E680 | Scaling A Cash-Based Practice In A Small Town With Toni Counts

In this episode of the podcast, we hear from Toni Counts, the owner of Off the Block Performance Physical Therapy in Central, South Carolina. Toni shares her journey of starting her own business after being unexpectedly fired from her previous job, just 9 months after graduating.

Toni initially started her business as a fully mobile service, seeing clients in gyms, parking lots, and anywhere she could. This allowed her to start with no overhead costs and build up her client base. However, being in a rural area with a low population density, Toni faced challenges in finding clients and had to rely heavily on networking, relationship building, and marketing.

After 6-7 months of mobile work, Toni was able to move into a space inside a gym, which helped with legitimacy and attracting potential clients. However, this also increased her costs with rent. Toni talks about how she started with lower rates, but through guidance and raising her rates over time, she now charges $300 for a single visit and offers package deals ranging from $200 to $250 per visit. This has allowed her practice to average over $200 per client hour in revenue.

Toni also opens up about her struggles with sales and money mindset in the beginning. She used to over-explain costs and quickly downsell to payment plans, which prevented clients from fully investing. It took her around 1.5-2 years to overcome these challenges. Now, she trains her staff on sales, money mindset, and roleplaying to help them overcome similar obstacles.

Looking ahead, Toni shares her 3-year goals for Off the Block. She aims to potentially open a third clinic location, increase her staff of clinicians to 3-5, and become the top sports performance facility in the area. She also desires the flexibility to spend more or less time clinically as her family grows.

The key takeaway from this episode is that cash practices can thrive in small towns with the right systems in place. Toni's journey serves as a reminder to not limit one's potential based on perceptions of location size. With dedication and hard work, success is very possible.

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: [00:00:00] Hey, real quick, if you are serious about starting or growing your cash based practice, I want to formally invite you to go to Facebook and join our PT entrepreneurs Facebook group. This is a group of over 6, 000 providers all over the country, and it's a pretty amazing place to start to get involved in the conversation.

Hope to see you there soon. Hey, are you a physical therapist looking to leverage your skillset in a way that helps you create time and financial freedom for yourself and your family? If so, you're in the right spot. My name's Danny Matei and over the last 15 years, I've done pretty much everything you can in the profession.

I've been a staff PT, I've been an active duty military officer, physical therapist, I've started my own cash practice, I've sold that cash practice, and to date, my company, Physical Therapy Biz, has helped over a thousand clinicians start, grow, and scale their own cash practices. If this sounds like something you want to do, listen up, because I'm here to help you.

What's going on? Dr. Danny here with the PT entrepreneur podcast. And the podcast today comes from a Facebook live stream. They had a chance to do with Tony counts, who is the owner of [00:01:00] off the block performance physical therapy, which is in central South Carolina, which I guess is. Actually. Central in the name, not necessarily geographic location, but it's halfway between Charlotte and Atlanta from what you told me on the rail line, which is interesting.

Basically it's a small town outside of Clemson, South Carolina. We got a chance to talk about. Her starting a practice in a small town going from mobile to brick and mortar and a sublease space to then having her own standalone spaces, her growing the practice with her husband as well, who works they work together running the business.

We talked about selling in a smaller town, hiring in a smaller town, the differences that she's seen and how she's able to charge 300 for a visit in a town that, is really between the, she has two locations between five and 10, 000 people in a town, which is, quite small in comparison [00:02:00] in particular with the price point that she's at.

This is a really cool conversation. Tony's awesome. She's done a great job. She's somebody that we've had a chance to work with from the start with her business and really watch her just grow and achieve a lot of really cool things that I think a lot of people didn't think she was going to be able to do, including her family in such a small town.

So I hope you liked this one. I really enjoyed talking to her about this. So enjoy the podcast and thanks again for listening.

What's going on. Doc Danny here, the PT entrepreneur podcast in the PT entrepreneurs, Facebook. Group, if you are watching this live in the Facebook group, thank you so much for joining us over your, I'm assuming lunch break, or maybe you're working for yourself and do whatever you want during the day. But today is exciting because we get a chance to get into talking about cash based practices in a small town and how you can get that to work.

Does it work? I think it's a common misconception that You can't [00:03:00] have a successful and, or maybe scale a cash based practice in a smaller town. And our guest today is Tony counts, who owns off the block performance physical therapy in central South Carolina, which is for reference, close to Clemson and she runs it with her husband, Cole, who's awesome.

Just talked to him yesterday, actually on our finance call. And we're going to talk about scaling in a small town. And for those of you that are listening on the podcast and you want to, watch this live, make sure you go to Facebook and you jump in the PT entrepreneurs Facebook group. Just go to your search bar, type in PT entrepreneurs.

We're the only one, we have almost 7, 000 other clinicians in here that are helping each other out on the business side. And if you are in a small town and you want to get your hands on our case study that shows you examples of clinics that have thrived in small towns, what they've been doing.

Just in the comments type case study and we'll have someone from our team go ahead and reach out to you and send [00:04:00] you a copy of that case study, which I think is pretty cool because for myself in particular, I actually didn't know if a cash practice would work in a massive town like Atlanta. And then I definitely didn't think it would work in a small town.

And over the last 10 years, it's been really interesting to watch the evolution of that. So Tony, with all that being said. I just want to say, thank you so much for your time. I know you got a lot going on, so I'm really very much looking forward to, learning a bit more about your story and how you've been so successful in such a more of a rural environment.

Yeah. Thanks for

Toni: having me on. It's been a, it's been a journey, but definitely wouldn't have wanted to do it without you guys.

Danny: Yeah. And quick backstory. I will say Tony has probably the most memorable coaching call that I've ever done, mainly because she got fired from her job right before she got on the call.

And it was like the most, it was unexpected. And it was the most like emotional call in a really, in a really positive, memorable way. There was was really cool, and, but what's been neat is to watch It's like. [00:05:00] You go from, Oh shit, now what I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm scared.

Like to now where you're at. It's if you look back, I wonder if you think to yourself, man, what, wasn't that just one of the best things that ever happened to you? They like, you didn't slow play it. They kicked you out and you had to figure it out. Yeah, no,

Toni: I mean it was, in the moment, I was mad anyways because of just the way it all went down because I remember coming to that coaching call and I was like, please just, I need one or two people on this call, I don't care who it is, to tell me that I never have to work for somebody like that.

ever again. Preferably anybody ever again. And then of course everybody's you got this. But no, that was a crazy time. But looking back, I would not have wanted to do this in the like, slow roll style. I don't think I would have wanted to side hustle and decide when to quit my PRN job and all that kind of stuff.

I think the, even though I didn't light the match for my burn to the ships method I, I'm glad that's the route we ended up

Danny: going. Yeah. Like it wasn't on your own terms and [00:06:00] sometimes that's hard, but it also forced you into having to really focus on your business faster. To go back to that let's just, we'll take a little bit of time and just describe your path to entrepreneurship.

When you graduated, how long were you working at another clinic before you stopped working at that clinic? Nine months. Oh, dang, it wasn't even a year, not even a year. So we can get into a lot of things with this, right? Number one, most people from what I've seen, like clinically, it feels like they don't feel comfortable doing their own thing until about, I would say year two, people tend to like really feel like pretty confident.

Did you feel like you had any challenges feeling clinically competent enough to do your own thing? Or were you just like I got this and you were confident enough from the get go.

Toni: So in my brain, I don't know where I got these numbers from, but in my brain, I thought that three to five years was about how long I should wait to like, get some more clinical experience under my belt to [00:07:00] do, to start my own practice.

That was just like going into it. I was like, Oh, three to five years. That'll be good. But that wasn't from a lack of confidence. That was more of a, Misunderstanding on my part on what you actually would need to start a practice. I was very fortunate that my clinical rotations and my CIs were excellent.

I recognize now talking to other people that I had a, an immensely better experience than a lot of people. I had some challenging CIs, but CIs also that were like, listen, you're here to learn. You're competent. What if we just give you a caseload? Make sure you don't hurt anybody and then like let you figure out what you want your style of practice to look like and I hope that everybody in PT school that's pursuing that gets that opportunity because that was a really good growing, like I got through the growing pains of like new job imposter syndrome stuff in clinicals.

So when I graduated, I was pretty solid on my confidence as a practitioner which I think also ultimately led to my [00:08:00] confidence of trying to learn and navigate business ownership for the first time. But I think that's a bit of a unique experience. A lot of my friends from PT school did not.

Feel that way coming out of school, but I had this three to five year expectation in my brain for some reason. Obviously that didn't happen, but

Danny: yeah, but I think, to grow on the clinical Scott and the clinical side, like really grow a lot clinically and to learn the business side at the same time, that's tough, and it's something, it's not that it's not doable.

But for a lot of people, maybe they don't have the. But for you as you got started, obviously you started part time with with your practice that then got turned into full time and the start for a lot of people, I'm always interested what was the hardest part of starting for you?

And what was the best part or the part that you enjoyed the most? I will

Toni: say the hardest slash scariest part of starting was the fact that I am a [00:09:00] do it once and do it right kind of person. And when I started, I was like, okay, we're going to do this. I want to set it up right. I want to have good systems in place.

I don't want to have to like, I don't want to start on Google docs for my documentation. Like I want an EMR system and like some of those things that on the front end ended up being a little more cost heavy and even like time consuming to get all that stuff set up. So I wanted to do it right the first time.

And that. Was part of why I had reached out to Eve's back in the day about potentially starting something. This was, like before I even got fired, I started with clinical rainmaker and it was nice to know that as I was setting those things up, that was being done right. Cause I think that was my biggest fear was just that I would do something wrong and like really have something up and then have to go back and redo it.

And that it would be a pain once I had patients and documentation and all that kind of stuff to back up. Because the, I will say I was [00:10:00] fortunate that in the nine months that I did work for somebody else, I was actually doing a mixture of in clinic and mobile therapy. So there was even a degree, cause I started mobile too, that was what off the block started as was me and my table in the back of my car.

So I did have enough experience with that, that I was like, okay I don't need anything else. I don't need the overhead of a space. I don't like, I can at least start today with something. So I did have that going for me, which was helpful. But it was truly like just the fear of not knowing what to do.

I think that was the hardest part. The most exciting part was finally getting to do physical therapy the way physical therapy should be done. Like it's the opportunity to be the change that we all would like to see in the field on a day to day basis. Even though that was totally terrifying. And honestly, I It was hard to explain to people what I was doing because people's perception of physical therapy is so bleh.

So they've either been to it, they've been to PT before or, they expect insurance to cover it or, they just want a yellow TheraBand because that's what they've had in the [00:11:00] past or, ultrasound or whatever. So explaining to people like what we were doing, they were just like, that sounds great, but that's not, I don't, is that physical therapy?

You know what I mean?

Danny: But it was really we say this isn't your grandma's physical therapy clinic, I'm like, but if your grandma came here, her deadlift would go up. I like. 50 pounds.

Toni: Yeah. And I love seeing the older people, like I love watching them get challenged, but

Danny: Oh, a hundred percent.

Like there's a whole, we could talk, we could, we'd have a whole hour about the way in which, you know, geriatric rehab could be improved and, for many of us, the, what you just said, I think is the, it's probably the like really one of the main underlying drivers of wanting to go this direction is.

Just frustration and feeling limited and being able to do your job the way that you want to do your job versus being able to like, just, it feels more like you're like. A waiter, just [00:12:00] managing people and having to quickly go through these different protocols versus, Hey, let's sit down and let's talk about what's going on.

Let's have a conversation. Let's figure out what your goals are. Let's also from there have the opportunity to actually work with you through the things we want to take you through, where we know the details and the nuances of some of these things are where the change lies as well as the compliance of somebody doing it.

And for me. I think if you ever get to the I don't know if you got like this within the nine months you're at another clinic, but there were times like whenever I was in the army and I remember I had so many people and frankly, it's free, right? So there's a lot of benefits to socialized system.

There's a lot of negatives. One of the negatives is you take it for granted. So I would have people come in and I remember I would quiz them on their exercises like. Like a pop quiz. I was like, pop quiz, asshole. Show me your, show me your lumbar roll that I taught you how to do it. It's like that.

And they, and [00:13:00] then I'd watch them flounder around and try to do something somewhat similar, but not anything like what I showed them. And I'm like, you're not even doing your damn exercises, man. Hey, expect to get better. And they're like, I'm sorry. I'm busy. Whatever. I tell you what, when I went into my cash practice, I didn't ask somebody once.

I didn't quiz somebody one time about, I'd be like, if you want to waste your time and money, that's on you. It was like, I'm going to keep working with you the best I can. And I just never had issues with compliance. And I think that alone for somebody that is really they're adamant about being good at what they do.

You need someone to do their part. And when you know they're doing it, it's this is awesome. What a fun way to work with people. So I totally get what you're saying. And I think that is one of the best parts of starting a business like this. It has nothing to do with the financial side.

It's literally makes your career more fun. Oh

Toni: yeah. No, I think my favorite thing has been the fact that I went from people coming in, not knowing their exercises, not caring. They're just there to get their six weeks in so that they can get their medication or their shot or their surgery or whatever to, I literally have people come [00:14:00] in and they're like, I'm so sorry.

I didn't do that. And I'm like, listen. That. All that does I appreciate you being honest with me, but all that means is that this prognosis this timeframe that I've told you that we could get you better in, it might be extended a little bit and that's totally fine. We will be here along the way.

We're not insurance. Isn't going to, because we don't take insurance, like insurance, isn't going to say you can't go anymore. We'll just keep working with you. But I appreciate that you recognize that's something you needed to do. And as long as you recognize that now that might extend your planet care a little bit.

Like I can still get you better as quickly as possible, but that's. Pending that you follow exercise

Danny: prescription. Yeah. And that, that is funny. Like I, you have people come in and apologize and be like, I missed a day. I gotta be honest with you. I was only able to do this six days this week.

And I couldn't get the seventh one in cause. Cause it would be like legitimate like something terrible happened. And you're like, Oh no, that's awesome. I was expecting to do it like three times. So I doubled it, and they like, yeah, I just want to make sure I'm doing this [00:15:00] right. And, so I think that's awesome.

I'm interested with a couple of things. Number one starting mobile, but then starting mobile in a. A town that doesn't have a lot of population density, right? So it's not like people live in, townhouses and skyscrapers near each other and you walk to the next person. What was that like starting mobile in a more of a rural environment where you're probably working with people that are more spaced out?

Toni: Oh, yeah. Early on in business ownership, you have A ton of time and not a lot of resources. So obviously you have to figure out how to spend your time most effectively. So a lot of times, I thought I was driving somewhere. I literally, I think the farthest person I went and saw was like 55 minutes from where I live.

I was just driving there. It's 60

Danny: miles away.

Toni: Yeah, and so don't get me wrong. I still like working my way through Rainmaker content So I would listen to my Rainmaker content and drive or the podcast or whatever But and then when I was out somewhere, [00:16:00] I would try to like okay either on my way there or on my way back I'm gonna try to stop by two or three places to shake a hand give a card Start a relationship, try to make a connection, whatever.

I did try to maximize my time when I was going places. I was dropping in along the way, but it was a lot of drive time. And it was also because I didn't have anything brick and mortar in a gym or my own space. There were a lot of questions about the legitimacy of it.

People were like, this seems weird. They'd heard of home health, but they hadn't really seen or heard of anything where you could see performance stuff. They would bring equipment to your house. I don't know. People were a little weirded out by it. I was used to at least getting a little bit of buy in with it, like I said, because there was my previous job.

I had done a little bit of that type of work, so I had talked to some people on the phone about it, and, so I knew how to sell it ish. But it was creating an okay online presence. And then like I said, a lot of networking stuff. So go to a BNI meeting and go to do a lot of, there's a lot of boots to the ground and shaking and [00:17:00] offering, free visits to coaches and owners that, different facilities and places that I was trying to connect with.

But it was challenging. But it worked for the first few months. It allowed me to. Obviously, like I said grow to some degree with no overhead, which was awesome. I say no overhead. It was a lot of gas mileage but relatively no overhead. My car has decent gas mileage. Thank goodness.

But it was a challenge, but it was a good place for me to start when I was trying to figure out What the heck I was doing after immediately being fired.

Danny: So how long did it take until you felt like you gained a lot of traction? Like how many months until you even got into a space where you weren't driving everywhere?

So

Toni: I started Rainmaker in February. I established my LLC in April. This is in 2021. And then from April to August, I was mobile. Which worked out well. It was good weather months. So I wasn't even necessarily always going to [00:18:00] people's houses. It was like, if their gym was cool with it, I might meet them at their gym.

They have a membership at if they're if they wanted to meet. I literally met some people in this big local park in Greenville. Yeah. And so it just, it differed. But yeah, it was between April and August of 21. August was when I moved into a space to CrossFit gym.

Danny: So February March.

April, May, June, July are so you're looking at six to seven months of driving around rural South Carolina working with literally anyone you possibly can. Now I want to take let me pause for a second and just like people need to realize that there's just like a level of. Effort that has to be put in some cases, and to drive 55 miles to work with one person, each direction is that is what it takes sometimes, because when you get started, what's hard about the start, no matter where you're at, and I do think it's probably even harder in a smaller town, like where you're at, because it's more, it's not as a well known, it's a bit more foreign[00:19:00] it That first, like 10, 20 people, I get that question all the time.

I'm like, where do I find my first 10 or 20 people in the world? Get the fuck out of your office, go get rejected by a bunch of people. Work with anybody you can possibly work with, even if they're 55 miles away. And do an amazing job and make sure you ask them to connect you with friends and family that they know that might be dealing with something similar that you can help.

And that's it. It's literally just effort over time and being willing to put in work that'll snowball to a point where then. You have momentum and that momentum allows you to move into the next phase, but to do that for six, seven months, many people, and I've seen many people do this, they're like a month in and they're like, this is too hard.

I'm done, and for you I know you said it took you that long to get to where you're in a space, but let's say six, four to six weeks into it, were you like, this [00:20:00] is working or did you think yourself? I'm not sure still if this is going to work.

I knew I

Toni: was surrounding myself with the right people to make it work. And I was setting it all up. But I don't know. I don't want to say I had. doubts, but I had plenty of frustrations. Like it was not easy and it was a lot of hustle. And my mom was still in my ear about have you like tried to get your stuff set up for unemployment?

And are you applying to other jobs? There were my husband he was my fiance at the time. My fiance definitely believed in me. And I don't want to say that my parents Didn't believe in me by any means, but my mom is a hundred percent the type that only makes safe decisions and she is also one of my best friends.

So it was interesting to have her in my ear going like concerned about the fact that I didn't really have a safety net other than the fact that I was getting married. Which isn't really I didn't want to think of that as a safety net, but it was, it came with its [00:21:00] fair share of challenges.

I personally. I never believed that it wouldn't work, but that was because I knew that I was willing to do whatever it took to make it work. It was one of those things like to have said that I thought that it wouldn't work was to also say that I didn't think that I was willing to put in the work, if that makes sense.

It would have had to be a self doubt problem, and that is not something I'm fortunate that is not something I've ever really dealt with. Yeah, that's good. I know how to hustle.

Danny: The thing is like the first stage. Is so meant it's so mentally challenging, it's I was talking to I was talking to a guy yesterday, interesting guy.

He actually has like the most profitable gym per square foot in the country. It's like they do three and a half million dollars in revenue in a space that's, I think it's like 2, 500 square feet. And. I was like, that's amazing. And I started talking to him about it and about how he got started and he started as a [00:22:00] trainer or like training people.

And what was interesting was, he was talking about just how much the early stages, it was all self, it was a mindset struggle. It wasn't so much a skillset struggle, right? It was, and yes, you don't know many things, but as your business grows and it becomes more complex.

It becomes a skillset struggle is do I know enough about finance to not ruin my business now? Do I know enough about leadership to get good people and keep good people and make sure I don't hire the wrong people or make decisions that are catastrophic versus early on? It's very much a mindset.

It's a mindset struggle where you're just like. Damn. I get, I'm getting termed down a lot. This sucks, this feels not so cool. Am I doing the right thing? Is it easier over there? Should I go back to this thing because it's, it seems safer and I have predictability with a paycheck and all that.

For you, it sounds like you were able to kinda work through that and have a lot of. Self confidence associated with it and I'm, I know you said you surround yourself with, with people, but to watch you go through the Rainmaker [00:23:00] program, which is so interesting to be able to get on calls with other people that are going through the same thing.

Do you feel like the misery loves company concept was like really helpful in that stage in particular?

Toni: Yeah, like just having people around it. So that I knew that my struggles were not just mine definitely helpful. So I mean on top of getting questions answered and like actually finding solutions for said problems It's okay, so I'm not like crazy This isn't because there were times where I was like dang is this a location problem?

Is this not growing fast enough because I'm starting in a, granted, I was driving everywhere, but the literal town that I started in had 5, 500 people, 5, 500. That's tiny. And I was like, okay there's not even like enough people here. If I think about like 1 percent of these people might come see, anyways, I started doing math and I definitely got, would get caught up in that.

But then I would talk to people that were like, in or near huge cities. Now, granted, I know there's more physical therapy clinics in those places. But it definitely wasn't. It was good to hear that. Other [00:24:00] people in different places and even in different stages of business. Cause like I said, I literally started an LLC after I got fired.

So I didn't even have a business when I started. But it was good to hear that other people were struggling with similar stuff and that we all, had a solution in front of us, which was great. Yeah.

Danny: Do you what is your practice sure. What's your price point now when you work with somebody?

So what does it cost to come to off the block now or what did it start at? No. Where is it now? We can go back to where we started, but I want to let everybody know that you can actually charge what you're worth in a small town as well.

Toni: Yeah. Our single visit rate is 300. Our, we have a eight, 12 and 20 visit.

Package option. Our eight visits is $2,000, which is 250 visit. Our 12 visit is 2,700, which is 2 25, and our 20 visit is 4,000, which is $200 a visit. So our average revenue over the last year for patient [00:25:00] hours has stayed above 200. Dollars an hour, which has been awesome.

Danny: Hey, podcast But I have a huge favor to ask of you If you are a longtime listener or a new listener and you're finding value in this podcast Please head over to iTunes or Spotify or wherever you listen to the podcast and please leave a rating and review This is actually very helpful for us to get this podcast in front of more clinicians and really help them develop time and financial freedom So if you do that, I would greatly appreciate it.

Now back to the podcast. So Some physical therapist that's driving to work right now just crashed because they just passed out and their car went off the road because they heard what you just said in a small town. Let me put this in perspective, right? In a small town. And we get this, we get pushed back on the value that we tell people they're worth, especially when we get the chance to work with them as clients.

And the reason is, it's not that other people don't see the value in it. It's that we [00:26:00] don't see. We don't think that they'll pay what what they actually will in many cases. And for you to be in a small town and have an average visit rate, that's, well over 200 is just an example of that.

If you provide a great service, people will. Want to use it because they see value in it. Like even it's been very it's very eyeopening for me to have a training partner that I've been working out with now for a few months. is completely outside of the physical therapy fitness world doesn't know anything about this stuff.

And, but he's in wine sales and he's always just dude, I don't understand why PTs make such a little amount of money, and I was like it's because insurance doesn't really think that we're worth a lot. And we take it and we undervalue ourself and stuff like that.

And he's yeah, but you're like, Change people's lives. I don't understand. Like why isn't that? Yeah, man, I can, you come talk to everybody that I work with and tell them the same thing because it can be a struggle sometimes to get people to raise their rates to where they need to be. Talk to me about this.

Where did you start in [00:27:00] comparison? And then, where are you now? Because this is only a couple years later.

Toni: Yeah. So when I was fortunate enough, like I said, to have guidance from you guys as I was starting because what I wanted to charge and what you've made me charge were two different things.

So first call he was like that's not enough. So I, my initial rates were 150 single visit, and I think they were down I only had one or two package options. I think I was just trying to sell a 10 pack for an average of 125 a visit or something like that. And then we increased, when I moved into the space which people were very understanding and we would just send out an email to the handful of people I was already seeing said, hey, we're moving into a space overheads increasing.

We want to continue to provide this excellent service. If you want to buy some more visits at the old rates do that. But, after this date, we're gonna bump it up. Then I went to 200 single visit. And then had an average visit rate. [00:28:00] I think we anchored it somewhere around like 175.

And then we've actually gone through two more rate raises since then. So we went to 250 single visit, and they all trailed up similarly, and then we ended up landing at the 300. And that was because I literally had a patient actually two patients, come in and look at me after two to three visits and they're like, I don't know why you don't charge more.

And I was like, all right, that's all I needed to hear. I was like, in this area, you think I can? And they're like, yeah. And then of course everybody in masterminds also yeah, might as well. That was the, Roger had just dropped the bomb on all of us and was like, by the way, this is what I'm charging for single visits.

And I was like shit, I don't do that. So between my patients being like, you're not charging enough because your service is extremely valuable. So similar to your wine guy and. Him being like, this is what we're doing. I'm like, okay, cool. And that's I feel like that's probably where we'll live it seems to be enough to to make people Recognize the value and understand the investment.

And at times weed [00:29:00] out people who aren't ready for a life change because we don't just change people's pain. We change people's lives but they have to be mindset ready to make the financial and time investment and then also to make the change but Reasonable enough that it's still accessible in our area.

Danny: So do you ever feel bad about charging? What you charge?

Toni: I don't i've had to do a little training with my employees because they both came from really bad overworking like my most recent hire was literally, seeing a counselor for healthcare burnout. And but she also, because she was at that stage, is she went, she was getting burnt out because she knew she was worth more.

So even though it required some training and it still is requiring some training she has almost been more accepting of all of it. It's been awesome. But it does require a little training when somebody comes out of the, Oh, yeah, you're only worth this many dollars an hour world.

Danny: I feel like most people, they settle into about 120 and it's usually it's because [00:30:00] that's typically the self pay rate that most in network practices charge.

And a lot of times that's because it's close to what, a Medicare eval is. And so there's really no other reason why, except for that. And if you start looking at the price point, and I'm just obviously I'm a proponent of charge what you're worth. And the reason I say that is because it's not just about you.

It's also about your staff. And it's about your ability to create opportunities for these other people that are going through burnout counseling, and I went to our office the other day. Cause I, I tweaked my knee a little bit and I got one of the, one of the PTs that I should say, not my office, our old office that we sold our practice, but like we're still, I still identify as the owner, but the the challenge is for me, like I, I still go see people and I talked to this guy, he's a new PT there.

I had not seen him before and he told me, he was like, Hey man, I got to tell you I [00:31:00] was like taking travel contracts and my, he and his wife were both taking travel contracts. I believe she's a mid labor delivery nurse. And he's I was this close to just leaving the profession.

And I heard your podcast and I realized, Oh, we're getting another contract in Atlanta. So he reached out to me. I connected him with the new owner. And, he's been a staff PT now there for I guess over a year. But he was like, it's awesome, dude. I get to see patients in less volume.

I get to work on like strength conditioning stuff with them and take them into, areas that I just wasn't allowed to go within traditional PT. And he's I seriously was going to take a construction job. Like this guy, because of, it doesn't even have to be, you don't have to start your own clinic, but if you start your clinic, you get a chance to.

Allow people in our profession that just want to be amazing clinicians to be amazing clinicians and to make a good living along the way, then you can't do that. If you're undercharging for your services, you cannot scale past yourself. You can't also pay a good salary and benefits and have stability for these people who deserve it.

So when you are [00:32:00] undercharging, because you literally don't value yourself enough, you're also you. You're robbing the people that are going to want to work for you on the mission that you have. So the fact that you're charging, which you are and there may be some challenges with people that are staff.

Clinicians that are like money mindset stuff. That's very normal. But as you work through that, the other thing that's a flip side of it is you working through money mindset stuff with people that are staff members affects them in such a positive way outside of the clinic as well, so there's so many layers to that about why we need to get comfortable with the value that we provide. It's good for the clinic. It's good for you. It's good for your staff. And then learning how to have conversations about this stuff train really. Helps them in so many areas outside the business as well.

I have, you notice that with your own staff and, for them talking to you about Oh my gosh, I feel more comfortable talking to people about X, Y, and Z now, because of what we worked on in here.

Toni: Oh, for sure. Like our again, so our most recent Staff hire, has worked through some money of mindset stuff with us, obviously we're providing her with.

Like literally a quarter of the amount of patients that she used to see With you know [00:33:00] her same her base salary is the same as her old salary with the potential to like almost double it with bonus structure and stuff like that, so but she Like got a financial advisor and she's talking about all this stuff because now that she has some time and isn't so freaking stressed all the time and all of this kind of stuff, she was like, man, like I can create a debt payoff plan and I can think about she was getting married in September and she was like, okay, so like me and my fiance are gonna be combining our finances here soon.

Like, how do we want to handle all this stuff? So I was just, it's been cool to see her. Not only freed from the torture that can be, in network PT work, but but also just the, she's truly just transforming into a different person or back into herself, if you will. But yeah, no, it's been really cool to watch her navigate all that and to actually change your mind about what she's worth and even the way she talks when we go and do marketing stuff, like to watch her confidence grow and be like, nah, man, this is what we charge is what's worth [00:34:00] like talking to, other doctors or gym owners or whatever, because people always ask that question. But just a lot more conviction.

And even when she's selling a plan of care to somebody in the clinic it's not like a, Oh I think that maybe this could be worth it for you. It's no, I'm a professional. This is what I found. This is what you need. This is how much it

Danny: costs. Yeah. And there's a lot of value associated too, because what people don't realize is you are educating somebody on something that they do not understand that on how to take care of their vehicle in life, which is their body for.

And that it's not like that information degrades, they don't lose it. They learn something, they get to apply something and investigate scenario. They share that with the people around them and they start to create a positive ripple effect because of that. And if you look at other.

I had to go to a dermatologist like eight months, 10 months ago. And it was, I was in there, I saw her for 10 minutes. And it was like 400 bucks. Ashley had a followup with it with a doctor just a virtual followup. Just the other day, it was 10 minutes and it was like 150. And it's [00:35:00] because we have a high deductible, like we're out of pocket, no matter what a lot of people do now, though, a lot of people are in that same boat.

So when you really look at it, you start to become an informed consumer. It's Oh my God. Our, with somebody like you is a steal compared to, the dermatologist that's like Google searching what the answer is to, the diagnosis they're looking for. And I was like, the hell am I paying for?

Is this crazy? I can just go do this myself. So this is where I think as people see that I started to feel more confident with it and that's huge for their staff. But for you in particular, this, the sales process can be a bit of a struggle. And I'm interested if there, is there a difference for you in terms of.

Obviously we have a very specific sales process that we like to teach and a framework, but there's rooms for people to, improvise and modify within that. Did you find that there were any differences in a small market in particular with the sales process of, how you were presenting what you're doing, or is it basically, the same as you would have if you were to teach somebody else how to do it?

Would it be similar?

Toni: I think there are some differences. [00:36:00] I think part of it is that. On the very front end, it might be a little more challenging to get people in the door. So not even necessarily, it's technically the beginning of the sales process, but helping people understand why we're different and why they should, even get on the phone with us, let alone book an email, let alone buy a package.

So I think some of that's a little more challenging, obviously just. Smaller density of people. There's just less people around here. But also then the affluence of those people, the fitness and health intentions of those people. We are in the South unfortunately, the weather's great and there's, just running communities and then hiking and this, that, and the other, but there's also a lot of people who fit the Southern stereotype and maybe aren't as active or aren't as healthy or don't really care about anything preventative and that kind of stuff.

So navigating some of that has been interesting. It's a lot of. Finding where your people are at very boots to the ground, very warm handshake type stuff. And then, which kind of comes back to the money mindset thing, I, for a while, found [00:37:00] myself pitching the cost of our plan of care. So we would get them in the door, right?

We get them in the door, they agree to pay for the initial visit, and then There was some guilt or some like assumption that I was placing on people, not because I actually knew anything about them and how they would maybe make a decision on the kind of the sales psychology behind it, but just because I would assume that they weren't ready to invest or didn't want to invest or that this would be a lot of money for them or whatever.

I had a really bad habit of. Telling people like, this is how much toll visit costs, but if you want to do a payment plan, we can make that work. You know what I mean? And so I like I wouldn't pause. I wouldn't let them. Most people have a decent credit card limit. Like most of them were like, okay that's a lot of money, but I can make it work and pay it off and whatever.

And so I was just selling people the payment plan, which we still have those. It's not that we don't have a payment plan option. It's not that people don't utilize the payment plan option, but if somebody is ready to invest, they're already in that mindset of yeah, I believe [00:38:00] in what you're telling me that you can do for me.

I, I'm ready to buy this. thing that you can't put into a box and wrap up with a bow kind of thing. They're bought in, just go with it. It, I, which was a problem for me. That was a mindset issue for me. I wish that I was, had won the lottery and could provide physical therapy services to everybody for free.

But I also had to work on my own mindset around Give people the opportunity to invest in themselves because some of them will surprise you and still to this day. I have people that we go into an evaluation like myself or my staff PTs and I'm like, okay I talked to this person on the phone and I'm getting vibes like they might be a little uncomfortable with the money thing.

And you will be super surprised how resourceful people can become when they believe that something is the right fit for them. So if there's anything that I would caution people against, it would be don't assume somebody's situation or what they're willing to make an investment in because you will find yourself wanting to do what you can to make it work for them.

And you might actually be doing them a disservice in that sense. So that's what I've found [00:39:00] in this market.

Danny: I think it's so true. I don't know. I think it's just in a small market. I feel like whenever I first started, I would like gauge whether I was going to talk to somebody about a package based on the car that they drove up in, yep.

Oh, Mercedes, we're going to package all day with this person, right? Yeah, maybe like Honda Civic, single visit and this is coming from somebody that drove and still drives cars that are like, people would probably look at and be like, man, whatever, this person probably can't afford that either, versus And it's such a silly thing to associate what somebody was driving with whether they can afford it or not, but it's, it's.

We don't know any different, oftentimes we're very uncomfortable with that discussion until we realize number one, just how much we help people, but also to just how much authority we actually have. And we give that authority away whenever we talk too much whenever we tell them the prognosis and plan that you said in front of them, we, we give that away whenever we [00:40:00] quickly downsell to a payment plan.

It's I can do this where we can spread it out. And, it's and then also it's also offensive to those folks. I had this patient and this changed my perspective on what people like doing this and making these, preconceived assumptions of what somebody can afford.

So I had this patient and this guy looks like he. There's running like a raft river rafting, boat for a living. Like he literally looks like he's just every outdoor education major I ever met that played hacky sack all day. That's what this guy looks like old Birkenstocks shorts.

He made out of jeans that he used to have. And it always works like the same shirt. And drives this old, beat up car. This guy has started and sold. To my knowledge, three companies, one for a nine figure exit. And the only reason I know this is because we became friends and he we talked about business stuff afterward and I was like, what in the hell?

And this guy, he told me he was really into [00:41:00] cooking. It was like, his hobby was like, he loved cooking. He was a big foodie. So he goes to William Sonoma and he's looking for this like very specific set of like Japanese knives. So he walks in looking like he does and they like redirect him to what would be like, I guess a value set of chef's knives.

I don't really know chef's knives, but anyway, he was like, this is not what I'm asking you for, and he's I want those over there. And they're like, are you sure? And he's, yeah, those are the ones that came in for, this is the knives I want. And. And, he's offended.

It's there's like the thing for these freaking knives, and just cause of the way I look, he's it's so frustrating. He's I just don't value these other things. And it doesn't mean that I don't have the monetary ability to do whatever he wants, and this guy literally just.

Bought a blueberry farm and just ran this blueberry farm. That's all he did, right? He literally worked outside in the field every day and he's cooked food. And so I, after, having this conversation with him, I was like, man, you just cannot judge people on face value. You can't judge them a on what their income or what their financial [00:42:00] position is.

You also can't judge them on what they value because plenty of people have spent money on all kinds of shit. And other people, they might see significant value in their body, in their health, in getting back to be able to do the things they want to do with their friends and family. And we discount that whenever we we basically downsell them on purpose, or we don't give them the Plan that is appropriate for them, but with no other strings attached, it's this is what I would do.

This is best case scenario for you. You have to be able to be honest with them, so for you, how long did it take for you to get over that sales? I guess discomfort that you first had.

Toni: Totally over it. I would say it was probably a year and a half, two years in only in the last eight to 10 months.

Do I feel like I am. I'm 100 percent fully convicted about it in a way that makes me make absolutely no assumptions about what. People want and what they value because at this point I have now had people like [00:43:00] open additional credit cards or ask to borrow money from family members or whatever to make it work.

And I've been rejected by people who drove up in a BMW with the paper tag still on it. Like you just bought a BMW. What? Are you doing but you're not going to invest, but you came to me because you have a problem that you clearly think I can help you with. I had the most perfect evaluation, the cleanest, clearest sales pitch.

I gave them a dollar amount. I put it in front of them. I was like fully anticipating them just being like, here's my card. And they were like, that's a lot of money. And I wanted to be like. Compared to the 80, 000 you just spent on the BMW, are you that's

Danny: why they didn't have any money left.

Toni: I was like, maybe that, maybe you should have thought about that before you decided to ask for my help.

But anyways, but like you said, priorities of different people. You can't assume from anybody where they'll prioritize.

Danny: Yeah, that's true. With your staff, how do you go about training sales and money [00:44:00] mindset? Any sort of like tips or experience share that was really helpful for you with training your staff up on what typically is a very difficult thing to get past

Toni: So some of that is just sharing money mindset related things with them, helping them understand and do some like sales psychology training, which, you guys have so graciously provided us because it worked for me.

So it works for them kind of thing. But so some of it is digging into sales psychology. Some of it is actually going through and talking to them about it. What they think it's worth. So like a lot of people haven't even been asked what do you, what, if you don't think it's worth what we're selling it for, what do you think it's worth and why?

And trying to get them to at least talk through where their mindset is. And then obviously role play is super helpful. There is some degree of fake it till you make it that has to happen. I think on the front end, because it's not until they, I don't think you fully get past it until you have sold a couple of packages to people that maybe didn't [00:45:00] fit the stereotype.

Like to have those weird situations where this person's not going to buy a package, there's no way they have that kind of money. And then they do. And you're like Oh, okay. So this is worth it. And then getting some weeks into working with these people and seeing how much they value it, seeing the compliance go up and all of those things.

But it takes time. But a lot of it's just consistency and, and really seeing it take place,

Danny: I think. Yeah. One thing that I always think about. If anybody's struggling with sales, money mindset, this obviously something that I don't know if there's anybody that we've ever worked with that hasn't had to work through some of this.

There's different levels of it, yeah. It depends on your upbringing. And. What, your family and how they viewed money and the conversations they either did or did not have, so it can be vastly different, but one thing I always think about really in general, if it's something that someone's struggling with is just to think about zooming out, right?

Like even or trying to explain what you do to an alien, like imagine explaining money to an alien, right? How would you describe that? And I think to myself, I'm like, Oh, here's this. [00:46:00] This either piece of plastic or this piece of paper that is essentially, it's a it's a representation of money, but what is money, and so how do you describe money to an alien? And it's, to me, I always think it's essentially, this is a transference of trust and value to get something that we want from somebody else, and they can also exchange that to someone else afterward for something that they want.

And when we zoom out and really think to ourselves, so if money really is just a transference of trust and the association of value, then what we have to think to ourselves is do we feel like we're trustworthy people? And do we feel like we provide value to other people? Because if we do.

then we should have no problem utilizing the standard that we have set as a society for defining those things. Because in actuality, if we all didn't agree on it, it would literally be a piece of plastic and a piece of paper. But it, what it is it's assigning trust and value. And that's, for me, that was always very helpful because I would get caught up in the [00:47:00] dollar amount.

I'd be like, Oh, This is a lot, but in association to what in comparison to what, because it's so hard, like even the guy that I'm training with right now, I haven't done anything special. He just does what I do. That's it. But he's been consistent for months and he's not taking any prescription medication anymore.

He's not having, he doesn't have heartburn anymore. He literally has so much more energy. He's lost 20 pounds. People in his family are like, what are you doing? And it's just literally just does what I do in the morning for an hour. That's it. That's all he's done. And now he's like more tired at night because he's physically active and he's getting better sleep.

And that's helping him tremendously as well. The guy's got a whoop now and he's he's down the rabbit hole. And I think to myself, I'm like, man, if I, and I work, it's not like I'm charging this guy. If anybody in my neighborhood gets hurt. Garage physical therapy, Danny's garage physical therapy table is available for free.

And I, and that's just because I enjoy helping people. But if I was to charge him for that what do you think he would pay? If I could say Hey man, if I can get you to lose 20 pounds, have way more energy, be able to play ultimate frisbee with your kids[00:48:00] not have to take medication anymore and not have heartburn anymore.

If I could promise you that outcome right now, how much would you pay for that? I think it would be tens of thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars. He'd be like, I'll give you 20 grand right now, if that's the case. And we undervalue this. And this is what we help people do on a daily basis.

And they don't know how to do it. And that's the thing we take what we know for granted. I think it's just so important to have these conversations and to share different perspectives for it because everybody's thinking the same thing. Oh, I'm scared to talk about money with these people.

But man, think about how much, you change that. Do you guys do a, like staff wins or like highlight patients to help with or do that as like part of your staff meeting? Yeah. So

Toni: we have a staff meeting. We talk about patient wins, but then we also talk about each staff members, both personal and business wins.

Because we want them to get excited about things that are happening in the clinic, but we also care about them as human beings. So no

Danny: finger, right? Like it's a weird thing.

Toni: This weird thing where we actually like care about the people that we are. Anyways. [00:49:00] But so like last week MR, staff PT.

She was like, yeah, made it to orange theory for an extra time this week. It was great. But it was fun to get to celebrate that with her. And it's okay, is that something you're working on doing? Like, all right, I'll hold you accountable. Come Thursday. I'll be like, have you gone to your third orange theory class?

You know what I mean? It's fun stuff because we're Even though we're their boss, like we're also their friend. We are also, I want her quality of life to be excellent. That's part of why I hired her out of a crappy job. That's just part of it. Yeah, no, it's super fun. So we get to do that.

And then we have our little like win board that we do with our patients. So when they finally like. Meet that first low hanging fruit goal of being able to do XYZ pain free. We have a board. They write their name What they identify as so like I'm an athlete. I'm her mom. I'm a crossfitter I'm a baseball player whatever and then I can and they fill in the I can statement.

So whether that's It's walk up the stairs pain free, complete my half marathon pain free, put, 50 pounds on the barbell and get it overhead, whatever that may be. We [00:50:00] celebrate those wins with them too. And it's super fun.

Danny: Yeah. No, I love that. What's the three year goal for off the block?

What are you trying to do over the next couple of years?

Toni: Three year. I would like to have one additional clinic potentially that's, I, there's a lot of pros and cons as I'm learning in business ownership to additional spaces. So we currently have two. And for obvious reasons, I would like to have those two full or at least mostly full before we even consider a third space, but I have or we have, because Cole definitely helps me make these decisions now, which is great because a little less pressure on me.

But we've talked about potentially a third clinic so that it would allow us essentially to cover like the tri county area in upstate South Carolina. So we're basically right on the border of Pickens and Oconee County right now. We're also established in Pickens County now and we've talked about maybe going to Anderson County.

I'd like to have, we have two staff clinicians right now. I'd like to see that probably at least triple. [00:51:00] We want to have kids. So that's not really an off the block goal, but it becomes an off the block goal because where we're at with off the block determines the financial and time freedom we have to start a family.

Yeah. And then I want to be the go to sports performance Facility in upstate South Carolina. I want to be and that's part of why I want to be potentially in Anderson County as well as I want to be accessible to everybody in the upstate. But yeah, maybe one more clinic. Definitely 3 to 4 to 5 more clinicians.

And then the ability to be as active or inactive, if you will, in the clinical side of. My business as possible Cole, of course, fulfills like an administrative role, but there are certain things that I have to do on the administrative side, but I want to be able to be a mom and be present with that.

But also I love being a physical therapist. I don't think I'll ever like completely fully eliminate those hours. I might for a time just to have the freedom to be with my kids, but [00:52:00] to have a business that runs even when

Danny: we're not there. That's the point of systems and building a business in an organized manner, right?

It's your decision with what you decide to do and how much time you decide to spend there. We have people that have, seven figure plus practices that have decided to treat more because they've been able to build their business in a way where. It's very well run.

It's it's very easy. I wouldn't say easy to manage, but it's very manageable with minimal time. And they just realized like, wow, the thing I actually really the most is like working with patients. So why am I not doing more of that? Which, and everyone has their own decision, what they want to do with it.

Having a family and being able to have. Essentially unlimited maternity leave sounds awesome. We've seen it on both sides where it's like people are, they're the only provider and they have, they start a family and then they're, it can be really challenging to balance that.

And and if you can get your business set up to a point where, you have non active revenue associated, it can be a huge help for your family [00:53:00] as you're getting started One other thing, not to throw this another thing on your plate because you do so much, but Tony's actually going to be coming on as a business advisor for us as well.

So some of you that are listening to this, that if you decide, Hey, maybe PT business is a group that can help me, you might end up talking to Tony about your business and seeing where you're at and if you're a fit to, to get some help from us, or if not, what, what advice do we have for you?

To get, to the next steps to where you're trying to go in your business. If if that's a fit. Hey, you might get a chance to pick her brain directly, which is awesome. And we're excited to to have her become part of the team and really be able to share her experience and knowledge.

And obviously after listening to this for, almost an hour, it's probably pretty apparent that she's pretty incredible at, being a business owner, but also obviously very passionate about the profession, which is huge. Cause that's step number one, it's This isn't a, this is, these are our people, this isn't a, I'm not a some business guy that's decided physical therapy was the place where I wanted to go and [00:54:00] start a business.

I don't know why anybody would do that outside of the industry, but it happens. And for us, this is more important than just just a business. Anyway, Tony, this is really a lot of fun. I'm so glad we could share your story and learn. More about success within a small market.

I really do think these are undervalued markets. Super small markets have their own challenges, but they also have their own. And then you don't have to just be in a big city like Atlanta or New York City or whatever to make a cash practice work. Anything you want to lead everybody with before we we finish it up.

If you're

Toni: thinking about wanting to do it, don't let size of where you're at be any sort of excuse. Like it's just it sounds like a reason, but it's really, it's truly not don't let this hold you back. And if you're. If you're, if you have more questions like Danny said, I am available.

There's plenty of different people from, that represent PT Biz that have been through growing their own practice into multiple six figures. Like we were here [00:55:00] for you, we're ready to support you and we're doing the thing every single day and it looks different every single day, but don't ever let where you live limit you.

Your perception of whether or not this is possible because it absolutely

Danny: is. Love it. What a great way to end it. I don't think you can say anything better than that. All right. Tony, thank you so much for your time. Thanks. As always for everybody live in the Facebook group. And if you're catching this on the podcast thank you so much for listening and we'll catch you next week.

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