Today we’d like to introduce you to Marty Zenthoefer.
Hi Marty, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I wanted to be a physical therapist since high school. I took out massive student loans, worked really hard as a student for 7 years, and graduated from The George Washington University with a Doctorate of Physical Therapy. My schools before that were St. Mary’s Ryken High School (St. Mary’s county – home town) and Mt. St. Mary’s University (Emmitsburg, MD) with a Bachelors in health science. I worked part time jobs in labor and maintenance while studying. My labor duties included working on a horse farm, regular building maintenance, and occasionally assisted on crews for ships with a navy contractor.
I completed my doctorate in 2020 during Covid. Moved home to have a place to stay while looking for my first career job. I did not plan to stay long, but that summer I was destined for something else. That summer of 2020 I met a beautiful woman and married her 4 months later. We met over a game of Mahjong at a friends house. (My house and this house were the only 2 places I went during Covid.) I passed my boards. Started my first job. About a year later we were having our first child and buying our first home. About 2 years after that we had our second child and I started my own business.
I worked in a mostly traditional outpatient clinic as a physical therapist for 4 years before starting my own practice. The unique part of this clinic is that we treated pediatric patients with special needs alongside adults simultaneously. It was a mess. I frequently disagreed with the management there and my patients often expressed frustrations with the management as well.
I have to admit it did force me to sharpen my skills as a physical therapist. I learned how to treat every population of patient that came through our door – pediatric with and without special needs, orthopedic, geriatric, neurologic, vestibular. I learned that PTs, OTs, and Speech Therapists in more rural areas must learn to treat everyone. This is because there’s not enough therapists in the area and there’s definitely a lack of specialists. If I wasn’t willing to research and attempt to treat rare or complex cases; then those patients would likely never find treatment.
On a full caseload I was responsible for treating 1-4 patients at any given moment in 15 minute increments. On my team I had a PTA and a rehab technician. We had to balance individual treatments for specials needs kids (often includes yelling, kicking, running away), adults with hip/knee/shoulder replacements, traumatic brain injuries, undiagnosed or poorly understood genetic syndromes, babies with torticollis, vertigo clients that get dizzy – all in 2 small rooms full of equipment. It was often chaotic and the perfect environment for fostering burn out and communication challenges between team members. It forced me to pinpoint the origin of musculoskeletal or neurological impairments quickly, design plan of care quickly, and communicate that to patients and team members fast and effectively. To this day I think that is still my highest value skill as a physical therapist – the fast evaluation and effective communication that gets patients to understand whats happening and do their exercises correctly and independently.
I’d also like to note I’m still friends with those Rehab Technicians today – one is even a god father to my youngest child.
In those 4 years I also learned the salary for PT will never be enough to raise a family of 4. We were in real trouble. I had massive debts. My clinic at the time, and every other clinic, are limited in how much they can pay Physical Therapists by insurance company rates. If you accept insurance rates then your potential profit is capped by the quantity of patients you can see. This is why traditional PT clinics try to overload the schedule of the Physical Therapists, Occupational Therapists, or Speech Therapists with as many clients as possible. This significantly hinders our ability to treat effectively, This hurts the clinic and the reputation of our professions as a whole. I had been sitting on a business idea I thought could fix this and after 4 years, a lot of hardship, and a lot of research I pulled the trigger.
I started Thrive Therapy, llc. Our business model is a “mobile outpatient therapy clinic” in the language of health insurance. In general public terms its a service that sends a therapist to treat you wherever you are. It ensures direct one on one intervention. It also allows us to provide treatments or support in the community. This usually is in the home but could also be in the gym, the park, the office, the library, a trailer park, a baseball game, a marina, the metro, a sailboat or on the roof of a yacht. I can personally attest that treatments and solutions for real world problems are a little more effective when provided in the real world. I’ve helped people return to their normal independent lives or learn to navigate the community with their new disability. Optimizing your ability to participate in life happens in real life – not a small room full of equipment you’d never buy for yourself.
My clients have never fallen and broken a hip or other bone, they perform their HEP weekly, they look forward and enjoy therapy. My therapists have begun to bring clients and their family with similar disability together to perform treatments in similar environments. The physical therapist gives feed back on stretching that is translated to the entire soccer team. The speech therapist will have her client give a presentation to her peers at the library. The occupational therapist will work on appropriate play and social skills at the playground. They’re building a community for the clients that often feel the most isolated. Can you imagine how effective our therapy is when provided in the real world with family and friends in real time? They get a plan that works, they get practice implementing that plan, and their family/friends enjoy being part of that plan. Our clients perform their exercises and maintain their progress way longer than any traditional model. The longer we build this model out the more new ideas for building community, optimizing function, and preventing injury come alive.
The health insurance is happy because our therapy is on the order of 10x cheaper per year than paying for new injuries/surgeries. The family and clients are happy because their therapy is more effective and more inclusive and easier to implement and understand. The therapists are happy because they can finally treat uninterrupted and no management looking over their shoulder.
This is my current venture in my life and I plan to build it out as big as I possibly can. Right now, we’re looking to hire as many therapist as we possibly can in the state of Maryland. Once we have between 10-20 therapist we look to begin expanding to other states. I want to see this model grow nation wide and become the new tradition.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
No! Its been hard, and still is. We are trending in the right direction and will continue to do so. It is getting better, but still hard.
My first year starting Thrive the business produced 20,000 dollars. We spent the year negotiating health insurance contracts, setting up bank accounts and collecting bank documents, and building out the Limited Liability Corporation on paper. I had to learn about EIN numbers, Operating Agreements, writing a business plan. I had meetings with Frank at Maryland SBDC which helped a lot in the beginning.
We had to borrow money from my family to keep our house. I sold my precious truck in exchange for a 2012 Nissan Juke to get an extra 10,000 dollars.
One note here is that most of this work wasn’t producing money. It made me feel crazy – we were in massive debt with a newborn and 2 year old at home. It felt like I should have been there but I was driving around posting flyers, talking to anyone that would listen, and doing cold walk-ins into physician offices t build business. I was writing a business plan and calculating potential taxes on hypothetical profits. It felt like I was shirking my duties as a husband/father with a simultaneous and extreme case of imposter syndrome. I’m a great PT, but I had a lot of business learning to do.
We had a new born baby and a 2 year old that kept us up many nights the first year. The business also kept me up at night – planning it, building it. I worked in the business everyday from 7am to 7pm. There were many nights I only slept 2 or 4 hours and even a few nights I did not sleep at all. I just worked on the business or cared for my babies so my wife got a moment to sleep. Those were my only actions for 24 hours a day that first year.
It was completely unhealthy for me and for my wife. I do believe its going to be worth it in the end. I still have nights I only sleep 3-4 hours, but I have at least one day every weekend to myself and family now. In another year I think I’ll be able to afford to have 2 days every weekend for family.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
We are a mobile outpatient clinic that provides Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Speech Therapy. I’m excited to say we will also have Pelvic Floor PT in a couple weeks.
Our clinic sends a Therapist to meet you where you are. Usually this is the home, but could also be the gym, the park, library.
We accept Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare, and Blue Cross Blue Shield. We also have a cash schedule for each therapy.
Our therapists set their own schedule and plan their own treatments. Occasionally therapists decide to meet their clients together to provide therapy at the same time. They can also have clients with similar conditions agree to meet together in public spaces to work on similar skills. They can also work completely independently and pick up more clients as they want to.
The great part of our clinic is that each therapist gets to set up their dream job under our name. They can operate completely independent as their own clinic with their own name. They can also look to be part of a team with other therapists. They can choose to accept a specific patient population or learn to treat everyone like myself. We support them by taking care of all the billings, collections, taxes, marketing, recruiting, referrals, authorizations, communications, and anything else that may pop up.
The goal of our clinic is to allow the therapists to schedule and treat exactly the way they want to. They are the expert, they know what is best for the patient, they are in charge.
Therapists are joining our practice fast because it is the highest quality of life for them and the highest quality of treatment for the patient. We also offer higher pay through a profit sharing model that therapists can utilize to make more than any traditional clinic can offer. This is because we have very little over head and expenses. No building, no big pieces of equipment, no trending interventions that don’t really work. We are just a team of people providing the highest quality of therapy to clients in the most meaningful location.
Our team at Thrive focuses on handling all the complex paperwork and organizational needs to allow them only schedule and treat. Our therapists are happy and excited to be part of team.
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
For our clinic it was originally designed to solve a problem in the world of PT, OT, Speech therapy. Therapists pay A LOT of money and work ridiculously hard to earn our degree only to make very little, have high student debt, and burn out fast. Most clinicians leave the career in less time than it took to earn the degree to join the career.
Our clinic solved this for me. It’s also solving it for 4 other therapists. We believe this option should be available to every clinician in every state.
For Thrive Therapy our definition of success is having at least one active therapist in every state. This business model solves a nationwide problem so it’s not successful until the problem has been solved nationwide.
Currently we are only in Maryland and once we hit 10 therapists we will expand to the next state – about 12-18 months I think. Our scaling should be exponential after that.
Pricing:
- 1 hour of therapy time = 200 dollars
- 30 minutes of therapy time = 100 dollars
- Blue Cross Blue Shield = 0-50 dollar copay range approximately
- Medicare = 0 – 25 dollar copay range approximately
- Tricare = 0 – 50 dollar copay range approximately
Contact Info:
- Website: https://thriveathome.co/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61557368768487
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martin-zenthoefer-251689349/
