E625 | Why Your Service Is More Important Than Anything Else
Jul 20, 2023In this episode of the podcast, Doc Danny delves into the crucial element of making a business go viral - being awesome at what you do. Drawing inspiration from the story of Andy Chen, Danny emphasizes the importance of genuinely caring about people and striving for the best possible results. He goes on to recount his own experience of starting a practice with no prior business knowledge, highlighting how their obsession with helping people achieve desired outcomes propelled their success.
This success is comparable to that of Chipotle, who became a sensation in the fast-food industry through their focus on delivering the best quality food without excessive marketing efforts.
Doc Danny stresses the significance of trust in business. If you fail to live up to the trust placed in you by your customers, they will eventually stop recommending your services. To illustrate this point, he shares the example of a realtor who went above and beyond by offering to cover the cost of the first visit if the client wasn't satisfied.
Ultimately, Danny concludes that providing exceptional service is the key to building trust and organically growing your business. So, if you want your business to go viral, start by being genuinely caring and committed to delivering excellent results.
This is great info whether you run a cash only practice or hybrid physical therapy!
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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. How do you make your business viral? How do you make your business into a word of mouth referral machine? And it's simpler than you think. There's one thing that you have to do really well to start to make it easy.
For people to want to send folks your way. And that thing is to be awesome at what you do. And I laugh about this cause it seems a bit obvious. It seems a bit straightforward, but I had a conversation today with one of the, one of the folks who work with in our mastermind group and each six months when we get together for our live events we have.
A mastermind MVP award that goes to the person that's made the biggest change in both their gross revenue and percentage of overall revenue. So fastest growing and most revenue change and a person that won the, at the last event, it was Andy Chent he and his fiance. Own a local practice in New York City, and he also has an education company that's called moment education where he does continue clinical education, but this was for his for his practice in New York City.
He won the award and I was talking to him today and he said, what was interesting was after he won, people were like, man, what, how'd you do it? How'd you have such, fast growth. And it's a, there's a lot of people, it's a 200 people that. That person, one, one, this this award over.
And he said, man, just be really good clinically, like it. And they're like, no, seriously, what's the secret? He goes, I don't know. It's it's literally just like really caring about people and trying to get the best results you possibly can. And, it's a good reminder that if you're amazing at sales and marketing, but clinically you don't care enough about people, or you haven't put in enough time to really feel like you're.
Very confident in the clinic. It doesn't really matter how great you get at business. I see this with younger clinicians where they struggle to succeed in their practices. And in some cases they just started too early. They didn't. They didn't develop the skill set to be able to really be confident and competent with patients to where they were so sure that they could get them better that they'd be willing to work with somebody for free if they didn't.
I think that's the litmus test you should ask yourself. Do you feel confident enough? To get somebody better that if you can't, you'd have to give them all their money back that's a place that if you're there, then we can bolt on business systems around that and help you grow significantly because it does, it will hold you back if all you are is a great clinician and you're no good at business.
You probably can build yourself to where you have a very poorly run lifestyle business and you're doing everything yourself, but you're probably pretty busy because you're getting a lot of people sent your way by, by customers. I think of people that I know even in the Atlanta area that this is not just exclusive to physical therapists, but all kinds of service providers, whether it be, attorneys or a massage therapist, chiropractors, physical therapists people That are, doing something on an hourly basis, basically to where they never are ever able to grow past himself because they don't understand how to do the business side of it, but they have a busy schedule themselves.
And it's because they're amazing at what they do. And I think back to when we started our practice, when my wife and I started our practice. Neither of us had what I would consider really any business experience. My wife had run nonprofits as a as a chapter president, basically a small nonprofit, but that didn't really have, that was more fundraising and managing volunteers.
So there's definitely some skills. I came over with that, but in a traditional sense, like we didn't go to business school. We don't have an MBA. We never were running a business before that. And I think about the things that we did. Looking back, not knowing and one of the main things was just being obsessive over helping people get outcomes.
This is many clinicians, by the way, you might be listening to this and then you fall into this camp. If you couldn't get somebody better What do you do, right? Do you just go on with your day or would it really bother you? You know for me, I remember I had this lady and she had a hip issue and I just couldn't seem to improve it I couldn't make any meaningful long term changes and I remember just getting so frustrated and going down the rabbit hole of like postural restoration Institute stuff and pelvic floor stuff and looking at breathing techniques and then you know DNS techniques and It forced me to learn all these things that I didn't really know at the time just from one person.
And this was like one out of, 50 that I just couldn't seem to get better, but I was so obsessive over it that I would spend all my free time learning about the hip and all of the anatomy and things that. Maybe I just, I was missing something on, or I would reach out to people that I felt like clinically knew more than me.
And I would ask them their thoughts on it. And I obsessed over, and I remember I apologized to this lady that I couldn't get her better. I was like I'm sorry, I'm going to, I'm going to refer you to somebody else. Because I just don't know what to do with you and I've tried everything, and I remember she was like super, super nice about it.
She goes, I know you've tried really hard. I can see. She goes, you come in here with all these different things and people you've talked to and articles you've read. And she's it's a, it's apparent to me that you're really trying to help me get better. And that's worth every dollar that.
I paid you in its own right, because you are ruling out a lot of things for me that are not the problem at the same time, but it's obvious that you really want me to get better. And that's, I don't think it's that common. Ironically, it should be, right? It should be the norm. It should be the thing that's just like everybody does that, but most people don't give a shit.
Not enough to go out of their way to, read an article instead of watch a show or something like that at the end of the day. If you can just start there, if you can start there with this sort of unwavering passion to get people the outcomes that they're seeking from you, like that's, don't forget, like these people are in a vulnerable position.
They're in pain. They are unable to do something physically that they really enjoy with people that they really enjoy being around. And. It's a difficult place to be, everybody that's had an injury or has felt held back by something knows what that feels like. And to be in that person's corner to help them really make a change, and to really go the extra mile for them.
I think it's so rare that in its own right, we'll at least get you moderate success in business. And if you start with this great service. You're gonna be just fine when you start to understand how to bolt on some of the business elements to this I heard this about Chipotle On a podcast that I was listening to and they were talking about Chipotle's marketing plan was just to have the best burrito bike by far the best fast food by far and No marketing really outside of that.
It was literally just we have the best ingredients we're at the best food is gonna be prepared quickly and We're going to bank on that. And they blew up. There's like a line around the door within a week. And it was because no one had really seen food that was fast. That wasn't like McDonald's.
That wasn't Burger King, that wasn't full of a bunch of whatever stuff that's really not so great for you. Not saying Chipotle, you can make Chipotle pretty bad for you. But in comparison to McDonald's. It's probably a pretty decent choice. If those are your only two options and they were spot on and they blew up and the restaurants got more and more popular.
They had a great model, but more than anything, they were selling something that was really good and they didn't need much marketing for that. And then obviously they built big business systems around that. And I think ironically, they actually sold to McDonald's as I'm. Comparing them right now for a lot of money and it's an interesting comparison because we're not selling burritos.
If you have this amazing service that people, it's like unexpectedly good, most people are expecting the average medical visit. They come in. They wait longer than they should. You don't pay attention to them a whole lot. It's confusing. They leave. They're not sure what they're going to pay.
And, if you can be light years, better than that, all of a sudden, what happens is people trust you, and. That person's brother, who's been dealing with knee problems, all of a sudden, that person that you saw is going to recommend their brother to come in and see you because they trust that you're going to help him just like they helped you.
And it's a status thing for those people. Keep in mind, referring somebody to a business is a status. Plus or minus issue. If I say, Hey, you got to try this new pizza place. It's awesome. Their pizza is amazing. And you go there and their pizza sucks. I've been downgraded in my status as a recommended source of places to go.
I don't want to lose that. Like I can't buy that. I got to earn that. So I'm very cautious about recommending pizza places to people because I don't want to lose my status. People do the same thing with recommending anything. If they're going to recommend you as a clinician and you suck, or you don't live up to the standards that they say, then they're going to stop sending people your way.
And then, they don't want to lose their status and they're not going to, you might be mediocre and they're okay seeing you, but they're not going to refer you to anybody else. You got to get to the point where people are just spewing how awesome you are to everybody else. And that comes down to what you deliver in the clinic or anything.
It comes down to how much you care about that person to sit in front of you. What's the give a crap factor in terms of whether they get better or not. Does it bother you? If it doesn't, then, maybe you don't care that much. I'm not saying anything's wrong with that, but if you go into business for yourself, you have to care a hell of a lot because people are there spending them, their hard earned money on trying to get better so they can do something they want to do in this world.
And, you're taking that from them and you deserve to give them the best option to get better. They possibly can. If you do that. Your marketing is going to get a hell of a lot easier. Your sales is going to get a hell of a lot easier. People are going to come in being pre sold. We had a guy who's a realtor and when I was seeing patients, he only did this with me, which I could never convince him to do this with everybody.
But he basically said, he was like, Hey, if you go see this guy and you don't get better. I'll just pay for your first visit. Just go see him for one visit. And if you don't think there's the right place, I'll just pay for it. What kind of, I can't pay somebody to do that. That's the craziest marketing that somebody really be willing to give somebody 250 bucks if they didn't like it.
And he didn't tell me this until after the fact, I had no idea, but that's the kind of service you have to provide. And if you do, then people are going to trust the ability to send folks your way and your business is going to grow in a very organic, very. Meaningful way just by doing that
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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 what you need to take. 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.
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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 customer experiences.