We were lucky to catch up with Okon Antia recently and have shared our conversation below.

Okon, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Setting up an independent practice is a daunting endeavor. Can you talk to us about what it was like for you – what were some of the main steps, challenges, etc.

There are many steps and challenges with getting a new practice off of the ground. The first step is to obtain an IRS EIN number and register the business with your state. Without this you don’t really have a business. I’d say the first hurdle is determining how much of your own capital you have to invest in getting the business started vs relying on outside funds for a business that has no history or sales. Other steps include deciding where to offer services (mobile, brick & mortar, etc) and acquiring the equipment to allow you to provide the services. Some of it is using your history in the profession while some of it is projecting out what you might need in the future given your unique circumstances. Being willing to learn and grow in areas unrelated to your “trade” is a very important step and a challenge within itself. You have to learn marketing, sales, finance, customer experience, tech support, billing/payment processing, real estate, and contracts in addition to the trade, product, or service you provide. Without a commitment to doing all of this, it would be very hard to launch a company and stay on track during the initial growth phase.

Okon, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Our company has been providing corporate wellness, sports medicine, physical therapy, injury prevention, and sports recovery services to the local community since 2019. We provide these services in traditional brick-and-mortar offices as well as #OnCampus at the convenience of your work office, school, club sports field, or gym via our innovative Campus Motion Mobile Clinic. This is a Sprinter Van built out into a mobile clinic to allow our team to serve patients and clients wherever they are, whatever “campus” they prefer.

We currently have two brick-and-mortar offices, one in the Fairfield area of Cypress, TX (NW Houston) and the second location in the Towne Lake/Bridgeland area, also in Cypress, as of June 2022. This second location added whole-body cryotherapy, local cryotherapy, and red light therapy services to our existing sports recovery services, such as compression and percussion therapy.

Campus Motion has set out to meet the recovery/injury prevention needs of the community and developed specific specialty recovery programs for runners, cyclists, baseball players, tennis players, football players, and track athletes. Our goal is to switch the sports health paradigm in the community from reactionary episodic care to proactive preventative care and to make it as convenient and seamless as possible. We offer a unique approach to sports health delivery in that we’ve meshed a full-fledged physical therapy office with a recovery/wellness center while providing those services mobile as well. We also offer virtual/remote corporate wellness services where help local small businesses engage their employees in wellness programs to improve retention, productivity, and overall health. This is done via 6 week challenges on a particular topicwhere we coach employees through nutrition, weight loss, mindfulness, heart health, or exercise specific challenges all remotely through our health technology We truly embody “Movement wherever you are” and are grateful for the trust our clients have shown us!

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I started this journey in early 2019. I was laid off as Regional Director at a very prominent corporate PT practice after a CEO change caused the organization to go in a different direction, and what I was brought there for was off the table. I spent a few months looking for the right role but knew I wanted to do something different. Traditional outpatient PT was not my jam anymore.

I took a flier on a part-time role with a company that provided employer-based health center services. A month after arriving, a position opened up that would have taken me from part-time to back to the regional/national level. I prepared hard and emptied out my notebook of ideas. I ended up becoming a finalist for the position but alas, close but no cigar. The disappointment from that decision and all the ideas I proposed led me to start my company. I literally started it a week later, and it was officially incorporated in October 2019. I was part-time still and had no interest in returning to standard outpatient PT, so I decided to start the company as a side hustle.

I planned to start seeing clients in January 2020 and saw my first client that first week of 2020. The Covid-19 pandemic then started in March 2020, and of course, I had barely gotten off the ground before the world was shut down. I didn’t have a single client for three months in my practice while the entire world was in quarantine (July 2020), although I still maintained the part-time gig.

Fast forward a year to July 2021. After a year of having W2 employment and a side hustle with a few clients due to unforeseen circumstances, it was now time to go full-time into my business without looking back. I say all of this to say believe in yourself when no one else does. If you are not content with your situation, then take the steps necessary to get where you want to be. Your greatest triumphs happen when you overcome your biggest obstacles!

Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?

1. You always have to have the mindset of continuous improvement and continuous learning regardless of your personal interest in a given subject. Usually, when you start a business, you have a specific passion you want to build the business around. That is awesome, but you need to be open to learning about topics such as marketing, sales, social media, SEO, finance, accounting, software programs, and customer experience.

2. Make plans for the here and now, for the short term, and for the long term, and continuously modify when presented with new information or new circumstances. It might be bad timing for some of your best and most creative ideas, and they might not work at the moment. Be willing to adjust those plans and revisit those ideas later when the timing might work better. Always be prepared to pivot.

3.Take your ego out of the equation. In my industry, many healthcare providers have trouble putting their professional ego to the side in the best interests of clients and patients. If someone else is paying you and responsible for generating revenue, then maybe you can get away with that. But when you are responsible for your business development and revenue generation, you need to consider what the customer wants and needs ahead of your own.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.campusmotion.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.cryo.recovery.physio/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/campusmotion.org/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/okon-antia-pt-dpt-ocs-scs-cscs-a6a15a119/