E550 | Concious Capitalism With Heidi Jannenga

Today, I am super excited to bring you Heidi Jannenga, the founder and Chief Clinical Officer of WebPT. Heidi advises on the company’s strategic direction and product innovation while advocating for the rehab therapy profession on an international scale. She co-founded WebPT after recognizing the need for a more sophisticated industry-specific EMR platform and has since guided the company through exponential growth, while garnering national recognition.

Heidi brings with her more than 15 years of experience as a physical therapist and multi-clinic site director as well as a passion for healthcare innovation, entrepreneurship, and leadership. Enjoy!

• Missing the immediate gratification of working with patients
• Handing off the things you don't enjoy doing
• Facilitating our children's relationships with money

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: [00:00:00] Hey, I've got a question for you. Do you know if you're tracking the right data, the right metrics, the right key performance indicators in your practice? This is something that's huge for us and really helps us make solid decisions within our business. But the prior software that we're using to run our practice made it really challenging to actually get that data out and use it in reports.

Since we've switched to PPG everywhere, this has actually become way, way easier for us to be able to have the right data. We have a dashboard of all the things that we actually want to see, the metrics that we want to pull, and it makes our life a lot easier to pull the information that we need to make the right decisions within our business.

So if you're running blind and you're not tracking the right things, or you're having a hard time actually pulling everything together, I highly recommend you check out our friends at PT Everywhere and see what they've got going on with their software platform. It's what we use for our practice. It's been a game changer for us.

You can check 'em [email protected]. I think you really like it. So here's the question. How do physical therapists like us who [00:01:00] don't wanna see 30 patients a day, who don't want to work home health and have real student loans create a career and life for ourselves that we've always dreamed about?

This is the question, and this podcast is the answer. My name's Danny Mate, and welcome to the PT Entrepreneur Podcast.

What's going on guys? Doc Danny here with the PT Entrepreneur podcast, and today I'm like super excited. I was probably the most excited I've been for an interview in probably the last two years with Heidi Janga from Web pt. I did a lot of, I did a lot of digging. I did a lot. And I l I liked you more and more the more I learned about you.

So I'm super excited to be That's very kind. Thank you. Oh, it's awesome. It's sometimes it's a huge letdown. You're like, oh, this person sounds awesome. And then they're a dick, and like I, the more I learned about you more, I'm like, man, this person's awesome. She's super into dogs and like giving back and conscious capitalism.

So we can get into all that, today. Yeah. But for [00:02:00] those of you that don't know, I'll let you give a little background. But I did wanna share, my only experience I've had with you was actually at the Ascend Conference in 2015. I went to my first business conference ever was the Ascend Conference in Chicago, which was awesome, by the way.

I saw you present, I got to meet a handful of other people and I really was just impressed with just your company overall and even meeting with some of the people that were involved, what you guys were doing, just how, they had nothing but positive things to say. So anyway, I've been looking forward to chatting you since then and I'm glad to do it today.

Heidi first of all, thank you so much for your time. I know you're busy and I really appreciate it.

Heidi: Of course, Annie, thank you for the invite. It's always awesome to be able to share your story and hopefully pay it forward to other PT entrepreneurs. I know there's so many of us out there.

My path has led me into a whole nother industry, a whole nother world. But as we briefly talked about, I still lead with, like, when people ask me what I do, I still lead with, Hey, I'm a physical therapist who happened to start a technology company, right? [00:03:00] I'm an entrepreneur.

There's all these titles that we love, our titles in the PT world. Yeah, we do. But I haven't added any other letters after my name per se, in this, in the secondary role.

Danny: You put like e n T behind it just for entrepreneur because yeah, we would, we love it, right? We love our ocss and you get that.

Lu's Fayed, which is so many letters that it's just ridiculous. But

I,

Heidi: I feel like I could add an MBA after the, just from living what I've lived through in the last, almost 15 years now, which is pretty crazy to think about since I left practice. But yeah, I feel like I, it have had an MBA on the job

Danny: going where you go to PT school.

Cause we can reach out to them and see if we can figure that out.

Heidi: Yeah. I actually, so I went to uc Davis as an undergrad and then went on to. What is it? It's in the Institute of Physical Therapy. What it, which was, is what it was called, sorry. When I went to PT school, it's now the University of St.

Augustine. Oh. So Stanley Catherine Patless brainchild. That now is, got [00:04:00] three or four different campuses and Yeah. Talk about amazing entrepreneurs,

Danny: right? Yes, for sure. In fact, I feel like I, I didn't, I had one school that I applied to. I went to the Baylor program or to go in the Army.

It was like, that was it. And if I didn't get in, I was just gonna apply the next year. So I didn't even look at other schools. But we actually have a lot of people that we work with that went through St. Augustine especially, that are really good manual therapists. And I think it's yeah, I think it's a great school and it's an it's one of those that if you wanna specialize in that area in particular, it seems to be the top of the list for a lot of folks.

Heidi: Yep, for sure. Manual therapy is still their kind of special secret sauce, but they obviously have a lot of great professors and other instructors that you, just like any other PT school, you're coming out very well rounded, but definitely a a little bit of a gear towards out orthopedics, outpatient nanotherapy.

Danny: Yeah. So I, anytime I get a chance to talk to another clinician who happens to be an entrepreneur, which is, I think for you, like you, that's the, I guess the way that you would identify with what do our physical therapist, I just happen to be an [00:05:00] entrepreneur. Tell me a little bit about as a clinician.

Yes. I geek out on this stuff. I was at PT for a reason. I really liked it and I still do. And, but what was your thing? What did you love working with? What was the type of patient that you were like, man, let me work with these all day long. What was your favorite?

Heidi: I became a physical therapist because I was an athlete.

And I was injured while playing and was rehabed by another physical therapist who got me back to playing. That was like really what my interest why I got interested in PT and went on to PT school. And so sports medicine was my thing. Even when after I graduated I loved working with athletes.

I have post a c l reconstructions a lot of postoperative care. Even I was One of the a therapist that worked with a orthopod who was one of the first that did hip arthroscopy. Ortho working with hip patients as well. Yeah I really love that. But I got so much, one of the things I loved about phy, it was never being a physical therapist is just, there was no it was never a dull moment.

Every day [00:06:00] was new. Different type of patients would walk in the door. So yeah, I was that lower extremity specialist, but I also did a lot with shoulders, cuz we worked with a lot of baseball athletes in the clinic that I was in. Post-op ucls and a lot of sh shoulder injuries.

The age group that I really loved was actually that high school athlete. Yeah. Cuz I felt like you just had a lot more influence and, parents would come in and you have a lot of conversation about, the future and what they should be thinking about and making an impact there.

And then actually leapfrogging into like that. Weak weekend warrior. Yeah. Those folks that I now can identify a lot more with in their forties and fifties, that were great athletes and now you're coming into this age where, man, you can't do quite what you wanna do, you could do back then, but you still really wanna stay active.

And so I love those two kind of ends of the spectrum, if you will, in, in the athletic world.

Danny: And That's great. Yeah. Those are both really they're fun populations to work with. You're not seeing patients currently, right?

Heidi: I am not. Outside of those [00:07:00] employees that come in, friends and the office friends, family.

Yeah. Friends and family. Exactly. That come in. I'm like, oh man, I did something. Mondays always seem to be my busiest day when we were in the actual office. Yeah. That would come over, but I still get, it's so great. This is the other beautiful thing about being a pt, like the relationship that I've built over the years.

I will still get a text message from a parent or, now it's their grandchild who is like getting into sports and they're like, Hey, I know you're not practicing anymore, but can you please help me, find a, find the right position or find a n a new PT for me. Yeah, not practicing, but still definitely Trying to stay connected with my clinical

Danny: side.

What year did you stop? What year was that? How long ago were you like not active

Heidi: in the clinic anymore? 2011 I stopped practicing full-time. That was after my daughter was born. That was about three years into our build of W P T. We had just taken our first round of funding in and things were accelerating.

And so I always talk about it as if, I [00:08:00] had two full-time jobs working on wept and working in the clinic, and then here comes my lovely daughter. I couldn't, I was no more achiever, but I didn't wanna three, three full-time jobs was just not in the card. So I had to figure out what to drop. And we, PT was our baby at that time, so yeah our other baby, do you miss it?

I do miss clinical care. Yeah. I think it's more of the patient interaction and that, instant gratification of something that you are, impacting with immediately with that patient. A lot of our things that we do in technology are long term and, it's an iterative process and Right.

It's not. There's not that instant kind of gratification that you get when can accomplish something in one visit with a patient.

Danny: Yeah. No, it's it's cool. It's probably the best job in the world, as far as like personal satisfaction is con concerned. But, it's, as a mother and when you have kids, and we see this, with a lot of the people that we work with, the ch the challenge is the clinical environment is [00:09:00] not really all that well suited to be a parent.

You have such a strict, pushed out schedule and it's very challenging. So it sounds like for you, you are juggling a few things and you had to let one go and obviously for good reasons. So I'd really like to dive into, You know how web PT came about, because in previous, other interviews I listened with listened to with you, I just assumed it was like you built this for your own practice and that, that's how it started.

But it sounds like you were actually working for another practice and you were trying to solve an internal problem while you were employed, which I think is even more interesting that you went the entrepreneur route and then turned it into a full on big company.

So tell me a little about how that

Heidi: started. Yeah, it's true. I was working for a large organization called Physiotherapy Associates at the time. I was a clinic director over three clinics. But the way physio ran their business, it really felt like this was, feel, really felt like you owned that practice, right?

Like it was, you had full authority over your p and l and the expectation was you, that's how you run it. Yeah. And I did really feel [00:10:00] that sort of quote unquote, ownership, even though I wasn't the actual clinic owner. But yeah, it was born out of a problem. I, I, we had p and l responsibility and our biggest expense was transcription and dictation at the time.

You have to transport yourself back to 2006 when 80 therapists were still documented on pen and paper, which sounds crazy today. But that's the environment that we were in. And so the Affordable Care Act had just been passed. The High Tech was about to be passed, and so there was this push in healthcare in general to move towards electronic digital documentation.

And frankly, we were left behind because we didn't get any incentives right. To make that transition. And we saw a need and. It was really just supposed to be for my practice initially. And then I had some of my fellow clinicians and then other directors who came over and said, Hey, what are you doing?

I wanna, it sounds like you're getting very positive feedback and I've heard really great things. Can I try that? And before we knew it, we had, 10 [00:11:00] practices up and running and also giving us po positive feedback. And then that's when we did our market research when we found out that 80% of people were still doing what we were doing.

Yes. So it wasn't a unique problem to us that maybe this was something we could actually help more therapists with. And so that's when we decided to launch the company back in February of 2008.

Danny: So the primary intent. It sounds and correct me if I'm wrong, was you're trying to save time basically for your staff.

Yeah. And money for, was this, was it being outsourced? Was it, you were using other software from a, a dictation standpoint? What was the primary root problem that you were trying to

Heidi: like illegally? Yeah, so we had a cost in that we had, you had, when you were done with your initial, and we were really just only doing initial evaluations and progress notes.

So every time you got done with a patient, you'd go back to your desk and you'd pick up the phone and you would dictate a note that then would get transcribed, which would take two or three days. Yeah. It would come back in the form of a Word document that then you would have to go in and[00:12:00] review or, the front office would print it out for you.

You would review it, you'd add a couple of things corrections because, Even though they were medical transcription, it never, always comes out the way that you think you said it. And so you'd make some corrections front, an office would go back and make some changes. It would literally take a week of time, first of all.

And and then we were paying for that service. Yeah. And it was just really costly. And so that was the primary objective. Not only that, but we would have people staying hours after, they would just, would have three or four a vows in a day.

And so now you're spending another hour after everyone's on the phone, because the office has to be quiet. And so now we rotations in the office of who was gonna be dictating one of me. It's just, wow. We had 10 therapists, right? So it was like, and we had a small office. And so it's just, it was just hard, yeah.

To get all that done. And we really, we wanted to have that written, or not written, but typed note which was a lot faster than you typing it [00:13:00] yourself in terms of a Word document. But we wanted to have that because, physicians needed to be able to read what we were writing.

I remember back when I first started PT school, we were handwriting our notes and then faxing those to p to the physicians.

Danny: No one, oh, we still use faxes isn't I think it's faxes. Yes. Crazy. It's interesting. When you see a problem like that, the vast majority of people, they just, they're like, this sucks.

And then they complain about it. And, but for you, for some reason, and I guess it's probably because you were trying to make your clinic more efficient and, this was one of the metrics you were held accountable to. You decided, all right, I'm just gonna, let's start to solve this.

Heidi: Danny, we, yeah.

So we did go out and do research. I tried to find a third party product that I could just, plug into my practice. I wasn't trying to necessarily have to build something. Yeah. But when we went out and we looked, what we found was, physician based EMRs, which, wasn't gonna work for us.

It didn't have any of the things that, PTs would need. You [00:14:00] see a physician once a year the volume of documentation that we do as PTs is very different than many other disciplines. It was super costly back then too. And and it was all server based. So we had to buy all the hardware.

We would've had a Oh yeah. Place to store it in the, find some closet where you had all your servers. We would had to hire a tech person. Yeah. It was just not gonna be any of the savings that we thought we would get. So I just, I got very lucky and happened to be dating a, web-based.

Tech, actually he was an entrepreneur as well. Oh. And he was like, oh, he helped me do all the research cuz I had no tech background. I was a very typical physical therapist, which is not tech savvy at all. So I had, I was very lucky in that he helped me do the research and was just baffled by what was lacking in the healthcare world.

Wow. And he was a strong emphasis in terms of helping to say, Hey I'm gonna raise my hand. I can build something for you.

Danny: I don't think people even I don't [00:15:00] think people even know what you're talking about in terms of a server in your own facility and some of these things do you guys remember telephones that aren't your phone?

Like a landline, like some of these things you're talking about the clunkiness and when I came in, I started practicing in 2010, so I remember going through my first rotations in the Army and they were on, it's called Alta. And it's basically this das system you have to go in. It's so old school, but the whole, the entire medical records of the military is run on this because it's the foundation and they can't really ever get rid of it, it looks like otherwise it would be incredibly expensive and probably break a lot of other things.

And you just look at the inefficiencies in these things and it's man, there's gotta be a better way. Yeah. So for you, you pieced this together. When was it that you looked at okay, instead of just the dictation, but also. Other elements of running the entire practice through this?

Like when did the software evolve to the point where this was like your, you're full on E M R to run your business?

Heidi: When we did our market research, what we found at that point in time is that everybody billing had already moved [00:16:00] into the digital world. You had to submit your claims digitally.

So they no longer wanted paper claims because they, frankly, it was inefficient. So we knew that everybody had a billing system already in place. You had to have some sort of, technology to be able to get paid, we knew that we weren't gonna go down that road. Documentation was the thing that was the bane of everybody's existence.

It was hard. It was and nobody else was focusing on pt. Like I said, it was doctor notes. It was, specialization even, it wasn't even specialized in physicians. It was this one size fits all for physicians as well. And so this concept of specialty had not really infiltrated yet.

Which is called niche, right? Yeah, sure. These products. And so that really didn't exist back then either. And so we were and then of course the web-based aspect of it. Everything starts with your documentation, right? Your codes start there. [00:17:00] The intake component of getting the demographics and everything in, like all of those pieces or the demographics and everything had to come into.

The documentation piece. So that couldn't just stand alone in terms of doing the documentation. So there were some pieces that we had to add to make it the most efficient possible to create a adequate piece of documentation. The likely next thing is you have the code digitally. Now you can eliminate pen and paper, which was one of our very first marketing place is that you eliminate pen and paper, right?

So now you have all your demographics in there. You have all the patient information, you have insurance information. You create a great document eval, you can fax it right to your doctor. Now your codes can go directly into your billing system. So we, I integrated, we never built a billing system because that was the most complicated and time consuming piece.

We just integrated, it was already being done. We didn't wanna reinvent the wheel and we wanted Also really important piece as an entrepreneur [00:18:00] is the ease of use. Yeah. I don't wanna have to rip and replace something. I you already have this piece. I'm just gonna connect to it. So we made an integration with I don't know at one point I think we had 20 different billing softwares because that's how many existed in the world.

And yeah. So we made it really easy for them to make an add-on of web PT to their already existing technology and software that we had. And then from there, it's now blossomed into a full-blown platform of Right. All the digital things that people are utilizing and you just, and we had to evolve as the industry evolved.

We were, one of our, still today is our differentiators is we really listen to our members as we call them we call them members because we built a community. It's an important nomenclature to us along the way. Sure. But yeah, listening to our customers was really important.

And we continued to build based on the needs of the industry and needs of the business. [00:19:00] So

Danny: when was it, and about what size was the business when, you thought to yourself, shit, this might be the thing that I should do, like full-time going forward. Like how long have you work on it? That

Heidi: was that.

When I left practice in 2011, I was a little skeptical in the beginning. Especially when we, in 2008 when we stood there at our first trade show and people had no idea what is an em r like what is the cloud? That was the biggest thing cuz we were the first web-based application at that.

It's amazing how much. Technology has accelerated in the last 10 to 15 years in healthcare. We're usually said to be about five years behind everything else. Cuz you think about what you do in your personal life and most of the time we wish, man, I wish I could do that in my clinic.

But there's still this weird barrier you just you somehow are okay with the five years behind in your clinic because there's more, there's HIPAA compliance and everything else, the barriers that we [00:20:00] have there. But yeah, it was really, probably that 2000 when I had to make that tough decision to li leave clinical care, that was really hard.

And I 100% believe that it was gonna be the right decision. That's when I made that leap of faith to really just go full-time into we pt

Danny: w what was the hardest part early on? Was it. Was it marketing? It was it selling it? Was it building the actual tool? What was it that you felt, stuck in the most where maybe you thought to yourself, I don't know if we can crack this code.

I'm not sure if we're gonna get past this. What are those areas was the hardest?

Heidi: The original, so it took us about 18 months to build version one of what we were, could go out to, to sell with and what we launched with in 2008. And that was, like after, we went through the beta phase of those 10 practices using our software, giving us feedback.

The most surprising thing initially was that, my, cuz it was originally my, essentially my workflow or the [00:21:00] workflow that had been instilled through physio of how we did things right. The fact that it was built with a physical therapist's mind, I think initially was the biggest. Attraction to people because they could connect to, oh, that's, this is how I do work.

And what was really, you think about what you do every day and, you obviously went through PT school, but you don't think, like what you do actually translates to everything else everyone else does. Yeah. You have your way of doing things and it, it was just baffling to me that it resonated so well with so many people across, many different states and different outpatient practices, that was like a light bulb moment. It was like, oh wow. We do have some standardization in, in, across our industry. But the hardest part was, even though there was a standard of workflow, what's not standardized is the tests and measures that we use consistently o on patients. We would have [00:22:00] so many requests.

Of, x, y, and Z tests or, Heidi's knee eval, right? Yeah. That I have these specific tests that I wanted to do. And so being a web-based single stack product, meaning that what you're using in your practice is gonna be the same as somebody else was using it, that was the, difference.

It wasn't all customized to you. We had to build a library of tasks that people could pull from to make have some we don't like to call it customized, but more configurable ball evaluation platform, right? Yeah. So that was probably the hardest part is to really have. All of the things that people wanted, but yet still have a foundation of evidence-based care.

Cuz we had to start saying no to people. And that was hard. It's show me the research on, this test that I've never heard of. [00:23:00] Yeah, never learned about, but show me the research. And when they couldn't do that, we would just have to say when you do get the research on that, let us know.

And I think that still is an issue in our general industry today is this lack of standardization. Lack of rep replicable processes. From diagnosis to diagnosis. I know we're getting better. We have a lot of evidence-based research now that helps to focus us on specific workflows and outcomes and things like that.

But I still think where there's quite a bit of. Runway to go, to get us in a place where it's just gonna allow us to elevate ourselves as clinicians in a higher plane in the overall healthcare continuum.

Danny: Yeah, I completely agree. And I think I, I think that the profession pushes back a little bit on that with, this is an art and a science, yeah. It's not just a science, it's an art and a science. And yeah. I agree. And there's so many different clinical methodologies in which people come to the conclusion of what's [00:24:00] going on and how they work with someone. And yeah, I can imagine that is a massive amount of verbiage difference that people might have.

But ultimately it seems like it's, giving them, it's almost like Legos, right? It's here's a bunch of Legos, like these are the main Legos we use, and then you build it how you want for your day-to-day and what you're gonna do to improve your workflow. And for you as a clinician, and I would imagine that was helpful for Building the IP of the software out and what people were doing.

But how many employees do you guys have now? I think you said like 800. Yeah. So is yeah, just over 800. That's a lot of people. That's amazing. And, but yeah, but like you as a clinician I could see how it helped on the IP side. How do you feel like your skillset that you developed as a clinician but then running a clinic, like how has that helped you run a software company?

Are there elements of the clinic that you're like, dude, I use this all the time, and it's awesome. And you meet other entrepreneurs that are just tech-based and you got like some super secret advantage on them because of your clinical knowledge?

Heidi: We are [00:25:00] 100%. Yeah. It, so that transition in 2011 was really hard because I was jumping into an industry and an arena that I just felt completely inadequate or didn't feel like I had the skillset.

That I needed to be able to do this. And that was the hard decision. But once I jumped in, like with both feet, you quickly realize that all of those skills that I developed, essentially at the end of the day, we are problem solvers as PTs. Oh yeah. You're taking in a bunch of data of what the patient's telling you, then you're, doing all your measurements and then you're coming up with a hypothesis that's gonna help solve that issue.

And and then if that doesn't quite work well, you have a couple other tools in your tool belt that you wanna try. So it's this iterative process to get the patient to the best outcome. Software is no different. Yeah, software is [00:26:00] no different. And, after being a clinic director as well, the skills and management style and all of that I developed over, quite a few years in being a clinic director over, we had at about 40 employees. That culture that we developed and that relationship with patients, all of those things, Dr. Like translated into how we built our culture, our relationship with our members.

All of those things were just the same. We replicated a lot of what we were doing in the practice right. Into a technology company. Wow. And and it's, again, it was, it's. It's a different feel. People always say that they feel an energy, a connection. Whether you come into the office or we're at a trade show and people are there, we're there to help, why do we become clinicians? We love to help people, right? Yeah. And that's exactly the same sort of people that we like to attract into we p t servant leaders as we call them. That we have [00:27:00] that same sort of that culture and that mantra with how we built our software. Yeah. Wow. And, I think that's just innately and culture kind of stems out of the founders initially, but once it becomes part of your values and how you do things and that true culture within the business that then continues to grow, as long as that foundation is still there it really is what holds the company together.

Danny: I've never really thought about the way you phrase it, like PTs as sort of natural problem solvers, but it's really interesting the way you put that together and you're right, that's what we do. Our whole job is to just listen to people. And particular subjectively, listen for little pieces of information and then we, we tie that together with our objective exam and then we have to convince them that what we're talking about is the actual problem, and then they have to actually comply with what we're saying.

Yeah. For, there's a lot of sales baked into that. And there's a lot of really active listening. I feel like for you, and I have friends that have software companies, and no offense to [00:28:00] them, they're terrible listeners. Most of them they're like, they're software folks, right?

They're tech guys. Maybe they think

Heidi: they know what's best already, right? Cause we dunno anything about technology. I know everything about technology. That was what's what actually made us as founders really work. Is because My co-founder didn't know anything about pt. I didn't know anything about technology.

And so bringing those two things together with the humbleness to say you have your domain that you're an expert in. I have my domain that I'm an expert in. Yes, we overlap in the middle, but the respect of both of them together is what really helped Forge. Cuz finding co-founders in the beginning of any entrepreneurial project is difficult, right?

And it, you gotta have that mutual respect to, to be able to do that. Cuz then you can step on each other easily and making decisions and the trust has to be there. From the get go. Yeah.

Danny: That's actually a great, a great point because I feel like most people, the mistake that [00:29:00] they make with partners is that they want people that are similar to them.

Yeah. And they have because they wanna hang out with 'em. And it's entrepreneurship is lonely early on in particular. Yeah. And yeah. So that's what they look for. But in your experience, and I'd love to hear what your thoughts are on Yeah. Partnerships and what people should look for.

What would you recommend if somebody's thinking about starting a, a business and they're a clinician? Yeah. And just any business at all. What are, what do they look for in a good partner?

Heidi: I think you do have to have the shared passion shared work ethic. Some of the values, I think are really critical from the get go.

That's beyond the expertise and skillset that you bring to the table. I do think that there needs to be shared values Yeah. In how you wanna run the business. And the transparency of how that goes, communication styles and they don't have to be the same, but it, all of those things really need to be discussed on a regular basis.

It's like getting into a relationship with somebody seriously, as many hours as you spend as partners you truly are, partners in the business just like you might be [00:30:00] partners in life. And so that, I think underlying the skillset, but, I'm a huge proponent of having a skillset and not overlapping maybe a little, but bringing more information and more skills to the table.

Having someone that is not exactly, doesn't have the exact skillset that you do. Yeah. One of the things that that I've learned over this journey is. Through research that, you, I see your ink 5,000 Congratulations post. Oh, thank you. Call back there. Yeah. We've been on the list for nine, nine years straight.

Wow. That's awesome. And one of the great things, as you probably know if you've ever gone to an Ink 5,000 conference, is the amazing speakers that you get to hear and entrepreneurs that you get to meet and things like that. And happened to go one year and they were talking about the research that had been done about the most successful companies in the leadership styles that were there.

And what they talked about early was having a visionary, someone who could really see beyond the trees, know where you're going. [00:31:00] Partnered up with a operator, so someone who could take those ideas and make them come into action, right? Because someone, if you have two people that are visionary, you're, you can't get anything done.

You're always thinking about the next thing and, oh, wouldn't it be cool if we did this? And you're scattered versus the more detailed oriented person who said, okay, I hear what you're saying, boom, now you're gonna go and you're executing on whatever that is, right? Yeah.

So those are the two kind of personalities or skillsets that you need to bring to the table initially. And then once you start growing the business, the third most important piece is then adding what they called a processor. So someone who's, who really has an eye for process. So you're now being able to scale the business, you can actually continue to grow it in a more efficient manner.

And that's, We didn't know all this stuff initially, but it just naturally [00:32:00] happened in, in just who we were seeking. And then the, what we felt like was missing from in the business. We hired A C E O actually in 2010 to work with US founders and we had this trifecta leadership.

But his skillset was really around process in scaling businesses. He had grown businesses from one to 20 million. And part of that is being able to have scalable. We introduced, a new like Salesforce into our business. We introduced some new levels of technology that could continue to grow with us and build processes around.

Yeah, so anyway, long story to say. Those are the kind of, the three that they talked about were the most important through the entre entrepreneurial journey, a visionary and executor and a processor.

Danny: That's a, that's like such, that's good to, good thing to hear. Cause I feel like we have three, those three things in my business unintentionally and now.

Perfect. You vetted it, so thank you. Selfishly though, I have a question in regards to as [00:33:00] you've grown your business, right? Yeah. Early on, you're. You're doing a lot. And it's exciting. But it's also like we talk about riding a bike really fast and it starts to wobble and it's it's exciting, but you also might hit a tree and crash. Or you maybe you cruise through and then you're good to go and but once you get past some of those stages and you're building your team and you're taking yourself out of certain elements. Yeah. How did you, how do you handle that?

Like, how did you manage going from, all of the like, hands on excitement of doing everything to now all of a sudden it's like you have to bring other people in that in many cases are smarter than you and, give over some of the decision making and other things in order to grow.

What did you, how did you handle that and did you struggle with that?

Heidi: I did struggle a little bit with it early. Although I did struggle with it a little bit earlier. I a hundred percent. Realize internally that I am somewhat of a control freak. I like to have my fingers into knowing a lot of, a little bit about everything, right?

[00:34:00] And if I can do it, I'm gonna do it. And initially you don't have any choice, right? You're wearing all these hats because you're not making any money, or you're making a little bit of money where you, when you make a little bit more, then you hire that next person, right? And so initially, like you just don't have any choice.

You're wearing all the hats. But when we did have the opportunity to start to bring more folks in, one of the big things for me was I got rid of the things that I didn't like to do. Right? I'm wearing all these hats, but man, I really don't like to do this thing. So that was where I felt okay.

I hate doing this. It'll be nice to have someone do it. Yeah. Even though I wanna still do it, like I don't like doing it, so I'm gonna hire someone to come in and actually do that. So that was my first step into feeling more comfortable in letting some things go. But then once you start to realize how much more efficient and how much more time you can start putting into the things that you actually love, which usually are the things that [00:35:00] you're really good at anyway.

It made it so much more fun. To come to work and do the work. And so yeah, slowly over time. And it also is about hiring the right person. And it's a also about being able to have your expectations set. With that person from the get go, right? Because for me it's always about hey, I'm, I want to feel comfortable with you and you know what your expectations are from the beginning, and then you're gonna perform and you're gonna do your thing.

And then as I feel more comfortable, I'm gonna let more rope out. I'm gonna let more independence happen. I'm not gonna have as much oversight, right? And so then you develop ways of communication and how you're gonna get a summary of whatever you feel like you need to know, right? KPIs, whatever they are that you're monitoring for that person's work.

And over time, it becomes easier and easier. But [00:36:00] initially it was hard. Don't get me wrong. But today, like most entrepreneurs can't, they can't get it out of their own way. And this is one of the detriments to a business is that you still feel like you have to do everything or you just can't find anybody to do what you would do.

And I think with a little bit more maturity, it, you realize that you wanna get from point A to point B, and there might be five different ways to get there. Your way is not the only way. As a matter of fact, there might actually be a more efficient way Sure. To do it. And so you, it's o it's okay to let go as long as you're still getting to be within the timeframe that you want it to be.

Yeah. And that was a big lesson for me to learn because I always felt like I knew the right way to do it. And then when people were, the smarter than me would come in and say we could do this in half the time if he just did this. And I'm like, oh, you get humble a few times and I think you [00:37:00] start being able to say, okay, like maybe I'm not the smartest person in the room in this particular area anymore.

Yeah. But

Danny: You bring up a good point though. For you now with mainly focusing on the things that you're really good at, what are you world class ad that you focus on and also what do you love doing in the business? What are the things that, like for me, I could do stuff like this all day.

I love learning from other people and having conversations like this, I don't get tired from doing it. I feel I have more energy afterwards. So what is it that you do in the business that you're like, man, I can do this all day. I love doing this. I'm really good at it. And you get to focus on that.

Heidi: Yeah. I mean at 800 we have now, I don't, I can't know, I don't know the numbers. We've hired so many PTs in the last two years, which has been interesting. Post pandemic. We've benefited.

Danny: One second. So you're hiring clinicians to work at the tech company? Oh yeah. That's so interesting.

Why? Why are they're just like burnt out from the profession? Or what is the,

Heidi: what's the emphasis burnt out from the profession? Still wanna remain in the profession, but think that they can add value in a different way. Yeah, it's been really interesting. So the non-clinical [00:38:00] PT is a growing segment of our industry.

And we have never seen as many applicants for the roles that we have within our business since just in the last two years. And so we've hired a significant number of PTs, which I love. I love that we have more, PTs getting into nonclinical roles. Although, on the flip side we talk about it as man, we're losing some really great people on the clinical side.

Sure, we gotta figure out how we keep people doing the great things that we need cuz that's what we really do as an industry. But that being said my, the things that I still love to do are working with our product team. So to really still developing, like being out ahead to develop what's next in the software.

So that kind of vision of where we need to go just from an industry inside and perspective. And then also just with our culture, like the people side of things has always been where my heart lives. And like again, that's, it's a unique position at this [00:39:00] size of a business to still have a founder involved.

And those values and what we stand for and the real driving the purpose and the vision of the company. Is still part of what I do. We still have all hands company standups on a regular cadence, which, I'm out there in front just talking about the mission, talking about the vision, why we still do what we do, why it's so important, like bringing Indu industry advocacy to the table and getting people fired up about what physical therapy is and physical therapists do, and PT assistance and why they're so important.

So keeping it, keeping them connected to the industry that we serve is a huge role that I

Danny: play. Yeah. And honestly, yeah, it doesn't really sound. Like most tech companies that, you know that I have any amount of knowledge of, or people that I know that run them. And it's very interesting how you have it set up.

And I've heard you state that you're like the chief clinical officer of the company, which Yeah. Never heard that anywhere else, right?

Heidi: There's Chief [00:40:00] Medical Officers, right? There's Chief. Oh, there. Okay. Yeah. I, yeah, I'm not a, it just made more sense from a clinical standpoint.

Danny: No, I love it.

It's so specific to your values and who you work with, and it makes sense to us who are in the profession. But, to go back for a second, and I talk to people about burnout a lot in the profession. I think it's an incredibly. Difficult problem to solve, not just in our profession, but healthcare in general.

In fact, I think it's easier on us than somebody like my brother and sister-in-law who are involved in emergency medicine and they have these crazy swing schedules and they're working at night and it messes their hormones up and all kinds of stuff. We don't have any of that, but we do, we definitely do have quite a bit of burnout in the profession.

And I'd love to know what you think about that. Are there certain elements of the business that you feel like, if we improved certain things, that we'd see less of that because as, as great as that is that you're getting all these clinicians to come to web PT and they're probably amazing employees and just nice people to be around, just like helpful, nice people.

Yes. I hate to see that our own profession is driving some of the smartest people that we have and some of the most talented people we have out [00:41:00] of the industry because of the environment of the profession itself.

Heidi: Yeah. No, it's a big deal. We've talked a lot about it in our state of rehab therapy report because it is a growing issue.

Yeah. And it's, a lot of it is obviously post pandemic, but the biggest issues that they raise as far as why do we feel burned out is the administrative burden. Sure. And it's something we take to heart a lot. Obviously cuz we're, we are part of that administrative side of the business as a clinician, we're in a clinician's day.

And insurance companies and the protocols that you have to follow to get paid these days is just, It's just terrible, right? Yeah. And so anything we can do on the advocacy side to, to try to minimize that administrative burden and for us to try to make the most, to meet all those demands, but in the most efficient way has always been part of our mantra of what we believe and what we're trying to accomplish [00:42:00] in the way that we build our software.

But yeah, so that's one of the biggest things. And then the other, flexibility of schedule. Yeah. Personally, I think that we have to embrace telehealth in a sort of hybrid model. That's where I believe the future of PT lies. There's tons of studies coming out with regard to adherence, to pt home exercise programs, things like that, that if you're staying connected in different ways and make it, you meet them where they are.

And Used to be that, oh the majority of the population doesn't know how to use technology. That is all thrown out the window now, right? Yeah, true. My 90 year old mom is, using FaceTime and knows exactly how to get on Google and check email and do all these things, right?

And so those excuses are definitely out the window and they're more cost efficient. Yeah, I just think there's an opportunity for the future in, in having more flexibility in how we deliver care. You mentioned when we first started, and we talked about [00:43:00] me having to make a decision. I couldn't do three full-time jobs, obviously I chose PT or I'm sorry I chose web PT because it was the fastest growing.

Part of it, if I could have continued to work as a P t I, I don't know if I would've or not. I actually, cuz it was such a big load to, to do what we were doing. But, a lot of women and even men are making that decision today as I wanna spend more time with my kid. But that's also the beauty of pt.

There's a lot of part-time opportunities, right? The flexibility of schedules is what PE a lot of people are drawn to within our profession that allows them to do, maybe more at home if that's what they choose to do.

Danny: Yeah, no, I mean it's difficult, like to really pinpoint what you need to do.

And even as an example, our neighbors, they're both they're both physicians. One one does she's mainly a surgeon, like a I don't know what you call it. Got GI tract surgeon and her husband is an internist, so all he's doing now is medical or [00:44:00] insurance claim reviews from home.

Cause they have two kids and she is back to to work cuz she's, she has a very, hands on, can't do surgery through Zoom. So they hadn't made a decision. And I, so I was talking to him and he was like, listen man, it's not what I went to school for as long as I did, but for where we're at in our life right now.

Yeah. It's the best fit. It allows us to, to have the best balance. And I won't do this forever, but I'm doing it now. And I, so I think that, The telehealth element can be really helpful. And even with us, one thing that we've seen just with people going from high volume settings to a setting where they're in like a lower volume setting, just the decreased burden of documentation.

And in many ways all of the other ancillary questionnaires and things that get tacked on that only, it's oh, it's just an extra one to two minutes. Like what big deal? Times 20 patients. Yeah. All of a sudden end, that's your lunch. And then I don't remember, I've never remembered eating lunch and not documenting whenever I was seeing patients.

Like I just was, there's time to catch up. I think it's, I think there's a load problem there too with the amount of volume that we're being [00:45:00] asked to see. And it's not like it's going the other direction. It seems to continue to go up.

Heidi: Yeah, it isn't, with reimbursements continuing to de decline.

That's the, the volume, the trigger that you have is to increase your volume, right? Yeah. I know that's what we were dealing with back when I was working as a clinic director in pt is that, unfortunately, physio was signing contracts of pretty low amounts, right?

And so that's where the whole corporate churn and burn started to come in. And I think that it's definitely different this time around. We've swung that pendulum back and forth where, there's been a lot of private equity money that's come into the industry now, and so you're seeing some of these larger physical therapy operations growing.

But there's still a lot of PTs that are head CEOs of these large organizations, and. There's definitely a difference in how they are thinking about it, but at the end of the day, they do have financial obligations. Sure. And you but it's more about efficiency. How do we more [00:46:00] efficiently deliver great care?

But really this administrative burden piece is what we want to dial it back on. How do we minimize and make that as efficient as possible to allow, therapists to still feel like they are doing what they love to do and that's really putting their hands on and treating patients.

Danny: Yeah. Yeah.

That's what we want to do. And then, the, I guess the check the box that we have to have is obviously documentation and all the other things that go along with that. But it's not like we love it. I don't know a single person that's oh man, can't wait to shut up all these notes while I'm eating my sandwich today.

It just, that just doesn't exist, I prefer be doing many other things but no, I, I appreciate your perspective on that. Cause I know you work with a gamut of different types of businesses and, and probably see it from a much higher level, but it's really fascinating to see many people are moving towards your organization and I always felt PTs would crush it in a corporate environment.

Just, just the skillset of it. It's like I see engineers that kill it in the consulting world, and it's just because they're analytical. They break problems down. They understand like processes, kinda like you're talking about.[00:47:00] So yeah, hopefully all the good PTs don't work for web PT eventually, but maybe you'll suck 'em all in,

Heidi: are, there are quite a few folks that are.

At this business crossroads Yeah. They're thinking about other things as a matter of fact. I'll put a plug in. Meredith Castin is someone maybe you should have on your podcast sometime in the future. She runs, she has her own podcast in a, and runs a whole business about nonclinical PTs.

Danny: I've heard Yeah. I'm familiar with. I think the blog is the first thing that I saw. Yeah. So I'm very familiar with with her

Heidi: work. Yeah. Yeah. So she's actually helped a lot of people put together the resumes and really understand how to continue to still be a pt, but like branch out. I think it's amazing.

I really think that it elevates the whole brand of says physical therapist and our doctorate level training and how smart and amazing we have the people that we have in this industry. Obviously we went through PT school for clinical care. Which we can't lose sight [00:48:00] of, but, I do think it's a really unique opportunity and I.

A cool thing that we have PTs representing and other businesses, not just PC businesses

Danny: for sure. No, definitely. I want to, I wanna switch gears here a little bit cause I wanna be respectful of your time and there's something that, for me, I, one of the topics that I've really had to dive into more as I've worked with more and more entrepreneurs, especially coming outta the clinical world, is their relationship with money and how they view money.

And one of the bigger hurdles that I see when people especially go from, a clinic where they're not talking to anybody about deductibles or anything nothing money related. Yeah. To then all of a sudden having to talk to them about what it costs to work with them. They have a very hard time with it.

And I think it's probably because we would work with people for free if we didn't have a mortgage and had to buy food. And it's just like personally very rewarding. So I think we feel bad. Yeah. In some ways charging for something that we just get so much personal satisfaction out of. But, everybody has a different view on that.

And mine's changed dramatically as I've gone from. [00:49:00] Growing up in a military family, then going into the military, and then now all of a sudden, having on, in some ways a more successful business I ever thought I would actually have. And the way I viewed is very different because of not necessarily just the amount of money we've been able to make, but also the way I look at it from having generated it through businesses and value and what someone pays.

So I would love to know a little bit about, how you grew up and was money something that you didn't talk about or was it something that your parents were like very open about? And then how did that affect you when you went into your own business as you started to charge what you're doing?

Heidi: So I was a product of two immigrant parents. My dad was an immigrant to this country from Austria. He grew up in Austria lived through World or the world, end of World War ii. So he was really young during that time. My mom is Japanese, which is really crazy. On opposing sides for sure.

She was in grew up in Hawaii. Yeah. Literally on of the war. And grew up in Hawaii. One of nine. Her parents had immigrated to [00:50:00] Hawaii, extremely poor. And so having been a product of those two mindsets I grew up in a very, my, my dad worked for the US Department of Agriculture. He we li we I lived the first nine years, or eight, or sorry, six years of my life in a double wide trailer and two acres of land in Flo in Texas where he started his career.

Then we, moved to Florida where we moved to the burbs, which was, Is really a lot of decisions were made based on on us kids from an education standpoint, cuz that was really important to them. Extremely frugal environment. My dad made a good living. My mom started to work as a school teacher when we were, I think 10, maybe nine or 10.

So in, in elementary school. But, completely middle class upbringing. But very focused on outcomes. So education was extremely important. And, I don't know as you brought this [00:51:00] sort of topic up, it just reminds me like I. I always wanted DoorDash jeans, like back in the day.

Yeah, sure. And we never had name brand clothes and all your other friends at your school are wearing DoorDash jeans. I finally though I had, I started working, doing jobs like in the neighborhood. Like I mowed lawns. That was my first job. I worked at a grocery store bag in groceries.

I, I did all these things during high school and the first DoorDash jeans I bought were the irregulars. Cuz I couldn't afford like the actual, you just remember all these things, but I don't ever remember wanting for anything real we always had food on the table and all of those things.

As I think about how I've taken those in, like one of our core values in at Wept is Moss with menos. So doing more with less. Yeah. It's about efficiency. It's about, making sure you're just not gonna go blow this water cash because you just got, funded by a venture capital firm.

It [00:52:00] was really about being very meticulous about knowing what you're spending it on. And if it's wor we're gonna data driven in a data driven way, make sure that if we're, we are spending that money, we're, you're gonna spend it in a way that we know it's adding value to the business. I don't know, long story short to say the values of the founder end up being values in a company.

Yeah. And I think it really served us well. We didn't go the Silicon Valley way of just, burning cash for many years. We were very meticulous in how we did that. Today I'm in a very different place. With, having had, tremendous success with a technology company.

What my friends will tell you is that they don't really notice much difference outside of maybe the size of my house in how I live my life. And I still struggle with truly recognizing and realizing the financial success that I've had today just [00:53:00] because it's just not my d n a, to just go out and have fancy cars and all of that's just my sort of own persona.

Yeah. Yeah.

Danny: And I find this fascinating because, it, for me, what I hear is X athlete competitive. Yeah. Comes from a family where you didn't get. Whatever you wanted, but you had what you needed, right? Yep. But, so then now all of a sudden you can probably have basically most anything that you want.

Yeah. You don't really exercise that, yeah. So it, it's, I always I find this so fascinating because it's almost like you're playing the game, but the byproduct of the game just happens to be money. But yeah. Do you like the game more or do you like the byproduct more? Which, what do you think?

Do you do you like the business side of it and like the challenge or is it like, oh, I like the compensation?

Heidi: Oh no. It's never been about compensation. No. It's always been about the challenge. Yeah. Every step of the way and, people have to remind you along the way that you have to take care of yourself as an entrepreneur.[00:54:00]

Oh, sure. You have to take care of yourself because too often it was, we want, we wanted to make sure we took care of all of our employees. We wanted to make sure. And as a entrepreneur you, you have that responsibility obviously. But we took care of them above and beyond one of the most rewarding things that I can truly say.

It's not about the money that I've made, it's about the success and the growth of the people that have joined us in our business. Some of those early, early employees that we had who, we couldn't pay them probably. We also had the luxury of starting in a downturn economy, right?

And so the salaries that we weren't top dollar. But we've made multiple millionaires in our business of people who believed in us and worked their asses off to contribute to our mission. And we've had folks that. W p Wept was their very first job out of college. Wow. And now they're, they've stayed with us for close to 10 [00:55:00] years, and now they're working for, Amazon and Google and, companies that they never dreamed that they could have been a part of.

And while it was really sad to see them go, you're just like, oh my gosh. Like they, they attribute what they've learned and the success they have now to, the journey that they've taken with we p t. And I don't know, I can almost coming into tears, but those to me are the most rewarding things as being of being an entrepreneur.

Yeah. But at the same time you also need to remember that you do need to take care of yourself, whether it's your mental health, your making sure you have time for your personal life, your family life and financially that you're also taking care of yourself along the way as well.

Danny: Do you buy your daughter named Brand Jeans?

Heidi: I do buy my daughter named Brand Jeans. And that's the, this is the also the, we can talk about money for a long time.

Danny: It's I was like, cause I think about this with my kids too. I literally remember I just wanted Nike shoe so bad and yeah, I never had 'em and, [00:56:00] but my kids wear ultras cuz I was, I like the width for their foot shapes so Uhhuh, but they're not cheap.

Although they're, they probably just wanna wear Nikes honestly. But but they have a lot more than than I had and I always struggle with like I wanna do cool shit with them and we can't afford to do cool stuff, but I want them to also, be able to understand where that comes from and Yeah.

And what, more than anything, like what my wife and I have done. Yeah. And from what I've found, it's yeah, we can do cool shit, but we also have to show you the reality of we volunteer places where people. They're asking for Christmas presents and it's like they want soap for Christmas or socks.

And my kids are like, what? That's what they want for Christmas. And they're like, yeah. Dude, these people, they, they're home. They don't have anything, and these kids are your age and you're interacting with them. And that's for us really important because I, anyway I just find it fascinating how No, it's,

Heidi: I totally agree.

It's the same like with the relationship with money, even though she doesn't my, I have a daughter who's 11 is really important. Something that we think about a lot. She ha she has to work to earn her allowance. Like she [00:57:00] has chores, like she's out in the yard doing stuff that I used to do, mowing the lawn and all that stuff.

So she's still doing all of those things, but, I don't know. I also see it through the lens. I'm with you. I should take that back. She doesn't have we still like she gets clothes from Old Navy. And because they grow so fast I just don't, sure, there's no value in buying like these a hundred dollars jeans.

Like you're gonna grow out of them in six months. And so she, she hears that from me and she's okay with it. And, but what we do splurge on is shoes because it's my PT brain, right? It's the structure of your foot. And she's got a, she's got some flat arches and she tends to pronate. And I'm like, you're not gonna tear your ACL when you're gonna be a volleyball player.

Like, all of those things. So to me that's also just our PT brains maybe working, which I, my parents didn't know anything. You're gonna wear your Converse or whatever

Danny: oh exactly. No I think it's fascinating and I love the, just to get people's perspective on, on on that, because just the idea of Being content and then, having what they want and what we wanted and in some [00:58:00] cases more, but without being complacent and just assuming that everything is just gonna fall in your lap.

Like I feel like it's just a tight, it's a difficult thing to tightrope and some of it's also naturally how they're wired in some ways too. So it is. Anyway, I have one last question for you, and yeah, then I just want you to be able to plug Y P T where they can find out more. So I'm a big, I'm a big book reader.

I love to read books, or actually I should say listen to books. My wife will call me out on that. She's you don't read shit. You listen. So I listen to books. But if someone is interested in one book that they can pick up that can be on any topic that you think would be helpful on the business side, what's your favorite, what's your go-to?

If you had to say, man, this is the one book that I recommend entrepreneurs read.

Heidi: Ooh. That's a really good question. I've read so many books. I'll tell you a couple the Okay. I'll

Danny: give you, I'll give you the grace for a couple. How's

Heidi: that sound? Yeah. Yeah. So the first one is I love and I'm blanking on his name, but it's called the hard thing about hard things.

Yeah. And I just love how just the humbleness of remembering that you, [00:59:00] you just don't know everything and how important it is to seek out and to truly listen. To your point of active listening and to have people around you that aren't just gonna, blow smoke up your butt, like it's truly people surround yourself with people that are really your friends that are going to just give you some really good feedback.

So that would be one. And then the second one more is more around like how we think about building a business. And it's, gosh, it's called there's two books. I think the second one's called Rework. Huh. And it's really how I like to approach management style and how we think about work in general is it's really to put the work in upfront to know how, like to have a clear thoughts and a and vision of what you're trying to accomplish and to vet that into, some different pieces before you just, jump off a cliff and start doing [01:00:00] right.

Because in our world, having to do that work upfront saves us a lot of time and energy on the back end. So if you're doing a bunch of, rather than just starting and then having to do a bunch of things only to find out, oh my gosh, I wish I would've known this. Now I've gotta go back and do a bunch of rework to do that.

So it talks about some best business practices in how to have the discipline to do the work upfront to before moving on to actual execution of your idea.

Danny: All right. So the hard thing about hard things and rework, both great ones. I have not heard of rework, but the hard thing about hard things I have, it's, I've been on my list, I have not listened to yet, so I'll definitely make sure to do that.

Heidi: Yeah. Rework is more a technology driven book by technology entrepreneurs. But I like it though, has a lot of.

Danny: Learning things outside makes so much sense. Even if you look at pt, I remember like reading things that were more like physics related or like [01:01:00] more structurally related.

I'm like, oh shit, that makes complete sense if applied in, so sometimes I feel like having that perspective that you can then apply to your own niche of whatever that might be is just, it's can be really beneficial as well. Heidi, first of all, where can people find out more?

Obviously web PT is your company, but if they're interested in learning more about you or the software and what you guys are doing, where can they

Heidi: go? Yeah, it's just web pt.com. We have a great blog. You can subscribe to our blog. We are still the business resource for anybody out there, whether you're a cash-based practice or you are taking insurances or, you're just starting out as a startup or you've grown now to a multi-site business.

We have it all. And that's been one of our pieces of secret sauce from the beginning is to tru truly be this education partner with you. Whether you use our software or not use our software, we'd obviously love to have you use our software, but yeah, sure. At the end of the day, it's about elevating the entire profession.

And then Danny, if you won't, if you don't mind, I'd love to just also give a [01:02:00] plug in. As we talked about money, one of the beautiful things that I've been able to do with the success of Wept is create a foundation. It's called Rising Tide, which is R I Z I N G, tide. And it is a scholarship program for physical therapies, physical therapists, so D p T students as well as residents from un underrepresented backgrounds.

Going back to my roots of, being part Japanese and having a lot of friends who were from underrepresented backgrounds and knowing what the demographics of our industry looked like in no way in comparison to meeting the needs of the current population within the United States.

I started this foundation to, to help give a leg up to getting more students, hopefully through D P T school as well as going on to residency programs if they'd like to. So you can go to rising-tide.com to learn more. And we are.[01:03:00] Really excited. We just launched our second cohort of D PPP students and so we offered 10 scholarships this year to D P T students of Up to $14,000 renewable for their two to three years of schooling.

Danny: Wow. That's amazing. I think that's great and I'm so glad you brought that up. I I wasn't familiar with that with my research. I left that out. So thank you so much for bringing that up. We'll be sure to link to all this stuff too in the show notes and, perfect. And Heidi, I just wanted say thank you so much.

I know you're busy. I, this is a conversation I really enjoyed. I hope everybody does as well. I'm sure they're gonna take a lot out of it. So anyway, thank you so much for your time today. Of course. I really appreciate your time. Yeah,

Heidi: no one, congratulations to you and your partners.

You guys are just crushing it. I love what everything that you're doing, and especially on the elevation of more cash-based services and cash-based practices it's definitely grow a huge growing segment of the overall industry. So kudos to you guys.

Danny: Absolutely. Thank you so much, guys. As always, thank you so much for listening, and we'll catch you next week.[01:04:00]

Hey, Pete, entrepreneurs. We have big exciting news, a new program that we just came out with that is our PT Biz part-time to full-time five day challenge. Over the course of five days, we get you crystal clear on exactly how much money you need to replace by getting you ultra clear on how much you're actually spending.

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So this is a one one-way channel. I'd love to hear back from you. I'd love to get you into the group that we have formed on Facebook. Our PT Entrepreneurs Facebook group has about 4,000 clinicians in there that are literally changing the face of our profession. I'd love for you to join the conversation, get connect with other clinicians all over the country.

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