E678 | How To Plan For Business Success This Year

In this episode of the podcast, Dr. Danny emphasizes the importance and benefits of conducting an annual planning retreat for physical therapy businesses. He highlights several key points to consider when planning such a retreat.

One of the main advantages of an annual planning retreat is that it allows business owners to take a step back from their day-to-day operations and remove distractions. By doing so, they can strategically plan their goals and objectives for the upcoming year, setting the stage for their business to thrive.

Dr. Danny suggests that the retreat should ideally take place in January or early in the year, as this allows for planning the entire year ahead. However, even if it's already late January, it's not too late to plan for the rest of the year.

Choosing the right location for the retreat is also crucial. It's important to go somewhere other than your home or office to fully disconnect from daily distractions. This could be a cabin, a rental home, or any other place that allows for a change of environment and perspective.

To help settle the mind and gain clarity before planning sessions, Dr. Danny recommends incorporating movement activities into the retreat, such as snowboarding or hiking.

Before the retreat, it's essential to do some pre-planning work. Analyzing the business data and key performance indicators (KPIs) from the past year is crucial in order to identify the major decisions and directions to focus on during the retreat. Without understanding past performance, the planning process will be incomplete.

Setting annual goals that are specific, measurable, and have defined metrics, such as revenue or new patient numbers, is another important step. Once the annual goals are established, it's then possible to work backwards and determine quarterly and monthly goals needed to achieve the annual targets.

Dr. Danny emphasizes the importance of developing specific action plans under each goal, including tasks, timelines, and assigned responsibilities. Leaving no room for ambiguity in execution is key. It's also crucial to track progress regularly.

To ensure alignment and buy-in, it's recommended to present the annual plan to the team. This way, employees will be more motivated working towards clear, shared goals that they understand their role in. Regular review of the plans is essential to keep everyone headed in the right direction.

Although the planning process is highly beneficial for solo owners even without a team to present to, it still provides clarity, focus, and direction for the upcoming year.

In conclusion, the key takeaway from this episode is that conducting an annual planning retreat, followed by regular review, allows physical therapy businesses to set informed goals and navigate the year efficiently towards their targets. It establishes important guidance and focus, ultimately leading to success.

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: 

Hey, real quick, if you're 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.

Hey, what's going on? Dr. Danny here with the pt entrepreneur podcast and today i'm talking to you about How do you run a successful? annual planning retreat maybe What the hell is a annual planning retreat and why would you want to do this? So I'm gonna go through all this. I'm gonna lay out how you can put together a success, a successful annual planning retreat that can really put your business in a great spot for the entire year.

Now by the time that this comes out, it's going to be the end of January and it's not too late. to do something like this. When we do our annual planning retreat, we do it in January. We're doing towards the beginning of January. In fact, we just did ours not not too long ago. It was last week and it's not too late.

So if you want to plan for 2024, you can take this, you can run with it and you can do something you can do something similar and hopefully you have. The resources, ability, and time to really be able to focus on this, because I think it sets the stage for your business to really thrive and for you to feel very clear about what you're trying to do for the year.

This is something that I. Initially, when we first started business, we didn't do anything like this. We just didn't even know that this was helpful or this was a thing. We just got into it and we just were working, we're just trying to get patients and we're trying to see as many visits as we could see try to hire people, just try to.

Try to actually do the work and you might be in that stage right now. But even if you are in that state, you're just getting started or you're just really time poor and you're trying to figure out You know what you should do next It's still very helpful to plan your year and i'm gonna lay out why and what you can do And if this if you're if it's just you don't have to do a planning retreat the same way that I do Because I have business partners you can still do this by yourself and even if you don't have a team to present your annual plan to, you can still do this and see a lot of success with it because over the course of the year things are not going to go exactly how you plan, right?

But if you don't plan for anything, then you actually don't know if you've made progress towards your goals or if you haven't for many people, this can be applied, not just in business, but basically anything. I. Have come a long way when it came when it comes to this because I would never plan for anything plant planning So it sounds boring just the idea of planning sounds boring but the outcome is great when you actually spend time focusing on what you're trying to do and you make progress towards it and I can tell you even if you have a half assed plant and you do a good job implementing You're going to be in a way better place than if you have no plan and you do a good job implementing, because you don't even know if you're working towards the right things.

So this is something that I think can be really helpful. So the first thing that I think, and these are must do's for me, and people may have their own variations of what they want to do with this, but The first thing that I think you really need to do if you're going to do some sort of annual planning and you're going to get a really positive outcome out of it is I think you need to go somewhere else.

You can't be in your house. You can't be at your office. You have to go to a different environment and this is something that You know, when you think of anybody that's trying to make a big decision or do something that's really challenging, write a book, for instance, a lot of authors will go to other places that way they remove themselves from the day to day.

They remove themselves from the constructs that we have around us that are normal, that we see as normal. And you take yourself out of this environment that is just. You just go through life at your house, at your office. And it's a very normal, consistent place for you. But when you look at trying to step back and almost pull yourself out of this level in which you're viewing what you're doing, imagine you could go up to the top of a mountain and look down.

On yourself, like from I don't know, a couple thousand feet. And you can say, Oh, it looks different from up here. Their perspective is different. It's really not that, that is that school is not as far away from my house as I thought, right? The things look different whenever you zoom out and when you can take a step back and put yourself in a different environment, it is incredibly helpful.

To allow you to say, this is where I go and I plan. This is where I look at things longterm. This is where I take a hard look at everything that I'm doing. No distractions from your business, no distractions from your family, no distractions from your team. This is a short period of time where you're literally solely going to focus on the goals of the vehicle that you have with your business to work your way towards time and financial freedom or whatever it is that your goals are impact on however many people whatever your vision is, but getting yourself out of that environment is really helpful.

And I've done this both. Locally where we've done this at our house or at our office, and it's still helpful. It's helpful to, to do it no matter what, but if you can get away for a day, two days and really take yourself out of that environment and focus just on this, you're, it's going to be such a better outcome for you.

And it doesn't have to be anything crazy. What we do now is not necessarily what everybody's going to be able to do because we, we do like a. annual planning trip where we go snowboarding and plan. I don't live anywhere near mountains, so I have to fly there, and I have to rent a place like with my partners.

But for us, the reason that we do this is it aligns with our core values of number one, you've gotta be, you gotta lead from the front. And we talk about, we want to be. Healthy, happy people, like successful, healthy, happy people. And there's very few people that I meet that are a combination of all those things.

I see people that are very successful in their entrepreneurial journey and they are unhappy and they're unhealthy. And I don't want to do that. Like just because business, you can have success in business. Doesn't mean that you can't also have. An adventurous life where you're active and you're happy and you're enjoying time doing things that are fun with great people.

So part of the reason that we do this is it aligns with our core values with it's a, it's one of the fun parts of owning a business. Now the other thing that we really like about this is it creates an opportunity to move. And you could do, you don't have to go ski or snowboard or whatever it is.

This is what we do. And what I like about it so much is number one, it is a completely different looking environment. I didn't grow up doing, I didn't grow up snowboarding or skiing. I didn't snowboard until I was 30. God, how old was I? 33. And so I'm 38. So I've been snowboarding for five years and it's not something that I grew up doing.

It's difficult to learn, but it's awesome. And what I like about it is it reminds me like when I was in Hawaii, I would surf. I have a longboard skateboard that I like to use in our neighborhood and it's really the. It's the moving back and forth. The carving movement for me is this sort of meditative flow state movement that is so hard to find and so enjoyable.

Helpful for me to settle thoughts because I can't focus on anything else. If you are On a basically, let's call it a fucking plank on your feet, sliding down ice and snow on a mountain and you're not focused on what you're doing, you're going to fall. So you don't have a choice. And that's what I like about it is forced movement meditation.

For us, the way that we set this up is we go out first thing in the morning. And we don't go all day. In fact, you can't necessarily do something all day and not work on your business because then it's technically not a business activity. It's not a business retreat. The majority of your day needs to be spent on business activities.

So for us, we go out, we might go from eight 30. It depends on the mountain opens eight, eight 30 to 11. So we'll go out for a couple of hours. Get a handful of runs in and then we go back, eat lunch and immediately get into working on the business. But what's great about it, and you can apply this to anything is you're going to move in the first part of the day with something doing something for us.

We snowboard for you. It could be go on a hike. It could be go on a run, ride your bike, play nine holes of golf, right? Something that's. You can't be out there all day. So you're like, yeah, I'm gonna play 36 holes a day. It's you're not going to get any damn work done, man. There's another point, go move, do something, get on a paddleboard, paddle around for an hour or two, get a great workout in, get a lot of movement in.

And what happens is when we're focused on these other things, these movement based things, it lets our thoughts settle. It lets our mind gain clarity and it's not it's awesome that it's fun. It's awesome that it's an enjoyable thing to do, but it's, what's even better and the by product of that is clarity.

And that is a hard thing for a busy person to, to gain. This, these moments of clarity come from repetitive movement that we. that we do that allows our brain to settle this thoughts. It's what happens when if you go for a run and all of a sudden you hear Oh, that's what I should do with this.

And this is what I need to do in this situation or go for a walk or whatever. And it's like one of the best ways to actually let your brain. Just work it shit out in the background. You want to move in some capacity, first thing in the morning, the beginning part of the day, and then, you're working your butt off the rest of the day.

And, the things that you're working on, you need to, in a lot of ways, plan ahead. Before you go on these these planning retreats, and, like I said, it could be anything. You could just rent a cabin, and go hiking, come back, and then work on planning. But before you get to where you're going to need to do some pre work.

And by this, you're going to need to take a hard look at your business. And this is where. It can be a bit hard as a new business owner because you don't know what you don't know sometimes But for us we have we track so much data and we're we are very big on decision making decision based Decisions based on data.

So we track everything so before I go and do annual planning. I'm looking at our year in review and you can do the exact same thing and look at your year in review. You want to look at your most important key performance indicators for your practice is going to be things like revenue, profit new patient volume, a percentage of clients that are on recurring services or.

Whatever recurring services you have, what percent of your revenue does that make up a total visit volume, your staff, looking at how your staff is doing, would you rehire these people? What roles do you need to work towards next year? What does your organizational chart look like? Do you have the right people in the right jobs?

And if you don't know if what I'm saying right now sounds like I'm speaking another language, your best bet is to get some help. On the business side of running a practice like this is what we do. If you literally are getting lost because I'm naming off KPIs that you're not sure whether you are tracking these things or if they're even part of your business, like step number one, become a decent business owner.

Spend some time learning that you can listen to this podcast. You can read books, you can talk to other business owners. If you want to shortcut it, work with PT biz, simple as that. Go to physical theory, biz. com. Check out what we're doing. We work with people that are doing this every single day. And that's step number one.

If you don't know what you don't know, you got to change that. But when you're looking at planning, these are the things that you really need to understand that. You're whittling down three to ten maybe things like between three and ten things three to three to ten decisions maybe directions of things that you need to address At the beginning of the year that are going to shape your entire, fiscal year.

So in this scenario in 2024, so you're thinking to yourself, all right, what are the three, three to 10 big things I need to make a decision on? Maybe it's, do I move to a standalone space? What should that space look like? What kind of funding options do I have? Can I go smaller and grow?

Do I need to go bigger and take it on the chin for a while but be able to stay in the same place and grow past myself? Do I need to keep this staff member is a staff member mediocre? Are they okay? But they're not. They're not what I'm looking for. Do I need to hire because I'm, Oh, our volume is above what we can fulfill on.

Do I need to increase my systems to allow for better management of staff and tracking? Do I need to reinvest in infrastructure? And technology and maybe marketing. Is this the year that I'm going to reinvest in marketing? These are the things that you're going to want to look at and think about before you actually show up to do your planning retreat, because you want to know what you need to work through, what things you need to spend some time really focusing on without any of these other distractions.

So once you have these three to 10 things, that's what you're going to actually work on after. You've gone out and you've done some sort of movement. So step number one is to define three to 10 big decisions you need to make in your business that you want to work through on your planning retreat. Step number two would be once you're there, obviously, I guess number two is go somewhere.

Step number three, move in the first part of the day, get up, get moving, do something fun, do something that is, essentially movement meditation. And then. Number four, come back and work on the big decisions that you have to make and work through those. 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 in front of more clinicians and really help them develop time and financial freedom.

If you would do that, I would greatly appreciate it. Now, back to the podcast. Now, if you want to take the approach that we take, it's really based around planning out our year and then reverse engineering our first quarter. So the way that we like to do it is we'll say, okay, what are our goals for the year?

What do we want to accomplish? And the easiest place to start with this for most people is just revenue. So let's say you are. Let's say in 2023, your clinic did 250, 000 in revenue, and in 2024, you want that clinic to do 500, 000 in revenue. So a double, right? If you look at that, you can say, okay, that means that we have to average.

A little over 40, 000 a month. And we've been averaging a little over 20, 000 a month. So how are we going to make up the difference there? And once you decide what you want to do, you have to look at kind of three main variables that are going to lead into that goal. So if we look at doubling your revenue.

In 2024 versus 2023, there's a few things there that are going to need to happen. Number one, unless you have the staff in place, you're going to need other people to help you fulfill. So let's say in this scenario, you're a single provider. Maybe you have administrative support, but you're the only person fulfilling on everything and you are hammered.

Like your schedule is super, super full. You're going to need to hire somebody. So one of the big things you can put down of your three sort of big things you need to focus on is hire a great clinician. You're going to need to also fill that person's schedule up, right? So you're going to need to increase new patient volume X in order to hit those goals based on whatever your 2023 numbers were.

And then the last thing would be that maybe you need better systems. To be able to track everything and to organize everything and to make it more effective and seamless to bring other people on. So maybe that's reinvesting in other technology and or training and things that actually need to happen so that you can build into this vision that you have for your company.

Underneath these three things are going to lead to your goal. You're going to want to go ahead and list out. What are the key things you need to work on to achieve that? So let's say you're looking to hire somebody. Okay. I want to hire a clinician by the end of Q1, 2024. I need to. Number one, start reaching out to connections to see if there's anybody that is a recommended person that might be a good fit for my company.

Maybe it's social media that you're posting that you're hiring. Maybe you're on LinkedIn putting things on LinkedIn about hiring or running ads on there to get qualified leads. Maybe it's relationships with. P. T. schools and starting to curate and develop relationships with P. T. schools. So you have a pipeline of potentially good qualified candidates that are going to be a fit to work with your company.

Maybe it's you don't have any sort of job description. You don't have any sort of Compensation explanation of structure of benefits All the things that you need to actually bring somebody on from an HR standpoint All these things are going to need to be a part of this one big goal But that one goal is going to be huge for you because it could potentially double your revenue and without that person You're not going to be able to hit So all of these things underneath that are going to need to be addressed.

And the best way to do that is to really lay these out in a Google sheet or something like that and assign a timeline and a person. And in this case, it's probably going to be you for everything, but a timeline and a person. Okay. Post. Reach out to connections by February 1st about referrals for a potential new hire post on social media by February 1st for.

We're hiring job opening post, right? So like you're listing out dates and assigned people, who is this actually, who's actually going to do this and when's it going to be done by. And this is really important because one of the big mistakes we see is we come up with these ideas of what we need to do.

And usually they're accurate because you spend some time thinking about this and you're in a different area and you're doing some movement before you start working on the business side of things, you're going to have a lot of clarity, but where we. Where we lose the plan is in the details and the timing.

When's it going to happen, who's responsible for it, and not following up with that. Because what I used to do, I would not do this part, was, Alright, I would come up with here's the big things we need to do, and I would assume I'll just remember. I'll assume somebody's going to do it, organically.

It's going to happen because I put the plan down, but it doesn't really work that way. Like you need accountability, you need timelines and you need people to know what their job is, who's in charge of what, and to be able to track that and have accountability there. So make sure you have. Those tasks, when they're going to happen, who's going to do it in order for those subtasks to lead to wherever that big goal is in this scenario, we're talking about hiring somebody, right?

Because if you just say I need to hire somebody by the end of Q one, but you don't actually have any of these other things you need in place, you're going to get. Slowed down a lot because maybe you remember, all right, I'm going to reach out to some people. You get some people in place that are potentially good hires, but you have no job description for them.

You have no organization about what their role should be compensation. And now you go to interview with these people and you obviously don't know what the hell you're doing. You don't know what they're going to be doing. Do you think you're going to get the best quality? Higher because of that, no, no chance.

Like they don't want to work for a unorganized business that doesn't have a clear vision and mission. That's your unique advantage early on is you are relatively fast growing. You have a lot of excitement, a lot of energy around this business that's growing. And. You can get people, you can punch above your weight class because you are, you have such a strong vision and fast growth that these folks see versus working for a big corporately owned practice that maybe has better benefits plans.

But they know they're not going to like working there. They know they're not going to work with the population they want to work with. And it's going to be more corporate. There's going to be layers of decisions that have to be made versus you're the founder. They can talk straight to you, right? And be a part of this fast growing ecosystem that you can sell them on.

And that's huge, right? But you do still have to have some layers of organization around what you're doing. Otherwise, you're not going to be able to bring anybody on. It's really going to be a good fit. As an example, when this hiring example, that's what you want to do. So you want to have these three main things are going to lead to your goals.

And then you want to have sub components underneath of it. And when they're going to be done, who's going to do them. So number one, you got to do some pre planning to go somewhere. Three, get out and move. Four, get your shit done. Plan your shit. And again, this could literally be one to two days. It doesn't have to be any longer than that.

It could be if you really want to disconnect and spend more time on your business, you feel like you need that. That's fine too, but at a minimum one or two days, but the last thing, and this is really important if you have. Other staff members, even if it's you and just like you and an admin, right?

An office manager and, or maybe it's just you and a small team. Once you get back, you need to set some time to be able to present your plan to your team and to get. Everybody on the same page, who's doing what what the goals are, why the goals are that. And if you don't want to have, revenue numbers in there, that's fine.

You don't have to do that necessarily. It could literally be instead of, 500, 000 annual, gross revenue say is the goal that you decide. You could just say, we want to double visit volume. In the practice this year, which would equate to the same thing, right? But it's not a financial number.

It's a metric that the business is tracking. You can do the financial side too, if you want to do that. It depends on how you want to run your business. You call it more of a open book model where your numbers are very transparent. The only one that might not be is profit, but people know in our company, like our core folks, they know exactly what our revenue is.

They see expenses, everything that goes along with that. Really, the only thing that's not completely transparent is probably profit which can be very different based off of overhead and events that we have advertising. Like we have some really big expenses and they know, like whatever the top line number is, that's not what the company's keeping, right?

Like that's, but that is still a number that we track and we want to. Be focused on because it does drive a lot of things. So it's up to you. You can do what you want with it, but you have to present your plan to your team. You present your plan to your team. You make sure that they understand what their part in this is.

And I can tell you, if you do this. Even if it's just you and your office manager or admin, they're literally going to be like, Oh my God, I feel so much better about working at this place because this person seems like they are really putting the time, effort, intention into making this business what they're telling me they want it to be.

Cause you can only sell somebody on a vision for so long before they start working with you and they start realizing, wow, they're literally like. Making decisions on the fly it's like they jumped out of a plane and are building the parachute on the way down. I don't know if I want to be connected to this person.

This is, this might be a sketchy place to work. They start looking at working other places because of that. So for you, this level of professionalism that you take to planning your own year out is going to spill over into your team. In a very positive way and they're also going to be very aware of what your expectations are for them And that's key.

You do not need to micromanage people, but you do need to give people direction And have expectations and accountability for them being able to do work at a level that you expect them to be able to do In the military, they would call it, big boy big girl rules like we're not micromanaging you but bf Be a professional, do your job, and do it really well.

Here's what your job is. Here's what we expect of you. Go do it. That's it. You want to support them, but you don't want to micromanage them. And for everybody on the same page and for them to know, okay, for me to hit this goal, my part of this is going to be this, and it's due by this, right?

That is huge because now you have all these people working together on a common goal and not necessarily siloed or individually. Working on their own thing. They're a part of an actual team. They're part of a plan that's going to help grow this business that provides for their livelihood. Don't keep, don't forget that.

It's very important. It's literally how they pay their mortgage, how they buy groceries. And if you don't take that seriously, if you don't take the the health of the job opportunities, the security of the employees that you hire very seriously, you are doing the wrong thing. And if they feel like you are trying to help them succeed as best you possibly can through this business vehicle that you've created, they will work, be very loyal.

They will work their butt off for you. They will be happy to be a part of your team because they know that you got, you have their back and you're going to do the right thing for them. So keep that in mind. If you're if you're struggling with retention, if you're struggling with people dropping off and leaving, it might, you might need to.

Look at yourself on the leadership side and ask yourself if you are actually organizing yourself and running your business like a business, or are you being very reactive and making decisions based off of feelings? Only gut feelings are helpful, but gut feeling. Backed by data is the best and the professionalism that you bring with even something as simple as this, right?

An annual sort of plan that you're going to put together and deliver to your team. That can make a huge difference in whether they feel like they're in a safe place. They feel like they're have good job security, like they're in a place where they can grow and they can grow with you. And if you don't do that.

Then you're really leaving a lot on the table and they might start to question whether they're in the right place. So if you're having a lot of turnover, you have a lot of people leaving, you're having a lot of issues with staffing and things like that. The first place you got to look is yourself.

Ask yourself if you're leading this company the way it deserves, and if not, and you need to start making some changes that simple. So in summary, number one, you're going to do some pre planning work, three to 10 things that you want to really make key decisions on. All right. Three to ten anywhere in there.

Most of you probably gonna have closer to ten Businesses, there's a lot going on go somewhere with it with whatever your budget allows, it could literally be As simple as like maybe you have a friend Who has a little cabin or something like that. Maybe for you, you crushed it in business last year and you want to do something cool.

Where you're working on the business. All right. Awesome. Reward yourself. Do something cool. Go somewhere else. Move. Do something that is going to get your body moving. It's going to get your, let your brain settle down. Let you synthesize thoughts in the first part of the day. Second part of the day.

Get after it focus drink a shitload of coffee if you need to and just focus on what you're trying to do come up with The main goals that you have the sub goals underneath that and then the things you're gonna lead to accomplishing those sub goals and then the last thing is Present this to your team when you get back, present it to your team.

If you don't have a team review it yourself for an hour or so. After you get back the following week to make sure that you are clear on what you need to do. And this is something you're going to look at every week, like you want to look at these goals every single week and make sure you're tracking them.

You could even just write them down or. Put them on a piece of paper that you print out and tape it up somewhere that you see it all the time, it's going to help you achieve these things. Keep this top of mind and review it. What you don't want to do is just grab this beautiful plan that you just don't ever look at.

Like what a waste of time. You've got to look back at your plan and make sure that you're implementing on it because you're going to get busy. You're gonna have a lot of things going on. Life's going to get in the way, but you got to make sure that you pull yourself back to this direction that you've chosen.

Think of it like you're trying to go somewhere. Imagine you're walking through the woods. It reminds me of like land navigation when I was in the army We had to learn land navigation, which I was really bad at by the way, so don't take land navigation advice from me. But In this situation, we're talking about business so let's say you're in the woods and there's a point you have to get to that you have to reach And all you have is a map and you have a compass.

Okay, so you could just start walking and try to figure it out. And that's what most people do. Or you could sit there and you could look at the map. You could look at your compass and you could say, okay, what landmarks do I see on this? That maybe I could use as reference points in case I get lost. What direction do I need to go with this compass?

And I'm going to plot this out on a map before I start to walk. And then as I'm walking. I'm going to try to stick to this direction that I've chosen. They call it an shooting, an azimuth, right? So you're shooting an azimuth out to the direction you want to go, and you're gonna try to stay on that. Now you're walking, everything's going great, you're sticking to your direction, but then all of a sudden you hit a river and you're like shit.

Now what do I do? I can't cross the river. So you've gotta go around. You gotta try to find a place where you can cross. Maybe there's a bridge. Now all of a sudden you go around and you're in a completely different spot. You've lost your direction. Now what are you going to do? You've got to get back over to the place where you started, either by understanding how many steps you've taken, finding a reference point and getting back to that to get back on your actual direction.

And you look back at your map and that helps you get back to the spot where you're trying to go so you can get back on course. This is what an annual plan does. This is what planning does for your business. Because if you're just aimlessly walking around the woods with a fucking compass, it's not going to work.

You've got to plan this stuff. You've got to stay on course and understand when you're off course and to get back on it. And that's what an annual plan does for you. It's the map. It's the compass. And it allows you to get back to where even if you don't get to where you're trying to go, you're going to get damn close in comparison to just walking around aimlessly with a compass in your hand.

That's what you're doing with this. That's why this is important. And I know for years I didn't do this. And if I had our business would have been in a better place because of it. I can promise you that I just didn't think it was important. I also didn't know how to do it. I didn't know anything about it and that's because I didn't know shit about business and then I learned about business and I realized, wow, I was doing a lot of things wrong.

And then we saw our business really accelerate and grow because of that. So I highly recommend that you spend some time working on planning for your year, focus on where you're trying to go, print it out. Make it as organized and detailed as you possibly can, and then shit is going to happen. You're going to run into that river and you're going to have to do something different.

It's going to push you off course, but as long as you have your plan, you're going to get back to the right place. You're going to start making progress towards you're trying to go, and you're going to accomplish a lot more this year. If you do this than if you don't. Hey Peach Entrepreneurs, we have big, exciting news.

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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 today.