The Freedom Journey of Two Powerhouse Physical Therapy Leaders - Norene Christensen and Orit Hickman

Welcome back to the podcast, guys. Today's episode started the way all of them should. 20 minutes of laughter before we even hit record. But once we hit record, the brilliance just flowed. We have Dr. Orit Hickman and Dr. Noreen Christiansen, two good friends of mine who are powerhouse leaders in physical therapy. They own clinics and they like to do things differently. They have swapped their burnout for boat rides, spreadsheets for scaling, and self doubt for CEO hats. How did you like that? Orit runs Pain Science Physical Therapy near Seattle. She blends neuroscience and heart to help her patients in chronic pain. And Noreen, she owns clinics across three Wyoming counties. She builds leadership teams like a boss and occasionally breaks trail and bones on mountain hikes. So together, these women are redefining freedom in private practice. They like to mix and AI VAs and sheer grit to build these clinics that can run with or without them. So buckle up. This one's got leadership gems, plot twists, and probably a few dogs barking in the background. So let's get in it.

All right, so I finally hit record. Ladies, thank you for. For being out the show. But we. It's about 20 minutes into this podcast episode that we haven't hit record because we can't be serious long enough. So welcome to Willpower PodC. Maureen Christensen, Orit Hickman. Thank you for being on the show. Let's have you introduce yourselves, you wonderful leaders. Start with Orit.

Just stop laughing long enough, she can stop giggling. Oh, my gosh. You had three rock stars in a room. What happens?

Light bulbs won't be getting changed?

No.

That's why we need our VA's.

That's right. Keep us on track.

That's right.

Where are they right now?

If hiring employees feels like dating apps full of ghosting and disappointment, you need to be at the Rockstar Summit, March 6th through 8th, right here in sunny Arizona. This event is laser focused on one thing. Helping you recruit, train, and retain top tier talent. So your practice runs like a dream. Instead of a dumpster fire, you'll get proven systems, real world strategies, and a community that gets it. Plus just enough fun to make it feel like a reward, not a retreat. So visit www.virtualrockstar.com events to secure your spot before we sell out. And we will sell out. See you in March, Rockstar.

Thanks, Will. I'm excited to be here. This is a lot of fun, of course, to hang out with two of my most favorite humans for an hour on a Friday morning. So I have a clinic in Burien, Washington, which is just outside of Seattle I've been a private practice owner for 15 going on 16 years this coming October. And I've been a practitioner. I was a practitioner almost for 25 years in May. And I've been moving away from practitioner into being a CEO and it's been an interesting transition. I've had my clinic, I started private practice 15 years ago in order to basically I was a female private practice clinician and was feeling fairly under supported by all the people that I had worked with up until that point and was getting kind of frustrated and finally decided, okay, I need to just do this thing. And I had absolutely no plans other than I'm just going to, you know, if you build it, they will come. And so that's exactly what I did was I started, I opened my clinic. I had no referral sources. I had a front desk person, I did have that. I had a billing company that I was working with at the time and no idea what I needed to do other than I was going to treat one on one for one hour sessions. And that was my only plan. And within about a year and a half, well within 6 months I needed to hire a full time PT but didn't actually do that until about a year and a half in. Had some contractors in there for a while and we grew from a 2,000 square foot clinic to a 4,300 square foot clinic. And then about two, we're, we're about two and a half years now. We moved, we, we purchased a building and moved into that space and we're going to open our first satellite. I'm going to open my first satellite here in about two months in Seattle. Yeah, yeah. So this been, and it's been quite a journey. Like we started with just, okay, I'm going to be an outpatient orthopedic clinician. I was doing primarily, you know, manual therapy and exercise and movement based treatment and then shifted to working with patients with persistent pain because I had been really kind of scratching my head about what I was seeing and I was feeling kind of frustrated because I had patients on my caseload that I was like, I know that PT is what they need. And yet I couldn't get past certain barriers. And those barriers were the central nervous system. And I just had no idea. And so started doing pain science work with patients and taking a very strong biopsychosocial approach and we rebranded in 2021. And you know, I think I've worked with you will since 2000.

Maybe that time about 2021, I think we started working together to do recruitment. And I now have another fabulous coach that I'm working with as well. And just. Yeah, it's been a whirlwind. It's been a whirlwind. I know we're going to Talk all about VAs and talk about how that's kind of, you know, changed my life also. But, yeah, it's been. It's been. It's been really fun. It's been fun to be a practitioner and an owner and meet amazing other business owners and women who are inspiring to me who weren't around 15 years ago when I started. So at least not to my knowledge. So it's been. It's been kind of incredible.

That's awesome. I love your journey, Ori, and so fun to watch you. Just like we were talking earlier this week, you're. You are CEO. It's so cool because your brain operates in this place of, like, frustration when you're not in that CEO hat. And it's not because you resent any of the other things. It's because you've evolved and you're in a position now where you know the best way to help your team and your patients is to be in that CEO role all the time. And you couldn't have gotten there without being freed up. So, no, it's been awesome. I definitely learned more from you, and you are the first ever Rockstar coach in the Rockstar consulting world. So that's awesome. She's leading out on calls for Rockstar recruiter. And so, man, you're just multifaceted and very talented. And so, yeah, Noreen, let's get into you, young lady. Let's give an introduction to this wonderful guest.

I just have to say, in the last two or three years that I've known Orit, I've watched her go from clinician owner to CEO, and it's been really fun to watch. It's powerful. Congratulations.

Some people slowly go through that. There was like, a shift one day and it was like, oh, there was no going back for a read.

Yeah. Well, I'm Noreen Christensen. I graduated back in the Dark ages in 87. Took my licensure exam on paper.

Michael.

Really? Yeah. Oh, I didn't know. That's cool.

We had to fill in those little circles with the number two pencil.

Nice.

My goal on graduating PT school was I thought I'd have a private practice in Vermont that had a simulation ski machine assimilated climbing thing. And instead I kind of practiced from Maryland to Utah to Alaska before I settled in Wyoming 30 years ago. Which is crazy. That's half my life now in Wyoming. And I worked in hospital base and private practice and sports medicine and really saw a lot of things I liked and a lot of things I didn't like. And the biggest thing I didn't like was how professionals were treated, especially within a hospital system, and how patients were in the dark. Nobody educated them on anything, on their insurance, what the process is, even what the expected outcomes of their rehab and what that's going to look like.

And so I talked my way into working at a hospital in Jackson. I was a little cocky. They weren't hiring. And I told them that I'd be their busiest therapist in three months. And just being in private practice, I went to the ortho group, introduced myself, and the one ortho was like, you know, if you're any good, you'd be in private practice. And I said, interesting, let me prove it to you. You don't know me from Adam. I just walked into town. Let me prove it to you. So he was my biggest referrer. I was the only one allowed to see his patients. And so that gave me the confidence to just leave the hospital. And this subordination, that they just treated their professionals horribly. And I wanted to open up a clinic that just had different values that, you know, I've worked with lazy therapists in the past and I've worked with lifelong learners. Wanted to surround myself with lifelong learners, from front desk to professional staff, to support staff to billing staff. And they're not staff members, they're team members that are not, thank you very much, because staff, they're team members.

They're not infections.

So I've been able to attract those kind of people. And now I definitely made bad hires in the past.

Some I got rid of within four months and some I held onto for a couple years.

But after four years of having my practice, I bought on a. I opened my practice in 98. In about 2002, 2003, I bought on a. Brought on a.

Business consulting firm. And boy, did I start learning what operation measures I should be going through. Because I was running my business into the ground. I felt like, oh, PT needs to affordable. Well, then you have your overhead expenses and your value.

We all do that. I think it's. Noreen, I think it's interesting because, like, what you're saying is healthcare providers of any industry, when they go to private practice, it's like, you know what I'm going to do to be different? I'm going to make it easier and cheaper and it's like, wait a minute, easier, sure. Cheaper is when we start shooting ourselves in the foot, but that's every one of us, right? I think that's a big part of this freedom journey is the mindset of money that Steve Allred talks about all the time.

Oh, definitely. And even our new grads, you know, we. Our profession, I think is the peace core of the health profession because they feel bad coding for their time because it might be too expensive. And it's like, you know, that's we can work with the patient. You need to bill for your value, code for what you did. But anyway, so they really helped me on that and understanding operations and KPIs.

And the economy crash came and I had one clinic at the time, and I went from four therapists to one other therapist and I really should have let him go and really held onto my business by a string. And then all of a sudden we exploded and went to two locations and three locations nine years ago.

And then Covid shut that down and all of a sudden, in 1600 square feet, I was shoving five therapists, six therapists, and that just wasn't working. But we came out of COVID and I met you three years ago going through the Rockstar recruiting program, which was super helpful. Our biggest funnel has been for recruiting, has been our interns and our technicians who go on to PT school who want to come back and work with three of my leadership clinic directors have been all interns and we call them my daughter, my granddaughter, and my great grandson because they all like mentored each other as interns and clinic instructors. And so that really helped and then brought on an executive coach after listening to the PT owners club podcasts.

And I'm like.

Gotta love those guys.

Yeah. And I'm like, Where were you 10, 15 years ago? I could have totally had a different business. Instead of now I'm managing this hockey, hockey stick growth curve, which has been really exciting. But I also now have three solid locations. Everything is growing. I'm at facility maximum in our 3400 square foot facility and our 1600s facility. We're at maximum there. So. And I'm currently now with the right support, looking. I've partnered with a large partner ship in March, and now I have the support to look at other clinics. And I. There are a couple of clinics I like to acquire and tuck in to our brand and improve the value of our brand.

That's amazing. And it's so cool you're doing too. What is that?

That's the tennis ball. For the border collie.

The border collie was that who's breeding earlier? I didn't know. I heard that's like a. Yeah, that's awesome.

Oh, sorry.

Everyone at home's like, oh, I wonder what dog that is. Or does Noreen have a breathing issue? I don't know.

No.

Yeah. No. It's so cool. This whole journey that you've been on and you know, I caught you at a later stage of business, but both of you have really overcome the day to day and you know, those pivotal points of like, overwhelm, you've gone through those off and on for years. I, you know, are said something I wanted to kind of dive into a little bit. It's a little bit off a plan. But what do you, you know, freedom is like the main focus of our show. What do. Do women in leadership face different challenges in creating freedom than men in our industry?

Yes.

Okay. What was that?

Even though I believe, even though I was between two sisters growing up and even though I feel like I'm. I'm one of the clan, I don't probably know. So tell me a little bit about what that's like.

So the, the societal pressure first. Right. Is as a female, when I, at least in terms of sort of my evolution, what I experienced was the expectation is you're going to be, you're going to be a mom.

You'Re going to. If you're going to be a clinician, you'll be a clinician, you'll be a great clinician. Which is a very, I mean, our field is very maternal. Like, even when I was going through.

Percent women, I think.

Right. And when I was in school, it was 80% women. And they were actively trying to recruit males into the field. And those who were coming in, like I. In private practice, my only.

Experience with business owners were all male. I didn't know any female private practice owners. And the one that was in my county, who I had never met, they used the B word to describe her. So there was. Right. So it's like, okay, you've got, you've got this expectation as I've got to be a mom. I'm going to be a great clinician. But how do I, how do I become a business owner and not be a baby?

So I get that, that there's a layer of pressure there in terms of like, if you're trying to fit the expectation, the societal expectation of like, well, I want to be a leader, but I don't want to be a B. That is.

The sad truth is if you're a man driven to build a business and drive a business, you have. You just have this drive, and that's.

Praise and people like you and for you.

And if you're a woman that knows what they want and are also driven by goals and success.

You'Re difficult and.

Or b. Or you're. Yeah, interesting.

I mean, I'll admit to that. But, you know, you just have to.

Hey, guys, thanks for swearing how it's going to go today. So I'm only grateful for both of you. Yeah.

I mean, the biggest challenge was figuring out this balance, because as a clinician, I had honed that skill of being maternal. And I also could be.

I could be direct and very clear with my patients in the role of clinician so I could direct their care.

I could.

I could be obnoxious and rude and say, okay, you're not doing your things. I need you to do your things when I needed to. But it was. It was. It was an. It was an established therapeutic alliance. And it was very clear that, you know, I had a certain role to play as the clinician, the transition to business owner. I mean, at the time, again, I had no female owners who I could look up to. That's why I'm like, where was Noreen when I was starting all this? Because I look at normal and I'm like. I'm always like, this is what. Like, I look at Noreen, I'm like, okay, this is where I'm going. This is where I'm going.

We're all trying to chase Noreen, man.

Yeah.

Up a mountain sometimes with grizzly bear spray. Where she's. During next week. Audience Just to be clear. Yeah, keep going.

Yeah. I mean, that's the real reality, is that it was. And I remember I went to my first PPS conference, and it was my last PPS conference. I had been. I had been an owner for a year. And I went, because I said, hey, I should probably go and get all the resources and learn all the things. And I went and introduced myself to a local business owner that had, at the time, I think he had four or five clinics in the same town as where I'm at in Burien. And I introduced myself, and he looks at me and he goes, I know who you are.

And I was seen as competition, and there wasn't any, hey, are. This is great. Let me bring you into this group and let me. Let me. Let me have you go ahead and learn what this is all about. And so it felt very much like I was a silo and what I have seen shift and change through the real benefit of social media, of even Covid. Right. Because everything went online. The benefit of all of this access and interconnectedness is that I now know people like Noreen, I know people like other female providers and owners that we were talking about before we came on today that inspire me, and I can talk to and we can share, and it is really okay for me to actually drive this bus in a very specific manner where I can still provide an incredible environment for people to work in, and I can still be mindful of how much money we should be making and the finances and all those pieces. And my team doesn't look at me and say, well, I don't want to work for her. In fact, they look at me and they go, wow, she's a leader. That's really cool. And I go, ooh, how did I get here? Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah.

And I think there's something you said. It's an interesting balance, right? Because you want to be inspired by people that are like you. You know what I mean? Like, people look and want to feel connected to people who are in the same world that they are. It could be religious. It could be gender. It could be race. It could be really just any kind of, like, country. It could be culture. It could all these different things. But we also want to have enough of a diversity element to it so that we can be exposed to what is different. I think the problem is that when we get too homogenized in any direction, we start to lose the spice of life. We start to lose perspective. And it's interesting because, you know, the more that we travel, the more we work with people who are similar or different than us, the more we realize we're all the same. And I think that's the problem. If we get two into one group of people, whatever it is, they start co collating and start seeing others as different but going. I'm kind of going on a rant. Here's the thing. Going back to the freedom mindset and having a different challenge coming in it. As young women leaders who don't have examples or role models, freedom is so much about a mindset shift. What shifted for you guys and when? I want to know, like, what shifted for you? Maybe it's not even around that element of it, but in your journey of becoming CBOs and freeing yourselves up, what shifted for you and when did that shift?

I'd have to say. I'd have to say that shift happened 19 years into my practice when that was the first hockey stick growth before COVID And I realized I'm in the clinic, I am working in the business, I am not working on the business. I need to pull myself out so I can.

Work on the business. And at that time we bought billing in house. And so there is suddenly all these new policies and procedures. And I had basically three clinics doing different things. No, we are one brand, one company and we need consistent policies and procedures. And I was just winging it and I realized I'm not going to go anywhere with all this entropy. And I actually had a whole company meeting and I tasked my employees, I said, look, we need consistent policies and procedures. I want billing working with front desk, I want PTs working with techs, I want front desk working with PTs. I want billing working with PTs. And in six months, I want a policy and procedure manual on everything that we do that's going to be consistent. And boom, they made me cry at our next meeting. They like, we didn't have chatgpt then, which I could have just plugged it in and like hear my parameters. They went above and beyond anything I could have put together because I don't know what billing does, I don't know what front desk does. I don't, I don't know all their procedures and the things they need to do. And it's a constantly, it's a living document.

And I used to think that I had to control all that. And I realized I don't, I don't have to control all that, that my team can do that. And then I got to.

I was like getting super anxious because I was, we're coming out of COVID so I'm like diving back in again, rebuilding my team, managing another big curve. But I'm in the clinic and.

I was like, I have to do something. I don't know what it is, but I have to do something. And that's when I started with an executive coach and he helped me just gain clarity of what are you doing? I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing. He's like, write it down.

Who was it?

I work with Practice, Freedom U and Steve Allred.

He is amazing.

He's amazing. He is really like, I'm Ms. Amped and he's Mr. Calm. And it really felt like, Steve, if.

You'Re listening, we want you to be more self promoting Steve already because he's such a powerful coach. But he's so like, hey, just so easygoing. You wouldn't know it from pools that he won't promote himself. He's very, very humble.

He's amazing. And so, like, I had this three page document of everything I was doing. He's like, why are you doing that? Where is your value? Is your value at something that. Well, our lowest paid employee is 2250, but is that a 2250 an hour job or is that an executive job? And so he really made me pull things out. Use the Eisenhower matrix of what I need to do, what I need to let go. And that has been very freeing and extremely helpful in my growth.

So your pivot occurred during COVID when you realized you were clear of how much you were in your business and you leveraged a coach to get into a mindset of, like, building systems and process these and rockstars. As you're listening to this, that's a big mindset. Shift is that we start looking at the things that we're doing and we put dollar amounts to those things and we say, is this worth my time? And it's not that, like, the CEO is above changing the light bulb, but the CEO who changes the light bulb because it has to be done, turns around and holds someone accountable or hire someone to do that moving forward. It's like that kind of mentality. So thank you, Orit, what about you? Or thank you, Noreen. Orit, how about you? You're all one person to me. You're so wonderful. So, Orit, what about you? What's your give it moment where you're like, I gotta start getting free. This is too crazy.

So 10 years into my practice, which was 2019.

I read a book and it was traction.

Ooh, good one.

I don't know who recommended the book to me at the time, but that. Yep.

Oh, it's right there. For those who are watching, Lorraine pulled it off the top of her computer. Awesome.

And so I read that and realized, huh, I could really use a leadership team. And I had sort of these, like, grand ideas that I wanted to. I wanted to have like five clinical practices. I wanted to have five. I wanted to have five clinics all over the Puget Sound. And I realized that if in order to do that, I didn't know what I didn't know, but I kind of had an inkling. There was a lot that was missing.

Yeah.

And so I created a leadership team. We came up with core values. We had four at the time. We now have six.

And we.

It was interesting because that was the first shift in my practice because we had. There were three people besides me on the leadership team. And as a result of it. One of those people actually left the clinic because they didn't like the direction we suddenly were figuring out we needed to go in. So I brought in. I brought in a coach. It was the first time I'd ever had a coach. He was not. He was in. In the field of health care, but not a pt. His background was in lean management systems. And John Sackett, if you're watching this, you absolutely changed my life. Because in that moment, I knew that, and I brought him in and I basically told him, I said, look, he is the type of guy who comes into a health care facility, and he would clean up the healthcare facility and fix all the systems. And I said, I don't want to have to hire you. And in 10 years, when my systems are falling apart, so I need you now to help me figure out what I need to do going forward. So in working with John, we. We implemented some lean strategies in the clinic, which was dramatic for us. We had a daily management system. We had a 5S system. And then John said to me, you know, you really need to rebrand. And he had me. He pushed me. He's like, you need to have. Your name needs to be Pain Science. And I was like, pts don't put pain in their. In their company name. That's not. And I fought it for a while, and then I. Then I fully realized I was fighting an uphill battle. It didn't make sense. So we rebranded fully as Pain Science Physical Therapy. Trademarked, did all of that. And it, like, as soon as we did that, things became very clear.

Covid hit. It gave us an opportunity to really step back as a company. And kind of like, Noreen, we just. It was like, starting over, right? And after. After Covid enough, things changed in our policies and procedures and our processes that people. People left who needed to leave, who weren't aligned. And then we met Will because one of my colleagues was like. We were struggling to hire, just like everybody else. And I had not let go of any of my team members through Covid. I had kept everybody fully employed, even when we were in lockdown. And so I kind of had this sense that it was going to be. There was going to be these challenges after Covid to bring on new people. So I was afraid to let go of my people. And they left naturally because it was. It was the right time. So then we met, and Will, you kind of gave me. You gave me some insight into that. I had more control over what was happening than I really understood. And once I kind of got that Recruitment. And like Noreen, we are. A lot of who we hire are past techs and students or friends of students. So people who've had experience within our clinic and then go off and tell their colleagues and their friends. So with working with you, it kind of started that process of me starting to think more along the lines of I need to be stepping back. And then, of course.

Through Noreen, I met Steve. And that has been because I kind of knew I'd been struggling with this concept of moving away from a clinician to say something else and. Right. And he. He just kind of just made that road a lot smoother for me. And he said, it is. It is okay for you to do less and be able to oversee and run the business, because he. He imparted kind of this wisdom that our decisions now are harder decisions and they cost more. Right. If I make a decision to change things, that has a greater impact than it did when I was a clinician just working with one patient at a time. Now I impact the business on a much, much larger level. And it's been. It's given me the confidence to say that I am shifting into this role. That is definitely.

Yeah. It's so cool how Steve has been a big part of the show, and he doesn't even know it.

We were talking about Steve.

That's one before the show.

Call him up and have him join.

I almost want to call him. It's so funny, because it's like this thing where he's so great and that the mindset is the thing that we were both talking about. There was a ship there, and I really appreciate the extra layers of challenge that you both had to go through in an industry that didn't have a lot of women examples for leadership. Because that's what you guys are. You guys are those examples of leadership. And I wish, you know. Anyway, Seth, call. Cut all this piece of it out, because what I want to say, because it's not really this conversation, is I really. That's one of the things I've thought about taking the show and doing. I'm thinking about pivoting the show honestly, and just taking it all about, like, for students and presenting, like, leaders like you to them, and then having them, like. I don't know. I just. There's something about the industry needing more examples. Uh, Seth, you can cut back in now. So now that you guys have all this freedom, and I know it's not like every second, every day, you're like, I'm so free. But you have comparatively way More flexibility and freedom. What do you do for fun? What do you do for yourself, like, in your spare time? I'm going to start with Noreen on this one because she's, she's a great example of like, I'll, I'll text her and she's like, yeah, I'm on the slopes, you know, like, like, what do you love to do with that freedom that you've created? Created that's just for you?

Well, it's, it's getting back into the things that I enjoy instead of constantly working on the business, working on my weekends, maybe getting a quick mountain bike ride in, maybe not. Maybe just sitting on my butt all day Saturday, Sunday.

You are so active, there's no way you sit on your butt. You, I, I think of you.

Oh, I'm a pro. I can sit on my butt with the best of them. I'm ultimately very lazy.

I've never texted you and you were like, hey, I'm just sitting here doing nothing. It's always like, hey, I'm fighting a bear.

That's all you're saying.

No, but I do, I'm skiing more. Sometimes I'll ski in the morning and then get to whatever I'm doing by noon or one o'. Clock. The year I turned 60, I spent a week climbing trip in one area of Wyoming. I went up to British Columbia and did a ski mountaineering trip on a glacier. And then I got home. I think I was home three days and took off to Hawaii for a week and a half. And then I don't, I think I was home a day and then went down to Phoenix where I finally got to meet you in person and Steve in person. And you know, my clinic did fine. My, my leadership has really made it easy on me. Right now I'm in the clinic a lot. I have a new therapist starting in August, but this one clinic has blown up. So I'm seeing a lot of patients. And I just had therapists break his leg trail running. And so I'm covering in that clinic and my leadership, they're doing things I don't even know about. And when I do find out, I'm like, why don't you tell me? Like, you're, we don't, we don't need to bother you. I'm like, good, as long as you make your decisions on the values.

And listen, listen to that, like little micro masterclass on leadership, delegation and freedom. She has people that she trusts. They're. They know their job is to free her up and they are receive. Doreen's trust because as long as it's based on. So there's a standard, it's not just loose, there's the values. And then once the values are in place, then they can freely act within that lane. And there's a small part of you that feels like maybe I should know more. But you realize at the end of the day they're doing their job. It's awesome.

So it's nice to be able to leave. Like next week I'll be on a backpack trip, no cell service and I have nothing to worry about. And I'm leaving again for two weeks in August to go back to British Columbia backpacking and there'll be no cell service. And you know, I know I'm going to come back to like a thousand emails but you know, I can unabashedly delete and if it's important, they'll email me again.

Yeah. And you've got.

I know the business is fine.

That's great. What about you or what do you like to do for. With your spare time that you're starting to earn when you're not treating, you're no longer treating. 60 hours a week. Like what do you do?

So exercise finally came back into my life.

Right.

Like you're a pt. Do you get, do you exercise? Nope, I have no time. Yep, now I have time. So exercise. I paint, which I, I have a studio out in the backyard that my husband built for me years ago and so I try to get out there. Not enough. But the big, the big love for us is boating.

Wow.

So we had, we sailed for about 10 years and then we moved to a powerboat, an older powerboat that we've been bringing back to life and we're actually leaving next week on a three week long trip.

Love it.

So rockstars, the proof is in the pudding. So now that we know and that you guys are pros at this stuff and I would say master recruiters, which I don't throw that out lightly, people who know how to recruit pts, well, it's not that they don't face challenges, but these are two leaders who never gave up and man they are, they are really able to recruit and it's a powerful thing. So let me ask you this. We'll go back to ori. What tools or tech do you use that have been game changers for changing your time? We talked about coaching, we talked about mindset. What are some tools or tech that you use are really big for you?

So we're actually a pretty tech heavy clinic in General, because we have, you know, a few years back, I bugged you fairly heavily to start to hire some VAs because you had had the experience of hiring.

Hiring internationally and I couldn't crack that nut. And it was, we were at a, we were at a breaking point where we needed better, better systems with our managing our phones and managing some of the processes in the background. And so as soon as we brought on two VAs, it was okay, we're going to use Slack to communicate. We use Asana pretty heavily in the leadership team. Now primarily, that's what Slack is.

Most people might know Slack, but. And then describe Asana.

Yeah, so Slack is our communication, our HIPAA compliant human communication platform, which is basically real time Chatt. And that's been fantastic because as a team, everybody is communicating on Slack and we're communicating with our VAs. And my front desk manager is also off site. She went off site back in Covid and that's been huge as well because it's allowed her to be incredibly productive. So when we talk about that whole letting go thing, I don't even see half my team because they don't work under the same roof. So it's. So we use Slack for communication. Asana is a tool for managing projects. I used to have, you know, sticky notes everywhere, lists everywhere, and now everything goes into Asana. In Asana, I can keep track of all the projects. I can keep track of my recruitment, I can keep track of hiring, I can keep track of, I can schedule out any project and I can connect with other. Right now, my leadership team, we're all in Asana. So we're all, we're onboarding two new therapists and we're doing that all through Asana and that's been, that's been really huge.

I, I do use, I use Chat GPT.

I don't use it as often now because I'll typically reach out to my coaches. Right. I'll reach out to. You will. Or I'll reach out to Steve to ask questions. But if I need to kind of work through something or if I need to clean something up that, you know, I'm not, as you can hear, I'm. When I speak off the cuff, it's, it's very stream of consciousness. And so if I'm putting together a nice, you know, blog post, I'll write it all out and then I'll stick it in ChatGPT and say, Clean this up for me.

Yeah.

So that it, you know, sounds better when I'm putting that out for patients. And also when I'm even communicating through email with prospective hires, I try to clean those emails up because again, my. My verbiage is. Is very off the cuff. So that's been helpful. I've already mentioned the VAs. They've been a game changer for us. I'm actually starting to realize that I need to bring on another VA that is going to be an executive assistant to just me.

Yep.

I haven't done it yet because I'm trying to really dial in what are all the things. But I have a feeling that once I do, that person's, like, going to get busy really fast because I've taken on. I've got too much in terms of managing marketing, so I'm trying to do that. We use. We also use. In our documentation system, we're connected to Prediction Health, which is managing our compliance. And Prediction Health has a AI platform called C Sidekick. And Sidekick basically is our scribe while we're doing documentation. And so while I am not treating that much, I am still in the clinic a day and a half. And I was the worst offender because I would leave and then I would not write notes for, like, a week. And it was driving my clinic manager fatty. And I said, I'm going to be better. And so utilizing Sidekick has been huge because it's allowed me to very quickly write up the notes, get the goals in, get the assessment, check it, make sure it's right, and then close the note out quickly. And so that piece has been pretty significant for us as well.

Yeah. And I have to give massive credit to ORIT listeners, Rockstars. The whole reason my virtual assistant company even exists is because of orit. I told her no, and then she said, please, like, like I said, I said no nicely. I sent you all the forms, like, just go hire themselves. Go hire vas using these forms and stuff. And then you did some research, like, no, it's not gonna work. And then you said, come on, just pilot. And I was like, all right, so let's pilot it. And then Robert jumped on your train. And it was exactly. We're filming this episode on July 11th. It was exactly July 10th, two years ago yesterday at 1:30pm that I got off the call with Orit Hickman. And I said, oh, my gosh, this is huge. Because ORIT was so intelligently, like, informative. It wasn't just like, yeah, I like my VAs. It was like, will, this is why you need to do it. And she listed out, like, six reasons, one of them being changing the industry. So areth publicly. Thank you. You are the reason I am now with 186 virtual assistants with 150 some odd partners across the country. We just got off the phone with a large national company today, a publicly traded company that wants to start working with us. And that is a good segue to Noreen because it was because of Noreen's connection that I got that introduction. Noreen, what do you. What tools and tech do you like to use to free yourself up?

It's funny. I am the spreadsheet queen. And you love spreadsheets. Oh yeah. I'm such a numbers person. Kind of like a Forrest Gump in a way.

But, you know, I can use ChatGPT and put in the parameters of what I want in a spreadsheet and work with it and it will produce one with what I'm looking for, with the formulas and everything. It's taken me a while to learn that. Steve has really put a boot in my butt. I think it was pretty pointy actually, to start doing things like that to free up my time. It's like if you know what you want. Sorry, the. The dog is.

Then what.

Hey, Sep. Keep that in. Sep for is our wonderful podcast editor. So Seth, let's keep that in. That was fun for those to see her throw a ball for her dog.

While we're talking.

That if you know what you want. But I'm like a re. I just have flow of consciousness and my speaking language and my writing language are Fairly similar. That ChatGPT will clean that up. We've been using for prediction health for quite a while for the compliance and reporting that you get on all your therapists. What time are they signing off? Are there coaching moments for, you know, to help them to be more effective during the day or to help them with appropriate coding or diversity of coding.

And we are also using Sidekick. I am typically the early adopter on everything and I am definitely the laggard on Psychic. I think I'm the last therapist, but it's. It's my. My heels in the sand saying I am not going to be in the clinic much longer, so why should I learn this?

But the therapists love it. It has really cut down on evaluation times. You know, it used to take 15, 20 minutes to finish out your evaluation, everything that you want to write. But now Sidekick is in the background and it figures out what's important, what's not. You review it and move on.

With our virtual assistants, that has really made us improve our tech. Before we got them, we started to use weave as our internal communication, but it's also HIPAA compliant external communication. So our phones are VOIP phones and we can text patients and they can text back to the desktop of our front desk, which when they're working the cancellation list, they have been so much more effective in filling those openings by texting people than calling because people don't answer their phones if they text. You know, you see them looking at their phones all the time and they text right back while they're talking to you. It's been a game changer on keeping the schedules open or full and have minimal openings, getting people in who are waiting. We have a huge wait list and so they just go down that wait list. They can do bulk texting and say, hey, first come, first serve. This is open and it's typically filled. So with the VAs.

We, they have, they're integrated in our weave, they're integrated in our EMR and our billing. So it's easy to message. And then we use teams. So we first started with a VA to help free up our front desk because I really didn't physically have space for another person. But also it was so hard to hire somebody that would come to work, wasn't hungover, didn't call in sick all the time, or they came to work and it was just drama and, you know, doing one of these while they're supposed to be working.

So.

She quickly became forward facing with our patients and we had to figure out a way to do that. And we started looking at some of these virtual kiosk companies. Now that I'm with a large partner, we have to vet everything and I'm on the wait list. So we just embrace Microsoft Teams and we keep a laptop open. Somebody walks through the door, the VA pops up. How are you doing? They're starting to create relationships with patients, starting to have back and forth conversations like they would with our live people. We've hired two more VAs, one for our billing team and we have a big screen on the wall and we keep teams up all day. So she is in the office with my other billers and conversations and education and support is constantly going around. And it's just, you know, 10 years ago I didn't know. Oh, I never would have thought, thought.

That, that you'd walk into an office and see a screen and by the end of this decade, everyone's going to walk into every medical office and see a screen and it'll either be a VA or an AI bot that you can't tell isn't a human being. But yeah, Noreen, that was a great description of virtual assistants and tech that you use. I love how both of your discussions really talk about the integration of these two fastest growing trends, which is the whole season VAs or AI. And it's so cool. One thing I do want to say to both of you and the listeners who are tuning in is that I am obsessed with ChatGPT work and with the VO or stupid, the Gemini from Microsoft. So I'm like, you two stream of consciousness. I like to talk it out. What I've been doing with ChatGPT that has changed the game. There's two things I want to share with you two in the audience. Maybe you're doing this, but the first one is I use the talk function more than anything else. I will go for a walk, a long walk. I'll create a. I have a paid version. So I have a project. So all of the different discussion topics will feed into one. It will remember better the other topics. It will pull it back. There's a main focus of the project. But like I was. Noreen has been, excuse me, or Reed has been helping me dramatically with Rockstar recruiter lately, repurposing it, right? So I've met with oreit, she's coached me. And then I was at my cabin a couple of weeks ago and I went on a long walk and I just talked back and forth and I just said, you know, I don't really even know what I want to create here. Can you help me? And it was like she started asking me questions and then it was like, okay, can you come up with more questions like those? And then we found something. We started diving in deep and what I found was in since I'm a stream of consciousness producer, I was able to do that higher level analysis with my CHAT GPT like a coach. And it's get smarter. Here's the other tip I want to share with you too and the audience is that you can do a corporate account with ChatGPT and this is huge. You can set a corporate account where everyone in your team is using ChatGPT and you can do a couple things. First of all, when everyone's sharing that corporate account, whatever anyone does, everyone else has access to. So you wouldn't want to do anything personal and just be work related. But for example, in my marketing world, we're creating a whole new like strategy around marketing. So we've got my marketer, but we've got the salesperson, we've got me. And so as I'm thinking of things in my domain from a high level. I'll be working the ChatGPT and like asking it questions and having it created, you know, pictures or whatever. They're doing their stuff and it remembers it so it informs the work that they're doing so that it all stays streamlined and it is unreal. And you can Even create specific ChatGPT bots within your corporate account. So we can have, we have a marketing assistant and so that marketing assistant, we inform it. You've got 50 years of marketing experience in healthcare. You're gonna be doing. Here's your, here's your main function and then we all work within that one bot. And so it's, you know, as we start to leverage AI and this is a big part of the reason I want you to do that show is to communicate to others what I've been fortunate enough to be exposed to, which is how to leverage these things for grow. Okay, so ladies, this has been a phenomenal episode. I've got some rapid fire questions for both of you. Let's. Yeah, worst mistake you've ever made in your life. I'm just kidding. Let's go ahead and let's move.

Oh, I have one. I have actually a few.

I should be careful when I joke with you two on the, on the line because you'll answer the question.

We won't care.

We won't care. All right, this one's going to take a little bit of thought. Then the rest of them are going to go faster. What is the best business purchase under $100.

That has saved you time?

Well, that's easy. I paid for chap GPT.

Boom.

That, that's absolutely the easy the. If I had to think under a hundred bucks, I'm like, yes. I was like thinking books. And then I'm like, oh. I'm like no chat GPT and like.

Minimally to free up in terms of like editing your. Your messaging on a minimal level. Like you just use that for stream of consciousness editing.

Well, I also I. We were talking about need of. You know, I'm going to need an A VA here soon. Part of the need is marketing because I am the person who does all the marketing. I have the full blown marketing strategy. Although I have met with the company that Noreen is working with and I'm looking to. They're going to audit me and help me kind of come up with some stuff. But when I met with, when I. So I basically like I needed topics I needed. I said and. And it remembers right, because I've been using it for a while. So I said, I need 20 any topics for newsletters on pain science. And it just gave me 20 different topics. And then I was able to write. You know, I'm able to write the newsletters based on those topics. And it was. I was like, oh, yeah, I forgot. It remembers. It knows me. It knows my company. All that. So, yes, chatgpt. He's a lie.

Love that one. What about you, Noreen?

You know, I unfortunately would have to say the same thing. When I was updating policies and procedures, it was so painful just sitting there, looking at my computer. And so I finally just put into chat pt, like, I need a policy and procedure for physical therapy technician. And it already has a bunch of stuff. And then, okay, well, I want to add this. I want to delete this. And in less than five minutes, I had a full document that I barely had to edit and did that for every.

Boom.

Every position for my.

But this episode, I've said that, like, 20 times. And by the way, here's one of my favorite topics or things to do with Chat GPT as well. I hate reading contracts. Like, it's the worst. I. If a lawyer sends me a contract, I literally want to stick a needle in my eye. Not being dramatic, Like, I just. I'm like, oh. So what I do is I copy the whole contract, throw it in the chat GPT and go advise me on the. The liabilities and the best parts of this contract and advise me on. On how should I approach this, especially when it's in a good place.

That's good to know.

Like, that. To me, it has to be, like, it's not. It's not the biggest thing that makes a difference in my world, but it's. It's. It's my favorite because I love that I never have to. Well, I'm. Some lawyers, like, you still read your contract. I'm like, yeah, but I wasn't really doing it before at all. So this is way better than that. All right, guys, Rapid fire. Let's get into the fun ones. We'll go. We'll go. Orit. Noreen. Noreen. Ori. Ready? Orit. What's a book that has blown your mind?

Your book 10x is better than 2x.

That's what I was gonna say.

Have the same answer.

Well, no, I'm looking at my books right now. Gap in the gain.

Gap in the gain. Same authors Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy. I think very powerful books changed my life a year ago, right when I. Two years ago I read those books. The Month after Noreen said you should do this and I committed to doing it. Those were the next two books I read. Love that. Let's go into your top time saver hack, Norit.

Ignore it.

Oh my gosh, audience. The power of those two words. We should do a whole episode and ignore it. So great. Orit.

I created an unsubscribed folder in my Gmail in my. My email. And basically everything that is junk, it takes too much time to delete it or. Right. Everything that's junk goes into the unsubscribe. And then once a week I go through and I block. I don't even bother with unsubscribe. I just block and I've just been blocking and. Because I end up with more than a hundred emails in an hour. Yeah. So I'm just like, it's all going in there. It's been a game changer for me to do that.

Oh man. I almost want a whole discussion on that. Okay, back to. Oh, did I. I haven't gotten to Noreen. Yeah, I did. So it was. It was. Ignore it.

It's her. It's her.

And then. Yeah. So now it's turn. What's the one thing you wish you'd stop doing way sooner in your business?

Stop doing.

Stop doing way sooner in your business?

I. I wish I had stopped listening to the negative in my brain.

Seriously. Well, it doesn't help when people are calling you the B word because you're. You're trying to start a business. You know what I'm saying? Like that kind of thing. I get it. Noreen. What about you.

Stop feeling like I had to keep a pulse on everything and start trusting that it's. It's going to get done and it's going to be done right. And however it's done, I'm going to accept it.

Okay, here's a fun flip question back to Noreen. What's the most time consuming task that you secretly enjoy?

Oh, I secretly enjoy getting all my KPIs together and filling in my spreadsheets.

That's really cute. What about you?

Or.

I want to steal that one.

That is the most common answer. This is episode.

Oh, really?

That I'm filming or something like that is the most common answer. People really nerd out on their staff and they don't want someone else to do it. I don't have to touch it.

I don't think it's anything different. I think that's kind of my. I think I. You know what? I also really like to Do. This is so dumb because I. I'm still. We. We. Most of our. Most of our checks come in via eft, but we still get stacks of checks. I actually really like stamping each individual check when running it through the check machine and then putting it in the bank and seeing that number go in there. So that's.

That's a very sad. As I get it, though, there's a very tactile. It's. It's almost like you're getting to touch the results of your work.

Yeah.

You're stamping it and you're rolling in. There's something almost like audio. Auditory about that and tactile. And then you see it, and it's visual. And then, you know, it's. It's like a pro survival activity because you see the money adding, like, because what the stress that business owners face more than anything, it's probably money. So you see that the bank account, I love. That was. That was one of my favorite answers. All right, guys, what's the latest thing that you delegated or.

Because I'm going away for three weeks, I'm going to. My clinic manager is going to do payroll while I'm gone. Nice.

What about you, Noreen?

Well, I inadvertently delegated learning and running all the new little processes from my new partner. I've been so busy. One of my directors just stepped up and started doing things. I'm like, oh, I'm just going to let her keep doing that. This is perfect.

All right, guys. And here's the final question of the episode. Everyone's been wanting to know from your perspective, what is it? Is it AI or is it ba.

Oh, va?

Okay. Or.

Don'T.

Looking at hiring more because we're partnered.

In the VA space. What do you really believe? AI or va?

You know, like.

I'm going to get a lot of hate on this personally right now. For me, it's AI. Just what. It's how it's impacting me personally from a business standpoint. VA all the way.

Love those answers, ladies. Seth, please put the magic number above us. We don't know where the score is because we're filming these episodes out of order. So Seth knows the actual tally. Every episode's gonna count. We're gonna see at the end of the season what wins VAs or AI. So, yes, Noreen and Orit. Final thoughts. Let's start with Noreen.

Oh, gosh, it's been a journey. I honestly can't imagine doing anything else that I'm doing now. I think I've been a therapist 38 years. I love the profession. I love that I'm in a position now like the age in my profession that I can start giving back, that I can start supporting others. I've learned a lot from my mistakes. I'm meeting excellent mentors and coaches and it's just a super exciting time, I think, in my professional life.

What a wonderful way to close that out for you, Ori. Final thoughts.

It's actually very, very similar. I was literally saying the other day how much I love what I do, and I'm so fortunate to get to do it. I have always maintained that I have loved physical therapy and I loved being a physical therapist. I never enjoyed who I worked for until I opened my own practice. And now I feel so excited about being able to, you know, advance the field in a manner that, you know, by doing what I'm doing, I'm employing people where I'm impacting many more patients than I could ever impact on just a one on one, you know, caseload. And that's really, it's really inspiring and it's exciting and I'm thankful that my degree has allowed me to come to this place in my career.

Oh, love that. And you're not just helping employ people. You're changing lives across the globe, both of you, as you work in the world that you do. And I think I'll say this as my little 2 second soapbox moment is that, you know, what Orit said at the end, rock stars is that our license is our opportunity, not our livelihood. That livelihood comic seem like if you screw this up, you're going to screw your life over. No, it's your opportunity. We have to be aware of the liabilities, but we never break free until we realize what we're capable of. So, Orit Noreen, thank you so much for being on the show. Thanks for tuning in to the Willpower podcast. As always, this is Will Humphreys reminding you to lead with love. Live on purpose. Purpose. And never give up your freedom. Until next time.