E437 | How To Deal With The Unknown

As an Entrepreneur, you will certainly deal with the unknown. It's something that will come back to you over and over again. At times, this unknown feeling can be downright crippling and scary. What will get you through this feeling is knowing how to work your plan and always make sure you are focusing on the right work. Enjoy!

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Podcast Transcript

Danny:  Hey, quick question. Raise your hand if you love documentation. My guess is basically nobody raised their hand except for that one weirdo that does like it. But most of us dislike it. It's part of the job though, and anything we can do to make that more efficient is always a win. We switched over to PT everywhere recently from my local practice, and one feature they have that I think has been a game changer is the voice of text note documentation feature they have where I can literally just dictate my notes and it will.

Populate within the actual note platform. I was shocked. I thought it would be incredibly inaccurate and I would've to fix everything, but it's really, really accurate and easy to do. I even just do it on my phone and I actually talk in what I wanted to do in between patients so that I can quickly do that while it's fresh in my mind and it doesn't pile up on me later in the day.

Save me a ton of time, save my staff a ton of. So if you're looking for a solid practice management solution, I would highly recommend checking out PT everywhere In particular, if you wanna save some time on notes, it's been a game changer for us. Head to PT everywhere.com. Check out their platform and see how it can save you some time in your office.

So here's the question. How do physical therapists like us who don't wanna see 30 patients a day, who don't want to 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 up guys? Dr. Danny here with the PT Entrepreneur Podcast, and today we're talking about dealing. With the unknown, I think as an entrepreneur, uh, as, as somebody that's trying to, you know, go into business for yourself, um, trying to do something different. Frankly, anything doesn't have to be business, but this is, you know, definitely comes up over and over again.

Uh, as far as business goes, we have to deal with. The unknown, especially when we start to make decisions to make big changes. Now, there's a few stages where this really pops up. The first one is actually deciding to get started to do a side hustle. You know, to leave your job, to go all in on yourself, you know, if, if that's the way that you want to start, but man, it's terrifying.

It's so scary, and. In particular because we have to, uh, be in person with, with our clients and, uh, do local marketing and potentially get turned down by people and have a awkward interaction and, you know, things that might go the wrong direction. Or maybe you, you, you try something, you know, you say, all right, I'm gonna do this.

You tell all your friends and family and it doesn't work. Like that. That sucks. That's actually the thing that I was most fearful of whenever I started my business, was that, you know, I was leaving this, uh, safe, predictable, good career, frankly, in the Army to. Open this, you know, cash-based practice in the corner of a CrossFit gym in the, in the not so nice part of Atlanta.

You know, like looking back on it, I think, yeah, I get it. I get why people were maybe a little concerned with the decision that I was making and you know, dealing with the unknown of what's going to happen is an. Incredibly important skill. And one of the things that, um, that I like to do and that I have a lot of our clients do, and, and frankly, I, even our kids, I have our kids do this because, you know, they deal with the unknown.

They deal with anxiety around school, sports, you know, things that are happening now that are just like, it's a weird time to be a kid. You know? It's not, it's not quite as, as, you know, as, as simple as it was even a couple years. So for me, I like to do something called a post-mortem, and this is something that you can start to implement, um, as you are kind of navigating your way through decisions that you have to make and, and dealing with the unknown, which is frankly gonna happen.

And it's not just in business, in your life in general, but you can apply this to business in particular to really help with some of the stress that has developed, you know, from, um, running a business, starting a business, growing a business. Uh, and, and the, the postmortem is something that I learned.

Through, frankly, through, um, Ryan Holliday's, uh, book. So he writes a lot on personal development and stoicism in particular modern take for that. And this is a stoic principle in terms of looking at a postmortem. So essentially it's what's the worst? Let, let's go through the scenario of, you know, what's the worst thing that could happen?

It's the worst case scenario, right? So if you, if you decide, okay, I'm going to, I'm gonna start a side hustle. And I'm gonna do this, you know, let's just say you find a gym that's interested in, you know, having a, a clinician that's there part-time, uh, you know, they, they like the fact that they're there for their members, but also gives you an opportunity to work with people from around the community and kind of focus on an edge, right?

So you're excited about this or you're also terrified and you're like, oh my God, what if this doesn't work out? What if it doesn't? And now let's go through a postmortem. So let's say you find this gym space, the, the reality is it's probably gonna be a couple hundred bucks if you're subleasing an a, an office, maybe even free if they, you know, aren't gonna have you there that much.

Or it's maybe per session that you see somebody, but it's, it's not a lot of money. So let's say you get started, right? And let's say you give it a solid, let's say you give it a year, a solid. So you're there, you're doing some local networking, you do some workshops, you meet some other clinicians and coaches in the area.

You know, you have some, some clients you're trying to drum up, you know, just with local interactions. And let's say that nobody comes to see you. Nobody, and you gave it a full solid year, right? Full solid year of trying and giving it your best effort and you get nothing. Nobody. So, What, what happened? Like what's, what's the worst case scenario?

Number one, you're out some money potentially. If you sublease this office for a year, you're out time, right? So all the time that you were spending on that, you could have been doing something else. You could have been spending that time with your family. You could have been at a prn position, a home health position, any number of things where you could have been making more money, right?

So you're, you're, you're out. Some money, you're out time, which is probably the most valuable. And over that year, who knows how many hours that is. Right? Um, not, not too many though. More importantly, I guess the thing that probably holds most people back is you're probably embarrassed. You know, you're prob you're, you're probably frustrated and you're probably not proud of the fact that you tried at something and you failed and, and your family saw it and your friends saw it, you know, your colleagues saw it and, It didn't work out and you had to hang it up and just go back to the job that you had the whole time.

Cuz this is a side hustle. You didn't leave your full-time job now. If that is the worst case scenario, you didn't die, you didn't get hurt, you didn't put your family in a position of financial ruin. You know, you, you didn't, you didn't do anything that was sabotaging your career long term. You took a chance on a fairly simple business model.

You're out some money, you're out some time, and you're embarra. All these things will improve over time. That's the worst case scenario, right? And I think as we think about that, it's like, okay, if that's the worst case scenario, could I live with that? Can I live with the absolute worst case scenario? And this is how I run, I run my decision making through this as well.

What's the worst case scenario if I make this investment? What's the worst case scenario if I decide to work with this client? What's the worst case scenario if I decide to partner with this person or not? And I run a postmortem through all of those things. You have to ask yourself, you know, with that postmortem, how bad is it to you?

How bad is it overall? Because the, the flip side of that is the reverse or the reverse postmortem. What if it works? That is what we typically don't think about, and we'll, we can stop there and say, okay, postmortem, what's the worst thing that happens? Am I, am I willing to take that If that's what actually happens?

But what about the best case scenario? And this is where I think people absolutely drop the ball and don't think about this, and they, they worry and they stress about all of the, well, what if this happens? Or what if that, well, what if it does? We, we just went through a full scenario. You're embarrassed, you're out some money and you're out some time.

What if it works? What if you're so busy on your side hustle that you are replacing 50% of your full-time income within the first couple? Let's say you're making another $3,000 a month in your side hustle. So what does that do for your family? What does that do for your financial position? The stress that you have with the student loans that you have, the also opportunities that you have to move forward.

Well, damn, you know, you're spending just a little bit of time on this and this is the, the additional income you're adding to your take home. What if you went full-time? What if you. Took that leap and went all in on your business. What if you could grow it past yourself? What if you could build something that generated passive revenue and created time and financial freedom and generational family wealth?

What if you never had to ask for another day off ever again? What if you got to work with the people that you love working with and every day when you went to work, you were excited because you knew they were gonna give you a hundred percent and you never had to wonder if they were actually compliant or if you're picking the right things or not because they were dealing with litigation or work comp or whatever it is that's frustrating you with the clients that you're having to deal with.

What if that happened? Would it be worth the trade off of that postmortem of the worst case scenario? And if it is and you're willing to accept the post, uh, the, the postmortem, the worst case scenario, then it's up to you. You have to do it. You have to do it. And the unknown isn't quite as scary anymore.

Because you know now you have two options. You have two, two ways that this can go. One, you're okay with the other one you'd be ecstatic with, and if you're in the middle somewhere, you're still happy. So think of this next time you have to make a decision. This is just a kind of specific scenario, but run a postmortem and then run a reverse postmortem or best case scenario and ask yourself, are you willing to take that trade off?

Are you willing to take the worst case? What does the best case look like? And is it the right decision for you and your family to move forward with that? Because if so, now you've taken the worst part out. You know what the worst part is? You can talk about it with your spouse or, or whoever you need to significant other to make sure that they're on the same board, you know, on board with you with the same decision and risk tolerance.

And then you just go, and then you do the work and you focus on. The plan, working the plan. That's what my, my, my mentor Kelly says, work the plan, work the plan. And we talk about this all the time, like you have to focus on the right work once you're in the mindset to put the work in, and this will help you get there.

Hey, real quick before you go, I just wanna say thank you so much for listening to this podcast, and I would love it if you got involved in the conversation. So this is a one way channel. I'd love to hear back from you. I'd love to get you into the group that we have formed on Facebook. Our PT Entrepreneurs Facebook group has about 4,000 clinicians in there that are literally changing the.

Face of our profession. I'd love for you to join the conversation, get connected with other clinicians all over the country. I do live trainings in there with Eve Gigi every single week, and we share resources that we don't share anywhere else outside that group.

So if you're serious about being a PT entrepreneur, a clinical rainmaker, head to that group. Get signed up. Go to facebook.com/groups/ptentrepreneur, or go to Facebook and just search for PT Entrepreneur. And we're gonna be the only group that pops up under that.