On 1 October 2026, surcharging card payments becomes illegal in Australia.

The RBA says the change is about transparency and lower costs for consumers. The problem for GP Practices is that the underlying card fee doesn't disappear. Someone still has to pay it.

And depending on how your money flows, that could be your Practice or your GPs.

Todd recently taught this live to our Project X Members. One Owner thought the impact would be tiny. Once she ran the numbers, she realised it affected seven or eight of her GPs.

In this episode, Todd and Sachin walk through what actually changes, where the cost can land, the maths behind the fee increases needed to break even, and how to handle the conversation with your team.

What You'll Get From This Episode

• Why removing the surcharge doesn't remove the fee, it just changes who pays it
• The maths behind a 1.5% surcharge becoming a 4.3% fee rise for your Practice, or 2.3% for the GP
• The hidden exposure many Owners haven't checked: GPs and tenants paying service fees or rent by card
• Why cash, bulk billing and direct bank transfers can create problems of their own
• Todd's four rules for navigating the change with your team

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Free Resource

Download The Surcharge Reset™ Playbook to work out what card collection is actually costing your Practice, compare the four ways to handle it, catch the edge cases most Owners will miss, and take the right conversation to your GPs before you make a change.

Download the Playbook here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Gv0TZ_2KSnO8sV-5Hpc6U0wOVmzYltvW/view

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Connect with Todd: LinkedIn

Connect with Sachin: LinkedIn

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P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are three ways we can help you grow your General Practice without burning out:

1. Get the Blueprint: Watch the free Practice Success Blueprint Training, the proven roadmap Owners use to grow profit, reclaim time, build trusted teams, and protect legacy. Watch Training Now

2. Sharpen Your Skills: Join one of our regular live workshops. Practical, proven tactics for recruitment, team performance, and profit tailored to Owners juggling it all. Click to Register

3. Ask Your Toughest Practice Question: Post your toughest Practice question in the SGPO Facebook Group and get answers from us + 1,000 Owners who 'get it.' Click here

Dr Annelies Geissler joined Robina Town Medical Centre and EZT Medical Centre as a contractor GP in 2008.

Sixteen years later, she's one of five equal Owners running both Gold Coast Practices, with around 25 GPs across the group.

Five Owners brings more experience and more capacity, but it also means more strong opinions in the room. Annelies breaks down how they choose the right people for ownership, split responsibility across two sites, and keep things moving when agreement doesn't come easily.

What You'll Get From This Episode

• What they look for before inviting a GP into ownership, and why clinical skill alone isn't enough
• How five equal Owners divide roles without losing shared accountability
• Why separate communication channels matter when you're running two Practices
• How treating decisions as experiments helps strong personalities move forward without endless debate
• Why they changed their fee structure to better recognise longer and more complex consults

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Connect with Todd: LinkedIn

Connect with Annelies Geissler: LinkedIn

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P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are three ways we can help you grow your General Practice without burning out:

1. Get the Blueprint: Watch the free Practice Success Blueprint Training, the proven roadmap Owners use to grow profit, reclaim time, build trusted teams, and protect legacy. Watch Training Now

2. Sharpen Your Skills: Join one of our regular live workshops. Practical, proven tactics for recruitment, team performance, and profit tailored to Owners juggling it all. Click to Register

3. Ask Your Toughest Practice Question: Post your toughest Practice question in the SGPO Facebook Group and get answers from us + 1,000 Owners who 'get it.' Click here

When Dr Luke Ward started looking for a Practice, he wasn't only looking for somewhere to work.

He was looking for somewhere worth buying into.

That changed the questions he asked.

Who owned it? How long had the team stayed? Was the Practice still being built from scratch, or had it already proved it could run well without chaos?

Luke eventually joined Robina Town Medical Centre and EZT Medical Centre on the Gold Coast. Today, he's one of five equal Owners across the two Practices.

He breaks down how he assessed the opportunity, prepared himself for ownership, and what junior GPs should look for before buying into a Practice.

What You'll Get From This Episode

• The questions Luke asked before choosing which Practice to join
• Why long-term staff retention told him more about culture than a polished pitch ever could
• How he prepared for ownership before anyone had formally offered him a share
• What Practice Owners should look for before inviting the next GP into the ownership group

Resources Mentioned

• How to Grow a Multi Million Dollar Property Portfolio by Michael Yardney
• Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
• The Barefoot Investor by Scott Pape
• The Armchair Guide to Property Investing podcast with Ben Kingsley and Bryce Holdaway
• Australian Institute of Company Directors course

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Connect with Todd: LinkedIn

Learn more about Luke Ward: Profile

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P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are three ways we can help you grow your General Practice without burning out:

1. Get the Blueprint: Watch the free Practice Success Blueprint Training, the proven roadmap Owners use to grow profit, reclaim time, build trusted teams, and protect legacy. Watch Training Now

2. Sharpen Your Skills: Join one of our regular live workshops. Practical, proven tactics for recruitment, team performance, and profit tailored to Owners juggling it all. Click to Register

3. Ask Your Toughest Practice Question: Post your toughest Practice question in the SGPO Facebook Group and get answers from us + 1,000 Owners who 'get it.' Click here

Helen Barnett's path to Practice ownership was anything but conventional.

After 17 years as a professional opera singer with Opera Australia, she returned to university in her late 30s, studied science, won the University Medal, and earned a place in medical school.

But by then, she knew medicine wasn't the path she wanted.

Preventative care was.

Nutrition was.

And that decision eventually led her to co-own Dubbo Health Hub, a multidisciplinary Practice in rural NSW, alongside GP Dr Heather Malham.

Helen brings a rare perspective to this episode. She has been the contractor, the clinician, and the Owner, often at the same time. That means her view on allied health isn't theoretical. It comes from years of seeing where these partnerships work, where they fall apart, and what Practice Owners often miss.

What you'll get from this episode:

• Why allied health works best when it's built into the patient journey, not bolted onto the side
• What allied health practitioners are really looking for when they choose a Practice, starting with being treated as an equal
• Why an allied health room can cost around a quarter of what it costs to run a GP room, and what that means for pricing it fairly
• Why values fit matters more than simply filling a gap in your service mix
• How to find the right practitioner by starting with your patients and the referral patterns already inside your Practice
• Why "here's your room" isn't onboarding, and what weak onboarding quietly costs everyone

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Connect with Todd: LinkedIn

Connect with Helen Barnett: LinkedIn

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P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are three ways we can help you grow your General Practice without burning out:

1. Ask Us Anything (Free Support): Post your toughest Practice question in the SGPO Facebook Group and get answers from us + 1,000 Owners who “get it.” Click here

2. Sharpen Your Skills: Join one of our regular live workshops. Practical, proven tactics for recruitment, team performance, and profit tailored to Owners juggling it all. Click to Register

3. Get the Blueprint: Watch the free Practice Success Blueprint Training, the proven roadmap Owners use to grow profit, reclaim time, build trusted teams, and protect legacy. Watch Training Now

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P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are three ways we can help you grow your General Practice without burning out:

1. Get the Blueprint: Watch the free Practice Success Blueprint Training, the proven roadmap Owners use to grow profit, reclaim time, build trusted teams, and protect legacy. Watch Training Now

2. Sharpen Your Skills: Join one of our regular live workshops. Practical, proven tactics for recruitment, team performance, and profit tailored to Owners juggling it all. Click to Register

3. Ask Your Toughest Practice Question: Post your toughest Practice question in the SGPO Facebook Group and get answers from us + 1,000 Owners who 'get it.' Click here

Dr Tim Koh opened his first clinic just three years after qualifying as a VR GP.

Not to build an empire.

To teach.

Nearly 20 years later, he's built six Practices, trained more than 60 registrars, and retained some team members for 25 years.

In this episode, Tim shares how registrar training became a serious growth strategy for his group, and why many GP owners may be overlooking one of the best ways to build culture, strengthen recruitment, and grow a Practice for the long term.

What You'll Get From This Episode

• Why many GP owners avoid taking on registrars, and why Tim thinks they've got the maths backwards
• How he recruits for cultural fit, including what he tells every registrar candidate about how long he expects them to stay
• How to position registrars with patients so training becomes a strength of the Practice, not something the community has to tolerate
• Why the most valuable thing supervisors teach isn't clinical knowledge, but critical thinking
• How registrars can lift standards, challenge pessimism, and become part of a stronger long-term GP team

Tim's advice for anyone considering Practice Ownership or supervision:

"Be brave. Nothing makes you succeed like needing to succeed."

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Connect with Todd: LinkedIn

Connect with Dr. Tim Koh: The Good GP Podcast

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P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are three ways Scale My Clinic can help you grow your General Practice without burning out:

1. Ask Your Toughest Practice Question: Post your toughest Practice question in the SGPO Facebook Group and get answers from us + 2,000 Owners who 'get it.' Click here

2. Sharpen Your Skills: Join one of our regular live workshops. Practical, proven tactics for recruitment, team performance, and profit tailored to Owners juggling it all. Click to Register

3. Get the Blueprint: Watch the free Practice Success Blueprint Training -- the proven roadmap Owners use to grow profit, reclaim time, build trusted teams, and protect legacy. Watch Training Now

• Dr Tim Koh
• Practice Owner - Currambine, Ocean Keys Family Practice

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P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are three ways we can help you grow your General Practice without burning out:

1. Get the Blueprint: Watch the free Practice Success Blueprint Training, the proven roadmap Owners use to grow profit, reclaim time, build trusted teams, and protect legacy. Watch Training Now

2. Sharpen Your Skills: Join one of our regular live workshops. Practical, proven tactics for recruitment, team performance, and profit tailored to Owners juggling it all. Click to Register

3. Ask Your Toughest Practice Question: Post your toughest Practice question in the SGPO Facebook Group and get answers from us + 1,000 Owners who 'get it.' Click here

Reservoir Medical Group has been open since 1960. Four generations of patients. A fifth now starting.

For 10 years the Medicare freeze made it hard to keep the doors open. Then COVID hit on top of it. When Sachin asked Lindsay Hyde what she was trying to solve when she first joined Project X, her answer was three words: "We were trying not to go under."

She didn't. Six years after taking a leap of faith and moving from 9 consult rooms to 13, they're at capacity. A nurse recently couldn't find a free room to run a health assessment. Now Lindsay is in conversations with the shopping centre about knocking on the neighbours' door.

What You'll Get From This Episode

• How a four-person management team ended the era of good ideas dying quietly in the hallway
• Five previous registrars returned as fellows -- the retention number that tells the whole story
• "If you don't do your business CPD your Practice might die" -- the reframe that cuts through every vocation argument
• The Roger Federer principle Lindsay borrowed from Todd and never put down
• How the leap from 9 to 13 rooms worked, and why 12 months later they were nearly out of room again

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Connect with Todd: LinkedIn

Connect with Sachin: LinkedIn

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P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are three ways Scale My Clinic can help you grow your General Practice without burning out:

1. Ask Your Toughest Practice Question: Post your toughest Practice question in the SGPO Facebook Group and get answers from us + 1,000 Owners who ‘get it.’ Click here

2. Sharpen Your Skills: Join one of our regular live workshops. Practical, proven tactics for recruitment, team performance, and profit tailored to Owners juggling it all. Click to Register

3. Get the Blueprint: Watch the free Practice Success Blueprint Training -- the proven roadmap Owners use to grow profit, reclaim time, build trusted teams, and protect legacy. Watch Training Now

.....

P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are three ways we can help you grow your General Practice without burning out:

1. Get the Blueprint: Watch the free Practice Success Blueprint Training, the proven roadmap Owners use to grow profit, reclaim time, build trusted teams, and protect legacy. Watch Training Now

2. Sharpen Your Skills: Join one of our regular live workshops. Practical, proven tactics for recruitment, team performance, and profit tailored to Owners juggling it all. Click to Register

3. Ask Your Toughest Practice Question: Post your toughest Practice question in the SGPO Facebook Group and get answers from us + 1,000 Owners who 'get it.' Click here

Some multi-owner Practices have partners who are comfortable with what they've built and have no interest in what it could become. They show up, collect their share, and defer every decision to the practice manager.

If you're the partner who can see exactly what the Practice could become while the others collect a cheque, this episode is about how you change that.

This isn't just a stuck Practice. It's a wealth event no one is turning up to collect.

What You'll Get From This Episode

• Why going from 25% to 15% might be the best financial move you ever make as a passive senior partner, and why Todd says the math almost always works in your favour
• Todd's one obligation for passive senior partners who want the upside: exactly what they must commit to and exactly what they must stop doing
• The Planet Saturn Practice: why a business with 20-plus years in the community has more upside than a greenfield start-up, and why the junior partner showing up is a gift to everyone at the table
• Why you should set a hard time limit on stuck-partner conversations, and what you put on the table when nothing has moved in six months
• The doctor who sold her stake for $1, built a Practice worth over $3M from scratch, and says the best thing that came out of it had nothing to do with money

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Connect with Todd: LinkedIn

Connect with Sachin: LinkedIn

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P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are three ways Scale My Clinic can help you grow your General Practice without burning out:

1. Ask Your Toughest Practice Question: Post your toughest Practice question in the SGPO Facebook Group and get answers from us + 1,000 Owners who ‘get it.’ Click here

2. Sharpen Your Skills: Join one of our regular live workshops. Practical, proven tactics for recruitment, team performance, and profit tailored to Owners juggling it all. Click to Register

3. Get the Blueprint: Watch the free Practice Success Blueprint Training -- the proven roadmap Owners use to grow profit, reclaim time, build trusted teams, and protect legacy. Watch Training Now

.....

P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are three ways we can help you grow your General Practice without burning out:

1. Get the Blueprint: Watch the free Practice Success Blueprint Training, the proven roadmap Owners use to grow profit, reclaim time, build trusted teams, and protect legacy. Watch Training Now

2. Sharpen Your Skills: Join one of our regular live workshops. Practical, proven tactics for recruitment, team performance, and profit tailored to Owners juggling it all. Click to Register

3. Ask Your Toughest Practice Question: Post your toughest Practice question in the SGPO Facebook Group and get answers from us + 1,000 Owners who 'get it.' Click here

An owner at the Practice Owners Conference thought their Practice was worth $100K. Their wife had already done the planning. After the sale, they would need to work nine more years to reach their retirement goals.

When Sachin and Todd unpacked the structure, the Practice should have been worth $600K to $700K. The problem was not the medicine, and it was not even the business. It was a billing structure designed in the 1980s by an accountant who has probably since retired into the same situation.

The associateship model makes one thing very clear: whoever built it was thinking about keeping 100% of their personal billings, not about what the thing would be worth when the time came to hand it on.

What you'll get from this episode:

• Why the associateship structure is engineered to produce a Practice worth nothing at exit
• Todd's ready reckoner: average Practices trade at 3-4x on a 6-8% margin. Project X Practices run 10-15% margin and sell closer to $1.5M on the same billings
• How loss aversion keeps doctors trapped in a structure they know is wrong
• The 18-month versus 3-year restructure roadmap and what determines which path you take
• What to say to your fellow owners first, and why this conversation takes six to twelve sittings, not one
• The doctor who sold her stake for $1, walked away, and built a Practice worth over $3M

Connect with Todd: LinkedIn

Connect with Sachin: LinkedIn

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P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are three ways we can help you grow your General Practice without burning out:

1. Ask Us Anything (Free Support): Post your toughest Practice question in the SGPO Facebook Group and get answers from us + 1,000 Owners who “get it.” Click here

2. Sharpen Your Skills: Join one of our regular live workshops. Practical, proven tactics for recruitment, team performance, and profit tailored to Owners juggling it all. Click to Register

3. Get the Blueprint: Watch the free Practice Success Blueprint Training -- the proven roadmap Owners use to grow profit, reclaim time, build trusted teams, and protect legacy. Watch Training Now

.....

P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are three ways we can help you grow your General Practice without burning out:

1. Get the Blueprint: Watch the free Practice Success Blueprint Training, the proven roadmap Owners use to grow profit, reclaim time, build trusted teams, and protect legacy. Watch Training Now

2. Sharpen Your Skills: Join one of our regular live workshops. Practical, proven tactics for recruitment, team performance, and profit tailored to Owners juggling it all. Click to Register

3. Ask Your Toughest Practice Question: Post your toughest Practice question in the SGPO Facebook Group and get answers from us + 1,000 Owners who 'get it.' Click here