One of the biggest frustrations I constantly hear from practice owners is “how do I get my employees to buy-in”. In fact, I hear this almost as much as I hear, “I need more referrals”.

As you know, a lack of employee engagement can result in poor productivity, loss revenue and staff turnover.

The truth is you cannot build a great practice without a good team.

You cannot build a good team without learning what inspires and motivates them.

Having worked with hundreds of practice owners and their teams, I have discovered 3 things you can do right now that will help with employee buy-in.


I just got back from doing a presentation to about 25 physical therapists in North Carolina, and the major theme that was brought up and what I spoke about was how do you get your employees to buy-in? How do you get them to buy-in to your vision? How do you get them to buy-in to doing the things that you know are best for patient care, for outcomes, and for the profitability and viability of the company they work for? We talked so much about that, and I want to share with you three different things, three ways that can help you with getting your staff to buy in.

So, this is number one. It all starts with a vision. It all starts with a vision from you. This is your business. This is your dream. You get to create this practice the way you want to, and I know something. I know you know what that is. I know you know what it looks like, and there’s a couple of things that get in the way. One is actually taking time to write it down.

The other thing is the critic. It’s the critic we all have. The critic that says, “Well, how you going to do that? You’ve never done that in the past. What proof do you have?” We all have that critic. Tell that critic “Go to bed. Go to sleep,” and what you want to do is you want to think and write down the vision you have for your practice. What does it look like? What’s happening in your business a year from now, two years from now, three years from now? You choose the timeframe. But what this does, creating this vision, what it does is give you something that you can share, and when you’re able to share your vision with others, they now can make the decision. Do I want to be a part of this?

The chances are that the answer’s going to be yes. They do want to be a part of this. They do resonate with what you’re doing, and they want to be part of this thing. Now, there’s other things that you’re going to have to do, but if you don’t have the vision then what exactly are your employees buying into? See, what people buy into are the visions that they have. When JFK said, “We’re going to the moon,” in early 1960, 1961, by the end of the decade he didn’t know how. He just passionately described the vision of what we were going to do knowing that we could fail, knowing that it couldn’t happen, but you know what? Leaders tell the vision as they see it. Martin Luther King had a vision. Abraham Lincoln had a vision. Steve Jobs had a vision, and so do you, and it doesn’t matter it’s not this grandiose vision that maybe some of those leaders had, but it’s no less important to you.

So, take some time and start writing down what this vision is. What does your practice look like? What’s your role in the practice? Describe the culture. Describe the systems you’re going to have in place, the number of locations, the number of clinicians you’re going to have. Get as specific as you can, and don’t worry about making it perfect, and don’t worry about the critic in your head that’s going to question you. Go ahead and do it, that’s the first step, and then after that share it. Share it with your team. You’ll be pleasantly surprised how thankful and appreciative they are that you did. That’s step number one. Next time, I’ll share with you the second thing you can do to get buy-in from your staff.