E576 | Mongolian Plumbing

Today, I am talking about a story I heard on a separate podcast told by prolific business coach and author, Dan Sullivan, regarding the importance of focusing on your business and not copying what other people are doing. Business owners should be careful of falling into the trap of Mongolian plumbing, which is when they try to replicate the success of others without understanding what else is going on behind the scenes. Enjoy!

• Analysis of the Mongolian Soldiers' Fascination with German Toilets and Its Implications for Business Owners
• Exploring the Depth of Business Strategies: Striving to Understand What Else is Going On
• "The Dangers of Comparing Yourself to Others in Business"

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: 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 is going on guys? Doc Danny here with the PT Entrepreneur Podcast, and today we are talking about Mongolian Plumbing. This is a weird title for a podcast. But what this is basically a story that I heard on a separate podcast. It was told by a guy named Dan Sullivan. Now Dan is a prolific.

Business coach. Also author of many sort of internal resources for their company, but also a few resources and books that they've put out recently that are really good. One being one of my favorite books that I read in the last couple years, which is a book titled Who Not How really good book, I think.

Super smart guy. But I heard him tell a story and I thought it was really interesting about the importance of just focusing on. Your own business and not necessarily just trying to see what other people are doing and copying what other people are doing. And the story was about Mongolian Plumbing.

So in World War ii, the, at the end of the world ii, I would, I should say the Russians recruited Mongolians for the frontline. And by that what that means is they basically force them to serve in the Russian military and. Threw bodies at the war. Basically Russia lost more soldiers than any other country.

And some of those people were not Russians, they were Mongolians. And what they did was they basically forced 'em into service. But when the war was over and Germany fell, they were in Germany. Many of these mags were in Germany for. The end of the war. And at the time, Germany was one of the most technologically advanced countries in the entire world, and they had something that these Mongolian soldiers had never seen, and that was indoor plumbing.

So this is something that to them was like a complete. Anomaly is fascinating. It's what in the heck? How do I hit this? I hit this little lever. Water flushes down and your pee disappears, right? So as they are finishing up the war, and a lot of looting occurs at the end of wars where you know the, to the winner, get, go to the spoils and some of these Mongolian soldiers.

Pulled the toilets out of the bathrooms of these German homes that they were in. And took them home because they thought it was amazing and they were gonna put indoor plumbing in their own homes. So they get back to Mongolia and they put these in their homes and go to show their families and friends and every, everybody there what this was.

And no one quite understood. And they go to show 'em how they can push this lever in. Water goes down and it removes. You're your, whatever, you've got in there. And to their surprise, they push the lever and nothing happens. And they're confused. They don't understand what's going on.

And to them on the surface level, the perception was that this thing was what was. Actually like causing the ability to have indoor plumbing. And in actuality, all that was a surface level fixture, which was connected to the real technology the real innovation, which was the ability to have high level sewage systems and indoor plumbing within these houses, which is relatively new at the time.

So if you look at this from the standpoint of business. And this is what I really liked about, what Dan had said in this podcast, it's that most people, most especially I would say, like newer business owners, I see this a lot what they do, and I am very guilty of this. I've done the same thing, not a, not steal a toilet from a German home and put it in my house and see if it would work, but be obsessive over what other people are doing.

And try to model the same. Exact things, right? And even, I mean there's even on in, in a digital sense, there's something called funnel hacking. And funnel hacking is where you go through someone's marketing funnel and you see how what they have in there, what kind of copy do they have in there, what type of.

Landing pages do they have in there. And you basically try to model that for whatever other offer you might have because you can see if it's successful, cool. What are they doing, what are they not doing? And I think you can get a little bit of, you can get some information from this. No doubt. Early on I just assumed, oh, that's it.

I just have to make this look similar and I'll be successful. That's like taking a toilet and just putting in a room and assuming it's gonna work because all you're seeing is the superficial side of what's going on, and there's nothing, in terms of the depth of the business, the actual sort of I dunno the best way to put it, besides backend of the business.

And what's going on. That actually is why it works. And you see some of these businesses and they have terrible websites. They have like terrible looking landing pages, poor social media accounts, and yet they're killing it. How? Because they're so good at other things that you can't really see that typically are not automated and they require.

Consistency organization and a lot of humans. So as you're looking at your own business I want you to keep in mind this idea of Mongolian Plumbing and just ask yourself if you're doing that with certain things. If you see somebody that is posting, with a certain filter on social media or they're, they have a certain banner around the video that they have and you just decide to copy that it's probably not gonna work the same way for you as it is for them because there's something else going on there that you're not seeing.

That's what you wanna keep in mind. So how, my advice for this, cuz I think everybody's guilty of it, is a couple things. Number one, You need to focus on innovation, not on copying other people. If you are copying someone else, you're already light years behind where they are at. Let me say that again. If you are spending your time trying to copy what other people are doing, you're inherently going to end up in a.

Inferior position to that person. Just think about that. What if you were taking a test and you were copying off of somebody that you know, you were, that you thought was smarter than you, they probably were smarter than you because they didn't have to cheat on the test and you did. When you look at it doesn't make a lot of sense to try to copy what other people are doing.

You could definitely take. People as examples of what looks like styles that you like yourself and model after those things. But I see so many people that just verbatim are copying other people. I saw this a ton when I was teaching for. Kelly Tourette's group I would see, like Kelly would, put a YouTube video out or something like that, and then instantly you would see all these people that were saying the same thing, one of two things.

They were either blatantly just copying exactly what he was saying or I. They would just say the complete opposite and then point at him at being as being an idiot cuz they were trying to get visibility by, by being confrontational. And neither I think is a good long term strategy. It might work a little bit in the short term, but there's not a lot of substance there because you're not innovating it, you're not creating anything.

All you're doing is just copying something. So focus on innovation, not on copying. And the reason why people don't do that, Is because it's really hard. It's, and it takes time and it takes testing things. Everybody just wants, Hey, tell me what one thing to do so that I don't have to ever worry about getting new patients again, or something like that.

And it's just not that simple. I wish it was, but it's not. And it changes. And it. Requires also having an amazing service, which is hard to do and requires organization and consistency and great people over a long period of time. None of that is simple by any means. So focus on innovation, non copying.

Number two, try to understand what else is going on behind the scenes. So try to focus on what else is going on. So if you are going to do a, some sort of funnel hacking approach where you're looking at, okay, this person has this opt-in ebook for. Lower back pain or whatever, right? And then you see, okay, these are the emails that they're sending out.

Like even that it still isn't quite what is probably driving effectiveness, assuming that's actually even effective. So I'll go on a little bit of a tangent here, but how do you know someone is actually effective at what they're doing? How do you know someone is actually having success with whatever that thing is.

Unless they're talking about it and they're being very transparent about what they're doing, you don't really know. You just think they are. And it's very easy to give the perception of success, the per perception of, this sort of depth of understanding. That may not actually be accurate.

All you have to do is look on social media and see how many people are renting Ferrari to take a picture in front of it to make it look like they're. Wealthy and that they've made a bunch of money so that they can sell people on some product about making money. That's a thing. You have to be a aware of what's legitimate and what is not.

So you don't even know necessarily that what you're copying works unless you know there's data behind that you can see. And oftentimes a competitor's not showing that to you. Why would they? If you're copying the wrong thing, you're going to really waste your time. So you gotta strive to understand what else is going on there.

So maybe it's, yeah, they have this opt-in thing, they have some follow-up sequences, but maybe what they're doing is they are directly segmenting interests and they are doing a better job of actually delivering content to the people that have raised their hand, that they're in a sub specific niche, let's say.

You have. Some sort of content they can opt in for to learn about running. Injuries. So don't send those people CrossFit blog posts, send those people running blog posts, send those people running specific things, even if you work with both of them. But that requires some technical understanding of segmentation.

Maybe it's from there, that's going to a live event where they're really good at. Teach you some sort of educational workshop where they want them to eventually show up so they can deepen the relationship and potentially become a client. It's very hard to model that. Like it takes a long time to get good at public speaking and to build a workshop that, that converts.

So there's always gonna be more going on than just the superficial level of it. So strive to understand what else is going on in, behind the scenes. Because that's where the actual difference in the business occurs. I didn't realize this until I started to spend more time around business, bigger business owners than than our, than what I have and.

Realizing, damn, you guys are a, you're super intentional about a lot of these things that I wasn't, you're an ultra organized, they follow up like crazy with specific messaging. They have a bigger team than what it looks like. They probably have a bigger team just on follow up in sales than most people have in their businesses because they see the benefit in it.

They are obsessive over a world-class service or a product so that they know that if they get somebody as a client, they're gonna be super happy. They're probably gonna wanna stick around and do something else and or refer someone else that they can help. So these are all the things that compound a business that can make what looks like some sort of marketing funnel that you could easily.

Copy into something that you can't copy very easily and actually takes a lot of depth of understanding and knowledge and organization. And that is actually the biggest differentiator that I see. Cause anybody can build a landing page. Anybody can, steal a brochure or something that's gonna be, forward facing marketing or something like that.

Anybody can steal a sales script, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they are executing on those things. Consistently and in a manner that is in alignment with the customer sequence and the relationship that you've developed like that is actually many layers deeper than what on the surface.

The last thing I would say is comparison is the thief of joy. So Teddy Roosevelt said this comparison is the thief of joy, and you can apply this to. Pretty much any aspect of your life, like you're always gonna find somebody bigger, faster, stronger, smarter, better looking, more successful, whatever it is, somebody's better at something than you.

It's not that hard to find somebody that's like that. So you comparing yourself to other people all the time just makes you feel miserable. And think about this, if you compare yourself to somebody that you are ahead of in some way, how does that make you feel? Good. Does it make you feel good to put other people down?

Probably not. And if it does, that's a bigger problem you should probably work on. And you've gotta be okay with the fact that like you are where you're at and you can only do what you can do. And if you feel like you are putting out effort on a consistent basis and you're trying really hard and you're learning things that you need to improve and you're seeking mentorship and.

And you're trying to improve yourself personally, then you really shouldn't be comparing yourself at all because it is, frankly, a huge waste of time and just makes you feel bad. Why would you wanna waste your time and make yourself feel worse about yourself? Like that sucks. If you're like, man I wanna be in better shape, and you spend all your time just looking at people that are in great shape and feeling like you're, you suck.

That's a huge waste of time. You should just go to the gym and do more pushups, like that's a better use of your time. So when we look at what people do in business though, they will spend hours, and I've been guilty of this. My wife has been guilty of this pretty much. Everybody in our business has been guilty of this.

It has, some give a shit about our practice or our PT biz. And you look at people that are, I'm putting this in air quotes, competitors, but other people in the space. And you start to compare where you're at. Oh, I don't offer that service, or, oh man, they named this. Service this thing and we should change it to that cause I like that better.

Or, oh, their website looks like it's loading faster than ours. Or I, oh, I like what they're doing here. Or whatever it might be. And all that happens is you just get frustrated. You get frustrated. And I what's interesting now I've seen, I've been on the one side of this where it's okay, I'm seeing what other people are doing.

I'm trying to copy that cause I don't know any better and. Now, like I see plenty of people that copy the stuff that we do, and it's both locally within the, our practice, but also, on, in a digital sense within our consulting company. And it is, Interesting cuz I just know what a bad spot it is for that other business to be.

And if you're just spending your time copying what I'm doing, like you've already lost. And it's not even a win-lose thing. That's the other thing. This isn't, I'm not winning. You're not losing, we just are where we are. That's just it. But if you're spending all your time just copying and trying to figure out what I'm doing or what our practice is doing, or what the competitor in your area is doing.

And they're focusing on actually like being an awesome business owner and innovating and trying to be creative and to appeal to their niche. There's no chance you stand, no chance you stand. No chance. You're literally just wasting time. So my advice to you is stop following anybody that you would even want to.

Pay attention to in your area if, especially if it's it makes you feel frustrated when you see what these people are doing and you're like, dang they're crushing me. Dang. They're like doing this thing and I'm not. And you just get FOMO about these things that you think you should be doing when maybe you shouldn't.

I don't know. Maybe those things aren't even working for those people, so just. Block those people. If if you have a bad habit of getting on social media or going to their websites or whatever and just seeing what they're doing, just stop. Just block it. I don't pay attention to any, anybody in.

Our space. I have no idea what other people are doing. I frankly don't care because I'm too busy trying to help the businesses that we actually work with and the team that we have that supports them. And that's where my attention is focused on. That's where our team's attention is focused on.

And anytime somebody brings up to me, oh, doing this or that, I tell 'em to stop. Just stop. Don't pay attention to it and definitely don't bring it to me cuz I don't care. It's a complete waste of time and it completely sidetracks you from focusing on the things that you wanna focus on.

Cuz human nature is to have this fear of missing out. Like you're missing the boat on something. Especially in business, if you think somebody is just like, taking all your clients or, whatever, they're just light years ahead of you in business somehow. It doesn't make you feel good, and I know for a lot of you, you're doing this, you're doing this probably way too often and it's unhealthy.

Don't focus on these other businesses. Don't focus on what other people are doing. If you're doing market research and you're trying to see what trends you're seeing across the board, or cool, do that, but do that in more of a varied way. Don't pick a couple people that are practices around you and just.

Digitally spy on what they're doing and make yourself feel worse by not doing that, or slightly better if you feel like you're doing a better job. It's just a complete waste of time. Complete waste of time. Focus on these things. Understanding H, how to innovate, not copy and striving to understand what else is going on as part of a system and not just the superficial things.

And the last thing is understand and remember that comparison is the thief of joy. And there's plenty of things you could be doing that are more productive and important to your business and to your family, and to your friends, and to your physical health and your mental health that have nothing to do with just going down the rabbit hole of what somebody else is doing on Instagram for an hour.

It's a complete waste of time. Please stop.

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.