F Scott Feil: It’s Okay to Reinvent Yourself

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Mr. F Scott feil. Thanks for jumping on learning from others. How are you doing? I’m doing great, Tim. And thanks for having me, man. I’m so pumped for this. Yeah, I appreciate it. You know what I like, I like the behind the scenes talks. Um, and so, uh, we’re going to talk about your name, Scott. Yeah. F is your middle, is your legit first name?

Yeah, so, uh, my dad was an English teacher on long Island and so, uh, you know, He named me after F Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote the great Gatsby, but, uh, his first name was actually Francis and my dad didn’t want to name me Francis. So he just left it as the letter F uh, which is pretty cool until you turned 16, then everything’s first name, middle initial, and all your legal documents get screwed up.

All your mail comes as Fs feel or Scott feel or, you know, F feel and you have to bring several forms of identification to get anything done these days. So thanks for that one pops. I appreciate it. Yeah. Did you ever have a reckoning with him over that? No, you know, I really didn’t. Uh, he, he was so good at what he did, you know?

No, he was just such a great English teacher and he got me and my brother started reading and writing really early, got us into the classics early. So by the time it came around in school, I was just really good at English. So I had to appreciate him for that, you know, uh, it’s worth the struggles that I go through now over a couple of name changes here and there, but, uh, yeah, no, it was, it was all good.

Cool. All right. So I asked two questions at the beginning of these, um, question number one for Scott on learning from others is what is your area of expertise and what are we gonna learn from you today? Yeah, so I think the main drum that I’ve been beating for the last couple years is that, uh, you know, Whatever your job is, whatever your profession is for me, it happens to be physical therapy.

It should really just be the tip of your iceberg. Um, and the reason for that I think is we have such unique skill sets, all of us, no matter what they are, you know, we can work a nine to five, but we can also do so many other things that create so many other streams of revenue. That, I mean, why not? You know, whatever your job is, it’s just a label.

It’s just the title. I don’t think you need to be shackled down by that. You know, I think we need to start thinking outside the box and using our skill sets for a bunch of other avenues. And I think that’s really what I’ve been working on for the last couple of years is trying to get healthcare practitioners and healthcare, clinicians, and academicians and professors to see that we’re more than just our title, you know, and we can create multiple streams of revenue outside of our daily practice.

So. So a big part, a nutshell, and a part of that yeah. Is helping these guys get out of debt. Right. Because you’ve, you’ve kind of went through that same process. And so you can come first person into that discussion. Absolutely. I’m still going through it. I mean, I graduated with a doctorate in physical therapy and a doctorate in education and our $140,000 worth of debt go for it.

And truth be told, I don’t even know that I want to use either doctorate in a traditional sense, so that could pose a big problem normally. Right. But, uh, if you leverage those degrees properly and you leverage your education properly, um, and your skill sets. And the end of the day, you’re going to be okay.

 

You know? And, uh, and that’s basically what I’ve been trying to do over the last couple of years to show people how to use those skillsets, to get out of their student loans as quick as possible. Cool. I’m excited to go into deeper discussion on that, but not before question number two, which is what do you suck at man saying?

No, you know, I think a lot of, I think a lot of entrepreneurs have that same issue, you know, and it’s taken me several years now to realize that you can’t do everything. Uh, despite having multiple streams of revenue, that’s come with a lot of commitment. And a lot of dedication and a lot of strategic planning to get something up and running and then move on to the next one and layer it and then move on to the next one, because essentially, I mean, You know, if you say yes to everything you’re saying no to something else.

Right. I mean, so if you take on too many yeses and you just keep trying to please everybody and say, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. To everything. Eventually you’re going to run out of time. Uh, you know, there’s just so many things hours in the day. Um, you know, when you want to try to utilize those hours, as much as you can, to be more of the CEO and the visionary, as opposed to the technician, just working on, you know, Little odd jobs here and there that add up.

So I think I’ve got, you know, I’ve started over the last two, three years. We starting to evaluate each project and proposal that comes my way and literally picking and choosing and saying no to the ones. I don’t think are a good fit are going to benefit both parties. It seems like you, you kind of have to go through that yourself because most people know, you know, don’t take on too much.

And even a lot of my, my fellow entrepreneur, friends that have found success, um, every time it comes up and I say, wow, you know, you’ve got your hands in a lot of cookie jars and doing a lot of things all nine times out of 10, they’re like deep breath. Yeah, man, but I wish I did what you did and just did like one thing.

Yeah. Yep. And that’s, you know, my big picture, you know, my vision, the things that I do is multiple streams of revenue, multiple different things. So I teach that you can do those different things. It just has to be done in a methodical way. And that, you know, you’re not going to burn yourself out. For sure.

Um, so how far into your journey of the two degrees and 140 K did you realize, you know, I might want to take this a different direction. Uh, so I had finished a masters in physical therapy. Then I went on to do a transitional doctorate in physical therapy. Then I went on to continue and do the educational doctorate.

I was two and a half. Years in, out of the four years of the educational doctorate, where I was like, the classes were great. The curriculum was great. Um, all the didactic work was phenomenal. I loved the learning about learning and how we teach and educate and then came the dissertation phase. And I was like, Oh no, I’ve made a huge mistake because that dissertation.

Kick my bullet every way you can imagine. I mean, it, they dragged me across that finish line kicking and screaming. It was not awesome. I would never recommend it. So for, for, you know, I’m not familiar with like what what’s didactic and, you know, I know what the dissertation is, but what are the problems that you ran into going through that?

So like the, the didactic work in the, you know, the curriculum, it’s just all the classes that you took. You know, most of my educational doctorate was online. Uh, so I, I took a lot of classes online. Then I went to st. Augustine university down to the campus for a couple of, uh, uh, online learning. Well, they were in, in person learning and, uh, Residencies, essentially we’ll call them teaching residencies, but the D the dissertation is a whole nother beast.

I mean, it’s when you pose a question and you do the research to try to answer it, you know, and, uh, I saw being an English major that it would be no problem. I’d be a good writer. I’d be able to hash this out, but scientific writing and like, Educational writing is a whole nother beast. It’s just like copywriting.

I thought I’d be a great copywriter right off the bat. Right. Took me many, many months of reading and reading and reading just to learn how different copy was, you know, it was a completely different beast. Um, and the dissertation is much the same way. You’ve got to write this proposal to a board to kind of, you know, go in there and, and explain your, your.

Thought process and what you think, you know, the problem is and how you’re going to solve it through your research. Uh, they approve it, that it took me two times to get mine approved, which was a huge issue. That was my first roadblock. Then once it’s approved, you actually do the study. Uh, you know, when you, mine was kind of a survey type study.

So I sent out a bunch of surveys. Then I looked at the, uh, the data on the answers and I came out with a, you know, Uh, uh, answer that just led me to more questions. So, uh, you know, it’s a long process. It generally takes anywhere from, I don’t know, eight to 18 months, uh, just depending sometimes longer. But, uh, my study took about a year and a half about 18 months and, uh, It’s just grueling, you know, and you write it up and you, you, you there’s five sections to it.

You write each section, you submit it to your, your advisor, then they trash it and they send it back to you. Then you write it again, then send it to your advisor. They trash it right back. It’s like, I mean, it took a long time, but over time, little by little less and less red was coming back on the, on the paper, you know?

And you just address each almost line by line. It’s just. Infuriating at times, but, uh, you know, uh, at the end of the day, I think it’s important to note that I’m probably the smartest, dumb kid you’ll ever meet. You know, the fact that I have two doctorates is absurd, sir, but it’s just too, it really is just a test of persistency.

That’s all it is. If you can be persistent, you can keep up with it. You can get a PhD, you can get an EDD, you can get a doctorate. It’s, it’s very doable. You just have to, you know, stay at it. You know? So what is it. I imagine you take some of that topic of persistence to the people that you work with on how to pay off their debt and, you know, feel, get a sense of stability.

So where do you come in? What do you say? How do you say start when you work with fellow peers on their finances? Yeah. I mean, it, it definitely starts, like I said, like, look, if I can do this guys, anybody can do it. I mean, you know, I’m still on my journey. I was, you know, 140,000 in debt. I think I’m now down to about yeah.

98 or so. Um, and that’s after about a year worth of really pushing hard and trying to, you know, Knock it down with side projects and side hustles and side gigs. So, you know, I, I let them know like, if, if I can do this, if I can follow this method to my madness and I can, you know, make it work, you can make it work as well.

You know, it’s, it’s, everybody’s going to have their own way to kind of go about it. Totally fine. You know, you just need a framework, you need some sort of strategy to follow a roadmap, and then just the systems to implement, to get it going and really be successful with it. Um, and if you’re not successful, got to get up and try it again.

You got it. You know, I think entrepreneurs are the perfect example of that, right. They just keep going until they find answers, you know? Um, and I think that’s the main thing, you know, I. Use my dissertation as a perfect example. I wanted no part of it by the time I was halfway through it, I was just so over it.

And I just kept getting them up and going and trying it again, getting up, go and trying it again. And I think, you know, considering I may not even use it that much. I think it shows how persistent you need to be. Sometimes when it comes to things because had I not finished it, it would have been way worse than, than actually going through with it.

It would have had all that debt and nothing to show. Yeah. You know, it’s an interesting topic that I don’t think I’ll ever get tired about talking tired of talking about is you just do the thing, you know, whenever I talk to other people, um, it’s, you know, you follow your friends with Josh 40, right? So Josh and I are working on some projects and, and we, we have these offline discussions and we talk about doing the thing and, and one thing that is hard to hard for.

The other people on the other side that don’t do the thing that say they wish they could do the thing. As they don’t accept that they’re not doing the thing. And so Josh and I were talking about how hard it is to have that discussion when you’re like, no, really you are the problem. Like, you may say, you want to do accomplish this and that.

And we’re not saying it’s easy, but we’re saying it’s clear. Like you just do that. You know, if you want to accomplish that, Go do what you need to accomplish the thing and quit complaining. Exactly. I think, you know, that’s a very good point and I think that’s my whole purpose behind my, you know, my masterclass, which is based off of the book that I wrote.

I wanted to do a thing. I wanted to write a book, so I did it right. Then it was taking it and putting it into a masterclass form to be like, all right, here’s how I did it. My goal is to get you from point a to point B. I see how I can do that. You need to do the things I say to do and implement. In order to get there, you know, and there’s a million excuses and that’s okay.

Like there’s going to be excuses, even when you’re doing the thing and you’re on the right path, you know, but you’ve got to find an answer to that excuse then to keep doing the thing until it’s done. Right. I mean, you know, so much of what I teach and what I go over with my students is just mindset, you know?

It’s just putting them in the right frame of mind to show them that they can do it. Have you always had like forward momentum as a mindset or is that something you had to learn on your own too? No, absolutely. I’ve been super driven my whole life and I have no reason for it. I don’t know why it just it’s how I was.

I mean, you know, I was in every. Group. I wasn’t like in one little click in high school, I was in every click, you know, I was in, uh, on the football team. I played golf. Um, you know, I played lacrosse. I was in the school musicals. I was in choir. I was the student union president. And then that carried on to PT school.

I was the class president for our PT class and it just, you know, it kept going and going and going. And like, I think that just came from my mom and dad having a really. Good work ethic and really pushing me to try things and do things. Um, so I was always really involved, uh, just like they were. And I think from there, it just kind of.

Push me. I didn’t even realize I was an entrepreneur really until till recently, but when I was back in the day, my dad was an English teacher, but in the summers he owned a landscaping business. And so me and my brother had worked with him, you know, for that on occasion. And then when we were off on summer vacations for like a week or two, we go down to the outer banks in North Carolina and.

They had a house on the 10th hole of the golf course. And every night my brother and I would walk the golf course and search for golf balls. We go clean them up and we take the best ones and keep those. And then we’d sell the rest of them to the golfers on the 10th hole the next day. And so we just started real young and, uh, and we just kept pushing and pushing and trying things and growing, you know, and learning and that lifelong learner thing.

I mean that. That’s probably why I ended up with two doctorates, cause I just always wanted to learn and push myself. And now I’m finding, there’s so much cooler stuff to learn out there other than just academic go to college and, you know, doing the normal thing. So it’s nice to have those as, as my foundational base, this line layer of things, but there’s just a lot more out there and following you and guys like Josh and, and you know, Dan Henry and just a bunch of like really.

Cool things that are happening out there. Now, it just it’s it. I know that I’m going to be learning for a lifetime because there’s so much to learn it’s so much to do. So, um, just take it one step at a time, you know, you briefly touched on how, you know, you, you’ve kind of always had this forward momentum and it’s something that you didn’t really realize till later, which is interesting because that’s pretty much how I often explain.

My mindset too. I’ve been really fortunate and I don’t know where it comes from. And so it’s interesting that you bring it up because now I have the opportunity to kind of ask you a question that sometimes I feel guilty about. Do you sometimes feel guilty or not? Maybe not necessarily guilty, but do you sometimes have a hard problem relating to the people that won’t do the thing?

Yeah. Yeah. Big time. And it’s like, okay. So here’s the thing with w w. Being a teacher or a professor. Right. And trying to teach and mold young minds and get them to learn something. Right. I’ve learned I’ve only been an adjunct professor now for about three years. So I’m still new. I’m very green and I don’t know how much I’ll teach and how much I won’t.

It’s still yet to be determined, but you have to be a good storyteller. Right? That’s the first step. That’s the best way to relate. Any, any sort of topic that you’re trying to teach once you’ve told that story and you’ve tried to get your point across. There’s a strong chance. There’s going to be a couple of people that still don’t get it.

Okay. No problem. Let’s take another story, right? Let’s let’s try to look at a metaphor or something that, you know, maybe closely relates to what you would understand. Right? And you, you can do that two or three, four times maybe, but after that, it’s like you start banging your head against the wall. Like how, if you don’t get it at this point, I don’t think I can help you, you know?

And at that point, The only thing that I can think to do is to refer them to somebody who may be able to teach it better or, you know, may get them on a different level. Um, you know, yeah. We just may not be a good fit, you know, like I can’t help you, but I know this person closely relates to what you’re doing, what you’re trying to do.

So maybe have a chat with them, see if they can help explain it a little better. Yeah. When Josh, Josh had interviewed another gentleman, Alex Kim rocks, his last name, but it was just in the last couple of weeks. Charfen yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you watch that episode? Yeah. Yeah. Phenomenal stuff. Alex is brilliant.

Yeah. One thing that he said that stood out for me and, and kind of on the same topic of what I just asked you on it, I want to get your opinion is. Alex said something along the lines, him and Josh were talking about being an paths and empathetic to people. And Alex said something along the lines that the more empathetic you become, the less patients you have, because you’re like the answers right in front of you.

So just do it. And the way he described it was. Perfect for me. I was like, yeah. That’s that’s the, that’s the way I say that nicely. Exactly. I mean, it, again, it’s the cliche phrase, right? I can only lead the horse to water. Right. I can’t make them drink. Cliche phrases are cliche for a reason. It’s because they’re true, right?

Like I can only get you so far. I can bring you to where you need to be and how you need to get there. From there. It’s up to you. I hand you the reins and you gotta go with it, man. You’ve got to kick in. You’ve got to implement. You’ve got to try. You’ve got to do. And you know, some people just can’t. I can’t find that gear and that’s that’s okay.

Learning. And I learned this a lot through physical therapy. You can’t help everybody. Hmm, you just can’t, you won’t be able to do some people don’t want to be out, you know, there there’s, let’s just say, I’m just going to take this, you know, as an example, but let’s say there’s a car accident, right? A motor vehicle accident.

And the patient stands to make a lot of money from an insurance company. If they don’t get better. They have to go to physical therapy, to show they’re trying and do their exercises and manual therapies and whatever else we choose to use whatever modalities to get them better. But if they don’t get better and they’re still a disability or a certain percentage that they didn’t get back after the car accident, maybe there’s a settlement, right.

So that person’s not motivated to get better. Okay. Even though you’re doing everything you can as well, the physical therapist to get them better and to try to help them get back to a hundred percent of what they were before the motor vehicle accident. Yeah. You just can’t help everybody. You’re not going to be able to, you know, it’s, everybody’s different, everybody’s got a different agenda, a different motivation, you know, and all you can do is give your best.

And if you know, you did that, that’s, that’s where you’re at. And you’ve got to detach the outcome from, you know, your own personal being and how good you are at what you do. Do you, do you smell those people out or do they just flat out tell you, look, I’m not really going to try. It’s a little bit of both.

I think it’s a little bit of both, you know, I worked in a workman’s comp company for a couple of years where people got injured on the job and our, our goal was to get them better and back to work as quick as we could. Um, you could, you could send, sometimes people were malingering and trying not to get back to work in no rush to get back.

Cause they were enjoying a little vacation off, you know, and get paid for it. Uh, but then most of the people. You know, we’re, we’re good apples. And they really did work hard and try to get back as quick as they could, because they had to feed their family. You know, they had to put a roof over their head and stuff.

So, you know, for the most part you can, you have people have the best intentions, you know, but, uh, every once in a while you can sniff out a Millinger for sure. Um, You know, but again, when it just comes to helping people and having them help themselves, it’s like you said, like a lot of times the answers right in front of you, you know, you just gotta do it.

Yeah. I think that the simpler, the answer, it, it is like, just do is, is harder for people to swallow. Yeah. What are, because it will, but the reason for that is because it becomes. Basically it’s on you, you know, it becomes a self realization. It becomes a self actualization, you know, the, the onus becomes on you then.

So it, that’s hard. That’s a hard pill to swallow sometimes when you realize that you’re the one in the way, and you’re the one holding up the works. Yeah. And I think kind of back to what we were touching on earlier, when I was saying as a hard for you to relate, um, that’s something that I too have only recently acknowledged and in more recent years, is that not.

Being proactive. It, you know, is the norm being proactive makes you the odd ball. Yeah. Yeah. What are some of the core concepts of your vision? Okay. So let’s kind of come back to what you do and how you help fellow, um, you know, PT kind of people and reducing debt and becoming more financially stable. What are some of the core concepts of what you bring to them to follow.

You know, I think the, the biggest thing is, is, like I said, you need some sort of framework, you know? Um, and what I, what I have done in my book essentially is created what I call the feel good method. It’s play on my last name. Um, but it’s also pretty awesome. It was good Motley crew, right? Yeah. It all ties in.

My boys hates it, but I love, but, but essentially, you know, I tell them to look, take, take a big umbrella and that’s your LLC, your company, whatever it may be. Right. The first thing you’ve got to do, you’ve got to have some sort of vision, right. I show them my vision board that I did three, four years ago.

It was basically took a huge piece of paper from my daughter’s art easel. You know, I just stole it, posted it up on the wall and like drew a bunch of stuff with marker on there. And the vision hasn’t changed much, you know, it’s there some pivots and adaptations, but for the most part, the core vision is still there.

Right. So I say, you’ve got to have something that’s. That’s got core values to it, right. Because that’s your base, that’s your foundation. So you’ve got your umbrella. You’ve got your core values there from there. It has to be about something you like, you enjoy something, whether it be a hobby or, or something you’re just really good at.

Right. And that’s your kind of point a, and then tying it to point B, which is like solving a problem for the world, or, you know, helping answer a question for somebody, right. If you can do that, you can create a profitable business. Right? I mean, it’s not that hard. It’s like you said, it’s simple, it’s connect point a your skill set and what you already know love and do.

The point be somebody’s problem or an issue that needs to be solved in the world. And there’s your business. You’re good to go. Well, underneath the umbrella, there’s a couple of pillars there and each pillar is a stream of revenue. Well, the pillars have to be prioritize, prioritize from left to right. And you have to figure out the most important priority first and next to the pillars is a bunch of numbers, which is just like a honeydew list.

And it’s like, you’ve got to knock all those off in order to get the pillar flowing and making money. Once that’s done, you can move on to the next pillar. Once that’s done, you can move on to the next pillar. And then off to the left, there’s a little bucket dipping into your trough of, of assets. And that bucket essentially is your baseline income, right?

For me, it’s not a nine to five job as a physical therapist. The, the goal is to kick that bucket literally eventually, right. And get rid of that income. So you don’t need that anymore. And then you can just do your own thing. Right. Um, but for me, my situation’s a little weird because my wife’s a type one diabetic.

So we need benefits and not just any medical benefits, we need good medical benefits. So there’s a strong chance. I may always have a nine to five and I’m okay with that because I love what I do. Right. I love being a physical therapist. I love helping people get better. So that’s fine. That’s not a problem, but in my free hours, I’m going to bust my tail to work on my side.

I projects my side hustles because they’re all passion projects, right. They’re things I love to do for them. Yeah. My hope is that they can build a big enough business that they don’t need that side income. You know, but for me it works, you know, I work my nine to five that covers our bills and everything.

And then, you know, from all the extra hours that I have throughout the day, I put it into my side hustles and those help pay off the student loans quicker, you know? And once those are paid off, well now shoot. Now I can start investing that money and making money. From my money instead of making, you know, working for money, it’s working for me.

So, yeah. So it sounds like the approach is, is largely to get organized and then follow that agenda. Exactly. Exactly. It’s it’s clarity, man. That’s that’s when people can focus down and get clarity and just see like, Oh, I have all these ideas. I don’t know where to start. Great. Pick one. Yeah, just do it like Nike said.

Right. There’s there’s a, you know what, that’s funny. That’s um, the, the two recordings I’ve done today, one before, and then yours, we both, we both brought up that Nike. So again, who knew it was that simple. Yeah. Um, so what’s, what’s kind of your. Your longterm vision, let’s say, okay, your debt’s gone. Um, you have on the one side, let’s say the medical benefits was solved some other way.

Um, and, and it was just Scott, what do you want to do? What are you going to do? Yeah. So I’ve got, I think. Two phases that I’m looking at. The first one is my goal is to try to help 220 to a health care academicians, clinicians or professors, uh, pay off their student loans. And the reason for 222 is that’s the amount of PT schools that were in the new, when I started writing my book.

So I’m just sticking. Yeah. That if I can help one professor from every university in the nation, that’s got a PT program pay off their student loans quicker. I’m good to go. That’s that’s the first phase along the way. If I happen to help a few more clinicians on top of that, and maybe even some healthcare providers that aren’t in the physical therapy world, cause this stuff all relates, it could work for OT or nursing or speech therapy or doctors even, you know, um, It’s all about just leveraging your skill set and your knowledge base, you know, and if, if you can start by doing that, I think we can really start to make an impact on how quickly we can pay down these student loans.

So people can stop stressing about them and really start living their life at an earlier age, as opposed to paying it out for 25 years retiring. And then all of a sudden your student loans are gone. You know, so I think that’s kind of the bigger vision is to expand out into, uh, you know, helping, not just healthcare professionals, but, uh, you know, anybody who wants to go the quote unquote traditional route through college.

Um, that’s fine. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s. Totally admirable to do that. I don’t think it’s necessary these days. Um, but you know, if you want to go to knowledge and you want to truly learn some subject of area of specialty or whatever it may be, that’s great do that, but you shouldn’t have to carry the burden of debt for 25 years after that.

You know, and I think that the big issue is like, look, it’s my debt. I took it on. I knew what I was getting into. I take full responsibility. For it, but let’s gamify it, then let’s try to pay it off as quick as we can, you know, by doing things we love to do anyway, you know, and making money while we’re doing it.

Yeah. You know, I want to give you the opportunity to talk about your book, but, but I want to ask you one other question that you just kind of touched on and if you don’t want to answer, that’s fine. Cause I don’t usually get into politics anyway, but it’s immediately relevant to what you just said about you.

You know, it was your decision to take on school debt. What’s your take on, um, the, the groups that are pushing for debt relief and just saying, you know, well just wipe it out. Uh, I’m a realist look, I took on a $140,000 worth of debt. I don’t expect somebody to come along, pay that off for me. And I feel like the next bubble to burst is going to be the student.

But I mean, that’s just like the mortgages were a couple of years ago right now. This year obviously is a whirlwind. There’s just a lot of crap going on. So it’s hard to tell, but when things settle down and we get to look at reality again, I think the student loan. Bubble’s going to be the next to burst that being said, I just don’t think it’s feasible to just forgive everybody student loans.

I think that we’re already going to be in a bit of a depression. You know, the, the economy is going to be in the, in the crapper for, for awhile. So. Just forgiving billions and trillions of dollars worth of student loan debt is absurd. It’s just going to put us even further in the hole. I don’t, I don’t think.

And that was even before this recession slash depression while. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s just not, it’s not a reality. I think there there’s programs that can be worked that can help and assist, but I don’t think just full on student loan forgiveness is going to be the way to go. Aside from the economics of, uh, and you know, not having to solve the problem, who’s gonna pay for it.

Do you think that in principle, it’s just something that, you know, they made the decision, they should be responsible. Yeah, for the most part. I mean, that’s how I feel personally, you know, I, I, I knew what I was getting into. What I didn’t know. And this, this isn’t just a applicant, both the physical therapy, the field physical therapy, but the day to income ratio is bad and getting worse.

So it’s a bigger problem than just student loans. Here’s the problem. Okay. Insurance companies are quote unquote, reimbursing medical clinicians for their work. They’re not paying us for what we do. They’re reimbursing us. No, you can’t go to a grocery store, get a bunch of groceries and say, Oh, I’ll reimburse you for this in a week.

You know that no business works like that except for the healthcare field. Right. So at first years ago, let’s say the eighties or so. Physical therapy was being reimbursed at a rate that was equal to what we were worth and what we’re doing. Right. You could make anywhere from a hundred to $300 per visit based on what you build and what you did with the patient.

Right. And that’s about right on for, for a treat. Well, as things went on, insurance companies reimburse less and less and less nowadays they’re reimbursed in 30 to $50 a visit, no matter what we do. And it’s like, well, if I was doing home health, which I was back in the day, that wouldn’t even be enough gas money to get out there to the patient, to see them and treat them.

So like, What do you know, why are we even going out there? What do we do for this? Right? And the patients are the ones that suffer the most. When you know, we don’t get reimbursed, what we’re worth, you know, whether it be a doctor, that’s why doctors are seeing people for five, six minutes and then heading out and documenting for 35 minutes because they got to go, go, go and see a bunch of patients get reimbursed, the level that they’re worth.

So if a reimbursement they’re going down, down, down, and our student debts are going up, up, up. Salaries are gonna probably take a dive. I mean, you know, a new grad physics, well therapists can make anywhere from 50 to 75,000 a year, but even a skilled physical therapist. There’s a ceiling there where no matter how many patients you see in a day, you can only make.

X amount of dollars for the clinic that you work for or whatever it may be. So at some point that debt to income ratio becomes so absurd. We’re, you know, if you’re taking out $150,000 worth of student debt, but you’re only making 50, when you graduate, you’re not going to be able to catch up to those loans.

So, so we have to look at, if you’re going to go to college, there has to be a solid plan for what you do after you graduate in order to make enough money to take. On the student loans that you, that you took out essentially, you know, and, and I don’t even want to get started in the fact that student loans are not able to be like drop, like you, they follow you forever, right?

Like you can’t default on your student loans. So, you know, it’s just, it’s one of those things where you have to do a little research and I’m hoping college students nowadays are a little more educated and they’re doing the work to, to figure out. What am I taking on? What’s it going to look like in the long term?

What’s the job market look like for what I’m going into, you know, and like I said, physical therapy is a great field. It’s given me a lot of opportunities. I love it. I love what I do. Um, but nowadays it’s getting worse and worse with the tuition, skyrocketing and salary staying the same or getting less.

So you gotta, you gotta weigh that out and see if it’s really going to be worth it in the long run. Yeah, and I think that’s applicable to, to any career or education is, you know, what’s your potential return out after you’ve made the investment? Well, as we get kind of closer to wrapping up, I want to give you the opportunity to talk about your book.

So dude, you wrote a book writing a book sucks. Yes. Yes. And I’ve been anxiously waiting yours. So I’m excited for . Yeah, love it, man. I’m so excited. There’s like I said, there’s not a lot of people that I follow, um, you know, from a digital marketing and, and, you know, SEO and lead generation standpoint. But, uh, you’ve been doing a lot of great things.

So I’m, I’m excited to read that one because I haven’t, I, my website has not. Even touched SEO yet. I’m not even there yet. So I’m excited to implement a lot of that stuff over the next six to eight months. But, um, yeah, writing a book does suck and, uh, I was an English major. So again, I thought it’d be easy.

I thought I’d be like, ah, no problem. I’ll get this done in three months. Like life got in the way. And you know, kids are jumping on you and asking to play and like, you know, weekends fly by and all of a sudden your free time’s gone and. How long did it take you to write? How, how, how many pages is it and how long did it take?

I got a copy here. I think it’s about 140 pages. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 165, five pages. Um, took me about eight months. Probably realistically would have taken six, but like I said, we had a bunch of family issues and life got in the way, but shale misses and stuff. So it took longer than expected. Um, but I don’t know.

I’ve never written one. So. Had to give it a try. I had to see, but I’m really I’m. You know, now that I’m done, I’m ready for the next one. I think I, I was bitten by the bug. I’m ready to write, write, write. I’ve got a couple more lined up. So I’m excited for the next four or five. Good for you. Yeah. This one, the first one I wrote was called PT educators, student debt, eliminator, multiple streams of revenue for healthcare, academics, academicians, and clinicians.

And, uh, you know, it’s just, again, using multiple streams of revenue to pay off those student loans. Faster, um, you know, and I’ll be, so the way it started was I had a list of a hundred side gigs and side hustles that made sense for a healthcare clinicians or professors and out of those 100, um, I did about 25 of them.

I’ve actually tried about 25 of the 25. I narrowed it down to about eight. Then I’m still doing eight to 10 that are still worth my time. And that I offer as services through my companies. And you know, that, that. Are all kind of under the umbrella, so to speak and related to a healthcare and digital marketing and, you know, writing and things like that.

So, uh, that’s basically, yeah, I took the book and then I, I created a masterclass based off the book where I kind of work a little closer one-on-one with people kind of help them add these streams of revenue to their businesses and, you know, kind of show them how they can. Use them to pay off student loans as well.

So it’s been a blast, man. It’s been a roller coaster ride, but it was so glad to be done with it. And, uh, yeah, like I said, I’m ready for the next one. Now, how long ago did it get published? January of this year? Yeah. Yeah. You know, for, for me, you kicked my butt. I think mine was practical a year and a half, because what I did was it was, you know, six to nine months of riding because it’s on top of running a business and, you know, or working or family and all that stuff.

And so you kind of work on it as you can. And then when I was done. Now I got 150 pages I gotta read. And so then you had to go back at it, move up, move a chapter, edit, move a page, edit, move a paragraph, edit. It was brutal. But, um, I think, uh, I think, like you said, if you would ask me a while ago, w am I ready to do another one?

It would have been hell no, but, but after you recover a little bit, yeah, it’s kind of exciting. Yeah, exactly. And it really is a sense of accomplishment. Like, I, I haven’t felt that since my dissertation probably right. The dissertation was done two years ago, two and a half years ago. So like I, after that, it was almost like, well, shoot, if I could do that now, what what’s next?

You know? And, uh, the book, actually, the book was easier than the dissertation. So, you know, like I said, if I can do it, anybody can do it like, uh, you know, Um, I’m one of those, like I said, the smartest dumb kid you’ll meet. So everybody’s got a story to tell they need to get out there and write it because it, it, it, not only is it great to accomplish it and write the book, it’s going to help a ton of other people, right?

Your story is gonna, you know, motivate people. It’s going to show you people how real you are and how real life it is, and that anything can be accomplished. Right? It’s going to help people with the tips and tricks and everything that you’ve learned along the way. And. It also acts as several streams of revenue in itself.

Right. If people buy the book, you make a little bit of money off it it’s, I’m not getting rich off the book, but there’s royalties. Right. Then it’s a lead magnet because it leads people into my masterclass. Right. And then on top of that, I’ve had speaking gigs already offered to me too, based off of the book.

So now I have a, you know, a little speaking side game that’s starting up, which I can’t wait for. So you know, it, the book can turn into so many streams of revenue on its own. It’s just amazing to have a book and be published and be able to put that, you know, best-selling Amazon author on your, your resume, you know?

Uh, it looks good. So. Yeah, well, I’m excited for it, you know, it’s you and I connect a little bit here and there on, on Facebook, but you’ve been a pleasure to talk to in person and I’m excited to see what you’ve done and what more you’re going to do. So I’ll leave you with the last few moments to tell our listeners how they can find out more about you.

Yeah, the easiest way is probably just to go to PTeducator.com. That’s my home site. Um, all the. Social media handles are on there. They’re all pretty much just at PT educator. I’ve got some personal ones, but they’re just basically the same thing with a couple of dogs and kids, pictures mixed in there. So, you know, if you’re really looking to learn and keep it business savvy, then the PT educators is the one to look up.

Um, but yeah, it’s been a pleasure talking with you, Damon. And like I said, I can’t wait to see your book and follow your journey because it’s been an awesome one so far. So thanks so much for having me. It’s been fun. Chatting. Yeah, thanks for that. All right. F Scott feil everybody. Thanks for jumping on learning from others.