E643 | How To Build A Rock Solid Reputation

In this podcast episode, Danny dives into the crucial topic of doing the right thing in business. He explores the psychological concept of reciprocity, where individuals feel a compelling obligation to return a favor when someone does something for them.

Surprisingly, the return can even outweigh the initial favor. To illustrate this, Danny shares a real-life example of how buying someone lunch can lead to their help in moving heavy objects.

Danny emphasizes the significance of reputation in the business world, highlighting how it can be rapidly influenced by our actions, both positively and negatively. Particularly for new business owners, who have the advantage of having all decisions go through them, doing the right thing for all customers is paramount.

By consistently acting with integrity, a strong and positive reputation can be built in the long run. Furthermore, it is crucial to identify the right customers for the business and, if necessary, refer others to specialists. It is important not to charge customers for office visits if they are not the right fit and would be better served by seeking assistance elsewhere.

While doing the right thing may initially pose challenges, especially during times of financial struggle, it ultimately brings about positive outcomes through reciprocity, even if that is not the sole motivation behind the actions. A reputable business can grow beyond its founder, and leading by example becomes imperative for staff and culture.

Employees pay more attention to leader behaviors rather than mere words. Therefore, by consistently doing the hard but right thing in the long term, trust and goodwill are fostered, even when specific desired outcomes may not always be achieved. Join us in exploring the profound significance of doing the right thing in business and the rewarding results it can bring.

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: Hey, real quick before we get started, head over to Facebook and join the PT entrepreneurs Facebook group. If you haven't done so yet, we have monthly live trainings going on there. There's an opportunity for you to join in the conversation instead of just listening to what I have to say on this podcast, as well as the people that I bring on.

And it's a really cool place to join about 6, 000 other clinicians that are. Honestly, trying to change the landscape of our profession through these cash and hybrid practices. One other thing that's really cool is we have a guide in there. That's a quick start guide. When you join, you can go and check this out.

There's about seven videos that we've curated that are the most common questions we get in the best case studies that we've found to really help you start, grow, and scale your practice up to seven figures. So if you haven't done so yet, head to Facebook request to join the PT entrepreneurs, Facebook group.

You have to be a clinician. We're going to check you out. We don't just let anybody in. But if you are head there, go ahead, get signed up. We'd love to have the conversation with you in that group.

So here's the question. How do physical therapists like us who don't want to see 30 patients a day, who don't want to work home health and have real student loans, create a career and life for ourselves that we've always dreamed about? This is the question. And this podcast is the answer. My name is Danny Matei and welcome to the PT entrepreneur podcast.

What's going on. Dr. Danny here with the PT entrepreneur podcast. And today we're talking about. The one thing you can do that's going to ensure that you have success in business. That one thing is to do the right thing. And it's so funny. It's like this. So it's so obvious yet. It's so hard to do. But if we look at the concept of doing the right thing, we have to think about the psychology of sales, the psychology of how people feel when you do something for them.

And there's this concept called reciprocity and reciprocity is basically the feeling that I need to even up with somebody if they do something for me. And the return of that can be far more of an ask than whatever you did for them. For instance, if I want to, let's say I have a friend and I want that friend to help me move and it's going to be an all day event of us moving heavy shit up and down stairs, if I really want that person to say yes, I will take them out to lunch first.

I'll buy their lunch and then I'll ask them. I'll say, Oh, I got it, man. Don't worry about it. Yep. I'll cover the, I'll cover our tacos today. Cool. Hey, real quick. While I got you here, I'm moving on Saturday. Is there any chance you'd be able to help me out? I'd really appreciate it. Now I got you. It was 10 worth of tacos that I bought for you.

Just bought me a day's worth of manual labor. That you're going to put in to help me move all my stuff around. This may be a terrible example of doing things from an altruistic standpoint of like why you should do the right things for people, but this is just a very relevant example of the ask in return can dramatically outweigh whatever you did for somebody.

When we look at this in the context of business, one of the things that is. Very apparent to anybody that's been in business for any period of time is that you have one reputation and that reputation can be either positively or negatively affected in a very quick way. Meaning if you. Start to do things that are not the right thing to do based on longterm expectations.

People will know that people will see that and people will maybe not bad mouth your business because of that, but they definitely are not going to talk your business up. And this is where, as a. New business owner, you have a very distinct advantage because everything runs through you, all the decisions that you make, all the things you say yes and no to come through you.

So you have this opportunity to have this very, very, very good reputation. Based on doing the right things for everyone that you come in contact with based on long term decisions. I talk about this all the time with our community in regards to making sure that if somebody's in your office, they belong there.

And that you shouldn't be working with people that don't fit who should be in your office. You got to understand your primary care. You also got to understand when somebody's not in the right spot and maybe they'd be better off seeing somebody else that's a better specialist with this thing than you are.

Like if you see somebody that comes in and they obviously need help with, you know, pelvic floor work and they're coming to you for back pain, you really probably need to make the case to say, listen, we might need to get some of this figured out first. Here's somebody that I think you need to see now.

And once you get. Some of this baseline work in place and that person thinks that you're appropriate for this then let's work more on this more advanced Movement based side of it. Okay, does that sound fair? Like I'm gonna send you over here or somebody that comes in and it's obvious that they might have some sort of systemic thing going on don't milk that person for a couple visits and then send them on their way because you also want to See if what you're doing is the right thing or not like send them to primary care make sure everything is good and then work with them and Don't charge them if they come to see you and you're not in the right place This always just drove me crazy.

I I've been places where I've been referred other places and I get charged a full office visit for it. And I'm like, what the hell? Like this, you just basically now added another thing to my plate. Now I'm, you're charged me for that and I get it. It's your time or whatever. But if you think of it from the customer standpoint, if you are trying to get them to the right place and you're gathering information and you're not the right fit for them, in my opinion, you should not charge them for that office visit.

And if you don't, I. You've got to keep in mind reciprocity is a real thing. You shouldn't do it just because of that, but it will follow back to you. It will come back and it will be maybe in a different form of more patients that they send your way or something positive to say about your business if somebody that then wants to set up some sort of education event and then next thing you know you have this new pipeline of people to work with because of it.

You just don't know. All I know is when I do the right thing for people. It's better for me long term and it feels a lot better to like it's hard at first, especially if you're struggling to make ends meet to say, okay, well, I'm not going to charge that person for that visit or yeah, I'm going to refer them to somebody else.

They probably should see them first. And I really could use like the visit volume from this person because I'm barely making ends meet for, you know, my, my personal needs and my family. And, uh, And it can be very hard in those circumstances in particular to say, yeah, you got to go over here first. I know I'd love to work with you, but we're not quite there yet.

There's other things we have to get checked off first before we can do this. But if you do those things, your reputation will follow you around in a really positive way. Now, where this gets hard is with your staff, where this gets hard is when you scale past yourself. And I see it to this day, you know, with, with PT biz, we have.

You know 14 coaches that work with us amazing people just the smartest clinicians and definitely know more about Cash based, you know hybrid practices than I do Uh actively all running their own successful practices and their their coaching in in our uh, you know in our community And do an amazing job And, but I also don't see what they say on a day to day basis, every single one of them.

I don't see what recommendations they have or decisions that they make. The, the only way to really make sure that your people are upholding what you really feel are your core values is for you to show it. It's the way in which you work with them, with them, the way in which they see you interacting with people.

And. What you say is going to, is going to hold nearly as much weight as what you do. Because people watch you. Your employees watch you. Your staff watches you. They see what you do. They see if you're late to a meeting. And if you're a minute late, you apologize to people. They see if you value other people's time.

They see if you follow through on those things you say you're going to do. It's like kids, man. Your kids watch you. You can tell your kids, oh, be a good person, do this, this, and this, be a citizen, like, be a functional, positive person in our society, and yet if you're, if you're just doing things that are complete opposite of that, you know, if you are completely contradicting what you're telling them to do, what do you think they're going to do?

They're going to do what they see you do. If you yell at them, they're going to yell at other people. If you're, you know, have a short temper, they're going to have a short temper. If you are constantly late, they're going to be constantly late. Even you could say like, you got to be on time. Why are you keep getting in school suspension detention because you're late all the time?

Well, it's because you're late all the time. So you got to lead by example. And that's the only way you can start to have these things trickle down from you without you having to micromanage people and make sure they're making the right decision. And that's where it gets really hard. But I can tell you this reciprocity is a real thing.

It's not their only reason why you should do things, but it is a real psychological. Aspect of why people make decisions and if you can understand that, and if that is the reason, one of the reasons why you decide, Oh, I need to do the right thing, fine. Use that as your, your fuel for you to make those decisions, whatever you need to do.

But I'm telling you the right thing, it may not always be that obvious. And I had somebody asked me this once and they said, how do you know what the right thing is? And I said, you know. You feel it we all can just whether or matter matter of whether we decide to actually Listen to it or not, or if we ignore it, you know, if we're like, yeah, whatever, shut up, man, go, go chill for a second.

I'm going to do this other thing, even though I know I shouldn't. It's just in the moment, this feels like the thing that I should do. What's the right thing? You know what the right thing is. You feel it. We all do. Whether it's a conscience or whatever you want to call it, like we know what the right thing is.

And it's usually the thing that sucks. It's usually the thing that's harder. Then whatever feels better in the, in the moment, if you can keep that in mind, you can say, shit, all right, I gotta do this because if you do, it's going to be so much better for you and your business longterm. And if you don't, then you're going to have probably faster short term success.

And you're going to ruin your reputation along the way. It just can be very, very hard. For you to grow past yourself is going to be very hard for you to keep people around and not have consistent turnover in your staff, because they're going to start to see who you really are. And then they're going to wonder whether you're being honest with them, whether you're doing the right things for them, or if you're just doing things that are going to be beneficial for you in the short term.

And nobody wants that. You don't want that. Why would you stick around if that was the case? And whether you like it or not, if you decide that you want to go into a leadership position and you want to be the person that's leading this company and other people are going to follow you. They hold you to a different standard.

You got to hold yourself to a higher standard than that. And it can feel like a burden. But at the same time, what a great reason to really force yourself to do the right thing, to, to consistently do that. And to build a business that people look at and have, not a damn bad thing to say about it. Because they, they may not have gotten the outcome they wanted to work with you.

Maybe, maybe they didn't get the result they were hoping for. But if they feel like you really tried, and you did what was best for them, they, they won't hold it against you. They won't. They, because they can tell, they can tell if you're honestly interested in helping them achieve what they're trying to achieve.

And now no one has a hundred percent success rate. But you can really tell if somebody cares or not and if that person really does care You're giving the benefit of the doubt. You won't talk bad about their business And if anything you'll even talk it up. You'll say yeah, like I didn't get the outcome I wanted but I can tell you I really felt like They tried really hard with me.

They were honest with me. They did everything that they said that they were going to do. And, uh, you know, and now I'm still trying to figure out like why my knee hurts, but I, at least, you know, I know what isn't the problem that we've already worked on and they helped me find somebody that was, was the next logical fit.

For, for whatever the problem was, that's turning a not so great outcome into a good outcome with the people that you work with, because you're honest, because you're doing the right thing for them and they can tell.

Hey, peach entrepreneurs. We have big, exciting news, a new program that we just came out with. It is our PT biz part time to full time five day. Challenge over the course of five days, we get you crystal clear on exactly how much money you need to replace by getting you ultra clear on how much you're actually spending.

We get you crystal clear on the number of people you're going to see and the average visit rate you're going to need to have in order to replace your income to be able to go. Full time, we go through three different strategies you can take to go from part time to full time and you can pick the one that's the best for you based on your current situation.

Then we share with you the sales and marketing systems that we use within our mastermind that you need to have as well if you want to go full time in your own practice. And then finally, we help you create a one page business plan. That's right, not these 15 day business plans. You want to take the Small Business Association, a one day business plan.

It's going to help you get very clear on exactly what you need to do and when you're going to do it. That's Action. If you're interested in signing up for this challenge, it's totally free. Head to physicaltherapybiz. com forward slash challenge. Get signed up there. Please enjoy. We put a lot of energy into this.

It's totally free. It's something I think is going to help you tremendously as long as you're willing to do the work. If you're doing, doing the work, you're getting information put down and getting yourself ready to take action in a very organized way. You will have success, which is what we want. So head to physicaltherapybiz.

com forward slash challenge and get signed up today.