E768 | Selling A Cash-Based PT Clinic With Jeremy Dupont

How Jeremy Dupont Built and Sold a Cash-Based Clinic in Just Three Years

On this episode of the PT Entrepreneur Podcast, Doc Danny dives into a remarkable story with guest Jeremy Dupont, owner of Patch and a former cash-based clinic owner. Jeremy’s journey of building and selling a thriving cash-based practice in just three years offers valuable lessons for entrepreneurs looking to scale, systemize, and even exit their businesses.

Starting Small but Thinking Big
Jeremy began his clinic with a clear goal: to deliver exceptional care. As a non-PT clinician with a background in strength and conditioning, he initially focused on being the best provider possible. However, as his clinic grew, Jeremy’s mindset shifted toward building a scalable business. Early mentorship and joining a mastermind group exposed him to what was possible, pushing him to expand his vision and hire a team.

Scaling Through Systems and Branding
In year two, Jeremy leaned into sales and marketing, implementing tools like HubSpot to create seamless processes for client acquisition and retention. He developed a strong brand that resonated with patients, moving the clinic’s identity away from himself and focusing on the broader vision of his business, Ripple. By empowering his staff and elevating a clinic director to lead day-to-day operations, Jeremy stepped back and focused on growth strategies.

The Value of a Sellable Business
By year three, Ripple was running smoothly without Jeremy’s direct involvement, thanks to predictable marketing systems, a strong team, and a clear brand identity. A valuation process helped Jeremy identify areas to improve, increasing the clinic’s appeal to potential buyers. This preparation led to a seamless sale, with Ripple’s clinic director and a partner stepping in to take the business to the next level.

Lessons for Entrepreneurs
Jeremy’s journey highlights the importance of:

• Building a strong brand that aligns with your values and attracts patients.
• Systemizing operations to remove reliance on the owner.
• Investing in your team to empower leaders and create a sustainable model.
• Using data-driven marketing to fuel growth and increase enterprise value.

What’s Next for Jeremy
Jeremy is now focusing on Patch, a marketing platform designed to help clinics grow using the systems he developed. His experience has given him a unique perspective on how to create a scalable, sellable business while maintaining exceptional patient care.

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: [00:00:00] Hey, real quick, if you're serious about starting or growing your cash based practice, I want to formally invite you to go to Facebook and join our PT entrepreneurs Facebook group. This is a group of over 6,000 providers all over the country. And it's a pretty amazing place to start to get involved in the conversation.

Hope to see you there soon. Hey, are you a physical therapist looking to leverage your skill set in a way that helps you create time and financial freedom for yourself and your family? If so, you're in the right spot. My name is Danny Matta and over the last 15 years I've done pretty much everything you can in the profession.

I've been a staff PT I've been an active duty military officer physical therapist. I've started my own cash practice. I've sold that cash practice And today my company physical therapy business helped over a thousand clinicians start growing scale their own cash practices So if this sounds like something you want to do listen up because i'm here to help you What's going on doc danny here with the pt entrepreneur podcast and we're back again with Our recurring guest jeremy dupont owner of patch Probably the greatest marketing [00:01:00] platform and company built in the cash and hybrid world today.

Really impressed with what he's doing over there. But today's a different conversation. We're not talking about marketing. We're not talking about, how you can acquire new clients. We're talking about selling your clinic. And this is something that Jeremy has done. do. And congratulations on that.

That is an incredibly difficult thing to do to be able to build a business that has enough value that somebody else would want to pay you for it. And you can walk away and move on to wherever else it is that you want. And this is the goal of many people that listen to this podcast, right? And I've done the same thing.

And I think it is a very challenging and rewarding journey to go on in order to do something like that. So we're going to dig into that. Everything that has to do with building and selling a in this case, cash based clinic today with Jeremy. And to give you an idea of what happens when you sell your clinic, you can work from anywhere.

So Jeremy's actually in in London right now. So how is it raining over there? Cause it's raining here.

Jeremy: Yeah, we've been here for 10 days so far, and I think we've had one day of sunshine. [00:02:00] So that's that we were getting the true like November London experience which is, which has been good, but yeah, it's nice being remote.

It does. I think that's the goal, right? It's like time and financial freedom. Everybody always talks about it. So we're, my wife and I were, we're here and we're doing it for sure. Do you miss your dogs? We do. Yeah. It's like a, it's a, it's an every other day FaceTime with the dog and making sure that we're seeing them before they go on their walk, but they're I grew up in Northern New Hampshire.

So they're on vacation right now. They're in the, they're in the woods or in the mountains. I don't think they're missing us too much.

Danny: Yeah, that's funny. Yeah. I wonder what they think about it too. Like I always wonder whenever we go on vacation, what do our dogs think? Like they, they're like, they're dead or they disappeared, and then all of a sudden we come back and they get so excited. So yeah, maybe they're distracted, but I wonder what they think about whenever they're thinking about you guys.

Jeremy: Yeah, I think again, I think that they're in the, they're in their happy place right now.

So when we get back, it'll be like, Oh yeah, like I forgot you guys were around. This is great. But they get spoiled raw in there. So I think they're in good hands.

Danny: Yeah, that's great. So let's do this. [00:03:00] I I think one of the interesting things that we've seen over the last really the last five years in particular is cash based clinics be able to actually have, exits and be able to sell prior to that.

What we saw a lot in a lot of the, honestly, a lot of the information that I got. From mentors of mine that were in business was you know You don't start one of these to really be able to sell it You start one of these to be able to work with the people the way that you want to build something that you could Build past yourself, but probably not, you know in any significant way And you just got to be okay with the compromise right of that to be able to work with people in the manner that you want to and I was fine with that you know when I started my clinic and I'll say over the last five years we saw that we've seen the transition be to You Not only is it possible to build the clinic to be able to sell, but in many ways, the cash model is more valuable than the insurance model because of the ability to control a lot of other variables that you can't really when you're taking insurance, which is one of the reasons why we see so many insurance clinics that are really moving to hybrid [00:04:00] clinics because they don't have much of a choice.

For you it's the timing was like, a sweet spot because the clinic you started it roughly four years ago, right?

Jeremy: Yeah, it'll be, we're in our third year right now. It'll be four years, like Jan one this next year, 2025.

Danny: Okay. So getting closer. So between three and four years and from the time that you started, the time you sold the business or had like letter of intent under contract, it was basically right at three years, right?

Jeremy: Yeah. I've had, I had an LOI, at the beginning of this year. So it was, I got the LOI a while ago. Then you go through like discovery and the audits and all of those things, but yeah, we've been right at the three year mark.

Danny: Yeah. Okay. That's impressive. Just in its own right, Bill start, grow, remove yourself and sell within three years is really fast.

We're going to reverse engineer this a little bit. Let's start from the beginning. This is something I know we've had conversations about this, that, for you, it sounds like this was the direction you wanted to go from the get go.

Jeremy: I know like when I started it, like I was like [00:05:00] very much obsessed with being like an awesome provider.

If anybody, I won't give the whole backstory, but I'm not a physical therapist, I'm a massage therapist, strength and conditioning coach. So you know, I was like really obsessed with learning how to be the best provider I could be. Cause I had to prove myself in this space at the beginning of this.

So when I first started and it was just me, like that was my main focus was how do I be as good of a provider as possible? But then, when I made the jump and opened the standalone space up and hired a PT, that's when I was like, Oh I brought that first PT on, I brought the second PT on and you start to see what your monthly revenue is looking like.

And it's Oh, I think I have something else here. And I obviously, lean more into the sales and marketing side of things and remove myself from the treatment side. Once I saw that path. That's when I started to think like, all right, I'm going to remove myself from this. I have other goals that I want to do.

And I think that's, my mindset definitely shifted at some point. It's very early on when I wanted to start setting this thing up to remove myself. [00:06:00]

Danny: Yeah. Yeah. And I noticed that from the beginning so for us, what, what's interesting is for me to see it from a, I don't know like watching it from the sideline as you're going through this, it's very, it was very obvious.

Early on that, you just you figured some shit out really fast. And some people, they maybe they're not as wired for entrepreneurship as you might be. And it's always interesting to look back and, You can correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem like somebody that is more of an entrepreneur than a clinician, right?

You like, maybe you didn't realize it until you actually, started your own business, but how would you say, would you agree with that? Do you feel like, you just didn't even know that's what you'd be naturally good at.

Jeremy: Yeah, I think it goes back to again, like me not even being a physical therapist.

So like right off the bat, I had to sell myself in terms of Hey, here's why you come and see me versus the traditional routes. And I had I think like personal trainers are great examples of a mini entrepreneur because they have to go out, they have to promote their service, they have to work the [00:07:00] floor, they have to get clients.

So I had a lot of that like mindset going into it too. So I'd always even though I worked at clinics, it was always, I was almost like my own like mini business. It was like an entrepreneur at every clinic that I worked at. So I think right from the jump and, growing up, I was always, mowing lawns and, being that like, kid entrepreneur too.

So I'd always leaned into that side. I've. Always really liked the business aspect of things. So yeah, I think it's just, it was a natural, trajectory for me of going from selling my own service to now okay, let's build this business and I really like this and I enjoy this and this is where all my content, everything that I read and listened to is about building businesses and not about.

How do I treat?

Danny: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that for some people, it's the other way around, right? Like they, and I would actually say I fell into this camp for a long time where I just wanted to I wanted nothing more than to be a fantastic, clinician. That was just like my goal.

And for a decade, that's really all I focused on until you get to this point where. You realize shit, [00:08:00] if I want to be able to grow, I have to learn these business skills. And I definitely reluctantly went that direction. And ironically, it's what I enjoy more now and but for a lot of people getting to that, getting that, that part of the business where they lean into the business side.

Sometimes comes from frustration, right? Like a lack of that. And I don't think that it was ever the case for you, which is part of the reason why I think you had quite a fast turnaround and grew the business the way you did, but what I'd like to do is maybe break it up over these three years, right?

In the chunks of so if you had to say like year one, What were in order let's take it this way. Like in order to hit a sellable business in three years, let's take year one, what you did and the things that you set up, or maybe things that you've made some mistakes with that led to then you getting ready to go into the middle phase and then the last phase of the business.

So what were the big takeaways year one, that if somebody's listening to this and they're like, I want to pull off a Jeremy, I want to sell a clinic in three years, what should they be doing?

Jeremy: Yeah, I think I've done a lot of reflecting since, actually, stepping away and, the sale [00:09:00] actually going through.

And that's what I did too, is just like, how do we get to this point? And, what were the steps here? And, I thought back to that first year. I think the biggest thing not to, plug the mastermind group, but that was the one of the biggest things that happened.

And I joined the mastermind group right off the bat. It's I'm signing this lease. I don't know what the hell I'm doing and, having that community. And I was like super lucky. I don't know how this ended up happening, but I do think that like it shaped my trajectory. For whatever reason, when I joined the mastermind group, I was put in like one of the top groups.

So I had I was doing like 20, 25 K kind of by myself. And I was in a group with, like Chris Roble from physio room and, Andrew Millett and, Chad Burnham up in Massachusetts. And I saw what they were doing. I was like, Oh shit, like this is possible. Like we can actually grow.

So it really opened my mind up more. And I think if I wasn't surrounded by those people, then that first year would have been very different for me. I think it would have been a lot a lot more just risk [00:10:00] tolerant with what I was doing. And, I think of. If I didn't see them, having multiple riders and just, doing these, 50, 60, 70 K months then, I would have never thought it was possible, but because I was exposed to that right off the batch, I was like, if they can do it, like, why can't I, so I'm going to hire, and I'm going to try to grow this thing as, as quickly as I can.

So I think in that first year, that was one of the biggest things was, I was around people that were really successful. And, I took a jump and hired somebody right off the bat, actually hired two people within the span of a couple months, just because the, the second provider came on board and she was just like a perfect fit.

I was like, I got to hire this person because I can't lose her. And I don't know how I'm going to fill her schedule. So I think that was one of the biggest things within that first year.

Danny: I, that's such a good point because I, this whole concept of the four minute mile, what's possible.

And the ability to break these these, like barriers that people didn't think are possible. When you see other people doing it, it humanizes it. It makes it like [00:11:00] less, I don't know. It makes it more achievable and not to doubt, not to maybe diminish anybody else. But what I noticed was whenever I got around the really successful entrepreneurs, I remember I had a.

I had a mentor that was in a, like a local entrepreneur group that I was in. And this guy was a a hot mess, like a train wreck of a human being. He was never on time. He literally was, everything in his life was like falling apart. He was getting a divorce. His like kids couldn't stand him. He was moving back.

He was from the UK. He was moving back to the UK. Cause he hated here so much. And this guy had a multimillion dollar business, and I was like, this guy doesn't have shit together. Like he could barely tie his shoes. And I think I could probably do it too, and and maybe it's not that distinct when you see that, people that are like smart and they worked hard at something and they stick to it and they made the right decisions over time and they end up with a really positive outcome.

And that, that can, I think, help you build a confidence. 'cause early on you just don't really know. So it, obviously, it's huge to see that, but you bring up a good point. You hired people and you're like, now what do I do? And I like, how do I fill their schedules? Cause it is, that is a hard step in these businesses to work past yourself.

So [00:12:00] let's go into like year two, because I think that's really where you hit your stride as far as growing past yourself, building a brand in particular, which I think you did a fantastic job with and then acquiring customers in multiple channels.

Jeremy: Yeah, I think that's where I started leaning into more in the sales and marketing side of things.

I signed up for HubSpot. I was like, all right, if I'm going to do this, I know CRM is super important. I got to learn the sales and marketing piece. I'll never forget. I took a rev ops, like free course through HubSpot, which revenue operations is just basically like, how do you mix? Sales and marketing and not make those two things siloed.

And how do you make it, just one thing. And, I took that and that's obviously talking more tech company side, but I took all those concepts and those principles and then applied it to our physical therapy business. And I just fell in love with it. I'm like, this is so fun. This is, blending, email nurture sequences with ad sets and, remarketing campaigns and all of these things.

And that's where. Again, probably if it didn't work, then I probably would have had a different path and, things would have been a little bit different, but it [00:13:00] just worked really well for us. And, that feeling of my staff members having full schedules was way more fulfilling for me than like myself selling a package or doing 30 sessions a week.

That's when I started to you talk about like the entrepreneur shift. That's when I started to move, totally away from, being a clinician and more on the entrepreneur side. And it's a lot of what I talk with like patch members about is you have to choose a lane of do you want to grow this clinic?

And do you want to be an entrepreneur? Or do you really like that? Like clinician side of things? And do you want to treat and do you want to stay In that wheelhouse, because I think that's what I started doing in year two was the first PT that I hired, she moved into this like leadership role into a clinic director role.

And I was able to remove myself. And I could just spend I did. Two to three hours of deep work every single morning working on learning ads in doing all the marketing campaign stuff that we needed to do while she was running the [00:14:00] continuing education meetings that we're having each week and she was meeting with the staff members and she was keeping that.

clinic culture. So that's a, that was a big shift for me. And I think what a lot of people struggle with is you've got to elevate somebody and you've got to let them, take over a lot of your duties because you only have so much time in the day. So you either got to hire out for it, or you're going to find somebody internally that can take that over.

And as soon as we did that again, just freed up so much of my time so quickly and early on in the business that I could just put a hundred percent of my focus into. All right, like what do we need to do with these ads? How do we continue to grow? How do we hire? How do we make sure that we're leveraging linkedin or, keeping this funnel of potential staff members so that we can, because that was a very quick lesson that we learned is we got really busy really fast and we couldn't find pts.

I think a lot of people are dealing with that. So now we take that side of our business very seriously and we have a C. R. M. Of just potential new hires that we can have. So I started looking at the business that way and, giving up a little bit of the control on the day to day [00:15:00] side of things.

And, that's a, it's a huge leverage point for somebody. It's, people leverage is massive than a brick and mortar.

Danny: It's huge. It's the only way to scale with a brick and mortar, you need space and people. In, in a, to summarize it, right? It's build a reputation to a point in year one where your schedule is so busy.

You have overflow, hire other people on and when did you move into your standalone space? That would have been Jan

Jeremy: one of twenty twenty one. You're

Danny: in.

Jeremy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Danny: Exactly.

Jeremy: Yeah.

Danny: So when you're in so check that box, fill it with people. You're too by focusing on sales and marketing and a little bit less.

On the clinical side, because you hired really good people. And at what point did you take your the higher you had that eventually became like your clinic director, at what point did she move into that role?

Jeremy: I think we were, we had just hired our fourth or fifth PT where it was like, all right, like we need somebody [00:16:00] in place here.

We need somebody that's really leveraging the day to day. I, I forced myself out by moving to Maine and only coming in the clinic once a week. So that was, it's a, I forced my own hand of if this is going to continue to work, then somebody has got to be here.

Somebody has got to run the day to day side of things. So we had a pretty sizable staff for sure. I tried to hold onto it as long as I could, but then I realized like it's not worth my time and effort. And, my, my time is best spent, just continuing to get new patients in the door and, leveraging these systems that we have.

Danny: Yeah. And you bring up a good point. You don't, you move like you didn't even live in the city where your clinic was. So that move happened. Going into the second year or was that going into your third year? I was going into

Jeremy: the third

Danny: year, correct? Yeah. Okay. So yes, like you basically force yourself to automate this, and make it as, as systemized as possible.

Did you have any issues with trusting that your people were like actually doing the shit that you want? Was that a difficult thing for you to actually, remove yourself that much? [00:17:00]

Jeremy: I was just so lucky with our staff. Like we just had like really awesome staff in place. I think, everybody, I think the good part about all that and where some of the trust would have stopped to happen is if we ever hit a point where we were slow or we weren't like cranky with new patients, because everybody's, melons and schedules are always full, then, as long as in the staff is super happy because they came in, they did their job, they weren't like, Oh, man, is that all like it was, it's a pretty good setup for kind of everybody involved.

So again, I think it's a combination of being really lucky with awesome staff. Plus, having these reputable systems in place just makes everything way easier.

Danny: Yeah. Okay. So going into year three, you're living in a different state. I guess it's like a Jason state, but it's still a different state, right?

It sounds worse than it is. It's like an hour train, right? It's not very far. Yeah. It sounds more dramatic when we say different state, but it's even still, you're not close. And and as the clinic moves into that year three. What do you feel like you did year [00:18:00] three that did a couple things number one You know put the business in a place to grow without you, but two you know You created something that other people saw value in that you weren't shopping around like the We can talk about how the offer and everything happened But it's not like you went out and we're like looking for something to buy it So so what things do you think you put in place that made it so appealing for somebody else to potentially want to step in and buy the business You

Jeremy: Yeah, I think it is. I think everybody listening to this will be interested in this part of it is in that second year I went, I worked with a company that basically put evaluation on the clinic and like gave you like a road map and a checklist of.

Here's where your clinics at right now, you're at this 40 percent mark of it being like actually sellable or to the valuation that you want it to be. So it gave me like a list of things that I need to do in order to systemize the business a little bit more to, potentially sell it.

Cause it was in the back of my head and I knew that exercise was going to be good for me anyways, because. I knew even in the second year of running the clinic, it's I love this [00:19:00] marketing side of things. And I know there's potential here. And I know that other clinics are not doing this.

So that's really what I wanted to do. So I went through that process and it was super eyeopening. It it gives you like a grade basically. And it mapped out all the things that I wasn't doing. And that's where I really removed myself. It's Hey, I can't even be doing the quarterly meetings anymore.

All of that stuff. Stuff like that's got to be all like internal. The predictable marketing systems were a big part of that. They like dove into the CRM and, saw what the reporting side of things looked like. So that was really when I, took that score that I got and implemented all of those things to really remove myself, the biggest part of all that though, and I think like why we had sticking power.

was like the brand that we built. It wasn't about me at all. I wasn't in even any of the like, Instagram videos anymore. It was not about me. It was about Ripple and the brand that we built and I think for the first year and a half. Most of the people that were coming in knew who I was or knew about me or, [00:20:00] had some sort of connection, but we got to that second, third year, it was not about me at all anymore.

And it was just about, Oh, I've heard about this place, ripple friend of a friend, or I saw the ad or, the website and the brand looks awesome. The space looks So I think that was one of the bigger selling points was just like the brand that we built. And we're so intentional about that.

Like even from day one, when I was still mobile, it's like, all right, I have this vision of what I want this thing to look like. So we really leaned into that at the beginning. And, again, day zero, that work that we put in the brand side of things paid off, for the sale.

Danny: Yeah. Yeah. It's it's interesting how much brand values how much brand adds value, but how little people emphasize it from the beginning, I think I've made, I'm in the same boat as this, by the way, like when we think about the first business that we started I didn't even know what that was, I thought I was a logo and it's way more than that.

And it's very beneficial to build a brand, how would you define a [00:21:00] brand and why do you feel like it adds so much value? And why should people pay attention to that as they're building their company?

Jeremy: I think it's especially on the the physical therapy side of things. I think a lot of people, especially, educated buyers now.

They don't want that like traditional old school PT look and feel for what they're doing. So building a brand for us, we, when I was working, I worked with somebody to build this brand and kind of take my vision to life and a big part of what I wanted him to do is, Hey, we're doing physical therapy, but.

When you walk in, it shouldn't look or feel like a physical therapy clinic. And when you go to our website, it should look like a cool website, something that you want to actually surf around on. And that was really like the buy in factor for us. And, talking about brand too, I think it's a lot of like me is pulled out of that and put into our brand.

So a lot of my values again, talking about like how, I don't want this, I'm not a physical therapist and I. think that people should see a PT, but for the [00:22:00] service that physical therapists should be carrying out the one on one sessions, the 60 minutes not abiding by insurance and being able to do what they want to do.

So we took, we brainstormed all of that stuff. We pulled out those mission, vision, and values and put that into a brand. And, I think you, our patients talk about it all the time of it's, They don't feel like they're going to PT and they feel like they're a part of something too.

It's, it's, they, the, our merch has a certain look and feel to it. If people are out in the South end walking around, everybody knows what ripple is that's a brand. It's a place where somebody wants to go.

Danny: Yeah. It's it feels like it's something that people identify with, and it's interesting, you can see there's so many different companies that sell things. Usually it's, Consumer goods, more so than anything else, right? It's a it's not like apple is a good example, right? There's like apple people and then there's. Android people, right? I'm in this 1, I'm in a, I have a rock group and we rock every Wednesday morning and we added somebody to our record that has an Android and it completely screwed up everything.

[00:23:00] I don't know. I don't know. What happens with that, but as an example he's. I don't look at it in the same way because now I know and for me, like it's a brand identity thing, right? It's whatever you feel about that brand, it is part of you and the way in which you show up and people see that as well.

And for a P. T. clinic or just a clinic of any sort to have that sort of identification with their consumers is really rare thing. It's a difficult thing. And it has a lot to do with the community you build around it too. It's not just core values or whatever, but it's also like the branding, the logo, the way in which you use colors, the way in which you use, phrases, the way you identify people.

That is that's that is community that's building a group of people around that So I think it's far more powerful than people think and but also it's like abstract in so many ways for people So I think it's a tricky thing to nail, but it does add a lot of value you know for you As you got through this checklist and you start building towards what you want Like how did that conversation [00:24:00] happen with the person who eventually?

Just bought the clinic. Hey, sorry to interrupt the podcast, but I have a huge favor to ask of you. If you are a longtime listener or a new listener and you're finding value in this podcast, please head over to iTunes or Spotify or wherever you listen to the podcast and please leave a rating and review.

This is actually very helpful for us to get this podcast in front of more clinicians and really help them develop time and financial freedom. So if you would do that, I would greatly appreciate it. Now, back to the podcast.

Jeremy: Yeah, I think back then, I don't think I realized it, but I realized it now. I love brands and I associate myself with Nike, like Nike, it's like anything Nike, or if I see, somebody with the, the new Nike drop that's coming out I give them a little head nod.

It's like, all right that's my people right there. And that's the route that we went down. And it was a cool experience where Like the guy that I hired, he does branding for like breweries and streetwear companies and not physical therapy [00:25:00] clinics. He just took a flyer on me for whatever reason.

And the, so the process of it all was really, like you said, as abstract as, if you could, create like your packaging. So if you were, if you're a coffee company, you obviously have packaging what would that look like? What would it feel like? So we went down that route.

And it really was able to pull a lot of again, what I wanted this branch, not only to just what is our, what do we want our product to be? It's not just one on one physical therapy sessions. It's again, what does it look like? What does it feel like when you walk in? What is that, that feeling that you get?

And that it goes into people don't realize it, but it goes into the color scheme that you have. It's, the look of the logo what does it smell like when you walk in? That's all part of a brand. And it was really interesting. It was a cool lesson that, that I learned too, is like when I first started working with him, like he set ground rules right off the bat of Hey, it's I create this logo or this color scheme for you. Like if I come up with this purple and you want a blue, like it should be [00:26:00] purple and there's a reason behind that. And it's because of, again, like the, this whole process that we went through. So I really, put a lot of trust in him and luckily, like he nailed it for exactly what I was looking for.

And But I think that was, again, just an interesting part of my growth was just trust the people like that. You hire to do their thing because they're the experts in that. And I don't need to micromanage every little thing that they do. And because of that, again, like we created this really awesome brand.

And luckily for me, like he was able to, and this is, going from. solo clinic owner to mobile to seven PTs. We started the brand as just like a landing page and like a digital company. It's Hey, I want to just throw some Instagram post up. Can we create a logo? This is what we're going to call it all the way to designing our space, designing our second space, putting murals up.

So it's very it's a continuous it's a continuous brand, even though we went to this like satellite location, like you still walk into that. Room in the satellite location. We have, and she's Oh yeah, this is ripple. This looks exactly like [00:27:00] what the HQ looks like. So I think it's just it's often overlooked, but it's so important.

Danny: Yeah, no, I completely agree when you know it, good when you see it. So when you, so you establish all this, you spend a lot of time on that, the acquisition channels there. But how did you bump into the person that wanted to buy your clinic? What was the backstory to that?

And cause you didn't go out, you didn't go out like shopping it, like with a broker, like most people would normally do.

Jeremy: Yeah. So I knew again, like I wanted to really lean into this. Marketing side of things that I was doing. I was in the mastermind group. I knew it was a big hole and I saw our clinic grow very quickly without doing any of the local marketing side of things and other clinics were growing the same rate as we were, but they were doing all local marketing.

So I was like, there's a hole here that can be filled. And I obviously love doing all this stuff. That's when, when I knew I wanted to spend most of my time and effort into the HubSpot and Google ad side of things, I ended up hiring this this executive coach is what the sessions were.[00:28:00]

And he owned a chain of PT clinics in new England. He had exited that and he was just offering like one on one consulting calls. And I actually met him through the company that that I went through like the valuation process with, and it was helping me like figure out all the finances great dude.

We had one on one sessions, but I, said to him of I need help, like figuring out job descriptions and elevating these people. And I don't have time anymore to meet one on one and train them up on how to be good leaders and all this stuff. So this is what I'm hiring you for. And him and I had a lot of great sessions, leading up until that point.

And that's where patch started taking off as well. So he came in and acted as like a COO almost, and a very fractional level which was great. And, he, loved the cash model that we had. Hit it off with my clinic director and, just approached me and said, Hey, I love what you're doing here.

This is awesome. This cash based world is incredible. I'd love to have, help out here because I've really, taken tune [00:29:00] to your clinic director and, I know you're on your way out and I want to step in and help here. It checked a lot of boxes for me, which again, I, like you said, I wasn't looking for.

Danny: It's an interesting, yes, it's interesting setup, right? Because you have somebody who has experience when in network clinics, which there's carry over from that to a cash clinic. But there's also there's a lot of differences. And and when I look at in network world, the thing that I find interesting is You know when they start to look at sort of cash options There's just so many things they can do that traditionally do they do not do And when you come at it from the cash side, it's like you almost have to you don't have a choice You know, you don't have this hospital feeding you people you don't have whatever just a bunch of volume of medicare work comp patients or something like that or personal injury attorney sending folks your way to do things on liens Like you have to go out and learn how to market and sell You But that also allows you to create a lot more recurring options in the business [00:30:00] that add so much stability that a lot of clinics don't have outside of that.

So it's interesting. I'm sure this guy probably was like, holy shit, this is like a really solid business. And I do have some understanding of, this model I've experienced. Growing clinics before, but this is a bit of a different animal, but I like the trajectory of this. And it's also a unique deal because, maybe we can talk about this, the setup of this. It's this buyer plus your clinic director have essentially partnered to then, take the clinic and grow from there.

Jeremy: Yeah, exactly. And that's, that was the whole deal too.

And that's, why, it was a while to get all of these things in the works and get everything ironed out because the clinical director was a big part of it as well. And, their buy in and because of their, running the day to day now they're, continuing what they were doing, but it was almost like a test run of like, all right, I'm fully stepping back.

Act like I'm dead. Does the clinic continue to run as is? And they crushed it. Like they continue to grow even to today. So [00:31:00] it's a, yeah, it's a, it's an awesome setup. And yeah, I think you're right of somebody from the insurance world comes and sees what we can do with a HubSpot and proper Google ads and, just like a good patient experience.

It's just so different than what they do on the insurance side of things. And, yeah. I think, he knows that, more and more clinics are going to have to add a hybrid arm or more clinics are going to have to be fully cash pay. So this is the future for sure. And I think it was just a perfect opportunity for everybody.

Danny: Yeah. It's interesting. Let's talk a little bit about details of this. So just so people can have an idea of, what are people looking at? And we won't get into like specific numbers per se, but from a multiple standpoint, if we look at net profit, the clinic. Like LOI, the actual sale of the clinic what multiple of net profit did the business end up, being able to sell for.

Jeremy: Yeah, this is the cool part. And again, what I've talked to a lot of people about was when I first went through that valuation process and they audited my business, like in year two. I was at like a two, three x [00:32:00] multiple. And then when I knocked everything else out and got all the systems dialed in, put a key employee in place, we went to that, four to five multiple which I think it's going to be even higher than that as cash clinics become more and more prevalent out there.

Cause that was a lot of what the valuation company told me that it was like, we don't really have any data on this right now. We don't, we were, we're taking what we think on the insurance side. And they were like, to be honest, we don't know if this is more risky or less risky. I was like, how does that make any sense?

Like people are paying for our services. But I think it's like the consistent patient flow that you just, you know, you don't like if, Google ads shuts off one day or whatever ends up happening. So yeah, those are the kind of the multiples that you're looking at, but it very much varies on some very key things of, again, I think that the brand was super important.

It wasn't DuPont physical therapy. It was ripple. I had nothing to do with it. We had a key employee in place that was running all the day to day. Yeah. And we had our marketing systems dialed in and we had this [00:33:00] CRM that we owned and reported and gave us all of the data. Getting those three things in place over the last year, really raises that multiple.

Danny: I, you bring up a good point and I've had conversations with investment bankers that are brokers for businesses and selling businesses. And just asking the same questions, because, if you look at traditionally, like traditionally what physical therapy clinics sell for, Is, somewhere between, it really depends on profitability and size, but it could be anywhere between two times net, or if they want to call it like EBITDA, which is a fancy sort of accounting term, but in the cash world for us, it's basically net profit.

Cause we don't have a lot of depreciation equipment we're adding back in. So the but between two and on the high end, 10, 12, I've heard of a little bit higher, but these are like massive. Yeah. So the scale, the size you have, the scale of the business also adds to your valuation.

But if you're talking about one clinic to be able to get a, a four to five X [00:34:00] multiple in three years is really good as well as no earn out. That's the other thing to keep in mind is a lot of people will have a sale of a business and then, but then you stick around for two years Cause it's de risks the buyer, they want to make sure that it doesn't just like, crash and burn.

So they, they may only get half of that money. And then the other half over two years as they earn out certain metrics that they have those are really common. And you had, you walked away, no earn out whatsoever. It was just done deal, send the money good luck.

Jeremy: Yeah. And they're past clients now, which is great.

So I still have my hand in like all of their, they, they have all of they like, I'm still running all their marketing. And I'm still like, the clinic director is one of my good friends. So we're still always chatting obviously. But yeah, so it's, and it's, again, it's as soon as that switch happens or the business was sold, it's business as usual for everybody.

It's they were still doing exactly what they've been doing for the last Six to eight months, and then I was able to, continue doing what I was doing. And the nice part for me, [00:35:00] and I think, why I went through with all this stuff was like, now I don't have to worry about it anymore.

Cause even though I wasn't involved, I was still checking PT everywhere, checking the P and L's, looking at the bank account, seeing where people are at with sessions. So just that like being able to take my mind off of that was really nice.

Danny: Yeah you're right.

There's a level of risk. There's a level of just awareness that you can add to other things. You can focus on other things. You don't have this thing in the background that might drag you back in to solve, complex problems at some point in time. And it's cool to be able to, to also, I would say, see, Sell the business to people that you know are going to maintain the sort of core values and the vision That you have for it as well I'd love to know what you think about that because like when we sold our clinic it was We could have sold our clinic to bigger orthopedic groups or another clinic or something like that It would be a great strategic acquisition for them But for us we felt it was you know Just as if not more important than the person that ended up taking over our clinic [00:36:00] Like they basically expanded on the vision that we had and not necessarily Take the brand and chop it up into different pieces and change it all because there's value in other ways.

So how was that process for you to be able to have the sale go through? And have your clinic director be a part of it.

Jeremy: Yeah, I think you and I are probably very similar in this and our, in our reasons why, like we ended up selling is, when I set out and like when I hired all of these employees as well.

It's I had a pretty big vision for ripple. Like I was like, we're going to take over Boston. We're going to go five, six, seven clinics. Like I want to take this thing over. And I think, we're selling people on that vision, which, as soon as I started with patch and I fell in love with marketing and all those things, Opening up more and more locations didn't sound interesting to me.

I didn't want to put my name on any of those leases or, do any of that. So I think that's like a lot of people are asking me of like, why did you sell? It seemed like everything was great, but I think that's the, one thing to think about if you are thinking about selling is [00:37:00] my vision for the clinic totally changed and it wasn't.

I wasn't doing justice to our employees staying on board and limiting growth by holding on to the business for a little bit of extra cash flow. As soon as I realized that, and I knew, again, the clinic directions in place, she has that vision. She wants to grow this thing.

She's super motivated to. To really expand it and then having that the partner come on board with the, the other investor it's a no brainer for me. It's just I had no interest in growing anymore. I lost that, that, that feeling and I wasn't really involved in the Boston community anymore.

I think it was a good realization for me.

Danny: It's interesting because it's not, I think, yes, you and I share a lot of similarities as far as that goes because of being exposed to a skill that you had to learn and you realize, man, I really like this. I like this more than I like, what I'm doing with these clinics and there's nothing wrong with that.

That's actually like just the evolution of your interests and you as a person and what you want to do. And I think that [00:38:00] I, it's not like patch is going to be your last company. It's pretty obvious that what you like to do is be creative. You like to, build things. And then at a certain point, you're going to learn something else and you're going to be like, great.

All right, now this is my next thing. This is what we call being a serial entrepreneur, right? That is what we're like, it's a terrible name, but it's like serial killer, but it's like, it is what it is. That's, I'm the same way. And it's it's, there's a, an energy you get from learning new things, growing things to a certain point.

And then and then at a certain point, what happens and you could have taken patch much further or an unpatched ripple much further. And. And athletes potential for us, the same thing. And what's been really cool to see is when, as we've sold it, it's our clinic has grown so much since the sale of the business, it's exactly what we wanted.

Like we didn't want to sell it and then be like, Oh, take good luck sucker. And it's, and it goes the wrong direction. Like we knew it was teed up to grow and we want to see that happen because we want our people to have more opportunities and we have somebody in place that's doing that student fantastic job.

I think that, as far as ripple [00:39:00] goes, it's going to be really interesting to look back in a few years. And of course you want it to be like the vision that you started with. It doesn't mean that's necessarily, you're the person to take it there. You're the person to get it going into a place where other people can then, take that and do something else with it.

And that happens. Like it happened with me with business education. I had no idea that I'd be teaching people about business. Like it wasn't even on my fucking radar when I went to The army's physical therapy program is like It couldn't be further away from what i'm doing right now It just happened that way and you end up learning things that you like and for You know i'm sure the same thing as you were, you know learning how to get into the profession and then starting your first clinic and then and now doing this but but what's so nice to see though is for you to be able to have that I don't know it's like It feels nice to know that you have somebody That is taking your You know, the vehicle that you spent so much time on building it and have so much energy invested in personally, your reputation, people associate you with that brand, and it's still doing the thing that you want it to.

It still has the brand reputation and it's upholding a [00:40:00] standard. Do you have any Sellers remorse. Did you get sad at all? I definitely did whenever I sold her business. Like I felt I don't know, like I've lost a family member. It was really weird, but yeah.

Do you have anything like that, that you were, experienced? And if so what, what's that been like?

Jeremy: Yeah, I think I definitely did a lot of reflection. So it's like everything closed on a, like a Friday. So I took that day and we were in London, which was awesome.

I was able to just reflect on it all. Yeah, I think it was just like, the brand and the people and like a lot of the, even like current patients that are still there those are the people that like, Got me through COVID and put food on my table during COVID.

And, that's, those, that's those people are family and they still always will be for sure. But now I don't have an attachment to any of those people anymore. Which is definitely sad. And I think Allie, my wife and I even just, we were scrolling back for some of the old photos of Tearing walls down and painting and going through that whole process.

And so we it's it's cool to look back and just see how much I've grown just as [00:41:00] like a person in that whole process. And I wouldn't change it at all. But yeah, I think it was weird. I think I'll put it that way. Luckily, it's an awesome hands now.

Like you said, like I'm no longer the bottleneck of that company anymore, which feels good. And I'm having so much fun with patch and hopefully like helping other clinic owners do this exact same thing. That's, that's what's, lighting me up now.

Danny: I think you bring up a great point.

Like the thing with patch that I just like, so just all in on is the fact that yes, okay, there's digital marketing. There's these digital services that are being done for people to help acquire clients, which they're probably are a, are going to do a bad job of, or maybe not do it at all.

Okay, that, that checks a box of adding value to a clinic, but what most people don't even understand whenever they start working with you is the amount of enterprise value they're adding their clinic is exponential. Like the reason I say that is right. So if. If you have this system that's running [00:42:00] your clinic, it's, and it's organized and you can see, your CRM is actually functional and you keep in touch with people and you can run reactivation campaigns and you know what your return on ad spend is and you're tracking things like a real business.

You can sell that fucker like that's the thing man Like and as I you know as we got through The sale of our business as we get you know Our businesses valued and have a clear idea what they're looking at It's so apparent looking at what investment bankers want and they'll tell you like you could just reverse engineer what they want You know And it's like paint by numbers and one of the biggest things is a consistent acquisition channel clear data and the ability for somebody To run a clinic or run a business of any sort By like basically learning very simple systems because they're there for somebody to run like they're looking to acquire a revenue stream a cash stream is what they're essentially buying And if it's so complex that no one else can run it besides you, it's worth basically nothing.

And if it's repeatable and someone else can run it, it's worth a lot. When people start working with you, yes, they're like, oh, sweet. I've got, better [00:43:00] acquisition and new patients and my marketing style that I'm saving a lot of time. But what I look at, especially why I like our mastermind members, to work with y'all so much is.

I know they're building something of value that they can then sell one day, which is so rare for most businesses. Most people just shut their business down. I was talking to our electrician the other day. I spent an hour talking to this guy about his business because he's been in business for 38 years.

It does seven figures in revenue. And he's just going to shut it down. His kids don't want to take it over. It's not organized at all. It's literally just reputation. But his reputation is so strong. Anybody could probably buy it and it would still run. But that's the reality. This guy's just going to shut his business down and move on.

Whereas, you get to have this wealth, accumulation of a event that happens at the sale of a business that I don't really know many other events that add that much value to somebody's life and financial stability as a business exit. And if you leave that on the table, it's a shame because you just didn't do the right component pieces in order to get to that [00:44:00] point.

Jeremy: Yeah, I think like when I was reflecting and I wrote like a blog post on it and I put myself back to that year one of building ripple and that's exactly what I thought is this is what I'm doing for the rest of my life. And then it's, that's it basically. Cause I know I didn't know anything about M& A.

I didn't know about anything about, any sort of acquisition or anything like that. But it's like super possible and I think it's gonna become even more possible in the future as, like I said the cash based side of things becomes the option for physical therapy. And I think you bring up a good point too, is, when I took the buyer through like our CRM and our dashboards and all of our data, he was Is this real?

Is this actually what this looks like? I was like, yeah, it's very simple. If something if a percentage goes down, we go in and we fix it and then we improve and we continue doing that. And if our discovery call percentage drops and we do a little bit of training or if our package percentage drops, or if our Google ads percent of patients goes from here to here, it's it's all.

We've right here in one dashboard. And yeah, that's [00:45:00] again, what I'm like super stoked about on the patch side of things, because you can build a, you can build a brand, a company, something that's sellable that has enterprise value. And I think a lot of clinic owners I think even if they do ever end up selling, I think their brain is like, is it that much money though?

What should, why would I ever do that? It's like you said you're building wealth with it. I think it's a lot more than people think.

Danny: Oh, totally. It's a seven figure exits. Incredibly possible. With these multiple, even, even a lot more than that, does these get bigger?

And so it's absolutely something that people need to consider and they have to look at what they're reinvesting, like reinvesting the net profit of the business back into the business to build more value. It's yeah. It's like you're buying your own stock versus going and buying apple stock.

You're just investing in ripple stock basically, right? And you have control over that which i'll take that bet You know any day a business that i'm actually running and at least if I fuck it up It's my fault versus if you know a publicly traded company screws up. That's nothing I can do about that, right?

So I think it's really cool to see i'm so excited for you [00:46:00] because you know I know that this has been a lot of work and it's a really Challenging thing to do. It's a really impressive thing that you've done as well. So the fact that we can share this with, with everybody and they can hear the journey is hopefully a very helpful thing to everyone listening to this.

Cause he's you sat in a accountability group with all these people that were ahead of you. And now there's people listening to this. They're like, Oh shit, Jeremy. Did this, like I can do this. And I hope that's inspiring to everybody that listens to this, that, that wants to grow a practice to the point where they can either autopilot or exit the way that you did.

But for now patches, what you're doing, so where can people learn more about, patch and how they can plug a similar system into their business that you were using with ripple.

Jeremy: Yeah, patch system. com. Definitely check out the website. I'm posting a lot on Instagram. Just at underscore Jeremy DuPont.

I've got a podcast up and going as well. First couple of episodes are going to be rolling out. Yeah, it's just connect you with Brandon. He's got me all set up. Set up on the pod side of things. So now that I've got some time back without doing all the ripple stuff I think, I've always get really good reception when I'm, whenever I'm on the pod with you.

I think a [00:47:00] lot of the first couple episodes that I've recorded is about the sale and how to do all that stuff and automate things. And I think I'm loving producing all the content. It's been super fun. And I always get really great feedback from people too. Yeah, follow me on Instagram.

We'll definitely, we'll pump it out there.

Danny: Yeah, definitely dropping a lot of really good reels, just like just great information and bite size sort of chunks of information. I wish some shit like that was around when I started my clinic dude I'm just like trying to read books, you know what I'm saying?

There's there's nothing like, like what you're putting out. If you're not following Jeremy, you're crazy. Anyway, Jeremy, do thanks so much. I know you're busy. You're going to run off to the. The next number of who knows how many meetings you have after this. And we just are thankful to have some of your time.

So thanks for sharing your story, man. Super cool to, to really dig into that. And hopefully, you guys learned a lot from this and we'll absolutely have you back on to talk about marketing again. Don't get mad. We'll talk about marketing eventually in the near future. So Jeremy, again, thanks, man.

I really appreciate it.

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