Client Of The Month: Sam Jackson With Foundation PT

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Client Of The Month: Sam Jackson With Foundation PT

We have a special guest and we’re starting a new series. It’s going to be called Client of the Month. I’ve got a guest and his name is Sam Jackson. He’s been working with me. We’re going to just learn a little bit about his story, his company, some of his keys to success and where he’s going. He’s got a lot of cool things to share. Sam, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

How are you doing?

I’m doing well. It’s funny being on the show because I’ve read it for such a long time. It’s a full-circle moment.

Here we are. I remember I was right here in this spot when I did my first episode with Nathan and we did the same thing. It’s like full circle for me, too. I was one of Nathan’s first coaching clients. You were one of my first coaching clients. It’s cool. It’s cool to see us all grow. Tell me where are you from. Tell me your story. I want to hear more about you. Where you grew up and you on a personal side.

I’m originally from Greenville, South Carolina, and I made my way through the state to school at the University of South Carolina. I then went to PT school at the Medical University of South Carolina, which is in Charleston. I lived in Charleston for a couple of years and got married. My wife and I were there probably five years in total and then we had a son and started thinking through what the next steps would be for us. I had been a staff therapist for a couple of years.

I loved being a PT but wanted something more and was very interested in the business side of things. Once you have a kid, it can be a big motivator. You have to figure out what’s next. We started thinking through a lot of those questions, like where do we want to settle down? I want my wife to be able to stay home from work. I was going to need a salary increase later, figuring out all the different options. Eventually, I ended up with the idea of moving back home to Greenville, being closer to family and then trying to start my own clinic.

I like how you talked about having kids because it does change you, doesn’t it? When you don’t have kids, you’re a little bit more selfish. Life’s a little bit more about you and you don’t think about the impact that you have on the world as much. Once you start having children and you start recognizing the degree in which you’re going to impact this person’s life, things change. You start thinking about, as you mentioned, what am I all about? What do I want to stay in for? How do I want to impact the world? It starts making you think a little differently.

Motivation For Business Ownership

I would say, as we talk more about the business stuff, that was a big motivator, as I said, having kids. It’s also helped keep me in check and probably helped me have to learn to delegate more instead of doing things all on my own. My wife and I talked about it and when we were going to pursue this thing. It was like there might be some seasons where I’m going to have to work hard, stay up late and wake up early. I’ve had those seasons, but the long-term goal has been to own a business. Not to own a job that you have to do all this.

It’s to own a company and a business where you have a little bit more freedom. That’s been cool and probably helped me in the beginning when your tendency is to try to do everything to get checked a little bit. You’re like, “I’m doing this for my family and for my kids. Not so I can be an absent father who works all the time and is stressed all the time.”

That was me for a while. What I heard out of that, which is awesome, I heard that you have your priorities straight. You knew what was most important. You stayed true to that, and that helped you not only be a better father but also a better business owner.

A big part of it, too, is listening to these shows. If you’ve read too and while you’ve heard from different owners and a lot of people have the same stories of they start working, they open, and things start getting busy and then they get consumed by their job and reach this point of burnout. I’m grateful to hear stories like yours and those of a lot of other owners. You start to recognize some of those patterns of, “When I stepped out a treatment, that’s when everything changed.” I went into ownership. Everybody says, “You will eventually have to step out of treatment.” I know that’s going to be hard, but you have to trust the process. You got to follow the path that’s been laid. That’s been a helpful thing to learn from the mistakes and wisdom of others.

Transitioning From Treatment To Leadership

Let’s talk about that a little bit. You mentioned that it was hard. Tell me about why it was hard. What were some of the things that you battled with internally? Knowing that you should step out of treatment. What was so hard about it? What was the battle that you were having about stepping out of the treatment?

Probably specifically for stepping out of treatment is you built this business. In my case, I picked up my family. We moved. We made some huge financial commitments in a lot of different ways, and then I treated everybody and did everything. You feel that simple as if control like it’s going to stop with me. Having to let go of that, trusting the team, and realizing that the job isn’t to do everything on your own, but you have to learn how to be a leader, learn how to help your team grow, and trust them. Maybe a little bit of a mindset shift on what my purpose is was with the company.

Sam, how long have you been in business?

I opened officially in February of 2023. I should have mentioned that.

You’re already talking about being a leader and all that stuff. What are you nuts? That’s amazing. Tell us about your company.

The company is Foundation Physical Therapy in Greenville. You hit on it, so we open in February of 2023. How the company, my journey as an owner and in terms of hiring different staff and everything, I pretty much did everything for the first 5 or 6 months. Probably in July ’23, I hired a part-time admin front desk, which was amazing. That was like a no-brainer not having to be the one doing all the paperwork and collecting all the payments.

That was a huge boost to me. I got to the point where I knew I needed to hire another PT. That was when I reached out to you to get some coaching. I was like in over my head when it came to hiring an APT and a lot of different questions about that. I hired my first PT in September. Honestly, with some of your guidance, I was interviewing some different candidates and had a couple of good ones. Can you keep one of the good ones on the line and see if she could potentially start later? I was like, “Seems like a good idea. Let’s do it.”

I talked with her, and we talked about, “What about starting a couple of months from now?” She agreed, so she started at the very end of November. I hired my second PT in December. My wife and I had our second son, so that was a crazy time. There were also a few deadlines, the whole first year of moving, a new baby, and another new baby on the way. There’s a lot of stuff going on outside of work and inside of work.

After that, I had another PT on the line. One of my friends from PT school and he agreed to start in February. The third PT in February and the fourth PT in July. Now, pretty much every time I hired a PT, I tried to step out of treatment a little bit more and a little bit more to where I’m treating like 3 to 5 hours a week. Most of the time, if it's patients I want to treat or if a doctor needs to get somebody in. I’ll try to see somebody.

It’s freaking amazing. Tell me about the space that you’re in now and where you’re at as far as being able to fill that space. What are your plans are over the next 3 to 6 months?

Business Growth And Hiring

We’re in a good location. A good spot, but we’re essentially growing out of it. Square footage-wise is probably good but it’s two stories. No elevator or anything. It was just not made for a PT clinic. It gets loud and crowded. It gets to the point where you’re getting busy. My first instinct would have been, “It’s time to go and look for another clinic to try to see about opening up another location.” I’m grateful for coaching for you and some of your advice, which was, essentially, as long as you can stay under one roof like the better thing to be.

I still had a lot of stuff I needed to do as an owner before I opened another clinic. The idea of opening another clinic is scary. The idea of moving to a bigger clinic is exciting and you can look at the numbers. You can see how things would improve like now. I’m already a functioning company or the company is already functioning.

I started looking for new buildings and am in the process of trying to get under contract with a bigger space that would double our or square footage, be all one level, increase parking, and solve a lot of problems from the clinical side of things. That is something that’s that is crazy. It’s thinking about where I was before when I was in Charleston working full-time and trying to figure out, “Am I going to rent? Am I going to buy? Where am I going to be? Can I even make it as a company?” Now, when you’re looking for a place and you have a little bit more confidence and in myself as a leader and the business as a whole, like, “We’re going to we’re going to keep seeing people.” I’d like to hire another higher other PT. I don’t think we could fit one in our current space. That’s been a cool thing.

We’ve been working together and I’ve just been amazed at your growth personally, professionally and your company. I wasn’t able to write all that down, but I heard that you’ve hired four PTs in 2024. You have outgrown your space. Completely 95% or 97% has stepped out of treatment and you’ve got a new location that you’re going to be moving into.

Yes.

You also had a baby.

Also, a house. Lots of big steps.

It’s just amazing.

The first time we talked, even on our call, you said, “You’ll be shocked at how quickly things can grow.” It seems like something that’s easy to say, but I didn’t know how much I believe you then. Now, when I take the time to look back a year and within a year, I hired four PTs, which is crazy how exponential things can be.

You’re at four PTs, plus herself and you have one admin, correct? A virtual assistant that you have on your team as well.

I just started with the virtual assistant.

Now, we have the VA team. You're gearing up for something cool. I did want to get into your company's purpose and values, but tell me a little bit about that. Tell me about the culture that you’re trying to create, a foundation, what your purpose is, and what your values are. Tell me about how that’s evolved over 2023.

Purpose And Values

It’s still evolving. When I think about that in terms of coaching lenses and starting the program, something that was helpful was there are times when I tell you, “I need to get my purpose and values down.” You’re like, “Not right now.” I was like, “I won’t.” When I started hiring people and maybe stepping out a treatment where you’re like, “You need to hone in on that.”

Our purpose is to help others live life to the full and then we have different values, excellence, gratitude, accountability, and grit. It’s been cool to have the values and to use that as culture building and to have those to talk about them at team meetings. Even if there is something that’s going on with one of my physical therapists, if something happens, it’s cool to be able to fall back on those values and to be able to say like, “That’s not humility.” Humility is another one.

That’s not putting others before ourselves. That’s not being grateful for the opportunities we have. That’s not doing things with excellence. Let’s get to the bottom. How can we solve that problem? It’s been a cool framework and maybe I heard you guys say this too. It allows you to replicate yourself and my hopes for the clinic and who we are treating.

One thing I love about being in Greenville, where I grew up, is that you’re getting to treat family, friends, and my friends’ parents and all that. There’s also an added burden of responsibility if you mess up or one of my family members or friend’s family members comes to PT and they don’t have a good experience. It’s got my name. I’m the owner and it stops with me. It’s a cool way to try to continue to cultivate a culture.

You’re responsible for that man. You’ve done so much. What are some of the things that you feel like you’ve learned? What were some of the biggest lessons or the biggest insights and a-has you’ve had over in 2023 that led to some of the success you’ve been having?

Even if I took it back to before, we were cooking together. I was working with another coach. It was the first time that I work with the coach. He was more of a productivity coach, but was working on me with some business thing. I think it was like a Gary Keller example, but to summarize, it was like if you follow a plan or follow the past. You can you can reach goals.

One of the examples is I think about the people you know who would run a marathon. We’ve all probably had patients that would be 60 years old and running a marathon or 50 years old. I’m thinking of one and it’s like, how do they do that? It’s because they follow the plan. In week one, you run one mile. Two, you slowly bump it up.

You do the little things every day that you’re supposed to be doing and then you look back and you see all the progress you’ve made. I feel like that’s what I’ve done. I don’t look at 2023 and think that I’ve done something amazing or incredible. It was that idea of following the path or following the plan, maybe with a little plot activity. You plot along. You do the next right thing and then you can look back and see all the progress you’ve made.



That’s beautiful. It’s not an exciting thing. Follow the plan and you’ll be successful. It’s like, but what’s the secret? There is no secret. The way that I experienced you and the clients that do well with us is they just follow this framework if they step out of treatment and work on the business. They delegate, have a team meeting, work on their marketing process, and work on their own boarding process. They train their team. They track their metrics, meet with their biller and meet with their account. There are a few other ones, but if you do all those things consistently.

I tend to use inflammatory language, but I’m not worried about your feelings. I’m not worried about what’s convenient. Follow the plan anyway, do the boring things, and make them the priority. Before you know it, you have four therapists and your clinic is full of patience. We’ve worked together. I know you’ve done a lot of work, but it’s not like, “We just implemented Adam’s four-step marketing plan and it got all the patients.” “We just implemented atoms two-step recruiting system and all the PTs came flying.” You just did the little things and everything lines up. I think that’s beautiful.

That’s good. As you mentioned, there's a team meeting where there are a lot of simple things like that. I was like, “Adam’s successful. He’s worked with successful owners. If this is what successful owners do, then we need to do a team meeting and try to start off on the right foot.” Afterwards, I started saying, “This is important.” I can’t imagine not having that team meeting now at the time the staff and get to work on stuff. That was maybe a little bit of humility, and I recognized that I didn’t know at all. I want to follow some wise counsel from people who have done things before me and followed it.

Delegation And Stepping Out Of Treatment

Keys to success, what I’m hearing for you is you mentioned delegating more and step out of treatment. That was a big one that you mentioned, which I agree with both of those and then do the little things, i.e., create the plan and just follow the plan. Not your feelings. Not your emotions. What do you do for fun?

I love spending time with my family. To be fair, it has been pretty crazy. I work at a time for fun. I hit on it earlier, but I did try to prioritize family and church. Those things that are important, but I haven’t had a whole lot of time for fun. I love spending time with people, playing pickleball, traveling in South Carolina football. Fantasy Football.

We’re going to be approaching Q4 soon. How do you see your company ending out the rest of the year? Have you started thinking about what your company look like in 2025? Have you thought about what your vision is?

Probably not yet. Not too much yet. The plan is to see if we can close on this new location. That would be a big part. That would probably be transitioning there in early 2025. If it’s not there, trying to find another space that we can continue to grow into and other things that. Building out like a clinic director role. I’m still the clinic directors, even though I don’t treat that much, but I don’t like delegating that to somebody working on processes and procedures and onboarding.

There’s lots of stuff that can be worked on. It’s always funny when people like, “If you’re not treating, what do you do?” I’m like, “There’s a lot to do.” In ending 2024, it’s finishing the year strong. It’s cool because probably just now is the time when investing back into the business. Now looking at profit and loss statements at the end of the month, it’s like, “Now there’s some profit there. I can see some of the fruit of all the hard work.” Probably just making up some money and making some money for the rest of the year and then going and investing that immediately into the new building again.



Starting With The End In Mind

I love the stage you’re in. You get most things pretty good in your company. Decent little marketing plan, the sales process, team meetings, onboarding built out, and get some policies and procedures. Everything’s still a little chaotic, but it’s there. Once you commit to putting a director in place and being like, “Here’s what I’ve built. It’s not all perfect, but it’s good enough for now.” You’re able to not only delegate patient care but delegate all of the day-to-day things to where you not only have objective time. You have the mental capacity to dive deep into your purpose and values.

Let’s go all the way back to the beginning and go deeper into the purpose and values. Go deeper into the sales process, the marketing plan, and the onboarding process. Bulletproof it. Once you get through that and you build up the A team behind you, now you can get into the place where you’re ready to scale.

Not in a dictator type of way, but in an empowering way so that you can stay more free to focus on the vision and the plan. You can be more of the big-picture thinker and instead of the doer. You get sucked down into the business and you can’t see. You think you’re digging a ditch and you’re looking down at the ground the whole time and keeping your head down. You might look up and realize like, “I’m not even digging the ditch in the right direction. I’m supposed to be going the other way.”

Sam, you’re standing outside the ditch, keeping people in line and setting the cones up. You’re going to make more progress that way. That’s a CEO skill that’s hard to learn. It’s just amazing that you seemed to naturally have that knack to where you seem to not let emotions get entangled in your decision-making process. You just follow the guidance and the plan. That’s the key to your success. I’m super impressed with you. You’ve been killing it.

Investment Mindset

Thanks. Wouldn’t be where I am without you. I’d say that the other thing about those as we’re talking about that is and I know you see it all the time. That is just how, like as PTs, we do not have any investment mindset. I’m the same way, but we’re all not wanting to delegate. There are tons of money and fears, and I do not want to make that higher. Not wanting to outsource something. That would be something that I would tell people.

It's like, you have to start viewing things as investments. Hiring another PT or a front desk is an investment. If you can stay out of the realm of where you’re checking your own bank account and focus on building the business, that could be helpful. I was able to do that because we moved back in with my parents. We sold our house in Charleston and rode the COVID wave up. I’m probably naturally more conservative guy, but in my head it was like, “I’m going to get it a year where I’m not going to worry too much about that and just invest.”

Once you get some of the tools, like the proforma and you start seeing how much if you invest. If I go from just myself and another PT to four PTs, how much more can you make and profit margin and how does your profit margin increase? You start feeling confident about making those decisions, such as investing in another PT and investing in a full-time patient care coordinator.

Reinvesting Profits Back Into The Business

It makes you get more excited about it instead of fearful, like, “This is going to take all my money.” No, this is going to give you so much more. What I took away from that, Sam, is if you’re going to open up a practice or try to grow a practice. You’ve got to be willing to cut down on some of the personal expenses like moving in with your parents. You don’t need an $80,000 truck. Get a used vehicle and pay it all. Get things back down to manageable.

When you start to see a little bit of profit margin in your practice, don’t take it. Keep it in the business. Reinvest it back into the business until you can grow something that can give you the income that you’re looking for. If you’re the owner where you’re at like 1.5 FTEs and you’re making like $5,000 or $6,000 a month in profit. That’s not enough. You’ve got to keep going. You got to get to $20,000 to $30,000 a month in profit.

The biggest mistake I see owners make when they hit that tipping point is they get to 1 or 2 FTEs in their practice and think, “I’ve made it. This is it.” They turn off that investment mode and get into saving mode. No, you’ve got to keep going. You’re almost there, but you got to keep going. Good stuff.

There’s probably going to be an owner or two who’s going to be inspired by your story. What you do is amazing. If somebody who’s reading wanted to shoot you a DM or an email, how would they get in touch with you?

You could email me Sam@Foundation-PT.com. Email me there. You can find me on LinkedIn and we can connect for a phone call. I enjoy talking with people. It’s funny that you asked about a new owner because I talked with a guy who’s starting up. That was good practice for the show. Anybody can reach out if they want to hear more about my experience or want to connect in any way. I’m happy to.

Important Links

• Sam Jackson
• Foundation Physical Therapy
• Sam@Foundation-PT.com
• https://Calendly.com/adamrobin/dr-adam-s-30-minute-connection
  



About Sam Jackson