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Transcript

Cuddles Don’t Scale with Rehab Guru · No Appointment Necessary

• 0:00
  Michael: Welcome to the latest installment of No Appointment Necessary.
• 0:03
  Michael: Today we have a very nervous David with us, um, one of the founders of Rehab Group, and we've got Simon as well.
• 0:09
  Michael: Um, I first met these guys when we first started HMDG back in I think 19 at Therapy Expo, where a very nice um Paul Hover introduced us and I learned more than I should have done about Shockwave that evening.
• 0:22
  Michael: It was a long evening and I drank a lot of wine.
• 0:24
  Michael: But we met a long, long time ago, and that was pretty much in your early days as well, wasn't it?
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: It was.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: When we uh cobbled together enough money back then to have a therapy expo stand.
• 0:34
  Michael: Oh, did you have one that year?
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we did, yeah.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was just like a little corner where you uh got like uh two square meters.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, things have come a long way since then.
• 0:43
  Michael: So welcome to uh Simon David.
• 0:46
  Michael: You guys run Rehab Guru.
• 0:47
  Michael: Give us a quick intro on who you are and on Rehab Guru itself.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: Cool.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: I'll I'll go first and then I'll hand over to Dave.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: So I have a background in the Royal Air Force, spent 18 years in the Air Force.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: Alongside that career, I did a whole bunch of sport, and that's when I turned my hand to software engineering and building things.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_02: In the Air Force, I was an exercise rehabilitation instructor, so physical training instructor first, and then specialized in sports rehab.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: So I was doing lots of you know, kind of sports therapy and working with physios in this multidisciplinary clinic environment.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_02: And that's where Rehab Guru was was born, where we were issuing exercise programs to patients out of huge filing cabinets of overly photocopied stick men and things.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: And we thought there's a better way.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: So this is like 2008.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: I started shooting photos in the studio, and you know, tech took a lot of, you know, it was hard graphed back then to get a tech platform set up, but our roots go, you know, as far back as that.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_02: And then uh it really kind of rolled out fully sort of 2015 and then kind of progressed from there into the additional full clinic sort of suite of tools that we've got now.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: Dave, do you want to go through your background?
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so my background's in healthcare.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: I trained in physiotherapy a long, long time ago.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: And Simon and I met when we worked together in the military.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I had 12 years in the military, and the first place that I worked was with Simon.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and there's a few of us that just created the idea.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: I worked a lot in professional sport at the same time, uh, and I'm I'm a southerner, despite having worked in the north for a bit with Simon.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: The story that Simon tells of how Rehab Guru started is pretty much the story.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't really got anything to add to that, but uh I still work clinically, so I still have a few patients that uh I work with to keep my hand in.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then my side of Rehab Guru really is in customer success.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: Whether it's a clinician who's just starting their digital transformation, or whether it's someone that's been running five or six different platforms at the same time and they want to push it all into one platform and come over to us.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I sort of hold their hand and help them and their staff, whether they're a one-man band or you know, they've got multiple clinicians and multiple clinic sites.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: I sort of help with the onboarding of that.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: Cool.
• 3:06
  Michael: So as a sudden though, you bring the finesse and the culture to the business.
• 3:09
  Michael: And the good looks and the and the looks to the critical thinking there.
• 3:12
  Michael: Let's talk about um how you sort of you started with um your backgrounds in in in kind of sports exercises, so on.
• 3:20
  Michael: How did you decide to go?
• 3:22
  Michael: You know what, this is definitely going to be a great idea.
• 3:24
  Michael: We should create a tech company.
• 3:27
  Michael: And do you do you regret it now?
• 3:29
  Michael: You know, let's create a tech company, let's go out to market.
• 3:31
  Michael: What what spurred on that decision?
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think it was um illusions of grandeur initially because when we started, there was really only physio tools.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: And what we didn't realize is there was something called private equity, and we just thought, you know, a couple of lads together strapping it, chucking our own money into it, we'll have this done in no time at all, and uh, you know, our name will be in lights and the the world of physio will be changed.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, things didn't quite go that way, and you know, there were lots of different companies that came into it.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so we've we started off as exercise prescription for a really long time.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um we we transitioned over the lockdowns to add all of the other clinic management stuff, but but that was really our why.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: We just sort of thought what was out there at the time that just wasn't cutting the mustard for our patients.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um over the years, we've obviously taken on feedback and realized that our opinion wasn't the only opinion.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: There are lots of ways to do it, there are lots of different things that people want in exercise, in functionality, in software, and hopefully we've become a little bit more level-headed and um just focusing on serving other people now.
• 4:36
  Michael: So that's an interesting point you brought up.
• 4:38
  Michael: You when you look at tech and software in general, and and today we are not going to talk about AI.
• 4:43
  Michael: Um, I think it'll be the first podcast we haven't talked about AI, even though you are in tech.
• 4:47
  Michael: There's a lot of software companies out there, whether they've got P or some level of funding, you've bootstrapped the whole thing, you've never had funding, I think.
• 4:53
  Michael: Um you're very different to a lot of tech companies as well, because you aren't the archetypal, formal, sort of strict techie business people.
• 5:02
  Michael: You're kind of too I'd kind of describe you as two lads who have kind of put some cool stuff together.
• 5:07
  Michael: Have you used that to distinguish yourselves from other businesses in the industry?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think we do it overtly, and I think if we wind back the clock when we, you know, this was a side hustle at its best, you know, sort of in the early days, we would try to portray this, you know, we're we're we are bigger than we are, you know, type thing.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_02: But now as uh as we've got a really, really good community of people, it becomes pretty easy just to listen to them, feed that into the product.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, the the faceless approach of big tech is not really being our style.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um and yeah, it is it's more of like a an evolution of ourselves and our products rather than this kind of pretending we're big tech.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think it depends on the uh the type of software.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: If you look at exercise prescription in the UK, you've got rehab my patient are still owned by another clinician with quite a lean team like us.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: But in the clinic management space, I think we really are a bit of an enigma with regards to what you're saying.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they all seem to have taken on investment, they've gone through private equity, they've scaled really quickly.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I think it's what someone's looking at.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: And if if that's looking like a you know a distinction, people really want to support a UK company or a company with founders that are have their feet still in the ground uh with healthcare, then most definitely that describes it.
• 6:28
  Michael: Although I'd say still say you're you leak in the sense that you know if I'm a customer, I get to speak to one of the team members.
• 6:35
  Michael: It's not like you've got people, and I know you've got other team members, but you're not I don't want to call it fobbing off, but you're not sending people to to to to the non-founders ordinarily, right?
• 6:44
  Michael: So I think that is quite unique.
• 6:45
  Michael: I know that that becomes very unscathed at one point.
• 6:48
  Michael: Yeah, once you start really, really growing, you can't deal with 75,000 clinics all wanting to talk to the founders.
• 6:54
  Michael: So that does still make unique, and I think it's an interesting marketing proposition um in some ways from a marketing perspective of we're very boutique, um, we're very small, and I know you've got tons and tons of customers, more than probably people imagine, but um, you're still small, you're unique, and you found a lead that you know, you've got your ears to the ground all the time.
• 7:13
  Michael: Um which most other companies don't have a accommodation of the or code centers.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think it comes from having a background in healthcare.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of the people that own clinics are still going to understand that some of their early customers, their early patients want to see them.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: And they are the front and center, their front of house a lot of the time.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it's quite difficult to step back from that.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's quite difficult to completely let go of control to other people.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: And when there's loyalty and you know that there's certain people that have helped you to get to where you are, be that early commercial relationships and friendships like we have with you, or relationships with people that are now customers that chose to just give us a punt and say, you know, I like these two guys, you know, I could choose any software, but I like them.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it does feel like we'd be fobbing them off if we saw them on our screens and didn't reply going, hi mate, how's how things going?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: How's the clinic?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: How's the wife?
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's nice that it's almost an extension of who we are rather than this separate entity which is compartmentalized in our life.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's all it's a part of us.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's a it's a really important point because I think that's what we try to build in our product is to be able to give people the tools that they need to be uh awesome clinicians and put them front and center, and all of the other admin and kind of rubbish and kind of crap that can be systemized is is done by the tech.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what we've had to implement in the very early days within Rehab Guru, because you know, I was still in the Air Force.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_02: I could have been posted to the Falklands or, you know, Iraq, Afghanistan, or anything at the time.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: So there was a really, really robust like systems and processes so that we're able to do the important work, which is probably getting that person, you know, and holding their hand at a critical time in their onboarding.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of the other stuff is kind of done.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_02: And we can learn a lot from that from a clinician's perspective, I think, that if we can, you know, accentuate what what their patient clinician time is like, because tech is taking care of the rest, there's a real similarity there.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a lot of way of tastefully doing this as well.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of clinic owners might bring in a clinic manager and they'll know that if that person has had experience in healthcare, they immediately get it.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: They know what the staff want, they know what the patients want.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: So when we've been looking for staff, our recent hire in customer success is a girl from South Africa.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: She's been a physio for over a decade, she's learned to code, she wants to work in this space.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: And for us, it's just like a complete win-win because you don't have to onboard someone within the company and the industry.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: When people message in, they're not being fobbed off by someone, they're being supported by someone that absolutely knows what they want.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: But it doesn't really matter too much whether it is us engaging with them or whether it's cloudy or someone else.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it it it really helps.
• 10:10
  Michael: So I think that brings us interestingly into um questions around running a business and what it's like to run a business.
• 10:17
  Michael: Um because actually, I think David, you mentioned that whether you're running a software company or a marketing agency or or a physio clinic, you encounter some ex some of the main same problems, right?
• 10:26
  Michael: It's not like every company is completely different.
• 10:28
  Michael: Um, but I want to step back to what you were saying about those early customers and and so on, because I have a lot of experience in this, because we grew in exactly that way where it's actually really difficult to continue giving the service that you did on day one, where you speak to every customer once a week or once a day, and it does cause a lot of problems because I mean just recently we had a customer who was complaining that they only get to speak to me once every few months, but that's the nature of a founder-led business because you you know, as you grow and as you scale, you know, again, if you've got 10,000 clinics, you can't speak to 10,000 clinic owners physically, even if you work 24 hours a day.
• 11:03
  Michael: Um, and so it does there are those those problems that you encounter as you go along.
• 11:07
  Michael: And I think you're right, you've got to hire people that um really fit in with your culture, that care the same or not just the same, but as much as you do to understand the industry, and that's why we hire clinicians as well.
• 11:20
  Michael: We're we're talking to an osteopath at the moment who is really interesting because they really understand the industry, and and it doesn't matter so much about sometimes the technical things, it's more about do you understand a clinic owner?
• 11:31
  Michael: Um, do you understand the industry, what it's like?
• 11:33
  Michael: Can you talk about exercise?
• 11:35
  Michael: You know, in your case, if someone asks a basic question about exercise prescription, they can answer it, right?
• 11:39
  Michael: You you're not getting me to do that, no point in hiring me to act as support.
• 11:43
  Michael: Um, in terms of uh running a business, I did it with my other half, you're doing it as friends.
• 11:48
  Michael: Has that brought any complications?
• 11:50
  Michael: Um, has it been really smooth sailing or have you had any problems running a company with your friends?
• 11:55
  Michael: Because I get this asked asked this by clinicians all the time.
• 11:57
  Michael: I'm thinking of doing this with my mate, um, who's also a physio.
• 12:01
  Michael: We're thinking of starting a business together.
• 12:02
  Michael: And my general answer is be very, very careful.
• 12:06
  Michael: Um, and also I would always make one person a 51% shareholder and another one 49, um, because things can go wrong.
• 12:13
  Michael: What are your thoughts on that?
• 12:14
  Michael: What's what's gone wrong?
• 12:16
  Michael: How many fights have you had?
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: We've gone 50-50s.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: We've never done the 51 and 49.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I would say that um our background together and the background that we had where we were always mission focused, we worked really hard, but there was always room for some banter, there was always room for catching up for a beer, there was chemistry.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I've heard people talk about this when they've got a clinic.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: I remember it in certain healthcare settings where you've got a group of you, and it just feels like you just get on like a family.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: And in certain environments like sport, in the military, and also in you know, NHS, you feel like you're a family.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that really helps.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: And if you have that grounding where you get to work together, sometimes live together, sometimes socialize together, you really understand who the person is and who you're getting into bed with.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think that's really different to having a professional relationship with someone over a short period of time, you don't socialize with them, you don't do anything outside, and you don't really know them.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, we hear about this a lot where it sometimes doesn't work because of personalities.
• 13:24
  Michael: I'll push back on that a little because you can know someone incredibly well.
• 13:28
  Michael: But if one of you wants to invest uh all your money in your bank in the latest AI thing or whatever, and the other one doesn't, um, or one of you wants to take dividends, the other one doesn't, I could probably give you a million examples.
• 13:42
  Michael: And sometimes I can just be family related.
• 13:44
  Michael: I've got to send my kids to school, I need more money.
• 13:46
  Michael: Um, there are always going to be situations where you're going to end up in not necessarily arguments, but conflict.
• 13:53
  Michael: Um, how do you guys solve that?
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think we're really lucky for a start that we kind of complement each other's skill sets.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: So in one area, someone is an expert, and I will completely leave any clinical stuff alone.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: Dave will completely leave any technical stuff alone, because that's how we kind of carve things up.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: Personality-wise, we're very lucky as well that we complement each other.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: You know, if you were to do like some sort of personality questionnaire, we would probably be a good match and you would put us together as a team.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_02: So look, we are really and we're also super anal about evidence.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_02: So if someone is saying, you know, I want to go on this, and it's and it's a gut feeling, it's like not a chance, you know, like give us the hard facts as to why that is a good idea, and you're almost, it's almost like a pseudo business case to make sure that it makes sense.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: But then you're right, there will there will be some things where there is a difference, and that's really just been us looking after ourselves because as a 50 founder-led company, if we aren't happy, because no one's gonna graft as hard as a as a founder, right?
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like however, whoever you employ, you know, founders are really important because they will they, you know, they'll give all their fingernails in order to make this a success.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: So making sure that you're on solid foundations, whether that's family life, finance life, you know, or whatever it is.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_02: So there's a big piece of us looking out for each other because if Dave's not happy and not functioning at 110%, I've lost 50% of my kind of team, or it's certainly a leadership team.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_02: And the same's true.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_02: So we will we're probably pretty hot on our welfare of each other and understanding that over a long period of time as being the way forward.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: Neither of us are pretty, neither of us are very hot-headed.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, I think some of the personality sits tools will have someone like a red, no one is like all red kind of cracking on.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_02: So I guess we're pretty boring in that respect.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_02: But that leads to a very le you know, kind of uh level ship.
• 15:54
  Michael: Yeah, I am I am all red.
• 15:56
  Michael: I I was you know probably why it's never worked with me with friends, but I do think it's difficult.
• 16:02
  Michael: I think you're quite unique.
• 16:03
  Michael: I think um, you know, there are always these problems.
• 16:05
  Michael: I I know two clinical who went in together and one of them just does less work.
• 16:10
  Michael: Um they are less available because of children.
• 16:12
  Michael: And at first that seems fine, right?
• 16:14
  Michael: But then a little while down the road, it's like, hold on a second, I do 30 hours more than you a week.
• 16:20
  Michael: Shouldn't I get some more money for that?
• 16:22
  Michael: And you can see those sort of splits happening over time.
• 16:25
  Michael: And so if you manage to put it off, then I think that is pretty unique.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um you gotta eat that frog early and and just say it, don't hurt feelings, just get it out.
• 16:35
  Michael: Yeah, this is why it's good to do your other half because you just do what it says basically.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: Follow me fell foul of that earlier on.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: There were actually four founders of rehab guru, and uh yeah, there were.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: And great people, we're still friends with them, both still, you know, at my wedding, as Simon was, it was was in September, although Matt couldn't make it because he was away.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and actually, coming from a sports and a military background, people in the military talk about this hurry up and wait culture.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: There are times when you're hurry, hurry, hurry, you haven't got time to eat properly, you haven't got time to exercise, you are just working, working.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then you get peacetime, or you you know, there's no exercise, nothing is going on, and you get to wait.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: And there there is just an acceptance that in our diary there will be weeks where we can dedicate tons to it, and times in summer holidays or something else is going on.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: The problem is when that prolongs, and you know, what you the example you give of where that stagnates on for a long time, and being able to have candid conversations with each other about you know what's going on, but not making it personal, so making it about the business.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: So the business needs this at the moment, and and how are we providing that rather than it being like an accusation?
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think the way that we speak about that is candid, but it's not personal.
• 17:55
  Michael: Yeah, I I do think you need a very, very clear personality type to kind of to do that.
• 18:01
  Michael: Um, because I can be very reasonable and very rational about things, but there are still things to get to.
• 18:06
  Michael: So, for example, if let's just say we owned a company and it was a startup, and you said, you guys said, listen, we're going on holiday for three weeks to Barney, that would not sit right with me, right?
• 18:16
  Michael: It it would I would just be my head explode.
• 18:19
  Michael: But you might say, well, it's really necessary.
• 18:21
  Michael: So you can get it's the smallest things that can cause quite a lot of resentment and and and disagreement.
• 18:26
  Michael: I think you do definitely have to have the right personality up.
• 18:29
  Michael: I'm probably not the best person to start, I'm to be honest.
• 18:32
  Michael: Um, probably far too demanding and think of everything in my terms rather than someone else's terms.
• 18:38
  Michael: It's easier to do that with staff though.
• 18:39
  Michael: Although, do you also have this thing?
• 18:41
  Michael: Like I I think my staff on this, um, when it's a bank holiday and they take time off, I'm like, do it, get really angry about it, and then things also might as well they're taking their time off.
• 18:51
  Michael: Or when they book in a week's holiday, I'm like, what are you doing?
• 18:53
  Michael: This is bloody holiday bullshit.
• 18:55
  Michael: And then he's checked himself, he's like, they need holidays, it's fine.
• 18:58
  Michael: Do you find that as well?
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: I do, but I find that that I've changed that and it was always about me.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: So it's that I didn't want to give myself the day off.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't feel I deserved it, I didn't feel that I warranted or the business could afford it.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, once you get over that, you're really happy for other people to have their time off and be with family, just be with them themselves, their friends.
• 19:20
  Michael: Yeah, it it it's an interesting one because I I'm I'm over it.
• 19:23
  Michael: I I I love it when people take holiday.
• 19:25
  Michael: And we I sometimes kick people and kick someone recently and say you need to go and take some holiday.
• 19:29
  Michael: And one interesting thing is um we did some sort of internal stuff recently and and we asked some questions and this went to someone else.
• 19:37
  Michael: But one of the um I don't want to say it wasn't a complaint.
• 19:40
  Michael: One of the things that we found was and that some of the staff said was Michael and Hannah work so hard that we sometimes feel like a failure if we don't work as hard.
• 19:50
  Michael: And you know, that's that that's we do not want that.
• 19:53
  Michael: We do not expect anyone to work as hard as because of course, like you said, no one will.
• 19:57
  Michael: But it's something you have to stay on top of.
• 19:59
  Michael: We got one of our developers.
• 20:00
  Michael: Developers who I think you did about 90 something hours in a week.
• 20:04
  Michael: And I found out about it and I was like, I'm going to fire you if that ever happens again.
• 20:08
  Michael: So you try and do your best to tell them like this is not expected, nor is it required or you know, wanted.
• 20:14
  Michael: But yeah, when you're in a fan-led business and you're working really hard, I think that can infiltrate down.
• 20:19
  Michael: But I think also if you're sat around doing nothing all day, going and playing golf, the the opposite happens, right?
• 20:25
  Michael: Where other people sort of go, Well, he's not working well.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: I've been really lucky and then quickly do this.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I've been really lucky in the jobs that I've had both since leaving the military and during the military as well, where I've had really good leadership, that you're just judged on your output.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_02: And around that, if you can stay happy, healthy, and sane, then your output.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: And that's where I've been really lucky is that I was able to do really good output because I was quite techie and quick at doing things, that I was able to grow a side hustle alongside that.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_02: So um there's a lot about leadership there.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I'll, you know, schedule a send on an email to make sure that I don't get a response from one of our team members at 10 p.m., 11 p.m., whatever.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_02: And they'll just receive it at eight in the morning.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's just little tactics just to make sure that they don't try and follow us because they'll burn out because they don't have that.
• 21:15
  Michael: It's interesting.
• 21:16
  Michael: You sent me an email like that, and it was like, don't respond.
• 21:19
  Michael: Uh I know it's the weekend, don't respond to Monday, or something like that.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: And of course I just got one straight back.
• 21:23
  Michael: Yeah, but yeah, yeah, just get it out of my bloody inbox and then we're um yeah, no, it I think it's really interesting as as any business owner, you've got to think about that pressure that you put on the team.
• 21:34
  Michael: There's there's you want pressure, but not too much pressure.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_02: I think what we've found as well is um trying to keep not everyone's a Swiss Army knife.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_02: We uh have recently been doing some work in like the business coaching area, and we've been laying out what our organization uh chart looks like of all these different positions, and then we do a position contract for each one.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, when you start out, you are wearing so many hats, and then you you want to hire an another founder, and you just can't leave people like you just can't hire someone who has got 10 skill sets.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: So being able to keep somebody in their area of expertise and just wholly rely on that and then take that off your plate has been massive for us.
• 22:14
  Michael: Yeah, interestingly, again, we had the same problem.
• 22:16
  Michael: I was doing 20 different things since being acquired.
• 22:19
  Michael: Ben is slowly kind of taking parts of that away.
• 22:23
  Michael: And it's funny, you have to kind of hire four new people to kind of do because what you were doing.
• 22:28
  Michael: And I think that's that's yeah, it's it's it's definitely interesting.
• 22:31
  Michael: But then you have to retain that cultural kind of thing as well.
• 22:34
  Michael: But one thing that Ben said, which it's really cool, he said uh when we first started working with him, he said, I don't want you doing anything that you're too expensive to do.
• 22:41
  Michael: So when I'm like chattering with an invoice that's been done, he's like, don't fucking do that.
• 22:46
  Michael: Yeah, that's stupid.
• 22:47
  Michael: Do the stuff you're good at, not the stupid shit you used to have to do.
• 22:50
  Michael: And I think that's a really good rule.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes you can you can get some of the nif-naff and trivia off other people's plates so that they can they can go forth and be awesome.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there's a real transition point certainly over the last 18 months to like two years, where we've grown into leadership as opposed to just being a two-man band.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_02: That's uh it certainly takes some getting used to.
• 23:13
  Michael: The moment you start getting I I think pass it was once you get past sort of four or five employees.
• 23:18
  Michael: When it's when it's three, four, five of you, you can create kind of a really closely unit and you'll trust each other and whatever.
• 23:24
  Michael: When you start getting to five, ten, fifteen, strong, that's when it gets more difficult.
• 23:28
  Michael: And actually, I think it requires a a much different skill set.
• 23:31
  Michael: I think um loads of people, I think the companies that fail often are the ones that um where the founder thinks that you know they ran a business of only a million, now it needs 50 and they can still run it.
• 23:41
  Michael: Most of the time I don't think that they can.
• 23:43
  Michael: I don't think that's possible.
• 23:44
  Michael: Um, so for me, I I recognise my skill set as well, my fault.
• 23:48
  Michael: I have zero patience, I want things done quickly, I don't tolerate mistakes, that doesn't work um in a in a team of 30 days.
• 23:55
  Michael: Just isn't it isn't bad.
• 23:57
  Michael: Um, so we've established you're both normal blokes.
• 24:00
  Michael: So I don't want to kind of go into a uh let's talk about the software industry and debt.
• 24:06
  Michael: Let's talk about some funny stuff, what it's like running a software business.
• 24:09
  Michael: So I want some funny stories because I hear a lot of stuff all the time from um clinicians who moan about software developers that moan about companies, like tech company does this, my tech company does that.
• 24:20
  Michael: I want to turn it around.
• 24:21
  Michael: I want to hear some funny things that um that your whether they're current clients or not, but people what people do with you, what what have they done that's uh ridiculous or created?
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_02: I think I mean there's always the obvious one that like refreshing the browser will get rid of 80% of the problems that you're writing in to support about, which is uh which is always entertaining.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_02: But one thing sticks out in my mind is uh is someone who was you know getting in touch and they they opened up their email to support with Tim, it was great to see you at Therapy Expo.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: I've signed up, however, I I just struggling to you know search for this exercise that I'm looking for and something like that.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: And when you showed me on the Rehab My Patient stand, it looked so simple.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, uh, wrong software, I think you want to speak to Tim Halladise, Rehab My Patient.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_02: So they were obviously uh shopping around.
• 25:09
  Michael: That's a funny one that sticks in my mind.
• 25:11
  Michael: It's it's for me the the best ones are the ones where they get really angry at you.
• 25:14
  Michael: They're like, this is bloody ridiculous, I don't understand it.
• 25:17
  Michael: And you're like, yeah, wrong software, uh I don't know, we don't have that feature.
• 25:21
  Michael: Oh, sorry.
• 25:22
  Michael: It's it's when they get really super angry.
• 25:24
  Michael: And and then you could tell the good ones when they're like, oh my god, I'd move up.
• 25:27
  Michael: I'm so sorry.
• 25:28
  Michael: It's the ones that don't say sorry, where you're like, I have this.
• 25:32
  Michael: Oh, I've got to be careful what I say.
• 25:33
  Michael: But I had this recently of someone that was going off, like completely going off, and then realized it was a problem at his end, not ours.
• 25:40
  Michael: Yeah, it it happened.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_02: I think there's a a great thing here, like so we've got some customers that like we would run through walls for them just by the way that they approached us and were just like, you know, it might be something complimentary, or it might be just like, you know, sorry to bother you, I'm finding this problem type thing.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_02: And like that is me, you know, weekend answer, get back in touch with them and say, you know, really look after them.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_02: So I think there's definitely uh some ways and means of speaking to software companies to get a lot out of them versus you know just enough.
• 26:12
  Michael: I think that applies to everybody and every industry, but but I think people forget it.
• 26:16
  Michael: So uh if I'm really angry, it doesn't matter, I'm still really kind, and I often say, Oh no, it's not your fault, but I try and be as nice as possible.
• 26:24
  Michael: And I think you get a lot further that way.
• 26:25
  Michael: We have the same thing if you phone up and start shitting on someone, but you know, it's not the way to get things done.
• 26:32
  Michael: Um, but people do get aggro, and I often give them an hour, but especially when I get a really aggro email, Michael.
• 26:37
  Michael: I sent you an email at 10 a.m.
• 26:39
  Michael: It's 4 p.m.
• 26:39
  Michael: and you haven't responded to it.
• 26:41
  Michael: I'm sure you're having a really bad day here, but I'm quite busy.
• 26:44
  Michael: Yours isn't my only email, and then they're normally like, shit, sorry, yeah, all right.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_02: But for us as well, like we're powering people's businesses, and that's something that weighs heavily on our shoulders.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: It might be something a few years ago, the clocks change, and like we would work to the you know, we'd be doing so much testing around that because if everyone's appointments are one hour out or they can't access their diary at 8 a.m.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_02: in the morning, those are critical business impacting issues.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_02: So there's a lot of uh kind of pressure that we we really take seriously because we know that we're powering people's businesses.
• 27:19
  Michael: Do you do you feel that because I feel this personally?
• 27:21
  Michael: We you would believe sometimes how much the team will do um when there's a problem.
• 27:26
  Michael: We will work throughout the night.
• 27:27
  Michael: We had a thing recently where we had a load of the team work till 5 a.m.
• 27:31
  Michael: and then get back up at 7 a.m.
• 27:32
  Michael: to start work again because it was a serious issue.
• 27:34
  Michael: And we don't tell people about it necessarily, but I feel like often our work can be not by everyone, and most people are fantastic, but it can be quite underappreciated at times.
• 27:44
  Michael: Do you find that yourselves?
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think you um definitely can see that in like the amount of effort that goes into providing a piece of software or a service, any service is is absolutely massive.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so there's definitely an underappreciation of how much effort goes into these types of things, uh, and also understanding and you know, reading around the topics and trying to solve the bigger problem, not just the problem that's facing that particular user, because you might like, oh, I I want this button over here or whatever, you know, I want this particular thing solving.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_02: And actually, what you're doing is you're taking ownership then of right, what is the bigger problem here, or how can we abstract that feature to please a hundred or a thousand or ten thousand people, not just the thing that's right in front of that person's face.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think the biggest challenge we have is that when I first started in healthcare, after a few years, I just thought there was a way to run a clinic.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of our customers think the way that they run their clinic is the only way that everyone runs it, whether they're a physio, a chiropractor, or an osteopath, they may request a new feature and they don't realize there are thousands of people using rehab guru.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: And we've got, you know, maybe it's just that we don't communicate it about how many features are being requested, what's currently being planned, how long it takes to plan a new product, a new feature, how long it takes to develop it, to test it, and then release it.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it's some of those patients that you know message you on a weekend, they're really polite, they're they really want the product to be good, that we end up working with them and they become part of our team.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they're part of the testing team.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: We might say to you, you know what, we're gonna give you a three years subscription here, or we're gonna give you a discount because actually you're not only being kind to us, but you're being really helpful in understanding and appreciating that these things can take several years to develop sometimes.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: We're all working as hard as we can, but they don't see that, they're not within our team.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people in healthcare have never worked in software, so they don't understand the the length that these things have taken the time and the energy committed, and that's quite a difficult challenge.
• 29:50
  Michael: I I think that's very specific to the software industry because I think that um and I've I've been guilty of this myself.
• 29:56
  Michael: Oh, why can't they just implement this thing?
• 29:58
  Michael: And you realize that when you think about it, uh, because I know tech, I realize that that needs an entire rebuild of the entire bloody system.
• 30:05
  Michael: I remember many years ago I was chatting to one of the devs at um uh at Barkley uh Bachley's, and I said, Why can't you just put like the Monzo features into like she was like, Yeah, we are, but we're having to rebuild the entire disruption top to bottom, and that's about 200 million pounds.
• 30:22
  Michael: So uh it takes time.
• 30:23
  Michael: And I think people understand just how much time it takes.
• 30:26
  Michael: And also you make a tiny little change.
• 30:29
  Michael: I remember uh Facebook, we wanted this uh not just liked, but also like a smiley face video, right?
• 30:34
  Michael: And people were like, I why is it so hard just to do that?
• 30:37
  Michael: You do it and suddenly the entire thing explodes and breaks, right?
• 30:40
  Michael: So one little thing can affect a lot of other fields.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, definitely.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_02: And the the testing is because the the the platform's massive now, uh you know, imagine all the different permutations of add-ons and all these different things.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_02: So we've just invested tens of thousands of pounds into a testing framework so that we can blitz through a hundred or more different kind of permutations of a user, and it runs for like 10, 15 minutes doing thousands and thousands of tests to make sure that things are robust before they before they go out.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I think with this as well, there's also an element of opinionation.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_02: So are we going to be really opinionated about how people use our software?
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_02: Which is you you go follow our blueprint, you follow our way of working.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_02: And that might be quite, you know, an easy, rigid way of doing it, standardized way of doing it.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_02: Or you offer them all these features and different flexible options and all this type of stuff.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_02: And with that comes great power, but great complexity.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_02: And our audience are sometimes coming at tech from a sort of non-technical background.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_02: They want all the power, but they don't have the technical know-how to unpick those and do all the configuration and so on.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_02: So there's a really fine balance for us to give great power with great simplicity, plus a suggested way of working, but you could do it like this, that, or the other.
• 32:00
  Michael: Do you find that you get a lot of requests um for features, and often more than one?
• 32:07
  Michael: I don't talk about the outliers, but for features where you're like, I know you will never ever use this.
• 32:12
  Michael: Um and these this is a crazy request.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we get that.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I think when somebody's on their journey to digitizing their clinic, and and we saw this a lot during COVID because people had some space to think.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_02: You know, they weren't, you know, smashing out 10, 15 appointments per day.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_02: They were like, right, I'm gonna get my digital ship in order and like it's gonna be perfect.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's like that New Year's resolutions territory where you go, this is gonna be precise.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna get my patients, I'm gonna be running the analytics, and I'm gonna run a report and I'm understanding my return on ad spend, and it's gonna be perfect.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_02: And so they'll approach it going, right, I want everything seamless, perfect.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_02: And then actually, when it hits the reality that it's never just gonna happen like that.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_02: So I think everyone can.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, features-wise, we we get all sorts of crazy stuff.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_02: But I think it's for for people, it's to start small and then build there.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I guess if you're looking at a piece of software, it's like, can it get me off the start line?
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome, but where can it take me?
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's probably the biggest design choice.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's difficult when you you're trying to onboard people that are a one-man band.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm a one-man band, my my wife works as well, she's a nurse, so we've got a little clinic together, and she obviously does a lot more than me.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: The needs for me are very different from a clinic owner that has 50 staff members and seven clinic sites.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: Someone who has used multiple different software platforms for the last 15 years and can easily change from one to the next.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: We migrate data for free, so we make it really easy, as opposed to someone who's never really used tech, they're still using a paper diary, and they jump into rehab guru and all right, they might know how to use an exercise prescription platform really well, so there's very little onboarding.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: We can have a bit of a blueprint with the exercise prescription.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: Here are the templates, here are the exercises, search for them, modify your basket, and send it in in varying ways.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: When it comes to the notes, well, the way I write notes would be different to another physiologist, would be different to a doctor.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: And all of a sudden they've got to start configuring everything for themselves for how the appointments um run, how long they last, where they are, who offers them, what piece of equipment is available for which clinician in which room, like a shockwave machine and and you know, whatever else kit they've got.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: Every clinic is different.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: We can't possibly know what they want, and we can't possibly give them something straight out of the box that they just sign up and it does everything that they need.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: That is a real challenge.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I think for anyone that's starting out fresh, I think it's really, really difficult to choose between which you know which platform you want.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: Do you go with five different ones, or do you go with something like rehab guru that's got everything?
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: And if you went with the five, which one are you going to use?
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: And and how are they all different?
• 34:57
  Michael: But that's interesting because uh uh I've always um been really interested in pricing for systems, right?
• 35:03
  Michael: Because you're absolutely right.
• 35:04
  Michael: Someone who has one seat, let's say that is a tiny clinic, they only need to use one or two features.
• 35:10
  Michael: That's that's really all they need.
• 35:11
  Michael: So you price it at, let's say, high tensively£10 a month, and then you've got a clinic of uh five people, and you price it at£50 quid a month, but you give a bit of a discount, you probably do 40 quid a month.
• 35:20
  Michael: But actually, the feature set that the five-person clinic uses is so much more than four times the individual.
• 35:28
  Michael: So it almost feels like um software prices the wrong way.
• 35:32
  Michael: It should almost go up for the more users that you have rather than down.
• 35:36
  Michael: And and I I think what's interesting is what you've done with that, because you kind of counted that a little bit, right?
• 35:41
  Michael: Because you've gone modular.
• 35:43
  Michael: And I think by going modular, you you fix that issue.
• 35:46
  Michael: So if I just want this one little thing, great, I can have it.
• 35:49
  Michael: If I want to have email, if I want to have AI notes, if I want to have blah, blah, blah, and you say, yeah, you can pay for each individual item and it soon adds up, but then it reflects more closely what it is in terms of the value that you're getting.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the pricing's been quite challenging with that.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you take the bookings add-on where you can book, do your online bookings, invoicing, payments, when we first released that during the first lockdown, it was literally book one appointment at a time, no classes, booking for one location for one clinician.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: And then once you've got, you know, ad hoc appointment times, throw in any availability that you want, calendar integrations, customize every email that leaves your account for every appointment type, configure your team and work out which clinician works at which sites at which time.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: We're pretty much charging the same amount that we were five years ago.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think that the price for that has gone up one pound.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_01: So we have invested enormously in the platform to give support to the large clinics, but we don't want to alienate the one-man bands that don't need all that functionality.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: And where we have gone modular, you know, you can end up feeling like we should really be charging those big clinics more.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: But how do we do that without them having to choose 12 different products?
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because some of the benefits of the clinic management software, where there is one price, you pay for it and you use it all or you don't, is that it can seem too expensive for some, there's not enough functionality for another, and it is really difficult to hit the sweet spot.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um we are, but the pricing is a challenge.
• 37:23
  Michael: On that, I think what's really interesting is from a pricing again marketing perspective, it's sometimes difficult.
• 37:28
  Michael: If someone says to me it's going to cost me a thousand pounds or ten thousand pounds or five hundred pounds, I look at that and I make a value judgment against that.
• 37:34
  Michael: But unless I understand the product in depth, I can't really make a very good judgment on it.
• 37:39
  Michael: It's just how it feels.
• 37:40
  Michael: Now, if you're going modular and you say, right, this is your basic, it's 10 quid a month, and you now you get email, you get automations, you get WhatsApp, you get booking, you get you start adding all that up and you put it together, and then I look at it and go, Yeah, now that price makes more sense because I can see individual components.
• 37:57
  Michael: And I think it's a really intelligent way to price because I have a feeling if I asked you, I'll ask me, how many people do you think really understand the ROI and the value that they're getting from the product?
• 38:07
  Michael: Because for me, I know that you know, I always I've had some of the music said, I spend a thousand, we make four thousand.
• 38:14
  Michael: I don't think that's great value.
• 38:15
  Michael: I'm like, one thousand or I'm fucking happy with that, but it's difficult sometimes to communicate that really well, and that's our fault.
• 38:22
  Michael: That's not that's not their fault, but it's our fault.
• 38:24
  Michael: We have to really help communicate that.
• 38:26
  Michael: It's actually very difficult, particularly when you're talking about clinics who don't have margins of like 300 grand a month or whatever.
• 38:33
  Michael: You've got tiny little margins.
• 38:34
  Michael: So I guess for you doing that also really helps people to understand what they're paying for.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_02: It does as well, and it's um we we work really hard to try and get people to that aha moment of like, oh yeah, I get it now.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a lot of things in there that are a little bit of like a gateway drug where they'll be like, okay, I'm just gonna use this for exercise prescription.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, holy smokes, it does that as well.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_02: How about I consolidate the death by a thousand subscriptions that I've got into one platform?
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's a bit more congruent, I can move between things.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_02: I know we're not mentioning AI, but AI can understand the context as I move between exercise prescription, treatment notes, correspondence, and bookings.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of benefit of trying to standardize, which is sometimes a bit of a swear word in the software industry, but there's definitely some merit in doing that modular approach.
• 39:23
  Michael: You bring up an interesting topic there.
• 39:25
  Michael: I think if you asked a thousand random clinicians about rehab um rehab vipatient, rehab guru, I guess.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: Freudian slip there.
• 39:36
  Michael: Yeah.
• 39:37
  Michael: Uh I need to get Tim on the podcast too now.
• 39:40
  Michael: Um if I ask them, they're gonna say and I ask them what you do, they're gonna say exercise prescription.
• 39:45
  Michael: That's what you have to do.
• 39:46
  Michael: And it's very much like a clinic owner again when they go from being a physio to being multidisciplinary.
• 39:51
  Michael: Oh, that's the physio.
• 39:52
  Michael: No, no, we got GP services and we got all this cool stuff.
• 39:54
  Michael: Yeah.
• 39:55
  Michael: Um, how are you finding it trying to kind of explain to people?
• 40:00
  Michael: And get people aware that actually you do a lot more than just send out some exercises.
• 40:04
  Michael: You've got just, I know, you know, I'm not here to market you necessarily, but just give us a rundown of all the different things you do.
• 40:10
  Michael: I mean, not in depth, but you know, your different modules.
• 40:12
  Michael: What are you doing now?
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_02: Exercise prescription its core with remote patient monitoring, outcome measures, so you're tracking pain, wellness, all of those good things through a patient app.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_02: We've got treatment notes so that you can do your inbound uh patient forms through to writing the treatment notes using AI transcription through to uh ongoing outcome measures.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_02: Then the booking system, so you've got embedded booking portal, free WhatsApp messages, and um the AI tool layered on top of that.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_02: Dave, have I missed anything there?
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_02: Probably I missed a massive thing.
• 40:48
  Michael: So, first of all, it's really cool because you do a lot more than exercise prescription now.
• 40:51
  Michael: Um I do want to get into how you're re-grinding that and how you're kind of communicating it.
• 40:56
  Michael: Because I think it's difficult for any business who does one thing and is known for one thing and then suddenly they do a ton of other things.
• 41:02
  Michael: But on the WhatsApp thing, this is something that pisses me off.
• 41:04
  Michael: Um, with a lot of software vendors, WhatsApp is generally people know that it's pretty much free.
• 41:11
  Michael: And there are a lot of software vendors out there that don't allow WhatsApps, they still stick with SMS.
• 41:15
  Michael: Why?
• 41:16
  Michael: Because you can make money off of it, right?
• 41:18
  Michael: You can.
• 41:18
  Michael: So you you've got to because there's not one single, let's say PMS in this industry that couldn't easily and quickly offer WhatsApp.
• 41:25
  Michael: It's this is not a big development job.
• 41:27
  Michael: I know earlier to admit it's not that big.
• 41:29
  Michael: They could do it, but they don't because of money, and that annoys me.
• 41:33
  Michael: And it's really nice to see that you are offering a WhatsApp integration.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_02: So um yeah, that's a really interesting point because we'll often have somebody who's chatting with us, you know, they're testing the market for different things, and they're saying, well, your system costs you know this much, and then uh this system costs the same amount.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_02: And then they say, and I will ask them, you know, are you paying for text messages?
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah, my text message bill is 90 pounds a month on top of my you know subscription fee.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_02: And you're like, okay, right.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_02: So your subscription fee is actually£120 per month, whereas that's£28.80 with rehab guru because we're doing free.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a very different conversation then if you're doing people always forget the reminders.
• 42:11
  Michael: No, I absolutely and and but it's also something that everyone wants.
• 42:15
  Michael: And it's just it again pissed me off that that more people aren't offering it.
• 42:18
  Michael: And and just from a marketing perspective, again, you are going to you've got to be careful about WhatsApps because I think my my SMS is filled with spam and my mum kind of leave leave them over there.
• 42:29
  Michael: And and my WhatsApp is very personal, like it's only people I truly know where to use it.
• 42:34
  Michael: So you've got to be careful marketing on WhatsApp, um, very careful.
• 42:38
  Michael: But there's some things that it's really, really useful for.
• 42:40
  Michael: And and I think a lot of people, I will always contact someone if I have a question by WhatsApp, if I can, over and above something else.
• 42:46
  Michael: And WhatsApp's really interesting because it can build conversations out as well.
• 42:50
  Michael: Um, uh, so there are lots of advantages to WhatsApp from a marketing perspective.
• 42:55
  Michael: So again, it's really good you offer it, and I wish more people did.
• 42:59
  Michael: Um, but we know why it is let's make as much money out of them as as is humanly possible.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's one of the reasons why I mean we didn't want the technical because some people don't use WhatsApp, but we made that design choice to go with it.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_02: Because to rebuild a whole SMS and metering that perma, it was just like, right, we need to move fast, we need to give people this reminder capability, let's not try and build it because it is really complicated.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_02: So we're like, well, we'll just bundle it in for free, keep moving forwards.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_02: There's lots of design choices like that.
• 43:29
  Michael: Exactly.
• 43:30
  Michael: So um, in terms of moving forwards, what's what's the plan for rehab guru over the next 12 months if you give some some stuff away?
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_02: Sure, I think that there's definitely gonna be some uh there is gonna be some rebranding, kind of hot take today.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_02: And that might be uh looking to look after that you know whole suite of tools that we now offer.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's not just just rehab.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_02: So there's that to happen.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_02: And what we're gonna do is just continue to deepen those uh those features.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_02: So you mentioned WhatsApp.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: Currently, that is a reminder.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_02: What if we bring that into a two-way conversation and you know there's a far more of an engaging um uh kind of conversation between you and your patients?
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_02: Everything is based around delivering an awesome service to your pastors.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_02: So we deepen those integrations.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna release an open API so that people can start to interrogate the rehab guru system for a whole raft of uh data, whether that's just your patient information and so on.
• 44:26
  Michael: We've got a sorry, just on that, so you're gonna go open API.
• 44:30
  Michael: That's interesting because some of the modules that you have are going to allow now external people to compete with that.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_02: So we for the longest time we were like, we can be everything to all people and you know, cancel all of your other subscriptions, which we still endeavor to do.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_02: And that works for a lot of people.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_02: They can cancel maybe five other subscriptions because we can be their CRM.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_02: We can, you know, there's an analytics module rolling out, so you could cancel, you know, something like a data player subscription.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_02: We've got the form, so you could cancel your form specialists, we've got outcome measures, so you could cancel those things.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_02: However, there are still some specialist organizations, especially in our enterprise space, that do need to integrate with our system.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_02: And that might be to trigger a certain action in their enterprise ERP system, or uh it might be just some kind of specialist tooling that we just can't build for somebody, but they could really move quickly and build themselves if we give them an API.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_02: So uh our sort of modus operandi remains strong as being also you know, everything all in one place, but we will open up an API.
• 45:42
  Michael: Just to be clear, because you just said if we give the API to them, is this going to be full REST, full open API, open documentation?
• 45:49
  Michael: Anyone can build.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, imagine uh a bunch of swagger docs where you've got all of your um post-get requests with authentication instructions.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_02: There'll be rate limiting to prevent abuse and lots of security around that because we don't want people kind of probing and scraping, but that's a whole security thing that is is swept up.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, you've got docs and you can build against that and create some bespoke systems if you want to.
• 46:13
  Michael: You know what?
• 46:14
  Michael: That's fantastic.
• 46:14
  Michael: That's genuinely really good because I think first of all, it gives you it shows you have a lot of confidence in your product because you are going to be competing with some of the functionality of other people, um, and probably want to move into some of that functionality at some point.
• 46:27
  Michael: But I think it's not even that necessarily just about how good something is, it's how familiar you are with something.
• 46:33
  Michael: So if someone really likes using that, they have to take data quite like case where let's say they really like using that, they could choose you, but if you like it, they can continue to do that.
• 46:43
  Michael: So I think that's a fantastic thing to do.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's also a choice that helps with adoption because one thing that we see clinic owners struggle with is getting their entire team to adopt a new piece of software.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: And being that we can be the everything to everyone doesn't mean that clinic owners want us to be that on the first strike.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: You can't eat an elephant in one sitting, and it might be that they decide that they want to start with exercise prescription, and actually rolling that out across seven clinics with 50 staff is only possible if you take it a bit at a time.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: So if we do offer integrations with other users, it helps people to start at one go.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_01: We don't we don't have an enormous amount of traffic that goes out in marketing emails because of the tens of thousands of people that have become users of rehab guru, we don't want them to start unsubscribing to our emailing list because we're hammering them all the time with we're the best, we do this, we do everything.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: All we send them information on is here's a new feature update.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: And one thing that we're probably missing a trick on then is reminding them of that.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: So we've told them that yeah, there's a WhatsApp integration, there's there's calendar integrations, there's clinic, you know, classes and all the stuff that you can book, but what we forget to do is tell them, by the way, you can run everything on rehab guru.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: And and this piecemeal almost helps them to understand that I was requesting this feature two years ago.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_01: Great, it's live.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna jump into it now whilst not bombarding them because uh people that want to be bombarded, they need to be bombarded and challenging.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_02: And this is bootstrapped f founders, right?
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_02: Because if we had VCs riding our back for hitting the next milestone on profit, then we would be squeezing every ounce of juice out of the platform and really peddling it.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_02: But that's where Dave and I have hence we we know each other, Michael, because we you know we use your services, because we're the uh the worst marketers ever.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_02: We just build product and try and make it awesome, and we've not been shouting about it enough.
• 48:55
  Michael: Yeah, and and and actually just on that, the the missing a trick about shouting and so on, um, and new features.
• 49:02
  Michael: I think where a lot of software vendors go wrong is they think about everything as a feature, not as an outcome.
• 49:08
  Michael: Yeah.
• 49:08
  Michael: And so I've got we're great, we've got WhatsApp.
• 49:11
  Michael: Okay, so how do we get that?
• 49:14
  Michael: What are the best practice?
• 49:15
  Michael: Yeah, you know, how do give us use cases of you know, is this for patient outreach?
• 49:20
  Michael: Is this for acquisition?
• 49:22
  Michael: Is this for XYZ?
• 49:23
  Michael: And you can do that with literally every feature.
• 49:24
  Michael: And I think software companies often they just become so feature-led and so focused on the development that they forget about people, more people would use it if they actually knew what they were doing and and were given examples, but also you end up getting quite a lot of churn because people will go, oh, this sounds like a great feature, I must get it.
• 49:42
  Michael: A good example would be reporting, some data analysis.
• 49:45
  Michael: They go, Oh, this is amazing.
• 49:46
  Michael: I should have all this data.
• 49:47
  Michael: Six months later, they go, Well, we paid 300, good 500, whatever it is.
• 49:51
  Michael: We haven't used any of it.
• 49:52
  Michael: Well, that's not on you, it's on them, but it is on you, if that makes sense.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I I think that this is, I mean, if I had lots of time, this is where I would put the bulk of my effort, is to give people the playbooks or the pre-written blueprints for how to implement something and it actually means something and make a difference.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_02: So that's why we're trying to build a really congruent product so that there is a way of working that we believe is really efficient and really productive and will assist them in breaking down traditional kind of physiotherapy business models where you've naturally got a ceiling.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_02: You either increase your prices, you duplicate yourself, or you charge more.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um sorry, or you um you know work harder longer or whatever.
• 50:32
  Michael: Yeah.
• 50:33
  Michael: So on that, let's let's get into that, because that's interesting.
• 50:36
  Michael: And I know you can't get into too much much depth, but if you look at your best customers, the the people that benefit benefit the most from your product, what are they doing differently?
• 50:44
  Michael: Like how what is your advice to to someone using whether it's your product or anyone else's?
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um so I think the experience starts right from that very first booking.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_02: They're going to receive a booking confirmation.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_02: And that booking confirmation, does it include some really rich information that feels kind of reinforces that that patient has made a good decision by choosing this practice to go to.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_02: Now, the clinician, if they have done this right, they can start the collect.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_02: Their appointment starts now, so they could be collecting data.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_02: So you elongate the treatment pathway from gathering some, you know, might be some demographic information.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_02: That's pre-pro, you know, it's going to populate the system.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_02: You're saving that crucial face-to-face time with the patient because you've started your gathering.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_02: And then also been able to deliver just gold standard experiences after the appointment.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_02: So, yes, they will receive an exercise program, they crack on, and they might have an appointment book for two weeks' time.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_02: Now, what if you're monitoring them whilst they're doing their exercise program?
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe they're not, they're not doing it.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_02: Or they might have a pain score of, you know, six, seven, eight when they're doing the lunges.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_02: You reach out to them and go, hey, Simon, notice that you're getting a score of eight on your rear, you know, backwards lunges.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going to swap that out.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that patient is then like, holy shit, this physio is the best thing since sliced bread.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_02: Outside my opponent, they've reached out to me, but then the technology has made that pretty trivial because you might think there's a huge amount of workload by monitoring a hundred patients on my caseload.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas you could be alerted to that within Rehab Guru and go, right, who's who's scoring a eight or more in the last week?
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_02: You're going to reach out to them and deliver, you know, a world-beating experience.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_02: And then that patient is putty in their hand.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_02: They're going to run through walls for you with their exercise program because they know that they're getting a really, really high quality service.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's one example of end-to-end how you can leverage tech to give a really good experience.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's not just about that hours appointment.
• 52:44
  Michael: So I think, first of all, it's um, and I imagine many customers don't, and I know I often don't, but it's it's using the software, using the product properly as it's supposed to be.
• 52:55
  Michael: And I always give an example of Excel.
• 52:57
  Michael: I think 99% of people use about 2% of the power of Excel.
• 53:01
  Michael: There's there's so much you can do.
• 53:02
  Michael: I think a lot of us um we buy a product.
• 53:05
  Michael: I I have this with this bloody car I bought, right?
• 53:07
  Michael: I bought this bloody nice car, really nice features everywhere.
• 53:11
  Michael: All I probably use like 10 of them.
• 53:13
  Michael: I still don't know how to do some of the auto things that you're supposed to do.
• 53:16
  Michael: Um, but we're all guilty of that.
• 53:18
  Michael: And I think if you want to do things properly, you've got to use the software properly.
• 53:21
  Michael: And then secondly, it's always thinking, and I hear this more and more literally from everybody, it's about experience, it's that about our patient experience, customer experience, and so on.
• 53:30
  Michael: Here's a question for you guys, because I've been thinking about this for us.
• 53:33
  Michael: Should you take on anybody that doesn't pay for consulting and how to use your product first?
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_02: Interesting point.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_02: I've I've mused with this on kind of dog walks and long bike rides and things of maybe we can offer like a like a white glove onboarding service where we are almost offering consultancy, we understand how you currently work and and how it fuses with business consultancy plus using the right software.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_02: I think that could be hugely powerful.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of people in our industry would benefit from that because they kind of come from a clinician background and then become business people second.
• 54:08
  Michael: I think everyone benefits from it.
• 54:10
  Michael: I'm thinking about it myself, because I just had a client who, or potential client, who said, Oh, I really want this all sounds wonderful.
• 54:17
  Michael: And then when when I looked into it, I thought, well, this is just a sticking plaster for a load of crap things you're doing in your business.
• 54:22
  Michael: I want to be a sticking plaster.
• 54:24
  Michael: And but certainly when it comes to to tech, like it's I'll pay a few extra quid if you show me how to use it properly.
• 54:31
  Michael: Give me design things for me, take me through it.
• 54:33
  Michael: How should I be using things?
• 54:35
  Michael: What is best practice?
• 54:36
  Michael: And it almost feels like I would love people to sign a waiver.
• 54:39
  Michael: I am signing a waiver, I am not taking consulting, but because of that, I cannot leave for 10 years because I'm let's be honest, people leave not because your product is necessarily crap, but because they don't know how to use it or they're not whatever.
• 54:52
  Michael: So I almost want to, I'd love to say, right, no marketing customer can come on board unless they get consulting first and a little bit during the case.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_01: But I think is is useful for two reasons.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_01: One is for them to vet you, but you're also vetting them.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like, is this useful?
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_01: I've got a friend that works in software sales, but in like cybersecurity, and they actually sell a product, and if that customer, and it happens to be in oil, um, the customer has to pay additionally for support.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_01: Support doesn't come as part of it.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_01: They're selling into an industry where people understand tech.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_01: We are selling into an industry where the tech literacy can vary so much that it's quite difficult to put a line in the sand and say this is what we do.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_01: And it also depends with guru what you're what you're going to be using.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I spoke to Tim Allardyce and Rehab My Patient recently, we're talking about customer service, and actually, so many people know exercise prescription now.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_01: They don't need an onboarding consultant, they don't need to be shown how to use an exercise prescription platform because they've they've been existing for 20 or more years, but the massive difference between clinic management softwares can be really wide.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_01: But also the price is uh allows us and affords us to do that consulting.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_01: So if someone is paying, you know, they've got 20 clinicians, they've got three clinics, they might be paying thousands of pounds a year.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_01: And if they stay with you for 10 years, it's worth offering them that support because the lifetime value of that customer makes it worth you doing a really good job for them.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_01: And it's quite difficult for us to know when someone signs up, are they just gonna use us for exercise prescription or are they gonna be using us for the whole platform?
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_01: And we just don't know.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a bit of a risk, it's a bit of a gamble for us, but we know that when we add new features in, like we're gonna be adding the CRM and there's gonna be loads of other stuff coming out.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, someone might start as an exercise prescription customer, they might start as a one-man band, and in five years, they're employing 10 people, they're using the entire suite, and you know, it's planting a seed and supporting people, not because they're a customer of yours, but because they are growing themselves, and as they grow, you grow and you grow together, and hopefully it's a bit of a win-win.
• 57:20
  Michael: Well, I agree, and I think that's a a cultural thing within your business, you want to help people and and and so on.
• 57:25
  Michael: I'm not sure I agree um if you compare this to say working with undertaking to larger software implementations, because first of all, they're not paying because they understand they need it, they're paying because they've got a shit ton of money.
• 57:37
  Michael: And so, you know, maintenance contracts as part of any big, let's say ERP installation is like, okay, it's almost as much as the the licensing.
• 57:45
  Michael: So I think that it's it's traditionally that you traditionally you pay a lot.
• 57:49
  Michael: I think that big businesses can afford it.
• 57:52
  Michael: Uh, I think this industry is very different because again, the margins, right?
• 57:55
  Michael: We are you and I, all of us are dealing with companies with very small margins, and because of that, they are often worried or scared, or certainly they look at a cost much more differently than someone who's got, yeah, it's no different, you know.
• 58:08
  Michael: If if I've got um if I've got a hundred million in the bank account, a cup of a seven quid cup of coffee doesn't mean very much.
• 58:15
  Michael: When you're a student, holy shit, you're getting NASA cafe, right?
• 58:18
  Michael: And so we've got clients who are very nervous about money, they look at money all the time.
• 58:22
  Michael: And I think you have to go over and above to keep those people on your on your products.
• 58:27
  Michael: And I think also, quite honestly, just from personal opinion, it's nice to help people.
• 58:32
  Michael: Um, it's nice, even away from reducing churn or whatever, it's really nice to help people out and make their life.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_02: Ultimately, like that was our marketing strategy to create advocates and champions by going over and above and and rolling out the red carpet for every single person that ever signed up for rehab guru.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_02: Now, our scale kind of dictates that that starts to so you need to start to offer really uh kind of creative options of onboarding so that it's contextual support and things to make sure that you don't lower the standard of support, but able to do it at scale.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the the art behind the science.
• 59:08
  Michael: Do you think support at some point becomes uh I was discussing this with Ben Morpha from um uh Ephra.
• 59:14
  Michael: Um do you think support at some point is gonna just become the thing that stops you growing and scaling?
• 59:20
  Michael: Um the thing that is gonna just increase your your your costs um not just marginally but by some distance.
• 59:28
  Michael: Because you get someone like Clinico who are like, listen, if you can't support yourself, people fuck off.
• 59:34
  Michael: Um we are we are, I mean, and they're quite bad agrees with that.
• 59:37
  Michael: They are like, look, this is our product, support yourselves, it's a lot of self support.
• 59:41
  Michael: Um you don't do that, you offer a lot more, which I think is amazing.
• 59:45
  Michael: Can you really continue doing that?
• 59:46
  Michael: Let's say you get 20,000 clinics on board in the next few years.
• 59:50
  Michael: Can we really do that?
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, um so there's a couple of things like really good documentation.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_02: There is, you can't get away from that.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you could chat with me on support.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_02: Who's kind of coded a lot of the system.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I was amazed the other day, because we've got we've got Finn from Intercom answering some of our questions, but he's got his disposal a whole raft of support documentation.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_02: And he jumped in there with a customer far quicker than I could.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_02: And the explanation instantly was probably 10 times better than the person who coded the system.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm like, okay, well, maybe there are technical solutions here that uh can deliver a better service, but it it's being careful about that.
• 1:00:31
  Michael: You know, if you'll solve me, I'll know a little bit about Intercommonfin because we've tried implementing it.
• 1:00:36
  Michael: Tried it costs money.
• 1:00:38
  Michael: Every that's in his model.
• 1:00:40
  Michael: Every time they answer a question, it starts costing more money.
• 1:00:42
  Michael: And particularly when, and I know you're being a bit facetious, not too much, but about you know, 85% of all of your support tickets could be sold by refreshing the browser, you do get into uh you know into a bit of a situation because as you go, you're gonna get more, I don't want to call them stupid questions, but more questions that could be answered very, very easily.
• 1:01:03
  Michael: Think, you know, it's the nature of running a software company in this industry where people are not technical, not commercial, and do need the hand holding.
• 1:01:10
  Michael: Because, like you said, this was our business model, hand holding, love, cuddles, which is great, and I think it should be like that.
• 1:01:16
  Michael: It's what we try and do, it's what I still try and do, give people big cuddles.
• 1:01:20
  Michael: That how how long can you do that for?
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, cuddles don't scale.
• 1:01:24
  Michael: You can quote that's a good old couple cuddles don't scale.
• 1:01:30
  Michael: That's gonna be the title of this podcast.
• 1:01:32
  Michael: It's cuddles don't scale.
• 1:01:33
  Michael: It's but it's it's it's really true, and not your best to do everything, and you try and do different things.
• 1:01:38
  Michael: So, for example, we've introduced um HMDG Connect for people.
• 1:01:41
  Michael: So the all of our customers have a platform to go on.
• 1:01:44
  Michael: I'll I've offered to do and sometimes I'll do things like this, but events for clients, and you try and do so much, but it's still not I can speak to to Simon about the product request a feature next week.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's I mean I think it depends how you consider it because one is retaining customers, and another is word of mouth that we hear all the time at conferences you're amazing at customer service support.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm so glad that we moved over from X.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_01: And they tell their friends, they tell their colleagues, and it's so difficult to quantify that and put it into metrics to understand how important it is.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's easy to overlook it.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_01: But I think when you combine that with, you know, social media, every time a new feature comes out, it goes on social media.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_01: There's an email marketing campaign.
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_01: There's lots of different ways in which we can deliver customer service by putting content out there, whether that's a video, whether that's an article, people see it and it it sort of starts answering questions before they're even asked.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_01: And it is also an opportunity.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_01: Someone may, you know, message in saying, Oh, I've got a problem with these forms.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_01: I use you for notes and forms.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if you're not using us for the bookings, then there's an enormous amount of automation where all these forms are going to get automatically sent for you.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_01: The answers are going to be automatically calculated, and you're going to be presented with the answers.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, that that automation by bringing it into one is so helpful for them.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_01: But that customer who was paying us, you know, 18 pounds a month can actually be some someone that we upsell to, so they get a win out of it, and we do too.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not always seeing that, oh, this is a burden.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes with our um model, with the modulation, it's a nice opportunity.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_02: I think there's some like customer behaviour that you can influence here because to get like good performing or kind of successful customers sometimes is helping them to help themselves and like the really good documentation.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_02: If we follow back, you know, and if you do need to reread these points, here's the article, here's the article, here's the video.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_02: So then the next time that the support uh kind of question comes up, they go, I might just search for this myself.
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_02: And you're like, oh great, we've we've changed their behavior.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_02: There's some stuff there, and and knowing that good docs exist.
• 1:04:04
  Michael: Yeah, you mentioned 18 pounds a month.
• 1:04:06
  Michael: I just want to jump on that because uh I'm sure.
• 1:04:10
  Michael: Do you ever sit there when someone's getting really angry and complaining?
• 1:04:14
  Michael: And sit there and go, You're paying this 18 quid a month, you've got a 10 grand enterprise solution.
• 1:04:20
  Michael: You're complaining because X, which is so insignificant.
• 1:04:25
  Michael: Do you ever get that?
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_01: We do a little bit, but actually, we've always gone with the philosophy that if you get enough of those 18 pounds, then you get a lot of money.
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that is 18 pounds a month.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_01: But when you consider the annual fee and the lifetime value of that customer and doing a good job with customer service, they tell their friends.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_02: For me, I treat every customer service ticket as a potential.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, this is going to sound really, really kind of ass-licking, but um, every customer service ticket is a continuous improvement point.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_02: So that's why we put our developers into the customer service environment.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_02: And when you have a um a ticket that gets raised into a GitHub issue, it's like, well, go ahead, developers, go and solve that problem because it's appeared three times now.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_02: Go and fix it.
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_02: We don't want any more tickets about that particular thing.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_02: So there's a lot uh happening there to think, right, if that if that is a problem for somewhere, somebody, it could be our fault.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_02: It could be my fault.
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_02: I could have you know coded it wrong.
• 1:05:25
  SPEAKER_02: So there's a lot there for us to unpick.
• 1:05:27
  Michael: Yeah, no, you're right.
• 1:05:28
  Michael: It does sound like article.
• 1:05:29
  Michael: Um, no, I think it is um yeah, I think it's really interesting as a company because you you do you're two really nice guys, you are doing doing things the right way, and even with things like support, where quite honestly, for me, I it drives me wild sometimes.
• 1:05:44
  Michael: I had someone say, I only got two hours of mica this month, and it I I you know I should get more.
• 1:05:49
  Michael: And I'm like, well, two hours quite that's enough for anyone, really.
• 1:05:52
  Michael: It's it first of all, it's enough for anyone, and second, um, you're not paying me for it.
• 1:05:57
  Michael: I'm giving this out of, you know, not uh because was my heart, but I'm doing this for it as a as a nice thing to do.
• 1:06:03
  Michael: And if you're happy to pay my two grand fee, I'll give you more than two hours, you know.
• 1:06:08
  Michael: But I think it's it's you're right, you've got to look at why you're getting complaints.
• 1:06:12
  Michael: And sometimes it's it's slightly different, I I think, with software, but sometimes it is because of you.
• 1:06:16
  Michael: And and for me, most often it's because you haven't communicated something corruptly.
• 1:06:19
  Michael: It doesn't work.
• 1:06:20
  Michael: Well, it does bloody work if you do it in this way.
• 1:06:22
  Michael: Well, you didn't tell me that.
• 1:06:24
  Michael: You you never showed me to do it that way.
• 1:06:26
  Michael: So you can you know, that's it you you I always say to the team, you can always think, oh, this is a horrible customer.
• 1:06:32
  Michael: But actually, when they say I I got no ROI on my ad, and you go, Well, you look at it, and you go, Well, you bloody have, it's a seven times ROI.
• 1:06:38
  Michael: Well, that's our fault for not showing them how to work that out or not doing enough reporting or whatever, whatever it is, maybe.
• 1:06:45
  Michael: Um, all right, we've been uh here for ages.
• 1:06:48
  Michael: I want to ask one final question, which I think is really important, which is about software selection from a software vendor.
• 1:06:55
  Michael: Um, it's really hard sometimes to choose between products, and I want to touch on two things.
• 1:06:59
  Michael: One is about features, one is about emotion, and the other one is just things you should look out for, questions you should ask of of any piece of software before you go ahead and buy it.
• 1:07:10
  Michael: Because I think it it can be scary.
• 1:07:12
  Michael: Many of the features of two products can be the same.
• 1:07:15
  Michael: But what would what would you look for?
• 1:07:17
  Michael: So, first of all, let's talk about the the key things people should look for in the products or from ASOF whether.
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_02: I think understanding your your actual requirement, you know, is is first and foremost before you go shopping, because there's lots of shiny things out there and it might seem like it's got like bells and whistles, and you've got an aspiration of using those, try and be honest with yourself and go, right, are you going to grow into those things?
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_02: And in which case that that's great.
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_02: And then, you know, apart from the usual stuff, that as the sort of data protection kind of nerdy guy, I would be saying, you know, all your usual credentials, ISO 27001, cyberessentials, GDPR, all that good data jurisdiction uh in terms of where it is.
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_02: So you want some good trust pages.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_02: And then what I would do is support.
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_02: Support is what we've been discussing for the last 15, 20 minutes, ping them a support ticket from outside, see how they perform.
• 1:08:12
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's an interesting little real life use case for how are they going to help me get on board?
• 1:08:19
  SPEAKER_02: Now you might get a response straight back from a salesperson, in which case you can go back with something far more kind of nuanced.
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_02: It might be about migration, it might be about something.
• 1:08:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but you're starting to test the water straight away without having to get your credit card out.
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_02: I'd be looking for good, long free trials, good onboarding process.
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_02: And um, that's how I would choose software, definitely.
• 1:08:41
  Michael: Do you ever do you ever think about so for me?
• 1:08:43
  Michael: I always look, I'd always check companies' house.
• 1:08:46
  Michael: It's a bit like choosing a builder.
• 1:08:47
  Michael: If I'm gonna buy a uh someone or buy someone, if I'm gonna get someone to build an extension, I'm gonna see they've got some cash behind them.
• 1:08:53
  Michael: So I do check its house, which isn't great for bootstrap companies, to be fair, generally.
• 1:08:57
  Michael: But I also look at obviously testimonials from other people, but also if they've got a team and where that team is based.
• 1:09:03
  Michael: I do not mind you having, and I'm I I don't know if you do or don't, I don't mind you having 40 developers sat in who cares, doesn't matter, but I want to see uh an onshore team that I can speak to, people who I could recognise and and and know are gonna be there.
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_02: Another thing I think companies house is kind of mixed truths because people have parent companies and umbrella things, and I mean, I guess I'll speak about our own company's house listing is that we've invested it all back into the product, so it's not like swimming in profit.
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_02: So uh yeah, that's the only thing I'd uh point out there.
• 1:09:35
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry, Dave, cut you off.
• 1:09:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the um the other thing I'd look at is how many features that company or that platform has released recently because there is such an enormous gulf between the way companies are run, make the way clinics are run, and what features are best for them.
• 1:09:53
  SPEAKER_01: So, although we said we're not gonna talk about AI, I think AI is a great way to enter in.
• 1:09:59
  SPEAKER_01: I have this number of clinics, I offer these services.
• 1:10:02
  SPEAKER_01: Clinicians and rooms need to share different pieces of care.
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_01: So you just put it in and say, I'm looking for a piece of healthcare software, which are the softwares out there that are going to be right for me, knowing that you may not find the silver bullet, you may not find the one software that does everything, but understanding whether that company is constantly reinvesting in new features, new products, so that when you message them in and say, I really like 90% of your features, but you don't do X, Y, and Z, is that going to be taken to heart?
• 1:10:40
  SPEAKER_01: Or are you just another one of the thousands of customers that sort of don't get listened to?
• 1:10:46
  SPEAKER_01: I had a meeting with um one of our customers, and they've been a long customer for a long time, and they're wanting to come over to us for the whole clinic management.
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_01: And we were talking to them about reporting, financial reporting notification.
• 1:10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Do clinicians get alerted when they haven't written their notes?
• 1:11:02
  SPEAKER_01: When they write a letter, are the administrators notified so that the administrator can send the letter on?
• 1:11:08
  SPEAKER_01: What's happening with the CRM?
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_01: What's happening with all of this stuff and time frames and actually being able to and we can't necessarily have those meetings with every person, but when we develop these features, we take feedback really seriously and we develop things that we know are going to be wanted.
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're looking at a software, but you think, you know what, they've not updated their functionality in like three years, are they going to?
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_01: Are they interested in?
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_01: Are they I think I think those are important things so you can future proof yourself by getting the right software that's not just right for now, it's going to be right for five years' time.
• 1:11:42
  Michael: Do you think that the feature sets, especially really expensive ones, can actually do the opposite?
• 1:11:51
  Michael: So, as an example, if I see a product with 3,000 features and I look at it and I immediately think, eh, unless you're Apple, you're not doing this, right?
• 1:12:00
  Michael: You need a trillion and bound to have to do it.
• 1:12:02
  Michael: So I think sometimes too many features can do the opposite, right?
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, Apple's a good example.
• 1:12:07
  SPEAKER_02: They released the iPhone without copy and paste and multitasking and all these things, right?
• 1:12:11
  SPEAKER_02: It was really good at a certain set of things.
• 1:12:13
  SPEAKER_02: And real life example of this is ClickUp.
• 1:12:16
  SPEAKER_02: ClickUp is like this productivity software that promises to replace Teams, Slack, your uh GitHub, your document store, your Dropbox.
• 1:12:24
  SPEAKER_02: It tries to be everything and it's crap.
• 1:12:27
  SPEAKER_02: It is so overwhelming.
• 1:12:29
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I'm a pretty techie person.
• 1:12:31
  SPEAKER_02: I tried to onboard with this and it I was just like out tech.
• 1:12:34
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, this is crazy hard to get into.
• 1:12:38
  SPEAKER_02: I need to compartmentalize these little things.
• 1:12:40
  SPEAKER_02: That's my chat.
• 1:12:41
  SPEAKER_02: I have Slack open.
• 1:12:42
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that is my note system.
• 1:12:44
  SPEAKER_02: I will use this.
• 1:12:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you know, so I think that's a good example of too many features.
• 1:12:48
  Michael: So, on that, did you find yourself because I've been back at it about three times?
• 1:12:52
  Michael: I want to love it.
• 1:12:53
  SPEAKER_02: I want to do, yeah, I want to.
• 1:12:56
  Michael: But every time I'm like, I'm I'm lost.
• 1:12:58
  Michael: I just I've got to throw this away now.
• 1:13:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's got so much promise, but uh, you just can't, I just can't get on board.
• 1:13:04
  Michael: Yeah, and I think sometimes simple is is best as well, right?
• 1:13:07
  Michael: Keep keep it simple, dummy.
• 1:13:08
  Michael: I think um we see that with a lot of software.
• 1:13:11
  Michael: And I think also one thing I would also say is that a lot of the time, and I see this where people I recommend something and they say, Oh, I tried the free trial, and I think you need to do more than a free trial with a piece of software.
• 1:13:23
  Michael: I think you need to speak to someone.
• 1:13:25
  Michael: It's no good just doing the free trial because you won't do all the things that you can possibly do with it.
• 1:13:29
  Michael: I the amount of free trials I've signed up for in my life, and I'd probably look at one in five properly if I'm not.
• 1:13:35
  Michael: And so I think you need to go to demos.
• 1:13:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think it's also an approach thing because don't just sign up for something on a whim when you don't have time to properly use it.
• 1:13:46
  SPEAKER_02: You need to carve out some time to think, right, this is gonna be business development for me to properly embrace this.
• 1:13:53
  SPEAKER_02: This is working sort of on the business, not in the business.
• 1:13:56
  SPEAKER_02: Because if you don't have that time, your trial's gonna elapse, you're then gonna get back in touch, you're half-assed about it.
• 1:14:01
  SPEAKER_02: You actually need to concentrate on this thing because if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right.
• 1:14:06
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's one mistake that I would uh sort of advocate people go away from is you know, making sure you've got time.
• 1:14:12
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why COVID was, you know, quite interesting because people had the um the headroom to to go and do this stuff.
• 1:14:19
  Michael: I think there's shiny coin syndrome, right?
• 1:14:21
  Michael: It's it's like there's always a new thing that you can look at.
• 1:14:23
  Michael: And and I know clinicians who I will know he's gonna listen to me too, like he's talking about me again fasting.
• 1:14:29
  Michael: But and it's it's constantly like looking at new things, you're trying new things, and and I think sometimes you've got to think about like, is this going to move the middle in my business?
• 1:14:38
  Michael: And if so, then let's do it properly and let's, as you say, spend some time in it.
• 1:14:43
  Michael: Um, because I I I think the particular I I've done it so many times where I s I waste so much time looking at products and cool little tools, and then I think am I actually gonna use this or is this any better than the thing that I'm used to and use?
• 1:14:57
  Michael: Slack is a good example.
• 1:14:58
  Michael: Slack just works, it's great, it doesn't the amount of other systems I've looked at where I've probably wasted hundreds of maybe not hundreds of hours, but tens of hours going, I'll just do Slack.
• 1:15:08
  Michael: And will it move to the end of the business?
• 1:15:10
  Michael: Will engine from one thing to another make any more money?
• 1:15:12
  Michael: Probably not.
• 1:15:13
  Michael: Let's just stick to Slack.
• 1:15:14
  Michael: All right, so listen, thank you so much, guys.
• 1:15:17
  Michael: Uh really cool discussion.
• 1:15:18
  Michael: Hopefully, not too tippy and and uh very little AI in this one because it's uh AR.
• 1:15:24
  Michael: Uh, how can people get in touch with me um or have a look at your product?
• 1:15:28
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 1:15:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um rehabguru.com.
• 1:15:31
  SPEAKER_02: Support at rehabguru.com for uh starting a conversation with us.
• 1:15:36
  Michael: Cuddles don't scale is gonna be the title of this episode, and thank you so much.
• 1:15:40
  Michael: And we'll chat soon.
• 1:15:41
  Michael: Thanks so much.
• 1:15:42
  Michael: Cheers, guys.