TSAHP Podcast - EP.37- Elliot Dobie

Hi, I'm Andrew Jacobs. Welcome to the successful Allied Health Practitioner podcast, where I sit down and talk to Australian based Allied Health Practitioners to find out how they have become successful. From nailing a work life balance, becoming fully booked, purchasing their home, buying investment properties or running their own business, success is different for everyone. I dig deep and explore their thoughts and strategies behind their success, while discovering the lessons and mistakes they made along their journey. So hopefully you learn from these and not do them yourself. I'm doing this podcast in the genuine hope that you learn from these interviews and personally become successful. For me, as a qualified osteopath and mortgage broker who exclusively works with Allied Health Practitioners, my purpose is simple. If I can help you become successful, then in return, if your journey to success requires you to secure a finance to purchase a home and investment property or start and run your own business, then you will want to work with me. And if you choose not to, that's okay. I just want everyone to be successful. And at least I know if you do become successful, this will mean you'll be able to help more people in Australia, which is amazing anyway. So let's get to the podcast. Welcome to another episode of the successful Allied Health Practitioner podcast. My guest today is Elliot Dobby. Welcome, Elliot. Hey, hey, Colin. I always like to start the podcast by asking the same questions. What is your Allied Health background and what are you doing right now? My Allied Health background is physiotherapy. At the moment, I'm launching a new practice management software company. Which sounds ridiculous. What's up? Oh, it's just a mouthful. It's a mouthful and it's just not what I thought I'd be doing. Let's put it that way. What did you think you would be doing? I mean, I had the same physio dreams that most people do. I wanted to work in sport for a long period of time. I wanted to own a clinic. I really love face to face care. I love the clinic, the clinic style of business. Then I decided I was going to do a PhD. Then I was like, "Oh, I'm going to be a researcher. I'm going to be an academic on the side." I completely went down a different brainwave. Then within two years, I flipped again. I think in my quarter life crisis, I can't decide where I want to be. I'm just following my nose at the moment. If you'd asked me a couple of years ago, I'd know this is not what I'd be doing. It's amazing how life takes us down different pathways, isn't it? We all don't know where we're going sometimes, but you've just got to follow a pathway and just find something that you're passionate about. From speaking to you previously, clinic one is definitely a passion that you have. Yeah, absolutely. I'm a passionate guy by nature. When I get something that I can really see the benefit for and can help a lot of people in solve a lot of problems. I don't know who wouldn't be passionate about it. I'm just really excited for the next few chapters. It's one of those things that the passion almost builds. I was passionate at the start, but I was always really nervous. Is this a good idea? Should I actually commit all my money? My financial future to this, should I ask other people I know to do the same? How far down the road? How cocky am I that this idea is good? The passion comes almost. It feeds on itself because once people go that sick or that's cool, I would love to use that. Then I just go from zero to 100 again. I feed on other people's interest and passions as well. It's kind of like a dopamine in every single time. Maybe it's something like that where I'm just riding those emotional waves. I love clinic one. I think it's going to be the greatest thing for our health and especially physios because it's going to solve a lot of my problems that I'm having. That's the best part. I know we're most clinicians struggle with because I've struggle with them and that's how most good products have built. It comes from those real life experiences. It's going to be cool when it's. I don't think it'll ever be finished, but it'll be really cool when it's mature. Not that it's not cool now, but I can really see the next even. We've got the bases down now. We're looking at two to five years of how AI is going to change practice and all those kinds of things. It's going to be really cool to see where this journey goes. Talking about journeys, take me back through your journey. Obviously, went to uni, you went to the University of Canberra to study physiotherapy and then walk me through that journey, how that's played out. I think I've personally funded University of Canberra and I reckon the reason that they're going through cuts is that I'm not paying for any physiotherapy because I've been there for almost 10 years. I did a double degree in exercise science and psych, which in my opinion was a dumb double degree. I enjoyed it, but it didn't get me anywhere. I had no job prospects. I had nothing on the other side. I tried to do it on as in psych and I couldn't get it because I didn't have the grades. Then I did it on as in sports studies and I really enjoyed that. Again, I didn't really know what I was going to do. That's five years of undergrad with no actual clinical outward. You do internships with exercise science, right? I was working with the Brumbies for a bid. I did some work with the Canberra Brava, a hockey team and stuff of the degree, but you go out stand for a job and they're like, "No, that's not happening." You're like, "Oh, okay. I'm just wasting my time, but it's not a natural progression into the industry." I got to the end of my honors and honestly, I just needed a paycheck. I was living in my parents' house. I needed a paycheck. I can't keep doing this. I don't care what it is. At that time, I'd been working in like Hospoe. I was a landscape-weboring. I've done so many random jobs. Nothing consistent. Then I finally looked at what I was going to do after the honors and I was about two months after the honors was finished. I was like, "What am I going to do?" I was like, "Oh, maybe I'll double down and go, "All right, well, I've got all this experience. I've got all these uni degrees. I'd hate to just not use them and go into the public service and stuff." That's my personal thing. I want to use what I've learned. I like what I learned. There's nothing wrong with it. I enjoy exercise science stuff. It's really cool. I like to research. I like those kinds of against fields of study. I didn't want to do anything super practical, but I didn't want to do anything super research based. I wanted in the middle. Then I was just looking at UC's Masters programs and went, "Oh, yeah. Physio has an employment rate of 99%. I was like, if I do that, I know in two years I'm going to get a paycheck because I am done not knowing." I then moved out stupidly. As soon as I started my Masters for a year and I moved to an expensive part in Canberra I go partner that I was within the best mate, struggled for the first year paying that to do a year in the Masters and then I ended up moving back home. I fell in love with Physio almost like day one. So I think the first, you know, in the Masters program got you get dropped in at Musk one. So you skip the first two years because you've done your exercise science stuff and you get dropped straight into my opinion, the best unit and the finest unit. I've got Phil Newman as my tutor, who is a goat. As soon as I landed I was like, "I love this." It was a combination of hands-on work, face-to-face people work, research. It just combined everything that I really liked. So that was cool. And then yeah, just really pushed through Physio as hard as I could. I wasn't working. I moved back home again to finish, like to go through my placements because I didn't want to, like, have to struggle with work. I wanted to study. I wanted to be good. I wanted to nail Physio. So I did that and then graduated. Got a job at a sport clinic in Canberra. Worked there for about four or five years. Was looking at buying in and then wasn't really the right option. And then I was still do, I'd gone down the pit in that I was deciding whether I was going to do my sport masters or something else. And that was probably, like I'm about to, technically it was about, I was four years into working and then I decided to do the sport masters. So I did six months of the sport masters with the Catholic Uni, ACU, I think. Really cool program. They got a double degree in sport masters and high performance like SNC stuff. Love that. So I did six months of that, but it was all cash and it's expensive. And I'm like, this is insane. And then a PhD opportunity came up at UC with Elite Snow Sports. And I was like, well, Snow Sports was kind of my background. So I was like, yep, I'm going to go, I'm going to pivot hard by repaying this cash. I'm going to get paid to do the study and go down this road. And then that was really fruitful because it linked me up with the OWA. I got to do some work with Snow Australia, got to go overseas and do all that stuff while studying. So that was absolutely awesome. I'm still doing it technically. I'm just deferred. So I'm technically two years into it. So I'm still shooting and I still get emails about where we are then and I'm like, oh my god, that's not even in my brand at the moment. But yeah, so I did that. And then after I left my old job, I went, oh, like we talked about, at my old job, we talked about softwares and building our own apps. And I think most clinics go through that phase where they're like, man, I wish we just had our own app, you know, I wish we had our own way of booking. Like there's so many things that go wrong. There's so many factors that could be sold with tech. And as soon as I left, I'm like, well, to be honest, I've got a pretty good free reign. I've had some savings built up. And I didn't really have anything besides the PhD. So I was like, okay, well why don't bug it this? Why don't I just go down this road and go, well, why don't I just flip the whole script because there was so many overheads at that business that I was looking at buying into at the time and going, look, there's so many things we can. So here and so yeah, it was just another journey at the start. It was just another like little rabbit hole that I went down and as I just kept going down I just couldn't stop and I was like this this is like this solution. This is the fix. This is the future and Every single person I told clinical or not Just agreed every single person so not one person has told me like people are skeptical like oh you this is Super risk you and this is so risk him like well. Yeah, everything's a risk It's an expensive risk, but everything's a risk if you start something new But all the people that were in my circle who would normally call me an idiot about doing something dumb Well, like this is a good idea. So yeah, it just kind of circle from there So I started chatting to software developers and going through those processes and ended up linking up with my CTO John and We started building clinic one in around February And we've just gone extremely fast in that build. So I think if you talk to anyone in software world to see what we've built We've got a web application We've got a practitioner application a patient application that all link together six AI features a whole bunch of other little things and we've done that in eight months So that's a massive amount of work Which obviously has its pros and cons But it's something that just shows how passionate we are about it and we're not just dipping out to win And I don't think this area is something you can dip your toe in like we I used to go I went to a couple of What do you call them the meetups for founders and stuff? There's an icon thing in Canberra where like founders and like people are innovation centers for entrepreneurs Whatever I went to like one of those Is this was like a year ago and I went and they're one of them like all you need an MVP You need like the minimal viable product to then test the waters. I'm like, I don't know one clinic who would trust an MVP With swapping their clinic over. It's just not gonna work for us like a practice management software If you're curious There's too much functionality needed. There's too many moving parts You cannot have something that does not reliably work and practice management software is a big by nature So yeah, we I met the right people we go in the right flow and we have the great relationships and yeah We just absolutely pushed through this last eight months and then we launched it the APA conference in October and yeah We're still building and refining and was done on board clinics at the moment and yeah, it's been Really really really fast-year Yeah, it's all right Yeah, so what's your definition of success? Ah If you're happy with yourself at the end of the day, you know, I don't think it's necessarily a An objective term. I think you can be if you're if you have a goal and you achieve it or you feel good about if you didn't achieve it That's success. I think it's like how you feel So for me if I went down this road and let's say I didn't do it I would feel pretty shit for a long period of time once I got a sniff of like, yep, I need to have a crack at this Even if I didn't do it. Let's say I dodged a bullet right let's say that's let's say that some other software with millions of dollars Drops out of the thin air and goes, yeah, we're cleaning up and I've already invested and I've gone down that road I wouldn't feel bad about it because I wouldn't have done on knowing sort of things so for me Success isn't necessarily about where your company ends up where your practice ends up or where you end up It's like how you feel about it and that can obviously be a positive and negative depending if you have like you know Some warped views about what you think you should be doing and those kind of things in social media Obviously doesn't help with that at all because you compare in yourself against the goats and things like that but like for me as long as I can as long as I'm comfortable with myself my decisions I know I you know life is short Those kinds of things and yeah, that's success in my personal view So not having the regret And maybe that's just a lack of regret. I mean you're gonna regret choices right stuff happens But did you do it for the right reasons, you know like if you've got a regret Is it because you made because that choice that you made wasn't in line with your normal value system? Was that choice that you made outside your value system? But if you're trying and experimenting pushing your bubble I Don't think you can be unsuccessful in the sense of who what you're trying to do as a person Obviously this objective measures is your business windows and lose But what your goals are did you build a good culture when your business failed? Did you make a lot of money in a short period of time doing one particular thing? But then lots of it goes it comes back to the value system So I think it's a good question absolutely. I think it's it's more about how you feel when you put your head down at the end of the day Do you think your definition of success has changed over time? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. It might just be because I'm 33 my brains finally developed fully because that study came out But I can't not see about everyone having the four stages of growth now I mean I always knew that but I'm like mate You told me my brain hadn't finished growing until I was 25 and now you're telling me it's 33 next next decade It will be 40 and it's just gonna follow me along. So I'm just never gonna be growing up That's how I personally find I think yeah There's a there's a you go through some you go through stuff, right? So by the time you're mid 30s you've gone through some stuff and you've seen what is important and what's not important You know when I was doing physio success was being full You know success was seeing 50 patients a week success was then when you're in sport is getting a play back at a certain time It's having good good relationships with management staff and coaches those are successes That's not always in your control So if something's is outside your control happens like let's say that that injury doesn't heal in the right time Be followed the protocol. Let's say that that coach doesn't like you or you don't have a good relationship with that coach For whatever reason is a your fault or did you come with your own values? So those successes can be objective, but there's too many variables To really get hunkered down on a failure I think looking at it from a success failure objectively is fine as long as it doesn't affect who you are and doesn't go Look, I'm a failure because I found about objective measures like no that objective measure fail But you did the reasons how are your reasons going into that and then if one of those reasons Wasn't right and you don't and you got a problem with it and that's the failure So yeah, I think it has changed you know, it's just Yeah, it's been kind of to yourself as well. I Think sometimes we hold our valves at such a high level that we don't have time to to look back and reflect on that So it's it's really deep the way you kind of look at that because it's so true And that's obviously the benefit and the whole purpose of this podcast is just to challenge the way that people see success And it should be you know something that should be discussed and considered because I think a lot of people have a warpsense of what success is It isn't just a monetary value or achieving certain things That it goes a lot deeper. So you know, that's a really good Angle to consider the success, which is great. So how Has your day like what do your days look like at the moment? Yeah, it's a mixed bag really mixed bag Depending on like because again, it's just me and one other well There's a whole software team that's involved in clinic one but in terms of the face-to-face and the outreach and those sort of things It's me so at the moment it's either depends how many people are interested in clinic one how many demos I'm doing I'm usually running through the software Chant and a clinic's about problems or sort of things. So that's the majority of my day Other than that it's learning how advertising works. It's learning how Product distribution works. It's learning all of those things that I have no idea about and that any founder You know, it just puts their head through 20 brick walls to figure it out I think in this world you got to be a quick learner to like survive And I think that's one of my skills like I can pick things I think I'm learning quickly or at least if we go back to Success and failure I fail pretty quick and then I can move on from it because I'm not buried in the thought maybe But in terms of that I'll be doing those kinds of things and then I still do some clinic work. So I work clinically Fright I first I choose the afternoons and friday morning so do about eight hours of clinic work And I still do a bit I still do a lot of sport I've got I'm doing work with like a more tai gin that's local and basketball ACT as well. So there's still a few things that I work with in Dublin or the basketball CT things What whenever this comes out it should be fun So that that's cool, but the I get a good mix of patience as well. I still get like you know your classic ACL I still get your classic way back So at the moment I get it's kind of nice having a break from the computer and going back to what I know and love and What used to be something I remember like you know five years ago or six years ago when you'd be a new grad you'd be Stress in every single patient and now it's like that's not even my stress point You know that's fun now. It's it's a it's a breath of fresh air from like the bigger world of clinic one and also the bigger world of a PhD That all makes sense. I can control it. I know it. It feels comfortable and I get to talk to people in a different space Whereas this is all learning and need for so it's almost like the five years ago You grad I just started again in a different sort of space So yeah, my days are so mixed. I got so many It just goes with the wind you know So why did you start clinic one like what was the real driver towards it like obviously everyone I know myself, you know, you're sitting in in clinic. You're between patients like oh this software this that but I never went on and started my own software to solve that. What drove you so passionately to go, no, I'm going to make the difference. I'm going to fix things that a lot of practices are already using software. And we know that you can speak to them and they never change things or anything like that. What made you want to make a difference and go on this journey? Yeah, there's probably a few answers. I think one of the most important ones that's really kept me going is that one of the reasons or physio specifically, there's other allied health to consider. We're not just physio, but obviously we're starting very significantly in the physio world. It's just how it is. For physios, it's hard to stay in the profession and financially, let's go with the success world to financially build what they would call as a successful salary. It's hard to then be able to get to $100,000 is the average wage now, right in Australia. If you say that to any physio, they're like, "Oh, well, that's either the cap of what they're going to earn," or it's just a little bit overrun. So to make more money, you have to see more patients or you have to charge more. Now, clinicians as physios don't always get to choose what they charge. It's the clinic owner that gets to choose that. No matter how much value that physio can give, their money is still tied up in how often they can work how much time work life balance issues. One of the biggest things that I'm excited about clinic, one of why I really wanted to create something that did this was to create other revenue streams that don't rely on face-to-face service. Physios have so much knowledge about how to help people improve lifestyle a whole bunch of stuff, but it canceling. We have so many skills that we can only monetize, right? And we have to talk about money here because of this business. We're not talking about in a way that we should be profiting of people's issues. We're talking about a career path and how to create more value for more people, but in ways that doesn't add more time. So, and a lot of that issue is tech. A lot of that issue is I can't give my value in the back of my head to people without seeing them face-to-face. And so, one of the key things that physio, that clinic one is building is ways that clinics can make more money without having that rely just on face-to-face consults. It's still the primary driver, but there are features where you can sell exercise programs, sell products, sell time, and all kinds of stuff all on the patient's app. So, instead of me having to purposely always be like, you have to come see me before I can help you. You have to do this before I can help you. We've now created a physio brain shop where you can put all your cool ideas for different people, different injuries, different demographics into a place where patients can then buy it. They don't have to just drop in and see you. So, those things, I think are really important where let's do that. And then from the flip side, let's make it cheaper for the clinic to run so they don't have to push you to see 20,000 patients a year. Let's bring those overheads down so that the clinic can go, you know what? You can do in our session. Or you know what, I'm going to pay you a full salary now instead of a per patient or a commission. I'm going to give you a full salary with all these benefits. I don't know how common it is for a clinic to actually give you a permanent part time with benefits because I never got off of that. It was casual or a commission. It's rare to find a clinic. I think that will give you a good wage, but also give you paternity leave. So, let's make it cheaper for clinics to run so that they can offer contracts and make employees happier so that they don't have to get pushed to those things and create other ways to monetize their value. That's not just based on face-to-face time. We can do all of that with a practice management software, with a patient app. It's simple to do. There's ways to do it and that's what we're trying, what we're going to achieve. So, that's what's kept me really excited about is like, "Well, there are ways to make this industry work better for every single person across the map." And not relying necessarily on old school tactics of business. We can level it up with the way the tech is. It just needs to be built for the person. So, what are the goals of clinic one for the first once to years? What are the short-term goals? Yeah, I mean, there's obviously investment goals and funding goals and growth goals. We'd obviously like to be overseas. We'd like to be a company that's not just in Australia based. Those are good company goals to have. For me, I want people to be happy using it. That's my goal. I want someone to get it and someone to turn on me like, "Clinic one is sick." That's all I want. And then I just want as many of them as I can possibly get. That's it. I just want someone to use it and enjoy using it. And then also feel like they can contribute to it. And we're in a space now where we can get data really easily from people. We can put stuff into the software to go. Tell us what you think. We'll put it into production. Give us some lists. We can vote. This is something that Spice does really well on their website. They've actually got a voting poll for feature drops. Those sort of interactive things are really important. So, I want to make it sick. So that someone goes, "Yep, this is really cool." And I want that to happen today. And I also want to happen in six months. And I want to happen every single time they use it. So, it's not necessarily a two-year goal. There's obviously business growth goals that we have to do to survive and to achieve expansion and those kinds of things. But personally, I just want people in the first year or two. I just want them to say this is sick. It doesn't mean it's perfect. But it's so good that they turn on their stream ones that work for it. It makes their day better, makes their life better because they're not buried in stuff on the back end. So, if I can achieve that in a year or two, which arguably we're very, very close, I'll be happy. And that's one of the great features as well. It's not only because you're in that growth stage and that kind of tech development stage that any feedback you can action quite quickly. If there's things that it's missing, you can change. And like a lot of the established software that there's things that you wish you they would have changed 10 years ago, but they still haven't changed. You've got the ability to do that now, don't you? Yeah, absolutely. And it's just one of the thing is tech. It's way easier to build to modularize software now. It's way easier to move things in and out. It wasn't as easy 10 years ago, 15 years ago, for all. So we're in a position where we're taking advantage of how the tech industry has grown and the features that exist to then be able to create more value for different niches. We can niche out the features way cheaper. We can niche them out to suit each individual run, whether it's mobile, whether specifically NDIS, whether those little things. So our plan is to ingrain those modules into each niche aspect of our health and create those features. Just take advantage of where tech is at the moment, but also know that it's going to pivot in the next five years that we different, you know? And so we've got a very futuristic mindset about where we have to shift on that journey. So we've had a few practitioners now come on and they've transitioned or they're transitioning from hands on clinical work into kind of a tech startup. And one of the challenges is marketing and getting out there. You said that, obviously, before that's one of the things that you're learning. What have you learnt in these early days about the marketing side of it all and how to get your product out to the wider market? Yeah, I mean, it's nice to have money to do that. I'd argue. I think that there's a period where you got to go through your phone book, go through your networking when you're starting out. So for me, it was, you know, learning to use my network as much as possible, you know, leverage the position that I've been in to then gain a foothold and go through. From the other side, I think in our aid health, social proofing is everything, I think for us, I think a word of mouth is a really big deal. Some of the biggest clients that we've chatted to are word of mouth referrals. They're not, it's funny. They're not coming because they've seen an ad that we've pushed or saw as a conference or something. It's someone told someone else. And that's just the nature of our world, our world as well. You know, especially but at the point where we can't throw a clinic one in people's faces, but advertising is hard. I think getting the message across of what we do without pissing somebody off, super difficult, you know, physios, especially with skeptics by nature. And it's a painful swap. So even considering swapping practice management software is an emotional, you know, it can be a subconscious little urk, you know, like, oh, even if the situation's there, even if that's really good, it's still painful to think about. So for marketing point of view, it's about getting the message across. It's about going, well, what value is going to do that particular person, but it's understanding their problems. And that's difficult because there's so many problems and then we've got so many solutions. So which one do you pick? Which one do you go? That one's the one that I'm going to have in my home. That's the one I'm going to spend two grand on ads for, you know, this is the one I'm going to do a video podcast for. Which one is the one to do? So trial and error Andrew, at the moment, it's, I've learned trial and error is everything and using your network as best as you can. Yeah, it's how we got to hear as well. So yeah, it's going back to, you know, kind of how you looked at success, isn't it? So if you choose something and you go down that way, if it fails, it doesn't mean you fail or you're a failure. It just means well, that didn't work. You move to the next spot. Yeah, and I like to even think of it as goals achieved or not achieved. Did you achieve the goal? Was that something that was that, was that, you know, did you tick the box? If you didn't TNT the box guy back through the. process, what happened, what was different. I think it's just so naive to come in. I mean, this is me being naive, talking about naive, not even naiveity, but it feels so naive for me to be able to come in and go, I'm going to nail every ad campaign in the first three months. We're going to have DMs out there at the WAZU. Absolutely not. I tell you what I can do, though, is every single time I have a conversation with someone, I am very confident that I can get what this product does in a two-person in the sense that they can understand. The other side of marketing and advertising is very hard to do that. How do you get that across in two seconds? Because if you don't have a two-second hook at the start of your graphic or your creative, it's just the way it is. And then you want to build authenticity into that two seconds? That's hard. How do you make something authentic in two seconds? You go, yeah, it's me how are you going? They're not a skip. So it's very difficult, I think. And that's something I'm learning is how difficult it is. But again, it's trial and error. And you have to burn some dollars to then figure out what works for the company. It's the same, I think, in any software world. But for us, social proofing will be everything. And when we have enough social proof, that will be our next now next level up. When we have enough people that have gone, this is a six software. I love using it. Then our products, our marketing, our goals will then shift. And then we'll really learn again, because it'll be down at different road. Yeah, so it's not just a static target. It's a ever-moving dynamic target really with when it comes to marketing. And things change from a marketing point of view as well, but it's just constantly evolving, isn't it? Yeah, what you do at each stage changes. So obviously at this first stage, I could dump it all of this into ads and get nothing. But if I go to every single person that I know, I'll get way more. So at different stages, and then once you're at a medium stage and a large stage, you have to change. At least that's what this, that's what the SaaS vertical podcasters tell me when I go out and go, how do I do this? They tell me, I've got to do something different every time. And they also tell me if it's not working, change it. Stop doing the same thing if it's not working. Pivot. So there's things to do there and to learn. But at the moment, we're in a position where we're still, we're still engaging with the networks. We're still using that word of mouth referral. And then there'll be a point where we then have to go, okay, well, we've reached out cap here. What's next? So it's figuring out what stage you're also at and what's working. What's not. And yeah, try one error. Try one error. How did the launch go that feeling like obviously spent months and months building this and obviously keeping it, you know, kind of, you know, not so much a secret, but it was kind of, you know, a lot behind the scenes and then suddenly you got to come out and and and share it with kind of the physio world initially. How did that feel? Yeah, it was great. It was a hard, it was a hard weekend to be honest, physically hard. I didn't realize that standing at a conference for three days would break me. But my feet, my feet were literally bleeding Andrew. I got home one day and I was like, why did I wear boots? I wore boots and chinos and it was the dumbest idea ever. And that was good. That was a Brookstore and they were giving out demos of Brooks. And so we all went down and got Brooks at the next two days after because I was like, I can't wear what I only brought boots and then like a rubber crock kind of shoe. Those only two things I brought it was so dumb. So physically it was hard. Emotionally it was fantastic. We, as a team got to really bond over it as well because we've been grinding so hard. We got to come together and celebrate it as well. And having any, any person who was interested as soon as we start talking about the software, it felt so good just to see them light up about what it does and how big it is. And they every problem that they have, we 80%, 90% of them we had a solution for. And so seeing their face when we presented those things and hearing their stories about what they've done to get around that problem, you know, I had, I had one person come into their name that they came up and they said, I don't want to talk to you because I've spent $10,000 trying to fix a problem that I think you've fixed. And I don't want to talk to you about it because it's going to make me sad. And I'm like, I really want to know what this problem is. You have to tell me. And it was something to do with the booking flow and the web portal in classes. And I was like, yeah, we're building a classes module. You'll be able to book in like for a class by the web portal. It'll have its own section. She's like, I've literally spent 10 grand doing that myself. I've literally spent it. And I was like, I'm very sorry that you spent that, but hey, like, you know, let's talk about your other problems, you know, like, so that sort of thing, we're all similar. It was like, we're all one community in the sense that we all clinicians to a certain degree or research of these shows. We understand those problems. So that emotionally felt good because we're in our bubble for so long. Is this going to be good? Are we hitting the right points? You know, how will it come across? How will the messaging come across? So it was emotionally validating and relieving. And that if we're going to talk about success and fail, it felt successful on that launch that we did everything right leading up to that. We've maximized our value at that point that we turned enough heads to look at us and every person we chatted to agreed with our problems and our solutions. So yeah, it was a great experience. Yeah, I can't wait for next year. I think next year is in cans. I think it's in cans. So hopefully by next year will be a completely different again, which will be really fun. So that will hopefully also feel just as good. So when it comes to managing your work life balance, how do you go about this that ultimately it's endless amount of times that you can put into this business? How do you kind of manage that? Yeah, it's pretty tough. I'm used to the weekends sort of thing. You know, like when you do sport, I've done, you're doing weekend sports since I've since I started physios. So I'm used to weekends being in and out. I'm used to the travel. So the extra workload in terms of like pushing through a weekend or pushing in and out of nights and stuff isn't really different. It's probably more for me to managing the the weight of it all. You know, I've never had this much responsibility. So managing that is where my pro-activeness goes. It's not the hours. It's it's going to just how I emotionally feel on the day about where things are at, whether it's in my control, can it change it, can it not? So the way that I manage that is that I try and put some mandatory things in, you know, they're mandatory exercise sessions that I have to do. I make sure that they happen. And then once or twice a month, I make sure that there's a day that I'm just doing completely nothing. And then I also try to make sure that if I if I'm brain dead and there's nothing to do, that a two o'clock on a Thursday for whatever. If I've got an hour gap and there's nothing to do and I feel terrible, I rely on the couch and watch half a movie. You know, it's about being, it's about knowing who you are, I think, and managing, you know, what what helps you feel better and what helps you don't and the pro-activeness of that is probably how how I get through some of those tricky points. But if you don't know yourself, it's kind of hard because you're like, oh, people tell me I should do this, people tell me I should do that. Like you got to know what works for you and be unapologetic about it. So a lot of hours that you're working at the moment? I mean, it's hourly, you know, it depends on the day. It literally just depends on the day. Some days it's a late night push, other days it's, you know, all when somebody else is up. But it's every day, it's constant. And if it's not constant, it's constantly in your brain. So it's not like something you can put down. And this is the difference. This is the difference between doing something where you're starting it, you're building it, you need to put in those hours. It's a when you're starting a new business. I mean, I'm saying this not evenly. This is my first business, right? But I you can't put it down. I cannot put clinic one down in my head. I can try and there are times where like I'm so brain dead that that's why I do movies. I like movies work really well for me. I get into a good movie and it sucks me in and I'm good. I'm away from clinic one for like an hour. So if I'm kickboxing or doing more time, I'm kicking the shit out of a bag. It's high intensity. I've got more, I got clinic one out of my head for a bit. So but every other hour it's there. It's there at 2am when you wake up. It's there at 11 o'clock a night when you're trying to knock some stuff out. It's always there. So the hour is just coming going in terms of physical work. But the physical work is nothing on nothing on the constant on the constant brain. That's where for me the real work is. If I if it was like a pilot dirt, right? And I could just shovel it completely different. If I've got 20 hours to put into shoveling dirt, it's different. 10 hours or 15 hours of this of normal work plus the five of the constant brain. It's not the same equation. You know, it's a different mentality. So yeah, it's but it goes the quick answer goes up and down. Some days we'll be better some days or not. But it's a it's a fun up and down at the moment. Would you recommend so obviously a lot of people out there have good ideas and different tech ideas and different things thinking they might start their own business or you know whatever their goals or dreams are. Would you recommend practitioners just give it a go and and jump in the deep end like did you know it's going to be so successful or you just have to just give it a go and just figure it out as you win. Yeah, it's a tough question. Hey, I think you've got to be the right I'm not I'm not saying this like I'm the right person. I don't understand. I argue when I say that, but like my personality seems to suit this in a certain degree, certain direction like I can handle the constant brain and I've I really have a fuck around and find out mentality. So that's just who I am. I've always been into like a bit more is taking a minute. other people. My partner balances that out so we've got a good akin. I think that if you're looking at going down something like this, the relationships are everything. So if you're doing it with the right people, limitless, you can do whatever you can you can conquer the world I think. It is all about who you're doing it with. Do you do you Lincoln? Do you have that connection? Do you have that relationship that you both understand each other that you will support each other that you'll push through barriers together? You can do things solo, but I don't know. I think every successful person who has achieved some of their goals, no one has done it by themselves. There's always something else. When, when, or the other? Two a certain degree. I said that two a certain degree. I think majority of people you need collaboration, you need people to help to complement your skill set. So if you have someone that I think works really well and this is why I'm so lucky that I've met John who's our CTO because on this journey we we just connected straight away. Like the first phone call, I was like, this is my guy, we get it, we get each other, we come from different worlds, but we just linked up. There was never a question about it. So if you've got the good relationships, I think that's positive sign number one. Yeah, I think if you're if you're emotionally driven enough to do it, I think if you're looking at just from a money point of view or you know a small goal, it can't just be one thing in your life. I think that it's going to change. You got to be like feel a breath that passionate about it, right? Really deep. Otherwise when it gets hard, you'll tap out. It'll be something that you can't you won't you won't go through. You just won't say it as the as you have the side. And then does that have a negative effect on you? Are you happy for that to fail in the sense of where to have that success and failure? Happy for it to not work. You're happy to lose money on it. Happy spend six months a year, two years, five years of blood sweat and then for it to go away, will you be able to live with yourself on the other side? You know, what in your life is in that way. So I think being realistic about where you are in life and what you can live with on the other side, coming back to what we talked about the start, if you do it and it goes down, are you going to be okay with it? If you are and you're going to feel better about yourself after it, no matter the consequence, absolutely do it. 100%. I don't think anyone in this life should be left wondering what if and if you land flat on your face and you're poor and kind of forward stuff, can you live with that? Is where does your value go to that? At least you know you tried. And the best part is you'll learn from it from something else. Like everything that I've all my skillsets that I've got now for clinic one have come from just doing multiple different things, like combining skills. And the only way you do that is by sucking at something for a while. And so if you do it and it doesn't work, you'll leverage that skill and learn and move onto something else. So I think it's about handling the emotional stability of it and rolling through those. And if you can do that and you've got the right mental space, absolutely 100% give it everything you've got. But if you're 50/50 or even 70/30, then I don't think it's a good idea. I think you're better off doing what you feel 100% on if that makes sense. Definitely. So who's helped you the most on your journey? My partner for sure. Yeah, my partner for sure. They're having my high risk and her low risk has been really helpful. But coming home every day and having that conversation that support bubble, it's unrivaled in what it can be. So my partner is the reason we're still here for sure. Because when you get those doubts, when you get those questions or those concerns and those stresses, I'm probably not the person that can handle that by themselves without just having the conversation. Or I need is one conversation. If I feel shit, or I need is one conversation and one go, shut up, you'll be fine. Out of boy, smack me on the bum, see you later. I'm fine again. So my partner is really good at that. So I think my partner is definitely one, my next circle of families, the next one as well. Because I've got a lot of life skills. My dad was in a count for a while. My sisters are loyal. I've got a lot of good skill bases in my network. And so that's the next one. Having real world experience on that side show me the absolute worst case scenarios. And then I can live with those. Then I can make data choices. So those are 100% my best networks. Is your partner involved in clinic one? No, but she's involved in the colors. She's like, I give her a, what does this look like? How does this make you feel? And she's really good with those sort of things. So she called, like we just did a whole bunch of creatives yesterday. And yeah, she comes in and she's like, why would you pick that color? And I'm like, oh, I thought it was this and she's like, that's not what it gives. Go that color. And I was like, brilliant. Sweet. So she comes in on those sort of things. But in terms of clinic one, no, it's not her bread and basket. She's in our out of health. She's just finished just anography diploma. So she's technically noticed in our government. She's a sonographer. So she gets the world. But radiography is a whole different kettle of fish as well with what software say you say. She has the same ideas. It's bookings. It's notes. It's patient face to face. So we have similar, similar days in some aspects. But yeah, she gives some good feedback on things that I also suck out though, because I'm like, I think this is cool. I'll go ask, I'll go get another opinion and then I'll get checked out pretty quick when it's bad. So what's some of the biggest lessons or some mistakes you've made along the journey? I wish I had more money before I started this. I wish I, I mean, would I have not started at that time? No, because I'm an impatient person. I'm like, get foot on the pedal as much as I can all the time. I want the world yesterday is kind of my nature. So, but it would have been nice to have a big ennestec at the start. I might have also, I mean, it's hard to say, but to do that, I would have had to then defer my PhD earlier. And I don't think I was prepared to do that either. So it might have been something I could have started six months later, but in tech world, you don't want to start later. You want to start now. It is, it is so key a race. So I think those things, but to be honest, there's not much in terms of, you know, there's probably more stuff with clinic one and what we've chosen to prioritize, but we haven't. And there's some decisions we've probably made in May or June that we could have lined up a little bit better, but there's from those, it's still fine because we learn from it and we just grow around it. So there's nothing that's been a really big lesson that's really smacked me across the face, but I have learned that relationships are important across the board. Networking is important, but coming to those things with the right mindset is everything. If you're coming in, you seem a bit fake or you're coming in, you're just a money guy or something like that, that will affect relationships. And I've seen people come to me like that and I can smell them all the way. So, and it just reinforces how important authenticity is, but it's also a really important business right now. It's actually a market trend. If you go look it up, it's a market trend for business to business things. There's authenticity. Everything. Everyone can see through your bullshit now. You can see through your reels and your stories and stuff. You want the person not necessarily the idea sometimes. So I think that the biggest lesson is just embracing the authenticity, embracing what the software is, where it isn't being honest about good things and bad things. What we think is really cool and being honest about what we've missed and rolling through it. And like people just want something that works for them. So we go, yeah, we don't have that. We missed it. Tell us and we'll put it in. But then I'm like, also, I've thought about these really, really cool things. You've got to take the group with the bad, but I think trying to just be this polished, shining armour of a salesperson just doesn't really work nowadays. At least in my view, and again, I'm naive, and I'm not a multi-million dollar company yet. So someone who is interested in this might be like, this guy doesn't know his ask from his elbow. You're probably right anyway. And then if you did have the opportunity to go back in time, what would you have done differently? That's a good question. I don't think there's anything I could have. I think everything is happened that I'd like to have changed. I can't see a decision. I think it's more just a circumstance that's led to it. This kind of comes back to that failure for what reason. Was it a decision I made? Was it not? I think with the launch, I probably would have saved a couple bucks on some of the stuff we spent money on. I think that would have been a factor. I think my level of scrutiny and my level of detail is something that I'm like, details are not really my strong suit. This comes back to knowing yourself. So I think going back in time, I would be way more analytical at the details. I'm the big picture guy. I'm the dreams guy. I'm like, let's do this. Does the work, does the not work? I miss details. It's just who I am. It's why the PhD is so hard for me. It's actually really difficult because I just gloss over details. Get to the next thing. Keep it moving. So for me, I would work on myself better in those factors and bring that to the game. Even now, it's hard because not in nature. I have to subconsciously go, all right, do a detail check. Don't just do an LH check. Do a detail check. Look for the things that you know you'll miss and I have to literally put that on a sticky note so I see it every time I've got to review something. So that's what I would bring earlier. That has cost us some time. It's not a bad thing. Like it but because of that I was we were able to do all these other things right but then there's details that need to be fixed. So I think that is probably where I go to. Know that self a bit better and then have steps to then fix those sort of issues. What advice would you give your younger self? It's also a good question. What would I wish I had known? Man that's tough. It's tough because I still feel so young Andrew. I don't feel like I've learned enough to give myself good advice because anything I say I also still feel naive about. So even that question before with the details. I feel naive in saying that. I think I would tell my earlier to just slow down a little bit. Like 5% like it doesn't have to happen yesterday. It doesn't happen today. Summarize clinic one for me and tell me how practitioners can find out about you guys and look it up and get a demo or do whatever. Give us a bit of a spill. Yeah so clinic one is a new practice management software. If this is the LV to pitch it does everything that your software does but it has a patient app where patients can book, pay, cancel. You can send them AI summaries. You can chat to them on you can do all this cool shit on the app. You have a practitioner app that actually and this is my biggest pet peeve is the practitioner actually pings me when a patient cancels or moves or does anything. It's about connecting you more with your diaries about connecting you more with the patient without adding extra work essentially. That's what we've aimed to achieve. It is something that is the price points approachable. It's not expensive. It's cheaper than if you have multiple software that we do combine. We're trying to help clinics. We're trying to grow clinics. It is technically a growth engine. There's revenue streams to be unlocked. There's a whole bunch of cool stuff we're building. So if you're in that space where you're looking at what your systems are or you're about to start a new clinic and you're looking for systems like a demo of this will change your mind about what you're using and what you're doing. So I think yeah best way to get in contact if it is some of you're interested in is just go to clinic1.com and book in a demo. Come chat to me personally. I do all the demos so you just chat into me. But I love hearing about people's clinics. I'm hearing about their stories about where they are, where they come from, what they're trying to do. Those sort of things really are really fun because I just know that we've got solutions for a lot of those things and I like helping people. The whole team likes helping people. That's why we're in our health to a certain degree. So it's just another way to do that. So yeah I think that's a pretty good spill. It's sick. At least if it's not sick tell me why it's not sick and I'll make it sick for you. Elliot thank you so much for coming on and sharing the story. It's amazing to hear about it all and I really appreciate your time. Yeah, Nourie is Andrew. Thanks. I'm glad we could finally knock one out of the park. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal, health, lending, tax or professional advice. That means it's not specific to you. Your needs, goals or objectives. So don't act on this information until you're spoken with your trusted professional. The views, thoughts and opinions expressed are the speakers own and do not represent the views, thoughts and opinions of the host or mortgage choice and such views are merely opinions expressed. We are not responsible for any losses, damages or liabilities that may arise from the use of this podcast.