E617 | The Biggest Hurdle When Starting Your Practice

Today, Doc Danny delves into the challenges that individuals face when embarking on a career in functional medicine. Drawing from his conversation with a Nurse Practitioner, he explores the fears that arise when starting a practice, including concerns about income stability and the time it takes to replace a full-time income.

Doc Danny candidly shares his own personal journey of leaving a secure military career for a different path, highlighting the fear associated with leaving something safe and consistent.

Recognizing the vital importance of time and financial freedom, Danny discusses how these factors enable individuals to create the life they desire and surround themselves with the people they cherish. He emphasizes the role of wealth in making life easier and enabling individuals to pursue their passions.

Encouraging listeners to take a chance on themselves, Danny inspires them to build their own health and wellness businesses, dedicating themselves to helping others achieve longevity and happiness.

Tune in to this thought-provoking episode and discover the transformative power of overcoming fear and embracing a career in functional medicine. Doc Danny's insights and personal anecdotes will inspire and motivate you to step outside your comfort zone and pursue a fulfilling path that not only brings financial success but also makes a positive impact on the lives of others.

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: Hey, real quick, before we get started, head over to Facebook and join the PT entrepreneurs Facebook group. If you haven't done so yet, we have monthly live trainings going on there. There's an opportunity for you to join in the conversation instead of just listening to what I have to say on this podcast, as well as the people that I bring on.

And it's a really cool place to join about 6, 000 other clinicians that are. Honestly, trying to change the landscape of our profession through these cash and hybrid practices. One other thing that's really cool is we have a guide in there. That's a quick start guide. When you join, you can go and check this out.

There's about seven videos that we've curated that are the most common questions we get in the best case studies that we've found to really help you start, grow, and scale your practice up to seven figures. So if you haven't done so yet, head to Facebook request to join the PT entrepreneurs Facebook group.

You have to be a clinician. We're going to check you out. We don't just let anybody in. But if you are, Hey there, go ahead, get signed up. We'd love to have the conversation with you in that group.

So here's the question. How do physical therapists like us who don't want to 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 is Danny Matei and welcome to the PT entrepreneur podcast.

Hey, what's going on? Dr. Danny here with the PT entrepreneur podcast. And today we're talking about. The biggest hurdle you have to face if you decide to go into practice for yourself. Now this is going to come based off a conversation that I had just today with a friend of mine that is thinking about starting a functional medicine practice.

This is a nurse practitioner that is looking to move over into that sort of niche career field. These are, Very well established cash-based practices. I've worked with a handful of these. I have friends that run these types of practices, and this is a type of practice where, you're going to go the non traditional medical route where they're looking at blood blood test samples, fecal samples.

Sometimes they're looking at Like different food allergy sensitivity tests that you might have. They're looking at a lot of the things that we would even talk to people about. What's your sleep like? What's your stress management like? How's your movement look, how all these things combined and look at hormone levels in particular and how those are affected by all these other factors.

This is the type of practice that I go to myself. I don't go to a a normal, general practitioner. My general practitioner practices what would be considered more functional or integrative medicine. And the individual that I was talking to you could tell They, they are fearful of it not working and it's so interesting because this is not somebody that we would probably work with within PT biz, but there's so many similarities that it was interesting to have this conversation and to hear what they were saying about the fears that they have.

One of those being, what about my income? What about the paycheck that I get? Like how long do you think it will take for me to be able to replace that? And that's such a difficult thing to say. It's just a very difficult answer to give someone. It's very much based on their environment, their preexisting relationships, their skillset, their ability to market and sell.

And what we can say is historically the people that we work with within cash based physical therapy practices, it's about a five to six month process for most people to get to the point where their side hustle is basically. At what they would need to replace their full time income, or at least getting to a place where they have to make a decision of whether they go all in on their own business, or they keep it as a side hustle and keep their full time job.

It's hard for people to do that. To be honest with most stages at that stage, you become very time poor. So you almost have to choose. But a lot of people like the stage where they're completely bankrupt. They're doing well in their side hustle and they have a full time job. They might be time poor, but they're making more money than they've ever made.

So they're putting themselves in a really solid foundation. But this is the first question, that I typically hear from people, how long until I've replaced my income? How long until, I've gotten to the same place? And it's the one thing that I think holds most people back. It's the fear of not being able to support themself.

It's the fear of giving up the trajectory that they might have within a large company. It's the very same fear that almost stopped me from getting out of the military. Because I knew that, hey, if I stayed in, as long as I didn't screw up, do anything, dumb and that I kept, doing a good job at the jobs that I had.

I'm definitely making major. Most of my friends that I graduated with, they're looking at lieutenant colonel right now. These were big deals to me. I grew up in the military. I grew up in a military family. The idea of becoming a lieutenant colonel or a colonel as, as insignificant as that might sound to other people, that was always a huge aspiration of mine to really make.

A decent rank within the military by the time that I had retired. But that wasn't the case for me. That wasn't what I ended up doing. I ended up taking a very different path. And as I look back and I talk to my friends that are still in those positions, there's so much that I'm grateful for in terms of what my life looks like versus what their life looks like.

The ability to have so much more say over what I do and when I do it, the involvement that I have within my. My, my family and with my kids lives that I just wouldn't be able to have with constantly being at training and long work hours and deployments and things like that come with that specific job.

Now with this individual in particular, they were not, we're not in the military and leaving that, but it's a big hospital organization where they, again, there's a lot of prestige that comes from the hospital that they're associated with. There's a lot of resources, there's a big team, they're doing things that they like to do.

But it is at the cost of no say over when they have no time flexibility whatsoever. And with a young family, it's tough on this person in particular. And what I see with many people that we work with is they come to this sort of crossroads where they have to decide is the consistency of a paycheck and the the rank or the positions that, you're going to be able to potentially make over the next.

20 years. Is that is that worth it in comparison to being able to go and volunteer at your kids field day whenever you want, being able to go and have lunch with your spouse whenever you want, being able to focus on your health and wellness because you have the time flexibility to do being able to just have consistent sleep for this type of a medical provider that I'm talking about they're doing swing schedules as well.

They're working 24 hour shifts. They're working at night. Really hard on their own personal health and fitness, and you have to make that decision and to leave one job to then go and try to start this other thing when you're so established in this other environment can feel like you're starting.

From scratch and it's just sucks. It's not like your reputation Necessarily transfers with you and all the credibility from your co workers Transfers with you outside of a big organization. It didn't do that for me when I moved to Atlanta Nobody knew who the hell I was They didn't know if I had a good reputation or bad reputation with patients and with performance based work I had to earn that and I can definitely say this It's the scariest transition is scariest decision that I ever made was to cut the cord with something safe and consistent and likely, had a strong likelihood of progression to then move into something where nothing was guaranteed.

But by doing so, it's the one thing that I've done that I look back on and I'm so thankful that I did because of how much it has improved so many other areas of my life as well as put me in a place to help so many other people within our profession. And As much as I can talk to somebody else and give them advice and assurance that, hey, this is the data that we see and this is it.

And you can get a mentor like what we do with people. You can work with somebody that's already done what you're trying to do, which I definitely would recommend to this person as well. But even with all those things, there's one person that you have to convince. And that's yourself. And there are absolutely going to be days.

If you decide to go the route where you are going to do something on your own where you think it was a terrible decision and other days where you think it's the best decision you've ever made and you're going to ride this crazy roller coaster we call like an entrepreneurial roller coaster and it could be even in the same day you might see a patient and then you crush it and they commit to solving a plan of care with you or something like that and then the next person just no shows you so you go from I'm on top of the world I'm going to crush it.

This is really working to all of a sudden. Oh my gosh. What if everybody no shows? What if nobody comes back and you have to try to rationalize that to yourself and you over exaggerate the ups and downs of this early on because it's such a new scary thing. But everybody has to go through it and keep in mind.

This fear, this limiter that stops so many people from taking a chance on themselves. It's the, that velvet rope that keeps people out of the life that you get a chance to earn. If you do actually take a chance on yourself, very few people will do it. Even fewer people will actually succeed. And if you do, you'll be able to put yourself in a place where you have both time and financial freedom, where you get to live a life that.

People think it's just not possible where you get to do things and be around the people that you want whenever you want to do it and have the disposable income to be able to do that in a world that demands that you need income, you need money in order to do things in this world. Life is easier whenever you have more money.

That's simple. It's the truth. It's not everything, but it sure does make everything easier. And if you take a chance on yourself and you can increase that earning potential and still do something that you really like and you get a lot of meaning out of. It's a great win in my opinion, especially to combat the massive amount of burnout that we see within the healthcare industry as a whole, not just physical therapy, but even, with this individual looking more in emergency medicine, this is an opportunity to really be able to marry those things together and have a great business that you can run and truly help people.

So if you're listening to this and you're in that stage, You're not alone. In fact, it would be weird if you weren't scared. You'd be a psycho baby. I don't know you, you would be too risky. In my opinion, you would take far too many risks and you probably would have to work on, toning that down some versus most of us in healthcare.

We're very risk averse people. We're very logical. We're thinking through all these different things and we never really thought that we would have to go into business for ourselves. So we are very fearful of the unknown when it comes to our career and what's going to happen and to give up a very secure place, a place where, you have progression opportunities and a secure paycheck and benefits.

Damn, that's a hard thing to do, but I have a hell of a lot of respect for anybody that does because if you can get past those things that create golden handcuffs for you in those bigger organizations. You have an opportunity to create a life that is different than everyone else that stays there.

And it is something that's right there for you if you're willing to take it. I hope this hits home for some of you. If you're thinking about doing it, I encourage you to honestly really look at, what you want in your life and decide if it's the right thing for you to do. And if it is, you can only wait so long before it starts to fester and bother you, and eventually you're going to pull...

You know the trigger on doing it and I hope that you do and I hope that you're successful because we need people To really be able to help folks in these types of businesses that we help them build with these cash based services And these health and wellness based services that are really helping people have longevity and happiness and be you know Healthy within the one vehicle they have in life, which is their body.

So I hope this helps I hope that you take a chance on yourself. And as always I appreciate you so much for listening to this podcast And i'll catch you next week.

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 much you're actually spending.

We get you crystal clear on the number of people you're going to see and the average visit rate you're going to need to have in order to replace your income, to be able to go. Full time, we go through three different strategies that you can take to go from part time to full time and you can pick the one that's the best for you based on your current situation.

Then we share with you the sales and marketing systems that we use within our mastermind that you need to have as well if you want to go full time in your own practice. And then finally, we help you create a one page business plan. That's right, not these 15 day business plans. You want to take the Small Business Association, a one day business plan.

It's going to help you get very clear on exactly what you need to do and when you're going to do to take. Action if you're interested in signing up for this challenge, it's totally free head to physicaltherapybiz. com forward slash Challenge get signed up there. Please enjoy we put a lot of energy into this.

It's totally free It's something I think is going to help you Tremendously as long as you're willing to do the work if you're doing the work you're getting Information put down and getting yourself ready to take action in a very organized way You will have success which is what we want. So head to physicaltherapybiz.

com forward slash challenge and get signed up today