E764 | What I Learned From Our Coach Retreat

The Power of Community: 4 Lessons from the PT Biz Coach Retreat

As business owners, we often find ourselves navigating a unique, sometimes lonely path. That’s why finding the right community can make all the difference. Recently, we hosted the first-ever PT Biz Coach Retreat in Charleston, SC—a transformative event that brought our team of coaches together to share insights, recharge, and connect. Here are four key lessons we took away from this incredible experience.

1. Play the Long Game

One of our coaches shared the importance of building a stellar reputation by consistently providing value without expecting anything in return. They highlighted how being an active, trusted member of the community creates long-term opportunities and relationships.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of expecting quick results, especially when you’re just starting out. But success often comes from playing the long game—focusing on relationships and doing the right thing, even when it’s not immediately rewarding.

2. Core Values Are More Than Words

Another coach shared how their team uses core values to guide decision-making and accountability. For example, when a team member considered skipping work due to personal stress, the coach reminded them of their shared value: teamwork. This approach helped resolve the situation while upholding fairness and unity across the team.

Core values aren’t just for display—they’re the scaffolding of your business. They ensure everyone operates from the same playbook, even when tough decisions arise.

3. Think Outside the Box

One of the most innovative strategies shared at the retreat came from a coach who partnered with health share programs. These programs, which differ from traditional insurance, allowed the coach to bring in clients at cash-based rates while minimizing billing hassles.

This partnership is a great example of thinking creatively to find mutually beneficial solutions. Whether it’s health share programs or med pay for car accident cases, exploring non-traditional avenues can open up new opportunities for growth.

4. Prioritize Downtime and Connection

Entrepreneurship can be isolating. That’s why we intentionally built unstructured time into the retreat schedule—no work allowed. Coaches had the freedom to relax at the beach, explore Charleston, or simply connect with peers.

This downtime allowed everyone to reset, gain clarity, and foster deeper connections. Sometimes, stepping away from the grind sparks your greatest breakthroughs. As Ryan Holiday puts it in Stillness is the Key, your brain needs time to rest and reorganize.

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: Hey, real quick, if you're serious about starting or growing your cash based practice, I want to formally invite you to go to Facebook and join our PT Entrepreneur 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 Matta, 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 What's going on?

Dr. Danny here with the pt outdoor podcast and today we are talking about the First inaugural PT biz coach retreat that we just ran. So this is a first for us. This is a a couple of days where we brought all of our coaches that could make it to Charleston. We got a big beach house for them.

And we spent a couple of days with them working on. Their businesses sharing about their business, teaching each other, what's going on and just getting to spend some time with each other and more importantly, them getting some time to spend with each other. If you're not familiar with the way we have our coaches set up, so all of our coaches are active.

Cash and hybrid physical therapy practice owners. So they are in it, they're actively running businesses and they're, they work with a certain number of businesses based on, how much time flexibility they actually have. So some is a few more than others. And and then we have senior coaches that overlay those and then are all the partners as well.

So we have a few different layers of coaches and this was, all of our coaches combined. We want to bring them together. So all business owners in their own right, they're all actively running clinics, which I think is, is a unique, important role for the clinician to have.

A finger on the pulse of what's going on. And what we wanted them to do was number one it's a big ask. Hey, we want everybody to come together at this this beach house. And it's a cool spot. So it wasn't that hard to get them there versus taking them somewhere that maybe they didn't care so much to visit.

But they're busy, they have families, they have businesses and anytime you can get, a couple of days from somebody, we don't take that lightly. We want to make sure they took a lot away from this and that they valued it. The other thing that we felt like we wanted to do was we want to create an opportunity for our coaches to have non structured time around each other as well, because, I find that it's like the, the pauses in between the notes and music or what make it right.

And the downtime. Around the right people and unstructured time oftentimes is where you have the biggest breakthroughs or you start to find clarity in things, or maybe you just finally have a chance for your brain to calm down, and take a break. And we wanted to be able to create that for you.

And build that in for our coaches. And that was one of the days that, that they had as well. It was just a chill day, chill at the beach, going to Charleston, enjoy seeing the sites but be around each other, and just enjoy that. So I'm going to talk about my.

Biggest takeaways or there's four of them from from this trip. And this was a whirlwind trip because we came in, we did five clinic tour videos with our videographer, went and visited, five different clinics that we work with in the area had a handful of meetings with potential employees or partners that we're looking to work with over the next few years.

And and then our coaches retreat as well. The first big thing that I would say that we learned while we're on this at this retreat and let me back up and say the first day of the retreat, the first full day, everybody had to come and present something that was a a lesson learned that would add at least 20, 000 to the retreat.

Your business, right? So it was like, okay present something or save somebody a 20, 000 mistake So that was the sort of context and everybody had a chance to present on whatever that was So i'm just going to pull out a couple things that I thought were really interesting from that And number one was the power of playing the long game.

So one of our coaches talked about how She really focuses on doing the right thing maintaining a impeccable reputation and really being seen as a long term trusted, valuable part of the community. Not necessarily just her business, but also, her in general, being a part of the community service being part of local events, local, groups that meet all kinds of stuff.

And she talked about it. Obviously it makes sense, right? I don't think this is earth shattering to think that having a good reputation is good for your business, but we forget sometimes that the more you can provide value to other people and ask for nothing in return, the better your reputation will become.

And for her to be so involved in her city and to talk about all the benefits that has led to without her necessarily asking for anything in return is a really interesting thing to keep in mind, right? Where one of the mistakes that I think people make very early on. And we were talking about this as well as this kosher tea, because some of our coaches primarily work with people that are new getting started.

And some of our coaches work with people that are bigger businesses that are trying to grow them. And in particular, the ones that work with newer businesses they said one of the biggest mistakes that they're currently seeing with newer business owners, and I completely agree with this because I still work with with these groups as well, is that they.

They want things to happen really fast and they ask, right? They're not necessarily trying to provide value and build a long term relationship before they ask for something. And that can be really hard when you don't, you have a short timeline, right? Like you need this to be successful.

Now, and in order to be able to have patience, you really have to focus on the long game and you have to focus on maintaining great relationships, doing the right thing for people without asking for anything return. And I know that sounds hard when you're trying to just get started and you need to make some revenue.

But I can promise you that if you can be patient, you can hold off on that. You're going to have far more opportunities going to come your way because your reputation is building as somebody that is a useful member of the community of the tribe, if you were right you're not just Sitting there taking from other people.

And that is incredibly important for you to keep that in mind as you build your business, not just at the beginning, but long term. Number two was develop core values and use them to hold people accountable. So I thought this was great because one of our coaches was talking about how she and her team, they worked on building their core values.

And I think it was updating them together. And as an example, as you do this, you're essentially saying everybody agrees that this is this is valuable. This is what we find important. It's important enough that we're going to say, these are our core values. We're going to put them up on the on the wall.

We're going to talk about them in our staff meetings, and we're going to live. By these core values, like we run the business off of these, we make decisions off of these so that when the owner's not around, you can think of the core values and based on those, decide what the right answer is to something that you're thinking about doing.

It helps us not have to micromanage people if they know what's going on. And as an example. This is someone who has a an office staff member. And after the election on Tuesday, this person text the owner of the company and said, Hey, I'm not feeling very good. I'm feeling pretty, pretty down. I'd like to work.

Remotely today, if that's okay. And the response she had, I thought was great because, she, a validated that this person felt upset, but also brought in the core values to the business and the response she had, I thought was just amazing and it was, Hey, I completely understand this is a tough time, for a lot of people, but you one of our core values is teamwork, right?

And. By you not coming in is directly, it goes against our core values when all of our other staff members will be in the office seeing patients. So you're, in order to abide by that, you'll have to come in the office tomorrow. And, the response was fantastic. She was like, Thank you so much.

I need to hear that. I'm sorry. I'll be I'll be in there tomorrow. And what she basically did was take a situation that was nuanced and difficult, right? So you don't want to maybe with a staff member discount the way they feel. But you also have to uphold a standard and maintain that standard across your entire team.

And that gets really hard when we talk about leadership. So when I look at these businesses or really any business, the two areas where people are going to really struggle as their business grows is understanding their numbers. So as their finances become more complex, being able to stay on top of that.

And two would be leadership, being able to actually say the right things, do the right things with people in real time. To get them to stay motivated, to work on the mission of the business. And I thought this was so smart to be able to intertwine your core values with decision making and why you're saying yes or no to things that maybe are difficult to conversations to have versus, saying Without tying that in you have no anchor to the business and what they agreed on with you, right?

So if they're agreeing with you that these are important and this could be other things, right? Like I have a friend who has a business whose core values one of them is do more with less so for him if somebody comes in and they have a plan or a solution to a problem and it costs a lot of money the first thing he'll ask is one of our core values is do more with less and he'll say Is this necessary?

And are there any alternatives that we can either think through how we can do this with our current tech or people? Or, are there any other options? Give me more options than just this one because it directly aligns with the core values that they have, which is do more than less with less. So this is the point of core values, by the way, when we talk about core values in a business, mission and vision, it's not just So you can just, do this exercise and forget about it.

It's because it's the core scaffolding of how you build the business. It's how you tie people together with decisions they're making. We are not around and how you can have difficult conversations with people and leverage what everyone agrees is a core tenant to the business to make sure that there are not any exceptions.

And people feel like they're, there's favoritism associated with somebody. And when you're, when your staff feels like you're treating one person different than others, that's very off putting to them. That's frustrating for them because this idea of fairness should exist, right? This idea of fairness and equality should exist.

Within your workplace. And that means you cannot make exceptions for other people without sacrificing your own integrity to do that can be a hard thing for somebody else to understand. And they can get frustrated with that. But if you can tie that back to what everyone agreed on was their core values, they created together that they agree that this is right.

And they want to work for this company. Then there's no discussion. It is what it is. We agree on this. And we suck it up and we do what we're supposed to do because this is what we agreed on. And that is a fantastic way to actually use Your core values and not just put them up on the wall and forget about them Hey, sorry to interrupt the podcast, but I have a huge favor to ask of you If you are a long time listener or a new listener and you're finding value in this podcast Please head over to itunes or spotify or wherever you listen to the podcast and please leave a rating and review This is actually very helpful for us to get this podcast in front of more clinicians and really help people financial freedom.

So if you would do that, I would greatly appreciate it. Now back to the podcast. Okay. Number three think outside the box. So one of our coaches presented on how he is working with Health share programs. So not health insurance, but health share programs, which typically are, it's a it's an organization that Pulls money together on a monthly basis And if somebody has a health issue and they get hurt then that health share program pays for it So it's almost it's like a private variation of that Of insurance, but technically it's not insurance.

It's a health share program. And he got connected with with a group that works with these different health care programs as a nonprofit. And as part of that sort of relationship that he developed one of these health care programs, which is in his area, decided that they wanted to start to send people his way for physical therapy.

And he was able to negotiate a rate that was pretty much consistent with what he charges as a cash rate. And it's all centralized through this health share program. They have, the billing goes through them. They get paid immediately. They request a number of visits that they want, and he's had no issues with the requests that they have, because typically we see people less than even in network clinic does.

And it's been a really good, partnership for him for Avenue for new patients, and this is just the beginning of this partnership for him. And it's something that I've honestly never thought about ever. And I don't think anybody that was sitting at this house any of our coaches have had any experience with that directly.

And to me, it reminded me of, So med pay with car insurance is an additional insurance you pay for. It's not that expensive. In fact, most people should add med pay to their car insurance because it covers your medical bills, like up to a ton of money and it's just straight cash to wherever you want to go.

You don't have to go to a, an attorney's, contact or whatever. But oftentimes, there'll be going through some sort of active litigation if they're, if they've been hit and there's some sort of insurance involvement. And what I found whenever I heard about this, I had a couple of friends that I just had met that were personal injury attorneys and they were like, Hey, we'd like to send you people for personal injury cases.

And I'm like, no, I am not interested in dealing with that. Like I don't want to have this big sort of backlog of visits that maybe gets settled when you sell your case. And what we settled on was if you have somebody who's MedPay. Send them to me, right? And if you don't, then send them somewhere else.

And we got a decent amount of med pay clients who would come our way because of these connections that I made. And that was an outside the box way of, marketing to to lawyers where these med pay patients, typically They were super easy to work with insurance paid us really fast and they have a, a decent amount of insurance covers and they really just want to get better, right?

Like the, so they're in a good spot for us and for what they want to do. So thinking outside the box, thinking about stuff like this, where, what's a win, right? What, where can you find the type of people you want to work with? The price point you need to be at and this non traditional, right?

It's not just going to physician's offices and get bringing them some cookies and hoping that they refer you patients, right? This is a different way of looking at things because if you want to compete in a, cash based clinic in particular, you're going to have to do things that are not in the traditional path as far as.

Direct healthcare marketing is concerned. And there's a lot of other variations that you can do. But as an example, one of our coaches shared how he's doing this and it was really smart, like really good idea. And it's starting to add a lot of new volume to his business, as well as something that he's been able to even leverage junior clinicians and even students with in order to see these these patients, because they don't come in with this sort of, I don't know, context of not of I've got to see the owner, right?

Care, they've got to see somebody because this is what their MedShare program sends them to. So they're far easier to deal with when it comes to moving them to newer providers or pay or students even. So number three, think outside the box. Number four, and this is the last one is to get around the right people and enjoy each other.

So as business owners, We get a bit isolated. It can be a somewhat lonely existence in many cases to, just have to bear the stress of starting a business, running a business on your own, because you can't really talk to your employees about the wins or the losses. You don't want to just vent to your spouse when you get home, because you don't want to just stress them out with the things you're dealing with.

So in many cases, what we see is Entrepreneurs tend to just push stuff down and they just deal with it, right? And I mean you can do that for a long time But it doesn't necessarily mean it's the healthiest thing in the world to do and what i've found and really enjoyed with being around other entrepreneurs is Oftentimes very similar In terms of our, like how we view things, maybe we are a little different than most people in terms of how we look at things and look for opportunities and to be very ambitious.

And when you get around other entrepreneurs that doesn't get stifled it, if anything, it gets accelerated, it's like somebody who's putting gasoline on a little fire. And it's because you're around other people that are getting excited for the things you're getting excited for.

And that can be really healthy and a really important thing. I would say for you to find the right mix of people to be around, you definitely need some entrepreneur friends. And this is something that I didn't actually put much faith in or thought there would be much value in.

Yeah. When even we started PT biz, like when I first started working with people in PT biz, it was individual, just me and them. Like they didn't meet each other except for the end of the first year. When I started working with clients, we brought everybody together to our office in Atlantic. Cause I figured they could see our office and some of the systems are running and all that stuff.

And what I realized pretty quickly was the best part of them coming. Had nothing to do with our office or any of the stuff that they saw that I thought was important. It was because it was, they were around each other and they started to become really close to each other because they had so much similar so many similarities and they were at so much common ground and like I had a light bulb moment where I was like, Oh my God, this is a missing link for so many people within, the entrepreneur world.

And a lot of us struggle with, The sort of loneliness side of being isolated, especially coming out of clinics where we're used to being around other clinicians. Like that is that's a hard thing to, to not have when you're used to it. You know in this example, one of the things we wanted to do was bring our coaches together.

And on the Saturday that we had with them, it was literally a free day. Hey, like here's some suggestions of what to do, but you have this fantastic beach house. You can walk to the beach. You got a pool with a hot tub, ping pong table, foosball, like whatever you want to do, like you, you want to play spike ball all day.

Go for it. You want to take a Uber into town and you want to go check out. Whatever sites in Charleston and go to a market or, whatever you want to do, cool, go for it. Nothing. It's there's no agenda. Do what you want. Sleep in late, wake up early, go for a run on the beach, whatever.

It's up to you, but don't work. No work allowed. That was we didn't want anybody don't get on your computer and do a bunch of shit Like be around the people that are here and enjoy a bit of downtime And what I found is sometimes you try to like force so much information into our brain and you know learn and work and be efficient And being able to hit pause for a minute And even a day, just stop and just chill, right?

Like just let your thoughts settle. Let all the work you've done settle. Let everything just smooth out a little bit by taking some forced downtime. And all of a sudden things start to become more clear for you. The things you're working on and you're struggling with trying to figure out. They start to become more clear.

And there's a book. It's one of my favorite books that I've read by Ryan Holiday. It's called stillness is the key. And this is a really hard thing for me, by the way, because I am constantly going whatever it is, I have a very hard time sitting still, which is just go. Even whether it's physically moving or it's like my, I'm learning or like listening to something or whatever, working on something.

And in this book, they talk a lot about how important stillness is, how important like doing nothing is, and letting your body and your brain just like chill. And that's very rare for many people that are entrepreneurs. And it's because you're so busy, right? But you need that downtime.

Your brain needs that downtime. And what happens is it's almost like it like has time to index things. Imagine your brain is like this library where people have left a bunch of books out. And when you calm down and you just chill it's almost like a little librarian is in there just putting everything away and reorganizing things and getting rid of stuff that you don't need and adding new things or indexing things and all that.

And that, and legitimately like Your brain works that way. That's what works that way. When it gets really good sleep, it works that way. Whenever it gets time to just to relax. It doesn't have to be inundated with problem solving and processing things. And that downtime is so valuable. And I got such great feedback from our coaches about just Being able to have a little bit of downtime, being able to step away from the business and family and, and be able to just let themselves be around other people that are similar to them, that they respect, that they work with and come away with that in, in just such a really unique place with having spent time with really great people.

For us, this was something that we didn't actually know if this would be something that It was worth their time, worth our time. That's the first time that we've ever done a retreat like this with our coaches. And I just don't see any way that we can't do it every year going forward. It was it was a great time.

We had a blast. And I love hanging with our coaches selfishly. Like they're interesting because they're not clients and they're not employees. They're this middle ground and yet I'm just so similar to them in so many ways. Like I'm like the original coach and now I get to hang out with all these other people that nerd out on business as much as I do, but happen to be a clinician and and have similar, like just life values saying so.

So selfishly. For me, it was awesome. I had a great time. I could hang out with our coaches for days and not get tired, right? So I think for you as a business owner, you've got to find Community as small or as big as it might be you have to find a community of other entrepreneurs You need to spend time with other people like yourself and you need you know, you need a place to listen to other people hear what they're working on To vent some of the, the stuff that you're going through with your own business and to just enjoy life with with the right people similar to you and not just try to rush, sprint through life.

Enjoy watching a sunset, at the beach, enjoy drinking a beer and playing beer pong or ping pong or foosball or whatever with friends that you can just talk to about, about, things that are going on that are meaningful. And. That's the biggest takeaway that I have is you don't have, you can engineer these things.

It just takes some work, takes some effort, might take some money. But the ROI on it from a, just from a life standpoint, it's so worth it from a business standpoint, so worth it. And it's a no brainer look for downtime with the right people look for, spending time with the right people. And I think it will return.

A massive, ROI for you. If you do Hey, peach entrepreneurs, we have big, exciting news. A new program that we just came out with it is our PT biz part time to full time five day challenge over the course of five days, we get you crystal clear on exactly how much money you need to replace by getting you ultra clear on how much you're actually spending.

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It's totally free It's something I think is going to help you tremendously As long as you're willing to do the work, if you're doing the work, you're getting information put down and getting yourself ready to take action in a very organized way. You will have success, which is what we want. So head to physicaltherapybiz.

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