Episode 1516 - Making legends: what, why, how

Dr. Dustin Jones // #GeriOnICE // www.ptonice.com

In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, Modern Management of the Older Adult lead faculty Dustin Jones explores the concept of creating impactful memories for customers and how it can enhance business success through word-of-mouth marketing. He shares examples from the restaurant industry, illustrating how exceeding customer expectations can cultivate lifelong customers and improve business growth through positive word-of-mouth. Dustin emphasizes the significance of creating "legends," which are memorable experiences that surprise and make customers feel special. These legends become synonymous with the business and leave a lasting impression on customers. When businesses go above and beyond to provide such memorable experiences, it not only fulfills the customers but also benefits the business owners. Dustin encourages listeners to consider what legends they can create in their own businesses. It could be as simple as acknowledging a customer's birthday with a card or text, or going the extra mile by taking a discharged patient to play pickleball or organizing a group trip. The possibilities are endless, and creating legends can have a positive impact on the business, the community, and the overall satisfaction of everyone involved.

Take a listen to learn how to better serve this population of patients & athletes.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

00:00 INTRO What's up everybody? Welcome back to the PT on ICE Show. Before we jump into today's episode, let's chat about Jane, our show sponsor. Jane makes the Daily Show possible and is the practice management software that so many folks here at ICE utilize. The team at Jane knows how important it is for your patients to get the care they need. And with this in mind, they've made it really easy and convenient for patients to book online. One tip that has worked well for a lot of practices is to make the booking button on your website prominent so patients can't miss it. Once clicked, they get redirected to a beautifully branded online booking site. And from there, the entire booking process only takes around two minutes. After booking an appointment, patients get access to a secure portal where they can conveniently manage their appointments and payment details, add themselves to a waitlist, opt in to text and email reminders, and fill out their intake form. If you all are curious to learn more about online booking with Jane, head over to jane.app slash physical therapy. Book their one-on-one demo with a member of their team. And if you're ready to get started, make sure to use the code ICEPT1MO. When you sign up, that gives you a one-month grace period that gets applied to your new account. Thanks, everybody. Enjoy today's show.

01:43 DUSTIN JONES PT on ICE Daily Show. It's Dustin Jones here. It is Wednesday. We're going to be talking about making legends. What, how, and then the why behind this. Making legends is going to be about how to create memorable, impactful experiences for your patients and why it's good for them, it's good for you from your professional standpoint, and good for your business. All right. So what I want to talk about first before we get into this are the modern management of the older adult courses that are coming up. We are picking back up. We usually kind of take a little break during the summer, regroup, do our revamps, update all the literature and the slides, and we're hitting the ground running. So we're going to be in Boise, Idaho, in Watkinsville, Georgia at the end of July 29th and 30th, and August 5th we'll be in Frederick, Maryland. And then on August 12th, we will be in Lexington for the MMOA Summit where all the MMOA faculty are going to come together and deliver the brand new revamp of MMOA Live. We're super pumped about that. And then we have Essential Foundations, our online course starting August 9th. All right. Legends. Let's talk about this. I'm really excited about this topic. This has been something I've been thinking about since about February when I read the book Unreasonable Hospitality. So this is a book that you probably heard some of the ICE faculty talk about that Jeff Moore recommended. Anytime Jeff Moore recommends a book, you should probably check it out. The guy doesn't recommend a lot of books, but when he is very critical of a lot of books, so when he says, hey, this is worth reading, you probably should add that to your list. And this definitely proved to be true with this book. So Unreasonable Hospitality, I'll just give you the 30,000 foot view. Will Guderia is a restaurateur, very successful in that business or that industry. And he kind of talks about some of the principles that he used to create such impactful businesses, restaurants in particular, and how a lot of those principles that he used also translate over to business in general. And just so many different industries can benefit from kind of that hospitality mindset. And so he talks about a lot of different practical strategies that all of us can use in the rehab and the fitness profession. But he speaks to one particular of how we try to create legends. And when he says the word legends, what he's really talking about is creating impactful memories for folks where they are surprised, they feel special, and they will never forget. That moment and the business that is associated with that moment. He's got all kinds of crazy examples from the restaurant business, where he just went above and beyond what people were expecting and thus created customers for life. And that really improved his business, word of mouth marketing, and a lot of different things that made their job more fulfilling. And so he speaks about that concept of legends a lot in the book. And I walked away from that book just thinking about, man, we have such a huge opportunity to create legends in the rehab space, in the fitness space. And I'm going to talk through, you know, just through that of why we may want to do that, and then particularly the how and give you some examples. So in terms of the why, the first thing that I want to acknowledge is that when we go above and beyond and provide a memorable experience for folks and do it in the mirror, that they're kind of surprised and taken back. That is very fulfilling for us. I'll give you one example. Ellen Sefi. So she teaches with MOA. She has created lots of legends for a lot of her patients. She had one patient in particular that she was treating in a more acute setting. I forget the exact situation, but she this this patient had a long road to recovery. And Ellen ended up switching jobs into outpatient as that that patient was kind of leaving that acute setting and going into outpatient. So Ellen was able to treat her in that setting. This is a long road road to recovery for that individual. And Ellen worked with this person to help her get back to being able to hike. That was a big goal for this patient. And I think this is where a lot of us kind of stop, right, is we get people to the point where they can do the thing, right? Whatever that particular goal is for this patient, it was hiking. So she worked on her lower extremity strength. She worked on her dynamic balance. She worked on her endurance and she checked the box of all the kind of prereqs to be able to go on a hike in Colorado. And that's where we stop. And that's where we have such a huge opportunity to take a one step further and create a legend. And what Ellen did is she actually organized a hike and did a 14 or with this patient, right? She gave her the prerequisite skills and abilities required to achieve that goal. But then she facilitated that goal to actually happen. And she went on that journey with that patient that for Ellen, that's one of the most memorable professional moments for her. The fulfillment of being able to see of all your hard work and time that you have invested in this person, that they're able to do something epic like that. That is so fulfilling. So it's good for you. It's also good for your business because that happens. What do you think that patient is going to tell all their friends and their whole networks? Do you think she took a thousand selfies on the top of that summit and posted it all over social media? And guess how many patients Ellen probably had from that word of mouth, from impacting that patient on such a big level that it really sets you apart from a lot of your competition that aren't doing that. They're just checking the box. They're just improving strength, improving endurance. And you're actually facilitating your patients climbing 14 years, right? That has a compounding effect over time. It's going to be good for your business. All right. So that's the what of the legends. That's the why. It's good for you, for your fulfillment, for your career. It's also good for your clinic, your business as well. And so I want to get kind of dive into some practical examples of how we can create legends in the context of rehab and or fitness. I think we can do this in very simple manners and we can do this in kind of big, big, monumentous events as well. On the small side of things, just think about how you can surprise your patients, make them feel special. This is could be as simple as acknowledging someone's birthday. You have their date of birth that you send them a card, a gift card, whatever that just that simple act kind of puts you above them. Beyond most clinics and in gyms, for that matter, it could be that easy. It could be that simple. It could be more like what Ellen did, where she worked on building physical capacity with a patient, which is usually the case in our plans of care. Right. We're trying to get them stronger, improving their endurance, improving their balance, all that fun stuff that is tied to a patient centered goal. Right. We're already asking a lot of those things. What if you take it another step further to facilitate them being able to participate in whatever that activity is? Right. I'm not saying you got to climb a 14 or like Ellen did, but what if you proactively, you know, organize the hike that they could go on? What if you address the barriers that they may have on going on that hike, like going ahead and printing out directions of going ahead and planning out the day, recommending restaurants to hit up after the hike, just reducing barriers and facilitating that or even connecting them with a local hiking group that's going to increase their odds of actually doing the thing that you help them be able to do. Right. We could do it in that manner. Ellen took someone up a 14 or for me, especially in the context of home health, this happened a good bit where it was usually something a lot simpler than going to climb in a 14000 foot mountain. It was, you know, once that person was discharged from homebound status that we would go and do something in the community that they loved about. One in particular, I will never forget this. Me and my wife went on a double date on Valentine's Day at Waffle House with Walton Peony Smith in Columbus, Ohio, that I was discharged in Peony. She was no longer considered to be homebound. And it was right around Valentine's Day. And she had just regained the ability to navigate her community safely and efficiently. And so we crushed the All-Star Special. I still remember that meal. It was absolutely amazing. A double date on Valentine's Day at Waffle House. Something like that is just takes things to the whole another level that I will never forget. Very fulfilling from the professional standpoint. Peony will never forget. And then all of her friends, her family won't forget either. And when they want PT, guess who they're going to be calling. Right. We could take it up another notch. And this is something that we have been trying to do more at Stronger Life. We have a couple examples of this recently, which has really fueled me wanting to talk about this. One is that we had four individuals compete at the National Senior Games. These four women have basically never ran their life before, about 12 months ago. They qualified at the state games last year and then went to Pittsburgh last week to compete in the National Senior Games. And one of our athletes, Carolyn Holmes, 89 year old woman, got third in the 5K. And her whole family, three kids from all across the country, their kids, and then she had a couple of great grandkids were all there to witness this. And I will never forget this. Carolyn Holmes, 89 years old, running across the finish line with her eight year old great granddaughter. We got Carolyn stronger. We improved her endurance. We improved her balance. We checked all those boxes. But we created the opportunity for them to really flex their muscles and really pursue something that they had never even thought that they would be able to do. And then to do that in front of their community, in front of their family and then the whole Stronger Life community watching this from afar. Those are potent moments. Those are legends that I will never forget. Hands down, my most fulfilling professional moment. Carolyn will never forget that. And anybody watching that story will never forget what happened on that day. It's good for me. It's good for Stronger Life. This is good for our communities. It's a win win win for everybody involved. All right. We've got another one coming up this winter where we're taking 25 of our members to Costa Rica in an all inclusive adventure retreat where we work on their balance, their strength, all this stuff inside the gym. And then we create the opportunity for them to use those skills and do things that they never thought were possible. Right. These are legends. They're good for you. They're good for your business. They're good for your community. So I want you to think what legends can you create in the context of your own business? Some of you, it may be, all right, I need to acknowledge that someone had a birthday and just write a card and send it or send the text or whatever it may be. Some of you may think, oh, man, I may end up taking that patient that I just discharged actually to go to the pickleball court and play some pickleball with them or connect them with that pickleball group. And some of y'all may climb a 14 or some of y'all may organize a group trip to the Caribbean. I don't know. But there's so many opportunities for us to take things to that next level to create legends. I've really enjoyed this. I think you will as well. And I know your business will benefit, too. All right. Let me know your thoughts in the comments. If you have any legendary stories or any ideas, I would love to hear what you're going to do. We'll get lots of ideas in the comments, which will be very helpful to make this more practical. All right. You have a good rest of your Wednesday. I'll talk to you all soon.

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