From Mount Everest to Building One of the UK’s Largest Physio Groups | Tim Allardyce #47

0:00A lot of people do dream of climbing Everest. I never dreamed of it. And getting above 6 ,000 meters is hard. It's very, very hard. People don't realize how hard it is. It's very hard on your body. It's very hard on your lungs. It's very hard on your brain. I applied for a couple of jobs and didn't get them. And I thought, do you know what? If I apply for one more job and not get it, I'm going to set up my own clinic. And so I did. You know, we started building our own software and we built several software, lots of software and a lot of things failed, but some things worked. And that's how I got on to developing Rehab My Patient, the exercise prescription software.

0:33You've got to have the right mindset. I've only ever been technically employed, properly employed by one job and that was a glass collector in a pub. And I remember thinking my boss is doing a bad job. I could run this pub better than my boss. Okay. And that's the start of mindset that I think you've got to start thinking about. And if you have that feeling like I could do a better job than my boss, then Can you go and be the boss? And that was devastating, because that was the first clinic I'd properly bought. That was Surrey Physio Partnership. That kept me awake at night, that really did, because we had no clinic location, nowhere to go.

1:07And I realised a couple of my staff had stabbed me in the back. So AI has a limitation right now, and it will always have a limitation, and that it's not human, and it doesn't have human interaction. People will want to see a human and be treated by a human. In our industry, they will. We're safe for the future.

1:32Great. So we're back for another episode of the business of a clinic, this time with Tim, who's going to introduce himself in a second. But I think what's really interesting here is that already having the benefit of speaking to him in the past, I know that there is a lot happening in his world across technology, across improving practice efficiency, across selling software to other healthcare providers, but also on a perhaps more personal hobby side, more recently, summiting Mount Everest. So I think, Tim, we'd love to get a quick introduction, but we'd also love to start on the Mount Everest side, because that's probably not something that any other episode will start with.

2:09So maybe give us the quick intro and then tell us where the Everest motivation came from. Hi, guys. My name is Tim Allardyce. I'm a UK-based physio, therapist, and osteopath i run surrey physio group and rehab my patient clinical software i'm clinical director at both and we do a lot of tech we do a lot of physio and we provide physiotherapy across london southeast england and and yes i have recently just got back from summiting the amazing mount everest so um having never done that myself uh although maybe now feeling slightly inspired to what what is uh like you just wake up one morning and you say today is the day we're gonna we're gonna start training for mount everest a long long-standing dream what was the what was motivation to get into that i never a lot of people do dream of climbing everest i never dreamed of it what happened was a few years ago we went on a road trip my wife and family we hired a motorhome and we drove around the west coast of scotland and it was an amazing trip and we met in on an island in scotland off in the hebrides we met a sherpa who summited mount ever six times a guy called phantom sherpa and he was running a exhibition in a church with prayer flags and nepalese stuff he was selling to raise money for his family back at home and he was really interesting guy and we asked him would you like to come and summit ben nevis with us because we're planning to summit ben nevis with our kids so we were doing ben nevis and and other mountains we'd done a few mountains with the kids and he said yeah i'll come along with you so we took a ferry with him over to the mainland we summited ben nevis my little girl was just five years old at the time and she made it all the way up on her own she's an amazing climber and that started me thinking and he said to me you know what you could you could do Everest you could you should go over there and it got me thinking he planted the seed and then I think that sparked off Everest popping up on my social media so the next thing is you know as soon as something listens to other phone listens to you but next thing I was getting feeds on Everest and then I thought you know what i can do this let's let's start that journey and sort of journey involves climbing smaller mountains first and then going on to the bigger ones what is the um it's completely unrelated to running healthcare practice by the way but personal curiosity for someone who uh it sounds like you were already outdoorsy climbing you're already doing you know sort of mountaineering how much if someone's going from standing start they want to go climb everest 12 month lead in six month lead in 18 month lead like what's the zero to heroes five years five years okay five years so you need a lot of time you know you this stuff is complex climbing it's it's complex mountaineering you need to learn a lot about it you need to get your your your your your boots on and you need to get up mountains.

5:21You start with thousand meter mountains, you progress to 2000 meter mountains, you progress to 4000 meter mountains, and then you hit the six thousanders and then you go for an 8000 and that's the route we all take. You know, it's very hard to just jump in because you know, you've got to learn about ropes and equipment and gear and you've got to be trained and fit and mountain ready. You know, it's just specifically my training for Everest took 18 months uh that was when I started thinking I hadn't said 100 % I'm going for Everest but I I started the process 18 months of training hard training um and that involved you know I did 460 days of running every day covering over to another 2 ,200 kilometers cycled everywhere altitude trained you know I worked with professionals and altitude training i went to the altitude center i slept in an altitude chamber in my spare bedroom for five months i started doing a cold training so i'd do ice baths every day i did 165 days of ice bathing every day through the winter and if i was on holiday i'd go and see sometimes it was absolutely freezing cold hit five minutes every day i'd do grip training i'd do breathing training obviously a new smanner cardio training and climbing mountains and I was pretty much ready I was very very fit and my vo2 max was very very good or my predicted vo2 max like I did it for a chart and the full on months and I was in good shape and then you start climbing mountains you know you climb small mountains first and then you climb bigger mountains so you know when you start getting to climb Everest you need to have been in the six to seven thousand meter territory you know you got to get high and getting above six thousand meters is hard it's very very hard people don't realize how hard it is is very hard it's very hard on your body it's very hard on your on your lungs it's very hard on your brain it's very very tough so anything over six thousand meters is serious mountain

7:33you didn't do that with your five-year-old did you no so my five-year-old she's now eight has summited okay i think nine mountains and she's too fast she's faster than all of us she's so fast it's unbelievable when she was five she summited ben nevis but i carried her down on my back so i had a backpack baby backpack she put the kids in she was quite a small five-year-old i had a backpack, stuck on the backpack. She summited all on her own. I took her down. But my little boy was seven at the time. He summited it on his own and got back down on his own. So we've done a lot of hiking with the kids.

8:06You know, we walked all around the south coast of England just after COVID. You know, we've done a lot of walking with the kids. Our kids are super fit. And we love being outdoors. We love being away from screens.

8:19Got it. So that's maybe there's the transition moment so so we love being outdoors we love being away from the screens and and and yet you're also uh in addition to to running a large msk group you're also uh building software which puts you right up against the screen quite a lot so yes um now we understand the the uh the focus the the requirements the five-year lead-in which i think already is going to be a disqualifier for a lot of people but the five-year lead into to scaling everest and now uh in the day job where you're not in specialized sleep chambers and you're not in ice baths. You're running a multi-site MSK group and you're also building and developing software for MSK leadership.

9:03So just sort of paint us a picture, if you don't mind, which one came first, which one came next? Like what are the sort of different hats that you wear in your day job? So we first came setting up clinics. So I guess, you know what? I only fell into setting up physio clinics because I applied for a couple of jobs and didn't get them. And I thought, do you know what? If I apply for one more job and not get it, I'm going to set up my own clinic. Yeah, I applied for two jobs and one job I did get. I applied for a couple of jobs, didn't get them. I applied for another job. So I was really keen to be a lecturer.

9:38I applied for a job doing some lecturing and clinic tutoring. I didn't get that. I applied for another job in a clinic in Crawley. I didn't get that. and I said I'm gonna do one more job and I applied for it I lasted one week and I was basically told not to come back and because apparently I'd done something which had somehow upset the receptionist I have no idea what but she moved my patients I had four patients booked in she moved them to a practitioner and the clinic owner didn't know what was going on and said I'm not sure this is gonna work out to him I have no idea I still to this day have no idea what I did anyway So that job disappeared and that was a real shame.

10:16And I said, right, sod this, I'm going to set up my own clinic. And so I did. And then the rest is like, you know, I could have been in education my whole life. If I'd got that job at a university that I applied for, which I was desperately hoping to get, I'd have been in education my whole life. Probably. Possibly. I don't know. And so it's funny how when one door closes, potentially it provides an opportunity. So sometimes you think that things happen, maybe they happen for a reason or maybe you can turn a negative into a positive. So I couldn't get a job. I was fed up with the system. I thought I'm going to set up my own clinic.

10:52It was easier back in those days to set up. There was less competition. And I, you know, I set up in 2005, you know, and that was these days. but you know that we would like the first physio set up clinic in Croydon you know the first decent size clinic in Croydon you know so we had a great opportunity and things were easier they you know the tech system that the support for businesses the the growth it was easier I think and and then you know then we got involved in tech you know we started building our own software and we built several software lots of software I mean I built apps I built websites you know I own hundreds of domain names and and I built websites a lot of them failed and I wrote ebooks they all failed you know we're trying everything techie and a lot of things failed but some things worked and that's how I got on to developing rehab my patient the exercise prescription software I'm our clinical director we have my patient and so it's an exercise prescription software that Surrey Physio created and we now use nationally you know across a lot of clinics we used a large number of NHS trusts ranging from Southern to Devon to Gloucester to Somerset to you know it's up to as far north as lanarkshire and forth and up in scotland so um yeah we've got a wide footprint on we have my patient and you know it's absolutely amazing brilliant now ai powered exercise software so we have an ai in there so you can literally type a prompt and it'll create an exercise program and it's really cool got it okay so there's a lot there's a lot to work with there so i guess uh i i am uh i'm sort of curious because it's actually not the first time i've heard the believe it well actually it's probably very believable not the first time I've heard the story of um as a as a what I call like a clinician entrepreneur right the the person who tries to go work in someone else's clinic and says I just the shoe does not fit and so I'm gonna go do this myself we hear this story a lot from from clinic entrepreneurs or clinician entrepreneurs who um just sort of get to that point where they say you know what I I just can't I can do it better I can do it faster, I can do it differently, and I'm not finding the fit elsewhere.

13:24So I guess take us into the emotional backdrop, like when you are starting that first site, like day one, building from zero. The first thing to say, right, is you've got to have the right mindset. So the thing is this, I've only ever been employed, technically employed, properly employed by one job, and that was a glass collector in a pub. okay so my first job I was I think 17 or 18 years old in a pub in Bromley and I was a glass collector and I can't remember I think I earned three pound an hour or something like that and anyway and I remember thinking my boss is doing a bad job I could run this pub better than my boss okay and that's the start of mindset I think you've got to start thinking about and if you have that feeling like i could do a better job than my boss i don't think my boss is great i don't think he's doing a good job then you go and be the boss right go and go and do it better this is this is a dna thing for you you're 17 or 18 year olds you're working your first job yeah unrelated to healthcare you've got this sense of something doesn't feel right we're not i've got the sense of i can do better than what my boss is doing.

14:42So you have two choices at that point. And if you have that feeling, you can do a better job than your boss, you can do a better job. And you don't like how to, in this case, the pub was being run. Yeah. Then either sit down, shut up and accept it, or go and do it. If you think you can do a better job, go and do it. And that's what I did. So when I left, I started in this mindset of actually, you know, maybe I should be running my business. So that, okay, got it. I understand the genesis. I understand the mindset, which predated your work in healthcare. There was this sense of, okay, I can do it better.

15:19I can do it differently. Now you're opening doors. You're starting that journey. It's the very beginning. What keeps you up at night? What's the emotional rollercoaster? I mean, I think a lot of people who have either started or who have been part of senior teams that have gone on to build big healthcare provider organizations, either in MSK specialty care or at private hospital level, wherever it might be, they will have those things that they can't sleep because of, the things that keep them up at night. What are your, I mean, maybe they've changed now, but what were your, I can't sleep because of this in day one and maybe now, day 1 ,000, day 10 ,000?

15:54What has the journey been like of I can't sleep because of this? Well, right now, I never have a problem sleeping. Okay. Except when I'm at 7 ,900 metres on Everest. That's a different story. Just showing me a little. A school gave me this beautiful gift for doing a prize giving a couple of weeks ago. I've just put it up on my wall. It's so beautiful. I signed a signature from Sir Edmund Hillary, the first person to summit Mount Everest. Look, so nothing keeps me awake at night. I sleep like a baby. and I have no stress and no worries about anything that's happening but it wasn't always that case I remember one time when one of them took over my clinic from his premises it was a really bad situation he basically set up his own clinic we we issued notice on our lease because we felt it was been far too much expected he would negotiate and he didn't he went behind my back spoke to some of physios agreed to take up and set up a new clinic with a couple of my physios that we were employing and then wouldn't negotiate and when we I thought something's wrong something's really wrong here and my start a couple of my staff were acting a bit odd and and they went behind my back and set up a new clinic from the same site with the same phone number same address and they had a patient list and and that was devastating because that's the first clinic i'd properly bought that was sorry physio partnership and and that kept me awake at night that really did because we had no clinic location nowhere to go and i realized a couple of my staff had stabbed me stabbed me in the back and that was really really upsetting and i and i remember i couldn't sleep properly for three to six months and i had a really horrible pain in my stomach a stress pain like a deep stomach ache that i just didn't want to eat properly i don't know what it was i don't think it was depression but i think it was just stress um and and that's that's the last time i remember not being able to sleep properly uh and that's the growth you go through as clinic owners there's always issues with landlords so that issue of a landlord was a whole other situation um i tried to sell the clinic back to him for 18 000 pounds i bought for 85 000 pounds and he said no and i thought why wouldn't you do that uh i said i'll get out you you can have the clinic, but please give us some money for it.

18:20And he said, no, you know, he was a very entrepreneurial guy himself. And but again, that provided an opportunity because at that point I said, I don't want to be a leaseholder and I don't want to keep leasing properties. So I'll start buying my own properties. So we leased the next one, made it successful. And then I started buying properties. You know, now we own, I think, six of our own clinic premises. five or six, hard to, I think six, maybe six. So we bought the buildings. And so now I have a property portfolio. So no one can take those properties off us. It's completely secure because I got stitched up by a landlord.

19:04And I said, never again. I'm never going through that feeling again. I'm going to buy our own properties. It's interesting. I hear you tell that story. And so I'm thinking back to when I was opening clinic. we opened uh first clinic in in london middle of covid uh which was a terrible time to open a clinic yeah and the clinic we uh the premises that we took over used to be a fish store like a pet store and so you know fish store has a lot of humidity obviously the tanks and everything running and so everything was rot the shop front was rot the timber was rot it was just rot rot rot rot rot which we only obviously discovered in full when we started ripping things open and pulling things off.

19:45And you mentioned landlord, and I remember with many, many short four-letter words, the number of conversations that I had with our landlord at the time about the fact that they had misrepresented the quality of the demise, and there was all this sort of tenant improvement stuff that we needed to do. I think buying the property outright, that would have been a much better decisions i think that's very cool that you guys have almost mcdonald's uh style your you know you some of your facilities where you actually own you own and operate and so obviously uh that's going to be much stronger i imagine the economics are obviously much better as well because you don't have this rent component and you're able to appreciate the asset value and all that stuff goes it goes in the same way which is really nice yeah it's there's pros and cons of owning your own commercial properties and you know the pros are you can do what you want and when you redo the property it's yours and you get the increase in asset value you don't have to pay rent and or but the downside is you know you need a new park we had to put new parking in one of my premises you're paying for it two thousand pound yeah you need a new roof you have to pay for it and so you know so you have capital expenses you have a large capital expenses that suddenly pop up out of nowhere that's the downside there are pros and cons like anything but it's worked out well for us because it's stability and that's the key thing landlords can't check you out because they decided they're going to convert it to flats um so yeah it was a bad situation i didn't sleep well but it turned into something really good you use the word stability and it's interesting i think um one of the transitions i think a lot of clinic owners go through is house on fire to stability right and and it's that early growing pains i think it's probably different for every practice sometimes it sets in around a million pounds turnover maybe it sets in around 20 staff members where you start to have tomorrow feels a little bit more like yesterday and the day after feels a little bit more like yesterday and you start to get into business as usual which i think is probably the foundation for growth do you remember that that like change for you in in terms of so you had this this challenging experience up front you then started building you know again almost from zero maybe even from negative five depending on how you look at it because you yeah when did things start feeling like i'm going to wake up tomorrow and i know what to expect i'm not going to get you know punched in the side of the head when i'm not looking it's starting to feel a little bit more consistent when did that transition start to happen for you um it's funny you say getting punched in the side of the head because it reminds me of something that Captain Paul Watson said at Run Sea Shepherd's, the brilliant organisation saving whales, which I loved.

22:34I haven't followed it for a couple of years, but I used to love it. And he always said, and he wrote a brilliant article saying, it's always something. And that's when as a clinic owner, it's always something. And when you're small, the internet stops working, your computer breaks down, your printer stops working, you know, these sort of issues. And then when you're big, it's always something, you're getting sued by someone you're getting threatened to be sued you're getting complaints and you know i mean we get threatened to be sued regularly you know it happens you know right now you know we are being threatened to be sued again you know and and actually what happens is you know when you're small these things ruin your life but when you're big you just say you take it with you're much more experienced and how to deal with it and how to process it um and so it's always something there's always something right but i'd say when you start getting to a point where you have managers to run things is when you can start thinking okay the stress is really off because most clinics are run by the clinical lead yeah the clinic owner works as a clinician and manages the practice kind of the overall kind of running of practice like you but when you start getting managers in whether that be a finance director CEO you know we have a CEO we have a finance manager you know we have a recruitment manager and so all of these people can take off stress whereas I used to do all the recruitment I've now got recruitment manager whereas I used to all the finance I've now got a finance manager yeah we've got a CEO we've got group managers we've got area managers.

24:11So we have a setup. And that's when you can start saying, okay, this is, we can take the stress off. It's interesting. We ran an event a couple weeks ago called Is Your Clinic Exit Ready? It was for buyers, operators, builders on the acquisition side, on the selling side. And one of the big takeaways from a group that we work with actually in the medical aesthetic space was you, if you can, obviously there's always the if from a cashflow perspective, if you can, building out that senior team, that management team slightly ahead of when it needs to come into place will pay dividends. He was talking about an experience of exactly what you were saying, you know, two people at the top and there was, there was two of them as a partnership.

25:00They'd acquired, I think four or five sites. They were growing very quickly and they said they were just getting absolutely hammered on all of the administration around the business exactly they're saying the recruiting pieces the data the compliance piece the finance piece you just can't think about growth when you start taking this like cement truck you know because of coming off the back and landing on top of you that's interesting to hear so it's like a similar experience can I am sort of curious so when you start to build out that management team and I think that's a lot of people sort of get burned on that making the wrong hires first or making one or two of the wrong hires?

25:36Did you, were you, were you sort of, do you have your own scars on your back from the wrong people and then figuring out what the right people look like? Did you get it right first time around? Like what, what makes the right management team for you when you think about scaling your time? Oh, I'm sure there's some process in it. I mean, we just got very, very lucky. You know, it just turned out that, you know, my now group manager that's been with me for probably just under 20 years. She was working at a clinic in Caterham. I had this amazing manager. She said, I'm at a local clinic 10 miles away.

26:11And I sat down and we hired her straight away. And she stayed with me almost 20 years and we're great family friends. She's amazing. She's still with us. Even though she's retired, she still does three days a week with us. And she's still my great manager, wonderful woman. And I got lucky. yeah and you know you just build a team hopefully that works for you and so you know yeah we got a great manager and then we took on a business development manager amazing guy great guy and and then he was the catalyst to really growth because he took on my ideas and i said look i got this concept can you make this happen so he was our business development manager he took the business and developed it and then became our ceo um and and and he stayed with me and he's been incredible just just become probably one of my best friends and so I think you can get very very lucky and if you get great people you really can fly and I've equally I've seen businesses get absolutely ruined by home the wrong people and it can completely ruin destroy your business so it's really really tricky and you just hope those people move on it's interesting you the The way you talk about some of your senior team, in both cases, you've said we've become friends.

27:31We've become great friends. We've become great family friends. They've been with me for many, many years. It's interesting. I remember my own experience running clinic. It's a story for a different time, but I spent some time working in commercial food retail early in my life. And I remember working alongside the kitchen. right? And the kitchen in a commercial kitchen is a very high pressure setting is very hands on. And there's a real thing about like collective flow. It's a you really feel it in a kitchen. When the kitchen is moving as one, you can have 20 people in there, 30 people in there.

28:05But it works like a factory line. And it's almost like 30 people, like a sports team, like 30 people moving in one direction. I remember in clinic, I unfortunately did not have the experience you just had, we made a few very wrong hires. We got really burned by that. And then we made some great hires afterwards. So we got very lucky, but it took one or two rounds to get there. And I think when we got there, I think I would probably have said, actually, I do say many things that you just said about your senior team, which was, these are people that I, I, like, I'd give them the keys to my house.

28:36I'd give them the keys to my car. I'd let them go pick up my kids from school. There's a, there's a level of trust that you have when you're working physically with people in a healthcare setting much like a kitchen that you just don't have when you're like purely office-based job you're not i just think it's very different and it's interesting to hear you say that you have that sort of depth of relationship with some of your team because you've got to wake up and trust that they're going to keep the lights on it like it sounds like that's exactly the team that you've brought together yeah absolutely you know trust is so important if you just get the right team you know it makes such a difference but it is hard i mean we just honestly we did just get lucky yeah yeah interesting where does them so you've got the team now you've got you've got the base the infrastructure the the growth you said it was early easier in the earlier days the market is more competitive now but obviously you're you're a really nice size you were saying earlier i think 150 plus or minus staff across every course of business it's like a it's a big business where if we speak together we get on a call in five years time

29:42what where's the business uh i don't know hopefully bigger hopefully we'll grow okay more tech um and i i think that what's changing in physiotherapy is the introduction of private equity uh so we are probably one of the last bigger chains now that haven't sold to private equity I think almost all of them have now had private equity investment and so what we're seeing is private equity moving into the physiotherapy space so it's done dentistry it's done vets it's done child care and they're now looking at physiotherapy you know so what's happening is the private equity coming in buying the bigger groups and that's what we've seen with you know Cora and Ascenti and Vita and Cora and Connect and HealthShare.

30:29And so, you know, we've seen this emergence of private equity-owned groups. And that's interesting. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, but I think that it's the way the water's flowing at the moment. So I don't know where we've been five years' time, but one thing we do have is we have a great infrastructure. so owning our own properties having our own software having a great leadership team means that we've got a lot of positive things going for us and and you know I think that hopefully we'll grow more we'll do more NHS work ultimately I'd love to have clinics that don't charge patients or have some sort of charitable status would be amazing but but that's not a reality financially at this stage uh that requires you know you to have significant capital to be able to run clinics like that um at a loss basically um so yeah i mean i think we just keep going and that's um we'll just keep doing our tech uh rehab my patient is still growing really really strongly so a lot of clinics are using rehab my patient for exercise prescription software you know back in the day people used to draw stick men now they're using digital and now they're using ai and we cover all of those things So this is AI, we're seeing AI as a big growth area in terms of a big risk area as well for NHS through ZFRP, but a big opportunity as well.

32:03So yeah, that's where we're going in five years. Can we, I'm going to be provocative for a second. So everyone's favourite two letters right now are AI. we have our own views of exactly as you said opportunity and risk and I think that right now our view of the world is that what's that great saying when the water goes out you'll see who's swimming without their pants on and I think wasn't it one buffer yeah exactly and and and our our sense is that there's a lot of hype training right now and and we are we are seeing in many ways in many ways because we obviously we build a lot of tech in house and AI is a big part of that but we are very aware of its limitations we are very aware of the fact that there need to be guardrails there should be backstops there need to be human interventions we do not yet believe and And we could very well be wrong, but our view of the world is that the human is still very much an important part of the loop.

33:10You can have AI firing, but as soon as you put that in front of a patient in terms of patient experience, patient engagement, is the tech ready yet to offload that entirely in our view? And again, we could be wrong is that it's not yet there. I am curious in terms of, I guess, wearing the two hats that you have, the healthcare provider hat and the technologist hat. How do you see, where is AI in the readiness, in the readiness spectrum of ready to be self-driving, right? Like the Tesla example, like is it the roadster, it's a self-driving car. Where is it right now in your view? With development right now.

33:50And actually, you know what? AI is not completely ready. it's not uh it does make mistakes it doesn't solve every problem it can't run your clinic for you it can't even i think do a good job as a as a pick your phone up admin receptionist you know it's it is very it is limited but it does have its place you know so so so yes we we it's it's developmental it's developed it's developing as beta it's uh we're seeing that um we're seeing how to create software now that uses AI that doesn't replace a clinician but supports a clinician so if we have my patient you can put a prompt in that says create me an exercise program for an 80 year old patient with knee pain and it will create you an exercise program put all the sets and reps in and name your plan okay but you still need to check it because it will put a stupid exercise in and you're like why would you put that exercise in I would never choose that exercise well of course you wouldn't because you are human and this is a computer so computers do do things differently from humans um and you know and and we live in a in a system where the ai makes mistakes and doesn't do a great job in some cases so you need a human to do it um however it will improve and it will have better use case um as as as as it goes on and as it gets developed and we will use it more and more in everyday world and everyday clinic processes.

35:18For example, in our clinic, we use AI for our complaints processes and it works brilliantly. Would I use it to pick up the phone and book a patient appointment? No, we just wouldn't do it. It couldn't handle that. And, you know, impossible. The AI receptionist one is an interesting thing. I mean, we have a lot of clinics that we sort of have this view of the world that there are going to be some healthcare providers who want a solution that's done for them, and there are going to be some healthcare providers who want to do it themselves. And most of the people who want to do it themselves, perhaps with the exception of folks like yourself who have a technology background, most of the folks who want to do it themselves will eventually become people who want something to be done for them because they will come to realize that standing up an AI receptionist or using some off-the-shelf plug-it-in AI receptionist might seem like it's a great 300 pounds a month, but actually you're losing 50 % of your new inquiries because they can't get their booking flow.

36:11So I think we share your belief that pointed at the right problem in the right scope, it moves mountains, but you really need to set that train track down. You really need to make sure that it is clear, the expectations, the guardrails, the proof points are there because it turns out patient operation is not easy. It's not a returning your shoes on an online purchase where you just send it back and get a new code. So I think that's interesting to hear that even with your knowledge and upfrontness in the technology you're building, so in some ways you're sort of a front runner in saying we're building our own tech.

36:50And you're also saying, but hold on a minute, let's be clear on where this thing actually can move the needle. And it sounds like the jury is still out for you. The key question to ask yourself is tell me the real clinical use cases of AI right now. I can only think of two, right, for physios. osteopaths and chiropros and source master's. Number one, clinical dictation software that writes your notes. And it's not perfect, but it's pretty good. Okay. And number two, exercise prescription. Five, rehab my patient. I'm not sure anyone else is doing it, but rehab my patient does AI. So you can put a prompt in and it will create you an exercise plan.

37:27Right. Or you can put your own exercise in and click a button and it will put in the sets and reps. So it just saves you time. right I can't think of any other use cases for a clinician are there any other use cases for physio using AI I'm not a physio I don't know if I'm the right person to comment on that I don't think so so even so we have it's not replacing physio yet and it's certainly not replacing private practice physio and it never will it may have an impact and support or replace NHS physio which is less therapeutic, it's less hands-on. But private physio is going to be absolutely fine.

38:07So AI has a limitation right now and it will always have a limitation and that it's not human and it doesn't have a human interaction and people will want to see a human and be treated by a human. Some won't but in our industry they will. So we're safe, we're safe for the future, will be a private practice will be a slight net gain with AI. It will help us support our businesses, but it won't replace our jobs in private practice. Tim, it almost feels like that's a good ending line, but I'm going to ask you one more question before I wrap up. One of the things I'm always interested in is if you could go back and do it all again from zero, knowing what you know now.

38:55If you had to make one thing, it sounds like it might be that first landlord, but let's assume it's not that pick another thing a different thing if you pick one thing do differently what would be the one thing that you would change anywhere in the journey last 15 years plus what what is the one thing you would change i'd probably gone into finance a lot more money uh i'd probably gone into finance and being a finance and created financial software and i've done way better uh no physio has been great honestly it's a feel-good job uh it is a is a great job uh i wouldn't change much i think i probably would have i would have capitalized and grown harder on opportunities in the nhs we held back too much when an opportunity came in the nhs we held back i'd probably pushed harder that's one thing i would have changed um 15 years ago and we were always a bit cautious and a bit you know and when these opportunities appear you know you have um growth risk uh you know as you grow you have cash flow problems you have hiring problems so we were you know we we went to go in time and probably i could have gone stronger and pushed harder but that's probably the only thing i've probably changed but um other than that i've been pretty happy with how it's gone great um tim thank you so much for everyone who's listening i really appreciate your joining um this is uh tim technologist uh clinic leader clinical director and let's not forget also Everest Summiter alongside his children, who are also, I think, going to put it in shame if we end up doing Mountaineer together.

40:28We really appreciate your time. Yeah, great. Thank you so much for joining. Thanks a lot for having me on. Appreciate it.