Transforming Physical Therapy Practices: Insights from Michael Silva

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (38.5MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | iHeartRadio | Email | RSS | More

Michael Silva – Physical Therapy Coach

 

Podcast Overview:

00:00 Created Run Strong to prevent runners’ injuries.
06:51 Transitioning from PT to helping therapists grow.
15:04 My kids aren’t interested in healthcare careers.
20:14 Health coach improving lives through somatic work.
22:03 Small practices struggle; larger, diverse ones thrive.
28:34 First client gained through friend’s referral proves invaluable.
33:30 Doctors overwhelmed by high patient quotas, lower reimbursements.
37:25 Started business for health-conscious, motivated clients.
42:38 Ebook on business basics and core strategies.
50:07 Business coaching: prefer long-term packages for value.
51:57 Passionate focus, AI, streamline processes, healthcare change.

Podcast Transcription:

Michael Silva [00:00:00]:
You this cup of iced coffee. Right? I could charge whatever I wanted for it. If you’re in contract with an insurance company, I can say, okay. I wanna sell you this cup of physical therapy services, and I wanna charge a $195 for that session. And they’re gonna On, no. If you want our clients, we’re gonna pay you $59, and you’ll take it or you won’t see our clients.

James Kademan [00:00:21]:
You have found Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. Downloadable audio episodes can be found On the podcast link found at draw in customers.com. We are locally underwritten by the Bank of Sun Prairie, Calls on call extraordinary answering service, as well as the Bold Business Book. And today, we’re welcoming slash preparing preparing to learn from Michael j Silva, the business coach specifically for physical therapists. So, Michael, how is it going today?

Michael Silva [00:00:52]:
It’s going great. How are you doing, James?

James Kademan [00:00:54]:
I’m doing well. So tell me the physical therapist world in my mind, that’s for people that are older broken. Right? Is that, I am guessing that is incorrect,

Michael Silva [00:01:05]:
but they are a, they are a frequent flyer of physical therapy services for sure. But physical therapy, spans the the whole lifespan from, neonatal to, growing pain issues in, toddlers, children, teens, sports injuries, work injuries, and everything in between. So that is a, a common thing I hear all the time when people aren’t familiar with physical therapy. Yeah. But, there’s it’s so much more. It’s so much more than just, you you know, old people breaking a hip and needing someone to teach them how to walk again. But, yeah, we offer lots of great services to humans to get them out of pain, function better, relieve stress, all sorts of all sorts of health promoting, services.

James Kademan [00:01:53]:
So just for me being the the guy that just doesn’t know the whole scope that physical therapy includes, does it also include prevention, or is it only let me help you fix once you’re having a bad day.

Michael Silva [00:02:07]:
Well, if it was, there’s many of us that are in the prevention side of things. So when I was a clinician, we we kept preaching prevention. I did a lot of work with runners over my career. So like my specialty, I worked with runners. So from high school to octogenarians, from Olympians to, you know, 7 hour marathoners, everything in between. And what I realized is after trying to fix people’s pains, fix their fix their problems, that if I just put together a program where I could address these common issues that we find in all runners before they get hurt, maybe we can prevent injuries and improve running and that’s what ended up happening. So I have a whole business called run strong that I did, that I created a class and it’s a whole, like coaching platform that I do for runners and coaches to help prevent that from happening. Nice.

Michael Silva [00:02:54]:
The problem is when health insurances are involved, they’re not big on prevention. No. They wanna wait for you to get sick and so they can give you a medication. They wanna wait for you to get hurt so that you can have a surgery. So we we preach it and we a lot of people in the sports medicine active outpatient world of physical therapy will have preventative services. But unfortunately, for some people, it’s an out of pocket expense because it’s hard to justify that to certain insurance companies. Some are coming around enough.

James Kademan [00:03:21]:
Yeah. It’s so interesting that you say that because I had a health insurance professional salesperson on the show. I don’t know. It’s probably right after the pandemic. I think it was. Still in the studio, but it’s interesting talking with her because she’s selling the health insurance. But from a personal point of view, she’s like, I don’t know why they don’t cover prevention. It’s so much cheaper.

James Kademan [00:03:46]:
So

Michael Silva [00:03:47]:
much cheaper.

James Kademan [00:03:48]:
Healthier. People are happier. But in the end, in order for them to build the big hospitals, they need people that actually go to the big hospitals.

Michael Silva [00:03:54]:
You know, I I hate saying this, but, there’s a lot of money in sick people. Right.

James Kademan [00:04:00]:
There is.

Michael Silva [00:04:01]:
There’s a lot

James Kademan [00:04:01]:
of money in health

Michael Silva [00:04:03]:
care. There is, and it shouldn’t be called health care. It should be called sick care. You know?

James Kademan [00:04:06]:
Oh, I love it. Yeah. So true.

Michael Silva [00:04:09]:
Yeah. It’s just, you know, trust me, we could go off for a whole episode just on this, but, you know, I started in the in as a physical therapist in 1998 is when I graduated from graduate school. I was in fitness world before that from undergrad. So I’ve been trying to help people stay healthy and improve my my whole career. And the the woman you were talking to, the insurance salesperson, is exactly right. Is what’s that old adage? An ounce of prevention is worth a

James Kademan [00:04:35]:
How much is it?

Michael Silva [00:04:35]:
Cure or what whatever it is. Right? And if we could just educate and get to people before they get sick, before they develop the chronic back pain, before they develop diabetes, before they break their first bone. Like, just give them the these small strategies and habits to form to better take care of themselves. I’d Call you there’d be a lot less, drugs being taken and prescribed to Americans, and Then it’d probably be a lot less money made in big pharma, but don’t tell them.

James Kademan [00:05:04]:
Gotcha. Interesting. It’s crazy. It’s scary that we we’re still in that realm of It is

Michael Silva [00:05:10]:
it is scary. Priority. Right.

James Kademan [00:05:13]:
So tell me, how do you shift from having your own physical therapy practice to coaching people with physical therapy practices?

Michael Silva [00:05:21]:
That’s a good question. So I had my practice for about, I won’t keep the story too long, but I had my practice for 20 years. So I started it early on. On was about 2 years into my career as a physical therapy, and I was getting, I didn’t know the term back then, but it’s a popular term in our world now is burnout. And I was unhappy with, what I was doing. Right. I was, I was working with the wrong patients that I wasn’t passionate about. I was working for, you know, companies that just didn’t see things the way I saw them.

Michael Silva [00:05:49]:
And I was just really unhappy doing that type of thing. So that’s when I did, my wife was also a therapist. We decided let’s just start our own business, do it the way we like it. So we did that, grew it for 20 years, and we had a successful business. I was about to open my 4th office before we sold. I had a team at some points up to, like, 25 employees, and we helped thousands of people in our communities. And we had really it was really rewarding, and I loved doing all of that, and I loved, helping people improving their lives. I didn’t like battling insurance companies.

Michael Silva [00:06:19]:
Right? I didn’t also, my hands took a beating. I was a very manual therapist, so I had my hands on everyone in mobilizing bones and tissue, right, that type of thing. So my hands got beat up. I was getting a little physically tired after doing that for over 20 years. And I saw the opportunity to exit At the the time during the pandemic is when I sold. The multiples were pretty good. There was a lot of money around, and people were investing in PT. So I started exit where I could, you know, take some money, invest it other ways, and then be able to reinvent myself, because it was fun.

Michael Silva [00:06:51]:
I loved it. I loved my team, but I think I needed personally to do something different. So then after I sold it, I went through a little bit of an identity crisis, you know, because I was known as, you know, the running PT guy that had this business. So I get over that and then just do some conversations and soul searching. I knew I still wanted to help people, but now with what I’m doing trying to help other therapists start, create, or or improve their private practices, I’m allowing them to help more patients. So I think in the long term, I’m, I’m still helping humans at the physical therapy level, but through my clients.

James Kademan [00:07:26]:
That’s fair. That’s fair. You touched on a few things there that I wanna ask you about little tangents here. First one is you said the opportunity came about to sell when you’re about to open up your 4th practice. Right. So that sounds like you’re on the way to growth, but then someone did someone come to you and offer you a bag of money? Or how did that work?

Michael Silva [00:07:45]:
Yeah. Yeah. At that time, a lot there was a lot of big, a lot of VC money and a lot of big money was coming in and buying up, PT practices because there is money to be made. So I was I was approached by a few different companies and, you know, I entertained some of the offers. I never entertained them previously. This has been going on for years, and it’s not just because my practice was special. Many practices that showed any sort of history of success were getting approached and getting phone calls and emails. And I ended up selling to someone who was, it’s a bigger practice now, but they were pretty local.

Michael Silva [00:08:17]:
The owner knew me, I knew her, and we had a great relationship. And it just felt like a good way for me to exit and to keep it within, you know, from the smallest state in the country, Rhode Island. So to keep it local was was nice. So just through some conversations and, like, I I use the term a lot of soul searching around that time. I figured let’s let’s do it. Now is a good time. And we were on our way up. We were we were successful.

Michael Silva [00:08:41]:
You know, the pandemic kinda hurt business a little bit and but we survived. We came out of that. The numbers were going back up. And I always think it’s a better time to sell a business when you’re doing well than when it’s failing.

James Kademan [00:08:50]:
Oh, yeah.

Michael Silva [00:08:51]:
So go out on top for lack of a better way to describe it. And I think it helped. It helped the, you know, evaluation of the of the business and helped my exit a little bit better than if I was failing and just had to get out of desperation, which definitely wasn’t the case.

James Kademan [00:09:05]:
Fair. So how long did it take to for you to negotiate with the buyer from the start of the talks to the time that you’re giving them the keys and walking away?

Michael Silva [00:09:18]:
I’m gonna let me think about it for a second. It had to have been about 9 months.

James Kademan [00:09:23]:
Okay. Decent, but not crazy. No. No. It was,

Michael Silva [00:09:27]:
you know, I think let me think. So we started conversations. It was over a year before we just started talking. And then when we really, like, had the LOI, it was probably about between 6 9 months. I think from the time we got really official, you know, like lawyers and accountants and everyone was involved and, you know, moving beyond the LOI. So that was probably just over the 6 month mark, I would say.

James Kademan [00:09:48]:
Okay. And was it tough to come up with a price? Because that’s always the big deal. Right?

Michael Silva [00:09:56]:
Right. Right. No.

James Kademan [00:09:57]:
And you got the practice, then there’s goodwill and

Michael Silva [00:10:00]:
Right. Right. So, yeah, it’s hard because you get, you know, as a business owner, you hit a lot of emotions that I know you have bought and sold businesses personally. Right? So I had a lot of emotion because this was like my family, my second life. So but I was realistic about what my business was worth. I’d I’d given myself enough education On, in my business and evaluating businesses and had a good team on my side. So it was pretty realistic On the numbers that I would’ve I wanted and what they offered were very, very close, if not spot on. So it wasn’t like going back and forth.

Michael Silva [00:10:30]:
Of course, I wanted to maximize what I wanted for the business, and they wanted to pay as little as possible. But it worked out. I think it, I it was a win win for both of us, which is kinda rare in those types of opportunities. But I think it goes back to what I was saying because we had a really good reputation in this area. We had a solid staff that’d been with us for a while. We had consistent, patients. We had, you know, one of the lowest cancellation rates out of any clinic I’ve ever seen. We had a really, we had a thriving business.

Michael Silva [00:10:58]:
It was a good cash flow. So and that with the reputation and all the goodwill we put in, I think they saw that because they were a local company, and they knew of us for the past 20 years. Whereas someone you know, I entertained an offer from someone on the West Coast. They didn’t know who I was or what I built and, you know, so I think, it it worked out. It was it was much smoother than I would have expected because I know these things can be horrifying. Yeah. But that will that will pour of course, those some back and forth as expected, but it was nothing awful. I think we, we played well together.

James Kademan [00:11:26]:
That’s awesome. Yeah. So when you sold, did you have to stay on for a little bit to make sure the transition was okay?

Michael Silva [00:11:31]:
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

James Kademan [00:11:32]:
Walking away.

Michael Silva [00:11:33]:
Yeah. I stayed on. No. I I we had talked about keeping me on longer and doing some other things. But after about it was about 9 10 10, 12 months, about the 1 year mark, the transition was done, the rebranding, everything had happened. You know, whoever was making changes and leaving and staying, everyone was stayed put. So that’s when I decided to, to walk away at that point and do and do what I’m doing now.

James Kademan [00:12:00]:
Alright. And the employees that you had, did they stay put or did they move? Or how did that work?

Michael Silva [00:12:05]:
Yeah. A lot of them moved, unfortunately.

James Kademan [00:12:08]:
Okay.

Michael Silva [00:12:08]:
You know, I think, you know, change is hard for people. And what I took as a huge compliment, and I didn’t realize how, like, emotionally connected to the business they were and what we had built. Like, they were re some of them were really sad and distraught about working for someone else and not for me. So, yeah, I would like to say that they all stayed on and they were, you know, as happy as can be. But, you know, some left. Some stayed. There’s still a few left, but over well, it’s been about 3 years now. And a lot of them have moved On, because, you know, the business is growing.

Michael Silva [00:12:41]:
It’s becoming corporate, and they wanna stay, the the small the small business feel to, their profession. So some of them moved on. I I wish they would have stayed. Some moved on way too soon, and they didn’t even give it a chance. And I tried to, tried to encourage them. But, you know, it’s hard. I don’t On I can’t force someone to do something. But,

James Kademan [00:13:01]:
no. No. Not at all. Especially with a big change like that, it’s interesting because I think when you, sale of business happens, the employees don’t necessarily know if they’re gonna be let go or if they’re gonna be if there’s gonna be essentially besides your the person signing the front of the check changing, nothing’s really gonna change. Like there’s a lot of unknowns.

Michael Silva [00:13:23]:
Right.

James Kademan [00:13:24]:
So sometimes I feel like employees just wanna leave so that they feel like they have some modicum of control.

Michael Silva [00:13:30]:
Right.

James Kademan [00:13:30]:
But that’s right.

Michael Silva [00:13:31]:
And I think that was the exact case with a couple of them. They wanted to make the decision rather than decision made for them. With ours, it was definitely different because in the PT world, it’s still, but at that point, it was really short staffed. So, I mean, there was plenty of business. No one was gonna get fired, at least the clinicians. I don’t think there was no plan to get rid of anyone at all because we had a pretty efficient, team. But I think just the the change, the the things are gonna be different, different patients coming in the door, different processes. The the demands were gonna be a little bit higher.

Michael Silva [00:14:03]:
So I think that’s what kind of Call them more versus not having a job. I mean, it’s a good time.

James Kademan [00:14:08]:
The best best

Michael Silva [00:14:09]:
5 to 6 years has been a good time to be a PT. You’re not without work. You can get a job. They they can actually call the shots in a lot of the situations.

James Kademan [00:14:17]:
Fair. I mean, I wanna shift gears and ask you when you started your business, you had to go on for 20 years. You’re with your wife. Mhmm. So she was a physical therapist as well with you for 20 years.

Michael Silva [00:14:29]:
Correct.

James Kademan [00:14:30]:
So you were married and in business with the same person.

Michael Silva [00:14:33]:
Yes.

James Kademan [00:14:34]:
I don’t know how you do that, but congrats to you. That is amazing. Tell

Michael Silva [00:14:38]:
you what. I mean, you you brought it up, so we’ll we’ll we’ll we’ll walk in that door. It it wasn’t easy at times for sure. You know? We raised 2 kids during this time as we grew this business. We both graduated together from the same PT school. That’s where we met. We’re very similar in who we wanted to treat and what we did. So there were times where it’s tough because, you know, we’re we had our work stress, and we brought that up home, and those were a lot of dinner conversations.

Michael Silva [00:15:04]:
I think we definitely scared my kids from going into health Call. I need my son who’s grown and flown is the furthest thing from health care, and my daughter wants no part of it, probably just from listening to us talk the whole time. And it made for made for boring On, always about patience and pain, numbers. But yeah. But if it wasn’t for her, you know, she was silent, like, On the back the backroom most of the years because she was home raising her kids. We wanted she wanted to be there. We didn’t wanna just have her come to the business and hire a nanny. It was our choice that we wanted On of us home.

Michael Silva [00:15:37]:
And then when she was done nursing our children, so we have 2, then I came home and we would split. She would go in one day. I would stay home with the kids, and then she would go in another. So then we split roles, and then we kind of all came back On. Then we came back in together, and we had different offices. So we were we weren’t, in each other’s face all the time, which I which I think helped because it can be it can be a challenge for sure.

James Kademan [00:15:57]:
I bet. I bet. So you were both in different locations for a portion there?

Michael Silva [00:16:02]:
Yeah. For most of it. We had the one office for most of the years. And then after the kids were old enough and in school and she started to regain some of her time, we ended up opening an office closer to our home that she ran. So I obviously helped oversee that and get that going. And then she, we we we started a small group training gym that she took over and did more of the preventative stuff that we’re talking about earlier. She didn’t like fixing people’s problems. She wanted to prevent them and keep people healthy and thriving.

Michael Silva [00:16:31]:
So we opened a small group train training gym, which she ran, then I took over that as one of our PT offices. So that was our 3rd office. So we kind of had that that delegation of roles, which was good.

James Kademan [00:16:44]:
Dang. That is amazing. Kudos to you for doing that.

Michael Silva [00:16:47]:
Yeah. It was a you know, it was a I’d love to say it was all roses, but that’s a big lie. And anyone listening who’s, you know, in business with a significant other, it can be done. It’s challenging. And I think through my wife’s coaching, making sure that, you know, we have date nights where we don’t talk about numbers and staffing problems and things like that and actually just focus on ourselves and our family and take vacations. And, you know, because that’s truly important. Like, I believe and I I use this coaching with some of my clients. Like, if you’re not healthy, your business is not gonna thrive.

Michael Silva [00:17:18]:
If you don’t have good relationships in your personal life, your business is not gonna thrive. So it’s coaching the human, not just the business as you probably know as well. Right?

James Kademan [00:17:26]:
Mhmm. Yeah. Almost more so.

Michael Silva [00:17:28]:
Right.

James Kademan [00:17:29]:
I was just listening to Jim Rohn. He said something about you spend all your health to get wealthy, and then when you get older, you spend all your wealth to try to get healthy again.

Michael Silva [00:17:40]:
It’s crazy. Right?

James Kademan [00:17:41]:
Yeah. It’s weird. It’s weird.

Michael Silva [00:17:43]:
There was a story can I share it? I’m gonna Yeah. By all means. Please. This is a pretty famous story, but I don’t know if you’ve ever heard it. It’s it takes part there’s this, like, rich American businessman who goes on vacation and sees this local native and one of these, like, beachfront resorty type of towns. We’ll call it in the Caribbean somewhere. And he sees this old guy go out every morning in his boat, goes to catch a few fish, comes back in, sells it to, you know, the local, seafood stores or On. And then he his wife comes down.

Michael Silva [00:18:13]:
They sit on the beach every afternoon. He plays a guitar. He watches the sunset. He does this day after day. So the American goes up and says, hey. You know, if you, we got you a bigger boat, and then we we brought in some staff, and we did this and did this and had this whole projection of how to grow this guy’s business and get him to work hard, work hard, work hard. And then he then he pretty much said, so what? In 20 years I can retire and play my guitar and spend the afternoon on the beach with my wife. And I was like, woah.

Michael Silva [00:18:39]:
Good point.

James Kademan [00:18:40]:
Yeah. It’s not for everybody. That to get what you already have.

Michael Silva [00:18:43]:
Right. Exactly.

James Kademan [00:18:45]:
Interesting. So, yeah, 20 years when you decided to sell the business, how did that conversation go with your wife? Because she was a part of it.

Michael Silva [00:18:56]:
Yeah. No. She was On board. She would have, she wanted to unload it earlier than I did.

James Kademan [00:19:00]:
Oh, nice. Okay.

Michael Silva [00:19:01]:
Yeah. Yeah. No. It it was definitely and she’s so supportive. Like, you know, I was the face of the bins business just because she was home with the kids a lot, and I was out doing a lot of public speaking. So everyone knew the business as mine, but she was a big part of it the whole time. And a few years before that, she’s like, I think we need to, like, move on from this. And, because, you know, we saw, like, health care and PT, the it was struggling.

Michael Silva [00:19:23]:
I mean, there’s there’s still money to be made. There’s still successful businesses, but she was just concerned about the future of it and definitely wanted to do things different, and she was definitely jaded with the whole health insurance conversation like we started out talking about. So I actually kept it going for a few more years because I wanted to get the valuation up. I said, you know, we’re not ready to sell now. We were too young when we at that point too, and we just weren’t ready personally, professionally, business wise. So I ended up getting some extra training, in in in the business world and prepared myself. I had like, I pulled myself out. I was the least revenue generating team member out of my whole team at the time when I sold, so I wouldn’t be handcuffed to the Calls.

Michael Silva [00:20:02]:
So I did a lot of prep work. So she started the process, was On board with it the whole way, and then was supportive, as we went through it.

James Kademan [00:20:10]:
Nice. That’s cool. Now is she doing coaching as well?

Michael Silva [00:20:14]:
So she is yeah. She’s a a health and wellness coach. She’d, she well, she does a lot of somatic work and, like, transformative coaching with people who are dealing with chronic pain and just struggling in life and trying to get out of a rut. So she’s doing that and that’s where she kinda took her her PT and and, you know, experience as a health care professional and is now doing that. And it’s crazy because the amount of improvement she’s seeing with her clients outside of our health care network and them telling us what to do has just been phenomenal. I mean, she’s changing people’s lives in a way she couldn’t if it was going through the insurance cause we didn’t have a code for, you know, a lot of the stuff that we’re doing, it was hard to Call for those things. Yeah. But she’s thriving.

Michael Silva [00:20:58]:
She’s doing great with her clients. It’s it’s, it’s fun to watch her.

James Kademan [00:21:01]:
Oh, that’s awesome.

Michael Silva [00:21:02]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:21:03]:
It’s super awesome. So let’s shift gears into the coaching itself for physical therapy. Actually, let me pause that for a moment.

Michael Silva [00:21:09]:
Sure.

James Kademan [00:21:09]:
I On ask you one more thing because this is interesting thing as getting through buying and selling businesses. I noticed that in some industries, there’s a threshold or anything below that companies that wanna buy aren’t really necessarily looking at you. But once you get over that, then everyone’s looking at you. Right. Is did you find a number like that with the physical therapy business? Yeah.

Michael Silva [00:21:32]:
I don’t know the exact number, but just going through it and and having these conversations over the years, like, if you’re a a one practitioner type of business and you are the business, it’s not very attractive, especially if you’re looking to sell and exit. I had, a friend of mine who had a room business, and she had had enough with my age. She’s been doing it for almost 25 years as well. And she’s like, I just wanna get out. And this is after I sold mine. She’s like, can you can we talk? And then I had to, like, have a hard conversation about your business isn’t worth anything without you.

James Kademan [00:22:03]:
Like Yeah.

Michael Silva [00:22:03]:
It’s a job. You really have nothing to sell. So they ended up just liquidating everything, taking whatever cash they could from that, and then moving on to another career. But, yeah, there is. And I don’t know the exact number, but I know smaller, one office practices where the owner is really deep into patient care are not very attractive, unless the the person is willing to stay on for years if they’re younger. But if they’re old, if they’re in their fifties and on their way out of their career, they’re not gonna get many buyers. But if you got, you know, multiple revenue streams, multiple clinicians bringing in the money, multiple, offices, then it starts to become really attractive. And then as you know, like, the you know, as the EBITDA goes up, so there’s the multiple.

Michael Silva [00:22:48]:
EBITDA is a funny funny thing. It’s very it’s an art more than a science I’ve learned.

James Kademan [00:22:54]:
Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Michael Silva [00:22:55]:
Yeah. That’s crazy. But I know that’s a Yeah.

James Kademan [00:22:59]:
A few valuations with different people. And I remember On, I got a quote for evaluation. This was years ago. And they said roughly between $510,000 to let you know what the business is worth. And I I remember my dad always saying when it comes to buying cars or something like that, he’s like, it’s worth what someone’s willing to pay for. So it’s one of those. So we could just throw a number out there and see if we get any buyers to find out. Because $10 for someone to tell you what price they’d to put on therapy, if they’re not actually getting you a buyer, they’re just pulling some arbitrary number out.

Michael Silva [00:23:34]:
Right.

James Kademan [00:23:35]:
So it seemed I was like, oh, and at the time, that particular business was, I don’t know, a 100 and 150, 180,000, something like that for $10. That’s a big percentage of that just to tell you what it’s worth.

Michael Silva [00:23:49]:
Percent of it just to tell you what it’s worth.

James Kademan [00:23:51]:
Yeah. I mean, it’s not like you’re selling whatever. I don’t know. Facebook or something like that. Just $10,000 to figure out what the price is worth.

Michael Silva [00:23:58]:
Facebook’s worth a little bit more. Right?

James Kademan [00:23:59]:
Yeah. A little bit. Yeah. Where percentage would be, rounding error for for us, $10. I was like, wow. That’s a

Michael Silva [00:24:07]:
I don’t know.

James Kademan [00:24:07]:
That’s healthy. So we didn’t do that one.

Michael Silva [00:24:10]:
Well, that’s good.

James Kademan [00:24:11]:
Yeah. So interesting. Let’s shift gears into the coaching now for real. Tell me why did you decide to stick with coaching physical therapists specifically versus just coaching any business?

Michael Silva [00:24:23]:
Yeah. So I started there because that’s what I knew. You know, that was that was my life for so long. And I think like, I grew up I grew up in a a family business. My father owned, well, my parents owned a, a beer and wine and deli that we grew up in.

James Kademan [00:24:39]:
So fun. Yeah.

Michael Silva [00:24:40]:
It was really fun. And I’m so I knew that I knew that industry slightly. Of course, we helped we helped. It was a family business. They went they sold it. So I kinda I think I got a little bit of the entrepreneurial bug just watching my dad do it, and he didn’t do that till he was 55. He was an employee until he lost his job and had to do something and turned a a dying convenience store into a, I think, just over 2,000,000 a year in revenue, business that he ended up selling.

James Kademan [00:25:08]:
Wow. At 55, he started that.

Michael Silva [00:25:10]:
Started at 55, sold it at over in his seventies. And this is a a Portuguese immigrant without a high school diploma. I mean, he’s pretty well. Yeah. So he they retired comfortably. He unfortunately died a couple years ago. But my mom is set. And, anyway, that was inspirational, but I know that’s what you Call what you’re talking about.

Michael Silva [00:25:28]:
So Yeah. So what I knew is, you know, private practice outpatient sports medicine physical therapy. That’s what I did. And physical therapy is going through, you know, some rough times. People are leaving the field. They’re burnt out. They’re getting yeah. If you if you if you On and if you’re ever bored and wanna read a lot of, negative press On profession, just go on to, like, one of those Reddit websites and go join a physical therapy group.

Michael Silva [00:25:54]:
And, like, if you if you listen to those, forums, you think that, you know, the physical therapy world’s a giant dumpster fire and everyone needs to get out before it explodes, but it’s not.

James Kademan [00:26:05]:
Alright.

Michael Silva [00:26:06]:
Really not. So I kind of I’m on this mission and I use the term I’m trying to save the physical therapy profession, one private practice at a time, because therapy so many quality humans and caring physical therapists that are leaving because they just don’t wanna work for big corporate. They don’t wanna they’re sick of doing what they’re doing and not even considering starting their own practice as an option. Because, I mean, it’s not easy, but it’s not difficult to do it. So I wanna help people who are passionate about working with someone, especially if they have a niche and a, you know, an avatar that they really wanna work with and they’re passionate about it. Let’s say let’s say say you’re a PT and you love golfing and you wanna work with golfers, helping people, you know, start a business with a golfer in mind and being able to enjoy going to work, provide a ton of value to a certain, certain subset of humans, and actually make some money doing it. Like, it can be done. I think people get so scared, and I think, you know, they have this mindset of all this it’s not it’s never gonna change.

Michael Silva [00:27:07]:
It is what it is. So that’s my mission is to not only help people start and grow their practices, but people who are frustrated and not seeing that they can improve their practice, try to help streamline their processes, you know, look at what what they’re doing. Are they attracting the patients that they On to attract? Are they providing a good patient experience to make sure these people enjoy what coming to the clinics and they’re not dropping off and canceling and no showing all their visits? So, I think diving into it and really figuring out the why for some of these owners is extremely important. And I wanna be I wanna help, and I wanna be able to help the patients that my clients are treating continue to improve their lives, so I’m doing it this way.

James Kademan [00:27:46]:
Nice. I love it. I wanna ask you. When you started your business, your business coaching practice for physical therapy, had a physical therapy company. You sell it. Now you hang out your shingle as a coach. Yep. How hard was it to get your first few clients?

Michael Silva [00:28:03]:
Still hard because this is

James Kademan [00:28:05]:
easy for me. Yeah.

Michael Silva [00:28:06]:
It’s, so I’ve got a handful of clients right now, not enough, to make it a thriving business, but, I mean, it was hard. The first one fell into my lap. I had considered starting consulting. My wife had told me, she’s like, listen. You did it for 20 years. You you did it successfully. You’ve got a you probably forgot more than most people know at this point in your career. Like, just why don’t you do it? I mean, I’m a public speaker as well, so I love being in front of groups and educating, so I’m doing some of that along with it.

Michael Silva [00:28:34]:
So as I’m considering it and starting to see what that looks like as a business, I get a call from, a friend of mine from across the country who has someone, that wants to in his later in his years, he’s about my age, 50, needs to do some make a change because he’s he’s losing his job and wants to start his own business. So that was my first client. You know? You know? He signed on for another contract. He’s probably gonna sign on for more, so he’s finding huge value. And, you know, I had impostor syndrome when he first wrote me the first check for my services. I’m like, what is this guy paying me for? Like, what am I gonna do? And then I actually used some of his quotes in in, online because he said, like, the best money he’s ever spent in his career was what he spent on me because, you know, not only just acting as a sounding board, but I’ve stopped him from making so many mistakes because he didn’t know what he was doing. For me, it’s just common language because I knew, you know, the processes you need to go to to start up a a practice in your state, that type of thing. So that one fell into my lap, and I had a couple others as well.

Michael Silva [00:29:34]:
But just trying to get out there, through different means and let people know I’m doing it. It’s hard. So, yeah, it’s a I would like to say I’ve I’ve got a waiting list and people knocking down my door to get in there. Not yet.

James Kademan [00:29:49]:
Give it a

Michael Silva [00:29:49]:
few more months, and that’s gonna happen.

James Kademan [00:29:51]:
This podcast will change all that. So it’s all

Michael Silva [00:29:53]:
You’re gonna change my world, James. That’s why I’m here.

James Kademan [00:29:56]:
You know, it’s interesting you’re talking about the physical therapy world being dumpster fire because it reminds me of the veterinary world. We answer phones for a lot of veterinary clinics and go to the trade shows and all that kind of stuff, and the veterinary clinics are getting bought by corporate. A lot of veterinarians are getting out. A lot of techs are getting out. I don’t quite understand why they’re getting out. I feel like it was kinda around pandemic time where people just started changing for whatever reason. To me, it’s I don’t and this is totally outsider looking in. Yep.

James Kademan [00:30:31]:
So I have never been a veterinarian or I take it I’ve been on the other side of the desk with a dog. K. Not on the actual fixing of the animals.

Michael Silva [00:30:40]:
You weren’t fixing the dog. You were just bringing

James Kademan [00:30:41]:
them No. No. I was just giving them a lot of money to fix the dog. So it’s one of those things where I’m like, why are people getting out of this industry? Because it’s a growing industry. Like, more people are population’s going up, and more people are making, what I’m gonna dare say, less than great health choices. And population’s getting older. There’s just I mean, I have a buddy’s dad that’s, I don’t know. He’s over 80.

James Kademan [00:31:10]:
Super nice guy, but every time I talk to him, he’s got a different health problem that he wants to tell me about.

Michael Silva [00:31:14]:
Which

James Kademan [00:31:15]:
is fine. Whatever. He’s not just sitting there. Like, he’s going to places and somebody’s spending the money whether it’s insurance or whatever. So I feel like these are growing industries that the professionals in those industries that are serving the people are bailing out of, and I don’t really understand why.

Michael Silva [00:31:31]:
So depends who you talk to. You’ll get a few different answers. But a lot of it revolves around, unattainable expectations from employers.

James Kademan [00:31:41]:
Okay.

Michael Silva [00:31:41]:
Does cutting reimbursement. So, like, if I if I was had a business and I was selling a product, I could charge what I wanted. If I’m selling you this cup of iced coffee. Right? I could charge whatever I wanted for it. If you’re in contract with an insurance company, I can say, okay. I wanna sell you this cup of physical therapy services, and I wanna charge a $195 for that session. And they’re gonna say, no. If you want our clients, we’re gonna pay you $59, and you’ll take it or you won’t see our clients.

Michael Silva [00:32:10]:
Oh. So yeah. So 80 for most for most clinics, depending if you’re an in network with insurances or out of network or a cash base, this is slightly different. But if you’re if you’re primarily an in network physical therapist, you get paid what the insurance company will tell you, and you’d have no say. Every year, I’d have this fun conversation with the insurance companies. I’d call the On, say, hey. I’d like to renegotiate my contract. And they say, yeah.

Michael Silva [00:32:33]:
You’ll take what we give you, and don’t bother me. See you next year. Yeah. It’s crazy. So, fortunately, for us, we had a lot of self Call based, excuse me, cash based services. So we had another revenue stream, which I think made us, as successful as we were because we weren’t Call totally relying on that insurance based income. So you have your insurances are cutting reimbursement, and they’re making therapists jump through fiery hoops. Like, we have to document for every minute we spend.

Michael Silva [00:33:05]:
If you’re my patient and let’s say you had we’re we’re gonna call it ABC Healthcare as your insurance, because I don’t wanna use any real names. So ABC Healthcare says, okay, we’re gonna pay x amount of dollars for a physical therapy. You can’t use this code. You can’t use that code. We don’t cover for this. Make sure their co pay is this. I On in your coding, I wanna see for every minute that you spend with that person what you’ve done and make sure it’s billable. That’s literally what we have to do to justify your treatments.

Michael Silva [00:33:30]:
Wow. Unlike a doctor’s visit where you spend 5 minutes, they charge $350, they get it, and they just put a quick note in there. I don’t know I don’t I don’t know why it’s so different, but there’s other other, services On health care that are similar. So you’ve got this the cutting reimbursement, an increase in the documentation needs, and the justification for treatment. So now if you’re working for a practice that says, okay. For us to be able to make money, you need to see 18 patients a day. Now does she and that it’s a little bit exaggerating, but I know people that’s some companies that’ll have their full time therapy over 20 a day, which is not good health care. No.

Michael Silva [00:34:07]:
But the more the more to that, that profit has to be spread to different people. Right? So the bigger the company gets, of course, you can streamline the systems, become more efficient, but also everyone above you has to make a little bit of everything you do. And the margins are just getting less and less and less. So the demands are high. The stress is high. Sometimes it’s unrealistic what they expect the therapist to do and they, and it it’s hard. Like it’s a, it’s a physical job depending on what population you work with. And it’s emotionally draining.

Michael Silva [00:34:35]:
Like, if you deal with pain, like, literally for 25 years, I talked about pain and peep what people had to give up or what they thought the best conversations when they thought they had to give something up, but we fixed them and they didn’t. But, you know, they ended up in surgery. They had their knee replaced. They get their leg amputated. Like, all these huge life changing, physical events that we had to help people with, it gets a little bit exhausting. It’s rewarding, but it’s exhausting. So now you had all that administrative load, the cutting and reimbursement, and also there’s a ceiling. Like, if you work for a clinic, you’re a staff PT, then you can maybe run that clinic.

Michael Silva [00:35:11]:
And then for most smaller practices, if you have a couple sites, there’s really nowhere to go after that. Now if you big corporate, okay, maybe you can work your way up than your regional manager, district, whatever. And not many clinicians wanna climb that ladder. So they’re seeing, like, alright. This is gonna be it for the rest of my career, treating 20 patients a day, documenting 5 hours every night while I’m trying to relax with my family. Because, like, documentation is really time consuming. So I think that’s why a lot of the naysayers are saying it’s a dumpster fire because of those aspects. Got it.

Michael Silva [00:35:46]:
My take on it is, I think if you’re really big, big corporate and there’s some really big PT companies out there, they’re so efficient. You know, they’re at that scalable level where, you know, they can do more things and it’s just more efficient for them to do it. Or I think they’re really small private practices or where you’re gonna thrive. It’s that middle ground where we’re seeing a lot of the struggle.

James Kademan [00:36:08]:
Dang. That’s so crazy. Now I get it. Now I get it. Interesting. I have to dig into the vet world a little bit more because I don’t know if insurance gets involved near Not

Michael Silva [00:36:17]:
as much. There is insurance for vets, but it’s funny you mentioned that because I was just talking to someone else and the exact same, you know, the exact same conversation with me is in the business world. And, you know, it’s becoming corporate corporations are coming On, buying up these vet integrating all their systems, trying to become more efficient, but it’s becoming commoditized. Mhmm. I think it’s a little bit different when you deal with

James Kademan [00:36:37]:
pets.

Michael Silva [00:36:37]:
I’m a dog guy. Like, you better treat my pet really well, but I think it’s different doing that than dealing with the human, the sick human versus a sick vet. And I know one of my neighbors here who was a really successful vet, I think he had 2 or 3 offices, and he unloaded for a boatload of money, and he’s done. He’s like, I’ve had enough. Nice. I’m assuming there’s similar headaches in that we’re talking about, but just slightly different.

James Kademan [00:37:02]:
I would bet. I would bet. Yeah. I I can understand the emotional toll Yeah. That you you keep seeing illness or just negativity. And even if you can help them, that negativity is still the initial thing.

Michael Silva [00:37:18]:
Yes.

James Kademan [00:37:18]:
They’re coming to see you when they have a problem.

Michael Silva [00:37:21]:
Right.

James Kademan [00:37:21]:
It’s rare probably that they pop in and say, hey, everything’s cool.

Michael Silva [00:37:25]:
Right. So this is why sorry if I’m going off On a tangent, but this is why when I started my business, I really wanted to work with health conscious fitness focused type of clients. So we had really motivated people, and we didn’t have many people who were on their deathbeds or injuries that were so catastrophic that, you know, life would never be the same. It was more sports medicine type of things. But we also had so many cash based services and wellness type services. So people wanted to come in to get to use, like, our anti gravity treadmill. They wanted to come in for a recovery service or to use our massage therapist or for just for personal training. So we kept that positive energy therapy.

Michael Silva [00:38:00]:
And then you had the person who was just in the car accident, broke their leg coming in in the walker and trying to learn how to move their foot again. So it helped balance it off a little bit. But I think if people aren’t creative and they’re just in that, it is. It takes a a a certain type of person to be able to do that for many years. Like, I think of doctors, like oncologists. God bless them. How can you just treat, like, dying people day after day and you know they’re you can’t save everyone? Like, God bless them. Like, thank God we’ve got people like that because I I don’t know if I could do it.

Michael Silva [00:38:30]:
At least not for long.

James Kademan [00:38:31]:
No. I’m right there with you. Yeah. No. It’s one of those, like, there are certain jobs that I just glad therapy someone to do them. Right. I don’t know why there are people that are willing to do that, but

Michael Silva [00:38:42]:
But they’re good there.

James Kademan [00:38:44]:
Yeah. It’s got I suppose it’s like a I always think of the meter maid or someone like the parking meter giving you tickets and stuff like that. Like, I know that we need that. Whose personality was just like, that’s what I wanna do. I wanna be the guy that just ruins people’s day. Right. Just give them tickets. Yeah.

James Kademan [00:39:02]:
I mean, I get I understand we need it, so there’s not parking anarchy or anything like that. But on the flip side, somebody has to be like, yep. That’s my job.

Michael Silva [00:39:10]:
That’s it. And whether they love it or not, that’s their job. And that’s what they’re doing.

James Kademan [00:39:14]:
Yeah. It’s interesting.

Michael Silva [00:39:16]:
I get it. I get it. Can I ask you a question?

James Kademan [00:39:18]:
Yeah. By all means.

Michael Silva [00:39:19]:
So I’ve met a lot of people from all different professions. This is out of the blue, and I have any Sure. I don’t have any idea how you’re gonna guess this answer, but there are 2 professions that in my experience, I’ve met the happiest people in the world Oh. In my world.

James Kademan [00:39:36]:
Okay.

Michael Silva [00:39:38]:
So the 2 professions different professions. And we’re not talking about, like, high paying multimillion dollar people who are just happy because they don’t have to worry about paying their bills. These are, like, honest, hardworking people, but for whatever reason, what, 90% of these people, excuse me, 90% of these people that when they came into my office and I met them, were, like, the happiest humans I’ve ever met.

James Kademan [00:40:02]:
Wow. What do you what

Michael Silva [00:40:04]:
do you what what’s a guess? Just throw something out there. This could be fun.

James Kademan [00:40:07]:
I’m gonna guess, and this is because I’m in On.

Michael Silva [00:40:12]:
Bartender.

James Kademan [00:40:13]:
And then I’m gonna dare say massage therapist. Oh,

Michael Silva [00:40:18]:
not bad guesses because both of them bring joy to people. Right? Yeah. Mailman or postal worker.

James Kademan [00:40:28]:
Really?

Michael Silva [00:40:29]:
I know. And you remember the old term of someone’s going postal?

James Kademan [00:40:32]:
Going postal. That’s a thing.

Michael Silva [00:40:34]:
Yeah. I Call you. And, phys ed teachers. Oh, interesting. So the ones that I found that were the happiest, the the postal workers are the ones that walked, like, in the cities, and they just, you know, push their Call or they would park their car and they would walk. So they walked every day. And for some reason, I think just the amount of physical activity, they had just enough physical activity in their day to keep them healthy and thriving. They were also very social people.

Michael Silva [00:41:01]:
They interacted with their customers, and they tend to be really just fun and engaging. And then the phys ed teachers, just think about it. They’re all just playing games with kids. Yeah. Right? Depending on the level, they’re like playing soccer with kids every day. Like, how fun is that?

James Kademan [00:41:16]:
It doesn’t seem terrible.

Michael Silva [00:41:18]:
Does not seem terrible, but, yeah, for whatever reason that just sticks out when people have asked me questions like that over the past and those two professions, maybe that’s On to be my third, my, my third career. I’ll get into one of those.

James Kademan [00:41:33]:
Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah. I don’t know. That’d be tough. Just I’m thinking of dealing with what grades could you tolerate? Call although you’d be healthy, you’d also be deaf.

Michael Silva [00:41:46]:
And kids are changing too. So I think it’s gonna get a little bit tougher to deal

James Kademan [00:41:49]:
with. Oh, I have no doubt. No doubt. Absolutely. You had something I wanna ask you about. What was it here? The fifties method. Tell me about that.

Michael Silva [00:41:58]:
Oh, the 5 o.

James Kademan [00:41:59]:
The 5 o method. Okay.

Michael Silva [00:42:01]:
5 o. Yeah. So it’s, I might rephrase it because a lot of people it’s it’s hard to see it in writing. Yeah. But it’s basically the 5 pillars of how, I think people need to approach if they’re starting a business and to start their thought process. It’s like my 10,000 foot view, of what you need to do, and it’s revolving around. And then they all just have we use o words to to target each one of those 5 pillars, but it just helps people focus on, like, who’s their object, so their target audience. You know? Really think about who the object is, owning the processes in your business, you know, building the structure of the business.

Michael Silva [00:42:38]:
God, I gotta drink more of my coffee. I’m drawing a blank on the other o’s. But, basically, it’s the 5, and it’s it’s like a 12 page ebook that I have, and I’d be more than happy to share with anyone if they wanted it. But it’s, it just goes over the basics of starting a business, not going right to because I think people put the cart before the horse sometimes. But, like, who do you wanna serve? How are you gonna serve them best? How are you gonna over deliver on the value that you’re gonna give them? Right? Get get help getting the processes to make sure you’ve got a solid process because everything’s gonna be better at that point. And I can I can probably argue that it’s nothing for someone like you who’s been in business world and coach business owners? You know, Rita, let me know what you think, but it’s pretty it’s a basic level just to get people who, haven’t done it before to open their eyes a little bit about, you know, these 5 key pillars On my opinion.

James Kademan [00:43:28]:
No. That’s fair. That’s fair. I run into those people all the time. I just had a guy, looking to rent an office space, and he asked me he’s like, what is On, the difference between an LLC and an EIN? And I was like, oh, yeah. Yeah. That’s where you are. And I helped him describe it, but it was one of those, like, I haven’t had to answer that question in a very long time.

Michael Silva [00:43:55]:
Right.

James Kademan [00:43:55]:
And it was very interesting how he’s like, I looked online. I don’t get it. All these acronyms.

Michael Silva [00:44:01]:
Right. Right.

James Kademan [00:44:01]:
And it’s because Yeah.

Michael Silva [00:44:03]:
It’s funny because it’s it’s a conversation you’ve had and something you’ve known just because you’ve dealt with those two acronyms forever. But, yeah, for someone new, they just don’t know that.

James Kademan [00:44:12]:
No. No. There’s no I don’t know of any manual. And I yeah. We got audited by the state, I don’t know, 6 months, a year ago, something like that. And I remember joking with the lady joking, right, with the state lady. We got audited for employees and all that kind of stuff. So I knew we weren’t doing anything wrong.

James Kademan [00:44:33]:
So there’s no worry that way, but the amount of paperwork that they asked for was just insane. And to me, I’m not in the world of dealing with insurance and stuff like that. So paperwork just stacks up on my desk and I try to get somebody else to do it.

Michael Silva [00:44:44]:
Right.

James Kademan [00:44:45]:
So I said, you know, what’s interesting is that you guys are really good at telling people that they’re doing stuff wrong, but you haven’t told me how to do it right. So I feel like you’re you’re kinda in somewhat of a hypocritical role here. Because, like, if I’m doing something wrong, by all means, let me know. But then you gotta tell me because I’m gonna keep being in business. How do I do it correctly?

Michael Silva [00:45:11]:
Right.

James Kademan [00:45:12]:
Nowhere in a lot of situations and a lot of areas where people can go and say, this is how you’re supposed to do stuff.

Michael Silva [00:45:19]:
So why do you think they’re not they’re not telling you how?

James Kademan [00:45:24]:
Speculating. Yep. Because I don’t know for sure, but I would guess that in something like a government thing, there are so many people, they don’t know.

Michael Silva [00:45:34]:
Right.

James Kademan [00:45:34]:
The I mean, even just the the tax code itself. We’re talking 100 of thousands of pages. No one person can mentally or even physically read that many pages. No. So no one person knows. So if that’s the case, which it is, how can someone say necessarily for sure that you’re doing something wrong if they don’t even know

Michael Silva [00:46:00]:
How to do it right.

James Kademan [00:46:00]:
Of the rules of the game. Right? Right. I think it’s like if we were gonna play monopoly and the monopoly directions were 500,000 pages, be like, hey. When you land on park plays, this has to happen. Right. Like, well, are you sure? No, I don’t know. I don’t know. Is that On to check hundreds of thousands of pages versus just a sheet?

Michael Silva [00:46:22]:
I guarantee many people would not be blaming monopoly if that was the case.

James Kademan [00:46:25]:
Right. Right. But Call, here we are. Right. So it’s interesting because I asked her. I’m like, if I’m doing something wrong, just tell me great. Fantastic. How do I do it right? Because I thought that I was doing it right.

James Kademan [00:46:39]:
Right. And,

Michael Silva [00:46:42]:
I didn’t hear back. No. Too bad.

James Kademan [00:46:46]:
She said she said, we’ll let you know whatever, and I didn’t hear anything back. So I assume no news is good news.

Michael Silva [00:46:52]:
Right. So was was the if you’re not comfortable sharing, don’t share. But was was there a fee involved or a fine that you had to pay? No. It was not even a it’s not even like, oh, we’re making money if we don’t tell this guy. Nope. They just didn’t know the answer.

James Kademan [00:47:04]:
Nope. It was a it was a employee audit to make sure I didn’t have any subcontractors or anything like that.

Michael Silva [00:47:11]:
Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah.

James Kademan [00:47:11]:
I have all employees, so I’m like, I’m definitely paying taxes for the employees. So I didn’t and I gave them all the information from the payroll stuff. They asked for general ledger. They asked for I didn’t even know what a general ledger was. I’ve been in business for a long time. I looked at that document, and we’re talking pages. Right? It goes back years. And all I could think is, who in the world is looking at this? Because I’m Call business, tiny business.

James Kademan [00:47:39]:
Right? From a a scalable like, when I looked at the Facebooks of the world. Right? 1,000,000,000 of dollars. I can only imagine what their general ledger looks like. And this document was thousand pages. It was hundreds of pages.

Michael Silva [00:47:52]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:47:52]:
And I’m like, who are we paying at the state that’s going through this thing? And

Michael Silva [00:47:56]:
what is the

James Kademan [00:47:56]:
best case scenario for what they’re gonna find that I may be doing wrong? Best case to even justify this.

Michael Silva [00:48:03]:
Well, if you’re gonna collect taxes on one person, they claim was a subcontractor. Right?

James Kademan [00:48:07]:
Yeah. I guess I guess it was just a weird man alive. I get it’s same thing with the parking meter person. Right? Somebody has to have that job.

Michael Silva [00:48:17]:
Right.

James Kademan [00:48:18]:
But I feel like it takes a certain type of individual that’s odd, but whatever. I mean, that’s that’s the world we live in.

Michael Silva [00:48:27]:
Right. It is unfortunate.

James Kademan [00:48:29]:
Yeah. Call me when you are coaching people, is it a one shot, one meeting done, move on with your life? Or is this a routine once a week, once a month?

Michael Silva [00:48:42]:
Yeah. So I I find it hard. I I do have a service where they can just pay me hourly and act as a sounding board or if they just have one situation. And I’ve got a person on the other on the other coast in California that uses me, in that way. But what I like to do is if, you know, we figure out what’s going on with the business, what are their goals, you know, what are the things getting in the way of them meeting their goals, and they come up with a an a rough idea of how it what we need to do to get there. So it’s almost like as a physical therapist, I’m gonna assess, diagnose, and come up with a treatment plan, so I do the same thing for the business. So he says, diagnose, come up with a treatment plan, what’s your lowest hanging fruit? This is what I think we can do together. And then if it’s a 3 month plan, then they sign On for 3 months.

Michael Silva [00:49:23]:
And typically, depending on their needs and their location, and a lot of what I’m doing is virtual, so I don’t go in person as as much as I’d like. But there Call be a weekly weekly phone or virtual meetings. And then I do have someone who’s, pretty Michael. So a little bit of a drive, but he’s in New England that I go to. And every month, I do an on-site with him. And then it’s, through email and text or phone call support in between just being there. You know, this guy was just opened his doors in his business, so there was a lot of last second what about this? What about that? This person? How about this? So and I was there as a resource for him through the whole thing, which was great. I personally think it’s hard to make, you know, a change in a person, in a business On 1 month.

Michael Silva [00:50:07]:
You know, it’s hard to get people prepared to open a business and be the leader they wanna be and learn how to hire and fire and all those other things and set up the processes and the 5 o’s and all that. So I would love to work with businesses for 6 to 12 months, but I have the 3 month option. And if they wanna pay hourly, which is not, financially is not the best choice for them, because they’ll get a lot more value with a longer being. You know, some people are are scared On the to invest a certain amount into their business, even even though you can show them the numbers and what they’ll get in return. So I work with them, you know, if they On just sign up for the month, and then we can put that towards a 3 or 6 month package down the road. But that’s how I’d like to do it and really get to know the person. I wanna get involved. I don’t wanna get so emotionally involved in their business that I get the the emotional blinders On.

Michael Silva [00:50:53]:
Like, you would’ve it’s your own business, but I wanna make sure, like, I’ve got if I’m when I work with my clients, I’ve got buy and their success is my success. So I think of developing a good rapport with them, really getting to know them as the human. I think it takes time. So I would say 3 months would be my minimum ideal to work with a client.

James Kademan [00:51:13]:
Okay. Call, tell me, you mentioned burnout towards the beginning. Yep. How do you train or prevent your clients from getting burned out in their business?

Michael Silva [00:51:23]:
Right. So a lot of it comes down to depending on the person, a lot of it comes down to who who their ideal client is. So a lot of people experience burnout because they’re working with a a customer. We’ll call them customers because even in health care, they’re they’re paying a lot of money for the services. We’re gonna call them customers. So that’s not the ideal customer. They’re just taking everyone and anyone in the door, and they’re trying to be the the Walmart On where they can, you know, just do everything. And not and I don’t think you can do everything really Call, and I don’t think you should be I don’t think everyone should be your customer.

Michael Silva [00:51:57]:
I really think if you had, some an area of focus that you’re passionate about. So I talked to people, what are you passionate about? Like, we mentioned earlier, like, if you’re a golfer, you know, let’s let’s let’s work on that. Do you wanna work with golfers? So how can we get you more golfers in? Right? So then we talk about, the 5 o’s and how we can build a practice around the golfer. So I think that’s a big part. People just burn with that, and then just streamlining processes. Right now, AI is scary a little bit, but it’s I mean, in health care, it’s gonna become a a life changer for people because using AI to help do a lot of the documentation and a lot of the administrative load will help lower the cost. So if we can lower the administrative cost, maybe give the therapist a little breathing room to do some documentation using AI in a more efficient way. Now they’ve got that, you know, we talked about the, unrealistic demands of seeing so many patients and trying to get the paperwork done.

Michael Silva [00:52:52]:
And, you know, if we could get our therapist to not take their paperwork home and use better efficiencies or better scheduling or AI to help streamline all that so they can go home and actually spend time with their family, and they worked with the clients that they wanted, and they’re in a, you know, a a mutually a a culture that they’re they resonate with, I think burnout could be prevented for sure.

James Kademan [00:53:16]:
Fair. I love it. I got one more question for you, Michael.

Michael Silva [00:53:20]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:53:20]:
And this is one that I run into when I was doing business coaching. And I asked, I asked the psychologist the same question, so I’m curious about you. When you are meeting with someone, I imagine you have a set time, hour, 2 hours, whatever it is. Yep. And my experience was it took a little time for people to warm up, and then they got jabbering. But that clock was still ticking. Eventually, that clock hits the time when you gotta cut it off. Right.

James Kademan [00:53:49]:
I personally was terrible at cutting it off. A 1 hour session would turn into a 3 hour session, and I would barely say a word. How do you cut it off like that?

Michael Silva [00:54:01]:
On your team, man, it’s hard. It’s really hard because I think it really depersonalizes a relationship that I’m trying to build with my client. So, fortunately, right now, I can build in some buffer room. It’s not like when I had my clinic, and I was patient, patient, patient, patient stacked every 30 minutes. So I build in buffer room to allow that to happen. But if it, you know, if I if I have to go, I have to go, and then I just schedule another meeting. I’m I’m probably not the most efficient of coaches, and I probably over deliver. And and that’s my I can’t help but do that and provide more value than they’re paying for.

Michael Silva [00:54:36]:
So I don’t have a great answer. It’s hard. But I think just giving myself that buffer helps. And I haven’t I haven’t had too many situations where I’m like, done. Gotta go. Right. You can see it next week. Was that was that did I answer the question?

James Kademan [00:54:50]:
Absolutely. Yeah. You and I How

Michael Silva [00:54:52]:
do you do it if you don’t mind me asking?

James Kademan [00:54:54]:
I was the same way. I just ended up stop being doing business coaching.

Michael Silva [00:54:59]:
Really?

James Kademan [00:55:00]:
Yeah. Yeah. It was one of those, for me, I felt like I was trading time for money.

Michael Silva [00:55:08]:
Right.

James Kademan [00:55:08]:
On my world is a not great exchange. And I ran into a lot of clients, that would love to pay for advice, but they didn’t necessarily implement or take that advice.

Michael Silva [00:55:23]:
That’s frustrating. And so

James Kademan [00:55:24]:
they would still pay. They still pay. They still meet once a week, once a month, once a quarter, whatever. And you’d say at the beginning of the session, right, okay, here are your, let’s say, 3 things that we talked about last time, and here are the steps. Let’s talk about 1. Did you do that? No. 2, no. 3, no.

Michael Silva [00:55:41]:
And the biggest excuse excuse. I’m

James Kademan [00:55:44]:
like, I can’t have that.

Michael Silva [00:55:48]:
No. That’s frustrating.

James Kademan [00:55:49]:
Yeah. I mean, I’m happy to take your money. That’s cool. But I’m not I didn’t feel fulfilled. Right. Because there were a lot of people and then the the their struggles would keep going. I’m like, well, that’s no good because someone’s gonna be like, hey. How’s your business going? And they’re gonna be like, terrible.

James Kademan [00:56:07]:
And they’re gonna be like, aren’t you using that James guy for coaching? Like, oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He’s great. Suck. But it’s like, well, how can it be great if your business is doing terrible?

Michael Silva [00:56:16]:
Right. Right.

James Kademan [00:56:17]:
I didn’t wanna be connected to that. So then you start trying to get rid of clients and I’m like, you know what? This ain’t it’s just not my jam. I enjoy it. And I still do some pro bono stuff where I just help people out, especially new businesses. But for the most part, I don’t I don’t push it because I was I was terrible at the clock there. Terrible at the clock. Yeah. And it was just so that’s always a curiosity thing to me because I joked with the therapist I was, that I had actually on the podcast.

James Kademan [00:56:47]:
I joked because I’m like, you’re talking to people about suicide, crazy depression, anxiety, all this stuff that from my point of view is gonna be a higher level than selling widgets, their business. Right? Business is a big deal. Huge deal. But I’m talking to people about how to market or how to sell or how to deal with employees and stuff like that, which is not necessarily life or death.

Michael Silva [00:57:13]:
Right.

James Kademan [00:57:14]:
Somebody that is actively slitting their wrists. I don’t wanna be like, well, time’s up. I got another appointment in 5 minutes.

Michael Silva [00:57:19]:
Put a bandaid on that. We’ll talk about

James Kademan [00:57:21]:
it easily. Yeah. Just, and she was just like, there’s a clock when it dings session’s over.

Michael Silva [00:57:26]:
Yeah. That’s tough.

James Kademan [00:57:28]:
And I’m like, alright. Well, if you can do it.

Michael Silva [00:57:32]:
Then you should be able to.

James Kademan [00:57:33]:
Yeah. And I I still have a very hard time with that.

Michael Silva [00:57:36]:
Yeah. Same. Same. And you know what to real quick On that. So, you know, when I started my profession, it it was time trading time for money. Like as a service provider, it’s like, okay, how many patients did you see? This is what you expect you to see. Here’s your salary. And then when I get when I started the business, I was seeing more patients than ever to grow the business.

Michael Silva [00:57:54]:
But then I started enjoying reaping the benefits of being a business owner, and, you know, I wouldn’t I hadn’t worked Fridays for 9 years, and I, you know, I could go to have a lunch date with my wife. And and I still had revenue coming in, so I wasn’t as much of an exchange for time for money. So now now here I am reinventing myself, and I’m back to the time for money. So I do have a hard time with that. I’m still finding value, and it’s not overwhelming. And I don’t need to work as hard as I did, you know, 25 years ago when I started in the profession. But, yeah, it’s true. Like, exchanging time for money is tough and cutting people off when you’re trying to over deliver and provide value is tough.

Michael Silva [00:58:31]:
But thankfully, no one’s, in a mental health crisis with what I’m doing.

James Kademan [00:58:35]:
Leat least not yet. Hopefully, you can do that. I will say that when I was doing more coaching, there was very few things that felt as good as a client coming in and saying, James, I took your advice and holy cow. It worked. Amazing. That that that that that that that all the good stuff.

Michael Silva [00:58:54]:
Right.

James Kademan [00:58:55]:
Because I’m like, yay. No big deal. Think, like, what did it take me to learn that lesson that I taught them? It took me 10 years, probably $50,000 like Call this stuff. Right. Like, that was money well spent on their end, and they’re the ones that actually implemented it, took the advice. So kudos. High fives all around. It was fun.

Michael Silva [00:59:17]:
That’s awesome. That’s a win right there for everyone.

James Kademan [00:59:19]:
Yeah. Yeah. So I like that. Love that part, but it didn’t happen enough. I it was a lot of I didn’t do that. But I imagine with physical therapy, maybe there’s people that are just like, hey. Did you do your exercises? Yeah. No.

Michael Silva [00:59:32]:
It’s I mean, that’s unfortunately a big part On that for me. That’s why I was burnt because I was working with a population that didn’t wanna get better. You know? And not that they don’t need the help, but I was a sports medicine guy. I was a former athlete, so I wanna get people to thrive physical, and they’re coming in not doing anything, lying to me. A lot of them just didn’t wanna go back to work. So they were I hate saying it, but they were dragging on their recovery so they could have the summer off. We used to call we used to call it they saw doctor Summer off. That was the name.

James Kademan [01:00:04]:
Oh, I love that. That’s awesome.

Michael Silva [01:00:06]:
But, you know, so I didn’t I really didn’t enjoy that population. And when I started working so most of my career was in with runners, and they are the most motivated people on earth. So now when I started working with runners and my schedule was filled with some days a 100% runners, literally, like, 75 to 80% of my clientele were runners, you know, I spent more time saying, no. No. You don’t need to do that 10 times a day, just twice a day. Or you don’t need to do that 7 times a week. Just do it once a week. Like, they were so over motivated and doing too much.

Michael Silva [01:00:37]:
Trying to pull the reins on them was a total of different, mindset. But I enjoyed that more than people who complained about something, wanna change, but wouldn’t change. You know? It’s okay to want it, but you gotta change in order to make that happen. Right. So that’s why I had that’s why I I I think I survived in my On my profession as long as I dig, because I had great motivated clients. And, hopefully, with my business coaching, I’m getting that I think hopefully the universe is gonna provide that same type of clientele for me.

James Kademan [01:01:07]:
That’s the name of the game. Yeah. Yeah. I think it would be fun to work with people that were that motivated. Oh my gosh. Yeah. On all aspects of whatever. I mean, it’s just a more positive environment and they are their growth mode.

James Kademan [01:01:20]:
It’s way more fun to chat with people in growth mode.

Michael Silva [01:01:23]:
Absolutely.

James Kademan [01:01:24]:
I love it. Well, Michael, thank you so much for being on the show.

Michael Silva [01:01:27]:
Thank you, James. This was a fun conversation. You’re you’re a a you’re a great host, and you’re, easy to talk with. This was fun.

James Kademan [01:01:33]:
Well, it makes it easy when I have good guests, so I appreciate your time.

Michael Silva [01:01:36]:
Alright. Awesome.

James Kademan [01:01:38]:
Michael, where can people find you?

Michael Silva [01:01:40]:
So, Michael, and, my last name is s I l v a. I am from New England, and I sometimes forget to put r’s in words, but a lot of people think my last name is Silva, and I just call it Silva, but it’s not. So michaeljsilva.com. I’m not super active on social media, but I am on LinkedIn providing some, content on therapy. And you can look up Michael j Silva, consulting on LinkedIn as well.

James Kademan [01:02:04]:
Nice. I love it. This has been Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle, stories, and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. My name is James Kademan, and Authentic Business Adventures is brought to you by Calls On Call, offering call answering and receptionist services for service businesses across the country on the web at callsoncall.com. And, of course, the Bold Business Book, a book for the entrepreneur in all of us, available wherever fine books are sold. If you’re listening to this on the web, if you could do us a huge favor, give us a big old thumbs up, subscribe, and, of course, share it with your entrepreneurial friends, especially those that either need to visit a physical therapist or have a physical therapy business. Michael is their man. We’d like to thank you, our wonderful listeners, as well as our guest, Michael Silva, the business coach for physical therapists.

James Kademan [01:02:52]:
Michael, can you tell us that website one more time?

Michael Silva [01:02:54]:
Michaeljsilva.com.

James Kademan [01:02:57]:
Awesome. Past episodes can be found morning, noon, and night at the podcast link found at draw On customers.com. Thank you for joining us. We will see you next week. I want you to stay awesome. And if you do nothing else, enjoy your business.