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In this episode, I am joined by Jamey Schrier, PT to discuss how the “gap in the game” can affect physical therapy business owners. Jamie explains that the gap is a concept introduced by Dan Sullivan, which involves creating an ideal vision for the future and then measuring oneself against that vision. This can often lead to feelings of disappointment and inadequacy. Jamie emphasizes how this concept can apply to physical therapy business owners and other entrepreneurs. Tune in to learn more about navigating the gap and finding fulfillment in your business journey.
Show notes:
[00:01:02] The concept of the gap.
[00:05:08] Progress, not perfection.
[00:09:07] Setting measurable goals.
[00:13:09] Moving closer to the ideal.
[00:18:23] Measuring progress towards the ideal.
[00:23:34] Happiness and extrinsic goals.
[00:25:31] Putting yourself out there.
[00:29:41] Belief in “more is better”.
[00:35:32] The writing reflex.
[00:37:02] Learned qualities of good leaders.
[00:42:26] Marketing and developing relationships.
[00:46:20] Being nicer to my younger self.
[00:48:04] Stay healthy, wealthy, and smart.
More About Jamey:
Jamey Schrier, P.T., is a best-selling author, business coach, speaker, and CEO of Practice Freedom U, a business training and coaching company. Jamey has helped hundreds of private practice owners Treat Less, Earn More, and live a life of prosperity and fun.
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Full Transcript:
00:03 SPEAKER_01 Hey, Jamie, welcome back to the podcast. I’m happy to have you back. I feel like you come back, you know, once or twice a year, every year we get a good talk around business and physical therapy and life. So welcome back.
00:16 SPEAKER_00 Oh, thanks, Karen. Appreciate being back.
00:20 SPEAKER_01 So today, we’re gonna talk about some things that I’m not very familiar with. So I’m kind of looking forward to digging in and asking some questions as we were talking before we went on the air. One of the things you asked me was, hey, do you know what the gap in the game is? And I said, nope, not even a little bit, never heard of it. So let’s talk about that. I’ll throw it over to you. Go ahead and define what the gap in the game is and how does that relate to physical therapy business owners or any, let’s say, entrepreneur, small business owner.
00:58 SPEAKER_00 Yeah, well, it’s certainly something to unpack, but I’ll try to keep it simple. So the gap is a concept that was originally created many, many years ago, 30, 40 years ago by this guy, Dan Sullivan. Dan was, or is, is he still alive? He was a mentor of mine, a coach. I was in his program. I was part of my coaching in my own business. And he has these different concepts. And the gap was a concept that talked about how people create an ideal. They create a vision in the future, an ideal of how something should be in the future. And what happens is, as we work towards that ideal, we tend to then measure ourselves against the ideal, against this vision in the future. And as you can guess that if you ever measure against something in the future, that’s not yet there yet, you’ll always feel less than, you’ll always feel disappointed. And the gain, G-A-I-N, the gain, the gap in the gain, the gain is when you actually have a starting point make progress towards something. And instead of measuring against this ideal and feeling less than, you measure backward against a starting point and you feel more than. Simple concept. And that’s the entire concept.
02:42 SPEAKER_01 And so how does that work in reality?
02:45 SPEAKER_00 Reality works like this. So when I have my practice, We had lots of ideals of how I wanted my business to be. And I would put together marketing programs and marketing strategies, and I would work towards them. They would work on some level, but not work to the level that I wanted them to work. So instead of looking backwards to say, Jamie, you increased referrals by 24%, I would say, Jamie, you’re a failure because we needed 40% of referrals. And now my energy goes down. My confidence goes down. Actually, Karen, I’ll start looking for other ways to market my business because quote, that didn’t work.
03:38 SPEAKER_01 Right. So we abandoned things a little too early, maybe. If we’re basing it on the future.
03:45 SPEAKER_00 Yeah. You could abandon things. You could feel like this doesn’t work. You could feel like I’m a failure. I’m imperfect. Your confidence is sucked. You’re disappointed. Your self-esteem gets hit. I mean, think about this. It’s all about how you perceive something. I mean, I can’t tell you, you know, as a coach and as someone who’s worked with hundreds and hundreds of practice owners in all different disciplines, I mean, a lot in physical therapy, but a lot of other disciplines, it’s amazing how many times I have to get people to look back at what they have done and what they have accomplished because they’re in such a negative place. Jamie, this isn’t working. I need to make $150,000. This just isn’t working. And I go, OK, well, where did you start? Where did we start here? And I would take them through this exercise. I go, tell me what wins you’ve had. Tell me what progress you’ve made. Tell me what milestones you did hit. Not what you did. It’s very easy to talk about everything you did. Tell me what you did. Just getting people to think in a positive way about something they’ve achieved immediately gets them out of this negative zone. And they start to look at the progress they’ve made. We have a great saying in our program that says, progress, not perfection. Progress, not perfection. And all of a sudden they start going, Well, I mean, we did go up 10% in referrals. Oh, and how did that work? Well, we’re able to see more people. And we were able to do this. We did do this. We did do that. So it wasn’t all bad. Like, no. Now the question that becomes, how do we build off of that? Everything becomes a positive, can do, let’s take a specific, Well, I guess positive is the best word, like a positive measure of how we’re doing something. It sounds so simple, yet our brain is wired against this perfectionist way of doing, right? Like we’re not given A’s for C work. We’re giving A’s for perfect work. The teacher doesn’t say, you know what, Karen? Awesome job. Really? I got a C, but you got an F last quarter. You got a C now. You did better percentage-wise than the person that went from a B plus to an A minus. No, no. We measure against the ideal. We measure against other people against the ideal. We’re measuring against other people that have four O’s and we seem like failures with a three, five. I mean, think about the entire education system of how it’s identifying this ideal. So that means they’re the high IQs, haves, and then what, everyone else fails? Everyone else isn’t good enough? You don’t get into the perfect school? Think what this does to people. Why would you want to try something? You and I talked about this idea of trying, taking risk. It’s very volatile out there in the world. It’s uncertain out there. It’s always uncertain out there. Maybe not quite as volatile as it is, but it’s certainly uncertain, uncertainly ambiguous out there. Why would you take a risk? If your vision of what you do is like an all or none, it’s all or none. Either I achieve this awesome business that gives me everything I want or I’m a failure. I wouldn’t take that risk. So that’s where this gap in gain mindset stems from. It stems from the people that work their butts off and all they keep measuring is how much of a failure they still are because they didn’t achieve this unrealistic ideal.
08:07 SPEAKER_01 And so how does that feed into goal setting and things like that? So, you know, oftentimes we’ll set goals that might be quarterly, maybe by yearly or end of the year goals. So if we’re going by that, it sounds like, well, why have a goal if we’re just gonna not have to work toward it? Does that make sense? Kind of playing devil’s advocate here.
08:32 SPEAKER_00 Yeah. So picture this, picture the horizon. Does the horizon exist? Can you see it? Yeah, the horizon is your vision. The horizon is important because the horizon gives you direction. So I want to go that direction. I would love this ideal situation to be like this. That’s healthy. And then you start setting measurable goals. Right? They have to be measurable. I can’t tell you how many times I work with people and it’s very vague goals, very like subjective goals. It’s not measurable. So you set your, let’s say quarterly goal and you can set your monthly sub goals and you can set your weekly objectives. That’s very healthy. And then here’s the kicker though. As you move towards them, by the time you get to the end of the quarter, I can’t tell you how many people that I’ve asked, I go, hey, we’re almost at the end of Q3. How’d you do? And guess what they said? everything they haven’t achieved yet. They do it every time like clockwork. It’s ingrained in us, everything you haven’t achieved yet. How do you think they feel when they say that? They feel down.
10:04 SPEAKER_01 Terrible, yeah.
10:06 SPEAKER_00 So all I do is I just ask them, well, what did you achieve? What did you do? How far did you get? Well, I mean, I did achieve this. I achieved this. And all of a sudden, they have a list of 15 things that they actually made progress on that’s objective. Like, you did this, yes or no. Yep, I did this. I improved this much percent. I did that. And that changes their whole perspective and how they look at the progress they’re making. And now they’re able to take that confidence versus that disappointment and then say, OK, Here’s what you did. Here’s what progress you’ve made. Well, what could you improve on next time? Not what did you fail at? That’s not conjunctive. What could you approve of? Well, I could do this differently. I could do this differently. Excellent. What did you learn? Well, I learned that when I do this, this is the result, but when I shift here, okay, and now what’s the plan for the next quarter? That’s exactly how. all of our people work with our team is keeping people focused on the progress you’re making, the vision that you want, but cutting it down into chunks of time, like 90 days, 30 days, et cetera.
11:31 SPEAKER_01 Right. Yeah. Yeah. And it reminds me of the book Aches and Pains by Louie Gifford. So it’s something that I do when I evaluate patients is they, and especially people living with chronic pain. So oftentimes they’ll say, oh, I didn’t do this. I didn’t do this. Or I can’t do this. I can’t do this because of my pain. They’ll say, oh, you know, I was able to take my dog out for a walk for like 15 or 20 minutes. And, but, you know, I was really hoping to do it for an hour. you know. And so he calls them pink flags, where instead of a red flag or yellow flag, when you’re evaluating somebody, he calls it a pink flag. So a pink flag is when someone says that they did something that maybe previously they weren’t able to do. So you make a note of it, but it often is accompanied by, but I wanted to walk for an hour. But a month ago, they weren’t walking for 15 minutes. Do you know what I mean? I’m just using that as an example.
12:30 SPEAKER_00 It’s called being in the gap. Yeah. They’re in the gap because they’re measuring against an ideal. Right, right. An ideal is all or none. Now, in that case, the ideal isn’t something completely unrealistic, but it kind of is because we talked about the horizon, right?
12:48 SPEAKER_02 Mm-hmm.
12:49 SPEAKER_00 What’s interesting about the horizon is, can you ever get to the horizon?
12:55 SPEAKER_01 I don’t think so. Well, maybe unless you’re flying into outer space, maybe. I don’t know. I don’t think so.
13:05 SPEAKER_00 Every time you move to the horizon, what happens?
13:07 SPEAKER_01 It just keeps going further.
13:09 SPEAKER_00 It moves that far away. Yeah. So what happens with, let’s say that patient, and that’s what’s interesting, we’re all experts at this. Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. I’ve done it with my patients. They come in, how are you doing? You’re all excited because you know they’ve made progress. And they go, well, I can’t do this, this and this. All they’re doing is measuring against the ideal, which is interesting because the ideal won’t be walking next time. As they get closer to the walking, that won’t be the norm anymore. The norm will be running. You’re walking now for an hour. Yeah, but I’m not running. You’re running now, but I’m not doing a marathon. You’re doing a marathon, but I didn’t finish as high as I want. This never ends. The closer we get to this ideal, the further the ideal becomes because we will change the ideal. Because our mental construct is I always have to be disappointed against something instead of looking the other way. I did this with my patients. I did the exact, I didn’t know what it was called at the time, the gap, the pink, the pink slip or whatever, the pink thing. But I always said, well, wait a minute. Let’s, let’s take a look at this. You came in like this. You couldn’t walk and now you’re walking. That’s something, isn’t it? Well, yeah, of course. I mean, that’s good, but it’s not this I go. I know it’s not that we’re working towards that, but if you constantly go home, you will think you are failing physical therapy. And we need you to be in a very good mental place here. If not, you’ll stop doing the work. You’ll stop showing up. Right. Something else will be more important because you’re like in your brain, this isn’t really working. I could just whatever I can get these results doing nothing. And then, of course, you stop coming and then you call back a few months later and you’re that much worse. Right. This is human beings. This isn’t business owners or whatever. This is human beings. You see it everywhere. And when you become aware of it, oh, my God, like you have the antidote. And your antidote is exactly what you’re doing, Karen. Your antidote is pausing for a second, and we’re having them reflect backwards. That is the secret. Reflect backwards.
15:27 SPEAKER_01 Yeah. It’s that combination. Yeah. It’s that sort of combination of reflection and affirmations. So you can reflect back to see where you’ve come from, but then you do have to, whether it’s an, you know, external coach or someone on your team or you yourself have to give that affirmation of like, yeah, I did do that, you know, or isn’t that awesome. I was able to do that.
15:53 SPEAKER_00 Do you see how coaching works? Yeah. Therapists, we’re coaches. Yes. We physically can work with people, but I would, I would submit that how we mentally work with people is just as important because of how often we see them and realizing that this is an art and a science. The art is what we’re talking about here, that connection. So with, with practice owners, you know, business owners, I mean, you keep putting yourself, I mean, here’s a quick story. So, you know, a few years into my business and I’ve shared this story before, I was like, I started feeling like I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I was like, I need help. So I was looking around, I was looking for someone, like, I need someone to help me. And there wasn’t that many programs, only a couple. And I’m not gonna say any names, but you know, the people I’m talking about most likely. And so I signed up for the program, wrote a huge check, $30,000, didn’t have $30,000. That was my first check that I wrote for a program. And they talked about this ideal concept, not the one I talked about, but they talked about this ideal concept. They called it looking at your ideal scene. or looking at your ideal employee. And that made sense to me. I said, okay, visualize that, write all that stuff down. And then a few months into the program, I started feeling more anxious. My angst was higher. I was on edge more. I didn’t know why. And that lasted for a little while. And it kind of came and went, whatever. A couple of years later, I learned this concept, this concept of the gap in the game. And it hit me why I felt angst. Because they were actually teaching to measure against the ideal. You were always measuring against the ideal because you could always do better. Yes, this is good. It could be better. Well, they were looking at it from, I guess, an improvement standpoint. I doubt they were looking at it to make you feel bad, but that’s the way I was taking it. And once I learned this, I realized the ideal wasn’t the problem. It was how I was measuring my progress towards it. I measured forward instead of backwards. I started doing that. I started becoming more confident. And then you, as you know, once you start having confidence, good things start to happen. Your brain starts to change how you think about things. And then your progress starts to accelerate and exponentially grow.
18:49 SPEAKER_01 And do you think that your, how you said your brain starts to think about things differently and does it feel like that extra confidence you have then allows you to take more risks? Because if you’re not confident, you’re not going to take any risks at all.
19:11 SPEAKER_00 Well, I mean, one of my mentors, a different mentor, told me, he goes, Jamie, business is a confidence game. And I never really understood what she meant. But the more I’ve been in this world of business and coaching, especially coaching other people that are in businesses, the more I’ve realized it’s such an emotional game. We’re human beings. We are emotional creatures. Everything we do and decide on is emotion, no matter how factual we might think we are. The emotional centers in our brain, it comes first. So any decision you’re making, let’s fix it. There’s emotional components that are rationalized, that are justified rational. So when things happen in our business, which they do, how you handle your emotions, how you recognize your emotions, and I do a lot of work and I’ve done a lot of work in training and emotional intelligence, that is what’s gonna determine your success. That’s gonna determine your happiness. That’s gonna determine how you connect with people. That’s gonna determine how you hire and retain and connect with docs and all this other thing. So this is an emotional game. And if you can find ways, very concrete ways that you can use to develop how you maintain and increase your confidence, you will outshine, you will blow away anybody else that doesn’t have that confidence. It’s not how much you know, it’s how well you can handle your own stuff. So yes, when you start to use this idea of measuring backwards your progress as a way to increase your confidence, there’s other ways too, that is gonna allow you to think more clearly, allow you to be more creative, allow you to innovate. This isn’t just random stuff. This is research stuff. This is high performance stuff. This is high level athletes. I mean, this is really big things out there that people are investing a lot in. But we can tap into this too.
21:27 SPEAKER_01 Yeah, and I think that’s really great advice. Like you said in the beginning, especially for PTs, because we tend to be type A’s, we always want to get the A in class or the A plus maybe, maybe the A’s not even good enough. I remember once in school, I think I got like a C plus and I was like, I never even saw that letter before, a C. I never had a C in my life. And I had a C in like organic chemistry or something like that, or a C plus. And I was like, I don’t even know what this is. So I was definitely one of those people, certainly overachieving and always wanting to get the highest, whatever that is. And then I started my business and things changed. So then I was like, you know, I feel like if I’m like up there at like 60%, like that’s amazing. You know, I think that’s really good. So yeah, things definitely changed.
22:31 SPEAKER_00 Well, it’s interesting what you said, Karen, because you said that’s really good. It’s only good if you think it’s good.
22:37 SPEAKER_01 Right. And I think it’s good. And I’ve also come to Oh yeah, I was gonna say, I’ve also come to the conclusion of like, I’m pretty happy with where my business is.
22:52 SPEAKER_00 And gosh darn it, people love it.
22:53 SPEAKER_01 I like it. Yeah, I mean, I like where it is. I know all you hear is you have to scale, you have to grow, you have to have more people, you have to have, and I was like, I’m good. I’m pretty good. I don’t know that I want to be managing a bunch of other people because I want to do other stuff too. I think it’s really good if you get to that place.
23:19 SPEAKER_00 You have to be a strong person to do that. I admire you for being so clear and being confident and I’m good with me. You’re not shooting for some ideal of, if I do this, then I’ll be happy. Happiness isn’t some extrinsic thing. It’s just you being happy because you choose to be, and there’s things that you do that give you joy. But when you put this arbitrary thing on, well, I’ll be happy when I make you know, a million dollar practice, then you make a million, you’re like, well, yeah, I’ll be happy when I make 2 million, you make it never ends, I’ll be happy when I buy the car. And it’s just like a dopamine hit for like, for like two seconds. And then of course, you have to show everyone your car because you’re getting additional dopamine. But eventually, it’s just you and your car. Right? So what is the real meaning? Right? Or maybe it’s trying to fill something that’s lack. So to have someone, and I love what you said, because this is something that I really embrace with our clients is, you get to create this game. You get to create what it looks like. You get to create what you want. And I cringe every time I say, well, Jamie, what is someone else doing? I go, it doesn’t matter. well, what’s the benchmark? I go, it doesn’t matter. I go, if I wanted you to just hit benchmarks, benchmarks are averages, you’re not average. Just do you, just create what makes you, not even make, it’s not what you need, it’s just what you want. You don’t have to justify to anyone. I mean, we can talk all day about judgment,
25:02 SPEAKER_01 Right.
25:02 SPEAKER_00 We all feel judged. We all feel criticized, condemned. And we do that to ourselves. Well, I’m not going to put myself out there because someone might say something. It’s hard to be out there. I mean, doing what you’re doing, I’m sure you’ve gotten maybe a couple of critiques in your.
25:19 SPEAKER_01 Of course. It becomes a part of it. Right.
25:24 SPEAKER_00 So you can hide and stay small. I don’t mean small in business. I just mean small. Mm hmm. or you can put yourself out there and the rewards go to people that are out there.
25:35 SPEAKER_01 Right. Yeah, absolutely. And whether people are out there making a positive difference or out there, maybe not making a positive difference, they’re the ones out there. So if you’re not going to be the one to go out and and be vocal or help people because you have something inside you that can help other people. Someone else will gladly fill those shoes and they might not be able to do it as well as you can, but they’re the ones out there.
26:08 SPEAKER_00 So I always have fun with people. This is sometimes when I work with, we work with sometimes the staff, the management team, obviously of the clients. And everyone talks about, I just wanna help people. I just care about helping others. And I love to dive deeper into psychology of what does that actually mean? You care about helping others. What is it that you wanna help others? How many people do you wanna help? Oh, I wanna help as many as I can. Then why is the magic number like eight people a day, when you can help more people than that, like, it’s like, well, you don’t want to help people. You want to stay in your comfort zone. Even if it means not helping more people. So there’s a lot of again deep seated. influence that we have that forms our opinions about something. Our professors do it, our industry does it on a lot of cases, school and all that kind of stuff. And we get out and I’m sure you’ve heard this, but so many business owners are like, what are they teaching them? They come out with these warped perceptions of things. And I go, it’s not warped. It’s called influence. Being influenced and persuaded to think a certain way, not intentional. I don’t think there’s any malice. It just is. Where the problem is, is we’re so unaware that it’s happening. So, you know, when you get people going into business, if you go into business with these, this wiring that you have, you’re going to struggle. You’re going to struggle because like you said, you know, failing is a big part of business. Fail, learn from it, fail, learn from it, fail, learn from it. Eventually you’re going to get some things right. And the faster you can go through that cycle, the faster you’re going to get there. But if you’re afraid to fail, you’re going to struggle with the same thing over and over again, but you’re going to keep looking for the answer somewhere out there.
28:10 SPEAKER_01 Right. Right. And that’s the, the shiny new things syndrome where you keep, I’m going to buy this. I’m going to buy this course. I’m going to do this course. I’m going to do this and this and this, but I’m not going to put myself out there, but I’m going to keep buying all the courses.
28:23 SPEAKER_00 You know what I mean? You fall in love with learning, right? You fall in because we’re learners. We love to learn. We love to know. but at some point it got to actually do the shit. Try something, implement anything, and then learn from it.
28:42 SPEAKER_01 Right. And you don’t have to implement everything. You can do one thing.
28:49 SPEAKER_00 Less is more. That’s a great book, by the way, The One Thing.
28:53 SPEAKER_01 Yeah. That’s all you have to do one thing. Like I was saying to someone who’s a patient or something last week, I can’t remember, but I was like, well, why don’t you just do this one thing for a week or two and see how you feel. And if that one thing feels okay, then maybe we’ll add another thing. and we’ll see how that feels. And if that feels good, we’ll keep those two things and just maybe add a little more load to just those two things. And it’s hard to get people to wrap their brain around something because they think I have to do all the different things. I have to do all the things or else I’m not going to go anywhere. Instead, you can do one thing and then you can add load to that one thing and see how far that takes you.
29:38 SPEAKER_00 Let me throw this at you then. What if you believe more is better? Like, let’s say that was a belief in your brain. You don’t know where it came from. It’s just more is better. Would that affect how you treat a patient?
29:55 SPEAKER_01 If that was my belief? Yep. Maybe it would have in the past, but not anymore because I’ve learned- Not you now, the hypothetical more is better you. I mean, Maybe, I’m sure it did. I mean, looking back, I’m sure I’d see someone the first time give them eight exercises and send them on their way, which is insane.
30:19 SPEAKER_00 So there’s the example. If I believe more is better, it shows up with my patient by giving them a stack of exercises and says, here you go. Go ahead and do these. So when I talk about how you think about what you do, how you think about your business, how you think about your team, how you think about your patient, 100% reflects how you actually do stuff with them, which affects the results. What you think, The actions you take equals results. It’s really just that simple. So if you want to change results, you have to change actions. And if you want to change actions, you have to change how you think about it. Now, you can act your way to a different way of thinking. You can think your way. to take different actions, but you can’t think your way to action. You’ve got to eventually actually act. So the thinking part is, I’m learning all this great stuff, but every two minutes you’re learning more. You’re learning, you’re watching more podcasts, you’re getting books, you’re bragging. I read three books last week. It’s like, but did you implement just one of the concepts and actually experience it for yourself? No, I’m just going to keep learning more. right so sometimes i think you know um i love the less is more kind of mantra less is more simpler is better take action on one thing try it and then we call it debriefing but it’s reflecting what happened give me something positive Give me something you could do better. What’s the lesson learned? What’s the next action step? I mean, that is the set four-step process we do every single time with every single client about everything that we do. I debrief everything. I’ll debrief this podcast. What do I think I did well? Next time, what could I do a little bit better? What did I learn from this? You know, what would I do the next time I’m on here or next time I’m on another podcast? Like, you know, someone once said the greatest teacher we all have is our past experiences. Right. Too many times we’re not going back to actually grab the goodness from it. We just keep looking about forward.
32:43 SPEAKER_01 Yeah. No, I love that. The debrief, what went well, what could you do better? What did you learn?
32:50 SPEAKER_00 And then what’s the next step? Yeah. What’s the plan? What’s the, what’s the plan? So if I’m doing this with a, so if you’re, let’s say you’re working with a staff, you, you have staff people, right?
33:01 SPEAKER_01 Do I have staff people? No.
33:03 SPEAKER_00 I thought you have a, I thought you have other therapists.
33:06 SPEAKER_01 Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have another therapist. Oh, okay. Sorry. Yeah.
33:11 SPEAKER_00 So you have other employees, other staff.
33:13 SPEAKER_01 So, you know- I thought you meant like an office staff.
33:16 SPEAKER_00 No, no, no. So this week, I’m sure you meet with your people every week, every couple of weeks. Start the meeting with what is one thing that really went well this week. One thing you feel good about. One thing that you just did really well. It could be it could be how you do it, it could be a treatment, whatever. Maybe a patient did something really great or whatever it is. Okay, what is one thing that you could do better? One thing you can improve? Well, I didn’t say one thing you did wrong. I said one thing you can improve. Positive way of looking at it, right? Proactive way. Well, I probably could do this better next time. Okay, tell me about that. They tell you about it. Like, okay, so what did you learn from this? Well, I learned that if I did it this way, I would probably get this result, which then would result in this. Great. So knowing all that, what are you going to do next time? Well, next time I work with that patient, I’m going to do this. Love it. And then what happens is they start to learn when they come to a staff meeting or whatever, they start to learn they’re showing up with this actually already done. They took the time to think through.
34:32 SPEAKER_01 Right, right.
34:34 SPEAKER_00 This is how I teach staff meetings. This is how I teach one-on-one meetings. It’s a format, but the format has so much, you know, backed, you know, obviously there’s research and all this, but it’s so powerful how you start learning so much about what’s happening, but you’ve never seen it before because someone didn’t ask you these questions. And as leaders, cause you know, if we’re owners, we’re leaders, Our job is to ask questions, not give out answers. Answers are lazy, they’re cheap, they don’t help anybody. Sometimes someone just says, okay, do this. But 80%, 80%, we should be asking questions, not telling people.
35:19 SPEAKER_01 Yes, we’re the guide. We’re the guide. Be the guide, not the expert. Be the guide. Yeah, it’s called the writing reflex. It’s something like where someone tells you something that’s going on and you have to go in and fix it. You have to fix it. You have to fix it for them. And then what that does is it takes away their power and their resilience, and it doesn’t empower that person. Instead, it makes them dependent upon you. And that’s the opposite of what you want to do with patients or with coaching or really anywhere you are. So you want to try and stop that writing reflex and allow the patient or the client to take some control over their own situation and empower them and allow them to figure things out.
36:15 SPEAKER_00 Yeah.
36:15 SPEAKER_01 Otherwise, oh, it’s very hard to do. It takes a lot of practice and it’s it’s takes a lot to kind of hold back on the reins, I think.
36:25 SPEAKER_00 You said something very, very perfect there. It takes practice. It is a skill. Skills are learned. It isn’t some magical thing. You want to be a better leader. Leaders like to listen and leaders ask questions and leaders know about people. They know about themselves. I mean, that’s what everyone would agree. Those are the qualities of good leaders. Those are learned qualities. Maybe you have a little headstart because you have a natural something or other that you learned growing up, but they’re learned qualities. So, you know, you can’t get those just reading books until you got to experience those things. So when you start, you know, if you take this, I’d love to hear about it, but you start talking to your staff like this, You’re now truly mentoring them, because like you said, you’re empowering them, you’re allowing them to have their own experience with this. When you tell them, they don’t have an experience. You’re just making them want you more, which is feeding your own ego and desire, not theirs. Right, right. Which again, if we talk about this idea of practice freedom, you know, I love this idea of practice freedom. It’s okay, we’re gonna actually quote work less. We’re actually gonna have more, whether it’s more money or more time and all that. You see how it’s now done. It’s done because you’re empowering your team to take more into their life, which helps them become better, which means you’re not spending as much time being the expert of everything. That’s how you get more time back. And because they’re better, they’re gonna be better employees, better producers, better engagers, better on everything. I mean, talk about a whole nother simple concept is like, I don’t understand how you can not quote work less or do less and not make more and have more. The whole idea behind, of course we can work harder and have more, but that’s an equal sum game. I mean, eventually you can work. You’re trapping yourself, but that’s for another conversation.
38:43 SPEAKER_01 Yeah, no. And as we kind of start to wrap things up, what is your best advice to, let’s say, a young entrepreneur? And I don’t mean young in age, but young in the game of being a business owner. So they’re coming to you, they’ve just sort of set things up and they’re super psyched and can’t wait to, you know, do all the things, all the things, right? So what is your best advice for that group of folks?
39:18 SPEAKER_00 Well, initially, you know, when someone’s starting out, hey, it does take a lot of work. You gotta be willing to put the work in. There’s nothing without work. Yes. But I also know people 20 years in that are working harder than they did when they first started. That’s a problem. But in the beginning, hey, you’re gonna put some work in. What you wanna do is put work in, but put it, instead of just splattering stuff everywhere, let’s get clear on, I like one year. Yes, we can go three to five years out, but I even find that hard to do myself, because I’m- Yeah, me too. But I can do one year. So you’re just starting. One year from now, What does it look like if anything is possible? Now, when you do that, stay out of the how. Stay out of the how zone. Don’t start spending your time how to figure it out because you may not know how to do it. But guess what? There’s a lot of smart people in the world that can help you, but they can’t help you if they’re not clear what you’re trying to accomplish. So one year from now, what is that vision? What does it look like? Where will you be visit-wise? money-wise and all that, that exercise alone is tough because you don’t know. You have to make it up and that’s uncomfortable. So have the courage to create that. Then what I want you to do is saying, okay, the next three months, I like doing 90 day sprints. The next three months, what is, I wouldn’t do more than like two or three goals. What are one, two or three goals that would have to happen in the first three months, anything that you want that would put you on track to achieve your one-year vision. And then 30 days. So in the first 30 days, what are you going to focus on to achieve your 90 days? And then of course you could do it weekly. So what are you going to focus on this week? So when you get clear, and this is all about clarity, and you get aligned, you have to start, Karen, making decisions. Leaders make decisions. You can’t do it all. So start making decisions, which means you have to say a word that is very uncomfortable. Do you know what the word is?
41:44 SPEAKER_01 No.
41:46 SPEAKER_00 No. Yes. You have to say no to something.
41:50 SPEAKER_01 Yes.
41:52 SPEAKER_00 but you get to choose what you say no to. That means you are actively empowered that you’re saying, no, not yet. I need to do all this. I need to hire a lawyer. I need to create a website. I need to, you know what? Let’s put it all out there on the table. There’s 25 things that you quote need to do. You need to focus on three. What are the three that are gonna move this company forward? to start getting you the momentum you need to achieve your goal. Well, people that are just starting out, one of them better be marketing and they better be developing relationships with your influencers of your area. And it’s funny how, when I talk to people and I said, well, what is all your stuff? Marketing is never one of them. It’s never in the top 10. It’s all this other busy work. Well, I’m finishing up my business plan. I go throw it out the window. They’re like, why? I go, I want you to go out and have 10 people say they hate you and never want to refer to you again. What do you mean? I go, just talk to 10 people. And if they say they hate you and never want to refer you again, then that’s a win. Really? Yup. Because you need to get out there and connect with people because that’s the business that we’re really in. And if you focus on that, yes, you might have to focus on some other, you know, some other key things. But you know what? I built my company without a website.
43:22 SPEAKER_01 Oh, yeah, me too.
43:23 SPEAKER_00 I built my coaching business without a website. Jamie, you have a website? No, we’re working on it. OK, how do we get started? Jamie, you have lots of information about your programs? I go, nope, it’s what I’m telling you it is. We focus on the things we think we have to do. But when you strip it all away, all you really have to do is get someone in front of you and help them. That’s it. Everything else is secondary. And when you get that laser focus, guess what happens? You start getting people in the door. You start helping people. You start learning how to work with people. You start making money. I mean, especially if it’s cash business. And now you’re learning, but you’re getting paid to learn. One of my favorite sayings is always get paid for R and D. And everything is R and D. In other words, everything we do is just really a test for the next thing. Well, You can get ready to do all this stuff, or you can just get someone in the door, do no harm, work with them and get paid to work with them. Figure it out as you go. So for young people that come in, we do have a lot of young people that come in our program that are just kind of getting started. We’re like, do you want to do this the long and hard way? Or do you just want to do this the fast way? Because you have to go through the fire no matter what. They’re like, let’s just get to it. I go, great. Boom. And one year they’re crushing any friend they have that started at the same time, like making like six figures easy. Yeah. Yeah. You have to go through what it takes to build a business. You can’t go around it. You have to go straight at it. Some people want to go fast. Some people want to go slow, but you’re going to have to go through the difficult part of business no matter what. That’s what I’d recommend from an organizational standpoint, get that one year, do the 90 day, do the 30 day, but at the end of the day, just start connecting with people and see who you can help. That’s number one.
45:26 SPEAKER_01 Yep, great advice. And now, Jamie, where can people find you? Do you have a website now?
45:33 SPEAKER_00 You can find me, yes, I do have a website now. You can find me, we’re updating it right now, PracticeFreedomU, letteru.com. I’m putting lots of free resources there and different kinds of trainings and faster classes I’m doing. I’m just trying to put a lot more free stuff. I want people to use this stuff. I want people to engage. So you can find me there. Um, and, uh, you know, if, if the timing’s right, you want to talk more about how we might be able to help you. If you want to get out of the gap and start getting into more gains, coaching helps guidance helps. So you can always reach out to me and, you know, happy to speak to you.
46:12 SPEAKER_01 Perfect. And now since you’ve been on the show so many times, I don’t know if you’re running out of advice for your younger self, but what advice would you give your younger self? I feel like you’ve probably done this so many times. You’re like, I think I’m, I think I’m tapped out.
46:24 SPEAKER_00 No, it’s never, it’s never tapped out. Cause the more you learn now, like, you know, the more advice you have to give. Yeah. Like you all of a sudden go back to, so around this topic, um, I think I would, um, I would be nicer to my younger self. I would slow down more. and reflect on what I’m doing instead of being someone that’s in such a rush to do all this and expending so much energy, but not getting the results with the energy. I would have, you know, still energy, passion that always takes it hard work. That’s always part of what we do. But I would have, I would have used what we’re talking about. I would have reflected more in progress I’m making and use that as the guide to keep going versus just sure, like just muscling through muscling through, right? I wouldn’t have muscled through. You know what I would have done earlier, I would have found someone not to, you know, be honest with you, someone like me, I would have found someone that could guide me better than me listening to me. I can’t tell you how many years and money and time and angst and how much day probably could have saved myself.
47:42 SPEAKER_01 Right. Right. Well, I think that’s I think that’s great advice. And I thank you again for coming on. It’s a great conversation. I think people will get a lot of great nuggets of advice and truth out of this conversation. So thanks so much for for coming on again. I really appreciate it.
48:01 SPEAKER_00 Thank you, Karen. It’s always fun to speak with you.
48:04 SPEAKER_01 And everyone, thanks so much for tuning in and for listening and have a great couple of days and stay healthy, wealthy, and smart.