Meeting rhythms are designed to run the business and reduce the number of meetings by being more intentional with your meetings and a structure to follow year after year to build your dream practice.  Discover the six components that will help you stay on track and create predictability and preparedness for your team and business.

Do you feel like you have struggles or challenges in these areas, this episode will help you understand and fill in the gaps and create the life and practice of your dreams. 

About the Host:

Dr Clifford J Fisher

Dr Cliff Fisher – Owns several offices all over the US and has a coaching business Dream Leadership Institute to help people find the greatest version of themselves. He will help you get to a foundational understanding to create the business and life that align with your being.  

Dr. Joseph Esposito, CEO

Dr. Joseph Esposito, D.C., C.C.N. C.N.S., C.C.S.P., D.A.B.C.N., F.A.A.I.M. C.T.N., is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of AlignLife. As such, he is responsible for the direction of AlignLife as it expands further across a dynamic and rapidly changing health care landscape. Dr. Esposito has more than 20 years of experience in a broad range of businesses, including chiropractic, nutrition, technology and internet marketing.

Dr. Esposito has extensive post-graduate academic accomplishments, as well as 15 years of experience managing successful chiropractic clinics in multiple states. He also is founder and CEO of Aceva LLC, a service-based nutritional company providing products and services to the AlignLife clinics. As the former CFO of an internet publishing company, Dr. Esposito understands the power of leveraging the internet to impact the lives of millions of Americans.

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https://www.instagram.com/alignyourpracticepodcast

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Align Your Practice podcast with Dr. Cliff Fisher where your best practice and life awaits you. Are you tired of running a practice on your own. We want to come alongside you with experts to help you create your dream practice in your dream life. Here is your host.

Alright, tribe, welcome back to align your practice with Dr. Cliff and Dr. Joe brought to you by line life where we want to give you the tools to find and create your align life. Last time was incredible is one of my favorite ones on rocks. And one of the interesting things Joe, you said was like You gave one of your team members are rock. And so and they didn't know what it was. So I'd love for you to share that story. But today we're going to talk, we're going to continue that conversation into how we create those collisions and talk about meeting pulses. And then we'll do a summary of the six tools. So Joe, would you please share your story on that with your team member?

Yeah, I just clipped out we're talking about rhythms. And, you know, why do we spend the time going over our scorecard and going over issues and solving and teaching. And I was telling this story about I had a number of clinics, and I gave an opportunity for the manager to get double their salary if they hit the net profit goal of the company of the clinic. And, and I was so excited. I never done that big of a impact. But we were scaling fast. And I needed someone to really take rain to the clinic. And after the quarter like she didn't do take any action outside of daily normal job detail. So I said why after I gave you one of the greatest opportunities and bonuses I would ever give. Did you not do anything? When I told you, if you double that? No, you increase that net profit, I would double the salary at the end of the year. And she looked at me says, Well, what's net profit. And she didn't know what this that was. You know, this is a number of years back. So it was like I was sending her the data, but she didn't really understand the finance. So with meeting rhythms, you're going to show a scoreboard with net profit with you patients. But you're going to actually go through the process where your whole team understands the flow of the business, the gaps, the holes. So anyways, Cliff love that story wanted me to want to share.

So meeting rhythms for me like they forced that collision. So what happens is, you know, those meeting rhythms like up another meeting another meeting, well, if you're having that conversation need to create level 10, which is also interaction when you have these level 10 meetings, there's a structure to it. And that's the thing that's typically missing in the meetings. And then the other thing that's missing is like a meeting rhythm or meeting pulse is they talked about NGOs. And so

so I mean meeting the level 10 Meeting means you want to a meeting that your whole team would rate a level 10 out of one through 10. Because it's efficient, you make great decisions, you move the company forward. So it's actually at the end of the meeting, literally rating the meeting. Was it a one to two or five? And anything under seven, you got to figure out why did you rate it so low? What can we do better to have a better meeting, because the last thing any of us need is another meeting. So meetings stretch to be efficient. And I love what Dr. Francis talks about. He goes, if you're not training, just having another meeting, if you're not role playing during training, you're just having another meeting. So role playing, and really going through scenarios and enhancing your ability to communicate and walk through your systems. That's training, and Cliff as directing training for align life. Training is vitally important, because when you don't, you're gonna end up having more and more meetings, right? Yeah, but that doesn't mean you don't need to have meetings, it just means you don't have to have off the spot meetings constantly throughout the day crisis meetings last second meetings, because of all the dysfunction. In your practice, Cliff and I are talking about meeting rhythms, to run the business to enhance the business to scale the business, not meetings on conflicts, because your flow your training is off that there's a big difference here. And most people don't have the time, the energy or the understanding of even what to do with these meetings. These are different meetings. So the meeting pulse, it's like a heart pulsing the business pulses throughout the year, and you got to have a point, you can't have the heart pulse every three seconds and then not pulse for two minutes. Likewise, you can have your business, have a meeting pulse, and have it once a year and then maybe twice next year. And then it's got to be a pulse. So it's a systematic rhythm. You'll hear the phrase meeting rhythms, or because it's a systematic method. So you should have an annual off site meeting about the business with your key leadership team. Maybe you in an office manager, maybe you and your husband or you and your wife, two owners. So it could be three of you. It could be five of you, but you take people who are influencing the leadership and the movement, not the delivery only of the service, but the leadership and the the ownership and the movement of a company should be added to date off site. Then every quarter, you have a quarterly pulse meeting to make sure that heart's policy. And then you have a weekly meeting. And clip I would also say monthly meetups with scorecards with your staff before the quarter leaves. So you're like, Okay, monthly meetups. And then I'm going to do my quarterly. Now I know where everything's at. What are your thoughts? I had a hard time getting all that in? I still do. Because that's a lot of pieces on top of running the business.

Oh, yeah. So like in our offices, so we have our daily which is our morning huddle and our post shift huddle. So we huddle before, here's what the day looks like our post huddle, which is here's what we learned in laughs. Then we have our weekly meetings group, which on ours is what you said, Yeah, we have our weekly office meeting, we go over our stats, our scoreboard, how do we do over the week, where the concerns what marketing things are going on. And then I also have a half hour meeting with my marketing person every week to say what's going on with their marketing. And then I have a one hour meeting with my office manager. And we call that the same page meeting. So we make sure we're on the same page. And then after that, then we do a, then we do the role playing or training. So that's an hour. And then monthly, we get together and we have a little bit longer weekly meeting. So it's at the beginning of the first, depending on the office, first week of the month, though, we go over like what were the stats for the last month? How are we doing? Are we on track to hit our quarterly goal? Are we off track on track? Where do we need to focus? And then marketing says, here's what we're doing this month, here's how last month turned out. And here's what's going on this quarter. So she, he or she does that. And then we do a scorecard check in just like what you're saying. So we we sit down with them? And we go over their scorecard are we on track off track on their KPIs? And then just like you said, we don't do a two day one, I know that's what US recommends we do. We have one that's an eight hour one and one that's a four hour one. And if you're a smaller team, then I have some teams where we do in four hours in two hours. And we do that every quarter. And then we do a one once a year we do a prep one, where we go over what are we going to do next year? So we'll typically do that somewhere between ideally in October between October and the beginning of December is the ideal time for that.

A prep for the meeting. You mean?

Yeah. Like what are we going to what are we going to do next year, and then we have our quarterly meeting. Just because it seems like December is like kind of a jam up at that end of year. Yeah. And I don't want to go into the new year not being right out of the gates. So I like to have that meeting December prepping for the next year. Yeah, so it's an earlier one than normal.

Okay, I know it's a good, it's a good, it's a good conversation. And for clinics that want to use level up the clinic with building the team. So you can scale if you're scaling up some clinics down at 3040 50% a year, you're going to need to level up every year with team members and training. Or else the organization kind of loses its its momentum, and its efficiency and its quality, quality of care. So having this rhythm, what I would do is at the end of the year like now is I would schedule your annual for let's say it's then between now and towards the end of the year, the earlier the better. So you can also set budgets, because as your clinic scales, let's say you have two or three doctors and you have four or five staff. It's a different business at that level. And you're going to have to departmentalized your budgets and then set your budgets in October, November. So you're ready for next year of how many dollars are going into the clinical department into the marketing department. And this may be this is definitely more advanced. If you're a doctoral student, that's going to be opening a clinic, but you want to really understand and be aware of the financial disciplines that you need to have as the organization grows. There's maturity in this cycle. But however big your businesses I would recommend now setting your annual date of when you're going to review the annual and then setting your quarterly meetups, my recommendation is to have your quarterly meetups quarterly strategy plan around the between the 10th and the 11th week of the quarter. So you can have everything buttoned up and refined by the 12th week. And you could effectively launch by you know, bow the 12 week. So by first week, you're up in humming already for the new plant. You don't do it too early because then you don't have projections on how you were going to potentially end the quarter. But you don't want to do it after the quarter is over because then you lose momentum. The calendar doesn't stop for a week for you to set things up. You're either doing it a little bit before the quarter is over. And I recommend that verse after the quarter starts right i mean that's the best.

Yeah, Joe my clinics we scheduled the last week of every quarter. We scheduled whatever they they do their quarterly on we scheduled that like on that one in Indiana. We just scheduled it for the whole year of 2023 on Monday. So we have all those scheduled. And then the how you tie everything in is So then the next week is when you go over scorecards. So then you go over the new scorecards that first week. So you're already you're hitting the ground running versus, you know, getting a week or two ended the quarter and be like, okay, cool. You got to hit these. Now you have a short window.

Yeah, yeah, no, you're right. So you are doing when you're doing the monthly meet up on the scorecard.

So I always do that the first week of every month,

okay, first week of the month to close out their car. Okay, that's smart. So

like, if sort of Monday is the first and I would do it that week. But if Monday is on a Wednesday, then it's the next week. So it's, I always go first Monday of the month. Okay, very good. And then I always prep my scorecards, I always put, there's a note on my calendar that says prep scorecards on the first of every month, and so then I'm ready for that first Monday, whenever that is.

So one of the things that I love that we provide in a line life has that align life can take some of the lift off you if you like the structure that we're explaining, and we synergize together line life can handle which Cliff runs is that the head training, so like we have a training agenda, so then you just build your train around the corporate delivery. So we have a year schedule, we know exactly what we're talking about, we kick off the month with some very powerful one hour insights. And then we drill down every week on different components of that topic. So it's really a great way of, you know, lightening up all the preparation work you need for training. So you can put some time into this component, which is meeting rhythms in your office. So please, if you're in the Alliance organization already, please, definitely attend the course that clip you're teaching coming up soon as the annual assessment of the practice and a planning for next year,

I think, just had it, we'll just had it because this produces I know that's coming up in a couple weeks, but this will get put out two weeks after so you got it.

So you just asked her. But in the future, once a year, we do allow people to come to really feel and listen and learn about how to do this effectively. So although we would have just had it when you listen to this next year, just let us know, you can reach out to support at a line life.com And tell them that you're realize your vision training, which is the end of your strategy session, we do invite guests, and it's really an experience for you to have early in practice so you can understand how to create momentum.

Yeah, it's, it's hands down my favorite meeting of the year and next year will be in October, we already have it scheduled, just like we're telling you guys to do we have our whole year plan for 2023. So same thing, so do that. And so meeting rhythms are critical, it forces the collisions. And so once you have those in place, and just like what Joe said, I do love align life, we have a whole year planned out already. And so you don't have to figure out what training should I be doing, it's already done. And then you just give that to your office manager or that you as the leader say, here's what we're doing this year, your team is able to be ready, they know what we're training on every week. And it gives you to lapse through all the material. So, so often people think, Oh, I just want the new stuff. No, we just need to get really good at the stuff that we have. And then if there is new stuff, we definitely vet it and we bring it and you know, it's not like our stuff never changes. But man get those basics, like the blocking and tackling the free throws. Those are the things that base hits, those are the things that wins games, it's not like the Grand Slam here and there, you know what I mean? It's like, it's the base hit. And so you know, we want to do great on the basics, and then also give you the tools.

I think my favorite quote is consistency is the new intensity and consistency, what drives momentum of the business that it keeps, it keeps turning more value. If you implement these things, if you don't, what I was saying when we first started, you get more friction, more resistance, it just takes more money more time and more people to churn the machine of your business. And that's when you lose profit. And you lose value. Because we're not efficient. And we're not we're not we're creating a lot of friction in the business. So meeting rhythms, if you handle it this way, this is really magical for you, and you'll stumble through it. So be patient, and keep learning, keep reading. But first, you gotta say you're going to do it and then you'll get better as you go. But don't step away from it. Even if the meetings don't feel efficient, you feel clunky. You could reach out to a line life, we'd love to have a conversation to kind of level you up and guide you a little bit because once you get this down, you're off to the races. It's going to be a different game, but honestly, literally have patients a year or two of consistently doing this. And you're probably about average at it. Five years later, you can be kind of an expert at doing it. But I've been studying and mastering and working on this for I don't know 567 years, and I feel like I'm getting Pretty good. I wouldn't say expert at it, but I think I'm pretty good. And that's many years.

In at a high level too. Yeah. And so it's funny because like, Joe, when you're talking about these things, like, you know, these are, these are some of the rocks I'm gonna bring on meeting, I'm gonna have meeting rhythms that would be a rock, just like we talked about last time. So that's a rock, scorecards implementing scorecards that takes three or four quarters to even get comfortable with. So those are some of the rocks like to build into there.

That's huge. That's huge that you make a rock your actual system, like, right, listen his podcast and saying, We didn't give you every single step of the meeting rhythms. But now you have an idea. Now you can do research and reach out to the line life or other organizations and find out how to really lay this out, because you need a little more meat probably. But definitely the architecture we're talking about is what most successful small businesses are using as a structural setting to gain traction and build value.

Yeah, I love the US model. And I would love to kind of summarize all the pieces and parts. I know, there's six parts to it. And so it's funny, I was like, Joe, I'd love to talk about our favorite one. He's like, Well, we kind of needed all six of them. And I'm like, Well, I guess that's true. So it was interesting, because I love people. But honestly, like, people don't matter if you don't have a good vision, if you don't have data if you don't have process traction. So Joe, I'd love for you, just you and I just kind of go through summarize the six tools, so that you guys can create your align business and your aligned life. So

right, so the six pieces of the model, the EOS model that we've embraced in, in our businesses, and we urge you to take a look at yourself is starts with vision. There's eight points of vision that you need to understand. It's everything from like your 10 year, target your three year picture, your one year plan, the rocks, we took up to talk about that number of components. But there is a documentation that if you reach out to support at align life.com, we can get you some layouts on how to build the vision. And then next division, there's people in process. I know people in data

or data, it's just data. So vision data, okay, vision and data.

That is how you measure the progression of your businesses is how efficient is garbage in garbage out with data. So you got to make sure you have the right data, your it's accurate. So data, you can't really do much in improving your business without measuring that. And then the next one after that,

people, yeah, it depends which way you want to go. Because you're right, there's pupils on the left, and data's on the right, so.

So after you have when you have data, then you can see if the people are on the right seat of the bus, right person, and if they're on the right seat. And you'll know that by how the data changes. So you take all the data and you give accountability to data sets to different people, so they drive numbers inside of your business. That's how you prevent yourself from micromanaging the business and macro managing the business being a true leader is giving the data points to people called KPIs to move those numbers. That's the beauty of data and people. And then below the line, we have issues in process. Yeah. And when you have bad process, you have more issues, when you have better process, you have less issues, the process issues become issues that you can solve to make it better process. So those two kind of dance together in a way. So you have to go state an issue and solve an issue, right. And when you're solving an issue most the time, it's going back to the SOP, the standard operating procedure, finding the hole fixing it, either you didn't have it documented, you had it documented, but you weren't following it, or you had a document it and it wasn't good, you got to redo it, right? There's only three scenarios on an issue is we didn't have a process for it, or a process, we didn't follow it. Or we had a process didn't work. Those are the three ways to really get really refined and very granular on this. Those are the three things you do with an issue. Go back to the process. And the final one is traction. Traction is the opposite of vision. Vision is what you want to do over the company's lifetime. The 10 year target. Traction is alright, what are you doing now? What's the one year goal? What are the rocks you're doing today? Like 90 days right now? What are you working on right now and improve this business? So that's the opposite of vision, vision, traction, those two tied together, move the company forward. What are your thoughts? I mean, that's the sixth framework of it.

Yeah, I thought you were spot on. And I think you know, as I process those, like, I think the vision, you know, everything, like all of them are connected. So there if you think of them like gears, it's not like you can have one without the other and so like the vision the core values have to be right so you know who the right people are that's how you define who the right people are? Do they buy into the vision? And do they have the same core values? And then the issues you're spot on. And I'll be honest, I think, when you're first developing process, even though the better your processes, you're just gonna have different problems to, like, it's not that immediately, there'll be less like, we were just sharing a story with me about one of your friends who had a big business, and they're like, we have all these issues still. And, you know, it's like, but we have to make different decisions for the vision of the company. So issues are like not necessarily a bad thing, as long as they're getting solved. And you have awareness of them. And so, like we said about it,

I think it was issues you have to quantify because you'll never run out of issues. Yeah, just you won't, like you know, and there's issues that drive revenue, there's issues that will raise morale that you fixed or Raise Morale, there's issues that will drive net profit, if you fix them. So you got to quantify the outcome, so you can decide what you're going to do. I was at a conference once, and it's a 32 year old gentleman was on stage. And he just sold his business for $60 million. And he was early 30s. And he said, I, I, you all know what I know, which is what to do to build your business. I just knew what to do next. Yeah, he's a young guy was just saying, because we all know what to do. The key is what to do next, right now, you may be operating on a 2% margin in your company, and you need to level up revenue. So you need to focus on attraction, doesn't mean you don't need a new computer system, you may doesn't mean only another staff, it doesn't mean you don't need a better X ray machine. But if your profit is 2%, then you better drive revenue in your company as the first rock and leave those other big Great, awesome, efficiently building things on your parking lot. Because your current goal is to drive revenue. Now if you have a team that's overstretching him or team, then you know what, maybe we focus on that. But like Cliff said, when we opened, we have to be self aware. What do we need in the business, goal wise revenue, profit, morale, there's got to be some big lifts, and then the rocks to implement have to help you get your goal for the company for the year. Right. I mean, that's what you said in beginning of it sounds like a given like an assumption, Cliff, why wouldn't you do that? But you know what, I think it's a worthy being said and written down. And asking the question, do these projects help me reach what we stated was the company goal? No, they don't, okay, don't do them. Put on the parking lot, grab something else that's going to help you reach your goal. Because you can reach your goal. Morale goes up, profit goes up, your maturity goes up, your consciousness grows, results matter. They're really the only truth is result in every aspect, whether it's clinical outcome or financial outcome. Outcomes matter, right. I mean, that's our one of our core values as outcomes, Matt. Yep.

So I hope you guys have enjoyed this, like whole time with us. I know, it's been awesome for me just to revisit it. And I've been doing it about as long as Joe and so it's really nice to kind of sharpen that sword. Because I think so often, we slip and check and we forget and like I learned things out of this. And so I hope you guys took things away from this. In our next episode, what we're gonna dive into is like, what are some Indivior practices, the best way to have a strong start is to have a strong finish. And so we're going to talk about that over the next two episodes. How do you end strong and then how do you start strong? So yeah, so thank you so much, Joe, for all your insights, and thanks for your expertise. I appreciate it.

Awesome. Thanks, Cliff. We'll talk next time. All right. We'll see you later.