Let's talk about success, twelve years ago when I open up my clinics, I remember getting a card from my mom. My parents came up here for the week that I open the clinic and I remember when my mom came back from Miami – she is just a very nice lady – she sent me a card in the mail saying, "Congratulations son on your success." This is way back 2005-6 when I open up Renewal Rehab. She thought I was successful because I opened up a clinic, I didn't have any patients, but she thought I was successful. Let's fast forward five years from then. The clinic was building up, we were doing well but I was drowning. I was stressed. I was treating a ton of patients. I was seeing lots of people. And we were making money, I was doing good but I thought everything was on me. Was I successful? Yes, I guess. But it came at a price.
Success does come out at price, it's not a walk in a park. Now, I have looked at all the things that I learned through trials. I got really sick last 2009 after I did the San Francisco marathon and I couldn't recover. I get sick to the point that I couldn't exercise for over a year. Doctors told me you can't treat patients anymore. That forced me to have to learn other things besides treating people in physical therapy. What allowed me to do is to see the big picture. It allowed me to be a little bit smarter with the things that I was doing.
Have any of you ever done crossfit before? I am doing crossfit – I do it a couple days – I usually do it every Saturday that I am in town. When I do crossfit, the coaches are always queueing me on form. When I am doing a deadlift and sometimes I want to ram my back – but they are queueing me on form because when I get on my form I get more efficient. And if I become more efficient, I can lift more. I don't open myself up to injury as much. I become much more proficient in that exercise which means I can do other things because I am not taxing out my body as much. This is a thing that is called smart success. What has happened to me through my trials is that I have learned that success does come in different forms. Maybe I was perceived successful in 2005, 2006 when I open up my clinic. I guess I was perceived successful in 2009 and 2010 when I was drowning – at least I was making a good living. Overtime, you learn how to become efficient. How to become better. How to become faster, stronger, you learn those things and your success in my opinion, becomes smarter. That's the reason why I call the course Smart Success. Because through my trials and experiences, I have found that this is the quickest, most efficient way to become an amazing physical therapist. It's by doing the things that I am instructing my students to do. I have to decide, I feel like my success now is smart because I am so efficient with my time. I am so efficient with the things that I am doing. I've worked on my leadership. I've worked on myself to have people work around me; people want to work for me; people want to be on my team. So that I can be here at 6:48 in the morning. I can be talking to groups of people through social media. People that work for me, they will work while I am doing this – I am still impacting people and I've had to work on myself. That's why I am putting on the course, to show you guys how to do that so that you can become a leader – you attract people to you. I have shown people, instead of doing it the traditional way begging positions for referrals, there's a way to do it through direct marketing, through talking to people and build a following in social media. It's smart success. Because if I do this I can take my kids to the bus stop, I can hug and kiss my wife and have coffee and breakfast together. That means a lot to me because I nearly had that taken away from me. In 2012, I nearly had that taken away from me. I was unconscious, I was on the floor, I was at my parents house in Miami. They don't know what's wrong with me. They thought I was dead. When you have certain things taken away from you, you realize that life is short. You don't know that there is "okay, you expire on this date." this ain't a milk carton; you ain't an orange juice carton. If you are going to do stuff, you got to do it smart. I want to do things smart. I want to spend time with the people I want to spend time with. I have now trickled that over in my job. I don't want no employees working more than 40 hours a week. You'll get your benefits, you'll get your full 40 hours, you are not working more than 4 days a week if you work for my company because I believe that life is short. Everybody needs to spend time with people that they love. Everyone needs to spend time with their family. That's my culture. I teach my people, "we are not going to work harder, we are going to work smart." We are going to make people amazing experience at our clinics and there is no reason why we have to be here more than 4 days a week. We stagger our schedules. Everybody can have lunch; we have lunch together if we love each other, you can lunch by yourself. I am about being smart. That's it, smart success.
There's this dude that has been bothering me through Facebook Messenger for like months. I have answered every question this dude wants and he finally says, "well you know, you are giving some great content on YouTube but it's just making sure that we build a relationship and that I know you well." and I was like, "Do me a favor, look at your Messenger. And while you scroll up look how long you have been talking to me. I answered every question you have. You have been a PT for three years." He finally said to me, "Do you have any people that have taken the course that gave a testimonial?" "Yeah, I have about 20 people that have taken it. You can ask them. Here's their names." he said a lot more stuffs but I got no time for this.
You guys who have taken the course – you have to want it. It's not like you purchase the course and then all of a sudden you have this osmosis. Somehow what comes in my online platform just come in your head. Like you are sleeping and it all comes to you. It doesn't work like that. You have to put out a freaking work. All I have done is I've laid it out for you to make you think different, to make you see the opportunities. That's all I've done. But you guys put in to work, not me. Because when you are ready for work, you just go.
My heart wants to help people in the profession. I got this opportunity to open up my third clinic or it was to create a course. It is one or the other, that was it. She actually want me to do the courses. I want to do the courses because after I spoke at PPS last year in November, and my talk rated the highest talk of the conference, everybody wanted me to consult for them to help with their practices. That sounds cool but when you have four kids and you have a wife, you realize that – I want to travel more. That's not really I want to do. I don't want to travel 35 weeks out of the year. If that was the case, I would have stayed and work with the tennis people. Smart is creating a course so that if you really want it, it's there for you. I don't have to fly to Boston, to Chicago, and to this place and to that place. I only want to travel where I really want to go. I only went to Seattle because I wanted to go – I have never seen the Space Needle. I only go to San Francisco because I love the Bay Area. I only go where I want to go. That's the situation right now in my career. But I want to help people, so create a course. And that's what I did. That's smart. Look how many people I helped through the course. You do it at your own time, you do it at your own pace. That's Smart Success.
I hope that helps because in PT we don't just do things smart, we do things hard. That's why people burn out.