The One Thing A PT Clinic Owner Needs With PTO Club Coach Adam Robin

Adam Robin , the CEO and founder of Southern Physical Therapy Clinic , has joined the PT Owners Club as a business coach to empower PT owners to create freedom. In this episode, he shares the ONE THING he believes owners must develop to succeed in their businesses. Focusing on empowering and coaching your team helps them develop to provide the best patient experience. Leading your Dream Team to success will also lead your business to success. Based on his and Nathan’s experience as an owner, leader of his team, and coach to PT owners, he shares what is needed to take the next steps and grow from full-time PT to the full-time leader of a successful business. Tune in to this episode with Adam Robin and grow from today’s conversation.

—

In this episode, I’ve got a repeat guest. He is a good buddy, a friend of mine, and one of my very first clients as a PT owner, Adam Robin. He is the Owner, Founder, and CEO of Southern PT in Picayune, Mississippi. Adam, good to have you on.

I’m excited.

I’m excited to talk with you as well. For those who don’t know, number one, I’ve been coaching PT owners for the past few years. As I said, Adam was one of my first ones. Adam is joining me to be a PT owner’s coach as well under the Physical Therapy Owners Club show and coaching brand. I’m excited to work with you going forward as a coach for PT owners.

It’s crazy just to sit back and think about the journey because that’s what it is. It’s a journey. You start this thing called a PT business and you go down this road and the next thing you know, you meet some great people along the way, and then now I get the opportunity to maybe help somebody else too. I’m excited.

For those people who don’t know, I don’t promote it a whole lot on the show, but I do coaching for physical therapy owners. If you go to PTOClub.com , there is a Book A Call button anywhere on there where you can reach out to me individually and also, with Adam to do a discovery call to see where your business is at and to see if and how we can help you at all.

Those are free consultations, just like you might provide for your patients but we’d love to investigate and look into your business. What’s going wrong and how we can help you? We’re excited to not only bring Adam onto the team. It was a team of one. It was only me. Now, I’m bringing Adam on. I’m excited to have him on. Adam, what got you excited about coaching yourself?

We’re all coaches, in a sense, if you’re a business owner.

If you’re a small business owner, for sure you have to coach.

You’re a coach and you may be coaching your clients and that’s it. You then expand, you hire some people on your team, and now, you’re coaching members of your team. Maybe you develop a leadership or an executive team. Now, your level of coaching continues to expand. As I’ve grown, my purpose has continued to evolve.

I enjoy connecting with people at a high level and helping them realize new opportunities for themselves and discover new things that they might be able to implement into their businesses. It’s fun. It gets me jazzed up. What better way to develop myself personally and professionally than to wear that hat as a coach? That’s what gets me excited.

It’s fulfilling to help PT owners realize goals and achieve things that they didn’t think they could achieve or needed some guidance. That’s fun and fulfilling. I’m excited to bring you on to affect more PT owners out there to achieve the goals that they want to achieve. Before we get into that, for the people who haven’t read the previous episode with you, summarize your history for us, where you started, and what’s happening now.

I’m still a pretty young owner. We started our business in 2019 as a team of one, as you said. It’s been an awesome experience. It’s not easy, but through a lot of grit and determination over the last few years, we’ve expanded. We have about 30 employees now. We have multi-disciplines. We have PT, OT, and speech. We’ve opened our second location and we’re moving forward with opening a third location. Our goal is to get open in the next few days. Things have exploded over the last few years and it’s been awesome.

What are some of the keys to your pretty rapid success? As I was working with you as a client, I recognized immediately your determination and your willingness to immediately confront issues. You weren’t one to hem and haw and stew and brew. You were going to confront issues as they come up very quickly and address them and handle them so you can move forward. You also have a great vision for your company but what were some successful things that you had to do in order to achieve this goal?

We chatted about it a little bit a few weeks ago so I’ve had a few weeks to think about it a little. Ultimately, success is a pretty big word. Success means being able to be fulfilled in any way that suits you best and fulfills your personal purpose. To me, I’ve always felt like I’m a natch. I’ve learned to evolve as a leader and to develop some skills as a leader. Leadership is what fulfills me and not only growing my own leadership but also helping others develop their leadership skills.

Every now and then, you’ll get a young person who reaches out to me and they’ll say, “Adam, I’m thinking about opening up a business and doing this. What are the first few things to think about?” I always go back to leadership. I talk about leadership and nobody wants to talk about that. People want to talk about, “How do I make more money? How do I grow and expand?”

I can totally see where you’re coming from because the pivot point in my ownership journey turned from complaining about the business and not knowing what to do to eventually taking control of my business and seeing it grow, expand, and become more profitable. When I finally took hold of the idea that I am an owner first and a PT second, I had to spend time working on my business.

It took me probably 8 to 10 years to figure that out. I had at the time what you would call a successful PT clinic. It was a one-clinic show. It was me, another PT, and a couple of PTAs. We were productive and I wasn’t hurting financially. It was one of those things where I was waking up at 4:00 in the morning to do notes. I was leaving at 6:00 AM. I wouldn’t see my kids. I wouldn’t see my newborn awake first thing in the morning. Neither would I see them awake when I got home at 7:00 at night.

When I finally took ownership to say, “I can’t be treating full-time and I have to spend time on the business,” I then started setting aside two half days a week to work on the business. It wasn’t until then that I started seeing changes in my business. Simply taking on the leadership mantle and recognizing that I am the captain of this ship and that if I’m treating patients all day, no one’s manning the helm. I need to spend time managing the ship and making it go where I want it to go in order to achieve the goals that I want. I see where you’re coming from with a leadership thing.

Leadership is a big term too. You can define leadership in a lot of different ways. One of the key ways that we like to define it is leadership has very little to do with what you do, but leadership has everything to do with the way that you think. You hit on a point that I liked and I don’t want to miss it, but you said that you had to change internally. You had to change the way you were thinking about your role in the business first and nothing happened until that happened. That’s leadership.

I can remember my thought processes back in the day prior to that point of the pivot. Why aren’t all these people doing what they’re supposed to be doing? If they would just get their stuff done, then I wouldn’t have all these headaches. It was an abdication of leadership altogether. I wanted to abdicate all the responsibility to everybody else without taking on the mentality that they need direction.

They want training and accountability in the practice because they see the things going wrong in the business as well and no one, especially the owner, is doing anything about it. Until I recognize that, “They’re not doing anything because I haven’t been clear. I haven’t given the expectations. I haven’t laid out policy and procedure.” That comes from the leader and if you’re not doing that, then you’re not leading. It starts with that mentality first, as you said.

The first person that you lead is yourself. Business owners come in all shapes and sizes. I would say that and you can tell me what you think, but most of them are quick starters. They have a lot of ideas. They probably aren’t great employees. They don’t like to be told what to do. They want to do their own thing. They’ve never been taught how to lead in a lot of ways. I know I didn’t know how to lead. If you remember me, I was a mess. I was going 100 miles an hour. I didn’t know which way I was going. The first question is who you lead is yourself. Once I learned how to lead myself, only then was I able to start leading others.

What do you mean by leading yourself, when you say that?

There are a lot of things that come with being an owner. A lot of the hard things like anxiety, fear, insecurity, irrational thoughts, and mindsets. You got all this garbage in your head because your business has put so much stress on you that now the worst parts about the way that you think are being exposed. The worst part about you is being exposed. The business is like, “All your bones are being exposed because now that you’re stressed.”

Part of what you need to do is learn how to become familiar with those things and start to peel back the layers of, “Why am I thinking this way? Why am I behaving this way? Why is my team responding in this way?” Everybody has their own journey of personal growth, but doing things like journaling, meditation, or making sure you’re spending time taking care of yourself. Also, learning how to develop some self-awareness and developing some structure in your life so you can manage your time and your attention a little bit differently. Once you do that, you can lead yourself. I can manage myself.

Where do you find a coach who helps in that particular part of the development?

The ultimate job of a coach is to recognize and be present with the client. Also, to recognize when those skeletons are starting to manifest. I can see the irrational behavior and what I want you to do is I want to invite you to start thinking a little differently. I then try to build repeating patterns in the new way of thinking so that way you can start to feel comfortable with it. You can let those bad habits go and start to think a little bit differently.

Let those bad habits go, and start to think a little bit differently to build repeating patterns in the new way of thinking so you can feel comfortable with it.
Click To Tweet

I love simply put how a coach can provide perspective.

They provide that space. They ask the right questions.

Also, forcing the client to put their concern into words because sometimes what I’ll find is as people are saying, expressing their concern in words, they recognize how maybe irrational it is or silly sometimes, or maybe when I put words through it, it’s not that big a deal at all.

It’s normal or maybe it’s a good thing. You didn’t even realize. It’s exciting.

Many of these issues that we have that hold us back are simply in our heads and once we formulate words around them and express them, we recognize, “What am I worried about again?” Sometimes it’s like that or allows the coach to ask the right question. “Is that a big deal right now? Are there more important issues on the table?” I’m just giving examples but maybe they ask the right questions that give you a different perspective on what might be holding you back or what might be providing anxiety and what might be the real issue.

I’ll give you my perspective if it’s always you. It’s always been you. You’re in a battle with yourself. You’re the limiter every time. The degree to which you can recognize, interpret, act, and get out of the way quickly, is a success right there. Sometimes, that looks like trusting other people to treat the patients or being willing to have that hard conversation with an employee, the biller, or whoever it might be getting out of the way.

What it looks like is death. It looks like the worst possible thing because the thing that’s holding you back is the scariest thing for you essentially. The idea that always comes to my head often as I’m avoiding things is one of my coaches said, “If it looks like death, run towards it,” because that’s what’s holding you back.

We are just being serious. You could be fearful, but that’s okay. Just explore a little bit, ask some questions, try some things out, and play with it.

You have to see was it like. To put some words to it, sometimes it’s good to do the fear-setting exercise. What’s the worst possible thing that could happen in this situation? Let’s take it as dire as possible and what is going to happen if it gets to that point? It’s because it won’t get that bad, but let’s talk about it. Let’s address the fear and take it all the way. Sometimes, fear-setting can be helpful in those situations as well.

I had a coach one time that was smart. He was a lot smarter than me. He said, “Clients succeed whenever they’re willing to face their own demons and take action.” That’s all it is. You’re willing to like hit it head-on and fumble it up and mess it up a little bit. That’s what gets me excited when I help people take action and overcome their fears. That’s what excites me.

You see someone grow. It’s almost like watching your kids sometimes. As they’re growing, they’re able to do more and you’re like, “Good job. Remember when you were scared of that, you hated that, you were so bad, or you told me you were so bad and you didn’t think you’d ever want to do it again or think you’d never get good? Now, look what you did.” That’s super exciting. It’s super fun.

I can google how to build an empire right now. I can google that. I don’t need the strategy. It’s not the strategy. It’s you. I read an article one time. I’m throwing numbers out there, but it was a high number of people who win the lottery. They win the lottery and then the next thing they know, they have all these millions of dollars in the account and then a huge number of them lose everything within five years because they haven’t become the person that they need to be. Focus on yourself, grow yourself, and everything else follows.

Focus on yourself, grow yourself, and everything else follows.
Click To Tweet

You noticed that along your journey that as you improved yourself, then it became easier to coach the team.

It became more fun because I was able to find new things and not be so bound by fear and failure. Now, my ability and my willingness to take more risks have grown stronger. Now it’s like, “Let’s open another clinic.”

What would your younger self a few years ago? That initial owner, what would you tell him to do differently?

Get a mentor quickly.

That would be my same advice to myself. Find some coaching or a mentor, you name it, but invest in it and get it. It’s because so many times, you feel like you’re on an island and you don’t know how to prioritize things. You don’t know where to look first and what needs to be done. We’re only physical therapists treating patients and we don’t know what it means to own a business. Pay the tuition and find someone to help you.

Get a coach, get a mentor, and get somebody in your corner who can help you manage yourself for a little while. The second piece that I would also recommend is to start reading everything you can about business or about leadership in general. You have awesome book recommendations on the website. Start there. Get the books and read. You have a coach and now you’re reading. Now, you’re going down a journey and you’re doing some hard things. You’re challenging yourself. Your recipe is set. It’s only a matter of time before you get closer to where you want to go.

Speaking of books, what were some that were most impactful for you?

They’re awesome and great, but the one that sticks out is Leadership and Self-Deception by The Arbinger Institute. That’s a wake-up.

That’s not just business.

No. That’s leadership.

It can help you with your marriage and all relationships. It’s not just business. It’s crazy.

It’s not like I read that book and then my business tripled, but I read that book and that was the thing that shocked me the most. I was like, “This is life-changing.” A great book is Good to Great by Jim Collins. Also, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni is a great book. The E-Myth is also another great book by Michael Gerber.

You’re ticking them all off. Those are the ones I recommend.

Those are the things that shape the way that you think. If you start consuming great material, you start thinking a little differently. Maybe read the PTO Club show every week. That is probably a great idea.

It’s a great place to start. What would I add to it? I referenced Gino Wickman, Traction , quite a bit.

It’s a great book.

As you said, that has more to do with strategy.

That’s more of a tactical book, which is great.

If you haven’t implemented any tactics in your clinic, that’s a good place to start, purpose and vision.

Nothing happens without taking some action. You got to take some action at some point. You could sit there and journal and meditate all day but, at some point, you got to get to work.

Maybe the most impactful book I’ve read business-wise is Who Not How by Dan Sullivan.

You shared that book with me.

I love that one.

That is the ultimate book for delegation. It’s a mindset book. How to start thinking differently about delegating.

They’re doing a number of books in a series. Dan Sullivan is a business coach for decades, but the writer is Benjamin Hardy. They’re teaming up to do a number of books. They’ve put out three now. It’s Who Not How , The Gap and the Gain , and they just came out this and I got it. I’ve been reading it. It’s 10X Is Easier Than 2X . It’s mind-blowing. I love this one so much. It also changes thought processes. I think what we’re talking about here when you’re talking about leadership, is if you want to get to where you want to go, you have to change who you are and what you do on a regular basis.

They talk a lot about two things. Number one, to set a 10X goal means you fundamentally have to change as a person. To go to 2X like, “I want to double revenues this year,” is like, “We’ll keep doing more of what we’re doing. We’ll probably get to 2X.” However, when you set a 10X goal, you have to fundamentally change things that are happening in your life and in the business because you have to ask some much more serious questions.

You’ve got to be able to envision new things that you never thought would’ve been possible.

Also, you’re more than likely with that kind of mindset to get to 2X pretty easily. The second thing they lean into is the Pareto Principle, the 80/20 principle that 20% of our work, whatever we do during the day, leads to 80% of the results. If you look at your results, 80% of that stuff came from only 20% of the worker effort that you put into it.

What they talked about is refining that 20% and letting go of the other 80%. As you get rid of that 80% and focus on a 20%, you get to another level. Also, that 20%, 80% of that needs to be delegated out and moved on to someone else as well so you can focus again down onto your niche that you’re specialized in. They lean into those two principles a lot here.

I’m about halfway through the book, but what we’re talking about and where we work a lot mostly with owners is, “You’re seeing patients full-time or at 75% of the time, or maybe you’re not treating patients, but you’re not just getting to where you want to go. There’s something that’s distracting you that we need to help you get rid of so that you can focus on other things in order to take your business to the next level.”

Many times, that’s how to get out of patient care, with most of the clients that we’ve met but in other ways, it’s not just patient care, but what else are you doing that’s a distraction? Are you still doing your own payroll? It’s because that’s pretty easily handed off and you can spend that time doing other more important things. That’s just an example of that 80/20 rule principle in effect.

I love that you used the word attention. I don’t know if you remember, but back in school, you start learning about childhood development. There are these predictable milestones that children reach at certain ages. Business ownership is the same. If you’re making $0 to $600,000 a year, your problems typically tend to look like this and then from $600,000 to $1 million, you’ve solved these problems. Now you’re solving these types of problems.”

Somewhere along that journey, attention management becomes super important. One of the things that I wrote down on my list was learning how to manage my attention was a huge milestone for me. Also, auditing your schedule every month. What are you doing and what’s your focus this month or every week? What’s your system look like to make sure that you’re holding yourself accountable and that you’re managing your attention? Once I did that, it skyrocketed a lot of things for me.

In those situations, were you handing off other things or just letting them unfold?

Where are we going? Where does the company need me not only now, but over the next 90 days? Also, forcing yourself to prioritize those things. That means you got to delegate. You got to be able to communicate and empower your leaders and your team. That comes with leadership development and those types of things.

Where I get a lot of help from consulting and coaching is, for me, I need someone to guide me with the words. How do I say that? How do I do that? How does that best come across? I can get to that place mentally, but then how do I start the conversation? How do I address the issue? That’s where I can look back on my past where coaches and consultants have helped me a lot. How do you put words to that without sounding like I’m pissed off?

It is having hard conversations with your team.

How do you have hard conversations?

The question to ask is, what do you want your team to know and how do you want them to feel at the end of this conversation? Begin with the end in mind. Start there. The words come. The reason why I’m having this conversation is because I want this person to feel excited about their work. What would be bad? What would be the worst-case scenario? Will they feel offended? How do we address that early? Also, starting to be a little bit more zoomed out a little bit. What’s the book? Is it Crucial Conversations ?

Yeah. That’s another one.

It’s a great book.

Along this path, I’m sure there were some hiccups along the way. It hasn’t been smooth sailing in the past few years, has it?

No. Failure is success in progress. We failed for sure and typically, every single time we failed was due to my lack of leadership. We’ve experienced things like a key employee quitting. We’ve experienced things like new big corporate hospital-owned clinics opening up in a town. We’ve experienced some financial crunches with declining reimbursement and collections issues due to a bunch of insurance things that I can’t explain. Also, financial issues.

One of our values is grit. Being determined and willing to face those types of challenges and not just face them, but learn from them. Sometimes, it’s helpful to zoom out a little bit and ask yourself, “What happened? What went wrong? What could I have done better? What could I have done differently? How can I be more proactive about this? What are three safety nets I can build right now to make sure this doesn’t happen again?” It’s debriefing that experience to learn and then implementing the structure in your business so that way it doesn’t happen again.

In the case where the hospital system comes into town, what leadership did you have to implement and where did leadership stand out in a situation like that?

There was a lot of fear in the team.

Also, in you. You got to address that first.

It’s important to make sure that you remember that abundance mentality. The truth is there are too many patients in the community to treat. You don’t have the space to treat as many as there are.

There are studies to point this out. I can see it to a point that 10% to 15% of the patients with musculoskeletal issues get to a physical therapist. Either they try to handle it on their own or they go to a doctor who medicates them, or they get to an orthopedic surgeon who does surgery before they get to you. There are a lot of people that are suffering musculoskeletally that aren’t getting the care that they need. If you’re only seeing 10% to 15% of the injured population, then that should open up your mindset a little bit to what’s available out there.

There’s plenty of opportunity. Nathan Shields told me one time that there’s no lack of opportunity for those who seek it.

There's no lack of opportunity for those who seek it.
Click To Tweet

Opportunities are always around us.

What happened? The new guy came into town so now I’m fearful. “I need to cut back on spending. I need to let go of some people.” Those are all of those things that could have crept into my head but instead, I was like, “Where are we at? Let me empower my team. Let me rally them together. We’re going to talk about abundance. We’re going to create some ideas to leverage the community a little bit stronger. We’ll re-look at our marketing plan.”

Now, I’m facing the challenge and I’m being more creative and open in leveraging my team as opposed to being fearful, insecure, and paralyzed. I’m sure there are some things that I probably could have done better, but without some level of leadership, I would’ve never been the person who could have navigated that. I would’ve been too scared.

If you haven’t overcome that fear, then your team will sense that. It starts with good questions for yourself, as you said. “How are we going to address this? What do we have to do in order to continue to grow in spite of another clinic opening up in my space? What has to be true? What do we have to do? ”

Think win-win. What has to be true? That was in the 7 Habits .

There are possibilities, but it starts by being introspective and asking good questions. You might have these fears and you go, “Why can’t I have a successful clinic and another clinic show up?” It’s probably in the best interest of the community that there are more people out there.

Why can’t I be the best in town?

Probably one of the best things that happened to McDonald’s was that Burger King showed up. Is there anything else you want to talk about your success journey?

No. I enjoy chatting about those types of things and I’d love to hear some feedback from some of the readers. I love to hear from them. I’m not sure if they have an opportunity to join the Facebook page and comment. Give us some feedback on what you think about the episode and what are some things that you want to talk about. If you ever want to shoot some ideas our way, we would love to connect and see what we might be able to do to help you.

As I mentioned at the beginning, if they want to do a discovery call with us, that’s on the PTOClub.com website where you can book a call. We also got the Facebook group. I don’t know if people don’t know about it. They should know about the Facebook group. It’s the Physical Therapy Owners Club . You can check that out. You can reach out to me directly at Nathan@PTOClub.com . If people wanted to reach out to you, Adam, how do they do that?

There are possibilities, but it starts with being introspective and asking good questions.
Click To Tweet

Right now, we’re going to have to use my company email. It’s ARobin@SouthernPTClinic.com or hit me up on Facebook. I’m on Facebook too.

You guys are lucky enough to have Adam here with me. He’s going to be on a few episodes coming up. You’ll learn more from our conversations about ownership and how we can help improve you and help improve your clinic. It starts with improving you. Thanks for joining me, Adam. I appreciate it.

Yes, sir. Talk to you soon.

Adam was born in New Orleans, LA. He and his family later relocated to Picayune, MS in 2000 where he eventually fell in love with the community, and established his roots.

Adam is husband to his loving wife Niki Robin and father to his son Kade Robin and daughter Logan Robin.

Adam attended The University of Southern Mississippi where he received his Bachelor’s degree in Exercise Physiology in 2014 and later attended The University of Mississippi Medical Center where he received his Doctorate of Physical Therapy Degree in 2017.

Since graduation, Adam has been committed and driven to make a positive impact in the world of physical rehabilitation. Adam, with the help and guidance of mentors, founded Southern Physical Therapy Clinic, Inc. in 2019 and has since developed a passion for leadership.

He continues to work closely with business consultants to continue to grow Southern to be everything that it can. During his spare time, Adam enjoys spending time with his family and friends.

He enjoys challenging himself with an eager desire to continuously learn and grow both personally and professionally. Adam enjoys a commitment to recreational exercise, and nutrition, as well as his hobbies of playing golf and guitar.

Adam is inspired by people who set out to accomplish great things and then develop the
discipline and lifestyle to achieve them. Adam focuses on empowering and coaching his team with the primary aim of developing “The Dream Team” that provides the absolute best patient experience possible.

He believes that when you can establish a strong culture of trust you can create an experience for your patients that will truly impact their lives in a positive way.

Love the show?  Subscribe, rate, review, and share! https://ptoclub.com/

The post The One Thing A PT Clinic Owner Needs With PTO Club Coach Adam Robin appeared first on Physical Therapy Owners Club.