Radio Front Desk

Build a successful practice: The confidence masterclass every practitioner needs | Alison Taylor of Jane App

• Jane.app • Episode 14

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This guest is a special one: Alison Taylor — the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Jane.

Before Jane, Ali was right there with you — managing her clinic, leading a team, scrubbing clinic floors, and juggling it all while starting a family. This episode dives into those messy early days, hard-earned lessons, and the traits Ali believes make a truly successful practitioner.

What You’ll Learn

  • Ali’s story from clinic owner to CEO of Jane
  • The role of technology in healthcare
  • The traits that Ali thinks make up a successful practitioner 
  • How clinic culture and intentional leadership shape a thriving practice


Guest Bio

Alison Taylor is the co-founder and co-CEO of Jane, which publishes Front Desk magazine and Radio Front Desk. With a background as a multidisciplinary clinic owner, she has worked alongside her co-founder to create an EMR for health and wellness business owners that’s genuinely helpful. Jane has quickly grown into a trusted, user-friendly platform, offering solutions that make clinic life easier.

Alison’s dedication to supporting small businesses and improving patient care shines through in her leadership style, which emphasizes collaboration, community, and steady improvement — all with a personal touch.


Resources mentioned


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We like to make sure that when we tell you more about Jane, it’s super helpful. Here’s one we think you might like: 

One thing Ali reminded us of is just how important it is to create a smooth, confident experience for your patients — starting before they even walk through the door. Jane’s online booking makes scheduling easier for both you and your patients or clients. With real-time availability, flexible scheduling options, and automated reminders, managing appointments feels effortless. Plus, you can customize the look and feel of your booking site to match your brand, creating a polished, professional presence online — no coding required.


Disclaimer: 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.

Speaker 1:

like when I was working the front desk, it used to drive me absolutely up the wall. When someone would come out and I'd say, when, when does you know so-and-so practitioner, I want to see you again. And they'd be like, oh, I don't know. Like I don't know if I'm supposed to come back, I don't know if they want to see me again. And one of my pet peeves is always just like, oh, just if you think you need it. And I'm like that person does not know the answer to that question. They want you to say here's when you should come back and here's when you don't need to Like what does, if you think you need it, even mean, and so I would have to go back. I'd knock on the door. I'd be like when do you want to see this person again? Because part of feeling cared for when someone's an expert is knowing what. What am I supposed to be doing here? What are the next steps? What am I supposed to be doing here? What?

Speaker 2:

are the next steps. Welcome back to Radio Front Desk by Jane App. I'm your host, denzel Ford. Today's guest is a special one, allison Taylor, the co-founder and co-CEO of Jane. Before creating a go-to software for over 200,000 practitioners, allie was in the thick of it herself. She was running her clinic, managing a multidisciplinary team, scrubbing floors between appointments, and doing it all while starting a family. Like so many of you, she was trying to build something better, not just for her patients, but for her team and her own peace of mind. When the right tools didn't exist, she decided to build them herself. That's where Jane began, in the messy behind-the-scenes moments of real clinic life. In this episode we're going back to those early days the scrappy lessons, turning points and the qualities Ali believes make a successful practitioner. Let's get into it, ali. Welcome to Radio Front Desk. It's such a joy to have you here with us. I would love to kick things off with some rapid fire, fun warm-up questions to get to know you better. So here we go.

Speaker 1:

Is a hot dog, a sandwich? Oh my gosh. I actually think about this all the time. I am going to say no, because if someone says, do you want a sandwich, no part of me is thinking like. So I think, contextually, words or communication is just like what the hearer hears, and when someone says, do you want a sandwich, they're not saying, they're not thinking a hot dog is part of that list.

Speaker 2:

So I'm going to say that because of the functional use of the word sandwich. They're not saying they're not thinking a hot dog is part of that list. So I'm going to say that because of the functional use of the word sandwich, the answer is no. This is a question I ask a lot of people not everybody, but a lot of people in a job interview.

Speaker 1:

If you were an animal, what animal would you be and why? Oh, I have a very thought through answer for this. I actually call myself like sometimes I'll say I'm head jogging like a head jog. And it's like sometimes I'll say I'm head jogging like a head jog, and it's because sometimes I feel like I can put off like this spiky exterior, but it's just to protect a soft underbelly. And so, especially when I'm stressed, I can get, I can head jog, which means that I like I get, kind of I go inside. It's like rolling yourself up, but also I'm like I don't see myself as big and scary so that's why I chug a cold plunge or hot sauna neither.

Speaker 1:

Okay. First of all, slightly ridiculous. I think I have a temperature regulation problem, and so both extremes are bad for me. But I would do a steam room over either okay, because I need the like room with the.

Speaker 2:

What do they put in?

Speaker 1:

it e Eucalyptus, but yeah, neither. And the whole like longevity extreme lifestyle thing is just it feels like a lot. It feels like a lot yeah.

Speaker 2:

All right, this one, I feel, is hard, but I'm going to go with it anyway. If you could trade places with somebody, who would it be?

Speaker 1:

I actually would say my daughter, and it's because I'm a little bit fascinated by the way that the teenage generation right now is experiencing the world differently than it was experienced when I was in high school, because the way they view technology and the way that they interact as peers and social media like growing up in this world.

Speaker 2:

I'd love to know what that feels like from inside a brain. Yeah yeah, they also have so much access to information that I didn't have All right. Thanks for playing our little game with me. Let's dive into the heart of the conversation. So you're the co-founder and co-CEO of Jane an amazing accomplishment. But what many might not realize is that you were also a clinic owner for many years before Jane existed. Can you take us back to that chapter in your life? What was it like owning a clinic?

Speaker 1:

So my parents were both physiotherapists. So I grew up in the clinic world doing my homework on treadmills and filing and putting the color-coded stickers on the charts and all all that was very fun and helping out with reception work. And then I thought I was going to be a physio for a little bit until I realized that I that type of schooling was not a great fit for me and I ended up succeeding in English and so then I was like, okay, I'm, I'm going to become a high school English teacher. And then, as I was going to school, my dad's clinic, their manager, was quitting very suddenly in the summer and he was like, please, can you just take this over, just for the summer, just do me a favor. And I'm like, okay, okay, fine, I'll just do it for the summer. So I went in and I learned the way that this, the clinic, was being managed, was just very like nothing had ever evolved over time with technology. So I was like you know what we could probably like update some of this? So I took a job that was being done five days a week and I turned it into a three day a week job. I was like I can do this while I finish my degree. So I was at school, so I continued to run the practice, finished my degree and then I was just really enjoying running the practice and I ended up brokering a second location to expand into. And then I was having children at the same time.

Speaker 1:

When I graduated from university, I was pregnant with my daughter, avery, and then my midwives needed a place to work, and so this is where I was like, well, I know how to run a clinic and I could just open a practice where you could work.

Speaker 1:

And I had some physios that needed space, that had gone off on mat leaves and wanted to come back into a slower style. One of the things that wasn't happening at the time was this multidisciplinary type of practice. I didn't know anything about that, and so I tried to find people that had some experience in that and meet up with them and say, hey, how does that work for you? And look for space and try to build out a business model, and then just decided to go for it, and then I ran that for 10 years until I just transitioned out of that a couple of years ago. And I will say for the listeners, running a small business was always more stressful and more difficult than running a tech company. So I have like deep empathy for the experience and for how tricky it can be to the margins are tight and the work is lonely.

Speaker 2:

It can be lonely yeah, yeah, you mentioned multidisciplinary practices earlier. I'm curious what exactly you mean by that and why it's such a valuable business model.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well, I didn't even seem like an option, like it wasn't an optional decision I made at the time. It was a necessary one, and that was partially because, well, I was already starting with midwives and physios, but I also knew that I couldn't have all of one. It's a large space. You can't have all of a single type of discipline working there, and then I also was hoping that I would have cross-pollination across the disciplines. So obviously, if you have all physios or all chiros or all massage therapists, one patient is only going to be able to see one person or they're not going to be coming back multiple times in a month.

Speaker 1:

The interesting thing is, I think people who tend to attend healthcare practitioners, like they tend to go to lots of them, like there's a type of person that does preventative care or that seeks this type of healthcare, and so generally it's just it's there's like a symbiotic relationship that can happen by having lots of different practitioners in the same space. And we saw that even with the midwives working out of the space. Then we had like lactation consultants that we were interested in, a lot of pelvic physio and, and actually now the midwives took over that practice and it's fully turned into kind of a women's health practice in a really lovely way. They have nurse practitioners and doulas and it's really like magical how that all can work together so well.

Speaker 2:

Do you think that's common, that when somebody goes into a multidisciplinary business that it's sort of like a need or do you think that there's other reasons?

Speaker 1:

you would do it. So in my experience, people, their networks, are in their own discipline. So when they think I have a room or I have a space I want to rent out or I want to someone to join and expand in my practice, that that's who they know. And not only do they know the people personally, but they also understand that style of therapy. So when I was putting in some extra practitioners, there were some types of therapists I'd never worked with before and one of my favorite things was I'd go for coffee.

Speaker 1:

I'd be like tell me everything, like how did you even know about this type? Like one in particular stands out I had coffee with an osteopath and I had never been to an osteo and I didn't really know what an osteopath did. And I'm like tell me your origin story, how did you even discover this and why was this something you were interested in? How did you get into it? And then I'd say and how is it different? How is it different from these other types of disciplines that maybe have some sort of overlap in the way that they think about the body or think about healing? And it was just so fascinating to actually realize you can learn this stuff.

Speaker 1:

And then I would have to say when you want to find a job, where do you go, where does your discipline go, to learn about employment? It's hard to know even where to go when you're looking for different types of practitioners. So you have to really expand and learn. So there's a lot of reasons why people don't go in this direction Like you have to learn, you have to do, you have to broaden your understanding of all the different types of practitioners and sometimes the different disciplines. They're protective of their scope of care, and so it can take a little bit of kind of relaxing your understanding of patient choice and how different types of practitioners can serve different people in different ways and then finding people who are part of that discipline but in a way that aligns with the way that you practice, so that everyone in the practice is working together. If you're treating the same patient, you'd all be working together, kind of in a team approach.

Speaker 2:

How do you like facilitate that within the clinic? As a clinic owner, you did this. Do you have to like educate the practitioners and have expectations that they refer to one another?

Speaker 1:

or how does that work? As an owner, you get to make the call on who you think fits with your style.

Speaker 1:

So, I say clinics all have like a soul and I grew up in one practice and brokered the purchase of a second and actually opening my own practice. I was really, really unsure of what the soul would be Like. How do we create the vibe of a practice? And the practices that I grew up in and that I was managing were very like community based physiotherapy clinics that had an open gym space, there was a lot of talking, a lot of people that would come in, like we used to have people who were doing knee rehabs, like after knee replacements, and three patients started booking in all at the same time and then they would do a circuit together and they would cheer each other on and you know it was like it was so social.

Speaker 1:

But the practice I opened was much more individual treatment rooms, closed off, kind of spa vibe. And it's not that they're better or worse, it's just that they're different. And I also had to decide how far did I go as far as the different approaches to health care. So I guess typically like considered Western or Eastern, and where do I want to draw my own line for what type of practitioner I'll put into the practice? And that's because I'm protecting the brand and the vibe and I want to create something very intentionally. It's like you have to have intention or it'll just get away from you. You'll build something you don't mean to build, and then now you can see that also.

Speaker 1:

It just kind of happens naturally in between the teams, so they'll start chatting in the break room like wherever, and then they'll find people that work in their style and start referring patients back and forth, and so, as a clinic owner, you put the people in that protects what you're trying to create as a brand, and then internally, your team will naturally align more or less with certain people and then they'll start working together, and that can just happen very organically.

Speaker 3:

Hey there, christina, here Just a quick moment to share that this episode is brought to you by Jane. We know how much heart you put into building a practice you're proud of, and that's why we're here to make things like scheduling, charting and payments run a little smoother. If you'd like to take a peek head to janeapp forward, slash pricing, because we love a good bonus don't forget to use the code radiofrontdesk for a one-month grace period. Okay, I'll keep it short and sweet. Back to the episode.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, let's talk about that group of people. So the practitioners. What makes a good practitioner?

Speaker 1:

A great practitioner. So there's sort of like a personality side to being a good practitioner and sometimes I would interview people right out of school and I'd be like I know that you're going to be great, you're going to be engaging with patients, you're going to build relationship and people are going to want to come back to see you. And the confidence does roll into that. So why? Why is a confident practitioner a better practitioner? And part of it is just their ability to make people feel cared for and to have an opinion on care and then to get people to come back. So a lot of times people think that you need to be good at advertising and when you launch a practice, you do have to let people know. People need to know you exist and you need to get your initial customer base, your patient base. But really every small business and any service business, most of your business, will come from word of mouth, referrals and repeat business, and what creates that environment is a delightful and effective service. So it means that when they come in, they're enjoying the experience of coming in, even if it's when they're in pain or not doing well, and that you are actually helping them get better, and I find that one of the places that I've noticed practitioners the lack of confidence can affect, that is, practitioners who don't know that they're the experts. Like the patient coming in is not the expert, you are the expert. And when someone comes in, they want to be cared for and in this, I think in this world in particular, we don't get cared for a lot and most of us are actually doing a lot of caring for other people and so, no matter what discipline you are, when someone comes in, you are creating a space where you get someone can feel cared for, and I think that's really a magical place to start Like.

Speaker 1:

When I was working the front desk, it used to drive me absolutely up the wall when someone would come out and I would say when, when does you know so-and-so practitioner, I want to see you again? And they'd be like oh, I don't know. Like I don't know if I'm supposed to come back, I don't know if they want to see me again, and one of my pet peeves is always just like oh, just if you think you need it, and I'm like that person does not know the answer to that question. They want you to say here's when you should come back and here's when you don't need to Like what does, if you think you need it, even mean? And so I would have to go back. I'd knock on the door. I'd be like when do you want to see this person again?

Speaker 1:

Because part of feeling cared for when someone's an expert is knowing what. What am I supposed to be doing here? What are the next steps? And so there's a couple of reasons I see people not having confidence in that. One is health care providers often feel like I'm going into this because I want to help people, and sometimes there's a bit of a rub against the financial side of that. I'm like well, I don't want to tell them to come back. If they can't afford to come back, and I'm like they can make that decision. You just need to tell them this is what's going to be the best, or give them multiple options like here's what I think would be the best possible outcome, but here's if you want to do some more of that at home instead. But people want. People want to be cared for.

Speaker 1:

And then the second thing that created really incredible practitioners was always when they were really excited and learning, and so it didn't matter what they were learning like, they'd be out on a course learning about whatever technique it was, and I know a lot of people.

Speaker 1:

You have to do learning in your career. A lot of professions require it in order to keep your certification and qualifications. But a lot of people just check the box on that, like they just do whatever the fastest thing is that they can do. And I know it's hard like it's hard to find time to do intentional learning, but the practitioners that were really passionate about it would bring it into their treatment in a way that was so enthusiastic that the patients and clients become enthusiastic too and they really do feel like this person is continuing to learn and grow and they're becoming more of an expert and I'm going to really benefit from that. And so the ones that are fully booked weeks and weeks in advance, they're ones that are confident that they can help. They set a plan for people. They're not unclear on what that looks like and then they also continue to learn and bring that into their practice. What about?

Speaker 2:

some of the practical nuts and bolts underneath building those relationships, like time management, I know it's.

Speaker 1:

It's tricky I especially for newer practitioners. It's hard because it's it's tricky I especially with your newer practitioners. It's hard because it's really balancing, like, your own life with your career and your profession. But the practitioners that were willing to fit people in at the end of the day when they were in pain, or meet that, meet people where they were, were always ones that and I don't know if it's chicken or egg like maybe it's because those are the people that were more capable at seeing the human side that would have the compassion to fit people in at the end of the day. Who knows, who knows what created that environment.

Speaker 1:

And then I would also talk about schedule management with our new practitioners, where, if you especially if you have the type of service where people need to come multiple times a week and they need to spread that out, make sure that your schedule accommodates that, having some evenings and weekend spots so that it's not just during the work day, like when you're newer, you sometimes need to work those times that are more convenient for people because that's where you're going to build up your case load. And once you have this very strong following, you can be a little bit more prescriptive because people will alter their life to come see you, but when? When you don't? You have to alter your life so that people can conveniently fit themselves in. So there is a scheduling component to it, for sure.

Speaker 2:

What can the practitioners learn from front desk staff?

Speaker 1:

So admin staff typically know why someone is not rebooking, and often actually your admin staff. They want your is not rebooking, and often actually your admin staff. They want your patients to succeed too. So they will prioritize putting people with the people that they think are going to provide the best experience. So I'm always like, oh, you befriend your admin, like you need them to like you if you want to fill up.

Speaker 1:

I had a massage therapist once at my practice that was not rebooking, it just could not build his caseload, but all the other massage therapists were full and he'd worked other places before. And I went up to my admin staff and I'm like, hey, what's going on? Like why do people not return? Like why don't they book back in? And they told me they were like you know what? He tells a story that makes them uncomfortable. And they didn't know what the story was, but they knew something somehow. I don't know how they knew this, but they can glean. Like they don't book in.

Speaker 1:

This is why and I was like weird. So I was like I wonder if anyone's ever told him that. I was like I'm gonna go and tell him. So I went in and I said you know, it seems like you're having trouble getting people to rebook. And I was talking to the front desk and they said that they've heard that maybe it's because you tell a story that maybe makes people uncomfortable. And he thought for a minute and he's like, oh my gosh, I know what it is. And so he told me the story and he told me how he thought how it would be perceived and then he realized the flip side and how it's probably being perceived. In a way he didn't realize the flip side and how it's probably being perceived.

Speaker 1:

In a way he didn't realize and then I was like, yeah, I think that's probably it. And he stopped telling that story and he started getting rebookings. And I was just like you. I could have just said you know, it's not working out, you're not succeeding, and he could have ended up going off and working somewhere else and continuing to tell that story and never succeeding. And I just feel like sometimes it's true. Your admin staff know.

Speaker 2:

How important is it really for practitioners to show up well online?

Speaker 1:

So I did obviously support for all of Jane's accounts. For many, many, many years I was the only support person and there was a practice and there was two practitioners in the practice and I got this feature request like we really need to be able to reorder where practitioners are if they're first or second on the online booking. And I was like weird, okay, okay, like let's look into this. And it turns out that this person it was like an older clinic owner whose photo was just like really terrible. It just did not look professional, kind of looked like almost mean in the photo. And then they'd hired an associate and the associate was smiling, had a beautifully lit photo, and so her feature request was like we need to change the order of these, because it's because she's first on the list that she's getting all the people and I'm not getting anyone. And I was like, oh, okay, I mean we could change the order of these, but that's not going to fix why people are choosing her over you when new patients are booking in, and so 100% the way that you show up online is going to affect the way people book.

Speaker 1:

And then I think one of the mistakes that people sometimes make too is being too inclusive in like I treat 8000 different things and I always think there's this store. I drive by when I drive my son to school every morning and it's like. It's like we make the best pizza, hot pot and tacos in the world and I'm like pretty sure you can't make the best pizza, hot pot and tacos. I'm like the fact that you're saying all of those makes me believe that you're not good at any of them. And so there's something to be said for recognizing that less can be more, and decide on an area you're interested in, and then I think it goes to that whole you can continue to educate yourself in that realm. You can be really excited about it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so back to where we were at the beginning. You are now in the world of technology. I wonder what you think the role of technology is in helping build that patient practitioner?

Speaker 1:

relationship. I mean, I think you know that, like Jane, the original version of Jane was for my clinic. So I opened Canopy in February. It actually opened, and Jonah was born in June. My midwives needed he was sideways and they needed him to turn, and so they're like you have to spend time on your hands and knees like to turn the baby and I just opened, just opened the practice.

Speaker 1:

I was like, don't worry, I'm like literally cleaning the bathroom floors. So I'm like on my hands and knees. I'm like this is perfect, like I'm doing my homework, which I don't do with a practical use of cleaning the bathroom floors in the clinic. So it was, it was a busy time, um, but I also knew that for me as a mom and working, like working, I'm like the only time I have to do this sort of work, like setting appointments or thinking about my own health care or anything, is in the evening, and if you're doing online research and you're phoning people, you're leaving messages, you're not actually like accomplishing what you need to accomplish.

Speaker 1:

So Jane was invented for this reason was that there was no online booking or electronic documentation that would work for my practice, and so Trevor, who's now co-founder of Jane, he was doing the website and branding of the practice and we were talking about building something beautiful and I was also needing this function of I need someone to get to that beautiful website and then I need them to book an appointment so that these practitioners that I'm convincing to join this clinic will end up having actual patients. And so I was showing him all the options. They were all terrible. So he was like, let's just build it into your website. So we built the online booking and electronic documentation, which electronic documentation also was to solve a problem that I couldn't afford paper charting. I needed eight treatment rooms that had income generating space. Like paper records take up a huge amount of space and then same with.

Speaker 1:

Even when I was thinking back to managing the practice, taking it from, I just took things that were done manually and put them in excel and the number of human hours of work that that can save. So I think technology it can both help you with your patient care, but also, obviously, your the administration of a practice can be extremely more streamlined if you're open to using technology, and I think that's only going to get more and more powerful now as technology continues to evolve and we find ways to adopt it into our practices. So I think I mean, obviously I love technology since I got into this world, but I think it's an underutilized skill because often practitioners are not hugely into technology because they're they're hands-on human helpers and so the direction that they've gone is just different. Usually it's very much more on that manual side of things. So it takes some, it takes a bit of a stretch to go into like really being thoughtful about how technology can help.

Speaker 2:

What would you say to kind of encourage or inspire people who are still in that world of hands-on paper or some version of light technology, to kind of move and adopt technology?

Speaker 1:

Unknown is the scariest thing. So when you don't know something, it's always scarier than when you do. I would say just getting over the hurdle of not knowing is actually the hardest part about adoption technology and finding the time to think. If I take some time to do this differently, even though I might know how to do it and it seems fast to me, you have to get through the transition process and then life will it's. It can be so much easier and so much more efficient.

Speaker 2:

As we wrap up here, is there any distilled down lesson from everything we've talked about today that you think could inspire clinic?

Speaker 1:

owners or practitioners. I mean it's nice for me to have the opportunity to maybe speak to the front desk audience because I just want to say thank you, like I think that it's such a privilege for us at Jane to be part of the work that all these practices are doing out in the world and maybe trying to find a delightful way to bring that technology or bring that help, and so I like that. When you join Jane you get a software but you also get like cheerleaders, like people who are really here trying to make your work life better, like our mission is help the helpers and they're doing that real work, caring for their communities, like making people's lives better, and we just get to be maybe hopefully a small like amplifier of making that work easier or more efficient or more enjoyable the stuff that people don't like to do. So I always feel when people thank us, I'm like thank you, why are you thanking us? You're the one doing the actual amazing work out there building these practices, supporting your communities.

Speaker 1:

I really feel like it's an honor to get to be part of that, especially as someone who's not a health care provider myself. So I'm proud of you all. That's well. That's what I want to say I'm proud of you. It's hard work and it can feel very stressful at times and very lonely and like kind of like you're doing something the business side of something that isn't super familiar or comfortable, and you're all doing a good job thanks for tuning in to radio front desk.

Speaker 2:

If you found this episode helpful, it would mean so much to me if you gave it a rating and leave a review letting me know what you think. And if you're a fan, you can subscribe to Radio Front Desk on Apple Music, Spotify and wherever you get your podcasts.