In this solo podcast episode, Kelly Alhooie argues that pelvic‑health and cash‑based practitioners stall at the $8‑10K revenue level not because of clinical competence but because of a set of non‑clinical, business‑related obstacles. She begins by identifying limiting beliefs about growth—fear that more revenue brings more problems, less time with family, or that growth is inherently risky. She then outlines a series of practical “levers” that practices often neglect: a predictable lead‑generation machine (instead of relying on word‑of‑mouth), effective phone conversion, booking full treatment plans, and hiring staff without fear. Kelly stresses the importance of modern digital marketing—workshops, consistent organic social, and ads that are only effective when supported by solid systems, SEO, GEO, AI recommendations, website funnels, and email sequences. She highlights that most providers lack auditing and KPI tracking, which prevents them from identifying and fixing leaks in their business. Throughout, she ties these insights to her own experience of scaling from $4K to $30K months while overworking, and she positions PelviBiz as a ready‑made system that provides the necessary processes, audits, and support so practitioners can implement these levers without massive upfront costs. The episode ends with a call‑to‑action for listeners to contact PelviBiz for help getting unstuck.
Chapters
Why your pelvic health practice isn't growing, and it has nothing to do at all with your clinical skills. Let's get into it. Okay, the biggest thing that I find on why people get stuck— they typically get stuck around $8K to $10K— because first off, it's belief. The first thing is belief. Belief that they don't need more. Belief that if they grow more, there's gonna be more problems. More money, more problems. The belief that, uh, if I grow bigger, it's gonna be too hard. The belief that if I keep growing, this will be something that I can't— that's gonna pull me away from my kids and that I can't have time with my kids. All these is a story that you're telling yourself, and it is a false belief. 100%. That's the biggest thing right there is the belief that growth equals more problems that I don't want. And actually, the reality is, and the truth here is that growth equals money and time, which is what every human wants. They want more time with their family and they want more money so that they can— the money buys the time. Now I know some of y'all are going to rebuttal me and say, guess what, Kelly, I don't want more money. Cool, but when the price of the economy keeps going up and up, you're gonna need it at some point. And the money is the thing that frees your calendar. That's the thing. So you actually do want more money, even if you don't want more money in your bank account. So let's just make that very clear at first, and it's okay to ask for more money. It is a-okay. I think in medical school they mess us all up because they, you know, if you— how dare you ask for more money, we're taking from people. That's not it. We became practitioners to help, to help patients, yes, but we also sacrificed a lot just to even have the title of doctor or practitioner or provider. And yes, we should be reimbursed for all the skills that we had to learn. Now today I'm not going to talk about clinical skill sets and more con ed that you're going to do and more studying from that realm. I'm going to be talking about why your growth is stopped and that it's not from the clinical side. It's from skills that you haven't learned yet, or maybe you heard of but you just haven't— you're not proficient at them yet. And these are the skills over any clinical skills that you can learn that will take you from here to here and completely change your life. So the first one I said is belief. That's number one, okay? Belief is number one, okay? Number two, most of us do not have a lead machine. When I talk to you guys, you guys are like, hey Kelly, um, yeah, my number one referral source is word of mouth. Word of mouth is not a referral source. I cannot control how many people are going to refer to me or not. So that is actually not a reliable source to get leads. That's just a hope. I hope they come in today. I hope someone talks about me today. That is not a way to grow a business. That's actually very scary if you're relying on word of mouth. So you cannot rely on word of mouth. Word of mouth is amazing. It tells me that you're amazing, which also tells me you don't need more clinical skills. But that's not the thing that is going to get you the outcomes that you're looking for. That's, that's number 2. Okay. The third thing here is I find that there's a lack of being able to convert people over the phone. So maybe that's where the bottleneck is. Maybe it's you that's taking the phone calls. Maybe it's an admin. Maybe it's a marketer. Maybe it's a salesperson. Whoever that is, are they the bottleneck to the company? Is their conversion over 60%? Are we over 60% conversion rate? If you are not, then that is the bottleneck. Okay, the next thing I would say is once they come in, can you book a patient out their entire treatment that it's going to take for them to actually get the result that they say that they want? If they want X result, can you book them out and have them commit to that and themselves to actually truly solve that problem? Can you do that? Okay, the next thing is hiring properly. I can't tell you how important this is. Most of us stay stuck because we're scared to hire. I remember my first provider that I hired on, she got paid way more than I ever got paid. So I was like, well, how am I going to pay her? Because I never got paid that. And it was such a thing because I was so terrified that I was responsible for an $85,000 salary. I was terrified because I never got paid that. I— for an admin, like, how the heck— or sales and marketing person, how the heck do you pay them? Because they don't directly make you money, but however they get patients in the door, right? But still, it's part of the cost that comes from when a patient is seen. And so like, that scariness was the thing that was holding my business back because I basically— oh well, I didn't basically— I saw 30 clients a week, ran my company, had no admin and I was making $30,000 a month for 3 months straight. Now, I was making a shit ton of money at that time, I felt like. I've never made $30,000 a month. I made— I went from $4K a month to $30,000 a month, and I thought I was, you know, Bill Gates. And so I was like, wow, like, this is it. At the same time, when I was seeing 30 patients with no admin, nothing, no systems, nothing, I had to run a business as well, so that's another 20 to 30 hours running the actual business. So I was working like 60, 70 hours, and I thought I was gonna croak. I did not see sunlight. I remember from like 7 AM in the morning, I was there till 7 o'clock at night, and I was in a basement just treating. And no, you don't spend money because you can't go anywhere because you're in— you're locked in the treatment room. Okay, and so I tortured myself because I was too scared to hire. So my point is this, is that's the thing that if I look back, I'm like, damn, if I hired a provider, I could have been the marketer, they could have seen the patients, and I could have moved the company 10 times faster. If I were to hire an admin, I could have seen more patients and/or put out an ad for hiring if the admin was on and she could take care of all the phones and all the things instead of me hanging out there until 8 o'clock at night calling people back, sending out emails and all the things. These are all things that are keeping us stuck, whether or not we realize it or not. The next skill you have to learn: digital marketing, especially in this day and age of AI. Digital marketing, ads, SEO, GEO. Okay, and I'm not saying that ads are going to solve your problem, by the way, okay? They're not. Um, but it is a lever to pull that is predictable rather than just hoping and praying that someone's going to refer to me by word of mouth. And let me just speak to that too. There's two levers I find in a, in a brick and mortar specifically that could be pulled, and even online too. It just depends on how you run your online business. Number one, Workshops are the most reliable, fastest way. I don't care if AI's here or whatever, it's the number one way to get clients in the door, period. I don't care what anyone says. I'm firm believer of that 'cause I've seen it time and time again. That doesn't mean that you have to waste your weekends. You hire someone to do that. Duh, we hire people, okay? But that is a lever that you need to pull and consistently pull. Like, don't get rid of that lever just because you've heard it now 5,000 times. Do not get rid of it. The next lever to pull is organic social media. That is the next lever to pull. But you have to be consistent and it is a longer playing game. Just 'cause you post for a week straight does not mean you're gonna get a client. Compare to if you do a workshop, one workshop, you're immediately gonna get clients from that, immediately. So once I do organic social media and I've been doing that for 3 months straight consistently, then I will pull the ads lever, lever, but I'm only gonna pull the ads lever if I have my digital marketing set into place, because everyone believes that it's about the ad and the quality of the ad and whatever else. It's actually about all the other things before and after that ad. Do you have organic? Do you show up on SEO? Do you— do you show up on GEO? Do you show up on AIO, which is AI recommending you? Okay. How's your website? How is the embed links in your website? Like, all this— how's the funnels before, after, when they book? How's the email series? Like, all that is the thing that makes the difference in digital marketing. And most practitioners don't have a clue. You don't even have a clue what KPIs or what things to audit to even produce that, to even see if it's worth your time, effort, energy. And so like, that's my last thing is like, people get stuck because they don't audit. And so then they just do this. If you can't see me, my hands are in the air like a little puppy dog. Okay, that's literally what they do. They just do that. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. They don't think. And then they go, oh my God, oh my God, I just saw some social media post, I'm gonna do this. I just saw this, oh my God, some of my friends doing this. And then it's— they are literally driving themselves insane. Insane, and they're just overwhelming themselves. And then what happens when we're overwhelmed? We literally just stay stuck. We don't do anything. I see it all the time. This is why PelliBiz has been hell-bent for the last 3 to 4 years on systems. Systems is the number one thing. Now people are finally catching on and using our word systems. But like, systems is the thing, and auditing is the thing that's going to allow you to have systems. But most people don't want to spend time auditing because they don't get a direct one-on-one return like you would if you see a patient. And this is the other thing I— and this goes back to beliefs, and especially providers and therapists— is that they believe that their value comes from when they see a patient, that they're growing the business when they see a patient. That's actually not accurate. You're growing the business the most when you learn how to communicate and you learn how to audit. When you learn how to audit, then you're able to say, oh, Okay, this is exactly my problem. It will tell you exactly the thing. You don't have to guess and you have to spin your wheels and act like you're on a hamster wheel and like a rat race and all the things. It will tell you. So then why don't we audit more? Why don't we have more tracking? This is massively important, guys. So these are the things that I believe 110% that I have seen time and time and over and over and over and over again and all the practices that I've coached. These are the things that keep people stuck because most of us are, are willing to learn new clinical skills, go get that new certification, because that's like the thing that we all love. But if you don't learn new business skills, which is what PelviBiz is about— PelviBiz— we started with pelvic health providers in business, and now we branched out to all of healthcare in business, especially cash-based businesses. We are here to help bridge the gap on all these leaky pipes, to help you be able to articulate it and execute it with the systems that we've already built out. We hand them to you, and all you have to do is implement it into the company. It's as simple as that. You do not have to spend over $200K on payroll. You do not have to spend years building this stuff out. We already have it built for you, and if we work together, we hand it off to you. And that is what we want, is to elevate people so that they get unstuck and feel that their practice isn't growing and don't know why. Or maybe they do know why but don't know how— the reasonings of how to get out of it. And this is key. So if you guys need help, reach out to us at PelviBiz, P-E-L-V-I-B-I-Z, @PelviBiz, and let's get you unstuck. Thanks, guys.
