E733 | Don't Forget, There Is Nobility In What You Do

In this episode of the podcast, Dr. Danny dives into the world of physical therapy, drawing parallels from his own experience working in the restaurant industry. He discusses the immense stress and challenges faced by restaurant workers and contrasts it with the noble work of physical therapists. Dr. Danny emphasizes the profound impact that physical therapists have on their patients' lives, creating "little miracles" through their work.

The host reflects on a TV show he watched, "The Bear," which depicted the high-pressure environment of a restaurant kitchen. He relates this to his own experience as a waiter and highlights the constant pressure and challenges faced by those in the food service industry. Drawing a parallel to physical therapy, Dr. Danny discusses the importance and nobility of the profession, likening physical therapists to chefs who create memorable experiences and bring joy to their customers.

Throughout the episode, Dr. Danny emphasizes the passion and personal reward that comes from working as a physical therapist. He acknowledges the potential for monotony in the profession but emphasizes the immense satisfaction that comes from directly impacting the lives of patients and helping them regain their physical abilities. The host contrasts physical therapy with other professions, highlighting the unique personal fulfillment and impact that comes from the face-to-face, service-oriented nature of the field.

In conclusion, the episode serves as a powerful reminder of the importance and nobility of the physical therapy profession. Dr. Danny encourages physical therapists to maintain gratitude and appreciation for the work they do, reminding them of the profound impact they have on their patients' lives. The episode serves as a call to action for physical therapists to combat burnout and maintain passion for their profession, recognizing the incredible value they bring to those they serve.

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: But with us, in the clinic, we create Like honestly little miracles for people that come in and think that They just physically cannot do things that they want to do with the people they want to do them with And by the time that we're done with them, they're starting to question What else they could do, they come in and They're unable to run because of whatever something's going on and you help them get back to running instead of them thinking That's it Oh, I hope I get back to running one day. It's well, what race do you want to train for next? 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 Matei 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, what's going on? Dr. Danny here with the pt entrepreneur podcast And today I want to chat with you a little bit about Why what you do is so important and this? I guess short podcast topic comes from Me watching a TV show actually with my wife actually on Hulu. It's The Bear. If you haven't seen The Bear, great show.

I actually thought season one started quite slow ended really well, but we just finished season three and I'm not going to spoil anything for anybody, but just context of the show. It's basically about a family in Chicago. That has a, like a sandwich shop. And the younger brother in this family goes off and works in like fine dining and becomes like a high end chef.

And he basically comes back and takes over running the sandwich shop. And eventually they turned into, more than that. I'm going to leave it at that. So anyway, I finished watching the third season and in the third season, this chef, this younger brother, chef gets together. With a bunch of other chefs, like real actual real life restaurant tours and chefs that they're all sitting around having a really interesting sort of informal discussion and just a little conversation.

And I don't know if this was literally just like a a conversation they had, these people have, and just ask them some questions and had them just talk about it in an open forum. It felt more like it was like a round table podcast and it was a part of a scripted show is really interesting how they did it.

But One of the one of the chefs talks about like they basically said something to the effect of, do you ever just get so tired of it that you want to hang it up? And I don't know if anybody here has actually worked in a restaurant, but I worked in a restaurant for years as a waiter when I was in college and.

It is one of the, like working in a restaurant is one of the most stressful things I've ever done in my life. Like it is just, it is very stressful. And especially if you are a career you know, kitchen staff, chef even any of it, but I really feel in the kitchen is very stressful.

If you're in front of the house or like you're a waiter, you're just getting yelled at by people more. So you're taking it versus the actually making the food. It's just, it's crazy how they have to try to coordinate everything. And it's just so stressful. So I basically asked him, do you ever just not want to deal with all the crap that you have to put up with?

And what he said was really interesting. He basically said that there's no ability in what they do, where they make. Like these magic moments for people, they make people happy to create these memorable experiences for people within the space they have. And it's, and that is like the thing that drives them, right?

That's the thing that keeps them coming back. Is this the joy that they can bring to somebody through food and experience within the atmosphere that they can create is. The addictive part of what they do and they find so much pride in it. And they feel like there's so much importance and nobility in what they do, it that it's worth the challenging lifestyle and all of the stress that they deal with.

And I like, I watched it more than once. I like rewound it. And I watched it again because, I feel like if you think your job is hard as a physical therapist, go work in a kitchen, go be a waiter for for your career and. There's a whole nother level of life impedance, stress, just challenge.

It comes along with that, but don't get me wrong. There's challenges in every career, but we look at physical therapy. What I see is it is, it can get a bit redundant after a while. I saw patients for 12 years before I got to the point where it just didn't make any sense for me to continue to do that.

Aside when it, when I compared it to basically taking over, really running and growing the businesses that, that we had started from an impact standpoint, my ability to help other people help more of the people that they're trying to work with. So me spending an hour one on one with somebody just seemed like it was very poorly leveraged use of time.

But it's not that I didn't enjoy. Like treating patients. In fact, I think it's actually one of the most personally rewarding things that we can do. And the fact that you get paid for it is amazing. And you know what they said that I thought was so interesting was, Hey, when you feel burnt out and you feel like you want to give up and it's it's over, you think about what you do and how important it is to these other people that you work with basically as far as the restaurants go for what this one person said.

And it made me think of physical therapy and how important what we do is to the people that we work with. And you get to see that on a day in and day out basis. And if you do anything for a decade plus, it's going to start to feel a bit redundant. I don't think there's any way around that aside from the fact that you have to continue to try to learn more and you have to remember the impact that you're having on the people that you work with.

You have to be. I'm very grateful for the opportunity to be able to do that. You have to understand how important you are to the people that you work with and how much you're affecting their life. Because in a restaurant, you may create these memorable moments, right? But with us in the clinic, we create honestly, little miracles for people that come in and think that they just physically cannot do things that they want to do with the people that want to do them with.

And by the time that we're done with them, they're starting to question what else they could do. They come in and they're unable to run because of whatever, something's going on. And you help them get back to running instead of them thinking, Oh, I hope I get back to running one day.

It's well, what race do you want to train for next? Where do you want to travel to with your running buddies and go run a race? Like there we're helping them squeeze more juice out of life, right? With the vehicle in life, which is their body. And there's a lot of importance and nobility to what we're doing.

We do as clinicians face to face. And I know sometimes that can be hard when you see your peers or your family, maybe they have a job that is a bit more, remote, maybe they're working, they have more flexibility in their schedule, they work remote, or maybe they get to travel a lot more because of the type of work that they do.

And that's great. And I've seen both sides of this as well, where I don't treat patients anymore. And it's something that I can tell you as a clinician as, someone who went to school to learn how to help people, I miss it. I really do. The perspective of that is, is interesting and it's just not something for me that I'll probably go back to, but every chance I get with friends, family, like I still treat people.

It's just in my garage. I have a neighborhood clinic at this point that I just treat friends and family and I love it. I really love it. I absolutely think it's one of the coolest skill sets, one of the coolest personally rewarding careers you can possibly have. And I can tell you, a more of a remote lifestyle.

It's, there's a lot of drawbacks to that too. And it's funny as I see this comparison a lot with younger clinicians where they're like, Oh yeah my brother works for the startup and they do X, Y, and Z or whatever. But I can promise you working for Some sort of software company that's building an app or a financial company or whatever.

There's no way in hell that they have the level of personal reward and satisfaction that you have on a daily basis with people that are so thankful for what you help them be able to do. I noticed this. When I was thinking about going to PT school, I was shadowing orthopedic surgery and physical therapy was a side thing for me because I would follow some of these people that had surgery to go do their, when they went to do their rehab to learn more about that side of it.

But I was interested in becoming an orthopedic surgeon. And what I noticed was the physical therapy clinic, it was so much more fun. People were coming back in, even when they didn't have an appointment to bring like a cake that they made for, their provider in the team there and all that stuff.

And there was just like so much gratitude from the people that we had a chance to work with that it's amazing, and it's one of those things that, yeah, there's some cons to the profession, no doubt about it. There's. There's restrictive schedules and it's challenging. It can feel very like energy draining when you have, especially when you have people that just aren't getting better, it sucks.

It and if you have like challenges that maybe people are, they're talking to you about, it can feel a bit draining at the end of the day. You're just giving so much to other people from an energy standpoint, from an attention standpoint. Really trying to help them accomplish this physical change that they're after and trying to solve just a Rubik's Cube of the human body is just so difficult.

And frankly, that's what makes it interesting as well. It's just something that is so important and you create such an impact for these other people, for the clients that you have and the patients. And you just can't forget that if you're feeling, a little burnt out, a little, just you're not, maybe your passion for the career is maybe not where it was or maybe that you thought that it would be.

I think you have to really look at what you're really doing and the people that you're helping and the impact that you're having on them because it is rare. It is, it's something that I don't think a lot of other professions have outside of a lot of service based careers, right? It's a service based industry that we're in.

We're in service of other people. I, and I think that is, becoming less and less popular, which is not cool. Honestly, I think that's, I think there's a lot of downside to that. In a world that is more technologically advancing than we've probably ever seen human to human face to face treatment of injuries.

To help people resolve those and get back to things that they love to do in the physical world where they have to use their body. We're not the Wally people rolling around in chairs. And we're using our body and we should, and people want to do that. And when that gets taken away from them, it's hard on them.

And you help people get back to that. And that is amazing. That's a noble career. That's something that you. Just shouldn't forget. And if you own a business that employs other clinicians and you realize that they're starting to, feel like their passion for the career, they're losing some of it, or they're getting, it feels monotonous or it feels like groundhog's day because they're treating the same things or solving the same problems or whatever, you've got to remind them of what it is that they're actually doing and why they're doing it and the true impact that they're making.

And how, what they've chosen to do, it's not just about. Income or the lifestyle or whatever it's about the service that they have chosen To be able to learn and provide to other people that is so Important, right? So Anyway, I thought this was an interesting episode with Some parallels to what we do in comparison to the restaurant world, which I'll be honest with you is way crazier environment, much harder type of lifestyle to have.

And, if you're a clinician, I don't even know if you realize how good you have it. It, and maybe that's part of the problem is you got to stop and really remember that you get to just do an amazing job. And have gratitude for that. Don't forget that and stop comparing yourself to all the people around you that you think Have a better job or they make more money and they make more money and they hate what they do Or they have more time flexibility, but they have no direct Impact on another person's life.

I don't know what that's worth, but it's worth a lot. And for those of you that are doing your own thing and you're able to grow a business and impact other people and take a risk on yourself and, make that work, then you get that opportunity to have a little bit more of what you're looking for with income and Time freedom and but yet still have that direct impact on people.

And I think that's, what's really cool about these businesses to where you can still stay in that environment, but not necessarily but, move a little bit past it into a role that it gives you a bit more variance and that's something that's pretty, pretty interesting and at a very unique way of leveraging your skillset.

So hope you liked what I dropped on you today. Don't forget what you do super important and needed and is going to continue to be even more needed. going forward. And so if you're feeling a little tired, a little fatigued cause your career is starting to feel a little mundane don't forget about the people you help and that should be enough to keep you going.

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