Beyond Insurance: OT's New Horizon
Janelle Kloske, OTR/L, shares her story of being the proud owner of a Private Pay practice that is impacting her community.
Janelle is a alumni of Private Pay MBA and she's owned not 1 but 2 OT practices. And in this interview we discuss the lessons she's learned along the way, what she's gained from Private Pay MBA, and the advice she'd give to OTs just starting their business.
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Transcript:
Doug Vestal:
Ever felt trapped as an OT chained by insurance, longing for freedom to serve your clients the way that you originally envisioned. Well, I want you to meet Janelle Klonsky once just like you. She is now the proud owner of Wana Mama in Holland, Michigan, and she's championed pelvic health and healing for women from prepping for pregnancy to postpartum recovery. She is reshaping OT landscape in her community, one client at a time, and guess what? Not a single insurance card insight. I want you to dive into this interview to discover how she a proud graduate of private pay. M B A has really unleashed the true essence of OT in her practice. If you are feeling called to really unleash your OT creativeness in your career, that I think this might just be the push that you need. So I am so happy that Janelle is joining us today. Janelle, thank you so much for coming onto the show.
Janelle Kloske:
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Doug Vestal:
Absolutely. So let's kick it off, and I'd love for you to talk to us a little bit about the path of you deciding to open up your own private pay practice versus working for someone else, which many OTs do.
Janelle Kloske:
I realized early on in my career that I struggled. I was struggling with the insurance piece of it. I loved being a therapist, but it was very quickly into starting to work in a skilled nursing facility and feeling like I was under the thumb of that insurance. Those expectations, Medicare protocols and productivity were really rough on me. I found that I wasn't able to give my patients and my clients what they really, I mean, it's not always the case, but in a lot of situations I felt like I had to rearrange the way I provided my services to meet those standards rather than the actual needs of my patients. So it was always kind of a struggle that I had to navigate, but I did work in that space for a really long time, but I was always in the back of my mind kind of plotting away to work for myself. So I've been an OT since I graduated in 2006. I started practicing in 2007, so by a few years into it, my husband and I were actually, we were thinking about starting a business together, like a home modifications business. We're just brainstorming all the time. But finally in 2012, I had the opportunity to move to Guam and I did start a practice because that was almost my only option if I wanted to work. So I did that and did it for a year and it was really cool.
It was an important learning experience for sure, and I realized it was short-lived, but it was overall really successful even without having a business background. So I realized that it would be something that I'd be able to do in the future, in the longterm. So when I fast forward a handful of years, I had my second baby and I was pondering all of the experiences that I'd had going into motherhood, and I realized that there were so little really good resources for women and mothers. So it just kind of fell into place. I created a business plan for guama and it felt so right. So I've run with that ever since.
Doug Vestal:
That's amazing. And I love one of the things that you said in there, which is that you and your husband are constantly coming up with different ideas and kind of playing that What if game and my wife and I, we do that all the time as well. I find it's great for the relationship one and then two, it just helps two see the world more expansively, and I think what could life look like if we did have our own practice? What could life look like if we had our own home modification and not be stymied from the beginning of going, no, that's a crazy idea. I think the first step in all this is just dreaming about it and planning for it ahead of time.
Janelle Kloske:
The dreaming is so fun. Yeah,
Doug Vestal:
It totally is. And you don't want to ever lose that because also, even once you have your business going, you can dream about the services you can provide, you can dream about employees that you could hire, that fervor never really, really leaves you. So that's wonderful. So I know you recently took private pay M B A, and I'm curious, so what did you take from that course and how have you been tapping into to that momentum?
Janelle Kloske:
Oh, finding your course. It was like magic, truly. I was literally at a crossroads with my practice. I was three years in at the time and I was coming out of health issues and having really struggling with momentum, but also having three years of work under my belt to build, feeling like I'd done everything that I could possibly do and still not seeing the outcomes that I was hoping for. There were lots of factors that were coming into play there, but I felt like I was just beating my head against a wall. It was a very frustrating moment, and I really was tossing around the idea of closing and I was talking about it that day and something I came across something maybe I am on Lindsay's ot, public health OT Facebook group, and I saw something about a private pay M b a course, and I was like, it was designed that was designed for occupational therapists in private practice. Are you serious? It was just handed to me on in this moment where I was like, wow, this is amazing. So it took very little thought and convincing to go for it. I really needed it and it was what I needed. So did I answer that question?
Doug Vestal:
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's been so wonderful having you as part of it because I think also the value that you've brought is that you are an experienced business owner. It wasn't your first rodeo. So you had the practice in Guam, you had your local practice for three years. And I always enjoy working with and having people at different stages of the business because when you're further along than other people, you get to kind of mentor and think about things that maybe they're not thinking about. But there's also, we talk about it in the course the best, do the basics better, and sometimes we can get so busy in our life and we can get so busy with our to-do list that we don't go back to those basic things again. And I think even for established business owners that's doing the fundamentals well from the very beginning and not over-complicating it, not it is so important.
Janelle Kloske:
Yeah, it's true. And what helped is to have your perspective. I mean, you have a really in-depth knowledge of what it means to run a private pay OT practice, and you were able to give me the business perspectives versus the therapy perspectives, which I already have. So I needed to look at things from a business lens through a business lens from that point of view because I've just always been a therapist and
Doug Vestal:
And most people in OT school do not learn anything about business. And the one thing that I've come to find out is just a skill, anything else. And there's so many great alignments between what you learn in OT school versus how to apply it to your business, like motivational interviewing and really thinking about your client and what's super important to them and what are their goals. And sometimes I find that the OTs just need permission to do those things they already know they need to do, but just really do it and not think that they have to be this big corporate behemoth and just really get back to the basics.
Janelle Kloske:
It's uncomfortable. It's not a comfortable space to be in for a lot of therapists. Yeah.
Doug Vestal:
Okay. So you've now had, you've had the one in Guam and you have this one that has been open for a number of years. So you've seen a lot of different things. So what would be some of those things that you wish you knew before starting your private pay practice?
Janelle Kloske:
I guess I wish, well, I wish private pay M B A had fallen into my lap as I was launching on mama, but that didn't happen. I should have gotten the business coaching sooner, I guess, because it's really strange. I felt like I knew what needed to happen. I'm not shy about pounding the pavement and going out and meeting people and getting myself out there. Where I struggled was with an elevator pitch that was very hard and I'm still working on it, but it really has improved quite a lot. And that was with your guidance and those touch points that you make and following up again and continuing making those touch points and building those relationships. I think that's where, what I didn't know before and what I gained from private pay M B A, the follow-up and taking things one or two or three steps further than I was taking them.
Doug Vestal:
Right. Yeah, it's so important. And once you learn it, you don't really unlearn it. But I think there's, I don't know, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I think sometimes when you're operating a business, you already feel like there's this thing in the back of your mind that you're already putting yourself on other people because it is say, do you have to pay? You are providing a service. And sometimes that conversation can be unnatural or unpleasant in people's mind that then to add to that following up, it can be a little bit uncomfortable. And does that make sense?
Janelle Kloske:
Yeah. It's really, I don't want to go off track too much, but I mentioned I had a photo shoot yesterday and I had a model participate in the photo shoot with me. She was pregnant and I didn't know her. The photographer arranged it, and when I walked in, she was like, what a mama. Oh, my doula told me I'm supposed to call you. And I was like, great, that's great. And we had an awesome photo shoot, but then at the end of the photo shoot, what do I do? I'm like, bye. It was great to meet you. See you
Doug Vestal:
Leave it hanging. Yeah.
Janelle Kloske:
I really don't know if I should have, there was a time issue in the studio there, so maybe I'll find a way to follow up in a practice way.
Doug Vestal:
Well, and I think you hit the nail on the head because you have all of these, we talk about it in private pay MBAs, like you're a local practice in a local community with real flesh and blood people. It is talking to people and it's planting the seeds and you can do all of the other fancy marketing and ads and stuff like this that you see people do. But at the end of the day, it's just relationships and it's built that one relationship at the time. And I feel like sometimes we get so pushed into the social media world, we see people doing that, that it's easy to forget that actually this thing that we're building is a super organic local thing and it relies on the people, not the IG algorithm.
Janelle Kloske:
Yeah, thank you. I love hearing that because how I feel about social media. Yes.
Doug Vestal:
It's the same as how I feel. So we've talked about it before, that being a business owner, you have to kind of accept this growth mindset and start to acquire new skills. So I'm curious, what are some of those skills that you are focusing on developing within your business?
Janelle Kloske:
Keeping better track of my referral sources and building and maintaining my relationship with them so that there's always that repetitive but not too repetitive contact that they know that I'm there. So I'm always kind of on their mind. I hope when an appropriate person comes their way and they can think of me, marketing is always a skill that I want to build on, but I think I'm going to have to source that one out and I need to get to the point where I'm ready to do that. And I am really excited about becoming a trauma-informed pelvic health therapist. So that's the skills that I'm really excited to dive into in the next year or so.
Doug Vestal:
That's awesome. I love that. And could you talk a little bit about the power and benefits of a team?
Janelle Kloske:
Yeah. I really love collaborating. So working by myself within Guama, that's a difficult aspect of it, but I love the process of building relationships with complimentary professionals in my community that I can collaborate with. And we all participate in the same summits and conventions and events and things like that and workshops. So I love building and I feed off of that energy. It just kind of drives me. So I was trying to do workshops earlier this year. My goal was to host a workshop every month, and I was doing it on my own. I knew that I would prefer to collaborate, but I was trying it on my own if I couldn't get somebody to jump in with me and I was not feeling it. So I just know that about myself now, and I'd much prefer to just get involved in other things that involve lots of a diverse group of professionals. So that compliment what I'm doing. So I do a lot of that
Doug Vestal:
And I think that's a great way to shore up those referral sources and it makes it a lot more natural for those interactions because you really are starting to assemble a team and that's ultimately at the benefit of your clients. So I think that's fantastic. Thank you so much for everything that you've shared. I want to ask you one last question, which is any advice you'd give to other OTs who are interested in starting a private pay practice?
Janelle Kloske:
I think that if it's swimming around in somebody's mind to practice on their own, if they have something, and I mean, I think every therapist has some superpower talent that should be shared, but if it seems to be something that would require sharing it in a private practice space, I say go for it. It's not going to come without its challenges. But I would say jump into the private pay M B A program first, maybe instead of three years later. I'm glad I did it when I did it, but I encourage people to just follow their dreams and their truth.
Doug Vestal:
Yeah, that's fantastic.
Janelle Kloske:
Being a therapist requires a lot of energy and compassion and burnout is real as a clinician. So whatever drives and inspires you, go for it.
Doug Vestal:
I think it's important to realize that a lot of times the burnout can be very setting specific, like your boss, you mentioned it at the top of the interview about insurance requirements and just knowing that there's even flexibility in terms of the settings you place and how you deliver those treatments, how you get reimbursed for those treatments. It all goes into those factors. And just knowing it's a possibility I think is a huge thing. Then you start the dreaming, which we started talking about as well, of what if my life was like I didn't have to deal with the insurance company. What if my life was like I didn't have to deal with directors of rehab that were constantly on my back about productivity standards? And I think that's super, super important.
Janelle Kloske:
Yeah. It feels so good to have creative freedom when you work for yourself. I wouldn't trade it.
Doug Vestal:
Yeah. That's awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time, Janelle.
