Small Business Solutions - Creating a Wellness Center Relationship

Small Business Solutions - Creating a Wellness Center Relationship Ivy Hartman: A wellness that’s centered can reduce many of the risks in your small business and that’s the message from our guests today. Drs. Bob Hoffman and Dr. Jason Deitch our co-authors of the bestselling book “Discover Wellness: How Staying Healthy can make you Rich. Welcome to sbtv.com. Dr. Bob Hoffman: Thank you. Dr. Jason Deitch: Thank you. Ivy Hartman: You’re welcome. Thanks for being here. I understand one of the strategies for small business owners that you mention in your book is to create a relationship with the local wellness center. What is a wellness center and how do you go about creating a relationship with one? Dr. Jason Deitch: Wellness center is basically our facilities in the area typically run by a doctor who’s a wellness-oriented professional, who consults with patients in their office but also sometimes work with local businesses to help them reduce their healthcare cost by keeping higher productivity and healthier employees working in their companies. And the way in which they find them in many cases is really working with consulting firms like our own by doing research, asking other business owners in the community to seek out solutions to what they can do to reduce their healthcare cost. So by working with local wellness centers they actually give access to their employees to be able to use the resources necessary to improve their health and well-being. Dr. Bob Hoffman: And the fact to the matter is that there are some doctors who have special skills in working with small business. And you know maybe they have a strategic alliance with a local gym or personal trainer or a massage therapist or an acupuncturist, or physical training instructor or whatever it is that they have as a package of team that will help a company utilize and work with in order to improve the health of their employees. So a wellness team and a wellness facility is an essential part of this process and it’s possible to get involved in this as an employer for very little expense or you can actually build your own gym and hire your own staff. It depends again on how far they wanted to get into this process. And what generally happens is most employers earn so much money back by doing a right thing of helping their employees get healthier that they continue to process on and on as they go forward. Ivy Hartman: As a small business owner, I may have a look on wellness that I have contacted. What are some of the questions I need to ask and make sure it’s a good fit or some of the resource that I really need to look for? Dr. Jason Deitch: At the very initial level, you want to focus on the financial access, understanding what their financial programs are and the business owner making decisions in terms of how committed they are. For example, sometimes employers can simply negotiate good rates for their employees without any other pack of expense for the employer. So financial access is really the first thing that most people look to seek and understand but cheaper isn’t always better. So it’s also finding out what the value is, making sure that the provider, the doctor what other people on the wellness team truly understand the needs of the employer and the employee. Dr. Bob Hoffman: And you want to know what services they provide and what relationships they have with other providers and what experience they have working with employees and employers, and what kind of results they produce in the past. It’s a whole package of information and again one of the reasons we’re in business consulting with small business is because sometimes you don’t know what question they ask or you get an answer and you don’t know if that is a good answer, a great answer or not such a great answer. And you need somebody to work with you to ask the questions to be part of the interview process, to help you connect with that local practitioner or facility so that you know that you’re taking the right steps and the right direction to help your people and your company at the highest level. Ivy Hartman: As something it’s important too that we one thing that the local wellness center and developing relationship with them is going to be a benefit to your company but, I think what you’re implementing some like this you probably would need to know what the other options are. If you’ve already done some research on the local wellness center or maybe try that, maybe you’re feeling like that there’s something else that needs to be fulfilled at that point where they will contact you. I would guess or find out what some of the other options are. Dr. Jason Deitch: That’s correct. We actually have a national network of pre-screened trained wellness doctors who specialized providing these types of services. So sometimes we will find them on their own, or ask those questions as to whether that makes sense and this is an appropriate type of program they should get involve in. Other times people don’t even want to go through all of that, they just come ask us some questions and we’re able to locate local providers near them to help them accomplish their goals. Dr. Bob Hoffman: And in addition to that we also have a network of other companies that we partner with from everything from ergonomic chairs to lighting in your business, to nutritional supplementation, and weight loss programs, and low cost exercise processes like bends that you could use to exercise with right at your work station so we partner with companies that we’ve looked for doing almost the same thing. We’re small business ourselves. We’re doing the same things that we’ve just done it first. We’ve researched the most and we therefore know more at this point to help guide you. Ivy Hartman: Local wellness center can be a great resource for people but you mention a couple of things, Dr. Bob Hoffman about ergonomic chairs and lightings. Simple little things that go into putting together a physical part of your business, they can actually benefit your employee. The main thing that I think of is cost and what do you have to say to a small business center who’s looking at those kinds of costs and how that they can make that rationale if they need to spend that money? Dr. Bob Hoffman: Well, all the research shows that if you keep your employee healthier they’re more productive, they have less absenteeism, they’re happier, they’re engaged at a higher level, they tend to stay at the job. So it is an investment, it’s not a cost that’s an investment. Even something as silly as someone who’s on the phone a lot having a headset and they are good and not such good headsets and part of our job is direct you to show you the right companies. We’ve done the research on them to help you negotiate better prices and to face it in. You know if you have 50 employees, you don’t have to buy 50 sets tomorrow. It could be a process that over the cost of the next six months or 12 months that you do that, our job is again constant tailoring, an approach based on your individual needs. Ivy Hartman: I really like that because in it you’re not biting up more that you can chew. Way to take us in the right direction and how you can actually contact the wellness center in your area or some of the resources that we talked about on today’s show. You can contact these doctors at DiscoverWellnessCenter.com or pick up their best selling book, which is “Discover Wellness: How Staying Healthy can make you Rich” and they’ve got some great introductory ideas and steps that can make you more rich and successful in your business and in your life. Thank you for joining us on sbtv.com. Doctors: Thank you for having us. Ivy Hartman: Absolutely, keep it right here on sbtv.com where small business is our only business.