The IDENTITY SHIFT You MUST Make Before Succeeding in Cash-Based PT

Show Notes

In today's episode, Dr. JJ discusses the concept of the "clock vs campus" and its profound impact on achieving success in both business and life. Drawing inspiration from Stephen Covey's book "First Things First," she highlights the importance of following a compass aligned with personal values rather than being solely time-focused to enable individuals to live, love, learn, and leave a legacy. And shares insights about the clock vs. compass paradigm to guide individuals to a successful and fulfilling journey in both their personal and business ventures.

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What is The Dr. JJ Thomas Podcast?

Welcome to The Dr. JJ Thomas Podcast! Here I'll be talking all things physical therapy, raw and unplugged, giving you the unfiltered insights you've been searching for in your cash-based physical therapy business. If you're caught in the grind of the traditional model, swamped with paperwork, or feeling like you're not reaching your full potential as a physical therapist, this podcast was created just for you.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 00:00

Envision what success looks like for you. What does what does success for your business look like? And now what you're going to do is think about the things that the things that you must get along the way in order to meet that goal of success. Welcome to the doctor JJ Thomas podcast. Welcome to the doctor JJ Thomas podcast.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 00:25

I'm doctor JJ Thomas. Today's episode, we're going to talk about something, we're gonna call it the clock in the compass. This is something that I realize in my own business ventures that's become really important in every aspect of my business and my life. The concept I want to give credit to, Stephen Covey's book, First Things First, is what really helped me hone in on this concept. And, like I said, it's something that I've been practicing in my business.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 00:55

But when I heard it described in Stephen Covey's book, it actually bring a lot of light and clarity to exactly why those things have worked for me naturally in the past. And so we're gonna spend some time today talking about your clock versus your compass, and maybe that'll help you discover, some avenues that you can bring more success to your business and even your life. Before we get into the exact details of the clock versus the compass, I wanna talk a little bit more about Stephen Covey's book, because there's another concept, a foundational concept that he talks about in it, that's really important for, again, recognizing the direction that you may be choosing to go in in your business. One of the things he mentions, actually he emphasizes, is that in order for us to be fulfilled in life, we have to fulfill certain things. We have to live, love, learn, and or leave a legacy.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 01:48

These are, like, the 4 things. These are, like, the 4 you know, call them the food groups, if you will. Call them the they're really life necessities. They're things that as humans, we need to be happy. We have to live.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 02:01

We have to love. We have to learn because we're learning animals, and we we most of us want to leave a legacy in some way, shape, or form. So if we can step back and think about those things and think about, in life, what makes us what makes us excited. Right? What gives us drive to do more things?

Dr. JJ Thomas: 02:19

If you really think about it, everything that we love, everything that we enjoy, everything that we're passionate about falls under one of those 4 categories. So what I want you to do now is take those 4 categories, and now translate them into some sort of, idea for a direction that you'd like to move in. And this is the clock versus the compass idea that I want you to really think about. In our business, what we found in my own business in particular and what I've seen through friends of mine who have who now have successful companies as well is that those people who spend the efforts and the, time and energy into making goals come to light, come to fruition, those are the ones that have the greatest success. And so what I want you to do is think about the goals and the values that you have for yourself, both personally and professionally, and for your business.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 03:19

And really bring clarity to those goals. Write them down. Make them concrete. As PTs, we're good at setting goals. Right?

Dr. JJ Thomas: 03:27

We're good at setting goals for our patients. We're good at saying, okay. This patient needs to have this much range of motion by this time because 3 months from now, they need to be able to do x activity. And so it's a defined goal that has real criteria around it. That's gonna be what the first step in this clock versus the compass idea.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 03:49

And I want you to think about that end goal as a destination point on a map. And now envision yourself taking a a path to that destination. How are you gonna get to that destination? What tool are you gonna bring to get to that destination quickly and safely and effectively? You're gonna need a map.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 04:12

Right? You're gonna use a compass maybe to guide you to reach that end target. If all you have is a clock, that's not gonna tell you what direction to go in. Right? If you're managing everything in your life right now, your day to day tasks for your business, your day to day tasks for your own goals, if you're just living off the clock, I guarantee you're gonna burn out like that.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 04:36

And I guarantee you probably already are, which is why you're listening to this. So hopefully this will help you. But if you take that end goal and you have a map now that you can use a compass for to direct you to the goal, you're gonna get there much more quickly, and you're gonna be able to enjoy and reap the benefits of those live, love, learn, and leave a legacy. Let's take the clock example. Let's let's actually bring it to a a life activity as PTs that we see all the time.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 05:07

Imagine yourself in the clinic. Okay? You're working with patients. If you're, you know, if you're in a cash based practice, hopefully, you just have one patient. If you're an insurance model, add a couple times 4 potentially on there.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 05:19

But if you see that patient walk in and your your intention of meeting a goal is solely based on the time commitment, the time process that you're gonna need to get there, you're gonna really miss some important steps along the way. I know even when when we first started our when I first started my cash based practice, luckily, I was very, task oriented, right, like, in terms of I wanna know the patient's goals and we're gonna work on the direction to get there. But a couple of my therapists, when they came in from insurance based world, they were so used to living by the clock that when the patient came in, the goal they had in mind was I need to make this patient feel like they're getting what they want in the next 30 minutes. And to do that, that was often driving their decision their and their actions for how to treat that patient. So let me give you an example.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 06:14

Gladys actually, one of my friends uses the name Gladys all the time. I love it. Gladys comes in and, she meets with one of my therapists and she says, I have this knee pain. I went to 4 other therapists. I saw a chiropractor.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 06:28

I had PRP. I'm no better. I and she's only scheduled for 30 minutes, and you need to make a change. Now if you're gonna live by the clock, unfortunately, what you're gonna do is you're gonna be so focused on that knee that you're gonna probably rub the knee, joint mobilize the knee, use some, you know, laser on the knee, maybe dry needle the muscles around the knee. Because in your mind, you're thinking, shit.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 06:51

I only have 30 minutes to prove to this patient that I know what I'm doing. And you're gonna go head on using that clock to drive that treatment at that knee. Well, guess what? Hate to break it to you. If Gladys already went to 4 PTs and 2 chiropractors and had PRP and they all did the same thing, you miss the boat.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 07:10

You're not losing your compass. You're not gonna get to the end goal. You're not gonna get to that destination for her because chances are, if she saw all those other people first, it's not coming from the knee directly. It's not coming from the muscles around the knee. You have to back up, do a full movement analysis, and figure out what the use a compass.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 07:29

Use the, the the results of the movement analysis now as your compass to guide you to how to actually get results with Gladys. That's what I'm talking about. From a clinical aspect, we do this all the time. Now in the insurance based world, like I said, it's harder for therapists to do this in the insurance based practice because they're so, such a sleeve to the clock that they're constantly just trying to make people feel appreciated and welcomed. So in the insurance based world, I get it.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 07:59

Like, you're a slave to the to the clock. You are, like, really just trying to do what you can to make that patient even get the slightest bit of difference. In the cash based world, you don't have to do that now. You can use the compass to guide your treatments. You can take that patient and you can reel it back and look at a movement analysis from head to toe.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 08:19

We talk about this all the time, and we teach it in our primal university classes. So if you don't know how to do that already, please reach out to us. We'll be happy to help. But using a full body movement analysis to now find the real root cause, which will uncover the root, the compass, to get you to the end path. So that's the clinical side of using the compass versus the clock.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 08:41

Makes complete sense. Right? You guys can think of probably a 1000000000 scenarios if you've been a PT for any length of time where people came in and if you just chase their pain, they didn't get better. But if you use the movement analysis as a compass, you will get them better in a way no one else could. So that's it.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 08:58

That's the model. The compass versus the clock. We know it works clinically. Let's talk about it for our business. In the business, what we're going to use as our end destination, as I mentioned earlier in the in the episode, is our goals, our vision and mission for our business.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 09:17

So if you think of, like, in I want you to actually picture a map in your hand and envision what success looks like for you. What does what does success for your business look like? And now what you're going to do is think about the things that the things that you must get along the way in order to meet that goal of success. And instead of getting so caught up in looking at the schedule and thinking, oh my god. I have you know, I'm only treating 4 patients this day, and I have 5 hours of unproductive of nonscheduled patient time and perseverating on again the clock.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 09:56

What you're gonna do is figure out, hey. You know, I really love treating the lacrosse athletes. That's gonna drive your decision. That's gonna be your compass. And that time that you have, that 5 hour block, now instead of perseverating on why you why it's not filled with patience, you have a vision and mission.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 10:14

I wanna treat the lacrosse players. Guess where you're gonna go? You're gonna go meet with some lacrosse clubs. You're gonna go show those lacrosse club owners and those coaches how you do your movement analysis. You're gonna show them what you can do for their patients for their patients, for their athletes.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 10:29

You're gonna maybe volunteer to work on the sidelines for them. But essentially, that whole idea only came out of you figuring out what your target market is, what your goal for your business is. So that's how you can apply this compass versus the clock idea from Stephen Covey into your own business model. Here's another thing I want you to consider regarding using a compass to drive your decisions related to your business. And that comes down to referral relationships.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 10:59

I remember a time where, I was getting busier and busier in my clinic, and I started hiring other other PTs. And it's great. That's a great that's a great thing. Right? In the process, I realized I was running out of I did a lot of the business relationship, upkeep with my referral relationships prior to having extra PTs.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 11:21

And in the process, I started realizing that I maybe I could use some help with upkeeping these referral relationships. So I hired a a a guy that I used to work with in marketing. He did marketing for another company that I worked for. And really great guy. And, what he started doing was I said, listen.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 11:40

What I really want you to do is, like, I just don't have the time to bring cookies to the doc's offices that I really value and appreciate their relationship. And so if I could write a hand note I still like to keep it personal. Like, if I could write a note to them and you could maybe just drop it off for me, let them know I'm thinking of them, that'd be great. That was the original concept for hiring this marketer. Well, you know, he's ambitious, and he wanted to bring me more business, so he started branching out and saying, well, JJ, I did those, but I really wanna help you grow your referral relationships.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 12:13

So I took the liberty of meeting with this ex doc and this other doc, and, and I really would like you to meet with them so that we can build that relationship. And I looked at him, and I was like, but I don't I don't well, I have to look into those docs. And he said, what do you mean you have to look into them? This one does shoulders. This one, you know, does a lot of pain management stuff.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 12:34

And I said, well, yeah. That's great. I mean, that's good people to know, but I have to make sure that I like what they do. And he looked at me and he's like, what do you mean? Like don't you want them to send you patients?

Dr. JJ Thomas: 12:45

And I said, well I only want them to send me patients if I like what they're doing for my patients. And he looked at me again and he's like, I don't understand. Like, why wouldn't you want anyone to send you more patients? And I said, well, because my model here, my vision, isn't just to treat whoever. My model, my vision is to get people better in the best way possible.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 13:06

And part of that means collaborating with the best doctors possible. And so any doc just won't do. I want all the rock stars. I don't wanna waste any time with somebody that I don't share the same vision and mission and values with. And so, you know, that was a funny little hurdle that I didn't realize maybe would be a little difficult for a marketing person to see.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 13:30

But you see, he was his clock, he was going off a clock or or in his case, it was actually raw numbers of how many referral people he could actually get linked up to me versus my model was actually really the compass. Like, what doctors are going to help me draw a path that's gonna get all of my patients to their destination. And so that was a really important distinction that I think, as business owners, if you want to have a business that is not only successful short term but 100 100% successful long term, you're going to have to choose what business relationships, what professional relationships, what referral relationships you wanna feed. And so that clock versus the compass analogy is perfect, when considering that. There's one more story that comes to mind when I think about this clock versus compass analogy, and this one is another patient scenario.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 14:29

This was a patient that I had So I started dry needling. I've said it probably a 1000000 times, but for those of you that this is your first episode, I started dry needling in 2009. And, it is we've said it a 1000000 times as well. It's a very, very effective tool for helping, amplify or speed up the recovery process in any musculoskeletal injury. So, word started getting out when I was it's probably probably 2010 at this point.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 14:57

I wasn't even in my own cash based practice at this point, but I remember this young athlete I was working with. And, the it was actually I knew the family outside of outside of the physical therapy community, and, the mom reached out to me, and she said, listen, my son's having a hard time. He's an he's an athlete, and he has this hamstring injury that has been really relentless. And we're trying to do everything we can, and we're stretching it, and we're icing it, and we're stretching everything else and it's just not responding to anything. We've seen the, the other therapists down the road and they're very nice, but we're not making good progress.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 15:34

Maybe he can come in and we can do dry needling. I said, sure. Bring him in. We'll take a look. So this young man comes in.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 15:41

I think he was 12 or 13 at the time. Really nice kid, very well spoken. You can tell, just like a like a conscientious, hardworking kid. And I'm evaluating him and I'm looking at him. And, and and I do find some things, musculoskeletal, that would respond to dry needling.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 15:59

But I when I talked to the kid about it, he looks at me and he's like, no. Yeah. I'm not I don't think I want that. And the mom, who I know we're friendly, she's like, oh, yeah. Yeah.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 16:12

No. You gotta get it. You you wanna get better. You gotta get it. She was really push pushing, pressuring him to do this.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 16:19

And I, you know, I said to him, it would really help you, but I don't want you to feel pressured. This is something that you have to be all in with. If you know, it's not something that I wanna push on you. So, you know, if you really wanna do it, great. If you don't, we'll find another way.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 16:35

And the mom looked at me and she's like, no. It's really fine. I'm his mom. I'm just telling you. You should just do it.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 16:41

And I had to check-in with my moral compass here because I'm, like, first of all, I really have to respect the patient. And regardless of whether he's 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, or 80, I am not in the business of making people do something that they're not signing up for, regardless of whether someone feels like they're in charge of them or not. And, and like I said, I knew the mom on a on another level, so I had to try to figure out how to navigate that. But, ultimately, I knew that I could not I could not, compromise my standards and values for myself and my patients. So I look at her and I said, listen.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 17:20

I understand you guys are on a time crunch. That's the clock. I understand he has a competition coming up. I understand you want him to be better as fast as possible. I'm not willing to compromise my standards for patience.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 17:32

I need him to be a 100% asking for it. I I I can't push him into this. What I can say is, you know what? Do you wanna try one needle and see how you feel? And then decide.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 17:43

One needle. And and he actually did say, you know what? I will do that. But I wasn't gonna treat him without his consent. Like, I don't care how old he is.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 17:53

I wasn't gonna treat him with needling without his eyes, mouth, ears, and everything, facial expressions, saying to me, yes, I'm on board with that. So that's another clinical scenario you you may have come across in your own life that you can identify with where we have to follow our compass, every single compass, regarding our clinical skills, regarding our application to our patients, regarding our business. And when we do that, we will have success because we're being true to our own mission, vision, and values for ourselves and our company, which brings us back to the original concept which is when we do that, we can live, love, learn, and leave a legacy. We can look at ourselves in the mirror and be like, let's go. I fulfilled myself.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 18:42

I fulfilled my patience. This was a win win for everybody. So when you use a compass as your guide instead of a clock, you're gonna find a lot of things will turn around for the better, and you'll have more success not only for your patients but in your business. If you haven't read Stevie Stephen Covey's book, you should check it out a 100%. There's a lot of really great lessons in there that help me in my business.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 19:07

And as we talked about the using the compass for a clinical application to your patients, if you don't have a great way of evaluating your patients where you can look for underlying group causes, please, by all means, check out our primal university courses at primalhq.com. And as always, I love to hear from you guys. Whatever you need to know, I'd love to help. So shoot me some messages and I'll be happy to respond. Looking forward to talking with you next time.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 19:33

Take care.