In this solo coaching video, Kelly Alhooie explains that the early‑stage "hustle" mindset—characterized by relentless personal effort, long hours, and uncomfortable outreach—can get a therapist, fitness coach, or other service‑based practitioner from $0 to about $10,000 a month, but it is unsustainable and leads to burnout. She argues that staying in hustle beyond that point is a common mistake. The real lever for scaling to $20K‑$50K months is building systems: hiring admin and provider staff, creating SOPs, implementing audits, and designing repeatable processes. Kelly outlines concrete hiring recommendations (admin and provider for brick‑and‑mortar; strategic hires for online), explains how to structure upsells and membership models, and stresses that business skills—system design, communication, and team management—are far more valuable than accumulating clinical credentials. She uses her own brand, OrthoPublic, as an example of a puzzle‑piece value proposition that focuses on orchestrating care teams rather than just hands‑on technique. The video ends with a call to action to contact her via Instagram (@pelvibiz) for personalized help.
Chapters
Why systems, not hustle, is how you get from $10K to $30K to $40K to $50K months. And that is what I want to focus on today. So what gets you from $0 to $10K? I'm gonna give you guys examples of this. What gets you there is hustle. It's really hustle. It's pain that's driving you that says, I'm in so much pain, I've got to move now. Let me take action and let me do uncomfortable things. That's the hustle. That's what I'm talking about. It's going out and talking to random people. It's getting on the phone calls that you don't want to get on. It's doing the events that you're like, oh my God, I have to talk in front of people. It's, um, treating patients at 7 o'clock at night when you're trying to put your kids to bed. It's all those things. That is the hustle phase. However, that phase you should only be in, in a very short period of time. And I find in therapy land Y'all try to extend it out for years and years and years and years and years. And then what are you going to say to me? Well, Kelly, I'm burnt out. I can't do this anymore. I thought it was cool, but then now it's not. It's because you stayed in that hustle phase for way too long. The goal is to get you out of the hustle phase as fast as possible, past the $10K month. That's the goal. And when you're past that, then you start having revenue where you can actually hire, you can invest, meaning you can invest in people and things. And that's when the beauty and the magic happens, when you're like, oh my God, I didn't think I could make $20,000 this month. Oh my God, I can have an admin to help call people. And by the way, my admin at max will cost maybe $4,000. I pay $4,000, I literally get one client that she converted over the phone, or one and a half, and she pays for herself. It's like a no-brainer, literally a no-brainer. So what— but here's the thing, and this is where people are terrified and not like— the $10K feels safe because it's you, you have control, you don't really have to learn that many new skills, you just have to keep wanting it every single day. Like, you just have to be motivated to like get out of the situation that you were in. But like, $10K slightly now starts feeling comfortable. It's the most amount of money you probably have had ever come in in a month. You feel good about yourself. You feel like you survived leaving the job and like doing things on your own, and like you're successful. These are all things that we say, but the reality is you literally just left a job to create another job to to then do the hustle, to then get burnt out and tired, and then you stay there and you will start making excuses. Well, my kids are home for the summer, so I don't want to progress. Or, um, well, I, uh, don't want to hire because I just don't have to deal with people. These are all the excuses, by the way. Um, I don't want to hire because I don't want to build something big. Well, big— we might be moving in a couple years, so like, I don't want to hire because like I might have to tear this thing down and move. All excuses. Um, I— what other— I'm just trying to think of everything you guys have given me, which is funny. I mean, it's funny because it's all just your brain keeping you safe. It's trying to keep you safe, but it's the brain actually stopping you from succeeding because it's just gonna— your brain is making you basically burnt out. Like, mind blown, right? Mind blown. I see this pattern, guys, all the freaking time. I talked to hundreds of you guys. I see the same patterns over and over and over again. It's what I'm good at, is recognizing patterns. These are the patterns that keep you guys stuck, and you don't have— you don't have the tools or resources yet to be able to know what it's like to hire. So like, it's just scary and then you stay stuck and you don't become unstuck. And so the new business skill that you actually have to learn is how to hire, how to put SOPs, which is basically organized systems, okay? How to effectively communicate the systems. How to teach the systems, how to then, uh, put audits in place so not only the systems are executed, but we can also check the box to see how efficient those systems are actually working. This is where most people, you know, miss out on. And so the two key hires, if you are brick and mortar, is going to be an admin and a provider, especially when you start hitting the $20,000 to $30,000 mark. You You need to do that, okay? A month. If you are online and you are trying to go from $10K to $20K to $30K, how can you maybe add an upsell? Like in the fitness world, like how can you add an upsell? Like maybe you add in nutrition, maybe you add in check-ins, maybe you add in, again, wellness-y type add-ons that they would need or want. Maybe you add in community, maybe, maybe you add in a clone of you. Like, all these things are upsells, by the way, okay? And so that's how you take the business from here to here. Now, with that, helping, you know, let's just say you are helping moms, you know, lose weight and solve their leakage problem. That's two different things, and you can combine it and then make it into an offer. So if you're online, that could look like group and one-on-one. It could be a combo. If you're in person, it could be like, okay, $3K to solve the problem. Oh, and by the way, we have these wellness services that you can— it's a membership and it's like $50 to $200 a month. Okay. And then by the way, once we've solved your problem, then we're going to do $300 a month because that is going to be where we have a fitness plan for you so that this thing doesn't come back. And so like, We have upsell on top of upsell on top of upsell, guys. And it's not like you're trying to pull wool over their eyes. I'm not trying to do that. I'm trying to keep them in amazing shape and give them what they want because they actually are asking for more confidence from us, which when you're in better shape, you have what? More confidence. You have more confidence. So like, why are we not giving them what they want? Because like it doesn't have a pain, so we can't treat that. Like, that's bullshit. That's bullshit. Like, part of our value, guys, is also putting the pieces of the puzzle together. This is why at OrthoPublic my logo was a puzzle piece. I wasn't the person that was like, ah, my only value is when I touch you. No, my value came from knowing who to put on the person's care plan team and how to then execute that. That was my value. So that's what I got paid for. Not because I know the best next manual technique. So be mindful of that, guys, when you're thinking, well, well, do I need to take another Con Ed class to know more so that I can put more letters behind my name to increase my, to increase my value and money that's coming in? No, people do not care about that. More letters behind your name is going to confuse them. They're going to be like, what the heck is that? It's like a foreign language. But learning a new business skill and getting systems, that's how you elevate. So if y'all are looking to elevate and you want more out of what you're doing, please reach out to us @pelvibiz on Instagram. So @pelvibiz, @pelvibiz on Instagram. I'm telling you, if you want to elevate, reach out and say, Kelly, help me, and I'll help. Talk later, guys.
