E08 | Kelly Starrett

If you don't know who Kelly Starrett is or what his company MobilityWOD (now The Ready State) has done, you should run (after your done listening to this podcast) to https://thereadystate.com/ & sign up for the 7 day free trial of the Daily M|Wod.

Kelly Starrett & his wife Juliet are responsible for starting a movement that had radically changed how people & practitioners think about movement & athletic performance. His 2013 release, Becoming a Supple Leopard has become a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. This blog was voted #4 in Outside Magazine’s Top 10 Fitness Blogs of 2011, Breaking Muscle’s Top 10 Fitness Blogs of 2011, and Health Line’s Top 100 Health Blogs of 2011.

Kelly and his work have been featured in Tim Ferris’ Four Hour Body, Competitor Magazine, Inside Triathlon, Outside Magazine, Details Magazine, Power Magazine, and the Crossfit Journal.

On Episode 8 of the P.T. Entrepreneur Podcast Danny sits down with Kelly Starrett to talk about hanging your own P.T. practice shingle and how to do it successfully. This is a great one gang make sure you tune in! You can find out more about Kelly Starrett: https://thereadystate.com/ @mobilitywod on Instagram & twitter

Ready to elevate your practice? Book a call at the link below with one of our expert consultants today and start your journey to delivering unparalleled physical therapy.

Episode Transcription:

Danny: [00:00:00] Hey guys, Doc Danny here with the PT Entrepreneur Podcast and the guy I have on the other line, I don't think I need to introduce this guy. If you don't know who Dr. Kelly Starrett is, then you're living under a rock. You need just to stop this podcast right now, go get "Becoming a Supple Leopard," and subscribe to MobilityWOD pro and teach yourself, something man, because you're missing out.  So, Kelly, I appreciate you on the podcast. This is going to be a fun talk.

Kelly: [00:00:23] Oh dude, my pleasure.

Danny: [00:00:25] So tell me about your recent rafting trip.  Because I know you guys just went out and did some crazy paddling.  So where'd you go?

Kelly: [00:00:32] Well, I'll tell you, you know, I think you and I were just having a conversation offline.

 And what I'll say is when you own your own business, and you are holding the umbrella for a lot of other people. You know, that we, I don't know how many other people make their living off of this 27, something like that. 28. A lot. It's a lot. There's a lot of stress involved.

I mean, you remember when you had a dream of going to grad school, and you're like, we're shadowing at a PT clinic. Yeah. You're like, you were working in the hospital just to get your hours, and you're like, someday I'm going to have a dream. And, and all of a sudden, that dream is here, and you've been working for it for a decade longer.

And, there's so much opportunity, and you're finally not poor. I mean, like you're paying off your student loans. Like you, you've got this workflow, and then the thing happens where you're like, holy crap, I don't have fun anymore.

You know, when you are a physio who owns your own business, there's no off button.  We work 24 hours a day. We're always on, we're talking to people, you know, and I, I don't feel like ever need a weekend. I'm not like, ah, you know, it's Friday. You know, the work volume is always there, and it's still impressive, and I'm always in it.

Like, you know, I don't mind talking to people about what's going on with them, and you know, and consulting, and we just get to do a lot of cool stuff.  About five years ago, when we were sort of at peak thrust on takeoff, we were just, you know, grinding, you know, we decided that we needed to recalculate and refocus our filter.

And that filter was, what's the point of all this? What are we doing here? And the end was to get more time together as a family. So when we started running everything through that filter, we were able to say no to things. We're ready to say yes to long-term development. And that clarified why we were working so hard because we were consummating that loop.

So there's intellectual curiosity, professional curiosity, all that's great, and I'll get saturated. But, you know, we got to carve out time where we're not just, you know, on the wheel as it were. And unfortunately, I have kids and they, you know I don't think, I think if Juliette and I didn't have kids, we would work 24 hours a day, you know? And, but because we have kids, we don't, and then to your point, we just went on, you know, Juliet and I were dirtbag river guides a long time ago. And, we're trying to get our kids to be dirtbag river guides.

Danny: [00:03:09] Well, your daughters are badasses, man. It's super cool to see. You know, it's, your kids are okay.

You can tell a lot about a parent or a person based on how their kids' act. You know, like in my opinion, like if your kid's a little shithead, there's something wrong with a parent. And that may sound harsh, but I think it's pretty accurate. And, you know, like,

Kelly: [00:03:34] it's hard to; it's hard to blend children, isn't it?

Danny: [00:03:36] It is man, their reflection of you, you know? So, you know, anyway, for you guys, I mean, I look at you and Juliet are the combination of you two. Ashley and I, my wife and I, we work together as well. And we see what you guys value and the way that you structure your family and what you put, what you find essential.

I mean, that's something that we, we were like, man, who do we want to model ourself self after? You're eager to damn near kill yourself to make it work.

Kelly: [00:04:11] how do you guys,

Danny: [00:04:11] so if somebody is in this right now or they're looking to start a business, you know, you talk about this kind of one thing, it's so important. How do you keep, keep it coming back to that? Like how do you check in to that and make sure that you're not getting lost and get stuck in this idea or this kind of concept of just grinding it out until you've reached whatever that goal, that mythical, you know, guilt goal is?

Kelly: [00:04:31] Right. Which never, whichever happens. Right. It never materializes. Well, there's a couple of things here. One is I think it's interesting when a lot of good physios now are, and I think we realize that you know, the marketplace consciousness has shifted, I think. You know, think about how risky it was to open your physio clinic maybe 15 years ago or 20 years ago.

Just, it's just different. The internet is not there. The sort of public awareness around fitness or mechanics, you know, there are always deep niches, but I think some of the, you know, there's a thriving PT practice next to us. That's here at the gym and one of our staffers, Shawn McBride, he's an OCS, you know, moonlights.

They're coaches for us, you know, kind of sees people in a traditional rehab model that takes insurance. I'm like, a great cook who held the door open for a lot of us who said, Hey, look, I'm going to set up an autonomous, the alternative to big, big, traditional physio where we can start to get into, you know, more nuanced, hands-on concierge-like care, right? Cause when I moved here, and I moved here in 2000, and I was, you know, I knew about Crystal Rock in 2001. She was lecturing and talking and holding the community open and tried to serve a city that I think was underserved the way traditionally; physical therapy was usually delivered.

And now, you know, fast forward to 2017, and it looks like her model is an ancient model. What he's, what he's still doing, taking insurance and you know, and so I think, with that in mind that it's a lot easier now for physios to be able to have a radically different practice that you can work in, you know, with teams and, coaches.

And I mean, there's just so many things you can do, but when you take it on. No, come back to your point is that you know, entrepreneurship, it is a family endeavor. And I think that's important because when you start this, you a, you're going to need your family support when you are there on Sunday and if you're starting a physio practice, you know, because you rightfully should.

And the time is right to do that. You know, maybe be in the alternative model, you know, that we, the, this world has changed a little bit. No, I just say, make sure you've talked it over with your partner so that you know, he or she knows what you're about to undertake because it's not for everyone. You see, it's, you know, you have fixed costs, and there are big bills, and it's scary.

And yes, you, you know, sometimes when you're ten years in and it looks all successful, it seems like it was a no brainer, you know? But I mean, even just the conversations you and I had when you were still active-duty military. Doing incredible work with the Army. You know, you were like, do I, is this, you know, I had to kind of pull you off the ledge a little bit.

Do you know what I mean? Like, come on, come with me. You see, it's, it's better. It's better over here. And what I'll say is with that idea that it is scary, is that you're going to need the support of your partner. And in this situation, I think you and I are, are unique, is that my business partner is my wife.

And Juliet and I have radically different, you know, tasks and the other type of the scope of responsibilities. And she is the CEO. And unfortunately, I think one of the things that I saw recently you had on a post, which I appreciated, was said, Hey, look, you know, you may be brilliant at connecting with people and an excellent physio coach. Still, you're crap at business, and you have no training in that.

That is not part of our, our, my PT education. I mean, we had to make a business plan. You know, and do all of that. But that's not the same thing as running a business and figuring out how to set up your recurrent payment and software and insurance and, and, you know. I think what's helpful for me is that Juliet is the consummate CEO, which allows me to do what I'm good at.

And she happens not just to be a good CEO, but she likes it, thrives there. So we, I, you know, one is always going to be a family business cause you're going to need your partners or your, your family support for it. So keep in mind with that too. If you are lucky enough, work with your partner, you, you have to make sure that, you know, you're not necessarily lying in bed at 10 p.m. discussing work and for forgetting that that is your life partner.

Cause it's easy, you know? I mean, just be a little bit vulnerable. You know, Juliet and I were both; I had single working mothers, and we were broke. I mean, you know, Juliet taught, remembers, like, you know, like Boohoo us. But if she wasn't able to go on field trips because, you know, she's, we couldn't afford it.

I mean, I mean, my, we were, we, I remember being critically deficient with my mom when she was getting her Ph.D. I mean, we were, you know, it was a donated, donated Christmas tree and no, no Christmas lights. I mean, we made our ornaments and, and I was never hungry. I was always cared for. But we were broke and, whenever we would run out of gas, always worried about running out of gas.

But the reason I mentioned that was that that set us up for the two to feel like, you know, we were hungry not to feel that kind of stress. We were comfortable being risk-takers because we were professional athletes and river guides and used to taking on big responsibility. But then all of a sudden we got to a place where we're like, Hey, you know, we are, we've figured out how to, how to.

Pay our mortgage. And the next question we need to ask them was, okay, and now we can, we need to take a beat and figure out how we can improve our life again. Now we're not, and we're not a slave to this thing cause it was, we, we, it's easy to become a slave. You know, Juliet would like to pull up the calendar, and she'd be like, all right.

You got, you're teaching four courses this month, and you know, you only have three on the books, so where's your fourth one? Do you know? And, and I was like, we have to do that because we know that that generates revenue. And so for the first time in our lives, again, we weren't broke and, but it's easy to get on the other side, and you haven't taken a vacation.

You've, you are taking your business partner for granted or your, your business support for granted. Right? Your network is for granted. You haven't, you know, and, and that's why. The river trips are so important, and that's why we create a lot of internal rituals in our family where we are working at a hundred miles an hour and that then we turn off click, you know, we have a sauna, we have an ice bath, you know, we, we try to play, we know we put phones in drawers and, and so that there is, while owning your own business is a 24 seven endeavor, it never stops.

You know, we're comfortable that and gotten pleased with that. You see, you also have to have pieces in place, so it doesn't rule you. You still order it.

Danny: [00:11:15] Well, I want to, I want to go back to kind of the beginnings of, you know, when you started, San Francisco CrossFit and, your practice within the, within the gym.

Because, you know, for me, when, when, when I got out and I, I vividly remember the conversation, you know, when, when you're like, look, Danny, you'll make more money. You'll see your family more, and you'll be happier, and you'll be able to affect the military more on the outside than in, you know, and, and.

Kelly: [00:11:38] I mean, I'm like, look, no, no, bro.

Unicorns, rainbows every day. Yeah. You have no idea.

Danny: [00:11:43] I mean, like, I think that was like, definitely like totally, it was just, you know, and, it, it's, it's, it, it resonated with me, you know when you said that, and, it's, it's something that I was unsure of what to do. And I remember, you know, back in the parking lot of dreams back when you guys had the gym and literally in a parking lot, you had this little box, that you had your table and it was barely big enough for like anybody to even move around. And I remember thinking like, dang, like if people are going to come to see, see somebody in a setting like this, you know, and this little box, like

Kelly: [00:12:17] it wasn't, it was a steer

Danny: [00:12:19] it, you can make it work, man. I mean, like any, anywhere.

Kelly: [00:12:21] So, so bring me back to that cause for a,

Danny: [00:12:24], and you started your gym while you were in PT school, right?

Kelly: [00:12:27] Yeah. You know, so I appreciate that we're talking to physios here, which is so great. And physio students. You know, it was after my first year, I think I was, I was back and in the fall, I had already discovered CrossFit my first semester of physio school, and then realized that I wanted to open a gym.

And, and it was, it was such a nascent movement. And we, the CrossFit movement, we didn't, you know, there were, when I discovered Crossfit, there were five CrossFits, and we are the 21st Crossfit gym now. And so we've been, we've been doing this a long time. And, I, you know, went to my PT school, you know, I went back from break and, you know, I took out an extra student loan. They're like, Oh, I see you're taking out a private student loan here. I was like, Oh yeah, it's the lesser money. Yeah. And I bought rowing machines with it and, and barbells.  In full transparency, the strength & conditioning around CrossFit looked very different than we are offered one class a day, you know, on Tuesdays and Thursdays it was the morning and Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or the opposite. Monday and Friday was in the morning, Tuesdays, Thursdays in the evening, and then on Saturdays, I taught all the classes.

And you know, how to realize at that moment. You know, taking on a business in physio school shaped my decision making. And it forced me to view my education through a much more practical lens. And so I was starving and saw everything about like, how does this work? Because I'm already going to start to do it.

I mean, I still realized that I needed to study and be underneath someone and see some surgeries and some complicated cases and have a little mentorship.

When I wrote up my business plan in my third year with our Dean as part of that communications class, you know, I was, I was just. You know, writing out the plan for the business, I'd already started. Do you know what I mean? I was already there and living, so I was thinking very much about these problems and physio school.

With the idea and someone, I think someone even said this early on, and I, I think I've repeated it to the physio schools where I've talked, but you know, also if you're working in a big office or a big hospital, you're still developing your book of business. People are going to ask you, and you're taking care of your, you know, slate of patients, right?

You're, you're consulting with people in their families, and you know what I mean? So you already have this little mini-business within the business, right. You know, just like going to get your haircut. I mean, you get your hair by a particular person, you know?  I think you know, and so that really, that got me spun up in terms of really focusing my attention.

And then, I went and worked for a guy who I thought was doing perfect practice and his physios, I mean, he was in a different, a different office, but the physios work there were all Australian, you know, physical therapists.

They were just really grand manual, badasses, and we're all engaged in the business of physio. It just turned out that our clinic was attached to this sports, really sort of fancy sports orthopedic clinic, and we had full autonomy, and there was no weirdness there.

But one year, you know, I saw how much revenue I generated for them, and I made $380,000 for that clinic, and I was got to a place where I was bringing in 50 over 50%, of my clients. People were coming to the clinic to see me. And because of, you know, I was making $70,000, and they were coming, you know, people were, so I was generating 50% of my leads, and I was referring a ton of people for orthopedic surgery.

And I was like, what's, what's going on here? Do you know? And yeah. And it turned out it wasn't the most significant situation to be in because sometimes these things aren't like that, you know, surgeons and stuff aside. And, I realized that all I needed to do was put a table down in my office and put my money where my mouth was because I'll tell you when you are a physio working for someone you don't see what needs to be done. And you can appreciate how your crappy sort of employee behavior is viewed. Do you know what I mean? Everyone is always snide or not doing their best, but when you're an owner, you have a very different set of responsibilities than when you just get to show up for work and wear your clothes and see your patients and go home.

Do you know? And, and, and people are very, very quick too—point, fingers, and bitch. I think, you know, what they send in the military like that's the right of the infantry soldiers to complain, you know? Yeah. When you're in leadership, it's just; you don't get that.

You don't get that luxury. Your job is to be able to let, let, make the infantry complain, and still, you have to do it. But, what I'm always down with is I'm putting your money where your mouth is. And so if you, if you think you can do it better, do it better. And I thought I could do it better, and the only way or I felt I could do it in a way that made more sense for me, and that meant I needed to put up my shingle, get my table, and then let go ahead and, and prove to myself what I thought I knew, which was, Hey, I can run a clinic in a better way.

That makes more sense to me. The ability to go out into the community and generate leads and generate relationships. Cause that's really what this is about. Serving the community. That is what this is about. This is not dentistry. This is, you know, people have complex musculoskeletal problems from being from their kids all, all the way up to, you know, Parkinson's too, you know, people in their hundreds and, and chronic pain in the middle.

And, there's a lot of people who need it. Consulting with, around, you know, actualizing, helping, you know, there is some notion, I think in physio that, you know, we've got the answers or, this is the way. It's like you are a consultant. To help people manage what's going on in their lives.

Musculoskeletal. Right? And that means in training and lifestyle, and you know, even the conversations around the bio, psychosocial aspects of surgery, you're there. So, you know that the idea of serving a community meant that I was out there having lots and lots of conversations with people. And that turned out to generate lots of leads and lots of, you know, and then I didn't have a bad set of hands and people got better, you know, fast.

And I helped them with their goals, and that turned out to be a good business model.

Danny: [00:19:07] So what was it like early, early on with the way you structured your schedule with teaching still? Like, did you, did you limit yourself to a certain amount of people per day or was it man, in the beginning, I'm just going to see as many people as I could.

 How did you structure that?

Kelly: [00:19:20] Well, you know, to complicate things, I had a child my first year of PT school, so I had a fantastic order. Yes. Right. And then I had a when I was working for that position, working with that at that clinic, I had a baby born in the NICU. Caroline was born prematurely.

And so I spent three weeks in the NICU and that, you know, just sort of the implications of that. And, you know, my wife was an attorney, Juliet was a full-time attorney and, and one of the things that I will say was very careful about the way it unfolded for us is that Juliet was a lawyer.

I was full time employed, either student or physio. And then I had another job, and that was the gym. And when I was still working for this physio at the physio clinic, I even, I know then we had a lot, I mean, I had a thriving gym with like, you know, 200 members, you know, during that. So I was moonlighting, you know, at my, at my dream job.

Wow. I held down a full job, and Juliet had a job. Then when I transitioned over to the clinic, I still already had the gym. So, you know what I'm saying is that it was nice to have Juliet's support. It was nice to have the gym, so I always, I didn't even have to make a move where I jumped all in and was like, had to make bad decisions.

I always was in a situation where I could make good decisions and long term decisions because I'd never had a cashflow problem. Does that make sense? 

Danny: [00:20:46] Well, you told me one time

 too, you know, multiple revenue streams are such an important thing to have in that, that I believe the number was seven is what you, 

Kelly: [00:20:53] the dream.

Danny: [00:20:54] Yeah. You're like, and you want to, you want to get, do you want to shoot for seven revenue streams? And I was like, damn. Okay. I got some work to do.

Kelly: [00:21:01] Right. Just, just so that you, you're creating an ecosystem. Sure. Do you know? And then in that ecosystem, you know, the real thing is like your time. So you know what?

We had structured it, you know, for ours, our children's stuff where we had a nanny, a couple of times a week. I stay, I had the girl twice a week full time. You know, when all this was going on. And often I would get up at 4:30 and by the time Juliet went to work, we'd do the baby handoff.

And then I'd go back and coach in the evening, right when Juliet got home, you know, so I was coaching on the bookends of the day. And then, you know, a lot of times, you know, what I would do is I would see ten patients a day. So I would, I would like Tuesday, Wednesday, you know, Friday or three days a week. So I saw, probably most patient days between 30 and 40, you know, a week.

And, it was grueling, and some days I would see 12 patients in a row. I'd work a 12 hour day, and those were one-hour blocks. I like just got to write this note and like, you know, forcing some kind of protein shake down my, my throat. Cortisone right next to it.

So it didn't take too much time to go to the restroom.

Kelly: [00:22:12] Hey, that was just a little speck. That was the Taj Mahal porta-potties, and we had

Danny: [00:22:16], a beautiful plant in it for sure.

Kelly: [00:22:18] Plant, dude, we had bamboo and lights and plants, and literally, we had all of the sanitation engineers who came to clean it was like, this is the nicest port-a-potty we've ever seen.

I was like, damn right. Damn right. We, I think on my resume next to Eagle scout and, it says, owned a Porter potty for nine years or eight years. I mean, it was his car, you know, so, you know the key is. I think it's accessible to, you know, the world has changed a little bit on social media. You like, we got away with the fact that YouTube was very early.

You know, people were used to seeing shaky iPhone videos and stuff, and now we see that the world has evolved. Like you can't just, I can't pull out my iPhone and make crappy content anymore. Shaky content on the spot, the materials the same. But the production has to be a little better. And we have to subtitle and, you know, but, but it did prove the point.

 And yes, we had a few people like, you know, walk around and be like, this is it. Like this is. This is where I'm training. We were underneath the Golden Gate Bridge, and, it was still deluxe.

And I had the inside of the box that had nice, you know, wood laminate floors and it was painted well, but, you know, it was not a 5-star hotel, but people, what people got was, you know, an hour of my undivided attention and care and work and a plan. And that's why they came back. It wasn't the place.

And I think that's... It's easy to get caught into the trap of I need my own, you know, perfect place. I have to have all of these conditions first. And, and I hear that all the time, you know, I was just counseling another young physio coach about, you know, his expertise and he has this idea around the teaching movements and, I was like, look, you just need to start, you know, and get a subscription base.

And if you think you're, you're nailing down, nail them. And the first thing that person did was go out into the world and say, you know, social media, say, I need a, you know, who's my business developer? Social media. Like he'd already hired someone to do the job he should be doing. Do you know what I mean?

And he had already missed the point. The point is, the thing that you're doing is the thing you need to be doing. So if you're seeing patients, the most important thing you can do is seeing patients.

And so, you know, it's easy. You can always improve the environment. But the most important thing is to get people into the door so that they can see you. And you can work with them and for them. And that's, you know, that experience of the fact that it was so rough and tumbled, in the beginning, clarified the importance of what was important.

Not necessarily having someone at the front office, but, but for me to be able to schedule effectively with my own, you know, run my book and then, and then, you know, really deliver on the pact that I had made with them. You spend an hour of time with me, and we will work together. Whatever you want to work through.

Danny: [00:25:17] Well, when I saw the, you know, the set up that you had and me coming from the military, I mean, I've, I've treated people in the grass , you know, back of trucks. Yeah, I found this, I kind of really just, you know, shared office space in a gym in Atlanta and set up shop there. And I didn't think twice about that would be deterrent to people.

But I, I definitely, I knew what I had, practitioners asked me, they're like, how do you, how do people come to see you in this little space?  I think what people just take for granted is just how rare it is to get what you're talking about. This undivided attention of a medical provider and to be listened to.

It's such a rare thing.

Kelly: [00:26:07] Interested in this fast nonsense. It was the same guy through the, I just, there, there was a time where I went through some blood paneling.

You bring a good point, you know, that was, that was a grind on those days, but then it wasn't like every single day. But, there was a time where I went through a blood panel and, I was sitting, I was talking to the interventional nutritionists about the results, you know, and she was like, so it says here you drink one to two cups of coffee a day.

And I was like; there's no hyphen. And then there's a significant long pause, and she's like, what? And I was when I was like, well, it was one to two, two to three, three to four and I felt like 12. More closely approximated how much coffee I was drinking. And, she's like, are you serious? And I was like, well, I got it.

I started coaching this morning, you know, I coach at 4:30, 5:30, I have two babies. You see, I have this business, I have all these other coaches, and that's three 20 ounce Americanos from Starbucks. 

I was like, dude, how do you think I'm getting it done? Do you know? And you can tell, there's a time when the old videos where I am skinny, and my hair's falling out. And I, you know, I am at the limits physically, and I was flying back and forth and, you know, and doing stuff like I, this unique world Greg Glassman set up for us.

We got people interested in things like deadlifting and, you know, and it was just such a diagnostic, but I would, I was teaching a lot, you know, and, I would get back, you know, Sunday. At like 11 p.m. or 1 am, you know? And I would go to sleep in my gym. I would sleep on my table.

And then coach on Monday at 6:00 AM and, you know, just like stay, asleep on my treatment table and then you know? And, that was definitely unsustainable. And I think, you know, the significant deterrent for a lot of physio starting a practice is that you are going to be thin. Like, I didn't hang out with my friends.

I didn't. Yeah. You know, I got this thing started, and I was willing just to eat a whole lot. I don't know if I can do it again. I don't think I have the physical tolerance to do that again and still train and coach and deliver. But, you know those long, long days was one of the reasons that we started MobilityWOD.

You know, I was like, Hey, look, I need to create another way to communicate so that I can give more information out and can create a database so that I don't have to cover some of these things in this precious time that we're spending together. Do you know what I mean? If I have only had an hour.

Especially in those first few meetings to understand the nuances of the environment and what's going on and, and help people reframe what's happening with them from a musculoskeletal way in a different PR and give them something to work on and just shift that low self-control. You know, I needed an additional resource in there.

And because I couldn't see people three times a week and it's too expensive, and no one has that time, you know? So that was why we, I was coming home and it's like, Juliette like there are some basics that people need to know and they don't know. And that was why we started making the videos in the first place so that I could get people up to a level so that we could get to the real conversation, not to the discussion about the interview, you know, like, what do you mean?

Like your quads, you don't know how to do any of this. Do you know what I mean? You. We can't start from scratch. It's going to take us too long. So if we began to, you know, bookmarking, and thus, you know, capturing some content in a video format, and then that was really so that I could get people spun up.

So when they saw me, they had a base understanding of what was going on.

Danny: [00:29:39] And I've always wondered this, MobilityWOD is something that, then, the business of MobilityWOD right, at this point, did it start with the idea of, Hey, we can turn this into a business, or did it start just a hundred percent organically where you thought, yeah, this is what I need to do for my patients?

And then it kind of grew into, Holy crap, this is picking up a lot of steam. Maybe this could be a business,

Kelly: [00:30:03], and we never saw this. It was never a business. It was, you know. It was advertising. It was a way of serving me, the gym members of serving, you know, I started teaching, this year marks the tenth anniversary of teaching the course.

So we've been teaching a course on human performance for ten years now. And MobilityWod was started in 2010. So, you know, we had already been out there and taught hundreds of courses and thousands of athletes. Before MobilityWOD began, it got to the place where I was like, Hey, we need to understand, do a better job of supporting the coaches with information.

You can see the ascent and developing and emergent voices of the gym. If my voice and teaching, but every blog posts took a couple of hours to write, you know, just, it's, it takes forever to write a big article and support it with pictures and, and, subsequently, you know, in a six-minute video, I can, I can,

contribute and communicate a lot of information that it would take me several hours. So I was able to, you know, take a quantum leap ahead in my ability to communicate what I was seeing and, and thinking. And, and we were really transparent because we needed people. One of these we recognized was that the current physio model was so reactive.

And that we had to shift our thinking around where we were delivering care. And I think this is where, you know, the first time we sort of struck the hornet's nest a little bit was getting people to realize that a lot of what I was doing is non-skilled care and needed to be done in a gym setting.

And a lot earlier in someone's real experience than it was when they were late and hot. And because we saw such large numbers of athletes moving, our pattern recognition went through the roof, and so we could connect the dots because we saw someone with no pain, no pain in the shoulder, no pain, the shoulder, but these compensations.

Then one day they show up. And we see them, they have shoulder pain, and we're like, ah, your shoulder hurts and notice that you've been swinging around like a crazy douchebag with your injury. And we were like, ah, it looks like we were engaged in some wizardry. Still, we had this gigantic laboratory going and realizing that we needed to empower and shift the burden of when we were delivering this care.

And I think that's, and I think we have a type one error. In the physical therapy, if our job is part prevention, or if it's, if actualization, right. Of really getting people to the place where they can express themselves in the world the way they want to. Right. We can't wait until something is wrong before we do that.

 And that is what the entire physio model was predicated on and continues to be predicated on. And for people to say that we can't impact upstream, you know, it's just, it's irresponsible. It's relevant. If, if we could manage all of the social components and get people moving correctly, then we would just really only see pathology and injury.

We'd see genetic deformities and abnormalities. We'd know problems in the expression of the genome around collagen. We'd see accidents. And then you know what, but 90% of what we would do as physios would probably evaporate. You know, it really would, because I think the human being is so robust.

We would still herniate discs and things, but it would be, it would be a very different situation. So I think we all need to conceptualize where our job is and what that looks like. And it turns out because I was a coach and lived in that world, that was the lens through which I viewed it.

And I also realized that if I was coaching, you know, I coached about nine to 12 hours a week in classes, and then private coaches on top of that. So I saw patients and the coach is that, man, it was a lot easier to have, you know, lots and lots and lots of little one on one interactions when people were still out of the.

  They didn't have pain. They didn't have swelling; they didn't have dysfunction. Right. They just had incomplete mechanics or they were, they were new, or, you know what I mean? They were learning something. I mean, that was, that was the place where I could have the conversations ultimately that I would be having if you were injured.

 

Danny: [00:34:56] you bring up the idea of reaching more people, right? And, you being able to do that in the gym and seeing more people at once and moving repetitions and, and now with, with social media and the internet and the ability to reach people to help them, you know, the potential is there.

So for you, you own a brick and mortar business, and you own a digital business, which one of those businesses do you feel like is more challenging to be successful at?

Kelly: [00:35:22] well, you know, there would be a time where I would say Juliet, and I would say owning a gym, you know, because at 350 members, plus all the other things that happened, plus the physio practice in there, plus, everyone who's hanging out in there.

You know, there's just a lot of stuff to work on and a lot of needs as it were. There's just a lot of, a lot of extraordinary people sometimes and it's just, it's just. If there's a lot of people in there, 350, if we're probably at 500 or 600 people, in a month, easily by the time we look at all the people who've come through and the visitors and, easily that number, there's just, that's just, it's messy being a human.

And that takes a lot of kind of time-intensive conversations. And, if you look at, mostly, I read in sort of two fields right now. One is complexity theory, which I'm just obsessed with because it was trying to help to view the human body's complicated theory, right? It's a complex system.

It's been instrumental for me. But also I read a lot about this evolutionary biology evolution, psychology, right? And so I'm reading, Harari's book Homo Deus, which is the, his follow up book to Sapiens. And I highly recommended it. But, if you look at successful primates, they spent a lot of time not fighting, but curating relationships.

And that's, that's exhausting. And it's exhausting as a, as a client or as a physio, because you are curating a relationship. Because that, that community, that patient-client interaction, is so vital and in the heart of what we do. And magnify that same sort of output into making sure my coaches are taken care of, making sure our office staff is sorted, making sure that, you know, that the travel, there's just a lot of input.

So there's that one piece, and that's sort of emotionally exhausting. And something I sometimes fantasize about not having. And then the other hand, you know, we see that our brick and mortar place a lot keeps us rooted in reality cause we're solving the problems and understanding, you know, we don't, we, it hasn't become theoretical anymore.

You know, it's, it's the reality of running a gym and running a business, which clarifies and streamlines you're thinking. So it continues to shape. You know, it'd be great.  I could see a patient three to five times a week. That'd be great. Do you know? But that doesn't work ever.

There's no; there's no physio model in the history of the world. You know, you remember that there's often one soldier for five Oh one physical therapists for 5,000 soldiers, right? It doesn't matter how good that physio is. The model is broken. So on the one hand, it's great that we keep ours; I'm still learning.

I'm still practicing. The gym is still my lab. You know, I have, I have classes on the schedule that anyone can take, but they're called Kelly's performance lab. Where I just experiment on people, you know, and things that I'm working on, concepts the, in the context of strength conditioning.

And

again, it's a Testament, and I think to Juliet and her management skills or organization skills that, the whole thing just doesn't implode. But on the one hand, it's straightforward and elegant because yeah, there are only fewer people involved, and we can be faster with the, with an online business, and we can reach more people, and we can scale things, and you know, and respect our time and work remotely.

On the other hand, you know, Oh my God, we fantasize about getting to a day where we turn social media off and walk away and just walk away. And they're like, what happened to Kelly Starrett? We don't know. He's like, but I saw some guy with a beard doing squats in the woods, you know. So, I think what's interesting is that it's still enjoyable and I don't think we've talked out or, or nailed it.

And we're getting better about communicating and the resources and we can, we continue to see massive amounts of opportunity and problems and the, it's, it's crowded and when we get ripped off, and we have to defend our trademarks. You see it, and it's a business first and foremost.

So, I think we, because it's such a high human touch, what we do, I mean, I just sometimes wish I manufactured widgets, you know like I should just make fidget spinners and collagen. You still have to ship them and manage them and, and organize. And you have to lead the people who are managing them.

I think business always has universalities in there, you know, there are universalisms in those pieces. And so at some point you better become good at business because that's the thing and it doesn't necessarily scale infinitely, but, hopefully, you can get back to a place where you can not fall into the trap that we started with, which is you're not seeing your family.

Cause it is all about you creating a life of meaning for yourself. Hopefully, doing something that you like or at least something that you're good at.

Danny: [00:40:49] Absolutely. I think you nailed it on the head too with, just the point of people very rarely reinvest in their business knowledge. And yet as physios, I think it's very, normal for us to think, Oh, you know I'm going to, pay however much money for this continuing ed course and it's going to improve my skillset.

But, you know I, I see a lot of good physical therapists that will never have a very successful practice because they're not good at Management or they're not good at business. They're not good at marketing themselves or,

Kelly: [00:41:20] or, or they don't have the partnerships to do that because it's not their skill set.

Right. At least I know that none of this could work without Juliet. Juliet, as you asked me what my partners for the day, I'm like, make sure Juliette is sorted out cause you know, Juliet has the resources and is feeling cared for then my business is not going to fail.

Danny: [00:41:40] And, and there's, there's a book called Rocket Fuel that, that talks about this concept of a visionary and implementer.

And it's exciting because for you guys that's just, that's you two, you're married, and you just have different skill sets, but the two together create a profound potential for business success. And so what you're alluding to, I believe is, is primarily like understand what you're good at and know what you need to replace whether that be somebody else or a partner or whatever, but, but don't try to repair, don't try to partner with somebody just like you.

That's a terrible idea.

Kelly: [00:42:13] Well, you haven't solved another problem. I mean, can we apply that thinking to anywhere else? When you have a team, you know, you don't have two quarterbacks, this is a dumb analogy, but it's the same.

And I, you hit it right on the head. The other thing I think that is tricky is that when you are seeing a whole lot of patients in the day, there is not a whole lot of extra time to like I mean like you're like, you're scrambling around, right.

To get paid and to be reimbursed and to and to try to improve your skillset. And theoretically, because you're a physical therapist, you exercise or have a movement practice too, right? You don't just talk about it, but you do Pilates or yoga or run or something, and, you know, I think it's tough to get ahead of that curve.

But,  I was talking with Greg Cook a long time ago. And we were talking about his, his first book, and he's like people, he said, people come up and ask me. They're like, Hey, do you think I should write a book? And he's like, you're, if you're not already writing it, don't ask me that question.

Do you know? He's like, because I was a single dad, writing chapters for the book that I had in my head on my washing machine at midnight, because that was the only time I could, and I do come down to will at some point. I mean, you, you know where you're going to have to realize that you can lead a better life and have a better business, but you know, you better have a, have a plan and, and you don't have to, it doesn't have to be fancy.

You just need to do things like answer the phone. I still, anyone who cancels MobilityWOD membership and calls the number, gets my cell phone. And I answered the phone.  Like I, I walked in the other day to the gym and pull out the vacuum because everyone else is busy and coaching, and I'm vacuuming up the rope hair, and I'm not

ever too good for that. But you do what needs to be done. And that's all of it. Until you can find a partner or bring a partner on or someone who can, who's better at it than you are, and in the meantime, it may just be you. I mean, now we have plenty of friends who like you, who you know, who can you do it by yourself for a while.

You make it work and then, and then your, your family realizes, like, Ashley's a Ninja and she can, she can do it better than you can.

Danny: [00:44:33] Oh, she's way smarter than me. I mean, I think that's an that's a no brainer, right? I mean, and I'm very fortunate too because just, you have a, you have a Juliet and me, I have an Ashley, and she's, she's just, she runs the, she runs the thing.

She talks in terms of standard operating procedures. Right. I talk in terms of ideas and, philosophies and like stuff like that. And there would never work if it wasn't for

organization from somebody else.

Kelly: [00:44:57] . Well and as Juliet says, are, here's our long term plan, here's how we're going to get this done.

Here's the content you need to produce. And I know Ashley does the same. And, you know, it's not, it's just as sexy. We do. I do look forward to the day where I think Juliet may run for government one day, and I just can't wait to be the first man.

 

Kelly: [00:45:29] I, I'm going to, I just want to staple papers and lift stuff and let her do all, do all of them, the public BS. But, the main thing is once again though, however you work this out, you've got to create. And envision a life that was you, like what is your goal?

No, your goal is to be able to travel, as one of our goals was to be ready to teach in another country and be able to bring my kids. And I'm not saying we're all gonna do that. Right? You can still create. You know, there are, I think, yet untapped in terms of excellent physical therapists developing longterm relationships with people.

Like they're never, ever, there's never going to be too many of us, and there's, there are so many talented people there, you just, we have to figure out a way where you can be reimbursed in away. That you're not getting $30 for an hour session, and, in your, in your time is, is better reflected in, you know, in doing something else.

So you just, you should be able to pay off your student loan debt, and save for the future and not work 70 hours a week for someone else.

Danny: [00:46:39] Right. Man, this is so spot on this, this is, this is great.  I knew this would be, and this would be an excellent conversation. I think people are just going to resonate with a lot of people. Hopefully, they can take some of the lessons learned from, from what you've done and, and then the years of your experience in business and multiple kinds of business and pay for it.

And I think the overall message we keep saying, man, like, why are you doing this stuff? Like, what does it come back to? And being able to keep that stuff in perspective, it's very motivating, but it also keeps you grounded so that you don't. A spin out of control and no one wants to finish by themselves.

Right.

Kelly: [00:47:12] That's right. And you can't burn out. You can't afford to burn out. And I've, I seen that burnout, so I look like, you know, and I was like, Ooh, like I do not have it. I got to a place where I wasn't having any fun. Right. You know, and remember why, I always say, you remember why you went to physio school.

People were like, cause I want to help people. I'm like, bullshit. That's not what it is. It's because you are a nerd and you like the work. Yeah. Like that's what it's about. I wanted the job, and I liked the tooling. I like the coaching, I liked the hands-on, I liked the conversations, and I love the work. And so, you just got to keep in a place where you can then just love the work

. The underpaid or undervalued for that experience. Yeah.

Danny: [00:47:56] Now that's perfect, Kelly. Thanks so much for your time. I mean, I know people, they, should know who you are. I'm sure if they, if they don't, ww.mobilitywod.com is the best place, to find MobilityWOD on their social media handles.

Instagram is awesome. You know, you guys are active on Twitter as well. So if people want to reach out to you, they can find you there. Kelly, you know, we really appreciate it, man. Thank you so much. Any, any parting words you want to give future PT's and or current entrepreneurs out there about the future? What they should be doing in business?

Kelly: [00:48:25] Well, I think that the the the physio entrepreneur is, in a unique place. You know, sort of carve out your island.  Hey, okay, I'm on this independent practice. It's slightly different than everyone else. I think we can shape public expectations of what good care is. And it's not that the physios working in these traditional clinics aren't giving good care, but the clinic, it may not be, or the hospital may not be the best place to deliver that. And I think we, we can give this voice where we can provide, spend more time with people and play a much longer game where that conversation is about.

All the aspects of someone's physical carriage. 

Danny: [00:49:06]That's perfect. You guys are here. Dr. Kelly's, he's the man, one of my favorite people, and so awesome to talk to him about business. And where they'd been. I hope you guys learned a lot from this.  It's up to you.  Do you have any questions?

Shoot me an email. You got my direct email. That's right. I give it out, and I do answer that stuff. So if you have a question, I love to talk business, and I'd like to connect with you. So guys, thanks so much for listening and take care.