Private Practice Owners Club

Robert Brown, PTA, is one of the few PTAs in the country who owns a physical therapy clinic, plus he is the first PT clinic owner that I’ve interviewed who purchased his practice. Wouldn’t you know, just like any other PT clinic owner, he came across the same issues related to culture, staffing, growth, recruiting, and billing that any de novo clinic has experienced. You may think that since Rob p...

Michele Kehrer, PT, comes to us as an owner who has been through some incredible tragedies in her life and, while overcoming those tragedies, concurrently established a thriving niche PT practice. Now she looks at life and business ownership through a different lens. Everyday is full of gratitude. Little “issues” are quickly addressed or minimized. Her priorities are quite a bit different. Now she...

John Woolf, PT, is out to change healthcare and not with any amazing technical breakthroughs. Rather, John is determined to change the practitioner’s mindset and redirect their focus on the patient (not their evidence-based care they provide) and aligning with the patient. By doing so, John has learned that patients are more engaged in their therapy – attending their PT sessions, following instruc...

Starting your own clinic can already feel like going over a mountain, how much more when you have more than twenty clinics on hand? Someone who knows just how that feels is co-owner and co-founder of HealthQuest Physical Therapy in Michigan, Bill Knight. We pick his brain as he narrates his experiences of owning twenty plus clinics which continue to grow and expand. He talks about the elements tha...

I’m excited to bring back Dimi, Dr. Dimitrios Kostopoulos, PT, DPT, MD, PhD, DSc, ECS, as we discuss the seven facts that will be and are changing the future of the PT industry. Dimi runs a number of physical therapy businesses – clinics, continuing education company, diagnostics – and also been on a number of local and national PT boards. He has perspective, and thus I believe he is expert on wha...

Dee Bills, PT, spent a year perfecting her clinic’s front office procedures and now has it down to a science. Dee found Front Office Guru in 2016 and now specifically trains front offices to optimize the patient experience, the arrival rates, and, thus, the collections at the front desk. In doing so, she has been able to turn around clinics that were severely under-performing to eventually achievi...

Jeff McMenamy, OT, and Dr. Sabrina Starling (from the previous episode) join me in a conversation about Jeff’s success and how his success is directly related to the business coaching that Dr. Starling provided and continues to provide him. Jeff started his clinic in a two-car garage and now owns four clinics across Wyoming – Teton Therapy. His life changed forever when Dr. Starling asked one ques...

Sabrina Starling, PhD, PCC, BCC, wrote the book on how to find the top talent to join your team, literally. After noticing that recruiting and hiring “A” players was exponentially more difficult in rural settings she decided to write the book on it – How to Hire the Best (available on Amazon). She has worked with a number of physical therapy owners in the past and has recognized some of our pitfal...

You can’t do it all, and you won’t achieve your business goals if you try to do it all yourself. If so, your personal limitations become your business’ limitations. You’ve got to develop leaders if you want to grow. How do you do it? Judy Cirullo, PT, ACC, CPC, ELI-MP has spent decades in physical therapy – as a therapist, owner, and now coach/consultant. Her professional experience has taught her...

Jeff Lee, co-founder and CEO of Measurable Solutions, knows what it takes for an owner to achieve greater revenues, profits, stability, freedom, and growth. What does it take? A team. An owner can never do it by himself. An owner has to have a POWERFUL team around him to carry out his vision. With a powerful team, an owner can expect to, in Jeff’s words, run a company from any distance which conti...

Paul Wright, B. App. Sc (Physio), Dip. Ed. (Phys. Ed.), Adv. Dip. Business Management, built his Australian physiotherapy practice from one clinic to two clinics, back to one clinic, then up to six clinics before selling them. How did he do it? Easy – systematizing (“E-Myth Revisited” by Michael Gerber) and managing by statistics. Lo and behold, he jumped from one to six clinics in a couple of yea...

Ian Johnsen, PT, MSPT has been a success in his small private practice in the Seattle area and, like me, decided to launch a podcast and introduce more private practice owners to the resources and success stories that are out there. So I decided to have a conversation with him to learn a little bit more about him and what he’s doing to be so successful. He was kind enough to share a couple of his...

What’s in your library? Time after time the guests of the Physical Therapy Owners Club reference the same books that have been influential in their growth as owners and leaders. It’s not a coincidence that the same books are frequently referenced, as these are true classics in the business realm. There are more than what I highlight in this episode, but these are typically at the top of the list....

I figure that I’ll share with you some of the insight I gained from conferences and events that I attend, in case you weren’t able to go yourselves. If you weren’t able to attend, no problem, I’ve got your back. These are some of my notes from the 5th Annual HODS Symposium – addresses and announcements from Dimitrios Kostopolous, PT, DPT, MD, PhD, DSc, ECS, Christopher Music, and others. The one t...

Craig Ferreira has been around the PT block thousands of times. He knows the inner workings better than almost anybody and can break down any situation into easily digestible nuggets. Thus, I had to have him on when I found out that he’s about to give a talk on how to improve productivity and, specifically, sales in the PT setting. Most PTs hate “sales” as we know them, but doing...

David Straight, co-owner of E-Rehab.com, and I are back at it, keeping a good thing going. This is Part 2 of my interview because David had so many good things to share, we had to spread the wealth. We were initially focused on discussing how to just develop a digital marketing strategy, and we did that because E-Rehab is expert in the digital realm. David went out of his way to share with us how...

If you aren’t routinely working on your online presence, you’re falling behind. That’s why people like David Straight at E-Rehab.com exist – to let you know what you need to do, what works best, what the current trends are, how to present yourself, then monitor your efforts. It takes some effort and, depending on the size of your practice, will take some time. If you’re looking to compete against...

What sets this episode apart from the others is that Dr. William (Bill) Dodson, PT, DSc, DPT, OCS, CHT has gone counter to everything we promote in The Club. While we’re constantly looking to promote growth and expansion to obtain more freedom and stability, Bill actually found that contracting and doing less has led to more stability, freedom, and happiness in his life. Thus, he’s been uber-produ...

What if I told you that if you focused on one thing, it would return you over $100,000 per year, would you be interested? Heidi and I continue our conversation about the current state of the PT industry and business ownership, and delve specifically into this topic. PT owners are losing money, over $100k per year, because they and their PTs aren’t getting patient buy-in to PT services. WebPT’s rep...

As one of the progressive leaders in our industry, Heidi Jannenga, PT, DPT, ATC, and her group at WebPT decided to get the pulse of the PT industry by surveying over 7000 rehab professionals across the country. The report, “The State of Rehab Therapy in 2018,” provides some important information regarding the current PT climate and, specifically, regarding PT business ownership. We discuss the asp...

Many physical therapists who decide to convert into business and private practice usually dive in immediately without taking into consideration the processes that it entails. One thing they commonly overlook is the financial aspect, and this often leads them to losing. Known as “The Financial Prosperity Coach,” Christopher Music shares some of the common issues among physically therapy owners fina...

Contrary to the belief of less is more, in business, having more people means getting many of the tasks done in no time. This was my constant refrain in the beginning stages of PT business ownership, “I love doing the PT, I just hate running the business!” That all changed when I started hiring the right people. In this episode, Dr. Jamey Schrier shares how to hire “A” players onto your team, beca...

What is your plan for the future? Do you want to stay owner or are you for sale and want to cash out at some time? There are a number of different options, but it also includes making sure that your financial and legal affairs are in order. It’s a seller’s market. If you don’t know, there is a lot of activity in the physical therapy space for mergers and acquisitions. With the current sellers’ mar...

The famous quote often attributed to thought leader Peter Drucker goes, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” It is often agreed that how we do things is more important than how well we do them. In other words, it is often agreed that culture is more important than strategy. But do we really put that into practice? How much effort are you placing on your company’s culture? Simply put, culture is...

Most practice owners don’t have a written business plan and written budgets. They may be looking at numbers but they don’t concretely set targets like they do for the patients that they treat. Chuck Felder of HCS Consulting says it’s important to create business plans and budgets to keep you and your team rowing in the same direction, having that alignment, teamwork, and cooperative mindset. How c...