Free Days: Entrepreneurial Self-Care for PT Owners | E185

mindset operations podcast solo episode May 02, 2019

cash based physical therapy, danny matta, physical therapy biz, ptbiz, cash-based practice, cash based, physical therapy

In short: A free day is a scheduled day, during the work week, when you do nothing business-related and spend the time on something for yourself. In Episode E185 of the PT Entrepreneur Podcast, Danny Matta explains why he and his business partners Yves Gege and Jerred Moon skipped a planned work day in Salt Lake City to go snowboarding. He calls it entrepreneurial self-care and recommends taking at least one free day per quarter so your brain can recharge.

Key Takeaways

Free days are entrepreneurial self-care. On a free day you do nothing business-related and spend the time doing something for yourself.
The rules are strict. No checking email, no seeing patients, no networking meetings, and no working on marketing campaigns.
It has to be a work day. Danny says a free day cannot be on the weekend; take it during the work week.
Start with once a quarter. Free days can be weekly, monthly, or quarterly, but aim for at least one per quarter.
Your brain needs to recharge. You cannot grind at a high intensity forever, and a rested mind gives you more bandwidth and efficiency.

What You'll Learn in This Episode

Why Danny, Yves Gege, and Jerred Moon traded a planned work day for snowboarding in Salt Lake City
The free day concept from Dan Sullivan's Strategic Coach entrepreneurial time system
What you can and cannot do on a free day
How Danny and Ashley spend a free day outside Atlanta
Why hustling without downtime leads you to hit the wall
How to schedule free days into your week, month, and quarter

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a free day for a physical therapy business owner?

A free day is a scheduled day when you are not allowed to do anything business-related. Danny Matta describes it as entrepreneurial self-care: no emails, no patients, no networking, and no marketing work, just time spent doing something for yourself.

How often should a PT entrepreneur take a free day?

Free days can be scheduled every week, once a month, or once a quarter, depending on how much time you can carve out. Danny recommends trying to get at least one free day per quarter.

Can a free day be on the weekend?

No. Danny says the free day has to be during the work week, when you would normally be working. That is what makes it a real break from the business.

Why does taking time off make you more efficient?

Danny compares your brain to a phone battery that you keep running down to 10%. It still works, but letting it recharge gives you more bandwidth, and he says you will be more efficient if you take that downtime.

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Full Episode Transcript

Hey, what's going on, guys? Doc Danny here with the PT Entrepreneur Podcast and today is Thursday. We're getting a short little kind of nugget of information, something I learned today that I want to share with you. I'm going to give you a context, to this, because I'm out in Salt Lake City right now.

I'm at a, and a financial workshop starts tomorrow. And, we came in, by we, it's, myself, Yves Gege and Jerred Moon. They are my two business partners in the physical therapy consulting business that we have. And so we're all out here for this financial workshop. And we got it on Tuesday.

We had the goal of taking care of a bunch of stuff that we need to work on together on Wednesday. So today's Wednesday, and instead, we decided to go snowboarding. So, so here, here's why I bring this out. Because last night when we were, we were talking with dinner, we were talking about time management and sort of, how to structure your week and your month.

And if, and if you're in business for yourself, you probably just work a ton. Like I, that's just the reality. Especially if you're just starting. You're trying to, you know, just get new clients or trying to build your business. You're trying to make your local reputation. You're just hustling, frankly.

You're just out there in the community and chipping away at business as much as you possibly can. Now. That's great, and you have to put that work in. But Jerred brought up this thing that he learned from, a mastermind. He was called a strategic coach from a guy named Dan Sullivan. And, it was called, like an entrepreneurial time system, which I had seen before as well, but not ever applied it.

And Deere talks about, you know, one of the things they talk about is free days. So days that are, you know, scheduled you, it could be every week. It could be once a month. It could be one once a quarter. Kind of depends on how much you can carve out for that. But on that day, you're not allowed to do anything business-related.

I can't check emails. You can't go and see patients. You can't go and, you know, meet somebody for networking purposes. You can't work on a marketing campaign. You can't do anything business-related, and you're supposed to spend that time doing something for yourself. So think of it as entrepreneurial self-care, right?

I think that's kind of the best way to. Position it and, you know, it could be any number of things. And Ashley and I have done this, as well. And, we didn't call it this, but we would take a day on like a Wednesday where we would go, and we drop the kids off. We'd go work out at the gym. Then from there, we take our paddleboards out, and we paddle around, this park that's just outside Atlanta.

We come back, grab some lunch, then we'd go pick up the kids together, and we would spend a day just. Hanging out, you know, and doing something that didn't revolve around our business. And it's straightforward just to get sucked into that and continuously think about it. So this idea of a free day, I love, and you know, when Jerred brought it up yesterday, we said to ourselves, okay, well we're going to be here until Saturday.

So that means we got, you know, mostly tonight, tomorrow night and Friday night to actually like work on the things that we need to do. So let's take today, you know, most of the day we left at like. Eight o'clock this morning. A mistake most of the day, unless this do a free day. All right? So we're not going to talk about business or to talk about any of the stuff we're going to go, and we're going to use our bodies to do something fun.

I've never gone snowboarding before, and it isn't a hell of a learning experience that is a tough thing to do. And there's not a lot of mountains open. Out here. There's just like one that was still open and like I only a few of the actual, like, runs were still free, so it didn't have any green runs.

Which is like the easiest one. They just had like blues and blacks that were open, so I had to go jump on like a blue a slope. And, you know, it was a, it was a lot of fun. It was tough. I learned a lot about what I can't do on a snowboard, and my butt kind of hurts from falling so much, but, even still, it was excellent, man.

What, just insanely beautiful. View, you know, like I, I've only gone team one day in my life, and I was eight years old, were living in Germany and we went to a place called Garmisch, which is a little ski town there. And that was it. So I'm 34 years old, so this is the second time I've ever gotten on snow with, you know.

Yeah. Either skis or snowboard. And it was a new thing for me. And, and even Jerred had both ski or snowboard, previously, quite a bit. So for them it was, you know, they were able to get out and, and, you know, jump back out there and, and, and have a lot of fun. So, but for us, we made this consistent decision.

This why bring it up is this idea of. Put yourself in a position where you're giving your mind your brain, you know, some fucking downtime, like let's be honest like your brain cannot function at that high of an intensity, that much of a tense clip forever when you're just grinding, grinding, grinding, grinding.

I've been there, you know, and it, I've worked myself to a point where I hit the wall, and I think a lot of us have to hit the wall. Maybe you have to learn that way. Right? And I'm telling you, it'd be great if you could just learn without having to do that and start taking care of yourself and do some stuff like this.

And as simple as it sounds like, cool, Dan, you get to go snowboarding. Yeah, I did, which is fantastic. It's cool that we're out here and we're able to do that, but really, instead of us working and I really like to work, and so Jerred and Yves, like we like what we do. We feel like we're impacting a lot of people.

It doesn't feel like work. It feels like we're just, kind of working towards, you know, something more significant. And, you know, for us to say, all right, screw it. We're not going to do it today. We're going to take a self-care day. We're going to do something fun together. We're going to do bonding, you know, kind of thing and get out.

It was fun for them, I think, to watch me go through this, you know, for the first time. But, you know, it's just, it's only one of those things that gave our mind a break. We're going to. Be in this financial workshop for the next couple of days. So we took care of ourselves today, and I think that what you need to do is look at your week, look at your month, look at your quarter.

And even if it's like once a quarter or once every other month, you know, take a day during the workweek. This, it cannot be the weekend. It has to be during the work week where you. Do nothing work-related, and you do something fun that you enjoy doing that is, you know, enjoyable, or be around people that you experience when you're not doing anything work-related and let your, let your brain recharge because you will be more efficient if you do that instead of, you know, always.

Taking the battery down to, you know, where, where you're at, like 10%, and you're running it. That, yeah, your phone works there. But man, let us let it recharge so that we have more bandwidth. And that's what these free days are about. So hopefully you can take that, and you can implement it into your, you know, your, your week, your planning.

You know, a self-care day is fantastic. It can be very beneficial for your business and the relationships you have with people around you and, and frankly, just yourself, so free day. I think about it, added in, try to get one a quarter at a minimum, and do something fun. You know, you earned the time freedom.

Use it. Alright guys, talk to you later.

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