E687 | Why You Need A Community Of Other Entrepreneurs

In this episode of the podcast, host Doc Danny delves into the crucial role that community and support play in the life of an entrepreneur. Drawing from a recent conversation with a new member of his PT entrepreneur mastermind group, Doc Danny reflects on the gratitude expressed by this individual for finding a community of like-minded individuals who understand the challenges of the entrepreneurial journey.

Doc Danny acknowledges the isolating and lonely nature of being an entrepreneur, particularly when those around you fail to comprehend your vision and attempt to steer you towards a more conventional path. He recounts his own moments of doubt, questioning whether leaving his military career was the right decision and contemplating a return.

The emotional rollercoaster of entrepreneurship is explored, with exhilarating highs and devastating lows, sometimes experienced in the same day. In the early stages, entrepreneurs are unsure of their capabilities and setbacks are difficult to navigate. The absence of a supportive community to celebrate victories and lean on during hardships amplifies the stress and strain.

Doc Danny finds it intriguing that the mastermind group member's greatest appreciation lies in having a community of individuals who share similar experiences. The difficulty of sharing wins and failures with friends and family who lack business context is highlighted, rendering even the sale of a successful business challenging to celebrate with outsiders.

Doc Danny emphasizes that entrepreneurship is a long and arduous journey, and attempting to navigate it alone is unsustainable. Internalizing all the stress and emotion takes a toll on individuals. Entrepreneurs need at least one person outside their personal relationships to confide in and gain fresh perspectives from. While the road to building a successful business remains demanding, a supportive community makes the process far more enjoyable and aids in personal and professional growth. Ultimately, finding a group of like-minded peers proves invaluable in staying motivated and overcoming the obstacles encountered along the way.

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Podcast Transcript

If you are trying to grow a business, start a business by yourself, you got to find a group of other entrepreneurs, at least one other entrepreneur that you can have a conversation with, because you got to get this shit out of your system. You can't just push it down and push it down and never say anything where.

Something that's really maybe stressful for you. You don't ever tell anybody. And something that's also on the flip side of that. Amazing. You don't get a chance to tell anybody. 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 Matei. And over the last 15 years, I've done pretty much everything you can in the profession. I've been a staff PT. I've been an active duty military officer, physical therapist. I've started my own cash practice. I've sold that cash practice and today my company, physical therapy business helped over a thousand clinicians start growing scale, their own cash practices.

So if this sounds like something you want to do, listen up cause I'm here to help you. What's going on? Doc Danny here with the PT entrepreneur podcast. And today I want to share a little bit about a conversation that I had recently with. Someone that is relatively new to working with us in our PQ biz mastermind group.

And I want to bring this up because I feel like this is a very relevant problem that most entrepreneurs deal with. I've dealt with myself. And it was interesting to get feedback from somebody that's really only worked with us for a few months. And it was basically a message that I got from someone that we work with that was expressing just how thankful they were to have a group of people similar to them that they get a chance to now go on this entrepreneurial journey with.

Together and and what this person meant by this and what I got from it was basically, listen, entrepreneurship is isolating. It's lonely. It can feel like you're the only one trying to, do this thing is hard with growing a business. And it can be challenging to have people around you that maybe don't understand what you're trying to do, that are trying to tell you that you should do something else because that's what they view as normal or that they've seen as the right path for them or the way that they've had success.

When it might not be what your vision is, it might not be what you want your life to look like, And it's hard sometimes to just get a lot of rejection which happens, especially in the early stage of the business where you are really just not sure if it's going to work. You're not sure if you did make the right decision.

You're not sure if maybe your brother or your uncle or your colleague or whatever, maybe they're right. Maybe you did make a mistake and this is a terrible idea. Yet you think it's not right. And you're driving on and you're trying to do the things you need to do in order to have the successful business that you want, that, that is really growing towards the vision that you have for your practice.

And to do that in an echo chamber, to do that in isolation by yourself is a hard thing to do. I know I did it. And there was a lot of times when I was very much wondering if I had made a mistake, I remember looking into what was the policy for going back into the military?

I was actively looking this up because I had left and I was having a tough time just growing my business. And I didn't really know if it was going to work out, I didn't know if I made the right decision. And, I had this career that I had left in the military that, was by all accounts, I was doing fine and I was making rank and I could take jobs that would, lead to promotions and, work my way up the ranks of officers in the army.

And And I remember looking, I was like, man, what are the rules for getting back in? I had and I could have gone back in if I really wanted to. But for me, it was like, that's like a safety net thing, right? It was like, if this doesn't work, I can always go back into the military and get started where I left off.

But for many people like me, whenever whenever I first started, or maybe you're listening to this and you're in the same place when you're trying to do all this stuff on your own and you're. You emotionally, it's very hard. You have these super high highs and you have these really low lows and it can happen sometimes in the same day, you can have your first patient shows up and you sell a package and you're like, Oh my God, this is working.

This can be awesome. And then you get, maybe no showed by the next two you have. And you're like, Oh my God, I'm gonna go out of business. And it's all like literally in the same day, you ride this emotional rollercoaster because early on, you just don't know. You don't know what you can do.

You don't know what you're capable of. You don't know if it's going to work. You don't have the skills. You haven't had enough reps to where you can really just brush it off as, it is what it is. It's a blip on the radar. You got to zoom out, you can't live and die by what happens each hour, each day, or even each week or month.

It's a long game. And the message I got from this mastermind member that we have was, it was so interesting because they basically said, I'm so thankful to have found a group of people that are doing something similar to me because I don't feel. Like I'm alone anymore. I don't feel like I'm just trying to figure this out all by myself.

And more than anything, I have people that understand the challenges, but also that I can celebrate wins with. And I thought this, I thought it was really interesting, especially the celebrate wins side. Because it, I think as you start to have success with your business it is hard to, it's hard to explain that to people that don't own a business because there's so many.

Variables that go into that in terms of your gross revenue your net profit, right? The amount of work you put in, the challenges that you worked through the things that are not guaranteed, the risk associated with it, all these things you've overcome and but really the scoreboard.

In businesses is your PNL, right? It's your balance sheet. It's your it's your profit. It's your revenue. And for other people that are not used to looking at those things it's hard for them to relate. And it sounds like you are bragging about your business, and the amount of revenue that it did.

And so what you tend to do is a couple of things. Maybe you bring that up with people that are friends or family members of yours. And if they don't. Understand much about business. If you're going to come off in a, not the best way, like kind of arrogance or like you're bragging.

But you're just excited because this thing that's been so hard for you is worked out and you want to share that. So I've done that and I've shared it with the wrong people and it's like hard for them to unhear. Some of the things you're talking about on the business side, and maybe it makes them feel bad about what they're doing or whatever.

And it's just not the right conversation to have with people that don't own a business. In fact, I just had lunch the other day with a with a friend that sold a business recently. And, and one thing he said to me was, he's you're the first person aside from like his wife that he's been able to celebrate this with.

And think about that this huge accomplishment is very rare thing to be able to grow start, grow and sell a business. And he did that. And yet he's been keeping it inside because aside from his wife who's he going to tell none of his friends are entrepreneurs. And he, it's not something that they even have context for.

And what do you want to tell somebody that you just, you just made millions of dollars on a business sale. What do they say back to that? But for me, I'm like, dude, that's awesome. What did you learn from that process? Like I'm asking him questions about the whole process and what is he doing with that money?

What's he going to do next? What was the best part? What was the worst part? And it was so refreshing I think for him to be able to have a conversation about just the things that he felt and the things that he had done and what he was proud of and what he, wishes he had done differently and all kinds of stuff.

And if you don't, if you are trying to, grow a business, start a business by yourself, you got to find a group of other entrepreneurs, at least one other entrepreneur that you can have a conversation with because you got to get this shit out of your system. You can't just push it down and push it down and never say anything where something that's really maybe.

Stressful for you. You don't ever tell anybody and something that's also on the flip side of that amazing. You don't get a chance to tell anybody It's such a shitty place to be and it's hard for people to understand this until they have actually been in this position But it's like a catch 22. It's like you're screwed either way Even if you're successful, you can't tell anybody or if you're having a hard time You can't tell anybody because they're going to tell you shouldn't have done in the first place what do you do?

You don't say shit you could and you internalize it all and then guess what? You end up stressing yourself out and you create Other problems because of it. So what we found, and this is just obviously, somebody from our mastermind that we, who we work with expressing the gratitude for not even what we're helping them with per se on the system side and sales and marketing and all the hard skills, right?

All the things that they're going to get better at as a business owner. It wasn't that it was, Oh my God, I'm so glad that I have met. People like me that are doing something similar to me, that people that I can call if something's going bad, people that I can call if something's going great, a group of people that I get a chance to meet with every single month, I get to get together a couple of times a year and just enjoy the common ground or the common ground that they are, living in and that they are trying to go the same direction.

And there's that. I'm going to buy this, but I think this, the saying is, if you want to go fast, go alone, and if you want to go far, go together, no idea where it came from. I think most quotes are they're attributed to the wrong people anyway. So who knows who said it, but it's pretty smart if you think about it.

And if you think of entrepreneurship or if you're trying to grow a business in this sense, say clinical practice, trying to grow a clinical practice to like a million dollar practice, hard thing to do. And it's a long journey. It's a marathon. So in this scenario, yes, it makes sense to go together.

Significantly, it's great because you keep each other motivated. It's like a training partner. You motivate each other on days where maybe you don't want to wake up early and train, or you don't want to do that mileage you have to do or whatever it might be. And we just happen to have what I think is the greatest community on the planet when it comes to especially cash based practice owners we just have the best people, just human beings.

Yeah, I can imagine amazing people doing amazing things that are incredibly talented clinicians that are also incredibly business savvy people that have massive visions of building businesses that truly provide great jobs for other people and help people do the activities in life that they love with the people they love doing them with for as long as humanly possible.

That's a hell of a fucking thing to be able to do. And when you surround yourself with the right people that are doing the same thing. Those days where you don't know who you talk to about the good and the bad side of things, or who do you reach out to? If you have a question because you're unsure of what to do, or if you're making a huge mistake, or if you're doing the right thing, like all that stuff, it starts to become so much less stressful because you have a group of people that want to see you be successful just as much as you want to be successful.

So it was cool to hear that. And it makes me think, if you're out there and you're trying to do this on your own, you gotta find at least one other person that. You can share this journey with, and it can't just be your spouse, by the way, because that is not fair to that person.

Either there, there's a lot of burden associated with that. There's a lot of layers to that relationship. You got to find somebody outside of your, significant other relationship. And for us obviously we have a a very, longstanding relationship with many entrepreneurs within our community that is a natural community for a lot of people to want to move into.

But even if it's not, even if it's yeah. I do, I need help with something like this. This not the right fit for me. That's fine too. I'm just telling you, you can't just, you can't be a lone wolf and do that forever because a lone wolf is a wolf that gets either old or it's done something wrong and it's not part of the pack anymore and it's about to die.

That's what's that's what you're dealing with. And when you look at entrepreneurship it's so much. Better to do this with other people and share that with other people because it's hard enough as it is It's super hard and to find that support group of positive people that are really trying to help you grow both as a business owner and as just a person be a better Person to everyone around you like man that is so worth it and it makes the journey.

It's still hard it's just so much more fun and enjoyable to be able to celebrate the wins and to have people that Can understand the failures and help pick you back up.

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