Traits Of Rockstar PT Owners - A PT Owners Club FB Live Event With Adam Robin And Nathan Shields

[00:00:00] He's got so much time to create and to be proactive and to get out ahead of those things and to identify his priorities and to hold himself accountable and to learn and to actually do the things that are important that are moving the needle in the business.

[00:00:14] Establish systems. You know? Systems, policy, marketing plan, everything that an owner should do like stepping out of treatment is so, so critical and actually have that written down like stepping out and being proactive about the things that you're trying to create in your business. Welcome!

[00:00:37] You've entered the Physical Therapy Owners Club podcast where your host 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 to success and show you how you can also obtain

[00:00:53] 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. Let's jump into it right away.

[00:01:10] We want to keep people waiting for the material, for the content. So, all right, we're talking about the habits of Rockstar PT owners and what we found over the years defines a Rockstar PT owner. The PT owner that is unstoppable, that gets things done, that meets goals,

[00:01:26] continually expands, continues to improve, is successful in clinic and the results, but also financially. What are you seeing especially as you've been coaching the last couple of years and through your own experience that what are some of the fundamental characteristics, traits, habits of Rockstar PT owners?

[00:01:47] Man, I love this topic but I did jot down a few things. Maybe we get to them all, maybe we don't but yeah there's a difference between people who make it and people who don't. Right? Not everybody makes it and some people like 99% of people in our program

[00:02:04] typically make more progress than they expect. However, some shoot off the charts and some are kind of in that middle tier. Sure. But what I found is it has very little to do with talent. Yeah. I can tell you that it has very little to do with talent.

[00:02:18] What do you mean by talent? Savviness. Yeah. Right? Your ability to have marketing skills or sales skills or just skill sets, like it's not a particular skill set that I've noticed. Right. I think it really just comes down to habits and routines that are very unique. Right?

[00:02:40] I'd even go not to override you at all but to even take a step back because a lot of the rock star people, maybe they don't have the initial habits but they have the willingness, like they have the desire to structure their lives

[00:02:58] and to make sacrifices to get crap done. Right? In order to establish those habits because I look at someone like my partner Will Humphries. I hired him because and I think I've told him this but I don't think it's a surprise to

[00:03:12] him but I did not hire him because he was a good physical therapist. He'd been out of school for a few years, he'd done home health. I think he worked a little bit in outpatient but actually I'm not sure but he was going into an orthopedic outpatient setting.

[00:03:25] He didn't have a lot of experience but I knew that Will had number one, you know Will. He's got the personality. People are going to like him. Right? He's going to attract people and people are going to like him

[00:03:36] but he also had a desire to get stuff done. It wasn't just yeah I want my own clinic someday because that'd be really nice but no I could tell that he wanted more out of life and he wanted to do more.

[00:03:47] There was a willingness is kind of a weak word for it. An inner desire, I saw it in you immediately when I started coaching you and that was hey I want to rule the world and that's different from Will.

[00:03:59] He wasn't like I'm going to have clinics across Arizona but I knew he had an eight desire. I could see a lot of myself in him. He just had an innate desire to do more, be more, expand and the clinic

[00:04:11] owners like you that do really well and the superlative owners in our group are ones who you can tell they have a drive. It's not just yeah I want my clinic to be better and I want to provide really good physical therapy. No it was more than that.

[00:04:27] Maybe I can't really put my finger on that exact word. Maybe it's grit. I know that's one of your values in your clinic but they just had that innate desire to do more, be more and the status quo wasn't cool enough.

[00:04:40] Yeah I find that like everybody kind of has those core priorities in life. Like these are the top three most important things in my life that I'd be willing to die for. You know? Like I would die for this and it's like your faith, family, your business.

[00:05:04] And if there's something above that like if it's like... Entry. Yeah yeah whatever whatever like I really like to work out and exercise and stuff. It's like yeah I like that too but like there's like a almost like a fear of failure

[00:05:17] or like a hunger that in a desire that's just built inside of you that really can't be explained all the time but like it's almost like you have to force yourself to stop working. You know what I mean?

[00:05:32] You want it so bad that hey if I got to work on the weekends, I'm going to work on the weekends. If I got to work, I'm going to do whatever it takes to get it done. Yeah there is that attitude.

[00:05:43] I want to talk a little bit about the people that we're not describing. So I'm sure there are people that are listening and are thinking, you know that's not me. I'm like I'm not hair on fire going to work all weekend and sacrifice everything to get this done.

[00:05:58] There are people out there that are listening like well maybe I'm not the best PT owner. If I don't have that innate drive or all consuming desire, those people can be amazing physical therapy owners as well. Of course.

[00:06:14] But I'm talking about some people who it kind of comes naturally to do this some of the stuff because I see myself as that person as I'm listening to you. I'm like I didn't lose all my hair because my hair was on fire for my clinic right?

[00:06:26] It's I want to do more, be more and expand. But as I started putting some structure into my life, and this is going back to what you said at first, my habits, as I learned more and recognized that what I'm currently doing isn't getting me the results

[00:06:43] that I want even though I couldn't totally iterate what those results were. Even though I couldn't define exactly specifically what I wanted. It wasn't enough. I wasn't getting enough out of my clinic. I wasn't getting enough of my personal life.

[00:06:57] As I started reading, gaining more knowledge and putting some of that structure in those habits like you're talking about into place, my business started doing better. For those people who are listening like hey I'm not hair on fire type of person that's

[00:07:12] going to kill it every weekend and sacrifice everything. If they just not only got the knowledge but just implement it. Just start implementing things. Implement structure, be disciplined enough to take the knowledge that you gained or the information that you received from a coach and do the work.

[00:07:33] You're not done with school now that you graduated from PT program. You need to pay the tuition and do the homework as an owner and as a leader now to learn what it means to be an owner, to become a better leader

[00:07:46] and to create something that's better than you. It takes a little bit of discipline and establishing some of those habits exactly you're talking about. Yeah, it's funny as I hear you talking about that it helps me get more and more clear on

[00:08:01] the topic but like you said not everybody has that natural internal drive to make things happen. If you're not that person no big deal however in order to create that you're

[00:08:17] going to have to develop some external pieces in your life to kind of force you to move in that direction. Establishing some boundaries on how you behave, how you make decisions, what you prioritize

[00:08:31] and creating structure and lots and lots of discipline is kind of a way to externally create that environment for you to succeed. Yeah, this is what successful people do type of actions. Correct.

[00:08:47] I like to say and I stole it from someone else but you don't start acting like a million dollar company once you make a million dollars. You start acting like a million dollar company now

[00:08:57] so that you can make a million dollars, right? If you have a $200,000 annual revenue mindset you're going to make $200,000 and if that's cool for you then that's cool for you, right? But if you have a desire to do more, be more, make more money, provide more for your

[00:09:13] family, have some more freedom you need to start acting differently. You need to start doing more, being more and so for someone who doesn't have the innate desire they just need to recognize that some of the things that come naturally to them need to change.

[00:09:28] They need to make different decisions. They've got to delegate to different people where you don't have the energy for certain things. You need to delegate those things that take energy from you and give it to someone else because they'll actually start

[00:09:40] pushing you and pulling you along. I noticed that on some of my team and maybe you have that in some of your leaders is as I delegated roles and started developing a leadership team

[00:09:49] they started pulling me along like come on Nathan we can do more, let's do more. Let's do it buddy. Right? And so that's the beauty of a team but just acting in a different way even if you

[00:09:58] don't have the innate desire. Yeah, you mentioned earlier like do the work. Like I wrote down before this call like show up, make the time and do the work. Like if you establish it as important get it done.

[00:10:16] And there's no like I'm gonna get it done if there's no if it's just I'm gonna get it done period unless it comes before my faith in my family but all else aside like I'm getting

[00:10:29] that sucker done. I'm gonna build out that KPI dashboard. I'm gonna freaking create that email campaign. I'm gonna spend hours and hours trying to recruit if I need to like whatever I say I'm

[00:10:41] gonna get done, I'm getting it done. All right? And that's the tough part about this time of year because here in a couple weeks people are going to have new year's resolutions. Right? They're essentially making promises to themselves that they're not going to keep.

[00:10:53] Right. And part of what you're talking about is say I promise myself to do these things for the benefit of my clinic but it's really easy to let yourself down and break a promise to yourself. And that's why I think having one-on-one personal coaching

[00:11:10] or even a mastermind that holds you accountable. Because embracing accountability. Yeah, not all masterminds are good at accountability. It's like hey, rah-rah each other kind of thing but something that provides accountability that says hey,

[00:11:22] you promised yourself and me, your coach that you were gonna do these things for the benefit of your company. Are you gonna get them done? Right? And so this time of year it's good to

[00:11:32] have this kind of conversation to remind people hey, it's more than just putting yourself out there and saying I want to set these goals and then setting those off to the side and letting

[00:11:41] them collect dust on the shelf. Where is that accountability piece? If you're not good at keeping promises to yourself, I'm one of those people, then you need to put some structure in place. And the reason I thought about that is when you said I've got to do this,

[00:11:55] I'm gonna spend the time to do blank, right? For me, I have to put it on my calendar. Then I know I look at tomorrow's calendar the night before and I'm like oh, that's right,

[00:12:05] I've got to do that. And if it doesn't work for me then I'll change the time and move it around and you name it. But I'm gonna put that action item on my calendar even if it's

[00:12:15] on a Saturday or Sunday so that I know it's there and I don't number one forget about it but number two, I block out the time to get that thing done and that helps out the time.

[00:12:24] Yeah, there's a lot of ways to develop habits but writing it down, sharing your habit with an accountability partner. Maybe you have a spouse or a team member and saying like hey, I'm gonna commit to this and I give you permission to hold me accountable, right?

[00:12:40] Yeah, those are all really, really great things and the thing is it's like you start small and you just get some wins, right? Stack some wins and then you do it over

[00:12:51] and over and over and over and then eventually you start to prove to yourself. You start to identify like I am a disciplined person, I say what I'm gonna do and I do what I'm gonna say

[00:13:01] and you start to develop that mindset of like if I say I have to do it, you know what I mean? That's part of it. Part of being that owner is to look forward, right?

[00:13:13] And this is an experience that I've had just recently. I'm creating this course to help PT owners increase reimbursements or revenues, right? It's a profits program and I need to create these videos for the training. I would say 70% done with the videos, the training, putting it on

[00:13:30] Thinkific. I got the designer, he's working on all the resources and stuff like that. But this last module, it's a little bit more involved, it takes a little bit more explanation

[00:13:40] you name it and I've just been dragging my feet. I'm doing it for like a month, maybe more. But I'm going out of town next week. I'm gonna be going out of town for a few weeks

[00:13:50] and I want to get it done before I leave town. If I wasn't and I bring that up simply because I knew there was a deadline. If there is this deadline, you know, this can be similar to

[00:14:00] having that coach and the upcoming one-on-one call like I need to get this stuff done before. I just told myself, okay, I need to do this. I need to complete all this stuff within the next week

[00:14:11] and having that deadline just was in my head every day. It has been. I'm not completely done but I'm probably 80%, 90% there. But that helps me get things done by just looking ahead. I want to have

[00:14:23] it done by a certain time. I'm making promises to people that I'm going to have this product out to them by a certain time or I need to hire. See one thing as we're looking forward

[00:14:32] that you don't have time to do as a PT owner if you're treating all the time and it gets forgotten is to look forward on the calendar at what's coming up. And it can be so valuable and so helpful

[00:14:45] if you have the space, if you take the time in the space to look forward on the calendar. So we had our group call yesterday and we talked about what are you guys doing for

[00:14:54] to minimize cancellations during the holiday season? What are you guys going to do to minimize those same cancellations at the beginning of the year when the deductibles go to zero again? I think one person said that they were talking to their patients now in the middle of December

[00:15:09] about the potential for holidays coming up and canceling or deductibles going to zero. I don't know how many were on there, 10, 12, whatever. But looking forward like that is that's your job. You're standing at the helm of the shit looking forward

[00:15:25] and no one else is doing it. You're the owner. So a habit of a really good owner is someone who looks forward on the calendar. What needs to get done? What's coming up? Where are the rocks

[00:15:36] showing up? Christie in our group mentioned, hey, Medicare reimbursements going down next year and team meeting, how are we going to combat the declining reimbursement rates with Medicare? It wasn't just Christie thinking to herself, yeah, what am I going to do about it? No,

[00:15:51] she brought it forward to the team. This affects us all. Those are some of the rock star leadership qualities and I'm not trying to top myself. I gave myself up as an example of what deadlines

[00:16:01] and looking forward can do to move you forward and take action, but true leaders really look forward. You do the same thing. Come November every year, what do you guys do for your marketing? We use it or lose it campaign. Yeah, exactly. And you do that every year.

[00:16:17] Right? Yeah. It's going to go out every year. And when you get to that level of leadership, where you have programs in place, now you're putting them on the calendar. Now you're talking about Jim Collins, good to great, pushing the flywheel. The initial pushing of the

[00:16:34] flywheel is hard and it takes effort and you're grinding and grinding and grinding, but as you keep going, it goes a little bit faster and a little bit faster and a little bit faster and it starts spinning and all of a sudden that momentum starts pushing it itself.

[00:16:49] Right? And it just takes a little bit of pushes after a while to keep it going. But right now for most owners as they're listening, it's a grind and it's pushing through. It's setting things up such that you can stand at the helm and look forward,

[00:17:04] taking the time away from patient care to look at the calendar, sitting down with your leadership team at the beginning of the month and saying, hey, what's coming up this month? What's coming up next month that we need to market for or plan for?

[00:17:16] Birthdays that are coming up, holidays that we need to adjust for, you name it. I think leaders who set themselves up such that they have that kind of time to look forward make huge strides in their

[00:17:28] company. Yeah. I'm thinking about Sam Jackson right now. Killing it. Right? The guys crushing it. And one of the things he's done is he's stepped out of treatment, step out. How long has he been an owner? Not even a year. And he stepped out. Nice.

[00:17:45] He stepped out. I think he's around like three days out. He's only treating like two and a half days a week now. Nice. But the guy, he's got so much time to create and to be proactive

[00:17:58] and to get out ahead of those things and to identify his priorities and to hold himself accountable and to learn and to actually do the things that are important that are moving the needle in the business. Systems, policy, marketing plan, everything that a

[00:18:14] donor should do like stepping out of treatment is so critical and actually have that written down like stepping out and being proactive about the things that you're trying to create in your

[00:18:27] business. Right? So like a lot of times it's like there's this problem or a fire and the business erupts. Right? And so, okay, here we are. We're in the middle of the fire.

[00:18:36] Let's put it out real quick and then let's just keep going. The answer to that is no. Why did this fire happen? Why did that happen? Right? And so now really you're trying to like

[00:18:47] look back and find the point in time in which the mistake occurred so that way you can be more proactive about it in the future. That takes a different type of like mindset. Like it's a

[00:18:56] different part of your brain. You can't do that like while you're treating patients and answering emails and answering phone calls like you need some quiet time to sit down and think and

[00:19:05] like think like zoom out a little bit so you can solve those problems. And then but once you do that over and over and over your business, the fires don't come up anymore. Right? I love that you

[00:19:16] brought up that it takes a different part of your brain because it was so hard for me to come off the floor right into my desk in my office and start working on business stuff. It was

[00:19:28] the wheels just got all gunked up and stuck. It's like a frozen engine for me at least. Like it's just a completely different mindset to shift. So when I tell people you need at least a half day

[00:19:39] to work on your business, yes you do. It's really hard if that half day is immediately after patient care. It's got to be after some kind of decompression like lunch or whatnot. Or even

[00:19:49] starting the day in a business mindset and then go to patient care. Right? That would probably be better, right? I don't know if you recognize the same thing, but it's taxing. It's hard to do.

[00:20:00] It's hard to get your mindset in a different space and it takes a lot of energy to make that transition, simply make that mental transition. So if people can spend a full day or start their

[00:20:10] day working on the business, I think that's even better. Yeah, I always recommend setting that deep work time. It's the cognitively intense boring work that you know you need to be doing

[00:20:23] that you're not doing. That deep work time, most people would recommend that be earlier in the day and earlier in the week because that's when your energy levels are at its highest, right? As opposed to like so Monday morning compared to Friday evening, whole different energy level

[00:20:39] at that point, right? So like it's true, right? So we want them early in the day, early in the week. That's the time you work on your business. Right, definitely. Yeah. And I think that what you're talking about there,

[00:20:51] creating habits, then you take that structure and put it in your admin time. So you do need to create habits. Tell me what do you do so that you're not guided and dictated by your emails?

[00:21:05] Yeah, so there's a few things that you can do, but we actually have a section in our training called Time and Attention Mastery. Like that's how important I think it is. It's like so

[00:21:16] important, but it really comes back to designing your ideal workplace. Like you be the designer right now. I bet you right now if I ask anybody like what would be the most ideal place to work?

[00:21:29] It would be like if my emails were off and my phone was on silent in the other room and I was in my office alone and there was no people interrupting me. Let's do that.

[00:21:39] What's that? Let's create that. Right. So like take your phone, put it on silent, put it in the other room, design your ideal scene and create your environment and then be

[00:21:53] disciplined enough to say no because what happens is we're so used to giving our time away. We give our time and attention away. We just give it away to the first urgent thing that comes up. And so people are, you've created inadvertently we create dependent relationships. Like people

[00:22:12] are dependent on you because they just come to you with all their problems. Right? And so when you start to say no and you start putting boundaries on things like emails and phone calls and text messages and questions from your team, people are going to be like, well,

[00:22:27] whoa, what's going on? Right? You used to be available all the time. Right. Right. And so like, I think it starts to number one, like really kind of getting clear, like your time is valuable, your self-worth is valuable enough to where like you need to have

[00:22:42] uninterrupted time. Period. There's probably only like two things in the world that would be a good reason for you to break that rule. And that would be like faith or family. Anything else?

[00:22:53] It's not in a dire emergency. Like I'll talk to you after my deport time and it comes down to like developing those habits. Definitely takes some discipline, whether you have that

[00:23:03] innate ability to have all the energy in the world and to work on your business or you don't, you can't get away from the fact that you have to stay disciplined. Yes. The plan equals freedom. Feel like that's a book.

[00:23:15] If it's not, it's going to be right. It should be. Yeah. The guys who are just disciplined and working smart. Right? So discipline doesn't mean taking that admin time. The admin time in and of itself isn't what's important.

[00:23:30] If you're during your admin time, if you are cutting checks, catching up on your patient paperwork, let's see maybe fixing something that a piece of equipment during your admin time. Yeah. That's not admin time. That's not what we're talking about. You not only need to be

[00:23:46] disciplined in setting aside your time, but you also need very, be very specific and prioritize what you're doing during that time. That's a constant question going through my head every day. What is the most important thing I need to be doing?

[00:23:58] Okay. Can we stop by there, Rosalia? That's the most important question any CEO should... That's it. Every single day or every single week, every single month at your cadence, you pre-define the priority and then you create boundaries around your time and attention

[00:24:13] to put all of your energy and motivation and resources towards whatever priority you set and you do it week after week. That's it. For me, I don't know about you, but that's how you make progress. That's it. What is the priority? Is the ultimate question?

[00:24:31] Yeah. If you haven't done some pre-work, then that answer is going to change a lot, and it shouldn't. If you've done... And what I mean by pre-work is if you've established some annual goals and priorities, those are the goals and priorities for the

[00:24:46] rest of the year in spite of everything else, right? But if you're floating and day to day asking that question to yourself, well, you could fool yourself into thinking answering these emails is the most important thing I could be doing when it really is, I don't know,

[00:25:06] establishing, building out the job description for my friend desk because they do whatever they want whenever they want and I don't know how to control them. I don't know. It could be something like that. Yeah, that's a lot more important until you have a relatively solid policy and

[00:25:23] procedure manual and an employee handbook and job descriptions. I've done enough annual strategic planning sessions to know that that usually lands number one or two every year if it's not already built out. We need to beef up our policy. Yeah, we need to build out our programs,

[00:25:38] policies, procedures and systems, job descriptions, you name it because it's hard to give someone a position and help them feel really clearly defined in their role if they don't have something written

[00:25:50] that you can reference or hold them accountable to. And so if you don't have those, that's way up there and it's the crap work. It's not fun. It's a grind. It's the boring work. Make

[00:26:02] it piecemeal. Just say, yeah, it's the one most important thing, but you don't have to spend five hours every night doing it. You just commit to doing one job description a week. And within a few weeks, you probably covered all the job descriptions, right? Yeah, that's a huge

[00:26:18] part of it right there. I just say that asking that question, you could get fooled into thinking some things that are urgent are most important. Right. Back to Steve McCovey stuff. You might think if they're urgent, but they're not important. You want to stay in the important

[00:26:34] range and not be dictated by urgency, which is typically reactionary. And you want to set up your systems and policies such that you aren't living in the urgent realm and the reactionary realm, but working on the urgent stuff or I'm sorry, the important stuff.

[00:26:50] Yeah, that's awesome. You did hit on learning about policy and procedure. You learned about some urgent versus important. There's some principles in there that you're alluding to you have to learn those things. You can't just like, it's not when you turn 18, then you all of

[00:27:09] a sudden learn what policy and procedures are and what those things are. You have to learn those things. And so I wrote on my sheet, study, study, study, study, read, read, read, read.

[00:27:27] Right. You've got to learn. You've got to become a master of your craft. And if you're not always be studying, I mean, find a podcast that you love, find a book that you love,

[00:27:38] find a mentor that you can leverage, hire a coach, read a book. Let's say you want to build out a KPI dashboard, play with it, get involved with it, put some numbers in there,

[00:27:48] create some scenarios. What if my clinic did this? What if my clinic did that? Well, if this happened, how could I improve it and really engulf yourself in the material and know it

[00:27:57] inside, outside, upside down backwards? Because the people who know their stuff are the ones who can make really good decisions and stay in that important zone a lot more often. You'll have

[00:28:08] a leg up on your competition. You'll make a ton of progress. You're going back to one of the old mottos of my podcast and that was step out, reach out in network. So we talked about

[00:28:18] getting away from patient care, sending aside admin time. That's stepping out of the technical aspect of PT. Reaching out is getting the knowledge. I say reaching out partially is a big portion of that is getting some coaching or consulting. But it's also, like you said,

[00:28:33] listening to podcasts, reading books. I love the quote, not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers. And find the books. I mention them on the podcast every so often. But the third part of that motto is network. So if you don't know which books to read,

[00:28:56] then you tap into your network. If you don't know what KPIs are most important or what benchmarks are most important, tap into your network. Now your network could be listening to a podcast

[00:29:06] just like a bunch of other PT owners do. But that network also could be a Facebook group of PT owners like we have. If you're not part of the physical therapy owners club, Facebook group, join it. You could join the peer-to-peer with APTA, PPS. They have a peer-to-peer

[00:29:22] network every year that starts up and you can be in a group with PT owners and share and learn, et cetera. But that's where you're talking about learning, learning, learning, constantly reading. And there are those people that constantly read but never implement. And

[00:29:38] hopefully you're not one of those. But I actually just did an episode a couple of months ago on the podcast with Steve Edwards. He's been a longtime friend and coaching client. But I highlighted him because he sent me an email about things that he had done because of

[00:29:54] podcast episodes that I had had. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I was like, I wonder how many listeners out there are making significant changes in their clinics after listening to episodes and not just gaining knowledge, doing nothing with it.

[00:30:09] I mean, that's not wise. What comes back to the discipline? That's what a Rockstar PT owner does is they take the knowledge and then implement it. You don't have to take everything out of my podcast and implement it that week

[00:30:20] and do the same thing the next week when the episode comes in. But for example, Steve Edwards, what really inspired him was an episode that I did with Steve Lines. And it was about, it's called like the five-star experience or something like that. I'm sorry, Steve,

[00:30:34] if you're listening, but I don't remember the name of the book. But he got the book and then started implementing aspects of the book in his clinic and really transformed the patient experience such that his arrival rate went up and plan of care completion went up.

[00:30:50] That's what I'm talking about. You don't have to do everything, but take aspects of what you're learning, especially as you're reading track. If you're going through the first 100 pages of traction and you don't buy Gino Wickman and don't have your purpose and values and the

[00:31:05] beginnings of an org chart in place, then you're wasting your time reading the book. That's fundamental business stuff. So there is some of that where people can gain a lot of learning without getting anywhere. And that's not what we're talking about. We're talking

[00:31:20] about making sure that learning is led to action. Yeah. Jim Rome is an old school personal development guy. He said one thing that really hit me. He said, work on yourself more than you work on your job. And it's like, gotta be learning, man.

[00:31:35] Gotta be reading. You gotta be studying. You gotta grow yourself. You gotta grow your understanding and your perspective. And then you can take the knowledge and the awareness and the perspective and you can insert it into your system of discipline

[00:31:51] that you've created, showing up, doing the work, making the time, keeping the promises, embracing accountability. And then when you do that, the opposite, the only other side is results. Is fulfillment. You create, you're manifesting what you wanted to create.

[00:32:12] So developing those habits are huge. Unfortunately, my default when I lay down in bed is to pull up my phone and just give me two big talk. Gets me. Gets me. But that's the

[00:32:24] constant fight is to pick up the book or pick up the phone. I would be better served. And I'm sure Huberman has gone over the studies and whatnot of the blue light that you shouldn't be watching

[00:32:36] before you fall asleep and how it affects you, right? Whereas reading the book, you're eventually going to fall asleep because your eyes just get tired. Right. You would be better served to read the book before you go to bed

[00:32:46] than picking up the phone and streaming, right? So that's a good time. There's plenty of time. How many minutes do you spend streaming before you fall asleep and it would be better served reading? Yeah, get an audiobook, man. You can get audiobooks. I mean, there's all kinds of

[00:33:01] ways to go for a walk and kick on an audiobook. 10 minutes a day will change your life. A year later, you know, I'm sitting here thinking about like PTA, who's PTA owner A, who's just

[00:33:14] like crush in life, right? And PT owner B, who's kind of struggling. The only difference is PT owner A has just done more work. They've done more of the boring work. They've accumulated

[00:33:28] a willing. Yeah. And they're willing to make more decisions and take it out. It's not a talent gap typically. It's very similar skillsets, similar IQs. It's just like this guy like is dialed in with his discipline and is committed to learning and growing and implementing.

[00:33:45] He's accumulated more body of deep work, uninterrupted deep work. Yeah. Do you find some of the owners that are quote unquote struggling or middling aren't making decisions? Well, not to a fault of their own. It's just that they,

[00:34:00] like we're in our own way. Like you've developed a habit of the way that you approach problems and it's no longer serving you. And sometimes like I'm very guilty of it. Like I'll

[00:34:11] get on calls with potential clients or work with clients. And I want to make no mistake. Like, if you ever work with me, I'm not doing the work for you. Like you're doing the work.

[00:34:21] You're doing the work, not me. You know what I mean? And so it's very easy to think like, oh, I've got this coach who's done it already. I'm just going to show up to the call and

[00:34:30] just let him like do all the deep work and like just pull the questions, which that doesn't serve you though. You know what I mean? Like you only make progress whenever you make the best decision you possibly can, you calculate the decision, make the decision.

[00:34:45] And if you fail, who cares? You get back up, you learn and you keep going. But yes, the ones that struggle do procrastinate, they're trying to find a sense of certainty in their decision that doesn't exist. Right. And so they're recalculating and

[00:34:59] calculating again and asking again, asking the same question, but in a different way. And it's like, it sounds like you're really clear. Like you just need to take action. Yeah. It's almost like they want to keep, they want to find some reason to keep doing

[00:35:13] the same thing and expect a different result. Because it's comfortable. Yeah. They don't want to get out of the comfort zone for sure. Comfortable. It's predictable. I know what this does. If I just work harder and try harder,

[00:35:24] then I did that before when I created a clinic. Now if I just try double harder, then I'll have two clinics. Uh-uh. Different skill set. A whole different skill set. Right. It takes a massive amount of discomfort and like change in

[00:35:40] like taking risk and embracing uncertainty. Right. And so like one of the things that I wrote down is be uncomfortable. You're going to have to make decisions and you're going to have to just

[00:35:50] trust your gut and you're going to have to trust your coach and you're just going to have to pull the trigger and go. And you're just going to have to have some sleepless nights

[00:35:56] and you know what? You're going to come out the other night way and you're going to learn a lot from that. But like embrace discomfort. That's where the growth happens. Being comfortable with uncomfortability. Yes. Be uncomfortable. Like get an air start swinging.

[00:36:09] Let's go. Yeah. I'm just writing down implement. This is what we talked about in the last 10, 15 minutes. Implement, take risk and be comfortable with being uncomfortable with making decisions without all the data. I did a disservice with one of my coaching

[00:36:23] clients because we spent probably three months of coaching calls talking about hiring another PT. And we couldn't go anywhere. His fear was just there. Like I don't see how I'm going to make

[00:36:36] money with another PT on board. All the things that could benefit from bringing on a PT and shuffling things around and opening up more time and space for him. And I had to come back

[00:36:46] to quite often like, what do you want if you're happy with treating part time and your current financial situation and you're comfortable there? It's really hard to move someone off the really comfortable financial situation. That's the first line in good to great, right?

[00:37:03] Is good is the enemy of great. So if things are good, it's really nice to stay fat and happy. It never stops either. It never stops. Taking risks and being comfortable with uncomfortability, that's hard for me. I know my tendency is to, my wife's tendency, she loves

[00:37:21] change. She's like, she'd move every two or three years if it was up to her just to see amazing places in the world and experience other homes in different places and stuff like that.

[00:37:32] I'm just like, oh no, we have to move again. It's gonna happen. We're really comfortable here. What if we die? She's the one that pushed me into PT ownership to begin with. Otherwise, I was pretty happy with the salaried position with benefits and all. That's the beauty of

[00:37:48] having that yin and yang, but it's necessary. Like I wouldn't be here without a lot of that. It's the unavoidable component of growth, fear and discomfort. It's the part that everybody hates the most, but like it's like a muscle though, like your risk, risk muscle, right?

[00:38:07] The first time it's like, I got to spend $200 a month for somebody to host my website. Oh my god. Like I can't afford it. Yeah, you can. And then it's like, I got to hire a PT. It's like 10 grand

[00:38:20] a month. Oh my gosh or whatever it is. And then it's like, I got to spend 30 grand. The numbers just keep growing and growing and growing. That's right. But then it's like eventually

[00:38:33] it gets to the point where it's like, again, you start to prove to yourself like I can pull this off. Yeah. I'm calculated, I'm disciplined. I've surrounded myself with some people who are smart,

[00:38:42] got my network, I'm reading my books. I don't have all the answers, but I feel good about this. Let's roll. Well, I love that you made the analogy to a muscle because that's something

[00:38:52] that I've learned over time is now as I see something, I want to do this and I don't know how to do it and I'm uncomfortable. I'm really comfortable now looking for guidance in terms of

[00:39:04] a coach that's been there, done that is willing to teach me 15 years ago. I wouldn't have paid the money for a coach. I was like, I'll just wait. Not even or I just won't do that thing. Now,

[00:39:16] I've done it enough. Now I've exercised that muscle enough and I have enough faith where I'm like, yeah, okay, someone's been there done that someone's teaching people how to do it. I'll join the group, I'll join the mastermind and figure out a way to get it done.

[00:39:29] And it makes that decision and that path much more easy for me. It is a muscle that I've exercised enough that I'm willing to spend $10,000 a year on coaching and consulting to get

[00:39:39] the results that I want because I've done it enough. Yeah. So I like that you made that analogy because for those people who are relatively comfortable but they know they want to do

[00:39:50] more. There are people out there that have been there done that, that will teach you. There are coaches like ours. There are other coaches out there for physical therapy owners that will

[00:40:00] teach you what it takes. It's a fear of the unknown. It's a fear that I'm going to lose everything or am I sacrificing everything just to do this one off thing? A lot of it is fear based,

[00:40:10] right? And in our industry, there's a lot of scarcity mindset because of the thin profit margins and understandably so. But there are people who are succeeding and flourishing in spite of those situations. Yeah, it's almost as I heard you talk,

[00:40:25] it's I thought about myself, my experience with working with coaches and whatnot. And it's almost to the point now where it almost seems irresponsible because they'll tell me something and I'll just do it. Like I won't even think about it anymore because I trust

[00:40:41] that process so much and it helps, man. It's like the quicker I can go from instruction to implementation, the faster I can grow. Right? Right. So you just got to trust it, man.

[00:40:53] You got to trust it. Exactly. We spent a lot of time on it. Were there any habits or traits that you think we missed? I mean, there's plenty out there. Yeah, I mean, I think

[00:41:03] yeah, I mean, I enjoy this topic. We pretty much hit them all, all the ones that I kind of thought of. The only other one that I kind of wrote down was make the investment,

[00:41:10] which we kind of hit on that with the risk. It's like spend the money. Like I can't tell you how many times like if you're a one PT owner, you're at like 30 to 40 visits a week and you've

[00:41:20] got a front desk. That's probably where a lot of people are at. Right? Yeah. The mistake that we make guilty as charged here is that we think we've got something to lose at that

[00:41:31] point. Right? Like we think we somewhere in our mind, we kind of convinced ourselves that what we have at this point is like a lot to lose. And it's like, no, we got to go way bigger. You

[00:41:43] know what I mean? Like we got to start thinking way bigger and helping them realize like, we're just getting this party started. We've got to double down on this sucker until we get to

[00:41:56] where our passive income exceeds what we're currently making. So it's like we got to think way more. We got to think 10x. Yeah. That helps me with the investment piece. Yeah, it's interesting when you talk about investments because the physical therapy,

[00:42:11] physical therapists, and I think it was Jamie Schreyer that pointed this out, physical therapists spent close probably close to $100,000 and on average a lot more $150,000 to get their physical therapy education with no guarantee of passing the boards, no guarantee of finding a

[00:42:29] job that could justify their investment. Yet they did it. It's weird that they'll express fear towards an investment when they already did that. They already did it once with getting a physical therapy education that promised them nothing, no promises, no refunds. Well, you can't blame the

[00:42:52] system. Exactly. They will take no blame. Like when you're going into the PT school, it's like you're investing in the system. Right. It's all on you. Yeah. You're investing in yourself. Well, yeah. Now there's a lot of fear. Like you've got to pull it off now, buddy.

[00:43:08] Yeah. Can I trust myself? It's really a fear of like can I really pull this off? That's true. It's really questioning themselves. That's true. Not to reiterate this too much, but one book that was influential for me this year was 10x is easier than 2x.

[00:43:23] And it goes back to the thought where, okay, if I just keep doing a lot of the same things twice as hard, then I'll get two times the results. Right? No. That's not how it goes.

[00:43:33] In fact, the premise of the book is that if your actions were actions of someone that's doing 10 times what you're currently doing, like you're making $200,000 a year right now, if you took on the actions and made the decisions of a $2 million a year revenue company,

[00:43:51] then you would easily get past $400,000 in annual revenue a lot faster than if you just focused on the $400,000 in revenue because $400,000 is close enough that you just do a lot of the same stuff over and over again. A little bit harder. Right? And yeah, you'll gradually

[00:44:09] inch your way up to $400,000, but you make the investment into I'm going to 10x this thing, those questions, the questions to get there and the decisions that you have to make to get to $2 million are completely different and will transform your business. Right?

[00:44:26] So I like your comment about mindset and investment because it does, it takes a completely different mindset, a different amount of investment to make significant transformational changes. I think I hit the nail on the head, man. Did we just wrap it up?

[00:44:42] I ain't got nothing else to say. Cool, man. All right. I think this is going to be one of my first podcasts of the new year as I'm looking at it. Yeah. So we'll have to get back together and talk about some topics

[00:44:58] that are related to what owners need to think about in the new year and how they need to comment to a fresh new start. But if people want to get ahold of us, like I said before,

[00:45:07] get on the group page on Facebook, reach out to Adam and Ori on LinkedIn and check out ptoclub.com where you can find out a little bit about us, find the podcast episodes,

[00:45:19] and also schedule an appointment to book a call with us, get a free consult and see where you're at in your business if we can help. Great. If not, we'll direct you where you need to go. So anything else you want to add after that, Adam?

[00:45:32] That's it, buddy. Sounds good. I enjoyed it. Cool, man. Thanks for joining today. This is awesome. It was. It was. Yeah. Have a great Christmas. Thanks for joining us today at the Physical Therapy Owners Club, the resource for stability and freedom in your PT practice.

[00:45:48] Reach out and join the network today. Subscribe to our podcast, get links to social media, and access all of our episodes with show notes at ptoclub.com.