Will Humphreys argues that opening a private physical therapy practice is the fastest way to pay off student debt while gaining autonomy and patient impact. A small practice can generate about $250,000 per year when billing ethically, and he credits ownership with improving his family life and leadership.
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$250,000 a year.
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Student debt is the single biggest problem in physical therapy today. It is unbelievable what physical therapy students have had to go through to become pts only to end up with a bill so high that their income isn't enough to cover it as well as their needs. To me it is a shame that we are in a position where we are doing this as an industry. And so as a result of that, there's a lot of people talking about solutions on what's the best way to pay off your debt or all these different ideas. But no one is talking about the single most important thing you can do to quickly pay off your debt and increase the impact you make on your patients lives and your personal freedom. And that thing is open your own practice. Stay with me. If you've never considered don't click off yet. Especially if you want to click off because you don't think it's possible or you've never thought of it. Let me explain to you why you should open your own practice. I believe that every physical therapist should own their own business. I believe you should be out in the community making a bigger impact. The reason most people don't is because it seems super hard to go do. But I promise you it's not as hard as you think. And I am committed to providing you with any of the resources for free that you need to go start your own business. See, it's the PT practice owner who has the greatest control. They make the decisions that impact their patients lives. PT owners get in trouble when they start scaling their business and they don't know how to be real business owners. But to be self employed is something different. You don't need to learn nearly as much to own your job and have maybe one or two hires assisting you in your vision. And I'll tell you is that the lessons I learned in owning my practice not only made me a better person, they made me a better father and a better husband. When you can take on that type of leadership over time, it is also the way that you're going to increase your income because you'll have greater control over what you spend. And so by owning your own practice you do three things. Number one, you increase your personal freedom because your debt goes away because you're able to pay yourself a little bit more. And I'm not talking about being greedy. I'm not talking about paying yourself something unrealistic or billing unethically. By billing ethically. By being a practice owner in a small private practice setting, you could easily generate $250,000 a year and by so doing, you can pay your debt off and experience freedom. The second reason is because you'll increase the impact on your patients. Like we talked about, you will make the decisions that your community needs. As an owner, I promise you, you'll be even better than you could have imagined as a student. Because when that responsibilities on your shoulders, you're able to make decisions to increase their freedom and their independence. Most importantly, number three, you improve the industry when you start your own practice. We privatize health care, we get away from national change so that we don't find ourselves as a commodity as physical therapists. But we become doctors in the community. So I hope that I've challenged the notion that maybe the easiest way for you to get out of debt is also the best way to improve your patients lives, which is to own your own practice. I would love for you to ask me any questions possible on what that journey looks like in the comments below or reach out to me. Because my dream is that we are an industry of private practices that come together to fight insurance companies and increase our patients results. Thank you for watching. Until next time.
