Practice Owner’s Manual Series, Part 2 - CEO Habits Of Time And Attention Mastery With Adam Robin

[00:00:00] Welcome! You've entered the Physical Therapy Owners Club podcast, where your hosts, Nathan Shields and other successful PT owners and leaders share their experience and insights on how to build successful PT businesses. They'll share the stories of their paths

[00:00:17] to success and show you how you can also obtain greater freedom and more profits from your business. That's what the PT Owners Club is all about, greater freedom and more profits. There's plenty of room for you as well, so come on in and join the club.

[00:00:38] Everybody has a different framework and there's no right or wrong answer. You should have a system of managing your attention, i.e., managing what's important, identifying what's important. You can use the quadrants, you can use to-do lists and they have...you can use paper,

[00:00:51] you can use something digital, but the most important habit that you can develop is actually debriefing your to-do list and your calendar and auditing your to-do list and your calendar regularly. Hello everybody and welcome back to the next

[00:01:07] episode in our series of the quintessential bulletproof practice owners manual for success. Hopefully you appreciated the previous episode, took lots of notes, did some homework, now get ready to do some more work on your business, get out pad and paper and let's go.

[00:01:24] Hello and welcome to the Physical Therapy Owners Club podcast. I'm your host Nathan Shields and got my good buddy Adam Robin back with us on part two of this journey for building out a successful practice, the Practice Owners Manual series. The bulletproof. Yes. It's not just

[00:01:41] successful, it's bulletproof. I should have added that. It's bulletproof. That's right. All right. Part two, Adam. Hey, thanks for joining me again and what are we talking about? I think today we're going to talk about a topic that's near and dear to my heart

[00:01:55] and it's called CEO habits, time and attention mastery. Why is it near and dear to your heart? Because listen, for those of you who I had an experience with a guy who's been following me

[00:02:08] on social media, apparently like I have a brand now that I'm developing on social media. Yeah, good. Yeah. And I was like, okay, yeah, like how do you experience me? And he mentioned,

[00:02:17] he said, yeah, you look like this guy who's just like all like working like a lot of energy. You got a lot of energy and you got a lot of motivation. And I was like, thank you because that's really helpful to hear. Right.

[00:02:29] I think it's a lot of that's true, but my weakness is focus. My weakness is my ability to actually like take all those ideas and put them into a product that's useful,

[00:02:41] that people can use, that people can see that's tangible and it's not just a bunch of rah-rah speech. Will Humphries was somebody who really, really helped me realize the power of like taking

[00:02:52] the power of the sun and putting it through the magnifying glass. And when it becomes through that magnifying glass, you have that point of energy that's so strong that you can start a fire.

[00:03:02] The way to do that is through the habits that you develop around your life on your calendar and on your to-do list, so that you can actually like not just have a bunch of ideas

[00:03:12] that are exciting, but actually put them into a framework that gives you results in your business. Yeah. It sounds more like it's more than time management because I think that would have been a default title for an episode like this, right? Time management, but it's more than that.

[00:03:26] Time and attention management. It's more about attention management. How to manage your attention. Focus. Like you said. Yeah. Focus. More about your, your attention is the most valuable product that you have in your business. What your focus on, what you pay attention to, right?

[00:03:41] If you look for possibility, you'll find it. If you look for limitation, you won't. Like how can we set up our environment or our routines in a way that forces us or makes it a lot easier to place our attention on the things that are important. That matter.

[00:03:55] And makes it a lot harder to place our attentions on McDonald's and Starbucks and YouTube and Facebook and all the things that aren't quite important because that's a hard thing. If you're using the strategy of I'm just going to try real hard, you're going to fail.

[00:04:09] You actually have to have a system. Yeah. The next default system is a to-do list. Yeah, to-do lists. Laundry lists. I'm like, man, that'll overwhelm me really quickly. If you're anything like me, you've got ideas in your head and some entrepreneurial squirrel brain, then everything

[00:04:29] ends up being equal of equal importance. Everything has the same priority when you look at a to-do list. It's really difficult in that regard if that's one of your defaults as well. I would say it's impossible. There are people who are smarter than me who understand the brain

[00:04:43] a little bit more than I do, but I would say that your brain has a really hard time comprehending the difference between important and not important. That's a hard thing. That takes a cognitively intense focus side of your brain, which is hard to tap into sometimes.

[00:04:59] We typically live in the reactionary moment where everything's an urgent. Everything's just urgent. It all feels like it's something that we have to get to now. Yeah, we live by email replies. Correct. Text message, ding, ping, phone read.

[00:05:12] It's all like you get that dose of anxiety. That thing that is driving us to take action, it takes our ability to separate from that so that we can actually decide what's important and not just urge it.

[00:05:24] I've got a couple of ideas, but where do you want to start? I'd love to let you start it. Tell me what you're thinking and we'll go from there. I'd look at my progression a little bit. One thing that was influential in our business

[00:05:34] is we started sharing this with our leaders. We called it the Covey Quadrant. I know Covey wasn't the starter of it, but he lays it out. Do you know what I'm talking about when I say the Covey Quadrant? I know exactly what you're talking about.

[00:05:46] So it's got the four quadrants and I hope I can relay these well via audio. But if you can imagine a piece of paper split in four quadrants. In the top left is you would label urgent and important. Then on the top right

[00:06:01] would be important, not urgent. Bottom left would be urgent, not important. Am I doing it right? Maybe. I'm following you. And then the other bottom right is neither urgent nor important. You know in the bottom right there's going to be trolling streaming Facebook. Eating brownies.

[00:06:23] Silly stuff. I consider that kind of important, but not urgent. Anyways, so we know what's there. Things that are urgent but not important are going to be things that like, hey, I need an answer now as to what are we going to do for babysitting this weekend?

[00:06:41] You find that out. That's like a Monday morning text from your wife. To her it's urgent. Well, yeah, it's urgent, but it's not all that important right now. Hopefully I do well with these examples, but hopefully the titles of the quadrants

[00:06:54] explain themselves as you work through it. And this is where you would take your to-do list and put the items on your to-do list into these different quadrants. The top left quadrant, urgent and important are things that those are typically things where

[00:07:08] maybe you let things, you procrastinate it. It's not a good place to live in urgent and important. That's hair on fire. This needs to get done by Wednesday and it's Tuesday night or else I lose money, time, energy, the business, my integrity, that kind of stuff.

[00:07:24] Urgent and important, you might think that's a good place to live, but that's not where you want to live. You want to live in the top right, which is important but not urgent. And you want to live

[00:07:34] there as much as possible because you know that in time, if I don't eventually get to them, they're going to shift over to the left quadrant and become urgent and important.

[00:07:45] You want to live in important, not urgent as much as possible with your action items. Now that's just like a boots on the ground type of perspective of getting the to-do list done. There's a bigger

[00:07:58] picture related to priorities and strategies and a plan for the future and that kind of stuff. And that's all figured out before all this because that's where you figure out top priorities for the quarter, for the year, what are our goals, that kind of stuff.

[00:08:15] Those should eventually distill down into some of these to-do items and we're not talking about that right now. An important part of it that's understand that that happened, now we're on the day to day. Living in that important, not urgent quadrant is where you start planning out,

[00:08:31] okay, my taxes are due April 15th. It's important that I get them done. It's not urgent because maybe we're sitting in January or February. Maybe let's say February, you should have all your forms

[00:08:42] together reports by then if you're not doing an extension, but say you're sitting in February and so it can sit in that quadrant for at least a month, maybe two before it becomes urgent

[00:08:54] and important in these to get done by April 15th. That's an example. You want to take those items in the important, not urgent and then apply those to the calendar. I use Google Calendar.

[00:09:06] I love putting my to-do items that I need to get done on the calendar and scheduling time for them so that I don't have to remember that I need to get it done. I just have to look at my calendar

[00:09:16] and it tells me where my focus is at any period of time during a day. I could put it down for two weeks from now. I could put it down for two days from now. If that doesn't work there,

[00:09:28] then I can always drag and drop somewhere else on the calendar if other things come up, but it tells me where to put my focus is. Again, I'm not talking about where to put

[00:09:38] attention right now. I'm just talking about how to prioritize the things that we're doing on the to-do list. Yeah, I love that. My belief is that the more often that we can spend our time in the

[00:09:50] non-urgent but important category, then we're winning the game. If we can spend 90% of our time there, you're going to win the game of life and business. If you find yourself down the totem pole, if you will, down the quadrant more often than you're losing the game,

[00:10:10] you're currently operating in a system that will not allow you to grow. You can't grow until you're working until there's almost zero urgent things on your calendar and you're almost like, man, this is easy. I'm crushing it. I'm crushing it. My team's crushing it. There's

[00:10:25] zero overwhelm in my life. Now you've got your stuff together. Now you can actually challenge yourself. Do you feel like you're at that place now with your PT clinics? I feel like I am at,

[00:10:36] okay, so it's May 23rd, 2024. In my current state, I mean, I'm growing an online company. I have a lot of things I'm challenging myself right now. Yeah, but just specific to the PT clinics? 100%. And I sense that about you, knowing what little I know about you and your

[00:10:53] leadership team and whatnot. You have three clinics now, you just open up a third, but you're not running around hair on fire. The sky's falling. I don't know what's happening. I got to

[00:11:03] do this. I got to do that. I got to figure this out. I got to figure that out. I don't sense that from you at all. You're more in the where's the next game type of attitude. Yeah. Today,

[00:11:14] I had lunch with a guy and he's a regional director for a large corporate company. And I went up to, I drove up there for an hour and I met with him because maybe one day he'll be my partner.

[00:11:24] That's how I spend my time, like seeking out relationships like that. Growth opportunities. Growth opportunities, investments, things like that. It's a lot of funer to be there than running around with your hair on fire all the time.

[00:11:36] What it leads me to think of is, so how do you determine, maybe I'm going to ask you this question first, how do you determine what's important? Good question. Great question. I'm full of good questions, bro. You did. Let's see if we can answer them. Let's go.

[00:11:53] I love what you said that everybody has a different framework and there's no right or wrong answer. You should have a system of managing your attention, i.e., managing what's important, identifying what's important. You can use the quadrants. You can use to-do lists and they have,

[00:12:08] you can use paper, you can use something digital. But the most important habit that you can develop is actually debriefing your to-do list and your calendar and auditing your to-do list in your calendar regularly. Every week, write this down.

[00:12:24] By the way, have a piece of paper and write this down. This will change your life. Every week, ideally sometime like Monday morning, just block off an hour or two. I preferably too. And the only thing you do during that hour,

[00:12:39] you're going to plan out your whole week. I do that Sunday night. Sunday night. There you go. Sunday night. It's going to be called your weekly preview. It's your weekly preview. That's what CEOs do.

[00:12:49] CEOs don't wake up Monday morning with no plan and they just go to work and they're just right. If you're waking up Monday morning without a plan, I'm going to destroy you. I'm going to destroy you. You're not going to compete with me.

[00:13:02] Sunday night or Monday morning, you're going to block off two hours and you're going to pull out your to-do list and you're going to look at it and you're going to have to force yourself to decide what is important.

[00:13:13] What is the one to three things that I need to get done this week that are going to get me one step closer to what I really want in my life and in my business? And I can only pick one or three. I usually pick three.

[00:13:25] I call it my big three every week. I have a weekly big three. Those are the only three things that I'm focused on. If I get those three things done, I am winning. Blocking off that time every week is huge.

[00:13:37] Now, it's also important for you to do that on a monthly basis. Maybe every month, you do like a four hour block of time and it's called your monthly debrief or your monthly planning session. Now you're zooming out a little bit and it's like, okay,

[00:13:51] I need a CEO game plan for the next 30 days. What is going to be my monthly big three? The first thing you're going to do is get in a habit of doing that on a weekly basis.

[00:14:00] The next thing you're going to do is get in a habit of doing that on a monthly basis and then you zoom out a little more. It's like, okay, now let's do it a quarterly big three. Then you have quarterly strategic meetings with your team.

[00:14:09] Then you zoom out a little bit more. Now you're doing an annual big three. Planning for your attention is huge. I usually request start off weekly, then go to monthly, then quarterly, then annually. And it's a skill.

[00:14:21] The first time you sit down and you're going to look at this piece of paper and you'll be like, oh my God, I don't even... I want to do them all. And you're going to start forcing yourself to say no to 98% of the stuff

[00:14:31] and only say yes to the 2%. That's really important. And that practice will get you way, way, way closer. Another influential thing that was a part of our business was... There's a whole book written about it by Keller. I forget his first name. Keller Williams. Keller Williams, Keller.

[00:14:48] The book is The One Thing and it's all based on the one question. What is the one thing such that by doing it, everything else becomes easier or unnecessary? And that's a great question to use to determine some of your priorities.

[00:15:00] And you can still get down to three things. I mean, because those three things might be in completely disparate areas of your business. But you want to talk a little bit broader picture. What's the one thing I can do?

[00:15:11] And this is where, again, doing a strategic planning session or something well ahead of time earlier at the beginning of the year when you're setting forth goals and strategies and whatnot. But it should align up with your weekly planning session.

[00:15:25] And that is what's the one thing that should I get it done this week makes everything else easier or unnecessary. And then that's a good priority filter to help you really determine what one thing is going to get you the furthest.

[00:15:41] It's important to be open to the answers that come to your mind because some of those answers are going to be things that you don't want to do or that you think are important, but they really don't push... They don't move the needle.

[00:15:53] They don't push the rock down further down the path. I've got to pay these bills. No. Who does it? The bills are going to be there. That's not going to get your business further. That's part of doing business. It's not going to get it further.

[00:16:07] Whereas if you're true to yourself, like being really clear about... Let's take something simple. What is my time off policy when employees want to take time off? Can I spend an hour, maybe two hours to get... Probably won't even take that long,

[00:16:24] to get really clear about what it takes for my employees to ask for time off and for me to approve it and be okay with it. I'm talking about a bigger thing, and that is generating policy and procedure that regularly comes up in the street.

[00:16:39] Important but not urgent stuff? Yeah, where you want to live. But you and I know you live there things your world starts opening up in terms of... Oh, God, yeah. You become the puppet master at that point. It is to get clear on their policy and procedure manuals

[00:16:54] because they don't have a clear defined one. Just working on policy could be huge and moves your business forward. Or we talked about this the last episode, getting clear on my values for the company, generating a vision, creating a purpose.

[00:17:11] All these things, these are high level things that are important with the capital I and definitely not urgent because you can get by without them. But if you live in that space and do those capital I important things, then you will move your business forward.

[00:17:26] And it's impossible not to. Over the many years of my physical therapy clinic ownership, one of my biggest fears was that one of my PTs was suddenly up and quit. I hated being in that position, that position of fear and weakness.

[00:17:41] That's why back in the day, my business partner, Will Humphries, and I decided that we were going to change the narrative and always be hiring, always on the lookout. Forget it, we weren't waiting for the next provider to quit

[00:17:52] and then start up the hamster wheel to suddenly replace them as soon as possible. We were going to be on the lookout always for the next Rockstar PT. Since that time, I personally witnessed Will Humphries build a bench of willing Rockstar PT candidates for our clinics,

[00:18:07] such that at any time if our providers wanted to leave, we had not only a suitable replacement for them, but someone that we were super excited about. He did this not only during some of the most difficult times

[00:18:16] to find physical therapists, but also in some of the most difficult parts of the country to recruit and hire PTs. Now, Will Humphries has developed a program for Upt owners called Rockstar Recruiter to show you exactly how to find the next Rockstar physical therapist for your clinics.

[00:18:31] Physical therapists that don't just fog a mirror and treat patients, but physical therapists that are excited to join your practice and are looking for opportunities to grow and lead in your company. It's exciting to see that what Will had done so masterfully in the past

[00:18:44] is now providing to owners like you across the country to help you be in a position of power versus fear of the next resignation. Bringing on quality physical therapists to view Will's Rockstar Recruiter program

[00:18:55] will open up opportunities for you in the clinic that you never would have imagined and I've seen it myself. Reach out to him now at will at unlockhba.com Will at unlockhbismboya.com or call him text him directly 480-248-5191.

[00:19:22] I got two things that I think would be really valuable for the audience. One is, okay, I blocked off two hours on Sunday. Now what? Okay, let's create an SOP for what you do during that time. When you say SOP for people who don't know?

[00:19:36] Standard operating procedure, a checklist. A system. A system. Yeah, a system for your system. I'm going to give it to you right now for free. We're just going to kind of make this up, but it's going to be called something like the weekly preview questionnaire.

[00:19:49] The first question is going to be what was one win that you had last week? Question number two, what was one challenge that really impacted your ability to make progress? Question number three, what is one thing you can do this week to overcome that challenge

[00:20:06] and how will that impact you in your life and in your business? Question number four, based on what you've learned in your current to-do list, what are the three most important things that you need to get done in the week? And why?

[00:20:18] Question five is what is a perceived obstacle that's going to impact your ability to get it done and how will you overcome it? Do that every single week. And then just for your month, do it for the month.

[00:20:29] And for your quarter, do it for the quarter, for your year, do it for your year. That's your SOP. Now you're coaching yourself. Like that takes some brain work to think about that. Like it's not just ABC or all the above, like you've got to actually dive in.

[00:20:42] Like you should almost be on the verge of sweating when you complete that assignment. Maybe the next question is, okay, you've identified your big three. Now you place them on your calendar. When are you going to do them?

[00:20:54] For the week, put them on the calendar right now and do not move them. And by the way, turn your phone off, turn your emails off, turn everything off. Right? Boom. Now you've got a game plan for the week. Like that's your SOP. Man, it's a game changer.

[00:21:08] Takes discipline. This is where it's obvious to me in talking like this, where an owner cannot be treating full-time and do this honestly. If they know it's hard to get some owners out of the mindset that the ownership is more important than the patient care.

[00:21:27] I understand if you're just starting a practice, yes, that's where you should be. You should be treating patients. But if even at the very beginning, I would go back and challenge you and I would have challenged myself to not treat full-time when it was just myself.

[00:21:41] Get everything I needed to get done in 35 hours a week and give myself four, five, six hours to work on the business. Because to honestly own your business and run it properly, you have to have the time to work on these top one to three things

[00:21:55] that are going to move the business forward. You have to make the time to do that. Right? You can't hope that maybe you have a cancellation after lunch and that gives you an extra hour. And I had one client who would do that,

[00:22:09] like the front desk person would schedule them an extra hour after a lunch twice a week. He had lunch hour plus an hour. It's not going to cover it. You can't honestly address the issues related to your business in that little amount of time.

[00:22:22] This goes back to the need for having the time to work on your business. Ideally, if you're in a situation where it's tight, start with a half day, build out to at least two half days, full blocks, not just a few hours, but like four or five hours.

[00:22:36] When I say a half day, that's four to five hours at a chunk. Create that time so you can work exactly on this stuff. Absolutely necessary. And you honestly can't expect to achieve any of your goals if you don't have that time to do this.

[00:22:47] People, myself included, massively underestimate the amount of time and focus you need to be placing on your business in order to help it grow. Massively. Not just grow, but be good. We're not just trying to be a broke down... I mean, we want to be the best.

[00:23:05] Be good at what you do. People massively underestimate the amount of time that you need to put into it. And I really like Alex Harmuzzi the way if you guys don't know who he is, go check him out. The game is a podcast that he posted,

[00:23:19] just a really smart business mind. He talks about all the time that it takes a thousand hours, uninterrupted hours, just to start making just a little bit of progress. A thousand hours. If you're building out your KPI dashboard or your marketing plan or your recruiting system

[00:23:35] or anything, it's like you need a thousand hours to get to start making good progress. To act progress that is transformational. Like sustainable, transformational isn't dependent upon you as a recurring system. A thousand hours. What you're building is a business that lasts. You're not building...

[00:23:53] Like you're not just throwing... You shouldn't be trying to just throw duct tape on it all the time. And he also references this concept of like if you're going to write a book or if you're going to build a business, you can spend five years trying to build

[00:24:08] an amazing solid business with systems and policies and procedures and training and everything. And then you can spend the rest of your life watching it grow and make you money. Or you can spend 30 days piecing it together and then you can be a slave to it

[00:24:23] for the rest of your life. Right? So it's just like put the time in and build something that's going to serve you instead of... There's no shortcuts. Like put the work in and make it good, make it sustainable, make it... Build it to where it can serve you.

[00:24:38] If you're not spending your time in that bucket then it's going to be really hard for you to get to that non-urgent but important bucket. It reminds me of... I was listening to one of Tim Ferriss's podcasts this last week and he was talking with a venture capitalist

[00:24:51] and he's like, I can't tell you how many... This business school graduates come to me asking if he would invest in their business. And he said, yeah, tell me about it and what they have an amazing name and a logo and they have this idea for an app

[00:25:09] and they spent all their time on that. Nothing on the business whatsoever. They haven't tried to procure any sales. They haven't marketed it to anybody to see if it would fly. They haven't done any research. They just built all the fancy things around it

[00:25:23] just expecting that people are going to flock to this. And I think we can translate that to the practice space where you can have all four walls, you can have a lease and a space and the equipment and you've got all the certifications,

[00:25:37] all those letters after your name providing great therapy. Man, you even got some referrals that are coming in and great, you're treating full time. This is it. At that point, you've done a lot of work to get to the point where you own yourself a job.

[00:25:53] And you are the worst slave owner there could be is when you're a slave to yourself. You own the job that you're in and that's when people tend to get stuck. That's when I got stuck is where I thought, I don't see the path out of this.

[00:26:07] I created what I thought was the ideal scenario in which I have my own business, but I'm a slave to it. It runs me. I don't run it. I think the unconscious, subconscious assumption was that if I work really hard at what I do

[00:26:21] and what I know to do, which is physical therapy, then my goals will be fulfilled and there will be some freedom on the back end. Not knowing that it takes intention and appropriate attention to the things that matter most to actually make that progress.

[00:26:35] When I finally started paying attention and the appropriate attention to my business set aside time to do that. That's when my life changed, honestly. Opportunities expanded, things happened, progress started being moved forward. Now I have plenty of opportunities in front of me now that I understand that concept.

[00:26:54] Yeah, discipline equals freedom. That's kind of what comes to mind. I want to also give the listeners another really important nugget, something that really did change my life and it's called identifying your non-negotiables. Well Adam, what does that mean? Well, I'm going to tell you,

[00:27:13] you have just a handful of what I would call non-negotiables that fill your cup, that bring you energy, that improve your quality of life. These are going to be things like, my non-negotiables are going to be, I need quiet time daily. I have to have quiet time daily.

[00:27:31] I have to spend time with my family. I have to exercise. I have to get eight hours of sleep. I have to spend time reading and learning. Maybe that's about it. Those things are the things that I cherish that give me purpose. And if I don't prioritize them,

[00:27:46] I will crash and burn. Identifying what those things are, maybe it's like I have to go to church on Wednesdays and Sundays. I have to spend 30 minutes in prayer a day. I have to ride my horses every day, whatever it is. You can't have 100 of them,

[00:28:00] but you can have three to five. And it's like prioritize yourself a little bit. Put those things on your calendar and they don't freaking move. I'm going to have dinner every night with my family. You know what I mean? What that will do is business is hard.

[00:28:15] Business is super hard. It's stressful. It's going to demand more than just physical labor from you. It's going to demand, it's going to have a mental toll. It's going to have a demand on your marriage, a demand on your friendships, a demand on your children.

[00:28:28] So like if you don't take care of that, you will lose it. It's going to demand on your health. Right? Get clear on what your non-negotiables are and prioritize them because the best business owners in the world understand what they are

[00:28:40] and they make sure that they're spending time there. Really important. I had a whole podcast episode with Mike Bills about this and how to... It was more about control, right? As physical therapy owners, we are very much at effect of our schedules. We willingly give up our schedules

[00:28:56] and our time to our patients. And especially as owners, if a patient needs to get in, I'm wide open. Put them on my schedule. I'll see him lunchtime after work, early before we open. You name it. Is there a Saturday issue?

[00:29:11] Then you can't come in any other time. Unfortunately, we take on that attitude, I think, and leave ourselves open to the whims of everyone else's schedule. But when we decide to take control of our calendars and our schedule and say, no, there are some...

[00:29:27] You can't see me after five o'clock. I have an owner friend in town. He leaves at two o'clock every day. Everyone in the clinic knows it. He's gone at two. So if you want him, you better get to him before two o'clock.

[00:29:40] And I totally respect him for it. I'm like, wow. I don't know if I had the guts to do that when I was still sitting in the office at the clinic. But that's what he does. And guess what? His clinic is super successful.

[00:29:53] Guys, very clear on what his non-negotiables are. Right. Taking control of yourself. So you are... What we would say in our clinics was at cause of your situation. Don't be at effect of others in the environment around you and the demands of others around you.

[00:30:07] Be at cause of your situation and thus saying, be intentional about what you want and set your calendar so that it looks like your intentions are being lived out and make time for them. I love your non-negotiables for Mike Bills. It was, you know what?

[00:30:24] I'm telling my office manager, don't schedule me between 12 and 2 because I'm going to go for a run at lunchtime. I haven't run for years and I want to get back to running. I'm going to go on a run at lunchtime. And guess who was his biggest supporter?

[00:30:41] Because people came left and right trying to get on his calendar during that 12 to 2 time and she would say, no, he doesn't see people between 12 and 2. Done. She just had to say it a few times and people laid off. But people will try to attack you.

[00:30:57] People will try to get on that schedule and fit in at those times. But the more you can commit to yourself, others will commit to you as well and say, protect that time for you. That was beautiful. I love when you said that. That was really good.

[00:31:11] First person you commit to is yourself. Once you learn how to commit to yourself then you can learn how to commit to your business. Other people will be attracted to that. That's right. That's huge. I've got like five minutes and then I got a run.

[00:31:22] But I wanted to, I wrote down as you were talking, if you don't mind, I wanted to wrap it up into a bow. Let's do it. Into a little checklist that people can take. Chapter one of your practice owner's manual is building the foundation.

[00:31:35] You're going to have your story. You're going to develop your vision, your purpose and your values. You're going to flip the page over. That was the last episode. That was the last episode. Right? Now we're on your time and attention system. This is chapter two.

[00:31:49] And it looks like this. Number one, have a to-do list somewhere. Either on paper, on digital. You are no longer capable of like holding all that information in your head. You have to have an outsourced brain somewhere where you can put all your ideas and thoughts and stuff.

[00:32:04] Okay? Have that somewhere. Number two, schedule time on your calendar every week to review your to-do list and to organize it and to identify and to sort and to label and to prioritize. It's going to be called your weekly debrief. During your weekly debrief, you're going to complete

[00:32:22] the weekly debrief questionnaire every week. And through that questionnaire, you're going to learn and you're going to re-prioritize and identify what your weekly big three are. The only rule is those weekly big three have to be non-urgent but important. They cannot be urgent or important things.

[00:32:41] They have to be non-urgent but important. From there, you identify them, you place them on your schedule and it does not move. And then subcategory, identify your non-negotiables, place them on your calendar and commit to yourself. If you do that,

[00:32:56] you will be a freaking rock star business owner, rock star CEO. You're going to spend much more of your time focusing on the things that are most important to you and your business. I'll tell you what, the confidence that comes from that, the control and confidence

[00:33:07] that comes from that simple exercise is huge. When I knock out my most important things on a daily basis, I'm like, I'm kicking ass. Feel good about yourself. I'm in control, partner. Look at you look like you're having a come home. Let's go.

[00:33:20] I got my stuff together, man. Think about when you go to and you see somebody on stage speaking and you're like, wow, I'm really impressed with this guy. The guy's got us some non-negotiables. I mean, the guy, this is what he's doing. He's like,

[00:33:32] he's got his stuff together. Be like that. Right? I love it. I love how you wrap that up. Very cool. This is part two of our series about the practice owner's manual, the bulletproof practice owner's manual for any owner looking to start their practice.

[00:33:48] Or it'd be great to see some of the experienced practice owners look going back through this and seeing where they can polish up. But awesome part. I love it. Promise. We're going to get to productive stuff. This is the baseline and the foundation

[00:34:00] for being super productive in your company. Yeah, next episode we're going to talk about some money. I like that. Let's dive in. We're going to get into all of it. We're going to make that paper. Come on. All right. Thanks, bro. We'll talk to you then. Peace out.

[00:34:28] Access all of our episodes with show notes at ptoclub.com.