E223 | Three Big Takeaways From The Blueprint Live Event

On episode 223 of The Pt Entrepreneur Podcast, I recap our Blueprint Live Event from this past week. 

We hosted performance based cash practitioners ranging from $0 in monthly revenue to $8,000 in revenue.  I cover what we did in these two days to what I learned hosting this event.

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Episode Transcription:

Danny: Hey, what's going on, guys? Doc Danny here with the PT Entrepreneur podcast, and I'm coming to you the weekend after two days. Live event, feel listened to Tuesday's podcast. It was a conversation that my business partners had with me in my truck on the way to our second day of that event.

We were talking about pricing. If you haven't listened to that, go check it out. Really interesting kind of way of looking at what you're charging yourself with that says about you and. What I want to get into on this one are the three things that I learned from the event in particular, just from seeing how the attendees, you know, viewed their businesses and had similar problems.

And they were kind of three big takeaways. And, to give some context, like these were all performance-based cash practitioners. It had businesses that were, you know, really reasonably new. I would say anywhere between. Zero like hadn't even started yet. And around seven, $8,000 a month in, in a, in revenue.

So really trying to crack that five-figure Mark and, and get to a point where they can start, have enough revenue to build a team. Only a couple of people were in a place like that. Most of them will just, just getting going. And, and one hadn't even started yet. So, you know, big shout out to that person because I wish I had done something like this when I started my business.

And the goal of this was to highlight. Sections that we feel like, lead to a successful business. So think of it as a checklist. So we develop these elaborate checklists that give you a score in your business based on where you're at with sales, with marketing, with systems, and with finance, both personal and business investment are proud of these.

We think that it encompasses a lot about, or we see what they with success in the business, and they won. We went through all of those in some small group work. Day two we went through building a plan for the next 90 days of what they need to implement to achieve the changes they want in their business on a very granular level, and then some sales training because we feel like that's probably the most prominent linchpin for most people is that they just are bad at selling most selling themselves, but also trading in the office whenever somebody is there.

So there are three things that I took away from this, I think I can help everybody that listens to this. So I'm going to go through those. So number one, the number one takeaway I had was, it takes guts to start, but planning and intentional work to grow. So it's scary, and it takes many guts to start.

But once you get started, then you realize what you've done to yourself, which is you don't, you dove into, an environment that is incredibly difficult to win in. It has no structure unless you create it for yourself. And changes frequently is very, very difficult. So, everybody, there had enough self-confidence and guts to be able to say, all right, I'm going to go out on my own and do my own thing.

And for many different reasons, many were similar, right? Like being fed up with the same. Schedules that none of us likes seeing 30 people a day working with primarily Medicare work comp patients, and they want to be able to use, and we'll how to move. So that's frustrating enough to drive many of them to go and want to start their practice.

But the problem is once they do that, if they don't create an environment intentionally to grow a business, they get stuck. And there are people in there. Yeah, they've been in business. You know, I would say side hustle practice, to fulltime practice anywhere between six months to two years, still hadn't cracked, you know, the 5k mark consistently.

You know, so really being over $10,000 worth of revenue. We see people do that in our mastermind sometimes maybe as short as four to six months. And the reason why we see that is because we have structure and create intentionally things that they have to do to have the building blocks of a successful business.

This is why we get so, I guess, passionate about actually having people in our, in our mastermind, that we can help. Cause we know what happens to those people. And imagine you're flying floundering for two years when you could have had more success within six months because you don't have the right information support.

That's the problem that we see in this group. It was apparent because, for many of them, they scored poorly on many sections of our assessment. You know, booking sales, marketing in particular and systems and, and one of the significant areas is not, is not creating time in their schedule to do the things on a business level that drive

 the business forward. I'm talking about things that don't involve direct patient work, you know, and create, creating the time to start to systemize and improve and plan or for what you want to do. And no one was doing that. He's weren't doing that at all. 

You know, I have much respect for anybody that decides to go into business for themselves, but once you get there, you have to say, okay, I'm going to create this structure. I have to have this structure in place. Otherwise, his business is going to eat you alive. I, I, I had a reference in the the workshop.

Well, I said, you know, owning a business is like having like. Like, like a baby lion, in your house. Like at first, it's cold, and it's cute, and you're like all excited about it, but eventually, it grows up. And if you don't like structure things correctly, that thing can eat you all right. And, and, and ruin you.

And our business is very similar. It will take from you, and it will take you your time. It'll make your energy, and it'll take you—your resources. If you do not structure what you need to see happen in that, the business will eat you alive. Just like it's refreshing to have a little lion Cub around, and then it gets more prominent, and it's hungry, and you're not feeding it all the time, and it does not have a structure.

Yes. What's next? It's going to eat you. So rule moral of the story. Don't have a lined cup. It's a bad idea. Anyway. Number two. Everyone forgets about the people that they already worked with. And I see this over and over and over again. Everybody that talks to me, it's just like, how do I get more new patients?

How do we get more patients? And look, if you're just starting and you haven't had a new patient, you need to get more new patients. I get it. But those of you that have worked with people, you have to remember it's five times more expensive to get a new patient than to reactivate or keep an existing patient.

And that is incredible. A useful thing to have and to remember because when you're trying to grow your volume or have consistency in your business to make sure that you can stick around and it's going to work, you can improve it past yourself. Those people are a gold mine that you just forget about, and you never do anything with them.

And some people in our, at our event, they had. Two hundred people that they've worked with and hadn't done anything to reactivate those people, reach back out to those people, see how they were doing if there's any way they could continue to support them, you know, in several different ways and add value to what they're doing.

These are people that have already paid you, that like you, that trust you. It's the easiest sell in the world, and you know, for you to try to get a new person in the door is so much harder. And I think if you're listening to this and you have a. You know, a preexisting base of customers that you are intentionally touching base with and trying to create options for them that allow you to, you know, provide value to them, improve your business, but also improve their lives.

You're missing out. Oh. And a big chunk of, you know, business and PTs terrible with this. You think if you owned an ice cream store, you know, if you said like, okay, buy this, Six pack of ice cream cones for me. But then after that, don't come back. You're discharged. You're released from my ice cream shop.

Hell no. They would never do that. They would be out of business. It's just the dumbest business model in the world. Let's just get people in the door, and then let's just never try and see them ever again. That's, and I'll tell you why it's like that because insurance doesn't reimburse for many things past a certain point.

They don't reimburse you. I was working on it. Improving someone's health and wellness, you know, being able to have conversations with them about sleep and nutrition, stress management, doing, you know, performance-based work with them. They don't do that. So the traditional model that you've learned and that you've been taught in most of our profession understands is not the model that we talk about because it doesn't work unless you have a ton of volume coming your way from things like post-op referral partners that are.

You know, sending you a ton of volume, that insurance is reimbursing for it. We don't mess with that stuff at all. So when we work with somebody, we want to have an ongoing long term relationship, and it's an awesome thing for us to see too. We got an email yesterday from one of ours, one of the people we've worked with.

I work with this guy for probably two years now. And, you know, it was typical kind of desk-based weekend warrior guy, kept hurting himself and, and we finally got some structure to what he's doing. And, and you know, he's, he's done well, but probably in as good a shape now than he was 10, 15 years ago.

And he sent us a picture of him on top of this height that he had done. He was out in Colorado somewhere. He hikes up to the top of this. I think it's like a 14,000-foot summit. And, he sends us an email with this picture, just saying like, how he wouldn't have been able to do this without what we have done with him.

And how thankful he was for us, you know, to help support him in his, in his goals and keep them active as he's getting older and engaging with his kids. And I mean, it's refreshing to see stuff like that. And that's the kind of people we get to help and be a part of their lives. And that's not the kind of person that I want to say, Hey, don't come back.

You know, unless you're hurt, then see me. I guess that's a stupid model, and it's one that I've practiced for, you know, years. Whenever I first started my practice, before I realized what I was doing. So hopefully, you're just getting going. You can see this from the get-go and, and you know, much better place a couple of years in.

And even, you know, where I was. So, okay, number three, everyone needs coaching and support every time that I'm around other business owners, you know that at events like this that we do in our mastermind. I'm always shocked at just like the simple stuff that people are missing, and it's, it's, and I do the same thing, which is the reason why I have business coaches and mentors, and I'm in mastermind groups.

It's because there's so much that you can miss, and you get so biased based on it. Your day today and the things that you're dealing with and, and the, you start just to have this narrow, closed view of what you need to work on, but it may not be what you need to be focusing on. And it can take your attention away from the essential things that drive your business forward.

And as I sat here with this group and talk to them about there are businesses and their story and hear them interacting with each other. It's just so exciting to see. Then, the lack of clarity in many cases that people have because they're so busy just doing the thing that they're trying to build and this, it's the double-edged sword of somebody when it's just them early on.

And Michael Gerber wrote an excellent book about this called E-Myth. And what you have to realize is that if you are, just, you know, growing your practice, practicing, you're just super, super busy and you're, there's no one else involved, and there's no revenue that's coming in without you being there, then you have a job, and you're self-employed at that, which is even worse because you have no benefits.

There's no one to support you. No company's going to help you. At least when I was in the army, I had all these people that could pick up the slack for me if something terrible happened. But you know, the challenge is when you're self-employed. No one's there, and this happened with somebody, even in our mastermind, who is on the verge of hiring.

You were literally like put the post out to hire another PT that same week. He tears his distal bicep ten, and he's in an immobilizer for like six weeks. And what's the business? He's losing out on a ton. It's a dangerous place to be. It's a, it's a place that you don't want to be forever, and there's a reason why you want to have employees.

There's because of a safer place for everyone because you can then share the risk instead of you have all of the risks. And. To get there. There are so many things that you have to be able to get right. You have to understand how to get your schedule busy, how to price yourself effectively, how to sell, how to market yourself both locally and via content digitally.

How did then hire and find talent, how to retain type talent, how to systemize your business in a way where when somebody leaves. Other people can pick up the slack and get the systems down quickly to then fill in and be just as good in those roles. That's important. That's my new dog, by the way.

You decided to go ahead and scratches the neck. Thanks, Teddy. Scratch his neck like crazy while I'm trying to make a profound point, anyway, back to this. Everybody misses things when they try to do it by themselves, and it's also the reason why. You don't try to teach yourself how to swim. You don't try to teach yourself how to play baseball.

You know you don't try to teach yourself any number of athletic tasks that we've done. You have a coach for those things. It's because that person sees where you're missing something. It gives you things to do to improve on those, holds you accountable, and you get exponential improvements because of that.

And I think that's the biggest thing that you need to be aware of as a business owner, is that you look at what you're doing as. This, I don't know only, you're almost like a martyr. Like I work so hard like I'm working 12 hour days. I've been doing it for however long like I'm grinding it out, you know? Okay.

Keep grinding yourself down into a ton of little pieces as it's not working for years, and then look back and wonder how much time you've wasted, how much revenue. You have lost out on because you don't have these things in place. That's probably a much bigger question. And I sat here thinking this self, this myself, there are people in here that had been going at this for, you know, well over, you know, one to two years and are in a place that, again, we see people in our mastermind group get within six months.

How much lost revenue? Is that because of mistakes? Mistakes that are avoidable when you know that you're making them and have a plan on how not to make those anymore. And that's a challenge, for us, is that we see this stuff and it's so hard for a business owner to see it when they're in it because there are so many other things they're thinking about.

And the last thing that they want is to be able to have another cost to reinvest in themselves. Then hopefully, you know, grow because they don't see that it's going to work. We see it all the time. And they're not sure. They're skeptical. And I very much was. As well. It took much pain for me to get to a point where I ended up bringing a coach on.

And ever since I did, I'll not have one. I'm always, and I'm always seeking out people that have done something that I'm trying to do because it's the fastest course of action to get there. And you know, investing in, let's, let's, let's call it a stock market, right? So like many of us invest in retirement, whatever plans.

Individual stocks, whatever you want to do. Historically, the stock market has returned 8% 8% per year on average over time, right? I think that's actually after the great depression only includes that 8% the average return on investment that we see in our mastermind group in year one is like 580% 580% now, think about this.

If you're investing in somebody else's business with your money, you have no say over what they do or don't do. Do you want to invest in Apple? Cool. Or something terrible had happened out. I phones could start blowing up in people's faces, and you have nothing to do with that. No. Say over that whatsoever.

And you decide, I'm going to do this. I'm going to invest my retirement with companies that know nothing about you. You don't know anything about them. For the most part, you just liked the way their logo looks now. Versus taking that same money and thinking to yourself, how can I invest in my own business and information that can help me grow it in resources that I don't have in leveraging other people's data?

I think if you look at it, what you're doing is you're shooting yourself in the foot. If you're trying to figure it out all by yourself, and that is what most people are trying to do, and then they take the route of investing in. Mmm leveraged, you know, 401ks Roth, IRAs, whatever it might be when in actuality, the safest investment you could make is in yourself.

If you know that you're going to put the work in to take information and get the change that you can achieve in your business to get that 500 plus percent return versus 8% and I don't know about you, but that's where I want to put my money. I don't invest at all in the whirlwind K stock market at any store, Roth IRAs.

Anyway, I stopped doing that as soon as I started my own business. Every dollar that I want to reinvest in, I put it in my business, and I'm using the exponential change and where we were at, you know, the year that I got out of the army and where I am today, much, much more so than it would ever have been if I would've been investing in other people's companies.

And that's the challenge for many of you. You don't see it that way, but make sure that you look at your business as an investment, not just a way to pay your bills. It can be something that can change your family's financial future for generations if you do it in the right direction. And for those that you are interested in kind of seeing.

What we do with people. What we have been able to do. There's a cool site that we have that you can see. Some of our mastermind members talk about it. Their stories are probably very similar to yours, and you can head to physicaltherapybiz.com/stories. So that's physicaltherapybiz.com/mastermind-stories.

And you can see three of our members talk about their process, different stages that they're in within their business, and how important it's been for them to reinvest in itself and what they've gotten back. But I think people that are strangers, you trust the opinions of strangers much more than me.

I'm very biased. This is my company. I'm the one that helps people with this stuff. But you don't know these other people, you know? And. Their stories are really, really interesting, and they may sound very similar to yours, and hopefully, you can look at your business as something to invest in and, and start to make that connection and put those resources towards that.

I am so breaking down again. Number one, it takes guts to start planning and voluntary work. We'll get you to grow. And we're too; everyone forgets about people that they already worked with, and they chase new patients—only number three. Everybody needs a coach. Everybody needs a coach, and everybody needs support and accountability because starting and growing a business, the hardest thing I've ever done in my life and for me to be able to support people in that has been such a cool thing to be a part of and excellent.

To see these businesses grow, and then people go from not always going to work all of a sudden. Not knowing what to do with all the additional cash they have each month, which is an entirely different place to be financially and be able to take that then and do things like, I don't know, pay off all your student loans faster.

We had a guy at our mastermind that finished paying off all the student loans in a year with all the extra revenue he generated for this business. I didn't change our opinion self one day and paid off all the additional student loans. He had been one year. Now he has no students, no that at all. And this year, it's going to be cool to see what he does this business and be able to scale it as he can.

Then reinvest even more in hiring people and bringing the staff on. So, guys, I hope this helps. I hope you take something away from it. I appreciate everybody that made it to the event—this last two days, and as always, thanks for listening to the podcast. We'll catch you next time.

Do you want more cash, PT, biz help? If so, get a copy of my book, Fuck insurance. It's your playbook to successful performance PT practice and never having to deal with insurance again. You can get a free copy at finsurancebook.com that's finsurancebook.com. Inside this book, you'll learn the direct techniques that we've used to become one of the fastest 100% cash PT practices in the country.