E551 | Why Social Agility Is So Important

Welcome back to another tactical Thursday episode! I was recently on my good friend Brett Bartholomew's podcast. If you are not familiar with him, check out his podcast, The Art of Coaching. The biggest takeaway I had from our conversation was the power of social agility. If you are struggling with business right now, this episode is for you. Enjoy!

• Understanding social dynamics in certain settings
• Influencing people in a positive way
• Becoming a better parent, friend, spouse, and citizen

Ready to elevate your practice? Book a call at the link below with one of our expert consultants today and start your journey to delivering unparalleled physical therapy.

www.physicaltherapybiz.com/apply

PT Everywhere: https://pteverywhere.com/

Do you enjoy the podcast?  If so, leave us a 5-star review on iTunes and tell a friend to do the same!

Are you a member of our free PT Entrepreneur Facebook Group? Join today!

Podcast Transcript

Danny: So I was having a conversation with one of our staff members about documentation and he had come over from a in-network practice that he was working at and he was talking about just how long it would take him to document and click through and the workflow and how, just how time consuming it was and how much easier it's been with the software that we use, which is PT everywhere.

And I know for us, we're very aware of. Sort of time leaks within our staff and our own schedules. And it's just one of the worst things you can do is just waste time on things when you could be doing them more efficiently. One thing for us is we have to document. It's something we need to do and you need to do it as efficiently as you possibly can because that's where you're gonna save a lot of your time.

We were seeing our staff members save upwards of an hour a day as far as cleaning up his documentation, making it more efficient. What if you got an hour of your day back just from documentation? What if all of your staff did the same thing? Highly recommend you take a look at PT everywhere.

It's been a huge time saver for us and really has made a big difference in our efficiency of our practice. You can check 'em [email protected]. I think you're gonna really like what they have to offer. So here's the question. How do physical therapists like us who don't wanna see 30 patients a day, who don't wanna 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's Danny Matte, and welcome to the PT Entrepreneur Podcast.

What's going on guys? Doc Danny here with a PT Entrepreneur podcast, and today we've got a short tactical Thursday podcast for you. And this one comes from a conversation I had recently with a good friend of mine. His name is Brett Barth. I was on his podcast recently. If you haven't checked it out, check out.

Art of Coaching. Brett is a ex strength coach. I guess he still does strength coach work with a handful of his NFL guys, but worked for Athletes Performance Institute which is now known as Exos, way back in the day, was one of their lead instructors, both with their combine development guys as well as the tactical athletes that they have.

They have an Eagle program, I believe is what it's called there where they do a lot of special operations. Return to activity, high level in the gray area, rehab performance stuff. And he wrote a book called Conscious Coaching That is amazing. It's about communication came out a few years ago and that kind of, catapulted him into really delving more and more into this idea of communication and teaching.

People about emotional intelligence and educating them on how to really be able to get what they want in life, which a lot of that comes down to communication, and getting better buy-in from our patients and our athletes. Right? Getting better buy-in from friends and family on things that you might want to do, right?

And. A lot of what we talked about was, just catching up on what I'm doing and what he's doing on the entrepreneurial side of things and we ended up getting in this topic of social agility. Which is really the ability for you to be dropped into any situation and understand how to be successful, right?

So it's how do you understand power dynamics and communication patterns and what to do and what not to do. And this can be really hard because some people are naturally pretty good at this. They have very high emotional intelligence. They're natural people. They just know what they should say, what they shouldn't say.

They know how to read people, they know how to persuade people, and they figure this out as at an early age. I see this interestingly enough in some habits that like my kids have and that other kids have as well. And then some kids have none of it. And it's just interesting to see some of its nature, some of its nurture, right?

But this idea of social agility, what I think is so interesting about it is, It's developed in a number of ways and we talk about, yeah, some people are naturally born with it. But when I started thinking about this, it clicked with me that, this superpower of being able to understand how to fit in any.

In any room in any organization and how to effectively communicate what you're trying to get across to people and whatever that might be is quite possibly maybe the most important skill you could cultivate. For. Happiness and success in life. Cause a lot of it comes down to that, right?

It's are you getting what you want out of life? Are you able to communicate effectively with other people? If not, it's very frustrating. If you look at like young kids, if they can't get their point across of what they're trying to say, right? They can't speak yet, and they just start crying and yelling and they get very frustrated if they feel like they're misunderstood.

We feel the same way. We may not cry and yell about it, but we definitely feel frustrated when we're trying to get a point across. That is not being received the way that we want it to, and we can't blame other people for that. We have to understand that we need to be better communicators and understand how people receive information, how we're giving people information, how that's being perceived, all kinds of things.

And what I realized was there's. There's two areas of my life that I realized this is just forced upon us. One of those is for me, growing up in a military family, I moved a ton. And any of you that have moved a lot you're gonna, this is gonna resonate with you because, when you show up at a new school or you're in a new neighborhood you just don't have a choice.

But to try to figure out where do you fit, how do you make it work? And the more you move, the more you start to realize there's trends and there's consistencies with things like. I think I moved 10 times before I was in college, right? Three middle schools and then two other moves in high school.

So I went to a lot of schools and that's a lot of new people. That's a lot of new days in a lunchroom. That's a lot of sports teams to try to break into. It's a lot of teachers to try to understand what you can and can't get away with, right? It's a lot of different dynamics that you can find yourself.

In good positions and in bad positions. And what's interesting is I've I look back and I'm like, man, in certain places where we lived, I really got it down well, and I was able to understand, the social dynamics and I thrived in those settings and other settings. It was, I was completely off and it was not a lot of fun for me.

Very isolating. And and then we would move every, like year and a half. So I'd get another shot at it and I didn't know it. Looking back I wasn't consciously thinking about this. It was just like, okay, get to this new school. I don't wanna sit by myself at a lunch table any longer than I have to.

So how am I going to figure that out, right? Like, how am I gonna get into a place where I'm not, in a position where I'm gonna get. I'm gonna get beat up or something like that, at a beat in the wrong place at the wrong time, saying the wrong thing to the wrong person. So like you learn these things through in a lot of ways, just like the positive and negative outcomes that occur from it. Now, you probably can't do this, and it's probably too late in your life to, to do this where you're, constantly moving and getting to test your social agility in these different settings. But the area that you can, and some of you actually, many of you probably have done is start a business.

And what happens with that is it's very similar in terms of putting yourself in new situations with meeting new people and then having to understand. Different dynamics and how to manage relationships and having social agility, right? Because when you start a business, You have to do a couple things.

A, you have to get out in the community, you have to meet people, you have to go to these awkward networking groups. You have to go and talk to other business owners. You have to try to get your brand out there. And it's not about More so than anything else. The number of people that know who you are, like that's actually incredibly important.

Thriving local businesses can have zero digital footprint, but lots of other businesses know who they are. Lots of other people know who they are, and they do great. They do awesome, and they may even have a damn website, right? So it's not all digital. In fact, digital is very new. If you really think about social media and the utilization of digital marketing, it's not that old, and businesses have existed for a hell of a lot longer than that.

So this social agility, If I was to drop you into a, a, b and I meeting, or a local, chamber of Commerce meeting or something like that, how are you gonna do, are you gonna, is it gonna be a beneficial meeting for you or are you just gonna sit there and listen? I've been on both sides of this.

I. Cannot stand going to groups like that. Because for me, I just don't really enjoy it. And I have to force myself to go and engage with people and use things that I understand now that are beneficial techniques for improving, connecting with people and just social conversational things to start developing relationships until you can Drill down to the people that are maybe the more appropriate ones for you to have a deeper relationship with.

Cuz not everybody in that room is gonna be beneficial to have a long-term business relationship with. But some of them are. And if you don't talk to any of 'em, you don't know who they are, right? The other thing you have to do is you have to learn. How to get rejected and how to communicate why people would want to, work with you.

And that's sales. So you gotta go out, learn how to market for yourself, and then you have to learn sales. Now all of a sudden, you get direct feedback, immediate feedback at, how did I do? They either agreed, yep, I want to commit to this plan of care, or no, I don't. So immediate feedback, you get to adjust on the fly.

You get to improve what you're doing. But it all comes down to frankly, your ability to communicate. And clarify what's going on with somebody's body to them and why they would wanna work with you to solve that problem. And that's sales. And that's a huge part, again, of being socially agile, being able to communicate and get your point across to other people and influence other people into what you want them to do.

And in hopefully, and in a positive way, in this case, a positive way, if you can actually help that person. And then after you've done that and you're like, man, I got it. This is it. Now you hire people and now you have these other human beings that come into your world and they have their own problems.

They have their own things going on, they have their own goals, and maybe some of those they don't really care to tell you about. And you have to try your best to support them and also get them to believe in whatever your vision is so that you can drive forward to, to actually achieving that, that vision for your company and your mission by.

Essentially getting them to buy in on your views, on your vision. And that's sales. Again, internally, that's communicating in leadership. You gotta be a leader with these people. But again, it just comes down to communication and getting your point across, listening to them, understanding how they receive information, how you relay information and matching that up in a way where there is buy-in and there is some consistency with moving towards the same goals.

So if. Social agility is one of the most important things we could possibly get better at in life in terms of getting what we want outta life, both from the standpoint of career success, relationship success, being able to connect with other people, having a community and ecosystem of support and and being able to achieve big goals that we have.

If you can't move 10 times in, 20 or 18 years, then your best bet is gonna be start a business. And he forces you to go out and have to put yourself in these situations where you work on your ability to have social agility. And if you're like me, and I know people hear this and they're like, he's not introverted, I'm introverted as hell.

I don't know what you're like you listen to this podcast and you hear me, I'm in my basement by myself. Talking right now, I'm not surrounded by a bunch of people. I don't actually enjoy being around large groups of people. I don't do well in, big social situations. Typically, and for me, I have to work really hard to actually go and put myself in those environments because I would sit at home with my wife and my kids and our dogs and her cat, and just, I'd be totally fine.

Totally fine. I enjoy the clinic. I enjoy the one-on-one environment quite a bit actually. But when you talk about groups of people, not my thing and I'm just not into it, it drains me. So when I got into business for myself and I realized shit, I didn't think about this.

I had to work really hard on that. I had to really. Focus on that, and then it's like doing an after action review. Every time you go out into the community, every time you go out to an event, every time you go and you do something where you put yourself in a position where you have to meet new people and have some social agility and you're working on that, then you have to do an after action review of, okay, how'd that go?

Didn't go well. And then you have to look at the context of what you're talking about. I'll give you a really good example. I was at a fundraiser dinner for our kids' school and we had donated to the school. So this was for like people who donated money to the school. And I'm sitting there, I walk in and there's I, there's like a guy I know and he's there with three other guys and They're talking about college football and where they all went to school.

And he's yeah, he's got a Clemson flag outside his house. He's got a Georgia flag outside his house. This guy's got a Georgia Tech flag outside his house and they go, what kind of flag do you have outside your house? And I go, I have an American flag outside my house. And completely it's Deflated the conversation and not saying it in a way where I was trying to come off as an asshole, but looking back on it, I sounded like an asshole, right?

Cause I could have explained like, what, instead of in directly what flag do I have inside my house? Like they're talking about college football, what teams do we follow? Things like that. And afterward I was like, man, that didn't go well. Cuz like they pretty much walked off pretty soon after that.

And then I went and I got. I guess I went and got a beer. I don't know how depth I did something else and then go, went and tried it again with some other folks, and that's, I'm learning from that, right? I'm learning. Okay, cool. Like in that situation, that context, I made a mistake here. All right.

Won't do that again. Boom. Learn from that. Versus I think a lot of people, what they'll do is they're like, oh, These just aren't my people. These guys are assholes or whatever, and blame it on somebody else. No, like I just didn't read the conversation. I didn't I didn't have good enough social agility.

So these are perfect opportunities for us to practice these things, for us to get out in the community, for us to work on it. And if you start a business, you're gonna force yourself to be better at social agility. And the silver lining to that is social agility may be the most important thing that you could get better at.

In your life to have a life that you want. So if a business feels hard, if business feels like it's sucking right now and it's just crushing you, keep in mind the success you're gonna have in business is gonna spill over into all these other areas of your life that are really positive because you're developing the skillset, and if we just lump it in as social agility, all these skills you're gonna learn, they're gonna help you be a better parent, be a better friend, be a better spouse, be a better citizen just in your community. Just be a better person overall because you're gonna be better at. Communicating in, in, getting, influencing, buying in, getting people to buy in and persuading people in positive ways for things that you wanna see happen in the world.

And that's a pretty awesome side effect. It's something that also can change your life in terms of time and financial freedom. So if you're struggling with business, I hope this helps. I hope this keeps you on the track. You'll learn some awesome stuff. Keep going.

What's up, PT Entrepreneurs? We have a new exciting challenge for you guys. It's our five day PT biz part-time to full-time challenge where we help you get crystal clear on how to actually go from a side hustle to a full-time clinic. Even if you haven't started yet. This is a great way to get yourself organized in preparation for eventually going full-time into your business.

So we actually help you get crystal clear on how much money you're actually gonna need to. Replace with your business to be able to make a lateral transfer. How many people you're actually gonna need to see based on what you should be charging. We're gonna tell you three different strategies you can take to go from part-time to full-time, and you get to pick the one that seems like the best fit for you for your current situation.

We even show you all the sales and marketing systems that we teach within our Mastermind for people that are scaling to multiple clinicians, past themself that you need to have in your business to be able to go full-time. And the last thing is we help you create a one page business plan. This is a plan that's gonna help you get very clear on exactly what you need to do and drive action.

That's what this is all about. We want you to win. We want you to take action, and in order to do you have to get really clear on what you need to do next. So go to physical therapy biz.com/challenge. Get signed up for the challenge today. It's totally free. We think this is gonna be a game changer for you and are excited to go through it.

Hey, real quick before you go, I just wanna say thank you so much for listening to this podcast, and I would love it if you got involved in the conversation. So this is a one-way channel. I'd love to hear back from you. I'd love to get you into the group that we have formed on Facebook. Our PT Entrepreneurs Facebook group has about.

4,000 clinicians in there that are literally changing the face of our profession. I'd love for you to join the conversation, get connected with other clinicians all over the country.

I do live trainings in there with Yves Gege every single week, and we share resources that we don't share anywhere else outside of that group.So if you're serious about being a PT entrepreneur, a clinical rainmaker, head to that group. Get signed up. Go to facebook.com/groups/ptentrepreneur, or go to Facebook and just search for PT Entrepreneur. And we're gonna be the only group that pops up under that.