What PT School Never Taught You About Running a Practice

You spent three years in PT school learning how to treat the body. Nobody taught you how to run a business.That's not an accident. It's a design flaw — and it's the same flaw that funnels brilliant clinicians into insurance-based jobs they didn't train for, billing codes they resent, and a model that quietly caps their income no matter how good they get at the actual work.In this episode, Kelly breaks down the specific business gaps that PT programs leave behind — not to shame the schools, but to name what you're working around so you can actually fix it. We're talking cash-based pricing strategy, discovery call conversion, how to position a specialty practice, and why "get more referrals" is the worst business advice ever given to a private practice owner.If you've ever felt like you're figuring out the business side alone — in the margins of your clinical day, between patient notes — this episode is the map you didn't get at graduation.PT school teaches clinical excellence and almost nothing about revenue, pricing, or business development — that's the gap you're working withCash-based practice requires a completely different skill set than insurance billing, and nobody's teaching it in entry-level programsDiscovery calls, niche positioning, and referral network building are learnable skills — not personality traits — and they're the actual levers of practice growth