6 BIG Business & Life Lessons from 2021: CashPT Lunch Hour

The world is different. Our business needs to shift and change. We need to offer something new. Hey, what's up? It's Aaron. And welcome back to the Cash PT Lunch Hour podcast. Today we're going to be talking about the six things that I learned in 2021. And, you know, it's being the end of the year. I want it to look back and reflect on what's worked and what hasn't so that 2022 is going to be an even better year. We do this every winter. I do this generally between Christmas and New Year's, where I take some time to really work and reflect and figure out, like, what's worked and what do we need to change. And, you know, if something's still working, I'm going to keep doing it. If something's not working, I'm going to try to take the lesson from that and. And improve upon it. So for the last few years, I've been doing this process with Jake Campos, who's our marketing specialist, Facebook ad specialist, digital marketing person. He also works with all our new clients in our Platinum Mastermind as they come on board and create their game plan. So Jake's really awesome. And we'll spend a day or two just kind of drawing things out on the whiteboard, talking through things, looking through our stats, looking through everything. And so we did that a few weeks ago because he just moved down to Florida again. Like, he moves around because his wife is in, like, micro is a. Is a marine biologist and moves jobs, and he's got a job that he can do from anywhere, which is really cool. So shout out to Jake for being awesome. But this is that time of year where I look back and reflect, and I want to help you think about that, but I also want to basically take some of the biggest lessons that I have learned from this year and download them to you. Sound good? So I think on the last show that I recorded, I said, let's do a little contest. And, you know, I was just trying to, you know, bribe you ethically a little bit and see if we can get some feedback about the show and see if there was, like, a new review or something you could leave for us and send out some swag to one lucky winner. So, you know what? Like, I don't come in and read these reviews all the time, but I know it helps other people find the show. So if you haven't ever had a chance to leave a review, I'd appreciate it. Well, like, I'd appreciate it. I know other people would appreciate it because People tell me all the time, Aaron, you know, I didn't know this existed. I didn't know you could do X, Y, and Z. Thanks for your help. Like, I didn't start this up to, you know, feel good about myself. I started doing this because I wanted to share what I knew to help other people. And so if you want to pay it forward and help other people, one of the ways you can do it is share the show with your friend, shout out the show on Instagram stories and tag me, or write a rating or review about what's been most helpful for you about this show and why someone else should listen. And then they're more likely to listen and get some help. So the winner is Trent Corey. So Trent is. We picked a winner from everyone who left her rating and review. And. And Trent's been really awesome to leave an amazing review. He's also written a bunch of comments over on our YouTube channel. So thank you, Trent. I will have a little swag box coming out to you in the mail shortly. I know you, so I'll get your address. So thank you so much. All right, so here we go. The six things that I learned in 2020 about business life. The first thing is the world's a different place. I hope by now you understand we're not going back to the way it was. It is the way it is right now, and it's the way it will be because, you know, we're going on year three of COVID and no matter how you feel about it, you know how you feel about it or what you think, it's not going to change. Like, people's buying behaviors and their actions and the ways that we need to serve our patients and clients. I know that our clinic is. I mean, it's been two years, and now in the last month or so, we finally have more than just our bare bones staff. You know, my wife's back treating patients. We've brought on a new, like, call it corrective exercise specialist or strength, like strength, strength coach, movement coach. Who's actually a physical therapist, Dr. Chris Williams. I'm super stoked to have him on board. You know, and it looks different. Like, I thought we would have a massage therapist. I've been looking for a massage therapist since May. I can't find a massage therapist who wants to work for us, who wants to make what we're able to offer. Like, I'm a massage therapist. My wife's a massage therapist. We've created an amazing job that we would have loved to have had as Massage therapists. And I mean, I'm not even getting applications at this point. So we decided to change it up. You know, my style of physical therapy is more hands on manual therapy, myofascial release, some trigger point therapy, dry needling, corrective exercise, et cetera. But I was never an exercise only therapist. So we never had a exercise specialist or did exercise only sessions. You know, I was always a massage therapist. So we're doing manual sessions and in the last two and a half years, Dr. Caitlin Herzog, she's a powerlifter and she's now a CrossFit coach. And we've had more people asking like for help with exercise because they don't want to go back to the gym, they don't want to go back to their group classes. They also don't feel safe doing that. So she's been offering a few of those sessions. And we said this summer, hey, maybe what we need to do when we like we had a massage therapist who we were offered a job too, but he decided he didn't want to take it. We said, hey, let's shift and pivot because maybe it's not massage therapy anymore, maybe it's something else. We hired Chris, got him on board. He converted the first three or four people in a row to the 12 week programs that we're doing and had a full day yesterday, which is st. I'm stoked, like, but it's new, it's something that we haven't done before. It's taken a little bit longer to get him on board because we didn't have the intake forms, we didn't have the kind of all the systems and we didn't have the pricing and we didn't have like what's the first offer and even the words to advertise it. But the world is different. Our business needs to shift and change. We need to offer something new. We're offering something new and people want it, which is really cool. I know people want massage because Andrey's back doing massage and going through all the massage gift certificates we have and you know, but it's not what she wants to do long term for another 20 years. But people want, you know, more movement. They want to work with people. So it's really cool. So the world's the way it is right now and it's going to shift and if you're struggling with your business, you need to think about like, well, what's something new I can offer or something different or even if the same thing, how do I position it? And Package it differently. Is that making sense? So many of our Platinum Mastermind members have done the same thing where it's okay, here's what business has been doing. Let's shift and do something slightly different. And my focus in the last 18 months has been on their business as well as our business, but I'm focused more on other people's businesses and my own some days. And we spent a lot of time in the last 18 months. So in 2020, we, we just built out a bunch of new systems. We went all in on our community, built out two new ebooks and a new course. This year, we didn't build out new stuff. We streamlined. We focused on sales. We focused on giving people an experience that they really want and not pressuring them. A lot of people say to me, hey, Aaron, you know, I really like, you know, I don't want to raise my rates. I don't want to do this because I don't want to feel pushy. I don't want to feel salesy. Well, we don't want to feel salesy either. But I know this, that if I can help someone and I can change their life, if someone's ever said to you, hey, Dr. Labouwauer, when I saw you a few years ago, I know I was struggling, but you really changed my life. That one thing. I've never had neck pain since. I mean, this is what someone said to me a few weeks ago. I haven't had. And it's like, if I can change someone's life without even really knowing it until six years later. I mean, this happened so many times, I can't count. Another person came up to me a yoga class six years ago. Dr. Lavouer, since I saw you, like, I haven't had any back pain. I've been able to go to the gym, deadlift, how much ever I want. I come to yoga five days a week. You've radically changed my life. I know that if I'm getting those things, you probably are. There are probably more people that feel that way than tell me. Probably 5% of people actually tell me this. If I know that I'm changing someone's life, then it's my duty and obligation as a healthcare provider to learn how to sell physical therapy. It's the, you know, I didn't, I don't know, did I take a Hippocratic oath as a physical therapist? I think it's something physician, Medical physicians do. Medical doctors do. But if it's to do no harm, I, you know, and an MRI just to Find out what's going on is going to do them harm. Because we know by our research that they're more likely to get surgery and spend more money. Then it's my ethical obligation and duty to not only learn how to market physical therapy, but to learn how to sell it, which is getting people to understand why they need to come see me first instead of getting an mri. So that's kind of the. That's number one. Like, world's different. We have to do different things if we want to keep continuing to grow. And we're doing a lot of different things. Okay. And I look back every year and go, what do we do that worked well? And what do we do that didn't work? And I can tell you this. I've seen that, you know, in the past, I've made mistakes where I thought everyone wanted to learn marketing, because that's the one I said, I just need to get new patients. And I put out a marketing course. And people didn't really want it, or they didn't want to do the. They didn't want to do the work, that they didn't want to do the work. They wanted the easy. And what I did was gave them. I. I taught exactly what we do, which isn't easy, and it's hard work. And it's, you know, this cash, the ultimate cash PD marketing system course, which I created like four or five years ago. That's why I don't need to spend all my time in my clinic focused on marketing and still have it grow or survive. Covid, you know, and spend 90% of my time on my coaching business because I put in the work. And I. And I. This comes up to one of our next points. I put in the work a while back, and it's paying off. So you gotta be willing to put in the work. But number one, the world's a different place. We're not going back to the way it was. It is the way it is right now. And if you're struggling, just like you might say to your patient who's been doing chiropractic for 24 weeks, three times a week on the GK5000 decompression machine, who's still saying they have back pain if you're still struggling business, you know, one, either I would hope that if you were working with me, you'd be growing and not struggling, or two, that maybe it's time to do something a little different. Wouldn't you agree? Okay, this leads me to point number two. Physical therapists are still afraid to talk about money. Physical therapists are afraid of talk about money. Probably a lot of healthcare providers and a lot of people in general, but I'm going to talk about this. You're still afraid to talk about money. You know what? When I'm pitching something to someone who I'm trying to sell myself to, it's still hard. But I know if I can help you, I know I got to. I got to get comfortable about it. Money can do amazing things. You should not be afraid of money. There's so many things you should be afraid of, and money is not one of them. You should not be afraid to talk about money. Just because someone else is weird about money or your parents are weird about money doesn't mean you need to be weird about money, okay? Money can do amazing things. You're not taking money from other people. I mean, you know, like, there's plenty of money. The US Is printing more money than. Than we have right now, right? So it's inflation. But money can do amazing things. So don't come and tell me that you just want to make three to $5,000 a month, because what you're telling me is you just want to replace your job. What I want you to do is come to tell me, aaron, I want to make 15 to 20 thousand dollars a month in the first year, and then I want to make 50, 60, 70, even a million dollars a year. Because if you have too much money, that doesn't mean you're a bad person. You're a bad person if you take that money and you do things like the evil person in James Bond where you build a space laser and you point it on all the major cities and you threaten to blow it up until someone pays you a trillion dollars. That's it. I mean, if you're an evil person, money is going to help you do evil things. But if you're a good person at heart, which I know you are, money can do amazing things. I actually have to give away more money this year. 2020, I gave away more money than I ever have. 2021, I've given away plenty. But, you know, there's more that I want to give away. And at PT Bizcon next year, in 2022, we're gonna give away a bunch of money. And when you come, you'll see what we're doing. Or you just pay attention. You'll see. I don't. I'm not gonna announce it yet, but I can tell you this part of the plans of the in person, eventually, to raise money for an amazing physical therapy centric foundation. Because money can do amazing things. And if you have too much, just think about this, okay? Instead of working three days a week and, I don't know, fucking off the rest of the time because you're smart. I mean, if you're making multiple six figures or seven figures, working a few days a week, what if you worked another day a week, doubled your income and gave more away or provided more services for other people? I mean, what if you could do that? What if you could open a pro bono clinic so you got your cat, you know, so then all those people that hate, say, cash based clinics only for wealthy people, you can say, f you, look, I got my cash based clinic over here. But look, I make so much money because I've got five locations, they're all cash based. We have a pro bono clinic in downtown, right? We have a pro bono clinic in the town that's got the hardest hit from the opioid epidemic. What could you do with your money if you had too much? How much is too much to give away to help somebody else? So think about it like this. Money can do amazing things. No one's going to respect you or respect your time, respect your recommendations on the exercises if they're paying too little, if they're only paying a copay, if you're barely charging more than a copay, if you're charging $75 cash and they could get a $50 copay down the street, like there's no difference. But if you're charging enough that they have to put some skin in the game and they're going to go home and they're going to work really hard because they trust you. Well, great. Then in order to get them to fork over a significant amount of money, you have to learn how to sell. And that's what I was talking about earlier. We have to learn how to sell. It's your ethical obligation. So money can do amazing things. It's still circulating. If you're sitting there going, I don't have money, I don't know where to go get it, ask yourself this, where are other people getting it? Right? And if you're like, oh, I don't know, could you go sell your old toys on ebay? Yes. Could you drive an Uber? Yes. Could you Renegotiate your salary 100%? Could you build a side hustle? Yeah. Could you charge more just if you went from just charging $150 an hour to $187 an hour, that could be the difference in you making five figures and six figures. It could be the difference in, you know, $10,000 extra a month. We took Ben, I think Ben Baggy started working with us in a platinum mastermind. I think at the time he was charging 175 or 200. We, we raised his rate somewhere between $25 and 25 and $50, but I think it was more like $25. He might have been charging like 186 or 199. And we took him to 225 and worked on him with his onboarding and sales strategies. And within a month he was making an extra $10,000. That's all we did. That's dope. So we made an extra. He went from 22,000amonth to 33 or 32,000amonth in 30 days just by making one slight tweak. So now what that did was that gave us a buffer so we could work on back end systems, training staff, and moved him so that eight months later, even after the pandemic had hit, he was making $65,000 a month. When the pandemic came through with the strategies that we implemented, he didn't drop his gross income. They actually increased their gross income through 2020. He opened another location after a little over a year and a half of being in business and being out of school. And now he's got three locations and he's doing over a million dollars a year. He's doing great things. He's turning back and helping other physical therapists learn how to market to patients. I mean, there's a lot of good that you can do. It's still circulating. You've got to find your money. I think Grant Cardone says this. Go find your money. Don't sit and wait for it to come to you. Don't look at your bank account and go, oh my God, there's no money in there. If you're looking at it and you're saying there's no money in there, go find it. Find the problem people are having that you can solve. The bigger problem you can solve, the more money you can ask for and make. And then once you find your money, do great things with it. So first you should probably have three to six months of savings and then you should, you know, make sure that you have a, like, ira, whether it's a Roth IRA or a simple ira, depending on what kind of business you have or the level of income you're making. So you've got some savings and you've maxed out your, as a business owner, you Max out your contribution because it's tax free right now or tax free later when you take it out, depending on what you have, and you max that out. You know, there's other investment vehicles. You know, you can get, like a term life insurance, which can be a great investment vehicle. There's a stock market. And then this leads me to, number three, crypto is here to stay. And you know what? It's producing the next generation of generational wealth holders. So what does that mean? What's a generational wealth holder? It's someone that has so much money that it passes down to the next generation, and that next generation almost doesn't even have to work for it. Traditionally, generational wealth has been passed down through land and real estate. So how is crypto doing that? We don't know much about crypto. That's okay. Go check out Brandon Smith's channel. Brandon's one of our Mastermind members, and he's crushing it. I mean, he's a guy that made $40,000 in a week, and he's done that three times this year in 2021, which is nuts. Right? But he's putting in the hard work, and he's done it, I think, three different ways. Okay, but crypto's here to stay, and it's producing the next generation of generational wealth holders. Well, why? One of the reasons is because you've got kids going out and buying JPEGs and then turning around and selling it for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars. But there's also going to be web 3.0 land. There's land already being sold on the blockchain or on the. On the Internet. There's land being sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars in, like, the Metaverse and Decentraland, et cetera. So I'm not saying go out and buy it. And, you know, everyone in crypto is going to say, this is not financial advice. I'm happy to tell you what I'm invested in. But what I'm saying is, is there's always something new coming around the corner. And I feel like I'm late because, look, I built a website in 1995. I built an HTML website in 1995, and I feel late to crypto, but I know I'm early. And if you're looking at it right now, you. I know you're early. And I was listening to one of my mentors, Shran Srivatsa's podcast yesterday. He was talking about crypto. He's like, the real way to learn it is to get into it. He's like, you might not like it, but you won't. You can research it all you want, but until you try it, until you click some buttons, you won't understand it. So this isn't a podcast about that. Like I said, if you want to learn more, go, go follow Brandon on his Instagram. I think it's R. Brandon Smith or Dr. Smith, DPT. He's got a discord group that I'm a member of. It's like 10 or 20 bucks a month. It's a no brainer because I've made thousands of dollars off the information that I've learned in that group. I mean I've, I mean I've forexed my, I forex my return on some JPEGs that I bought. Let's, let's, let's keep it at that. So I think that it's here. Don't ignore it. Understand it. It's part of understanding money. It's part of having that conversation about money. What does money do? What does it mean? Where does it come from? I mean the US Gold standard is not really anymore. It's not gold, it's just ones and zeros. Money is an idea. And crypto is decentralized, which means that it's not any one government controlling it, it's the people that belong to it. So it's here. It's producing the next generation of generational wealth holders. I'm not going to say it's a great place to invest your money, but I'm saying is you need to have an eye on it, just like you have an eye on the stock market and just like you have an eye on your business. And if we go back to it, your business and yourself is the best place to invest your money if you haven't already. So in courses in business coaching and growing your business, because you can grow your own business and wealth and income through being an entrepreneur faster than any kind of stock or crypto or other investment can. So if you haven't invested in yourself, you need to be doing that. You already invested in yourself. In PT school, you spent anywhere from 50,000 to $450,000 to become a physical therapist. And if you just go get a job, you're going to be making between, I don't know, 70 and $150,000 a year as an employee. Right? That's not a big return. But if you can go and make multiple six figures as a year, seeing four patients a day, working or working three days a week, you know, like Many of our Platinum Mastermind members, you can go make a million dollars and not even treat patients. You can make $40,000 in a week or like $18,000 with an email like just Jenny did. You can radically change the world and change your life. And you need to understand the world around you. And crypto is one of those things that if you haven't heard about it, you're living under a rock. You need to go investigate what it is. Because I didn't do that five years ago when I first heard about bitcoin. And then I was like, no, I'm focused on my business and I'm glad I did. But what if I had bought $1,000 worth of Bitcoin five years ago when I first heard about it? You know what? I might still be doing the exact same thing I'm doing right now. Because business is a long game. So this is the next one. Number four, business is a long game. Investments are a long game. Crypto. So crypto, I believe it's a long game. It is a long, very good long play in there. A lot of people are doing short game, you know, like trading, you know, 10%, 20, 30% down, and they'll wait for it to go up a little bit, run, and they'll sell off. Well, you have to still drop in a significant amount of money for that to be a significant return for me. For you, you might put in 100 bucks and make a thousand and feel like, hell, yeah, I'm taking that out and doing something with it. For me, I'm looking for, you know, 50, 70, $500,000, you know, gains before I'm like, dude, this is like, I got to take this out and sock it somewhere else. But business is a long game because I'm looking for 100,000 million dollar plays. And I know that they're going to take time. And I can tell you this even in uncertain times, like it has been for the last two years or longer. Even before the pandemic, it was feeling uncertain and weird with the election and the transition of, you know, Trump to Biden and all that stuff. Like, people are getting weird around here when you can solve a big problem with a capital Bing Capital, big capital. When you solve a big problem and you put in the work and you lay a good found solid foundation, your business is going to thrive and you're going to help tons of people and you're going to make plenty of money. So think about it as a long game. Too many people will come to me saying, aaron, I need to make money now or they're only judging their results on what do I make now? You know, hey, I'm paying you a lot of money for the course or the coaching. You know, where's the money? I'm like, you just started your business. You know, like, I've been doing this for 20 years. You know, it takes a long time. And I'm not saying it's going to take you 20 years. I'm saying we have to time collapse it. But your expectation going in needs to be that this is a long game. And if you need money now, just get a credit card. Like, you just put some money on a credit card because you will be able to pay it off even if it's a 23% interest rate. You, you know what, you're going to grow your business faster than 23% if you do it the right way. I mean, I've done it plenty of times because business is a long game. And I tell you, it's paying off for me in droves this month. Things that I didn't think would ever work, things that, you know, have been just put in place for years. All of a sudden people are like coming and buying those things or asking for help, which is great. It's awesome. You know, I feel some days I feel a little unprepared for the volume, but it's scared. Growth is scary. When I look at the potential for growth in my business, it feels like, oh my God, I don't want that to happen. It feels scary. It feels scary because I haven't done it yet. But growth doesn't happen in your comfort zone. I wish I could draw this out. You've probably seen it. Draw a big thing about a big circle and put a little dot on the other side of the page. Comfort zone is your big circle. That dot is where growth happens. Growth happens outside of your comfort zone. You have to be uncomfortable when you are signing up for a new program, coaching program, you're doing something new. It feels uncomfortable. Just like, you know, the night before a big trip, like, let's say you're going to away for two months to summer camp or you're going out of town. Remember when you went out of town for like study abroad or, or the first time you went to like college or the night before your first day at PT school. Remember how nervous and excited and we call it in my family NER sighted you kind of had the butterflies, right? That's the way it feels when you're on the edge of something new and something Great. And when it comes to money, because you've had experience, negative experience with it in the past, you start associating that feeling with negativity like, I shouldn't do this. But what I'm telling you is when you're on the verge of something big, you're going to feel those feelings. I can't tell you how many times I felt those feelings in the last two years. It's nuts. Even when it feels negative, even when I had an employee leave, it's like I could feel it. I know that this means it's growth, but it was so amplified, it hurt. It hurt. But I reached out to my coach, my wife, the other people around me, and, you know, I was able to move through this thing. And it's bet. I mean, things are better now. They are so much better now. Because I knew when I felt that, that it wasn't a signal to run away, it was a signal to keep moving forward. It's just like I tell our coaching clients. Like, when you feel this, when times are tough, run to us, not from us. So run to the problem, not from the problem. What is it the Navy SEALs do, right? When there's a fight, everyone else is running away. They run to it because their, their strat strategy and tactics is what's the exact words. And I apologize. I'm not a military person. I've read dozens of the books. But it's, it's, it's fight, it's, it's explosive violence. It's like, it's, it's, that's how they win. It's just exploit, explosive, fast, quick, you know, action and violence is how they suppress the enemy. And you have to think about your business like that. How do you suppress the enemy, which is fear and doubt, not just your competition, fear and self doubt. You have to attack it. So if there's a secret lesson in here that I've learned from Bedros, who's my personal coach, my business coach is you have to attack this game of business. Business is war and you have to attack it. And at the end of the day, it's more like it's a little bit like rugby, where we can go out and beat the shit out of each other and then we're going to have a beer together. Like, as long as you don't steal and copy my stuff and tell me that it was yours first when you clearly know it wasn't, we're going to have a beer afterwards. But when it comes down to marketing and sales and running a business like this is not a hobby. This feeds my family and it helps me do good in the world. And I'm gonna go out there and I'm gonna attack it. I'm gonna fight and do everything I can. I'm gonna stay up later than you, I'm gonna work harder than you, and I'm gonna travel more with my family and I'm gonna go out of town 81 days of the year with my family like I did in 2019. The only reason I didn't do that 2020 and 2021 is because, Covid, business is a long game. And you have to see that there are some short term wins there. If you have a product that converts and you already make money, there are definitely some short term financial wins. If you do not have a product that makes money yet, your short term wins are career satisfaction, quitting your job, helping people, getting those first paid in full, right? Like you might not be taking home money in your personal bank account, but you're helping people. You're getting your system set up, your business done, and you're doing it faster than I ever did and than anyone else because you're following a roadmap and a blueprint for success, right? And remember, business is a long game. You're not in this to build a job. Like right now you might be trying to get away from something else. Like, you couldn't go back to work because you didn't want to get a vaccine. And fair enough, but you can't go work for the hospital. So now you're going to go start a, start a business. Mike, this isn't the first time that's happened. Eight years ago, there were droves of people coming to our courses and programs because of some change in insurance and people were getting laid off. Like, I don't know why, because I wasn't working for someone else then, but it was nuts. Do this on your own terms. And so what I'm saying is business is a long game. Don't just create a job. Get out of your shitty job and get this rolling. But then think about what's the next step? What happens when you want to go on vacation? Could you go on a week long vacation? Could you go for three weeks to climb Denali like Julie Lee? Julie climbed Rainier in 2020 and Denali this past summer. And she's training for the next mountain now, seeing four patients a day, and she's going out of town for three weeks at a time. She's got to go do a bunch of training and she hasn't just built a job, she's built a lifestyle. So I'm going to tell you about the next one. The next one is that next year is going to be even better. So number five, these kind of all flow, I'm kind of jumping ahead of myself. But next year is going to be even better as long as you don't stop and never quit as long as you keep going. I think Jason Capital has this great shirt. You don't need to know who Jason Capital is, but he's got great shirt says keep fucking going. I want one of those shirts, but didn't say fucking. It says F V U K or something like that. But it is, it's just keep going, don't stop, never quit. Next year is going to be better than this year. Every year in my business has been better than the next. Every year in my life is getting better than next. My body feels better now than it did when I was in peak shape. Racing bicycles, you know, racing bicycles, I wasn't concentrating on movement. It's concentrating on power, speed and endurance. And now I'm concentrating now because I'm a physical therapist, I'm doing this for, I concentrate on quality of movement and strength and, you know, mobility and stability and not how much can I lift and how far can I go, but how well can I do it? Okay, how do we take that to your business? You got something that's, that's working for you, but it's not great. Like you've got some employees that as you've shifted to cash, they don't really see it. Okay, next year can be better, but we got to get them better too. We have to focus on the quality of our business's movement. We can't just focus on quantity, we have to focus on quality. So what does quality look like? It looks like a team that follows you, that's going to follow you into the gates of hell, right? Because they believe in your mission. You've got systems that are running so that you can go take a two month vacation and that's what it's going to take for you to go open another location is to be able to leave your current business for at least four weeks and still have it run and produce income so that you can be focused on the next location. So one test you have to think about is can I leave my current. If I want to open another location, can I leave my current one alone and have it run without me? And if it can't, there's systems that we need to build out so that next year can be better than this year. Next year is going to be even better because that's the outlook that I have. I know it will. That's my trend. I hope it's yours. If your trend isn't on the up, then what do we need to do to make it better for you? Okay, and number six is when you live by default, you get what you got. When you live by design, you get what you want. I just heard this recently and I was like, that is exactly it. Taki Moore said this at our two day intensive. He's a. I'm in his black belt program, so if you haven't noticed, I've. I belong to a mastermind. I have a coach. Maybe it's too much, but not for my speed. It time collapses me, right? And he said, when you live by default, you get what you got. When you live by design, you get what you want. And that hit me. I was like, holy shit, that is it super powerful to me. Like when you just say, hey, I'm gonna take what I get, I'm just gonna wait around like so many people did in 2020. Like, people that worked with us, did they just live by default? They get what they got. But the people I know that live by design, that plan their year, they get what they want. We just did a masterclass, a preloaded year masterclass with my platinum mastermind this past week. And what did we do? We didn't plan out our marketing strategy for 2022. We didn't plan out our sales strategies. We planned out what we wanted. We started with the big rocks and the pebbles. Like, what are the big important vacations and time with our family and time for ourself. We started with putting in our two day retreats and our weekly calls. And we said, okay, what are the big promotions and marketing activities that we did this past year that worked really well? Okay, how do we schedule those in? What are the other things that I need to be doing? Like my. My must. So what were the things that I need to keep doing? What are the things I need to stop doing? So what are the pieces of sand and strategies that I can pay someone else 10, 20, even $150 to do an hour that I shouldn't be doing, I don't want to be doing, and then what? They're the things that we need to start doing and then we map those in so we know we get what we want because we designed it. It's just like paying yourself first. The concept of profit first, which we Teach our, our members when they come on board, you pay yourself first. People say, mirin, I'm not making a paycheck. I'm not paying myself. Why not pay yourself first? And there's some strategic ways to do that. Even if you're only paying yourself 20 bucks a week, you're still paying yourself and you're getting rewarded for the hard work you're doing. But when. Because when you live by default, you get what you got. But when you're proactive and you design your life because you know what you want, you're going to get what you want. Unless, of course, you quit. And it's okay to quit. Just acknowledge it to yourself, to me, to someone else, that this isn't for you. Because it's certainly not for everyone. Being a business owner, being an entrepreneur, being a cash practice owner is not for everyone. It certainly isn't. And you have my permission to not do it. You have my permission to not come and work with me, and you have my permission to not work with anyone else and just go get a job that feels comfortable. Because some people just need to know that they have stability. But if we learned anything during the pandemic, there's not a lot of stability in pt. So many people got laid off. And I know you can go back and get a job right now because I know dozens of cash practice owners that would love to hire you. And there's just not enough positions for physical therapists. So even if you're not into this business thing, figure out what it is you want and go and go out and get it. Don't sit around and woe is me or make excuses. If there's another bonus, I can say that there's. I've heard way more excuses in the last 20 months than before. So many excuses and reasons why something else isn't right. Okay, think about this. If someone's doing something and sharing it, what's the difference between you and them? It's not how smart you are. It's not your experience. It's not your. It's not how good looking you are on Instagram. It's the fact that they're sharing it and you're not. The three things. I've had a few people ask me this in the last few months, which is amazing. A couple of our new Platinum Mastermind members and one or two people who are applying for the Mastermind in the last week. What makes someone successful in your program? Someone else asked, like what? Unu asked. What makes someone unsuccessful in your program? Which is really, the best question. Okay, so what makes someone successful is that they're one quick to ask for help. Okay. As a physical therapist, you're smart, you're a doctor, but guess what? You should be open to asking for help. It's the fastest way to getting what you want. Ask someone for help. Don't be too proud to ask for directions, like the stereotypical man who's driving the car. Like, I'm not gonna stop and ask for help and then just get lost for hours like Clark Griswold. Be quick to ask for help because there's plenty of people out there who can help you. Serious. No matter whether it's business, personal life. You know, I've got a kettlebell coach. I want to. I want to pass the strong first kettlebell certification. I can't do it myself or I know I probably could. I could probably figure it out. I'm smart, but I want someone else to tell me what to do and help me through it because it shortens the time and it's 1 less or 20 less decisions I have to make. Same thing with business. On my call with Bedros yesterday, he's like, yeah, Aaron, I'm just basically agreeing with you. You know, after four years of working together, I was like, yeah, I know. He's like, it means you've pretty much got it. And I was like, yeah, I know. But at least all I gotta do is ask you and you agree with me. And now I don't have to think about it any longer. I just think about it. And after I've thought about it for more than 30 minutes, I write it down. If it's not been solved by the time our call, I ask you and you say yes, and I'm great. Done. Like, it saves me a ton of time and mental brain space. Where was I? If you live by default, you get what you got. When you live by design, you get what you want. So what do you want? You have to be very clear on what you want because you might have hit a goal, and what you want, you already have. So what's next? What's the next bigger thing? Now go get that. Go get it. Because 2020 year is going to be even better than this year. That's Cash PG Lunch Hour podcast for this year for today. Thank you so much. If you are at all interested in working together to grow and scale your business, to take you from a couple thousand dollars a month to multiple six or seven figures, help you scale your business, help you open a new location, just hire some other staff so that you can start an online business or take your online business from a couple thousand a month to 40k in a week. Just send me a DM with the word 2022. I'll send you some details and see what we can do. See if we're a good fit. See how we can explode your business together in2022 and for years to come. I'll see you on the next episode and I'll see you next year. Peace.