The Special Forces Mindset I Used To Explode My Business | Cash-Based Physical Therapy Business

Show Notes

In today's episode, we'll be discussing the concept of 'mission mindset' and how it can make all the difference in achieving success in both physical therapy and business. By having a clear understanding of your mission and setting specific goals that align with it, you can take the necessary steps toward delivering amazing results for your clients and business. We'll explore the benefits of this approach and provide practical tips for cultivating a mission mindset that drives you toward success.

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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

What defines success for your business? If you don't understand your mission, if you don't understand what's gonna define success for your business, you're sure as heck gonna have a hard time getting there. Right? You don't know where you're going unless you know where you wanna go. Welcome to the doctor JJ Thomas podcast.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 00:21

I'm doctor JJ Thomas. Thanks for joining today. We're gonna talk about having a mission mindset in your business. I'm not military. Right?

Dr. JJ Thomas: 00:31

Like, I never served in the military. I wasn't raised by a military parent, But I have a lot of respect for military, professionals. And I think a lot of people in the world do. And I think the reason that is is that they have a mission mindset. Their profession puts them in a path where they're training for a mission, and they have a systematic approach to ensure delivery of that mission.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 01:05

We whether you realize it or not, we already adopt a mission mindset when it comes to treating our patients. So we have a systematic way that we ensure that we're gonna deliver results for our patients. If we take that same mindset and we apply it to our business, we're gonna ensure results as well. So let's talk about the components of what a mission mindset really means. When someone's given a mission and and let's I like the military example because it gives you this, like, very important, you know, purpose.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 01:39

Right? Like, a mission is something that's very important and has a has a huge purpose to it. Right? So with a mission mindset, the systematic approach, the number one thing that we that our leaders are gonna do in a mission is help everyone understand the mission. So we have to understand the mission.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 01:57

We have to understand the ins and outs of this mission. And most importantly, we have to have a goal for that mission. What defines success in this mission? So with your patients, what defines success is going to be what their goals are. Right?

Dr. JJ Thomas: 02:14

Like, your patient wants to run a marathon in 4 months, and they have this patellofemoral pain. Or your patient wants to be able to throw a ball with their son, and they've got this rotator cuff impingement. Or, you know, your patient wants to be able to I actually had this one guy, he's the best. 80 year old man. He could barely raise his arm overhead.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 02:37

And, and he surprised me. I said this is I was a new therapist. This is years ago, but I'll never forget him. I was like, what are your goals? And I'm thinking he's gonna say, I wanna be able to, like, you know, what most people say, raise my arm overhead to wash my hands or whatever.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 02:52

His goal, he said, I just wanna be able to he said, I just wanna be able to hold my wife and let her rest her head on my shoulder at night. He he had impingement pain. Right? But it didn't bother him that he couldn't raise his arm overhead. What bothered him is that he and his wife couldn't snuggle like like they used to.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 03:09

That was his goal. Now I, in my mind, was like, well, I wanna get you even better than that. But I needed to make sure, number 1, I met his goals. Right? So understand the mission.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 03:19

Had I never asked, I would have been working so hard to raise his arm overhead and maybe not met his goal. So understand the mission, whether that's for your patients or whether that's for your business. For your business, I find a lot of business owners go into business without a very clear mission. What defines success for your business? If you don't understand your mission, if you don't understand what's gonna define success for your business, you're sure as heck gonna have a hard time getting there.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 03:49

Right? You don't know where you're going unless you know where you wanna go. So number 1, understand the mission. Number 2, and we do this with our patients already, is generate a plan that addresses the issues and anticipates potential problems. So as PTs, I think we often think really well in the patient example, so let's go right there.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 04:13

So in our PT world, immediately, when we're generating a plan, we've already evaluated them. We've already established the mission. Right? We've already established the goals. Now we're gonna evaluate them.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 04:25

And we're gonna look at what are their strengths? What are their weaknesses? What specific weaknesses are limiting them from getting to their goals? And how we're gonna address them systematically. And then a step further from that, we're gonna say we're gonna try to anticipate what hiccups might we encounter.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 04:44

So again, if we take, like, a runner example, we know they wanna run a marathon in 4 months. They've had this patellofemoral pain. We see the deficits. We see that their hip baby is is limiting them. We see that their calves are tight, that their ankle dorsiflexion is limited.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 04:57

We know we're gonna have to address those issues. Right? What hiccups might we run on along the way? Well, maybe this person is is an executive and they travel a lot. And we're gonna have to anticipate long days of travel, and we're gonna have to give them tools to make sure that they're managing their mobility despite 5, 6 hour travel, on planes.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 05:18

So anticipating the needs related to the mission and the goal. That's number 2. So take that same scenario. You guys are already doing it with your patients successfully. Because I know if you're listening to this podcast, that you're a successful PT already.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 05:32

You're already getting patients better, and you already have a goal oriented mindset. So take those same goals, those same systems. Now apply them to your business. You know what your end goal is. You know what your mission is.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 05:45

Right? You've understood your mission now. Look at your own business strategies. Identify the weaknesses. Right?

Dr. JJ Thomas: 05:54

Identify those weaknesses and identify the different components of it that you can change to make your business better. Anticipate hiccups along the way. So if you can really analyze a mission that way, you're gonna you're gonna get to your goal much faster. Then the third step is communicating that mission. If we think about our military example, I have this great image of, like, you know, Jocko Wilenac motivating his team.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 06:25

And he's he's very clearly identifying all the components of this mission. Now, again, we're gonna we do this already with our patients. Right? They come in. We need them to know what they're signing up for.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 06:38

We need to them to know what their what our expectations of them are in order to help them get better. So we're gonna communicate. These are the things you need to do. This, you know, I've been a PT 23 years. I've been a business owner just over 10 years.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 06:54

I remember this isn't as easy as it sounds sometimes. I remember a time I had a patient, you know, we've talked on the podcast before about how I do a lot of dry needling. I had a patient this is a communication error. I had a patient who was came to us for dry needling. He had some chronic pain that he wasn't able to respond to PT elsewhere.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 07:15

All different types of therapies, all different clinicians, different modalities from other doctors. And he heard about dry needling, so he came to us. And he wanted he was like, I heard about dry needling. I think this can help me. I'm like, great.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 07:29

Let's go. He's like, one thing. I'm deathly afraid of needles. And he he actually was a a male nurse. So he used needles all the time.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 07:36

He's like, I he's like, I'm fine with putting needles in other people. I was like, you talk about needles for me, I get a little goofy. You know? So I'm like, no problem. We're gonna go through we're gonna go through what you should expect very clearly.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 07:48

Right? This is the communication stage of the mission. So I tell him, I'm we're gonna I'm gonna very clearly describe to you what's happening when we when we needle you, and that should help alleviate some of your concerns. So I started to give him the same rundown that I gave most of my patients consistently, and it worked for them. I said, listen.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 08:09

What we do is we're gonna find an area that's dysfunctional. I'm gonna put the needle in, and then I'm gonna and then I pissed in the needle. That's how I said it. And then I pissed in the needle. His eyes bug eyed.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 08:20

He goes, you did what in the needle? And I'm like, oh my god. I didn't do that in the needle. I pissed in p I s t o n. I would never do that in the so anyway, the point is sometimes you think you're being very clear, but communication's a two way street.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 08:35

You need to look at your audience and make sure they're getting the message you're intending to send. Right? So apply this to the business world. You might think you're being clear in your communication, but your staff, your employees, your support staff, that doesn't you may not have any direct employees initially, but you're gonna hire or contract out help along the way, whether it's for your website, whether it's for, you know I have a video team here that's amazing. You need to make sure that you're communicating in a way that you think they'll understand, but you need to pay attention and make sure they're hearing what you think you're saying.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 09:11

Because that poor patient thought I did something very odd in the needle. And if had I not noticed that, that could have gone very wrong. So apply that to your business model as well. Make sure you're communicating well. Communication is so important.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 09:25

I'm gonna give another example that's more related directly to my business, and and and how it can help your business. When I first started, I've told this before, but within a I think 2 years, the business grew, to a place where I needed help. I needed an an administrator to make my time more efficient. So I hired someone on a recommendation. He's still with us today.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 09:50

He's amazing. But when it's when he and I first started working together, our communication needed help. We just we weren't exactly understanding each other and what our needs were to work together as a team. And, one of the first things that happened was I was trying to be a good leader. I was trying to communicate the things that I thought, would help get the job done systematically.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 10:17

And I wasn't delivering the right expectations though. So essentially, what happened was I would email a list of, like, can you do this? I would love if you could do this, blah, blah, blah. But just a list of things. Right?

Dr. JJ Thomas: 10:31

And then I wasn't getting follow-up from that at first. So what I realized is I was getting more and more stressed out because I was now thinking I asked my administrator if he could do these things, and I I don't know what he I don't know if he's working on them or not. So I felt my stress go like this. And finally, I've it didn't take me long. Thank God.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 10:55

2 weeks into that, I was like, oh my god. I'm more stressed out now. How could this happen? I thought, duh, you gotta communicate with him. So I went to him.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 11:02

I said, listen. I hired you to take stress off me, but now what I find is I'm stressing about what I've asked you to do, and then I'm stressing about whether you've done what I've asked you to do. So we came out with a system where he and credit to him. He was like, oh my god. I'm so sorry.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 11:17

That's the last thing I want. But had I not gotten that communication piece together and brought, if I'd let it go any further than 2 weeks, trust me, I would have stewed. And it would have built and built and built to a point where maybe it wasn't recoverable. But kudos to this admin is he was like, oh, god. No.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 11:34

We gotta fix that. Alright. Let's and together, we came up with a system. So I will say these things need to get done. He'll give me a follow-up.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 11:41

It's it's a cadence that now we're in a groove with, and he's still with me today. And, we work really well together. So on the business side, communication is really important just just the same. The 4th step of this mission mission, strategy, mission method is celebrate small and big wins. So, again, I have this image of the soldiers on the battlefield or, you know, the Navy SEAL team dropping in in the helicopter.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 12:10

All those sexy images help me wrap my head around what what we're really doing here, what we're really doing when we're trying to, accomplish a goal in our business and for our patients. And, every great leader takes a moment to celebrate the wins. Right? You gotta celebrate the wins so you can move on. In in a military environment, you know, you take out a single target.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 12:34

You're celebrating that. Not not not over celebrating, not so much that you're missing the guy that might be behind you, but you're like, heck, yeah. I got that. I nailed that. We nailed that.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 12:44

We did that together. Let's go. And then you're motivated to continue to win and achieve and beat those goals time and time again. So that's another thing that I see from my business colleagues sometimes is that they're so they're so caught up in their own stress. They're not taking the time to be like, woah.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 13:05

That was a big win. Wow. I met with that doctor that went really well. He seemed to understand what I was talking about. We seem on the same page.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 13:12

That's a big win. Or even, like, even just getting a single patient better that wasn't able to get better somewhere else. That's a big win. So don't be remiss in celebrating your own big wins in your business and with your patients because that's what's gonna continue to drive you and your team to continue to do better, to continue to meet those goals and those missions. It's it's just so valuable.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 13:37

And then the last piece of that, though, is at the end of a mission, recap that mission. This, I tend to think of more of as, like, reviewing game film. Right? So a lot of professional athletes, even college athlete even our high school athletes here, they have an amazing lacrosse team right down the road. Those guys review the game film all the time.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 14:00

And what that does is it allows them to look and strategize at, hey, let's celebrate the wins. Wow. That was a great play. We we all work together. But also, what could we do better?

Dr. JJ Thomas: 14:13

And by analyzing past missions and right out of the gates like, you finish a mission, you celebrate the win. Next thing you do is, what did we do well? What could we do better? What that does is it it establishes patterns. Again, this is a strategy you already use.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 14:31

I guarantee it. In PT, we use clinical patterning as as part of our, strategy for getting patients better. And what clinical patterning is is when we take a patient and we test, retest, and when we see what works, our brain turns that into a pattern. And then you see 10, 20, a 100, a 1000, 10000 of those patients with that same type of presentation, now all of a sudden, you recognize it before you have to do 8 tests. You recognize it way earlier than you would have before.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 15:07

The same thing can happen with your business. So when you work on a particular goal or mission for yourself with your business, take the time to analyze it afterward. What did you do well? What didn't you do so well? Look at the game film.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 15:21

What could you have done better? Just by spending a couple minutes after every mission and analyzing what could be done better, you're gonna find that you're developing patterning and you're gonna succeed more quickly the next time. And you're gonna do it so effortlessly that you're not even gonna realize you're doing it after a while. I wanna give a patient example to highlight this. This was years ago.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 15:45

I wanna say, gosh, it was probably 18 years ago. But again, one of those patients that will forever stand in my mind. So I'd been out, let's say, 5 years or so. At the time, I was doing a lot of pool therapy. And it was a busy environment.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 16:01

I mean, I've talked to you about that before. It was insurance based world. I had a great team that I worked with. But but for the most part, I was in the trenches in that pool, sometimes having, you know, 8 to 10 patients at once. But this one particular patient, came in, and we were treating her actually for, like, a back radiculopathy type thing.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 16:20

She had a pretty significant history, had a dural leak at one point. But long story short, I'd been treating her for at least, I'd say, 12 sessions. And every time I she came in, you know, we had our conversation. We made lots of eye contact cause I think eye contact's huge and important. And and we talked.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 16:40

And she was heading in the right direction. One day, however, she came in, she walked in the pool, and I was talking to her. Something was different. I I could not put my finger on it, and I kept talking to her, in fact, to try to, like, pull out what was different. She just was different.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 17:02

I could like I said, I couldn't put my finger on it. But I did start asking questions because I was like, something's off. I flat out said to her, I was like, hey. Did you change anything? Like, anything different?

Dr. JJ Thomas: 17:12

She's like, no. A little tired, but I didn't really change anything. Did you change your medications? Because that's a big red flag. You know?

Dr. JJ Thomas: 17:19

She's like, no. I didn't change my medications. I'm like, alright. Like, I'm still looking at her, watching her closely. Finally, after about literally a few minutes of that, I was like, listen.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 17:30

I think we need to get you out of the pool. I don't I'm not something's not sitting right today. She argued with me, of course, because she wants us to get better. And she's like, no. No.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 17:39

No. I need to be here. I'm in pain. I'm like, I know you're in pain, but I'm telling you, let's get you out of the pool. Now I called someone else in the pool with me because I was so nervous about her.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 17:49

Again, didn't really know why. Didn't have any concrete evidence. But walked out the pool with her into the locker room. Had another staff member come in and make sure my other patients were doing okay. I was in the locker room with her, and all of a sudden, she started having a grand mal seizure.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 18:06

And we handled it. You know? Thank god she wasn't in the pool, because that would have been a whole another mess. She was in the she was in the locker room. She had the seizure.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 18:14

We kept her contained. She was safe. Obviously, at that point, I left out. I'd already called her husband to pick her up because I was like, you're not driving. Something's off.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 18:26

So by that point, right after that, her husband came. We called the paramedics, but they said, no problem. Just bring her to the hospital. Long story short, my clinical patterning, after only 5 years, told me something was not right. And I listened to it.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 18:40

So clinical patterning can happen with your patients. It can happen in your business. Take the time to assess your own business strategies and what's working and what's not working. It may not be as dramatic as preventing someone from drowning in a pool during a ground mount seizure or at least having other complications. But it in terms of the business world, it's still gonna have a great effect.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 19:03

And it's more powerful than you can really put concrete tabs on. So if you wanna successfully hit your mission time and time again, take these 5 steps. Emulate that military personnel. Emulate that professional athlete of of whatever short. Emulate your own practices as a clinician, and listen to those 5 steps.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 19:25

Establish your mission and your goals for that mission. Come up with a plan that targets meeting that mission and goal for yourself. Anticipate hiccups along the road. Communicate the strategies effectively with yourself and with your team around you. Celebrate small and big wins.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 19:45

And lastly, study the game film. Using those five strategies is gonna help you succeed time and time again, faster and faster and more effectively as a clinician, but also more importantly for this podcast, as a business leader. It's great sharing these stories with you. Thank you for inviting me into your family room and, listening. I'd love to share more with you.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 20:07

So if you want to hear more like, and subscribe to our channel, click the link in the description for the ebook, for the free ebook, and, let us know what you think. If you have any questions, please reach out.