No One Is Coming To Save You: Leadership, Identity, And Building A Business That Can’t Be Taken Away With Regie Tiu

No One Is Coming To Save You: Leadership, Identity, And Building A Business That Can’t Be Taken Away With Regie Tiu

Welcome to the show. Our guest is a friend of mine. His name is Regie Tiu. Reggie is a physical therapist. He is a practice owner out of Queens, New York, and has an incredible story. This guy was born in the Philippines and made his way over to America to open up his own practice, and he is successful. Now he is a keynote speaker, and he helps not just private practice owners but service-based businesses build raving fans inside their companies.

I am catching up with Reggie. We are just having a casual chat. We had a live Facebook event where we talked about Reggie's story and how he approaches building raving fans. He has an incredible story, a very unique story, one that is really valuable. I learned a lot, and hopefully you do too. Sit back, enjoy the episode, and we will see you soon.

---

What is up, Regie? How are you?

I am doing great. Trying to keep warm here. We are in New York, and it is cold now.

What is the temperature over there?

We are in the 30s, but we expect heavy rain. I just got a text alert from Con Edison, our electric supplier, to be on the lookout for downed power lines and power outages. That is not good.

No, it is not good. I am in the South. I am on the opposite end of the world. We just went through a little bit of a cold spell, but we are in the 70s.

Good for you.

The summers are miserable, man. I am going to be honest. The summers are miserable. We are not known for our weather. We have good food, but we are not known for our weather. It is great to have you here. We are live in the group right now. We will also post this as an episode, but I wanted to just introduce you to our audience. I know that you hang out in the Facebook group a lot. I know we have been knowing each other for it has probably 5 or 6 years now?

Yeah, around several years.

Something like that. For those who do not know Reggie, I am just going to do a quick introduction. Reggie is a physical therapist. What I love about Reggie is that he is from the Philippines, which I think is awesome. That is like my second home, even though I have never been there yet. He is a practice owner. We will get into more of his journey from the Philippines in a little bit. He owns a clinic in Queens, New York called Restore Plus. He has been there for thirteen years. Does that sound right, Reggie?

Yes, almost thirteen years now.

Also, now he is a keynote speaker, and what he is really known for is helping service-based businesses build raving fans inside their companies. If you guys have not checked out Reggie, you can find him on Facebook and social media. He posts some really cool content. I watch it all the time. I am like, there is real value. What I love about what you talk about is how you like to talk a lot about mindset, leadership, personal humility, and building that connection with your team and your people. I was like, "Reggie, let us go live and let us talk about what you do, man." I am so glad to have you here.

Great to be here, Adam. Thank you for having me.

How Regie Moved To The United States 

If it is cool, I would love to start with tapping into the story of you coming over from the Philippines because that is super unique. I do not even know what the story is going to be, but I know it is probably going to be a lot harder than most people's. If you can come from the Philippines, which is a poor country, right?

Yes, compared to America.

I am assuming you did not come here with full pockets. You came here with some struggles, and you were able to integrate into the US and learn the system and learn the culture and the language, and build a business in a very challenging market in New York. It is not very easy to build a successful practice in New York. I am looking forward to just hearing about the struggle, man. Let us start from the beginning. Talk to us about how you got here. What was the thing that inspired you and your family to move to the US?

Just like most people you have met from the Philippines, you have met a few already. They are still overseas, and some may be here. The Philippines is a poor country compared to America. Although there are in the city, some people argue that it is not a poor country because the malls there are bigger than the malls here. That is just because of the cultural differences. Mostly, it is that culture where they like nice stuff, things like that.

If you are outside of the city, it is very different. From where I grew up outside the city. To give you an idea, my neighbors were drug addicts and drug dealers. It is what we call a low socioeconomic neighborhood. Basically, it is a poor neighborhood. I grew up with that environment. I went through a lot of bullying because I was 1 of 2 Chinese kids in the neighborhood. Even though I was born there, I was different.

People treat you differently still. I learned the language very well. If you do not see me and I talk in Tagalog, which is the Filipino language, you will not know that I am Chinese. A lot of times, when I tell people I am from the Philippines, they tell me, "You do not look Filipino." It’s because I am not. I am 100% Chinese. I was born there, so I can talk and curse with the best of them.

That is how you avoid getting bullied even more. Because life is so tough, most people in the Philippines have this mindset already that, since they were little, they want to study hard. That is why you are going to meet a lot of Filipinos who are nurses, who are physical therapists, or occupational therapists, because the goal is for you to do something to get a ticket out of the country, which is to come to America to get a green card and earn the almighty dollars.

Be it through education. I have some friends who married Americans. There are different kinds. I do not judge people. Everybody has their own thing. They have families to take care of. That is the mindset since you are young. For me, my mom always told me, "You have to study hard so that someday you can get to America."

Since I was young, I heard either friends, families, or relatives, they go there, and they tell how great life is in America. You always have this big dream, like, "Money grows on trees in America. There is plenty of food, and money is easy." That is what they tell you over there. When I came here, though, you are in for a rude awakening.

When I got to college, keeping my mom's words in my mind, I have always been top of my class. I said, "This might take us out of the country." I learned early enough that I do not want to grow up and raise a family in that neighborhood where one wrong decision can land you either in jail or you are dead. I just realized I just do not want to be there for a long time. I studied hard, top of the class all the time until I got to college.

You get to college, and you are thinking, "What do I take up?" Somebody told my mom that at that time, physical therapy was in demand in America. Guess what I became? I became a physical therapist. I knew nothing about physical therapy at that time. I did not know what physical therapy does. All I knew at that time was that they said, "What does PT stand for?" For some members in your group who are from the Philippines, they would understand this word. They said that PT is Puto Titi. In English, it means circumcision. That is all I know.

A little bit of a curveball.

Leave it to your crazy idiot friends from the street to tell you what the physical therapist does. All I know is if that is something that is going to give me a chance to get to America, I am in for it, whatever they do. It was just fortunate that when I got into the field and did my internship, I fell in love with the profession. I stuck with the profession.

I have had classmates who one of them is in IT, one of them is a cartoonist, and different fields. Some of them went to med school. After I graduated, I worked there for a few years because I was thinking about how to get to America. Finally, I was able to get the papers, come over here, and go through sponsorship, which some clinic owners might be very familiar with.

I am very familiar with that, going through the process and helping others also have the same chance for that American dream. That is how I got to America. Now I came here, though, I wish I had a lot more money, because if I had, I probably would not be in America. I tell you that. I have friends whose parents own businesses in the Philippines.

That was not the case for me. I came to America with $50 in my pocket. That was it. That was the last money that I had after I basically saved all my life, thinking that at some point I was going to use that. Use it for credentialing, use it for the exam, plane ticket, and everything. After all is said and done, I have $50 in my pocket. I still remember going to the airport.

When you have that money, that is the thing that is left. You are so afraid that you will lose it, because if you lose it, that is it. Fifty bucks is not really a lot. You hid it in your pants' secret pocket back then. The jeans that I had, my mom stitched a secret pocket inside the jeans. That is how much you protect that because you just cannot afford to lose it.

When I came here, there was a time when I had to collect cans and recycle them. I remember five cents for each can. You collect them enough, you know a small plastic bag will land you a buck. A bigger one can get you $2 or $3. That is what I would use to buy my groceries until I was able to find a company that was willing to sponsor me, and then I could get some work. That is how everything started for me.

How old are you at this point? You are collecting cans, and you have some work. How old are you then?

When I came here in 2002. I was 24 or 25 around then.

Are you by yourself?

At that time, when I came here, at the beginning, I lived with my aunt, my dad's sister.

Was she already here?

Yes, she was already here. She was one of the people who told us in the Philippines, "Life is great there. Food is so plentiful and cheap." When I came here, I told you, things change. I was there less than a year, and I said, "I cannot do it." To give you an idea, this one evening, we had dinner with her friends. Everybody was asking about me because I am the new guy. They were like, "Who's this new guy?"

All of a sudden, she just yelled out in front of everybody. She was like, "He eats too much." I was shocked. I was so humiliated because you never thought that was going to come out to relatives. That is why some of my friends and I were talking to each other. We said, "Sometimes it's better to live with friends than with your relatives."

You do not expect that. I was working, cleaning the house, mowing the lawn, shoveling snow, everything. In my way of thinking, and my parents told me, "You've got to do all these things in exchange for having a roof over your head." After a while, I said, "I cannot do this." When I started working, I saved up little by little. Even at that time, I used to hang out in Best Buy. I just go home basically to sleep.

I used to hang out in Best Buy. In Best Buy, they have those big TVs, and then you have the couch. You see me sitting there on the couch reading some journals and stuff, just to be up to date with the knowledge and technique here. Thank God that people in Best Buy were cool enough that they did not throw me out. I was just basically there every day until I was able to save enough, and I was able to get my own apartment.

You are in New York at this time, right?

Yes.

You saved up some money. What are you doing for work? Are you a physical therapist working for a clinic somewhere? What are you doing for work, or are you still just collecting cans?

When I came here, I already had everything planned out. I said, "One week, get rid of my jet lag, I'm taking the exam." I said, "There's no ifs and buts about it. I'm not going to fail." I do not even entertain that. I took it, thank God I passed it, and that is when I started calling companies. At that time, we had the phone book, the yellow pages.

I called every company that is under physical therapy until I found someone who was willing to sponsor. Here is the thing. There is something in return in exchange for those papers for the sponsorship. I got paid way less than every sort that I do not share with many people. I got paid way less than everybody else because you need that paper.

For me, "If this is what it's going to take, then I've got to do it." At one point, I was working three jobs because I was working full-time in one job, 40 hours. I structured that two days there. I have half a day that I will be working and filling from the per diem work there. On the weekend, my girlfriend at that time was in Jersey, so on weekends I go to Jersey and do coverage work on a Saturday.

You were hustling.

You have to because you have to pay rent and the bills. Remember, at that time, I counted my money so much because you have to make sure you count every penny. After everything with groceries, I have $200 for my groceries every month. I cannot eat more than that. I used to buy Chinese takeout. At that time, it was three-something for chicken wings with pork fried rice. I would split that into two. I have lunch and dinner, so you can have like $5 for a whole day's meal. At the end of the month, I usually get $50 if I really save, $50 left every month. If you splurge more, then that goes away.

How Regie Decided To Start His Own PT Practice 

You are working, you are hustling, you are paying your rent. At what point did you start thinking like, "Maybe I want to open up my own practice?" When did that start?

It was a few years into it. I said at the beginning, I knew how to speak in English, but coming from the Philippines, I am very conscious about it. People treat me differently here, too. The bullying did not really just stop in the Philippines. You come here, and you are bullied by Americans. I feel like I had a stupid stamp on my forehead when I was walking around there in certain areas. In Queens, it is more diverse, but not as much. It still did before. When you go to certain parts of New York or other states, you are different.

People talk to you very differently until you start opening up your mouth. They realize, "He can." Just a quick story. When I first came here, aside from reading journals to be more up to date with the techniques, I felt like I was inferior in my knowledge, which, later on, you realize is not really that. We just have to be confident in expressing ourselves. One of the first shows I used to watch on TV at that time, believe it or not, was Maury and Jerry Springer. Are you familiar with those?

Yes.

The reason why I was watching those is that it is not like you learn physical therapy from those.

No, you do not.

I want to be able to, same as in the Philippines, talk and curse with the best of them. I feel like here I have to be able to express myself. I was in martial arts when I was younger. I took that up again. That helped me build some confidence that I can stand my own and hold my ground if I have to. Funny enough, when people see how the way you stand, it gets them to back off immediately.

Also, the way you talk. When I start talking more slang, the way more Americans will talk, then they start treating you differently also. I am not saying that is right, but sometimes you've got to do what you've got to do. At that point, I just started learning more and more about the field. The culture is a big thing. I worked in that clinic for more than ten years.

After a few years, I said I got more confident, and I saw the things that we were doing there. I was like, "I do not agree with this. I know I can do this better to provide a better experience for the patients." For me, it is about that connection with people serving the neighborhood. That is what I love about the physical therapy field. It is the most fulfilling job in the world because you get to have a patient coming in who cannot walk.

By the end of their sessions, they can walk, run, and return to sports. They get their lives back. What other profession can do that? I really love the service part of it. When I saw that there were things that could be done, but I could not do anything much, I basically ran the place for many years, but I could not make the decisions because the boss would say no.

I started thinking to myself, "I want to create something in the future that can provide a different experience for the patient." One night, I still remember that the boss came to the clinic, which I felt was odd because, since I ran the place for many years, we had grown it to twice the size. I even designed the location, the different layout for the new location, because the boss did not want to hire an architect or a designer.

He came, and I thought something was weird because he is usually not there when I am there. At the end of the shift, he called me to the kitchen. That is our staff room. In one sentence, he fired me. I remember that. He said, "You're fired." I was shocked. After more than ten years, all I could say at that time was, "That's it?" He said, "Yeah." I asked him, "Can I come back tomorrow?" because it was nighttime and I had stuff there.

That was home to me for more than ten years. You have extra shoes, you have extra socks. He said, "No, you cannot come back here anymore." I had to bring everything that I could with my two hands and go home. I still have stuff that I left there. The worst part is that I had to go home to my new wife because that was the first working day after I got married. I had to break the news to my new wife that I had just been fired.

The financial stress took its toll on my family, and later on, we separated and ended up in divorce. I have to admit, I got depressed at that time because you start feeling sorry for yourself. I felt like I lost everything. I lost my identity. You feel like you lost your manhood. You lost your money, and then you lost your family.

You lost your relationships. Later on, I said, "Who's coming to save me?" Nobody will. I stopped the pity party. I got up, and I said, "Only I can save myself. What do I do now? Either I work for somebody else, or I build something that no one can take away from me because I am not going to get fired again."

That is when I started the clinic. I felt like that was the push that, when I got fired, was the push that I needed because I was thinking about starting a practice. "I cannot, but maybe next time." When I got fired, there was no more next time. It is either then or now. I said, even if I do not make it, then I know I can work with somebody else. Thank God, knocking on wood, thirteen years later, I’m still in business.

It’s good for you. You have been an entrepreneur your whole life.

Chinese culture has a lot of entrepreneurial qualities. You are going to see a lot of Chinese people who are entrepreneurs.

When I think about it, it is a hardship. It is a lot of struggle and a lot of risk-taking. You are taking risks. I think you learned the skill of being very efficient, and you learn how to count your money very early. You counted every penny, and you allocated your resources responsibly. You learned that skill.

The last skill, which I do not think was the one that you learned later in life, but you just learned that nobody is coming to save you. It is on you. You took 100% ownership of it. It is like you can either blame the world or you can take full responsibility and ownership, and you can control what you can control and move forward. I feel like that is being an entrepreneur your whole life. You mentioned it, was it your mother or was it your aunt who spoke that into you at an early age?

It was my mom. She always drilled that into me since we were young. "We're going to America. We're going to America because we want a better life." It is no fun being broke. There were times when we had no electricity. You are going to study with candlelight. You split the food on your table with your siblings. Sometimes you do not have enough food. You go to sleep hungry.

That is not the life you want. I feel like the part that made me learn that no one is coming to save me started early on when I was young. When I was being bullied, I was hoping, or at that time, I was thinking my dad would back me up as a man. My parents always told me, "You don't fight." I get punished if I fight.

Here’s the thing. That did not make things get better. That actually made things worse. Let me be clear, especially when people hear this on social media, I am not condoning violence. I am not saying that. At some point, you have to stand up for yourself because people are not going to stop coming if you do not stand up for yourself. I am not saying you fight all the time. For me, in my experience, that helped me get the peace that I wanted. I realized, "No one's coming to save me. My own dad didn't come and save me. Who will?" I got to handle things on my own. I got to stand up for myself.

You started the clinic?

Yes.

I am assuming you started all the same way most of us start. You just started, got a small place, signed a lease, and then started knocking on doors, I would assume, right?

That is the crazy part. I would not have done it now, knowing what I know now. I probably would not have started the same way. When I started, I said, "I'm going to borrow some money." I used some money that I had left behind and borrowed from the bank for the equipment. Instead of starting a small place, I was this little kid with big dreams, and I had a lot of confidence in myself.

I got a 2,200 square foot facility at that time to start. I did that because I envisioned it, like, I saw the place, and I said, "I like this." Transportation-wise, it connects the trains. We are right across the street from the train station, so I said, "It's great." The area was being developed, so it was not the way it is now. The rent back then was not anywhere near what it is now.

I envisioned myself, and I said, "I'm going to fill this place up." I was a cocky little kid at 2,200 square feet. I only had two beds to start off in the whole place. My strategy at that time was that the whole place looked empty. I got big pieces of equipment from the gym to fill up the place. It looks fuller. That is how we did it. We start knocking on doctors' doors, people I know from the neighborhood, because it is in the same neighborhood where I worked for more than ten years. I know people in the neighborhood.

I was at one point board of directors of the Chamber of Commerce and knew some of the doctors. It is different when you are doing it on your own. You start knocking on people's doors, going to the church, people in the supermarket, anywhere. You invite people to come in. I was able to develop a strategy that, when we have patients coming in, we are going to give them an awesome experience that they are going to love, and they are going to tell other people about it. That is how we grew.

The Impact Of Building Your Own Raving Fans 

I know because we were a mastermind together in a similar coaching partnership. I know you invested in yourself and in different coaching programs. One of the things that you always talk about is this idea of creating raving fans. You alluded to it just now. You talk about that with your customers or your patients, but these are my words, not yours.

I feel like there is a similar approach with your team. Your team becomes these raving fans as well. At least that is what I get from some of your content. I would love to dive into that a little bit. How do you do that? How do you think about creating these raving fans, and what are some of the principles that you follow to create that outcome for your company?

It is a great question, Adam. You are correct because when you tell a business owner that they should think about the customers, but raving fans is not only about the customer. You do not have raving fans. The bigger the raving fans, it is about your team. If your team is not raving about you or your company, then that is a big problem because why would your patients rave about you if people who work for you do not even like you?

I went through a part of that at the beginning of my entrepreneurship journey. I went through a lot of changes and a lot of challenges with hiring. That made me learn that very important lesson. How that started with my clinic is because of where my location is. We are not exactly where people live. This area is really building up.

Long Island City is crazy here. We used to see the Manhattan skyline. Now I see buildings from Long Island City. It is just different. At that time, I had a challenge. I said, "How can I get people from the location where they live?" It is eleven blocks away from my clinic. How can I get them to come to me if they have a clinic close to where they live? You know the struggle.

We are treating patients in pain. We are treating patients who cannot walk. Here I am asking them to walk eleven blocks to come to see us. I realized that we have to create a great enough experience that they will come and choose us over a place that is closer or a place that is cheaper. That experience has to be great enough. We started that right from the beginning with our patients, and then with the staff that developed a little later.

The turning point for me was one year, a few years into the practice. At the beginning, it was myself and a receptionist. It was easy to manage that. When I started growing my team, the patient load started growing. I remembered that I had one year that I had 27 people left my company, and I had a team of six at that time.

The environment and atmosphere were toxic. It was very stressful. At the beginning, I kept thinking, or I kept saying, "I don't have much luck in hiring. I always get bad people." Some business owners may relate to that. That is what we are thinking. Later on, I realized that it is not really true that they are all bad. Do not get me wrong; some of them deserve to get fired.

A lot of it, I have to take responsibility for. It made me go into personal development. I realized that there is a lot of realization. You hear me say that word a lot. I learned that when I go into personal development and become a better person, I can be a better father. I can be a better partner for somebody in the future. I want to meet somebody someday. Also, I can be a better leader for my team and a better business owner.

I focus a lot on that. I invested in myself and learned all these different things. As I grew, as I developed, and as I improved, everything followed. That is what made me start creating raving fans amongst the staff, also. If I am the only one producing that result, then I am going to get trapped. If my team can help me produce that result, then I can get away. Also, that will multiply the number of people that we can help.

How many years in business were you in when you had all those people quit? What year were you on, roughly?

It was 3 or 4 years into it. That is when you start really growing. For the first couple of years, I worked Monday to Saturday from 8:00 to 7:00 almost every day. You treat hundreds of patients because you work 50 or 60 hours. At some point, I started, I cannot sustain this anymore. I brought in that when you had the aide, then you had the biller, then you had your PTA, and you grew your team. I know I can treat patients, but I was not a good leader.

Build Raving Fans Through Self-Awareness And Personal Development 

I did the same thing. I would like to say that most people have a similar experience. I did not really lose a lot. I did not lose 27, but I did lose probably 5 or 6 in a year because of me. Nothing really changed. The turning point for me was whenever I realized that I was being a jerk. I use the word jerk, but I was really being a little bit more than that.

Driven by ego. We do not realize it sometimes because we are in this fight or flight mode all day, every day, trying to juggle all the balls in the air. We end up becoming somebody that we do not want to be. We ended up losing some good relationships because of that. I did the same thing. I went about a year where I just detached from my friends. I detached myself from the noise in the world.

I just read all the books on leadership that I could. I started diving into meditation and journaling, and deep breathing, and just learning a little bit more about my emotions and capturing the way that I was thinking and feeling during those intense moments, and choosing to control those moments instead of letting my emotions control me. That was the turning point for me as well. I want to back up just a little bit.

My issue was with my front desk. I had this really great front desk person, probably was not going to turn out great long-term, but she was very talented. She wanted to do things her own way. She did not want to do them the way that I wanted them to be done. I did not know how to navigate that, but with just more anger. She ended up quitting me and gave me a day's notice.

I had another person join who was another rock star, and she is still with me. Her name was Angel. I guess about 3 or 4 months into her employment, she pulled me aside. She said, "I want to have a meeting with you." She said, "I am about to quit. You are driving me crazy." In my head, I was just thinking, "I am just trying to help."

I am not trying to drive you crazy. I am driving myself crazy. The best thing that I ever did was I said, "Obviously, what I am doing is not working. I am permitting you to hold me accountable. I need you to teach me. I am going to continue to do my thing, but anytime that I make you feel overwhelmed or if I make you feel uncomfortable, or make you feel like you are about to quit, I want you to stop me and tell me right there.

You have permission. I am not going to get mad. Whatever you say, I am not going to get mad, just tell me." She started doing it. She was like, "Adam, you are doing the thing." That was the greatest teacher for me because what I started to realize was that every time I started feeling overwhelmed, that is when she started feeling overwhelmed. I started learning that the way I was controlling myself internally was the same emotion I was delivering to them.

I was like, "I am anxious. That means they are anxious. When I am mad, they get mad. When I get crazy, they get crazy." It became a game of I need to control myself so that I can invite them to be calm and composed with their work. I am in debt forever. Eternally, I am in debt to Angel because of that lesson that she taught me. That was my experience. I do not know if you have something similar.

That is great. You came to the realization. That is great self-realization or self-awareness. Some people, when they call you out, you might still not listen to them. You might still reject them. I am stubborn to a fault. The first few times, I did not listen very well. I still go with the same habit. It is just your brain rationalizes things until it really gets bad. You have labor investigating things like that. It really got bad.

That is when you start realizing, "Let me start chilling a little bit and then see what's going on." I think that is why it got to that point. Same experience as you. The reception or the front desk was the biggest turnover for us at that time. When I started improving my emotional awareness because, since being a kid, I knew my IQ was always high, because I was trained, and when I was younger, before I had all my surgeries, I remember things very quickly.

I look at my book once time and I remember the information. My fourth surgery changed things. It still got me through school, though. I knew that was not a problem, but at the beginning, I was thinking, "If you are smart, then you can make a successful business." That cannot be further from the truth. You have to start working with people. I improved my EQ. That is when I feel like everything changed for me. Not only with the companies, even with my personal relationships, everything improved at that point.

That is, whenever I started allowing myself to be calmer and composed and grounded. It invited my team to be calm and composed, and grounded. That was the gift that I gave. I learned how to give that gift. Whenever I started learning how to give that gift, that is when my team started becoming fans of me. They started telling me, "I love working with you. You are an amazing boss."

Not because of anything more than that. It was just me being composed, choosing to have more grace and choosing to listen more than I talk, especially through the hard things. That was the gift. That built a lot of trust, and that also allowed my team to give that gift to the patients, because we started learning about that. I can remember maybe 3 to 5 years into business, I still have some people on my team that are still with me from those times, from the early days.

They tell me all the time, especially people who joined the team, "Adam is not the same person he used to be." You do not know the old Adam. That guy was crazy. We have conversations about how, actually, I am the same person. I just have different habits. These are the habits and skills that I learned.

That actually becomes the foundation of our leadership development training. When we put language to those skills like EQ or emotional intelligence, that is the language that my team starts to use with each other. They start teaching each other that, and that is the language that the patients have as well. There are many times when patients in our clinic will stop me, and they say, "Adam, I want you to know that when I came here, I just came here to get my knee better. I feel like I got a little more than that. I feel more grounded when I am here. I feel more present when I am here."

I have gotten that message from my patients. I truly believe it is from the work that I did. Not that it was all on me, but it was from the gift that Angel gave me that helped build that culture. As I am reflecting on that experience, maybe that is how we have developed raving fans. I am wondering if that is a little bit of your framework.

In the way we show up as leaders, you mentioned it, when you are upset, they get upset. The way we show up passes on to them. If we are not clear about how we communicate that, they will not be able to understand. They are not in our minds, and they will not be able to read our minds. When we start changing, and people say, "It's a different you," it is the same us.

We just know how to manage situations better. This is version 3.0 of me through the years. The way you said it is correct. When we started having the team respect us, we all shared the same values. That is one key thing in my hiring process. Through the years, we have developed a solid hiring process already.

One key thing is that we have to have alignment in my values, and we have ways that we do that. When you are all aligned, then you understand each other, you share the same goals, and you share the same vision. That is when they enjoy working. When they enjoy working for you, the patients can feel that, versus somebody who is just there to clock in and clock out.

People, when they work they just do not have to go over, above, and beyond. When they love what they do, that just comes naturally. When patients come in, they feel that. When I come in, and the patients see me, they would stop me, same as you, and they would tell me, "Your staff are awesome. They did this. They did that."

I did not ask them, and the staff did not ask them to tell me. I feel very proud when they do that. It is not because of how good I am. No. I am just proud of how my staff are showing up and how they are serving people, which is one of our core values, service. We are serving our community to the best of our they can and people are happy. That is how you create those raving fans because they bring other people.

We have strategies on how we do that, but that starts with that experience. If you do not have your staff as raving fans, they are not going to be able to produce that great experience for the patients because they are going to be forced. Also, you do not know what people say behind your back. If they are not happy, what is stopping them from telling their patients that their old boss is an a-hole? Those two are very closely connected. You cannot have a practice where you can not be in the practice day to day in the day-to-day things if you do not have your staff as your raving fans as well.

What I took from this, and correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds like building raving fans really starts with you as the leader. It really starts with your self-awareness and personal leadership. It starts with you learning how to be somebody that people like.

People like to be able to handle those tough conversations with either their staff or patients. Sometimes, the patients who are not your friendliest patients at the beginning turn out to be your biggest advocates.

It is more manageable to maintain a positive culture when you are by yourself. If it is just you and one person, you can grind through an eight-hour day and put a smile on your face and make your patients feel like you are happy, even if you are stressed. It becomes exponentially more difficult to do that whenever you are building something outside of yourself, whenever you start having 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 therapists in a building, and you are trying to create that outside of you. It is a whole different game.

It is not only the staff now, because we have a virtual staff. It is a hybrid. We have in-person, and then you have virtual staff. How are you going to make everybody happy or have that great experience with your company?

Book Recommendations From Regie 

I know we are getting closer to the hour, but if you can share a little bit about what some of the books that you have read, or what some of the things that you committed to that really helped you develop that sense of leadership and personal self-awareness?

The book that really helped me with my emotional and self-awareness is Emotional Intelligence 2.0. I read it many years ago. That started something in me and started changing things. That has been monumental for me. I know it is not a business-related book, but that has been the fundamental thing for me. For the business side, Atomic Habits has been very important for me because I want to make changes.

The quote from Maya Angelou says, “People forget about what you say, people forget about what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” I always make people feel great. They feel heard. They feel seen. You put in the process of how they can grow that exponentially. If any business out there is struggling with that or wants to get that result, especially if they want their team involved, I would love to be able to help them out.

We are live right now in the Facebook group. I will comment below. I will tag you in there. I will drop your email address in there, and then I will also drop Chris Williamson's stuff in there, too. This will also be a podcast. For you guys that are tuning in, check out the show notes. You will have Reggie's website and all his social media stuff. If you want to get in touch with him, I am a big fan of what he does. He has the PPO club stamp of approval.

Thank you, I appreciate that, Adam.

Thank you so much. I really enjoyed the conversation. Maybe we could do this again, maybe sometime next year. I love to tap into people like you just to learn how you are growing as a leader and just watch your evolution over your career. Maybe we can redo this sometime next year.

I love that.

Brother, be good. Merry Christmas. Happy holidays. I will see you later.

Thank you. Merry Christmas. Happy and healthy New Year.

Important Links

• Regie Tiu on LinkedIn
• Regie Tiu on Facebook
• Regie Tiu on Instagram
• Restore Plus
• Emotional Intelligence 2.0
• Atomic Habits