E682 | All Things Business and Life With Nicole and Jesse Cozean

In this episode of the podcast, Doc Danny sits down with Nicole Cozean and Jesse Cozean, the owners of Pelvic PT Rising. As experts in the field of pelvic health physical therapy, Nicole and Jesse also have valuable insights into running a successful PT business.

Danny introduces Nicole and Jesse as two of his favorite people in the profession, highlighting their extensive knowledge and experience. The purpose of this conversation is to provide listeners with an informal discussion about Nicole and Jesse's journey, offering not only business strategies but also life perspectives and goals.

Throughout the episode, Nicole and Jesse delve into the details of managing their pelvic health practice as a husband and wife team. They also discuss the various services offered by Pelvic PT Rising, which aims to help other clinicians grow their businesses in the pelvic health space through consulting, hiring strategies, and practice management.

The conversation takes an interesting turn as Nicole shares her experience of being on maternity leave after recently welcoming a son. This new dynamic in their lives presents unique challenges and opportunities for her role in their businesses.

One of the key themes in the episode revolves around mindset, priorities, and financial decisions. Nicole and Jesse share their values and insights into how they choose to allocate their time, energy, and money.

Overall, this podcast episode offers an unscripted look into Nicole and Jesse's journey in building successful PT careers and businesses while navigating life as partners and new parents. Danny hopes that these real conversations will not only benefit listeners professionally but also have a positive impact on their personal outlook. 

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: [00:00:00] Hey, real quick, if you are 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, cause I'm here to help you.

Hey, what's going on? Dr. Danny here with a PT entrepreneur podcast and. And today you get to listen to a conversation between myself, Nicole [00:01:00] Cozine and her husband, Jesse Cozine. If you don't know who they are, they own a practice called Pelvic Sanity and they also have a business consulting as well as clinical education company called PT Rising.

Now these are two of my favorite people in the profession. They specifically focus on pelvic health practices, but they're. Incredibly knowledgeable when it comes to the business side of everything. And one thing that I've been trying to do over the last couple of months is just have some very open ended conversations with people that I think are doing a really great work in the PT space.

I did this with Chauncey Cofield. I have a podcast with Jimmy McKay is going to be coming out here soon, where we had a chance to have a similar type conversation and with Nicole and Jesse, I get to have the same conversation. These are conversations that. I would be having with friends anyway, and I wanted to be able to share conversations like this with the PT entrepreneur community [00:02:00] because it's not a scripted.

It's not as, hey, what's the next thing your story and we definitely do a lot of that in case studies of what's going on as well as topic based things. But these are conversations that I think can be really impactful, not necessarily just on your business, but also on the way that you view the world, the way that you view your life and the things that you're trying to accomplish during your time here.

And sharing the thoughts and experiences that other people have that I really admire is something that I'm really excited to be able to do. So we can do all kinds of things in this, talking about their practice, what life looks like now that they are that they have they have a son so they have kids now that, how they're able to manage their relationship being a husband and wife working together, not necessarily just being being married, how they're helping other clinical.

Our clinicians on the business side in the public health space, what that's been like and the journey through all that hiring, managing actually running, running their practice and being able to really work their way out of it. Nicole being out of practice currently since she went on maternity leave she's not seeing [00:03:00] patients, which is interesting because that's like a new part.

And even for me being able to share. Things that I've found on money mindset side with people that we've worked with, things that we value as far as what we spend our time, our energy, our money on and and how we make those decisions as well as just all kinds of other things we get a chance to get into and in a really informal, but hopefully very real unscripted way that you get a chance to learn something from.

So if you like these, let me know in a in an iTunes review or a Spotify review, and I'd love to hear your feedback on these type of episodes. Amazing feedback on the Shantae Cofield Podcast so as long as I keep getting good feedback on these I'll keep trying to reach out to Cool people that I think are doing a great job and doing more of them So I hope you enjoy this one and now as always thank you so much for listening

guys We

Jesse: are so excited to be joined today by Danny Matea PT Biz Danny. It is so good to be talking with you I feel like this interview is a long time coming. Yeah,

Danny: I've had Honestly, for the last, what, 20 minutes or so, we've been talking before the podcast [00:04:00] and it's been great just with that. So I'm excited.

I'm excited to just have a conversation with with the two of you, especially because of how, how influential you are within the pelvic health, world public practice world. And and that's such a growing niche. It's interesting to me because I remember when I went to PT school, we had a professor and.

I went to Baylor. I was in the army. No one wanted to go do pelvic health, right? Like it's like we're sports ortho only and she was like, let me tell everybody in this room something It's like if you want job security you go into pelvic health and here's why she goes there's way more vaginas than there are pelvic health providers and at the time I was like I don't know what you're talking about.

I just want to deal with ACL injuries. And as I've watched the it's obviously not just women's health, it's because everyone has a pelvic floor, but the growth of that niche in particular seems faster than any other niche. In the profession. I don't know. Maybe I'm not. Maybe I'm like biased with that.

I'd love to know what you think with that, though, because it does seem like it's exploded, especially over the last five years.

Nicole: Yeah, it totally [00:05:00] has exploded. And Sarah Reardon was at our Pelvicon conference. So her, she's the vagina whisperer and she's based out of New Orleans, right?

So she was like, she's a huge person on social media. She's got more than like 500, 000 followers. She posted on, at the Pelvic Con stage, a growth chart of the search term of pelvic floor, and it is literally an exponential growth pattern on the number of people that are searching it. And so I think that it's one of the specialties in physical therapy that has really benefited from social media, and the just overall educational piece that goes along with all the kinds of pelvic floor disorders.

And I think that's what's driving a lot of people to be like, Hey, I, that is a problem. I do deal with that and I don't want to. And then it's now where do we go? And so we're like, In a perfect place to capture that excitement about you can get help for something that people have been suffering for [00:06:00] years.

So I think that's where some of that comes, but that growth chart was pretty nuts

Danny: and it's really

Jesse: interesting. I think that works so well in the cash model too, because you're going directly to the consumer. Whereas in the insurance model, you have to go and change the mind of a doctor to get them to prescribe physical therapy after a baby.

That's gonna take this generation of doctors, frankly, just dying off and us bringing a whole new one in. That's like a 30 year process. We don't have time for that shit. Yeah. Now it's, this is where you're seeing cash practices take off, just like you're seeing in the performance space, being able to educate and put that information out there and get patients to come to

Danny: them directly.

Yeah, and I've always been surprised it feels like the U. S. is, Decades behind other countries in terms of the the pelvic health approach, especially it just being inter twined with the birth process. I remember I had a chance to go teach down in Australia. This is when I was working for the strets and it was, we were teaching movement mobility concepts at a gym and I was talking [00:07:00] to a physio and she worked with postpartum women and she was saying that, obviously it's a socialized medical system, but it's it's just like part of it.

You have a baby and then they have their visits lined up pre and post and, It's not really like a choice. It's not a choice, but it's just very accepted. It's just part of the, it's part of the process. And that's totally different than us. It's most people don't even know what that is.

They just tell you to do a bunch of kegels and then you're gonna be good to go. And we always, we obviously know that's not the case. So I've always been interested in I don't know if it's just because it's a, a third party payer model or whatever it might be. And maybe they're trying to not have to pay for certain things, but I just couldn't understand why.

Thanks. If we know this is such an important thing, is it not just part of the process? Yeah. I

Nicole: mean, you're, we're as confused as you are. Like it, it seriously is like one of our huge, like I could get on a soapbox on it for an hour. We will not be doing that on this podcast but it's seriously, it's it's ridiculous when you think about like the amount of time that you are pregnant, which also creates just a ton of pelvic floor issues just by the body changes [00:08:00] that happen.

And then also. You have this marathon of a physical event, right? You've been, I'm sure, in the room with Ashley when she's had two, right? So it's just it's pretty gnarly. And then everyone, and then you have a new life to take care of. And then it's yeah, good luck. You just freaking tore muscle.

Ligaments have been strained for now, a year and, good luck. But you're right in that it, it's automatic in some other countries and it's not here. And so I think that's, again, we're like, Just the overall education of the person experiencing the issues has really driven a lot of the seeking help for these

Jesse: things.

Yeah, and I would also say with that, Dani, and you and I can probably attest to this, I think there's a huge gendered piece of this too, because it was seen that public health was a women's focused thing. And still the predominant patient population is female If you or I had passed like a bowling ball out of our butt Like we would be in the doctor's office like demanding [00:09:00] care, right?

How many erectile dysfunction pills are there out there? You can't turn on the television without seeing all that stuff and yet it's oh cool like pat on the back You just had a baby like good luck with the rest of your life. Yeah.

Danny: Yeah No, it's crazy. We wouldn't have a baby. That's what would happen.

The population zero, zero. I'd be like, yeah, we're good. We're just, we'll just let it end. But, you

Nicole: know, because the male pelvic health patients that we see are so different. In terms that's y'all have something wrong with your penis and it's the world is ending. I will do whatever it is you want.

You want to stick your finger up my butt? Totally fine. 12 times

Jesse: a week? Can I come 12 times a week? Will

Nicole: that fix it faster? We just need to get this fixed because it needs to be erect when I want it to be erect. We need to have an orgasm when we want that to happen and all of the things. So it's actually, I love working with men in that way because they're like so motivated to get whatever it is.

It's fixed. It's so fun. Talk

Danny: about sales, man. It's like he, you gotta sell him on the why it's not hard to sell that, right? If something's not working, that's important to [00:10:00] you it's very obvious why you need to get some help. In fact, we had we had a practice that we had a chance to work with for a while.

And his name is Lance Franks. I don't know if Lance. Lance

Nicole: in your pants.

Danny: Lance in your pants. The best, I go, bro, that's the best social media handle. I've never heard of for what you do. And, and I remember talking to him and I'm like, this is just, it's a bigger problem than people are probably aware of, but to have visibility and to also make like less I don't know intense for people, make it a little bit, funnier, even with the name of it, of the social media account, but like the education side, it was great.

And he had people flying in from like all over the world to work with them, and I'm like, this is amazing. But obviously there's. There, there is a problem, there's a niche that can solve it. And the value for what we do is obviously there, right? Regardless of whatever insurance says, I think that's one thing that I've noticed with the businesses that we've had a chance to work with.

And most of the pelvic health practices that we work with, they're like very sports, like ortho return to movement, like running, lifting, that kind of stuff. That's my primary sort of I guess [00:11:00] experience. But even with that, what I've found is they seem to. The virality of helping somebody and then the friends that they talk to you is like no other niche that I've ever seen.

Nicole: Yes, totally. Because, and it's just so intertwined in that could go to soccer game. And then what else are you talking about? It's just it's just like a little social start. So built in social circle for those people that have kids and stuff. So it's Yeah, word of mouth referrals are like huge for us.

And you still have to, we still have to teach people how to ask for them and stuff like that and help people to be able to talk about something that is not your typical dinner table conversation. But again, I feel like the more people have heard about it now, it's not so super weird to talk about it, which is just really cool to see from someone that has absolutely no problem talking about anything like that.

It's just

Danny: really fun. Yeah I wonder have you guys seen a big transition in the time you've had your practice from at least for me. I noticed initially it was I was selling [00:12:00] people on why they would want to go somewhere where they weren't using their insurance. And now what I see is there's way more options.

So it's why would I choose you? I don't know if you've noticed the same thing in terms of your area Which I would much rather have that second conversation, meaning there's more awareness and all that. But have you noticed any big changes that have happened during the time from when you start your practice to now?

Yeah,

Jesse: I think 100%. And I think that's, it was actually really interesting. We were talking about this when we did a big website revamp, but now this is actually how we teach our mentees to think of it too is exactly that way. Danny is, how are you setting yourself apart? It used to be enough to have a website that just says, Hey, we can help you.

Right when it was just a, brand new thing. Hey, they recognize their name on it. Like great. Now it's saying, Hey, why is this better than the hospital place? Why is this better than the ortho place that does this as an add on? And, has a curtain instead of a door, right? And you're 100 percent right.

We ended up having to revamp and do a lot of new things with. Yeah, just explaining to folks exactly [00:13:00] what they should be looking for. Same thing with what you guys are doing. Like what should it look like to have great physical therapy? Now it's more than just you need it. It's an informed consumer, which is again, I think really plays well to a cash practice.

And a place that spends time with people and especially in a pelvic health setting, I think it's,

Danny: it's critical. Yeah, it seems like more of an education element, like I always talk to people about it in terms of, uh, we're clinicians, but it seems like we're more like consultants for the human body.

Like people it's, this is like our vehicle in life, right? Like it's not us. It's just how we get around. Like we're something we probably can't even explain, but deep down, like there's, we're the drivers of all this stuff, but the body is our vehicle in life and being able to educate someone on things that we know that we maybe take for granted, just even simple stuff.

Like I've been training with a friend of mine. And he basically was like, Hey, what's that you for working out? And I'm like, you don't have time to program for you. I like, are you serious? Do you honestly want to work out? And he's yeah, I haven't worked out in 20 years. I said, okay, I trained from six to [00:14:00] seven Monday through Friday in my garage here.

You can show up. Don't be late. You're going to do what I do. I'll modify stuff for you. And he's come three months in a row now straight. And he's lost like 25 pounds. He's not taking a prescription medication anymore. Like his sleep is so much better. His energy is so much better. His back doesn't hurt anymore.

And he's Oh my God, this is the greatest thing I've ever done. Like, why don't we, why don't more people do this? And I go, yeah, I know, dude, I get it. Like we talk about this all the time, just like train effectively, whatever, but I, we take it for granted so much. And what's funny to me is this guy's in wine sales.

So he sells like wine to restaurants and builds out wine menus and all kinds of stuff, like really interesting guy. But he's like my junior sales guys make more than your like senior physical therapists make and you guys have a doctorate and you're helping people with literally life changing musculoskeletal injuries He is like why is that like that?

There's such a there's such a mismatch and I don't really know the answer I'd love to know what you guys think in terms of like why is what we do undervalued by the [00:15:00] economy? but like Selling liquor is far more valuable, yeah. There's

Jesse: two ways to make your back pain go away, and only one of them involves drinking wine, right?

Yeah, that's right. But I don't know I feel like it's an insurance thing, top down. That's the game that everybody's been trapped in and playing. And, this is, it goes into the money mindset thing that you have to see. We see it all the time as we're coaching folks. I don't even think that, first of all, none of you guys as clinicians got into this for the money, right?

You got into it because of what you love doing and helping people and all the things. And there's nothing except for now, I think cash physical therapy that is taking the roof off of the limits that have been imposed by an insurance company that was just the limit of what could happen. And if everybody is getting the same ish reimbursement from the insurance company, then all of you guys as clinicians have a cap on what you can make in order to have that be a profitable business.

And now I feel like cash is coming along and [00:16:00] taking the roof off of that. And. As cash based business owners, we can afford to pay our people more. We make more ourselves. I think that's really the only thing I see changing any of that. What do you think, Nicole? Yeah,

Nicole: I agree. I don't think that Yeah, I don't really have any much more to say about that.

Good job, Jesse.

Danny: Well done. Yeah, well done. It is fascinating, and it's I've always wondered I don't know if there's a lot of us, too. I think that's the other thing is there's a lot of schools, and we're like one of the more profitable graduate education programs to have not for us, but for the actual universities which I always thought was fascinating.

I was like, what is I guess we are, huh? No wonder there's so many damn PT programs and the average debt coming out. It's like in the one forties range, for people graduating in PT school and the average starting salary is like half that. And it's, but so what does that say?

What does that tell me about those people? What is it? They are doing this because it's not about the money they're doing it because they want to help people like the service element of it. And, but this sort of idea of a [00:17:00] service or a labor of love, if you were to say it's like, it doesn't have to be mutually exclusive from.

Actually making a good living, especially for something that the individual actually values far more than insurance does. And I always found that as so interesting and it's, but it's getting people to realize that are clinicians, that's the hard part. I know for you, like when you work with people on the money mindset stuff, how do you help them through that?

Like, how do you help them realize you're worth a lot more than 120 a visit, which is Medicare says what you're worth.

Nicole: Yeah. And honestly, I had to work through that quite a bit. Myself and Jesse, I think being outside of the field helped me a lot to, to be like, Oh yeah, like I am helping people with way more than just, the one thing that they came in here for.

And so now, we have changed the way that we Talk to people coming in about I want you to leave public sanity, a better person, you're going to be a better. It's that's the vehicle to, to a better life, like public sanity coming into here once a week for the [00:18:00] short amount of time that you're going to be here in the big scheme of things.

It's you're going to be a better person. And I don't feel, I feel like I've always had that inherently in my vision, but then I was always you know, capped with insurance and whatever. And so now that we can actually build that into our business model, I think it's been really cool to see how we can truly transform people.

But I do find it interesting to be on the coaching side now, because I don't feel like people articulate very well what they're good at, what they can help people with. And I feel like it's. They're still operating in a box that PT schools showed them and insurance companies show them and so That's what I feel like has been really interesting to try to get them out of that because not only is it money mindset But now it's a confidence thing.

It's being able to actually say I'm really good at this thing I can my skill set I can help you and I know that in the physical therapy world, we're [00:19:00] so often oh, we don't fix people, we, but it's we fucking do actually we have a lot of skills that can fix the shit that you come in for.

I get that it's a shared model of goal setting and all that bullshit. But also, it's we have a big, huge skill set and a knowledge base about the body that's really valuable that not any person else in the, not anywhere else in the medical community has. So I feel and I don't know if you see this, I'm going to throw that question back to you too, like, how do you coach that because we just see it so difficult, we say like, when we're talking about build even talking about on their website okay, what makes you different?

And they're like silence, they cannot say it. Do you find that difficult for folks

Danny: to? I think copywriting in general is very hard. We're talking about expressing yourself through words in a succinct way on a website. That's really hard. But I feel like what they associate themselves with is whatever their credentials are.

And we're credential, [00:20:00] not like we love credentials, letters, all the things, Oh my God. Yes. And the more letters, the better, but no one knows what that means. Except for other clinicians. And that's it. So I feel like the challenge is they don't really know what their value is.

They've never really been shown it. There's no table where they can go look it up. I guess you can look at insurance, but that's 75 a visit and see as many people as you can see, it's a terrible model. So part of it, I think is making associations between other industries that are generally like, fee for service models.

And legal is an easy one. CPAs other professionals in some degree. But if you look at even where we're at now with insurance deductibles being so high. I'll give you a great example, like I had to go to the dermatologist for the first time, I think in my life, a year ago and I go in there and it was something like super simple.

And the lady was, she, I spent maybe 10 minutes with the actual [00:21:00] dermatologist, right? And we have a very high deductible. We're self employed. It is what it is. Yeah. Yeah. And I leave there, I'm like, I spent 10 and it was 400. And I was like, what the hell, man? I did the math on it. And I think this is an incredible hourly rate.

Good for this person. But the, I did not feel like I got 400 worth of value from this person while I was there, considering she basically just Googled something while I was in the office. And I like, man, I can go in to a good, cash based provider. For a musculoskeletal injury, and I feel like I leave there knowing so much more feeling a, maybe I'm unsure and it's, I'm anxious about, Oh my gosh, am I going to be able to do this or this?

Or and there's lots of different types of problems that we help people with, but either way that are, it's causing stress. It's causing them to have to worry about something. And even if after that first initial evaluation, they're like, okay, I feel like I'm in the right place. I feel like this person has listened to me.

They understand me and I have a. I have a plan for it of what we're going to [00:22:00] do, like that's incredibly valuable and very rare in the medical community, almost non existent in the medical community, right? So I think for them, if we can say, just think about these experiences compared to these other ones and what, your attorney is charging to put together a Document per hour, like you're not even very close to that, but do you feel like what you do is just as valuable as a non compete agreement or something like that for a business?

Like I, and I think that's where they started to see the difference. It also helps when they start to see their first patients come through. So once they started to see their first patients come through and those people are just like. This is amazing and they start sending everybody like if they felt like you were robbing them They wouldn't tell their brother to come and see you, they just wouldn't say anything because they'd be embarrassed They just got you know Swindled by somebody and that's I think that's what we were thinking and it's so irrational when you think about it But we're so scared to have that conversation because we would do it for free and that's what's an interesting, odd sort of frustration for people is you like this so much you would do it for free, [00:23:00] which is amazing.

But life isn't free. You gotta pay your mortgage. You gotta buy groceries. And also, just because you would do it for free doesn't mean it's not really valuable. And what a cool opportunity to do something you would do for free and make a great living doing the same thing. It's like such a great way to, match them up together.

That's usually where we end up going with people. But it's a continual problem, I think for people. I don't know. I would say it took me years, honestly, years before I felt comfortable. And I didn't even have any sort of option for people see more than one visit. And I didn't even schedule followups.

Like when I first started working with people, I'd be like, yeah, if you feel like you need to come back, just my schedules online, come back and see me. And they're like I obviously want to, so can you schedule now? I'm like just do what you get home. Maybe change your mind.

Like I would talk them out of coming to see me because I was so scared to talk about money. It was so dumb. So I can relate. I think we all can, and we should, because. We're not doing this because we're trying to make a bunch of money. I honestly never thought I'd make more than a hundred thousand dollars a year.

In my career ever. And I was cool with that. That's why I went to school for it. I was like, all right, that's fine. I'm good with that. I really, I like this career. I think I'll want to do it every day. So I don't know. It's a continual problem, but I [00:24:00] think it's worth solving. The people that you have to solve it with are very much worth helping because they're doing it the right way.

Yes. Yeah. And

Nicole: they're it's so fun to see that little light bulb term turn on and folks and then them getting excited and them getting better. Cause then I feel like it's like a positive feedback system, right? It's like when they believe it, then it's easier to say, and then it's, now the next sale or whatever you want to call it is that much easier.

Jesse: I think sometimes as business owners, it almost is a little easier. Most things are more difficult when you get employees. Sometimes this actually helps with the money mindset piece though, because now it's not yourself that you're protecting. You're protecting your employees and wanting to provide this amazing job that you wish you'd been able to have and help them pay off their student loan debt and all of that.

And I think that can sometimes be, it takes it away from feeling you're taking the person's money and putting it in your pocket. You're taking it and you're providing these amazing jobs. I think sometimes can really help with that. And I think it's always interesting too, once we've a couple of times given people homework.

To go out and spend money on yourself. If [00:25:00] you're not willing to go spend 150 to get a massage, or to go to acupuncture, or to go to a mental health therapist, you don't even know what the feeling is like for the people who are in your office. Like, how are, you've never actually been, put yourself in that patient's position, and then all of a sudden they go, and it's like, Oh, wait, I did love that.

I wish they had Booked me out more. I wish that there's something about that too of just Experiencing it from the patient side. I

Danny: think yeah. Yeah, i'm interested. Do you I had a real fucked up relationship with money? It was like very much, like scarcity mindset, depression era grandparents that would boil a ham and we'd eat that the whole week that we would visit them and So for me, it was always just like I viewed money as this really scarce thing that there was never enough of and that's a really unhealthy way to look at it.

And on the flip side, I see some people and they just, they're like, they have no respect for it whatsoever. They're always find themselves in consumer debt and really bad place. So how was that for you? It, cause I'm assuming [00:26:00] based on our conversation, you have a relatively healthy relationship with money and everything that goes around that now, but how was it for you getting there? Did you, which side did you have to come from? Were you more like me where it was like more scarcity or was it more oh, this is just whatever and it's completely frivolous?

Nicole: So what's actually really interesting is that Jesse and I have very different backgrounds, and we've actually had to work on coming to our own cozine Jesse and Nicole family money mindset and money rules, and we're really big fans of roommate.

Ramit Siddhi. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. But I came from, so my dad is like first born Mexican son who like, didn't go to school and, just learned a trade in computer sales and stuff. And then he like built his own family money. But I always feel like he lived well above his means trying to provide for us.

And so I never saw like responsible money management. It was always like, it'll [00:27:00] be there. Here you are. And then. And then we never got taught how to manage it well. So what that looks like for me in PT school was I'm going to invest in myself. I'm going to take out the maximum amount of student loans, and I'm going to spend that student loan money like it's my job because, of course, I'm going to come out with a doctorate and I'm going to Make good money in air quotes and when I come out not understanding that you know that the debt to income ratio is really a problem in our field.

And so I had like massive negative net worth. I didn't wasn't even tracking anything. My spending habits were not great. And then I come to Jesse, who comes from a very entrepreneurial family you can go ahead and speak to your. Your experience.

Jesse: Yeah, and it is interesting that some, we're all on one side of this and I don't think anybody ever comes into this.

Just ready to go on their money mindset stuff. But I was definitely on the other side. I was frugal and I was proud of it, and it was actually [00:28:00] really hard for me as the business grew and we got more successful to enjoy the fruits of that. Whereas like I was so responsible, it was just sitting in the bank and cool.

Great. We've socked that away and make sure you put that and we make sure we max out the 401k and the IRA and all the things and not being able to, I like look down on people who drove a nice car. It was like. Oh, I see somebody rolling down the street in a Mercedes. I'm going to walk in front of them.

I'm going to walk real slow. Screw them buying a

Nicole: Mercedes. Yeah. And then Jesse drove like an old Subaru that Yeah, it

Jesse: was Flint stoning my ass around town. Cause the engine didn't work. And so I think we actually ended up being really good for each other and coming into a healthy, healthier, but you're right.

It's a 10 years. We do monthly like cozine ink. Planning meetings with finances and net worth and all that stuff, because I don't know, I think a lot of people only have negative conversations about money. And then it's obviously, and you know this better than anybody, Danny, it's amplified when you guys are in business together too.

It's [00:29:00] not just your personal finances, but now you have the potential conflict of maybe disagreeing about how to spend money in the business or how much to take out. There's a lot of things that if you're not on the same page as a married couple with that too. It's going to be a problem.

Danny: Oh my gosh.

I think that's probably the biggest stressor for a relationship from what I've seen. And fortunately for Ashley and I, she's very much, she's yeah, I just think you're better at this than me. So just fill me in on what I need to know. And I'll sit her down and what kind of what you're talking about a couple of times a year.

I'm very, to be very Infrequent when I do this, but when I do it, it has to be short and like to the point, it's here's where we're at, here's where we're at, this time last year, she's oh, cool, we're in a good spot, right? Whatever. But also she comes from, a military enlisted, one parent working background, like they didn't have a lot of, a lot of money.

So it wasn't like. It's not like she's trying to keep up with her friends that are all like balling out of control or something like that. Which is really helpful. And I think that can cause a lot of stress, but like having that [00:30:00] sort of ability to be fiscally conservative, but not be a miser is a hard thing to do.

I'm actually, I'm reading this book right now on this topic. I don't know if you've heard of this book, but you probably really like it was called taking stock and it is a. Relatively short book, which helps me because I I will drop off like halfway through most books, but this was written by a physician who was an internal med doc, had his own practice and he basically got into the fire movement, the financial independence, retire early, retired, got bored and was like what do I want to do?

What is it that I'm interested in? And he realized that he wanted to become a, hospice physician. So just at the end of people's lives. And what's really interesting about it is it's like he was writing stories of people at the end of their life. They're talking about what they wish they would have done different or that they are like really proud that they did very similar to like the regrets of the dying.

I believe is the book that was written about the hospice nurse in Australia. That's wrote the five most common regrets. But this is basically the most common. How do you take this sort of like vehicle that we all need [00:31:00] to understand in money, but not let it consume you, not let it negatively ruin you because you don't know how to manage it and line it up with what you are, what you value, which is hard because I don't think a lot of people actually look at what do I want this to support?

Not necessarily. What do I need to do in order to get this is what most people, do. So I, ironically, I'm actually listening to it right now. And I found it like just so spot on to have that sort of healthy balance. And to have that perspective of people that are like we see people throughout their whole lifespan, but not right before they die.

That's a different perspective. We get to see what does it look like when you have good health? What are you doing to maintain yourself when you're in your 70s, 80s, and you're cognitively sharp and physically able to do what you want to do. And to see his perspective on this and him choosing to go back to it, it's really fascinating.

I think that Most people, from what I see, they really struggle with this. I think it's one of the biggest struggles that most people have. And as soon as you're able to get that compartmentalized, or not really, organized, I should say, the stress is so much better, just, even something you're talking about, like tracking net [00:32:00] worth.

That's something that I started doing a few years ago. And when I first had to get everything together and compile everything, and I'm like, This sucks man, like I gotta find out what all these account numbers are and all this and do I have insurance and but now it takes me about 15 minutes a month, maybe 20 minutes unless I'm really trying to dive into something every month as soon as I'm done, I'm like, I feel so good, it's like you just it lets your brain just calm the hell down.

Whether you like it or not, it's what we have to deal with.

Nicole: Yeah, and then, I don't know, I found that doing that helps our goal setting a lot better, and then we can actually compartmentalize our goals a little bit differently, because now we know, it's okay, we're good. Doing with doing what we're doing and then, and that was a not some, that was something that like Jesse had to teach me I didn't know how to be thoughtful about that, and I was always just being like, Matt, there's a big red sign over there.

I don't want to look at it, I'm just going to put this on the credit card then. Yeah.

Danny: Yeah. We don't do it anymore. Yeah. I think for your spouse and that's, or this can apply to a business partner as well. Because[00:33:00] it's that times a lot more with a business partner because this is, you're running your business, right?

So if you have one business partner that hasn't have a respect for money or one business partner that's just no, we can't do that. We can't do anything. Like we can't do anything fun. We can't enjoy anything. Like it's, it sucks. And like finding that middle path. I think it's very challenging and takes a lot of communication, takes a lot of conversations that a lot of people avoid because normally if that conversation has friction, it leads to, to a fight.

And then, so they're like, all right I don't want that. So they just don't even talk about it. Totally. Yeah. When business finance is

Jesse: so related to your personal finance and business stress is so related to that stuff as well. So this, we actually, in our training stuff, we talk a ton about net worth.

It's the thing I probably get the most pushback on for people. For all those same reasons, Danny, right? It's Oh, it's going to be such a pain. I don't want to look at my student loan debt. What if my number is negative? But man, I always liken it to if you had one number that could perfectly encapsulate your health, your cholesterol your exercise, whatever else you were doing, like you had one number, like we would [00:34:00] look at that.

And that would be an important thing to look at. That's what net worth is for your financial health. Yeah, like there is a number like that actually encapsulates all that stuff and so sometimes when people are so in the weeds with Oh my gosh I had these many cancellations this week or I had this person no show or this person asked for their money back on a package or whatever that is I feel like that's usually coming from a place of, financial, personal financial issue and not knowing your numbers there.

And a lot of times when we actually work through what does the business need to be making? How many patients do you actually need to be seeing to grow your net worth to be going in the right direction with where you want to be going? It's way lower than people expect. And it just takes that entire stress off where you only need to see 12 patients a week or whatever it is for you.

And 13, even if you had 12 cancellations, who cares? You still saw 13. Like you're going in the right

Danny: direction here. Hey, sorry to interrupt the podcast, but I have a huge favor to ask of you. If you are a longtime [00:35:00] 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 would do that, I would greatly appreciate it. Now back to the podcast. That's a great point. I haven't thought of it as like that, like an internal comparison, right?

If it was like one blood biomarker, you could pull and you're like, Oh, I'm good. It, that doesn't quite exist yet that I know of at least, but on the net worth side, what I think you're right about is if you have a negative net worth which there are people listening to this that do, and I've been there as well.

And. At least you need to know where you're fucking starting. Because if you don't even know, then how are you gonna know if you're making progress, just so if this, if the stress of it is. Causing you to avoid it that much. You got to realize that that's not a healthy thing. You need to just understand that this is where I'm at now.

Okay, cool. [00:36:00] I'm there. This is where I'm at now but if you're doing the right things each month, what is nice about network tracking is. You will see that go the right direction. And that's positive reinforcement. That's a very positive thing. Maybe it's still negative, but it's not as negative as it was the month before or the year before.

And now that I've been doing this for a few years, what's really interesting is to go back and look at months, like three, four years ago. And you're like, dang, look at us. We've been doing a really good job. Like we've been making like. Intelligent decisions and be doing the right, right things and moving towards the goals that we have.

I am interested though, for you what do you assign value to that? You're that you're like, no, we do want to spend money on these things. What in your life do you value? You're like, Oh no, I'm totally down to spend money on whatever it might be. Yeah, we actually, it's

Jesse: so funny. We just had a whole revamp of this conversation for us based on like where meets money rules and thinking about, yeah, spending extravagantly.

And where can we. Increase that. One thing that we just did literally a week ago is we went and got a membership at a [00:37:00] bougie gym that like, like

Danny: real bougie, what's so busy about it?

Nicole: There's like a bar in there. It's more of a club. And

Jesse: club type thing.

It's got that kind of feel. It's got a steam room. It's got, you get a massage there And but that for us was like, why are we skimping on our own health? What we were talking about if we expect our patients to come in. And pay for a better health experience, better outcomes.

Like we have to be willing to do that ourselves. That's a big one for me. Yeah,

Nicole: totally. And we've also done like things that seem little but like I'm flying to Boston and I'm taking a red eye because I'm all, I'm in my mom era. And so I'm like, ah, I don't want to be away from clay for so long.

But so I'm, we're, I'm going first class, and so it's like awesome. Yeah, because to me it like makes sense. I would have never done that. Like even three years ago. What are people going to think? I would have never even said it on a public [00:38:00] podcast like that. There's no, I would have been like very much Oh no, what are people going to think about that?

But to me it's yeah, it fucking makes sense. And it's going to make my trip more enjoyable. And I can hit the ground running on Thursday and that's that stuff like that. I think we've decided that it's okay to spend money on things for convenience, things that make our life more convenient, things that make us healthier and things And that's like some of the stuff that we've, even over the last year, have changed quite a bit of.

Jesse: That's such a great question. What's it for you, Danny? What do you and Ashley want to spend more on or spend more

Danny: extravagantly on? Yeah, it's, this is something that for us, we Intentionally, like for a lot of what, like we want to do, cause we're not going to move, but yet we both grew up moving a decent amount is travel, with with our kids and it's exposing.

I feel like there's a lot of value, a number of ways. Number one, exposing yourself to the way other people view things and [00:39:00] think and different parts of the country or the world allows you to take yourself out of the. The matrix, which is our life on a day to day, and be like, Oh, it is interesting, why they do this way or like a good example for us.

Like we recently took our kids to Montreal. They have this fall break. And so we go up there, for fall break and it's like Europe light, right? It's one of my favorite cities. Actually, it's a great spot. And yeah. So there's people speaking French and they like the public transportation is different.

And there's, they just they value like different things as well. Like it's, they stay up later. The culture is a little different. Some of the food is very different. And we even went on like a, there's a huge outdoor market there. I think it's John Talon market. And it's basically like the huge open air market.

And they could try all kinds of just crazy stuff that, we would never really find here in Atlanta. And for them to get exposed to those things is really interesting. But what we like about it as well is this concept, it's called memory dividends. And we have this, and I, this is like my [00:40:00] favorite thing we've bought in years.

And this was actually, I'm not going to take any credit for this. Ashley said, get me this for Christmas. So I got it for, it's called a sky bridge. And I'm like, I'm late to the party on this. It's basically a. It's like a big iPad that on it you have, you can have chores like, so all of our kids chores are on there so they can check them off in the morning or during the day and then whenever they all of them check off, it like explodes like confetti.

So that's, they love that, which is awesome. They do their chores more than all the whole family calendars on there. What are we making for dinner that day? Like everything that we have going on because our life is just wild with all the stuff our kids are doing. But the other part is it syncs to your phone and all your pictures randomly.

Rotate through this, right? So I was sitting this morning, like drinking my coffee and there's these pictures of like us in Acadia National Park with our kids were in. We went out to sawtooth mountains in Idaho or we went to Hawaii and and you're like, Oh, dang, that's awesome. I forgot about that.

But then it's a memory dividend that pops back up. So I view travel as [00:41:00] just a it's a huge investment for us. It's the thing that we probably value the most. Number one, because we had to spend time with our family, but also just because. It's such a crazy, impressive world and things are so different and it's a shame to just never see some of those if you have the ability to do it.

And as entrepreneurs, we do have an opportunity if we're successful to generate time and financial freedom, right? Now, some people might want to go out and buy a Porsche and maybe they're super into cars and like that, it's like art to them and they, they love it and that's, they get a lot of benefit from that.

And for me, it's not really my thing, right? I would rather go to some trip with my kids and I wish I would spend my money on that. So that's the number one thing that I would say that we really look at it. We budget that into our year. It's okay, here's these trips and our kids get.

They get a fall break. It's weird how Atlanta does it. It's a super short summer. They get a fall break in October. They get the whole week of Thanksgiving. They get two weeks at Christmas. They get a February break and they get an April break for a week. So we get these, it's almost pseudo year round school.

So they only have eight [00:42:00] weeks in the summer, but. On these little week long breaks, we're always like, all right, where are we going? What's the next place we're going? And it's long enough to go a lot of places and spend enough time somewhere to get to, experience it at least. And also now that we work with so many people all over the country and throughout, Canada.

And we can ask people like, yeah, what do we do here? Or we'll meet up with them. And we're like it's so fun to be able to expose. Our kids to all these different areas. So that's number one thing for us for sure. Oh, that meet up with

Jesse: them, have it be a tax write off. Cause you had to go meet with your person out there.

I was thinking it through Denny. Where's the next like big trip? If we look like on the two or three year horizon, like where's the dream trip for you guys?

Danny: We're going, so this summer we're going to we're going to go to Italy and France. We, and this is like. I feel like a dick saying this stuff sometimes.

Listen, let me give you some perspective. Okay. 10 years of entrepreneurship fucking eat shit for years, grow a couple businesses, and you can get to the point where, you have the opportunity to spend money on something like this. And so anyway, I have a lot of perspective for that and I [00:43:00] appreciate it.

To be able to take three weeks with my family and go to, to Europe. It's huge. Mainly the time side is tough. The money side is tough as well, but that's the next one for us. And sometimes I feel like people talk about travel and you're just like, sound like an asshole. But anyway, so for me I just wanted people to have perspective for what that really takes, as well as if that's what you value, like you got to build towards that.

We knew we wanted to do stuff like that. And so we're going to go, we're flying into Venice. We go from Venice to, lake Garda, there's a huge amusement park, the biggest amusement park in Italy on Lake Garda. We're taking our kids to Gardaland is what it's called. We go to Verona. There's a Coliseum, like a mini Coliseum there that they do concerts and operas in.

So we're going to go see an opera in a Roman Coliseum. Fucking nuts. Yeah, it's crazy. Then we go down to Bologna and then Florence and we have a bunch of little side trips we're taking there. And then we fly up to Paris and we're going to check out Paris pre Olympics. So before everything's. Crazy there, but they have the Olympics, the summer.

And then we fly back. We're learning Italian as a family. Not very well, but we are experienced [00:44:00] that we're, we try to learn about the culture and the history and we try to learn about the language and then and then we go and we try to experience it and try to do as much as we can without being crazy tourists, and enjoy the area.

And yeah, and it's, we love it. It's one of our favorite things to do. So that's up next for us. Cool. That

Jesse: sounds incredible. And I think that's one of the things. I don't know if you fell into this trap early in your career with this, Danny, but forgetting why you're doing it, forgetting why you're working so hard.

I remember like the first three or four years, really everything that we did before COVID. Honestly, COVID was such a blessing in disguise for us, um, to force us to slow down. But we would have said, hey, we're doing this for time freedom. We're doing this so that we can travel before we have kids. We're doing this so we can do all these different things.

And we didn't do any of them. We were just working 80 hours a week, both of us. And sometimes it takes, it's one of the things I really love about coaching folks too, is sometimes it takes that outside perspective to just be like, what are you doing this for?

Danny: Yeah, [00:45:00] I agree. I think I would agree with you as far as COVID is concerned, because I think that for me that's, I think that's the busiest that we ever were.

Leading up to to, March 2020, and it was a forced pause for people that don't pause. Like for Ashley and I, that's just, we're very similar to you guys. It's just no, we had shit to do. And this we've taken on these obligations. We have people to support. We felt a lot of pressure during COVID to be able to support our staff more than anything.

That, that was probably the scariest thing for us was like, man, we didn't know what to do. We didn't know how long we would have the clinic closed or. Or what we would do on the finance side we had six months of cash reserves that we just keep on hand because we're trying to be very fiscally conservative luckily for us that was like a huge, saver for us from a stress standpoint, but but yeah, even leading into that, man, I was still doing stuff for the strets.

I was still, we had started really ramping up PT biz and I just was overwhelmed. I had so much [00:46:00] stuff going on. Like within from November, 2019 I had serious panic attack leading up to an event that we had. Thought like legitimate attack? Like a real one, like a real panic attack? No, I thought I had a heart attack.

I thought I was dying. Oh, geez. Okay. And I was in my, I was in my house going downstairs. I'm in I have an office in our basement. I'm going down the stairs and I like literally cripple. I'm like, slumped over, think I'm gonna die. Like I, and then it seemed like it lasted forever. It probably was, I don't even know.

20 seconds. But it felt like forever and just when it ended, I was like, Oh, and then I went right back to what I was doing. I didn't tell anybody, didn't tell anybody. In January, I get shingles and all down my leg. I'm like, what the fuck is this red shit on my leg? I don't know that. And why does it feel like someone's electrocuting me?

And, so it was like these months leading up to it, this is all, November, 2019, January, 2020, March rolls around and it's boom, everything stops. And it's probably the greatest thing that's ever happened to me personally, health wise. [00:47:00] Because it forced me to slow down, and then I was like, Whoa, I can't go back to that shit again.

That was too much. I took too much on. And I think for a lot of people, they get to that place, and maybe they don't have that hard stop. They don't have that realization that they just can't keep pushing. The burnout side is a real thing and I don't know if we can talk about it and people can be like, yeah, I don't want to be like Danny thinking I'm going to die in my basement, and I'm just going to avoid that.

It's I wish you could, but you might not be able to, you might just have to go through something really challenging and realize that wow, this isn't really worth it. And what you're telling yourself that you're doing, are you really doing it for the reasons you say, or are you doing it because you're scared of something else that might happen?

Like you're moving away from, fear, you're running away from something cause you don't want to fail or whatever it might be versus. You get pulled towards things that are really important and compelling, and I feel like I'm doing that a lot more now versus for whatever reason, just feeling very motivated to try to not fail or prove people wrong or whatever it might be that's just unhealthy, deep down.

I think that I'm right there with you and for you guys it's hard to turn that off and I don't know, have you struggled with actually. Finding that [00:48:00] balance.

Nicole: Yes, absolutely. I think for you a little bit more than me Jesse, but, and I can remember, Danny, I feel like I was on your podcast.

I don't know exactly when, but it was certainly pre COVID and it was like, we're. I've got five clinicians. It was like multi clinician practice. Like we were in it. And I feel like without that pause, we wouldn't, we wouldn't have started. We hadn't started the podcast yet. We had not started business.

We'd start base barely started business coaching. We, but out of COVID came public PT rising both clinical and business side. And But we have also had to make sure that we're not doing the same thing again. We're not just being like, okay, cool. Now we have pelvic sanity still, and we have pelvic PT rising, and we have Pelvicon.

So we've had to make sure that Everything is a [00:49:00] lot more streamlined and goal focused and not just doing stuff just to do stuff, right? Not just, and I like what you said too about not just doing something because you see it done wrong and you want to do it better, but to take everything else out of.

Put your blinders on and be like, what do I want to do? What do we want to do? Who do we want to impact and not look at we're doing it because of any other outside influence other than we just want our own mental focus to be. Dialed in. Does that make sense?

Jesse: Yeah it makes sense to me. I'm not the one you gotta convince.

But yeah, I, it is a little bit of a struggle and having, a one year old and trying to be there with him and spend time with, that was a big challenge for us as we were doing it. And I think it's gonna be interesting this year. We've really tried to slow down. We've I think the other thing [00:50:00] that every entrepreneur comes to at some point is their own limitation where you're you start off as the backstop and especially when it's just you like it's only you and then you get to a point where you're hiring people, but it's still you who's on the hook or you're the one who's filling the gaps when there's a problem or a crisis.

And I think that's where we were at public sanity for so long. And really working to build a better team to frankly overhire and overinvest in our administrative staff. We have an amazing administrative staff now. We didn't have to have that before because I would just go in after everybody was done and fix everything in the evening, right?

And it's shoot, it doesn't really matter. We can hire whoever because I'm going to be there and overseeing the whole thing. And it's been a real learning curve for us over the last three or four years, too, of being able to truly get great people empower them. We've been doing that in the rising coaching program now for the first time in the last three or four months.

And it's been incredible as well to see people who have [00:51:00] gone through all of our programs now being able to turn that around and teach people beneath them. And again, it's about leveraging our ability to do some of this stuff and having a bigger impact. Then we could ever do when we were handling all the one on one calls ourselves or burning the candle at both ends to try to make all that stuff happen.

Clay's made us a little bit more deliberate about that. Yeah,

Nicole: and then just one other thing personally to share with everybody, honestly, because I feel like I didn't realize what that postpartum period was really going to be like. And I don't know how it was for your guys family, but I feel like We're, we were awesome and rocked it for four months and then, and we're like, what's everyone talking about?

This is simple. And then all of a sudden it's we had, we knew that are like immediate protected. Immediate postpartum time was that immediate protection was up and now we're like, oh, starting to get back into stuff and that's where I really started to freak out with oh my God, what are we going to do?

I don't understand. Clay's changing like every [00:52:00] day. We don't have the childcare setup that we need. I am feeling like really pulled and weird about letting anyone else take care of him, even though I really also miss the business part of stuff. And I want to get back to that. And you just, I just felt like right at that, like four to six month mark, like a whole set of different postpartum issues hit.

And we started fighting more and before it was like, we're this united front and clays are the best thing that ever happened to us. And we went through some fertility struggles. So we were just like stoked that happened that clay was actually here. And then all of a sudden the reality of him being here was like, Oh, this is very different.

And so we had a, not that long ago, like six months ago had this sort of other. Yeah. Yeah. Come to Jesus time with what are we really going to do now? How are we going to structure our time? How are we going to prioritize being with Clay? And it's cool that we had the opportunities to do what we needed to [00:53:00] do financially in order to make our life the way that it is now.

Because of all the hard work that we did for, 10 years prior was like really a neat thing, but it was definitely very hard. So for anyone else that is cause a lot of people, I'm sure you work with a lot of folks that are, go want to start their own business after they have a baby.

That's like a natural. Thing to be, okay, cool, I'm going to quit my job, I'm going to go on my maternity leave, and then I'm going to start my business. That was a huge surprise to me that I had a hard time in the middle of the first postpartum year versus at the beginning.

Danny: I think it's tough. Kids are Cause you're fricking hard, man. Like they make a, they scream, they cry, they keep you up. If you really think if you were trying to break someone mentally, you would just have like really annoying noises constantly and disrupt their sleep. And then. They pin you against each other where you're just like I need time to do this and I need time to do this.

And next thing you [00:54:00] know you're like your best friend who you're in this with, you guys are just freaking yelling at each other. And it's because this person that you brought into the world that you absolutely love is literally driving you crazy. And it's, and no one gives you a book on how to do that.

Like it's not like they give you instruction. It's crazy. They let you go home with this baby, this like human being. With literally no experience. None.

Nicole: And family dynamics change. I feel like that was another interesting thing for us. Where it's now all of a sudden we're having to deal with all this different family stuff that we never had to deal with before.

And we were just like, this shit's for the birds. Can I want to give Clay back for a second. Can someone like take care of him for a month while we figure our shit out?

Danny: Oh yeah. No, it's true. Or yeah, God forbid you spend three minutes longer at Christmas with one family than another. And then, then it's just they're, they lose their shit, right?

So it's, the thing is it's life, right? It's, it is what it is. We, and it's amazing as, at that, but it's these. I think these challenges are they're not unique to people in general, but in the [00:55:00] entrepreneurship space, because you put so much on yourself so much work capacity, there's so much risk as well that people don't, they can't, I don't think they can have a respect for the risk that you take.

And we get used to it, like we completely get used to it, but. There is a level of risk there that is a stressor underlying stressor. And then you add these other things into the equation and it just makes it so hard. I think for the two of you, I'd be interested to hear though okay, you have all this, this challenge, but then you take a step back and you're like, wow, what are we trying to build towards?

Like what? What are you trying to get your businesses to, to create for you on the life side for, for you and for you to clay. And then if you have any other kids as well, like what came from that? That's I guess your clarity that came out of all that. Yeah, go putting

Jesse: us on the spot.

But I think for me, Danny, it was for me, it was more living and enjoying the moments that we have with clay. Now, I was always such a future planner and oh, if I put this number [00:56:00] in and I run a compound interest calculator that we could retire at. 52 with just enough to get us by. And then if we don't take so that was very much me.

And I think it's been a clarion call is that right now for us, the time flexibility, the time freedom to be able to spend time with him in this time is more important than growing as fast as we could possibly grow or having a second pelvic sanity location, or, taking as many coaching clients as we could possibly squeeze onto the schedule.

That's just not our priority anymore. And I think there's a freedom in that as well, when you take that step back, and you get a little bit more of a holistic view of your life, and where you want the business to go, that you can then start to really invest your time in the things that actually move the needle in the business.

And one of the coolest things, we were just doing kind of our year end review from last year, and we do usually a thing that, where we go through our time, and we say, what do we want to [00:57:00] do more of, What do we need to cut and what do we need to keep doing? And we had hit, I was super proud of this last year, all of those for both Nicole and I have doing more.

Of the things that really matter and then getting this other stuff off our plate, whether that's automating it, delegating it, outsourcing it, whatever that was. And I think that priority forced us to do that. And I think it made us significantly better business owners ultimately is. Having that time limitation.

So yeah,

Nicole: which is and then also interesting too, because I feel like once the goal isn't just to get more business owners into our program or more of someone to buy another clinical education course that I do, it's not about like how many people are doing it. It's that we're going to be able to create almost like that process driven goal instead of our results driven goal, right?

It's like the process now is as to Okay. Be able to take a step back, look and be like, what is the pelvic health field really need right now? And then we can carve out time to create that. [00:58:00] That's, and in, in the cool way that works then we're gonna, we've already seen that more people are like blocking to us.

I feel like because we've shifted our Mindset a little bit on it's not about the number of people that come and spend money or do anything like that It's like it's a neat perspective to be able to craft,

Danny: I feel like this is where I Sometimes I don't know how this stuff works. You know the idea of You change your underlying sort of approach and really align that with what you're trying to do on the personal side and as well as in the profession, what you really are trying to do to help the profession improve and grow, which is something that I actually, I would say for the two of you, I very much respect for you doing, because in the coaching space, there's a lot of.

People that are really great marketers, but not [00:59:00] necessarily, they're not necessarily interested in moving the profession forward. They're interested in just making money. And they view it as an opportunity and it's transparent after a while, right? It's like people can tell and. If you don't have, if you don't have true passion for trying to help this profession, it gets, there's better opportunities, other places, like you could go somewhere else, and then maybe they will and they'll figure that out.

But I think once you align yourself with what you're trying to do. It's funny how it seems like the right people just gravitate towards you. And like I said, I don't actually understand how that works or why or whatever, but I can tell I've experienced something similar at myself where, you, you are basically just doing what you're supposed to do.

And when you do that and when you say the things you're supposed to say because they're truly what you feel then the right people Resonate with that and they end up wanting to work with you as well I think it's worth the effort of being very intentional about thinking about these things [01:00:00] because it may not seem like it's really Going to be great for the business when you do that and you sit down and you're like, wow, like, why am I doing this?

What don't we need to be doing? Or what should we be doing more of? What is maybe the right thing to do instead of the easy thing to do? And once, once you really nail that, it's crazy. Just how. Much easier. It is to achieve the business goals, and I don't know, I, that might sound a bit woo, and maybe I've lost some people here where they're like, Danny has lost a fucking mind, but it's true, and I said, I don't understand it.

All I know is it definitely works and it works with your practice, but it also works with, it works with life. If you're putting something out there that isn't truly who you are, the way you feel about things, you're going to really put yourself in a place where you're repelling people that maybe you should have a relationship with or you should, be in a community with or whatever.

Because the first thing is you got to realize what do you want to do? Who are you? And from there, start to make decisions based off of that, instead of trying to be cool for somebody else or, make a [01:01:00] decision based on revenue exclusively, it just doesn't work in the long term.

Nicole: Absolutely. And I feel when we set up pelvic sanity, there was, especially from a non clinician like Jesse, there was a couple of things where at the very beginning, we had to be like, what is the right thing to do for these patients with pelvic health concerns?

Right thing to do is to make sure that we never compromise on, one on one treatment sessions and like a really nice calm atmosphere with a really solid door and bougie stuff on the table warmers and all kinds of, essential oils going and all kinds of stuff. And because, and it was very good that we did that so early on because there were times when, business guy over here is Have you

Jesse: seen our essential oil budget? It's our second biggest line item. It's like linens, credit card fees, and then lavender. What the hell is this on the budget here,

Nicole: right?

But it's but those are the things that like, there's no, I will not practice [01:02:00] this way. And same thing, we've done that now for business. What do these people that are starting their own cash based PT practices need? And it's, a good, if we have coaches, it's great coaches that have been successful.

It's proven systems. It's transparent numbers with, we poll before and afterwards all the time. Like we report back what types of numbers people are getting in our programs. I know you do the same and you're reporting on that. Some of the other, I can guarantee you that not every coach does that, right?

Because if you actually looked at those numbers, they might not be that great. And that's not to say I'm not trying to bash anybody, one person, but it's like when. When you're driven by getting results for other people, then that, then you're, again, we're aligning in what we know needs to be happening for the profession and for the successful life of the person that's going to work with us, and that's really what [01:03:00] drives all of our decision making that way.

So it, I don't think it's very woo. I tend to be a little bit more woo than a lot of people might think. But I really believe in that, yeah, getting being truly authentic to yourself. You're going to attract the right people on them and both on the business side and honestly patient side.

All of our patients at Pelvic Sanity are freaking awesome. Yeah, we even we have a whole podcast on the two percenters because it's also like when you are aligned that way and most people are attracted to you by that and you have people coming into your office that. are just really awesome people as well.

There's 2 percent that's very easy to spot that's like, how did you get here? You're being a pain in the ass. You're not abiding by our policies. And honestly get the fuck out. Yeah, it's not worth it. Because we don't want you to be here. And it's not, we're not worried about.

Losing that patient revenue by saying actually, we're not a good fit for you, you need to go to another clinic. And I just feel like there's all that is to say is that that alignment of what you're truly trying to, who you're trying to help and who you are as a person is really what [01:04:00] ends up making you just exponentially that much more successful, I

Danny: think.

And it sounds

Jesse: easy. To just be authentically yourself. And it seems like it's the most difficult thing out there. And Danny, I would just want to say, I think I respect the hell out of everything that you put out and do, because you can feel that emanating from you. Like when I first read fuck insurance, you had to change the name

Danny: on that.

Is this true? Yeah, it's still on Amazon, but when we. When we revised it, we did change the name mainly because Amazon, most social media platforms have changed their policies on allowing profanity, even if you put an asterisk where the U would be they so anyway.

No, it's still there. It's in fact, people, more people buy that than the revised copy that we actually put marketing dollars behind which is funny and ironic and also irritating for our marketing company. But yes yeah. Anyway, yeah, it does exist still.

But

Jesse: just to give you your due there, I've read a lot of business books from folks and I feel like 98 [01:05:00] percent of the kind of book that is. Oh, here's all of these success stories now by my program. Yeah, that work, right? And I really genuinely, I read that and I get so frustrated with those other things.

And when I read what you put out, it's man, every word in there, you're literally just trying to help people with that. And you never see that. It's always some sort of like slick thing. And we've even had people like came to us for business coaching who literally said, we looked at their thing. It's look at their numbers.

They're failing as a business. And they said, it's okay, I'm just going to go out and coach other people now, because it's easier

Danny: money.

Nicole: Literally, someone said that to us, and we're just going to apply it.

Jesse: They put up all you need is like a website and a couple of suckers, really. I don't, that's so frustrating for us.

And it is just hard sometimes to remember that, that long term thing is, man just being authentic, putting your stuff out there. Putting stuff out that you really think is going to help other people. And that is going [01:06:00] to eventually lead to that success. But yeah, we're seeing the, you have a longer term view of this than we do, having been coaching for a longer time,

Nicole: PT biz been a thing, like at least 10 years.

Danny: No, I started working with people like on a one on one basis and it was the end of 2015. I now would take three month contracts, with people where I, and actually. Yeah, before that, but not in a structured way, but I would take three month contracts and I'd be like, Hey, here's the deal.

I'm going to work with you for three months. I'm going to try to help you with whatever I can help you with. I don't know if it's going to work. And even with people, when I first started working with, I was like, if I can't help you, then I'll just give you your money back. I actually don't know if this is going to work but I need you to actually pay something so you'll pay attention.

So you know and that was it. And I actually did that actually with one practice out of the Bay area that I was like, this didn't fucking work. And a lot of it had to do, it was above my pay grade. It was more infrastructure stuff I didn't understand. And so I was like sorry but no worries, you don't actually owe me anything.

So I appreciate it. And so that's how we [01:07:00] started And a lot of it was irritating to me in some ways because people would reach out and I would answer all these questions and my wife would start actually we started to get mad because I'm sitting on the couch while she's trying to like, spend some time with me and I'm like following up with.

People that are just asking me business questions as we're trying to run a business and raise kids and so finally one of my mentors, he was like, Hey, just put a monetary dollar amount on it. And the right people will say yes. The wrong people say no, but more people started to say yes than I expected.

So then, it went that direction. But I would say the thing that happened that was interesting for me was when we first, like I spent a year with. six no seven practice owners. And I was like, all right, I'll spend a year working just with these seven, but we're going to get together at the end and we're going to meet up at our office.

We'll do a day just working through some business stuff and we'll see how we like it. But when we got those people together, it was so fun. It was like one of the more fun times that I've ever had. And I was like, this is crazy. I, this is literally great for me. I love this.

It's so fun. And, they're like, they're paying to get [01:08:00] help with their business. But then when I got a chance to connect all of them, many of these first seven people that we worked with they're really good friends. Like some of them are in the other people's like wedding parties and stuff.

And it's, and you're like, wow, this is cool. So there's a connection, a community piece to it that we really liked and realized that this is a missing link, I think for a lot of folks was to have that ability to connect with another clinical entrepreneur that is treating people similarly, but also trying to grow a business like that.

And that's really, that was a turning point for. For us, because we're still, we still were growing and running a practice and all the things that come along with that. And I think that's the difference for a lot of people. And for the two of you as well, it's to have legitimate experience with running a business.

And then let's actually be a good coach, which is not, doesn't always go hand in hand. And actually enjoy coaching people. That combination is pretty rare. And is the reason why, you tend to see really good results and you sell your. Your conference out every year and it's because you actually have that combination, which I [01:09:00] think is very rare.

And the other thing too, is no, I'm not bashing on all coaches because like I have, I feel like it is a bad rap for a good reason. There's a lot of people that are. They have a course on this and that or whatever. But outcomes, truly getting outcomes for people, it's hard. You take it personally.

If they don't do what they're supposed to do, it's hard when you want something more than somebody wants it for themselves. Like that sucks, and, but it's also like the outcome, like we were talking about, earlier, if I think about in the last 12 months, like the people we worked with 65, 000 new patients.

And I think the net effect of. What are the physical activities those people can do now versus before? And like the enjoyment they get with being around the people they like to be around doing the things I like to do. And the net effect of that is really such a profound driver for some of the challenges associated with any business.

But this one in particular has unique. Challenges. I'm sure you guys have realized as you're working with people all over the place and remote teams and stuff like that. But you come back to it. It's pretty amazing. We get a chance to do that [01:10:00] regardless of the outcome, like we've all, I feel like we were playing with house money at this point.

So being able to do something fun and really help other people along the way, like what an amazing mix, we could be selling fidget spinners and be fucking miserable and well, but most people, if we're not found, I don't know if you've noticed this too, but most of my friends that I've met that are wealthy, they're either unhealthy or unhappy.

Very few of them have I ever met that are wealthy, they're happy, and they're healthy. They, physically, mentally, relationships, all that. And I'm like, this is not, this should be the norm. Why the hell can't we have more of this, and that's really for us, at least our reason for what we do now, is driving more towards that.

We just happen to do it with, most performance based clinicians. Yeah,

Jesse: I it's so fun to see Danny that's like convergent evolution in your story and ours and same we had Similar aha moments when we put people together and realize it's not about just oh, here's this business tactic Yeah, it's about the community it's about all the stuff that you guys do as clinicians right is the [01:11:00] accountability is the community and We had our first like business retreat for our people out here and had that same kind of aha moment where he rented out A boat and took him around the harbor.

Oh, that's cool. It's and pelvic pts I think they traumatized the poor bartender on this boat He still is in therapy right but you get a group of like 50 pelvic pts together and they're drinking And this poor guy like learned more about anatomy in that hour long cruise than he ever wanted to know.

I think

Danny: he didn't even know he had a pelvic floor.

Nicole: And then now we realize he has a problem and that we can help and why his relationship is failing and all the things.

Danny: I think that's great. But it's also what's cool about it is they're uniquely different cultures. And that's what I find, what people need to find.

And if you're listening to this, like you got to realize like, where are your people, what, if you're looking for like help with your business and you want a community element and, coaching wrapped around it you got to figure out like where are your people? Cause if you come to an event that I'm doing, like we're doing a hard fucking workout at six o'clock in the morning [01:12:00] on Thursday morning, right?

This is the kind of people that we gravitate towards. The vast majority of people are showing up and they look like they're ready to do burpees at any point in time. And

Nicole: when you do it to us, we're doing sound bath on the beach and people are crying. That's what I'm saying.

Danny: And even though we might have similar business principles that apply across the board, it's not packaged the same way. And you need to find the people that are the right fit for you because that community of people, I always talk about Skill set is important that you're going to learn, people processes, sales, marketing, finance, all that stuff.

You need to know that stuff like it or not. You got to do it if you want to run a business, but like the network side of the other side, right? It's these are people that if you could stop in at any city where anybody in our community is at and hit them up to grab dinner. And it'd be a great conversation because you'd have such, so much in common and you're driving towards similar goals.

And that's what I think for a lot of people, they're missing that. We're so isolated. We're so compartmentalized. And especially as clinicians that are trying to do do something [01:13:00] in business it's not a lot of us. And to connect with other people like that, they can celebrate wins with you.

They understand that the challenges that your brother or your friend who works somewhere else, maybe doesn't. And thinks you're crazy because you started a business, like all of a sudden now you have this, not to say it's like a support group or whatever, but it's like people that are in your corner that want to see you be successful and they want to help you out.

And it's not just us. It's like everybody. And that's the net effect of that is just very powerful. And it's hard to lose if you really go down that route and you find your right group of people. And sometimes you're in the wrong place and that's okay too. You got to maybe bounce around and find the one that is the best fit for you.

Yeah,

Nicole: totally. I, we totally agree with that.

Jesse: I feel like that's an excellent way to end this, Dani. That pretty much sums it up. I can't, I feel like we could talk for another four or five hours. Maybe we just will offline,

Danny: but Yeah, you know what's funny? I feel this is a very enjoyable conversation for me.

And I lose track of time with stuff like this. It's a, you know I have no idea how long we've been talking, but [01:14:00] the that's like for me, that it's just like such a fun activity. It's such an energizing thing to do. I'll leave here and I'll have more energy than whenever we started. And I just really appreciate a, candid conversation about this stuff to hear your perspective on things.

And it's, it is very refreshing to hear How much overlap and similarities are we're finding in, for me, at least it's okay, cool. We're definitely doing the right thing. We're on the right path to have that, to reinforce by what you're doing. So I appreciate it. I hope everybody likes this conversation.

I've been trying to do more of these with people that I respect. And some of it is. Is for you, but a lot of it is for me and just being able to connect and share ideas. And so hopefully, you find value in this as much as as I have. And hopefully you guys have as well.

Nicole: Absolutely. And a real quick shout out to the person who connected us. I knew who you were and stuff before, but Shantae Coffield. You were on her podcast recently. She's a good friend of mine. So shout out to her for one of the most authentic people I've

Danny: ever met. She's great. Talk about a great example of somebody that's into the shit [01:15:00] they're into, right?

Like she's, and I appreciate that about her probably more than anything else, like I just really, and it's not, people like her are just like so rare. And I wish there were more of them, like that's really it. It's just be yourself. You'll attract the people that are right for you.

Be what, be into what you're into. Be into volleyball. If you're into volleyball, move from North, New Jersey where it's cold to somewhere warm. If that's what you want to do, but dude sit down and think about what you want your life to be like, right? Build it around that. And I think that's a great example of what Shantae has done.

And yeah, I'm very thankful that she connected us and we got to do that first podcast. And I remember I was like, man, you got to start a podcast. You're awesome at this. There's certain people I talked to that are just. You're like natural, great communicator and this platform and to see like how much reach you've had is amazing.

Because it's so helpful and the ideas you share and the people you talk to, it's just, it's great. So yeah, Shante, thank you so much. Thanks so much.

Nicole: Cool. Thanks Danny for your time today. And I had just awesome conversation and we will be in touch a lot of times.

Jesse: Yes. Thanks again, Danny.

That [01:16:00] is, and just again for being. What you are to the field, the way that you're pushing things forward. Like we see that's inspirational to us. And I know you've the trickle down effect of the stuff that you're doing. And we hope some of the stuff that we're doing, I think really is changing things.

And I, we've seen it, you've seen it in just the last five, 10 years. How big this movement is growing that the number of people that are being touched the number of employees who have amazing jobs So they actually get to work one on one with a patient like oh, yeah That's it. It is really cool to see and you've been an inspiration to us along the whole journey So we just want to say thank you and so great to have you on the for the conversation today.

Danny: Yeah. No, I appreciate it Thanks so much for the conversation. I look forward to someone coming out. Hey peach entrepreneurs. We have big Exciting news a new program that we just came out with it is our PT biz part time to full time five day challenge. Over the course of five days, we get you crystal clear on exactly how much money you need to replace by getting you ultra clear on how [01:17:00] much you're actually spending.

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