Don't Be The Coupon Person: Why You Should Invest Your Money

Dr. Kelly Alhooie (Pelly Biz podcast) argues that business owners—especially pelvic health practitioners—should prioritize investing over penny-pinching. She contrasts poor personal spending (e.g., buying depreciating cars) with productive investments (higher-interest bank accounts, commercial/personal real estate, mentors/coaches, hiring staff, event booths, and marketing). Key claims: wealthy people favor investments and "good debt" that produces returns; investing in mentors yields large returns (speaker cites ~700× ROI); commercial real estate returned ~8% in her experience and personal-use property ~5%; hiring via a recruiter (example fee $15,000) can be worthwhile; a Google Ads lead costs about $80 per form; a $100 event booth can yield 50+ contacts. She emphasizes avoiding a "coupon-person" mindset because it attracts bargain-oriented clients and limits revenue, and stresses learning to communicate value to attract paying patients.
Questions this video answers
July 8, 2023
About 700× return (speaker's claim)
About 8% (speaker's experience)
About 5% (speaker's experience)
$15,000 (example recruiter fee)
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. We're going to talk about when you're starting out a business or even if you have a business, is the concept of you got to spend money to make money. Is that true? And anyone listening right now, have you heard about you gotta save money, you gotta save money, you gotta save money. If this is you, if you're a saver, if you think you gotta spend money to make money, then this is a must listen podcast. So let's get into it. So number one, rich people are not into saving money. Rich people understand that you have to make an investment rather than save. So Dave Ramsey, most people know him, okay? He's the guy that talks about saving money, saving money and save money. And that may work to a certain extent where it's going to get you to not spend money on stupid things. And I say stupid things in the fact of whatever you spend money on, is that overall going to give you a return on your investment. So let me give you guys some examples, okay? If I invest in a car from my personal account, okay, overall, is that car going to bring me more money from year after year after year? What do you guys think? It's not. That car is actually going to depreciate. So this is something that you do not want to make an investment in unless it's from a business account, by the way. So that is a tax thing that you can get around. Um, and that's a whole nother topic. But if it's from your personal account and you are buying a car, that is not a good investment to make because it will depreciate year after year and it will not be bringing you any money. It's not making you money. That car does not make you money. Now let's go into real estate. Okay? If I were to have, let's just say $5,000 in my bank account, okay, and that money is just sitting there in my business bank account. I have 5k. All right? Now what do I do with that 5k? This is a question that I get a lot. What do I do, Kelly, with that 5k that's just sitting there, Do I leave it in there? Do I take it out? What do I do with it? Well, you can Leave it in there. That's option one. But it's just sitting there. It's not making you any money. So there are certain banks, just so you guys know that you can take your money, put it into a different bank and it will make you a 2 to 3% return by just sitting in the bank. But your normal bank account, if you just have that money sitting in there, is not going to make you money. So this is how rich people get richer. They take the money, they put it in a separate account that has a 2, maybe 2, 3, 4% return and they leave it in there and it makes the money. Now they want to make more money, they can eventually take that and put it into maybe a commercial space or put it into themselves. When you invest in yourself, it's the most return that you're ever going to get and is investment in yourself. When I invested in mentors for myself, I've gotten 700 times the return. When I'm invested in commercial real estate, I've gotten an 8% return. Personal use, property or whatever, that's a 5% return. Okay? So there are different return levels, but each of those investments are then making you more money year after year. It's not draining your money, it's not taking your money out a car. It will because it's appreciate. So that is a stupid investment, okay? From a personal account, business account, different story. Okay? So that's how I want you guys to look at money. So the going back to the question of do you have to spend money to make money? Well, kind of, yes. Because rich people are not afraid of debt. They're not afraid to take on good debt. Debt, car debt, not so good. Other debt is good, okay? It can be good if it's making you money. So when you're thinking about, hey, should I do this for my business, it's going to cost me a lot, maybe up front, but then on the back end, it's going to make you a lot of money then. Yes. So let me give you an example. If someone had to hire a recruiter to get someone into their company, like a PT or an OT into their company, and they have to pay that recruiter, let's just say $15,000 for getting that person in, do you guys think it's worth it? Yes, it's worth it. Even if that person, even if the owner had to go into debt to pay 15k for this PT to come on, because that PT overall is going to help make them thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. And some by treating Patients. And so that is good debt to take on. That's debt that you want to invest in because there is going to be return on that and you're going to be making, you know, hundreds of thousand dollars, you know, coming to your company because of that. So that's a good investment right there. Let me go back to saving. Okay, let me just talk about this for a second. When you are saving, okay, and you're just like, hey, I gotta save my money. I'm like the coupon person or I'm gonna go to the dollar store and shop at a dollar store, okay? I used to be one of these. I grew up very poor and I used to be one of these people. Like I'm just gonna go and get all the cheap stuff at the dollar store. You're going to have a very hard time attracting the buyers that you're trying to attract in your clinic. Okay? Normally most of us cash based pts charge around $200 a session. Someone that goes to the dollar store is not also going to be spending $200 on a session. They just aren't because they haven't primed their brain to say that that is okay. So if you yourself are collecting coupons and trying to save, save, save, save, save, then you're going to attract buyers that only want to save, save, save. And it's going to be very hard for you to sell someone on a package in your clinic. It really is. Because you yourself don't believe that you would spend $2,000 to get your leakage fixed. So why would anyone else spend that? So what you have to do is you have to become the buyer that you want to attract. And you yourself have to stop shopping at the dollar store. You yourself have to stop collecting the coupons. You yourself have to stop asking for the discount at every store. You got to say, yes, I'm premium, I'm going to pay the premium price because I expect the best and want to be the best and am going to be the best. Okay? And when you do that, you pay the price for it. That's just it. Okay, so and you gotta say, you know what? This massage is $200. Okay, great, I'm gonna spend $200 on this massage. And maybe in the past you wouldn't spend that, but you gotta feel what it feels like to put down that money and be like, okay, this is the mindset that most of my patients have. Most of our patients aren't or wealthy or rich or all that kind of stuff. You just have to want it. And See the value in it. It doesn't mean we're attracting all the rich people in the town. Not at all. Most of our patients are actually teachers. That just means that we're solving big problems for these people. So that is why they are willing to say, hey, here, I'll come see you. Because you are helping me get to the goal that I've always wanted. So. So I'll pay whatever you want to get me to that goal. It's the value. And if you yourself are like, I don't see the value in going to Target to buy soap, so I'm just gonna go to the dollar store and buy soap. Well, there's your problem right there. Then once you start correcting that and start actually paying a premium price, you'll start to understand where your clients feel. And only your business is going to grow from there. But if you start to still stay in the save money mindset, your business is going to have a hard time growing. And that's just it. Another example of this is if so, to spend money to make money. Okay, If I give $100 to this event, that allows me to have a booth at this event. And it's the exact population that I want to treat. So maybe it's like a postpartum mom summit and you want to have a booth there. Should you spend a hundred dollars for this booth to go to this postpartum mom summit? Heck yes, you should, because they are taking all of your people. That is your ideal population. And it's in one location. And there the goal is to get contacts. It's literally to get contacts. So let me, guys, let me give you some reference here on Google Ads. When we spend money on that, every form that someone fills out from our website cost me about 80. A form. That's not a guaranteed patient. Okay, so I'm already spending money before the client is even actually a client. That's a good investment. Same thing with this booth example. We're spending a hundred dollars. But in return, you should be getting your ideal contacts from all these people at this convention. And you should walk out of there with like 50 contacts plus from that convention. And that alone is something you can't even pay Google Ads for. You can't even pay that amount for to get that many leads from an event. Because just to get one person from Google Ads is costing me $80 just to fill out a form. And at event that you pay a hundred dollars for. Okay, let's just say you're getting. You're walking away with over 50 contacts, that's an insane amount of return on your investment. So when you're talking about, well, I don't know if I have $100 to put down for this event where all my ideal clients are at. Yeah, you do, because you're actually losing money if you don't do that. And you're sinking the ship. So you've got to invest in the right investments, okay, to get the right returns. And an investment is always a risk, by the way. There's always a risk. It cannot pan out for you. Well, okay, but more than likely, if your clientele is there or if you know it's set up well, the risk could be very, very small with a small investment to have a big, big return on your business. So I think this is a good question. One of my client accelerator program clients asked me this and I wanted to make it into a podcast because I thought, you know what, there's a lot of misinformation about out there about you got to spend money to make money or just, I got to save, save, save. Same thing with the business coach. You guys have got to invest in a coach. It doesn't even have to be me. I don't care. Just invest in a coach. I want every single one of you guys to get to your goals. And if you don't have a coach, you're not going to get there. You're really not going to get there. I promise you from experience, I have had many coaches, and this year I have many coaches. But with that being said, like, they have exponentially more than any investment I've ever made. Given me, like rocket fuel compared to a commercial property, compared to personal property, compared to stock market, any of that stuff. There's no competing with it. There's literally no competing with it. Invest in yourself. It's also a tax write off, okay? It's also a tax write off. That's very important because, you know, pay Uncle Sam to just keep staying stuck and you're just going to keep paying him. Why invest in yourself? Get information that someone's that's going to hold you accountable. Get a community around you. Like, get someone that's going to actually support you and be like, no, you're not going to stay stuck. Here we go, let's go. You know, that's who you want and that will get you there. And let's not make it so painful. So, you know, same thing. Let me do one more thing. Cause I have so many examples of this. You would take another Con Ed class. That's not really a good investment because you're not learning then how to communicate with the patient. You're learning how to use your hands better, but the patient really doesn't care about that. Can you solve their problem from point A to point B? And can you communicate that well enough to where they give you money so that you can actually solve their problem for them? Most therapists that are like the best therapists in the world have had like, you know, 50,000 Con Ed classes. Those therapists are amazing therapists. But those therapists don't know how to attract people into them to actually get the help because they can't communicate what they do. So someone is not going to give them money because they don't understand. They don't understand that they can actually solve their problem. And that therapist is saying, oh, I just must need another Con Ed class because I have to go take it so that I could tell this person that I know this technique. That's not it. We've got to learn how to communicate what we do well. And once you can do that, patients will be coming to you begging you for help because they see that now you can actually help them because the way you communicated and told them, based on this method, I'm going to get you from here to here. And that's how you get your business to grow. So many lessons here. I could go on and on about this topic because I'm very passionate about it. Because I didn't get this at first, number one, I thought I always had to save money. That's how you become rich. That's not true. Rich is a very. By the way, it's a loose term here. I'm not saying, like, everyone's going to be a billionaire here, but I'm saying rich in your own way. And the fact that you can live, survive and just like, you know, actually live your life and not in fear that you can't pay your rent next month. Okay, that's rich to me. Okay? So, you know, like, I always used to be that way. Like, oh my God, I gotta save, save, save. But that's not it. I didn't understand good debt and bad debt and good debt. There's a lot of good debt out there. And how do you acquire a lot of good debt? So. So that good debt brings a return. How do you not acquire a lot of bad debt? That's where you gotta say, how do I stay away from bad debt? That bad debt will bring you down. So hopefully this makes sense. Guys, I want you basically to invest in the right things. If you're confused, please reach out to me. Uh, I'd be more than happy to help you is where to invest so that you can get a return on your money. Um, and don't be the coupon person. That's the biggest lesson here. Please don't be the coupon person, because that's what's holding you back. 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.
More from Kelly

The providers stuck the longest aren't broke, they're just waiting #coaching #mindset

The death of traditional pelvic PT clinics #physicaltherapy #businessgrowth #trends

Cash Based Practices | Hospital Job vs Private Practice and the Math Nobody Shows You

Stop letting fear run your physical therapy practice #cashbasedpt #mindset #shorts






