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

Alright, Stephen thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Was there an experience or lesson you learned at a previous job that’s benefited your career afterwards?

When can I start my own practice? It was a question I’d heard asked, but never answered. There are so many factors that go into an answer like this and I wanted someone to nailed it down for me, but no one could. I’ll tell you the story of how I knew.

The first portion of the question was, “Are you clinically ready to practice on your own without an overseeing eye?” Simply put, are you ready to take the training wheels off and ride on your own? Now I am a physical therapist and not a brain surgeon so it may feel like the stakes aren’t particularly high, but any job in healthcare has a responsibility to give quality and safe care that comes from experience and education. I knew I had the education, but I wasn’t sure about the experience.

2 patients came my way that helped me know I had enough experience to strike out on my own. The first one named Matt was a Cross-Fit athlete who hurt his lower leg while jumping. I evaluated him and so did 2 MDs before he received an MRI. These cases are always particularly fun because you get to see how good your detective skills are. The 2 doctors said 1 thing and I (to myself and to the patient, but no the Doctors – I’m not dumb) had another opinion. When the MRI results came back it turned out that I was correct and the 2 Doctors were incorrect. No big deal, but it started to erode my imposter syndrome.

The second patient that came my way was Calvin. He was having shoulder pain and was also scheduled for an MRI but he was seeing myself and my boss (the owner of the clinic I worked at) before the appointment so, again, I get to put on my detective hat. I evaluate and so does my boss, we both write down what we think is going on and then when the results came back I got 4 out of the 5 conditions correct and my boss only got 2 of them. My imposter syndrome was still present (still to this day for certain things) but in that moment I think I realized that I didn’t need to be perfect to own my own business and take the training wheels off, and that I had enough experience and education to attempt the leap.

The other portion of this story are the financials behind starting your own business. You can be the best clinician in the world, but if no one wants to see you then your business will fail. I adopted a slow transition that I would recommend to anyone where my side hustle became my full time gig. I started with seeing patients for myself before and after work and then as I started turning away business I started to cut back on my 9-5. Once I was making enough money to very very frugally live off of my side hustle and had a bit of a waitlist even in the down months, I completely cut out the full time job and let the flood gates open. I was pleasantly surprised to know that I probably could have made the leap earlier, but glad that I waited so that the transition was less stressful which meant it was still very stressful, but tolerable :)

There is no way you can completely know if you will be successful with your own business, but I hope these stories give you a sense of the questions you should be asking and the thought approach behind them.

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

I am lucky, what I enjoy the most and am best at are the same thing: Helping people.

I enjoy working as a consultant to people who are thinking about starting their own business and aren’t sure where to start. I share my story where it is relevant and in particular try and guide them around the potholes I hit.

I started as just helping my friends start their own clinics and that developed into my side hustle. If you read my story you know that maybe one day this will become my 9-5

Shoot me a line at [email protected] if you are looking for help and I’ll let you know if I have space

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

Don’t try and track down strangers who don’t know you at all and try and convert them into clients, use your relationships. Your best relationships are with former patients because they already know and trust you, so keep every email of every patient you have ever worked with.

Start a monthly newsletter where you talk about ANYTHING you like and that will keep your name in their minds and when someone tells them about their bad shoulder, your name will immediately come to mind.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your firm or practice?

This is probably the least sexy answer to this questions, but I saved up $2000 and loaned it to myself for my business and that was the best decision I ever made. By not taking out a large loan it forced me to be lean in the beginning and only bolt on additional expenses when I could afford them. I rented from a gym vs getting a lease, I used inexpensive bland software, I kept as many expenses tied to revenue as possible.

When things got challenging down the road (remember 2020 and COVID?) I was able to stay afloat because my business was still lean at its core. I would encourage others to take the same approach because you really can’t fail, at worst you end up “regrouping” and pivoting or worst case just having to be more patient.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://ihealthsciences.com/
• Instagram: @ihealthsciences
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ihealthsciences/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-horney-pt-mpt-mtc-cscs-2097571a/
• Twitter: @ihealthsciences
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ihealthsciences