Stop Making Excuses

Hey, what's up? Welcome back to the Cash PT Lunch Hour podcast. This is your host, Aaron. And today I'm just gonna drop you some thoughts about making excuses. That's all I'm hearing lately are excuses from people. By the way, if you're watching this, I got the PT Bizcon 2022 mug. 2023 is coming up in March 17th, 18th in Charlotte at the City Center Marriott. More details to come. Keep your ears open. But here's the thing. I've just, you know, been DMing people, answering questions, getting a lot of people saying, oh, but this and all but that, you know, but I gotta check with my spouse or oh, but you know I'm gonna have to raise prices to make that much money or oh, it's not the right time. I need to wait for this. I'm here to tell you, like, stop fucking making excuses. Because that's all you're doing is you're just making excuses to protect yourself. You're making excuses so that you don't have to fail. And it's just like, don't bullshit yourself like that. You're just cheating yourself. You're not cheating me. You know, like I'm not here because like I want your money. If I message you and I'm like, hey, I can help you, it's not because like I want your money. It's because I want you to win. I want all pts to win because I don't need your money. Because I'm drinking single origin Costa Rican coffee and you know, I'm eating scallops for dinner last night at really nice restaurant. I mean, I'm making my dry aged rib eye. I mean all the things, like I got what I want because I stopped making excuses a long time ago. You know, I don't, I can't even remember like what was keeping me. But all I know this is, it's gotta stop because it's never gonna be the right time. It's never gonna be the right time for all of you there. Like, oh, I just need to wait till I get my bonus. You know, Someone was like, oh, I just, I'm getting a $20,000 bonus. Okay, that's cool. Like you can't quit your job. You know, if you quit your job, you owe that 20,000 back. But what if you leave a job making 85,000 or even 100,000 and you go to a business and you bring in 250, is that $20,000? Consequential. All it's going to do is keep you from getting to the 250 or half a million or million sooner. It's just going to slow down your timeline. It's never going to be the right time. It's never going to be the right time to quit your job. It's never going to be a right time to buy that course, hire your next employee. It's never going to be right, right time to go to that. You know, Con Ed, you're like, I mean, so many people are like, oh, is there Con Ed close to me? I'm like, go to the one that you really want to and spend the money to get there. I mean, it's never like, you know, it's never gonna be the right time to hire your next employee to go live on Facebook or Instagram. You know, I've got so many Mastermind members who are afraid, they're crushing it and they're still afraid to go live because of what they're gonna look like and what people are gonna think. Well, it's only gonna. It's only going to grow their business, you know, it's not going to grow my business. It's going to grow their business. It's never going to be so. It's never going to be the right time to do it. Just do it. Just fucking do it. So at our last two day retreat, I was telling someone, like, you need to do the 30 day Facebook Live challenge and why and here. And then all of a sudden, by the end of the day, I think 12 or 14 people, at least a third of our group who was there, started doing this on their own because they all know that they need to take action, right? So they started doing it and it's amazing. I was like, holy cow, look at all these people, right? It's never gonna be the right time to invest in yourself. Like, it's never gonna be the right time to spend that kind of money that makes your stomach churn. But I can tell you what, I've done it myself. I've spent 25,000. When I didn't have it, I spent 35,000. I didn't have 50,000. I mean, I've had $50,000 on a credit card to get the coaching that I needed. And I had to split it into two payments because my limit wasn't high enough, right? Like, I can't split this into two because my limit's not high enough. I had to pay down like 10,000 of it, put the rest of it on like 30 days later, and then I paid it off over, you know, the next four months. But guess what? That 16 or 20% interest is worth it because my business grew 40% and then 80%. Like so. So what? So I lost, you know, another thousand dollars to make an extra couple hundred thousand, right? But if I had never said yes, I wouldn't be here. You wouldn't be listening to me. It's never going to be the right time to join the mastermind group, you know? And when you do, make sure you join one that's actually a real mastermind, not just like an online. This is like a circle session where you just talk about your problems, you actually do shit on calls and you get things done. Someone creates a game plan for you. You know exactly what to work on. You're not working on everything. You have a plan and you know your next right thing. It's never going to be the right time to raise your rates. You're just making an excuse by saying, oh, I'll raise him January 1st, or I'll raise him when I get move into my new space. I'll raise him when I get this new piece of equipment. It's never going to be the right time to ask him to marry you. I waited a long time to do that. Things are never going to be perfect. It's never going to be the right time. But the longer you wait, the more pain you're going to sit in, the more you're going to suffer. And you can choose to suffer or you can take action. Because perfection isn't the goal. Making this life perfect, making your business perfect, making everything perfect, waiting for that is not the goal. That's what school taught you. School taught you that things need to be perfect. Perfect isn't the goal. So if you want to build a life by design and live a life of your dreams and have everything you want and come home at the end of the day and want to keep working, instead of complaining about your boss, you need to get over things being perfect. This is about growth. It's about learning. So how can you keep growing? How can you keep learning and improving yourself? Learning business strategies, but learning about who you are, what your strengths are, your weaknesses. Learning how to communicate with other people effectively with your. With your family, your lovers, your business partners, your clients, your employees, the people who you work for or work with. It's about creating impact and changing the world and making progress. This isn't just about sitting back and waiting for someone else to do it. Growth, learning, impact, progress, change, meaning making money. These are what we're working for every day. If you're an entrepreneur. If you just want to throw your hands up and be like, Aaron, I don't listen to you. I just need job security. You know, my family relies on me, you know, for my health insurance. Like, dude, I totally get that. But you may just need to stay where you are, and that's okay. Not everyone can live like I live. Not everyone can do what I do. Not everyone can do it. My mastermind members do. We need people to be worker bees and just do work. Let me tell you this. If you're waiting because of your health insurance, you're like, oh, well, I get good health insurance. Well, guess what? Buying health insurance for yourself, for a family of four, maybe that costs. I mean, that could cost you $2,000 a month, right? Which is a lot. But what if you go from making $100,000 a year to, you know, $400,000 a year? Is that extra thousand dollars a month consequential to you at that point for the freedom it gives you? Look, maybe it's not even just the money. It's just the time for you. Instead of working 45 hours a week and then doing notes on the weekends, instead of hanging out with your kids, can you see 18 to 20 patients a week and pick up your kids from school at 2:30 or 3:00 clock every day? I mean, Meg Greco is working with me, and she grew her business from like 150 a year to 400 plus a year, and now she sees like 10 or 12 clients a week. She picks up her kids every day from school. I mean, she works from home. Her clinic's in her. She's got a clinic in her basement. She's teaching other people how to do this now because we've built so much time, freedom for her that she wants to teach other moms how to do the exact same thing. Because she gets to spend more time with her kids than she does with work. And yet she's killing it. Making more than most of you ever think is possible, Right? That's what we're looking at. So what you're doing to yourself is just making excuses to keep you safe from failure, right? When you make an excuse and you're like, oh, I can't, I couldn't, or someone else won't let me, or something else won't let me. You're just trying to protect yourself, and that's normal. But if you never took a chance, look around, like, think about this. What do you have in your life right now that you're sitting here looking at whether it's your car, your watch, the clothes you're wearing, the job you have, the people you're with. What if you actually never took a chance? What of these things sitting around you right now? Wouldn't you have? So what happens when you take a chance on yourself? I know this. If you bet on yourself and you put money down on yourself that you're going to go and win, I mean, you're going to do it. You're your own best investment. You should bet on yourself before you bet on anyone else. Bet on yourself before you bet on the stock market. Bet on yourself before you bet on crypto. Bet on yourself before you bet on, like, buying real estate. Bet on yourself. Right? And maybe it has to do with your belief system that maybe you believe other people are responsible or something else is responsible for actions and you have no, no responsibility for what's happening. Like it's destiny that all these bad things are happening to you. Like there's some shitty things that happen to people in the world, but you can absolutely take control and change the outcome, change your perspective. You can be a victim. You can certainly be a victim. Just go be a victim. You probably have patients that are victims and you're like, oh my God, they're so hard to work with. Yeah, because they're victim and they have no. What's it. The SAT word is? No locus of control over their own situation. But yet you can control your situation no matter how hard it may be. You can control your perspective and your outlook on it. There may be things that you are unable to physically control or financially control, but there's a lot of things that you can. So what you need to do is focus on what you can control and let go of the things that you can't. Because there's a lot of things that I can't control, no matter how controlling I want to be. That's why I don't have my office in my clinic. Because I'll be like, oh my God, these guys aren't doing the way I want. You know, my office is next door and I'll let them, like, breathe and try not to micromanage. So you're making an excuse. You're keeping yourself safe from failure. But safe from failure keeps you from growing. You're keeping yourself from making the same mistake you've made in the past again. But if you make a mistake and you don't learn from it, you're going to keep making the same mistake. And I know you know people in your life who have done that where They've made mistakes and they keep making the same mistake. Okay, you're not learning anything. So in our coaching group, you either have wins or lessons. Sometimes you win and sometimes you learn you don't lose. Losing is not an option once you decide to move forward. But when you join my coaching group or become one of my private coaching clients at $50,000 a year, like, there's no losing. I don't let you lose and you're not going to let you lose. Like that vocabulary goes out the door. So you don't want to make a mistake again. You don't want to go live because someone's going to comment negatively on your post. Well, guess what, all the negative posts on one of my ads are making the ad super cheap. Like I'm getting super cheap leads from this one ad because it came out, we talked about Google my business, and the ad came out about a month before Google my business. Google turned Google my business off. And they just put you over into Google Maps and people keep commenting on it and I'm like, thank you very much. And I'll comment back and be like, hey, just don't pay attention to the details. Just do you look at 30,000 foot view and stop complaining. And all it's doing is making the leech cheaper. Right? I'm not bothered by it. So. So the fuck what? Someone disagrees with you. There's a billion people in the world. There are people that disagree with you. One of my coaching clients, Brandon Smith, he's all in on making sure people who disagree with him don't work with him. And all that does is magnetically attract the people who he wants to work with in his business. Like we did a in May masterclass in the May mastermind this year I did a training on creating MRR monthly recurring revenue. And Brandon had some monthly recurring revenue at that time. A couple thousand, you know, $5,000 with one program. But then what we did is we created a new program, a bigger program, inner circle program. And now he's doing like 18 or $20,000 a month in monthly recurring revenue and we're going to take him to 50. And we were just talking about this this week. Here's what you need to do to get that to $50,000. Mrr isn't that fucking dope. Guess what? He doesn't make excuses. He does the work. Or he says, you know what, I didn't do the work. Don't make excuses. Stop worrying about what other people say because what's going on truly happen if you do make a mistake. Are people in your life going to stop loving you? Are you going to stop loving yourself? If you make a mistake to the people you really care about opinion, is that going to change? I mean, maybe if you start drinking every day and you become a destructive alcoholic and you destroy your life like. But I'm not talking about that kind of mistake. I'm talking about misspelling something on a post or it not being perfectly right or the evidence based practice mafia. PTs come after you because you talked about myofascial release. Oh my God. That's not evidence based. I mean, fuck those guys. They did that to me. They did that to one of my good friends now, Erson. I met Erson Rilhioso through a forum where he was posting some helpful info and the people on the Forum, this is 12 years ago, were just blasting him and I was like, hey dude, you know, don't take it personally. They did the same to me on another forum and then we became friends. You know, it's dope. So let me read something to you. And this may. This is going to resonate with some of you and not with others. This is a quote by Theodore Roosevelt, one of her presidents. Right. I first heard this from Brene Brown when I saw her speak a few years ago at. I think it was at one of Lewis Howes events, Summit of greatness. I'm just going to read this. This is really powerful. It's not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The 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 errs, 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 spends himself in a 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. I mean, that's. That quote gives me chills right now, just reading it. And you know, if you have a. Just go back. I mean, look it up. It's the, you know, the man in the arena quote. You can look it up, read it. But here's the excuses. Here's. I mean, here's some of the excuses that I've Been hearing it's, oh, in order to make $20,000 a month, I have to charge ridiculously high prices or do something ridiculously high ticket. I need to ask my spouse, partner. I'm not ready. What, what am I going to get? I've tried coaching before. Let me tell you this. Look, in order to make 20, I mean everyone here listening to this, you have a business and you're a physical therapist and you actually help people avoid surgery, whether it's hands on in a clinic or through telehealth or online through some like coaching program, running or working out. And you're helping people work out, run, exercise safely and avoid injury. You know what, your service is easily worth $20,000, worth $100,000. What does the surgery cost these days? Right? What does the surgery cost for a patient in money? Time lost working out, like a shoulder surgery, a knee surgery. I mean those things are going to keep you out for 12 weeks minimum, probably more like six months. The total hip replacement is the quickest one, right? Like you're up and out, but are you really better? I mean maybe depending what's wrong, but. So you're not going to lose that much time, but how much? You know, like what's the risk of getting surgery? You get a hospital borne infection, you can lose feeling in your leg, you can get a blood clot, you can get a dvt. I mean, right, you get a blood clot that cuts off circulation to your leg. Just what happened to a family friend of mine when he had a spinal surgery. You can get a blood clot in the back of your brain, which happened to my cousin when he had a cervical like fusion. You can, you can die. Which happened to a physician here in Greensboro who I spoken with a few weeks before and was like, Aaron, I've heard from so many patients how good you guys are. He died on the operating table for a routine back surgery. I don't know all the details, but I know he went to back surgery and never tried physical therapy with us. So, so, you know, thinking about that, saying, hey, I could never do this because I'm going to have to charge more prices. This is scarcity. It's just you're living in a scarcity mindset. What you are actually doing in order to charge higher prices, you got to stop thinking about, oh, I'm charging higher prices, I'm ripping people off. How much value can you add to your patients? What more can you do? So in our program, Platinum Mastermind, before we charge higher prices, we add value. But many People are charging too little to start off with, so you have to learn that you're valuable. So if you change someone's life, think about this. Has anyone ever said to you, oh, Dr. Lavouer, when I saw you a few years ago, or that thing you did changed my life. I can now do X and I never thought I could do it again. Okay, I know the answer is yes, you don't think too hard about it. But just imagine, what would that be worth to someone? How much time could you have saved? And had they come to see you first, they wouldn't have said, oh, you changed my life to try all these other things, but easily $20,000. And I'm not asking you to charge patients $20,000. We're just talking about, you know, 1500, 2000, $2,500 for a plan of care, or $2,500 for, you know, a 12 week program. $2,000 for a 12 week program, 800 bucks a month to, you know, train with you to be able to run a marathon. I mean, I pay that. I pay my kettlebell coach 400 bucks a month, and we meet twice a month. And I really need to meet with him once a month. It's not the money and it's not. My time's more valuable. And I'm like, hey, Brett, can we just, you know, meet once a month? He's like, well, I'd like to check in with you more often to make sure that we're on the right track. Okay, great. I mean, I'd certainly pay him more, but he hadn't asked more. So, Brett, if you're listening, don't charge me more. But he deserves more. You can totally do that, but it's worth it, you know, but we all have to charge the prices we think is fair value. But then if you tell me, oh, I could never make that much money because I'd have to charge ridiculously high prices, you're thinking from the wrong perspective. Okay? You know, the way to make more money is to get more clients, charge more, or reduce the amount of time you spend. What we need to do is increase the value of what you offer before ever asking for more. And sometimes that's you understanding the value of what you offer. But let me ask you this. Would you never pay that much to see yourself? Like, if you would never pay $250 to go see another physical therapist when your back hurts? You can never charge $250 because it won't be genuine. If you would never. If your back hurt and you would never go directly to a physical therapist for an opinion. And you instead, you go directly to a neurosurgeon. You don't believe that physical therapy works. So how could you even ever switch your business from in network to cash if you don't believe that physical therapy is the first stop when your body hurts and is injured? If you go directly to a surgeon, then you're not, you don't believe in physical therapy. You should just get out of the business, you know, or you're just a order taker from, you're not taking orders from clients, you're taking orders from physicians. You can't charge money for something that you would never buy. That's what's unethical. Okay, but guess What? I paid $350 for a massage. I would easily pay 250 for physical therapy. I mean, I have, I mean, I'm in clinic. I pay a whole lot more to get treated than that. If you want to break it down, you know, okay, here's another one I need to ask my partner, spouse or, you know, generally, this is just a, generally, if someone does say this to you on a strategy call, this is a, it's a smokescreen. But when it is reality, like when your partner is on there, Let me ask you this, like, does your partner spouse support you in your personal growth and business growth? You know, are they someone who doesn't want you to grow and doesn't want you to be successful? Because if they do want you to be successful and you do have a healthy relationship, why do you think they would keep you from going after your dreams? Right. Why would someone who loves you and supports you keep you from going after your dreams? Whether that's losing weight and getting fit or growing your business and supporting your family, why would they keep you from doing that? So if they are keeping you from doing that, then maybe you have an unhealthy relationship and there's no way you're going to grow in that relationship. So this isn't a relationship podcast. But I can tell you this. The people you surround yourself with are the people you're going to be like the people that surround yourself with. If they're not supporting you, they're going to keep you down like crabs in the bucket. So have a heart to heart. Like, don't get on a call with me or someone on my team or anyone else. If your business partner or spouse has to be the one that makes the final say of whether you can make a decision on investing in yourself and your business or not, you need to have them on the call. And if they're the one controlling the first, you know, even if it's a parent, if they're controlling the money, they need to be in on the decision. Or you need to have a conversation with them about, hey, this is my domain in the business. I get to make these decisions independent of you. And anything, any decision under, you know, $100,000 to grow our business, because I'm the operations manager, marketing person is all mine and mine to own. And you go do that and you make those decisions, you know, and you can have meetings, but they need to be. They need to trust you. I get it. When you're in a partnership or marriage, there are things that go together. You both need to be decision makers. So they need to know what you're thinking. Well, before you get on a call or make a decision, even if you decide to go to Con ed and spend 1500 bucks, okay, they're going to have an easier time understanding why Con Ed to be helpful because they. Everyone thinks that Con Ed makes you a better therapist and you can charge more money, but that's not. Con Ed doesn't do shit. It just gives you some more scraping tools because they're really expensive. What you need to learn is sales and marketing. We've talked about that a ton. So your partner, spouse needs to be in on that information or just don't use it as a lame excuse. Just own up that you don't understand or it's not something you're ready for. You can't stomach the making the decision on your own. And you know, you're scared. That's totally fine. Just tell me you're scared. I'm like, cool, like, great. Like, I totally get it. I've been there, too. I got a lot of clients who've been there. Okay, here's another one. It's, oh, Aaron, I'm already working. I mean, this has been going on for years. Oh, I'm working with so and so coach. You know, it's like, hey, hey, I'm looking for help. Okay? I'm working with this person. I'm like, well, why are you reaching out to me for help? Why don't you reach out to your coach for help? And some people are like, oh, I should reach out to them. You know, Like, I've had people like, we're working with my buddy Greg Todd. And they're like, aaron, I'm working with Greg, but I'm struggling with this. I'm like, well, reach out to Greg. If Greg's your coach. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, don't waste my time. You know, but if you're working with someone and it's not working for you, I totally get that. Not everyone works the same. Right? Just because you bought a course or worked with a coach or been a mastermind before doesn't mean that the course or coaching or mastermind that I have won't work for you. It's kind of like saying, you know, I got back pain and I tried physical therapy. I tried the physical therapy in air quotes, and it didn't work, so now I need surgery. Well, I can tell you what. There's so many different types of physical therapy. That's one of the reasons I don't teach clinical skills, is because I believe my clinical skills are the best, but I don't believe they're the only. There's a lot of people out there, and they're the best for me and my clients. Right? There's a lot of people out there that do some amazing things that have a very different clinical skill set than I do. I tell you, I'm probably better with my hands than 98% of you because I spent 10 years as a massage therapist before PT, and I've done it for 20 years. I've taught it. I've done all that. And my hands are great. They're great. You know, but guess what? My hands aren't the only gift that I have. And I know this, like, just because, you know, well, if you were a coaching client of mine, you would exceed your goals and we would set new goals. So what happens is, you know, or when I ask, is like, okay, you've already worked with someone, but something's not right. Well, something's been missed. It's either they missed something. More likely, maybe you didn't do the work or you didn't tell them everything that was going on. And that's totally cool. But I need you to know this. If you're not growing your business, you're dying. Right? Okay. You went through a program. If you're not growing, you're dying. Because if you're keeping your business the same, inflation is outpacing your growth, and your business is dying. Do you have the results you want, or do you really want more? Do you think after trying a few times of coaching, it doesn't work for you? And that's what I'm saying. It's kind of like physical therapy doesn't work for you. Did you surpass your goals? Because that happened to me. Racing bikes. Like, I Surpassed my goals and I had nothing left to race for. Right? But a good coach is going to help you hit your goals. But before you actually hit your goals, you're going to create a new target. Because you need to keep growing. You need to keep helping more people. If you have a gift to help 100 people, you need to help a thousand. If you can help a thousand, you need to help 10,000. 100,000. A million. 100 million. Okay? Why didn't your last coach help you create new goals? So stop making excuses. Take back your power. Create your own damn future. Okay? Do it like you have the ability to create your own future. Create a life by design and a life of your dreams. These are just the top three excuses that I've been hearing for the last few months. There's plenty more. There's many more. You've probably told yourself these excuses. So next time it happens, just stop. Just take action, do the work. No one else is going to do it for you. Like no matter what. Like just buying a coaching program isn't going to solve your problems. You actually have to do the work. See your eyes on a target, work with a coach. I mean, it's going to help you get there faster, stretch your beliefs, stretch what you think is possible, and then stop at nothing to get there. And why do I stay? Work with a coach? Well, I had a coach for soccer, I had a baseball coach, basketball coach, my bicycle racing coach got me from category 3 to category 1 Racing in Europe and national championships. My kettlebell coach has gotten me stronger. Where I'm going to be able, I went from being able to barely snatch 20kg for 24kg is going to be easy. And I'm going to pass a strong first test, which is 124kg snatches in five minutes. Like four years ago. That was impossible. There was no way I could do that. Right? And business coach. I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on business coaching, masterminds, courses. And it's grown my business from hundreds from six figures to seven. So I would never ask you to do something that I haven't done myself. I never ask anyone, my employees or family, to do something that I would never do myself. You'd never come here and clean the toilet if I wouldn't do it myself. I hate cleaning the toilet, but I'll do it myself if I have to. Right? Most of you aren't willing to eat shit to build the life of your dreams. You're not willing to lay in the dirt, sit in the mud, eat shit for as long as it takes to build the life of your dreams because it's too hard. And that's totally fine. But if you want it, you're going to have to do it. And no one else is going to save you. Man on the white horse isn't going to come and do it. You got to do it. So I want you to know, is it, you need to set a target, you need to find someone who's been there, then you know what you want, be crystal clear on it, what it is and why, and then stop it. Nothing to get there. Don't let anyone stop you. So look, if you've got a physical therapy business, whether you're coaching people online or you've got a clinic, you're in network and want to convert to cash, or maybe you're doing telehealth or even you're just coaching other physical therapists and you want to grow to multiple six and seven figures, you may be a great fit for our platinum Mastermind group. You know where we're going to create a personalized game plan for you and give you the roadmap to growing your business and multiplying it 10x right. Many of our members, you know, pay for Mastermind within the first few months when they join because it's designed to pay for itself. Because if I can't help you, I'm not going to let you in and I'm not going to ask for your money. If you're interested in joining and working together, first thing we'll do is hop on a free strategy call, figure out where you are, where you want to go, help you see what's possible, and create a strategy for you to get there. And if we feel like we're a good fit, we'll invite you in to join the Mastermind. So if that sounds interesting to you, just DM me with the word private. Like, if you're listening to this on the podcast, just go to Instagram and DM me the word private and I'll message you the details, ask a few questions and we'll get you invited into a free call. The only reason the call is free is because I want to help, but it's not to ask me anything. And it's not for tire kickers. It's for people that are serious about taking their business to the next level. So if that sounds good to you, just head over to Instagram. Aaron LeBauer shoot me a message with the word private and we'll go from there. Otherwise, thank you for listening to the Cash PT Lunch Hour podcast today. I will see you on the next episode. Get out there, stop making excuses. Take control. Do the fucking work and you'll be successful. I'll see you soon. Peace.