Dr. Kelly Alhooie (Pelvibiz Podcast) describes her transition away from 'hustle' culture after years of overwork. She recounts holding multiple jobs (at one point four roles), extreme clinic schedules (up to ~50 patients/week), and long-term health consequences she attributes to chronic overwork. She urges pelvic health professionals to shift from one-to-one treatment toward one-to-many approaches (podcasting, social media, events, hiring/visionary roles), adopt self-care routines (e.g., no phone before late morning, walking), and design sustainable practices. Episode closes with a coaching CTA and booking link in episode notes.
Questions this episode answers
April 8, 2023.
Four (personal trainer, Pilates instructor, concierge for movie stars, clinical director for an outpatient orthopedic clinic).
About 50 patients per week.
About 1,300 people online (host's estimate).
Not touching her phone before 11:00 AM and doing a walk first.
Chapters
Welcome to pelviz 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 we're going to talk about why I stopped hustling. I used to be known as the queen of hustlers. And for those people that are listening who used to hustle, is that you? More than likely, if you are a pelvic health therapist, you are probably a hustler at one point in time. That's just kind of. Typically we're type A. Not always, but typically we're type A. We like to do the thing, we like to be good at it. So those people tend to be the hustlers. So you're probably thinking, kelly, what the heck is a hustler? If you don't know, Hustler is someone that just thinks that they need to fill their schedule and do more, more, more. Because the hustle is like the game that they have to win. So for me, those that don't know me that well, I create games in my head. I play games. I don't know. It makes me excited to play games. I love playing games. So for me, the hustle game was how much can I actually fill my schedule? And the more that I filled my schedule, the happier I thought it made me because, wow, look at how productive I am today. And then you see my schedule from 6 o' clock in the morning filled all the way until 8:00 clock at night. And this is not a joke. I first started the hustle game when I came out of grad school and I had all the student loan debt and I realized that I wasn't going to get paid that much. So I picked up one job, an extra job besides my main one. And then I said, you know what? I still not making enough to pay off my student loan, so I need to pick up another one. And then I picked up another one. Okay, so I had four jobs at one point in time. I was a personal trainer, I was a pilates instructor, I did concierge for movie stars. And I also was a clinical director for a outpatient orthopedic clinic. Okay, I did it all. And I was working from, like I said, seven until sometimes three in the morning when I was on movie sets. So that's the hustler right there. That's someone that is very Determined to get what they want, willing to do anything and everything to get there. Now what I've realized, being a hustler started to impact my health way back when, even before I knew it. And I didn't know that at the time, but because of that, I feel like that has now led to my current health issues and all my autoimmune issues because of how much I was in go, go, go, go mode. And I just thought that that's just like how we have to live the rest of our lives. Because this is what you have to do to make ends meet. Being a PT or you guys an ot, pt, whoever you are out there, you know, like, that's just what I thought I had to do because no one taught me how to do anything else except the system taught me how to put my hands on people, see patients for one hour in the outpatient orthopedic place, see people for 15 minutes, and then next person, next person, next person. That's the hustle mode too. So all I was trained was in hustle mode. My parents both were hustlers. So where do you think I got my training? My mom, she was a hustler. She had four jobs too. So, you know, that's just something that you don't really realize until you, you start seeing the repercussions of it later on in life where you're like, oh, maybe I shouldn't have done that, because now it's truly impacting my health. It will impact your health, it will impact your relationships because you don't have time for anyone. It will impact your social life, it'll impact your spouse's life, because all you're doing is hustling. And you get to a point where you're like, you know what I have to ask myself, is this really worth it? Is this worth it? Is it worth it to hustle and have four jobs to have? You know? You know, at that point, I kind of still had energy. I mean, I was kind of psycho, so I kind of still had energy. But is it worth it to now I feel accomplished because I'm now able to pay my $2,000 a month student loan bill and I was able to live in this apartment that had mold everywhere in it, but I was able to live in it, you know, and I think it was at the lower price point. But still I felt like, hey, I've accomplished something. Like I have my freedom. I'm not living in my parents basement. And you know, I have jobs and I feel good, right? But here's the whole, the cold hard truth here, okay? You have to learn to work smarter and not harder. Let me say that again. You have to learn to work smarter and not harder. What I mean by that is you have to learn to not treat one on one. So, so we have to like rewire the brain. Because how we've been taught is just treat one on one and you get money for that. You get money for that service. But what I need you guys to realize and start to think about, for those that are listening to this podcast right now, I want you to think about what is something that I can do that's not going to impact just one person for an hour, that's going to impact a hundred people for the hour. What is something? So for me, I'll give you some examples here. Some examples would be a podcast like Pelvibiz Podcast. We even have our own podcast for orthopelvic called Collaborative Connections where we're connecting everyone in the community. Okay. That's what I do very well, is connect people. So what we wanted to do is get our word out and spread one to many. So people that listen to that one to many. Another one is hiring. You can hire someone that can treat one on one. Okay, you can hire someone to treat one on one, but you can be not treating or treat very little and then be able to do. I call it visionary task where you're the one that's thinking, you're planning, you're developing, you're leading. Like those are the higher level tasks rather than the one to one and you just get paid for that. So that's another thing that you can do. One more that I like to do is events. Whether or not that's online events or in person events. What kind of events can you put on? Like we did a be well Women summit where we had all 40 locally owned women owned businesses and we got them together online. We had over a thousand something people online. I think it was like 1,300 and something online for our summit to promote locally women owned businesses in our area. It was freaking epic. We had goodie bags and everything. If you're like, look, online's on my thing, I hear you. Then you can do an in person event. How can you do that? Where can you host that? Is there someone that has space that can, you know, allow you to have that? But start to think how can you impact one too many? Another example is social media. When you put out a video post and you are talking on social media, aren't you influencing potentially 200, 300, 400. A million people online. Yes, you are. So you're actually doing a one to many tasks. So give yourself credit for that. That's amazing. Now let's think how we can continue to do that and then how can you make money from doing that? Okay, that's how I want you to think. But for those people that are, that are listening to this and be like, yep, I identify. I'm a hustler. It's actually not a good thing. I used to like take a badge of honor for freaking being a hustler because I could outwork people and I can still outwork people even with all my autoimmune stuff. But that should not be a badge of honor that I proudly wear around. Of course I can outwork you. Like, no, that's not okay. Like, that is clearly led to health issues. So what are ways that you can actually take care of yourself? That's number one. That's. You've got to put you first. So in the morning, like I have a morning routine where I have to not touch my phone before 11 o' clock or I have to go and do my walk and then I can touch my phone and then as the day goes on, that already sets me up to not be in hustle mode because I've taken care of myself and I not like, okay, let me get up. This is what I used to do. Let me get up, let me go right into work. What does someone need? Let me answer emails. Okay, let me answer IG messages, let me answer, blah, blah. And it would just go on. And the second I got up and opened my eyes, it was game on. And I didn't shut it off until like 8, 9 o' clock at night. When I was just treating in my clinic, just, it was just me. I was working from 7 o' clock in the morning to 7 o' clock at night. I was in a basement. I never saw the light. I literally didn't see the light for months and months and months. I waited a whole year to hire and I just, I hustled and I just had patient after patient after patient come in. And you know, I was up to 50 patients a week, 50 patients a week, still running the clinic by myself, treating by myself, having no one else on. It was psycho. And I highly don't recommend that. It's not sustainable. It's definitely not sustainable. And that's the other thing you have to think about is if you want to be in this game again, I'm going to go back to the game. If you want to be in this game for the long run, then you got to learn not how to hustle, because you can't hustle. If you hustle, you're only gonna make it like one to two years, and then you might croak. I'm just being honest. But if you want to play the game, because I enjoy the game, I literally enjoy all the ups and downs, the losings, the winnings, all the things. You enjoy that which is truly what I love. Which may be a little crazy. People may say it's crazy, but, you know, I love that. I love can I be? Can I win the game? Then you've got to work smarter, and you got to think more than you react and think more than you actually use your hands. So instead of being someone that is, you know, just the therapist doing the work, you have to learn how to pull yourself out and learn how to hire. So other people are doing the work. But that doesn't mean that you're not working, because hustlers have a hard time pulling back if they don't see their schedule and is blocked out every freaking hour because they have something to do. No, you actually want your schedule open so that allows you time to think to then be able to say team or, you know, other therapists. This is how we're going to move forward, and this is what we're going to do so that we don't have to be the hustlers and we can work smarter and not harder. So this is kind of a quick podcast for the day. But just remember, guys, try not to be the hustler. Let's get rid of the word hustler. It's just really not a good thing in hustle culture that we have right now. Let's try to slow down, especially us female entrepreneurs. Slow down, take some breaths, and start to use your brain more. And I promise you, things will work a lot better than you trying to just fill the schedule, look like you're super busy, and be super busy and just trying to do the thing after thing after thing. Let's work smarter. 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.
