Podcast Transcription - Climbing The Mountain Of Growth On An Everest-Like Scale
Hello and welcome to yet another episode of the business of Hearing podcast and today we have yet another wonderful under the hood interview. Before we jump into this, I have one question. What would have to be true for you to have ten locations and 48 members of staff? What would the structure be? How would you operate? How do you ensure you can continue to grow and thrive with that infrastructure? Well, that's exactly what you're going to learn today so let's jump in to this wonderful under the hood interview.
Welcome to the Business of Hearing podcast with me, Oli Luke, the podcast for entrepreneurial private practice hearing care clinic leaders, the ones who set benchmarks of excellence, build wildly successful businesses, grow their impact and navigate the choppy waters to spearhead the future of private practice hearing care. Thank you so much for joining us. Pour yourself a cup of tea and let's get stuck into this week's episode.
Hello Hello, this is Nancy Duncan, the host of under the Hood. This is our deep dive into the world of audiology practice, private practice, I should say and we now cover North America as well as our neighbors to the north in Canada and today I have the great pleasure of introducing Robbie Davidson. He's an audiologist and current owner of Davidson Hearing Aid Centers with several locations all over Canada so I am so pleased to interview him today and pick his brain on managing so many people that he has so welcome, Robbie. I'm so glad to have you here.
Thanks for having me. Really looking forward to this.
Good, good. So tell me a little bit about your practice. As far as I can tell, it's a multi-generational practice so you are not the first in the Davidson clan to take ownership, is that correct?
That's right. My grandfather started the clinic back in 1943 so we just celebrated our 80th anniversary which is accomplishment. As far as I'm aware, it makes us the kind of oldest, kind of consistent, family-owned independent clinic in Canada so that's kind of something.
Congratulations.
Thank you. And my dad started working for my grandfather in, I believe it was 1971 then he took it over and then I got the privilege of joining my dad and working with him in 99 and have been there since.
Oh, wow. And has your dad since retired?
He did basically the pandemic.
It’s a good time to retire.
Exactly. He took a few months off and then got interested in some other projects and things and just never really came back but..
So you're the last man standing. So talk to me about how many locations do you currently have?
We've got ten clinics in eastern Ontario region so.
How many employees does that put you at?
Enough that I don't know the exact number but sitting somewhere around 48 right now.
Wow. So that's where I want to spend a little bit of our time chatting because most clinics have one or two employees and that's problematic enough but 48, that's a whole another level so tell me, how do you manage that day to day with different personalities and different issues and problems that arise and how do you go about keeping your sanity most of all?
I mean, they're the reason that I love doing what I do so much. We've got an amazing team and a lot of great people but no, certainly it does present some challenges and one of the big things we've been building on recently is kind of more of an in-house team to help with that so we have our own HR admin now, in house bookkeeper, director of administration services. That does a lot of the onboarding and training parts of things. Yeah, we all just work together and kind of tackle each problem as it comes.
That's great. Now, are you kind of the point person with all of those employees or do you have a practice manager they work with or how does that work?
No, everything, I guess comes back to me so I wear a lot of hats and get to learn a lot of new skills and be a part of different things which is a lot of fun.
Yeah, I would say I know myself and I'm on a much smaller scale than yours is. I feel like every day is a learning experience and I'm at a point where I'm doing things I never thought I would a do or have to do. Kind of like parenting in a way.
Yeah, it's a lot like that and I mean, one of the things is, for whatever reason, I never really enjoyed school but I've always loved learning and this has been a great opportunity to learn lots of different skills and constantly be evolving and changing and trying to do a better job.
Now, is your primary role the management or are you direct patient care or a little bit of both?
I haven't really defined it recently. When the pandemic hit, we basically kind of tried to keep people from moving around and gave everyone their own location and their own office and didn't kind of share things, resources the same way we did prior to that and when that all happened, I lost my own office or access to an office a couple of days a week so since then, I've really been doing a lot more management and just running the day to day and a lot less direct patient care, which I kind of miss. Every time we get a new Audiologist that joins, I often take a good chunk of the first month and spend time with them, which is a lot of fun but trying to figure out a way to get myself in a little bit more routinely now.
Well, and I'm sure they appreciate that because that's the hardest part, if you are primarily doing direct patient care is when you have somebody start, you don't have that time to train as efficiently as you'd like so that must free you up to do a little bit of that.
Yeah no, it's definitely nice to be able to put time in there.
Good. So how would you, in your opinion and your vast experience, define a high-performing clinic in the audiology world?
I've heard other people answer this, and it doesn't help. It's a hard question to answer.
Well, it's such a unique question for each individual.
It is and there's not any single metric that really is the be all, end all but for me, I guess the enjoyment level of our staff is a huge one. As long as people are enjoying what they're doing and seeing the difference that they're making and working together cohesively as a team, that's one of my biggest metrics of success and then having been around for 80 years, we've got a lot of people who've been with us for decades and decades and they were bringing their parents or their grandparents in, and they remember tell me stories about the receptionists we had in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s which is kind of neat to hear all those stories and about my Dad when he was young but just being able to offer them the same service at each location, that commitment to care and excellence everywhere, continuously, every time. Being consistent is a big one for me as well.
Now, with the employees you currently have, who's been with you the longest and well, not who but how long have they been with you?
We just lost him, unfortunately, to retirement. Rob had been with us for 37 years.
That's incredible and that's a testament to how you run things, that they've stayed 37 years. That's not a lot of can say that anymore.
And not just that but his wife had worked with us for many years as well.
Oh, wow.
And daughter went into audiology, and she's been one of our audiologists since 2018.
It's not just a family practice for you, for everyone.
That's great. So what's the one thing you believe that your clinics do better than anyone else? And again, this is another unique question because we all think we do everything the best, right?
It's true and the general answer is customer service. Everyone says, oh, our customer service is exceptional.
Right.
Again, for me, it would be regardless of how old or new the hearing aid is, regardless of how expensive it was or not. It's kind of treating everybody as if they're of value and being consistent and helping them at any point along their journey, regardless of what they need. That is really what we strive to do and I think that makes a huge difference.
I agree and I think it's the level of honesty, because we all know there's some horror stories out there in our world with how patients have been treating and just being honest with somebody and saying, you know what? It's not time for you to get a new hearing aid and seeing them, that relief and the benefits you reap later on because of that because of that honesty with them and I'm sure you all have done the same, being that you've been around so long.
Yeah, it's really frustrating hearing people coming in and say oh, I was told I had to get a new hearing aid because this was irreparable, and it's a receiver or an ear hook or something minimal. It's like oh.
Yeah, I see that all the time where they just need a new ear mold and somebody's told them they need a new hearing aid, and it's crazy.
Now, they may have a lot of advantages from getting a new hearing aid but that's not the only option and we should give them the opportunity to make what they feel is the best informed decision.
Correct. I had someone the other day with a one-year-old hearing aid that was told they needed new because it had stopped working. It was plugged with wax.
Okay. I cleaned it, handed it back to them, and I was their savior and I didn't do anything but my job but it's amazing to me. Now since you said you took over in what, 99 or you started?
I started working in 99. Took over in 2018. Well, took over. That was the official transition date but everyone asked me. It's like oh, what's it like being the boss? And it didn't seem any different because when I graduated in 2006 from audiology, I worked really well with my dad and we just slowly transitioned different things. I just took on more and more responsibility over the time so there wasn't a hard and set date where anything felt different.
Well, and it must have been nice to have a little bit of a safety net there, being that a, it was your family. We were taking it over from and having that slow transition so it wasn't sort of like ripping off a band aid.
For sure. Yeah and I mean, I got to learn an awful lot with my dad there as helping with guidance and one of my cousins worked with us for 18 years, and he still is. He's moved back home to the east coast and opened his own chain of clinics there. He's still a great resource. We talk all the time and just share ideas and bounce information back and forth.
Well, and it's so important to have that because often when you are an owner, you're sort of an island of one, and you don't have often those resources you can reach out to and ask those questions of and for that to be someone you trust as a family member, that's incredible.
Yeah, it's been very nice.
Yeah, I bet. Now, since you've taken over, have you made a lot of updates, changes, how have you transitioned the practice to make it your own?
Yeah, I mean again, it's been that continuous shift, but since 2018, we've opened three new locations, moved one of our busiest clinics into its own space and then turned the old one into just head office. We're currently sitting in a new space right now which will be our 11th clinic, hopefully later this winter or spring, providing the renovation doesn't take too long, as they typically always go beyond your plans.
For those who can't see him, he's currently sitting bundled up in a hat and coat because what did you say? It's 50 degrees. The heat is not working yet.
Yeah, 50 degrees. They just installed the HVAC today so I think, any luck, I should start getting heat here in about an hour or so.
So you'll be stripping things off during the interview? No, I'm just kidding.
Now, are all of your locations fairly close in proximity, or what's the furthest driving distance between them? I don't know nothing about Canada so I have no idea how things are laid out, to be honest.
So Ottawa is our capital and it's a population of about a million people and we have five locations spread out throughout the main city, and then we've got five, soon to be six within communities in eastern Ontario which is you know, typically an hour to an hour and a half from the city itself.
Okay and do you have folks that have to commute between the offices as far as employees, or does everybody still, since the pandemic, have their individualized locations?
More or less. They have their own individualized locations. We've gone back to a few people float between two locations for different reasons but no, mostly everyone's in their own unique location.
Are they all full time or do you have satellite offices as well?
No, those are all full time with I think two of them are single clinician and all the rest are multi clinician locations with full time admin. Definitely not a one day a week.
That's a lot of balls in the air to be juggling so congrats. So what would you say in your journey as an owner would be the biggest mistake you've made? Would you say?
I guess I try and have a growth mindset that everything is a learning opportunity rather than a mistake. It's only a mistake if you haven't learned from it.
I agree.
Biggest mistake. I guess the biggest one from kind of a staffing perspective is not taking the time to see things or see problems from the individual's perspective because it's easy to know all the things that you're doing and you're involved in and kind of working on and then not always view it from your perspective but it's hard to view it from theirs. I think there's a few things that could have gone a little bit more smoothly with employees and created better outcomes or longevities of working relationships had I done that more effectively but I'm learning. I'm a work in progress.
Yeah, I have to say that's one of the hardest things I've experienced is because as an owner and you're just trying to survive your day, most days, trying to get through, plug all the holes that happen throughout the day, put out all the fires and so it's very easy to have this sort of narcissistic viewpoint of the world where people come up and give you information or have a complaint and staff, and it's very easy to think of how this affects me but it's sadly not always about me even though I want it to be. I think it's so easy to just react rather than think it through and that's one thing I've gotten better at but like you said, I am still a work in progress, where sometimes it's hard not to have that knee jerk reaction when someone gives you frustrating news, bad news. I've had to kind of stop, breathe, take a minute, maybe a day and then react because so easy just to come from that place of, well, how does this affect me?
Right. I mean, the other thing, too is, even as you said, we're dealing with so many issues with so many people and we kind of create a hierarchy in our own minds of how important things are and how much attention we should put into those but sometimes you lose sight on what we think is a small little issue. Might be a great big barrier for somebody else.
Correct. That might be the biggest issue they're dealing with in us, it's minuscule in our day to day so it's hard to remember that. Very hard.
Even asking the right questions to say, how important is this for you? I'm not viewing it with the same lens, but how do I need to handle this one?
Yeah, and I think even sometimes people's good news is hard to take as an owner. I've had people come up and go oh, I'm pregnant and I'm like, great and in my mind I'm like six to eight weeks without them. How are we going to plug that hole? Because you got to kind of think that way but at the moment I've got to stop and be like no, that's wonderful. That is a wonderful thing but we'll manage.
It's funny hearing you say the six to eight months, oh sorry, weeks. That's a very non-Canadian response because here it's twelve to 18 months.
Oh my gosh. I had a one-week maternity leave, so I'm moving to Canada but I'm too old to have babies now but whatever.
That's incredible so does the government supplement the employee or do you have to? How does that work?
Yeah. So the government will cover some of their wages while they're off.
And by law, I'm assuming like the states, you've got to hold that position for them if they're intending to come back?
Yeah. The one nice thing is twelve months is long enough that you're able to often find someone who's a new grad or somebody who's willing to. It's long enough that they can sign up and they feel like they're going to learn a bunch in that time and it's worthwhile at least training them so it's not like you're going a couple of months with nobody and you're not going to find somebody for that little period.
That's true. That makes sense because you're not going to plug that hole for six to eight weeks but at the same time it's a huge hardship so maybe we should support this twelve-month idea. I would have been on board with it 17 years ago when my son was born. One week was not enough. I don't advise it.
No, I wouldn't either but my wife and I had twins in May.
Oh my God.
And I took two weeks off, of which I only went into the office two to 3 hours a day, saved for the one day that I got food poisoning and I stayed home that day.
Well, it was well deserved so congrats on the twins. Wow. How many children do you have?
Five.
Goodness gracious. Your wife must be a saint.
So we thought we were done at three and then we got the bonus twins so our house is a chaotic, noisy, wonderful mess.
You got the buy one, get one and I'm sure you wouldn't change a thing.
No.
Exactly. Now, we already covered what you felt your worst decision was or hardest decision. What would you say your best decision has been made to date as an employee, as a clinic owner? Excuse me.
Again, another hard one. Probably one of the best things was, we do well, pre-pandemic we did, and we're starting to bring it back. We did one day a month. We closed down all of our schedules and all of the clinicians would get together for training.
Okay.
Some kind of activity so whether it's a product training with a manufacturer whether it was something entirely done within our organization, some days we brought in the whole admin team as well and had everyone there kind of working on something or learning about something and especially with so many locations and so many people, having them come together and kind of spend time together is really valuable and almost as much as for the content but for all the side conversations that they're having, you hear people talking like oh, I'm doing this with this fitting, or asking questions about that, or giving tips on what's been working for them so kind of just that sharing of resources and information.
That must really bring about the team mentality, too, which is really hard when you're all dispersed to do. That's a question that brings up for me is, how do you maintain that? Because it's one thing, as we've grown and added clinics, it's gotten much better over time because we've changed a few things but initially, it was this us versus them mentality that I found fascinating and terrifying at the same time because I kept saying, but we're a team. We have a unified goal with everybody involved. Why is this happening? But do you have a lot of that, or have you managed that out?
Yeah, I think you can always do a better job, but I think we've done a pretty good job in a lot of ways of kind of having everybody working together and there's a number of things that we've done to help with that. One would be we use slack a lot, which is kind of a team communication system, messaging system and through that we've got channels where everybody's involved and then channels where specific offices are involved and it allows everyone to communicate and share information and work together on problems and different things so that's been really helpful and then we've even created, it's hard to get all phone calls and we don't like missing incoming calls. We've kind of created different ways of, initially we had grouped offices together so that two or three clinics would be working together to get calls so if they couldn't get them within three rings, it would go to the other clinic so that they could help out and share. And it kind of binded people together a little bit and made them kind of responsible for a little bit beyond their..
Beyond their four walls.
And then now we've gotten to a point where we have a group of customer support and satisfaction team that kind of work behind the scenes and help everybody out so there's kind of that constant flow of information and resources that help. Another thing that we've done this year which has been good, is everybody spends one day of the year visiting a different clinic, shadowing the person in the same position there and then they do one day a year hosting somebody else, having them shadow themselves.
That's smart.
Yeah, it helps share how we do things and it can be as easy as how someone maintains. That was a big one, was someone loved how somebody else maintained the tubing on their wax removal equipment so that it didn't look dirty.
Right.
How people store the old fitting programmers and fitting cables and things so that it was easily accessible but took less space in the drawer. Just different things like that really helps connect everybody and makes things more efficient.
Yeah, I mean, it's such a simple idea, but yet so effective, I can see. I'm actually going to steal that so it's not stealing because I'm telling so he's like, steal away, it's fine. Now I know over the last maybe three or four years, really right around the pandemic time, the world of audiology has shifted dramatically and the focus between OTC and online vendors and all of these different things has changed our landscape. I know from when I graduated 100 years ago. What do you think at this point the future of audiology looks like? Do you see much change? Do you have any idea of what your thoughts are on that?
Yeah, I don't have the.. but a little bit goes back to I had a friend ask me, what percentage of patient success do you attribute to the technology and what do you attribute to yourself? And my answer to that was, for 70% of people, it's probably 90% technology. For 30% of people, it's probably 90% me. Meaning that looking at the future, there are people that OTC is going to work for, and there's people that mail order is going to work for and there's people that just need the product and they maybe don't produce a lot of wax and they're pretty self-sufficient and the base kind of fitting will meet their needs and then there's a huge percentage of people that they need the handholding, they need the support. They want the guidance, they want the help. They have wax issues and they need to have it, as you said, that one year old hearing aid clean, that they're not going to buy a new one every year, every time it gets plugged up so we're a service industry, and I think that's going to mean until hearing aids become which I don't know if they ever will but unless they become so inexpensive that you basically throw them out like a toothbrush and get your next one and you're ready to go.
Right.
There's the market for us.
I always have these moments of fear where I think, oh, we're in a tech savvy generation and they're coming up as they age. Will that make us obsolete? But then I think to my own life at 50, my level of technology knowledge is not what it used to be and my ambition to learn more about technology is waning and the hearing aids are only going to get more and more tech savvy so I think there's always going to be a need for that help and that handholding because things are changing, whether it be the technology or the person learning it, and we have to keep up and I can already see myself at 70 or 80 going, oh my gosh, this fancy phone. I don't know how to use it because if it wasn't for my 17-year-old now, I wouldn't know anything. I think that fear that a lot of us have, that we're going to be obsolete is minimal so I think you're right. I think there's always going to be a need for that service-related portion of it.
Yeah. And we're going to have to shift what we do obviously, we're going to have to stay up to date and there might be a smaller market that we have to work with but, I mean, with the aging population, there's no shortage of and the underserved demographic that we work with. There's no shortage of people that do need our services so it's just figuring out ways that we fit in.
Yeah. And I think that you'll see more and more options or moving towards some telehealth things because I think the pandemic made people a lot more savvy when it came to that type of thing and open to it, I guess I know myself, if I could see all my doctors that way, if I'm not having an issue, that would be fantastic so maybe I can work from my pajamas and from home someday just doing that. Now, if you had to share one piece of advice for somebody either considering audiology or considering the big leap to private practice, what would that be?
Considering audiology, I would say just one of the requirements in most of the schools in Canada to get into the audiology program is to spend at least 14 hours doing observations in different clinics, which I think..
That’s wise.
Yeah, it's a great thing and because there is that requirement, clinics are quite open to having people come in and do that, which is really nice so definitely try to get in some clinics and see what it actually is like.
We had a student once that did that and they ended up going into mortuary sciences so I'm not sure what I did but they felt audiology wasn't for them.
Well, it's not for everybody but I mean, I love the balance of helping people, making a difference in their life and that technology aspect as well. For starting your own clinic, it's a long road where you're never off the clock. I mean, I took the day off yesterday to spend the day with my kids because my wife took a much needed break day and I still, I think, answered about five phone calls and a bunch of emails and I mean, you're never off, so be prepared for that and make sure you love what you're doing or at least find bits and pieces that you love. For me, one of the big things when I'm having a challenging period, I always kind of go back to usually something that I can control and that I enjoy doing and go and be productive with my own time. It kind of gives me a re-centering and readiness to kind of move on.
I think people underestimate and I've said it before, I'll say it again, you've got to be especially kind of crazy to enjoy this because you're right, you're never off. Even I was away recently for a weekend with a friend and she's like, you're still working and I looked at her like she was crazy, and I said, I'm not working. I said, I'm just checking my email. She goes, right, but you're answering a work email. I'm like oh, that's not work. That's just part of my life but you're right, you're never off the clock. I wake up in the middle of the night and have a pad next to me to write down, oh, I got to make sure I call so and so tomorrow but it's just our normal, so you have to be prepared for that. Yes, you're right.
For sure. Yeah.
Now, what types of things do you enjoy that get you centered outside of the office? Because I think everybody I've talked to, it's unique. We had one individual that raises goats and somebody else that enjoys race cars and so what's your thing that clears your head and lets you step outside of that work mode?
For me, it's riding a bicycle, road bike, mountain bike recently with multiple young kids, most of my riding time is in my garage on my trainer, going nowhere.
On the road to nowhere.
Yeah, it's perfect.
That'll be your memoir.
Since the pandemic hit, I think I've done close to 10,000 miles on my stationary bike.
Oh, wow.
Three and a half years.
Oh, gosh. Yeah, that's tough. I have a peloton, I think I've ridden it three times in three years. I've got a goal this year. It's going to be a fourth time. I'll ride it for this year but that's good. Do any of your children find the same enjoyment with riding a bike so you get to go out and do it with them, or are they still too young?
They do. The oldest is six, so I have six four two and then the twins and the six four and two-year-old all absolutely love riding bikes. In the winter, they still ask me to go out for a bike ride, so I will take them out on my bike in the winter. In the summer, the six and the four-year-old ride their own pedal bikes.
Oh, wow.
And we do up to 8 km together, which is pretty amazing and then the two-year-old, I've got an attachment for my bike so he sits on that with me and, yeah, we all go out and cruise on Saturday morning, give my wife a bit of free time.
I'm sure she enjoys that.
Yeah, it's lots of fun.
Yeah and that's probably the other thing, too. For anybody considering practice, you've got to have an outlet because you will certainly find yourself down the rabbit hole of never-ending work so you've got to find a way to step away, that's for sure. Now, do you predict when that time comes that any of your children or other family members will continue taking on the reins of the practice, or what are your thoughts on that?
I was never pressured into it at all and had never really contemplated doing it until my dad offered me a summer job my first year of university but if the kids want to, I would be very supportive of it but if it's not their thing, that's totally fine as well.
Well and I think that's so smart because I'm always shocked at how many people say, well, my son's getting ready to go to college next year and they're saying, is he going to be an audiologist? Like, it's such an obvious choice and why didn't I? Occurred to me, because this is my legacy. If he'd love to join, I would love to have him but he needs to find his own way in the world so I think it's good that you have that insight to do that as your father did as well, because I have worked for people forced into it and they were miserable doing it.
I can imagine but I mean, for me, I saw how much my dad loved his job and loved helping people and he would come home and he would talk about it. If anyone came up to him on the street and had a question, he would happily answer them and talk about hearing aids for an hour on a Saturday evening at a party or something and I find myself in the same position. If anybody, they're like oh, I'm sorry to talk to you. It's like, I don't mind. I love this stuff, what I do.
I get the 10:00 at night Facebook messages hey, my aunt needs a hearing aid. What do you recommend? It's like, let's go. Don't tempt me with a good time.
Yup.
Well, is there anything else you'd like to add before we wrap up, Robbie?
I don't think so. No.
I think you've covered it all and if anybody would like to reach out, is there a best way to get a hold of you, whether it be email or just on your website? What would that be?
Sure. Our website is davidsonhearingaids.com and I'm available. My email is [email protected].
Well, I really appreciate your time and your insight into managing so many people and taking on a family practice. You're a wealth of information and knowledge and continue the good work and hopefully you have heat by the end of the day today in that practice.
Thank you very much.
I wish you the best on your continued growth because it sounds like you've got a real growth plan for the future and that's amazing.
Yeah. Well, thank you very much.
You're welcome. Thank you again and happy new year.
Thank you.
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