Why PTs Need to Talk About Money

This might be a touchy subject for some people… and if you’re one of those people, I suggest just reading this with an open mind.

Look, I get it… We didn’t get into this profession in the first place to become millionaires, but we also didn’t sign up to be broke and to the point of working extra PRN jobs as a Doctor to live the life we want.

So let’s just call it as it is… there’s a portion of this journey where it is about the money. 

I don’t know about you, but when I was in my early to mid 20’s, I thought $100k was a lot of money. To be fair, at that point in my life, it would’ve been a lot of money. We’re only capable of understanding the reality of our current perspective. 

As I got older, I realized that the life I wanted to live required more than what my earning potential was as a clinical PT in outpatient orthopedics. At that point, yeah, it started to become about the money.

I had expectations of a 6 figure job out of school, but the reality was accepting an offer for around $65k as a new grad clinician - again, the most money I had ever been offered in my life… this offer made sense to take that at the time, with my current understanding of the world and how I thought money worked. 

But as time went on, my views started to change. I was fortunate enough to meet people who thought about money differently than me. They pushed me to challenge my current views and beliefs around money. I'm not going to lie. I used to have a VERY scarce mindset around financial beliefs (so if you currently do, it’s ok, but do you want to feel this way forever?). 

After a year of practicing clinically, I started to understand business a little differently. When you see business models in action, you can better understand how they work and where they can provide upside.

As a direct service provider, I could see that my skill set was being reimbursed in the range of $90 - $350 per session (depending on services rendered and billed, as well as being able to see multiple sessions per hour). Yet, I was only being paid about $30/hour when I broke it all down. To be fair, I think this is an excellent model for the business, but not great for the clinician long term.

So, keeping this concept very basic - if you can go directly to the consumer (your clients), cut out the middleman (your clinic/employer), and keep overhead/costs low, then you can generally replace your salary without a crazy hourly requirement (sometimes in about 20-25% of the hours you’d need to work traditionally. Sure, you’ll initially work yourself into another “job,” but is that necessarily a bad thing if you get 50% of your time back?

The one thing that has been proven true for me is that the bigger the risk I take on myself, the bigger the reward. 

The goal of our content isn’t to convince you to go one way or another in your professional journey, but it is to help you challenge your current beliefs, understand the reasons why you believe them, and ultimately, when you’re ready, maybe you take the leap and bet on yourself.

It won’t be easy, but it’ll be worth it.