Interview with Dr. Maddy Roth of Inspire Pelvic Physical Therapy

Welcome to Pelly biz podcast. I'm Dr. Kelly Alhui. I've grown my pelvic health practice, orthopelic 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 I have a very special guest here. She's one of my mastermind students. Maddie, welcome to the Pelle Biz podcast.

Hi. Thanks so much for having me.

Yeah, go ahead and introduce yourself. Tell us where your practice is at and tell us a little bit about kind of, you know, what population you typically see.

My name's Dr. Maddie. I'm the owner of Inspire Pelvic Physical Therapy. We're located in Saginaw, Michigan. So right now it's me and then I have two admins and then I have a pelvic floor occupational therapist, a mixture of patients. I really like the pelvic pain cases. We see a lot of pregnant and postpartum. We see males, we see pediatric cases. There's not a lot of pelvic pts in our area, so we're willing to take on pretty much anyone that needs help.

That's awesome, Maddie. So can you give us a little. Can we go back a little bit and tell us how you got started? Like, what inspired you to potentially have A practice. Were you one of those that always knew you wanted one, where you were like, no, I was kind of forced into one. Can you give us a little bit more background?

Yeah, it's always been on my bucket list to start my own business. Even in PT school, I was thinking about doing it, but I wasn't sure how it was going to go because insurance is so complicated. And I was like, how am I going to be able to figure this out? And then I kind of was introduced to the concept of cash pay pt, and I was like, wow, this is so easy. So at the time, I was working at a local outpatient ortho clinic, and I had just gotten done from maternity leave. I was working about 32 hours a week, and I was kind of ready to start working on Fridays again. So I was like, well, maybe this would be a really good chance. On Fridays I could have my own little thing I could cross off my bucket list. And.

Yeah, okay, so. So at that time, you're like, okay, maybe I can start a practice. All right, great. So now what do you do from there? Do you go mobile? Did you get an office space? How did you decide to make the next move?

Yeah, so Saginaw, Michigan, is actually pretty. I don't know. There's good and bad for starting a practice. The good thing was I knew I could find a place to. To lease that would be really cheap. So I found a place, and it was only gonna be 500amonth for a huge kind of waiting room, gym area, and a big treatment room. Well, it wasn't that big of a treatment room, I guess, but. And I was like, okay, cool. And then all I need is a mat table, some lube and gloves, and started doing some calculations and, like, all right, I gotta see four patients a month to be able to cover my overhead. This is very doable. I'll work Fridays. I'll see hopefully more than one patient a week. But that's all I would have to do to kind of check this off my bucket list and make it happen.

Yeah. So you're like, okay, so this is what. So you kind of budgeted it out first off.

That's what you did.

So you budgeted it out, created a budget, and said, all right, to make this work, I need this amount of money. So you're becoming very logical, which is great. And then you're like, all right, so now did you ever have doubt of, like, I don't know if I can get these patients? Did that ever creep in?

Oh, yeah. So at that point, I still was like, I really don't know if this is going to work. There's not really many cash pay clinics in the area. I started kind of putting my feelers out, started making my website. Still wasn't really sure if it was gonna work. Yeah, I just was hoping and hoping it would. So basically I was still at my current job working 32 hours, and I was starting to make my website and things like that, and I was like, well, if it works, it works. If it doesn't work, then, I don't know, I guess I'm gonna have to use, like the money from my current job to pay for this rent, and it's gonna be kind of annoying to pay on it for a year, but it won't be the end of the world. So.

Yeah. Okay, so you're still at your current job working 32 hours. You potentially now have this side hustle that you got going on. Okay, so now where. How do you leave this cushiony job that's paying you that your parents probably told you, don't leave a cushiony job.

Right.

And for those who, I don't know if that's okay, if I can say, Maddie's parents are both dentists, guys, and they own their own practice, correct?

Yep. Yes.

So Maddie grew up with two entrepreneurs, and we can get into that in a second. She kind of saw her parents, like, do the thing, Right. And so she's like, okay, maybe this is why, you know, I'll start my own business. Great. But what switch, Maddie, in your head where you were like, okay, I'm gonna let go of this cushiony job that actually provides me benefits and all this stuff, and I'm just now gon in on this Friday side gig.

Yeah. So this is kind of where it all shifted. So at my current job, there were several other PTs that had their own businesses, little side hustles. And I was like, okay, that's cool. I'm going to do kind of what they're doing too. There's been no issue with that. We don't have non competes. All of a sudden I show up to work and the CEO of the company's there. And he said, maddie, we're firing you for starting your own business. So at that point, I was like, freaking out. I had no patience. This was all just an idea. I had my lease signed.

So let's just pause there. I mean, that's a moment right there. Because you show up, it's a normal day. Okay. You're walking into work like, okay, here I'm Just gonna do the thing again, Right. And then all of a sudden you're blindsided, and then you're like, crap. So then that day, I'm assuming you had to leave that day, Is that correct?

Yeah. Yeah, I got walked out.

Oh, you got walked out. Okay, so she got walked out. Okay, then. What are you doing? Are we having a moment to cry? Are we having, like, what's happening?

Yeah, there were some tears. Of course. I could even cry right now, but I'll try not to. It's okay.

It's a moment.

I liked my coworkers a lot, so that was the hardest thing. And I felt really blindsided. So basically at that point, I was like, all right, I gotta find a new job. We need money. Our family depends on my income as well. I applied to four other PT jobs in the area on all the applications. The first, maybe not first, but one of the questions was, have you ever been terminated from a position? Right. Yeah. I didn't want to lie. I answered yes. And one of the applications, it was, like, automatically just came back and it was, like, rejected it. I'm the type of person that doesn't fail at things like all students, college sports, and I'm like, I can't even get a job in my profession. This is, like, really pretty, right? Wow. Wow.

Because they're not even asking, well, why? Why did this person get fired? Because they don't know the backstory. Yeah.

Yeah. So that was another turning point. So I was thinking then, okay, either I need to switch professions, maybe become a massage therapist, or just do something kind of random personal trainer or keep applying to jobs, or I can make this business work. So my husband and I, we looked at our, like, personal budget, and we're like, okay, we've got, like, a couple months that we can survive without your income before we gotta, like, move on with your parents or something like cloth diapers for the baby. Right. And so I. I was just. I don't know, I was forced to go all in. So that's kind of. Yeah.

Some people at this stage, they either decide to do have a side hustle and still work for someone else, or they're forced. And people could be forced in many different aspects. They can be forced because their current employer forces them. They could be forced because potentially their health.

That was me.

They could be forced because it truly is the only option. Because maybe they can't go and work somewhere else. Like, there. That just isn't an option.

Right.

So there's many different ways. And you decide, oh, you didn't decide. But you were forced into saying, okay, I have to start my business. This literally is the only option right now that you're seeing, because all the other people potentially could have just denied you because you've gotten let go from another job. So now you're forced. How many patients do you have on your schedule right now from your side hustle?

So I still had zero.

Okay.

I always have this philosophy, like, you can will yourself to win. So I was like, I'm going to have to will myself to win. I don't know if it's possible, but I do. I was thinking about the baby I had just had and, like, how I could support him. And anyway, getting emotional, but so I thought, all right, I'm gonna march into these doctor's offices, which if I would've had another job, I probably wouldn't have done, like. Cause that's really scary for me. I just marched in, gave him all my stuff. I was starting to set up meetings with doctors, starting to set up workshops. And another thing I started doing was posting really crazy, inappropriate reels on Facebook, Instagram, and just like, committing social suicide, going all out. Cause I was like, I don't care. I have to do this. Like, my family's gonna go down if I don't. And then finally, a girl from my church, she texted me and was like, hey, can you dry needle my neck? And I was like, yes. With first patients, I was like, oh, my gosh. And then after that, it just kind of snowballed. Like, I had her, she wrote a nice Google review, and the workshop stuff started to trickle. And yeah, like, slowly but surely, like, by month two, I had a couple patients. I was seeing maybe four a week.

So I wanna pause there because what you're saying is. And I find this a lot with entrepreneurs, the ones that are either forced to go all in or that decide to go all in, those typically are big winners because they just put everything on the line. And they may have had you. May. You were forced into it. It wasn't even an option for you.

You.

Right, but you just went in and you put every thing on the line and you said, there is no other freaking option. Like, this is it. And when you have that hyper focus that you had Maddie of I got to do this for my baby. I got to do this for my freaking relationship.

Right?

I got to do this. Like, no matter what, I'm going to make this work kind of mentality rather than. And you were still doubting yourself. It wasn't like you were not Doubting yourself. Right. But you were like, I don't care what it takes. I'm going to be so obnoxious online that you're going to get people's attention. We'll promote your social media at the end. But now, I mean, tell them you got a lot of followers right? On social media.

Yeah, yeah. Social media has been really, really big for the business. I know some people, it's not the case. It has worked really well for me though. Facebook and Instagram. I would be up late every night just like worrying and stressing and like studying other big pelvic pts. You know the big ones. The vagina whisper.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Why do some of these reels take off? Why do some of them not? And so I was trying a bunch of things and experimenting and I think I kind of figured out eventually, like what can make things take off and what doesn't. So that's been really big for bringing in patients and ad revenue and things like that too.

Yeah, that's awesome. So basically you just did the thing even though you were terrified. You went all in and you were like, okay, I'm gonna do whatever it takes. And you did some studying. But besides studying, this is the part that most people miss besides you guys studying and taking every, all the information in. Because she could, Maddie could have just stopped right there. But what she did instead was immediately took action and decided that, you know what, I'm gonna try to just do the own, my own versions of these videos and let's see if it takes off. And then it did, and then it didn't probably right away, but like over time, as she's studying and getting better and refining, now it's taking off.

Right.

So I think this is a really good lesson to. Even if it doesn't work at first, when you made that first post that you put out, I mean, I remember mine. I ordered a bedazzled screen behind me. I was in my 600 square foot apartment. I put pillows on the window so there wasn't like weird light coming to my head. I had full on makeup, I had a ring light, my hair was all done and I had, I couldn't even say my name. And I had one word. Hi, I'm Kelly Alhoi Pause. And that took me two hours to record. Like, I mean, don't you remember yours, Maddie? Like the first post?

Uh huh.

You're terrified.

I was terrified. Yeah. Still, every time I'm going to post a reel, I'm like, okay, I can't do this. I can't do this.

Click.

And then I'm like, posted it. Oh, boy. And then I keep looking. I'm like, okay, there's not a lot of negative comments for some, but, yeah, I have to kind of psych myself up every time.