budgets. These are all things that can impact the practice positively and profits without having an adverse impact on the bottom line. Dan King: [8:51] So is the dashboard always paired with your advisory work or is it used independently? Sean McColl: [8:58] Yeah. So we do have, you know, as you mentioned, there's a dashboard where people can go in, anyone can go in and they can plug in their own numbers and they can get a report or they can see what, you know, what the small incremental, what a 3% reduction in costs looks like to their business. And you might be surprised at how big it is. I know you've seen it, Dan. And then they can do that. But where we come in oftentimes is people look at it and say, okay, I can see where I could realize, you know, Sean McColl: [9:21] six figures in increased profit without cutting any services or having to expend different things. How do I do that? can you help us? And of course, the answer is yes, we can help them while we're happy to do so. Dan King: [9:31] So it's not just an opportunity to track metrics and sort of see how a plan that you've devised together is working in the real world. It's also a sort of issue spotting tool. It's an opportunity to see, hey, beyond the plan that we've come up with, we're going to spot possibilities, not just issues and problems, but possibilities that we haven't seen before. Sean McColl: [9:54] Yeah. I mean, you know, your audience understands that having a third party, an impartial third party looking at a situation can often yield alternatives or ideas or suggestions that maybe the people involved directly don't see. And we offer the same thing. We can look at things. Oftentimes a business develops blind spots, something it's just been there for so long. They just accept it as the way it is. But when asked about it, say, what would it look like if we were to change this? Or have you ever thought about doing this differently? Or how about that? Or, hey, there's something out there. that might be good. Have you ever looked into this or talked to someone about this? And oftentimes, those types of suggestions along with encouragement and some insight and advice, again, third-party advice, looking at it from the outside, Sean McColl: [10:35] ends up being very effective for our clients and they see great rewards. Dan King: [10:39] Pivoting for a moment, I think folks might be curious to understand a little bit about your personal journey and what drew you to do this kind of work. Who is the advisor they would be hiring? Sean McColl: [10:48] Yeah. So I can tell you my background is both Fortune 500 and entrepreneurial. So very early in my career, I ended up working for AT&T and spent several years up at their headquarters. Then I had a business with a partner. It was a small marketing company. I like to say we took it from a very tiny little company to a slightly bigger company, and then we sold it to an even bigger company, and that bigger company became a $200 million company. And so I don't take credit for them getting to $200 million, but I do take credit for us getting from this tiny company to a little bit bigger company because I ran the sales and marketing. Sean McColl: [11:18] And, you know, along the way, you know, I did a fair amount of managing people, of helping develop and grow people and mentoring people, but also developing people as leaders and helping them become leaders of leaders. Sean McColl: [11:29] And through this journey myself, and I also, those couple of small businesses we help grow. Through this, there's certain things you start to see and start to recognize. And most people, when they go into a business, whether it's starting your own practice or something else, they have good intentions and they want to, you know, do something bigger than just make money. They want to help people often. And, you know, we're here to kind of help them do what it is they want to do. In this case, you know, the therapy group, you'd want to help somebody. And so if we can come in and help them make sure that the business is stabilized or allow them to grow and expand and, you know, serve a bigger audience so they're doing, you know, even more good for the world, that's what we want to do. But we've learned to recognize what are some of those obstacles, what are some of those landmines along the way. And a lot of times it's also having the accountability. Someone who's running a business oftentimes gets so busy working in the business, they don't have time to work on the business. And by committing time, say an hour a week to work with me or someone on my team, they can set aside that time, focus on the business, and then walk away with next steps and then know that they're going to have that accountability for the next time. Sometimes things happen and they don't hit it and that's not the end of the world. But a lot of times people, when they're working with someone else, they make a commitment. Sean McColl: [12:40] They tend to honor those commitments before they honor the commitments themselves. And so it's a way to do it. We try and do it in a very constructive way where we're encouraging them, but also holding them accountable and calling them out. Sometimes they just need to be called out and they know that and they appreciate it. And then we say, okay, we've done that. We figured that out. Sean McColl: [12:58] Okay, now we just need to do this and move on to the next thing. Dan King: [13:00] What is essential to do accountability well? The concept of accountability can be very powerful in business. I totally agree with you that they're the best laid plans. Anything can happen internally, externally, right to a business owner. How do we do accountability? Well, such that clients really get good results from it. Sean McColl: [13:19] Yeah. I mean, it starts with the person. So, you know, you hear about people being coachable. You know, if someone walks into a practice and says, I want to work with a therapist, but they don't accept any responsibility, they blame everybody else. It's always some other reason outside of them. That person's might not have the same results as someone who walks in with a genuine desire to learn, to want to change, to seek growth and seek healing or seek whatever it is that's bothering them. And the same thing with us, you know, business owner who's humble enough. To be a business owner, you have to be confident because there's so much adversity, but you also need to be humble and say, I want to learn what can we do? I've had some success. I've got to this point, but I know I can't keep doing this. I can't just keep working more and more hours. I need to figure out a way to do it. So the person that's open to those types of things, who wants to be accountable, who wants to do what they said they do, who wants to explore things, who's willing to hear the constructive criticism, but still it's criticism, which isn't always easy to hear, but who hears that and says, okay, you're right. I'm going to change that. How do we change it? Let's figure it out. Okay, I'm going to do these things by the next time we get together. I'm going to have done these things and we'll talk about it at that time. That's the person who's going to be the most successful in my experience. Dan King: [14:30] So an important beginning is a willingness to take responsibility. That makes a ton of sense. What are the most important commitments on the part of the coach or the person that is holding the customer accountable? Dan King: [14:42] What's most important for them to do? Sean McColl: [14:44] There needs to be an understanding. There has to be the genuine desire to help the person. I enjoy it. My day's never the same day twice because... You know, even though I'm talking to the same people each week, each business is different than the other. Each day is different than the other. There's new things that come up. And so, you know, for me, it's a willingness to learn myself, you know, to realize that I don't have all the answers and to ask a lot of questions. And a lot of times I'll learn from my clients as I ask them questions. And some of those things I can sort of file away in my own brain. So if I come up with a similar situation with somebody else in the future without revealing any confidentiality, of course, but I can apply some of those same lessons and share. And so it kind of this group thing where even though the people aren't interacting through me, we're taking the best practices or learnings or lessons and kind of sharing those. And we're all kind of learning and advancing and growing through that. To me, that's the very rewarding part of that. Dan King: [15:35] You know, do you have a feeling as an advisor, and I used to have a business not all that dissimilar from what you do now, do you, have you ever had a feeling that you can kind of tell right away when you meet a potential client for the first time, boy, I can really see us working together, ooh, I'm pretty sure it isn't a fit. Have you developed the ability to make that judgment call pretty quickly? Sean McColl: [15:55] Yeah, you can tell certain people right away who want to learn, who have that humility and who would be a good fit. Sometimes you have people who don't necessarily have that same attitude or approach, but through the process, typically when I meet someone, it's not, this is great, I'm going to hire you. This is a very big decision. There's a lot of confidentiality involved. There's a lot of things they're talking about. It may be stuff that they're not even talking with their spouse about. It's not just professional, it's personal. They're sharing some of their own feelings of what they're doing. Or not doing well, you know, how this business, you know, when you own a practice or a business, it impacts your personal life because it's your livelihood, maybe people depending upon you, and it gets into your sense of, you know, who you are, your self-worth. And so, you know, it gets very real. And so, you know, some of the times you end up listening to things and talking about that, but it typically isn't one time where I meet someone and they hire me, it's through the course of some conversations. And then they realize that there could be value to working with me. and, We're building up that rapport over time. And it typically won't get to that point if they're not serious about it and aren't willing to try or don't want to do the things we talked about in terms of being humble, willingness to learn, to listen, to hear constructive criticism. And so it kind of, it almost, it's a form of self-selection. Dan King: [17:14] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And is there a wide variation in terms of how long clients tend to work with you? Does it tend to be, or does it tend to be a kind of set duration each time? Sean McColl: [17:25] Now, it tends to be more of an ongoing thing. And so my goal is to offer value every time I meet with them and have something where they're walking away from a conversation with one or two or three or more things that they've learned or things that they've realized. And maybe through questions I've asked or things that we've discussed, things to do to help improve their business or to be a better supervisor or leader of leaders. And my goal is to keep that going indefinitely for as long as we add value and add value each time. If I'm adding value, hopefully they continue to find the value and continue to work with me. Dan King: [17:59] As we come towards the end of our time together, Sean, you talked about how, Dan King: [18:03] yes, you're giving high-quality business advice, but you're also meeting clients at a human level. So we always like to end these conversations on a human note and say, when you're not doing the work of trusted business advisors, what do you do for fun? Sean McColl: [18:17] I will add one other thing to that just before I answer that question. I realize not everyone's in a position to be able to hire me. And that's okay. And oftentimes, you know, I'll meet with somebody or someone will ask me, hey, could you, you know, this person starting a company or a business just starting out, would you mind talking to them? And the answer is always yes. I'm always happy to do that. I'm always happy to have a cup of coffee or a phone call. And if I can give them some insights or things that help them get on their way, you know, we've all certainly benefited from the advice of other people. And so, you know, I try and give that back to people. And I genuinely enjoy doing that. But to answer your question, I've got two teenagers in my house, so that keeps me very busy with their different activities as well, and I enjoy exercising. I live in Charleston, South Carolina. There's lots of outdoor activities. And reading and continuing to learn is just so important. It's not just that it's good for me professionally, which it is, but, you know, I enjoy doing that and then just working, you know, and helping out people in different ways throughout the community wherever I can. Dan King: [19:16] Are you reading anything interesting at the moment? Sean McColl: [19:18] Yeah, I was reading a book on spirituality and it's good because it helps us think about bigger pictures like what are we doing? Why are we doing it? Why are we here and how we can help other people? And it's often been said the best way to get what you want is to help enough other people get what they want. And so I'm reminded of that. And it teaches us also gratitude. There's so many things today we see where it's easy to get beaten down or get worried or be concerned about all the things happening in the world. And there certainly are things. But it's important not to lose sight of all the blessings that we have and all the things that we do have to be grateful for and how we need to help other people, whether it's having those conversations I mentioned with people who are starting out in business or just, you know, being there as a friend or help mentoring someone who maybe is younger in your field and wants to get to learn more or just being, you know, being the best friend, neighbor, family member you can be. Dan King: [20:07] Words of wisdom. I'm sure that folks got some nuggets of wisdom from this conversation. So thanks for coming on to your group practice, Sean. Sean McColl: [20:15] Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure.