Ultimate Physio

15/08/2025

Private practice physios - here is a tip when choosing which mentors are credible and which you should listen to.

Credibility 101 - if said mentor has not practised in the setting you work in, which for the bulk of us is Australian private practice physiotherapy, they simply do not understand the nature of how you work, the patient types you see, and the systems you operate under.

Use this discernment of their level of credibility before believing every word they say.

14/08/2025

Yesterday my good friend James Schomburgk did a post saying he wouldn't employ a physio in his clinics who is anti manual therapy ( I paraphrase as James cited the physio in question was sceptical of manual therapy research findings but not other research findings including exercise therapy).

I'd like to double down on this sentiment.

We practice in the Australian private practice system.

Most ( but not all) patients have acute pain, or an acute exacerbation of a chronic problem.

These problems respond to manual therapy. There is evidence these problems respond to manual therapy.

If you are a physio who does not use manual therapy you should not be working with patients with acute pain in a private practice setting.

Patients with acute pain want pain relief!

This is why they come to physio.

They do not want to be told they will get better on their own and sent on their way. They do not want a know it all physio quoting studies at them.

After all, what is their biggest complaint from their GP appointment?

"The doctor didn't even touch me!".

If you don't believe in manual therapy, don't work in Aussie private practice.

For those who think manual therapy sucks?

Try asking your patients in acute pain what they actually want...

For those operating a second opinion service with chronic pain patients only don't drop your bs opinions here as they aren't relevant.

If you work in private practice physio in Australia you need to stop treating everyone like a chronic pain patient with yellow flags galore, because I can tell you after 20+ years practising in this setting this is one of the most harmful things you can do.

Mismanagement of acute pain and injury is rife in physio these days, let's draw a line in the sand and stop it in it's tracks.

28/05/2025

I don't do many posts for employed physiotherapists ( my main clients are clinic owners), but here's an important one.

I hear lots of people talking bad about our profession right now.

But most of them are talking garbage as patients need physios more than ever.

I'm going to show you some simple steps as a therapist to get to the point where you earn a $150k pa package, working 4 days a week, fulltime, with no work at home.

What you don't know is that this salary package will have you out earning around 50% of clinic owners, and earning a higher hourly rate than around 2/3rds of clinic owners ( who earn a higher amount but do far more hours).

So here goes:

1. Find a clinic who values you, designs an employment package for you where if you bill more you earn more, and has clinical philosophies you align with

2. You have to commit to that clinic for 5 years to get to the salary and hours you desire

3. Your billable consult rate has to average more than $240/hr for private patients for follow up appointments ( ie $120 or more for 30 minutes follow up consults)

4. You need to get really good at your physio skills- manual therapy, building therapeutic alliance, exercise prescription, practical education, diagnosis, prognosis

5. You need to give every single new patient a treatment plan

6. You need to do extra learning in advanced communication ( there are plenty of good physio specific mentors for this)

7. You need to follow up every single patient who no shows or cancels! ( you, not your admin team)

8. You need to maintain a clinical philosophy of helping every single patient under your care to reach their goals

9. You need to work on your own limiting financial beliefs and not project them onto patients, other staff, or the clinic owner

10. You need to use an ai note taking software so you don't do paperwork at home

11. You need to be efficient - you don't need more than 30 mins a day to do admin. If you believe you do, go and google something called "Parkinson's Law"

12. You need to do your notes in the session with the patient ( that's what Doctors do!)

13. You need to treat around 50 patients a week or have 28 to 31 hours of treating time a week for a fulltime role

14. You need to take your 4 weeks of annual leave a year to keep you fresh - don't bank it

15. If you take leave of more than 3 weeks at a time, when you're back you need to work hard to rebuild your list ( see point 7 above)

16. You need to actually give a s**t about your clinic owner - they hold the keys to what you want

17. You also need to care about the profitability of the business you work in. If its profitable it can pay you more and train you better, and if it's not, it can't

And

If you do the above:

After 3 to 4 years you will have what you want.

But here's the real problem:

Many of you reading this aren't patient enough to do the above.

You will stay in a job 2 years, get "burnt out", hope to the next one, and start again.

Then you complain you can't afford to buy a house.

I will bluntly tell you that not many people earning $150kpa can't afford to buy a house ( depending on where you want to live).

What is the magic feature that happens after 2 years in a job that you can't get if you job hop??

It's called repeat business.

Old clients returning with new injuries, or referring family members and friends.

Stay in the right job and earn $150k for a 4 day week after 3-4 years.

Or job hop to your doom, and quit the profession to become a medical sales rep, or go back to uni ( for what?)

The choice is yours.

For those who are serious - show this to your clinic owners and work together on a plan to go and do it...

My challenge to you - be patient, work hard, and enjoy the process.

27/06/2024

Here's a simple way as a therapist to be eligible for never ending pay increases. Your boss will also be OK with this:

1. Determine how to measure your performance in your core role right now
2. Improve your performance
3. Prove it by going back to step 1
4. Sustain it - 6 to 12 months ideally
5. Ask for a payrise using steps 1 and 3 above
6. Repeat forever

16/04/2024

Here's a short video I posted this morning for allied health practitioners in private practice, regarding minimising patient cancellations. (15 min watch)

Here's a video I shot on the 3 key things you need to do as a physio, psychologist, remedial massage therapist, or any type of allied health practitioner

07/02/2024

Happy Birthday Jess Prestedge - our Google Ads, SEO and Website Builder!!!! Hope you have an awesome day!

04/12/2023

This is the single most useless thing you can do as a physio in private practice - and I've done it! The good old "page of exercises"

22/11/2023

This is the SINGLE BIGGEST lost opportunity in your clinic and it's costing you a fortune - potentially up to 6 figures per year!

I'm talking about notes, letters and correspondence done in work time in gaps.

Now, I know it needs to be done. But are your therapists simply either doing:

a- way too much of it; or
b- spending way too much time on it??

Let's do some sums based on a practical example.

In the past in my clinic I've had clinicians doing up to 4-6 hours' a week of letters, notes and correspondence, for which they are blocking out appointments. Worst still is when they take this home. It's not their fault - it's actually the perfect storm of external demands and internal blocks. What a challenge...

An average scenario:

Let's call the average 5 hours.

Let's swap half of those hours with an appointment.

Let's average the value of an appointment at $100.

2.5 hours, 30 minute appointments @$100.

So that's an extra 5 appointments a week.

An extra $500 a week.

Let's utilise this over a 44 week working year.

$500 x 44 = $22000.

The business gets an extra $22000 a year. Per therapist!

Let's say the therapist gets 45% of this. The therapist gets $9900, the clinic gets the rest.

This amount that the clinic gets is all profit - as there are no fixed costs associated with this, apart from the extra money paid to the clinician, which they have earned! Multiply $10k approx by the number of therapists in your clinic. This is the result. And this is only if half their existing admin time is booked with appointments (which I think is realistic).

So everyone wins.

How do we do this?

We need to work with our clinicians to help them to shift some of their limiting beliefs around notes, letters and correspondence; and
We need to give them some tools to be more efficient. (ie technology)

In my upcoming webinar "Get your time back: how to streamline notes, letters and correspondence as a therapist in private practice, well known mentor and coach Annette Tonkin and I will give your therapists solutions to this challenge.

And at the end of the webinar, I will tell you about the tech we are using to massively reduce the time taken in our clinic for notes, letters and correspondence. You don't need to be a tech guru to use it.

This webinar is for both clinicians and owners. Please come along - I hope my example above hits home.

It's most likely your last chance to book tickets as your therapists' diaries will book up between now and the webinar which is lunchtime on Tuesday 12th December.

Learn from physiotherapy mentor Annette Tonkin about how to solve the problem of notes, letters and correspondence taking over your non- clinical time

31/10/2023

When was the last time you thanked your boss for keeping your clinic alive, keeping you in a job, and not giving up over the hardest 4 years of their business life?

If you haven't, it may be a good time to.

:)

21/10/2023

This post is just one example for those physios who only give exercises without even bothering to learn what the patient wants in the consult.

You are filling the caseloads of your competition.

Instead of talking, try listening.

15/10/2023

This video is for early career physios with under 5 years in the workforce, ideally in private practice.

Want to be fulfilled and wealthy as a physio?

Outlearn to outearn.