Build A Team That Outgrows You with Dr. Lance Knaub

We share how Dr. Lance mentored an internal leader to become CEO, built systems that survive turnover, and used equity partnerships to grow a durable, valuable practice without burning out. We set a practical path for strategy time, clear boundaries, and a definition of enough that protects health and family.


To join the book launch team, email: drlanceknaub@denaliconsultingteam.com with subject line “launch”

Connect with Lance at https://denaliconsultingteam.com/

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We specialize in helping therapy practices like yours achieve financial clarity, so you can focus on what you do best—helping your clients and managing your team- while we help handle all the businessy stuff they didn’t teach you in grad school. 

To see if your practice might be a good fit, schedule a free consultation at therapybusinesspod.com. 

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*Intro/outro song credit:
King Around Here by Alex Grohl

Transcript

Handing The Reins To Your Team

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What if you developed a team that was so strong that one day you eventually let one of them take over the business for you? Well, that's exactly what Dr. Lance Knobb did in his physical therapy practice. He had a successful practice that he ended up mentoring one of his team members to then take over and run as the CEO. Today, Dr. Lance digs into how to nurture a team, how to grow a team and be a strong leader, but also as the business owner, how to really prioritize yourself and create a balance between the business and your personal life. This is a fantastic list and a wealth of knowledge, and I know you're going to take a ton of value out of it. My name is Craig, and I'm the owner of Daisy Financial Coaching. Our team is on a mission to make your therapy practice permanently profitable. If you own a solo or group practice, we're here to help you build a business that creates more time, makes more money, and serve more people. This is the Therapy Business Podcast. All right, we have Dr. Lance here. Lance, thank you so much for joining me today. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Oh, fantastic. Thanks for having me. So excited to be here, ready to go.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Yeah, me too. I'm I'm pumped just after the little bit we chatted before recording and looking at your site. I just uh I think you're gonna be a wealth of knowledge. You have a ton of experience in the physical therapy world and in helping business owners, helping practice owners grow their businesses. And so I'm pumped. Uh, but I do want to, since I know a little bit, I want to let listeners know, give us a little intel into your background. Uh, who are you and what what do you do?

Building A Practice And Mentors

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Yeah, well, thanks for being here, everybody. Make sure you like and subscribe. So much value already. I mean, Craig is yeah, profit first, as you guys know, which is near and dear to my heart. So my background is as a physical therapist and personal trainer. My bachelor's was in exercise science and met my wife in physical therapy school. We actually had a really great opportunity to live and study abroad. We met in Aberdeen, Scotland, and we're able to uh, you know, kind of have uh an adventure, uh seeing the world while we were in school there, and then we came back to the States, worked for a couple years, and you know, the entrepreneurial itch kind of rose up. I realized, and we both realized that we it could be done better, and we wanted to build something better and and actually combine physical therapy and fitness together and have like a bigger continuum for folks. Um so that was super exciting. We rented 300 square feet from a little boutique fitness center right after getting back from our honeymoon, it was our first official month's rent. I don't recommend you know getting married and diving into business with your partner. It's not for the faint of heart, but either. But we we grew closer and got through all the challenges, and I was lucky enough to have some great mentors approach me, and you know, one was great at marketing and one was great at finance, and just had really some incredible mentors, which we can talk about. And I I realized that partnership wasn't uh you know common enough in the physical therapy world, and I I studied partnership in all industries, created a partnership tract, and that helped attract the best and brightest. And in 2015, one of our you know most talented people at what my mentor called a development plan meeting said they wanted to run the company and my and my jaw dropped, you know, they're sharing their shorter and longer term goals. And um, I took a deep breath and realized this could be a good thing. And over three years, then we continued to develop them and the entire team in 2018. I handed off the CEO head of our five-location, you know, 50-person multi-million dollar business at that time, which was our biggest investment, and it was like our first child for sure. So that was exciting and scary, and then I had to figure out what my next mountain was going to be. And after talking to a franchise broker and being on the Shark Tank side of the equation, thinking I might have to be a franchisee to diversify a little bit and have some you know more passive investments, I realized I wanted to pay it all for and help other entrepreneurs. So that's exactly where I am now with you know Denali consulting, helping other you know entrepreneurs, but particularly love helping healthcare entrepreneurs, which I know is a niche of yours with physical therapists and you know, particularly wealth managers, somehow that developed as a niche as well.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Wow, that's that's fantastic. I mean, just the the growth trajectory you had, and then to just stop and say, you know what, I'm gonna show others how I did what I did. Um and and I'm with you. I think uh the idea of handing the reins off to somebody is is terrifying. Did you build to that? Is that something that I'm if it had happened, I guess, a few years earlier, would it have been a no way that's ever happening? This is my thing, get away from it.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

Maybe, maybe not. It really, you know, I guess depends on your confidence. Because then you're kind of, in my mentor's words, my mentor Jimmy, is like you're betting on it's future risk, and you're you know, certainly betting on other people. So it really kind of depends. Now, now we tended to, you know, we really groomed our own people and developed our own people. So I felt a lot more confident. I'd been in the trenches with them, been through hard times, versus like Ray Dalio, for example, even you know, a self-made billionaire, one of the most successful financial minds in the world, you know, brought in outside people when he did it. And by the way, it took him like 30 some years, and he brought in two people and it still didn't work. So it's definitely not an easy thing to accomplish. You do have to be intentional, I think, right from the beginning or early on if this is a goal.

SPEAKER_00 5:55

Man, okay, that makes a lot of sense. And I think from what I've seen talking to a lot of practice owners, it's it's a hard transition to make where the business owner is seeing, you know, I think a lot of PTs go out and they start the practice, and maybe it's just them or a really small team, but they're seeing the bulk of the clients, they're seeing the bulk of the patients. Then they may bring in another PT or a PTA or a tech or some to help, but still it's they find they're growing and yet they're having that difficulty of transitioning themselves out of there. Uh is that something you see? How did you successfully obviously you successfully did that? And so um, yeah, how do you how do you strike that bouncer? What's how what's the secret or is there a secret? I don't even know.

Creating A Partnership Track

SPEAKER_01 6:39

Yeah, well, you know, I I put uh all of my best thoughts and lessons into a process in the a book in 2018, the 4% breakthrough. So, you know, every chapter is a step, and I so I think it can be organized into a process. And um, you know, I was exposed to the e-myth, Michael Gerber's book, The Entrepreneurial Myth, early on, unfortunately, before we started the practice. So I was a big advocate of processes and systems and writing having a playbook, but then the initial people on our team were rock stars, and I relaxed a little bit, and they were just doing a world-class job, and life was good, but then you know, people moved, we lost a couple, and I realized we weren't working off with our processes, so I had to go back and get that in place pretty quickly. And that was you know, time lost and it disrupts the team. Everybody's used to really just things being smooth. So, you know, I definitely recommend spending the 10% of extra time when you do something and getting it organized in today's world, right? You can make a video, have it auto-captioned, create up a video library of your processes. It's it's so much easier in a lot of ways. So I do think you know, you need to be organized with your frameworks and systems, at the same time have world-class people and um and give them enough freedom and authority, you really need to develop them and know. Like one of our secret sauces was these development plan meetings, like when I mentioned our our future CEO, like if you really spend some time outside of the review and you know what their you know short-term and long-term goals are and what their interests are, where that aligns with the company, if you make that a plan, they're not gonna go anywhere. You're best and brightest. It's just gonna set fuel on the fire. And people are gonna have different levels of flame. Some are gonna have a high flame and really need to grow fast, and some might be lower. And you know, you'll just need to develop them over time. They're gonna be rock, you know, solid, steady, and stable. And some of them are gonna go up and down. When they have children, it might go down a little bit, or when they become empty nesters. So you just have to monitor all those things. So I really think getting that framework and getting the best people in place are some really big keys.

Grooming Your Future CEO

SPEAKER_00 8:53

Man, I love that. I love um what you said with knowing their goals and then making that part of the company's plan, which I think is not something many of any business owners doing, regardless of industry, is getting to know what their team is actually wanting to do. Um, I think it's and that's not out of yeah, it is. And I'm like, I don't think it's that we don't care or that they don't care about their people. I just don't think it's we're so sometimes so caught up in growing this business and our goals and how getting the team on board with those things to stop and say, what are your what do you want out of this, or what do you want your life to look like, or your career? Um, because I don't think they're gonna come out and tell you, just like you were talking about, if you didn't create that pathway, they never would have said, Hey, I want to run this company. They would have probably quietly started thinking, I want to run a company, and then went out and and left and found a company to run. Uh so you created that pathway for them to speak it up, and then not only did it benefit them and their goals, it obviously changed a lot for you and your business in a in the right way too.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

And for all the founders listening, I think you have to create your vision has to be so large that your teams can fit inside of it. Because if it's if your vision is not larger than theirs, exactly what you said. It's gonna, you're gonna lose some of your best and brightest with the bigger flames. And you know, that may not be a win-win, but probably for you, you know, if you're aligned on all factors, like them having, you know, you having them on the on your team is is probably in your best interest.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

Yes, uh, I think that's that's really, really insightful and helpful. And I know that's something turnover is a stress point for a lot of a lot of practice owners too. And so I think that's that's really great. Um, I want to pivot to going back to just that idea of the business owner. So you're developing this team and people you can trust, which is gonna help hopefully bring that business owner out of the day-to-day seeing patients. What I've found, and I want to pick your brain on this too, is that when a business owner is so busy seeing patients and and doing notes and all those things, then you know, then marketing becomes like a little byproduct, and then managing the business itself becomes a byproduct. And if there's time, which there's never time, they can start actually being strategic with the business. Uh how important is making sure that they have time to actually strategize and do some strategic planning in their business? How uncommon is it, I guess, and how important do you think that is in the business side of it for the business owner to be doing?

Systems, Playbooks, And Processes

SPEAKER_01 11:20

Yeah, well, you and I both know the answer, right? If you're not working on the business, you will fail. It's it's it's certain. Um so yeah, and Michael Gerber, you know, the author of the emyth, his language. So working in the business would be the technician work, right? For us, you know, for physical therapists listening, it would be your physical therapy, or you know, attorneys listening would be doing law work and you know, doctors doctoring. And then the on the business, you know, the entrepreneurial and the management work. Yeah, that's that's everything, you know, working on the business. So definitely, you know, create a plan. Step five, chapter five of my book is after you've done a lot of introspection, really, you know, it's where the rubber meets the road and you're gonna commit in writing to the non-negotiables in your life, you know, your personal life and sleep, exercise, your partner, time for yourself, and then you know, work in the business, of course, right? Your 30 hours or 40, whatever you're doing, but then the work on the business as well. You're gonna have to map that out in advance because it's not gonna happen by accident.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

No, uh, it's being proactive. And I think that's this whole survival feeling that a lot of people have is you know, that my revenue's great. I'm not paying myself what I want to pay myself. And I feel like I'm constantly just playing catch up and um, you know, all these things on my plate of growing the business or the things I want to do, they just keep getting pushed to next week, to next week, to next week. And until we make that pivotal change, it sounds like that's of actually choosing to say, okay, here I have to make it a priority, otherwise, it is just gonna get pushed to the wayside uh constantly. It sounds like is a huge part of what you're saying.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

And just to be specific, I'd recommend that people spend 10% of your year, a quarter, a month, a week, and a day on some strategic higher level thinking and planning, right? So you you can't be on the mountain top 100% of the time, but it can't be zero either. If you run straight down into the trenches, into the heart of the enemy, you're gonna lose. Um, but you can't just you know think and dream and plan all day long. You do have to go take some action eventually. But I think it's doable. It really only has to be like 10% of your time. So um, you know, as an approximate framework to give you.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

I think that's a great, just doable target and easy to translate in. And you know, I think I've I've always going back to the idea of profit first, of what we prioritize first is what happens. Uh, so sitting down even and just creating your calendar for the year if you want to, and just earmarking, okay, every Thursday at this time is I do not see anybody, you know, any patients. It's just time for me to really work on the business. Um, and then from there you can decide what you're gonna utilize that time for. But I think just making it a priority and before everything else gets because it's easy to say, okay, 10%, that's a couple hours a week. Uh and then the week gets going, you're like, I'm seeing patients all day, every day, and then all of a sudden you just don't have time.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

And exactly what you said, I think is a great approach to for everyone who's just trying to maybe the onion one layer and just get a little bit of work on the business. I'd recommend you know, trying to schedule 30 to 60 minutes for some CEO time, and it's got to be on your calendar. And if you know, write it in a way. If other people have access to your calendar, look at your calendar, it's just your CEO meeting. They don't have to know it's your meeting with yourself. And then definitely take a look at your your most important data from you know from a high level, and there'll be plenty to cover in your your CEO time and be careful not to start like catching up on your notes and doing all the other things, you know, your technician work.

Development Plans That Retain Talent

SPEAKER_00 15:05

It'd be it's so easy to do that, especially if they're stressed about money to say, well, I need uh these these notes to get done and all these things. No, it's um really carve it out. I would I try for myself, I try to think of it as the same way if I was had an appointment with with someone, uh, I would respect their time. I wouldn't just ghost them, I wouldn't just cancel on them every single time we have an appointment. No, I would show up. And so treating it like that's an appointment with with myself. I'm I'm meeting, I'm gonna treat that time as sacredly as I would if it was someone else on my calendar. Thousand percent. Yes, absolutely. Okay, great. And then even on those going to just one more note on that is the book, I think it's Living Forward uh by Michael Hyatt, is one that I read a few years ago. And uh the one thing I took away from it was that idea of um he's it's all about time blocking, but the thing I've really leveraged was the annual time blocking, which is just kind of what I talked about, like the important things in our lives, and it's not just business. So I go in and I block every day my kids are out of school for the year, so that way the days are blocked so I can be free to spend time with my kids during those days. Um, I would block important birthdays, or I would block a time once a month to go out to lunch with uh my mom or my dad, or go take the kids lunch at school. And so, and then I would block days for CEO, what I would call CEO retreat, and it's just prioritizing me my calendar. So then when I'm looking at the month or the week ahead, I'm like, oh wait, it's already blocked. Um, here's things I'm supposed to be doing, or now I can purposely take time with my family. Um, and because those things are the most important to me, then my clients and then sales calls and all those other things get filled in around it instead of me trying to push it into an already full calendar.

SPEAKER_01 16:49

That's gold. Yeah, I'm gonna check that out. Um, I've never read any of Michael Hyatt, so I'm excited to check that out.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

Yeah, it's a good one. I I recommend it and I always take a little bit from things and um implement what I can where I can. But um awesome. So balancing the personal and the family side is another common struggle. Um, and we already kind of alluded to it a little bit, but yeah, how do you find that balance? Because I I find uh it's easy to feel guilty while you're at work because you're maybe not uh present at home, and then when you're present at home, you're feeling guilty because the business is is needing you, or I'm gonna put quotations, needing you to be there. Yeah, how do you find that balance? Or yeah, any any recommendations there?

SPEAKER_01 17:36

I mean, I don't want to underplay this because this is it's a massive problem when we know from a high level, you know, the title of my book is the 4% breakthrough that 96% of businesses fail in 10 years. And that's just Michael Gerber's data. 80% fail in the first five years. And by the way, you know, he says don't get too excited if you're in the 20% because 80% of that's gonna fail. So if you do the math, it's 96%. So I don't want to under you know downplay it, but I do think that having this you know time map, this uh, you know, having this schedule strategy um is critical because it's gonna be a lot of Parkinson's law. When you really have your time to do your CEO meeting and to do your treating and to do your notes, those things are gonna happen. And then you can also give yourself permission to flip the switch at X time at six o'clock and be with your kids and at nine o'clock to relax and spend some time with your partner and you know, watch a show or read or do whatever you want to do, you know, head towards bed at ten o'clock. So I know that that helps me for those reasons and gives me permission. Now, of course, there's loose ends on my mind that of course I feel like I want to do, but most things can wait. And of course, if it is urgent, you know, take care of it, give yourself permission. Um, and then even just you know, journaling before bed just to clean up those loose thoughts and you know, tackle them out of the way. So I think a lot of what we talked about, but those are kind of like some more specifics on on staying healthy and not getting sick. Um, because I mentioned you on our pre-call, that's part of my story and my passion, helping entrepreneurs stay healthy.

Founder Vision Big Enough For All

SPEAKER_00 19:17

That's right, because you've combined the two, just not only rehabilitation, but also uh fitness, right? Uh just taking care of your body in general. Is that is that part of it?

Escaping The Treatment Treadmill

SPEAKER_01 20:16

Yeah, so really what I mean is in you know, in 2011, when we had three offices, 30 employees, and we just had our third child, so we had three kids under the age of four, I was doing exactly what we're talking about. I was grinding, working 80 hours a week, not sleeping enough, just abusing my body. And I didn't have all the skill to handle all those things, personal and professional. And my digestive system in my body had enough, and my digestive system stopped working, my GI system shut down. I couldn't eat. I was either in the bathroom or running to the bathroom. It was embarrassing. I couldn't function, I had to rule out cancer, crone, celiac, see specialists. Um, you know, it was it was uh it stopped me in my tracks completely. So that's really where you know part of this passion comes from for entrepreneurs just fighting so hard to you know stay alive beyond 10 years and to serve all the people and create impact, but you know, not to make extreme sacrifices or their health or their family or the things that matter most.

SPEAKER_00 21:19

Yeah, I think that's uh something that's overlooked, and I'm I'm hoping there is a shift in the entrepreneurial world. Uh, because I feel like you know 10 years ago it was hustle and grind, and if you're not, you know, if you're not working, then you don't care about growing this business. And um I'm feeling there's a shift in in just that messaging, I'm hoping it is that we don't start these businesses to work 80 hours a week and be stressed about money. And uh, I mean I can go work 40 hours a week for someone else and make good money too. It's I we start a business for time and control of our income, and yet this messaging of hustle and grind with no end in sight to that, because let's face it, you can always grow, you can always do more, you can always do more and more, and there's always people who are gonna tell you, oh, you have five locations. Well, how do we get you to 10? How do we get you to 20? And um, how do we get you to have a nation national brand? And so it's just at some point it's when do I stop and take time for myself? Because it's not gonna happen without intention.

SPEAKER_01 22:21

A thousand percent. Yeah, it's easy to stay on the hamster wheel, and but I think the best time is now, if you haven't done it already, to yeah, know what success looks like for you, know you're enough. Because you know, uh, I don't know if you know Sahil Bloom, he just came out with a book, The Five Types of Wealth. It's his first book, and he's also got a great journal, which I'm going through now. And yet for at least a year, he studied highly successful people, and everybody wanted a little bit more. No matter where they were, you know, centimillionaires, billionaires, a little bit more. They just, you know, human nature is not to be satisfied. So in advance, if you really know what your enough looks like and what the other types of wealth are, and what the other, you know, most important types of health and wealth are, you're going to be, you know, better served.

Scheduling CEO Time On Purpose

SPEAKER_00 23:07

Yes, I think that's great. And I I love that question of what does success look like for you? I was just talking to a practice owner um last week about she had worked with some consultants um a while back who were just really pushing her to grow and open other locations and all these things. And she stopped and was like, I don't want that. Like I just want, you know, uh, I don't want to have to manage more. It's just she wanted to basically optimize her current practice is all she really w was wanting to do. And successful exactly. I and I told her, I was like, That's there's that's not even a wrong yet. That's perfect. It's you shouldn't have to conform to what somebody else says a successful practice is. It's if one practice that's humming along and making good money and you uh now have time to yourself and time with your family, that is the dream um for you. And some people want to have that huge enterprise, and um, and that's okay too. I think so. I love that you're saying what does success look like for you, knowing that even going in for those who are just starting their practice, or even if you're 10, 20 years into it, stop in to say, What is what is my what does success look like for me? Um gives you a good picture of where you're headed, at least. And so you can kind of filter things through that decision making, and as you're strategizing, what is it, where am I actually going with this? Otherwise, you're just gonna kind of keep aimlessly going and you're never gonna stop working 80 hours a week.

SPEAKER_01 24:23

Knowing your North Star, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 24:25

Yes, I love that. Uh, I want to ask one more question going back to you, you talked about partnerships and your team. Um, and so with with those, and are you speaking partnership as an actual equity stake for them? Uh, are they getting an ownership percentage of the business?

SPEAKER_01 24:42

Oh man, great question. Um, I'm working on a book right now on exactly this, on because yes, that is exactly what I mean, like equity partnership, which is super common in law firms and physician practices, but not common in physical therapy and some other industries. So that's exactly what we did. And I want to, it's an underutilized approach, um, definitely in physical therapy and many industries. And you know, the one thing I didn't mention was our partner who became the CEO, we powered through the pandemic under their leadership, they did a great job. And you know, when you build a very healthy and valuable business, you know, you're gonna get noticed. And private equity noticed us in 2021. And, you know, it wasn't the plan, and you know, our vision was to stay independent. Um, but we agreed, you know, our CEO minority partner wanted my wife and I to sit down at the table with them and share our financials in advance. And I said, okay, we will, as long as they come with something specific. I don't really want to go down a rabbit hole of resources because in our, you know, I guess at that point it had already been maybe 18 years. Uh, we only shared our financials one time. And it was partly to get a good valuation, an outside valuation as we were bringing on partners. But we, you know, sat down with private equity in 2021 and uh you know practiced the partner with private equity, and they were both there. The practice department with private equity, and actually the private equity, you know, leader and you know, owner in the you know, partner in his firm was there. And our CEO saw it as the brightest path forward, and we ended up doing it, and I ended up coaching them. I was already doing coaching, and they you know throwing some perks for my wife to have more time with the kids. Um so that's you know, just like an additional part of my story that I want to share. And you know, if anyone's interested in in partnerships, this is a book that I'm putting out right now. You can be part of the launch team, and I want to help get this out more because you know, as I mentioned, it's it's not utilized enough. I know when I went to the physical therapy private practice meeting two years ago, everyone's trying to, everyone's talking about how to get a private equity exit. And um, you know, of course, I shared what I learned and what I know, and that's fun and exciting, but really building a self-managing team where you keep your profit generating machine and you know, other people on their team get to create generational wealth as well, and you've got this legacy business is very, very exciting. So, so yes, I definitely, you know, and even the working title of my book is gonna be like a smaller piece of a bigger pie. So that's really the answer. And I remember talking to our physical therapist and saying, listen, this is not success if the pie stays the same size. The only way this works is if we really grow it. So, you know, they were gonna have to help grow it faster and bigger than what I would have done alone with my wife and I.

Annual And Life-First Time Blocking

SPEAKER_00 27:35

Man, that's that's great. I I have never I'm I love that you're taking that idea and almost uh challenging the status quo of how to approach this, because I've I've never heard of a physical therapy practice doing this before. I'm sure maybe some have, but I haven't seen that before. Of I'm gonna give my after leading them and training them and mentoring them, I'm gonna give them an equity stake into the business, not just by practice. You know, we've we've taught people to you can share profit just as bonuses to your team, but that doesn't mean that they own a percentage stake. So I think that's really interesting and cool that you're that's a gr uh a really interesting idea. I'm excited to I'm gonna I'll buy the book. I'm gonna I'm interested in it. I want to hear how you go about it and all the ins and outs of it that we we don't have time to dig into today.

SPEAKER_01 28:22

For sure. I'm super excited. Yeah, and we'll yeah uh get you on the launch team as well. And I know for everyone listening, they're probably like profit first take. Mind some specifics to think about of you don't have to necessarily gift it or be sweat equity. I'm actually a fan of buy-in. And so that I always use the example of like a first car, right? If people participate in their first car versus being gifted their first car, they really respect it and appreciate it a lot more. And again, for everyone listening who's intrigued by this, it is uh an incredible attraction tool for you know the best and brightest world-class talent. Because you know, most uh, you know, businesses, physical therapy and otherwise, don't really have an opportunity to earn, you know, earn equity, become a stakeholder, it's pretty special.

SPEAKER_00 29:10

Yeah, no, that's that's amazing. And and I kind of alluded to it earlier, but I think the ones who are gonna be prime fit for it, the ones who are like, I want to like your one, who wanted to run the company, they're gonna if that's who they are and that's their skill set and they're amazing at that, they're gonna go do that regardless. And so to give them not only this platform, so they already have a leg up that supports them, but also you get to keep and utilize this amazing person who's gonna then take and grow your business for both of you at the same time. Um, I I think that's cool. I think it's amazing. All right, man. I we are running on time, so I'm gonna send people to you because I think you have so much value. Um, I know you're doing a mastermind soon. Tell me uh about what that looks like, or tell our listeners what that looks like, and then we'll we'll link to it in the show notes for sure.

Balance, Boundaries, And Permission

SPEAKER_01 30:01

Awesome, Craig. Yeah, for everyone listening, be sure to yeah, like, follow, subscribe. I mean, Craig is doing an amazing job getting out so much value, and profit first is so incredibly valuable. Actually, you know, earmarking and paying yourself first. I mean, you know, paying yourself last, profit last is the wrong way to go. So, you know, study uh, you know, all the info that Craig's putting out. I've created a mastermind myself in Denali Consulting, and the title pretty much says it all double your take home, double your valuation, and 10 extra life. So many entrepreneurs, it's the opposite of profit first, aren't getting paid commensurate for the roles they have. And, you know, fancy language, right? Your seller's discretionary earnings, you know, anything you're putting through payroll and or profit, whatever that is on a monthly basis, you know, let's say it's four thousand dollars, you couldn't even replace yourself as a physical therapist for that, let alone you know, your CEO work, your marketing director, any other hats you have. So try to pay yourself competitively and then look at the profit. That's what our mastermind is going to try to do to make that happen quickly, you know. Um, and then the second thing, if you can do that for the full year, right, if you increase your profit of the company, and again, in technical language, your EBITDA, you know, before taxes and depreciation and amortization, that's what valuations are based on. And, you know, we could like if we go from$100,000 in profit to$500,000, let's say you were a 5x multiple, right? Now all of a sudden your practice, instead of being uh$500,000 valuation to be$2.5 million, you know, in one year just by increasing your EBITDA. So that's a massive return on investment. And at the same time, we're gonna try to have a life along the way and avoid what I call no life syndrome and not work 80 hours a week so you can avoid you know getting sick like I did and you know make your most important priorities first in your life. Uh, make first things first, really.

SPEAKER_00 32:00

Man, I love it. The connection of the human behind the business, which is a huge, huge passion of mine. That um it's we're not just talking business, which it's easy to find a million programs out there that will talk about business only, but to take into consideration the human who is the owner, which is the most important piece. Um, and that's exactly what it sounds like you're doing. So uh we're gonna link to that for sure. We'll link to your website as well. Um, and then anything uh you mentioned a launch team for the book. Is there a way for people to sign up for that yet?

SPEAKER_01 32:31

Yeah, so um, you know, the mastermind is a combination of one-on-one coaching and and a mastermind and you know, some group uh where there's a lot of collective wisdom. That's where magic is, and whatever industry you're in, definitely I recommend talking to people outside of your industry so you're not always doing it the same way. And then for the book launch, probably the best thing, just maybe throw a launch in the subject line. You guys can email me uh directly, DR Lancenob at denaliconsulting team.com. And um, yeah, you definitely give you some early access to the book and some special perks, and you can help me like finalize the decision on the title and a bunch of things, and it'll be fun. We're gonna get it out sometime this year.

SPEAKER_00 33:16

Awesome. It was such a pleasure meeting you. I will link to all of those things in the show notes so it's uh nobody has to worry about trying to type or uh rewind to listen. It's just they'll be there, so you guys click on those, uh, get in connection. Um, it's been awesome. I would love to pick your brain another time for stirks. I think we only scratched the surface on your wealth of knowledge. Uh, I want to hear more about this equity stake for for your team. So um, but thank you for your time, thank you for your insight, and it's been a pleasure. Thanks for joining us on the 40 digital podcast.