E809 | The Frisbee Lesson: Two Essential Traits For PT Entrepreneurs

Success in business isn’t about being the smartest. It’s about being the most human.

In this post, Doc Danny shares the two traits that separate thriving clinic owners from those who burn out or fade away. And they might surprise you.

Trait #1: Kindness

If you became a physical therapist, odds are—you’re already a kind person. You want to help. You want to make people’s lives better. That’s powerful.

But kindness in entrepreneurship isn’t just about being nice. It’s about how you treat people:

• Patients

• Staff

• Partners

• Even competitors

When you show up with empathy and generosity, people remember. It creates loyalty, trust, and a magnetic brand. It creates moments that change people—like the story of Dave’s son giving away his treasured Frisbee to a younger kid at the park. That act of kindness? That’s what sticks.

But kindness alone isn’t enough.

Trait #2: Resilience

This is the one most PTs have to actively develop.

Let’s be real:

• 1 in 5 businesses fail in the first year

• 50% don’t make it to year five

Why? Because resilience is rare. And building a business will test it daily.

You’ll face:

• Rejection from potential clients

• Staff conflicts

• Financial fear

• Market changes

• Tough decisions you’d rather avoid

And still—you keep going.

Resilience is a skill. You can learn it through:

• Sports

• Hard jobs

• The military

• Parenthood

• And yes—running a business

The Winning Combo

What Dave’s learned after 10+ years and helping 1,000+ entrepreneurs is this:

👉 Kindness without resilience = burnout
👉 Resilience without kindness = toxic leadership

But together?
💥 That’s where trust, grit, and long-term success come from.

Final Thought

Success in business without success in life is failure.

If you want both, focus on becoming someone who is kind and resilient. Not just one or the other. And the best part? You can start becoming that person today.

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Podcast Transcript

Danny:  Look, when I was treating full-time, I can count on one hand how many times I ate lunch and didn't catch up on documentation during that time. Well, we wanna help you get your lunch back, and we're gonna do that with an AI tool that we created called Claire. Now Claire is a documentation AI scribe that we built and specifically trained to be able to document physical therapy notes very accurately, very quickly, and.

Be able to function in the background while you are focusing on the human being the patient in front of you. This is one of the best ways to take away mundane activities that none of us like to do, and free your time up to focus on the people in front of you, as well as free up time for you to do other things in life that you want to do.

Way more than write your notes. So if you wanna try this for free, you can head to meet claire.ai. That's Meet MEET. C-L-A-I-R-E AI and get signed up for 10 free notes that you can test this out, see how it works, see how much time it's gonna save you and get your lunch back. 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's Danny Matta, and over the last 15 years, I've done pretty much everything you can in the profession. I've been a staff boutique. I've been an active duty military officer, physical therapist. I've started my own cash practice. I've sold that cash practice. And to date my company physical therapist has helped over a thousand clinicians start, grow, and scale their own cash practices.

So if this sounds like something you want to do, listen up 'cause I'm here to help you.

Okay, today we're gonna talk about the two traits you need to be a successful clinical entrepreneur and they might not be what you think. My name's Amy Te, I'm the founder of PT Biz. And over the last 10 years, I've started scaled sold practices as well as helped over a thousand entrepreneurs start scale and, and even some of them sell their own practices as well.

And here's what I've learned doing that there are two traits. That above all else are needed in order to be able to have success as a clinical entrepreneur. And one of these, you already have the second one you're probably already working on. Lemme tell you a quick story about why I am gonna share this with you today and how this relates because.

I have two children and my goal is to raise great people, right? Great human beings that are citizens, that are productive people in in our world. And there's two things that I try really hard to instill in my kids, and they're the same things that clinical entrepreneurs need to be successful as well.

The first one is they need to be kind. Kindness is an incredibly powerful skill, and honestly, it's what many of you probably already have, but. I have two kids, one's 11 and one is 13. And one thing that we work really hard on is to help them realize that the more that you help other people, the more that you give to other people, the more impact you have in the world, the more that you help other people.

It feels great. It, it's, it's something that gets passed forward and you teach somebody a lesson about how to treat other people at the same time. My son plays ultimate Frisbee. And uh, when he made his middle school ultimate Frisbee team, he was given a Frisbee that had his school logo on it, and he's never ever thrown it.

Okay? This is a, uh, treasured item for him. We went to go through the Frisbee across the street at this school yesterday, and the only one that, that was, uh, on the way out the door was his Frisbee. Now, he did not want to throw it. I told him, I said, look, we'll throw it around. Probably won't drop it. I'll clean it off if it gets dirty at all.

And then it'll be good as new. So he didn't really wanna do it, but he went along with it. Anyway, when we get over to the park, there are two younger kids there, and as soon as we start throwing the Frisbee, what do they do? They run over and they say, can we play with you guys? Can we play? So what are you gonna say?

You know, like, no, get outta here, kid scram, whatever. Keep in mind, my son's 13 years old, he's in seventh grade, and. So we threw the Frisbee with him, taught him how to throw different, you know, variations of, uh, of how to throw a Frisbee, how to catch it in different places, whatever. Just ran around, ran little routes with them and had a great time.

And when we went to leave, um, instead of just heading out, my son actually took his prized Frisbee and he gave it to this second grade kid who didn't have a Frisbee. And he asked him, he said, do you have one to practice? And he said, no. He goes, cool, you can have this one now that. That's a moment of kindness that is very, uh, rare, I think, and, and also very positive for someone who's 13 years old.

These are traits that I'm, you know, are, we're well on our way to, to having people that are positive citizens in our world. Now, I. The, the flip side is that the second trait is resilience. This is something that frankly, everybody needs to work on to improve, and my kids are no different. And there's many things that we're doing with them to try to improve resilience, um, as they grow up, right?

But typically they don't go hand in hand. And this is frankly sad and something that I don't think needs to be this way. Because you can be kind with without being a pushover. You can be resilient without being an asshole. And for whatever reason, these two things tend to run in parallel, uh, with each other, uh, and, and not be kind and resilient.

Now there's obviously plenty of cases where, where people are this way and usually they're very successful, very happy people, and they make the lives of everybody else around them better. Now, you as a clinical entrepreneur. You are are already a probably a pretty kind person and the reason I know that is most people don't go into the field of physical therapy.

A field in which you're helping people get outta pain and get back to the things that they love to do, because you're a jackass, right? Like you're a very kind person in most cases. Now, here's where you're gonna have to work really hard to actually get what you want in life. And that is building resilience.

That is building the ability to, uh, like take failures, to put yourself at risk, to get back into scenarios that maybe you're afraid of, uh, to, to. Feel uncomfortable and be okay with that and learn things. And, and the reality, the statistics on businesses making it in the US are, they're not on your side.

Okay? One, uh, one in five businesses will fail the first year, 50% of businesses will fail in the first five years that they're in business. That means half of you listening to this, if you have a business for five years, probably ain't gonna work out. Why? Because people typically are bad at business.

They're not resilient and they don't treat people the way that they should, especially in a service-based business. But if you can do those things, you can have businesses for decades. Our, our practice still exists today and is thriving. It is almost 11 years old, and it is, there's, there's no end in sight to it.

As long and as long as we can continue to do the right things for the people that we work with, you can have something very similar, a very, very, uh, successful, very robust business that provides a service that people need and you can feel really good about. So you have to have this combination of both things.

And here's the funny thing about resilience. You can learn how to be a resilient person in many ways. I learned resilience through, uh, sports, through, uh, working very difficult jobs that my dad went out of his way to try to, to get for me, I think, so that I would also realize that like manual labor maybe isn't the path for me.

Forever. Uh, the military taught me a lot about resilience. Having kids taught me a lot, a lot about resilience. Starting and running a business taught me an insane amount about resilience. But for you, you have to realize that this is a skill you're probably gonna have to continue to work on the rest of your life.

You, you probably don't have to lean into how do I become a more kind person? That's probably ingrained in you, right? Uh, because of who you are in the profession that you picked. But being resilient doesn't always go hand in hand with that. And you know what I see, and it's sad to see this is, you know, there's, there's a mentality that, you know, the the nice guy, the nice girl, they finished last.

And in some cases that is true in our society, you'll get walked all over, passed over for promotions. You know, you won't get what you want in life because you're scared that you're gonna get turned down or that you're gonna fail. You know, this idea of somebody being kind and meek is, doesn't have to be that way.

You can be a resilient, gritty person, but yet still treat people incredibly well. And that is a combination that I've found to be the best combination for success. Not in just business, but in life. Which, which frankly. Success in one area without the other. In my, in my opinion as an entrepreneur is a failure.

I wanna have success in, in both areas. I wanna have a well-rounded, balanced life. And I if, if we need anything, honestly, like if you look at the way that, you know, society is, is continuing to progress, it is becoming more divided. Uh, it, it's, it's, it's definitely more divisive and we need more kind, resilient people.

We need more people that are incredibly nice to each other, but they are gritty, you know, and they. Put the work in. They, they're not afraid of failing. If they fail, they continue to push on and continue to work at getting better and better and helping people around them. And that's what entrepreneurship forces us to do.

It is the number one way of improving yourself. It it, whether you like it or not, I thought starting a business was about starting a business. It is the most direct way to have a personal, uh, development path that I've ever found. And a lot of that is developing resiliency. It's developing, getting over the fear of things that you have the fear of talking to somebody about money for.

For something that you're, you're providing them, that is very valuable. The fear of having that tough conversation with a staff member that you know isn't doing the right thing, but you're avoiding it. The fear of moving into a bigger space because you're taking on more leverage, more, more debt. You know, you have loans and you're expanding the fear of economic changes of things that are happening, and how are you gonna run a business during that time?

The fear of maybe leaving your job to go pursue what you actually wanna do. Uh, in the clinical entrepreneurship space, all of these things are fear and being a resilient person is being able to deal with fear and be able to get over that and be able to deal with rejection and failure. 'cause it's gonna happen no matter what.

So these are the two things you need. I. Kindness, resilience. If you focus on those two things, you're gonna have a whole hell of a lot of success. You're gonna have everything that you want, but it's not an easy path to go that route. It's not easy at all, and you gotta put the work in. So I hope this helps you.

I hope this clarifies the things that you need to work on. I hope my son's Frisbee story sticks in your mind next time you think about, you know, the passing forward, being kind to people. And I hope that you decide to take a chance on yourself and build that resilience and that grit that you only develop.

By actually jumping into the arena and starting and trying to grow a business.

Hey, peach Entrepreneurs, we have big, exciting news, a new program that we just came out with. It is our PT B 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 getting 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 wanna go full-time in your own practice. And then finally, we help you create a one page business plan's, right? Not these 15 day business plans. You wanna take the Small business association, a one day business plan that's gonna help you get very clear on exactly what you need to do.

And when you're gonna do it, to take action, if you're interested and signing up for this challenge is totally free. Head to physical therapy biz.com/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 gonna help you tremendously, as long as you're willing to do the work.

If you're doing, 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 physical therapy biz.com/challenge and get signed up today.