Epiosde 447: Persistency at a Plodding Pace with Kalpesh Patel

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weddell.

And before we get started, if you.

Want to know exactly how to win again and again, go to Wydell on winning.com webinar now to watch something I've put together for you. Now let's get going into this episode.

Of Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm going to be talking now with Kalpesh Patel. And Kalpesh is a therapist operating out of Gainesville, and he's one of my personal favorites. He and I have solved the world's problems many times while he was saving my life. And he's not only a therapist, he's a trainer, a teacher, and has a wealth of insight into successfully navigating life. And all have come from his practice in solving the most difficult problems that people have. As he said, in his career, he's usually the eighth person that people go to see whenever they have a complex problem. And so it's not just normal experience, it's very intense experience. So, Kalpesh, let's jump in again.

Sure, sure. Absolutely. Yeah.

Talk about how you evolved into that role when you went over and started working all those many years ago at the University of Florida sports facility and evolved in years. The point is if when you're really talented, people will find out for sure.

Yeah, yeah. Yes, yes, yes.

And you're really good in your area. You know, the thing is, like, people go to work in a company or whatever, maybe you're not get. If people are not coming to you and asking you how to do this or this, that and the other, you need to expand your skill set. You need to get there. You know what I'm saying?

I have some good stories around this because, you know, when I was younger, I really didn't see myself as a success story. I didn't really see myself as a go getter. And so I had actually ignored the details of my own story in order to fit my life story into my own mental picture of, like, I'm just a, you know, go along to get along kind of guy. But when I look later, when I look back at my own story, I realized, oh, no, I paved my way. I just, I just omitted those details because I had this, you know, I kind of didn't really understand who I was. So here's how it went down. It's pretty funny. So I, you know, I went to massage school because I had a lot of issues myself. I used to go to a massage therapist. He was a really great guy. And at the time I was doing database management. I started getting headaches from just being in front of the computer nine hours a day. And this was back in the before the flat screens. So they were all CRTs and databases were slow. So you would sit there, you'd ask a query, and it literally would take 45 minutes for this thing to figure out something on a relatively small database. And just being in the corporate environment behind a desk, I just didn't see that being the end all and be all of my life. I had friends who did Japanese cabinetry. I'd come home to see these beautiful things they had made and how happy they were to work with their hands. And I thought I wanted to do something with my hands. My friend, the massage therapist said, you could become a massage therapist. You could do that part time and do computer work part time. I thought, oh, that sounds like that might work. It's worth a try. So I go to massage school. As soon as I was there, I realized that there were sort of these two camps. One is people that do spa work. So people kind of come in and they're stressed or they just want to feel nice, and they get on the table and you do a session. And typically that session is a formula, Right? Okay. It's like a little playlist, and you play the playlist, and it's a nice playlist. And people are like, oh, that was lovely. You know, it's like you make a Mai Tai. Standard Mai Tai, nothing fancy. Just, you know, behind the bar there's a little list of. This is how you make this cocktail. You make the cocktail. Everybody loves it. It's great. You know, I realized I'm not that guy. I don't want to do spa work. I want to problem solve. Because every time I got a taste of problem solving, I was like, oh, that woke me up. I really enjoy that. And so I realized, oh, I belong in this other camp of clinical work where you work in a clinic and you try to solve problems. So I left school already with this awareness that I belonged in Camp A and not Camp B, whatever the that, you know, however that may be. And so I kept finding work that allowed me to do clinical things. And one day I was sitting in a friend's office waiting to talk to her, and I saw this little tiny magazine, this little tiny magazine sitting on the. On the. On the table there, the coffee table. I picked the thing up, and on the back was this little ad that said, get fit for golf. And it was about how you come in and they'll do a Movement analysis, all stuff that sounds all normal now, right? But this is like 22 years ago. So it says, get fit for golf. Come in, we'll analyze your movement, and then we'll strengthen the things that need to be strengthened and stretch. What needs to be stretched and get your cocaine better. And I thought to myself, you know, here I am helping World War II vets with problems that they've had for 30 years, and I'm helping them get better. I damn well can help. Somebody that isn't even having pain just wants to flow better in their golf swing. That's probably cake compared to the stuff I'm dealing with right now. So I call the number up and I say, hey, I just saw your ad, you know, and I wondered if you might have any work for me. And the guy said, well, you know, it's a small program. We're just starting out, so we don't have any place for anybody else. I said, well, look, I appreciate you taking the call. Would you mind hearing out my spiel while I've got you on the phone? And I don't know, Larry, I don't know to this day what made me say that. I didn't have a spiel, but he seemed like a reasonable guy. I think that's what it was. I think I recognized the tone and the demeanor on the other end of the line that here's someone that seems to care or there's something receptive about this person. So I said, you know what? Throw. There's, there's somebody there ready to catch. Throw something.

Well, there, there. I'll stop you and say there's is an aspect or an illustration of the thing where we started by saying everything is connected. You just have to make yourself aware. The tone, the reception, voice, there's stuff being played, messages, clues being sent to us all the time. You like things. You don't like people. You like people. You hit it off with situations, bad buildings. House.

Yes, yes, yes. Pay attention. Yeah, so this lovely person, you know, I, I gave him my spiel. I said, look, I've learned this stuff in school. It's not the typical stuff, but has a lot to do with movement analysis. I'm really enjoying it. I, I, you know, I feel like I, I, I, I'm actually getting to some key underlying issues with people with the, with this methodology, and it's making me stretch and learn. So I really appreciate all of that. And I said, I very much would like to work in an environment where I'm working in conjunction with other people. I Want to have colleagues. I don't want to just be doing this alone because, you know, two heads are better than one. And he was very kind. And he said, you know, I appreciate all you're saying. Do me a favor, Just give me your contact information. He took down my contact information, and I thought, well, that's the end of it. Three months later, I get home to a voicemail on my home phone, an email, and a voicemail on my cell phone from this guy saying, hey, we have an opening if you want to try. So he had not only had he taken my information, he'd remembered me. He remembered me as a person. And when an opportunity came up months later, he thought of me. So just over that one phone call, I made myself a living human being in his mind enough, because I took the time to put forward whatever it was that was important for me.

Yeah.

And so he very kindly, you know, sent me this information. I went for the interview. And he wasn't involved in the interview. Some. Some other person that was involved in the interview. So there were two people actually interviewing me. One was the massage therapist, and the other was a physical therapist. So the massage therapist was taking the lead on the interview because I was a massage therapist. And he's asking me these questions, you know, what's my area of interest and what kind of training do I have, blah, blah, blah. And the other. The physical therapist is sitting back and he's looking at my cv, and he goes, what's this ortho bionomy stuff? And I said, oh, it's blah, blah, blah, blah. And I started explaining it. And the PT goes, oh, that sounds like Jones's stuff. And I said, yeah, it's actually based on Jones's paper. This guy read Jones's paper that. The year that Jones released it, this is like 1963 or something like that. And so, yeah, so he developed this off of Jones's work right away. And he goes, oh, that's great. I learned a bit of Jones's work because I'm from Australia. And I was like, oh, wonderful. And he said, I can't believe you know about this stuff. And I said, I can't believe you know about this stuff, you know? And so then he starts asking me all these questions. And the massage therapist who was supposed to be the lead on the interview starts leaning back further, further in his chair because he's like, I don't know what you guys are talking about anymore. And the physical therapist is leaning further and further in his chair towards me because he's like, oh, this is going to be good, you know, we are going to work well together. And that's exactly what happened. He wanted the same thing I wanted, which is to have another person who's using the same model or a close enough model that you can collaborate.

Right.

And so that's how I got my start there, is that I found someone who wanted a collaborator. And this guy and I would go have lunch every day and we would talk physics, we would talk engineering, we would talk osteopathy, we would talk physical therapy, we would talk anatomy every day.

Well, people understand the fact that when you're going to build a company or start an enterprise or whatever that it's around the clock type situation. You're going to put in a lot of hours. What they don't realize is what those hours consist of. And what you guys were doing was starting something. And usually that's why, you know, one or two, like two or three, let's say key like minded people at the core of something can create something mind blowing. But you can't have 12 people in there because there's too many moving parties.

Yes.

Yeah. Decisions and everything. Now let's just talk about where you started with that. You know, they had this idea of it. They were fortunate enough to have you stumble in. And one thing about noticing that ad in that in the back of a paper, follow the breadcrumbs, folks. It doesn't matter how obscure the lead is.

Yeah.

Where you see something, you hear something, a scrap over here. It doesn't matter if you're the fourth choice for whatever. If it relates to you. It doesn't matter where it comes from. It matters that it comes.

Yeah.

If you have your eyes open and again, it didn't like fall in the next day. You know, you have a lot of, you know what I tell people, you have a lot of lines in the water. You, you know, you need to catch a fish, you needed to get a situation and you just follow with the leads and the breadcrumbs as far as they'll go and make a good impression. You know, like I like that phrase, making yourself a living human being to the people you meet, you know, so they'll make that impact. But I hear all the time people in hiring people that the job they had they got because you know, somebody they met and maybe was recruiting at Company A but remembered them and then they left it went over to Company B and they needed a person like that, you know, you. And then all of a sudden they called you up just like that. That happens more than you would imagine.

Oh, no, I. I'm sure. Because that was really. That was the. The story of my early career. You know, the very first job that I got, I was literally the last guy on the list. Okay. I mean, this is 1999, right? So it was a different world, but nonetheless, I was male and I was foreign. That was the last guy this guy wanted to call from the list of new grads. He had a habit of hiring new grads right out of massage school because you can pay them less, right? And he had an opening and he was desperate and he was calling everybody he could call, and my name was the very last name on that list. But I'm the one person that picked up the phone that day, right? So I went in. I did a good job. I did such a good job that I impressed the girl at the front desk because she's the one that's hearing things from people as they leave check out. They pay her and they make another appointment and they go away. So she's the one that's getting all the feedback, right? Two weeks into it, the guy finds another candidate willing to come in and take the position and tells the front desk girl that he's going to fire me and replace me with this new candidate. She threatens to walk out based on the feedback she'd gotten. She said to him, if you fire him, I'm going to catch hell from all the patients and I'm going to quit if you fire him. She did not tell me that for six months. She told me that six months later.

Wow.

So I was not aware of any of this, right? So there you go. Like there's, you know, it's like you don't even know what's going on, right? You're doing the right thing. Things are working out, things are playing, and people are making plays for you, right? So the second job I got, I'm. I'm at the market. I'm at the farmer's market, and this lady I don't know comes running over to me yelling my name and smiling as if she knows me, grabs me by the wrist and drag. Starts dragging me across the market saying, you've got to meet John. I don't, you know, I don't even know. So I stopped. I said, lady, I'm sorry, who are you? And she goes, oh, I'm sorry, my friend. So I'm friends with so and so who you gave a massage to in massage school. Because the massage school had a practice where the incoming freshman class would get a Session from the outgoing graduating class. So you would just get assigned a name out of a hat. Right. So some woman that I'd never met who I gave a massage to because she's an incoming freshman and that was that and I forgot all about it. But apparently the impression I made on that lady was so great that she had told this friend and what she told the friend made such an impression that this friend was now insisting that this man hire me.

Wow.

Right, Right. So the man looks at me, you know, I'm in shock. And I said, sir, I have no expectation that you do what this lady tells you, but I would appreciate an interview.

Yeah.

And he goes, oh, I can do that. And I said, great. You know, so I gave him, we went interview. I did my orthobotomy. He was so wowed with orthobony that he didn't just give me the job, but he started studying in the field. Right. He became one of the students in the field. Right. So. Right. So it's, it's the impacts that you're going to have when you make yourself, you know, if you just do what's right and you do it well, you know, you follow your thing and you do it well. You pursue excellence.

You create the past. One way of looking at it, you create the possibility. It's not a guarantee, but you create the potential for ripple effects.

Yes. And I never would have thought of these.

Now if you, if you go out there and do a crappy job, you create the potential for ripple of negative ripple effects.

Right.

If you do a great job in all these situations, you create the potential for incredible, mind blowing beneficial ripples to happen. And if you do that, as you know, during the course of the day, you have all kind of situations come up. If that's your regular way of operating, don't be surprised that good things happen because you have kind of set this thing in motion by doing above and beyond. But here's what I want to talk about is the, the value what people should take. These are not just telling, you know, stories and everything. The, the value of two like minded people, which you and that other and that, what started there and you're talking hours and this, that and the other and one. And obviously you're making an impact. How big is that operation today? How many worked there when you started?

Well, okay, so it's massive because the thing is that little clinic at that time, I think, let me think now. Two, four, six. So there were seven therapists in that clinic, one clinic. Now there are.

Seven clinics seven clinics.

Right. The largest two have somewhere in the range of 20 therapists on staff each. Right. So it's a massive department now. It's a department that's, you know, it used to be they had one manager, then they had. Then they had to change it to have like two managers and then an overseeing manager. And then they had to have like, they just keep having to increase the management components because it keeps growing in complexity. Because not only are there now multiple clinics, but there are subclinics within the clinics because there's specializations. Right. So now you've got people that are specializing in brain trauma stuff and balance and inner ear things. And then you've got people that are specializing in visceral and pelvic floor and.

Becoming mecca for high level, intensive, unique therapy.

Oh, it's huge. And then there's like a professional athletes component. So, you know, softball. I mean, sorry, baseball. Post surgical. Baseball rehab is like a big piece unto itself.

Yeah.

And for the longest time in the country, the one doctor who sort of invented the arthroscopic surgeries and repairs in Atlanta, I think it's in Atlanta, that's where everybody would just do the rehab, was in his clinic because nobody else was doing these repairs. And people didn't really profess, especially at the professional level. They were like, well, just work with the best kind of thing. Right. And I don't know if it's a function of numbers or if it's a function of excellence, but nonetheless, you know, these days there's a lot of professionals that will come here and do their post surgical recovery here, even if they didn't do their surgery here.

Yeah.

So there's a lot of. Yeah, it's huge now. It's huge.

This is a result of. I want to point this out, like, had a big table of business guys, you know, a couple of years ago out here right before COVID and we were out at dinner and a lot of them had listened to the, read the book, and the podcast was just getting started and all. And so they said, larry, you tell us, what do you think is the most important thing for a leader? You know, how you evaluate it? And I said, results. And they all laugh real big. Of course. What else is there? And so the thing is, you. The guy was excited when he met you because he said he realized we can get results working together. The thing that you have with what we want to do here, we can get results. The reason you guys spent all this time talking is figuring out how to get better results from the Situations, the clinical experience that happened during the day, week, month, year, and you found answers and then what. And as you got results, you became magnetic, you know, and people. More and more people came and this, that and the other. I see that with high level, you know, I've had tons of different therapies in different areas, you know, for my situation here this 14 years.

But.

The, I found that the top guys who are the ones that I gravitate to, they're not necessarily top guys at the beginning, but I could tell they're good, you know, like when the guy right at you and they invariably. Schedule fills up. It's amazing. In the beginning, you know, they're just looking for bookings and you know, grad, you know, in the off season, they don't have many people down in Florida, you know, back to New York and whatever. Now everybody. You got to get on a waiting list. Yeah, results, absolutely. And it's the value of, of overdoing in the, you know, in individual situation. But then get results. Drive yourself where it's like, have the model. We started off saying everything's connected. Have models, collect models and figure these things out. How much, you know, how much is enough. When you get the results and you don't have to. All the results today, you know, like you said, margin.

It's that persistence at a plodding pace. That is, I think that's, that's the thing. I, you know, I remember years ago, one of my clients came back from Africa with a photo safari thing, and he made a calendar of all the pictures that he had taken. You know, so he brought me one of the calendars and one of the creatures that he had on there was one of those, like wild buffaloes that they have there, you know, and, and so this, it was a male. And he's just sitting there just looking, you know, he's just like looking at the camera like, I'm not going anywhere. And I realized, like, oh, that's what I am because, you know, I get people in here, they're. They have all sorts of issues. They're struggling emotionally because they're the pain and the, the chronicity. And at this point they're kind of going broke with all the money they're spending on this medical issue and yada, yada. And I said, what does this person need to see when they first walk in this room? What, what do they need to do? They need to know what a great expert I am, how clever I am, all this stuff. No, they need to know that I'm determined and I'm on their side. I'm an ox, and I'm their ox.

Yeah, right. That's very.

Right.

Yeah. That's a very good picture.

The fact that it's a clever ox is a bonus. But the oxygen, that was. I felt, oh, that's the most valuable thing they need to know. Like, listen, man, I'm just ornery. I won't quit. And, you know, I'll be damned if this. If this problem makes a fool out of me.

You know.

I'm gonna win in the end. And most wars are wars of attrition. Right?

Right.

Stick it out.

You're finding out. You.

You.

We're finding that out in the Ukraine right now. Thanks so much, Kalpesh.

If you enjoyed what you've heard and are dead serious about finding out for yourself exactly how this works in the real world, I've taken the most valuable business lessons I've learned over 40 years and put them into something for you to watch. Go to whiteellenwinning.com webinar now in order to move up as fast as as possible. I'm Larry Widell, and I run the Million Dollar Mastermind. Go, go.