A Beginner's Guide To Hiring Your First Employee

Hi, welcome to the Pelvibiz Podcast. Are you a pelvic health PT or ot? Struggling to start your own practice? This podcast helps pelvic health PTs and OTs get out of debt, gain the income they desire, be able to treat patients without insurance restraints, and learn how to create time freedom for yourself and your family. I'm your host, Dr. Kelly Alhui, founder of Ortho, Pelvic Physical Therapy, Pelvic health Business grower and Pelvi Biz. Over the last two years, I went from a solo entrepreneur to a seven person team in counting. I'm here to help provide a clear path to grow your pelvic health business.

As fast as possible so that you.

Can gain the time freedom, decrease debt, increase income and live the life that you desire. Before we get started today, make sure you click the link in our bio to grab your ticket for Pelvi Biz. Now let's get into today's episode. Welcome guys to Pellibiz Podcast.

I'm your host, Kelly El Houey. Today we're going to talk about how to hire and when to hire and who to hire first. These are big questions that I get a lot. So I'm going to start with who to hire first. So when I get this question, people are referring to do they hire an admin first? Do they hire a virtual assistant? Do they hire a pt? Ot, pta? Who? Who the heck do they hire? And I have to say, I was in this position many, many times when I started out. I waited a whole year. I was in business for a whole year before I actually decided to hire. And I would say my number one regret that I had in business when I look back is that I didn't hire soon enough. I waited until I had 50 patients a week, guys, 50 patients a week. For months on end. I was working from 7:00am in the morning till 7:00 clock at night, six days a week, seeing 50 patients by myself. For those that know, like, it's a lot to just see like six patients a day or seven patients a day. I was seeing 50 patients a week by myself, running the clinic. I had no admin, I had no one. And by that time, after three months of doing this, I basically burnt myself out and was like, oh, I need to hire. But the problem was, the first problem that I encountered was my own belief. And here it is. I believed that over the last eight years that I was not, you know, working for myself, that it taught me that I didn't even have enough money to like pay my rent and pay my student loans and all that stuff. So why now can I afford to pay someone? That was my belief. And that's why it took me, I believe, so long to then put money towards paying someone. Because I believed that it was such a, going to be such a burden to me that I could not afford them. And the reality is the burden for me was my health. My health actually suffered because I didn't hire on anyone, because I thought, oh, no, I can keep doing this, I can keep doing this. But truly, my health started suffering. And when your health suffers, what happens? You have to put money towards your health and you got to focus on your health. Okay, so I should have hired way sooner than I did. I highly, highly recommend not doing what I did. What I do recommend doing is when you're at 15 to 20 patients a week, you yourself, okay, I want you to think about, is this the time that I should hire? And I want you to start thinking about that. And there is no right or wrong whether or not you hire a therapist first or whether or not you hire an admin first. Okay, Personally, I chose an admin first and I'm going to tell you my reasoning behind it. The reasoning behind it is I thought if I hire the admin first, she can help me do all the little tasks that I already hate doing. Like, you know, calling the patients back, emailing all the minute things, you know, on Excel, Google Docs, like all that stuff. It's just not my jam. Okay, she can help me with that. And also I was thinking, well, who's going to manage this other therapist if I bring them on? Because I'm treating patients, so how am I supposed to manage this other therapist? So I thought, okay, if I bring on an admin, she can help me manage, she can help me manage these people. So that was my thought. So I brought on an admin and then literally two weeks later, I brought on my first ever pt. Okay, when I did that, my, that pt, I had no clue what I was doing. No clue. I had no clue what I needed to hire her. I had no clue she was a 1099 and I didn't even know that she had to pay her own taxes. Like, it was bad. I didn't have any systems in place when I hired her to like say, hey, this is what we're going to do today, or this is how you, like treat pelvic health conditions. She was a brand new new graduate, didn't have a clue what pelvic health was. Took Herman and Wallace level one, but like nothing else. So I basically had to train her in all of her skills. And within two months, she left. She said, I'm done, I'm going to neuro rehab. And I have to say it's another regret. I have to say she probably left because she was like, this is crazy because nothing's organized. And it probably to her felt like that I was not being honest with her. But the reality was I, I wasn't. I just didn't know about like taxes, I didn't know how to hire, I didn't know what I needed. And I wasn't that clear with this hire. So when you're not that clear, then people tend to leave because they're like, well, this is so wishy washy. I'm just unsure about what I'm getting. And then they go bye, bye. Okay, so you don't, I'm just telling you guys my mistakes. So then I want you guys to go through them. So number one is, is higher when you're around 15 to 20 patients a week. And if you're thinking about hiring an admin, you want to pay them about 15 to $20 an hour. Okay, if you're looking at PT, PTA, whatever else, it's a whole different conversation on what to be had. You could pay them anywhere between 45 an hour to 75 an hour. It just all depends on your profit and what you're actually charging per visit and what percentage you know, that is you. So we have to figure that out. So if you have questions about that, just DM me. You can always just DM me on Instagram. We can chat about that. But you know, that's how you pay them. And you can put them on salary or you can do them hourly. Hourly is less risky. And the fact of they get paid per patient. Okay, so if they treat a patient, you pay them. They don't treat a patient, you don't pay them. There's ways that you can structure things on. Okay, well, if you don't have a patient, but you do a social media post for me, or you do a blog post, then maybe I'll pay you half of the pay. And then that way they're still providing value to your community. And you know, someone randomly cancels within that 24 hour period and they still are getting paid. Maybe not at their hourly rate, but at least they have some work and it's just not a loss. And then they get frustrated because they're like, well, I have all these openings and I'm not getting paid and now I need to go find a new job because now the salary that I was relying on is not here. So that could be a problem. That can be a problem with hourly, but it can also be beneficial if you just don't have a full caseload for them just yet. The benefit to salary employee is number one, it's going to push you to bust your butt to get those patients. It's going to push you, it's going to push you to grow your company. Because now you have to fill between 32, 35 to 40 slots on the schedule that someone now is salary. And you got to fill that because you're paying these people no matter what. Then you got to think and come up with what are they going to do in the time periods that they don't have patience. So let's say a patient cancels or we just couldn't fill that spot. What are the things that that pts can do during that time period? So let me give you a couple here. They can write blogs, they can do Instagram or TikTok post. They can do some marketing for you. They can go around and market for you. They can create memberships, they can create handouts. They can also reach back out to their old patients and like on an old, you know, cancellation list and see who they can actually contact and keep nurturing them that maybe didn't finish their plan of care. Those are things that I would be having my PT or OT or PTA do if they didn't have patience. That's then going to help recapture people and get them back in the door to the clinic. Okay, so there's pros and cons, our hourly versus salary and when you would do that. Okay, so I went the route of hiring on an admin first. Two weeks later I hired on a pt, two months later she quit. And then I had to find another PT to come in and take over. And at that point, because I was seeing 50 patients a week, my energy and my health was. I was just so done. I was so burnt out because I just burned myself to the ground thinking I can just do this. And that's not the case. And from what I found through my masterminds that I've done is everyone is so happy around that 15 to 20 patient mark when they get an admin because they can actually call patients back and not feel so overwhelmed. They can actually like pinging. This is, this is the other thing I wanted to mention is when you actually pay the admin because remember how told you at the Beginning of this, I thought, how can I afford to pay them when I couldn't even pay myself for eight years? Okay. But when I actually brought on my admin, she paid for herself and some because she was then able to answer phone calls that I couldn't answer when I was in treatment. She then was able to call people back that I couldn't call throughout the day because I was treating from 7 to 7. She then was able to send follow up emails to people that potentially were leads. But again, I just didn't have time to follow up with. She was able to do social media and start promoting on social media something that I didn't even touch because I just didn't have time. Because I mean, it was kind of true. I didn't have time. Okay. You know, she then started to say, okay, well this is the system for this. This is the system for this because we had to get organized and figure out how we were going to communicate better so that together we can help build the practice. Okay? So an admin is an amazing, amazing asset. And I know most of you guys think, well, they're not bringing any patients in the door like a PT or OT would, but the reality is they actually are. They're way more important than a lot of times people think. And they're the first person people are going to talk to when they come in to the clinic and, or on the phone and that's going to set the tone for the rest of their visits. So I highly, highly recommend pulling an admin in. Now a lot of you guys have questions on should I have an admin virtual or should I have it in person? Well, it depends. An admin in person is great because they can greet the patients when they come into the door. They can also kind of feel the vibe out of the clinic and create a vibe of the clinic of like unity and, and togetherness. They can also be your go to person of hey, this patient needs this and you can just tell them rather than send them an email. And they can kind of be the glue of the clinic that holds everything together. When someone has a virtual assistant, the positive to that is, let's just say I was in California and I couldn't afford another room for this person to hang out at. Maybe a virtual assistant is possible because I just don't have a place to put them. Like I literally don't have have clinic space or if I did, it would cost me another $2,000 a month. And that's just something that's not in my budget. A Virtual assistant can help do all those tasks like email, social media, all that stuff. You just better have really good communication with that person because they're not face to face. When you're treating a patient, it's not like you can just step out of the room, say, hey, can you help me with this? And then you have to now send them an email or wait for a response back. And so it could slow things down just a little bit. Okay. But again, it's. You can pick. There's no right or wrong. Just you choose what works for you. Okay, so that's virtual virtual admin versus in person admin. Personally, I always pick in person admin. Cause like I said, it just really kind of glues my whole team together and it's like one person that we can all kind of count on to have kind of all the information of the clinic on what's happening with like one patient or with an email or whatever else is going on. So personally, that's why I like in person. Maybe I'm old school, but that's just me. What else about hiring? When it comes to therapists, you also need systems. Like you need major systems and even admin systems in the fact of how are we all going to communicate, how are we going to work together, how are we going to train the pts, the ots, how are we going to collaborate, how are we going to be on the same page here, how are things run? And then, you know, for us, like we have meetings every single week because I believe it's that important to collaborate and get everyone together to be on the same page, especially for communication. And that's the biggest thing is creating and developing your systems and, and then being able to utilize those systems. And those systems work really well. So, you know, speaking of systems, I haven't even announced this yet, but at Pelvibiz, that's coming up in two weeks, I have packaged all my systems and I'm going to give it to you guys for those that come on into the mastermind, into my Mastermind program. So we're starting a new Mastermind program and at the end of October and it'll be for like a whole year. And all my systems, I'm going to train all your admins, I'm going to train your pts, like everything so that when someone comes on, you guys don't have to worry about that. Because it was such a burden to me trying to just hire my first person on and then try to figure out all the systems that they need and get them to Understand all these systems. It was just too much. So instead, I have all the tools. I've trained lots of admin. I've trained lots of pts and ots. Why not just give you guys my tools? So, you know, that's my plan going forward. So if you guys want that, just, you know, DM me, let me know, send me an email, whatever you gotta do. You can reach me in many different ways. But hiring, I have to say, is. I would say the most challenging part of business is bringing that first hire on. It is so scary, I think, because of all the beliefs we've had and like, all the. At least for me, all the debt that I had of, like, wow, can I really pay this person? And now I'm responsible for this person's lives, you know, and now I'm responsible for almost 10 people on payroll that every single. Well, with both businesses Now, I have 12 people on payroll. So I'm in charge of 12 families and their income. And if you really think about that, it's kind of scary, but it's also kind of really cool that you get to help it empower, you know, these other people and help and give them a job that, you know, they like and that doesn't overwhelm them. So that's pretty cool, too. That's the other cool thing about hiring. I'm gonna say one more thing about this too. With hiring, hiring, you never know. Like, people always ask me this too. Like, Kelly, how do I know who's the right candidate for my clinic? Okay. And I think the biggest thing with this is really truly understanding the person's why. And most of us think that we hire people come on because of money. That could be true in some people's cases, but I have actually found with pelvic health pt, a lot of times they come on because of mentorship. Yes. They're going to ask you about Con Ed. Do you have Con Ed? Sure. Yes. They're going to ask you about the money, but a lot of times they want to know that you're actually invested in them. And I give them a sheet when they come on and ask them, you know, rank this in the most importance to you and tell me what's most important. So there's mentorship, there's money, there's time, there's flexible hours, there's Con Ed, there's. I don't know, there's a couple more things on there. And they have to rank them in order that they feel is top priority to them. And what I do is I take that and then I utilize that on how that they can help the overall team out and how that they can help overall, like help move orthopelvic forward. So if their thing is like time, then how can I create a contract around time for them and give them more time off? But maybe they don't get paid as much. Conversely, if their top priority is money, well then sure, I'll give them the money, but what do I expect in return? That their schedule is full, you know, pretty much at all times and then they gotta work. I don't mind giving you money as long as you're working. Okay. If their thing is Con Ed and they want mentorship, well, maybe I build in time where, you know, every other week I'm doing one on one training with them or we're doing group training with them if you, if you don't want to take away your time. So there's so many different ways to structure a deal when someone's coming on, but I really make it around the person. I don't think it's one size fits all when bringing on people. And I think it's everyone's so unique and let's use their strengths. And that's the other thing is what are they good at? Are they good at writing? Are they good at speaking? Are they good at sales, Are they good at marketing? Like what are they good at? And then utilize those strengths and then when they have those open time slots, then how can I utilize those strengths to then have them do the thing? So let me give you an example. If they are good at speaking, maybe during their breaks I have them do a Facebook live or an Instagram Live or what our TikTok live, whatever it may be. If they're not good at speaking, guess what? I'm not having them go on Instagram and do a live because that's just gonna be disaster. Okay, Maybe they're really good at writing. So maybe then I would have them write a blog post and utilize them that way. So I play to people's strengths because that also lights their soul on fire. If I give them something that they absolutely hate, and I have them do that every single day, they're gonna be like, peace out, I hate this. Instead, give them something they're actually good at that lights their soul on fire, that's gonna make them wanna stay around and contribute to the team because they feel good about that. So I mean, there's so much to unpack with hiring. I could go on, on. And I have to say, like I said, each Hire I have actually done. I've gotten better and better and better at every single hire has been better than the next person. And that goes for admin. That goes for therapists. Every single one. Our ads have gotten better are just our what we want has gotten clearer. And that's the other thing is you need to make sure that when you put out ads and when you interview people that it is very clear on what you actually are hiring for. Just like I gave you the example of when I hired on that first pt, I was so unclear on what I wanted, what I needed, what the PT was going to do. That PT laughed after two months. It was my fault, okay? It was my fault because I was not clear. And that PT is like, where the heck am I working? Like, what is this? So becoming very clear is also very important. So for those that are hiring, do not be scared. Well, it's normal to be scared, but really start to think about hiring around 15 to 20 patients. When you're at that. I really believe that that is a sweet spot to hire so that you don't get overwhelmed, you don't burn yourself out and that you can start to progress your practice forward. Because if you don't hire, you're actually holding your practice back. Okay, for real, when I waited and I was treating 50 patients a week, I was actually, yeah, I had a lot of profit because it was just me and I didn't have to pay anyone else, but I actually was holding my practice back. My practice could have grown a lot faster if I had an admin. I mean, think about how many calls I probably missed. She could have taken those calls and got those patients in the door because I didn't have time. I was literally treating patients from seven to seven, back to back. So if I hired her fur, if I hire her on when I had like 20 patients, the practice could have even gone 10 times faster than it already did because of her. So just food for thought. It's really. It's a really, really hard phase, the hiring phase. And yes, you will get better at it. But if you guys need help, please reach out because it is like the most challenging phase. So hopefully this help gave you some clarity around hiring, when to hire, who to hire. And again, there's no right or wrong between hiring admin first or a therapist first. Hopefully you guys enjoy this. Have a good night.

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