E686 | Why Your First Growth Cycle Can Ruin Your Business

In this episode of the podcast, we dive into the crucial growth phase that clinical businesses face when transitioning from a solo practitioner model to a standalone clinic space with additional staff. Danny discusses the various challenges encountered during this phase and offers valuable insights and advice to navigate through them successfully.

One major hurdle that owners must overcome is the transition from being a practitioner to becoming a manager and leader. This requires acquiring new skills such as training and onboarding staff, providing feedback, and handling personnel issues. Staff turnover is a common occurrence as owners adjust to their new roles.

Securing a suitable clinic space becomes another challenge, as it involves finding and negotiating a lease agreement. The host highlights the importance of having commercial real estate expertise to avoid falling into bad lease deals, as landlords may try to take advantage of inexperienced owners. Additionally, owners often find themselves in a position where they have to sign a personal guarantee on the lease, which legally binds them if the business faces financial difficulties.

The financial aspect is also a significant concern during this growth phase. Funding the buildout costs, including construction, equipment, and design, often requires taking loans, thereby increasing the level of risk. Moreover, fixed overhead expenses like rent and utilities rise, while revenue may dip during the transition period. These financial pressures can lead to feelings of doubt and questioning if the decision to expand was the right one.

Danny shares his personal experience of facing near bankruptcy due to a lengthy buildout delay, emphasizing the importance of understanding the challenges in advance and taking appropriate measures to mitigate risks. He stresses the need for external help and guidance during this pivotal growth phase, as it can determine the long-term success or failure of the business. Tune in to gain valuable insights and prepare yourself for the journey ahead.

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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 entrepreneurs 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 Mattei 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 entrepreneur podcast and today We're talking about growth cycles or growth phases and in particular the first big growth phase that we see uh cash based or really Whatever hybrid base any clinical business have to go through and The first stage which is tough is starting right starting is always hard but with starting It's interesting if it's more mental.

It's more mindset. It's more Confidence. Do you think you can actually do it? Will people pay you for what you're doing? Are you? Are you able to get over the inevitable rejection that you're going to feel and get from, uh, local marketing or, you know, other business owners? Um, it's going to happen. But it's not like the stakes aren't incredibly high.

Let me put it that way. Right? So let's, let's think worst case scenario. You go and try to start your own cash based practice in particular, the startup costs are minimal. Uh, it's more your time than anything else. And you're putting yourself out there to potentially fail. That, that is what people usually have to struggle with, but it's not like you're taking on half a million dollars in, you know, a business loan and.

You're, you know, you're on the hook for that personally, and that can create a lot of problems for you. Uh, if your business doesn't work out, it's the, the financial issues associated with that can be really minimal in comparison. It's much more of a mindset problem, much more of a getting over whether, you know, you're good enough to do this or, or whether you can get past and work through some of the things that you don't know.

Uh, you know, and learn like how to sell and how to market. But the, you know, the, the backup plan is go back and get a job. Okay, you're not ruining your family's financial position. You're not, um, you know, you're, you're not going to have to go through bankruptcy because of that. But when we look at. Uh, the first growth cycle, which I don't even think I don't consider someone starting a growth cycle.

That's basically you're just starting, but the first growth cycle is typically where someone goes from themself in tip, usually a subleased office, sometimes mobile, uh, and they move into a standalone space that is. You know, considerably more overhead, more, uh, startup costs, more risk associated with that, because when you move into a standalone space, there's a few things that you're going to have to.

Right. Uh, you're going to have to, number one, your rent is going to go up. You're then going to have utilities that you're going to have to pay for as well as part of that. You're going to have to buy equipment to outfit the space. You're probably going to have to do some sort of construction. Um, if depending on if the landlord pays for part of that or all of it, uh, but either way, there's some amount of tenant improvement that you're probably going to have to do design work to make it look the way that you want it to look, you know, the build out of these spaces can, can cost a significant amount of money.

And normally the. The landlord is going to do a portion of that. Um, rarely are they going to do a full build out, like customized to what you want, everything branded and all that's like, that's typically not what they're going to do. They're going to, if anything, they're just going to put up walls in a bathroom.

Uh, and they might do some of it, uh, or they might connect you to the contractor that can do it, but, but some of that's going to be on you as well. So you're taking out usually either a loan or you're, you're saving money and you're trying to use that to standalone space, but this is what makes it tricky.

And this is what it really, uh, why I feel personally that the first growth cycle that a clinic owner has to go through is actually the hardest. It's the sketchiest in my opinion. And it's because you have something to lose. Now you have a lifestyle business for most of you, but most of you will have a busy schedule when you decide, okay, I want to move into my own standalone space.

You have a busy schedule. You probably have very low overhead. You're probably making. Better money than whenever you work somewhere else and you have control over your time now, you're not you don't own your time yet have control over your time. You're still trading time for dollars, which, you know, it's very hard to get to the point where you're not doing that at all.

Right. But you will be stuck there for as long as you decide you want to have that business. If you don't ever grow past yourself, you'll never have any nonactive revenue. Uh, unless you're doing something else like, I don't know, some sort of affiliate. You know, I don't know, kick back for something or that's probably minimal if, if, if much revenue at all, you're going to get on that with something like a supplement or something like that, that you're selling.

So you could stay small, you could stay in a lifestyle business, uh, and you don't have to work for someone else and you can make better money than working at a clinic or a hospital, right? So you do have something to lose at this point. And that is where there's risk associated with this because the only stage.

The only stage that I've seen people in this setting, business owners in this setting go out of business is, uh, in the stage where they do a growth cycle gone wrong. Uh, first growth cycle gone wrong. Usually if you make it through your first growth cycle, You're, you learn a lot of lessons. You become a much, much better entrepreneur.

You realize how to mitigate downside risk. And, uh, the likelihood of you going out of business is very low after that. But if it's going to happen, it's going to happen during this stage. I think it's the hardest stage. Uh, it's a riskiest stage and it's, and I'll kind of explain why. So if you're ramping up for something like this, at least you'll know, uh, what's coming and what we've seen, you know, now with like hundreds of clinics that we've helped go through this stage.

So. The first thing is you're going to be going from yourself to then other people. So now you have to become a good leader. So you have to be a good manager of people and a leader within your business. You're probably going to need at least a part time. You know, administrative assistance to help with many of the things you frankly shouldn't be doing.

You know, administrative tasks, super bills, following up with people, scheduling people like it. Really, you shouldn't be doing that. Uh, if you can help it, um, if you can get any of your time back administratively, both through a person or through technology, that's gonna help you automate a lot of those things, very much worth the investment.

Uh, 'cause you're gonna take, you'll, you'll basically trade out a $20, uh, task for a $200 task or more. If you're seeing a patient or if you're doing something that's going to drive more people into the business or visibility of the business, those are very valuable. So exchange those 20 admin tasks for 200 tasks as much as you possibly can.

But again, that's somebody that during this stage. You're going to have to find them, train them, and, uh, you know, and, and you're already time poor, right? So you already don't have a lot of time and I have to allocate a certain amount of time to train somebody how to do a job that they're new to and make sure that you have quality control in place that they're doing what they're supposed to be doing.

And that's pretty much any new employee that you bring on, especially when it's your first or second one, you're going to spend a lot of time training them up. During the stage, you also have to find a standalone space. I have to find a standalone space, meaning you probably need to find a good commercial realtor in your area that can help with finding a space, but also.

Uh, lease negotiation. Do you know what you're looking at? Do you know what a bad deal looks like versus a good deal? And I can tell you, I've seen this happen over and over again. A more senior business owner will take advantage of a more junior business owner nine times out of 10. That is what, that's what they're going to do nine times out of 10.

They're going to, uh, try to give you the best deal for them, the worst deal for you. And if you don't know what you're looking at, you're probably going to take it. Assuming this is just the way things are, but that's not the way things are. That's just your reality. That's what you understand. Um, you know, I, I've seen this where people will find a space that the landlord is like quoting them.

Um, I'm really astronomically high rent number and they're basically justifying it off of comps of what are, what's considered like class a space or like super nice space in their area. Yet their space does not look anything like that. So there are comps that they're, they're, uh, comparing those to are, they're not the same thing.

You may have BC class space, which is, you know, fairly nice, but not, it's not an a class space. It's not like marble countertops and all this other stuff. And they are. Projecting their rent based on that because they might think you take it or maybe frankly, they might not even know if they're new to being a landlord.

So there's a lot of factors associated with this, but not only do you have to find a trained administrative staff, do you have to find a standalone space, you have to negotiate the space, you have to make sure you're not getting screwed on the space, uh, and then you have to sign a personal guarantee.

Your business is too tiny to have the assets, uh, to, to be able to offset the risk in the, the, um, rent that you're signing. So you're signing this, a rental agreement, and you're personally guaranteeing that for whatever duration of time that you're going to stay in the building. And if you like, don't think that this is just, Oh, well, if it doesn't work out, just let me out.

No, that's not how it works. Like I have good friends that have literally had to pay, you know, six figure plus amounts to break leases for businesses that didn't work out or businesses that they wanted to shut down and move or something like they will hold you to these things. There's a personally guaranteed and in the majority of cases, especially with these small businesses.

So you got to make sure you sign the right. Uh, the right deals, the right spaces and, uh, that you're calculating everything effectively, you got to find. Uh, construction loans, build out loans or negotiate tenant improvement within your rental agreement so that you can save as much of your cash as possible.

Uh, you really need at a minimum three months of cash reserves if you want to go into a growth cycle, uh, without feeling like you're going to throw up if something, you know, gets delayed or you get negatively impacted. Um, you know, you, you also have to make sure that you have other fulfillers. That are going to be able to come in the space with you.

You don't need them immediately. You're going to need to find them relatively soon. So let's say you decide, okay, I'm going to move into a standalone space myself. Your overhead goes from 500 bucks a month up to, uh, 3, 000 a month, let's say. So it's gone up a lot, but you can still eat that. It's going to cut into your profitability, but you can still eat that.

But it doesn't really make sense. For you to do that, unless you're going to be able to increase your gross revenue in the facility, right? So like, why would you move into a bigger space if you're bottlenecking yourself, uh, with the visits you can see. And you're probably close to that no matter what in the sublease space you have.

So you have to find another clinician, you have to find another fulfiller of services. And the good news is, uh, that adding another person increases your, your revenue considerably. The bad news is that first person is the least profitable one that you're going to hire. Because when you look at your standalone, uh, space or your, let's call it your fixed costs.

Okay, so your facility, your utilities, your tech stack, all of that. That's all going to be your overhead and it's not going to change whether you have. You just one provider or whether you have four providers in a standalone space, let's, let's say is 1500 to 2000 square feet somewhere in that range where you can get, you know, three offices, uh, private offices.

If you're doing a closed treatment model, a gym space, and, uh, and now you can have three offices and that means that. Uh, you as the owner can be at like a half to a 60 percent schedule and then everyone else can have enough hours to where they can be at a full schedule with that first person you hire.

It's just you and the other person are now, you know, you're spreading the fixed costs across two people versus when you have three staff clinicians in yourself. Now you're spreading across four. So but the fixed costs don't change really at that point, maybe slightly, but not significantly. So the hard part of this stage is you're super time poor.

are, uh, increasing your overhead to the rate at which you could have three or four providers, but you're only going to be able to have one, uh, within a short period of time because it's not like you can hire all three. You may not have the marketing capacity to do that. You may not have the new patient volume to do that.

Right? So, so that's typically not the case. Uh, so you're going to be, You're going to feel more poor, like more revenue, poor, I should say net profit, poor in this stage than you did in the stage you were leaving. And that is usually a kind of crappy feeling for most people when they go, man, I was netting, let's say you're netting 10, 12, 000 a month that you're taking home, maybe top line, you know, and, or more, I mean, shit.

So we've seen some people that are doing 25, 000 a month by themselves. Right. And they're netting like. Uh, cause they don't have any, they don't have any overhead really. They have very little that they're paying for and um, you know, and they're very lean. Now all of a sudden they go into a standalone space.

And they're going to net less than they were when it was just them and they're going to be working more. They're going to be managing more people. And a lot of times, and this is how I felt when we went through this. I was like, why did I do this? What the hell was I thinking? Why didn't I just stay in my little office?

Like it was so nice back there. It was so nice in this little gym space that, um, you know, that, that I had like super cheap rent in. And, uh, you know, not a lot of responsibilities. Well, this is where you have to decide, and I'm, I'm laying out the reality of what this looks like for you. I'm not trying to scare anybody from doing this, but what I want you to understand is this is business is a game and there's, there's levels where the game gets a lot harder and the game is the negative, you know, effects that can come from it.

The, the, the challenges that you'll face, they get a lot harder and they get a lot more real because when I say. Yeah, I've seen people go through these stages and literally have to shut their business down, go through bankruptcy, or, you know, spend years and years paying off, uh, loans that they have gotten that didn't work out.

That's a real thing. Okay, that does happen to people in, in many, many businesses, not just, uh, you know, a physical therapy practice or a clinical practice, but it happens. So at least understand that there are challenges that you're going to have to be aware of and you've got to mitigate downside risk. I didn't understand what this meant.

I had friends that would say this and it would sound like, what the hell do you mean by mitigate downside risk? It sounds. Like something, an investment banker saying, I didn't understand. Here's basically what they mean. You have to try to think through all of the worst case scenarios. And if you can put yourself in a place where you can still sneak by, even in the worst case, then you're, you've got a pretty good shot of making this work.

Hey, sorry to interrupt the podcast, but I have a huge favor to ask of you. If you are a longtime 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 them develop time and financial freedom.

So if you do that, I would greatly appreciate it. Now back to the podcast. So you have to understand what you're getting yourself into and realistically project out what you can honestly make in that facility and what kind of overhead you can justify paying for, uh, and not just dive headfirst into this.

It's, it's, if we just want to get started, people like myself, people like, you know, people that are quick to start things. We say that, you know, you'll, uh, jump out of the airplane and build the parachute on the way down. That's definitely, I fall into that camp. I'll quickly kind of move into things. Um, that's not a good strategy whenever you're moving into a growth phase, because again, the, the risk is much higher and the stage is much harder.

So you at least need to know what you're looking at and what you're going through in order to understand like what you're gonna be dealing with and how long you're going to be dealing with it. Cause I can tell you for sure, if you're looking at going through a growth cycle, you're going to have a real shitty 12 months, super shitty 12 months.

Uh, and, and not all shitty, cause it's going to be awesome too. You're, you're going to, it's, I'm not trying to. Stop anybody from doing this. Um, but I will at least want you to know what you're dealing with, because I think there's too many people out there. They're just selling you this dream of, Oh, you'll have this passive income from this business and it's not going to be hard.

And you're not going to have sketchy moments. And they're like, that's not true. It's not true at all. It's really freaking hard. That's why not a lot of people do it. And especially growing past themselves really, really, really hard. But the, the positive side of it is you get a chance to develop a business, grow a business that employs awesome people in an awesome location.

You get to help more people in your community. You get to build. Enterprise value, true value, where you have a business that you could sell if you wanted to, you have a business that if you set up the right way, you could autopilot, you could be very inactive in the business if not active at all, if you really want to set up that way, um, and it's the beginning stage to growing something to seven plus figure business, uh, multiple seven figures, 10, you know, you know, 10 plus million a year if you want to do that.

Like, and you can't skip this step. I think it's the hardest, uh, phase honestly. Uh, because let's say, let's say you, um, You do this and you grow your practice to where it's generating a million dollars a year. You have proven that you can do that now for you to open another clinic and do the same thing You have the cash flow you have the information the resources the connection You have all the stuff you've built along the way now if you want to open a second clinic And you want to do the same thing It's a it's an unfair advantage compared to somebody that's trying to do it with You know, for the first time you have so much, uh, on them in terms of all of the things that you've learned and all of the connections and, and the resources you can bankroll it without having to take out these massive loans.

So that's why, you know, I think as you look at this, I think it's very necessary. If you decide you want to grow past yourself, you, I don't know how else you do it. You, you can't avoid it, but you almost have to like, uh. Build it and hope that they will come sort of, but with far more intention than that.

Right? Uh, that is, that is the stage that you'll find yourself in. Um, and like I said, it's, we're going to feel the most financially poor and the most time poor because when you are going through a build out, when you're finding a space, when you're looking for employees, when you're training people up, you're doing all this on top of fulfilling like 20 to 40 patient visits a week and marketing to get those people in.

So, you know, when you really look at it, it, if there's, if there's a stage where you're going to be working, you know, 60 to 80 hours a week, this is it, this is where it's going to be. And it's going to be like that for a while. It's a marathon. It's not like, okay, I can sustain that for like a month. No, it's like that for a year.

If not more, and it's because you're having to build your staff up, build your team up, uh, and build your space out. So all of these things you just need to be aware of as you go through the stage. And I can tell you as we were working with, you know, hundreds of businesses between our clinical rainmaker program and our mastermind.

This is a stage where a lot of people, a lot of people we work with, it's where they start to second guess whether this is what they want to do. It's, it's honestly where they start to think to themself, wow, is this really what I want to do? Is this really worth it? Did I make the wrong decision? Why has this gotten so hard?

And you just, it's because there's so many skills you have to learn. I mean, let's just talk about leadership for a second. We see this all the time and people will ask us like, Hey, can you just put together a checklist, like a leadership checklist and I'll just make sure I'm checking the box and all these things.

And that's like such a unrealistic thing to do because leadership is fluid. It's case by case basis, it's context based, uh, it's It's so hard to say, like, well, what do I do in this setting? What do I do in this certain scenario? And there's so many things you have to know in order to help somebody make the right decision, but they have to do that on the spot in many cases, uh, with people and dealing with other human beings that human beings are messy, irrational.

They bring their own stressors into the clinic. They, uh, they may not have the same vision that you have for them or what you're trying to build for them within your business. They'll leave, you know, the, you'll have staff turnover. You'll have, uh, people that don't follow the systems that you put in place.

You'll have to be a positive in some cases, and you'll have to, uh. You know, give people critical feedback, uh, in some cases, well, how do you do that in an effective manner to where they don't feel like you're personally attacking them? And some people receive information differently than others. You know, even though they might be very direct person with you, they may not like it if you're direct with them.

And so how do you know all these things like this is, this is all the things that we're learning during this stage. And this is why you see so many people. So many people during this stage have staff turnover because they're learning lessons about leadership. One of the best ways to learn how to not be a leader of people is to do a bad job leading people, uh, and feel the pain of that and then realize, wow, I can't talk to people that way.

I can't, you know, I just can't act this way and expect people that they want to work, you know, with my company. I need to improve myself. I need to work on myself and the deficiencies that you find, right? Like these are all things that are going to happen during this one very, very pivotal. Stage, right?

And the first thing that I think you need to ask yourself, very first thing is, why are you trying to do this? Why are you trying to grow past yourself? I'm not trying to stop anybody from doing it, but what I'm getting at is it's going to suck. So when it does suck, you better damn well know why you're doing it.

And I can tell you for me, uh, my reason for wanting to grow past myself, there's really two. Number one, selfishly, I really wanted to see, uh, if I could play the, the game of entrepreneurship at just like a more challenging level, right? It's like if you're playing a, I don't know, like Madden, I play like Madden with my son, we can play on.

You know, rookie level where we score like an absurd amount of points on the computer. Uh, and we win every single time. Right. If we want to go up to like the pro level or whatever, the, the one that's the average one, you know, it gets harder. Uh, but we still win. But then you turn it all the way up to like, I don't know if it's like all pro or something like that.

And it's really hard, like super hard. So. So it's sort of for me was like, all right, well, can you play at a higher level, a more difficult level versus the one that you find yourself at selfishly? I wanted to know that. Uh, the other thing was, it was very important to me to develop a time independence without sacrificing financial ability.

To, to, you know, provide for, uh, for my family. So the only way to do that in the business that I had was to generate non active income, meaning, you know, someone else's seeing patients when I'm not there. So if I wanted to drop my, uh, my kids off at school and. let's say that's from seven to eight. So instead of, okay, I just don't have a patient from seven to eight.

Well, now maybe we have a therapist or two in seeing patients from seven to eight. Well, I'm not there. So we're still generating revenue in the facility, even though I'm not there. Or if I go on vacation, instead of me just shut my schedule down and I got a zero coming in, as far as revenue is concerned, now we have non active revenue.

That's being generated by other people in the business. And that's in a service based business. I mean, that's really like sort of the bread and butter of how you can have. Non active revenue. So it was, Hey, can you play us at a hard level? And this is to generate more time flexibility without sacrificing the monetary side of what the business could make.

So that required moving past ourself. And, um, you know, as we did that, I can definitely tell you, it's the, it's the hardest stage that I went through. It's this, it's a stage where I second guess whether it was the right move or not. Uh, and I tell you what, what's funny is when you sign a lease, When you sign a lease for, you know, three, five, 10 years, whatever, um, man, that's going to hold your feet to the fire.

If you want accountability, that's going to do it because you can't get out of it. Like you're stuck. Uh, whether you like it or not, whether your business is doing well or not, you still got to pay these people for the usage of a space that you signed up for. So you know, it's, it's definitely something that for me, I felt very compelled to want to grow to that stage and beyond, uh, for the reasons I stated, but you need to know your own, you need to know why you're doing it.

And if it's just like, Oh, I just wanted to, I just want to make more money. May. Okay. Maybe that's strong enough to get you past it. Uh, I don't know. You might get to a certain point where you're like, this isn't worth it because I'm actually making less money for right now for a period of time. Uh, and you know, and that's going to happen.

You're going to, you're going to have revenue that goes up when you're in by yourself. You're going to have revenue that goes down when it's you, uh, going through a growth stage and you just get one provider on it and it's going to go up above where you were at once you're at the second, third, fourth other provider, then you can be in a really, really, you know, good spot from an income standpoint.

But to get there, you gotta. Um, you're probably going to go through a down downturn as far as what you're taking home, uh, for, for a while. And you gotta, you gotta look at it like an investment in the business. You're investing in the infrastructure of your business so you can come out the other side and be in a far, far better position.

So um, I want to highlight these things because I have just been having a lot of conversations with people in our mastermind that are going through these stages right now. And you know, sometimes I, I make these. I make these podcasts for them. Uh, hopefully this helps people that are not in the mastermind as well.

But if, if you are, and you're listening to this and you're going through the stage, like I get it, it sucks. Um, that's okay. It's going to suck better to know that it's going to suck and it actually sucks, then think it's going to be awesome. And it sucks. Uh, you know, it's, it's a completely different perspective when, you know, you know, it's going to be hard.

Um, and you can be ready for that and you can get everything in, in line. You can, you know, know that, you know, you're going to have some challenges and this is part of the process. It's kind of like we work with patients, right? Like every time that I would work with somebody that has some sort of like chronic problem or even, you know, acute on chronic issue that they came, they came in for, I would always let them know.

I was like, listen, we fully expect that we can make. Some changes in your symptoms in a fairly short period of time But the likelihood that you're gonna have a setback is very high You gotta think about this even you've had back pain for the last decade, right? Like it would be weird if you just woke up tomorrow and all your pain was gone and you didn't have any sort of like Minor setback with things that have been bothering you for 10 years So that's normal we expect that and when you can pre frame what somebody can expect let's let's imagine you're that patient for a second and If I say that to you and you go to pick up your backpack and you get this little twinge in your back You're like, oh, yeah, danny said that's normal.

So i'm i'm, okay Versus if you never say anything about that and all of a sudden they feel a little twinge in their back They're like, oh my god, did I re aggravate something? Am I doing something wrong? Does he even know what he's talking about? You know, I thought this was This was going to be resolved and you are pre framing what they can expect, both positively and negatively.

That's all I'm doing for you. I'm pre framing for you what you can expect, uh, from this stage. And hopefully that helps you drive through and commit to, to, you know, to grow in the business to where you want it to grow. Um, but if you're, if you're a solo provider, that's got a pretty busy schedule right now and you're eyeballing.

Uh, going into a standalone space and hiring people and growing past yourself. Like this is not, this is a stage in which it makes a lot of sense. To get some help, to get some help from somebody that knows how to actually go through a growth cycle effectively and to not ruin the business at the same time.

Um, this is the bread and butter of what we help people with, you know, that are just coming into the mastermind. A lot of people for the first year where they work with us is they come in around the stage or they're pretty busy. And then it's a lot of, it's a lot of stuff. That they have to do in that, you know, first 12 months, um, and, and sometimes even longer, depending on a lot of factors, uh, hiring and systems they have in place, uh, finding a space build out times.

Like it can, it can definitely take, take a long time, but if you're going through that, through that phase or you're thinking about going through anytime soon. I highly recommend, reach out to us at physicaltherapybiz. com, you know, see if, if we're even a good fit to help you. Chat with one of our advisors.

This is a stage that I think is just so hard and it's, it's such a make or break phase that it's really not worth trying to figure it out all by yourself. Like I did. I can tell you, it sucked. It sucked even worse for me. Uh, we made all the mistakes. It's, it was, it was awful. It was awful. It was the most stressful time.

In my marriage the most stressful time in my business. Um, Man, we had all these setbacks like our build out took I said it was gonna be two months. It was six months Uh, we couldn't get the fire marshal to approve the building and give us our certificate of occupancy We couldn't see anybody in it. We're paying staff.

We're paying overhead the whole time We had all this equipment loans. We couldn't even use them. We couldn't even see anybody in the damn building You know, and we saw our cash reserves just dwindle, like just evaporate over that six months go from, you know, six figures in cash reserves down to like under 10, 000 by the time that we actually were able to open that facility.

And we made every mistake you could possibly make because we didn't know what we didn't know. Um, and. And in the process, honestly, like it is the closest that we were to ever going out of business. Like it's, it was crazy looking back on it. Um, but even with that, like learning all those things, like. Um, you know, we learned a lot of lessons.

We share a lot of those. We know exactly what not to do. Thanks to what we did. Uh, and we, we know exactly what to do thanks to all the people that we get a chance to work with now. Um, where it's, it's a, it's a fairly dialed in process at this point. It's still not easy. It's still a hard stage, but it's far, far less risky, uh, far more, um, predictable, reliable.

Um, and like I said, if you're trying to grow past yourself, you don't have a choice. You got to get past the stage. It's the hardest one. So anyway, hope this sheds a little bit of light on what you have, uh, to look forward to. If you're going to go through your first growth cycle, if you've already made it through congrats, this one might resonate with you.

And you're like, damn, you're right. That was hard. Uh, it's better now. And it will be once you get past it, but you can't, you can't skip it. So hope you enjoy this one as always. Thanks for listening.

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