How to Create High Performing Remote Teams - with Lisa George

how to create high performing remote teams – with lisa george

Working with remote teams is a challenge for many private practice owners. But how do you build a high performing remote team? In this episode, Jo is joined by Lisa George. Aside from being an Occupational Therapist for almost 30 years, Lisa is also the Remote Team Queen and helps practice owners build effective remote and hybrid teams.

Jo and Lisa discuss:

the surprising way Lisa manages her remote team’s productivity,
the challenges faced by many health professionals when transitioning from public heath to private practice,
how to balance purpose and profit in your practice,
the importance of recruiting people who align with the values of your practice,

that trust should be given, not earned, and
the importance of creating a win-win for both your practice and your team.

You can find Lisa at Remote Team Queen and Momentum Rehab or via email lisa@remoteteamqueen.com.au.

You can download Lisa’s White Paper – Remote Team King & Queen: How to create an engaged, loyal and thriving workforce, no matter where or how you work here: https://remoteteamqueen.com.au/whitepaper

Other resources mentioned in this episode:

If you know you need more support, please visit my website at https://jomuirhead.com

TRASNCRIPT:

Jo:

So welcome to the Entrepreneurial Clinician Podcast. It’s Jo Muirhead here again today. And I am <laugh> interviewing somebody I have been incredibly excited to have on this podcast. As soon as she reached out to me and said, Jo, I’ve got so much I wanna say to your audience. So the day we’re going to share the brain, that is Lisa George. Now you are going, who? Well, yeah, that’s great <laugh>. And she’s nodding her head going, yeah, you dunno who I am. And that’s the awesome thing about this podcast and my connections, is I get to bring to the world people who are doing incredible things that you may never have heard of before. And it won’t be long before most of us have heard of Lisa, because she’s got big plans and big ambitions, and I know that the world needs to hear what she needs to say. So Lisa, I’m not gonna introduce you. Tell us who you are and who you serve.

Lisa:

Hello, Jo. I am so excited to be here. <Laugh>. I think I’m having one of those Julia Roberts moments like Pretty Woman, where the old ladies ask me, am I enjoying the opera? And I feel like I’m going to pee my pants .

Jo:

<Laugh>

Lisa:

I hope that’s allowed.

Jo:

That’s ok. We can say that here.

Lisa:

Are we setting the tone for the next 30 minutes of chat? Didn’t really wanna set it at that level, I guess. But as an OT I’m giving myself permission to do that. So thank you so much for having me. I am very excited to be here. Everything’s under control below the belt, so don’t worry about that. <Laugh>

Jo:

All the women’s health physios are going I know.

Lisa:

Yeah. I know someone that can help you <laugh>. By way of introduction, that’s probably not the best way to bring myself into this space, but apart from my light bladder leaky tissues, <laugh>. Anyway my name is Lisa George. I used to be Lisa Dulo, so some people may know me as Lisa Dulo from Momentum Rehab. And I’m an occupational therapist and I’ve been an OT for approximately 29 years. So nearly hitting my third decade. I know I don’t look like it, but you guys can’t see me, so that’s okay. So I’ve been an OT for a long time. I run Momentum Rehab. I’ve been doing that for about 19 years. And I love my team. I love my work. And I’m also the Remote Team Queen, so, I’ve evolved. I’m an evolving being. And it’s been a really interesting journey, which I’d love to share some of with you today, in a short way. How do you summarize 30 years in the time that we’ve got?

Jo:

That’s why I’m here because I’ve got the questions prepared.

Lisa:

Excellent.

Jo:

But what I wanna help everybody understand is Lisa does have a reputation for being the remote team queen. And as a coach, helping health businesses and leaders in their health business navigate how we do remote teams, in-house teams, hybrid teams. It’s always a question. It’s like, how do we do this? And how do we do this? And when I started reading Lisa’s information and what she was on about looking at the size of her team, looking at the engagement of her team, I’m like, oh, heck, I have got things to learn here. Hence, my Lisa is here today. But we’re not gonna just launch straight into that because if we don’t understand where Lisa has come from, it’s not gonna make any sense on where she’s gotten to and how she’s gotten here. So I can see from the bio that you sent through to me because, you know, I do read those things. Anyway, we won’t go there. <Laugh>. You trained as an OT in the early nineties. Yay. I think we went to school at the same time.

Lisa:

I think we might have been.

Jo:

Yeah. And you say you started your career in public health sector. Tell me about that. What were you doing?

Lisa:

So my first job, I actually didn’t get the first job I applied for, which was a bit of a blow cause I’m a bit of a high achieverSo that was probably one of my first life disappointments. And boo to them. Sorry. But they missed out. And I won’t say who didn’t hire me, but basically I started out in mental health.

I started out in acute mental health at Bankstown Hospital in South West Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. And I was there just doing a locum and I learned so much. Obviously as a new grad, walking into an acute mental health setting, you’re on a massive learning curve. But that was a locum position. So then I moved on to Liverpool Hospital also in southwest Sydney. Acute setting, community health. Lots of experience in a rotational position there. And then I moved back to Bankstown Hospital, and worked my way up the ranks, became an acute team leader there, grade two. And that’s where I then moved into private practice. So in totality, I was probably in public health for about three and a half years.

Jo:

Wow. Three and a half years in acute mental health in one of the most disadvantaged parts of Sydney. Especially back in the 1990s when we had so many cultural challenges that we were trying to navigate.

Lisa:

Absolutely. So I had a big level of experience in those three and a half years, I really packed it in. I think as a new grad, I was really obviously enthusiastic, wanting to learn as much as I could and figure out where I sort of fitted in the OT world. So I did move through different rotational positions, and then I settled in acute services, not in mental health, but actually in neuro rehab and dabbled in surgical medical community health as well. So it was a broad spectrum over three and a half years, but it was really just designed for me to figure out what I was interested in and where I wanted to go.

Jo:

Such an important part of our career is figuring out where we fit. And so many people need help. And we kind of come out of our graduating fast thinking that we’re gonna help all the people with all the things all of the time and, you know, we’re gonna be like changing the world and I’m gonna go find my cape. And I dunno about your experience, but I learned pretty quickly that pediatrics was not my place.

Lisa:

Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. No, I was the same as well.

Jo:

Yeah. Addictions was not my place. Too judgy mc judgey for addictions. Yeah. <Laugh. So then you moved into this part of the world. Oh, actually before we go, what do you mean by neuro? We’re gonna have people here who, I dunno what that means.

Lisa:

Yeah. So neurological, like your stroke. Mainly the strokes. CBAs. And it was quite, I guess as a young clinician, it was quite astounding how many young people were having strokes at that time. So that was a real eye opener for me. But to be honest, Jo, I mean, I was going into the hospital actually having a bit of a phobia about hospitals. I used to faint in hospitals. Wow. So I had to overcome that as well. Going into the hospital system, how do you be in OT and faint when you cook into a hospital? <Laugh> Talk about throwing yourself in the deep end. Right?

Jo:

Holy goodnight.

Lisa:

<Laugh>. So, yeah. Yeah. So that was sort of my playground for a while.

Jo:

Wow. Okay. So then, like a lot of occupational therapists here in Australia, you moved over to what we call workers’ compensation or rehabilitation provider work. So for our non-Australian friends listening, this is where we help people return to work following injury, illness, and trauma. And we’re gonna probably speak in some acronyms now, so I’m gonna try really hard to decipher the acronyms. So you’d found yourself in the hospitals, you’ve obviously got some leadership capability cause you moved up through the ranks and then you moved over to this private practice part of the world. Yeah? What was one of the big changes or challenges for you when you came out of hospital and, and moved into private practice?

Lisa:

It was the commercial side of it. Basically because I was working for a private rehab provider, I didn’t go to CRS, which was our commonwealth rehab service, owned by the government. It was a private small business. And we had KPIs, we had productivity targets. We were billing every six minutes. It was like we were solicitors. Everything was very commercially driven, very money driven. And I had to learn that very, very fast because if you don’t learn that fast, you don’t survive. And it can become very, very stressful. And it still can be very stressful even when you’ve got that awareness because that becomes your driver. And your motivator. And I guess as a health professional, some parts of that role didn’t quite gel with me and my purpose and my values.

Even though I did stay in that sector for a good three, another three years, it feels like <laugh>. There’s a little bit of a rhythm happening here, moving on every three years. But I can assure you that I have settled. But I was only there for three years, but again, I moved up the ranks, I became a team leader, I became the operations manager. And I think being in that small business that really gave me that understanding of what it takes to run a small business, the commercial reality, the customer service that’s required, the relationships that you need to develop, the confidence that you need to present with the sort of team that you need to have to be able to deliver the service that your customers expect. So, and to maintain that, the referral flow. So it just gave me so many rich experiences, including my boss. He let me drive his Jag once <laugh> which I think as a young person, I just thought was the absolute best, you know, and that’s where I learned to drive a manual as well. Because they had a manual car in their fleet and I was kangaroo hopping up the road, and then getting stuck in car parks. And I was going on work visits because I was on the ramp and I kept trying to do hill starts. It was just disastrous. So my first supervisor actually taught me how to drive a manual vehicle. I’m sure she still remembers the experience. <Laugh>, she’s probably traumatized.

Jo:

<Laugh>. Yes. So for people who are trying to work out what a manual vehicle is, it’s a stick shift. It’s where you actually have to use both feet in the pedals in the car while you’re doing things with your right hand and your left hand, which is actually quite amusing for an occupational therapist. But we’re gonna leave that there. <Laugh> So here you are, a hospital trained OT, so upon graduation, you’ve gone out there, you’re serving the world, you’ve kind of got a perception that they just turn up. And then you move across to private practice which has got the allure of prestige, money and prestige. But you had to learn this commercial aspect to your work. And this is a huge learning experience and, and a part of this whole entrepreneurial mindset shift that we need to embrace, which is not taught in any of our schools. It doesn’t matter which health professional school you go to, you, you’re not actually taught, you’re taught how to write a treatment, but you’re not necessarily taught how to resource that treatment plan. And that can be quite confronting, can’t it?

Lisa:

It is, it is confronting. And I think it’s quite scary because you are out of your depth in lots of ways. And it’s just learning. You’re thrown in the deep end and you just have to make it work. And that’s pretty much it. Being a small business, they didn’t have a lot of resources. I did have supervisors, which I’m extremely thankful for, because without them, I probably wouldn’t have lasted as long as I did, and I wouldn’t have been able to grow and develop as I did. But yeah, it was definitely the school of hard knocks. You weren’t handheld. You had to just take the initiative, you needed to be very self-driven, very self-motivated and you needed to take a lot of initiative as a young clinician, I mean, I didn’t have a lot of experience, but I think I just had the sort of personality that wanted to succeed. I was reasonably ambitious when I look back on it. I’m probably blindly ambitious. Quite naive. And I thought I knew a whole lot more than I did. And I must have made a lot of people laugh. Because when I look back on it, I laugh at myself, but yeah, I think you just learn. I just learnt so much and it’s just set me up. It really did.

Jo:

I’m really glad you brought up this commercial aspect to the work because it’s so important. And I know a lot of people listening to this podcast really struggle with the tension between I gotta do a good job for my clients. I’m here if I’m here to do a good job for my clients. I don’t wanna have to think about this money thing. I don’t wanna have to think about this commercial aspect.

Lisa:

Yeah. There’s a real tension. There’s a difference.

Jo:

There is a real tension. Yeah. So how did you make peace with that?

Lisa:

I think what it did for me was I realized that we can make a difference in lots of ways. And this is the way I was making a difference at this particular point in my career, in my time. And I knew that there was a reason why, and I was doing what I was doing and the results I was achieving for people, I could see the benefit that that was providing to them. And I needed to almost just make that my focus. I needed to make not the money. Yes, the money’s great, but at the end of the day, because I am a purpose-driven person, I needed to hold true to that and know that in my heart of hearts, I was doing the best for that person.

Yes, there was money attached to it. But not a whole lot. I mean, at the end of the day, I’m still getting paid as an employee. Right? So it wasn’t like I was earning a bucket load, probably more than what my counterparts were earning in public health for sure. But I was very highly accountable for my output. And I guess that’s why you get paid the extra money. So I felt quite comfortable with that. I felt quite comfortable with that because I had expectations placed on me and my output was related to my income I had, I was deserving of that. I was worthy of that.

Jo:

Nice. Whoa, that’s really cool. All right. We’re gonna take a little turn here. There’s a fork in the road coming up people. So there is at 27 years of age, you were diagnosed with breast cancer, which I read that on when we first started to get to know each other cause that’s how we met. Yes. I thought I was young at 47. 27 is terrifying.

Lisa:

It was rare. Very rare.

Jo:

It’s very rare. But congratulations on being this far past the journey. And I just wanna say thank you for going first because a part of what got me through my cancer journey was knowing there were people like you who had survived and kept going and were thriving. So I’m gonna try really hard not to cry about that, because that’s a big deal for me.

Lisa:

Me too. <Laugh>.

Jo:

And then, and then you had the sudden loss of your mum. Yes. Which would’ve been incredibly painful. And then something happened, which is you needed to return to work but because you’ve obviously needed a period of time off work and you needed something that could serve you, and you found that it didn’t exist. Talk to us about that.

Lisa:

Yeah, so after I’d been through the treatment, I’ve had my breast removed, I’ve had my chemotherapy, my radiotherapy, another lot of chemo. Then it was time for me to go back to work and I was on a graduated return to work plan through my employer at the time. So I had moved on from private practice at that point. And I was working for a large insurer in compulsory third party, which in Australia or in New South Wales, it is related to car accident rehab. So car accident insurance, once you’ve had your accident. Then the claim is managed by a team, in the insurance company. And I was on that team as a health professional providing advice and referring to rehab providers to help those people get back to living their lives.

So I was working for that company when I was diagnosed, and I had only been there for six months when I was diagnosed. And I was very grateful that they supported me through that process. And so they offered me graduated return to work. I was going back part-time, I was working in the mornings and then going to North Sydney to have my radiotherapy and then going home. So I really wanted to keep off. And being on the other side of the medical system was also an extremely confronting experience, but a very enlightening one. So I’ll leave it at that. That’s probably another podcast altogether. But they did support me through that. And I got to the point where I wanted to return to work and I did lose my mum at that point in time as well.

So they support me through that grief process as well. But it did make me question a lot. And so I decided at that point, and it is definitely a fork in the road. Do I use this experience that is pretty crappy to say the least? Do I get bitter and twisted about it and, and have the pity party? And I’m sure there was a lot of pity in there through certain points. Do I use that experience for good or evil, I guess. And so I decided that I was going to use the experience to benefit myself and others, and for me it was a matter of having to make the choice of do I go back and work for a large corporation doing the nine to five drill on the train every day on the treadmill earning, essentially earning money for their bottom line?

Or does my life have a greater purpose than that? And I decided my life did have a greater purpose and I wanted flexibility. And my employer wasn’t willing to offer me the flexibility I needed in order to meet my life purpose. So at that time, I wanted to spend time working with women in my local church. I wanted to support people who were going through breast cancer, particularly younger women. And so I decided I wanted to work part-time. They weren’t offering it to me. And so I thought, well, you know what? I have seen a gap in the market in my role. There are no rehab providers out there doing purely car accident rehab. There’s a lot of workers’ comp or workplace rehab providers out there doing this, doing the CTP thing, but then not purely CTP. And that’s when I decided to set up in my garage at home to start my own rehab provider practice in car accident rehab.

Jo:

Wow. So here we have this woman who has been supported by an employer. So many of us would be going, oh, I have to, I have to be loyal to them. I have to be so thankful and grateful for everything they’ve done for us.

Lisa:

Yeah. And I was not going to sacrifice my life for us.

Jo:

Exactly. And that’s what I wanted people to hear. So as employers ourselves, we know that we wanna be a great employer, but it comes to a point where it’s like, I just can’t offer you what you want. I’ve turned enough circles and turned myself inside out enough and I just can’t do this. But a couple of things happened. One was flexibility the way it needs to be. Actually the flexibility back in that day was probably one rostered day off a month each month.

Lisa:

<Laugh>. Absolutely.

Jo:

Yeah. That’s not flexible. And then flexibility becomes this thing that gets thrown around. But what you wanted was the opportunity to do your productive work kind of when it suited you so that you could do other things that were more purposeful at that in conjunction with. So it wasn’t either or it wasn’t a competition.

Lisa:

I wanted the blend.

Jo:

The blend, but then you also saw a gap in the market. So you actually went how can I serve? And then I love this about entrepreneurial health professionals cause that’s kind of how we start, how can I serve? Most of us leave employment because we go, I can do it better if I’m allowed to do it my way. And it’s like, where, how can I serve? How can I help? How can I help? So you went about creating a business based on the value of flexibility. Is that correct?

Lisa:

Correct. And I realized that not only was I not getting the flexibility I needed, but there was a whole cohort of health professionals out there that also weren’t getting the flexibility that they needed in order to meet their life roles. So as an OT, we’re all very role oriented. We like a balance of our roles. We’ve got different roles in life. And I thought that it was really in full alignment with who I was as a person to not only live my life this way, but also to offer that opportunity to other clinicians who may have children, may have aging parents, I have other they might wanna go to the gym every morning and not have to rush for a train. You know, whatever is important to them in their lives. That they get to do those things as well as earn a living and use their skills and make a difference in the world.

And that’s it essentially, it was a very simple concept. Nothing really complicated about it, but the only thing was no one was doing it at that point in time. It was 2004. Everyone was very rigid in how they were operating as an employer. And it was their way or the highway. And there wasn’t a lot of flexibility there. You just served out your maternity leave and then you went back, there was no compromise. There was no negotiation. That’s just what it was. And you either work part-time or you work full-time. And it doesn’t always work when you’ve got young kids, right? If you’ve got other responsibilities, still trying to run a family and get to a workplace on time is you feel like you’ve worked a full workday before you get there. Right?

Jo:

Absolutely.

Lisa:

You’re putting on another hat as you’re running through the door and then you’re turning, taking that hat off at the end of the day and running out the door to pick up from school or daycare, or you’ve gotta put your kids in daycare, which not everyone wants to do. Or there’s afterschool care that some people don’t wanna do either. People just wanna be there for their kids. All those important things. The school assembly, they wanna go to the canteen, they might wanna do the uniform shop. And I grew up in an era where my mum was available to be able to do those things. And it was always so exciting for me to have her in the canteen. You know, you get all the freebies and stuff.

But it was just lovely to know that she was there at the end of the day when I got home I could help with with homework. And that’s what I wanted to provide, not only for myself if I was able to have children, cause at that time I didn’t know if I could have children after all of my treatment. But to be able to offer that to other people was gold. It was gold. And people were taking me up on it. Like there was a gap. Another gap in the market.

Jo:

Yeah. Look at that. And let’s just be clear, this was back in 2004. Okay. So 16 years before the pandemic forced it upon us. So you’ve kinda got 16 years of experience to share with us right now. So the question that I get asked all the time is, how do I manage my staff’s productivity if I can’t see them?

Lisa:

Very good question.

Jo:

Could you shed some light on that? I think health professionals get quite fixated on still managing around turning up. How many client sessions have you done? Are your notes up to date? and because they’re things that we can tangibly manage. But would you agree that that’s possibly not the best strategy to get the best outta your team?

Lisa:

It’s not the only strategy.

Jo:

There we go.

Tell us more. Lisa, tell us more

Lisa:

Leading a remote team is a learning curve and I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way, and that’s why I wanna be able to help people to navigate that space and, and avoid the mistakes. It’s a lot to do with communication. It’s a lot to do with communicating the expectations. Yeah. And there are systems that you can put in place to be able to monitor productivity without looking like that you’re micromanaging people. My message to everyone is that I trust them. Trust is the foundation of any remote team. If there is any inkling coming from me that I do not trust people, they will not be trustworthy. And I believe trust begets trust. And if I don’t communicate that clearly from the outset, then people will think that they will get away with stuff. So they’re just happy to serve me and my purpose as well. People are aligned to what we’re trying to do here. And so I communicate what we are here to do. They buy into my brand and my purpose, and I communicate clearly what the expectations are in terms of what they need to get done. They don’t need to do it nine to five. We work very asynchronously. <Laugh>.

Jo:

That’s such a powerful word that I can’t pronounce. So well done!

Lisa:

Yeah. It’s a tricky one. But at the end of the day, as an employer, you can see that whether things are getting done or not, there’s not a lot of places to hide. If it’s looking like things are going south, the numbers do not lie. And I think if you’re a business owner you need to be looking at your numbers. Not in an obsessive way, but so that you’re aware of the trends and the things that are going on in your business so that you can make sound decisions and you can direct the path of what needs to happen. But at the end of the day, it’s about people buying into the life that you offer them. And I believe I’ve never had to work hard at that because people have ultimate flexibility and it meets their purposes in terms of what they’re trying to achieve in their lives.

And they get paid for the work that they do, and they get paid very well. So it meets all of their needs. It’s a win-win because they’re doing the work that we need to do in order to make a difference in the world. And they get a buzz out of that because as OTs, we love to make a difference and we love to see the smile on our clients’ faces when we get an outcome for them that improves their lives and their quality of their lives. But also it’s a win from all angles in terms of business growing, our reputation growing and our customers being happy. And people still get to meet all their other life roles and, and what satisfies them in life in terms of looking after their kids or their aging parents or whatever it is for them that’s important. Their dog <laugh>

Jo:

So you’ve highlighted the CEO checklist for recruitment. The health CEO checklist for recruitment, values alignment, are we recruiting people who are aligned to the values of the business? Because at the moment, what’s getting in the way is the lack of talent. There’s a lack of available talent. It’s been that way since Covid. It’s probably that way before Covid.

Lisa:

Certainly, it’s never been like it is now.

Jo:

Neither of us lived through the Spanish flu, so we didn’t get to see it back then. So are we recruiting around values. Now that’s not our personal values, that’s our business values which might be the same thing, but probably not safe to be the same thing. Then you’re talking about communicating clearly, which is very different to communicating often. So I meet a lot of health business owners who are trying to control their productivity and they’re doing it by communicating a lot and they have lots of different methods of communication. And what I have noticed is that that communication doesn’t always hit the mark.

Lisa:

No. And I led my team for the majority of the time when those things didn’t even exist. So I didn’t even have that at my disposal. And even though I’ve got it at my disposal now, I don’t use it.

Jo:

Wow.

Lisa:

And that is mainly because everyone knows exactly what they need to do and what they need to get on with. And I just let them get on with it.

Jo:

So guess what? That’s clear communication.

Lisa:

It works. I don’t have to check up on them. I really don’t.

Jo:

So it’s not a volume. This is the point I wanted to make because this is one of the things that when I was reading all of your information, it’s like, clear communication is not voluminous. Clear communication is, do you know what you need to do? Do you have the tools and resources to be able to do it? This is my expectation of you. Go forth and do.

Lisa:

<Affirmative>.

Jo:

But I bet on the upside of that is when you’re noticing this data driven pro, like when your data is starting to tell you that something’s not working. My guess is you need to be fairly quick to reestablish what’s going on here?

Lisa:

Yeah. And that’s when you ask what is going on? It’s not accusatory in any way. It’s just what, what is causing this anomaly? Yes. And don’t assume you know what’s causing it, and don’t assume that it’s because someone’s doing the wrong thing. Cause again, that’s not trusting. It’s about looking behind, digging a bit deeper and going, okay, what is actually going on here?

Jo:

I love this concept of trust because I talk about it from a marketing point of view and from a client centered approach point of view, which I’m very passionate about. Trust is our true currency. Right?

Lisa:

Absolutely.

Jo:

But if we don’t have trust in our business, if we don’t trust the people around us, either we’ve got the wrong people around us. Or there’s something internally that we need to fix.

Lisa:

Yeah. And I assume trust from the outset, I don’t make people earn my trust. And that is the key as well, because I think if we set people up to earn trust.

Jo:

Yeah, we do.

Lisa:

It’s just for me, it just doesn’t sit well and I don’t think you get the right outcome at all. I think that just sends a really negative message from the outset and it almost puts a bullet in it from the outset, I think. So that’s my little superpower, I guess.

Jo:

<Laugh>. So creating trust. Recruiting for values, alignment, communicating clearly. Using your data, making sure you know your numbers, using your data all adds up to creating a win-win, for the business, a win for you is the business and a win for the person who’s working within your business.

Lisa:

Yep. Absolutely. And I would say that builds loyalty. Loyalty to brand loyalty to me. And I’ve had contractors and I run a contractor based business. I’ve had contractors for over 10 years.

Jo:

Yeah. I’m the same. I run a contractor based business and I have better stick rate than employees, much better stick rate.

Lisa:

And that’s a commercial choice that I’ve made. But I find that well I just treat people as employees anyway because I care about them as people. I care about their lives enough to offer them the flexibility that they need to live their lives. But also I care for them as genuinely as human beings. They’re not a number to me. And they’re my team. Without my team, I don’t have a business. So if I don’t invest some element of care, concern and humanity into being a leader of these people, then they’re not gonna want to buy into me or commit to me in any way. And to what I feel is important. So you know, that’s just how I’ve chosen to run the business for the last nearly 20 years. And it’s paid dividends in lots of ways.

Jo:

Well, number one, you’ve been in business for 20 years, which is not supposed to happen. So you’ve got a remote team of contractors, which I can see how that fits into the whole accountability and responsibility part, which we haven’t really touched on today. How many people have you got on your team at the moment?

Lisa:

Currently? There’s around 25.

Jo:

Okay. So we’re not talking three.

Lisa:

No, we’re not talking three. And they’re scattered. So between the Hunter, the Illawarra and out Bathurst & Orange.

Jo:

So geographically you kind of go three hours north of Sydney, three hours south of Sydney and three hours west of Sydney. That’s a fairly large geographical area and lots of driving.

Lisa:

Yes.

Jo:

Yes. Hence why you are working now. It makes sense. Hence why you’re working in compulsory third party insurance because a lot of motor vehicle accidents are happening out on those non-city roads.

Lisa:

Absolutely. But interestingly, Jo, I’ve diversified in that 19 year period. And I guess that was another opportunity that came my way that I took hold of back 15 years ago. So I was about six months pregnant with my first child Isaac. And I was approached by a home modification service to do some occupational therapy, home mods visits for them. And I hadn’t done home mods since my hospital days. So it had been probably about five years since I’d done a home modification. And I said to them, look, I’m six months pregnant. I haven’t done a home mod for about five years. Are you sure you want me to do this?

And they went, yep, we want you. And I went, okay, well someone else is believing in me. I suppose I better give this a crack. So I put on my clinical OT stuff. Cause you know, case management is a little bit different. But yeah, I put on my OT. Got my tape measure out and all the stuff, all the gear, got my toolkit together and off I toddled and I ventured on a very steep learning curve in home modifications and grew a team around that.

Jo:

You grew a team around home mods. I have a lot of OTs coming to me going, I can’t grow my home mods business. Wow.

Lisa:

And so now we had an insurance team and now a community team which then branched into the National Disability Insurance Service, aged care and palliative care.

Jo:

Wow. All because you asked the question, how can I help?

Lisa:

And do you really want me? <laugh>

Cause I was willing, even though I didn’t have recency of practice in that area, I was willing to learn and I was willing to have a go and I was willing to back myself. I thought this was something that I was acutely interested in at the time I was doing it. And I was really interested in community OT at the time, and I thought, there’s so much value in being an OT in the community. Because we can make such a big difference to people’s lives at a point in time when they need us most. And I really felt like we can help people stay in their homes for longer. We can help people who are living with disability to live their best lives.

And I was really keen to explore that. So I thought, well, the only way to do it is to get my hands dirty and get in and do it. And I’m one of these people that I’ve always maintained a caseload. I believe that keeps me real. It keeps me grounded, it keeps me in touch with all the challenges that my people face every day. And it means that I’m continually growing and developing my skills as well. There is never a day when I don’t learn something. And I’m nearly 30 years in. I think if you just have that mindset of continually learning, growing, developing and investing in your own development then big things can happen. So the whole team grew out of that and it has essentially saved my business because there has been another shift. And as a business, we need to be adaptable.

Jo:

Yes.

Lisa:

With the insurance companies going more towards national rehab providers. Smaller rehab providers have been essentially cut out of the market. And so we are no longer able to receive referrals for compulsory third party. So if I hadn’t developed that business back 15 years ago, I wouldn’t be in business today.

Jo:

So the diversification piece is incredibly important, but then you’ve also got flexibility in your teams. I’m just thinking about this whole value you have around flexibility on which your business was built and being able to use words that we all hate, like being agile and being able to pivot.

Lisa:

Yeah, I strongly believe flexibility is the way of the future. And I think I’ve always believed that. Because I started it so long ago when other people were looking at me like I was crazy. They were going, really? How can you maintain quality? How can you maintain a workforce? How can you, and I’m like, well, I’ll show you how. I’m just gonna get on and have a go and, and I’ll Yeah. I’ll figure it out.

Jo:

Yeah. And it’s a very, very similar philosophy to what I’ve done in my practice as well, which is basically, II want you to be able to do this work in a way that suits you.

Lisa:

Yep.

Jo:

I just need this work done and done to these standardsAnd if that’s not happening, you just don’t get more work. So for me, it kind of took away a lot of pressure around having to have those performance improvements programs or questions.

Lisa:

Yeah. And I understand there’s people out there as well that will have those employees. And they’re trying to manage those people who want to work remotely, who possibly don’t have the right approach to things. But I think the philosophy is still the same. It doesn’t change regardless of the terms of your employment arrangement. If you as a leader are leading with this paradigm, it’s the same. The expectations, the communication, the trust. It’s still the same.

Jo:

So let’s go back to that paradigm. It’s about values alignment. Communicating clearly, having trust, and coming from a position of I trust you instead of earning my trust, you basically got to stop me from trusting you. It’s a very different way of approaching it.

Lisa:

And I even say that in the interview.

Jo:

Wow.

Lisa:

I view this as an arrangement of trust from the outset.

Jo:

And then when we apply that, we can start to see the data, then we start getting used to looking at our data, looking at trends, looking at anomalies. And when we come from a paradigm that incorporates all of these features, then we’re creating a win-win win. A win for the business owner, for the business, and for the people who are working inside the business. And our customers win.

So Lisa, if people want to get in touch with you to learn more about your skills and how you can help them develop a team that is like yours, use drawing on your knowledge and skills, how do they get in touch with you?

Lisa:

Well, I have a website. It’s remoteteamqueen.com.au <laugh>. I also have another website, momentumrehab.com.au and I have email addresses attached to both of those businesses. So it’s Lisa@ remoteteamqueen.com.au. And it’s lisa@momentumrehab.com.au.

Jo:

And I’m just gonna do a little sneaky thing here, right? Any chance you’re recruiting for extra team members, <laugh>. Cause I have a feeling I’ve got listeners who are going, how do I work for Lisa <laugh>? So are you actually recruiting?

Lisa:

I am always recruiting. I’m on a constant recruitment drive. And I am on the constant lookout for talent. I don’t even I don’t advertise very often. A lot of people come my way through word of mouth. It tends to be a fairly slow way of recruitment, but I find it attracts the right type of professional with the right level of experience. But I’m always open to conversations with people. And people have come through LinkedIn, they’ve come through lots of different avenues. And I’ve attracted, I believe, the cream of the industry. And I love my team to death. <Laugh>, almost <laugh>. But yeah, I would love to speak to anyone who is interested in working this way.

Jo:

That is very cool. So you were totally unprepared for that.

Lisa:

I was. Could you tell?

Jo:

<Laugh>.

So I wanna say thank you’ve gone a little bit longer today, but I think that conversation has been awesome. Oh my gosh. Have you got a resource for us?

Lisa:

I have a download and it’s on the remote Team Queen website. It’s a white paper. Okay. Yeah. Called Remote Team Kings and Queens: How to create an engaged, loyal, and thriving workforce no matter where or how you work. So it’s actually all of my thought leadership in this space is packaged into a white paper that I prepared shortly after Covid. When I realized that there were a lot of people out in the market struggling, not just health professionals, but also broader corporations and businesses that needed to know how to lead their teams effectively from a distance. So that you can download that from remoteteamqueen.com au

Jo:

And we will have all the links to all the things that Lisa has talked about today in the show notes. Catch us on the socials cause we’ll put them on the socials there as well. Lisa, thank you so much.

Lisa:

I’m on LinkedIn too, so if anyone wants to connect with me on LinkedIn, happy to connect.

Jo:

Okay. So for those of you who dunno what LinkedIn is, it’s what old people use to connect with <laugh>. I’m kidding. Excellent. Fabulous conversation. Lots of stuff there.

Lisa:

Thank you. I feel like I’ve got so much more to say, but this time is over.

Jo:

Yeah. I have a feeling you’ll be back cause I’ve actually gone. Ooh. I need to talk to you about that and that and that and that. And you’re in Sydney, so we’re just gonna have lunch and make that happen.

Lisa:

Love that. Thank you, Jo.

Jo:

Really looking forward to seeing the conversations that come up from this podcast episode today. I look forward to learning more about you and seeing what comes from all this Remote Team Kings and Queens. Thank you Lisa.

Lisa:

Thank you, Jo. It’s been wonderful.