E770 | 2024 Lessons Learned

As we close out 2024, it’s the perfect time to reflect on the year’s biggest lessons. For Doc Danny, this year was filled with growth, challenges, and insights that not only shaped his business but also impacted his personal life. In this blog, we’ll explore the key takeaways he shared on the latest PT Entrepreneur Podcast and how they can help you build a better business and a more fulfilling life.

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1. Sales and Marketing Are Crucial for Starting, Finance and Leadership for Scaling

When you’re launching a business, sales and marketing are your lifeline. These skills help you attract clients, communicate the value you bring, and turn leads into loyal customers. But as your business grows, your focus must shift to finance and leadership.

• Sales & Marketing: Overcoming the fear of rejection is critical. Whether you’re inviting a client to work with you or selling a service, the mindset and skills to connect and convert are essential.
• Finance & Leadership: Scaling a business means understanding cash flow, managing overhead, and leading your team effectively. Strong leadership fosters staff retention and growth, while sound financial knowledge ensures your business remains profitable.

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2. AI Is Here to Stay—Lean Into It

Artificial intelligence is no longer a concept of the future; it’s a tool for today. Doc Danny emphasizes that embracing AI can help business owners save time and become more efficient.

• How AI Helps: From research to administrative tasks, AI can streamline operations and reduce burnout. For clinic owners, this means more time spent with patients and less on paperwork.
• Balance is Key: While AI enhances efficiency, creativity and problem-solving remain human strengths. Use AI as a tool, but don’t let it replace critical thinking.

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3. The Product Is Everything

Your product isn’t just what you sell—it’s the entire experience you offer. For clinicians, this includes patient outcomes, customer service, and consistency across your brand.

• Why It Matters: A great product leads to word-of-mouth referrals, creating a “flywheel” effect that drives growth with less effort.
• Continuous Improvement: Audit your team’s performance, refine your processes, and focus on delivering exceptional value at every touchpoint. The better your product, the more your marketing efforts pay off.

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4. Life Happens in the Present

One of the most profound lessons of the year is the inevitability of death and the importance of living fully in the present.

• Focus on What Matters: Spend time with loved ones, pursue meaningful experiences, and prioritize what truly brings value to your life.
• Stop Waiting: Whether it’s a business decision or a personal goal, don’t wait for the “perfect” moment—it may never come.

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Ready to elevate your practice? Book a call at the link below with one of our expert consultants today and start your journey to delivering unparalleled physical therapy.

Podcast Transcript

 Danny:

Hey, real quick, if you're serious about starting or growing your cash based practice, I want to formally invite you to go to Facebook and join our PT entrepreneurs Facebook group. This is a group of over 6, 000 providers all over the country. And it's a pretty amazing place to start to get involved in the conversation.

Hope to see you there soon. Hey, are you a physical therapist looking to leverage your skill set in a way that helps you create time and financial freedom for yourself and your family? If so, you're in the right spot. My name is Danny Matta, and over the last 15 years, I've done pretty much everything you can in the profession.

I've been a staff PT. I've been an active duty military officer physical therapist. I've started my own cash practice. I've sold that cash practice. And today my company physical therapy business helped over a thousand clinicians start growing scale their own cash practices So if this sounds like something you want to do listen up because i'm here to help you

What's going on dot danny here with the pts nor podcast and today is our 20 year 2024 You're in review or lessons learned, I guess you could say. So all the things that I took away from this year, uh, that were important enough to me to be able to put in this podcast and hopefully share with you in a manner that will help you with your business and, and life, I'm going to lump these together because I'm going to talk about a couple different things that I learned this year that, um, you know, and maybe have something to do with business or not.

I, it kind of all does to me. You know, I think if you decide to go down the path of doing your own, your own thing, it's just so interesting how we, we've, we think it's, we think it's because we want to work for ourself. We want to, you know, have an opportunity to make more money, have an opportunity to be more creative and have more flexibility over what we do.

But when you really look at it, when you really step back, if you're being honest about what you've decided to do, whether you know it or not, it is essentially. A just, you get thrown into the world of personal development. You get thrown into a world that highlights your strengths and highlights your weaknesses in a way that I really have never experienced.

And you can either decide to lean into that or you can, um, shy away from it. But either way, it's still there. It's still something you're going to have to deal with if you want your business to be successful. And I would say. You know, starting a business is one of those things that's, I mean, it's like a couple of most important things I've ever done.

Just, uh, in terms of the effect that it's had on my, uh, on my life, me personally, just like the ability for me to do things in the world, the ability for me to help people, but also just like the personal growth that's forced me to have. So each year I try to sit down and think about, okay, what I learned this year.

Um, and, and for whatever reason, every year that I do this, I try to It's not always just business stuff, even though this is a business podcast. So I'm going to weave these together as best I can and share with you kind of how this applies to your, your business. And some of this is very tactical. Some of this is a bit more, um, I don't know, philosophical in some ways.

So hopefully we don't lose you when we get to that part. Anyway, let's start with this, something super tactical. Sales and marketing are the two most important skills to start, but finance and leadership are the two most important skills to scale. I'll say that again. If you're starting, the two most important skills are going to be sales and marketing.

If you are scaling past yourself, the two most important skills are going to be finance and leadership. Now, sales and marketing is a challenging thing to learn, especially if you've never, uh, you've never had any experience with business, but Essentially, it's finding product market fit, it's finding people to come in and work with you.

And then it's, it's having a conversation with them about the value you provide. And if they agree with you, then they pull out their credit card and that's the sale, right? So it's getting people in the door and getting them to, um, want to work with you. So that you can help them solve a problem basically, right?

The challenge I think for a lot of people early on Is there's a there's a huge mental hurdle with this because a few things happen number one Uh, there's a fear of rejection and this is deep rooted by the way. I see this my son has Liked this girl for like two years at his school and He last year He wanted to invite her to go to this like Christmas dance they have, and somebody else invited her, uh, before he could.

So it was, he was like super bummed out. And this year he's dragging his feet on this shit again, and it's going to happen again. And when I talk to him, it's so obvious. It is the fear of rejection. It's the fear, fear of failure and then a ridicule from all of your friends, uh, about, you know, you know, Like getting, you know, crashing and burning and he doesn't quite understand yet that that is normal.

It's very normal to have that fear. Uh, and you know, it doesn't go away unless you expose yourself to it. So it never really goes away. You just get better at dealing with it. But, but in the business side, when you start and you're looking for clients, it's kind of like, you're going to ask somebody, To the dance, right?

Like you're asking them, Hey, uh, you know, I think I can help you with your back pain. Would you like to come and work with me? Right. It's no different. And the fear of being rejected is still there. It's like, you're this 12 year old boy. That's, you know, scared to ask this girl to a dance. So, you know, when you really look at.

The ability to, uh, deal with that. You have to, um, you have to focus on the outcome that you want, right? Like, why is that important for you to, to do well for him? He wants to go to this dance with this girl for you. It's because you want to build a business that supports your life and allows you to, uh, to build time and financial freedom, but the fear is still there and you got to get over it.

And that's, that's really marketing and selling. And then there's the monetary side of it, right? There's the, there's the fear of, uh, not fear. It's the mindset around money. Sometimes it's, it's fear. You don't really know what to do with it. You don't know how to have discussions around money. You put money on a pedestal.

Your family maybe has some different associations with money that, uh, you learned from them positively or negatively, right? And these are all things that you carry forward as an adult. Uh, it's the way in which you look at the world. The lens that you're given is based off of the interactions you have as, uh, as somebody You know, as you're growing and you're developing and the people around you.

So this is why it's like, I'm actually very, very careful about the people that I want my kids to be around. Um, because I don't want their worldview to be based off of, um, negative people that all they see is like the bad in things. I don't want them to be around people that are just like, they just are not, um, and not ambitious.

Like, I don't want them to be around people that are just super complacent. And they don't really feel compelled to Grow in any way like I just don't want them to see that as oh, this is normal This is the way it works And when you talk about money, that can be a really tricky thing because maybe you came from a family that had no money so it's very scarce and you view this as just like If somebody does works with me, then they can't buy groceries.

And if you grew up around money, then maybe your family never talked about it because it was kind of this taboo thing. And, you know, they didn't want to be, you know, bragging about money and they never really talked about it. And you never really learned much about it either. Uh, it's very, there's very few people that grew up with like a healthy relationship with money.

Um, so that's another thing that pops up on the sales and marketing side, but when you're getting started, that's Sales and marketing is that's it. And, you know, even for us, like when, when we work with clients that are just getting started, we have a program called our clinical Rainmaker program, and it is.

Specifically built around the skills of sales and marketing. Like we go through how to like set up the technical side of the practice and, you know, logistics or whatever of that, that's not really like the part that holds people back. What holds people back is sales and marketing, getting people in the door and getting them to commit to want to solve a problem with you.

Um, and a lot of that's mindset and skills that you haven't learned yet. And you need to go apply and learn and grow and, and you're going to kind of suck at it at first and you'll get better. But eventually in order to grow, you know, to where you have a full schedule, sales and marketing is where it's at.

And the flip side of that, when you go to scale, it's finance and leadership. So this is something that really, I wouldn't say that I quite understood how important this was until this year. Like you always hear, oh yeah, okay, leaders, leadership is important. Leadership is whatever. Leadership is this sort of vague thing.

Some people are fantastic leaders. Some people are terrible leaders. And yes, of course you see people that are terrible leaders have way more turnover, but, but sometimes people don't know that they're a bad leader. And sometimes people don't know that they're a good leader. And it's hard to define. It's hard to really quantify these things.

But. But you can see it based on turnover that you have in your company, based on, you know, retention of your staff, based on the, the, the recruiting of other people to come and want to work with you. I mean, that's it. And when we really look at leadership, leadership is the ability for you to be. Able to convey and communicate a message of what you're doing with your company where you're trying to go and why anybody would want to To be along for that ride and to stick stick around for that, right?

And so for you as a leader your ability to really communicate is key your ability to communicate not just Like your vision, but also to understand Communication is not, uh, it's not, there's not a singular way to do it because some people like to be communicated to differently than others. And, and also they might communicate with you in a way that they don't want to be communicated back with.

And I always found this was interesting. We actually had a staff member, we went through this assessment called the Berkman assessment with our team years ago. And we had a staff member, And she had an interesting assessment where, um, she was very direct and she'd played a lot of sports. Like, I mean, you get that a lot.

Athletes would be like very direct, but on her Berkman, what was interesting was, uh, the way in which she received information was not. Uh, necessarily direct, that's not the best way, that wasn't the best way to communicate with this individual, which you would think if someone is fine with being direct with you that you can be direct back with them but that's not necessarily always the case.

So you understanding your people and their communication styles and what drives them. And the type of people they are. And like really honestly, like great leaders are incredibly empathic. Like they have so much empathy and they can really understand people. They can look at people from the, the angle of like, where do they come from?

How do they become this person? You know, How did, how did, how did they end up this way positively or negatively? What, what can we do to help, uh, facilitate in personal growth, uh, uh, growth, uh, on the, uh, career side as well? Like, so, so that their actual like professional growth and. And to help move them towards the goals that they have personally and also understand what those are.

And I think a lot of times people think, Oh, leadership is this sort of like strong, you know, this is the way it is. Follow me as I run into this burning building kind of thing. Um, and, and that's, there's an element to that for sure in certain, certain groups. Uh, but, but generally, uh, the best leaders are the ones that take care of their, People and understand their people and do the things that are best for their people.

Like even this concept of leaders eat last, like we at live events, what we do, I just, you know, I, I will not eat until like everybody else has had, had food, right? It's just, uh, something that for me was ingrained in me when I was in the military. You do not eat until you're, you know, your, your soldiers are, have eaten.

You're waiting, you're making sure everybody has what they need. Like you're taking care of your people. A leader is not somebody just tells people what to do and, uh, learning how to do that, learning how to be that person. Um, and your style can be a very hard thing to do. And it's not just as simple as like, here's a checklist.

I wish it was that simple. It's, and it's not, it's sort of like, you know, how it'd be like saying like, here's this checklist on how to be in a functional relationship. It's just not that easy. Uh, it takes work. It takes effort on yourself and with the people that you're working with, uh, or that you're in a relationship with.

And that's just it. You gotta, you gotta lean into that and understand. And a lot of times leaders become better leaders when they fuck up. They're they, they fall forward at least. Right. But like they say the wrong thing to somebody, they get. Have an emotional outburst. Uh, they, they don't follow through.

Maybe they're not as detour oriented as they need to be. They're, they're, they're kind of all over the place. And then that's just frustrates people. And they don't really want to work in that environment. And you can be like, okay, well, they're in the wrong spot, or maybe you need to improve as a leader and, and, uh, in certain areas, and that's where it's a tough decision to make and a tough thing to come to grasp with.

So, you know, leadership is huge. And then finance is the other one. So. The reason the finance is so important is because when you're scaling, you're going to go through phases where you have to really understand cashflow in a way that you don't have to, when it's just you. Again, a cash based business, it's the most, it's the most simple accounting business that you could possibly have.

You know, someone comes in, they pay you money, you render a service, and then you're done. And then, you know, they leave happy, right? Like that's it. Uh, there's not a whole lot to it. You're not like, you know, selling things you have to get from China from a warehouse and have shipped over here and you have to pay all this money to have, you know, costs of goods that are going to sit there for a while and, and, uh, or accounts receivable or anything like that.

It's a super, super simple business model where you go to scale past yourself. You take on additional overhead, taking on additional risk. Uh, you decrease your net profit. And you know, if you don't understand how to manage these things, number one, you might think you're doing something wrong or you might be doing something very wrong.

You might, uh, calculate compensation packages incorrectly. You might, uh, not be able to like set up, uh, benefits correctly because you're not understanding the net profit you need based on the right metrics. Like there's so many things that you can mess up just, just the other day. I had somebody messaged me on, um, in our mastermind portal where they can just, you know, ask me whatever they want or send me documents or whatever.

Like I'll, I'll look over all kinds of stuff with them. And I get a lot of finance questions and somebody sent me a, uh, a finance question. And one of the first things I wanted them to, to, to send me was their average visit rate. And when they sent it to me, it was high. Like it was higher than I would have expected.

So I asked him to recalculate it and told him like what to do. And they came back and they came back at like. Over 20 lower average visit rate, uh, than when they started. And, and here's why it's important. You are, uh, if you're building a compensation model, you're backing into numbers based on your average visit rate.

If you're looking at a percentage of revenue generated. If you are calculating that off the wrong number, that is essentially, let's call it 10, 12 percent higher than where you think that it is, you're really in a bad spot because you're going to be overpaying somebody for work that they're doing that doesn't allow you to.

Then have the margin to be able to have benefits, to be able to pay for your overhead, to be able to pay for non revenue producing staff, like front desk staff, as well as have profit in place to be able to then grow your team and continue to grow, grow the business. And. What are you going to do whenever you put this compensation plan in front of somebody?

And then you say, oops, sorry, I messed this up. I need to change that. What a terrible way to start your business relationship, your, your employer employee relationship, like good luck digging yourself out of that hole. So you have to be very, very clear on your finances when you're moving into a space, when you're expanding, when you're bringing on benefits packages, when you're bringing on leadership within your staff and how you're going to compensate those people and understanding your margins as well as your.

Overhead and your, your spent like your, uh, you know, your clinical budget, basically your business budget. Um, and most people suck at this personally. Like if you don't have your personal shit together, what makes you think you're going to be good at running a business? Like you gotta realize this is a incredibly important skill, both on the personal side and on the business side.

This is one of those things that like, for me, I mean, this is a, This is a must do you must understand what you're spending your cashflow, both personal on the business side, because I've seen people that have successful businesses and then they, they, they freaking squander it all on the personal side and you're like, how are you in so much debt and you make a lot of money, you know, like, what are you doing?

And they have no idea. They don't track anything like it. It's just so frustrating when you see that, but I get it. It's boring. It's not fun. Like nobody really likes it. You know, if anybody tells you that they love finance, like they're probably it. freaking boring person at a dinner party, you know, like you do not really want to hang out that person, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they're wrong, that it's important and that, you know, you should have a strong understanding of it, especially if you own a business.

And personally, you got to respect the fact that if you don't understand money, then money will own you and you don't, you'll never ever have financial freedom because you're not going to understand what's going on. So you have to understand your basic finance. You have to understand your business finance.

Um, you know, and if you don't, Then you're going to have a really hard time scaling your business past yourself. So these are things that you have to learn. You have to improve if you're trying to scale. So sales and marketing to get started. Most important. Uh, finance and leadership are the most important if you're trying to scale.

Okay. Number two, um, AI, AI is here to say AI artificial intelligence. Okay. It's not going anywhere. Um, it's here to stay and it's something that. I view as, uh, something that you need to lean into. Otherwise it's, you know, you're going to be behind the curve as far as career opportunities are concerned. Um, maybe not so much in our profession to begin with, but administratively as a business owner, things like that, like it is very, very helpful, um, to have that enable you to be able to do more.

And, and here's the way that I look at it. Creativity, I don't really see, uh, AI changing that much because that's a very, very difficult thing, uh, to, to be creative, just problem solve. It's not that black and white. Usually sometimes it involves long term relationship development. These are things that just cannot really be offset, uh, by AI tools.

But if you're looking at, um, let's say just data collection research, uh, you're trying to stay up to date with, with, uh, clinical research, you're looking at ways that you can, um, you know, like double check finance and numbers and, uh, spreadsheets that you're trying to pull. These are all things that you can do so much faster with, uh, different AI tools.

And that makes a huge, huge difference. Um, you know, and, and. Even with clinicians, there's things that are, that are right around the corner that are going to help, uh, administer, uh, alleviate administrative burdens and things of that nature, uh, from them so they can focus more on patients, right? These are really good things.

These are things that hopefully help decrease clinical burnout. But the way that I think about it is. Hey, sorry to interrupt the podcast, a huge favor to ask of you. If you are a longtime listener or a new listener and you're finding value in this podcast, please head over to iTunes or Spotify or wherever you listen to the podcast, and please leave a rating and review.

This is actually very helpful for us to get this podcast in front of more clinicians and really help them develop time and financial freedom. So if you do that, I'll greatly appreciate it. Now back to the podcast when we went from like going to a library to do research to write a paper, right? And then now all of a sudden you shift to the internet and like, I'm old enough to remember having to go to a library to look shit up and encyclopedias and different books to try to write a paper.

But then I, I remember, you know, the, the shift towards the internet and it was super rudimentary at first. It wasn't all that. Easy to use it started to become easier and easier and now could you imagine like trying to Let's say you had to like write a research paper, you know, like go to a library to find these different articles uh, or books or whatever you're trying to get this information from versus putting it into google or like searching for it in some way Uh on you know, whatever site you're going to go to like the speed at which we can Find information and aggregate information has changed dramatically the speed at which we can communicate has changed dramatically and Those people that didn't really lean into that they they kind of got left behind You know, like they definitely were way slower than their counterparts And the same thing is happening now.

I I view this as sort of just another Iteration of that where it's going to allow, uh, more work to happen faster with less effort on our part, except for the creativity side, which I just don't see how you can outsource that or how it can be replaced at any point in time soon. Um, and that's great because you still have to use your brain.

You know, I think people that just rely solely on these things. Are going to become idiots and without context to ask the right prompts, you, you're not going to get very good answers and you're not going to really even understand what you're looking at. So you do need a depth of information and knowledge in order for AI tools to, to be helpful.

But if you have depth of knowledge and you can then leverage this tool, it's, it's, it's like you're becoming more tech enabled. And what I see is, I think people are scared. This is like going to replace their job. Um, and I do think it will replace some people's jobs, but what's going to happen is it's going to make the people that are, uh, smart enough to lean into these things and adaptable enough to lean into some of the technological changes that, that are happening right now, it's going to make them more efficient and it's going to replace people that are, uh, they're, they're pushing it away.

You know, they're like, nope, I don't want to do things that way. I don't want to add this into what i'm doing And that's fine. It's your choice. You can do whatever you want. But you know, if you look at like employees And who's going to be retained it's going to be who's the most efficient who's the best at what they're doing Uh, and and I don't see this so much on the clinical side, but definitely administrative.

I see that for sure There's probably going to be a uh in the near future. You're going to be able to have one admin Do the work of two to three people Admins in a bigger clinic because of the redundancy of some of the things they're doing with one person can lean into some of this, the tech enabled side of things, and that's going to increase profitability for, um, for clinics, right?

I mean, that's just the, that's just the reality for clinicians. I don't see it changing. Nearly as much the human to human side of things is so important. It's actually great news for anybody that is actively still in patient care and great news for these clinics as a business, because those are going to be super hard to disrupt.

And if anything, they're going to become more valuable because they are so insulated from technological changes. So I think, you know, as a, as a clinical owner, you're in a fantastic spot to really be able to have. Stability for decades as a lot of the, I think tech side of businesses really becomes quite disrupted, um, you know, over the next few years.

So AI, again, it's here to stay. You're either going to lean into it, uh, and use it to your advantage, or you can sort of rage against it. Say, I'm not doing that, like not interested. That's fine. You're going to be slower. Um, you're not going to be able to maybe do as much, or you're gonna have to pay more for more people to do the same amount.

And, uh, the people that do lean into those things, they're going to just frankly have better run businesses, and they're probably going to have the ability to do more on the business side than you can. And it's going to be harder for you to compete. Uh, so again, AI is here to stay. All right. Number three, product is the most important thing to focus on.

Focus on so product is the most important thing to focus on now, uh, what that means for clinicians. And, and clinical businesses is your visits, your customer experience, uh, the way in which you make people feel the way you communicate with people, the consistency that you maintain your brand, uh, all of the things that are wrapped around the product, the actual outcomes that you're getting, the training that your staff is getting, the consistency that they have.

This is your product. You're not selling a burrito. Right. So you can't tweak your tortilla recipe and your pinto bean recipe and make it a little bit better and you know, whatever, like, but you can do that with, you know, how your initial evaluations go, how you're communicating with people after the fact, how you are following up with people, how your front desk handles reschedules or mistakes, you know, the way in which your brand is shown up on social media.

These are, this is your product. This is your product. And the thing with a product that's so important is you can be a fantastic marketer. And you can you can get out there you can do a ton of workshops you can Uh injury screens you can do a ton of ads and be amazing at ads and get people in the door Fantastic with social media and get a ton of patients from that whatever right?

But here's the thing if somebody comes in and your product is not fantastic The likelihood that they're going to recommend you to a friend and family member is very low. It's very low So for every one person you bring in you see just that one person You Now, if you have a fantastic product and that one person you bring in, let's say one out of every two sends somebody your way.

So now each person that you bring in, you get a half of another person from that one person. So after every two people, you have a whole nother one. So now you have a third. And then that person, A percentage of the people that you see that were referred by somebody else will refer somebody your way. And this is where we get these dividends that pay out from a fantastic product.

This flywheel of people that come in and then the marketing is done on your behalf. This this idea of word of mouth referrals is very powerful. But word of mouth referrals, A, only happen when you get people in the door, which is Honestly marketing to begin with so you have to understand how to do these different types of marketing effectively But you have to deliver an amazing product and that amazing product then makes your marketing efforts that much more beneficial that much more ROI positive because Each person is worth more than one and that's snowballs and snowballs and snowballs And that's how you build this brand where people are talking about your business in a positive way All over the place, uh, without you having to be out there, you know, beating the drum of your business so much.

And not to say that you, you aren't, you obviously will continue to do that because if you can add on fantastic marketing with a fantastic product, it's like, the sky's the limit, the sky's the limit. But most people are not good at both of these. You're either, you really focus on the product and you're, you're, you're a.

You know, a clinician to like at heart and you just want the greatest outcomes for people. And you, you're a nerd about keeping up with all these con ed courses and, and the newest research and all that stuff. And people want to work with you because you're such an expert and you're so good with people, but yet you're terrible at marketing.

You're terrible at marketing. You're scared to get, you know, out and do an injury screen or a workshop. You, you, you're, you're terrified that if you run an ad, it's going to be a waste of money or it's going to dilute your brand in some way. You're this purist that it just feels like it has to be organic.

I have to come my way from these other patients. Stop that shit. Like that's fine. You're fantastic on the product, but, but get out there and market. Don't be, don't, don't, don't be an idiot about it. Like you have to market your business. Like this doesn't happen to where businesses that actually grow substantially don't do any marketing.

And when anybody tells me like, I don't even have to market. I'm like, great. You have a fantastic product, but like you're leaving a lot on the table. And if someone else has a fantastic product and they do a better job marketing, you're dead in the water. Like keep that in mind. So you have to understand product is number one, but people have to know your product is awesome for them to then tell other people about it.

So what I see though, is the flip side. I see a lot of people that are focused a ton on marketing, lead gen, lead gen, lead gen, get people in the door, get people in the door. They focus on that and their product sucks. And they wonder why. Every month they have to then go find more people and more and more people and that is a tough game to win So just making sure that you know, you focus on The product and in step one I talked about sales and marketing is most important skills to get started Like you need to focus on that as well.

But as you grow this is where it gets really hard And if you just you your product can be fantastic and it's very consistent. It's just you When you have more than one person, now all of a sudden you have variance, you have slight differences in how they like to communicate and how they like to like the exercise they like to do.

And not to say that you want to like make this completely cookie cutter, but you probably want to have some amount of frameworks that your people function within. Otherwise, it's just a fucking free for all. Who knows what they're doing in there? Are you auditing your staff and seeing what they're doing on eval how they're talking to people the the follow up emails?

They're sending how they're communicating the speed at which they're doing that Like are you are you auditing any of these interactions they have with running workshops or uh injury screens? You know, are you are you like Doing continual work with your staff about best practices and the continuing education side of things like these are really important things to do to make sure your product is great.

And on the flip side of that, it's your customer experience is part of your product as well. What is your administrative staff doing? How are you communicating with people? You know, like what are the channels in which you're tracking these things? How do you know if you have a great product or not? Like these are the things you have to focus on in order to really really scale Up what you're doing Because the product is the most compounding thing you can possibly have a fantastic product out scale is a very hard thing to do It's one of the reasons why you don't see a lot of restaurants that grow past more than one location, right?

This is a completely different industry, but with food but it's hard because now all of a sudden you have other people cooking it other people that are like seating people and they're at the front of the house, right and and You have different bartenders and it's like Crap. I can't control this as well.

It's really, really hard. And that's where your systems have to be really tight. You have to focus on consistency of your product. So if you focus on that, that is one of the things that's going to help you scale the fastest, but probably one of the hardest things to actually maintain at scale number four, this last one.

Uh, this is going to sound morbid, but death is inevitable. And in some cases, it's closer than you know. So, say this again. Death is inevitable, and in some cases, it's closer than you know. Now, the first part of that should be, uh, you know, no news that's new to anybody. Um, we all die. That's just how it works.

We all know it. We probably don't like to talk about it much. I tend to like to talk about it more than most people, which I'm not sure why, but I find it fascinating in a way, and here's why. In a way that forces me to focus on things in the current environment around me and be present. I struggle with being very future biased.

I like to think about what's going to happen in 10 years, what's going to happen in 20 years, what, what are things going to be like in a hundred years? You know, like what, like that stuff is fascinating to me. And I think about it all the time. I'm constantly thinking about what next, what's going to happen next.

What next steps are in our business? What do I want to do with my family? You know, what do I want to do in life? And in some cases, if you live in the future, you die in the present, right? Like if you never, ever like focus on future, the same thing can be said for the past, some people are very past bias.

You're like, man, can't believe we didn't win that playoff game to make it to the state championships. It's like, I never think about shit like that ever. Uh, like I, I never think about things that happened in the past. It's very, very rare. If that's the case for me, I'm much more. Future bias, but the same thing to be said for people that are there They're constantly dwelling on things that happened in the past and they die in the present because they don't live there But life happens in the present life happens today life happens, you know Around us at all times and i'm gonna i'll give you a couple examples of why this is so fresh in Uh in my mind for this year and it's because I don't know if it's because I'm getting to an age where People are having more like health problems naturally, uh, because like, you know, I'm I turned 40 and uh next year so 2025 I turned 40 and But for sure i've noticed Just like with whether it's close connections or loose connections.

There's a lot more people that have had significant health problems that have died that are dying. Uh currently and uh It seems to be like way more than ever in my life that i've that i've noticed Uh, I had a friend whose best friend unexpectedly died in the middle of the night Um, I had a friend whose brother in law is, uh, you know, is going to be in hospice care.

Uh, who's young, who's, uh, who's, who's in his forties. Um, you know, I had, uh, one of our mastermind members, her husband suffered a massive stroke and fortunately for them, like, You know, she's a badass PT and she's helped him, uh, after the, the incident. And he looks like he's making a really good recovery, but man, it looked really sketchy for a while.

And this is a young, healthy person, you know? Uh, and that is, that is real stuff. I mean, that happens. And it wasn't like, it's, it's not like that, you know, the person that had a stroke was thinking they were going to have a stroke and like, Oh man, I need to do all this stuff to make sure that I like.

Didn't waste time on whatever or like regret missing out on doing something or saying something to somebody or whatever Because they're not gonna get a chance to do it again after that right or this person whose friend died in the middle of the night like Do you think that he would have changed what he did the day before?

If he knew that was going to happen, but we don't know like you just don't know and it's this interesting Perspective to take to things where you if you really think about it A, it's very uncomfortable to think about. So I'm not necessarily saying everybody needs to do this, but what I can tell you is on the, uh, the, the present side, right?

That, like being present in the moment, being able to enjoy the things around you, being able to pay attention to things around you, like that has become so much harder because we're so distracted by so many different types of technology. So many different things that are bombarding us all the time. We have so much.

Information that's bombarding us constantly. I mean, you're probably listening to this while you're working out or you're cutting your grass or it's like, you're probably multitasking and listening to me say this, right? And that's normal because I do the same thing. Like if i'm unloading the dishwasher, i'm probably listening to a podcast, you know, I'm going on a walk.

I'm probably listening to a podcast. Uh, you know, that's that's that is That is the way it is. Uh, it's efficient in a lot of ways. Tell you what, like if you want to really have a, uh, a moment that grounds you, like really think about this for a second. Think about the people that I, just the three people that I mentioned, you know, that, that you probably have people around you that similar things are happening to, uh, maybe as family members, maybe it's just friends who knows it's, it could be coworkers.

It could be their, their family, but people die unexpectedly. All the time constantly and you just don't know if that's going to be you. You can be as healthy as you want. You know what? Who knows? You just don't know. So the way that I look at this and the reason that I think it's important to really keep this top of mind is a couple things happen.

It's a perfect reminder not to wait on things. And I, I, I, this is probably the most important thing for me. Uh, as far as what I get out of this is it is a fantastic reminder. Not to wait if there's something that I'm like, oh man, I don't know if I have time for that I don't know if I can commit to that.

I don't know if uh, you know, I don't know like maybe it's an expense You're like man. I don't know if we can do that Uh, but it's meaningful to you. It's important You should do it. You should do it because you may not be able to and you don't know. So it's a perfect reminder to not wait. It's a perfect reminder to live your life, to live your life.

And that doesn't have to be crazy shit either, right? I mean that literally could be you putting your phone away, you know, sitting down with your with your kid or with somebody that's important to you and having a conversation and like really listening to them and paying attention to them. That's it.

That's it. It's like the person in front of you is important enough for you to just pay attention to them how simple that sounds, but how rare that is. It's shocking. And being top of mind, the fact that like, you just don't know, allows you to have this sense of urgency, almost to pay attention, to be present, to focus on the people that matter the most, to, to, to spend time with people that matter the most.

Uh, and, and also to not worry so much. About shit that you can't control, shit you can't have a positive effect on or any sort of effect on in any way. And so many people spend their whole life worrying about stuff that never ever happens. And it's a, it's, it's a, a waste of mental bandwidth. It's a waste of, uh, you know, your, your most precious resource, which is your attention.

And which could be focused on a number of other things that could make such a more, you know, an important, um, Uh, effect on other people's lives or your life and instead you're focused on something that just causes you so much anxiety because of something that might happen one day and instead of saying, here's where I am today, what's around me, who's around me, what can we do?

Like that's something for me that this year in particular has been, uh, I would say a big change. But it's definitely been amplified and it's because of the close proximity, um, that, that I've had to, you know, people around me that have had young family members, uh, you know, have just like very catastrophic illnesses and accidents.

And, um, and you know, it's, it's just, it's an important thing to keep in mind because, you know, I'm the same age as them. You know, I have families just like they do and, uh, and you just don't know if that day's coming for you or not. And hey, hopefully for me, it doesn't happen anytime soon. Hopefully for you, it doesn't happen anytime soon.

Uh, but we just don't know. So you should live your life that way. And you should focus on, you know, keeping that top of mind and it being present and allowing you to not squander your life. Don't just don't just float through life and look back one day and realize you didn't actually do anything. You didn't actually do anything of significance.

You didn't do anything to challenge you. You didn't do anything that made a positive impact on other people's lives. You didn't take a chance on something that you should have taken a chance on because you're scared. Like you're not going to have that chance in your debt. It's just not going to be there.

You're not going to have that chance when you're too old to do something. It's just not how that's not how it works. You know, there's different seasons in people's lives and you have to take advantage of those as they come. Uh, so, you know, to end on this, I hope that this, I hope that this doesn't, uh, ruin your year to hear me talk about this.

Cause, cause for me, I don't mean it in this way. I don't mean this in a negative way whatsoever. I actually mean this in a really positive way, mainly because I think that. Most people are either very future biased, like I am, or they're very, they're very past bias and life doesn't happen in the future and the past.

Life happens in the present and being present is a very hard thing. Like this whole idea of, Mindfulness, I mean, you're like, this is not something people really had to focus on too much when they weren't distracted as easily. Right. And, uh, for us, we, we are, and we have to understand that. So being present, being mindful, being aware of what's around you, that's really, really something that, uh, I've worked on a lot more this year and have, have really found to be incredibly beneficial to my life in many different ways.

So in summary, uh, number one, sales and marketing, two most important skills to get you started. Uh, but finance and leadership. Are the ones that you're going to have to learn in order to scale. AI is here to stay. Uh, lean into it, use it as a, a way to, uh, you know, enable you to do more and be more efficient and make better decisions.

Uh, but it's not going to take your creativity away and don't use it so much that you basically are become an idiot, uh, which I do see people doing. They become such a dependent on it. They won't think for themselves. Uh, three product is the most important thing to focus on. Product, product, product. Make sure your product is fantastic.

Your outcomes, your patient interactions, your customer experience, improve it, continue to improve it, never stop improving it. That is the flywheel of a business that is going to get you more and more customers without as much effort. And a number four, uh, everybody dies. That's an inevitable, uh, and in some cases it's closer than, you know, and we don't know, uh, when that's going to happen.

So focus on the present, focus on the important things around you, the important people around you. Don't wait to do things. Don't, uh, hold off to experience things. Uh, go for it. And remember that, you know, the present is where we live. And sometimes we have to remember that we're all going to die for us to be willing to actually Live in the present instead of the future.

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