What Phase of Business Are You In? An In-Depth Look at The PelviBiz Pyramid

Welcome to pelibiz 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. Today I'm going to talk about all the phases in business, whether or not you're an ot. Pt, pta. This is for you. I think this is gonna be a really good one on teaching you guys that there's so many different phases in business and you gotta make sure you're hitting the mark. And then once you hit the mark, that there's always gonna be a new set of problems. So when it comes to learning and growing, we cannot treat this like a course. This is not a course. This is not a course. You've got to learn to get tools and use those tools to then be able to move you up. I call it the pelvis ladder. Okay? The pelvis ladder. So that you can get the time back that you want, the money that you want, the whatever the heck you want in your life. If you move all the way up on the pelly biz ladder to. I call it supreme panura. You get what you want. I'm going to teach you today different phases that you've got to go through to get to the top. So here we go. Let's dive in. So number one is a wannabe newer wannabe is someone that you're at your job. You're absolutely burnt out. You hate it. They're making you do all the notes at night, okay? And you're like, there's gotta be a different way. Maybe you're working four jobs. That's what that was me, okay? And you're over it. And you're like, there's gotta be a different way. That is a wannabe renewer. You are thinking about taking the leap, but you just are stuck. Cause you just don't know how to do it. You're making $0 a month in your business and you have zero patience, okay? This phase is when people think that they need to do an llc. It's a hundred percent not true, okay? Llc, bank accounts, all that stuff comes later, guys. It really does. What you really want is to just. What are people's problems? This is where you need to study. If you are a wannabe new or listening to this and anyone really, you know, even if you're a solopreneur, premium or whatever you are, you need to. You need to study. You gotta study your audience. What do they want? So when I'm a wannabe, what I'm doing is figuring out what are people's big problems, and then do I have the solution to solve those problems. So in this phase, I'm getting my big 45 list together. For those that have heard me talk about that before, if you don't know, just DM me. I'll send you something over. But big 45 list, I'm getting together. I'm figuring out who in my neighborhood is going to be the people that I'm going to help. That's what you gotta do when you're a wannabe preneur. You cannot wait to quit your job, and then you gotta figure this all out. No, now is the time. If you're thinking about it, you've got to get started on who the heck is your audience and who are you serving. That's number one. Okay. Second phase is a. I call it a pelvic paneur. So a pelvic preneur is someone that has a side hustle. Maybe you quit your job, maybe you kind of working at a skilled nursing facility, and you're also doing your. Your side hustle. Like, maybe you can quit your job completely at this phase, and you still are struggling because you only got one patient. You got zero patients. That is a pelvic paneur. This is the phase where you are in the hustle. This is the grind. You're trying to talk to everyone. You're trying to sell whatever you can. You being, you might be making, you know, $1,000 up to $6,000. In this phase, you may be seeing one patient. You may be seeing seven patients a week. In this phase, that's called a pelvic paneur. And I personally, in this phase, I like to tell people to go all in and. Or they can, like, quit their job completely. That's what I mean by that. And just like, go all into your business. Because what I've seen from people, the faster that they can go all in, the more that their business is going to succeed, the more someone kind of just dabbles in, like, maybe I'll have this side hustle because they're afraid. I get it. It's scary, okay? And they're like, hey, I'll have this side hustle over here doing. Or I'll work with a skilled nursing facility or home health, and then I'll do my side hustle. Those people take a little bit longer, and there's a little bit More mistakes being made because they're just not ready yet and they don't trust themselves. And that just comes with confidence. Confident. Saying confidence or pain? In this phase, as a pelvic preneur, if you got a lot of pain, those people move quickly, okay? Because they want to try to get out of the pain. This, it's a sucky phase to be in because you're a hustler and you're doing everything, trying to make whatever work and know as many people's problems as possible. This is also the phase where now, potentially, you can start looking at getting a bank account, where now, potentially, you can start to look at an llc. But really, guys, and your accountants will tell you this, at least mine did when I quit. When I quit my job completely and I worked for someone else for like three months of that year, my business, my real business, orthopelvic, was considered as a hobby. That's literally how we filed for taxes. It was a hobby because I wasn't making much money in it. And where I worked before, I was making more money. So unless your business is making more money, okay. Than where you previous previously worked, it is not a business yet. It's called a hobby. Okay? So there is no. I mean, yes, bank accounts you want to keep separate, but as a business starts to grow, accountants can figure out how to help differentiate that. But it's not something that's a must. In this phase, again, you got to study your audience. It is marketing, marketing, marketing. And marketing involves research. So I'm going to Google. I'm searching everywhere in my area that may have my audience. I'm going to YouTube. I'm searching everywhere in my area that may have my audience. I'm going to Instagram and looking at Instagram places and looking at who is in my area that potentially I could partner with. That's this phase as pelvic preneur, you've got to study the market and see who's out there, what problems they have. All right, next phase. Phase number three is a solopreneur. That's what I call it, a solopreneur. In this phase, this is when you just need profit. You are by yourself. You're not working at the skilled nursing facility anymore, and it is all you at this point. Many practice owners stay here, and I think it's a mistake, and I'm probably going to get hate for it, but I think it's a mistake. Many practice owners think I made it. I have a business. No, you actually don't have a business. You now just created another job for yourself that you are in completely. You can't take a vacation. You can't get sick. You can't. You can't. If your kids are, you know, something's happened to them, you can't just all of a sudden up and leave. You just created another job because you don't have a replacement. No one in this space is helping you out. It's just you. So it's. It's high stakes here because by this point, you're typically really worn down. Your energy is, you know, you're pretty, pretty exhausted because not only are you treating patients, you are now running the front desk and calling patients back. You are now trying to run the whole business and think about how you're gonna get more patients. You're trying to do all the marketing, all the sales, everything. In this phase, you are doing it all. Oh, yeah. And trying to, like, live life and keep yourself healthy so that you can continue to do this. But there's really no vacations in this space because you take off. There goes your company. There's also, like, maternity leave. It's you. It's. If you don't have someone to. To replace you, then how is your business going to run? You're going to shut down? And then what? We're going to start all the way back to wannabe renewer, and then we had to build it back up again? No, no, no, no, no, no. There's a better way. There's a better, better way to do it. So I try to get out of solopreneur phase as quickly as possible. And trust me, guys, it took me over a year to hire people because I was so afraid. I was making $30,000 a month by myself. I had no help, and I just. Because I never was able to pay myself. I was never able to pay myself before this, before my. Before my. Before I started orthopelvic. And. And I've learned that you've got to hire people to help you faster than you can hire people to help you. Even though I get it. It's scary. I know. It's so scary. But the faster that you just say, you know what? I'm gonna let go and hire someone to help me. Oh, my gosh. It makes a world of a difference whether or not that's admin, whether or not that's a pt, and we'll get to that. That's the next phase. But still, we're in solopreneur phase, and this is still the grind. You are hustling. And you are at the peak of exhaustion. And in this phase, you may be seeing 8 patients to 20 patients a week. You may be making anywhere between 7k and like 19k a month as a solopreneur, depending on, you know, what you want, what your caseload is. But you're not taking any vacations. You're not really taking time for yourself. And that's the sucky thing about solo preneurship. It's not going to be sustainable for long term. And you can do it. People that had parents that were entrepreneurs, they did this and they just thought this is the only way, but that's not the case. So here we go. The next phase is premium peneur. I like this phase. Premium is when you can start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Okay. This is where you start to get an admin on board. And then pretty soon after that, maybe a week later, or maybe together, you hire a PT or a PTA or an OT to get them on board. Okay. So you start to build your team. This is when potentially you're gonna need new space because your team's growing. So then where are you gonna put these people? So you gotta figure that out. This is also when this is a big step, trying to decrease your patient load. It is very hard for people to do this because they believe that all the patients just want to see them and that they're the only ones that can treat. And that's just not the case at this phase. You have to really learn how to let go and start to teach other people the systems that you have that they can just replicate. But you got to teach them that. And this is where you change from everything and anything we've ever known, which is like manual do exercises. You're the one doing it. Like, you just keep doing the thing like you are it to then, no, I can actually teach someone this skill and they can do it and I can be the brains behind it. That is something that's really hard for people to get. And that's why most people get stuck at the solopreneur phase and they stay there and they think they've made it, and they have not made it whatsoever because they've now just created another job. So in premiumpreneur, which is a step above solopreneur, okay, you're building out your team. You're going to decrease your patient load maybe completely, maybe just a little bit. Okay. I would say 20 to maybe 30k a month. You're making and you're seeing about 20 to 40 patients a week. Okay, 20 to 40 patients a week. You're seeing here because you have a team now on board. This is when you've gotta change up your tactics and start becoming a leader. Sometimes this is very hard for people to lead. You have to create systems, you have to put rules into place because you're like, people would never do that ever. No. And then you're like, crap, I gotta be fair, I gotta be. I have to have rules. You got to know the laws of your state. I mean it's a whole thing. I'm making it sound scary, but honestly it's the best thing. You've got to hire, hire, hire as quickly as possible. Your goal, anyone that's listening to this is get to premium status as fast as you possibly can so that you can get your actual time back and you can actually run the business and start making it become a true business that operates without you. It's really key. And then I always say the last phase here is supreme. This is when every single person on my staff, we have backup on top of backup on top of backup. My manager's backup is my two admins. My admins backup is potentially a PT if I really need them. That's like third string, okay? Like we're on a football team here. My managers, if she needs me, then potentially I can help her out. That's how that works. My pts backup is other part time pts. Those are their backups. So every system that I have in place has another backup. I have a system for everything and it runs very well. Except when I was away I learned that I didn't have a system for who's training the pts. And I have another PT coming in to help train my pts. So again it takes me out of the equation because I have to think, I have to move the company forward. I have to think about what's the next step of the company. And it takes too much of my time to get in there and train and train and train. When you could hire someone to help train and you then can keep moving the business forward. Because the second that I put myself into my clinic, my business slows down. It will slow down orthopelvic and no one in that company then's growing because I can't think to say what's the next step and what's the next move that we're all going to make and lead, keep leading. The mission forward is to help more pelvic floors in Northern Virginia and like move that mission forward and get Pelvic health out there here, it's a little stiff. So we gotta get that mission and people to know that, like, we can treat your pelvic floor. And it's a big issue, you know, and when you're at Supreme Canur. Okay, okay. This is life changing right here. Something that you've never even dreamed of. And some of you that are listening right now could never even probably fathom that. Okay? But it can so happen if you're just willing to follow the pelvis ladder and take the steps to get you to the top. At this point, you're seeing anywhere between 40 to 100 patients a week. And this is again, where your skill set is. You're not treating patients at this point. This point. You are completely removed from your clinic and the fact that, like, patient care and, you know, you could be anywhere having the clinic run. So there's just, again, there's different levels to this. But if you are doing that, then you gotta make sure that everything has backup on top of backup. You got systems on top of systems. Hope everyone, hopefully everyone realizes when I say systems, system is something that you could tomorrow pull in a new person, and they follow the system and they follow step 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And they can just do the thing that gives you confidence that if someone wants to go, if someone wants to come, if someone. Whatever happens, whatever change happens, it gives you confidence to easily be able to say, okay, I'm gonna move this person into this position. Because these are the systems. They gotta just follow the system. It's. And everything, it's more trainable and it's more. The wheel keeps going instead of us going to a screeching halt because we have one person that now has significantly messed up the whole equation. You don't want that. That's a business that. That's very unstable, and you want a very stable business when you're a supreme. And I have to say this, what makes me different compared to any other of the business coaches, especially in the pelvic health world. I'm literally the only one not seeing clients in clinic. And my office is at my home. So I am able to have systems and allow my team to handle the systems and me be able to think about what are the next moves for the clinic so that we can all grow together. And when you do that, then everyone's happy because you are able to give the people what you want. But the second that you just say, you know what, I'm done. I'm just gonna hang out, not do anything. Well, everyone's gonna die then, including your company. I mean, for real. So, you know. You ever heard the term, like, growing or dying? It's so true. If you're not growing, then things start to. To not progress. People start to, like, not get motivated. Cause they're like, there's no growth to be had. They're doing the same thing over again. They don't get it. Like, it's just not good. So you always need to be in the growth mindset. And if you're staying as a solopreneur, where it's just you doing all the hustle and, and not hiring all the things, I mean, you're just going to be so worn out, you're not going to make it. And you're going to say, what's. What's the point? Why am I doing this? So I encourage all you guys to think bigger. You think really, really, really big. Like, really today. If you're listening to say what you want, what is it like? I want to have 40 hours a week off of work. Great. Every single week. Fabulous means pretty much you're not working. Okay, cool. You could do that. I want to have this house here. Great. You could have that house there. You really, really can. I truly believe it. Okay. And I need you guys then to also go experience that so that you can dream big enough. So what motivates me personally to like, get up this ladder and keep climbing the ladder and go to the different phases, because this is hard stuff. It's not easy. What motivates me personally is I literally go and live or try to live or pretend that I'm living okay in things that I want. So most of you know, I want a house in California. I can't buy a house right now in California. But instead of me going and buying the house. Cause I can't. Then what am I going to do? I'm going to go on vacation there for a day. I'm going to go on vacation there for three days, and then I'm going to go on vacation there for a month. I'm then going to go on vacation there for three months. And this is true story, by the way. Okay, I'm not lying about this. Is that this is how you start to see and experience. Just get a little taste of it. What would it be like if I lived here? What would it be like if I had four hours off work every week? What would it be like if two days a week I had completely to myself start to experience that? What would it be like if I wanted to live on the ocean every single day. What would it be like? Go out and rent a boat on a lake. Drive like, I don't know, three hours away. Go find a lake, rent a. A kayak. Okay. For like, five bucks. Okay. And go sit on the lake. Honestly, I'm not kidding. Go sit on the lake and see how you like it. And if you like it, then make that what's going to drive you to get to the top of the pyramid. And that canoe or kayak could then potentially become, maybe it's a jet ski. And then the jet ski can maybe become a ship or maybe a pontoon boat. Maybe the pontoon boat now becomes a yacht. So go and experience that. But whatever it is, you've got to have a taste of it. Otherwise, when these hard days come. Cause they will in business, you're gonna be like, what's the point? What's the freaking point? And those moments of you looking back, remembering, man, you know how amazing I felt and just at peace when I was in my canoe on that water, that's gonna help get you through. Remember how amazing it was hanging out with my kids because I could take them to Disney World? That's gonna push you and get you through. So those are the things that help drive you up this ladder. And the latter is the foundation of the different steps that you're gonna have to go through in business. And some of them are painful, some of them are amazing. But you gotta hit every single one to get you guys to what. What you truly want, which is money, time, freedom, flexibility. Hey, if you have kids, hanging out with your kids and doing whatever the heck you want. So hopefully that helps break it down a little bit. But that's the pelvis ladder. Let me know if you need anything, 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.