E659 | How To Stay Motivated

In this podcast episode, Doc Danny explores the topic of staying motivated, particularly for business owners and entrepreneurs. He emphasizes that maintaining motivation can be a challenging task, regardless of the specific goal, whether it's related to education, health, relationships, or any other aspect of life.

Doc Danny starts by discussing the initial stages of a business, where the combination of excitement and fear often serves as a driving force. However, as time goes on, individuals realize that running a business is more like a marathon than a sprint. It becomes essential to understand that it is an "infinite game" with no definitive end.

To sustain motivation, Danny highlights the importance of having a clear mission and a "bad guy" to conquer. The mission should hold deep personal meaning, such as helping clinicians achieve professional freedom and remain in their field. The host himself finds motivation in assisting a generation of physical therapists in earning more and gaining flexibility.

The "bad guy" in this scenario represents high-volume mill clinics that overload young therapists with excessive patient loads and unpaid work, such as endless documentation. Driven by the profit-driven practices of health insurance companies, these clinics often sacrifice quality care for quantity. Danny chose to opt out of insurance to prioritize providing personalized and meaningful care to his patients.

Throughout the episode, Danny emphasizes the power of reading success stories and knowing that they are making a difference in the battle against the "bad guys." He advises those who are struggling with motivation to define a clear mission that is personally significant and to identify a rival or adversary to surpass. By focusing on helping others and embracing challenging goals and competition, individuals can sustain their motivation and persevere through difficulties, avoiding the feeling of being stagnant and losing ground.

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: Your co pays, your co insurances have gone up, your deductible has gone up, meaning everybody has got more skin in the game, yet we're paying more in premiums for getting less. So now that that's squeezing, even these, these milk clinics, they're getting squeezed too, unless they have a, they actually have a hospital contract where they can have a private negotiated contract with a hospital where they can make a lot more money than what we make.

That's a completely different story. Hey, are you a physical therapist looking to leverage your skillset in a way that helps you create time and financial freedom for yourself and your family? If so, you're in the right spot. My name is Danny Matei and over the last 15 years, I've done pretty much everything you can in the profession.

I've been a staff PT, I've been an active duty military officer, physical therapist. I've started my own cash practice. I've sold that cash practice. And today my company physical therapy business helped over a thousand clinicians start growing scale their own cash practices. So if this sounds like something you want to do, listen up because I'm here to help you.

Hey, what's going on? Doc. Danny here with a PT entrepreneur podcast. And today we are talking about how to stay motivated. Now I think this is one of the hardest things to do. When it comes to pretty much anything, right? This could be achieving some sort of education goal. This should be, it could be some sort of, uh, athletic goals, some health and wellness goals could be relationship goal.

It doesn't really matter what you're trying to stay motivated for. What matters is that you understand that you can stay motivated intentionally. And you gotta, you gotta know that what you're staying motivated for is something that's meaningful to you, the right thing, right? So I'm gonna talk about this in terms of business, because one of the things that I see constantly, right?

Especially once people are a couple years into running a business. Usually the first one to two years, it's literally excitement and, and terrifying at the same time that, um, it's sort of like riding a roller coaster and it's like, oh shit, this is awesome. And then, whoa, this, this is dangerous. What's going on?

And then I, and you're back up. You're like, oh, this is awesome. And then it's all crap. We're going out of business and it's awesome again. Right? So that alone, I think it's just straight adrenaline of both these really amazing things and these, these really terrifying things. They're going to keep you super alert and motivated, right?

Like that's, that's enough to do it right there. But after a couple of years, what happens is I think people realize, Oh shit, this is a marathon. This is going to take a long time. And I just got going. Uh, and I've been kind of like sprinting really hard. Like imagine sprinting the first couple of miles of a marathon.

And then all of a sudden you realize you got another 22 miles to run. Uh, That would suck. And that's usually what people realize whenever they, they understand that the business is a, is a infinite game is ongoing, right? There's no end. The end is whenever you decide that you want to stop or sell your business, right?

Uh, there's, there's, there's no end really. So how do you stay motivated in, in a game that can go forever? Well, you've got to understand a couple of things. There's the mission that you're on and there's the bad guy you're trying to beat, right? There's a mission you're on and then there's the bad guy you're trying to beat now what I mean by that I'll give you this example in terms of PT biz because this is very relevant for me Because for for me, this is six years now with PT biz and I can tell you this much Like what the stuff that I go through on a day to day basis is so much more challenging than whenever I was running my, my, uh, my cash practice because there's more people involved, right?

There's more complexity involved. Um, and, and honestly, like it's not easy. It's hard, just like running any business is hard and it's hard to do that and to stay motivated and not want to jump ship and do something else because you can see these things. You're like, Oh man, maybe it's easier over there.

Maybe it's, maybe there's more of an opportunity over there. And when it comes down to it's your mission, it's your mission. And it's the, it's the bad guy you're trying to beat. Right. I think of it like a video game. Right. And that's, that's the way that I look at it. So for me, you know, the mission has to be something that is important to you.

The same mission for everybody, right? Like for me, my mission is I want to help cash based clinicians really start, grow and scale so they can create time and financial freedom for themselves. And more importantly, a huge part of my mission is to keep amazing clinicians in the profession. Like no, I don't have any judgment on anybody that wants to use their clinical skillset in a nonclinical way.

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 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,

go for it. Right. I, I get it. Clinical work. I see this with nurses and doctors and physical therapists and you name it, any sort of healthcare profession that's tough on us, right? People just like ask a lot of us. They, they take a lot of our energy. It is a, uh, it is a very strict schedule, right? It's not a lot, a lot of flexibility associated with your day, but I tell you what, man, helping somebody.

Achieve some sort of return to an activity that they love get out of a pain state. They thought they were going to be in for the rest of their life, you know, help them overcome an injury and literally get back to the thing that they, they, they love doing with the people that they love doing it with.

There's no better feeling professionally than I've ever experienced in my entire, uh, in my entire life. And, and it's, it's the thing I act, I haven't seen a patient in two years and I miss. The ability to help someone with that. Don't take that for granted. Like that is like one of the most Amazing things that we get a chance to do It's the reason why people will stick around in profession where the pay isn't as good as it should be School is long school is expensive.

It's because you get that personal satisfaction of helping somebody and it's so personally gratifying so I want to keep great clinicians in the profession and help them realize that they can tweak their skill set. They can still help people with those things. They can just do it in a slightly different way and they can actually earn with what they should be earning.

They can actually generate enough money for their family to where, you know, they aren't, they aren't Uh, feeling like they made the wrong decision, uh, becoming a clinician. And that's a big deal for me because I see people that are leaving and I get why they are, but man, people need us. Like people need great clinicians.

And I hate it whenever, uh, we see one, one leave. So I always look at it like even, even with me, when I started our cash practice, I wanted to save great clinicians from these bad jobs as well. Real shitty jobs where they were seeing super high volume, you know, and they were just getting super burnt out and we can get them a great job.

Where they get to work with amazing people. They have less intensity of work. They can make the same amount of money, if not more, and like just actually save those people. Right? So you got to look at, all right, well, what's your mission? Well, for me, that's it. I want to help a generation of clinicians be able to generate time and financial freedom and stay in the profession that they love.

That's what I want to do. Now, the other side of that is who's the boss, right? Who are we beating? Who's the bad guy? Well, for me, the bad guy. It's honestly, it comes down to high, high volume in network practices. It comes down to these mill practices that I think are honestly, they're just crushing our young clinicians.

They're crushing the people that are coming in. They're the most excited to become, to come in the profession and they get 20, 25 people dropped on their schedule and they're asked to document, you know, every weekend whenever they wake up in the morning because they can't catch up. Uh, to all the notes that they have to, uh, to write during the week.

They, they have all these questionnaires that just keep getting added to their schedule every single, uh, year. It's just, hey, it's only going to take a couple more minutes. Yeah, but like dude i'm five years in and this is the like 20th time you told me it's only gonna take a couple more minutes. So now i've got Literally hours of questionnaires that I have to fill out every single week that helped me do my job no better.

Helps me get this person outcome no differently than if I did it or I didn't. And I can tell you this much, they don't want to fill out these stupid ass questionnaires either. Like, and it just increases the burden of nonclinical time with you. And the actual people that are here trying to help them get you to help them get the outcome that they want.

It takes away from the purity of the relationship that we should be there. And I know damn well, it's not all their fault either because the real big bad guy is just health, health insurance companies in general, right? You look at go and look at the profit report for United healthcare for any of the quarters.

That they, they, they actually have put out, like they're a publicly traded company. They have to disclose these things. They're publicly audited. Uh, so their accounting has to be presented and they have, they have shareholder meetings where they actually have to have earnings calls and say this. And I believe in the last quarter they had like, I can't remember a billion and a half dollars or more in profit.

It was an astronomical amount of money. So tell me where's the gap, right? So everybody's paying more money. For their, their actual monthly healthcare premium. Everybody's paying more healthcare premiums gone up 42 percent in the last 10 years, 40, I'm sorry, 47 percent in the last two years, healthcare premiums are up 47 percent in the last 10 years.

That's gone up your copays. Your coinsurances have gone up. Your deductible has gone up, meaning everybody has got more skin in the game. Yet we're paying more in premiums for getting less. So now that, that's squeezing even these, these milk clinics, they're getting squeezed too unless they have a, they actually have a hospital contract where they can have a private negotiated contract with a hospital where they can make a lot more money than what we make.

That's a completely different story, but like, do you have to think even they have a bad guy? That bad guy is health insurance and they're stuck with it. And I guarantee you they wouldn't want to if they didn't have to, but they do. And the volume is where they make up the difference. So they're forcing volume on clinicians that don't know any different.

They're having to see more people because they're getting paid less. They're getting paid less because they're getting less. as an overall business. And then, then what do you do? It's a tough situation. I don't know. I decided to opt out of it completely and just say, listen, you are the patient. You're going to have to pay for this out of pocket.

No matter what, would you rather spend an hour with me and I'll get you better as fast as I humanly possibly can. Or do you want to go over there and probably spend 16 visits over the next four to six weeks with this clinic where you're going to be treated by, you know, one provider is also going to be treating two or three other people at the same time.

You choose. It's probably going to be the same amount of money out of pocket. Regardless, people are opting out of that and they want to come work with people like us. So the mission and the boss, who you trying to be? Cause those things I wake up and I'm like, man, fuck health insurance companies. They suck.

You know what? And these PT mills, they suck too. And maybe they aren't quite as bad, but I don't want them to employ people that should be working for themselves or people that should be working for the practices that we set up, where they get to have great work life balances and they get to work with awesome people and they get to love what they do for a living as you should.

That's what gets me up in the morning. The mission of being able to help people generate time and financial freedom is huge. I read the social proof. We get the internal success that we see in our team. We get it every single day where we're seeing people have success and X, Y, and Z within their business and their personal life.

And that mission is top of mind every single day and then top down everybody in our company understands what we do, who we do it for and why we do it. So we stay motivated to help these people because mission is top of mind and we know who the bad guy is and who we're trying to go after. So if you're struggling to stay motivated.

If you're struggling to stay motivated within your own business, I get it. I've been there. It's hard, man. It's a grind. You wake up every day and sometimes it feels like you're just getting your ass whooped. And then guess what? You got to wake up the next day and do the same thing. And you don't know if you're doing the right thing.

You don't know if you're, you're winning or losing. You just feel like you're treading water. Like I get it. So how do you stay motivated to find your mission and define who's ass you're trying to whoop every single day. And if you do that. You're not going to have a hard time staying motivated and you're going to be able to push through until you get that business where you know he needs to be, not just for yourself, for the people you're trying to help.

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 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 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.

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