E578 | The Key To Being A Calm Leader

Today, we are exploring the relevance of philosophy for business owners. Understanding your very own emotional control is one of the biggest areas you need to have dialed in when it comes to building a team because people can be very unpredictable. Managing your emotions can be a superpower.

• Exploring Self-Management Through Eastern and Western Philosophies
• Focusing on what you can control in business
• How to create frameworks and barriers around your reactions

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: So here's the question. How do physical therapists like us who don't wanna see 30 patients a day, who don't want to work home health and have real student loans create a career and life for ourselves that we've always dreamed about? This is the question, and this podcast is the answer. My name's Danny Matte, and welcome to the PT Entrepreneur Podcast.

What's going on guys? Dr. Danny here with the PT Entrepreneur Podcast, and today we're talking philosophy. Now wait, don't fall asleep on me, just cuz I said philosophy. Don't turn it off. This is something that I enjoy learning about something that I'm actually interested. I'm excited to talk about this today and share a story with you.

It's a couple, maybe a couple stories and why I think this is gonna be relevant for anybody that is a business owner in particular, but really I think it just applies to pretty much anybody. And when I think of philosophy, I think of a couple old guys arguing about the meaning of life and.

That's what I thought it was until, I don't know, maybe about 10 years ago when I first got exposed to anybody that had anything to say on philosophy that I really even cared to listen to listen to. And it happened to be one of my one of the bosses I had, like the main boss I had, I guess whenever I was at my brigade whenever I was at Scofield Barracks and I had a brigade.

Commander he was a Berg Colonel. And he was really into like book club kind of stuff. So he basically would assign books for officers to read, and then we would have to give our thoughts on it and he would ask us about it. Pop quiz, asshole running, we're running today.

What'd you think of that book? And and so anyway, that, that's the first place that I got exposed to to anything had to do with philosophy. And that was actually the book Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, which is a very common book to see military leaders have, by the way, because Marcus Aurelius was a military leader.

He was the emperor of Rome, and he was someone that was actively leading the militaries in multiple wars actually. While he was the emperor. So it was interesting to, hear his own perspective of him coaching himself up basically, and journaling for him to, to himself. And that was the first exposure that I had based off of a book that I was assigned basically by this leader that I had.

And I didn't really think much of it after that honestly. And when I. I went into business for myself. You realize very quickly that business shines a big ass light on the things that you are really good at. It will highlight that, and it will also highlight the things that you are really bad at, and it just, it's like it multiplies these things in one way, it's really positive because you can play to your strengths and you can really focus on the things you're really good at, and you can build a business around that.

But at the same time, if you do not try to mitigate or limit and improve the areas that you are really bad at it will eventually highlight those things too, and you will end up having a lot of problems for yourself that you're gonna have to deal with. One of the areas for me that. I Really was challenged with, was patience and emotional control.

So I was a not a very patient person and quick to get excited about things in a positive way, quick to get mad about things in a negative way. Would, you could say, having a short temper or whatever is probably an easier way to put it than a lack of emotional control. One sounds better than the other, but that was something that I noticed that came up with me was a lack of patience and a lack of emotional control, and in particular, when it came to. Building a team that involves other people, because when it's just you, then there's actually a lot of advantages to going fast and not being very patient because you're just like pushing.

But when you build your team, you end up. Having to really focus on developing other people. And that's hard to do. That takes a lot of patience. That takes a lot of consistency. And people are messy. They're gonna do what they want to do and they're gonna do the things that they think are best for them because everyone is selfish.

That is what I've come to the conclusion of probably more than anything. And not necessarily in a bad way. They're just all more concerned with their own life. Than they are with yours. That's normal. If you know someone shows you a picture of your kid's class, what's the first thing that you do?

Are you looking for your neighbor's kid? No. You're looking for your kid. Why? Because they're your kid. It is a part of, it's part of your life. It's normal to be more concerned with yourself than it is with other people. For me as we were building our businesses, it was challenging to start to bring people on for something that I knew was so difficult that we had worked so hard at that no one could really understand.

And then for them to not have that same level of, Of caring that we might, and it's frankly not reasonable to expect someone to have a business owner's level of caring without owning the business. This is very rare to find that. And it's not, you shouldn't expect that out of people.

What you need to do is really understand that you have to be consistent with them. You have to provide them a great opportunity, a job that they really and a culture that they want to be a part of. People will stick around because they want to be a part of your culture, not because they just want to keep their job.

Someone's job will keep them there for a certain period of time. But the community that you build within your own business the. Business family, if you were like, that is what actually is gonna retain and keep people around much more. But now, as I started to deal with a lot of the things that, that I was deficient at, One of the areas that I really started to gravitate towards was philosophy.

And this actually came from a, another run in with the military. This when I got out of out of the Army I spent years teaching for Kelly Tourette's Group at the time was called Mobility Wad and now it's called the Ready State. And my primary role there was the director of their tactical program.

What I would do is I would go to different military bases all over the country, sometimes even internationally, and I would work with their operational elements. I would work with, frankly, I would, if you put it this way, like the soldiers that they had, but also the medical staff and. It was a really fun job because I had an opportunity to come in, consult on this gray area between injuries and human performance, work with medics, work with operators, work with general military as well, like big military groups, small, more specialized military groups.

And it was just a super fun job. It was a really cool way for me to still have. Like one foot in the door with the military, but not necessarily be in uniform anymore. So when I was at a military base that is one of the more, I would say, specialized military groups on the planet, I was there working with their medics and I was going up there for two days.

And the first day I'm up there, the head medic that brought me up, he he was like, oh man, you just missed You just missed Ryan Holiday, who is an author, and he's written a number of different books. One of my favorite authors, he wrote, the Obstacle is The Way, ego Is the Enemy. Stillness is the key. A whole bunch of.

Other books as well, but a lot of what he has written on is like a modern take on stoicism. And this medic that brought me up, he was like, man, this is like one of my favorite authors. He was just up here and he was, working with our staff and gave a keynote presentation and.

And I thought it was interesting. I was like, oh, cool, I'll check his stuff out. So at this guy's recommendation I started reading his his books and they just were, it, sometimes I think that you read things and it's not the right time to actually hear things. Same thing with podcasts, right?

Some of you might be listening to this and you're just like, whatever, dude, teach me how to sell a package. Okay, we could do that, but some of you need to hear what I'm gonna say today and. You might be ready to hear that. And at the time, like I got exposed to stoicism when I was in the military, exposed to his philosophy when I was in the military, and I just could care less.

It was like it was an something that was a burden for me to read, hard to read. I skimmed through it because I just wanted to have a general understanding in case this colonel asked me about it. I didn't really reflect on anything. I didn't think about anything. And then, fast forward years later, I'm in a different sort of time period in my life and my career, and I get this recommendation and all of a sudden it just It just hits me at the right time, and it was really important for me to to take, the information that I was learning from some of these texts and what I was actually reading, and try to apply these things in my own life because, At that time, our business was really growing quite a bit, and I started to realize that like my own temper, my own lack of emotional control and lack of patience was hindering our business.

It was creating problems in our business, and it was creating staff problems turnover and issues that were popping up, that we're creating real business problems for us as well as just. At home, even just with the stress that you have in business, you carry that over to your home life.

You know it. Most people do. I definitely did. And so me just being like very short with our kids and really anybody that I would interact with I would say I was a pretty I was what you would consider an asshole for probably six years, let's put it probably six years. And as I started to just learn more about, outlooks on life and essentially philosophy is really understanding your philosophy on, on life.

Like your view on life, your view on how you make decisions and how things interact with you and shape your world. That is what has been beneficial for me. That's something that was really very helpful for me when it came to business and home life. So I bring this up because most of the entrepreneurs that we work with, what gets them in the door with us is the fact that they need help with their business.

They're great clinicians and. They, but they know very little about business. They don't understand sales, marketing people, processes, finance taxes, like all these things that you need to understand. They don't understand that. So they come to us so they can get basically a clinical mba, within cash and hybrid practices, and learn this information, add this to their skillset and have a functional business.

But what they realize after. It depends on the person. It could be very quickly, it could be years. What they realize very quickly is that if they're not working on themself as part of that upgrade, I guess you could say in terms of them these adding these additional business skills, that they are completely missing the mark.

And it's not gonna go away. It's not gonna go away if you are a broken, difficult person. You're going to have a lot of problems in your own business because of that. If you don't address those things as well, you can be the greatest salesperson in the world, but man, you lose your temper on an employee and they're gone.

You can't do those things. You lose your temper on your kids one time too many, and all of a sudden they're not gonna trust you and not want to talk to you about things. So these are areas that when I look at, like for me, what the. Solution or part of the solution was it was to have a better understanding of how to manage myself.

And that came down to learning self, self-learning and having discussions with people that seem to have their shit together a lot better than me. And it always came back to the same idea of philosophy and not just like stoicism I talk about, because it was like the first thing that I was exposed to.

But also, other philosophies. If you look at, for instance, something like Buddhism is so interesting to me because it shares a lot of the core principles of stoicism and yet they, it's not like they. Shared ideas with each other. They're separated by the Persian Empire and they didn't have cell phones and they weren't tweeting each other about, Hey, are Are you finding this beneficial as well?

Like they independently came to similar conclusions about how to regulate themself and Es essentially try to be happy in a world where there's a lot of pain. And that's a really important thing to understand and realize that this sort of Eastern and western influences that there's a lot of overlap.

And what people have come to conclusions on, and when people independently come to conclusions in different places and different time periods without influence, there's a lot to be said for that. And I think that's, for me, what I've realized is just really beneficial. And I'll give you, a real life example of this.

And then I'll talk about how this applies to the business side of things too. And for context. So like my brother-in-law and his wife, they're having their third they're having their third kid and his wife, she's, a little bit older for having another baby. And she said that the likelihood of some sort of genetic de I don't even know if the right word is defect.

She basically said the likelihood that there's like a genetic problem is like one in a hundred. For this third kid because of her age and I guess some other factors. And she was really worried about it. Super worried about it because they had tests done and they had I guess a week before they had to wait to get the results back.

And her husband Is was a complete opposite and he is, I got into the same stuff as me and it's really like the core tenant is to focus on the things you can control the controllable, and then do not stress about the rest. And that's probably the number one thing that I could have.

Anybody that's listening to this, that owns a business in particular, keep in mind and it's focus on what you can control. And don't stress about the rest. And what was funny is it came back totally normal there it was, everything's fine. And for a week, her husband's been just normal, just focused on all the stuff you normally would.

And she's been like, can't think of anything else. So stressed out. And in the end it, it turned out to be fine, but it was nothing that either of them could control. But yet it took over her thoughts for a week. It stressed her out really bad for a week. It made her so much less productive and less present with other things in her life.

And then when the end result was, nothing came from it, it was totally normal. So you could make a, a statement that was a wasted week of stress and additional mental bandwidth being taken away from maybe the things that you really enjoy or the people that you enjoy being around. And this is obviously a huge life event, but when we look at the business side of things and how this how this happens to us as business owners, this kind of thing happens on a smaller scale all the time, every week, constantly.

It, and it's stu oftentimes it's stuff we can't actually do anything about. I remember for me, I struggled a lot with. Comparison of where our business was at with other people. Because I would see, oh, this clinic's doing this and this clinic's doing that, or this clinic's hired somebody else. And I would start to figure out, oh, what are they doing this different than us?

And I would end up spending the entire day looking at what someone else is doing versus actually focusing on the stuff that I could control. What a waste I look back at that it's such a waste. Not only that I was a. Difficult person to be around during those times when you're just stressing over something.

I have absolutely zero control over what someone else does with their business. None. What? What? I don't even know what I thought I might be able to do. I just thought I might be able to learn some s, super secret technique or something that they were doing with growth or whatever it might be.

But also the truth is you don't even know how that business is actually doing. The visual appearance of what somebody wants you to see and what's actually happening, they're not the same. A lot of times they're not even close to the same. Just look at social media, do a great job of making yourself look awesome on social media and your life sucks.

Like things can be really bad for you, but you can make yourself look super happy and presentable and everything's great and in business, what are you gonna make your business look like? Shit, even if it's, even if it's is doing bad, no, you're gonna make it look as good as you possibly can.

So a couple areas where you can really apply this, that will help you tremendously with just attention. Productivity and just your stress levels are the number one thing that I've taken away from years of now, being exposed to this stuff and being around this stuff. And it's to focus on what you can control and do not stress about the things that you cannot control, that you do not have direct control over.

It is not worth your time. It is so much more important to focus on the things you can actually control instead of me sitting there and then just trying to figure out, what these businesses were doing, what kind of social media posts they're doing, what kind of video editing software they have, what kind of website they have, what kind of ads they're running.

I could have just focused on improving our own business for the hours that I was spending doing something else, and I, and yet you feel productive. You're not productive when you do that. All you do is put yourself in a stress state where you're also trying to copy somebody else. D just think of that for a second.

D, do you feel like you're in a place of control when you're just trying to copy someone else? Probably not. Like I never got anything positive out of. Trying to copy someone else's business model or copy somebody else's advertising angles or their approach or whatever, or even stuff like this, like I don't even really listen to other people's.

I definitely don't pay attention to anybody else's stuff in our space as far as Business Edu education is concerned in the physical therapy world. I cuz I don't actually want any influence whatsoever on my own opinions and my thoughts outside of what we see within the hundreds of businesses that we actively work with.

I'm not trying to be biased by somebody else because I don't really know the context that they have, and I'm definitely not trying to regurgitate what other people are doing yet over and over again, we see business owners that'll do this, especially on social media. It's oh, this is working for them.

We should do the exact same thing. Do you know if it's working for them? And you're just stressing about all the little things that you can and can't do versus. Focusing on actually improving the areas that you can improve. Maybe focus on just delivering a better service, being more consistent with that, focusing on training your own people up better, focusing on hiring.

Better if you haven't done that yet. Focusing on improving and curating the relationships you have with your referral partners and the relationships you have in the area that are important. These are all things that the hours that you would spend doing these other things would just be significantly better if you would just focus on these.

So competition is a big one. The other one is uncertain economic environment. This is something that, for me, when I got out of the military, we were not in a. I would consider an uncertain economic environment. It's been pretty steady until covid in 2020, which was the most actually terrifying time to own a business that I've experienced a brick and mortar business.

Because you didn't know what to do, you didn't know what was right, what was wrong. You didn't know if anybody was coming in. I've had to let people go. Just, that's a legitimate challenge versus, people, like recently there's been a lot of tech layoffs, right? So people are freaking out and they're like, oh my God, the economy's going in the dumps because Google lays off 15,000 people or something.

And even at the worst time in 2008, I think the unemployment rate was like 10%. That means that 90% of people in the country were still employed. Like nine outta 10 people that you had run into were still employed. And that was like the worst recession we've ever had. It just depends on what you point your attention to, what you focus on and really just trying not to stress over these things that you can't.

You can't do anything about and just focusing on the things that you can, that's probably the best advice that I, could give any business owner at any stage in their business journey at all. And a lot of this for me, has come down to this sort of like sense of calmness that I have because of the way in which I look at things now, the tools I have and that I've learned to deal with, the stress that comes along with starting your own business, which is real.

It's real. This isn't made up. And if you're thinking about. Let's say you're on the fence and you're like, man, maybe I should do my own thing. You need to ask yourself, is this really what you want to do? This shit's difficult. It's hard, it's gonna create a lot more stressors in your life and can also be one of the greatest catalysts for personal growth.

Financial growth and changing so many areas of your life that in a positive way as well, but you don't get there without the discomfort and challenge of actually having to. Start and grow a business getting turned down a lot, having to learn new skills, feeling incompetence, feeling awesome, and then the next hour you feel like you're going out of business, like it's this emotional roller coaster that you're on all the time.

But as soon as you can learn that, you really just have to focus on the things you can control and not stress over the things that you can't. All of a sudden, it's like you're on that rollercoaster, but it feels, it just, it feels in control again for some reason. Yes, there's still ups and downs, but you feel calm.

You feel like you know what's happening, and you feel like you can just be rational with what you're doing and saying and where you're going with your business and. That turns into your life as well, because it supports your life. So I know this is a little bit more out there than the tactical things that we talk about a lot, but, I had an interesting conversation yesterday with my brother-in-law that spurred this on about the their genetic testing that they did.

And it made me think about this. I was like, man, your weeks were so different. You and your wife, your weeks were totally different. She was super stressed out and it ruined her week and you were as calm as could be, and you felt, okay, if this comes back, we'll figure out what to do at that point. But we can't control anything until we get the results.

So I'm gonna focus on, taking my son fishing. I'm gonna focus on the clients that I have and the business that I work in so that I can really help, provide for our family, like these things that we can control. And it made me think about just this one superpower that you can develop for yourself if you're willing to really learn a little bit more about how to manage your own emotions, how to create frameworks and create.

Barriers in some ways around your own reactions, cuz they're natural human reactions is part of how we keep ourself alive. It's like it's we're very in tune to threats. And we've been like that for a long time. It's definitely something that helps us survive. But, We don't have saber tooth tigers chasing us around anymore.

We don't have to be hyper alert and stressed out over all these things that really are not life or death, but yet are, deep down we may feel that they are. Like I said, this is something that for me has made a big difference. I highly recommend if you have any interest whatsoever in learning more about philosophy and just the elements of that can be applied in a more practical way.

I really do think Ryan Holliday's work is amazing. All his books I think are really good reads in particular, like we get, we send the Daily Stoic Out, which is one of his earlier books. We send that out to people that are our new clients of ours. And we really like the approach of not just that book, but if I had to pick one, I think for me stillness is the key, is a really solid read.

If you struggle with your mind constantly racing in a entrepreneurial state or a stress state or anything like that, and just this sort of overlapping conclusion that all these different religious groups and philosophical groups have come to the same conclusion, that having a still mind, a clear mind, putting yourself in a place where you can be calm is so valuable in so many ways in your life.

That's a book that I would recommend pretty much every entrepreneur get a copy of and read. So I hope this helps you. I hope that you stuck with me to the end because this is something that for me, has made a big difference. People ask me to talk about this stuff. I shy away from it because I think it can be a little bit dull.

It can be a little bit preachy and that's not really the world that I come from. Which maybe means even more for why this might be something to look into because as sure as hell, I'll tell you, I'm not the guy that's going outta my way to try to read a damn philosophy book.

I wouldn't try to read a book at all. Like I'm not a big, I'm not a big reader. And especially not stuff like that cause it makes you think and it's hard but it has been incredibly helpful for me both in the business and in my personal life as well. And, if this helps you and you realize you need, you struggle on the business side, what a great opportunity to take this sort of vehicle in entrepreneurship and apply that as a way to be the greatest self-development vehicle that, that you'll ever find if you're willing to actually do the work.

Hey, peach entrepreneurs. We have big, exciting news, a new program that we just came out with That 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 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. That'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 sign 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 the work and 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. Hey, real quick before you go, I just wanna say thank you so much for listening to this podcast, and I would love it if you got involved in the conversation.

So this is a one-way channel. I'd love to hear back from you. I'd love to get you. Into the group that we have formed on Facebook. Our PT Entrepreneurs Facebook group has about 4,000 clinicians in there that are literally changing the face of our profession. I'd love for you to join the conversation, get connect with other clinicians all over the country.

I do live trainings in there with Yves Gege every single week, and we share resources that we don't share anywhere else outside of that group. So if you're serious about being a PT entrepreneur, a clinical rainmaker, head to that group. Get signed up. Go to facebook.com/groups/ptentrepreneur, or go to Facebook and just search for PT Entrepreneur. And we're gonna be the only group that pops up under that.