This week on the podcast…
This week on the Uncharted Podcast, Dr. Andy Roark and practice management geek Stephanie Goss are in the mailbag to take on a question from a practice manager colleague who is struggling with hiring. They have a candidate who feels like a good culture fit. This is a huge win and probably has you wondering “What is the problem???” Well, this candidate is a good culture fit and they are less skilled than the manager's current assistants. And they are currently making a wage that is both higher than the existing assistants AND over the top end of this practice's pay scale. The manager is wondering what to do but more so, how do they know when it is time to adjust the pay scale? Because they thought they were paying well. This sparked some lively discussion between Andy and Stephanie. Let's get into this…
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Episode Transcript
Stephanie Goss:
Hey everybody, I am Stephanie Goss, and this is another episode of the Uncharted Podcast. This week on the podcast, Andy and I are jumping into a letter that we got in the mailbag from a manager who has a good cultural fit assistant candidate that has been working for another vet in town. And this assistant is making quite a bit more money than this manager's existing assistants. And they are wondering what to do about the situation, but their question isn't what you might think given the situation. This was a really fun one for Andy and I to debate. Let's get into this, shall we?
And now the Uncharted Podcast.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And we are back. It's me, Dr. Andy Roark and the one and only Stephanie I guess the change in my pocket wasn't enough Goss. Ah,
Stephanie Goss:
That's funny. I was like, where's he going with this? And then…
Dr. Andy Roark:
Then you got it.
Stephanie Goss:
And then I realized where you were going with this.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Ah, then you got it.
Stephanie Goss:
How's it going?
Dr. Andy Roark:
It's good. It's good. Yeah, things are good. I can't complain. I've been doing the driver's ed with my daughter where she has her learner's permit and so we go out and we drive. And so yes, last night she was like, “All right, we are going out on this big…” It's like it's five lanes in each direction, a big road. And she's like, “I'm doing it.” And my mom was down visiting and I think she wanted to show her grandmother what a good driver she was. And so she was like, “I'm not afraid. We are going out past Target on the big road.” And so she gets in the big road and she's in the center lane and we're just driving and we just keep driving. And finally I was like, “Jacqueline, where are we going?” We've left Greenville, like we're leaving Greer South Carolina. We're in different county.
She's just driving on this big road always in the center lane. And she's like, “No, I'm going to turn around and we just keep going.” And I was like, “Jacqueline, what are we doing?” And I realized that the traffic was whipping by and she was afraid to change lanes and so we were trapped in the center lane of this big road because every time she would like… And then she really started to feel pressure and so she'd put her turn signal on and people were just kind of jerks.
And they would just move into her blind spot. We went another 15 minutes before she could get out of the middle lane. And it was one of those things where you were like, I wanted to be “Jacqueline for God's sake, figure this out.” But that doesn't help the 15-year-old girl who's driving the car-
Stephanie Goss:
Poor Jacqueline.
Dr. Andy Roark:
… feeling a lot of anxiety and she desperately wants to do everything right. And so giving her a hard time is not helping. And also we should apply some pressure here. So I did what I do, which is just lean into humor and I started texting people that I was glad to have known them.
Stephanie Goss:
You're never coming back because you're going to be stuck in the middle lane forever.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Exactly right. I was like, “Tell Hannah her father loved her and I'm sorry I wasn't there for her 12th birthday, but just know that somewhere I'm still driving in the middle lane.” At that point I was probably somewhere around Milwaukee.
Stephanie Goss:
Oh man. Hey listen, I've driven out by your Target and it is crazy. So-
Dr. Andy Roark:
It is crazy.
Stephanie Goss:
… I don't blame her.
Dr. Andy Roark:
No.
Stephanie Goss:
Okay. I hate that part of town.
Dr. Andy Roark:
No, just the whole thing reminded me of European vacation with Chevy Chase-
Stephanie Goss:
That's so funny.
Dr. Andy Roark:
You know when he's stuck in the roundabout?
Stephanie Goss:
Yes, yes.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I'm like, “That was it.” So the roundabout was just a straight road.
Stephanie Goss:
That's so funny. So I had my first driving experience with my kid this last week. Now she does not have her learner's permit yet. She's 14.
Dr. Andy Roark:
So you're just breaking the law.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Okay.
Stephanie Goss:
But I was on our property.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Okay. Was it like a lawnmower driving experience?
Stephanie Goss:
Nope. Nope. She's done that. She's done the golf cart. So we progressed to an actual car and I had to move the cars around in the driveway and I was like, “Sissy, do you want to want to back the one car up and then we'll move the other car and then you can drive it back up the driveway.” And she was very excited.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. This sounds like an idea I would have. This is 100% sounds like an Andy Roark idea of-
Stephanie Goss:
Mow my driveway is-
Dr. Andy Roark:
Just going to get her to park down the driveway. What's the big deal?
Stephanie Goss:
My driveway is not as steep as your driveway, but it is steep and it does have a ditch off to one side. I did not learn my lesson from listening to you talk about Jacqueline, however, there was no falling off the side of… She did great. But what I is, my poor kid is going to be the kid who's literally in a booster seat to drive. She is my grandmother.
Our driveway is steep. And so it's hard enough when you're short to see over. I am very short. It's hard enough to see over the dashboard when you're short. Going straight uphill when you're short is a significant challenge. And bless her heart, she was just creeping because she's like, “I don't want to crash into anything.” And I'm like, “Thank you for not crashing my car, but also can you step on the gas?” Taking 20 minutes to go up the driveway. Oh. But it was that moment of “I'm not ready for this.”
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Oh, it's a whole… Yeah. The joys of parenting never end. But you know-
Stephanie Goss:
I'm not ready.
Dr. Andy Roark:
… philosophically it's funny. That's life in a lot of ways because we don't give ourself enough credit for the hardships that we've overcome. We were all there at some point where we were freaked out to change lanes and now we don't even think about it, but we don't go back and pat ourselves like “Yeah, I got past that.” We get past it and we go on, but it's just funny that that's life. And so I really love where my daughters are right now sort of developmentally in that I'm watching these wonderful people figure out what it means to be an adult human being. And the challenges they're facing are challenges that I can relate to. I get traffic stress, I get it. I didn't necessarily get… I can't find my video I want towatch on YouTube anymore.
That was not a part of my childhood that I relate to. But the stuff when they start acting like real adults, I'm getting it. And so Jacqueline, I think she's going to do some work for us over the summer at Uncharted probably doing some website stuff and some data management stuff, which is sort of an interest of her, but she has to interview for the job. And so she's going to come meet with Tyler and Stephanie-
Stephanie Goss:
I love it.
Dr. Andy Roark:
… and Danielsson and she's going to have an interview with them later this week. And so she's stressing about her job interview at her dad's company.
Stephanie Goss:
Oh my gosh, that's so funny.
Dr. Andy Roark:
But I'm enjoying it. So it's awesome. It's awesome.
Stephanie Goss:
I love it. I love it. Well, I'm excited about today's episode. So we had a mail bag that I just loved and it was from a manager who was struggling because they have a good cultural fit candidate who has been working for another vet in town who is older and getting ready to retire. And they've been with that practice for a long time. And so this assistant unlicensed is making more than the high end of this new practice's assistant pay scale. And so the manager was like, “We have good culture, it's a good environment. There's lots more opportunities at our practice, but when I just look at the finances, this assistant would be taking a pretty significant pay cut to make the change over to our practice.” And they were like, “I really don't feel like I can justify paying them more than the current assistants because my current assistants have more skillset than they do.”
So this is an experienced assistant, but they have a lower set of skills because they have not been doing the same level of things in their current practice. And so that's the backstory. But what the manager was asking was that this made them reflect about their current hiring process and they were like, “I'm worried that I'm not attracting good candidates at our current pay scale, which I thought was pretty competitive and I'm looking at increasing the whole scale, but I have no idea how to tell if I can actually afford that, when I can afford it, how I can afford it.” And they were like, “I've raised prices and I'm planning on a significant price increase again, but how do I know when I can afford to give people raises essentially by increasing my pay scale?
Dr. Andy Roark:
There's a couple of things here. So let's start with head space in general. And so I want to immediately push back on where this is going and just, I'm not saying… Just hear me in terms of head space is where we provide context and we try to zoom out and look at the whole picture. And so one of the things that I want to say, and there's some baseline assumptions here, I think this is interesting. I understand this is definitely coming from a place of privilege, but just hear me out. There seems to be this idea in our culture that as you go through life, you will always make more money. You will make more money and more money and more money. And the idea of making less money than you made before is somehow innately a failure. And I see that a lot and I kind of look at that idea and I push back on it a bit.
Now, I'm not saying I think this sounds a lot differently when we're talking about people who are not making a living wage or things like that. But I'll give you an example. I saw there was this consultant in our industry, he's in vet medicine and he does a bunch of positive psychology and stuff like that. And he's not associated with Uncharted in any way, but his business was growing and he wanted to hire another consultant. And he said, “I'm looking for a young consultant or someone who doesn't have experience. And I would train them and help them and they would work with me and this is a position that we would like to grow.” And he could pay the person something like $60,000, right?
And then I saw a discussion of this in some of the manager groups and stuff in Facebook and uniformly, they were like, “This is offensive that he would offer this job because we make so much more now doing what we're doing managing this hospital. It would be a massive pay cut to go and do this.” And some people were really upset that this job offer existed. And to me, I just sat and looked at it and again, this idea that you have to move upward in pay in your life continuously. I don't think that that's true. And I think it's possible that this person who wants to hire and grow a young consultant and says, “This is what I can pay.”
I don't know that it's about worth or someone says, “Oh, you're not worth that or anything.” It's just a simple matter of this is the opportunity that “We have and this is what it pays. And you have to factor that into your decision of do you want to do this work or not.” And as someone who owns his own business, let me tell you, I have not made more money every year. That has not happened. There's good years and there's less good years. You know what I mean? And I could tell you the first year that I stepped back from being full-time in practice to try to do some of my own weird writing and speaking things, my pay went down. And that's not failure. That's just me saying I'm not being a full-time doctor anymore. I'm being a part-time doctor and I'm doing these other things and that job just doesn't pay as much as the other job.
And again, so there's not anything right or wrong about it and I hope people aren't hearing this the wrong way. My whole point in this is just if this person is a great fit and they think that they would be a great fit and you have a really good opportunity for them, they don't necessarily have to make the same money that they made in their last job in my mind, to come there. I will tell you, I have worked at a couple of places that I would take big pay cuts to work at because their culture was great. And I would say, “Yeah, I get it.” And again, all this is based on I had my needs met, my wife works full-time, like I get it, that's not everybody. But the idea, just this is part of pay scales. If you put pay scales in place, the benefit to pay scales is wage transparency and people kind of know what they make and you get some standardization.
The downside is that sometimes people are going to come and they're going to say, “I'm worth more than what your scale has put in place.” And that's their perception of what they're worth. But they're going to say that and then you are going to feel trapped because you either have to change your scales, which has a big weight attached to it, or you're going to have to say to the person, “I'm sorry, this is what I can offer you based on the scales that we established.” And sometimes I think people think that that's a deal breaker right away. Well this person said “That's what they're currently making and I can't offer them that, so they're not going to take the job.” And I would say “Maybe that's true.” I think that if it saved me 25 minutes of driving in each direction and I was coming to work at a place that had a great culture as opposed to a toxic dump, I would take a rather significant reduction in pay to have that job.
And so anyway, I just want to kind of open up with head space and say, I don't think that we're obligated to match someone's current salary or to give them a raise as they come in. If we have standard pay scales and we have a good reason or just say “This is what we can do,” that doesn't make us bad. And again, the person might not take you up on it, that's their right and their prerogative is to say, “No, I really need to make what I make now because that's what my budget is on.” And that might be a deal breaker for them.
But anyway, I just want to start with that and say just because you have someone who you think would be a good fit and they don't match up with your current pay scale, that's not necessarily the end of the world. It's something that you would need to talk about with that person. But I always put that forward because I feel like people think that it's an assumption that's chiseled in stone is whatever the person has made before we have to match that. And I don't know that that's true.
Stephanie Goss:
Okay. So much to unpack there. So two things I want to pick apart. One is I totally agree with you on the taking a step sideways in terms of pay for the right position. And I think that that is totally true and I am 100% on board with that. And I think for a lot of us being in veterinary medicine, we have historically, when we're talking about the paraprofessional staff, we have historically a lot of, I would say as a whole grossly underpaid our paraprofessional staff.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Mm-hmm. I agree. Yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
And so when we talk about the paraprofessional staff, I feel like the conversation has to separate a little bit from the professional staff because I will agree with you 100% like the tracks for me, when I was in the beginning of my career, I had to keep moving up and up and up because I was a paraprofessional staff member who was living on my own and paying my bills and I had to keep making more money because we weren't talking about vast amounts of money, we weren't talking about salary level money, we were talking about hourly wage. So for me, that upward mobility meant changes in my life and my lifestyle and that was a need at that point in my life and allowed me to accomplish desires as well beyond basic needs. And when we talk about the professional staff, I absolutely agree with you and think that I was really happy when I got to the point in my career where I could have the choice to make a move sideways when it came to pay.
And my last two jobs actually, I have taken both when I moved to my last practice, and I'll be candid and share with everybody, when I came to Uncharted you and I had honest conversation because I was making significantly more in the practice when I tied everything up together, my base salary, bonuses, all of those things. And you and I had an honest conversation of this is where the company is, this is the salary schedule that I've set. And for me it was very much to your point about considering what are the things that I'm gaining that have nothing to do with money, the schedule flexibility, the culture, the ability to be doing something that I'm passionate about, all of those things that you spoke to. And it was the same for me in practice. I moved from a practice where I was working 60 hours a week to a practice where I could set my own schedule, where I was able to do Uncharted things as well as be in the practice where I had flexibility.
All of those things had worth and value to me. And so I'm absolutely a believer in that cultural component of it. And I think that it would be tone deaf to not speak to the fact that that freedom and flexibility comes significantly easier when we are professional. And I mean high salary level professionals. The difference between that and paraprofessional staff that is hourly pay wages. Because I think that that piece of the conversation to your point is important and people have the right to say “No, this is a need. I need to make this amount because my budget is set off this.” And professionals have that right as well. I could say as a new vet, that's the conversation that we have a lot of times when it comes to recruiting is like, “Look, if a new grad tells me that they're not going to take less than $150,000 as base salary, great more power to you. If that's what you need, you go, I can't give you that.”
To your point, that may be something that my practice can't do. And I think that when it comes to the wage scales, I love that they're asking this question because I think that the whole point of the pay scales is to have that transparency that you were talking about and to set some equity across the team. And the way that this manager is asking the question, they're talking about it being a good fit and taking the pay cut, and they're talking about the fact that at least they're looking at the fact that they have assistants now who have higher skills and more training and therefore should be making at the high end of their pay scale. And this is how we got to where we are at veterinary medicine because for years and years and years, we as untrained business professionals, managers and practice owners gave into, “Well, this person feels like they're a good fit and they're telling me that they make more money, so therefore I must pay them more to get them on the team and get them in the door.”
And this is what created the inequity in our industry when it comes to pay. And so I'm so proud of this writer who was just like, “Dude, I've already got the pay scales and they're asking great, great questions.” And I think that a lot of us are not even there. And so I love that you opened with that point that if you don't have scales starting with just the thought process that it shouldn't always mean that we increase and increase and increase I think is so great. And I love that.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Well, I appreciate you saying that. I agree with everything. I agree with everything you said. Yeah, I wanted to hit that point on pay scales is to say that's the downside of scales is there will be some person and you're like, “God, they're perfect, but they want more than our pay scale and-“
Stephanie Goss:
Then they're not perfect
Dr. Andy Roark:
And also it's not a pay scale. If you have a pay scale and you break it to get somebody that is unethical. That you've told everyone this is what the deal is and then you've kind of gone and made a deal that doesn't adhere to those guidelines with somebody else. That's not fair. So anyway, but I wanted to put that out just to say I felt like, and I don't know that a writer meant this, but I have seen this very simplistic logic of we have a pay scale. There's someone else who's come to interview, they were getting paid more than our pay scale, which means our pay scale must be raised across the board to match what this other person was receiving. And two things I want to point out to that is just to say, and again, I know most everyone who listens is going to immediately know this or pick up on this.
Just remember, salary and total compensation are not the same thing. And if someone comes to you and goes, “I made this amount of money,” and they're like, great, “Did you get a CE budget? Nope. Did you get vacation? Nope. Did you have a 401k? Did you get any sort of retirement matching? Did you get health insurance? Any of that?” Like “Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.” Then you're comparing apples and oranges to say this is the salary. And so anyway, just remember to think in terms of total compensation for sure. And then the other thing is there are some simple things like geography where this person was working in downtown San Diego and now I live an hour and a half outside of San Diego and well, you are not going to make what you made in downtown San Diego because we can't charge what that clinic in downtown San Diego charged.
Those are some basic realities that most people would sort of understand, but also I just want to put them out and go, “Just remember that as we start to talk about this.” I think everybody should hold those numbers loosely. And at the same time, let me just say that sometimes there is this painful thing where someone says, “I want this job,” and you say, “I want you to have this job.” And they say, “I really do need to make this amount of money to make this work for me.” And you say, “I can't give you that amount of money.”
And man, everybody feels bad, but that's not an ethical failing at all. Sometimes it's just the way that it works and that's heartbreaking for everybody when it happens, but sometimes it just happens. And so I think that that is a good opening head space is what we need to look at this with clear eyes and just look at what's possible and set aside some preconceived notions about this person's never going to come here or they can't come here if we can't match what they currently make or we're obligated to give them what they currently make or we're somehow disrespecting them.
I think we have to set those things aside.
Stephanie Goss:
And I love that point and I think that the piece that I would add to it from a head space perspective in terms of trying to make a decision about potentially changing your pay scales. You said, “Do you have this one person who has come and is like, ‘I need to make this amount,' and you're bummed and you're looking at potentially changing your whole pay scale because of this one person.” I would say that the better head space would be to zoom out and say, “This manager asked the question, they're concerned that they're not attracting good applicants.” Are people going on a regular basis? Have you been trying to hire forever and you aren't getting applicants even in the door? Is this the first person who's walked in the door?
Or are you in a space where you do have long-term employees, you're not losing people because of pay and this one person who feels like a good fit has said that this doesn't fit for them. This is where the challenge with scales is because we're driven by people and we're driven by the emotion. This is where we're letting the emotions guide potentially the decision making process and where we have to zoom out and say, “We established the pay scales for a reason,” to your point. “And is there actually a motivation to change the pay scale or are we being swayed by the emotion of the situation because we like this person and we want to hire them?”
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, I love that. I think if you're going to have pay scales, there's a couple things you have to own and one of them is you should not fall in love with the idea of the new employee. And if you have scales and you're like, “This is what I'm bound to.” This person comes in, they're a great fit, it is easy to fall head over heels and say, “Yes, this is the person for us. We've been waiting for this.” Don't do that because it's going to break your heart really badly when it doesn't work because they don't match into the scales that you have set and the way your business is set up. And that's going to hurt. The other thing is you can't take this personally, which means if this person says, “I'm sorry, I can't come here because my needs are not going to be met.” That's not a judgment on you as a person.
It's not a judgment of your business. It's like you have pay scales and you set them up this way and this is what you're able to do. You can't take it personally. And I think I see both of those things all the time. People fall in love with the hire that they're hoping to make and it breaks their heart when it doesn't happen. And when the person says, “I'm sorry, I can't do it for that,” they take it personally and they're like, “God, my business is a failure. No one wants to work here. I'm the worst. This practice is terrible. Everything is going down. Clearly we're going out of business very, very soon.”
Stephanie Goss:
Get out of new manager Stephanie's head because that was, I remember vividly, it's so funny that you just talked about that because I remember vividly as a new young manager, I was trying to hire a lead receptionist and I had an ad that I had worked really hard on and I found this candidate and she was amazing. And she came from outside veterinary medicine, but she had all of these relatable skills. She was personable, she was warm. I fell in love with her on the phone and then she came in for her interview and I was completely head over heels, like “Will you marry me?” So excited. And then I got to the point in my interview process at the time where I was like, “Tell me what you are looking at for salary.” And she told me a salary that was more than double what my pay scale was because she was coming from outside vet med and she had all these experiences and it was totally justified for the prior industry that she'd been in.
And there was zero correlation at the time to veterinary medicine. And I was crushed. And I was like, “Well, our salary range is here.” And she just looked at me and she was just like, “Oh,” and she was very kind and she was just like, “I am really sorry.” And she had great boundaries and she was like, “I'm really sorry.” She was just like, “That just is not where I need it to be.” And she's like, “I really liked you.” She didn't try and put pressure on, which was great and we parted ways, but you were in new manager Stephanie's head because I was like, “I totally failed. Nobody wants to come work for us. This is awful.” And once I got through all of that, the lesson that I learned the really, really hard way was there are limits, right? There is a structure.
And I knew going in into it, and that was the moment where probably 15 years ago where I started publishing in all of my ads, what our pay scale was and what the position paid because I never wanted to get to that point again where I was heartbroken and I had fallen in love with somebody and then here they are telling me that their expectation and my abilities are two wildly different planets and we're not even in the same solar system. I did not want to get to that space ever again. And so that's kind of an action step thing for me when it comes to hiring, but it seems so simple, but it's amazing to me how many of us do it to ourselves over and over and over again where we have this plan and we don't put it out there. And so I think that's really important, both the, not falling in love with it, but also putting up those boundaries and sticking to them.
And this would be a case where I think our writer said “We have a pay scale. We have a pay scale for a reason.” And if you immediately drop those boundaries because you've fallen in love with somebody, it's only going to hurt you and the rest of your team who is going to be frustrated when you have higher skilled people. We look at our peers who do this, you get somebody who is, you're desperate for a person and somebody comes in and they feel like a good culture fit and your head is telling you “Don't do this,” but your heart is like, “I want to help my people.” And so you do the thing and then one of your existing assistants finds out that the new person who has less skills is making $2 an hour or more. Yeah. And now your whole team is p off.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Exactly.
Stephanie Goss:
That's the exact reason why we create pay skills in the first place.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Oh, you're exactly right. And I'll tell you this, the other emotional part of it too in head space for me very much is offering someone a job is putting yourself out there for judgment. Like asking someone on a date kind of. You know what I mean? Where you're like “Hey, I don't know if you'd be interested in this. I think you're kind of great.” And you're like, “Andy, that's ridiculous because one of them is clearly you putting yourself out there and the other one is just this company that you work for.” And I'm like, “I don't know.” Maybe it's just because I own, it's because I own the company that I work for, but you know what I mean? It sure is. There's a lot of identity tied up in that of I work so hard in a leadership role and I think most managers feel this way and a good manager feels pride in the place that they work and they should because they should be a big part of it.
And so they should, you do feel pride. And so when you're saying, “Hey, this is what I can do for you and we'd like to have you here,” there definitely is some fear of rejection there where someone goes, “No, I can't know, oh, I'm doing so much better at this other place.” You go, “Oh, maybe my practice is not as attractive as I thought. Or maybe we're not doing as good a job as I thought.” And I think a lot of people feel that pain a lot. So anyway, I think for me, all of this kind of comes back around to that head space of try not to fall in love with the idea, try not to take it personally. This is a relationship and it's kind of got to work for everybody. And so let's just start with that and kind of shake it out because I think as soon as we buy into the idea of salaries can never go down.
People will never, ever take less money than what they had before regardless of extenuating circumstances. And if they don't take the job, it's because you are not worthy. I think those are emotions that people actually have, even though they sound ridiculous when you say them out loud, I think you have to set those things aside. That's kind of my big thing. I think the last part of head space that I would say is there seems like there's a number of questions bundled together here.
And whenever I have a bunch of questions bundled together, it always feels like the Gordian knot, meaning it's the magical untiable knot and I'm like, ah, I can't figure this out. And the truth is usually what happens when I'm having feelings like this, I'm having questions like this, one of the healthiest things from a head space standpoint I can do is sit down and say, “What are the questions that I need answered in order to move forward?” And that's the mental process that I use. And so just sort of stepping back, what are the action steps? Well actually you know what, I'm going to put a pause here and say, how do I untangle this? How do we break this down into the action steps or into the questions that we need to get figured out? Let's take a break and then we'll come back and we'll do those as action steps.
Stephanie Goss:
Okay, sounds good. Hey friends,
I just wanted to talk for a quick second about some maths with you all because I've been thinking a lot about the workshops. And normally here's where we tell you what's coming up and we've got some great stuff happening. So you're going to want to head to unchartedvet.com/events and check out the upcoming calendar. But I want to talk about maths because if you are not already an uncharted member, you can attend any one of our workshops and pay $99 a piece. Most of them are just 99. You can do it as a one-off, great and fine. However, that adds up really quick. And if you do the monthly workshop with us, and I've seen some of you there as repeat customers, which is amazing, but you could spend almost $1,200 over the course of the year doing workshops with us.
Or you could pay $699 and get a 12-month membership, which means you get all of the workshops that we do at no extra charge. You also get access to our amazing conversation in the community, our community members and all of our community resources. And it is hopping over there. We've got conversation 24/7, we have got activities, we've got book club. We're writing our handbooks together in Handbook Helper Group this year.
We are talking about development and leadership growth, doing our development pathway this year. We are doing hallway conversations where we're talking about topics. These are sessions that are community led, community driven. It is topics about things that are going on in your practice that you want to talk about with your peers. All of that is happening and it's all included for your $699 membership. So simple math, do you pay almost $1,200 for the year or do you pay $699? If you're not currently a member, you should head over to the website and use this argument to convince your boss, “Hey boss, I need to be a part of this amazing community because Stephanie told me so and because she's telling you that you will save money.” Hopefully that works, but I couldn't resist. I hope to see you at our upcoming workshops again unchartedvet.com/events for everything that's coming. And now back to the podcast.
Dr. Andy Roark:
All right, so let's come back here. So I just said the last thing for me with head space is whenever I have something like this that feels tangled, I need to break it apart. And the way I break it apart is to say “What questions do I need to have answered in order to move forward?” And so the questions here are, what is my current scale really? Which means do not get drawn into the dollar for dollar salary comparison. You need to look at your total compensation package and say, “What are we really doing?” Because it's easy. And I know a lot of practices that are like, “God, we can't pay people.” Well, other people pay them and I'll look. And I was like, “Man, you, you're offering health insurance and you are matching their retirement contributions and you have an EAP and you offer all these other services and you have a generous paid time off plan. No wonder you're not offering the salary that other peoples are.”
That's not right or wrong, it's just different. And beating yourself up because the salary offer you make while you've got these wonder, this nice collection of perks and supplemental things is that that's comparing apples and oranges. So what is your actual scale when we look at total compensation? Because that's what we want to compare to others. The next question for me is, is my pay scale competitive? And I don't know the fact that this one person comes and says, “I made more, I have less skill but I make more of this other place.” Maybe I'm not wrong. Maybe the other place was wildly overpaying this person and I'm sorry-
Stephanie Goss:
That's a thing that happens.
Dr. Andy Roark:
There's a 50% chance that if you go, “Either I'm low or she's high,” or they're both a little bit true, I don't know. And so is my pay scale actually competitive? If my pay scale is not competitive, can I afford to change it right now? And if it's not competitive and I can't afford to change it right now, how can I change it going forward? Meaning I might not be able to afford this person's salary now, or make, make the pay scale shift now. However, if I'm not competitive, I can make a plan to become competitive and maybe I can get this person to come along for the ride and maybe not, but I will remedy this problem and I'll be more competitive in hiring in the future if my pay scale is competitive and I say, “You know what? I'm doing what I can do. I feel like this is a competitive offer. I don't know that this person is going to find someone who will pay her or him what they were being paid at their last job.”
I'm not going to say that necessarily, but I am going to figure out how to present the fact that our scale is competitive and we'd really like to have them there. And I encourage you to shop around, obviously look and look and see what other places can do. This is what we can do and we would like to have you and I think you would be a wonderful fit here. How do I present that knowing that I'm not going to change my scales? And so those are the questions that I have. And if I can go through and answer each of those questions, bam, I'm golden.
Stephanie Goss:
Well, I thought kind of the same way because when I started reading the email, I thought they were going to go in the direction of, “Well, what if I wind up paying them more than I'm paying my existing team?” Which is one question, what is the potential risk factors there?
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Because the answer is don't do that.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Dr. Andy Roark:
The answer don't do that.
Stephanie Goss:
But then they-
Dr. Andy Roark:
You have a pay scale. You bought into it. Just so many bad things can happen.
Stephanie Goss:
But then they steered away from that in their email and were like, “That's not actually what I'm asking. What I'm asking is how do I know if I can afford to adjust my current pay scale?” And I think we talked from a head space perspective of do you need to adjust the pay scale? And I think you have to look at that. And I think your point about looking at is this a one off, is this an outlier or is this a consistent trend? And then I love your point about looking at is your scale competitive? Well, how do you know that? Well, you have to know what goes into your scale. To your point, it has to be about total compensation. You have to be able to compare apples to apples instead of apples to oranges. And you have to look at what other people are paying.
And that often is very, very hard to find in veterinary medicine because we are secretive AF. We don't share pay scales freely. We don't advertise as a whole and change is coming. There are lots of us who have been doing that for some time and now states are making it easier because states are requiring employers to provide pay information in their job ads, which I love. I that level of transparency. I think it's only going to benefit us in veterinary medicine. But being able to look at what is actually competitive and then looking at your own team. Are you losing people because of the pay or do you have really long-term satisfied employees? Is there a reason to make this change? And then to your point, the question that they actually asked, I love, and this is where I get super nerdy about how do you actually figure out if you can afford it? And I'm going to give a shameless plug for myself, which is really hard for me to do.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I know, do it, get up on the stage.
Stephanie Goss:
But also for our community. So I have a workshop in our community, in our knowledge library, which is where we house all of the materials from prior workshops and conferences that we've done. And I love this topic. This is a soapbox for me for sure. And I actually have a workshop that I've done about exactly this. How do you figure out how to afford it? And as part of that, I put together a spreadsheet for everybody. And so if you're a community member, you can access that in the library. And if you're not a community member, I'm just saying that's the kind of resources that we share in the community on a regular basis. But that's where I would start as a manager is it starts with a spreadsheet. And I know that not everybody loves spreadsheets as much as I do. In fact, I know Any Roark does not like spreadsheets.
Dr. Andy Roark:
It's not that I don't like them. I do like them, I don't love them like other people do.
Stephanie Goss:
But I have a color-coded spreadsheet for you guys for this.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I know I-
Stephanie Goss:
But I'm going to break it down.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I like a basic spreadsheet that's just-
Stephanie Goss:
I'm going to give the-
Dr. Andy Roark:
… plain numbers. It's just like a vanilla spreadsheet.
Stephanie Goss:
I'm going to give you the vanilla recipe right here. Okay? So the question is how do we actually know if we can afford it? And so what you have to know is what are you currently paying? What is your existing team cost you at their scale? Which means looking at their current wages and also their current average hours. And then you're looking at that as a percentage of your revenue and that's your pay, the percentage of your budget that makes up your paraprofessional wages. And now for most of us, the initial knee-jerk reaction is to say, “Well, my staff ratio is 25% or 19% or 28%,” whatever it is. And to go say, “Well, what does the industry tell me that that percent should be?” But that's the wrong question. The question we should be asking ourselves is where are we compared to where we have been before?
Which is are we trending up, are trending down compared to ourselves year over year? Because it doesn't do me any good. To your point about the pay scales and having, what did you say, Fort Jenkins, Texas. Having a practice in or outside of San Diego. Having a practice an hour and a half outside of downtown San Diego and a practice in the middle of downtown San Diego in the Gaslamp, just the rent alone on those two practices going to be wildly different. So there's going to be different expenses. It goes the same to staff. And so if I look at the industry trends, I do get some value by comparing myself to average practices. And AHA summarizes this really, really nicely. There's two resources that I would say AHA's benchmarks around compensation. And VH made us one as well, but the well managed practice study gives some really good industry benchmarks as well.
But it still doesn't do me, I don't think enough good to say, “Well, three to five doctor practices in a suburban area.” Well, what does that actually mean? Because the suburbs of San Diego could have wildly different pricings than the suburbs of Des Moines, Iowa. They're still suburbs, but those are two wildly different locations geographically. And so what I want to do is look at where am I trending as a practice? And so looking at that percent of gross revenue and then using that spreadsheet to play with the numbers. And so there's two ways that we affect change here. We can pay people more and not change the revenue and there's three pieces at play. There's our gross revenue, there's our cost to employ our team, and there's our other costs of running the business. So to impact those numbers, there are really three levers that we can pull.
We can increase our revenue, which would decrease the other two percentages because when we make more money and the costs stay the same, the percent goes down. We could increase the cost to our staff and not increase the revenue, which means that that percent is going to go up and then we have to cut costs elsewhere. Or we could do some sort of balancing of all of the things. There's a lot of things that we can do here, and this is where the spreadsheet comes into play. Because if you put in the simple numbers, you have your team, you list everybody and you just list them by their initials, put their salary, then in another column, put their average hours, get the total of your team's hours and the total salary that you're paying on them on average, and you can pull that straight out of your timecard software.
How many hours have people worked on average over the last quarter through the last three months? And then you look at that total wage and you look at it relative to your revenue, then you have the ability to say, “Well, if I gave everybody a $5 an hour raise,” and you can just plug that into the spreadsheet, Excel's going to do the work for you and tell you what that does to your percentage without changing your revenue. So then you have the ability to know, “Well, can I afford to do this without making any changes? Yes or no?” It becomes very black and white. You also have the ability to say, “Oh God, that number looks really, really high. If I give everybody $5 an hour raises, that's a,” I don't know. I'm just going to pick a number out of thin air, “that's $40,000.”
Well, that's a big scary number to a lot of us who own businesses, right? $40,000 is not chump change. So then I have the ability to go in there and play with it and say, “Well, if I cut some costs in other areas, what does that do to the percent? If I increase my revenue, if I make $10,000 more in that same quarter, how much does that suppress the percent?” It gives you the ability to play with those numbers. And that is by far the best way that I have ever found to do… You have to run projections and it has to do with the math. And not everybody loves math, but this is where you have to play and figure out how can I afford it? And most of us are afraid of this because we don't have the training, we don't have the knowledge.
I didn't know how to do any of this until I got got training and honestly, until I took business math class at the community college, I had no idea how to do any of this. And it made my life so much easier once I figured out how to do it. And I will tell you that I think that's where we got to in veterinary medicine is because a lot of us are either afraid of it don't know how, or a combination. And so we make those emotional decisions. Instead, we've fallen in love with the idea or we're like, “This is a good cultural fit,” or “My team is working so, so hard and we just need another person.” We make that gut emotional decision to say, “I'm sacrificing for the greater good. My team needs another body, so I'm going to pay this person $2 more than everybody else because it's going to make them happy.”
Well, guess what? In the long run it won't because someone will find out that the new person is making $2 an hour more than them and it will cause havoc in your staff. That's why we set up pay scales in the first place. And so I think that that's where we make the emotional decision because we don't know how to do that math. And that's a huge part of what made me so excited when we got this email. Because I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is a huge soapbox and I want to nerd for a minute, even though Andy's just going to sit there and give me the stare like ‘Really, you're talking about spreadsheets?'”
Dr. Andy Roark:
This is much spreadsheet time airtime as we've ever given in everything. There's never been –
Stephanie Goss:
Thank you for indulging me Andy Roark.
Dr. Andy Roark:
… this much airtime devoted to a spreadsheet.
Stephanie Goss:
I'm just saying.
Dr. Andy Roark:
No, it's good. It's good. It's just…
Stephanie Goss:
Andy's like “If you didn't understand any of what Stephanie just said in the last five minutes, you can go check out the financial workshops that her and Jen Galvin have done.”
Dr. Andy Roark:
There you go. We have financial workshops that cover exactly this. If you're like “Uh oh, tell me more. My heart purrs.” If you're just like, “I want more of this specific spreadsheet focus,” then we got you covered. We totally got you covered.
Stephanie Goss:
We do. We've got t-shirts.
Dr. Andy Roark:
You do have a t-shirt that says something like, “I have a spreadsheet for this, don't you?”
Stephanie Goss:
I do. I do. It was given to me by one of our community members who knows my love of spreadsheets.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Speaking of our community members, getting this back on the rails here. I was talking to one of our community members recently and he was talking about at his practice, they did some surveying of their staff, which I always think is great. And they're like, “What are the stresses of our staff?” It was a burnout type survey. And they were actually really surprised to come to understand that their staff was feeling a lot of financial strain. They live in a major metropolitan area and they didn't recognize how difficult it was for a lot of their staff to live in this area getting paid what they were paying. And of course they felt like they were doing a good job of trying to compensate their people. I think it's hard to get your head around what it really costs to live in a major urban area today.
And so anyway, but they saw that and when they saw that, they said, “This is not okay, we want to fix this.” And so they actually decided they were going to raise their prices and give 100% of that raise to the staff. And so they said to the staff, “We're going to raise prices and 100% of this goes to giving you guys cost of living raises.”
And then they sent an email to the clients and they said, “Just so you know, prices are going to be going up and here's why they're going to be going up.” And they explained that they needed to raise prices so their staff could have a living wage and not be financially strained. And so 100% of this price increase is going to the staff. And I said, “How did it go?” And he was like, “Oh, great. It went great. The clients seemed to understand. We didn't get any pushback at all. The staff were in board on implementing the raise in price because they knew it was important and they knew where it was going.” And I was just like, “That's a beautiful thing.” I just thought it's, again, thinking outside the box and being like, “Oh, we have a very specific problem. We're going to come up with a very specific solution to said problem. And here we go.” So anyway, there's definitely things that we can do.
Stephanie Goss:
I love it. And I think about that from my own behaviors as a consumer. And I think about, I lived in the Bay Area in California and they implemented healthcare for the restaurant industry and for restaurant workers, which is unheard of in the service industry that you would have healthcare coverage. And the business owners, restaurant owners were like, “How the hell are we going to afford this?” And so the conversation was, “We have to increase prices. There has to be something to offset this.” And so I know some of my favorite places who did exactly what you're talking about, and they just went to their clients and they're like, “Hey, this is why we're doing it. This is what we're doing with the money and we hope that you'll go along with us for the ride. And if you don't, we understand.” And I remember being impacted by that.
I would have paid it and I probably would have paid it and grumbled about it if they hadn't have been so forward. But once I got that, I remember seeing a notice when I went into one of my favorite restaurants and I was just like, “Okay, that totally makes sense.” Not only will I be happy to pay that extra amount, but I actually changed my behaviors to think about it and was like, “Here, let me tip.” Let me… I'm going to tip, I'm going to tip more. Which is I recognize not necessarily normal, but it was that emotional heart connection. And to your point, when we think about it and we put it in that context, it goes back to something you and I talk about all the time on the podcast, which is we can't be all things to all people. And we are going to have clients who would get that email and would be like, “I don't want to go there. I need a budget conscious vet practice.”
Totally understand. Totally understand. We might not be your people, and that's okay. It's the same as when the candidate that you're interviewing says, “Well, this is what I need to make for my budget,” to say “I totally get that. And I wish you the best of luck.” Because to your point earlier in the episode you talked about how do we have that conversation with them and explained to them like, “This is what I can offer you.” And for a lot of people that fills this with anxiety because we're just like, “How do I have to explain myself?” You don't have to explain yourself. You just say, “Thank you. I completely understand and I wish you the best of luck,” and move on because it's not going to be the right fit. You cannot be all things to all people, whether it's your team, whether it's your clients, stop. We've got to stop. And so I love that you use that example.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Oh, good deal. All right. Well, that's what I got my friend. I don't think I have anything else.
Stephanie Goss:
Okay. I love this. Thank you for letting me talk about spreadsheets.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh, my pleasure. I'm so glad we got to do this.
Stephanie Goss:
You're not, but thank you for lying anyways. Take care everybody.
Dr. Andy Roark:
See you everybody.
Stephanie Goss:
Well, gang, that's a wrap on another episode of the podcast, and as always, this was so fun to dive into the mailbag and answer this question, and I would really love to see more things like this come through the mailbag. If there is something that you would love to have us talk about on the podcast or a question that you are hoping that we might be able to help with, feel free to reach out and send us a message. You can always find the mailbag at the website. The address is unchartedvet.com/mailbag, or you can email us at podcast@unchartedvet.com. Take care everybody, and have a great week. We'll see you again next time.
