Achieve your Financial Goals Faster: Income Streams with Stephen Stockhausen DPT 053

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About Achieving Your Financial Goals

Ever felt like you’ve hit a professional ceiling, especially in a field as challenging as Rehab? Stephen’s journey from travel physical therapy to Chief Operating Officer (COO) of a tech startup will inspire you with its raw honesty and innovative thinking. Stephen’s story serves as an example of how traditional roles in healthcare can often come with financial ceilings.

Faced with the hard reality of insurance reimbursements dictating income potential, Stephen, alongside his wife, also a traveling physical therapist, began exploring various avenues to achieve their financial goals faster. In this episode, we talk about strategies for maintaining financial health, such as flipping furniture during travel assignments and leveraging property investments for additional income.

Transitioning from clinician to COO didn’t come without its learning curve. Stephen underscores the transferability of skills gained from clinical practice to corporate leadership. Pattern recognition, meticulous attention to detail, and the ability to connect seemingly unrelated dots are among the competencies that seamlessly translated to his role in a startup environment. This episode sheds light on the parallels between patient care and product development, where the ultimate satisfaction lies in the broad, positive impact on lives.

From the charming enterprise of running an Airbnb to the nuanced role within the Southern Ute Indian Tribe healthcare system, his experiences are as varied as they are enriching. His insights into startup growth, healthcare, and the spirit of entrepreneurship offer invaluable lessons for anyone looking to broaden their professional horizons.

Resources

Transcript Achieving Your Financial Goals

Intro 00:01

Welcome to the Rehab Rebels podcast. Are you a rehab professional ready to transition to an alternative career? Hear inspiring stories from others just like you and learn the best ways to bridge your career gap. This podcast has you covered. Now here’s your host, doctor of physical therapy and podcaster, Tanner Welsh. 

Tanner Welsch 00:21

Welcome back to another episode of Rehab Rebels. For this episode and moving forwards, I’m going to do a little bit more of an introduction of the guests and reasons why it might be good to listen, by capturing and presenting the universal themes or relatable concepts from the individual guest’s particular story. With today’s guest, Stephen, if you ever felt as a rehab professional, undervalued financially, with stagnant financial prospects, at a largely undervalued pay rate, then you’re going to want to listen to this episode with Stephen and how he met his family’s financial goals a decade sooner than if he were to be a full-time clinician exclusively With that. I’m going to give a little bit of background before we bring Stephen on. 

01:10

He was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, briefly spent a few years as a high school teacher in Kentucky before attending and graduating from physical therapy school at the University of Kentucky. He is currently the sole physical therapist for a local Indian tribe, as well as the COO of Ergonauts, and he graduated with his DPT in 2011 and began working in the outpatient ortho setting for a few years, obtained his board-certified orthopedics and immediately began travel physical therapy along with his wife, intending to travel for only two years, but ended up traveling for around seven and in the last three with their daughter with them. That’s pretty exciting and unique. So welcome, Stephen, to the podcast. Thanks for having me. Yeah, yeah, thanks for coming on and sharing your story with us. I gotta ask how was the doing travel, physical therapy with a daughter there for a few years? What was that like? 

Stephen Stockhausen 02:09

Oh man, it was great. It was great. We’re pretty firm believers that your life doesn’t end when you have kids, it’s just they’re joining your family. You don’t have to totally change your lifestyle just because you have a little one. You know. Tag it along with you and right from the start we tried to keep that up. Then we had her in Durango, Colorado, and then, I think she was three weeks old, we moved to Kentucky, you know, and then we were there for five months as travelers and then all the way back to the Bay Area in California and she’s the best old travel buddy ever. She can go anywhere. It’s great. Start them early, they don’t know any different. 

Tanner Welsch 02:43

Right, when did you guys stay, you know, when you had your daughter, what settings were you staying at? I know some people you know carry a fifth wheel or they rent out places. What worked for you guys with your family? 

Stephen Stockhausen 02:54

Oh yeah, good question. We actually got this a lot. So we chose to go the route of just finding unfertilized apartments ourselves. We’re pretty good at the secant bind and we actually one of our little side hustles where we’re traveling is we’d like to furniture flip. And so you know we get these unfurnished places, go get some used furniture someplace and you know we’re a little bit creative and dress it up, make it look nice, use it for however long the contract is and then sell it. 

03:22

And they actually worked out really well because then we could travel and you know I just have a tundra and my wife has a little Subaru and we didn’t. We didn’t tow anything and we’d have to bring furniture. We had a little bedding situation that we really liked, like the Cadillac of Camping Ratchets. It was amazing. So we actually enjoyed using that. So we didn’t need a bed. It was great, I mean. So that’s what we ended up doing. But a lot of people go agency can find you housing or you can do a furnished finder, but we chose to on our own unfurnished and then flip some stuff and generally paid for itself or made us a little fun money. 

Tanner Welsch 03:55

For sure that’s really scrappy and pretty clever. So yeah, nice, what. This ties back into the opening comments with the financial aspect behind our careers. But what’s your story behind the first sense of awareness that things weren’t quite right within your rehab career? 

Stephen Stockhausen 04:14

Yeah, I would say it’s probably probably about after the first year or so. My goals when I got out of PT school was I wanted to become an OCS, an A-out fellow, and then on my own clinic, you know out, I was purely an outpatient guy. That’s all I wanted to do. Athletes is my background and within that first year I worked in mentorship with our two clinic owners and their fantastic clinic ownership. And then we started talking about maybe buying into the practice after I traveled. So I had gotten into this job. They understood in a couple of years my wife and I want to travel for a little bit and it was going to work out perfect because one of the owners was in his sixties or so and he was going to retire and the other one was 20 years younger and so it’d be perfect. You know, I leave for a couple of years, buy him out and great transition. 

04:56

So we started looking at the numbers and this whole time I’m thinking, oh, I’m not being paid what I’m worth. You know, I need even more experience. I’m going to make so much more money. And then I see what insurance companies are paying for our services and I’m just there’s nothing left in the pot to pay me more. It totally changed my perspective. I used to have this little bit of predatory clinic owners, you know, just abusing and abusing new hires and that does happen for sure. But once I made that realization of my ceiling is so low, even owning my own practice, unless I turn into a PT mill, which you know and I’m sure probably 90% of your outpatient audience is working at one because that’s what they all have to be at this point and that’s not the way any of us were taught to treat in school. 

Tanner Welsch 05:39

So that was when I realized it’s got to be something different, it’s got to be a better route than this, for sure, and so that’s where it goes back to meeting your financial goals with you and your family. When you hit that point, it was man, this, this isn’t what I thought, what it was. So then, what happened? What did you end up pivoting to, or what was your new direction after that? 

Stephen Stockhausen 05:58

Well, that was a big driver behind us, traveling for much longer. The original plan was two years because we didn’t realize it was going to be so great and so we took our. This is crazy. We took our very first travel jobs and home health in the Bay Area and, mind you, we took jobs. Making is like 200, 250 a week after tax more than I would bring home in two weeks here in Colorado, and we were stoked. Little did we know that I forget what it was $1,600 a week or something. In the Bay Area. Home Health is probably $400 or $500 a week less than what we should have been making. But we were oblivious. We’re new travelers. 

06:39

There was no blogs out there back when we started and we were just so stoked we were making tons of money and anyways, it was great. And that’s where there’s so much more out there. I mean these larger companies. They have different negotiated rates and Home Health pays really, really well for travelers especially. And then next started us realizing, oh, we do this a little longer. We’re out of our cumulative $300 grand in debt that the two of us had, because she’s a therapist as well. So that was the first moment we realized we should probably keep traveling period, maybe not necessarily Home Health, but traveling because there’s generally a little bit more pay there and they could have explored that option for seven and a half years. 

Tanner Welsch 07:18

Okay, since you did quite a bit of traveling, I got to ask what are some things that you liked about the travel therapy and some things that you didn’t like about the travel therapy? 

Stephen Stockhausen 07:29

There’s really nothing. Almost every aspect of it is. It’s great. If you’re adventurous, you like to see new places, if you like to know, you’re the person who doesn’t want to necessarily do the touristing thing, you want to find the little locals. Bar the little. It’s perfect because you’re there for three months, six months, nine months or even 12. So you get to get that insider locals perspective. That was, I think, the best part is really discovering different places that we’re at because you’re there for so long. You’re not just in and out in a weekend or even a week. I think that’s the best part. 

07:59

The only real negative was the community. We got to the point where we had a little group and so we jumped a couple jobs following this group of friends and that was awesome. But then life takes you different directions and every time you change a spot you are looking for new friends and reconnecting, which again, for a lot of people, is awesome. They love it and we got pretty good at it. But starting over and finding a community each time is a little bit of a challenge and at the end I think that’s part of why we came back home. We had a three year old at that point and for whatever reason, our friend group here became closer with them here while we were. Every time we’d come back home. It was just a closer bond. So I don’t know, we just got lucky with that. We didn’t grow apart. Yeah, I think that’d be the negative. That’d be the only negative. But there’s stuff like the different meetup groups and I was playing in these little pick up soccer games just trying to meet people and yeah, it worked out pretty well. 

Tanner Welsch 08:52

Okay, what were the different settings that you tried and or really liked or gravitated towards? 

Stephen Stockhausen 08:57

Home health is the best quality of life and pay. When you look at those two, especially when you’re in a new area, you’re driving around, you’re driving past the little market that you would have never seen on Yelp or whatever. The pay is the best. You’re generally done with patients in a six hour timeframe or so and then you’re a document from wherever you want. We lived in the South Coast of California for a while and we’d go to a vineyard and have a wine tasting and type it on our computers doing documentation. It’s pretty great. We did outpatient Outpatient pays really well up in Alaska because there’s no PT schools. That was a great location wise. That’s amazing up there. And then I did a sniff in Kentucky at one point. It was horrible. I won’t work sniff again. It was too depressing for me personally. Yeah, I think that’s just moves three, but we did a lot on home health. 

Tanner Welsch 09:45

I’ve talked to a few people about it as well and that’s what I’ve heard is really the downside is the starting over with the new relationships every time you have to move. There’s no grounded network of friends or whatever, because it’s always changing every time you’re moving. But everything else seems to be pretty great. And for home health, I’m still currently a home health physical therapist and really do enjoy it and love the flexible schedule and it’s one of the higher paying settings. So, 100% on all that, you did some travel therapy. You come back and I’m curious what are some other? And we’ll get to your COO physician, but what are some other things that you guys were doing to reach your financial goals faster? The travel therapy totally makes sense and then you come back. So what were some other things that maybe you tried and or maybe you’re still doing? 

Stephen Stockhausen 10:33

Yeah, so the big one for us was we knew our little town here in Colorado is where we wanted to end up. So we spent two years before our little girl was born and then we didn’t buy our woman till she was one. So we spent three years looking for the right property to possibly settle down here back in back in Colorado. And part of the reason we took so much time is again, we know we love this area. Outpatient physical therapy doesn’t pay really well Somehow. It’s so rural that you’re driving all day and the way their contracts are structured it just doesn’t make it as great as home health and the little town where you knock out your five or six patients in a day and you only have 10 minutes between one year and you might go an hour to your next patient. So we knew we weren’t going to. Our jobs weren’t necessarily going to make us meet our goals, and so we’re looking for the right property. Things that we’re really wanting is something I had some sort of income potential as a fail. Stay Maybe it has multiple lots so we could split the lots and if we had to sell one off as a cushion of, things were harder coming back home, then we anticipated, we didn’t really know how it was going to be. They were both PT’s and we’re coming into a small town, so it’s two people looking for a very small handful of jobs. So that was a big one. So we bought our place in 2018. And then we immediately began Airbnbing it out while we were still on contract. So we bought the home in 18 and then took jobs in the Bay Area. 

11:57

Really for the next two years we were in and out, but pretty much for two years. So for pretty much two years we were in California while Airbnbing out our house, and so we were able to have someone else paying our mortgage while we’re still making the good travel money. And we started with that of realizing we can do something on the side. We can leverage what we already own to help us out financially a little bit. And then when we came back here permanently in the summer of 2020, we were obviously living in the house. 

12:27

We couldn’t Airbnb that out, but part of what we ended up doing was renovating our garage, which initially was a log cabin. The family who built this house was living in this log cabin, which now is the garage, so it had all the guts. You know it had all the everything we needed, and so we just updated it and it looked beautiful. I mean, we did hire a lot of it out, but anyway. So we have a guest there right now. We’ve been Airbnbing that out straight. It’s not a stop. Huh, yeah, it’s been not a stop. 

12:57

And so you know, part of the reason for a big, big reason that was so great is coming back home with a three-year-old in our little town. I think our PRN job that my wife got quoted for was maybe $10 an hour more than what childcare was going to cost us. So why work your butt off to have someone else raising your child? And so we just if we could offset that $10 an hour, which is no brainer for an apartment. So, yeah, she was able to stay home and work. She worked part-time. She’s got a little bit of a remote job through a home health agency that was trying to do new things during COVID, you know, and so she did that for a couple of years and actually just recently, within the last two months, went back into the clinic part-time herself. 

Tanner Welsch 13:35

How did you guys actually manage to rent out or do the Airbnb? Were you guys actually living in a whole other state? Because you know you got to clean up after somebody and then get it ready for the next person and all that. How did all that work when you guys were actually living in another state? 

Stephen Stockhausen 13:52

We were really fortunate. We built a great relationship with a local lady who is our cleaner and so she basically served as property manager. I mean, I think we had something forget what it was something hit the house and broke that piece of siding or I don’t remember what happened, but you know she’s oh, my boyfriend does this stuff and we’ll fix it real quick. It was awesome and we lucked out and we had some friends. One year we were back in California and they got five feet of snow on our roof. You can’t leave that on your roof and I don’t know how much you’re familiar with snow. But friends orchestrated everything and got people to come and shovel our drinking roof while we were gone. 

14:26

So we just managed a relationship. So it was all about having those relationships and that’s what worked well for us. And we, you know, we had to structure our rentals. We had to really communicate with her on the schedule. Hey, we, we can’t do a same day turnover. In fact, for her I think she needed two days just because she had other calling, which, now that we’re here on the property, we’ll do a same day turnover and keep that unit filled as much as the can. That’s an extra 200 bucks. Yeah, so it’s all about just managing finding the right people. You know it’s like any business right Finding the right people managing those relationships. 

Tanner Welsch 14:57

Okay, so you’re back and you guys got the Airbnb stuff going and you’re. Are you done traveling? Where do you get to your COO position and how? How is all that going for you? How did that start? What’s the store? 

Stephen Stockhausen 15:11

there Started with LinkedIn. So I was on on LinkedIn and I, you know I’ve dabbled in, I’ve done some clinic director stuff and managing clinics in the past, so I had that experience before. So basically what happened was building relationships. I connected with this gentleman on on LinkedIn who was doing some pretty interesting things with the UK school of engineering and ergonomic field and you know I was just curious and we had a lot of the same connections because we went to we both went to university and he taught and I I went there as a student and transitioned into a phone call and we just hit it off and where he was taking this ergonomics company was more into the broader safety and wellness field and that was sort of my opportunity to possibly leverage our skills as therapists right. Essentially what he was building out at the time before I was anything was a platform to help do ergonomic evaluations super fast, so essentially four or five times faster than what you could do in person. 

16:14

I did ergonomic evaluations out here. We’re three roles, so there’s a really big backpack company. That’s their home offices near here. I won’t share their, their name or anything but the biggest in backpacking. They’re out in the four corners area. 

16:28

I did their ergonomic evaluations paper and pencil, ruler, all this stuff and it takes forever. I had no idea if it was any good. I just sent them this report with a bunch of dimensions and they get a desk that’s tall and a chair. That’s these dimensions. Here you can go HR person, go buy this stuff, and now they have to go look up all the specs and anyways, essentially what we were able to, this gentleman was able to put together again before I had any role in helping them, an app that just does it at all. It looks at all the factors ergonomic factors, fines, what’s safe and then, for example, as we include, this chair will work for you, this desk will work, this everything, boom, boom. There’s no thinking right and so it’s just easy. It’s fast and from what I understand from our testing again, this is not my field, but from our testing it’s more effective than a professional paper and pencil just relying on their own expertise, because you can’t skip steps, it’s standardized right, it’s using the power of technology. 

17:23

So that’s what he was building out and man, physical therapists need to start using this stuff because at the same time I was in California again, side hustle all the time. We’re starting to work with Luna. If you’re familiar with Luna care, yeah, definitely, they’re nationwide now, but they were nobody. I mean me and two or three other people were their initial physician liaison team going out to doctors. You like talking to doctors? Hey, give us your patients, they’re desperate for anybody. They took me to help them do that stuff. It was crazy. 

17:48

And so I’m like man the side hustle. I’m already treating people in their office. I’m already treating people in home, in the gym. I don’t physical therapists take this tool and we’re already going there. Go to their office, go to their gym, go to their whatever Boom, boom, boom. You do their evaluation and then maybe we can prevent some of these problems that we’re treating or we can get them out of pain and then keep them out of pain while they’re working. And then, of course, covid hits and everyone’s dual workstation employee or now we have twice as many workstations which you’ve twice there are going to have like risk factors. So there’s a big potential there. 

18:20

So that was the initial. Okay, I see the big picture. I want to get involved. I want to get this to PT’s because these ergonomic evaluations you can do with our tool. You can do it in like 20 minutes if you’re not chatty. It’s all about personality, right. So you got some people going to take a logger and in certain markets, if you’re in a big city, you’re looking at 400 bucks a pop. That is way better than the $72 a visit that you know healthcare based in this little therapist here in Durango per session. I mean that’s ridiculous and that’s for a whole session. So there’s just a lot of potential stuff. 

Tanner Welsch 18:50

When I got involved Okay, so you see the big picture and see the importance of this. How did you start and then get to the COO position? It sounds maybe you did some consulting and worked with them initially and then they just really loved what you did. 

Stephen Stockhausen 19:03

And tell me All the famous stories of startups, you know, in the garage and everyone’s doing everything I was in on this all hands meeting, we had and they share this document. And then they make the statement that this is our, this is our marketing document and we’re going to, we’re going to watch it, we’re a share it immediately. And I’m looking at it and it’s like a data sheet features. It’s a list of I don’t know how else to describe it. If you bought the old school computer and you look on the back and it’s got this much RAM and this much boom, boom, boom, boom. It’s just a bullet list. 

19:34

Long story short, it was not a marketing piece, it was a, it was a data sheet. And that’s why I was stupid and I said that’s not a great tool. I think we should do something different. And she now our CEO but I forget what she was at the time she’s worked in sales and marketing her own career in tech and, yeah, this is not what we need. And so the, the founders, go ahead and make it sure sounds good, I’m okay, yes, I’ll do it, I’ll give it a shot. 

20:02

And so that’s how it started. I mean, it was just as a Safety consultant, the little bit of the physical therapy market. You know we’ve got a product that we’re hoping to get more home safety related, so I was in talks about that and then all of a sudden I’m writing every single word on our website and I’m facilitating. Now I manage our LinkedIn, I manage all this other upper-ish old stuff. I started training some of the other people on edge little by little, so it’s not your typical route that I would say 99% of COO’s get into. You know they all have massive, massive amounts of experience and we’re early stage startup where I have the role because no one else can do it right. We’re just too early on for sure. 

Tanner Welsch 20:43

What are the practical, non-obvious skills that make you a great fit for this role as COO? 

Stephen Stockhausen 20:49

I think as a as a clinician, you’re already trained to see patterns and to see how things connect and that’s sort of I would say if I have one real skill. I’m not super smart, I’ll be really honest, but they all work harder than almost everybody else. I was a kid in PT school who made the study guide for everyone and I didn’t make it for everyone, I made it for myself and then I just share because I needed to put in the work right and I needed the attention to detail I think being able to see how those seemingly disparate things can connect and possibly bring about something positive right. So I would say that’d be the most non-obvious skill, that the one thing I’ve gone for, yeah, but you know I had background in, again, marketing clinics. I worked with Luna early on, like I was saying, and their physician liaison team, so going out and talking to doctors and explaining how to tell that story a little bit. I think everyone should have some sales and marketing experience and that’s one of the areas where physical therapy school just is terror. I mean it’s we had no business training, none when most of us are gonna be working at private clinics and possibly managing for sure. 

Tanner Welsch 21:55

What do you love most about your new reality? 

Stephen Stockhausen 21:59

Because I’m still full-time Working with patients. I have the benefit of that sort of intrinsic value of helping people, getting them out of pain. I really enjoy this population that I’m with. I work for an indigenous population to try about here something I’d know no experience at all with being a suburb kid from Ohio, you know and so I have that, but then also like to change it up. I’m doing this stuff with Ergonauts. We’ve got a product line that we’re hoping to launch here in the next 18 months. That literally would be a hundred million people. I’m truly impacting people on a humongous scale, and so it has the potential of both aspects. I think that’s the best part. And then also, honestly, with that Airbnb, it gives us a little bit of flexibility. So my wife and I, we took our little one and spent a month in Costa Rica last year to learn Spanish and dispersion. We didn’t quite come out even, but it wasn’t thousands and thousands of dollars gone, because we rented our whole place out for a month and that’s covers a mortgage plus half our trip. 

Tanner Welsch 22:58

It sounds like a win-win for sure. 

Stephen Stockhausen 23:00

It’s work, though, right, it takes time. We’ve been doing it for a little while, so we’ve got a dialed in, right? I dislike people thinking a there’s ever anything such as passive income. I’ve sold courses. We were some of the original travel therapy bloggers, right. So blogging before you know your social media influencers really, pt adventures it’s still up there. It’s a hundred and something articles the original travel. It’s a great resource. Still. It’s all evergreen. It’s great we speak at the travel convention every year. But that’s not passive either, right? So when I stopped actively updating site, guess what goes away? All the income that site drives. So there’s no such thing as passive income. And then you know, things take work and it takes time to get good at it. So, yeah, we’re in a pretty good spot now, but I’m doing Airbnb for four or five years now, so we figured it out. 

Tanner Welsch 23:47

For sure. I’m glad we were talking about this passive income, not really passive income. I’m curious what are the different revenue streams that you have that you’re comfortable sharing? We’ve talked about it like, I think, at least three, and I’m curious which one you feel gives the most value for your time and return on your time. 

Stephen Stockhausen 24:06

When you look at the ceiling, the startup obviously has the most potential right. We’re still very firmly in development. I’ve been here with them for four years and we’re still in development. The process is totally different than people. The hustle mentality is real and the hustle is not go hard, go fast, it’s don’t stop. My wife gets frustrated because she’s like you’re on all these meetings, you’re on all this stuff. When are you guys going to be bought A? That’s not the goal. The goal is to make something that people just love. But ultimately, yeah, that has the highest ceiling. I don’t know about. As far as other rewards. We really enjoy being Airbnb hosts on site. We like meeting people. 

24:49

Our town is outdoorsy. It’s in the mountains. It’s hard to get to. It’s a Lex for people like us who want to get out and be in the mountains and then come home and have a nice place to sleep and then get out again. The guy right now he reads expeditions as his job. That’s his whole business is running expeditions. He has an insane life, so we do really enjoy that. 

25:10

We have two Airbnbs on the property. One is a vintage airstream and that is a huge pain in the butt. It’s super cute. Anything old construction is just every guess. We’re worried about Leaks, we’re worried about various problems, mice, because we’re out in the middle of nowhere. The apartment is fantastic. I would say. One Airbnb on the property is quite rewarding. People just thank us all the time for having this. We’re like you guys are the ones paying us all this money to stay here. I really enjoy patient care. I guess because I’ve been out 12 years now doing it for a while a little bit of luster’s wore off, but I still really enjoy it. I don’t think I’ll ever stop treating patients. I’m just not going to be doing it at the same time. 

Tanner Welsch 25:51

And I got to ask with the tribe that you’re working with is that funded through the state or the county? Is that how you get paid, or is this your own business? Or how is all of the financials behind that work? 

Stephen Stockhausen 26:03

That’s actually a great little discussion to have. So you can be your own LLC and get hired by whatever the tribe. Is that you would happen what to work for my current position? Our tribe took over their own healthcare. So if they have the capability and the desire, tribes being autonomous, they can do that sovereign. And so our tribe took over their own healthcare. They manage it themselves and so I work for this tribe. I’m not an IHS employee, I’m not a federal employee. So there’s about an hour and a half way there’s the other clinic that’s closest to us and they’re all federal. It’s all IHS employees, which has definite benefits pension, and they have, I guess, great vacation and the pay is fair. But my particular situation is difference. I just work for this one entity. 

Tanner Welsch 26:52

Okay, so is that how you’re set up then, as an LLC or a sole proprietor and they just pay you directly? No, I’m a regular employee of their health system. 

Stephen Stockhausen 27:01

Yeah, so this particular tribe is broken into two funds, right. So they have what they call permanent fund and then growth fund. So they have an investment branch of the tribe and then the operations side. So under operations is all the services that travel members and anyone tribal qualified gets. So I can see anyone who is IHS eligible. That’s part of the deal, but I’m paid by. My tribe is called the Southern Ute Indian tribe. I’m paid by the Southern Ute Indian tribe. It’s just like any corporate job I do. I draw, we do all that, and so it’s just a regular business Cool. 

Tanner Welsch 27:35

Thanks for explaining that. That’s pretty interesting. 

Stephen Stockhausen 27:38

Yeah, I thought I was going to be an IHS employee, to be honest. 

Tanner Welsch 27:41

For some closing questions. For real professionals who maybe are looking for some additional income or maybe another stream of income, what are some tips that or from your experience that you are willing to share and to maybe help them get started, or what direction to go? 

Stephen Stockhausen 27:59

Yeah Well, I think what matters most is what your interests are. You’re a clinician looking to make a little extra money and you don’t mind being in the clinic. Prn is an easy trade. You don’t have to learn any skill, you’re just trading some time for some money, right, doing the concierge thing. If you’re a little bit business oriented and you’re a little bit entrepreneurial, starting at LLC is 50 bucks in most states and two hours of your time and you’ve got yourself a business right. Obviously, our product with the Ergonauts is perfect for clinicians trying to work a little bit extra. But you’re going to have to be a bit entrepreneurial at first sidehouse. You’re going to have to jump in your own business on your own clients, initially right now. We’re eventually going to be siphoning clients to our evaluators, but we’re not doing that right now. So that’s a great option Again, trading less time for more money and then, if you happen to own a property, leveraging what you have already. 

28:50

I think is so powerful. So if you’ve got a two bedroom apartment, if you need to for a little while, rent that other apartment out. You could probably pay your entire rent, especially the way rental prices have gone up lately. You probably pay your whole rent with someone else and then you’re just sitting there rent free, take that money and put it into whatever it is you want to put into that. Again, what do you want? What do you like to do? Work creative and we like projects a little bit. If I had to start again and I didn’t own a property, I would probably pick some vacant land and I’d put a yard or I’d put a tiny home on it and then I’d rent that out sidehouse. So as much crap as Airbnb is they’re getting in the press lately the short term rental they’re talking about all crashing or whatever. If you’re in this desirable spot and you can create something that’s unique again a little bit of creativity the business will keep coming. You just have to be able to provide something different. You can’t be these slum lord Airbnb places that you keep seeing online. 

29:44

I wish I had a better, more concise do this one thing answer to your question. But the key is you got to find something you like to do and you can stick with it for a while, because If you can’t stick with it, it’s not going to be. We ran a blog that I mentioned before and that was awesome. Paid for our kitchen renovation. You know we made tens of thousands of dollars on it. We didn’t make a penny for over two years. 

30:05

You got to put in the time, you got to put in the Well, you know, with podcasts, right, I mean you got to put in the time. It’s a hustle and you have to like it and eventually it’s going to be worth it. So I think, finding what you really enjoy. In your case, if you hated podcasting, there’s no way you’re going to put in the time to build up an audience and to provide enough value where you’re going to get sponsors, or you just got to find what you like. You don’t have to love it. I’m not a big fan of the big. Only do what you’re passionate about, because that’s tricky. I could say you’re super passionate about pottery and then you make that your business and now you’re stuck throwing pots all day long and your hands are aching and hey, so you don’t always want to follow the past. Find something that you like enough to stick with it. I think that’d be my only real useful piece of advice. 

Tanner Welsch 30:50

I think your spot on there for sure. I’ll chime in here too and just let people know everything we’ve talked about on the episode. We’ll be in the show notes page to dive in deeper and something that we’re doing on the rehab rubbles is actually going to be exploring other side hustles and streams of income and talking about those things. And a quick one that you mentioned right off the bat was doing PRN stuff and with Luna, and we actually have a episode with Melissa about Luna and we got some content on the website already about it. For those that are interested in maybe looking into that and work for them PRN and then Ergonauts as well, if those individuals or physical therapists are looking to dive into that and do some of that as a side hustle, that’s an option as well. 

Stephen Stockhausen 31:32

I didn’t get a chance to mention it before, but we’d love to throw you and your audience a code and get them a hundred bucks off the training. Honestly, my big goal is getting as many people out there out of an interest rate as possible. If I can help others there, it’d be great. I’m sorry I didn’t mention it earlier. We’d definitely love to do that for you, Sure. 

Tanner Welsch 31:51

Thanks Stephen. Yeah, we’ll include all that stuff in the show notes so people can hop on board and get the benefits of that and progress further with you guys if it’s a good fit for them. But yeah, I’m really hoping to expand really what we’re talking about out on the podcast and also in the content on the website. Thank you for coming on and sharing your journey and some of your insights. I really appreciate having you come on. Thanks a lot, I appreciate it. 

Outro 32:15

Thank you for listening to the Rehab Rebels podcast. If this podcast was useful, make sure to hit that subscribe button and leave a review. For more information about transitioning to alternative careers, head to rehabrebels.org or follow us on Instagram at Rehab Rebels podcast. We’ll see you next time. 

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