E596 | You Can't Lose If You Don't Try

In this podcast, Danny delves into the idea of trying and failing and how it affects people's chances of success. He reads a quote from Teddy Roosevelt, which emphasizes the importance of facing defeat and striving for success. Danny shares his experiences with coaching teams and his kids, highlighting how fear of failure can hold people back from trying new things.

He recounts a personal story of his son trying out for a school musical and how it led to newfound confidence in himself. Danny goes on to explain how the fear of failure is not limited to kids, and how adults often give themselves an out in case they fail. He stresses the importance of taking risks and trying new things, as it is often the only way to succeed.

The episode encourages listeners to take chances on themselves, even if they are afraid of failing. Danny argues that without taking risks, life would be boring and uneventful. He reassures listeners that whether they succeed or fail, they will have an awesome story to tell. The podcast ends with a call to action, urging listeners to take a chance and try something new, as it may lead to unexpected rewards.

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: Hey, real quick before we start the podcast episode, I want you guys to check out our new YouTube channel for PT Biz. We are putting out a weekly video on the most common questions that we get, and we are breaking those down in a way that's more engaging. Where you can learn better and really focus on one thing at a time.

So if you're interested in really learning more skills to upgrade your cash and hybrid practice, head over to YouTube. Subscribe to the PT Biz Channel and check out the weekly videos that we're coming out with to help you win in the cash-based practice game. 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? Doc Danny here with a PT Entrepreneur podcast, and today we are talking about trying and failing. And whether you are intentionally or unintentionally, maybe stopping yourself from even having the opportunity to succeed. And I'm gonna jump right into this one. And I'm gonna read a a paragraph from Teddy Roosevelt.

And this is something that I heard when I was in the military. Something I didn't really understand, I would say, until I was older and and had tried some things and failed at some things. And also as I had kids, I started to see this more and more this is something that for me as I read this, and I read this occasionally.

It's something I used to have as like the back of my, or my, the desk desktop image on my computer. And it's the man in the arena. So he says it's not the critic who counts, not the man who points out. The strong man or where the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better.

Their credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood. Who strives valiantly, who airs, who comes short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcoming. But who does actually strive to do the deeds? Who knows? Great enthusiasms, the great devotions who spell spends himself in the worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement.

And who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. Now, I want you to think about that for a second, cuz that's a lot and. It comes from somebody who is a very interesting background and Teddy Roosevelt is somebody who, as I learned more and more about him it's just a very interesting upbringing.

Someone who was sick as a child, bullied a lot very weak, started developing his own sort of physical fitness as a way to, to deal with the the sicknesses that, that he had and tried to help improve. And that really led to a life of being like very physically active and and someone who.

By all I intents and purposes was a very fit, active individual the rest of their life. And for me when I read this is something that I bring this up, because I think it's very common for people to not try things if they think that they are going to fail or if they have a decent chance of.

And I've done this myself. I've done this with sports, I've done this with schools that I didn't try out for in the military. Different groups that I didn't try out for in the military, where some of it was, yeah, okay. Maybe timing, but ultimately some of it is just fear of, failure of not actually being able to pass some of these things, not being able to.

And I see this now I see it with my kids. I see it with them avoiding things if they think they're not gonna be good at 'em, not wanting anything to do with it. And it's, I think in a lot of ways this is very natural. So let me go ahead and, I guess preface by saying that it's very natural for us to not want to be bad at things, but very rarely are there things that we can be good at without being bad at.

First, and this is something that I wish I would've understood better as a kid, as a young adult, and even now. For me, as some, I'm almost 40 years old, right? I'm not a young, I'm not young, I'm not old. But I still see this and struggle with the fear of failure, which I think many people that listen to this podcast do the same thing.

And I'm gonna bring this back to the business context here in a second. For me as a parent, it's been very interesting to to see my kids grow up and compete in different things. And we live in such a competitive culture. The US is such a competitive culture and in a lot of ways it's not a bad thing.

It's what makes us world leaders. It's, It's one of the reasons why our culture is is dominant at many things. But to see your kids do things and fail is, I think, harder than them failing in a lot of ways. But I, but to see them avoid things cuz they don't want to fail on it in the first place is even worse.

And I've seen this with my kids, both my kids I've seen this with a lot of kids and I've been coaching a lot of of my kids' teams over the last, really, over the last Year and a half or so, every sport that they play, basically, even if I don't know anything about it, the, and what I see, it's not just my kids, it's just kids in general.

That the it, it seems like the thought process is this. If I don't try then I can't fail. If I do have to try and I don't try my best, like if I don't really go for it, then at least in the back of their mind they know that they didn't fail. They just didn't really. Even try that hard. And I think it's, you can justify loss to yourself by saying I didn't really try that hard. It really didn't mean that much to me. So I don't really care. I'm not even gonna put out that much effort. I'm not gonna practice that much. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna invest myself in this because if I don't do that, and if we lose, then it's not really my fault.

Right? There's nothing that I did wrong and I didn't lose, I just didn't. I see that a lot, and that's something that's really challenging as a coach, as a parent to be able to help people get past that and realize that dude, it's better for you to actually try than not try at all, because at least you know where you stand.

You might be amazing if you actually tried, right? You. Be able to help your team significantly by doing so. And I know these are somewhat insignificant youth sports in the grand scheme of things, but it's just lessons that they're learning along the way that hopefully I can help them with. And even recently, one thing that I'm actually very proud of that my son did was he tried out for the school musical and funny funny enough, I don't think he actually knew what that entailed.

I think he thought it was a play and not a musical. After they casted him and he got a a part in this musical. He, I remember talking to him and he goes, dad, I gotta sing and dance in this thing. And I go, yeah, dude, it's a musical. That's what musicals are. And he was like, I thought I just was gonna be like, Acting like it would be like lines that I had and different scenes and stuff.

And I was like that's part of it too. And so anyway, he didn't even know. And it was like a deer in the headlights moment when he realized he had to sing and dance in front of basically his whole school and all of the parents. And he practiced and he practiced and he learned his lines.

And, they practice an astronomical amount for this little Annie Junior musical. And when they they did their show, and this was just last week, and they did three shows on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. All that hard work, all that effort led up to the Oh shit Fear Moment before the first play, which is the first night, which obviously is just so intense.

And being able to push through that and. Be able to perform, be able to compete and do that the right way. And do that with the peers that he practiced with was like such a cool thing for him and such a big win to be able to, see all that practice turn into something really positive.

And he could have flopped too, right? It could have gone terrible. It went great, but it could have gone terrible. But at least he's. At least he was, taking a chance on himself to be able to put himself in a place that was uncomfortable. Someone who's never done that before, I've never been in a musical, and the thought of that.

Makes me not want to do it really either. And it's cuz it's intense. It's public speaking, public performances and but he did great and he what comes along with that and what I've seen is a level of confidence that he has now that he wouldn't have had with out doing this. When some people get that from sports and some people get that from, things like this.

There's performing and some people get that. Other areas where they're, they have success, but they have to try and they have to really put out effort and then they see that they can have success in something that is difficult. And that is an a really important s I guess, understanding to have.

It's a really ior important thing to see in your life. Everybody will come to that in different ways. But as I look at my kids and I look at coaching and youth sports, like there's so many parallels that I see with adults. Adults that we interact with and that we talk to, and that end up being a part of different coaching programs that, that we have or they end up in our mastermind or whatever it is.

And these are full. Men and women that are scared shitless to take a chance on themself. I get it, I've been there. I remember just, not being sure if what we were gonna do was actually gonna work. And it wasn't so much the financial challenges that might have forced us into, or that we would've ended up facing.

It was. Perception of other people that I had failed at something after having left what was a on track to be a very successful career in the military, which I could have kept and I could have gone, done my 20 plus years, whatever it is and made rank and take different jobs and all those things that I thought I was gonna do, and then all of a sudden, Something changed.

I had opportunities and I had to make decisions about whether I was gonna take a chance on myself and were gonna go for it outside of the military or whether I was gonna stay in and I was going to have this very clear path in front of me of what my jobs were gonna look like and what my titles were gonna be and all of those things.

And, making that decision to. To make a change is very difficult. It's a very difficult decision To actually do it is even harder because it's such a roller coaster of, of a ride early on where you have these highs, super high highs and super low lows because, you don't really know what you're doing.

You don't really know what to expect and and it's exhilarating and it's terrifying at the same time. But the one thing that I am very glad that I did, no matter how this would've ended up, is that I actually jumped in and I tried, I took a chance on myself and I tried really hard like that.

That's the other thing is like I really gave it my best effort. I tried my ass off and. Partially. I think part some of it is the right time, right place. Things that fall together. Don't know really why those things work out sometimes, but I think there's an, there's, there are elements of things that that just happen that are positive and negative sometimes that you can't necessarily outwork.

But really giving it your best effort is important because you don't wanna be like one of those kids that I coach that's I'm. I'm going to try to do my own thing, but secretly I'm not gonna give it my best effort because at least I know if I don't and I fail, like I really didn't fail cause I didn't really try.

I didn't try very hard, at least, I was just like, okay, I did this for a couple months and it really wasn't going my way. So I just went back to something else. No big deal. It's just a little phase in my life. I tried something out, whatever that is. Such a cop out like that is such a, Negative way of looking at what you could accomplish on your own.

And I'm very specifically talking about business in this context. Now you can apply this to whatever you want, but I've seen this now and I've seen this with people that I've worked with, I've seen this with. People that our company has worked with where you can tell they are unwilling to put forth effort.

They're unwilling to really try the way that they need to in order to actually see if this is something that's going to work for them. And in the process, they always give themself an out. They give themself an out to go back to that hospital job that they don't really like. They give themself an out so they can go back and they get that high volume, clinical position that they just really don't like, but they know it's safe and they never, ever actually go all in and try as hard as they can because the fear is if I try as hard as I can and I fail, I'm a failure.

The reality is, if you straddle the line, you're gonna be a failure because you're not gonna be able to make it work by giving partial effort, partial intensity. You have to be willing to just put yourself out there to learn and make mistakes. You're gonna fail, but you're gonna fail forward. Is the goal, right?

You fail, you learn something, you change, you improve, and then you're better because of it. Not I failed this little thing. Oh, this little workshop didn't go the way that I thought. I didn't get any patience from it. I'm gonna go back that job. This is too hard. That's not trying hard enough. You're not putting forth enough effort and you think, you've, you put yourself in the arena and you really tried, but you didn't.

You didn't. And you know whether you did or not. And that's the sad part. The sad part is, You're gonna have to deal with that. You're gonna have to deal with the fact that you didn't actually try, you lied to yourself, you lied to everybody around you. You gave a little bit of effort, and then you ran back to the thing that was safe and easy because you didn't want to fail, but you also didn't wanna succeed.

And what if it had worked? What if it does work out? If you're thinking about doing this is the thing that I think, the one thing that I talk to my kids about, I talk to other entrepreneurs about constantly this one mental shift where we fixate on all of the negative things that can happen, and this is a survival.

Like it is literally deep wired, hardwired into, to us and our DNA to look for, oh where are the negative things? What are the things that can kill me? Where are the threats? We look for those, we pay attention to those like we're, we are built for that. So go figure, when you start getting involved in things that are new to you and you're, you don't really.

How they're gonna go, what do we look for? We look for threats. We look for things that are gonna take us out figuratively, in most cases, right? No, it's not. Not like you go open a cash-based practice and there's a tiger there waiting to eat you. That's not the case. Okay? But in our minds, we don't know the difference between that and some business competitor or not understanding a part of the business that gives us a massive amount of anxiety.

So what do we do? We just don't actually even try and we fixate on the negative. We fixate on all the bad stuff, all the stuff that could go wrong, and the one shift, the one mental sort of tweak you can make that, that I honestly think makes all the difference in. Both in sports, in school relationships, in business, in anything where there's something amazing that can happen or you could crash and burn.

It's flip that from what are all the worst case scenarios to imagine this? What if it does work out? Just think about that for a second. Like you can put this in whatever context you want cuz it's a business podcast. We're gonna talk about business. Let's let you go out on your own. And it actually works and you make more money and you're more satisfied and you have time freedom and you can work with patients the way that you wanna work with them.

And you can build a culture of a clinic around you that is exactly what you want it to be. You can hire the people that you want to hire. You can work with the type of niche, a population that you wanna work with, and you can get so much fulfillment outta your job that it doesn't even feel like work.

Oh my God, what if that fucking happened to you versus all the negative things that you think about, oh, I'm gonna bankrupt my family and this isn't gonna work, and that's I'll never figure this out, or whatever it might be. Most people fixate on that, and these are trivial things. You're not gonna bankrupt your family if you try to take a chance on yourself.

You have a degree for God's sakes. You fall back on that. You can get a job tomorrow if you wanted. Don't let that be the thing that stops you from actually trying, from actually doing the thing that you want. Because again, what if it worked out? All the stuff that I just mentioned, as amazing as that sound.

I can point to hundreds of people that we have worked with directly who, people who I know, people whose families I know that has directly changed from them actually taking a chance on themself and it worked and we don't think about. We never focus on what if it actually works. We focus on all the negatives cuz that's how we're wired.

But please listen to me when I say this. This is one of the most important things that you could possibly do to reframe the way in which you're looking at these problems. The way in which you're look, looking at the things that you want to be able to do. It doesn't even have to be business. Maybe there's that person that you really.

And you would love nothing more than to be in a real, a relationship with that person, but it terrifies you that they might say, no, God, I wish somebody would've told me this when I was younger, because there's so many examples of things that I shied away from because of the feel fear of rejection and failure.

But what if it works? What if that person that, you have so much in common with that, that you just you would love to be with? What if they said, Let's go on that date. That. What if it works out? Oh my God. It could change your life, but if you're too unwilling to even take a chance, you'll never find out.

And if you get shot down, damn, at least you have a cool story. At least it's at least you have a funny moment you can point at to your friends of, this didn't work out. I totally bombed on this. Whatever like. Dude, life without Scars is a boring life. We have these scars from these stories. We have physical scars from things that we've done that are stupid, where we've heard ourself, but we have awesome stories to tell about it.

You need scars, you need to take chances, and you're never ever gonna find out if you're gonna win or if you're gonna lose if you don't take a chance. So as I was thinking about this today, and this is just fresh in my mind because, from my son just doing this this musical. I'm coaching his baseball team now, and I got this super frustrating kid that I just want to like, slap the shit out of because he doesn't try, he doesn't try.

And I think this is why, and when I talk to him, I tell him, listen man, like you are on, we need you. You got to help us out. And it's like he gets it and then he'll lose it sometimes and then, and it comes back and him realizing that it's like, Effort and losing isn't a bad thing. And I see him where it's just it's obvious that if he doesn't try, like it doesn't affect him the same way if he doesn't do well, cuz it in his mind it's not as, it's not as important.

It, he didn't really care. The things we really care about, we really try for and then we fail. It sucks. It's the worst. It's man, I really cared about that. Like I really wanted that to happen and it didn't happen. What the heck? I thought you said if I worked hard and did all the right things, it would work out.

It doesn't always work out. And if we knew it would work out, it'd be boring. What if you knew you were gonna play a game and you would win every single time? No matter what, you play a basketball game, your team wins. It could be close, come down to the wire, but just the fact that you know you're gonna.

Makes it so boring that you wouldn't even wanna play. You got to have the likelihood of failing in order to have the exhilaration of winning. You can't have one without the other. So if you're on the fence about doing anything, I don't care what it is. It could be something that with business, it could be a relationship, it could be having that difficult conversation with a spouse or a kid or anything, what, whatever it is.

If you're sitting there and you're on the fence about whether you should do it or. I think you should do it because one of two things is gonna happen. It's either gonna, you're gonna get a win, it's gonna work out, and you're gonna feel amazing and it could change your life, or you're gonna crash and you're gonna burn, and you're gonna have an awesome story to tell people about the chance you took on yourself and how it didn't work out.

And you're gonna learn something from it, and you're gonna be better off for it as well. But if you just sit there and you don't do anything, nothing's gonna.

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If you're doing the work and you're. 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 Eve 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/pt entrepreneur, or go to Facebook and just search for PT Entrepreneur.

And we're gonna be the only group that pops up under that name.