Lee Sowerbutts

Lee Sowerbutts

Spa City Therapy

After working for 7 years at three different outpatient facilities, I decided to launch out on my own as a private practice owner. Up to that point, I had worked for two hospitals and the largest PT chain (at the time). I learned a lot at each stop along the way but always had a dream of one day owning my own practice. Fittingly, I saw my first patient on July 4th, 2002. Kinda cool. Breaking free from the corporate culture… becoming independent from hospital- owned physical therapy.

Well things started to slowly change. One of my biggest referral sources retired. Another orthopedic group opened their own POPTS… Then a large family practice followed suit. One of our hospital systems changed ownership. They started buying up all the remaining physician practices which made it difficult for the physicians to refer out of the hospital system. This was 2014. Probably nothing new that you haven’t experienced or maybe heard from another owner.

I needed new patients… fast. We were sinking. Revenue was dwindling. Credit card debt was rising. I started looking at different marketing programs and pulled the trigger on one. I started implementing these strategies… even tweaking them. Things seemed to be turning around. I was seeing record monthly, quarterly, and even yearly patient visit numbers.

But things weren’t right. I was drowning in paperwork. I spent my Sundays trying to catch up on notes from the previous week. I had no life outside of my clinic. I had no systems. At times I felt like I was running on a treadmill going nowhere fast. I was searching and noticed owners who seemed to have figured out some things. I reached out to them. We would share ideas that were working in our practices. We were solving many of the same issues we were struggling with. This continued for about 6 months. We decided to meet in person… in Chattanooga.

Our first mastermind in Chattanooga was eye opening for me. I began to slow chip away at processes & systems that I needed to put in place. That was 2017. Three months after Chatanooga we did something we had never done… we broke 100K in monthly revenue. I developed a solid hiring process. We were able to hire a staff who bought into our newly developed core values. Our meeting rhythm improved and was productive. We were tracking our metrics and holding our staff accountable. In 2018 we broke through with 1.2M in revenue breaking our previous years mark by 500K.

In April of 2019 I stepped out of treatment… continuing to implement and improve our systems as we grew to 3 clinics. Now I work from home, only going to the clinics for meetings or to check in on our staff. Having time freedom is amazing. I can’t tell you how valuable it is to have the ability to spend more time doing the things we love with those you love! Thanks to my other NLPT founders for this gift!