E747 | How To Handle Seasonal Changes In Your Clinic

In this episode, Dr. Danny dives deep into the often-overlooked characteristic of patience and its critical role in achieving success, particularly for new entrepreneurs starting their own practices. He highlights how the ability to delay gratification and maintain patience is not only essential for long-term growth but is also one of the strongest indicators of future success—something often observed even in children.

Dr. Danny acknowledges the natural inclination of many practice founders to be competitive, which can sometimes conflict with the need for patience. Competitive individuals often desire quick results, making it challenging to navigate the slower periods that many practices face, especially during seasonal fluctuations. He provides insight into the typical slower months, detailing how summer and holiday seasons can be particularly tough for smaller, newer practices that may not have the same resilience as larger businesses.

Drawing on his personal experience, Dr. Danny candidly recounts his early days in practice, sharing his fears of potential failure during his first Christmas season when business slowed down significantly. He emphasizes the importance of perseverance and how, by cultivating patience, he was ultimately able to navigate those uncertain times and emerge stronger.

Listeners will discover that maintaining a patient mindset can help entrepreneurs withstand the inevitable ups and downs of running a practice. Dr. Danny expertly outlines practical strategies to foster this essential quality, reminding us that while competitiveness may drive initial motivation, patience is the true cornerstone for sustainable success.

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: Look at things from a different perspective. All of a sudden you start to realize, Oh, this is a seasonal change in businesses, which is very normal. All right, cool. What does that mean that I need to learn from this? Maybe it means that we need to do a better job of managing cashflow during times when we're really busy.

So that way in times, whenever we're not as busy, we have a cash buffer that doesn't make us feel so stressed out because we see our bank account, really getting hit. 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 Mate 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, cause I'm here to help you.

Hey, what's going on? Dr. Danny here with the PT entrepreneur podcast. And today we're talking about something that is just maybe not the coolest topic, but we're gonna talk about patients and we're gonna talk about how to maintain. And cultivate a patient approach, because when I look at the characteristics of somebody that's going to be successful with starting a practice, if they are like a positive person, positive mental attitude, they bring every single day, if they are willing to work really hard, if they are patient, like they're going to be fine.

Those are three big things that make such a massive difference. But the ability to delay gratification and be to be patient, like that's been studied. That's one of the strongest indicators that children will have success later in life. And when I look at it in adults, I see the same thing.

The thing with patients that is It's difficult is most people that are going to start a practice are relatively competitive individuals. We work with tons of people that are ex athletes, almost everybody actually has some sort of competitive background of some sort. Maybe I'm obviously not going to a professional play professional sport, but like they played sports.

They had some sort of competitive element to them. They did. They were competitive in other ways outside of like a, like a a sports element. It could have been many other things, but there's some element of, Competitiveness to them. And that's important. I think that you have to have that. You want to be able to compete.

You want to be able to see where you stand, right? There's a, there's not necessarily a chip on your shoulder, but you just want to know what you're made of and that's normal. I think that's a very like common thing that I see with people that want to see what they can do in the business world.

But when we look at the patient side of things, those usually don't go hand in hand. He usually don't have like highly competitive people that are also incredibly patient. That is a rare combination. That's a deadly combination. If you have those two things, holy crap, you're going to be hard person to beat.

But those don't usually don't go hand in hand. Those are tough. And this is an interesting time of year because for many people what they see is. Seasonally, these clinics, whatever, cash hybrid practice that you're in not so much in hybrid and insurance practices, but in cash practices, what we see the two really of the slowest times of the year or the summer people are traveling.

Some of you, if you're in an area where there's a bunch of snowbirds, maybe it's even busier. It's your busiest time of the year, but generally when people are traveling they're not. In your area to be able to come in for physical therapy visit. So okay, makes sense. We'll see a decrease in in volume.

And then the holidays is another time people are traveling. People are busy visiting family. They're buying Christmas presents or like doing all this stuff around the holidays. That just deters them from coming into your office, right? Like for a short period of time. And these are normal, by the way, it's normal to have these cyclical changes in the year.

It happens in many different businesses in different ways. Our business is very similar to, it's no different. Like we have months that are going to be busier and less busy, right? If you look at a gym, gyms are super busy, like January, February, March, beginning of the year. And then they're really busy right before the summer for everybody's trying to get in shape so they can, feel better about themselves at the pool.

And they're like dead. Around the holidays, right? It doesn't exist. Nobody's there and that's normal. That's just the way that those businesses work. But recently, we've had a rash of people that have been really frustrated with slower, periods of time because of.

Seasonal differences. And especially if you're a small business, this doesn't affect bigger businesses quite as much. And it's somewhat of an unfair advantage of being a bigger business. But if you're a bigger business, you have more people, you have more of a brand, you have more lead gen that's happening in the background because of the things you've put in the time you've put in over the years and the people.

That you've worked with and all that. So it's a little bit less of an effect on a bigger business, but it still affects them. But if you're a smaller business and you're just getting started, I remember my first Christmas season, I thought I was going out of business. I literally was looking for part time jobs at a hospital.

Fortunately for myself, I was too lazy to actually submit any applications. And I never did. I never had to go and get a job in the interim to help with our family's finances by time, December, I got through December and I got January, February, March were like PR months for our practice.

But I started practicing June, right? So I started in June. I didn't know anything about the seasonal changes at the end of the year. Nobody told me that I didn't, I had no idea and it really sucked and I was very worried about my business. But when we look at the way people respond to this they can.

Have like really significant freak out moments where they really do think Oh, it's all over. Everything's going, everything is on fire. Like it's the end. But it's because they're looking at things through a very short term lens. And when you're a newer business owner.

That's all you have is a short term lens. You don't have a long term lens because you haven't been in business for very long, right? It's like when you're a kid, a week seems like it's so long for you, but if you're a year old, a week is really, it's one 52nd of your life, right? So one, basically one 50th of your life is one week.

I'm 40, right? Or 30. I'm about to turn 40 next year. I'm 39. Let me say that. I'll be 40 in a couple of months. And for me, it's a significantly smaller chunk of time. A week is like nothing for me. It's not shit. If you're 90, a week is like nothing. Like time literally accelerates as you get older.

So you get a chance to like look at things through a bit more of a long term perspective. And you're like, Oh, that's not a big deal. Just be more patient. No wonder as people get older, they have more patients. That's the way it works. But if you can understand this as a young business owner and say to yourself, all right, cool.

I need to take a long term perspective on this, even though I don't have it. And I need to look, take a step back and just look, okay, what am I missing anything? Okay. Am I doing the right work? Am I focusing on the right things? Do I have the right fundamentals in place? Because if you do things will fall into place and you'll be fine If you're not doing the right work and you're not focusing on the right things.

Yeah, you could totally be nose diving your business and being a terrible spot But that's how you that's why you need to know what to work on and make sure you're doing the right things But when you really are able to take a step back Look at things from a different perspective all of a sudden you start to realize.

Oh You This is a seasonal change in businesses, which is very normal. All right, cool. What does that mean that I need to learn from this? Maybe it means that we need to do a better job of managing cashflow during times when we're really busy. So that way in times, whenever we're not as busy, we have a cash buffer that doesn't make us feel so stressed out because we see our bank account, really getting hit.

Yeah. Hit hard, maybe that means that we need to focus on marketing efforts leading up to those few months so that we can do a better job of working with the people that are still around and not traveling. Maybe we need to do a better job of marketing through the holiday season to be able to generate, some variation of of visits and volume that's tied in somehow with the marketing campaign for the holidays that makes sense, right?

So there's ways in which we can build our business to. Even these out, but we have to be calm, be patient, take a step back and really look at these things from what we consider like a 30, 000 foot view. When I was in the military, I had an instructor. He was actually, he was an air force guy and he used to always say this.

And of course, this is such an air force saying, he'd be like, look at this from a 30, 000 foot view. Take a step back. What's it look top down? Don't you're in it right now. And then we're talking about like patient care and how we work with people. But if you can take a step back and realize, Oh Separate yourself from the situation.

What are we missing? What are you doing? What are we not doing well? And really be objective over those things. That's the best thing for you to do in times where you're feeling uncertainty and you feel like you want to rush to get things to change all of a sudden overnight, it may take, if you're not doing the right things, it could take two or three months of work for you to really see things pay off.

We see this a lot with people that are marketing. They're like marketing aggressively, locally. Their schedule gets super busy and then they have no time to actually maintain any sort of marketing channels. And then all their new patient volume drops off and then they got to go back out and try to build it up.

And there's this cycle of just like market fulfill market, fulfill. And they haven't actually been able to stabilize anything. Cause they're not. Prioritizing their schedule correctly. They don't have a sort of block schedule where they're doing the right things at the right times throughout the day and maintaining a steady marketing channel for their practice, right?

This is a perfect example of it that many people are guilty of, including myself. So if you are struggling to be patient, here's my advice. 30, 000 foot view, take the air force view, focus on the work. Make sure you're detailing out that you're doing the right work and really look at your year And if you're really concerned with seasonal changes that do happen and that's like a scary thing for you To really focus on what things can I do that lead into these seasons that put our business in a better place Do not have as much of a peak and valley and it's more of a level sort of growth trajectory for the business that's going to really offset a lot of stress for you.

So I hope this helps, enjoy, the summer seasons and just keep in mind, everybody else is too, everybody's doing it. So don't freak out if you see a seasonal difference and enjoy the holidays. It's actually one of the best parts of these businesses is that you get to take a break when everybody else wants to take a break, that includes your family.

No longer, if you're an in network practice, you're getting crushed at the end of the year. You're getting crushed over Christmas. You're not taking any vacation. Everybody's trying to squeeze their visits in at the end of the year before their deductibles rolled over. And in a cash based practice, guess what?

You can be present. You can hang with your family. Just got to make sure you set yourself up to where, these things, you put the business in a good spot and you get to enjoy the holidays with everybody else. That is a really cool aspect of these businesses, and it shouldn't be a stressor for you.

If set up correctly,

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