E600 | 3 Ways To Improve Your Leadership

In this podcast episode, Doc Danny discusses the challenges of leadership in mid to large-size cash and hybrid practices. He shares his insight that leadership is a constantly changing target and can be challenging to master due to the many variables that come into play when dealing with different situations.

Danny highlights the issue of high turnover rates and the importance of creating an environment that fosters a positive culture to retain good team members.

To help build better leadership skills, Danny introduces three key points.

First, he suggests that leaders should not spend too much time in their offices, but rather share in the hardships of the company with their staff. This creates an atmosphere of teamwork and collaboration that leads to better outcomes.

Secondly, he emphasizes the importance of having fun with the team while maintaining a professional distance. Having a good relationship with colleagues increases job satisfaction and productivity.

Lastly, he encourages leaders to be mindful of their time and to consistently apply their leadership skills to create an effective workplace culture.

Danny concludes by stating that being a leader starts with leading oneself and gaining control over one's own time. He reminds us that mistakes will be made, but it is essential to take lessons from them and avoid making the same mistakes again.

Overall, this podcast provides valuable insights for anyone looking to become a better leader and create a positive workplace culture.

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: Hey, real quick before we start the podcast episode, I want you guys to check out our new YouTube channel for PT Biz. We are putting out a weekly video on the most common questions that we get, and we are breaking those down in a way that's more engaging. Where you can learn better and really focus on one thing at a time.

So if you're interested in really learning more skills to upgrade your cash and hybrid practice, head over to YouTube. Subscribe to the PT Biz Channel and check out the weekly videos that we're coming out with to help you win in the cash-based practice game. So here's the question. How do physical therapists like us who don't wanna see 30 patients a day, who don't want to work home health and have real student loans create a career and life for ourselves that we've always dreamed about?

This is the question, and this podcast is the answer. My name's Danny Matte, and welcome to the PT Entrepreneur Podcast.

What's going on guys? Dr. Danny here with the PT Entrepreneur Podcast, and today we are talking about leadership. Leadership is something that, especially as we work with more and more business owners that are I would say, Mid-size to larger size cash and hybrid practices. We are really realizing as a company, I'm talking, when I say we, PT biz, and everyone that's within that, all the coaches and the partners.

That leadership is this, it's this continual moving target that is so difficult to pin down because there's just so many elements or I should say variables. They go into different situations in which you have to apply a leadership skillset to be able to say the right thing, have the right response, and deal with the right, the situation in the right way.

And the challenge is, Understanding all of that is damn near impossible. Outside of the person that is running the business. You can't just say, Hey, time out. Let me call somebody real quick and then let me answer your question in the moment, you have to be able to understand what you should say, what you shouldn't say, and what you should do and what you shouldn't do.

So as. Me personally as I dive into this more and more to really help create better structure and frameworks for the businesses that we are working with. There's a lot to learn. There's a lot to try to organize and especially to try to just create general frameworks, general things in which people should do or shouldn't do to create.

A environment where they are a healthy leader. That is developing a really healthy culture. And when we look at the reasons in which someone is going to stay or leave your practice, which is a huge challenge, turnover is a huge challenge. We have as just a society of, employed people.

Everyone is a free agent, and I think of it like everybody's on, like their rookie contract in the nfl, and you see this a lot, right? It's like these rookie contracts they're not making life changing money. I guess they are depending on when they've been drafted, but a lot of these guys are not necessarily in that ballpark, but they get that second contract all of a sudden, they're.

They're in a different ball game, a ballpark as far as financially. But when I think about employees, a lot of people, they've got this short window of one to three years, where then they're a free agent and they don't really care where they're gonna go because a lot of times it's what's the best opportunity, which is fair.

I think that's, it's fair. Do what's best for your family and if you want to try to retain really good people, you have to create an environment where they wanna stay. And one of the biggest reasons that people will leave is culture. And culture is it's really, it starts and ends with the leader of that organization.

So if you own the business, that's you, the tone that you set, the environment that you create consistently and. If it's an environment somebody wants to stay in, it's a fun environment of high achievers where you're mission driven, like you're gonna keep people longer, they're gonna want to be a part of that, and they're gonna really enjoy being an employee within the business, right?

And having that job. And one of the best ways you can do that is to create great culture and great culture. Like I said, it trickles down from great leadership and great leadership is essentially just understanding how to effectively lead people. And some of this, as I think about interactions that I've had both in my own businesses, things that I've done right and wrong, things that, that, the ramifications of those things.

And my time in the military in particular I think the military is one of the places where. Leadership is studied the most because you have such clear outcomes and high stakes associated with military leadership. Same thing in sports. Not nearly as high stakes, obviously as the military but sports is another place.

So you look at. Successful coaches that have won and what kind of culture of, high achievers and winning have they created leaders that they've created within their own organization? You look at military leaders, this is typically where you see the most sort of leadership information come from.

And then third, I would say is the business world. And the business world is because again, there's this clear outcome. It's very similar to a sport, right? Are you winning? Are you losing? Is your business growing? Is your business. Is it dying off? Are you slowly dwindling the business down to where it's just really not even a functional business anymore?

So in those three areas, as you look at those, for me, I, what I'm really trying to do is find overlapping themes and then apply that to where we, we've seen this in practice within clinical, the clinical world, because it is a different setting. It's a different type of person. And there's own, there's its own challenges in comparison to, let's say you're working with, a software company and software engineers or coders, right?

Or in the military with different types of, soldiers that are within that jobs that they have within that, or you're playing on team. And there's something today as I was like reviewing some of the things that. That I really wanna try to distill down. There's three key things that I thought about that are really pretty straightforward and simple that you can really apply to your own practice fairly easily, or I wouldn't say easily, fairly quickly.

But maintaining and con consistently doing these things isn't really, maybe the easiest thing to do, but it just takes being mindful and consistently doing them to really help improve your presence as a leader. And I'll go through those in just a second. But for those of you that are you don't have a business, the very first person you have to learn how to lead is yourself.

So this. Might not apply to you directly, and if it doesn't, that's okay. You have to learn how to be consistent with yourself, how to follow through on the things that you say you're gonna do, how to create. Guardrails around your own time and what you want to accomplish. Otherwise, you're never even gonna get to the point where you start a business or if that's what you want to do, or progress within your career. So you have to learn how to lead yourself first. So I'll just have, lead that as a caveat. If you do not feel like you're very disciplined, you don't have very good control of your own your own time you're just, You're just floating through life with no direction.

You have to get that down first before you can apply any of these other things that I'm gonna talk about. Number one, if we're talking about leading people, and especially within a clinical setting, I think one of the first things you have to realize as you grow as your business grows is that you.

You can't spend too much time in your office and you have to share in the hardships of your company. So here's what I mean by that. As you get busier, and I'm very, I was very guilty of this, especially with our first two staff members that we brought on, because at the time, not only. Had we started Athlete's Potential, this is our first hire was about a year and a half in to us starting our company as far as a staff clinician is concerned.

The next one was about I think eight months after that. During that time we had myself, my wife, who was running all the operations side of the business, which was a huge help for me. And really the two of us together with different skill sets was massive. It so super, super helpful.

But we had an office manager and then we had two staff clinicians. So anytime you bring another person in training them is always hard. And these are newer grads at the time. So I basically had to spend so much time mentoring them clinically, teaching them about how to have conversations and mind money, mindset issues that they were having to break.

All kinds of stuff That was just like getting them to a point where they could even function within a cash-based practice. Not to mention, the, just the clinical excellence side of being able to understand higher level movement problems, being able to program for those things. So some of that, These providers came, batteries included with, they had training conditioning backgrounds, which was awesome, which is one of the reasons why we hired them.

But once you get to a point where you're, you bring somebody on, you think it's gonna save you time, but it, what it actually does is it makes you more time poor and you're still fulfilling on patient volume because that's how re revenue is generated. And you're still marketing and you're still running the business and you're tracking things and you're.

Having your financial meetings with yourself and you're making sure that everything is running, you're running the business, and then you layer on new employees that need to be trained that, are far from where you want them to be, especially when you first bring them on. And that's just the nature of the employment side of things.

You have to train people effectively within your own company, but when it's so small, it's just you. It's just you. And you're already time poor, and then you become more time poor. So one of the things that we typically do is, we will get them to a point where they're finally. They're finally self-sufficient.

They're finally at a point where they can function within the company and they can see patients and they, they can take evaluations and they can take all through a plan of care, and they understand continuity options. And they can actually do the business side and they can do the clinical side, and then all of a sudden it's like, You leave 'em alone and you get back to to catching up on all of your stuff and you spend a lot more time head down in the office working, get, getting all the other things done that you need and it's very easy to forget about how much support your team needs and how much FaceTime your team really needs.

But also they probably want, because they decided to work for your company because partially. They're inspired by what you were saying by division for your company. So you can't just leave them alone at a certain point, even if they are self-sufficient and they're functional because then they start to they, they start to lose that rapport with you and.

That relationship starts to go the wrong direction, which is really hard to dig yourself out of that hole once, once you're in it. And it comes from just being time poor and trying to get your time back. So don't spend too much time in your office and make sure that you're, sharing in the hardships of your own staff.

Like for instance, this is something that I would say, even though I screwed up a number of other things. This is not something that I ever. I ever screwed up. I always it, we would ask our staff, to start their patient visit time at six o'clock in the morning, because that's when I started seeing patients and six o'clock and seven o'clock in the morning.

Pre covid were very popular times because it's before people had to take their kids to school Six o'clock, seven o'clock in the morning for me. Always booked out. Always booked out for our other staff members as well. I was always there before them. I never I never asked them to see a six o'clock patient and then I would come in at nine so I could sleep in like never happened.

I'm not gonna ask them to bear that hardship of an early morning schedule and me not being willing to do it myself. Yet, I see this with clients that we have where as soon as they get other people in, it's okay, I'm not doing that anymore. That's on you. You're gonna do this and I don't have to do that anymore.

And that's just not the way that, that it works. There there's a saying that, a shepherd should smell like their sheep. And if you are not directly involved with the employees that you have and you're not sharing some of the challenging things associated with the business as well, they will grow to resent you for that.

It's no different than for me when I was in the military. Showing up for morning PT early in the morning, standing out there it's cold, everybody's in formation 30 minutes or whatever before we, we even are gonna get started for physical training. No one wants to be out there running in formation.

No one wants to be out there doing a bunch of, sit ups in the wet grass. It's not. Whatever. It's not the most enjoyable thing to do for sure. You'd rather go to the gym and whatever, do your little CrossFit workout or something like that. And if you wanted to do that, you had to do it later in the day because certain amount of time you had to be out there physical training in the morning with, so with your soldiers because they're out there and if you just say, Hey, you go, you guys have a good time.

That's not you're not really. Showing much leadership associated with that. You have to bear the hardships as well. So make sure that you're not spending too much time in the office and you're out there with your people even doing the things that maybe you don't like to do.

Number two. You have to have fun with your team, but also be professional about it. So one of the mistakes that I see with younger clinicians that we work with right now, especially within our mastermind as they're bringing other people on, is they're bringing on other young professionals. I can't say I was really ever in this stage as a business owner, but I was absolutely in this stage as a junior officer in the military.

And I remember. When I got to Hawaii, my first duty station, we didn't really know anybody. W we, yeah, we didn't really know anybody except for some a classmate of mine, her and her husband got stationed out there, which was cool, and we definitely spent a lot of time with them. But they, she was stationed at a different hospital.

She was at the main hospital and I was at the 25th Infantry Division, which was at a different base. It was at the infantry base of Scofield Barracks and. So when we got up there and where we lived, we didn't really know anybody. But the people you work with are the people that you become friends with easier because you're around them.

And one thing, and I remember I had a boss that told me this, he said, Hey, have fun with your staff, but don't get too close. You're their you're the boss man. You're the leader. You can't develop tight friendships with people that, and you also have to in some cases discipline and hold accountable and.

That's not the easiest thing to do because it's somewhat lonely. They say that, the arro gets the thinner the air is thinner. The higher you, higher up you go. And it's true in the military, it's no different. I couldn't hang out with the, my sergeants that were, attached to the same clinic as me I the civilians.

Some of them depending on where they worked and things like we might be able to have a better. Relationship than others who are just directly underneath me. So you just gotta be careful cuz you can't, you want to have fun, you want to show your personality a little bit, but you also need to do that at an arm's length and maintain your professionalism.

That way you can maintain your position at, in a leadership role where you know you need to be the boss sometimes. And that's just the way it is. So you gotta be okay with that. And what I see is like young clinicians they just get super buddy. They're like best friends with all their staff and as cool as that sounds and there's definitely some benefits to that from team cohesion, but the challenge is, it's like me trying to be best friend with my kids.

Like I wanna have a great relationship with my kids, but they know that, like we are, I'm not their buddy, like we are friends. I want them to be able to talk to me about whatever they have going on. I want to be able to help them. I'm here to, Be their mentor, their guide in life in a lot of ways, but they need a level of respect that is very different than what they do with their best friend.

And the way in which they talk to us, the way in which they talk to their friends is very different. And it should be because we're not their best friends. And with your staff, it's the same way, because you have to keep in mind that. Your obligation is to do what's best for your company and your people.

And sometimes that doesn't, that your people don't see eye to eye with what you have to do because they're not in the same position. So don't get too close to your staff. Be friendly with them. Enjoy being around them. Go out to a happy hour with them. Drink one beer and and be done with it.

Don't get sloppy in front of your staff. Don't. Don't do things that you're gonna regret or say, things that you're gonna regret that make you look unprofessional, because they will not forget that. And it's not like they're gonna be, think that's something endearing. That's not a good place for you to put yourself.

So make sure, have fun with your team but maintain a professional distance that's important. And it just comes with the territory, it's, and it, I think it's actually one of the things that is a little bit it's a tough exchange sometimes. To, you wanna be a part of the team, you are a part of the team, but you're also running the team.

So you can't you just can't be on the same level as employees that are working together. Just understand, have fun, but be professional. Number three, listen to your people and see how they feel about how they could improve or how your company could be improved. So listen to them and. And listen to what their recommendations are because it may be something that you never really ask them about.

And I remember going to a staff meeting or an offsite staff offsite for a day with with athletes potential. And my wife was leading it. And I remember we did an exercise that she had that a lot of it was like, what, if you could change something and there was like an unlimited budget, like what would you do or just suggestions that people had for like ways in which we could improve customer success.

And we were really, the theme was really around like the customer journey and customer success and the suggestions we got from our staff were so good. They were not all, not all of them were. Things that we could do logistically, but to allow them to be creative and share what they're seeing cuz they're in it on a day-to-day basis.

And if they're like, this would be a lot better if we could do it this way. Have you ever thought about this? Or what about making this change or adding this or taking this thing away. And when we put our blinders on as leaders in, especially if it's our company, it's just man, it's so personal to us.

I think it's very easy to just think this is the only way, this is the only way in which this problem can be addressed. The only way in which this can be something that is beneficial to the company, it's the only way that we're gonna make, progress for what we're trying to do. But I'm telling you, people are smart and.

If you ask them, first of all, they have to trust that you're gonna listen to 'em. Number one, they have to trust that you're not just going to d disregard what they say. That's actually really, step one along with the rest of this is you have to build rapport with them and trust that you're gonna do the best thing for them.

But if that's the case, then they should be able to give you really, Honest feedback about what they think would be better without feeling like that's gonna ge GE jeopardize their relationship with you in the company. And some of the best changes we made came from that one staff offsite from us, just like asking our staff, what do you think about this?

And giving them the creative, ability to make suggestions knowing that. We weren't gonna ream them for that or completely disregard what they say. And your people are really smart. And if you treat 'em that way, they're gonna be much more willing and open to want to work with you to solve problems because they feel a sense of pride associated with that.

The same way you do and one of the best things you can do, and this across the board, this has to do with. Any sort of coaching and basically leadership in your own company is just coaching other human beings, to essentially try to get them to work towards your future vision, whatever your company is.

That's what's so hard about it, is you're basically trying to convey and communicate your future vision for your company, your vision of who you're, like, the mission that you have, and getting people to get on. Bored with that. And in some cases people screw up and they need to know like when they made a mistake, what they need to change.

And you need to give them direct feedback without being an asshole. More often than not, though, when somebody does something great, you need to highlight the fact of what they did was great, and you need to get excited about that, and you need to let them know how appreciative you are and really build them up during those times because positive reinforcement like that is so powerful.

It's so powerful. Just think for a second about someone that's important to you that even says something. As, as simple as, I'm proud of you. Good job. You crushed it, thank you for X, Y, and Z. If you respect that person, that means a lot to you. I see this in even with coaching. I'm, I've been coaching my kids teams now for the last couple years and just making a conscious effort to just coach and It's kids suck to coach.

Let me put it that way. If you have little kids coaching, I'm not coaching Georgia football, right? I'm not coaching some older, athletes that are super squared away and I'm coaching like eight to 11 year olds and half of 'em don't want to be out there. Their parents are just making 'em do it.

They may think they suck and they don't wanna pay attention, right? So in, in some cases you definitely have to get them back on track and you have to be direct with them and let 'em know who is in charge. But more than anything, and the thing that I see over and over again that kids just like people respond really well to, is.

Being excited for them, giving them positive reinforcement. It's if somebody has a great idea and it helps improve something within the business, you should highlight that. Not just highlight that with them, but highlight that A about them in front of everyone else. So everyone sees just how good of a job they did.

That is a big deal to that person. You've made that person's day. You've made, you've validated the fact that they did. A good job and they worked hard on something and that you appreciate it and that you appreciate them being a part of your team. The same thing applies across the board with anything.

It could be your kids, it could be, a team that you're coaching. I did this with, I had a kid that he finally got his first hit and I got so damn excited that I literally ran out on the field and I picked him up. I was I was super excited for him and, I talked to his his dad yesterday and his dad said, he goes, this is the first team that my son has ever been excited to be a part of ever.

And I can't help but think that this kid is excited because. We are excited for him, okay. You struck out basically every time you get enough to bat, but dude, that one time you got that hit, like it was so exciting and everybody was all excited for you, and now he's as motivated as could be coming to practice, practicing on his own at home.

What a turnaround man. That's people. This are just little people. The same thing can be said for people within your. Own organization. I'm not saying if they crush it on their package sales or you should pick 'em up during your staff meeting. What I'm saying is you gotta highlight these people. You gotta express and share the fact that you're proud of them.

And if you can do it in a manner that is just, that is authentic and it highlights them, especially to their peers, that is powerful And. That's something that you can do in a number of ways, but definitely if you ask for their opinion on things and they help with something that you're working on or they help improve something within the business, like man, highlight 'em.

Share that with them. Show that you're grateful and that goes a long way. These things also, they don't cost anything but time and attention. And this is frankly the most valuable currency that we have as business owners. And like I said and number one, don't spend too much time in your office.

It's when I go back to when we first hired our staff, I was we, this company, our cash-based practice was growing, we were hiring, I was still seeing a full caseload. I was still teaching, two, three times a month for Kelly Tourette's group. I had started doing a little bit of consulting work with other practices on the side.

So the beginnings of that, and I started. Sharing thoughts like this on podcasts, and I still had another podcast with the Dawkin Jock podcast with Joe Schmank. So in the evenings I was doing podcast interviews with strength conditioning professionals and. I was swamped, man. Then we had two little kids, and oh, and I was married and I was trying to stay that way.

So like I was time poor as I could be. So what did I do? I prioritized getting my work done at the detriment in a lot of ways of being able to maintain and curate relationships with new staff members that we had, and just didn't give them enough time and attention. And that's, What it costs.

And ultimately it is an expensive currency when you're time poor, but it is also free if you think about it that way, you don't have to pay for all this expensive whatever, con Ed for them and get them trained up by somebody else. That might be necessary in some cases if they need the skills.

But more than anything, you need to spend time with them. You need to spend time with them, you need to listen to 'em, you need to mentor them. You need to help them with the things outside of the clinic, outside of their employment that they're trying to achieve. And if you can do that, and all of a sudden, you know you have people and they may not be in your company forever, let me.

Let me caveat this by saying that like people will move on, people will leave, people will outgrow opportunities that they have. That's totally normal. But I can tell you this much, if you do the right thing for people along the way, like when they do leave, they're not gonna have a single bad thing to say about you.

They're not gonna move, a half a mile down the street and open up a practice right next to you. Because it's just not the right thing to do and people don't do the wrong thing to good people. It it's gonna work out better for you if you treat people better along the way. It's just that simple, and it's hard to do.

It's hard to give people that time and attention, but if you can do it, it's the number one way in which you'll maintain a positive culture in your business. Retain talented people, and you'll have a work environment that people look forward to being a part of, and not necessarily just.

Absolutely dislike going to their job. In summary, let me wrap this up real quick. So the three things in the clinic that you can start with to help improve being a better leader, it's number one. Don't spend too much time in your office. Make sure you're spending time with your staff. You're spending time, in the gym area.

If you have a lunch break, make sure eat. Eat your lunch with your staff spend some time together, talk to them, see what's going on. Don't just try to bang out your notes. I get it. I've been there. Your time. Poor. Try to spend some time with people. Whenever you're at the office and not just stay in your in, in your actual office all day long.

Number two, have fun, but be professional. I get it. If people around the same age as you and you've hired them, it's hard. It's so hard to lead your friends because they see you as their friends, not as their leader. So maintain professional bearing and distance, but also have fun with them.

Show your personality, but don't take it too far. And number three, listen to your people and see how they can help improve your company and what suggestions they have. These people are smart. These people see things slightly differently than you. These people are involved in a slightly different way, and they're independently able to help solve problems if you give them the opportunity to do and if they do a good job, highlight the hell out of it. Be super. Positive and optimistic with them about what they're doing and why you're so appreciative of what they've done, because then they will be far more likely to want to step up next time you ask for feedback because of how you handled that first situation.

So I hope this helps. I know this is a difficult topic. This is a difficult thing to learn. I don't actually think you can learn leadership without making some mistakes along the way. So if you are a leader in some capacity, And you've screwed up a little bit here and there that's totally normal.

That's okay. As long as you just don't continue to make that same mistake and you get better from that experience, then it's all trending the right direction. You're falling forward, you're failing forward, and that's not a bad way to go. I don't think it's a avoidable. Completely and the mistakes are what give us really cool stories.

So hope this helps. As always, thank you much so much for listening and we'll catch you next week.

Hey, peach entrepreneurs. We have big, exciting news, a new program that we just came out with That is our PT Biz part-time to full-time, five day challenge. Over the course of five days, we get you crystal clear on exactly how much money you need to replace by getting you. Ultra clear on how much you're actually spending.

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Information put down and getting yourself ready to take action in a very organized way, you will have success, which is what we want. So head to physical therapy biz.com/challenge and get signed up today. Hey, real quick before you go, I just wanna say thank you so much for listening to this podcast, and I would love it if you got involved in the conversation.

So this is a one one-way channel. I'd love to hear back from you. I'd love to get you. Into the group that we have formed on Facebook. Our PT Entrepreneurs Facebook group has about 4,000 clinicians in there that are literally changing the face of our profession. I'd love for you to join the conversation, get connected with other clinicians all over the country.

I do live trainings in there with Yves Gege every single week, and we share resources that we don't share anywhere else outside of that group.So if you're serious about being a PT entrepreneur, a clinical rainmaker, head to that group. Get signed up. Go to facebook.com/groups/ptentrepreneur, or go to Facebook and just search for PT Entrepreneur. And we're gonna be the only group that pops up under that.