you're listening to the pt pinecat where
smart people in healthcare come to make
noise here's your host jimmy mckay thanks
voiceover guy uh do you want to say
thanks to my friends uh from sarah health
the remote care platform helping clinics
grow revenue without having to add staff
or extra work sarah health automates
patient check-ins by text improves
follow-through and helps clinics capture
rtm reimbursement between visits at sarah
health
dot com and if you know a sarah
there's only two types of sarahs there's
sarah with an h and there's sarah without
an h this is just sarah without an
h sarahhealth.com our guest today built
one of the most trusted practices in his
market and then made a move that surprised
most clinicians he stepped away from
treating patients entirely now he spends
his time helping pt owners grow businesses
charge what they're worth
and stop apologizing for creating value.
We do lead with I'm sorry a lot,
don't we?
He believes PTs are some of the most
underpriced professionals in healthcare
and that cash practices may be the path
that actually saved the profession from
burnout.
Let's get Courtney Morse in on the show.
Courtney, welcome to the program, man.
Jimmy, I appreciate you having me.
This is a lot of fun.
I've been listening to your show for a
long time and I appreciate what you do
and I'm excited to be here.
I'm just a curious guy.
So for background,
I came to you're you're you're involved in
the head coach for PT biz.
And that was something that didn't exist
when I met Danny.
I think I was still in PT school
or maybe I just graduated.
And I told him this story.
And I think it's funny because he had
a podcast called Doc and Doc and Danny.
Right.
Doc and Jock.
Sorry.
He was Doc Danny.
And he was asking me about podcasting.
And I was like,
this was early in podcasting.
And I'm like,
I don't know what I'm doing.
I just talk and sometimes people listen.
And he we were having like,
I don't know,
tacos or something in Virginia.
And he was like, I don't know, man,
but doing this for a while,
I might do this other business thing.
And I was like, that's cool.
He's like,
but that means I'll stop the podcast.
And he had just told me he had
a mattress sponsorship.
He got an affiliate code from some
mattress.
I forget what it was.
And I remember being like,
you're walking away from mattress money?
Bro, I don't know, man.
But it feels like PT Biz is probably
the better of the two decisions.
It's probably harder in the grand scheme
of things in that mattress money.
But yeah,
it was probably the right move in the
grand scheme of things.
All right.
So in your intro,
we talked about you opening a practice,
growing it,
and then sort of walking away from it.
What's your superhero backstory?
We talked a little bit before I hit
record about your background,
but I find you find a lot of
detail about where someone is from where
they were, what they've gone through.
Well,
thanks for kind of asking and bringing
this up.
And I'm not going to go too far
back,
but like we mentioned before we started
recording, you know, my wife and I,
we are from Western Kansas,
like our family on both sides.
We're like wheat farmers.
We're growing up.
I was I graduated from physical or from
undergrad.
and our town is so small i didn't
even know what physical therapy was it's
like i'm asking all my my uh you
know classmates like what are you guys
doing with this exercise science degree
and they're like we're all in pt school
and they're like what is physical like
this is how small it is and you
know we kind of talk about this and
it's kind of this lasting joke
You know,
like everything good kind of starts on the
coast and then works its way into the
into the middle of the country.
And so like it's twenty sixteen and like
Wichita's like, hey,
food trucks and like food trucks,
you guys heard about this.
And so like I just had not ever
heard about this thing, you know,
because in the western side of Kansas,
like it's even slower.
And so
you know i i went to p i
didn't start pt school until i was right
and so when i graduated uh i got
plugged into like it was a fine practice
um but it was kind of you know
your traditional outpatient ortho things
and like all the traditional outpatient
ortho things like they're stacking
patients on the and they're doing the
things that they have to do to survive
and four or five years into it i'm
like this is it like i i could
see the people in front of me and
like
They're as miserable as anybody else I've
ever seen.
And like,
they're just going to write this out.
Like at that point, I'm, you know, three,
three years old.
I'm like,
I'm not going to write this out for
the rest of my life.
And so I had convinced my wife, um,
we had a son that was going to
be in second grade and we had a
daughter that was going to be in pre-K
and like,
she could have gone into kindergarten
right away.
Like she's sharp.
Kindergarten's easy.
And second grade is like,
they're not even doing multiplication yet.
And so I convinced my wife, like,
let's take a year.
We're going to get the camper and we're
going to go do travel physical therapy.
And we're going to go see the country.
We're going to go get out of town
to go see what this is.
And so we spent, you know,
six months in Oregon and we were in
Tennessee and we were in North Carolina
and we,
we kind of get all the way back
after a year and we get plugged back
into a very similar job.
And I was like, Oh,
It wasn't the job.
It was the work.
It was the setting.
And so I actually had a past PRN,
like she was a past patient.
She said, hey,
I heard you're back in town.
Do you want to see my patients?
My husband's getting transferred out of
the city.
He's like, yeah, send him over.
She's like, no,
do you want to see my patients?
And I was like, no.
And I think this is the case for,
you know,
a lot of physical therapists in general is
like,
nobody wants to start their own business.
Like we are helpers and we are
integrators, you know,
like we are conservative by nature.
And like the thought process of me
starting my own practice,
extraordinarily daunting.
And she's like, I've got ten people.
I'll send them to you.
I'm seeing them out of this hair salon.
you know and it was like just her
and her rich white lady friends that she
was going to send over to me and
like just needle them and she was charging
sixty five dollars an hour like well i'm
gonna try but that's kind of where it
got started was like me treating out of
a hair salon with my massage table and
subsequently my picture on the first day
was that's what got fired me got me
fired from the other job i was like
okay i'm all in was doing both sides
was yeah
Really?
So you, wait,
you doing something after hour,
after work hours,
pissed off the person you were working
for?
A hundred percent.
And to this day,
we still hear this all the time.
It's like,
everyone knows like these non-compete
clauses and whatever else,
like they're ludicrous and impossible to
enforce,
but it still attaches a lot of people
to that job.
And they're like, oh my gosh,
like even hiring a lawyer and paying them
fifteen hundred dollars to be like, no,
this is good.
luckily a friend of mine was an attorney
and you know we kind of did it
on you know i bought him a nice
bottle of whiskey and you know send him
a nice email and a thank you card
afterwards but it's scary yeah why do you
think that is is i mean i when
my boss found out when i was in
radio and found out i was doing voice
work at night he helped me build a
home studio he was like you can use
the station stuff but he's like why don't
you build a home studio i remember just
being like
So why is it that some people get
like almost like I don't I heard his
phrase once.
I forget where it is because I'll give
credit when I figured out.
But it's like people want you to do
well.
They just don't want you to do better
than that.
Yeah.
we say that to ourselves,
but in the grand scheme of things,
everybody kind of feels like it's a zero
sum game, right?
And this is how I got out of
this quote unquote non-compete.
I was like,
I'm not going to the doctor's offices.
I'm not taking insurance.
I'm not doing any of the things that
you're doing.
I'm the least likely person that you'll
ever be competing with.
And so they kind of worked the language
to be like, yeah, I guess you're right.
So I repaid back or I paid back
my sign on bonus and then I was
free.
That's so... What year was this?
Ballpark it.
So we started our practice in December of
twenty seventeen.
So we were kind of up and running
in twenty eighteen.
wow.
I mean, so that's, you know, that's a,
that's ten years ago,
almost ten years ago.
And I remember, like, nowadays,
or just the people that I talk to,
maybe,
maybe it's the people that I now surround
myself with,
where now people will be like, hey,
you've got to really, how do we,
how can we build this together?
Why don't you bring that into the fold?
And we'll, let's add to this.
How do we grow to get,
be an entrepreneur?
Yeah, there is more of that.
But in the people that we coach every
day,
there's plenty of the
like you can't do that while you're here
um and so it still exists it still
exists in a pretty big way that's only
going to make someone want to leave it's
only going to make them stay long enough
until they can make the leap themselves
yeah that's a scarcity mindset a hundred
percent yeah and so this is actually this
is the biggest challenge of you know
people that come into you know business
ownership as physical therapists it's it's
their mindset it is you know
So how do you explain what PTBiz is
to someone?
Someone sees an ad or hears from someone
or reads a book that Danny wrote that
he used an F-bomb in.
I remember when he wrote that,
it caused an uproar.
And I was like,
now someone writing a book like that
wouldn't even move a needle.
That was ten years ago.
So how do you explain what PTBiz is
and who is it for?
Yeah.
Let me start that with how I got
involved in the first.
And so we started our practice,
like I said, in, you know,
twenty eighteen,
basically January twenty eighteen.
And I was maybe six months into the
program.
And I think Danny's podcast started maybe
three months before that.
Somebody introduced me to his podcast and.
I am maybe unique in a way where
I don't have any problem asking for help.
Like, if there's something I don't know,
please tell me what I need to know.
And I want to go figure this out.
And so I was in it.
And, you know,
the Internet then is like the Internet
now.
There's no shortage of information out
there.
But I need you to lay out the
order and the sequence for me.
The example I use now, you know,
we're in the United States and we all
are football fans.
I am a much better quarterback than an
offense coordinator.
Just tell me the play and I will
run the play.
I don't always know what play to run.
And so I very much, you know,
in the rocket fuel kind of setting,
like I'm an integrator, a hundred percent.
Tell me what play to run and I
will run it.
And so it was six or seven months
into the program and they're like, hey,
we created this thing,
it's called the mastermind.
And I was like mastermind number,
number nine, right?
And we've had a few thousand people have
come through it at this point.
But it was prior to that,
I felt like, you know,
I was turning the wheel on a steering
wheel that I didn't know if it was
attached to the car.
I was doing a lot of actions.
I just didn't know if it was pointing
me in the right direction and doing the
things.
And so what PTBiz is,
it's the coaching program of people like
myself and people with bigger businesses
than us.
And, you know, these guys that have,
you know,
done impressive things in our industry.
teaching people like this is the play that
you're supposed to do now here is what
you're supposed to do now like stop having
shiny object syndrome it's this thing and
so the the frustrating thing sometimes is
you'll get these visionaries and that do
come in and they're like oh well how
about this like nope
i'm gonna reign you back in it's this
thing and so it's it's i think really
powerful to have somebody that's already
been through it like shining you the
flashlight through the way like this is
this is how we get there and uh
i i tell people like we're all on
the same path i'm just slightly further
than you are right right you're just
loaded down so that was the vibe that
i got so you got you guys do
this twice a year twice a year
So twice a year,
a couple hundred people who are all
together,
and we'll get into the specifics too
because the rest of the year,
they're not in person,
but you pair people up based on revenue,
Because people in certain revenue brackets
have similar problems.
And who do you want to be surrounded
by?
People who understand you, that, oh,
you're in the same boat.
How did you solve that?
And you want to be coached.
And that coach can look at you and
go, if you're in this sort of bracket,
you're in this stage.
And this is probably your biggest problem.
And they're like, oh my gosh,
how'd you know?
It's like, well,
because we were there or we've worked with
hundreds of other people who've gone from
there to there.
And that was the thing that's done it.
So that to me for setup was sort
of unique.
It didn't treat everybody the same because
you had different problems.
Totally.
And so we will even divide the building
in two at times to be like,
if you guys are under just a two
hundred thousand dollars in annual
revenue,
your problems are leads and sales.
Let's go talk to people that are going
to help you with leads and sales.
And if you're a two fifty to five
hundred,
you need to hire an administrator to do
the work and you need to hire your
first PT.
And then above that,
it's a little bit of rinse and repeat.
And then you're building on leadership
systems and you're refining it.
At that point, it's systems.
Right.
And it's like,
here's how do I recreate this thing?
How do I take what's worked well for,
you know,
somebody over here in a two million dollar
business?
How do I implement that into my business?
What is so all right,
let's go back before we go forwards.
Before we hit record,
you said like how long it takes someone
to sort of get into the ecosystem.
We do a lot of sniffing.
You said before,
we're sort of risk averse because we want
to help.
And risk feels dangerous, right?
What are the barriers that people need to
get over before they go, okay.
I know I want to do I want
the result.
So what it's got to be psychological,
right?
Like what are what are the barriers that
prevent people from saying, let's do this?
Yeah.
What we were talking about before we hit
the record button is our from when you
first learn about us,
whether it's from an ad or whatever else
it is,
like when you first learn about it's about
six months before somebody comes in here
and decides to work with us in the
program,
which is a really long kind of sales
cycle on our side of things.
And
there's a lot of trust that has to
be built in that six months.
And so we have to go walk the
walk and we have to show them these
are these little points of trust along the
way to show we know what we're doing.
And it's not very much different than if
you go out and you're trying to find
your own patients,
if I'm going to go talk to runners,
I need to go have conversations with
runners that show like, Hey,
this is something that we do.
We do this all the time.
We see this all.
And we know how to solve these problems.
It's very similar.
The parallels that makes my job very easy
as a coach,
the parallels between running a business
and actual physical therapy are very
similar.
Oh yeah.
Point solution, you know,
and then it's all these other, you know,
continuity and, you know,
how many people sit around.
And so it just takes that long.
I think, you know, from a,
particularly from a digital standpoint,
we're all remote,
we're spread across the country,
to build trust over that amount of time
with digital touchpoints alone.
So what is it?
Once you're talking to someone,
what are the one or two things that
prevents them from doing it?
Because there's a lot of people who are
like,
I call it the end of a diving
board.
They're gonna.
They're getting ready.
They're soon.
Once I know.
What are those things?
Yeah.
There's usually two, it seems like.
One of them is things in their own
life or their own work or their own
business that they're currently working
just aren't quite bad enough.
And like, OK,
and so they get kind of comfortable like
this stinks,
but it's not bad enough to jump.
Totally.
Yes.
And so that's a big part.
And then if there is some kind of
radical change,
like if they do get fired or their
job change or private equity comes in and
buys their company and now they have all
these ridiculous standards, they're like,
OK, now we've got to jump.
And so it almost takes an external force
for them to finally decide like, okay,
now I've got to move.
I was reading a recruiter the other day
on LinkedIn,
and he was giving this story about this
woman who made a lot of money.
She's like high salary, like two to fifty.
But she hated her job.
Job was brutal.
And then she's like,
I found her a job that we know
that we decided we agreed she would love.
but it was five thousand dollars less per
year.
And she would not leave because I can't
take a step back.
So she said,
you're willing to be miserable every
Monday for a two two percent reduction.
And the person was like and then the
point of the article was this was about
an emotion.
She felt, well, I can't go backwards.
For six hundred dollars a month.
Right.
She's like, but you hate your job.
You hate your boss.
You're on edge because you're getting text
messages all the time.
You hate this.
This is better.
And it's five thousand dollars.
She's like, you paid me, the recruiter,
two thousand dollars to find you a job.
What are we talking about?
So.
the more people give logical excuses for
why they don't think things i'm like that
isn't it what is the emotional reason and
give it to me yeah you have to
dig a little bit deeper that that is
what actually drew me so there's kind of
two things that drew me to ptbiz at
the beginning the first one is like i
knew that danny worked for kelly's
tourette and mobility water and like
And Kelly is like on the board of
advisors or whatever,
Kelly and Juliet both.
And I've always kind of heard this like,
oh, you know, I, when I was,
I did a little bit of CrossFit at
the turn of the ox or whatever.
And somebody handed me, you know,
becoming a supple leopard.
And I was like flipping through this book.
I was reading that,
like they spoke a language and it changed
how I speak a language.
And so knowing that he was there,
I was like, one of these days,
this is going to pay off.
I'm going to go meet Kelly Stratton.
And I did, and it was as great,
they were as great of humans as I
want them to be, which was great.
But the other, geez,
now I even lost the thread that we
were pulling on.
Just the emotional barrier,
like what actually prevents people from
jumping?
Yeah,
and I think the other aspect of that
is in our practice or in physical therapy
biz,
we we've kind of learned and it's kind
of a you know like a well-known trope
about entrepreneurship at this point it's
like it is the best personal development
plan right that you'll ever sign up for
and we didn't know that when we signed
up for it and and i can a
hundred percent promise you like i'm a
better better father and i'm a better you
know dad i'm a better business owner all
these things because i went through and
cleaned up my own stuff
And most people don't know that they're
not diving into that or that's not why
they signed up for the thing.
But very much at the top of PT
Biz, like we're talking about,
like you put your personal relationships
and you put this other stuff first and
you prioritize this stuff first.
And I know you were there for our
kind of closing statements at the end.
And I talked about that.
I mean, I talk about this ad nauseum.
is like you need to you know put
your own oxygen mask on first when you're
running a business because if not your
business can run over you and it leaves
you in a like this person that you
were describing it leaves you in a very
unsatisfied place when it's like this is
what you built yourself and so you there's
a certain amount of like you have to
kind of lead from the front and being
like
Go fix your shit.
Because if you don't,
you're gonna have a really bad time with
this business for the rest of your life.
You're gonna create something that you
ultimately don't wanna be a part of.
You're gonna create a job,
not a business that you're stuck in.
So what was that thing called?
So we were at a table.
What was that thing?
It was like six categories.
What was that called?
What was that again?
It was like a,
we called it a leadership checklist.
Like a leadership round table was what the
whole thing was.
And again,
these were the businesses that were over
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars of
gross revenue.
Like they get to go because after that
point, it is just all leadership.
it's all leadership and it's like how how
do i not not only lead myself how
do i lead my team now you know
other people i'm responsible for other
people's mortgage and other people you
know putting food on their table and so
uh my wife works and works in our
business too and i think one of the
the biggest selling features about working
in our practice is like
things are steady at home.
Like they're always steady.
There's always calm.
You know,
you'll listen to these other podcasts
about husbands and wives yelling at each
other in work and you're like,
oh my God.
And so like the fact that, you know,
you can use entrepreneurship to solve or
go at least give you an avenue to
solve some of your internal struggles is a
huge selling point that never gets talked
about.
The thing that grabbed me about that was
a couple of things.
So it was a table of,
I don't know, eight or ten people.
And the exercise worked.
There was like a bunch of of category
six categories and then a bunch of things
to rate yourself.
Yeah.
in these different areas below it.
And then you'd talk about it.
And the cool part was number one,
I was like, here's Courtney,
who's a coach.
So he's supposed to be like,
I do everything perfectly.
And several times you were like, yeah,
I'm not good.
I haven't been good at that in the
last three months.
And I was like, huh?
Interesting.
And most of the people,
cause I like my like two or three
questions is like, Hey,
how long have you been doing this?
Most of the people at our table have
been doing it for a while.
So they've been doing the same exercises
or similar exercises for a while.
And they were still listening to other
people going, yeah, how do you do that?
That was the thing is like,
they're literally wearing like their
revenue on their tag to be like,
I know what I'm doing.
And they were still like,
sitting down and being like,
what could I be doing better here?
And really most of it was about
themselves.
It was not an app.
It was not a, hey,
what EMR are you using or what?
It was,
what could I be doing or what am
I the limiting factor of?
Yeah,
that's something I think about the
community that we've built in general is,
the group of people that work inside that
room are more generous than any group of
people that we've ever met.
Like somebody asked the other day in one
of my coaching groups, like, hey,
I just brought on somebody,
our onboarding process is okay.
Does anybody else have something?
And I was like, yep,
this guy just shared one with me.
And like,
people are sharing things that they worked
really hard on.
And they're just like,
they want everyone to be successful in
that room.
We kind of recognize, you know,
if we do well, you know,
it helps not only the people in the
room,
we're trying to help the whole industry,
right?
We're trying to help all of PT.
And so none of us learned how to
onboard a new employee in physical therapy
school, right?
You have the choice to be like a
business owner or a business person who
owns a PT practice,
or you have the choice to be a
PT who owns a business.
Right.
You can't really be both at a super
high level.
Like if you're going to be a business
owner,
then you have to lean into it and
you have to, you know,
learn where your weaknesses are and learn
how to be vulnerable and talking to stuff
in your groups that is hard.
But that's that's what this group is so
good at doing.
It's like bringing up the fact, you know,
bringing to the top.
Here's here's everything, warts and all.
And it's it's a really unique room in
that way.
Um,
when someone comes in and they're coming
from someone else's,
let's say they're an employee and they're
like,
they're going to do the sniffing around
and they're going to talk to you and
bank, you know,
bank questions off you guys and see what
you're saying,
but they're coming from an insurance
model.
many PTs, myself included,
and conversations all the time,
PTs will still tie their own value to
what insurance pays instead of what
patients receive, right?
Pay for the, you know,
your value is the outcome,
not what someone's willing to pay you for.
How do you approach that?
Because many people will, I mean,
when I was in PT school,
ten years ago, cash PT was like,
number one, it was blasphemous.
It was blasphemous.
And now,
I mean,
I was sitting in a room three weeks
ago with two hundred practice owners who
were like, not batting an eye.
So like,
where does that conversation need to
happen?
Someone's like,
so tell me about this thing that I've
been told was not that doesn't work.
And you're like, OK, well,
I can introduce you to hundreds of
practice owners.
Does it?
How do you start?
Because that's a that's a value shift for
themself again.
Oh, yeah.
the mindset shift that we all had to
go through, it's profound.
And some people, they get it right away.
And some people truthfully don't ever like
really come to terms with that value
because it's just baked in so deep.
And I mean,
When I first started, you know,
like I said, I was starting,
I was charging a seventy five dollars an
hour, you know,
twenty eighteen or whatever.
And, you know, my first coach, Eve, Gigi,
was asked me like, hey, man,
you got to be charging one twenty five.
And to me, that number was astronomical.
And again,
that was still probably what Medicare was
probably paying at the time.
Right.
And I couldn't do it.
And I would finally get it is like,
OK, congratulations.
It's actually one fifty.
You took so long to change your prices
like the market has moved.
And I had to hire a separate mindset
coach externally.
Again,
we're wheat farmers from Western Kansas.
We don't have any prospect on what it
is we do.
So when I talked to my team and
we talked about the value that you bring
and the care that you were bringing to
the table,
we have to talk about a couple of
things.
And the first one is, imagine
put yourself in the shoes of one of
your patients who has had back pain or
shoulder pain and pick a diagnosis for
three months, six months, nine months.
And then imagine them sitting across from
you and you don't have the confidence to
tell them, actually,
we work on this all day and we
can solve this problem pretty quickly.
And truthfully,
it's only going to cost us about twenty
five hundred dollars for me to work one
on one with you for the next three
months.
And like
If you told that to anyone,
if you told that to any patient, like,
hey,
I know this has been bothering you for
nine months and you've been to the
chiropractor,
you've been to the massage therapist and
you've had an MRI and you've had all
this other stuff and you had injections or
whatever else,
I can solve this problem for you in
like three months.
And it's going to cost me like sign
me up.
Where do I start?
And so I think the first step of
this is we have to have we have
to get people to stop thinking about what
they're charging per hour.
right units or hours or codes right
totally it's not like i i i had
to think about this the other day because
we were talking i think it was you
that or you and megan brown were talking
about this in one of our circles like
we have to stop thinking about how long
we work as a billable unit like oh
cool twenty three minutes yes all right
that's it yeah so
What what we have to do is we
have to start thinking about outcomes and
we have to think about long durations of
these things like two thousand dollars for
me to solve this thing that's really been
bothering me for a long amount of time.
Like that's pretty valuable.
The other thing that I have to tell
my team is we know for a fact
they're going to get the best care in
town coming into our practice.
And if we don't convince them that this
is the best place to get the outcome
that they want,
they're going to go look for it somewhere
else.
They're going to go,
they're going to walk out the door and
I say, hey,
it's going to be ten visits,
but I'm kind of squishing on the details.
And like you have to know that your
plans are good and that your diagnosis and
your prognosis is good.
And if it is,
people say PTs think that they suck at
sales.
They sell ninety percent of this whole
plan of care every single day.
The last percent is what makes them
nervous is ten percent about how much it's
going to be money.
Right.
Here's what it's going to cost.
They do.
They do the rest of it.
And if we don't tell them that
confidently,
they're going to bounce after three visits
when their pain goes away.
And then they're going to go look for
that solution from somebody else.
And who knows what they're going to land
on.
But I can guarantee you it's not going
to get them as good of outcomes in
the short amount of time.
They're going to go do weird stuff at
a different provider,
or they're going to be still working on
this thing six months from now.
They're going to, you know,
worst thing is they're going to go have,
you know, surgery or whatever it is.
And they're going to say, I tried PT.
It didn't work for me.
So it's an obligation for us to be
like,
If you know that you can solve this
problem,
you have to convince them and convince
yourself that this is the best place for
them.
Yeah.
Because it is.
You brought up Megan Brown.
She's got a great line.
An excuse is a problem that you have
decided not to solve.
It's such a good line.
And I've heard someone else say,
if you have a problem that requires a
thousand dollars to solve and you have a
thousand dollars,
you have decided not to solve that
problem.
And when you start talking in terms of
other people's identity or what their work
is like, and you're saying,
I've searched for nine months to solve
this problem.
It hasn't been solved.
You haven't tried what I do.
It'll cost you X.
And then you shut up and say,
I make suggestions, you make decisions.
And if you decide to do here,
I can give you this.
I don't know where that doesn't fall in
a class in PT school.
This is our basically sales module.
It's like you create a menu for them,
you tell them which item to choose,
and then you shut up.
You don't hear a shoulder surgeon be like,
yeah, but we could also,
or what about this?
It's like, here's what it is.
This is the solution to your problem.
full stop.
Right.
And so, you know, to a certain degree,
like when we're first new,
when we're new to starting a business and,
you know,
we don't have our name out there very
much,
we do have to build up a little
bit of credibility and we do have to
build up a little bit of trust.
Sure.
And so
Until we get to that point,
it is a little bit more challenging and
we do strike out a little bit more.
But that's the only reason that people
wouldn't identify with this and buy this
solution, buy your plan of cares,
because you didn't confidently convey that
in a way that made sense to them.
then that led to a little bit of
mistrust with them.
Your lack of clarity led to their
mistrust.
We don't need to be taught.
There are things that are in our human
operating system that you're like,
I don't know what's up with this,
but I don't...
I don't buy it.
Or something's off.
What is it?
I don't know, but I'm out.
We love to say we're logical beings,
but we're emotional beings.
We make an emotional decision and we back
it up with a logical story to make
ourselves feel good.
Let me ask you this.
If you're meeting with someone for the
first time who's like,
I think I want to try this.
I've heard about PT Biz, right?
Friend suggested.
What do you look for when you're like,
this person...
What are some of the attributes that
you're like, this person will do well?
Are there things that you can spot?
As much as anything,
and I had this conversation the other day.
I do a lot of onboarding calls in
both tiers.
We have the Clinical Rainmaker,
which is our six-month program for people
that don't even have a business or they
just started a business and they're trying
to figure it out.
And then we also have the mastermind,
like we've had a little business for a
little while and we're trying to grow this
thing.
And I do onboarding calls for both.
And I have for a long time.
We've been doing the Rainmaker for six
years.
what you recognize right away is those
people that are coachable and will
implement the thing they're like yep
whatever you say coach like those are the
people that that you know are going to
do well and the people that are that
come every single time with excuses or
yeah buds or whatever else you can almost
guarantee like they're going to struggle
in this program compared to somebody that
you know we have to do a good
job as coaches to
Ask them the questions to make sure that
they come to that conclusion on their own.
But when they come to it and they're
like, yep, I got this playbook.
Now I'm going to run with it compared
to like you ask them the question like,
I don't know.
And then they have ten excuses like those
are the people that, you know,
they're going to really struggle in any
program, I would assume.
Right.
I make suggestions.
You make decisions, right?
Like you look for that.
You've said before that cash PT could help
save the profession from burnout.
Why?
Yeah.
I'll go back to this point Kelly made
at one of our events.
He said,
we cannot change a system as large as
healthcare internally.
Yeah, no way.
It's too big.
There's too much money in it.
We're not a partner.
The only thing that we can do is
we can provide an alternative next to it.
And if we can grow that alternative so
big, then the other guys,
they have to go make the changes, right?
And we're not there yet,
but we're making changes, you know,
within the industry,
but we'll see it locally first.
You'll see changes within your town,
like more like in Wichita alone,
which is where I'm located,
We started with one physical therapy
practice and now a cash practice,
and now I bet there's six or eight,
right?
And it's just because, hey,
there's proof of concept,
these other people are doing it.
And so what has to happen is there
have to be enough people that opt out
of the thing.
And I get it, like insurance,
it has to stick around,
it has to be there for somebody.
But for people that kind of recognize,
I went to this thing,
the product wasn't very good,
and I still had to pay for it
anyway.
And to a certain degree,
sometimes it's more expensive, right?
If you go to a particular like hospital
system,
I heard this on a Rainmaker call the
other day.
If you go into a hospital system,
sometimes they're charging,
these hospital systems are embedded with
these insurance companies.
It's like four hundred dollars a treatment
session.
And that's with two or three other people.
They're like, well,
we're not charging that.
We're much more transparent about it and
whatever else is like,
this is a better product, right?
On a busy day in our practice,
you're going to see six or seven patients.
A full patient load for us is twenty
eight patients in a week.
And we know patients.
We know people that are seeing twenty
eight patients a day.
Oh, yeah.
It's not a two day.
Right.
And so, I mean,
the pace that we get to work out,
the relationships that we get to build,
like they're vastly different.
And the delivery of it is a lot
different as well, too.
And so again,
if you go back to this person that
you were mentioning before that doesn't
want to go back five thousand dollars
because like that's moving them backwards.
Like we find a lot of people that'll
be like, yeah,
I don't need to make ninety seven thousand
dollars a year or one hundred twenty
thousand dollars a year if I can just
not do notes until ten o'clock every night
or if I can come if I can
leave to take my kid to the dentist
and not have to take PTO every single
time I walk out the door.
And so the
That system,
it has to be run that way,
but we're building the alternative next to
it.
And it's clearly a better product.
Right.
Ask, what do you value?
I think a lot of big organizations,
because I hear from people who are there,
well, nobody wants to work.
And people have said before, it's like,
well, what are you offering?
What is the thing you're offering me?
Because I've seen people work in practices
that autonomy is the biggest flex.
And those people come and don't leave and
are happy about it because they understood
what they were.
You're buying a job as an employee, right?
Yeah.
Forty hours a week is a massive
investment.
Ask yourself what game you want to be
playing and then decide to play that game.
Well, and Jimmy, you mentioned autonomy,
and this is what our practice was built
on in the beginning, right?
I read a book.
It's Built to Sell.
Oh, yeah.
Daniel Pink?
Yeah.
And the premise of the book is like,
do not be the bottleneck in your business.
And so from the very beginning,
we were training people how to do the
things that I do because I never wanted
to be the person that like every decision
had to flow through.
Right.
And so I was only in my business
for maybe two years before they asked me
to come on and start help coaching part
time.
And so I'm stepping away.
The business is running.
There's days of the week where it's
running without me until I got to the
end of twenty, twenty four.
And like,
we would like you here full time.
And I had prepped for that since the
beginning.
And so
I've stepped away.
I've never lost an employee unless they've
moved out of the state.
It's because we've been giving them
autonomy, like hire smart people,
train them on what to do and get
out of their way.
And so it was a pretty natural.
It was the hardest part was for me
stepping away from those patients.
But in the grand scheme of things,
I didn't miss them as much as I
thought I would.
And they didn't miss me as much as
I thought I would.
I left them in good hands.
And truthfully,
some of them I had been seeing for
a very long time.
This is when I knew I had to
step out of patient care,
is I'd gotten a little bit complacent on
going and learning the new stuff.
Because even at, you know,
eighty percent capacity, mental capacity,
I was still a pretty damn good PT.
And it was like, ah, like,
so my brain was really leaning more
towards the, you know,
the business side of things.
And, you know, for me, it was impact.
Right.
I can have a certain amount of impact
working one on one with a patient.
You know,
this person can now go function with their
family or in their community or in their
church or whatever.
Right.
If I can train a team,
now I have a little bit bigger impact,
you know, more ripples or whatever else.
But if I can go train,
you know,
several hundred people how to have
business like this,
my impact is now much larger, right?
And that's what it was for me.
And so me stepping away from patient care
was like,
this is how I can continue to feel
like I am, you know,
contributing and like I get a lot of
worth and value from from my career.
But that's an identity change.
Like that's,
that to me is like the big,
that's a big internal change,
but no one can do it as good
as me.
And it's not saying that someone can't,
but it's like, if I let this go,
what am I?
Yeah.
Then what am I,
if I'm not the doer and I'm the
overseer, am I any good at that?
Or do I want to do that?
Or, you know,
then am I not this anymore?
Because I wrapped my entire identity
around that.
Yeah.
if you've ever as a,
an employer or a boss or a manager
or whatever said,
it's just easier if I do it myself,
then you're not doing a good job.
Right.
You have to go learn how to do
things.
And so the other book that,
that was in the back of my head
the whole time was, you know,
the big leap by Gay Hendricks is like,
this is my zone of excellence.
I can treat patients all day and I'm
there,
but what I'm really good at is this
other thing.
And this is, you know,
what he calls like your zone of genius.
And it was always in the back of
my head.
I was like,
I think I would be really good at
this.
And so it was,
it was a big leap, you know,
our profitability was down that year that
I'm out, you know,
it was a kind of a crazy year
in twenty twenty five.
But ultimately,
like the business still grew or, you know,
we had a little bit more stability because
I had W two salary and I didn't
have to pull out so much from the
business on a regular basis.
And then this year we're off like a
like a, you know,
like something that goes fast.
What's the future look like for the people
that you coach?
The vibe that I got,
I've only been to one of these,
was that it seemed like you were guiding
people through places you've been and it
sounded like you guys were saying,
this is the next thing coming.
How do we prepare you for this?
So what's coming down the line?
Yeah,
so we always are thinking about in our
practices, new patients.
I get new patients on the door.
Like it's all about new patients.
And in the grand scheme of things,
the real metric is lifetime value, right?
It's okay,
so I provided this solution for three
months and then they,
now they can go back and they can
do this thing and we've solved this
problem.
But in that time period,
you've generated so much trust with
people.
Like it's really challenging to kind of
send them else back into the world.
And so it's, you know,
getting people onto, you know,
continuity plans.
And this is where,
this is what insurance-based companies
could do now is they bolt after
graduation,
bolt on some cash training or some small
group training or some programming or
something else,
allow PTs like to do the fun stuff.
We always discharge them right when it's
getting fun.
All right, well,
time to go back to whatever.
I was like, wow.
But this is the part that you really
want to do.
And so these are the big things for
us is helping people, number one,
use continuity is what we call small group
training or just ongoing visits in a way
that's meaningful for them.
That's a big challenge.
It's always going to be hiring and getting
more folks in the door.
And that means getting more spaces and
learning how to manage that.
And then the other thing,
like anybody else,
it's learning how to harness AI in a
way that meaningfully tracking your KPIs
and your numbers and knowing what to do
with those numbers and be like, okay,
what am I going to do with that?
Right.
And again,
I can count on one hand the number
of people that are in PTBiz coaching that
have an MBA.
right?
It's all, it's none of us.
Like we never learned how to be business
owners.
And so it's, it's so nice to,
to have somebody, you know,
Danny is very astute on this thing.
And our other, you know,
one of our other partners Jared moon is
runs huge businesses and like to have them
guiding us and being like,
here's what you got to look for.
Here's the next thing.
It's again, much better quarterback than,
you know, offensive coordinator.
Sometimes they have to tell me what to
do.
And I'm like, yep, that sounds good.
I'm going to,
I'm going to run the thing.
And so
It's thinking beyond like, ow,
my shoulder hurts.
Right.
There's so much other value that we can
provide to our clients.
All right.
We have a tradition on the show, Courtney.
It's called the parting shot.
This is the parting shot.
One last mic drop moment.
No pressure.
Just your legacy on the line.
Our parting shot brought to you by our
friends at Empower EMR.
If your clinic is tired of slow software,
clunky documentation,
Empower gives PTs faster workflows,
better notes,
and customer support that actually
responds.
Also want to say thanks to USPT,
helping clinicians grow careers through
mentorship, leadership development,
and strong local clinic brands backed by
national support.
So you got two choices.
You can just have your own parting shot
and just whatever quote, mic drop moment,
or I can give you a parting shot
question.
Up to you.
Hmm.
I I'll take the question just because I,
I have so many of these that I
get to write.
All right.
So I'll tee up with this one.
If a new grad physical therapist,
fresh out of PT school said, all right,
I've heard a lot about this.
I want to build a career that I
love and I can afford that works for
me and not the other way around.
What would your sort of one minute pitch
be?
What would you have?
What would you say to him?
Yeah,
I think the first thing that they have
to do,
it is useful to go learn how to
be a good physical therapist first.
And so sometimes that means working in one
of these businesses or working in,
you know,
in an in-network place and go getting some
reps and, you know, learning their chops.
But, you know,
three years down the road is kind of
the sweet spot where, you know,
it's kind of the Dunning-Kruger effect
where like you're just smart enough and
also just dumb enough to be like, okay,
I can really do this.
And so when you get to that three-year
spot,
like this is when people can really go
make it happen.
And then at that point,
hire a coach and do what they tell
you to do.
Right.
That's it.
Yeah.
So it sounds like get out there and
mess up and learn,
mess up and learn and mess up and
learn.
And then once you're at that ceiling,
that sort of three-year mark, like, okay,
like you said,
I've looked around and this is what it
is.
I understand it.
Is this what I want?
If it is, great.
If it's not,
you get to sort of decide.
I mean,
how many people at that event in South
Carolina with PT Biz,
like the types of practices were so
varied,
like different and weird in all the
coolest ways, right?
So varied.
And what's nice about that is in PTB,
it's like you are running your own
practice.
This is not a franchise.
We're not telling you what to do.
We're giving you best practices.
And again,
it's up to you to kind of go
run your own brand and like go create
the lifestyle.
There are people in there that just want
to get busy enough to have a lifestyle
practice,
never see a patient on Monday or Friday,
have five days off every week and whatever
else it is.
And so you get to choose your own
adventure.
And how many other jobs in healthcare are
like that?
Not many.
Not many at all.
If someone wanted to contact you,
what's the way if they were like,
all right, this guy seems cool,
but I'm going to test drive him a
little bit.
Yeah,
I would tell them to go to the
PTBiz website first and foremost or follow
PTBiz on Instagram.
You can follow me.
There's not much going on.
It's just pictures of my kids.
It's Cordeon Morse at Gmail or at,
that's like Gmail.
Cordeon Morse at Instagram,
but all the real action that happens over
at PTBiz.
Courtney, appreciate this.
Thanks for doing what you do, man.
Just standing in that room,
it was pretty cool to watch a bunch
of people on similar but different
journeys at similar but different stages
and watching people talk to each other
like future version of myself or past
version of myself.
It was pretty cool.
Yeah.
It's pretty motivational because you can,
you can see where you're at on the
path and there's always a way to get
to the next one.
Or you can, like in Mikey's shoes,
you can choose to tread water a little
bit.
It doesn't have to be a rocket at
all times.
That's the nice thing.
Courtney, appreciate your time, man.
Thank you.
Thanks, Jimmy.
That's it for this one,
but we're just getting warmed up.
Smash follow, send it to a friend,
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Want to go deeper?
Hit us at pgpiecast.com or find us on
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And legally, none of this was advice.
It's for entertainment purposes only.
Bullshit!
See, Keith?
We read the script.
Happy now?