Hey, chiropractors. We're ready for another Modern Chiropractic Marketing Show with Dr. Kevin Christie, where we discuss the latest in marketing strategies, content marketing, direct response marketing, and business development, with some of the leading experts in the industry.
Kevin: Welcome to another episode of the Modern Chiropractic Marketing Show. This is your host, Dr. Kevin Christie, and I have a wonderful guest, Allie Taylor on the podcast today. We're going to interview her.
She is the developer and, I guess, co-CEO and co-developer of Jane App, and I'm sure you've heard of their software. They're doing a lot of great things. What we try to dive into today, other than some of the definitely meat and potatoes of how to make EHR streamline your life a little bit, but we actually really tried to dive into the topic of culture and team culture, and how to build that and how to also convey that to your customers, or in our case, our patients. [01:04.6]
A lot of times we talk about the patient experience and we talk about obviously customer service, and things like that, but we don't even have the appropriate culture within our own team. How can you expect to convey that to the community when your team is dysfunctional or is not thriving and you're not doing the things to actually have a good team culture? That's really the foundation of it and I can attest to that with my practice.
I have hyper-focused, over the last few years, on having A players in my clinic and making sure that we all function together well, and everybody has kind of an ownership mentality and builds that team culture. And then, from there, what I've noticed was that inherently transferred to the community, into the patient base, and I've gotten so many compliments on my team. So, we dive into that a little bit.
I wanted to kind of change it up. We definitely touch on some of the EHR stuff, but I wanted to talk about the culture because they're doing a good job of it. [02:08.4]
We’ve chatted about it. I've seen it from the outside. I can tell what they're doing, at least in our profession, how they're doing it. I've met with them when I was at Forward in St. Louis. I've talked to other people that use their service, so I can tell they're doing a really good job with their customer service, with their culture around that.
And then, we dive a little bit into the internal side of it.
So, I hope you enjoy this episode with Allie Taylor, and we'll be keeping on churning out interviews and solo episodes. I'm really enjoying this. We're hitting, believe it or not, our three-year anniversary this month, and so I've still got a lot of wind in the sails. I'm enjoying this podcast, doing it, learning as much as I can to try to help get that information out there, so I hope you enjoy it as well.
If you are, I would love a rating and review. I don't ask a lot from you guys, but I would appreciate that if you could take the time. If you've been listening to his podcast for a while and you're getting some good information, if you could just take a minute and do that for me, I would appreciate it. [03:08.4]
All right, here's my interview with Allie Taylor.
…
Welcome to the show, Alison. I really appreciate your time. I'm excited to have you on. I know we had met at Forward in St. Louis, Bobby Maybees’ event there, and we had a little bit of time to talk. You were busy. But before we dive into everything, tell us a little bit about yourself, both personally and professionally.
Alison: Yeah, thanks for having me on. It's an honor to be in front of your audience actually. They are near and dear to my heart. Yeah, so my story. It’s hard. It's funny. Personal and professional are so interrelated.
Kevin: They are.
Alison: Yeah, personally, I have three children and I live in Vancouver, Canada, so we're your neighbors to the North, which is an interesting part of my story in general actually in how that all came to be where we're selling a worldwide solution out of Canada. [04:01.3]
Kevin: Hey, it happens, right?
Alison: It does and I actually think it's been very beneficial to us in many ways. I have an English degree, a bachelor of arts in English literature and a minor in psychology, which is always surprising to people because I own a healthcare clinic and I started to healthcare software. [When] you’re kids, you always say, What are you going to do when you grow up? and I'm just like, There's no way in the world you have any idea what you're going to do when you grow up. You're going to do one thing and it's going to lead to the next thing, and then you're going to find a passion somewhere and you're going to follow it.
Kevin: Yeah. It's like I've heard one of the best things you can teach a kid is confidence, right?
Alison: Totally, yeah.
Kevin: And if you could teach them that, then the other stuff kind of takes shape from there.
Alison: And pursue what you're interested in. Whatever you're doing in your life, you should be interested in it. That's what you should be doing with 90 percent of your time.
Kevin: I agree.
Alison: My daughter actually said she wanted to be a helper when she grew up and I thought it was the best possible answer. I was like, You're taking something about you that you like and then we're going to find a profession that works with that. So, then whenever we see professions that help, we start talking about maybe that would be an interesting profession for you because it's a helper role. Anyway, I think it was a fantastic answer. [05:10.4]
Kevin: That's great.
Alison: And I'm sure many of your audience and you yourself probably had the same feeling. I'm sure you all wanted to be in helper roles.
Kevin: Yeah. I've got my first child on the way actually coming in April.
Alison: You do?
Kevin: I'm thinking about those types of things and I'm going to try to instill that onto my son that's going to be born here soon.
Alison: Congratulations.
Kevin: Thank you. Excited.
Alison: A big life change.
Kevin: Yes.
Alison: Fantastic. And actually there's incredible parallels between raising a family and owning and running a business, which we could talk about for hours in another podcast.
Kevin: Yeah, we're going to dive into that. One of the things I found interesting is, and I didn't know this prior to communicating and stuff through email, that you actually own a healthcare clinic.
Alison: Yeah, so that's sort of where this kind of all started. I opened a clinic in 2011, the year my third child was born, and it's multidisciplinary, so it's physical therapy, chiro, massage, naturopathic medicine, midwives—the midwives that delivered my children work there—counselors and nutritionists. [06:13.8]
It’s about 12 disciplines there and I'm about 30 practitioners all sharing sort of eight treatment rooms. And it's still running, still going strong, and it's a really lovely little model. It's an integrated care and it's actually turned a little bit into women's health just because the midwives work out of there, so there's a constant parade of pregnant ladies walking in and out of the doors, which has been an interesting switch in the business model even because it's just kind of a revolving door of new people walking through. That's been really good.
And then, so during that process I was opening the clinic, I was looking for online booking and electronic charting, and I knew I needed online booking because I was convincing a whole bunch of practitioners to join a clinic that didn't exist yet. [07:02.3]
The way that the world was going even back then and even more so now is people do their research online looking for care, and if they can't book online and they're in pain or they need care, they're going to most likely continue to look until they can finalize that appointment. But when they book that appointment, they immediately stop looking. So, I knew online booking was a priority because I needed to fill a caseload from nothing to full for many practitioners, so that was important.
And then, the electronic charting, I didn't have room to store paper charts. I think electronic charting is just sort of … everybody's doing it now. Very few people are still on paper. But, at the time, paper charts were super expensive. There’s a lot of clicking costs that people don't think about with toner and photocopying, and shredding and storage. I also didn't have the physical space to store charts because I needed the treatment room to make my business plan work. I needed to fit in eight treatment rooms.
Anyway, I needed electronic charting and I needed something that would work for all of those different practitioners as well. I always say as a chiropractor, even if you put a few chiropractors beside one another, you're all going to want to document in a different way because you will treat differently. Nobody treats the same way as the chiro that works down the street. [08:13.7]
That's kind of one of the beautiful things about therapy in this way that everybody does bring their own knowledge and experience, and passions to it, and you'll have your own approach and that's what makes you such good physicians really, the passion behind the way that you treat and the way that you see the human body. It's like part art, part science, and it comes together in this really kind of lovely way, so everyone will want to document differently because the way your brain works, you're going to want to document in a flow that works with your particular treatment style, which we talked about a little bit earlier. I saw on your website that you call yourself the chiropractor that loves business, I think. Is that what it said?
Kevin: That's part of it, yeah. I enjoy the business side of it. It's interesting because, being a chiropractor, especially if you own your own practice, you have to have multiple hats and one is being a chiropractor, which you’d go to school for a whole lot of time. [09:08.2]
And then, you have to be good at business, which is a whole other degree, and then marketing, which is a whole other degree, and communication, which is a whole other degree. But I think what I enjoy about the business side of things is I've always been someone that enjoys building, building something and having it firing on all cylinders in a sense. So, it's not necessarily that I enjoy … I'm not a business tycoon or anything like that, but I just enjoy the processes and systems of developing a nice business.
Alison: I'm with you, for sure. What I was wondering, though, do you enjoy documentation?
Kevin: I hate documentation.
Alison: Because I was like, Hmm, I don't think I can trust him if he's a chiropractor that enjoys documentation.
Kevin: Yeah, I know. Actually, quick little story. I'm a member of Strategic Coach, which is an entrepreneur coaching group, and I've been a part of them for six years. Actually, they're based out of Canada. They're out of Toronto. They really focus on getting their clients to really dive into their unique abilities and function on that. [10:10.0]
One of the things that I've done is that I have a chiropractic assistant and I've trained her on doing this objective, so it's really helped me out quite a bit, and then I can go and do the objective and obviously clean everything up, and ins and outs. I'm trying to streamline that, but I'm not a huge fan of having to take notes.
Alison: I was laughing at that when I saw that. I'm like, It's okay to love the business, but I’ve never in my life met a chiropractor that enjoys documentation. I was like, Maybe this will be the first.
Kevin: Yeah, I equate documentation to having to pay taxes, right?
Alison: Every day, many [sound dropped].
Kevin: No one likes paying taxes, but you have to do it. It's the same, the same thing with obviously documentation.
Alison: That is very true, and, yeah, it takes up a large portion of your day. This is what we talked about, that whatever you're doing, you should be interested in it, another part of chiropractic care that the doctors are not interested in. So, it's a real slog, having to work through part of your life where you … [11:11.0]
Kevin: It is, and I wanted to dive into that a little bit because what I'm kind of trying to … I don't want to call it spearheading, but I'm on an initiative for sure to figure out how chiropractors can stop letting this eat away at their productivity, their life and their quality of life, and their enjoyment of work. If you ask a hundred chiropractors or even a thousand, What's the one thing you can remove from your life and you would enjoy practice more? it's definitely documentation.
Alison: Yeah, every single one and that's around the world. That's not unique to any country. It's actually not even unique to any discipline. You could ask physical therapists and any one in the medical profession that. I would say that that's a large part of it. [12:00.1]
Kevin: What are a few things that you feel that Jane App has that are helping chiropractors streamline that a little bit?
Alison: Documentation is a fascinating conversation because you also have to balance it with the needs of insurance, billing and documentation requirements. So, that's what makes it such a difficult thing to do well as a software. And for chiropractors specifically, it's an area that definitely we have two new features in the works and we're continuing to refine them.
But, again, when we talk to different chiropractors, they all have different needs, and a lot of the needs come from what their previous software could do. So, people tend to build up workflows and routines around whatever the tool is that they're using, and even if it's not the best tool or the best routine, they know it, and so you can get really fast at doing something even if it's not designed very well.
Kevin: Yup.
Alison: So, then we have to sort of … I call it detoxing, or what's it called when you go through when you're in quarantine and you get sprayed down when you leave something? It's just this idea that you have to sort of erase everything from your brain in order to actually enter a state of mind where you can say, What would actually be the best way to do this and not just the way that I'd seen before? [13:19.3]
We get a ton of feature requests, just people asking for what they've seen before, so it's balancing that with “What are they trying to do and what's really the best approach?” People call it macros, and when they say macros, they mean, especially in chiro, three different things. They either mean shortcut keys that create longer sentences, or they mean sort of a wizard where you check through it and then it creates narrative charting, or they mean a dropdown that has sort of saved replies in it. Depending on who you're talking to, they'll all use the same words and it will mean different things.
The reality is everyone wants to be able to enter the most comprehensive information in the least amount of time with the least amount of effort. Everyone wants to do it in a different way because we're all different and we all have different preferences. Some people are fast typists and some people are not fast typists, and some people want to click and some people don't want to click, and some people want trees and some people don't. [14:14.3]
So, the way that we've approached Jane's charting is really through a templating system with the idea that, because everyone's so different, they should be able to build their templates to suit their practice. And we have a template library, so if you create a fantastic template, you can share it into the library. There are, I think, over 10,000 templates in there, which is a little bit overwhelming, but they're all peer-contributed. Practitioners who use Jane create a template and they can choose whether or not they want to share it, and once it's in the library, you can pull it in and you can use it. You can either use it as is or you can edit it, so that it's more specific to how you practice.
And so, they can be so complex or they can be so simple, and it really depends on your style and how detailed you want to be in your documentation. We recommend that, if people have to obtain a consent, just put a little consent checkbox. If verbal consent is sufficient for whoever it is you're working with, you can say “Verbal consent for treatment obtained,” and you can check it off. And so, it just makes it a little bit faster to go through all of the hoops you have to jump through in your documentation. [15:16.8]
Kevin: Perfect. That makes sense.
Alison: Yeah, but we're always looking to improve it, and for chiros in particular because there's so much documentation, because your traffic is so high. A very busy chiropractor could be treating hundreds of patients a day, and if you think, even if the chart note takes two minutes, this is why it's such a pain in the butt.
Kevin: Yeah, it's interesting because what's happening is even a chiropractor that's, let's say, seeing 40 in a day where most of our audience, and we lump them into kind of evidence-informed chiropractors, and so they tend to do a little bit more than just a quick adjustment. But, either way, what's happening is insurance reimbursement in the States especially has gotten so low in most of our States. It's weird down here, obviously. [16:08.6]
Alison: Yes, I'm fully aware. I actually think it's fascinating and, yeah, there's so much room to be helpful there because it's a confusing system.
Kevin: It is. I'm in the state of Florida, which is on the higher end of cost of living and cost of running a business, but it's not California, New York or Illinois, or some of these other ones. But our reimbursement is so low that you have to see more people, but there's really not a lot of profit margin, and so you're like, I've got to get the 40 or 50 people data to really sustain this practice. And then, yeah, like you said, if it takes you one or two minutes to do a note, you start adding a lot of time. It gets crazy. Especially if you're seeing a high amount of new patients, you need to do those initial reports. It can get tricky, for sure.
Alison: Yeah, we're seeing a bit of a movement towards cash practice, especially as deductibles on plans become so high. [17:02.8]
Kevin: That’s what I did, yeah.
Alison: Yeah, and it's really interesting that you have to become a teacher, not only in their health as far as the care of their spine and their body, but also in how their insurance plans work. You have to do all this advanced math for them to say, If your deductible is this high, you have to charge this rate, and you're going to have to pay this much if we go cash rate. It's fascinating how much work that is for a business.
Kevin: Yeah, it’s a lot.
Alison: [sound dropped] so you do that. You do your documentation, and then you also do your treatment, and then you're running your business in the evenings and weekends around a full case, a full [sound dropped] schedule. I think this is why when I said at the very beginning that they have my heart, the small business owners especially in the healthcare space, it's in my blood in a way that I don't think I could ever leave this world in a job. [18:01.0]
I was talking to somebody who was working in payments, like payment solutions in chiropractic [sound dropped], and they’d left payments and gone into a different career path, and then they said they had to come back. They were like, I can't leave this. This is what I love to do. It's in my blood. It made me think about what was in my blood.
Kevin: I want to go back. We're going to come back to this. Obviously, the impetus of developing your own software is because of the needs you have in your own practice. When did this actually become a second business for you?
Alison: We only got halfway through that story. So, at the time, my co-founder, Trevor, was running a marketing agency and they were doing my branding, my website, sort of that whole side. I think I had stationery. I think I had a letter, actual envelopes printed at the time, and I was really frustrated by the options that were out there and I just kept showing him all of these really horrible solutions. But because I was really building a beautiful brand and a beautiful space, and I didn't want to jump people off my branding onto some sort of generic online booking website that didn't flow very well. [19:09.0]
So, six weeks before I was set to open, he was like, We could just build you something as part of your website, so he scoped out the project and then gave me a price, and then we did it. Then, he built in six weeks. He and another coder built the whole scheduling, online booking and charting documentation part, and then I just used it for a year and a half. It was just part of my website. It didn't have a name at the time. It was just …
Kevin: Speaking of which, how did you come up with the name?
Alison: Name? Yeah, that was quite a branding exercise. We went through many, many names. One of them was “Doctopus.” We had a few. We had a little logo with an octopus with lots of arms, doing lots of things. [20:00.5]
We knew most of the other options in our space for things like Practice Fusion, Practice Perfect, Clinicmaster, ClinicServer, all of these sort of generic clinicy words together, and we had some of those on our list, too, like I think Front Desk. We had a few that were sort of more in that realm, but we knew we wanted to be something that stood out from that as something different.
And we also knew that we really wanted to center Jane around being helpful to your practice, almost like another person with you.
Kevin: I like that.
Alison: The idea was to personify Jane, which has actually worked very well, and to give Jane this feel of, yeah, exactly, being a helper in your practice for you.
Kevin: And your goal will be to have Jane synonymous with helping as, say, Siri and Alexa, right?
Alison: Exactly. For real, that was part of it, so Trevor really wanted it to be something that would become part of the vernacular of the clinics. So, instead of saying “it's in the schedule” or “it's in the software” or whatever you would say, “it's in Jane” or “check Jane” or “Jane has it.” [21:05.7]
And the idea would be that, yes, Jane, as a name, as a brand would become just synonymous with practice management software as the ultimate, top-of-the-mountain dream goal, where Jane is, Jane as practice management software becomes the same thing.
Kevin: That’s great.
Alison: Yeah, it's worked. Only recently, though, we've had a few people comment and say, It’s rather sexist.
Kevin: We're in 2020, and it's …
Alison: I thought that was interesting because that never occurred to me. And you know what my response was? I don't know if I can swear. Can I swear on your podcast?
Kevin: You can swear. We’ll just put a nice little [unclear 21:40.5] on the episode.
Alison: I was like, Jane's a fucking powerhouse. I am proud that Jane has a female name. I'm like, Do you know how awesome she is and what she can do? That was such a strange comment to me because I was like, I'm so proud Jane has a female name. She’s incredible. [22:01.5]
Kevin: Sometimes it's become too much with it, not to dive too much into it, but Ryan Holiday is one of my favorite authors and he's a stoic guy, and he just had a podcast. He tends to be more on, let's call it the left-leaning side of things. But he was saying how if you're too woke, you're not awake. And he was talking about how sometimes it's just going too far. It's like you should be able to name something Jane App and not have anybody question that. It's ridiculous.
Alison: I understand the reasoning for thinking of sexist. It’s because it's like a receptionist. I think they're thinking, Oh, it's like a receptionist, which could be a man, and I think we did actually have some boys' names on our list, too. Jane just worked. It was also simple. It was easy to spell. When you're naming your child, and I'm sure you're having this conversation a lot right now actually.
Kevin: Yes.
Alison: Have you come up with a name?
Kevin: Yeah, Brandon.
Alison: I like it.
Kevin: And the whole strategy around it was … we'll get a little sidebar here. My name is Kevin. My dad's name is Kevin. My mom's brother's name is Kevin. So, I come from a very … [23:08.7]
Alison: A whole load of Kevins.
Kevin: On both sides, Irish Catholic family, and so everybody had the same name. My dad's got a brother named George. My mom's got a brother named George. So, one of our things was that we were picking a name that no family members or close friends had. We didn't want too common of a name like Kevin or John, and then we didn't want too trendy of the name. We wanted a name that was good as a kid and good as an adult. And then, it just had to go well with my last name. And so, we checked off all the boxes with Brandon and we liked it.
Alison: Did you give him a middle name? Kevin or George?
Kevin: Ah, no.
Alison: You're not throwing the family names in there? He's not going to be Brandon George Christie.
Kevin: No. but, yeah, that was our strategy.
Alison: That's a good one. I know I always think that it has to be easy to spell because you don't want to be spelling your name your whole life, although some people love the unique spelling and that becomes part of their personality, too. Although my middle son's name is Liam, which is now the second most popular name in the - [24:09.9]
Kevin: That's a very common one, yeah.
Alison: - country or something. I know I have an Avery, a Liam and a Jonah. But naming is a tricky thing for your kids and it felt that way actually for the software Jane as well. It was a throwback to naming.
Kevin: On the topic, it's tricky, chiropractors trying to name their own practices. They have a big time struggle with it, and sometimes they come up with names that are very obscure or sometimes they just default to their last name. Nothing right or wrong. I'm just saying it's always a challenge to pick the right name.
Alison: Totally. I actually don’t have a … I mean, I usually have strong opinions on everything I say. I have strong opinions. I hold them loosely and I can change them to the exact opposite opinion if I get a new piece of information. So, I just feel strongly about everything. But I do think that the healthcare practitioner builds a lot around the trust of their name, and so putting your name in your practice I don't think is the worst thing ever. [25:05.3]
Kevin: Yeah, it just depends on what your goals are. If you're trying to open up 20 locations or have a bunch of …
Alison: Very different, and for just how the exit plan for practitioners is a tricky one -
Kevin: Correct.
Alison: - because your associates tend to not have enough money to pay for your practice, so you have to figure out some sort of succession billing system, which can be challenging, and you have to plan that three years in advance.
I know I was thinking about this for Jane. I have so many things where we'd love to go with Jane and we're always on the way of like, How can we be the most helpful? what I like in the clinic marketplace that would be so fascinating, trying to help practitioners with exit plans. What do you do with your clinic when you're ready to retire?
Kevin: Yeah, and it's a big topic and I've interviewed a couple of companies regarding that that sell and buy practices, and one of the topics we brought up was your marketing strategies and having all those documented, because if you came to the table with your profit and loss statements, and your W2's and all that type of stuff, but you also came with documented marketing plans over the years and you had a huge email list and you had a great following on Facebook, and all your systems were in place, then that's really going to help benefit the exit strategy. [26:20.0]
Alison: Yeah, and it's not something that people think about, although I do find in the chiropractic world, there tends to be so many family practices that get passed down to the kids. Have you noticed this? This is a thing in chiro. Brandon is going to become a chiropractor. This is just inevitable.
Kevin: Yeah, it happens a lot. I'm wondering if it's going to continue as much just because, and this is me speculating, but the kids born to the chiropractors—I shouldn't call them kids—the adults that are now chiropractors, and let’s call them 26 years old up to 40, were probably born to chiropractors that were in the ’80s and ’90s, and things were really nice and Dad and Mom made great livings as chiropractors, and everything was really, really fun and easy, and all that. Now I think … [27:06.3]
Alison: It’s more of a struggle.
Kevin: Oh yeah, and chiropractors are doing great and it’s a really exciting time for the profession in a lot of ways, but if you're not careful, it can be quite a bit of a struggle. Plus, you layer on the $250,000 in student loans in the States and the risk–reward gets a little tricky. I'm just wondering how many chiropractors now that are having kids or have kids that are younger, if they're going to make that recommendation. And I'm not just talking about chiropractic. I'm talking about healthcare in general.
Alison: Absolutely, and we're seeing that swing in the Cash Practice, the insurance struggle. We're seeing it across disciplines. We're used by thousands and thousands of practitioners in the U.S. One of my favorite things is, no matter where we go, we walk into a clinic and it feels the same. It doesn't matter if you're in Canada or the U.K. or Australia or the U.S. There is a similarity between all of these.
Kevin: Yeah, and sometimes it's just different zeros. I have friends that are orthopedists and, yeah, they make more money and they’ve got a lot more revenue, and they’ve got bigger-ticket items. But if you compare that practice now versus 15 years ago, they were making double and triple before, and now they're not, and so it's the same. It's still a very big struggle. It's just that there's different zeros at the end of their revenue than ours, but it can still be stressful. [28:22.9]
Alison: The other thing that came up before is the same, right? They have to run their practice. They have to do their documentation. They have to do all those things with the market. They have to figure out their new patient strategy. They have to manage staff. Man, that is one that no one ever teaches you about.
Kevin: Yeah, it's hard.
Alison: We have about 100 staff now at Jane. There’s 100 staff, so we're managing people in a whole different level than I ever did in clinic ownership and that’s fascinating.
Kevin: I want to touch on that because one of the things that you do well is company culture, and we could probably sit here and hammer out all the benefits and features of Jane App all day long and I know there's a lot of great ones, but one of the things that I'm hearing across the board with a lot of the chiropractors that I work with, some of the groups I'm affiliated with, the folks that are using Jane App and implementing it, is that they feel that same sense of company culture. [29:16.6]
Not only is it happening internally for your 100 team members, but it's spilling out into the end user and they can feel like, Okay, they're always looking to develop, listen to us, grow, optimize, things like that. Can you speak to that a little bit?
Alison: Yeah, it warms my heart so much to hear that. When Trevor and I started, it was sort of just two of us, and so, of course, I was doing every email and every phone call and every demo, and driving an hour to do a 45-minute demo for someone that was going to pay us $70 or less a month. And that's the relationship that you build. So, of our first 200 customers, none of them have canceled. Zero. [30:02.3]
Kevin: Oh wow.
Alison: Which is kind of phenomenal. And one of the things I was the most worried about as we grew was that we would lose that feeling of relationship with our customers, because it does obviously get harder as you have more customers there to know everybody at that level.
And so, part of the training is that our support team goes through three months of training before they actually are allowed to sort of work out on their own and they have to pass tests, and part of that is really trying to make sure that they're empathizing with the customer. And I think because it's so much of my heart, having run a small business and knowing all that goes into that, part of it is empathizing with that. But I was quite worried that the feel, that feel that Jane cares about you, we'd have a hard time scaling that. That was something that I wasn't sure how we would be able to scale.
But one of the things that we've been talking about internally is that the culture that we have internally translates externally and I'm sure you see that in your practices, too, that you work with. [31:02.6]
Kevin: Yes.
Alison: If you're not kind to their staff, if your staff are not supported and communicated with and feeling connected to the business, that will absolutely spill out into patient care.
Kevin: Yeah, and I want to touch on that real quick because it's true. What happens a lot of times in healthcare and you see it all across the board is that they hire team members. They really pay them as little as possible, try to get the lowest as possible. They don't have really great hiring skills and they bring some--
Alison: Yeah, and you're like, Will they quit? Just the first person to walk in the door and it will be, God, someone needs to sit there.
Kevin: Yeah, exactly, and so they just don't build a really good internal team around it. Even if you're just starting out, you want a person sitting at the front desk, or if it's maybe it's you or your spouse that are kind of bootstrapping this, you’ve got to add team members that actually care that are intrinsically motivated, and then you treat them right, like you said. And so, I think chiropractors—and this, again, is healthcare, but I specialize working with chiropractors—they need to really focus on that because it's amazing what the patient senses, either good or bad, right? [32:09.8]
Alison: I think it's interesting that you say that because it's another area where I'm like, We can help with this because we feel we have a full team, a full education team on our team. Part of our 100 people is people that are working on educational content and the training, and that they do that for both external, so the content that we have on our guide and the videos. They just launched a practitioner training course and a front desk training course, so that your staff can just sit down and go through a course and you don't have to ping them on Jane.
But one of the things I was talking to them about was in our internal training, we’d do a lot of … I've just pulled in articles that I think are important about what it's like to work in a company that you want to be a part of, so different readings through that, and then as part of their training, they read them and they do a little reflective, and I'm like, Let's put that in our external training, too.
Clinics need their front desk staff and their admin staff to be thinking about this as well, not just learning how to use Jane, but also learning how to help grow a business and create a culture that they want to work in, and all the things that we train our staff in. I'm like, I'm so excited about it. We're doing all this work. Let's share this with our clinics because they could use this help, too. [33:21.3]
I'm working at layering that into our training, our external training. So, your staff, when you hire someone, they can go through, not just learning how to use Jane, but how to be a great employee, how to contribute positively to their workplace, how to deal with conflict, all the things that are important skills to have that your receptionist may not be trained in.
Kevin: Yeah, and I'm a big proponent of that. I've got a lot of our systems in place, but not organized well, and so actually I'm investigating something called, and I think they're out of Canada, too, and I know we talked about …
Alison: All of that thing, yeah.
Kevin: Yeah, where it’s like Shopify. You get all kinds of good stuff out of there.
Alison: Yeah, I know. Everyone's coming to Vancouver now, all the U.S companies [sound dropping]. [34:04.3]
Kevin: Yeah, a lot of good businesses. We actually use this thing, an exercise portal called ChiroMove by Physiotec; they're out of Canada. But the one I'm talking about is Process Street. I'm not sure if you've heard of them, and that’s Process.st. It’s pretty affordable, but it's a platform for businesses to run their systems on and have it there, and then trainings.
And so, right now I've got my virtual assistant building it out, and if I were to hire a front desk person, all of the stuff is there. You can employ or make videos. You could have checklists, all this stuff, and so it essentially is going to be the documentation hub of my practice so that you can scale it. Right?
Alison: For sure, yeah, because every time you're training someone, and I always say, if you have no documentation, the next time you bring a new person in, as part of their onboarding, have them document everything they're learning, because at least then it's a time that you're … Documentation is so hard. It's hard to do it. It takes a lot of time, but it can save time later on. [35:03.4]
I actually really loved—I think I don't know what you called them—all of your strategies, basically the way that you look at marketing. I loved it. They're kind of ethics-based almost.
Kevin: That's the biggest thing. Yeah, we’ve got the MCM Tenets, the tenets of modern marketing.
Alison: That's right. I love them, because I find marketing can be challenging, but I'm obsessed right now with the idea of communication and trust. I'm reading a really amazing book called What You Do Is Who You Are. It’s really good, but he talks about in the book a lot about how communication needs or the amount of communication that's required is reversely proportional to how much trust there is in the relationship.
Kevin: That’s a hundred percent.
Alison: And so, when you think about communication, sometimes people are like, You just have to communicate, and I'm like, Actually, if you're not communicating in a way that engenders trust, you could be doing damage by communicating. If you're communicating poorly or if you're not communicating in a way that engenders dressed, there's really no point. It actually could be worse. [36:10.3]
Kevin: Or if you're communicating through Messenger or text or email, that just doesn't [work]. You lose the affect sometimes.
Alison: That’s dangerous. We have a distributed team, so we're mostly in one office in Vancouver, but we have about 10 percent of our team that works in various cities remotely. And so, communicating across different formats is definitely something that we have to think about and how that comes across.
But, yeah, for marketing for clinics, for sure, what you've put out there is so important. This is your brand. I'm a bit obsessive with it about Jane. This is your brand. This is your voice. This is who you are in the community. We have a strict “no negativity” if you're connected. Actually, yeah, if any of our clients are even out there speaking negatively, I will reach out and be like, You know, uh … be positive. [37:01.0]
Kevin: No, absolutely, but I think that comes back to the communication that you do have with the end user, which has been really good, and then, at the same time, taking that mindset of the systems and making it as streamlined as possible for the chiropractor. You apply that to EHR because that is a system and it's usually a broken system for most chiropractors, so if they can get their EHR system to be really optimized and systemized, and not add to their issues, that's a huge step in the right direction.
Alison: Yeah. And last thing I'll say about that is that I often say to people Jane is not going to be perfect, for sure, but chiropractic in the U.S. is one of our top two fastest growing markets. It's a big segment for us. And so, when I talk to chiros and I'm like, There are things, for sure, that aren't perfect, but I guarantee they're important to us, because your success and your happiness with Jane is our business plan. That's more important to us than anything else, so we're very aligned on that. [38:05.1]
And so, when we have that trust in that relationship and when you build that through great support or through conversation, what we find is people are a little bit more willing to hang on through. I call them ripples. So, I'm like, Nothing is going to be perfect, but we're going to work as hard as we can to fix things as they come up and then to make things better, and we're just getting started. What you see as Jane today is not even near done to what it will be.
Kevin: Which is great. And then, could you just kind of in a bullet-point list say, what are a handful, three to five big things that chiropractors are desiring in their EHR system?
Alison: The things that they most like about Jane right now?
Kevin: Yeah, that or just what you're hearing from them. What are they saying? I'm glad it has this or we need this. Just in general, yeah, that Jane does offer for them.
Alison: I think for us, a big one for Jane is that we're a web-based, so you can access Jane from anywhere on any device. [39:00.9]
Kevin: That’s huge.
Alison: That’s helpful, yeah. We're also very well-priced for the chiropractic world, so I think people are really enjoying the fact that we are supporting their business with their bottom line, which can be tricky, as we know, for practices. Because I was a clinic owner, I'm very sensitive to that. Actually, before Jane started, I was looking at franchising my practice, because it felt like the only way to make a clinic really, really grow into anything was to take that model and plant it in multiple places, because clinics have a ceiling. There's only so much space. There are only so many people that you can see. There's only so much you can do to get your margins down.
Yeah, so I think the price is helpful. It starts at $74 a month, month to month, then they'll contract. This is what we also say that we want you to stay because you want to stay. It's like having a girlfriend that you're like, Okay, fine, you can leave me in a year. I'm like, That's going to be the worst possible relationship for them. [40:07.2]
Kevin: Yeah, there are definitely some EHRs out there that lock you in, and then they hold your stuff hostage, which is crazy.
Alison: Yeah, and there's sunk loss costs. If you pay a huge upfront fee, even if you're not happy, you'll stay just because you want to get value out of that money, which is a weird concept because now you're unhappy. Now you’ve spent money and you're torturing yourself. So, at some point, it's best to just kind of cut it off.
Kevin: Yeah, I kind of brought this up in my Facebook group. It's the same way with some of these chiropractic coaching groups. I do some one-on-one coaching and some of these have five-year agreements and they have more attorneys than they do employees.
Alison: I know. It’s odd.
Kevin: And they hold you to it. I've heard of some chiropractors just really struggling just to stay afloat and they still won't get it. It's crazy.
Alison: That is shocking, I know. We're all humans, and so I think everyone should be treated with respect based on their circumstance and their situation. [41:07.0]
Kevin: Definitely.
Alison: And so, the price is really attractive. And most people just say Jane is enjoyable to use. Because my cofounder, Trevor, was the main developer from the beginning, he still manages the code team and the design of Jane, and so there's a real intentional design where we want to make you … You should be enjoying using your software, and then, ideally, you should be looking very professional to your patients. If you present professionally as a brand, it does change the way your patients view your practice. So, all the emails are nicely templated, and come with your branding and your colors, and the same with your online booking and that whole side of things.
Kevin: That's cool. And the online booking, I assume, is integrated with the schedule?
Alison: It is, of course, yeah, and that's why it’s web-based. We started in the web world, so we didn't have to transition to it, which gives us a little bit of an advantage from software that are a little more legacy, because it's hard to change that. [42:05.6]
And then, the electronic charting, of course, people can access home, so if you have to run off and do something, you can still go and do your charting later in the evening without having to be in the office. If you have to cancel your day and you're sick, you can do it from home. And all the reminders are included, so we have text reminders and email reminders. It's all part of the price. We also don't believe in finding lots of other ways to kind of up the fees, so what you see, we're pretty stable at that.
Kevin: I won't name names, but I know some that are like, Yeah, it's the only this, but to actually make it functional--
Alison: You have to add six modules. That's a bit of a struggle for us because there are people that want a simpler version, so that we have two versions. One is basically if you're doing insurance billing, you use one. If you're not doing insurance billing, you use the other. And it's not so much an upsell. It's just that if you don't do insurance billing, you don't need all the insurance features. It’s just more that you don't need that. But I'm still looking at maybe if I should try to add an even lower tier plan. I just can't. I haven't quite figured out the pricing on that yet. [43:09.6]
Kevin: Perfect. That sounds great. I really appreciate the information. I think the biggest thing that you guys have done has made it kind of an enjoyable experience, whether it's using the notes in your private practice or communicating with you and your team, or growing together, because that is part of a relationship with HER, growing together and seeing consistent improvements, and getting feedback from the end users and obviously implementing those. Because, I mean, it's just technology, right?
Alison: It changes constantly, yeah.
Kevin: Yeah, you can't do now what was in 2015, and then you can't expect to do now what it will probably be around in 2023.
Alison: Yeah, exactly.
Kevin: So, it's just always going to be better and evolve, and new things come out, so that's exciting. [44:01.2]
And then, something like the online scheduler part. I'm just going to wrap it up with this and you can kind of make a mention of it. But that is a really good patient-experience thing. It's amazing what that does for a practice and for the patient, and just really decreasing the amount of hurdles to get onto your schedule is really helpful.
Alison: Yeah, and we have lots of stats on that. The most popular online booking time, as you would imagine, is 10:00 p.m., and so I always say that, before I had online booking, Sunday, people would call in in pain, leave a message. By the time you called them back the next morning, they couldn't make it anymore or they'd already found something else. And so, even just capturing a couple of those people, it pays off your software for the whole month.
Kevin: Or thinking about the fact that you can decrease the amount of phone calls coming in to your front desk person.
Alison: Yeah, it's huge. Over half of my appointments at my clinic now are booked online. I have one front desk staff at a time. [45:00.6]
Kevin: Yeah, so if you have a busy practice, you could almost have one less person in a lot of ways.
Alison: Yeah, exactly. That's right. I think I mentioned that. Anyway, I know, we're done. We have to go. I would like to see a picture of Brandon when he is born.
Kevin: Definitely. It'd be all over social media. No, I’m not going to try to do that, but I'll definitely get a picture. I really appreciate your time. I'm going to be stopping by your booth. I know you won't be there at Parker Vegas.
Alison: That’s right. Martin and Vanilla will be there. Like I said, they're some of the best. You’ve got to go see them.
Kevin: Definitely. And then, will you be at Forward this year in the summertime?
Alison: You know what? We are having our conference at the exact same time.
Kevin: Actually, I knew that because I think Bobby is going to your conference.
Alison: Yes, Bobby is coming. It's so unfortunate. John is coming, too, actually.
Kevin: If you know, Bobby and I are business partners -
Alison: He’s so wonderful.
Kevin: - yeah, in the Chiropractic Success Academy, so we talk all the time. And we'll be having dinner in Vegas and stuff. [46:00.4]
Alison: You should come for the conference, too, for the one, but I believe it's the same weekend.
Kevin: I know. I'll be manning a station in this event there, where he's got a really cool thing going on where we're going to have a lounge area where some of us that have some input on things to do for your business will be lounging around, maybe having an old fashioned here and there, and trying to build …
Alison: Now you're speaking my language.
Kevin: Some young chiropractors out.
Alison: I kind of do an old fashioned, get it with Buffalo Trace.
Kevin: That's what I do.
Alison: Do you?
Kevin: Yeah.
Alison: Good.
Kevin: You don't get a Canadian whiskey? How dare you?
Alison: There's the rye, but that one's a pretty good one actually. Actually, I just bought a couple of bourbons from Brooklyn that are phenomenal.
Kevin: There you go. I got a $1,000 bottle of Japanese whiskey for a wedding.
Alison: Love it.
Kevin: I was in a buddy's wedding, and the ironic part about it, when he got it for us groomsmen, it was only worth 300, and he never shipped it to us because he was living in London and then he moved to the States. By the time it got to us, it was 1,000. He said he wouldn't have gifted it to us if it was that much. [47:06.0]
Alison: Wow. Have you drunk it yet?
Kevin: No, not yet. That’s going to be my kid’s college tuition fund.
Alison: They make it in a barrel. It’s the best for the Japanese for the well-priced, although the [unclear 0:47:16.3] one is so good, too. Another podcast.
Kevin: And we’ll have to run into each other at a conference and we'll have some whiskey.
Alison: Absolutely.
Kevin: All right. How can our audience find you guys and reach out, and have any questions or start to use your app?
Alison: Yeah, we're a Jane.app is the website, and there are tons of videos online, so people can get a feel for what it looks like. We try to show Jane as much as we can.
And then, if they want to book a demo, our team is fantastic and can walk them through and answer any questions. We also have a demo site, so people both can log in and play around with fake data, and if they book a demo or get in contact with the team, they can get access to that.
And then, like I said, we're on the constant road to improvement, so even if they choose not to go with Jane, I always ask that people send me feedback on where they were hoping for improvements, and then I hope that we can win them in the future. Like I said, coming second is the most motivating thing for me. [48:16.5]
Kevin: I like it. I like that mentality. I have no doubts that you guys are going to be continuing to do great, amazing things in the profession and I'm looking forward to seeing that journey.
Alison: Yeah, thanks.
Kevin: All right, have a good one.
Alison: Yeah, you too.
Thanks for tuning in today. Please be sure to check our redesigned website at www.ModernChiropracticMarketing.com. Stay up-to-date with our blog, where content is regularly added by Kevin and guest contributors. You can also access our library of podcast episodes there. Go to www.ModernChiropracticMarketing.com and subscribe to the podcast today.
This is ThePodcastFactory.com
