Advocating for Pay Equity: Get Paid What You Are Worth

Welcome to Pelly biz podcast. I'm Dr. Kelly Alhui. I've grown my pelvic health practice, orthopelvic physical therapy, and now I'm helping pelvic health professionals do the same. Each week I give you the knowledge you need to grow your practice. Let's get into today's episode.

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Today we're going to talk about pay. How as pelvic health therapists, mostly women, how do we get paid what we want to be paid? The big topic, okay, how do we get paid what we want to get paid? So number one, you really want to get paid whenever you want. You gotta work for yourself. That's just the reality, okay? And I'm gonna tell you the difference. When you're working for someone and for yourself, what caps you out, what limits you and all the things and why we need to dream big so that we can have whatever we want. So the number one thing about this is I think most of us women tend to be like, we'll just take whatever is left over. I guess that's how much I'm worth. Like whatever it is, I guess that's what I'll take. But the reality is we have to dream. We have to dream big. Like real big. So if you want $5,000 a month, great. If you want $10,000 a month, great. If you want $20,000, $30,000, 40,000, 50, 70, 80, a hundred thousand dollars a month. There are pelvic health therapists that actually make that money, guys. Yes. They make over a hundred thousand dollars a month. True story. Okay, so whatever you want to make a month, make sure you state that. Don't hold back and just say, I'll just take what my salary, whatever's left over, whatever we have at the end of the month. If you're an entrepreneur, it's not how this works, you've got to say, I have to make $20,000 to survive this month, and that's what I need to take home. So then how am I going to do that? What do I need then to actually make in the clinic or online? And then how am I going to take a profit of $20,000 that month? That's what you gotta do. So you gotta work the problem backwards. That's huge. That is step number one that most people completely skip just stating what they want. Sounds simple. Most people don't do it. You'll ask them and they'll still hold back. They'll be like, maybe like 5,000. That's like kind of all I need. It's like, okay, that's all you need, great. But don't you want to make more than that? Because what happens if you want to go on vacation? What happens if a kid gets sick? Like, you gotta make more than that. So let's actually state what we want. So I think that's huge for us women. I don't know why we always have a hard time. I'm guilty of it, too. I'm not saying I'm not. I think we just are always like, yeah, we'll just give, give, give, and we don't think about what truly do we want. So step number two, you've got to become an entrepreneur. If you want no ceiling cap for salary. Okay? It's just the facts. Because what happens if. You know what? Let's talk about. If you work for someone, and I'll come back to that. So if you work for someone, so let's say you have a job, you work for someone else. Okay? There's actually only a couple ways that you can increase your salary. So normally they're going to say, hey, Sally, we can pay you $80,000. And you're gonna be like, okay, great. So you're working at a clinic for $80,000, and then the next year comes around and they give you a raise of 50 cents. 50 cents an hour raise. This is literally true story. This is what my husband gets $0.50, $0.25 an hour raise every year. And that's just what happens. That's like. That's the slap in the face. Are you kidding me? Are you saying, like, oh, I got all these Con Ed classes. Oh, but that didn't make a difference. I was like, $4 a day. Like, that's nuts. Come on now. So if you were working for someone, how can you increase your pay? Well, number one, you have to think about whatever corporation you work for is how can you make them more money? So besides seeing patients, how can you make them more money? You can make them more money by selling products potentially and selling them to your patients. You can make more money by coming up with an online membership and using that for your current clients in clinic. You could make more money if you said, hey, I'm going to see more patients, okay? And I'm going to get a profit share from that. But guess what? Eventually you can't see more patients because you're going to be tired and your health is starting, is going to start to go and you're going to be like, what is this all for? What is this all for? When you have, when you don't have your health, you can't do anything. So what's the point? The corporations, I'm not hating on them, but the corporations, they're capped out because insurance every single year is getting less and less. It's going to reimburse less and less. So they're going to have to put more and more pressure on us to, to, to see more patients, to do more things, to sell more things. Instead say, you know what, I don't have to stand for this anymore. I want to take off when I want to take off. This was me. So I want to take off when I want to take off. I want to be able to make the money that I want to make without having a cap, without being limited because I know that I deserve that because of how the outcomes are with these patients. I'm changing these patients lives. So now what do I do? So now if you're like at, you know, at the end, you're like, man, I'm just done with all this. Okay, great. Now let's talk about you working for yourself. You work for yourself. The more therapists that you actually add onto your schedule, the more profit that you're going to have when you hire. Just so you guys know, when you hire your first therapist, your profit is going to go down because you tend to pull yourself out a little bit from clinic and you don't see as many patients. So you're not getting that money. So what happens is that you give it to the PT more, the OT or pta, okay? But then the second hire that you have on, that's going to give you more profit, okay? Because now you have two therapists working instead of just one, you're relying on one. So the goal really is if you really want to pay increase and be able to actually pay your employees, you want multiple therapists. On staff because multiple therapists is going to keep everything running. It's going to keep paying your admin, your manager, maybe your marketer pay for clinic space. It's all the things, okay? The whole system has to work. And don't just think that the pts are the ones or the OT is the ones just making the money. The admin make you the money too, because they bring the people in as well as you yourself help the clinic because you also bring in people in. You are the face, you are the marketer technically for your company. So everyone has to work together so that everyone can make more money. Does that make sense? So in a private cash based business, everyone's got to come together and figure out how are we going to make more money. And there's three ways to do that. The first one is you see more patients, okay? Which a lot of people don't want to do. The second one is you increase your prices, okay? Which some people want to do and some people don't. And the last one is you, the current patients that you currently have, you just see them for their entire plan of care instead of stopping halfway through their plan of care and being done there. So those are three ways to increase profit in your business. Those are massive, okay? That's how. Those are the only ways that you can move your business forward. And then you've got to set a goal of I need to pay myself this amount and I need to pay my staff this amount so that we've got to hit this number so that we are still in the positive and not in the negative.

Okay?

And really, if you are a PT listening to this or an OT listening to this, or a PTA listening to this, you can have whatever amount of money that you want. You can be a six figure earner, you can be a seven figure earner, you could even be an eight figure earner if you wanted to be. Okay? Just depends on, you know, how quickly you want to grow things and what you're willing to do, like what kind of time and effort you're willing to do to put into it. So there's no ceiling. So us females should really be dominating this space. Most pelvic health therapists that I coach, their goals are only to hit 5k a month. That's it. But then they started, then they start to realize that as I get through this, wait, wait, wait. I want to hit 20k a month or I want to hit 30k a month and the goals start to get bigger because no one has allowed us to dream that big. We've always thought as PTs or, you know, OTs, that if we just hit six figures, a hundred thousand dollars, that that's amazing, like, we made it. But the reality is the way the economy, you know, is right now. A hundred thousand, even if you make a hundred thousand dollars, it's hard to survive today. It's really hard to survive today. Okay, With a hundred thousand dollars, especially if you have kids or sick parents or whatever it may be, you're sick, whatever that may be. So what are we going to do to say, you know what, I deserve this, and I'm going to work the problem backwards so that I actually get what I truly feel that I deserve.

Okay.

And let me just state one more thing too. People think that money is like, evil. Money is not evil. What I've learned is the rich people actually are the people that give the most. Truly, they give the most. The rich people are the ones that have sacrificed a lot of their time, maybe not now, but like a lot of their time early on to get things moving, grinding, going, and all the things, okay, Money isn't bad, and you don't actually own the money. You use the money to help pour into your staff, to help pour into a clinic, to help pour into maybe Con Ed or investing in mentorship. You use that money to help continue to grow. The money is not just sitting in a bank account. It's can. It's being used to help keep growing things so that everyone around you has continued to have growth and you guys just aren't stagnant. The second you take money and like, go buy a Lamborghini, what's the point? What's the point to say you have a Lamborghini? I'm not saying, like, there's anything wrong with that, but what does that truly give you? It's not even an asset. Doesn't even give you a return on your investment. It just depreciates. So you have to think like, as well as, okay, great, now I'm earning this money. Now what do I do with this money? You got to make smart investments in different assets. And assets can be people. Assets could be houses. Not your current house that you live in, but like a property. Assets could be your building. Assets could be. What else? A mentorship program. Like, you put in money there and then you get tons of money back from being in a mentorship program because now they've guided you to understand how to grow your practice. Those are assets. Okay? That's what you want to do with that. So anyone that's Listening to this right now and you think a money's bad or. I just, I hate talking about numbers. They overwhelm me. The sooner that you can sit down with yourself and say, what do I truly want? What do I want? And also, what do you need? So if you need, I don't know, $4,000 a month to survive, great. But what then do you want on top of that? Because just to survive is not a good standard to set for yourself. What do you want? To thrive. So Maybe you want 8k a month to thrive. Okay, great. Now how are you going to hit that 8k a month? Anything is possible. But what's the strategy behind you hitting 8K? And you can even say a hundred thousand dollars. That's a goal, too, People hit it. We've been there. Okay, so what do you want? Figure that out. We've got to figure that out. And if you're, you know, if you're confused or lost about it, please reach out to me and say, kelly, this is how much I want to make. How do I do it? Like, honestly, how do I do it? And I'll tell you a strategy on how you're actually going to get there. And it's not as hard as you think. It's not this, like some elaborate plan, but it's just really spelled out and it's very clear. And when things are very clear, then you can start actually getting paid what you actually want because you know the path of how to get there. When you're unclear, then you're going to be like, I'll just take whatever, whatever you guys give to me. It's fine. Like, no. Please set your standards high. I talk to my mastermind people all the time about this. Please set your standards high and shoot for the stars because more than likely, you're going to be able to hit it. Bye, guys. I consider myself a business and life coach. Are you ready to live the life of your dreams as an entrepreneur? If so, let's chat. See the episode notes below and go ahead and book a call. See you all next week.