The Freedom Bottleneck and how to overcome it

[00:00:05] Welcome to The Aaron LeBauer Show. This is the number one show for passionate physical therapy and healthcare entrepreneurs looking to level up their income and impact on the world. If that's you, then you're in the right place. So

[00:00:18] sit back, chill out, and let's get into the show. Hey what's up welcome back to The Aaron LeBauer Show. This is Aaron LeBauer Show from the road. So I am in Bristol, Tennessee slash Virginia. Bristol, Virginia. I'm actually in

[00:00:38] Virginia this weekend for Lambretta Jamboree. You know when I travel, I like to, I don't really go on vacation, I go on trips. I like to do work. So I'm working this morning and then this afternoon I'm gonna go for the show, the

[00:00:56] vendor area, and then tonight we got a party, tomorrow we got rides, yesterday we did rides, etc. So I've got some thoughts and things I'd like to share with you for the podcast about freedom, about how to overcome the freedom bottleneck

[00:01:12] because there's a big bottleneck, and how to get more of it. So like I'm here in Bristol so what should I talk about is how did I get here? How do I create a business that allows me to come to Tennessee? How can I go to Hawaii?

[00:01:30] Australia, travel with the family. I think 2019 I did, I counted, I did 81 days out of town with family. So that was like beach, skiing, mountains, visiting family in other places, Thanksgiving, winter break, etc. I did that traveling while managing

[00:01:49] the clinic and my coaching business. The last years has been a little bit different because of COVID on and off, but in the last year I spent 10 days in Australia, last 12 months I spent 10 days in Australia, 5 days in California. I was

[00:02:04] in Hawaii for 10 days 11 months ago. All for work. Here I went to Utah skiing with our mastermind, that was great. I've been to a couple other events. I have a whole list I haven't counted but I get to do that and it's a lot of fun and

[00:02:25] what I like to do especially let's say when I was in Hawaii, I'd wake up early and I'd work and then I go surf, have some lunch and go to the event that I

[00:02:36] was there for and get to experience what it's like. Similar in Australia I got to hang out with a friend and go to Bondi Beach, go swimming, see Sydney, work in Brisbane, see part of Brisbane and then go to Noosa where we had our conference.

[00:02:51] It's really awesome. There was a time when I ran my practice and I was like I really want to be at the APTA events, I want to go to PPS but I was trying to

[00:03:02] figure out like well how do I go? I mean number one the educational content wasn't what I really wanted to learn but I felt like I should be there to go be around other physical therapists who own private practices. I was like I really

[00:03:14] should be there because there's no one else that I'm connecting with and to go to PPS that starts on a Wednesday and it really ends Saturday morning so I have to give up, I have to travel Wednesday or really Tuesday so I have to give up

[00:03:27] Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday of treating patients and go stay somewhere a couple hundred bucks a night. I mean I remember the last one was at the Broad Moor which is a really fancy hotel in Colorado Springs and there's no other like

[00:03:38] Marriott's or anything else nearby and this was a little bit before this before Airbnb so it wasn't like Airbnb was a consideration. They did it in places like New Orleans as well. I mean I could stay somewhere else there but I remember it was the

[00:03:50] Broad Moor. I was like there's no other option and I got to miss four days of treating patients so besides it costing me 1,200 bucks in hotel, 1,000 bucks in flights, it cost me 2,500 bucks in treating patients that week so it's

[00:04:03] really $5,000 and I'm not going to be with friends or family and I was going to learn things that really weren't gonna help my business because I don't need to learn how to shake a doctor's hand or worry about insurance contracts

[00:04:14] or you know productivity and stuff like that especially as a solo practice owner. I don't need to worry about how many units for my PT is billing so I never went until I figured out how I could go and I couldn't even get a presentation

[00:04:29] how to go and run. I used to run webinars from an interview other PTs like Jerry Durham and Rick Lau and then but same with Con Ed. Con Ed is mostly Saturday Sunday but you still got to miss at least Friday and probably travel on Thursday.

[00:04:41] There was an event I did John Barnes MFR 3 and it's a full week. It took me a while to figure out like I knew I could go it was worth going but not because I

[00:04:51] was going to learn something that I wanted to learn but really what I needed to do is free myself from always like trading time for money like only my time produced money so my my time does produce money now but not directly one

[00:05:08] for one. I don't do one-on-one coaching. I don't do one-on-one treating patients. I love doing both. I've treated patients for 20 years and I got to a point where I could help more people by coaching them but if I coach you one-on-one then

[00:05:25] I'm doing something and I'm delivering that coaching in a way that doesn't deliver me freedom because I can't coach a hundred people in a month one-on-one. There's not enough time in the day. There's enough hours in the

[00:05:38] month but it doesn't allow me to do the other things I want to do build the business I want to build, provide the freedom and flexibility for me to move

[00:05:44] and travel so I do a lot of I do one to many coaching that's what we do in our Platinum Mastermind. So we do in our CashPT Academy and our CashPT Blueprint case study program. I do some one-on-one but it's very expensive and it's only

[00:05:59] for people who have unique situations or really just decide they want to pay it but that's not my goal. It's because I know you've got a question about hiring, about objections like people say they want to use them at their insurance

[00:06:13] about how do I set up this workshop. I can put you and 10 other people or 50 other people in the same room same zoom even if it's just five other people and I can help you plus four other people and that helps your 25 people a week and

[00:06:25] there are 25 people a week and now I've helped you grow five people grow from five patients a week to 25. That's from 25 people to a hundred. Aaron can help more people and that's really why I love it and it scales and I want to

[00:06:37] talk to you today about how you can do that as well because freedom is scale and what do we all want is freedom. We want freedom to travel, we want freedom time, freedom from money. We don't want to have to worry about those things we

[00:06:51] just want to live life we want to treat patients the way that they should be treated the way that they deserve to be treated which is for me and you to make this you know like I'll make decisions for my patients based on what I believe

[00:07:02] is right in my experience and you should do that for your patients without insurance companies interfering or without fear of repercussions from physicians who we disagree with because they're like oh you need surgery for the

[00:07:13] sciatic thing. We're like no I just need to do put my elbow in your butt and get you doing some half kneeling balance and chops and lifts. Okay so freedom is scale. Scale means we stop trading time for money. There are a lot of times where you

[00:07:30] are gonna work one-to-one and get paid but overall we need to be able to say hey you're gonna do that if you want to but most of the revenue should come through other people treating patients for you or for you doing one to many

[00:07:44] programs whether they're online and active like a course like our Cash PD Blueprint course that is almost 10 years old now which hint hint there'll be a 10-year anniversary special. That's for people just launching a cash practice

[00:08:01] and you come in there and I've already pre-recorded the trainings and you go through at your own pace. I'm not doing one-to-one coaching in that and there's there I get to answer your questions in our free Facebook community but you know

[00:08:17] those things are the same and if I did it one-to-one with you all the time it's like I can't help as many people and I can't help all the people so we've put over 1,500 people through that program in the last 10 years and it allows me

[00:08:30] to generate revenue while helping you get faster results than I could get on my own for a fraction of a price and it's the same basically the same investment you would to go get do a dry needling certification or just you know

[00:08:42] actually not the whole certification just one weekend. So that allows me to scale my time because that information is very like it's not specific and it's just how do you go market? How do you launch a business? What are the different

[00:08:56] models of cash practice look like? What are the compliance issues? What does what do you need to do to actually get a business off the ground? Here's all the links and resources and discounts to all the people and the software and and the

[00:09:08] things that you need to get it rolling. Even in our Platinum Mastermind it's you know we meet three times a year in person. We meet every week on Zoom. You've got a question about hiring or a contract there's three or four other

[00:09:22] people in there they're gonna have the same question now or have it in a few months and if I can answer that for you I answer it for them and we answer your questions before you even have the problem a lot of times and so people go

[00:09:32] oh my gosh it's like oh I already know this. I get that problem and you almost even get to a point where you're like I already know all the information because you've heard the answers and that allows you to go so much faster. It took me 15

[00:09:44] years in business to get the 15 of my own patients a week, $15,000 a month took a long time and I did 10 years of massage and five years of PT before I got there and people are now doing it within a year. In the last few years that it

[00:09:58] results have even accelerated. I think Derek went through he did a cash PT residency and did that back in 2018 and in his first year he did six figures and then I had Stephanie McMillan came in. Stephanie McMillan and Julie Lee did

[00:10:11] like six figures in eight months and now we got people doing six figures in their first you know six months and doing 20k a month. They're you know like fourth and fifth month even some sooner and some slower but even the people that it

[00:10:26] takes you know 18 months to hit you know 8,000 a month still are doing it in like six or seven years faster than I did. Faster than your peers did you know ten years ago five years ago. So just understand that results compound, the

[00:10:42] teaching compounds and this is what we also need to do as physical therapists for people about back pain. We need to do this to educate people about knee pain why they don't need surgery and Instagram posts are great but they don't

[00:10:53] last forever. YouTube is good but we need to have an even bigger impact than just making videos. We need to help people at scale so freedom is scale. The bigger the problems we can help the more people we can help but that doesn't mean we need

[00:11:07] to help everyone that means we need to help a very specific niche of people with a very specific niche problem. Scale, so scale means freedom and it means you're no longer trading time for money you're helping more people and the more people

[00:11:16] you help the more revenue you generate the more time you have but what happens is most people leave a job as an employee and they go build themselves a great job. Most people go build themselves a great job as a cash

[00:11:31] practice owner and it's just you that's what I did. I built myself a great job you know making $100,000 $200,000 a year it was great but I was still trapped like I told you with if I don't see patients I don't make money. There's

[00:11:49] only so much time in the day to treat patients and so there's three ways to make more money it's charge more, reduce your expenses and see more people. I can only reduce my expenses so much so you really can't save your way to wealth

[00:12:04] I mean it's easier to you know charge $10 more per visit then try to save $1,000 a month. It's so much easier to make more money by delivering more value you know but a lot of people are limited in mindset about how much you can charge

[00:12:20] and there is a limit to how much you can charge for physical therapy. I know people have charged $450 an hour so it's somewhere up in the $450-$500 I mean maybe even a thousand bucks you could probably do that but you can't charge

[00:12:32] where you can charge $100,000 an hour for physical therapy probably not so you can raise your rates you can see more people but if you're doing one-to-one treatments maybe for 30 minutes you could see maybe some people I've seen

[00:12:45] see 50 people a week okay great you got to have another person probably helping you move people in and out of the door but then you're still limited to 50 people so if we can see more people in an hour without shortchanging them

[00:13:00] because yes some people do need one-on-one manual therapy but there's a lot of other problems we can solve we can see multiple people at a time and it's really so what happens you build yourself a job you're limited by the time

[00:13:13] in the day you're limited your time treating patients how many people you week you know like family obligations etc and look I've scaled my time and so I'm here to teach you how to scale yours. So what's the first solution? Let's

[00:13:29] go hire someone else to treat your patients so you've built a full caseload or as big of a caseload as you want like I have some clients who just want to do part-time work themselves and even only have the capacity to do part-time

[00:13:41] right now so they'll get the part-time and they'll go hire another part-timer to take their caseload and their overflow and then fill them up so we can we can hire someone else okay so hire another PT they treat your

[00:13:54] patients for you maybe need to hire an admin to you know take phone calls change the room etc do all the things that you don't really want to do but you're still only trading time for money when you see your patients so PT

[00:14:05] is the thing that frees you from that okay that allows you that allow you to travel so I hired Derek and I could travel I hired Derek and I got in my VW van and went to a Lambretta Jamboree in 2018 actually took the kids from

[00:14:18] Greensboro to West Virginia to Illinois to see my brother and then Wisconsin to hang with some friends for a week and then drove to Chicago to see another friend and then to Philadelphia for the Lambretta Jamboree for three days and

[00:14:31] then back to Greensboro we did that and Derek was had only been there like six six weeks I had all the systems everything dialed in all you had to do is treat patients and it worked and he we were gone for two and a half weeks it

[00:14:44] was awesome okay great so in order they treat patients I can travel I can be at home with the kids I can work out more I can help more people I can see people and

[00:14:56] they can see people now I can help 50 people a week instead of just 25 by myself so in order to do that in order to hire someone we need to have systems and SOPs we need to build a job description we need to really know what

[00:15:10] it is about our business that's that's different than others we need to put up an ad on LinkedIn indeed you need to really I treat I teach all our clients how to create a what's called a application funnel for their job we also

[00:15:27] do application files for high-end like coaching and one-to-one training you build an application funnel because the application funnel keeps you from having to review thousands of resumes and spending and wasting time on indeed LinkedIn etc like looking through candidates so you build an application

[00:15:44] funnel to filter out the bad candidates so you don't just spend hours scouring resumes you also need to know all the interview questions what are the right interview questions to ask and when we need to then create a contract we need to

[00:15:56] train them we need to allow them we need to do the we need to test the system and one of the best tests you can do if you want to open multiple locations is to do

[00:16:07] a one month away test I've done this with multiple clients where they've done that away Kyle Ben yo hey who else you know as we we do this one month like two

[00:16:17] and a half weeks three weeks a month go away is it what breaks okay fix that so then you can scale we have to do that and for many people this works for many people hiring multiple PTs this works there's hundreds of cash practice

[00:16:33] locations that have multiple therapists here in the United States you may not believe it you maybe are like you know I don't even believe it works and I can tell you that these guys are out there crushing it there's a lot of people

[00:16:44] who've come through my program there's a lot of people who haven't and they're out there crushing it and they're doing it right and it works it can still be a trap though because here's what happens I've had you know a handful of clients

[00:16:57] in the last year and a half to two years where they're rated at higher rate of scale and they just can't find someone we can't find a PT there's really right now there's there's a couple reasons why they can't find them number one they're

[00:17:11] trying to find the perfect person to replace them their standards are so high that it becomes an excuse okay number two people there's just no candidates right there's just no candidates there are people don't want to move to their

[00:17:26] area but I had a client you know in in DC have this issue a client in San Diego have this issue and a client in Houston have this issue where they're just not getting anyone any candidates because there's a lot of PT jobs out there so we

[00:17:44] have to make that job special the other problem that keeps people from hiring is you're not charging enough to be able to pay a good salary to this person or if you do you don't make any money on the back end and your business suffers and

[00:17:58] so you have to be charging enough and there are a lot of people out there they're not willing to charge higher rates so there's this becomes the bottleneck is hiring you can be all prepared and ready and now you've hired

[00:18:08] okay but you can't hire or you hired someone and they weren't the right fit and they go away and there's no more candidates I'm getting job solicitations right now it's kind of crazy so they don't want to work for you they don't

[00:18:22] want move your town you know it's there you're not you're not able to provide best benefits etc so I mean okay we have to actually sell the position there's a couple other things we have to fix is maybe the offer the listing

[00:18:34] etc we really have to work hard to find this but you know there is an alternative and what's the alternative the alternative is creating more of an online hybrid model I'm not gonna call it virtual PT I'm not gonna call it

[00:18:47] telehealth there's a lot of different things but telehealth is me doing physical therapy through zoom and I have to do it licensed where I'm licensed in someone else's I have to be licensed in the location where they are there's

[00:19:02] virtual PT and virtual PT is telehealth if you're doing PT you can't provide physical therapy to a patient in it who's at that moment present in a state where you're not licensed even if it's you know we call it virtual PT and

[00:19:19] consulting or wellness consulting if you're helping them with a medical problem a back pain issue you know shoulder impingement etc you're doing physical therapy and you need to be careful about violating state practice

[00:19:34] when you're doing that no matter what you call it so but that's still a one to one trading time for money model okay so that's not really it it's more of a

[00:19:45] how do we see many people at a time and so we've got a whole track in our mastermind and cash PT Academy for online business and the trick is is to take the people that are already your clients and customers and move them into

[00:20:02] one of these programs so this is perfect for those of you who are I'm already maxed out with patients during the week and more people want to see me you know like okay or your or half of your clientele you're charging $75 an hour

[00:20:16] or two and the other half you're doing 150 and I'm here telling you you need to charge closer to 200 what do we do at the $75 an hour people we've got to move them into group programs which they'll probably like a whole lot more and it

[00:20:29] depends on the clientele but generally if you're training kids or adults for performance if you're doing even like hands-on mobility work like we can do mobility work in a group and then there's all the people to say oh cash

[00:20:43] PT is very expensive okay it's only expensive to the person that doesn't value what we do but can I do a one-to-many group model and give people great results for a lower price absolutely ten people in a room at $29

[00:20:57] piece I make $290 for the hour that's dope so there's a lot of different options here for that utilizing software like trainer eyes and these other like training apps etc and there's lots of different plans and programs of

[00:21:12] how to do this so what I want you to think of and start brainstorming is what's the big problem what's the very big problem with a capital B IG that you can solve for 20 people at a time or even 20,000 people and you can deliver it

[00:21:28] all at once what's that big problem because you've solved the big problem people pay the big money and if we do a we can offer some kind of program we can charge a fee that's just such a no-brainer price and it's not a one-time

[00:21:40] fee it's an ongoing monthly recurring revenue that we get hundreds if not thousands of people to enroll in your program I've seen people do it I've helped people do this I mean Maria Wissman is one of our members and she

[00:21:54] started and did like 10k in her first eight weeks and she wouldn't even license as a PT she's doing like training boot camps she is on USA cheer and she's got an app at 49 bucks a month and we're getting I don't know how many

[00:22:06] people dozens and dozens of people since we launched it like five or six months ago she's got other levels of training as well Joe Gambino is another person may or may not have heard of who I've helped do something similar there's a

[00:22:18] lot of people that are doing this these models be careful of you've got a busy schedule with your clients or maybe it's not as busy as you want but it's still busy enough and if you're gonna go try to launch something online to a brand new

[00:22:32] audience that's gonna take time because you have to build an audience you have to build a tribe of people that want to do business with you you need to make sure you do is utilize the resources that you're already making for your current

[00:22:43] patients and you offer them to people who are already watching you and following you you're solving the same problem you're just solving it in a different way creating an online business doesn't mean we need to solve a

[00:22:54] new problem we just need to solve the same problems at a different level of the delivery so I hope this is making sense if it doesn't then maybe what we need to do is hop on a call and talk about how we can do that in your

[00:23:05] business or maybe go back and listen to some of the other episodes that I did maybe about a year ago on doing more online online coaching and online business and some online strategies however what I want you to do is think

[00:23:21] outside the box how can you deliver the same results or similar results for a lower price just imagine you know I can put 20 people in a room and get them 80 percent better for 25 percent of the cost of one-on-one more people might even

[00:23:37] say yes if you really want freedom you've got to figure out a way to stop trading your time for money and leveraging other people time and leveraging a one-to-many model and like I said that's why we have a whole track

[00:23:51] on this in our roadmap and if you want to launch something from scratch it don't expect it to you know take off right away just because Grant Cardone can do it you've got to build it and it takes a long time the best way to go

[00:24:07] start from scratch is to go high ticket and then build down unless you already have a large audience it takes time to build foundation and it takes time to generate sales like you've got to give it more than 30 days even if you come

[00:24:18] work with me you've got to give it more than 30 days because while I can give you some really quick strategies to generate revenue I can't guarantee they always work because we have to hit the market message match correctly and that takes

[00:24:29] time and then if you don't have an audience then we have to build one we have to build we have to really go after something people are asking for and likelihood people are already asking you for this just not hearing it because

[00:24:40] it's not a possibility for you it's one-on-one is the only way to do it and that's why I got out of the insurance model but it's not we learned that during COVID I know that I'm a manual therapist I've been using my hands for

[00:24:50] 25 years and still one of the most effective things I can do is do a yoga training for 30 people I can make 500 bucks during that hour and help 30 people with their back pain it's awesome it's great you know so build it for the

[00:25:06] same audience and then if you want to do this and you really want freedom you really want the freedom formula and you want the step-by-step path to generating freedom for you in your business make sure you're working with someone who's

[00:25:21] done the same and helped others do it too because otherwise it's like okay who are we learning from like yeah YouTube's great but it's just like learning how to fix your back from YouTube like we can try all the things but if you really

[00:25:34] want this like pathway and game plan to doing this just make sure that you're working with someone who's done it and proven that they've done it and it's a it's something that gives you freedom and ultimate control over your own

[00:25:45] business and you're not renting from someone anything you're not being held hostage you're not you know giving away a percentage of your profits or any of that stuff just make sure that you find someone that has the trainings and knows

[00:25:58] what they're doing and if you're listening this and you're like yo Aaron I dig what you're doing and you'd like to work together to do that just DM me the word all in and I'll send you some details about how we can work together

[00:26:10] and how we help but first thing I'm gonna do is ask you a couple questions to see where you are see what you've done see where your goals are and then we can brainstorm some ideas together and if we have a program that fits great and if we

[00:26:21] don't I'll let you know and send you on your way however what I'd love to do is help you because it's my mission to help save a hundred million people worldwide from expensive imaging and an unnecessary surgery like imaging that

[00:26:33] scares them and surgery they don't need because they didn't see a good physical therapist or didn't go to PT at all and the way that I found I can do that is by helping people like you get help learn what's possible and get the exact

[00:26:46] strategies tools and a game plan and help executing it over time so you get results even faster than you can on your own so if that sounds interesting you send me a DM with the word all in or go to call with Aaron calm and fill out

[00:26:59] little form and we'll chat so great so do that and then so other than that what I want you to understand is there's lots of possibilities you just have to get yourself exposure to all of the possibilities to all of the options be

[00:27:14] sure you're doing it in a way that's legally compliant because as a physical therapist you're regulated healthcare professional so we have to be compliant a personal trainer doesn't have to and just because you're a PT and you call it

[00:27:25] wellness training doesn't or you charge cash doesn't mean you don't have to be compliant you need to know your state law practice acts and take that stuff seriously and work with a lawyer I do so make sure you've got a lawyer looking at

[00:27:38] this stuff I didn't at first and I had 20 people telling me different things and I was like well let me go find a health care lawyer who understands PT so just be mindful of that take it slow this is a process just like healing is

[00:27:52] not an event it's a process growing a business not happen overnight it takes time time in the market time in your industry time with your people keep taking one step forward one at a time keep growing every day take the lesson

[00:28:07] and improve upon it it's like the Kaizen thing right every day one better something like that and I'll see you on the next show peace out hey what's up it's Aaron thanks for listening to show if you enjoyed the episode and you'd like

[00:28:19] to help support the podcast please share with others post about on social media we'll leave a five-star rating and review over on iTunes and to catch all the latest from me follow me over on instagram at Aaron Labauer thanks again and I'll see you next time