When should you fire your therapist?
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[00:00:00] You've done all the work to hire the best therapist that you can for your small business, but now you're running into trouble and you're like, shit. Should I fire this therapist? It's a really hard decision and I'm here to share with you some things that might be able to help you make your decision a little bit easier and a little bit faster.
My name is Hoang. I'm an OTCH and I started my therapy clinic over a decade ago. And within five years of that, I started my online business. And so I'm here to share some business tips and experiences that I have that may help you. So I don't know if you know, you know how long you've been in business, but it really doesn't matter.
At some point in your career journey, you're gonna have to hire people to help you build the kind of business you want, right? I started with my business thinking I wasn't gonna hire nobody, but I don't know how it was going to grow and how it's going [00:01:00] to have multiple locations. Uh, but at some point you're gonna have to hire somebody.
so that you could maybe take some time off and just have some security of someone's gonna, uh, you know, help you, right? And sometimes you're gonna have to hire a therapist, uh, but you do all the work, you check on them, you do the interviews and you've brought them in and you've hired them six months, nine months.
12 months in and you're like, I don't know this person's truly working out. And now you want to consider firing them and you keep going back and forth and it's causing so much stress and tension. Well, I'm going to share with you because that's exactly what's happening with this. Um, it's top of mind because, um, I have been having some one on one consultations with other business and I just wanted to bring it up and share it with you to share with you what.
You know, like every one of us goes through, [00:02:00] which is, um, you know, these little bumps in business and we have to make, you know, we have to make hard decisions like there's always, there's never just upsides, upsides, upsides, everything's great. There's also what we consider downsides, right? Bumps in the road and the faster you can make the decision the more certainty that you can make the decision Then it helps you to be able to move on faster and actually releases your stress.
I read somewhere that stress is Unmade decisions listen to that again. It was changing from this like life change. I was like what? stress Unmade decisions. You know, when you, once you make that decision, you're like, Oh my God, you feel that really it's because you're stressed because of unmade decisions.
And I've been there where you've been. I'm still there for other things, but [00:03:00] not for firing a therapist. If my therapist watches this, you're not fired. Don't worry. Your job is good. Right? But I've been there where I've had to fire a therapist. And I. I was talking to this business owner who, um, she's in the pelvic health space, um, and manual therapy.
And, you know, even within that niche, it's, it can be really hard to find a therapist to train them. I told her, I'm like, I know I'm a certified hand therapist and it's hard in my space. So it's the same thing. Right. Um, but she wanted my, um, she wanted the consultation because she sees that I'm, I'm working with students and I've developed my programs to work with students.
And so she wanted to know, like, She wanted to work it through, like talk it out with someone who is experienced working with therapists so often. And I do have a process, um, of a series of questions that I ask [00:04:00] and things to look at to make that to help That I did to help her really come down to the realization of what decisions had to be made and an action plan, right?
So it's not always like, oh yeah, let's just fire that person, but let's actually go through the, the reasoning behind, but also Uh, to help her make a decision, but also to set it up for the next success, right? So this business owner has been in business for a decade, um, but has never hired someone like this, right?
So, so here's what happens. So we kind of dialed down to, um, so that to help you kind of think through, like, should you fire someone, right? Should you fire a therapist or should you keep them and keep training and coaching them? Um, and the decision, once you make it, it's going to, like I [00:05:00] said, relieve that stress.
So in a few of the questions that we went through, I'm not going to go through the whole thing with you. We're able to break down two major things, um, professional soft skills and clinical skills, right? So as therapists, there's. It's essentially two buckets, right? So um, we want to determine do they have soft skill, professional skill issues, or if they have clinical skills when they have problems in both areas, it's becomes extremely hard to mentor and coach that that's extremely time consuming.
So you have to really ask yourself, do you want to do that if they have professional soft skills, but clinical skills, like they're tight. It's much easier. It's their coach. And if they're coachable, right, if they're coachable, you know, it makes a difference. If they're great with like personality, self skills, [00:06:00] professionalism, all that is amazing, but their clinical skills are not very good.
You can train for that. You can coach that, especially if they're coachable. When you have. Problems in both buckets. I mean, your hands are full, right? And you have to make that determination of how much time are you going to give because your time is very expensive. You have to start. That's got to be. A thought process, you know, you have to value, you have to value your time.
I value my time. My time is very expensive. Um, the more I give of that, the less time that I have to do at a higher level. Um, so we went through the questions to determine, okay, these are the two buckets of problems. And now to then go into like, what do we need to [00:07:00] do to set up actionable steps and to review?
Essentially, I did a audit of her. of her system or process of like, how do you bring someone on? What's your onboarding process? Um, what's your explanation of the role and your scorecard? Like, so that's where you evaluate somebody. Um, how is your training set up? Where are the loopholes in your training that is now causing a lot of these issues?
Because I'll tell you what, as a business owner, We blame ourselves for everything. We blame ourselves for everything. We take on so much and, and majority of the time it is for us to take on, but not everything. And you have to have discernment on when it is you and when it isn't you. And that you have to be able to pick and choose [00:08:00] wisely so you're not paying attention and putting your focus on the wrong things.
If you're putting your focus on the wrong things, um, it's going to get you nowhere fast. If I'm in Miami, I'm trying to get to Orlando, but I'm driving South. I'm never getting to Orlando headed to the keys. I'm going to be in the wrong place. I am driving. I am doing a something. My time is spent somewhere, but I am going to the wrong destination.
And that's where. You make sure that you're focused on the right areas to be able to get to the best conclusion, right? So if you're sitting here, la la la, like, maybe I should do this, maybe I didn't do that, it's all my fault. You're doing all this work, but you're not getting where you need to go. That was a hard conversation yesterday.
That I had. [00:09:00] So, um, we went through all of that and I'm sharing this with you because if you're in a position where you're hiring a therapist, firing a therapist, these are all really great things. I do this. I do this in my business in order to hire in order to decide whether to keep people or not. Just because you get hired by me doesn't mean that I'm going to keep you forever just because I'm I hired you.
Um, people know 100 percent you're coming into a small business. This is not a big corporation, right? Uh, where once you get the job, you think, Oh, I'm going to write this shit off and I don't have to do shit. I've been in big corporations. So I know no one gets fired. People get fired. You don't think that you're going to get fired, but people get fired in big corporations too.
It's just slow. You know, the way I see it, the analogy I have is, is when you're working with a big corporation, right? You're dating a [00:10:00] dude, you're dating a girl and y'all people know you're not a good match, but everyone's scared to break up. So y'all people just riding it out. Do the necessary things, ho hum, but you're both miserable, but nobody wants to break up with anyone else.
Right? That's corporate America. You dating a more experienced person and my age, if I'm dating a, I know what I want, right? I know what I want. And if I date you and I know you're not for me, we breaking up. Why am I going to drag this shit out? Right? That's small business. It should be because it's so expensive to keep people who, who don't work out.
Right, and we have a hard time doing that because we were the person who hired them. It's our fault That we hired [00:11:00] somebody who isn't a good fit, right? So but that's the that's where you have to really explore so that you can feel certain about your decision because you are you As a business owner you have to be the decision maker, right?
you How are their professional soft skills? How are their clinical skills? Do you have problems in both buckets or only one bucket? Are they coachable? And then you look at your, did you explain the, the role correctly, which means you have to have a scorecard. You have to have a, you know, um, You know, I have three objectives that my therapist need to hit all my all my roles have three objectives in each role has three objectives and you need to be hitting those three objectives.
Right? Um, so that requires me to have a great onboarding process. How does that onboarding process looks, you know, within one week, four weeks, um, two months, three months. [00:12:00] How is that progression looking because we can't be a year out and I'm still telling you the same shit over and over That is not happening.
I did not hire a four year old You know how you have to tell the four year you have to tell your kids how to do the same shit every day Right. I didn't hire a kid. I hired an adult Right. And so that's the, that is the honest conversation that you have to have. And I told this therapist, I was like, you are so nice.
And I could hear myself coming across like, And I was like, okay, Juan, calm down. Calm down. Um, but I was like, you're so You want to be the nice guy, but how much money is it costing you because you're the nice guy? And how much is it costing them [00:13:00] because you're the nice guy? Because you're not being honest and telling them, hey.
You're not doing a good job, right? You're not doing a good job. So then you have to decide the training. What does your training look like? So that's where we went more into depth. But here's the thing when it comes to training that I think most people get wrong is that you're not specific enough. So. You know, she was like, well, this is a problem.
This is a problem. I was like, what's the one problem? She's like, I don't know. There's so many problems. I'm like, no. You have to pick one out of all of that problem. What is the one thing that if you could change would make the biggest difference, right? [00:14:00] So I'll use my example. When I'm working and training my therapist Whether it's my own therapist or believe it or not, my students inside my programs, one of the hardest diagnosis to treat are your kind of like insidious risk pains, right?
So they have They have wrist pain, but they don't have range of motion problems. They have more of a nerve tension issue. So, within that particular diagnosis, therapists have a really hard time evaluating and treating. So that one particular diagnosis is a problem. I've now identified this one diagnosis.
Within that one diagnosis, I've uncovered there's two [00:15:00] major problems. That needs to be addressed. Which one is the most important? This is exactly what I went through with her when I did the one on one consulting. So I'm sharing that exact formula with you. So if you are looking to train your therapist, Um, that's how you can set your goal.
You've got to get more specific with people versus saying, I need you to know everything now, right? If you as a business owner, if you are committed to training your team of therapists to be better, to be providing a level of service for your business. And this is so important when you're a cash based business.
This is extremely important if you are a cash based business if you're an insurance business you're like who cares because um, you know You have like a gazillion people [00:16:00] all at the same time But when you're a cash based business and you are a premium price cash pay pay business people are willing to pay you premium because they are there for a specific problem, they are paying a lot of money and they are looking for a particular outcome and you will lose money, right?
Thousands of dollars will fall out of your pocket if you don't fix this particular problem. The key thing here is to be dialed in into how specific that problem is so you can set a goal and you can put a timeline to it. And if that therapist cannot hit that goal within that timeline, right? Then how much longer are you willing [00:17:00] as a business owner to be stressed?
And. To lose money because that's the thing when you're a small business owner. You can there's a lot of downsides right, there's a lot of downsides and The money bleeds out. All
right. I am when I hire I am I have become very honest with what I require and what people are willing to, to work with. I will train the shit out of you. You will leave here with the thing that you want the most. Most people come and work with me as a therapist because they desire clinical skills and three letters behind their name.
C H T, right? [00:18:00] When people come and work with me, they can leave and get any job anywhere. I guarantee it 100 for every single therapist between my online space, my, um, my clinic space. I know what I provide and as a business owner, you, you know what you provide too. And if you're having a hard time, please join my email list and get more tips.
And if you need more help, you know, like dude, the links below, right? But as a business owner, as a small business owner. You know, we have to make the big, tough decisions, and the faster, the sooner we make it, the better our lives will be, and better for the, you know, the whole team, if you have a team. When I've hired, when I've fired people, [00:19:00] my staff always come and tell me afterwards what they don't want to tell me while they're there.
Sometimes you don't have all the information. You have to, you have to find it. You have to dig in there for the gold, find it, and make the decision, you know. When I hired, when I fired a therapist, I was like, this is a struggle. I was like, how long do I want to struggle like this? And I went through these set of, these series of questions, um, this particular game plan.
And, um, yeah, it works. So anyway, that is my share for this week. Uh, when should you fire your therapist? Uh, we're not here trying to fire people. We really, most business owners want to keep the people they, they hire. Um, cause they hired them for a reason, you know, uh, you hired them for [00:20:00] a reason. Um, but you have to really be thoughtful and, and.
go through those critical thinking processes, um, to come to a decision. I hope this video has helped you. If you're struggling with anything business related, I cover, um, a lot in my OT business corner program and hiring. And firing is one of, um, the modules that we cover. Cause it's so important when you're building your business.
So anyway, uh, I hope this video helped you and like subscribe and leave me a comment if you like. All right. Until next time. Thank you.
