In this episode of High Velocity Radio, Joshua Kornitsky interviews Maggie Ishak, a business coach and founder of Practice Business Insights. Maggie shares her journey from corporate engineering and supply chain leadership to coaching business owners, focusing on employee and client retention. She explains how working with a wellness practice client inspired her to develop Practice Business Insights, a software app that helps wellness practice owners analyze their data to identify patient drop-off points, coach practitioners, and drive growth. The app integrates with Practice Better software and offers actionable metrics to improve retention and business performance.
Maggie Ishak is a former Vice President of Supply Chain and Operations at Michelin North America with more than 30 years of leadership experience.
She left corporate leadership to pursue what she loved most—helping business owners build stronger businesses and stronger leaders.
Maggie created Practice Business Insights after building a simple Excel model for one coaching client that revealed opportunities hidden in their data.
She believes business is ultimately about people. Maggie enjoys spending time with her husband and three boys, serving in her church, and helping others discover what’s possible.
Connect with Maggie on LinkedIn.
Episode Highlights
- Overview of Maggie’s background in engineering, supply chain operations, and leadership.
- Focus on coaching business owners and leaders, particularly women-owned and couple-owned businesses.
- Discussion of challenges related to team management, leadership, operations, employee retention, and client retention.
- Introduction of the software product, Practice Business Insights, designed for wellness practice owners.
- Importance of data analysis in practice management and decision-making.
- Connection between employee retention and client retention.
- Insights on improving client retention through better communication and clarity.
- Use of metrics to evaluate employee performance and client engagement.
- Strategies for coaching teams based on data insights to enhance business growth.
- Emphasis on the significance of clarity and role definition in both employee and client relationships.
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.
Joshua Kornitsky: Welcome back to High Velocity Radio. I’m your host, professional EOS implementer Joshua Kornitsky. And today I’ve got a really exciting guest that I can’t wait to talk with. Uh, let me start by introducing Maggie Ishak, and Maggie is a business coach with Focal Point Business Coaching, but she’s also now the founder of a new software product. And we’re going to talk about that in a little bit. But let me give you a little bit about her deep background. It’s in engineering, supply chain operations, leadership. And after nearly three decades in the corporate world, she now works with business owners and leaders to get out of their own way so that they can drive growth for their own companies. She’s got a particular passion for working with companies founded and owned by women and couples. The most common phrase used by her clients is she makes things easier than I thought they’d be. Which speaks to her ability to simplify what may be complex and overwhelming. Welcome, Maggie. I’m so happy to have you here.
Maggie Ishak: I’m so glad to be here. Thank you for having me.
Joshua Kornitsky: You know, uh, there aren’t as many people I enjoy talking with as I do enjoy talking with you. And when you shared with me about what you’re going to talk about a little later today, this, this software, uh, I was really excited. But for people who don’t know you, um, tell us a little bit about the work you do with businesses and business owners and the kind of challenges that you help them solve.
Maggie Ishak: Sure. So, um, when I launched my coaching practice now about two and a half years ago, uh, my mission was to help these business owners and leaders really get out of their own way and drive growth within their organizations. And there’s a couple of different, uh, areas that I typically get involved and help them with. So it’s really how they’re managing their team, how they’re leading. Um, how they’re running their operations. And when we think about managing their team, one of the most common things that I see is they’re hiring good people. They want to make sure they’re developed, they grow their careers and they keep them. Uh, on the flip side of that, when I think about their operations and how they work with their clients, it’s how do they retain those clients and use that as a, as a growth lever lever for their businesses. So those are, those are a few of the areas that I get involved in. Typically when clients come to me, they are, they’re kind of up to here. Um, they may be tired, they may be a little bit overwhelmed. Um, they’re growing and maybe they’re, they’re just struggling to kind of capture that growth where they’re not the busiest person in their company and they’re trying to figure out how do they leverage their team? How do they retain their clients? Um, so they can kind of take a step back and really enjoy their company’s growth.
Joshua Kornitsky: Okay. I mean, that’s a, that’s an awful lot to help people with. Yeah. So so let’s narrow in a little bit. So when when you talk about retention, what do you mean?
Maggie Ishak: So for me, there’s kind of two sides to that coin. One is employee retention. So you’ve made an investment to hire somebody which typically for many organizations is not a cheap endeavor. So not only are you paying salaries, but might be benefits. You’ve trained them. There’s a ramp up time to get them into their role. Once you’ve got them settled in that role, you want them to continue to grow, find value in their career, um, and stay for some period of time.
Joshua Kornitsky: Ideally.
Maggie Ishak: For a really long term. There’s actually a company that I’m working with and they’re like, when we hire people, we really want them to stay for years and years and years. And so they, they want to, they want to really, they’re committed to that employee and they want to find ways that they can serve that employee, grow that employee so that it’s really a two way street. The employee finds gross, uh, growth opportunity and then they’re able to, to, to keep that employee. Okay. So there’s a, there’s an employee retention side of this.
Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.
Maggie Ishak: The other side of it is there’s a client retention. So most businesses are making some kind of investment to find their clients. Of course, it might be advertising marketing, it might be networking, it might be actually.
Joshua Kornitsky: Even a podcast.
Maggie Ishak: A podcast. Absolutely. It might be paying for leads or referrals. And so, um, also for many of those businesses, those, those transactions or that client relationship is not a one time thing is that there’s an idea.
Joshua Kornitsky: Sure.
Maggie Ishak: Yeah. And so you don’t want to have a business where they’re paying for one time clients. And so they want to find ways to retain those clients over the long term. Um, and maybe have them continue to refer other people as well. So there’s really kind of two sides to that retention coin, employee employee retention side. And then the client retention. And a lot of it comes down to money, right? They’re paying money to hire or retain. Um, and also to find those clients, they want to be able to use those to drive growth in their organization.
Joshua Kornitsky: So is there a connection between employee retention and client retention. I mean it. It seems both obvious, but also sort of obscured to make the. To ask the question.
Maggie Ishak: Yeah. No, there there is a connection. So I’m going to maybe kind of start at the top. If you think about the owners, the founders, the leaders in an organization. One is just really around clarity. Why are we here? What are we doing? And so when I think about.
Joshua Kornitsky: Speaking my language.
Maggie Ishak: Yeah, yeah. When, when we think about employee retention, one of the biggest challenges we have is is there role clear? Um, one of the, one of the most common things I hear from these founders and leaders is why can’t my team just do their job well? How, how clearly have we articulated that to them? Do they know what they’re empowered to do or not do? Have we given them the bandwidth, the education, the leeway to do that? And it’s one of the most common things I see where when they don’t find that clarity, the employee may kind of shrink back a little bit, may not really, um, be as empowered. All of a sudden the manager is like, why aren’t they doing what they need to be doing? The employees thinking I’m capable of doing a whole lot more. And so that is, that is something that can that can create a challenge. And what I like to do is help unlock that. So clarity is kind of one of the biggest pillars there. Flip it around on the client side. Same thing exists. Um, is it clear what that relationship looks like? Is it clear who’s expecting who or what from whom? Um, as a client, I’m going to use a really simple example. Um, attorneys. Okay. Not always known for their clarity. Okay. Especially if they’re speaking in legalese. I’m going to use a real life example from my, uh, from my own business. I needed some documents drafted for, for my new business. Uh, talked to a couple of attorneys to get these, uh, these documents prepared. One of them I was trying to get a sense of like, how long is it going to take? How much is this going to cost me? What’s the investment that I need to make? Um, one of them said in cases like this, we expect it to take X hours. And here’s a rough idea of what it’s going to cost you.
Joshua Kornitsky: Seems about as good of an estimate unless you’re buying like a will package.
Maggie Ishak: Yeah, exactly. We know there’s going to be some gray area, but he at least gave me some ballpark a ballpark, some guidelines. Second attorney can you guess what the second attorney told me?
Joshua Kornitsky: Time and materials.
Maggie Ishak: He said it depends. Oh, it depends. Is the antithesis of clear. Yes. Um. How many zeros are on that? It depends. Um.
Joshua Kornitsky: It’s great if you’re the guy quoting 0%.
Maggie Ishak: It’s not good when you’re on the client side. Right. And so from a clarity perspective, that second attorney really missed the mark. I went with the first attorney. So that’s maybe one example of where clarity shows up in a, in a, in a client relationship. Um, so I mean, we could kind of use that one thread, but there’s lots of other layers like that that kind of can apply across both the employee side of it and the client side of it.
Joshua Kornitsky: Well, and I think we in in today’s world overestimate price as the, the great differentiator. It’s about depending on the product or service that you’re, you’re after. It is not always about who is the cheapest. Because when you know, if you were having heart surgery, heaven forbid, do you want the best or the cheapest, right. Necessarily. But that experience, doesn’t that tie back to you as the organization retaining the the right employees who understand what the organization’s about, but also what the customers need?
Maggie Ishak: Yep. 100%. I, you know, if I could, if I could maybe add one more thing to that. Joshua, one of the other commonalities that I see, and this is where I kind of stuck my finger And and something came up from there. Um is around data. Um employers have a lot of data that they can use to measure employee retention. So it might be employee engagement, it might be assessments, it might be just other things that are kind of going on in the organization. But there’s data that’s there that if ignored, might be a blind spot when it comes to employee retention.
Joshua Kornitsky: Well, is it ignored or sometimes are they just not even aware that it exists?
Maggie Ishak: It’s sometimes it’s that they’re not even aware it exists. Sometimes they’re aware they don’t know how to measure it. Um, they might be measuring it and thinking, you know what, that, that, that’s wrong or that they’re disputing it somehow they’re making excuses for why that data is showing up the way it is.
Joshua Kornitsky: I’ve never heard that before.
Maggie Ishak: No. Similarly, on the client side, there’s a lot of data that can be extracted from businesses to, uh, to get a jump on retention and determining how loyal clients are. I mean, it can be anything from NPS surveys to Net Promoter score surveys to get an idea of what the client’s pulse is, um, to internal data that the company is collecting to help them understand what our client’s buying patterns. Um, are they engaged? Are they not engaged? And that that’s actually kind of the tipping point for how I got started with one of my clients.
Joshua Kornitsky: Well, so will you share that story with us?
Maggie Ishak: Yeah, 100%. So, um, I was working with a client, um, she is the proud owner of a growing wellness practice.
Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.
Maggie Ishak: She had a team. And when I first started working with her, she brought to me two challenges. One, hey, I’m spending money to bring in all these new clients and my practice is not growing at the rate that I thought it was.
Joshua Kornitsky: So there, were they leaving or not sticking around or you don’t know at this?
Maggie Ishak: At this point, I didn’t know what was happening. All I know is she was spending money to bring in about 100 new clients every month.
Joshua Kornitsky: That’s a lot.
Maggie Ishak: It is a lot. And, you know, you would have thought you would have seen the revenue growing at a much faster clip than the profit growing at a much faster clip. And we weren’t seeing that. The second thing she said to me was, I need to manage my team better. I need to have visibility or I don’t have visibility. As to who’s retaining clients, how are they performing? Um, I need to give people raises. I don’t quite know how to evaluate them. And so initially when I tackled that second problem, you know, putting on my prior corporate leadership hat, you know, I initially looked at it from a management and leadership perspective. What I very quickly discovered is she didn’t have data to assess what was going on in her practice, how her team was managing.
Joshua Kornitsky: So it sounds like this was not a brand new business that just got established a couple of weeks ago. The kind of questions that you’re saying you were being asked, uh, sound like it was a mature, profitable business?
Maggie Ishak: Yes. She’d been around for about ten years at that point. She had a team of 12. Okay, so not a small business. Not not just started last year. Uh, and, and she felt like she needed to be growing faster than, uh, what was actually happening. And so we started looking at, at her data. And what I realized is, is she actually had data, just not information and insight. So it’s a phrase that I use, uh, data rich, but information poor.
Joshua Kornitsky: I love that you need to copyright or patent or trademark that because that that sums up we live in such a data heavy universe now. Um, but not all data is useful data 100%.
Maggie Ishak: And in fact, Joshua, this was a thread that had existed for my entire corporate life. Almost every job that I was in, I found something there that had to do with data where we had data, just not the information to go with it. And, and we certainly could go into that. But I’m, But I’m not. Um, but it’s a thread that’s kind of been following me around for almost 30 years now. Sure. So I started, I was like, can we just take a look at what you have? And she said, sure. And so we got into her practice management tool. She had all her appointment data there. We had more data than than we could use.
Joshua Kornitsky: Okay. So so as you said, uh.
Maggie Ishak: Data rich.
Joshua Kornitsky: Data rich, information.
Maggie Ishak: Poor. Yeah. So I pulled that data knowing what I know how to do. I threw it in Excel and built for her a little dashboard, very kind of baby mini dashboard. And we started using that in our sessions, and we started figuring out what was happening to our clients. We started figuring out among her team of practitioners who was doing better at retaining clients. Who was not doing as well. That person that was not doing as well needed a little bit more coaching on some technique and process. And what is this person doing that this person is not? So we can get them. Maybe it’s not up to this level, but at least move the needle a little bit and basically raise the water level in her practice.
Joshua Kornitsky: And understanding where that delta is is everything, because that’s how you get everybody at least to a to a specific level.
Maggie Ishak: Yes. And what I found with her, where there were some best practices that this person over here was doing that this person just didn’t know to do. And so some of it was training process documentation, some of it was just coaching. And so we started to unpack that. And one day she looks over at me and she says, you know, other people could use this. She was talking about the tool that I had built that basically was just for her. That was kind of a mock up.
Joshua Kornitsky: And you were solving her problem with her and her data.
Maggie Ishak: I was solving her problem, right? That was it. I had zero intention of of doing any more than that. And I very quickly dismissed her comment. Sure. Because in my mind, I launched my business to coach business owners, not to be their Excel jockey, which I had done for many years in the past.
Joshua Kornitsky: As they say in improv. Yes and.
Maggie Ishak: Yes. And so I dismissed it.
Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.
Maggie Ishak: And she kept mentioning it to me, and it took more than a year for it to percolate in my mind and actually think like, what could I actually do with this without replicating this very manual work that I was doing in Excel? And for those that know Excel, you kind of know maybe what I’m, what I’m, what I’m thinking about. And it’s, it’s great, but, but I didn’t become a coach to also be an Excel analyst. Right.
Joshua Kornitsky: And you will spend more time tweaking and tuning that than you would ever get to the opportunity to work with a client.
Maggie Ishak: Yeah. And that’s not as fun. I mean, yes, I’m capable, but it’s not as fun. The fun part was seeing her use that information and actually use that to drive insights for her business and make decisions and watch her grow her business.
Joshua Kornitsky: Right.
Maggie Ishak: Well, fast forward, um, I partnered with, uh, somebody in the tech space and just asked the question, hey, what can we do with this thing? And their answer was, yeah, we could, we could do something here. So fast forward. So we now have an app and it’s called practice Business Insights.
Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.
Maggie Ishak: And it’s specifically built for these wellness practices, practice owners to do a couple of things. One is see where their patients are leaving, when and where their patients are leaving. So what does that look like in their care journey?
Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.
Maggie Ishak: Allow them to coach their team.
Joshua Kornitsky: That’s huge.
Maggie Ishak: So they can see what’s happening across the landscape of their team. Who’s doing well, who’s not doing well. What do I need to do?
Joshua Kornitsky: Give them the insights for where that difference is.
Maggie Ishak: Yes. And then the third thing is give them insights to find growth opportunities for their business.
Joshua Kornitsky: That’s pretty remarkable, considering it was something that was not even on your radar. And most people invest loads of time and money just trying to build some miracle application. You accidentally solved the problem and solved the operation and collaboratively saw the opportunity there. So what types of businesses are is it specifically focused in the wellness space?
Maggie Ishak: So right now we are very specifically kind of laser focused in the wellness space. And we are connected to one practice management software called Practice Better.
Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.
Maggie Ishak: It’s the most commonly used one. And so.
Joshua Kornitsky: So there’s lots of opportunity to help people.
Maggie Ishak: There’s, there’s lots of opportunity there. So we’re staying kind of focused in that little area. I shouldn’t say little in that area. Sure. Um, we have the capability to connect to other practice management tools. We just haven’t gotten that far. And, um, I’ve got a kind of a long term roadmap that I’ve started to, to build out where this same concept of addressing client retention. And how does that tie to your operations? How does that tie to your team? There’s a number of other industries that this could be applied to. So we, we haven’t we haven’t gotten that far yet.
Joshua Kornitsky: Well, and look, it’s, it’s truly, uh, having a different part of my life. Um, been in the software development space. If you go too fast, your product will have challenges that you can’t begin to anticipate, learn from the clients that you’re working with and you’ll, you’ll build a better, stronger product that will satisfy their needs. So, so what type of insights? Uh, I know you shared what, what you were doing manually. What other types of insights are you able to help now extract from practice?
Maggie Ishak: Yeah. So let me give you a couple of examples. And these came up from the pilots that we’ve been doing since the early part of this.
Joshua Kornitsky: So it’s already in, in.
Maggie Ishak: So we’re in market. So we’ve been we’ve been piloting since maybe March, April. And it started with one practice. We then got another practice. And so then we had a number of practices that we were piloting with over several months. And it was through that pilot phase, we actually learned a lot. So we gave we gave those clinics, those practice owners tremendous value by getting a peek at their data and getting some insights. And I’ll share those with you. But we also learned a lot and we iterated and iterated and iterated. And so now your development. Yeah. And now the product is, is significantly improved over where we started, um, earlier this year. So I’ll give you a couple of examples of insights. So, um, one practice owner, we started looking at her data and she noticed a pretty large cliff from visit two to visit three, meaning she had patients that came for their first visit, came for their second visit. And then all of a sudden there was a big drop off getting to visit three.
Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.
Maggie Ishak: And we have a visual that very clearly shows those literally a stair steps. And so she was like.
Joshua Kornitsky: Why is why is that step enormous?
Maggie Ishak: Why is that step bigger than, than the others? And so what she realized was as part of her process, she and her team build out what was called protocols for their clients.
Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.
Maggie Ishak: And these protocols included ordering supplements, maybe some meal plan design, but it was more tactical things related to that, that wellness journey for that that patient. And what she found was it was taking them weeks to return those protocols to those patients. And what was happening was those clients basically lost interest.
Joshua Kornitsky: Sure. Because they got all excited about their journey and then nothing.
Maggie Ishak: And then nothing. That’s literally Joshua. This was my first meeting with her, looking at her data. The light bulb moment and she’s like, oh my gosh, we have to do better with our protocols. And so now what they started to do is get those turned around within 24 hours of that appointment.
Joshua Kornitsky: Sure. To keep that interested party.
Maggie Ishak: To keep the patient engaged. She’s immediately seen the results in her retention. That’s one example.
Joshua Kornitsky: That’s that’s a powerful example. And that’s one that hits directly to their bottom line pretty quickly, I imagine.
Maggie Ishak: Bottom line because it keeps their schedules full. Sure. And and as we know in almost every industry, it is significantly cheaper to retain an existing client that you’ve already paid money to bring in than it is to go find a new one. Yes. Okay. Second example. Another client was or another pilot practice was looking at at the data. And she realized because we were also looking at future appointments, she noticed that many of her practitioners were only booking the next appointment. Well, best practice is Joshua, if you come to one of these wellness practices and they say, Joshua, you know, to really for you to really see the benefit, we need to see you every two weeks, right? Best practices. Joshua, let’s go ahead and put the appointments on the books every two weeks for like the next.
Joshua Kornitsky: Six months or whatever it is, some period of time for your treatment plan to be executed.
Maggie Ishak: Yes. And even if we need to change them, that’s fine. But what this one practice owner noticed was several of her practitioners were only booking one appointment out. Well, that created a few challenges. One is it made it easy for patients to churn because let’s say you can’t make that appointment next Tuesday. You go onto their platform and just hit cancel. You’re like, I don’t have time to rebook right now.
Joshua Kornitsky: Right.
Maggie Ishak: And you disappear into the ether and they don’t have a way of finding you. They don’t have a flag that says, hey, Joshua just canceled. He doesn’t have any upcoming appointments booked. Um, so she realized she needed to work with her practitioners for those, for those patients to book out a series of appointments.
Joshua Kornitsky: So, Maggie, you identified how it helped with scheduling. What other insights were you able to glean from that?
Maggie Ishak: Yeah. So one of the other big problems or big challenges that these practices have is as they are bringing on new patients, which is a good thing.
Joshua Kornitsky: Sure.
Maggie Ishak: They need to know how to pair that patient with a practitioner and ensure that that practitioner is going to have space for them in the coming weeks and months to fulfill that care plan. Okay. Thinking about the example that I gave a few minutes ago, if me as a practitioner, I’m not booking all my patients out at those regularly occurring, right.
Joshua Kornitsky: If I’m only doing a week at a time, I’m.
Maggie Ishak: Doing a week at a time. My schedule looks wide open when really it’s not.
Joshua Kornitsky: Sure. And you’re going to have conflicts.
Maggie Ishak: And so I inadvertently, as a practitioner, I’m creating a logjam for myself because now I get a new patient, which is great, but now I don’t know how to work that new one in with all the other ones and still give adequate care to everybody in my portfolio. And so.
Joshua Kornitsky: And you’re also going to make the people who thought they had an appointment at one angry because it’s now 145 and we’ve all been in that seat.
Maggie Ishak: And so I might inadvertently be creating churn.
Joshua Kornitsky: Sure.
Maggie Ishak: Because of that. And so this is another benefit where those practice owners can see how full the books are. And if we think somebody’s got a big patient load, but their books aren’t full, they’re not booking it out. We actually have a visual that, excuse me, that gives them that view. Um, in fact, I was actually meeting with a practice owner last week and what she was doing was going practitioner by practitioner and looking at how many appointments out were booked by patient. And she was seeing a very clear disparity of why are these booked out? These are not booked out. And so it gave her a very specific action item to go follow up on. And so now it gives these practice owners very detailed things, very actionable, detailed things they can go look at and actually move the needle on their practice.
Joshua Kornitsky: That’s absolutely astounding because I can understand the impact, but I want to back up and ask a question. So the these business owners that are that are running these wellness centers, that’s their that’s their lane, that’s their level of expertise, right? And, and they are successful and.
Speaker 4: Really good at it.
Joshua Kornitsky: Right? And they’re successful enough that they’re able to hire employees and to have ongoing relationships. What they are not is data analysis experts. So how do you help them understand? And there’s, there’s an old saying in, in the universe, right? What gets measured, gets measured, gets managed. But there’s the flip side of that. What gets measured gets mismanaged. If I’m looking at the wrong things, and I believe it to be the accurate mover of the needle, I could be really harming myself. So how do you help that?
Maggie Ishak: Well, so I’ll back up and say that through our pilot process, we really honed in on what are the handful of key metrics that each one of these practice owners needs to keep their eye on? So, for example, one of them is we call a two visit conversion. So you go to a practice. Once you go to you have your first appointment, what percent of people come back for visit number two? Easy to measure. Sure, we can report it. And with a practice owner, what this makes it very easy for them to see is which patients didn’t come back for that second visit and who was the practitioner that saw them.
Speaker 4: Right. So they can.
Joshua Kornitsky: You’re going to see a trend pretty fast if it’s one particular practitioner.
Speaker 4: You’re.
Maggie Ishak: Going to see trends and then it’s going to prompt you to ask the questions. What can we do about this differently? Okay. What what is missing in their process? Is it as simple as, hey, Joshua, before we finish our appointment, let’s look at the calendar and let’s go ahead and get your next few appointments scheduled. Okay. Could be as simple as that. Um, there are other metrics in terms of retention measures. So for example, um, many of the practices use a measure of five visits in 90 days. That’s enough visits to complete a care plan so that the client sees a benefit and they’re spaced out enough that it’s not too frequent, not too infrequent, and they can continue that, that progress. And so one of the things we measure is what percent of new patients each month have hit that metric? And in fact, what many of these practices are now doing is using these indicators for monthly or quarterly Reviews with their team. So it’s standardized, made it really easy. And exactly back to your point that what gets measured gets done.
Speaker 4: Right.
Maggie Ishak: For the practitioners. If they know they’re being measured on five visits in 90 days, and that may be tied to a bonus, it may be tied to other compensation. I’m going to be more aware of booking those patients out and watching it. The beautiful thing about this tool is it not only gives those high level metrics, it gives them the patient level detail. So as a practitioner, I can see who are those patients that are in process? How many visits do they have? Oh, Joshua is about to miss the five and 90. We need to rework some of these appointments and make sure he gets back on the schedule. So it’s very actionable and it tees it up to them and identifies things that they otherwise would not be able to see. Now, I will say this some of the practices that I’ve been working with are very analytically minded, and they’ve been doing this by cobbling together Excel spreadsheets, and it’s very manual and time consuming.
Speaker 4: And.
Maggie Ishak: Error prone. This just hands it right to them.
Joshua Kornitsky: So you’ve come a long way from an Excel sheet.
Maggie Ishak: We’ve come a long way, but they can just log in. They can see these metrics. They can dig right in. Um, and then they can actually see the progress week to week as they make the changes with their team.
Joshua Kornitsky: So you’ve given them a dashboard. They’re able now to see sort of the health of their business at a glance. How do they act on that data. What do they do.
Maggie Ishak: Yeah. So that’s a great question. And in fact, for, for many of these practice owners, I’m having a lot more conversations with them now. From a coaching perspective.
Joshua Kornitsky: It makes sense to me because understanding it, but knowing how to deal with it are two very different things.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Maggie Ishak: So, so the kinds of conversations this has now driven is, oh my, I have a practitioner here that is falling short on these. What are some tools and tips and techniques? How do I coach them? So it’s really kind of two parts.
Joshua Kornitsky: One awesome.
Speaker 4: Though. What?
Joshua Kornitsky: That’s what they need.
Maggie Ishak: That’s exactly what they need. So what are the standard operating procedures that need to get employed in that practice? Okay. But then secondly, how do I coach that practitioner to improve on those results? Right? There could be a carrot, there could be a stick. There’s other techniques in terms of coaching. And so now I’m working with those owners to make them coaches to their team, giving them some tools and insights. And so it’s really kind of come full circle for me, where this tool has really been a way for me to engage with a whole nother market and, and other practice owners, but then also be able to come back to them with those same things around leadership and teams and trust and, and really bring it full circle.
Joshua Kornitsky: Well, kind of like you said at the beginning, it is actually all connected, right? And as silly as that sounds, the healthier your business, the healthier your employee retention, likely the healthier your client retention, which means that you’re making more money so your employees are happier. And it is sort of this magical wheel that goes round and round.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Maggie Ishak: And in fact, these practitioners, when their books are full, it’s going to make them more likely to stay if they’re out of practice and for whatever reason, and their book is not full.
Joshua Kornitsky: Why stick.
Speaker 4: Around?
Maggie Ishak: Yeah. And because that impacts their compensation. So yes, it totally comes full circle. And then the clients feel taken care of. They’re more likely to be loyal to that practice. They’re more likely to refer other people. And so it’s this giant flywheel.
Speaker 4: I love it.
Maggie Ishak: Once we get it, yeah. Once we get it cranked up, it’s uh, it’s a good.
Speaker 4: Thing.
Joshua Kornitsky: So if I’m a business owner that’s listening to this, uh, and whether I run a health care practice or something else completely different, I want to go back to your core message, which is retention. What should I be asking myself? What, what are the things that I need to be thinking about?
Maggie Ishak: Yeah. So I would say the first thing is, do you even know your, your employee retention? Do you know what do you know about your employee retention? What do you know about your client retention? And many business owners might be like, I have no idea. Okay, we may need to start there. At least figure out what data is available. Are you doing well or are you not doing well? And then start to diagnose that and then figure out how how do we solve that? Okay. Employee retention. I mean, they really, they really feed off of each other. As you said, just a few minutes ago.
Speaker 4: I was.
Joshua Kornitsky: Just repeating you.
Speaker 4: But yes, I mean, it’s it’s all connected. Yeah.
Joshua Kornitsky: And it shouldn’t be hard to figure that out. But it is when the expression you can’t see the forest for the trees when you’re living in your business, whether it’s a wellness business or a factory, when you’re in it and operating every day, it becomes harder and harder sometimes to see those trees.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Maggie Ishak: Yep. But I’ll give you some maybe common things that I see on the employee side, please. Um, teams go into a meeting and no decision is made. They walk out and nobody’s clear on next steps. Um, there’s some problem that doesn’t get solved. The can just gets kicked down the road. Um, things are late. Maybe projects are.
Speaker 4: Late. Right.
Maggie Ishak: Um, new product launches or just deliverables are late. Maybe we’re just missing the mark on some of the business results that we’re looking for. Oftentimes those are rooted in pillars of employee engagement. I use clarity as one, but it could be around commitment connection, contribution. And there’s a whole framework that I use around building trust and organizations. And um, those same pillars apply on the client side as well. So, um, typically these business owners have a sense that something’s not quite right. They just can’t quite put their finger on it. And so that’s where I can come in and help diagnose and help them put their finger on what exactly is going on. And then what can we do about it?
Speaker 4: Well, and.
Joshua Kornitsky: I want to stress that while you have found this new niche within the wellness space, you work with all types of businesses.
Maggie Ishak: I work with all businesses. As you mentioned earlier, I have a real passion for working with businesses that are owned by fellow women. I’ve also found this little sub niche of businesses owned by couples. So husband wife teams. Okay, there’s another little dynamic that that shows up there. Um, but I’ve enjoyed working with a number of husband wife owned companies as well as the female business owners. But I don’t say no to the gentleman.
Joshua Kornitsky: So I think that what you’ve demonstrated today is, is that there’s always insight to be gleaned, particularly from someone who’s coming in from the outside, whose only agenda is to help you as the business owner, get your business where you want it to be. Um, I can’t thank you enough. And my last question to you is, how do people get in touch with you? How do people learn more if they’re specifically interested in practice business insights? Um, we’ll share any links or anything you tell me now, but how do.
Speaker 4: People get in touch with you?
Maggie Ishak: Yeah. So me personally, probably the easiest way to find me on LinkedIn. Um, Maggie Isaac, ISHAK, uh, find me on LinkedIn connect. Let me know that you heard, uh, heard me on Joshua’s show. Um, and we can exchange that way we can start the dialog that way. Um, for, uh, this platform that I’ve built for these wellness, uh, practice owners, um, the website is practice business insights.com. And in fact, for these practice owners, there is an opportunity for them to get a, um, a complimentary trial.
Speaker 4: So, and we’ll share those links as well.
Maggie Ishak: There’s a way that, that they can connect their data and at least get a peek at what’s possible, um, without any commitment. Um, no credit card required. Uh, they can get a peek at their data. And then we’ve got different plans in terms of the level of support they need and how large their team is.
Joshua Kornitsky: That’s fantastic. Well, I really think you’re doing a service to what I suspect is largely an underserved business industry that touches a whole lot of people’s lives. And ultimately, Maggie, you’re making people healthier. Absolutely. And I love that.
Maggie Ishak: It’s exciting.
Joshua Kornitsky: It’s it’s all connected. As we said at the beginning, um, thank you for coming in. I really enjoyed learning about what you’re doing and how you help.
Maggie Ishak: Thank you for having me. It’s been a pleasure.
Joshua Kornitsky: A pleasure was mine. I want to remind everybody our guest today was Maggie Isaac. And again, we will share links to everything she mentioned when we publish. She’s a business coach with Focal Point Business Coaching, and she’s now the founder of a new software product called Practice Business Insights. Plural, right?
Maggie Ishak: Yes, because there’s multiple insights.
Joshua Kornitsky: I want to make sure she’s got a deep background in engineering, supply chain and operations leadership. And after nearly three decades in the corporate world, she now works with business owners to get leaders to get out of their own way, which is harder than it sounds, so that they can drive growth for their companies. She’s got a particular passion for working with companies founded by women or couples, but she’s happy to work with organizations that see the value in the coaching. Um, the most common phrase used by her clients is she makes things easier than I thought they’d be. Which speaks to her ability to simplify what may be complex and overwhelming. I know that that plagues just about everybody. So give her a call. My name is Joshua Kornitsky. I am a professional implementer of the entrepreneurial operating system known as iOS. This has been another wonderful addition of High Velocity Radio. Thank you for joining us. We’ll see you next time.
