E777 | Planning Is Guessing But It's Still Important

The Importance of Business Planning: Start the Year with Intentionality

The start of a new year is often filled with excitement and motivation. It’s a time when we commit to eating better, training harder, setting ambitious goals, and improving different aspects of our lives. For business owners, it’s also a critical moment to reflect and plan for the year ahead.

In a recent episode of the PT Entrepreneur Podcast, Dr. Danny dives into why business planning—even if it’s not perfect—can be one of the most valuable exercises you undertake.

Why Business Planning Matters

Many entrepreneurs shy away from planning because they feel uncertain about whether their goals or strategies are correct. This fear of imperfection can lead to procrastination or avoidance. But as Dr. Danny explains, the value of planning isn’t about getting everything right. It’s about the process of sitting down, reflecting on your business, and setting a direction.

“Even if your goals are imperfect,” he says, “the act of thinking through your business and identifying areas for improvement gives you an edge.”

Planning vs. Reacting

One of the biggest pitfalls for entrepreneurs is falling into a reactive mindset. It’s easy to feel busy with day-to-day tasks, but busyness isn’t the same as progress. Dr. Danny uses the analogy of treading water versus swimming forward:

• Treading Water: You feel like you’re working hard, but you’re not actually moving toward your goals.
• Swimming Forward: Even if you’re slightly off course, you’re making progress toward a destination.

By taking the time to plan, you avoid the trap of reactive work and start making intentional strides toward growth.

The Benefits of Imperfect Planning

Dr. Danny emphasizes that planning doesn’t have to be perfect to be effective. The simple act of sitting down and thinking critically about your business can lead to:

1. Clarity: Identifying areas that need improvement, like hiring, marketing, or revenue goals.
2. Direction: Establishing a target to work toward, even if it evolves over time.
3. Momentum: Creating positive forward movement, which builds confidence and motivation.

How to Get Started

If you haven’t planned for the year yet, it’s not too late. Here’s how to make the most of your planning session:

1. Set Time Aside: Block out uninterrupted time to reflect on your business.
2. Ask Key Questions: What needs improvement? What goals do you want to achieve this year?
3. Write It Down: Document your ideas and priorities to create a roadmap.
4. Start Small: Focus on a few key areas rather than overwhelming yourself with a long list.

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Podcast Transcript

  Hey, real quick, if you were 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 skillset 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 to date, my company, Physical Therapy Biz, has helped over a thousand clinicians start, grow, and scale their own cash practices. If this sounds like something you want to do, listen up, because I'm here to help you.

What's going on? Dr. Danny here with the P. T. Alchemist Podcast, and it's the beginning of the year. Happy new year. This is the time when everybody starts to try and get their shit together. You see this yourself, right? Everybody's trying to eat better, train more set goals, improve their business, improve their relationships.

It's actually great. I think it's actually one of my favorite times of the year to see all this positive momentum that people have. But as we all know, For most people that trails off at different times for different people, but for most people, and I'm not immune to this, by the way, I've set plenty of goals or intentions at the beginning of the year, that I'm like, I'm never going to eat a chocolate chip cookie again.

And then, January 10th comes around and I'm like, Eating a chocolate chip cookie because they're delicious and everybody is going to either, succeed or they're not going to succeed, or they're going to make somewhat progress towards the goal they have at the beginning of the year. And what I want you to think about as you're going through your business planning and thinking about what you want to improve for 2025 is I want you to realize and be okay with the fact that whatever you're planning on the business side is basically just guessing because no one really ever told me this, when I was Doing business planning.

And and I always felt I don't even know if this is the right goal. I don't know if I'm don't know if this is what I should do. I don't know if I should do something else. And what would happen is I would get so frustrated that I would just not do it. Cause I'd be like this is dumb.

I'm literally just guessing maybe this is right. Maybe this is wrong. And I wouldn't do it. So I wouldn't actually sit down and do much as far as planning the business was concerned. And what I realized was even if I, the years that I would plan, the years that I would set out the things I wanted to do for the year, for the quarter, whatever on the business side, even if I was, Not maybe right about exactly what I need to work on.

It wasn't so much about that. Here's why it's important. Even if you literally don't know if you're doing the right thing, you intentionally sitting down thinking about the areas you need to improve in your business, the things that maybe need to be added, the technology you need to improve, the people you need to hire, the marketing initiatives the revenue you might want to make, right.

The amount of new patients you want to get all these things. Even if you're. Not even right on all those things. You're going to be right on some of them and you're going to have to do work to really think about your business to even have any goals down at all. And here's where the magic is.

And this is what, I hope makes you feel better about any planning that you might do. Even if you think that it's not great planning, the fact that you sit down and you're planning, anything puts you in a better spot than the vast majority of people, because you've sat down, you've intentionally thought Taking a look at your business, the things that you need to add or remove, and that thought process itself, the work that you've calculated out that you need to do, or the goals that you've even somewhat gathered that are important, the work that you've put in to get there is worth it.

It allows you to take this 30, 000 foot view of your business and try to capture in a snapshot of goals which is always hard, right? To say, Hey, here's, I want to be this year. I don't even know if that's possible, but even if you're off, at least you've thought about it. And for most people, they haven't because what they're too busy doing is reacting.

They're being reactive. They're just, they're busy and they're, they feel like they're getting things done. It's a difference between treading water and actually like making. Progress moving forward like you can tread water and it's not easy like it feels hard It feels like you're doing something, but you're not really moving You're not swimming forward like you need to know which direction you're going.

You need to know where you're trying to go To at least start to make positive Momentum. And here's what happens. Like you can either sit here and tread water and stay busy working on all kinds of reactive things, or you could at least start swimming some direction, right? And you may not know exactly where you want to go, but in the distance, you might be able to see this land you're trying to make it to.

So let's say you're not exactly Straight in the right direction. Maybe you're off by a little bit. At least you're making forward positive momentum towards the goal, the end result that you're looking for. And what most people do is they just get frustrated and they just go back to treading water. I like screw it.

I don't think I'm going anywhere. I'm not sure I did that I'm just going to sit here and be busy. And that doesn't actually help you make progress going forward at all. So even if you feel like you have done the absolute worst goal planning and In the history of goal planning, it's better than not doing it at all because the forced mental exercise of you thinking through the things that you need to make adjustments to in your business is the whole damn point of doing the planning.

That's it. That's it. It's forced time for you to think through something, which is hard to come by because we're so inundated with all kinds of people. Different information and all kinds of different things that we need to improve or that we're working on in our own lives that we forget about planning for our business and making the right moves in our own business.

So hope that helps you. Happy new year. Do yourself a favor. If you haven't done it yet, sit down, really think about your business, try to do some rudimentary planning at best. It may be the best time you spend on your business this year.

Hey, peach entrepreneurs. We have big, exciting news, a new program that we just came out with. It is our PT biz part time to full time five day challenge over the course of the five days We get you crystal clear on exactly how much money you need to replace by getting you ultra clear on how much you're actually spending.

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Then we share with you the sales and marketing systems that we use within our mastermind that you need to have as well. If you want to go full time in your own practice. And then finally, we help you create a one page business plan. That's right. Not these 15 day business plans. You want to take the small business association, a one day business plan.

It's going to help you get very clear on exactly what you need to do. And when you're going to do it to take action. If you're interested in signing up for this challenge, it's totally free. Head to physicaltherapybiz. com forward slash challenge, get signed up there. Please enjoy. We put a lot of energy into this.

It's totally free. It's something I think is going to help you tremendously. As long as you're willing to do the work, if you're doing the work, you're getting information put down and getting yourself ready to take action in a very organized way. You will have success, which is what we want. So head to physical therapy, biz.

com forward slash challenge and get signed up today.