Will Power
Being a physical therapy entrepreneur can be unbelievably challenging at times. From patient care, to running the businesses, to balancing a family, it’s no wonder many entrepreneurs feel overwhelmed and burned out. Each Tuesday, join Will Humphreys, a retired private practice owner and medical entrepreneur, as he introduces game-changing leadership concepts and interviews other successful leaders in healthcare. If you want to start, scale, or sell your outpatient physical therapy business, this is for you. Together not only can we increase our income, impact and freedom, we can build the largest network of healthcare leaders in the world at the Will Power Podcast.
Will Power
This is The Biggest Financial Mistakes Private Practice Owners Make with Keith Campagna
Are you running a private practice but struggling with financial management? You’re not alone. Many healthcare professionals find accounting, metrics, and financial strategy overwhelming—but mastering these areas is the key to business growth and long-term success.
In this episode, Will and Keith break down the most common financial mistakes private practice owners make and how to shift your mindset for sustainable profitability. They discuss:
- Why financial awareness is crucial for business succes
- How technology can provide clarity and forecasting power
- The key financial metrics every practice owner must trac
- How coaching can help bridge knowledge gaps in business finance
- The mental shift needed to go from clinician to business leader
- The future of accounting in private practice
If you're a PT, healthcare provider, or private practice owner looking to grow your business and take control of your numbers, this episode is packed with insights you can’t afford to miss.
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Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode, Rockstars. Today we've got Keith Campagna, who's the growth officer at a company called Accounted For. They are specialized in the physical therapy space to help all things accounting. So before you turn off the episode by hearing that most of you are like I don't want to hear an episode about accounting, you are going to, I promise, love this episode. I will tell you from personal experience, rock stars, that my journey in changing my mindset was significant around this thing called accounting.
Speaker 1:So, whether you're afraid to admit that you don't understand what a P&L is, or whether you are fully aware of your numbers and you think you mastered it, if you're looking to sell one day, I want you to pay attention to this episode because we're going to be talking about the mindset that accompanies growing our business through our accounting. We're going to compare it to a conductor creating music and how accounting and the financial piece is the theory of it, but together we can create the art and be controlling our future together in our businesses. It's a very fun episode. Keith is an amazing guest. Enjoy the show, All right, Keith. So listen, man, we were talking about growth and you were talking to me about what you think limits PT, OT, SLP leaders from growing their practices. Can you talk a little bit about what you were saying earlier about what's limiting them?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think for anybody and I think it extends beyond private practice, I think for anybody who's trying to build on a dream or a vision they have a sense of instinct, gut instinct, that they follow and it's worked and it got them where they were. But what really helps businesses grow is knowing their numbers, and what we were talking about was this idea that, like in all of the challenges inside of the private practice space, what seems to be lying underneath it is just an inherent unawareness of where are my numbers, because every practice owner will that I know you've met and I know I've met. They're really smart people. They're super, super intelligent. But there's this thing about accounting where people are a little bit like keep the numbers away from me. I don't know. I have an accountant. They should be handling everything. But at the end of the day, that's not the truth and that's what we're doing at Accountant 4. We're exposing that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think, rockstar, as you're listening to this, I want you to really dial in, because many of you are listening going. I already know my numbers. We're not talking about production numbers. We're not talking about patient visits. We're talking about the numbers that, if we're being honest, you may not understand as much as you would like. Or, like Keith said, you might be giving to somebody else and having them in charge.
Speaker 1:And I will tell you, keith, in my business networking experience, having been with hundreds of companies over the years in and out of PT, the number one thing I hear, when people go south like their business almost loses everything, is because they've delegated their financial aspects to a fractional CFO or someone that they just literally put over there so they can go back to their work. And then, all of a sudden, one day their cash flow starts shifting if they even know what that is and then their accounts start. What they notice is when their accounts start dropping. That's right. Conversely, conversely, I've got clients who are listening and you know who you are guys I'm thinking of specific names of people who are probably listening to the show who wake up every day and they look at their cash flow in their bank account, and if it varies by a small margin, it's enough to send them into a mindset where it ruins their day.
Speaker 1:So, there's extremes. You've got one extreme of like delegate forget. You have this other extreme of like not knowing how to read the numbers in your accounting so that you're reactive to every minor difference. So, like dude, just talk to me. I feel like I've said a lot Like talk to me about what comes to mind when I say that. Well, what comes to?
Speaker 2:mind is that we almost have to take a step outside of the private practice industry and talk about accounting for just 30 seconds. I promise to all of the rock stars out there this will not put you to sleep, Keith is going to make it entertaining.
Speaker 1:He can literally make anything entertaining to me. Let's do it, let's do it.
Speaker 2:So if you look at the accounting industry and you go online and you searched crisis in accounting, you'll find out that in 2020, the industry that oversees the certified public accountants identified 75% of the certified accountants in this country hit retirement age in 2020. Wait, how many 75%? What the crap. That's insane. If you think about the industry, what comes to mind? Old white dudes and taxes, right, two things that people aren't overly excited about.
Speaker 2:Now, something that I know from being in the world that I grew up in from a software advancement position accounting is laggard.
Speaker 2:They simply manage taxes and that's what everybody knows about accounting for. It's why accounts work four and a half months in the beginning of the year, because nobody does any work until it's too late, and then the accountant's got to clean it all up, and then they take two months off to figure it out how to fix all that and then they re-kick their business development right. But at the end of the day, all of these accountants are leaving the industry and all of their human capital is going with them and, with that being said, they're losing their touch with the world. The business owners, the entire software industry is trying to fix a CPA problem, and nobody very few people are addressing the small business owner problem, and that is that business is way more than just tax from an accounting perspective, it's way more than taxes. It's cash flow, and maybe one out of 10 business owners understand the difference between cash flow and profit, let alone EBITDA or all the other metrics that come into play when growing a business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man. So that is a huge insight is that all of these experts are leaving the industry and the way that it was traditionally worked it worked was broken anyway. I went through in my businesses um five different CPAs in my timeframe and I have actually done a number of combinations and bookkeeping and all these elements, but for me from personal experience, rock stars. Everything went from like workable to incredibly productive and profitable. When I got that, I still don't know everything about numbers, but I'm not afraid of my P&Ls. I know the 20% that I have to know to manage and uphold my bookkeepers and I wouldn't consider myself an expert, but compared to many small business owners, they might think I am because I can talk about cash flow and some of these terms. So talk to me, keith, from your perspective. How do you help your PT owners and or other business owners understand their metrics? What do you do that's different around all that?
Speaker 2:Well, there's two things. One there's this software everyone's heard of called QuickBooks right, yeah.
Speaker 2:And the funny thing about QuickBooks is that eight out of 10 small businesses use it, but very, very few of them are actually using it. Again, because it has to do with accounting and there's a real mental block as it relates to getting close to accounting. So the data inside QuickBooks is not very accurate. If you think about bookkeeping, it inherently takes place in the past. So, as a small business owner who's got a billion things on their mind, their best chance at looking at accounting is outdated information based off of tax reporting purposes.
Speaker 2:What we do differently is we actually take the data out of QuickBooks. We refilter it and put a bunch of rules in our software, then put it back into QuickBooks. So youilter it and put a bunch of rules in our software, then put it back into QuickBooks. So you, the business owner, you don't have to learn new technology. But we give data integrity to QuickBooks, which takes you out of the bank account math business the one that freaks out everyone that you'd mentioned right and we take and it gives you clarity, it gives you current state cashflow. I know my revenue is coming in, I know my expense is going out, but the key will. We all have technology, but it doesn't mean that we're using it. What we do is we leverage again our proprietary tech to build forecasting trends and projections and we coach the clients on a very fractional, based off of their need, basis on what to do with the numbers. And that's the big gap. That just is what we felt, we fell into literally as we entered the private practice industry.
Speaker 1:How did you guys enter the private practice industry? Like what led you to that, just like anyone else.
Speaker 2:Well, references like the, the, the relationship inside this industry is different and, for what it's worth, my background is in software sales. I've worked in every industry and every size company. I've talked to the owners of the people that work in there. I've never experienced any like private practice. Simply put, my co-founder, sean he was working as a business development partner for an accounting firm and him and three of the partners were at a table and a private practice owner said, pointed his finger at all three of them, one at a time, and asked where his money was, and not one of them could tell him the answer. And so Sean decides to meet with the guy to understand it. And, sure enough, sean recognizes this opportunity and, just like you and I would, over the weekend he goes out and builds code, because that's what Sean is about?
Speaker 2:No, he never did it before. He literally learned the code to build this process that allows us to clean the actual data and provide the going forward metrics. So you know what to do if you want to improve your numbers or you know there's a ready for this one. You know there's a three month payroll or three payroll month coming up. How do I accommodate that? Besides crap my pants as a small?
Speaker 1:business owner. It's another way of saying that is doing nothing, because you see it coming and you're like, well, cross my fingers, let's just see how it happens.
Speaker 2:Right. Imagine having, instead of just your revenues which, again, this is a gap that we fill with the industry instead of having all of those metrics that come in from the insurance providers and how much reimbursement you're getting, you have to assign your expenses to this. So, when you combine your cost and your revenue, well, guess what? Now you know your financials, and that's the part that I think you were mentioning. That makes you much more powerful. It's that simple.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and I have so many questions. It's hard because, rockstars, there's like eight episodes built into this that we could talk through right now. But I will tell you this that in my world that when we got to the point where I was able to understand those metrics again, it was an accelerant, I mean. But it's so much harder, I think, when you don't have a financial background, that a lot of PT owners, ot owners, they just think, man, there's something wrong with me. I honestly feel there's a lot of imposter syndrome going on around their accounting numbers and it can be an incredibly overwhelming world for people to get into because it can just be this scary piece of it. So what would you say would be a baseline focus for listeners who maybe, who almost, are there, like, what would you say the essential reports are and why they should? They should like, pay attention to those reports?
Speaker 2:yeah. So really good question. So, the things that we do we offer a free quickbooks assessment, so I'll just share with you what we do and then your, your rock stars, can basically go about doing it. If they want to talk more about it, well then we'll see where that goes. But, all things considered equal, we look at P&L, we look three years back and we want to see macro trends. Yes, my revenue grew, but why? Yes, my revenue declined, but why?
Speaker 2:One of the things that sticks out more often than not is marketing. Numbers will go up, costs will go up, but revenue doesn't. What happened there? Because people don't take the time to understand the numbers. They don't realize what's going wrong.
Speaker 2:We had a client who literally, oh, it looks like you're spending $3,000 a month in marketing. What's your ROI? I don't have any. And then they stopped paying $3,000 a month in marketing. What's your ROI? I don't have any. And then they stopped paying $3,000 for something that wasn't getting them an ROI. Well, like $36,000 back into your bank account, boom, right. So there's the P&L, there's the balance sheet, right, what's it look like right now? And what can I look at from a labor? Like, labor is the big one. What does my labor look like in percentage of total cost and if you're above 55%, why? It doesn't mean it's bad. That's a key thing. Numbers inherently aren't bad. It's the thing that got you there and the context, which is what comes when you work with somebody who can help provide context.
Speaker 2:And then the other one is the third. One would be like a vendor management report. Try to figure out where you're putting your money to. You might not realize like, again, just as an example, we've had clients where we've uncovered $20,000 plus of paid subscriptions that were of no use whatsoever, just purely outdated money going out. So if you can keep an eye on where the trends are, it could peak to start curious why did it get there? Or why is it working? And then you can double click on it and then, with the vendor management report, it gives you perspective on how to reduce your expenses. We've had a client where their payroll vendor just decided to start doubling their charges, their fees. Just double their fees. No conversation, no, nothing, if not for the bookkeeping service, right? Why did this double? I don't know. Boom, go back, save six grand, get six grand back.
Speaker 1:You said something really powerful in the end. That really highlights the balance, in my opinion, of what the owners should be responsible for versus the accounting experts that they work with, because, again, it's kind of like a medical billing company, in the sense that PT owners don't have the knowledge base, so they sacrifice this knowledge and just give it like a monopoly to the person that they're outsourcing it to, and that lack of balance creates issues. Accounting is the same way, but I also sent I also, at the beginning of this episode, talked about clients I've had who are holding every detail of their accounting themselves, and what I've seen in that case is they get so granular that they start worrying about these really small decisions because they've put so much time and energy to find them. So you need an accounting group that's going to bring everything to your table and give it the right gravitas, the right emphasis of everything going. Hey, here's a subscription differential. This is low-hanging fruit. We can just cancel it if you want. Or, hey, your labor cost was at this percentage, which, by the way, rock stars.
Speaker 1:That was the number of all the accounting numbers that changed my world, because I got gross and net income. I understood in general okay, I'm making more money than I'm spending, and that kind of concept. But the number one thing that I figured out with the help of a great accounting solution who's no longer even doing it anymore was the percentage of payroll to income. How much do I spend on my payroll based on my income? And that became the North Star metric financially.
Speaker 1:That led all of my decision-making because, like you said I'll rephrase it information leads to inspiration. Where you guys come in and I would say all of us need to have, if we don't have this solution is the information from the financial perspective that leads to the inspiration of the decision making. And the most key of those was the second thing you mentioned for me, which is understanding that payroll to income piece. Just a more personal curiosity how do you work with your clients around that number, like, like, what does that discussion even look like? Do you bring that to them and say, hey, you're paying 80% of your income to, you know, to payroll Like, what do you guys do to support them in that?
Speaker 2:Oh, hell, yeah, it's the number one. It's the number one obstacle yes, and it's the number one opportunity Opportunity Right, thank you, and it's the number one opportunity Right, thank you. Right, like at a very base level, what we're talking about is how obviously unaware a private practice owner is about their business not their profession, but their business because they don't know that. They're probably aware that it costs a lot of money to pay people, but they don't know that they're. They're probably aware that it costs a lot of money to run to pay people, but they don't know how it falls into the actual landscape, the whole landscape of the business.
Speaker 2:And something you mentioned about the clients that are, or contacts of yours that are, in the weeds you mentioned, they're like stuck on all these details. That's the thing that can get you wrapped up I say wrapped around the axle, right, like you have to see business as a game and this is where the coaching comes into play. There's an offense and a defense, and if you're paying attention on this little thing here and you don't pay attention to the labor that you're spending, what's the point? The big win is in the labor. You know that the second, next win may be very well in how do I streamline efficiencies, how do I reduce my cost in certain areas by bringing in technology which, by the way another episode Our industry is so young in accepting technology that the opportunity and this is what brings us at account we're like super pumped about being at PPS and helping.
Speaker 2:It's just this notion of there's so much opportunity, because it's not like you can't figure out how to get more money. It's not how you. You can't figure out how to recruit, you can't figure out how to improve a patient's experience. All of that's out there. You just have to figure out how to align the pieces in with the business that you have and then, like you, you'll get better results.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's one of the reasons I have the podcast, because for me, I want to be able to bring solutions like you guys to the table, because there's so many services and technologies that people just don't even know about. We are the very youngest in all of healthcare, you know quick, just like highlighted, that is when I talk about virtual assistants on my company's end of people, they're very much like oh, tell me more. If I go to a non-PT event, if I go to dentists or anyone else, they're like yeah, I've already got my. They've been doing it for 10 years. And we on like AI, we're early adapters of all these things.
Speaker 1:But that's why there's so much opportunity for owners. It's always like well, how are we going to make greater profits with declining reimbursements? It's like well, we have this whole efficiency realm that we haven't even tapped into, notwithstanding baseline services like yours that are just like oxygen that you have to have, that people don't even do that appropriately. There's so much opportunity for growth. I have friends who have sold 10, 20 locations After they stayed on for a while. They're starting more locations. Why? Because it's such a profitable. Ptot is such a profitable industry. It's so easy to make money when you've got the right solutions in place, and it comes down to dollars and cents, like you guys do, it accounted for.
Speaker 2:And you used the term imposter syndrome earlier, so I want to bring that back, because one of the things that I got to enjoy I get to enjoy is this I'm not a trained PT, ot, I'm certainly not an accountant, so I get to walk into the industry eyes wide open, ears wide open, mouth shut and I just listen, and the thing that I keep realizing and learning is that it takes a different mindset to go from a clinician to an owner, to an entrepreneur, to an exeter, to maybe even coaching, going back into the ecosystem. Right, it really requires a mindset and with each shift comes the imposter syndrome. I don't know what. I don't know, I feel worse, I'm not going to move towards it and it's not easy. It's not easy.
Speaker 1:No, it's over. I will tell you this. I think most people who are listening to this show rock stars. I'm hoping you're already aware of these stages of mindsets. I'm hoping that's not a new topic because if it is new, quickly you go from independent owner, where you're exchanging time for money, to where you start developing a team and systems and processes and eventually become a business owner where you exchange people and processes for money. This is all rich dad, poor dad, stuff and then you go eventually, the end goal being that you're an investor in your own company where you're exchanging money for money and other people are running your business. And that's where friends of mine have scaled to dozens of practices and sold and so forth.
Speaker 1:But maybe what's not clear to people who are listening is that their mindset shift has to occur around this, amongst some very key divisions of their company, and what you're saying is that one of those key areas is accounting. When you talk about accounting we're not talking about medical billing. That's the end result of that. The collections it goes into the accounting side of things. That's revenue cycle. Revenue cycle, I would say, also is another area where our mindsets have to shift over time. Accounting. It has to shift, Like early stages, they just need to know their income and their expenses. But if they're going to scale and ever become an independent, freedom-based owner, they have to know how to lead their leaders through finances, yes, and not just their leaders, but the clinicians on the floor, right Like there's this big movement.
Speaker 2:Right and funny enough, a lot of this. I have my own personal experience with helping a private practice that's local to me here, because I had my shoulder I needed work on. Sure enough, I go see somebody and I can't shut it off Will. So I'm looking around and I asked the woman that was the PT that was working on me. She was the manager of the location. So I started asking all these revenue questions because I am sitting on a table and I said what challenges are you having? And she said ancillary services, laser treatment, massages, all of these things that cost money.
Speaker 2:I can't get my therapist to talk about these services, and so I wound up getting a client laying on a table because of the different approach that really, when we think about the experience of the patient in a different way, you're able to lock in all of these elements. But if you don't going back to what we're talking about, if you don't know the numbers, you could be going in the wrong direction or you could be spinning your wheels. But if you know the right numbers, it's just copy paste, copy paste all day long.
Speaker 1:It's very simple. What I love about accounting is that once people get a baseline understanding with the right partner, like an accounted for, it becomes very objective. A lot of what we do as leaders requires creativity and like there's something very black and white about the story that is told through our numbers. You know, the biggest mistake I made in my business was looking at my numbers as a postmortem, meaning I only looked at reports from like what happened last quarter so I could and that was, by the way, that was still very good. That was a mindset of like a manager level owner where I was still very much a manager in my business because it was good to know what happened historically that put me in the seat that I'm in right now. But history is only half of what numbers tell us. They're also the greatest predictors of future success and that's one of the keys I tell people and at Rockstar I would encourage you if this is an episode that's really interesting, you and you're feeling even a little bit overwhelmed I would encourage you to do this is to sit down and watch Shark Tank. Watch Shark Tank with your phone and chat GPT and listen to the discussion and not let anything go.
Speaker 1:When Kevin O'Leary talks about, you know, acquisition cost. Right then, what is acquisition cost? What is it? And start like having a dialogue with artificial intelligence while you're watching the show. It will be relaxing in some ways, but it'll also surprise you how easy it is to understand these concepts. And then, once you put your arms around these, then it puts us in a position where, going back to what you and I are talking about, we can look forward and go, based on historic trends. I can project, if I keep doing the same things, this outcome. Do I want that or do I want to tweak it? And that's where the fun comes in. Right? I'm guessing that's where you guys have a lot of fun is helping owners kind of create that future.
Speaker 2:Yep, yeah, and like, two of the questions that we ask every time with our clients is what did we do well and what didn't we do?
Speaker 1:well, when you say that you're talking about, like we, as their practice, you're not Right right right For you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, right, yes, yes, like what went well and what didn't go well for our clients, right. And it really boils down to your point. If you understand the leading indicators right, the past is the lagging indicators. The future is the leading indicators. If you understand, because now you were able to map what your expenses look like and what your revenues look like into the future. Well, now you could start making educated guesses on things, not just what other vendors for other software companies tell you, not what you heard from somebody else. And then, all of a sudden, you realize that they forgot to mention this one thing, which blew, sunk your boat, so to speak. It's you get to choose on your own numbers, leveraging your own experience. It's the best. You have the most fun growing your business. Even you, like you, smiled brightly when you got to that point, right?
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, because it's at that point you feel empowered.
Speaker 1:I even now get really excited about thinking around these numbers because you start to feel more at cause, like I know what happened historically, I know what my leading indicators are, so I can get again being a visionary. As leaders that we all are, it's our job to predict the future and there's always some art to that. But the numbers that we can use through accounting is the science of it, and the science is predictable. The science is easy with the right support. So when I love talking about these topics to people because the least attractive, the least sexy topics in healthcare, medical billing, accounting no offense, but perceptively, that's how they view it those are the most fun Because when we can control that, we can start writing the future in our own handwriting and go this is what I want to build, this is what I want to create, and so having the ability to wrap our arms around our numbers is one of the most fun things that people can learn to do, and they don't know that until they work with somebody like you, obviously.
Speaker 2:Well, it makes it a lot easier when they do, for sure. And the part that I'm hearing and which you know I'm smiling now because you got me remembering things that I love about business is that if you look at a musician, indulge me for like 30 seconds.
Speaker 2:If you look at, music, which I do, and you've got rock stars, so this applies right. I was born to be a rock star. I have no musical talent, so I love being around other rock stars. But my point is that when you look at musicians, they make work, look like play, and when you can do that which is totally what you just described when you can, as a private practice owner, restructure the way your numbers look and your business looks and your mind works so that the work becomes fun, you nailed it, dude You're playing the game, you're no longer stressing, you're growing, and the best way to know you're playing a game right is to know that you're having fun. If you're having fun, other people will come and have fun with you and away you go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that shifts everything. I want to just for the rock stars are listening. I want to keep going on this analogy of accounting being like music theory and like the idea that as people are learning, you know the structure of the song of their business through the theory of their business, through accounting. It is going to be a little bit left-brained. It is obviously left-brained. You're going to be learning how that works.
Speaker 1:My youngest son is a musical savant. He can listen to any sound and tell me the exact note. He's been doing that since he was three. He's a master pianist at the age of 12. And what's funny is that he spends a lot of his time obsessing with music theory. He'll take out these pieces of paper with the lines and he's just sitting there not playing music, drawing the notes and connecting them, but he hears the song in his head and that's what's so. Crazy is that there are business owners out there, guys who are like my son, who are business savants. They just get this stuff intuitively, but most of us 99% aren't. But there's a lot of really talented musicians who aren't like my son, who just love the sound of music, who love to write the theory and then, when they start connecting their ability to create on paper and they can start hearing that song in their own head. Then it's like, okay, what kind of song do I want to write? And that's where the fun and the beauty comes out.
Speaker 2:And no musician ever learned music alone. They leveraged someone else's music and no business owner created a business alone. They all had somebody, a mentor or a coach. And that's the part again earlier in the conversation. What's missing, it's not just technology, it's having a coach that can easily either A keep you accountable or B. What's missing it's not just technology, it's having a coach that can easily either A keep you accountable or B keep you motivated, or C let you remind you to be excited about what's happening right. You're breaking out of the old mold and becoming someone better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, you're so spot on, you know. Going back to my son again, he's constantly looking for the next teacher who's going to teach him more of what he needs. So it'd be like someone playing the piano without a teacher going. Well, I'm a loser because I don't know how to play piano. It's like no man, like everyone needs their instructor and they need the theory, and when we start to slowly progress, we go from chopsticks to Beethoven's Fifth. It's all about that. It's not the age, it's the stage that we're in. And I do want to validate something, keith, for our rock stars right now that rock stars I brought in a financial expert once, when I had about five locations, I think we were doing roughly $4 million a year.
Speaker 1:I brought in a financial expert because I was just really struggling in that space, and so I went out and I found someone with no healthcare experience who had worked in every other industry though, who came into our business, and after three months he resigned and I was like what's going on? He's like this is too hard. I was like what do you mean? And it was because he was a CFO type, so it wasn't just accounting, it was like CFO level stuff. He goes well, I was forced to think that healthcare would be just like everything else and what I've realized is that healthcare is completely different from a financial level because of medical billing. Like the biggest thing he was struggling with was more on that revenue cycle side, but how it diluted and confused him on the accounting side is where he drew the line. And so since that timeframe I've worked with people. I think it's really important.
Speaker 1:The lesson on this is number one. Like if you're struggling in this on any level, you know maybe you get it at a base level but you're realizing now you need to know it even better. Good, you know, just realize that's the wonderful stage you're in and that, like a lot of people struggle in that, I would argue, everybody I've ever met required a coach in healthcare. I don't think there aren't any savants who could figure that complexity without help. But number two is that when you're working with somebody who's an expert, that you find someone who's really dedicated to the healthcare space and even better if they're PT specific.
Speaker 1:And you know, that's one of the things I really appreciated about you, keith, is that you guys are all in on PT. I mean, you guys have visions for PT owners. Why is it that you guys are so connected and passionate about the PT industry when I see a company like yours come in? Obviously, when it comes to opportunity, that could be in a lot of different areas and I've been told by other mentors there's better opportunities outside of PT and healthcare. What is it about you guys in PT that you're so passionate about?
Speaker 2:I mean I can't, I'm not going to take away from the opportunity that's there right. So there's the business. Opportunity excites us as a business because we could grow. But my mother's retired in ICU, ccu nurse so, and Sean's mother, the founder, I believe she retired in healthcare, I don't know to what level, but the point is that the community inside of PTOT is truly remarkable.
Speaker 2:From my own personal experience, the passion that goes into patient's care, the knowledge that it takes to be the amount of debt that one has to incur to be able to help someone feel better, is remarkable.
Speaker 2:And then you get into a private practice company and you start working with other like-minded individuals and then they start branching off and, like, you've got within PPS, you've got the peer-to-peer groups, you've got so many networks that are all designed to help and, honestly, I fell in love with the business world decades ago.
Speaker 2:I love small business, I think in a time I don't know if this is what happens on your side of Zoom, but in a time where everyone's freaking out about bad news and aliens and all this stuff and the way corporate America and corporate behavior gets written about in the news what's always worked and arguably has been the reason that things are still better than they're not is small business, and that things are still better than they're not is small business, and so private practice, I think, epitomizes healthcare. The thing that matters most is that people feel better as soon as they can, and at their own control and maybe non-pharmaceutical manner. Right yeah, and then the opportunity to build an ecosystem that works inside of a market that rewards people for hard work and good decisions. It's just super fun, will.
Speaker 1:It's super fun. It is fun. I think, at the end of the day, two things can be true at the same time it can be super fun to be in this business and there can be incredible challenges. Those two things can be true at the same time. It can be super fun to be in this business and there can be incredible challenges. Those two things can be true at the same time. I think what makes it fun is what you and I were talking about earlier this idea of when we're in it with people, we're not alone, we're getting the right story and baseline understanding of our business so that we can start controlling our future. Then it becomes really worth it because of the business that we are in.
Speaker 1:I just want to second what you said, too, to our rock stars is that the business that you guys have taken on is no small thing. Like every little stand every PT, ot or speech therapist makes in their community is a stand against Big Pharma, it's a stand against dependency, it's a stand against the centralization or what do they call it where the consolidation of healthcare. Right now, private practices are diminishing in every sector of healthcare, so every day when that PTOT, slp owner gets up, turns on their computer or drives to their office. They're taking a stand for the greater good of all humanity. Not to be dramatic, this is literal, because what they're standing for is the best quality healthcare, because no one and everyone would agree to this. No one gives better healthcare than private practice does in any of the healthcare segments. So for us to fight the battle, I want Rockstars, as you're listening, to think of yourselves as generals of an army and not minimize that, not minimize the impact or the importance of what you do, whether you have two employees or 20 locations that every day you're getting up, you're taking a stand in big ways in that community, but you have to have generals, you have to have generals underneath you, you have to have admirals, you have to have these leaders and generals underneath you. You have to have admirals, you have to have these leaders. And one of the single most important elements of your army is going to be the ammunition. It's going to be the energy that you have as a business.
Speaker 1:And what is that? That's the money. And who's your admiral over your finances? Who's in charge of your accounting? Do they have healthcare experience? Zero to 10, where's your mindset on that? Like, are you advancing your mindset around that.
Speaker 1:Do you have someone who's going to help you? Do you have a service you refer to? Do you have a guy that you talk to once a year when you pay his bill, after he tells you what you owe in taxes? Or do you have an admiral who's on the front lines with you? And the only reason I brought Keith to the table is because that's who he is and his company. This is a very passionate person who I have heard multiple times through my network of how he is there with you as you fight this battle in your communities. So sorry to put you on the spot a little bit there with a slightly dramatic monologue, but it's true, keith. I think you guys are making an impact in that way. What do you guys see for the future, like if you could create if you got your own pen for accounted for?
Speaker 2:what do you want to see happen for your business in the PT space? I want it to become a common behavior. One of the things we say a lot as it relates to accounted for with our clients is that there's common sense and there's common behavior. Right? So like the idea that the career let's, maybe we even started smaller the curriculum of learning private practice includes business management through accounting, basic stuff. So like the dissemination of information would be the answer. Right? The idea that you too can understand this stuff that would be the thing that I would want to see the most, because with that becomes everything that you just talked about, right? The idea that you know your numbers, you can be inspired by data. That is there for action. It's not just the result. You now have something that you could move towards or away from to improve the overall business.
Speaker 2:So to me, I want to see more people become aware that it's out there. You know, listen, accountant4 is a great company, but we're not. You know you can go online. You can go and ask your current bookkeeper how they help with forward-looking projections and trends. That's out there. Go ask for help. And then, the more that that happens, I think the groundswell will just rise up, I love it All, right man.
Speaker 1:So, keith, you're a leader. You're obviously an owner. Give me one of your favorite business books that you've read.
Speaker 2:What comes to mind is Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. What comes to mind is how to Win Friends and Influence People, by Napoleon Hill. I really like the Four Disciplines of Execution. Is it the Four Disciplines of Execution? I think so. Yeah, yeah, 4dx. Yes, let's see. Rich Dad, poor Dad's a good one, and I mean dude, I used to read a lot. So the Challenger Sale is a good one, because it really brought to light the idea that if you want to make change, you have to challenge the status quo. Sounds silly, right, but I'm a huge fan. I'll call it business, because I certainly applied to business Steven Kotler. Anything Steven Kotler has written about flow state. Read those, because you could apply that mindset to what you're doing every single day.
Speaker 1:By the way, that was a surprise when we got to know each other is that when you meet someone who's in accounting, you have, like you said at the beginning of the episode, a pretty clear idea of what you think you're. You said at the beginning of the episode, a pretty clear idea of what you think you're coming up against in terms of personality. You're thinking you're coming against the pretty stale, you know, left-brained individual. You are so far opposite of that. You're this flow state, creative individual who's inspired by the art of accounting, and it's just a cool encounter to what most people experience, I think, in that space.
Speaker 2:I love it. Thank you for that. Appreciate that very much, but I would say I'm inspired by the art of business.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like accounting just happened to come with business, and here we are talking about how accounting influences business. But at the end of the day, I appreciate what you said there it's a lot of fun it. But at the end of the day, I appreciate what you said there it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun helping and I like to think we're doing a pretty good job.
Speaker 1:I will second that. Keith, thank you so much for being on the show today. If people want to get a hold of you, how's the best way they can do that?
Speaker 2:Go to the Accounted For website. It's accountedforthenumber4llccom. You can hit me up on LinkedIn, keith Compagna. You can email Will and he'll introduce it to me. Either way, come, find me. I would love to talk to you and, again, we can help in a lot of ways when the timing is right, Love it man.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you again for being on the show. It's been great to have you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're the best. We'll appreciate everything you're doing. Congratulations on all of it, thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to today's episode. As a thank you, I have a gift. In today's show notes there's a link for you to join the Stress-Free PT newsletter. This is a comedy newsletter for anyone who works in healthcare and of course we're gonna have comedy bits. We're gonna have inspirational stories, leadership bits. It's gonna be a weekly newsletter just to lighten your week, to help you do what you love with more passion. So click that link below and join that newsletter and we'll see you in our next episode.
