Turn Your Side Hustle Into a Full-Time Job
20 Nov 2025 · 1 min
Dr. Kelly Alhooie (host, founder of Orthopelvic Physical Therapy and Pelvi Biz) presents a single-episode podcast aimed at pelvic health PTs/OTs on how to turn a side hustle into a full-time practice. She outlines two primary paths: (1) an all-in cold-turkey quit (her own experience) and (2) a gradual part-time transition, and emphasizes action and mindset over perfection. She gives concrete operational targets (monthly income needed, patient volume, pricing, and marketing "big 45" checklist), clinic/logistics options (mobile vs rented room), and typical timelines (1–4 months to replace income depending on effort). Episode mixes tactical steps with personal stories to motivate listeners to plan and act.
Questions this episode answers
$800
$4,000–$5,000 per month
About 5–7 patients per week (variable by goal)
$200 per visit (recommended average)
15 doctors, 15 gyms, and 15 Facebook groups (the "big 45" list)
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 Orthopelvic 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 pelvibiz. Now let's get into today's episode.
What's up guys? Welcome to Pelle Biz Podcast. I'm your host Kelli Elhuey. Today we're going to talk about how to go from side hustle to jumping in full time to your own practice. Many of you guys have thought about starting your own practice and really haven't made that jump yet or you kind of dabbled in it, but you don't really have a steady stream of patience coming in the door. So today I'm going to tell you how you can make that job and it's not as hard and scary as you think. So let's start out with how to first make that jump. So there's two different options. Typically that people do, they either jump full time right into their business and just cold turkey quit their job. If you're one of those people and you're like, look, I'm just going to go for it, by the way, that was me, okay? I quit my job. I only had $800 in my bank account within one month. It put pressure on me that I wanted to make my income within one month and I was able to do that. So you may be that kind of person. If you're that kind of person, typically what I would do is recommend if you're like an all in or nothing kind of person, then I would recommend what do you need? It's very important. What do you need to then be making to be able to last you one month? So in most people's cases that I talk to, it's around 4k to pay off student loans, to pay a mortgage, to have a Car, kids, whatever, about 4 to 5k a month that typically people need to live on. So then you have to ask yourself, okay, if I need four or five thousand dollars a month to live on, then what then is my target goal of patients that I need coming in the door a week? So typically it's going to be around five to seven patients a week that you're going to need coming in the door to be able to replace your income at work. Okay. And again, depending on your goal. So you want to know that. So that's very important so that you're like, oh, okay, I can plan to make this drop because it's just five to seven patients, which doesn't sound like a lot because we're so used to just seeing five to seven patients a day in one day. But it can take a second to build up. It doesn't have to take long. Some people are like rocket ships and they just go. And other people kind of drag their feet because they're scared. And it's harder for them to kind of go and do the uncomfortable thing. So, you know, it could take anywhere between a month to replace their income up to three to four months. It's just again, it's all based on if the person is willing to take action. That is the biggest thing I have to say when it comes to diving into your business. You can have all the skills, you can have all the tools that you need, but are you willing to just go and try the thing? Most people will ask questions, take every course possible, try to make the thing perfect before they go do the thing. But if you're one of those people, and typically the all in people are those people that just go and like, just try the thing and then ask questions to a mentor later or then go and take a course later. Like, those are the people that are going to make it. Because those people just try and they have the motivation to just go and just give it their all. And if it doesn't work, then I'm like, okay, how can I pivot? What can I do next? What can be different? So that's very, very important. On the flip side, you may be the person that is like, you know what, I'm going to kind of dabble in this. I'm going to actually get a part time job and then I'll slowly start building my clientele. Well, that's great. And you can do it that way. Just know that it may take you longer and you may be okay with that. That may be okay too. I just know that If a stage is painful, which the beginning phases of business are painful, and hiring phase, the very first one, not after that, but the very first one is painful because you just don't have systems in place. You don't know what's going on. You don't know what to expect. So those, to me, are the two most painful things in business is starting the business and then hiring, because you're just so scared. It's. It's literally hiring is like quitting your job all over again. It's that scary. So, you know, most people are afraid of that, but you know, at some point you got to rip the band aid off and just, just go for it. So if you're the part time person, okay, if you are the part time person, you want to dabble in this. Okay, great. So let's plan out how many hours you want to work at the part time place. Is it 20 hours? Is it 15 hours? And then how much time do you think you want to allot towards your business? I will say this, the more time that you can actually put into your own business, the faster your business will grow and the quicker you will get out of that stage. It's just facts. So then I'm assessing. What do I have in savings? Do I have anything? For me, I didn't have anything. I just literally had $800 in my bank account. That was it. And I had no backup plan. Well, my backup plan was to live in a tent. Literally, this was it. Because my health was failing. And because of my health, I had really bad health because I was working two jobs just to try to make ends meet before I became an entrepreneur. But because of my bad health, that's what actually forced me into entrepreneurship. So I'm actually very thankful that my health was a driving factor that I realized if I continue to work this job 40 hours a week. Okay, 40 hours a week. And this is the first time I only had one job after a decade of working, okay, I continued that way. I literally will croak or I get cancer or something. I could felt, I felt it coming on. I could literally not move out of my bed. Took me an hour to move out of my bed in the morning. It was horrible. It was really, really horrible. I never want to go back to that phase again. So I knew I had to make a change. And at that point, we just bought a house. Like two months later or two months before that. I was like, I'm gonna give this all up. I don't care. I'd rather live in a tent and be free and not have all this stress of them trying to make me do the notes, treat the way I don't want to treat and all the things. It just felt morally not right to me. My body was just dead. I'd rather like be living in a tent with, you know, no one to. That's like jumping down my throat to do these notes than to have these people tell me what to do and like, say, I have to do it this way. And that's the only way. I just didn't believe in it. And I don't like to do things that I just don't believe in. Whatever I do, I'm 100% committed to because I 100% believe in it. So, you know, if that's you and you're like, look, I hate when they're trying to force these notes down, like, you know, down my throat or I hate that, like, you know, especially in pelvic health, they try to tell us in an orthopedic setting how we should treat and then they force our patients onto these aids. These aides have no clue what to do with a pelvic health client. They like work them out times 10 and then they're all flared like they don't know. So that was a big sticking point for me. And so I just couldn't, I felt like, couldn't do. What I was built to do was to make these patients have amazing outcomes. And that bothered me. That bothered me a lot. And because of that, probably what's affecting my health, because it just like I went home every night thinking, wow, I could do so much better. I knew I could, and they weren't letting me. So then I made the decision and that's when I made the jump. But if you're, if you're, let's go back to the part time. Okay. If you're the part time person that's dabbling, then typically you're the person that wants kind of all your ducks in a row. I'm just generalizing just from people I've coached. Okay, you, you, you want all your ducks in a row type thing. And a lot of times you don't have to have all your ducks in a row. The biggest thing that you need to go in from a side hustle to a full time is number one, you have to know a target. So you have to know, do I need seven patients a week? Do I need eight patients a week? You need to know how much you're going to charge. Typically, I would recommend $200 a visit that's average across the whole entire United States. You need your big 45 list. I talked about this a lot. But you need 15 doctors on your list, 15 gyms on your list, and 15 Facebook groups on your list that you're actually going to be getting clients from. You need to know what your target marketing strategy is. So are you going to be talking to bikers that have pudendal neuralgia? Is that your, is that your population trail people? Is your main population pregnancy or postpartum? What is it? And then where do those people actually hang out and how are you going to target those people? So is your saying going to say we help treat pregnancy and beyond in active. In active women type thing like you really want to be very specified. So for us at Orthopelvic, we help men and women get rid of bladder leakage, hip pain, low back pain to return back to activities they love. And then a lot of times we're promoting leakage with CrossFit or, you know, decreased leakage with CrossFit, because that's our target population is crossfitters that have leakage. So that's how micro niche you want to be to be able to target the population that you feel works best for you and that you like treating. Then you got to figure out are you going to be mobile or are you going to rent out a small room? You can rent out from a massage therapist, you can rent out from a salon, you can rent out from a chiropractor, you can rent out from an esthetician. There are so many just random rooms that you can actually rent out. And typically that price point is going to be anywhere between 200 to $400 a month for that room rental. And you know, you can have patients come see you in that spot, or you can decide to save that money and be mobile. But just know that you're gonna be giving up more of your time if you're mobile. So that's just something to consider, you know. So those are the main things and then just the little stuff. What EMR system are you gonna have that? How are you gonna get people to pay? You can also just do straight up Venmo. That's free. There's no charges to that. So, so how is that set up? And if you guys want, you can always DM me. There's always my email below. And I have a whole get started with your business in two days and beyond. So literally within two days you can start seeing patients super easy. It's like a checklist. And you Just bam, bam, bam, check all the things and you get started and you start your business. That's literally it. We don't have to overcomplicate stuff. Do not overcomplicate it. It's easier than you think. You just gotta know how to market and get leads coming in to be able to grow your practice. So those are the biggest things, going from a side hustle to full time. And at some point you're just gonna have to decide when you start getting seven patients or five patients a week. Okay, now, is it still worth having this part time job over here and is that actually slowing me down? And the answer typically is yes, even if you don't realize it at the time, because that 20 hours that you're working at the PRN job is 20 hours that you could be out marketing, you could be doing events, you could be talking to people online. And that's actually a distraction to, to get you to go full time into your business. So that's when you have to weigh the pros and cons of is this worth it? And that's why some people will just dive in head first so that they can fully focus on their business and just go all in and be like, okay, game on, I'm doing this. That's what you know, that is something to think about. What do I want? What does full time even mean for me? Full time for some people means seeing eight patients a week. That's full time for them. Sometimes for some people, full time means seeing 15 to 20 patients a week. Sometimes for crazy people like me, full time meant I was seeing almost 50 patients a week. I got up to for months. That's two PT's caseloads or OT's caseloads or PTAs. Gets a little like, that's insane. Don't do that. By the way. It just depends on what you feel is right for you. And then you also want to look at, okay, if I see this many patients, am I satisfied with that? Am I satisfied with the salary that I'm getting? Am I satisfied with the, with the time that I have with myself, my family? Like, what? What do I want? So I build everything around what do I want? And you gotta start there. Otherwise you're just gonna kind of like go along with wherever the business goes. And that may not lead you to happiness of actually what you want. It may lead to sometimes resentment because you're going down this path and you don't really know what you want. And then you find yourself like, oh my gosh, now I have this crazy thing and I don't have time for myself and you're resentful. So that's another thing to think about. Build the business around what you want. Don't let the business take over and be the driving force. You, you be the driving force of what you want and where your energy wants to go and then you build the business to fit what you want. Oh, that's massive. That's so massive. Don't let it over, you know, drive you. You drive it. You be in control and you say what you want and then you'll get it. You just got to be really honest about what you want and that's how you go from side hustle to full time and you just keep dreaming, keep going up and up from there.
If you are ready to change your life, click the link in the show notes to get your ticket to Pelvi Biz.
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