E538 | How You Should Start Your Cash-Based Practice

Today, I break down a question I recently received from a podcast listener: "is it possible to start up a cash-based performance PT in a standalone location vs. starting out of a gym setting?". This is a great question and my views on this have changed as we continue to work with more and more people. I discuss the pros and cons of both and what route may be right for you in today's episode. Enjoy!

• What is your lifestyle choice?
• Anticipating higher costs
• The most typical route people take

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: So I was having a conversation with one of our staff members about documentation and he had come over from a in-network practice that he was working at and he was talking about just how long it would take him to document and click through and the workflow and how, just how time consuming it was and how much easier it's been with the software that we use, which is PT everywhere.

And I know for us, we're very aware of. Sort of time leaks within our staff and our own schedules. And it's just one of the worst things you can do is just waste time on things when you could be doing them more efficiently. One thing for us is we have to document. It's something we need to do and you need to do it as efficiently as you possibly can because that's where you're gonna save a lot of your time.

We were seeing our staff members save upwards of an hour a day as far as cleaning up his documentation, making it more efficient. What if you got an hour of your day back just from documentation? What if all of your staff did the same thing? Highly recommend you take a look at PT everywhere.

It's been a huge time saver for us and really has made a big difference in our efficiency of our practice. You can check 'em [email protected]. I think you're gonna really like what they have to offer. So here's the question. How do physical therapists like us who don't wanna see 30 patients a day, who don't wanna work home health and have real student loans create a career and life for ourselves that we've always dreamed about?

This is the question, and this podcast is the answer. My name's Danny Matte, and welcome to the PT Entrepreneur Podcast.

What's going on guys? Dr. Annie here with the PT Entrepreneur Podcast, and today I am answering a question that I got from Instagram. So this comes from somebody that sent me a message. His name's Ian Hardy. Ian, thanks for the message and let me apologize for the delay answering this. That actually ended up in my hidden request folder.

And an old man that I am, I didn't really ch I don't check that very often and I am not super tech savvy when it comes to social media. So anyway, I apologize. Cause this came in, I guess a couple weeks ago and I wanted to make sure I answered this Speaking of this, Ian, thanks for the question.

If you listen to the podcast or you're in our ecosystem in any way, And you have a question for me, this is probably the easiest way to get me to answer it. You can send me a direct message. It's just Danny, Matt mate pt at Instagram. And and you can, lemme know what you have a question about and if it's a question that is it's worth a podcast response, I'll do that.

And if it's just a quick response with something, then I'll answer it that way. I typically get back to people as fast as I can, but I appreciate this one. Cause I thought this was a good one. I'm gonna read it real quick. He says, Hey, Danny, love all your content that you create. I listen to all your podcasts.

Look forward to seeing your Wednesday your client win Wednesdays each week. That's awesome, man. If you're not on our email list, by the way, head to physical therapy biz.com. Get signed up for our five day challenge, and you'll get added to our email list on Wednesdays. I highlight client wins that we're seeing.

These are people that we're actively working with and the change that they're seeing in their business. It's a fun email to write because it's always highlighting what someone else has done and we'll take a little screenshot, we'll hide their information so you're not, aware of their identity and just for their own.

Personal identity reasons. But everything that they write to us in a text or in a message, you can see what they're working on. It's usually some cool stuff. There was one that we that I sent out the other day that was a person that we work with that had hired two of her prior coworkers at a PT mill that she was working at, and she was super excited about being able to do that.

So anyway, those wellness or those client win Wednesdays, Those are cool. And they're fun. And I, Ian, I'm glad that you like those cuz I know it's always fun to see what other people are doing and it gives you some, some more courage in some ways to do the same thing and that you can see that other people are doing and put yourself in their shoes.

I think it's really helpful. So we'll keep sharing those for sure. He, yes. Could you possibly do a podcast on, if it's possible to do a startup in a cash-based performance, physical therapy practice in a standalone location? Versus starting in a gym or a CrossFit box. I'd really I really want to know if you think it's possible for sure.

All right, Ian, let me dive into this one because I think it's a good question and my views on this have changed somewhat as we have worked with more and more people and. We've also seen people come out in different phases from a business standpoint from school, even if they are looking to start their own business.

So I'm gonna basically answer this for anybody that is looking to do this. If you're a student like Ian is, or if you are a newer practitioner, this will apply to you as well as somebody that's a seasoned clinician. And your goals might be different. Your the biggest difference probably is your lifestyle.

In regards to, you may not have a family or kids or anything like that. You may just be supporting yourself and you can live off of, peanut butter sandwiches and have a dozen roommates and you can make that work when you're very young. Versus if you're a little older, you may have, kids and a spouse and a mortgage potentially, and a lot of other things, right?

So if we're looking at the start. Should you or can you start in a sublease space as an A space in an office, or should you, and can you start in a standalone space? So the answer is you can start in either one, and there's pros and cons to both. But ultimately we want people to get to the point where they're in a standalone space and there's a lot of reasons for that, but, The biggest ones that I see over and over again, and you're really not gonna be able to maybe understand this to the level that, that I'm I wish that you could when it comes to a sublease space.

But the thing is, you don't control that environment. And it's probably the biggest. Issue associated with it. The biggest negative on standalone or on, on subway spaces is that you do not control the environment. And there's a lot of factors associated with that. Number one, if you're in a gym and they're playing loud music and they're dropping barbells and you're trying to talk to somebody about their tenure history of lower back pain, it's very distracting.

The. The environment is what it is. It's not what you make it because you don't control the environment. It you're, you are subleasing this space from somebody else. So the customer experience can be hard to control and hard to have, be consistent in an environment. That's probably the biggest thing.

Aside from the fact that let's say you sublease a space and you need the gym space to work with somebody on something. Let's say you're doing a lot of like movement training. You might be in there and it could be crowded, right? You might be in there when a class is going on. You might be in there when you know they're playing, I don't know some music that is profane that maybe the person that you're working with doesn't appreciate it.

As much as I love Rage Against the Machine, this person might not really enjoy it. And they, they might not have the best experience because they can't concentrate because they're just hearing a bunch of F bombs. So keep that in mind. Your customer experience is not gonna be the greatest when you sublease from a gym space in comparison to you doing it on your own.

Now when we look at the pros of a space like this, it's the biggest pro is that it's cheap, typically, and it's not as cheap as it used to be. I think that there's enough people that have. They have built practices in gyms or subleased offices to some degree of other professionals that, they're aware of us now, right?

Like when I started mine, I had six months of free rent and then it was like 400 bucks the first year and 500 bucks the second year per month. And that was really cheap in comparison to where I was at, and I always thought it was funny. When the guy that owned the gym, he'd come over and he'd he'd just show up in my office sometimes and I'd, I'd work on his, whatever was bothering him and he would tell me about the, the frustrations of owning a gym and the overhead and all of the moving parts of coaches and stuff like that.

And I remember sitting there in my office and thinking, Just how simple my model was and how much less stressful it sounded and how much more profitable. My model was because as far as top line revenue was concerned, like how much money the businesses were actually making, his gym was making a lot more money than my practice was.

But when we looked at how much money were our businesses, keeping the actual profit, the take home, right? What really matters? My little subleased office in the corner of his gym was generating more profit than the gym that I was subleasing space from. Now think about that for a second. Keep that in mind.

If you had an office and you were subleasing space to somebody that was, I don't know, selling shoes or something like that out of the space, and you come to find out that they're actually making more money than you, you might think to yourself, wow, I need to. Start getting in the shoe game or I'm gonna own that somehow.

So I never wanted him to actually know how my business was doing because I just didn't want, I didn't want to have the conversation of rent going up and or any number of things associated with that. The profitability side of it is really good because, for me at the time, Let's say we had $500 a month in rent.

We were somewhere in the range of 15 to $18,000 a month in top line revenue in that office with me, by myself. So the vast majority of what we were making. I was keeping right. And it was all, it was good. It was cool. We had that office for a while. We actually had multiple offices that were subleased offices before I'll take that back.

We had one office, it was a subleased office. We opened our standalone space and then it wasn't open yet. And this, the gym that I was in, it actually got shut down. When I tell people I had like an interesting experience at the first gym that I was at I mean I really, there was some crazy stuff that happened and one of those things was that the gym owner had been ignoring the city in regards to his certificate of occupancy.

So when you have a cert, when you have a building, It has to have a certificate of occupancy, meaning that the local government, fire marshal, they have said this is a safe environment to have X number of people in. So you have a maximum capacity, but you need the certificate of occupancy to F really legally function as a business.

And. The way the gym was set up was, it was basically two separate buildings that were connected by a door in the middle, and there was a wall that ran down the middle that separated these two spaces. So apparently they were supposed to either install a sprinkler system or the wall in the middle had to be a firewall.

So it had to have certain material, building material. And the gym owner. Had ignored the city for months and basically just, I assumed, didn't think it was that big of a deal. One evening when I had evening patients, as I'm walking out with my last patient, there's five or six cop cars that pull up and.

This patient of mine is wondering what's going on. I have no idea what's going on. I thought maybe somebody was selling drugs in there as a drug bust or something like that. Come to find out, the gym owner had just ignored the city for too long and they decided, you know what? We're tired of this guy.

We're shutting his building down. We're shutting his business down until he does what we tell him he has to do. Pays a fine on top of that, and then builds this firewall. To be able to function in the space, meaning no one could go in the space, including me. And, the sublease that I had didn't really do me any good because I couldn't use the office for a few weeks while they built this.

Firewall down the middle. So when we look at the controlling of environment, and this is what I'm referencing to in these sule spaces, you don't control the environment and stuff like that can happen. So I wasn't expecting that. I didn't do anything wrong, and all of a sudden, the next day I had really had, it was a Thursday or it was a Wednesday and I had two more days of patience that week.

Five, six people a day, and I had to scramble to find another place to see them because we were building out our standalone space and it wasn't ready. We didn't have a certificate of occupancy and we didn't have anything in it. It was basically a shell and I had to scramble to find a place to see these folks.

Luckily for me, I knew a few other gym owners in the area. I reached out to. A few of 'em, and one of 'em had an office that I could rent short term from him to see my patients. But look, from a customer experience standpoint, we had to reschedule all these people. We had to tell 'em what's going on.

It just wasn't, it wasn't our fault. And it's not like anybody necessarily blamed us, but it just doesn't look good for you. When you look at a standalone space, I'm not saying that you're gonna have a gym owner that doesn't, that ignores a city and doesn't have a certificate of occupancy.

This is just an example of what happened to, to me and my business. But it's possible because you don't know how that person runs their business. I liken it to. It's equivalent to building your house unlike somebody else's foundation or land. And they can do whatever they want. They own it.

You just have this thing you've built on it, which doesn't really have a whole lot of value un because you don't own what's underneath it, right? So when you look at standalone spaces versus subway spaces, I think subway spaces they're very important to get started. They're very important to get started and to have what we call proof of concept.

So if we look at this cash-based practice business pyramid that we created, the first phase is from zero to $5,000 in revenue on a monthly basis. So proof of concept, you're basically proving that your business model is gonna work. It's low risk. You're typically side hustling at this phase. Maybe you're going full-time, but for most people, it's, they have a job and they're doing it on the side because what they wanna see is they wanna prove that they can get to $5,000 a month on the side before they typically jump into the next phase, which is survival phase.

And survival phase is between 5,000 and $10,000 a month in revenue. And for most people. A sublease space makes the most sense because they have the least amount of risk, the least amount of personal sort of collateral on their side that they have to account for. It's easier to get out of, it's just simple in comparison.

So most people are gonna go the side hustle. In a subway space route, first, they're gonna prove the concept. They're gonna get to around five grand a month, evenings and weekends. Maybe they have some flexibility with their full-time job where they can spend a full day or two even in the office. And then they're gonna cut the cord on their full-time job so they can go from five to 10.

Some people, we've seen people hold onto em, employed positions, W2 positions, until they, I've seen people get to. 12,000 a month in revenue while still having a job, a full-time job, basically. Most of these are gonna be home health PRN stuff where they have a little bit more flexibility, but that's hard to do.

You're really burning yourself out quite a bit, doing that. I don't necessarily recommend that, but hey, if you have a family and there's things you have to take care of, I get it. You gotta do what you gotta do. But when you look at the stepping stones, really from zero to five, you're proving the concept.

Most people are gonna do that in a sublease space from five to 10. It's survival cuz you got no other income and you're just focused on your business. It's usually when people progress really fast, by the way, because they're not splitting their attention. They're focused just on one thing and their backs against the wall.

Like you have to figure it out and you will because you know you're smart. You have the time to work on it. You have the desire, you have a lot of reasons why. Because there's no other income coming in. So most people scale up there really pretty quick. And then from there they go onto the success phase.

And that is usually where we see people move into a standalone space. So if you're following this current trajectory, you've got a sublease space on the side, you're proving the concept. You leave your job, you get to 10,000, and then from 10,000 to about 20,000, depending on your price point, There's, it's typically clear sailing for most people.

If you can get to 10, and let's say your average visit rate is, let's just call it $200 an hour to make it easy on my math. So that means you're seeing 50 patient visits at $10,000 a month. To get to 20, you have to get to a hundred patient visits, which is about 25 a week, give or take, depending on how many working days are in the month, and.

It's just you really, and probably an admin or a spouse helping you. If you have somebody that's maybe, you're a little further along and you have a stay-at-home spouse or somebody that has a job that they're, they don't really like and they're looking for more flexibility, you can do that.

And you can get to about $20,000 a month with a decent, average visit rate. And that's the success phase, right? Because if you're between 10 and $20,000 a month, you never have to work for someone else the rest of your life. That's the reality. That's a pretty awesome place to be. If you think about it, and this is one of the things, when I get a chance to talk to people that are thinking about working with us, I always like to reference like, Hey, if this is all that you can end up doing, this is the pinnacle of your business.

Career as you just get to this phase, you know where you're making $20,000 a month. You have minimal overhead, you're working with people that you wanna work with. Your profitability's probably gonna be somewhere around 70, maybe 80% depending on. Your fixed costs, but let's just call it 70% as $14,000 a month pre-tax that you're bringing in, which is a lot of money in comparison to working as a staff clinician somewhere else.

And they say, this is where you max out. You never make it any further than that. Is it? Is it worth it? You know what I mean? Is that worth it? And for most people, it's a no-brainer because you're not gonna see that sort of career progression in really any other way that I've seen. If you have a desire to do your own thing, not everybody does.

I get that. And there's some inherent risk associated with it. And you gotta earn it. It's not like this is guaranteed, but the vast majority of people we work with, well over 90%. They will get to this range, this success range. So it's not guaranteed, but it's very likely. And that's following that current trajectory that I talked about, where you're going from a subway lease space and you could stay in a subway space and be in that face if you really like where you're at and you maybe just wanna stay and have a lifestyle business, you could totally do that.

The problem is when you go to scale past yourself, you go to hire somebody else. It gets very tricky in a single office, sublease office because you run outta space and then you're trying to split schedules, and that's really challenging. So you're definitely gonna need more than one office, and this is where most people have to make the decision.

Okay? Do I try to sublease another office in this gym and let's say real numbers now for most people, it's gonna be somewhere between. 700 and $1,500 a month to have a subway lease space. I've maybe even higher in certain cities, like in LA or in New York, San Francisco in really high cost of living areas.

So if you're looking at, okay, it's gonna be, let's call it 1500. To have a subway space and now you gotta look at, okay, I need two. So let's say they're gonna charge you $2,500, ME $3,000 a month to have two of these offices. You gotta really like where you're at. You gotta really like the gym and you gotta have a really strong relationship with them to where there's sy in a symbiotic relationship where there's referrals back and forth for that to make sense.

Cuz if that's happening, then it's worth the price of admission. It's worth it from a marketing standpoint. Like we work with a practice that is in a well-known baseball facility and he pays quite a bit over $3,000 a month for a sublease kind of rental space. But it's built a multi clinician and business within that, and a good chunk of his new patient volume comes directly from the gym that they send it over to him.

So when I see something like that, it's almost built in marketing costs. You're getting this built-in, referral source for paying a premium on a space. I don't see any problem with that, especially if it's a credible long-term. Jim, that has a really strong ownership element. The founders are good business people.

They're reliable. You can ride that out and grow to whatever it is you decide is appropriate or the size business that you want to be, and it can be a really good fit. It's rare, though, in most cases, the gym. You'll outgrow it, and then you move on to a standalone space so that's a typical trajectory for most people when they get involved.

Now, back to Ian's question, can you go straight into a standalone space? Absolutely. You totally can. Now, the thing is, if you do that, you're probably not, you're probably not going the side hustle route. You're probably doing what we call burn the ships, meaning you're going all in from day one. So if you're gonna do that, you just have to be aware of a few things.

Number one, your costs are gonna be higher. If you go this proof of concept route, you're probably, or the side hustle route where you're going through proof of concept. You're probably not gonna have months where you're losing money. I never had a month where I lost money starting out, even though I did the burn the ship's method.

Mine was a little different because I had about. 60 days of terminal leave in the Army. So when I had two months of basically full-time pay because I had saved up two months of vacation knowing I was gonna start my own business. So I had two months to basically replace my income, and in month three I did.

And the first two months going all in. If I didn't have that, I would've been in the red. I would've lost money, not a ton. It would've been a few thousand dollars each month. And then by month three, I was above where I wanted to be and it just grew from there. So I also did this in a subway space, so I didn't have as much overhead.

So if you go the route where you go standalone space only, you need a couple things. Number one, You need to have decent cash reserves, so you want to have money that you know you're gonna you're gonna dig into it as you get started. You're also gonna have significantly more costs on the front end with building this space out.

In this case, it depends on the circumstance we've had worked. We have worked with people that have gone. All in from the beginning. They're, they're all in on the business. They start with a standalone space, and I'll tell you this much, they grow faster. They're going to hit different trajectories.

A different trajectory in the business faster. Like for them to get to this success space is gonna happen a lot faster. For them to get to $20,000 a month. It's gonna happen a lot faster in most cases because they're gonna have a standalone space where they can control the environment. It gives them more credibility than some guy in the corner of a CrossFit gym or girl in the corner of a CrossFit gym.

So you can get people in easier. You can grow it easier, but you do have more fixed costs. I've seen this work in a couple situations. One, somebody that's a little bit more senior of a clinician, they have savings and or they have a spouse that has a pretty good job that they can live off of one income and that person can go all in from the beginning and they have the financial ability to take.

More risk on and to try to grow a little faster. They typically also have some variation of word of mouth, positive presence with potential clients that they're gonna work with. So they will usually get busy faster because they're batteries included. They come in with people that they've already worked with and they have established clinical record.

The other area that we've seen this work or scenario. Is somebody that has investor or they have the good fortune of coming from a family that is affluent and they can leverage that on the front end as far as cost to build one of these out and to have cash for running the business. Easier because they have access to capital or they have funding from private funding.

So if you have, let's say you have an investor, right? And there's a lot of ways that you can borrow money and pay money back. But let's just say you have somebody that. Is an old patient of yours. And then let's just say in this scenario, let's just say your name is Brian. I don't know. Sounds like a good name.

Let's just say it's Brian. And Brian has this guy that, that he's worked with and this, let's say this other guy's name is John's is a guy, he's older, he's pretty affluent for whatever reason, he sees something in Brian and he's Brian, You're gonna be successful. Let me know if you ever start your own thing, cuz I would love to back you.

And John just sees hard worker, somebody with talent. Brian has no idea what the heck is going on. He's just trying to get this guy's back pain better. But all of a sudden Brian's you know what? Maybe John's right. I can do my own thing. And you inquire about this, right? And there's a number of different ways that people will set this up.

The best way is to not give up equity in your business if you, unless this person is gonna dramatically help you grow it. Lemme put it that way. If this person is gonna be passive and they're not gonna do anything, I would not give up equity. That would be best. Best case scenario for John, the person lending the money.

And the worst case scenario for Brian, the person borrowing the money in best case scenario for Brian, he would take the money. Let's just, let's say it's a hundred thousand dollars, let's say. Let's say John's Hey Brian, I'll give you a hundred thousand dollars to do whatever you want with it. I want a 10% return that is paid back to me over the next, let's call it five years.

So he says, okay, five years. I want tw, I want. A hundred thousand dollars back. Plus I want 10%, so I want another $10,000, so you have to pay me $110,000. Let's just call it simple interest over the next five years. That's a pretty good deal. You can take that money, you can build out your space, you can have cash reserves, and you can grow a business like this pretty fast, and you could pay that person back plus interest and own a hundred percent of your business in the process.

So if you have somebody. That, like that. This is an example of how you can leverage other people's money to speed up, how quickly you can make that transition. And in this scenario, not to be biased, but I will be, if Brian was smart, he would work with us in our mastermind so that he could actually do this correctly and not be on the hook for a hundred plus thousand dollars.

From his friend because he squanders it on all the things that he doesn't need because he doesn't have the skillset and the understanding of how to run the business yet. This is actually one of the biggest problems I see with people that go all in that don't know how to run a business. At least if you go a sublease route, you're learning some of these lessons not in quite such a harsh way.

So if you screw up your sublease, it's not that big of a deal in comparison to somebody that screws up the lease that they have and they take on for five years. Now, think about this for a second. You got 500 bucks a month that you're paying over here on a sublease that's 12 months long and somebody did it, on a rocket lawyer boiler plate contract, y you're.

That's gonna be hard to enforce that. Okay. They probably don't know what they're doing. You're really it's not hard to get out of. You go over here and you sign a sub, or you sign a lease for $3,000 a month for five years with a professional commercial real estate owner. They got you. There's a personal guarantee associated with that, where if you don't pay it back, you owe it.

You could even, your business could go bankrupt, but if you're signing a personal guarantee, which in most cases you are, you owe that money. Personally, and you're gonna owe John that money back. So you don't wanna screw up these bigger steps that you're taking. You're not taking baby steps. When you talk about this, you're talking about taking a big step and the bigger step you take, the more risk you're taking associated with that.

This the faster you can move forward. For sure, you're taking a bigger step, but you're also taking more risk on associated with it. So keep that in mind as you go through it. You can leverage others people's money, but if you're leveraging other people's money, Without the ability to operate a business, that is silly.

That's a terrible idea. Actually, don't do it. It's just not worth it. Like you you're gonna learn some very expensive, painful lessons if you try to go about that in a manner where you have no idea how to run a business. So you have to be able to do two things. You have to upgrade your skillset, and you have to upgrade your network.

Something like what I just referenced with our mastermind accomplishes both of those things because your skillset gets upgraded by learning the things you need to run a business like this. Your network gets upgraded because you get surrounded by a bunch of other business owners and all the connections of those people that it then allows you to avoid mistakes and scale faster.

Now, let's say in this scenario, it all works out. You scale, you grow. You're gonna get to the phase where you're at the success phase much faster than the person is on the side. They're doing a side hustle in a subway space. And you're gonna get to the point where like we have the next phase after the success phase would be Turning Pro and then repeat and refine, which would be Turning Pro is 20 to $40,000 a month in top line revenue.

Repeat, refine is 40 K plus. And that 40 K plus really. It doesn't really change too much from that in order to get to a seven figure run rate, cuz that would be twice that much about $80,000 a month. The only difference is you need more space and you need more people. That's it. Your systems don't really change, your acquisition doesn't really change your pay structure.

People doesn't change your leadership has to improve so much because you do have more people. But you basically just have more overhead with space, with salaries, and you have more people that you need in the mix with these service-based businesses. So you can get there a lot faster. If your goal is that you want to get to a half million, to a million dollar practice as fast as humanly possible, then go all in on a standalone space.

Don't do a side hustle. It's all you focus on from the beginning is purely starting one of these businesses and growing it as fast as you can. If you are less confident in your ability to, that you have no financial backing, you have no resources to where if you screw it up, it's not gonna ruin you financially for life.

Then I would say your best bet is to go the side hustle with a sublease space, go that route and. Just take these baby steps to where you're putting yourself in a position where you go from zero to five, you prove the concept. From there, your neck, check your next check. The box is gonna be, okay, cool.

I have some cash. I have two. Two incomes. I'm gonna save this money. Don't go and buy a bmw. Just save that money, get a cash reserve, and then just enjoy the great feeling of saying. That you quit and that you're moving on to something else. Quit the job that you don't like. Go all in on your business still in the subway space.

Grow from five to 10. Take some pressure off yourself cuz now you've had a minimum. Replace your income, grow that up to 10 to 20,000. Then start looking for a standalone space. That's typically where most people will do it. They'll typically have an admin in place. They'll usually have. A busy schedule, they'll move into a standalone space with revenue instead of zero revenue.

And the other example, and they grow more methodically slowly, but they have less overall risk. So I would only go the other route. If you have the financial backing, if you have the means, if you have basically, you know for a fact you're gonna be able to hit the ground running. You have this amazing.

Track record and people are knocking down your door to work with you and you feel very competent about running a business. And even if you still do, I still would work with somebody to build your skillset in business, cuz I. You may be an amazing clinician, but it's not the same thing when you look at starting, running, scaling, leading people in your own business.

Very different. And that's the difference maker for whether somebody's successful or not. There's a lot of great clinicians out there that could not run a business because they don't have that skill set. There's a lot of great business people out there that can't treat lower back pain. That's cuz that's not what they do.

But you have to have a unique mix of both if you're a clinician to make this work at least in this setting. Yeah. Ian, I hope that answered your question. Take you guys through the cash-based practice business pyramid that we have in terms of where people are at, where you can start, different scenarios of whether you're gonna go all in from the beginning or if you're going to take a more risk mitigated, route by side hustling.

And it really, again, just depends on everybody's situation. I don't know what your situation is or whoever's listening to this. I don't know what your situation is, but hopefully this gives you some sort of guidance in regards to what you should or shouldn't be doing based on the scenarios that I laid out.

So I think both are great. Here's the summary of everything in terms of key point. You can do either. The real important thing that has to happen is you have to make a decision to do something and actually do it. That's pretty rare. Most people, they talk about things and they don't do 'em.

Do you know people like this and they tell you, oh, I'm gonna do this and this, or, Oh, I'm, I got this big thing. I'm working on this, and this, whatever, and nothing ever comes out of that. Please don't be one of those people. I've not followed through on everything I said I was gonna do, so I can't sit here and tell you that.

I've always done that. Sometimes it's just not worth doing. Even if you say you want to, or you just don't have the courage or you don't have the, you just don't do it for whatever reason. Whether it's outside circumstances or it's yourself, you just didn't do it, and you have to take ownership of that and you have to live with that.

But here's what I don't want people to have to live with, and I've seen this in clinicians that are too old, frankly, to do this. They're putting themself in a place where, They have too much going on in their life. They have too many people that are dependent on them that they cannot take a chance on themself at a certain point, and it is a level of regret.

I don't know if they'll ever be able to get over a regret of not knowing whether they would've been able to make it work or not. A regret of what would my life maybe have looked like? What would my day-to-day look like? What would my satisfaction with my career look like? What would my financial position be like for myself and my family if I had at least tried?

Because the likelihood of you bankrupting yourself is very low. Even if you go the leveraged route, like I talked about with the scenario, the guideline and money, the other one. Even with that, you still could pay that back if you, if your business sucked, it wouldn't ruin your, wouldn't ruin your life, but, I've talked to clinicians that are older, that have been in the profession for 20 plus years, and they just cannot take a risk at this point.

They can't take a chance on themself, and it's sad to, to hear them and to talk to them about what they wish they would've done and that they just literally can't because of their life circumstances at this point. So of all of the options that you have, you can pick which one is right for you. But more than anything, what you have to do is decide if you're gonna do this or not, and it's not the right choice for everybody.

Let me get that straight. You might be listening to this and thinking to yourself, yeah, maybe I should do this. Maybe this is the right fit for me. And maybe it is, but maybe it's not because I think everybody knows deep down, and it's this. That's hard to describe. It's like this festering feeling, this deep, annoying feeling that doesn't go away.

And you can try to ignore it, and you can try to focus on other things, but for some reason when everything else around you gets quiet and you're just sitting there, it comes back and you feel it, and it's annoying and it won't go away. When I have stuff like that, I know I have to do it because if I don't, I'm gonna regret it.

There's certain things that I didn't do when I was in the military I didn't have a chance to do when I was in the military that still bother me to this day. And there's literally nothing I can do about it. Zero. No, ma, no matter what I do in business, no. No matter what I accomplished outside of that environment, there's just certain things that I didn't say yes to.

I didn't take a chance on d jobs that I didn't have opportunities to do places I didn't have an opportunity to go that I wish I had. And. And in many cases not even my fault, but to still prove the point. There's things that I regret that I cannot change because I'm not in that environment anymore.

I'm too damn old for real. I'm too old. I literally, I can't even go back in if I want to cuz I'm too old and I don't want that to be anybody else. When it comes to the, our profession. And what you decide to do because I'm very proud of many of the things that I did when I was in the military, but the few things that I just never got a chance to do still bother me to this day.

Absolutely. And I know when I talk to people in the profession that have similar feelings about not taking a chance in themself, They just never get over it. And if you feel it, and not everybody's gonna feel this way, but if you feel what I'm talking about, it's not gonna go anywhere. So you better either decide, all right, I'm willing to live with this frustration, this deep annoying feeling of, regret or you decide to take action and take a chance on yourself for better or worse.

Whether you would've known or not what would've happened, like better to fail and know than not try at all and wonder what would've happened. And that's what I see a lot of people doing. So to wrap this up, the number one thing that you need to decide is whether this is what you want to do or not.

And if it is, you're gonna know it. And if it's not, you should know that too. And then from there you can decide which option is best for you. But the first thing you have to do is decide whether you're gonna do it or you're not. And that's it. That's where you have to start. And if it is, then cool.

Here's a couple options for you. And there's a lot of ways that, we can help if this is what you decide is the right fit for yourself and your family. So anyway, guys. I really appreciate the question. Ian, thank you so much. I appreciate the fact that you even listened to this. It's pretty crazy to me.

I think about that every time I record a podcast or I look at our numbers and I see all the countries and people that listen to this is wild. Cuz I'm just some guy sitting in my office at home recording these podcasts and trying to share information that hopefully helps you. And I keep doing it and I'm gonna continue to do it because, I see just how many people.

Listen and ask questions and how much it helps. And so that's very motivating for me. So if you have a question, please send it my way. Like I said, Danny Matte, m a t a, PT as in physical therapy is my handle on Instagram. I'm not super active on it, but I definitely respond to to questions and direct messages.

So if you have one for me, Go ahead and shoot me a question. I'd love to answer it on a podcast if it's if it's worth this long of a response. And if not, I'll just respond via message. So anyway, guys, thanks again for listening and I'll catch you next week.

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