We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Molly Poenitzsch. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Molly below.

Alright, Molly thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. 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?

We started our physical therapy from an empty building, which my husband helped to design to make it optimal for patients as well as the physical therapists. One of the key challenges in setting up our practice was establishing ourselves in the community and getting referrals from the different doctors in the area. It was a struggle trying to get to share our story with many doctors because they already had established physical therapy clinics that they sent their patients to. And when we felt like our clientele and our reputation were being built up, COVID hit us hard and we lost so many patients. I wasn’t sure if we would get through the pandemic.

Advice for a young professional would be to never give up on your dreams if you want to start your own practice because it is well worth it in the end.

Molly, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m a Doctor of Physical Therapy and pelvic floor physical therapist. I have a passion for staying active and my goal is to help people get back to what they love. I graduated from Texas Woman’s University, which is where I met my husband, James Poenitzsch who is also a Doctor of Physical Therapy and co-owner of Live to Move. We worked for another private practice for a few years before deciding to open our own practice. The main reason for opening our own practice was to be able to spend more time with our patients and offer other wellness services including strength training and whole-food plant-based nutrition counseling. Most orthopedic physical therapy clinics see 3-4 patients per hour, but at our clinic, we only see one patient every 45 minutes – 1 hour. This also creates a better work environment for our therapists so they are not overloaded with patients and documentation.

We’ve also expanded our services to include pelvic floor physical therapy which I’m very proud of. I never imagined becoming a pelvic floor physical therapist while in school until after I gave birth to my son in November 2019. Now we have another pelvic floor therapist at our clinic and can offer this much-needed service in our area.

How’d you meet your business partner?

I met my business partner (my husband) while in physical therapy school. He was actually in the graduating class of 2016 and I was in the graduating class of 2015. Although we were in the same physical therapy program, we did not have any classes together, so we would see each other in passing, but did not really interact at all. During my last year of school, one of my classmates convinced me to go to PT Olympics that year, which is where different physical therapy schools in Texas get together to compete in different athletic events. James happened to go that year as well and that’s when it all began. Seven years later, we are married with a business, a 2.5 year-old son, and another baby boy on the way due at the end of October.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

The most effective strategy for growing our clientele is making ourselves different from other physical therapy clinics. Because we don’t schedule as many patients on the therapists’ schedules, we are able to spend more one-on-one time with our patients and offer better care. Often our patients have been to other physical therapy clinics and they tell us all the time that it’s not the same and they will never go back to where they went previously. Sometimes they tell me that they didn’t even know who their actual therapist was at a different clinic.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.livetomovept.com
• Instagram: @livetomovept
• Facebook: @livetomovePT