Summary:
Welcome to The Business of Allied Health – where we dive into what it takes to run a successful allied health business in Australia.
In episode 7, host Michael Dermansky interviews Fiona White, a physiotherapist turned successful business owner in the allied health sector.
Fiona shares her inspiring journey from her early days as a passionate clinician to leading her own business. She discusses the challenges of transitioning from hands-on clinical work to taking on a leadership role, the importance of empowering teams, and the value of finding one’s passion.
Fiona also reflects on the lessons she’s learned from other industries, the critical importance of understanding your ‘why’ before starting a business, and offers practical advice for aspiring health practitioners. Plus, she shares her insights on balancing work and personal life effectively.
This episode is perfect for those seeking inspiration and actionable strategies to grow their allied health business while maintaining purpose and balance.
About Fiona White – Founder and Director of Own Body Mobile Health Services
Fiona White is the Founder and Director of Own Body Mobile Health Services, a home visiting allied health company founded in 2010, currently employing around 100 people across Australia. A physiotherapist with a passion for innovation and care, Fiona has built a thriving business while challenging the norms of healthcare delivery. Ahead of her first maternity leave in 2020, discovered a significant gap in resources for business owners preparing for extended leave and has now made it her mission to share what she has learnt, empowering leaders to step away with confidence, ensuring their businesses thrive in their absence.
Fiona was also awarded the 2019 Victorian Telstra Women’s Small Business Award and the 2018 Entrepreneurs’ Organisation ‘Accelerator of the Year’ Award.
CLICK HERE to read the full transcript from episode 5 of Business of Allied Health Podcast
Key takeaways
- Fiona’s journey into physiotherapy was influenced by her childhood exposure to sports and physiotherapy.
- She initially thought she would work in neuro rehab but transitioned to business ownership.
- Building a business requires surrounding yourself with inspiring individuals.
- Starting slowly in business can lead to missed opportunities; taking risks is essential.
- Empowering team members is crucial for business growth and personal freedom.
- Fiona’s shift from clinician to business owner was triggered by a personal injury.
- Delegation and outsourcing are key to effective leadership.
- Learning from other industries can provide valuable insights for business improvement.
- Understanding your ‘why’ is essential before starting a business.
- Investing in a business coach can save time and money in the long run.
Topics discussed on this episode
- Fiona’s journey to physiotherapy
- Transitioning from clinician to business owner
- Building a successful allied health business
- The shift from clinical work to leadership
- Empowering teams and delegation
- Finding balance in business and life
- Learning from other industries
- Advice for aspiring health practitioners
- Final thoughts and future aspirations
For practical articles to help you build a better allied health business, go to MDhealth.com.au/articles.
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Ep 7 - full transcript
Michael Dermansky
Hi everyone, welcome to the show that explores with allied health business owners and managers what’s important about being in allied health business today. We have a special guest today, Fiona White from OwnBody. Fiona, welcome to the show.
Fiona White
Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.
Michael Dermansky
Great. Well, we’re gonna I want to talk to you about a specific topic of been running a business by not being in the business. So what you had to do when you had when you had kids, we’ll start a little bit further back. Why did you start to become a physiotherapist in the first place?
Fiona White
Is actually exposure more than anything. I’d love to say there was some grand plans around what I wanted to do, but I was really into sport as a kid as were my parents and I spent a lot of time at the physio either for myself or for them. So there wasn’t many jobs I think I knew about and I’m pretty determined once I set my mind to something. So I thought physio is where I want to be. The other thing I thought about was a dolphin trainer because I want to just swim with dolphins but that wasn’t so realistic so I went with physio in the end.
Michael Dermansky
Yep, of course.
That’s a pretty common story I’ve heard quite a few people that they went to be physio because they went into sport they spent a lot of time in physios and that’s where they saw it. But I mean as you went through your courses, is that what you continue to want to do as you continued to do your course or?
Fiona White
Yeah, definitely. I actually, to be honest, I don’t think I ever knew that physios worked in hospitals when I started my course, but I did learn to love that. And as I went through physio, particularly the cracks when I got to work with people, I got really passionate about it and was very keen and had all intentions of continuing to be a clinical physio for the rest of my life.
Michael Dermansky
Right, so what did you do straight out of university? you go work in a hospital or private practice?
Fiona White
Yeah. So I did a bit of, it was a bit of a choose your own adventure with me or build your own adventure as it was. I actually had, I had a bit of a background in exercise and through my placements was quite passionate about exercise as medicine. I was a roped instructor, a personal trainer. So I had quite a lot of experience working with people without injuries and teaching, teaching exercise. So when I got to my placements, that was really like my natural, what I fell into and where I felt like I was, was best placed, but I still wanted to, to see what else was out there. So I had a few part -time jobs. I worked in a few private practices and, and some hospital work and did that for a few years. After a little while, I kind of took a gap year. went in, had a season in Queenstown and just sort of switched my brain off for a few months and had a bit of a reset. But when I came back, I realized that what I was really passionate about at the time was neuro rehab. Again, thinking back to my student days and the times that I had had the opportunity to work with that population in the hospital work, I just felt that it was the area that my skills could be put to best use. was really passionate about it. when you’re teaching someone to walk again, that is so special.
And so I thought I’m going to try and get a job in a rehab hospital. So when I got back from my trip, I made a few calls and which actually anyone listening, if you want to get your dream job, call around and ask. And for business owners out there, we love it when people approach us. But I called a bunch of different hospitals and happened to get through to someone who was desperate for a team member that day and landed myself with myself a job really quickly and got a bit of a hybrid role in this rehab hospital.
And from then, again, when I got the opportunity to work in your rehab, we were just working with the most amazing, just amazing clinicians that was so good at what they did. We were changing lives every day, you know, helping people walk. I really got, I thought that was my path. I thought that’s where I was going to be.
Michael Dermansky
Yep. But it’s pretty amazing in that what you just said, like, you know, one, if again, if you haven’t, everyone has to learn a lesson out of that too. If you want to go on an area, make a phone call, yourself out there. It’s, it’s amazing when people think like, no, I have to go through a formal process. I can’t just make a phone call. Yes, you can. That’s how you’ll get into more places than you can imagine is by asking about it.
Fiona White
Yeah, and it shows a real passion for, you know, real interest in the company and initiative, which which us business owners love to see. We’ve we’ve got some of our best team members from people who’ve just called up and or just sent their resume through don’t wait for a job ad.
Michael Dermansky
Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard as well. We’ve had some great staff members who just, you know, I’ve heard what you do love what you do. Do you mind if I see what you’re up to? And then we ended up discussing a job with them as well. And the second thing as well as that, you know, what you said you’re really passionate about and then you’re hearing your voice the way you talk about it too, is that you’re changing people’s lives. I mean, that’s why a lot of us go into the physiotherapy profession, we want to change people’s lives. And you saw that happening, which was, you know, such an awarding thing to say.
So, neuro rehab, you were working in hospital, thought that was going to take direction of your life, but you ended up starting your own business as well. How did you go from where you were to that?
Fiona White
kind of a series of unfortunate and fortunate events, I would say. The promotion came up and it was for a neuro rehab job. So previously, I was working a bit of a hybrid role where I did get to do some neuro rehab, but it was, you know, working through the hospital and then a full time neuro rehab job came up and I thought, yep, this is me. This is my life. And unfortunately, yeah, yeah, and then I missed out.
Michael Dermansky
Right.
Fiona White
But at that, you I was obviously very disappointed, but I’m a fixer. I’m a problem solver. And so I started to look for the next thing and what was going to fulfill my passion or not necessarily the passion in your rehab. I actually didn’t go looking for other jobs, but I wanted to be engaged in something that I was really, really passionate about. And at the time and still I do to this day have a lot of friends who ran various non -physio businesses actually. And I kind of had in the back of my mind that I wanted to do something, no idea what, but I wanted to do something like them. that, you know, big lesson in that is surround yourselves with people doing really cool things, because it’s a great source of inspiration. In my, previous employer, I’d actually done some home visits for, or teaching Pilates at people’s homes, some really wealthy people around Canwell and all that and I thought, maybe there’s something in that. Maybe I could do Pilates. I had that exercise background, but I knew nothing. I knew absolutely nothing. I was literally Googling, how do you get an ABN? And then probably more importantly, what was harder to find out is, is it legal to provide physio in people’s houses? You know, I had no idea. Obviously now it’s a lot more commonplace, but back then I was really starting from scratch. So I started slowly and I started way, way, way too slowly. It’s lots of lessons for the next business. If I ever do one, I was way too conservative getting started, but you know, pretty low risk appetite at the time. And even now probably as well. But I started seeing some clients and a lot of them really just PT clients on my way home from work. And I’d found this little niche that was people with injuries who wanted personal training. Now, of course, there’s, you know, a whole cohort of professionals who do that now, but I was providing that PT in people’s homes, mostly for people with injuries. And that then started evolving into actually providing physiotherapy as well in people’s homes. So yeah, it evolved from there. It got bigger and bigger. And it got to a point where I was doing this every night of the week and I started to get up the confidence of, maybe I could do this.
So I started to do this a little bit more and I asked my employer if there was an opportunity to go part time. And the answer was no. So I thought about it and I took what was a really big risk for me at the time and had it in my resignation. I did ask to go casually and I did get to, to continue working, but, had to take up a few other, casual part -time jobs to sort of keep things afloat. but yeah started from there and kind of went all in from there and it’s grown to where we are now which is nearly 100 team members across four states.
Michael Dermansky
Yeah, it’s pretty amazing stuff.
And then you took it from, you know, PTA for injuries yourself and you’ve got three different arm, you know, you physio, OT and, and podiatry as well in three, four different dates as well. How did, how did that come about and from where you were running at that starting point?
Fiona White
Yep. Yep. Look, it was baby steps along the way. It’s been the better part of 14,15 years now. And I hadn’t you know, what I was hiring contractors back in the day when we thought that that was the way to employ people and actually funny story, one of my very first team members has has just applied for and got a job again with us. She started started back probably within the first few years when I started having having team members and she’s gone had a whole other career in women’s health and had three children. And she’s come back to us because it fits her life now. And I think she worked for us about 10 years and it fits her life now. And she remembered the support and the ethics of the business that we run and wanted to be involved again. So that was pretty cool. But I like to think that we keep great relationships with our team members from the get -go. And we’ve had lots of people like that who’ve sort of come and gone over the years too. But yeah, sorry, back to the question. We just grew bit by bit. we had more obviously just in Melbourne, sorry, I’m in Melbourne. So we had a few other team members in Melbourne, and it was all just me. Like most businesses, I was doing the admin, I was doing the risk assessments, I was doing the invoice processing. And I started to realize that, you know, you have to outsource something. I think anyone who runs a business, you outsource something even if it’s just from the start, probably outsource your accounts and most people would have some form of admin helping them. And over time, I worked out that I kept trying to refine what was my secret sauce. What was I best at? Where was I best placed to make the biggest difference in the company and make the biggest difference for our clients. And over the years, it sort of got to the point where unfortunately, I’m not treating anymore. I no longer treat as a clinician within my company, which is really hard because I do love being on the tools, but I’ve only got a limited amount of time and I have to be really clear on what I could do that would benefit the team the most. And that is refining the operations, building the team up, making our clinicians’ job as easy as possible. So all they have to do is focus on being really great clinicians and doing, you know, the bare minimum amount of paperwork and admin that we require, not a whole lot of useless admin that we’re doing just for the sake of it. So my job is really just refining the whole backend process, obviously building the company and promoting it and getting the clients so that I can have 90 to 100 team members going out and providing a remarkable service on my behalf. Unfortunately, I can’t make much of an impact if I’m just seeing one -to -one clients.
So my job is to enable, train them, enable them, make sure they’re really happy and enable them to see all the clients for me.
Michael Dermansky
So let’s talk about that when you said you’re not in tools anymore as well. And cause we’ve had this conversation before in terms of when you, you realized you have to find a way off the tools. What, what, what events will trigger that? And how did you go about changing your position in the company?
Fiona White
So when it happened, was 2016 and I wasn’t seeing all the clients. still had a decent number of team members, probably 20 to 30 team members at the time, but I was always the backup. So someone was sick. If there was a last minute, you know, referral that had to be seen or I felt had to be seen and needed an initial that day, I would jump in the car and I’d be spending, you know, I was living in St. Kilda at the time. I’d be, you know, driving across town. Sometimes I’d be going out to Wooler, like, know, I’d be spending an hour plus each way in the car to go and see one client, because I felt that that had to happen for the business. I couldn’t turn away referrals. Then I was playing way too much netball for someone of my age and out popped my kneecap one day. And yeah, and it was my right knee. So there was no way for me to jump in the car and go and see clients. I couldn’t be the backup. So it came out of necessity, really. I had to figure out a way to get around it. And what it meant at the time was. Sometimes we just have to say no. Sometimes it might mean that I might incentivize one of the team members with a little bit, you know, a little bit more cash to go and see that client. There are a few ways around it, but it really started this cascade of events where I looked at, wow, how, and I, so I just sit home on my laptop every day. That was all I could do. And I got so effective and I could do so much work and contribute to the business in a way that I’d never had. Cause I was always trying to dabble in doing the work. was always trying to be a clinician. I was always getting pulled in different directions, but I had weeks and weeks and weeks where I couldn’t move. and so I, me being me, I wanted to be as effective as I could, just worked and worked and worked and really saw the outcome from that. And from then that really triggered how I approached everything. It wasn’t just the clinical work. was right. Well, I looked at every job that I did and thought, can someone else do this?
What am I the most, what is most important for me to do? And what can I empower and enable someone else to do? What can I outsource or what can I delegate to someone within my team and give them the opportunity to learn different skills as well?
Michael Dermansky
That would have been pretty self searching as well because I mean, that’s you, your value, your self worth is tied up and I’m a clinician, I do this job. How did you, how did you step through that emotional journey?
Fiona White
Absolutely. It was a very, I don’t know if I probably let go, Michael, you’re probably bringing up some trauma for me. Actually funny story, still like for a long time, I had a job at a private hospital in Melbourne and I only resigned two months ago, I think it is I was doing casual work on a weekend because I love seeing clients. And I loved I just love, you know, impacting people in that way. And so was sort of doing the odd one on a weekend. So quitting that was actually probably the biggest moment where I said, no, I’m not doing it anymore. But I actually love being part of a team and love love working. So I kind of got my fix from that for a really long time. And for me, I had to separate it from my business. I had to I made a call at some point that I was going to do it in the business anymore. But yeah, I kind of got my fix from working as an employee, which I really loved it a little bit heartbreaking to make that call. But yeah, can’t really say I’ve got over it yet, but I have to keep thinking about what, you know, the time it takes for me to take to not be in the business and going and seeing a client. It’s actually, you know, it might help in that short term, but it doesn’t contribute to the longer term growth of the company or development of our team.
Michael Dermansky
Yeah, I mean, but also your time as well. I mean, you’ve got two kids as well. you still you’re a mom, you have a life, you have to look after other people depending on you as well. And, you know, are you able to, I mean, it’s nice to be able to do those things as well. And you know, it’s not a necessity for the business, it’s what you love to do. But how do you balance that what you love to do your life outside of work and work at the same time?
Fiona White
Yeah. And to be honest, if it was the, my driving passion, if I wanted to get back to doing clinical work, I could, I mean, I’ve taken two lots of maternity leave. So if I didn’t want to be involved in the day to day running or the growth of the business and clinical work was my passion, which for some people it really is, I could actually just, I could not, could stop doing all that high level stuff and go and do what I enjoy and be a clinician working in the company. I know that the business can run without me, so I do have the freedom to choose where I spend my time now.
Michael Dermansky
So that’s a pretty big deal. I mean, you can talk about where you took your business. was going to ask you, what is the business like, business like now and how does it continue to change? But in saying that too, I mean, one of the biggest things you just said now is that you structured the business where it is now. You have the freedom to choose where you want to be in it. You want to be in a higher level and do you want to be just, you want to be on the clinical side. You’ve got the options of doing that. So that how, how have you changed the business from 2016 when you’re running around for every referral came in to make sure you had it to where it is now and you’ve got that choice now. What have you changed in your life in your business to make that happen?
Fiona White
it was real, it’s really about mindset. So getting in that mindset of either delegating or outsourcing and trying to be really clear with where I spend my time. I mean, I like everyone else, I still get pulled into, pulled down rabbit holes and need to need to fix things when, when certain emergencies come up. know we’ve discussed something that’s happened in our business recently where I had to drop everything and, and work on that. But, you know, again, being there does enable me that freedom to do things like that. But it also enables me to the freedom to be home with my kid when we’re sick. I’ve had unfortunately two kids this year in both of my kids have been in hospital this year and one of them is actually going to surgery again. But I’ve got that ability now to have built the business to a point where I can take that freedom. How I’ve done it and why I’ve done it is really, it really comes back to kind of positive reinforcement as I’ve gone along the way. I’ve by building up and my team and enabling them and empowering them to take on the work and to take on the projects. They now treat the business like it’s their own. They work hard, they’re loyal, they’re engaged. I give them a ton of flexibility. I’m not micromanaging their hours. They come to me with ideas and they’re pushing me to broaden my understanding of what I want from the business and I think even, sorry, reflecting on something you’d said earlier, the dietary and OT, a lot of that came from the team. They were noticing that we’re getting these requests for different services and it’s really responding to what they were seeing that makes us make better decisions as we move on. I’m only working three days a week, probably at best, the child who’s first year of daycare this year.
So I only see what I see and they, by empowering the team to come knowing that they can come to me with suggestions and ideas. And I actually, I have this discussion with all of our new team members as well. I tell them that the best thing you can do is tell me what we’re doing wrong. Cause we, we only see, I only see what I see the senior team only see what they see. But if we’ve got not, you know, over 90 eyes looking at opportunities for change, that’s fantastic. And so by enabling our team to have the freedom to know that their voice matters and that they can come to us with ideas and particularly the senior team really taking on projects as their own. It means that I have a lot more brains and a lot of people who are a lot smarter than I am contributing to the business and helping us grow.
Michael Dermansky
I guess on the flip side of that to just, I guess I wanted to ask, and I just think it’s a good point to discuss. How did you, how did you have to change your mind? Or how did you change your mind? So you know what my value isn’t all this have to know everything, have to do everything. How do I get my ego out the way to allow other people to step in and do what’s best for them, and not be the smartest person in the room?
Fiona White
Yeah. Yeah. Great question. I try to think where, it came from in initially. I would say that I was actually part of a group called, I actually have just rejoined called one of the newest organization. And from memory, was Tristan White, who’s who you’ve just interviewed as well, introduced me to them. one of the biggest lessons I got from that experience is that you don’t know what you don’t know. learning from people outside of the physio or allied health world is, it was so much more beneficial to me at the time. And I really developed this mindset of learning from bigger businesses. And there were businesses who were doing this. one of the, actually I do remember one of the courses we did was about a time audit. What, where do you spend your time? And I went through and I had to document it for a few weeks and categorize it. am I doing all day and could this task be automated, outsourced, delegated? And I went through every single thing with the view that I think I had a holiday coming up, but I also knew in the background, I always wanted kids. So I knew in the background that at some point I want to take maternity leave. So I always had that, but I had short -term goals. Like I want to go away without my laptop. And I did that. I think that was the end of 2015. sorry, not 2015. would have been 2017, I went away without my laptop for a week, which was amazing. So those those kind of micro steps definitely helped me along the way.
Michael Dermansky
That’s fantastic. I mean, there’s some really good lessons in that too. I think you pointed to something that I’ve learned over the years as well is that you can get some amazing ideas outside of your industry. It’s so, it’s important to know what people do in industry, about really good things, but it’s also so important to see the view from the other side because the ideas will come, I mean, from our point of view, the ideas that come from the hospitality industry are enormous that can just elevate their customer service level as well.
All these things that just aren’t on our radar that can be brought in and say, you can do this so much better. You can do this. I mean, our training program for students came about from what I loved what like the big accounting firms used to do like internship programs. I’m not sure they still run them, but they used to run internship program where they would conduct cadetship program. So you would do your first couple of years as part time and, and, and study part time while you were still working, working full time in one of the big accounting firms. And then you did the last two years full time, but it was on a context of, of learning. think this is a brilliant idea.
Fiona White
Yeah.
Michael Dermansky
We’re gonna start doing this, we’re gonna start taking our students. And that came from outside of our industry. The way it was done in other industries, it was a great idea.
Fiona White
Yeah. Yeah. And look, early days for me, I love what you said about the customer service I worked in. had lots of jobs growing up. I was always very, very happy being very busy. But taking, you know, customer service into what we do as physios is so important. And it’s it is hard to teach, but people who have worked in customer service jobs tend to have that little extra bit of understanding of how to work with clients from that side of that side of things. One of the, one of the biggest influences in how I created the company, developed the company was from different leaders that I’d had through all of my different jobs. used to work in a retail store years and years ago. And it was the first time I’d had a job where there was a leader who was just genuinely happy to be there. And she cared about you and she cared about what you were doing. And she made the workplace fun. And that really stuck with me. And it’s something that you know, she connected and it’s something that I wanted to continue that I always look back on. I always wanted to have a workplace that was like that. And then my friends who’ve known me a long time will laugh at this. But one of the biggest influences in my life is actually Lula Lemmon. So that was the flagship store opened when I was working around the corner from from it in Chapel Street many years ago. And I got to know the general manager who, you know, continues to be a good friend and mentor to this day and learning how, you know, that was a, that was a big business, but they, was the first time I’d really been introduced to culture by design. They cared about their people. They invested in their people first and you walked into Lululemon and it might be different now. It is probably a little bit different now, but their people were happy. You walked in and you felt like a celebrity walking in there. People greeted you. They cared. They cared what you thought. It created this environment that made you want to be there. think it’s a huge part of their success. So businesses like that, you can get inspiration from anywhere, but businesses like that have really inspired me to do the positive things that I do in my business. And similarly working in businesses where the team maybe weren’t valued or will work really hard with no gratitude.
And leaders weren’t so interested in the people we were treated like numbers. And we were asked to do admin, admin, admin, admin. That just seemed like an absolute waste of time. I’ve taken all of those experiences to try and create the best business I can and have, create a workplace that I would want to work in as an employee.
Michael Dermansky
Yeah, that’s fantastic. It’s a really good learnings to that too. think there’s about three things that we have to take away from that. So number one, just learn, go and see what other people do. And you get to know the general manager of a store that you didn’t even work at and they were happy to share their learnings. Do it, no one’s going to say no. And if they do, go to the next one, it’s no big deal.
Fiona White
Hmm, absolutely. Ask for advice and ask for, you know, ask to take someone out for a coffee and pick their brains. Not everyone’s going to say yes, but I have learnt so much from, you know, from people who have been generous with their time.
Michael Dermansky
And more people will be generous in time than you expect. And it should be something you’re afraid of. Second of all is, is that if you’re an up and coming physio, bi -life health person, anyone, put your retail experience on your resume. It’s so important. Because a lot of the ones we see that, I didn’t put that down because I didn’t think it was important. It’s so important because it shows that you’ve learned about customer service. And it’s an enormous part.
Final question for today. If you’re currently an employed physio or a health practitioner and you’re thinking of starting your own business, what advice would you give them now?
Fiona White
If you’ve listened to any business podcasts or learnings, you’ve probably heard this, this answer repeated a lot. So I’m going to, I’m going to do something a little bit different with my answer here. The first thing I would say is really, really work out your why. And that’s, that’s not unique to say, but I think there’s this idea that business is easy and you can make a lot of money from it. So what I would say before you start is what do you want from it? Do you actually, if it’s money and free time, you got a lot of, you got to earn that, it’s a long way to get to that point. But if it’s something unique, if it’s working in or creating, if you want to create your own special clinic that has a special interest, I guess, really get clear on what that outcome is. Is that already out there? Is there someone doing this that is doing what you want? If actually you just want to be really good at working in a really niche area, or you’re really fantastic with people and you want to lead, you know, she’s my example for it, a team of neuro, you know, and you’re great people leader and you want to work and lead a neuro team and have provided the best service going out there. There are tons of businesses out there that would pay you a lot of money to do that. And it’s a lot less stress than running a business. However, if you’ve got some stronger wise than that, if you think that what you’re doing isn’t actually out there, then the advice I would give is to start with, again, reach out to people who are doing what you want to do, get some understanding of what it takes, what it means, what it looks like. If you get past that step and you think, yep, still want to do it, I think I can do it, I’ve got the energy to make this work, then invest in a business coach from day one, it feels like a huge expense to start with, but is the best money you’ll ever spend. It will save you so much money in the long term, getting a good business coach to help you from day one. And then ongoing, you know, once you’ve taken the leap and you’ve got stuck in, surround yourself with people doing great things. Doesn’t have to be in the allied health space, although there’s some great groups out there that I would highly recommend. You join early on to get some specific insights into what it takes us to up and out health business. But go broader than that, you know, if you’re if if you’re looking at a local private practice, maybe like a BNI, I think, Michael, you’re you’re involved in some of those. And yeah, for me, it’s not super relevant. But I’ve joined EO, there’s some bigger business groups out there. There’s a lot of support you can get even through. We’re in Victoria, the business Victoria, but surround yourself with people doing cool things that’ll spark your inspiration. It’ll motivate you and it really helps create great ideas and gets the ball rolling and it’ll help elevate you to the next level.
Michael Dermansky
Yeah, it will. And I mean, it you’re not reinventing the wheel because all those kinds of things you’ve done, like the ideas you have, the ideas might be yours, unique or different, but the way of doing these often been done elsewhere and just taking something else has been done elsewhere and bring it to your industry is going to save you so much more and effort and allow you to really bring to what you want in fruition earlier. Which is why you may have gone to the business first place. I think it’s really important what you just said is that understand why you want to do it. Because if it’s just for the money, there are so many other way easier ways to do it. And I know it sounds like from business, I why you’re saying that’s not true. It is it’s a lot of work, you a lot of hours in and a lot of heartache of a stock you didn’t expect to happen. But unless you’ve got the why coming forward, it’s hard to get through those really hard times and they will come. The easy times will come but the hard times will definitely be there and you’ve got to be prepared for them too. Like why have to be strong enough to get through those hard times when they do happen.
Fiona White
Yeah. Yeah, I can’t tell you the number of business owners I know who feel like they’ve bought themselves a job. So they’ve worked really hard to establish a clinic and now it’s just day in day out. actually, if they’d invested all of that time into being a great clinician and being a great leader that, you know, they might’ve been in the same spot. But, you know, saying that I love what I do. I’m so glad I’ve done it. I’m so glad I was young when I started because I certainly don’t have the energy to put in those 80 hour weeks anymore.
And no, I’m very, very fortunate that I have been able to build a business to a point where I can work two or three days a week and it continues to grow and my team are fulfilled and yeah, there’s lots of bright things in the future.
Michael Dermansky
any final thoughts before we finish up today.
Fiona White
I just, I’m really keen on workshopping this idea of, of leaders on leave actually what the domain name leaders on leave .com. So if anyone is interested in learning more about, about how you can step out of your business, how you can empower your team, how you can elevate them so that you can focus on what’s more important than feel free to shoot me an email, Fiona @ leaders on leave.
Michael Dermansky
We’ll leave all the email and the domain name all in the notes for the podcast today as well. So anyone that wants to talk you about that too is happy to do that. Thank you very much for your time. It’s been a fantastic conversation and some really good learnings out of it too.
Fiona White
Thank you. Yeah, thank you for having me. It’s always nice to chat. Cheers
Michael Dermansky
Yep, thanks, Fiona.
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