Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Dr. Nicole Lorenz. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Dr. Nicole, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about how you went about setting up your own practice and if you have any advice for professionals who might be considering starting their own?

Like many, I presume, starting my own practice was years in the making. I began considering the possibility of starting my own practice 2 years prior to filing paperwork for my “LLC”. I do not come from an inherently entrepreneurial family, however, I was able to reach out to a cousin and discuss some of the basics required to start a business; the rest was found through trial-and-error and scouring the internet. (And, about a dozen different podcasts!) Along the way there have been many challenges ranging from small to the seemingly impossible. As an independent physical therapist, the greatest challenge was getting network with specific commercial insurance providers. The process was slow and difficult to navigate. I went through multiple rounds of my applications being discarded for a variety of reasons; without communication as to the error. Having a background in training for endurance sports (running and triathlon), I leaned on my experience that consistent work over time yields results. It took six months, but finally I got my application to be in-network with commercial insurance. At this time, my practice has been open approximately 2.5 years. My two biggest lessons have been: 1. to have patience, starting a business is a process and your goal is to be in it for the long-game. 2. Relationships are one of the most important factors in a business being successful. I owe much of my business’s success to support from a few key people, without whom I would not be here talking about my business.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am an orthopedic and women’s pelvic health physical therapist; I am also a certified Pilates instructor. I chose to pursue the field of physical therapy because of my interest in healthcare and my love of sport and being active. I received my Doctorate in Physical Therapy from Wayne State University in 2012. Thanks to an amazing professor who introduced us to Pilates during our graduate coursework I began pursuing education in Pilates instruction prior to graduation. I was always interested in working with an athletic population of patients and began working in an orthopedic clinic upon graduation. Throughout the early part of my career, I was training and competing in triathlon during most of my non-working hours. It was my transition from training for triathlons to starting a family that lead me down the path to specialize in women’s pelvic health. I began looking for information that would guide my activity level through pregnancy and beyond, and found very little research-based information to work with. This ongoing interest in supporting myself and other women in the perinatal timeframes lead me to begin specializing in the area of women’s pelvic health. Pelvic health is an area of practice within the field of physical therapy that requires significant, and ongoing, postgraduate coursework. My background in orthopedics allows me to view women’s health issues through both the lens of global movement patterns (what is happening in the whole body) and through the lens of a pelvic health clinician. As a clinician in this field of practice I am often helping women who are dealing with pain conditions involving bowel/bladder health, sexual health, and bone/joint pain in the areas of prenatal, postpartum, and throughout the lifecycle including peri and post-menopausal.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

One of the books that has had the greatest impact on my entrepreneurial journey has been “Shoe Dog, A Memoir By the Creator of Nike”, by Phil Knight. Whether you are a fan of the Nike brand, or not, the story of how Nike came to be what we know today was a trial of errors. I think back to some of the experiences Phil Knight described in the book when I come across a difficult situation. It gives me a greater understanding that I am meeting one small challenge after another, and that I have to address each and continue forward. The book is a true testament to the concept that nothing worth doing is ever easy.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Early in my career I worked in environments that began valuing quantity over quality. In healthcare, this is not a value worth working for. It was the high volume of patient care that ultimately lead me to consider starting my own practice. Having gone through school to achieve a doctorate in my field, I expected to be given adequate time to provide quality care to patients. This was not the case in some of the settings I have worked in. The goal in starting my practice was to provide one-on-one care for sessions of approximately one hour, rather than seeing 3-4 (or more) people per hour. What I did not expect was to still have such a strong focus on number of visits I was seeing. Yes, we all need a certain amount of volume for our business to thrive and pay our bills. Even now I have to look at certain KPI’s and remind myself that the goal is quality and not quantity; and that for now, the practice is achieving that goal.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.refineptwellness.com
• Instagram: @refinephysicaltherapy
• Facebook: Refine Physical Therapy and Wellness
• Other: Threads.net: Refinephysicaltherapy

Image Credits
Photographs taken by Shelby Dubin.