OT Freedom - My Story
This content was created by Mary Kostka. This content was uploaded by Mary Kostka. This is a YouTube video titled "OT Freedom - My Story" created in October 2025, featuring Mary Koska, an occupational therapist and practice owner, sharing her personal journey of building and managing a successful occupational therapy practice. She discusses the challenges she faced, the systems she developed for efficiency and staff retention, and her goal to help others achieve freedom and balance in their OT careers. The content is a monologue-style presentation focused on professional growth and work-life balance in occupational therapy.
Hey everyone, Mary Koska here and I am a occupational therapist and I am the owner of Ohana Occupational Therapy and I want to just tell you my story a little bit here. I am a, I've been an OT for 35 years and 14 has been in private practice and I, I have lived it all. I, I think every hardship a practice owner goes through, I have been through it and I have gone from the struggle bus to having freedom to treat when I want to, how much I want to, if I even want to. We have just more than doubled our practice through the pandemic and I am just excited to do this workshop to teach you how to have OT freedom. And basically I'm going to pull back the curtain and show you all my tools, everything that I've developed to help make things run super, super smoothly. So I, my struggles have been everything from pain myself to being able to find, good, find and keep good staff retention to you know, just being burned out because I was treating all the time and trying to run the business. And I've also dealt with that emotional struggle of I love to treat. So you know, it's like hard to of move away from that and just do more the administrative stuff. So I, I have found the key is to definitely set it all up so that you don't have to treat, but then you can treat when you want to and how much you want to. So right now I am free to be gone. I can go away to, you know, business conferences if I want to. I can take, I take multiple vacations a year. I'm able to take my mom out on cruises. I can treat when I want to. And it's just, it's been a long time coming. It's taken me 14 years and to be honest, I don't want it to take you 14 years. I want to just show you all my systems for making everything super easy, super efficient. How to get high productivity from your staff. And they're happy to do it and they're not burning out because they're well supported and you're in tune with how they're doing and just, you know, creating a system and a culture and an environment where people are just really, really happy and are, you know, doing great. Our average productivity, I was just looking at it, it's 80, 80% and yet they leave on time, they're happy, they, they have energy and you know, it's, it's good. My clinic is an insurance based clinic and I think my story is probably pretty familiar to a lot of your stories. In that I started out, I was treating in. Actually I was treating mostly in the schools, but I also did some birth to three home health. But the thing that was really what I really struggled with is I did not have the ideal environment to do the treatment in the best way that I knew how. And now that I do, we are able to do occupational therapy for pediatrics in the most ideal way possible. And then we get just these amazing results. And it's because I have full control control. I can, you know, I can have the equipment that I want, I can have the space that I want, everything. It just makes such a big difference to get that control. But you know, with it being insurance based, that's challenging. It's challenging. And I have developed all these key systems so that I can deal with all these challenges without getting stressed. And the thing is, like, when it was just me and I had, you know, I could still have my ideal therapy scenario and everything. But the problem was if I wasn't treating or if I wasn't working, I wasn't getting, I wasn't getting any income. And the other problem was I was very limited on how many kids that I could help. And so I think this is where my story is. Like so many other therapists. So we get into this because the quality, you know, we want the environment, we want the quality, and then we get it and we, you know, we, we love it and everything and we're growing and we get a wait list and we're like, I need some help. And then we add people and then we add therapists or we add support staff. And next thing we know, we're like, oh, I gotta, I gotta learn how to manage all of this. And all this takes time and everything's multiplied. And then the next thing you know, you're just starting to feel like the weight of the world. You have responsibilities to make sure you make payroll, to pay to your payroll taxes and, and it gets scary sometimes because people get sick and then, you know, you don't have enough revenue coming in and it's, you know, it's, it's hard. But ultimately I felt like I, I wanted to help as many. This has always been my thing. I always want to help as many kids as I can. I don't want it to be capped. And we just have grown and grown, but it's been manageable because I have all these systems in place. And that is what I'm excited to share this OT Freedom Workshop because I want you to have freedom. Freedom. I want you have the Freedom to treat if you want to, not treat if you don't want to, and to be able to go home, enjoy your family, enjoy your weekends. I, I am big on having fun. I love to go kayaking, I love to go traveling. I love doing martial arts. I, I love hanging out with my friends. I, I don't want to limit my fun time. I think that I have so much more to give when I'm refreshed and I'm happy and I'm having fun. And I want that for you too. So I am really excited for, for doing this workshop and the really great thing is, okay, so you get me on Thursday and we are going back to back with my coach, great Todd. And then you get to go to also SSHC Live. And I gotta tell you, there is nothing like the energy of Greg's events and how he just brings everybody together. You know, we are just dedicated to helping each other win. It's such an incredible, incredible culture. And you will just between getting all the tools and the things that you need to develop your ot, your OT freedom, your blueprint for that and then plus getting to go to Greg's event, oh my gosh, you're just, you're just going to walk away with so much, so much value. And the bonus is we're going to go on the cruise. This cruise. Dinner, this cruise ship for dinner. And it was so fun. We've done that before and he's rented out the, the whole, the whole ship. So I'm including that in this package. Anyway, I look forward to seeing you. If you have any questions, if you want to get on a zoom call, just anything, just, you know, let me know. And my, my, my email. I'm smiling because everybody laughs when they hear my email. It's my name, Mary Koska. M A R Y K O S T K aol dot com. That's my personal email and I, yeah, I'm, I'm a little old. I still have aol, but I don't know, I just never felt like changing it. So that's my personal email. You are welcome to reach out to me on Facebook messenger on, on email we can get on a zoom call, I'm happy. On a phone call, I'm happy to answer any questions that you have and I just cannot wait for you to feel like, I feel where you're just providing the highest quality care. You have an amazing team that loves to just help as many families as they can. They have good energy, they're not pushing back and you're able to provide all the benefits that they need. A competitive salary, and you get to have fun in your life. I want that for you.
