We recently connected with Norah Whitten and have shared our conversation below.

Norah, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you happier as a business owner? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job?

It’s so funny that I ended up as a business owner because I distinctly remember saying multiple times “I never want to own my own business” I thought it would be a lot of work (spoiler alert: it is!!). Despite all the work, I do absolutely love owning my own business. However I still don’t really identify as an entrepreneur. When I worked as a staff PT I started to get bored and felt that I wanted to be mentally challenged in ways outside of patient care. I loved, and still do love working with patients but I knew I couldn’t treat 40 hours a week for the rest of my career. When I think about the things I want in life they would be as follows: A job that allows me to treat the type of patients I enjoy in the way I feel patients deserve, flexibility in order to be there for my kids, provide for my family financially and continue to be mentally challenged and learn new skills. Having a business checks all those boxes and so I feel like I kind of ended up here by accident. This is not to say there aren’t times I’ve thought about how it is nice to have the stability of being an employee but I always come back to how it’s so worth it when I think about the extra time I’ve gotten with my kids and husband.

Norah, 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?

Growing up I always knew I wanted to do something in health and fitness. I was an athlete growing up and loved working out and learning more about the human body. Initially I thought physical therapy was isolated to working with old people and didn’t think that was for me, however once I got into college I learned that there are so many different areas of PT and many ways your career can go (and now some of my favorite clients are actually my older folks!). When I graduated PT school I knew I wanted to work in orthopedics and focus on working with an active population. I felt I could relate to active patients well and knew the struggles of being frustrated by injury. However what I never thought I would end up doing is pelvic floor PT. We learned a little about the pelvic floor in school but really just the basics (it was probably only about 2-3 lectures total). It wasn’t until I had been practicing for a little over a year that I started to feel like I was missing a piece of the body. I had a couple patients I treated who I knew had some type of pelvic floor issues going on but I really wasn’t able to help them due to my lack of knowledge. I also started having friends who were getting pregnant and having babies all while doing CrossFit. Some of their experiences with pelvic floor PT really showed me that there aren’t many pelvic floor PTs out there who really understood higher level fitness. That was when I knew I needed to learn more about the pelvic floor and really bridge the gap between orthopedics and pelvic floor PT. The pelvic floor doesn’t work in isolation from the rest of the body, so it can’t be treated that way. I think what really makes our practice standout from other clinics is that we do treat the entire body. We are asking all of our patients about their bowel and bladder habits in order to screen for pelvic floor dysfunction and those who are coming in for pelvic floor dysfunction, we’re also looking at the whole body. In my practice we’ve also chosen to be out of network with insurance, which means patients pay us directly. This allows us to spend a full hour with each patient while not being dictated by what insurance will or won’t cover. This allows us to focus solely on what the person in front of us needs. I think some of the best compliments I’ve gotten from patients are about how they feel really listened to and understood by our therapists and that their experience at Functional Phyzio has been significantly different from “typical” PT clinics.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

I feel very lucky in that my business was pretty low cost to start. I initially started my business by renting space in a CrossFit gym. I didn’t even have a room, I just set up a table in the gym and started seeing clients. I bought a treatment table off of Facebook market, ordered some supplies and was ready to go. The biggest investment when I started was a business coaching program. I knew I didn’t know how to run a business and that if I wanted it to be successful, I needed help. I remember standing in the kitchen with my husband telling him I wanted to invest some of our savings into coaching. He is not someone who spends money without thinking (and I’m thankful for that) but I knew I would have to sell him on the idea as the program was about $5000. To my surprise, it actually wasn’t that hard to get him on board. I do feel very fortunate that we had the savings to invest into starting this business and that my initial risk was pretty low.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I think there are a few things that have really helped me. I started doing CrossFit myself when I was in PT school and through that met a lot of other people and gym owners and so once I graduated and started practicing people who did CrossFit and had injuries knew I understood what they were trying to do and that I wouldn’t just tell them “CrossFit is dangerous”.

I also do a lot of workshops at gyms in the area and always try to provide as much value as possible to as many people as possible. The workshops cover topics ranging from shoulder mobility, low back pain, pelvic floor health and everything in-between. I always want people to leave the workshops learning something new and with a new exercise, stretch or tip that they can implement immediately.

Lastly, I think I provide a really good service and have built up a wide word of mouth referral network because of this. I always focus on finding the root cause of an issue and providing my patients with long term, lasting solutions vs quick fixes. In working with patients one on one over a longer period of time I’m able to really build a great relationship with them, get to know them personally and tailor their treatment plan to exactly what they need. This kind of service is rare in healthcare and by providing something different and exceptional people talk about it.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.functionalphyziopt.com
• Instagram: @functionalphyzio
• Facebook: Functional Phyzio and Performance Therapy
• Linkedin: Functional Phyzio and Performance Therapy
• Youtube: @norahwhitten277

Image Credits
Joy Knight Segovia Pagan