Turning Your Pain Into Your Superpower

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'm gonna go over a very personal story that not even my best friends have heard. And it's something I was very ashamed of. And you'll hear the outcomes. So here we go. I wasn't born with a superpower. In fact, it was the complete opposite. When I was three, I stuck my head through a banister when I was playing with my sister Christine and I got stuck. I couldn't get my head out. I was trying to pull, pull, pulling my head out. And finally I got my head unstuck and I ripped my right ear. Completely off. Yes, completely off. I have a picture where I look like a football player because of all the gauze around my head, my ears. This led me to so many struggles that I could never have imagined. The first one being I had a 95% hearing loss in my right ear. It led me to also being labeled as learning disabled where I couldn't read, I couldn't write, I couldn't talk, and I couldn't hear. In elementary school, I was being pulled from the normal classroom to be put in this special class to get extra help with my reading and writing. It made me feel so less than all those other kids in that class. In addition, I would have to wear a hearing aid. And you know, back then, like, no one wanted to look different. You had to have like the same clothes as everyone to fit in. Like, no one wanted to look different. Well, I had this thing sticking out of my ear and every single time we'd have nap time in fifth grade on and we put our heads down on our desk. Second, I would get close to that desk. Beep. You hear this beep. Because my hearing aid making this noise. So I had to quickly pull out of my ear and put it in my desk. The struggles continued. In middle school, I was in the resource class with all the special kids. Now, this resource class was right across the hall from the main bathroom. And guess what? When the door would open to my class, people that were in line to the bathroom could see right into the classroom. Cause my desk was right there at the front door. So what I would do, I would throw my pen on the floor, lean over, stay there, and basically like falling down on my desk, stay there until our door closed so that no one could see I was in that classroom. And sometimes I would hang out there for like five minutes till that door closed. Now in high school, the rules changed. I was no longer in a separate classroom. I was now with the regular kids. I still had a learning disability and I was called upon like all the other kids were. So I remember sitting in class every single day worried about, is a teacher going to call on me to read out loud and can I actually perform? And I'd be thinking of every excuse, like, my throat hurts, I'm sick, like, I don't know if I can do this. And so it was like, so it was just like so stressful every single day being like, is someone going to call on me and can I actually perform or am I going to look so stupid in front of the class because I don't even know how to read out loud. It was horrible. In addition to that, I, like all my friends would go out and play sports and I was stuck inside with my tutors. And it just kept reminding me every single time that I'd go to my tutors that I was less than, than the rest of the normal kids. College came and undergrad and it was hard, but I was able to get through it. Then I had to take the GRE to get into PT school. Well, the GRE I took three times. I applied to over a dozen PT schools. Over a dozen. Guess what? I got rejected from every single one of those. Every single one. So I decided to take a year off. And in that year I was like, hey, why don't I get a job at LA Fitness? I can be a personal trainer. So I applied for a personal training job. The first day at LA Fitness, I walk in and they're like, oh yeah, this is a sales job to sell personal training packages. Well, I read the description wrong and I was like, wait, so now I'm a salesperson? I don't wanna be a salesperson. And my boss was one of those bosses that you're like, get me away from you, you know, as fast as possible. So I worked there at LA Fitness for eight hours and I said, I gotta go. Please don't even put me on payroll. Peace out. That's when I decided to hire a GRE tutor and study my freaking tail off like it was my, you know, like it was my full time job. I reapplied to a dozen of those PT schools again. And I took the GRE two more times. And by doing that, only one school accepted me. But I got accepted. Some of you know, I'm from Atlanta, Georgia, where the sun shines. Hotlanta, what they call it, like, it's amazing. But the one school that accepted me was in Nazareth College in Rochester, New York, the third snowiest city in the U.S. just FYI. They have the lake effect snow. They have underground tunnels that actually lead from building to building so that we didn't have to walk outside. That's how snowy this place is. And in fact, I remember calling my mom, being like, I can't do it. It's too snowy. I can't do this. There's so much stress. I just can't do it. I don't know if I'm gonna make it. And that's where I met my husband. His name's Nader. Yes, Nader. Took me about a year to pronounce his name correctly. Him and I would go to the computer lab at 5 o' clock in the morning and we would study together. He helped me get through PT school because he come with me and just sit there and like figure out like how I learned best and would, you know, help kind of coach me on how I was going to pass this test. And the last day of PT school came. I remember this. The financial aid lady came in. We're all sitting in this classroom, she gives us all these envelopes and everyone opens them up. We all look and I'm like, holy crap. I have $200,000 in student loan debt. $200,000. And I look over at my husband's thing and he says, over $100,000 together. We are going to graduate the next day with over $300,000 in student loan debt. That's how we started our life together. The next day came, we graduated, we did it. You think it would feel amazing. Well, there was this cloud over our head. It was called the boards. The boards. We had to take two weeks after we graduated, we took the boards and I didn't pass. I failed. So now I worked so hard to get through all this schooling to make this moment come true and I failed. I didn't know what I was going to do. I was bawling My eyes out at my parents house at this point, bawling. So I said, all right, I got to pull it together. I've got to get a tutor and get a tutor to study for the boards. So I studied like it was my frigging job from 6:00am in the morning to like 9:00 clock at night for two months straight. I just didn't leave my house. I went crazy. I was just studying, studying, studying. I said I'm going to pass this, I'm going to do this. Took the boards again and I passed. So now I'm living the dream. Yeah, right. That's a bunch of bs. Okay, so now we move back to, we moved to Atlanta, Georgia. Okay. And there I had four jobs all at the same time. I worked at an outpatient orthopedic place, I worked on movie sets, I taught pilates and I was a personal trainer. And after about four to five years of doing that, I got so burnt out my husband and I decided to move to Portland, Oregon with one bag each. So we decided to sell everything, move to Portland. And there I had two jobs at the same time. I worked for a skilled nursing facility and I also worked for an outpatient orthopedic doing pelvic health. And I remember on the holidays I'd be sitting in a car, my car, at, at work and talking to my family and so jealous that they were back home during the holidays, getting together, being able to laugh and talk. But I couldn't go back there because I couldn't afford it. And instead I'm getting yelled at by this 80 year old that doesn't want me to get her out of bed. So we got tired of Portland after two years and decided to move to sunny, sunny Southern California. Southern California. It was amazing. I worked at a cash based clinic. I liked my boss, we loved California. It was just, it was a dream come true. I had everything I wanted. But then we found out my husband's dad got sick and we had to move to Virginia, where my husband is originally from Virginia, my least favorite place. Finally found a job in California that I loved and I had to move to Virginia to help support my husband and his family. I went back to working at an insurance based clinic that was owned by physicians where notes were more important than patient care. Also at this time my health was failing because this was a very hard move for me. In addition to that, my dad was diagnosed with cancer, metastatic cancer. And I asked my job, can I take off to go see my dad. They told me no. Yeah, they Told me no. So that night, I went home and I started researching. I said, there's gotta be a different way. After eight or nine years of doing this crap, I've worked all over the US like, it doesn't change no matter where I freaking move. So there's gotta be something that's gotta be different out there. And lo and behold, I'm searching on Facebook and Smart success healthcare event came up. They were dressed to like the nines, and that's what me attracted me to them. And I was like, greg, Greg Todd. Who is this guy? Oh, let me start taking his programs. So I started investing in his program. That was January 2020. By March 2020, I completely quit my job and I started ortho pelvic physical therapy. I had no entrepreneurship experience. I had no business plan, no revenue stream, no patience, no money. Had $800 in my bank account, and I was $200,000 in student loan debt. But you know what I did have? I had a guide that was guiding me, and I knew I could outwork anyone. So I decided to jump fully into my business. I was willing to live in a 10. At that point, I didn't care. I needed my health back. I needed to go visit my family, and I needed to just take control of my life. At that point, I started from scratch. I started going to people's homes. I started standing on trailheads. If those of you that don't know what a trailhead is, it's like where people would go running, and I would stand there where they would come to and from that trail, and I would stand and yell at them and then say, hey, you want to go to the parking lot? And I'm going to do a movement assessment on you running. That way you can improve your running or decrease your pain or whatever you may be feeling right now. And I started getting clients from that. I started teaching Pilates just to my community. And every single day, I would stream it live so that Facebook and everyone on Facebook would see that this is what I'm doing. I wouldn't charge for it. I then would ask my current patients to refer me, other patients, and they started doing that. They started becoming my marketers. So within one month, by April 2020, I was able to replace my income, see 30 patients, and make 8K by August 2020. Four months in, I saw a hundred patients. It was making $20,000 a month. And at this point, I was getting too busy to be mobile now. And that I decided to turn literally one of my rooms in my house into an office. And I'd have people walk through my one car garage, through my kitchen, up my stairs, my and go to another bedroom where my office was. By September 2020, I got office space. It was in the basement. We had no windows, we had no running water stains all over the carpet. But I made it work, said I'm gonna make this work. We had cheap rent, but I had now had a space and I got my time back and that was huge for me. By July 2021, 15 months in, we had 290 patients and I was at $65,000 in revenue. @ this point, I was able to pull out of clinic and start Pelvibiz where I help coach pelvic health therapists be able to start and grow their businesses. In addition to that, I was able to pay off all my student loan debt. All my student loan debt guys. In just a year of me working, compared to it took me eight years to just pay 50k in student loans. Crazy. By July 2022, 27 months in, I was seeing 390 patients a month and we were making 80k a month. 80k a month. And at this point, instead of renting my building, I decided to buy it. By May 2023, 37 months in, we were seeing 500 patients a month, making $115,000 a month. And a couple months before this, I took a month long vacation with my husband to our favorite place. In addition to that, I have helped over 80 plus pelvic health therapists start and grow their practice through the pelvibiz movement so that they can live the life of their dreams. And by doing that, I get to live the life of mine. Coaching these women has been so inspiring to me. It's been such a thing that filled my cup, fills my soul. I talk to these women every single day. They are my people. And I just want to continue to grow the Pelvibiz mission so that people know that there's help out there and they don't need to keep struggling with student loans and debt and not having time with their family and not doing the things that they want to do. You can have so much more and every single one of you guys listening to this podcast 100% deserves that. And you got to learn how to take your pain that you were experiencing throughout your childhood and turn it into a superpower. 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.