E720 | Lessons Learned Abroad

In this episode, Dr. Danny shares his insights from traveling to Milan, Italy to teach a Ready State 102 course with Kelly Starrett. He discusses how movement is a universal language that connects clinicians and coaches from different countries, highlighting their shared passion for helping people move better and achieve their physical goals.

Dr. Danny explores the differences in education and regulation between Italy and the US, noting the limited access to certain degree programs in Italy and the impact of healthcare and fitness industry regulations on the business environment.

He also delves into the perceived value of health and fitness services in Italy compared to the US, discussing the lower prices and lesser emphasis on regular exercise and prioritizing health in Italian culture. This presents challenges for practitioners looking to build successful businesses in these fields in Italy.

Furthermore, Dr. Danny reflects on the differences between big cities like Milan and smaller towns in Italy, noting how the close-knit communities in smaller areas can affect pricing strategies for practitioners. He also explores the entrepreneurial mindset differences between the US and Italy, highlighting the opportunities for rapid growth and high incomes in the US, contrasted with the stronger social safety net and cultural stigma against excessive ambition in Italy.

Overall, Dr. Danny emphasizes the importance of gratitude for the opportunities available to US-based practitioners in the health and fitness industry, and encourages listeners to appreciate the environment that supports building successful and impactful businesses.

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 Podcast Transcript

Hey, real quick, if you were 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 skill set 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 i'm coming from to you I should say from Italy. I had a opportunity to go and teach a Ready State 102 course with my friend, Kelly Sturette in Milan, Italy. And I jumped at the opportunity to do I don't get a chance to really teach with him much anymore.

And I couldn't turn it down, so I was hoping that I would get a chance to meet some, physios in Europe and connect with them and just see, how are they doing things? And how is it different? How is it better? How is it worse? How is it, is it the same?

Are we dealing with similar problems in terms of running our businesses? Overall, just I I'm very thankful to have the opportunity to come here and spend some time with a buddy of mine as well as as well as connect with what turned out to be 30 different coaches and clinicians from seven different countries, which was pretty wild.

We had people interpreting for each other in there. While while going through different material we had like I said, seven different countries. Most people were fluent enough in English that we could make it work. Some people, not so much. We had we had an Olympian, we had a gymnast in there.

We had the Chinese Olympic rhythmic gymnastics coach in there, which was interesting. We had a lot of. Strength coaches and physios that work with different teams in in Europe as well as from private practice owners, which was was really cool to, to connect with. And we were able to, go through two days with them, spend an evening.

We went out to dinner with everybody and just got a chance to learn a bit more about about everybody and make it all connect to each other, which I think is a really cool part of this course in particular. Yeah. Just letting them all meet each other. It's funny when you get like one, one group of guys that kind of connected in where we're spending a lot of time together was, there was one military guy that was just an infantry officer that was into this stuff for himself.

There was a trainer from the UK. And then there was a an Italian physio that all just became buddies and they were hanging out and it was cool to see they all were into the same stuff. And that's one thing that I'll lead with that I think is really interesting.

Movement is a universal language. So, those of you that are listening to this, you help people move better understand why they have. Pain and why they have limitations and how they can Resolve those and you can help them with that and then They can go and achieve whatever it is that they want to do physically and do that with the people They love doing that with and that's no difference Like literally, it's the same, whether you're in Texas, California, Georgia, North Carolina, New York, whatever.

It's the same, and the clinicians and the coaches I've met in, that are from Canada, from Mexico, from Australia now from Germany, the UK, Portugal, Italy, Hungary Austria, the, uh, everywhere. It's all the same. They're all literally helping people with the same problems. And it's awesome, because we share such a common desire to help people and have so much personal satisfaction with it.

And I see that in people from all these different areas and it is literally exactly the same. It's the same. You deal with the same type of problems, the same type of frustrations, and you get the same kind of results and impact with people no matter what country you're in or, what the language is, it doesn't matter.

And it was a really cool thing to be able to have some conversations with people about the people that they're working with, the problems they're solving, um, and also to really get to know a few people better that were entrepreneurs. They had their own practices, their own businesses.

And the group that brought that brought us in, it's called the performance lab. It's three Italian guys. And I got a chance to go out to dinner. The first night we were. I guess the night before the course with the three of them and Kelly, and I had a chance to chat with them a bit about their business and they have this sort of education platform online education platform, but they all also work with people independently.

One is like a dietician or nutritionist. The other two are more Strength coaches like sports strength coaches. And it was funny listening to two of them argue over which movement was better the, uh, Romanian deadlift or regular deadlift. And, it's the same everywhere, right? I have friends that are strength coaches.

They do the same shit. They argue about what they think is better for sport or not or whatever. And the. They're, they get pretty heated about it. It was pretty funny to watch. But it is definitely, there's a lot of similarities in terms of their ambition, what they want to do. What type of vision they have, which is really neat for me to just learn about and ask them questions about what they're trying to do.

But then also to learn about the differences in terms of regulation. And there are some really unique regulations in different countries. So, you could be in, and maybe you are listening to this in one of these other countries. And I'm going to try to explain this the best way that I can remember, but there's different regulations in a few things.

Number one, school opportunities are not Guaranteed from what the the Italian guys that we met were telling us that brought us in and it has to do with the number of spots that are available per degree per year. And because it's not like free education, but it's very inexpensive. You may not, Get to end up studying for the degree that you want Depending on how you test depending on which schools you get into It's not that much different than the u.

s But in most cases unless you want to go to a medical school or something You know like advanced school that you have to test into almost anybody can get a bachelor's degree Undergrad degree and whatever they really want and it didn't sound like that was the same You know here the other thing that was really interesting thing.

Was the fact that the skills, the ability to do the same type of work are the same, but the value placed upon it in other countries is not. And here's what I mean by that. And I'm, as I'm telling you this, I guess keep this in mind in terms of why is this important to you? It's important because I hear people, that are struggling with different business elements all the time.

I get questions every day with the clients that we're working with. We're helping them work through these things. And the perspective of understanding just how much. Better. The economic environment is the business environment is in the US was really eye opening for me talking to these other business owners and other countries.

And I never really had that opportunity. I'd talked to some physios in Australia and Canada and the UK, they're all similar in terms of their setups. And there's some, challenges in some of those with more of a socialized medical system for some of them, but for a lot of them It's really not that regulated in comparison to maybe.

Italy or Germany after talking to a few people there. I bring this up because I want you to keep in mind, like understanding how grateful you really probably should be for the environment that we get a chance to have businesses in in, in the U S so the school environment, like I said was a big one but the other one was the value that people place on the skillsets that these clinicians and these strength coaches and trainers actually have, and I'll give you a good example.

So we're in Milan which is a big city in Northern Italy, and we had the like highest paid hourly paid personal trainer in the whole city came to the course. And they were the people that brought us in were paid. Tell us about this guy and what he charges. I believe he charged 80 euros a session.

The average personal trainer there charges between 30 and 40 euros a session, which is probably I guess with the exchange ratio, it was like 40, 50 bucks an hour. And cost of living, there's some differences there in the cities. I would say it's very comparable to where we live in Atlanta.

If not, maybe a little bit more expensive and then, in the more rural areas, it's less expensive, but you always, you also can charge less. But I thought to myself, I was like, man, who's the trainer that I know that charges the most in Atlanta? And there's a guy that I know that charges like 250 bucks a session in Atlanta, which in comparison, this guy was charging like 80 euros, which is basically a hundred dollars in Milan.

And he was like. It outlier and some of this might be, yeah, maybe what people are willing to pay price psychology. You can get a lot of factors, but I don't think it was that as much as people just don't assign value to their health the same way or getting help with their health the same way that, that many people in the U S do.

I like just, it's amazing to me how I've seen such so few gyms, like hardly any gyms anywhere. I don't really see people exercising a whole lot. There's everyone smokes. The only thing they have for breakfast is like a pastry, and coffee. But you walk like freaking 20, 000 steps a day.

Like you walk so much. It's crazy. Amazing to me that, and there's also no like almost no people are overweight. There's some people that are overweight, but it's not like it. It's not like Atlanta it's or like where I live. There's tons of overweight people everywhere.

It's an epidemic in the U S we know that. And talking to some of the folks here, I think a lot of it has to do with like food quality and lack of just general non exercise based movement. But yeah, everybody smokes, everybody drinks and everybody walks and they're all thin, but nobody really exercises traditionally from, from what I've seen.

In fact, my, my my family met me. After the course and we spent some time here and my son and I were just like literally running around throwing the Frisbee. And you would have thought that like we were a circus act, the way that people were just just watching us while we're running around, throwing a throw to Frisbee and get a little workout.

And we did like some pushups with it and stuff like that. So I just don't, I don't think it's as common. I don't think it's as valued. And maybe that's something that's changing. It is interesting to see what's funny here is it's almost from trends that we have in the U S it's almost like they're like 20 or 30 years behind where we're at.

And maybe this just has to do with like what culturally is going on. Like I see so much Michael Jordan, Chicago, bold stuff around there's it's like Chicago bulls and New York Yankees are like the big things. It's like Jeter stuff and Jordan. And, I'm like, this was a long time ago in comparison.

To like who's playing currently, but that's there's a lot of that. They find that really interesting. And so maybe like the health trend is a little bit behind as well. I'm not sure, but I just think that we don't realize just how much people assign value to trying to stay healthy and maybe have less health issues.

Sort of health parameters around our daily activities and we need more help. But because of that, you can build a business around that. That's substantially bigger and you're better off for then you could in in, in a European country in particular, I've spent this time in Italy.

I'm talking to a lot of Italian business owners, but here it seems like it'd be so much harder. And I think, I had this conversation with Kelly and I was like, listen, man if we got dropped into Italy, And we had to start the businesses that we have in Italy to begin with, not in the U S would we be able to build a business to the place that we've been able to build to?

And I think the answer was no, I don't think that I would be able to do it in this type of an environment. There's so much more regulation. There's so much less value placed on what on what we do. And the culture is very different too. Talking to some people about smaller towns, they're literally terrified to change pricing at all because the people in their village, like literally will get like angry.

and think that they're being greedy, right? And I don't know who sets these prices, but this was like five different people I talked to about similar things. The only people I would say that I talked to that didn't really have this perception were two people from Berlin. And they were, Berlin sounds like it's like very sort of modern, progressive And a lot more like entrepreneurial than some of these other areas.

Like I talked to a lady in a small town in Hungary, who's she's like a movement based sort of massage therapists, like a massage therapist, but also a coach, just like a really cool mix. Like we work with people like this in a PT biz as well, that are really like moving based clinicians, but can use their hands.

And, she's charging 25, 30 euros a session. And she's like twice as expensive as the next closest, like massage therapist in her in her little town. And she's just talking to me about what she can charge and the people she works with. And the thing is like there, it's such a close relationship in these little towns that I could totally see why it would be much harder.

And I see it as similar in the U S in much smaller towns, people will have a similar issue that they may have to deal with as they're trying to get their pricing where they need it to be in order to really establish their business. Hey, sorry to interrupt the podcast, but I have a huge favor to ask of you.

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So if you do that, I'll greatly appreciate it. Now back to the podcast. So I don't think that's like exclusive just to Europe. I think it's in a smaller environment, but it's a extreme level in talking to some of these folks about, what what they're able to charge, talk to a lady that was a functional medicine like medical doctor, Austria really interesting.

She's like the Petra T of Austria. And even with her, the what she was telling me was challenging was the. But the viewpoint of what people are looking for is very different still. And I would, like I said, I think this is if you were to look at like how people are looking at relationship with doctors 20 years ago in the U S is similar to where she's functioning right now.

So she's ahead of where other people are at, she wants to talk to them about biomarkers and stool samples and, looking at, glucose and all this stuff, they are like, I just want you to be my doctor and do what a doctor is supposed to do. It like was all this other stuff.

So the education side, I think is very challenging. And we're so much further ahead of that. We're faster to adopt some of these trends. I think partially because we're a newer country. We're also far more independent entrepreneurial. Like it's interesting. To talk to people about the differences.

And one, one guy in particular that I talked to, it's really interesting. He had spent a good bit of time in the U S but he's Italian. He lives in Italy and he has his business here. And what he said was interesting. He said, if you are in the U S. You have far more opportunity. You have far more entrepreneurial sort of individuals because there's really no ceiling on what you can do, right?

There's no cap. There's there's less regulation. And if you are crushing it in the U S it's the best place to be. He's it's the best place. If you are, just killing it with what you're doing in your career, your business, and your income level is at a high level.

It's but if you're at a low level in the United States, it's brutal. It's very hard. He said in Italy, it's very hard to grow a business to get to a point where you're outpacing other people, but if you are, lower income, it's not as hard to have a I just generally like.

Sustainable lifestyle where you're not struggling as much as if you're very low income in the U S there's a, there's more of a safety net, right? And it's more of a socialized economic environment versus more of a open economic environment in the U S which is why so much.

Innovation and entrepreneurship comes from that. But I think he's right. I think it's, on the one side, there's no ceiling, but there's a steep drop off. And here there's a it's hard to get past a certain point. It's almost like people are pulling you down. It's what do you think you are?

You think you're better than us? That's the mentality I get from a lot of these people that they're trying to do something more. It's almost like everybody around them is like, why aren't you happy with what you have? Why are you trying to to do more? And some people are just wired that way.

These folks that I met, man, they're wired that way. They need to see what they can do. They need to try to grow something. People listening to this are the same way. And I'm like that. I just don't do well in a stagnant, just cruise through, life. And maybe that's, there's lots of healthy things to do.

there's other aspects of your life that you can really focus on more your community, your relationships, hobbies that you have, all kinds of stuff, getting involved in whatever service projects you want to do. There's probably a lot of other things you could do, right? But the way that I'm wired is I want to.

I want to be in the game. Like I want to compete in the game of business. I want to see what I can do. I want to, I want to be able to have a big impact on other people. And I think that economic environments like this, they really stifle that quite a bit. And so when I look at the U S in particular, it is hands down the best environment for the types of businesses that, that we run.

If you're running a. A cash based hybrid practice, whatever any sort of, person to person business. Like the U. S. is such a great spot. Do that. And, maybe you obviously like me, you can't come here and have some of these conversations with some of these other clinicians and really just learn a bit about how they're doing things.

So I hope that me being able to share this with you helps you realize how fortunate you are to be where you are. You and you. You had no say over that. Keep that in mind. Like you're born somewhere and maybe you can move, right? Let's say these Italian guys are like, you know what? I want to get out of here.

I want to move to us. It's not that easy. It's not that simple just to uproot move somewhere else. Like you have your whole family system, you have immigration regulations. All kinds of things. Even, now digitally, it's a bit easier to grow businesses, right? And that's cool. That's an advantage I think is universal.

But, we were born in the U. S. And we were born in an environment that values what we do as clinicians. And coaches more than any other country that I, from somewhere in that country that I met, we have less regulation. We have more opportunity. We have more, um, less of a taboo sort of stigma around trying to do more, trying to accomplish more or wanting more in your life than some of these other.

Areas, and I have such a better perspective for that now, after having some of these conversations, I'm so thankful. I'm so lucky that. My parents were American. They're in the U S and they, I was born in that, into that environment as well. And not even knowing, just like I, and shit gets fucking hard.

Don't get me wrong. If you run a business or you're trying to start a business, it is not easy. Like it's literally very hard. It's hard physically, mentally. It's hard every week. It doesn't like it, if it feels like it's easy now, just give it some time. It'll get hard again. Something's gonna pop up and challenge you.

And that's the fun of it, to be honest with you. If it was just easy, it would suck. It would be so boring. What if you could play a game and just have unlimited lives and you never had to worry about the game ending? This is pretty cool. Not fun. And you want the challenges in business.

The challenges in business are what keep everybody else out. If it was that easy, everybody would do it right. But even on your hardest day, even on the most challenging day, we still have it easier than people in some of these other countries. For for, to do what we're trying to do to grow a business past yourself in particular, it is much, much easier for us.

Like some of the employment taxes and things that some of the folks were telling me about it just sounds like really hard to really grow past yourself and employ other people within your business in particular, that, that seems to be a major a major limiter, and a lot of folks just, they just do their own thing and they never grow past themselves because they don't really want to have to to, to deal with it, keep that in mind. So if you're having, if you're having a rough day, if you're if you're struggling, if you're maybe not gaining the momentum that, that you want, it's okay. It's supposed to be hard. It's supposed to be hard, but keep this in mind. If you're in the U S like me, like man you have it so much better.

And even on the most challenging day you have, keep that in mind, keep in mind that you don't have to deal with some of the other regulation, some of the other challenges that people are dealing with in other environments are trying to do some things similar to you. You're in a sweet spot for these types of businesses.

You're in a sweet spot in terms of opportunity, in terms of like a growth mindset versus a, a stagnant mindset. And that's an amazing thing. And that's something that, you don't take for granted. Don't forget that. And it's really cool for me. It's so cool to learn about different history and, uh, just some of the regions and stuff and just there's Florence and Siena are two areas are pretty close to each other in Italy.

And they were literally at war with each other for 500 years, 500 years at war with each other. That's over twice as long as we've had a country. And they're just fighting over from my understanding, land in between, like the Chianti region which is, a good agriculture region. And they're just fighting over that, right?

So it's over 500 years, 500 years. And they still, if someone's from Florence, someone's from Siena, like they, there's still tension. It's funny. Even the, like we were in Florence and we were talking to our tour guide who she was walking us through one of the churches and she's from Florence, but she's I, even though I'm from Florence, I love seeing it's so beautiful.

And I was like, why do you say it that way? She's it's, rivalry, bad blood, 500 years to do that. It's been hundreds of years since that happened, but they still feel that way. So it's a very culturally stuck in its ways. Traditions here very different.

They value that like they, they're so into their region does this the best they do this thing the best, right? It's this tomato comes from here, this type of cheese, this whatever, right? And for us, where we live, We're so young. We're and we're so focused on new things and development and growth and and that's a perfect environment for entrepreneurship.

It's so interesting to see the dynamic between the two and to have perspective for that. Cause like for me, I feel so thankful and I'm really glad that I had the chance to experience this and talk to some of these folks. And I come away with this with a different perspective and frankly, gratitude for where I'm at.

And I hope that you can feel the same way without necessarily having to come here. If you do have an opportunity to come here, do it. It's awesome. It's so beautiful. It's cool. It's great. Like travel is such an interesting way to educate yourself and learn about the world and learn about how people do things differently.

Not necessarily better, worse, the same, whatever. They're different. Like we do things differently. And for what I'm trying to do with my life, like the area that we live is just such an ideal place. Okay. For me, and I'm so thankful that's where, I was, where I was born and I hope that this helps you if you have the chance to go to any of these in person one or two courses, by the way, like these are awesome.

They're so cool. Such a good way to meet other coaches and clinicians. Kelly doesn't do a ton of these anymore. He's mainly doing like private stuff with teams and stuff like that. So if you see one of these pop up, like totally take the opportunity to try to go to it, especially if you can, travel to like this one.

It's, there was somebody that came from New York, somebody that came from Arizona and they were one, I think own a gym. The other one was a was a clinician. And it's a business trip, right? But they get a chance to take a business trip to another country. And what a cool way to have a business deduction is to go get some CU hours and a little trip with it as well, which is which is awesome.

So if you see one of these pop up, I would definitely check it out. Can't say I'm going to be at any more of these anytime soon. I don't know. It just depends. But so thankful I could spend some time with with a buddy of mine and And and do so in such a, unique place and learn about other businesses and other countries and other people and and I'll leave you with this, but people everywhere are exactly the same.

And one of one of my, I guess like stories I'll tell you about a conversation I had was we were talking to somebody here in Italy that was we were talking about COVID and and it was definitely rough here, older population that had a high death rate. And she was talking about how everybody was making bread.

Everybody was just staying home making bread, right? And I started laughing because my neighbor made so much damn bread. During, April to like September of 2020, we had so much sourdough bread from the, from him, which was awesome actually. But it's the same people are the same, they're doing the same things, they want the same things.

Just doing so in a slightly different place. If you can get out and learn about other people's cultures, I think it's such a great thing to do expose yourself to it, and but also it's so cool to have perspective for what we have and how, lucky we really are.

And keep that in mind, like we're fucking lucky. It luck is real thing. There's a lot of luck in who your parents are and where you're born. And some people end up with more opportunity than others, when they say like talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not.

And and we have so much more opportunity where we live. So I'll leave you with that. Thanks so much for listening. Catch you next time.

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