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Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of The Testing Psychologist podcast.
Today is an additional episode in the EOS series that I’ve been doing over the past 6 to 8 months. I realize today that we’ve been doing EOS for [00:01:00] almost a year. As such, I’ve retitled the episodes a little bit and now they will note which year we are in because we’re about to cross over into the 2nd year. And that was up to episode number 10 in the series and honestly just got tired of tracking those numbers. So this is technically episode 10 I think, but it is still in year 1.
Today I’m talking about quarterly pulsing #2. So if you have not listened to the rest of the EOS episodes, I would highly encourage you to go back and check those out because they build on one another. I’ll be using terminology that I have defined in previous episodes and get a bit cumbersome to keep reviewing those terms.
Today, I am talking about, again, our 2nd quarterly pulsing meeting. Once you get into the swing of EOS, [00:02:00] you do a meeting every quarter to check in and redefine your priorities or rocks, solve any outstanding problems, just talk through things and recalibrate. So that’s what we are doing.
I will dive into this in just a moment, but if you are a practice owner or hopeful practice owner and you’d like some group coaching and accountability, I’d invite you to come to check out The Testing Psychologist mastermind groups. You can go to thetestingpsychologist.com/consulting and book a pre-group call to talk with me and see if it’s a good fit. And if it’s not, we will find something different that is a good fit. No pressure.
All right. Let’s talk about quarterly pulsing #2.
[00:03:09] All right. Here we go. So, last time we left off, I believe it was September 2022, and we had just finished our first quarterly pulsing meeting. At that time, we’d identified several important rocks or priorities; in EOS speak, they’re called rocks and navigated some changes on our leadership team due to a maternity leave. So this is a temporary change, but an important one to figure out.Fast forward almost five months, and I should say this is not typical by the way, we were supposed to meet in December, which was still going longer than usual, but we had to reschedule due to one of our leadership members being out on vacation. So here we are five months down the road for our next quarterly check-in.
Now, just procedurally, [00:04:00] the day started with quite a few hurdles. It snowed several inches overnight, so schools were closed. Many of us have kids. So we were figuring out what to do with kids working from home. Another complication was that we rented for this event was also on a late start. So we couldn’t even get into the space if we wanted to. So we had to scramble, figure out childcare, figure out whether we do it over zoom, which is not ideal, or in person.
One of our team members had the internet go out at her home, so it was just crazy that morning. That was a weird tone to start with, but we rallied. We settled on Zoom to start and then we would transition to in-person after lunch, which was good.
I was definitely a proponent of the in-person meeting when doing this work. I get so much more out of it being in person than trying to do it over Zoom because it can get [00:05:00] intense and sometimes emotional and the vibe of being together makes a big difference.
Once we got into it, It was great. I can tell we’re getting into a rhythm these days. We started with our typical check-in where our implementer asked us how we were doing both personally and professionally. We set expectations and hopes for the day and then we moved to reviewing our rocks.
In the Rocks Review, I mentioned this last time, but it is highly accountability driven, and we are graded on what percentage of our rocks we completed. This is not a casual process. So last time we got 100% which felt great. This time though, we got 80% and 80% is the threshold.
So we [00:06:00] met the goal, but I felt bad because I missed two of my own rocks. I wanted to explain why I missed them and give a lot of background and context, but that’s one thing about EOS is that when it comes to something like this, it’s either done or not done, and that’s just how it works. So I had to swallow my pride and just say that two of my rocks were not done, even though there were great reasons why that I wanted to share with people.
So after the rock review and grading, we reviewed our issues list. This is the list of ongoing problems that we’re trying to solve in the practice and our cold storage list or VTO so to speak, to see what was relevant for us to talk about today. So we combed through those lists. We did a keep, kill, [00:07:00] combine, where we kept the important ones, got rid of the less important ones, and combined any of them that needed to be combined so that we’d have a more streamlined list.
After we did that, we moved to the most important part of the day. The theme for this particular quarterly pulsing, and this is consistent across EOS implementations, the theme for today was cash flow drivers. I was super excited for this. This session was all about increasing revenue and profit in our practice, and it was awesome.
This is just another step in the direction of getting my team on board with the finances and getting comfortable with our business as a money-making venture. I think I’ve talked here before about the burden I suppose of carrying all this financial information and responsibility. I definitely function as our practice’s CFO for better or [00:08:00] for worse, and to have my team understand more and more of that information is really helpful and it felt really good.
So how did that go? Well, we started with an exercise to brainstorm what more profit would do for us as a practice. This is illuminating. It really helped us dial into the importance of profitability. We got to see the possibilities that could happen with more profit. There were a lot of the expected things like better pay, raises, better compensation, more benefits, and things like that, but also came up with ideas like confidence to try new things because we had a financial buffer to work through, ability to attract better clinicians and talent, things like that.
So he had us brainstorm all the possibilities that could happen with more profit. And then just to put a [00:09:00] fine point on it, he asked what we could do if we did not have any profit. And it’s zero of those things. So that contrast is important.
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All right, let’s get back to the podcast.
Now, as far as the content, our implementer Jake, helped us to identify 4 to 5 core activities that would increase our profit as much as possible. We started this by brainstorming probably more than 20 different [00:10:00] ideas. And then we paired them down to the ones that would move the needle the most.
So for us, this included dropping some insurance panels, ramping up private pay marketing and clients, maximizing our office space, and hiring for profitability, which means doing an analysis to understand which type of employee in our practice is the most profitable.
So we identified these 4 to 5 core pursuits and turned them into objectives which then subsequently turned into rocks for the coming quarter. So we took those rocks and then we assigned them like usual so that different members of our team would be accountable for getting these done. And again, this is one of the best things about EOS is identifying priorities and pairing that with accountability for getting those priorities done.
So nobody walks out of the meeting like, what am I [00:11:00] supposed to be doing? Or who’s taking that? We define it super well so that everyone knows what they’re doing and only one person works on each thing. That way, the responsibility is very straightforward.
After that, we spent a little bit of time identifying any additional rocks for the upcoming quarter. Though, the vast majority are focused on profitability. We identified again, the 3 to 5 most important rocks for the coming quarter, which is going to be a short quarter for us. We are getting back together at the end of Q1. So we have less than three months because this meeting happened in early January.
Let’s see. This is a great part of EOS. It’s just identifying the things that are most important. I think a lot of us in our practices have so many ideas and maybe even have the people to implement those ideas, but it’s [00:12:00] really hard to prioritize what we should be working on and how long it should take. It’s nice that the EOS works on a quarter system, so we know we get these things done within the next three months.
Lastly, we spent some time IDSing; that’s identify, discuss and solve two major issues with our implementer’s help.
All in all, this was I thought a great day. We rallied in the afternoon. We got to be in person. As the owner of the practice, I just feel more and more relief and support through this process. To have my leadership team come together and genuinely help build my dream is truly humbling. And to see it now turning into their dream as well is the best part. It is amazing.
Talking about finances has gotten easier as well. [00:13:00] This was actually hard. This quarter was tough. Last year was tough. This was our least profitable year of every year that I’ve been in practice. And I admittedly have a fair amount of shame around that.
I have ideas in my head of what our profitability should look like. And to be able to share that with my team and to literally say like, I feel ashamed of this was just a beautiful moment to feel heard and held and just supported by them. To have them jump in and then help to figure out how to increase profitability, even if a lot of those ideas had already gone through my mind, to see them rally and get on board was just truly magical and gives me so much confidence and faith in our practice.
I continue to love this EOS process. If you are interested in implementing it [00:14:00] yourself, there is a self-implementation option and you can also hire a consultant like we did, but there are lots of resources in the show notes to learn more about EOS and the principles if you are interested.
Alright, y’all, thank you so much for tuning into this episode. Always grateful to have you here. I hope that you take away some information that you can implement in your practice and in your life. Any resources that we mentioned during the episode will be listed in the show notes, so make sure to check those out.
If you like what you hear on the podcast, I would be so grateful if you left a review on iTunes or Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcast.
And if you’re a practice owner or an aspiring practice owner, I’d invite you to check out The Testing Psychologist mastermind groups. I have mastermind groups at every stage of practice development, beginner, intermediate, and advanced. We have homework, we have accountability, we have support, and we have resources. These groups are [00:15:00] amazing. We do a lot of work and a lot of connecting. If that sounds interesting to you, you can check out the details at thetestingpsychologist.com/consulting. You can sign up for a pre-group phone call and we will chat and figure out if a group could be a good fit for you. Thanks so much.
The information contained in this podcast and on The Testing Psychologist website is intended for informational and educational purposes only. Nothing in this podcast or on the website is intended to be a substitute for professional, psychological, psychiatric, or medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
Please note that no doctor-patient relationship is formed here, [00:16:00] and similarly, no supervisory or consultative relationship is formed between the host or guests of this podcast and listeners of this podcast. If you need the qualified advice of any mental health practitioner or medical provider, please seek one in your area. Similarly, if you need supervision on clinical matters, please find a supervisor with expertise that fits your needs.