E636 | 5 Free Ways To Deliver An Amazing Experience

In this episode of the podcast, Doc Danny and Yves delve into five practical and cost-free strategies that physical therapy practices can employ to enhance the customer experience and generate more referrals. The first strategy is the power of using people's names when interacting with them. By addressing patients by their names, it fosters a sense of personal connection and value.

Next, the hosts discuss the importance of sending a detailed follow-up email after each appointment. This email should recap the discussions during the session, outline the treatment plan, and even include exercise videos if feasible. Such personalized follow-ups aid patients in understanding and adhering to their treatment plans.

The conversation then shifts to the significance of punctuality. Showing up on time for appointments and apologizing when even a minute late establishes trust and professionalism. Being punctual demonstrates respect for patients' time and contributes to building a positive reputation.

Moving forward, the hosts stress the importance of genuinely caring about patients and their outcomes. It goes beyond simply completing necessary tasks; it involves understanding patients' goals and frustrations on a deeper level. By working passionately and compassionately to solve their problems, patients can sense a genuine desire to help them achieve their desired outcomes.

Lastly, the discussion centers around the benefits of implementing a system. Standardizing processes based on what works best and providing staff with consistent training ensures that patients consistently receive an exceptional experience. This adherence to quality allows the business to grow and scale while maintaining high standards.

Throughout the episode, the hosts emphasize that consistently implementing these free actions can yield substantial results in terms of referrals, reputation, and overall practice growth. Additionally, implementing a system enables new staff members to replicate success, ultimately leading to long-term success for cash-based practices. By prioritizing customer experience in conjunction with clinical skills, physical therapy practices can thrive and make a lasting impact on their patients.

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: [00:00:00] Hey, real quick before we get started, head over to Facebook and join the PT entrepreneurs Facebook group. If you haven't done so yet, we have monthly live trainings going on there. There's an opportunity for you to join in the conversation instead of just listening to what I have to say on this podcast, as well as the people that I bring on.

And it's a really cool place to join about 6, 000 other clinicians that are. Honestly, trying to change the landscape of our profession through these cash and hybrid practices. One other thing that's really cool is we have a guide in there. That's a quick start guide. When you join, you can go and check this out.

There's about seven videos that we've curated that are the most common questions we get in the best case studies that we've found to really help you start, grow, and scale your practice up to seven figures. So if you haven't done so yet, head to Facebook request to join the PT entrepreneurs, Facebook group.

You have to be a clinician. We're going to check you out. We don't just let anybody in. But if you are head there, go ahead, get signed up. We'd love to have the conversation with you in that group.

So here's the question. How do physical therapists like us who don't want to see 30 patients a [00:01:00] 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 is Danny Matei and welcome to the PT entrepreneur podcast.

All right. What's up guys. Dr. Danny here with EGG and the PT entrepreneur Facebook group and the PT entrepreneurs. Podcast going live today. If you aren't a member of the Facebook group, go ahead and make sure that you head over to Facebook, request to join. We're going to make sure you're a clinician first of all.

So if you don't, if you're not a clinician and you try to get in, we're probably going to figure that out and might not let you in. So we just have clinicians in there, clinicians that are excited about growing and starting cash based and hybrid practices. [00:02:00] So today what we're going to talk about is What you can do with no money to improve your customer experience.

And really, when we look at why we're talking about this it's because there's two parts to your business. They're going to drive what we consider like virality. So one of the first things I want to see with any new business. And I was just talking to a guy that had started a marketing company earlier this week, and it's been a few months that he's been in business.

And we started looking at how many people are being referred to you? By clients, and that is a strong gauge of how good of a job you're doing with a service based business in particular, right? You could probably apply that to almost anything product or service, but you want to see that you are getting referrals from customers without incentivizing them to come your way.

That is a very strong indicator that you're doing something right. In the business, but that comes down to the outcomes that they're getting and [00:03:00] also the experience that you're providing for them. And what we find is you can actually get great outcomes, but they, your clients not be super excited about your service.

And they're not gonna stick around and they're not gonna refer people your way. You can, you're actually better off to have a less superior outcome, but people just love what you're doing. As odd as that sounds it's really such a key component. They're also far less likely to say something negative about your business.

If they had a great experience, even if they didn't have the outcome that they were looking for, there will give you far more benefit of the doubt. So we're going to talk today about how you can improve your customer experience. And for many of you, you're like, I don't have the money to reinvest in all these things that may be on a high level you can do.

These are free. These just take effort and these take consistency and being intentional. And the good part about that is even if you have a seven figure business, you can layer these things in with your team and they will help your business as well. Cause, and if you're brand new and you have no money, then bam, perfect for you.

Cause you don't need anything for this, right? Yeah. Either way,

Yves: [00:04:00] it's a win. Yeah. This is, it's so important. Like we took it, I think for granted in the beginning, but now with the data points that we have, right. 250 plus people, I did a pretty deep dive on marketing and new leads in the mastermind when I built that 90 day marketing sprint to really figure out what was going on.

And what we realized was over 50%, it doesn't really matter like what stage of business they're in, in particular, let's talk the 500 K. Million dollar practices, even those practices, 50% if not more of the referrals were word of mouth. And so it just shows you that again, no matter what stage you're in, like you said, in particular, if you're early on this is, it's just a key component.

In my opinion to growth. Hopefully this one's going to be of a lot of value. Cause I think these are essentials and sometimes you may take them for granted, even if you're in bigger practice, like you said oh man, I do these things naturally. Why aren't my other clinicians doing good at it?

It's probably cause you just haven't trained them on some just simple things that you probably do naturally. And guess what, if you [00:05:00] just give them a couple little tidbits that could be huge. I'm not gonna go too much of a tangent, but I met with one of the PTs at made to move.

And I was like, you naturally are very like open. You naturally are great conversationalist. You fill your schedule. People stick around. You're also really good at building relationships with referrals. And she's I was like, God, you'd be great at teaching these people. She's but she looked at me and she's what do I teach them?

I just do these things naturally, and I was like, yeah, I get that. I felt that way too. But. I started reading more books, right? Like Charismith. I know that was like a weird inflection point, not because I needed to do the things in Charismith, although there was great actual things there. But I realized the things I was doing was like mostly in that book.

And I'm like, Oh man, like the way I sit and we'll talk about this more. All these things were just so important. And I'm like, dang that's awesome. Like I need to find a way to, to teach this to more people.

Danny: Yeah, some people are naturally they have very high emotional intelligence, in fact, a lot of clinicians.

I find that there's 2 categories of clinicians. I would [00:06:00] say the more dominant subset would be like people, personalities are like people, whatever, where they do really well with engaging and communicating with people. They feel very subgroup.

Thank you. As people that are more analytical, they're more like scientifically minded. They love the, the research side of things typically, and the protocols that they can develop and and they tend to actually be a little bit less effective on the customer experience side.

But yet they might be actually better on the outcome side because they're very thorough. And and I think everybody's probably had an interaction with medical providers of both sides of these. And there's pros and cons, but if we're looking at the customer success side, yeah, that book, that's one of my favorite books that I've ever read.

Like it just. And as you read it, you're like, Oh, that's what that's called, right? Like some people will naturally if someone sits and they cross their arms, then you cross your arms and you may not even realize you're doing it, but that's called modeling or mirroring. And all that's doing is just [00:07:00] like associating something similar with somebody else to feel a similar to make them feel more like similar and increase your likability factor.

That's what happens subconsciously when we look at body language. So I'm not saying that's obviously the only thing. There's lots of things you can do, but some people might do that naturally. And you can systemize some of these things. You can start to engineer some of these things as you train people.

So this really comes down to, just understanding. What things can you do to really help improve your customer experience? We assume that if you're interested in going to business for yourself, or you've already done it you probably clinically have to be pretty confident in order to do and if you're not, that's a tough place to be, right? It's Oh, I'm going to learn how to be a business owner. And I'm gonna learn how to be better than average clinician. That's not that common that we see that we'll see new grads do that sometimes. And it's a struggle I think for them to do that early on, but we assume you have the clinical box checked.

This is going to help you on the actual like experience side, right? And again, these are free. So I'm going to start with the first one. [00:08:00] It's, and it's so easy. It's so easy. Anybody can do it. I'm going to do it right now, Eve. I'm going to use your name more. And by doing so, I weaved that in there by doing.

So there's many different references for this. Talks about this, but there's a very. Known book called how to win friends and influence people. And it's funny, like one of the key takeaways from that is that everybody's favorite word is this is their own name, right? So don't be, don't obviously use their name in every sentence that you possibly use.

Cause then it's very awkward, but to use someone's name. And here's a great example. If you are front desk and this is an unfair advantage, they can look and see who's coming in. It's not like they have to remember hundreds of people. They have to remember who's coming in at that time and what time, who they're working with, and they get a chance to use their name when they come in.

What's up? Hey, Sarah, how's it going? Come on in. You need anything? And if you can do that and the clinician does the exact same [00:09:00] thing, Hey, Sarah, have a seat, whoever's going to be down in a second, they come down and Sarah, what's up, how was your weekend?

Like you've just used their name twice. It doesn't seem like it, it maybe is that big of a deal, but to that person, it means that, them, who they are. If you're not just a number to them and in most medical experiences, healthcare experiences, they don't know who you are. When I was in the army, you didn't even know who your primary care doctor was going to be.

They moved so much. They rotated you so much. They would have no idea who you were and you wouldn't know who they were talking about a lack of continuity and having to rebuild trust with people and things like we get a chance to really do much better than that. And using somebody's name is absolutely.

Free and easy to do. You just got to remember to do it and remember to train your team to use it on a, in a very intentional way.

Yves: Yeah. As you were saying that when somebody walks in your door, I feel like what a big difference between, Hey, you can have a seat to, Hey, Sarah, have a seat right there.

We can't wait to see you. Like [00:10:00] just that little difference, I think goes such a long way. Cause what, again, it's just so many at this point experiences, whatever, I'm almost 41. I feel like more experiences, but I remember some guy telling me

Danny: old, by the way, no offense, but that's like it went.

My kids. I remember when I thought 40 was ancient, I was like, you're a 40 year old man. You remember the Oklahoma state coach that he's I'm a man, I'm 40. He's like telling him not to pick on these like players that he has, like the media. And they're like, bring it to me.

I'm a man. I'm 40. That's you, dude. You're a I

Yves: am. I beat your son in 007. He's I just lost to a 40 year old. This is like the worst day of my life. I remember that specific.

Danny: Yeah. He wasn't right for days.

Yves: Anyway, so I remember being at, it was like an impromptu like coach the coaches session and a guy was coming in and he said these specific words.

I've had it. I've heard it a thousand times since, but he's People don't really care. What you do for them in the session or what you say in the session, what they care about, what they remember is how they feel [00:11:00] when they leave. And so again, just this act of saying their name once or twice, three times, and weaving that in, they're going to feel like it's a better experience.

No matter what, like you said, like clinical outcomes matter, but how they feel afterwards can have this enormous impact and something so simple as using their name and it. Honestly, like little things to go along with that, like looking them in the eye, shaking their hand firmly, like we went to a wedding and my son and daughter were there and everyone gave him compliments.

How Liam was like shaking their hand, looking in the eyes. You don't see that often. So that's the other thing. I feel like these things are also now exceedingly rare, and so if you can intentionally do this and you can make this just a part of who you are, if you know it naturally, I think you're automatically going to have a leg up, especially in the medical world, right?

Like the only time you hear your name is when somebody screams it in the hallway that they're ready to put you back. It's the only time you hear your name the whole darn time.

Danny: It's usually pronounced wrong, right? Like [00:12:00] your first name and my last name constantly mispronounced, right? Like it's just.

And then you definitely know, they don't know who you are at all. And they're like, Mata, you're like, ah, shit, that's me. You don't know me. Yeah. But no, I think what you're getting at is a bigger thing and really highlighted in the. The charisma myth in terms of just like interacting with people, right?

Being able to make eye contact, to being able to listen these are all things that are very free. And and especially like just thinking about how you engage somebody with using something that, Maybe they don't hear as much, right? It's somebody saying their name in a positive way.

Like you've all heard our parents say our names in a very negative way, right? We do that with our own kids. And it's the tonality of it is so easy to pick up. We're very sensitive to tone more so than anything else, right? And that's it. You can't just be like, hey, Sarah, have a seat like that's not helping you like you can't or that person over there and then they expect that they're just like, oh, [00:13:00] man, what's wrong with them?

They're like, not happy to see me or whatever. They'll pick up on that. So even if you're not excited, you got to act like you're excited. Because they don't want to be there either. They're hurt. They're injured. You think they're excited to come to physical therapy? No, they are not excited one bit.

They're not telling their friends. I cannot wait to go to physical therapy because that means they're hurt. And that means they're going to have to do some uncomfortable stuff, even though hopefully we can help them get better. So I would say that's number one, easy, super easy. Second thing, a thorough follow up email.

This is something that we, I feel like I harp on this and I constantly bring this up. I didn't even know that this was something that was beneficial until I had a patient that came, basically they came back to see me. And they just were like, Oh my gosh, that email was so helpful. Like I actually knew what I was supposed to do.

You had videos explaining what I, what you wanted me to do, how much I was [00:14:00] supposed to do it. Like they're like, it was so helpful. I sent it to a friend who was dealing with a similar problem and it even helped them. And I was like, oh, wow, that's awesome. Like I didn't know, but for me, I came from a world where I was only going to see somebody once a month, like there was nothing I could do about it because it was such a understaffed position within the military where we just couldn't get people back in to see you.

You were lucky if it was, two, three weeks, if there were post op or something like that, which is not even that, that's not ideal. And. So if I'm not seeing you for a month, then you got to be really clear on what I'm doing, because all I can think of is if they don't know what to do and they don't do it correctly, and they're not bought in, we're wasting a month before I'm going to even know that nothing is getting better.

And so it just came down to being like very clear, very thorough. And they take a little while to write. That's I think why people don't do it, because it takes a little while to actually organize everything in an email that summarizes everything, summarizes what you found, and then very clearly lays out what you need them to do for as far as [00:15:00] their part is concerned.

And over again, I would get people to come back and they'd be like, Oh my gosh, it's so helpful. Just that first email and people would go back and reference it for years. So if you can think about, all right, how can this person leave. And I always think of it this way, they leave, they go home and then they have to explain to their spouse what just happened, what they did.

It's like a telephone game, right? Cause they're going to leave some things out and there's going to be some gaps in communication. So I always thought, okay when they get home. If they can have their spouse read this email and their spouse knows exactly what's going on with them better than they can even articulate it to their spouse, now, all of a sudden, like it's a home run, like it is such a clear way for them to know what's going on.

So taking the time to really summarize the visit, summarize what's going on with the clear path is forward and what you need them to do until they see you again, next, Not only is one of the better things you can do from a customer experience standpoint, but it's frankly, one of the better things you can do from an outcome standpoint and making sure that they are bought in on what you want them to do, and they're going to actually do it when you're not around.

Yves: [00:16:00] Agreed. I still remember, I wonder if I would have, I can't remember if I would have done this on my own or just I'm pretty sure I stole it from you though, right? You were just using YouTube videos and sending email afterwards. I'm like, man that's brilliant. And it's such a huge upgrade too.

In the beginning, I just thought it was just as giant upgrade as compared to giving them a sheet of paper and sending them on their way. Like I wanted to blow that out of the water. Like I thought that was just like the dumbest thing ever. And I was like, okay, what can I do here? So yeah, sending them a YouTube video, even if it wasn't me in the beginning, it was somebody else and creating a kind of curate.

Hey, this is what we discussed today. This is what we think's going on. Here's the plan. Make sure and do these kinds of exercises, have a little prescription there. I can't wait to see you next time. I think that's a. Like it takes so little time and the effect, the possible effect of that is massive.

And I also think not only what you said, the spouse thing was absolutely brilliant though, because I think that's a really cool way to frame how to write this. But secondarily, it's also like, how do they feel in that week where they're not around [00:17:00] anymore? Like how do you keep them engaged? We know about this right now, right?

How do you keep people engaged long term? So they continue to see the value of seeing you on an ongoing basis. And that email is amazing. They hopefully feel excited afterwards. A cool, I've got a plan, but they go home, life happens, blah, blah, blah. So any extra touch point to actually get them to hopefully do the thing you wanted them to do, as well as continue to feel like they're getting a lot of value.

Like again, there's the bonus points involved with that are massive compared to the time put in.

Danny: Yeah. And a lot of that actually came from when I was. Working for the Tourette's when I was working at Mobility WOD, I remember talking to Kelly about the research that he did when he was in PT school.

And it hadn't, it actually, it wasn't like movement and whatever the stuff he's talking about. It actually was like patient compliance. He did research looking at how you can best have patients that are compliant. And one of the things they looked at was how effective are handouts, and what they found was, [00:18:00] I forget the percentage, but.

The vast, not the vast majority, a significant chunk of people just lose them. Like they just literally don't even, they just lose them. And also as I was getting into my clinic, I was like I'm not going to print a bunch of stuff out or even, I didn't even have a printer. To do it right.

And what we'd started doing with these videos with mobility wide, when Kelly was sharing all these videos I would what I would do is I would go through and I would timestamp videos for people of what I wanted them to do based on what he was doing. And it started to get really challenging because.

It would, people would get off track. They would, I would be like, watch from this time to this time. And next thing I knew they were like watching all this other stuff and they would come in and they would be doing all these other exercises or stuff that he went over. And it would really confuse my patient about what I actually wanted to do.

So then we started to build a database of all of our own exercises, which is very common, I think, for people to do now. And if you're not doing that very much worth doing, you can go and just start. Building a YouTube bank of the exercises that [00:19:00] you want people to do. And it's you and your staff and it's branded and it's explained the way that you want.

We have tons of people that use our videos for their own clinics, which who cares? Go for it. That's awesome. To hope they're helpful. But we just want to make these individual ones for that. And I don't think we really thought it would be that helpful or it would be that much of a differentiator with patients but it absolutely is it makes such a big difference.

And especially if you can say, Hey, don't worry about trying to remember everything I said today because I'm going to send you an email that's going to have me saying the same exact thing in a video that you can watch as many times as you want after you get home. And if you have any questions, you can just respond right back to me and I'll get back to you on whatever question you have, but for them to feel comfortable.

Like at the visit where it's like, Hey, pressure's off you. Don't worry about remembering everything. You just remember why you're here and what's causing this and what we need to work on, and then we're going to fill in the rest. So like that comes down to, just being able to follow up with something very concise and making sure that.

When they get home, they feel [00:20:00] confident that they're in the right place to not just your experience they have, but man, the outcome is just like light years different whenever they're actually bought in on what you have to say and they're following the right things that you want them to do.

Yeah, this

Yves: is a relatively new I don't know if the word science, but a new kind of philosophy or new frame of looking at things, this idea of customer success, with software, it's about adoption and engagement. And I love applying those things to. Medicine, right? Like into physical therapy, into clinical world, because we know that if compliance, which is another word for adoption, basically, like if they do the things that we tell them to do, the likelihood that they actually get a good outcome increases quite a bit.

So there's just so much we can do from the. customer success, customer journey side that just like we're doing now, that is just totally free. That again, will pay you dividends. Cause if you think about it, as you're saying all that, I'm remembering PT school and it's [00:21:00] almost like in PT school, we were just Told that probably only 10% of our people were going to actually do our exercises.

So why even put effort into it? I feel I don't know if you had that feeling, but I did, that's just what they said. It's probably no, he's going to do this, do the minimum out. Some will probably most won't like, it'll be fine. Like they need to come in three times a week and that's when they get their dosage and it doesn't really matter.

And I feel like we threw in the towel, you know what I mean? So once you move into this. Performance based cash practice, hybrid, whatever it's like now this stuff becomes almost essential. It's almost flipped it up on its head, which is what I really enjoyed. So now the focus could be on adoption, customer success.

And I was like, that excited me as opposed to, all right, you might or might not do these like, all right, see you later. Man, that, that kind of sucked having that outlook going to clinic.

Danny: We get jaded. I think everybody gets, so this is the challenge with those environments where you don't have a lot of compliance, I remember I worked with what's called a warrior transition unit, which is basically people that are hurt that are active duty that are going through a medical board [00:22:00] process, meaning they're getting discharged from the military for medical injury purposes, many different kinds. This is just, I was working with the the people that have like musculoskeletal problems amongst other things, right?

There's just all kinds of crazy jobs that. People have and, they have lots of traumatic brain injuries and mental health stuff going on. And, but I really ended up with most of the people that had musculoskeletal problems. And I remember just being like very frustrated by the process because it's not to say, so it's not to say that they didn't want to get better.

It's just that they didn't really want to get better before they got their VA rating taken care of because it had to do with how much disability they would receive from the injuries that they had in the military. And this is when they sign their contract to join the military and voluntarily enlist or to be commissioned.

You sign a contract that says, listen, if you get screwed up while you're in the military, then there's a rating system assigned to that. And then they'll have, healthcare for that. And they may have some sort of money they get every month associated with it. So when you're going through this process, it's yeah, I want to feel better, but not, I don't really want to feel better until after I've been rated.

So there's this like thorough [00:23:00] rating process, very similar to somebody going through personal injury, right? Where it's yeah, I want to be better, but not to the case. Settles, right? I don't want this to be going forever, but I also don't want this to affect what I might be able to get from this compensation.

So that's tough, right? Because you're you end up with people that you might be trying hard and they may not really want to put the effort in or even if they. Do it's there's a reason why they don't want to feel better. So I think that can be really frustrating for people and and really challenging.

And so if you're in that kind of environment, like you move to a cash based practice or something like that doesn't happen. Like none of that happens. On dude, on the flip side of that, like I've been in some environments, like I was at this infantry brigade where they would have anybody that was on what's called a profile, which means you're injured and you can't do certain training activities.

They had what's called profile review boards, and these profile review boards would be are typically was a battalion sized groups of 600 people, and they would have the the brigade surgeon, there was like one surgeon, one M. D. or D. O. for the whole brigade, which is, three or [00:24:00] three to 4000 people.

And then you had a P. A. that was assigned to every battalion. It would be the battalion commander, it would be, the battalion non, NCO the The highest ranking NCO, and then it would be the surgeon and it would be the PA and me, and we would sit in this office and each person would have to come in and they would have to stand at attention in front of everybody.

And they would have to explain what they were doing to make progress on on their injuries, right? Or sometimes it was like other stuff, but they had to explain. Playing what they're doing to get off this profile, because in some cases, they weren't they weren't deployment ready. They weren't combat ready.

And that is something that the military tracks very closely. So you'd be sitting in this room and a soldier would come in. And the battalion commander be like, Oh, so I hear, I see your shoulder hurts. You can't do pushups or carry a rucksack. So what are you doing about that? And he's yeah, I'm X, Y, and Z. Like I'm doing this, and this. And you'd have soldiers there. Like he'd straight up be like are you. Going to physical therapy and they're like, yes, sir. And I'm going to physical there and they wouldn't know who the hell I was because I'd never been to [00:25:00] my office.

And then, the colonel who is the battalion commander, he'd be like captain Matei, is this guy coming in to see you? And I go, sir, I've never seen this person in my life. And dude, can you imagine like the look on these people's faces when they would do that? Like that talk about ultimate accountability.

Now, all of a sudden they're literally working all weekend cleaning shit up because they just lied to the talent, the battalion commander. It's like the most compliant setting you could possibly be in, because if they're going to call you in and you're going to say, no, I'm working on this and they're not there, like they're, you can't hide from that.

So it's the complete opposite. And I actually really liked that because what happened was. I would get people that would show up, they're ready to do their shit. And they're held accountable by their chain of command, their leadership to see if they're doing the right things or not.

And if they weren't, then they got in trouble. I think what's interesting is I've been in different environments and I've seen different levels of compliance. The best compliance though, is internal compliance from the patients that we get a chance to work with in a cash based setting.

Because they're there because they want to be there. They're not there because being forced to be there. Or that they're like forced to be there, but don't really want to get better. So it's such a better [00:26:00] environment to be in. And the compliance level is way better, but also it's better if they know what's going on and they feel comfortable when they leave, because they're going to forget a lot of the shit that we say.

So it's just such a simple thing that people can add in to make sure that they're summarizing things correctly and getting the outcome they want.

Yves: Yeah, it's a difficult transition to we see it a lot of people that go from, seeing 15 plus people a day. And then now all of a sudden you're seeing 5 to 6 people a day and like how to build structure around that, like the kinds of patients that you see.

And I love having these conversations because it gives people a really good idea of kind of the difference in setting, which can be, it can be tough, right? Because you go from a focus of obviously reimbursement and kind of triaging, which is a skill in of itself, multiple people to now, like I got an hour, like it's gotta be very focused.

This person is motivated. They expect a lot, they want a lot. And that's why I just want to be helpful because in the end, just like we said, this kind of customer experience, client success principles, I think can be a huge difference maker as far as your practice, really [00:27:00] growing, because I definitely know a lot of good clinicians who are great.

At programming and rehab and the science, but have a lot of difficulty growing and it's mainly because these things don't come as

Danny: natural. 100%. 100%. Third thing, again, totally free is punctuality. I have a obsessive compulsive problem with punctuality. They've gotten better. Listen, slightly. I don't get as anxious and frustrated when I feel like I'm running late.

For something or about to run late for something. It's very rare that Matei show up late for anything. It's incredibly, it is. Something we physically try to get be somewhat late to things like you don't want to be the first person to show up to a kid's birthday party. You don't want to do it. So we will intentionally try to be later and we're still the first ones there.

We cannot help it. It's just what it is. We're like, literally helping them set up. Oh, yeah, I'll grab the cupcakes. No problem. We're helping you set up [00:28:00] the birthday party. So we just get places on time or early. Everywhere we go, our kids are never going to waste other people's time. That is absolutely not going to happen.

And I can tell you as a consumer, if somebody wastes my time, I hate it. And I'm not the only person that's like that. There's a vast majority of people expect that if you tell me, okay, I'm going to be seen at one o'clock, that I should be seen at one o'clock or very close to one o'clock. And I always felt like this was something that we, like a core value of ours.

This is a punctuality, the core value of ours. If for instance, we would always tell people. Hey, if you come and see us and we say, we're going to see you at one, we're going to see you at one. We have a tiny waiting room with two chairs that are uncomfortable. We don't expect you to sit there very long and they're like, oh, okay.

So that's weird. Cause normally I go to a medical office or I go to see a practitioner and you're like 20 minutes late and and if you're lucky and you're filling all these forms and [00:29:00] stuff that, is they don't really know what's going on. And. They're always late.

So for us, like punctuality was always a big part of that. And to the point where if I was a minute late for something, I'm apologizing. I'm so sorry. My last patient ran over a little bit. I feel bad. I'm sorry. We're running late. And they were like, you're a minute late. You're good. It's no, okay.

But I still I'm gonna apologize to you. Cause I just wasted a minute of your time. I'm sorry. And like that all in its own right. We had so many people that would speak positively of us because we are so adamant about not wasting people's time about being professional, about saying we're going to do this at this time, and we say we're going to do it, we are going to do it and not wasting your time to the point where it actually almost became a problem because if we would tell people like, Hey, I'm going to send you this, this homework email by the end of the day, some of our staff, like they might, they might see people later into the evening.

They have a bunch of patient stuff to catch up on and they're headed home to help with, like bedtime routine stuff. And by the next [00:30:00] morning, they send a patient, whatever their homework email is, and we might get somebody that night, it might be like 10 o'clock at night, be like, Hey, I just, I'm checking it's my, did you forget to send this?

And our provider would have to be like, no, I'm sorry. I didn't explain it and they're fine. But they got so used to like the discipline of what we were doing that it, it was trained in them that they expected it. And then it would be weird when it didn't happen. I think if you can be very punctual, you can be on time every time, and if you're a minute late, apologize, that's going to go a really long way for you and your practice.

Yeah. I think what

Yves: that does is gives people a reason to talk. About you, cause it's just such a unique thing, especially in the medical world. Like you said, like the likelihood you get seen on time in any medical provider is. It's zero, right? It's basically, I don't know, another medical provider that I'm going to be seeing on time, although you always do show up on time and do your paperwork, but yeah, it's absolutely huge.

And I, it's funny. Amy's this too. I think it's very much if you grew up in a military family man, there's just no, there's no way you're not on time. Like I've helped her with birthday parties a little bit. [00:31:00] She'd be like, let's go. And I'm like, what do you mean? Let's go. If we show up there now, yeah.

Just like Danny said, we're going to, we're going to be the one setting up. There's nobody going to be there. Like we've got to get there an hour late. She's there's just no way she's doing that. So we'll always inevitably the first people. That's such a good example at a birthday party. It's it's crazy, on the business side, there's just no reason not to do this, right?

Like a little bit of extra effort, especially in our practices is. Going to make all the difference. And again, it gives people a reason to be like, you're not going to believe this, what this practice does. Like just give people a really easy reason to talk about you. Yeah.

Danny: When's the last time that someone was a minute late for something that you were supposed to be at and they apologize to you for it, I know I'm the only person. We're the only people like, dude, it's, it is so disrespectful to me when people show up late, when people waste your time. I remember, dude, I remember teaching down in Miami that I've taught in Miami I think three times at this point, I will never, ever teach in Miami ever [00:32:00] again.

We'll never go back. No offense if you live in Miami, but you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. Every fucking person there is so late. It's their culture where you're like, it's just what they do. It's the culture of the city. And it drove me nuts. Cause I'd be down there and I'm like, listen, man, we're supposed to start this.

I have so much shit to get through with you guys in this course that I'm teaching. And I was teaching down at this gym in Miami. And I even had the owner come up to me. Cause I was like, dude, we've got to get going at eight. And he goes, listen. Here's what's going to happen only about half the people were there and they were all from other places.

They had traveled in. He's you're going to have about, happy to me, like 25 people are going to roll in about 20 minutes. And they're going to have coffee. They're going to have like little shots of Cuban coffee. They're going to pour them for everybody. They're going to be super excited.

Everybody's going to drink some coffee and then people will settle down. So it was like, you're probably going to start like 30 minutes late and I was like, that's not what I do, man. I minutes late. And I remember I was so upset [00:33:00] that I literally told him, I was like, listen. This is cool and all thanks for bringing coffee.

Don't do this at lunch. Be back at one o'clock because I'm going to start if you're here or not. Did they listen? Yes, they did. A lot of them were like, Oh God, it was like I ruined their day probably by telling them that. But it's just dude, that's just it's so strange to me to think that it's okay for you to just waste somebody else's time.

It's the most precious resource in the world. What makes you think it's okay for you to take that away from everybody else? That's yeah, I'm going to be there at the right time. It's not okay. And if you do it in your business, I promise you, if you're doing your business, you're going to have a reputation of being, someone that wastes other people's time that lacks professionalism.

And it's, it is free. It's literally free. It's so free that just even the idea of just maybe move up your timeline a little bit if you're historically late, but there's nothing you can do that if you have a patient that's waiting for you. And you show up after they wait, you can't dig yourself out of that hole.

If you're late and they're like, Hey, [00:34:00] I'm here at 11. I don't care if you're stuck behind a train, leave earlier, leave before trains are going, leave. I would show up in my office. I'll be there at five 15 for a six o'clock patient. And they only had one guy that ever beat me there. And he would drive from about an hour away.

And he would do laps in the parking lot. He would walk around the parking lot. It would be pitch black walking around the parking lot because he was trying to warm himself up so that when you come and see me, like he wouldn't be super stiff from sitting in his car for an hour. Only guy that ever beat me.

And even then that bothered me. So I think if you really think of this from a standpoint of what do you want people to say about your practice? What you want people to say about you and your business, if they, if you can come across as professional and consistent as possible, that is going to pay such big dividends for you.

And the other thing is you set the tone of how everybody else in your company acts, everybody else. And if you do not set that example for them. If you said the example of like just being late to everything and, not prepared. What do you think they're going to do? If they're going to do the exact same thing.

So it sets a tone for basically everything in your company, at least in my opinion. I think you [00:35:00] have to start with that. No.

Yves: Totally agree. Totally agree. You want to hit the

Danny: next one? Definitely. Which actually, why don't we go let's go. Let's go to the last one and then we'll come back to the system.

Cause I think this next one punctuality in my opinion goes hand in hand with like actually caring about people. This is like just another simple thing that you can do. And this is where I think people in a cash practice, it's harder than they think. The volume is not the same. In terms of number of people you're seeing the amount that you are paying attention, the amount that you're present and you're actually listening to other people, I think is actually far more.

I can cruise through the day with 20 people to not, whatever, check the box on stuff, not really be like super present with these folks. And it was more like being a waiter and managing a bunch of tables versus. When you're in a cash practice and you only have a few people and you're spending a consider about a considerable amount of time with them, you are actively [00:36:00] engaged with them and mentally, I think can actually be fairly hard for people that are not used to that because you can't coast, you got to be there and they can tell if you're not and it really comes down to the, I call it your give a fuck factor.

How much do you actually care whether this person gets the outcome that they want or not? It doesn't have anything to do with money. It doesn't have anything to do with compensation in any way. It doesn't have anything to do with what your business does. What it comes down to is how much do you actually care where this person gets better or not?

And if they aren't getting better. Does that make you frustrated? Do you go and try to learn? Why do you go and talk to people about what maybe you could be doing better? Or do you seek out, advice to help with, make sure you're not missing something like, or do you just oh, okay. Oh, that, that person's just, they're just not getting better.

Oh I'm gonna refer them out. If you take that approach, I don't think you're going to have a ton of success in this type of practice. If you take the approach of being like borderline obsessive over getting these people better, that's different. They're going to feel that. [00:37:00] And it's a very apparent thing when somebody is actually listening to you and really cares, maybe more than you even think they should.

If they, if you're like, why does this person care so much? It's their job. It's what they want to be best in the world at, like you lucked out, you somehow ended up here and I care more about what happens here than you probably think I should. And if that in its own right, it's probably the most important thing that we'll talk about today.

And there's no amount of coaching I can give somebody on that. That's an internal thing, whether you take pride in your career or not, and if you don't, you're probably better off not to open a practice.

Yves: And I really think. I know, not think, I know this is something that you can't fake, like you've got to, like people are really smart, like we're literally, you can go look at some of the, paleontological, anthropological data on this, but like we're in tuned to people's lives.

Facial movements, engagement level. We can really pick up and if you're not doing this and you're not actually, [00:38:00] like you said, just borderline obsessive about making sure that this hour is an amazing, like one of the best hours of their day. And you're really, truly sought trying to solve the problem.

Like it's going to be. Almost impossible for you to grow, and it was, I think it still is probably one of the harder transitions that I had to go through. And I think other practitioners as well, again, going from 15 to five, I love the waiter analogy. Like you're physically exhausted at the end of 15, but at the end of the day, I was no, I wasn't physically exhausted.

I was emotionally and mentally exhausted because we would be talking about such in depth problems in some of these sessions, like we would just get into some pretty deep stuff. And I know you saw some of that well, especially some of the people on continuity programs, we're. Now, to the point we're made to move like we're catering our sessions, we can talk about the systems of this, but we're catering our sessions to actually go there as often as possible to really understand why is working out important to you?

What's going on here? What are the things other things in your life kind of affecting this? We go there. And I think that's [00:39:00] a, it's an absolute. Superpower because a, you're not getting that sort of experience, I think, from any other health care provider, potentially from psychologists or certain functional MDs and maybe like in the fitness industry sometimes, but ultimately it's pretty darn rare.

And putting that attention and focus on somebody and actually giving a shit, it just allows for absolute. Insane growth, and you gotta be prepared for it though. You know what I mean? Like I said just like you had no talk weekends, like sometimes I'd get home in the day.

I was like, I just can't talk to anybody. Like I am emotionally and physically or mentally, all the things absolutely exhausted. Like I just need to like sit in a room in a dark room and nobody's allowed to talk to me. It's just a different kind of, muscle that you got to start to flex and, I got better at it for sure, but it definitely took, there was definitely a learning curve there.

Danny: Yeah. And I think there is a fine line there between being like, so empathic with people where you really feel that, and then being like sympathetic towards people where it's more coming from a place of strength versus being [00:40:00] sucked into what they're doing. You have to, I think that's a challenging thing for some people to learn because you get to know these people pretty well.

And, but it's also, it's weird because it's what makes the wins so enjoyable as well. If you help somebody get over, whatever, something that's really been limiting them from things that they really like for a long period of time. And all of a sudden they come back in and they're like, Oh my God, dude, I literally worked out for the first time in five years and my back didn't hurt.

This is amazing. This is changing my life. I give the feeling that you get from that you, you, it's just hard to describe the way that feels right. It's just like such a, it's such an amazing moment for that person, but also for you to be able to be facilitating that with them and be a part of that.

It's like the whole reason why it's fun, whole reason why it's enjoyable, but on the flip side, somebody comes back and they're not doing better. Like it just can wear you down a little bit too. So I do think there has to be some level [00:41:00] of understanding that, you can't just get sucked into it a hundred percent because that will drain you for the day versus be able to.

Associate those changes with what's going on. And I'm sure you not the outcome be tied to you directly. But but for you to still really care a lot about how that person does that's the key. The key is just whether you care. And we see what people with us too. I can't tell me people we've had in the mastermind that had come up to me.

And it's not even like I've never even met them. It's just, they just listened to the podcast and it's tone. It's like things that you say, it's whatever it's topics you talk about. And they're like, I can just tell. You're not just trying to sell me on something. And it's true. Like I'm not. I can't I'm not a good actor.

Like I just, it is what it is. And, but that comes across because people are smart and they can they can see things, they can hear things. They also like, they will listen to what you say over a long period of time and see if you're contradicting yourself and you're changing what you're saying.

That's a huge yellow flag for me. I'm like, whoa, wait a second. That's weird. Like they were saying, this is [00:42:00] such an important thing and now they're not. People are smart and they will listen to that. The one thing that they will give you a lot of grace with is if they think that you're actively really trying to help them and you really care, like they will absolutely be patient with you.

They'll refer people your way. They'll try to help your business more than you ever thought, because it's just not that common. And it, in a world full of mostly selfish people, if you can be an unselfish person that really tries to help others it, you're like a unicorn. As sad as that is to say that's the truth.

Yves: No, I agree. It's what the interesting concept. I've never thought about that. Like this difference between empathy and sympathy, right? There's, you can go into a session and be like, Oh, I'm so sorry. You feel that way. That sucks. As opposed to, I'm sorry. You feel that way. That sucks.

But here's now your plan of action in order to actively start solving their problem. Cause what else you said, which I love and I, Okay. We'll see how much this rings true or not, but it's in some ways I want to care more about solving your problem than you do. I want you bought in and I want you doing it, but I'm sometimes going to be so obsessive about like, [00:43:00] how can I get to the point where you're running without teeth pain?

I'm going to do everything I can in order to do that way. And I think that's like the core thing we're getting at, right? Being a problem solver, being empathetic, really caring, like going to put all that together in a way, right? You also can't be. We say it all the time.

Hopefully now, who EOR is, right? You can't be an EOR either. It's Oh man, that's so sucks. I'm not sure what we're going to do. This is terrible. That session's probably not going to go well. But I'm very much like that. Like even now in, in PT biz, like if somebody doesn't get a good result.

I stay up at night or somebody's frustrated in our program. I will stay up until I come up with at least some sort of plan of action, maybe not always be the best solution, but I'm going to give you what I think you should do next. I have no problem giving my opinion about, Hey, this is what I would do.

Or this is based off all the data I see here's the action that I would take. And I think, that just goes a long way.

Danny: Agreed. The last thing and we'll finish with this is just following a system too, right? Because I think for a lot of people that, especially that we get a chance to work with, they fall into this camp of just really caring about people,[00:44:00] of doing these things that are high emotional intelligence that get it.

Them to a point where their schedules are busy and then they hire other people and everybody, nobody's going to be just like, and we used to figure out is what is it about you and what you're doing and the way you're interacting with people and the skillset that maybe you like the actual like skills, clinical skills that you've developed.

What about those things? That mixture of things is what's led to success with the way you're working with people, because there's really, it is true that it is an art and a science. You have to have both and, but yet you can systemize. The things that are most beneficial. And what I did with this is we didn't know what I like.

It wasn't like, I was like these are the things that I'm doing. I didn't know. And we actually had our office manager when we hired her, she like sat in the office with me doing me seeing patients and she's you seem to do this scene, people seem to like that, or you seem to do this thing.

And so for us, we're able to tease out. Things that [00:45:00] I didn't realize were. I was doing unintentionally and be able to start to build those into training that we were doing with staff that we're bringing on so that they were intentionally aware of those if they weren't doing it themselves.

So it was very similar. It was very consistent. Even some, sometimes it went so far as to where our verbiage was so similar. It was like weird for people that had seen. Me and then end up working with other providers are like, oh my God, they still say, they say things the same way that you say things like tone and all kinds of stuff.

And whatever, for better or worse that happens sometimes as well. But following a system can really help scale past yourself. It also helps set your providers up in a way that they're going to be able to have success as well.

Yves: Yeah, it's so interesting when we do these podcasts, like we have similar journeys we've come to similar conclusions, but in different ways, like I would have never thought to do something like that.

For me, the inflection point was so much of this and so much of being, entrepreneurial and learning about marketing and sales. Like at some point you get to, we talked about this, but in a different way, like you get to see the [00:46:00] matrix, when I read charisma myth, now I noticed when mirrorings happen.

Now I noticed when people are doing these things before I didn't. And this was

Danny: Are you like, yo, are you mirroring me right

Yves: now? Depends on the person, but yeah, not rando, not on the street. No, but yeah, somebody I know for sure, if you're just saying my first name, in order to like, get me to like you, cause I already like you, it's fine.

Do you

Danny: know what I'll do? This is not to cut you off, but I'll actually, I'll do three distinct movements. Like I'll cross my arms or I'll cross a leg. Or I'll like, shift and maybe put my hand up or something like that. And if somebody does that two or three times in a row, I'm like, you're mirroring me, dude, I trapped you.

I know what you're doing.

Yves: Yeah. It happens on accountability calls or sometimes one on one onboard calls I'll itch my head and that other person will itch their head like unintentional or not. And I just, again, I noticed these things, but anyway, the. The inflection point for me was really reading the book E Myth.

Like I, this was very early in my career, but I remember reading that book like, okay, cool. I get it. Systems to follow. I get [00:47:00] it. We've got to standardize things. But then when they said like every McDonald's looks the same, they make their fries in the exact same way. Like everything was.

To the T exactly how it was. You go to McDonald's here or McDonald's in Shanghai. Like it's going to be the same. And I was like, dang, like that's right. Like why that's why their food just consistently tastes. Okay. It tastes good to me. Maybe some other people disagree, right?

Danny: I don't do, this is a reason why they're all over the planet.

Like their food. Have you ever had their fries? Fries are fire. Now they may never decay if you leave them out on your countertop. I'm not saying they're healthy, but bro, they taste amazing.

Yves: Exactly. And it didn't even come down to that. It's like how they dressed the red and yellow, like where the, how the outlook of the facility looked like there's so much to that.

And I'm that's awesome. It probably makes it so much easier. For the employee for as well as the customer to have a really good experience again for the employee [00:48:00] to really learn how to be successful in there. And I was like, dang, I'm going to do that from the beginning. Like I'm going to always build whatever I do on a regular basis.

I'm going to write that down and build SOP and I'm going to make it much easier that when someone comes in, they're just going to be like, run this play, man. It's like football. I just need you to know to go run this route and I'm going to throw you the ball and we're going to score a touchdown.

So I just constantly build systems. And I think that. Is just so important again, from a customer success in all areas of business, but obviously in this conversation, right? Like organizing the flow and of eval organizing like our three step process and how we laid out for people, step by step of how to go from, eval to committing to a plan of care and then also the added benefit of that is allowing it to improve.

And now all of a sudden, the more people I had, now we can improve because we have the system and now we're all. We have more inputs in the system and it can improve in general. So there's just, I can nerd on this all day, but I, it was just I think a huge game changer for me in business. [00:49:00] Yeah.

And

Danny: I think that the other thing too, is you're, you have to realize if you're trying to set people up for success, you need to. You need to train them, but you also need to give them don't micromanage them, but give them boundaries to work within, right? Give them, let them be creative within that.

But Hey, just, you need to follow this general approach that we find success with, right? We're not trying to build robots, but we want to have consistency in. What we do. And you're right. I think you can look at other businesses that are, that do these things really well as examples. And, I look at something like, I always look at Chick fil A we're in Atlanta, this this, the headquarters of Chick fil A it's there's not, I can throw a rock and hit three Chick fil A's, which is great.

Cause Chick fil A is awesome. But if you go and it's like, they're so efficient, they've got a bunch of teenagers in there that are saying, my pleasure to everybody. And they're just churning out nuggets. Like you wouldn't believe. And they're they kill it. They're absolutely like just crushed the business.

So if you think about it okay, on a smaller scale, how can you take some of these other things, be observant of this stuff, go to places that you think do a [00:50:00] good job. Yeah. I'm like what is it that they're doing? I remember I was going to this yoga place for a while and it's man, it always smells so good in here.

And so what did I do? I started figuring out, oh, this is what the. So what they use or whatever. And then we did it in our office. We're like, Oh, it's going to, I want this to have a very distinct smell. And it's I was just paying attention to what the other people are doing. And I actually really liked their customer experience.

So you can do some of those things. Take little elements of what other people are doing. Layer it in ways that, that's, still your own and are beneficial for your practice. I think that's one of the bigger things you can really do is just be aware of what other businesses are doing and ones that you respect and you really enjoy going to, or, that you admire and and then see if you can add elements of that to your own business.

Yeah.

Yves: Couldn't agree more. Bringing things from other, especially, not necessarily even, oh, fitness industry to healthcare. Okay, that makes sense. But something totally adjunct, like software, like fast food sales. I think we can get a lot of good ideas. For Patas, we have gotten a lot of good ideas from just, completely different, sectors.

So yeah, community.

Danny: More a ton. [00:51:00] Alright. In summary, use people's names. Send a thorough follow up email and do it as quickly as you can be punctual, show up on time. And if you're late, even a minute, apologize, follow a system. So build a system based on what's fine. You're finding success with and have your team follow that as well.

And then you got to actually care about people. These five things that are free, they take your time and take your attention, but it doesn't take you, hiring some outside marketing company for 5, 000 a month or whatever, like it takes just efforts and consistency over time to really build a great reputation and a great customer experience to hopefully go along with your already.

Ninja level, clinical experience and clinical outcomes that you're helping people get. If you do those two things together, grow, you can grow to whatever size practices you want. As long as you can maintain those standards at scale, which in its own right is its own problem, right? To deal with.

That's it guys. If you do those things, your practice is going to be better off for it and they're totally free. [00:52:00] So hope you guys liked this one. Thanks so much for joining us in the live stream. If you're on the, in the Facebook group. If you're listening to the podcast, as always, thanks so much for listening to to the podcast.

If you are actively trying to start or grow your practice and you want to get some other eyes on and you want to get some some help from people that have helped over a thousand practices doing head over to physicaltherapybiz. com, check out what we're doing. If it feels right, jump on a call with our with our advisors and we'll see if where you're at digging into your business to see if there's a mutual fit.

If we can help you get there faster and with more certainty, we can let you know about that. And if we're not a good fit, then we can help really. Point you in the right direction of where you should should be looking. As always, Eve, thanks so much for your time guys. Thanks for listening and we'll catch you next week.

Thanks everybody.

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