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7 Tools To Become A Coach Successfully | Barbell Training, Powerlifting & Physical Therapy
Barbell & Powerlifting Coaching and Physical Therapy are skills that require an immense amount of hands-on experience to master, and so does business! Coaches and clinicians spend lots of time working on their clinical education and skills, without considering how they will build a business and more importantly, a business that can grow and sustain itself even during lean times, such as the recent COVID pandemic.
In this episode of the PRS Podcast Dr. Rori Alter, PT discusses with her co-host, Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, how she built Progressive Rehab & Strength in her spare time while working a traditional physical therapy job, and the strategies that help her continue to grow in a saturated field and during the pandemic.
Questions answered in this episode:
-How do you become a powerlifting coach?
-How do you create a sustainable business?
The 7 Tools To Become a Clinical Coach with a Successful Business Include:
Knowledge Acquisition
Mentorship
Experience
Core Values
Core Goals
Flexibility, Adaptability, and Systems
Client Education
Check out this episode to learn!
Episode 2 Transcript:
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:00:00] When someone is maximizing their strength and muscular development and they're reducing their injury risk, that's less interruption to training. Ultimately, if people are achieving their goals, they're going to want you to continue to help them achieve their goals. Welcome to the Progressive Rehab & Strength Podcast.
Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS: [00:00:20] We're your hosts, physical therapists, strength coaches and PRS Clinical Coaches, Dr. Alyssa Haveson.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:00:26] And Dr. Rori Alter join us on our journey of barbell, strength, training and rehabilitation.
Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS: [00:00:36] Welcome to episode two of the Progressive Rehab & Strength podcast. I'm your host, Alyssa Haveson, and I'm here with my co-host Rori Alter, founder and head clinical coach of Progressive Rehab & Strength.
And we are going to be talking about features of sustainable coaching and clinical practice today. Following up on what we talked about on our last episode, which at the end we kind of got into the question of how do clinicians or rehab clinicians do what we do and combine that rehab and coaching process to include that in what they're doing in the clinic.
And before we dive into today's topic about features of sustainable coaching or clinical practice, we're first going to quickly discuss how to get involved in coaching from Ground Zero.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:01:26] So this topic that we're going to start with, coaching from the ground up is essentially in response to a follower question from Nicola B. He's a member of our free Facebook group, The Secret Society of Barbell Mastery, where we provide free education and coaching in a supportive community of athletes, coaches and clinicians. So if you'd like to join us for weekly form reviews, Q&A and other discussions surrounding barbell training and injury, the link to our free Facebook group is in the show notes, or you can head here to join us in that Facebook group.
Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS: [00:02:12] So Nicola asks:
“What is the PRS Method?”
And we did answer this in episode one. So if you haven't listened to that yet, definitely go back and check it out.
And he also asked:
“How can someone get involved in coaching?”
So Rori, can you talk about how someone can get involved in barbell training or powerlifting coaching as an athlete who might want to coach themselves or an athlete, who might want to start coaching other people and as a clinician who wants to become a clinical coach.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:02:41] Yeah. So this is a topic that I'm really excited about because essentially this is the journey that I went through. So Alyssa, we talked about our journeys in our prior episode where you were a coach and a personal trainer and a barbell or a powerlifting coach before you became a physical therapist. But I wasn't, I was a physical therapy student who got into barbell training when I was in school, and then when I realized how beneficial barbell training was and strength training and how functional it was and how much of an impact it could have on someone in the rehabilitation setting, and I also started to become a competitive powerlifter.
I then realized I also wanted to combine the two, and I felt that I needed to become a coach and figure that process out.
And, you know, I think that one of the biggest things that kind of ruffles my feathers is that there are all these certifications. You know, you can get a us USAPL coaching certification, you can get a Starting Strength Coach Certification, you can get a NASM CPT certification, you can get the NSCA CSCS certification and ACSM has a certification and ISSA and ACE and all these certifications. But essentially what these things are or even CrossFit, what these things are, are a pen and paper exam where you open a book and you read it, and maybe you read it, maybe you don't. Maybe you just take the test and hope for the best and you pass or you don't pass and they don't care if you have any applicable experience at all. I will segment the Starting Strength Certification that you definitely can't it's no longer a pen and paper certification and there was always a practical component to it, but you wouldn't.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:04:38] I'll use that as a segue into my experience and my first experience trying to get a coaching certification. I utilized the Starting Strength Certification process to become a coach, and I actually didn't pass the first time.
And the big distinguishing factor between something like the CSCS or a CPT exam and the Starting Strength Certification is that you need practical experience in order to pass the Starting Strength Certification. You don't need any experience to pass a written exam like the CPT exam, NASM CPT or something like that.
So just because someone has a certification after their name and just because you go and get a certification does not mean that you have any experience coaching someone or writing a program.
And that's the biggest thing, I think, with people who take the Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist exam is that it's all theory and there's no practical application for most of these certifications.
So the biggest thing that I recommend for someone, and this was my experience with the Starting Strength Certification and I did not pass the first time and I didn't pass the first time, not because I wasn't smart enough to pass it. I was smart enough to pass it. And they actually told me they did not pass me on the practical. I was like barely passable on the practical because they knew that I was smart enough to pass the written exam…
…but I didn't have enough experience coaching people, so I needed to spend more time coaching people.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:06:15] So what I did, and I did a little of this before I went to take the Starting Strength Certification the first time. And I'm not saying the Starting Strength Certification is the best certification to take. I'm impartial to any certification out there.
Tip 1: I think the best thing is to become as educated as possible. Soak up information, listen to podcasts like ours, read people's articles, learn from people who do what you do in the way that you want to do it and do it well. So that's one area to start- learn, read books, read journal articles, read articles, listen to podcasts, shadow people.
If there's a coach that you value, if there's a clinician that you value and you want to learn from them, reach out to them and ask. That's how our courses started. I was mentoring or allowing people to intern with me and I was just educating one on one so much that I was like, I'm going to just create courses so I can reach more people in this way, you know?
So learn and don't just rely on a textbook and a pen and paper certification or exam to credential you or certify you.
Tip 2: The second thing is to start coaching your friends and family for free. There is no roundabout way to do that.
You will never value yourself as a coach and you will never charge enough if you just start trying to charge people because you're like, I don't know, I'll start with $50, just, you know, whatever.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:07:52] And then as you start to gain more experience, like you've set your rates so low. So I would start with free and then learn and create your value in your worth. And then once you have experience and can justify charging, charge your value.
So coach your friends and family put it out there on the Internet and say, I'm trying to practice my coaching skills, my program writing skills, my clinical skills. You know, if my friends and family want to come work, get some, like physical therapy treatment or whatever, come to my house and I'll look at your shoulder injury or whatever. If you're a physical therapist, if you're not getting that type of clinical experience in the clinic you're in.
So start with doing the thing for free. I'm sorry. There is no workaround.
I would never hire someone who has no coaching experience. And if they come to me and they do want to work for me or us at PRS, they're going to intern and they're going to do the thing for free first. Or they're going to shadow do a lot of shadowing, even if they have a CSCS or whatever. If they've never worked in the capacity that we're working in. They're going to shadow first. So do the thing for free. Get the experience. Offer it to all your friends and family.
And learn before certification. Certification, I'm sorry, does not certify that you have experience and knowledge. It certifies that you were able to pass an exam.
Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS: [00:09:34] Yeah, I think that's really great advice because I know that:
A lot of people who seek out certifications are often looking for the answers of the “how to do this,” which you usually won't even find in those books if you're looking.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:09:50] Physical Therapy school isn't even really the “how to do this.” Like your clinical experiences are how to do this, you know, so it's as a certification in the personal training realm which powerlifting coaching and barbell training coaching fall into the personal training realm, there's no school for it, there's no licensing body for it. You can go to school for exercise physiology, you can go to school for human movement, whatever.
But there's no school that gives you the practical experience of being a coach and it doesn't come along with a certification. So you have to create those experiences for yourself.
Whether that's reaching out to people who you value and respect and want to learn from. It's taking very robust courses versus a certification course, and I say robust process and experience because there's really not that many out there. I would say up until recently, the Starting Strength Certification was probably one of the more robust experiences, but the Starting Strength Certification doesn't even give you a clinical experience. You go and you have a weekend with them where you listen to lectures and you coach some people in your platforms and you get tested on your ability to coach. But there's no process where you learn to coach before you go there. Now they have a something called the pipeline now where it's like a kind of like an academy where you can learn and it leads into the certification process. But before the pipeline there really wasn't anything like that.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:11:39] And here at PRS, we have online courses that are mentored courses. So they're not just like a weekend certification or a seminar where you go and you learn about a particular topic for a weekend or a few hours, and then you're off on your own, left on your own devices to continue and try and apply that on your own. Our courses and the reason we structured our courses, the way that we structured them is they're 16 week mentorship programs that are very robust with Q&A and case studies and office hours so that you get that experience and you can get that support in applying it with the people that you're working with or offering your free services to or working within a clinic. Or if you are doing personal training already, you have that mentorship and that support to do that.
So I could talk about this all day long, but I feel like the biggest takeaways are:
Learn from people that you value and respect and want to emulate.
Don't just rely on a pen and paper exam to give you all the tools that you need to to be a coach
Do the thing for free as an intern or as a student or whatnot, so that you get that experience and then can charge your value and have confidence.
The only way that you're going to be able to charge your value is if you're confident. And confidence is going to be built through experience.
Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS: [00:13:13] So I think that one of the next big questions that arises when you have somebody who is a clinical coach or coach and they have developed their skills and have some experience, oftentimes we get asked:
“How do you create a sustainable business?”
How do you venture out from the clinic or do something on your own or on the side and make it sustainable, get clients, patients, and have it be something that they could ultimately potentially turn into a full time position for themselves.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:13:48] Yeah. So the big thing is that even if you've gone to physical therapy school or you've gone to chiropractic school or you have a certification through NASM or NSCA or whatever, or you have the Starting Strength Certification or you've received your master's or bachelor's in exercise science or exercise physiology or strength and conditioning or whatnot.
The problem is, these aren't business degrees!
So maybe there was like a course or a section of a course that kind of brought up business. But ultimately, these don't provide you a business background whatsoever. So you're done. You've got some experience, you've got the certification or the license, and maybe you're trying to build something on your own or you're working for someone who has an established business.
But then you decide that this is something that you want to do on your own, or you want to create your own large business. Maybe you want to be an independent trainer or independent coach or clinician, or you want to have your own practice and really build your own gym or your own clinical practice or whatever.
So there's two things that I think are really important: If you have no business background whatsoever, and this is really how I was able to grow PRS from the bottom up as literally just me with my little Honda Civic driving to people's houses after hours when I was working full time as a physical therapist for an outpatient practice. And I built a business that has not only sustained itself for, I guess, seven or eight years now, because I guess really in 2014 was when I got my little silver Honda Civic and started to drive people's houses.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:15:45] And then in 2015 I got an LLC like officially Progressive Rehab & Strength had a name and it existed in the universe and then it sustained itself. It grew, has four coaches and sustained itself through a global pandemic. And year over year through that pandemic, the business completely changed in terms of its makeup, but our gross revenue did not change, did not go backwards despite the global pandemic.
And how was I able to do that with literally no business background? I don't have an MS or a bachelor's in business.
So first of all, education, education, education. I continually learn about business on my own. So I listen to podcasts, I read books, I ask people who have built businesses, all that stuff.
Tip 3: But on the ground level, as a person and as a business, I think there are two things that need to happen. You need to have core values that drive your actions with your business. Having core values are going to keep your mission and your vision in line. And how you deliver services and how you make decisions within your business are always going to be guided by those core values. So at PRS the values, the PRS values that are in our manual, so we have a manual, that all of the clinicians here at PRS and clinical coaches here at PRS guide their practice by include trust, success, individualism, attention to detail, minimalism, professionalism privately and publicly across all social, professional and social media platforms, community respect, value and safety.
So we're not going to dive into the core values here at PRS in this episode, but you can think of how those words or those values might apply to business, decisions, and coaching and our interactions as a team amongst the professionals that run PRS amongst our clients, our interactions with our clients and prospective clients and other professionals in our realm.
So by having a set of values that guide our actions and our decisions, that has helped us create a sustainable business that thrives no matter what's going on.
So if you are trying to build a little practice for yourself or as a whole, whether you're an athlete, a coach or a clinician trying to venture out on your own, come up with a set of core values that are important to you in your professional life, and then use those to guide the decisions that you're making as a lifter, coach or clinician.
Tip 4: The other thing, and we talked about this in our prior episode, is that we also have four core goals that guide our Sustainable Training Method.
And when you have values and goals, they really help to kind of pull you in and ground you and give you a base to build things off of whether that is your programming or your marketing or your interactions and deciding to work with someone or not work with someone to deciding to do a podcast or not do a podcast.
Deciding to make any decision in your business. Should I hire this person? Should I do this thing? Should I use this platform to deliver my coaching? Or should I use that platform to deliver my coaching?
If you have core values and core goals, then you will be able to stay on track with your business.
So we have four core goals at PRS and they are to 1) maximize strength and muscular development, 2) reduce injury risk, 3) optimize goal attainment, and 4) instill longevity and lifting in life.
And we can look at these four core goals from the athlete perspective. So when we're making decisions for the athlete and also from a business perspective, so from an athlete perspective, these core goals keep them training and help them sustain their goals and, and train long term without interruption.
And from a coaching perspective, longevity is the most important of these four core goals in that we want to utilize the core values and those first three core goals to instill longevity in our business.
So. If we follow those first three core goals and utilize our core values in combination with our core goals, we will get longevity for the lifter. Reduced injury risk, continues to stay motivated, continues to reach goals and set new ones over and over and over again. Can lift through any scenario that comes up in their life. Having a baby, which I talked about in the last episode, moving and Alyssa's moving next month.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:21:13] Alyssa has a lot going on next month, which next month is June. So we're recording this in May, but I actually think you're listening to this episode in June. So Alyssa has a lot going on in June. So, you know, based on what we know, what's going on in her life, her training is going to adjust to what's going on in her life.
And that's how we can take these factors and really individualize training, we can then modify the training to not just reach the client's goals, but also take into account what they have going on in life. And that is how we don't go through these bouts of, well, f it, I'm just not going to train this week or this month because I have so much going on. I'm going to do what I can to sustain my training and continue to reach my goals in the capacity that's right for me right now in this month and this season of life.
So if we can do that for every client, we can then do that for our business.
And if we can use our core values to make decisions for our business, we're also going to instill longevity in our business as well. Because if we kind of reach for the next shiny thing or like shiny is it called shiny syndrome? Shiny object syndrome? Is that what it is called?
Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS: [00:22:35] I don't know.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:22:36] You know, when someone's like, "Ooh, I want to do that."
Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS: [00:22:37] I've just never heard it named as a...
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:22:42] Oh, well.
Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS: [00:22:43] Diagnosis.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:22:45] Yeah. So if we kind of just keep our blinders on and say, like, what is the goal and we modify things based on what's going on. And we don't make decisions in our business or in training based on like, Oh, that's exciting, let me do that or whatever. We end up getting longevity in our business as well.
So longevity in our business comes from what we do on the business end, but also having clients that are, I say with a sustainable training model, you will have retained clients. So we want to be doing something that's sustainable and retainable.
So in terms of coaching, you know, it's harder to get ten new clients than it is to work with ten new clients for a month. So we'll just use this. Let's say the total value of a client is $100 per month. It's easy to get one client to work with you for ten months versus try and get ten new clients to work with you for one month.
So ultimately that is what we have built the business on, is providing high quality coaching that really meets the needs of the client. So that essentially long term retention is how we build, how we sustain our business. And so I guess, you know, I don't really I don't like talking about money. I feel like I don't want my I don't want my clients to feel because ultimately, we absolutely love our clients and some of our clients become our best friends, you know? But that's really what it should be, you know. And that's I guess that's part of the process, is providing that safety, comfort, friendship also with your clients as well, which is part of the sustainability process.
Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS: [00:24:42] I was going to say, you know, money aside, we'd feel pretty crappy if we had clients that were injured and leaving us every month rather than we do this because we love what we do and we want our clients to we want to see our clients make progress, feel good long term.
So, you know, just to add to that, it's not really just about $100 per month or whatever it is. It's really that we want to see all of our clients making progress, reaching goals, feeling good, being active and getting over. Yeah, not getting injured, getting over injuries or if things do come up. Having the tools and knowledge and understanding and having us there for guidance to be able to get through those things. Because I think one of the big things that happens to people is, you know, they tweak their back or or some symptom injury arises and then they don't train because they're waiting to feel better. And then they don't train again because they're waiting to feel better. And then that goes on for a couple of weeks and they try to get it back into the program that they were doing before. So really what we're here for is to, aside from everything else, help you guys get through all of that.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:26:01] Yeah, and I think so just to kind of touch on the longevity thing and sustainability and retain ability from a coaching perspective.
So we're going to recommend you use our four core goals because when someone is maximizing their strength and muscular development and they're reducing their injury risk, that's less interruption to training and more optimal goal attainment. Right?
And ultimately, if people are achieving their goals, they're going to want you to continue to help them achieve their goals. And when people are achieving their goals, they stay motivated to continue to barbell train. So those two things are what we really mean by longevity.
So the uninterrupted training, continued training that someone has for a lifespan because they are getting stronger, they aren't getting injured, although we cannot say injury prevention, we will never say injury prevention. We will always say injury risk reduction, because no matter how many i's we dot and t's we cross with our method, injury prevention is not a thing and we can have a whole podcast about that.
But when someone is getting stronger, they are at a lower risk for injury and they're achieving their goals. They're going to stay motivated and healthy enough to train long term and those things combined will lead to you having a sustainable training business on an individual client basis, if that makes sense.
Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS: [00:27:45] Yeah. And I think that does explain or kind of explains why Progressive Rehab & Strength being such a small company, not having a significant amount of followers and also not paying for ads, why we do so well, why we are keeping clients, why we get clients, why we get referrals. Can you talk a little bit more about that, Rori?
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:28:11] Yeah, and I also want to mention and I talk about the I talked about the pandemic a couple of times in the last episode, in episode one, but I want to bring that up again because we, we got nervous, or I got nervous as the business owner here at the beginning of the pandemic, I was like, shit, people are going to like cancel coaching because coaching is a luxury.
And at the beginning of the pandemic, I really went into freak out mode. And I mean, listen, rightfully so. Everybody was kind of stressing out about their business, but we didn't have anyone cancel at the onset of the pandemic. I think maybe out of the probably like 60 active clients we had around that time, maybe over the first three months, six months, maybe three or four stopped. And it wasn't because they didn't have gym access, it was really purely a financial thing.
But this just goes to show you that even though we were a luxury, people truly valued having the guidance and the adaptability that we provided them when gyms shut down.
And this goes into what Alyssa was just asking about how did we thrive? How do we continue to thrive as a small business? Very, very well under the radar, I would think, or I feel, you know, amongst the sea of companies and brands that I'm not going to name because they're our, whatever you call it, competitors, I guess. You know, and this is another whole other topic that I could talk about is that we are really the only female owned and run business of all female coaches, which also makes it hard in this world as well.
So how is PRS as a female run and operated business thriving despite pandemic and despite being in a very saturated field of both rehabilitation and barbell training and powerlifting?
So it comes down to the key features of our sustainable coaching or clinical practice, which include those professional core values. So we are very firm on our core values and they really guide us in our every day, not just our everyday professional actions, but our everyday life interactions and actions, our client facing core values. So those four core goals which I've mentioned previously and always putting the client first and having a system in place that truly helps us to analyze the client as a whole, what their needs are, what their goals are, what their wants are. And it allows us to adapt our method to them.
And really understanding the difference between a template, a framework and a system which we can put on our list to have another episode about, which is also something we dive deeply into in our courses. So the Programming Fundamentals Course you can get on the waitlist for our courses in the show notes below. So understanding the difference between a template, a framework and a system and being very flexible and adaptable.
So understanding that we have to do what works. So doing what works really and not just what we're taught and that kind of ties back into what we were talking about in the beginning is and so does a template framework versus system tying back into what we were talking about in the beginning, which is the experience and the starting from ground zero and offering your services for free or interning or shadowing and just trial and error.
You know, in the beginning, if the pandemic happened, when I first started my coaching business, when I first started Progressive Rehab & Strength, I probably don't think that I would have survived as long.
When I first started my online business, I had high client turnover. The lifespan of a lifter was maybe a couple of months to a year versus the lifespan of a lifter is now a lifespan.
You know, they have more goals. They go from local to national to international levels with us, and they have these things coming up and those things coming up and they're having a baby or a surgery that they need help through.
And so being flexible and adaptable and really having a system versus using templates or what's written in the book, this really leads to sustainability because we can get people better, faster with the tools that they need and teach them the tools that they need to stay better.
So autonomy is also very important to us here. So we don't just hand-hold our clients through every step of their training. We really educate. Education is extremely important for us.
This really is more so for the people who come to us for rehab coaching and then might go back to their own coaches. We need to educate them. We want them to be autonomous in their rehab and autonomous with their health so that the next time that they're injured or this comes up again, they one, have the tools to help them and also have the knowledge and understanding of the experience that they had here with us.
So if they have a different type of injury or different medical consideration that comes up in the future, they come back to us for help.
And that's something that you can do in your business is the education component. And really giving someone autonomy, especially as a clinician. It's not just, “come to me every week for the next rest of your life.” It's, “here's why, here's how and here's what to do. And go back to your coach, change these things and be well. And then if you need me again for something else, because hopefully it's not the same thing again. I'll see you for the next thing, not the same thing.”
I think that's really important in terms of the sustainable business model, especially from the rehab side. And I don't love getting repeat clients because I don't love that they're hurt or sick, but I love that they come back to me because they know, first of all, it's not the same thing and second of all, that they know that they're going to get back and they're confident and what they're going to be getting from us.
So I just talked about it from the rehab perspective. Can you talk about it from the coaching perspective?
Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS: [00:35:18] Yeah. So when it comes to our coaching clients and having them stay with us long term. Again, as you were mentioning ,they're reaching goals we're adapting their program, their coaching to them and what they need. And I always say that the program should fit the client rather than expecting the client to fit the program.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:35:42] Amen to that.
Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS: [00:35:44] And as we talked about in our last episode, Athlete Identity, we look at our clients and we fully assess our clients and we understand their athlete identity.
We understand: 1) What's important to them and 2) Where barbell training fits into their life. And for some people, they want to compete internationally and for others they want to do it on the side to be healthy and strong. And it's not even their primary activity. And making sure that our programming, our coaching or guidance fits into really what they want to actually help them reach their goals.
Because at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter what my goal is for someone if they just don't care about that. You know, to me that's that's one of the biggest things that we do that creates sustainability with our coaching clients, both with their progress, their goals and having them as long term clients, which is really one of the parts of what we do that I love is knowing what's going on in my clients lives, knowing them so well that I just sort of know how they're going to respond to something or and just really getting to know them as a person, which also helps me get better at coaching them and programming for them because I already like I sometimes I know what to expect in their response to anything, anything that I add in a program. You know, I know how they're going to feel about it. And I can often just read their minds.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:37:18] Oh, my God, my favorite line I've heard this line so many times for my client is:
"How did you know?" "How did you know I needed that this week?" Or, "you always make the right change at the right time."
And so I think that kind of really ties into getting to know the client. But how do we get to know the client? And that comes from a whole process that we've developed on monitoring our athletes and checking in with our athletes and tracking their training trends and understanding fatigue and all that stuff, which we have a training fatigue article that will link in the show notes.
And then we also have an article that covers tracking training trends. And that is how we really monitor the fatigue, the training fatigue article and the tracking training trends along with some of our technical articles, is really how, from a programming perspective or an actual training perspective, not really a business perspective, create sustainability in our PRS method and those four core goals. So we'll link to those articles in the show notes as well.
But just to kind of tie it all back together and back to the original question was how do you become a coach? And then also how do you create sustainability in a saturated sea of coaching through the thick and thin of what life is throwing at us, and that is creating really happy clients who create a word of mouth referral system.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:39:09] And I could literally go off the radar and not put out any social media content, not put out any new articles, not pay for ads. I think that I paid for ads and actually did worse for our business once. I'm not really interested. I think I used it for one course launch and I was like, I am never doing this again. We are all organic here.
how do you create a six figure business?
Word of mouth - through word of mouth. And it's just everything that we've talked about in this podcast, especially if you're a new coach or a clinical clinical coach or a clinician who really wants to leave that mill model, physical therapy practice or create your own coaching business.
Listen to this episode again and then join our facebook group and ask us questions because we'd be happy to answer them.
So some of the most common questions we get are:
“How do you do this if you're at a mill model physical therapy practice?”
“How do you implement these elements of a sustainable training or sustainable business when you're at a mill model, physical therapy practice, who might not have the same values as you and might not have the things that you know are beneficial for creating what you're trying to create?”
“How do you work at a physical therapy practice that might demand that you do things a certain way that are against your moral ethics and your values and the way that you want to practice physical therapy?”
“How do you feel good about the treatment that you're giving out at the mill model, physical therapy practice?”
Well, it's hard, but you can still use these principles to guide you. How do you do this If you're getting pushback from your clinic, how do you do this when you have minimal equipment? How do you create a sustainable business without feeling like you're keeping people in physical therapy longer than they need to be? And this is a big question that, again, I actually use this when I'm giving someone a free consultation and I'm saying like, listen, this isn't the best business model for me because like, you come to me three times and then I then you go back to your coach or whatever, you know. So, hey, I just worked with you for three sessions, and now I'm not working with you anymore.
But that person's going to say, “Hey, grandma or hey powerlifting friends. Rori helped me out. Go see her for your shoulder.” You know? So even though it's a quick turnaround, because we're getting people better, faster, or we're at least educating them so that they can continue to feel better after those one or two sessions and then maybe check in with us like in a month or come back in a month and like kind of do like a reassess and like, where can we go from here kind of thing.
They will value that more than being in physical therapy for three sessions a week for 12 weeks and like not being back to peak training again.
When you're just the physical therapist, how do you send them back to their coach who ultimately increases their risk for injury? So that is something that we talk about all these things in our free Facebook group, The Secret Society of Barbell Mastery, so we can continue these conversations in there or on future episodes, if you have any questions that you want us to cover related to these topics or other topics, there is a form in the show notes that you can submit questions for the podcast. You can head into our Facebook group, also linked in the show notes.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:42:41] Ask your questions there during Q&A or get help from us in there, or download the Clinical Coach Starter Kit also linked in the show notes. And also, if you ultimately would like to mentor with us, we do have the PRS Clinical Coach Certification courses. You can take one or all of them. You don't need to go through all of them. You can just do a programming course or Barbell Coaching & Movement Optimization course or business course. You can do any of them independently, but we mentor you through the whole 16 weeks of each course. So the waitlist for that is also in the show notes.
So just to sum up what we talked about in today's episode, we talked about building a sustainable coaching or clinical practice. We talked about the key features. So having core values and core goals that guide you, really valuing experience and education and looking to people who you value and trust to help guide you and mentor you. And just understanding that a pen and paper certification really isn't going to be the end all, be all when it comes to building your coaching or clinical practice. So with that all said, we hope to see you on the next episode and bye for now.