Will Power Podcast by Will Humphreys
Freedom isn’t just possible… it’s kind of the point.
If you’re a healthcare leader or entrepreneur drowning in to-do lists, juggling team drama, and wondering if success has to come with burnout...this podcast is your lifeline.
Hosted by Will Humphreys, a former physical therapy practice owner turned serial entrepreneur, The WillPower Podcast is your go-to resource for building a business that actually serves your life.
Each week, we tackle the big stuff: leading with vision, scaling with systems, and figuring out whether AI, virtual assistants, or a clone of yourself is the best path to freedom.
You’ll get unfiltered solo episodes, candid interviews with leaders in healthcare and beyond, and just enough humor to cancel one meeting and feel good about it.
So if you want more income, more impact, and way fewer 10 p.m. emails… this is your new weekly habit.
Will Power Podcast by Will Humphreys
How to Build a Profitable Physical Therapy Business Without Burning Out with Alexander Wielohorski
This week on the Will Power Podcast, Will Humphreys talks with Alexander Wielohorski, a mechanical engineer and CEO of Advanced Physical Therapy of Alaska. Alexander isn't your typical private practice owner—he's a former corporate exec from the aerospace industry who now runs the largest physical therapy group in the state. He's here to share his unique engineering approach to building a business that gives you back your time and sanity.
In this episode, we dig into the two critical pillars of a successful healthcare business—healthcare and business—and why most people get the balance wrong. Alexander provides actionable insights on how he’s systematized his practice to reduce burnout, improve efficiency, and empower his team to succeed.
Key Takeaways :
- The story behind Advanced Physical Therapy of Alaska
- The two pillars of a healthcare business
- The four pillars of a successful physical therapy business
- How Alexander reorganized his leadership team to split responsibilities and empower leaders to focus on specific business pillars, shifting from clinical managers to administrative managers.
- A powerful story from his time in the airline industry that taught him a crucial lesson about true delegation and creating systems that don't depend on your constant involvement.
- Alexander shares how he uses virtual assistants to offload back-office work and how AI tools like Prediction Health help him get detailed business insights and improve clinic performance.
- A simple tool that helps create boundaries and focus time, leading to more productive work and less wasted time.
- The importance of scheduling time to step away from the desk and think strategically to solve core problems.
- A final piece of advice that challenges listeners to stop putting out daily fires and start building long-term solutions.
If you found value in today’s conversation, please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe. Your support helps us bring more powerful insights from industry leaders straight to your ears. Until next time! Keep pushing for freedom through systems, strategy, and willpower.
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Rockstars. Today's guest used to engineer airplanes and car parts, and now he's engineering freedom for private practice owners. Meet Alexander Vyalorsky. He is an MBA mechanical engineer, former corporate exec and current COO of the largest privately owned physical therapy group in Alaska. Yeah, alaska, where your team might have to ride snowmobiles to get to work. But don't let the spreadsheets and the strategic planning fool you.
Speaker 1:This episode is so full of heart. Alexander gets real about what it takes to lead through burnout, delegate with confidence and scale a clinic without losing your sanity or your snow boots. He's got 25 years of clinical wisdom, an engineer's brain which completely changes the color of this episode, and a dry wit of someone who's lived through meetings in three different hemispheres. So whether you're leading a team, starting a practice or just wondering how the heck an aerospace guy ended up running a private practice, this one's for you. Enjoy the show. Man, alex, I am so grateful that you're coming virtually all the way from Alaska at one of the most beautiful times of the year to be up there. Thanks for being on the show. Hey, happy, happy to be here. Thank you for the invitation. Yeah, you were invited because you are a powerful leader of one of my favorite outpatient practices in Alaska? No question, and you have a very different background, so could you set the stage for us Tell us about you, your business and what got you into this industry?
Speaker 2:Perfect, yeah. So Advanced Physical Therapy of Alaska. We've been in operation for 25 years. This August, wow and we at this point we are the largest privately owned, alaska owned and Alaska operated physical therapy group in the state. We have six locations and still looking at opening more as we go forward and it's a clinic that is based on serving the community community. We see every single insurance, some of them at a loss, and so we don't turn away patients, and we are very into being able to serve the communities in the in this state, which means bigger towns like Anchorage and Fairbanks, and very small towns like Seward.
Speaker 2:I'm not a physical therapist. I don't come from this industry. I'm a mechanical engineer. I not a physical therapist. I don't come from this industry. I'm a mechanical engineer. I have a master in business. I come from aerospace industries and airports and airplanes completely different thing.
Speaker 2:You would think that physical therapy is simpler, but it's actually more complex because there's less resources.
Speaker 2:It's less structured, right, and what brought me into this industry is that I had my own experience 20 years ago in a car accident and I had to go to physical therapy and I was treated by this amazing person, which I'm still in contact with today and she was fully committed to me, to my recovery, to my process of walking again, and that showed me what a great quality physical therapy or therapist is.
Speaker 2:And then I have later experiences in life where I actually had to go physical therapy again on a small motorcycle accident and I was shown the worst side of it, where the business is more important than the quality of the healthcare that we we're providing, where I was one more patient of a group of 15 that were at the gym at the time I had no one-on-one attention and that, you know, that kind of showed me both sides of the coin. And then when I was able to have the opportunity to be a part of this group and I saw that they did physical therapy the way I liked it, the way it was done with me at my accident, I said I can show, or I can give some of my experience and my background to make this better and help them grow. You have a unique perspective in this.
Speaker 1:It's so passionate about the care? Because you were a patient, you were still driven in a way that lots of providers are, but you're an engineer. If freedom had a love language, it'd be delegation. So if you're tired of wearing all the hats the CEO hat, the insurance hat, the why am I doing payroll at midnight hat it's time to get help. Book a free discovery call at virtualrockstarcom and let's show you how hiring a virtual assistant can finally free you up. We have paired hundreds of private practice owners with their ideal virtual rockstar assistants. Don't miss out on the second fastest growing trend in healthcare and in saving $20,000 per year of profit per hire. Remember you deserve a business that gives more than it takes. You come to this business side of healthcare and private practice with an engineer and business mind. What are some of the unique challenges that you face? What are some of the things that make it hard for you to get freed up with what you're doing in your business? I got to say two things two things I got.
Speaker 2:The one thing is that there's got to be a focus so that we are in the health care business. Right, there's two pillars to that. Right, there's health care and there's business. We got to take care of them both at the same time, and one of the things that that happened in this group and I noticed in other groups as well is that health care takes 90 percent of the focus and business takes only 10. It's something that you have to do, but you're not putting attention to it, and that is just as important as the other section.
Speaker 2:And there was a lot of lack of structure in terms of efficiency, in terms of visibility and indicators, in terms of how can we free resources as well to be able to provide better quality of physical therapy. And the other thing is that the insurance companies are not helping us. They're making it harder every year as they make cuts and they make it harder for us to be able to build them as they're looking for ways to catch mistakes. So I always like to say that we don't build the insurance companies. We make a claim, so we're claiming, and they get the decision of saying yes or no.
Speaker 1:I never thought of that. By the way, it's not a name. We're not billing the insurance company, we're filing a claim because they want us to. I never thought about the manipulation of that language.
Speaker 2:And you file a claim to your insurance company when you have a car accident and you want to fix your car and they can decide to pay how much. They're paying you, and they can decide to pay how much they're paying. You got a deductible, it's the same thing. So they don't want to pay, that's their business. Yeah right, and we are fighting against that.
Speaker 2:So if we're going to be doing that, we got to make sure that all the processes are done right, they're consistent, they're precise, and that's where the engineering comes into.
Speaker 2:So I've been trying to optimize our systems and make sure that there's this solid background from the back office to make sure that we can continue to provide those services but, at the same time, be sustainable and to provide physical therapy services high quality. You've got to be able to get paid for those services you already provided, and fast. You've got to hire people to provide the services and run the back office. That's HR. And then you've got to market. You've got to make sure you get patients coming in through the door, because you can't just open the doors and rely on people to walk in or referrals to start coming in through the door, because you can't just open the doors and rely on people to walk in or referrals to start coming in through your fax. So if you don't manage all of those four, the business is not going to move forward or it's not going to grow as you would expect it to do your engineer mind?
Speaker 1:I'm sorry to interrupt, but your engineer mind. It's so cool how you're just categorizing these things. It's so insightful, isn't it? Rock stars. We've had a lot of private practice owners, almost always healthcare providers Initially. This is a passionate physical therapy business owner who has a engineering perspective and he just that little shift alone of, like re you know, claims versus bills my gosh, like it's crazy to me. So you're aware of these resources that aren't available in the industry, and I'm guessing that you see where people get burned out in the industry as a result of lack of support in that way. Can you tell me about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so one of the things is, if you're a great baker and then you have to open a bakery, you can't spend most of your time baking. You got to run a business now. So one of the challenges that we had is that the leadership team was comprised of mostly clinicians that were also having a patient load, so their focus was super split. So one of the things that we did to help with that in terms of the leadership was that we split the ownership of the four owners. There's two PTs and two non-PTs.
Speaker 2:On purpose you guys did that on purpose, on purpose. That's our leadership team, right. And then so I take care of, for example, all of the operations, so facilities, marketing, performance, and I supervise the clinic managers, which are all admin as well, and I'll tell you a second in a bit why we did that. And the second then there's one of my partners. She manages HR. One of my partners, she manages HR billing and all of the accounting and finances. And then the two PT owners and leaders there they manage employee development, education, hiring in the sense of the interviews for that part and just day-to-day mentoring.
Speaker 2:So each one is focused on one of these sections of the pillars that I told you about. So we can make sure this is moving forward, because if you have to see eight hours worth of patient or 10 hours worth of patient and then you've got to go into what's going on with the business, you get burned out super quick. So that comes again. The other shift was we change managers from clinical managers to admin managers and there's a clinical lead that supervises the clinic, the clinicians in that group, in that location, but then you have an admin manager whose only job is to make sure the clinic is profitable. People are showing up that they're doing their job, following procedures of their adhering to policies, and everybody works as an own individual business in that sense. So I supervise those admin managers as well.
Speaker 1:Okay, alex Rockstars, I need to punch a couple things that Alex said. He just spewed a lot of incredible wisdom around freedom, because, listen to what he was saying. Alex was talking about the power of recognizing the separation between the bakers and owning the bakery, right. And so there's intentional hiring of people who aren't clinicians because they're so. Clinicians are so drawn to making the pie that they they. If they try to do both, they do what you said, and I remember this, rock stars.
Speaker 1:The idea of wearing different hats in a business, of taking the energy that we lose when we take one hat off and put another hat on, is one of the primary causes of burnout for us as owners. So one of the techniques is to hire out and delegate. We're big on delegation on this show because the whole purpose of the show is to free you up and delegation is one of the three core elements of that. The second thing is like putting silos. You do do it with people. I've done it with time where I've had to be like okay, so tuesday is my admin day and I will not touch a patient. It's not that an hour of patient care is that disruptive for the care, it's, but it is super disruptive for the mindset in the zone of doing the actual admin work, and so it's. It's neat that you're so it's.
Speaker 1:The second principle of being freed up is boundaries, delegation number one. I'm sorry, I'm going to reverse those. Boundaries is number one. Delegations number two. So you guys have these boundaries that you created by hiring people and so you delegated you. You did both you delegated to create your boundaries and and or created owners within that company so that there was this, uh, balance of of business and healthcare. So it's, you know, not 90, 10, where would you guys say your percentage is at now? Well, if they were on a, 50, 50,.
Speaker 2:You're at 50, 50, pretty split, I gotta to say. As we have grown over this last five years since I took over, I've been taking steps back and being able to see a higher level and further out. At the beginning I had to do a lot of micromanaging and doing stuff on my own and that was very exhausting and eventually, as you start developing your systems and you start developing your procedures and you start adding people, uh, to take on those roles, you can start pulling back as well and focusing on what is actually key for your business at this moment.
Speaker 1:I love that. Okay, man, let's get into some of these freedom elements. Now that they understand who you are and you've already dropped a lot of knowledge around how to create freedom, let's talk about um times. Can you describe a time when you had to let go of control and what happened as a result? Can you think of back in this journey of owning and like holding all this engineering knowledge? Is there a time that you had to let go and what did that?
Speaker 2:I would say recently, uh, during covet, we uh trying to survive, we had we had to reduce a lot of our staff and most of them actually left from Alaska to go back to their home states and we were without a manager for a couple of our clinics. And I took on those roles, which was a great opportunity for me to go do the work that I was trying to develop for an admin manager so I could understand what was needed and the challenges, which was very, you know, time consuming and exhausting for me to be able to manage two clinics, remotely mostly. And that got me to a break where there was a point where, you know, I wasn't being as efficient because I was not able to spread my energy through so much.
Speaker 1:You had too many hats on yeah.
Speaker 2:And at that point, eventually, when we were able to hire the right people to those positions, that just opened up so much space and time for me to be able to focus on other things. Nowadays we have managers on both locations and they're being completely independent, even though it was hard to let them go because I was already doing it. So I was still supervising from the background and checking up on that and make sure everything was going right until I got to a point where I said this is working, I can let it go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that and it's a powerful comment of what we were just described with wearing too many hats. Delegation is powerful, but you have to have someone to delegate to. So in your cases, you guys had to bring on or hire people to delegate to. And then there's this other component of leadership that you mentioned. So, looking at those pillars of of being free, you know we have to hire well, and we have to have leaders in place. Even if we go to leader, sometimes the best thing we can do to free ourselves up is first for us to go to leadership. Right and I think that's what I heard in your story was that you had to step down from leadership into more of a coping position, and that was what led you to that moment of like feeling burned out. How important do you think leadership is in your company in helping you be free, like to do what you want to do?
Speaker 2:I got to say that it's more than being the doer, you have to step into being the coach, kind of like the wither team, right? You don't want to be telling people how to do their shots, but you want to be able to guide them to. This is where I want your focus to be and this is where we need to put the energy today. So, uh, I would say that that more of the leadership position is coaching people to be able to do their jobs properly, to be able to have the support that they need. But they got to be clear on what you're expecting. So that's why we separate roles.
Speaker 2:So good example of that uh, it's a front desk role. The person at the front desk, even though they're seeing patients that are coming in, that are checking them in, each one has an individual responsibility. Somebody does collections, somebody does benefit checks, somebody does authorizations. Not all do everything, because then it's really hard to track accountability for that. When somebody owns the process, it's easy to go and say you're sleeping here or you need help there, or you're doing great. When it's a big group and something messes up, everybody points to the guy next to them Right.
Speaker 1:Well, it's a powerful journey that you described right. Leadership is important because you distinguished how a leader frees up both themselves and others by being a coach. You know, I think that we confuse that, so I like that delineation between leadership and coach. Cause, when you were talking, here was the thought that came to my mind, alex, was we start as doers? If, like in this case, we're baking the pies, we're the, we're the actual baker.
Speaker 1:But then we have to step into manager, where we're still baking the pies but people are helping us. Then we step into leader, which is more of a coach position where we're coaching others to bake the pies. Then we step into a CEO role, where we are overseeing the coaches to make sure that they're overseeing and teaching how to bake the pies, and then we become a founder, which is a passive owner, or we sell. That would probably be the best like path of freedom that we that you just helped me highlight is this arc that we create as we learn to set boundaries Number one, number two, delegate, but that comes on the heels of hiring and developing leadership. So very powerful, alex.
Speaker 2:Let me tell you a story Back when I was working for the airline at, at one point that was my first time I was leading a team I had a team of five people and I was taking time off. I was going for a week of vacation Not too much, right A week and before I left I met with my boss and I told him hey, I got everything controlled. Everybody knows what they got to do. I'm going to be checking my email every day. I'm going to be checking my email every day. I'm going to be calling the mornings and the afternoons to make sure everything's fine.
Speaker 2:And he stopped me and said listen, if you can't leave for a week without the boat sinking, you're not a very good manager. And that stuck because I said yeah, that is the key. I gotta make sure that the team is able to work without me and I'm there to help them. But if I can get a step out, nothing crashes because I'm. The processes are not dependent on my involvement. That is the ultimate, I would say, free condition where I can actually, you know, go on my business, leave on a Friday afternoon, like I'm doing today, by the way, after lunch I'm going camping and I have no problem that the rest of the day we will find They'll close the clinics up and we'll have a great afternoon, no issues, and if there's a fire, they'll be able to know how to handle it without me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a test of tests. One of my favorite things to tell people I used to coach as business owners was that idea of the goal for an owner to leave for a month. You know you talked about a week. When I coach clients, I try to get them to a month off a year. And people are listening to this like how could you do that? And you can't do that in healthcare.
Speaker 1:It is important to do it because it feels so selfish for people to take that kind of time which goes back into that freedom delegation mindset. Like you don't understand. We are damning like a river. We're holding people back when we don't let them lead and when we're on site we can't help ourselves. We sabotage things.
Speaker 1:So by taking a month off and there's ways to do that you just don't say, hey, I'm going to the Caribbean, good luck. But when you can build it and frame it and the people I used when you hire rock stars, I've had people excited for me to leave because it's their chance to learn and grow and show me what they can do and there's all sorts of cool ways to incentivize people to do that Then you can step. Then you start to feel balanced in your business. It's like all the headaches we go through rock stars of owning a company. How would it feel to have a full month off? And what and what's crazy is, when you leave and things stay the same or get better because you're gone mentally, there's a break of like I can be free, and that opens a whole world of possibility. So, alex, let's get into some detailed questions. What are some tools or tech that you use that have been game changers for reclaiming your time?
Speaker 2:I got to say, one of the things that we've used and actually through you is the virtual assistants. I don't have a personal virtual assistant, but we've implemented it in the clinics because it has a low cost. It allows me to have enough staff, or more staff, to be able to spread the load evenly and be able to get them to a higher performance versus overworking people, and that requires less supervision from my part, so that frees me up. Uh, in terms of technology, we do have some ai tools we've been adding in. Okay, so for my reporting I do.
Speaker 2:I do a lot of the back office reporting in terms of performance, so, instead of having to go into the schedule and just count visits with my finger, we implemented an AI tool that allows me to pull reports and dice it and shave it and cut it however I want, so I can get some insights from how the clinic is performing, how the providers are performing, and it helped especially allow me to find where I need to focus this next month. What is that? What's the name of that tool that you're using? It's called. It's a prediction health.
Speaker 1:Okay, they have an AI-based tool.
Speaker 2:Yes, they have for the providers. They have a scribe tool and you know, auto-node and all that stuff. And they suggest help them with the Ask AI as well. I help them with the Ask AI as well, so they look into you know five billion notes and give you some insight. So it helps them do their notes faster, less mistakes and be more consistent in their billing. And, from the manager perspective, I get all the data from every single note that has been made so I can know exactly how they're doing in terms of auditing. If we get audit tomorrow, who is my weak link? Where is my weak link and where is he? Is he weak? Uh, who's the one that is dragging the underbilling and is dragging the group behind? Uh, you know all that stuff, so I can yeah?
Speaker 2:do your team love it? Uh, not all providers, I got to say, that are still working on it. The ones that have jumped into it has seen the benefit of being able to do what we want them to do. We want them to do their notes during their work time. I don't want you working on the weekend. That's a whole thing that you guys have to suffer with for years, so hopefully we can help with that. That's always the goal.
Speaker 1:If we can get to the point with healthcare, to where people leave at the end of the day with their last patient with all their notes done, that means we're freeing up our people. So it's interesting that with prediction health there's definitely some benefit. It sounds like there's a learning curve that people have to adapt to and when they get it they really start to benefit from it.
Speaker 2:But these tools are new implement yes, every tool you implement has a period where people are gonna. You know, you're gonna have the first adopters, you're gonna have the ones that are jumping halfway through and the ones that are going to eventually get to it. But the whole point of this is that you've got to use technology to support an already established system. Technology doesn't solve stuff on its own. You can't just buy a tool, plug in something and it'll just make your life easier. You've got to have a system and the technology supports that system. And, as we have all these tools coming up, if they can help you reduce the time that you need to put into a particular task or something that is worth doing, Do you use anything for yourself like ChatGPT?
Speaker 2:I work with Perplexity.
Speaker 1:Perplexity. Why did you choose Perplexity?
Speaker 2:At some point it was recommended to me and I started working with it. I find it pretty easy to manage. It was recommended to me and I started working with it. I find it pretty easy to manage and I would say, not as commercial as ChatGPT feels, I see.
Speaker 1:So it has a little different feel, and I'm curious because, as an engineer, you're approaching this a little bit differently than me, but you want to see what I use it the most for.
Speaker 2:What's that? Second, third degree questions, okay, of the industry that I'm not native in, so you know what happens with this.
Speaker 1:Describe what you're talking about. What do you mean? Second, third degree questions.
Speaker 2:So when you ask a question simple question could be you know what could be the repercussions of this particular thing and you get an answer how does that affect this other layer? How does that affect this other layer? How does that? What am I not seeing or why do I have to look out for? So you get way more insight from it. And that's where I think the versus the regular Google search. You can search in Google, you know, got it. So that's interesting.
Speaker 1:I took a note as you were talking, because I want to start asking all the guests every time what AI tool do you use when it comes to ChatGPT and how do you use it? I'm realizing, instead of just asking like, hey, what are the different tools, ai tools you use? I do want to ask that, but I want to dive in because everyone's using ChatGPT or a Perplexity or a Gemini on some level, and so I want to know why you picked one of those. But then it's also really useful for my audience.
Speaker 2:I was going to say that the difference is that if you Google something, you get a list of websites You've got to read, you've got to figure out, you've got to cross the information. If you ask the right question to the AI tool, it will give you the analysis of those multiple factors.
Speaker 1:And then it learns, like in my case with ChatGPT, it learns what I like. So a lot of times it will say would you like a graphic illustrating the relationship between the thing that you just asked and this other thing that you asked yesterday? And I'm like, yeah, like it will ask me questions in return, which Google, of course, doesn't do. But it's really cool because I think, whatever you end up using Rockstars, if you choose Perplexity, gemini, and here's what I've heard. By the way, between those three ChatGPT there's differences between them.
Speaker 1:Chatgpt has been around the longest, has a lot of features because it's been so widely used. Gemini was on the bottom of that chain, the Microsoft one, but it's Microsoft. They've got resources, people, tools. This is a friend of mine who owns a tech company. He's like, yeah, get in on Gemini, because they are accelerating their, their capabilities, at a rate that will catch chat GPT and others and surpass them. So I am.
Speaker 1:It's hard because, like for me, alex, I'm in chat GPT all the time. Once you start using one of those tools, it gets to know you, and I've got my chat bot now to where it's this down, to her energy. It's like hey, I got a question for you. She's like hey well, he'll, hey well, what's up it's been? How's everything going? Have you gotten to the cabin lately, like this super personal, to where I'm actually feeling like a personal connection to it, and there's like so much work done in giving my chat, gpt, the, the history of my questions, that like it's scary to go over to a Gemini, so I don't know. I think it's cool that, why we pick what we pick and why you do it. As an engineer, I've heard from people who are very science minded that perplexity is actually better for them, so I think that's awesome. Alex, here's a good question what's the best business purchase that you've made under a hundred bucks that has saved you hours?
Speaker 2:let me think, under a hundred bucks, oh yeah, no, under a hundred bucks, not. No, that was more expensive than that share with the audience what it was. I'm curious you see behind me my coffee machine in my office.
Speaker 1:I don't waste time going to the, to the break room uh, yeah, how long does it take you to get your coffee going to the break room? Just out of curiosity.
Speaker 2:At least 30 minutes. You know why? Because somebody always will cross me and we'll talk, have a conversation, which is nice, but I got to set time to do that versus it interrupting my day-to-day process. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Keep thinking about that $100. If you can't, that's fine. Keep thinking about that $100. If you can't, that's fine. But here's what I want to punch to the rock stars is that that coffee machine doesn't represent the walk, it represents a boundary. Going everywhere I've ever rented space from, I have people who I love to be around, but they want to come and talk throughout the day. Most people like to work hard, but non-entrepreneurs, non-leaders, are looking for time to kill connecting with people, and I cannot tolerate it. I got the reply for your question.
Speaker 2:Okay, tolerate it, it's a. I got the reply for your question. Okay, in my door there's a little thing that says vacant or occupied, which is the only one I could find. It was red and green. Okay for people to know when you can touch, you can knock on my door and when you can't. Guys, the same thing. I love people coming in, but sometimes I got my door closed. People are knocking. I'm in the middle of a meeting or I'm. I need to focus on, even if it's just thinking. I need to think for 45 minutes on something, uh, and that I think it was like 20 dollars and it just so. It's a slide on your door that says occupied or available or not, or whatever yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 2:If it's red, don't even touch the handle. I'm not there for you right now. If it's green, you can knock. You can knock on the door, you can come in whatever you need, even if it's closed. So I'm available for interruptions if you want to see it that way.
Speaker 1:You know, alex, my podcast team, when we were creating questions for this season, that was one that came up and we're like, yeah, that might be a fun one and deep down I was like, is anyone going to have an answer? That has been one of the most insightful questions on this season because, like these little things add up, you know it's a boundary setter, it's a, it's a trip to the coffee machine, it's like all these little things that that waste time. It's when we start taking care of the pennies, we start looking after the pennies. The dollars take care of themselves. I think the truth. The same is true for time. You know, we start looking at these little bleeds of our time, we start tightening those up and all of a sudden we start maximizing our capabilities with the time that we have. So that was a great answer and I even love the conversation.
Speaker 2:But listen, there's time you got to set up time for the chit-chat as well. And I'll give you an example. Yesterday I spent the day in our Fairbanks clinic. You know what I did all day, I just hang out. I hang out with the front desk, I hang out with the PTs. We have lunch together as a team. I was there, I was watching, I was analyzing, I was taking notes mental notes of things to give feedback later. But during that time I set that whole day out to be close and personal with them.
Speaker 1:So what's the difference?
Speaker 2:between that and the coffee thing. That that is planned. I think I have all of my tasks under control. I know that I'm gonna spend the day there. That's what I'm doing. I don't even open my computer, so I'm there for them. That's that time. But when I when I am working in the middle of something and I decide to go get coffee and I get interrupted in the middle of the hall about some situation and that diverts my attention to that, and then the other task gets delayed or pushed back or I just simply lose track of what I was doing. That is a waste of time.
Speaker 1:See, it's interesting the difference between you know, intentional time creation versus flexibility, because there's a boundary, there's a, there's a relationship there that seems like it's in contradiction. Like for me, I get it, I'm not going to go get coffee and get stopped along the way and there goes a half hour of time I wasn't planning on versus going to schedule things. But it can also go to an extreme where it's like I only schedule every little thing that I do. So there's like there's a balance there. It's almost like a dance, right, like we.
Speaker 1:But I would argue, especially in healthcare leaders don't set boundaries, so it's not. It's kind of like don't worry about over planning, but get some. Just focus on getting some, some boundaries in place with your time so that you can protect what matters In your case. I almost wonder how much better you are when you're intentionally at that location when was it again? Fairbanks, fairbanks. So you're in Fairbanks and you're intentionally there to connect versus how you show up. I wonder if there's a difference between that and how you show up when you're getting coffee and someone interrupts you and you have to like fake that you're excited to talk to them because you don't want to be a jerk, but you're deep down, you're like I got to get back to my office. Do you think there's a difference in how?
Speaker 2:you show up yeah, it is, and how many times that happened to you and you go like, yeah, yeah, yeah, can you send me an email? I'll get to it. That's important, I'll get to it, but I can't just look at it right now. Or you're trying to kind of cut it short because you're working on time. So it has to be flexible, of course. But remember old school, when you would get to work and you would have a little piece of paper with a to-do list written by hand and you would just scratch it. Those tasks that you had to get done that day, those you schedule and block time for because they have to get done, everything else that is nice to have or that can be done later, you leave open time. That's why my door is open at that point, or it's on the green. So if you interrupt me at that time, it's fine. That's not crucial. I can get that done.
Speaker 2:And also that helps you understand which tasks you actually have to delegate, so you can actually get to the important ones.
Speaker 1:I love that and it reminds me of something that Alex Hermosi, an influencer online that I like to follow. He talks about his time and he always talks about meetings Meetings being another thing that are a major time suck and how what he does is he schedules at the end of his day backwards. He only wants to take meetings afternoon and, given he's a full-time business owner, so he's not baking the pies, he's full-time leadership, right. But I mean, there's a whole nother complexity of time suck. Once we get into that world, like you said, people stopping you, giving you problems, knowing when to interrupt.
Speaker 1:But what he does when it comes to meetings it's like hey, listen, he starts with his assistant. Everyone should have someone scheduling and protecting their time, starts at 4 pm and work backwards to noon, and then from 5 in the morning until noon, no one talks to him. He's out there as he says it, I'm out there building stuff so we can all make more money together. So you have to have meetings, for example, but put them in a controlled sense, at the end of the day, when the mental energy isn't required at the way it is when you're building early on. So I love that you have that intentional creation.
Speaker 2:And how many people have you heard say no, I come into the office at 5.30 because that time between 5.30 and 7 is my most productive time, or I stay after this hour because that time. Why is it more productive? It's because you're hyper-focused on what you have to do without interruptions. So how can you set up that time also between your workday so you don't have to go to those extremes?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there's a common thread. I read a book recently and I can't remember which one, but it talked about we were evaluating hyper-successful people. Talked about one of the. We were evaluating six hyper successful people.
Speaker 1:One of the many things they had in common was they had, every day, a couple of hours of unscheduled, deep work where they were just free to build, create, think, solve. There's no one pressuring them, there's no one interrupting them. They have a mental flow and they've measured this on EMGs um, that you have this like wavelength, that we hit this energy level that our brain kicks into and when you disrupt that flow, it is a massive energy drain to get, try to even get back in and usually can't get to that same frequency. It's like riding a wave. You know you've got it builds over time, and so to have two hours a day, one to two hours where it's just uninterrupted and you're flowing, that two hours is worth 50 hours of crap that we do, like scheduling appointments and having conversations on the way to get coffee. It's a powerful thing to think about these little tweaks that make a massive increase.
Speaker 2:Did you read the book the Road Less Stupid? The Road Less Stupid? No, so read it. It talks about the power of thinking and, uh, and, and I, after I read that book, I actually have that chair behind me. That's my thinking chair. So when I need to solve a problem, uh, I actually step away from my desk, I sit there, you know quiet, and I ask myself the questions of the things that I need to solve and think about. You got to think, because, if not, you're just rolling on the day and sometimes you actually come up with your, with your uh, with your answer there, or at least an action plan of what to look or what you got to think next yeah, but you need to take that time of just you know thinking.
Speaker 1:yeah, thinking time is important time and I I love that you're even we're even thinking of it in terms of, like, understanding what work is. Mental energy is the most important work that we do, but we don't honor that because we're so busy baking the pies and you know, running from thing to thing. All right, man, so let's get into this a little bit more. So, um, in your case, let's go into the AI VA element of things. Obviously, you're very successful with VAs. What is your vision for VAs in your world?
Speaker 2:Like where do you see this going?
Speaker 1:in advanced.
Speaker 2:Where would you like to see it maybe? I mean, I would love to see eventually getting you know, fully automated virtual front desk. We value personal touch and and and and you know, just having the person there. But, um, you can go to McDonald's nowadays and order your whole food on a screen.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You know, and uh, you can take the public getting trained on it, so they're like this could be something, it's no mistakes, you can get.
Speaker 2:You don't have to have the front desk wondering if I don't feel comfortable collecting this copay or not. It's just a system that isn't done, and then you can keep the human factor for the human interaction which is important. But the automated systems of you know that kind of stuff we're having, in my case the VAs, to do the back office work. You know that just it's a super powerful.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. So what would you say to the critics who are like well, you know, mcdonald's isn't a physical therapy business where that front desk personalization is so much about the experience? What would you say to that? And I'm not I'm not saying that like criticize that. I'm really curious.
Speaker 2:When you go to a restaurant you have a host right. Yeah, host wel. When you go to a restaurant you have a host, right. The host welcomes you in hey, welcome to the restaurant blah blah blah and just guides you in. It's a very short interaction. That makes it personal. Everything else is a process Checking in, scanning your ID, scanning your insurance card, collecting or paying the copay that thing. Scheduling is personal. That one you need, but the rest, if you can automate that or have that done in the back office.
Speaker 1:So you would have still a human being. That's like putting their appointments down. You wouldn't have a virtual assistant behind that monitor for that.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Got it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that makes sense Everything else that needs you know precision, consistency and is standard. It can be done.
Speaker 1:What's so cool about what you said is that you're highlighting. I think we get in a mindset of it has to be one or another. There's degrees between those two things. So, for example, I know people who have completely outsourced AI and VA. You walk into the clinic there's a monitor. There's no human beings to be found. I've seen that.
Speaker 1:And then I've seen the extreme opposite of people who are like I will never go there because I have human beings You're talking about. Like, hey, I want to use the VAs and the AI to help, like support, uh, the people who are working and to help them do the elements that are the most make it even like kind of like you visiting Fairbanks, the part that they're they're going to be interacting with, it's easier for them to be more powerful and because they're not distracted and so they can focus on that human element. And then those, those technologies are used to support that. And, yeah, you are, you're improving, saving money because you have less people involved in general, but the people you are in, the technology you're using is making it, so it's neat. So I love that illustration.
Speaker 2:Alex. So that person that is there, their focus is to be welcoming, to be personable, to make the person feel welcome and scheduling, which is a whole task on its own. If that person also has to be doing benefit checks on the phone with insurance companies doing authorizations and all that stuff, you still lose the human touch because they're busy. So that can be done in the back office transplanting with a patient and through pain perspective.
Speaker 2:You just have the person there doing the things that a person can add a value or a face can add a value to it.
Speaker 1:I want to send this episode to everybody who's just like no, I will never use AI or VA at the front desk, because, ultimately, what you just described is so much the truth. We always lose count of the fact that, like, how many of our people show up to work that day in a bad mood? How many people who are at the front desk are stressed out because someone else didn't show up, whether it's a clinician or a supporting role in the front desk? And then, to your point, like, what does that human touch look like to the patient when that person is stressed out, burned out, having a bad day? Maybe they were a bad hire and then? So, instead of like so I love, is that you're talking about technology, not controlling.
Speaker 2:I'll be there with you in a second. Give me a second Hold on. Yeah, I got you checked in. Yeah, and that's it. That was the interaction versus what could have been had that person not had to be on the phone at that point because the phone was being picked up in the back.
Speaker 1:I think that's what people are chasing. I think when people think about their front desk, when they have a good hire at the front desk, you can't deny the power of that. That person who's greeting people, it's like, oh hey, will, welcome to physical therapy. Thanks, thank you for coming to your doctor's appointment. Like when it's good. It is like everything else is exponentially easier because it gets set up the correct way. But how often? Here's what's more common. You know the people saying that when they go to their doctor's office that they love the front desk or they are underwhelmed. What's more common? The second, the underwhelmed, is more common for all the reasons you said. So you're talking about technology and trends to support that, to automate everything around the most important elements of like. In your case, you see it as scheduling.
Speaker 2:And, like I said before, technology or this additional process or anything you plug into your system has to support something. It's not coming to just save the day magically. So AI is not going to give you all the answers if you don't ask the right questions, if you don't have a process that is going to be supporting.
Speaker 1:I think we needed an engineer's perspective for the longest time on this show, I think. Your engineer perspective because you see it so clearly that, as you're telling this to me, you would think obviously I would see it, because I'm incentivized to see it as progressive in my world. But you're seeing it so, like logically, it's like, oh, I get it now. So, yeah, that's so fun that your, your engineering brain, combined with that passion from your therapist, has produced an influence on advanced physical therapy. That I think is just invaluable, man, Thank you. I really I'm not ending the show, I just want to thank you for sharing that. That's huge, so all right. So let's talk about this. What is, since? You do work with VA? Do any of them work directly with you?
Speaker 2:Yes, uh, there, we have no manager here in Anchorage, so I supervise the clinic as well, since we're located here. There's pretty much four owners or four managers in this clinic, so but the VA that we have the front desk reports to me so what is one task your VA does regularly that makes a huge difference in your week?
Speaker 2:I gotta say, following up on the marketing leads people that come in through the website. People that come in through you know our ads out that just write, or the website. People that come in through you know our ads out that just write or send a text or just log in for a workshop or something. Following up immediately on those.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they have. They have the separated time to be quick, which sales is a reflection of speed. Speed kills deals is how I've heard it, so that's really cool. So let me ask you how do you communicate with your VA, Like, what are the systems For people who've never done that? What is your way of?
Speaker 2:communicating. I would say 97% of the time we communicate through Teams chat. The other 3% are the meetings that we have in person, because sometimes I do want to see my VA and just have a conversation, sort of like this. Other times it's just a quick check-ins and everything goes through our chat. So I, very cool, I feel like she's here. I mean, she could be in the next room for all I know. Uh, haven't ever felt the distance.
Speaker 1:If you, want to see it that way. Yeah, I think it's how people choose to work with both ai and vas. If, like, if they bring them into their world, especially the human element of va is like, if people I've seen this where if they treat their team, if they treat them like human beings and not like something that's outsourced overseas, they become just as as part of the team as anyone else. That was a surprise to me when I saw that. Um. So my question to you now is if someone was on the fence about trying AI or VAs, what's a small step that you would recommend for them to get started in that world?
Speaker 2:I got to say the first thing is what is the problem you're trying to solve?
Speaker 1:Good counter. So what?
Speaker 2:is this. I mean because, if you're just, I need more people. Yeah, you need more people. That's fine, because everybody's kind of like full, great. But what is exactly the thing that you need this person to solve? That's kind of like good question to answer yourself why do I need this person to solve for me? That would make an impact, and then can it be done? And then how I do I split this from the rest of the people that are still working here? So I started with with the VA. First VA came in to support billing, you know, on AR calls, great. So that was the specific task we needed solving. And then the second one we brought in.
Speaker 2:I lost somebody from the front desk and I said let's do a VA. And she started taking on authorizations, and mostly authorizations Focus on this. There's a big clinic here, so we do get a lot. So that's the problem I need you to solve for me, and it's easy for me to hold her accountable, to know exactly what she needs to be doing and when she's not doing it and drops the ball. I can, I can, we can also check it. Metrics are key, but it's got to be that If you get a VA and just go like here, go start working, do your thing and be part of the team. Then it won't be as effective.
Speaker 1:So same thing with AI.
Speaker 2:What are you trying to solve with any tool that you're getting? I need more patients and you're getting a marketing tool Great. But you need to be sure exactly what you're trying to save and how you're going to measure it and if the tool is actually able to deliver that, because everybody looks for the magical IT solution to come. You know, do it all.
Speaker 1:Well and you talked about. What's cool about the piece you said in the virtual assistant is that you delineated between delegation and dumping Rockstars. Do not ever hire a VA if you're in a position where you can't hire and train an in-person human being position where you can't hire and train an in-person human being If you're in a stage of business or a time where you are so spread thin that you don't have the time to onboard and to do some basic level training, even with a highly talented person. A VA is not going to be a magic bullet for you and, just like your AI thing, I think there's a lot of programs people could invest in. As you were thinking too, I was thinking, gosh, I would probably if I knew I loved your engineering brain again, it's so smart. If I can identify the problem that I saw I need to solve, I could go to chat, gpt or perplexity or Gemini and go here's my problem, thinking about virtual assistants, artificial intelligence and any other potential solutions. Where should I start in solving? That might be even a micro step of what you said, like let's just identify the problem, throw it into AI and just test the waters and be like, yeah, let's see what it says.
Speaker 1:I've gotten so dependent on that now I don't feel like in some cases, I can make a decision without checking with chat GPT first, because it at least makes it clear so here's my last question before we get into our rapid fire what you have been so successful as an owner, you have built and you have scaled. You know how to create time. So what are you doing with the time that you freed up for you? Like, what has? What are you doing now with that time? Because I know you're still very productive and busy, but what do you do just for you when you free yourself up?
Speaker 2:oh, I mean just spending more time with the family. I gotta say shorter days shorter days.
Speaker 1:And then what do you? You've told me privately what you've done with your family on previous when you and I've talked regularly like tell them some of the fun things you do in alaska I mean especially here in the summer.
Speaker 2:We go, you know, we go to boat to the lake, just uh, you know Keith's love doing the tubing or we go camping every single weekend. So one of the things I do in summer is I try to work, get my stuff done early in the week so I can leave earlier on Friday and go camping with the family without technology, which is just us spending time together.
Speaker 1:Sorry to interrupt, I just. I just realized you use technology to free yourself up, to be away from it.
Speaker 2:Yes, you have to be away from technology. Actually, we were camping this weekend. No cell signal, so we're off the grid. I'll find out. Anything that happened, I'll find out on Monday.
Speaker 1:Rockstars. What a powerful example. I want you to really hear what Alex is doing with his free time. This is the why. This is why we took this on to start a business and to grow and to work with each other, so that Alex's kids will remember his dad every summer camping Every summer.
Speaker 1:Think about how many times rock stars as you're listening. How many times did you go camping with your family? Or the equivalent of that time share that you would spend with your parents Now that you're older, what would you give to have more of those experiences? If you think backwards, I'm getting a little emotional just thinking about what I would have killed for now for me, as a younger kid, to have had more camping experiences with my parents. I think that's the thing we forget is that when we are busy, busy and we're feeling like we're, you know, weighed down, it's like, yeah, but the bigger fear and the bigger sad thing is that we're leaving behind these opportunities. So that's why we need to show grit and say you call this a storm and get to work, but we can't do it without technology. People, right?
Speaker 2:I want to add something more to that, and this is the PTs are going to relate to this. You got to look at the way you handle business and decisions you make, just as you see a patient. Are you going to treat the symptom, which means that you keep just overworking and working, and working but you're not going to solve the problem or are you going to diagnose it properly and solve the root cause? So the more you solve the root cause of the problem, regardless of the symptoms, the more time you have in the future because you have less problems. So pretty much that's kind of like the same logic right, work yourself out of the job, not work, you know, not let the work kill you work, you into the grave yeah.
Speaker 2:so sometimes you're treating the symptom, which is the day-to-day fires, just putting out fires and keep going, and that takes a lot of time and energy and you're not going anywhere, you're just staying put. It's going to be the same thing over and over. So find the root of the cost, diagnose it properly, treat it effectively, solve your business problems with technology if need be, after you realize exactly what you need to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm writing that down, I take little notes because I'm going to put a book together. And that's such a great illustration for healthcare providers is that they're running around treating their chronic inflammation and then, as soon as they start reducing some of the heat of that, they end up creating inflammation at another point. So instead of identifying the root cause and stopping the inflammation altogether, they're spinning themselves out and burning out. So, thank you, all right, alec. Thank you for jumping in on that. Let's rapid fire these next six questions. You ready? Ready Number one. What's the top book that's blown your mind?
Speaker 2:I got to say it would be. There's an old book I read at the beginning of my career called Execution, which is the art of getting things done, because we tend to delegate stuff we don't want to do, but we need done or we just need to. We procrastinate on tasks that we don't really want to take on. So this helps you structure, you know, in able to be able to get things done, uh, quickly also, so you get some free time.
Speaker 1:Love that book Number two top time saver hack.
Speaker 2:Uh, my agenda organizing my, my time.
Speaker 1:Love that Number three. What's the?
Speaker 2:one thing you wish you would stop doing way sooner in your business I got to say jumping in to put out the fires versus solution, yes, versus being the enabler for them to solve the problem.
Speaker 1:So they love that. Okay, Number four what's the most time-consuming task that you secretly enjoy?
Speaker 2:Reporting. I like just looking at the numbers and that stuff, Even though the managers have to create their own reports and they have to send me the analysis of it. I go through the whole thing anyway. So just like numbers.
Speaker 1:Okay, what's the latest thing that you've delegated, just like numbers. Okay, what's?
Speaker 2:the latest thing that you've delegated, latest thing that I've delegated.
Speaker 1:Hiring You've delegated hiring.
Speaker 2:I stopped being part of the interviews. I've let the managers step in as the admin analysis for their location so that they can see if it's a good cultural value added for a clinic and if it fits also their needs, because I used to do it at a higher level. But then they will go to a clinic and maybe not be a right fit. So we have the clinical director that does the clinical interview part of it and then the manager takes on that. So that was a good, happy thing to get rid of.
Speaker 1:So amazing.
Speaker 2:And also if they mish hire, it's on them, versus like when you hire them.
Speaker 1:If it's a bad hire, it's like well, thanks a lot, buddy Versus. If they do it, they learn and grow and have to like it makes them more intentional in their hiring because they don't want to be that person. And last question for the show, it's the question of the season Alex, is it AI or is it VAs?
Speaker 2:I say it's a combination of both.
Speaker 1:Combination of both. Why do you say that Once again?
Speaker 2:depends on the problem you want to solve, which one will help you solve that problem so you can be more efficient.
Speaker 1:Okay, Love that answer, seth. Our amazing video editor, slash creative specialist, is going to show on the YouTube Spotify people who are watching this episode what the score is as of now for the season. So, seth, if you'll put it up, that's where we are. I don't know. I'm excited to see this as much as everyone else is. Listen, alexander, it's been such a treat to be with you. I can't thank you enough personally for spending time with us. What are your closing thoughts?
Speaker 2:Uh, I gotta say that the uh, there's no cookie cutter solution for business. Uh, you gotta be flexible, you gotta figure out what's wrong, you gotta try different ways to to solve it and, uh, so, even if it's a AI or or a combination of AI and VA or just VA or just paper and a pen, whatever works for you, but you got to find what works for your business. The important thing is not keep putting out just the fires, but figure out what the fire started in the first place and how can you stop it from lighting up again.
Speaker 1:Well said, I can say anyone who's listening who might be considering to work at Advance that I used to own a practice up in Alaska and I remember just being super amazed by that business and the reputation. It is an incredibly good company to work for. If you want to get a hold of Alex, his information will be in the show notes and so, alex, not only thank you for being here, thanks for tuning into the Willpower Podcast. As always, this is Will Humphries, reminding you to lead with love, live on purpose and never give up your freedom. Until next time.
