E668 | How To Start Your Cash-Based Practice In 2024

In this episode, Doc Danny explores the significance of the 5 Day Challenge for physical therapists who aspire to establish their own practice. This challenge is designed to help clinicians become financially organized and build the confidence necessary to successfully transition into practice ownership.

On Day 1 of the challenge, participants are encouraged to conduct a personal finance audit. This involves understanding their spending habits, determining their monthly income needs (referred to as "clinical freedom revenue"), and identifying areas where money is being unnecessarily allocated. By uncovering wasteful spending, clinicians can free up funds that can be used towards their business endeavors.

Day 2 focuses on calculating the "clinical freedom number," which entails determining the number of sessions needed each month based on revenue and average fees. Doc Danny highlights the tendency for clinicians to undercharge due to discomfort with sales, despite the high value they provide. Charging higher fees can reduce the required number of sessions, ultimately making the transition to practice ownership more feasible.

On Day 3, participants are guided to identify the best strategy for their transition. They can choose between going all-in from the start with no backup job ("burn the ships"), working evenings and weekends while employed, or even taking on an undesirable short-term job to build their business. Each option has its own set of advantages and challenges, and Doc Danny helps clinicians navigate through the decision-making process.

Day 4 delves into the comprehensive sales and marketing systems that are crucial for a successful practice. Using a yes/no assessment, Doc Danny guides participants in evaluating their current systems and provides insights on how to transform a reactive business into a streamlined one. By methodically building these systems, clinicians can lay the foundation for a thriving practice.

Finally, on Day 5, participants are tasked with creating a one-page business plan that summarizes the financial numbers discussed throughout the challenge. Displaying this plan serves as a daily reminder of accountability and commitment to their goals. Doc Danny emphasizes that fear of failure or embarrassment often hinders action, and the one-page business plan counteracts procrastination.

Overall, the 5 Day Challenge equips clinicians with the organization, confidence, and plan necessary to successfully transition into practice ownership. By addressing both financial and psychological barriers through a structured process, participants are well-positioned to take the next step of launching their own thriving practice.

You can find more info on the 5-Day Challenge on this blog post!

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: [00:00:00] 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 Mattei 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 we're going over How do you start your practice in 2024? And in particular, we have a great resource [00:01:00] resource that we put together called the five day challenge. Uh, you can go to physical therapy, biz. com forward slash challenge, and you can get access to this course for free.

I think it's one of the best courses we've ever put together. Uh, if you're really thinking about, you know, making the transition to start your practice, or maybe you have already started your practice, but you haven't put much prep work into it. This is a really good resource, um, for you to get yourself organized.

The other thing is, you know, another big portion of this, uh, of this five day challenge is the very first day we do a financial audit. So even if you are in business already and you, you know, are, uh, you know, making some money, making some revenue, but maybe every month you look at your. Your personal account and you're like, where did all the money go?

This is a really good exercise to do to figure out where you're spending everything. It's kind of painful, but it's important. And that's day one of the challenge. So in the podcast today, I'm going to go over these different elements of the challenge. What, what you need to think about as you're going through, uh, the, the beginning stage of starting your practice.

And, uh, and [00:02:00] this is something that we actually pulled from the Facebook group as well. Eve was on this and then he lost all his internet, but I finished out strong. So you got me and Eve. Uh, for the very beginning of the podcast and then Eve completely disappears. But I, uh, I go through the rest of the podcast solo.

Um, so you got a chance to, uh, to listen to, you know, the different component pieces that we want you to really focus on as you're going to start your practice. Cause you know, in 2024, it's always like fresh beginnings, right? Beginning of the year, January. You know start the year off and and try to make that a year that is going to put you You know a step closer to the goals that you have.

I think that's one way to to really look at Um, you know these these cycles of the year And they can be a really good time to really prepare and start and try to recommit to something so if you've been on a fence about something like this or maybe You've started and it's not going the way that you would like, uh, this can be a really great way for you to get Yourself back on track get yourself, you know more motivated hold yourself accountable and actually achieve the goals that you want to achieve So hope you enjoy [00:03:00] this one and we'll catch you guys next week.

What's going on doc? Danny here with Yves Gege in the PT entrepreneurs Facebook group and on the PT entrepreneurs podcast. So hey if you are New to the group. Welcome. If you are new to the podcast, welcome to the podcast today in particular, it's going to be a great podcast and a great, uh, you know, video, if you're watching this in the group, if you are in the stages of trying to like move to start your own, your own practice, uh, if you are already have a practice.

Don't, don't turn it off yet because there's still some things we're going to go over that are probably going to be helpful for you. But in particular, we're going to talk about the five day challenge that we have and why we put it together and what's, what's involved in it and why we think it is a no brainer for people to go through in order to actually like get themselves ready to make a transition.

Um, which by the way. Five day challenge, completely free at the physical therapy biz. com forward slash challenge. All you gotta do [00:04:00] is sign up for it. I think it is the, one of the best trainings that we have, whether free or paid, uh, that's out there. And we spent a lot of time trying to put together what we thought would be an ideal, um, course that would organize, uh, clinicians to get them not just like sort of ready on the, what they need to do financially, but also confident that they can actually.

Uh, make the transition because I think that going into starting your own practice, the biggest hurdle that people have to, uh, get over is mentally. Can they do it? Will people pay for it? Can they get clients? You know, I feel like, I don't know, maybe you want to touch on that for a second, Eve. Like what was coming out of a.

A clinic that you had already, you know, owned and been a part of that sold. And then I, I'm assuming you probably had more confidence in somebody that had not done something like that, but like, how did you feel with your cash practice in terms of, you know, actually being able to make it work? [00:05:00] Yeah,

Yves: I'm definitely a, a numbers guy, especially if I'm going to take risk.

I want to understand numbers at a deep level and the five day challenge does that beautifully, right. It really organizes of, okay, where do I, where am I at personally? If I take this leap. Like what's my financial risk and how do I replace my income? Like, you know, that's what most people are afraid of.

And that's the biggest thing I was afraid of. I was like, I was making pretty good money in insurance based practice. And now I'm going to go take this leap. Like, do the finances make sense? Like at what point, you know, do I need to see five patients, 10 patients, 20 pages, like where, where do I get to the point where I'm starting to make some money and does this make financial sense?

And so, um, you know, this is something that I did. You know, pre five days before we built this is like, I did the exact same thing. I just did this little, you know, performance said, all right, where do I need to be? And I was like, I looked at a number. I'm like, I think I can do that. You know what I mean?

Like it just gave me the confidence. I had the clinical confidence, but then I had the, like, you know, even [00:06:00] if I didn't have the business sales marketing skills, I was like, Oh, I think I can learn enough to do this. Basically.

Danny: For sure. You know, and I think that. Whenever, whenever we got started here in Atlanta, I had a opportunity when I, my, my last, um, duty station was Fort Benning, Georgia, which is down in Columbus, Georgia.

And I was training at a CrossFit gym that I like just, just to like test it out. You know, I was like, Hey, if there's any members you have that are interested in, uh, you know, working through an injury, then, you know, I, I would love to get the opportunity to try to try to help them out, you know, and with the gym owner.

They, uh, they were all about it and we did just like a little profit split. I can't remember what it was. I only saw a handful of people, but I remember, you know, I did see probably, I don't know, six to 10 people while I was there in a little room with a massage table that they just had there anyway. And they paid me 150 bucks.

Uh, [00:07:00] for the, for the hour that I spent with them and just that alone, you know, just like, I think that first one, right, that you, that you have, and I didn't even have a business at the time. I didn't have a name for it or anything. I just was like. Does this work? Let me just beta test this. Right. And, and it did.

And it worked. And it was like, the people that I saw after that were people that I had worked with that referred me their friends. And, uh, and that was it. And it was, this was literally like a few months before we got out. And then I kind of just, I stopped because I was like, all right, I'm going to focus on the actual business and getting things in place before we leave.

But I think the confidence of that is really important. Um, I didn't really do anything on the financial side to really look at like, is this feasible, you know, which is interesting because I look at a lot of numbers now, like I am like really interested in that side of things and I, I find a lot of value in understanding it, um, but at the time I didn't know, you don't know what you don't know, right?

So I think that's the thing with this five day challenge that if you're listening to this and you're, you are in practice already for yourself, [00:08:00] The very first day, day one of this challenge is, is literally defining what we call your clinical freedom revenue. So it's how much money do you need to make based off of your personal, uh, spending, right?

So now this is a very uncomfortable exercise. And the reason I bring this up for anybody, including if you are in practice or not, when is the last time you did a personal finance audit on yourself to see where everything was going and manually did this? And this was advice that I got from a mentor. As I was really trying to better understand finances.

And one of the things that he recommended that I do was every year manually look at like a three month snapshot, not around the holidays, because usually it's skews it somewhat, but like three months where there's not a lot of, you know, stuff going on out of the norm and look at your spending for those three months, categorize all of it in the same Excel sheet that we drop into the, uh, the, for the first day of the five day challenge.

Go through that and then [00:09:00] look at what percentage are you allocating money to? Where are you spending money? Are you spending a lot more money on things that maybe don't really matter to you and you haven't even realized, right. And actually audit that on yourself. So I do this every year as well as look at, um, every single month I track.

Every single thing as far as what we're spending, what percentage of that is, uh, in comparison to what we make, uh, as well as what all of our assets and liabilities are. And it takes me probably two hours every single month and it's uncomfortable. And I'm sure there's ways to automate it, but don't do it manually.

And this exercise takes people a couple of like, it could take you two hours and you probably would hate it. But by the time you're done, you're going to know exactly where you're spending money, exactly how much money you need to make. Personally, and it's going to be a really clear idea of where you're spending it.

And if those are places that you want to allocate your cash instead of other places. So this is what we get. This is a huge problem, I think, is even when someone was in business, they're like, I just don't feel like I'm making good money, but like, I don't feel like I'm seeing [00:10:00] our savings go up, our ability to invest in things go up.

And then we sort of take a look at things like, dude, you're spending like 2, 000 a month on eating out. Like, do you know that? Did you realize you were doing that, you know, and you're like, that's a mortgage payment. What are you doing? Right. So, but if you don't know, and maybe you do know, but you don't want to actually like.

You know, I don't know, do the hard work of like making a change with that people avoid it and you cannot avoid it. So this is day one. If that doesn't sound like something you're willing to do, I mean, you need to have a tough conversation yourself about how much you want to actually like be successful in a business.

Uh, when you make this transition or if you are in business and you're not willing to do that, like you're just leaving a lot on the table and it's frankly far less stressful when you know what you're spending money on and understanding your actual like clinical freedom revenue in order to actually hit that.

Yves: Yeah, I mean, they talk about it all the time, like what gets measured gets improved, right? And so you can't put your head in the sand, you know, because you probably know that there's an issue, but you don't want to, you know, really look at the finances and like, yeah, say no [00:11:00] to eating out or say no to going to Starbucks, you know, twice a day because, uh, it's uncomfortable to make those, you know, lifestyle changes.

Right. But I think it's, it's so good that we did this first because it's like such a key skill. Not only the key skill of potentially creating more discipline, right? And self control, but also the skill of looking at your numbers and, you know, doing this because that's a skill that will help you so much in business.

Like you said, I was a numbers guy, but now I am. It's because you've had to develop that because you've realized the better I know my numbers, the better I'm going to do it business. So it really helps you twofold, which I think is really cool. And you kind

Danny: of hit that date one. Yeah. Yeah. And it's also the, you know, most people are going to be Uh, the, the most motivated to do any of this on day one, right?

So, so when we front load the thing that is the most uncomfortable, um, you know, we have the highest likelihood that somebody is actually going to do that. Now, granted, you could just skip it, I guess, and you could go onto the other stuff, [00:12:00] but I recommend that you don't, you know, and it's just, uh, it's something that I think is a good practice.

It's something, if you haven't done in a while, it's really, really helpful. Um, and this is really, uh, you know, it's everything. Automatically populates for you. We spent a lot of time on, on this. Uh, I guess it's a Google sheet that you can make a copy of. And honestly, you can use this forever as long as you're spending money on things, right?

You want to do just like a yearly audit of yourself and look at what your monthly spending looks like. Um, I see a lot of stress with people when it comes to this. I worked with a lot of people in our mastermind group on finances and, um, as their business starts to do better. One of the things we tend to see is that we see lifestyle creep is the term that is used for as your income goes up, your lifestyle goes with it.

And usually you definitely don't want that to be like a one to one, right? So like if you go from making 80, 000 and you're spending 80, 000, so now you're making 120, 000 and you're spending 120, [00:13:00] 000 like you essentially are. In the same place, you just have, you know, some sort of, uh, lifestyle that is this gotten a lot harder for you to keep up with.

So we want to make sure you got your clinical freedom revenue in place. First, the second thing that day two, I should say, and it looks like we lost Eve. We'll see if he jumps back in, but I got this regardless. Day two is your clinical. Freedom number. So your clinical freedom number is what we define as basically how many sessions do you need to see on a monthly basis in order to equate to your clinical freedom revenue.

So your clinical freedom revenue is how much money are you spending on a monthly basis. So let's say That number is 4, 000. So if it's 4, 000, your clinical freedom revenue is 4, 000. And then we need to see, all right, well, how much, how many, uh, visits do you need to see in order to achieve that? So that you can make a lateral transfer to where you're not, um, taking a big step [00:14:00] back in, uh, your personal finances as you make a transition to having and starting your own practice.

Right? So the best way to look at this is basically your clinical freedom revenue. So let's say that's four grand divided by. Your average visit rate. I'm going to make my math easy here. I'm going to say in this scenario, you're charging 200 bucks. So if you're trying to replace 4, 000 and you're charging 200 a visit, then that means you need to see 20 visits in the month in order to make a lateral transfer with your finances.

If you're charging a hundred dollars, this is where this average visit rate makes a huge difference. Cause if you're charging a hundred dollars and I have to see 40 visits versus 20, then I can tell you. You know, you, you definitely want to see 20 over 40, you know, it's just like, it's kind of a no brainer because.

You're going to end up generating the same amount of revenue with literally half the amount of work. And one of the biggest mistakes that [00:15:00] we see that we end up having to help people with, and partially this is because they don't actually feel confident with selling, is being able to effectively sell what they're doing in the clinic and feeling okay about that.

Because Most clinicians, they feel this, uh, this, this challenge with charting for what they do. Partially it's because they're, they are, they get a lot of personal satisfaction out of it. You know, most of us, almost I would say probably none of us went to PT school because we wanted to make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

It's not in the cards for you as a clinician in a clinic or in a hospital or in the military like I did, right? Like, That wasn't in my plan, my life plan, right? I thought I was going to make 80 to maybe 120 grand a year and, um, really enjoy the job that I had. Right. And that's most of us. So when all of a sudden you're talking to somebody about paying you 150 to 250 a session [00:16:00] that can get really challenging.

Um, but it doesn't mean that you're, you're not worth it. Like the value that you provide is actually. Raider than what we charge. You know, I have a, a buddy of mine that is a partner in this. Um, I guess it's like a liquor and wine company, but he basically sells wine. Right. So he's, he's in wine sales and, and he told me, you know, if you have a.

Junior sales rep in this industry, they're going to make somewhere around like 120, 000 a year, right? No college degree needed. No, definitely no advanced degree, no additional residency training, all the things that we do. And you know, when I told him what PTs make, he was just shocked. He was like, it's crazy to me that I can have a junior salesperson make more money than what somebody with a doctorate makes, but that is the economy.

That's what. We know we are valued as, and typically our primary is based off of what insurance says that we're worth, which is [00:17:00] bullshit, frankly. 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 or Spotify or wherever you listen to the podcasts 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. So if you would do that, I would greatly appreciate it. Now back to the podcast,

the general population thinks what we do is very valuable and just think of it this way. When's the last time you went to a sporting event at, you know, a local school, you went to some sort of networking event, you went to a Christmas party, uh, anything where you're meeting new people. And when they find out that you're a physical therapist, what's like one of the first things that they say, Oh my gosh, great.

My knee is killing me. Like, can you help with this? Right? Like everybody has something that we can help them with. And [00:18:00] when we do help them achieve, you know, a pain free state or back to an activity they love. I mean, oh my gosh, the value is astronomical and it happens all the time, all the time. Even for me, when I go to like bigger mastermind groups, I'm a part of or networking groups where.

They're just, there's a lot of very successful people. I still introduce myself as a physical therapist because I, I mean, that's what I identify as. I've worked as one for so long, you know, I still see friends and family and enjoy it quite a lot. It's to see, you know, patients, uh, that are just in my community and help them.

And, but every time I introduce myself, it's the same thing. It's like, oh my gosh. Why does my wrist hurt when I do pushups? You know, it's like random stuff. I had somebody in a conference room. This was a few, a few weeks ago doing a couch stretch up against the wall because they were talking to me about the front of their hip and their knee and stuff.

And I'm like testing them. Uh, and, uh, you know, it's very valuable. So don't undervalue yourself because what you charge per session. That's going to dictate how many you have to [00:19:00] see, and that's going to dictate also how much revenue you can generate per provider when you go to hire other people. Because if you're not charging enough, you're not going to be able to hire and pay people well and have them have a career that is meaningful within your organization.

So you got to keep that in mind as well. And that is something that, uh, your clinical freedom number will tell you because if you're charging too low, you're gonna have a high number. And if you're charging enough, you're gonna have a lower number. And also, some of this might be you're in a different stage of your life.

You have kids, you know, you have a mortgage, you, you know, you're, you're further along in your life versus if you just graduated or maybe you're only a year or two out. You have a dog, maybe a cat, I don't know, uh, but something that's not going to require as much, uh, you know, cost as a family might, right?

So you may have less that you actually have to replace. So that's day two. So we figure out how much your, what's your burn rate? What are you spending on a monthly basis? And where's all that shit going? Because if you can lower that even better. Number two, what are you going to charge and [00:20:00] how many of those sessions are you going to need to see in order to replace your income?

From working somewhere else. Number three is figuring out day threes. What strategy is best for you? So there's really three strategies and you kind of have to define which one is the right one for you. So number one, there's burn the ships. That's what I did. I just said, okay, I'm out of the military. I'm now an entrepreneur and I'm starting a practice.

So, uh, no, no safety net, Jess. That's what I do every day, like all day. My job is to try to start and grow this practice. Go find people that I can help at by any means necessary legally. Right? So that's what I did. There's a lot of value to that in terms of you have the time you have, or you also have a lot of motivation because it sucks when you just sit there by yourself and no one's coming to your office.

Um, just a really shitty feeling. And you know, when you go home and at least for me, I would go home and I would see my wife and I would see my kids. And my dog and my [00:21:00] wife's cat, which is her cat, by the way, uh, looking at me wondering like, yo, man. You're going to feed us, we're going to get some food. Like, are you doing the right things?

You know, are you putting yourself out there? Are you, uh, you know, are you working? And it's a lot of motivation if you go that route. It's also sketchy. It's very stressful. It's the most stressed I've been in my entire life. Um, but it's the fastest way to success if you can make it work. And especially if you have some sort of cash reserves, it can be helpful if you can make that, make that work.

Or if you have a spouse that maybe is, is working, you can take a chance on yourself earlier. The second way. It would be what we call like an evenings and weekends strategy is where you stay in your current employer, but then you start doing your own thing on the, or during the evenings and on the weekend.

Um, the pros of this is you don't really have to leave your current job. You have some stability with that. You know, uh, the cons are it's very, uh, it's very like time poor for you to do that. You are, you know, it's taking your evenings and your weekends and you're just trying to get patients are [00:22:00] fulfilled on seeing patients.

And the other thing that can be really challenging is your employer might look at that as a real red flag and fire you. And this has happened, uh, to a number of people that, uh, we've ended up working with. So if you do that, make sure that you are not super close to your clinic. You're definitely not taking.

Patients from your clinic, like we call it the, like, don't be a dick rule. Like if, if you're an asshole about it, it's just not a good place to start. It's not a great way to treat people that are employing you. Uh, just as, you know, it's just think of it if you were on the other side, right? Like, don't do something that you wouldn't want somebody to do to you.

Right? That's just, I think in general, a good, a good rule of thumb, right? The golden rule. Don't do it. So, you know, don't, don't be right next to where your clinic is. Don't take patients from there, set up, uh, wherever it is that you feel comfortable. And it's a good strategy for, for many people. A lot of people go that route.

The last one, and this is the one, if I was going to do this again, I probably would go this route. And that's the, what we [00:23:00] call, um, I hate this job strategy. So that's where you get a job. At a, uh, a clinic that you don't like, maybe it's home health, maybe it's a, uh, a skilled nursing facility, something like that.

But you have some flexibility, maybe you're working three days a week, but you're getting paid decent. You got some benefits. Um, but you don't want to be there very long, you know, it's something that you know is short term. And. Uh, you know, if you get a comfortable job, maybe you stay there too long, but if you get a job like this, you know, you don't want to be there.

You're not going to stay there any longer than you have to, and that's a good thing if you're really truly trying to move on to your own business. So day three, we wanted to find which of those strategies best for you. I go over these in more detail, uh, within the, uh, the five day challenge number four.

It's a big one. We actually walk you through all of our sales and marketing systems. So the sales and marketing systems that we have, we use as part of what's called the, uh, PT Biz 86 assessment. This is an assessment that looks at a couple of different [00:24:00] areas of the business people. Processes, sales and marketing, finance, and then personal.

So this is the chunk that is sales and marketing, and this is a big portion of it because obviously sales and marketing is what drives the front stage of the business, you know, without sales and marketing, that means you don't have any patients and they're not paying you anything. So we take you through all the systems we have in there.

And this is basically a, uh, think of it like a test. It's a quiz for yourself and it's either a yes or a no, right? So there's only two answers. It's either, yes, I have this established or no, I don't have this established. Like, yes, I have a repeatable sales script that I use in order to sell, uh, plans of care to clients.

Yes. You either have that. Or no, you don't. Now, if you're just getting started, you're probably going to say no to almost everything. Um, and that's normal, right? So you don't really know what's going on yet, but you want to know where you're at. And then this is also something that you can reassess. You know, [00:25:00] months down the road, and you want to actually look at this as almost like reverse engineering, what you're doing to make sure that you're building the right systems as you're growing.

So if you were to reassess yourself, this is something that we do with our, with our mastermind clients is like, we do this test because we want to know where are you at, where are you making progress, where are your, your sort of weak points that you need to improve. We focus on those because we know if we started to get a yes on.

Damn near everything on these assessments that your business is humming, you know, it is a well oiled machine by that point. And it can take years, frankly, to build a lot of these things out and years more to refine them. And that's the difference though, between a really good business and a business that is very reactive.

A business is very proactive knows, Hey, I am missing these systems. I don't, I'm not doing a good job at. Uh, lead to close, right? So do I have, am I tracking leads that are coming in? Am I converting them at above 70%? Right. Do [00:26:00] I have a clear follow up process for my admin to reach out to people to make sure that our.

Book to show rate is really good, meaning they're calling people, they're confirming, they're making sure they're getting on your schedule to make sure you don't have drop off there. These are all little things that actually add up. And if you think of it as this big system, right, these are little cogs in the, in the huge wheel of a business that each might add a percentage of efficiency.

But each time that we upgrade that and we add a little bit more efficiency and a little bit more efficiency, we go from a very reactive, challenging business to run to a very streamlined. Uh, you know, smooth business that is very predictable and that's far less stressful, right? So as you're getting through this first stage, just keep in mind, you may say no to a lot of these things, a lot of these systems that we have and the questions that we ask, but it's a baseline for where you're at.

And it's also now, you know, okay, I need to Have these in my business and here they are here. They are based on literally like a thousand clinicians that we've had a chance to work with. And we've [00:27:00] defined this based off of all these reps. So what a great addition that you have to your business to start out with knowing exactly what systems in your sales and marketing you need to have in place.

And then you can reverse engineer, which you need to work on. So that's day four and day five is creation of a one page business plan. And it's very simple. It's basically paragraph form. We plug in the numbers that you got from your first few days. And what's cool about this is you can print this out and you can put it somewhere that's visible.

You can print this out and you can give it to somebody that you respect that, you know, can help hold you accountable. You can hold yourself accountable by putting it somewhere where you see it every single day. You know, if you wake up every morning and this thing is. Taped up next to your bathroom mirror where you brush your teeth, you can't help but look at this every single day and remind yourself of what your goals are because one of the things that we see having now been, you know, helping people with their practices for at this stage, like going on like seven years is.

We see a lot of people that [00:28:00] get excited about the idea of doing their own thing. And I don't know what the percentage of follow through is on it, but it's gotta be lower than 50%, you know, uh, if, if it's higher than that, I'd be shocked because there's so many people that have interest in doing something.

And I think it applies to almost anything, but this is a big challenge. This is a scary thing. This is a career shift. You're not necessarily changing careers, but you're changing the way in which you're using your skillset and you're putting yourself out there. You're putting yourself out there in a way that.

It can be scary, not necessarily just financially, but perception of how other people view what you're doing. It's scary to put yourself out there and maybe fail. And I know for me, whenever I started my practice, I wasn't so concerned about the financial side of things. Like obviously, you know, I didn't want to take a big step back financially, but I also didn't think that that would happen considering I could [00:29:00] go get a job, you know, within a matter of weeks, if I really wanted to.

Uh, at any number of clinics for me, the, the biggest fear, the biggest hangup, and frankly, the biggest motivator that, that really drove me to not fail was the fear of failing and the perception of how that would make me look to my friends, family colleagues, because at least for me, I had left what was the beginning of a great career in the military, uh, you know, and.

And it's interesting, it's funny, because like, I look at classmates of mine, and you know, they're all Lieutenant Colonels, you know, or about to be Lieutenant Colonels, uh, many of them, you know, will make even higher ranks than that, and that's a big deal, that was a big deal for me, and that was a big deal for my family as well, you know, because I come from a long line of military officers, like, that's just what we do, and uh, you know, that's a, that's a very, very important thing, [00:30:00] To, to, to me at the time and to my family and for me to give it up and then co started this business in a CrossFit gym.

In a room with no windows in a town where I didn't know anybody, you know, it's like, well, I don't want to fail because I don't want to embarrass myself. And then what, right? It's not like I can just go back into the military. I mean, I guess I, maybe there's, there was an option for that, but like, it's really, really not.

So I was scared of that. And for a lot of you, the thing that will stop you from making a transition is not the financial side. It's not the work. It's the fear of how are you going to look to your friends, how are you going to look to your family? How's that conversation going to go at Christmas dinner when people are asking you how you're doing and you're not doing so great?

You know, when your business is sucking, uh, And I've had, you know, times where it's gone up and down and, and it's normal for that to happen, especially early on, because, you know, you don't know what you're doing. You don't know how to handle the ups and downs. You can't stay calm very well with it. [00:31:00] And it does bleed over into your family life.

Um, and that fear of failure is a real thing. And it's either something that It stops you from doing something or something that can motivate you to make sure you actually achieve what you're trying to do. And that's the way that I think you can look at it because it's going to be there for everybody.

You know, what's interesting is I'm seeing this right now in my own family. So my sister in law and my brother and my sister in law now listen to my podcast. So I have to be very careful about what I say about my brother. in particular and my sister in law, but listen, she's a badass. She's a, she is a nurse practitioner.

She's starting her own functional medicine practice and she's gonna crush it. She's gonna kill it. But here's what I can tell you that for sure is going to be a hang up. It's the fear of what if I was wrong and I have to go back to this prestigious hospital that she's leaving. And ask for her job back.

That is probably worst case scenario because she knows she could get a job whenever she wants. But the mental side [00:32:00] of it, I see it in her. I see it in the unknown, the fear of what if this doesn't work? And even with all this prep and this amazing clinical skill set and a great clinician who has, you know, true, really good bedside manner.

With patients, which is a pretty rare thing when it comes to general, you know, physicians. Uh, and wants to spend time with people. Like, you line all this up and you're like, this is gonna, it's gonna kill it. You know, she's got great local connections, a community of people around her that want to see her be successful.

She's my sister in law, we're obviously gonna help her out a ton. You know, so it's like, what else do you need? What other, what else do you need to know that you're gonna, that's gonna work? But even still, with all that, the unknown is scary as hell. So scary. And it's because of the fear of embarrassment and fear of failure and having to go back to wherever you were at before, where your tail between your legs and ask for your job back, even though the likelihood of that is so damn low, so low, and that's what stops a lot of people.

So if you can, if you can take this one day business or this one page. Business plan [00:33:00] and as simple as it sounds, if you can print this out and give it to somebody you respect or you can, you know, print it out and put it somewhere you're going to see it and, and, you know, maybe your significant other sees it or your dog sees it or whatever other people see it, the likelihood that you actually do it is way higher.

It's so much higher and that's what we want. We don't want you to go through this exercise to just go through this exercise and maybe it's not the right time for you. to start something on your own, and that's fair. That's fine. Everybody has different circumstances. Everybody is in different places, and everybody starts in different places.

But, if you want to take a chance on yourself, start a clinic like this. This is probably your best bet, in order to get yourself organized enough to give you the confidence to say, Okay, I think I can do it. And to date, we've had about 2000 people go through this five day challenge, which is awesome, which is amazing.

I think it's great. Totally. It's completely free and you know, you can get through [00:34:00] it. Obviously we hit five days, but like you can do the whole thing in a day, if you really want it to and knock it out, you know, put the work in. But then once you got yourself organized, now you got to pull the trigger.

Right. So we want you to be able to have the highest likelihood of that happening possible because we see it. Every single day. I get it, man. There's people that hate what they do in our profession. They're in clinics that are not treating them right. They're in clinics that are really forcing them to see way too many people to be effective with their clinical skill set.

Um, you know, and if, if that's not where you want to be, I would hate that you left the profession because if you still have a desire to treat people and to work with people in a much more organic way, there is a better way. Like we see it every day. And obviously I'm biased because of how many people we've seen come through this.

And maybe you don't have the same confidence, but when I see people go and then they go into software sales because they don't want to be in the clinic anymore, I feel like it's just like, we've lost. Somebody from the profession that should we shouldn't have left lost unless [00:35:00] they truly don't want to be in the profession and and that's Fine too because you're probably 22 years old whenever you decide you want to go to PT school You know, you're not an adult like we're still figuring out our life We're still figuring out who we are and if you don't want to be in it they don't but if you do and you love seeing patients and you're getting sick of the PT mill grind and, you know, no control over your time and your schedule.

There's, there is a different option. There's an option that a lot of people have found success with. Not just people that work with us, just people in the profession. It's really cool to see, uh, and be a part of. So anyway, that's it. I recommend head over to physicaltherapybiz. com forward slash challenge.

You can get access to the five day challenge there. Like I said, it's probably our, our most well done, uh, you know, best kind of put together, uh, you know, mini course that we have. It's great. You can go through all five days, figure out your clinical freedom, revenue, figure out your clinical freedom number, how many sessions you need to see, figure out what strategy is best for you, figure out and see what all the sales and marketing, [00:36:00] uh, systems are that we want in place for these businesses.

And then make yourself a one day. Our one page business plan, give it to somebody that you can hold you accountable, put it up in your, you know, in your house somewhere that you see it on a regular basis and then commit to making a change. You know, it doesn't have to be right away, but set a date about when it's going to happen and follow through on it.

So hopefully with all that you, uh, you know, get a chance to start the next year. You know, this is December. This will probably come out end of December. Starts when you were out the new year out 2024 with, um, a plan of what you want to do and follow through on that. And you're the only can do that. We can just help you get organized for it.

So hope you guys like this one. Thank you again so much. If you're in the PT entrepreneurs group, hopefully you like the, uh, the live stream side of it. If you're listening to the podcast, thank you so much for listening. You know, it means a lot to us that anybody even listens to this or watches this. It's incredibly, uh, It's just crazy that that happens and that you even care what we have to say.

Uh, but as long as you keep caring, we have to say, we'll keep putting this stuff out. So [00:37:00] as always, thank you so much for watching and listening, and we'll catch you next week.

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 exactly 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 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 [00:38:00] 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 gonna help you Tremendously as long as you're willing to do the work if you're doing 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 to head to physicaltherapybiz.

com forward slash Challenge and get signed up today