E542 | 3 Lessons Learned From The Mastermind Live Event

Today, I wanted to share some thoughts and lessons learned from our recent Physical Therapy Biz live event that we did last week here in Atlanta, GA. These are always such a great experience for the incredible business owners we get to work with but also for our team.

• Imposter syndrome exists at every level
• Take the high road, always
• Give people everything that you have

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: Hey, I've got a question for you. Do you know if you're tracking the right data, the right metrics, the right key performance indicators in your practice? This is something that's huge for us and really helps us make solid decisions within our business, but the prior software that we're using to run our practice made it really challenging.

To actually get that data out and use it in reports. Since we've switched to PGA everywhere, this has actually become way, way easier for us to be able to have the right data. We have a dashboard of all the things that we actually want to see, the metrics that we want to pull, and it makes our life a lot easier to pull the information that we need to make the right decisions within our business.

So if you're running blind and you're not tracking the right things, or you're having a. Hard time actually pulling everything together. I highly recommend you check out our friends at PT Everywhere and see what they've got going on with their software platform. It's what we use for our practice. It's been a game changer for us.

You can check 'em [email protected]. I think you really like it. So here's the question. How do physical therapists like us who don't wanna see 30 patients a day, who don't want to work home health and have real student loans create a career and life for ourselves that we've always dreamed about?

This is the question, and this podcast is the answer. My name's Danny Mate, and welcome to the PT Entrepreneur Podcast.

What's going on guys? Doc Danny here with the PT Entrepreneur Podcast and today. I'm going over my top three lessons learned from this past live event that we just ran with our mastermind group. For those of you don't know I own a company with two partners that's called physical Therapy Biz.

Physical Therapy Biz Works with cash and hybrid practice owners all across the country and even internationally. We have a couple Canadian practices that are in our Mastermind and we've worked actively with people in a number of other countries as well. And What we do twice a year is we get together with our mastermind group, which is basically the group that we work with on an annual basis.

So every year, we will work with to, to date we're, we have 200 active businesses. But we've worked with a few hundred in that program that are in and out that are alumni of that program. But 200 currently and twice a year in that program we get together. And we do an event, we do a business development event.

And this year we did it in Atlanta which, which was a lot of fun. It cuz I didn't have to travel, which was great. But also the area we did it was great. It's we're the Braves plate, it's called The Battery. There's a hotel right there. We actually went to a Braves game on Wednesday, and then we had our full event, which is basically, we do a workout together at six o'clock in the morning on Thursday.

We start our day at eight. We go all the way until about five o'clock. I. With actual work that day. And then from six until about midnight for some people later we go out and have dinner and hang out and go to a place which is basically just like a big bar with a bowling alley and darts and ping pong and all kinds of stuff.

It was a fun place called Punch Ball Social. The second day we do we do mainly content. And work through some things that we're working on. We do some small group work as well where we involve our guest presenter. And our guest presenter this year was actually Megan Brown, who, Megan Brown is a physical therapist in the Alexandria, Virginia area that owns mine, the mat Pilates and yoga.

She was awesome. One of my favorite guest presenters that we've had so far. If you guys are not familiar with her stuff, definitely go check it out. But what I like to do after these live events, Is, I like to let I like to get my brain power back first, number one. But I like to think about big lessons learned and I like to share those with with you guys because if you can't be there this is my sort of next best way to, to help you along your journey.

And if you were there, Then hopefully this helps you consolidate some of the things that happened because there's so much going on. There's so many people to meet, there's so many conversations that are being had, there's so much information that, we're sharing with you.

We've worked on really hard and curated to be able to share, to hopefully improve your business. But ultimately it's a lot, right? Imagine being new to this community, walking into a group full of, it's 200 people. Some of the nicest people in the world, like the most open people.

But even still, it's a bit intimidating to walk into a room full of 200 people and so it can definitely be challenging, especially if you're newer to, to the Mastermind. It's your first event it's overwhelming. So I always like to try to break these down. And I have three lessons that I learned that I took away from this from this event.

And I wanna share those with you guys. So number one, the first thing is imposter syndrome exists at every level. So I'll say that again. Imposter syndrome exists at every level. And this is based off of a conversation that I had, a couple conversations that I had. The first one being someone that was, Brand new to the Mastermind.

They'd only had their business for about six months, and we were having a conversation and they said something to the effect of, I, I just feel like I don't even belong in this room. I feel like everybody is so far ahead of me, like, why am I here? I feel, like they have imposter syndrome, they shouldn't be there.

And I've felt that way in many instances with business in particular as I started to get involved in business groups. And it's an interesting place to be. You feel like you're on the JV squad, you feel like you're on, somebody gave you a scholarship because they felt bad for you. And what you don't realize is everybody starts there.

You have to, you can't skip the line and go straight to having Business knowledge and experience, you have to earn that. And you in a lot of ways, by working with a group like ours, you are skipping the line in terms of mistakes and learning a lot of the wrong things. But you still have to earn, your stripes in a lot of ways, because being in the trenches is the only way to understand what some of these people have gone through and what they're experiencing.

And just how challenging running, starting, and running a business, can be, but also just how personally rewarding it is as you have to develop yourself as your business grows. That was an interesting conversation because relatively soon after that, I had another conversation with somebody that is more senior member of our group.

They have their businesses like over hunt $500,000 a year in in annual revenue, and. What they said that I thought was interesting was they felt because let me, I guess take a step backwards. So we actually have name tags that are different colors, and those colors correspond with where your business is at.

On a spectrum of gross revenue, so from zero to a hundred thousand dollars in gross revenue, you have a white name tag from a hundred thousand dollars to $250,000. You have a red name tag from $250,000 to $500,000. You have a green name tag from 500 to a million. You have a black name tag, and a million plus in your business in terms of annual revenue, trailing 12 is a gold name tag.

This person had a black name tag and they were having people that had name tags that were like white and red and green, come up to them and just pick their brain about stuff and ask them questions about their business. And this person said, I just don't feel qualified to give anybody business advice.

I feel like I just don't even know enough about what I'm doing yet. Like they just don't feel like they had their sort of processes dialed in as much as they would've liked to, to be able to feel like they were in a position to explain it to somebody else. And. I actually think that's just a sign of humility is all that is.

This person's obviously accomplished. They've obviously done a really good job in, in growing a cash-based practice to, over half, between half a million dollars a year, and they felt unqualified to give advice to somebody that was asking that, that was, less than half the size of their business.

And that's because. There's humility associated with what you don't know. Once you learn more about business, like there's so much I don't know about business and I started learning more about business, I started to realize just how little I knew and how much more I needed to learn and how much more I needed to surround myself with people that knew what was going on.

The other thing is it's very similar to clinical skills. So think about when you started to learn about the human body. When, so you gra, you go to school. You, it's a fire hose of knowledge. They are teaching you all kinds of stuff primarily so you can take the national exam, right? So you can take this federal test and have a license, but then from there you realize, oh shit, I don't really know that much.

There's a lot that I still haven't learned. And to be able to come to terms with that and be like, okay, cool. When they say lifelong learning, In this profession, they mean it because the human body is so intricate and we learn more about it every year and research comes out, that changes the way in which we can get best outcomes for people.

And you have to come to terms with that and actually like really like that to be able to not get frustrated in the profession because you feel like you're always catching up, but you're not always catching up. You're always learning and having humility to know, okay, this is what I know now this is what I understand to be true today, but.

If something improves and something changes, like I will change my practice based off of what the best practices are. Based on current evidence and practice research and and experts that are doing things, typically leading research as well. So you have to take the same lens into business as well.

And I thought that this was, somebody that reminded me of just like a senior clinician that just felt like they didn't have everything figured out, but they were light years ahead of like a new graph and they were just, taking that role within within our mastermind and felt like they were out of place.

But that's just a sign of humility to me. The last person that had an issue with this was myself. Everybody look, everybody has like internal dialogue and I definitely do as well, and when I walked into this room, this is the biggest, this is the large number of people we've had at a live event.

And every year there's more, and every year I walk into it and I'm like, what in the hell is happening? Like, how did this happen? Because for me, like it's strange to have, 200 people wanna fly in from all over the country. And Canada for our Canadian friends to come in and learn the frameworks that we've put together, to come in and meet each other.

And it's strange for me to have people that want to talk to me, to have people that want to tell me about a podcast they listen to or a chapter of a book or something, or to, they wanna take a picture with me. I find that. Just weird. It's strange for me, I'm not necessarily saying there's anything right or wrong about it.

It's where I have found myself to be and I appreciate the opportunity to lead this group of people. But I also feel unqualified to do so in many ways. And I think it's natural. Like I said, I think it's natural and I think it's a healthy thing because. There's a fine line between being confident and being arrogant.

And I feel like the difference is, confidence lacks confidence has humility. Arrogance lacks humility. And for me this sort of internal dialogue of what the heck are you doing, man? Like, why are you here? What qualifies you to do this? This is a massive amount of Of people, but also it's, there's pressure in a way where this is not, these are not my businesses, right?

If I run my own business into the ground, that's on me. If I put together information or give recommendations, or, I influence somebody in a way where that drives their business the wrong direction, that's their business. There's far more pressure and I feel much more of a sense of, protection for these people than I even do with myself, because I never want somebody else to be in a bad spot because of something that I may have said or something that I may have put together.

So it forces me, it forces our team. To put even more effort into what we're doing because of how much we appreciate and trust these people with what we are teaching them. And that is something that in a lot of ways puts me in a position of being an imposter, but knowing that I'm willing to work to improve, to help, be the leader I need to be for the people that we work with.

If you have imposter syndrome, that's not abnormal. In fact, I think it's abnormal if you don't. I think it says more about you if you don't, than if you do, because I've also run into people where they're overly confident and they shouldn't be. They feel like their skillset is better than it is, and those are typically people that have lacked any sort of negative implications because of the decisions they've made.

Usually, once you've learned something the hard way, you're a little bit more objective of the dec, the things you say, and the way in which you make decisions. So if you have imposter syndrome in any area, I don't think it's a bad thing. I actually think that's a sign that you're a healthy, rational human being.

Number two, take the high road always. So number two, take the high road always, or always take the high road, I guess grammatically maybe is better. Anyway, take the hi road. Megan Brown, who is our guest presenter, she told a story and she actually. Did an amazing job with her presentation, it was the story of her entrepreneurial career, which I actually, I thought was great.

I I think she had like something that she touched on for everybody in the room because it's hard to put together the right information for 200 people that are vastly different stages, in some cases in their entrepreneurial journey. And she did a great job of it.

What she did that was, I thought was awesome, was she tied stages in her journey to songs and had basically a playlist of her entrepreneurial career, which was so great. But one thing that happened that she brought up was a instructor who was her general, her manager, her general manager.

That was the person that she'd taken under her wing for a couple years, taught her how to run the business, taught her how to teach classes. To make a long story short, this person basically decided that they were going to just open their own yoga or open their own Pilates in yoga studio right down the road from her basically, and steal all of her all of her client list and use that to market to for her own business.

And as Megan told a story, It was obvious that it was like, a really shitty thing that happened to her. And what she said was, she went back and forth, legal action, whatever, lots of things. And what she said was, She decided to take the high road.

She decided to focus on her business. She decided to not, focus on this other person's business, not to pursue them legally on any these things. And eventually that person ended up failing at what they were doing and their business went under. Their business failed. And I think that for many of you, you can be on both sides of this.

Okay. Because we've had something, we had something similar happen, not to the extent that Megan did early on with the first staff member that we had. And when you have somebody go a mile or so down the road and reach out to prior customers, prior clients To let them know you're going somewhere else and that they should come see you there.

And for us to see those emails, because we own the email account so we could read everything probably without this person knowing that actually was really hard for us. I think that more than anything, it frustrated us because we had spent so much time with this person and.

I'm not, I don't expect anybody to stay in a business if in their heart they want to go do their own thing. But if they do, and if this is you, if I'm talking to some of you that are thinking about doing your own thing as well. If you're thinking about doing your own thing, go do your own thing.

Don't cannibalize the business that you're at because. You're scared of the start that you may have that might be a bit slower if you don't do that. But that is not the high road. The high road is to go build your business on your own. When I moved to Atlanta, I didn't have a list of people that I could reach out to that I had worked with.

I didn't have resources like that, and we had to build it from the ground up. It would be equivalent to me. Going and like I taught for Kelly Tourette's group for years, and if I decided I wanted to start a Con Ed group, my own Con Ed group, and then I took all of the contacts that they had and I reached out to them to let them know that I was starting my own group that was basically very similar and I was gonna teach very similar things.

I would be a complete asshole, right? I would be a real jackass and I would never do that, ever because I have too much respect for the person that is a mentor of mine. But when people are scared, and this is something that I think we have to give people some grace as well, when people are scared because they are.

Cutting the cord on a paycheck and they're moving on to start their new life, and to start this business that has to support their life. It is scary. And if you don't know when or where money is coming in, you're probably gonna make a lot of decisions that are based in fear, not based on what is the right thing to do.

Because I think if we all had a conversation about what's the right thing to do, we would do it. But when things are scary and people are afraid, they think for themself over everybody else. And I understand that and that's okay. But as you go forward in your career, as Megan brought this up I thought about myself, I thought about my wife and we've had a handful of people that I would say locally that have just.

Really not done the right thing for us and our business, even though we have gone out of our way to do the right thing for them. And sometimes it sucks, it, it sucks to constantly be like, why are we playing by the rules and other people are not, because it's harder to do that.

It's harder to do the right thing and be have integrity, unwavering integrity with the decisions that you're making. But I can tell you this much. Where we are currently, we have far exceeded our expectations when I left the Army. And I think a lot of it has to do with the way that we decide to carry ourself, with the way that we decide to Interact with people and the decisions we make and then the decisions we make to take the high road to do the right thing every single time, regardless of what that does for our business or doesn't do for our business or with other people.

And I, I highly recommend you do the same thing whether you are exiting. You have somebody that you are in disagreement with or you don't see eye to eye or local competition potentially, do the right thing. You know what the right thing is? Take the high road. You're always gonna end up in a better place because of that.

Because remember this, you get one reputation. I. Just one. And it goes everywhere with you. And I can tell you when people reach out to me and ask me about certain people that that we have worked with, we've had interactions with, and it has not been a very positive one. I'm not going outta my way to badmouth anybody, but I'll give you my honest opinion.

If this is someone that you're deciding that you wanna try to do some work with because of how they have interacted with us and other people are doing the exact same thing. Now keep that in mind. You have one reputation. Take the high road. Number three. This is a big one for anybody running workshops or events.

Give people everything that you have, give people everything that you have. Time, energy, attention. When I was running the Mobility WA courses for the Tourettes, one of the things they told me was, We expect that this is the time in which you're teaching a course. We also expect that you get there early and you meet and say hello to every single person that comes to the course.

We also expect, unless it's a Sunday night and you're flying out close to when the end of the course is, That you stay and you answer every single question that every single person has. And when I was training with Kelly, I noticed this because I remember being in, at the rogue facility in Columbus, Ohio, and Kelly was teaching a course and it was one of the first ones I was at as an assistant instructor, as I was learning how to teach this program, and.

When the course ended, he stayed for two to three hours. There was about 50 people that were there two to three hours to answer every single person's question. There was a line that was probably 20 people deep and think about this for a second. He stayed to answer everybody's questions. What about the person at the back of that line?

They stayed to get one question answered by one person that they probably drove, who knows how far just to talk to. And I remember just how mentally exhausted he would be. Just like brain dead, didn't wanna talk after a, after an event, didn't wanna talk after a course. I totally get it. I get it.

Having been there on, in a number of different ways at this point, but. The amount of energy that takes, the amount of attention that takes the amount of being intentional about making that decision. He could easily be like, all right guys, course is over. I gotta run. I'll see you guys later. He didn't build his reputation off of that shit.

He built it off of being the guy that's sticking around for three hours that's gonna answer every single question that you have until the last person leaves. And when we teach workshops from when I was teaching a lot of workshops, I took the exact same approach to all the workshops that I taught. I would show up early, I would say hello to everybody.

I would try and remember everybody's names the best I could, which can be really hard. But at least trying. And then I would stick around, I would answer every single person's question for as long as that took, and that makes such a big difference. If you're not, first of all, if you're not doing that at a workshop, at a local event, you should be because it's going to show people just how much you care and how much effort you're putting out.

And that is a rare thing at the events that we have by the end of the these events. I am like, basically use a useless human being for a day or two afterward. I can't make a decision. I can't have a significant, I can't have a meaningful conversation. I just sit there, I'm tired, and for me, when we're at these events, I'm not there for any other reason, but to.

To be a part of the community, to meet people, to spend time with people, to give them my time to answer questions, and I don't, I, I didn't get a chance to get around. To 200 people and have a conversation with every single person. But I sure as sell, tried and for me to go and just say hello to people that I haven't been able to connect with yet, that are coming in, to our business.

Cuz we have, look, we have 18 people in the company now that are helping with All the operations side coaching fulfillment, lot, lots of smart people. It's not something that I can just do by myself, but, for me to go and just have a conversation or answer a question or to stay after the event was over for two hours, to be able to answer questions for everybody.

And make sure that they got their question addressed, because who knows, maybe they came in, just had that one question they wanted to talk to me about. And, and it, and if you blow them off, or if if you're in a rush to get outta there because you're tired, like you're just, I.

You're looking at it the wrong way. You gotta be there for other people. You gotta give them a hundred percent of what you have. It can't be 50% of your attention. It can't be 50% of your effort. It has to be everything. You have to be just very selfless with your attention, your time, and your mental bandwidth.

And if you do that, if you can do this, and I'm talking about in a context of a big event, right? But if you can do this even with five people at a workshop, Five people at a workshop and they feel that you're there for them. They feel that your attention is a hundred percent on them.

Like how rare is that for somebody to actually listen to you not listen to you. So they can wait to then say the shit they wanna say, but listen to you. Listen to what you're saying. Think about what you're saying, give you their opinion on something with something that's bothering you, or they're a subject matter expert on that.

That is a very rare thing. Even if you go to a medical visit, it's still a rare thing. They're typically so scattered and thinking about all the other visits they have and documentation they have, like that locked in presence is such a hard thing a difficult thing for people to find, but not a hard thing to do.

It takes intention. It takes you doing this on purpose and you giving your energy your attention to other people. That is the currency that will pay you back 10 x if you're willing to do that. It is a very difficult thing to do, but it is very worth it, very effective, and people are worth it. PE people deserve that.

They deserve your attention because if you want them to be a client of yours or if they are a client of yours, keep in mind. They put food on your table. They pay for your damn house. They pay for your gas, like they're the reason why you have an income. Do not take them for granted. Treat those people the way they deserve as if they're literally buying you dinner.

Because in a lot of ways they are. And if it wasn't for them and it wasn't for their willingness to work with you or for them to recommend other people to work with you, you would be working somewhere else. You would be back in that job that you hate. Do not forget that. Appreciate your people, appreciate them and give people everything that you have.

That's number three. So in summary, When you know, I go to these events again, I try to take away as much as I can and I brain dump it and then I try to organize it and I'll share it with you guys. And these are the big three takeaways I had from this event. So number one, imposter syn syndrome exists at every single level.

I think it's a sign of being a normal, rational human being. I think if you lack imposter syndrome at some point in time in your life, You're you're borderline potentially gonna be a serial killer. I don't know. I'm not saying you're a serial killer. I'm saying maybe you could go that way if pushed wrong.

Number two, take the high road. Okay? Take the high road. Ask yourself this, it, whoever you respect most it. It could be a parent, it could be a grandparent, it could be a teacher, it could be a coach. Whoever you respect most in your life, imagine they're watching you with the decisions that you make with other people.

And if they're not proud of the decision that you would make, you're making the wrong decision. And frankly, we all know what the right decision is. We just don't always do it. We know we should do certain things or not do certain things. We let that little voice inside ourselves say, it's okay, just this one time.

Or, you know what, they did me wrong. They deserve it. I should do this. And that's not true. If you're doing the right thing, have a high level of integrity with everything you do. Your reputation carries with you everywhere you go. So take the high road and number three. Give people everything that you have.

All your attention, all your energy, all your time. Especially if you're there in an environment where you are the person running something, you're the person running a workshop. You're the person doing a teaching a con-ed course. You're the person teaching at an event of some sort. Be B available. Be there for people.

Give them your time. Give them your attention. It's a currency that we can exchange and it'll come back to you 10 x if you really give it to them selflessly and ask for nothing in return. So that is. Three big lessons that I have for you guys from the Mastermind. So as always, I really appreciate it.

If you're listening to the podcast, longtime Listener, thank you so much. If you are new to this, welcome. We're trying to help cash and hybrid practices, grow. We're trying to add a billion dollars in cash revenue, annual revenue to the industry to a already 40 plus billion dollar industry.

Physical therapy in particular, but clinically across the board. That's our goal. We have a long way to go. We need a small army of people to be successful to do that. I hope that you're one of 'em. So guys, as always, thank you so much for listening and I'll catch you next time.

Hey, peach entrepreneurs. We have big, exciting news, a new program that we just came out with That 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.

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If you're doing the work and you're getting. Information put down and getting yourself ready to take action in a very organized way, you will have success, which is what we want. So head to physical therapy biz.com/challenge and get signed up today. Hey, real quick before you go, I just wanna say thank you so much for listening to this podcast, and I would love it if you got involved in the conversation.

So this is a one one-way channel. I'd love to hear back from you. I'd love to get you. Into the group that we have formed on Facebook. Our PT Entrepreneurs Facebook group has about 4,000 clinicians in there that are literally changing the face of our profession. I'd love for you to join the conversation, get connected with other clinicians all over the country.

I do live trainings in there with Yves Gege every single week, and we share resources that we don't share anywhere else outside of that group.So if you're serious about being a PT entrepreneur, a clinical rainmaker, head to that group. Get signed up. Go to facebook.com/groups/ptentrepreneur, or go to Facebook and just search for PT Entrepreneur. And we're gonna be the only group that pops up under that.