E694 | What We're Learning Now With Yves Gege
Mar 21, 2024In a recent podcast episode, hosts Danny and Yves delve into the transformative impact of lifelong learning and the importance of expanding one's knowledge beyond their expertise. They underscore the value of reading diverse books, sharing their current reads that include the autobiography of the iconic Leonardo Da Vinci.
Danny shares captivating insights gleaned from Da Vinci's life, emphasizing his meticulous attention to detail and the significance of a well-rounded skill set. On the other hand, Yves discusses a biography on the rock band, The Rolling Stones, tracing one of the member's journey from the produce business to oil refining through a strategic partnership that revolutionizes his company, Standard Oil.
They highlight the wealth of wisdom embedded in biographies, offering profound insights into the strategies and mindset of successful individuals. They emphasize the humanizing effect of these narratives, making success appear more achievable and inspiring listeners to emulate such strategies in their own endeavors.
Furthermore, they stress the importance of stepping outside one's comfort zone to broaden perspectives and enhance skills. Yves shares her enthusiasm for a book by music producer Rick Rubin, which explores the role of creativity and imagination in various pursuits.
Addressing the challenges clinicians face in establishing cash-based practices, they discuss the emotional hurdles like self-doubt and the critical role of mentorship in navigating such obstacles. They emphasize the need to surround oneself with like-minded individuals to foster growth and motivation.
In conclusion, the podcast episode champions the ethos of lifelong learning, advocating for extensive reading and the exploration of new ideas and skill sets to dismantle limiting beliefs. They underscore the transformative power of biographies in understanding the strategies of successful individuals and the pivotal role of mentorship in personal and professional development.
Ready to elevate your practice? Book a call at the link below with one of our expert consultants today and start your journey to delivering unparalleled physical therapy.
www.physicaltherapybiz.com/apply
Do you enjoy the podcast? If so, leave us a 5-star review on iTunes and tell a friend to do the same!
Are you a member of our free PT Entrepreneur Facebook Group? Join today!
Podcast Transcript
Danny: [00:00:00] 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 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.
All right. What's going on. Dr. Danny here at the PT on for our podcast. And I'm back again with Yves Gege. Today going live in the Facebook group. If you are not [00:01:00] in the Facebook group, head over to Facebook, look up PT entrepreneurs. We had about 7, 000 clinicians in that group right now, really cool group, openly sharing what's working, helping each other out, connecting with one another.
And we do trainings in there as well as live streams like this, which we do almost every Friday. So if you haven't joined that yet. Definitely head over there and and check it out. For those doing the podcast, as always, thank you so much for listening. I prefer podcasts listening to stuff myself, cause I can take care of other things around the house.
It's a great form of content. You can consume while you're like doing the dishes or whatever else you're doing, working out. So anyway, thanks again for listening to the podcast. But today we're going to share. What we are working on and what we're learning ourself. I think this is something that we talk a lot about.
As like being lifelong learners and constantly growing and and learning things. And I think for most people, they learn in school and when they get out of school, they just stop. I don't know. Most of the people that I. That I know [00:02:00] they, they don't really continue to learn a ton which is interesting.
Some of them do, and but oftentimes I think it's just what show they're watching or whatever it might be, which don't get me wrong. Like I'm finishing the last season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. So I'm all about some of that stuff as well. But yeah. I think there's definitely a place to continue to try to learn and and grow in books are one of the best place to do that.
This is behind me, I got a whole bunch of books that I've read about half of all of those and combined that equals a lot of books, the amount that you learn versus like how you apply it, I think are two different things. And we can talk about that today but one of the things that, that we, I think do differently is go outside of our general scope.
As well, right? Just health and wellness and physical therapy and movement, which I do learning about that stuff, especially now being a desk bound athlete where I'm just stuck in front of a computer. I found I have had, I have to work much harder on my physical health than when I was clinically like seeing a bunch of people a day, which is an odd drawback to not being in the clinic.
If you're a clinician, [00:03:00] like that is one of the best parts of being in the clinic is you're oddly strong. You have good grip strength. You get a lot of steps in especially doing a lot of manual therapy. So anyway, for me, I've turned my attention to that mainly out of necessity is to stay as healthy as I can myself because I need it more, but either learn some interesting stuff to way outside our, kind of scope.
And so I thought it'd be interesting to share what we're reading and maybe It might make sense for you to learn some of the similar things and and, pick up one of these books as well. Why don't we start with this? What are you learning right now? What is, what has gotten you interested?
Yves: Yeah, I think it's super interesting just real quick. You're so right. I feel like the evolution of self development for me and I feel like for a lot of other Business owners or entrepreneurs or people that are lifelong owners is they tend to go inside their scope first, right? So you like, you'll go deep dive into rehab and, strength and conditioning and all the things PT related.
And then this next evolution is to just go way outside, go into like other verticals maybe. And now. Based off this list that I'm going to give you, it's stuff that like, [00:04:00] in some ways doesn't even make sense to learn, that's where I'm going now is I'm going to places where you know like learning Leonardo da Vinci's autobiography.
Do you know what I mean? Like I'm reading that, which like saying it out loud, I feel like such a nerd saying that, but it's super interesting. And I think it came from either Tim Ferriss or somebody else who basically said. Some of the smartest people they knew read autobiographies, some of the most successful people they know.
It's okay, I got to start doing this. I was actually on Lex Friedman's podcast. I think this person, this author was there. And it was just super interesting, the stuff he was talking about, really deep diving into people's lives, spending a lot of time with them and learning from what they're doing really well.
So I'm only about halfway through the book, but yeah, There's a lot of things I had no idea about Leonardo da Vinci. There's, we always knew that he was a renaissance man doing a lot of different things. But the cool part that I learned was the diversity of skill sets.
And be able to converge those different skill [00:05:00] sets into one is so extremely helpful. Like people know him as a painter, but he was also like an anatomist, they called it. So he literally was dissecting human bodies.
Danny: Yeah. He used to steal them, right? Like he had to dig them up. Basically, yeah, they thought it was like a terrible thing to do
Yves: 100 percent and like he'd be cutting skulls in half and he's one of the people who like found some of the sinuses, like behind the nose and near the brain like he had all these discoveries like scientifically as well.
He was making like war machines like building like huge. Crossbows. He was an architect and all these things like were interrelated like one of the paintings that he put together. They were dissecting it and it was like it was accurate to the point that the fauna like the plants that were part of the painting.
And this was an imaginary painting wasn't like he found. Like a grotto and then like just copied it. This was an imaginary place, but the fauna that was there was actually spot on [00:06:00] and looked and what would be the kind of fauna that was there. So it was just like the converging skill sets. Also, it was like the attention to detail, which I'm more of a big picture person not necessarily I'm more operationally driven.
So like somebody who's a more creative, somebody who's really detail driven and just realizing that. These details can make a huge difference when it comes to actually like conveying a message, right? Or some of the things that you did, there's the details were just insane of how specific you got.
I'm trying to think about that. Like, how does that work for me? How does that work for the content that we put together? How can I be more detailed, more creative? How can I bring these skill sets from these other things that I've learned and then bring them into what I'm doing? It was just really cool to, to learn some of those things and only halfway through, I'm curious what I'm gonna learn next.
Danny: The biography side of it is interesting, right? Ashley is reading Titan right now, which is the
Yves: Rockefeller That's a monster book. I have it. It's a monster book.
Danny: Most of these are, right? Like most of these are Our big [00:07:00] books. But I have not read it yet. I don't know if I'm ready to take on that type of a challenge.
I'm a credibly slow reader and rarely finish a book, but she's sharing what she's learning with me in that book, which it has me so interested that I actually want to read it. And what's what I found fascinating was he's known for oil, but he started in produce. He had basically like a produce company and he grew that to where they were basically, selling and distributing produce and oil was turning into this thing that was new, right?
It was like cars were just coming around and they were using it for industrial purposes and things. And He basically got approached by someone who ended up becoming his partner in a oil refinery company that knew how to refine oil and he needed somebody that had logistical experience to be able to [00:08:00] transport and take care of like operations of that.
So he was like the specialist with oils concern. But he found this guy through produce and then he actually bought his partners out because they started to, he was very religious. He bought his partners out because they were gambling and doing things he didn't agree with. So he basically bought them out and they had to I guess they could have bought him out as well.
They had to basically bid on what they were willing to pay each other for it. And ended up paying like 72, 000 for this company, this, which would become Standard Oil, which was the probably like most prolific company ever, right? It's basically, if you take, Exxon BP and shell and add them together. If that company got broken up into these subsidiaries that are huge companies today, massive companies, that was his company.
He bought it for 72, 000, which would be equivalent to like around 650, 000 at the time the book was written in the late nineties. So probably maybe I don't know, let's call it a million dollars. So he basically bought his partners [00:09:00] out for a million dollars and then grew it to, what it is today.
So I think what's interesting about biographies is you get a chance to You get a chance to see behind the scenes of what people did, what they were thinking what shaped them and learn from that. And you can apply it to whatever situation you're in. So for us, maybe, Leonardo da Vinci is a bit more like creative and Rockefeller is a bit more an entrepreneurial example.
But you can apply in a lot of different ways in terms of successful people. They leave clues. There's breadcrumbs of high achievers of what they're doing, what their habits are. Maybe weird things too, right? Like stuff like I read Ben Franklin's biography and I was like, this guy's like kind of wild dude, like he, he was like partying and it's, just crazy inventor doing like all kinds of wild stuff.
And. But he just was like thinking outside the box so much more than everyone else. And that's what's interesting too, is you're like, I'm sure Leonardo da Vinci was doing the same thing. And he's viewed the [00:10:00] world a little differently but was able to pull together in a way that he left like this insane legacy that very few people do.
Yves: For sure. And I think what else it does, which I think is important for people to learn to, it humanizes certain things and shows you the fallibility of some of these people who we just think, Oh, we've got this person, Ben Franklin that's a person like the Rockefellers, like they must've been perfect.
They must've done all these things. They must've had luck or and you read it and you're like, Oh man, like this doesn't seem that great. You know what I mean? Sure. They had some luck around the way, but it's this person isn't really different, and I feel like. That's a big important lesson to learn.
It lowers the veil of success a little bit and just gets you a little bit closer to be like I could do this. This doesn't seem that hard. I think that's important too, right? Like it's important to realize that although it may seem like this person is so successful because they're really smart or extremely talented or they have something that you could never attain.
And then all of a sudden you're like, Oh man, this [00:11:00] person, they literally were partying all the time and they still invented, these crazy things or this person was actually super didn't really, he never really finished anything. Like literally never finished 99 percent of his work and was never completed.
And it's dang, like I'm going with the exact opposite. I have to complete everything no matter what. And I'm like maybe I can let some things go every once in a while. So it's just, I think it's super helpful for kind of this unheard or unseen reason as well.
Danny: Yeah, it makes me think of one of the books that I'm reading that I was going to share is this one.
It's The Creative Act, A Way of Being by Rick Rubin. And I I picked it up when we were in Steamboat, actually. When we were visiting you. Picked up this book. It's uh, it's an interesting book. It may not be the right book for everyone to read. Because it's a lot of, it's. It's like basically his thoughts.
On the creative process [00:12:00] on artists and anything that would be considered creative, which he defines very broadly by the way which I thought was interesting. And quick backstory on Rick Rubin. If you look up Rick Rubin. He is one of the most prolific music producers of all time, especially in the hip hop community and R& B.
And if you, it doesn't look like he should be like, that's the other thing. If you look at him, he looks like he's like a homeless guy. That's like a hermit. Yes, you're right. Yeah. He looks like a hermit. Huge beard just does not look like he would be A massive, producer in the, any music industry, let alone the hip hop R and B kind of rap community is huge there.
But if you like, just do yourself a favor, Google search, Rick Rubin albums produced, and it is insane. The amount of albums that he's done in many different genres of incredibly well known albums that have done really well. And what's interesting about him is he's. He's he's not a musician really.
I [00:13:00] mean, not anything, so significance he's someone that people go to, to get help with finding like hits basically. Like he knows what other people like, and he knows how to work with people. He knows how to ask questions and he knows how to basically Help people come to the conclusion that of where their artistic creativity is leading them.
Like he's a guy that, that you go to when you're trying to figure those things out. So he's like the sage of music production, really interesting. Like he told, he talks about this story of he worked with system of the down for the, like their first big album that came out and in chop suey, the, like the biggest song that they had, the singer was having a hard time figuring out like how to end the song, like the lyrics had to end it.
And Rick Rubin said, go to this, go to the bookshelf. Grab a book and just drop a book and whatever page it goes to make the ending the lyrics of something on the page. The first, first, a sentence that you see and the [00:14:00] guy's like stuck and he opens a book, drops it and he finds a sentence and he's like thinking through it and he's boom, got it.
And it's stuff like that, that he does with them. That's just so out of the box, crazy. And. He talks about like the creative process in this a lot but the idea of creativity and being an artist or artistic, tendencies and using your ability to be creative can be anything.
It can be music. It could be art. It could be traditional things you think of things like that. But he says think of the Philly cheesesteak. What have, what a work of art, like someone came up with that simple ingredients. So good. It could be solving a problem in your business. It could be.
Parenting your kids in a really unique way that's specific to them, like it could be anything. And what's interesting about the book is it's so broad. It's just it could apply to almost anything. Not necessarily just music or art in the traditional sense. And there's one thing that he says, and that you're talking about this as well.
When you realize that you read these biographies and people are just people are just Like you forget that, [00:15:00] Leonardo da Vinci was just some guy and you forget that Rockefeller was just a guy who had parents, who had kids, who had stress, and he had concerns, and he had really great things that happened, really bad things that happened, and self doubt, and all these things, but yeah, they're able to accomplish these kind of like amazing things, and some of it might have to do with what they did, some of it might have to do with luck, like him being in Cleveland, Rockefeller being in Cleveland at the time, When oil production was happening and they had access to waterways and he had experience with logistically moving things like he could have been in Atlanta, Georgia and that wouldn't happen.
And he never would have been. No one would even know who he was outside of probably his family. So there's luck involved with those things too. But in Rick Rubin's book, 1 thing that he says that I thought was so interesting is. He says, turning something from an idea into reality makes it seem smaller.
It changes from unearthly to earthly. The imagination has no limits. The physical world does, and the work exists in both. So what he's basically saying is you have to imagine what you want to accomplish before [00:16:00] you can have it happen in the physical world. It happens in our brain. It happens in our creativity, happens in our imagination.
And oftentimes as we get older, I feel like we lose imagination. The ability to think outside the box, the ability to think big. You see this all the time with entrepreneurs, they're like I'm just going to think what's realistic. Let me think of the realistic thing. And that's what most people go with.
And then you think of these people that are have achieved something really cool or they've made this huge impact and they're thinking way bigger, they have way bigger imagination. They're like, they're thinking a thousand times bigger. And even if they're halfway there, it's still so much more than the average person.
And it's Thinking so small, and I thought that was really interesting and something that can apply to people are listening to this as well, which is basically you're probably not thinking big enough legitimately, you're probably thinking real small because you're scared that you can't accomplish what you might actually be able to imagine.
And if you just let yourself think as big as you possibly could, and you start to work towards that. Like you're going to be [00:17:00] far much far better off than just being like, very reasonable. Oh, I can't do this or that, or that's unrealistic. And why, like who, who says it is right. And how different are we than Rockefeller or Da Vinci or Rick Rubin or whatever, really not.
It just depends on what you want. And if you're willing to think big and then do the work in the physical world. Yeah,
Yves: I remember this often, when I was seeing patients, I had a lot of people that I could see on a regular basis, and they may have been an accountant, or maybe a lawyer, or maybe a dentist, and they're like, man, you're just doing all these really cool things, and as you're talking, I'm realizing that probably that's the first step, so to speak, is to be able to imagine yourself doing something else, and I feel like for a lot of people, it's tough.
The day to day is hard, right? Life is relatively difficult. You've got a job, you've got kids, you've got responsibility, you've got bills, and it's difficult to find room and find time to, yeah, to imagine what it would look like to own your own practice or to imagine what it would look like to [00:18:00] have a seven figure or multiple seven figure practice.
So I think that's a, such a great point that, if you're listening to this, I feel like there's two things. That we've done specifically to help you break through those walls, which I found really helpful. Number one was that five day challenge we put together, right? Like it created some tangibility and some brought it from the imaginary world more to the physical world and got people thinking about, holy crap, Here's what it would look like to actually do this, which I think is huge.
That's been a great one. The second one, and this one's directly from our business partner, Jared Moon, which I've seen some transformations happen with this exercise. I'm thinking about doing it in this, in another business is the 10X exercise, right? So it breaks through these false beliefs and these barriers that we have.
It's what does it look like to 10X my business today? What, like they had to sit down and put pen to paper and say, all right, I'm seeing. A hundred patients a month. Now I'm seeing a thousand what does that look like? And I saw so many people go through the exercise and be like, Holy shit. [00:19:00] I think I can do this.
You know what I mean? Oh man, like this, I just have to keep doing more of the same, or they just come to this realization. Now they can imagine it and now they can actually put some pen to paper. So I think that's a huge point that I think a lot of us get stuck in is, we just can't even imagine what it would look like to take this next step.
Danny: It's. It all starts there. And what's funny is it's totally free. It doesn't require really any specific skill set. All it really takes is some time and being intentional about what do you want? So I like to think of. Instead of let's just take this in the business context, you could apply this to anything, right?
But let's just say that, you want your life to look a certain way. All right? You want a certain amount of financial independence. You want a certain amount of time independence. You want to certain amount of physical health or relationships and all this. And think about think about what that what you want.
And [00:20:00] there's actually a book that It goes over all this called the vivid vision. It's a pretty intense drill if you go through the whole thing. And I went through this a few years ago and I basically wrote out what I wanted my life to look like in as if it was a like a snippet out of a newspaper, article as if someone else was writing it.
Which is hard to do like creatively it's challenged to do that. And, but it's also a really difficult thing to really think, okay, what someone's writing a newspaper article 10 years from now, what do I hope that says about what I've done and what our business has done and the impact we've had, things like that.
But in a very detailed granular level going through that's really hard, but you could just sit down and just think yourself. Okay. What do I want my life to look like? Or maybe who's someone I know that I would like to trend more towards what their life looks like than what my life looks like right now.
And it does help to have those people that are that are mentors, that are people that are you aspire to be more like that. You have a, it's pulling [00:21:00] you that direction in a positive way. And you To go back to that quote for a second about, what Rick Rubin says is, turning something from an idea into reality makes it seem smaller.
And it's so true because, like you said, going through the five day challenge can make the idea of A practice where you can replace your income seem a lot more achievable. It seems smaller, right? I remember the first time that I met someone that had a seven figure business, I came away thinking to myself, unimpressed not necessarily in a bad way, but I was just like, Oh my God, this person is going to be like genius level.
I'm basically meeting Jeff Bezos. Like the greatest entrepreneurs in the world. This person is going to be amazing. And they were late. They were all over the place. They had no, not a really clear idea of what was going on in their business on a day to day basis. They were in the middle of moving and going through a divorce, like they were a mess.
And but they had like at the time, it was like a 5 million a year business. And I was just like, what, [00:22:00] this person, there's just no way. And, but for me, at least it made it seem like far more tangible. I was like I'm not as much of a train wreck as this guy. Maybe I, can do the same thing.
So I think like some of those associations even can make things feel smaller. They feel more achievable and it, and maybe it, it doesn't have to be just your, the vision of it, but maybe just seeing other people that maybe have done what you're doing. Can help you get there and or they can help you realize maybe that's not what you want because I don't know if you've met people that are like hyper successful and they're everywhere else.
They suck. But sometimes it gives you perspective to that. You might be a two out of 10 career wise for where you want to be, but you may have this amazing relationship and great health and a great friend system and you're like a 10 everywhere else. And that person might be a 10 in one thing and they suck everywhere else.
You have to ask yourself, would you train places with them? Because it's important to know what you don't want as well. Yeah, for sure.
Yves: If some people are new to the podcast, they probably haven't heard this story, but like how we first met, when I was like, I should start a cash practice, I was one of the first [00:23:00] people to take Danny up on business consulting.
And I didn't really know anything about cash practices. I was expecting to come into your clinic. It was going to be this like gorgeous, amazing thing. You're going to be this absolute clinical genius, these hour long appointments were just going to involve all these different things. And you are, you're a good clinically, let's just go ahead and say that.
But like, when I
Danny: got there, I didn't, I underwhelmed. You
Yves: underwhelmed me. So I was like, this guy's just doing you're just like, can you put a band on somebody's ribs and like breathe with him for a while? And you guys talked for 45 minutes. I'm like, Oh my God, you just paid. This guy just paid.
I don't know what it was at the time. Maybe 150 bucks, maybe it was like close to 200. It was
Danny: 175.
Yves: 175. And I was like, Oh my God. And I was like, it was like that moment that I was like, I can totally do this. This isn't going to be that hard for me. So it was just, it was so helpful to, yeah, just again, like decrease that barrier to entry and take it from, something that I thought was unachievable and gigantic to something that Just as you said, seemed much more small, smaller and [00:24:00] much more cheap.
Danny: Hey, sorry to interrupt the podcast, but I have a huge favor to ask of you. If you are a long time listener or a new listener and you're finding value in this podcast, please head over to iTunes wherever you listen to the podcast. And please leave a rating and review. This is actually very helpful for us to get this podcast 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. I had the same thing whenever I I went to San Francisco when so this was probably like six months out six months from the time that I got out of the military for training. I had to go out there for the course I was teaching for the strets.
And. At the time they had their gym was I guess I take it back. Th they were in a different space. As I said, they actually had a gym the first time I went out there, I was actually, stationed in Hawaii. And. I went out and I worked with their coaches and Kelly was writing [00:25:00] becoming a supple leopard, the first edition.
And he was finishing edits on it, right? I barely saw him, but he did have a half a day where he had like patients that he was going to see. And they had this little Connex box that was it was basically like a a mobile office that had an air conditioner on top and it was just barely big enough for a table to be in the middle.
And for him to scoot around the outside. So they would only go in there for part of the eval, and then it would be outside the rest of the time in a parking lot. And I remember watching this, and I was just like, what the hell? And I got to go in for a patient with him, and we're literally scooting around the outside of a table while he's assessing this person who happened to be this, Big ass power lifter.
Who's barely like the three of us in the space. It didn't last very long. I had to leave because it was like so cramped. And, but I remember at the time, I think people were paying like, I don't know, it was probably 250 bucks, somewhere in that range. And he, and I remember asking him, I was like, they have a lot of people that see for this.
He's wait list for like months. And I really, it's crazy. [00:26:00] Like they're going to come in, and they had a porta potty like next to it, right? Like it wasn't anything special. It was like, maybe. The complete opposite of what anybody would think, but it really came down to, for me, it was interesting to see that and to see what people found assigned value to.
And it changed the way that I viewed the way in which I work with people because of how much you listen to people, how much they would have conversations about what was meaningful to them, what they were trying to do, what their goals were. We're physically or what they were struggling with.
And what I realized was I was like, Oh my God, this guy's really good at getting people to to something and work towards something. He's amazing coach when it comes to that. So good at getting people to work towards a goal and getting them bought in on it. And it also broke false belief for me.
They're like, okay, you do have to have this, immaculate facility. And, you have to do all these things during the clinical visit to assign value to it versus, Give somebody what they want, which is listen to them, help them create a plan, help them maybe [00:27:00] in their own mind, in the, in their imagination what do you want to do?
And I remember this happened all the time. We get people when they'd You know, they, maybe they're just trying to get back to the gym or something like that with them dealing with back pain or knee issue or something. All of a sudden their pain's gone and they're feeling so much better and, we get a chance to say okay, cool do you have any physical goals that you would like to achieve that you, that you haven't done yet?
And they're like, do you think I could run like a 5k? And. Yeah, we can run a fucking 5k, of course, let's do that, and then get excited with them for this thing that they want to do. And all of a sudden for them, it's just, it's a huge deal. It's I don't know if I can do it. It's really far. I've never run that far, and if anybody's run, it's such a mental thing, right?
It's you can run a lot further than you think for a lot longer than you think. And right now everyone could, you might not feel so great afterward if you're not trained for something, but like you can do it, but people, it's where they start breaking that false belief. All of a sudden it's like, they're bringing it into the real world.
It feels smaller. And all of a sudden that five case, nothing. Now they can run a 10. Now they can run a half marathon, a marathon. They can, now they can start decreasing their times. [00:28:00] It's physically, it's the same thing as in the business, in a business. People are like, do you think I can like. Make a thousand dollars a month on the side.
Let's do it. What next? And then they start to see, Oh, I can do this, and this, and it becomes smaller. It becomes more real and they can move towards it. And it's cool to be a part of that process because we see it physically with people. We see it on the business side of people. We see it.
You can see applied to basically anything, but it's just helping them understand and say that first step. And then often, oftentimes. I think the hardest part is just getting started or even like having the confidence to think that you can do it. Like I had somebody tell me one time or in the early stages, you need somebody to believe in you more than you believe in yourself.
If you can find that, if you can find that person that they can help you get over that stage. Oh my God. It's such a huge advantage.
Yves: Yeah. I think when it comes to treating patients. When it comes to learning more about business and taking this like next step, a big theme that you just talked about was just like reframing the perspective, right?
[00:29:00] Or getting rid of some of your false beliefs. And I think that's the biggest superpower when it comes to learning, reading books, being part of a a mentorship group like we have or just having a mentor in general that's probably the best thing that they can do for you is just breaking those false beliefs and reframing your perspective because yeah a lot of this stuff is just like in our minds and we just hear this one thing that kind of change everything else and all of a sudden this stuff you know becomes more.
tangible, and that's why we always focus on the stuff that we talk about and stuff that we teach. It's just like focusing on yourself first. Everything that can happen to unlock success for yourself starts at that self development process. It just starts with you and can you learn and can you break those false beliefs and can you go seek that out?
And can you take that next step? Yes or no. And if you can do that, the dominoes do start
Danny: to fall. Yeah, for sure. And it's funny. It's, I feel like the biggest battle early on is it's mental. It's emotional, right? If you're going to. If you're, if we're [00:30:00] talking about trying to make a change in your life, in our case, we're talking about people with their business, right?
They're trying to, they're trying to maybe move into their own clinical business or whatever it is they're doing. But they're changing and that is difficult. It's very easy just to stay the same. Or they're trying to improve themself and, again, like it's hard to make any sort of change because the first step mentally is to think that you can even do it.
And I think, not to go to our side of what we're talking about, but if you look at just like from a society standpoint, there's so many people that just don't think they can ever accomplish more than whatever's around them, right? This could be education. This could be career. This could be health.
Everyone in my family has died from a heart attack early. That means I'm going to do it. When, maybe you have a predisposition, but maybe everyone in your family eats terrible and they don't actually, they don't take care of themselves. They don't help. They don't know how to. There's an information gap there. And, so you start in a place where you [00:31:00] think this is what my world is. Everybody does that, right? It's, it could be anything. Everybody in my family's military of some sort. Guess what? That's what it was. That's what was normal. It's normal for me.
You start to see people and in their family, everybody's in everybody's a dentist. Okay? That's normal for you. Or everybody works in a coal mine or everybody does whatever. That's your world. That's what it's around you and it's what you find as normal. And then when you go to try to make a change, It's hard because oftentimes it's on you.
Everyone else around you is no, this is the way it is. Like it's normal for them. It's the way they view the world. And when you start to view things differently, it can be challenging because they feel like maybe you're going to move away from them. You're going to move past them as you're trying to develop personally or trying to make a change in your life to work towards more of what you want, and that I think is the hardest state stage for anybody. And we see this early on with the people that we work with in the in their clinical rainmaker program in particular. Dude, I see it. I see it all time. It's just emotionally, this is so hard for people. And there's such high highs and high lows.
And they don't know if it's going to work because they don't have a [00:32:00] track record of success in that yet. And so rare to find somebody that is confident in themselves. They're, They have self belief that they can accomplish what they're trying to do. And as soon as that leaves them, that's fleeting.
They go running back to wherever they came from. And we see this over and over again with people that, they don't find that success or they're not willing to maybe stick it out. And all of a sudden they're back to wherever they started. And they're probably never ever going to try to do anything again.
It's like they touch something hot. They burned their hand. They're never going to touch it again. Like it's a negative reinforcement associated with that versus. What did you learn? Did you learn? Maybe you made a mistake that next time you try again and you won't make it and you're going to be successful.
Most people leave off there. And I think this is where we look at like our role in what we do. Sometimes I feel like, yes, there's best practices. We can share information on the business side that are, that help businesses for short more than anything. I think what we do really well. As we help people realize what they can do, we help ask questions with people about what they want their life to look like, and we surround them with positive people that [00:33:00] they want to help them get there because they're on the same path.
They're trying to get the same place themselves. And, if you're listening to this and I've been in the same place and you're surrounded by people that are trying to keep you in one place for not for bad reasons, but just that's what they think you should have, or your, what your life should look like.
And you want to move in a different direction. It can feel very exhausting to try to constantly. Isolate, in isolation, try to fight that battle yourself mentally all the time. And I was reflecting on that as we shot this event next week where we're going to have 250, business owners come together and I'm like, what an amazing opportunity, what an optimistic group of positive people that are going to, they're not going to be like, Oh, you can't do that.
Or you shouldn't do that. It's going to be like what next? You're not thinking big enough. They're challenging each other in this completely different way that snowballs in such a positive way. And I think that, for what we do, that is the most important thing, if we really drill it down, like we help people realize what they're, they can accomplish.
Not necessarily. Obviously there's a lot of tactical things that can plug in and whatever else that everybody [00:34:00] wants, but more than anything, like that's really, that's, what's valuable. I think
Yves: for sure. There's so many things I want to talk about all that we've said. One thing that's, that just stuck out to me is from the Rainmaker perspective the difficulty of starting things out.
We actually just added a module in there that Jacksy put together. One of our coaches, that's more about mindset and how to take the next step and what to expect. And we just had somebody who literally just watched it and say, I'm going to watch this every day for a week. So just realize it's it wasn't about right.
Like the founder member thing that I put so much time and energy in. It wasn't like, nobody's ever said that about that module. It's it's this module that's sticking around to people that are like, Oh my God, like this is what I need to hear to put it. Cause we know like that tactically, It's pretty straightforward.
You know what I mean? Don't get me wrong, it's still hard, it's not easy, right? But it's pretty simple. This other stuff is way harder, right? The complexity of the human brain and keeping people motivated and understanding what to do next and what to say to someone, what Kelly does, what to say to someone [00:35:00] to get them to take the next step and actually imagine it and put the plan together, that's really the hard part, right?
And that's why we focus on that stuff so much more. Okay. Yeah,
Danny: it's no one's ever been like, Oh, my God, Danny, your clinical finance module blew my mind. It's changed my life, right? It's No, they may find some of these things helpful, and they help you understand information. But I can promise you, like, when we get together next week with all the people that we work with in in the PT biz mastermind there will be certain things that they will take away from, Presentations guest presenters, things that we've structured that we assign probably more value to than we than actually exist.
And what they're going to remember and what's going to help them more than anything is something that we don't even know what's going to happen yet. All I know is that they're going to have some sort of. Interaction or conversation with with somebody at the right time or and in the right stage of what they're trying to work on.
And it's going to [00:36:00] be really impactful for them. And it's one of those things that the reason we get together every six months is, we want the minimum effective dose for those things to occur. There's a certain amount of work that needs to be done. You can't do that every month. It's just ridiculous.
Like it's, you just would get everybody all hyped up and then, but they wouldn't even have enough time to actually So it's almost like when we get together in person, it's like we get a chance to go into this creative world where we can dream big and we can talk about whatever it is we're trying to do.
But then you have this time in between when you go back to the real world and you put the work in, because you have to have both. You can't just have one or the other. And. And and that's, what's cool is we don't know what's going to happen. I can, but all I can tell you is plenty of people are going to have conversations that didn't know they were going to have, they're going to be incredibly impactful on their personal and their business lives.
And that's, what's so cool about getting the right, the right people together and why I think what they're referencing with this idea of being creative and using your imagination and thinking big, and then, but then also [00:37:00] surrounding yourself with the people that are going to help you, um, trend that direction versus trying to You know, keep you wherever you're at.
Yeah.
Yves: If you're stuck, one of the, what I think one of the best things you can do is change your environment, like the power of changing your environment and you're surrounded by, we can do a whole podcast specifically on that. But I think that's huge. So I feel like I'm going to share some of these numbers.
I'm a big numbers guy, but I'm putting, I do the kind of state of the union state of the mastermind presentation and I get to put some numbers together. Our. We put in a trailing 12. So trailing 12, in case you don't know what that is, it's basically the last 12 months of gross revenue.
That total number is your trailing 12, right? And we get everybody's trailing 12 together, all the businesses in here, and I get to see what that total is, right? And In 2023, right? So the, all of our business together generated 58 million, like that is a crazy number.
And I looked at the average, like, all right, what's the average business? What is the average? And it was like 250, 000. I'm like, that's crazy. Like when [00:38:00] I started, I was like, if I was making. 40 to 60, 000, and I was like, Oh, cool. Replace my income and I'll be good.
And now just the average is a 250 K gross revenue business. And these numbers just continue to blow my mind. And I think it's just I don't know. Proud of what we've done. Do you know what I mean? It's pretty cool. And it's Man, this is again, just getting started,
Danny: like every year include like people that we've worked with that are not active clients anymore.
I think about that. It's well over a hundred million, if you add in everyone that we have worked with that we haven't had a chance to help grow as a business owner and then cool. That's great. Like the alumni we have are just like so successful in their own right.
It's amazing. And, I think, yeah, you're right. The impact is huge. And there's just so much work to do still like that's the thing like this is just we're in the second inning This is just getting started and that's where I get this question people are like Oh, is it too late to start a business like this and like you're like an inning number two Yeah.
Whatcha talking about you get plenty of time to get yourself [00:39:00] in a place where, you want to try to start your own business. And I dunno if there's ever a time where there's just an absolute nope, too many, right? It's too bad. It's like the cream will always rise to the top.
The best businesses will always do well. There's a lot of businesses out there that just suck. They're very mediocre. They're not. Terrible. They're not good. They're just in the middle. And if you can commit to being as great as you possibly can be delivering the greatest health care experience someone's ever had.
There's always space for that. And I think that's where we see a big transition in In our industry as well is where we go from. We go from quantity and low quality to as high quality as humanly possible. With the quantity has to lower because of that. And I think as we see that swing back towards it.
I hope that what we see is that there's some middle ground that can happen also with in network practices and, people that are taking Medicare and Medicaid and these things where it's like you can have both or be close, be better in both where maybe you don't have a choice, but to [00:40:00] have higher volume, but the quality can be as high as humanly possible and not get disgruntled by these poor, reimbursements that are happening, which sucks.
Nothing you can really do about that directly. So for us, it's, I feel like the quantity side of it obviously is down, but the quality, we see this huge quality improvements across the profession where I feel like people are having these conversations that are not necessarily traditional physical therapy conversations, outside of that scope that I think still so important when it comes to movement and sleep and, community and stress management and being all tile and stuff together.
Like that's huge. And I see it, our industry in particular. Is really growing rapidly. And I think a lot of just people in general are looking for help in those areas where people, they can trust and people that are like very educated and skilled that understand what they're dealing with. And that's a blue ocean for people to listen to this.
I don't know who else is killing it in that space or moving into that space, but there's a huge space that we can all really thrive in.
Yves: I think you're so right. I. So there's an inherent advantage, which is cool. As I get a little bit older and I've been in, entrepreneurship for over a [00:41:00] decade, you can see trends and you can see things happen.
So I feel like what I'm seeing right now is we saw the trend of a lot of businesses do really well. Businesses got a lot bigger. Quantity seemed to be the big thing, like more leads, more, like it was just more. And this isn't just in PT, like we're seeing this in software. We're seeing this in product, like we're seeing that across the board.
So I feel like the people that are going to win over the next like 2030 years are the people that are mission driven. Would be clear. Number one, and the people that are product driven, the people that are like, how can I make the best possible product, not only in fulfillment, but like client success, like we're realizing too, just like in our own businesses, that the more that we focus on that stuff, the better the business does, it's not about more, it's about just like you said, quality over quantity.
And that's just getting started. Just like you said I would almost feel the exact opposite. It is not the. [00:42:00] It's not a bad time. It's actually probably one of the best times. And I think that's going to stick around for a while. We haven't even got to the point where that is even close, to max capacity.
It's going to be what drives the market for a long time. Dude, a hundred percent. I agree. And I think it makes me think of sometimes I would hear Kelly say all the time and it's more isn't better. Better is better, right? As simple as that sounds, it's like people are just like, and this was in the context of training volume, right?
Danny: More training is not better. Better training is better, right? More more patient volume isn't necessarily better. Like better patient volume is better outcomes is better. And if you can have high volume and better. Service, alcohol, like you're going to kill everybody. You will crush everyone.
Why is Chick fil A so fucking awesome? Because they have amazing chicken sandwiches, and they deliver them at light speed. Amazing. Crazy. That's why they kill everybody. And they're not even open one day a week. That's a very hard thing to do though. If you are better than [00:43:00] everyone, cheaper and faster, you win across the board.
You beat everybody, but it's so hard to do that unless you're Amazon or, I guess Tesla for EVs, right? Like you're, I'm talking like. Such a difficult thing to do that you can have a massive business off of it. But I don't think you can do all of those very easily or well, but if you can just be, better, better service even if it's slower, even if it's the volume is lower, you're still going to do pretty damn awesome because people like better so hard, just being better and having a better quality, better service, better outcome.
It's so difficult to do it at any scale. I
Yves: think just like the Chick fil A for example, right? Not only are they not open one day a week. They basically never change their menu because they want to be really good at these specific things. And think about how slow their growth is. They could probably open thousands of stores.
If they wanted to, they could do that, but they had this like really cool owner operator model where you have to go through this training and it has to be the right space. So there's a lot of places where [00:44:00] there's not a Chick fil A and it's probably really frustrating for people, but at the same time, they're going to grow and they're going to sustain.
for so much longer than somebody who just tries to scale really fast at, the behest of their product or their customer service or not finding the right people. So yeah, the Chick fil A model, man, like they, they've got a down pat. It's very similar to like our model, right? This kind of performance based cash model.
It's we are not going to grow fast, but we're going to be consistent. We're going to be profitable. We're going to be We're going to get really good outcomes. We're going to have amazing customer service, and we both obviously are leaning fully into that. Cause we feel like that's the way we want to do business.
Yeah. And
Danny: not to say you can't scale fast but I I had a mentor that told me one time, like what goes up fast comes down fast. So like when you look at the business side of things, if all you have to do is look at what's like the, we work. Drama series with Anne Hathaway and Jared Leto.
And it's just like this huge, fast spike in the business and just [00:45:00] collapse. It's literally went bankrupt. And slow, steady growth may not be as cool of a story. What is cool is staying in business. And if you look at business is a finite, it's not a finite game. It's an infinite game.
There's no it's not like monopoly was once you get to a certain point, you went you just keep playing. The goal is to make decisions that align with what your vision is and grow towards that in a methodical, consistent way. And some people might go faster than others. Depends on their risk tolerance.
It depends on their situation they come out of, it depends on their environment, their location their skill set all kinds of things. But the goal is to grow, to get better, to improve slowly over time. And if you do that, you're going to build a very robust. Difficult to kill business versus, scale scale, sale.
And this is complete opposite of something like software, which I know you're familiar with that world as well. And if you look at the SAS world is all about get funding, spend as much money as fast as you can to scale a [00:46:00] team to get a Minimal viable product out to try to get product market fit, get more money.
When you run out of that money, then, dilute as much as you possibly can to scale and grow and then sell. And it very rarely works out. People lose money in that they're just betting on it basically, because if it does work, they have a huge pop on the exit and they get a huge multiple return.
They don't need to be right. 10 times, that's the complete opposite of a cash based practice. We're literally every decision they make. This is a complete damn opposite. I had a chance to teach at Georgia Tech at a, they have a tech incubator for startups. And I, they brought me in, I felt like I was like a animal in a zoo cage.
Like they were just so confused with my business model. And they're like, what is that? You don't, you own the whole thing. Yeah. And you guys make money every month, and are you trying to sell it like anytime soon? And I was like, no, it's like, Profitable business is how I like pay for my livelihood.
And they're like, I don't understand what you're talking about. They just brought me in as a panel speaker. And they had all these other [00:47:00] people that were in the tech industry. And I just couldn't believe, I was like, you guys are gambling. This doesn't even seem like real business. Have you ever thought about maybe like taking profit or maybe, like slowing it down a little bit.
What do you guys think about that? And it's complete opposite. So I think just to understand what game you're playing, but the goal for us is different. It's to stay in the game is to grow slowly and grow consistently. Yeah, no, a hundred percent. I think it's just a totally different world. When we look at.
Yves: Cash based practices are a big focus and it's a big part of our mission, right? It's this time and financial freedom, having a profitable business that you enjoy, that you love and be able to take home enough money to live your lifestyle and continue to invest in other things, right? And that's, that roadmap is very doable.
It is very clear.
Danny: Super conservative too. I think that's the thing that aligns with most clinicians are very risk averse and. This is the least risky business that you can start, right? It's like damn near the least risky businesses you can start. It takes minimal capital to start. The risk exposure is tiny.
You can always go back and get your job back or a variation of [00:48:00] your job back. It's training wheel entrepreneurship in comparison to dang near anything else you do. You want to open a restaurant and see what that's like. Oh, dear God. I sat next to a guy at a party. at a poker game the other day that has a, he has two restaurants that got highlighted in the Atlanta Michelin star guide.
And I was like, dang, this is a super successful restaurant tour, right? He's this is a crazy business, dude. It's so stressful. It's just insane. The fact that they even stick around, like you rarely stay more than a couple of years. The lifestyle is wild. Cause you're, you're up so late, your day starts late.
You're up late. You have all these people that might not show up food that could go bad vendors that don't show up. You have all these moving parts. And that's how I was sitting there. I was like, Oh no, I want nothing to do with that. Like it's nothing at all. And everything he told me was like, even if you get to a certain size, let's say you want to build out of space, the commercial landlord, they will build whatever you want.
They'll make it look insanely nice. And they take a rev share. They actually get a percentage of the revenue that the [00:49:00] restaurant generates at a certain point, which I'd never heard of that before, but this is like a whole different business model, a whole different world and very sketchy, very low risk of success versus what we do.
I can count on one hand, how many people I know that have gone out of business. With a cash practice. And it's always been the same thing. I'll tell you exactly what they did. They took out a big loan. They got a big sub or a big lease in a big space that they built out. And they didn't know a goddamn thing about running a business.
It's like they bought themselves a Ferrari and they didn't know how to drive stick. And they eventually ran out of cash. They couldn't meet their lease. They had to file bankruptcy because they couldn't buy themselves out of it. And they had to start over from square for square one.
Yves: Cash is king. Do you know what I mean?
That's what we're realizing again. That's that, that switch that's happening away from the kind of startup world and this idea of just. Building a sustainable business that is cashflow positive. Like we're even seeing it we're in the investment world a little bit more now.
And you're seeing that there are people looking for cashflow positive businesses, not these huge, [00:50:00] it's still out there obviously, but not these huge businesses that they're going to grow and scale and sell, like it's more about being cashflow positive, which fits so well, just like you said, with.
PT entrepreneurs with clinical entrepreneurs, because, we're risk averse, we're servants at heart. We really like our product. And so it's just
Danny: such a great market fit. Yep. All right. I think that's, I think that's it. I think that's the end. I think that's it. I think we did it. We had so much more, but we went on a tangent.
Yeah, I know. I didn't even get a chance to get into another book, but that's okay. Save it for another time. So in summary biographies. So great way to learn what other people have done and how that might apply to your life. Read things that are some outside your lane, sometimes like things that maybe you're, shy away from, and maybe you can learn something that can apply.
I always found interesting, like sci fi is one of those things that I would read. And you can always, I find It's like this sort of futuristic world. But there's like human, humanity lessons that can be applied to that. Like I'm [00:51:00] going to watch the second Dune on Sunday with Jack, we're gonna go see it.
And I'm so excited to, it's going to be awesome. It's going to be, it looks great. But then, stuff like that and it's Oh, how does like reading Dune have anything to do with a business or whatever, it's just like This fantasy book or just sci fi book and it's it depends how you read it and how you reflect on things like that.
You can learn something from anything. I encourage you to keep learning, keep reading things, pick things that maybe aren't just in your normal wheelhouse. And and think about how they apply to your life and how they can apply to things you're trying to work through, especially problems you're trying to solve.
Like it's the perfect opportunity to be creative is whatever problem you have. And you think, what are other ways that I could look at solving this or improve this scenario or work towards whatever this might be? That's really what it's all about. You're always just trying to stumble forward. That's the goal.
Yves: We've had plenty of failures. I'll be talking about one in my state of the mess, right? With plenty of failures, the deal can you fail forward, and just change your environment and change your environment. Could be changing your physical environment, finding a mentor, reading a book, like the more that you can continue to expand your [00:52:00] perspective, right?
Like you've got this tiny bubble. If you keep the bubble small, it's going to be really difficult for you. But if you can keep bringing a new perspective and making that bubble bigger, I guarantee, almost guarantee you that you'll be successful. If
Danny: nothing changes. You're all about the maximum today.
I love it. That's it. We'll leave it at that. See you next time.
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 five days We get you crystal clear on How much money you need to replace by getting you ultra clear on how much you're actually spending.
We get you crystal clear on the number of people you're going to see and the average visit rate you're going to need to have in order to replace your income to be able to go full time. We go through three different strategies that you can take to go from part time to full time. You can pick the one that's the best for you based on your current situation.
Then we share with you the sales and marketing systems that we use within our mastermind that you [00:53:00] 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 physicaltherapybiz.
com forward slash challenge and get signed up [00:54:00] today.