Sarah is an Occupational Therapist, a lover of travel, has a great time in life, and helps people while having a great business. Dustin met Sarah Putt at a podcast conference and then again at another where he recalls having a great time with her and her husband Ryan.
How Sarah Putt Makes Money Being Successfully Unemployed
Sarah Putt runs a private Occupational Therapy practice. Around five years ago, she started her business for early intervention, which is birth to three years old, Occupational Therapy.
She currently has one employee where they both see patients in their patient’s home. They conduct evaluation and administer treatments. Sarah loves her career and profession because she is able to give back and is able to travel with the flexibility her business has created.
Experiencing Five Months of Traveling
Sarah met Dustin Heiner three days before she left for five months to travel with her husband. She said it was a lot of work.
They took a month driving from the west coast to the east coast, spent three months in Europe and then another month going from the east coast back to the west coast, again.
She had assumed her physical absence from her business would be stressful but it went well. The trip, even though hard work, was beautiful. Sarah called it a five month stress test, and she passed, as did the business in her absence.
Dustin knows how stressful travel can be but he definitely knows its benefits as well. He says that a lot of people are nervous to take even a small break or “stress-test” and that he is impressed and happy she was able to take as long as she did.
What Sarah Putt Did Before Occupational Therapy
For Sarah, she always just followed the traditional path. She graduated from high school, then went to college, and then worked. While she was working, she was introduced to Occupational Therapy.
At the time she graduated, people only needed a graduate degree for Occupational Therapy. She got that degree and a job from an internship she was already affiliated with.
Everyday for five years she went to work, met with and worked with the kids and then went home. She had a unique opportunity four to five years later when a company wanted to bring Occupational Therapy into one of their sites but they didn’t have one yet.
She questioned whether she could do this task at the time with working so much at her current job. However, Sarah approached her boss about the opportunity and how she wanted to restructure her schedule to do both.
Then independent contracting came into Sarah’s life.
Dustin believes that an employer who is open and willing to work with employees like that is fantastic and he applauds that quality.
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How One Opportunity Led To Many Others For Sarah
The company Sarah was an independent contractor for referred her to another company looking to have Occupational Therapy as well. Now having two independent contracting jobs, and her full-time job, she needed to get rid of the full-time job.
During this time, she was getting pretty frustrated with one of the companies she was working for were as they were not inline with her values. They were taking money from her paycheck and not holding up their end of the bargain.
While talking with her husband, he mentioned maybe Sarah should start her own company. She found it humorous as she didn’t feel she has ever had the entrepreneurial spirit to start her own business.
Fortunately for her, the seed was planted in that moment even with her reservations. Sarah realized her life was good, not great and decided to try it out.
Sarah’s mentality was that if she failed, she would at least be able to go back to what she was doing before with independent contracting living a good life, not great. She believed it was worth the risk to see if she could do it.
Dustin Heiner believes entrepreneurs and people who are determined, will always have a fall back. People like that know that if something like this fails, they will still be able to find a job because of their determination.
He also believes taking the leap takes a lot of nerves and guts and you have to have faith in yourself and what you’re doing.
What Happened After The Company Launched
Sarah felt that it was a lot of stressful situations and it was challenging. She said it is one of the hardest things she has done, but she wouldn’t change it because of where it is now and what is happening with it.
Reflecting back to the first couple years that the company was trying to get it off the ground, Sarah said it was so hard. There were a lot of external and internal pressures. There was a lot of self doubt.
She couldn’t believe it was happening to her or that she knew what she was doing. Sarah doubted what she could bring to the table and what would set her apart from other Occupational Therapists.
A self-proclaimed perfectionist, Sarah felt she was held back on doing all of this sooner. She thought she had to know everything before getting started.
People would say negative things about how she would fail by not doing things their way or the traditional way.
Dustin is incredibly competitive. If someone tells him he can’t do something, he will tell them to watch him do it. He believes people project their own limitations on other people.
Dustin tries to weed out these feelings in his coaching students. On a recent coaching call, a student, who had previously been told investing was a bad idea and that he will lose money, asked Dustin when he should tell his family he was doing this.
Dustin believes it is a personal choice and you just have to own it. Imposter syndrome is a real thing that people deal with. He encourages his student to try to cut down on limiting doubts and realize they have so much to offer.
What Occupational Therapy Is And How To Build A Business
Anytime Sarah is at other types of conferences, she is asked more about the topic of her podcast than the podcast itself. A lot of people think occupation is a type of employment or a job.
It is actually daily things that people engage in that are purposeful and meaningful. Things that people need and want to do and how you occupy your time.
Occupational Therapists are experts on occupation; the how and why people engage in these activities. We all have different things we need and want to do in life.
Something could happen where it could get in the way of engaging in these purposeful activities. That is where Occupational Therapists comes in, they utilize these meaningful activities to help to get people back to health or to a point if they have not already learned these skills.
How An Occupational Therapy Business Works Locationally Independent
Dustin assumed that in order to carry out Occupational Therapy, the therapist would have to be physically in the room. He also wonders how it can be done when the therapist is absent.
Sarah explains that because of the current climate, a lot of things are changing. Typically, the therapists actually work with clients in one-on-one, in person, in the client’s own home.
It is typically very location specific. Sarah and her employee are both physically there.
How Sarah set up her company allowed her to manage the administrative aspect of the company from wherever she is, which makes it more location independent.
The actual work is very specific to being there. Now, because of Covid, health care has been able to utilize tele-health. This is the first time they have been approved for this and how they can continue to do the work over the computer or over the phone for their clients.
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Sarah says they can even record the therapy and let the clients watch the videos later. There have been a lot of changes, but Sarah has still been able to manage the business and get the clients the help they need.
Dustin tries to focus on the good things that are changing right now instead of the bad. He does not have to be in person to teach about real estate.
Since he is the expert and has everything for his students to learn, it doesn’t mean they are not able to learn the information he is offering just because it is virtual.
Starting Your Own Practice Like Sarah Putt
From Sarah’s experience, the most important things came down to legal logistics that needed sorted out. She talked to a lot of Occupational Therapy entrepreneurs.
Some of which told her to figure it out and learn it as she goes. Sarah was more conservative in her approach.
She got a lawyer to help figure out the best protections she would need for herself, her business and her clients.
Considering all that she wanted to do like be in client homes, with kids, clients with complex healthcare needs, she wanted to be bulletproof.
Sarah encourages people to check with the state that they wish to be working in since they are all different. In her case, she was restricted on the type of business she could have according to California.
There are two main things Sarah tells everyone:
- Get the legal entity set up and then get the financial aspect figured out, before anything else.
2. Hire a lawyer and an accountant for these things to protect yourself, your business and your clients.
Sarah struggled initially with all of the conflicting information she was getting and was having a hard time putting into words what she wanted her business to look like.
Since it was healthcare, she wanted to make sure there were no loopholes and that she was fully protected.
Dustin recommends leaning towards asking experts for help. He doesn’t think you should be upset or hindered for having to pay for their time. A large endeavor like this with healthcare is complex.
It is not as easy as selling lemonade. Make sure you talk to someone who can help you and an expert in what they know. Dustin loves paying his accountant.
Things they do well in an hour, he would do in a year so he doesn’t mind pay them for their expertise.
Why You Should Hire A Lawyer And An Accountant
Even though Sarah knew of others who didn’t go this route to begin with, she did. For Sarah it was more the peace of mind getting started knowing that the legal and financial sides were taken care of.
This allowed her to put her energy and focus into the business without those looming unknowns. She knew someone else was taking care of things she couldn’t do.
Set up right the first time and have the peace of mind, Sarah encourages.
How To Make Money With A Brand New Business
Sarah started small. Rather than cutting ties with the companies she was contracting for, she was building her business on the back end. She was networking and working at the same time.
She was essentially working on her business all while still maintaining her other job and doing what she needed to do with them and her clients.
Once the paperwork for her business was done, Sarah approached the companies she worked for and asked them to change the way they pay her. Instead of paying her personally, they will pay her company.
After that, they updated their contracts, everyone signed and everything went on like normal except her company was being paid.
Over time, Sarah built up her clientele through her company and was able to decrease her clients that she was working with as an independent contractor with the others.
Slowly left both other companies when she felt she had enough clients to be on her own. It didn’t happen overnight, she explains. She tried to keep it stress free, still making income, and not just rely on hope.
Dustin is impressed that Sarah asked the two companies to pay her company instead of her. He believes that takes a lot of courage.
How To Grow Your Clientele
Word of mouth is huge for Sarah, but it was also understanding the funding she wanted to use and not wanted to use. She made the point of not taking insurance.
This is something she decided based on stories from other practitioners. Sarah wanted to work with early intervention, birth to three years, in home and was very specific about the niche she wanted to be in.
Her funding sources came from the organizations that feed into that age group. Sarah had to establish herself in the organizations. Sarah would walk into the organizations, tell them her name and that she wanted clients.
After a while, she was able to get the referrals.
Pro Tip: When you’re first starting out, you can’t be picky. If you are, it may limit you.
She realized there were places some of the other therapists don’t want to go into. Maybe the rougher neighborhoods, the ones further from their home residences and other barriers.
Sarah took the clients that were overlooked because of those factors. She would drive for hours over a span of a 60 mile radius. She would work with the kids no one else wanted to work with or where no one wanted to go.
Sometimes, Sarah hears about people trying to do what she is doing and they complain about not having clients so she explains to them that they are limiting themselves by sticking in one area.
There are a lot of other people who are also wanting to stick in the area as they are. She encourages people to be willing to go out and do it differently. This was how she grew her business and clientele and the word of mouth spread.
How Sarah Gains Continuous Clientele Growth
Sarah tells all of her clients she wants to work herself out of a job. Since she works with kids up to age three, even if they need more help, she doesn’t get to stay with them. New referrals coming in for her business is important.
Now that she is established, the caseworkers are happy to send people to her because she always has time, she will always go and always does good work.
During this growth period she was seeing about 10 clients a day. Outside of drive time and documentation time, there wasn’t a lot of self-care time. It was a lot but it was what she needed to do to know how to gain flexibility on the back end.
That is how Dustin did it. He was working hard on the front end to relax on the back end. Delayed gratification is important to him and his family.
When Dustin started buying rentals in 2006, every penny went to buying the rental properties. He sacrificed a lot and didn’t spend on other things. The one vacation he and his family took every year was from California to Arizona to see his in-laws.
They barely ever dined out because everything went into rental properties. It took him about six years to quit his job and he was still nervous about it. Dustin was happy that he delayed his gratification and now has the passive income.
He thinks it is easier to say you will quit then when you actually quit.
When Sarah Putt Felt Her Hard Work Pay Off
Around maybe 3-4 years, Sarah started to feel good about what she was doing and the decisions she was making as an entrepreneur and as a private practice.
Sarah was so focused on growing the practice in the first two years. She was doing the best work she could while instilling what it was she wanted with her values, her mission and embedding that into her profession, her job and her company.
She thinks it took a while to relax and say it was where she wanted it to be. That’s when she hired her first employee.
A lot of businesses fail within the first five years, so Dustin thinks if new businesses make it five years, they have done it successfully.
Hiring Your First Employee
Sarah believes she was extremely fortunate in regards to her first employee. When she first started Occupational Therapy, she had been, and still is, a huge proponent of taking on students and becoming their mentor.
The mentors are called fieldwork educators and the students do their internships and their rotation is at the mentor’s company. Sarah always knew the importance of investing in students and loved the energy and passion they brought to her practice.
She loved being able to share the excitement and experiences. After about 1-2 years, she took her first student and she was amazing. They hit it off right away. After her student’s rotation, Sarah realized she was special.
She met with her student later and wanted to offer a job. Since this student was with her early on, she knew she could be honest and transparent about how things may go.
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She is still with her three years later, and very supportive of the business. Sarah loved being able to learn through the process with her. Sarah says being honest and open is important when hiring in the beginning.
Dustin likes the way entrepreneurs employ others and help them provide for their family. The employees love doing what they do everyday.
Dustin thinks a lot of people are like that, and that they want to be supportive and love what they do working for other people. Then you have the entrepreneurs who have their ideas and are able to employ people to help realize their dream.
Business owners create a product or service and have other work for them while they provide the employees with an outlet for them to do what they enjoy.
Dustin has many people who work for him despite the questions of why his employees are doing all the work. He knows they get paid really well for doing what they are an expert in while he does the same.
Adding Additional Employees
From a business owner standpoint, Sarah says you have to know what you want. There are a lot of things to consider before doing this. You have to figure out what you want. Whether you want a lifestyle business or something you want to grow.
At times, Sarah wonders about hiring more people. However, she loves her employee because they are on the same page. Hiring is a risk and you risk them maybe not being a good fit or then keeping up with their client load.
Sarah encourages people to decide the lifestyle they want to live. She also says to continue to evaluate and reevaluate your business and where it is going.
Dustin says you can always think about growing but maybe you don’t want to. He has 30+ properties and he is not really in the growth phase anymore.
Dustin and his family are blessed with a lot of money. He could scale up his business but he is now where he can live off what he has and loves teaching people about real estate.
Scaling This Type of Business
First and foremost, Sarah believes that building your clientele is the most important. Since she is financially responsible for someone else, she doesn’t want to overextend and offer another employee something she cannot live up to.
With her first employee, Sarah was working crazy hours and she still wanted to hire someone but had to bump up the hours and clientele to keep where she was comfortable and also have the employee be comfortable as well.
Sarah says that making sure you have the money coming in but also paying attention to streamlining and onboarding before you hire.
At this point, bringing on someone new she would have to focus on all of the new stuff and not her current caseload. She would have to focus on things like training, mentoring and onboarding cost and time.
Building up the clientele for the next hires, is really important.
Dustin agrees that you want to build up enough money or work to justify adding an employee. He wants to build a business and as he needs to alleviate pressures, he will add.
Dustin will hire someone for one of two reasons; they bring in money for him or they alleviate pressure from him. He was able to hire people to write articles because he doesn’t want to write them.
He was also able to hire people to manage tenants and manage his properties because that is something that he doesn’t like to do.
Successfully Unemployed Rapid Fire Round
What Sarah Putt Does to Give Back
Mentoring is a huge passion for Sarah. She does this in a few ways. Sarah is still a fieldwork educator and still takes Occupational Therapy students do their internships.
She likes to share their experiences and learn from each other. She also helps other Occupational Therapists and other professionals to start their own companies.
Sarah is able to share information with them personally and on her podcast. Not only does she help people with starting companies, she also helps people through how to start a podcast.
Sarah has a huge passion for traveling and also international volunteering. She explains that there is mentoring in that, too. She has been to Ecuador, Honduras, and other places educating the educators in those places.
She works with healthcare providers, doctors and others spreading the importance of Occupational Therapy and its benefits.
Dustin says Sarah is a giver. He believes there is a reason her and her husband are around and it is to help people.
Sarah’s One Piece of Advice to Get Started
Sarah wants people to know it is ok to make mistakes. She feels she was held back in the beginning due to her perfectionism. Now, running the business and mentoring, she has realized that mistakes is where the money is made.
The mistakes tell people what not to do and that is where you figure out how to make improvements, the best way to do something, or the next step to take. She says to make mistakes quickly and in the beginning and move on from them.
The mistakes will propel your business, your passion and your company forward.
Dustin believes he learns so much more from his failures than his wins. He is a competitive person.
For example, when his kid’s flag football team wins, he just moves on and doesn’t reflect. But when they lose, there is a lot of time reflecting on what could have been done differently.
A Piece of Advice to Sarah’s Younger Self
Sarah would tell herself not to underestimate what she can do. She never imagined she would be where she is now. She never thought she would be an entrepreneur or own her own business.
Growing up she was shy, and didn’t talk much. Sarah was so afraid of putting herself out there. So she says if you have a passion and are motivated to do something, you can do it.
Dustin doesn’t picture Sarah being shy because of how she is now as an outgoing and talkative person. He thinks her husband is funny also and even watching this and listening to this podcast, he can’t tell she was ever shy.
One App Sarah Uses Daily
Sarah uses this app often but rarely has to think about it. She uses Calendly on a daily basis. She sets it, it integrates, and she forgets it.
Calendly has been life changing for Sarah but it’s one that she doesn’t think about a lot, it just works on the backend.
Dustin also used Calendly in his day to day life.
The Non Fiction Book Sarah Recommends
Sarah says she doesn’t read that much. She wants to but she drives a lot. So what she does is listens to a lot of podcasts. She calls herself an absolute podcast junkie.
Some days she listens to close to 8-10 podcasts a day. Her top pick that has had a huge impact on personal and business life is Maestro on the Mic.
The host is a Physical Therapist who talks about Physical Therapy and also talks about mindset, imposter syndrome, and living the life you want. Sarah loves the content, the love and the message that the host spreads.
Where to Find Sarah Putt
Sarah’s podcast is OT 4 Lyfe. Named as such because Occupational Therapy is the Y of life. Her website ot4lyfe.com, her Instagram is OT.4.Lyfe and she is also on twitter and FB with the same name. Sarah loves connecting with people so you can find her by searching her name also.
The Podcast and Clientele
Currently, Sarah is keeping the podcast and her practice separate. On the podcast she talks about it all, but has not used the podcast to increase clientele. Sarah’s podcast is more for Occupational Therapists, students, and people interested in the field. It is not necessarily for parents or kiddos that she would be working with.