Why Well-being is the Missing Piece in Your Business Success Puzzle with Jennifer Raams

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Welcome to the Willpower podcast. Today's special guest is Jennifer Rams. She is a coach at Practice Freedom U. And she specializes in helping healthcare entrepreneurs grow their businesses. She works in all sorts of fields, physical therapy, dental. She has tons of different experiences growing her own business, helping larger companies. And what's interesting about her is that she got, she has a degree in business coaching from a place of mindfulness. So a lot of what she's going to talk about today is going to be applying mindfulness, not necessarily meditation, but mindfulness to a business so that people are able to develop a sense of well being. That well being is the foundation for all that she does. So we're going to talk about your well being today. It's today's episode. Enjoy the show. Jennifer, you talk a lot about weaving well being into success. How do you help the business owners that you coach build practices that support their lives, that don't consume their lives?

There's lots of strategy strategies that I've used myself throughout all the years of business and I like to share them with my audience, you know, with my practice owners that I work with my clients. Because, you know, as the business owner itself, you wear so many hats and it is just very difficult to keep your own well being as a priority. So you have to be super intentional about that. There's lots of good tools that you can use and that I've practiced myself. So I know from like my own personal journey that when you scale a practice, a physical therapy practice, we opened three practices in six years. It was super exciting. But honestly, sometimes it felt like I was really managing this monster and it was hard to keep my head above water. So from that own experience, from my own experience, there's things that I do that really help me ground myself and show up in the way I would like to show up for my team. So really taking care of your own well being, I feel is the biggest priority and also a big challenge for practice owners. And I feel that the personal well being and organizational well being is very strongly intertwined. So if you take care of yourself, it's going to be sustainable. You can do things for a long time. You can slowly work through your vision while not burning out.

That's amazing. I love the idea of well being being a focus because everyone knows that. I really think they know it. But living it is kind of a totally different story, don't you think? I mean, at least for me and.

My journey was, yeah, it's trial and error. You have to kind of see. Let the like Stress could be a good thing, too. It gets you going, gets you excited about things. It kind of pushes you out of your comfort zone. Right. So using that and having that balance between what's healthy, stress and when it. When. When does it turn into chronic stress? When it turns into chronic stress, your decision making is not good. You can't think clear. You're probably spending your time in the wrong areas and your energy. So that's where I feel now as a coach. I come in to really get clarity and explore why the stress is bottling up and why it's almost not sustainable as a practice owner. And it's so much easier to see that as a coach or a little bit more from a distance or come from up above than when you're in it yourself.

How did you discover that with. On your. In your personal journey, before you became a coach, how did you discover that?

Just really by my. It feels like your head is spinning and you're running in circles and you're not productive anymore. I think a lot of practice owners can resonate with that feeling. So it. It doesn't become. It's. At some point, it's not really a choice. It's like, I gotta make time for myself. This is not sustainable. So that's when I started thinking of efficient ways to do it, because you don't have much time. So doing that quick swim in the morning or run or do whatever your hobbies are, sometimes it's just cooking a nice meal after a busy day and really connecting with creating something. And it. It's amazing how it's helpful to pick things that don't take a long time. Of course, golf is super fun. It does take a big chunk of your time. I would recommend in the weekend taking one full day off to really recharge your battery. But in between, throughout the week, there's efficient ways to do it. And if you're intentional about it, and not just you go automatic pilot and you're rushing all the time, you don't even notice that you're rushing. That's when things get dangerous because that's when things happen to you. And in that way, you can't really manage yourself.

Yeah, I really appreciate how you're bringing up the ideas that it doesn't take a lot of time to disconnect and recharge a little bit. Because I think you think about these longer deals. I read a book called the Gap and the Gain by Dan Sullivan, and he talks a lot about this concept of you have to have free days. You have to have 24 hour periods where you are not working. And there's. And he recommends it's not a small number. So a lot of business owners who are feeling trapped in their business, they think of that as impossible. But let's talk about the value of having free time. Like what does that do for you and for your clients when they literally take even a larger, like a full 24 hours off? Why is that so important to the business owner?

It makes you be able to really connect. Take that step back that I was talking about and see like what's the why, why are you doing this? Why are you going through this roller coast of emotions and what is really, what do you want to get out of it? What is it that you want? Get clear on that. So connecting with why you do things and finding meaning in that and then also finding meaning in the small tasks at work that you might not like that much is so important because it gives you a stronger drive, stronger motivation and you need consistency and discipline to make things happen and to have success in business. So it's really necessary to not be spinning in your head and not knowing what the priorities should be. So prioritizing is a huge key to success. And I really like to look at clinics to see like what is the business owner doing? Where is the business owner allocating their time and is this a good return on investment? Right. Where do you spend your time? Where do you spend your money? And then how does that come back to you later? So just to be, be intentional about those kind of small steps can really buy you a lot, a lot of time, a lot of health and a lot of fun enjoying. Because that's to me still the main thing. I don't really want to make the goal to not get a burnout and not have my, my team get a burnout. But really, how can we thrive? How can we have fun at work? How can we kind of harmonize work and life so you can really enjoy both places? And you go to work in the morning on Monday with a good feeling of camaraderie and meaning and that you're making a difference in the world. So I think it's important to be able to connect with that.

That's great. How do you, you talk about having fun in the workplace, man, when it's fun, it's not work. I know I've had experiences with companies that I've worked with where like when you get that right chemistry going and you gamify it, it becomes so magnetic. How have you done that and how have you helped your clients gamify and have fun at work?

Yeah, really teach them to really celebrate any small wins and bring the culture to work. It's everyday thing, it's very frequent. You have to touch on things. It's not just a holiday party or the team bonding activity once a month, it's every day. How do you walk into the door? Do you care about your people being happy or not? Or are you just so into the day to day tasks that you don't even notice what's going on with them? So really checking in every day, feeling that energy and also allowing for, for not such a great days. If there's people that are going through something, being there for them, being the support, see how you can help them in those situations. So I teach practice owners to do the same thing and just to kind of be aware of that, that it's every day small task. It doesn't necessarily have to cost any money or extra time if you combine it with just how you show up.

Just how you show up. So you're saying the pace that leader is the pace of the group.

Yeah, the energy you bring in the door. So the big thing is the stress management which I work on a lot with my clients because if we just react to everything, we don't have good energy around us. And it's really like regulating your own emotions in that way that allows you to build culture and to have space for someone else and to set the right example to be that role model. So I believe in like managing yourself and well being plays a big part in that.

Yeah, well, being. You've mentioned energy quite a bit. Jennifer. What do you mean by energy? Like where's your background in that space? Because you're using that term enough to where I feel like you have some training or some experience with what that's come from.

Yeah, it's I think combination of the emotional intelligence, being aware and understanding how you show up and how feelings are important in an environment.

And it also comes in when the mindset is important. I've done mindfulness training. I did.

Part of my education is from nyu becoming a mindful leader. So it's really the first three months of that was managing yourself through techniques of self care.

Mindfulness.

Let's look into that. That's really interesting. So you have a degree in mindfulness leading in mindfulness?

Yes.

So did they teach different types of meditation or was it, was it only meditation? What was that?

It's, it's really wide. It's not really how people say you have to meditate and sit on a cushion. It's totally not like that. And that doesn't work in the business environment. So it could be little moments. Say I, I was the marketing person at our company.

Yeah.

And I was tired. I dragged myself to the hospitals to go visit with all the doctors that were there. And I just took a moment in my car before I would go to do my marketing rounds to just sit there and just check in with my breath, see how my mind is racing or not. And just a couple minutes of breathing and seeing if I can make my breath a little deeper or just kind of a little bit more air in and out. And just being aware of the body and just the feeling of are your feet on the ground? Where are the contact points with your chair? Just getting aware with where you are in space that just can ground you and then gives you that energy and that clarity to go about your task and to show up with intention when I do the marketing round. So I would be more self aware.

So it's not so much about like sitting down and taking out your app. I, I for one have been trained to do Transcendental meditation, which is 20 lights a day. You probably heard of that.

Yeah.

I am hit or miss with it, but when I'm consistent with it, it does take a lot of time. But I had a breakthrough where literally I was meditating once in the middle of my day. After being consistent in that 20 minutes, my brain literally produced solutions to some of the bigger problems that would have taken me weeks to figure out. I literally came out of that meditation and wrote them down and it saved me hours. I remember thinking that was the best 20 minutes I spent today.

Yeah.

So maybe that's a goal for people. But you're saying, like to get started, you don't have to spend that kind of time.

No, I think it's amazing. What say you go wash your hands between patients just to be aware that you're washing your hands, that the water is running on your hands and how it feels and just take a moment. Just little things like that. You can build mindfulness practices within the day. And same with running, you can do walking meditation or walking mindfulness. Even calling in meditation sometimes scares people. So just basically being aware in space and what you're doing at that moment.

Why does that scare people? Meditation?

It's I think, the commitment and the getting in touch with your body. We're so used to being in our, our head.

Of things and then we're so action oriented, which, including myself. So that's why I kind of needed it. It wasn't a choice anymore. It's like I need to do something to not just be running around rushing all the time. We all know when we rush, things go wrong. Right. You're in a car, you're rushing. It's more likely that it goes. Something is gonna happen.

Yeah. It's a really good analogy that like when you're in a car and you're rushing, that's when the accidents happen.

Yeah. So rushing is just not great. And I speak for my own example, I tend to rush all the time. So it's just really wonderful. Like you always have your breath with you. I feel like it's a tool. And just even going. Another example, going into a meeting, difficult conversation. We've all gone into meetings, worked up, having certain thoughts in our head that were negative. And you kind of get in a meeting talking about that energy. You get defensive quickly, you're reacting. You think the worst case scenario you're fear based state. And it's not going to be a good outcome if you just go in slow and you get yourself organized. You manage your emotions with the techniques that, that are there that I can teach business owners how to do it. You show up way better and you take that time, you respond how you'd like to respond instead of react. And then later on you have regrets and you have to fix it all.

Or circle all this extra stress because now you messed it up.

Yeah.

I don't want you to give your secrets away, Jennifer, but what are one or two things that you would work on with one of your clients to help them get mindful before a crucial conversation like that?

Preparing well and taking your time, slowing down just a little bit to write the intent down of the meeting or what. Yeah. What you want to get out of it. How do also how you want that person, that, that employee or team member or leader, how do you want them to feel at the end of the meeting? So really kind of visualizing that and that will keep you disciplined to stick with, with your sticking to your intent. When things circle out of control or people are getting off the subject, you know how to get back to that intent. So it's really slowing down and preparing just for a little bit. It stays off well.

Yeah, that reminds me of that phrase slow is fast and fast is slow where if we can slow down just a little bit, we end up going faster in our world overall. And yeah, that's so interesting. So a lot of your coaching, obviously, because you have a lot of the Steps, you've been a successful owner leader.

You'Ve worked with major companies.

You know the five things a marketing specialist should focus on. Like, you know that you could teach someone, okay, here's how I approach a doctor at a hospital. It sounds like a lot of your coaching is just like you said, is managing that well being. Like you think that before you even go into that space, you have to control and assist the well being of that individual. So that's a, that's not un, that's not totally unique in terms of what coaching does, but it seems like that's unique to you in the sense that like you find the most value with your clients by focusing on that first. Is that fair?

Yeah, totally fair. I think there's a lot of power in our relations that we have with our network, with our employees, with our leaders. That's how we get things done. So I really feel that investing in.

That relational part of our business is really important and that really has to do with your well being and showing up. It's not all about strategy in business. It's that the people part that I focus on. And I think it's more and more so because now with all the resources that we have online with AI and there's a lot we can just get from, from the online sources. And I think that's where we as coaches really come in to make that connection at a personal level and see what's in the way of the development of the coach oftentime or of the business owner. Because we, if the business owner plateaus and doesn't grow their own operating system, their personal operating system, the business is not going to continue to grow, the strategies are not going to work, the retention is not going to be good.

No.

So it's just being proactive with that and investing in yourself first, then in your leadership team. Then let your leadership team kind of carry out what you taught them or what your coach taught you and then it trickles down to the whole organization. So for me that investing in a coach, investing in yourself is very good return on investment. And I speak from experience. I wouldn't be here if I didn't take time to really grow and evolve my own operating system. There's so much we, we don't know and we think we know it all. And being humble about that really pays off.

So you've been coached, you've had coaches before?

I have had coaches. We started pretty early on, in the beginning, just with this.

What coaching methodology or coaches have you worked with that might be worth noting?

In the beginning, we just started with what are people's strengths? Which is always very helpful. Our people a little bit more cookie cutter and it's, it's more rational. It's really difficult from there to move into how am I going to use the strengths and how can we complement each other. So the real.

Kind of big nuggets that I took away from the coaching that I got was how to build psychological safety. How to say no, not always, yes to everything. How to, in a sentence, use your communication differently. Yes. And instead of no, or how you start, your sentences are very important. So a lot of communication skills, active listening. So all of that I incorporate now what with what I do and how I help the business owners excel. And sometimes it's just one little nugget that makes a huge difference.

Yes. It really is like that one thing that unlocks a whole series of other things can be such a big impact. What do you see long term for what you want to build here in your coaching world? What's your vision for what you're building right now?

Yeah, good question. I really like to really help people in this time of uncertainty and change because I've gone through it. I know uncertainty is a guarantee. Right. That's the only thing certain in life is uncertainty.

Yeah.

So. And so many people struggle with it. I've seen it, I've felt it. I really want to be there for different practice owners. And I know with all the challenges and with reimbursement and things that are out of our control, I feel so strongly about helping people find out what's in their control and in their influence and just really working on that. And to me that is a guarantee to, to kind of that direction where they want to go and really get that success in the end and really create a life just even now while you're still in it. And I know it's. That's blood, sweat and tears sometimes building a practice, but just creating maybe things like just practices, allowing yourself to go on vacation every three months, things like that. I really want to empower practice owners to take care of themselves.

That's right.

The turbulent times like this. So that's where I like to show up and I, I want to teach every practice owner that even if they make a small change, the ripple can be huge. So if they feel powerless that they don't have much control, I like to show them that they actually have a lot of control and that the small good impact that they're making can become a huge impact in a society. And it Starts at work and with organizational well being. So I feel very strongly about that.

That's great.

Yeah.

So you want to continue to help that and do you help people just in the physical therapy space? Do you help people outside of the industry?

I've been coaching for the last five years now and a lot of people like entrepreneurs, so could be. And executives. So the executives have been with engineering companies and IT and then practice owners, dentists and physical therapists, people in mental health, even nutritionists. Oh good.

So you're all over healthcare.

Yeah. Yoga entrepreneurs, People that starting yoga entrepreneurs.

I have a sense that maybe you do yoga. Do you do yoga?

Actually that's one thing that I don't do.

You just come like you're so mindfulness based and you're so, you know, physical therapist into like the mind body connection. It just seemed like a small jump to go to yoga. I actually started getting into it myself recently and I've really loved it. I'm doing some hot yoga and it's just for me I'd had lots of surgeries. So just being in there that mindfulness combined with physical activity is unreal. I feel wholly different person different than regular exercise. For me, it's just a really different experience.

It's one. It's one thing that maybe one day I will do. I like painting, so for me I would paint or moving in space. Like the walking always comes first. And I love stretching. All the PT stretches that I've taught everybody, I love to do a stretching routine.

Do you practice?

Yeah, different, different. I do sound healing and things like that. Just not sound healing.

I think you've seen it or you receive it.

I've received it.

Okay. So I've been. I've been in one of those sound healing things. Those are pretty cool.

Yeah, it's really letting go and just letting the moment take you. Right.

Yeah. Well, music and sound can do it in a way that very few things can. It just brings you into a certain space. I think we all experience that. Whether in your car and you hear something that's really exciting and it just, you know, totally charges your battery or a sad song comes on, you start getting emotional. The wavelengths of emotion combined with the wavelengths of music, it's amazing how they can influence each other.

Yeah.

And that's true for everything that you're talking about with mindfulness. You know, that whole concept of like you're grounding people and helping, helping them kind of just get in touch with where they are with their own vibration, so to speak.

Yeah. And we're so in the profession of caring for others. So I think if people are a business owner. Keeping that in mind, what do we do for our patients? We make them comfortable. We let. We kind of help them stretch out of their comfort zone. We help them get like disciplined with their and consistent with their home exercise program. So a lot of things we do and we're very comfortable with with our patients we could really do with our leaders and just with anyone that you work with on the workplace, in the workplace. That caring mindset so connecting that I really get. I oftentimes refer back to that. It's easier that way.

Yeah. I love the connection of what you bring to your coaching in terms of intense self care with all the strategies and stuff that you can build on the back end. But it's like yeah, you don't have that self care in place. The strategies don't matter. You've got to. If you're. You gotta be at a certain. If you're the utensil, the tool.

Yeah.

You've gotta be sharp. Otherwise it doesn't matter. How you get taught how to swing that ax.

Yeah.

It's like here's a better way to swing the ax. Well, sharpen the ax. It has the most impact.

You know how to swing the ax, right? Yeah. It's like that really fine tuning that and I think it's easier for other people to see it from the outside. We all have our self limiting beliefs and our the excuses that we come up with to not get uncomfortable or not or to let go of something that we used to having.

Yes.

So it's nice to work with someone that sees that just something small can have a big impact.

Agreed. I agreed. Well that's so neat. So what would you want Practice practitioner Practice leaders in the space. We're listening to the show right now. What would you want them them to know about anything else that you would say about well being things that they should know or think about that would help improve their well being.

I like using humor and not take ourselves too serious and trying to see the fun in things and really creating more laughs during the day. Uh huh.

They've done studies. The people who laugh or the people.

Who do well just put that smile on your face and maybe you're going to feel good. It oftentimes works.

Totally. Totally. You know you said something earlier that I want to dive into as well. You said you're like helping my clients even find joy in the things they don't like. That was interesting. Tell me about that.

Yeah. It. It's It's a shift in perspective. So some even. Let me just give you example. With the feeling or emotion that you can shift, sometimes you're. You're fearful or you're anxious. How close is that feeling to excitement? Right. Can you transition between one and the other? You feel it in your body. But is there a way that you can look at things differently to feel more joy or to. To see, like, I'm just cleaning, say, or help, say, for example, I'm helping someone get off the ice machine. It's not my patient. Someone else treated the patient. The patient looks like would. Could use some help or just. I want to connect with that person. Just a small task of helping someone off the ice machine, doing that small act of kindness can really connect you with some joy. You can see they respond well to it. They didn't maybe expect it. So it's something small and that can touch them. It's really those small acts of kindness that don't cost anything extra. It's just being mindful that they like to be seen. They like to see that they're important for, like, in your eyes, and they like to be careful. And then doing that small step to, To. To show that you are caring for them and you. You want the best for them while they're in your space. But just small things to me make it more fun than just focusing, say, on all the stresses and on everything that goes wrong in that day in the clinic. And then you don't see those opportunities where you can make a big difference by being present and by slowing down just for a small period of time.

Got it.

Does that answer your question?

It does. I love that too. I think that phrasing of like, how can we reframe anxiousness into excitement? I was reading a book by someone by the name of Mel Robbins, and she was talking about how she really struggled with flight anxiety. And she was taught by a psychologist how just kind of remaining. It consciously changed how her body responded physiologically.

Yeah.

She was on a plane feeling anxious, and she'd be like, oh, I'm not anxious. Because your body just feels the anxiety. It's like, oh, we're dying. Oh, no. But if we feel the anxiety, we go. We tell our brain, like, oh, I'm excited to go where I'm going. It's like, oh, really? Oh, okay. And it shifts. You still have a lot of those similar feelings, but it shifts your body's physiological response into one that doesn't create panic attacks and allows you to be so. I like the Fact that like it's okay to have hard things and be scared, but like using our mindfulness and presentness to go, oh, my body, I'm seeing my body react like I'm in danger. I'm not in danger. I'm excited or excited to have this thing over with. This will be such a great deal to have this hard conversation because once we get over it, like life will be better.

Yeah. I think there's a lot of strength in being able to reframe. So first you have to be aware of your thought, right. What's going on right now. You have to kind of inquire in that, that feeling and then you can reframe it. Is this actually this change or this uncertainty, could that work for me? Because we fall into the fear based and kind of clamping down and go back to our default what we used to do. And that might not work in that situation anymore. We might have to be agile and come up with different ways that like you said, we're not so comfortable doing.

Yeah.

But just reframing it, it's like, how can we get stronger from this? And there's lots of examples. Every business owner has stuff happen every day when they go to work. Something is going to happen. We've all had injuries occur in our clinics. Right. People fall down or anything. And it comes with anxiety and feeling like, oh, damage is done, we can't do anything about it. This is terrible. I wish it never happened. Or you can reframe that and really see how can I strengthen our structure and systems. You have to connect with the patient. Right. What can you do now at that moment? What do you have control over that you come out stronger if you just put your head in the sand and oh, it didn't happen. There's going to be complaints, there's going to be lawsuits, there's going to be relationships broken with referring MDs. Yes, we've had it and we came out stronger. We reached where people fall down or accidents. We reached out to our patients like crazy. Follow up, make them feel special. And with the doctors they've been, they yelled at us before like it's hard to avoid. Right. It's their surgery. Don't do damage to my surgery. And relationships could have been broken. But it's where the real, the real like trust comes in and going that extra step, being uncomfortable, reaching out to the doctor, admitting what happened and then inviting them for in service. Or you maybe there's something really nice that came out of that one issue. We had a doctor that Referred older anterior approach hip replacements to us and one patient or more patients would get tendonitis, hip flexor, tendonitis, which is common in those cases. So the doctor was upset and he discussed that with us and.

We kept at it like I kept going to him, what can we do different? Give us more feedback. How can we improve, improve the system. Thanks for sharing. Really getting that open line of communication. We developed this beautiful protocol and by strengthening that relationship, he trusted us that we would never do straight leg raises with his patients anymore after those surgeries so he could trust us with that. We had so much communication back and forward. He would refuse to send any of his total hips to any other clinic because they would always do the straight leg raises.

Interesting.

You know what I mean? So it's that challenge when you really think something is spinning out of control. Your fear based thinking is starting and then how can I reframe this? That through, through the difficulty, through the roller coaster, we actually come out stronger. And in my experience with building a business, there's so many of those examples and all my clients that have shared their examples with me, it's, it's proven that 9 out of 10 we can learn something. We can make our structures and our strategies better and the foundations from our business. We can put better protocols in place, better processes. So you have to be willing to think that way and get the help. If you can't think that way, find someone that can guide you thinking clearly and critically and creatively set up that foundation so you're not just putting out fires all day, every day and staying at that hundred thousand profit margin for years and years because you're using the same systems and there's a ceiling to that. So I would really invite people to surround them with the support they need to get to that next level.

Got it. Well, Jennifer, this has been so awesome. I love this whole mindfulness approach to coaching. If people wanted to get a hold of you to talk to you more about this, how can they get a hold of you?

Yeah, email is always a good way. And I'm on Facebook and LinkedIn and I have this great practice, the quiz. So if there's, maybe that's a good start. The first step to identify through the quiz which areas of your business could use a little bit more focus. So maybe you can include that in the notes and just starting with that quiz and then I can follow up with you, whoever does it. I'd love to chat more and, and see where I can help. That's, that's my passion. And that's what I feel strongly about. So please let me know where I can support you in your journey.

Thank you so much Jennifer for being on the show. We sure hope you have a great rest of your day but thanks for that wonderful knowledge drop.

Thank you so much for inviting me. I really enjoyed it.

Thank you for listening rockstars and if you're one of the many medical professionals and leaders who have had it dealing with the drama of hiring and training people that you think are overpriced, then let's think about how virtual assistants can offload you to do what you love which is changing people's lives. In the show notes there's a link to jump on our calendar so that we can show you why LinkedIn shows that virtual assistance is the second fastest growing trend in healthcare next to artificial intelligence at no obligation. We'll see if this is a fit for you. I hope to talk to you soon.

Sam.