Getting Team Buy-In: The 13-Step Process For Successful Change With Arlan Alburo, DPT

 

Team buy-in means a significant number of people become greatly involved in making your company or organization perform well. If you tried to implement this change without success, then Arlan Alburo, PT, DPT, MTC has you covered with his thirteen-step process. As the CEO, Chief Content Officer, and Co-Founder of Orthopedic and Balance Therapy Specialists, he saw to it that he is leading the company in the right direction. In this episode, he explains each of the steps one by one, and intricately shares how he convinces his team members to buy-in the new programs and procedures. He teaches us how we can align everyone on the same page and optimize plan implementation. Arlan’s thirteen-step secret incorporates objective data, proper planning, tracking, and (maybe most important) team input. Following the process will surely increase your rate of success.

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Getting Team Buy-In: The 13-Step Process For Successful Change With Arlan Alburo, DPT

I’ve got Dr. Arlan Alburo out of Indiana. He will be sharing with us the thirteen-step process to implement change and new programs in our companies. You may have experienced it in the past, I know I have, where you present changes that might be coming, new policies, procedures, new programs, new ideas and treatment techniques. Maybe it falls flat during the meeting. Maybe you get some head bobs, but you’re not convinced that there are a lot of buy-ins and you’re questioning the success of the program going forward. Many times, there’s some resistance to that change. You get feedback after the fact that there are some disgruntled employees, people who haven’t fully bought into the changes that were presented. Sometimes those programs aren’t altogether too successful.

If there was a way that you could increase your success rate in implementing those changes, you would want to know, I would assume. That’s what Dr. Arlan Alburo was going to talk with us about is how to be more successful and get buy-in from the team when we implement changes in our company? I’m excited to present to you the thirteen-step process. I’m excited to use it on myself and my teenage boys. I could always use more buy-in with the family. As we implement this thirteen-step process, we’ll see a significant increase in the success rate and buy-in from our company teammates as we follow the process.

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I’ve got Dr. Arlan Alburo out of Indiana. He is the Cofounder of Next Level Physical Therapy, which is a mastermind coaching group for PT business owners. I’ve interviewed another cofounder and member of Next Level Physical Therapy both Travis Robbins and Kevin Kostka. Arlan is a part of that group. He is also the CEO and Cofounder of multiple physical therapy clinics in Indiana called Orthopedic and Balance Therapy. Thanks for coming on, Arlan. I appreciate you doing so.

Nathan, thank you. I’m honored that you’ve invited me to be a guest on your show.

I’m excited to know about your story because I know a little bit about it having talked to you, but would you mind sharing with us your story to become a successful physical therapist and what got you to where you are?

I’m originally from the Philippines. I was 22 years old when I immigrated to this great country of ours. I like to tell my story and start off by saying, “I got off that airplane in Chicago with a $150 in my pocket in fives and the ones.” I am so thankful for the profession of physical therapy who brought me to realize my American dream with my family here in Indiana. We have four locations for our practice here. We’re considered as a suburb of Chicago. I am also the Cofounder of NLPT to help our fellow private practice owners out there realize their dream of running a profitable practice, achieving time choice and financial freedom. I started my practice in 2003 in Valparaiso, Indiana, with my cofounder.

Back in those days, we did everything like most private practice owners when you’re starting out. You do your own marketing, went out to visit physicians, you type your own reports and your vacuum. You do everything. My practice went up fairly quickly to about a 100 to 120 visits between the two of us, but then you realize, “For this thing to grow, I’m going to need more help.” We plateaued by 2007. By 2011, we were thinking, “This is not what we thought it would be.” We were paying ourselves but we would have made more by working for somebody else.

For the longest time, that was the question at the end of 2010, “Should we keep our practice open?” At that point we realized, we need something. We need some help. We need to study a little bit more about business, about entrepreneurship. That’s when our practice started turning. That’s when we started realizing, “We can grow, we can scale this thing, but we’re going to need more help.” By 2013, we were growing pretty well. My practice went through quite a bit in 2013. Our main location was involved in a fire. We closed our practice for seven months, but we actually came back from that pretty strong. From a team of three, by the end of 2013, we were probably eight to nine people, which to us was already a lot of growth.

Working together with your team in framing your plan increases its likelihood of being carried out. Click To Tweet

Now, we’re a team of 30 in four locations. We’re opening our fifth one shortly. My fellow cofounders from NLPT had been a great help in doing that and in scaling the practice. I’m a full-time CEO and visionary for our practice. I don’t see patients anymore. That’s what has helped us put systems in place, putting our leadership team in place and make this thing run smoothly with the help of our leadership team without the owner or the cofounder having to carry the burden of running the business. It’s exciting times and I’m hoping to share that with fellow private practice owners out there.

You’ve got to rewind for us. What did you do between 2010 and 2013? I have an idea in my head and I have a formula that I reiterate on the show for successful business owners. I wonder if you followed the same path to success between 2010 to 2013.

What we did was we searched, “How can we get help? Is there coaching out there?” During those times, there was not a whole lot of coaching. I’m a natural fact-finder, so I read the lot but we decided to go with a consulting company out of Florida. I don’t know if they run anymore. We got some leadership training and how to organize our practice. I believe Kevin Kostka went through the same thing. That’s what got us started is putting systems in place. To put systems in place, you start with your organization. You’re organizing the board and being a good executive, like what Kevin Kostka talked about with you. That’s how it got us started. We attended marketing conferences. Most of all, conferences on entrepreneurship and business development has been helpful.

It’s the same formula. I always reiterate to reach out, step out and network. Reach out to find a coach, consultant or mentor, someone that can guide you. You’ve got to step out. As you got that consulting, you had to take portions of your treatment day instead of the sign for the business. You probably started at a half-day, maybe a full day a week or starting simply work on the business since you’re not seeing patients. You started networking or joining accountability groups, masterminds or collaborating with other PTs or simply business professionals to establish your network and start working on some of these business aspects that you’re trying to move through. Almost all my episodes have followed that same pattern. It’s one that I consistently preach and harp on.

It’s crazy because when you’re working in your business and seeing patients, there’s nothing wrong with that. The longer you’re there and spending most of your energy just seeing patients, by the end of the day, you don’t have the energy to work on your business. Without that energy and without that dedicated time to work on your business, your business will never grow beyond the line of patients you or your partner can see.

I started doing half days of working on the business. Transitioning from that patient treatment energy to working on my business was energy draining. It was hard to switch mindsets during the days. I tried to move people towards taking a full day and simply focused on the business from the outset. Did you have the same issues?

That’s exactly the same issue I went through. I started out by blocking four hours. I would stay in the office. I will just close the door. If you stay in the office, you block four hours before you know it, someone’s knocking on your door. That’s also telling you that you don’t have systems in place. I thought, “This is not working.” I decided I’m going to go to the local library for four hours. I would tell my teammates, our teammates in advance and tell them I’m going to be off the grid four hours. My phone is going to be off. I’m not going to be checking email. They know that even if they tried to reach out to me, they wouldn’t be able to reach me. That four hours became eight hours and then I said, “This is working.” Eight hours became two days. It became three days. By May of 2017, I was gone from treatment full-time. I have not been seeing patients for many years now. It is fun running practice when you have help and you have a leadership team in place.

I’m assuming that you are opening up your fifth practice, but you’re probably not doing a whole lot about it. Are you pretty busy yourself?

I’m not going to be seeing any patients. My job there is laying the vision of how that location’s going to be, setting the pro forma for that with my CFO and then envisioning how many we need to staff that place. We have our leadership teams and VP of operations to make sure that things are running smoothly right off the bat on the first day.

 

That’s great. Congratulations.

Thank you. I refer back to my leadership team. Without them, it would be tough because when I opened my second office, I did all the work.

From 2010 to 2013, you’re getting some consulting and training. This is what we’re going to talk about. You’re getting all this consulting and training and you’re getting all these ideas. You’re like, “We need to do this. We need to do that. I need to structure it this way. My employees are going to do this thing.” Was that well-received right off the bat? How did you start implementing things?

It’s probably happened to most private practice owners. You learn a lot of stuff from the consulting that you’re going to or maybe go out of state for three to five days and learn business concepts and then you go back and instantly try to implement it. It’s easy to do when it’s just you and your partner and maybe be a couple of people. When you have a big team and you’re trying to implement new concepts all the time, you might not always get the best buy-in from your team. Sometimes you’re going to get blowback. A lot of owners out there were seeing that in our consulting with NLPT too. Our first mastermind group was a group of twenty. When they first joined, we were throwing a lot at them to help their practices out, but they would go back to their teams and tried to implement them right away. They were getting a ton of blowback.

We then realized, “We need to introduce the thirteen-step of change through persuasion to our mastermind climbers.” That way they can introduce any program, any change that they’re trying to implement in their practice and ensure maximum buy-in because it happened to me. From that period from 2010 to 2013, I would go back and tried to implement. It was a little easier at that time because we had a smaller team. If I did that now with my team of 30, let’s say I attend a conference in San Diego and come back on a Monday and decide we’re going to do this thing for the whole company. That’s not going to go well. There are specific steps that you need to take as a private practice owner when you’re introducing change through your practice or implementing a program or trying to tweak a certain process. You have to go through these thirteen steps to make sure that you’ll ensure maximum buy-in. The problem is most owners jump to step seven. Step seven is implementing the plan. They skip steps one through six.

It’s not any different than going to a ConEd course that you alone go to and then you come back and say, “Every other therapist needs to introduce this into their treatment protocols.” They’re going to be like, “Why? What? Who?” They didn’t get all that prep that you got during the course of your ConEd course. It’s not necessarily different than implementing some new treatment procedure when you’re trying to change structures and procedures and something is as fundamental as their jobs. I can imagine, it takes some cozying up to them and preparing them for that change. I’m excited to know what the thirteen steps.

There are four major stages of change through persuasion. Stage one has three steps in it. Stage two has four steps in it. Stage three has three steps in it and stage four has three steps in it. All in all thirteen steps. Let’s talk about stage one. Stage one is called Setting the Stage. You have to set the stage. What I mean by that is the three main steps in setting the stage is facing the facts. What are the facts behind this change that you’re trying to implement? The more objective data you have, the better. Even graphs or trends. Let’s say, what’s a common thing that you’ve heard from your podcast guests as far as may be something that they’ve helped introduce or change in their practices? Let’s say the arrival rate or something.

It’s simple things like that. Arrival rates or recruiting PTs are hard. Trying to figure out an appropriate salary to offer.

The common thing that we would hear is that the owners would like to improve on the plan of care utilization. Maybe the patients of their PTs are not utilizing the plan of care properly or fully well. There’s something that PT owners wanting their team members to improve the plan of care utilization. Making sure that patients are graduating and making sure that patients are completing their plan of care. The common thing that would be facing the facts would be, what is the present plan of care utilization percentage? What is the arrival rate? What’s the drop off rate? What is the graduation rate? What is the trend? How does that look like on a graph? Has it been down-trending for quite some time?

To implement changes, make sure that you as the leader would be walking the walk and talking the talk. Click To Tweet

Another combination maybe for some practices that sell cash services. Let’s say, they have a laser or dry needling that they’re selling as cash services and their team is not selling it. The owner can sell it, but when it comes to their teammates trying to sell cash services, they can’t do it or hardly doing it. Again, you lay out the fact, “This is the fact. Our plan of care utilization is at this level or our sales are at this level.” Even units per visit is another thing. Maybe PTs have some locations or some practice may be seeing patients for an hour and maybe only charging three units.

Anything that you’re trying to change, you’ve got to face the facts as far as that particular situation and issue goes. After you think about the facts, the next step would be you got to establish a sense of urgency. By the way, the most powerful way to face the facts in my view, and we’ve been doing this for years now, is open-book management. My practice is open-book management to all our teammates, not just our leadership team. Our whole team of 30 people from the front desk, techs to PTAs, PTs, clinic directors or marketing people, they see our financials every month. That’s a steep gradient for most owners to get to that point where you’re showing your financials.

There’s a whole lot of obstacles for some people to do that or a lot of reservations to do that. Face it, it can get any more factual than that. When you show your financials, the team sees whether you’re doing well or you’re not doing well. It’s good to see that this is what’s happening. How are you impacting the top line of the business? How are you impacting the expenses? A lot of lines on that P&L, they don’t have control of, but the one thing that most teammates have control of is their impact on gross revenue through visits and through appropriate utilization of charges. That’s one of the most powerful things that we’ve seen in this step number one facing the fact.

Number two, you establish a sense of urgency. If this trend keeps going, what’s most likely going to happen and when you present this to your team, you have to get this out of them. You have to ask the same question, “If we continue in this pattern, this trend, let’s say for a plan of care utilization, how would that impact our graduation rate?” If patients are not graduating and not getting the results, how will that impact our marketing? How would that impact our image with our referring physicians? How would that impact you as a PT or as a teammate? At the end of the day, that sense of urgency has to resonate with them. Most of our teammates are interested in the number one radio station, which is WIIFM, What’s In It For Me? That sense of urgency has to ring true to them.

I love that you’re asking the questions and you’re bringing it back to them.

It has to resonate personally with them because otherwise, they would say, “Why do I care?” If we have the right teammates, they would be concerned. This is a way of making sure that they relate to the issue at hand. The third step would be creating that ideal scene. If this issue is addressed properly or if this program is implemented well, how does that ideal scene look like? What does it look like for you as a teammate? What does it look like for the practice? What does it look like for everyone who’s working here? How does that look like for our patients? How does that look like for our referral sources? Creating that ideal scene is step number three. Those are the three steps in stage one, setting the stage and make sure you face the facts, show the facts and be as objective as possible. Establish a sense of urgency but to establish a sense of urgency, you have to help your teammates realize that there is a sense of urgency. You have to ask them questions, you have to relate it to them personally. It has to resonate with them that it impacts them. Finally, as a team, you have to create that idea of seeing what would that look like.

Once you’ve done that preliminary part, then we move on to stage two. Stage two has four steps in it. Stage two is essentially developing and implementing the plan. The first step, which would be step number four, in this case. The first step under stage two, which would be overall step number four would be framing a preliminary plan. If you have a leadership team, you start framing a preliminary plan of how are we going to address this issue? Who would be involved in implementing the steps that we were going to layout? What would be the timeline? Who’s going to be impacted? How are we going to measure the results based on this plan? You frame that preliminary plan. Why is it a preliminary plan? It has to be preliminary because you have to involve the input of your team. If the plan is just from you, the owner or the founder, that plan is not going to be very powerful. You’re not going to get complete buy-in.

If you frame that preliminary plan together with the help of your team, initially with your leadership teammates and you all work together on framing that plan, the likelihood of that plan getting carried out and implemented well shoots up very high. The next step, which would be number five is gathering feedback. You present your preliminary plan for your team, then you gather feedback. How do you gather feedback though? At NLPT, we love seven questions typically when we’re gathering feedback from our teammates. The number one question we ask, let’s say you present your preliminary plan. Whatever plan it is, maybe it’s on the plan of care or improving cash services or maybe hitting our profit and loss targets and profit-sharing plan. People would have questions when you present a preliminary plan. The first question for gathering feedback, there are seven questions for gathering feedback that we love to use. This is based on the book, The Coaching Habit.

Those seven questions, not that we wanted to memorize it, but understand how those questions flow. Let’s say you present your plan, the first question that you need to be asking your team is, let’s say, someone raises an objection, an issue or a concern about the preliminary plan. Your first question as the leader, the founder or the CEO would be, “What’s on your mind?” You asked your teammate and you just shut up wait for their answer. Let them talk. After they talk, you follow up with the second question which would be, “And what else? Can you tell me more?” Let them dive deeper into it. Question number three would be, “What’s the real challenge here for you?” Let’s say they raise an objection or they’re thinking this plan is not going to work, then you ask question number three.

Question number four would be, “What do you want out of this? The number five would be, “How can I help?” Showing them that you’re concerned with their success as much as they would be. “How can I help make this a reality?” Maybe this is the preliminary plan. Maybe it ends up not being the actual final plan. By going through these questions, then you’re able to gather feedback from your team and maybe you realize, “They would have a point. Maybe this is not the direction that we need to go.” Which leads us to question number six, “If you are saying no to this, what are you saying yes to?”

Essentially, you’re asking your teammates, “I realized this plan may not be the best plan, but do you have another alternative for us that you would like to suggest?” Let them give you an option. Finally, number seven is, “What did you learn about this? What was most helpful here for you?” In number seven, you’d want to take notes on what you learned about that process because the next time you introduce another change or plan to your team, that number seven questions are important for you to remember. “This is how we did it the first time or this is what worked the last time,” and maybe this is the same way we go about it. Question number seven is, “What was most helpful? What did you learn about this process?”

That’s the gathering feedback step, which would be number five and number six is finally just rolling out and finalizing the plan with your leadership team. What does a final plan look like? There’s a goal, there’s an objective, there are action steps and there will be people assigned to each action step. There’ll be milestones and timelines for each action step. You also want to make sure that there is an actual deadline for when it’s going to be done. As far as setting deadlines, deadlines should be agreed upon by the whole team instead of the founder just setting a deadline. Let everyone agree on a deadline and you’d get a great buy-in that way. They know, “He’s not just mandating that we get this done on this particular date.” That was a mistake I’ve done.

There are so many times where I delegate something or ask somebody to do something without a deadline. I’d follow up a week later, “How are you coming on that?” He said, “I didn’t even start working on it. When do you want that?” “I wanted it a week ago.” It’s all my fault. I didn’t set a deadline.

It can swing in the other direction too, where you said a pretty aggressive deadline and then you have teammates thinking, “What does he think? I’m not doing it right. I’ve got a ton of work that I need to do and here we go. He’s putting a deadline.” That’s why it’s good to agree on a deadline for both ways. No deadline is not good. A super aggressive deadline that the owners set for the teammates are not very well-received either. It should be something in the middle, a happy medium. That’s stage three. Most owners jumped to step seven is implementing the plan. Step six, finalizing the plan. It doesn’t end there though, after implementing the plan. Stage three is you got to manage the results and morale of your team.

There are three steps here that are super important. Step number eight would be planning for and celebrating short-term wins. Let’s say you have a huge goal or a big thing to implement or a specific metric. Let’s say for example your plan of care utilization is 80% and you wanted to jump to 95%. A jump from 80% to 95% is such a huge jump. It’s cool if you would set, “Team, if we get to 85%, how should we celebrate it as a team?” We love doing mini-games. I got this from Travis Robbins. We do mini-games in our practice as far as if there’s one particular metric that we would like to influence, we’ll do a mini-game around it. Then we’ll decide on what the prize of the mini-game is.

In a month or in a quarter, it’s something to look forward to making it more fun. Plan for and celebrate short-term wins. It is so important for our morale. Step number nine would be you need to track and report results on that particular plan that you’re trying to implement. It has to be included in your scorecard. Typically, tracking and reporting usually happen during weekly team meetings. I would highly recommend if you’re introducing a plan to change something, it’s something that you monitor, you track and report results on a weekly basis as a team. That way you know it’s getting implemented correctly and you can debug it even more. Step number ten would be continuing to engage your team. You track and record results. The next step, engage the team, continue to debug, continue to tweak. If the plan needs to be tweaked out a little bit, change there a little bit and that’s where the feedback from your team. You continue to get feedback at this step.

If the plan is just from the owner or the founder, that plan is not going to be very powerful and would not get complete buy-in. Click To Tweet

I haven’t said a lot because I’m learning a ton and I’m writing down notes as you go into this, but continuing to engage the team. If you’re one of those personalities that jump to the next thing often, this can drop out. That’s where your teams can get desensitized to the changes that you present. They might look at it and say, “There’s another idea. This will go by the wayside in another month.” He comes up with the next bright idea and then that’ll go by the wayside. You’re a little desensitized to the changes where I love how you’re talking about continuing to engage the team and recognizing like, “This is part of our practice and I’m going to continue to talk about it. We’re going to continue to push.” I love this step.

This leads us to stage four, which is preventing backslide. Change is difficult for most people. We’re all human beings. We are typically resistant to change and change is so personal. Especially, if our teammates have been doing things a certain way and then we are introducing a change. There might be some initial changes. They get desensitized to it. Maybe the first two or three weeks they might be doing it or implementing the plan and before you know it, they might backslide back to their old ways of doing things and back to the same issue. All that work results in nothing if you don’t particularly plan out stage four which is preventing backslide. How do you prevent backslide? Step number eleven would be you need to discuss with your team right off the bat when you frame that preliminary plan and finalize that plan, disruptive versus desired behavior as far as that as the new plan or new change that you’re trying to implement. List out at least three disruptive behaviors and three desired behaviors as far as the new plan that you’re trying to pursue or a new change that you’re trying to implement.

Is it part of the plan or is it something that you do on the fly?

I would do this right off the bat. You can include this in the plan. We just put this at step number eleven, but I think it’s a great idea to put it in the plan right off the bat so that way people are aware. This is in stage four preventing backslide. It was put there to remind people to create this step and you can add this step to finalizing the plan in step number six. List disruptive and desired behaviors so that way your team is already aware, “These are the actions that we want to see from our teammates.” If there are five or six, perfect. These are the actions we don’t want to see in regards to this particular plan or change that we’re trying to pursue.

Finally, step number twelve would be to make sure, you as the leader would be walking the walk and walking the talk. You need to be the first model of an example. This is an easy example. Maybe the change would be a new employee handbook. In the employee handbook, it talks about coming to work early, like five minutes or maybe ten minutes. If you as the founder, the owner or the leader come late all the time, then it would not be great for implementing and following the plan when they could see you yourself following and creating one of those disruptive actions you’ve actually listed.

Finally, number thirteen is systemizing the process. Now that you’ve gone through this new plan, the first stage is you set the stage. In stage two, you’ve developed it and implemented it. In stage three, you’ve managed results and morale, you’ve track results and it is working. In stage four, the final step, want to systemize it using a process map. This is the thirteen steps of change through persuasion. We coach our mastermind groups for a whole day on this. How we dive deep into it including the process mapping at the end. You’ve got to learn how to process map. Once you know that the plan works, you got to put that as a system. You got to write that down. How do you write that down though? There’s a great way to process map that. That’s something that we coach our mastermind climbers on. I believe this change through persuasion thing is something that’s a little bit underrated for most owners. It seems like it’s something easy to implement, but the tendencies are to jump to step number seven. It seems like the first six steps, they’re just a hassle. If you skip those first six, you will not get the maximum buy-in that you’re looking for.

Maybe our readers are already doing a couple of the steps, but I love how you’re talking about and presenting the facts, “Here’s where we are and this is where we need to get.” They don’t take the time to involve the team by establishing a sense of urgency and asking them questions. They also might not totally be open to gathering feedback from the employees or team members. They also might not be willing to engage the team members by celebrating the wins. I love the thirteen steps because it incorporates the team members throughout the process where some people might just say, “Here’s the issue, here’s what we need to do, get it up to that level. If you do so, great. We’ll move onto the next thing.” I love the engagement that’s brought out through the process.

At the end of the day, engaging with this is the key. When you look at the thirteen steps, it is the heart of this, engaging your team so they know they’re part of forming a plan. When it comes time to implement it, they’ll be fully vested.

I can see how this could be a good filtering mechanism or a vetting mechanism in and of itself. Even though you go through this process, some people are not going to be bought in. Some people are simply resistant to change. I see this as a great opportunity to use the process to filter out those people that simply won’t get on the bus or fall into alignment with what their company is doing and where it’s going. This goes every step of it. It allows for engagement and invites them to change it if they’re not willing to do so along that path. It’s easy to move people out in this regard.

 

If you go through this process and you have a teammate who’s still not buying in, then you might have to be looking at that teammate and maybe letting them off the bus.

I love that you broke it down into thirteen steps. I love that you brought in the The Coaching Habit. I read that and I saw a friend of mine reading as well. I loved it and how it can be influential as a leader because we are essentially coaching for the team members that we work with. As the leader, we’re there to help them through any issues and problems. Sometimes we need to see ourselves as that coach.

That’s actually written in my home office at work. My three hats. To our readers, when you think about it, you have three main hats for your practice. Whatever stage you’re in, you may still be seeing patients, but still your top three hats and treating patients is not in the top three. Number one is you’re the visionary, number two is strategist and number three is head coach. The neat thing is those three hats, you need to somehow incorporate that into your week and find times here and there to wear your visionary hat.

You have to work on something related to visionary and strategy every week and then work on coaching. In our practice, I’ve dedicated Tuesdays to coaching our teammates. Tuesdays are also our leadership team meetings, but it’s also our one on one meetings. It is also our coaching meetings. That’s the most powerful thing because that’s one thing that I needed when I was starting out. I did not seek out right away and no wonder we didn’t progress as well. Once you started adding coaches to help you out, then the practice grows. It’s the same thing for our teammates. If you want to be our teammate, we’ve got to coach them.

They want that. They want someone who’s as concerned about their future as they are and maybe provide a little perspective along the way.

Do you follow football?

Of course.

Who’s your favorite team?

I’m from Arizona, so it’s the Cardinals.

There's a huge gap between knowledge and understanding, but there's an even wider gap between understanding and implementation. Click To Tweet

I’m a Chicago Bears fan. Our head coach is an amazing leader. When you look at it, we are like a sports team head coach. Running our practice is like being a sports team head coach. Trying to encourage and motivate your team. Matt Nagy is great at that. He is a great head coach when it comes to motivating his teammates, his team, being a great and encouraging leader and engaging his team.

Arlan, you’ve shared a ton with us. Is there anything else you want to share?

I want to end with something that I read. You’ve probably read this book, Executive Toughness by Jason Selk.

I haven’t read that one.

I love that book. In that book, he mentioned specifically that there’s a huge gap between knowledge and understanding, but there’s an even wider gap between understanding and implementation. I already discussed the thirteen steps and maybe you’ve memorized it, but it’s one thing to know and understand it and it’s another thing to implement it. I would strongly recommend you implement it in your practice. If you have any more questions, feel free to reach out to me or reach out to NLPT and we can help you implement change through persuasion in your practice.

How do people get in touch with you, Arlan?

The best way would be through our Facebook group, NLPT Basecamp. It’s a free Facebook group. They could join there and they could also add me as friend personally. You can message me on Messenger and we can correspond that way. If you have any questions, I’d be more than happy to help you.

Thank you so much for your time. You shared a ton of great insights. This is a huge step for any successful business owner who wants to make changes. You have to change in order to grow and scale. In order to do that, you have to implement these changes and this is the way to do it. I appreciate the wisdom that you shared with us. It was great.

Thank you, Nathan, for having me on.

Important Links:

• Dr. Arlan Alburo
• Next Level Physical Therapy
• Travis Robbins – Past episode
• Kevin Kostka – Past episode
• Orthopedic and Balance Therapy
• The Coaching Habit
• Executive Toughness
• NLP T Basecamp – Facebook group
• https://www.NLPTBasecamp.com/about-nlpt

About Dr. Arlan Alburo