CashPT Lunch Hour Podcast Expensive is a State of Mind

Our idea of what is expensive or what's affordable has been skewed by insurance companies. Starting a physical therapy practice or business is not expensive. It's not expensive if your goal is to help thousands or millions of people. It's not expensive if you know what's possible for you. Hey, what's up? My name is Aaron LeBauer and we're here today on another episode of the Cash PT Lunch Hour podcast. If you're watching this on YouTube, be sure you hit the like subscribe and notifications bell those little buttons. If you're watching this on itunes, please share this out with your friends or leave us a review. And if you're on Facebook or watching this anywhere else, give us a little thumbs up and like. But what I'd really love to know from you is what questions you have and what your big takeaways are from this episode. So don't hesitate to leave comments, tag me, and let me know what your number one insights are. So today on the episode, what we're gonna talk about is why expensive is a state of mind. Haven't you ever, like, thought of something like, that's expensive? Well, PT school is expensive. Oh, the iPhone's expensive. Coaching program's expensive. The $10 hamburger, that's expensive. Expense is a state of mind, and it's also relative. It's relative to the result. And I believe in physical therapy, we are. Our idea of what is expensive or what's affordable has been skewed by insurance companies. It's been skewed by the way that we are compensated for our time rather than for our results that we get people. It's been skewed by the fact that insurance companies are only going to pay $30 or $38 no matter what we do. We actually got a, you know, I own a cash practice, and our patients pay in full at time of service. And I got an email the other day from Multiplan trying to negotiate our rate for an evaluation. And Instead of the $250, they were like, well, we'll pay 37. And I told one of my team members, and she laughed. She's like, that's not even enough money to pay a good physical therapist. I was like, I know. So just imagine, like, if we were accepting the 37. You know, how many people do I have to see an hour to actually pay good physical therapists? I got to see at least two, maybe more, because I, you know, I gotta pay someone. Plus I got the overhead, plus the marketing costs and plus all the. All the other Taxes and expenses. Expensive is a state of mind, especially when starting a business. What you really need to think about is investing. So if you're going well, man, Aaron, PT school was expensive. Yeah, it was. Especially if you don't work as a physical therapist. Yeah, it was. Especially if, you know, you've accepted a job for, you know, $65,000, $55,000, $65,000 and you don't have a side hustle or you don't have a long term plan or that job isn't giving you something like long term. Like there's not like a long term, like an IRA match or something where, you know, long term, I'm getting more out of this. Or maybe that job, you know, isn't giving you any time off and you're doing, what's it called, documentation on the weekend, which I have never done. Expensive is a state of mind. You know, a lot of people say, oh, Aaron, I can't afford that. I can't afford the coaching or whatever. I'm like, well, that's why we have credit cards. And they're like, oh, I would never put anything on a credit card. I want to grow my business debt free. Okay, cool. I get that maybe in the past you've had bad experiences with credit cards. Probably because you haven't used them to invest in your business or yourself. You've used them to buy things that depreciate over time or after a while they suck and you're still left paying for them. Like, I don't know, a couch. I know. This is like, hey, I really need that thousand dollar couch to fill up my brand new apartment now that I have a job. Okay, well, after, you know, I'm on the payment plan and after six months the couch has a hole in it or a stain, or maybe it's the car. As soon as you drive it off the lot, it loses 10 or 20% of its value. After three years, you're still paying 300, $400 a month to buy the car off the lease costs more than a used car does. I mean, in 2021 with car prices, you know, used car prices are really high. So it might not be happening now, but maybe you've had this experience in the past where you've bought something that didn't add value to your life, it added status to your life. Maybe it added nothing to your life and you paid a lot for it and you're still paying it down on credit cards later because you didn't learn how to, well, maybe manage your money. But really, you know, how do I live just below my means and not buy things that are going to keep me under and spend money? Right. I'm going to spend money on things that I know are going to give me a big return later so I can create systems that generate revenue ongoing. And I use this ongoing revenue to buy the things that I want rather than, rather than keep me from investing the things that I need. Okay, so if I want to race bicycles, I need a good bike, you know, but primarily what I need to do is train and I need a coach to train me because it doesn't matter how light my bike is or whether I have carbon wheels or aluminum wheels. And if I show up to the race and I'm not ready for the race, my nutrition is off, my pre race plan is off, and I actually haven't been training. Who cares how light my bike is? Same thing. I can't show up to do business and just know, hey, I'm arbitrarily five years as a physical therapist and now I'm qualified to open a business. Like there are people that are doing that and they're building businesses and their cost to run their business is higher than their average collections and they're losing money and they're coming to me and saying, aaron, help, like I'm about to go out of business. I think I want to shift to cash, you know, but. And I'm like, maybe you don't need to. We just need to get some of these costs under control and add some cash like wellness services to your business. You know, different mindset. So maybe you've had these bad experiences and you're like, putting something on my credit card would be a bad idea. It's not a bad idea. Maybe the people I'm hearing it from are just saying that to me as an excuse instead of saying no. And they're not. They don't want to be mean and they don't want to say no. But really what I think is, I've heard this so much that we think that using our credit cards is bad. We think that things that might help us are expensive. And one of the things I imagine it is is because I don't know that I can actually make six figures as a physical therapist because I've never been shown that. And I was told by one of my early mentors, aaron, you've got a six figure business. And I was like, no, I don't. No way. Well, John was right, I do. And I have more than that actually. So. But I didn't the point is, I didn't have the belief until I had someone else tell it to me multiple times. And as a physical therapist getting out of PT school, you've got six figures in debt, but your first job is likely not over six figures. Unless maybe you work in home health and you work a lot extra. Or maybe you're in outpatient orthopedics and you are all of a sudden, as a new grad, a clinic manager. Because all the people who are 10 years out are like, hell, no, I don't want that job. Because that means I'm working time and a half and only making an extra couple thousand dollars a year. And you've put a lot of things on your credit card and you're afraid. Or maybe you've been listening to Dave Ramsey and he's telling you, eat ramen noodles and pay off your student loans as fast as possible. I'm going to say that might be good advice for someone who just wants a job. But if your goal is to run a business, your goal is to help thousands of people, even millions of people or hundreds of millions of people, don't listen to Dave Ramsey about how to pay down your student loans. Because if you're getting out of school and you have a big dream and you want to help a lot of people, your student loans, those are good debt. Because the knowledge that you learned is not going to depreciate the information, the doctor, doctor period in front of your name that you paid for, the information that you gathered from that education, it's not going away and it's not going to depreciate. The only depreciation of your education as a physical therapist is if you stop working as a physical therapist, if you stop helping people. And I'm not saying stop treating people, if you stop working in our industry, if you go and say, hey, look, I'm going to just sell real estate because physical therapy profession isn't doing it for me anyway anymore. After five years, okay, like, you're no longer using your knowledge as a physical therapist. You're selling real estate. I know people who've done that. I know people who've gone into medical sales. And so, you know, their degree and their title still kind of helps. But, you know, it's like you're letting that depreciate when all it has to do is that investment will keep appreciating, appreciate. So the 100, 150,000, even if you only have 70,000 left, like, we don't need to rush to pay that off. If Your plan is to open a business. Okay. Investing in the stock market is great. So maybe if we looked at the last 30 years, you could get like an 8% return. Awesome. But what if you put in, let's say, $100,000 in your business? Could you get a million dollars out of it in the next few years? Yeah. So you can 10x your hundred thousand and turn it into a million. Okay. I'm not even saying you have to spend 100,000. Let's say you spent $10,000. Could you get $100,000 a year for the next 10 years? Absolutely. But if I put $10,000 in the stock market right now, I'm gonna earn, you know, there's no. What's it called? There's no guarantee that I'm gonna earn it, but I'm gonna earn an 8%. You know, so next year I'll have $800 extra dollars, and then the next year I'll have 800 extra dollars plus the 8% of the extra 800. And so it's going up like percentage points rather than doubling or 10xing. So I can add some percentages to my income by putting it into an IRA or the stocks or beat out crypto and meme stocks might be a little different, but that's an exception to the rule. You know, that's kind of like playing around and, you know, hoping, like, this money does well, and it is doing well for some people. I'm talking about, like, traditional stock market investing or investing in real estate. Your home price isn't going to double in a few years, except for, like, very small amount of homes. Most homes will not do that. Maybe some places in California now during the pandemic, like, they've gone up. But in general, over time, investing in a house is not going to double your investment. You put in 100,000 into a $300,000 house and you pay monthly, you know, $1,500. A few years later, maybe your house is worth an extra 100,000. That doesn't mean you now have double. It depends on how much you can sell it for and what your expenses are for selling it and how much principal you had. But if I put that 10,000 or even $50,000 into my business, I know that with the right education and accountability and business coach, if I invest $50,000, I know if I take action on it, that I'm going to get more than that back. I'm going to get double, if not triple or 10x that back, which is what's happened to Me and what's happened to the people that I've been working with, learning from and the people I've been coaching. So the, my point here is that the best investment that you can make is in you. And expensive is a state of mind because it's not expensive if you know you're going to take what someone shows you and tells you and take action on it and put it into play and never give up until you get it right. Expensive is when you invest in coaching and they suggest you do something and you go, no, that's not what I'm going to do. I'm going to try something different and it doesn't work. That's expensive. Expensive when someone gives you an idea and you don't take action on it or it doesn't work the first time and you quit. So the difference between investing and expenses are investments are things that you spend money on. Whether you put in a credit card, you take out a loan, you spend cash on it knowing that you're going to get a positive return. I know that if I invest in a team member, an employee, that I'm going to get time and money back, I'm going to get a positive return on my investment. I know that if I invest in coaching, I'm going to and I take action. I'm getting a positive return on my investment. I know that if I invest in Facebook ads, I know I'm getting a positive return on my investment if I have an offer that already works and I'm willing to leverage my time and to have someone else do it for me and play with the different offers. What's expensive is buying stuff and never using it. What's expensive is buying something that you think is great that adds very little value. I mean, I would say some of the things that add little value that are really expensive is. What are those like indoor treadmills, the body weight treadmills. Can't remember what they are, but they're worth. They cost tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. I've had clients before that were stuck in like long term leases they couldn't get out of. They were paying $2,000 a month and they were basically sold on the fact that runners, injured runners are going to come use it and rent it from you. And so yeah, that kind of happened, but it didn't actually bring in more people. It didn't, it wasn't the thing. It was the thing we thought was great, but it didn't actually add value because our, the clients didn't Value that. Okay, a car is expensive. Do you need a car? Maybe. Do you need, like a fancy car? No, you need a thing that gets you from point A to point B. But if you want a fancy, nice car, find an investment, find a system, Find some recurring revenue that you can generate. Or don't just find it, go build it and then use the profit from that to buy the fancy thing. Now, the fancy thing is expensive, but you've built something that creates an ROI that pays for it. So essentially, you're using someone else's money to buy you nice stuff, but you're not using their money. You are actually adding value to their life in exchange for currency. And in currency allows you to do cool things like buy a cool car, go on a great vacation, go to Disney, donate money to a cause you believe in. But if you're stuck in the. I can't use credit card debt to get the education or pay for the software that's going to allow me to have more time and help more people, even while I'm sleeping, then you're in the wrong state of mind. You're looking at this the wrong way. You know, people say to me, aaron, I could never use click funnels. It's $97 a month. Like, okay, like. But I have the $297 a month plan, and click Funnels makes me hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. So why is 97 expensive? Well, maybe it's expensive because they don't believe that anyone wants to buy their product. Okay, maybe it's expensive because they've been told that you shouldn't pay $97 for something that you can't touch or you don't know how to use. I'm not exactly sure. It's probably more of a belief that I'm successful. So that's why in my program, Income Impact Academy, we help people. The whole beginning of that program is teaching you how to sell your product before you go and create it. Because I don't want you building out an amazing course, an amazing online course, and spending a bunch of money on camera equipment and editing and all that stuff before you've even sold it. We should sell it and use the proceeds to make it even better. Sell it before you create it. Okay, with physical therapy, we know physical therapy is something people want, but is it something? Is just physical therapy something they'd pay cash for when they could go down the street and pay 50 or $75 for it? Maybe if you're charging $75, they might still. They probably still Go, oh, but you don't take insurance. You're like, yeah, but it's still only 75 bucks. And then they might go, oh, yeah. And then you're just stuck going, okay, well, I'm only charging 75 bucks. How do I afford X, Y and Z? Because you're not charging enough and it's not unethical to charge more. You just haven't ever been shown what the clinics are actually charging people and what people pay because they're not paying at time of service. And it just gets confusing. So how can I afford it? It's like, look, here's the question. It's not like I can't afford it. It's like, I'm gonna figure out how to afford this. I know that these things are right for me. I'm gonna figure out how to afford it. You know, if I pay for a $50,000 coaching program, which I have, I'm gonna put it on a credit card that gives me a ton of points and a few nights free stay in like a Marriott hotel, and I'm gonna pay that sucker down. And I'm gonna pay it down with recurring revenue that I generate based on the coaching. I mean, I've done that multiple times. So you might be listening, go. Okay, Aaron, enough with that. Alright, great. Let me break something down for you. Would it be different if you knew you could make, you know, six figures? If you knew you could make seven figures with your idea, would that be different? If you knew, like, if I could snap my fingers and all of a sudden you had a six figure business, which means you're making $8,400 per month, would that change what's expensive or what's a good investment, would that change your idea? Like if, if you were able to go put down $10,000 or $20,000 on a credit card and you knew within the next 30 days you'd make that back before getting any fees and you could pay it off? Like, would you, would you put that amount on a credit card? Would you split that amount among, would you max out four or five credit cards to make sure that you could do it? Well, one of my coaching clients, I want to give out a shout out to Brandon Smith. He was actually a prior guest on the podcast, but he started working with us and within a week, actually like five days. So we did. He started in our platinum Mastermind program and then we got on our game plan call and he was telling me what his goals are and what he wants and what's working and what he's tried. That's not working. I said, why don't we do this? Let's take the thing that's working and let's relaunch it and raise the price. And then he was like, no, I don't know, blah, blah. I was like, dude, well, do you want to make money or do you want to just like work on this thing that you know, is not. Like we haven't figured out how to get it to work yet. He was like, well, let's, you know. He's like, okay. So I gave him our five day launch plan and the dude went out and crushed it. He made $40,000 in less than a week. He more than doubled the investment he made in his coaching program and in himself and in his business. And he continues to crush it. So, you know, so shout out for Brandon for doing that. And he's not the only one. There are a handful of other people I can think off the top of my head and I'm not going to tell you all of their stories who have come in coaching programs that we've run and we just gotta look at like what's going on, what's working, what's not and make one or two tweaks, one or two ideas and we can get a massive ROI right away. And then what we can do is go and look at what are the long term strategies we need to put in. So let me see if I can pull this up. I do wanna. Oh, the apple pencil's not here. I wanted to do a little drawing and I can do this. I think I can do this with my finger, but maybe I can't. But I want to break down for you. What is, what is expensive? What does six figures really look like? So write this down. You're probably just going to have to write this down. Let's see if I can. Yeah, I was going to draw this out and be fancy. Let me see if I can change this real quick. Let me see. Oh, there we go. No, that didn't work. That's not it. Oh, well, write this down. Write down $100,000. Isn't that a really big fucking number? Okay, let's write down a million. It's got two commas in it. One million. What does that look like? Well, I can tell you, let's start with 100,000. What that looks like is $8,400 per month. Now you might be thinking, damn, Aaron, that's a lot. Okay. Our Mastermind members regularly go from, you know, four to five, maybe $6,000 a month when they start to $20,000 months before they even hire their next physical therapist. You know, Julie Lee did the exact thing it did exactly that. She texted me a message in June. I think May was one of her best months. And she made like 19,000, I think. Then in July, she went and climbed Denali. So I think June, she also did incredibly well, but she was out. And then she came back with a waiting list. And so it's like, oh, how do I earn that much? Okay, I need you to think about it like this. So for $8,400 per month, how do we get there? Well, if the average plan of care and like an in Network practice is $1,000, depending on what you charge, and in cash practice, it's somewhere between a thousand and fifteen hundred. For my business, it's two thousand dollars plus anyone they refer. But so let's just imagine it's $1,500, which is eight visits. At about $187 a visit, all you need is six new patients a month to come in and finish a plan of care, and you're making $9,000 a month. Okay, that's six. That's not even two new patients a week. That's like one and a half patients a week. If you are like, oh, I'm not really going to charge that much, I don't know how to do that. That's another conversation we can have. But let's say your average plan of care is $1,000. Like it is a national average. We're talking nine patients a month. That's just two new patients a week. And you're making six figures. So six figures is not very far away. So if six figures is your goal, that's a great goal for your first year. We've had clients come in and just barely hit, like, miss it. Derek Nielsen made 96, 207 in his first year. And he didn't price his services the way I recommended right away, but then eventually got his prices up. Ben Baggy did well over six figures his first year, and then by the end of his first year, he was at 22,000amonth. And then Stephanie McMillan is definitely on track for that. She made 10,000 in her first month. And with, like working three days a week and growing, you know, so if you're making 20k a month, then you're like at multi six figures, you're around the 250,000, 225 mark, which is a great place to be. And as soon as you get there, your schedule gets so full you can't do the marketing, you can't see all the patients. And really, right before you get there, we need to look at hiring the next PT so you can have your time back before it's all gone, so that we can grow and scale and help more people. So what's really possible? So just imagine this. You invest 10, 5, 10, 500, 1500, 10,000, 20,000 in coaching and then we go and we add two new patients to your business per month. Or two new course sales at $1,000 per month. Do you think that that would be a good investment? Yes. Oh, Aaron, maybe that's not possible for me. Hey, maybe it's not possible for you. But don't let that negative self come and tell you it's not going to work until you actually even try it. Maybe if you're doubting yourself, you're not clear on your goals and your vision and what's possible, or you're having the imposter syndrome. You're like, who am I to be able to help tons of people? Well, who are you to not help tons of people if you've helped one person? There's billions of people on our planet. There's millions of people in the world, and there are hundreds of millions of people in the United States. If you can help 1, 2, 12, 20, like, who are you not to not go out and try to help hundreds of thousands of people? Okay, PT school didn't teach you all this amazing stuff to just go help, you know, 20 people a week or 20 people a day. They taught you this stuff so you could help 20,000 people a week. So what's possible for you if you could do six figures? So what about seven? Oh, gosh, Aaron, that's a long way away. Yeah, you need to build a team to get to seven figures generally, whether it's virtual assistants or in person. And that's just $84,000 a month. So how do I do that? Well, if you can do $20,000 a month by yourself, then what we just need are four of you. But not a view. We need four employees generating the same amount and we're just about that seven figure mark. I didn't get into this game to own multiple businesses. Well, no worries. You don't need to be. There's a lot of seven figure businesses out there without a profit margin. It's seven figure in gross, but no one's taken, you know, the owner's not taking home 100,000, you know, so you have to look at your gross versus your net and Your profit and your expenses and what you're investing in and what you're buying, that's easily. It's not necessary because there are some things that are just expensive and there are some things that are great investments. But most people that I interact with who are just getting started business have them mixed up or they don't really. They think investments are real estate and stock market. And some people are like, I would never get in the stock market. Or they're trying to time the stock market or time the crypto. You're never going to beat the game timing it. You just need to be in the market and you need to have multiple investments and multiple streams of revenue. Credit cards aren't evil. Credit cards and debt is like, these are, these are things you leverage to get what you want. My recommendation would be not to go into debt on a credit card that you can't pay off. But, you know, I wouldn't go into debt and a credit card for like a new car. But I am going to go to debt on a credit card for coaching and accountability, for software. I know that's going to pay off down the road. For images, photos, for photography. For people who believe in our mission. Student loans are not a burden. Let me just tell you this. Student loans are not a burden. I'm going to say this a million times. Everyone's like, oh my God, student loans, student loans, student loans. Okay, great. If your plan is to just be an employee, yeah, they can be a burden because you're not going to earn shit or you got to go get a job in healthcare. But if you don't want to own your own clinic, you need to get a side hustle that you can spend, you know, 10 hours a week on, maybe 20 hours a week on. You know, maybe you have a side hustle and it's on Instagram and you're selling 10, you know, 10% affiliate commissions here and there. And, and you've got your courses and they're 10, 20, 30, $40. Okay, great. But you know what? I'm looking at you and going, man, you could sell that for so much more if you just figured out how to write a good sales page and how to create the really good offer because what you have is valuable, you're just not valuing it. And then your side hustle could be your main hustle. Or we could automate your side hustle and you don't need to do as much work with it. And it can bring in double, if not triple or 10x the revenue. And you could pay off your student loans with this automated stream of income that you've worked so hard to build. But that's not working. You know what I mean? Like, you don't have to go in and buy a clinic or build a clinic, and you do not have to spend, get a $150,000 loan to start a clinic. You need to invest in your business. You need to invest in yourself, in your knowledge and. And in a mentor or a coach or both. If you want to be proficient in business like you are as a physical therapist. And I say that because. Or is it proficient? It's like when you graduate from PT school, you are a proficient, or, you know, like you pass the. What's it called? The state, the national exam. You're proficient, okay? You're not an expert physical therapist, and yet you've just spent $80,000 or $150,000 to be proficient. Not dangerous. And most PTs in our industry think you're crazy and dangerous if you go try to treat patients. I've seen people say I'd never hire a new grad. New grads can't open businesses. They shouldn't. It's unethical. Like, screw them. What I'm saying is you just spend all this money to be proficient as a pt and you want to own a business, and now you're afraid to invest anymore until you pay off this thing. What I can tell you is that if you invest in business, the business knowledge and expert experience and systems that you're paying for, you're paying for speed, and you're paying for someone else who's figured it out to show you exactly what to do so you can pay off the student loans faster. But you don't put the money directly to student loans. You put the money first. Money in directly to building out the business and systems. You say screw the loans. Like, especially if you have federal loans, they're some of the best loans to have. I don't care what percentage it is you invest in your business, you're going to earn a higher percentage return by investing in yourself. So that's all I got to say for right now. I hope you've gotten something out of this. I know it took me a long time to develop this mindset, and part of it is I teach it to others. But I've had to go and listen and share, and I've had to invest in coaches and coaching programs and mastermind groups and put myself around people who. Who are where I want to be. Okay, if you're hanging around People who tell you you can't tell you it's unethical, tell you you shouldn't, you need to get away from them and go spend time with the people who are going to support you. And that's what I've done. And that's where, what it's taken for me to build this like mindset of an entrepreneur and how to invest wisely, how to choose my expenses, say, hey, I don't care about that expense. I'm gonna spend the money on that and not be afraid to invest in something when I know I can. Gonna go all in on it. So what I want you to do is figure out what do you want? Reverse engineer it, find the person that has it or it's done it. Go pay them to show you how to do it. Because you're only gonna get there faster. Instead of trying to figure it out on your own, you're gonna, it's gonna take a lot longer and you'll probably hit some roadblocks. It's going to take a long time to get around them. And all I can say is we already know how to slice bread. Just make it better. You know, the wheel is already invented. Make a better wheel. Don't try to start from scratch because you are your best. Invest your best. You are your best investment. Expensive as a state of mind. Change your state of mind. Change your state of being and go out there and help millions of people and we'll see you guys on the next show. Would really appreciate it if you've gotten anything out of this podcast. If you go over to itunes and leave us a five star rating or review screenshot this and share it on Instagram, tag me and put a little comment with your number one takeaway from the episode. We totally appreciate. We'll reshare it and I'll see you on the next show. Thanks so much.