Josh Funk: How He Bootstrapped and Scaled to 9 Clinics

Four to five years. Every about 18 to 20 months, we've been doubling.

Yeah, yeah. And I'm curious, you know, like, is there anything that you have done differently, your journey of getting to the nine clinics, you know, in terms of like the number of locations and the sequence of like, not the operation side, but like maybe the timing and sequence where there's cash flow, money and like. How to get smarter in business and in life. This is the question and I'm on a journey to get you that answer. I'm going to interview the world's top entrepreneurs and deconstruct their winning secrets. Going to talk about everything from marketing, money and living a bucket list life. I'm Rick Lau, healthcare entrepreneur. I grew and exited my 127 locations in my 30s. Welcome to the Clinic Boss Show. So we are live, you know, I want to welcome everyone to the Clinic Boss Show. And this is about how to get smarter on business and life, you know, and so this, this whole series is about like, how can we learn from the top entrepreneurs in the world? And, and today, you know, we got a super special guest. And before we talk about that, my name is Rick Lau, I'm the host and a bit of my story is like, you know, I grew, exited 127 location, now a $37 billion grocery store owns my clinics. You know, that, that is, that, that, that is my story, you know. And, and we got Karen Elliott here. She is an entrepreneur and runs and is responsible for like growing a team of business coaches. She's the business coach herself. And, and we got Josh today. And Josh, just before we kind of get started, I've always wanted to ask you this, like, how do we, how did we meet and cross path, you know, like, how did you hear about, like, because I, I just know randomly. I got an email from you one year saying that you're not going to come to Toronto and then I bump into you in like in, in, in a, in, in Colorado. Right, Rick?

Well, hopefully this isn't too much, but I've been just fanboying over you and your content for a long, long time. And it just so happened that then we're in a restaurant last year at Apta csm and I think I was by myself and I saw you guys and it was just a perfect moment for us to get together and, and grab a bite together. Yeah.

What was it? Love at first sight?

You know what, I didn't want to say that. I don't want to make him feel any like, you know, like he's Pumping him up, self up in the beginning of the show here. Like I can't inflate him a little bit more, you know. Wow.

Wow. So was I, was I, was I, was I much taller and like in person and more introverted in person? Josh, Is that.

Oh, man. What you see is what you get. Rick, you're. You're very handsome guy.

Yeah. Super cool. And so I was curious, like, do you remember like the first piece of content that like attracted to like, I guess like some of the content that, that kind of picture that made you kind of like follow me over the years?

Yeah, no, I think it was something on Instagram. It was honestly, you, Paul, Darrell, you were talking, it was at one of your events and then there was. I just saw like, you know, content kind of like micro dosed out over the course of, you know, multiple weeks. And it's good stuff. Signed up for the newsletter, been on the newsletter, probably see that probably like five years at this point.

Cool. So it happened on Instagram first, right? Is that, is that what I'm hearing that. Okay.

I'm almost 100% positive as Instagram first. And then I got into the newsletter and then something happened. It was right before we were about to open up an office and I think we got delayed a week and I couldn't leave the time that I thought because I had to be there. We had some permitting issues. So.

Yeah, I remember that I got that email from you. I think you, I think you bought a ticket like for a Clint Boss some in Toronto, the event we have every year that has 300 owners.

Right.

And then you're like, oh my God, I want to come, but I can't because of this. And then somehow we crossed paths in Colorado and you caught me off guard and then we ended up having dinner the entire night. You hung out with Shayda as well, and Shayta's mom, You know, like the four of us at that, like that steak restaurant. Right? Yeah. And then more recently this summer, you, you, you flew down to Calgary at one of our meetups, you know, and you hung out with like the team and, and that was super cool. You know, it was good.

I, I loved it. I think it was a good chance to just kind of see what you all have going on in person. And I think the thing that I was most impressed with was the tactical application, which I think is largely something that is missing when I've gone to business things before. So I, I came away very, very impressed. You have great, great operations, great team and yeah, just happy to be here today.

And now you're going to be one of our. You're going to be one of our, like, keynote speakers out in our clinic boss summer in Florida in January. You know, we're going to talk about all things about. About pipeline, clinicians, clinic culture stuff.

Right.

And how to grow your cash flow. Right. So that is. That is super cool, you know.

So, yeah, you really had to twist my arm to get me down to Florida, so. What's that? You had to really had to twist my arm to get me down to Florida, so.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And maybe, maybe just so that, you know, I guess the people on the show know kind of your story maybe in a few minutes, like what's been kind of your CEO journey, you know.

Yeah, it's crazy. I think probably have to take it back to like, my. My first business actually wasn't a rehab business. And this was actually the first time that I lived in Canada. So the first time I lived abroad was the sport of lacrosse. And that was actually the first company that I had too. After I graduated physio school, PT school, I started a lacrosse services company. And that was my first foray into the world of entrepreneurship. It was a company called LAX Factory. I ended up growing that company and selling it. But that was a CEO side hustle, so to speak. And I think we can all agree when you look back at the beginning of your CEO journey, you're probably not even really a CEO. You're the jack of all trades. You're the Swiss army knife. You're. You're learning how to do everything. And I don't think it was, honestly until I sold that business, I poured more of my time and energy into rehab to perform, which is, you know, my, my absolute passion project. And the pandemic itself, where I feel like I really earned that title. When I think of a CEO, I think of the, you know, obviously the success of the organization, but the success of your people, the people that you're serving and people on your team. And I don't think I fully knew what that looked like until we went through, you know, obviously some very, very extenuating circumstances. You're having to put more and more things in place to allow people to have certainty, to operate, putting them in a position to be safe, putting them in a position to be successful and really building out what an ecosystem of, you know, your company culture, touch points. Looks like.

You sound like a CEO now, dude.

I think at this point over the past couple years, I've earned it and I've had that on my card for much longer and I look back at times and you know, you talk to a lot of people are business owners and you're not, not quite a CEO until you're, you're doing certain things and you're honestly reaching certain scale and you're offloading certain tasks also. So.

Yeah. And I just, I think you're quite humble, Josh. Like, you know, when I look at your story, you know, like, you know, you grew from one to like nine locations, you know.

Right.

And how many staff, how many staff do you have within the business now?

We have 82.

82, okay.

Wow.

You know, and, and you know, and we'll dive a little bit more of that. But yeah, that's, that's a pretty cool story. And, and Karen, I want to hear from you, like, you know, like, just so the audience kind of knows a little more about like my co host is that how does Josh's like CEO journey compares to kind of like your journey with like you with, with your clinic and where you're at now?

Oh yeah, it's. I was chuckling, talking about, you know, calling yourself a CEO. I had this discussion with an owner in Victoria and when you think of it like you go to school to become a PT and then all of a sudden you think you're going to be a business owner. It's actually a ridiculous and it's hilarious when you really think about it. We have no right, really. So you fly by the sea, your pants, you wear all the hats. You figure it out. And probably at the we have to do that. And if we're self aware and we're in tuned and we reach out to other mentors that are doing it and we get help, we get coaching, I think we can be. The potential is to be, you know, some of the best business owners out there. Because we've had to do that. We didn't just slide into a seat, you know, we had to learn all the roles first. Right. Which I think is important. And then we had to recognize, man, I can't do everything. Like I need some help. So you bring on your first hire and then I gotta learn how to delegate. What does that look like? So, you know, you make lots of mistakes along the way, but in order to grow from one to nine or myself, I was a, you know, one person show out of a 250 square foot room and that included a bathroom, you know, to two, two places. You know, with over 35 staff. I don't know if I would have got there had I not had to do the grinding at the beginning. It's not sustainable, but I think it's helpful and you do make a lot of mistakes. But I do believe in order to earn that CEO hat, you have to learn how to be very self aware, get out of your own way and empower and bring up the rest of your team. One of my biggest goals when I decided to be an owner was I wanted to create a team of leaders. I didn't want to be the solo person. I wanted to create a whole team of leaders because I figured, well, that's got to be better than just one. And it is.

Yeah.

So, yeah, it's, it's interesting to reflect back whether, you know, over that period of time and now that I've, you know, I'm not a clinic owner anymore, I've exited and gone on to my next life goal, which is helping the owner make that path a little bit easier. But the struggle I think is, is part of the game.

Yeah. Okay, cool. And, and I just, I want to start off like I got consent from Josh that I can ask him anything, you know. Right.

I'm at it.

So Josh. Yeah. So Josh, like the first thing I want to ask you is, you know, when you started, like, you know, when you started your first clinic, like how did you get the money to start your first clinic?

Know, so I graduated from school and between the time from graduating school and starting my business was about three and a half years. I fortunately had worked all through physio school, so I had a very, very small amount of debt, comparatively speaking, to a lot of other people. I graduated with probably 30 something thousand dollars of debt. Yeah. Lived at home for a year and honestly paid it all off during my first year being out. I then purchased a home and then I started to save money up knowing that I wanted to open up my own business someday. Something that I also did to minimize my expenses was something called house hacking in the real estate world, where when I bought my house, I also had three roommates living with me. So I had friends. I wasn't paying for mortgage, so I was saving a lot of money. I had always had side hustle jobs. I had that lacrosse services company. I was working 40 hours as a PT and then I was also personal training and doing small group training. So there was a lot of opportunities here to get ahead.

You were Gary Veeing right from the very beginning.

Hey, Josh. I, I guess you could say so. So, you know, I had my full time thing, I had the side hustle. I was doing a Little bit more personal training, small group training from grad school and got to a point where I had saved up enough money that I felt comfortable quitting my job and opening up rehab to perform. I still blew through all of that money in the first year and actually went into what I would consider at least a good amount of credit card debt. But you know, it's one of those things that everybody kind of does things differently. I think some people start do business loans. But I wanted to put myself in a situation where, you know, I had enough of a buffer, so to speak, that I felt comfortable with.

Interesting. Yeah. So, and how much did you spend for your first clinic? You think 300,000, 200,000. Do you remember?

So I was a sub leasee of a room at the first place that I was at and I did not have to do anything to honestly pay other than a flat rate. So I had a flat rate for the room. It was 2100 bucks a month. We had full access to the gym that we were, you know, that we were using. The equipment was already there, so it was a very, very low barrier to entry. Just a great startup space. And I was there for about 18 months before I was in a situation where I then actually got asked to leave. So I actually got asked to leave the, the facility, the sports complex. And we were in between two turf fields. If anybody's been in an indoor sports complex in between two turf fields, we're using the gym equipment. The owner of the facility also owned the personal training business at the place. And it's not exceptional but we didn't want to necessarily refer to them all the time. Like we're bringing in clients and like we don't feel like it's in our best interest to feel like we have a forced referral system to your personal trainers. Their personal training business wasn't going very well and when I said no, like our team of 3pts at that point, at that point in time we weren't going to be changing the way that we were operating in there. He asked us to leave and we're on a two month clock and it was not until July of 2016 where we opened our first brick and mortar. But at that point in time, how.

Much man, how much?

We felt enough of a bank account that, you know, I was able to cut the cord and I, I, I think looking back on it, I will be honest, Rick, I don't know, but I would put it probably somewhere in the neighborhood, neighborhood of like 100, 150k.

We that's cool.

Yeah, we went in very, very lean. We didn't have private rooms initially, so a lot of it was just equipment and getting the, the cold, dark shell space operational and, and permitted up to county standards. We added things as we went. So that's why it's a little bit harder for me to pinpoint it because we went in super, super lean. Then it was like three months later, hey, we're doing well. What are we gonna. What are we gonna change? What are we gonna add? So every time people were walking in, they were like, what's gonna be new on Monday this week? But, you know, it worked out well for us.

Okay, so. And then, and then how did you fund your second clinic and third clinic and blah, blah, blah, ninth clinic? Is it all funded from the cash flow from the, from the, the ones that did well, or you actually took on partners debt? You know, like. Yeah. I'm curious. Or you. Or, or you took some venture capital.

We have, we've done a mix of self funding and then bank loans from M T. Our first loan for that first location. We did take out a $30,000 equipment loan that was an SBA loan, small business Administration, for anybody who's not familiar with that. And then after that, we were fortunate enough that from just in terms of cash flow, we reviewed where we did not need to go through the SBA for our loans. And at this point, we've done, I think, five non SBA loans. But we do, you know, we do do a mix of self funding and loans for our offices. No outside money. Nobody else owns us at this point in time. But yeah, it's not to say that couldn't change in the future. Although I, I would like to keep it on the minority side if, if we were to do anything at this point.

So I have so much, I have so much respect for people who bootstrap it and self fund themselves. You know, they, they grind, they hustle, you know, call it the hack. But then at the same point too, is that like, they leverage the cash flow of their clinics that are doing really well to fund the next purchase, you know, And I don't see that with a lot of, like, clinical owners. I see a lot of people, you know, get to a certain point where they're like, oh my gosh, like, I feel like the right thing to do is open the second location, but then your first location is even like Max isn't making that much money right now, you know, and you want to open your second one. If you want to do another startup like, you Know where you're burning cash for like, you know, a couple of years.

Right.

So.

But yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it's, it's one of those things that, you know, we've gotten better and better as we went. Sometimes we've taken too little money and it's put us a little bit thin in the bank account. But I'd rather be in, in that situation than potentially take on more debt now. We have been good about in situations also where it's been the other end of the spectrum where you pay down things earlier. You know, obviously with variable interest rates over the past three, four or five years, certain years are a little bit more favorable. And yeah, it's a, it's an ever, ever changing process. We are looking to go through another round of debt financing at the end of the year this year. And you know, you're already talking about 10% like interest rates for, for some of the business loans out there. So we'll see how it goes.

Wow. Wow. That's insane. Yeah. You know, I think, I think now, like, you know, I have the luxury speaking with a lot of like, private equity in the past, like know, six to 12 months and yeah, these high interest rates right now is, is, is making it difficult for people to invest. Right. You know, and I guess it's even harder for like small business. Right. You know, like, you know, if, if they're charging, you know, those type of rates, you know, and depending on the margin on your business. Right.

Yes. And the one thing that I, I will say, and this is, you know, obviously a source of pride, but if we're doubling every 18 to 20 months in terms of business revenue, I feel very, very comfortable saying that there's an ROI there, that I'm, I'm okay with a 10 interest rate, you know, and that's largely been how we've grown over the past four to five years. Every about 18 to 20 months we've been doubling.

Yeah. Yeah. And I'm curious, you know, like, is there anything that you have done differently, your journey of getting to the nine clinics, you know, in terms of like the number of locations and the sequence of like, not the operation side, but like maybe the timing and sequence where there's cash flow money and like, you know, and, or, or, or like based on team stuff, Right?

Yeah. This sounds so bad, but nobody that will, will be listening to this was involved with this organization. But a huge moment for me was when I sold the Lacrosse Services company. It got to a point in time. We had 280 kids in the club program. And I was spread thin. Like, I was just very, very spread thin. It was not until I let that ship sail that I got to put the company that I had gone to graduate school for. And the thing that I knew that was always going to be the main thing where I finally got to devote my. My full attention to it. So when I say we've been doubling, like, the four of the past four or five years, sometimes I sit back and go, where would we be if I did not have something that was taking a significant amount of my time and energy during those first, like, three to four years of the business? So I think, if anything, I just learned, like, you know, try to try to go a mile deep now, try to not be a mile wide. It goes along the lines of, you know, you're trying to find one thing and do one thing well. And I know that's, you know, a little bit oversimplified, especially in the beginning where, like, Karen's mentioning, like, you have to wear 18 hats. Like, I'm imagining going into lids, like the hat store in the beginning, like, as a business owner, and you have, like, 18 hats stacked on and you're just trying to shed them. But I had, like, a whole nother business of hats on top that I was, like, trying to juggle and manage. And that's just not. That's not. It's not putting you in your genius, you know, and if you. And it's not getting you closer and closer and closer where you're shedding your hats and eventually earning your role as the CEO for this one company. And, you know, I. I know a lot of people want to do multiple things and multitask, but there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of research out there to say, like, multitasking itself isn't overly productive. And then for me, just managing two things, like, I was getting nowhere. You know, I was running into situations where, like, work life balance was extremely compromised. Let's be honest. Like parents in youth sports, like, one of the most challenging customer service areas possible. So, like, no matter your best efforts, like, you're still getting 10 to 20% of your parents are just like, they're going to complain no matter what. And then that was taking away from obviously everything I was trying to do at R2p.

So, yeah, it's interesting. Josh, I'm curious to know, because I get this question a lot. In coaching, a lot of owners, like, should I open another location? Should I keep having more locations? Do I stay in one Do I not? That's a, that's a big question constantly in this. I don't know if it's pressure or expectation that you have to open another location. I was the opposite. I did not, I wanted, I would rather have a bigger, expansive, you know, I went from 250 square feet to 7,000, you know, so, but I, for me, I was the CEO of my home. I had three young kids. So I, I had that role which is 24, seven still. And then to, to then take my time and divide it again. If another location, another location. It was so overwhelming for me. I thought, no, as long as I have one place to go, I can manage that and grow within that larger space. We did end up with another center across the parking lot. But why for you was the desire and drive for multiple versus one large center? And maybe it's demographics depending on where you live. I mean you're in the U.S. i'm in Saskatchewan, Canada, which is only 250,000 people. So I'm curious, what's your thoughts on that?

One of the most frequently asked questions I get is how can you help me grow my clinic? So every year we put together an annual event called the Clinic Boss Summit. It's basically the Woodstock for everyone interested in growing or selling your multi million dollar practice. You're going to meet over 300 of the world's top clinic owners. The network is going to be insane. It's three days. You're going to learn everything from marketing, finance, HR recruitment and cellular clinic. And the best part, it's going to be Orlando, Florida on January 26th is one of my favorite cities to hang out in January because you get the sunshine, palm trees and best theme parks we usually sell every year within the first couple of months. So grab your tickets. Tickets now go to clinic excel.com to grab more details.

I think you know, and I mentioned we got asked to leave our startup space. That was a very, very comfortable space for us. Low cost equipment's there, it's great.

Yeah.

Then you sign a 10 year lease for your first place that you go into and you know, you don't really go in with like rough forecasting and budgeting and stuff and you. And we blew the doors off of any expectations I had within about the first year to maybe 18 months. And I'm sitting there and going, okay, we're almost at capacity where I'm at here and we still have eight and a half years left on this lease. Like I feel like we have something great, can we do this again? So it's more a curiosity thing. Okay. I easily could have sat back there and gone. You know what? Things are great. We're very, very busy. We could have had, like, crazy long wait times. We still are in that lease and kind of like you, we. We expanded the space. We actually took a. Took space across the hall. But for me, it was the curiosity of. Of. Of possibility. Right? What else. What else could be there? Could we do this a second time? The first location, I opened up, not in a place that I grew up. The second location, I was like, all right, if this went this well, where I didn't grow up, why don't I open up a spot where I grew up, where I know every aspect of the community, I know a ton of people, and it was an absolute zoo for the first three to four months. But for reasons not related to, like, getting people in the door, it was everything behind the scenes. But, yeah, I mean, I. I tell people all the time, it's either, you know, you're either going to choose to potentially be like the Solopreneur. And there's reasons why that could be appealing. There's reasons why I would say one location and just getting it rocking and rolling would be very, very appealing. But I feel like after that, like, the. The decision to keep going is just something where it's.

But if you had that way and.

Like, yeah, you're just like. I fell in love with the possibility of, like, okay, how far I could take this thing.

Okay, so if you say, like, if you have the opportunity and you had the space and your first location to expand to, like, this massive facility, would you have done that? Or was it just really more. Can I just, like, keep doing this in multiple areas? You know what I'm saying? Because I think there's a different difference in. In kind of that thought process. And I don't know if it's entirely a Solopreneur just having, by definition, just one location. It's just whether you just want one large location or you want to have nine ones that are. Are of smaller size.

Yes. And I think. And something for me and why I brought up the Solopreneur thing, like, I look back at, like, when it was just me, and you get to a certain point and, like, you're just renting out space and it's. It's easy, it's great. But then, like, you go on vacation and there's no money. Like, there's no leverage. You're not.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Replicating. You're not creating something, and then it's like the first office. You're like, all right, cool. I've got other people here. There's good things going on. I've got a team. It's enjoyable.

Yeah.

You know, we're collectively working towards something. I've played sports all my life, so, like, I always. The team environment just fills my cup up. But then, yeah, the decision to do the second one, it was the. The curiosity. The curiosity of what could be possible in my hometown. The curiosity of what is this as special as I think it is? And you're also like, testing whether or not you feel like what you have is something that is really good. So then we were like, you know, you get in there and then you get smacked in the face because you have no processes.

And.

But that's a whole separate conversation. So.

And one thing I want to add, like, Josh and I shared this with you. Like, you know, when. In my early 20s when I did this, right, you know, we had this big BHAG, right? We like, we want to have 100 locations or we have the 50 locations thing. A lot of us, like, early in our CEO journeys, like, we fixate on a number, you know, that like, at one day I want to have 100 locations or 127 locations. And, and for me, it was my ego that was driving me that I want to do that right. You know, and then once I got doing that, I was like, oh, my gosh, like, this is not what I expected, you know, and. And so it's. It's actually very interesting when I meet, I mean, a lot of different entrepreneurs who grow for different reasons. There's other ones I meet where like is very strategic, where, like, I want to have 15, 20 locations that are diversified because the value of my business five or ten years from now is worth way more than selling a single, you know, the, the EBITDA multiple of you business, when you have a platform of, you know, 15, 20, 50 locations is worth maybe two times or like, or maybe a three times extra on your. On your multiple, you know, and so I think there's a lot of host of reasons, you know, on, on why people want to have like multi locations, right?

So I think about that more now than I did say like four or five years ago. Four or five years ago, I didn't know anything. I was just like, this is cool. Like, things keep getting better. I'm having fun with this. I'm learning a lot. Like two, two, two words that mean a lot to me is like pursuit and potential. Like, I'm Those are two things that just resonate with me. Like, I feel like I'm on a continual pursuit of my potential and this is a way for me to like, iterate and reflect and, and evolve. And it really wasn't until probably the past four or five years where, you know, you start hearing it more at business conferences. You're more aware of what you've put together and the valuation of the industry that you're. The businesses in the industry that you're in. So yeah, I am much more aware now where I have a target of like, I'd love to get to 15 to 20 clinics. Like, that's, that's like the short term place that I would like to get to. And there are certain things that I know that come along with that. If we can operate at the business metrics that we have worked ourselves into over the past few years.

Cool, cool. And actually let's, let's jump ship a little bit. I want to talk about like, you know, your nine locations. Now you've got nine locations. Josh is like, you know, has 82 people working this team. How do you scale, like, how do you scale your culture across your eight different locations? Is this still dependent on Josh? Or you got people at individual locations. Like, how do you, how do you do that when you have like multi sites? Because it's a very different game. I think it's very easy to do when you own one clinic. Like what Karen talked about, everyone, like all 37 people on 7,000 square feet is way easier than like when you're so spread out. Like, what's, what's, what's, what do you do, Josh, across your night locations?

I think of like three things in particular. One, obviously there's a hiring component to it. And I think being transparent about your core values, transparent about your operating principles is very, very important. I think that from a facility standpoint that the athletic vibe, that the positive affirmations and quotes on the walls and some of the things that just naturally go along with a more sports, athletic, positive, upbeat environment are attracting people who energetically are a little bit more aligned with that. And then I do think a big part of it is our pipeline to our team, like our internal development of people going through the internship program. More than 60 of other people on our team have gone through our internship program. So they get to try before they buy with regards to culture of our company before they even come in. We try before we buy, they try before they buy. And like, does this person pass the vibe check? And sometimes it's Very subjective. But like when I get a resume of a former student, it's not always new grads. Sometimes it's like a year out, two years out, three years out and I throw it over in to that location where that students spend time. And I got people going, absolutely, I'd go to bat for that person. Versus not like there's a different level of excitement for an individual joining the team too versus somebody that kind of just goes through like a standard resume cover letter. You can fake your way through an interview. Like, come on, how many people like have you gone through an interview process with? And then you meet them later, you're like, oh my God, this is not what I signed up for. So. And when you have that many people that have spent time before you, you have no choice. But even if somebody's a deviation from norm a little bit, they have no choice but to kind of follow the magneticism of the room and the magneticism of the core of the people. So if I oversimplify how we've been able to do that, I'd say that's a huge, that's a huge part of it.

One thing I'm going to give you big a shout out to Josh is like, I follow you Instagram and I follow like some of you, like, you know, some of the clinical training you do. You've done an amazing job to build your personal brand and this type of like training that you have so that like you're already pre screening the people that you want to hire that understand the culture and all this other stuff. So, so it's, it's pretty cool to actually see you do that, you know, and, and the influence. Right.

Appreciate, appreciate that very much. I mean it's something definitely take a lot of pride in. You know, we talked about the beginning CEO success of the people. You're trying to do everything you can to make sure that you bring in the right people and you train people the right way, you take care of them the right way and you ideally.

What about Christmas parties? What are you doing for Christmas parties for nine locations? Is it nine separate ones or one big one? You fly everyone in, you know, you like.

Do you watch ESPN, Rick? So ESPN has the SPS. We have the R2PS every year, which is our holiday party and award show. So we have sports themed awards that everybody votes for in the company and we come together and it's a night of festivities and a night of celebration for our team, the R2 piece. We will do our fifth annual or sixth annual R2Ps this winter.

Okay, so everyone flies in one location.

Not.

Not separate individual ones. Right.

All together. Just like we just had an end of summer barbecue. So everybody came together for all the locations. We did it over at Lone Oak Beer Food Fellowship. Everybody just kind of getting together.

All the little.

Little ones running around. It was. It's pretty awesome. Kickoff in the beginning of the year. Company kickoff. Shut down the office on Wednesday. Second Wednesday every year, everybody comes together. There's presentations throughout the course of the day. There's small group breakouts. There's goal setting. And that's like a. That. That's a big day where we review the previous year and then we align on what the. The year is to come.

Yeah. Love it, Karen.

Nice. That's awesome. I love that.

Yeah.

I stole your bucket list thing, Rick. I'm being honest. And I'll tell everybody here too. I stole your bucket list thing. Okay.

Hey, Josh, we steal. I still. I steal shit from everybody.

You steal stuff from everybody, Rick.

It's actually called like reverse hacking, you know. All right. And making even better. But yeah, that's. That's a good point. You know, I think, I think, you know, like now, like within my CEO journey is like, as I bring on like really high performance leaders, a lot of it is be able to like, you know, identify like, personally what is things on their bucket list. Professionally, what's on the bucket list. And me as like a CEO or me as an employer, am I able to be able to help them check that stuff off? And that builds incredible amount of like, loyalty and also. And also productivity, you know, because people love, like, you and they love where you're working. Like, they're gonna actually put that effort in and do the stuff that most people wouldn't do.

Right.

So.

Yeah, and for us too. And even like, from a clinical development standpoint, like something we're prideful of. And I know this might not be something everybody's like crazy about, but we're even prideful of our people that we develop and leave. Like, we have people that end up leaving our sports, like, type environment. They go to professional sports. Like, we have two people in the NBA now. One in Major League Baseball. We have another would be in Major League Soccer soon. And then another one who just took a WNBA and NBA job. Like, those are still, like, things that I know who in our company has those aspirations right now that ideally we're. We're developing them for. And the transparency that is kind of happening with. Within our. Within our walls and within our conversations, I think allows people to just be themselves and make the most of the environment, but pour back at the same time and overall just kind of enjoy the journey.

Yeah, that's awesome. That is cool. So we got five minutes left and we're going to wrap up. And Josh, I want to, I want to maybe hear from you. You know, what, what, maybe what advice or experience share can you give relating to how you're mastering, you know, like entrepreneurship in your personal life? You know, how do you balance it, like both or even can you balance like what is, what are your strategies on be able to like, you know, master that, you know, that entrepreneurship and.

Personal life, you know, I think it's twofold. One of the things that I think is very, very important is transparency. Because you have people in your life that are going to be able to feel when you are going through sprints with regards to work sometimes, and I say it's sprints and I know work in general is a marathon, but as an entrepreneur, there are certain time periods where ideally you are sprinting and then you are kind of recalibrating and sprinting and then we're recalibrating. And the more transparent you are about when those periods are, I think the better off that you'll be and I think the more likely you're going to get people that support you through those periods. They're checking in on you through those periods. You know, it's not that you're intentionally trying to be more withdrawn or, or absent seemingly. You know, you're just doing what you're doing. I mean, you're, you're pouring everything you can into your, your passion. And I think the more that you're able to just communicate that to other people. People might call that like an accountability buddy or accountability part, but I think if anything, it's just a certain transparency of what's going on in your life. And then outside of that, like using your calendar to actually block personal time and whether or not that's social things in the evenings, whether or not it's just making sure that you have hard cuts either to the start of your day or the finish of your day, making sure that you have things blocked with regards to vacation, I think those are all extremely important. Like if we're, if things are important enough work wise to block, there's no reason why we shouldn't be blocking time for people and places in our life that allow us to operate at our best, knowing that sometimes and more often than not, it's the professional that takes away from us being at our best. Personally and not the opposite. Wow.

Yeah. That's amazing. You know, like, I totally agree with that. Like, I think my life consists of sprints and roller coasters and, and that blocking and batching of your personal life is super important. Karen, I want to hear from you, like everything that Josh talks about. We hear a lot about this in our community. Do you. Is there anything you want to add to that, Karen?

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting.

Life.

I, I don't buy the life work balance because I think it's seasonal. Right. So I, I think it's an integration and it's a, it's a dance. And I, I got this from actually Andy Golfin. You would know Josh, him and all his work. Right. So I listened to a podcast. It was about athletic performance, but he uses this four square diagram. I thought it was brilliant. Where you get 10 points. That's all you have. And you have to assign points to how much time or is in relationships, physical health, mental well being and, and work, work professional development. And it's going to change. And so sometimes you're going to be like a five in your work and that you only got five points left. So, so then you take that to your partner, your friends. Look, here's my square. For the next three months, I got. I'm a five in the work, which means I'm going to be a low one in our relationship for three. Three months. Are you okay with that? It's not forever, it's three months, but assigning points and then it's that you come back out of it. You know what? I'm gonna throw my, my five back into my relationships and my kids and my family because I've been absent for a bit. Having that open communication and knowing where you're at in those quadrants and you only got 10 points. I think it's so helpful to assign that per season because you go through seasons where it's, it's up and down and it's a matter of communicating it, I think with the people that are around you and, and then they can support you because now they know you're not just being a jerk and a workaholic. You have a specific project or clinic you're opening, this is what it's going to take. But I'll be back in, spreading myself through the quadrants again. So I really like that. And it was related to sport and performance, but I think it's so useful.

I love it.

Yeah, I love it. I'm a big fan of this stuff.

So, yeah, I love him, he's great.

Yeah. And how many points do you have right now, Karen?

You know, I, I say, I will say I'm pretty well the next two weeks. I'm probably a three or four in the work just because it's super busy right now, but I'm pretty balanced now. I gotta say. I'm living a pretty good life. Yeah. Sometimes it goes up a little by one point, but I'm never there very long.

Cool. Cool. That's cool. That was awesome. This is, this is our first episode. I really loved or talked Josh, you know, and I have like some massive like takeaways like me personally. Right. You know, like. And so, but thanks, thanks for sharing your journey, you know, and, and kind of your, your path, you know, on how you went from 1 to 9. This whole talk about how you balance, not balance, how you manage your sprints, you know. Right. I think this is one thing that every single entrepreneur, every single like CEO, whether you're starting off or even as you, as, as you scale to like whether it's 20, 50 or 100 locations, you need to have that. Right. Because one at one, if one aspect of your business, like one aspect, if your personal life goes down, like your business like will go down with it, you know, and I, I, that happened to me personally and it's the worst possible thing. So yeah, let's, so that's cool. I just want to wrap it up. So we'll see everyone next week. The next week we got a super juicy topic we're going to be talking about. We're going to be talking about clinic roll ups and private equity and everything that's happened right now in the US and Canada about like all the activity with why people want to own whether it's 20 clinics or 50 clinics or 100 clinics. You know, I've had the luxury of, of actually being in Dallas, Texas over the summer onto an M and A summit where I spoke to 20 of the largest like private equities that buy clinics, you know. And so we are actually going to do a bit of a, like a rundown show down next week. So it's gonna be super juicy. I just, we're gonna have Josh Paul as our guest and he's gonna actually share a bit of that.

Right.

So I just want to thanks everyone coming to show. We'll see everyone like next week and, and yeah, and Josh, thanks for your thanks Josh.

That was super fun.

Yeah. And Josh, I'm gonna see you next week. Right? We're gonna, we're gonna hang out in Phoenix, right?

Yes. We're gonna get a huge steakhouse dinner like we did last time. I can't wait.

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