Mia Poklopovich [00:00:01]:
Before this episode begins today, I wanted to let you know that we have a brand new free resource available for therapists and practitioners in this wild world of business through the Freedom Therapists Club. Introducing expanding your service, the checklist to create sustainable and scalable therapy offers. It is the checklist for therapists who love their business, but also love themselves a little more too. These are the questions that I come back to every single time when I'm creating or scaling anything new in my business. They are well worn but have served me so well, and I hope they can do this for you as well. So whether you are at the beginning of a brand new business or you are looking at rewriting a new chapter in your current business, I hope this checklist begins to serve as a permission slip for you to creating more time, more freedom, and more impact in your business too. I hope you just love today's episode, and I would love to hear your thoughts. You can find me over at mia poco, m I a p o k o, on Instagram, where you can download your free checklist in the show notes.
Mia Poklopovich [00:01:16]:
And therapists, please don't stop creating. The world needs more of you. Welcome to the Freedom Therapist Podcast, your safe space to learn and unlearn all the things about scaling your business without losing yourself in the process. I'm your host, Mia Poklopovich, a previously burnt out mental health occupational therapist and business owner who found her way to fall back in love with business and life all over again. Because success doesn't have to come at the cost of your freedom. You're going to get so much chat, a lot of energy, and of course, a little bit of chaos because it comes with the territory. I can't wait. Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Freedom Therapist Podcast.
Mia Poklopovich [00:02:08]:
I am your host, Mia, and I am so so beyond excited to be back in your ears this week for week 2 of the podcast after the most amazing launch week. Thank you so, so much. It's honestly, it has blown me away. The fact that this podcast went to number 12 on the careers charts in Australia, like, are you kidding? I am just so grateful, and I am so beyond grateful for every single person who listened, who let me invade their afternoon walk or their cleaning or their downtime or their drive to work because it really shows how important these conversations are. I think the fact that there is a podcast in the careers charts talking about burnout, talking about stress, talking about overwhelm, and talking about energy, amongst all of the podcasts talking about profit, hustle, gains, productivity just shows how important these conversations are right now and in this space. And I am so proud of every single therapist who has reached out to me via DMs, via emails, via messages to share their thoughts. And I'm so grateful that we could create a safe space to talk about these things because it is so unbelievably important at the beginning of your career, in the middle of the career and towards the end of your career, these these challenges don't go away. Whether you're in the therapy world, whether you're in another service provider world, whether you're a woman in business, it is going to be tough and there is going to be seasons that really suck sometimes.
Mia Poklopovich [00:04:13]:
And I think having a platform to talk about these things, having a space to be able to learn from other women is everything beyond my wildest dreams. So that wouldn't be possible without every person who has listened or downloaded or shared this podcast. And I am so, so grateful. I know I've said it. I'm a bit lost for words, as you can see. And in coming a full circle around and talking about the really hard things to talk about. I wanted to sidebar on today's episode because this was a really hard episode for me to record. It is one that I've sat down to record several times.
Mia Poklopovich [00:04:59]:
I have created the space. I have set my environment, and it's been a really tough one to record because I think the thing is it's it's really deep and it's a really personal share, and it does get pretty vulnerable in there. So thank you for letting me share my story. Thank you for listening. And I hope that through hearing somebody else's experience, you can create a sense of lessening that isolation or giving you that extra nudge to maybe keep going or try something new. So please know this was a vulnerable one, and I would love to hear your thoughts as always. It took me a little while to become an OT. I studied for a year at uni.
Mia Poklopovich [00:05:51]:
After high school, I studied early childhood teaching, and then I shifted over to exercise and sports science. And I have a degree in that, which I learned so much that has supported my career as well. And when I finished my exercise and sports science degree, I realized that I'd actually really fallen in love with a lot of the units around nutrition, mental health, looking at the whole body and not just the muscles and the joints. And when the discussions came about of postgraduate offers, there was an OT one on the table and I decided to give it a go. Fast forward a little bit there, I graduated from uni. I worked as a disability program coordinator. I worked in disability employment for a little bit, and then I moved into voc rehab. Knowing that it was a really different space back then, OT jobs were very far and few between and mental health OT jobs even further.
Mia Poklopovich [00:06:51]:
So knowing that I really wanted to go into that mental health field, I really wanted to work with remote populations. I started applying for jobs out remote and 3 weeks later I was offered a position in Darwin and 3 weeks after that I moved my entire life. And it was one of the best things I ever did. The practice that I went to work in straightaway in Darwin wasn't for me. I learned a lot, but it wasn't the right fit for me. And then I set up another another organization's practice in there too. But I kept having this deep desire. I knew that I wanted to run things a little bit differently.
Mia Poklopovich [00:07:30]:
I knew I really wanted a holistic practice, and I knew I wanted to work really deeply with my clients and I wanted to do a lot of remote outreach, which which was tricky. It's a really tricky business model and 100% earning that it is a really hard model to manage. So the only way that I knew I was going to be able to do this was to start my own practice. And so OT inspire was born. Now I remember being terrified. I remember thinking I had a mortgage at home in Perth. I had bills and a life, and I was living far away from all my support networks. And I remember being so terrified, but knowing that this was exactly what I wanted to do.
Mia Poklopovich [00:08:22]:
And I think it's really important to acknowledge that because the fear is always there. I remember so many people saying to me, you're earning really good money. Like, you know, why don't you just keep doing that and work your way up? And I just I knew that I wanted to run a service the way that I wanted to run what now is the OT Inspire service. And so I felt the fear. I felt the fear so deeply, started OT Inspire. And within 2 weeks we were fully booked. And yes, there was a demand for OTs in the space, but a lot of big organizations had just moved into the same region as well and just started services. And I think what speaks to being fully booked and making a profit that early on is genuinely really caring about the service you are creating, the 1%ers, and just living and breathing those values all through your service because being able to show up and being so heart led in the space and really connecting with referrers, with clients, with making a difference is how you are really gonna connect to your why and create a service that is really successful.
Mia Poklopovich [00:09:46]:
I worked so incredibly hard. I was building relationships in the space. I was building connections, bearing in mind that I was fresh into this region as well. And all of those little 1% service extras, you know, going over and above with creating a resource or making sure that everybody had enough time to feel seen and heard, making it a really genuine service is what I think really set OT Inspire apart from the very, very start. And then I got the call to start flying down to provide OT services in Alice Springs. And Alice Springs for me, they'd always just been this little voice in me that knew I wanted to go there. And I remember telling people I wanted to work around Alice Springs or Tennant Creek and people in Perth going, oh my god. And I had this I just had this deep desire to to work there and to go there.
Mia Poklopovich [00:10:46]:
I went down there for a remote outreach trip. It was the middle of winter. I hate winter. I love summer. I loved living in Darwin. And I went down there in the middle of winter, and I fell in love with this town. I fell in love with the community, and I just knew that that was where I was meant to be. And so as it always does in Alice Springs, what turned into a 3 month trial turned into something like 4 and a bit years, and it is one of the most beautiful places that I have ever been privileged enough to visit and live on.
Mia Poklopovich [00:11:28]:
When I got down to Alice Springs, it was a whole new ballgame. I had left my support network. I had 2 beautiful therapists in the space who we will absolutely hear from later on this season, who are my people that I could confide in, I could trust, we could share a lot of the emotional trauma that we were experiencing. And I'd moved down to this brand new town and it was a different space down here. There was a lot more competition, and there was a handful of people working in the space that weren't as kind as they could have been. And I can completely see that from the perspective of working in a remote town, when somebody new comes in, you never know how long they're going to stay. But it made it really tough at times, and it is probably one of the biggest reasons that I believe in such a community. And I believe in women lifting each other up in this space because that will do so much more in this space than the opposite will.
Mia Poklopovich [00:12:37]:
But that is a story for another time, and the rest of the community in Alice Springs was absolutely divine and one of the kindest communities I have ever encountered. And if you are ever, ever lucky enough to go and visit Mabantua Alice Springs and to go and get a coffee at the goods on a Saturday morning, you will see some of the biggest change makers and inspiring humans who are there doing the work. It is such an inspiring environment to be a part of, to work in, and people really lift each other up. And that is such a beautiful part of living in Mabonto Alice Springs. So we got ourselves a little office, a very tiny office, one room. Shout out to Abby and Katie, our very first hires. They were some wild days. And there was this cafe that I used to go to, and I used to go there with my friend Talia, who was an OT at the hospital.
Mia Poklopovich [00:13:42]:
And I would say to her, this is just exactly I would love to have this as a clinic and have it as a home so it didn't feel like a clinic, so that you could come in and have that sense of homeliness and that sense of safety and security. And as the universe would have it, in a few years, we outgrew our tiny little office and a friend of a friend passed on my details to the landlords. It all happened incredibly fast. And we had one of the quickest moves ever. Right before I was due to go on my first bout of leave in a very long time, and OT Inspire moved into Healey Crescent. Healey Crescent, for me, has some of the most beautiful memories. It is the space where OT Inspire really grew into the service that it is today, and it was the space that held us as we grew as well. And so the service was growing.
Mia Poklopovich [00:14:43]:
The team was growing. We were getting busier and busier, and so we had to hire again, and it was so fast paced. It was referrals coming in left, right, and center. We were doing a great job. I was so proud of the team. It was growing and growing, and from the outside, it just looked incredible. Our beautiful ops manager, Marley, joined us, and she's been on the journey ever since. And we just kept kicking goals.
Mia Poklopovich [00:15:11]:
Right? We were providing much needed services to some of the most remote locations in the NT. We were working with families who were achieving their progress goals, which is just the most rewarding part in this space. And we were having people students come to us asking to do their placement. We were having people cold apply via email for work. And it was the genuine connection, the collaboration, the sharing, the knowledge, and the building of a community and the building of relationships in this space. And then I got the call that we had been listed as a top three finalist for Xero's Small Business of the Year in Australia. And at first I thought it was a joke. So classic.
Mia Poklopovich [00:16:07]:
It was it was such an insanely wild ride, and it was so exciting, and it was so incredibly rewarding, and it was so busy. But it didn't matter because the work was lighting me up, and I loved what I was doing. I loved this work. I loved this service. But the day started to get longer, And then it turned into evening work, and then it turned into a little bit here and there on the weekends. And because we had grown so fast, we didn't have the systems, the procedures, the supports that you need to be able to take that step back as a business owner. And as the business was growing, so did the reliance on me being in there 20 fourseven, being on and being available all the time. It was wild.
Mia Poklopovich [00:17:10]:
And I think when we start these businesses, they are something that we are so proud of and they're something that we care so deeply for. And they take up so much of our time and our space that often a lot of our self worth can get mixed up in that productivity as well. And if I'm being really honest, that's exactly what started to happen. As the business grew, my productivity grew, my self worth grew, and the 2 became entwined into this little dance that was never going to end super well. And I see this happen a lot. I experienced it firsthand myself, and it's often around these times when we might be receiving those signals from our body or our mind that we are a little bit burnt out, but we push them down a little bit more too. But also, I really I really have to take a moment here because I was so proud of this service, so unbelievably proud of the impact we were making. And I think that's what kept me going because I love this work.
Mia Poklopovich [00:18:35]:
I loved working with the clients. We got to do some of the most incredible work, and these are memories and life experiences and clinical experiences that I will treasure forever, that have changed my career, and that have changed me as a human. And it the whole experience was just such an incredible privilege as all health care work is. But there's a lot of barriers running a private practice, especially one that is as remote as Mabon to Alice Springs. There's major staffing challenges. There's travel. As everybody would have experienced in the last few years, there's excessive overheads, and the needs were just increasing, which means a lot of burnout. We grew to a team of OTs, therapy assistant students.
Mia Poklopovich [00:19:26]:
At our max, we had 9 people in the clinic over the 6 years, and it was in the 6th year personally that I also went through one of the hardest years of my life. So throwing in a growing business, a lot of personal stuff and, and already beyond burnt out OT and things started to slide. There was no downtime. The business relied on me being on all the time and the momentum that I had once loved. I resent it so much. I was beyond exhausted. I wasn't sleeping. I wasn't feeling good.
Mia Poklopovich [00:20:12]:
And as one thing started to slide, so did everything else, and I lost my confidence. I lost my confidence in my abilities as a business owner. I lost my self trust, and I lost myself. I had continued to create this incredible service and create more and more and more, but it had also led to burnout upon burnout upon burnout. And when every single aspect of your business depends on you, I didn't have the structures in place to stop my business from going down when I did too. And as we had team changes being in a really transient place like Alice Springs, we had changes in the system, the funding. Things became heavier, white lists increased, and it just became heavier and heavier. And I remember thinking, what have I created, and how do I make it stop? And even now, talking about it, there's there was such a sense of shame attached to this.
Mia Poklopovich [00:21:28]:
And there shouldn't be because we need to talk about this stuff more. It was one of the most isolating times of my life. And I remember getting back from a remote trip. I'd been out on remote outreach for 10 days and coming back to my house exhausted, beyond exhausted as we always are after a remote trip. And I realized I had left the hose on out the back for 10 days. The entire backside of the house was flooded. There was water everywhere. It was the middle of winter, so it's like it was like minus 2 or something that night.
Mia Poklopovich [00:22:19]:
And I just remember sitting on the wet tiles bawling my eyes out. And I was like, I remember thinking, we're here. This has got to be rock bottom. And I had this realisation that I had created this business to make a sustainable, long term, big impact. And right now, it wasn't going to last past 6 months because I hadn't looked after myself in the process too. And one of the reasons that I had started my business was to have a life with more freedom, with more space to create about things I really care about and to be able to live a life of my dreams, and this wasn't it. And I knew I knew I had to make some huge changes. So as I was sitting there on those freezing cold tiles in minus 2 degrees, I realized I could keep letting myself get pulled each and every way.
Mia Poklopovich [00:23:36]:
I could keep running an urgent and reactive business. I could keep getting upset when boundaries that I didn't have were stepped over, or I could try and pick myself up. And so I did, knowing that deep down it was only the start that we were going to make some massive changes. I was going to have to make some incredibly hard decisions. And I had created this. No one was coming to clean up this mess. No one was coming to fix it. I had created it, and I had to own it.
Mia Poklopovich [00:24:27]:
And it was up to me to make those changes. And so I spoke with some very entrusted people, my closest of closest, my accountants who'd been with me from the start, and I got myself a beautiful business mentor, who I still have and absolutely adore. And changes were made. Slowly but surely, things that weren't working were changed. Things that weren't serving the business were slowly let go or changed too. And it was one of the hardest seasons I've ever gone through. I think I cried either every day in my office or every night for at least a month. And so we scaled back and came with it, the guilt and the shame and the blow to my self esteem, which no one or nothing can prepare you for.
Mia Poklopovich [00:25:31]:
And as a practice owner who had been used to running on such momentum and not being present, getting really present with those emotions really sucked to begin with, but it was all part of it as well. And so slowly and intentionally, I rebuilt the practice in a way that was more aligned, swallowed my pride and learned to speak up when I would have usually stayed quiet, used everything as a learning experience, and not being afraid to change or do things or find ways that things could be done better. Had some of the hardest conversations, not just a business of my life, and implemented systems and new ways, which I know Marley will tell you she hated in the beginning, but loves now and slowly but surely picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves off, and I started to find a new way. It was the hardest 18 months I have ever encountered in my life. But somehow, with the support of the most amazing humans left in the tiny team, you cannot do this journey alone. I am telling you right now, I managed to make it through. And through the hardest moments come the biggest growths professionally and personally, I've learned, because you can't have one without the other. It's impossible.
Mia Poklopovich [00:27:18]:
You cannot truly grow as a business in this space without growing and expanding as a person too. And as we came out the other side and we all just took a moment where we could, a friend offered me a last minute quick trip to Bali. It was already organized. She had already planned it all and all I had to do was get on the plane. And so I did. And what happened after that was I got the worst Bali belly of my entire life. And I spent the first 48 hours of the trip on the bathroom floor regretting every single life choice that I had made up until this moment. And then 24 hours after that, I met the most incredible human.
Mia Poklopovich [00:28:13]:
And it's funny how someone else believing in us can start to help us believe in ourselves again. And as I headed back to Oz, trying to navigate long distance love and just finding the new way of working, amongst it all, there was still so much work to be done, but things slowly started to fall into place. And so did the next thing and the next and the next, and OT Inspire started to rebuild, but this time stronger with a strategy and foundations that would support it long term. But there was something that was still missing. Having been a remote outreach OT most of my career, it's my favorite part of the job, but I was traveling so much and having the pressure of having to return back to the office and trying to staff the office and be in a 1000000 places at once was becoming harder and harder, and I felt myself slipping down a familiar path. And so I made the hardest choice that I have ever made in business, and I closed the clinic doors on our Alice Springs location. And what followed was every emotion under the sun. I remember I was in between remote trips, and I arrived back at the office in the clinic with just under 48 hours to pack up and clean every single part of the last 2 years.
Mia Poklopovich [00:30:01]:
And 2 of my dearest humans, Flip and Kelly, were there waiting to help me when I arrived, and it's really so emotional even talking about that now. I have never been more grateful. There was so much shame and guilt and a deep grief of what was once a beautiful dream and how a business should look and how a practice or a clinic should look. Had I failed, was it still successful without a physical clinic? Would the business still be successful had I just made the worst business decision of my life, even though I knew that having a physical clinic was not in line with the business strategy that I needed, that I wanted to be able to run my business the way that I wanted to run it, to be able to run OT Inspire in a way that the business would be sustainable and grow, but would also give me freedom as well. And as I felt all the fields and really reflected on the past 2 years as I was scrubbing the floors of the past 2 years, even amongst all the guilt and the grief and the sadness and all of it, there was the deepest feeling of freedom. And I knew in that moment that as hard as it was, this was the right decision. Because what was important to me in my business was having the energy to be able to complete really successful remote outreach visits, having the flexibility to travel, to work in line with my energy and my team's energy, having more resources for growth in the business, and being able to really expand and create in areas that light me up here too was exactly what I needed in my business to grow. And so I dived in, and I never looked back.
Mia Poklopovich [00:32:27]:
And suddenly, almost 2 years on, which is so unbelievably wild, we didn't fail. In fact, quite the opposite. Here we are, a fully sustainable, exceptional, high quality service, shaking up the system, a regulated team working their own hours getting to go and watch their kids play football during the week, a regulated owner living between her two most favorite places, the territory in Bali, a meaningful, purposeful, and creative business, More time, more energy, and more freedom. And the happiest and most free therapist in business and human that I have seen in myself in a very long time.
