TRANSCTIPTION:

Jen Casey (JC): I feel like I haven’t talked to you and really done a deep dive in what’s happening now in your business in a long time, so I’m excited to hear all the updates of the things that you’re working on right now. You had this physical in-person business for a long time. How did you start to transition that online and what does that look like for you?

Nicole Woodard (NW): I worked at a division one university and I was commuting about two hours and 40 minutes a day, so whenever I moved away from that location to be closer to my family after my son was born, I wanted to maintain that closeness so I said, “Oh, I’ll just drive once a month and go see all of those clients.” That once a month really started to grow and grow and grow and one day a month wasn’t working. It was far away. I started to learn and see this big telehealth movement happening and I thought to myself, “What is it that I’m doing that can’t be done in an online platform?”

A lot of the research for physical therapy started to show that it wasn’t just us putting our hands on people. It was actually them taking control of their own bodies and their own lives and moving properly. I just really thought, wow… that’s a great space to go and empower people and be able to connect with more people from my lovely home.

JC: Yes, I love it. So what exactly is telehealth, because I actually haven’t heard that specific name for it yet.

NW: Telehealth is essentially any health platform that you can get going in. You can go to the doctor, you can go to the dietician, you can go to the nurse practitioner, or you can go to physical therapy. It’s any of those platforms, even psychologists now are doing it. Neurologists, too. It’s the ability to get online either with video chat or through an app where you can ask questions and get your questions answered. Sometimes they can still send you medications or prescribe exercise, like what I do.

It’s taking your health care to the next level.

JC: I know throughout this whole journey of transitioning and integrating this online piece in your business, there’s been a lot of objections and people not understanding what this is. How have you navigated dealing with these perceptions and objections about what physical therapy and what going to a doctor is.

NW: The biggest thing was my own mindset. I am a super hands on manual therapist. I mean, I spend 20 to 30 minutes with my hands on clients. I kept thinking I wasn’t going to be good enough in this space. Those were tons of things that you and I worked through together and that I worked through with Manifestation Babe Academy and really thinking about my own objections to myself, diving into that, and answering those questions.

How I started combating that is I just picked up a few clients and I said these are only online clients. I met them online through Instagram and I kept them online the whole time. What happened with those clients was revolutionary. They got better, faster and were more compliant than anyone I’d ever seen in person. It was awesome. They loved that connection and that ability to get a hold of me, but they took so much personal responsibility for what they were supposed to be doing.

I said to myself, “These people are getting as well as anyone I’ve ever touched in person, so why am I not reaching out and impacting more people this way?”

Why am I limiting myself by saying, as a physical therapist, I need a whole hour long appointment, one-on-one, three days a week with these people in order to get them better when maybe that wasn’t the actual truth.

So finding that other side of the story.

JC: This is so valuable and I think we can draw some parallels even for those people who have only online businesses, who are insistent that they can only help people one-on-one, and they’re afraid to transition to a course or group program. Or they’re afraid to hire other people to come in as support coaches because it’s like, well if it’s not me… then how are they going to get the value?

I think what you’re modeling is scalability and reaching more people. Interestingly enough, the people you found online are more of your ideal clients because when you’re stuck to a specific location, especially for clients who live in the middle of nowhere, how are you supposed to find your people if that’s your situation? You really just stepped forward and opened up so much more opportunity and created so much more impact through this.

NW: The thing that I dealt with a lot was that people don’t even understand what physical therapy is as a profession. Walk around (this is actually really fun if anyone wants to try it in general for any profession) and tell people what you do and have them describe it. Say, “Shut your eyes and tell me what a physical therapist looks like.” It’s so interesting. Then I would ask them, “What is it that a physical therapist would do?”

I started to hear these things that they thought were common for physical therapists that maybe weren’t exactly true and there was some other expertise that went into it. So getting in this online platform not only is just for my clients, but it’s for everyone across the board to start understanding what our profession does because we’re freaking awesome and I love what I do!

JC: What are some of the biggest misconceptions that you heard when you started, because essentially you were doing market research and that’s a really fun exercise to go and ask that. Even when I say I’m a business coach outside the coaching bubble, people do a little head cock, like a little dog. They’re like, “What do you mean? How does that work? So people on the Internet just send you money?”

NW: Yeah exactly, and that’s kind of the same thing with physical therapists. They look at us and say, “Oh yeah you guys do massages,” is one end of the spectrum or, “You go in and they give you exercises whenever you’re hurt or after surgery,” which both of those are sort of true, but they’re missing this whole concept that’s so awesome about physical therapy.

Someone can come to me, injured or not injured, and I can diagnose your movement problems, so anything in your body that’s going to lead to an injury has caused the current injury to happen. I have the ability to be able to fix those either with hands on techniques or exercises that can immediately improve what’s going on.

People also don’t know that brain connection. The brain and the body are connected all the time and if your brain isn’t working perfectly, which unfortunately for most people it’s not (including myself!). We get a ton of neuro in school, so really studying how the brain connects to the body. Our exercises aren’t just to lift your leg and strengthen it. It’s to connect your brain to that leg so that you can run as fast as possible. Those are the biggest things that my clients see.

“Boom! Wow! This exercise correlated to me running the fastest mile time I’ve ever had. How did you do that??” And that’s AWESOME.

JC: That is so powerful. I want everyone who’s listening to this to recognize what’s so incredible about what you did within that. When we have an offer or something that we’re selling online, if our potential clients don’t understand what it is, how it works, or how it’s going to help them get to a desired end result, if they’ve got all these objections because they don’t understand it, you can’t sell them your solution.

What you’ve done in stepping into the online world is like demystifying all of the things that previously confused people and now creating this really clear solution to help people feel better on every level, whether they’re an athlete or not.

NW: Exactly. The number one objection that I keep hearing about physical therapy was the amount of time that it took to get there. Most physical therapists work eight to five. The majority of people that are coming to us have insurance and they have insurance because they’re working jobs. Those jobs are taking them out for the majority of time, so they can’t make it to their appointments. It’s not like a doctor’s appointment that’s once or twice a year. This is two times a week for maybe six weeks.

It was overwhelming for my clients, so people quit.

They stop coming.

They never get better and just learn how to deal with pain or they stop exercising.

“Well, when I run it hurts all the time,” or, “Nope, I just can’t lift weights because if I do, I get back pain,” and I ask them if they have ever tried physical therapy. They say, “No, I can’t afford my deductible and it’s not that bad. I also can’t afford being off work that often.”

That’s where this model is life changing for people because all they have to do is check in on the app. They’ve got exercises every day. They send me videos of how they’re moving when it’s convenient for them, so they’ll send a couple videos a week. Maybe at 8:00 at night they’re at the gym and they take a video of their squat. They send it to me, I analyze, and I say, “Hey, you’re shifting here. Let’s add a couple of these exercises this week. Be aware of that.” We check in once a month through video chat or they still have the option to come in person once a month, but it saves them so much time and inconvenience.

JC: I didn’t realize the level in which you had built this out with. For all of you guys, in whatever industry you’re in, look at the biggest problems that people have. You identified that they can’t take off work and they can’t come in the middle of the day. You’ve built a solution that works more for you, as the person facilitating, and it makes their life easier too.

Hopefully this speaks to not just the people in this situation, but also the personal trainers and dietitians who are only seeing in-person clients. It causes major burnout. You’re driving to the office, you’re working these very specific hours, and you’re not really able to make the biggest impact, and for your vision, it’s massive.

NW: When you’re one-on-one like that, you’re spending a lot of time, which is awesome, but you can cut way back on that amount of time and they are more compliant and they get more from you when they need it. You still get the relationship stuff. You still get to love and care about them and all the stuff that I love because the people is the best part of my profession. You get all of that and you can impact five times the amount of caseload with the same amount of hours.

JC: This whole next level of scalability in what you’re building and what’s possible now with the online space is absolutely mind blowing. You stepped into and you saw the vision. You came to an event that I spoke at and you were like, “Oh my God. Now I see it even more clearly what’s possible.” There was a lot of people in that room who did have a physical location business as well as online.

What was the biggest aha for you, because you said there was a big shift just being in the room with other people who were doing what you wanted to do.

NW: The biggest shift was that mindset stuff.

I was telling myself that I wanted to do something different. I wanted to change the world of physical therapy, but when I looked at it, I was still doing the same things the same way that I already knew didn’t work at the scalable level that I believed physical therapy could.

I think sitting in that room and even hearing some people’s objections in that room that were the same as mine… “Oh, I could never go out of my brick and mortar. People want to just see me and they want me to put my hands on them.” Hearing that stuff through someone else all of a sudden made me realize everything that I was saying out loud as well. In that room, I think there was one other person who is a PT too heading into the online space. We were able to connect and we went out to lunch and realized that everyone else in that room had no idea who we were or what we were doing, even when we said the words, “I’m a physical therapist.”

That was when I realized no matter how big or how small this can get, as far as my amount of clients, it’s my duty to help people understand my profession because that’s the only way any of us are ever going to grow. That’s the only way that this changes and we get the respect and the collaboration in the medical community.

JC: I know when you were transitioning out of doing more of the in-person stuff, that was a little bit challenging to let go of that. I’d love for you to speak to what was coming up for you during that and how you worked through it because that is a scary leap.

NW: I’ve been in the online space really now for about a year where I was pushing it and having online-only clients, but I just left my brick and mortar business about three months now.

I cried in the closet. Most comforting place to cry, ever!

I felt like an epic failure closing my brick and mortar because that’s what everyone is doing. I didn’t necessarily feel empowered. I knew it was the right decision. I knew it was what I had to do for all the circumstances that were leading up to it. You and so many other people taught me undeniably not to look away from the universe because the universe is shoving you in the right direction. I felt so called to do that, but I still felt like a failure and I had no idea what I was going to do or how I was going to make this work.

We are looking at growing our family, so we adopted our son. I started the business after that and started looking at trying to make this a profitable business, not just a business I’m feeding money into. Like, this my family. This is us potentially having another child. This is making sure that my husband is able to work a job that he loves. This is making sure that we get a home. It was hard and it was ugly.

I realized so much of that stuff was just me telling myself a story that it wasn’t going to work. Once I decided that it was going to work, all of a sudden everything opened up.

I found a telehealth physical therapy group on Facebook that has almost 3,000 members. I was able to become a mentor through that group helping other people. I have PT’s reaching out to me all the time on Instagram asking if they can do a 30 minute call.

I just had to make that mind shift that it was going to be okay.

Just sit down, grind, figure it out, and fail as fast as humanly possible.

Because this is coming…

All medical platforms are going to be online. It’s coming, people want it, they need it, they just don’t understand it yet. If I can fail faster than everyone else and I can cry in the closet sooner than they do, then I can revolutionize what this looks like for other people. Those other people right now are my clients. It can revolutionize what their life looks and how they train as athletes. That means the world to me.

I just had to step out of myself and become that badass individual that I was claiming to be.

JC: One of the biggest things that you said is so simple… you just decided. You said, “The moment I decided that this is going to work,” then there was no other option. You burned the ship, so to speak.

I’m sure you had a lot of people in your life, family members and friends, who were like, “Nicole, what are you doing? What do you mean you’re closing down your physical location? Why would you do that?”

Not only do they not understand what a physical therapist does, but those people probably also don’t understand how that would be transferable to the online world. That’s a big question that I get from a lot of clients of mine, who are like, “My family doesn’t understand or support what I’m doing.”

How did you navigate that?

NW: Well luckily my husband is the bomb, so I will give him all the credit. I literally come up with these insane ideas and he is just like, “Nicole, live your dream. You will just change the world.” I will say I am so, so, lucky in that aspect.

From the other aspect, I sat down and started a morning routine and part of that morning routine is that I only consume content from people that I look up to. People who are creating and living in the online space. Those are the people that I listen to every morning. I don’t listen to music anymore while I’m in the car.  

When you hear those people every day, what you are doing becomes the norm. It’s normal for me to be where I’m at, so even when people give me objections I realize that it’s okay. That’s not normal for them, but that’s my normal.

Surround yourself with people that are already living at least part of the life that you want to live!

I love my parents and I value their opinion, but their idea of a really successful life is a really stable 401K and a job where they can stay. It’s not that those things are important to me. I was raised that they are. Right now, that’s not what I want to do. Those things don’t match up right now and that’s okay. I look at my other mentors and they’re like, “Get it! Here’s how you do it! And this is how you build financial stability for yourself in the future! And this is what it looks like!”

I saw this whole other path that those people just don’t even know exist and ignorance maybe for them is bliss, but for me it wasn’t bliss because I knew that this existed over here and I had to figure out how to get there.

JC: People need to stop taking advice from people who have not had success in the thing that they’re moving towards.

When I was doing the online business stuff, in the beginning I had managers at previous jobs try to talk me out of leaving.

I had a therapist who looked at me like I was all sorts of crazy.

My parents were super confused.

My friends were asking, “Why aren’t you coming out and getting drunk with us on the weekends? I don’t get it.”

That is a SCARY transition if you haven’t done the personal development work and you’re not totally solid in what you’re creating. You’re saying, “I did not listen to anybody except the people who were living the life that I wanted,” and I think that’s such a good takeaway for everyone.

When we hear other people’s negative stuff, it’s only going to resonate for you if it’s a fear that you have.

We can touch somebody’s skin and it feels nice and soft to be touched, but if you’ve got a wound there and someone goes to touch your skin, it’s painful. It’s the same thing on our emotional body. If somebody says, “Are you sure it’s really going to work? Don’t you want to stay and save up for 401K and cash that in later?” If that’s a fear that you have deep down, all of a sudden you’re triggered and you don’t know why. You’re back in the closet!

NW: That was huge for me, listening to people that practice that. You, Katherine Zenkina, and James Wedmore talk a lot about when those things come up for you and people are telling you things that you already believe, it’s just the universe asking you if you still believe it or not. If you do, then those are your people and you can hang out with them and that’s your group.

There’s people that tell me stuff that I believe now to be true and those are my people and I know that I’m supposed to be with them right now in this stage of life or business.

Then there’s other people that tell me objections that I used to believe and I know that it’s just the universe checking in on me asking, “Hey, are you sure you don’t believe this anymore? Just wanted to make sure you’re still confident in your answer and your decision.”

It’s nice for the universe to check in on us like that.

JC: I just got back a few days ago from three days with James Wedmore and the inner circle mastermind. This is my second year and it was the best one that we’ve ever done. We all walked out of there on cloud nine, like holy crap… this whole other level of what’s possible opened up and James shared something really cool. He was like, “I hope you guys recognize that this is how you can feel and are supposed to feel and have the potential to feel at all times. This is your natural state.”

For so many of us, we have that emotional home of stress or anxiety or frustration and we want to go back there and fight that identity. Something just clicked for me. We’ve heard different iterations before through source or through other people sharing it with us, but something just clicked on another level and it was exactly that. This is what’s possible. I’m only going to listen to the things that make me feel that good. lt was a whole other level of feeling good and seeing the vision. It’s so exciting to be around other people who are in that space, who see what is possible for you, and who are going to pour into your vision.

NW: I love it. I mean, you introduced me to that stuff and I have been nonstop since. I’m like, “I gotta do the masterminds, gotta do the live events, and be in the room with the people and do the work.”

Tradition tells us that if we just follow in the path that everybody else has done, then we will be successful. So many people will be, but if you follow in the path that everyone else has done, you will only end up where they are. You can’t surpass them. You’ll just end up where they are and maybe that’s not where you are supposed to be. Maybe you’re supposed to be something bigger or maybe you’re supposed to be something different.

If you just follow that, you’re limiting your potential.

We have these bracelets, refocus bands, and our business motto is, “Today, your best is enough,” and you’re supposed to look at and I say that’s two fold. That’s asking yourself are you really giving your best or are you looking in the lane next to you, whether you’re an athlete and you’re looking in the lane next to you, or are you trying to beat the person in front of you at their race?

If you’re only focused on that person and they have a bad race, are you going to run slower too or could you actually go exponentially faster if you only looked inward and you asked yourself, “Can I be MY best self?” If you really are giving your best, even if everyone around you beats you, that’s enough for that day. Just be satisfied with where you are. I think that that’s been true for my athletes. It’s also been true for me in this business moving from traditional to something that’s not quite as traditional.