Running a physical therapy practice means wearing two jobs at once. You’re the clinician the schedule depends on, and you’re the owner responsible for marketing, operations, finances, and a team. Most owners try to do both at full capacity until burnout forces the question, which is why time management for physical therapy practice owners is less about a better planner and more about deciding what the owner stops doing.
In this episode of the Practice Marketing Podcast, host Neil Trickett sits down with Jamey Schrier, PT, founder of Practice Freedom U and author of The Practice Freedom Method, to break down how practice owners can take back control of their calendar. Jamey walks through six strategies, from defining priorities and time blocking to delegation, boundaries, and building in time for personal growth, that he says let owners step out of full-time treatment without stalling the practice’s growth.
Episode Highlights
- → Why defining priorities comes before any calendar tactic
- → How time blocking protects an owner’s highest-value work
- → What to delegate and automate first
- → Setting boundaries that actually hold
- → Building a regular review-and-adjust rhythm
- → Why personal growth belongs on the schedule
Guest Bio
Jamey Schrier, PT, is the founder of Practice Freedom U, a coaching and training company that helps physical therapy, occupational therapy, and other practice owners build profitable practices without working excessive hours in the clinic. According to his website, he was a multi-clinic physical therapy practice owner for over 15 years. He is the author of The Practice Freedom Method: The Practice Owner’s Guide to Work Less, Earn More, and Live Your Passion, which his website describes as an Amazon #1 bestseller. In the episode, Neil introduces him as someone who has helped hundreds of growth-minded practice owners achieve uncommon success without the burden of working excessively in their clinic.
Key Takeaways for Practice Owners
- Priorities before calendar. Jamey says the word “priority” is singular, and that owners need to get clear on the one thing that matters most before deciding where it lives on the schedule.
- Block time for the business, not just patients. Jamey says to concentrate similar work together, with admin, meetings, and marketing in protected blocks, because you do not get into the zone by changing tasks.
- Delegate down and automate out. Jamey suggests listing your tasks by high and low value (or energy), then removing the smallest low-value task by eliminating it, finding a “who, not how,” or using technology.
- Boundaries are a system. Jamey says owners are “yes people,” and that putting up “borders,” like being off the grid until a set time, is how you protect your attention.
- Review on a cadence. Jamey says our past experiences are our greatest teacher, and his simple debrief is “did well, do better,” after a quarter, a project, or an event.
- Schedule your own growth. Jamey says owners need the same commitment to learning as an owner that they bring as a clinician, and suggests asking what skills you would need to succeed at your next level.
Start With Priorities, Not Tactics: Time Management for Physical Therapy Practice Owners
Jamey opens with the one thing he would want listeners to walk away with: to grow, you must let go. He says he has never met an owner who reached out for help who was not already busy, with a to-do list that was pages long. In his view, the items keep piling up because more is coming in and few are leaving, until the time gets eaten up. He adds that letting go is hard because, as he puts it, nobody does it better than us.
“You’ve got to define your priority.” — Jamey Schrier
Jamey says that when he looks at why this is so hard, part of it goes back to school. Education set our schedule from age four or five, and so did our first boss. Then we open a practice and, he says, it is a wide-open blank sheet that we have had no experience filling. That is why, in his view, what usually gets sacrificed first is personal time and time with family.
His starting point is to define the priority. He points out that “priority” is a singular word, and says that owners often list four or five projects on top of their core day-to-day work and then wonder why none of them are working. His example: if the priority is hiring, you narrow it down to establishing an effective recruiting mechanism, because that one thing sets off a cascade of events that moves you toward your goal.
He also leans on Stephen Covey’s idea of beginning with the end in mind. Jamey says a wise person once told him that you cannot make meaningful decisions in the present without a meaningful future, and he describes what he calls the power formula: our thinking determines our decisions, our decisions determine our actions, and our actions determine our results.
“Without that picture, you’re just making random decisions and you don’t know if they really align, because there’s nothing to align them to.” — Jamey Schrier
To find the real priority, Jamey says he starts with where the practice may be losing money, and asks for objective data rather than a feel for the numbers. By his account, once an owner has accurate metrics, the answer is often different from what they assumed. His example: you may think you have a referral problem, when the referrals are fine but they are not converting to a plan of care, and cancellations are at 22%. Neil adds a marketing parallel, noting that patients often say “my doctor sent me” at the front desk when the tracking data shows several touchpoints along the way.
Jamey also likes to work in 90-day quarters, which he calls long enough to get something done and short enough to feel real. He says he used to let coaching clients choose three to five objectives each quarter, and now asks them to make a strong case for more than one. And he says the owner’s own lack of focus is what ruins the team’s focus: if you tell staff to focus on one thing and forget it two days later, he says, they feel like they are letting you down.
The Power of Time Blocking
Neil asks what time blocking looks like for an owner, and Jamey says it means concentrating things together. He says he used to work six days a week and could not say no, with patients at 7 a.m. Monday and 9 a.m. Saturday. As he started hiring, he says, he realized his own time was best spent on the things only he could do well, like strategic thinking and connecting with people and opportunities.
“You don’t get into the zone by changing tasks.” — Jamey Schrier
So he tried squeezing patient care into four days, taking Fridays off from the clinic, and using Friday mornings for administrative work, meetings, and his stats and KPIs. Later he says he added another concentrated day, a Wednesday, for marketing activities. He recommends scheduling staff meetings back to back, rather than one here and one there. Jamey also says that, according to research, it can take up to 20 minutes for the brain to fully shift to a new task, which is why he suggests grouping tasks with a similar focus.
Neil says the worst thing a small-practice owner can do is give themselves an hour a day for admin. He says you are much better off putting that time together, three or four hours in a week in one chunk, so you are not distracted by the next patient.
“Give me a bigger chunk of time.” — Jamey Schrier
Jamey agrees, and says a half hour here and a half hour there does not work. Give him half a day to handle bills, mail, and responses, he says, and he promises it will beat a half hour five days a week. He also describes a habit he built for the clinic floor: before walking into a new patient eval, he paused and asked himself what he appreciated about the person, which he says forced him to get present.
Delegate and Automate
Jamey says delegation starts with how we see our team. He recalls a seminar where the speaker pointed out that staff are old enough to vote, buy a house, and take out a loan, and he says the lesson stuck: his staff were capable of much more than ordering supplies or cleaning, if he would let go.
“These people are capable of so much more than we give them the opportunity to do.” — Jamey Schrier
Neil asks which tasks to delegate or automate first, and Jamey says his favorite tool is a two-column list. Draw a line down a piece of paper, put low-energy or low-value tasks on the left and high-energy or high-value tasks on the right, and be honest about where each task belongs. Jamey says that if an owner has never done this, he guesses about 90% of the day will land on the low side, with patient care, documentation, and ordering supplies among the usual suspects.
From there, he says, pick the smallest low-value task and remove it in one of three ways: eliminate it, find a “who, not how” who could do it as well or better, or look for technology, including AI, that could handle it. He says the owner needs to be open to it, even when it feels uncomfortable or imperfect.
Neil puts it as buying your freedom. He says an owner could save a few dollars by doing the bookkeeping, but it costs attention that belongs on high-value work, and that the same goes for owners who try to be their own website, SEO, and content specialist. Neil says that for a practice on the cusp of one to three million, you have to invest in people and systems, let go, and delegate.
Jamey adds that he sees this starting at about $400,000 in revenue, with the work shifting as a practice grows: building new thought patterns between roughly half a million and a million, and needing a leadership team, more technology, and a narrower focus at a million and a half to two million. He cautions against growing just because you feel like it, and says the vision has to make your life better. He points to Dan Martell’s Buy Back Your Time: one way or another we are buying back our time, either paying someone or doing it ourselves at ten times the cost.
When fear gets in the way, Neil says, it often comes down to an abundance versus a scarcity mindset. Jamey says he has moved away from those labels and talks instead about how we speak to ourselves. His example is reframing “I can’t afford to hire” into “How could I afford to hire this person?”, because, he says, your brain will not try to solve a problem you have just declared unsolvable.
Set Boundaries and Protect Your Time
Jamey brings up boundaries early in the episode. He says there is a word we have a tough time saying, and it is no.
“We’re yes people. We are people pleasers.” — Jamey Schrier
He says that when owners say yes to every request, what they are often saying no to is their own personal freedom, which is one reason he named his company Practice Freedom. Neil adds that the goal is not to be on a beach all the time but to have the freedom to be in the business as much as you want, or not, and Jamey says that takes white space on your calendar.
Jamey says boundaries are hard because our minds go to “what if something happens.” He tells a story of driving home from the beach when his father-in-law called to say his place had burned down, and says he was happy, because he would not be going to work the next day. His point is that most of what we fear missing is something we would find out about anyway, and that we are in a constant state of high alert, distracted and interrupted.
In his view, the greatest thing people are after, besides our time, is our attention, and everyone wants it, including staff and patients. His answer is to put up what he calls borders, or absolutes, such as “I am off the grid until 11 o’clock on Monday.”
“It’s amazing how your staff will figure things out when you’re definitely not available.” — Jamey Schrier
He pairs that with the delegation lesson above: he says staff are more capable than owners give them credit for, and that the real issue is whether the owner is willing to let go and let that person succeed.
Review and Adjust Regularly
Neil asks how an owner can regularly review and adjust their time management. Jamey says the greatest teacher each of us has is our own past experience, and that too many owners spend their energy on what they have not done yet.
“The greatest teacher we have is our past experiences.” — Jamey Schrier
He describes what entrepreneurial coach Dan Sullivan calls “the gap”: when you compare yourself with other people, or with an ideal you have not reached, you fall into a negative place that is not creative. Jamey’s alternative is to measure your progress backwards, by debriefing, or reflecting, on what has already happened.
His simple version is what he calls “did well, do better.” After a conversation, a quarter, a project, or an event like a seminar or workshop, he asks what went well and what could be better next time. He says the habit also changes how people talk about coaching they have tried before: what worked, what did not, and what would help them move past it.
Jamey adds that this is not just for the owner. When you get comfortable with it, he says, make it part of everything you do with your team.
Invest in Personal Growth
Neil asks about time management for the individual, not just the business. Jamey says clinicians are conditioned to keep learning and evolving after school, and asks owners to imagine applying that same attitude to their growth as an owner. When he asks owners about this and takes surveys, he says, the answer is extremely low.
“Communication is such a huge part of being an effective leader.” — Jamey Schrier
Jamey gives his own example. He says he was not good at communicating when he started: he was confusing, he was not clear about his expectations, he used sarcasm to hide how he was feeling, and his empathy was shaky.
“I was more empathetic with my patients than I ever was with my team.” — Jamey Schrier
He says he worked on these things over the years and still does, because personal growth is never-ending. A question he likes to ask clients is what skills they would need to be successful at a future level, for example a $5 million company when they are at $2 million. He says the answer gives you a road map of what to get better at.
Asked for one final piece of advice, Jamey says his adage is “less is more,” and that if listeners take away one thing, it is that in order to grow you have to let go. His first step: block out 60 minutes once a week, out of the office and not at home, to think about what you heard and the challenges you are facing. He says he promises things will start to get clear.
About Practice Freedom U
Practice Freedom U is a coaching and training company founded by Jamey Schrier, PT. According to its website, it helps physical therapy, occupational therapy, and mental health practice owners grow and scale their practices with a roadmap that organizes practices into stages by revenue and team size, and its team of coaches offers discovery calls to practice owners who want help creating a plan.
In the episode, Jamey says that if you are interested in coaching and help creating a plan and accountability to build your business, he is open to a phone call, and Neil points listeners to Practice Freedom U online for free advice.
FAQs
What are the six time management strategies Jamey Schrier shares? According to Jamey, they are defining your priority, time blocking, delegating and automating, setting boundaries, regularly reviewing and adjusting, and focusing on personal growth.
Why does Jamey say practice owners struggle with time management? He says that school and employers set our schedules for decades, so most owners have had no experience building their own schedule, and that owners are yes people who give away their personal time first.
What is time blocking for a practice owner? Jamey describes it as concentrating similar work together, such as admin, meetings, and marketing, in larger chunks, rather than spreading a half hour here and there across the week. He says it can take up to 20 minutes for your brain to fully switch to a new task.
How do you decide what to delegate in a physical therapy practice? Jamey suggests splitting a page into low-energy or low-value tasks and high-energy or high-value tasks, then removing the smallest low-value task first, by eliminating it, handing it to the right person, or using technology.
What does “did well, do better” mean? It is Jamey’s simple debrief: after a project, quarter, or event, ask what went well and what could be better next time. He says it is not just for the owner and should become part of what you do with your team.
What is Jamey’s final advice for practice owners? He says that to grow you have to let go, and recommends blocking out 60 minutes once a week, away from the office and away from home, to think.
Related Episodes & Resources
- Get Un-Stuck in Your PT Business w/ Jamey Schrier, PT: Jamey’s other episode on why growth stalls for private practice owners and how to get un-stuck, including delegation and hiring.
- Running on Empty: 40 Minutes with PT Business Coach Dr. Adam Robin: how to avoid burnout as a practice owner, with systems, delegating, and energy.
- Build a 7-Figure Practice w/ Darryl Yardley: how to build a 7-figure practice from scratch.
- Physical Therapy Marketing Services: how Practice Promotions helps fill the schedule so you can step out of the day-to-day.
View Full Episode Transcript (click to expand)
[0:18] Neil: Hello and welcome to the Practice Marketing Podcast, highlighting successful strategies from North America’s fastest growing clinics and experts so you can learn from their wins and power your practice growth. Hi, I’m your host, Neil Trickett, CEO of Practice Promotions, and today we’re going to talk about your most precious commodity, which is time management for practice owners, and how can you balance patient care and business duties. And we’re talking with our specialist here, Jamey Schrier, PT. He is the founder of Practice Freedom U, and he coaches and helps entrepreneurial practice owners all over the US to grow their practice. He’s helped hundreds of growth-minded practice owners achieve uncommon success without the burden of working excessively in their clinic, and today he’s going to talk about time management for practice owners and how owners can balance patient care and business duties. And I’m really looking forward to this because Jamey had an awesome insight in a blog I recently read about this, and I said we’ve got to talk about this on the podcast. So welcome, Jamey. Great to have you on the show again.
[1:19] Jamey: Yeah, Neil, so glad to be here with you and dive into some time management talk.
[1:26] Neil: Yeah. So we both are very familiar with this, being practice owners in the past, and it is a juggling act. So why is it so difficult for practice owners with time management? What do you find as your coach for practice owners?
[1:39] Jamey: Well, I think the simplest thing, and if anyone could just walk away with one thing today, I’m going to give it to you right now: to grow, you must let go. It’s really that straightforward. I won’t say it’s simple. It might be simple, but it’s certainly not easy. Anytime we’re going to grow our practice, we must have the time and the bandwidth to do so. Because I don’t know about you, but I’ve never met an owner that was reaching out to me to talk about possible coaching or getting some help or advice or whatever that wasn’t already busy, that didn’t have a to-do list that was pages long. So it really starts with, can we let go? And it’s hard for us to let go, right? I mean, you had your practice, I had my practice, nobody does it better than us, man. We’re the GOAT, right? We’re the greatest in our business. And it’s hard to let go of the things that maybe we think people can’t do as well as us. And I think that mindset, that perspective, and of course the action of keeping it on our plate, it just keeps piling. So more is coming and few are leaving, and eventually the time just gets all eaten up. So I think that’s really number one.
[3:10] Neil: Yeah, I love that. And it’s just so true in life in general, right? Whether it’s our personal time or it’s business time, it’s about time management: what are you doing with your time, how are you being productive? And then when you own your own business, it kind of takes that to a whole new level. And if you’ve never done that before, you definitely are, like you said, the number one. You know how to do it, and at the beginning you have to be, right, to get your feet underneath you, get the practice going. You are it. You’ve got to make it go. But then you get proficient at it, and then you get other things piled on to you, and before you know it you’re stressed, right? You’re burned out, you’re feeling all these pulls in different directions. I’ve definitely experienced that in my practice, and then as we’ve grown Practice Promotions, over 80 staff now, it’s been a lesson learned also in your own journey of letting go. But I would say letting go with the know, right? Sometimes we can get a little like, “Oh, I can’t let go because I don’t know what would happen.” But you can delegate, you can let go, but you can know what’s happening, right, and that it’s being done properly. And I think that’s part of processes and systems too, right?
[4:28] Jamey: Yeah, for sure. You know, I’ve done a lot of research and just work and exploring. I love psychology. I think I’d be a psychologist probably, although sometimes I feel like I am. And I like getting to the deeper root of where this is coming from. And think about this: we started our educational journey in school at four years old, maybe some earlier, four or five years old. School created our schedule. I went to kindergarten, I went to the AM session, it was 9 to 12, right? So I showed up 9 to 12. Then you get older and you go all day, whatever, 9 to 2:30. Then you go to high school, then you go to college, a little more flexibility but you still have classes. Then you go to PT school or whatever other school you go to in your industry, everything’s structured. Then you get your first job, and guess what happens? The boss determines your schedule. And then you open up your own practice, and it’s up to you to determine your schedule, your treatment schedule, your personal schedule. How do you balance the two? You’ve had zero experience doing this for 30 years potentially, and now all of a sudden it’s like a wide-open blank sheet and you’ve got to figure out how to do that. That’s why it has become so hard, because everything else was just focused on: all we had to do is do what we were being told to do. Show up when we show up, leave when we leave. So we don’t know how to manage our time with respect to, well, how much do I do in the business, or how much do I do patient care, or how much do I do with marketing, or whatever, how much personal time I have. And unfortunately, because we’re hard workers, Neil, we know how to work, and what typically ends up going is all of our personal time, all of our free time, a lot of time with the people that we say are most important to us, our family, yet we spend the least amount of time with them. So you kind of look at it from that perspective, and at least for me, it’s like, okay, I see why I do what I do. And I realize in order to move forward, in order to grow my business and also have the life I want, I’ve got to use a different way of operating and looking at my time versus the one I was basically taught and influenced by my whole life.
[7:10] Neil: Yeah, that’s great. And at the beginning, and also in different parts of your business, you are the most important part of the business, right? And if you don’t take care of yourself, and as you’re saying, you don’t invest in your personal time, you don’t have that balance, right? You get off balance and then you’re no good to anybody, because you’re kind of stressed out and you’re feeling the pressure. And it’s harder to make the right decisions when you’re in that. And you and I both know it’s easier said than done.
[7:41] Jamey: But you know what, I can push through anything, that’s my mindset. I can just keep working, I can just keep doing it, nights, weekends, whatever I’ve got to do to get over the hump. The problem is we don’t get over the hump, or we think we’re getting over a hump and now our business is a million five, there’s a different hump. So it’s like what you said, and this is to answer your question as well, it’s about creating boundaries. It’s important for us to create boundaries in our time. There’s a word, and I’ll talk about this more in a few, there’s a word that we have a really tough time saying. The word is no. We’re yes people. We are people pleasers. We are altruistic helpers. We want to help other people, that’s why we’re in this field. Yet when we say yes, what we’re saying no to a lot of times is our personal freedom, which is why, I mean, that’s one of the reasons why I called my company Practice Freedom, because ultimately that’s what we want. That’s why we want the business, to have the freedom and the flexibility to do things the way we want to do them. Yet we’re saying yes to, “Okay, I’ll do this. Yep, I’ll do the supplies, I’ll clean the toilets, I’ll treat, yep, I’ll go out and market, I’ll make all these decisions.” And it’s really, really exhausting and it’s impossible to grow the way that we all want to build and grow our company.
[9:11] Neil: That’s a great point. I’ve heard that before in other gurus and coaches out there, that it’s really the things that you say no to that help move your business forward, which is really…
[9:24] Jamey: I wish I could take credit for it, but yes, I learned it a long time ago, and because I’m a very slow learner and hardheaded, I understood it but I didn’t apply it for a long time. And once I started to apply it, I realized how uncomfortable it was to say, “Hey, Neil, I’d love to be on the podcast right now, I’m focusing on XYZ, can we circle back in a few months?” To be able to say that is hard when it’s like, “Sure, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.” You start saying all these things, and then no wonder we have a massive to-do list. And then, like you said before, it’s hard to show up high energy, powerful, mind sharp, creative, on point if we’re just wearing ourselves down. You just can’t show up in that. You know what is popular now, and has been for a little while, in that flow, in that zone? You have to have time, you have to have what I like to refer to as space, white space in your world and on your calendar.
[10:27] Neil: Absolutely. And I think that’s a really important part as a business owner, is having that thinking time, right? You can’t problem solve, you can’t create the future for your business and different departments within your business if you’re just in the go all the time. I like what you said, that white space. You’ve got to give yourself some freedom for that. And I think too, what I’ve seen, and I personally experienced this, is that you’re not trying to achieve this grand vision of being totally free on the beach, and that’s what your life is going to be as a practice owner, a business owner, right? The goal is to have the freedom to be as much in the business as you want, or not to be, right? And that gives you a choice, that gives you freedom. It’s when you’re forced to be the all-encompassing person and the amount of work that you have to take on, that becomes stressful. And there’s times, let’s face it, we all have times in our business where we’re going to have to put more work in. We’re going to have to roll up our sleeves and jump in. There’s something not going right in the business, we’ve got to steer the ship back on course. That’s business, right? That’s entrepreneurship. There’s always going to be that in the future, and you just have to realize it. But how can you get back into the calm waters again, right, and have things flow until you have to jump back in the next time? If it’s always dangerous waters, that’s where we see the burnout in practice owners, and they want to sell their business because they’re just not happy where they’re at.
[12:09] Jamey: Yeah, I mean, good point. I adopt a mindset, and the mindset is based on Stephen Covey’s work, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I believe it’s habit number two, it could be three, and he talks about this idea of begin with the end in mind. Again, another one of those concepts that took me a while to adopt, and now it’s part of everything I do. And I think one of the mistakes we make, and one of the mistakes that we can fix and avoid, is to get clear on what this looks like when it’s at the point that you want it to be. I won’t say done, but it’s looking at the outcome of things. It’s really counterintuitive, because most of us are just problem solvers and we jump in and we start figuring out stuff versus pausing. I remember when I was doing some workshops, I remember you were in there, and I asked you this question and you started thinking, you came up with this idea, then you went back and you had this poster made of the whole thing. And who knows where you’re at now, 80-plus people. I think at the time maybe you were at 10, 15 employees, whatever you were. But you had thoughtful time, whether you call it strategic planning, whether you call it thinking time, you had thoughtful time to actually look at, well, what is it that you want, what is it that you look like. A very wise person once said to me, “Jamey, you can’t make meaningful decisions in the present without a meaningful future.” So too many owners are trying to make decisions right now, but they don’t know where they’re going to, and the decision, if it’s going to be effective, has to be aligned. So this idea of, you have a practice, whether you’re just starting or whether you’re years into it, what is it that you want, where are you going with this? And then, as Simon Sinek talks about, let’s establish the roots of it and say, why is this important to you? Then go back to the beginning to start putting in the foundation of what you have to do right now to start moving towards that picture. Without that picture, you’re just making random decisions and you don’t know if they really align, because there’s nothing to align them to. And I think that’s really a big thing when it comes to time management: let’s get clear on what you’re trying to do, because then we can make more aligned, more strategic decisions that will save you from then going back and fixing something that you caused. I call it just the power formula, and it’s like, our thinking determines our decision-making, our decisions determine our actions, our actions determine results. If you’re not happy with the results, first of all, get clear on what you want and then go backwards. So what actions do we have to take? Well, it depends: what decisions am I going to make? It depends: how do I think about the problems I’m seeing in my business? So mindset is so huge. I know it’s overdone, it’s about as overdone as the word leadership, but it really is critical. How do we think about the problems in our business, how do we think about what we’re doing, our staff, because when you start to shift that even a little bit, it produces massive results.
[15:26] Neil: Yeah, I totally agree with that. It’s something I’ve seen many, many times when practice owners come to talk to us for marketing. And marketing is one of those areas in our practice where we try to shotgun it, right? Let’s try something new, or let’s chase this shiny object over here, what’s the latest Facebook ad or this kind of thing. And so they don’t have that strategic decision part of it. The thing is, “Hey, we need more new patients.” Where it’s like, okay, well, how many new patients do we really need to get? All right, and then what’s the effort that we really need to do to do that? And then how are we going to leverage the way that we’re found online, how are we going to leverage mechanisms for our website, how are we going to get patients to come back for care, send their friends and family, how are we going to make doctor relationships, all these critical areas, and then from that have your actions that you’re going to take in each one of those areas. But what we see is that people say, “Hey, I need new patients yesterday,” and then, “Oh, I saw something shiny here on Instagram, let me try it,” sign up for it, and then all of a sudden they’re spending a boatload of money and it’s not really getting them any traction, because they’re just trying all kinds of actions without the strategic part of it at the front end.
[16:30] Jamey: And what’s interesting, that behavior, if that’s how they think about marketing, guess what? They’re thinking about their operations, their hiring, their retention, their financials, they’re thinking about everything, because your whole construct of how you think goes to everything that you have to deal with in your business. So rarely do I see, like, all these things are working great but this is the problem. Because if it really was the problem, there’s tons of strategies out there. You could type into YouTube or Google, I mean, there’s tons of stuff out there, so it can’t really be the strategy per se. There has to be a level of, like you said, how does that owner think about the business. Because if I’m calling you to say, “Hurry up, I need people like yesterday,” that angst is not going to give you the time needed to really establish an effective program that’s going to help them in the immediate future and also long term. So a lot of times we make these short-term decisions that seem to be good for a few weeks, a month, or a couple months, and then they don’t work, and we think the reason it didn’t work is because it wasn’t a good strategy, so let’s go to the next strategy, the next strategy. Next thing you know, we put a lot of money and a ton of time that could have been on something else into it, and now we have a distrust and we say things like, “That doesn’t work.” And the reality is, all this stuff that people are teaching works. The question is, what do you specifically need to put in place to get where you want? That’s a different level of how to approach a business, and from a coaching standpoint, that’s exactly what we’re doing. And then it’s like, okay, so you need help with marketing, well, let’s look at Neil, see what they’re doing, see how they help, and see what our budget is and see what we want. Because I guarantee if that person came to you that was really clear on that, that would make your job easier to help that person, versus someone coming in with their hair on fire going, “I need help, I need help,” and you’re like, “Time out, calm down, we’re not going to go that way, because I don’t want to be the next person that you say that didn’t work.”
[18:47] Neil: Yeah, and as I’ve said in the past too, our highest performing clients, the top 10%, they’re really good at that. Like, this is where we need to go, and here’s our strategy, and here’s what we’re thinking. It’s not this immediate fire that they’re needing to quench, right? They’re looking way into the future, and they’ve got the time to do that, right? They kind of built themselves the time to do that. So let’s chat here a little bit about what our audience can do as far as smart strategies they can start to work on to manage their time better, and see how they can craft this important time in their business for running their business.
[19:22] Jamey: Okay, so there are a few strategies that I thought about when you and I were talking, and I think one of them goes along quite simply with what we just said. You’ve got to define your priority. I’ll say it’s for everyone, but remember, the word priority in itself is singular. I did some research on this, and I think it was maybe 50 years ago that we just started using it plural. Like, how do you actually have multiple priorities? So getting clear on what the priority is, and in order to get clear, just go with me for a second, people that are listening: if you want to know what the priority is, you have to understand what it is you’re trying to get to. So if the priority is, well, we have to focus on, let’s say, hiring. Well, what do you want to do? Well, I want to bring someone in so I can reduce my time treating so I can focus on more marketing. And in order to do that, we have to get better at putting a process of recruiting in. And I know you were sharing your Market2Grow program, so then you can narrow, by thinking through the multiple steps, you can narrow it down to our number one priority is really establishing an effective recruiting mechanism, whether it’s looking at our ad, maybe expanding our reach, or trying something that maybe did not work before and looking at a different thing. You can narrow it all down, because that one thing will then set off a cascade of events that will help you move towards your goal. That doesn’t happen quite often. A lot of people don’t have one priority. They have, like, “What are you doing?” “Well, we’re focusing on this, this, this, and this.” I said, “That’s great, how’s that working for you?” “Well, it’s not working well.” Well, how could it? You’re already busy doing your core day-to-day, week to week, and now you put on top of that eight different projects. It’s hard to say no to something, so we have to make sure we’re clear on what’s most important. And Neil, that’s not always easy, because it all seems important. But when you’re able to step back, even if you don’t have a mentor or coach, you could do this on your own, you kind of step back and you just have to get out of that clinical mindset and say, okay, what are we trying to do here? So setting that priority is just critical. If you can’t do that, it’s going to be really hard to create enough time to then spend on more strategic planning, because you’re not spending the little time that you have at least focusing strategically on where to focus the time that you do have.
[22:10] Neil: And what are you seeing as you talk to different practice owners, as far as when you whittle down what their priority is, what do they truly come out to be? Like, what’s…
[22:26] Jamey: Well, yeah, if you step all the way back, if we’re talking about money problems, financial problems, the first thing I look at is where we’re losing money. So the priority would be, okay, where are we potentially losing money? And we start looking at our collections process, we look at how much is in AR. And what’s interesting to a lot of people that I’ve talked to is, “Well, you know, we have some measures, we have some EMR reports, but I don’t really look at them, not really sure what they all mean.” So I’m like, “So how are you making decisions if you don’t have any objective data?” And they’re like, “Well, I mean, I kind of know.” And I was like, “Well, what if you’re wrong? Now how much money and effort and frustration is it going to be if you’re wrong?” So we always like to get a really clear picture of what’s going on and let some of the objective measures determine that. So for most people, when we start working with a client, especially if the client is established and, like, over 750 or 800,000 in revenue, it’s, okay, I hope that you know what’s going on, but I don’t want to roll all the dice on that, because you might be off. Let’s get clear on your numbers, let’s get clear on your metrics. Neil, that alone is a huge task for a lot of people, to get accurate measures. But once they do, it becomes so easy then to know, you know what, I thought we were having problems with referrals, we’re not, we’ve got plenty of referrals, they’re not converting to a new patient, they’re not converting to a plan of care, our cancellations are at 22%. If we focus on tightening that up, all of a sudden more money comes in, and it didn’t cost you any more, and you can do it confidently. So that’s a lot of times where you want to get clear: is there some objective means to corroborate your story of what you think the priority is?
[24:24] Neil: That’s wonderful. Yeah, and I can’t agree any more, because it’s such an important thing to make decisions off of data, right? There’s so many times, I’m sure, as you work with clinics, that they think it’s one thing but it’s really another, right, for them. And until they have the right information in front of their face, then they go, “Oh wow, you know what, it is over here, it is this problem. Let me put my attention and some plans around that.” So I love it, that accurate data.
[24:56] Jamey: Accurate data, yes. That’s true. A lot of people have data, and, “Well, how did you come up with that?” And it’s some crazy formula that’s not correct. And I said, “Can you imagine if we spend time on solving something that’s not actually a problem, but the way you were doing it, the data was wrong?”
[25:13] Neil: I’ve seen that more than… Well, here’s a marketing story for you. This happens quite often, where the front desk is asking the patient, “How did you hear about us?” And they might say, “Hey, my doctor sent me,” or maybe my friend, or “I came on Google,” or whatever. But the reality is, when you look at the tracking data, it was, maybe their doctor recommended PT, but then they actually went to Google and Googled different therapists in their area, and then they came across your clinic, and they saw an ad, and then they went to your Facebook, and then they talked to a friend about you. And we just have to realize that, especially from a marketing perspective in today’s world, it’s just omnichannel, like you have to be everywhere. People are going to make their decisions off of seven or 10 data points. But if you’re just making your decisions for what your marketing plan is going to be based off of what the patient says at the front desk, that, like you said, could be the wrong kind of data, and you’re making the wrong decision based off of that. So I can definitely relate to what you’re saying there, Jamey. But I do like what you said about priority versus priorities, right? And it doesn’t have to be a priority that’s… yeah, maybe it’d be a long time, right? Or it could be something you do in a quarter.
[26:29] Jamey: I like operating in quarters. I just think 90 days is so much time to get something substantially done and implemented, but it’s not so far in the future that you’re like, “Ah, it’s never going to come.” So 90 days seems to be that perfect thing, and from a lot of people that I follow over the years, it seems to be a pretty well-accepted time frame. It doesn’t mean you can’t have a 30-day goal or even a one-week goal, but 90 days should be a medium enough objective that it can help you start making decisions of what do we need to focus on right now, today, this week, to start moving towards that 90-day priority. I’ll tell you a quick mistake that I made when I started coaching. I allowed people to do three to five goals or three to five objectives every 90 days, and what invariably happened is they would just choose all kinds of different stuff, and at the end we would go back and measure and it’d be like, “Well, I got a little progress here and I didn’t get to this,” and it’s like, you know what, I think we need to narrow this. So now they have to convince me of more than one, I mean, convince me with, like, a lawyer-mindset argument, more than one. Because what I’ve realized, the bigger problem is they don’t know what is more important than something else, so they just put them all as goals, but there’s not any plan to actually achieve any of them. This takes thinking, and thinking takes energy, and if you don’t have time and what you’re doing day in and day out is sucking your energy, then you just make quick, quick-witted solutions. But unlike the solutions you make for your patients, you don’t have the experience. You do, knowing that you’re putting all these things together to make that decision for your patient in two seconds. Your business, you don’t have that yet. So you’re trying to use what you do for your patients on your business, and so many times those are not good decisions, and they just suck up the time that you have.
[28:34] [Mid-roll ad for the free Practice Promotions practice marketing sample kit (practicepromotions.net/kit), about 28:34 to 29:14. Not transcribed.]
[29:14] Neil: And now back to the show.
[29:18] Neil: I’ve heard that from a psychology standpoint before, that if you look at your staff, right, the ones that are your top performers, I think one thing to really look at, and what can you apply to yourself, is the ability to prioritize. So when someone is very good at identifying what is the most important thing to do right now, and they do that, it could be a simple action, could be a more complex action, but you look at any employee that you have that’s really a top performer, very good, if you look, they’re very good at prioritizing their day, right, or their actions, in a way that they can get the most important things done and accomplished, and then they have time for the other things as they go along with the day. So I just remembered that from, maybe, a psychology class back in the day, but I think it does make a lot of sense when we’re talking about time management and priority.
[30:07] Jamey: Yeah, it’s like that singular focus, right? They become focused. And I’ll tell you who ruins the focus of the team: the person who’s not focused, which would be the owner. How many times, and you might have been guilty of this, I know I was guilty of this, and sometimes I still catch myself, I’ll say, “Hey, Neil, so what we’re going to do is we’re going to focus on doing this thing.” “All right, yep, I got it.” Two days later I forgot about that thing, and now it’s the next: “Hey, Neil, hey, listen, can you do this for me?” Or “Hey, we really got to make sure we get referrals down by the end of the week.” Or two, you’ve got, like, six different things running through your head, you don’t know which one you really have to focus on, and then you get, quote, in trouble at the staff meeting, and you’re like, “All right, well, I’m doing the best I can.” And then people wonder why people are, “Oh, you’re great, thank you so much, Neil, but I’m going to go over here,” because they don’t feel good about what they’re doing, they don’t feel like they’re succeeding, they feel like they’re letting you down. This comes from the chaotic nature of the owner, especially in smaller business, so it’s like under two and a half million, under that, the business owner does not have a clear understanding of those things. And when they do, they can start to slow down and calm down and be more intentional, not just with what their time is, but intentional with what they’re saying to the team, which is critical. One thing for the team, that’s a whole different thing: you don’t want to give them more than one direction.
[31:45] Neil: Very good point, Jamey. Absolutely. And so one of your next strategies here you talked about was time blocking. So embracing time blocking, what does that look like for a practice owner?
[31:53] Jamey: Yeah, so time blocking, the way I look at it, is concentrating things together. I used to work six days a week, right? I couldn’t say no. A person wanted to come in at 7 in the morning on Monday, a person wanted to come in at 9:00 on a Saturday. I’m working all over the place, completely inefficient. But you know what, I know how to treat, I know how to work, you know, get money, and that was my mindset. And what I started to realize, especially as I started hiring people, I was like, my time’s more important than anyone’s, because there are things that only I can really do and do well. And treating, yes, I’m good, but there’s other people that can do it. But like some of the stuff we’re talking about, thinking and strategic thinking and connecting with people and opportunities, that’s where I need to be. So what I decided to do is say, well, what if I squeezed, let’s say, four days a week, but I did it hard? Like, I don’t care if I’m working eight hours or 10, once I’m there in the clinic, let the patients keep on coming, but I’m taking off Friday and Saturday. So Friday morning I would begin to focus on kind of administrative stuff, I’d have my meetings on Friday, I would focus on looking at some of my stats and KPIs. Then I started looking at, well, how could I concentrate, maybe grabbing another day, like a Wednesday? So then Wednesday I was able to focus a little bit more on marketing activities. So I started to concentrate different activities, starting with patient care. And then if you’ve already reduced patient care, you can do this with kind of administrative. I think staff meetings should all be together. If you’re in the mindset of a staff meeting, have all of them back to back to back. Don’t have one here, one there, one the next day. It’s so difficult getting into a flow. Maybe people have heard of flow. You know, Steph Curry, the basketball player, he’s in the zone, he’s in the flow. Well, these companies are all investing so much money into human beings getting into a flow, operating almost on a subconscious level, producing crazy high results, and all of us have been in that flow, in that zone. You don’t get into the zone by changing tasks. So you’re looking at tasks that have a similar focus. This is a fact, this is research: it can take up to 20 minutes for your brain to shift wholeheartedly to a new task. You might think you’re shifting, but your brain is still focusing on that previous thing. So being able to concentrate similar tasks is how to chunk or reduce activities, which then opens up time that you can focus on some other things to further reduce some of the stuff on your plate, which I can talk about next.
[34:47] Neil: Awesome. Yeah, and I love what you did there and how you kind of gave yourself the days to work on admin tasks, and then you kind of expanded upon that as you got comfortable with it, right, and your staff got comfortable with it there too. And I think that’s a very critical thing, especially if you’re in a small practice and you are seeing a lot of patients. The worst thing you can do is just give yourself, like, an hour a day to work on admin tasks and stuff. You’re much better off putting that time together and giving yourself three or four hours in a week in one chunk to, like you said, get your mind focused on that, and you’re not distracted by what the next patient’s coming up with and what you’ve got to handle. So that way your time blocking is done. You can focus on patient care on those days that you’re doing patient care, but you’ve got to have the time carved out, and a significant amount of it, in order to grow your business.
[35:49] Jamey: Yeah, I’ll share one quick story. I realized I was just all over the place. I knew I was coming to a head. “Jamey, you just can’t keep operating like this. You’re killing yourself, and it’s causing so many problems at home and in relationships.” I knew that, and I started to learn some of these strategies. So I started chunking time, but another thing I did is I paused. Pausing was a huge thing. When I went in to see a new patient, before I went into the room to do a new eval, I just paused and I said, “What do I appreciate about this person?” And it forced me to get present. From speaking to owners, being totally present, dialed in, is a rarity. Our brain is somewhere else. Our brain is worried about financials, or hiring, or where the next patient is going to come from, and we can’t get present. And then, of course, when you’re not present, patients can sense it, and your staff can certainly sense it. Along the lines of what you’re saying, it’s a big thing, so that was a management strategy I took to help me become present.
To your other point, grabbing a half hour here and a half hour there doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. Give me a bigger chunk of time. Give me half a day to handle all my bills, to handle the mail, to respond back to things. Give me that versus a half hour five days a week, and I promise you won’t be anywhere near as effective. And again, it goes back to this: it’s hard saying no. It’s hard putting a block on your phone, shutting the door, or just getting the hell out of the office, not even showing up, and saying “I’m off the grid for the next few hours.” It’s hard because your mind goes, “What if something happens? What if there’s an emergency?” And I’d be like, what are you worried about? My place burned down. What was I going to do about it? I was at the beach, driving home, and my father-in-law called to say that my place burned down. I was happy as hell, and my wife’s like, “Why are you so happy?” I go, “I’m not going to work tomorrow. A snow day, or a fire.” What do you think is going to happen that’s even going to matter? You’re going to find out about it. But it’s this impulsive “I need to know, I need to be sure, I’ve got to have my phone here.” My phone’s off and face down. All my stuff on my screen right now is gone. You’re the only person on the screen. We’re operating in such a high-alert phase, constantly distracted and interrupted. Do we know the greatest thing that people are after, trying to get from you, besides obviously our time? It’s your attention. We’re giving away our attention everywhere. So once we recognize that, we can start looking at how we protect our attention when everyone wants it, including our staff, including our patients. How do we put borders up, which is another strategy? Put borders, put absolutes. “I am off the grid until 11 o’clock on Monday.” It’s amazing how your staff will figure things out when you’re definitely not available.
Here’s what really hit me at home. I was attending a seminar somewhere, and he said, “Think about your staff.” I was thinking about them and who they are, and he goes, “Do you realize they’re old enough to vote?” Yeah, they’re at a college level. They can buy a car. They can buy a house. They can get a loan. Someone’s going to give them a loan of a hundred thousand, or multiple hundreds of thousands. Your staff is actually capable of a lot of stuff, let alone degrees and all this other stuff, and you can’t trust them with ordering supplies, or cleaning the toilets, or some of these other things that are sitting on your plate, just because you can’t let go? These people are capable of so much more than we give them the opportunity to do. The real issue is, how about we focus more time on how to delegate something, which by the way is another strategy: delegate something to someone else and help them ensure the success of that. If you look up delegation and process, there are lots of ways to create a process. We have our own way. It’s not complicated. It’s mostly whether the owner is willing to let go and allow that person to be successful doing the thing, because if they’re not successful doing it, you’re going to take it right back. So how would they be successful doing it? It shifts how you approach it.
[41:07] Neil: And so how do you go about helping people understand what are some good tasks to delegate or automate?
[41:15] Jamey: Oh, well, my favorite thing is I look at high value and low value. I also call this high energy and low energy tasks. So take a piece of paper, slice it down the middle with a pen or a pencil, and on the left side write “low energy” or “low value tasks,” and on the right, “high energy” or “high value tasks,” and start writing down, as small as you can. Don’t make it two huge tasks, but specifically, if you look at day in and day out, what are you doing, and how would you characterize that task? Be honest. All progress starts by telling the truth. You’re doing bookkeeping. Do you just love it? Do you just have a sweet spot in there for it? Or do you just do it because, in reality, “I don’t mind, I guess I can do it,” or “I really don’t feel like paying someone to do it, that’s why I’m doing it”? If that’s the answer, it goes on the low side. If it’s something like, “I really love strategically thinking about my business,” “I really love when I get time to just be away from everything and come up with ideas,” or “connect with people and opportunities,” put that on the right side. What I guarantee you will find, if you’ve never done this, it will be, what do you think, Neil, 90/10? Ninety percent of your day is going to be low value or low energy. At least you’ll have maybe a couple of things you like. You’ll put patient care because you’re good at it and it’s pretty easy for you and you enjoy the connection, but there are going to be so many other things a part of that too, including documentation, including ordering supplies, including all that other stuff.
So if you start with that list, then it becomes, well, just to get momentum, what’s the smallest low-energy, low-value task that you can remove or eliminate from your plate? There are three ways to remove it. One is just, “I don’t need to do that anymore, why am I doing that?” But aside from that, look at who can do this. That whole construct of “who, not how”: who can do this, that still gets a great result, maybe even better than me, and what would they need to be successful doing that? That’s one. The other is, I’m curious if there’s a piece of technology that I’m either aware of or unaware of that could potentially help me with this. And let’s face it, with AI coming on strong, I guarantee 99% of the low-energy, low-value tasks you have, there’s going to be an AI technology that can help you. It’s called AI agency. It’s already here. It’s coming fast and furious, but the owner needs to be open to doing that. So start there, ask those questions, and then move towards removing it, even if it’s uncomfortable, even if it doesn’t happen perfectly. Just be open. Get into the habit of checking things out of your low-energy box. I know you did it, Neil. I did it. I’ve never met a successful person, truly successful, not just money-wise but also in control of their time and their life, that didn’t do this, because it’s impossible to have those things and hold on to all these things, especially things you’re not good at.
[44:37] Neil: Yeah. And a good friend of mine told me one time that a practice owner, an entrepreneur, buys their freedom, right? I think one of the hardest parts is really the letting go, what you said at the very beginning. You give the example of the bookkeeping, right? There are people that are probably much better skilled than you are at bookkeeping. You’re a practice owner, you’re a physical therapist. Yeah, you could save a few dollars and do it yourself, but what is that really costing you, because you don’t have your attention on those high-value, high-energy activities? So you’re going to have to pay a little bit of money to hire a professional bookkeeper, but that’s going to give you the ability to make much more return on the investment you’re putting in. We see it all the time with practice owners that are trying to do all the marketing themselves. They think, “Hey, I can be a website specialist, I can be an SEO specialist, I can be a content specialist.” You don’t have time to do all of that stuff. You’re running a business. What I definitely found in scaling a business is that the bigger the businesses are, the more vendors they work with, the more experts they pull into their wheelhouse, because they know they can’t scale without experts that they’re paying for their expertise, and systems and things like that. So I think that’s something, if you’re that practice owner on the cusp of going one to three million, then you have to invest in people and you have to invest in systems in order to get your business to that next level, and let go and delegate. It’s really that simple.
[46:19] Jamey: And really that starts at about $400,000. Below that, it’s just you and your show, self-employed. But once you start hiring, when we’re working with people between a half a million and a million, it’s putting in those thought patterns, it’s putting in those uncomfortable actions, where you’re still able to make money, but you’re starting to learn. If we get people coming in at a million and a half, two million, it’s like, look, there are things you’re doing in your business where we need a leadership team, a management team, and we need to incorporate more technology, and we need to really narrow down what this company is going to focus on and what they’re going to be really good at, and what stuff we’re going to, quote, outsource, either to technology and platforms or vendors or whatever, if you have a vision of growing. And if it’s a vision that is going to make your life better, because, Neil, if they don’t have that, and I’ve talked to people where they’re like, “I don’t know,” and I’m like, then what are we going to help you do, if there’s not really a reason why you want it and how it’s going to make your life better? Don’t just grow because you feel like, “Oh, I’m just going to do it.” This takes a lot of work. So yeah, this whole idea of delegation, it’s easy to say. I think you’re referring to Dan Martell’s Buy Back Your Time. We’re buying back our time one way or another. Either we’re going to pay someone to do it, or we’re going to figure it out on our own, and it’s going to be ten times more expensive and take ten times longer to do. But at some point you have to invest to get back more time. Some people are willing. Other people, fear takes over.
[48:02] Neil: Yeah, so I think that comes back to, and I think this is a skill, right? This is a skill that you learn. Can you develop your skill to have an abundance mindset versus a scarcity mindset? Part of it too is our personalities and what we’ve grown up with in our lives. Even in some cultures there’s more of a scarcity mindset, being very frugal, very protective of money. And I’m not saying that you’re frivolous with money, but if you have an abundance mindset, where you know that there’s a lot of potential for things and you go after those potentials in a strategic way, versus “I don’t know if we can afford to do that,” that’s more of a scarcity mindset. A lot of that mindset can hold you back from where your business could really be, and yourself from where you could really be.
[48:59] Jamey: Yeah, it’s interesting. I started moving away from “abundance” and “scarcity,” mostly because once everyone starts using it, I move away from it, because who knows what it even means anymore. But to your point, a lot of it is how you speak to yourself, how you speak about your business, how you speak about your staff. To make it simple, do you speak in a more positive way or a negative way? “I can’t afford” is a negative way of speaking. I’m doing a talk later this week on mindset and how to increase profitability in your business, and there’s a slide that says, here are the things that I hear a lot: “I can’t afford to hire,” or “I’m not smart enough to grow,” or “My staff will think I’m greedy if I take time off.” And it’s like, what if you could reframe that in a much more positive way and say something like, “Well, how could I afford to hire this person?” or “What would be the result in my life if I hire this person?” You start to shift into moving towards how to address this, versus putting up a blatant “there’s no opportunity, there’s no possibility.” Because if you make a statement like “I can’t,” your brain, which is the most creative, innovative machine in the world, is not going to try to solve a problem that you just said has no solution. But when you start to put questions in your head, and this is how you get over limiting beliefs, by the way, you start to question it, you start to put rationale in, and all of a sudden you look for possibilities and opportunities. When you start to think like that, and I’m sure you’ve run into these people, whoever’s hearing this now, you’re like, “Man, my friend, they’re creating this,” you have a new program. Well, you’re thinking about it, you’re questioning, “I’m curious, what could we do to help solve this problem?” Anyone can do it. And yes, it is a developed skill. It isn’t that someone’s lucky or someone’s born into that. It’s a developed skill, but it takes reps. It takes reps, and it takes knowing when you’re doing it. That’s the hard part. We don’t even know we’re doing it because it’s an automated habit, so we have to get out of that habit by instituting a new habit.
[51:30] Neil: Love it. Love it. So let’s continue here. You said, in looking at your time management, it’s really important to regularly review and adjust. Can you speak to how a practice owner needs to do that?
[51:46] Jamey: Yeah, so one of the most powerful teachers, the greatest teacher each one of us has, it’s not your professor in school or the person you went to high school with. The greatest teacher we have is our past experiences. Too many times we are constantly focusing on the future, on what we haven’t done yet. “Oh my God, I hit a million-dollar mark in our business, but I really wanted one and a half million.” “We hired a great person, but I really want another great person. Are we going to be able to do that?” And we constantly put ourselves in what Dan Sullivan, a very well-known entrepreneur coach, talks about: the gap, this negative place. Anytime you compare yourself against other people, or compare yourself against this ideal that you haven’t reached, you fall into that place, which is not creative. The way out of that is to look backwards, to measure your progress and your results backwards. So your past experiences, if you start, we call it debriefing, briefing the past, but it’s really reflecting, or whatever the other word is that’s used, looking back helps you learn tons of lessons. A simple thing that we do, I just call it “did well, do better.” No matter what, when we’re done with this, I’ll be like, “What do I think I did well? Next time, what could I do better? Be more prepared with this, be more concise with this, share this story,” whatever it is. You’re constantly using your experiences to gain lessons to then grow from them. So when people come to us and they go, “Well, Jamey, I’ve worked with coaches in the past, it didn’t work,” and I’m like, okay, well, what did work? Did all of it not work? “Well, this was helpful and this was helpful.” Okay, what would you like to see that would help you move past? “Well, this and this.” I’m like, okay, what if we could focus more on those things? That’s just an example off the top of my head. So that’s one of the most powerful things, Neil, is reflecting or debriefing, either on a time frame, like how did things go in the first quarter, or on a particular project or an event, how was our seminar that we put on, our workshop that we put on, on runners. And anyone can do this. This is not just for the owner. So when you start getting comfortable with it, you make sure it becomes a part of everything that you’re doing with your team.
[54:22] Neil: Awesome. Yeah, so important there to use that positive mindset, right, and look at what you have accomplished in your work and in your practice, and use that to springboard forward. And then I think finally here, you talked a lot about time management within the business, but what about as individuals, right, as personal growth? What are some of the things that you like to focus on there?
[54:52] Jamey: So we are conditioned, and we all bought in, that in order to be a great clinician, a great clinical professional, we can’t leave school thinking we know it all, right? We have to continue to learn, evolve, grow, try things, learn from them, all of that. So imagine applying that same attitude towards your professional growth as an entrepreneur, as an owner. What are you doing to advance your ability as an owner, your skills as an owner? When asked, and I do take surveys, it’s extremely low. Maybe they’re reading a book, maybe, you know, but are they focusing on how to be a better communicator? Communication is such a huge part of being an effective leader. Well, how effective of a communicator are you? I know for me this was a big one. I wasn’t very good at all. I was confusing. I wasn’t clear on my expectations. I was sarcastic as a son of a [expletive]. I used my sarcasm to hide how I was really feeling. I wasn’t direct. My empathy was shaky. I was more empathetic with my patients than I ever was with my team. These are all things that I worked on over the years and got better and better and better, and I continue to work on them because it’s never-ending. So it’s having that never-ending personal growth of how can I get better, not just as a clinician, we’re good with that, but as an owner and a leader.
A question that I love to ask clients is, what skills would I need to be successful at this future level? So what skills do I need that I don’t have right now to help me have a $5 million company, let’s say you’re at $2 million? It forces you to think, okay, in order to be there, I’m going to have to be better at this, this, this, and this, and now it starts giving you a road map of things that you can do to become that. It’s like we’re making up what we want and then focusing on doing what we have to do to get there, and it’s just a wild thing when it happens. I know you can speak to that as an entrepreneur. I mean, this is how it’s done. It’s not more complicated than that, but it does take some effort and some courage to do.
[57:18] Neil: Yeah, absolutely. So, Jamey, you’ve shared some wonderful advice for us today about how we can leverage our time better in our practice to help us grow our business. Is there any final piece of advice that you would have for our listeners out there?
[57:36] Jamey: Yeah, I mean, again, I gave you a lot of stuff, and we have the adage “more is better,” but my adage is “less is more.” So if you just walked away with one thing, I think I said it in the very beginning, in order to grow, you’ve got to let go. And I think the way to do that is to just start by blocking out a chunk of time every week, even if it’s 60 minutes, just once a week, not a day. Sixty minutes out of the office, not at home either, that’s not the most creative place, for both people. And just give your brain time to think about this, think about what you heard today, think about some of the challenges you’re facing. Give your brain time to just be more thoughtful, and I promise you there will be things that start to get clear for you. So just blocking out that 60 minutes a week is a great place to start.
[58:33] Neil: Love it. Awesome advice, as always. Jamey Schrier here, super expert, and don’t forget to check him out and see what he can do to help elevate your practice at Practice Freedom U. Is that the best place for them?
[58:48] Jamey: Practice Freedom U dot com. I’ll share a link with you. If you’re interested in coaching and getting some help and guidance to create a plan and create accountability to build your business, then I’m certainly open to having a phone call with you to see if or how we can help.
[59:01] Neil: Absolutely. And there’s tons of free advice on there too. So it’s Practice Freedom, and the U is the letter U, dot com. Great stuff there, Jamey, and thanks to all the audience for taking the time to listen to us today. I hope you got a lot out of today’s podcast. Don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast for future episodes, and also check out our YouTube channel, where you can learn about Market2Grow and lots of other great training that we have on there to help you elevate the marketing in your practice. Also, on practicepromotions.net we’ve got tons of great free downloads, advice, and marketing tips to help you grow your practice. So, Neil Trickett here from Practice Promotions and the Practice Marketing Podcast, wishing you much success in your practice.
[59:46] [Outro inviting listeners to leave a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, about 59:46 to the end. Not transcribed.]
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