The One Thing Filter: How to Make Better Decisions as Your Clinic Grows

In this episode of the PT Entrepreneur Podcast, Doc Danny shares a simple but powerful idea for clinic owners: pick one core outcome your business exists to create and use it as a filter for every major decision. As your team grows, choices get more complex — what to say yes to, what to ignore, who to hire, what projects to start. Danny breaks down how to choose your "one thing," why money has to be part of it, and how aligning your team around that filter makes leadership easier and your business more stable.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• Why documentation is the #1 satisfaction killer for many clinicians — and how Claire can remove most of it
• Why early-stage goals are simple (replace your income) and what changes once you get past survival
• The "what race are you running?" analogy and how it exposes mismatched decisions
• How to decide what you actually want your business to look like long term
• Why "no money, no mission" matters, even for mission-driven clinic owners
• How PT Biz landed on its own "one thing": helping clients make more money in their clinics
• How to use a single filter to decide on hires, con-ed, software, space, and new projects
• How to get your whole team making decisions through the same lens instead of waiting on you

Claire: Stop Letting Notes Crush Your Day

Danny opens by talking about satisfaction surveys in our profession. Over and over, clinicians say the same thing: they hate writing notes. It is the part of the day that makes them want to quit, and it is the last thing they want to do when they get home.

Claire is the AI scribe PT Biz built specifically for physical therapists. Think of it like having a meticulous student in the corner, capturing the details and drafting your notes so you can stay locked in on your patient.

• Trained on physical therapy workflows and language
• Drafts notes for you so you are not catching up after hours
• Helps you remove most of your documentation time and get your evenings back

Try Claire free for 7 days: https://meetclaire.ai

From Survival Mode to Strategy

Early on, business decisions are simple. Your goal is clear: replace your job income so you can safely support yourself and your family. You are willing to work long hours and say yes to almost anything that moves revenue in the right direction.

Once that need is met, the decisions get harder. Do you stay small? Do you grow? How big? What kind of life are you actually trying to build around this business?

Danny points out that most owners never slow down to answer those questions. They are "jumping out of the plane and building the parachute on the way down," chasing whatever looks like opportunity without checking if it fits the life they want.

What Race Are You Actually Running?

To explain the problem, Danny uses an endurance analogy.

• Training for a 5k is very different from training for a marathon.
• Training for a 100-mile race is different again — in volume, intensity, nutrition, and time.

A lot of owners, he says, are making decisions like they are running a 5k — short-term, fast payoff, quick bursts — when in reality they are trying to run a very long, very hard race. Their decisions and their true goals do not match.

Get Clear on the Life You Want First

Before you can pick a filter, you have to be honest about what you actually want.

• What do you want your business to look like 5–10 years from now?
• How big does it really need to be to support the life you want?
• What matters more to you: growth, time freedom, leadership, selling someday, or staying clinical?

Danny suggests sitting down by yourself, and with your spouse or family if you have one, and talking through the kind of life you are trying to build. You might realize you do not need as big of a practice as you assumed — or that you are thinking too small for what you actually want.

No Money, No Mission

As mission-driven as PTs are, money still matters.

Danny shares a lesson from when his wife ran a military nonprofit in Hawaii. Her boss used to repeat a simple phrase: "No money, no mission." If there is no revenue, there is no staff, no programs, no impact.

Your clinic is a for-profit business, but the same rule applies. Without healthy revenue, you:

• Cannot provide for yourself or your family safely
• Cannot create good jobs with fair pay and benefits
• Cannot support your community or give back meaningfully

Money is simply an exchange of value and trust. You have to get comfortable with it if you want your mission to survive.

PT Biz's "One Thing" Filter

At a recent planning retreat, the PT Biz leadership team spent hours wrestling with a single question:

"What is the most important thing we do for our clients?"

They help people with work–life balance, health, relationships, and dealing with the emotional weight of entrepreneurship. Those things matter. But when they drilled down to the one outcome everything else depends on, the answer was simple:

The purpose of PT Biz is to help clients make more money in their clinics.

When their clients make more money:

• They can hire better, pay better, and create low-volume environments
• They can offer true lateral transfers from hospital or corporate jobs
• They can reduce burnout and build careers that last

So now every major decision runs through one filter:

"Does this help our clients make more money in their clinics?"

How a Single Filter Guides Decisions

Once that filter was clear, decisions got easier. Examples Danny gives:

• Hiring: Does this role help clients grow their revenue or improve their business directly? If not, it is probably a no.
• Education and con-ed: Does this topic help clients run better businesses and increase revenue? If not, it is lower priority.
• Events and guest speakers: Do they add to clients' ability to build stronger practices, not just feel inspired?
• New resources and tools: Do they point back to revenue-producing activities or critical business skills?

Instead of chasing every interesting idea, the team now says no to anything that does not connect back to helping clients make more money.

Give Your Team the Same Decision Filter

As your clinic grows, you cannot be the only person making decisions. Front-desk staff, clinicians, and leaders all have to make calls every day.

If they know the filter, they can ask themselves:

• Does this software, course, hire, or project support our "one thing"?
• If not, why are we spending time or money on it?

When they make a call that is off, you can go back to the filter and see if it is a training gap or a culture issue. Over time, everyone gets better at choosing in the same direction without you micromanaging every move.

Your Challenge: Choose Your "One Thing"

Danny closes with a challenge for clinic owners:

• Decide on the single most important outcome your business exists to create.
• Make sure it is big enough to support the life you want and honest enough to include money.
• Share it with your team and use it as part of your weekly meetings and training.
• Run every major decision through that filter so saying "no" and "yes" gets simpler.

When everyone knows the race you are running and the "one thing" that matters most, your decisions get clearer, your team gets more aligned, and your business is far more likely to move in the direction you actually want.

Resources Mentioned

• Try Claire free for 7 days: https://meetclaire.ai
• Book a call with a PT Biz advisor: https://vip.physicaltherapybiz.com/discovery-call
• Join the free Part Time to Full Time 5-Day Challenge: https://physicaltherapybiz.com/challenge