7 Things That Change When You Have Employees

This podcast will help you to become more confident with your patients , more successful in your practice or business and a leader in pelvic health , and we're going to have some fun along the way . Join us as we rise together .

We're Jesse and Nicole Cozine , founders of Pelvic Sanity Physical Therapy and the creators of the Pelvic PT Huddle , and this is Pelvic PT Rising .

I in fact get anxious around this time where I'm like don't tell me , don't tell me , don't tell me , wait , tell me .

I get so freaking excited because we do get . It's just a snapshot we really want to present .

We actually present to each person who's in the program what we call their scoreboard of where they were when they started , where they are now , what their biggest wins were , what the return on investment in the program was , how much income they have generated through the program and it is just so fun from people going from heading to really started who had no

revenue at all when they began , to replacing the current income or being able to quit their side hustle . We've got people who are going from good to great , which is a really difficult transition , but had employees made some changes that affected them and now are doing amazing . We've had people go over projecting for a million dollars for a year .

I mean like it's awesome . I love this time of year so we'll probably be sharing some stuff with you guys as we get a little closer . But if you're interested , if you're a business owner who has not been through the accelerator program , we'll talk to you just a little bit about that is going to be coming up here at the end of December .

We're going to be taking another cohort through . We just took our first 130 plus people through in this last six month piece . It's a six month coaching intensive that is meant to be foundational .

It's meant to be the springboard for you guys into our one-on-one mentorship programs and we're just so excited and proud of all the work that everybody has put in over these last six months and getting to see those results . It's one of the reasons , nicole , I'm so glad that we did it as a six month program . That was a big debate when we were starting off .

Do we want to just give people like a course with a bunch of information but then no accountability and no community and it's subjectively a shit ton of information that we're giving people ? Should we have made it take a year to go through ? We settled on that six month time and I think this validates it .

I think it moves quickly for folks , but it is pretty transformative .

What's even more cool for us and I don't know if we've even talked about this very publicly a lot , because we've talked about it a ton within our rising business mentorship family , which is anyone in rising one , rising two , now the accelerator program . We've talked about this new structure that we have for public beauty . Rising business we post clay .

We knew that we were going to have to really restructure everything to make sure and our major goal with this was to make sure that we had something for every step of business .

We took a look at everything we had currently done and then we reworked a lot of our programs and then now have four different business programs meant to be able to help anybody at any stage of business from you maybe just think you want a business to no patients to make it $250,000 or more crushing , have employees and everything .

A lot of people don't make the leap because of that . You'll have all of that information at your fingertips and that kickstart program . That's kind of a just . You get all of the information . It's an online course , basically , and you can go through as quickly as possible to get through and get all of your stuff in . Next we've got our accelerator program .

That is the entry point into all of our business mentorship stuff .

So everybody who is in the rising mentorship family has been through the accelerator program or was in one of the earlier cohorts where basically we went through all of the same information and then realized that man , everybody needs to know these foundational principles before we can start talking about the different nuances of their business .

So that is the foundational level of stuff . That is a six month business coaching intensive that you go through Again . The next cohort of that is starting in January . So if you're a business owner and you want things to be different at the end of 2024 , we always talk about how nothing is going to change until something changes .

good to great is actually the most difficult of all of those steps . So that's the accelerator program . If you want to go any further in our different programs , that is the entry level to all of that . After that , we've got our one on one mentorship .

This is going to be a program where you are in with a bunch of other folks who are in our mentorship family . We're going to be doing One-on-one calls . You're going to be getting group coaching calls from us .

Those one-on-one calls we're actually really excited about this are with our rising coaches and these are people who have been with us for years , who have worked the program , who have built amazing businesses of their own .

We always think you should learn from people who have gone where you want to go and we're really excited to be bringing them in for your one-on-one calls and being able to serve more people with that and we're in there doing the group coaching , answering questions . We do office hours in there .

That's where you get that individualized level of attention on your business , on where it goes . So we've got a lot of our folks who have been through the Accelerator program are right now deciding on graduating into the mentorship program and this actually brings us to the topic of our podcast today .

But the last thing we do is our CEO boardroom program and that's for people who are really just objectively crushing it . You're doing more than $250,000 in annual revenue . Usually that means you've got multiple employees and you are really on that kind of quick path . It's a much smaller program . It's capped at 20 people . It's got regional exclusivity .

We do a lot individually with each folks in there . So you can find out all that information at pelvicptrisingcom .

So I know that was a lot , nicole , but we wanted to talk about what changes in your business as you hire employees and this is actually came out of a conversation we were having in the Accelerator program of who should go on to mentorship and frankly , we think from an ROI perspective , everybody should be doing mentorship .

But I think that we've also been really passionate over the years even more so now that we've had employees ourselves for so long now is that the decision to grow beyond yourself and the decision to hire employees in your business is as important , if not more important , than the decision to even start your practice in the first place .

It literally changes everything about

your business .

You have a new business the moment that you want to grow beyond yourself and in some ways , you know , in some of our phases we talk about , you kind of go back into the oh shit phase a little bit and sometimes the hustling phase , because you roll changes and so many things changes , and so we are going to talk about in this podcast what changes , and some

of you might be thinking like , oh , just a few things , right ? I think that one of the biggest mistakes we see people make is as a solar printer .

You get busy and you're like , oh cool , the next logical step is to just hire and you may get told this by a different coach or whatever , and we actually want people to make a very deliberate decision , to stay in that happy as little clam phase for a period of time .

Really think deeply about if you want to grow beyond yourself , because there are so many things that change , and if you don't understand that that's what the decision that you're making . Sometimes you're up shit Creek .

If you hire too quickly and don't realize that , you hate your life , you hate your business and you're wondering , like what the fuck did I just do ? I thought I was doing the right thing and you realize , oh no , this is terrible , Because having employees is fucking really hard .

Just because we picked a nice random , I don't know why seven everything because it was easier than infinity . Things change when it comes to your business , but here are some things that change your role . First and foremost , your role change . So what worked for you as a solopreneur is not going to work for you as a business owner .

A lot of the traits actually that make you great as a solopreneur actually hold you back when you go to a different role . So a lot of people can have a lot of success as a solopreneur because of your clinical skills , because of the buy in you get from people , because you genuinely care and people can see that .

And all of a sudden your role in the business completely changes . And maybe you got into this because you wanted to treat the way that you believe the patient should be treated and you're a clinician at heart , first and foremost , and you can have a very successful solopreneur business by being a clinician at heart .

The moment you hire somebody , your role changes . You're no longer the primary clinician that people are seeing and I remember , nicole , we was pretty vividly when we realized that more people at Pelvic Sanity were seeing other people and not you .

But the and this is why we put it first your role is different and it's a huge identity shift . It's a huge transition period . It's just a huge God .

It just it's a mind fuck sometimes because you feel like you're a clinician and that's how you were successful and you think that you can still do only that and still be successful , and usually that's not true .

You really have to switch your mindset into knowing that now your role is to is business owner , your role is now employer or your role is still clinician if you're still seeing patients , but man , that is now down the priority list .

Now you've got somebody who's depending on you for their livelihood and you have the responsibility of filling their schedule , and it's not filling as quickly as you want . The phone isn't ringing and you don't really know what to do .

So , whether or not you've hired admin help , at this point you are doubling the amount of administrative work that you've got , the amount of prescriptions that need to be faxed , the amount of cancellations that are coming in , the amount of moving in this movement in the schedule , the amount of hopefully leads , because you're going to need to double your leads in

order to double your patient volume because you just hired somebody . So all of those roles are things that you may have been very settled in and doing just fine when it was your schedule that needed filling . But , man , that completely changes when you've got the responsibility of somebody else . And Nicole , number two is responsibility .

You have a whole new set of responsibilities as a business owner with employees than you had when you were a solo product .

But even if we're not physically present in the office , like as the business owners that have employees , the buck ends up still stopping with you , and so if there's a problem at the clinic , you're the one that starts to deal with it , and it's even harder because you weren't actually involved in the situation .

And so now your vacation is not always a vacation because you're still thinking about it that way , although with our programs , we help you to be able to take one and enjoy your life regardless .

We originally started the business in part for time freedom , like many of you guys out there , and then found that we weren't taking any advantage of that because the clinic was running and somebody needed to be there to do that Even just a simple example that you might not even think about .

But for years we always have made sure that all of our people felt extremely safe in the business . And if you've got a female staff member who's there alone with a male patient , are you comfortable with that ? Is your person comfortable with that ?

There were so many times when I was looking at the schedule and it would be like , oh , so-and-so has a male evaluation at the last person of the day . I need to actually go back into the office to have somebody be there if we didn't have front desk coverage or if somebody had called in sick . I'm looking at the schedule .

That's the kind of responsibility that you have , and then you just also have this responsibility that , early on especially , can be a little bit crushing of you are responsible for someone else's livelihood .

And again , it's not just , oh , I have a waitlist , therefore I need to hire it's like no , but do you actually have the actual volume you need to fill and keep filled another person's schedule ?

And again , you can make any transition Like everybody who's listening to this or everybody who's been through our business programs , I fully believe , would be successful long term on their own . It's just could you do it faster , could you do it easier , could you do it better ?

You damn sure don't need a lawyer to look at your forms or to tell you that you need to be HIPAA compliant , even though if you're listening to this , your cash base practice you probably aren't even a HIPAA covered entity . People are like oh yeah , my lawyer said that I needed to pay them $2,000 for a HIPAA form .

I was like did you know that you're not even a HIPAA covered entity ? Because it seems like something your lawyer should know if they're charging you $2,000 to do your forms . But it's a whole other thing . I have a whole problem with that . Nicole , your sister's a lawyer , so I'm going to put my lawyer rant on pause here .

There are so many weird rules , regulations that state dependent you don't know what you don't know in this situation and for rule followers like public rehab providers are , I literally do not understand you're so much more likely to have an employment problem than you are to have a patient complaint problem at your office .

It is ridiculous Like a hundred times more likely , a hundred times more likely . So if you want to be scared about something , be scared about that , right .

You clearly have something that is compelling patients to trust you , to work with you , to finish a plan of care , to do all of that stuff and so often what we just assume that everyone's like us or that you could very easily teach that and what ends up happening is that even something as simple as how you introduce yourself to your patient sitting in the

waiting room , or the things that you observe , or the things that I look at someone's handwriting to tell you and how much they wrote on the subjective or what they checked on this box here it tells me so much .

All of that stuff I could glance on someone's intake form , take me literally less than 20 seconds and have a prior assumption about what's going to go on in that session , and that's the kind of stuff that is so difficult to translate to somebody else .

You know the answer to that right now . Listening to me , you know exactly what you would say to that patient . Good luck convincing your front desk to know all that stuff .

You have to build a system , a training system , to be able to translate that , so that the person that you hire as an admin staff can still be very truthful on the phone , but then their role is not necessarily to be a clinician either .

So what are you going to do to make sure that every patient that calls feels whatever you want them to feel on the phone and gets good information and then also converts to booking an appointment ?

. Your profitability drops dramatically .

And if you don't know how to set up your employee contract , if you're not filling their schedule , if you're paying a salary or a guaranteed wage and they're not seeing patients , if you're not charging late cancellation fees , all of those can massively affect the profitability of the business to the point where you would have been better off financially not hiring ,

not seeing those patients because you've structured this in such a way and there is an expected drop in profitability because you're bringing on staff . That's part of the patient visit is now going to pay your clinician instead of all going to the clinic when it was you seeing all the patients . So we expect some of that and some of that is really preventable .

But it's a really really common mistake that we see when people hire , especially their first few employees .

A lot of times we come in and it's like whoa , we've got to really have a tough conversation about how you're paying your folks , because this is just you're literally losing money every time your , your person , sees a patient , and so think about your profitability as it goes through . That's another thing that really changes .

You can't just say , oh , I'm going to see double the patients , I'm going to make twice as much . The answer is absolutely not . You might double your patients and make the same amount if you're lucky .

We have , since then , fixed that issue and optimized it and now teach it to other people in our mentorship programs .

But the training , the mentoring , the onboarding the difference between onboarding and training and mentorship is a huge piece that you need to understand what you want to do at your business , what you want to offer to your employees , that you need to dedicate the time to be able to do that . Again , going back up to number one , your role is now different .

Now , with employees , you actually have to prioritize their needs above your patient's needs , and so not only is it a huge mindset shift , it's a shit ton of time , work , energy to like systematize that , so people feel like they're actually coming to a place like an organization that has their shit together .

But I've heard so many times oh , I'm just going to hire an experienced clinician , or I'm going to hire somebody who has front desk experience , or I'm going to have my front desk person train my next front desk person . The answer is no to all that . You're literally not allowed to say that in the rising mentorship family , Like you cannot .

You will spend the same amount of time if you're doing this right , working with an experienced clinician who comes in with somebody who has 10 years of experience , as you would with a new grad . Now , you might be going over different things , you will be going over different things , but you're going to spend the same amount of time training .

They're going to have to unlearn things . They're going to have to learn things about your business . If they're going from an insurance practice to a cash practice , you're going to have to train about that and show them the value and make them be able to convey that to a patient . It is not less time to hire somebody who's experienced .

I think everybody has this idea that , oh , if I just find the right person , maybe this unicorn will come in and I won't have to work with them at all . And every once in all that happens .

And I'll tell you this if you do find somebody like that , it's actually the worst thing that can happen for your business , because then you think all the rest of your employees are going to be like that . We've actually had one employee who was kind of like that Nicole , at least on the clinical side , was brilliant clinically . You guys shared an ethos .

It was just absolutely fantastic . We were like cool , this is going to be great . This employee thing is so easy .

And , jesse , the last thing is the thing that makes a lot of people uncomfortable and a lot of people really struggle with having employees is having hard conversations . You will not have employees and not have to , at some point , have multiple tough conversations , and that can range from hey , your numbers suck . To hey , I need you to be on time .

To hey , you got a park over here . You're taking spots away from patients like hey , clean up your shit out of the sink . I'm such a stickler for that . I felt like sanity .

And then all of a sudden you realize you're walking on eggshells or you're doing something that's unsustainable in the business , or something isn't working , or you're frustrated or it's just not going the way that you want it to go .

You feel like you're almost like living in someone else's business because you're not willing to have these hard conversations , and that's one of the things that is really really challenging . And as a solopreneur , frankly it's kind of nice . You don't have to have that many hard conversations .

You have to have the every once in a while and forcing a late cancellation policy Although if you let that wave , the only person you're hurting is yourself . So you can kind of get away with that too . But the minute you hire employees , you're going to be dealing with hard conversations , and that's not bad .

It's actually a sign of like healthy communication and being upfront and transparent and forthright , but you will have hard conversations way more frequently when you have a staff than when you don't , and then you will have exponentially more as you add . Team members yes .

I do not do , and I've had to work really hard at instigating those conversations , and as a business owner that has hired employees , you a lot of the time are responsible for instigating tough conversations , which to me , is like a whole different level than just being able to deal with it .

It's much more difficult when you're actually having to instigate all of that .

now , especially got to have a little bit of self awareness and understand , like even for someone like me , right , like I had to learn that I do really well in those different scenarios and don't do well and others and then have to work on that Like it's a full blown self realization journey on steroids

. When you have employees , it is really important to understand that these things change . It's inevitable , and that is is that one business growth requires personal growth .

I think I don't know if it comes off that way that you guys sometimes it feels that way . We don't want it to . We love our freaking staff . I love everything at public sanity , like the way that that I wouldn't trade that for anything , but we want you to .

I think I think it feels that way because we're going against this narrative sometimes that we see online all the time that hiring is just the next step or you have to hire , or if you hire , then you can just be on vacation all the fucking time and you don't have to work hard and all of your people will just do all the work for you , and it's like

that's such horseshit . So , as Nicole , you would always say , do not misconstrue , it doesn't mean that you shouldn't hire . If you already hired , that you made some sort of terrible mistake . We don't think that at all , but we do want you going into the growing process with Eyes Wide Open . We want you thinking through is this the right thing for you ?

Is this the right thing for you right now ? And being prepared for some of these challenges ? And , honestly , I feel like getting help , whether that's from us , from some other program , from books , from from podcasts , whatever it is . But you're going to need to learn new skills , new abilities and be able to work with and lead a team .

That's a whole different set of skills that got you to where you are and what got you here is not going to get you where you want to go , and that's one of the reasons we're so passionate about doing this is that we took our lumps with trial and error before we started doing mentorship with as many people as we could find who could still teach us stuff .

And we still do that , because it is that important to make that process smoother , to make you a better boss , a better employer and to make this thing actually work . So that's why we're going to talk about it that way . It's not because we're negative about hiring folks . It's been one of the best things that we've done in an area of huge growth .

I think for both of us me very much stepping into those different roles . But man , it's anybody who's telling you it's easier . If you're thinking that it's easy , it is very much not .

We want people to be very deliberate about this decision because of the seven things that we just talked about , that change . You have to be ready for that and you have to want that and , like Jesse said , it has to be the right time for you to take on this new role responsibility , the legal stuff , all the stuff that we just talked about in this podcast .

Maybe they were trying to , but it's like , oh yeah , it's a little barricade . It's like , yeah , it is , but it's also a lot of like spit up and poopy diapers . I've looked at another person's butthole more in the last year than Maybe not me , though , right . You just like this is easy .

If this is something that you do want help with as you grow , that is what we're so passionate about . We've helped 450 plus businesses . Nicole . That is a crazy number to be so excited about that out of control .

.

But man , I am really excited about that and seeing all of the people who are helping patients in their own communities and building a business that truly works for them , that is really exciting for us . So if you're interested in working with us at all , make sure to check out that accelerator program .

There is a little application thing that you can fill out on the webpage . It's at pelvicpitturizingcom slash accelerator . Once you do that , I remember our team will get back in touch with you , make sure we answer any questions , make sure that it feels like the right fit , and then that is actually opening up for enrollment in late December .

So if you guys are smart business owners , you're thinking about that could be a tax write off for this year , so you might want to be thinking about that , but that'll open up in late December as well . So hope this has been helpful for you guys . As always , would love to hear from you . We'd love to keep this conversation going .