Ep. 141-Passive Income Living with Dr. Aaron LeBauer

Today's guest is Dr. Aaron LeBauer, who's a doctor of physical therapy, international speaker, podcast host, author. He's the host of the Cash PT Lunch Hour podcast, author of the Cash PT Blueprint, and has helped thousands of passionate physical therapists scale their time, income, and impact without relying on insurance. Not only is he a PT, but he is on a mission to save a million people from unnecessary surgery by helping other passionate therapists succeed in business and learn how to market directly to patients. So if you are a business owner, you are trying to figure out how to simplify the process of owning and running a business. If you want to get yourself out of the position of doing all of the work that you are doing and learning how to create a system, create a team, create leverage, create passive income, this episode is going to be for you. All right, Aaron. So welcome for— and thanks for hanging out with us.

Hey, Jason, thanks for having me on your show. Appreciate it.

My absolute pleasure. So as we were talking about pre-gaming, I know a lot about your world and I'm an incredibly passionate advocate of the PT world. And I know a lot of the transitions that happened over the last 10, 15 years of going from a master's level to an entry-level doctorate, which I think is a brilliant move on their part. But what I would love to start off with was, what was it that inspired you to make the decision that this is what you want to go all in on for you professionally?

Yeah, I think it goes back to me being a massage therapist, or actually before that I was pre-med in college, but at Duke University. But the first night of organic chemistry, I realized it was going to take me 4 hours to do the review of the review homework from the prior 2 semesters where I got an A and I was like, I'm not doing 4 hours of work every night for one class. So let me do something different. Um, about, you know, I graduated college, uh, I lived in Israel and then for a year, and then I moved from North Carolina to California with everything I owned in my car, slept on a couch for 6 weeks and just bounced around. Couldn't get a real job. Um, and, but I knew I wanted to help people. I liked using my hands and my mom had suggested at some point, become a massage therapist. So I did, but I had this epiphany one day working as a bike messenger that I can be a massage therapist, work 4 hours a day, ride my, and race my bicycle, you know, the other 4 hours of the day and have enough money to do both and live there. Um, but after being a massage therapist for about 4 or 5 years, um, a theme started happening with my clients. They would tell me, Aaron, like, I know when I tweak my back, I need to come see you. Um, Uh, okay, great. So they knew they needed to come see me. Then they'd say, but no one else has touched me and helped me be able to touch me where I hurt, or been able to help me like you have. I'm like, okay. They've been like, I've seen acupuncturists, chiropractors, massage therapists, PTs, been an orthopedic surgeon, had the surgery, had the injection, et cetera. And you're the first person that touched me where I hurt. Okay. So my ego is a little big, but not super big, but I was like, what's wrong with these other people? You know, I'm like, okay, great. Like, but what's wrong with these other people? Why aren't they? And these are simple things like touching you like on the quadriceps or, uh, you know, shoulder muscles, like rotator cuff muscles, or, you know, your traps, like just reproducing the pain. Okay. But then they said, okay, Aaron, when am I actually going to get better? Like, it feels good when I come to see you, but when is this going to stop? And I was like, well, I don't know. That's not my training. And. Because I was doing more medical massage, my wife, who was also a massage therapist, um, at the time encouraged me to look into physical therapy. We were living in the Bay Area at the time, and it was going to be almost impossible to go back to PT school anywhere nearby because I was going to have to take like 10 prerequisites. Well, life kind of kept moving on and we ended up moving back to North Carolina where I was born and where I'm from. And I was able to go back to PT school. By taking only 2 prerequisites and I, you know, I was like, okay, let's try that. You know, it wasn't just an on-the-whim thing, but it was a, I should do something different than massage because I want to keep advancing my career and I could get in. I can apply to Elon, hopefully get in. I applied to Duke in Carolina as well. I got into Elon first because they had rolling admissions and I went to PT school and, um, got my doctorate of physical therapy.

That's amazing. As you're, as you're telling this story, I'm echoing my own journey of, I also went to Israel after high school and I lived there for 2 years. Not knowing, you know, anything of what I was going to be doing. And I, you know, had this like, I like connecting with people, I like talking to people. And before I was a therapist, I joked that I was a professional Jew. I worked in nonprofit, like, you know, youth group programs and sleepaway camp and Princeton University Center for Jewish Life and youth, you know, youth director at a synagogue. And I was basically doing therapy, but getting paid nonprofit salary, right?

Right.

And until I went— and my admission into graduate school, or my thought about going to graduate school, was one of my students who ended up going to conflict resolution for her master's. And she's like, well, what are you doing next year if you're not coming back? And she's like, you should go, you should go to therapy, you should become a therapist. And I'm like, well, like, you know, I'm not great with testing. And here I am working at Princeton, a school I never would have gotten into because I barely graduated high school. And we found a program in South Florida back where I'm from, and it had no GRE requirement. And when I found out, they're like, we don't believe that taking the standardized test will convince us if you do well that you'll be a great therapist.

All right.

And I'm like, damn, this is a great philosophy. So very similar to you having this credit thing, right? This prereqs and pre-credit thing. I had these same, like, you know, things that like, I never— if I did not— if this school, if Nova didn't have— if they had a GRE requirement, I don't know if I'd be a therapist.

Yeah. Yeah. Mine was like, Elon was like, just get 1000 on the GRE. I was like, well, that's gonna be Tough. I went, I studied for a week and I got 1,010 points. Awesome. You know, that's all I needed to do was to get in. But, you know, the funny thing is, is I had been out of school for 10 years. And so like Duke and Carolina and Elon were all like, well, we don't, we only count the credits if you've taken them within the last 10 years. And I asked them and they were like, well, just apply. Even, you know, the admission counselor at Duke was like, just apply. You know, I was like, I did these undergraduate, courses at Duke. Like, he's like, just, just apply. I was like, he's like, I was like, okay. But it was like, okay, so I've had life experiences and you're kind of gonna punish me for not, you know, for being in that, being in a healthcare field. But you know, there are all those little unique hurdles that we get through to actually get to the other side, which are kind of end up being fun stories. So yeah.

Well, that kind of like hints at like, the conversation of once you are practicing and the whole purpose of not just wanting to help people, but helping them get past the limitations of the help they can't get because the system is set up in a way to not give them everything they need. Oh yeah. And, and right, that even the education system, which is really challenging, going back to what you just said, well, you know, we only accept credits within a certain window, and but I went to this school, right? And yeah, and how much the system, uh, that at one point is useful, especially for those of us who need a license to practice certain things, right? Law, medicine, you know, those type of things, accounting, and where we do need to have higher standards. But sometimes that limits the possibility of people like you and me who may not have had the resilience or the fortitude to just keep going and to ask anyway, right?

Right, right. Oh yeah, absolutely. You know, the one of the funny things is I think Duke required, like, for PT schools, like, growth— like anatomy physiology. Well, as an undergrad, they didn't actually offer that as a biology class. It was like It was like invertebrate anatomy, you know, I was like, for being like a biologist. And so it wasn't even a class that they had off, you know, so they, so many hoops or like steps or hurdles are put in front of us that I think a lot of people aren't willing to try to go through. And I think that's, you know, when I look at that and like, okay, those were aspects or, um, personality traits that I had, like, all right, I'm going to figure this out. That have helped me be successful on the other side of graduate school that a lot of people, you know, just stop and go, okay, well, this just isn't for me.

Right?

Yeah.

And I think that's one of the things that even though I know I wasn't a great student, I wasn't an academic, I didn't— until I realized what I actually love, enjoy doing, then it was like, oh, I don't mind reading this. I don't mind study. I don't mind doing a project. And like, I learned how many of my false beliefs kept me from achieving. And I still wonder, like, you know, if I didn't naturally go fall into this, so to speak, because of a personality predisposition and also growing up with a very chaotic family. So it's like perfect that I'm a marriage and family therapist. Like, what would I have done? And I found a lot of my false beliefs were around money and making money because I grew up as a scholarship kid. I went from public school to a Jewish private school on scholarship, you know, and there were people in my class for their 16th birthday who were getting really, really, really nice cars. And I'm like, my parents are getting divorced and I'm here on scholarship and I got no money in my pocket. So I had a realize, no, going through, especially as a therapist who became a business owner, how much I had to unpackage and heal in order to be able to come the success process that I'm on now. So what was that like for you, right? So you graduated PT program, do you go right into your own practice? Are you working for somebody else? When did— what was that little entrepreneurial, intrapreneur, entrepreneur journey for you?

Yeah, so it kind of goes back to massage therapy school. So in our massage therapy program, it was 10 months long. So it was Western massage techniques for 5 months and Eastern, so like Eastern massage, so basic, uh, based on Swedish, uh, massage for 5 months and, uh, shiatsu massage on the other. And in that we did a bunch of other things, but in each kind of semester we had a business class. We, we really didn't get such business class in PT school. Um, we, we did, but it wasn't really practical. Um, and I had already had a massage therapy practice. And so on my first clinical rotation in PT school, I had a, uh, had a day where I saw 43 patients in one day. And I was like, it was like in the 30s, and then like the basketball team strolled in at 6 and was like, hey, can you guys treat us before our big tournament tomorrow or game tonight at 9? I don't know, I can't remember what it was.

A lot of people.

I know. So I was doing notes until like 9:30 or 10, and I'm sitting there going, I can't I can't do this when I graduate. Like, no one's going to pay me to treat patients the way that I want to see them, you know. So I've got my hands on— so basically it was people weren't getting touched where they were hurting, even just to acknowledge, or for the therapist to show the patient that I know where this problem is. So I've got my hands on one person, I'm kind of trying to coach someone across the room through their exercises, and I've got 4 people an hour all day long. I was like, there's no way I can do this You know, even working for someone else, they're not totally treatable, right?

Yeah.

Not sustainable to do that model the way I wanted to treat patients or work for someone who was actually going to pay me to see one person in an hour to really find out what the problem was, touch them where they hurt, treat them, give them a home program. So I knew that day that I had to start my own business. When I got out of school, my clinical instructor said, no one's going to pay more than their copay for PT. And at the time, copays were $20 to $50. And I was charging $85 for like massage therapy, uh, myofascial release, like medical massage type of stuff. I was like, people are actually— I'm sure people pay me an extra $10, you know, to be Dr. LeBauer. But that was at the end of my first year. So as it went on, I did some other clinical rotations. Like, this is exactly what I'm gonna do. I'm just start my own business and I'm not gonna do it with insurance. And so I think I graduated in December, took my licensure exam end of December, early January. And then through that process, while I was waiting for, you know, the results to come back or my actual license to come back, I was just working on setting up my, my business as a physical therapy business. And I started seeing patients, I think beginning of February and haven't worked for anyone else. And I've only worked for myself and we charge much more than, than I started, but, uh, how, how we charge and what we, and how we price is a different conversation for sure.

And the funny thing is, I mean, you know, when you are talking about this, this professor, who's like, well, you can't do this. And I know so many stories, and I hear this from so many people, where they're going to the wrong people for mentorship and advice, especially those who've never had the audacity or the balls to do it themselves. And therefore they're poo-pooing, like, you know, because they didn't do it for themselves, you can't accomplish that from you. I remember I have a buddy of mine who, his brother went to whatever school for entrepreneurship when, like, you know, they're in the '90s, and like when entrepreneurship was just like No one knew what that was, right? And he loved it. And he graduated from there. So he only applied to go to college because his brother liked that program, and he wanted to do that program. And he said, within one of the first semesters of taking business courses, and they had to do a business plan. And he goes to the professor of the class, and he goes, you know, so when you did this for the business that you created, was this the process that you went through? And what was the outcome for you? And the professor goes, Oh, I've never owned a business. And he dropped out of school the next day. Yep. Right. And now he has a very, very, very successful financial planning business above and beyond, right? So what you're hitting on right there is something that I want everybody to listen to, is who the hell are you going to for advice and mentorship? And make sure that they're the type of people that are doing what you think is impossible that they figured out a way to do it because you don't have to repeat the wheel. You don't have to create everything from scratch. There are people out there that are doing that. And so when you heard that from that professor, what was your first initial thought of like, no, you can't charge more?

Like, I'm going to prove you wrong. Like, I'm like, I already charge $85 an hour. Like, I can go to the hospital and get a job for $43 an hour, or I can charge $85. I was like, why would I? Yeah, what would I do the other thing? I mean, I told him, I said, check in with me in 3 years. You know, and this is a year into, uh, so I had 2 years left to school. I said, check in with me in 3 years and we'll see, we'll see what people are paying. Um, I haven't heard from him. Yeah, but I mean, what you're, what you're saying is true though. So in my massage therapy training program, the person teaching the business was someone who had a massage therapy private practice actually in LA charging like, he's like, you know, I, I treat like high-end, like, you know, clients charging $200 an hour, go to their house. He's like, you shouldn't be afraid to charge, you know, a lot of money for people, especially if you traveled to them. Uh, whereas the people in, uh, professors in PT school who did this business class, one managed a hospital and the other had created a PT program at another university. And they had been PTs, but they had— one had been a PT, the other one was an administrator, and they had never actually owned or opened a business. And the parameters they gave us to build a, uh, business plan around were just so far-fetched for what PT could actually do. We asked, we said, well, can we change the parameters? They said no. So we built a building, it was— and we just took 75% of the space, like, okay, we're renting this space out, and then our clinic's going to be a 2,500-square-foot clinic. You know, it was ridiculous, right?

And this is, I think, what I find in a lot of people, especially with a lot of my clients, is that they're, they're stuck in that mindset. And We don't know, one, the whole idea, and we're going to get into that about the passive income play, but two, like, you know, whether you're reading like the E-Myth, right, the entrepreneur, manager, technician side, or as my coach Rick talks about, like simplicity, probability, and leverage, but people forget the leverage part. So, right, and I think they're both overlapping with everything you're saying is that, you know, as a hands-on technician in that moment, whether it's as a massage therapist or as a physical therapist or as a chiro or as a medical doctor, whatever we're doing, tutor, you're only getting paid for the time that you're in front of that person and you can't handle anything else. You can't do your marketing during that time. You can't do a podcast interview during that time. You cannot answer calls of any potential incoming clients that are hot leads. You can only be the technician doing that, what you do, and that can only— you're trading your time for money. So when you started figuring out that method, what were some of the things like, was there any books that, you know, that popped up, any, anything that like informed you to like have different information.

So when I was starting my clinic or doing— moving more towards passive income?

Both. Yeah, both those stages, because I feel it's developmental stages.

Yeah, yeah. So I think my first— the first business book I picked up was when I had a massage practice in San Francisco, and it was The Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson. And it was 1999, you know, 2000. So you could have a website, but most people who had websites were only in California, and it was like a business card website.. And so, you know, the alternative was how do I advertise in the San Francisco Chronicle to, you know, that didn't fit my budget. So his Guerrilla Marketing was great. And I'm sure, I know he's updated the book. I just haven't read the updated one. So that was pivotal for me. And I think when, you know, so I got into coaching, um, helping other physical therapists because they just started asking me. And I think the, I worked with a couple of coaches, but it wasn't until I read the book that I read that really shifted, like how I did the marketing and sales, was Russell Brunson's book DotCom Secrets. And I've got it, it's around here somewhere. But it's the cookbook. And I've just got notes in the margin that, and then when Expert Secrets came out a year or two later, I've got notes in the margin in both of those paperback books. And I've just read them many times. I've used so many strategies. I mean, there's an email sequence that Russell gives in DotCom Secrets that he's like, just model this and use it yourself. And I've done that. And it's made me hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I've seen him speak. And I just want to give him like a proper due respect of like, he is probably one of the greatest salespeople that are alive in this generation. Oh yeah. His pitch is perfect. I mean, it's just so good. And obviously, right, when you're, when you're talking about like that product that he has, it's a lot more backend work. I want people to know like, right, like they've heard about ClickFunnels, especially if you're in the business world, there's so much backend that like, again, going back to leverage is don't, I would say don't do it yourself unless you're not working, you have nothing else going on and you're like literally trying to make your, first dime. But I would challenge people out there, like, who find someone online who's an expert at doing that, and that's what they do all day, and let them take a piece of that pie for you to make the hundreds of thousands of dollars that you wouldn't have made otherwise because you're not going to be an expert on this. So, you know, again, going back to the leveraging out and building a team and building a system, which, you know, I want to get more into, um, when you started doing this practically, uh, as a practitioner, how did you start like laying that out? Like, what was the first brainstorming idea of like, okay, here's how I want to build up my system. Here's how I want to build up my team. Like, what, what thought process did you have around that? Instead of being like, okay, well, I can, I can see 100 patients a week, or I can do 10 patients a week at a higher fee and then build out a team. And right, so what was some of that process and those steps that kind of you went through during the time frame?

I think initially so many people, like not just my clinical student, like clinical instructors, my professors would look at me like, Aaron, where are you working once you graduate? I'm like, about our physical therapy. And they're like, wait a minute, like, yeah. And they're like, oh wow, do you have your insurance contracts and everything? So I was like, no, I'm not doing insurance. They look at me like I was crazy. And so really, for the first 5 years of my clinical practice, it was me just doing it to prove to everyone that it could be done, because so many people told me it couldn't be done, it shouldn't be done, you know, even that, you know, if I wasn't a Medicare provider, I was practicing unethically, and I couldn't so much as breathe on a Medicare beneficiary and be in the same room, you know, like just a lot of misinformation and fear.

And so lots of fear.

Yeah, lots of it. And, you know, I'd get like, I'd call like even around the whole Medicare topic, I'd call the North Carolina, you know, uh, APTA person, the national person, I'd call someone else and they'd all get, they'd give me 6 different stories. Like the same person would give me a different version each time I talked to them because they just didn't know, or no one was asking these questions. And it was one of those, things where it's like, I felt like the more I asked, the more trouble I was going to get in, you know, kind of like in school, like the more, you know, I don't know what, you know, like when you get in trouble as an adult, you're like, okay, maybe I just shouldn't ask these questions. I should just do. But like, but no one has to be a trailblazer, right?

And I had the same issue. It's funny, when I started going down the integrative medicine rabbit hole with neuro-emotional technique, and part of it is we use a little homeopathy, we use some nutrition, and then I started taking nutrition program. Like, I would go to the seminars from companies like Standard Process or Apex Energetics or Designs for Health, their actual clinical training programs, and I was the only therapist in the room. And I just wanted to have basic information. I wasn't like giving my clients anything, and I wanted to know enough to CYA, right? And then I started calling around, like liability insurance and the state board, and they're like, well, it doesn't— just because it doesn't say you can't doesn't mean you can't, right? In other words, Then I went to the nutrition board and it said my licensing board in Florida, the fam— the 491 board, which is mental health and marriage and family therapy and social work, are exempt from nutrition guidelines as long as they're doing it within their scope of practice. Yeah, but then there was no scope of practice, anything about nutrition within the marriage, within that board. So I'm like, I'm just going to continue taking CEU upon CEU and training programs and a certification in integrative mental health and nutrition. Because if it comes to it, someone has to be a trailblazer. And I know what to refer out to functional medicine, and I know what to refer out to PTs or chiros or acupuncturists where it's not purely— so I love that you did that because a lot of people, it's scary as hell. The insurance thing alone of how can you not use your insurance, especially when you get into clinical diagnoses? And what happens if they don't meet criteria? And what happens? How long can you bill that criteria for and all those other things. So when you started off from the beginning, what was your biggest fear about not only just having to prove them wrong, but like, you know, from the financial side, can this really happen? Can I get— can I really ethically and morally convince someone that this is a better thing to do than just billing and insurance?

Yeah, I think my biggest fear was I'm not going to make enough money to support my family. You know, enough people enough people won't, uh, want to come or won't want to pay, and I won't be able to support my family, and I'm gonna have to go get a job that sucks, you know. And like, what did I get into? But, um, you know, I think I didn't let that— I didn't want to let that stop me, you know. I, I didn't dwell on that too much. But I think if I look back, is, you know, we had— my wife got pregnant halfway through my third year. Oh wow. So I think the baby, I started my, I started practicing like legally as a physical therapist in February. My first daughter was born April 4th. So it was like 2 months to really start making money, to generate revenue that my wife wasn't able to generate, uh, to kind of make it up. So there's a lot of pressure. And I think my fear was that it wasn't going to work and everyone would say, hey, see, I told you so, you know, and I was going to have to swallow that pill. Um, so I like, I didn't, I didn't let it. And I think in general, the big fear is that, you know, it's like for me, it's like the fatal flaw or the big fear is the, you know, I won't be liked. Like people won't like me if I do something different or if I say what I really think, you know, people are going to be offended. I think that's my, like when I, in operating the business and everything, it's like I have a hard time coming around to that, but like fear of failure is no longer there, you know. I want to be able to, and I do this and my VAs do this really well for me, is to be able to say something that I believe whether people like it or not. And they'll pull that out of me better than I can do it like for myself. I'll be like, I was like, oh my God, I can't believe you said that. And you're like, well, that's what you said in the video. And I've gotten better at that over the years. Like, you know, I don't care if I have haters anymore. Where I make people upset. In our marketing, I try to be, uh, well, I try to be— I'm trying not to put people down. I just want to make that clear. But in, but in the business we're in, you know, there are going to be people that disagree with us. And I think that beyond making my practice successful, it's— it was that. It was the, I'm going to respond to someone on an internet forum or in town, and they're going to not like my views, my political views. Or something else, not wanting to do business with me even though I can help them, you know. And at the same time, there's some people I just— even though I can help you, like, we— our views are so different, like, the way that your personality is and mine is, like, we shouldn't be working together anyways. And so I've gotten over that, and that's taken time.

That's— I'm so excited to hear you saying that. And, and, uh, you can see that those who are listening to the audio can't see how big my grin is as, as I'm talking right now is that's exactly what I've moved my practice into over the last couple of years, especially the deeper I've gone into the mind-body integrative wellness side, where I actually heard from Dr. Patrick Gentempo. I'm not sure if you're familiar. He's a chiropractor who's done a lot of buying and selling, building practices, and he's gone into more of the documentary world and business coaching side of that. And he wrote a book called Your Stand Is Your Brand. And very much exactly what you're saying. And it's really about you want that percentage of people that completely line up with what your values and your system is, and that's what they're looking for, and put your attention to them. Because if, you know, if the people who are not buying into that, one, they're going to be more difficult to work with. Two, they're not going to go all in on what you want them to do if they're coming to you as an expert. And they're always gonna be like, well, this is what I want for my treatment or my protocol. And you're like, but that doesn't work for you. Like, no, I'm convinced because I did my research on Google, right? Then let those people go elsewhere because you want that 30, 40% of that 20%, right? It's that 80/20 really, probably that the 20% who do automatically agree with you that are willing and seeing your value, that are willing to follow step by step what you're doing and will get those expert results from it. And that's what I love. Like when I'm hearing people, whether, whether it's dating or whether it's running their business or how they run their home, should be that, you know, very core value-based proposition. Where I even put that on my website coming home from hearing him speak at my business, one of my business conferences, where I put literally a line on my, on the homepage of my website. And it says, if you are looking for mind-body integrative wellness, if you are ready to go all in, if you're ready to stop making excuses, if you've gone from therapist to therapist with little success, we're the right therapist for you. But if you're not, but if you're this, this, and this and this, if you're shopping around looking for the most affordable, If you've already called 50 therapists and no one has— well, I want only a male therapist or a female therapist, or I only want someone who I think— don't bother reaching out.

Yeah. Yep. Yeah. It's like you're qualifying and disqualifying people.

Yeah.

You know, people hate that.

Like, how dare you? How dare you do that to clients? Like, but it's like going into a shawarma restaurant in Tel Aviv and asking them what their best sushi roll is.

Right. Oh my God, I miss that. It's what I miss is that get the shawarma and you stand up and you put the salad on, you eat a layer and you do it again.

That's my favorite. Yeah, it's a good stuff. So come, come, come visit South Florida. There's two right across the street.

Oh man.

Yeah.

But I think that, but you're right. It's getting over, for me it was getting over that fear of upsetting other people to share my values so that And but what that does is that brings more of the right people in. And we're so afraid, and I was so afraid of like turning people away. Or this is what people do, is like, oh, should I do a niche or should I do general practice? And it's like, no, you do a niche. Some people won't come see you, but more people will. And they're going to ask you like, hey, you know, I know you do this, but can you help me with that? You'd be like, absolutely.

Yeah. Or right, or you build some of that team out where you have someone on your team who specifically does that. And again, it goes back to the leveraging out of like, I can't be the expert of everything, right? I can't be the web designer, I can't be my social media marketing guy, I can't be— so I have to know what I'm absolutely good at. And I want people to like hear this, like, and I am working with one of my clients on this, and we were going through the Enneagram personality styles, and I'm like, no wonder you have such difficulty and challenges on this, because, you know, the, the, the stress point in your life is being decisive on, you know, instead of being a jack of all trades, is actually niching into something. And you're like personality predisposed to avoid that because because you don't want to piss anybody off by saying, I'm sorry, I can't work with you.

Yeah.

And right. So that becomes a personal growth opportunity for sure as well for yourself in this scenario. So yeah. So let's talk a little bit about like passive income, because this is something that over the last few years, right, people start off with like, you know, the social media thing of the entrepreneurships and the, you know, everybody's now a CEO and all this stuff. And you know, you're legitimately running a company with business and with employees. So it's a very different thing. And my buddy Mike talks about this, like, just because you own a company doesn't make you a CEO. Just means you have a job that you've created for yourself. So when you're talking about passive income, one, first, give me your definition of what passive income is. And I know you're, you know, and then we'll talk about how you've moved into that world.

Yeah, I think the, well, the misconception is that passive income is easy and doesn't require work. It does require work. It's just when you can transcend or get out, escape selling one-to-many or doing or trading time for money, right? When you can get out of, okay, my time's worth this and so the more time I spend, the more money I make. And most people think, well, in order to double my income, I have to work twice as hard. But if we can get out of trading time for money, and that's either by hiring other people to be the technician and do the work or building a system or software or selling an online course that enrolls people without me having to teach it. Those are some easy ways to do that. So passive income to me is income that comes in, even if I'm hanging out with my kids at the amusement park or sleeping, is because someone or something else is generating the actual sale for me. Yeah.

So what are some of the ways that that started getting— like the first way that you started applying that and where are you at now?

Yeah, I think the first way I started applying that was Well, the first thing I did to free up my time was hire an assistant, but she didn't help me generate income. She helped me see more patients and have more time to build my online course that everyone was asking me for. So that was the very first thing I did, and I waited probably 5 years too long. Like I said, everyone's telling me it's not going to work, so I just waited to hire someone too long. But what I did is I had launched an online course, and my online course sold well. I didn't— I, like, let me just say this. I hired a coach to help me launch an online course. And he recommended, you know, build a sales page, send this email sequence, and we enrolled, and let's see what happens. And we enrolled 25 people at $197 before I even built this program. So I made $5,000 in a weekend. I was like, okay, great. Time to build the program. I raised the price.

So pause right there for a second because this is like, this is such like an expert secret, right? Yes. Where you put out multiple offerings and then you see what you get the bite for. I mean, this is kind of that whole— what's the, uh, the fundraise— the, the fundraising platform they do? Like, we have this idea, we have this prototype, and it hasn't even been built yet, but do you want to invest in it? Right? But we don't realize that we can do this for other potential business ideas as well. So, so when you were doing that and you put it out there, what— how do I want to ask this? Were you 100% sold on your own product, or were you kind of doing beta testing of like, which one of these things kind of get more traction?

I knew that— that's a great question. I knew that the information I had could help someone build a successful cash practice. I just didn't know that other people would actually want to pay me for it. I had had some people pay me for like one-on-one, you know, coaching, consulting, but it was like, I'm treating 25 patients a week, I'm— and I've got these other people want my one-on-one time. I'd already built a blog to, you know, answer the most common questions, and I knew I needed to write like A book? But I was like, but someone else already has a book and they're selling it and I'm not, I don't need to write a book. I'm better on video. I'm better when I speak to people. Let me do a course. And so I figured out how to do a course, but I knew I wanted to create a course, but the whole idea is that I didn't want to create something that no one wanted to buy and spend time and money doing it. So I wanted to sell it first. Now I learned it early and had success with it. I've seen people come through my coaching programs who spent $50,000 on a course and they get in the coaching program and they just still can't make it up and they're just impatient and they're thinking I'm gonna save the day and I'm not. And I've also launched a course that I thought everyone wanted that I built out and no one, I mean, people bought it, you know, like I made $20,000, I made, you know, but I had like more refund requests than any other program I'd put out because it was too hard and they didn't wanna wait. And I realized, okay, there's a marketing course. I was like, I was like, oh, they don't really want to put in the work or the time to see the results. And so it wasn't like, let me try this and let me try that. It was, okay, everyone's asking me to help them with this. Let me figure out what's the best way to do it, but I don't want to build it and I want to spend my time or money or effort creating a website, a membership website, hiring a VA to set this thing up for me if I don't have any money or capital. And that's what I did. And I've done it multiple times that way successfully. I've taught people to do Do the same thing. And, um, it is, it's kind of like a beta test, but it's not a this or that. It's a, let's try this thing and doesn't work. Okay. Let's tweak the headline. Let's tweak the promise and see what happens.

And are these only PTs that are tapping into this or it can be leverageable to others?

Mostly like for the programs that I do and coaching I do is mostly PTs. I've got some massage therapists, some chiros, um, a couple of acupuncturists. Yeah. Occupational therapists, et cetera.

Yeah. Yeah, it's in the neuro-emotional technique world. Even though we all are mind-body practitioners, they, they play through like, you're the mind docs, you're the body docs, even though we both are doing very similar stuff, uh, when it comes down to it, especially through an NET. But that's kind of—

and business is business. So if you're teaching business, I'm teaching business, it doesn't matter what kind of therapist I am, right? You know, maybe 5% around, uh, practice act legalities and maybe some insurance, you know, type of things like Medicare, like PTs can't opt out of Medicare, but occupational therapists can't or something like that. You know, I mean, it, it's just like, there's a missing comma somewhere. So, you know, I mean, whatever, like those little things, but everyone has to figure that stuff out on their own generally anyways, because it's mostly state dependent or, you know, stuff like that.

So, so when you're saying like people are finding something too hard, is there, you know, I've taken a bunch of courses online. I've, for me, I found I love going to workshops in in person. I mean, besides the pandemic, which made it really tough to do that. And so therefore, I was taking like Zoom-type courses. What are some of the pros and cons that you found for some of your learners? Yeah, I think, yeah, have come out of that.

Yeah, I think the thing that I learned is that, number one, people want results right away. So, I mean, I even had a— the training, it was like, do this, and you're gonna get some results. Well, You know, I do something very similar with my mastermind members, but they're paying me 10 times as much and they do it and they get the results. And for $2,000 or $2,500, people are like, well, I'm not really sure, so I'm not going to put myself out there to send an email to all my clients. So they either didn't have— didn't want to send an email to 100 people, or they didn't have, uh, 100 people to send this email to. So one, I need to give you some kind of results like right away. To almost pay for the program. Um, but the other thing is, is I think it's not the information, it's, it's who the buyer is and their mindset coming in is that, oh, I'm going to pay this money and everything's going to change and I don't have to do any effort. And I think that's who I— and I got a lot of people with this marketing course, like people are saying, Aaron, we need a mark— we need more marketing, I need more new patients. That's— I've already got a practice, but I need more new patients. Okay, great. Here's this marketing program. Easily you could go in, set it up. It's a system that I create that brings in 15 to 20 new patients for us a month without me doing active, like, workshops or marketing, right? And I just taught that in this course. But people are impatient. They don't want to do the hard work, and they think they have to do it themselves, so they won't hire someone else to do it. Um, you know, those were the things. And so I started bundling that course with another program and That helped. But the last marketing program I did, I taught a whole lot less and we did a lot more together. And we did a— we did like a— the very first weekend was like, okay, assuming you already have a business, like that's who this is for. You're gonna send this email and you're gonna make these phone calls. And what we're gonna do, the goal is to make $2,000 in the first week to pay for the program, you know. And, and the people that did the work got the results. The people that don't do the work don't get the results.

Yeah, it's interesting because the things that I constantly go back to and is that consistency, right, is going back and having a very crystal clear system, knowing what, what isn't working. You know, someone— I'm sure you've gotten those calls of like the golf course, country club, and put your ad in our country club. And I'm like, when are they like— and someone posted about this in one of my Facebook therapy groups and I'm I'm like, when are the— like, number one, print marketing is dead, you know? Like, I mean, unless you're talking about being in a high-end specific designer— like, my family has a family furniture business and it's high-end, so exactly, they're niche of a niche, um, and it's high-end and it's designed and it's hand spec too, right?

There's, there's off stock, like $20,000 couches or more.

Yeah, yeah, that type of stuff.

Yeah, we have those here in North Carolina.

Okay, right. Well, that's— well, yeah, well, because of High Point. Yeah, I've been to High Point multiple times in my life for the furniture show. So what a— what an incredible thing that is that they have going on there. I mean, it's from when I was a little kid to going a few years ago. It's— it's holy crap.

Sorry, I didn't mean to get you off.

No, no, no.

I was just at like Furnitureland South last week and it was like, you know, couches are still $8,000, but they're on sale. You know, they're 20% off, right? Yeah. Oh, cow. That's a big couch.

Exactly. Shout out to Wasser's Furniture, man. Yeah.

So shout out to Wasser's Furniture. Those couches will last 30, 40 years.

Forever. Right. Because they're They're going to, because they're going to ask you what exactly are the needs of this couch? Do you have children? Do you have pets? How old are your children? How old are your pets? They sit on the thing. Are you only using it on the weekends? Is it for a vacation home? Is it, what's the temperature? Like we ask all of those things, right? Talk about niching of niching of niching of niching. Is your living room left facing, right facing? Which side do you want? You know? So again, like going back to just that pure spec of like, who do you want to see and who you want to get in front of? Uh, that's the market that they're, that they're catering to.

Um, I know I got you off track.

Yeah, dude, what was I even asking you?

That's all right.

Yeah, that was just a really crazy side tangent. But again, but I'm wondering, like, when you— when people go and they're investing in this and, and they want to see the outcome, I think it really is, is like, what's the, um, what's the process? What it's going to be transformed— how am I going to be transformed?

And, you know, so I think the, the good analogy is A $1,400 couch is going to be a little stiff and it might last 5 years. But that nice couch is going to smell, especially if it's leather, it's going to smell great. It's going to feel good. It's going to break in nice. And you might recover it 2 or 3 times in 30 years or 40 years. Like my dad's couch has been in his house for 35 years and it's a great couch. But the results are different. And the results come those results for like a couch come years later. Like I've got a couch I'm replacing, it's 5 or 6 years old, but the kids and the dog have just abused this thing. I'm like, so we weren't going to spend, you know, good money on a couch. We're just going to get a couch that works for us because I know my kids are going to just abuse it and drop spaghetti on it. But so what's my expectation? And so when we go into, you know, selling a program, pricing coaching, It's managing expectations on the way in, I think, um, especially let's say for me, for my coaching program, I've got some people that come in and they're brand new in business. So what are the results they can expect? It's like, you can't make $10,000 your first month if you have no existing patients. I mean, you can, I've had some clients that'll make $10,000, $15,000 their first month in business, but most people, um, really what we're looking at when you're starting from the ground up is career satisfaction. Your schedule and getting like the business foundation kind of established versus someone who's been in business for a few years and they come in and they're like, you know, I've got 15 to 20 people a week and I want to double it. Like, right, there are a couple strategies that I can do to take you from $20,000 to $30,000 in like 30 days. Or, you know, I had one client came in, he has an online business and I said, well, send this email sequence and raise your price. He said, really? I said, well, how much money do you want to make? He's like, okay. And he did it and he made $40,000 his first week in my program, which is just incredible.

Which is incredible, right? But you can only also— I can— this is going back to whatever we're doing in whatever field, you can only see and get— or, and, you know, as a body doc, you can only get your hands on so many people a week. And also knowing the damage that you're doing to your own well-being and what that takes away. And I remember when I first started meeting chiropractors and there was that whole like private practice management thing that they're doing. And, you know, the company like, oh, we, we adjusted 1,000 people this week. Or, you know, we're so like, we're the practice that adjusted 500,000 people this year with 2 practitioners, right? Like, how are you not gonna burn out and fall apart?

Or what is the patient experience? You know, the patient experience in that is— I'm a little biased, but they'll come in and get a hot pack, sit on a massage chair, the aide will do something to them. They'll see the chiropractor for a few minutes. If you're lucky, you get an adjustment and you're out the door. And it's just a factory.

And I— Right.

You know, so in some aspects, you pay for what you get, but a lot of times you don't get what you pay for.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's right. And we both know there are amazing, amazing practitioners in all of the fields doing that. But it also, at the end of the day, it's the question of like for the practitioner and it's the agreement between the person who— the product, the person who's creating the product and the person who's consuming the product, what's the agreements? What are they really wanting to get out of it? And I, and I, I had this conversation the other day with one of my clients because I'm helping them figure out what their next career move is going to be. And like, well, do I want to do this field? I'm like, no, no, no, no. What are your core values? What are your core values about any industry or career that you want to be in? And then let's reverse engineer the careers that align with those values. And then I went back and showed them my, on my website, we ready to Zoom screen share. And I'm like, here's the— here are the core values of my business. Do you believe that knowing me now that we've been seeing each other for a few months, that I am verbatim hitting every single one of these core values and with the definition of what I put there? And they're like, oh yeah, that's like 2000% spot on. I'm like, yeah, but that's how I run it. That's— it's— it doesn't have to be this esoteric thing that when you decide your core values, you stick them on the wall and you never look at them again. Yeah.

And I think for core values, one of the things I've learned is almost less is more.

Yeah.

You know, I think one of my coaches, Bajor Skoljan, was like, we had all these core values, no one knew them. And so he got them back down to like 4, you know, because— and I don't know what his are, but, you know, they're definitely core values that sound nice. But do our employees know them? Do we live by them? You know, even though they sound fancy? Yeah.

And if you're running— if you have a team and you're running your team meeting, like, are you running the questions and challenges through how is this aligning or not aligning with our core values? How is this client or patient aligning or not aligning with this core value? How is this person we're dating aligning with our— not aligning? One of my favorite stories about that is like I did a speed dating thing and sat with a really nice person, and on our second conversation I'm like, listen, so I have an organic home and I really do prefer only to eat organic. And when I'm traveling, right, or if I'm going to, like, you know, still, I'd rather eat make sure that if I'm having salmon, it's not farmed, or I won't have the salmon. Right. So I still have my particulars, but I do prefer, you know, mostly everything coming into my house is organic. And she responds back to me, oh, I on purpose go to the non-organic aisle. Am I responsible? Thank you so much. That's everything I need to know about why this won't work. And I really do wish you well. Right. And that was it. Like, and like, but people are like, what do you mean? Well, you can convince her and you should have these conversations. Like, I'm a 43-year-old dude. I don't need to convince anybody of anything at this point. We're either in alignment on as many things as possible, or we're not.

Right. Well, isn't that one of the reasons like relationships falter is someone in there thinks eventually they'll change? Oh, right. I can get them to change though. Eventually, like this will change about them.

Right. Well, that's women. Please listen to that. This is what I found. And it's not like, you know, dogmatically one way or the other, but more consistently It's the joke is when, you know, the men are hoping that their woman doesn't change and the women are hoping that I'll get off. Hopefully they will. Yeah, I can see their potential if only they stop doing this differently. And the guys are like, God, if they stayed this way forever, this would be amazing. And that's where— and then there's no check-ins, there's no board meetings, there's no— I mean, I love talking about the entrepreneurship side of relationships, of taking those values and the psychology of entrepreneurship into that, but it's spot on. And You know, especially if you're hiring staff and having those like, you know, the KPIs and what do you want to move into? What do you want to learn? Is there like you're hearing about this technique? I want to go take this training in this workshop. And how many, how many bosses don't be like, great, like, let me, let me, let me send you out there for the weekend because that's going to incentivize them to stay with your company for a lot longer, you know? And, and, and I feel like that's, you know, missed out in so many different businesses.

Yep. So Jason, I want to, I want to loop back to one of the questions you asked me. Which I think were there, is that it was— you said, how did I get into passive income? And I, and I, and we kind of stopped on the course. But here's the thing is that I just want to kind of bring this around to the circle, into the circle, is that I found something that sold. And then what I did is I automated the sales process through using email marketing. Like, I have a lead magnet, people download the lead magnet, they get an offer to get into a webinar, which then moves them into this course.. And I've done that with lots of different ways, but that's how I started with the passive income. The first passive income I made was putting something for sale on my website and someone actually bought it. It's like I woke up, I was like, oh, I had some money. I was like, this is amazing. But really what made me six figures was a lead magnet to an email sequence to a webinar to a course. But I already knew the course sold. And in there is the DotCom Secrets strategies that I learned. Helped me set that up. And, um, I've put thousands, thousands of people through this course and training program on how to launch a practice.

That's awesome. Yeah, and I think again, going back to the idea that this can be leverageable into multiple fields in multiple ways, and the languaging might be more streamlined towards body docs, but I really do see the success and value of systems and processes and all these things that a lot of practitioners are like— we're still stuck in so many levels of just Well, I'll just raise my fees. But great, you're still— yeah, you're gonna make a little bit more money at the end of the day for maybe a little bit less hours. But we're still not talking about the freedom and the lifestyle you designed because we're not taught to think about it this way. But I got to be in front of the person, right?

It's two different games. Wouldn't you agree? It's like there's two different games. Like there's a game we're taught to play and then the game of business where we have to learn, or we don't learn that in school. We have to go find other coaches and mentors and books and trainings that teach us how to play the game of entrepreneurship.

And I think a lot of it is like partially our passion and our commitment to what we do, right? In other words, I know you posted this on your Facebook page of like the best way to begin more freedom and more financial success is to hire someone to replace you, right? Which is one of the right— yeah, but I can't trust them. It's the Colonel's secret recipe. They're gonna open up right next door to me and they're gonna knock. I can't give them the system and the process. They'll rip me off, right? I mean, yes, there are people out there that will do that, but if you incentivize and you are ethical and you're moral and Listen, there's still douchebaggy people out there that will fuck you over, but you can find ways to really minimize and mitigate all of those things by piece of the pie, by, hey, you bring this person in, we're not going to give you your standard thing. We're going to give you a little bit more of— you're talking to a buddy who comes into our practice, we're going to give you the first 3 sessions of them coming in full 100% commission on that, above and beyond your hourly, right? And there's so many ways that people are not doing and they're losing both, you know, the practitioner is losing, the business is losing. And I think that's something that, you know, we need to talk about more. So as we, as we wrap up, let's just get— give a few places of where everybody can find you. I know you have your book, you have your podcast, you have your website with the courses. So where can they go to find you and reach out and connect with you?

Yeah, I think the best place is to go to Instagram, find me @AaronLeBauer. It's LaBower with a B like boy, um, or go to Google and find me. It's, or it's aaronlabower.com. Um, but Instagram is the best place if you want to send me a message or find the link to like our resources, free resources, book, et cetera. Um, I've got a free book on how to launch and scale a 6-figure cash practice. Um, and if you message me on Instagram book, I'd be happy to send you a copy for free.

Awesome. Awesome. Aaron, thank you so much. I know that, uh, my guess is I, we're probably like we talked about before. I want to definitely go more into like course creation and, and, and niching into that. Cause I know so many people don't even realize that they have something to put out to the world. And that first idea is, well, why, why me? I'm not already an expert or I'm not known as an expert. Um, and, and to the, the, the system of how to do that. So I would love to invite you back. Yeah. I'd love to be back.

Yeah. That'd be great.

Cool. All right, my man. Looking forward.

Jason, appreciate it.

My pleasure.