Save your thumbs, make more money & think outside the box

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Treat Your Business EP95

[00:00:00] Katie Bell: If only we had a way that we could save our thoughts. At a recent event with Physio First actually, I was sat at one of these big round tables. There was lots of them in the room and I got positioned next to this fabulous gentleman who we are going to be talking to on this week’s episode. , and he was explaining to me, he’s a clinic owner, a very, very successful clinic owner.

[00:00:24] Katie Bell: He’s been in the industry many, many years, but he was talking to me about how he has I guess scratched an itch that was always there for him in terms of thinking outside of the box and being able to serve his clients in a much, much better way and in a different way, whilst also saving his thumbs, creating more revenue and profit in his clinic, and allowing patients to really buy into the journey of their recovery.

[00:00:58] Katie Bell: And being able to give them something and provide them with something that allows them to live well. So, without further ado, let me introduce to you Michael O’Reilly, you are going to love this next episode and it’s going to really get those of you who are thinking about different ways you can work with your clients, those of you who have got big ideas about what you can do and what things you might want to create and how you might want to design something new and not just treat patients in the same old way.

[00:01:37] Katie Bell: and feel maybe that you’re not completely fulfilled in how you do things and know that you’ve got more to give just like Michael O’Reilly did and here is what he has created.

[00:01:50] Katie Bell: Welcome to the Treat Your Business podcast with Katie Bell. I am Katie, and this is the place to learn the strategies, tactics, tools, and mindset needed. To build your clinic or studio into a business that gives you the time, money, energy and fulfillment you want and deserve. My team and I work every day with overwhelmed and exhausted clinic owners like you to shift them from a business that is a huge time and energy drain and is not giving them the income they want to confident clinic owners that are making money, saving money and getting time back in their lives.

[00:02:20] Katie Bell: So if this sounds like something you want, let’s dive in. This podcast is sponsored by HMDG, the leading digital marketing agency for the Clinicare is in the U. K.

[00:02:30] Katie Bell: Michael, welcome to the Treat Your Business podcast. so much for being here.

[00:02:35] Michael O’Reilly: Thank you very much for the opportunity to spend some time with you and to talk over things and to learn from you, the amazing Katie.

[00:02:42] Katie Bell: Oh, okay. I love that you dropped that in there first. Michael, for all of our listeners, tell them who you are and what is it that you do?

[00:02:51] Michael O’Reilly: So I’m Michael O’Reilly. My Insta handle is The Neck Physio, which kind of tells a bit of the story. So I am, I studied in South Africa and I came to the UK in 2000. Locum’d for a bit and anyway. Got to the point where we started our own practice. My wife’s also a physio. So I started our practice Weybridge Moulton physio in 2005.

[00:03:14] Michael O’Reilly: And yeah, so we’re knocking on the door of 20 years in the practice, which has been an amazing journey. It’s been. It’s been quite a ride as most practice owners will appreciate but yeah, we’ve got the privilege of working with an amazing team of physios, admin support, et cetera, et cetera, massage therapists.

[00:03:34] Michael O’Reilly: So we’ve built what we call the WWP family. And we really strive to keep that sense of family and belonging and all, and having people who join our team, giving them the sense that they’re joining something higher than, they’re doing something more than just coming in and treating patients.

[00:03:53] Michael O’Reilly: They’re part of a bigger thing that we’re looking to achieve. So yeah, that’s the long and short of our work. Of what’s, where I’ve come from and and yeah, in the last few years I’ve been doing some other things which I’ve found quite interesting and exciting and frustrating in equal measure.

[00:04:09] Katie Bell: And this is why I have invited you on the podcast. Not just because you are really, a really inspirational clinic owner for others out there. You are, Michael, take that. You absolutely are. But we were sat together at the Physio First event in last November. Won’t wait. April,

[00:04:26] Michael O’Reilly: no, it was April.

[00:04:28] Katie Bell: April of this year. And we happened, I always think the universe works in amazing ways, but we ended up sat next to each other on the table on this round table in this room. And all of these people, I’d never met you before. And we started, we introduced who we were to each other. And you started telling me about the fact that you were a clinic owner.

[00:04:45] Katie Bell: And that you’d recently. Diversified, moved, added another layer of complication to your life by starting a new business, essentially. And you’d gone through a process of developing a product that you clearly saw an opportunity within your clinical work. Went away, designed this, went through this journey designing this amazing product and then have now launched that product, which we’re going to talk about today.

[00:05:12] Katie Bell: And now you’re taking it to the next level, and I just keep seeing all the growth happening, which is so exciting. So you lent me one and you said, go to your room. We had a breakout session, didn’t we? Go to your room, lie on it tonight for 10 minutes and let me know what you think. in the morning.

[00:05:27] Katie Bell: It was amazing because you said to me as I was sat there, I was shuffling around in my seat and you said, what’s going on with your neck and your upper back? And I was like, Oh God, this guy clearly knows what he’s talking about. And instantly I felt and saw the difference and realized what this piece of cake could actually do for people who were struggling with neck, back, upper back, shoulder problems.

[00:05:49] Katie Bell: Michael, tell our listeners where this idea came from and how it’s got to where it is now.

[00:05:56] Michael O’Reilly: I’ll try and do that in three minutes. Okay. I specialize in the upper Quadrant and and have spent the last, I’ve been fortunate enough that pretty much the last 20 years, that’s almost exclusively what I’ve been doing.

[00:06:06] Michael O’Reilly: So I’ve learned a few things about it and I’ve learned not only about how to treat these problems, but also how we. What’s the longer patient journey through these stages? Because we see them for brief periods, but what’s happening in the longer, what’s happening on either side of our treatment episodes.

[00:06:21] Michael O’Reilly: And I basically come to, to realize that the prevailing wind of the information age is pushing us all into flexion all the time. And that’s, as we’re getting pushed into flexion, we then are sowing the seeds of neck pain, shoulder pain, headaches, dizziness, radiculopathies, the whole works, which is probably making up, getting towards 50 percent of what’s walking through.

[00:06:44] Michael O’Reilly: Private practices doors nowadays, and my prediction is it’s going to be even more than that. And anyway, so I’ve all, we’ve, I’ve developed a couple of programs and things in order to try and help patients to move better for longer But always found that there was something missing that’s, that the weight of the information age and the postural demands that it’s been being placed on us by the information age was just too much and we needed something else.

[00:07:09] Michael O’Reilly: And it was during lockdown when we were doing those awful video appointments, which I, I got a patient, I had a patient who had a typical neck shoulder irritation thing going on and she had a full length foam roller at home. And so I thought let’s see what we can do with that.

[00:07:27] Michael O’Reilly: She put her camera down a floor level, and which is an interesting thing about perspective. Sometimes we just need to change our perspective on problems. And I got her to clamber, as you do, clamber up onto this full length roller. And even though she’s quite fit and athletic and mobile, it just reminds me of what a pain in the butt it is.

[00:07:50] Michael O’Reilly: Rear end, full length rollers are for most of the applications for which we want to use them. Now, of course you do have your high end patients where you want a very unstable platform, et cetera. But for the majority of people, they’re just too ungainly, too unstable. And which then importantly, what I’ve come to realize is just another little thing that creates friction.

[00:08:10] Michael O’Reilly: And if we want to help patients to do exercise and do effective exercise, we want, we need to make it as easy as possible for them. So I looked at this and thought, Oh I wonder if we couldn’t, keep some of the features of that, but get rid of the others. So that’s to make, so keep the good, get rid of the bad.

[00:08:27] Michael O’Reilly: Add more good. And so I bought a bunch of foam rollers home and I’ve then started chopping them up into different shapes and sizes and doing different things with them. And anyway, the long and the short of it is what is now the Opti Neck Balance Wedge. And I thought this might be useful just in our practice for our patients as a bit of a hands on tool.

[00:08:45] Michael O’Reilly: And then I actually started using it myself and realized that this is actually something that is So powerful for, and for bringing about that fundamental postural trunk mechanical reset that we all need every day because we’re all being pushed into flexion all the time. And then, and realize that, gosh this has real value for me personally.

[00:09:11] Michael O’Reilly: It has value for my patients and therefore it’s likely to have value for the wider world because we’re all stuck over our screens. All day long. So yeah, since then being been developing what we’re doing around it. And then, but as much as that trying to take the message to the wider world of we are facing a postural pandemic.

[00:09:32] Michael O’Reilly: There is a tsunami of posturally driven problems coming down the line to us. And this is a huge it’s a huge issue. It’s going to be a huge issue for society, but it’s a huge opportunity for us as therapists to really take the lead on this and to really be able to be at the forefront of saying, this is what we need to do in order to be upright eighty year olds.

[00:10:00] Michael O’Reilly: Because otherwise, we’re not going to be upright 80 year olds as a society. We are going to be hunched over 50 and 60 year olds. And that is going to create a huge public health issue for the years to come. Not only is it going to affect morbidity or longevity, it’s also going to affect morbidity because we are going to be so stuck and so imbalanced that our quality of life and our existence is just going to decline in my humble opinion.

[00:10:24] Michael O’Reilly: But I see it all the time. So I’m more and more convinced of that. So since then, we’ve been, because I feel this kind of burning desire. It’s almost become like my raison d’etre to, to be shouting from the rooftops to say, what we do every day does matter. There’s been this notion in that’s pervaded its way through the physio world.

[00:10:46] Michael O’Reilly: That actually posture is for the eighties, posture doesn’t matter anymore. Yeah. Forget about it. It’s just such an outdated concept. But the truth is that, that is a lie. There’s some research that has been taken, misinterpreted and extrapolated to the wider population that then says, okay it doesn’t matter how, what you’re doing anymore.

[00:11:03] Michael O’Reilly: It doesn’t matter that you’re sitting in front of a screen all the time. It absolutely does matter. And so yeah, I’ve not only in my. Yeah. I guess some might say he’s just trying to flog a product or he’s just trying to build a business or whatever, but actually I’m trying to get a message out there and I’m trying to equip my first love, which is the physio profession, to be able to be at the forefront of making this change, and giving us the opportunity to be the leaders in this field.

[00:11:31] Michael O’Reilly: So yeah, sorry, there’s your three minute answer. Impassioned answer. I

[00:11:36] Katie Bell: love it because we tell all of our clinic owners all the time. Whether you’re developing a product, bringing in a new service, starting a clinic, you have to know you why you have to be a, it has to be a bigger reason for it than just plugging a product, making some money because that’s that.

[00:11:54] Katie Bell: The making money thing is a byproduct of living into your passion and doing things that you truly believe, because. Business is really hard. Running a business is really hard. And so if you’ve got the passion and the clarity of what you’re trying to do and what your mission is, Michael, then when it does get hard and you have moments where you think, Oh, what am I doing here?

[00:12:14] Katie Bell: This is challenging. That is always going to have you back. And that’s what’s going to keep pushing you forward. But also our clinic owners forward who might also think, I’ve got these great ideas and I’ve done nothing with them.

[00:12:27] Michael O’Reilly: For sure. Yeah. And that’s, that is a big thing, and I think this is when I look back at all the different things I’ve tried over the years and in terms of, cause ultimately I was looking to solve the problem.

I’m not, I never thought I want to make a product because product gets me X, Y, Z. What I’ve been thinking is This is the thing I feel that I have an affinity towards and I want to do it to the best of my ability and I want to help patients as best as I possibly can. And the balance wedge has just become, is a result of that rather than me thinking, okay, what can I import?

Anyway so yeah, it is exactly that. And as you, when you were talking about that, I was reminded of the number of times where I’ve been knocking on clinic owners doors and I’ve just gotten, the 10th email that’s never been replied to and all those people that I’ve tried to contact and they just haven’t even bothered to reply and that, as you said, knocks you down.

And then I think, gosh, what am I doing here? Is this really that valuable? And then I’ll go into the clinic and I’ll treat the patient and they’ll say, I love the wedge. It has been life changing. It has done this. I had all this neck pain. I no longer have this neck pain anymore. My life is just completely different because I don’t have those headaches anymore.

I feel taller, I’m moving better. I’m using it every day. I’m telling people about it and now I think, okay, I need to use that to feel what I’ve got because there’s plenty of people who just. Either don’t get it, or they’re not interested, or there’s professional arrogance, or there’s all sorts of other restraints.

And some people just, you’re just too busy to even contemplate something else coming on and I think, but now I need to focus on the value that this is delivering for one patient because, and if I can just keep focusing on the value that’s delivering for one and then think, okay, that next wedge that is now being told to someone else, and I was actually thinking about this yesterday, I was thinking, okay even if I’m, if nobody ever buys another wedge from now, I’m like, I can.

And then think there’s about 6, 000 people out there who have the potential to have a different postural life and be moving better and differently at 80 than they were before. So that’s 6, 000, 6, 000 users of these that are potentially on a different path than they were before. Now, obviously my big hairy audacious goal and my driving passion and belief is that there should be one in every household.

Cause 6, 000 is like nothing, it’s not even 0. 01 percent of our population, but just in this country, nevermind all the Western world, but it’s that, that it’s got to be like, okay, other people may not get it and they may not, whatever. That’s fine. But there are people who will get it.

And what I want to do is I want to get it in the hands of those who need it. So

[00:15:04] Katie Bell: let’s talk about the wedge itself. And you have delivered some training for my team, which was amazing to get them thinking about it in a whole different way. We are using it in our clinic. I started using it when I met you.

[00:15:20] Katie Bell: And so I’ve been using it, my husband’s been using it, I can’t get him off it because he just lies on it every night, so I probably, I definitely need another one because we need two of those. We’re using it in clinic, we’re using it in our classes, we’re using it in our therapy sessions rather than just hammering on somebody’s thoracic spine for 30 minutes.

[00:15:40] Katie Bell: We’re positioning them on the wedge. We’re using it to do lots of, shoulder opening work, pec METs, all the stuff that we do that we can do in that position without having to not waste 30 minutes hammering somebody’s thoracic spine. We can leverage what we’re doing in a session and

[00:15:56] Michael O’Reilly: get much better

[00:15:57] Katie Bell: results.

[00:15:57] Katie Bell: So we are actively using for listeners who might not be able to see our video. Michael, this is a imagine a long foam roller, and literally come down it on a on an angle, a 45 degree angle almost, so that you’ve got a flat bottom to it, and the rounded bit is what you’re lying on. But it’s like a, it is a wedge, so your bottom is at the lowest part, and your head is at the top part.

[00:16:20] Katie Bell: What’s instantly great is nobody falls off it in class. It’s accessible for everybody who can basically get onto the floor. You’re not so focused on trying to keep yourself balanced that you can’t then do your release work, which is what we ultimately want people to do in classes. And you can just use it in so many different ways.

[00:16:39] Katie Bell: If you can, I know this is really difficult, but can you summarize like the actual mechanics behind it? What are we actually doing with this wedge? Why does it, why is it making such a big impact so quickly for people?

[00:16:51] Michael O’Reilly: For sure. So boiling that down, it’s what I refer to as ratchets and wedges, the simple concept of ratchets and wedges.

[00:16:57] Michael O’Reilly: Coming back to this notion of we’re all getting Pushed into flexion all the time, so we’re getting increasingly flexed through our thoracic spine and the neck is, that’s increasing the compensatory demand on the neck and the shoulder and that’s when we, the compensatory demand exceeds the compensatory capacity, that’s when we get the symptoms of whatever they are walking through the door.

[00:17:18] Michael O’Reilly: So what’s happening through the trunk is posteriorly, because of all the time we spend in flexion, those thoracic intervertebral joints and the costovertebral joints are getting increasingly stuck in flexion. So they spend more and more time there. They then just get stiffer and stiffer into these positions.

[00:17:34] Michael O’Reilly: So that creates that sagittal plane blockade to extension through the thoracic spine. So I use the analogy of the filing cabinet. So if you have a filing cabinet and you tilt it forwards, The first thing that happens is the top draw slides out. Yeah. Now we should be in the position where, so effectively the top draw is the head where you can put a bowling ball on top of the, on top of the filing cabinet to extend the analogy.

[00:17:57] Michael O’Reilly: But essentially what should be happening is our filing cabinet should be able to rock nicely forwards and backwards throughout the day and throughout our upright lives in such a way that we’re able to move, but the center of mass of the top drawer or the polling ball can sit mostly over the basis supports.

[00:18:14] Michael O’Reilly: Of the bottom of the filing cabinets. So now we, as you tilt that forward, the top drawer goes out. We spend so much time tilted forward. So we start to stiffen there. So it’s almost like a wedge gets slid underneath the back of the filing cabinets. So that then creates initially. very small, but it creates a bit of an, of a barrier to extension.

[00:18:36] Michael O’Reilly: So now the filing cabinet from an articular point of view, can’t rock back into full extension to get to the other half of the pendulous wing. So posteriorly, we end up with a with this articular restriction to extension. And then anteriorly, because we spending all that time in flexion, we’re getting the shortening and tightening down of the myofascial chain.

[00:18:58] Michael O’Reilly: So from pec minor, all the way through from little finger down to the opposite hip flexor, all of this is just getting shorter and tighter and shorter and tighter. And that’s what I then refer to as the ratchet. So it’s like progressively creeping, slowly ratcheting down. So now the. The phylancabin or the trunk has, anteriorly has this fascial restriction to be able to come back upright, so the soft tissue pulling down, and posteriorly it’s got this articular restriction of the wedge, the figurative wedge is getting in between the thoracic vertebrae stopping them straightening out.

[00:19:30] Michael O’Reilly: So we then in a position where the compensatory demand on the neck is high all the time, exceeding the capacity, causing the irritation, causing the mechanical neck pain, causing the shoulder impingements, the cuff tendinopathies, et cetera, et cetera. So what the wedge does, what the balance wedge then does, is if you can then change that orient, change orientation to gravity.

[00:19:52] Michael O’Reilly: So now we’re getting gravity working for us by flattening us out rather than against us. By being on that, on the long, straight, convex upper surface, we are then getting the, from a physics point of view, it’s the ground reaction force or the wedge reaction force coming back up into gravity. The thoracic spine, so re restoring thoracic extension through all those areas where we are stiffest and where we get jammed and what’s pushing everything in front of it forwards.

[00:20:21] Michael O’Reilly: And within, with each deep breath that you take, we’re getting articulation through the cost of vertible joints and then articulation through the thoracic invertible joints, all the while restoring thoracic extension compliance. from a skeletal point of view. And then what’s happening anteriorly, because we’re in that elevated position where you freed up the scapula, you weight bearing down the midline, so from head all the way down to sacrum, you then removing any restriction to, or any outside restriction to anterior chain opening.

[00:20:55] Michael O’Reilly: Which therefore then means, just by putting your arms out to the side, we are re establishing length and compliance through those anterior chains. And then when you start adding movements on top of that, and exercises and releases, then it becomes all the more effective. Just Yeah, people say, Oh, it’s so passive, it’s so passive.

[00:21:14] Michael O’Reilly: Yes, it’s passive in the first instance when you lie on it. And actually what we do need sometimes is that passive release because we’ve been so passive through the day getting stuck, but that’s just the first step. And then you start adding movements onto that. And that’s why the Pilates world is absolutely loving the Witch, because it creates an easy platform.

[00:21:32] Michael O’Reilly: In order, that allows you to do a whole range of activities and a whole range of exercises on top. But the, at the heart of it what it’s really about is making effective correction easy. And this is the thing that I realized is that it’s all about habit. We want to try and help our patients create a corrective habit.

[00:21:49] Michael O’Reilly: And in order to create a habit, you’ve got to have a cue, you’ve got to have a simple routine and a tangible reward. And so this is, this was about taking the complexity or taking an exercise that is otherwise a bit cumbersome and complex, doing away with all those barriers that create the friction and create the complexity, make it easy and accessible and immediately rewarding.

[00:22:11] Michael O’Reilly: And if you do that, you create the habits, and once you create the habits, you change the outcome. And this is the key thing, we have this opportunity as therapists to meet patients for a relatively brief period of time in their lives. But if we can help them change their habits, we really change their long term outcome.

[00:22:28] Michael O’Reilly: So in the same way that your husband is being drawn back to the wedge, I would say he’s being drawn back to it because he feels the difference and because it’s easy. And then he forms a habit. And when he forms a habit, he’s going to be, if he maintains that habit, he’ll be moving very differently as the 70, 80, 90 year old than he would have been otherwise.

[00:22:44] Katie Bell: And I can, talking from a personal experience here, we I have, I’ve used the wedge now pretty consistently most days if I’m at home in the evening instead of, being again back into false flexion on a very comfortable sofa. I just lie on it and I will watch a very small amount of television that we’ll watch on an evening from the wedge because it is passive.

[00:23:06] Katie Bell: I can just lie there. I open my arms. I open, just open up my chest, my upper back to, I feel like it almost corrects the like nine hours or 10 hours I’ve been sat in front of the computer all day. And you can’t get that same feeling on a foam roller. I mean I’m Pilates trained so I’ve, I use foam roller a lot in classes but have moved to using the wedge more and the instant reaction you get from patients when they lie on it’s that the sound that they make like when they lie on it is just oh that feels so good.

[00:23:37] Katie Bell: That feels like what I’ve been, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. What I’ve been looking for, oh my God, this is good. This is this I, and they don’t wanna move off it. And then it’s we can do diaphragmatic breathing from it. We can do a whole relaxation session from it. We can do loads of our stretch and release work from it.

[00:23:55] Katie Bell: We can add weight into it. We can do bridges, we can do roll-ups. There is like a lot that you can do with this. It’s a relatively simple piece of equipment, which means there’s no barriers to it. And we, I saw you, I ordered a load from you, didn’t I, and I said, first of all, what’s really important to me as a clinic owner is that I’m behind this, that I get it, I understand it, and then we can bring this into my team, which was only two weeks ago, we talked to the team about.

[00:24:24] Katie Bell: This is what we’re bringing into the clinic and we’re going to do a whole kind of month campaign around posture and upper back and neck pain. And we, we’ve got a whole sales strategy that we’re going to bring into it. So we’re, we can see the opportunity. And yes, it is about having another way of bringing some more income into the clinic.

[00:24:44] Katie Bell: Yeah. But that’s not the reason that I’m doing it. The reason that I’m doing it is because I can see the benefit to our customers and the ac the easy access to being able to just use this very quickly, very easily at nighttime. ’cause everybody says they’ve got no time. Everybody is time poor.

[00:25:02] Katie Bell: Everybody’s overwhelmed with all the exercises physios are giving them, and therefore compliance is low. Results are then not great and then true. Your reputation is affected because you lose the buy in from clients.

[00:25:15] Michael O’Reilly: So from

[00:25:15] Katie Bell: a personal experience, teaching with it in classes has been amazing. Personally using it, I have had no, zero impingement, shoulder, soreness in my boxing class since using it.

[00:25:30] Katie Bell: At all.

[00:25:31] Michael O’Reilly: Excellent. Great. I’ve

[00:25:33] Katie Bell: haven’t done all my rotator cuff, band exercise and all that stuff that physios are rubbish at doing for themselves. I’d just lay on the we

[00:25:41] Michael O’Reilly: And it’s because you are addressing the fundamental drivers. Yeah. You’re addressing that fundamental driver of thoracic flexion system of.

[00:25:48] Michael O’Reilly: Stiffening the thoracic spine, shortening and tightening anterior chains. If we just do that away, because you’ve seen the talk that I do on this, and I use the image of the tree, we’ve got the roots, the trunk and the branches, and it’s, we’ve got the roots being lifestyle, society, ergonomics, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:26:05] Michael O’Reilly: Then that comes into one trunk and then goes up into the complexity Of the branches, which is all exactly as you say, the impingements, the neck pain, head pain, et cetera. If we can just influence and rebalance that trunk, we simplify everything else that’s above that. Yeah. And that’s, it’s so exciting and so encouraging to hear that you’ve experienced that personal difference.

[00:26:25] Michael O’Reilly: That is super powerful.

[00:26:26] Katie Bell: Do you know what I, what experience I get? Because I, when I lie on it at nighttime and I’ll do, Sometimes I’ll just lie there and do lots of peck opening and chest opening stuff. Sometimes I’ll just lie there. I get a really warm feeling, like really warm feeling in my like mid back,

[00:26:44] Michael O’Reilly: like almost.

[00:26:44] Katie Bell: It’s going, Oh, hi, blood flow. You’ve been missing for the last nine hours. Welcome back to the party. That’s how it feels.

Yeah, for sure. What’s really interesting is that it’s, you talk about that smile, that sound or that sensation when you first get someone onto the wedge. And that’s, and I think that’s comes from it.

Cause intuitively we know that’s what we need because it’s that, it’s a restoration of our, what is our upright makeup, and it’s. We talk about having a wedge window, which is a reset for mind and body, because that’s the other thing. So we, now we’re talking about all the postural biomechanical factors involved, but it’s also just that opportunity where you’re lying on your back, you’re looking at the blank ceiling and you can just focus on your breathing and you can just go through that kind of decompression.

Of the day, where you, everything, your arms are out, your phone is hopefully nowhere near you. And you can just think about your breathing and just, if in doubt, breathe out and breathe and getting that, and the combination and that whole link of mind and body, dial down the stress, reset the mechanics and just get us back to where we should be.

The problem is that for us in society now, normal is flexed. Normal is weight forwards over our toes. But if you don’t think about it anymore, yeah, flexed and stressed. Exactly. Yeah, that’s a good one. Flexed and stressed. We so forwards all the time. We don’t know what is different, but what’s amazing is when you get someone on the wedge for the first time and they go through the simple series, when they stand up, one of the most consistent things they say is, I feel lighter, I feel taller, I feel like I’m now more balanced and it’s, and this is the thing that then excites me and then I think, okay, I’m not going to be put off by the fact that physio.

Clinicona didn’t even bother to reply to my email. They may be a barrier to their patients experiencing this, but I’m going to take it to those who are going to hear it, so And that’s

[00:28:40] Katie Bell: why I wanted you to be on this platform, because I feel like I am just as passionate about this product as you are.

[00:28:46] Katie Bell: I absolutely love it and I really want Cliniconas to see the benefit it can have. To their clients. First of all, that’s why we do things. We do things to impact that our community and the people that we work with and we look after and we support. But looking at this, let’s take a moment, Michael, to look into it as a business point of view, because this is a business podcast.

[00:29:05] Michael O’Reilly: Yes.

[00:29:06] Katie Bell: You have been using the wedge with your clients in your clinic for a while now, haven’t you? And you have sold an enormous amount of wedges to your patients.

Yeah. So at last count, it was about, so we’re coming on to about year three now, and this is from the initial, just let’s try one or two, a couple of prototypes to where we are now in, in terms of full scale production.

In our practice alone, we’ve probably sold, I’ll put it another way there’s about 1, 300 to 1, 500 of our patients who are experiencing the benefits of the wedge on a regular basis, i. e. they have one at home. And many of them have more than one at home. And we also have a travel version, and so what quite often happens is they’ll buy one, they’ll be like, wow, that’s amazing.

Actually, now I’m going to be traveling, I’ll buy a travel one, or. My daughter’s going to university. She needs, that happens a lot, actually. So we’ve got multiple, yeah, multiple wedge households in our patient base. Yeah, just in our practice, it’s probably getting close towards about 1500 of those.

And so when you think that’s talking from a business point of view, because this is the thing, it’s about, I talk about being win, win. It’s win for the patient because ultimately that’s the most important thing. They experienced the benefit. It’s a win for the therapist because it means you can, instead of having to keep bashing into those thoracic spines and whatever, you can now, you’ve got something else that you can be bridging the gap between the living room and the treatment room and progressing on so much further.

And then it’s a win for the practice because. Or whoever is, it’s a win from a financial point of view. Let’s say, because it’s something that’s, that your patients will love and that will also then help contribute to, even if it’s just the shortfall that Cooper and Axa and all the other insurance companies are taking out of us all the time.

If you think if you can. You can be supplementing that by selling something and making 20, 20 pounds, 25 pounds or whatever per item. Then that’s, that makes a big difference. So from an overall revenue point of view, I have to check the maths, but it’s probably about 30 pounds that it’s been worth to, for our practice, just by this one product that patients love.

What’s not to right?

[00:31:20] Katie Bell: Exactly. And this is about bringing up in that additional income stream that isn’t complicated. It doesn’t require more staff. It doesn’t really require a load of overheads. Your ability to order and get on demand is amazing. So this is not anything, there’s no barriers to this.

[00:31:39] Katie Bell: It’s not like you have to have a massive warehouse that you need to store them and stock them. You don’t. We would run something if you’re short of storage space, that you basically have an order window that these are the times that you’re going to order and you get people paying a deposit or on a waiting list or whatever you want to create in your clinic.

[00:31:56] Katie Bell: And then you do a massive bulk order and they pick them up between this date and this date.

[00:32:01] Michael O’Reilly: So

[00:32:02] Katie Bell: there isn’t, doesn’t have to be any barriers to how you can introduce this into your clinic.

Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. And it’s, and I think it’s a good point that you make there because at the moment, if we look at the other products and services we want to, or the services we want to bring into our clinics, most of them come with a really chunky price tag that then becomes very difficult to monetize on top of this.

There’s, you can spend 25K on an ultra, so yes, you could. Charge extra for shockwave. So that’s probably not a good example, but there are these others that are actually really difficult to monetize and take huge capital outlay where this is going to take you basically no capital outlay, and it’s going to make you money and it’s going to keep making you money easily without having to say actually I’m going to use this piece of equipment and it’s going to cost you another 15 pounds on today’s appointment, which is always a tricky conversation.

Yeah. So where this is something, rely on that. Yes, you can buy one from me.

[00:32:56] Katie Bell: And this is about, how did you say it Michael before? You said this is about allowing patients to move better for longer. Is that the words you said? So this is like taking what we do in the clinic room for 30 minutes or 45 minutes and saying right, between when you see me now and when I see you next.

[00:33:13] Katie Bell: I always say to my patients, what I don’t want to do is firefight. I don’t want to see you one week and then three weeks time and then three weeks time because all I’m doing is literally just pouring water on the fires that started over those three weeks. My job is to move forwards and get you better and keep you well.

[00:33:32] Katie Bell: And the only way we can do that is if you are a doing things at home because you spend nine hours in front of your computer in my, this is what I’m like. And then I expect a physio to hammer my 30 minutes and then I’m all fixed. And it’s not going to look like that, is it? But if we can then show the patient that journey.

[00:33:49] Katie Bell: Our job, and we have this in my clinic. It’s our job is to first get you feeling better, then moving better. And then living better. That’s like how we do things. So that journey for us, and we show showcase them that journey is so we have the wedge. This is how the wedge supports us. in that mission, in that vision, in that journey with our patients.

[00:34:10] Katie Bell: So it’s so powerful.

Yeah, for sure. I think, yeah it’s the bridge and the gap between the treatment room and the living room. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because you can replicate so much of the same stuff, and exactly as you say, it’s cause that’s what I found, even though I was constantly wanting to get better and better at what I did, I’d find that I would just be.

Be ultimately firefighting. And we’re just trying to space out the time between those firefights as much as possible. But it was like, Oh, come on, surely it can be better than this. But then realizing that ultimately it’s habits, and ultimately we need to, we want to position patients. We want to get them optimized, but then also optimized.

Optimize their lifestyles, optimize their movement input, cause so we can optimize them with all of our skills and abilities and all the toolboxes tools we have in the box as physios, but can we keep them optimized? And I think this is the, ultimately what then the wedge boils down to is this is something where they can, they have a much better chance of keeping themselves optimized and that for us then is real success as therapists, isn’t it?

Yeah. And it’s not.

[00:35:13] Katie Bell: Yeah. And coming back to that, into that bit, like weave this into the business, okay, what does this do? This creates a better conversion rate, a better retention rate, a higher patient value average. You’re getting better results, therefore your reputation’s better, your referrals are then better.

[00:35:29] Katie Bell: Your team are not exhausted because they’re hammering their thoracic spine for 30 minutes all the time. You’re leveraging what you can do in so many ways along that.

[00:35:38] Michael O’Reilly: Yeah. Along

[00:35:38] Katie Bell: that journey, it can impact your clinic in such a positive way. For sure. And it’s also

about being unique because people have said to me so many times, Oh, you’re going to sell, can you buy them on Amazon?

Or are you going to sell them on Amazon? I’m like, no, I don’t want to do this. I want to put it in the hands of those that understand it. And that’s why it’s been an interesting journey for me then talking to physios because I’ve been saying want you to have this thing because I know what a difference it can make for you as therapists and for your patients and for your businesses.

And. Yeah, some have been a bit more receptive than others, shall we say, and but it is this thing of something that’s unique that I want physios to have. So that physios have that advantage because, I love the profession and I want to see the profession develop and go forwards.

And it’s yeah, this is the thing that I can have for you. It’s not just another one of those ridiculous little blue wave things. It’s been backed by a chiropractor and you can buy for 9. 99 on Amazon, which is only going to make your problem worse in the long term. So yeah, it’s a it’s the opposite, the thing that fires me up, but it’s here’s the thing that you can really make a big difference.

You that will have your patients loving you because you’ll be, you’re the person that brought them. This unique overall solution. You haven’t just folded the wedge, but you’ve brought in the overall solution of the understanding of let’s help you, like I love the old three steps, now we’re going to live better, and this is about equipping you to live better, make better 80 year olds.

[00:37:06] Katie Bell: Awesome. Up to the world, Michael.

We can try.

[00:37:14] Katie Bell: Michael, for people that are listening to this, who,

yeah,

[00:37:16] Katie Bell: are really interested in not only from a clinical point of view, but from a business point of view.

Yeah.

[00:37:22] Katie Bell: How can they contact you to get more information and find out a little bit more?

Best way is probably through the website.

So that’s optinec. com, O P T I N E C K dot com. And there’s a link there to be able to email, or you could just email info at optinec. com. And then also just following us on Instagram. So it’s OptiNeck underscore balance underscore wedge, and then my personal handle of the dot neck dot physio.

And cause in all this, I’m talking about the postural revolution. One of the hashtags we’re using is postural revolution. And I’m like I’m wanting people to see through the emperor’s new clothes of this. It doesn’t matter what you do. It doesn’t matter how you sit. Posture is.

is a bad word that people don’t even, in the moment you say it, some people are really shutting down. We’ve got to realize that is misinformation and that we have a responsibility to, to say, no, it does matter how you spend your day. Cause the seeds you sow today, you are going to reap the rewards of, you are going to get the fruits of that.

And. You need to be, you need to know that you will get the fruit and it will either be good or bad, depending on what you do with it today.

[00:38:30] Katie Bell: Wow. I’ve got a load of listeners right now, Michael, who are all driving to work, listening to this on a Wednesday morning, because that’s when our most listens happen, when it lands on a Wednesday morning.

[00:38:41] Katie Bell: And they’re all going to be slumped in the car, thinking, Oh my God, there’s something to

[00:38:44] Michael O’Reilly: say! I’m not scared! I’m not

[00:38:47] Katie Bell: scared! I can see that! Michael, so much. So much for being here and sharing your knowledge and being so inspiring to other clinic carers about what is possible.

Thank you very much for the opportunity and I’m just trying to give it my best.

[00:39:03] Katie Bell: As my dad always

said, give it your best. That’s

[00:39:05] Katie Bell: all you can do.