E566 | Three Big Takeaways From 2022

One of my favorite things I get to do each year on this podcast is to look back and reflect on the lessons learned from the year. Use these lessons and make next year the best year possible for your business. I appreciate you all listening, I hope you have a great New Year, and can't wait to get into 2023 with you all. Enjoy! 

• Making the right decision is really hard
• Hobbies are important even if you think you're too busy
• We can be happy with far less than we have

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: So there's all kinds of hidden fees within your business that are just part of doing business. One of those is credit card. Processing and for us, we didn't even realize how much we were paying in credit card processing with the first management software we were using for our practice. And when we switched over to PT everywhere, we just realized we were saving literally hundreds of dollars a month with credit card processing with their partner with Card point versus who we were using with our prior.

Software. This has made a massive difference. It's more than paid for itself. It allows us to decrease our overhead. It allows us to have more cash flow to reinvest in our people, in our technology, in our facility, in marketing and everything that's gonna drive the business. So don't get abused by credit card processing companies.

Make sure you're paying what you should pay. And if you're looking for a management software, I highly recommend PT Everywhere directly integrates with a. Processor makes it very easy and their rates are super, super competitive. So it's saved us a ton of money and it probably will do the same for you if you don't know what you are getting charged.

So head over to PT everywhere. Take a look at what they've got. 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 wanna 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 Matte, and welcome to the PT Entrepreneur Podcast.

Hey, what's going on guys? Doc Danny here with the PT Entrepreneur Podcast, and today is one of my favorite podcasts to do each year, and it's gonna be my Lessons Learned podcast, my 2022 Lessons Learned podcast. And in I sat down and I wrote out A number of things that I felt like were big takeaways for me this year, and narrowed it down actually to three, just so that I could you know, do, do this in, in a, in a fairly succinct manner.

And share my thoughts on these, these three things that I learned. And hopefully they, they help you as well. You know, it, I, I feel like I, I know that there are people that listen to this podcast and honestly, I'm just very thankful for anybody that listens to this podcast on a, on a regular basis. I never, you know, it's, it's kind of blows my mind when I think about it.

But you know, when, when I think about this stuff, I, I wanna try to make it as generalizable as possible, because some of you are just starting, you know, you're, you're, maybe you're working in a clinic and you're thinking about. Doing your own thing and, and getting, getting to a place where maybe you start a side hustle or, you know, you, you start building the infrastructure to be able to do something on your own.

Some of you, maybe you've taken that, you know that that leap and you are in practice for yourself. But you're in the early stages and its struggle. You know, it's a really challenging time to try to grow your own, you know, your own clinic and your own business. And some of you are dealing with much different problems.

You have staff and you have a lot of overhead and a lot of, a lot of people that you support and re a lot of responsibility and there's a lot of stress that comes with that as well. And it's funny, it's like, There's, there's stress and uncertainty at every step of the way. It doesn't actually go away.

I think what happens is we just get more accustomed to it. You know, we get, we get better at dealing with it. We, we become conditioned to it in some ways, but it doesn't mean that it's not there's not a le a level of stress that people that are, are. You know, not entre entrepreneurs, people that are not trying to create their own, their own business and, and a business that supports their life.

Like they, they don't necessarily have the, the same type of stress that, that you might be feeling. And so anyway, I wanted to go over. Three things that I really took away from this year that I think will be generalizable to everyone. And hopefully help you at whatever stage that you know that, that you are actually currently in, cuz all of them are frankly, pretty damn hard.

So number one, making the right decision is really hard and it helps to use probability. So I'll say it again. Making the right decision is really hard. And it helps to use probability. So I look back, you know, it's, it's been nine years now basically that I've been, you know, an entrepreneur you know, where, where you're, the decisions you make are solely your own for the most part, right?

Like, no one's necessarily telling you what to do. No one is giving you direction of like what you should or shouldn't do. And this sort of ultimate time freedom, ultimate ti ultimate say over your time, it may not be freedom especially early on, but the ultimate say over what you do when you do it, how much of it that you do is, is is up to you completely.

And I've found that one of the harder things is to make difficult decisions and, and to, to be, to make the right decision. More often than not, and we definitely have made mistakes. There's no doubt about that. And I don't think you can avoid all mistakes, because if you do, you probably are playing a really small game.

You know, you're, you're probably fearful of things that might change or. You're, you're slow to adapt to things you know, or you're intentionally just governing your own, your own business and personal growth for other reasons. You know, I mean, for sure. A lot of it could be just, you know, fear of not wanting to to mess the business up, you know, not wanting to take a step backward.

And that's fine. I mean, some people go much slower than others, and I think there's nothing necessarily wrong with having like a, a slower pace with your business. I, I do think that there's a healthy amount of growth. That's good. And going too fast is kind of like, it's, it's sort of like when you, when you ride your bike too fast and it starts to wobble and you got two options, you either commit and you, you, you know, you, you ride that out.

Or you try to slow down and typically you, you're gonna fall. So, you know, that's sort of what it feels like, but you have to find the pace that's right for you. Either way, you have to make decisions, you know, when do I leave my, my full-time? You know, job at the clinic and go all in on my side hustle.

At what point does that make sense? Do I sublease this space or this space? Do I move into a standalone space or do I stay in the sublease space? Maybe I get a couple of those. Do I focus only on brick and mortar? Do I try to add in some remote element to what. I'm doing, do I hire this person or this person?

Should I fire this person? Or should I try to work with them to improve? These are just a, a couple of the decisions that we have to make along the way that are very big decisions. I mean, if, if you really take into account. The other people that you're involving in your business? Like I've always felt the most amount of personal, you know, sort of stress and responsibility for others.

For, like, I, if, if I make a mistake and I end up in a bad position, that's on me. If I make a mistake and our employees end up in a bad position, that's the worst. Like I always think about. The people that are working with us more than even myself because this is how they, this is how they pay their mortgages, you know, like this is how they buy food for their family.

And there's a, there's a absolute sense of responsibility that needs to be taken into account with any big decision in particular that you're making. And for me, I always. Never really knew. I mean, you people tell you like, oh, go with your gut. And I don't necessarily think that's bad advice from what I've found, looking back more often than not the way that I felt like, like the sort of deep gut feeling that I had about a thing I had to do typically was the right decision.

But not always. Cuz sometimes you, you know, we can be emotional about things the way that things affect us. Sometimes our ego gets involved and we feel like somebody did us wrong, and then we start acting based off of that versus based off of the logical decisions that we should be making, you know, and there's, there's this sort of idea of having emotional control without being emotionless.

And that is a a difficult. Thing for me to do. I tend to swing one way or the other. It's very difficult to find that middle ground that, that I believe a Socrates called it the golden mean, the middle, where you can see both sides of something and make a rash decision based off of what is best in that situation.

And not necessarily just what's logically or emotionally, the, the, the best thing in letting your, not letting your ego get involved in the decisions that you make and the way that I've found to really feel confident about the decisions that I make. Is is based off of probability. So I read a book this year, it's called By This, not that it's a, there's a, there's a guy that has a blog, it's a financial blog called Financial Samurai, and he talks about this in his book.

This is not, this isn't my, you know, methodology. This is a hundred percent his to give him credit for that. Really good book. Just basic sort of financial stuff. And he, he talks about, Making decisions based off of probability. So 70% is the threshold that for him is where he says yes to something.

And I read this and I go, man, this is like so spot on. And I've started using it. Throughout this year, and especially with people that we work with, like making decisions, I'd bring this up with them as well. Like, you know, what percent certain are you that you should do this? You know, if it's, if it's, I don't know, it's 50 50, you shouldn't do it.

You know, 50 50 is too low. That's a coin flip. We don't want that. You know, and if you're like, I'm 80% certain, then. All right, then you roll the dice, you go with it, and, and you know, at least you went with a probability that's most likely gonna lead to the, the outcome that you want and not always, right?

So if it's 70% certainty or above, I say you go with it, right? And an example if, if someone says, all right, well, man, if, if you have a side hustle that's making three to $5,000 a month, then let's say you're, you're in a, you know, You have a sublease office, you're seeing people on the side in a gym or something like that, and you really are starting to feel very time poor, and you just don't know if it's the right time for you to leave to do your side hustle full-time.

Maybe you have responsibilities with spouse and family and other things, and you sit down, ask yourself, what's the probability that if you do this, That you can get this to replace your income within a couple months. You know, do you have the cash reserves to cover yourself for a couple months? Do, do you feel confident that you can do this and not put yourself in a really bad position and take a huge step backward financially within a couple months?

And if you're sitting there and you're thinking, I feel, you know, 70% certain that within two months I can replace what I'm making at the clinic full-time with my own, you know, with my side hustle, which would now be your full-time. You know, your full-time gig, then you should go for it. Like, that is a decision that you should say yes to.

You know, versus if you're like, I don't know, it's 50 50, I don't know how this is gonna work, or, you know, what traction I might, you know, have or not have I go full-time, then I wouldn't do it. You know? I would wait until you have that 70% certainty because you're gonna feel a lot more confident about the decisions that you make.

And also it's, I think it also helps with decision remorse because, We are going to make the wrong decision like that's gonna happen. You can't always make the right decision. I mean, even people that we work with that literally like there's nothing that they're trying to do that we haven't already done and probably multiple times over and or helped many, many other people like them actually do as well.

Even with that, like there's still. Factors that you know, you just don't know about things that could happen that are just out of your control. I'll give you a great example. Like we, one of the practices that we worked with for years, Is they have an office in Manhattan and in like February of 2022, they went under contract to build out a space in, you know, a a, which would, would be like, what was gonna be the biggest clinic that they had to that to to date.

In Manhattan, which is a super expensive area. So between buildout and like monthly cost, it was a lot. And you know, this is February, 2022. The next month everything gets shut down, and now they're like in a pretty bad spot. Because they just signed like, I think a five year lease on this space. They can't even use it.

Like it's, they can't even like be in the building. Everybody in the area had left the city. Right. And they're like negotiating with the owner of the building to for, for rent abatement and like, it's a big amount of money they have to carry each month just to have this facility that. They don't, can't even use.

Right. Like even though if you look at it in the long, you know, perspective, we look at it over a few years that that facility, they still have it. They kept it, they were able to make it, to make it work, and they're crushing it with this space. Like it's a great spot and they have, you know, room to grow.

But at the time, you know, if you'd have asked them in June, if, if like, hey, if you could. Hit redo on this, what would you do? They, they absolutely would've like not had the space. Right. And you could say, like, if you're looking at it in that perspective, like it was a mistake, but in the long term it's a, I think a really good move.

So some of this depends on your, your timeline, you know, that, that you're looking at these things, but were they 70% certain it's the right move? Absolutely. You know, and. It was the right move. But man, then you have some events that happen that you just don't know. You know, you don't know that's gonna happen.

Or maybe something in your personal life happens, or with your family or with your employees you know, or with your area potentially, and you just don't know. So you have to go based off of a framework. I think it's so helpful to base your decisions off of framework so that you have rationale for why you made that decision.

And if you look back and you're like, why did I do that? Did I just like, You know, make that decision for no reason like that, that doesn't feel great. Cuz I've been there and you're like, why did I do that one man, am I an idiot? Like, am I like inept as a leader? I don't know how to make the right decisions because you're not looking at everything.

But if you have a framework to run things through, you feel much, much better. So if you're 70% certain that you should do something, you should do it. And I think you could actually apply this to a lot of other areas you know of, of. Any part of, of your life, you know, whether you're in school or who you should decide to spend the rest of your life with or you know, like where, where you should buy a house or is it right time to buy a house?

Like there's so many things you can apply this to that I think will help give you a sense of Objective, you know, rationale for why you're making a decision. It's been great for me. I, so I run everything through this, this this filter. And if, if anything is, is a coin flip, I throw it away. I'm like, no, I'm not dealing with that.

If I'm 70% certain or higher, I, I will I'll go with that, that decision. And I recommend that you try to have the same thing. Been very, very helpful for me this year. Number two hobbies are important. Even if you think you're too busy. So hobbies are important, even if you think you're too busy.

So this is something that I've actually had a number of friends tell me over the years. You know, I mean, probably, probably a half dozen people, you know, I would say six to seven people in the last nine years have independent of each other, told me, dude, you need a hobby. Right. And it's so funny looking back because it's, it's just interesting to be able to like, take, take yourself out of your day-to-day and actually think about the perspective of other people and why they're telling you these things.

And early on there's, I mean, there's no way I was like listening to anybody. I was just barely, I, I, I was just trying to not You know, run myself into the ground because there's different stages that you're gonna go through in, in, I think, supplies to life. But it just, just, I, I apply all these lenses to business because, you know, it's like, it's a documented sort of history for the last nine years of exactly like where I've been, what I've been doing, and where, what part of my personal life that, that I'm in as well.

And. I had no hobbies up until recently. You know, I mean, I, I tried, I would say like, I have a, a friend who's very in into bow hunting, but he just loves to shoot a recurve bow, which is, you know, basically just like a, a wooden bow. And when I was, I was with him years ago, he basically just took me to a bow shop and.

Bought me a bow. He was like, all right, here we go. Now you got a hobby. So I have this target, I have this bow sitting in my backyard. The the target is and I'll shoot at it occasionally I'll do it with like my kids or whatever, but I never, it didn't like click with me the way that it did with this person where it's just like movement meditation for them.

Right. You know, I've had like trying to get back into things like grappling and things like that that I did when I was in the, in the military, you know, getting and playing like different. Sports with you know, whatever intermural sports or whatever it might be. But I always prioritize business and family.

That's it. I mean, like the, I didn't have a hobby for a reason and it was because we were just so busy and especially early on, you know, when I started the practice, we had, you know, my son was two, my daughter was six months. I was traveling probably three times a month teaching for The mobility Ward, which is now the ready state.

You know, teaching, teaching for CrossFit, teaching for the tactical groups that we worked with. And man, I barely had enough time to do anything. You know, I, I was just like pulled in so many different directions and then starting PT Biz and still doing all those things for years. And I just, you know, was, was si my whole life was siloed in a way where I didn't even have any, any time for anything besides what I was trying to accomplish.

And, The, the challenge with that is it's not really a healthy place to be, and I've seen this now with people that we work with and I almost feel like it's a superpower for them to be able to really do a good job of prioritizing interests and hobbies that they have on a level that is, that is. I would, I don't even know if it's as important to them as their business, but even if it's somewhat close to their, like business, family and then their community and the, the hobbies that they're in interested in, I think it's very important to have that balance and you lose it along the way if you, if you don't but you do, and yet you do have to make decisions as to what is most important for you.

Like I had, I had this guy that my, my son and his son went to Pre-K together, and they went to this actually for a couple years. They went to school together. And so he and I became, became buddies and he would call me up to play on their intermurals. He had this, he had this softball team that they would play.

It's just like a men's league, like rec league softball team. And he'd been playing, it's like his buddies from college, they'd been playing together for a long time like 10 years. And they would have like, people that just wouldn't show up or we couldn't make it from time to time. So he called me up, fill in, I'd show up, you know, fill in, play some softball, whatever.

It was always fun. Grab a beer afterward, hang out and. Eventually what happened was I started to not be able to, to play, you know, like I had, especially with the Dock and Jock podcast that I had for years. A lot of the podcasts we did, my co-host was bouncing all over the US with his, you know, his wife was active duty military still, so they were in like West Point and then they were out in the Seattle area.

We had like time zone differences and schedule differences. And then we were doing these interviews with all these people and it was really hard to time those. The only time we could do it was in the evening. So, you know, usually probably like one to two evenings a week I would be doing a podcast inter interview.

And then I also was teaching at typically once a week at some gym somewhere. And that was usually in the evening as well. So two to three evenings a week, I was doing something work related. So when this dude called me up and they were like, oh man, I can't, I got a podcast. And he'd be like, what are you talking about?

Like you're, you're recording a podcast or like you're listening to a podcast. And I'm like, no man, this is like my job. This is what I'm, this is part of what I do for a living. Right? And, and then I'd be teaching and eventually, You know, you call somebody and and or text 'em enough and they just keep turning you down.

You just stop, you stop reaching out. Right? I mean, that's basically what happened with me. And it's not that I didn't like softball, I didn't like this group of guys I was playing with or, or this guy in general. But like, I just didn't have the time and I didn't feel like it was important to have to have a hobby.

But over the years in particular, I've noticed like the becoming one dimensional, or maybe it's two-dimensional because. Families are so important that that's never really, it's not something that I pull away from ever. Right. I'll have zero hobbies if it came down to family or, or hobbies. But I just think it's so important to have an outlet outside of work, outside of family.

They talk about like the third place a lot for people. You know, you have work, you have home, and then a third place. For some people it is, you know, maybe it's a, a, a sport group or whatever they play with. Maybe it is a Maybe it's a, it's a, a church or something like that. Maybe it's, maybe it's a a another community that you're involved in that's a nonprofit, but you spend time with this, this third place.

And I think that that gets lost easily as, as an entrepreneur and, and you may find yourself in the same position. But keep in mind, from a mental health standpoint, it is very important to have that variance, to have those interactions with other people and to do something where you use, in my case, I just really enjoy being able to, you know, have some sort of a sport or movement that I'm involved in.

And, and using my body and my brain in a different way. It's very healthy for me to, to get out of just like work, work, work, family, family, family, and be able to do something that's not related really. You know, at all that that, that is, that is different and gives you some variance. So, you know, this is the first year I'm nine, nine years into this, like, this is the first year where I can say I actually feel like I.

Have a hobby. I got back into golf actually, ironically with my son for the first tee. He, he did the first TEE program this year and I just started playing. Golf again. You know, I never ever did. I just took forever. On the weekends. I felt selfish being out there for six hours. I didn't, I didn't want to drink during the middle of the day with, with my buddies playing golf.

Like, this is not what I wanted to do. And, and now like, I can go out, you know, and, and I play with like random people sometimes. I play with the same, you know, people I know from, from our neighborhood go play nine holes, 18 holes. Just go, just go to the. Practice, like just something that is a skill-based hobby for me has been great.

And, you know, golf is something that I just, I grew up doing somewhat. Never really actually liked it that much. And now it's just such a fun hobby for me and, and a, and a great way to, to get out and, and do something differently. So, you know, if you can maintain. Hobbies in a, a community, a third place, wherever you wanna call it, along the way, I think you're gonna be far better as far as having some mental balance and probably some physical balance in your life versus just.

You know, that that singular focus on your business which many of us end up having to do in some cases. I don't know if you can avoid but keep in mind like there's a reason why hobbies exist and are such a big part of people's lives. I think fortunately for us, as we go into business for ourself, we get to sort of mesh what we really like with what pays the bills, right?

With what, how we make a living. What a, what a gift that is. You know, you're, you're, it's like your hobby is your business, right? I had somebody tell me that one time that, that is an entrepreneur. I was like, what else? What else do you do? He's like, nothing. This is like, my business is my hobby. I really like this stuff, but I don't think that's a healthy.

I honestly just don't think that's a healthy response. I don't think that's a good thing. I think that there's plenty of other things that we would be interested in. It's just that I think we get fixated on the business and that becomes a priority. And it is a game. It, it, it is a big, big game. So it is fun.

It is also not that fun sometimes. So, you know, it's, it's something that I think variance is very, very helpful with. And the people that I've seen that we've worked with, that you can, you know, you can tell like they still have their hobbies and they have their, their. Third place, like they just seem far more balanced and they have more, they're just happier honestly.

They just, they seem like they're far happier. So if I could go back and, and and improve that, I would definitely allocate time. For things that at the time I thought were a waste of time. Because it definitely gives a sense of balance in your life that doesn't exist when you just are solely so focused on, on your business that you put your blinders on and everybody else around you becomes less and less important.

Because you feel this sense of like needing to succeed in business, you know, I think you have to ha you have to try to maintain some balance, otherwise you end up very one-dimensional. And for a lot of those people, you know, this, this isn't the case for me, I'm very fortunate that I was able to you know, to have balance in, in some ways in my life, but a lot of my friends that I've seen go down this path.

They're very successful in business and they, they're not successful anywhere else in their life. They're, they're un unhealthy. They have bad relationships with their, you know, with their. Their family with their spouse, with their kids you know, they, all they really have is their, they make a lot of money in their business and they're successful there.

And, and that's pretty much it. And I think ultimately that's a pretty big failure. So number three we can be happy with far less. Than we have. So number three, we can be happy with far less than we have. This is something that I feel like I've now had to deal with probably three times and.

It's interesting because I don't know, I, I almost wasn't sure if I even wanted to bring this up because if you are, if you are struggling, like in your, in trying to get your business going, if you're drowning in student debt take this with a, with a grain of salt because you know, the position that you're in right now just feels like real shitty, you know, like it, and.

It, it feels like a lot of just like, it's like you're, it's like you're riding your bike into the wind. You're tr you're pushing really hard, but it feels like you're going so slow. And there's all these, you know, factors that are, that are limiting your ability to make, you know, gains and, and have momentum.

And I know what that feels like and it sucks, but when I first broke free of that right, and all of a sudden it was like, Oh crap. This is working. And we started to in particular, make more money than we, we thought that we would in business or really at all. Right? Like you, you, you have, you have to understand, like I went into the Army with.

With the mentality that I was gonna be in the Army for 20 to 30 years, a as a career, that, that is the path that I've seen in my family for generations. It's just, it's what we do. Some people go and, you know, they, they, they become, or they're a family of dentists, right? Like they're all dentists. And that's not my family.

My family is family of career military. Officers, that is my family. So that's what I thought I was gonna do. And up until the, we made the decision to, to leave the military and start our own business with, with my wife and I our expectations as far as income was concerned was based off of military.

Promotion charts and government pay scales, which are very, I mean, they're transparent. You can go look up how much a major with 14 years of, you know, time and service makes and where they're located. And that's sort of what I just based my my expectations for income based off of was, was military pay scales.

And within, I would say it was probably the within two years. So we had two years under our belt of starting athletes Potential. And we were making far more money than I I would have been making if I'd stayed in, in the military. And what happened with me was I started to get this anxiety around losing that.

This thing that I actually never, I didn't actually think that I was going to have. All of a sudden we had a lot more financial freedom and the ability to put ourself in a really, you know, good financial position because of the success we'd had with our, with our practice. And I started to have a lot of stress and anxiety around.

The loss of that, like, oh my God, what am I gonna do if I can't save X amount of money per year? What am I gonna do if I can't afford, you know, this house that we're in because our income level goes back down to, you know, whatever it is. And I started to actually have a lot of, a lot of anxiety around that and, What I, I realized and, and was able to, to really work through was the fact that we need far less than than we actually, you know, think we need.

And this has now happened a couple times with me and this year. This year we sold our practice. So we sold our, we sold athletes potential. Really so we can, a couple things. Number one, so we can focus solely on PT Biz. It's, it's, it's grown a lot more than we ever thought that it would, and it deserves our full attention, our, our, our team, our staff, like everybody that we work with and deserves our full attention.

And, What we weren't giving our full attention to was our practice. And we had intentionally just, you know, we're coasting cuz it was e it was easy to run, it was profitable, it was, it's a fun little business. But for our staff and for, I honestly for the business, we felt like there's so much more there.

And you know, we sold it to somebody that we think has, you know, big, big goals for it and, and just wants to focus on that business and, and be the, and lead it, you know, in a, in the right manner. But when we did that, We took away diversity in income streams, even though it's, it's not like, you know, it's, we, we still, we still make plenty of money with the business that we do own.

And more than we, we, we spent, we, we still don't live much differently than when I was than when I was in the military. Like it's, it's, we haven't moved the goalpost a whole lot, but even still taking away that secondary income stream created Str anxiety. Again, for me, the same thing, the same bullshit that I have already dealt with, which is this idea of like, you know, fear of loss.

Like, oh man, what are we gonna do if, like, if PT Biz doesn't do well, we only, this is the only business that we have. And it's, it's like I started to have this anxiety. Again around this sort of, this loss aversion and, you know, it's so silly because if you sit down and really think about what you actually need, like how little you actually need it, it's very, very helpful to do this.

Because again, like I said, this is not the first time that I've had to deal with this. And it pops back up and it popped back up again. And for me, I, I sat down and, you know, what really helped me was thinking about. When Ashley and I when we first got, when we first got married, we we lived in this little apartment and this, this was like

We'd been, we'd been living together for a while in college, in this little apartment, but we got married when she was still in college. I had just graduated, so we were living there for a summer before I went off to basic training and this little one bedroom apartment. We had our dog, and then we had her brother actually lived on our couch for.

Quite a while, like pretty long time. This little one bedroom, it cost us prob, I think it was like $500 a month in rent in this little, you know, middle Georgia town called Milledgeville. It was tiny town where we went to school and it, it wasn't like we were unhappy, like we actually. We're totally fine. You know, we, I mean our life was like quite different in terms of like maybe some of the things that we did, but and, and what we do now.

But man, like we were totally content and I, that is very helpful for me to think about, you know, and to, to add into, when I'm reflecting on like things that I'm. Grateful for, I think is the best way to break this if you're having any sort of anxiety around loss aversion as you start to have some success, as you start to break outta that headwind and all of a sudden it's like, oh man.

Like what if this just stops? And I've, I've talked to very, very tenured successful, you know, entrepreneurs that have been doing this for decades. And I've even asked them, I'd be like, man, does this sort of like the stress of. Of like, what if this goes away? Does that ever like completely resolve? And they kind of laugh at me and they're like, not, not a hundred percent.

Like it's kind of always there. And what I've found, and, and in talking to them and just my own experiences, the best way to deal with this is, is just to have. Gratitude, a practice of gratitude being grateful for things that you do have, right? Like whatever that might be. And you might be struggling to start your practice and, and you feel really time poor.

But there's, there's gotta be something that you're really grateful for. Maybe it's even the opportunity. To have this side hustle where you get to work with a niche group of people that you just feel so energized to work with. How lo how, how fortunate are you? Just for that? Just think about how many people go to work and they hate it and they go every day and there's no way out for them.

They see no way out. They're just, they have no other choice. And it feels like, you know, it's, it's just. This, this hamster wheel of life that they're stuck in and they hate their job and they've got golden handcuffs on cuz they, excuse me, they've put themselves in a place where they cannot leave cuz they have so many responsibilities.

And for you to be even able to have like, To see the opportunity to be able to really love the, the work that you do, replace your income and more have say over what you're doing. You know, when you do it, who, who you're working with. Like what a gr what a thing to be grateful for, what amazing opportunity that so many people don't have and they feel lost and you have direction where you, you can do that.

You know, maybe it's just focusing on like how your physical health, you know, we work with people day in and day out. That are injured, that are hurt, that have chronic pain, that have traumatic injuries, and if, if you're physically capable of doing, Whatever it is that you want to do, at whatever level it is that you want to do that, like what amazing gift you have of health and, and some of that is probably you, you've earned it by, by doing the right things, by, by taking care of yourself.

But even still many people are, it's none, none of their, their fault. It's, it's, it's accidental. It's, it's who knows why, but they're hurt. I mean, they can't do some of the things that they want to do. And just having gratitude for the fact that you can wake up and you can go for a run, or you can wake up and you can go work out.

You can go play basketball, you can go for a hike, you can swim whatever you want to do, like be grateful that you have your physical. Health and we have a direct comparison of what it looks like and how frustrating it is when people cannot do what they want to do physically. And just having gratitude for those things.

And even for me, like the, the anxiety that I would experience around loss aversion mainly came down to money. It came down to income. It came down to cash flow. You know, it. And for me, what I've found is very, very helpful is just to think about the things that my family really enjoys doing and how little that actually costs.

You know, like just us spending time together, you know, us actually like going on, you know, hiking together, us going on a, a. A vacation and experiencing new places together, you know, going to sporting events together, just spending time together, watching movies together doesn't really cost anything. You know, like spending time together at home or with our family.

Like, these are things that they're, they're not cost-prohibitive and they're, they're our most favorite things to do. You know, it's not, we don't have to take. These elaborate vacations that we actually get a chance to do now. Like we could literally drive to the, to Charleston and have an awesome time and be there in five hours and stay in a friend's, you know garage might be, it would be cool, it'd be fine.

And it's, it's very helpful to have perspective on that and to keep that in mind. Because at each stage, right, you get to a point where all of a sudden you're like, oh man, I'm not like, I don't feel like I'm crippled by the, the debt that I have. Oh my gosh. Like what if I like my business fails and I lose that?

Like, this is so common for people to see that, and it's just each stage as you make more and more progress, it comes back. So have gratitude focus on that. Like make that part of your morning routine, make that part of your day in some way or your week where you're actually like writing this down or you're talking to somebody about the things that you're grateful for.

Because I don't think that this really ever goes away at different stages. It pops up in different ways. And we need far less than what we think we need. You know, we can be very, very happy with a, with a lot less. I think the thing that makes us happy is being able to be around the people that we really enjoy being around, being able to find enjoyment in the work that we do on a day-to-day basis.

Now, whether that be for you building a business, clinically, working with people, I think that's one of the most person rewarding. Careers that we have. Like what a, what a unique opportunity to have personal and monetary reward associated with a career. Like, that's such a, such a great sweet spot. So many people, like, imagine if you just sued people for a living.

You're just a, you're just a litigator, you know, you're an attorney and all you do is just sue other people. Like, it's just like one of the most negative things that I can think of like that. And, and yeah. I mean maybe they can like make a lot of money, but I don't think that's like, I don't see much personal reward from that.

Maybe that's just me, but like helping somebody that's had years of back pain. Get back to something that's really important to them and how personally rewarding that is. Think about that for a second. Just have gratitude for the fact that you get to help people. It's such a rare, rare thing that you actually get to help people face to face.

And you see those changes with people. Don't take that for granted because for most people, they don't get that kind of satisfaction, you know, oh man, you killed it on that, you know, p and l projection this, this year, and the like, let's go. You know, like the, the financial world is not the same. I, I just don't see the same amount of.

Of personal satisfaction out of like truly helping another human being get over a physical injury and back to something that's just so important to them. It's a huge part of their life. And spending time with the people that, that, that they love and that are important to them, like that right there is worth the cost of admission to the profession.

Now, if you can line up. Making a great living at the same time, by being able to create one of these clinics, successful clinics, like it's, it's even better. So we have a lot to be grateful for. We need far less than we think that we need. And being aware of that and having gratitude for that is gonna stamp that.

It's gonna stomp that out. Like, you will not, you'll not have that anxiety around or, and if it pops up, that's the first thing you need to do is just think about how little you need and how lucky we are to actually have the career that we have and be able to actually help the people that we help. So, These are my three big takeaways for the year.

Number one, in summary, making the right decision is super hard. Use probabilities. If you're 70% certain or higher, you should do it. Don't, don't just go off a gut feeling. I think it's important to, to, to definitely like, What's your gut trying to tell you? We know there's a strong brain gut connection.

You should listen to your intuition, but ultimately give yourself an objective framework that helps you make decisions. You're gonna feel a lot better about it if you do. Number two, hobbies are important. Even if you're, you think you're too busy, like do not become. One dimensional. Do not give up everything else around you in, in, in trying to achieve a goal.

Unless you feel like, yeah, there's no other way, right? You could always add hobbies back in. Like, I just started playing golf again, right? Nine years in to start in a, you know, in on the entrepreneurship path, but, Man, the balance that you can have, if you have other things that you can focus on that can take your attention off of just the stress of, of, of trying to grow that business.

It's, I think very, very healthy. And from what I've seen, the entrepreneurs we work with, the ones that have balance, they just seem to be far happier. They have far more like mental balance, just health and, and are in a better position. And they, they're, they're just not nearly as like crippling, cripplingly, stressed out as I was.

And so many other people end up being, because they do have this third place, they have this community, they have this, this sport, this, this hobby, whatever it is that they have, that they can actually focus on as well and have some balance in their life. Number three. You can be happy with far less than you have.

And it's easy to get to get in this sort of downward spiral of worst case scenarios. Well, what if this happens and we lose this? And what if this doesn't work? Versus being grateful for what you have and realizing just how little you need to be happy with the people that are around you. And that right there, just having that gratitude for the profession, for, for what you have accomplished.

For your health, for any number of things. Having gratitude is one of the best ways to really deal with the anxiety of loss aversion of, of what if this doesn't work? What if I lose this? What if I screw this up? What if somebody sues me? And then we end up, you know, going through bankruptcy, like these are terrible things that could happen, right?

But they may never happen. Also, like it may never happen. And being paranoid about those is not a good place to be versus focusing on, you know, oh man, like, What are the positive things that you know that, that I can focus on and not necessarily focus on loss aversion as much as you focus on gratitude and being grateful for where you're at.

So those are my three big takeaways for 2022. I hope that I hope that this is helpful for you as well. You know, this is the end of the year and you know, 2023 is right around the corner. I I hope that you have had a great year. I hope that you know, you're able to spend time, not just physically, but be present with your with your, your family around the holidays.

And enjoy that time with them. I hope this podcast helps you learn learn some lessons from, from my experience, which typically is, I mean, I feel like I go through a lot of, a lot of discomfort sometimes to share some of these things. Hopefully that so you don't have to, or maybe less discomfort, hopefully.

And I hope that you had a great year and if you didn't have a great year You got an opportunity to change that anytime that you want. And, you know, take, take your own outcomes in internally, ma, make those your own. Own those. And if this year wasn't what you wanted it to be, and you feel frustrated and, and you know, you, you know that there's a place you're trying to go that, that, that you're struggling to get there.

2023 is right around the corner. Got a plan for it. You gotta, you get the right factors in place for some of you. I'll be very honest about what some of you probably do need to do and if, if, if you're struggling on the, you know, on the personal side, if you're struggling. We're on like the mental health side.

Like you need to go talk to somebody. You need to get some help you know, and, and work with the professional. You can work on the stuff yourself, but like, we are medical professionals and if somebody's dealing, if somebody is just like trying to use, you know, a book or YouTube or. Whatever to fix their chronic back problems.

We would think that's silly. And if you're struggling with stress and anxiety around your business and whatever else is going on, it's a very stressful thing to do Going into business for yourself. Like you, you gotta have an outlet for that and I, I totally recommend that, that you, you look for somebody that you can, you can work with.

Cause I think it's very helpful in my experience. It's been very helpful. If you're struggling on the business side and you don't know what to do, you know, you, you don't, you don't feel very clear on what your goals are. You don't really know what you should or shouldn't be doing. You know, you, you feel like you're not making the progress that you need, then you should get help as far as that goes.

And there's a lot of people out there that are helping our profession with business. I think it's great. I think it's amazing. I'm one of them. My company is one of them. Maybe we're the right fit to help you. Maybe we're not, you know, ultimately I, it's, we'd love to work with the right people and put it that way, and not everybody's the right fit for us, right?

I mean, you might listen to this and be like, nah, I don't know about this guy. Like, whatever. Like it's, some of the stuff is helpful, but if maybe what I, I just don't align with you. And that's fine because there's lots of people out there that. Can help and you should get help on your business if you're struggling with it because the, the fastest course of action to get where you want to go in your business is finding a mentor that's already done what you're trying to do and having them help you through the process.

It's no different than us with someone with an injury. Like if somebody has an A C L tear and they have surgery and they want to get back to playing soccer, they should find a clinician they can work with. That has helped soccer players get back to playing soccer after an A C L tear. Right. Like, or athletes of some sort.

Multi-directional change of change direction. Athletes back to those sports, you should find that. Like find that and you'll get there faster. We know that, and it's so funny to me whenever I talk to clinicians about that and they're like, yeah, yeah, I, I got plenty of podcasts and books to read. I'm just gonna figure it out.

Like, dude, it's so dumb. Think about that. It's like a patient telling you they're, they're just gonna read books and listen to podcast to self rehab their acl and. Maybe they can figure it out, but it's probably far less likely that they're gonna do a good job than if they work with somebody that's actually helped hundreds, if not thousands of other people, do the exact same thing.

And you know, like, so if you, if you were literally just struggling with this and in your gut, take this same 70% probability, right? Like if, if you're like, okay, I feel like I, there's some stuff I don't understand and am I 70% certain that if I get some help, I'm gonna do the work to make this a great return on investment for my time and my money.

If you're 70% certain, you should go find somebody to help you, whether it's us, whether it's somebody else, whoever, get some help on your business. It's probably the most important thing that I've done. Definitely the most important thing I've done as far as career progression is concerned because it's just such an advantage to be able to have support and help and know that like I'm making the the right decision.

These are proven systems and practices and I can wrap like a really great business around my clinical skills and, and have a lot of certainty about where I'm trying to go. So if you're on the fence about getting some help, make 2023 the year where you actually get some help on your business and, and gain some serious momentum because I think that a lot of clinicians are out there.

You being one of them that are listening to things like this, that are looking to, to grow their practices, that are looking to start practices that are, that are looking to hire people. You're not the only one. Like you gotta keep that in mind. Like this is starting to become more and more acceptable.

And more and more people are starting businesses like this. The, and in order to succeed, you're gonna have to be a better business owner. That's the truth. Like with more people that are ha, that have businesses like this, if you are a. N like a subpar business owner, great clinician, you're gonna be in trouble.

You need to be a great business owner, great clinician, and then hire other great clinicians around you because the game is getting harder. The, the, the average clinic is getting better. I. Like on the marketing side, on the sales side, on the, on the business system side. And if, if you're just running, you know, running, gunning and trying to figure it out, like you, you are not going to have as much success as you would've had even five years ago because there's just more professionals getting involved in this.

And you have to keep that in mind. So get the help that you need. 2023 can make it a great year for your business. I just wanna say thank you so much for listening to this again, I really appreciate it. It's crazy to me that we're 50 minutes into this if you're still listening to this. Thank you so much.

I've talked about three things for 50 minutes, and if you're still listening, I, I just, I, I, your, your attention is the most valuable thing that you can give to anyone, and I appreciate that so much. I hope that this helps you, you really. I have no idea, just to be honest, like how important this outlet is and the ability for me to educate and the fact that people listen.

It's amazing. You know, it's, it's so cool. And I hope you have a great new year, great Christmas. Hope you spend some very meaningful time with your family, and I'll see you in 2023.

Hey, Pete, 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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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.