Achieve Your Growth Goals Like The Titans Do
The next episode of our series on larger companies is all about mirroring the steps they took to grow, and today Paul explains how that journey starts with a vision.
Full transcript
Generated from the episode audio and lightly edited for readability.
Good morning and welcome to another episode of the Martin Rehab M&A Advisory. I cannot tell you how excited I am about this episode. We are continuing in our series on how to compete and how to become like the titans in your market. Those companies that have grown to 10, 15, 20 and some across the country have grown to 50 to 100 clinics and these are independent privately owned companies. These are not companies backed by private equity or the publicly traded companies. These are privately held companies and I think that we can learn a lot from them.
And that's what we discussed in the first episode. In the second we talked about how exceptional patient care and patient experience can help you to compete with them. And what I want to talk about today is how do we kind of mirror what they have done and grow a company to meet our objectives and our goals for growth. And that's our episode today is it starts with a vision. Look, every single great rehab company across the country, it started with a vision. What I want to know today is what is your vision?
What's your vision for your business? And when you're creating that vision in your head, what I want to make sure is that you're not just dreaming. We all have dreams. We talk about these dreams that we have. But when we have dreams and there's no goal setting towards those dreams, sometimes those dreams will never become a reality. Now your goal or your vision could be going from one clinic to three clinics over the next five years. And that's if that's what it is, that's what it is.
We start there. Maybe your vision, maybe you have three clinics now and your vision is to grow to 20 clinics in three years. That was my goal back in 1993. We had three clinics and my vision and my goal was to grow to 20 clinics by n by the end of 1996. And so once we have that vision, we can actually see what that looks like in our minds. Then we have to plan backwards from that goal, from that vision, plan backwards on how we get there.
And so again, kind of mapping that blueprint for growth. You know, one of the big steps that you need to take is to create the very key milestones. Now, you know, in my company and in many companies, those milestones can be based on numbers of clinics. And typically, it's a mix of startups and acquisitions. For you, it may be a number of patients. It may be a number of new patients if you want to stay in a single clinic. But we have to identify the key milestones towards the vision.
So from today to the vision, what are some of those key milestones that you will have to hit in order to get to that vision? Is it three clinics per year? Is it two by startup, one by acquisition or vice versa? And then once we have those key milestones and let's call them six to 10 key milestones on getting to that again final vision that what we have in our heads. We then have to detail that road map and that's where we begin to assign tasks.
Some to ourselves, some to others. We begin to set deadlines for each of the tasks within reaching those milestones. And that's where you as a leader need to begin to define responsibilities towards marching towards that goal. And this is where it gets real exciting because you don't have to do it all. There's also obviously key in some budget planning, estimating costs and planning finances for that expansion. And we'll talk about that a little bit more. But the next big decision you need to make, and this is what I have coined this slide as where the rubber meets the road.
This is a pivotal choice in your career as a physical therapist. And it's the choice if you really want to grow significantly to dive into management and leadership or do you want to continue treating patients, continue in patient care? And as I'm sitting here today, I really don't have an opinion on either one. It's what you want. The difference is that I've it's not real common for those who stay in patient care to also have the ability to kind of outsource to others their company and their company's ability to grow.
Typically, you as the leader and as the owner need to be at the center of that growth. Now, does it need mean you need to never see a patient again? No. But to have 20, 30, 40 hours of patient care a week and expect to grow your business, multiple clinics over a number of years, very difficult. We've seen many try. It's it's difficult. So that's a key pivotal choice you need to make. I can remember you know back in 1993, we brought in a consultant to map out and help us with this plan.
And I can remember we met, it was a Friday night in our clinic and he had a big whiteboard up there and he said, "You know, as of Monday, Paul, you will no longer be the clinical director in the Morstown office. And as of three months from now, Jeff, you will no longer be the clinical director in the Cherry Hill office." And Jamie, as of six months from now, you will no longer be the clinical director in the Del Rand facility. You are all taping taking corporate roles, and we're going to drive those corporate roles for our growth.
Now, in addition to you and your partners taking these positions, you also need to assess your team's capabilities against this growth vision. And you really need to begin to recruit some of those and align your goals and visions and fill those gaps with those people who you believe could be a key part of that growth. All right, now we get to kind of the finance side of this. And this is where having a really good accountant, consultant, financial planner, you know, again, cons, accountants and financial planners don't tend to know how to do this in the rehab business.
So a really good consultant and our company obviously does a ton of this work in helping you design how you finance this strategy. So, we need to plan the finances for your journey ahead and that means going to your bank and possibly looking at a line of credit. Potentially there are some other sources of capital. But you need to plan that out based on the growth trajectory of your business, what finances you will need and how you'll pay back those finances, etc. And just know when you start this that there will be bumps in the road.
I can tell you that, you know, I'll go back to my story briefly. I was charged with growth and that was startup and acquisitions. And in our first year, I was chasing and chasing and chasing. In year one of a three-year plan to get to 20 clinics, you know how many acquisitions we did? Zero. But I had a lot in the pipeline. I had a lot waiting. And so my partners were saying, "Hey, where's this growth? Okay, we've done one or two startups, but that's not going to get us to 20." Well, in year two, the floodgates opened.
And so again, you know, I had to ren, you know, get on the road. And a lot of the folks that I had been talking to during that year all kind of came at one time. Then the problem was how do we assimilate all these acquisitions and work them at the same time? And that was that was fun. Another, you know, great thing is to learn from others who have done this before. And look, I'm going to throw us out there. We we have, you know, five preparatory consultants, including myself that have done this before.
They've grown multicl companies. And so having them on board helping you do this. The private practice section conference talking to those who are one or two or three steps ahead of you is so valuable. All right, now we're we got our vision, we got our dream, okay, and it's time to take that first step. Well, here's the first step, guys. It's a blank sheet of paper, okay? And you know, we offer something called a growth potential assessment, and that's what we're doing. We're taking that blank sheet of paper and we're starting to look at your business and this is what you need to do and then what is the first step that you need to take in order to get you closer to that goal and that vision.
Just beginning to write that detailed growth plan. Having an actual plan. It's like a football team in camp getting ready for the season and preparing for that first game. And then preparing for what they're going to do in games three through 16 and the playoffs, etc. So you need that plan and then what is the most exciting is when that plan has been detailed enough and you feel strong enough about that plan that you have that kickoff meeting with your leadership team. And then eventually that trickles down to all your staff.
Again, you want to really keep your vision in focus. You're the one with a longterm vision. You're the one who's thinking long term, but as we reach those milestones, you want to make sure that you're able to celebrate those milestones for yourself certainly, as well as with your staff. You want to keep them on focus that with each milestone we meet, we're gonna look back. How do how could have we done that better? Where are we? And know right now that there's going to be roadblocks.
I always describe this as, you know, we're on a highway and we're going across the country to get from three to 20 clinics, right? We're going across the country, but there will be roadblocks. And so, every once in a while, we're going to have to take a detour. We might have to take a detour, jump out of our car, and jump in a boat for a period of time. We may have to do some different things, but we always get back on that road and on that path.
Now for those companies who have really shown ex incredible success with growth is when you start planning that growth strategy and you start seeing you getting closer and closer to that goal. It's looking beyond that to how a partner could exponentially improve your growth. So it's considering growth beyond independence with a partnership or joining a larger group. Those business owners and those leadership grow teams that can actually look at how the business grows through an acquisition to its final destination, they will end up getting the best deal available in the market.
And so really understanding in this current market the benefits of being an equity owner with a larger company either a locallyowned company with you in the larger owner having potentially equity up in that parent company. You now have shared resources with companies that have almost unlimited financial resources and funding. And it's a way that you can really accelerate growth. We've seen many of our clients see that destination and grow and double their growth. What they've done over 10 years with these companies now, they can typically do the same.
So if it's 20 clinics, they can get to 40 in three years when it took them 15 years to get from zero to 20. I know in our situation, we were in a position where there was an earnout. Now, there's not a lot of earnouts in today's market, but my goal was to achieve our earnout. Now, we figured that we would get to that earnout. We had 21. We would get to that earnout when we got to about 35 clinics. And our goal, and we had five years to do that, and our goal was to get there in two.
And we did it in two. We continued to grow through year three, really just mainly for the benefit of the acquirer. And then I was able to exit after year three and start this company and this is what I always dreamed of. So if you right now are thinking that you have that dream and you want to turn it into a vision and you want to make it real. Click below. Let's talk. It's great talking to you today and click below, talk to me and I look forward to talking to you in the very near future. Thank you.
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