From Treating 50 Hours to 0 Hours and Opening a Second Location with Steve Edwards

From Treating 50 Hours to 0 Hours and Opening a Second Location with Steve Edwards

I got a special guest, the number one PT in Las Vegas, my guy, Mr. Steve Edwards of Achieve Physical Therapy. What's up, Steve?

Not much. Happy to be here.

I'm happy you are here, too.

I am happy I'm here. It's not necessarily show-wise happy, but we talked about this a couple of times. I feel the strength when I get to talk to you guys and bounce ideas off of you. I'm happy to be here.

Did you hear the show we did with Kenny? He said something so awesome. He said, "I went home and I told my wife I had a good day." I was like, “Isn't that cool? You can grow your business and have good days.” That's what it's all about. We have been working together for quite some time now, and so you've gotten to learn a lot about me. I have gotten to learn a lot about you, and I love you, bro. I remember when we did the conference in Florida, and I walked up on that rooftop and I saw you. I almost started to cry. I was like, "Steve, give me a hug." My wife likes you. We had dinner that night or the next night, and my wife was like, "I love Steve. He's awesome."

I thought we'd bring you on and talk about your story and what you are doing. I know that there are a lot of things that you are working on that you've overcome and that your vision is expanding. I'm hoping that we can inspire some of the readers along their journey. If you want to learn more about Steve, you can go back to previous episodes. I think you've been on 2 or 4 times.

I think this is my third, something like that.

Steve Edwards' Inspiring Journey In Private Practice

Why don't we do a quick introduction? Who are you, where are you from, and what are you about?

My name is Steve Edwards. I’ve been a physical therapist for many years in Las Vegas. I had a private practice. You read the other episode and you will know every mistake I have ever made and then some and multiple mistakes. The same mistake multiple times, too. I finally realized over time what it is. I just how I was stuck in a rut, how I got out, and the opportunities that come as a result of being able to coach with you guys. That's where I noticed my biggest gains when I was coaching with Nathan specifically and with you. When we meet, I take it all in. I sit there, take notes, and try to feed it to the team. That's where I see my growth.

I can recall back on my journey like I'm still learning. I haven't been doing this for terribly long. I'm still learning a lot but I can remember every time that I have been in a place of stagnation, stuck, lost, and not having a good time, every time, it's always related to times when I wasn't seeking outside counsel. I got disconnected from a network of people who can challenge me and help me shape my perspective, but I have always wandered off.

That's exactly what happened to me because I was working with Nathan for a while. I felt like he got me to a great place. I felt like I was doing well. We had a plan in place for another therapist to come in. I was going to step out of treatment. Some things happened where I lost a therapist at the same time. I thought, he was only going to be temporary and I was going to hire another one. That's the time when I said, "I can probably do this on my own. I don't need outside help. I've got this."

I fell right back into old habits immediately, which is sad, but I stayed there for eighteen months and still read the blog and heard you on the show. I thought and this is right when you and Nathan joined together, you were going to start coaching with him. I said, "Let me reach out to Adam and see where we are at." Was that rough? Months, floundering, going nowhere.

There's a lesson to be learned there that maybe I realized. It's like when they say, “When you sell your practice. One day everybody's going to sell their practice but if you want to sell your practice, call Tanny Crawford with Martin Healthcare Advisors. Shout out, Tanny. If you ever get to a place where you want to sell your practice, what most people who have done it before will tell you is always make sure you have a vision of what's next for yourself. What does the next chapter look like? Get clear on what that is and have something that you are stepping into because if the game is, I'm going to figure it out, you are probably going to get detached and lost.

I'm wondering if maybe you left the coaching company, which is fine. You could take breaks and stuff but what's next? Is there another coach you may need to hire? Is there a different area of your business that you should get involved in? Leave from a place of choice because I'm going into something, and not from I'm going to figure it out because we are not good at that.

That was a hard lesson to learn because I wasted eighteen months. Eighteen months of falling right back into old habits. I just wondered where I could have been had I not done that. I realized I need to have somebody that not necessarily holds me accountable, but helps me hold myself accountable. Somebody who's already been there has the ideas. Somebody who can recognize what I'm not doing correctly. We talked about this coaching session. We talked about that specifically with my skillset, mindset, and driving execution on something I need to work on if I want to change some things and that was extremely helpful. That's not something I'm going to come up with on my own.

It's not always about a coach, you start to develop, and you develop the skill with your team but you start to hone in your skill of listening to the language, and the language matters, and when you start listening to people talk. You can hear what they are saying, but you can also hear what they are not saying and you can hear things like lack of confidence and a little bit of insecurity around a certain topic.

As soon as you hear that, it's like, "Wait a minute. Let's not leave that point. Tell me a little bit more about that." Once we dive in, you can recognize your weakness point. It's like a lack of commitment around a certain thing. Maybe it's the way you communicate or the clarity you have around something and as soon as you find it, you empower yourself again, and you are like, "I'm in control of this," but it's hard to see that in yourself. Nathan always says, "It's hard to see the painting when you are in the painting."

Even after we talked about that, I felt like my last two leadership meetings and the team meetings were night and day different. A completely different feeling from the team and my leadership team as well.

Transforming Team Meetings For Maximum Impact

It's like, “How do we systemize that?” It's like what needs to go on the agenda as a reminder to keep this type of rhythm without having to think about it? Is it a prompt? Is it a question? For instance, one of Nathan's favorite prompts is, "There are no pink elephants." In every meeting, he starts with, "Reminder, there are no pink elephants in this room. Is everybody clear on that?"

He prompts that, and he's intentional about that at every meeting because he's probably made that mistake in the past. As an example, one of the prompts on my agenda is, "Let's be sure we get our conversations down to specific action items and agreements." What we have tended to do in the past is have these rah-rah conversations in the leadership meeting, and they are all cool and fun, but what does it look like? Let's get down to specific accountability and action items, and that's our prompt, reminder, and intro to our meeting, and that holds me accountable. That holds the team accountable. You level up your meetings, and then you level up your impact on the organization.

I feel like I'm barely beginning to recognize what is missing from those meetings. Initially, it was just, let's get a meeting on the schedule. Let's block time off. Let's get a leadership team. Let's get a meeting. Let's create an agenda. Let's go through the agenda and then realize that it has become stale and something more needs to happen. That's why I'm at where there needs to be some accountability for my leadership team. There need to be some action items. There needs to be a specific plan carried out by someone other than myself in terms of the goals of the company.

It's not always about doing more things. You are having the meeting. You are doing the meeting. It's on the agenda but then it's like, you are doing that. Let's get way better at it because there are always levels to that stuff. You've been to a powerful meeting where you've been inspired. You've been like, "There's a new level of inspiration and direction in the company now because of this meeting." How do we have those all the time and create that standard? It starts with you as a leader, getting clear.

Unfortunately, I'm a slow learner but it takes me a minute to get it but we'll get there. I recognize that now.

We are talking about meetings, and what a boring thing to talk about but they are so fun. The reason why I like meetings is because they force you to lead. There's nothing more inspiring to me than watching a leader stand for what they believe in, even when they are not quite sure if everybody's going to be on board with them or not. You have to get up there and take a stand for it. You are nervous about it, but then you keep on and slowly shift the mindset and beliefs inside that room over time. That's the thing that elevates you.

You'll see it from the team too, the expectation of what that meeting needs to be. Compared to when it was initially, "Why are we doing this? Why are we talking about value? Why are we talking about our wins? Why are we talking about the patient's ultimate goal?" To now, "I have got this to share. I have been thinking about this for the week," whatever that may be. It is nice to see the evolution of the team through those meetings too.

Escaping The Treatment Room And Embracing A Bigger Vision

I want to rewind a little bit because you weren't having those meetings in the beginning. Maybe you were, but maybe not the leadership component.

I had a leadership team that consisted of my admin and me, but we didn't have a set time for the leadership meeting. Since I was treating patients, if I had a break in between, I'd say, "Let's talk for twenty minutes. I got twenty minutes now." We were doing a team meeting, and even the thought of blocking off time when people could be seeing patients for a team meeting initially made no sense to me whatsoever. I wasn't doing any of that initially when we spoke that first time. I fell right back into old habits, digging in with the treatment and hoping productivity was there.

I remember you were treating me full-time when we started. You were treated full-time in the clinic, and I remember I said, "I want you to write down your vision. Write down your vision of what you want to create." I remember you wrote down something crazy. Do you remember what it was?

I don't. It might have been to be out of treating patients.

You said you wanted to open ten clinics. I said, "That's inspiring.” I can get excited about that. Once you started realizing that there was a way bigger vision that we needed to play, you started recognizing, "There's more I have to do here." That was fun when we started. We started with that vision, and then it was like, "We have to step out of treatment."

It's interesting because, to be able to get to that point, there were so many smaller goals or different things that had to fall into place. It took time. I was thinking, "I want to be out of treatment in two months," but things took time because I didn't necessarily have anything in place to support that.

There was another milestone that I recall, and it was this idea of finances because there is always some fear and uncertainty around finances. I don't know if you remember, but we dove into them. We pulled out your metrics because you were like, "I don't know if I can do this. I don't know if I can afford this." Talk us through that. What was that like?

You go back to my older podcast with Nathan, which was always a worry of mine. Financials. It seems like every time I go to take a step, whether that be growth or a change in the business, financials come into play. The thought of, "Can I afford to do this?" It seemed like up to that point, especially when I wasn't coaching anymore, every decision I was making was based on fear of finances.

The idea of getting out of treatment meant that I was going to hire a physical therapist to see patients. Then what? First of all, I didn't know what my day was going to look like if I wasn't seeing patients. The other thought was, "They can't see as many patients. They are not going to be able to hold on to the patients. They are not going to be able to deliver."

If I step out and get somebody else in here, then our numbers are going to drop. All those thoughts ran through my mind. What I finally realized when we went through the finances was that I had the money to have a physical therapist 100% to cover it. That gave me confidence. I could move away from fear. The confidence was there. The evidence was there that we could afford it.

You have a documented history of it. How much more proof do you need? It's been running this way for years.

What I did, too, is I put that number in a note and I made it my phone screenshot for a long time. When it came on, I would look at that number and go, “You got enough. This is what you are producing every month. This is what your revenue is.” For several years, I'd been telling myself, “You don't have enough. There's not enough here,” and so I needed that reference over and over again. The evidence was there. The history of being able to produce and have the financials in place to hire a physical therapist was already there. It was a matter of getting some things in line and being able to make that move.

You mustered up the courage to go for it, and you hired two therapists. Didn't you hire a PTA and a PT?

I hired a PTA at the first of the year to help with some of the other stuff we were doing, and then I was taking a couple of afternoons off so they would assist with that. When I completely moved out of treatment, we hired a PT to take my spot. We started the process in June, and that individual came on in August.

The "Like Me" Program: Elevating The Patient Experience

There was another thing that you mentioned that was key, and it was this idea of, “If I step out of treatment, they are not going to be able to treat me like me. They are not going to be able to do things like me.” All that stuff. Tell me about that process. How did you get over that?

This is another example of why you have to have a coach in place because those thoughts have plagued me forever and ever.

It's a lie.

You just need somebody else to tell you something different. You only hear your voice telling you that. You got to hear somebody else, and you got to see somebody else that's already done it and so we met, and you were like, “You got to do the You're Like Me program. We talked a little bit about what that was, but in a sense, it's what I do that ensures a patient gets quality care. They are going to schedule their plan of care, they are going to be here for every visit, they are going to refer a friend or a family member, and they are going to be seen for a second plan of care. All those little things.

We started with the initial evaluation checklist. What do I say? Not so much what special test I do. What do I say? How do I say it? We went through every little thing. What do I say to the patient at the end of the evaluation? How do I explain it? We came up with the handouts and the plan of care and had them sign the plan of care. What are we saying on the second visit? I did another checklist. What are we saying on the second visit? What are we saying on the third visit, all the way through the sixth?

We have talked about this, but the fourth visit. On the fourth visit, a patient is looking to leave you. Whether they are better or they are not better, they are looking to leave you. What am I saying on the second visit? What was I saying on the third visit? And then we came up with that sheet. What are we doing in terms of talking to the patient or managing the patient? What story are we presenting to them? What picture are we presenting to them throughout the entire plan of care? I just went step by step. It took months. We talked about it for months.

You worked on it for a while.

We came up with every SOP there is, and then I created a video for that as well that went into the onboarding program. When we brought on the therapist, they could step right in, and the checklists were there for the initial evaluation, for the 2nd through 6th visit, how to schedule a patient, how to manage a patient, how to improve that new patient-to-discharge stat. For every stat, there's a video. Two things I noticed. One was that as a business owner, I could never give my full attention to the patient. As I'm working on the patient, my thought is, “I wonder if we got that in because payroll is coming up.”

“I wonder how many referrals we got today.”

“I wonder what's going on with marketing. Where are our numbers?” Every thought about the business. I wonder if my therapists are doing this. I wonder what our percentages are. A patient is coming in, and I'm trying to give them quality care, and I'm giving quality care, but my mind is not with them. I'm not giving them my full attention. That's one thing I noticed. The second thing I noticed is that when the entire Like Me program was in place, the onboarding happened, and they were trained appropriately. Our numbers went up when I stepped out. I did not expect that to happen at all. A lot of it is because these patients are getting full attention.

They are better than you at it.

That's their only job to treat patients.

They don't have to do all the things.

When I stepped out, there were certain patients that were like, "I have been coming here for so long. I'm used to seeing Steve," and it was a minor issue.

You worked on that program for a long time. The first one's always the hardest because you've never done it before, but it’s a skill that develops programs and creates control around things. You learn the nuances of it but it's the first product that you deliver to your team. It's the first valuable piece of something that you give to your team besides a paycheck, which is I'm going to help you be an awesome therapist.

It's interesting, too, because I feel like as I was doing it, especially my therapists that had already been here, I didn't want them to feel like I was going in and saying, "These are the mandates. This is how this is going to work. This is what we are going to do." I had already written down what it is I do and then brought them in and said, "This is what we are going to create. Let's get some input from you as well."

They had some say, but for the most part, we were all on the same page. It was a matter of putting it in place, training on it, making sure that it's being done, and following up on it, but they are so receptive because that was the first little bit that I gave them. They were so receptive to everything else. I see that in our leadership team, too, now as they are dispersing that information to other team members.

The Power Of Delegation: Empowering Your Team For Success

Maybe you don't hear it as much as I do, but I don't know if so much anymore. "I can't compete with the hospital systems." You are competing with the hospital systems at this point. Do they have a Like Me program? Probably not.

It's crazy because I went to lunch with a buddy of mine PT. He worked for me. It was back when we had a second clinic. That second clinic, we can talk about that. It was a mess. It was a joke. My managerial style was, "Don't call me,” to, “Please don't bug me with this because I'm already seeing a hundred-whatever patients over here." I went to him several years ago, and I said, "If you want this clinic, you can have it. It's yours. Take the patients, take everything." I went to lunch with him because he was shutting down. He's like, "I can't compete with all these orthopedic groups. They have their own PT. The hospitals right here have their own PT."

You get burned out as an owner. I was burned out as an owner. That wears on you, where you are trying to see patients, you are trying to be all the production, and still deal with everything that is involved with owning a practice. It can beat you down. If you are not going to get the help, it will continue to beat you down and then you get those thoughts again, "I can't compete with this. I want to leave the hospital. There's no hope here. The reimbursement is this," whatever it may be. Those same mys.

We tell ourselves, “I'm talking to myself,” but we tell ourselves this lie of "I am going to grind out and I'm going to get to the other side." It's like, “No, you are not.”

I can tell you it does not work. Twenty years of that. It never changes. The longer you go, the more ingrained you get in those habits.

You get deeper. You dig a deeper hole.

You don't see an out ever.

Not everybody wants to open 50 clinics. Some people want to have their one clinic and a year of coaching will transform your life. It's a big deal.

I can tell you that. I went twenty years trying to get out of patient treatment. After a year of coaching, and by month eight, I'm out of treatment.

I remember when you did the Like Me program, and it's the first piece of value that you give to your team. I feel like that is where owners start to believe in themselves because they are like, “I do have skills. I do have a lot to offer my team.” When you roll that out to your team, it's like, “Our place is awesome,” then the confidence grows, and the vision comes after that. I remember we got on a call, and you were like, "I hired the new therapist. I rolled it out. It's working. I cannot believe it. It's working here." I remember saying that to you. I was like, “I can't believe it. They are falling for it in a sense.”

I was so happy to hear that. It's such a cool thing to hear that you are impacting people that way. It's awesome. The patients are getting incredible value. That allowed you to step out of treatment and then this vision of, "I want to open up another clinic. I want to start developing leaders on my team." I was like, “Now we are getting into the good stuff.”

You started meeting with your 2 leaders to start building 2 clinic directors, 1 for each clinic. Talk us through that process. How did you identify the leaders? What was your process around starting to pour into them and preparing them for being a clinic director?

Creating A Leadership Pipeline: Building A Thriving Company Culture

It's interesting, too, because with one of the therapists, one of the things I talked about is when I brought them on, I talked to them about my vision that my goal was growth. I'm passionate about growth. I love seeing things grow and working on that growth. As I brought him on, I said, “I want somebody else who's passionate about growth because what I want to do is open more clinics. I want to provide an opportunity for you to be able to share in that growth both professionally and financially.”

Initially, I was going to be working with him and bringing him on as a clinic director. I talked to one of my other therapists. When she came on, she was like, "I want to be a staff therapist, not too interested in it." I approached her again because I didn't think she recognized that she was a natural leader. People flock to her. She's an amazing person, an amazing therapist. I approached her again and talked to her about it. She said, "I'm very interested in being a clinic director as well."

It worked out perfectly because we had a second location. I brought them in, and I created a clinic director handbook that had everything you could ever imagine. Everything that I'd ever thought of, dealt with, every policy, every procedure that they may have to deal with HR, anything. We began to go over that, but then we incorporated the leadership. I started a leadership program as well. As I would meet with them weekly, that week, I would work on that module in a sense of what we were going to work on.

We blocked out an hour during the week. Every Thursday afternoon, we meet, we do our leadership meeting, we go through briefly the stats, and then we get into the leadership training. What I love more than anything is when they walk out of it, and I'm like, “That’s the stuff I want. That’s the stuff I like,” because they don’t know anything about how the business runs. They don’t know anything in terms of the front office. They don’t recognize, even though we are doing KPIs, they don’t understand how all those tiny components lead to revenue, so I love meeting with them and going over it. As I said, we have got a second office coming up. Hopefully, I'm going to sign a lease.

I am pumped for you.

This will be a completely different experience than the second office I did before.

All the work you’ve done. You've built three programs in a year. You’ve done a lot of work, and it’s like, you don’t get that work done buried in treatment. You don’t do it. What you’ve been able to create, like the foundation you’ve laid, is going to catapult you. That second clinic’s going to rock. You’ve got a good marketing team in place, you’ve got some leaders in place, and then you’ll do a 3rd and then you’ll do a 4th, and then things will start to break again.

I was talking to my physician marketing coordinator in our meeting, and the week before, I said, “This is the plan with the second office. We want to be marketing for two months prior.” I loved it. She’s like, “I have got so many ideas about what I want to do with that.” It’s amazing how the team members start to come up with different ideas or how they can contribute to the success of the company. They are all in. I couldn’t be happier with them.

Attract Top Talent By Expanding Your Vision

You’ve gotten clear on your vision, enrolled them in that vision, and given them a framework and a roadmap on how to get where they want to go. How can you not get excited about that? For everyone on a road trip to Disney World or Disneyland, it’s hard not to get excited about it. It’s like, “I’m going somewhere.” If you are not growing, if you are not expanding, your vision needs to be big enough so that everybody else’s vision can fit underneath it. If your vision is not growing and expanding and evolving, your people are going to leave you.

That is a big selling point for us when we bring therapists on. When I’m interviewing a therapist, I say, “This is the plan. In year one, we do our mentorship. Year three, leadership program. Hopefully, by year four, we have got some expansion. We have got something for you to be able to move into and become a clinic director. That’s the goal.”

The thing is, when therapists come out of school, so many of them are in debt. School is so expensive, and that debt-to-income ratio is a burden on them. They see what their salary is and try to get above anything more than what the usual raises are for the year standard living raise and so the potential of being able to get over that debt, be able to own a home, be able to have some autonomy in the clinic, be able to grow anything, I noticed that’s a big selling point for a therapist. I have a recruiting director who is following your recruiting program and so she is constantly recruiting and I had to tell her to turn it off for a little bit. It was filling up too much of my day.

Too many interviews, too many phone calls.

Let’s turn it off. Let’s put it off for a minute. For this second office, we need to replace a therapist here. Based on our growth projections, we are hoping we are going to hire another one within 3 to 4 months and I have got three therapists that I texted, giving them an update saying, “This is where we are at,” that I have already interviewed and they said, “Fantastic. Let me know when my first day is.” All of them. I do think that the opportunity to have profit sharing, to not feel that burden of that debt-to-income ratio, and to see a pathway out of that is a big selling point for them.

We have a great feel here in the office, and those are some of the other selling points as well, but is there anything they can do to get that sense of feeling overwhelmed? If they can somehow get rid of that, whether that be the dead income or feeling some burnout because of documentation, those are all selling points that we have for them. That's where I feel like we have made some progress as well as being able to get the patients or get them that we need in here as well that fit who we are and what we are looking to grow, how we are looking to grow.

Navigating Challenges And Preparing For Future Growth

You've got a big year coming. Exciting year. What do you foresee being your biggest challenges? Maybe in the near future and then getting through the end of the year? What are you thinking?

I would say the biggest one is making sure that the patient experience is not affected in any way. Not comp because we are going to grow. We are going to bring on new staff and that second office and we have a system in place. We talked about that in the leadership meeting. Talking about the patient experience, we have these systems in place to create this amazing experience for the patients, to offer incredible care, but there are gaps missing in the system, so I want to make sure that we have those gaps. Those are bridged before we get too far into this expansion, making sure that everything flows. The other thing too with that is something we have talked about, and one of our goals for 2025 is weekly training for every department. Our front office every Thursday. Technicians, every Tuesday. Our therapists as well, every Tuesday. Every week, there is training.

Training on something. Remember those prompts we were talking about in the meetings? What we do in our leadership team one of our prompts is, "What are you reading? What are you learning?" Everybody's responsible for learning something. It doesn't have to be what I'm learning. Some people read the Bible, some people read business books, and some people read leadership. Everybody's responsible for sharing and teaching it. Teaching it to us and teaching it during our leadership programs. Things that you are learning in the book and the things that you are reading about marketing, sales, systems, and team meetings. Those are little mini-lectures that you are giving to your team, and you are building these people, and when you build your people, they can build the business.

I may have heard that a million times, and I love where my leadership team is right now. I feel like they are on the edge of getting to go off to make an impact on the business that is not so much directed by me but more self-directed because they understand exactly how this is going to work and how it affects them as well.

When you onboard people on your team now, are you a part of that process, or is that delegated fully?

Front office technicians delegated completely. The therapist is me, primarily because I have only done one therapist in the team, but for this next one coming on, I will take my clinic director with me as I do it, and then I'm going to start pushing that.

That could be a good opportunity for you to see them flex that leadership muscle of being like, "Let's empower this employee," and you are not necessarily hands-off but more giving them some free rein and then honestly see how they handle it because you learn a lot more through teaching than being taught.

It would be the same with the mentorship program. With the therapist we brought on, I set up that year-long mentorship program. We'll push that onto the clinic director as well.

I'm excited. March 31st, 2025, is the goal.

That's the goal.

Operational Excellence: Ensuring A Smooth Transition For Your Practice

What do you foresee being the biggest challenge? You mentioned the patient experience, but do you see leadership challenges or operational challenges on the horizon?

There's going to be some operational challenges. We go from 1 clinic to 2. Just in terms of billing, not sure exactly staff-wise how much more staff we need, how many more individuals we need. There are going to be some logistical issues that hopefully, we are not having too many growing pains with. Like I said, when I did this in the past with a second location, no leadership team in place, there was nothing in place. It was an opportunity. I mentioned an orthopedic surgeon who came to us and said, “I have got this office. Do you guys want to move into it? I'm going to move into the next one,” and we said, “Sure.” I got a manager and said, don't bug me, and went from there.

It’s completely different this time, and at least we are aware that there are going to be some issues. I do feel like my clinic director is prepared and excited. He's excited about the opportunity to have some autonomy but also be in charge of the growth, training, and building his team, and he talks about that at every leadership meeting. “Where are we at? What's going on here?”

There's going to be some bumps in the road, no doubt. There's going to be some bumps in the road financially as well. It's going to take a bit of a hit. I remember you saying after you opened your second one, some of the thoughts you had were like, “Why would I do this?” You are sick of it, and then all of a sudden, “This is good. Forget about it,” and then go do it again.

One thing that's cool for me to recognize is that you are building a new position in your company, and it's the director of operations. You are the manager of the clinic directors now and that role will be replaced at some point. One thing that helped in our clinics is doing something like a monthly or a quarterly site visit rhythm where we'd go out to the clinic and block off the full day for the director and we would go through the front office, and I'd have a checklist. Front office, “Are they doing the script? Are they getting the referral scheduled?” I would sit in on the team meeting. I would review it. Do they have the big three? Are they following the policy and procedure? We would give the feedback to the clinic director. Essentially, I'd have a full-day audit of the site visit process that I would go through with the clinic directors, and then eventually, that's the thing you can pass on to your director of operations.

I'm VP of Operations right now, and I know I'm going to want to give that hat off to somebody. I was trying to write up the handbook for the VP of Operations. I noticed I didn't have a whole lot to write in or type up. I don't have a whole lot of experience where I'm only focused on operations as opposed to treating patients and focused on operations and everything. It'll be interesting as we go along here what goes into that manual and how I eventually pass that off as well.

I'm thinking it would be cool to get you back on the show either 3, 6, or 12 months after you open that second location, once you get through the storm. Maybe more like six months after you open, what you learned, what the takeaways were, and what you wish you would have done differently. If we can get right on the edge of the lessons, that would be of tremendous value for the people reading and me, too.

I'm all for that.

Sounds like a deal?

Yes.

We'll be in touch.

Sounds good.

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About Steve Edwards