You can learn more about Dave and Move About Therapy Services by visiting:

www.moveabout.com.au

 

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Eve & Trisha

Eve Drew  00:04

Hello and welcome to the business of health Podcast. I'm Eve Drew and joining me is Trisha Cashmere Hi, Trisha.

 

Trisha Cashmere  00:12

 How are you today?

 

Eve Drew  00:13

I'm really well. We've got a special guest with us today we have Dave Jereb joining us. Dave is from Move About Therapy Services. He's an OT. And he's a seasoned pediatric ot with over 20 years of experience. He's a mentor and a coach and he's trying to reshape pediatric occupational therapy in Australia. His key principle is tightly woven in Move About's organizing principle, supporting the people who support the kids. And this highlights his dedication to making a meaningful difference, fostering connections and embracing lifelong learning in a playful manner. So Dave envisions a world where all kids regardless of their differences can live meaningful lives and be valued and valuable community members. Dave's commitment to end burnout in early career OT's nurturing their professional growth and mentoring OT business owners reflects his holistic approach to uplifting the community. He and his amazing wife Cathy, also an amazing OT, developed the move about activity cards and innovative workshops, demonstrating their shared passions that continual learning and development. And Dave's relentless dedication to pediatric OT and his support for early career therapists are paving the way for a brighter future in this field. So thank you, Dave. And we're really excited to have you joining us today.

 

Dave Jereb  01:37

Thanks for having me. That's a great intro.

 

Eve Drew  01:42

That's all the stuff that you're doing. So

 

Trisha Cashmere  01:44

I want to know that guy, that guy sounds great. Yeah, I like him.

 

Eve Drew  01:48

I like him to have how's your day going? Dave?

 

Dave Jereb  01:50

It's good. Yeah, it's, it's going quickly, they tend to go quickly, but good. Yeah. Not much happened yet. You know, 10:30 I've been busy just doing emails and paperwork, and, you know, meeting like, nothing. Truly nothing exciting so far, until it's getting all very excited for this moment.

 

Eve Drew  02:13

And now it's all gonna happen, for sure. Absolutely. Dave, we're always really interested. And I know the intro gave a little bit of a snapshot of what you've achieved, and what's important to you in your role as an OT and as a business owner. But can you just tell us in your own words, a little bit about what your journey as a health professional and business owner has looked like so far? And you know, what lights you up? What are the most exciting things happening in your world right now?

 

Dave Jereb  02:40

Yeah, look, I come from a long line of people in caring professions, and my whole family are either teachers or school principals, school librarians, social workers, got a few OTs, so I'm an OT, my wife, Kathy is an OT, and my sister was an OT. And we all sort of started in the Disability Support field. My Aunt worked for Banardos it was almost like a rite of passage in our family that you would do vacation care programs, or Saturday programs. So my sort of interest and love of working with kids, and working in the disability field really came from my mom, pay me $20 to volunteer at a vacation care program. And I always say, I don't know if it counts as, as volunteering if you get paid $20, although that is well below minimum wage for what I was doing. But yeah, and I loved it, you know, and there was a particular experience where I was the, I was sort of 14 at the time, and the kids love this older guy. And we just had fun that was sort of foster kids and some kids with disabilities, and they were really into it. And there was one kid that would just pace around outside. So this was sort of demountable with a concrete section in between there was kind of hot and, and the sun would beam off the reflect back off the concrete in the windows. And no matter what the weather was, he was not going to be inside, he would sort of humm his way through all the way through the room till he got outside. And it was terrible if it was raining, and he had to be inside, but he would just wander the perimeter. And yeah, the first day I was like, What's with this guy, like, I'd not really met someone with autism before. And I didn't quite get it. I didn't know at that stage that you were meant to. You know, wrap them in cotton wool and handle them with kid gloves. And I still haven't really learned that lesson. I like to push and dig and engage. And I went out there and handed him a basketball. And he just dropped it and walked off. And I was like, What's going on here? And so I picked it up again. And I handed it to him again. And he sort of looked at me and threw it to the side. I was like, huh, like I'm offering you to play as I went and got it again. And this time I handed it to him. And again, he looked at me just briefly and then threw it the other way but I was ready like a goalkeeper and I was all set and he threw it i caught it and handed it back to him. And then I got this little smirk, right. So this kid was non-speaking, he really didn't interact with anyone. But I managed to get this smirk. And that was the moment that I'm like, I don't, I didn't know it then. But I can look back and I can see that was the spark that said I wanted to work with kids. And connection was my way in. And so that's always been important to me. And that's been the thread through the whole piece. It's how we run our business is really, you know, connection focused. Relationship is everything. I always say the biggest business biggest myth in business is the phrase, it's just business because it's never in the, most boring businesses, It's all about relationships and connection. But that's certainly how we treat, how I treat how Kath treats how move about treat. And yeah, and then I was lucky enough to get a placement in the US and I did a camp there called Camp Avante, and that had some, it was an OT run camp. And it was really, really amazing. And I met this amazing OT from Chicago, Beth Austin. And as we she was my cabin therapist, and I was just the counselor for that camp. And as as we say goodbye. I said I might see you next year, I might come back to work because my sister was working in the States at that time. And she's like, Oh, you might come work for me. I was like, Oh, I might take you up on that. And then we went a different way. And I was like, what she's serious, like, did I just get a job offer? So I followed up on it. And yeah, Beth offered me a job. And I had sort of also, I guess the other part is the love story in there where I was on a placement at that time. And that's where I met Kathy. And you know, I was young, I was vulnerable  she was an OT aide working at a really great OT clinic that my sister was working at Sheila Frick created therapeutic listing. So there's a lot of luck that happened to you. But yeah, that's met the love of my life. And then we were separated. And then we, you know, moved back to Chicago and I worked for Beth. And that was just the most amazing first page job. I did have a little bit of rehab for six months while I waited for my visa. But yeah, I really launched into the dream job and had more support than you knew what to deal with. We had weekly supervision, group case studies. People could jump in your session, you could sit in and watch the boss. And just stacks of PD, it was just a dream. Absolutely, yeah.

 

Trisha Cashmere  07:20

Yeah. And that's fine, too. I love the way you told your story Dave. She can hop on the stage and do that on one day. I really interested about your experience as a new graduate, because actually, it sounds like the most amazing graduate experience. And And certainly, I know that I am where I am because I had a terrible new graduate experience. And you know, I share that with a lot of people. So to have moved from where you are, you obviously were able to recognize, you know how fantastic that was because you didn't just take it for granted you you've seen that this is something different. So were you communicating with your colleagues or, you know, peers from uni, during this period where you could, you know, compare and contrast? Or did you just I don't know, how did you know? How did you know that it was so great.

 

Dave Jereb  08:07

I didn't like it. I really, I know, I didn't really connect a lot with my colleagues back home. And I didn't know how good I had it until it was gone. Right? Like that's the thing I lucked out with this dream job. And I was there for five years. And then we moved back to Australia and it was gone. And I mean, I don't know if you want me to do you want me to talk about how good it was?

 

Trisha Cashmere  08:38

Because, well, I'm just so you know, you always reflect on your own experience and what's happening. And I know that, you know, like, I offer amazing graduate experiences in my team now and in my business because of what wasn't a fantastic experience for me. And so everything that I do is to try and make sure that our early career grads have a different experience that we don't have that early career burnout, that we have that amazing support. However, they don't always know what they've got. Right? It's challenging, because when you're just starting out in a profession, and you haven't been anywhere else, and maybe your only job experience is McDonald's or not even you don't necessarily know what's great until you don't have it. So did you know at the time, or did you just wait, I didn't

 

Dave Jereb  09:27

look, I knew it was amazing. Okay, I did know it was amazing. I didn't know how rough some people had it and how little support people got until I was actually a business owner and I was hearing the war stories of people coming across to us. So you know, we set up a very similar system at  Move About, because it was all I knew. And it was it felt good. And like to be honest, I think there was that moment that I lost it. So we moved to us back to Australia. I sort of had had it with Chicago. winters which were, you know, really beautiful for one week of the year from Christmas to New Year, but otherwise just gray and gloomy and cold and never heard of the phrase, it's too cold to snow.

 

Trisha Cashmere  10:12

No

 

Dave Jereb  10:13

It's too cold to snow.  That's how cold it was

 

Trisha Cashmere  10:22

sounds delightful.

 

Dave Jereb  10:24

horrid, but beautiful. He loves Chicago and you want to go into the state stop doing the LA New York. And skipping Chicago. It's an amazing city. But back to back to the story. You know, I remember when we set up Move About. And there was this one moment, first session of the morning. It was a rough rough session. And I remember sitting down at my desk, we just had just a little office, it was one treatment room were two tiny, tiny, tiny office and a tiny waiting room. Up one ended, I was sitting at my desk. I remember looking at the clock 9:55 Because I just finished a 50 minute session, looking through the doorway to the treatment room. And there were sort of the remnants of this rough session, there was the cloud or like a cloud up the back, there was a platform swing sort of off to the side. And there was this half spilt bubble tub by the doorway that was sort of the cooldown that didn't quite work the way I wanted it to. And I just thought, What am I doing? Like, I'm meant to be the expert. Now I'm a business owner. Like, what I can't do this is like what's happening and everyone always, you know, people have always thought I'm inherently confident. And actually, I've always thought I was pretty confident. And I was confident a lot of the time and I was confident at Beth's. And then I got here and I was not overly confident in the moment. I was like, Well, what do I do? I remember sitting there in silence. And I don't do silence Well, I'm kind of I don't know if you're catching that. But I'm kind of a fairly animated guy. And like the silence was peircing you know, like in the movie where it starts to get that high pitch. Like it felt like that in that moment. Like, am I allowed to swear? I'm not really sure it's done? What am I lost? And I sat there and just like, Shit, What do I do, and I'm just sort of looking through the doorway at this session thinking I can't do so like, I'm completely overwhelmed i'm out of control I'm alone, like I'm alone in this clinic. Cathy actually had to go back and do some study. So she wasn't with me at that time. And I'd gone from this big team to just being just me. And I was like, I want my team back. I want that team. But I remember being annoyed at the team over there because it was mental health professionals too. And they'd be like, oh, you know, the child is feeling this one this thing. And like sometimes the kid just likes London Bridge is falling down. Like sometimes I just liked the song. It doesn't mean that world. But no London Bridge was falling down for me at that time. I'm like what are and like the clock was ticking. And my next session was at 10. And then I had an 11. And I hadn't packed up the room and I was like, I need to call Beth who's like my my former boss. I was like, I need to get support back. And so I got out my yellow post it notes. I only use yellow by the way, none of this blues and pinks and green stuff. And my big yellow stock standard old school. Ah, Trisha has got some blue and yellow post it notes in front of the neon ones that don't do that. A little bit. I've got pink, ah, old school yellow, just that anyway. Right, cool, Beth. And then I ran into the session and packed up, you know, as much as I could what was there, I couldn't get the water out of the carpet with a bubble tub where it had spilt,  packed that  up and do my next session. My next two sessions were fine, right? They weren't great. They weren't bad. They were just fine. And my thought did keep going to the first session of the day. And then they went out and it's just before midday, I finished my three for the morning and I called Beth. And I said, Beth, I think I need I think I need some mentoring. And she's like,, let me have my book so we can schedule you in. And it was that easy. I got my support back. We got a little bit of my support back. And I had to pay for it now because I was a business owner. But it was worth it. And like I didn't hold back I went no, I had so much support there. Now I'm on my own. I ended up getting every month or every four to six weeks. I got two OTS one from Beth, one from Kathy Warmsley who was she taught the DIR floor time course in Australia at that stage. She was in Perth. I reached out to her introduce myself and said I want someone here and so she supported me, a speech therapist that I knew back in Chicago Sherry Collins she also all of them teach on DIR floor time actually because that was the model I grew up in they were the people I went to and then Gil Foley was a psychologist in New York that sort of supervised one of the case presentations. I did it of course and so I got this sort of multi disc support for myself and I felt like now I have my my super team I can feel good and it just it's it's something that we've we've carried on so then I was able to you know, Kathy Oh of course like oh we'll just make it us and then within six months, I've employed someone and then six months later, we expanded to the place next door. But we've always had one to one supervision, we've always had weekly group cases or group supervision, depending on our format. We do stacks of PD, we have people available to jump in and support people in tricky sessions. And we have long shadow time, long time to support you to get assessments. And we've always just supported people that way. And we've always been supporting the families with their kids. So you know, it was quite natural. Once we came up with the phrase, we support the people who support the kids, that really is our families who bring their kids to us. That's our team members, because they're the ones supporting the families. And in the last year or so we've really tried to make it about our community. And so we're doing online and live training, we've got move about mentoring, where we're offering really affordable mentoring for early career OTS starting as early as, like  $87, which is nothing but it's much less than a treatment session, because we want to help those guys that aren't being supported in their current workplaces. I'm mostly working with sole traders and people with small teams that are looking to start to grow their teams and trying to make sure that they can do that in a way that doesn't sacrifice their life and their family and end up with them. You know, slaving away with a full caseload to pay their payroll. Yeah. I feel like I overshared then, was it too much,

 

16:21

no one's perfect. answered, like three of the questions I had, like, you're so intuitive.

 

Dave Jereb  16:28

Well, that was a nice podcast, nice to meet you guys.

 

Eve Drew  16:33

One thing that really resonated me with me, then Dave was talking about, because I work with a lot of sole traders, predominantly, so people going out on their own, but that we can actually get around to this, we don't have to have a physical team. On site, we thought that we don't actually have to build a team, we can still be a sole practitioner, if that's as big as we want to get. But having external people that we can create our own team of support and how important that is. So I really thought that was a really beneficial share. So thank you for sharing that. I

 

Dave Jereb  17:04

actually think there's no such thing as a solo practitioner that just actually can't function like that which humans are social beings. So you can be the only person working in your business. But that will be incredibly incredibly stressful, if you're trying to do it alone. And so you know, and your husband or your wife might be part of that team. You might have friendships, social supports. Or you might actually pay for mentoring, which is probably a good way to go to have someone, often you get the most honest answer, you have to pay someone to get the honest answers to help.

 

Trisha Cashmere  17:37

So I'm interested though, because it really isn't. I mean, so obviously, my experience is in the physiotherapy space, and it really isn't a common thing for people to pay for mentoring. You know, like as a business I know people are very comfortable saying don't have expertise in my bookkeeping my accounting, my legals might, you know, and you can, all your business services, stuff marketing would have are very happy to pull in professionals for that, but finish uni, have, you know, one or two years experience in like, okay, now I can jump out into the world and present my service without and I think that that's a really, it's an interest, it's interesting to me that you spent five years in a environment where you were deeply supported and mentored. And then, and maybe it's because you're in America, like, was in the States was that more of a common scenario where people would pull in external mentors to support them, because it's just not something in in clinical stuff that I've seen so much here, you know, people rely on the mentors or that that, you know, like more informal mentor networks, or within their teams, but they don't, in my experience, and probably someone will tell me, I'm wrong. But I'm not really aware of a deep kind of

 

Dave Jereb  18:50

why I would say that, yes, in particular, the practice I was in and I don't know if the DIR floor time model is a model, particularly for kids with difficulty engaging in relating. And so it is a multidisciplinary, this kind of approach. So you do want to get input from different disciplines when you're really completely immersed in that model. And the practice I was in was very much a culture of always learning that we've kept it move about, as well. And so you know, my my boss had 30 years experience now 40, or something years experience, and still getting her own mentoring, like always did, and that was just my role model. So that was all I knew. And then I came back and like I was spending $600 a month on mentoring, which today would be about $1,200 a month. actually asked Chat GPT to work it out for me the other day. But yeah, this was 15 years ago, and it was worth every cent for my mental health. But also from my clinical practice. It just meant that I felt like as soon as I made the decision, because I'd had that experience before I felt in control. Like yeah, I went from feeling out of control to in control and my content and my confidence just came back to me. And you know, and so it's Was it real confidence or not? Was I faking it? Was it authentic, confident, it was authentic confidence. So long as I knew that I had people that had my back and could support me. And that's what we try and do and try and help early career therapists know is that, you know, actually, you can do great work right now. And feel confident in the outcome that you're doing. If you have the right supports, you can't be great right now. The top 5% of people are great. So by definition, you can't be great yet. When you're an early career therapists or an early business owner, you can't, but you can do great therapy, you can do great work if you have good supports and good structures and systems to

 

Trisha Cashmere  20:44

fantastic. So well, I'm jumping in. I'm just because of burnout, right? We love talking. We don't love talking about it. But it's it's a live issue. There's huge attrition out of the Allied Health Professions, or all of the caring professions really, do you? Do you have any way your own personal experience, but also, you might be aware of some research that might suggest that that sort of support too, because what you're doing as you're supporting people to achieve great outcomes with their clients, irrespective of theirprofessional stage, you know, do you believe that being able to achieve those outcomes is inoculating people against burnout?

 

Dave Jereb  21:28

Yeah, I think it's a big part of it, you know? Yeah, burnout is something that I've gone on a bit of a bandwagon with lately. And the first part of what I say is that I get so frustrated with the justs, so people will want to fix it for the person and make them feel better. And so people try and just people don't want to hear it when you're not feeling comfortable. And so they say things like, I just need to work a bit harder. Or, or you just need to work less, or you just need to go for a run, or you just need to take care of yourself, or you just need to do some mindfulness coloring in. And it's like just gesture, and it's like and then the person does that thing and it doesn't fix their burnout was they'll feel overworked, overwhelmed out of control. And because it's it's not a just thing, it's like a really complex thing we have to deal with. And so there are sort of two parts that I try and walk people through. One is there is actually an early career roller coaster that you need to ride out with support. And so really, that is and I don't know if you guys have heard of the conscious competence matrix. So you start a new career, and it's new and exciting. And you don't know what you don't know, that's unconscious incompetence, pretty quickly, you realize how much you don't know. And then you start coming down the roller coaster right? conscious incompetence, I'm aware of how little I know, in this job that I do, which is a big shock for all that perfectionist that are graduating at the moment. And so a lot of people burn out at that part because they don't have the right support, they don't have the knowledge that that's a typical part of the process. They you know, they told our you know, if it's the right job for you, it should feel easy, or you should love it, or it should be, you know, like, it's like, no, it's hard work. But it's I love it, because it's hard work. And I love it, because I've got through the roller coaster, and I survived it when other people didn't. And so you don't know you don't know, you know, you don't know. And then you start to know it. And so that's when the other people drop out too, because you think it's gonna get easier. Once you know what to do. But in conscious competence, you still have to think through it a lot. And so when you're thinking it's exhausting. And so that's not easy. either. You need to come out the other side to unconscious competence, where you can do some of your jobs without thinking you have some kids on autopilot, not autopilot. But you're like you don't have to think through every step, you can have your plan and then you can be present, and just enjoy the flow of what's happening. And then reflective competence is you can actually say what you're doing in that time and share it with others. But that's the roller coaster, it's not to you're coming out the other side of unconscious competence and reflective competence that you start to hit flow and feel really energized. So at first thing I do is let people know, this exists. And it's like it's a good three year process to get through that maybe five years, maybe two years if you really dig in. And then it really is more complex than just one thing as well. So I I'm really trying to make sense of this. And I sort of came up with seven S's and then they became five S's and then three S's that are sort of really nine S's, I don't know, but um, it's really looking at I've landed on a term this week that I'm calling supported self development, right? It's not all about you working yourself out. And it's not all about me doing it for you. It's about you working yourself out with my support, knowing when to ask my support and us working together to help you grow and survive early career and roller coaster. So then you can, you know, reach greatness. And so it really comes down to self support and structure. So self awareness to know what you can do okay, what you need help with and know your vision and values like I think landing in a job that fits your vision and values is a big job is an important factor for feeling successful. Support is having professional supports, like everyone should have professional supports. And if you don't have it, you got stacks of choice at the moment, because there's huge demand, you can switch jobs, you can ask for that support and make it happen. Or, you know, if you're getting paid well above what you should be paid, because there's no support, maybe you pay for your own support. You know, like, I don't know that anyone says that. But I'm going to say that it's like, if you're getting paid 20 grand more than you should, because you've landed this job in a rural area that has no support, pay for your support. You want that job, that job fits your vision and values, and you're going to fail, if you try to do it alone, because we're not made to do that one that's a bit rough, isn't it harsh. And then social supports, too, you need to have friends and family or like you need to have people around you. I think that's a big deal. And then structures, things like clinical reasoning, developing new skilled observation, and then strategic practice, just doing it over and over again. And practicing it just some of it just takes time. So that's sort of the ideas I'm thinking with. There's no just in there. It's like a lot of work. But it's worth it. Like I'm an OT, and I think it's the best job in the world. And the idea of occupational therapists, not finding their occupation meaningful. Makes me sad, actually, any Allied Health right, it's really an amazing profession. It is heavy. There is you know, things around the client caseload, I think it's less about client caseload, I think burnout probably has more to do with that imposter syndrome, perfectionism, getting worried about that stuff. And admin admin is another thing that in our profession can heat up. And so, you know, 30 in our clinic, you tend to have a caseload of about 25. And other clinics, you might have 100, if you're doing half our fortnightly versus hourly, weekly with OT, and OT tends to get we get more reports than I think you guys do in, in physio. So but yeah, I think admin burns people out. But um, yeah, so self support structure, I think is the simple way of saying something. That's an incredibly complex thing that is very doable. If you if you find your team,

 

Trisha Cashmere  27:17

think that's fantastic. And where's this going to pop out? What's going on?

 

Dave Jereb  27:22

Well, so I'm working through it. And I'm trying to force myself every week or two to do an Instagram Live, just to force myself to organize another step in it. And then I capture that on otter, and I feed it into chat GPT, to see what comes out of it. And I'm organizing my thoughts. And I don't know when it's going to come out. But anyway, when I'm working through it, I mostly do. I'm using it to support my team and chat about things and just get my ideas around. And the people I'm mentoring, as well. So whether it becomes a something, it's just sort of more of a passion project.

 

Trisha Cashmere  27:53

Yeah, like, sorry about just monopolize this man.

 

Eve Drew  28:00

I'm just like, sitting with I'm so interested in as I said, You'll literally, like, it's like, you can read my piece of paper. No, no, it's perfect. I'm like, I actually just like listening very much to everything that you have to say. And I think, you know, the burnout thing is something that's, I think, a very personal mission of mine, as well. And so that resonated, it is a huge task, but it's something that we do need to keep working towards. So I love that you're trying to bring, you know, a real life concept to life with that, as well. And you've talked about the main contributors. And something that you mentioned earlier, is that, you know, as business owners, we're putting a lot of time and effort and thought into how we can support our teams, because we know that, you know, well being is paramount. But maybe there's not as much thought going into that a lot of business owners are also really struggling. And so that's something I'd love to hear your thoughts about that as well.

 

Dave Jereb  28:55

Yeah, yeah. I know, often, like, I feel like, I still feel like I'm somewhere in the middle of, of sort of, how do I say old and young? I'm not, I mean, more on the old end, but I still act like a kid. So I feel like I'm somewhere in the middle. And I sort of want to marry these two groups, because I feel like there's these people needing support and just everyone's sort of blaming each other for why work why people are burning out and it's, you know, some people are like, there's there's business owners that are like, are they you know, they don't make them the way they used to. And you know, they're not tough, they're not resilient. What do you think's going on with this resilience, and then you've got other people going in these toxic workplaces and these money hungry bosses, it's like, all of those are true. And none of those are true. Actually, mostly, none of those are true. Actually, the graduates coming through, like incredibly passionate, really looking to make an impact credibly enthusiastic, and they haven't failed at anything. So that is a challenge that we need to work with and support them to be able to have a few failures. I've had a lot of fails. So little fails, don't even register on my radar because of the big ones I've had. Business owners on the other hand, and people have this concept of business as sort of this big business, but most business owners in health care didn't get into it because they're good at business, they got into it because they're good at their craft, right. And usually what happens is, they start doing it and only planned to be themselves and then they get fall, and they want to help more people. And now they've got 30 hours of treatment happening in a week and like, I better employ someone, and then they don't have time to support them. And then they're offloading their kids to the new person. And the parents aren't happy because they've gone from the boss to the new. And it's all a bit of a shamozzle.. So when I'm supporting business owners, I'm like, no, no, get to like 16 hours, and then say to the next client, hey, I'm full. But I can take you on as a caretaker role, while I'm employing someone, and I'll take care of you, and you'll get therapy, and then I'll hand you over that little subtle difference is a game changer for business owners to just have the perception of, they were not one of yours that you've offloaded. There's someone that was never yours, and you've supported them. So now you can support the new therapist with them. That's helpful. But most business owners are really terrified, if I'm honest, they're really coming from a place of I'm paying a salary. And what if I, what if NDIS disappears? What if the phone stops ringing? What if this happens, I'm going to lose my house, I'm gonna lose everything for my kids, I'm going to lose all of this, right? How do I find therapists? What if I lose another therapist? There's no therapists out there. And there's this scarcity, that is completely understandable, because they've got all this responsibility. And they're not like, you know, the people you see in the movies in business, they're not making hundreds of times the profit, they may be, maybe making a bit more than they're paying their highest experienced therapist, often, they wouldn't be if they weren't treating themselves, so they're literally trading to pay salary. And you think, how is that possible? I see the dollar amount we billing, it's like, rent cost a lot. And then you've got what we're paying you plus super, plus workers comp, plus all the things we have an asset, like, it just, it does disappear. And so

 

Trisha Cashmere  32:16

plus the coffee machine and the chocolate biscuits. That sounds very . But yeah, this even I were just discussing this just earlier. And it was in the context of the sorts of things you know, as small business owners in the health space that we would like to bring to our teams. But the reality is that we don't have the super profits of a lot of or we don't have the profits that corporates do. So, you know, big business, just do have more money, you know, swishing around that they can invest in things that maybe a small business owners in health, we just actually can't. I don't know, that sounds. Yeah. And

 

Dave Jereb  32:52

sometimes, so. Yeah. And I look, I, we had a turning point, that there was a point where I used to, for a long time, I said, you want to be the best come work for us, you want to earn the best, you're gonna go somewhere else. And yeah, I attracted people that want to be the best. And I attracted good people, we went seven years without losing in OT, it was like, magic. It was amazing. Because we supported the people who support the kids, and we got the right people in there. But there was a point where I looked around I went, That's sucks. Like, you guys are the best. I would bring my own kids to you. Why are you earning less than and well, you're earning less, because I'm supporting you more, you got stacks more support, you've got better job conditions, you've got better resources to work with, this still sucks, right? Then it's harder for you to buy a house than someone who doesn't care as much or like it or someone who doesn't, isn't as good. And so we just really we we had this frank conversation, and we were a bit a little bit bigger. Now, I mean, like, we're not small anymore. We've got three clinics in Sydney, Central Coast and Newcastle, about 25 OTs, right. So we're not small, but we're not big. And there's a lot more risk these days. But we sat down and I said, I want you guys to earn as much as other places. And so here's what we're going to do. I'm going to be open and honest and chat to you about what we need. The only way we can do that the only way we can have the best resources, the best support and pay the best is that we have the absolutely best run business that you've ever seen. Now, that's not being hard ass. That's not charging for not doing a service. That's not no, that's been really good about rescheduling that's covering each other's kids. When someone's out sick, that's coming up with group ideas for holidays and doing that sort of stuff. And this is stuff that people did sort of. They did it themselves, but a little bit sporadic. But once we formalized it and once I say like I really I personally don't care about money that much. I'm doing well enough, I'm happy enough. But I'm gonna make myself care about it so that we have the best run business. And so we did a course called Run like clockwork that helped us really nail our vision and values. That's where we really discovered our organizing principle was we support the people who support the kid If I was getting my sticky notes, I had six or eight sticky notes around the eight important things. And then I had to remove two, if I had to then remove another two and then remove another two and I just said two and, and the last one left was the one I wouldn't give up. And I couldn't break those two and one was supporting the families and one was supporting my team members. And that became support people who support the kids but and then we developed our systems and the team got into creating video systems, and we just up leveled, and became this better run business as a team. And we started talking about KPIs. We never talked about KPIs I hated, I didn't want to focus on dollars, I don't want to focus on numbers. I didn't want to feel like talking about billables. But saying, Alright, here's where it is, this is what you need to hit for me to feel okay. If you go over that, I'll give you a bonus. And so then people started tracking their KPIs. And it was sort of not as something you get in trouble with but just a way you contribute. And you let us know if you're a bit low, we fill you up, and now everyone gets a bonus. Everyone has a caseload that's achievable. We're running a better business. And people get KPI bonuses, every quarter. Most quarters, we have a profit sharing bonus that we do we now offer a maternity leave, as well. Yeah, but it took a fair bit of vulnerability. And it was a huge risk, I guess. But it was it paid off. We've got a team that really, that we call them intrapreneurs on the entrepreneur, I took the risk, Cath, and I took the risk. They don't have any risk, but they do reap some of the profits when they pitch in and treat the business as their own. And that was it's hard. It's hard. But yeah, it's been good.

 

Trisha Cashmere  36:41

Sounds fantastic. I think I'll go be an OT and work for you too

 

Eve Drew  36:44

know I'm thinking the same

 

Trisha Cashmere  36:47

could be an intrapreneur for sure. Going on,

 

Dave Jereb  36:51

maybe have a physio arm it is move about therapy services, because we had always planned to be more multi disc. And we did have speech for a while. And I talked about how I went seven years without losing an OT. And just as we're about to have our first child, which was hard work. And finally we got to having our first child, I lost a therapist that had for six years moved to Newcastle. She then came back and managed my Newcastle practice and now is opening the third practice in Newcastle with around the central coast practice in the I was opening the new castle practice with us. But we lost her to Newcastle village, another one to Fiji lost another one to Adelaide. And our one full time speech he moved to Canada so no one moves to the clinic up the road. But it was like ah, this is why I think it's so we simplified things back to OT one day, I would love to get back to being a multi disc team. So give me a call when we do.

 

Trisha Cashmere  37:44

Yeah, no. I'm not really pediatric person.  to do big people. Yeah, I think I think we all need to know you need to know where you fit in the world, right?

 

Dave Jereb  38:03

Planned incompetence. That's my new favorite phrase. incompetent, planned incompetence, right

 

Trisha Cashmere  38:09

at that time.

 

Dave Jereb  38:10

So everyone wants to be good at everything. You know, I want to be great at zero to 96 or even zero 18 is hard enough. But so, but you can't be great at everything. And the way to be great at something is to plan to be incompetent at almost everything. Like

 

Trisha Cashmere  38:29

it's very sexist. It's a very sexist observation. Yeah, yours.

 

Dave Jereb  38:34

It's not mine. I was thinking. Beautiful.

 

Trisha Cashmere  38:37

No, no, no, no, I'm just gonna dive right in. So I feel like men have been doing that in the domestic realm forever. I don't know how to do insert domestic task. Or I'll leave it to someone who knows better.

 

Dave Jereb  38:48

I didn't know I get a few how you make the best coffees?

 

Trisha Cashmere  38:51

That's nice. I think it's good. Well, I certainly learned how to fix the pool. So that was my mistake.

 

Eve Drew  38:59

Conveniently got planned incompetence around anything to do with outside tasks. And that sounds really gender biased  as well, but it's just I'm not good at that stuff. I think

 

39:12

the poll, I got to

 

Dave Jereb  39:16

look at my transcripts and you can see my planned incompetence. It was like aged care, P Oc. Rehab P. Again, the Pediatrics HD, mental health, D or C, you know, like, you could see, that's fine

 

Trisha Cashmere  39:33

with joy in your, in your professional scope, you know, and then once you've found that space, where you have joy in you can be joyful. I mean, it's still a job, but it's a job that, you know, gives you something every time you there,

 

Dave Jereb  39:44

love what you do. 100% You know, like I, I know a phrase, I hate people like, I don't want to live to work, I want to work to live and it's like, I want to do either I want to love like every minute of my life. I want to love my work and you You know, like, it's this weird thing, where it's like, I love working nearly as much as I love not working. And it's a weird contradiction, but I do like having my not work time. But like, I really get excited to work and do what we do. It's cool.

 

Trisha Cashmere  40:20

I think it's fantastic. I love that.

 

Eve Drew  40:25

Yeah. And you can see that, like, you can see that energy coming through, when you're talking about all of the stuff that you're doing like you your energy, and you look at your look alive. And it's a really lovely ripple effect on everyone. And you know, even Trisha and I today hearing you talk about it, because you're the type of person we need in our industry, we need people that love what they do, and that feel energized. And, and you're the person that is that role model for your team. And they're seeing someone that loves what they do and is passionate about your profession knows what you want to do. And that's that lovely ripple effect that you're having on everyone around you, Dave. So thank you for that energy that you're bringing into health.

 

Dave Jereb  41:04

You're making me teary

 

Eve Drew  41:07

genuinely mean that it's,

 

Trisha Cashmere  41:10

well, the thing is, like, we want health professionals to come into our profession, we want them to stay in our profession. Everyone's scratches their head constantly about, Oh, what's this all about? But I think you've really nailed it, you know, it's giving people the opportunity to be really good at what they do. And you found a way that you can do that in your business. And I feel like a lot of people could learn a lot from you.

 

Dave Jereb  41:32

Yeah, when and, you know, the other big turning point was we were, you know, doing a bit better as a business and things were coming along, recruitment was still hard. And I, and we didn't need it as much. The one thing we do try to do is do what we can to not lose people and have to recruit. But there was a switch to where I went from going, we're going to be the best and so that everyone wants to work from us, it's like, there's more. Yeah, we'll be better than everyone else. And this sort of competitive thing, too. It's like, you know what, let's get like real about our vision. Our vision is not that 300 kids will have meaningful lives, it's an all kids will have I cannot employ all occupational therapists and all people that work with kids. And I don't need a Megamart move about, right. And so that's why we went we have to actually help people. At other clinics, we have to help people who are not working for us, because we need to keep up people in in our profession and doing this work. And, like, the irony is that as soon as I let go of that, and as soon as we started sharing more on social media on LinkedIn, putting free webinars out as well as some really affordable webinars and those sort of things, it just attracts people like it. It's actually really worked for we've had someone with 28 years experience join our team. This year, we had someone who graduated 32 years ago and had sort of a decade of Child and Adolescent training and then, you know, focused on our kids in grade school, our stuff she's getting back in the profession, asked to work with us yesterday. Hmm. Someone with about eight years experience, like approaching me. Yeah, because it's contagious, right? Like it's just there's all this sort of woe is me depressed, I'm depressed, everyone's depressed, we're all depressed, who can be more depressed these days. It's like, actually the world's there are some people that do it really tough. But really, in Australia, we're all in the top 1% wealthiest people in the world, if you count the billions of the rest of them, there's a lot to be grateful for. And if we just sort of focus on living a life of vision and values, things sort of fall into place. I think, maybe that's a bit Pollyanna or something, but seems to be working.

 

Trisha Cashmere  43:41

That's well, I mean, your that's your experience. And I think that the, the fact that you have had the you know, constancy and consistency and growth in your business, and your team speaks to the fact that you're not alone, that that you're, you know, they're feeling it, which is amazing. Because it's a feeling, you know, you want to be a part of something you want, you want people to feel like they're in the right place doing the right thing. And that's just feel so sell the words, but they have to feel it.

 

Dave Jereb  44:08

They do. Yeah. Yeah. And I think our team do it. Like I think, at the moment, knock on wood. We're in a really good spot. I think people are and it's like this hard. People have life stuff, too. That's hard. Not just work stuff. And there are sometimes challenging cases and that sort of stuff. There's a there's a lot of support needed, but it's very doable. And yeah, I think we all love what we're doing. That's cool thing

 

Eve Drew  44:34

is, what a great spot to finish, I think. Thank you, Dave. Again, thanks so much for the energy and the knowledge that you shared so openly. Again, it's that real abundance kind of mindset that you have, how you can make an impact in in your industry and and help the people that help the people in your world and that you're having a big ripple effect. So thank you for everything that you're doing. Thanks for a great conversation and look forward to chatting soon. Thanks Trish. And we'll look forward to catching up again, we're all part of actually a mastermind group together. So we look forward to catching up in person, Dave. hopefully in the near future,

 

Dave Jereb  45:10

maybe one of the business and bubbles nights.

 

Eve Drew  45:13

Yeah, absolutely. That sounds like a good plan.

 

Dave Jereb  45:16

Hey, can I can I plug a conference we're doing at the end of the year, would that be okay? With all this talk about burnout, trauma is a big thing at the moment, and people are quite thinking a lot about trauma informed practice, we're bringing out Kim Barthel, who is just the guru in trauma sensitive practice. From Canada, she's an OT. That really is the the expert in trauma. She's coming out November 24, and 25th. To do a two day live course I decided this year I want to bring back people to connect with each other in person. And so there's that two day live course trauma sensitive practice, you can find it at move about.com.au forward slash courses. And there's a whole bunch of little events that we're throwing in in the lead up if people had sort of earlybird bonuses, but thanks for letting me get the plugin. Oh, absolutely.

 

Eve Drew  46:01

You'll think yeah, we'll share all of your links in the show notes, Dave and on socials and everything like that. So thanks again and we'll chat soon.