E670 | 4 Lessons Learned In 2023

In this episode of the podcast, Doc Danny reflects on the lessons he learned in 2023 that can help us all improve our lives in 2024. Lesson 1 is all about realizing the true value of our health. Doc Danny shares a powerful story of helping a friend achieve great shape and improve his overall quality of life through regular morning workouts. This experience made her realize that as clinicians, we often underestimate the worth of our knowledge and should charge more to reflect its true value. So, whether you're a healthcare professional or not, this lesson reminds us all to prioritize our health and recognize its importance.

Lesson 2 is all about giving our time. Doc Danny shares how he now prioritizes coaching her kids' sports teams as a way to give back to the community and spend quality time with her children. He emphasizes that giving your time is often more impactful than just making monetary donations. It's a challenging but rewarding way to contribute to your community, and it also teaches valuable life lessons and improves patience.

In Lesson 3, Doc Danny encourages prioritizing experiences over material possessions. He shares how creating new and exciting experiences with loved ones can boost happiness and create lasting memories. He highlights the importance of bonding with family and friends through shared adventures and activities. Doc Danny recounts a special high-speed driving experience he arranged to celebrate her retiring father, showcasing the power of creating special moments together.

Finally, in Lesson 4, Doc Danny emphasizes the importance of organizing our lives like a business. He discusses how he now plans her personal goals with the same level of detail and rigor as he does with her business. By reviewing progress regularly and making necessary course corrections, he has been able to achieve improved health, better relationships, and accomplish her goals more effectively. This lesson serves as a reminder that having goals is not enough; we need to have a plan in place to turn those goals into reality.

In summary, this episode provides valuable insights and lessons learned from Doc Danny's experiences in 2023. It encourages us to truly value our health knowledge, give our time generously, prioritize experiences over possessions, and approach our personal goals with the same level of organization as we do with our businesses. By implementing these lessons, we can all strive to make 2024 a year of growth, fulfillment, and success.

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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 skillset 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 because i'm here to help you.

Hey, what's going on? Dr. Danny here with the pt entrepreneur podcast and It's the day after christmas. I think they call it boxing day. Probably because we got so many damn boxes all around all around our house, but what I wanted to do Is share my lessons learned, and really there's four of them from 2023.

And hopefully, what I learned in some way can help you with going into 2024 and thinking about some of the things that I learned and how you can apply it to your life, because I. As I do this podcast, I always think to myself, alright, what's the value of the things that I share?

And it, I, sometimes, I question whether this is valuable at all, but the fact that so many people listening to this has always reaffirms that, there is value and that continuing to, be a part of you're weak is just an honor for me to actually have you listen to anything I have to say.

And I, I think sometimes. It is because for many of you, I might just be a step or two ahead of where you're at, maybe in life. Maybe not, maybe in business just in terms of things that I am working on I feel like being a step ahead is helpful because in a way it helps you look around corners easier.

And know what's coming and, I hope that. Me sharing the lessons that I've learned this year and really putting some thought into it can help you in going into next year as well, and maybe prioritize some of the things if it's the right stage of your life to do not all these are business release related.

In fact. I don't think any of these are business related, but yet at the same time they are. So let's start with this. First of all, Merry Christmas. Happy holidays and let's get into it. So number one, health is wealth and we know this, right? Like I don't have to tell you that your health is important and that your health is incredibly valuable, but some of you probably need to hear it because there was a stage in my.

Entrepreneurial career and which has been going on now for about 10 years that I've been, off the W2 train and just doing my own thing, but it's very easy to get sucked into bouts of intense work where you neglect yourself. In the process you can limit your sleep, you can stop training the way that you know, you should, you can stop moving the way that you should.

You can start making easy food decisions that can lead to, internal problems because you're putting just terrible fuel in the system. And I think it's normal to go through stages like this, even for people like ourself that are really more fitness forward, health minded people. We also want our business venture to succeed and we will take the bandwidth from other things and put it towards whatever is going to help us be successful in our business now recently, and this is really only in the last couple of months of the year, I've been training with a training partner in my garage at.

So from six to about seven, seven, 10 I, I work out and there's a a buddy of mine that is, we've, our kids go to school together. We've coached some sports teams together and he expressed some interest in wanting to start working out again and he hadn't really worked out in 20 years. So I told him, I said, all right.

I usually work out alone. I actually don't really like to work out with other people just because I like to do my own thing and it's a time for me to think through some things. But that being said, sometimes I can be inefficient when I'm by myself because I'll take too long in between rest periods of sets and stuff like that.

Like we're all guilty of, I think it's a difficult thing. It's a mentally difficult thing to train by yourself, especially early in the morning. So I told him, I said, all right, man, six o'clock we start like beyond time. Here's what we're going to do. Like this, the programming I'll help modify things for you.

Cause it's been a long time. And for the last couple of months, he hasn't missed a single day. Like not a single day. And what's been cool for me to see is just how thankful he is to have guidance about what to do and have somebody that can help him correct certain things and make sure he doesn't hurt himself as doesn't get a setback while trying to be healthier.

And what's been wild to see is I haven't really done. I haven't talked to him about nutrition or sleep or stress management or anything like that. All he does, we're mainly doing strength training, do a little bit of conditioning, but mainly strength training early in the morning and over the last couple months he Has lost like 10 to 15 pounds.

He's not taking acid, like acid reflux, heartburn medication anymore. He's sleeping a lot more because he's just frankly tired and he has to wake up early. So he's going to bed early and getting more sleep. And it's not like he's obviously Oh man, all this stuff is great. But when I talk to his family members, like his wife and his brother and his friends and stuff, and like they're so thankful.

They're like, Oh my gosh, you are like changing this guy's life. And I take this for granted because I'm just doing this anyway. Like you can just be here while I'm doing this. You can do what I do and that's it, right? To me, it's not much more than that. I'm not thinking, Oh, I'm going to change this guy's life.

But we completely forget sometimes how valuable the information that we have is and just how much it can actually change other people's lives. And I'll bring this back to you as a clinician. And your practice, if you ever doubt what you're charging and what you're worth, please keep in mind that you are worth so much more than you probably are actually charging people, because I don't know what it's worth for this guy to have lost.

10, 15 pounds. I don't know what it's worth for him to not be on medication anymore. I don't know what it's worth for him to be sleeping more and who knows how many years he's adding to his life. His ability to keep up with his kids has changed his ability to say yes to things that they asked him to do has changed.

What is that worth? I don't know, but it's worth a lot more than what you're probably charging. So keep that in mind. Health is wealth and we know so much about it. We're so good about educating people and helping people with things. And we completely just take it for granted. We just think everybody knows this stuff.

And the reality is most people don't, and most people are in desperate need of somebody like you to help them understand how to take care of their body, how to live in the world that we live in and be successful in being healthy for the longterm. Cause it's a long game. We're going to hopefully here for a long time.

So best to take good care of the vehicle that we have in life. So health is wealth. Number two, give as much as you can in particular your time. So one thing that I said no to for years. Was getting involved in coaching and and really just like being more active in like school activities for my kids school activities.

And it was just because I was so busy. It's busy. It's I can't prioritize this or that. Like I've got these other things to do and especially, doing as much as I did in the evenings with workshops and podcast interviews and even patient care. I could never say yes to being able to coach.

I didn't feel like I could say yes to be able to coach as well as I was traveling a lot, just teaching. So I never did. I never did it. And this past year in particular, I say yes to pretty much. Any coaching opportunity that I can possibly get any opportunity to be able to like help locally with school activities to volunteer for things.

And for me in particular, I found coaching. I really do enjoy it because. It forces me to have to organize a plan for these kids to be involved with the community to work on my own patients, which is tough. And to get involved with the parents as well, that are their kids are, they live in the same area as us.

And. It's it was a hard thing for me to do because the time commitment is pretty intense and I still do a lot of work and I travel a decent amount for work. I don't really do it as much as I used to, but for me now it's a priority to the point where, I'll try to coach both my kids teams in whatever sports seasons they have or at least get involved to help out with, You know, running drills or whatever, like I'm not just sitting there at practice.

Like I want to actively be involved in anything they're doing or I want to be leading it. And this idea of giving back with your time, we, we give obviously like we donate to nonprofits and groups that we really. I think are doing a great job, but there's something different about giving your time.

We give people money. We give organizations money and it feels fine, right? It's Oh, it's great. Giving this away and seeing what this is, the mission is supporting is very it's very rewarding personally, but giving your time is very different. It's so much harder. It requires so much more of you, and I think it's far more valuable for people that are busy, right?

Almost everybody is so if you can give your time, like it means so much and especially something like this where you're involved in your community and you're really sport is just a way to learn how to work together. It's a way to learn life lessons. It's not about necessarily whether we win a basketball game or not.

Granted, we want to win, don't get me wrong, but I don't I don't really care as much as I do that these kids are developing and they are improving and they're learning that if they put some work in on something that they can get better at it. What a great moment. Like I've seen this over and over again with kids that are just really not very either interested and or naturally talented in the sport that they are probably getting, their parents are probably forcing them to do, or just so they could be active. But to take a kid that's just Oh, I suck at this. I'm no good. I don't want to be here. And then all of a sudden, for them to realize, no, you're like, dude, you're a great rebounder.

Here's what we're going to do. We're going to focus on this one skill and I want you to practice these things. And when you're at practice, like we're going to really work on that and we're going to be very positive about the things that you do well, but we're also going to really understand where we need to improve and to see them go from, Not feeling very confident about their ability, or maybe they're embarrassed that they're not very good at something to all of a sudden they're making progress and they're seeing that intentional work and focus and practice leads to improved outcomes.

I don't know what that's worth. But it's amazing to be a part of that is so cool And I hope because these aren't necessarily my kids, but I hope that they See that Okay, I wasn't very good at this thing. I did these things I got better and now you can apply that to Basically any other area of your life if you're willing to put the work in that is a valuable skill.

That is an incredible realization that people have, and I see it in real, real time with with the kids that I get a chance to to work with. And for me, it's also a great practice in patients. I am not the most patient person with other people's kids. I do not like to have to create discipline for kids that don't have it, but I will do it.

And they may not like it so much. And their parents sometimes don't like it so much, but that's just the way it's going to be with anybody that is. On a team with me, it's just, we're there to listen and improve. And, but sometimes I get very frustrated and you can't just yell at somebody else's kid. Like it's a, not, it's not the best idea when they're obviously in fourth to sixth grade, I'm not talking about adults.

So for me, it's a great practice and patience and also it forces me to have to work and spend time on something that's not necessarily just business related, which is really healthy for me as well. So find something to give back with your time, not just, and I know you're busy and like I'm busy too.

And I'm telling you, I wish I would've done this years ago. I wish I would've started this years and years ago and I didn't do it and I did do it because I just felt like I couldn't. Find the time to do it. And the reality is I probably could have, and it would have been just fine. And I missed out on an opportunity to to work on these things, to give back in this way, and to be a part of my kids team time and their development as well.

Just because I was a bit too selfish with the time I had that I was frankly, just putting towards my businesses, right? Second lesson, give as much as you can, especially your time. Number two, prioritize experiences over things. And this is something that I, this is something that is not a, I would say a new conclusion for me, but it's something that I have come to really appreciate and almost like a core tenant of my.

Of my life at this point, I don't look at what can I, like the money that we earn from businesses, the money that we earn from the work that we put in and the things that we do can go to many things. It can go to. The house, the pay for the house you live in, the student loans that you have just life.

But once you get to a point where, you're able to have some sort of disposable income, it doesn't even have to be a lot, because I'm not saying that you have to do anything crazy, but the ability to experience things in the world with the people that matter the most to you is the, I think, the greatest investment you can possibly make.

And here's why I say that number one, it allows you to experience new things. And that is really healthy for us, especially with our brain and experiencing new things and our emotions around that and our happiness level. When we experience new things with people that matter to us goes up dramatically.

And most of us live a very redundant sort of same thing every day, same routine every week. 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 wherever you listen to the podcast and please leave a rating and review.

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and that's normal. That happens. You. Most will find the routine. They stick to it and that's it. But the ability to experience things with your family. especially first things with your family and friends is just really, it's a cool thing to do. It's a very fun thing to do. And the secondary effect of that is what we call memory dividends, right?

So memory dividends are basically you reminiscing on the Activities that you did, the experience that you had and my wife does a great job with this. So Ashley, every year she, I think Apple is who she uses with Apple has some sort of a yearbook you can create with family photos and she spends a enormous amount of time pulling all these pictures together from our year and basically summarizing our year in one.

physical picture book. And the other day we, I sat there with our kids, her and our kids. And we looked through, at this point we have 10 years worth of of these books that she's created. And we spent so much time like sitting down. Looking through these pictures and just like you forget some of the things and some of these are, not even like a big deal, right?

Like the first time we went to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens for Christmas with our kids, was one of the pictures we saw. And then, It was it's just it brings back what we call memory dividends, right? So for me i'm like, oh, yeah There's like this crazy this really cool train set that jack and maggie were like obsessed with and these are the things that come back up when you number one Experience things with people and number two if you document it like that's a really I think a cool practice that ashley is Done for years now, and i'm so thankful that she does it and it's it is a lot of work But I think it's very worth it.

That's a physical book that We get to look at and that their kids will get to look at our family can look at and it's a really cool thing. So prioritizing experiences is big and sometimes doing things that are maybe, they're not in your comfort zone. Like I'll give you an example.

My dad just retired, so he's. 65 and he has spent 45 years straight basically working in the government system. So both active duty in the army and for the last 21 years, he's been a government employee at a military hospital. In Augusta, Georgia, so he's retiring at the end of the series, had his retirement party and my brother and I are like, what are we going to do for this guy?

Let's get him a gift. We're looking, okay, do we get him some golf clubs? He loves to golf, right? And I could have done that. Like we could have done bottom, some golf clubs or whatever. Maybe some, something he never would buy for himself, but instead we decided, you know what?

Let's do something really cool for him in Atlanta. They have the Porsche headquarters and something you can do is actually You can do what's called a Porsche driving experience where you get a coach and for about an hour and a half, they teach you how to drive these things around a track, like full speed, you're driving as fast as you possibly can.

And it's really cool thing to do. And our whole family came, they came to the facility, they got a chance to watch me and my brother and my dad. Drive these insane cars around this track. And then even like my kids and nephews they got to jump in the car with the pro drivers and they took them around on these hot laps.

And they're just like, they thought it was the greatest thing ever. But all this is. It's coming together to do something fun and unique for, this person who is going through a big life change and has really, spent a long time working and has really never, ever would never do something that's for himself.

It's would never treat himself or something like that. What's cool about that is, for my family, anybody that's, that was there, you're, they're not going to be able to like. Ever see a Porsche and think not think about that time with with all of us. So like the memory dividends of these experiences of this time are so meaningful.

And, maybe you could say, Oh yeah, every time he would grab his golf clubs, you would think about this. Maybe he would. But that's not anything unique for him. That's not something that is a first experience for him that is going to be as memorable as his entire family being there while he drives the car around, the track and also give, we were giving him a hard time because he was going so damn slow.

He was like, we're like, Hey, this isn't this isn't a surface road in Atlanta, give it some gas, man. What are you doing? I think he was nervous. I didn't want to wreck the damn thing, but. These are just things we're going to remember. These are experiences we're going to have. And I'm thankful that we had a chance to do it.

And for me, my mindset on this is really, I want to be able to have experiences with the people that matter the most with me, from in my life. And they don't have to be crazy like, like this. This was like a unique thing for somebody that's retiring after a long career. It could be anything.

It could be saying yes to going camping somewhere that, maybe you've never been before. It could be something so simple that you just prioritize that over. You're spending your time and your money in chasing of things of, physical possessions that you're going to lose. Interest in over time and instead taking that time and that money that you might have and putting it into spending time with people doing things that are memorable, documenting that, and then all of a sudden now you have these, the compounding memory dividends for years and years to come.

It's a really cool thing and a different perspective for me this year that I hope, you can apply to your own life because it's been really fun for me to really focus on that. I look at, okay, what experiences do I want to have with my family this year? What things do I want to be able to do?

What first, what haven't we done that maybe we can do that are going to shape their view on life? They're going to shape their confidence with certain things that they can do. Versus what do I want to get him for a gift? That's not as important to me as it used to be. So Number four, organize your life like a business.

This is something that I was first exposed to a few years ago, but I can't say that I really dove into this and actually applied this in a really meaningful way until this year. And I, for a couple of years, I was a part of a group that was really big on having success in all areas of your life. Not just for many of us, it's we're really good in one area.

So maybe you're like super fit. And you're really healthy, right? But maybe your relationships aren't so great. Maybe your business is killing it and financially you're really doing great, but your health suffers, right? Maybe you have a great relationship with your kids, but you and your spouse never prioritize each other.

So when we start looking at these sub domains of areas that you want to improve in your life, the best approach that I've found in order to not Not. Accidentally get where you're trying to go or accidentally not get where you're trying to go is to organize your life as if you were organizing a business, right?

So I plan every year for our business. We check in on that, on the progress. We may course correct if we're off on certain things that we're planning for. We do this annually, quarterly, and then we review these. On a weekly and monthly basis. And if you take this same approach of organizing what you're trying to do, and you track that the same way that you would track things in your business, it's pretty amazing what you're actually going to end up accomplishing.

Because most of us have all the intentions in the world of accomplishing something better in the new year. And it's right around the corner. 2024 is about to start and it's arbitrary. And who cares? Like time is such a interesting thing that we assign this Oh, now is a new start to the year.

New start, new year, new me kind of thing. We see this in health and wellness all the time, but for whatever reason it is, it feels like a new beginning for people. And if you fall into this camp, use that momentum. Use that momentum to put yourself in a place where you're intentionally saying, I want to accomplish this.

In 2024 and it doesn't have to be your business. Obviously you can apply this to your business You can say I want to have this much revenue These number of employees I want to have whatever this amount of profit and reverse engineer how to get there, but If you take the same lens and you apply it to your business, you want to have this health.

You want to be at this weight with this body composition and these internal biomarkers, maybe that you test with blood tests as an objective measure of where you're at by, This time next year, then you can say, okay, that means I have to exercise this amount of time. That means I need to meditate this number of times.

That means I need to walk this number of steps per day and track that on an actual like weekly and monthly basis. And now all of a sudden you can say, okay, I need to get four workouts in this week. I need to make sure I'm getting, 10, 000 steps every single day that I'm drinking this much water and then I'm doing this number of meditation sessions or something like that are mindfulness sessions and put that down, write it out, organize it as if your goal planning for your business, for for Ashley and I, a big part of our year in 2023 was working on our relationship.

This is not something that like granted, like we've been married for going on 17 years. And when we did get married, I was 22 and she was 21. We were babies. We were most people that get married at that age. It doesn't really work out well. And the reason it doesn't work out well is because most people are not actually even who they're going to end up being at that age because they're immature and they have a lot of life to live before they actually know what they value.

And for whatever reason, I think we're a little bit. Older souls in general, but we got there a little faster, but for 16, 15, 16 years, we never spent. A minute working on our own relationship. How crazy is that? The most important relationship in our lives, we never focused on it at all.

And we intentionally started to work on this really, it was in 2022 but a lot of it was in 2023 to really work on, okay, how do we better communicate with each other? How do we improve our relationship? Not that there's anything was wrong with it necessarily, but we never spent any time on it.

And then we took the same approach. Okay. We're going to. Go and work with somebody this number of times per week, we're going to check in with each other this number of times we're going to focus on improving how many date nights we have and really just focusing on spending more time together.

That's intentional and not necessarily just being around each other, which is what tends to happen. And I can tell you for us, it's just like what a difference that approach makes. And you can say, I want to have a better relationship with my spouse or I want to be healthier or, I want to accomplish.

X, Y, and Z, but how many times do you actually do that? How many times do you actually end up accomplishing what you say you want to do? And for me, prior to taking this approach on my own personal goals I can't say it was very often. I can't, I, certain things were important to me and I would prioritize them, but it wasn't like I was intentionally working towards an improvement of an area.

And yet I would spend hours and hours planning for my business and reviewing my business and, doing quarterly reviews and planning. And I'm spending all this time being so detail oriented on something that obviously is important, but I am not. There's no freaking chance that my business is more important than my relationship with my spouse.

It's not I'll take that. I'd give that up in a heartbeat before I gave up my, my Relationship and family like no way, but yet I was spending almost no time even looking at anything like that no time taking a level of detail to my life Outside of business that I was spending on this business entity and I just thought oh This is just so important because it's how we provide for family and all this that and whatever but yet No, it was just because It's hard to do that level of planning or even close that level of planning on yourself.

Cause you got to be like really honest with yourself and you got to focus on what it is that you want to improve. So that was a big change for me this year is really implementing that and something that I've seen a lot of positive progress and still a lot of things that need to improve, no doubt, but a lot of progress has come from me planning my life the way I plan a business.

So in summary health is wealth what you know is far more valuable than you may even think that it is Give as much as you can of your time be very open and giving with your time It means a lot to everybody around you and you're gonna learn a lot of lessons yourself along the way prioritize experiences over things experiences pay memory dividends and you will have Those compounding memory dividends for the rest of your life, especially if you document those experiences.

And then the last thing is to organize your life the same way you organize your business. Take the same level of detail of organization to your business or your life as you do your business. Don't just hope that you're going to end up accomplishing something. There's, I forget the football coach's name, but Herm He was Indianapolis coaches.

I heard him say this one time. I would have to look this up. He said a goal without a plan is a wish is what I remember that one phrase I think about all the time, a goal without a plan is a wish. Don't just wish for something to be better in 2024 plan for it to be better. Expect that it will be better.

Put the effort into it actually being better and go figure. And by the end of next year, you're going to be shocked at how much. More progress you've made towards the goal that you set, because if you don't have a plan, all you're doing is wishing and hoping that you're going to get there. So I hope this helps you.

Again, Merry Christmas, happy holidays, get ready for the new year time for you to really work towards whatever it is you're trying to do in 2024. And hopefully for you, it ends up being a much more accomplished year, a happier year, a healthier year. Then it was in 2023. Even if you had an awesome year, let's make 2024 even better.

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