Clinical Growth as a Business Owner

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 .

Now we're going to talk to you guys who are business owners about clinical education and how to do this . Before we do , I've got a couple of announcements .

One Nicole , is heading to CSM here really soon , so make sure , if you're going to check out her talk , we also have a hiring director for those of you guys who are business owners and are looking to add someone to the practice .

We got so fed up with indeed's bullshit and putting on all these other things that weren't specific to pelvic health that we wanted to create something that was just a no brainer for folks . So if you are looking for a position , you can find stuff there .

If you want to advertise for a position exclusively for pelvic rehab providers , you can go ahead and check out the hiring directory . Both of those are found at pelvicptrisingcom slash map versus 25 bucks a month . So , honestly , once hiring , always hiring . Just put it on there , leave it up . If one person finds you from it , it is worth a million times that .

So we want that to be an awesome service for those of you guys looking for a job and those of you guys who are looking for an employee , absolutely . So . We were kind of thinking about this topic , nicole , because in the accelerator program we have clinical excellence modules and that always gets a lot of conversation going .

And as an outsider to the field , I find this very interesting that everybody who we've met I shouldn't say everybody , almost everybody in our business mentorship programs is feeling a little bit uncomfortable as a business owner with how much continuing education they're doing .

Either they're doing a boatload of con-ed in order to try to fix issues or proceed issues with the business that they think this is going to help with , or they're not doing any con-ed because they're focusing on the business and growing it and the mentorship program and everything else and feeling guilty that they're not going out and doing a whole bunch of courses .

And it just seems like everybody's unhappy and I don't like when that happens . So I thought we should talk about it .

But here's the thing I think if you think about that first category of person that Jesse described , the person who is thinking that the reason that someone's dropping off their schedule or the reason that they're getting more cancellations , like oh that must .

If I just do blank , if I just take this visceral course or if I just do this more exercise-based certification , like I've been wanting to do it for a long time , I think I can really add a lot to my practice . I think that that will help me to retain these patients better .

They don't care how much certifications you have and all the things . And that's not to say that each one of those courses or series of courses or certification , like they can be freaking excellent resources . But it's not the reason why you're having a business problem .

The lack of you taking that clinical con ed course is not the reason why your patient is calling and saying I think I'm just going to take a pause for treatment for a second . I'm going to try this other thing .

I'm going to go and talk to my pain management doctor , I think I'm going to get some injections and said I'm going to push pause on pelvic rehab for a second . Like no amount of clinical continuing education is going to help that from happening .

That is more of the clinical excellence , piece of the accelerator and the foundation for all of our business rising offerings .

So we get to do a lot of this data and we see people having better businesses , longer plans of care , getting more people all the way through a complete plan of care with the same clinical skill set . Right , they're the same clinician they were .

They're a great clinician at the beginning , at the end , like if you're thinking about starting your business , you're doing that because you have some clinical confidence and some clinical skills .

So , with no additional clinical training skills , anything else , they're able to see patients for longer and get better results , because it's not about the clinical skills 1000% .

Maybe you've chosen to invest in business coaching or something like that and you just don't quite have the revenue stream yet to invest that $1,000 of con ed that your employer used to pay for you . Now you are the employer , so that kinda sucks From that perspective . No one's funding your con ed anymore .

You've chosen to invest in other areas and what gets pushed down the list is clinical con ed and y'all feel so guilty about that . And I will tell you this is one of the .

I mean , this is gonna be a little bit of a side rant , but it's one of the reasons why I think that forcing people to do con ed in order to maintain their license is sort of a bullshit , because there were many , many years where I just did con ed only to do my license requirement .

I'm taking , like ACL stuff off of a fricking med bridge has nothing to do with pelvic health . It's just because I felt like it was like so easy , I chose all of those things because I just needed to like have that be done because I was so busy with other things , and so I don't know if that's you and that's okay .

There's seasons to your business and you don't necessarily have to feel guilty because one year you didn't do 17 courses , and that's coming from somebody who makes courses . I want you to buy all of the things .

I feel like everybody should buy all of the con ed courses , especially rising , but I don't want you guys to do it just because you're feeling like guilty , because you feel like you need to do something , you guys are searching for something and feeling really guilty about not prioritizing that .

Like it's okay , you're still a good clinician even if you're not doing 17,000 con ed courses .

Just because you're a business owner , because you really care , because you're tracking the people who are falling off , you have that accountability to yourself that you just can't possibly have when you're employee . Right , I mean , you can track .

We track our metrics for the folks at Public Sanity , but at the end of the day they're still getting paid , whether or not Nancy falls off the schedule or not . When you're a business owner and you've got 10 people on your schedule , it matters when two of those folks disappear .

So you're trying to get by and you're caring , you're doing all the things , you're thinking about them on your way home . It's not the okay cool like wash , my hands lock up and I'll come back in the next morning as an employee , like you're already improving because you're a business owner and because of how much you care .

It's one of those things to give yourself some grace . This is , nicole said .

There's seasons to this stuff and to the contrary to that , nicole is , there's the time when you know you're so busy with the business side that you're just busting through a bunch of stuff on Medbridge to get your ConEd units and then there's years where you're doing 10 times the amount of ConEd that you actually need to do and it kind of balances out .

But just being accepting of the fact that there are going to be seasons with that and then recognizing that , especially when you're running a business , that a lot of times it's an either or thing , can you invest in business or can you invest in ConEd , and not just a financial thing .

It's not even about the money , it's sometimes just about your time and your mental energy . I just don't have time at this point in my business . I don't have the bandwidth to spend a weekend listening through a clinical course , no matter how great it is , and then deciding that you're not going to feel guilty about that .

So it's not even just about the actual time that the ConEd course takes , it's the mental bandwidth that it takes to then try that on every patient that it's appropriate for , and hone your skill because you just learned something new .

And so now it's like an additional focus that might not always hit that top priority list and , like Jesse said , like that's okay , it's okay . So we just wanted to make sure everyone feels good about what they're doing . If you want to do connet , great . If you don't or you can't , that's also fine . And I just feel like we don't want to .

Like Jesse said , we don't want you to feel bad , whichever person you are .

So if you haven't been trained in treating male patients and you go out and get trained and can now see male patients , well , you just doubled the number of potential patients you could see , or with PEDs or with Yenny's fertility training if you guys go do that or with dry needling and there's people who are searching specifically for that not in California thanks

to the acupuncture lobby , but right , that's a thing . So there might be opportunities . But then realize it's not just like oh , I took the course , awesome , All of these patients are going to be knocking on my door next Monday .

Now you've got to like go out and market and meet the new doctors and all of the different things , and are you willing and able to invest the time in that ? So I do want to say that is an exception to hey , a new clinical interest can change something in the business , but it's not going to be as simple as just taking the con , ed course .

So that is one of those things to make sure that you fix before you think that taking some sort of p ? P adding pediatric therapy to your pelvic therapy to your business is going to like fix this revenue stream problem Like it probably won't if the fundamental issue is something with forfeits or buying or your money mindset or something like that .

So it really is important to look at that . Now we'll kind of leave you with this .

The one thing that I want for every single person in this field is I want you to be very deliberate and intentional about planning your clinical route , plan your clinical con ed , maybe even years in advance , right and I want you to think about what deficits do you actually have ?

Not ones that you think you have , not ones that you would like to help , but what are you actually lacking in at this time and then find courses that will help you to do that . You have so many options for amazing con ed courses . There's brilliant people out there making content for you probably now more than ever .

But I want you to match what courses you take with either a true clinical need for you to learn that skill or a true business need for you to learn that clinical thing . And the marrying of both of those worlds would be if you share both a clinical need and a business opportunity , and then that's the thing that you need to take .

So I want you to take a really good introspective look at what are my actual blind spots not the ones that one person one time I thought maybe needed more hip exercises and I didn't know what to do . Therefore , I'm going to do this year long certification , not that kind .

But what are you actually needing ?

More information on what comes up again and again and again and again that your patient population really is needing you to understand more things like menstrual health , hormone stuff , like is there stuff like that that might lead you down a path of taking a course to help your current patients and then might lead into another business opportunity as you grow that

area of your practice if you like it , to then be able to offer more things to the folks that are already coming .

It is a different responsibility , it's a different journey and you can't expect to have , you know , the same amount of conhead stuff every single year the way that you may have when you're an employee and that's OK . There will be years where you do a lot of cool stuff . There will be years that will be a little bit more lean .

The better we can get with all of that , the more accepting we can be . I think the happier folks will be . So if you guys have questions about this , if you guys want to reach out , please let us know . We'd love to hear from you .