podcastforsmallbusinessowners

Ever wonder about the doctor that your doctor goes to? Well, this week Brian is chatting with Lisa Chase, PT, owner of Back to Normal PT in St. Petersburg, FL. She’s an expert physical therapist and shares her background in physical therapy and how she has built a unique and successful practice using innovative technologies and education. Today, she’s sharing her experience, and the technology she utilizes that has catapulted her success as a therapist, practice owner and has helped her treat thousands of patients and professional athletes in a holistic way. 

Episode at a glance:

• The mystery is in the history. If you take the time to listen to your patients, and ask the right questions, your patients will tell you exactly where you need to go. 
• Find the game changers and the differentiators - Neubie E-Stim, Dry Needling, ASTYM, magnet therapy, etc.
• Find a way to have 20% of your GI come from self-pay if you’re still in the insurance model. 
• Think through the full journey of the patient. 
• If you have a foundation in manual therapy, Lisa can come in and teach the Exercise foundational course. If you want to get patients better faster or if you want to get a certification, go to Michigan State. You do not need to take the exercise course to use Rehablinks. 
• Lisa can be reached at: healing@back2normalpt.com or by visiting her website.

This week’s podcast covers what it takes to be a successful practice owner. We’re not talking about the executive characteristics and traits that you need to be a successful practice owner, but rather, how to overcome a lack of confidence or uncertainty to take the leap into practice ownership. We’re working to get you in the mindset, and how to overcome common barriers that prevent you from making the leap into private practice starting with your ideal scene. 

Episode at a glance:

• Don't peg your happiness to the statistics. Peg your happiness to the enthusiasm and energy, and growth of the group and that you had within the group. 
• To discover your ideal scene, bullet point out what your life would look if everything went exactly as you envisioned in your professional life in private practice and what your personal life would look like. 
• Three categories of success in private practice 
• 45 - 60 visits per week is break-even. Most startups that we work with break-even within 3-6 months. 
• Once you’re in a power condition, you can plan out offices 4-8 in 24 months

In this week’s episode, we’re focusing on the pinnacle of what every practice owner needs to know in order to run a successful practice, and it’s not what you think. Yes, we all struggle with the rules and regulations required to be compliant in this heavily regulated environment. But honestly, those elements can be taught and mastered and will remain quite fixed moving forward.  However, the office personnel that you are trying to manage is another story entirely. Depending upon what phase in private practice you are in will dictate the order you need to address these issues. So, in this 100th episode, we’re giving you a better understanding of these common struggles and what you can do about them. 

It’s time to live the life of a practice owner that you deserve. On this week’s episode, Brian briefly recaps his conversation with PPS president, Sandra Norby, from last week’s podcast. He discusses the importance of advancing the cause of the APTA to make the physical therapy profession the very best that it can be. He then goes on to share his seven best strategies on how to get your practice to the top 10%.  

This week we’re chatting with our Director of Remote Management Services, Abby Keyton, PT. Abby is a physical therapist and started working with Brian as a travel therapist at his clinic in Maryland. During her time in the clinic, she worked her way up to clinical director followed by COO. For the past three years, she’s been working with MEG first as a practice coach and then managing offices remotely and working with owners throughout the country. In this episode, she’s sharing some real life experiences that she’s had running clinics around the nation as well as some solid tips for how to be an effective and successful clinical director.

As we pay more attention to the innovative leaders within our profession, it’s easy to see that we need to break out of the mold we have been working in over the past 4 decades and be revolutionary about how to operate in 2020. We all know that being a great clinician does not equate to you being successful at running a physical therapy private practice. You have to obtain the skills and continue to grow both personally and professionally. Successful business leaders will tell you that when you are looking to dismantle and restructure any operating basis, you must pilot the new model while continuing to run the existing model until you get the new model de-bugged and dialed in before you abandon the old. This week, we’re breaking down where we are today in private practice, and what we have to do now to succeed in 2020 and beyond. 

What is your purpose?

In this podcast, Brian explores how to stay causative over your career and the attributes necessary to own and run a successful private practice. He inspires his audience to not shy away from risks and challenges and to color outside the lines in this game of life. He implores his listeners to take a closer look at themselves and to ask “why” instead of “how.” Check it out to learn how to evolve into the best executive you can be.

Every office we’ve worked with that has an Human Resources professional on staff, we’ve noticed a culture of fear among the staff. The overwhelming majority of these offices are mom and pop offices. In this podcast, Brian strives to bring these truths to light on how to confront them in his usual no-nonsense and honest fashion.

Do you know the cost of doing business? If you don’t, you are the effect of what you don’t know. No, you didn’t go to finance school, but the finance lines are still the most important division in your practice. By knowing the cost of doing business we mean, the profit margins, the cost per visit, etc…

This week Jon Repka from Paro is joining us to talk about finance lines and about what you don’t know. Paro is a financial services firm that has highly vetted financial professionals in an amazon-style fashion with a specific division that works with private practice owners like yourselves.  

How did I come up with the four keys to private practice success? Well, after hitting rock bottom in my own practice, I invested in becoming the best owner that I could be by learning everything I needed to know. This led me to consulting where I learned, after working with hundreds of practices, that there was a sequence to follow and key elements that needed to be in place to be successful. The better one followed them, the more successful they became. The four keys to success are: 

• Environment
• Structure and Organization
• Personnel Management
• Systems of Operation/SOP’s

So many practice owners who talk to us are focused on doing, doing, doing. But that is not going to make you a better owner, nor is teaching your staff. Training advances skills, teaching just educates.

How much time do you need for an effective marketing campaign for your new office?

This week, Brian is giving his top 3 actions to market a new practice that will yield the greatest return on investment of time (and money). You want to make an impression that is effective but not salesy. You want actions that are effective for the market demographic, the specialities you’re offering in your clinic, and your location in the country. All of these factors impact the effectiveness of your marketing actions. After working with many startups over recent weeks, we knew we had to talk about the successful marketing actions to really hit the ground running. So give this podcast a listen for the top three strategies to market your new practice.

Have you ever trusted someone only to find out that they never had your best interests in mind? Did this result in you feeling as if you had been taken advantage of? 

The definition of betrayal is the violation of a person’s trust or confidence. These experiences can stack up and have long-lasting effects on you, oftentimes altering who you are and how you trust others. This operating basis can be devastating to you on multiple levels leading to problems not only at work but also in your personal life. Many of us have been betrayed or experienced what we consider betrayal at one point or another in life, and the people and situations that contribute to this happening are not going to go away, ever. How you choose to deal with them makes all the difference in the world in terms of overall happiness, stress reduction and practice management.  

Every physical therapy practice owner has most likely been lead to this point in their career by a burning passion to own their own practice because it is part of their vision to treat patients in the manner in which they agree with professionally. Unfortunately, not all practice owners I’ve met can say that. Some owners went into private practice because of an offer they couldn’t refuse. Others sought to make more money. Or, they opened a clinic because they were darn good therapists and got talked into opening a clinic, or they went in with a partner who they felt complimented what they brought to the table. 

Whatever that spark was that triggered the next step in your professional career toward ownership, it doesn’t really matter since you are now trying to figure it all out to be successful in private practice. Listen for the second in our series on ownership and leadership and how to win at both. 

As I started planning out this week’s episode, I wondered if in my 28 years of physical therapy and Practice Management experience, have I ever specifically targeted trying to hire a veteran physical therapist for any of my offices? After thinking about this for a while, not once did I actively recruit a veteran therapist. Here I am, a veteran therapist myself; there’s nothing wrong with me nor do I think there’s anything wrong with ANY veteran therapist I’ve ever met. I just never intentionally went out on the recruiting lines to attract a veteran therapist. I’m sure many of you have, in which case I would love to hear about your experience doing so. I’ve always just taken the approach of seeking to teach or train somebody something new as opposed to having to retrain somebody and something old. 

I believe that if you’re a high-quality practice owner, one of the priority areas of your concern will be how to create that ideal company culture, much like a baker who is constantly focusing on how to make that ideal pie by working with only the best ingredients. The same thing goes for the physical therapy practice owner who is only looking to hire, train, and retain the best most highly motivated personnel available. Unlike baking, where you can purchase the best ingredients; when it comes to the personnel, they need to be homegrown in order to be the best. In today’s labor market, it is unlikely that you will hire somebody “off the shelf” who comes in with the attitude, skills, and motivation that will complement your company culture. Therefore, the burden falls on you the owner/manager to understand the science of personnel development and have the professional skills to effectively communicate and enhance the ability of those around you. 

This means that before you can go out looking for your next advanced therapist, you’re going to have to look inside yourself first in order to challenge your own abilities as an executive and leader. In part two of our three-part series, we’ll discuss how to recruit, hire, and train.

Fact: it doesn’t take more money to build a better physical therapy practice. All it takes is better people. When I say better people, I mean you and me as owners and leaders of our groups. When asked, just about everyone will say that he or she can be better than what they are today. If this is true, then they would immediately understand that they have deficiencies and lack of capabilities.  

More significantly, I want to bring your attention to the fact that real success in any business is dependent on one’s abilities to bring about understanding amongst your team. The keyword here is “ability.” The only way your skills are going to grow in the field of private practice management is if you realize that you have deficiencies. If you acknowledge that you don’t know all there is to know about this field of practice. Let’s face it; physical therapy school did not sufficiently train us for the challenges that we face every day in the world of private practice. So, before we go criticizing the shortcomings of our staff and feel like we are adult babysitting, maybe it’s because we have not been sufficiently trained ourselves on how to be the best: recruiting director, personnel manager, billing director, clinical director, office administrator, marketing director, therapist and CEO for our business to begin with. 

This week, we’re talking about how a lack of proper personnel management has placed owners in tough situations when all they factor in is money and justifying salaries.  

I’ve been working with both new and existing owners now for almost two decades. When I think back to what I went through when I opened my first office in 1999, it’s a world of difference. I actually recall putting my head in my hands saying to myself: “I would pay anyone anything they wanted if they would just sit down with me and show me what it is that I needed to do first, second and third in order to build a successful practice.” Unfortunately, at the time, all that was available were business consultants who either didn’t know physical therapy or were more interested in selling me stuff rather than actually helping me. I knew then that someday I would create a company that physical therapy owners could trust would have their best interest in mind and provide them with the knowledge and support necessary to their success.  

A private practice’s success begins with the owner knowing what they need to do and when they need to do it. There is no time in business where your actions as an owner are more critical than when you open your first office or expanding into your next location. MEG Academy was built with 14 comprehensive programs to enable owners to operate in every area of private practice with complete certainty. This begins with our “startup accelerator program” and the “expansion program” specifically designed to ensure one’s success with growth. In this week’s podcast, I cover the four most important factors to consider when successfully expanding into your next location. Maintaining viability while experiencing steady growth is what makes for a successful practice and less stressed owner.

Our employees are people and as we all know; people, in general, are resistant to change. I read an article last week about how more now than ever before people are being labeled with having Neophobia. Defined as “the fear of anything new, and it can be an especially persistent and abnormal fear. In its milder form, it can manifest as the unwillingness to try new things or break from routine.” How do you get your staff on board to make necessary changes in your private practice when they’re afraid of change? 

Knowing when it’s time to hire additional physical therapy staff is a challenge we hear about a lot from the practices we work with.  If it’s not well thought out, you could wind up paying more in payroll than you are getting in return for the services being delivered. This is especially true when you are a new startup practice just starting out; you cannot afford to spend more money than you make. To combat this, you need a proven hiring system that tells you when and who you should hire based on the numbers. You should never be guessing or hoping that your new patient numbers will sustain the new physical therapist you just hired. You should be driving those numbers and hiring based off a sequential plan of growth that you are in control of. This week, we’ll dive into the strategy to know when to hire the next therapist that your practice can sustain that will contribute to the growth of your practice. 

If you want to be a successful startup, we always recommend starting with an office manager. Front desk is a huge gateway to your practice and the office manager should run that show (consider the front desk and office manager the gate keepers) and be the core of your front desk management system.  This week in our podcast, Brian discusses the benefits of this for your startup, but also how to create a culture of US for your practice, and how the front desk contributes to that.