It's one of the most common business questions we get asked, and it's important! Your rent is going to be one of your two biggest expenses (along with payroll). It's sometimes hard to find that 'Goldilocks' zone.
If we overspend we can hurt our profit margin and have to work more hours to pay for space we didn't really need.
If we underspend we might either dislike where we work or outgrow our space sooner rather than later.
In this 'sode we're talking all things rent:
We'll get really practical here - hope it helps as you navigate these big decisions!
Accelerator Cohort #3
If you're a business owner looking to take your practice to the next level, make sure to get on the wait list for the Business Accelerator Program (www.pelvicptrising.com/accelerator). We've taken more than 200 pelvic rehab business owners through this six-month coaching intensive and it's incredible to see the growth in both the business and confidence in those who go through it. Check it out, and let us know if you have any questions!
About Us
Nicole and Jesse Cozean founded Pelvic PT Rising to provide clinical and business resources to physical therapists to change the way we treat pelvic health. PelvicSanity Physical Therapy (www.pelvicsanity.com) together in 2016. It grew quickly into one of the largest cash-based physical therapy practices in the country.
Through Pelvic PT Rising, Nicole has created clinical courses (www.pelvicptrising.com/clinical) to help pelvic health providers gain confidence in their skills and provide frameworks to get better patient outcomes. Together, Jesse and Nicole have helped 500+ pelvic practices start and grow through the Pelvic PT Rising Business Programs (www.pelvicptrising.com/business) to build a practice that works for them!
Get in Touch!
Learn more at www.pelvicptrising.com, follow Nicole @nicolecozeandpt (www.instagram.com/nicolecozeandpt) or reach out via email (nicole@pelvicsanity.com).
Check out our Clinical Courses, Business Resources and learn more about us at Pelvic PT Rising...Let's Continue to Rise!
It's one of the most common business questions we get asked, and it's important! Your rent is going to be one of your two biggest expenses (along with payroll). It's sometimes hard to find that 'Goldilocks' zone.
If we overspend we can hurt our profit margin and have to work more hours to pay for space we didn't really need.
If we underspend we might either dislike where we work or outgrow our space sooner rather than later.
In this 'sode we're talking all things rent:
We'll get really practical here - hope it helps as you navigate these big decisions!
Accelerator Cohort #3
If you're a business owner looking to take your practice to the next level, make sure to get on the wait list for the Business Accelerator Program (www.pelvicptrising.com/accelerator). We've taken more than 200 pelvic rehab business owners through this six-month coaching intensive and it's incredible to see the growth in both the business and confidence in those who go through it. Check it out, and let us know if you have any questions!
About Us
Nicole and Jesse Cozean founded Pelvic PT Rising to provide clinical and business resources to physical therapists to change the way we treat pelvic health. PelvicSanity Physical Therapy (www.pelvicsanity.com) together in 2016. It grew quickly into one of the largest cash-based physical therapy practices in the country.
Through Pelvic PT Rising, Nicole has created clinical courses (www.pelvicptrising.com/clinical) to help pelvic health providers gain confidence in their skills and provide frameworks to get better patient outcomes. Together, Jesse and Nicole have helped 500+ pelvic practices start and grow through the Pelvic PT Rising Business Programs (www.pelvicptrising.com/business) to build a practice that works for them!
Get in Touch!
Learn more at www.pelvicptrising.com, follow Nicole @nicolecozeandpt (www.instagram.com/nicolecozeandpt) or reach out via email (nicole@pelvicsanity.com).
Check out our Clinical Courses, Business Resources and learn more about us at Pelvic PT Rising...Let's Continue to Rise!
In the last 10 years, our field has gone from an unknown specialty to a household name. This brings unprecedented opportunities, but we need to rise up to meet them and give our patients the care that they deserve. In order to help others get better, we need to be better. This podcast will help you to become more confident with your patients, more successful in your practice or business and a leader in pelvic health, and we're going to have some fun along the way. Join us as we rise together. We're Jesse and Nicole Cozine, founders of Pelvic Sanity Physical Therapy and the creators of the Pelvic PT Puddle, and this is Pelvic PT Rising.
Speaker 2:Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Pelvic PT Rising podcast with Jesse and Nicole Cozine. Hello man, we are coming off an incredible interview with Susan Clinton. That was a fun conversation, Dude so good.
Speaker 1:If you have not listened to that interview on the podcast, please go back and listen to it. So many amazing clinical pearls. And see me have a slight epiphany about telehealth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we're going to make all of our employees go back and listen to it. It was so good those three questions that she had that can guide at your evaluation. So today we're going to be talking about something for you business owners, or affectionately known business wannabes as you start to think about space, rent and how to basically position yourself in your market. It's probably an area, nicole, where we get a ton of questions, and one of the few areas that you can make some pretty big mistakes as a business owner.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is a really important discussion. It's an important thing to consider, no matter what kind of a business owner you are. And actually, jess, why don't you give us the quick rundown of pelvic sanity's space? And then we'll do it now, and then we'll do the podcast and we'll put our stuff into context.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I feel like a lot of our coaching is a lot of do as we say, not as we do. So when we started off, we rented a four-room place that had a big gym space in addition, which was actually pretty massive. When it was just you, nicole, and Southern California, rents were very high. You had to see a lot of people to break even, a lot of people to make what you were making at your previous job, and rent was a pretty heavy burden on the business early on. And then, as we grew, things turned around, as they often do. We filled those spaces. We actually converted that gym into more treatment rooms. We ended up maxing out that whole space and ended up having to rent out a room across the hallway for our massage therapist and for a long time at pelvic, sanity space was actually our limiting factor. We were really crammed into a space that we didn't have room to grow. We just say no to some opportunities because of the space.
Speaker 2:And then, as we came back from COVID, actually we had the ability to blow out walls between two other suites in our area and basically take over like a quarter of this massive building that we're in and did a whole build out. That took a long time. That took close to $100,000 in cost in order to put that together. That's probably a low thing. By the time we talk about all of the furnishings and all the high low tables, everything else. And so now at pelvic sanity we have a 10 room space. We rent two of those rooms out to allied practitioners to kind of make a little almost like a women's center. We rent two to a postpartum mental health therapist and another is to a craniosanctural acupuncturist who does some amazing stuff, and then all of the rest are pelvic sanity rooms. So that's been our space journey. Does that sum up everything you were thinking, nicole?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. I think it's just important to know. Like you know, we always talk about who you're getting advice from, so just understand that that was our journey and we'll put into context for you. Some of our lessons learned here and some of the ways that we think about space now is directly related to what has happened on our journey, so just wanted to put that into context for you all.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so let's talk about the options that you really have when it comes down to it. So really, there are three. You can be a mobile practice, you can rent a room from a larger business or a larger landlord, or you can sign a lease of your own. Those are really the three options, and all three of them have some pretty significant pros and some really significant cons. We want to talk about each of those in order. Nicole, first of all, talk to me a little bit about mobile and just going to people's houses, driving up and doing your thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I mean, obviously there's no overhead, right, you have your wear and tear in your car, you have stuff like that, but you definitely don't have a ton of overhead because you're using essentially your space is your patient's house.
Speaker 2:And the con that we see. So I think a lot of people, whenever we start coaching, we always ask anybody we're working with who's mobile? Are you doing this because you are really excited about mobile and you believe in it and you really want to see people in their homes, or are you doing it because of a little bit of that fear of failure? Hey, this is a way to dip my toe in. I don't have to sign a lease, I can still.
Speaker 2:This is a side gig and a lot of times for a lot of people they start off mobile and they end up realizing that it's pretty wildly inefficient. You're spending a lot of time in the car. It's breaking up your day in a way that a lot of times, you don't want that to be. You're not willing to charge the $250, $300, $350 an hour that you need to in order to really make your time as valuable as it should be, and it's not really something that you're passionate about. So we often see people transitioning and starting this way and then transitioning to a brick and mortar because, at the end of the day, they never really wanted to be mobile. It just felt like the safe thing to do.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. So we see that quite a bit and honestly shout out to the folks, and we have a few of you in our Rising Mentorship Group who know that this is their passion, this is their jam, like literally, one of them is called when you Are PT, because she meets you where you are mentally, physically, spiritually and literally in your house, and it's wonderful. But she has a passion for helping that early, early, early postpartum period, and so that is an example of somebody who really is solid in what they want to do, and she wanted to make mobile an integral part of her practice and you market it that way, right, if that's the thing that you really want or care about, that's what you push, that's what you market, that's how you build yourself in the local community.
Speaker 2:It's just a little bit hard to do that and then turn on a dime to say, oh cool, now I'm just like a brick and mortar and no, I'm not going to come see you in your home if you're going to be doing that. So the next one we have is Renting a Room, and this can be something that is just a low cost thing. You're not locked in, usually to any kind of long term things. This can be a month to month. So this is a great kind of foot in the door of a brick and mortar practice. Now, your downsides here is that you don't have control over your space at all, so you may not have control over your hours. You certainly don't have control over the other business, over their clientele, over the decor, over the experience that patients have when they come and see you, which starts to wear on you, I think, after a while.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we've heard a lot of people that where it starts out okay and then you run into things that are just a wide variety of stuff Things ranging from super petty and just dumb and annoying to really like challenging personalities and a departure from what you originally thought you were getting into, and so it is something that we caution people at. It's an okay stepping stone in some cases, and in some cases it can really hinder your ability to make better choices for something of your own.
Speaker 2:And that is, if you are doing this, make sure that you're just renting the room, if you can. We see a lot of people who try to save money or they're working with like a landlord who tries to do this. It's like, oh well, you can have 16 hours a week split up over three days, and then that always comes back to bite folks in the butt because they've got a patient who can only come in on Friday afternoons, but they don't have the room on Friday afternoons or they can't even just go to the office and sit and work when they've got kids at home. So I would always advise, even if it is a little bit more money, getting a steady lease. If you're in a place where you're renting a room and just having the room to yourself, if at all possible you can leave your stuff there. You know, schlepping things in and out. No one's wondering why there's like a vaginal model on the wall, like it's your place and I will say this.
Speaker 1:So I actually we forgot in the space talk, jesse, that I actually rented space when I got fired. You can go back and listen to that story and that podcast. It was a few ago, but I needed a space before pelvic sanity build out was done the original pelvic sanity and so I rented space from somebody and it was amazing for a very short period of time, but I was schlepping my laundry in and out. I had to bring my own linens. His space wasn't great because he was doing orthopedics and so his high low table didn't work Like. There was a lot of things that were fine for a short period of time and would have been a huge problem if I was doing that for much longer.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And then your third option is to sign a lease for yourself, and this is where you do your own thing. That is the pro Like. This is your space. You can do what you want. You can have your whatever plum, nightshades on the wall, like whatever it is that makes your heart happy. You can do that.
Speaker 2:But people are a lot of times really afraid of this. You're usually on the hook for rent. You're often personally on the hook for rent. You can, as we found at pelvic sanity, fill that space and start to grow out of it and find it to be a little bit limiting. And a lot of times the length of time that you sign your lease for dictates how much money the landlord will give you to build the space out. So you're encouraged or incentivized to sign more years on to your lease, which might be really attractive to lower your upfront cost. But now we're having a little bit of a panic attack over the fact that we just signed a three year, a five year, a seven year, a 10 year lease and you feel really on the hook and committed to that when you don't really know where your business is going to be at that time.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so, and we were there too. I mean, don't you remember when we first signed pelvic sanity lease? I was like this is like the biggest contract. This was before we bought our house and it was like this is the biggest contract we've ever actually signed, if you take the yearly rent and amortize it over however many years. We signed the original pelvic sanity lease for I think it was five and it was like, oh shit, this is like a big deal that we're just signed. It felt like we were signing our life away.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was sitting in there in the empty room like listening around, like how loud is the freeway, what happens with this? What I mean, I was just like over there trying to, you know, take away some of that anxiety of like, oh, are we making the worst decision ever that we're going to be bound to for the next five years? But we'll talk a little bit about what that really means to get out of a lease as we go on. So those are really folks's three options as you're looking at these things. Now, one of the questions we always get and I wish there was a convenient, easy answer to this is how much I'd be paying for rent.
Speaker 1:And this is like the quintessential answer for every physical therapist thing we've ever said. But it really does depend, and we're going to go over some of the things that depends on and what you can use as a rule of thumb here in this section.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can sometimes hear like 10% thrown around as a rent. 10% of what? 10% of your revenue? First of all, when you first start, it's never 10% because you literally don't have any patients but you do have a rent. So it's 100% on day one, right, and this is something that it just you have to make sure that your rent makes sense and it doesn't. Really. There's no like number that makes is magic there because you're going to be growing.
Speaker 2:So public sanity. I think for most of our history we've been well over 10%. We're in a high cost of living area. When we first started off, nicole had extra rooms because we knew we were going to grow into them. I think there was probably a time when space was our limiting factor and we were just crammed in there. We had staggered everybody's schedules. We were using that time as best as humanly possible. We were probably under 10% and then all of a sudden we do this big build out to make sure we're not limited by space anymore and we're back over 10% and throughout all of that I didn't really care to be honest because it made sense for where we were in that history and the timeline of the business.
Speaker 2:And so that's what I want you guys to ask yourself.
Speaker 2:So if you want to be a solopener and you know that's your goal then and you don't have very many hours you are planning on working that much, then don't go out and sign a crazy huge rent where you're going to have to go and work way more in order to pay for that. And, conversely, if you want to grow beyond yourself and you know that's your vision and you're going out and signing a three year lease on a one room place, you're going to find yourself in trouble sooner rather than later. So just be thinking about does this seem to make sense for me and where I am in my business journey? And one of the best ways to do that, nicole, I think, is to convert your rent to the number of patients you need to see a week in order to pay for that. So sometimes this is really helpful. If you're comparing two spaces, it's kind of hard to sit there and think oh, you know, should I get this one space for $1,000 a month or this other space for $2,000 a month?
Speaker 1:especially different. Stuff is like included in one and not included in another, and there's all kinds of different permutations of oh well, internet and this is included in that, and now you have to pay for your own air conditioning and all the stuff. I mean, there's so many different permutations of what's included, so you need to get all of those things out and put a $1 amount to it per month and then do this. Jesse conversion, yeah.
Speaker 2:So you would just been then be able to convert that and say, hey, is this worth an extra $1,000 a month? To me, well, if you're charging $200 per patient, $1,000 a month sounds like a lot, but in reality that's 1.25 extra patients a week. So now does that sound like a lot? Maybe, maybe not right. But you know, hey, this space is way better and it's got more windows and has room for me to grow, and all I would have to do is see an extra 1.25 patients per week. Maybe that's a better decision than this. You know one room supply closet that feels safer because I'm paying less for it, but is in a worse part of town and you have to walk through a dark alley to get there, whatever parking isn't good and all the things right.
Speaker 1:So you have to think about all the pros and cons for your patients as well.
Speaker 2:So thinking about it as patients per week is actually really helpful as you go through this. A couple other things to just think about is the cost of space is really often negligible to your income if you can fill it with a clinician. So sometimes we'll get this question of you. Know, hey, I want to grow beyond myself. It might not happen immediately. I'm just looking to sign a three year lease. I was like, well, the extra space, if you can find a clinician, even just for that third year to fill the extra room, it's going to be more than worth the extra rent you paid for that room for all three of those years combined. Right? Did I say that in a way to make sense?
Speaker 1:Say it in a different way, though, because I feel like I know you, so I got it, but do it again.
Speaker 2:Yes. So I mean the bottom line is is a clinician in there is going to be so much more valuable than the extra rent that you're paying? So even the chance that you're going to get a new clinician in there, or the chance that you're going to get them in there, even after several years of paying for a quote wasted space, that third year where that clinician is in there is going to more than make up for all of that extra rent that you paid in those first couple of years. So, as long as you can float this by yourself, which we're going to talk about here in a second then the potential upside. We talk about this all the time in our coaching programs, but the potential upside, or increased revenue, is so much more powerful than trying to cut costs on your rent that it's always going to outweigh that.
Speaker 1:Right, that made more sense for sure, but that can be scary to a lot of people, right Cause then you have to, and this is like business owners crash course right now is that once you decide to open your own business, you no longer think about it in terms of month to month or even years. You have to think about it over a longer period of time for things like that to make sense.
Speaker 2:Right You're balancing. What you're balancing is short term risk and long term reward. Right, and this is why, whenever we ask somebody about their ranch or we're asking questions about it, I always ask somebody to model out the worst case situation Could you float the rent yourself if the clinician you have right now quits, if you're not able to get somebody in the door, if you're not able to rent it to somebody else, or everybody always has these great ideas and this is a little bit of a tangent to Cole, but it goes back to the way we think about things is we're never certain, like business is never certain. That's one of the things that I hated about my MBA course, honestly, was they always gave you like these really simple situations and scenarios where you knew all of the information, you knew all the numbers, and the big difference between that and real business is we don't fucking know. Right.
Speaker 1:We have no idea, you know you can want to hire somebody.
Speaker 2:We've had people in our program looking to hire somebody for nine months, for a year, without being able to find somebody.
Speaker 1:Right. Or, conversely, you can have one of your clinicians tear their ACL playing drunk kickball on the weekend. And yes, that happened to us and yes, I was pissed off. Okay, and we had, like you know, if we had calculated like her revenue for our life, then I would have even been more pissed off.
Speaker 2:Right, we can't afford the rent now because of this.
Speaker 1:In for a decision right. I'm like it's a poor decision, it's a poor decision.
Speaker 2:It's the moral turpitude of this generation.
Speaker 1:I'm fucked, yes, or evermore because of this. No, it was all fine.
Speaker 2:But think about that. That does matter, right? So we always go in with, like, our presupposition and I always want to introduce more uncertainty into this. So I'll usually have people model things out and I say, well, worst case, that clinician that you're planning on taking with you gets pregnant and then doesn't come back to work or decides to her husband, gets transferred and decides to leave or whatever it is, can you float this yourself, right?
Speaker 2:This goes back to the is it scary or is it dangerous? Question that we love asking, and that's why, when we got the numbers for our rent, I think we were paying almost $3,000 a month, like immediately, nicole, when we moved into the first public sanity space, and it was a lot for you to float by yourself. But you could easily do it and if you had to, we could have continued to do that with you as a solo preneur. And, yeah, it would have sucked. There's like man, we're going to have to see an extra three or four patients a week in order to pay off that rent where we could have gotten something smaller, but it would have been fine. We weren't putting ourselves at risk.
Speaker 1:Right, and it's important to know your actual, your actual risk, right. So it's like we knew that we didn't have any family helping us. We didn't have any of that like backstop, and if you do, then fucking use it for this scary time Right, Like no one's giving out a medal for you to like worried about shit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like just do that. If you have access to that, there's no shame in that at all. Now, we didn't have that, so our calculations needed to be based on exactly what it was going to be for Jesse and I to like rent our apartment and eat and do all that stuff, and it was still fine.
Speaker 2:And you know that was before we had developed the taste for expensive wine.
Speaker 2:So I don't know if we would have run the same calculations today. Right, but until you really have an established history Now, when we did the second build out or the, you know, the expansion of Pelvic Sanity to a 10 room place, that is beyond what Nicole can probably do, although if you ever went back to being a solar printer I would be charging like 800 bucks an hour for you, by the way, but it's still probably beyond. But we had at that point had had five, six years of history in there saying, hey, we can do this and the only thing that's limiting us is our space.
Speaker 1:And our mindset honestly.
Speaker 2:Right. So you know that was a. Again, when you look at the exception to the rule, it is that we now had five or six years of history showing that we could safely do that. And most people don't start off their business obviously with that kind of confidence or that kind of history. That you've done it, you've seen it, you know that you can make it grow, make it happen. Even in the dealing with COVID, dealing with people leaving, like we dealt with some really tough stuff and we knew that we were still going to be able to grow.
Speaker 1:So I will say this though if you are in one of our Pelvic PT Rising business mentorship groups, though, you can borrow some of that confidence and borrow some of that collective experience to be able to help you to make decisions. So just saying yes.
Speaker 2:So let me hit you guys then with a couple of other truth bombs here, nicole, and pipe in please if I misstate any of these. But first of all, you need a space for your admin if you plan on growing beyond yourself.
Speaker 1:Yes, seriously, I know we need to do a whole podcast on this, but I know a lot of you are like, oh, I can have a virtual admin assistant and I really like this and all the things. In a perfect world and, honestly, even in an imperfect world you need to have an admin that is actually at your place, with space for them to be there, and it just is better that way. Period.
Speaker 2:And the story. I've used VAs. I still use VAs for non-essential things, but at the end of the day, for running your practice via suck, via suck, they're not there. You can't.
Speaker 1:This is going into that podcast we need to train them like how you would train an in-person person.
Speaker 2:You never know if they're really doing the things that you want to do, and one of the whole things is you want somebody in the clinic to be a smiling face, to be the person who greets them. They're literally not there. What are you going to do? Put up a freaking iPad on a stick.
Speaker 1:And even then your freaking VAs, probably working for two other people, and that you can't be there on these days. It's just not great. We're going to do a whole podcast on it. But if you're looking for space, you need to account for a, and it doesn't have to be huge. It doesn't have to be big, it doesn't have to be like the doctor's office that you go to. It just literally needs to be a space for a couple of chairs and a desk, and that's kind of it.
Speaker 2:That's what it was in public sanity for five years, Nicole. Even when we were cranking we had four or five clinicians in there, it was still just basically like a raised desk Was the front desk space until we were able to build something we wanted.
Speaker 1:Literally it was like a half moon thing we got for free from somebody that was moving out of something and it was not big and there was like four chairs in the waiting room and that was it, yeah.
Speaker 2:If you guys are clinicians or administrative staff listening now, you all don't know how good you had it, man, so you got your own space. Make sure you have space for an admin. If you are thinking about leaving, make sure that you've maxed out your current space. A lot of times people will come to us and say, oh man, I am hiring this other person, I need to go. I was like, well, wait, okay, cool, but talk to me about your room situation. Well, I work three days a week and my other person works three days a week and this other person works two days a week, so we won't fit in this two room place. We need to do some math there, right, because what really needs to happen is we need to rejigger the hours and times that you're working, or you need to cut your patient down your patient hours actually or stagger schedules, or can we get creative and that massive gym space which we need to talk about?
Speaker 1:Let's talk about that right now. Actually, we'll hold on a second. I will say this A lot of the coaching that we end up doing is how to go back and see the people that you've hired either too fast or without boundaries or in the wrong way, honestly and go back to them and be like, hey, this is what the business needs now. And we had to do this with a therapist that was part time at our clinic and she was working. I think she was working five days a week.
Speaker 2:four days a week, half days.
Speaker 1:In one of these times where we were like we need to rejigger the schedule, we went to her and we're like, listen, we need you to cut down to three eight hour days. We can't do this half day stuff anymore. We need to have you share the room with the massage therapist and massage therapist needs two days. So you can pick the three days, but it's got to be only three and it needs to be almost eight hours. So, right, that was a big deal for us to go back and do, and it's a big deal for you to go back and do that, because you've promised somebody something and they're working for you because of your original conversation. But you need to put your big freaking girl panties on and do what's best for the business, and a lot of times it takes a tough conversation for you to be able to grow both in business and personally.
Speaker 2:All right, I'm going to piss off a lot of the PTs and OTs out there with this one. Do you really need an 8,000 fucking square foot gym space with like a squat rack and a treadmill and a pool?
Speaker 1:Well, jesse, I will say this. I'm going to defend us all here for a second. I will say this I don't think everybody needs that and I think sometimes we overestimate how much we really need that, and any day of the week I certainly would take a bigger treatment room where I could do most of my exercise stuff in there, which we've done at pelvic sanity over a gym space hands down all the time. Let me put go to Vegas and do this right. But I will say, this is where it's really important to know your ethos. If you are a cross fitter, a weightlifter person I lift heavy. Therefore, my patients should be able to to you know how to use a squat rack. You know how to use a pulley machine. You want a cable thing attached to the wall, fucking TRX, whatever. If you know how to do that and you use it with every single one of your patients, we can talk Great.
Speaker 2:Put it in right, but know that this is my bitterness here comes from Nicole. How much money, oh. God Do you think that we have wasted at pelvic sanity on this idea that we needed we had a Pilates machine. I installed the TRX thing that the only person who used it was me until it fell out of the wall and I fell on my ass tailbone injury. Well, that was actually probably the best business decision, because we were injuring people's tailbones in there and then we could fix them.
Speaker 1:No, jesse was the only person that fell down. But honestly I will say this like early on before, I was just like it's not happening. We're not doing this at pelvic sanity. You have kettlebells, you have weights, you have medicine balls, you have steps, you have your brain, you have outside. You can have your patient bring in stuff. I've had power lifter people. I'm like, fine, bring in your fucking plates, bring them in. And then, guess what? I'm going to watch you get them out of the trunk. I'm going to watch you carry them into our clinic. I'm going to watch you do all of the stuff as you're doing it.
Speaker 1:But like there are so many workarounds to this and I think that the biggest pet peeve that we have now is that a therapist that comes to us like can we get X equipment? And I'm like you know what? Now I say absolutely not. It needs to fit in your room. You need to use your brain and get creative, because the amount of money and time that we have spent trying to placate unrealistic expectations of PTs that lack self-awareness on how much we're actually doing, exercises that require require is the keyword there require barbells, and all this shit is ridiculous.
Speaker 1:So just be honest with yourself what kind of a PT you are, what kind of a person you are and what kind of a person that your clinicians are. Because even if you're super passionate about that and you get a clinician, maybe your clinician isn't passionate about that. And now all of a sudden, it's only going to be you using it in a space that could also be a treatment room. So we're just saying we're not saying don't exercise your patients. We're not saying don't load your patients. We're not saying don't lift heavy. It's that. Is that the best use of your space For your business?
Speaker 2:Yes, and those of you guys who are in the rising program who do have these massive gyms, because you use them every day and it's part of your ethos. We love you guys, totally understand.
Speaker 1:Yes, and you've made the right decision because you've thought deeply about it. Though that's the thing, that's not just the knee jerk. Oh, I need a room and a gym space and all the things.
Speaker 2:Yes, last thing on my miscellaneous list you, nicole, if you do need to grow out of a space, if you have just filled it to bursting, you've looked down the hall for a room to rent, like we did, then breaking a lease is not going to be the end of the world.
Speaker 2:It's like breaking a lease at an apartment they are required to try to fill it. Usually you can negotiate some sort of lease break and at the point, honestly, where you're busting at the seams and growing out of it, then the additional revenue you're going to generate at a new space is going to more than pay for whatever the lease break was. So be thinking about that. Well, you know, when you do sign a seven-year lease, if you had to leave for some reason at the end of two Years, there is no realistic way in in God's green earth that you're going to be actually on the hook for five more years of payments On this empty space, as the landlord just sits in there and like swims in their Scrooge McDuck pile of money that you have to pay them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally. You guys like this is just this again. This is like being business savvy. This is is being able to believe that you would be able to handle a shitty situation if it happened, or a great situation, right, if it's in the case of you growing out and your space becomes your limiting factor, that we've seen that happen where it's people's space becomes their limiting factor, way more often than we've ever seen any catastrophic thing from needing to break a lease.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. Actually, the last thing I want to say, nicole, on this like miscellaneous categories when do you live? Is this place convenient to you? I have seen so many folks we've actually had to help relocate Because they thought that this was the part of town that was hot and growing or they had this wonderful thing that just fell into their lap. Beware things that fall into your lap in business. Usually they're not things you were looking for and you know. Usually it's like dropping a live koala bear like a bobcat into your lap.
Speaker 1:Koala bear bobcat. Which one? I feel like that. That analogy was weird.
Speaker 2:Well, I felt like I don't know. I feel like koala bears might be a little bit vicious when like cornered, but maybe not, maybe not.
Speaker 1:Anyways. Bottom line, though, is that I feel like some of the toughest decisions and conversations that we've had to have in our business mentorship groups is when a Seemingly serendipitous thing Happens and they're like I think I need to do this and and then it just doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2:You're driving 30 minutes each way every day, when, in reality, you started your business so that you could spend more time at home with your family, right a?
Speaker 1:lot of times it's like based on promises of the person like, oh, I'm gonna have so many patients for you. This is gonna be such a symbiotic relationship. That's another takeaway. Like, do not Take into account if somebody says, oh, I'm gonna refer you so much if you come and rent space for me, I would almost be like run the other way. But you can seriously call bullshit. You certainly should not believe them.
Speaker 2:They've been consistently referring people to you at their current place, right, if they've been a consistent referral source to you for years already, then yeah, they would probably continue doing that in their space. But right, you've never sent me a single patient before ever. But all of a sudden I'm gonna go into your space and you're gonna become, like pelvic, pt's biggest advocate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, doesn't always ring true and I would say we've also seen it where they've been great refers. And the second that you're right there. It just doesn't work out that way or something happens, and now you relate, your relationship changes. Right Now you are a Leasey right and, yeah, it just is very interesting.
Speaker 2:So, nicole, I love how you said this know yourself, your goals, your business and your numbers, and you will not go wrong.
Speaker 1:Seriously, like I think everybody gets just to take like a bird's-eye view of this issue. Everyone, I feel like this is one of the most common questions that we get. I have this opportunity, I this space on blah blah. I need to move. I. This isn't working for me.
Speaker 1:I think I'm gonna take this and, honestly, the thing that we go back to the most is these foundational principles of Know yourself, know your goals, know your business, know your numbers, get your emotions mostly out of it and Just make decisions based in those things. And then I will say this there is a little bit of this gut-check, gut feeling thing that you do need to Pay attention to, but only after you've done all of the math and all of the things and done the pros and cons list and listen this podcast a million times over and Really grappled with all of the permutations of what could be for you and your business. Only then do you take all of that into consideration and then do your gut check test. I feel like too many people think that they have a gut feeling usually good about something and they haven't done this other stuff, and then that clouds the logic and the decisions that you can be making for you and your business, and this is objectively a big deal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think, especially to Nicole, that that gut check. I trust that gut check a lot more if you tell me you've visited 20 places than if you tell me you've been to two, totally right. So if you're the one who's telling me that you know this is the only place in town that I could possibly be, like you are not looking hard enough. Go back and actually start contacting people and come up with different options, because I don't trust your gut. If your gut is, should I do this thing or not? I would much rather be, should I?
Speaker 2:I mean, it's like buying a house. I mean this is it really is like they like housing for yourself personally, is that you most places will have to move right and not very many people graduate from school and then buy their forever home. So trust yourself to handle the consequences. Run your numbers, make a good decision, see a lot of different places, know what your options are. Then have that gut check moment and then recognize that no place is ever going to be perfect for you for the entire lifespan of your business, like you're gonna have to move, expand renovate whatever it is, and you got to trust yourself that at that point in your business You're gonna have the ability to handle the consequences of your decisions.
Speaker 2:Totally cool, all right. Well, I always love when Nicole doesn't have anything.
Speaker 1:I'm like that was great. You should have just gone into the ending. I must have just hit that so guys.
Speaker 2:I hope this has been helpful. If you guys do have questions about this, please feel free to reach out. Let us know always. I mean, this is one of the bigger decisions that you're gonna make in your business, so it deserves a lot of thought and introspection and the effort to see different places and know what your options are before you dive in. So, as always, we appreciate every single one of you listening. We'd love to keep this conversation going and let's continue to rise.