This is the final part in a 3 part series on how you as a private Physical Therapy practice owner can successfully scale and grow your business while still providing expert care.
Here we are, finally the 3rd part of this series.
In part 1 you found out about the number one limiting belief that’s holding you back from working yourself out of your practice.
In part 2 you found out how the different levels of private practice PT owners handle growing and scaling their business.
We also talked about listing out your responsibilities and how to work yourself out of a job.
Remember: The goal is to work yourself out of a job. To create LESS work for yourself, not more, while increasing your income.
Today we’re going to give some examples and stories to illustrate the power of handing off responsibilities in your business.
Turning over responsibilities can be powerful. It not only frees up your plate, but it can also allow you to discover untapped assets in your business.
Remember in part 2 how we talked about the difference between the Major Leaguer and the All Star private practice PT owner?
The All-Star goes out of their way to attract rock stars. Staff members who can not only do their jobs, but can recognize problem areas AND actively propose and implement solutions.
In other words they don’t create more headaches for you, they drastically reduce them.
Once you start surrounding yourself with rock stars it’ll take a huge load off your plate, and your business will explode.
I’ll use an example to illustrate this.
How To Get A 100% Conversion Rate
On Tuesday we ran a promotion. We had 56 come in for a free screening and 45 converted to a full plan of care.
This is the highest number we’ve ever had.
In fact of the 11 that didn’t schedule, 8 are waiting on physician scripts. So it’s really 3 people who didn’t convert.
It was a super successful conversion.
I was pretty impressed with our results. However this changed when I heard about Dan’s story.
Dan is one of the PTs that works with us. As well as working with us he is also a devout follower of what we teach at BPTM.
Dan, during this promotion, saw 13 free screenings and converted all 13 into a full plan of care.
Just in case you didn’t see that that’s a 100% conversion rate.
I was blown away.
During our staff meeting, I had to stop and ask Dan how he did it.
Here’s what he had to say,
“I just assumed that since somebody called in, they raised their hand and said ‘Yes, I want help’, that they were going to schedule. I had no other assumption and I just proceeded through. ‘Here is the next step, here is the next step, and here is the next step.’ Probably in the past I wouldn’t have done that.”
Dan’s insight was the assumption he made.
He assumed that by coming in, the person had already raised their hand and said “I want help”, and it was his job to lead them to the next step.
How does that assumption play out in real life?
If a patient had a time consideration, or distance, or money, he just blew right through it.
There weren’t any barriers. If it was a time barrier Dan would say something like “Ok, you need to come in early in the morning? Well I start at 7am on these days. You can come then.”
Or regarding a money barrier, “Okay, so what is your situation? Let’s talk with billing.”
They want treatment. They want to get back to what they are doing. And it was Dan’s job to get them there.
He was able to help them overcome all these barriers, because he knew deep down that ultimately they wanted help.
Dan is a rock star. But we went through and actually looked back over our results.
For many years our conversions were in the 50% to 60% range. But in one year, with Dan taking up this assumption, his conversion rates had gone up to 100%.
That’s the power of having a rock star on your staff.
Guess who we’re going to have teach our other PTs how to do free screenings?
Guess how much that takes off my plate realizing that Dan is really good at it?
We can record his teachings on video, and make it available for future PTs. It may become part of Breakthrough PT Marketing.
But think about it…. I don’t have to worry about getting better at how to do free exams, or how to train other PTs to do free exams. I have Dan, a member of staff in our practice, who can train others.
That’s the power of turning stuff over. There are hidden assets in your practice already.
If you’re trapped in thinking you are the best, and you have to do everything, you’re going to get in trouble.
However if you take up the traits of the Major Leaguer, and the All-Star…if you can find really good staff members, that take the initiative, that test and implement different ideas and find a strategy that dramatically makes things better, and you can get them to teach others….
Then your private practice will sky rocket. Just like ours will with Dan’s training.
But that’s not all.
I really want you to understand the power of turning things over to rock stars.
I’ll share with you another story from our practice.
A Simple Phrase That Eliminated Non-Compliance
While doing a treatment audit we came across something.
Kelsey is one of our new grads. She’s amazing, has superb technical skill, and we’re glad she’s working with us.
She works maybe 30 feet away from Joe. Joe is an expert on our staff. They’d been working close for a year, when Joe discovered one little hiccup in Kelsey’s treatment plan presentation during an IE.
While delivering the presentation, she would say “this is what I recommend.”
Now that doesn’t sound like there’s anything wrong… After all, after an exam, a patient is likely to follow through on what you recommend.
However Kelsey was getting some non-compliance from her patients. She would get a lot of push back after her presentation such as “I can’t really come in 3 days a week…Can I just do 1 day a week or every other week?”
If you’re making a recommendation it’s much harder to support when trying to persuade your patient.
However Joe picked up on it. Joe gets very little non-compliance because of what he says,
“Instead of saying ‘here’s what I recommend’ I say ‘here’s what we are going to do next.’
Can you see the power of that?
Just one simple phrase, one simple change, and you get a lot of compliance.
The key is that Joe is leading the person through the exam.
Kelsey changed her approach, she did an awesome job transitioning to this new method quite quickly. She put this one thing in and then her numbers went through the roof in terms of patient compliance and her graduation rate.
That’s one change, one change that can only be identified by an expert. An expert that was Joe, and not me.
Joe now teaches our other PTs as a Clinical Director.
That’s the power of letting go of the mind-set “I am the best.” Once you empower others, you’ll find gems in your staff.
What Next?
By now you’ve realized the power of turning things over to your staff, of letting go of the belief of being the best.
Remember: The goal is to work yourself out of a job. To scale up your practice, spend less time working, while keeping your quality of care at the same level.
So here’s what to do next.
Make a list.
Write down all of your responsibilities.
Then start finding people to turn them over to.
Turn them over to people who know more than you. If they don’t, offer training, or give them the freedom to learn on the job.
Put it this way, if you spent 2 hours a day, every single day, learning about clinical treatment…how much further would you be in a year?
A lot right?
This is research, your reading JMMT and JOSPT and doing online Con Ed and going to weekend courses. The material completely consumes you, and you become the best therapist in the world.
How much better would you be?
How much more valuable would you be?
But if you did that….how would you ever find the time to study marketing? So you could become the best marketer for your practice?
How would you find the time to study and implement the best financial systems in the world?
The list goes on. By specializing you can afford to become best in your field. But if you do that, you won’t be able to do it for your other responsibilities.
But if you turn it over, and allow other people to spend 2 hours a day studying in that field?
Then everyone can become the best, and your practice can benefit.
So start turning over your responsibilities.
That is how you grow and scale for your business while keeping your care at a world class level.
Hope you enjoyed!
-Chad
P.S. Want to find out system you should implement in your practice in order to get the most immediate return?
Check out our Physical Therapy and Direct Access Marketing Resources
It’s has everything that you will need to help grow your PT practice.
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