E615 | Wine Sales vs Cash-Based Practices

In this episode, Doc Danny shares a conversation he had with a friend who owns a wine distribution company. They discussed the physical therapy profession and the challenges that come with it, specifically the low compensation compared to other professions.

The average physical therapist makes around $80-90,000 but has an average debt of $150,000.

Danny explains that starting a cash-based practice is a proven solution to increase earning potential while still being an active clinician. This allows physical therapists to charge more for their services and ultimately make more money. He believes it is an elegant solution that allows individuals to marry their passion for the profession with financial stability. 

This episode sheds light on the challenges that come with being a physical therapist and the potential solutions to overcome them. It encourages individuals to explore alternative routes to increase their earning potential and stay in the profession they love.

Tune in to hear more about the benefits of a cash-based practice and how it can change the game for physical therapists.

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: Hey, real quick before we get started, head over to Facebook and join the PT Entrepreneur's 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, and 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 gonna check you out. We don't just let anybody in. But if you are head there, go ahead and 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 wanna see 30 patients a day, who don't wanna 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? Doc Danny here with the PT Entrepreneur Podcast, and today I want to tell you a little story from a friend of mine an interaction that we had this past weekend when we got to talking about the physical therapy profession. So let me break down to you what happened and why this is gonna be relevant for you and.

This individual that's a buddy of mine. We we coached a baseball team together this year. And I got him over to the house a couple times to do sled drags. Something I like to do I try to train with my neighbors, just try to share what I know about health and wellness with people that that maybe that's not their thing.

And hopefully they can learn something from me and they can, it, it improves their health as well. So that's something that I do. Not everybody says yes. Plenty of people say no and they're like, Hey man, you wanna come to my house of drag sleds? That's something that everybody says yes to, but this guy, he's cool.

We said yes and. Backstory for him is he actually is a owns a part of a company that is a wine distribution company. And as I was chatting with him about what I do, because it's a bit. I think for most people that I meet, it's hard to explain. They definitely let people know that I'm a physical therapist, but I don't see patients anymore.

My wife and I, we sold our practice. I'm basically a educator at this point, is what I let people know, and he was asking me about the physical therapy profession and why it is that we do what we do with PT bis, and. Talk to him about high volume that we have in the profession and how much burnout we see, but also the disparity between what income for the profession is versus what the the actual cost to get the degree is.

And I told him, I said the average PT probably makes between 80 and $90,000, somewhere in that range. And the. The average debt they come outta school with is about 150, so close to maybe half, a little more than half of what your actual debt is. And he just was shocked.

Shocked. And he goes, man, I've got salespeople in our company that are, selling wine that are making double what someone with a doctorate is making that just doesn't seem, just doesn't seem like it should be that way. And I completely. Agreed with him. I said, yeah, man, I get it.

It's. It is a profession that is so personally rewarding that we are very much willing to take less pay because the job is such a great job and it honestly is I'm sure whoever's selling wine for this guy's company, It doesn't get the same level of personal satisfaction that we get as clinicians when we help somebody get over, a significant injury when you help that youth athlete get back to playing a sport after having an ACL tear.

When I was in the military and I was helping people learn how to walk again with residual limbs or after, traumatic event where they broke their back falling out of a plane or something and I say helicopter plane would be too high but, falls from these tactical events that.

That happen and it can change their life and we get a chance to help them get back to Things that they love to do, and it's an incredibly personally rewarding career no matter what you do, whether it's pediatrics or neurology or ortho sport, whatever, vestibular, for God's sakes, I've seen people that are vestibular PTs take people to their dizzy all the time and literally, Change their life by showing them how to self-correct certain things or to get them back on the right track to where they're, they can stand up without feeling like they're gonna fall over.

That is changing somebody's life much more so than selling somebody a bottle of wine. Let's be honest. And yet the compensation is so dramatically skewed in a different direction. And it's because the economy doesn't necessarily agree with the level of value that we know we bring to other people.

And what happens with us and what we help people do in cash-based practices and we help them realize that. Individuals value what we do more than insurance companies value what we do. People are willing to pay to work with a professional to help them get back to the things that they love, and they'll pay a lot more than what an insurance company says you're worth.

And we see this in contracts all the time. I review this stuff and it's crazy. You'll see some of these contracts and it's Hey, 70 bucks a visit. See as many people as you can that we don't care. We don't care if it's all the same time or there's one person at a time or not, whatever.

Max, you get 70 bucks a visit. They could be there for 15 minutes. They could be there for an hour. You could bill x number of units. It doesn't matter. It's a set fee. And you're like, man, I you're worth more than that. And then all of a sudden you go on your own and people are willing to pay you a hundred fifty, two hundred, two hundred $50 for that.

Time with you with that for that skillset that you do have that they value significantly more. And I told 'em the reason that our business exists and has grown significantly is because of this exact problem that he realized as soon as we ha we started talking about it, it's so obvious to everyone else that, what we do is.

Very valuable, but the economy doesn't necessarily agree with it. So the only way that we've found to really go around that is to do your own thing. Say this is what it costs to work with me. And set up a practice in a manner that allows you to do that. And this is where we see people go from, making $80,000 a year to $150,000 a year just by taking a chance in themself and learning how to bolt on a business skillset.

To build a practice around themself versus, working for somebody else. And I'm not saying that everybody should do this because plenty of people are. Not gonna be good entrepreneurs. They're not gonna be good business owners. They don't have any desire whatsoever to learn these things, and that's fine.

Those people are not listening to this podcast, right? They're not even somewhat interested in what I would have to say. They have plenty of other things that they're interested in, but if you're listening to this and you're thinking, man, is that really the exchange that can happen? Is this really a val a viable option?

Is this something that people can do? The answer is absolutely. And. To be honest, you should make more money than a wine salesperson. Okay? Like it's crazy to me that it's that much of a difference. I put up a stat one time that the average coder makes $132,000, and the average PT makes about 85. That is.

A significant difference, but it's what the economy values. So we can't get angry about it. We can't get mad. We just have to realize what other way can we use our skillset? If compensation is really a huge determining factor for what you want to do with your career, cause there's lots of other reasons why you may not want to do this type of a career field where you go into a cash-based practice for yourself.

But if you're trying to provide a better living, everything is getting more expensive. That's a fact. This is an option that you have to where you can still work with people the way that you want, stay in the career field and still be able to increase your earning potential in the profession as well. As we see a lot of people really mitigate a lot of burnout by doing this cuz you're not seeing as much volume, you're not seeing doing as much ancillary work as far as notes are concerned, and questionnaires and calling for verification for visits and all those things that.

They just take us away from treating the actual person that's in front of us. So anyway, this is something that I wanted to share with you. It was an interesting light bulb moment for my friend and it really highlighted to me, just how important it is to do the work that we're doing because, it is an unfair position that we have found ourself in, and it's.

It's quite possibly one of the best jobs you can have, personally rewarding jobs you can have that I've ever seen. It's the reason that I went into the profession. It wasn't for money. I can tell you that, and most of us are like that, but if you want to marry the two and still be able to stay in the profession, I think it's a pretty elegant solution, a pretty proven solution at this point with a cash based practice that can really get you there and still allow you to be an active clinician and part of that environment.

So hope you like this one As always, thank you so much for listening, and we'll catch you next week.

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.

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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.