E759 | Is Leadership Something You're Born With Or Can You Learn It?

In the latest episode, Dr. Danny breaks down two essential skills for entrepreneurial success: effective leadership and financial management. For entrepreneurs transitioning from the startup phase to a scalable enterprise, mastering these skills can be the difference between surviving and thriving.

Leadership: Born or Made?

Dr. Danny dives into the age-old question: Are leaders born, or can they be made? He shares insights from his own life, observing his young daughter’s natural leadership traits as well as his experiences in the military. Although some may have an innate flair for leadership, Dr. Danny firmly believes it’s a skill that can be cultivated with the right mentorship and guidance.

Recalling his early days as an assistant clinic director, he highlights how the structured support he received through the military helped him grow into a leader. With the right resources and encouragement, anyone can hone their leadership abilities.

Financial Acumen: The Backbone of Sustainable Growth

While leadership is crucial, Dr. Danny underscores that understanding the numbers behind a business is equally essential. Financial management is not just a back-office function but a powerful tool that enables informed decisions, supports strategic growth, and provides stability.

Dr. Danny encourages entrepreneurs to embrace both leadership and financial mastery to empower their businesses and themselves, ensuring a solid foundation for growth.

Takeaways for Entrepreneurs

Aspiring and established entrepreneurs alike can benefit from these insights. By prioritizing both leadership development and financial literacy, business owners can confidently drive their organizations to new heights.

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: 

I like this question because I think you could answer it one both ways, either yes or no, right? Leaders are either born leaders or they can be taught. I think it's a nuanced. Answer to this, right? Because I think some people are naturally better leaders. 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. 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, cause I'm here to help you.

What's going on back in here with the PT entrepreneur podcast. And today we're talking leadership. So my wife got me a deck of cards that are different leadership questions, and I thought these were great. So I'm going to answer a leadership question. And I think I'd be interested to hear, you should think about this yourself.

And your thoughts on this, I'm gonna give you my thoughts on this, because what I find there's two skills that I've come to realize are the most important skills that any business owner entrepreneur can learn in order to actually scale a business past the start stage. The start stage is.

It's like sales and marketing. You got to learn how to get clients. You got to learn how to sell them something. And you got to learn how to take rejection because you're going to get turned down a lot. Like it's very heavy mindset. Once you have what we call product market fit, you have something that people want and you know how to sell it and you know how to market it.

Then it's scale, like scaling in a service based business, really any business, but in a service based business, like a clinic, you have to scale through other people. And people require leadership and leadership is something that is a very broad topic. But I would say leadership is the number one reason whether a clinic is going to fail or not.

And number two, and I don't know, they're like basically the same. It's one a and one B is understanding your finances, cashflow management in particular, but understanding Your numbers and being able to make the right decisions based on the data you get from your, financial data. Both of these are very difficult skills to understand and people go to school, to learn these.

But I don't know if you can just learn these in school, like especially leadership. So let me pose this first question, right? So the question is, some say leaders are born. Others say leadership can be taught. What do you think? And can anyone be a leader? Explain. I like this question because I think you could answer it both ways either yes or no, right?

Leaders are either born leaders or they can be taught I think it's a nuanced answer to this right because I think some people are naturally better leaders And you see this with kids. I see this with with kids my own kids age, right? Like my daughter is an interesting example of this. She is a naturally just naturally gifted leader in terms of like kids.

Her age, she's, she can get them to mobilize together to do something. She's good at getting people to do things together. She is confident and she is direct with other kids and adults, and, but also really nice to everybody. So leaders are not typically the best leaders for my fat are not authoritarians.

There are people that are like, they care for everybody else. They're trying to get everybody else to, have the things that they want. And that's something I see that she does all the time. And I can't say that's something that we like taught her, right? Like she, she just naturally has been that way.

And you get like positive reinforcement for these things. And some kids I think are more motivated for that than others. So the positive reinforcement from that, leads to doing more of that behavior, which, obviously develops that sort of leadership style. You see this with kids that are naturally deviates that when sports, and. What I can say is though, I do think some kids are naturally, some people are naturally better leaders than others, but anybody can be a leader. And I'll give you a prime example of this. When I was in the military is Made up of primarily young males and young males are sometimes a very challenging group of people to work with, right?

You can have a lot of egos. You can, have issues with behavior. Especially in that setting. And at an early stage in the military, like you could be, a new enlisted private first class or something like that, but they're going to, you're going to have certain responsibilities that you have to, take ownership of.

You could be a in a couple of years and all of a sudden, like you're in charge of 20 to 40. Soldiers like for me, when I when I graduated from the Baylor program, which is, your active duty while you go to school. So I, the first two and a half to three years, and I was in the military, I was in my DPT program and in training.

But as soon as I graduated, I got put into a clinic where I was, what was called the assistant chief, director meaning like I was like the second in charge and, but my boss at the time she was pregnant and she had some pretty significant. Complications that ended up on bedrest in the hospital for the last couple months of her pregnancy So this is right when I got out there.

So I went from just graduated to within a few months. I was running a clinic and this wasn't it was like three clinics So there was like 25 people That I was in charge of and had to go to all these senior briefings and stuff And you get thrust into these positions pretty quickly In leadership roles, but what is there as well is a lot of mentorship.

I had a lot of mentors and I had a lot of systems built around you, which can have negative consequences as well. If you're trying to make changes, but in a leadership role to have some structures, very helpful to know that you can like you're doing the right things within the context of what you're supposed to do and you're following a system.

So I think that. When you look at this from your standpoint of leadership, some of you may be better leaders than others naturally, but everybody can lead people and some people, you don't know if you're a good leader sometimes until you've been put in a position where you're forced to be a leader.

And I think everybody actually should. See what that feels like, because you might be better at it than you think you might just have some anxiety and some, there's some unknown around the fear of failure of you being put into a position like that. So it's very important that, you work on the skill set of leadership that you put yourself in positions where you have to lead.

People where you take on leadership roles, where you're responsible for things that you have to deliver to other people, where you have to be responsible for other people and hold other people accountable and have difficult conversations with people. Cause that's frankly leadership is helping other people around you succeed, right?

For the greater good of the mission of whatever it is very easy to see that in the military, right? Because there's big missions that they have and people get. Put in leadership positions at very young ages and it functions primarily pretty well, right? There's obviously exceptions, but for the most part, it, it functions well.

And it's because there are systems in place and there's a lot of mentorship. So if you are struggling as a leader, My advice is get some mentorship and get some better systems around you so that you can thrive in a leadership role. So interesting question, something for you to think about as well.

Can anyone be a leader or are people born leaders? Think about it yourself. Talk to you next time.

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