This is the entrepreneurs versus coronavirus podcast with your host. Ryan Kononoff. We're in an unprecedented time right now as Chronovirus continues to spread throughout Canada and in fact our world we're starting to hear some remarkable stories of how businesses are rapidly evolving and innovating within their space. 

In this next interview I had the opportunity to speak with Heather Branscombe She's a founder and clinical director of abilities neurological rehabilitation and Heather is also an accomplished physiotherapist and author. What I want you to listen for is her perspective on the Corona virus crisis. Her revenues were down to 60% and yet she remains optimistic and in fact excited about what lays ahead. 

She also talks about some of her key assets and how she's leveraging them right now to do her best work and also to inspire those on our team to do the same. Over the past week, which is arguably. In the most challenging week of March economically speaking, she's also found a way to increase revenues on a week over week basis. 

Let's dive in. Heather welcome to the entrepreneurs versus corona virus podcast and thank you for joining today. Yeah, it's great to have you. For those that haven't heard of abilities, can you tell us a bit about your company what what do you do? Thank you. So at abilities neurological rehabilitation, we provide neurological therapy, so specifically physiotherapy occupational therapy and speech language pathology services to kids and adults with neurological challenges. 

We started just with myself again. I'm a physiotherapist started in 2007 and now we have four physical locations within the phrasal valley area in Chilliwack Abbotsford Surrey and Coquitlam and we now have a, Virtual clinic as well Awesome And so tell us a little bit about who a typical customer would be I get a lot of questions that may or at dinner parties about oh fix my back or oh do I have a question about my elbow or some sports injury and so I like to joke that I can't really help you on that, but when you have your stroke or your spinal cord injury come back to me because that's where we can help you. 

Having said that so for kids that would be kids day, for example that have autism or Down syndrome cerebral palsy. There's a variety. Of challenges that could be I'm gonna acquire neurological challenge a brain injury some kind of viral infection that has consequented in some kind of neurological challenge or a developmental issue and similarly for adults. 

So again children as cerebral palsy become adults with supervolving children with Down syndrome become adults with Down syndrome, but we also again deal with people with who have had Parkinson's MS final court injury stroke kind of the variety. So basically, if you have a challenge the kind of, Stems from some kind of issue with either the brain or the spinal cord where the people to help you. 

Fascinating. And just to give us a bit of a scope on the size of your operation, you mentioned you've got four locations how many staff do you have how what what's the mix around your your locations how many people are involved? Yeah, so we have between 40 and 50 staff members some of our best member turnover a little bit more than others. 

So, it's a variety of salaries staff contractor staff and hourly staff. Definitely, there's a different mix. So again because we see kids and adults. With neurological challenges we see a variety of different things. So in Coquitlam and sorry, for example, we tend to see more adults than kids and then as we go out interesting into the valley, we tend to have a higher mix of kids that we see versus adults. 

And so in our team we have our team consists of therapists, which again are kind of the lifeblood of our organization physiotherapists observational therapists speech therapists, and then working with them, we have rehabilitation assessments that help them so the therapists developed and Decide what the plan assesses and develop the treatment and then the rehabilitation assistant would help to actually. 

Plan and then supporting them, we have them an administrative team so we have billing we have customer service bookkeeping and then myself. Now when I was when I was doing some reading it seems like you've got a fairly unique business model in that you've sort of brought this team of different types of practitioners together in a way that perhaps isn't as common out in the industry. 

Can you tell us a little bit about that is is it in fact unique in that sense? Is this something that you came up with or is it quite common to? Have that mix of practitioners all under one one single roof. Yeah, and that's a super good question. It is unique in terms of a private practice, but it's actually not unique if you go into our public practice. 

So it kind of speaks to where I come from. So I've been working as a clinician for 10 years in both private and public facilities and what I what I notice as I advance through my career is again. I I loved working with both kids and adults with neurological challenges because I, Love the relationship that happens with that. 

I mean, I love working with people in general, but if someone brings their ankle, you know stick to eight visits and then you're off on your way, but if you have a neurological challenge, it's something that one can help you with long-term. And so that was something that really resonated with me. 

And right before I opened abilities, I actually was working as a physiotherapist at the Fraser Valley Child Development Center and, What I love about working as a child development center with the people that I worked with. And in that environment, I was as a physiotherapist working with occupational therapists and speech therapists and I felt like I was a way better physiotherapist because of the input that I had from my team because people as a body were not just muscles or tissue, you know, we're a complex being and so it's really interesting to work within a team to see how different disciplines are different perspectives would look at some of the same challenges and how we could work together to. 

To create something different. So that's what I really loved about working in public practice, so that's like, you know your government hospital systems. What I found super challenging about that system is the limitation so there's always resource challenges that we had there were ongoing waitlists and ways and it was really hard to innovate as a practitioner and I could see that there really was a need for public services. 

So at the time back in 2007, even, Private therapy services for people with neurological challenges was really rare and so you would have what most people would think of like a typical physio place where we would go for your back injuries your ankle injuries those kind of things. But they really weren't serving people with neurological challenges better and so it actually ended up in in the way of education for physiotherapy when I got my degree I got a bachelor's degree now to become a physiotherapist my daughter wants to be physiotherapy, but she needs to get a master's degree. 

So for myself I don't need to change I'm already physiotherapist as it doesn't really matter but that kind of change happened pretty early on in my career and I thought hey 30 years from now when there's all these physios running around and they all have their masters degree and I don't I'm not gonna ask you agree. 

So I ended up getting an MBA and when I did that what I really found was some of the skills that make a really good therapist is actually some of the same skills that makes a good business person as well. We might call it different things but it's the same thing. 

We have a goal we assess where we are we know where we want to go and we assess strategies on how to do that. So that was really once I was able to figure that out that gave me the confidence to kind of learn what I learned in business school and apply that to some problems that I could see as a physiotherapist and that's kind of how abilities was born super interesting and when I was reading a little bit more about your bio there was another dynamic there that kind of fed into the passion that you bring to. 

Abilities can you talk a little bit about that within your own family? Yeah, I know exactly to what you speak and so so at the time so I was working as a physiotherapist that the child development center is married. I had one son and I met this sweet little boy and he was six weeks old at the time and I knew pretty quickly early on that he should be part of our family and so our family ended up. 

Adopting my son my middle son and my younger daughter, they're a sibling group and so it's one thing to see not only am I a therapist working in those population but I'm also a caregiver to someone that I love who's dealing with these challenges myself so so we ended up I'm as I said, I met my son at six weeks old we started the process to start to adopt him at 13 months old he came to live with us at 21 months old and he's now. 

18 today and so as we were going all this I was actually finishing my MBA. I'm just about the time that he was going to school and there really is a difference for children the government really prioritizes and I think rightfully so they really prioritize funding for early intervention for children and that really is important but they're really is a stark contrast to the availability of public services for children below five and then above five. 

When they go to school so it's one thing to see that when you are a therapist and to prepare their parents and it's another thing to see that for yourself so here I was going in and seeing my son going to school and I know that so my son has cerebral palsy he's walking right now he plays on his local football team, he plays on his rugby team, you know, he's active but he's still require support and I knew that he would not be someone that would get support from that but I also knew that wasn't out and available. 

In the community so there's definitely things people say moms will do things other people won't and that was really the combination of that and then using my MBA to be able to use a business plan ironically at first for my capstone project for my MBA. I actually did a project for a fee for service program for the child development center and I will forever be grateful for the Fraser Valley Child Development Center for their willingness to work with me to open their books to really help me understand. 

What would be viable and I was able to present that and at the time for a variety really good reasons and the child development center didn't want to pursue that themselves but I basically took that business plan that I did for it my MBA with the information that I received by working through the child development center and working with them and then used that to start abilities with the idea of if I build it they will come and and that's what happened really that's a fascinating story and thanks for sharing that aspect of sort of where some of your experience and Knowledge has has come from so let's talk a little bit about your business model if we can what is your your revenue model do you sell consultations do people pay for constellations do they pay a some sort of ongoing subscription fee how do you generate revenue in your business we're pretty regulated from that to a certain extent because as healthcare professionals each of us have a college so we are down to the rules of the cult of physiotherapy occupational therapy and speech language pathology, so we definitely do that so our model. 

Is. A one-on-one treatment. We do offer some groups, but we do a one-to-one treatment model. So basically what happens is somebody will come in and go for their first assessment and in that assessment they will always see a therapist first and the therapist will meet with the client and/or family and caregiver and find out what the problem is and then together develop a treatment plan for them moving forward. 

So then moving forward, they will either implement that treatment plan with the therapist directly or Where they will implement that plan working with a rehabilitation assistant and if the rehabilitation assistant is developing or working through that plan then the therapists and the assistance will work together the therapists developed a treatment plan and a support plan for the rehab assistant to be able to execute the treatment for the client. 

And so that's our revenue model. And so within that what percentage of your revenue would be repeat business where someone's coming back perhaps. Through the course of their entire lifetime. That's the really unique thing for us is I like to say we tend to almost collect clients other than you know, there's really not a huge turnover. 

So again, my philosophy being a parent of a child to how to receive services through abilities is it's not necessarily that just because you have a neurological challenge or some kind of challenge requiring or services, you need to see us for forever but many of the clients that we've seen. 

Some of the clients that I saw myself when I started all by myself in 2007 are still clients of our today because the underlying challenge doesn't go away and as these clients learn and grow and adopt there's still have new goals and so what we're always trying to do is to kind of discover that potential. 

So for example, right now, we are obviously very successful company over four locations, but we're really only serving just over four hundred families over that. So really I'd say we really aren't a high turnover high volume. We're really more of a Relationship high touch boutique kind of feel and that relationship is really what we're leveraging to help these clients to develop an outstanding experience over the years. 

Very very cool. And so do you know do you have any numbers that you can share around what that percentage looks like that sticks with you or has been with you from from day one versus one time clients or any if you don't that's okay. We do have that because one of the the work that we really do and I think we'll talk a little bit more about this about how the, The new environment has affected us and one of the things that really important for us is to really understand our fundamentals and and understand our clients and going forward. 

So looking at things like how often they stay with us are what we would call our client retention rate is really important for us. So, that's the metric that we look and so. People are different and they're definitely those that come for want, you know, a one-off thing or coming for a home program and then check in so there are those but on the whole we have a higher than a 95% retention rate month over so yeah, it's it's massive so our whole idea is once we bring you in it's about developing the relationship and keeping that relationship so what were your immediate thoughts when coronavirus and coveted started to hit the news? 

Yeah, so obviously for us we work with a population that you know that and self a lot of them are immediate. I mean, you'll compromise and have those issues so for us I think as an organization and even as individuals with them that organization we were probably listening to it a little more a little more intently than probably the general public having said that on the other hand. 

I don't think anybody could have predicted the way that. This has unfolded as as it went I remember I mean, we're now kind of really too kind of the end of the second week of really seeing those huge changes and I just remember that kind of that turn for us for me was around kind of the March 16th part so that was that beginning of the middle of the week where you could really see that's where travel restrictions were coming in all of those kind of pieces were like, okay, this is gonna get worse before it came it got better and so for me it was easy for me. 

To get swept up to listen to the news and to do that and I quickly figured out you know what this is really isn't going to help my organization and so with some of the advisors that I currently work with we put our heads together virtual therapy was always on our radar but it became pretty apparent very quickly that that not only was the valid strategy for us going through it was our only strategy going through and so once I made that mental pivot in my head and my mental mindset that real. 

Helped me and it doesn't mean that I haven't had ups and downs through this and and haven't had to go through the emotions and many people have had to go through through this period, but once I knew what our plan was I mean that happened on the 16th, so the next 17th was the Tuesday we had a company-wide organization we've always used zoom to to gather as a group on a monthly basis, so once we did that and we outlined the plan then for me, that was my confidence. 

I listened to the news a lot less frequently than I did before because it for me it didn't matter what was happening outside the world we knew our plan we knew how we could help our current clients and how we could position ourselves to be of highest and best use and really it goes back to our vision and so when I think about some of the things that we were going through before this like some of the challenges that we had so you know, the the the strengths that we had have been magnified and the challenges we had were magnified as Well, but fortunately. 

For us we were we were just this year on the beginning of a second year two of us three year mission and that mission was to become the most admired mirror rehab company in DC by delivering an outstanding staff experience and an outstanding client experience and knowing that that's not mutually exclusive so that all sounds fine everybody's talked about, you know, you hear about visions and missions and core values and people put it on the wall and and it sounds like it's kind of nice little fluffy extra stuff if you have. 

Extra revenue but I'm here to tell you that once this virus came and once we saw the potential impact our vision and our mission was the foundation for what we were going to do we knew that our vision and our purpose which is really our purpose he discovered the potential and children and adults with neurologically based challenges we had to deliver that purpose in a different way. 

The way that I was sharing in that meeting is to say you by the end of the week we probably were not going to be able to see our clients we're high touch high relationship, we're not going to be able to serve our clients the way that we had in the past so thinking about what our purpose is my challenge to them was you know, what these clients that have had challenges with us for months and months that we're working they're still going to have those challenges at home and how are those challenges going to be different or even? 

More magnified because if I had a stroke at the beginning of the merch, I still have a stroke now if I have a child who has sensory dysregulation or has problems communicating with other people that child still going to have that challenge at home, so how can we as an organization rise together think about how we can serve our staff and how we can serve our clients in this way and so ritual therapy was our only way through once we could figure that out and that's where all of these sounds. 

Like nice fluffy things core values mission and vision that was our foundation and and I think it added for our staff even for me it added a level of constancy and consistency and just fundamental underpinning for us to work. Right in a world that had had lost all of its constancy if that makes sense yeah totally so let's talk about that strategy because you mentioned a few times that news sort of things really started to I don't unravels the right word but really take off in in the news and so it sounds like you had some really key strategic conversations with some key people in in your life and in your business. 

In. Real time and we're able to make some pretty quick decisions about that strategy, how did you come up with a strategy obviously, you know, it was to go digital or virtual but were what were some of the ideas that were floating around and how did you decide to make that call in such a quick, you know responsive nature no again it kind of goes back to your vision and our mission and as part of that about 13 months ago, we actually met as a full organization to talk about what our strategic plan was going forward and Even at that time some of the challenges that we have is getting qualified death, so it's really hard to become a therapist and it is really hard for therapist from around the world to be able to practice here so finding the right staff has been a huge thing and so we've had some other challenges and so we had already identified strategically that virtual care is something that we wanted to pursue and we had done a lot of the work that we needed to do so we need to improve our. 

Financial systems we needed to improve our people development we needed to improve some of our accountability and reporting around rules and responsibilities, we knew that we needed all of those foundation things to really launch that but virtual care wasn't something that was necessarily new to us it was something that had already been kind of the seat had already been planted within our organization and funny enough. 

I can't even take credit for it myself are our director of client experience as we were talking about our next plan in terms of. Expansion she had actually brought it up herself instead, wouldn't it be cool if our fifth location wasn't a physical location it was a virtual location, so again that was another seed that had been planted months ago and so as we kept going so we had some of these these already planted one of the challenges for us though again, we attract staff and I'm probably biased but it's like a bomb that's things that their kids are the best kids ever, you know, the people I work with obviously are not my children, but I think I work with them. 

A best people on the planet but we have the people that we attract are really attracted to that relationship because again we are dealing with some of these clients for years and years, we become like a family we are part of their family's lives and so it was one of the challenges that I was noticing just from a people point of view is there was some hesitation about how can we replicate that in a virtual fashion, it's so much easier when you're face-to-face, so there was some of the challenges we did have therapist that Were dabbling in it here and there but we didn't do it but there's nothing like a world pandemic and and closing all four of our locations that really did help us understand virtual is the only way for us to go forward, so those were some of those things that once this was coming and I've always had. 

External business advisors, and so whether you call that a business coach or whatever you whatever you want to call I've had that in a variety of different ways over my growth and career but I really do also credit having some kind of external source someone that knows you as a leader knows your strengths and weaknesses also knows your organization their strengths and weaknesses but is removed enough that can be objective and not was really critical for me and I so I really rely. 

On those in those coming days and once they helped me to deliver that plan. I've never talked to my advisers as much as I have in the last two weeks, but we have never advanced if I was to open a physical location, it would have taken a lot longer than we did once we decided that we're making that pivot on the Monday and we set out that plan on the Tuesday we basically got a full clinic up and operational in three days and that would have taken probably about three months for us so again it. 

Is a credit it's a credit to our team it's a credit to our vision like values that the trust that they had in me and that they also understood their key roles and their key priorities and obviously I was communicating to that but as I was setting that out to the team members, I was doing it again, one of the things that we did as I talked about was talking about was improving our accountability and reporting about roles and responsibilities so without looks like it abilities is every role in responsibility has what we call the big three the top. 

Three priorities that you have in your organization everybody has that including myself so my big three is to set the vision build the team and don't run out of money, those are my big three and so I I obviously work another thing but that's my role as Co of the company and everybody else knew that role and so it was really. 

For me to understand who to give what to wear because I knew what they were good at because they were really good at working at those responsibilities the other thing I did we did have to downsize some of our admin from that but we were really able to quickly as a team assess what are our strengths in our admin team and what was their availability that was the other piece where some people still really did want to work with us that really do believe in abilities and our vision and our mission, but now, They're working with small children at home or now, they have somebody sick and so we had to quickly understand again in those three days and we needed to give people time to assess and to process themselves they're having maybe they have a spouse that's now coming at home to figure out what are our resources within our organization and so they felt like they couldn't work because you know, we we have lots of great men that work in our organization, but just being a healthcare helping the nature of everything we have a Lot of women. 

And that work with us and so and and with that there's a lot of care taking responsibility that they end up doing as well and so we wanted to give them permission to be like, you know, what if you need to take a pause you need to take a pause giving them if you're going to work with us that's awesome and be available but if you can't right now that's okay, we'll be here when we get back and we're gonna and I'm committing a thousand percent so that we can be here and we're gonna be stronger when you get back but it's okay, it's okay, okay to take a break and so once we're able to figure. 

Out what those resources were and use our big three it was it was a lot easier for us to implement the virtual clinic and you made some interesting points there and that's something I've picked up through a number of different conversations. I had a conversation with another business who previously or prior to coronavirus was already a hundred percent remote but transit from being a hundred percent remote and having the space to be able to focus and work to being a hundred percent remote with kids and spouses or Significant others in the background it it's been a huge learning curve for them who already had you know for the last decade had a remote work force so it's it's a you know, I I think I don't think there's anyone out there right now who's not seeing change and being challenged in new ways, even if they were better prepared for this than other businesses now you mentioned that you basically had this virtual you had this plan and so as you talk to your mentors, it was it was really just a matter of licking the switch and saying okay, we're gonna do this now this is our trajectory and it it sounds like it took a matter of three days to be up and running. 

Where you actually taking clients within in that third day or how quickly were you able to ramp that fifth location up that's one of the things that I can already take away that I'm super proud of our team that we were taking telepromptus and and we're looking at that we track that week over week to see what our difference was between clients versus telepractice so we made that shift really quickly and I think again to speak to your previous point about working for home, and I think what has been really helpful for. 

Us is again that kind of accountability we know that everybody has good intentions, but there is there is that new dynamic in terms of working from home. I've always had the idea of eye care less as a leader how you get something done it's more I care more about the result and so as long as we can have clear expectations about what those results are if you need to do that in different times or different things. 

I've always been around therapist choice and that and so again, that's why we have different compensation. Plans we have different offers and so I think that did help us to be more successful not that we don't have bumps along the way because we definitely do and our therapists are we're learning how to work in this environment a lot of our therapists be it, you know, we have some therapist that this is their first year out of school working and we have therapists that are. 

You know multi-published 20-year plus experience and a lot of them are telling me it feels like it's their first job again or like they were a student and I'm placement but I think again what helps them is the consistency of this is the production that I'm expecting from you and that we can be really clear about that production, so they understand what they can do and I'm giving them the freedom as much as I can in terms of how they want to do that so you don't necessarily have to do the same hours you did before but I'm still expecting. 

The same amount of production for that similar time, so it's just having that. Shared expectation I think that's where that big three really helps us the shared expectation the accountability in the reporting because we have those systems in place. I don't feel like I have to micromanage people. I don't feel like I have to I feel like I can be there more effectively as a coach and as someone to build them up and to support them through this time and less worried about are you wasting my my really important dollars right now when every single dollar matters more than any other time so I'm really grateful for this foundation that we. 

Had so can you talk about I think you mentioned the term volume before or when you close down four clinics and you open up one to sort of replace those what's the typical volume through a door maybe on a daily or weekly basis and how does that compare with what you're able to do, you know day one week one in this virtual clinic that you were able to launch a good question and it's not yeah it's not all roses and that we did we hit a significant revenue challenge with this transition because one some of our Clients felt like it might be I mean it hit at spring break so a lot of our clients typically either came maybe a little bit less during spring break or they would have taken a break entirely some of them at the beginning two weeks ago or like oh, you know, maybe this is a two week thing we're gonna go so there's been a little bit of a challenge in terms of converting some of our current clients into Teletherapy, which is again, we want them if they want to come and we need to support them through that so our job was to continually reach out to them. 

See how they're going doing showcare and concern but we overweak so in that third week we had a 60% hit in our revenue versus the week before and so that was our bottom and now we're up 5% from that so now we're down about 55% so we are working really hard to bring that up the analogy and again in our company meeting this week on Monday, it was welcome welcome to her location our virtual location is the only location open we invite. 

Every. Then go one of you to come and to work and I'm committed if you're willing to work. I'm committed to find you that work. It's going to take time but it's like a new location. If I was to open a new location in say Langley, we wouldn't have the same revenue at the beginning. 

So again, it was trying to help the team and ourselves to set the expectation. We're not going to be able to do that overnight. So what we're looking for is net new and then again working with our advisors and our teams to model this out financially to make sure that we're okay that we're doing. 

Stuff from cash flow side from an expensive side to make sure that we can stay viable. So we really have this startup kind of mentality right now which is exciting if you want it today. I choose to be exciting. Yeah, I think it's such a unique perspective to take that yes, we're we're closing down four locations, but we're actually opening up a brand new one and you're sort of on that bootstrap kick start, you know mindset where you're effectively starting a new business or you know, creating a new revenue stream for your business. 

That could put you in a very interesting spot when this passes and we start to open our doors. Can you speak to that a little bit about how you? Whether it's you know, three months from now or six months from now. What does the future look like for you as far as opening new locations? 

Do you see this changing your your mindset there? Yeah. I actually am. There's not much I can do about the pandemic but what I can do is use this opportunity to make our organization stronger and I can already see. You know their type of changes that we've had to deal with but as we dealt with these changes we are becoming stronger and as I've seen some of my clinical owners and I feel for them because a lot of the clinical owners that that do especially that work with kids and adults with neurological challenges, they really don't go into this for the money. 

Like it really if we were to work as a therapist in private practice, this is not the area. This is not the higher idea for business opportunities, they do it for the relationships and as as I watched them on social media and that I my heart. Breaks for them because some of them are just they decided to close their doors for two weeks with no other thing and so our messages we are open. 

This is the way that we're open we're open in a responsible way but we are open and this virtual clinic. It's here to stay and as I've talked to our team our feeling collectively is the longer that these restrictions in terms of face-to-face contact and that go on. I think the longer it will the more a client will actually really enjoy. 

This and that well they may come to the clinic but they may not come to the clinic as frequently as they do and plus we're serving net new and so in serving net new some of these people now. For so for example our absolute teaching we're looking you know, geographically specific now for a virtual clinic it's the province of British Columbia and it only stops for that because of our college and so what has been interesting is just fundered that wouldn't fund virtual therapy two weeks ago are now doing that work-face DC is funding tele therapy ICBC on an individual basis, so this time of challenge has really created innovation in this space so for us. 

Like their way is no better time to have this clinic and some of these things these positive things will continue that's where we're doubling down and and our virtual clinic is here to stay it is our dislocation that's great and that was going to be my next question is do you do you see this staying around beyond this pandemic it sounds like you thought about that and and you see at least some of them continuing to buy into this model of care yeah. 

I I think so in the longer this goes the more buy-in we will have and that was really important for us right from the Get-go you know some of our clinical coders again who are just they're great clinicians and it is hard to be a great technician as many people start in business at being really good technician and it's hard to make that transition to to thinking as an actual entrepreneur and thinking about this organization as a living thing, but it was really important for me to position ourselves right from the get-go is we never close we are open we're just open in this way and this is not something that we're doing. 

Because we're sitting at home and we have nothing better to do we were doing this before albeit on a smaller scale and now in order to answer the response of the community, this is the way that we can help in the community. I see families in Facebook groups parents of children that are worried about funding that they have disappearing because they're losing that worried about their children about how this social isolation is affecting their development and worried about using the gains that they have and so it's so gratifying. 

For us to be able to do something that we do well this is our purpose to discover the potential in in kids and adults with neurological challenges and to be able to do that in this way and so for us it gives us purpose through this piece and yeah well like again, I would never wish this on anyone but I think if you're smart as an entrepreneur entrepreneur and think about your skills, whether you're a solo entrepreneur or whether you lead smaller large group of people, you know, what? 

You're inherent strengths are and so if you can leverage that to enhance this opportunity then there's never been a better time to be an entrepreneur. I think this is the time that will help us to move Canada forward through this time, so I'm excited. I love your mindset. I mean, you set it yourself your revenues, they were down 60% still down 55% you made up some loss ground there, but ultimately you're seeing this incredible opportunity ahead and you're choosing to innovate through it and I think that's just a remarkable mindset to have. 

Up. Know what happens if this goes from your perspective if this crisis carries on beyond six months, what do you see as your greatest challenge there the greatest challenge for us is how we manage our ongoing expenses for in clinic things, so whether there are some strategies that we can use for that but the stronger that our virtual clinic is the greater we're going to be able to offset that piece and I thank you for that mindset. 

I I have seen as I talked to other entrepreneurs and other clinic owners. I I have A mini clinic owner group that I have from around and we're meeting on Monday. I do know that we're different but really if it comes back to my own fundamental piece would go back to what is my big three so my big three is to set the vision so what's the vision right now our vision is the clinic so I need to be mindful about what's happening now, but I also need to be thinking to three four six months ahead, as you said that's my job to be able to do that and that's what gives me focus. 

I need to build the team and so I need to be thinking based on that. Vision what kind of resources support do I need for my team so that they can meet that vision six months from now and I need to not run out of money, so what kind of financial resources we judge can I use to help us to go forward and that's changing as we all know on a day-to-day basis and and I'm grateful for the national provincial even more local opportunities that are coming into help. 

I think that's one of the fundamental things that makes Canada so great and so I'm gonna leverage. Every piece I can to help our organization because I know that helps our community that helps our staff that's our mission is to become the most admired or rehab company by delivering an outstanding staff experience and an outstanding client experience so as I keep thinking about that three six months ago that gives me the motivation in the mindset to keep going in this chaotic time what is keeping you most occupied like can you chalk it up to sort of one responsibility or one perspective and what What your team like you've talked a lot about how you're communicating and you know trying to move your client base over to this new virtual clinic how are you doing that what mechanisms are you using to communicate and therefore what's keeping you busy right now yeah so the number one thing it really is communication. 

I've said this a lot this week to our team that over communication I'd much rather you over communicate than under communicate so communication is key so for us for the last two weeks. I'm sending out a daily email up. Date so I'm telling them what my priorities are at the clinicians what their priorities are our administrative team, we know what they are. 

I'm giving them their priorities so my my main responsibility right now again it's changing so we're gonna get back to a new ribbon and a new normal irrespective of how long this pandemic goes as long as this virtual clinic so it was a lot of work for myself to be able to organize a team and the resources in those first kind of three days, so there was a lot of our getting people to check in with me to go. 

Of communication with our clients that's where again we're leveraging our strength of we have really good relationships with our clients and so we leveraged our our clinical team that know our clients best to be able to reach out individually so that was their number one priority with the show care and concern and to reach out with them to have them to talk through that so we had scripts to be able to help our clinicians not say something word by word but talking points so that they would be able to talk to them the conversion probably wasn't as high as we liked about as We go and as our clients understand that this is a long-term thing and they've seen that care and concern of quite confident that those that want to continue with therapy are going to continue with therapy so communication is a huge piece, but what I noticed for myself, you know last week where we really were switching to that. 

I was working more than I ever had in my life again that like that startup mentality and so this week again lots of work, but I really try to and I'm communicating my team. We need to start coming back to some kind of new normal consistency, we can't work a thousand percent all the time for weeks and weeks on end and so well, we worked really hard in that first week to create the system that we need to go forward then we allow those systems to work so this week was really about communicating and figuring out how those systems were working, well, one of our core values is find a better way and so if something didn't work the whole idea of that is instead of if, A problem comes up to really think about people assuming that they have the best intentions and whenever possible to create a system or environment to set them up for success, that's what we're gonna do.

So that gives me the confidence to build the team and so that's my main goal right now right on so for those listening that maybe don't know what a virtual clinic could look like and everyone knows what walking into a physical clinic checking in sitting down in a in a chair and waiting and then and then the practitioner comes out and go to a room and everyone understands what that experience might be like can you describe what is it like to visit the virtual abilities clinic yeah, it's actually kind of awesome which is what I I wanted to do it take like 12 to 14 months ago so really what you're doing is you are connecting with your clinician virtually so that can be over your smart phone over a laptop so we use zooms which as I've mentioned I think on my Instagram stories today, if you didn't know what zoom was a month ago, I don't think there's hardly anybody that doesn't know what zoom is now and so zoom itself for telepractice, it's really just a tool so how we use that tool again because our height. 

Touch relationship boutique experience we are still abilities we're still gonna do that, but we're gonna do that in a virtual way, so what we're gonna do is find out what your goals are find out what the challenges are to that goal and we're gonna use that session to be able to help you to that so for example zoom has a white board feature so our occupational therapists are using that as a drawing tool for kids that are working on fine motor issues, so look at working at drawing and forming letters and those kind of places they're. 

Making crafts together, we have adults that are using it to go through their programs so we can do a home program we can do consultation we can actually do a therapy just like it would be in clinic but every therapist is going to talk to you and just like we would in clinic over that from the comfort of your home now, you're going to be able to work on your goals in a virtual way, so if we were to actually come to your home and we and we did do that in the past and we're more than happy to. 

Do that but there was. An extra cost because obviously the therapist has to read the clinic use their vehicle drive there. So there were mileage costs and travel costs and that. And so that's why I'm pretty confident that the longer that this goes especially the more people are really going to be let in on the secrets that telepractice is a pretty awesome thing. 

I think there's not many of us that wouldn't rather see their family doctor if they could overtell the practice versus driving to your family doctor sitting in the waiting room with all the things people. Waiting you'd much rather, wait at home. So all of those things we don't make you do that we don't have to wait and do that but all of those advantages are going to happen until practice. 

So I really I was just mentioning that to a therapist I was talking to today that I think this will be in terms of our professional development as a healthcare profession or industry. I think this will be the inflection point that we look at historically as the takeoff for telehealth just in general, which is pretty exciting to be. 

Here on the ground floor and to be working on it. So again such a great mindset so for those that are listening and and struggling and their business and maybe they haven't figured out how to pivot or how to shift or innovate within their own industry. What resources or suggestions could you make to them? 

Yeah one I think it's important to yeah, you know, you've spoken a lot about the mindset and I've noticed that as well, and I think that's a really easy thing to say but I'm able. To have this strong mindset because you know this isn't all roses and polyanes that there are challenges and there and there there have been times that I've cried and there have been times that I have gone. 

I think it's important as I said to our team a couple weeks ago through this you're gonna feel those emotions and I think the more so some people are gonna have to go through that more than others but that I really feel like to the extent that you don't go through those emotions and let yourself process it it's gonna be really harder to clear your head. 

And to make some some strong decisions. So I think that's the number one thing that it's okay to do that and to feel those feelings. Number two, I think it's to go back to again if you if you did the woo woo soft thing of doing the vision and the mission and the core values this is your time. 

I mean, it's funny even for ourselves. We're only in year two over three years vision, but you better believe that. I've actually come out and I've looked at our vision. It's posted on our walls and all that in the clinic. But I have that as a background on my computer that it's something that I go back to every day. 

And so if you have that definitely go back to that. If you don't have that though, this is a time. I know it's it can feel hard like you have to do action. An action is definitely important and and definitely one of the things that my advisor said early on about this is that urgency urgency is important this can't wait and and I definitely agree with that but. 

The extent that you are not just working hard but working smart so thinking about whether you're solo entrepreneur or whether you have a team what are the core competencies capabilities that you have in your team and how does that match with the problems that are happening today, then that might be something really easy if you're for some it might be easy for to say, hey, yeah, we have this client base he's clients still need challenge that they still have challenges we have. 

Competency to be able to help them how can we help them without actually seeing them well so that is a thing but it might be something outside of your thing this might be a way to think about a completely different revenue it might be a different client base. I don't know what that is, but just taking some time to think about what are what are the assets and the resources that you have and and people and how can you not that to a marketplace because there's definitely a marketplace out there and how can you make that connection once you have that then it matters? 

Less about what happening so instead of worrying about how the government is going to help you what the weights of the day is and and let's be clear about super helpful and and super important right now focusing more on the things that you can control and what you can control as you said is your mindset, you can control the resources and the assets that you have including people material systems those kind of things and you can control the message that you have out there and once you know, what your office are. 

And what your mindset is then you're ready for the message and then you're ready to work hard in a really smart way and I feel like that's the best way for you to be able to not only survive this pandemic but actually to thrive. I love that so I heard kind of a few different themes there if I can just summarize having the right mindset going back to your roots your reaction time. 

I mean you talked about you know, quickly reacting and pivoting in a with a sense of urgency leveraging your strengths, so knowing what your strengths are and and and then you mentioned you have to embrace. Technology at this time seems like technology is a pretty common theme in in all industries right now as people are trying to figure out how to do things in a digital way. 

I think those are all really really great suggestions. So thanks thanks for being on the show. Heather really appreciate it, what's the best way for people to reach you if they'd like to connect yeah. I'm I'm all about connection again we're relationship based company and I'm all about connection. 

I love being an entrepreneur when I'm when I'm hiring people I always say this is my dream job it should be my dream job because I have ultimate control about what my job is and I'm super passionate about helping entrepreneurs and helping them to achieve their dreams. As well. 

So you can follow us abilities neurological rehabilitation on social media. So on Facebook, you can look us up at abilities neurological rehabilitation. We're also on Instagram at abilities rehab? Instagram is probably the best way to follow me specifically. I'm specifically running that page. I'm running the stories. I'm doing the video thing. 

So if you're on Instagram send me a DM or you can feel free to email me. Heather at abilities rehabilitation.com, or finally you can check us out on our. Website which is abilities rehabilitation.com Awesome thank you so much for for taking part and we'll be excited to follow your progression through this new fifth location that you've just opened up. 

Thanks again Heather. Thanks for inviting me. 

Thanks for listening to the entrepreneurs versus coronavirus podcast with your host Ryan Kononoff for complete show notes and additional information visit clearbridge.ca/podcast. Ryan is the founder of Clearbridge Business Solutions. To find out how investing in technology can help your business, especially during uncertain economic times visit lifewithclearbridge.ca connect with Ryan on LinkedIn or on Twitter at Ryan Kononoff, that's RYAN KONONOFF. 

Thanks for listening.