E581 | Huge Hiring Mistakes

What's up, everybody? Today, I wanted to get on here and talk about a trend I am seeing in physical therapy businesses that have scaled up over the past two years. When it comes to hiring, don't assume that every PT hired by you is going to be willing to work long hours, do workshops, and create content for your business. It is important to provide employees with a sense of security and stability in order to ensure that they will want to stay long-term. Don't put them in a risky situation because this will lead to them looking elsewhere. Enjoy!

•  Trends in Scaling a Physical Therapy Practice
• Employee Compensation Structures for Younger Entrepreneurs
• Building Resilient Long-Term Relationships with Employees

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Podcast Transcript

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? Doc Danny here with the PT Entrepreneur Podcast and today is gonna be a short but hopefully very impactful podcast for those of you that have practices already. And one thing that I wanted to address and share with anyone that listens to this is just some. Relevant trends that we have seen over the last really 12 to 24 months in particular, as we have seen more and more practices scale past themselves.

So one of the, I think, most common things to do when you have your business and when you go to hire somebody is that you have this expectation or assumption that they are going to Treat the business the same way that you do. And in a lot of ways, what I mean by that is that they're going to, want to work evenings and weekends.

They're going to want to do workshops, they're going to want to create content. They're gonna wanna take risk by having a very low salary. And one of the things that we have seen that's a bit of a problem Especially for younger entrepreneurs. Ones that are just hiring people and and in many cases, younger themself, is that with the first hire they make as a, with a staff clinician in particular, if you put a lot of risk on the.

Employee, the likelihood of that person sticking around is very is much lower, let me put it that way. Meaning if you take somebody and you give them a really low salary, they have basically a. Almost all compensation, not almost all, let's say like 50% or more of their compensation is coming from bonuses and you expect them to, work evenings and weekends and get out and get their own patients, and you make it very clear to them that they need to bring their own patients in.

You're essentially setting the stage for that person to leave, just to go do this on their own because you've shifted all the risk over to them. So I want you to think about this for a second, as if you were someone that was looking for a job with somebody else. And let's say that there's two scenarios.

One is a scenario where you have a really good salary. And an opportunity to make more than that by having a, a bonus associated with volume that you see. The other option let's say you have a very low salary and you have an opportunity to make bonuses based on, seeing patient volume, but it, accounts for a considerable amount of your total pay.

As someone that is looking for a job, which one of those two do you find more appealing? And let's say your compensation is the same top line, like the most you can make, one is just more coming from bonuses and one is more guaranteed salary. Most people that are employees are gonna say, yeah, give me as much guaranteed money as possible.

Because then I don't have as much risk, which is true. And with compensation structures, there's a lot of ways to do it. Traditionally in the healthcare world, it's just a salary. There are definitely plenty of positions where there's salary and then there's some compensation based on volume that you're seeing and things of that nature.

But it, you're usually not also expected to go out and find all of the business or the vast majority of the business that you're going to see. And I made this mistake very early on. With the first staff member in particular that we had, and we had, a very low base salary for her.

We expected her to go out and get a bunch of people market herself, bring her own patients in and that's fine. Like you, your staff should be a part of that, but they shouldn't feel like they, they have a lot of risk on them by their volume not being super high, because that's really the job of the business.

And the business involves the staff members, but it shouldn't rely on staff members to bring their own people in, because if you do that, you're gonna get to a point where that person's gonna wonder why. Am I even working here? If I'm doing basically 90% of the work and I'm taking on all this risk, they're not even taking risk off the table for me.

Why don't I just do that for myself because I can try to figure the rest of this out. You're putting that person in a really bad position and you're in some ways forcing them to try to find other options versus if somebody had, a really good base salary, they could make more money with some bonuses, but they.

We're expected to just be an awesome clinician and be amazing at seeing people, and that was the. Majority of what they were supposed to do, and you really protected their time in other ways and were able to create a culture around having amazing clinicians that get amazing results versus just having them all go out and spread them super thin and have them do all this marketing for themself and stuff, which, I get it when you're early on, you're like, dude, you gotta help me with this because I'm gonna try to build your schedule up, but you have to be a part of it.

That's very normal. But what I see is too many clinicians are expecting too much out of employees, and they're, what they're doing is they're somewhat forcing those employees to act like entrepreneurs, and then they wonder why they leave and do their own thing as an entrepreneur. It's because you've basically incubated them and force them into taking all this additional risk they probably didn't wanna take in the first place.

And then they leave and they could do their own thing because they're already taking on a lot of risk. So as you're looking at this, what you did yourself and what your own compensation structures are, they should not be the same for an employee. An employee should have security, safety benefits, and they should really be able to focus on one, maybe two things within the clinic so that they can be a great employee if you want them to stick around for a long time.

If you want people that you can mentor and then they move onto their own thing, then keep paying people like crap. And giving them really risky compensation structures, and they're gonna keep moving on that's what you're gonna end up seeing. Lesson learned for me, we did this the more risky way with with staff members early on, lower compensation, way more risk on the upside.

For them if they saw a lot of patients and they made a good bit more money. But, they're like, oh, what if I go out of town for a week? I'm not gonna be anywhere near my bonuses. And it was better for the clinic, and it was worse for the for the staff member. Something to keep in mind if you're trying to build something that's gonna be, resilient long term.

Relationships associated with your employees, and you want them to feel like they're a part of a team and not just that they're just eating what they kill, then you have to treat them like an employee with things like benefit and security of, base a base salary that is like a good base salary and not just all all bonuses because you're just teeing 'em up to see how risky this is, how much risk they're taking themself.

And then, Eventually just deciding, I, why don't I take just slightly more risk than I am right now and have quite a bit more potential upside if it works. So hopefully don't make that mistake if you're in the hiring process, if you're looking at, compensation structures and what that should look like.

Make sure you're trying to make them feel secure and safe, and that they have a great place to work long term, and that they're a solid employee. And not that you're just treating them like a entrepreneur, that you're mentoring within your business by having them take on all this additional risk that you just don't wanna take on yourself as the actual owner.

Hey, Pete, 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.

We get you crystal clear on the number of people you're getting to see, and the average visit rate you're going to need to have in order to replace your income to be able to go full-time. We go through three different strategies that you can take to go from part-time to full-time, and you can pick the one that's the best for you based on your current situation.

Then we share with you the sales and marketing systems that we use within our mastermind that you need to have as well. If you wanna go full-time in your own practice. And then finally we help you create a one. Page business plan. That's right. Not these 15 day business plans. You wanna take the Small Business Association, a one day business plan that's gonna help you get very clear on exactly what you need to do and when you're gonna do it.

To take action if you're interested and sign up for this challenge is totally free. Head to physical therapy biz.com/challenge. Get signed up there. Please enjoy. We put a lot of energy into this. It's totally free. It's something I think is gonna help you tremendously, as long as you're willing to do the work.

If you're doing the work and you're getting. 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 connect 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.