E800 | What I Wish I Knew 10 Years Ago: Business and Life at 40
Mar 25, 2025
This past weekend, I turned 40. We packed a big cabin in North Georgia with family and close friends—about 30 of us. It was awesome. Well, aside from the norovirus that tore through half the group (me included). But even that gave me time to reflect.
A decade ago, I was just getting out of the military. I had zero business experience, a young family, and a desire to start something of my own. Now, after building and scaling multiple businesses and helping over 1,000 clinicians do the same, I’ve learned a few things the hard way.
Here are 10 lessons I wish someone had told me when I was 30. My hope? That one of these helps you make a better decision, faster, without needing to hit the same potholes I did.
1. Comparison Is the Thief of Joy
You will always lose the comparison game. Social media, other clinics, your old classmates—you name it. Focus on your race, your goals, your life. Nothing good ever came from obsessing over someone else’s highlight reel.
2. You Don’t Need It All Figured Out
Just move in the right direction. When you’re early in business, everything feels overwhelming. What matters most isn’t clarity—it’s momentum. Decide where you want to go, then say no to anything that takes you off course.
3. Your Kids Don’t Care How Much Money You Make
They care if you’re there. They want cardboard box forts, walks around the block, and pancakes on Sunday. Don’t trade presence for prestige. I almost did—and I’m glad I caught it early.
4. Your Body Is Your Vehicle in Life
You can’t serve others if you’re run down, burnt out, and underslept. Prioritize your health—just like you tell your patients to. Sleep, train, eat well. You’ll think better, lead better, and last longer.
5. Wolves Don’t Concern Themselves With the Opinions of Sheep
Fear of judgment keeps more people stuck than fear of failure. I almost didn’t leave the military because I was scared of what others would think if I failed. Screw that. The only opinions that matter come from people who love you and tell you the truth.
6. Delay Gratification Early On
When we started our business, we paid ourselves the same as my military salary—for five years. No lifestyle creep. That decision gave us freedom to reinvest, stay lean, and avoid panic when income dipped. It was one of the best financial decisions we ever made.
7. But Don’t Delay Forever
Eventually, you should use your money to create memories. Read Die With Zero if you haven’t. Go on the trip. Throw the birthday party. Say yes to the moment—because you won’t be able to enjoy it the same way when you're 70.
8. Cash Flow Is King
High revenue looks good on Instagram. High net profit pays the bills, grows the team, and buys your time back. Your business needs to generate real cash, or you’ll always feel strapped—no matter how big the top line is.
9. Recurring Revenue = Freedom
It took me years to realize this: If you're always chasing new patients, you’re building a treadmill. Create something that brings people back—monthly memberships, ongoing care, remote coaching. It builds predictability, lowers stress, and keeps your team secure.
10. You Can Have It All—But Not If You Try to Do It All Alone
I’m proud of what we’ve built at PT Biz—not because it’s big, but because it helps people win at business and life. Not burnout. Not broken marriages. Not empty bank accounts with full schedules. You can have financial freedom, health, great relationships, and impact. But it takes discipline and community.
Final Thoughts
If one of these lessons hit home for you, good. Now do something about it.
Start the project. Skip the comparison. Schedule the trip. Hug your kid.
Build the business and the life you actually want.
And if you want help getting there—we’ve got a community for that.
👉 Book a free strategy call
👉 Try Clare AI for free → MeetClaire.ai
Thanks for reading.
– Doc Danny
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Podcast Transcript
Danny: Now it's no secret. I didn't like writing notes whenever I was a clinician, but what I really didn't was babysitting my staff and getting them to write their notes. And as odd as it might sound, it's a real problem when you're trying to get your staff to stay up to date on their notes and they're just trying to catch up on it because they're busy with everything else.
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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 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.
Hey, Danny Matei here, founder of physical therapy biz, and I just turned 40 and what I want to do was share what I wish I would have known. 10 years ago when we started our first business today on the podcast. So this past weekend I turned 40 I got together with about 30 friends and family at a big cabin in North Georgia.
It was great. We had a fantastic time except for the fact that norovirus. Swept through the house and about half the people there have been very miserable for the last few days, me included, but I had a fantastic time aside from that. And I gave me some time to really sit and reflect and think and honestly just be grateful for the fact that I could get together with so many friends and family that everyone is.
healthy, everyone is doing well And for me in particular it gave an opportunity to really think about just how much has changed in our life in the last 10 years And I want to share You know my thoughts on that with you and I have 10 things That I feel like I've learned that I wish I would have known 10 years ago When we started our practice, I was just coming out of the military No business experience, anything like that.
And now a lot of the stuff that we learned, I wish somebody would have told me a mentor or something like that. Because a lot of these lessons are, you learn the hard way and in some cases that's the best way to learn them. But either way, if I can help you avoid maybe some of the challenges that I've gone through and you can just listen to what I have to say and be like, yeah, that sounds better than me doing this other way it's a win, right?
Number one comparison is the thief of joy. This is something that I feel like I say all the time. It's a Teddy Roosevelt quote and the whole concept of it is pretty straightforward, right? Comparison is a thief of joy. Comparison is a funny thing because for those of us that are competitive, which are most people that are actually going to start a business.
I think that's a pretty common attribute for a lot of those folks for better or worse. You're very competitive and it's very common to compare yourself to other people around you. But when we do that, What happens is it never really works out well for us. We're either going to feel better about ourself, and cool, good for you, you're doing better than somebody else.
That's a dickhead thing to to focus on. Or you're not doing as well as somebody else, and then you make yourself feel bad, right? You're like, oh, so and so looks like they have a whatever, better business than me. It looks like they go on cooler vacations than I do. It looks like they do all these other things.
And in social media in particular, it's so easy to curate your life for all the best parts of it and not the not so great parts of it. It'd be like me showing all these pictures of our family going to this cabin in North Georgia, but. Half of the people there are, have a norovirus, like that's the, that's a great part of it, but you can take that out and just make it look like everyone's having this awesome time, which we had a great time until everyone got sick, right?
But the reality is you can make your life look however you want. And other people do this all the time. And it's very easy for us to compare ourselves to other people and feel bad about where we're at or what we're doing, or maybe we're not doing enough. And and that is a very bad place to be because it frankly doesn't matter.
We make more progress when we focus on what we're trying to do and where we're trying to go and the things that we need to put in place or the work that we need to have done in order for us to get where we're going than it is to focus on anybody else. And I see this constantly in businesses where people are comparing themselves to other businesses And then they get in this sort of reactive state of, Oh I'm not doing this type of ad, or I'm not doing this type of program, or I didn't do this type of like email campaign.
And now all of a sudden they, they take their attention away from the things that they're working on. And then they go to copy everybody else. And when you're copying other people in particular in a business, it's never a good place to be. You never want to be on that side of it. You always want to be doing the things that.
are unique to you and your business and align with what you're trying to accomplish in the business. So comparison is the thief of joy. Number two, right? You don't have to have it all figured out. You just have to make constant progress in the right direction. So there's a internal resource that we wrote for our for our mastermind clients.
And this is something we'll probably have access for everybody. It's called the clinician's compass. This is a small book that I wrote that really is to help people understand What race they're running in the direction they're trying to go. So the idea of this is understanding where you want to end up in life, understanding what business vehicle coincides with that to get you there.
And then starting to reverse engineer. Getting that business to the place that needs to be in order for you to have the life that you want versus what most people do is they build a business that becomes their life and they sacrifice everything else around them in order for that to be successful.
Well, a lot of people feel like they have to have everything figured out. They need to figure. Oh, I need this many clinicians. I want this many locations. I want, whatever everything figured out. It's not that's just not the case what you need to do is just make constant progress in the right direction because It's not that clear especially when you're first getting started Imagine like trying to do annual planning or quarterly planning in a new business and you have no idea what to expect, right?
You're just guessing you're trying to make forward progress in the right direction And you're going to get a lot of opportunities that come your way and they need to align with the direction you're trying to go because these things can take you off Course very easily very quickly and distract you from where you're actually trying to go And that's why it's so important to just have a general idea of where you're trying to go Right for me.
It's you know I want everything I say yes to create more time and financial freedom for myself and my family, right? Okay, so what aligns with that many things don't align with that many opportunities that have come our way We say no to because they're going to take a lot of my time and it limits my ability to coach my kids.
It limits my ability to spend time with my wife. It limits my ability to have physical activity on a daily basis so that I can stay healthy and participate in things with my friends and family that I want to do. And there's always going to be, if you say yes to something, you're saying no to something else.
If I say yes to this meeting, I'm saying no to taking my daughter on a, breakfast date. Like these are the things you have to keep in mind. You have a limited amount of time and you just need to know. what direction you're trying to go. And at that point, you can trust your gut and make decisions based on that.
But if you don't have a general idea of where you're trying to go, how do you know if you're making progress in the right direction? You're just guessing, right? You're just guessing. And this is what most people do is they're very reactive about the decisions that they make in their business. And oftentimes they end up in a place that they didn't want to be.
Sadly, this is very common. With with the entrepreneur community, because we get blindsided. We just get these blinders on of, we have to have success in our business. It's so important. It's so important. And everything else falls apart around us. So you don't have to have it all figured out. You just have to know that you're making progress in the right direction.
Okay. Number three. Your kids don't care how much money you make this is actually something that I think anybody that has kids or maybe you have a dog, whatever your dog doesn't care how much money you make. They just want to hang out with you. They just want to go on a walk, like your kids are the same way.
And for many of us, this is something that's. There's this thing we tell ourself where we say, I'm doing this for my family. I'm putting all this hard work in for them. And when they get frustrated, cause you're not around, cause you're working so hard and you're trying to get, your business to to be successful.
And if you don't have any balance around that, at least some amount of balance, you're, what's going to happen is you're going to. Avoid the people that love you the most unintentionally because you think you're doing the right thing, right? And this is something that for me, you know with having young kids when we started our business you think they don't remember those things you think they're not gonna remember if you're not around I can remember if you're constantly gone Is it that's just not true like they remember and all I want to do is just hang out with you They just want to spend time with you and the reality is They don't care how much money you make.
They don't even have a reference point for that. I remember like my kids, we got them, all these Christmas gifts one year. And this was like the most, like we've ever spent on Christmas ever, right? And we're like, oh man, we've got this cool shit for the kids. Like they're going to love this.
And all they want to do is play with the boxes. They just want to build forts with the boxes with, with my wife and I. That's it. That's all they cared about. They didn't care about the toys they got or anything like that. They just want to hang out. With a cardboard box, right? So what you think value other people value is not necessarily what they do And your kids in particular if you have them or your dog, they just want to spend time with you They just want you to be around them and to enjoy each other.
So don't discount that because that is Also free you don't need a lot of money to be able to do that You need time and you need being present and that's really important to not forget that because you know Having been around a lot of entrepreneurs at this point. It's so common to see a lot of success With failure in other parts of people's lives.
Like it's sad when you see somebody and they have all this financial success, all this success in a business arena, and they have no relationship with their kids, like their kids won't talk to them. Or they've ruined their health or these other things are so important and I just don't want you to be one of those people.
Because I was close to being one of those people and luckily for me, I got around the right people learn how to manage this, the entrepreneur life. I have a a spouse that will call me on my shit, which is incredibly helpful and important. And for some of you, if you don't have those things, you can trend the wrong direction.
You got to make sure you're focused on the right thing. So remember your kids don't care how much money you make. They just want to hang out. All right. They want to spend time with you. Okay. Number four, your body's your vehicle in life. Take care of it. For clinicians, that's my background. Most people, watching this, that's your background, but yet it's so easy for us to not take care of ourselves.
Because. We're so busy trying to have success in this other area that is challenging and that we don't understand And when I was just starting our clinic, I was still teaching a lot I was traveling two to three times a month to teach for kelly sturett's group. Which is called the ready state now at the time.
It was called mobility wad So I was traveling two or three times a month I was doing workshops late, in the evening to try to get patients with local marketing. I was treating all the patients I was doing a lot and I was burning at both ends and the thing that I took away where I could create more time was sleep so I started to really limit my sleep because I would go to work come back I would hang out with my family when my kids would go to sleep Which was like pretty early because they're pretty young, they're 7 30 8 o'clock then I would I would go right back to working, And then I would work until maybe midnight and then i'd be up at 4 15 because i'd work out at 4 15 get to the clinic 6 a.
m patient, and so I would say four four to five hours of sleep is all that I All I had for years and eventually my health started to deteriorate. I started to get like weird symptoms. I started to feel very fatigued. I started to have a hard time training and recovering and your body will start to let you know it's like your check engine light is coming on and you can only treat yourself.
Really poorly like that for a short period of time before it starts to have other effects. It creates a lot of negative problems for you. In particular, your emotional control, right? Like when you're tired, you're like a baby, right? If a baby's tired, they're just like they're, they lose their temper easier, right?
Like they, they cry easier. When you don't have sleep, like you're just not as good at thinking through things. You don't have as good of emotional control. You lash out at other people. These are things that happen because you're tired. So that's a huge one. You've got to sleep. You've got to take care of yourself.
You've got to put good food into your body and take care of yourself because this is your vehicle in life. And if this breaks down, then you can't accomplish these things that you want in your business to be able to get you where you're trying to go with you and your family. And it's so counterintuitive for a clinician.
When we talk to people about this constantly, think about how many people you talk to about sleep, nutrition, movement, stress management. And then all of a sudden, if you actually look at yourself, are you doing what you're telling other people to do? Because I sure was not. And many of you are probably not either.
And you can only do that for so long before it creates a problem for you. So you've got to reinvest in yourself. And I feel this even more now than ever, right? It's, I don't recover the way that I used to. Like I need to spend more time warming up. I need to get more water every day. Like I have to sleep a certain amount.
Otherwise my recovery is just not very good. And if I want to be physically active with my family, which I want to do, I have to put time and effort back into my physical health, my mental health in order to be the person that I want to be around them. And the person to lead the business that you're starting, that you're growing, like that person needs to show up and have.
energy and they have to have focus and these things come from us really pouring back into ourself and making sure that we're being healthy, that we're not necessarily just burning at both ends and just work. Cause that's what a lot of people will do and it's a mistake and eventually it'll catch up to you.
Okay. Wolves don't concern themselves with the opinions of sheep. So that again, wolves don't concern themselves with the opinions of sheep. I had someone tell me this one time and. I thought I was like, that doesn't make any sense but it really does, if you think about it when we put it in the context of what other people think about you and how you feel about that.
And sadly the way that other people think about us, we put far too much emphasis on right. The. The way we're perceived the way you think you're perceived and too many people will avoid doing things That they really want to do in life Because of fear of what it will look like to people that they care about or maybe even people they don't care about That they're just worried will have You know, some sort of opinion of them and this idea of wolves don't concern themselves with the opinions of sheep.
What do they care? It's a it's apex predator and dinner, right? And i'm not saying you know to that extreme maybe with people's opinions You should care that little but you should care a hell of a lot less than you think and all of us have Things that we haven't done that maybe we regret or we wish we would have done and if you really look back at that for most of us the root of that is fear of what other people would think of us, not necessarily if we did it, but if we failed.
And this stops a lot of people from doing something that's very meaningful to them. This stops a lot of people from taking a chance on themselves. This was something that was very hard for me. Whenever I got out of the military, one of the, one of the concerns I had. Was what if this doesn't work, I'm giving up this career and I was you know Checking every box needed to be able to continue to make rank in the military and work my way up You know the ranks Over a career.
What if I get out and I decide I'm gonna go teach for you know for mobility wide I'm gonna I'm gonna start a cash based clinic which at the time nobody even knew what the heck that was really And if it doesn't work am I going to be able to go back in the military? Could I go back with my tail between my legs and ask for my job back?
Would I have to get a job at a clinic that maybe I didn't enjoy? I get a lot of value out of? What if I failed? I'm giving up this very secure path, this career that I've been working towards in order to do this thing that I wasn't sure was going to work. And it wasn't that I was necessarily scared of financial ruin or anything like that.
It was really, I was scared of, if this doesn't work, it's gonna be really embarrassing for me. Hey, sorry to interrupt the podcast, but I have 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 for more clinicians and really help them develop time and financial freedom. So if you would do that, I would greatly appreciate it. Now, back to the podcast. And I'm going to look like a fool because all these people have told me that why are you doing this?
Like you have this sure path, you have this career, you have this, however many more years and make rank and then get military retirement and pension and healthcare for life and all this stuff, right? And if it doesn't work, you're going to look like an idiot. That's the way that I viewed it.
I wasn't actually afraid of the financial side of it as much. I felt like Ashton and I were very financially responsible, but it was the fear of it not working and me looking like a failure right after having given up. This job in the military and that stops a lot of people the fear of failure the fear of what other people are going to think Stops so many people from actually taking a chance on themselves It stops you from starting that business that you want to start it stops you from asking that person out that you really you know really want to date, but you're scared they're going to say no and all your friends are going to laugh at you.
It's possible from all kinds of amazing things that they're just scared of what other people are going to think. And they're scared of the rejection and the embarrassment that they might feel and the way that other people will feel about them. And in reality think about this for a second, the people that really matter to you, that the people that actually care about you, do you think that they're going to harass you?
Do you think they're going to say. I told you so dummy. Like you should have just done this or this. Absolutely not. That's not going to happen. But yet in our mind we think that and the concerns that we put on what other people think the fear we have around what other people think is one of probably the most profound ways to stop you getting what you want in life.
It has ruined more people's dreams than about anything else that I can think of. So you got to realize you can't concern yourself with what other people think about you. And it's very hard for people pleasing clinicians like ourself. We're just trying to make people happy. We're just trying to get people better.
Awesome. That's a great Habit or that's a great trait to have in so many ways But it's also very negative when it comes to you taking a chance on yourself So do not concern yourself with what other people think so much do not worry about the failure of it Think about what happens if you don't even take a chance on that and then you're too old to do anything about it That's scary as fuck to me versus what we're talking about with failing Not scary at all.
And as soon as you start to put yourself in those positions, you get better and better at it. And it starts to affect you less and less. And that's where you got to really focus. Your attention is pushing yourself into areas where you're uncomfortable and not being so concerned about what other people think of you.
Okay. Next one, delay gratification as long as you can. So at this point, We've worked with over a thousand clinicians in physical therapy biz. And this isn't like a thousand people bought the book that I wrote. This is a thousand people that we've worked with face to face, help them in their business, in the trenches with them, helping them actually start, grow and scale these businesses.
And one thing that I've noticed that is an absolute trend is that the people that tend to have the most success are the best at delaying gratification. And here's what I mean by this. So let's say we have two different clinics. And both of them are off to a hot start. Let's say they both get to the point where they're seeing, they're generating 15, 000, 20, 000, 25, 000 a month by themselves in their clinic.
Clinician one takes that money and they move into a bigger house. They buy a nicer car. They go on a really nice vacation. They have this disposable income now that they're not used to making as a clinician making 80, 000 a year. And all of a sudden, maybe They're clearing 160, 000 a year.
So they have this net of 80, 000. That's awesome. We have this additional money that we can live this big life with clinician number two, lives the same exact life, takes that money and reinvest it in their business, reinvest it in savings in paying debt down in investing outside the business grows that.
And is able to grow that to multiple people and put themselves in a really good cash position because they have now saved a lot of that money that they've made, but they haven't moved the goalpost on their lifestyle. The amount that will slow you down, if you start to have success and live this big life that you might want, but you might need to delay longer than you're willing to, will slow you down so much and the people that are.
willing to delay gratification and reinvest back in that business, reinvest back in themselves, reinvest back in investments outside the business, they put themselves in such a different place financially. And this is something that I think Ashley and I did really well, because when we got out of the military, I was making about 78, 000 a year as a captain stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia.
And that was our salary, right? So when we got out, we started paying ourself. a salary like a paycheck from the day that we could write from in the business that was equivalent to my paycheck from the army. And we didn't change that for five years, we did not change what we paid ourself, even though our income like went up by multiples of what I was making whenever I was in the military, we didn't change our lifestyle.
And because of that. Within a few years, we had eradicated debt that we had completely paid it off. We had put ourself in a position to have cash reserves in our business to really expand and grow into standalone spaces to, to be able to hire people, to be able to get time freedom and not have to do everything.
And that was massive for us to be able to spend more time with our family in particular. And we'd put ourself in a place where we had started to snowball. Savings and investments, even outside the business that have, compounded over years and years that wouldn't have happened if we weren't able to actually save as much money as we did as our income grew.
And this is a very hard thing for people. In fact, I see this. Trip people up all the time because if you're if you're used to making a certain amount of money And now all of a sudden you're making, more. It's a natural tendency to start to you, Buy that nicer car live in that bigger house go on that nicer vacation, you know buy that go out to those nicer restaurants all these things that You're gonna you want to do and you want to have that sort of reward from the hard work that you've put in i'm not saying not to do that because the next thing i'm going to talk about is counterintuitive this ironically But it's it's about delaying gratification early on so that you can put yourself in a place where you have a foundation financially a foundation of of fiscal habits that are solid because with businesses here's what you got to keep in mind You have it can undulate Okay, meaning you can have great years and then it can go down or you can have great years and then you go through an expansion cycle and all of a sudden you're making less money than you were and that can feel very scary, especially if your income goes down a lot and you're, and you've expanded your lifestyle into it versus what we did was keep it exactly the same.
So we didn't really care. So as we grew and reinvested in the business and we go through hiring people and taking on more expenses, we saw our net profit go down, which is normal during growth phases. And then it went back up as we were able to fill the schedules up of the providers that we had, and we were able to add other profit centers to the business and that put us in a completely different place, but we didn't, it didn't affect us in a negative way because.
We were used to living off of money that we were able to pay ourself no matter You know how much the business went up or down because it was such a small amount in comparison to what? The net profit of the business actually was so don't move the goalpost delay gratification as long as you can and then you can start living this big life that you want and i'll talk about that next actually because delaying gratification forever is a terrible idea.
So the next thing would be to die with zero. I don't necessarily mean exactly die with zero, but this is a book that I read. It's called Die With Zero. And it's a, the concepts of the book I like a lot. The author is a, like a billionaire. I think at least, hundreds of millions of dollars, if not, billion in net worth.
So you're talking about somebody that lives a very different life than you and I. So some of the concepts are maybe don't apply exactly, but it's a great sort of philosophy. It's a great way of rethinking how we prioritize money. And for many people, they prioritize money over time. And they prioritize possessions over experiences.
And in my experience, those are not the most valuable things. Pouring back into your friends, your family, spending time with them, creating these unique experiences, these opportunities to create memories and this is like probably one of the core portions of the book that elements of the book that I really took away that I thought was fantastic.
And it was this idea of, How important experiences are how important is the document those experiences and the reason why is you get what's called memory dividends. So Imagine you go on a trip with your family to Disney, right? Okay, like you have young kids you take them there They have an awesome time.
You're taking pictures. It's expensive Sure, like I get it but a couple years later all of a sudden you're looking through some photos and you see these pictures of you and your family and At disney on the teacup ride or you know eating a mickey ice cream stick, or something like that like You're going to get all of a sudden you remember that and you get what's called a memory dividend and that is just as Important as the actual trip like that's the cool part about it is you get this dividend of the actual experience and Those experiences are so important though and it doesn't have to be something expensive like it could literally be going to the park with your family and Organizing this to where you get together And you throw a frisbee and you grill out and you just hang out together and you enjoy that time around the right people.
Because these shared experiences are really important. And one of the mistakes that people make when they delay gratification, they get really good at it. This is a mistake that Ashley and I made in particular, was then all of a sudden you don't want to spend money on anything. Even if you can't, even if it's important, even if it creates a meaningful experience for you and your family, you still say to yourself, no, I can't do that.
Because what if I need this or what if I need to invest in this thing or what if I need this for the business And if you do that the rest of your life, you avoid these fantastic experiences that maybe do cost a little bit of money, but they cost time more than anything else. And they cost your attention and they cost your ability to be creative, to think about what you can do with your family.
This is a real problem. And for many people, the idea of just save for retirement, delay, wait until you're old, then you can start experiencing the world like this is so ass backwards, right? Like you can't. Experience the world in the same way when you're 70 as you can when you're 25 30, right?
If you want to go backpack through europe and sleep at hostels You can't do that over a certain age or you're a creep, right? You're it's weird. You definitely can't do that when you're like 70 That'd be much harder for you to do than if you're 23, right? So timing of these things is really important and just understanding that it's not all about just money.
It's not all about just keeping all that money and waiting until you're old to use it one day. It's about using it Effectively and curating experiences and time with the right people. Along the way this is actually one of the reasons why I had such a big birthday party I never do this like I never ever prioritize my birthday I read this book and I've been prioritizing my birthday the last couple years and So for me like I just want people to be around each other I want to be able to have a good time with people that I don't see as much as I wish I did Friends family and bring them together and let them be around each other and see each other and curate these cool experiences that we can have you know with one another so that I can be a part of their life and I can share some of the financial success we've had with them without them having to worry about paying for anything, right?
That's a really cool place to be And it's a unique place you get when you have success in your business But you also have to realize that you have to be able to share it along the way and if you don't then you end up being old with a bunch of money and Unable to experience the world in the way that maybe you could have along the way because you're physically more capable So die with zero the concept of it the book.
I would highly recommend reading it. It's The title is die with zero. It's fantastic. It's made a big impact on me. Okay. Cashflow is king. If you're going to start a business, you need to start a profitable business and cashflow is one of those things. And the really net profit is one are one of those things that are the most important.
So gross revenue, which would be the money that business makes prior to before any expenses is in many ways, a vanity number, net profit and cashflow. This is how much. Actual cash is coming back to you as a business owner to do any number of things you may want to do. Maybe you want to reinvest in the business.
Maybe you want to hire people. You want to grow. Maybe you want to take that money and you want to move it into things outside the business. But what net profit and cashflow allows you to do is to be able to like actually have security in it from the business. I have a friend who has like It's like a 20 million top line business, but it's a it's a juice company and the net margins on this are very low, right?
Like they're very low. And if they need to get a new piece of equipment or if all this fruit goes bad or something like that, it can actually like completely ruin months of profitability for this business, even though it's so big. And it's a very stressful type of business to run versus when we look at like these cash and hybrid based clinics having.
A relatively high percentage of net profit puts you in a much better place as far as stress is concerned as far as predictability is concerned and it's it's less likely to be in a bad spot to where it ends up getting shut down So high cash flow high net profit Businesses are really important to make sure that you are keeping your profit at a high percentage because without profit, you just have revenue and nothing to show for it at the end of the day.
And a lot of people like to say Oh, I have this 20 million business or whatever. And we even track gross revenue, but it's because it's the easiest thing to track. Getting somebody to submit their P and L is harder than you think and have it accurate is is a bit challenging. But net profit is what we really care about.
And here's the other thing that's really important. If you don't have cashflow and net profit, you're never going to be able to hire people inside the business that can be in leadership positions in your business. If you're trying to remove yourself and let's say autopilot your clinic to where you don't have to run the day to day of it and you create true time freedom for yourself.
You can't do that without having the corresponding cashflow to be able to pay somebody, right? Maybe it's a profiteer or more of a salary or whatever it is, or getting really talented people. It requires money. And if you don't have the cashflow, you don't have the profit. You're never going to be able to hire anybody in the business that can actually come up with decisions on their own.
That's going to be a leader in the company. And you need that if you're going to try to create time freedom for yourself to some degree. Otherwise. You still have created a job for yourself, if you can't leave the business for a month, if you can't if you get hit by a bus and the business doesn't work, you have a job still, right?
And you need cash flow, you need net profit to be able to pay people so that you can take a step back and focus on other things in the business and or in your life, right? Cash flow is king, you need that. Alright, recurring revenue equals freedom. When I first started my clinic, I didn't even know what recurring revenue was.
And we'll define it real quick. Recurring revenue is money that comes in every single month without you having to go out and find a new customer, right? So this could be membership models, could be people that are buying another package of business maybe they're working with you on. This could be having Remote coaching or some of private training in the business that they're on some sort of membership model And it's money that's coming in without you having to go out and find a new sale every single time I didn't know what this was and I didn't even Think about adding this into my business for years and I look back at some of the bigger mistakes that I made this is way up there like this is definitely up there because In the first two years of us starting our business, we averaged about 300 to 350 new patients a month.
So we were churning through new patients for a small cash practice and none of them we gave an option to come back for anything. Anything at all. It just was discharge. And if you think about the metrics that we have now we want to see businesses really be around 50 percent of their revenue coming in from reoccurring or recurring revenue.
So this is repeat business in some capacity. If we'd even got half of the clients in those first two years to stick around, you're talking about 300 patients on an annual basis that are coming back for something. Let's just say that they're coming back for a once a month visit. That's 300 visits you're talking about that we missed out on a monthly basis Probably 60, thousand dollars a month in recurring revenue that we missed out on by not actually Having any sort of structured way to bring people back in and honestly my mentality was that They shouldn't do that anyway.
And it was because, I thought they need to learn this information. They can do this on their own. I don't want to become this maintenance provider that I thought was just like, Not the right way to work with people. And what I realized after some conversations with patients that I had was they wanted that.
They wanted somebody to work with them. They wanted somebody to help them navigate the very Confusing world of health and wellness. They wanted somebody to hold them accountable They wanted somebody to do hands on work that made them feel better on an ongoing basis They want these things and if you offer that offer it to them It will dramatically change your business because imagine if half of your revenue was coming in No matter what marketing efforts you did at all.
How much predictability is that for you for your overhead? How much predictability is that for your staff? What does that pay for right? Does that pay does that cover your rent your office manager your marketing your payroll? Potentially at least a big chunk of It probably does. And that is a much less stressful business to run than, hey, every single month we got to find 30 to 40 new people.
And if we don't, we're screwed. Like we're in a bad spot. So that is not the right, that's not the kind of business that I would start again. If I was starting a clinic, I would start with. Trying to build in some sort of recurring revenue model from day one, give people something that's ongoing that provides a lot of value that they want and make sure that I build that into the business model so that it starts to compound and snowball.
It's literally the biggest business mistake that we made early on and we didn't even know we were doing it right. And as we started to learn these things. It made a tremendous difference in our business. And in a lot of the businesses that we work with, this is a a really important sort of core element that they build into their business to make sure that there's predictability.
And it's not as sketchy to run where you don't feel like you're just playing this, eat what you kill game. You have this recurring base this sort of stability from the revenue that just makes your life much easier as a business owner. So recurring revenue is. King. All right, last thing, your spouse is your most important business partner.
So this may not apply to all of you. You may not have a spouse. Maybe you have a partner of some sort that that you live with but it's not a business partner, right? Your spouse is the most important business partner that you have. And here's why this is so important. Your home life.
If there's stability there and you're, and in particular, if your spouse believes in you and they believe that you're capable of whatever it is, your goals are, whatever you're trying to accomplish if they support you and vice versa. Cause you may be listening to this and watching this, but are you supporting your partner in life?
Are you supporting your spouse? Are you supporting there? Goals and what they want to do. Because if you have that, if you have that support, if you have that stability at home it makes all the difference in the world for you to be able to go out there and just get the shit beat outta you.
In the early days of trying to start a business and coming back, and instead of that person. Putting you down and they're like, I told you, you couldn't do this. This is a bad idea versus, all right, let's get back out there. Good job. Let's get, let's do it again. I'm looking forward to seeing, what you're able to do.
Let me know how I can help. That is such a big difference maker. And it's the person that also you need to make sure you're prioritizing much more than you think. And it is a, it is an easy relationship to I would say avoid but to not prioritize you think to yourself, Oh, I've been with this person, we've been married for however long we understand each other, they know what I'm going through, but you can't, you have to prioritize this person, you have to prioritize time with them doing things that you enjoy together like you cannot avoid.
Like actually putting time in with your spouse, even though you're so busy trying to do other things and you're stressed out or whatever else. This is someone that you enjoy, that you've had a lot of fun with, that you obviously liked enough to want to get married, and you don't want to let that relationship sour because you're so solely focused on other things.
And I can definitely say, for me, for I would say the first couple years when we started our practice, Ashley and I, we worked together, we started the business together. So we were around each other a lot, but I did a terrible job of prioritizing her as a person outside of the business. Every time that we would talk it was about business, right?
It had nothing to do with her or interest that we had outside the business. We didn't really ever spend any time together. It was always just. Awesome. The kids or us talking to the business or us with our employees. And it's one of those things that at a certain point it'll catch up to you And these relationships you take for granted that you just think are going to be there.
They start to slowly deteriorate and you have to put time and attention back into these people like This spouse relationship to me is it's the most important relationship that I have and I can't say it was always like that when I started my business. In fact, it definitely wasn't, especially if you looked at, if you looked at the way that I prioritize my week and this is a really good test for yourself.
If you prioritize your week, look at your calendar. What it'll tell you what you're prioritizing. Are you prioritizing business? Are you prioritizing your kids? Are you prioritizing your spouse? Are you prioritizing health? Like it'll tell you all kinds of things. And if your spouse is not a part of the equation, and you just think that person is going to be around because, you guys are comfortable with one another, it takes work.
And if you don't do it, it's going to end up taking that relationship and putting it in a really sour, position where you may not be able to dig yourself back out of it. Fortunately for Ashley and I, this is something that we've had our ups and downs. We've learned how to work together.
We've learned how to communicate better together. Our relationship is in a better spot than it's ever been, but it's not by accident. It's because of hard, work challenging, work, things that you have to learn about yourself and accept about yourself that maybe you need to change and vice versa.
And if you're not willing to do those things, then that relationship is going to slowly deteriorate. And and that is not a good thing. That's, that is a very, actually an incredibly sad thing. And I think it's something that I see very often in the entrepreneur world, where one person is just, solely focused on something and they forget about everybody else.
They expect them to be around. To help take care of them and and it'll just always be that way. And they never ever prioritize the other people around them until those people get sick of it. And then they, they leave. So I, I hope that doesn't happen to you, right? I hope that me being able to share this like relationship and how important it is is something that you can, really take and start to make a change with how you are spending time with your spouse, how you're communicating with your spouse, how you're prioritizing.
Your spouse, because it is, in my opinion, at least for people who are married, like I am, It is the most important relationship that I have because if things are off there things are off everywhere else And it's the foundation. It's the bedrock. So you've got to spend time working on your relationship with your spouse You have to continually improve that it's you know anything else you have to nurture that you have to continue to grow that You have to continue to improve and if you do then it'll continue to become as solid as ever.
And if you don't, then it will slowly drop off and you may end up without that person being in your life. In summary, this is what I wish I would have known 10 years ago. And as a 40 year old man which isn't that old, right? They say 40 is the new 30, I think. I wish somebody would have told me this, whenever, when I was 30 because if someone had said, listen, Danny comparisons, a thief of joy, don't compare yourself to other people.
That would have been really nice to know because I spent a lot of time comparing myself to other people and seeing what they were doing and trying to change what I was doing in my business. Cause I figured they had to figure it out and I didn't, and it wasted a bunch of time. If someone would have said, just figure out.
Figure out the direction you're going. You don't have to have it all figured out, but have a, an idea of what direction you're going, why it's important and what you want your business to eventually support. Like that would have been very helpful versus being very reactive to what I was doing.
If somebody would have said, wolves don't concern themselves with the opinions of sheep, which someone did tell me that that was huge for me, it's just yeah, why do you care so much about what other people think? Why is that something that's going to have you stop taking a chance on yourself?
Why is it going to have you stop trying to improve your life or to go after a goal that's so important to you and it's meaningful to you, but yet you're scared of what other people will think and that's enough to stop you? Dude, come on take a chance on yourself. Don't worry about what other people think, care what other people think that are the most important people to you, that will be honest with you.
Don't care what your, your friends think. Don't care what some, loose connection thinks. Don't care what your uncle thinks, right? Care about What like your spouse thinks, care about what your best friends think, care about what your family thinks of you that even in some cases they, they might say things that they're, cause they're worried about you.
And that might come off as they're doubting you, but they're just worried that. Something might not work out and they want you to be okay, right? You have to understand that as well So don't let opinions of other people stop you from actually going after what you want in your life These are the things that I wish somebody would have told me and I hope that that this information helps you in some way Maybe one of these things that I said affects you or means more to you than the rest But whatever that is think about it and start to make a change in your life for whatever, direction that's going to take you.
Don't just listen to stuff and I'm guilty of this a lot. Like I consume a lot of content, but it's about taking action on content, right? It's about you making a change. It's about you putting effort in over a period of time to make an adjustment. And if you can do that. Then I think this podcast, I think this video will help you significantly.
I hope it does. And if you're starting a clinic, if you're trying to grow a clinic, like this is what we help people with. We help people not just have success in business, which is obviously important, but to not burn your life down in the process, which frankly is so common in the entrepreneur world.
And if you're trying to surround yourself with. Coaches and a group of like minded people that are on the same path as you. I would recommend heading to physicaltherapybiz. com. Take a look what we're doing. We're honestly helping people like in a very meaningful way. And that's something that I'm very proud of.
There's a lot of education out there. There's a lot of people selling information. A lot of people selling business consulting and all these things. And I think the thing that separates us is the fact that we're not trying to just have business success. We want to have success in life. And we want it all right?
We want to be a great human being. We wanna have great relationships. We wanna be healthy. We want to be successful financially, we wanna be successful in life, helping other people and, giving money away and giving our time away and being Phil, philanthropic, philanthropic and actually helping people along the way and not necessarily just solely focus on.
What's our business revenue, which obviously is important and we help grow those things, but more than anything, it's about the combination of you living a fantastic life and having a vehicle in life that helps you get there through your business. So thanks for listening. Thanks for watching as always. I really appreciate it.
And if this helped you share it with somebody, that's about all we ask. Share us with a friend even give them like a timestamp Hey, I think this one would really help you because obviously this is pretty long. You may not have time to go through all of it, but share it with somebody. I hope it helps them as well.
So thanks for watching. I'll catch you on the next one.
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