How Virtual Assistants are Solving the Medical Industry’s Biggest Bottlenecks with Ben Barron

Hey, rockstars. Today's episode is a behind the curtain view of what's going on in the medical industry and what it means for you. So you're going to learn why medical clinics are desperate to develop better systems, better support, and a better way to run their day to day. And how virtual assistants are becoming a secret weapon that helps practices grow, stay profitable, and even deliver better patient care. So we're going to break down what's broken, why it's broken, and how VAs can solve that. If you want to become indispensable and understand the future of your role, this episode is a must. Listen, let's jump in.

Well, thanks for taking the time to do this. Just as a reminder, I don't know if you looked at any of the stuff we've done. Well, you know, what I'm essentially trying to do here is have conversations with people that are doing interesting things in the world, almost exclusively of pt. And, you know, the reason that we kind of started these conversations is that I felt like there's some really cool stuff happening in pockets and that people are doing some neat stuff, learning some cool stuff, tackling problems differently. But from a. If you look at the industry overall and whether it's from coaches and consultants or LinkedIn influencers or whatever else, it feels like we're just saying and doing the same things we've been doing for 20 years for this. Problems that might be the same, might be marginally different. And so just interested in, I don't know, just hearing other people's perspectives about what they're seeing, what they're doing, what their approach is, and trying to give people a, you know, a platform to spread that that's not just their own network, hopefully, so they can, you know, we can all kind of help each other out. That's kind of the idea.

Yeah, I love it. You know, what's really interesting about that too is that while you were reaching out, setting that meeting up, I had had a similar idea. I just thought, you know, it would be really cool to collaborate with companies that are doing cool things and people that I like to hang out with. Like, it was kind of one of those things for me where I'm like, so who do I like to connect with? So when you were reaching out, I already had that in mind. I was like, oh, cool, Ben. Saving me a step by initiating it. Oh, that's because I would have, I would have reached out to you for the same thing. How cool would it be just to kind of talk about the future, talk about what revisions are what we're working on, see where there's alignment. Because obviously when you and I get together, it's. It's been a powerful experience for me and I think.

Yeah, agreed. I think that, yeah, make no mistake that a part of this pet project is the fact that I get to talk to people that I enjoy talking to.

Like.

Yeah, I wouldn't spend. I got a lot of things to fill my time. If I was talking to a holes all day long, it wouldn't be. This wouldn't be something I did a lot. So it's. And it's also like a way to just kind of think for me in my role, what I'm always trying to do is just, you know, cross validate what I think I know. And I think, I think too often in a profession that you've been in for 20 plus years, I will, I'll. So my recording's going. I'll take that and turn that into a transcription. I run it through my own chat GPT that pumps out the actual interview format and everything else. I'll send it to you. You can, you know, you'll have full license to approve anything or change anything you want to. Before we go live. I'll edit this whole part out which is.

Oh, I didn't know we were filming something to be produced. I thought we were just having a conversation. Are we gonna. Are we doing a show?

This is not video. No, no, no. This, this, it's recording to. To get the transcription. It does video and recording at the same. A video recording at the same time. This is only going to turn into a transcription. Light modified. That's the what it'll turn into. Essentially it's back and forth. Ben said this, Will said this and you try to put it in the sub stack and it feels kind of like an interview, but it's heavily edited. So yeah, no visuals and no video or anything like that. So. But I got together at pps which by the way, I can't believe we didn't run into each other there.

I was. I wasn't at PPS this year. I was actually.

Well then now I feel less bad.

That we didn't run into each other. I was doing a charity trip to Africa and I came back that weekend. My team was there, but I wasn't there.

Oh, great. Okay. So I saw your logo, I assumed you were there and I just, I was just heads down the whole week. It was great week. But yeah. Oh. Got together with. Actually it was one of my partners from my own pt. Practice that I owned back in the day, and it's only been seven years, call it since we sold talking to him. And this is like one of my, like a guy I would call a mentor at one point in my career. And we flipped the script since then. Now I'm his resource. And he actually called that early on. He was like, there's gonna be a day where you pass me and I'm coming to you for help. Like, you know, he actually called it, you know, over a decade ago, which is kind of cool. Yeah, we're having a conversation, and I'm like, mike, the world's changed, man. Like, I, I, you know, I just felt like we're talking about some stuff, and I was like, yeah, I get it. But no, that's. That's not where we are anymore. And I think the more conversations we're having like this and the more we can kind of absolutely force people to think about some things and take in different perspectives and also force myself to hear other people's perspectives over and over and over and over, which then gets ingrained in your own. You know, hopefully you don't just put roadblocks up and you start to, you know, internalize some of it. That's. That's the idea.

Yeah. I love it. I love it. Well, this is a great discussion. So, yeah, where. Where do you want to go with this thing?

So, yeah, we'll. We'll bounce around a little bit. I have some rough notes and stuff, and, you know, we'll start with, you know, maybe introductions and things like that. Like, just real quick. Okay, but. But I think that, like, where I would like to spend some time today is kind of on. I don't want to say operations, but, you know, what's. What's broken, what's working? Like, you know, maybe less around, like, what are the industry headwinds and tailwinds and more about, like, what are the actual functional things that people are doing, can do, should do, have been successful, are currently successful, and that sort of stuff. But maybe a good place to start would be just kind of about. I mean, we can go through your background if you want. I'm happy to do that, but I think the thing that I kept coming back to, I was getting ready for this, is that, like, the kind of through line and all the businesses that you're working with today, because on the surface, if you just go say, hey, Will's working with and. Or owns and or CEO of companies. Abcdef, what is the kind of connector between those two things? I Feel like I know you well enough to know that those aren't going to be completely disparate companies with disparate functions and missions and things like that. There's got to be a unifying force there, because that's, I think, probably just the way it would make the most sense for you, but I'll shut off at that point.

Yeah, no, I love that, dude. It's, you know, for me, it's interesting because my journey, um, this may not be relative to what you want to put out there, but just here, so that you have a heads up. I sold my practice in 2018, and I was. And I had a mentor who's like, all right, let's get you out of physical therapy. And I'm like, no, no, no, you don't get it. Like, this is kind of a life calling for me. And he advised against the industry because he had seen what it was, how it'd been going and stuff. And he had told me, he's like, listen, it's really more valuable that you leave the industry. And I said, no, I believe that there's something here that's foundational for something much bigger for everyone in healthcare. I believe we should be leading the musculoskeletal industry and all those things that you already know, Ben. So I started multiple companies. But really, Ben, it was a matter of me trying to find ways to serve the industry in the deepest level I could. So even though I own other companies, once I created Virtual Rockstar, everything pivoted. And so that's my main focus. Virtual rockstar is 98% of my time now. And so I have these other entities. I've taken what I've learned from starting a PT practice, I've started other companies, and there is a through line between them. Like you were. You were indicating there is a service to the industry that that is provided. And Virtual Rockstar, because of its growth rate, has just been, like, for the last two years, has been my main thing it took. We are scaling really fast, and we're impacting hundreds of practices now across the country. So those. So, like my medical billing company, my coaching company that I own, they're independently run by my partners, and I coach them, you know, and I advise them, but they are very much passive in that regard.

Got it. So I want to go back. I want to. I want you to kind of more articulately say, give you the space to talk about what's Virtual Rockstar, why is it having an impact in the industry? But I want to go back to Something that I heard you say that I got a question about. Your mentor said that it was more valuable for you to leave the PT industry. Yeah. More valuable to whom?

Me.

And for what? He was only looking out in that sense, money.

He looked at it very specifically and he looked at the declining reimbursement rates, he looked at the profit margins. His recommendation was I stay in health care, but that I leave physical therapy. He's like, you've got this expertise and in business, inside of like outpatient private practice, he goes, there's so many other more valuable private practice, you know, subsets within healthcare that you should be focusing on. And his, his whole point was, you know, you'll make a bigger impact if you're making more money. And for me, I just knew what, you know, Ben, about physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech is that this is a part of the, the journey that is. That should be leading the way. And I just thought we need people to, to stay in it. I really didn't feel like it was a choice though. Like, for me, value wise, purpose wise, passion wise. It was, it was always, it's always been physical therapy.

Yeah, that's. It's really interesting, you know, because I obviously left the industry for a year and a half and the story I always give is that I felt like I was. I might as well have been selling ball bearings.

Right?

Is that, is that like they had. When we all, you know, work is important to us. It's part of who we are. It's part of our, you know, our own ego and ego not in terms of like, self importance, but like who we think we are as humans. And there wasn't a lot of purpose to it. And, and so that's what pulled me back. So I, I can totally hear you, but it sounds like that advisor was giving you some almost a push to. Hey, physical therapy is very similar to these other, what I'll call retail health industries. You've scaled in one place. You can go help someone do that, and they might be making 350 bucks per visit, whereas therapy's making 100. So there's more love to go around. So Will, why wouldn't you do that?

Yeah, exactly. And he's. He was in healthcare himself. He owned hospitals and, and has had physical therapy elements to his hospitals. And so he knew the industry well. He was just saying, yeah, there's definitely more meat on the bones somewhere else for you to make a health. An impact in health care.

Yeah, it's interesting. So I know my answer to this question, but if you talked about purpose and drive and you feel like this is like your mission for lack of. I don't know that that's the right word to use, but why not go for the money? Other than that.

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I. For me, it goes back to Connie Clemens. She's was my physical therapist when I was 17 years old. I fell off a mountain rock climbing and broke both arms and both legs. 21 bones in my body. When I was, when I was 17, it was on a Friday the 13th and it was. I went through this whole healthcare journey with that. I had multiple surgeries. I still have surgeries. They're going to replace my hips soon. And when Connie came in and like stood me up for the first time and cried when she saw me walk, she was with me for. As a home health physical therapist, it's. I'm chasing. What I'm chasing is impact. I'm chasing the unique opportunity that people in the physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech world get to make with people who are going through the darkest nights of their lives. And I don't think there's anyone in our industry that joins it for the money, which is such a strength and ultimately because of our poor education and weakness that we can talk about later. But the passion that drives most people to get into this industry, I'm not unique in that. And I think that what's powerful about the passion part is we are so set on the emotional impact on the individual. Knowing that physical motions are part of that, physical capabilities is a big part of that. That it's just, there's just nothing like it in the world. I call. I used to tell people when I, when I was balanced how this is the greatest profession in the world. And so to see its potential for what it could do to change the world is what drives me more than anything money could ever do.

It's really well said. And yet here you and I are, which is that we're working with people trying to help them make money.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, on one hand, there's a million ways to make money and yet here we are, and here we are trying to help other people in order to continue to pursue their own purpose. And often the pursuit of that purpose is most hindered by economics. Not based upon their clinical skills, not based up. Certainly not based upon a lack of patience or anything else. So talk to me about virtual Rockstar just for a second. Like, how does that fit in to that kind of purpose driven approach that you have to the whole thing?

Like, yeah, it's, it's funny because I never, when I was learning to walk with my physical therapist, I never imagined there'd be a day where I would have hundreds of employees in the Philippines as a workforce to help support the industry. Like it never, there's no way I could have ever figured that out. It was driven by experience. Having become a physical therapy practice owner, Ben, and then like going through the traditional struggles that every one of us go through. You know, I, I, I was really poor as an owner in terms of leadership and how to run a business. And you know, none of us are really taught that in our industry. And so I, I considered leaving. I got really serious about leaving and then my wife encouraged me to go hire a coach. Yeah, she was supportive. She's like, yeah, walk away, let's go, let's go do something else. But I wouldn't, I wouldn't have left the industry. I just would have walked away from being an owner and then gone back into trading. And she was just like, yeah, let's do that or give it a year and go hire a coach and join a business networking group. Entrepreneurs organization is what I joined. And she was, because of that recommendation, everything shifted because with knowledge came power, with power came profits. And with profits I was able to more realize my purpose. And so once I figured that out, and that wasn't a small journey, I think I joined in 2008 and I sold in 2018. So it was a 10 year, it was a decade of like massive ups, massive downs, two steps forward, five steps backs, 15 steps forward, you know, like this incredibly intense journey. And so again, when I sell my practice, I'm being told to leave and I'm like, no way I'm going to solve this problem. So I started. The way I got to the virtual rockstar side of things was that I was committed to helping private practice owners as my priority. And the reason that's my main commitment, like it is for you, I'm sure too, is it's the private practice section of our industry that drives the innovation, changes the dynamics of our industry and really does the best in terms of marketing who we are to the communities when we're not, you know, the private, the non private practice side of our industry. We're just part of a collective healthcare solution. But in the private practice world, we are frontline healthcare providers that change people's worlds. So that just began. So the main problem I was solving is how can we help either educate or facilitate successful private practices in our industry. And in that journey I Started a medical billing company. And the reason I started those companies, Ben, was because there's so many problems to solve. I started building solutions around who, not how. So in my world, when I solved my medical billing problem for my own industry, for my own company, excuse me, it was Katie Archibald who was my sixth solution that came in that changed my world for the better. And so she was the one that took us from like one to two locations to five. And then she ran the new 26 location company when I sold. She was the RCM genius. And so she became available after my time at that company left ended. And it was like, you know, I never dreamed about open opening a medical billing company, but she was available and I knew she could serve lots of owners. So I built that company around her and then a coaching company around another great, you know, partner in my old PT practice on education. And then way Virtual Rockstar was born was that I was recruiting. It happens to be my special superpower. And I was hiring Americans for my billing company and decided to try hiring people overseas directly instead of just like outsourcing to an unknown company. And found that I loved it. I started, I used an agency to begin and then I let go of that agency because I knew I could do it better. And so I created my own agency, but I never thought I would offer it to other PT owners. I started hiring virtual assistants directly for my billing company and my coaching company and went through that process of setting it up legally and all those things. And I had something like 50 some odd employees overseas when my coaching clients were like, hey, you keep bragging about that. And I can't stand my turnover at my front desk or one of my key people need better support. Can you help me hire? And my answer was sure. And they're like, okay, well what business is that? I'm like, oh, I'm just going to tell you how to do it. Like anyone can do it kind of thing. And so I literally like handed them like policies and procedures on how to hire using websites. Because if you're going to hire one or two contractors overseas, you really don't necessarily need an agency unless, you know, some people just want to outsource it. So I was trying to coach people on how to do that and they kept coming back saying this is taking too much energy, this is hard for us. Can you just do it for us and we'll pay you? And I said, no, Ben. For months, until finally one of my closest clients was like, what are you doing? There's a group of us Wanting to pay you and you're not even selling something. And so I piloted a program. I didn't think it was going to be that impactful, Ben. I literally thought medical billing and coaching and all these things were way more impactful. And all these things, I'm like, I didn't use virtual assistants when I had my private practice, so I didn't really see the impact as much at first. But we piloted the program in 2023 and it was July 10th of 2023 when the two companies that I hired, two VAs for each. I jumped on a follow up call, assuming it was going to be like a wrap it up, get them off my back kind of scenario. And literally both of them said, hey man, we've used your billing, we've done your coaching. This virtual assistant thing has made the biggest impact in our business. And that shocked me. I was like, so when you, when.

You, when you say that people have had the biggest impact on their business, I think it's important that we just clarify. When you're talking about virtual assistants, are we talking about people that we would consider to be front desk folks in previous models?

Yes. Currently we hire for lots of different positions within a private practice for either support or completely offloading. But at the time, those two pilot programs, one of them was a complete front desk solution. So we had two virtual assistants who are answering. She had a front desk leave. And so she decided for just a month or two to pilot this idea, forwarding her phones to these VAs overseas and doing all of her scheduling. The other guy in Texas, he piloted two people to do insurance verification and medical billing for him. And so it was very different at the time. You know, both of those pilot programs were in different sectors. And so, yeah, they came back and they were just like, yeah, this is, this has transformed our business. This was the easiest thing that you did for us. Instead of trying to help us like you just did this for us. And it's completely changed how we operate.

Do you think when was that, Will?

It was July of 2023 was when we ended the pilot.

That's not that long ago. So it's interesting to me because I that that people would say that's the most impactful thing. When I feel like if you had told me you were, you were outsourcing or had the secret sauce to go fill their clinic with new clinicians, that I would be like, oh, yeah, I get that. But you're actually saying that. No, something that doesn't take a specialist degree doesn't take A license. And frankly, there isn't an overall workforce shortage of. In terms of people that could hypothetically work at the front desk of a clinic that actually was most. The most compelling value that you brought to your customers at the time.

Agreed. I think that's why I never saw it as a business, by the way, at the time, Ben, one of my companies was a coaching company specifically. I had two coaching companies. One of them was specifically to teach people how to hire physical therapists. So. Rockstar recruiter.

Hold on, I'm going to interrupt so that people can hear this is. That was your number one. Was your number one advice the fog. The mirror fogging tool that you always talk about?

The mirror fogging tool? No, but I. But it was part of it for sure.

Do you want to just say out loud how you start with that, what that is? Like, I know I butchered the name of it.

Well, the mirror fogging thing, I don't know if I'm tracking because there's a. I think we were referencing.

You said that you early days of your practice, you would hire people in.

The biggest question I'm following. All right. Yeah. No, I would definitely not recommend that. So mirror fogging. What I used to say to people is early days when I didn't know how to recruit and I stunk at recruiting. I used to tell people, and it's true, if a person fogged a mirror, meaning they were alive and had a pulse, I would hire them. Yeah. And so it was like. But I think a lot of. A lot of owners are doing that when they don't think they're doing that. Like, they're just so much in pain and desperate because they're treating X number of hours, or they're super worried about burning out their good people that they just. Oh, you want to join? Well, they're not great in this area, or their tone isn't the best. But what. You know, they're available, they want to join, let's hire them. And it's like the biggest.

Yeah. And I understand that the. The labor market can often create scarcity, which creates fear, uncertainty, and doubt, which leads people to maybe make decisions from a different point of view. But I think that either making a bad hire or not moving along fast enough from someone out of the fear of the oper, the opposite side of that coin is like such a huge risk for an organization because the number one thing that happens is that your great people look around and they're like, what is this person doing in the boat with us?

Yes. And I Think we hire for the opposite reason where we, we feel this pull of having tons of patients, usually not enough support team, enough, enough providers. And so you just, as an owner, you know, you see that you're trying to be, make a profit. So you're. Those people are highly productive, sometimes too productive, meaning they're not well balanced with what they should be doing. And then, you know, you have someone come up who wants to help. It's like an immediate like, oh, but that's like you said, that's the, that's the worst decision we could ever make is to hire someone who's not aligned. And if we do it and it doesn't work, that's different. But sometimes we, we're justifying hiring people just because we're scared of, you know, being burned out or burning out our people.

Correct. But also that I think you bring up a great point though, is that that person, you're going to create one of two problems. Either that person stays and they're not the right person. That's one laundry list of problems. Maybe not with that person. Maybe it's for you because you have to continually put time and effort into managing performance. But it also then has an effect upon everyone else inside of that facility that can, that either that person's behavior rubs off on or maybe they rise above it. But once again, they're looking around saying, why won't we take care of this problem? We all know this is a problem, right? So that's one problem. The other problem is if you actually do make the hard decision, it comes in, you know, what is a bad hire, you're back in the same spot. You got to put, I mean, it's already sunk cost and you got to do the whole thing over again. So, yeah, it's, it's, it's interesting that, you know, one of the ways that you can, you can help with that is by having, you know, working with a company that is providing resources offshore where, you know, a lot of that is handled by somebody else and that, you know, one would expect lower cost that would, you know, overall.

Yeah, it's interesting, again, like you said at the beginning, it's like wouldn't, wouldn't the hiring of the physical therapist ones be the most useful? But the problem with that business then, authentically, and I realized this even when I created it, is that it was a done, it was a teach you how to do it business. And there's really three types of businesses. It's like, you know, let me teach you how to do it. There's done with you and then there's done for you. Done for you. Always wins because it takes the least amount of effort, even if it costs more because it's easy done. You know, me teaching you to do it, which is what rockstar recruiter was, was this business that did very well. What's crazy is I kept raising my prices because what I found was people out of desperation would give me a thousand dollars to join my program for four months. But when I started charging $10,000, those people would go away who were just like not willing to do the work or quote unquote, too busy to do the work. And the people who paid more money made more space in their calendar for it. And they always had great results. I feel like I say this all the time, Ben. I think recruiting physical therapists is so easy in this market when people know how, because most people don't. So if you're one of those people who know how to recruit, you can dominate the game. Now, given there's different sizes and models, like net health is one of those companies, or, you know, you look at larger companies, recruiting is a different story. But your typical 1-5 location PT practice, if they know how to recruit, they can dominate. But the problem with rockstar recruiter was it was a, it was a bi monthly call. There's online training. You had to do your homework. And I just assumed people were so much in pain that everyone would want to do that. But. And then I thought, well, the reason that I don't have hundreds of clients for rock star recruiter is because they, they didn't know it worked. I get that I have to prove the program, but once we got like 35 star reviews of PT saying, yeah, I've started hiring now and I think I've solved my hiring solution, I just, I started marketing it. Well, most people who called were like, yeah, that sounds really good. I'm just so busy. So I was doing a good job.

Yeah. Well, I think this falls into the bucket of what you mentioned before, which is the, it's an interesting business world, the physical therapy business world, because no one until, you know, until private equity came to physical therapy, owners and operators were almost exclusively physical therapists. Yeah. And those physical therapists had difficulty managing their p. LS in the same way they have difficulty managing an interview and hiring.

Agreed.

Is that the, the core skills, both hard and soft, that people are bringing to their role, Whether it's the technical skills of being a physical therapist, the soft skills of being a healthcare provider and a caregiver don't align naturally to those things. And so I think that, you know, it's. It's a problem that you've. You're obviously having a lot of success solving for people, but I think it's not. But which I think is because it aligns very well to the same fundamental problem, which is that the things that make you a great therapist do not make you a great business person. And maybe that kind of segues into something I've actually been excited to ask you is you've worked with a lot of companies, I don't know how many, between, you know, the recruiting company and the coaching company, and there's virtual rockstar. What do you think the traits are? Or maybe some unifying. Unifying themes around the people that actually do evolve and change and take the coaching and put it into practice. Like, what. What are your kind of learnings there?

Yeah, I love that question, Ben. That's a smart question, because I think people who are. Who are reading this are either going to A, identify that they are this person, B, identify they have these. These attributes, but they maybe not be using them, or C, realize they're not natural attributes to them. So before I answer, I just want to say that I was the third person that didn't have. I had a coach tell me. He's like, man, you don't have any natural business acumen. But he said.

He goes, that's a little rough to hear when you.

It was hard to hear he was a good coach because he was right. But he said it like this. He goes, and I was waiting. He paused just so that, like, like, you know, I started, like, getting emotional, like, hey, this. That early hurts my feelings. And then he goes, but you're coachable and you're trainable. So the point is, is that as long as we're humble and willing to. As long as we're willing to take good direction and then put it into action as best we can and perfectly, but are the best we can. Anyone can be a powerful leader. I know that sounds like a. I said leader specifically, not business owner, because leaders. Being a business owner is just a technical skill. Being a leader is a business owner and someone who can actually grow in and scale. And I know there's a lot of people are like, well, that's not true. Not everyone's a good leader. I'm like, no, not everyone's a good natural leader. It's Theodore Roosevelt's the one who said that anyone can be a powerful leader. And he explains in his theories as to why. But here's what I find are those attributes that you say that differentiate people who are more profitable and more successful than others other than being coachable and willing to take action. There are people who are more or less prone to identify their worth as a provider. That is a very interesting mindset shift that I've noticed as I've coached and worked with hundreds of owners over the years is that there are people who be. And here's. And these people who come in as physical therapists, usually who don't identify as like I am in my soul, a physical therapist. Like they are a PT and skill, but not as like who they are as an individual. These are people who sometimes have owned other businesses who are a little bit older when they get into physical therapy or they're just incredibly entrepreneurial or, or they just kind of see it as like how it really is, which is that our worth is not defined by how good of a PT I am. The vast majority of PTs, OTs and SLPs that come out of school though, they, they define their value in how good of a therapist they are. And that's all they worry about, right? Like, because it is a lot at first in school. So they take the test and then they go get mentored and they spend all this time. Many people never let it go. And they did they build that Alphabet soup behind their name to make them feel good. It makes very little, it makes no difference in reimbursement for one. But in terms of your patient's perspective, they don't care. Can they treat people better? Yes, absolutely. And there is value in that. So I don't want to like say that it's like a bad thing. It's just, it's just not useful. If people are trying to progress as leaders or entrepreneurs, it means it that in that situation it means nothing. It literally means nothing.

I think it's a great call out. I love the Alphabet soup because I feel like I've used that in my life. And I often see people's the initials after their credentials, after their name. And I'm someone who's been in this industry for 25 years. If I don't know what the initials mean, I can tell you I'm quite positive that you're the people you're trying to attract, I. E. Patients definitely don't know. And so it's interesting in a world where we are continually fighting the battle between is pt, st, physical trainer or physical therapist, then we're going to add another 75 continents and vowels after Our name. So what, what I think is interesting about what you said the most, and it makes kind of brings to mind for me is that the concept between just technical competence is what you're talking about. Right, right. Is all the, all that training that people get, the mentorship, the fellowship work, all that stuff, tremendously valuable, makes you a great therapist in a lot of ways, but it makes you a great therapist technically. It doesn't make you a great therapist from an emotional standpoint. It doesn't necessarily make you any better of a communicator. And if we think about like those kind of the EQ components of being a healthcare practitioner, regardless, I put this probably in just about. I mean, if you're in a specialty where you interact with patients who are sedated at all times, maybe, maybe this starts to fall away. But even then you're still interacting with peers and colleagues, so it's probably still got a role. But yes, that, that EQ side of things, that. How do you motivate people? How do you as a therapist be a coach similar to you will as a coach for PT owners? You're coaching patients. How do you not just give them the information, but give them in a way that they absorb it, they retain it and they actually act upon it, most importantly. And that's where I think the interesting part comes. Because we've definitely moved to a world where fellowship mentorship, those sorts of things are tremendously important to nearly all new grads as they're coming out. And I don't disagree a lick with it. I just wonder how are we also giving people guidance, feedback, coaching on how they interact with their patients in a non technical way? How are you dealing with a patient who's in tremendous amount of pain, who's crying, who's on top of everything else they're dealing with as it relates to this orthopedic issue. Their mom is dying of cancer, they, their husband just left them. I mean, whatever those things are, because that's something as healthcare providers we have to own, that's kind of bucket too. And then we have the whole third bucket, which is that like, okay, you have the emotional intelligence, you have the technical competence. Those two things are only small subsections of what you need to be to actually be an entrepreneur if you want to, or to do something other than just treat, I don't want to say just if you want to do something in addition to treat patients at some point in your career, it's going to be a whole different set of skills. And I wonder what that path is. I know what it was for you. And I was at school of hard knocks and luck and, you know, seizing opportunities when it came our way. It's disappointing there's not something more concrete available to people than that.

I agree.

1. It's one currently in a curriculum PT school. It's one healthcare for business class or Business for healthcare. Excuse me, class. And a doctorate program like that I remember, like falling asleep on.

Totally. Because it's run by an educator. They might have like an owner who shows up and speaks. But, like, to your point, it's more of a cultural thing. I think if we could, as a culture of an industry, develop this way of being that focuses on leadership. It doesn't have to be ownership, doesn't have to be entrepreneurship, but leadership is that rising tide. If we could talk about, you know, taking a stand in the industry in a way that, like, supports the industry instead of having it be this weird thing where, you know, people get upset when people are encouraged to call themselves doctors of Physical therapy in the community because they're afraid of the negative impact. My Most. In my YouTube channel, Ben, my most popular video by far is a video that said, it's just a simple title. It says, should a doctor of physical therapy call themselves doctor? And the video begins with me going, yes. And the. The amount of, like, negative hate comments from physical therapists saying how dare you? Like, was insane. And I think that to your point, like, having a more of a cultural shift into leadership and those elements would lead towards better entrepreneurship, better education, we kind of solve a lot of those elements. But to your point, like, yeah, that's. We don't. We. We're really. We're actually conditioned in a way that doesn't serve the industry. I think, right. Coming out of school, the Doctor of.

PT thing we could talk about for a long time between how do we get here? Was it the right call? Should we use the label system? What I'd love to do is to get some consensus between you and I that calling yourself Dr. Will by name and referring to yourself in the third person, Dr. And then insert first name. Can we at least agree that maybe that's not the way we should go as an industry?

Totally.

Okay, excellent. I'm glad. I'm glad we. You've heard it here, folks. And I'm glad. I'm glad we've solved. One of the. One of the problems out there is that I don't have a doctorate degree, should I ever get one. I will never become Dr. Ben. And I am not talking to Dr. Bill, Dr. Will.

Such a weird thing. Anyway. Yeah, totally get it. I'm with you.

Okay. Yeah.

So.

Well, I'm glad. I'm glad there's some consensus there. So what do you see? Like, one of the things that I think is interesting around the Virtual Rockstar side of your business is that you saw a problem for yourself, you went out and solved it, then you created a scalable solution that others can partake in and created a great business out of it.

Sure.

What do you think the next problems are out there that we need to be thinking about? Like, so I'm gonna go backwards. Not only did you solve that problem, you solved it in a way that you said yourself. If you went back in time and told yourself you're going to own a company with a hundred employees in the Philippines while being deeply embedded in the physical therapy profession, you wouldn't even know what that meant yet alone thought it was a possibility as you're just, you know, obviously you have that entrepreneurial bug as you're looking around and seeing like, what's the next problems that we need to solve in a way that we haven't even thought about? I have my own opinions, but I want to hear yours first.

Yeah, that's a great. That's a really great question again, because there are, There are definite problems that we have thought about that we have to solve. Your question was where the problems we haven't thought about.

Well, yeah, it could be the ones right in front of us too, that maybe we just need to think about differently.

Well, again, I mean, the recruiting thing, I think, you know, we look at recruiting as the problem, but it's really a symptom of the core problem, which is reimbursement. The core problem. I think most people understand this problem comes from a place of knowing how to fight it. I think the core. I think the core, Core, core issue in our industry is how we relate to money as people in physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech. Because how we are taught to think about money and in our education is the corest of those issues. But, but how do we. How do we solve that? We have to work kind of backwards. And that's where, like Virtual Rockstar, first thing it did was open up space and time. It made a little bit more profit for people, but it also made it easier to have more time so they can spend time tackling the deeper, more bigger issues, which is how do we fight reimbursement? And there's lots of great people who are starting to stand up in that Space. But we're very early stages around doing things like dropping our lowest paying insurance, organizing ourselves in groups to actually fight the insurances and win. And that's starting to happen. I see it now across the country with my network work. It's very exciting because if we can increase reimbursement, we can pay more, which isn't the solution for recruiting physical therapists but it is a huge variable that we are all fighting against. If we had more profitability, we'd have more power to be more and have more time and space to be able to solve that. So that's, that's the most low hanging, obvious fruit there. But it goes deeper into this thing of like how can we go back and change how we even relate to money in the first place? Because at the end of the day, if we saw money as the tool that's needed to grow our purpose instead of this necessary evil that people tend to approach it as, then I think everything else would be easier to take a stand against insurance companies. It'd be easier to have our profitability in a position where we're building teams in a life changing, long term way the way our friends do who are successful pre t practice owners. Right. So those are, those are the first ones that come to mind. What about you?

We're in, we're in alignment in what we're thinking about and I think that where you're going is to a similar place, which I agree with you. I actually think there's never been a better time to be an entrepreneur who wanted to be a PT provider or own PT clinics. I think today's the best time ever in the history of our industry.

Love that.

At the same time, I think it's extremely challenging if you've already built a large multi clinic location because you're saddled with some, some burdens that are hard to get out from underneath. And I'll come back to that in a second that the reason that I think it's fundamentally really exciting times is related to what you mentioned. We have to be okay talking about money because no one works for free. We do this like all of us. Yes. We want, you and I are here and not in other industries because we want to be a part of this journey of physical therapy and the mission and the vision that we have associated with that.

Right.

At the same time we have spouses, homes, children, pets, whatever else. We have obligations. We'd like to retire at some point like all those things and hate to break it to everybody, but all those things take money and so that doesn't mean we need to go make billions of dollars a year, but it does mean that it's okay to realize the worth of your skills, to charge accordingly, and to build a life around that, Whatever that is for you individually. That's where I think the greatest opportunity comes. Because if we just. And this is my friend Scott. He heard from second door health. He and I have talked about this a million times. Is that if you're starting up a new business, you can work backwards. There are more patients than we know what to do with. Okay. I don't need to worry about patients. I don't have to take patients at a loss. I don't have to do all these other things that maybe I had to do in the past because I was really concerned about, can I fill my schedule? Instead, I say, what is the math that allows me as an owner and perhaps a practitioner in the clinic, maybe not. Whatever it is you want to do to fulfill my purpose, to get value out of the work that I do all every day, to feel like I'm serving my community, and to meet my financial obligations to myself, my family, and others. How can I do the same thing for the next therapist that I hire? And the next therapist. And the next therapist. The next therapist. What is that number? How many patients does that person need to see in a year? The revenue equation in therapy is really, really simple.

Yeah.

How many. How many visits a year is someone gonna see? And what's going to be the revenue per visit for those visits? Okay, so now that's. And you can build your entire p. L. From there. And so if it's a small business and you only need. I say only. I know it's a lot if you're starting out, but you only need 300 new patients in a year, as opposed to. I'm a very, very, very large business, and I need 300,000 new patients a year. And I'm saddled with 30 insurance contracts that I've had for years and years and years that I have to get out of and blah, blah, blah. Those are very different things. And that's why I don't want to put them in the same bucket. But I think that's where the excitement lies, is that you can. You can make these decisions. And I think that for me, I'll shut up here, because I'm supposed to be talking to you, but no, I love it. The other side of that, though, is that's what you do if you're right out of the chute. But I think that no matter which I think is different than if you're established. Regardless of where you are in that continuum, though, the idea of the care model and physical therapy has not changed in 40 years. No, it's been two to three times a week for four, six, eight weeks in person, maybe one on one with a therapist. Maybe there's some extenders, maybe it's a pta, whatever. There's some variability there. But by and large, in clinic hour at a time, two, two to three times a week for some chunk of time. Make no mistake about how we got here. We got here because that's what paid our bills. We got here because in order for us to write CPT codes on the bill, we had to do said treatment that said treatment had to happen in a clinic. And therefore that's what we did. That's how we got here. We continue to stay here despite having some opportunities, you know, whether it's remote therapeutic monitoring, telehealth, whatever it is, some opportunities to do things that differently, we default back to that same thing because we say that it's quote, unquote, best care, despite not having evidence to back that up. And so I think that. I think for myself, the problem I want to have had when I retire, what I want to feel like I had an impact on, not solved, was how do we allow physical therapists to treat more patients than they can treat today and have larger impacts on a per capita basis? So per therapist basis, how can we have a greater impact on the communities that we serve? We can't do that if we just keep treating the same way we've done it for 40 years because it's just a linear effect between the supply of therapists and the number of people we can impact. We got to do things differently in order to scale ourselves exponentially. That's where I think the opportunity lies.

Agreed. The people who know how to. There's, you know, if we look at. Brandon Siegel is a guy I know in our industry, he's really influential, and he says this thing. I heard him say this recently on a webinar. Last week we were on together. He's like, we have to start approaching our. The business side of what we do as a game. Because what we're doing is we're treating it like it's law. The way that we're treating the. How we're treating, the way we're billing, all these things are so grained into us. But if we saw it as a game, the way that other industries are considered, like, okay, so how can I do this ethically, but how can I. What can we do differently and ethically that would change and solve these problems like you just mentioned, Ben. So if people could go in and start thinking differently about their business, because if they, if, if we don't, we're just going to continue to go insane doing the same things, expecting a different outcome.

Have you ever listened to the founders podcast?

I have. I have. I've never heard it, but I know, okay, it's.

I just started because I heard I got a recommendation. And so when I start a podcast, especially if it's going to be long form, I go to a topic that I know that I'm interested in because it gives that person the fighting chance to actually get and maintain my attention. And so they did a whole piece on a guy called Colin Chapman, and Chapman was essentially the founder of Lotus, the car maker that ended up being one of the revolutionaries in terms of building it Formula one. And I'm a big Formula one fan. So he's a super controversial guy. Led to like, I think 25 drivers died in cars that he engineered. Like, it's not, you know, it's not the great. It's not the greatest history ever, but. But one of the things that he said, which I find, I think just you made me recall, is the concept he had is that what he always wanted is for a. Whether it was Formula one, like a government or a regulating body or somebody else, is what he wanted somebody to tell him is tell me how many horsepower I have and tell me the size of the box that my car needs to fit in. After that, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go reimagine every single thing, but give me like two constraints. Height, width, length, the box, horsepower, everything else. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna. And I'm gonna go play with every single thing that I can. I think that's kind of the attitude that we. That you're. You're mentioning is that. Is that instead of seeing, hey, this is the way it's been, or these are what all these CB toad T codes require and I gotta treat it this way. It's like, no, no. Like, what if it is? I have more patients, because this is where we are. This is our box. As many patients as you want, like, they're all out there. So we can go treat as many patients as you want, and you can treat them in a variety of ways, all of which are legal, reimbursable, ethical, and all of which you can find research supporting that they provide good Clinical outcomes, what do you want to do? And that's, that's, that's a, that's a different way of looking at the problem. Well, I like, I like the way you frame that. It made me really think about this differently.

I like your analogy to the metaphor of using that as a formula. One example, it made me wonder what you thought those two constraints would be. And you mentioned one of them is just this consideration of unlimited patients. What's the other one? Do you think maybe there's more than two?

I think the two constraints that we have that you can not control for, but you don't have to necessarily control for one. I think it's that. I'm going to say this differently. There is not a constraint as it relates to patients. There is a constraint as it relates to staff. I know you're great at recruiting. I know that you probably are industry leading in it. There is on a macro level there are just only so many therapists to go around, which is not going to meet the demand of patients in the model that we have today. And so I think that's a constraint. And the other constraint I think you make for yourself, which is this is what I need my business to create either in terms of enterprise value or cash flow for myself for it to be worth me to go after this. Those are the constraints.

Yeah. The end in mind, like knowing what we want and how and believing we can actually create this is part of that. So I like that because it's, there's a little bit of like mindset baked into that second constraint that you mentioned. And again I think that's why people listen to podcasts or read, you know what like we're talking about here today is, is that we, those people who are naturally inclined to want a better life. You know, back going back to my story, like instead of walking away from being a knowner or a leader, it was like, well let's go learn a little bit first. It's that that can seconds and constraint I think is that power that comes from knowledge and knowing what you want. I think that's awesome.

So we're almost at time here. What have we not talked about that you wanted to or anything that we can give some time to that are pet projects or stuff. You want to make sure we get out ecosphere at all.

No, I, I'm really grateful. I think we covered everything. Honestly. I, you know, we've, you know, the, I'm just, I guess. Well, the one thing I am doing, I should probably mention, I don't Know if we knew what if it's going to go into this. But I have in person an annual summit that I do every year, and it's in March this year. And so last year was our first one. We're going to sell out this next one. We'll have about a hundred people there in terms of attendance. So it's. It's pretty good size, but we run it really well. It's a hundred percent focused on teaching people how to recruit, retain and train is our whole thing. So it's really special because we're going to be having some industry leaders in and out of our industry, including the CEO of Trainual Software. Speaking. Yeah, he's amazing. And so we've got some really.

Do you know him personally? I know he's a MESA guy, right?

Yeah, he's Scottsdale. So Chris and I. Oh, he is Scottsdale.

Okay. Traniel is Mesa.

Right. So during that story I was telling you about me leaving physical therapy in 2008, I joined EO. I had. I was accepted to their introductory group called Accelerator. That's for people who make less than a million in gross annual revenues. Chris Ronzio was in that group and both of us were in different businesses. So Chris Ronzio and I have known each other since that timeframe. He and I grabbing lunch this Wednesday just because we're good friends. And so it's funny because that's what started this thing about, like, you start networking and then your net worth multiplies. And we're also gonna do a little bit of business because he sees a huge potential there with my hundreds of VAs and maybe getting some of that like, train y' all baked into how to train those VAs. And so it's fun. It's really fun. Chris is great, but he'll do me.

A favor, if you don't mind. I actually reached out to Chris randomly on LinkedIn recently and we made a connection. They're former WebPT folks in the Arizona area that I know he knows and either still work there or did work there for a long time. And so we have some people in contact. We actually have gone back and forth. But just tell them, put in a good work.

I will.

If you don't want to.

I will. I will totally. I'll just go like, hey, I didn't even know you. You know, you just meet recently connected with a good friend of mine, Ben Barron, man.

Yeah. Because we were trying to get together when I'm out there in January. But he's. Because I'll be out in Your neck of the woods. And we should try to hook up because I'm going. I have to be out there for you.

Should.

Our sales kickoff's like Tuesday or Thursday. I think it's like the 13th of January, but I'll be there Monday to Saturday probably. So we should find a cup of coffee or grab dinner.

I would love that. Dude. Dude. To meet you in person. Come on.

Yeah. And so anyway, that's. That's too funny. So I'll put a good word in.

For you for sure. He's a. He's a close friend. Like, he and I were texting over this weekend on some other stuff. Like, it's. He's a really good guy. He's really the most humble. He is the most humble nine figure leader I've ever met. He's never lost an ounce of who he is in that journey, which is so rare.

That's cool. That's really cool. Yeah. All right, man. Well, I appreciate your time. I know we got to get moving.

Thank you.

I will put this into the. The AI machine and pump out an actual document that we can work with and edit a little bit. Give me a couple days to. I'll take the first pass because it'll give me something and I'll. I'll jigger around with some stuff a little bit. Would love to get something out before Christmas. It won't be this week or next though, probably.

Yeah, no worries. I can get that back. My side back to you. And I really appreciate this. This is kind of a different format I'm excited to learn about, so thank you, Ben. It's always great to be with you.

All right, cool. Good to see you. Well, have a good one. Thanks so much.

You too, buddy. Bye. Bye, Sam.