E611 | Why You Should Forecast Your Future

In this episode, Doc Danny explores the topic of forecasting one's future. Doc Danny suggests talking to people from different worlds to get a better understanding of different career paths. He also advises people to think about their boss, their role, their salary, and their career growth potential.

By writing down these factors, individuals can forecast their future and decide if they are happy with the life they see for themselves.

Danny encourages listeners to take control of their future by actively forecasting it. He believes that by visualizing one's future, they can make better decisions that will lead to a happier life. He also mentions that the grass is not always greener on the other side, and it is important to do thorough research before making any major career changes.

Overall, this episode provides valuable insight into the importance of forecasting one's future. It encourages listeners to take charge of their careers and lives, and make informed decisions that will lead to a fulfilling and satisfying future.

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: Hey, real quick before we get started, head over to Facebook and join the PT Entrepreneur's Facebook group. If you haven't done so yet, we have monthly live trainings going on there. There's an opportunity for you to join in the conversation instead of just listening to what I have to say on this podcast, as well as the people that I bring on, and it's a really cool place to join about 6,000 other clinicians that are.

Honestly trying to change the landscape of our profession through these cash and hybrid practices. One other thing that's really cool is we have a guide in there that's a quick start guide. When you join, you can go and check this out. There's about seven videos that we've curated that are the most common questions we get, and the best case studies that we've found to really help you start, grow, and scale your practice up to seven figures.

So if you haven't done so yet, head to Facebook request to join the PT Entrepreneurs Facebook group. You have to be a clinician. We're gonna check you out. We don't just let anybody in. But if you are head there, go ahead and get signed up. We'd love to have the conversation with you in that group.

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.

What's going on, doc Danny here with the PT Entrepreneur Podcast, and today we are talking about your future. I know that sounds, that, that sounds extreme, but I was listening to a podcast this morning and I heard the podcast host say something that was really. I found very interesting and it resonated with me, and he was talking about how he had worked as a a coder.

So he was a software developer basically, and he came into work one day and he was not super happy with where he was at, and he basically sat down and he looked at, okay, if I stay here over the next 10 to 20 years, what jobs am I most likely to have? And who are those people? What do their lives look like and do I want my life to look like that?

And he called it forecasting his future. And I laughed out loud while I heard this because unknowingly I did the same thing whenever I was trying to decide whether I was gonna stay in the military or if I was gonna get outta the military. And I remember I was in Columbus, Georgia. I was at Fort Benning.

And I had been put in this troop medical clinic that was like right next to the Airborne School. So we saw a lot of those guys. We saw a lot of instructors that were getting out and they were, going through their medical board processes. And so we were seeing just a lot of volume and honestly, a lot of people that just didn't have time or the desire to get better because they were moving on in their career, either through training or in life and getting out.

As I sat there and I didn't really like the job that I had, but I said, all right, maybe this is just short term here. What are options that I have? So I looked at it and I said, okay, who's my boss? All right. What does my boss do? How happy do they seem? Having conversations with them and what's that their boss look like?

And there's other jobs in there as well that I could move on to. Some of them sound cool, being attached to different special operations groups or going back and getting your PhD or doing an advanced degree at West Point and all these things are like, they sound great. And when I was a student, when I was just graduating, I was like, I wanna do all of that.

I want to get it all that, while I'm in the military. And as I had conversations with people that were in those different worlds, it's funny, it's like the grass is always greener, right? You think, oh, okay, if I go to this special operations group, then everything's gonna be awesome.

Or if I go get my PhD and then I can be an instructor that'll be awesome. I'll teach at the schoolhouse and I'll be an instructor in the Baylor program or I'll go get an advanced, sports medicine doctorate at West Point, and then I'm gonna be, working with teams and stuff.

And I remember talking to one of my friends that had just come out of a special operations group and I was talking to him about it and how he liked it. And he definitely liked it more than like the job that I was in. But again, what happened? And he was like, man, just. You're still in the military, there's a lot of, there's a lot of hoops you have to jump through.

There's a lot of regulation, there's a lot of stuff. And you can only be there for a short period of time because you really can't get promoted by just staying in those jobs forever. You have to bounce around and take these other jobs. A lot of those being managerial sort of roles. Where you're clinic director basically, very similar to a bigger out of network or a bigger in-network clinic.

Outpatient ortho clinics, hospital clinics. So as I looked at my bosses and my boss's bosses, I realized I don't want to be here. It's not that I, I don't want to do what they're doing, I guess is a good way to put it. And I saw how much time they spent at work. I saw how much, they, I don't know.

I, they didn't really seem like they loved it. They seemed like they just were there because they knew that they could, Retire and get a retirement pension and healthcare for life, which is in a lot of ways what keeps people in the military. As I started to forecast my own future, I realized that for me, I would've had 13 years left to hit.

My 20 years and have a retirement. So there's a certain number of jobs that I could go into, certain amount of rank that I would've made. And then after that, hey, what would I have done? Okay I have my next 13 years I'm done with it. What would I do? I would've done exactly what I did with athletes potential.

Get out, open up a cash-based practice where I could just have like really solid. Opportunities to work with people one-on-one, really help make massive change with them. Educate them, help them with their health and wellness beyond just what their injury, what they were coming in to see me for their injury.

And I would want to have a practice like that, and that's what I wanted. Also, I had friends that were doing somewhat similar things and in talking to them and about the lifestyle that they had and the things that. The were pros and cons with it. It just seemed to grossly outweigh what I saw when I forecasted my own future within the military.

So here's something that I would like you to do if you haven't done this yet. Sit down and think about who your boss is, and not just your boss, but their boss. And maybe just go like one or two levels up from them and. I want you to actually write down what their role is, what their life looks like, how much they see their family, how much money they make, how happy they seem to be and honestly, talk to them and just ask 'em about it.

Hey, what's this role like, what's this clinic director role like? Because you might look at 'em, be like, oh man, I can't wait to be a clinic director. Cause it seems like they have so much autonomy and stuff and you talk to 'em and it's dude, I'm seeing a 85% patient schedule, plus I'm doing all this other stuff for like local marketing and running the practice and hiring and training and they might just be getting burned out and making marginally more money is, which is the case that I tend to see in those types of environments or.

What's next after that? Was it like a regional director or, you become a partner in some way? There's lots of different things that you can do within these bigger organizations and areas that you can move, but I would write down what those are, what those next steps are, probably how long you think it's gonna take for you to get there, and then how.

Likely, like how much do you want to live that life? How much do you want to be like the people that are ahead of you? And I think that's a very strong tell as to whether you should do it or not. If you see people that are like, man, they're happy, they're thriving in that environment. They have good work life balance.

They spend a lot of time with people that, that are meaningful to them, and they're like really engaged at work and they're trying to get better at things. That's a really great sign. That's a sign that whatever job that is, whatever direction that is, is probably very sustainable and rewarding.

Versus if you see people that are just jaded and they're just like waiting until they get to a certain point to be able to quit and do something else, like that's gonna be you too. And you gotta understand that so you can forecast your own future. And before you end up in a spot that's, you're too far down that road where you can't really jump ship too easily.

You should at least think about what that looks like. So forecast your own future, write that out, and then just think about it for a little bit and decide what is it that you want. Your life to look like and do these roles align with it? Because if they don't, then it's just a matter of deciding what options do I have with the degree that I have?

They give me the best opportunity to live a life that I'll look back on one day and be very proud of and have very few regrets with versus a job that you just jumped up to next cuz you thought that was the next logical thing, even though it didn't really align with what your long-term goals are.

And I see this so often, especially within our profession, especially within the military, they're very similar, big organizations and there's a lot of just rank time and service time in a a company of some sort. And then you get, you become a cog in a wheel. You, they're good at letting you know that you're a, you're, you're a leader in some way.

You're a clinic director and, and whatever that means, whatever. There's a title. Those titles keep people around in a lot of ways too. Forecast your future. Think about what you want to look like, think about what your bosses are doing. What their life looks like. And if you want your life to look like that.

And if you don't, then you gotta really think about what change you need to make to go the direction you're trying to head, to make your life look like the thing that you want it to look like versus what you think it should look based on all the people around you and what as normal. And as soon as you take yourself out of that environment and you look at it from a different lens, you might realize that you wanna do something vastly different.

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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Then we share with you the sales and marketing systems that we use within our mastermind that you need to have as well. If you wanna go full-time in your own practice. And then finally we help you create a one. Page business plan. That's right. Not these 15 day business plans. You wanna take the Small Business Association, a one day business plan that's gonna help you get very clear on exactly what you need to do and when you're gonna do it to take action.

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