SnackBreak Ep. #011 Aaron Lebauer (CashPT, PT Consulting, Coorporate Wellness, and Entrepreneurship)

Okay, cool. And then. No, I don't really have any other questions. Are your audience. Is it mostly DBT students or someone.

Yep. So it's mostly students. I originally started the page kind of focused on putting out orthopedic content and exercises, and then I realized that there are thousands of pages like that out there. So I was trying to figure out kind of a unique value proposition. That's where I think if I. If I can get more in the mentorship space. And so 2022, I'm going to be mostly focused on the podcast and then I'm going to try and get a little bit of a newsletter. Going to build some traction there.

Awesome.

But I can do. I can do. I'm going to do a little intro and then we can get started from there. But most of the questions I'm going to have. I'm kind of going to have you wearing a couple different hats today, which you do on a daily basis. That shouldn't be a problem. But just talking in terms of your perspective from a Cash PT owner, a PT entrepreneur and consultant. And then I wanted to talk touch a little bit on corporate wellness too, because that's not something any of my guests have really spoken on before. Does that sound okay?

Yeah.

All right. Hello and welcome to another episode of Snack Break by Ortho Snacks. I'm your host, John Shafer, and on this podcast I interview physical therapists, fitness professionals and health and wellness experts. My guest today, I don't know if I dreamed this up or if I saw it online, but he has been referred to as the godfather of Cash pt. He is the host of the Cash PT Lunch Hour, the author of the Cash PT Blueprint, which I recently finished, obtained a lot of value from, and he is the owner of Labour Physical Therapy and Labourer Consulting, where he's helped thousands of healthcare entrepreneurs treat the way they want, as well as obtain a little bit more freedom. And this man is on a mission, a journey to save 100 million people from having surgery. That's a lofty task, but if there's anyone up for the job, I think it is this man. He is Dr. Aaron Labourer. Welcome.

Hey, John, thanks so much for the warm welcome and great introduction. It's an honor to be here.

Yeah, absolutely. I really appreciate you carving out a little bit of time to chat with me today. I know the holiday season can get busy and like I said, I just finished your book and I think that the listeners are going to obtain a tremendous amount of value from this conversation as we kind of Sort through the book a little bit as well as your journey. So looking forward to it.

Awesome.

Just so everyone can really get on the same page, before we go any further into the conversation, I'd like you to talk a little bit for those who don't know what is CashPT and what makes it so unique compared to the insurance based model.

Yeah, I think the basic way I think about cash based physical therapy is that I make a direct contract with my patients. So my patients or our patients are the ones that pay us and we agree to the terms of their program and then they pay us directly. And if they'd like to file a claim for reimbursement, they can do so on their own. Which is different than in network physical therapy where as the business owner, I would sign a contract with Blue Cross Blue Shield to accept a specific amount of reimbursement per treatment and then the patients come and see us. But there's a third person in the way. It's a triangular relationship which in personal relationships don't go well. And I don't believe in business relationships that go well either. And so then there's like this middle ground of being out of network. So out of network physical therapy. The difference between that and cash based PT is we're basically out of network. We just don't file the claim on behalf of our patients. Whereas an out of network clinic typically still files the claim on behalf of their patients, which takes a little bit of the friction away. It doesn't change the patient's responsibility. It makes it a whole lot easier on us because it's really hard to file a claim for someone else. I mean, people do it all the time. But when I start, I mean, it goes back to kind of how I started was I knew it was just going to be me and I was like, I'm not going to spend all day on the phone with insurance companies. So that's the basic, you know, in network. Out of network, you file a claim on behalf of someone else. Cash based. We're out of network, we just don't file claims for our patients.

Okay, so what percentage of your patients do you think actually go back to file the claim themselves?

That's a good question. It's not a metric we typically track. I think it depends on what year it is. I think these days probably 50% of people go and file claims. Some of them probably intend to do it and then they realize that insurance isn't gonna pay for their first $5,000 of services anyways. So they probably don't and then there's a good portion of people that do, and they have great insurance and they get reimbursed.

Okay. So a lot of it sounds like it just has to do with healthcare trends overall.

Yeah, yeah. And by the time people get to us, they're like, I don't really care. I just need to be helped. Because they've been somewhere else and not been helped because they didn't have enough time or they weren't listened to, or they waited a long time or they couldn't get in. Sometimes people come to see us because they're like, well, you guys can get us in. I'm like, I know.

Awesome. In your book and online, you kind of talk about the turning point, which you're introduced to the idea that there's a way to do things differently. And that was the day you treated 43 patients. So I guess my question would be, what do you kind of say to a student who's on a clinical and they're in a situation where they're seeing a high volume of patients, or even someone who's in the middle of their job, who is at a high volume clinic treating more patients than they'd like? Is it a situation where you just kind of have to grin and bear it and try and learn as much as you can in the moment, or. I mean, how do you kind of approach that?

Yeah, I think when I looked at it when I was a student, you know, I saw 43 patients that one day, and it wasn't like, it wasn't like I was seeing 10 patients. And then all of a sudden one day I was like, I was seeing 30 patients a day, you know, generally probably five to 30. But this one day, I was there super late and I was like, I had to count up all the notes that I wrote and that whole clinical rotation. I worked like a dog. But I knew that I had it easy compared to my dad, who was a cardiologist and his uncle, they, you know, they wouldn't sleep for days in a row. They were on call. Like, I wasn't on call overnight. You know, my dad's like, I fell asleep signing my name multiple times. Like, I didn't like. So for me, my expectation was, I'm going to work really hard. At the same time, I knew that seeing four patients an hour after already having been a massage therapist for six years wasn't going to cut it with the patients that were coming to see me in my massage therapy business because they were coming to see me because physical therapy had in Quotes failed. Or they'd been cpt, the chiropractor, the acupuncturist, the orthopedic surgeon. And no one had touched their problem before or their pain area. Like, no one had been able to help them until they saw Aaron. Well, they saw me. And I got to spend an hour with them for, you know, like once a week for, you know, three to eight weeks or whatever. Like I did as a massage therapist. I wasn't prescribing three to eight weeks. I was just. They would come see me and we'd replace, book them for the next week. And they're like, wow, all of a sudden I feel better. No one's gonna be able to do that. Okay. So I knew I couldn't help those patients in the current physical therapy model. So if you're in that, you know, as a student, it's just like, you just. You suck it up and you get through it and you know, like, hey, this is what I don't wanna do. Because there's a limited, finite amount of time if you have a job doing, and that's the position you're in. Well, if you don't like it, it's up to you to change your situation. As a student. You don't really have that much control to change your situation in the middle of a clinical. But if you, if you have a job, absolutely you do.

Yeah. So then kind of moving into. You had this experience and you knew right after graduation that, you know, you wanted to open your own practice. I feel like a lot of new grads think that are at a point where they feel like they don't necessarily have enough experience. I know this is something you speak to a lot, but what's your typical advice for those students who feel like they might not be ready?

Yeah, I mean, if you can. If you feel ready to go to a hospital and work with patients who might fall without, you know, when you blink or who are on, like. Who are on, like, supplemental oxygen and you're. You feel comfortable enough getting a job working in a skilled nursing facility or going to someone's home at Home health, you can. Or even getting a job in outpatient physical therapy clinic, you can start a practice. You know, if you don't feel ready because your clinical skills aren't ready, then you're not really ready to graduate. Owning your own business is no different. It's just a second set of skills you have to build. It's not treating patients, it's running your business. And you don't need five years of experience working for someone else. To learn how to run a business, you need to go work with a coach and mentor to learn and read books and take courses to learn how to run business. Just like you spent three. Three years learning how to be a. In air quotes, competent physical therapist upon graduation, you know.

Yeah. And I mean, just kind of building off that it was a situation. I'd say I felt similarly in the past. And just reading through your book and seeing that you do lay out a blueprint of exactly how you do it. There's so many resources out there, especially within business, just how to learn different aspects of it. And with all those resources available, it becomes systematic. And so many people have done it before. It's like, it's. It's not that great of a stretch to say that I can do this right, so. And I like that. I feel like that's a message you preach a lot, and a good one at that.

Yeah, well, you know, so many people told me, like, you can't do this. Like, you shouldn't open a business. Like, you have to have five years experience. I'm like, what do you mean? I was like, I've got seven years of experience, like, treating patients already. Like, you're telling me I can't open my own business? Like, it's ridiculous. And so not everyone graduating is going to have the same level experience as me or someone who's already an athletic trainer or maybe done personal training for a while. But we've helped people who right out of PT school have never done anything else, and they start their own business and they're wildly successful. It's because they want to, not because, you know, they have to. You know, I think that's a big difference maker.

So with that being said, surely you faced a lot of challenges during the early years of opening up. What were some of the greatest challenges you face and maybe even your favorite failure?

Yeah, I think the biggest challenge is how do I find patients? They're willing to pay cash to come see me originally for me, you know, no, no one. There are a few people, like my wife. My dad was still skeptical, and he was like, oh, you can do this, but you should probably go to the physicians, because that's what we did, you know, and he's basically like, go cash in a few of the favors that people owe me around town. And it says, how do you get patients pay cash? Well, I went to go cash in some of these chips and they didn't send me patients. Like, I'm well connected in Greensboro in The medical world, and it didn't get patients and physicians say, well, only if you took their insurance. I'm like, but you know the. And I'm like, you know the results I get for people and you're still gonna send them somewhere else just because that other place takes insurance, not because Dr. Labourer is like the best option. Like, I thought that was ridiculous. And that was after a few years of practice. So I guess the number one I would say mistake or thing that I did that I would change was I went to go try and market to physicians. I'd spend 30. Every eval, I'd spend 30 minutes writing up a treatment note and printing out letters on stationery and sending it out to their, you know, their primary care providers, specialists, and even the chiropractor that they listed. And I did that hundreds of times. I go personally drop them off. One chiropractor ended up from. That was like, wow, you wrote me a note. Oh my gosh. He ended up, he's like, let's meet for lunch. And he ended up sending me 12 patients in my first year. It was great. But the amount of time I spent on that strategy, the ROI wasn't there. And so there's a bigger ROI in getting out into the public and marketing directly to, like, our customers, our patients. And that's what we teach our clients these days.

Okay, and would you say it takes a certain type of. I want to say a certain type of intervention or strategy in terms of how you're applying each session? Like, do you use. Do you think Cash PT can primarily only be successful for people who do a lot of manual therapy, or do you think people who rely more heavily on exercise prescription can be just as successful?

They can both be just as successful. I think there's a misconception that the amount of time I spend with you is what's valuable. It's not the amount of time I spend with you, it's the result that I can give you in the transformation. But I'm only going to really, truly know what it is you want if I spend time with you and ask you the right questions. But it's not whether I touch you or whether we don't touch you or exercise you or needle you or not. And I would say that the pandemic taught us that even with telehealth, like, we can get people amazing results and they'll still, they're still willing to pay the same prices that we've charged for in person visits.

Okay, so with just. With the Cash PT model Kind of. How did that change or evolve throughout Covid? Did you feel like your business took a. Took a big hit, or were you able to, you know, kind of adapt, like you said, with telehealth, and find other ways to keep the strategy successful?

Yeah. How did it evolve? We're much better at sales. We had a lot more objections to people, and these are objections like, you know, I don't want to come in, I'm not ready to take care of myself, etc. It did. We did take a hit. I mean, we had to. We didn't have to close down. But people were really resistant to telehealth in the beginning. We converted right away to it, and all our current patients moved in. But we had two months where we had no new patients. They're like, well, I've been in pain for six months. I'm willing to wait another two weeks to two months to get started. And then once that came around and we could open in person, people had no tolerance for telehealth anymore, like, locally. But I think if there was anything it did was it allowed me to create some systems that we had just put on the back burner because we didn't really need them. And I was talking with my team today and our lead therapist, Caitlin Herzog, and just talking about how our sales strategy is different now than it was almost three years ago when she started. And she's like, it's a game. It's like, we used to have only, like, one script and one pathway, and it was fine because at that time, it worked better than the one we had before. But now we have three or four pathways because we've spent a ton of time just really getting really good at sales. And we haven't done more marketing. We've done more sales because sales is how we get people to understand that they need pt. Sales is how we get people to enroll in their plan of care and buy into their plan of care so they stick through it.

Okay, so what would you. What would you say your biggest advice is for a new grad who's maybe struggling to sell their treatments just to their patients? Whether, let's say. Let's say not even within their own company. They don't open a cash PT practice. They're working in the outpatient setting. They're having trouble getting buy in. What would you say your biggest advice in that situation would be?

Learn to ask the right questions. Right. Okay, so there's two types of questions we want to ask. There's one that is just really getting into why they're there because they're not there to gain more range of motion. They're not there to fix their knee or get rid of the knee pain. They're there to get back to the activity that the problem you're seeing is keeping them from doing. But in order to do that, we have to ask them why. So there's like, settings, like, you know, like, why is it important for you to fix your knee? Okay. Because I can get back to CrossFit. So why is CrossFit important to you? Okay. Because it makes you feel strong. Okay. Why is feeling strong and healthy important to you? Because it allows me to be a good role model to my kids. Okay. Why is being a good role model, your kids, important to you? Because I didn't have a good role model growing up, and I want to do that for my kid. Okay, great. Now we're starting to get to the real reason that they're there when we start to understand those things. And now they're going to buy into the plan of care, and I can create a program that solves that problem for them, not just the problem that they can get fixed anywhere else.

Yeah, I've seen this. I've seen the circle of why before, and just the motivational interview, I feel like that's something that I'm really grateful. I've gotten a lot of opportunity to do so just within my education. And I think that the more we can get to the root of, kind of like you said, why patients are wanting to be seen, why they wanted to return to health, better outcomes could be. So that's awesome.

Can I drop one more nugget on that?

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. So the next step is now we know why now we have to position future. We have to future pace. Like, an ounce of future pace is better than an ounce. Like a gallon of, I don't know, like regret later on, whatever. Whatever the analogy is. But we have to future pace working together. We have to create future with them. So one of the top questions we ask is, you know, John, if you could snap your fingers and produce one outcome working together in the next 90 days, what would it be? And how would it change your life? Right. So now what I've said is, okay, over the next 12 weeks, you get, you know, if there's one result that you want, it's just one result, not 20, just one result. What would. What would be the most important one and how would it change your life? So I position working together for 90 days, I position the fact that together we're going to get them the result. And it's a life changing result. You know, it might not be life altering, but it, it's something that's meaningful to them and they tell us and great, I can absolutely help you do that because pretty much like I can't fix your, I can't fix your meniscus, but I can help you play tennis again without your shoulder being a problem. Okay.

A lot of valuable nuggets right there. That's awesome. So then you get to a point where you're starting to see a little bit more success by yourself in this cash practice. Take me through, take me through the process of hiring on more therapists. I see that you now have a licensed massage therapist as well. What's that kind of work, working relationship been like adding on those additional roles and expanding your cash PT practice?

Yeah, I think for so long, so many people told me it wasn't going to work that I was just focused on making sure that a cash practice worked, that I could do it. And I got to a point where I couldn't justify going to like CSM or PPS because it would take me out for three or four days of the week, I'd lose income. And what was I going to learn there? They weren't really teaching things about how to market directly to patients or direct marketing or copywriting or anything like that. I was like, well, I'm not going to learn anything. I don't really care about the research on, you know, hallux, Valgus, crepitus, like, whatever. Like I don't care about that stuff. It's not going to change my, my practice. Okay. And then I was like, well, you know, I want to be able to go on vacation, but every time I go on vacation, you know, I basically take a pay cut. I started hanging around people who had more successful businesses with me than me. And I realized the way that they were able to do that was to hire staff. I said, okay, like, let me figure that part out. So I hired an administrative assistant who immediately, like, this is five years too late. Immediately saved me, I don't know, six, seven hours a week just by being the one to schedule people and answer the phones, like, and return, just returning phone calls and scheduling, rescheduling people which paid for her jobs. Like, okay, now I have seven more hours a week to see patients that I don't have to. And that more than covers what the salary I was paying her. And I realized, ah, this is how we do it. And so that was kind of the Aha. Moment. And then looking back on it, I think if there's any big nuggets about hiring and building a team, it's number one is what jobs or roles are you doing in your daily activities or life that you can pay someone else to do, and you can pay them less than what it costs you. So it doesn't cost me any money to treat a patient, but I can generate $250 an hour treating a patient. So I'm not going to spend my time answering the phones when I should be treating patients because I can pay someone else less than 250 an hour to do that. I can pay another PT less than 250 an hour to treat our patients, so I can coach my clients so that 50 people at a time can learn how to get another dozen patients, you know, in their business. And if we can kind of start looking at our business, that's when you start looking at. When you move from owning a job to having a business, when you value your time over the, over the. You stop trading time for money. Your time becomes more important. So if I can hire someone to do this job for, you know, so that I can go spend some time somewhere else making more money, then I need to hire out that role. Unless it's something only Aaron can do. Hopefully that makes sense.

Yeah, that makes sense. That kind of, that kind of piggybacks onto my next question too. And I was going to ask about some of the biggest challenges of Cash PT in general. I know because, I mean, you kind of answered with your last question, but I was going to say if you're the only person treating at a Cash PT clinic, then you're in a situation which you're taking time off, you're losing income and things like that. But I mean, pretty much just answered my question in terms of the solution being hire more staff for the jobs you can't do and then also supplement, um, with other therapists who can treat as well.

Yeah, I mean, you absolutely, like, you can own a job and it's great. Um, but like, when you stop working or want to go on vacation, like, you don't have, you know, you don't really have anything you can do. Um, and you have to have a vision bigger than yourself. So a lot of people who own a job get out of a shitty, Leave a shitty job and build one for themselves, and it's much better, but they're not really building a business that works for them. And it takes a little bit of faith, but you also have to be able to say, okay, if someone else can treat these patients now, I can spend more time on the business growth activities, the marketing, et cetera, and fill their schedule and keep seeing patients if I want to.

Absolutely. So then I'm going to ask you to put on a couple different hats throughout this interview. And the next one I'd like you to put on is your physical therapist, entrepreneur, slash consultant hat. So in the book, you talk a little bit about kind of the moment you realize that you're giving away all your services for free, essentially not getting a whole lot of a thank you back. So I guess I just want you to talk a little bit about how you knew, how you knew when you wanted to step into your roles as a consultant. Moving into writing the book now doing the podcast, PT Cash PT Lunch Hour. Just kind of what that transition? More the entrepreneurial side of things outside of just your cashpt practice.

Yeah, I think it was, you know, I was trying to just help people do what I did. Right. People are asking me, aaron, how did you do this? And I got on the phone with a couple people and just for an hour, just told him everything. I was like, here's all you need to do. You just do these 20 things. Okay, great. And I think I said to my wife, like, they didn't even say thank you. You know, like, I told him exactly how I did it. And then I had a woman ask me some questions. She said, hey, can we get on call and ask you some questions? Sure. She said, how much do I owe you? And I said, I don't know. And she said, well, how do I pay you what you charge your patients per hour? So fair enough. And that's the day I realized that this was something that other people wanted, but was also something that was valuable to me and that, like, I could share and teach what I knew to other people and generate some income with it. And so what? Prior to that, I was already writing a blog I had started. Instead of a podcast or writing a book, I started doing webinars. I feel like I'm much better talking and speaking and sharing ideas in this medium. And so I did that. And that's how the Cash PT Lunch Hour started. It was a series of live webinars, about 40 something live webinars, some interviews and some trainings. And then, so along the way, let's see, I met another physical therapist who had already got out of practicing, and he was doing webinars himself, had some big YouTube videos, this guy, John Schumacher. No one in PT has really heard of Him, But John Schumacher is one of my early mentors. And he said, aaron, you have a six figure business. And I said, no way. He said, yeah, you do. And I couldn't see it, but he could. And so I hired him to help me build out a sales page for my course, the Cash PT Blueprint. And we did that. And he said, here, take these five emails and send them out to your list. And I adapted them to myself. And we enrolled 25 people in the course before I even built it. And that's when I realized, okay, now I have some work to do. This is a thing. And then it was another year or two where I was still treating patients. But the whole time I'm treating patients, my thoughts were, I've got all these other things I need to do. I've got people that need help. I've got. I can help more people than just this one person sitting in front of me. And I'd already hired another PT at that time. But I realized I needed to stop treating, to focus, you know, a hundred percent on the things that were driving, like my interests, which is running our clinic and running the coaching and consulting business. And so then I just, I kind of slowly, I kind of ripped off the band aid a little bit. I went down from Monday, Wednesday, Friday to just Wednesdays. And all of a sudden, no patience, got on my schedule. Just that one change. And it's allowed me to help even more people and still grow our business and our clinic. And our clinic helps just as many people as we ever did, if not more now. So I think that's, hopefully that encompasses your question. But if there's one thing that I want everyone to understand is I've had people come to me say, aaron, I want to start an online business. I want to teach and make money online. Okay, great. You have to give first. You have to give a lot of yourself and your ideas and your content, you know, So I had been writing a blog, doing a webinar series, been, you know, I had created a, like a group on Facebook before I, like, ever sold anything. And then, and it took years of not only like sharing my knowledge, but working on this before I had success in, as a coach. And so you have to, like, you have to build an audience. You have to have people around you that want something. And if you don't have that, it's gonna be really hard to build a course and then go try to sell it. You need to have an audience and then you need to sell it first.

So would you say it was A situation where you're kind of dabbling in a bunch of different things, seeing if anything would stick. Or was it always. You had the, you had the singular idea of you want to spread knowledge in terms of how to open a successful cash PT practice and everything kind of surrounded about that.

It was, I wanted to start my own, my clinic because I wanted to treat patients. And then everyone told me you couldn't do it. And I proved them wrong. And other people were, were finding success, wanting to do it. I said, well, you know, like, let me help these other people do it because it's as big as the biggest middle finger I can stick up is to help thousands of other people do what everyone told me was impossible.

Okay, and so what would you say to maybe a PT who's been practicing for a while and they're interested in getting involved in doing some consulting, whether that's for other, other businesses, other physical therapists? How do you kind of get your foot in the door in terms of consulting jobs?

Share what you know, just share what you know. Teach your best stuff, teach it and do it for free. But you know, for free. You don't do it for free. One on one, you and you, you don't need to always teach how. You teach the what and the why. Like what the problem is. You bring attention and awareness to the problem. You share with people why they need to do something about it. And you can tell a story about how you learned how to do this thing and then you can say, you know, if I were you, this is what I would want to do next. I'd want to do A, B and C. And C is find someone to help you through it. Just like I would if I'm promoting physical therapy. Like, it's not go to my Instagram and fix your back pain, it's go to my Instagram and learn about, you know, why you need to do something about your back pain. And then you come to me to fix it. So it's, if there's anything you do, it's find one platform to share your information. The second thing would be find a platform that you can use to collect emails and a lead magnet that converts and we use the PT email engine, which is the software program that we created. I use it for my clinic and my, my coaching business. And what it does is allows me to send automated thank you message and automated follow up emails to people. And as soon as they come in, they get acknowledged and they get more information and I give them more information, more ideas, more things to chew on until they're ready to work with us.

Okay, so then in terms of you said, you said you don't necessarily need a lot of experience to jump into opening a cash PT practice, what would you say to a new grad who's interested in getting involved in consulting? Because I feel like that might be more of a situation where you really need to build up some sort of a skill. I mean, you could consult with npt,

but I think there's a couple things. Number one, remember the Leonardo DiCaprio movie Catch Me if youf can about Frank Abagnale? Right. He taught a class at, I think it was at Harvard. And eventually they said, well, how'd you do that? He said, all I had to do is be one chapter ahead of the students. Right, okay. So you have to be one chapter ahead of the people you're teaching. And it's going to be really hard if you're trying to teach someone. You know, if you're trying to teach someone to do something you haven't done, that's going to be really difficult. You know, you can be a kind of like a health coach or, you know, kind of like a mindset coach. And look, I haven't done. But I haven't built a franchise, but I can kind of coach you through some of the steps you're going to need, but I can't coach you on, like, franchise, like, issues. So if you've created something and you've been successful at something, you can certainly teach people how to do it. You don't have to be the master or, number one, you just have to start sharing what you know and help people along. But if you haven't created an online course, it's gonna be really hard to teach people how to create an online course or you haven't created a cash practice. It'd be really hard to teach people how to create one because they're gonna have answers that you don't have. They're gonna have questions you don't have answers to. And it's gonna be, you have to have some kind of track record there, and you can build it just by helping people. You know, hey, look, I've been helped. I've helped five people do this. And I can help you because I've done before.

Yeah, I really like the idea of one chapter ahead. That is. That's awesome. So obviously you. You mentored so many healthcare professionals at this point. You've spoken a little bit about some of the mentors you've had kind of take me through how you Found your mentors, what they've meant to you and what someone should look for in their mentor.

Yeah, that's great. I think one of my, let's see, I've had clinical mentors but besides my clinical mentors, my business mentors, there was a. Another guy, Scott Van Niekirk I met through one of my clinical mentors who had a cash based physical therapy practice. And he shared with me some of the stuff that he knew and we did like a three month kind of coaching program and it was something that I did. I can't remember if it was before. I think it was before I had a PT practice still and I had a massage therapy practice but he was helping some PTS massage therapists in this. Like I met him through John Barnes and my, my release training and did that. And how did I find him? I just found him because he was in that community and he had a very similar type of practice to the one I knew I was going to build. Then the next person and then beyond that, like for my cash practice, like there wasn't really anyone else. Next things were okay. PT doesn't have the information I need to market directly to patients. I need to go outside the industry. And I started reading blogs and books of, you know, just general marketing and even personal trainers. I had another coach when I first really got into realized I needed a coach was when I wanted to start my coaching business. So that's when John helped me launch my course, the Cash PD Blueprint. But then it was, I was like okay, this is good. I got this right. And it was another two years before I realized I need something else. So I did, I did a two week program with Lewis Howells a course and I made it was a $2,000 program. Most, most money I'd spent on coaching. Yeah, I think earlier on the first one was like 1200 bucks. And then I think it was like another 12 or 1500 bucks. And I think this one with Louis was 2000 or 2500 bucks. I was like all right, this is a lot but I know I need this. And I bought off a webinar and immediately made $18,000 that first weekend. I was like, okay, like this is starting to make sense. But he didn't have a long term program. And then, and that's when like, like I said, I what happened? I knew I was like I need to keep growing this. I'm started running into problems that were good problems but I couldn't solve it on my own. I was spending too much time in them. And so now I have a business coach. His name is Bedros Coolian. Like his. So here's what happened was one of his blog posts. His post was how to get ranked on the top. You know, the top page of Google, right? And it was something I had seen when I was building up my clinic. Went five years ago, four or five years ago, to show it to someone. I said, hey, check this out. This is that original blog post. Well, I went on that blog post, and Bedros had installed a Facebook ad pixel. So after I showed it to someone, I was like, I started seeing Bedros in my Facebook feed in his new podcast, started listening to his podcast, and they had a live event. I went to his live event, and I was like, I need to work with Bedros. I'm not a personal trainer and I don't have in a gym. And that was his main offer, was a mastermind for. For gym owners. So I wouldn't talk to the salesperson, hey, what do I do? Like? And they said, well, Bedros has this private coaching program. And so I enrolled in that. And I've been working with him going on four years. And it's rapidly accelerated my business's growth because I don't have to sit and stew on decisions. I can, you know, I have a coach and a, you know, like a group of people that I'm now connected with who can help me wade through all these decisions so that I can focus on my top 5% of activities, not stuck in the weeds or sitting on a fence in the cornfield trying to figure out, do I, you know, use square or go card connect, or do I do, you know, JNAPP or intake queue? Like, they all do the same thing. And the amount of time people waste trying to make those decisions is crazy, but they don't realize it at the time. And that's what. And that's what these. The business coaching does for me. And so how you find a good one was the other part of the answer is find someone who's been where you want to be or is where you want to, you know, or is where you want to be in the future. Um, and read their book, watch their. Listen to their podcast, watch their courses. You resonate with them. Um, check out their programs, get on a call with them or their team and see if it's a good fit. And if they can help you, they'll tell you. And if it feels a little uncomfortable and scary, it's supposed to, you know, it's not supposed to feel comfortable. They're supposed to get you out of your comfort zone. So.

Yeah. Cause I guess that was kind of going to be another one of my questions is just if there's any red flags to look for in seeking out these coaches. But I mean you kind of answered it with doing your own research, making sure that, you know, you resonate with their books, with their products they're putting out and that they have a proven track record. So that, that is all super helpful as well. The next thing I want to talk about this, honestly, this tails off of consulting a little. But I noticed on your website that you offer corporate wellness. I haven't had any guests on who've really spoken to what that looks like. I'm curious, like what does that look like in practice?

Yeah, I think it's interesting because it can take many different shapes. So there's two main models. Is one the one that we've done in the past, which we're not currently doing right now because of Pandemic, but we do a class at your, at your office or will do a class for your team on a one off or on a regular basis. Which is a great way to get people familiar with us for when they need physical therapy. So we're doing more like yoga classes, meditation, mobility, fitness classes, those kinds of things. The other model, which we haven't done, but I've worked with people and coached people through this part, which is where they go to a business and they're on site for let's say two hours a week or maybe twice a week and they're there and they're kind of like there for open office hours. Or people can sign up and get a, like a 10, 15 minute consultation. Depending on your state and your practice and the relationship with this business, it can include some treatment or not. And then that's a great way to say, hey, I've treated you here, done this service here, we need to see you in the office. And now I can get people in the office. But if the big thing with corporate wellness is it takes a long time because there's a big corporation has really only one person that makes the decision and you're never going to talk to them. They're generally the CEO. So you have to talk to like five or six different people who have really no decision making power before you talk to someone who can make a decision. So it takes a long time. You have to be able to show them that really like you want a big contract, you have to be able to save them more money than they're already spending. So hey, if we, if you bring us in for let's say $100,000 a year and we do this every week, based on the size of your company, you should be able to save a quarter million or half a million dollars a year in healthcare costs. And if they look at that and they actually really believe you, which I'm pretty sure we have the research to show this happens, they'll be like, it's a no brainer, let's get you in here and do it. And then once they say yes, it could still take some time, but that's generally, those are kind of two different models, it looks like. You know, I mean, I think there's, there's a lot of ways to skin that cat, but those are the basics of it.

Yeah, yeah, that answers my question. I guess I was just a little bit more curious in terms of what the contracts look like. I mean, you kind of mentioned it could last a year long or it could be one day. So it really kind of, it kind of depends on the situation.

It kind of depends. Like we've done it for, I mean, we had a team, we had a woman who has, I don't know what she does. She does like sell some beauty products and has a team of like 25 people. She bought, bought a massage gift certificate and did a, like a group yoga class for all of them. I mean, we got tons of clients from that. I mean, that's one level of corporate wellness and the other is, you know, doing, let's say a regular yoga class down at, down at the headquarters, you know, once a week. You know, those, those are both pretty easy to, to kind of envision. And how do you write that up? It's like you're going to pay us X per month and we're going to do this service and if you're, you know, contract wise, if you really need, need, someone should use a local lawyer who knows contract law to look at it. But it's fairly simple, no more complicated than the contracts we have with our patients.

Okay. Yeah. And before we break into our last segment, which is kind of the five questions asked all my guests, I want to ask you one more question. When would you say you really cemented your path and knowing what you wanted to do? I know a lot of students struggle throughout their education, even after they graduate, really finding their purpose or path or what they want to do with their life. So I guess kind of at what point do you feel like you kind of found that or do you feel like you're still searching?

I Still don't know. When I was in college, I knew I wasn't going to do the same thing. At some point, I was like, you know, if I'm going to do the same thing for more than 10 years, I'm going to be disappointed with myself. You know, I had a bunch of friends in college who were like, well, you know, you go to med school or you go to law school, or you go work in management consulting, and that's it. And I was like, I don't want to do any of those things. So, you know, like, I tell people all the time, like, you don't need to know right away. Go experience life. Go do something. And look, if you go through PT school and after a year or two of practicing or two days, you're like, screw this. Like, this isn't for me. Go do something else. But you haven't wasted your time. Unless you let it waste. Unless it. Unless you let it be wasteful. All the learning and years that you've experienced in school or in a job that you don't like or a job that you love are all knowledge and fuel for the next fire that you can build to help other people and help yourself.

Yeah, I like that a lot. One of my mentors is always preaching the idea of everything you do is just another rep that will eventually accumulate into, you know, growth into something great. So, Aaron, if you're up for it, I've got five questions to ask all my guests. The first. The first being what is your biggest key to a successful day?

My biggest key to a successful day? Plan it the day before. Okay. So I know when I'm gonna eat lunch and know when I'm gonna work out, and I know kind of what I need to do during the day, and then it's get something done. Once I get something done that I like, it's like I'll do like 10 things in a day. But if the one that would make my day, if all I had to do is that one action and one activity and that was it, then my day was successful. I do that one first.

Okay, so everything else. Yeah. So are you the type of person who's like, big into to do lists? Blocking hour by hour? Kind of. What's your typical approach?

Yeah, I have to build a to do list and I have to block out my time. But I don't always keep the time blocks. I've got ADD enough that if I don't have it on my calendar, it doesn't exist. And if I don't have it On a list, it's gone. But I don't judge my success or day by my to do list. I judge it by the done list.

Okay. Yeah, that's a good strategy. I feel like. I think sometimes when I try and go with the blocking approach, if the day starts to fall apart a little bit, then I kind of start to view the day as a failure. But I like what you said about kind of look at what you got done and judge from there.

Yeah. Well, right before lunch, I went and moved some things that didn't get done today. I moved them to next week. So today's not a failure. They're not on today anymore.

Okay. The next question I have for you is, what do you wish someone had told you five years ago that have kind of impacted where you're at right now, your approach to how you're doing things?

Yeah. Oh, that's so good. Five years ago. What should someone have told me five years ago? I think that. Gosh, that's a. That's a really good one. I have that answer for, like, you know, 10 years ago, I think five years ago, where was I?

Was you go back to 10, too, if you'd like.

Yeah, I mean, I think that. I think the whole idea around how much my time is worth and how much money you can make in revenue, like, money's not bad. Like, I should be able to generate 3 to 5 million a year. No big deal. And a lot of people say, hell, I don't need that much. Like, neither do I. But if I did have that much, what more good could I do with it? Right. How much more good could I do with my money? Money is not just for me and my family. If I am able to generate more money than someone else, you know, like, great. Like, that's capitalism. But it's what I do with my money that really makes a difference. You know, I was able to last year give away more money than ever in 2020, give away more money than I ever had before this year. I don't know how much money I've given away, but it's not enough in it, you know, I don't know, but I've given away plenty. And I want to be able to get to a point where I can give away significant amounts of money. I want to go give away $100,000 without even thinking about it. You know, I think about it without even, like, it not hurting me and feeling the dent. Like, I don't have to feel it. But that's a significant amount of money. Yes. $200 is significant to some people, but what would change an organization? What would change a small organization or small businesses, you know, life or outcome? I mean, we're talking not just tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands. And I need to think that big. I'm trying to think that I'm thinking that big now, but I wasn't thinking that big five years ago. And that's something that my coach, you know, helped me with. You know, he's like, aaron, I want you to be generating 3 to 5 million a year in the next three years. I said, that's great, but how am I going to do that? You have to show me. He said, you're not. You're thinking with the wrong currency. He said, you're thinking in the currency that you're charging right now, not the products and programs and. And what you'll be charging, you know, a few years from now.

Okay, awesome. The next question I have for you is, is there any book or product that has significantly impacted your life over the last three months?

Oh, in the last three months. Book or product? I got a new hat for Christmas.

Nice. Give him a shout out. What brand is there? What are you working with?

Let me plug my microphone back in. It is a Everest Designs hat. You know, it's wool on the inside. So I have an old one. And it was like, well, Aaron, what do you want for Christmas? And I was like, I'll have a hat. I don't. I didn't grow up celebrating Christmas, so Christmas is kind of new to me. Yeah, you know, I grew up. I'm Jewish, so I grew up and we didn't get Christmas presents. And my wife's. My wife converted to Judaism a few years ago, but she's more Buddhist Buju. But she celebrates Christmas growing up, and so it's always a fun thing. So how's that impacted my life in that it allows me to, you know, connect with another side of, I don't know, myself and my kids in ways that I didn't have growing up. So if the lesson in story, you

know, I saw you're doing a little bit of skiing too, last week. Is that right?

Yeah, we went skiing with my kids. So I took them skiing the three days before Christmas, which allowed my wife time to wrap a God ungodly amount of for everybody.

So keep yours warm too. The next question I have for you is, is there any quote or mantra that you try and live your life by?

Yeah, you miss 100% of the shots you never take. That's Wayne Gretzky and there's that one. And then there's the don't stop, never quit. Because you have a goal and you don't stop and you don't quit, you're not going to lose.

So I guess what. What are some of the shots you feel like you've taken that initially you thought didn't have a chance of going in?

Starting my cash practice. And everyone told me it's not possible and it's not unethical, and no one pay more than it could pay for pt, you know, selling a course. You know, I have a. I have an online course that sold. I don't know, we've enrolled thousands of people in it. Like, I didn't think. I didn't think that was gonna go the first time, but I was like, screw it. I'm gonna build a sales page and I'm gonna send out some emails, see what happens. And enrolled 25 people in the course. I. Let's see. You know, moving across country, like, I grew up here in North Carolina. I took a shot to move to California. It was amazing. I did some amazing things out there. I became a massage therapist. I raced bikes at a top level of sport. I met my wife and then took another shot and saying, let's move to San Luis Obispo, where her family is from. She's from la, but she had family in San Luis Obispo, which is the central coast. And it sucked there. And we said, okay, instead of doing what we've already done, moving back to San Francisco and throwing a dart at the map, let's go try North Carolina. We took a shot. We were both. By the time we moved here, we were engaged, bought a house, both re enrolled in school. And, you know, we've been able to do so many more things here, being here than we could have done if we had stayed where we were.

The rest is history. All right, last question. Signature question of the podcast. Dr. Aaron Labourer, what is your favorite snack?

Oh, my favorite snack is dried mango. The unseen dried mango from Trader Joe's.

Nice. How long has this been your go to snack?

Probably five or six years.

Okay. Do you do it by itself or is it paired nicely with anything by itself? By itself, if it's good.

I mean, if it's dry and hard and you get a bad batch, sometimes you got to wash it down with some water. Sometimes you need some dental floss or toothpick afterwards to get it out of your teeth, but it doesn't pair with any other food.

Yeah, my little brother got an air fryer for Christmas. And this isn't just like a basket and air fryer. This thing is pretty elaborate. He was trying to do some dried bananas and they were good, but same thing. A little bit sticky in the teeth and I don't know, needed some toothpick action after that. Aaron, I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me today. Where can my audience find you?

The best place to find me is over on Instagram, Aaron LeBauer It's A, A R O N L E, B, A U, E, R. Or if you can't find me there, just go to Google and it'll point you in the right direction.

All right, awesome. It's been a lot of fun and I'm sure my viewers, like myself, took a lot of value from this conversation. So, again, really, really appreciate it.

Hey, John, thanks for having me on your show. And you asked some amazing questions that haven't been asked before before. So it's been fun.

Awesome. All right, everyone, thanks for tuning in. Okay, so then, let's see. Oh, shoot. Okay, so, I don't know. I'm not quite sure what's going on with the recording. I still see it on your end.

Yeah, you can. It'll. Once we close, it'll render everything on your end once we close it. Okay. Yeah, I've got a recording and just let me know and I'll upload it so you can. You can.

Okay, thanks. Thanks so much. Have an awesome rest of your day.

Absolutely. Let me know when the episode's out. And if you have any links or things you want us to share, email them over and we'll send them out. All right. Okay.

It'll. I'm anticipating it dropping probably mid to end of January, so I'll let you know.

Okay, perfect. Thanks, John. Happy New Year.

See you later. You too.

Bye.