How Great Leaders Build Transparency, Accountability & Team Success with Sean Healy

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Welcome back, rockstars, to another episode. Today we're featuring Sean Healy, the CEO of Accounted For. But this episode, guys, is so fun. We're talking about leadership development and how we develop independent leaders. And the name of this episode, I don't know what it's going to be yet. I'll probably have it figured out later. But it's basically discussing the F word in business, which is failure. His company has a culture around failure that I've never seen. And it's going to be a powerful episode as you learned about how he's built a team of people that feel so safe that they get up every day and they want to come to work. Now, obviously, that's not everyone every day, but he qualifies it based on this. My new favorite quote of culture in a company, which is company culture, is the feeling your employees get on the Sunday night before coming to work. Man, does that hit me hard in this episode. And he talks about how we eliminate all the resistance in our employees lives by making failure something we celebrate. And if you don't believe me, listen, by the end, you'll be a believer. Enjoy the show. Okay, so, Sean, as you're building your company, leadership is key. Absolutely. So let's talk about leadership development from your perspective. What has that journey been like for you? Developing leaders at Accounted For?

Okay, so developing leaders is just like developing any other employee. There's a lot of failure involved.

Got it.

I mean, one of the things that we do that I think was really important and it's a key piece of our culture, a key piece of our development, is we encourage failure. We talk about failure every single day.

Really.

When we kick off our team meetings, we do team meetings Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. So I meet with my leadership team every Monday, just as a kickoff strategy. How is everything in each department going? Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, everybody jumps on a quick call. We go, what were our successes? And we let everybody talk from bottom up. What were our failures? Bottom up every single time. And then we talk about what needs to get done that day. If anybody needs help. We talk about stuff. What's going to happen the next day? The next day. Is there anything that we need to be aware of? But by throwing failures in and making failures something that you celebrate, it changes how transparent employees are. It changes how people lead. It just. It opens up the door to just a lot of unique and a lot of unique growth.

I love that, Sean. And it's interesting because I listen, I've read the books good to great. And they talk about making it safe for failure. But I've never heard the concept, the way you're describing it to where you're leaning into it, brought up repeatedly as an item to be celebrated in that regard, because that's going to completely change the game in terms of just how people feel safe about it. So literally every day, your employees will say, here's my successes and here's where I failed.

Oh, yeah. I mean, to a degree where, like, we, like, it's something people. I'm not going to say they get excited about talking about failures, but yeah, we. Every single day, if there's a failure, it's something that's being brought up, and it's, hey, I learned or I failed, but this is what I learned not to do again. Now, obviously, if somebody fails the same way every single day, you have to go about it a little differently at some point. But overall, a lot of times, the quickest way to learn is to. Failure is to fail. Right? You need to put certain safety nets. You have to have checks and balances, right? A failure can't drastically impact a client. But doing something incorrectly and knowing you have the right checks and balances, I want my team to come and try new things. I want them to fail because when they fail, they're going to learn and they're going to grow faster than. And everybody else. Like, if you're willing to put yourself out there, it's the easiest way to grow as a professional.

Well, there's probably no other way to grow, right? There's like, all. One of my favorite mentors once told me a story about someone that made a mistake that cost him tens of thousands of dollars. And the way he handled it. He told me this. And he wasn't bragging. He was just. And he's a huge success. He has multiple hospitals. Not like, okay, you know, like his hospitals, plural. And he's. And he told me. He said, this person made this mistake, but I knew. He said, he's. I knew they were trying their best and that they were very competent. Otherwise they were taking on something new, very challenging. And it resulted in this massive failure. He put his arm around them and go, well, that was the best money I've ever spent. And this person in tears is like, what are you talking about? He goes, well, I have to pay to learn. And I either pay coaches or I pay companies or consultants or whatever. He goes, or I pay through experience. And he goes, now I have an employee who knows how to handle this the right way. He goes, that's. That's in the end that's going to make me the next million dollars. And I just, I can only imagine, Sean, how that your employees feel when they, when they're not only just safe to share it, but they have a leader that believes in them enough to put their arm around them. Go, good for you, good for you. Let's celebrate that fact.

You have to live up to it too. Like when somebody makes a failure, you have to stop. And all leadership has to be aligned. Right. Because there's. I forget what the book was, but they say that culture is kind of what your direct team is. Your direct team. So in larger companies, managers play such a key role in culture because the company might have a good culture. But if your team doesn't, then that employee's perception is that the company doesn't have a good culture. And when something does go wrong, it's taking a deep breath and it's reminding yourself that this is a learning experience and there's positives of when you create that type of culture. I found if something goes wrong, I want to know about it quickly, right. I don't want somebody to be so scared that they're not going to bring something up. Especially in the finance world if something goes wrong. Like you need to know about it and get on top of it right away. Now, once again, there's a lot of processes and we put a lot of double checks in place. So it's very difficult to have a catastrophic failure. Right. But especially when accounting firms are. There's constant hacking attempts and there's all these different things that can go wrong. Having an environment where somebody will immediately bring it up to you or really immediately bring it to light, it just gives you the ability to do something about it if and when that scenario happens.

Well, yeah, and I think that there's this inherent accountability that that culture creates when you make it safe for people to promote their failures. Because when there's. First of all, failure is the ultimate F word in business. For, for a lot of companies, cultures, meaning they don't talk about it, they don't want to look at it. Their employees are constantly just trying to like up, manage their, their direct reports by showing them all the great things that they've done without, you know, in hiding and putting under rug every little thing that's done. But what the problem with that is is that it promotes even good people from, to becoming unethical in their, and out of integrity in how they act. Because integrity isn't good or bad. It's just the balance of those things. So if we're not providing the failures and mistakes to our direct reports, then we're not telling them the whole story. And I've learned in my own companies, then you get a culture, especially in remote companies, of people who start snowballing and they start watching Netflix and hiding it. And, like, there's a difference, I think, in failure between effort and rebellion. Like, rebellion, failure is where they're just not trying. They're trying to cheat the system. Oh, yeah. For effortful mistakes is like. Is. Is like what we should love and nurture and show nothing but kindness and mercy on the way that you do.

But I think it's the intention behind it sometimes.

Like, yes. Have you ever had anyone, like, come clean on, like, other stuff? Like, yeah, I checked in, but I didn't do anything. I don't know. That probably doesn't show up in a team meeting sense, but have you ever had employees do that?

So, I mean, it's a good question.

We do one on ones. We try to keep teams in groups of six. We try not to get over that. And.

We find that it's hard to manage more than five people at any one point in time. We do one on ones each week. And I think sometimes there's times where you see something's going wrong, and because you're okay with talking about failures, you kind of wait for them to bring it up. Even though you probably have a good idea that something's going on. There's been a few times where you can see something's happening and you can call it out. We try not to do it in an attacking way. We don't want anybody to get defensive. So one of the biggest, I think it was Brene Brown had a good quote, and one of my employees brought it up to me, saying, hey, I think this is a better way for us to communicate with our team when it's something emotional or when we need to call something out. The story I'm telling myself is this. And so what you do is you say what you're thinking, but you throw the story of what you know. The story I'm telling myself is. Because this is what's in my brain.

Yeah. The story in my head is that you are busy. And. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You start describing the subjective, unproven facts in a way that, like, helps them feel like there's some safe distance from it.

And a lot of times you'll start to understand that, you know, yeah, there's something happening. Hey, I am getting a little lazy. Hey, I don't know why But I've been waking up a little late, or I've just been really overwhelmed, or I just haven't been happy recently. And it. You can kind of get past that smokescreen and you can actually just have a real conversation with the person, figure out what's going on and see what you can do to help. You know, it just. Let's say it comes down to intention. You have to. You know, the goal is if you're going to put somebody on a performance plan, it's not to get them out of the company when you put them on a performance plan, it's to help them perform and give. Make sure you're giving them all the tools that they need or support that they need to. To be a top performer.

Yeah, I love that and I love the way that you described this. One of my previous guests said something that has stayed with me. It was the idea that we want to give our employees the benefit of the doubt is one of the greatest techniques we can ever do. Now, there's a difference between that and not, like, being firm on what's right and having those hard conversations.

Confrontation.

Yeah, right. Oh, they're probably just tired. It's like, no, I'm going to talk to them about it, and we're going to talk about the outcomes objectively. Like, hey, this isn't being met. We're not skirting around that issue. But what we're saying is, hey, listen, I. I don't know what's going on, but I trust. I trust you. I sense from you something else might be going on. And I really want to help you with that because I had one employee once, Sean, that we were missing money from our. Our. Our. Our Cash Pay band at the beginning of our. At the front of our desk. And every. Every. Every week, we would just notice $10 was missing here and there. And whoever was didn't know that. I was. I was aware of it. And so we started tracking it. I was trying to catch the person. I did. I.

And when I confronted this individual to fire him, I was pretty. Just black and white about it. I wasn't a jerk. I just said, hey, listen, this is done. We're finished. I saw you stealing from. I know you're stealing from me. We're finished. And I said, I won't call the cops if you just walk away right now and never hear from you again. And, you know, he came back to me three years later, and he showed up at the door and he's like, I was. I was desperate. I want you to know I'm sorry, I'll pay you back. I was desperate. He kind of went through it and I just thought, wow, even when the most heinous acts are being done, there's a human element to it somewhere. Rarely, I think, do people act out of pure malice. Even though I do think that does happen sometimes. So the idea that you guys make fear, you take the F word out of fear and you allow people to look at failure as part of this natural, organic journey. So I know we've talked about the extreme version of people like failing because of. Of rebellion or like stealing, but I just think it's nice to balance that because in your team, people are able to do that. So what's the result for you? What have you heard from the team that you've worked with about that in terms of how they feel about talking about their fears?

I've gotten nothing but positive feedback on it. I think initially it can be a little difficult. And mind you, our clients, we do this, we have the same conversations. So when we meet with our clients once a month to talk about finance, we also ask, what were our successes last month? What were our failures last month? It's meant to drive self awareness. Right. And it can be a little uncomfortable in the beginning, it's a muscle that you kind of have to like, utilize. Right. But once the team starts using it, what I find intriguing and when I know that it's starting to work is when I do a one on one, I ask what the failure was or what the success was, and their response is, you know, it's funny, I was thinking about this last night and what that means is they're going through their week, they're trying to figure out intentionally. Yeah, it's that proactive mindset. Right. And so when I hear stuff like that, I know it's working.

Working.

Right. When they know what their focus was from last week and they tie it into the one on one, they're being intentional. So I've seen it work really well. I've even had instances where we've brought people on part time and it was probably the biggest compliment I've ever received. We had somebody that was, that came on part time called me up one day and was like, I want to come on full time. I know it's not something we discussed yet, but the culture on your team, there's just such. It's so different. It's so just like refreshing. I want to be a part of this team and that's what I want. That's the end result, right? You want to have a good place that you're working at. I mean.

Yeah. You want to be happy. And you spend most of your life in this place called work because you have to eat. Yeah. So, like, why wouldn't you want to work somewhere that you love and you're happy?

Yeah. Let me remind you, it's a bookkeeping and accounting company. Not like we're. Like, it's not the most fun. It's not the most satisfaction. Sexy.

Like, but Disneyland.

Yeah. But when. But when you can show up to work, you enjoy the people you work with.

Yeah.

You know, you. You know, even if selfishly, you're. You're gonna. You're. You're. You're gonna do a better job, you're gonna care. And that's, you know, that's not something that you can just throw money at people and say care. You. You have to put the right structure in place. You have to put the right culture in place.

Well, you know, I said Disneyland kind of, you know, tongue in cheek, because you were talking about, hey, we're an accounting firm. Yeah. Physical therapists. You know, we're in there. From a physical therapy owner perspective, I could. I think the people listening to this are like, yeah, how can that be cool? But what I've learned is what you already know, which is that you can have that cultural experience in any business where you're making a difference. Because who doesn't need accounting? Who does it, man? Dude, the headaches. I was telling you before this call, I went through four different companies, and I just. None of them are specialized in pt. It was this constant like. Like, do I really have to deal with this crap? Like, why do I have to deal with money? But what it's interesting is, like, that culture makes a difference. And so you. I think that maybe you guys are the Disneyland of accounting companies because you have a culture where people feel safe and have fun putting that on the website. That's Disneyland of accounting firms. My medical billing company that I was running for all those years, I used to laugh at how fun it was because when I, you know, when I tell people I'm a physical therapist, they're like, I still kind of do, honestly. Because people are like, oh, wow, look at you. But when I say I'm an owner of a medical billing company or now it's a virtual assistant company, people go, okay, whatever. Who cares? Especially PTs who are like, that's so boring. But, dude, my billers back in the day, they were just like the. They would. They would high five. Like, we Got more money from Aetna. Heck, yeah. Stick it to the man. High five. It was super fun. And I just. There's passion in anywhere that there's product.

Right?

And what you guys produce is so valuable. You produce more. I mean, it's always like the what and the why. But I remember what I've heard from my comic. Oh, by the way, this is true. This isn't just for the episode today. One of our common clients was on a call on Wednesday of this week, and she was talking about how she said this was the first year ever that she started the year without feeling doom and gloom. She goes, I know where my numbers are. I know what I have. That's why it's fun, because it's not about the numbers. It's about this therapist owner who's amazing, by the way, super talented, taking fear and pain away from her and encouraging her to go out there and grow her practice and change people's lives. Dude, how cool is that?

It's great. I mean, some of the. Some of the feedback we get from clients, it's.

I don't even understand how we get some of the compliments we get. And mind you, I'm not saying we're perfect in any way, shape, or form, but I'll hear from some of our clients being like, I. I can't tell you how much I appreciate your team or, like, when. When it's compliments on my team, I take that to just like, it's. It's the ultimate compliment because that's what.

You'Re focused on, is developing your leadership team.

Yeah, well, I'm also very fortunate, too.

I.

Look, we can talk about the culture, but you really need good people. You need people that are bought in and care, and you need legitimate people to like, that can really take the company to the next level. And they. They have the hard job. I work for them. Like, they are the. They're. They're fantastic. I'm extremely lucky for every single individual on our team, and they. They're the reason that it all, you know, happens.

So I gotta say, my favorite thing about hosting this show for me is that I feel like this is, like 100% about me learning. My audience, of course, gets to come along for the journey that I get to go on personally every time, because I. I get to experience people like you, and I get to get it from different angles. So the thing I'm going to share is that I was filming another episode with a PT owner who had 20 locations that he built in six years, seven years.

Oh, wow.

And. And the way you two are similar, it's like. So he said the same thing that you said. It's like his focus. He didn't say it in the words that you did about working for the team, but he said was like, when I mentally shifted from, I'm not about my patients, but I'm about my leaders, and I'm about making sure that they get the best experience possible, that I can help them grow. And yes, I. Them. Well, but you. He said the same thing almost word for word about, you can't pay people to care. It's like, what, what? You can't, but they. But you pay, but you still have to pay. Like, that's the problem is. Is that, like there's. That's a component. But it's more than that. It's like an experience. It's about growth and all the things that you just talked about. So it's fun for me because I get the different learning of it. It's like, okay, so how am I doing that? And Rockstars, how are you doing that with your leaders? Whether you have one location or you have 80 locations, like, what are you doing to help pour into your leaders? And so that's a great. And I think everyone has a different answer. What. So the big thing that you mentioned at the beginning is this idea of taking the F word out of fear. Obviously, that's one way that you grow your leaders is by helping them learn to grow in the organic way. What are other things that you do to. To. To show your leaders that you care or build them to grow them? Like, all the things that you think about, like, what do you do, Sean?

So I'd say one of the other things that I try to do is I am always asking them what I can do better.

Wow, you model feedback.

Yeah. I mean, I want to know.

If there's something in our company that needs to change or needs to improve. And.

If you're not going to change yourself, how can you expect everybody else to? So I try to get as much feedback as possible. Now, mind you, it doesn't mean that we're going to change every time we get a piece of feedback. Right?

Right.

There's key things. You have to know when to say no. You have to make sure that certain things align, certain things don't. But I think a key piece of it is you have to accept the feedback, but you also have to trust them to make decisions. I mean, I'm sure you're aware of this. And anybody that runs a Company knows how hard it is to delegate and knows how hard it is to trust other people with maybe taking the wheel and maybe going in the wrong direction. The amount of times that I've let my team make a decision and I just backed them, you know, hey, let's see how it goes. All right. Like, I might not agree, but I think this is a good opportunity for us to learn, you know, and a lot of times what will happen is all of a sudden things get that much better, you know, and just trying to make sure that you have a good understanding and a good gauge for what they. They need to be successful. Like perfect example, we've done Culture Index. I don't know if you ever heard of Culture Index.

Very familiar. Love it.

Okay. I thrive in chaotic environments.

Every single person on my team works better in structured environments. I am not good at building structure. So mind you, now we have a lot of structure. It's something I had to put a lot of time and energy into getting better at. But I didn't do it all alone. You know, it was the team, it was constant feedback. It was, how do we improve this? You know, even when someone was working, could it work better? It's sometimes putting some of those pieces in place. You know, standard operating procedures, a project management system, simple things. Who would have guessed? I don't know how we ran our company pre some of those items. We, when we do our like one on ones, we laugh about it sometimes. Like, do you remember the day when we didn't have Monday.com? like, it's, you know, those things go a very long way. You gotta ask the question, you gotta be open to it. You need to prioritize. What's the biggest thing that I can impact in my company? Because as a leader, your job is to target the biggest thing that's gonna drive the most change. And that has to be your focus. You have to do all the other jobs too, but it has to be your focus.

Yeah, I can hear my rock stars, like asking about some of these softwares and things, you know, like Monday.com. i know what that is. So when you talk about SOPs or standard operating procedures or platform books, as sometimes they're called, or when you think about different structural pieces that have been vital to you, have you seen. You may not know, but like, as you have you for PT practices specifically, have you seen anything that you have seen work well in your PT practices to help them create that same structure?

Oh, absolutely. Cadence of communication with your team, Number.

One, what do you recommend? Like, what do you think?

I think that everybody should have at least a one on one every single week. Even if it's a 15 minute one on one, it should be a quick check in. Same structured meeting every single week. Nothing gets, nothing gets scheduled over one on ones. So a manager meets with their team, you meet with your leadership team. If you don't have a weekly cadence, you're, you're, you're playing the game at a disadvantage.

How do you, what's the, what's the structure of that one on one? That 15 minute one on one?

So we use something similar to an action review. So the action action review is very similar to our action view is what like the army, the Navy use. It's what usually high performing teams use. What went well? Or what was the focus? What went well? What didn't go well? What's the focus for the next week? Or we do it is as I mentioned earlier, what was your focus? What were our successes this week? Where were our failures? What's our focus this coming week?

Oh man. So it's very like results driven. It's very much like, you know, because we could talk. So how you doing? Oh man, I just woke up kind of in, you know, it's like versus like what went well, what didn't? Where was your focus? What went well, what didn't? Where you're focusing on now. I love that because it gets to that point. I don't think it needs to take a lot of time.

No, we do 30 minutes. Where I do 30 minutes. My leadership team each week, my managers do it with the account managers each week. And as I said, sometimes it is just like a, this was just a bad week, I had a bad week. And it's like, okay, you know, that's okay, right? What can we do to make sure we're set up for a good week next week? You know, you can, you can kind of take that step back and try to remove some of the emotion out of it. And just what's in our realm of control? Right. Like some of those simple things that you read in all the hundred thousand business books or leadership books, it's just, it's just asking those questions sometimes and just putting it into a very good structured format. It just keeps you on the same page with your team. And when you fall off, you know, it's like a highway, right? When you fall, when you get off the highway, how quickly can you get back on? Right.

I like that because you started with meeting struct, meeting rhythms for structure. You know, when people leave A company they don't like. What's the number one cliche thing that everyone says? Oh, they, they were, they were. Communication was horrible. Like so, so what's the one way to change it? Communication. And I would, I would argue rock stars. As you're listening to this, if you're struggling somewhere in your business, maybe there's, there's probably not. Maybe there's a probable out. Out point in your company around communication. And I love that thing that Sean just highlighted this, this one on one structure that allows you to connect. What else would you recommend, Sean? You're on a roll, bud.

No, just some standard operating procedures. You know, if something as simple as before, somebody walks out of your office, you know, are we scheduling all the meetings for the rest of their plan of care? Right. Is there some, is there a something tracking how many people are walking out the door without scheduling all 14, 16, 18? Are they just scheduling the next two and then leaving? Those little things go a very, very long way. If you want your billing team to do something, do you have those processes written out? You know, because if all of a sudden they're coming. If your employees are coming to you asking question after question after question and you're giving the same answer after answer after answer, you are wasting time. You know, it could be something as simple as. Did you look for the standard operating procedure yet? Do you, did you look for the sop? Oh, there isn't one. All right, we're going to talk about it, but you're going to go and write this SOP next. And the next time somebody comes, it's not going to give you the answer. Did you, did you go check the SOPs? Right. And little by little, it's a mountain. But little by little, you start having this information that your team can access. It doesn't all have to be in your head, right? And it also doesn't always have to be your way. They're meant like by them being in charge of the SOPs, they might bring improvements that you never thought of. It doesn't have to be your idea to be a good idea, you know, so it's just, it's just that it's getting into that consistent cadence. It just, it makes a world of difference over the course of time. It's going to be annoying for a week or two, for a couple months. But little by little by little, you know, people become more self sufficient. The information's already there. You know, it's just, it, you start to see some incremental improvement that way.

I like the way you described development and living of SOPs as a habit development. I like that you describe it that way. It's almost like that'd be a great book title, right? The habit of SOPs. Because people think of it as something that they have or they don't. They don't realize they're living documents that are meant to be collaborated and created by the people who are running them. And the way you describe that development of that frustration from personal validation of what you just said. When we did our physical therapy, when we grew our physical therapy practice, when we started getting multiple locations, that's when we started sops.

Interesting.

We called them Playbooks. Like the PT Playbook, the Front Desk Playbook. Yeah. And they're just. They're just SOPs. And it was so funny because eventually when we sold, one of the big things that shocked me was that the SOPs were part of what they were buying. It was like that. Yes, they were buying the revenue, but it's the systems that they care about next to the revenue because the people are variable. And yes, they do care about people, but they were third in the mix. So when I started one of my companies after selling, it was weird. I remember we were starting and it was like, okay, let's write this down. Where are we putting our Google Doc? Because in the early days, we didn't have softwares like Trainual, if you've heard of those guys. So the software you can use right now for an unplugging Trainual, for those of you who are like, where could I go to help do this? Trainual teaches you how to create SOPs, and it creates a centralized platform that even tracks people in their training. So when you have SOPs, you can see if they're answering the quizzes right and if they've done the training. But in the beginning, it was just a Google Doc, and it's just like, you start writing, okay, I figured out a problem. Write it down. And it's. It's such an annoying step every time, Sean. For me, I'm like, oh, I have to write this down. But, like, when you get in the habit of it, you stop thinking about it, because like you said, then you start scaling. And then it's just they're. They're all doing it with you. And that document gets created. So I love that you created. You describe that habit of SOP creation as a stability factor in your. In your leadership team.

Now, let me be clear about something. I did not Write all the SOPs.

No, your team did with you.

And I don't recommend, especially owners like I think they say if you are a visionary type, like doing some of that type of administrative work, you're not going to do a good job at all. And also there's a concept called the curse of knowledge. When you know so much about a certain topic, most people don't even know the foundation that all your knowledge is built on, right? So what happens is when you write an SOP as somebody that's been so in the weeds and knows it, you skip like half the steps. And if somebody goes to try to repeat it, they're like, this is not in English, right? Simple isn't simple, right? So having somebody that, especially if you're newer, if we have our people, when you're newer, go into a new client, read the SOPs. If they don't make sense, go put them into English, right? Go figure out those missing steps. And it's once again, it's not something you write and you're done. It is a constant evolution. It will continue to change. And to your point, it has to be a habit and it has to be something that you know, even your managers, your leadership, somebody's going, asking questions, is there an sop? You have to be consistent about it to really get traction over the course of time.

Great share. Thank you so much for sharing that. Okay, so kind of reviewing, we were talking about structure that you were able to create that supports your team, which is part of that structure, is an element to the bigger discussion we had about creating a culture in your company for your leaders that they love. And so you have this meeting rhythm, which are personal humanizing check ins. You have the second that are results driven. You have the second component of systems operations and other things. It may not be structure related, but if there is, I'd love to hear about it. But what else do you do for your leadership team to help you develop that culture where they feel super safe and, and failure?

So the only other two things that I can think of, we always allow them to block. We pick an hour each week that they can plan for the next week. Right? So Thursday, end of the day, let's take a look at next week. Let's communicate what meetings are coming up, what do we need to get done for there. Let's start doing time blocking on our calendars. Now in accounting, we can all work remotely. It's a little different than pt. But let's take a PT example. If every Thursday your doctors took a look or your clinic directors took a look, what visits, you know, how many visits do we have next week? What days are we missing? Do we have gaps in the schedule? Do we have specific people that there are gaps in the schedule? You can do something about that all day Friday, or you can plan, hey, you know, we want you to go do some marketing. Go do it at this time, because you don't have patience. Right. You can look proactively at the next week and make little decisions. Right?

Yeah.

The other thing is just giving people permission to say no. I think it can be very easy for.

At least with my team. My team always wants to try to help. So if somebody asks for help, they'll volunteer, even though they might have 10 other priorities that day. And the one thing we really try to continuously, like, it's constantly giving them permission to. You own your calendar, the clients that you serve, like, you own those accounts. If there's something that's more important, don't put something urgent before something important. Right. Like, I'd rather you delegate. You have permission to delegate. You have permission to say no. If I tell you to do something, I'm like, I need this done. You can turn to me and say, I don't have the time for that. You know, you have to give them permission to be able to just be authentic, if that makes sense.

Absolutely. And you have to make that safe. Because my best leaders were able to tell me no without saying no. Like, they'd say, because, you know, I never trained them to do that the way you're doing. So, like, my best. I remember my best leaders would be like, okay, so you want me to do this by this time? So here's what else I have going on. What would you say is a bigger pr? Like, they would put it back on me in a way that was like, oh, well, the other thing. Okay, great, so what needs to shift? I'll go, oh, I'm not going to give that to you. And I remember, like, after the fourth or fifth time going, oh, they're telling me no in the most respectful, kind way. But not everyone has that skill. So being able to. And of course, you're to counterbalance that. You're not saying people have a right to go, no, I don't feel like doing that. It's a matter of helping.

Yeah.

All of these things are predicated upon the foundation, like you said earlier, of having the right people.

When you. When you don't have the right people, all these things don't work. And it doesn't matter how hard we try to put these systems in place. In my experience, Is like, if we have C players in our team game, it's only a matter of time before anything positive we try to put in crumbles because they're actively destroying it or unintentionally destroying it.

Yeah. When you have players like that, unfortunately you, you have to part ways. If they're not a culture fit, you. You have to part ways. Some of my, some of the clients that I think are most successful will brag about how, hey, we actually let pts go this month. It was, that's our success because they were not a culture fit. You know, when a lot of PTs out there are, we're having trouble finding people. The, the clients I see are most successful, the ones like, oh, no, no, they, they didn't meet our. They didn't fit our culture. You know, they might have been a good performer, but they didn't fit our culture. So, you know, we decided in the long run it would be best to be part ways. Like, yeah, that's a sign of like, you're, you're going to do big things.

Because that's the hardest thing to do. Right? Is to like, hey, especially in the service based industry where if that therapist fire, if the owner fires a therapist, their world gets worse in terms of time. Not in terms of quality though, because getting rid of the other person is much better for quality. But there's a definite increase in like, who's going to take those patients and all that. And I love that you say that because I think one of the most courageous things that we could ever do is take a stand for what our values really are about by firing people who aren't a fit. So I think a lot of people listen to episodes like this looking for that trick. Okay. My leadership isn't totally dialed in. Okay. What's. So Sean's talking about stability. Let's. Let's learn more about like, oh yeah, the SOP thing and like all these things. But like, at the end of the day, those are the structures of the pillars built upon that foundation of people that you mentioned at the beginning. Yeah. And no one ever is perfect at this. But your team, I can feel it, has this like, core culture of like, they probably even helped eliminate those people because of your company culture. Like, if someone joined who wasn't a fit, your whole team would probably catch it pretty quick. And even you stick out like, you.

Stick out like a sore thumb.

Yeah.

I mean it's. Which is great. Which is exactly what you want. But it's on them to look as our company continues to grow it's on them to make sure that, like, the culture stays the same. It's on them that when somebody does. Has a failure that they don't get, you know, when they be. Get promoted to be a manager, you don't slap somebody on the wrist when there is failure. You're not, you know, you have to live by it as well. And if I ever hit a point that I stopped doing it, it is your job to tell me that I am doing something wrong. And that is not in line with the culture. And I need to look in the mirror and make a change. You know, you need to have that just that you constantly talk about. Otherwise it, you know, when you grow, it is. Culture is one of the first things that tends to go unfortunately.

Unfortunately. Yeah. And if. And everyone's like, well, how do I know if my culture is not in fit. You know, I always tell people, like, hey, if you don't like getting to work, no one else is going to work happy either.

I heard a great, A great line. Culture is the feeling in your employee's stomach on Sunday night.

Oh, my gosh. That's the best quote on culture I've ever.

I heard it and I was like, I will never forget this one liner.

I got chills, man, because, like, I was just with my son on Sunday night. You know, they were going back to school right after Christmas break.

Yeah.

And they're having their Sunday night blues. And. And I was relating to him. I was just kind of like, man, you know what? It doesn't go away sometimes. I used to have my own company. I was an owner, you know, dreading Monday because it was like I had a culture that sucked. And as. As employers, we're still employees of our company unless we're passive investors. So we kind of get our. We have our cultural index of our own in our stomachs, don't we? Like those Sunday nights.

You're definitely a prisoner of your own company at times. But, you know, it's a. You're a prison of your own making. So it's.

Yeah, it. I.

We've all had that job that we've had that, like, hit and it's, you know, and sometimes it's just asking the team, like, do you get the Sunday scaries? And if you see their look like, no. And you're just like, oh, all right, I need to do something about this, because if that's what's happening, we need to get to the. But we need to get to understand why and make sure that, you know, that that changes quickly. Because nobody wants that. You don't want people that are just upset coming to work. It's just.

Yeah, man. Sean, this has been such a great episode. I can't believe how much we've covered in such a short amount of time. I want to thank you for sharing your insights and wisdom from building that team. I don't think when you've never built a great experience as a business owner, it feels like it's impossible or anyone else can do it. So when I hear someone like you go through that. And again, my greatest blessing is hearing multiple touch points from people from time to time game. It's inspiring. It's like, you know, I think I want rock stars. As you're listening to this, just to recognize that either a, you have this and you're going, amen, brother. And you picked up some extra kernels that you didn't have before, or maybe you're a PT who's starting out and you don't know where you're going, what you're building towards. Well, this is a target for you to hit. Or maybe you're in the middle of it with multiple teams just thinking like, man, I have the Sunday night scaries. Whatever it is, it's all possible to get to that place where people are super happy and they get to love where they work. So, Sean, if people wanted the Disneyland experience of accounting, how could they get ahold of you?

So you could always go to our website, www. Accountedfor a c c o u n t e d the number4llc.com or.

Probably just find my email, which I can send over to you.

Will, I'll put that in my show notes as well as that website. But guys, Rockstars, as you're listening, you know, I never get anything out of this personally in terms of financial. I only bring services and products and people that inspire me that I know are good for the industry. Everyone that we bring on is about helping you discover what's right. And not every person is meant for every person, right? Not every service is meant for every client and so on. But I only bring on people that I either do work with or want to work with or would have worked with if I had if I still have my practice. So, Sean, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. And yeah, thanks again for all those wonderful insights.

No, thank you. This has been a lot of fun. I appreciate you.

Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to today's episode. As a thank you, I have a gift in today's Show Notes. There's a link for you to join the Stress Free PT Newsletter. This is a comedy newsletter for anyone who works in health care. And of course we're going to have comedy bits. We're going to have inspirational stories, leadership tidbits. It's going to be a weekly newsletter just to lighten your week, to help you do what you love with more passion. So click that link below and join that newsletter and we'll see you in our next episode.