This episode of the Pelby/Pelvi Biz Podcast (hosted by Dr. Kelly Alhooie) is a first-person account of Kelly’s roughly 10-year career path from working in corporate outpatient settings to launching her own pelvic health practice. She recounts heavy student-loan burdens (came out of school during the recession with ~9% interest), working multiple side gigs (Pilates instructor, in-home personal training, treating performers in hotels/movie sets), geographic relocations (Atlanta → Portland → Orange County → Northern Virginia), and burnout from unsustainable workloads (she reports seeing ~18 patients/day, four patients/hour, plus ~3 hours of notes nightly). Exposure to a cash-based clinic model inspired her to pursue private practice to escape insurance constraints, improve patient care, and gain time and financial freedom. The episode includes promotional CTAs for Pelvi Biz tickets.
Questions this episode answers
February 19, 2022.
Approximately 9% interest.
About $2,000 per month (≈ $200 toward principal).
About 18 patients per day (roughly four patients per hour) and ~3 hours of notes each night.
Chapters
Hi, welcome to the Pelby Biz 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 back to Pelby Biz.
Today I'm going to go over just the journey that I've been on over the last 10 years. So I started, I'm originally from Atlanta, Georgia. I went to grad school in New York in Rochester, New York. That is where I met my husband. He is also apt. And then we moved back down to Atlanta for our first job. We took a job with a corporate PT practice and I started to realize, wow, this is what my life is going to be. I treat patients for eight hours a day. Then I went home and would do notes for two hours a night and I was like, so I guess this is just what I have to do. This is what people do. And I started to realize a paycheck and a half was going to my student loans because I went to school when the recession hit so my interest rates were at, at 9% interest rate and that was crazy.
The learning experience with that.
I didn't even know what interest rates were. I'm just being honest. I had no clue. No one ever talked to me about money and loans and anything like that. So it was a big shocker. We came out of school and a paycheck and a half went to loans and I wasn't even making a dent. I think I was paying $200 towards the actual principal and I was like paying $2,000 a month in student loans. So it's something crazy. And this is where my passion comes from because again I felt like I was blindsided and no one taught me about this and told me like, hey, this is going to be very Hard. So because of that I was actually forced to get other jobs. So what I did when I was in Atlanta, I would teach at these prestigious private clubs and I taught Pilates. I've been teaching now Pilates for 16 years. And I was teaching at these clubs to just get extra money. Also I started doing in home personal training because I knew I could get 50 bucks an hour and that was more than actually a PT was getting paid. So I thought, why don't I do this because I can get money to actually be able to eat off of or do something fun instead of just pay it all to student loan debt. So basically, to make a long story short, here I started working on movie sets. I went to all the five star hotels around my area and I asked them, I said, hey, if you guys need anyone to come in and treat people, if they have any pain or anything, I'm right here. I lived right by all the five star hotels, I can come here at any time of night. And so they actually started calling me, which was shocking. And I would go and treat it like 2am in the morning when these performers or movies star people would be off their sets and I would go treat them in their hotel room and then I would wake up and treat normal patients at 7am until 4 and then start treating them around 7 or 8 at night until in the morning time. Make a long story short, I did that for about four years. And as you probably could imagine, I was really burnt out by that. And I got so overwhelmed because I just had so much business that I was just like, okay, this is too much. Even though I was making some money, I wasn't making that much money. I was making some money just to make ends meet at that point. But I was like, it's too much. And I got offered to go on tour with Katy Perry for two years. I got offered to tour with Cher for a year. And I had to deny that because I knew the schedule demand was crazy. I remember it was my brother's wedding and they're like, no, you can't come off tour to go to his wedding. And it was my best friend's wedding and I couldn't come off tour to do that. I denied those two gigs to hang out with my husband and live a more normal life. And those were great opportunities. Sometimes when great opportunities present themselves, sometimes you actually have to determine what's important to you. And for me it was being with my husband. I wouldn't have been able to see my husband for two years, but there is options out there for PTs and OTs that if they're single and they want to explore the world, you can tour with dancing companies and touring companies to treat the performers. So that is a thing out there. Also, we got so burnt out, that's when we decided to pack up, sell every single thing. Actually we sold every single thing, even our mattress and we had one bag each and went to Portland, Oregon because we thought that was going to be a more wellness lifestyle that we badly wanted because we were so burnt out from working so hard just to pay student loans. And we weren't trying to pay student loans in five years. No, we were trying to pay student loans just in 20 years. But that's just how bad it impacted us because we both went to the same school and came out with the same amount of debt and we just weren't aware no one was talking about it. So we went to Portland, Oregon and we actually loved it there. The it's the most beautiful place on earth. So if no one's been there, you should go there. But in August and September, by the way. But yeah, we got tired of the rain. So I also had a good mentor out there for pelvic health mentor. And I really got involved in the wellness community side. Portland people are very granoli and crunchy. I'm not saying that in a bad way. It's a good, it's a good thing. And they're really about wellness. So I really started having this integrative wellness approach being applied to my practice and not looking at it, just strictly pelvic health and orthopedic from a muscular skeletal standpoint. So that was really cool. And then we got tired of the rain, went to Orange county and I was clinical director of Sartin physical therapy there. And I was just trying to run that practice and treat pelvic health clients. And there Julie had an amazing model. It was cash based and we really got to treat the patients and that really inspired me to be like, you know what? I can do this. This is so cool. And I actually thought that we were going to be there long term. I didn't even want to start my own business. But my husband's dad got sick and that's what moved us to Northern Virginia after California. And there I worked at an outpatient orthopedic job and I absolutely hated it. And I just remember how I loved working at Sartan and how like that model I really liked and I had to make, I think the saying is, what, lemons out of lemonades or something like that. I just wasn't really into living in Northern Virginia. No offense against Northern Virginia people, but I just wasn't. And I had him. I had to do something. I had. So that's when I was like, you know what, I'm gonna dive into my own business and see how that goes. But I was never someone guys that wanted to start a business. And the reason why is because I saw every business owner so stressed out that I was like, I don't want that pressure, I don't want that stress, I just don't want to do it. And the reality was I was actually really forced into starting a business A, because the move I made and B when I was working in a traditional model, there was just none of my beliefs aligned with how these insurance companies are dictating us. It's the insurance companies that are the problem that, that really drive us to want to go out on our own or want to be at a network providers because our hands are tied behind our back. And it's a real problem in our field that this is why I want to help you guys be able to practice the way you want, treat the way you want, live the life you want, have the time, freedom you want. Because the old way when it comes to in network is just not the way anymore. It's just not. It just the model cannot be for you. It's not for you of how you want to practice, of how your body.
Can actually hold up.
You can't sustain that. It's just not sustainable. Seeing 15, 16, 17 patients a day. When I first came out and I was working in Atlanta, Georgia, I was seeing 18 patients a day in an eight hour day in outpatient orthopedic clinic. I was seeing four patients an hour. Four patients an hour. And I just thought that was normal.
How crazy was I?
And I was doing three hours of notes at night. That's just not normal guys. And that shouldn't be the case. And as reimbursements go down and down, clinics have to amp the amount of patients that they see because they have to make overhead and they actually have to pay the pt. And it's not like we're all millionaires, we're not at all. They just have to pay the PT a normal salary and you can't have that when you're getting reimbursed $80 a patient. You can't even pay. You can't even pay rent at that. You cannot. This is where again my passion comes from, to help you guys out because I really want to change the field. Of pelvic health, of how we're all practicing. I want to change healthcare. I want to be very impactful on people's lives so that they don't have to go through what I've been through and the struggles that I've had and the amount of work that just the overwork and the burnt out that I've experienced is been so real. And that is what I don't want you guys to go through.
