Announcer (00:01):

Welcome to practiceOmatic where doctors and practice owners share business, lifestyle and marketing stories all while guiding you to more patients. Here's your host, Zack Greenfield,

Zack Greenfield (00:14):

Welcome back guys to PracticOmatic, I'm Zach Greenfield, your host today we have with us Heather Boicourt. Heather is today having her four year anniversary at her practice. And she is now the practice manager. Now I know on the show, we've had a lot of vet owners. This is a unique situation because the ownership is not onsite anymore. At this practice. Heather effectively runs the practice as the manager which is a great example of the business standing on its own two feet, which is amazing. She shifted into veteranary medicine after a career change, went to school as a vet tech got licensed and started at this practice as an extern moved quickly to becoming the tech manager then became the assistant practice manager, which really was where she got most of the information to take this next, the most of the experience to take this next step as the manager, because she was effectively the CFO, she was running all of the books and that gave her a deeper insight into how to run the practice. So welcome Heather. Thank you. Awesome, to have you, on the show. Yeah. So congratulations on four-years today.

Heather Boicourt (01:33):

Thank you. I like to call it the anniversary of the first day of the rest of my life.

Zack Greenfield (01:37):

Okay. There you go. Toss and everything's going well for you. I mean, you started basically just kind of walked in the door and say I'm still in school. And then within four years now you're running, running the entire practice.

Heather Boicourt (01:52):

Yeah, I have, I actually have on my fridge at home, I have all my name tags stacked up and it's like Heather, Heather comma, CBT, Heather comma, CBT tech manager, other COVID a CVT assistant practice manager and you know, et cetera.

Zack Greenfield (02:07):

Awesome. yeah. So congratulations. So tell, I wanted to adjust, let's just dive into taking on that bigger responsibility of, you know, creating the reporting, the financial reporting and the bookkeeping and so forth and how you willingly jumped on that opportunity, even though you initially started at the practice with the idea that you're going to be working more hands on with animals,

Heather Boicourt (02:34):

It happened kind of on accident. I think a lot of great things do, it's like an opportunity accidentally presents itself and you get to, you get to jump or not. And at the time I was by no means qualified to be doing that, but had the desire and the drive. And I have th the joke that I have is like being new to an industry like this and being new to I'm always like taking on more things than biting off more than I can really chew. And my, if I get asked to do something, my response is always absolutely. And then I turn around and go, and then I figure it out. So that's essentially what happened with being the assistant practice manager. It turned into sort of this natural delineation between our, the, at the time practice manager and myself. She was really more geared towards like the HR and the people staff, and didn't really have an affinity for the numbers. And that's always been something that I naturally gravitate towards. I like, I like data. I like knowing why things happen. I like identifying trends, even though I never did it, you know, for money, but it you know, it started out as just kind of curating data and entering it into a visually pleasing format so that we could see, you know, what the trends are. What's normal, what's happening. What's the business doing from one day, week, month to the next. And I just kind of loved it. I glommed onto it never really stopped.

Zack Greenfield (04:04):

You know, it's one of those things that you're right. You, you sorta need to have an affinity for it. If you're, if you're going to really get involved with it, you need to be interested and have the drive like you did. If you're that. If you're not that person in any business, you need to find somebody just like you. That's my personal experience. And I've dipped in and out of that over the years, but a lot of times, and like currently here, you know, we have bookkeeper that's when we're headed with us for years. But if we, but if, you know, from running the business standpoint, you really got to understand the numbers, which was your springboard to becoming the manager. Correct?

Heather Boicourt (04:41):

Yeah, absolutely. And I think a little bit past that it's more than just an, an affinity. There has to be like this weird curiosity. You can't just say, oh yes, this is what the numbers say. You have to have the thing that goes why.

Zack Greenfield (04:55):

Yeah, sure. I got it. Yeah. So you gotta be able to dig. You want, you got to be interested in digging into the source of all of that, but even on a, but even on a practical, practical level, you're in this role for what, almost two years

Heather Boicourt (05:10):

As the assistant practice manager.

Zack Greenfield (05:12):

Yeah. And so you're, you're doing bookkeeping and it's kind of evolving to where, you know, you're doing the reporting for the ownership and for, you know, to show them what's going on with all of the different revenue, streams and costs and things like that. And then at what point do you start making recommendations about how things can get better,

Heather Boicourt (05:31):

Preferably sooner, rather than later, being able to look back at past data can give us a really good idea of what, you know, what September is going to do. So historically September does blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, and so in our case specifically, September the hospital usually takes a dip because back to school is happening. Everybody's distracted by that. And so preemptively, I'm able to say things like we need to do some sort of thing, or we need to add more shifts or so specifically for us right now, we're short a doctor and we are overbooked. We're like, so for the month of July, we were 107% full on our exam schedule. And that's purely because we are missing your data doctor. We need. So if anybody is,

Zack Greenfield (06:18):

Yeah, I know I have some bad news for you though. So, you know, I talked to a lot of that and obviously we have a lot of owners on this show and so forth, and this is the problem everywhere in the industry right now is that the demand is really high, obviously. You know, people took on a lot of pets during the pandemic, pandemic puppies and all those other things. And there's also a lot of jobs shift and shake out and people moving and changing everything. And from what I know this shortage of qualified doctors will continue for unfortunately many years to come. I mean, it's forecast for forecasted to be out, to like, well, past 20, you know, into 20, 25, plus

Heather Boicourt (07:02):

At this point I could probably send somebody to school and get them back before the vet crisis is over.

Zack Greenfield (07:09):

Yeah. So it's tricky. So you're not alone in that, but because you understand the numbers so well, I mean, one of the things and just full disclosure, you know, Heather and I have been working together for years, we do all of the marketing for the practice or her, and I have a pretty good understanding of what's happening. One of the things that, you know, her I and ownership decided to do a couple of years ago. So I guess two years now is you guys have boarding, right? And it's a pet resort. And we all decided that sort of spinning that off from a marketing standpoint was going to be a good idea. And there were some reasons for that there was SEO reasons to have more footprint for the entire operation. It gave us two websites, two business listings, you know, two sets of reviews, all sorts of good stuff happening there. And then it also started to change the way that I think we all look at that as that's some, another sales channel we can really push, right. How's that working, you know, against the fact that you're down a doctor,

Heather Boicourt (08:15):

I'll actually take it back to about two years ago, I viewed the pet resort as like the redheaded stepchild that was kinda sick

Heather Boicourt (08:28):

Because it wasn't like it wasn't pulling its weight, honestly. I mean, it was, it wasn't living up to its potential. And I, I kind of felt like it would be, it would serve us better as a parking lot as additional parking than it would as a, as a pet resort because it wasn't, it wasn't doing what we wanted it to do. It, wasn't living up to the vision that that Sarah had, who the practice owner and you had all of these, you know, wild and crazy ideas. And initially I'm like, why, why are we putting lipstick on a pig? But like, the pig is beautiful, but we just say,

Zack Greenfield (09:05):

They, you were looking at that those, that judgment was because you were looking at the financial reporting, correct? Yep. The facility is great. The kennels are not like it's all brand new and nice. So it was really about the fact that it was underperforming from a financial standpoint.

Heather Boicourt (09:25):

And of course, retrospectively, we were marketing ourselves as a veterinary hospital.

Zack Greenfield (09:31):

It just wasn't, it was really, this is a great story about sort of, just lack of noise. Like nobody was beating. Nobody was beating the drum on the fact that you guys had boarding. And, you know, that's where I get excited because I see where you saw you know, a pig with lipstick. I came into this situation and saw low-hanging fruit Because there was a, because we have you guys, you know, we had a good, you know, thousands of existing clients and a good email database pet owners all around a growing area, and you had this boring facility and it was really just almost a question of, you know, awareness. Yeah.

Heather Boicourt (10:11):

And it was almost like we have blinders on, like, it was, it was something that was available to our hospital clients, should they want it? And we weren't thinking like bigger picture than that. It was like, this is, this is a service we offer to our existing hospital clients.

Zack Greenfield (10:26):

Right. And now it's now it's marketed straight out as its own reality, if you will. And

Heather Boicourt (10:33):

Yeah, we, me personally, I never would have, like, my brain just doesn't do that. I wouldn't have thought it needs its own website. It needs

Zack Greenfield (10:42):

And needed its own identity. And so now things are much better. So what's the difference been like, give me some, give us some like data here speaking to number. So when I was a pig, where were we

Heather Boicourt (10:53):

When it was a pig? That's when did we start working with Zach? It was like 2019.

Zack Greenfield (10:59):

That's like the summer of 20, 19 20. Yeah.

Heather Boicourt (11:02):

I think it was like may ish. So we started seeing April, may we started lipstick status and then looking at the, looking at the graph, like pretty steadily from there we go, we had our three highest months in a row at that. I felt like at that time. So June, 2019 was highest ever. And then July beat that and then August feedback. And then into September fashion, we get, but of course number is rapidly approaching and we are taking steps to fix that, but then carrying on COVID hits. Right. And I'm sure this is like, blah, blah, blah. Taylor's all this time. At this point, everybody has this story. We shut down the pet resort in March. So our production went down to, you know,

Zack Greenfield (11:51):

Those are, those are throwing, it's like a interruption and all this.

Heather Boicourt (11:56):

Yeah. So, so like looking at the numbers year over, we're like, you know, 300%, which is right in shiny, but like not real. But that, that felt a little bit like getting chopped off at the knees, you know, cause it had been, it was starting to like pick up some momentum and do what we wanted it to. And then we just had to shut it down completely and then start building back up from there. But what we've been able to do is you have stayed ahead of it in a way that none of us would have done or could have done by, you know, even through all of the travel bands and you know, nobody's going anywhere, everything's shut down. You were still having us send out those emails and still, still staying at the front of everybody's mind because eventually of course, things are going to open back up, you know, and they did. And when they did, when we did open the pet resort back up, we didn't start back at zero. We hit the ground running, we were ready for that. And, and it's, it's just been up and up and up since then,

Zack Greenfield (12:59):

You know, this is where you guys make my job easy because you don't find me on a little, little thing like that. We spent, you know, time and energy. So we had a lot of stuff specifically just for our listeners to understand we did more than emails. We were actually advertising the pet resort in the man of the middle of the pandemic, not with, and this is important. We didn't, we weren't advertising with direct offers because there was no offer. It was shut down. We continued the awareness, the brand awareness that the service was there and so forth because we were still healing the lack of awareness from years past. And it didn't matter that there's a pandemic. What we wanted to do is just continue to brand and, and let everyone know that it was hitting the website for, you know, retargeting and all of this stuff that the pet resort was there. And then yeah, then that awareness is there. And suddenly everybody wants to go take a trip and boom, you're there with the big net to sweep up all that, you know, sort of what I call potential energy that then went kinetic.

Heather Boicourt (14:05):

Yeah. Other things that happened in the middle of the pandemic that I wasn't really anticipating, but like retrospectively it totally makes sense. Daycare started doing way better than it had. And my theory behind this is, you know, everybody is homeschooling their kids and they've got their dog at the back door barking, its face off and you're like, I'm going to come and kill it. I'm gonna kill the dog, bring it to daycare. And so our daycare numbers started taking off right before boarding did.

Zack Greenfield (14:34):

Yeah. Yeah. And that's great again, I mean, it's just awareness, but it's a lesson in, and this is like, I want to put a little spotlight on this because this is not what people like to do. People don't like to market when the chips are down, you know, this is the biggest mistake that I see people make when the chips are down and revenue's a little tight, they go down their list of expenses and marketing looks like a soft number. So they go, okay, let's cut that. And that's a huge mistake. And thankfully your ownership and you understand that that's actually one of the most important numbers when the chips are down is to keep that budget in place as much as possible because you can't get out of a hole with no nothing. You know, you got no tools. You're not going to you can't, you can't wish your way out of a revenue dip. You've got to, you got to go into attack mode.

Heather Boicourt (15:27):

That you're right. That's something I've never had to, I've never had to push on for her is the marketing budget.

Zack Greenfield (15:33):

Yeah. Yeah. It's great. So we have, we have good. We have good understanding that like when September is going to be a pullback, I get some, I have some folks, you know, I talked to, they're like, oh, we're going to slow down. This is our slow season. So we don't want to advertise like what isn't that the time where things get, I mean, if you think about it, like if there's a pizza on the table and there's only like eight slices, right. And there's four people at the table, you know, at that point it's like, well, how quick are you going to grab slices? So if you're in a market there's only so many buyers in your market and those buyers shrink, right. They bring a 12 inch pie instead of a 16 inch pie because there's a seasonal dip or whatever it is, you gotta be more aggressive.

Zack Greenfield (16:17):

You gotta be more aggressive to get the amount of pizza that you need to feel full. Not that it's not a time to start being like, oh no, everything's small. So I love that you guys are ready to attack. When we know, like for instance, September, it's going to slow down. We crank up, all right, get more aggressive to try to pull as much out of thin air as we can. And we know we'll get it back later anyways, you know, but it's no time to just let you know. And that's really the definition of marketing. I think it's like being in control of your revenue is really the main objective is being able to spend and get a good ROI so you can control what's coming in the door. Yeah. Yeah. That's really what it's all about. So tell me, you know, just in terms of the hop hop, let's just pivot back to the hospital side. The hospital was always doing pretty well now it's like bonkers And then, and how was it through the pandemic? And you know, what was that like just numbers wise and also just, you know, morale and everything else.

Heather Boicourt (17:27):

Sure. I think like, like most other practices we had to make some pretty fast and dramatic changes to the way we operate. We pretty promptly had to shift to masks and curbside and we started doing curbside pretty instantaneously. And you, I don't know whose idea it was. I'll give you credit. It was you, it was ax idea. We have this really cumbersome check-in process for like, well, I thought I was all fancy with my QR code to take you to the website, to, to tell us you're here. That's about as technical as I get though. So initially it was like a call us when you get here type of thing. And at the time we had just like a standard four line phone system and our poor receptionists were inundated. It was, it was nonstop. Like we couldn't take, we couldn't take calls from people trying to book appointments because we were so swamped with people calling to tell us that they were here for appointments, which is not a good use of payroll hours.

Heather Boicourt (18:31):

That's not a good service to the people checking in or the people trying to make appointments. And you created this solution for us that has been in place ever since and has been amazing. I mean, there were, you know, some, some pickups in the beginning that you very quickly responded to with adjustments and you were really just really responsive and really helpful with like, well, how can we make it better? Let's tweak it here, let's add this. We could also use it for this, you know, and like kind of morphing, what was initially just a, a solution to a phone problem and turning it into a whole thing. But now, you know, it's it's its own machine and it's, it has been invaluable and we'll never stop using it, you know, regardless

Zack Greenfield (19:15):

It's it was a F it was actually an interesting idea. It was, it was software technology. We had used for years to replace the clipboard and traditional human medical practices. And we also used it in hostess stands in restaurant. So basically it was a check-in system, you know, it was a check-in software system, but, you know, but then when the pandemic hit, I looked at it and I was like, you know what? This is actually really well suited for curbside. So we modified a little bit of the software so that, you know, it could be mobile, get it off, but we had run it on tablets for years. So instead of like a clipboard, you'd have a tablet sign and people signing with a mobile phone number or email and kind of, you know, and that would prompt everything after that. But we decided, okay, well, let's just modify a little bit, so then it can run on anybody's phone. We added really mobile friendly, a call to action button on the mobile website. So when people got there, it was like check in and then just took them through that flow.

Heather Boicourt (20:15):

The the satisfaction surveys. And

Zack Greenfield (20:19):

Well, we tied all that in, so now they get their appointment, follow up their feedback surveys there, and then they get added to your email list are cross-checked and records are automatically updated on all the marketing lists. So it actually is you write like an entire thing that certainly isn't going to at this point need to, that doesn't need to go away. And I think everybody likes it, right. Your clients like that. It's so convenient. Yeah,

Heather Boicourt (20:45):

Absolutely. And I think we've, we've to the, at a time where people don't really want to talk on the phone. Like if you can avoid picking up a phone and making a phone call all day long.

Zack Greenfield (20:57):

So that's, how did that, I know how, how did that change the front desk reality with the like, I mean, I don't think it eliminated a hundred percent of people calling when they get there probably, but let's say eliminate, how did that change the vibe at the front desk and their efficiency and how much you can get out of that labor pool now for what is better use?

Heather Boicourt (21:18):

Well, we didn't have to hire another receptionist when we lost one. We have, we have since had two because, you know, growth continues in all directions, but it was, it limped us through, on a shorter staff upfront where otherwise we would have been completely screwed.

Zack Greenfield (21:36):

Yeah. And you got, and we did, you know, there were some complaints for a little while there that the phones weren't being answered, but I think this, this helps solve.

Heather Boicourt (21:44):

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, in, in union with also getting a phone system that was not limited to four lines,

Zack Greenfield (21:53):

There's a little, a little thing. I mean, this is also all this stuff is like, you know, it's techie stuff, but this is how you do better for your clients is you got to rotate behind the seat. This is like back of house stuff we're talking about, but it's really important because the pandemic was the catalyst to effectively optimizing the front desk check-in process and client feedback and follow up if we effectively automated that entire thing. But it was the pandemic catalyzed.

Heather Boicourt (22:25):

Yeah. And there are a lot of ways that you have seriously increased efficiency for our, for our business, that the check-in process. And then there's that without getting too ahead of myself, but I'm going to the enrolling in wellness plans online you have really beefed up the booking system. Like we always have the ability to book online, right. But you have made it so much more visible and so much more accessible and like such a, this is the obvious next step you have come here, you got them in the right funnel. And like, they go that direction. And now it, the amount of time that it saves our receptionist on the phone has been incredible. Like the average appointment phone call takes like new client phone call takes probably 10 minutes on average. And they now have the ability to do that online. And as a client of places, myself, I would so much rather do that online.

Zack Greenfield (23:19):

Well, cause you don't have to slip it into your busy day. You can do it after dinner while you're watching TV. Yeah. So it, it allows your practice to take on new client appointments, 24 7, which to me again, you guys had online booking, but it was taped on top of the practice. It wasn't. Yeah. It wasn't

Heather Boicourt (23:43):

Exactly. You had, it had was what's the appointment. You had to be an existing client. It had to be an existing patient. And you had to like the two options that were presented to you.

Zack Greenfield (23:55):

So it was like, you know, but a lot of decisions are, you know, that way, you know, before I arrived and started helping you guys, you know, kind of pull the most blood out of some of this technology, it was like, you knew you needed to offer online booking. It was kind of like an instinctual thing, but then it's like how to get it so that your clients can really get the best use out of it. You, as a practice can leverage the technology so that your staff can be more efficient and spend, you know, caregiving time when needed and when, and not be doing what I call like housekeeping phone calls and things like that. Like you say that getting bogged down for 10 minutes to just set an appointment is something that, you know, in today's world should be easily taken care of online, which is the way it is now. Yeah, we did. We rewrote the entire website and funnel and the way that all of your existing and new clients experience the page flow and click pass on your site. So that online booking is the natural step that they end up taking as they move through the different choices and so forth. So yeah, I'm glad to hear that, that part's really worked out well, as on a percentage basis, how much can you see, or do you have numbers on what to being booked online versus what's being booked by phone right now?

Heather Boicourt (25:14):

You started with the online booking. So it looks like it was in February of February of 2020 when we initially started online booking and we had between then and when we like really started pushing it and optimizing it as much as we could, we had probably 20 or so appointments that were booked online, like in, in the weird period where we were like, it's a thing that you can do if it fits exactly all of this criteria and there can be no exceptions. And it was like, that is because we, the amount of work that it took on the backend to make that fit into the schedule and like make sure that it was scheduled appropriately was just not, didn't feel worth it to us

Zack Greenfield (26:01):

Well at the time. And you want to ease into things a little bit, so you've got it up and running, but also the vendor of that software only does so much on setup. And then they kind of let you go to, you know, good luck with it. Right?

Heather Boicourt (26:13):

Yeah. That's the total sentence then I think we started really heavy pushing it probably the beginning of this year, maybe end of last year.

Zack Greenfield (26:21):

Yeah, I think so. I think it's been 16 months, you know, that

Heather Boicourt (26:27):

Just over 800 appointments, both online, you know, how many reception minutes?

Zack Greenfield (26:32):

Well, yeah, if you're saying 10, 10 times 800, right. So you saved 8,000 labor minutes. Yeah. I mean, that's, you know, that's, that's 8,000 of people not on the telephone in the last 12 months. That's incredible number. Yes. Yeah. So that's a, and if you divided that by workdays or your open days, that's, that's tons, you know, that's a lot, I mean, yeah, it's a, it's another human for sure. You know, you guys were paying this thing anyways and it's not even expensive. It certainly isn't the cost of having another body. They're not even close to probably a hundred. It's probably a hundredth the cost of having another person. Yeah. So, and then it just keeps getting, it keeps getting better. Right. Cause we didn't, we, we w we just recently revised it and opened it up to even do more.

Heather Boicourt (27:18):

We added in some, you know, simple grooming services. And I it's, you know, with limited availability of course, because we're pretty booked anyways. But even just, even just like having it visible as an option, just because it's, you know, we're booked out two weeks for a bathroom, but it's there and we're showing people that it's there. That is something that they can do.

Zack Greenfield (27:39):

Yeah, exactly. So even that's the other thing to, to, to highlight here is that even adding the option to the booking system is a version of bringing awareness to these other services. So things you thought you weren't going to, you know, having a menu for incense, people read choices and menus when they are at their call to action or their action taking steps on a website. So when they're, when they've emotionally shifted to take action, then they're going to look carefully to make sure that they do the correct thing. And you have a good opportunity there to show everybody all of the possibilities. So in this case, we added the grooming services, which I think a year, two years ago, nobody thought grooming was going to be booked online. That just sounded weird.

Heather Boicourt (28:33):

Yeah. Well, and, and comprehensive appointments things besides wellness. And I think I, I probably put up some resistance to that when you suggested it. Like that makes me itchy, you know, pushing past my resistant.

Zack Greenfield (28:51):

Well, and also sometimes I think like we want to, even though, and I think on any idea, bar marketing or business and so forth, when you have enough success, like we've had, there's a good understanding that even if you have pushback on something, that's great and we all should push back where we see it, but it doesn't mean it's not worth testing. If there's something to watch out for, maybe this is going to be a problem, maybe it's not, and, or maybe we'll get it where it functions well for the client and for the practice. And then this case so far so good. But

Heather Boicourt (29:25):

We work really well together is you present an idea and I tell you why it's not going to work. And then you tell me how we're going to fix it. So it does. And I go fine.

Zack Greenfield (29:34):

Yeah. I think, well, again, let's not done now. I'm feeling a little under pressure. Like, there's gotta be times I'm wrong, just like anybody, but the

Heather Boicourt (29:47):

Greenfield

Zack Greenfield (29:51):

You're like, it's okay though. I guess that's the thing is like, you know, I've done some videos and I really believe this, that marketing and growing a business is really, you know, being comfortable with a lot of micro failures. And if you, you know, you gotta be, you gotta embrace the micro failures so that you can see the bigger picture of your success and, and getting, you know, like wellness plans is a great example of that wellness plan. It started six years ago for you guys. I picked it up and, you know, made it a real sort of high priority in terms of a number I wanted to grow. Like one of our KPIs, if you will, it's a, it creates a huge, you know, guaranteed revenue stream and a really important piece of the cashflow puzzle for you guys. So it's an awesome thing for clients, a win, win, win.

Zack Greenfield (30:36):

I mean, it's a win for the clients. They save some money, it's a win for the animals because they're getting great preventative care. And it's a win for the practice from a cashflow and business strategical standpoint and, you know, predictability and forecasting. So everybody in that arrangement wins. And so to me, that's one of the, when you have a win-win win like that, it's like, okay, well, let us drive that one to the fee, you know, as high as we possibly can, let's get as much of that on the board as possible. But, you know

Heather Boicourt (31:04):

First thing you started heavy pushing after pet resort. Like once we started moving on the pet resort and getting that kind of moving by itself, that was the next thing that you definitely kind of honed in on a new, like, this is, this is the thing we're pushing.

Zack Greenfield (31:18):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it makes sense though, when you think about like, for the reasons I just said, it makes sense, but it also makes sense because wellness plans are a representation of your sort of raving fans. I mean, that number is your closest client group. You know, those folks are really decided they're going to go the distance with you this year, next year, and so on and so forth because they're making a monthly commitment to their animal and to your practice and the whole picture. Right. And they're doing that. They're voting with their wallets literally, you know, so and they're, you know, and they're capturing savings. And like I say, it's great for everybody, but for, for my purposes, you know, is one of those things it's like, this makes more sense than almost anything to try to grow, especially when you have a good list, you know, and you had a lot of existing clients and there was a pool that could jump in and get involved with wellness plans.

Zack Greenfield (32:16):

So we sort of had that to work with, again, it was just like, it's low hanging fruit, and it's such an easy thing to talk about and sell because it's not insidious in any way. It's good for the animals and good for the clients. So, yeah. I mean, there's really, there's no, there's no, there's really nothing negative about it at all. So I love something like that. It's like clean, the benefits are clear, so yeah, it made a ton of sense to me and it still does, you know, we have our goals for that and I'm sure we're going to hit them, you know? And, and and the more people that get involved with that, the better it is for everybody.

Heather Boicourt (32:54):

Yeah. And we, we get, we get closer to that goal, very on a minutely basis, like the amount of wellness plans that we're enrolling at this point, it's just, it's kind of

Zack Greenfield (33:06):

Crazy. And we made that online enrollment too.

Heather Boicourt (33:09):

Yes, we did. And that was the one that I pushed back pretty hard on. I did,

Zack Greenfield (33:14):

But we do get them every week. A couple of people sign up and they do it like at the weirdest hours of the night. And again,

Heather Boicourt (33:22):

I'm that person too. Like, there's no reason I shouldn't understand this. I'm that person that is like in bed at 11 o'clock at night. And rolling my pen on a wellness plan. Cause I love him so much. Right,

Zack Greenfield (33:31):

Right. And it's a time to take care of like, check that off your list. You know, everybody has these little lists of things to manage their household. And sometimes it's tough to fit that in their day. So as a practice, being able to give people those tools to take action when the office is closed is great. It's made your practice, you know, some elements of your practice run 24 7, even when the lights are off at the office. Yeah. They're important elements to

Heather Boicourt (33:58):

That. That is what makes a huge difference. And I'm going to go back to myself as a client. Again, like the only time I'm going to book a dentist appointment is probably at 11 o'clock at night online. And if they don't have availability for me, I'm going to go find another dentist, you know, because I'm going to take the path of least resistance. And I think I'm not unique there as a, as a consumer, we take the path of least resistance. So you've done a really good job of making the important steps, easy for our clients.

Zack Greenfield (34:24):

Yeah. Thank you. I mean, I think it's like now sort of, we laid all this stuff out. It's kind of a neat picture that we painted. So we took sort of fragmented and underutilized, you know, different things that were happening. The pandemic was in some ways a blessing. And I always think it's nice to look back on saying, you know, there's that old saying? And it really is true when times get tough. That's when we can find our excellence, you know, and the pandemic. And I've talked to some people that have some real tragedy in the middle of that and you know, are still recovering personally, financially and otherwise. But you know, a lot of times when we go through those chapters in our lives, they allow us to find excellence where we otherwise might not even have been looking. And these, this story is a little bit of that where we, you know, we had both a little bit of a chance to take a break, like saving the pet resort, you know, things slow down, just things are shifting around. And we had to look at ways to leverage technology and make the practice better. Now we kind of have this really cool system and everything is automated. Like I don't with

Heather Boicourt (35:38):

The prospect of growth so much easier. We have more capacity for more time, more energy, more space for new clients, new patients, new boarding for like the stuff that really actually requires a human element. You know, we've, we've kind of like turned out where that wasn't necessary. Right.

Zack Greenfield (36:02):

Right. And your, and your front desk staff now, how would you say, or would you judge that they're able to do a better job when they are on the phone now? Because they're not as overwhelmed. I mean, there's gotta be some intangibles in that, I guess the only you would know and, and, and Kendra, your front desk manager, I mean, how's that playing out?

Heather Boicourt (36:21):

It has eliminated a lot of the fluff and in, in tandem with, again, the new phone system, we put, we put a good old fashioned phone tree in place. So which also helps to trim out the, like, leave a message for the prescription refills that wasn't occupying, you know, receptionist time. But that, that was still, I think you can link that back to back to the initial, let's get them off the phone as much as possible, you know, the, the big push to automate that. And then it was just kind of like, well, where else can we take that?

Zack Greenfield (36:53):

Let me ask you a hard question right now. I haven't listened to the phone tree this week, But I may ask you a question is the phone tree recording, reminding people that they can go online if they're just calling to book an appointment? No, there you go. So right here on this podcast, we got a pretty good one that we're going to make a change to because somebody is calling in. We definitely want to remind them just like Verizon reminds their customers, that if you want to pay your bill or you want to check on your pets, prescription shadows, or you want

Heather Boicourt (37:31):

To see that

Zack Greenfield (37:33):

You're going to watch, you want to book your appointments online and check those things online. If that's the reason you're calling. Yeah. Yeah. The phone tree, for those of you that have one, they're listening to this podcast and the website are actually two pieces of a bigger funnel picture. If you will, about, you know, how to move your, your clients, customers, whether they're new or existing to the, the best resources for them to solve their problem, then you know, kind of the way that we need to look at everything is somebody is calling. The only reason they're calling is because they have in their lives, they're perceiving they have a problem. And they perceive that the problem will be solved by the person that picks up the phone or that they can get on the phone. If we give them an other choice, an alternate choice to solve their problem in the easier, faster, more efficient way, typically people are going to take

Heather Boicourt (38:24):

Yeah. Path of least

Zack Greenfield (38:25):

Resistance. So it's really just problem solving as the sort of nuts and bolts of the whole thing. And then, you know, getting good tools on the table. So I'm excited to, I'll be excited to listen to the new recording.

Heather Boicourt (38:39):

We record it for us.

Zack Greenfield (38:41):

Now. I did think it's time to update. We do, we did some I guess, let me ask you this question. Do we done some explainer videos? You don't want, I've done one we've had, someone's done how's feedback on that. Or do you get any feedback?

Heather Boicourt (39:01):

I don't really get any feedback on that. I think those they're so like the strategically placed that it, it, I don't think that they really stand out in anyone's mind. I don't know if that's the right thing to say or not, but they're just like, they make sense to be where they are. So nobody's going to be like, ah, yes, that was a wonderful such and such video. Cause it's just like, of course it's there, you know, it's stuff that just like makes sense to be in position.

Zack Greenfield (39:22):

Yeah. I like that. That's I mean, I'll accept that as a positive, but you know, it's interesting is that we, we did all those videos in the same regard that some of this other stuff is that we wanted to have a way to explain things and talk to clients, new clients and existing clients, 24, 7 Sunday nights, you know, whatever it is that you guys aren't there that basically can hold their hand, like, like a phone call. So we did a good job. I think of analyzing the front desks most frequently asked questions. We did FAQ's and then we sort of drill down into the really hot stuff and created media for that. So that those questions could be basically answered automatically, but in a warm, you know, client-centric way by video.

Heather Boicourt (40:08):

And I think from a, from a client standpoint, that is, that is invaluable in a way that I think really aligns with like, as I have a sister that's significantly younger than me, she falls like squarely in the millennial quintessential millennial bucket. And they have there's like this and I won't just pigeonhole them in general. There is some human nature to have a little bit of anxiety around things that are unknown. Like it's like the unexpected, like you, and not even like a bad anxiety, you know, just like a little bit of apprehension because you don't know what to expect and you have done a phenomenal job of telling our clients what to expect. And that I think takes a lot of the, like if you're a new pet owner and you've never been to the vet before, especially with this pet or whatever. And it there's some like little bit of apprehension. Cause it's, it's a big thing, you know, to, to engage on a new pet journey. And you're like, well here, this is everything that you have to expect. And this is what we're about.

Zack Greenfield (41:08):

Yeah. I like that. Maybe the next video is your puppy's first vet visit

Heather Boicourt (41:14):

From the dog's perspective.

Zack Greenfield (41:16):

I mean, we could do some fun stuff with that. I like that. I think

Heather Boicourt (41:20):

We need to utilize. I know.

Zack Greenfield (41:22):

And we have the 360 cam, which is pretty fun too. Cool, fun tools. I'm just so glad to have you on the show and to share like really the granular, like I say, like sort of back of house stuff that we've done together over the years and continue to do. And, and it's all just been awesome. You know, I mean, I didn't even remember half of this stuff and frankly, Frank been kind of a whirlwind, especially with the pandemic holiday we had in the middle of that. And hopefully we don't have to go through too much of that anymore, but now we're well-suited. And I think, frankly, you know, I feel like the practice is fairly Bulletproof for this, you know, sort of up in town volatility that we're having with, you know, COVID in general and everybody getting back to work and travel, hopefully you know, and the, and it's leaner and meaner, which is always good.

Zack Greenfield (42:14):

The, you know, like you say, you haven't felt the need to take on too much more payroll to do, to get basic stuff handled. Like, like everyone you'd love to have another doctor, so we'll see how that works out. Yeah. It's not going to be easy, but yeah, no, it's a great practice. So anybody that's listening, if you're interested in being in the Boise Idaho area and you want to be part of a really growing and fun place, then this is a spot that you might want to reach out and take a look at because you could do worse. There's no question about it. So yeah.

Zack Greenfield (42:56):

Well there's, there's like, look, I've, I've this, you know, what's so cool about this show, Heather, I've gotten to talk to so many people like about office toxicity. We've had, you know, all sorts of things that happened, like vet burnout, suicide rate, you know, all these things and there are real issues, but you guys run a really upbeat, fun, progressive forward looking, you know, culture there that I think anybody would be happy to be part of. And I think it would be easy for somebody to do worse, I guess, was what I meant to say that like, you know, there, aren't a lot of practices that are like that. I think that comes from the top down from ownership from you and you guys set the tone and you know, that's awesome. So you get to take a job that can take a job anywhere, but they need to take a job where they're happy and they're getting, you know, they're fulfilled and they're not being overworked and the place isn't like, you know, poisoned to go to every day, you know, and there's, there's plenty of that out there.

Zack Greenfield (43:54):

Like there is at every office and every business segment, you know, there's no different that's, you know, from my learning and talking to people that's experience that plus more because there's a lot of emotional stuff going on with caring for animals and you know, all of that and, and caring for the clients that are caring for the animals. And, you know, there's like a lot of what I would call human factors. And it's so important to have a good clean, healthy, supportive work environment because that stuff is a constant, no matter where you work that or you're going to be facing that all the time.

Heather Boicourt (44:34):

And that you're absolutely right. That does come from the top down. That's that's Sarah, that's her all the way. And she gives me and the rest of the managers, the space to take care of our staff in a really, really fantastic way.

Zack Greenfield (44:47):

Yeah. That makes a huge difference. So anyways, so if a doctor is considering moving to your, to the Boise area, this would be the first, this would be the first stop I think, to look for maybe an opportunity to work there. So anyways, I'll, I'll leave, let's leave it at that. I think that's good. And I want to thank you for being on the show. And then what I want to do is, you know, of course maybe we'll do this again. We'll, we'll do six months or something like that. And we'll see if we hit some of these goals on wellness and some of the other things we're working on, we can rotate back on it. That'd be

Heather Boicourt (45:19):

Awesome. Marketing experiments.

Zack Greenfield (45:22):

Exactly. Like key second stuff. So anyways, we'll see. Yeah, we'll see. On the next episode, guys, thanks for listening to practice nomadic with Heather bow court, the manager at river city veterinary hospital. Can't wait to have you on the next show. We'll we'll have another exciting guest.

Announcer (45:41):

Thank you for listening to this episode of practice. So Matt subscribe to the podcast. So you don't miss any future episodes for additional help and resources for your practice. Visit Zack greenfields.com to connect with Zach. Visit Zach greenfield.com/z G.