We were lucky to catch up with Greg Bailen recently and have shared our conversation below.

Greg, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Your ability to build a team is often a key determinant of your success as a business owner and so we’d love to get a conversation going with successful entrepreneurs like yourself around what your recruiting process was like -especially early on. How did you build your team?

For the first two years it was just Matt and I as co-owners at Thrive HQ. This year, we had the pleasure of bringing on Anna Fobbe as a physical therapist who will be working at our new St. Paul location and we plan to continue to hire as we grow. For us, we rely heavily on relationship building for both building our team and working with and attracting new clients. We were able to find Anna through a mutual connection who knew about our business and what we stood for and he was able to put us in contact with her. As far as the interview process goes Matt and I are not big fans of “traditional” interview processes that are very scripted. We prefer to have a dynamic conversation (usually at our favorite local coffee shop) to see if we are a good mutual fit for each other. From there we will typically bring applicants into the studio to observe, ask questions and this also gives us an opportunity to observe how they interact with potential or current clients.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Greg Bailen and I live in Lake Elmo with my 4 year old Kennedy, 6 year old Jack and my wife, Lainie. I grew up in Roseville, MN and went to Saint John’s University where I earned my bachelors in psychology and pre-physical therapy. When I originally attended college I was on the engineering track but found out after my first year that that was not where my passion was. It was after I took an intro to sports medicine class my sophomore year that I started to learn about and develop a passion for becoming a physical therapist. What attracted me to the profession of physical therapy was how much potential there was to make a true change in someones life (think getting a grandparent back to playing with their grandchild again). From there, I went on to Mayo College of Medicine/School of Health Sciences to earn my doctorate in Physical Therapy. During that time I also joined the Army National Guard where I serve as a medical officer/physical therapist and have had one deployment to the middle east.

My passion and the mission of Thrive HQ is to “Change Lives Through Movement.” We strongly believe that if we can get people out of pain and moving better, that that can improve many aspects of their life. Additionally, we believe movement isn’t just physical. We can move positively in many aspects of life/”deep health” from nutrition, to sleep, to stress management and managing our relationships. We try to address all areas of this concept of “deep health” when we are working with our clients that walk into our studio. Our main service is physical therapy. However, the way in which we deliver that service is unique and all-encompassing in that we incorporate aspects of deep health (sleep guidance, stress management, nutrition guidance, etc.) in combination with hands-on manual therapy (body work), exercise programming and modalities like dry needling to get people healthier and continuing down their fitness journey.

How’d you meet your business partner?

We actually knew each other from our previous job where we worked together as clinic directors. We connected about Thrive HQ over a delicious rib/bbq dinner from our local butcher shop. We both came to the realization that how we wanted to practice healthcare was not compatible with the external parameters of the market we were in (insurance-based healthcare system). We realized that if we want to be able to address more areas of deep health with our clients and get them back to what they actually want to do (versus what insurance says is “normal”) that we had to break free from the insurance-based clinic market and into the cash-based market where we can address the individual in front of us versus worrying about what we can or can’t do based on reimbursement from insurance companies. This was a hard decision but it has been so freeing to be able to provide quality healthcare without restrictions.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

For the initial start up of the business and for our recent expansion we have leveraged personal capitol, small business loans and lines of credit (HELOC). We also currently have a line of credit that is available if we need any additional working capitol.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thrive-hq.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thrive.hq.physiotherapy/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thrivelakeelmo/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thrive-hq-physical-therapy-and-wellness/?viewAsMember=true
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu5W7voqmWWB7QOcTE5eQoA

Image Credits
LK Creative Co. (Lexie Kennedy)