Building the Foundational Documents for your Dream Practice

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Alright tribe Welcome back to align your practice with Dr. Cliff and Dr. Joe brought to you by align life. Today I'm super excited to talk about things that has many names Joe, and I have different names for him, but all the same things. And so their foundational documents, Constitution Joe, you refer to it as the core ideology. So I love that I had not heard that. And so I would love this session. So this is going to be several sessions. This first one is going to be that 30 foot view of the whole thing why this is important. And then we're gonna dive into each one of them because there's a lot to dig into.

Yeah, I agree with you. There's so many different names. If you're talking to Vern Harnish, his work or Geno's work and Eos, or you study any of these other programs that everyone has their there are semantics and the language around it. But the bottom line is that we need to know the why, how and what and the value of an organization. And you and I probably have both. I know we did set up at least a purpose when we started our first company. But it was just this thing I put on the wall. So people saw it, but I didn't know what to do with it. I didn't have any value for it. And it was probably 1015 years later, where I started to learn how to utilize it authentically inside of the business. And I think we all go through so much pain in business before we see what we should have done in the beginning. Right?

Yeah. 100%. So yeah, so today, I would love to talk about foundational documents. So for me what the foundational documents are, is their their vision story, their key characteristics, their critical actions, their mission statement, their purpose statement, a premise statement, and a product statement, and an affirmation statement. And so with all that it's like holy cow, what are all these things for? Why should I even put the time into doing it? And Joe, I loved what you said about like, all this stuff should lead to those five things. So I'd love for you to share that and dive into that a little bit.

Yes, so all of these documents are basically quantifying and solidifying and documenting the way you're going to process through a business, the way you're going to navigate your thoughts around the business, not only your thoughts are the thoughts of your scaling team, in order to continue down the same vision. So if you're on a ship, and you're in a storm, and you're the skipper behind and the boat is, you know, it's going in different directions, we're losing a sale, if everyone in that boat doesn't know the purpose doesn't know where that boats trying to go, doesn't know the vision of the skipper or how he's going to manage adversity, things are gonna fall apart, there's gonna be arguments and fights, we're gonna have different plans and what they think they should do during the storm. So I'm going to jump over the ship, and go their own way and say I don't believe in the skipper or his vision or where he wants to go, and it's going to be mayhem, and people are going to potentially even die in adversity. If you look at the military, my sister was a naval academy grad. And she says if we don't have the same mission and purpose and we're not following process, people die on an aircraft carrier, you make a mistake, people die. So you can go through the extremes or you can bring it home to your average business that without knowing who you are, why you're doing what you're doing. Where are you going to Why are you going there? It creates friction, confusion, contradictions, and just things that slow you down make the business more stressful, less profitable. That's that's the that's it for me clarify when you hear that it's like I want less stress more production I want easier business I want more fun and make more money and help more people right that's what it is. If you look at Joe polishes work he says Follow the health principle easy, lucrative fun, like what if we all just kind of follow things are easy, lucrative and fun. And most of those things will follow our values are why right. So so yeah, that's my 30,000 foot view of like why I would do it we can get into the depth of the five things you said and is that the when we talked about the hiring part?

Yeah so this is what you we hire on we fire on we do our reviews based on we do our rewarding based on and we do our acknowledging both good and bad. Like acknowledging doesn't always have to be positive doesn't always have to be negative. Because so often when I hear acknowledging I'm like, Oh, I did good versus Oh no. I there's a level of where I can learn to do better.

So when we talk about that, if you're listening to this, you may be thinking, Well how do you hire to these things that you're talking about. And you'll get more strength to this conversation in the next four or five podcasts because you'll understand the value of one of these tools that we talked about, and then you'll understand how to hire to it. Right now, it's a little bit too high of a level of a conversation. But when we say higher to it, we're talking about hiring to the values of the company. And I'm going to give just a simple example, if being on time and organized is the value of the company, and someone shows up for the interview late, and they forgot their resume, they're probably not going to meet your values. I'm just going over a simple one. It goes deeper than that. But that's simple as finding out do they resonate with your values? And Cliff's gonna break this down, I know, in great depth academically over the next four or five, so stay tuned, let's go over adversities that could happen. And why these would be of importance, right? Yes, everyone thinks we just go into process of a business, like let's just do the job. But we don't realize that stuff happens to get us off course. And if we don't have these, these premises that you're you're gonna write down, you kind of get off course.

Yeah, it's easy, because we kind of go, you know, we're hardwired to be cheap and lazy. So then we just like up, I'm just gonna sleep in, but if we're on purpose and on our mission, and we've shared that and communicated that, that's how we drive and build the company that we really want. Because it's way easier to go to the grocery store and get, like snacks. Sometimes it is vegetables. But once you've been disciplined and long enough to eat the vegetables, the sweets are actually almost too sweet. And soy same thing like school, we're so programmed of like, Oh, I just need to regurgitate Regurgitator you know, this or that we're this honestly building a practices of creation. It's like an an artist, it shifts from paint by numbers to, you know, creating your canvas, you have a blank canvas. And so rather than looking at what everybody else is doing, this is your opportunity to say, Okay, this is how I define success. And this is how what it looks like. And there's going to be a certain group of people that want to be part of that mission, they want to be on that ship. Like you said, the one thing when you're talking about the skipper, here's the thing I lost, I was always trying to make everybody happy on the boat. And sometimes I would put the boat at risk, because I was worried about taking care of everybody on the boat. I'm like, Oh, let me take care of you. Let me take care of you. And then the boats going into a freakin storm. And so this gives you that Northstar, this is your compass.

And as you mature through this, you will when we say hired to it you will be maybe doing what we would do is to talk about our purpose in front of the room with a bunch of applicants. And as you're explaining your values and your purpose and your why and your reasoning and your your mission in your community. I remember this day, when there was like three, four applicants in the room. And I remember two or just enjoying it, it just not showing a lot of expression. One was taking notes, eyes were lit up. And there's one on the other side, rolling her eyes, looking at her nails, just so not engaged. She didn't resonate with our values. So it was so easy when you put it up front, because you could see those that are inspired. And this was the biggest message for me on this particular podcast, the 30,000 foot view podcast is you want to hire people that are inspired. Because inspiration is an internal thing. Motivation is an external thing. So when you motivate someone, it's like come on, let's go to the gym, come on, I hate the gym, come on, let's go, let's go I hate it's not my value. I don't want it I want to go, I want to go, you know, have a cigarette. Now. Come on, let's go to the gym. That's motivation. Inspiration is internally like, I want to be part of this business. I love the mission of this doctor, it feels so good inside of me, I hope I get this job. It would be such a dream. That's inspiration. So be careful of hiring people, you have to motivate. You want to hire people that are coming with inspiration. And that's by understanding who you are, where you're going, what you want, why you want it. So that's kind of what I think the best value is out of this first session.

Yeah. And where I went to when you were talking, I did take some notes, but I was when you're talking about like finding those people that are lit up, they don't have to have the same core values, they just have to be aligned with the same like the core values have to be aligned. So I know we talked a lot about that in the previous sessions where we talked about core values. But this is again, all these pieces. This is a big, this is a puzzle, and we're putting all the pieces and and if you're missing a puzzle piece, then it's not you know, people don't know what's there then they're they're focused on what's not there versus what's there. And so that's a

good point. because we're not going to find someone that resonates and owns all the values of the business, it's not what we're looking for. But let's say someone is not as healthy. And they hear the mission and they hear your purpose and your vision, what you want to do for people that like, I want that from my life, I want to make changes to me verse, that doesn't make sense. And they're contradicting and against your purpose, that's going to be a problem in the business. So just like, I think it's authentic, when we have a patient come in, and we explain the journey, the chiropractic lifestyle from day one, we're not like, well, let me wait till he's a pain. Let me just give him some crisis care and not even mentioned it. And then let me see if I can do some correction. And then then I'll kind of talk to him about the lifestyle later, like in two years, it doesn't work that way. The same thing here, you may say, Well, let me just hire them, train them. And then we'll kind of teach him some of our values later, to think that it's a painful journey, when you do it later.

On. Yeah, and I was thinking like husbands and wives, they get married, they're like, Oh, I'm going to change them after we get married. It's like, that is a miserable road. So that's, that's so true. So some of the high points that you know, Joe and I, we talked about, like, why would you spend your time because this is definitely an investment in time. And if we're hardwired to be cheap and lazy, but why would we want to spend the time. So the number one thing is hiring and building your team. A lot of times, we don't think about that, because we're usually one doc, we started out as one doctor, one or two team members. It's like everybody's on the same page, because we're all on the same meetings. But as you start to grow and develop, you need to be able to, like trans, transcend that message to the everybody that comes on board. That's one of the big gaps. I think in companies, as soon as their direct report is not the owner, there's a shift in what gets transferred. So this foundational work will be the start of a living document that will go through your whole, like career, the life of your practice. And even after you're gone, like I'm like. So looking at that, it allows for you to control thoughts, you get to put out there what you believe, and then get alignment with your team, when they have some chime in on this, they get buy in. And so like I know, yesterday, we just had one of our quarterly meetings that aligned life. And we went through, like you spent 100, I don't know how many hours a ton of hours on our core values. And we cleaned them up again, like we just made a couple tweaks, it was just like, cool. Here's a couple of weeks couple tweaks. So every time we're just sharpening, sharpening, sharpening getting better clear. The other thing it does is it allows for massive growth. And Joe, you said this the other day, and I just, you know, I just love it, the only thing that's guaranteed is shit is going to happen, and shits gonna hit the fan. And so that's the only thing that guarantee there's no like, Oh, this is gonna be a rosy road, if you do this, it's going to be awesome. You know, there's going to be no obstacles,

you're going to have fluctuations in the economy that are going to shock you, you're going to have changes in the insurance industry that are going to going to anger you, you're gonna have things going on in your community that are against your principles that that are going to happen, you're going to have staff that are going to leave, they're going to quit, there may be staffs that do things of low integrity, there's going to be things that happened. And if everyone on the team that's on that ship, when someone jumps overboard, or someone gets in a fight with the skipper is the rest of the team unified and on purpose, and we keep the ship moving forward. There's many times there's no purpose in a business. And you see, nine staff quit in a company somewhere, or because they're misdirected that the whole, the whole organization is on shaky ground. So let's help you in this five series. Podcast help you get rock solid, a foundation that is like stone in the ground. So that while you're navigating, you may not have had adversity yet. Or you may be 10 years in practice and know exactly what we're saying. Either way, the stronger you are, the more conviction you have. And the more you stand like a rock for your purpose and your vision, the more you're going to accomplish what you're looking to accomplish.

It's a great point, Joe, I think this series will serve both people both the rookies and the veteran so if you're if you haven't just pull it out, let's sharpen it up, just like I mean, we've been doing this for over 20 years. And you know, we still make it better, we still make it better. And then people who've never heard this stuff, man buckle up, you're gonna be you're gonna go through this, it's gonna blow your mind and then when you come out of this, you're gonna have such clarity. And when you have that first team member that you bring on, you're gonna be like, here's what we're about. They're like, Oh my gosh, I am 100% on board I've been looking for a company to come on board and give all my talents all my skills to so

when I was running my six clinics, we had all cash practice and we would weed the garden on the By the second day we the garden by when they would come in. We would do a consultation exam we find the gap in their health of where they are where They want to go, we'd give them an opportunity. And some people wouldn't accept the opportunity. But those that accept it, once those that came on board, and they had a value exchange cash, they stayed for months, years decades. And when I had an insurance plan, I'm not against an insurance practice, I'm just explaining the difference. When you are in a cash practice, you have to have massive value, and you have to be right on purpose. In insurance practice, if we're in network, they would stay, they may leave. And we did the garden throughout the whole experience, because it was easy to get in. When you're running your business, do the same thing, weed the garden before you build your team right up front. So you hire slow fire fast. In the beginning, if people are resonated with your values and your purpose of your business, even during the interview process, we did quick, so you don't have to spend, the average person that gets hired stays to yours, no matter how good or bad they are. Because emotionally, we want to make it work. We hire them. Let's try we keep trying and trying and did the wrong fit. And we may have known it day one if we did the right steps that you're going to learn through this series.

That's awesome. So what we'll do in the next four or five episodes, we don't know, but we feel like it'll be four or five, or it could be 14, like we're because there's a lot in this. So what we're going to talk about, we're going to talk about vision story next, come in for that one that's gonna be talking about how do you lay out your 90 day plan? How do you build out your one year plan? And then what's your three to five year plan? And then what's your overall vision, then we're going to dive into purpose statement, which is going to be why we're here. Then we're gonna go into premises, what is our core belief, our core values, which we've already done, we're going to now talk about it from a professional standpoint to then we go into mission statement, and this is how we're going to serve our purpose. And then we're going to talk about key characteristics, characteristics of people on your team to accomplish your mission, then what are the critical actions? So do the daily actions every single team member has to do? And then what is an affirmation for your office? And so those are the what we feel are what yeah, what we feel are the like the Constitution, the foundational documents or the core ideology, and whatever line you whatever one you pick, just keep it consistent. It doesn't matter. There's not a right or wrong on this, but just make sure it's consistent because there's nothing worse than trying to bounce back and forth between different ideas. All right, so excited for the next one, too. So I'll see you guys next week where we're going to be talking about the vision story, and have a great week. Thank you guys very much.