Episode 21: Are you celebrating your wins?

Dr. Deb shares ideas on how to share your wins. Your team needs to celebrate the wins as well as you. 

Do not miss these highlights:

02:07 Why you should celebrate your little wins in business

02:30 Sharing your positive feedback with your team doesn't cost you anything - Give them a shoutout

05:22 Acknowledging these little wins is huge for all of us, it makes us feel like what we're doing is worthwhile

06:08 Healthcare is a struggle every single day for most people, in order to stay in the game for 20 or 30 years, you need to make it fun and exciting

08:33 It's the victory that gets us to the end - Celebrating victories brings a personal touch to your practice

09:26 Sharing that excitement and love to the team as well as to the clients, builds longevity, loyalty and trust amongst your employees and patients

Transcript for Episode #21:

You're listening to the Functional Medicine Business Podcast featuring Dr. Deb, one of the most creative functional medicine business practitioners in her industry. She shares the wisdom and knowledge that she has gained over 25 years of functional medicine, a pioneer in functional medicine, scheduling, leadership and Practice Management. Dr. Deb has a wealth of knowledge and is eager to share to help functional medicine become more productive, and for the practitioners and patients to live better lives. Our podcast shares the good and the bad of our industry. Because Dr. Deb knows the pain you live every day building a functional medicine practice with practical tools on how to manage money, taxes and patient care. She will discuss it all with you.

Hello, hello. Hello, it is Dr. Deb and you're listening to the functional medicine business podcast FMBI. Today I want to talk to you about celebrating your wins. Now we have a tendency to think about our wins as little things in business. You know we celebrate the holidays, we celebrate the Super Bowl, we celebrate the new year. But I want to ask you do you celebrate your little wins in business? Do you even take the time to recognize them as wins and celebrate with your team? You know, many people that I talked to in this space never take time to celebrate the small wins. They never share the positives with their team, they only share the things that they find that they're doing wrong. And I think that that's a difficult thing for many of us to learn how to do I understand that.

I remember when one of my business coaches told me to do this 10 years ago, and I was like, "are you kidding me? I'm not talking to them about that, then they're gonna want a raise and they're gonna want more money, and they're gonna want time off. And they're gonna complain about how hard they're working. I'm not telling them how good we're doing." But as time evolved, I realize that your dedicated, committed team that you work with day in and day out, and the people that are there supporting your mission in your goal, they need to hear about the wins just as much as you need to hear about the winds, they need to hear about the positive feedback that you get just as much as you need that positive feedback. That's what keeps them going as much as it keeps us going.

So my first question to you is, are you sharing your positive feedback with your team? And if you're not, I would really encourage you to do that. What we do in our office is when a client gives us positive feedback, whether it's in writing or whether they verbally are telling you one of our team members, we asked that team member to send a message throughout the entire team and let them know what this client said. So patient, Susie came in and said, My god, you guys have the best support staff. I love Colleen, she's amazing. She talks me through things when times are difficult. And it's just nice to know you guys are here. That's the kind of message that we send, we try to send verbatim to our team so that everyone gets a shout out. One of the other things that we did for a really long time was do shout out Friday. So every Friday, we would do a shout out. And we would say to our team members, we want you to shout out one of your team members, what have you caught them doing throughout the last week, that has been incredible that made your life easier that went out of their way to help a client and do something special that they didn't have to do. And we would go around it, everybody would shout out somebody on the team.

And it really took the focus off of the negative things that we were focused on, and gave us more of a positive focus and uplifted our team core, and our team culture. So those are just little things that you can do throughout the week that are they don't cost you anything. It's just a little time and a little thought behind doing it. And it actually makes other team members level up a little bit. Because if they see the same team person getting a shout out every week, this makes other people think like, hey, I want to get a shout out. So in order for me to get a shout out, I need to do something really special, I need to do something really amazing. And I think that's just a fabulous thing for people to be able to do. So I want you to think about what are the things that you can do that don't cost a lot, maybe cost nothing that can really elevate your culture in your practice and make everybody feel really great. Now, the other thing I want to talk about is celebrating your success. That's what we started this show with. And we all have wins throughout the week throughout the month throughout the year. Some are little some are really big wins. Maybe your win is that you had five new patients this week for your practice.

Well, how do you celebrate that? Do you just kind of go on and ignore it and don't acknowledge it? Or do you take a moment to just pat yourself on the back, tell your team how great they are or maybe you're the only team person. So you do your happy dance in your office, because you had five new patients, which is more than you had the week before. You know, there are little things that you could do. But acknowledging these little wins is huge for all of us, it makes us feel like what we're doing is worthwhile, it makes us want to do better and want to do more. So I want to encourage all of you guys to celebrate throughout the entire year, we do some things where we'll just bring lunch in once in a while, you know, once a quarter, we'll bring luncheon for our team. And we'll have a lunch, a sit down lunch, where we all sit together, and we take the time to talk or we'll do a potluck, and everybody brings something in. And it's fun, and it's exciting. And it breaks up the monotony of the day of seeing patients and dealing with constant problems and struggle. Healthcare is a struggle every single day for most people, whether you're dealing with insurance, you're dealing with schedules, you're dealing with providers or patients, it can be a challenge. And in order to stay in the game for 20 or 30 years, you need to make it fun, you need to make it exciting, you're working really hard to build your practice and care for your patients. And create an atmosphere for your employees. That is beyond anything that you can imagine, outside of your practice or inside of a large organization. So take the time to really celebrate that and, and acknowledge for your team and for yourself that your hard work is paying off. You know, we all need to have fun. And I like to look at the Super Bowl as a example for this when when they win any team when they win, and I'm not a sports person, so I won't name teams here, somebody will definitely reach out and tell me you got the wrong team. When you win the Super Bowl, the team gets to get together and they celebrate that trophy. It's all of their trophies, it's not just one, it's not just the quarterback, it's not just the coach, it's the entire team. And they have worked so hard throughout their career and throughout the year, to get to the Super Bowl to begin with, let alone to win the Super Bowl. And you have to think of yourself in your business the exact same way, you've gotten to that place where it is amazing for you to be part of this, this business that you've created that gets to touch the lives of so many people, and change the lives for so many people by implementing health protocols that make them be the best that they can be. And that alone should be a celebration. But oftentimes, it's not. Oftentimes it's the opposite. We look at it and we just say, you know, I just I can't get it right. I don't know this, or I don't know that or missing this or missing that. Don't do that to yourself because you know, it's a long game. It's a learning game. We all learn every single day as a practitioner, I know you're up leveling your knowledge, I know you're up leveling the tools that you have in your toolbox to help those clients. So be proud of that take responsibility and be excited about this.

You know, it's the victory that gets us to the end. And whether it's a conquest in a 5k that you want to do, or a fitness school that you want to achieve, or your kids winning something, celebrate all of that, and celebrate that with your team, because that's what makes your team a family niche and not just a money making machine for you. It brings personal touch to your practice, which makes all the difference in the world for you and for your clients. And I would say this, you know, over the years of being in practice, my clients have become like family to me. And we often forget to celebrate those fun wins with them. So when we have a new baby born into our practice, we share that on social media. We share that excitement because our clients love to see those family things as much as we love to see there's and it, it builds longevity. It builds loyalty, it builds trust amongst everybody in your office, whether it's an employee or a patient. And it makes it much easier for you to go to work every single day knowing that you're going to treat a family member versus you're just going to treat a client that's going to pay you some dollars. It's much easier, it's more rewarding. It's much more fun and I would encourage you guys to add a little of that personal touch into your practice into your marketing into who you are, and really allow that to be who you want to be.

So I hope this has been helpful for you. Please share your wins with us, I would love to see them in the chat. I would love to know that what you guys have going on in your practice in your life is making you happy and fulfilling you. And so please share those wins with us. We'd love to share them with you. And we'd love to highlight them as much as we possibly can. So thank you for being part of our podcast. Thank you for being part of our ecosystem. And let us know if there's anything at all that we can do to help you grow your practice and have it be your dream.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others. post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review. To catch all the latest from me. You can follow me on Facebook at FM bi, join our free group where we support one another and share our struggles. Thanks again and I'll see you next time.