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00:00:01
Dr. Joey Allbritton, Co-Owner of Rehab CEOs
16 Plays15 days ago
In this episode, Steven sits down with Dr. Joey Allbritton
Learn more about SaRA Health:
https://www.sarahealth.com/
Check out REHAB CEOS:
https://rehabceos.com/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to The Disruptors Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to another episode of The Disruptors, where we're arming you with the tools you need to innovate within the physical therapy space by highlighting those who have come before you. I'm your host, Stephen Cohen. Now, let's get into it. and Welcome back to another episode of The Disruptors, where we're highlighting innovative folks within the physical therapy world.
00:00:22
Speaker
I am really excited to be joined today by Albritton of Rehab CEOs. And Joey, we'd love to give you a minute here and and tell folks ah a little bit about yourself.
Joey Albritton's Career Journey
00:00:34
Speaker
Hey, what's up? Thanks for having me. So for me, um we'll kind of do the the long, short version of essentially why you should even care about the bald guy that's talking to you. So um I was a dental hygienist for four years, decided that was terrible. Wanted to get into some type of healthcare thing that actually had upward progression, but I didn't want to go to med school. And so for me, I was just like, what is that profession? So physical therapy was kind of the natural bridge there was an athlete for a while.
00:01:00
Speaker
Growing up, I went through PT myself when I ended up having an hip issue, all those things. I was like, okay, I'm going to go to PT school. And so for me, I then naturally kind of said, okay, well, I want to own my
Transition to Marketing and Business Growth
00:01:11
Speaker
own clinic.
00:01:11
Speaker
And then I was like, well, how do I actually grow a clinic? So then I started kind of deep diving into marketing, sales, everything like that. And so I did that for a bit as the month before I started PT school, someone reached out to me and was like, Hey,
00:01:25
Speaker
do you know how to run Facebook ads for clinics? i was like, I mean, I've taken a course on it, but that's pretty much it. So um he's like, sure, let's let's let's do that. How how much do you charge? And i was like, I just threw out a number because I had no clue what people had been charged for something like that.
00:01:38
Speaker
um Started with him, started my DPT, and we did that for a while. He referred someone, he referred someone, they referred someone, and then finished my DPT. And by that time, the business had grown so much that I was like, huh, interesting. um Maybe I don't want to actually be a practicing physical therapist.
00:01:58
Speaker
And so two failed boards later, realization that I actually like marketing and sales significantly more. um I've been doing this for marketing and sales for PT clinics for about almost seven years now.
00:02:09
Speaker
um Not licensed, have my doctorate. So just a really expensive way to throw a doctor in front of my title. um So that way, maybe, maybe people want that more. um And then about two years ago, Robbie and I, so Robbie is the other co-founder of Rehab CEOs.
Formation and Expansion of Rehab CEOs
00:02:25
Speaker
um We merged companies because I was doing pretty much all the marketing and sales stuff.
00:02:30
Speaker
But then I realized that like there's people that were getting tons of leads and everything was going really good, at least from what I could see. But then they were really weren't getting the same results. And so i was like, why is that?
00:02:41
Speaker
And so realistically, it's because on the coaching side, they needed more business operational infrastructure and those type things. Well, he was simultaneously running through the same issues, but on the opposite side of like, hey, we're doing all this coaching.
00:02:52
Speaker
Well, how do we fill them? And so we merged about two years ago. And so that's kind of how rehab CEOs was developed because he had been coaching for about six or seven years prior to that with another group.
00:03:03
Speaker
um And so that's where we are now. we've We went from pretty much nothing two years ago as far as client-wise, but in the grand scheme of things, maybe 30 or 40. um Now we're with over 250 clinics around the nation and we're kind of a range of cash, hybrid and and network.
00:03:19
Speaker
um I'd say probably more on the hybrid and in-network side now. Yep. um because that just naturally goes towards bigger guys. And I like working with bigger guys. um So that's kind of our, our in a nutshell, the fastest I could possibly say everything of why why you should actually maybe tune in so we can kind of show you how to grow some stuff and things that we're doing across the nation in different clinics and stuff like that.
Importance of Referrals and Patient Experience
00:03:41
Speaker
I love it. And it's ah and know I think we've talked about this, like how wild the timeline similarities between rehab CEOs and and Sarah, right, where we pivoted the company in May of 2022 and have seen yeah a dramatic growth. And similar to to you and your you know the initial part of of your story,
00:04:06
Speaker
is referrals. This industry is amazing in how quickly you can grow on referrals if you just do the right things for the practices you work with.
00:04:21
Speaker
and And even for some, and this is ah an aside, but i think it's actually worth ah worth're talking about, even some groups that we have determined it's best for us to walk, like mutually walk away from, we have still gotten referrals from them.
00:04:36
Speaker
Right. And I imagine you've probably had a very similar, ah a very similar experience on on your side. Yeah. I mean, we've, we've had it to where like people have gone through some of our stuff and they're like, I realized actually don't want to run a clinic.
00:04:50
Speaker
Thank you for saving me some time. And then they refer and leave us a five-star review. and We've had people who like we do sales calls with them and I'm like, Hey, you' like, you're clearly not a good fit right now.
00:05:00
Speaker
um But you just try to provide value. And then over time they're just like, Hey, like i actually have a buddy who's been asking me, but like you've helped me and you, didn't even pay you anything. and it's the same thing with like anything on the the patient side of things. Like,
00:05:13
Speaker
I think I was actually just talking to an owner about this the other day because she was having issues with someone who there's an insurance. They only had authorization for 10 visits. And she's like, well, how do I actually get someone to do more visits afterwards if we have to go more of cash based? Because like they weren't actually authorizing anymore.
00:05:31
Speaker
And. Realistically, we were kind of trying to solve for the wrong thing. Like she was wanting to effectively say, how do I fix this with sales? When in reality, it was like, we need to provide so much value, only care about that person and provide so much that where it's kind of a no brainer offer for someone to want to continue on the cash side of things.
00:05:50
Speaker
Or we've had issues where we've had clients who are like, hey, like they were only at 10 visits and I really know they need to get to 14. And they were they were telling me that everything was good. They got the results. But like, I know they need to come in for a couple more.
00:06:03
Speaker
And I'm like, well, do they need to come in more because you think they'll get much better? Because we're just trying to hit 14 length of stay because that's the national
Strategies for Practice Success
00:06:10
Speaker
average. And she's like, well, uh. was like, okay, so realistically, it means we're probably enforcing and actually giving positive feedback or negative feedback to the wrong things for our front office or our providers.
00:06:24
Speaker
So like that's why we focus on graduation rate as like one of the biggest metrics across the board. was like, because if he graduates in six or eight or 10, I don't care. Because if you do the right thing, they will refer, they will leave a review, they'll come back later.
00:06:39
Speaker
But if we're pushing for that extra one, two, three visits, yes, you make a little bit in the short term, but you're missing out on all the actual on the back back end. And we're potentially enforcing bad things for front office of like, hey, you did why did you let them cancel?
00:06:53
Speaker
Yeah. Or provider, why didn't you squeeze these extra visits, which then actually ends up probably causing you turn of staff, which costs you significantly more than the amount of visits that you actually ended up losing.
00:07:03
Speaker
And so there's a lot of those things that I think there's a lot of hidden things that affect referrals. And people just genuinely just have to be like, how do we have our employees benefit always in mind?
00:07:14
Speaker
how do we have the patient's benefit in mind and literally nothing else matters because as long as our company is set up to be profitable which that's maybe a whole nother issue there's a lot of people that are not set up to be profitable but if we are it'll always play out in your favor like i've never seen it not happen and so i think that there's very few people sadly in the pt market that don't have that mindset or or that do have that mindset and i think that there's a big opportunity for anybody whether it's people helping physical therapy clinics or physical therapy clinics himself, because there's a lot of the people out there that are doing really sketchy stuff.
00:07:47
Speaker
And we're kind of getting lumped in with there. It's like my uncle's a, he who does car sales. So of course, everybody thinks car sales, it's a terrible person. He's a pretty awesome dude, but he's been grouped into it. And so we want to make sure that we're standing out so we don't get grouped into it.
00:08:03
Speaker
stuff that we see in like, I think it was like Lake Erie or whatever there where they did all of like the Medicare fraud and all that type of like, that's what some people think about. So we have to find a way to not actually be grouped into those people.
00:08:15
Speaker
100%. And and i'm i' you're already talking about how you see it. You probably have data to prove it, but also just yeah gut feel, which gut feel is is very strong, right? and It's likely an interpretation of reality that is not 100% data driven, right?
00:08:32
Speaker
ah the I was on a a panel at the NetHealth customer conference a few weeks back, and one of the senior data leaders, Dr. Tim Marshall from IV Rehab, was on the panel.
00:08:45
Speaker
And what they saw was a near perfect correlation between patient experience and then every other performance metric. Like if the patient was happier, everything else took care of itself. That was the happier the patient, the more profitable the clinic, the lower the cancellation rate, the better the outcomes. Like he was like, it was kind of amazing. Like you just layer on data points and just ping, ping, ping, like in the exact same spot on the, on the, the, the line.
00:09:13
Speaker
So, yeah, I don't think people really realize it, but like the people who get sued for malpractice are not the ones that are typically the ones that are bad. It's the ones that people don't like.
00:09:24
Speaker
There's actually a lot of studies behind this. And so, like and i've I've seen it firsthand. Like, unfortunately, I've worked for some dentists who are like super, super nice, doesn't actually do very good actual treatment.
00:09:35
Speaker
Never had any issues. I've got someone who was really, really, really rude. She's always actively going through stuff, but like clinically she was actually very good, but she was always undergoing some type of actual lawsuit because she was just mean, like just straight up mean.
00:09:50
Speaker
And so like, there's a lot of those things that I don't think people inherently realize that like, If people like you, you have a good customer experience, it fixes 99% of things. And usually, and that's kind of everything in business. Like the symptom we're seeing is typically not the actual problem.
Business Mindset and Innovation
00:10:07
Speaker
It's like we're we're trying to feed to to treat the foot, the the actual neuropathy that's going down the leg, when and in reality, it's a back issue.
00:10:15
Speaker
It happens all the time in business where it's like, hey we need more new patients. And in reality, we actually have a drop off no show cancellation issue or we're trying to hire someone. And in reality, it's because we have no profit to be able to pay people what they actually want to be paying compared to the hospital systems.
00:10:30
Speaker
And so it's very easy because like, even for me, I i love sales and stuff like that. so like, I'm always trying to use my sales hammer to fix everything. And we just paid a ridiculous amount of money to go to one of my business mentors to coach us. And he's like, you don't have a churn issue. You don't have a product issue. You don't have a sales issue because you should need more people to know you exist.
00:10:48
Speaker
And it's like, okay, I mean, i knew that already, but like, it's sometimes you have to have someone else tell you that that is the inherent issue because it's very easy to be like, oh, like I'm operations driven. We need to fix more on the system side.
00:11:01
Speaker
It's very easy to fall into those traps. There's a ah ah really ah really cool framework around the the local maximum, right? and And you can get yourself caught in that very, very quickly where it's like, well, I am really good at operations and I get energy from operations, right? So therefore, I'm going to focus on that. But and improving your your you your fill rate, if you will, by another half a percent is not going to have near the impact as,
00:11:34
Speaker
decreasing your self discharge rate by half a percent right now yeah well and i think it's it's it's hard because so many of the big business coaches out there like your your tony robbins or gary v like are the guys that are really prominent out there they're all like hey don't go don't worry about your weaknesses double down on your strength but the inherent issue there is your business still has to be well-rounded And so you kind of fall into this weird fallacy of like, oh yeah, double down, double down. But then you wonder why you don't grow.
00:12:04
Speaker
Or it's like our guys on the sales side of things, they're like, I want to improve my close rate of eval to plan a care. And I'm like, we're already at like 80%. Like you may be able to go up 5%.
00:12:14
Speaker
But in reality, I see that you're only contacting half your leads within the first day. There's way more overall throughput actually just fixing that. And then realistically, really probably your backend conversions will be better because you have more volume and faster feedback loop.
00:12:28
Speaker
it'll actually fix all the inherent things you need anyways. Well, in that example too, then your referral sources know that you're getting people booked within a day, which is going to drive higher rates of referrals, right? And it creates a virtuous cycle there.
00:12:41
Speaker
And yeah, we we use the Pareto principle a lot when it it comes to feature design and other improvements with within Sarah, because it just, that framework holds to be true.
00:12:54
Speaker
It does. So, so ridiculously often, right? Where, yeah, 80% of the value and 20% of the work and 80% the work to get the last 20%. And it just, you it really just shows out like over and over and over again. It does.
00:13:11
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, for us, we even saw that because we like did an actual demographics of all of our guys of like who we're spending the most amount of time with, who is getting the best results, all those type things. And I was like, oh, huh interesting.
Client Focus and Business Efficiency
00:13:21
Speaker
Anybody that's below $30,000 a month in revenue and owner, admin and PT, they all took way more of our work, but they paid us only like 20% of our revenue. And I was like, this makes no sense.
00:13:32
Speaker
So we just said, here it all is for free. Just take it all and grow yourself. Don't have to pay us anything on that. yeah And then i was like, okay, but our guys that we do actually get the most amount of money, the best results with is all of our big guys.
00:13:44
Speaker
So like, let's just have more of those. Like that, that sounds much better. Um, I make more profit, more revenue. They make more money. We get faster results. Let's just focus on that. And so there's a lot of that type stuff that even kind of in operations of business and stuff like that, that like people don't inherently see like it,
00:14:02
Speaker
whether you're small, you're maybe like one clinic, maybe you're five, 10, 15 clinics, it literally, you're always going to be busy. And so most people think that it's going to be addition by addition. Like we need to do more actual things, but it's really addition by subtraction because usually you're going to be doing like 15 to 20 things simultaneously because at any point the business always feels like it's on fire because there's 5,000 things you need to do.
00:14:28
Speaker
And if everything's important, then nothing is. And so usually that's like one of the first things we do when we start working with people is like, what are you focusing on right now? Let's eliminate like half of that. And then sometimes it's elimination. Sometimes it's like, who on your team can we actually delegate that to? Because maybe we haven't actually done that.
00:14:45
Speaker
Or if we don't have that, who, how do we get that? Who? Sometimes the hard thing about that is that who costs a lot of money and we need to fix profitability issues first. But that's how you can kind of start to look at that because you're always going to feel like you don't have enough time.
00:14:59
Speaker
But if someone can have 200 locations and still feel like they can do all of that, if you have two locations, well, then like, how are they able to do it if you aren't? So I always kind of like to look at those type things of if someone's been able to do it, then why can't you? So we're literally just a bag of bones and we got like, they're we're all the same.
00:15:19
Speaker
And so if they can do it, I've i' always kind of used that as my principle of like, okay, well, if if this company grew to be 30 million here, why why can't we do that? Like there's, there's literally no difference. And so that is a big belief breaker, which we also kind of have to look at that in patients.
00:15:36
Speaker
Cause like a lot of times they have these issues and they have all the things that are going on and they're like, well, I'm a unique snowflake. Cause that's pretty much everybody's initial thought process is I'm a unique snowflake. Therefore I will always have chronic back pain for forever.
00:15:50
Speaker
And so the way we start to break that is through one good communication yeah up to actually having testimonials, reviews, like all of that type stuff so they can find someone that's common to them so they can start to believe it's possible.
00:16:04
Speaker
And so we always want to try to enforce that believability of actual like perceived likelihood of achievement because that'll make it to where anything you're trying to sell is inherently more valuable.
00:16:15
Speaker
Because like if I've been a therapist for 40 years, versus someone who literally just graduated, I probably feel more confident that someone that 40 years experience is going to give me better results.
00:16:26
Speaker
Some of you may be arguing here of like, hey, I know some guys have been doing it for 40 years. They suck. Yes, there's always like a there always has to be a bottom 50% everywhere. statistically um But that's how a lot of people look at it.
00:16:40
Speaker
And that's why people inherently are choosing surgery. over physical therapy, because in their head, there is they I go in for surgery, it's fixed. We all know that most of the time that's not actually true, but that's how they see it because there's not a lot of actual effort they have to do.
Overcoming Industry Challenges and Mindsets
00:16:56
Speaker
They show up, they're done, they think they're done.
00:16:58
Speaker
In reality, half of them need physical therapy when we're done, but we haven't actually communicated that to with them. And so it's easier for them to pick that or we've stayed so surface level on pain and stuff like that.
00:17:09
Speaker
Well, the true actual thing for that is like, well, if it's just pain and we're not figuring out truly what they're not able to do, I'll just take pain meds. Significantly cheaper, significantly less effort, significantly less everything.
00:17:21
Speaker
And so that's what a lot of people go to. And then that's one of our competitors. But then the biggest competitor for us is just people doing nothing. Like that's, that's 100%. Like there's, I do not believe in competition at all.
00:17:35
Speaker
Like the only thing we're trying to compete against is the lack of attention that they are giving us and the lack of care of wanting to make a change because it takes work. Like you can have a hundred clinics in your area and every single one of you be full, like 14% of all people. Like if I, if I have a million people right now in my city, 14% of those 140,000 people have some type of musculoskeletal issue that we can help them with.
00:17:59
Speaker
And I guarantee you anybody on here, y'all couldn't all see 140,000 of those people this month or y'all would die. And so there's plenty of people to go around. They just don't know we exist. And so that's the problem that we typically have to solve for.
00:18:11
Speaker
i I couldn't agree with that more. it is a We like to to talk about it in this like ah willingness to resource curve for the patient, right? And as pain is high, the willingness to resource is high, right? And then as pain drops, willingness to resource, right? And that go that's specific to each patient, right? For some, it might be driving, parking, co-pays, right?
00:18:32
Speaker
All that. But ah So I'm very aligned with exactly what you're what you're talking about. I do want to go back because yeah one of the where the goals ah of of this podcast is to give people tactical ways to improve their ability to innovate, right? um Because to your point,
00:18:52
Speaker
there's not competition. Right. And, and I was just on a call or before, before this, like, well, who is your biggest competition? Like ignorance. It is the 70%, maybe 60% now, um, you know, 60% of practices that either a don't know what RTM is or B doesn't think it can work for them.
00:19:11
Speaker
Um, or the 10% that tell me that they did it during COVID. Like, Really? These came out 2022. Let's talk about that. So, yeah, the the folks that are on the negative one to zero out of five knowledge scale are are like that's it's it's ignorance. And I think that broadly apply like that principle applies to PT for on the patient side as well. So I completely agree with you on that. And so breaking the mindset. Right. And.
00:19:38
Speaker
all in my own journey of believing I could be one of those people that started a health technology company that grew and helped people and like had a brain, like did all the things, right?
00:19:54
Speaker
I would love to hear what tips that you have for folks in breaking that mindset because in full transparency, I was not able to do it myself. It took our first angel investor who um had his own startup, sold it to Unilever, um and it was the first organic condiment company.
00:20:15
Speaker
And and he and I met business school. He saw Sarah Health from the germ of idea to what it became. And it's like, I'm betting on you. Here is the first check in. And I was just like, why?
00:20:27
Speaker
like Why are you betting on me? He's like, well, because I think you can do this. Like that's that's why. and I didn't even start to believe until that point. and It took that call that that the external stimulus right to break it.
00:20:42
Speaker
for me, but how do you help practice owners and just those that want to innovate, right, or or grow? How do you help them break that with maybe some more internal stimuli to be able to break that, that mindset?
Innovation in Processes and Systems
00:20:53
Speaker
Yeah, um there's there's a lot to potentially unpack there because really, I think when we hear innovation, we always think technology and it doesn't necessarily have to be that. um because Most of us realistically, even you yourself, I know when you talk about RTM and stuff like that, you really don't bring up software a lot. It's more so like, how do we systemize actual personal communication?
00:21:14
Speaker
And so I think just getting clear on what we mean by innovate would be a kind of a good start um because for technology, like The likelihood of someone being a PT clinic owner and also coming up with this crazy software and stuff like that, it's it's pretty low.
00:21:30
Speaker
And in reality, the reason that is, is because we have so many things we're trying to do as an owner and we're trying to focus on so many things. And realistically, like we're probably a lot of people are not as profitable as they need to be.
00:21:42
Speaker
And so first... The hard thing is we've all been told to like fake it till you make it fake it till you make it like that. That's what everybody literally tells you the whole time you're in PT school because you don't know what the hell you're doing.
00:21:52
Speaker
And so like that's what everybody says. And in reality, it's kind of unrealistic to actually feel confident until you actually have social proof that you can do it. And so for us, a lot of it is not necessarily like, I think you have to believe in all these things to therefore actually start to either innovate, grow, do all these things.
00:22:11
Speaker
It's I can actually achieve these things, even if I don't think I'm worthy of it, or I don't think that I actually will be successful as long as I know the actual place I'm trying to go and the actions that would actually get you there and just do it.
00:22:24
Speaker
Cause there's gonna be several days where no one literally wants to do anything because that's business in a nutshell. Like there's gonna be days where like it's literally you wake up, you realize why am I doing this again?
00:22:36
Speaker
still have to do it. And then it maybe gets a positive feedback loop. And then it happens again. You're like, why am I doing this again? And it's very easy for us to focus on that because that's kind of our primordial brain kind of coming in and saying, hey, for survival, we don't actually like change.
00:22:51
Speaker
We don't like to actually put in all this effort because historically we wanted to essentially fit in, not do all these things because stress is essentially a sign for us that there there's risk there.
00:23:02
Speaker
And so it's very hard for us to kind of get that mindset out of our head. But I've also seen some of the things you can do is actually like focus on trying to become the type of person that would attract those things. And so like an easy example of that, I have people who tell me all the time, i do everything I can to get five star reviews.
00:23:21
Speaker
And I'm like, okay, so, or I do everything I can to even get physician referrals. There's just kind of two examples here. And I always ask them, well, when's the last time you left a five star review? And it's usually crickets.
00:23:32
Speaker
And so we have to become the person first so that way we can actually do the things we need to have the things. it's the whole be, do, have thing. And so we have people who are like, I want physicians to start referring to me. And i'm like, okay, well, when's the last win's last summer so last time someone came in who was a sales rep for some type of service or equipment?
00:23:54
Speaker
What was your reaction? Did you welcome him with open arms? Like, oh my God, I've been so happy for you to sell to me. Or did you run to the back and tell him, hey, tell him I'm not here. I'm treating patients.
00:24:05
Speaker
Yeah, I'm treating patients. I'm not here. Like, hey, he just left. He's at lunch. And so we can't even do it ourselves. So why would anybody else want to actually receive us? And so first you kind of have to look at like, what's your, why, what are you wanting to go to starting to think about what the actions are? If you don't feel comfortable while doing those actions, try to be on the receiving end of it.
00:24:24
Speaker
And then you'll start to realize that as you start putting more of that positivity out there, because I know that it like, it sounds woo and all those type things, but like, it's very, very true. Like you've probably seen those things where you have like the YouTuber, they go in, they try to give someone like ah a free car or $10,000 or whatever. And like, they literally have to ask like 30 people of like, before someone's like, because they're like, what's the catch? I don't get it. It sounds like a scam, all those things.
00:24:51
Speaker
And so people are naturally not open to actually taking those opportunities. And so once you kind of realize that as soon as someone actually like give, if if you're they're in pain, And they fell over and they're injured.
00:25:03
Speaker
Well, they don't even think about if someone says, can I help you? And so most of us have been so driven by getting away from pain that when we finally have the opportunity to go towards pleasure, we don't make the jump because we've been conditioned not to.
00:25:19
Speaker
And so if we can kind of break those beliefs, know where we want to go, it has to be a big enough vision to where when you have those crap days, you keep going. Otherwise, it's very easy to just wake up and just be like, oh, yeah, I didn't get much done today.
00:25:33
Speaker
But then you do that for six months, a year, six years, and all of a sudden, it's like, I didn't get much done my whole life. And so that is the biggest thing is figuring out your why, knowing the actions you need to take. And the hard thing is, like we talked about before, is sometimes you don't know the actions.
00:25:47
Speaker
So the easiest way to do that is find other people that are like-minded, that have achieved what you want to do, and shortcut that curve. And that's why like for you, when you're even looking at investors, like you you didn't would say, hey, I want to find a way to raise all kinds of capital and build a business to where I have all this money. It's just like, i'm just going to find someone who knows what they're doing here. And I'm just going to see if they'll fund something.
Fostering Innovation and Business Growth
00:26:09
Speaker
It's like our our guys are wanting to do this. It's like I always use the analogy of it's like trying to like, let's let's figure out how to build a shockwave machine to then use it to get better results.
00:26:21
Speaker
Like no one does that, but we do that with like, oh, let's learn how to build a website. Let's learn how to run Facebook ads. Let's learn how to do all this stuff. And reality, like we're just focusing on the wrong things.
00:26:31
Speaker
And so once we start focusing on the wrong things, we'll have more time back. We'll have more in profitability. And when our when our company's truly running the way it is, then we can get into this true innovator role.
00:26:43
Speaker
yeah You're a producer, then you go into communicator, and then you can get into a true innovator role. But it is very, very hard unless you have like the world's biggest mission to say, I want to endure this for years, make no money, put all this work in and just hopefully it works out.
00:27:01
Speaker
Or if you have more money, time and resources, it's a lot easier to start testing some of this stuff, implementing these things to where you can maybe make that one big innovation that it changes the entire industry. but a lot of times we're trying to have split focus and trying to do this thing on the side and trying to run our clinics. so And then both of them really just aren't doing anything.
00:27:20
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. theres There's very, very few examples. And when anyone in the history of the world has done two things well, right? Thank you for listening to this episode. This would not be possible without the sponsorship of Sarah help.
00:27:34
Speaker
Sarah is the relationship operating system for physical therapy practices. driving better patient outcomes, improved arrival rate and improved financial margins.
00:27:44
Speaker
If you'd like to learn more, check them out at Sarah, S-A-R-A health.com, Sarah health.com. And if you'd be interested in advertising with us and helping us produce even more great stories, please let us know at Stephen at Sarah health.com. Now back to the episode.
00:28:03
Speaker
want to highlight a a ah couple of the things you said. The first being innovation does not equal technology. I could not agree with that more, right? When I think of innovation, it's across the people process technology, right? So that could be something as simple as, hey, you're a staff PT at your clinic.
00:28:22
Speaker
And you notice that, you know, let's say use photo for for outcomes tracking, right? And like, man, like we're only getting 50% response rate on this.
00:28:32
Speaker
I, a patient said they'd be more willing to do it if they had a way to do it in the office. Like, Could we get an iPad to, and I guess that's kind of tech, but stay with me, right?
00:28:43
Speaker
Could we get an iPad for the patients to do it before they leave? Like that to me is innovation, right? That's innovation within process to drive a better result that you want to go after, right? It could be, oh, like, let's make sure to to send a text.
00:28:57
Speaker
to patients after they get dry needling. And you know, if you're using Sarah great, like, you can't help a little bit of a shameless plug, right? Because let's like, well, let's make sure we know the advocacy of it. And we know that some patients get sore and we want to get ahead of that, right?
00:29:11
Speaker
it It doesn't have to be technology. doesn't have to be tech-driven. It could be pure process. It could even be in your like subjective part of your visit, right? Of like, hey, I feel like I'm getting 20 minutes into the visit and finding this data point that has been extremely helpful in the first 10, right? So let me try to ask these three separate questions run an experiment and see how that works. So I could not agree with you more.
00:29:38
Speaker
that innovation does not have to have technology in it it does not yeah and i think that that's a lot of the power of like being in as many clinics as we are now like everybody always kind of thinks it's like well how does robbie know this stuff well first it was just like we always tell people it's it's through robbie's mistakes just don't do what robbie did and that's how you're learning but now we're at a point where like we're in so many clinics someone's like yeah i tried this and it like it really just helped us sell more people. Like for our guys that are out of network, it's like we have this pricing calculator that literally are able to customize it in front of the person. Like we used to just have to do the math in our head.
00:30:11
Speaker
It's like when I actually started actually doing that, people were like, oh, this is really cool. It's customized me. This is exactly what it's gonna cost. Like they all started to to prepay for their whole package more. Or like you have something where someone comes in and they're like, well, yeah, everybody that comes in, we ask them a question of like, hey, like, what were you able to do since last time you're here? What are the big things that you're able to do that maybe you haven't been able to in a while?
00:30:33
Speaker
That sounds like small. But then as soon as they say that, we're like, cool, go write it up on the whiteboard.
Enhancing Patient Engagement and Satisfaction
00:30:38
Speaker
And so they write it up on the whiteboard. So then there's this big wall of testimonials of things that things that people have achieved. And then it's a very easy chance for you to say, well, hey, there's a lot of people who had similar issues. I'm so excited that you've been able to do that.
00:30:50
Speaker
Is there any way you'd be willing to share that so other people see that that's actually possible? So you ask for the review. But the thing that people aren't realizing is what's happening here is when someone comes in, A lot of people are pissed off from work. They are stuck in traffic. They had a bad day. They're in high pain.
00:31:07
Speaker
And so they immediately come in with a very, very negative state. If you stop them and force them to say, what have they been able to accomplish? Or even one of the the questions I love asking is, what are you grateful for today? Because the only time anybody ever asked you that is on Thanksgiving.
00:31:21
Speaker
It forces them to get out of And I learned that from a assistant that I had when I was a dental hygienist. She asked that. She's the most quirky person ever. But like she asked that. And I've seen people go from like pissed off to like the happiest person I've ever seen.
00:31:35
Speaker
And so if we do that, well, if we have a bunch of therapists who are having to see a bunch of unwilling patients who are like, well, I'm here, ain't I? It's like, okay, that's not going to be a fun hour for us. um So instead, if we can change those, it creates a better environment.
00:31:49
Speaker
People are more bought in. They want to actually show up for therapy. They leave you more reviews. They leave you more referrals. And your your therapists are happy, which makes them actually want to care about that patient. Because as much as we like to say, I'm going to care for everybody equally, you're going to put a little bit more effort into the one that's nice to you that you jive with and everything like that versus the one that just complains about every single thing.
00:32:10
Speaker
And so you learn so many of these small little nuanced things of like, we send an email out to give them this like, hey, meet your rock star for today. And it goes to their staff bio. So that way they're not no showing a random physical therapy business. They're no showing that therapist that they just read about, which also then gives us signals for SEO that people are traveling to the website.
00:32:31
Speaker
yeah So there's a lot of those little things that we've been able to kind of pick up over time and people just slowly innovated. ah I think either over just trying stuff or like they just accidentally walk into something. They're like, huh, that's interesting. When we say that, like we actually talk to them about their spouse before we introduce price, we can overcome some of those objections of I need to talk to my wife.
00:32:51
Speaker
or i have plans coming up. It's like, okay, well, like you knew you had plans coming up, but like we talked about it after price. So now they use that as the actual excuse. But if we hit that before price, it's more of a let's figure this out together.
00:33:04
Speaker
And so there's very small nuances that you can kind of get into or like a lot of our cash or our insurance guys, they charge too little on their cash rates. They're like, oh, I make it cheaper because there's less administrative burden.
00:33:15
Speaker
I'm like, awesome. So no, you don't have a price anchor at all to make it to where $40 copay as much. So like, let's say they get 110 average reimbursement. A lot of them be like, yeah, it's only $85 cash for us to actually do that because like we don't have as much billing administrative burden. We don't have to take the percentage out there. So we make it cheaper.
00:33:33
Speaker
And I'm like, why? Like, it should be like $200 a visit. So then when we say, hey, like normally you're going to need to come in here for 16 visits, $200 a visit would be $3,200.
00:33:43
Speaker
But luckily you have a really good insurance. It's only going to be a $70 copay. You see how that sounds significantly different than like a $70 copay? Yep. And so there's ways to frame those small things to where you can help more people. because that's really all this is, is how do we lower friction for someone to finally make a bet on themselves to get better without some type of surgical and or pain med intervention?
00:34:09
Speaker
Because we all know that they're better off going to physical therapy than pretty much any other option. But we have to have those small little nuances to where it does it. And everybody's always looking for that one big thing.
00:34:20
Speaker
It's like usually 500 little things. And that's what makes business a little bit harder because we have to operationalize the small little things because like... For you, someone may be like, oh, yeah, Steven, he's just so charismatic. And I'm like, OK, well, what does that even mean?
00:34:36
Speaker
Like, oh, that means to he like like what and what does he do that makes him charismatic? It's like, oh, he he shakes his head when I'm talking to them. So he knows that I'm actually listening. he he He shakes my hand when I walk in the room.
00:34:47
Speaker
He remembers the things about my daughter that I talked about, and the things I was going to do over the weekend. And so if we can formalize some of these things, you'll have significantly better operations, more profit, happier staff across the board.
00:35:00
Speaker
But you also have to and so inherently understand how to sell, why it's important to your staff. Otherwise, it ends up being, hey, we started with Sarah Health and we tell them this is important to do.
00:35:12
Speaker
And that was it. And for some reason, no one actually wants to do anything. So then we don't actually implement it. And so then they're like, OK, here comes Joey again. He's making another change. And then they're just resistant to any change because we don't think about the people we're trying to change on some of this stuff.
00:35:27
Speaker
And so that's more important than almost anything is selling the why they need to change. And then they can actually start to figure out how to actually implement it. There's so much gold there.
00:35:38
Speaker
And one of the things that I'm picking out is and and maybe you were going to get to this, maybe not, so apologies if I'm ah you know stealing the thunder, but learn from outside of just PT, right? So you mentioned a few things, right? So in terms of getting the objections out beforehand, and that makes me think of Chris Voss, never split the difference, right? And then reading about negotiation, getting to know, and a couple of those other books on sales and negotiation, right? yeah You talked about
00:36:09
Speaker
how there is so much in gratitude, right? And how that's so powerful. It makes me think of a book called Giftology, which is absolutely amazing, as well as The Happiness Advantage. I think it was by Sean Acor.
00:36:23
Speaker
And just like, those are very, very valuable lessons I could apply, right? um And then there were there were a couple others, but like, looking outside of PT because really, and especially as you're talking from like an operational and even like selling and and let's let's face it, like I hear all the time like PTs hate selling anything.
00:36:47
Speaker
You're always selling and you're selling the hardest freaking thing, which is behavior change, right? Like, holy cow, you are selling the hardest product in the world to sell. Yeah. ah just admit that you're good at it. Like even if it feels dirty, like you're good at it. You have to be.
00:37:04
Speaker
and So, so much gold in that. And you what I kept like seeing like the, Oh, ping like, Oh yeah, that was from this book. That was from this book. That was from this book. And even we've talked about, you know, the, um the, the, like, I can't say no to this, this offer, right? A hundred million dollar offers from Alex from Ozy.
00:37:23
Speaker
Right. i just there's so much gold out there. And that's where I think, you know, to even further and reinforce that innovation does not have to equal tech. It's just taking a lesson from somewhere else and applying it in your specific situation.
00:37:40
Speaker
Yeah, I see because we we do pull a lot of that. And I think that's one of the biggest advantages that I've had for being in the dental space for as long because the dental space is probably about 10 years ah ahead of physical therapy and pretty much everything um like marketing wise, where their actual like reimbursements are. I know we've gotten cut ah harder on the reimbursements, but still to make the volume work like.
00:37:59
Speaker
They do accelerated dental hygiene now. So like, it's pretty much like, let's use text. Like they hit all that stuff and they got into the whole, like, Hey, we're going to start cutting people when we don't see visits. We're going to start trying to 1099 people, all those things, which we all know we shouldn't be doing, but that was super prominent about 10 years ago. And I'm starting to see people do it pretty heavily right now.
00:38:18
Speaker
And so I see those trends or even like our sales process. We modeled it after my mentor, who's essentially licensed it across 5,000 gyms around the nation. So I've been doing that process for about five years.
00:38:28
Speaker
We've iterated it over and over and over and over over time. But like, that's how we're able to do that. But the hard thing is, though, you're a lot of times when you're getting into books or podcasts or stuff that's not physical therapy specific, you're having to pay the cost of learning that curve.
00:38:47
Speaker
is you're having to say, what is the essence that I'm pulling for here? How do i then turn that into physical therapy? And then hopefully it gets the same result that it did in this industry.
00:38:58
Speaker
And so that's the power of volume because then you can actually iterate on these things. That's why like we're literally doing beta tests like all the time. Like we're doing oh yeah Facebook ads for hiring. was like, okay, well, that's cool. That didn't work worth a crap across anybody. So let's never do that.
00:39:13
Speaker
Three or four years ago is really good. And then they removed all the targeting for being able to even target physical therapy as a job. If it's ah an employment ad, you can if it's like for me trying to get clients, you can do that. But if it's employment, they call that discrimination.
00:39:27
Speaker
I call that I'm just trying to get in front of the right person, but that's Facebook in a nutshell. yeah There's all these different things that like we do inherently because we have to be evolving. So that way, pretty much you can just skip the learning curve. So you don't have to figure out, does this work or does this not?
00:39:42
Speaker
But there is a lot of stuff that you can literally pull across everything. You and I were talking about stuff ah the the other day about, well, okay, well, how do we take what we're doing for our team that we're already getting paid for to use that as a diagnostic way to actually start maybe selling supplements on the back end?
Sales and Operations Streamlining
00:39:58
Speaker
So it's like, okay, well, if someone has having some type of extra extra pain, maybe that we ask a question that's RTM related, but then opens the conversation for selling CBD if that's okay based on your practice act.
00:40:09
Speaker
Or maybe we want to sell them into a wellness model because they're telling me that they have energy, they're finally getting back to these things, and they want to go to wellness on the back end, or you have another supplement, or you have a brace, or you have orthotics, something like that.
00:40:22
Speaker
So you use a diagnostic type sales question to give you opportunities for upsells. And not that I'm like the big, like, Hey, let's add on all kinds of cash services. Most of the time when I hear cash services, that just means the company is not profitable.
00:40:35
Speaker
um Like I'd rather fix the overarching thing to get you just 20% more profit versus trying to add like all these logistical things. Cause there is a cost of change no matter what. And sometimes it's like, we're trying to make all these changes. There's the operational complexity of like, Oh, we're going to add a massage therapist because people happen to be here. Let's just make money off of that.
00:40:55
Speaker
Well, now that massage therapist, hopefully they're making as much as a physical therapist because they're taking up the same amount of room. And we all know that massage therapists are 100 times finicky. If you don't know, just know massage therapists are super finicky. Like at the moment you get them full, they moment the moment they quit.
00:41:09
Speaker
They all say they want to be full until they get full and then they want to quit. And they're like, oh, well, if they're getting me full, I'll go do own thing. And so there's just a lot of those things that you kind of see over time. And we've just noticed a lot of trends. um But that is a lot of the innovation is like pulling from other industries, pulling from our own industry of what's working and then seeing like, and a lot of times it's not actually like make it more complex, mad more steps. It's how do we remove some of that? Yeah.
00:41:34
Speaker
And sales, like almost everything is like, how do we remove another question? Because, Anytime you introduce anything, whether that's operational constraints in your business, um extra marketing stuff you don't need to do, sales questions that are really not actually feeding the actual conversation to get you closer to getting someone to want to move, that just gives them more things to have objections around.
00:41:56
Speaker
And so you can't really have objections to questions. So like we're very question based on our frameworks on how we do stuff, but we wanna make sure that it's as precise as possible because that's also takes up a lot of time, administrative burden, all those things.
00:42:09
Speaker
And so usually it's like elimination is one of the biggest things we do. The hard thing is if you don't know what to eliminate, you just assume like, let's just add more stuff. Let's add more quote value by adding all these things. And that's where people get into a lot of bloat that's not scalable. And it makes it very hard to get to like four or five, 10, 15 locations.
00:42:29
Speaker
And it gets really, really tough. 100%. then it's even pulled from, out again, outside from PT, right? Elon Musk biography, which I really did enjoy in his framework, right? You know, basically build it, rip out ah too much, and then put 20% back and and then call it, you know, and repeat.
00:42:50
Speaker
It's a little bit of a simplification of it, but that... Yeah. As you're saying, I couldn couldn't agree more. And I know one of the, one of the, the rules we have with within Sarah health is if anyone ever says the phrase, well, they just have to before a feature, like it gets just, you'll get shouted out.
00:43:13
Speaker
Like, like, nope, nope. Like, you you You actually get shouted down and like it doesn't go anywhere. Right. And it's this maniacal focus on zero administrative burden for PTs because they have enough already um and and removing it from anywhere and everywhere we can.
00:43:34
Speaker
And sometimes it means saying no to stuff, right? Like, ah, you know what? We're not going to do that. That sounds really fun and really cool. Or like in the case of a group we're working with right now, that's using Sarah for their athletic trainers and sports med outreach program.
00:43:51
Speaker
ah They're like, are AT is going to get like billing notifications? I'm like, yep. they are like we're not if there's enough value we'll we'll figure it out in the back end but it's like yeah we're we're not we're not going to build that yet like let's let's test it let's make sure and and hack it together um but yeah getting a little bit uh i digress so coming back we call that the six inch putt so like that's why like everything we've done like we we used to focus so much on the owners of like this is what you need to do
00:44:22
Speaker
And in reality, we realized like it's still too much for most owners.
Communication and Management in PT
00:44:26
Speaker
So we're just like, okay, well, how do we get it to where you just have to tap it in? And sometimes that's like, we have clinical director training, office manager training, student training, provider training, front office training, biller training, like you name it.
00:44:37
Speaker
Like you stop doing stuff. You just tell them, hey, go to that, go through that training. You're good. um So we've had to kind of almost instill the whole six inch putt, which was really what a lot of our owners need to start instilling in their staff. Yeah.
00:44:49
Speaker
Because like the way we structure a lot of comms and stuff, once we get like our all hands meeting and leadership meeting and stuff like that, if someone has an issue, it's like, hey, is this a 911 or can it wait till the actual meeting?
00:45:00
Speaker
Because most of the time you're having to be so reactive in your business that you can't ever do anything, even if you are the most productive person, because you're just putting out fires all the day. So like, I definitely agree on all of that for sure.
00:45:12
Speaker
ah So, Joey, this has been a fantastic conversation, which ah I'm not surprised at all, given how our previous have gone. And so now I get to ask my my ask you my my favorite question, which is, if you had a magic wand and could fix one thing within PT, what would it be?
00:45:33
Speaker
Um, I think a lot of it would be, that's a tough one. And I know you, yeah I'm bad. Everybody here, he sent me, he sent me this question ahead of time. So I had time to actually know and i I forgot to fill it out. So now I have to be um on the spot here.
00:45:46
Speaker
Um, so I mean, the easy answer would be reimbursement um if i could fix that but that that doesn't really help anybody because yes we have insurance negotiation tactics and stuff like that but that's not going to get us back to the good old days of 20 years ago um if i had to really distill down things for anybody it would be teaching physical therapy owners better communication Like that that is the number one thing I've seen across the board. And ah there's a lot of people that are good, but only in certain aspects.
00:46:21
Speaker
And so they're very good at like, almost everybody that's listening to this is probably amazing at communicating about physical therapy and why it's a good thing for someone to do. But we kind of start to lose that when it comes to how do we get our physician referrals?
00:46:36
Speaker
How do we get our staff to want to do these things? How do we like, because it goes back to selling, like you're talking about, we're always selling. Like if you want to go to Chick-fil-A over Chipotle and you're needing to get your so spouse on board, you're selling on why Chick-fil-A is a better option.
00:46:51
Speaker
If you need your kid to actually go to bed at 730, you're selling them on why it's a benefit for them and why they need to do that. If you need your staff to start implementing all these things in in the business, you have to sell them on why it's important.
00:47:04
Speaker
And so communication is how we do that. But it's not always those positive communication things. It's also having hard conversations. Because most owners are being held hostage by their employees to a high degree right now.
00:47:19
Speaker
And the reason that is, is because there's such a hiring shortage right now and or they're not profitable enough to hire the people that they want to, that they're afraid to actually have the hard conversations to make them or not make them. It's help them understand why we need to make changes in the business.
00:47:37
Speaker
And they're afraid to do that because what if so-and-so leaves? The real question is, what if so-and-so stays?
00:47:47
Speaker
That is a very big one that I see all the time of like, oh, I don't want to, like, what if what if I train them and then they they end up opening up their own location? Or what if I, and like, okay, well, what what if you don't train them?
00:47:59
Speaker
ah you just going a terrible clinical director? Like, cause that's the only other option. And so we have to kind of be able to have those hard conversations, know that those are typically the only thing that's preventing you being where you want to be.
00:48:13
Speaker
Cause like there's times where they're people will literally tell me like I had someone that they hadn't been paid in 15 years as an owner. Their husband literally called their business a nonprofit as a joke, but like he called it a nonprofit. He did really well. So they were fine.
00:48:29
Speaker
But for her, she was doing 60 minute oneon one on one, 85 average reimbursement. There's no math that'll ever or make that work. And so she kept falling into this hole. I just need to hire one more and i it'll finally be better.
00:48:44
Speaker
And in reality, she knew the math was a math and and we needed to have a conversation with the team of like, hey, unless we're unless we want to go out of network, which sometimes that's the hard conversation we need to have. Or sometimes it means we need to go to like a 40-minute scheduling because then all of a sudden we're significantly closer to being profitable. That's still not necessarily where I'd want them to be, but we can fix a lot of the RPV issues in her state to get around 110 versus 85. So at that point, she's super profitable, but she was afraid to make those changes, which is – I'm not saying that anybody is invalid for thinking those things.
00:49:16
Speaker
saying. Because there is a lot of fear associated with that. But I would much rather have that conversation now. I always tell people, i'm like, hey, we can either have the hard conversation with our staff or we can have it with the landlord.
00:49:27
Speaker
Only one of those gives us an opportunity to make some money. And you can't ever pay anybody if you go out of business. You can't help anybody if you go out of business. And so a lot of times it's just we need to get better having some of those communication points, whether that's negative feedback, whether that's having the hard conversations, whether that's finally firing Susan, who you know is not doing her job.
00:49:47
Speaker
always tell people like realistically, if you have to justify that someone's trying their best or she means well, like they're probably not someone that needs to be working for you.
00:49:58
Speaker
They maybe were good in the past, but they're no longer serving you.
PT Industry Challenges and Competition
00:50:02
Speaker
And so there's some of those things if we can get better at communication there and and communication is also marketing. So people know you exist.
00:50:10
Speaker
There's a lot of that that communication as a whole will fix within all of physical therapy, because unfortunately, physical therapy has probably one of the biggest branding issues I've ever seen. Like if I talk to a hundred physical therapists, they all do significantly different style of physical therapy.
00:50:26
Speaker
If I talk to a hundred people on the street, they will tell you completely different things of what physical therapy does. And so right now, like the only real like mainstream way of trying to bridge that gap is like us actually having individual businesses do direct response marketing.
00:50:43
Speaker
Cause like, I love the APTA on some of the stuff they're doing. There's some stuff that I think could be improved. But like a billboard in New York Times is not going to be the thing that all of a sudden gets everybody to know what physical therapy is just by saying choose PT first.
00:50:56
Speaker
like That's not going to be the thing. It's going to take everybody in the profession getting better at communicating. So that way we can actually do this. And so we can actually grow as an entire industry.
00:51:08
Speaker
Otherwise, the thing that people aren't realizing right now, everybody's like, oh, well, what what about the pops, the hospital systems, all these places are going to take all of our PTs. I'm not worried about that.
00:51:19
Speaker
You can outcompete them very easily. The thing I'm worried about is the fact that really there's an entire another industry that's about to eat up physical therapy. Chiropractors are are literally at mass hiring all of your physical therapists out from under you. And if you haven't seen it, it's happening soon.
00:51:37
Speaker
And they are very business savvy because that's kind of how they had to be whenever they went in there. And so it's not a PT versus PT. And really, it's not a chiro versus PT. It's a we need to educate the public.
00:51:49
Speaker
And most people would at least choose a physical therapist specific practice before a chiro who happens to do physical therapy. Between that and then ai there's a lot of things that could be disrupting the actual industry as a whole.
00:52:02
Speaker
So we have to get better very quickly. Like they just announced this a day or two ago. Apple is introducing ChatGPT into all of their OS devices in the next year.
00:52:13
Speaker
That's 2 billion users that now actually somewhat understand what AI is. So they're very quickly gonna start asking ai what do I do to treat my treat my low back pain? So if we don't start communicating better, AI is going to be messing some people up because you and I both know that like it's not quite there yet.
00:52:32
Speaker
Or Elon Musk, who's giving out unsolicited back pain advice, telling people to get certain surgeries for their stuff. like There's a lot of misinformation. So we need to make sure that we are the one that people go to.
00:52:43
Speaker
And that is, I think, the thing that would truly move our profession forward if that's all we changed. i really like that answer. I really like that answer one, because I agree with it.
00:52:55
Speaker
Right. So I do think that how we started this conversation, right?
Key Elements for PT Industry Growth
00:53:00
Speaker
Like our competitors are ignorance. ah and That ne needs to be like that. that's That's it. So in in in closing, Joey, yeah I think you gave a lot of really good tactical pieces of advice for folks and in some really good frameworks. Right. One, innovation does not equal tech. and Really, I think in our conversation,
00:53:22
Speaker
Innovation equals iteration, right? Just trying something new. um And in breaking the mindset, do it through active, right? Activity, right? Become that person um and know that while you won't see it every day, if you put the inputs in, you're going to get the output that you want at some point.
00:53:43
Speaker
um I think learning from outside, we we have the saying that you know learn from you know our scars so you don't have to earn them yourself. And then similarly, like learn from the scars of others so you don't have to learn it yourself because there are a ton of patients out there that ah people that should be patients that need help.
00:54:00
Speaker
And frankly, like you don't get bonus points for making your journey harder. right And I think the the last piece is on the the hard conversations and communication.
00:54:11
Speaker
And you know to to use again another outside source, right? I think the the book Radical Candor that has been really helpful in not only helping me think about those conversations, but also just realizing like,
00:54:24
Speaker
you get what you allow and oh yeah, you think you're the only one that knows that Susan isn't pulling her weight? Everyone knows. Everyone knows. and And we've seen it in our company where we had a co-founder that that wasn't pulling his weight and we let him go and the overall productivity shot through the roof, right? Like, oh I don't know. We're going to be able to do this. All of a sudden, like everything got way better.
00:54:47
Speaker
um So, know you know, you're, it happens. It's kind of funny. It's like, oh gosh, like, I don't know, like if I get this bear trap off my leg, I don't like i don't know if I want to let it go. I bet you do.
00:55:00
Speaker
I really, really bet you do. ah you You'll be surprised. And i think the last piece is in having those hard conversations, some advice that I got from one of my mentors back at Deloitte Consulting. and Now granted, we were actually making phone calls and negotiating with software vendors for the best users like the eBay PayPal deal, which was an absolute blast. But his advice was always,
00:55:24
Speaker
the call you should make first is the one you want to make the least. And i think very similarly advice to to those that need to have those hard conversations. And it's something that we live out. I live out is the thing that you want to do the least, put the top of the day, right?
00:55:42
Speaker
Get it done when you have the most energy, ah the most, you know, built up reserves and and knock it out. Yeah, we see that all the time. like so Front office will respond to all their emails before they call all their leads.
00:55:56
Speaker
Your providers will do everything that they have to before they actually have the conversation of insurance or what someone's going to cover or all those things. You've got the staff member that isn't doing what they need to do, but it's easier. or like i had someone the other day, they were like, should i is when's the best day to let someone go?
00:56:15
Speaker
I was like, yesterday, if they're if you're letting them go. um And so it's like, why would we hold on to someone for an extra four or five days to do it on a Friday? Like they're they're going to continue to bring down the culture. There's a reason that they're not there.
00:56:27
Speaker
And so there's a lot of that that I see everywhere. And that's because, again, that's that's how we're built. Like humans are not meant to go into that level of stress and that level of everything. And so comfort is what we're all seeking.
00:56:40
Speaker
But if we're comfortable, then we're not growing the way we need to. And so we have to continue pushing into that and being a little bit uncomfortable um with it. And so that will allow us to grow so much faster.
00:56:52
Speaker
But sometimes you need to someone to help you hold accountable to that. Yeah. and that's That's one of those until you build that actual rep, like you it's going to be a little bit hard for you to want to start to do that. It's like, because if if behavior change was easy, we would not have an obesity epidemic.
00:57:09
Speaker
All of us would have six packs. All of us would play every instrument we've always said we wanted to learn. All of us would have already done all those things. And those are the things that we want. That's not even the things that we are like, hey, I don't really want to do this because it kind of sucks.
00:57:25
Speaker
So that's why it's so hard because like we can't even get ourselves to that on things we want. And so that's what separates good entrepreneurs from bad, though, because they do the things even when they don't want to So that way they can continue to grow because they know it's their responsibility to do that for their team and show up that way. Otherwise, there's no reason that you should expect them to do that.
00:57:48
Speaker
Yeah. Hey, everyone's watching. Just like everyone knows that you're, ah you get what you allow when you let Susan stay and really sorry for all the Susans out there. um You know, they, yeah, they, they, they're watching, they see it and like it a hundred percent. And, and I know way a book that I've really loved on that, this subject specifically is Arate by Brian Johnson.
00:58:11
Speaker
And this idea of getting one degree hotter every day. Right. And the idea that water doesn't boil at two 11, right. It boils at two 12 and that journey from room temp to 211 is nightmarish.
00:58:26
Speaker
But once it starts to boil, Hulk, like the the ounces of pain you will go through during that process do not even remotely come close to the pounds of pain, of regret you would experience if you didn't try.
00:58:46
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's like patience. Like you've got all of the all the amount of prevention that would actually fix the amount of back end. Like it's it's literally the same thing. But I think there's also on the stuff where you're like, hey, how do we get people to innovate? How do we get them to grow?
Mindset for Happiness and Growth
00:58:58
Speaker
Well, the hard thing is, is if we don't have a big enough why, what happens is it's the same exact analogy of like, hey, the water the water is getting hotter and then eventually it boils. Well, what actually happens is you're like, okay, I'm at 2 million a year. I'm at 2.5. I'm at three. My goal is five. And then you finally get there. Well, the day before you hit that that new all-time high doesn't really feel any different than the next day.
00:59:20
Speaker
And so then the goalpost continues to move, which also starts to make you feel like you just never actually have enough. Yes, you have to find ways as you're growing, because we don't want to start applying these, these rules of like, Hey, whenever I get here, I will finally be happy.
00:59:38
Speaker
Well, if you have people who have achieved that and they're not happy, well then therefore the goal is not what made them happy. And so we have to find a way to make ourselves happy now. And then getting there is just a bonus.
00:59:49
Speaker
Yeah. Inside that's where a dinaur coach, right. Is so valuable. in that. um And yeah we, I'm lucky to, to have ah an and an investor and coach, a dual that provides that, that, that perspective, right? We're all like, you know, we only grew patient enrollment by 20% last month. And like, you'll be, i thought I'd be, I fall into that trap all the time.
01:00:16
Speaker
And he'd be like, yeah. ah How many did you have last month at that, and at this time last year? like, okay, it's like 10 times better.
01:00:27
Speaker
I can't like tell between my legs, right? But you having a coach in an outside objective view is so helpful, not only to make sure that you're growing, but I think too, to make sure that someone is helping put that perspective in place, right? Because it'd be so easy. I bet you have a conversation every day, right? Someone went from two to 5 million and like, you know, like, you know, we, we missed on this metric though. And like our, we got, we got a bunch of four star reviews. I'm really upset about that. Like, like, whoa, whoa, whoa, who whoa.
01:00:59
Speaker
We're ah look back a year, right. Or two years. So yeah. Well, it's, it's the same thing. Like I'd be remiss to not actually bring this back to like patient care. You see this all the time. You're treating patients.
01:01:10
Speaker
They literally, they're acting like nothing's happening. They went actually from like nine out of 10 pain to, four out of 10 pain. they They forgot to tell you that they ran a marathon for the first time over the weekend. There's all those things. and That's why we asked those small things of like, Hey, what have you been able to do since last time? Share a win What are you thankful for? Because we have to kind of pull that out because that's human nature. Like it's not just business owners who are heavily trying to achieve stuff. It's, it's everybody.
01:01:35
Speaker
It's your staff that want to continue to progress as a therapist and have an upwards of that. That's why we have ascension programs for all of
Communication and Learning Strategies
01:01:42
Speaker
our guys. So where they know how to go from like a junior PT, senior PT, clinical director, regional manager, all those type things, and maybe even a partner.
01:01:49
Speaker
And so you have to kind of know where you're at. So that way you kind of know where you're kind of projecting up there. But that gets back to communication and actually giving feedback the way we need to. So people have a pulse on where they are.
01:02:01
Speaker
That also gives us an opportunity for patients to be like, hey, we did awesome today. I see that your range motion is improving here, but we still have some things that we need to work on, especially your strength next time. So that way it's always just push pull so they don't cancel. They're like, Hey, I'm, I'm doing good. I've got these exercises. Like I love seeing you, but like not that much. Like I'm just going to go ahead and just keep doing these. I think I'm fine.
01:02:22
Speaker
And so we have to learn how to instill those things to where people inherently understand where they came from. Otherwise it's very, very easy. Like in, in the owner world, I always call it entrepreneur amnesia.
01:02:33
Speaker
Um, because it's very, very easy for us to forget that stuff. Um, and then look back and it's like, Oh yeah, we doubled the share. Um, I guess I kind of forgot because you youve kind of move that stick or even for us, it's like, okay, if we bill you monthly, well, maybe we crush for the first three months and then you have one month where someone quits. You're like, well, this month I didn't get an ah ROI.
01:02:54
Speaker
and like Yeah, but like, let's look at this overarching thing. Like we're not measured on weeks. We're not measured on months. We're measured on years as owners. Yeah. And so I think we just have to change our measuring stick a little bit and realize there's always going to be that up and down, just like the recovery curve of like, Hey, we're going to get better. They're probably going to have a regression and we're going to keep kind of going from there.
01:03:12
Speaker
And so it's, it applies everywhere in life. And so I think the more we are aware of that, like that is a very big, like if I could, if I could distill down a a key skill that a lot of people, if they have it, they're the ones that are like very, very big. It's the ones that have very good pattern recognition.
01:03:30
Speaker
because either they learn from mistakes faster, they see other industries do that, and they're able to pull that and ah and distill that down and even show those patterns to be significantly faster. Like that's, if I had to distill down like Robbie's biggest skills, pattern recognition and framework ability is like,
01:03:46
Speaker
it's it's uncanny like the way he breaks that stuff down i'm like i don't know how the hell your brain works that way like and when you look at his notes on his whiteboard and stuff like that it looks like a mad scientist has done it um but that's just how his brain works and so there's a lot of those things that if you start to look for the patterns you'll see them and you'll be able to start to implement those and everybody will have a lot more systematic growth across the board And that is a future that I not only wanna see, but help support obviously along with with you and and many, many others that it will take to get there.
01:04:17
Speaker
So with with that, Joey, I want to say thank you. This was an absolutely fantastic conversation. i think we gave you gave folks some really nice tactical pieces of advice as well as encouragement and a little bit of a push and ways to think about making some changes in their innovation and leadership journey.
Resources for Further Engagement
01:04:38
Speaker
And so for that, i want to say thank you.
01:04:40
Speaker
Where can people find you? of course, we'll put this out in the show notes as well, but please, where can people find you? and and Yeah. um So we're pretty much on every platform at this point for rehab CEOs. um There's technically a Dr. Joey and a Dr. Robbie one as well, but just go to rehabceos.com and you can pretty much see all of our media.
01:04:58
Speaker
um And then if you're wanting some more of our like free resources, because we've got about 350 videos of like training of like hiring, marketing, our entire sales system, how to do workshops, all of that type stuff, 100% free and two free group coaching calls a week.
01:05:11
Speaker
If you go to school.com slash rehab CEOs, but that's S K O O L.com slash rehab CEOs, just hop in there. We can help you with anything. It's like, again, it's a hundred percent free.
01:05:22
Speaker
That's we call it. Our community service content. Cause we realistically, we know there's a hundred people out there that are trying to help people, but not everybody's going to align with the same person. And so we want to just want to provide value. So eventually maybe,
01:05:34
Speaker
At some point you're like, Hey, I want to work with you. But if not, that's completely fine too. I've had people in there for years. They're like, I just do your free stuff and we've been good. And so like, that's completely fine. Cause I can't work with everybody one-on-one. So this is our way to kind of grow the the entire industry as much as we can. And then if you want to go faster with support, then we could always have a conversation.
01:05:55
Speaker
Absolutely. I love how much information you're sharing out there and just trying to be fuel to the fire for for private practice and and beyond. So with that, Joey, I want to say thank you.
01:06:06
Speaker
And until the next one, this has been The Disruptors. See you next time. Thank you for listening to another episode of The Disruptors. I hope that you were able to take one or two things away that you can apply immediately to your own innovation journey.
01:06:20
Speaker
As always, I'm your host, Stephen Cohen, sponsored by Sarah Health. Let's keep moving.