Radical Accountability With Your Team: Why Lowering Your Standards Costs More Than Money With Adam Robin and Nathan Shields

[00:00:00] I'm thinking about someone we had to let go who wasn't meeting productivity expectations on a consistent basis and we gave him support and he wasn't acting out towards other people. Like he got along with the rest of the team pretty well. Welcome to the Private Practice Owners Club. Your hosts and coaches, Nathan Shields scaled his practice and exited for millions.

[00:00:25] While Adam Robin went from working 60 hours a week in one clinic to scaling to multiple clinics while working less than four hours per week remotely. This podcast is meant to share with you exactly how they did it and how you can build a business that supports the lifestyle that you truly desire. And don't forget to join the Private Practice Owners Club community on Facebook, where we are obsessed with providing even more resources that help owners just like you win the game of private practice.

[00:00:59] Where do you want to start a conversation? Well, I'm kind of sitting here thinking about what is the trigger? When do you decide it's time? I don't know if I even have a clear answer for that. I don't know if there's an objective. It's kind of like when do you break up with the bad girlfriend or the bad boyfriend? You know, it's like, I don't know. It's like eventually you just get tired. You feel like I know for me, like having been here a few times, I get to this place where I'm really tired emotionally.

[00:01:28] And I feel like there's nothing left that I can do. Like, I don't know. I'm out of answers. I've exhausted every amount of leadership capital that I have. And at this point, the only way to satisfy this person is to change who I am as a person. Or sacrifice your values. Or is that correct? Another way of saying like sacrificing my values. Right.

[00:01:54] Or if it's money related, then sometimes it's like I have to sacrifice the financial health of the business. Never turns out well. Never. There's no one wins at that, you know? Yeah. You kind of know like, yeah, it's time. Can I share my experience? Sure. And you say, when is it time? Well, so it's easier in our positions when we're looking at other owners and their employees and their stories.

[00:02:22] But even in my individual cases, I've been around enough that I start getting inklings. Like, something rubs me the wrong way. Could have been some experience, some either first hand or from someone else. Or you start frankly seeing some metrics like, that's not right. Not that there's a red flag, but my ears get perked, right? I need to pay attention to what's going on here and see if this starts becoming a trend. You're really good in those situations of addressing it immediately.

[00:02:51] I have to. I'm not as good. I take my time. Maybe I'm quiet. I'm the type that's like, let's see what happens here. Where I could probably use more of your go straight at it value. Maybe. It's kind of a bad thing too sometimes. But we go with it. We work with it, right? And so I think that's where it starts. Like, okay, where does this land on the scale of acceptability? Which value are we straining a little bit to accept this action? And just be observant. Watch.

[00:03:21] See what happens. Because usually by the time owners come to us about it, frankly, it's time. When it gets to the point where they're talking to us about it, it's time to cut the ties. I always have to remember the adage, I've never fired somebody too soon. We'll always give them a leash. We'll always try to be empathetic, even blame ourselves for the person's mistakes or inabilities before letting them go.

[00:03:50] And the more that we can keep our ears perked towards what's happening, be observant, watch the objective metrics as they come to us, I think we are going to be better served to let people go quickly. And that would be in the best interest of the business. Like, so in your situation, do you feel like you, what would you have done differently? Maybe judge how you guys did things. Do you think you did it well?

[00:04:19] Did you follow a good process? Were you maybe turning a blind eye towards some of those activities because they were a good producer? Well, I was a little bit disconnected from the business last year. That's not an excuse, but like I didn't fully understand the gravity of with this person because I was a little bit disconnected, maybe a little bit more disconnected than I should have been. Well, would you say your leadership team then was a little bit, gave them too much of a leash? Yeah, yeah.

[00:04:47] I think that they had a hard time understanding when it was time to have the conversation. You know what I mean? And we learned that lesson and we've acknowledged that together. And that starts with me modeling that better and also holding them accountable to that better. Really quickly, were they withholding of some of the issues? No, I think.

[00:05:19] That were coming up from this person? I would have let them go three months ago because that's not acceptable. But it sounds like maybe they weren't sending up all the appropriate information to you. Yeah, it was a kind of a confusing thing. You know, like, okay. I think they were hinting at things. I know exactly what you're talking about. Hinting like, yeah. Well, hoping that you would get the message. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right. Like, you know what I mean? Like, and I had to tell them like, no, no, no, no. I'm never going to get the message. You know what I mean?

[00:05:48] It's like, I am blunt, dude. Dude, I'm so squirrel brain. Like, I don't have time for a small, like, you just gotta tell me, you know? Yeah. And so like, if something's important, I had to train my team. If something's important, it's like, hey, Nathan, I need you to sit down because we have to have a conversation about something important. That's how you address it with me. You know what I mean? Like, so I had to teach them that and that never happened. Sure. It was like these subtle little things. And so I kind of blew it off. Like, yeah, we'll just handle that or whatever. Like, yeah, whatever. Yeah.

[00:06:18] Tell me how it goes. I never really gave it the attention that I probably needed. If they don't make it worthy of a conversation, you're going to blow it off just with the same amount of importance as their subtle hints. Correct. If it's a subtle hint, you're just like, well, it's not worthy of a conversation. So I guess you got it handled. Yeah. It was kind of a weird thing because what happened was, and hopefully we're not getting on too much of a tangent, but my leadership team started to get overwhelmed.

[00:06:44] I started to have a little bit of like, well, why are you overwhelmed? Like I started to like kind of blaming them. You know what I mean? Like you're the one that's not overwhelmed. Like you need to get your stuff together. Like what's going on here? So I started kind of looking at them and then it snowballed into a weird thing that we had to kind of rally around, but it all stemmed from this freaking one person,

[00:07:07] one person who like ruined everything, everything that we had. You know, we learned a lot about that, but I came in and I cleaned shop and basically said, okay, great person. I don't know anything about you, but you're about to learn a lot about me and we're about to get to the bottom of this. What's going on? You handled it personally. You didn't leave that up to your leadership team. Okay.

[00:07:35] I'm assuming that in the future they would handle this, but this correct gotten to this point, you handled it. Yeah. This was one where I had to kind of step in. Right. I said, my thoughts were like, okay, I'm going to approach this person and I'm going to hear them out. I'm going to hear their concerns. And if there is an ounce of opportunity for me to, to serve this person and to improve what we do to help this person, I'm going to do it. I'm going to go all in on this person.

[00:08:03] Talk to me a little bit more about what was your mindset and did you have a structure of how that was going to go? What was your mindset going into it and how did you frame your self? It's like, this is how I want this to go, or this is a structure I want to use. What was that? I just looked at it from a place of full service. Okay. How can I help this person? You're obviously out of alignment with our value. I take full accountability, full ownership. Something has happened underneath my watch. I don't fully understand it. That's on me.

[00:08:32] I don't care. How can I help you? I'm going to show you how much I care and how committed I am to trying to find a way to make this work. And when you come in, what are some of the first things you say? Hey person, listen, I understand that this is happening. First thing I want to do is apologize. I was wondering if you were going to go there. First thing I want to do is apologize. At some point, you've got to come in with like, listen, it's gotten to this point. So I have to take responsibility. Totally. I find myself in that frame of mind or starting the conversation off like that pretty frequently.

[00:09:03] Yep. By the way, I'm taking full ownership of this. I'm not here to what's right, what's wrong. Doesn't matter. All I want to do is I want to show up today. I'm going to serve you. I'm going to show how much I care about this relationship. Cool. How can I help? And I got all the demands. And I was like, fine. Action item. Got my VAs. Boom. Spreadsheet. Mailed it over to them. Here's my action items. Here's the things we're going to do. We're going to put all this together. It was things like the schedule and the communication and just little petty things, right? Moved it all forward. Put a lot of energy behind it.

[00:09:32] And that was after the first conversation? After the conversation. Okay. And it wasn't enough. Right? So this wasn't the, we need to let you go conversation. Or you, I mean, you weren't necessarily going to it. Like if we don't get these results that I'm letting you go right now. No. Going in like, how can I make this best for you so we can work? Correct. Okay. Yeah. Because I'm going to have to draw a line. Yeah. But I want to make sure that I deposit into this relationship enough to where I can draw

[00:09:59] a line and feel like I've done my part to be able to ask for that boundary. Right? That's basically what I did. And that's like, hey man, like I've exhausted all of my resources at this point. So at this point it's either like, you're going to hit the standard or you can't be here anymore. Was this one, was, was this a situation where productivity standards were met or was this the way he was interacting with team members? Team members. Yeah.

[00:10:26] And so you provide him this support thinking this is going to calm you down and help you be an adult. I'm going to show you how committed I am to hearing you and serving you. But he was still not interacting appropriately with team members. No. And it really came down to, you know, he had this idea of how, what quote unquote ethical care looked like. Sure.

[00:10:49] And after repeated conversations with him, it became very apparent that he had this ideology, if you will, that wasn't going to be, there was no wiggle room with him. It didn't work with him. He wasn't. I mean, from my perspective, he didn't realize how compromised his judgment actually was and how blinded he was by his own depth of like, just like, it's not possible to do what you're asking. You know what I mean?

[00:11:19] Like, it's just like, there is no world in which that happens. Correct. Correct. Like, you know, like it just doesn't add up. Right. And so it became apparent to me that there was no way to serve him anymore. Okay. I got you. And it was like, you know, the last thing was like, well, what if you just paid me by the visit and changed the way the structure and gave my own special thing and this and that. And I was like, you know, I think we're done. I think we're done.

[00:11:48] I think this is pretty clear that you're not happy and I'm not happy. It's time to part ways. Did you see that you were making changes and he wasn't? Did he make it much effort? No, I think that we just weren't aligned. That's all it was. Yeah. You know, I don't think it was personal. I think it was he viewed the world through a lens that I would never see and he and vice versa. Yeah. And we all know where that ends.

[00:12:13] I'm thinking about someone we had to let go who, yeah, wasn't meeting productivity expectations on a consistent basis. And we gave him support and he wasn't acting out towards other people. Like he got along with the rest of the team pretty well. So, but I remember will shared from his exit interview because will was talking to him, but he shared that he's like, yeah, you know, some of the stuff you've been talking to us about, like how you manage people and whatnot. Yeah, I don't like that.

[00:12:43] We're like, oh, cool. Cool. Then this isn't going to work. And let's find a place where you will work for you. Will you give us like two to four weeks to find your replacement, four weeks to get to find your replacement. And in the meantime, we'll help you find yours. Like, where are you going to go next? And we literally did that. Like we reached out to friends who lived near, who had clinics near his house and said, Hey, we've got this great provider and he's not working out for us, but he could definitely work out for you.

[00:13:12] And he's like, you guys would do that for me. We're like, yeah, dude, we want to serve you. I mean, just because it doesn't work for us doesn't mean you're a bad person. We just don't align and that's okay. I say that not only to share how we did it, but also to recognize that I wouldn't be surprised if he went somewhere else and met those production standards. Yeah. Because he was more aligned. Maybe so. Right? Well, he's a hard worker. He was a very hard worker. Right? And so I think it comes down to values.

[00:13:43] We had another person on the call talking about how a certain process wasn't being followed by the providers on getting patients to show up. Right? They have a process between the front desk and the providers to get patients who didn't show. And there's the same culprits that aren't getting it done. And somewhere along there, you got to recognize that they're not doing it. And I shared this and I've shared this before on the podcast, you know, the Alex or Mosey thing, they're doing it for one of three reasons.

[00:14:11] Either they don't know what the expectation is. They don't know how to meet that expectation. Or number three, they don't understand why it's important or how it affects them personally. Like, why is it in my best interest to do this? Right? And so a lot of it comes down to that third one. Like, are we just aligned? We talk about production and the other provider or the other owner talking about her provider

[00:14:39] is about production, but also the values just weren't there. She was, this provider is more focused on other things. And so, okay, we can move on from that. And that's all right. Yeah. The challenge that I have is whenever drama starts, whenever the toxic behaviors. Are you talking like behind your back? Talking behind the back, rumour, disgruntlement and belittling the company a little, you know,

[00:15:08] and creating animosity and draining the energy of the people around you. Yes. That's for me, like I go into full, I'm a bull that's all red whenever that happens. I don't tolerate it. Like mama bear mode. Oh man. I get angry. Like, it's so disrespectful. I would never do that to another person, especially somebody on my team. That was the case here for me.

[00:15:35] You know, I noticed that not only was my leadership energy being drained, but so was the leadership team. Right. And we were spending, we were doing 30 and 60 minute meetings about this guy over and over and over and over, right? Trying to solve this riddle that could never be solved. At some point you got to just pull the plug. Basically, I continued to watch him erode our culture.

[00:16:04] And at that point, when I'm firing somebody, I want to make a very clear statement to the team as well. And I want to do this in a respectful way. But at the end of the day, I asked myself, what would my team think of me? What message do I want my team to receive? Right. Because that is going to determine how I fire you. In your case, it sounds like this guy was just like, not aligned, but like wasn't causing

[00:16:34] the disruption. Right. Maybe it wasn't in a few metrics or whatever, but wasn't making right. That's a professional misalignment. Right. But when you're eroding the emotional health of the company, you're fired immediately. Right. If he was doing something like you're talking about, there wouldn't have been this grace period. Like, hey, let's make amends and things work out for you. Things work. And it's a nice transition.

[00:17:02] No, it would have been pack your stuff. You're out. Yeah, you're done, man. You're done. I've got too much riding on this. And then I care too much about this team. And it's just, there's not a lot of upside for you being here anymore. Unfortunately. Well, we can't tolerate you being here anymore. Yeah. I'm done. You know, if you're a private practice owner whose schedule is packed, but your bank account doesn't show it, this is going to be for you.

[00:17:31] You're paying your staff, your biller, your landlord before you even get to pay yourself. You've got money stuck in AR and you keep telling yourself that you'll figure out the business side someday. Listen, on June 4th and 6th in Nashville, we're going to be hosting the profitable owner intensive systems for immediate cash flow. This is going to be a day and a half where you're going to walk away with a 90 day cash

[00:17:56] plan, a simple one page CEO dashboard, and a clear path to actually paying yourself more from the practice you already have without working more hours or compromising the care that you want to give. Tickets are $4.97 and seats are going to be limited. Get your tickets now by using the link inside the show notes. Do you see where maybe you could have or should have taken an off ramp sooner in that relationship?

[00:18:23] I think that had I been connected to the company a little bit more, absolutely. I think that one of the, I will say that one of the things that did cause me to hesitate. And when I say hesitate, I mean like three or four days, right? Was financially. I was going to go there, man. Because he was productive. I know. And you know, that's where I and many other owners hesitate and usually longer than three

[00:18:53] or four days. So kudos to you, but we hesitate cause like that's going to make my life really uncomfortable. It's going to make my team's life uncomfortable. I appreciate the revenue that they're bringing in. What am I going to do with all these patients now? Yeah. How am I going to fill that spot? So how much more can we tolerate of this person to maybe find the replacement or find the solution? Right.

[00:19:20] And that's where everyone gets stuck and you're an amazing recruiter. You're like a world-class therapy recruit. I got to add to that too. Yeah. And so now you're like, cause I've been there. It sucks. You're just like, my company, my employees hate being around this person. I hate being around this person, but maybe I just need to tolerate this person for a little bit. It almost feels like a no one situation.

[00:19:48] However, on the other side of it, it's always worked out better. Like my team rallies, our efficiencies improve. The environment is like butterflies and rainbows. Everyone's happy to be there. Right. And that shows up to our patients as well. I mean, you're in the middle of it, so I know it's not totally easy, but it's better. Wouldn't you say? It's necessary. It's necessary. It's necessary. What's the feedback from the leadership team? Are they?

[00:20:15] I think they were nervous about, I got to remember, this is a leadership team that's been beat up by their team for 12 months. They've been held hostage by this toxic thing for 12 months. So they were tired. They didn't really have the fortitude, if you will, to make that call. They feared that if I fire that person, then that's going to trigger this person to quit and that person to quit. And we were going to start creating this. Yeah, there's that. Right. I was like, let them.

[00:20:43] Like, we'll start over. Whatever we got to do. We just can't do it anymore. Lock the doors. Yeah, we'll shut down one of the clinics. I don't care. I had gotten to that point. All of this to come back to, I knew that this year was going to be a rebuild year because of the turnover that we experienced. Right. I knew that this was going to be a rebuild year. So I knew going back to the book, Science of Scaling. We talked about that during our annual strategic planning workshop a little bit.

[00:21:13] That's a good book. We had to raise our floor. Right. Raise our floor and. Right. What was it? Lower the. I can't remember exactly what it was. Oh. We had to raise our lower focus or narrow our focus and raise our floor, whatever. Lower your focus, raise your floor. Yeah. Essentially what that meant was there was less that we were in order to grow and rebuild, we were going to have to tolerate less. Yes. That was my theme going into the year.

[00:21:39] So I had that as a principle that I was committed to following that pushed me through helping me find clarity that I knew that this was the right decision. The other thing is it was like Monday or Tuesday and I'm kind of stressed out because I'm kind of rebuilding the all this together and I'm kind of talking to Catherine and this was a speech therapist talking to Catherine and she pulls up her phone and she's like, Oh, look, that speech therapist we just offered just accepted the position. That was on Thursday. That was on my Tuesday.

[00:22:09] So I was like. And when did you let him go? That like Thursday, like I got the offer on Tuesday. I let him go on Thursday. Oh, okay. Gotcha. So what I was saying is when you can recruit, when you can recruit, you can recruit, can push through because I was like, okay, it's a new grad. They're going to start April 1st. I can push through for a couple months without this guy and I'm going to be low. Guess what? That's why we keep cash in the account. Right? That's why we have the line of credit. That's why we're here.

[00:22:39] Like we've prepared for this. Freaking go like we can make it happen. We just hired a PT. We got a couple of the interviews coming in. Like, let's do it. The power of recruiting, man. Yeah. I think we shared it at the workshop in January as well. But if you had a bench of available people, you would tolerate less on your current team. And so it's shifts the power dynamics to the point where, hey, you're being a jerk. You're productive, but we don't need to tolerate this because we got other people that we've

[00:23:08] already interviewed. We know they're aligned with us. We're happy to bring them in. Here's the door. Yeah. Because this is important. There were a couple other fringe people that were involved in this little fiasco in the clinic. One other PT, one other OT. And I had individual meetings with them. They were the first to find out that this guy was fired. Totally. You like went from one room to the next room. Yeah. It was like the next day. One on one. Guess what I just did. No, it was like, this is broken.

[00:23:38] What's happening is broken. You're a part of that. And I'm letting you know. I had a meeting with them on Friday. I said, this guy is no longer with us. He's been terminated as effective as yesterday. And on Monday, I'm going to get an email from you Monday morning. It's either going to be your resignation letter or a letter telling me why you want to stay here and how committed you are to helping us grow this year. Ooh. You decide. And that was the end of the meeting. Dude. And they both stayed. Really?

[00:24:07] You got to draw the line, man. Wow. Draw the line. Wow. They both stayed. That's awesome. Because they were a part of that. They were a part of it. Right. They fed into it. Right. They were still on the fringe. It's like they wanted to be here, but they were kind of being pulled into it. So I had to let them know, like, things are going to change this year. Going back to it, man. I know you can say that because you not only are you committed. Number one, you're committed. And that shows your commitment.

[00:24:33] But you're leveraging your recruiting capacity to say, you don't have to be here. Because I'm assuming, and I think I've got a pretty good inkling that they didn't just submit their letter and say, okay, I'm super committed. They still might be on the fence, but they just need a couple months to find their next job. You just have to maybe go off of the studies, right? What do they say?

[00:24:59] 35% of your current team is looking for work, actively looking for work right now as you speak, no matter what they say. And because I've been in your exact situation before is that I, we cut off the head of the snake, if you will, but it was just a matter of time before the other people who were part of that and got the poison left. Right? I know what you're actively doing is not because of them, but you are actively looking for their

[00:25:27] replacements, not because you're expecting their resignations over time, but you're actively looking for their replacements because that's what you do. You're always, it's what I enjoy doing. I like the chase. I like the recruiting thing, but you have to understand those people. That was my experiences. Like we cut off the main person, but the other people in time, you know, they left. I shouldn't say in time within a few months. Yeah. They left as well. And I know you're in a prime position to replace them because we're looking for it.

[00:25:57] Not that you're inviting them out the door, but no, we need inviting them the other way. Like, Hey, come join us. The water's warm over here, but there is that out there as well. I've never had a negative ROI on higher levels of accountability and standards. I've never had a negative ROI. It's only been whenever I've lacked accountability or bent or ease the standards. That's always come back to get me right. Right.

[00:26:25] And holding a standard is scary, but it's also free. It's also remarkably freeing and it'll transform. It's always transformed my people. They rally the right ones rally. Right. And these conversations, I know, like I tell these stories with a lot of passion on the podcast, but like, I'm not like being a jerk to my team. I'm trying to be diplomatic and fair and clear, but that's a scary thing for me to do.

[00:26:54] It takes a lot of courage and like, I lose sleep over that stuff. Yeah. But every time I show up authentically and I draw a clear line and I tell them that I will serve them with every ounce that I can, but there's a boundary that they're going to have to fall within the people that want to be here, stay and they get focused and driven and directed every time they get kind of like realigned. They get refocused. I feel like that's really critical. You know, I think of somebody like Spencer.

[00:27:22] I always talk about Spencer, but like the way that he moves people with his leadership is really inspiring. And that's one thing that he does really well. I mean, he's got a standard and he's not afraid to fight for it. He's not afraid to tell people like, Hey, this standard is worth fighting for. And if you don't like it, you can hit the road and it works. And it actually attracts the aligned people.

[00:27:48] It's not only strengthening of your team, but you'll start attracting like people. I don't know exactly how that works, but you start getting clear on your values. And how that's lived out in your organization. And you get better at filtering out those people who don't work. And even during working interviews that we would have, team members would come back and be like,

[00:28:11] man, I'm not sure that person's a fit because they know what a successful person in your organization looks like, acts like, feels like. And they can tell you better than you can sometimes that this person's a good fit. This person's not right. And you start attracting those other people. And, and as we started working a lot with PT students in our area, the ones that worked well in our organization would start talking to their fellow classmates.

[00:28:38] Hey, I'm in a great place over here. And usually the ones that they're friends with birds of a feather flock together, right? Usually worked well in our organization as well. Right. And so that starts to expand your values, your culture starts to get known and starts attracting people into the organization. Totally. Yeah. I think the main point is don't compromise your standards. And I keep saying standards, but don't sacrifice your culture. Don't do it. Your values. Your values.

[00:29:07] I think it's important to, I think about my children, my kids, you know, for those who have kids, there's probably not a whole lot of things in this world that you wouldn't, that you would let compromise your kids. You know what I mean? Like you would like kill for them if you had to, you know, like how do we protect our company with that type of tenacity, fierce love, right? And unapologetic love and commitment towards it. Don't get on your heels with that.

[00:29:37] Like get out in front and like be the tip of the spear with that. And if it's not a hell yes for them, get them off the bus. You know, I think it's a good idea. So if you got that person in your company that you're kind of like on the fence with, like it's time for a conversation. Now, yesterday we only had like five owners on the call. Yeah.

[00:29:59] But interestingly, this person brought up their issue and everyone else had gone through the same issue and could share the same experience, right? They were just like, yeah, I've had that, suffered them for too long, tolerated them for too long. And once we let them go, things significantly improved. Yeah. Not just the environment, but the numbers and the efficiencies and life was just better.

[00:30:25] And so that's all we could say to this owner was like, it's scary, but it's going to be better. I saw Greg or Greg Rochelle. I don't know if you've ever seen his podcast. You should check out Greg Rochelle's podcast. It's a really good podcast. He had a Facebook reel, one of the reels that I saw last night. He said, if there's somebody in your organization that's causing a problem and you're not doing anything about it, you're the problem. Right. Right. And I was like, Ooh, and then I copied it and sent it to that person. Oh, did you? Yeah.

[00:30:54] I sent it to her and she was like, you're damn right. You know, like, you know, the one other thing that I wanted to share, because I think there's a lot of people that are listening to this that can learn from my experience. Like, you don't have to make the same mistake that I did. Like, if there's anything, don't do what I did. I didn't do it the right way this time. I think that's what we're saying to everybody is like, listen from our mistakes. Right. To suffer them. Yeah.

[00:31:20] You can get away with these things when you're in the clinic every day, you can get away with it. You can move things, you have influence and you can hide it with your energy and your leadership. But when you try to open up three clinics and you got 40 employees and you're not there as much, you can't hide it. It's going to be the standard that you set and the expectation that you have with your team that controls that. And I didn't do a good job of making that standard known. Right.

[00:31:50] And now we learn that lesson. That will not happen again. But the point is that if you are an owner with a single practice and you have any ambitions to like, maybe you want to grow your team and like take a vacation every now and then, you know, or like maybe open up a second location. Or maybe you want to sell to your team one day.

[00:32:11] Or if you ever want to build a business where you can create some distance from it, you have to be able to model that standard and get the right people on the bus and get the wrong people off the bus. And you have to train your people how to model that standard as well. And so it starts with you. You know what I mean? So this isn't even about you really. It's about who you're being for the next person in line so that you can train them up. So think about this. There's a longer game to play here is what I'm trying to say. Yeah.

[00:32:39] Just out of curiosity, did you happen to have any members of your leadership team in on those discussions with this person? Every single one. All of them. Yeah. Everyone's feedback. You're modeling. Totally. This is part of your development process as a leader is you're going to sit in on these difficult conversations and watch how we do this at our organization. I think that's vital.

[00:32:58] And we didn't share that in our group call yesterday, either with the guy who was talking about someone who wasn't following the process or with the other owner who is dealing with this person is we should have made that recommendation that they have a member of their leadership team in on those conversations so that they can coach them. And model what that conversation looks like. I think that's vital. Yeah.

[00:33:22] I think it's really important to also because your leadership team is smart and it's good to work with them because they can give you insights and perspectives that are within your blind spots that you can't see. So it's good to have them counsel you as a leader as well. And give you feedback, right? Correct. Correct. And also in these disciplinary situations, which is kind of what you were doing legally, it's good to have a witness. Yeah. For sure. For sure. Cool. Good stuff, man.

[00:33:51] Well, I'm sorry to hear that you had to go through that, but I'm feeling like you guys are better off on the other side of it now. Dude, Q3 and Q4 are going to be great. Yeah. We're coming. We're coming. Here we go. Coming back, baby. All right. Good stuff, man. Good talk today. Yeah, buddy. We'll talk to you later. Thanks for listening to the Private Practice Owners Club. If you enjoyed this episode, would you mind doing us a huge favor and leaving a review?

[00:34:16] This helps us get the podcast out to more clinic owners to help them create greater freedom and profits so they can own their future. And visit our website, ppoclub.com, to find more resources and connect with us.