Tristan White

One of the great things we love to do a SmartCompany is follow an entrepreneur as they grow their business. Tristan White from The Physio Co is a great example – he’s featured on our Hot 30 Under 30 list, in our Start-up Awards on in our Smart50 Awards. Revenue in 2009-10 was $1.6 million and is growing fast thanks to the ageing population. But while White is arguably in a sweet spot of the economy, he is purposefully growing at a measured pace so that he can focus on cementing the culture of the business. Today he talks to us about building that culture and why he’s prepared to fire staff that don’t measure up.

How are you seeing 2011 for The Physio Co.?

It’s looking fantastic for the Physio Co. Just on Wednesday this week we had three new team members join us and we’ve got another five lined up for the next month, so we are growing rapidly in 2011. We’ve got new team members, lots of new work and it’s looking like another year of fast growth. With a bit of luck we might make the Smart50 list again.

Are people your big problem? It sounds like there is plenty of work out there, but you just need staff.

Absolutely. The niche that we’re in is physiotherapy for aged care and the demand for work is really strong, the pipeline for 2011 is looking fantastic. We need more people, more physiotherapists. But not just any physios, we need what we call TPCers. We need to attract and find the right people to deliver the service for us.

How difficult is get any physio at the moment, let alone ones you really want?

We’ve chosen a small niche and we’ve chosen a small pool of people to try and select. At the moment there are not that many people out there with physio degrees but fortunately there are a number of new physiotherapy courses that are producing graduate. So there are more and more physios in the pool, but the fact is that we are looking specifically for people who want to work in aged care, want to work with oldies and also who share the vision of The Physio Co. So they’re the two key factors in selection, for us – a passion for aged care, for helping oldies, and secondly to join in the journey that The Physio Co is headed.

It’s always a hard decision to choose between people with experience and those graduates who you can perhaps mould into the sort of staff member you want. How do you approach that?

We’ve got a nice balance between experienced physios and young graduates and the fact is that the experience versus graduate factor isn’t as significant for us as much as the cultural fit. And do you know what? The right people are finding us, we’re not necessarily having to find and seek out the right kind of people. But we don’t have a preference for graduates or for experienced people. It’s quit simply the right culture fit.

It must be satisfying that your brand as an employer has reached the stage where people are coming to you.

It’s pretty exciting. As we said we need more and more people and for The Physio Co brand to be strong enough to be able to attract people is absolutely fantastic. One thing that has got us there is our commitment to our vision and our core values, but you’re probably aware we made it to the BRW Top 20 places in 2010 and that’s certainly been very helpful to attract more and more people to our organisation.

Now, it’s a great little spot for you to be in. The pipeline of work is full, the demographics are in your favour, the population is ageing in the right way. Is there a temptation to just try and get as many warm bodies as you can and do as much work as you can? Why have you resisted that?

It’s about the long term, James. Many entrepreneurs, me included, are opportunists, but the long term view in my opinion is much more sustainable and we want to be around in 10 years, 15 years, 20 years time because that’s when there is going to be a peak in our demographic. The oldies moving into aged care, they’re not just there for the moment, they are here for the next 20 or 30 years. So we want to get it right and grow with that demand rather than hit it hard right away and potentially damage our brand for the future.

Do you sit there at the end of some months thinking there could be a lot more cash coming in? Or do you have to stop yourself from thinking that way?

Yeah, there’s a lot of discipline and focus required in the way we go about doing business and if you start looking at dollar signs then it’s going to be very, very distracting. So we are absolutely committed to our vision and the way we are growing at a steady rate. But I can certainly see the dollar signs could light up if you weren’t careful.

Your focus on culture is clearly a key part of the strategy. Was there a key mistake you made early on that planted that seed?

Getting the right people into our business is critical and I made some errors in the early days of our business by just putting bums on seats so to speak and that didn’t work out so well. I really needed to find what the purpose of the organisation is, what the values were and be very, very specific in using those to select the right people. So yes, absolutely I made some mistakes. It wasn’t disastrous but it made me really stop and think about where we were headed and how the right people are critical to where we are going.

How did you work out what the company’s values were.

Look what I did was I read quite widely and the most helpful book or approach that I used was Verne Harnish’s Mastering the Rockefeller Habits. But probably more that the reading and the research, the most important thing I did was to get the hell out of the business. I went overseas with my wife for two weeks, we were in North America and I was absolutely focused on what are the values for this organisation and what’s it going to look like in five year’s time. 

Can you take us through a couple of the most important values?

There’s four values and they are not just generic statements, they’ve actually got a paragraph that goes with each and every one of them. Under the value of “respect everyone” it says we’re always on time. It’s as simple as that. There’s some simple little messages that says we do what we say we’ll do, we’re always on time, we communicate in clear, concise and honest ways. So respect everyone is probably at the top of the list. My favourite which is possibly a little bit different to other organisations is a value which we call “being memorable”. We want to be different, we want to be unique and we think that we can be memorable by doing the small things rather than the large things. It’s not throwing a massive party, it’s dropping in to see an elderly resident in their room who doesn’t like to come out and saying “G’day, how did the Tigers go on the weekend?” or something along those lines.

So how are these values instilled? I gather in the recruitment process you’re probably looking for people who give you the sense that they perhaps have those values already, but is there a induction process? Are you keeping track of how staff members live up to the values? What’s the process to make sure they permeate the business?

The values are used in every single part of what we do. You’re spot on in that we use them to attract and then they are used in selection to find the right people. People only join The Physio Co if they are deemed a value fit by two people. It’s not just my choice, it’s not just one person’s choice. There needs to be two people so they are absolutely a TPCer.

Beyond that, training and induction of new Physio Coers is the probably the most important part of instilling values and making sure people understand them. So just Wednesday this week we had a full day induction program for three new starters and the first half of the day was almost exclusively about the past, the present and the future of The Physio Co, what the values mean, examples of how to live those values and what are the expectations in terms of new Physio Co team members

As far as reward and recognition is concerned, we have an MVP of the month every month of the year, which is someone who lives the values to the best possible degree that they can. Each month it’s a peer nomination process. Anyone can nominate another member of the team for living the values and there are three finalists and one winner every month. And they get announced at our team learning events and they also go into the draw for the MVP for the year. 

Are discussions about values included in performance reviews or is that more focused on the skills your staff have?

The values are probably two thirds of each and every performance review. So it’s living the values, how they live them, examples of how they live them and if there needs to be improvement, then we would use stories of other people living the values of how we would expect them to be improving and performing in the future.

What’s the reaction from staff? I mean obviously your recruiting process hopefully gets people who understand the values, but are there staff who will reach a point where saying hang on, I’m good with my clients, I’m helping make people better, I’m a skilful physio, I’m just not that good at being memorable. How do you handle those?

Good question. The thing is that in our painted picture vision of 2012 – which describes what The Physio Co will look like in 2012 – talks about our culture and it talks about the fact that we hire and fire based upon our values. The fact is we have asked people to leave The Physio Co because they didn’t fit with the values of our organisation. So at the moment, we’ve got 31 members of our team and each and every one of them lives the values absolutely every day of the week as far as I’m concerned and we have the right value fit. So I guess the answer to your question is they probably don’t join the organisation,.

Do people ever wane over time?

They could, but we talk about them, and it is such an important part of what we do that do you know what? It doesn’t even become hard, it just becomes what we do and it’s not as if you have to make an effort. When you first join The Physio Co, absolutely there’s an effort required to live and breathe and act out the values, but over time it becomes part of what we do and do you know what? There’s probably one person at the very top that has to live, breath and enthuse everyone else and that’s me and that’s why I do have the title of Chief Enthusiasm Officer at The Physio Co.

Do you ever get sort of value fatigue at all?

James, I have regular breaks from the office and from work which helps me stay on top of my game. In my opinion, this is really important for all leaders.  I don’t think it is possible to be focussed, passionate and enthusiastic everyday without regular breaks to recharge the batteries. 

The idea of being memorable is one that a lot of companies like to do, but how does it actually manifest itself? 

In the aged care facilities where we work it’s really the smaller memorable things like stopping and having a piece of cake and singing happy birthday when there’s a birthday party going on. It’s remembering the names of someone’s grandchildren, it’s remembering their favourite footy team. It really is the tiny little things that make people feel special and think “hey, there’s Steph and she’s the physio” and they really feel like we’re part of the family.

Is there a lesson in there for other businesses – in Australia’ you only need to do the little things to stand out?

Culture is absolutely everything in terms of business as far as I’m concerned, but culture is in the detail. It really is the tiny little detail that separates your business from another business. We can all do the little things from time to time, but it’s the discipline to stick at them and do them day in and day out that really does make the difference. So look, I would say to other businesses you really have to stick at the little things, the one percenters but it’s unsustainable if you don’t have the right people in your team and that’s where the right value fit from day one.

When you are looking 10 or 15 years ahead towards for that real demographic peak, would you consider an acquisition or would you be worried about the culture that you would be brining in? 

Look, acquisition is certainly not on the radar for us at the moment. It’s never say never, but our growth is so fast the way we’re headed that we would much prefer to be bringing people in a steady stream as we are at the moment. That’s how we’re getting and maintaining our culture. For the time being there’s no acquisition on the horizon.

Are you having to bulk up your internal management capabilities to handle that growth?

I’ve invested in support team over the last few years to make sure again we’ve got the right people at that level and we are very, very disciplined about the way we go about the support of team. We share stories of living the values every day at our morning huddle which we have called ‘to the point’. It’s on every morning at 10:05 to 10:17 and that process and that meeting has been critical to the growth of our support team as well.

I love the specific timing there. What happens at 10:18?

At 10:17 an alarm goes off and the huddle is over and we say thanks very much and we get back to doing our jobs.

Even if you’re in mid conversation?

Absolutely. We’ve got a captain, a “to the point captain” and it’s her job to keep us on track and on time and if the alarm goes off, it’s over. We’ll see you at 10:05 tomorrow.

Tristan, if we can just change direction. We often hear concerns about the aged care sector and how some of the individual operators are travelling giving funding constraints and constant cost pressures. What’s your sense of the sector from someone who on the inside?

We’re about to celebrate our seventh birthday, I’ve been the industry for that amount of time and it’s changed and matured significantly in that period. It’s grown very, very quickly and the clients, the homes are that are operated by The Physio Co’s clients are fantastic. They are very resident focused. I think the sector is improving. It’s not perfect just yet but the aged care industry in Australia is progressing well in my opinion.

Do you have to be mindful of the homes you choose to work with?

Good question, the answer is yes. I know I am harping on this point a little bit, but even our suppliers and our clients need to be value fit for the organisation. We need to not only the people that work in our business but the people we work with and the people we work for need to be value fit. We’ve ended relationships with people we didn’t think were the right value fit for The Physio Co and that’s ok because I think we are probably both happier.

But there’s a conflict there in that The Physio Co has got a core purpose of helping oldies stay mobile, safe, and happy and if we choose to end a relationship with an organisation, which we haven’t done often, then there are possibly 30, 40 or 50 elderly residents that may not be getting The Physio Co service anymore. That’s a conflict for us, it’s something that we do take very seriously. So we don’t do it too often if we can avoid it.

Fair enough. Tristan, thanks very much for having a chat with us.