Radio Front Desk
Radio Front Desk is a podcast that talks to real people in real clinics about what it takes to build a health and wellness business.
Host Denzil Ford, Editor-in-Chief of Front Desk magazine, digs into the inspiring stories of folks building their practices from the ground up — including what works, what hasn’t, and everything in between.
Created by the team at Jane App, this podcast is your source for discovering fresh ideas and proven strategies for clinic life. Join us on this journey of building a practice you love.
Radio Front Desk
Rethinking the front desk: Why personalized service isn’t always better for your patients | Dr. Julie Durnan of Ginger Desk
Dr. Julie Durnan is a dual entrepreneur doing something pretty unique: she’s a licensed naturopathic physician who’s opened not one, but two businesses.
The first was a naturopathic clinic in North Vancouver. Then, when practitioners retreated online during the pandemic, she launched a second business - Ginger Desk - a virtual assistant company now serving hundreds of clinics.
In this episode, Denzil talks to Julie about balancing the demands of business ownership, improving the patient journey through admin, advocating for women and her staff, and her creative strategies for efficient and successful clinics.
Read how Julie got started building Ginger Desk in Front Desk Magazine
Dr. Julie Durnan is the Founder and CEO of Ginger Desk - virtual administrative assistants for health practitioners. Ginger Desk hires, trains, and manages industry-trained medical office assistants and matches these Virtual Assistants (VAs) to health practitioners remotely. Their ultimate goal is to empower solo practitioners and clinic owners to achieve administrative freedom.
Dr. Julie Durnan has founded two integrative health clinics and currently operates one of them with a team of 10 practitioners. Over nearly 20 years, she has been deeply involved in running clinics and maintaining a private naturopathic medical practice. She is a community builder and a fierce advocate for supporting women who want to build their careers, focus on their families, and make health services more accessible for all.
This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional medical, legal, or financial advice.
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast host or its affiliates.
Absolutely. I mean, I think the biggest general suggestion I would make, and what I've experienced that didn't work, was creating a bespoke experience for every single patient that comes in through the door. So it sounds so beautiful and lovely to make this concierge experience for our patients, but the reality is things fall through the cracks when we try to do things on an individual level every time. Dr.
Speaker 2:Julie Dernan is a dual entrepreneur with a knack for solving problems. She's a licensed naturopathic doctor and the founder of a virtual assistant company called Ginger Desk, based out of North Vancouver, Canada. Julie's gift for identifying and filling gaps in her business and her deep passion for her patients drove her to launch Ginger Desk. When inefficiencies in her own clinic started to pop up, she came up with creative solutions that are still used by GingerDusk today. We get into some of these strategies and more in this episode of Radio Front Desk. Welcome to Radio Front Desk, a show that surfaces what real people in real clinics are doing to open, run and grow successful health and wellness businesses. I'm your host, Denzel Ford, Editor-in-Chief of Front Desk Magazine by Jane App. Here we have powerful conversations with health and wellness professionals on the business side of clinic life. We hear their stories and discover what works and how to do it, and we also talk about what doesn't work. If you want to check out more stories like this, head to frontdeskjaneapp. Julie, welcome to Radio Front.
Speaker 1:Desk. How are you today, hi Denzel? Thank you for having me here. I'm doing so well, thanks, yeah.
Speaker 2:So you have a lot of aspects to your professional life. You are a naturopathic physician, a clinic owner and the founder of a company called Ginger Desk. So let's get into all of this today. But I wonder if you start with telling me a little bit about your background, your early experiences that you're comfortable sharing, about how you came to be an entrepreneur, a businesswoman and just like who you are today, how you got here.
Speaker 1:So just a loaded question there, that's great yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, I'll start with how I started in practice. So I started here, actually just a block away at Lonsdale Naturopathic Clinic, as an associate and I worked for three years as an associate naturopathic doctor with a couple of amazing other doctors and that was such a great experience and I learned really quickly in my first three years there that I loved practice but I wanted to do it my way and I wanted to create systems and programs that I could control and really build out and evolve. And so I opened my clinic really early on, just two and a half years into practice, and that was my first clinic in West Vancouver. I started it with a practice partner. It was such a fun experience, it was thrilling, it was terrifying and I learned so much in that first five years and that's really how it all started Wow.
Speaker 2:So can you say a little bit about opening your first clinic, because a lot of our listeners are actually doing that or thinking about doing it. So what was that experience like? How did you actually make the decision to do that? What was that experience like?
Speaker 1:How did you actually make the decision to do that. So I made the decision simply because of I wanted the autonomy and I wanted to be able to be so creative in my business, and I realize now, looking back, that it was the creative element that I was really craving as an associate. So, going into it, I have to admit I knew nothing about launching a clinic and I have so much advice for those who are starting their clinic from scratch. I mean, really, we always say to practitioners that 50% of your job is going to be wearing a business hat and 50% is the treatment itself, and I think for clinic owners it's even more. It's like 80% is the business and there's so much we need to learn, because we need to learn all the business systems behind the scenes. So making sure you're doing payroll and paying the government all of those taxes on time, and that's something that often folks overlook is all of the behind the scenes payments that are required for a clinic owner, so things you have to pay out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yes, right, yes, right, so a couple audits later, a couple mistakes under our belts and we really figured it out. And there's so many systems and checklists that go on behind the scenes in a clinic that often associates don't realize and patients don't see and they're just part of building that experience for both patients and associates and I sort of learned those the hard way.
Speaker 2:Right. So one of the things we like to talk about here are the things that don't work. Is there any example that you would be comfortable sharing that didn't work? It was a mistake. And then also, if there were I don't know like a few three tips that you would give as the advice that you said you could give, and then see where we get there, absolutely.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think the biggest general suggestion I would make, and what I've experienced that didn't work, was creating a bespoke experience for every single patient that comes in through the door. So it sounds so beautiful and lovely to make this concierge experience for our patients, but the reality is things fall through the cracks when we try to do things on an individual level every time, and so I talk to my associates about this all the time, about standardizing our treatment plans and really getting our treatment notebooks organized and having our research in line. But we need to do the same thing where the patient experience is concerned at the front desk, and systematizing and standardizing touch points is really the way to improve their experience. And if we try to create a unique experience every time where we bend over backwards, things are going to fall through the cracks. I don't know if you know this about me, and if we try to create a unique experience every time where we bend over backwards, things are going to fall through the cracks.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you know this about me, but I have worked in two clinics, and one of them was a naturopathic physician and a massage business.
Speaker 1:I didn't know this Interesting.
Speaker 2:And they offered what now I wouldn't have thought of it then, but what I would now talking to you call a bespoke experience and what I found in that because I was doing the front desk and what I found in that is that a layer of that bespoke experience was that some of the patients that were longstanding patients that had a really strong relationship with the physician, they would want these communication pathways directly to him but because he had limits on his time, that had to come through me and one of the breakdowns like hearing you talk about this that I remember is like that desire for the patient and then the willingness of him to try to create that with them. Because they came back and he had this almost like responsibility. He felt to have those conversations but he didn't have the time to do it.
Speaker 2:So it was like these conversations that were through me and I remember there just being like this emotional breakdown where like I became this like telephone game and and you end up apologizing when you can't meet their expectations and I would take what he said and I would tell the person and just by the nature of how humans work, I would say the wrong thing and then they would think I was like twisting things. I'm like, no, I think I thought I understood what he said. But anyway I have had this experience in my life. It's very interesting to hear you talk about it.
Speaker 1:And I think that's so interesting that you've had that experience firsthand and it speaks to the fact that when we standardize things, it not only creates a better experience and creates ease for the practitioner, but it also doesn't necessarily mean that the patient is going to have a worse experience.
Speaker 1:In fact they're going to have a way better experience. And if we think about standardization like we think of, let's say, starbucks no matter what your opinion is on Starbucks as a company they have standardized every little bit, and so customer walks in, they know exactly what they're going to get every time, even if it's automated, even if it's from a checklist, it feels good because you know what to expect and it's done according to your expectations every time. And so there's this opportunity, I think, for us as clinicians and front desk staff, to make sure we standardize what we can, and in customer success or in patient success, we call it low touch versus high touch points.
Speaker 1:So, low touch is something that's automated, like it might be a feature in Jane, where it's a reminder that their intake form hasn't been completed yet Versus high touch is maybe we're picking up the phone and asking how their pain is after the visit and it's just intentionally creating this system where both can exist. But we know that to delineate them because we can't be bespoke and have that high touch on every communication or we'll all burn out, right, yeah, so just a little more time.
Speaker 2:On your advice for clinic owners. Do you have some tips that you would give for people on how to open their first clinic?
Speaker 1:Yes, I would say my biggest piece of advice is to think about your patient's journey. Think about the experience they have from the moment they find you or your website online from the time they book, maybe they speak to your front desk staff, maybe they get their intake form sent to them online and then their drive to the clinic, or their click of a button to get to the virtual telehealth appointment, and then the time of payment and then the experience after rebooking their return consult. So think about the entire patient journey, and somewhere in there you're going to find obstacles and gaps, because there's no way that, as a new clinic owner, you'll have captured all of their problems.
Speaker 1:So one example is for many years at my clinic, which is located in North Van. We're up on the third floor above the library, and it can be tricky for patients to find us the first time, and so we used to tell them verbally before their consults look, here are the instructions, take this elevator to the third floor, walk down the hall, blah, blah, blah. Until one day we decided we have so many issues where patients would call us lost on their way to the clinic, so we decided to make a video showing them the experience of actually driving down Lynn Valley Road, spotting the clinic building, driving into the parkade, finding the elevator, and it made this huge difference where they just had to visualize, they just had to watch the little video clip.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love that and so it's so simple. I love this, too, because people are when they're opening their first clinic. I've heard a lot of people. They often choose a space that's just the space that is there. You can't always pick a space that is like the perfect dream space, so you might have to have, like this interesting pathway to get to the front door. That's right.
Speaker 1:And for us we chose. We wanted to find a location that was centrally located, where community gathered anyway, Because if it is a drive out for folks, they're not going to come in to pick up their magnesium or to get a quick B12 shot if they have to go way out to the Boone Hills. But what we also wanted was really good parking and free parking.
Speaker 2:So we chose that location.
Speaker 1:For those reasons it did require a little bit of, you know, support to get there in the first time, but after that we won them over because we have gorgeous windows that open Right. That makes everyone happy, I love it.
Speaker 2:I love it. Okay, two more tips.
Speaker 1:For new clinic owners. I think you know if you're looking to hire associates. That's another tip I have is make sure you have something to offer them. So often I see new clinic owners think that people are just going to gather because they have a beautiful space, and that's not always the case. So I think, as a new clinic owner, you need to be inspiring your associates with either mentorship or some marketing support. Marketing is a big one, and if you can drive traffic to the clinic, then you will have people just dying to get into your clinic as an associate.
Speaker 2:I love that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And then another one hit the pavement. So, as a clinic owner, I would say and I say this to new associates as well don't just hide in your room and go on Instagram, but get out there and meet all of the neighbors, find other health practitioners in your area and other business owners who are at the same level as you are. Let them know you're opening your clinic. Speak so highly about the people you work with all the time and really get everybody excited that you're coming to the neighborhood, because it's a really, it is a really exciting thing. And you know, when we opened our clinic, we had a big grand opening party. We invited the mayor to do a ribbon cutting ceremony and mayors love that stuff. So invite the local politicians, invite the local community I love that and invite all the business owners to maybe put in a raffle prize and and really make it a fun event so because you like systems.
Speaker 2:Another thing you might know about not know about me is I also think in systems to the point where I almost can't not do it, but I I wonder if we could just dive into that a little more. Why does this work? Because many people I've talked to you have mentioned this the idea of getting out there, meeting people, going to events, showing up, having your clinic brand present how does that work? Like what is actually the mechanism to make that physical presence turn into someone coming into the clinic?
Speaker 1:I mean with that. I think it's just passion. I think people want to hear your story and they want to. They they love being excited about something new and fresh and if we have to be our best marketers and we have to believe in our story and our business like nobody's business, so I think that's what it is is people follow passion and they're excited to hear what you're building Right. I think that's all it is. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2:Okay, let's switch gears to Ginger Desk. So would you tell me what that is we are going to need to build from the ground up, because I really want to take our listeners on a journey to understand how you got there and then what it is and like how it works and what the benefit is.
Speaker 1:So great. So Ginger Desk is a tech-enabled platform that provides on-demand pre-trained professional virtual medical office assistance to allied health practitioners.
Speaker 2:Okay, and so you hire a team of people who are there to answer the phones, and then what do they do?
Speaker 1:So we have a whole team of real-life humans doing the work, and our team is mostly women or women-identifying folks who are enabled by technology. So we're really good at using tech, such as Jane, and then other platforms as well, and we use lots of other tools to do our jobs really, really well. So we do everything your front desk can do besides greeting the patients in person and cleaning the room between consults.
Speaker 2:Okay, Wow, okay, and so from my knowledge too, there was a lot of like treatment questions that would come from through the front desk. How do they handle that? Is it just like message taking?
Speaker 1:That's a great question. I mean it depends what the question is. So if it's a simple question that might have been already located in the treatment plan, we could look it up. We'll have access to Jane's so we can go in and see. If it's something that really is medically specific, we'll send it over to the doctor and then reply on behalf of the practitioner.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, wow, I did not know that. Wow, that's really cool. That is like actually like front desk people.
Speaker 1:Yes, we do exactly what the front desk does. I love it.
Speaker 2:Okay, so how did you tell us the origin story of Ginger Desk?
Speaker 1:So we launched four years ago out of my own integrative health clinic and I started Ginger Desk with my amazing front desk manager, jennifer, and I saw that there was a big gap that a lot of my colleagues were constantly telling me, like how do you manage all of your labs and how do you handle your faxes and your release of records? And I would tell them my staff does it, does it yours? And I realized that there was so much that these practitioners were doing on their own. They were sending emails between consults. Some of them were sending out invoices after hours or returning phone calls. And I sat down during that time with a good friend of mine, a good colleague of mine, for a tea and I really asked her like what is happening in your clinic and why aren't you getting the support you need? And it sounded like she was doing about 50% of the own admin on her own. And I think that's quite common in multidisciplinary clinics where the front desk has a hard time being everything to everyone. When they're originally hired from one discipline so let's say, an RMT hires them, well, the physios may not get the exact support they need with respect to exercise prescriptions.
Speaker 1:So it was then that I thought, well, why don't I, just, why don't I consider launching a pilot project? And let's see if I could offer my colleagues something that's similar to what I've already built over these last 15 years in my clinic. And so we got to work and we developed an office manual, we hired three virtual assistants, I did one webinar to my colleagues and we launched it. As just that, this is a pilot project. We've got a wait list here. Please join us. We're only accepting five clients and we had this massive wait list already.
Speaker 1:So we knew we had something, and so what we did was really document all of the successes and all of the failures that we had in that first three months of business. And within three months, we not only had five really happy clients practitioners but we also had a massive list all across Canada. So by January of 2021, we launched all across Canada and then by May 2021, we were all across the US. So it was really clear to me very quickly that my colleagues needed the support, that they didn't have their systems in place. They were struggling with staff retention issues, which is probably the biggest reason that clinic owners hire us is that the staff turnover rate is just so high and that constant pain of hiring, training and then managing a staff member, only to have them quit and have to do that cycle all over again.
Speaker 1:It's just so expensive. Yeah, so yeah, and then I left practice, and the rest is history.
Speaker 2:Wow, wow, congratulations. I mean that is quite a story. Thank you. So can you talk to me about the systems and like what your I guess I want to know like what your original systems were when you were a clinic owner and then how you translated that into Ginger Desk.
Speaker 1:Well, and that's such a great question because it's very simple and it's back to that client journey we were just talking about, but it's really tracking what is the patient journey through the clinic and then documenting all of those touch points where there might be gaps, there might be questions from them, there might be a form they needed to fill out, like what are the ways that we can make the front desk experience a lot more efficient and organized and then the practitioner's time protected, and so, going through that, there are standard workflows that work for 90% of clinics, and so what we've done is we've implemented those workflows every step of the way and then we can customize them or add that little bespoke concierge experience when needed.
Speaker 2:Right, do a lot of the gender desk. Your customers I guess you call them customers.
Speaker 1:Practitioners.
Speaker 2:Practitioners? Do they also have humans in the clinic at the front desk to greet, as you were saying, and do cleaning or whatever, but it's like takes a load off of them. Is that what is happening?
Speaker 1:That's a great question. So 50% of our practitioners are solo practitioners where they might be renting just a simple space that doesn't have a front desk. They might be doing telemedicine, or maybe they're an associate in an integrative clinic where they're just not getting everything they need from the front desk, and then the other 50% of our practitioners are clinic owners where they've got that pain point of having the staff hiring cycle that is relentless and their front desk staff is overwhelmed.
Speaker 1:So there might be dedicated tasks that we do so here in Canada. We might do some direct billing for clinics, for example. That we do so here in Canada. We might do some direct billing for clinics, for example, so that you can leverage the fact that the front desk staff is there in person so they're there to greet folks, clean the rooms between consults and we can handle the billing behind the scenes. That's one example.
Speaker 2:And are you in Canada only right now?
Speaker 1:Both. We're both in Canada and the US.
Speaker 2:Oh fun, very cool, yeah. How do you I'm drilling in a little, maybe too far, I don't know, but I'm actually curious how do you handle the like the insurance side of everything that goes on in a US clinic?
Speaker 1:In the US. So we're not billers and we don't claim to be, so we work really well liaising with billers Right, and we'll do insurance pre. So that's a huge lift for clinic owners and yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, very cool. Okay, so talk to me about. My understanding is that you have an opinion on like the service that Gender Desk offers in terms of how it can impact stress in the clinic. Yes, and so would you talk about that for a little bit?
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and I'll say that what's been really cool about running this company is finding out the other impacts that we can have on practitioners and their patients. So when I set out to launch Ginger Desk, it was to support that colleague that I had tea with. It was to find a way to support these practitioners who didn't have the systems, who didn't have the support, who had staff hiring issues, didn't have the systems, who didn't have the support, who had staff hiring issues. But what I've realized along the way from surveying our practitioners is that we're also having an impact on their patients. So we surveyed all of our practitioners recently and found that we can relieve stress in patients by 75% just by adding a VA to the clinic, and that goes to show you that patients just aren't getting what they need.
Speaker 1:And when we think of really busy, overwhelmed clinics, so often, right, there's a slower response time or maybe questions aren't getting answered or they find it hard to get in off the wait list, and so it really can have a health impact on patients to have some extra hands in there. The other thing we found is that our response time in clinics has changed dramatically. So clinics come to us I mean often I'll meet a practitioner on a discovery call here at Ginger Desk and I'll get their autoresponder that says I'll get back to you in the next 72 hours. And that always surprises me like oh dear. These patients are waiting three days sometimes for a response In clinics. I know we try to get back to them within 24 hours, but when we've added a VA on average in clinics we've seen that there's been an improvement in response time by 50%. So that plays into their stress levels. For sure Is that we can make just such an impact by standardizing systems, getting an extra set of hands in there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting because it seems like there's so many. You're hitting all the humans. You're hitting the owner, the practitioner, the front desk staff, the patients and you're just creating this extra layer of, I guess, process. I'm going to say that that adds to the overall wellness, which is so interesting because it sounds like, you know, like assistant, virtual assistant, front desk. It seems so businessy.
Speaker 1:It does.
Speaker 2:The impact is actually very much on the human side of it.
Speaker 1:It is. And it's interesting because I even didn't. I didn't know what we would accomplish. I didn't set out to intentionally excuse me to intentionally boost patient outcomes, and I didn't. I didn't expect that we would make the front desk happier either, but it's so awesome to see that what started out as a project to support my colleagues has ended up supporting this whole community of people. And I mean I'll also say that it's been just such a pleasure to watch our own team of VAs grow and prosper, because they come to us as MOAs that were previously working in brick and mortar clinics and they were exhausted by the commute and they were feeling overwhelmed often in practice. So it's been really amazing to offer them a chance to really build their careers remotely while they also support their families and their household and their personal goals, all while climbing the career ladder.
Speaker 2:I love that. How do you train them? Because I'm just thinking about even just one multidisciplinary clinic. There's a lot of you're saying that there's standardization that works. So how do you train them with that standardization? And then whatever pieces need to be trained to offer more bespoke experiences where required, on a low volume maybe.
Speaker 1:That's a great question and I could do a whole podcast on this aspect alone but I won't.
Speaker 1:I'll try to keep this succinct. So we have a program at Ginger Desk called Ginger University. So we've developed this over the last four years and we've been refining it and really it's become its own department and community on its own. So because we hire medical office assistants who have experience working in clinics. Already what we realized was there was this huge gap where they didn't know the allied health practitioners or health and wellness practitioners, so they might be more medically slanted.
Speaker 1:So we put together a whole training on how to support allied health practitioners and also how to use Jane for example how to do direct billing here in Canada, how to do the insurance pre-auth in the US, because this really is a different job for them, where it doesn't exist out there, and so we've had to create our own training that really serves them. So they're learning the scope of practice, for example, on different disciplines, so they have me directly with access. So they learn a lot about lab assessments and what labs we might prescribe as NDs. But then they also get to know PhysiTrack and how physios are prescribing exercises. There's so much that they need to know. So we've got a really robust 100-hour training program that is mandatory for every VA that comes in, even if they've worked for three to five years in an existing clinic.
Speaker 2:And then do you have how do you like. Where is the content of that course? Is it in a learning management system.
Speaker 1:Is it in? Exactly it is. It's all automated. We've got videos and PDFs for different learning abilities, and then we have lots of shadowing opportunities. So we have a role at the company called Ginger University Manager and then we have a Ginger University Mentor and so people are taken through the modules really carefully, we hold their hands, there's lots of time for questions and then there's lots of live shadowing on calls with our senior VAs.
Speaker 2:I love that so much. Another nugget from my life. One of the first things I did at Jane was create Jane University.
Speaker 1:Did you and?
Speaker 2:it's sort of how the whole team that I'm on now like kind of emerged was creating these courses for Jane and it kind of went both for our customer support team and for our customers. We never got a learning management system and that program is being revamped now by another team and I think they're going never got a learning management system and that program is being revamped now by another team and I think they're going to get a learning management system finally.
Speaker 2:but it's interesting to hear you talk about it, because I kind of that was one of my early things at Jane, coming from an academic background, and then I was like hey, I can build courses if you want them, and so that's that's how I'm here today. That's my like origin story little bit.
Speaker 1:Oh, that is so cool, and I remember the days when it was Jane University, because it's Jane Guides now, exactly yeah, so that's so interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's awesome and our platform that we use and I'll say the name of it it's Thinkific, because we're so proud of Thinkific, and I love that it's a Vancouver-based company, yeah, and so it's so cool that we're we're very friendly with Thinkific.
Speaker 2:They're a great company. Awesome, yeah, that's great. Okay, so you were talking about automation a lot, so I wonder if we could dig into that a little bit more. Just I don't know. Maybe even like I'm asking you philosophically like what is the role of automation in all of this, and then like a little bit of what it actually looks like, well, that's that it's such loaded question, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Because, like we're in this world of tech that is very fast moving and AI is here and it's clearly here to stay. And I'll say that we totally embrace all of it. And this is actually one of the tangents I'm going to go on here is that we just did an investment round at Ginger Desk. We just raised Congratulations, thank you, we finished, we just closed a round with some investors and in bringing on the investors, I was required to pitch Ginger Desk and our attraction to date and my vision for the company, and I was always very clear with the investors that we are a human powered company, we are tech enabled and that is our power, that's our superpower.
Speaker 1:And I had a lot of investors come on board who would be like okay, so how are we gonna replace this aspect with AI and where are we gonna reduce the team with AI? And my answer was always we're not. We're always gonna empower them with the tools so that they can do their jobs better, because humans, we make mistakes and there are different aspects of our personalities. Maybe that we need to standardize for different clinics. We can do that with automations. You know, we can use chat, gpt when possible, and we can improve accuracy rates and we can standardize maybe some common forms that we're always creating. There's so much available to us, but we don't ever want to lose that human touch, because it's so critical and for us it's the heart of our company. We are human-powered first, and then we are tech-enabled second, and I'm so proud of that and that's why we can deliver compassionate care to patients and we can add those little concierge touches, because we're humans.
Speaker 2:I love that we have our own journey with AI, and a lot of the conversation early on was this is going to Jane doesn't talk about replacing humans at all, never but it was definitely like how can we become more efficient with AI? What I found found, though, is in everything that we do, it actually just transfers the work, so you put less energy into sitting and thinking of raw ideas and less energy into maybe, certain types of first drafts, but then, once you have that automated version, the work just transfers over. To now. We got to edit it to make it what we really want it, yeah, so yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1:You've still got to be creative in the end, yeah, and you've got to oversee the work yeah, but it's there as a start and you're still making the decisions about what good, what's good, what's not good.
Speaker 2:What do we actually want to say here? Yes, yeah, and all that is so important. It's not. These conversations can become so polemical and like it's such a political debate, but it's like there's actually just a really practical thing going on here Exactly, and that's how we see it exactly.
Speaker 1:It's so like we embrace it and like let's look for areas where we can better automate our jobs to make our jobs more enjoyable. Yeah, and so we've also. Just, we're about to launch our new tech platform oh, tell me about that. So it's called Ginger Stack. I'm so excited about it, and we are launching it next month to the team and it will be a behind the scenes support for all of our VAs. So from a client's perspective, it will completely revolutionize the way we onboard clients and then, operationally for the VAs, it's going to make their jobs so much more efficient and so much easier. So we've got all of the workflows that we've developed over the last four years populated in our new platform, and so it will improve the accuracy of our VAs immensely Okay.
Speaker 2:So it's the workflows that are in the stack, exactly Okay, interesting. I was wondering if it was like a set of technology that you were recommending to people, but it's more just the workflows.
Speaker 1:Exactly, it's an internal technology for the VAs only.
Speaker 2:Oh, I see, and it's got all their workflows, I see. Okay, so you're making your team more efficient to help everyone. Wow, exactly, yes, thank you. Is there anything else that you wanted to bring up about Ginger Desk? I feel like I went through a lot of the curiosities that I had, but is there anything else that you wanted to discuss about? Oh, thank you, alex. I'm just going to break the fourth wall there. Where did the name ginger dust come from? I love it.
Speaker 1:So I'm a naturopathic physician and in traditional natural medicine the herb ginger can do virtually everything. So in practices ginger desk does virtually everything oh, that's amazing.
Speaker 2:I love that I also love ginger. I do, I love that I also love ginger.
Speaker 1:I do too. I love it. Yeah, I love ginger tea. I love the root. It's great, yeah.
Speaker 2:My favorite is, you know, like in a juice. Yeah, delicious. Like ginger and turmeric.
Speaker 1:Because it's a bit spicy yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So is there anything I missed about your company?
Speaker 2:that is because I I mean, I think we could sit here and talk for three hours about I mean ins and outs of it and how it works and like the automation and all of this like, um, the workflows, like what are the workflows? Maybe that's something like what are the actual workflows that are, like, the most used? I I guess that are kind of common across most of the businesses and I'm asking that because our listeners might be starting their businesses and they might not be thinking in this way of operating their front desk as a system.
Speaker 1:Yes, so well. The first system I would say that a lot of people don't consider is patient recalls, so we sometimes call them patient reactivations, but often a really busy front desk will be just putting out fires in a reactive state.
Speaker 1:And they don't actually have like a chunk of devoted time where they can sit there and do some revenue building for the clinic. And so what we do is we'll create a whole system, pulling reports in Jane, we'll see who hasn't been in in 3, 6, or 12 months and create a spreadsheet and we'll go in and send them either customized or standardized emails to get them reactivated.
Speaker 1:And this is such a value add that a lot of clinic owners and practitioners don't think about, or they think they don't have time for it or they think that they have to do it.
Speaker 2:But often the patient doesn't need to hear from the practitioner, it can absolutely be from their assistant and to them just having that reminder can be so valuable, and we've seen folks increase their overall revenue by 30 to 40% just by adding those patient reactivations in Interesting A lot of the people we have talked to mentioned that and they kind of they're not in your world so they're not thinking that way, but they are talking about that callback process and some of the advice that others have given is, like you know, don't feel like you're bugging people too much and just get out there and make the calls and you're kind of upping the level a little bit and saying not only make the calls but have someone else do it for you. Exactly.
Speaker 1:Yes, and then create a system for it. So every month we're going to target 500 of our existing clients, so 125 clients are going to get custom emails every week, or maybe they're just getting a templated email per week. It's totally up to the practitioner but creating the system around that, and so we've got workflows for how we handle that. If we get their voicemail, or if they don't respond, what do you do then? And it's just about mapping out the process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. That's great. Is there one more workflow that is top of mind that people really benefit?
Speaker 1:from Definitely the initial patient workflow. I think some clinicians, when they're new in practice or maybe they've just worked in another clinic for so long they don't think about the possible impact that they can make on this whole patient experience when they first come to your clinic. So we want to check in on whether their intake form has been completed, because if it's not in, then that practitioner is going to have to sit there for 15 minutes in a paid visit and actually collect all that information. So there's a whole workflow from the point of booking where we make sure that maybe their labs are in, maybe there's some records we need to get, check that their intake form is in and then a thank you afterward can go can be really powerful.
Speaker 2:The intake form one is interesting too, because I believe that you get a different answer if you're sitting there in the office under this time pressure of the paid visit and waiting for treatment that you're trying to fill it out, versus when you just do it at home. So I bet you that's really appreciated on the patient side too.
Speaker 1:That's right it is, and it just made me think of also like there are different learning abilities in patients.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1:And we've had folks who come to us and they're like look, I can't fill this intake form out like this. I just my brain doesn't work that way. And so the VA will just pick up the phone and actually phone them and go right into Jane and fill out the intake form for them. So they'll verbally ask them the answers to the questions and make such a difference, and so it's there. That would be a bespoke or concierge experience.
Speaker 2:That's what I was thinking. Yeah, on top of your standardized new patient workflows. I love it. This is so great. Would you talk to me about, like, dual entrepreneurship? What does that feel like to you and how do you move through that kind of relationship? And I do think it's probably very much a relationship. So how does that work for you and what's your thoughts on that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great question. I mean I'm certainly busy. I've got a clinic, a company, I have a family. I've given up my practice. That was one thing that absolutely had to go. I always say you can have everything but you can't have it all at once. So I know this from experience. But I find that the experience for me has just been so fluid because I am one person who has a clinic and I have this beautiful company and everybody. I'm very transparent with everyone I work with. So if I'm in a clinic meeting and talking to my doctors about tricky cases, ginger Desk will often know that I'm in that meeting. They can look at our shared calendar and then I often talk about Ginger Desk will often know that I'm in that meeting. They can look at our shared calendar and then I often talk about Ginger Desk to my clinic team. So it's really amazing I have such an incredible team on both sides and because Ginger Desk was born out of my clinic, for me it's just been one big fluid experience and it's been so special.
Speaker 2:Would you be interested in talking about how you pick that team, because I am. I know it's something that our listeners all are grappling with, but it's also something that I'm really picky about. So I wonder, and I feel like I have been lucky to create an amazing group of people who I couldn't do any of this without them. But how do you make that decision about who's a good person to bring?
Speaker 1:in In either company, like whether it's an associate or whether it's an employee at Ginger Desk.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think for me, I have a few non-negotiables, I have a few things that I'm looking for in everyone, no matter what their role is across my team. So I'm wondering if you have things like that too.
Speaker 1:Yes, I sure do, and I'll say I mean we were looking for a value add in terms of culture. That's one big thing is we're not just looking for somebody who just blends right in. We're looking for an ad, so somebody who has a different perspective, a different upbringing, some new ideas that they can bring to the table. So that's one thing. But then what we do look for is values alignment. So we're absolutely asking folks like where have you excelled in your life before, even if it was in high school? We want to hear about really amazing experiences and something that they're really proud of.
Speaker 1:And I find that we can't ever hire the wrong person when we ask that question, because when we hire these top excellers, as long as they're in values alignment with us, they've always really won. Especially at Ginger Desk, we've seen that play out. But values alignment is so important. So, looking at, I don't let them know what our core values are when I first meet them, but I'll ask them to give some examples of how their own values play out in their life, and we're looking for things like integrity and personality and efficiency with resources. Right, right, of course. Yeah, I love that. Do you have any like special questions that you ask, like one question that you always ask, and they always get a little bit stumped and they want to think of something that was just like an accolade from their professional career. But what we're looking for is just any time where they can show that just as a human evolving.
Speaker 2:They were really proud of themselves. I love that. What would you answer to that question? I feel like I have a bucket full of things that you could say, but what would your answer to that question be?
Speaker 1:When was a time that I was really proud? I think closing this last investment round for Ginger Desk was one of my biggest accomplishments. Yeah, I love that, to really see that our company has come to life in a way that I can speak about it publicly and be really proud of our traction, because you need to really lay it all on the table when you're talking to investors Like you can't hide anything. And I was so proud that we had nothing to hide and I was like, ask me anything.
Speaker 2:This company is amazing. Love it. I also love that. I'm really a fan. I'm learning of stories where things that are going really well. It kind of started from a place of like I wasn't really intending for this to happen. Yes, I just love stories like that. Jane is kind of a story like that where our founders were like, well, we just thought it would be like a small thing in Vancouver and so yeah.
Speaker 1:I love their story.
Speaker 2:I learned to appreciate that, and some of the clinic owners that we're interviewing for the podcast are like that too. They're just like I don't know. I just kind of was doing something and then it went really well. I love that story.
Speaker 1:And we follow our passion, right, yeah, and I think clinic owners need to consider that is like when we follow our passion and we really understand our zone of genius, we can do these amazing things and we just need to get help. We need to right, bring the team in that can do all the things that you're not amazing at or that you don't like doing. Yeah, and then really, when you're following your zone of genius and your passion, oh my gosh, there's no limit to what we can create.
Speaker 2:I love that. There's no limit, yeah. So what's? You've talked about your round of funding.
Speaker 1:You about your round of funding. You've talked about your new ginger stack what is next for Ginger Death? So we are launching, in the fall, live phone answering, and this has been coming for four years. We have prided ourselves on being all things automated and efficient behind the scenes digital and what we're seeing is that there are a lot of clinics out there that want us to answer their phone, and they want us to do so in the ginger way of things, where it's systemized, it's automated, it's really supportive and compassionate, and so we are. We do realize that folks have different learning abilities, and so for some clinics, they do just need someone to answer their phone. So we're launching that this fall and we're so excited.
Speaker 2:Wow, exciting. Do you have to grow your team to do that?
Speaker 1:We do so. The team is growing and we couldn't have done it without the tech stack that we've just created, GingerStack Right. So I'm so excited to have that launch so that we can offer this new service to clinics.
Speaker 2:I love it. I love it, I love it, thanks. Well, thank you so much, julie. I think we have extracted so many things that people are going to love to hear and listen to this conversation.
Speaker 1:So thank you for being with me. This is great, this was so fun, thank you.