The Leadership Shift Every Business Owner Must Make To Scale With Spencer Shoemaker

The Leadership Shift Every Business Owner Must Make To Scale With Spencer Shoemaker

Our special guest, first time. Spencer, have we done this before?

I did one with Nathan before the Private Practice Owners Club conference in October 2025.

Some of you may have heard me talk about Spencer Shoemaker, I’ll do a quick little recap on who Spencer is to me. We went to PT school together. Sat right behind me. Behind me and to the right. I think you were to the right. You were looking at my right ear for the whole PT school and that's how we met. Right after school, we stayed connected because you started an entrepreneur journey, and we started talking about business, and that grew into what it is now. You're super successful as a business owner and we're partners in a few companies.

I just value the way that you think and that you approach things. I learn a lot from you and I figured people who read this could learn a lot from you too. I thought it would be awesome to just have you on and just pick your brain a little bit, talk a little bit about life, leadership, some of the lessons you're learning and add some value to the audience. Does that sound good?

For sure. I can do that.

What's been new for you. We'll just keep this conversational, but we're approaching the end of Q1, the last sprint at Q1. I’ve been talking to a lot of owners and it seems like this is where momentum usually should start to be kicking in because you're getting through that that one year hump. You should have some plans, a little bit of vision for the year. You should be positioning yourself to for the big push. As you think about where you are in your companies and the lessons maybe that you've brought with you from 2025, I'd love to hear what you're focused on right now and like how you're approaching the problems you're solving.

Shift From Being The "Most Important Person" To Empowering The Team

Yeah, thanks for having me on, first of all. I appreciate it. I repeat what you said. I get a lot of value out of the things just even sitting on one-on-one meetings with you every week, some of the things that you think of and bring up and how your brain operates, it challenges me in a good way to not only in that business but also other businesses. I think of I think the world of you as well.

From 2025, I think that every business owner probably goes into this where you start off and you don't really know what you're doing. You try to learn a little bit about everything and figure out what really fills your cup. I think over the last probably a little bit more than a year, the thing that has continuously filled my cup has been developing a team and developing team.

At some point, you become a business owner and you think you have to be the most important person in the room, you think you have to answer every question. You're not important unless you're the one that people come to. There comes this mountaintop where you start to work down the other side of that where you're like, “I am exhausted every week not only for running my company but also from having to answer every question inside of it.”

Obviously, you start off with your policies and procedures and that gets a lot of questions off your plate but some point in there you realize there's a lot of people around you that are working really hard and you realize it's for you. They're working hard for themselves but they're also working really hard for you because they see the time and effort that you put into it. They see your vision, they want to get behind your vision and they want to grow with you.

So not everybody is in it for themselves. A lot of people value a team approach and the strength of the team is what leads the way. I think over the last twelve months, in each business that I'm in, I took a step back from wanting to be the guy that everybody came to and really start to hone in my team and build them and give them some opportunity to make mistakes.

Honestly, that's when I learn the most, when I make some mistakes. People aren't really going to learn a whole lot of life or business lessons if they're not able to make some of those mistakes on their own. Taking a step back from the PT business I'm in, it was okay, these are the things that I'm good at, these are the things that I'm passionate about and it's not like I'm trying to offload the things that I'm not passionate about.

It's not like this exhausts me, so you can have it. I think the first issue that you can have is when you start delegating task and the and the people know that you're only delegating it because you don't want to do it. I think they feel that and that's not so empowering, in my opinion. People want to feel empowered that you see value in them and how they view business and how they view certain aspects in a different way than you would.

You're empowering them to make that decision and to them it then feels because they're better at it than you are not because it's not something I want to do. It took a lot of self-reflection it took a lot of like swallowing some pride on I don't want to be this guy anymore. I want to develop a team I want to have a strong team I want to have a great work-life balance to then identifying who those teammates are.

It's really not that hard. I know this is conversational so I don't want to take over the whole thing but what are you trying to identify when? You view that as well. If you had to answer every single question inside of your business, you'd never get a work day done. What are you looking for inside of that? What are you looking for in empowering your team?

In the businesses that we're in together, I think I’ve told you this before, it's easy to have the easy conversations and the conversations that you're really good at this and this is why this is why I want you to take it on. It's really hard to have the conversations where you have to tell somebody why they're not meeting the standard. To me, I feel like you have a superpower inside of that to keep it, it's not personable at all. Let's keep it objective let's protect the business. We can go a little bit further into what I'm looking at from ‘25 to ‘26 but I think that the audience would get a lot of value out of how you approach conversations like that.

I love how you mention developing a team. I love doing that too. There are challenges that come with that. I’ve been really thinking a lot about business and practice owners and how to serve them and how to understand them. What I'm learning more recently is how do I make things easier? How do I make things simpler? I used to build systems that were like complicated and like needed to cover every single detail and I ended up overwhelming my team too much and I ended up causing them to be distracted and lose sight of the of the of the main purpose of the thing. I’ve been focusing on like how do I make it easy? How do I make it just like push the button?

Part of the thing that I look for in team members is I think the challenges to building a team really, I think really depends on like the leader that's in the room. For instance, my leadership style is going to be different than yours. Some people are going to gravitate to my approach. It doesn't mean it's right or wrong, just means it is and we can argue if it's effective or not.

You're going to do it a different way. You're going to lead your team a different way with a certain set of values and principles that are important to you. It doesn't mean it's right or wrong. It just means it is and that's going to create its own set of strengths and weaknesses. For me, personally, I look at, number one, are the people are they willing to be led? That's a big thing for me. Are you willing to be led?

Going back, you mentioned you've experienced this transformation from I'm the important person to I'm not the important person and I think that that's important that's a piece of it but also I think I haven't had a ton of success with not being the person who is really clear on what the outcome is needs to be, that understands what the standard is.

It doesn't necessarily mean I have to be important but I do have to be that person that's like, “This is the standard.” I have to be the enforcer of that. Maybe the next question is how do you balance that where it's like I'm not important but I am going to step in whenever the standard is not met? How do you keep that distance that's needed to be effective at that?

Starting With Accountability And Having Tough Conversations

To answer that question, I’ll still lean towards I think there's different levels of leadership, of course. I’ve got my core group of leadership team. For me, it starts with accountability. I have to be willing to hold people accountable. There's a ton of friends and when you're going to hire, typically, there's two types of people you can hire. If I'm trying to start pelvic health per se, I can either go hire somebody that has a ton of experience inside of pelvic health and has done it their way or another company's way for a long time or I can go hire someone with not much experience and I can train them how I would like for it to be done.

A lot of people think that if they hire that first person who has a ton of experience, they can just step back. I think that's a problem because they may be a great pelvic health therapist but that doesn't mean they're following the same standards of your company and they don't have the same values of your company. They have the same personal standards as a treating therapist but they don't have the same approach and all the things that you would want in your business.

It could be argued sometimes it's easier to hire that person with experience and start a program but honestly I think the most important thing is to find somebody that you align with and that your business aligns with the most and grow from there, whether they have experience or they don't. I think to answer your question I’ve got to start with being able to hold my people accountable when they're not willing or they're not reaching that standard that you're talking about. I think that the problem that a lot of business owners will run into is like that's not quite the standard but it's good enough. We're almost getting the job done.

Also, I don't know what the standard is.

We haven't really completed our vision yet to know what success looks like. To talk about a couple of calls that we've had in the businesses that we're together in I like when you end a call with what seems like success to you. There then you really know what they're thinking and then you typically say, “What looks like success to me is this. What is something that we both how do we both win? How does the business win?” When you asked that question just a second ago, the answer that comes to mind is accountability. You have to be willing to have those tough conversations and hold people accountable even when they're your friends.

I’ll speak on a subject that I had. One of the issues that we're running into inside of our therapy company is we went through a little bit of a couple of our providers were not credentialed. When we figured that out, we're like, “Okay, we're going to keep seeing these patients but we're going to get credentialed.” We went through this phase of we were essentially treating a few patients for free.

I'm not saying that's the best policy I'm not saying it's the worst policy but it's what we chose to do. There are certain reports you can run and when you run this one report inside of we use Raintree, it's called an Authorization Exception Report. It basically gives you the total amount of how much we gave away in treatment per se.

We got through the credentialing hiccup and we had a couple of therapists, and he'll listen to this and he'll laugh as I'm talking about it because we talked about it and you know him. He's one of the therapists that went to school with. A lot of patients will come in and they'll have had surgery and we'll treat them for a visit. We'll do the eval. If they have certain insurance, their authorization takes a while.

For a great therapist, you're like, “I need to get them in. I don't need them to scar over. I need to go ahead and start treating them.” There was a certain way inside of Raintree that you can set the note type as different. It was called a P-note. He had figured out how to put them as a placeholder. He could schedule them as a P-note and so they wouldn't get lost in the shuffle but they still had a placeholder on the schedule even when they didn't have auth. He looked up and if we're behind on auths, we've been treating this patient for free for three weeks.

I walked into the office and like, “What are some things that we can do? What are some systems that we can implement that this does not happen again?” He eased around like he knew what I was talking about and I'm like, “How do we stop using the P-note?” He just smiled and he's like, “The only reason I'm using it is because I want the patient to get treatment.”

I'm like, “We don't disagree about that. I also want the patient to get treatment. Insurance is not fair sometimes. I get it, but if you're looking at it from my point of view you're seeing them for free and it's not affecting you you're still getting paid. As the business which we have to protect first, I am now paying you to see a patient for free so I am losing money on this deal. I didn't get in business to make money but I did not get in business to lose money either.” He's one of my best friends that I just had to have an accountability, just a quick two-minute conversation with and I think that if you have a mutual respect for each other, those conversations are not that difficult. It's like, “I see what you're saying.”

I can see his point, he can see mine. We can agree to disagree. We typically don't do that. Typically, there's some silver lining but you have to be able to have the accountability conversation so that they can see your point of view as well. If I'd have just walked in and said, “Stop doing that.” I'm not saying you have to give a why every time but that was an easy two-minute conversation on them understanding from a business perspective why we can't. I think that if you really dial it back to what a lot of issues in business are, it's that. There's a lot of people out there that don't want to hurt their friends' feelings, they don't want to hold people accountable and there's you know certain instances inside of a business and those start stacking up.

If you're not willing to really hold any of them accountable, it's a recipe for disaster. I think that starting off with my core group, I have to be willing to hold them accountable and at some point, that has to drip down from my leadership team to the people that are underneath them. They have to be able to hold their level accountable as well. I think probably one of the most important things inside of business is to be able to and willing to hold people accountable even if the conversations are tough.

I love how you approach that conversation because have you ever read the book Crucial Conversations?

Yes.

Pretty good book. I don't remember exactly every single part of it but one of the keys to success with those hard conversations is your ability to create to create some type of area of common ground. Usually, that common ground in my experience is the value or the principle in which we're going to choose to operate within. In your case, you were able to define that with some language that was able to be easily understood and agreed upon with this person, which was here's let me let's zoom out. Here's the situation.

Here's what's really happening and how and this is the piece that's the big problem. Let's talk about fixing that. You were able to create that thing that was separate from you and it became a problem that you could attack together. I feel like that is so important to leadership and influence, to be able to create that agreement around that principle. If you can create these principles of operation throughout the business that you're going to hold true to and you can create agreement on those principles, then you got a team that's bought in.

You can distill that down into a value. I'm sure that there's like a core value that was relevant that you could probably put a word to that. I feel like that's really what's the foundation of creating that buy in with the team. To piggyback off that, I think leadership is obviously starts with understanding who you are and the values and principles in which you believe in and you choose to operate within and working on becoming the person who can model that standard.

You can start actually like building some trust with yourself. That unlocks your ability to like hold your team accountable to that standard because you've been the person that can do it. I think leading yourself is key but then I think that maybe goes back to my point in the beginning which was making sure you have a team that's willing to be led. Did you have something to add there?

I think when you strip it down to the bare bones of it, it's important who you hire. They have to know that you're in their corner you want them to succeed and you have to know that they're in your corner and we're collectively working towards the same thing and if is an if it's an insurance issue, that issue's not going to get in between us. That's an issue that we both have to work around.

We both have to work around that to get to our common goal, which is, first and foremost, getting the patient seen with quality care. Second, make sure that we're getting paid from an insurance provider. I think that if you questioned any of the team that's around me, those are our goals. I want the patient to be taken care of, the company to be protected and the employee to be paid and there to be an even exchange.

In your words, I think that you use a good bit there to be an even exchange between the company and the employee like we are all working towards the same thing. We want this to be fair. We want the company to be protected. I think that if they know that deep down and you know that deep down. Everybody's willing to come up with a resolution.

The Importance Of Holding A Clear Standard To Gain Confidence To Let Go

I just had this revelation because I think you just answered my question. My original question was how do you create that distance? How do you become the not important person in the room? In my mind, I thought typically, what we do in the beginning, and I still fall into this trap. I think we all do. We want to get in there and we want to own the thing we want to be the person to solve the problem. We want to own the process and we want to micromanage the whole thing. Especially in the beginning, like we've had some startups recently that have been hard and we've had to be a little more hands on.

The thing that allows you to learn to let go, part of the thing is you being very clear on what the standard is and number two, having the courage to hold that standard no matter what. Nothing can rock that standard because if you can hold that with a level of safety, that is the thing that gives you the confidence to let go of the details.

To add on to that, I think you said it like you're worried about every detail, you overwhelm your team but truly, there's no way that one person can worry about every single detail. You're figuring out what's important for you and what's a win for you. Truly, if you can enlighten your team and you can empower your team, they're going to figure out way more details than we even had capacity to get to in the first place.

Learning how to create those principles that you want and building the language that describes them cleanly and having the courage to be like, “I'm going to stand behind this no matter who believes me or not,” and having the courage to hold tight to that standard will unlock growth, but that's not it because there's more to it than just that. Part of the thing that I get in trouble with is when things go wrong. Everybody's got a plan until you get punched in the face. You know this about me. I tend to worry a little more than you.

I tend to get a little restless and I get antsy when things aren't clicking at the highest level possible. That could be money's tight, that could be somebody on the team's got an attitude and I don't like it or it could be the clients are upset. We’ve got to fix it. We’ve got to get the clients better. I have this compelling urge to jump in and want to just fix it now, which is a problem and that's disruptive. I know that. It's still hard to fight that. My question for you is do you experience a version of that or are there other triggers that make you really want to jump in? How do you make sure that you handle those situations appropriately?

The Struggle Of Taking Team Challenges Personally And The Solution

I think that my struggle is I feel like I take things personally too much. To talk more about that, I think for me, I want to create a standard and I want to create some systems that it's easy to follow. I'd love it if 70% of everybody's daily job was step-by-step this is how we complete it. That last 30% in my brain, I'm like, “As an employee or as a patient, I have taken care of you at every single turn.” Everywhere that I can, if there's a 50/50, you win and I'm going to take the brunt.

There comes a point in time where in that 30% of the things that aren't inside the systems or the policy or procedure you have a standard that you would hope that they would follow. They would fall under that. When the and when there's certain times that people go rogue or they do something more self-serving than beneficial for the company, it really bothers me. I think that the word that you've used in the past is when people challenge certain things. When people challenge me on certain things.

They want to challenge the principle. They want to challenge the whatever framework. The agreement was already made and now we're breaking we're breaking the rules.

For me, maybe this is selfish, but I try to surround myself with people that think like I do or care like I do. I know that everybody's not always going to match that same they're not going to think exactly the same. I'm not saying they care less but they care differently. I feel like my struggle is sometimes I take that personally because then I'm like now I have to step in and I have to be the bad guy. I feel like every single time that something like this has come up, I'm always the good guy. I'm always the one that moves to the side and you win. The moment of time that I ask you to do that for the company, it really bothers me.

I think that's probably my biggest struggle inside of business, trying really hard not to take things personally. At the end of the day everybody works to provide for their family and to provide for themselves. That's why you work. If 100 % of us did not have to work, chances are, nobody would work. I think that you probably get to where you are in ownership and stuff like that because you truly care about your business and the product.

Also, the people around you and you hope and expect that that would be reciprocated most of the time. When it doesn't feel reciprocated whether they didn't mean it personally or not, sometimes I’ll jump to that conclusion. I get defensive. Even when people mean well, sometimes my brain will go to worst case scenario and that's a struggle.

How do you see that disrupting your leadership and what safety nets do you put in place to make sure that that doesn't compromise your judgment?

I think that for me, typically, a conversation pretty quick after because I may sleep on it for the night but I'm we're about to talk about it. I feel like I can get the emotion down and I can have a calm conversation but typically, after a conversation, I can see their point of view and I can explain my point of view and we see each other's side. It's like, “I was really jumping to a conclusion there.” Sometimes I'm not.

Sometimes I don't jump to a conclusion and at that point when I realize that maybe we're not as connected like our leadership team isn't as connected on various things, I feel myself separating just a little bit. I don't quite trust you with everything that I once did as much. Maybe that's not good. I feel like that's my protective mechanism. To answer your question, the things that I put in place is typically follow up with a conversation. Typically, those are not going to be a text conversation. It's going to be I'm going to pick up the phone and call or I'm going to try to hit you in person if I can.

For me, hearing the emotion in someone's voice, hearing the tone in someone's voice, it does a lot for me. You can mistake text all the time like they put a period instead of an exclamation mark. They're mad. I feel like just being able to feel that between them a conversation goes a long way with calming down those triggers or those issues. At the end of the day, once you work through that scenario that you weren't as pleased with, for me, if it's something that could come up again it's time to create a policy. I don't want this to happen again.

Let's operationalize that. My default is fear, worry. Fear and worry makes you irrational. I seek control over the thing and that somehow, if I can control it, I won't have to worry about it. I can put my finger on it, which is not good for scale. I try to systemize my fears. How can I systemize the control around my fears and tighten those things up? Here's the thing, usually, when I do that, it makes things simpler and clearer for my team. I find myself being able to let go a little bit more.

I'm in a season right now where I'm trying to learn how to own that. That is my strategy to basically lead myself a little bit better. Another thing that's really helped me, Spencer, is having some advisor advisors and mentors around me who know you at that level and who know the way you think and know your weaknesses and know your blind spots because we all have them. A lot of times, there are people on your team who who've been with you since the beginning. They know all the good, the bad and ugly.

A lot of times, I’ll sit them down and I’ll just say like, “I'm thinking through this thing and here's the decision I'm considering. Would you be open to giving me some critical feedback around that? What am I missing? Is this me being a good leader or am I missing something?” Create a relationship with at least a handful of people on your team who you give permission to actually give you some critical feedback. I learn a lot from those things.

I learn a lot from those and that helps me too. I love what that mentioned the communication standard. I teach my team this all the time. There are levels of effective communication. Not everything should be an email. In fact, email is probably the lowest level. It's like email then maybe text I don't know if text is they're tied neck and neck.

The next thing is probably phone call. After that, Zoom call. After that, in person. If there are emotional or nonproductive communication within those channels, your job is to move it up the chain to seek the solution. I try to teach my team that like that was not an email thing. That was a call thing. You got to own that. I think that's a lesson that I’ve learned too, creating those communication channels.

Here's another question I have for you. Let's say you have a team member or a group of people around you who are working hard and they want to do good. They want to do a good job. They're just not getting the outcome. It's not good enough. I'm learning this lesson because here's the thing. There's not a lot of people in this world that are going to work as hard as you and I. Fair? My default is always to think, “They're just not working hard enough.” That's my immature default, which sometimes is the case.

Sometimes people need a little motivation but it's not the only thing holding people back. Sometimes they just don't know. They don't have the skill. What's your strategy on being a little bit more diagnostic around underperformance and how do you handle that? I'm the type of person that wants it done now. I have to have patience and understand like this is going to take 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. How do you do that?

I think that for me, one of the qualities that I cling to as a leader the most is to figure out what other people enjoy doing. What they're passionate about, what their strengths are. I feel like I'm always diagnosing that. If there's an issue to be brought up, I'm like, “What is this issue? Is this because this is inside one of their weaknesses? Is this because this is exhausting them because this isn't what they're good at?” I'm trying to look more towards their strengths. Is there some way that I could utilize this person into a different role? Is there some way that I could edit their job roles to add a couple of things that energize them make them happy and take away the things that doesn't fill their cup or it causes exhaustion and allow someone else to help that is good at that?

I think that I'm always like when things aren't going like I would want them to I'm always like going through that in my brain, maybe it was my fault. Maybe I put them in the wrong role to start with. Maybe I need to change some of those things. I think that's where I go to first when something's not going so well. Typically, a conversation goes a long way with that.

If it's something that we've created like a little ladder for growth inside the clinic and I go to them and I'm like, “I put you in this ladder because I feel like these are your strengths.” I go to them three months later and they're like, “I really am not enjoying this. I'm trying to get good at it because you want me to do it I'm not naturally good at that.”

A conversation will allow me to change gears and move them around to something like I was telling you about. Sometimes, you have those conversations and they're just not keeping up. At that point, you've got to decide are they hitting my minimum standard? Are they hitting our minimum standard for our company to still be successful or are they not? Are they a fit for this team long term or are they not?

I guess I'm repeating my answer to the last question but I feel like a conversation piece goes a long way with getting their body language and their emotion and their tone to figure out because chances are if you're not happy with what they're doing on performing, they may not be happy either. They bringing it up to you because they feel like they're letting you down and so having a conversation about it gives them free leeway to air it. It's not complaining, it's not giving up. It's just saying, “I know that you wanted me to do this. I just don't think that I'm the right person for this job. This doesn't fit my wants and desires.”

I'd say that 90% of the time, that's probably the case. You're only talking about a performance issue maybe 10% of the time. At that point, maybe the fit's just not right for you or for them. That's nobody's fault. We just got to find a fit that is. That's still your job as a business owner and as a boss. If that person doesn't align with your growth and with your company's growth, find them somewhere that it is, even if it's with a different company, even if it's in a different role.

I'm still in charge of you. I'm still responsible for you, so even if it's not inside my company, I'm going to make a vow to you. When I hire you that I want what's best for you as well. If this isn't it, I'm going to help you find that. I think that a conversation goes a long way in figuring out the underperformers whether it's that they just don't fit here or I just need to utilize them in a different way.

Using The Momentum Formula To Diagnose Underperformance

I want to share a few things with you and see if you've ever heard of this. Have you ever heard of the momentum formula? I had an executive coach and he shared with me the momentum formula. At the end of the day, you're trying to create momentum through your people. Momentum creates traction and traction creates outcome.

The momentum formula is vision, motivation, roadmap and capability. It's another way of saying that might be like vision, motivation, policy, skill. Vision is they need to understand the goal. They need to clearly understand what the ideal outcome is, why it's important, and what it looks like what it feels like. They need to be able to describe it and see it in their head the way close to the way you do. If I go to your team and I'm like, “What's the goal?” And they don't describe it to me exactly the way I see it, that's on you. That's the owner because what that will look like from your team is confusion.

I'm working real hard, I got the skill but I'm all over the place. I'm not beamed in on that goal. Second one is motivation. Are you and that picks up where you were. Is your team even motivated? Is this person even motivated to do this? Do they want to do it and are they intrinsically motivated to do it? And do they feel like the support and compensation level that they have is enough to inspire motivation to do the thing?

If they're not motivated, that will feel more like resistance from them. They're just not quite willing to sacrifice for the thing, which is different than vision, which is different than confusion. If your team is exhausted because they're working so hard but they're still not hitting the goal, it's probably not a motivation issue. Third thing is roadmap. Roadmap is like do they have a very step-by-step policy and procedure that is easy to follow and creates predictable outcomes? If they don't have that, I just don't know how to do it, that feels like a waste of time like I'm just wasting my time.

Lastly is capability do they have do they actually have the skill? Do they know do they feel like they have the intrinsic skills that will help them experience the result they're looking for? You can create a simple questionnaire for somebody. Just create a simple questionnaire that helps you become more diagnostic on which one of those might be missing for you to be able how for you to be able to understand where can I allocate my energy and resources for this person or this team in a more effective way to support them? It might not be a motivation issue. Might not be a vision issue. Might just mean your sops suck. I have found myself leveraging that momentum formula to help me be more clear as an owner. For those of you that are reading, hopefully that is helpful for you.

I want to add one more thing. One thing that also has helped me, especially with new grads because new grads specifically tend to be a little bit more emotional. When I think about growth in life like think about growth in a career. Growth on a team, growth in as a father, growth in your faith whatever it is. Growth is at some level a series of decisions and tradeoffs. It's like I'm going to sacrifice this thing so that I can get more of this thing. I'm going to sacrifice this thing so I can get more of this thing. I'm going to sacrifice coming off the floor and not treating so many people so that I can focus on working on my business. It's a tradeoff.

I see a lot of younger employees hitting a wall because they're not willing to make the trade or they're not even realizing what trade they're trying to make. I'm going to give you an example. How many times have you worked with a new grad who feels like they have to document an entire freaking essay on their notes because they feel like if I don't do this somehow I'm not a good person or whatever. They end up sacrificing their mental health, their personal health, their bandwidth, all the things. It's like what if we could let that go and decide this is a trade that we're willing to make? At some point, the standard that you have in your head is going to become the bottleneck. If you let this go just a little bit, look at what it opens up for you.

I also found success and breakthrough with team members when I'm able to understand what they're trying to grip and what they would need to let go so that they could grow. That helps me become more diagnostic as well. Hopefully that was valuable. As you’re growing these companies, where do you feel like you need to improve or get better at so that you can actually become a person that grow these companies?

The Goal Of Systematizing 70-80% Of The Workday

I guess we've, we've answered it a little bit, but I feel like what I was talking about earlier when I feel like the policies and procedures make up 70% of the work day, for me that feels like a win because a majority of the day is whether it's treating patients, when you graduate from PT school, you can probably treat a total knee. They know that part. The skill part's there.

Now it's time for me to teach them how to strategically document, how to make sure that I have taught them between the 8 minute versus the midpoint rule. You just work through which patients can I see more than an hour with, which ones do I need to stay one in an hour with? It's my job to create a repeatable policy and procedure that they don't have to do thinking for 100% of the day because that creates exhaustion.

I think for me, in any business, whether it's therapy or whether it's whatever business it is, I need to create policy and procedure that 70% to 80% of their work day is systematic. I'm helping with maybe me or someone right below me is helping with the other 20% to create more systems for that. I think that that can always improve. I think that we could I think that in a lot of businesses or in my therapy clinic, it's called a practice for a reason.

You're always practicing. I think that if you're not fine-tuning your systems and your policies and your procedures, then you're probably going to fall behind because there's every day efficiencies that are being created. Whether it's your EMR, whether it's AI, whether it's virtual assistants, whatever you can utilize to create more efficiency, I absolutely think you should. You've got to create enough alignment with whatever team you have to systematize a lot of their day and then try to create vision that they're thinking similarly to you.

If there's ever an issue that needs to be addressed, you address it right then with love. I think that I can always improve on that. I think that I can always be looking through the businesses that I'm a part of and figure out if there can be some more things that can be systematized and then feeding into my team so even when it's not systematized, they can start thinking like an owner. Even if they're not an owner of a business, they're an owner of that job. They start thinking like the owner of that job.

I’ve learned that boring repetition and systems leads to leadership and vision, not the other way around with people that we're trying to develop. When you're developing your people, it's like, just follow the checklist and shut up for a little while. After a year, once you can breathe this, then we can talk about dreams. If you try to do it the other way around, it gets messy. Awesome conversation. Super deep dive into leadership. I know I had another question, but I'm going to save it for the next episode, a little bit of a teaser. I appreciate your time. We'll circle back like maybe end of Q2 and we'll do another one. We'll catch up.

Sounds good. Thanks.

All right. Be good.

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