Growth Accelerator: Hire Them On Or Hire It Out With Christina Panetta, PT

Christina Panetta, PT learned fairly early on in her clinic ownership that she needed to outsource in order to grow and improve. When she needed some time and space after having a baby, she hired a PT and came back to part-time work. When she recognized that she needed more business training, she hired a business consultant. Now, decades later, when she needed some support on social media to drive patients into her clinic, she hired a social media marketing company. Too many times, in order to save money, owners will take it upon themselves or leave it to their staff to work in areas that are not their specialty (business ownership and social marketing are two examples). This inevitably leads to poor outcomes, distractions, wasted energy, and little return on the investment. Moral of the story—hire them on or hire it out.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Growth Accelerator: Hire Them On Or Hire It Out With Christina Panetta, PT

I have Christina Panetta out of New York who not only brings and shares a great story about her growth from a single room clinic to multiple practices, but I’m excited to share this because Christina recognized fairly early on and as a firm believer in either hiring them on or hiring it out. What I mean by that is either hire on another physical therapist if I need more time and space or hire on a coach or consultant to teach me what I need to look for and do that I don’t know how to do or also hire it out. Find the resources, find the vendors to do the things that you’re not an expert at, which could be many things. Social media marketing and billing come to mind. All these things that sometimes we try to do and we’re not trained to do it. We don’t know the ins and outs where we could hire an expert and get it done much more efficiently. Christina is a huge believer in that and her story reflects that because she’s hired on and hired out. She has grown significantly and continues to grow and continues to look for other resources to help her grow and she’s been successful at doing it.

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I’ve got Christina Panetta, Founder and CEO of Panetta Physical Therapy in New York. I’ve met Christina through Hands-on Diagnostic Services, which we’re both owners of diagnostic treatment centers. I’ve always been excited about talking with her because she has plenty of wisdom. She’s been around for a while. First of all, thanks for coming on, Christina. 

Thank you for having me.

I consider you a great part of my network because every time I’ve interacted with you a lot, you’ve had the wisdom to share. I don’t know if you remember those instances, but they were important to me. I’m excited to bring you on. Did we meet a few years ago for the first time?

Yes. When we were training, learning how to do EMGs and diagnostic testing.

I always liked our conversations as we were going to lunch and whatnot, but for us in the audience, would you go back and share with us a little bit about your professional story of what got you to where you are? I know you started small, now you’re up to four clinics. I want to share what your path was like with the audience. 

I wouldn’t consider myself a business person. I went to physical therapy school because I wanted to help people clinically. I never thought about having a business. My husband was a business guy. He had his insurance office and I was working for a big medical group. I had at that point one child, I had my son, he was maybe two years old and we joined a gym. This is back in the time where free weights, we were moving into Nautilus, it’s the ’80s. We wanted to get back in shape. We joined a gym and we were walking around the gym and they were telling us about how they’re going to move some walls down and put in a Nautilus center. My husband says to the sales guy, “Did you ever consider having a physical therapist here?” This was before anybody did things like that. He’s like, “No, what would you need?” He looks at me and I’m like, “Room for two tables.” The next thing you know, that’s how I got into the business. I didn’t quit my other job. I got 500 square feet maybe, I don’t even know if it was that big. We put two tables in there. My father in law made the sign and it said, “Physical Therapy Office: Christina Panetta, PT.” I sat down.

I didn’t even have a telephone. I use the club’s phone number and my marketing when I would get a phone call, they would go, “Christina Panetta, you have a call on line two.” I would run out of the office through the club and answer the phone. I legitimately didn’t know anything about anything. The first patient was a gym member and he walked in and he was like, “Who are you?” I’m like, “Physical Therapists.” He’s like, “I’ve got back pain.” He was a landscaper. That was my first patient. I remember his name. I even went in on Sunday mornings to treat him. I started small.

What were the first couple of years like? Did you ramp up quite quickly? How soon thereafter did you get out of your full-time job and recognize that maybe you needed your phone and your space?

It was a slow ramp-up. The cool thing was I got to know the doctors in the medical group and the medical group, what would happen is they would have patients. People that were injured at work and in car accidents, which could be treated in or outside of the group. It was a weird situation. Even when I was working there, I was allowed to bill privately anytime anybody was injured at work or in a car accident. They didn’t have inside the group all the access. I had access, a pool, and I had access to this new Nautilus equipment and treadmills. I could use anything in the gym. I started two nights and then eventually, I tweaked my hours in the medical group.

I was working three days and then I would work two long days in the health club. The owners of the club, I’m not even exaggerating, my rent was $50. This is the ’80s. Therapists were making $10 an hour. My dad was in awe. It’s different in the ’80s and they were always like, “Are you doing okay?” They love the prestige of having a physical therapist. I was full-time with two nights, then three days a week in the medical group and then two days a week. Eventually, I got pregnant again with my second child. After I had the baby, I switched to two days in the medical group and three days in the main office. Once I was three days full-time with my patients, I bit the bullet and left the medical group.

At that point, you were probably looking for new space. At what point did you finally establish your clinic had set up a lease? I’m sure that was a huge jump for you at the time, but to have your place or jump out of treating full-time and going to your thing.

It was a big jump. I feel like in some ways I was lucky because my main office is still in this health club. What happened was the health club kept expanding. Every time the health club expanded, first of all, they would’ve given me any amount of space when I first said, “How much do you need?” I was kicking myself because I’m like, “Why did I only say two tables? I need four tables.” I eventually did get my phone. In the early ’90s, I got a computer. The ’80s is pre-computer. I got a dot matrix printer. In the beginning, I had an aide receptionist because I use all their exercise equipment. I always needed an aide in the gym, that was my big plus point. Everybody got to like, “That’s got me the whole body concept, come in for your back but I’ll treat your whole body.” The club liked it because anybody that became a patient often would become a gym member. It was a nice give and take in that period.

It’s not uncommon to have a physical therapy combo like that in a gym. One of my good friends, Aaron Williams with OSR in Arizona, worked closely with a gym down there. One of my previous episodes was with Paul Wright. He’s in Australia, but the same thing connected with the gym and was able to establish something big with them, especially with that crossover.

It’s an easy way because I didn’t have to have a big layout of equipment. My most expensive equipment, the same thing, the early ’90s. Electric stim units, it was big. We hardly ever use it, but in the ’90s you needed electric stim and ultrasound. I remember my electric stim unit cost the same as my Camry, which was my first car. I didn’t have to take care of the bathrooms. I kept growing and I was lucky in that the club kept growing. They put a second floor on and I’m like, “I need four tables,” and then I was like, “Four tables is not enough. You’re not using that conference space. Can I take over that?” I was like, “I need eight tables.” As I grew, first, there was me and then Karen Eckardt. She was my first employee. Her father-in-law was one of the owners of the gym. It’s convoluted.

Her husband was an insurance agent. Her husband was walking by my office and he was like, “Who are you?” I’m like, “I’m a physical therapist.” He’s like, “My wife too.” I’m like, “I need to meet her.” Karen comes and meets me in that summer. I was working. I worked three twelve-hour days and that was my schedule. The other two days, I was a mother. I had two young children. That summer, all I remember is I hired Karen and I said, “This is fantastic. Here are your patients.” I was only working three days a week and I gave her the whole schedule and I said, “I’ll work on building my schedule in the fall.” I took the summer off and enjoyed it. I know it sounds insane, but I was trying to balance being a mother and being an owner of a business.

Many times I come up with people that I interview that eventually become successful or coaching clients that I have, and they keep thinking, “I’m treating full-time. I need to bring on this other provider and build up their schedule.” I try to tell them my coaching clients at least or who aren’t at that point, “No, you give them your patients and you worry about building up your schedule or scale back so that you can work on your business.” Looking at it from a different perspective, how can I financially afford to bring on somebody else and not treat patients myself? What am I going to do to become productive? You found that because you were essentially living a higher purpose and that being a mother and spending time with your family, especially as young as they were and concerned about building up your patient load afterward. For you to give that to Karen was not only insightful, but it’s an example of what people could do. If they have the focus of themselves and their business first. When you bring someone on, it’s investment. It might’ve been a scary situation for you at the time to take on another salary like that. To invest in bringing on a provider that you can scale back and work on the things that you need to work on, whatever that might be.

My husband, his degree was in marketing. Come the fall, he was like, “We’ve got to go out and visit doctors.” That was not easy for me. Because he was insurance, I used to help him. They used to call this X dating where you would call people and say, “When does your insurance expire?” I hate it, but I would do it. I’d be like, “Please don’t make me do that.” When I had to go and visit doctors, I was like, “No way, this is terrifying.” He was like, “I don’t understand.” He couldn’t understand that. I was terrified. I did it, I would go out, but I had a lot of awkward experience.

You learn it over time and you’re probably pretty good, I’m sure. 

I feel comfortable. I had a lot of help along the way. For me, I had people that helped teach me how to go and make a relationship with a physician.

Things seemed relatively smooth. When did you hit a point where you’re like, “I’m in trouble?” Did you ever hit a point like that? 

What happened was, a lot of my referrals came from the medical group. The doctors wanted their patients to have what I had at the gym. They were referring their patients to me and everything was great until one of them, the leader of the pack, the orthopedic, and then probably hundreds of people have been through the same story. My biggest referral source, way more than 50% of my patients. What does he do? He wants me to open a business with him, but I don’t want to open a business with him. He opens his own PT clinic. The interesting thing is I had an office manager at that time. That was Karen and myself, an office manager and a trainer. Karen and I worked opposite schedules that we could fill up our table, and we only had a certain amount of tables. This is how I got introduced to a survival strategy. The office manager sent us a postcard. It said, “Do you need more patients? Are you afraid of visiting doctors?” I’m like, “Yes.” I didn’t answer it. I throw them in the garbage. She filled out the postcard and she was like, “We need help.” Way back in the ’90s, me and the office manager, we fly out to California and then that’s when I learned how to make a relationship with positions that I didn’t already know. That was either sink or swim. Either I was going to do something to handle the situation or I was going to think.

Was that difficult for you to sacrifice the time, energy, money that it takes to have some consulting through survival? 

The first program I did with them, we doubled our business. Karen and I being together to four full-time therapists. It was a big thing because I remember saying that I always had this target that we wanted to do $1 million. Being able to double the business, that was our big target. I have four full-time physical therapists, I could do $1 million, which is pretty much what we did. That was huge. That was where the club added a second floor and we were able to double our space. I could have gone anywhere, but I’ve been lucky in the club that I got to stay in the same place because they kept expanding as we expanded. That was huge for us.

It took more time going to a weekend course and then coming back and all of a sudden you have four therapists. How much time did that take for you to build up? 

We doubled our referrals in one year. It was probably one year that we’ve doubled the amount of new business coming in. I did a marketing program with them and then the following year, I didn’t know how to manage anything then I did a management program. For us, that’s the basis and it put the organization in the company. The first step is you have to be able to go out and then form relationships, find the patient’s people are out there suffering. You have to be able to find those people, bring them into your place but then you can’t treat everybody yourself. You have to learn how to delegate. I always say my type of management I call it household management. When I was little, I was treating, but I could hear my office manager and front desk receptionist. She was everything. I was treating and I would be like, “No.” My management was like family-style. To me, you could get yourself maybe one therapist. If you want to expand out, we’re open from 7:00 AM to 9:00 PM and that’s two completely different staff. You have to have a management system in place and an organization. That’s what Survival Strategies helped me a lot with setting up, having an organization in place, having systems. Everything even that we do has come from what we learned with them.

The way that my business partner and I looked at it as we were going from mom-and-pop to an enterprise. If you envision what a mom-and-pop place looks like, everything is dependent upon mom-and-pop being there and running everything to an enterprise. The idea of what an enterprise looks like means that there’s a structure in place, there are policies and procedures about how you do things. You might never see the owners on site. We recognize that it took some investment in capital, energy and time to make that transition. It’s necessary if you want to grow and if you want to avoid burnout for the individual. The one thing I’m confident I can say this about you is that when you did get that consulting you were adamant about implementing it quickly. You didn’t come across and be like, “That’s a good idea. Maybe I’ll do that someday.” I’m certain that you came back and you put a plan in place quickly to get this stuff implemented. A lot of us might read a book or hear some good things at a conference and think, “That’s great. Someday I’ll implement it maybe, maybe not.” You were pretty determined about that.

The big thing is that it wasn’t a course that I took. The way that Survival Strategies works is a consultant works with you every single week. More than anything, they were guiding me. I would have assignments every week. There are those people that always get the assignment and they do it right away. I’m the opposite. There’s the student that they get the assignment and they’re like, “I work good off a deadline.” I don’t do it when I get it, but I never miss a deadline. I need the deadline to fire me. Every week I would say, “I’m going to talk to this person. I am supposed to have visited five physicians and ask them these questions or I’m supposed to have met with four of my staff and written up their job descriptions.” I always had somebody. They were cheering me on and motivating me. To me, I needed that. I was motivated but I needed maybe more than anything the person to hold me accountable.

That’s the beauty of having a coach or a consultant, especially one that meets with you regularly, whether that’s weekly, biweekly, whatever it is. They hold you accountable. They provide deadlines simply by the meeting. You don’t want to let that person down. You want to show them that you’re capable and competent. That’s the beauty of having that because who else would hold you accountable? You’re left to your devices and there’s not necessarily a deadline. Essentially outside of the household is the head of the business. You don’t have any one individual to answer to when you’re at your founder/CEO stage. That’s the beauty of having a consultant that meets with you regularly, is to hold you accountable, guide you and teach you. What I find is a lot of them are helping you fulfill your goals and what you want to learn and what you want to figure out. Is that what you found as well?

Yes.

You’ve expanded out of four clinics. You’ve got the policies and procedures in place. You’re no longer the household business. You’ve got the structure, you are an enterprise. What are some of the successful actions that you’re handling to overcome the problems that you have?

The biggest thing is keeping my eyes open and being willing to change. In the beginning if you want new patients, you had to make more relationships with physicians. I love that because in New York, we have direct access. People can come right to us. Everybody that works for me other than me has a doctorate. They’re all doctors of physical therapy. We have social media. Social media to me has been the game-changer. Think of this, who is on Facebook? People like me. Who makes the decisions about healthcare? Women age 40 to 65 years old and they live on Facebook. They make the decisions for themselves, their husbands, their children and their parents.

Just like Survival Strategies, there are companies like Breakthrough PT with Chad Madden. They specialize in helping you reach the people that are looking for help. What I’ve learned is that people are out there. There are more patients than all the private physical therapists in the world could ever handle. Many people want help. Still, when they go to their doctor, even despite all the educating. Thirty years I’m educating doctors and I have educated a lot of them, but they still don’t always prefer them first to physical therapy. They’re looking for answers and people aren’t trusting. They don’t trust people. They’re skeptical. They don’t trust their doctors. They do their research. We can use social media, we can use Facebook. This has been for me the biggest thing, our newest clinic.

I did the numbers, only 25% of my patients come from a physician. 30% are coming because they were past patients but everybody else are direct people, just public. People are searching for answers. To me, they’re the best patients you can have because it isn’t the doctor who said, “Get some therapy.” They’re looking and saying, “I have back pain. I’m an active person. I want to get back to doing what I want to do. I want to get back to doing what I love. I don’t want to take medication. I don’t want surgery. I don’t want injections. I’ve tried all that.” They’re doing their research and then they come across our educational videos about knee pain, shoulder pain or back pain and they sign up for our workshop. I’m 100% in control of who do I want to see. I can turn it on, turn it off. The fun thing is I can say, “Let’s decide what we want.” We want shoulder patients. I can go and I can work with all of my staff and say, “Let’s make sure we’re all doing the same thing.” That’s a lot of what I spend my time doing because I don’t treat it all. I don’t have any patient load. Even Karen, she is still with me.

She doesn’t have a patient load. We spend all of our time keeping our systems in, but also looking out there and saying, “What’s new?” You do the diagnostic testing. It’s like, “We should be doing that.” We’re researching what’s out there. “Therapists can do EMGs, NCVs and Musculoskeletal ultrasound.” Does that fit into the practice? Doesn’t it fit in? Does it bring the type of patient in? What I find is when you bring that type of patient in and you have to make sure all the staff is capable of delivering the same outcome that you’re promising when you deliver the workshop. Our workshops are all about, you have a pain in an area, most likely the cause of it is somewhere else. It’s always that message of, “You have a herniated disc. You’re bone-on-bone. Yes, you have a torn meniscus.” What’s causing it? If you never fix what’s causing it even after you get the shoulder decompression, you’re still going to wear out the other tendons in your shoulder if you don’t fix your ribs.

I love the experience that you share because it shows what you would be doing if you’re not treating essentially. That question comes up from physical therapists all the time. “If I’m not treating, how am I being productive? If I’m not treating, what am I doing with my time?” You’ve established that. You’re keeping your structures in place. You’re still monitoring all the key stats. You’ve got your KPIs, you’re probably graphing them or at least looking at them week-to-week. If you’re not, then Karen is doing it for you, reporting up. You’re looking ahead and that’s what a true leader should be doing. It’s not heading in the ground or buried in patients, but rather looking up forward and saying, “We’ve got direct access. How can we take advantage? What is our demographic that we’re hitting at?” We’re getting into marketing strategies. Knowing what your true demographic is and how to message to them is the first step.

I love how you said, “It’s like a spigot.” You’ve got two systems in place where you can turn on the patients, turn off the patients or tweak things enough to say, “We’re doing this and this is the message that we need to do. We’re going to focus on this body part. We need to train the therapists appropriately.” Everyone’s using the same narrative, the same vernacular, the same vocabulary, they hear these patients hear the same story to build on that foundation. That’s what you should be doing as a leader, developing that over and over again, tweaking the marketing and doing the training. It’s great that you shared what you’re doing as a leader. 

If you know what it is, it’s much fun meeting with the therapist. We have thirteen therapists. Every quarter, we meet with every single therapist for 30 minutes. If I do look at their production, I’ll usually have a question. I’m always looking for, what’s their passion? When you learn things about people, how do I pull that passion out? What do they want? What I see is that most of my therapists other than Karen, myself and Mary Jane, they’re all 40 and under.

You guys are 41, 42? 

I’m more in that other demographic of the Facebook people where my staff is the Instagram generation. They will balance in their lives. They want the family and they want the profession. They want to have an impact. I’m reading this book called Impact Imperative. They care about the world. They care about people. They want to treat people who want to get better. I talked to them all the time at the workshop, people are suffering. We have the answers, but there’s this big disconnect. They don’t know it. When you can take a person, we always do success stories, testimonials, complete a plan of care. We take a picture. The patient talks about the before and the after. You take that person that thought they’d never run again or they’d never be able to walk them all with their grandchildren or go to Disney. That’s what’s great about being a physical therapist. You can help a person that wants to do that passionately.

We spend a lot of time teaching new therapist, how do you pull that out? I spend a lot of time talking to the therapists about who is it that you love to work with? Why do you love to work with that patient? Let’s get down to the bottom of it. I’ll find out some crazy things like, “This person loves to work with people that are grandparent’s age that can’t walk.” You would never think of this. He’s a young guy and he’s like, “That’s my favorite patient.” How do you create a story and how do you find those patients? You can get so good at working with that patient. That’s what I’m having. I spend my time and I’m having fun. That’s helping me have my therapists have more enjoyment and getting more out of work because they think they’re having a bigger impact on their community.

It sounds like what you’re doing intentionally, you’re creating a culture that is focused on purpose and you’re getting to the heart of what the therapists want to do and fulfill that purpose that they had in going to physical therapy school and helping them define that. I saw you’re reading The Coaching Habit or Change Your Questions, Change Your Life. Which coaching book was it?

It was one of those, The Five Questions.

It was The Coaching Habit. I highlighted that in a show because that was one of my top books. I know you’re probably following that agenda a little bit to help them get in becoming a coach. That’s what a coach does. What else do you want to do? There are some books that have been influential as you look back.

The last book I read, believe it or not, was Impact Imperative. It was all about having an impact because I do all the work in Haiti. It was looking at, is what you’re doing having the impact that you thought it was going to have? It has a lot of research of sometimes what you think could have a good impact and sometimes have a negative impact. That’s why it’s called Impact Imperative. Making sure that you look forward and you also look backward to say, “This is the impact I was trying to have. What impact did it have and was it all good? Could some of it have been bad?”

With the knowledge that you have and the wisdom that you gained over the years, what would you tell your past self about what you know now?

I would say don’t be afraid to challenge yourself. Most of the time, people don’t give themselves enough credit to have the confidence to move forward. Give yourself more credit. When I would go to visit a physician, I was the one that was afraid and I felt uncomfortable, but my husband was like, “Christina, every time you come back here, every conversation you’re like, the one is good.” Some of it is your demons, hold yourself back. The other thing I would say is to get help and reach out. Open your eyes, read all the magazines that we have. There are a lot of people out there that can help you. If I had reached out and worked with Survival Strategies years earlier, what would that have done? I would have been twice big in the hay day of physical therapy. Not that I’m not, I’ve achieved a lot. I’ve moved through it, but some people can help us. What I’m finding, go on the other extreme, I’m like, “Who’s the expert in diagnostic testing?” That’s E-stim. You’d go to HODs. I had issues with getting patients to arrive. “Who’s out there?” It’s much easier. It pays itself off much faster. If you’re having difficulty in an area, look out there and don’t be afraid of the changing environment. I look at it and say like, “Social media.” Even for me, I have an Instagram account too. I know Facebook because I’m that perfect demographic, but when I want to hire a PT, they’re not on Facebook, they’re on Instagram. A lot of it is being willing to study up a little bit and research.

I love that you’ve gotten to that point and that surprised me. It took you several years to get to Survival Strategies from when you started?

It was 1996.

It was about the same thing for me. We got coaches earlier than that, but it took me several years before I was willing to invest in getting some coaching and consulting. Frugal as I am, it’s hard for me to part with money. Like you, once that I found the benefits of it and how it not only increased my volume and my profits, my revenue, you name it, all that stuff, it also improves my life. The freedom that I had in my life. Fulfilling a greater purpose and helping me achieve that. There was all that stuff that was helpful that came from having coaches and consultants and I would do the same thing. I would tell my earlier self to get a coach much earlier, get some consultants. The same thing I had this accident. 

For me, the big thing is, I am in the second generation in the practice. Transition planning, even Karen and I had talked about that. There’s a lot of consolidation going on in the industry. You work hard to create something that I feel is unique in the marketplace. How do you transition? That’s I’m exploring not much selling the business but looking at, “How can I offer to my employees to become perhaps owners in a company?” That’s the next step, how do I make sure that it lives on? Even for my staff, you have this environment, if you sell out, half of them could lose their jobs and life may not be the same as the way that it is. It’s like, “How do you have it live on?” I’m not there every day anymore, so less and less.

Good luck with that but it goes back to you being the leader and looking forward to seeing what’s coming down the road. Not for you individually, but also you’re noticing what’s going on around you and how are we going to survive this? How can we structure it? What do we need to do to survive and do what’s best for our team members? You brought up something. Tell us a little bit about what you’re doing in Haiti. Do you mind sharing? 

Haiti had an earthquake in 2010. Another 300,000 injured and maybe twelve physical therapists that were all trained in the Dominican Republic. For a country, there are ten million people that live in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. It didn’t have a good, stable system to start with. You know the story. I had gone there during the earthquake. I brought back a woman and a baby and I have continued to work at Stony Brook University there, maybe after four years, I brought them down there to help establish a PT program at a university. The cool thing, our first students graduated and 22 of them. The two are my scholarship students from rural, I’m talking rural mountain, no electricity, running water. They live in banana huts, they ride mules. I sponsored two kids and they’re graduating. Everyone has a passion. My passion is to help that country together to help grow the physical therapy profession in Haiti. They have 50 something physical therapists in the country. They are all young, smart professionals. There was another school. There are two physical therapy schools in Haiti.

You don’t have to go to the Dominican Republic and learn to speak Spanish to become a physical therapist. They’re at the point of being forming licensure. If they’re at those early stages of having physical therapy be a recognized part of a medical program that every hospital would have a physical therapy program. All therapists would be registered by the government. They’re trying to set up, they have a legitimate association and they are recognized by The World Confederation for Physical Therapy. They just got that.

That’s great and kudos to you for taking on such a massive project like that, but your influence has been felt. Congratulations and thanks for your work with that. 

The cool thing is all the physical therapists that I know, people in private practice, they have helped me with that project. Anytime I’ve reached out and said, “Can you donate money for a laptop or a table?” People are amazing and that they’ve helped and they’ve also brought their talents. Many people have come with me to Haiti. That’s where you get to see how good people can be.

If people were interested in what you’re doing or wanted to donate, do you have ways to take their money or take their time or help?

I haven’t asked much for the money but the talent they can email me Christina@Panetta.com. We haven’t set up a 501(c) officially yet.

I’m sure there are people out there who are like, “I would love to join a trip sometime or if there’s any way I can help out, let me know.” I want to make sure that’s available and to do that, they need to reach out to you?

Reach out to me. Even if you go through my Panetta PT website, there are links and find me on Facebook.

I’m sure you’ve posted some of the pictures on Facebook or Instagram or both? 

It’s on Facebook.

You’ve gone from a point of success and you’re making significance in the world, and even in the PT industry in regards to Haiti, at least. You’re at the forefront it seems like. Congratulations on that.

I feel like I wake up every day, I go to sleep thinking about, “What can I do?” It drives me. It is my passion. I try to share as much as I can with the therapists in Haiti because they have such a thirst for knowledge and know-how. Being able to share, not just me, but that’s where you realize how many cool, great people I know that I can bring those talents together to help in ways that make such a big difference.

Thanks for your efforts there. Is there anything else you want to share with us?

It makes me realize, why I do what I do and how much physical therapy touches many lives. The biggest thing I see is that I don’t think any of us know the effect that you have on the person. I came in, I couldn’t do this and now I can do it. You don’t always fully know. I thought it would be cool to follow-up with people and say, “You’ve got this person back to anything.” It could be walking or running or work or helping their grandchildren in turn. Think about physical therapy in general, you get that active person who’s involved in their community back to doing what they love, what do they, in turn, accomplish in the community? That’s where I feel like physical therapy has such an impact. I can’t think of anything, honestly, that has a bigger impact on not just life, but it’s the trickle effect into society. Anything we can do to promote that. If we always keep that in mind, that’s why we do what we do because it makes the difference.

Thanks much for sharing your story and your wisdom. I appreciate it. 

You’re welcome. Thanks for having me. It was fun.

Have a good day. 

Important Links:

• Christina Panetta
• Panetta Physical Therapy
• Hands-on Diagnostic Services
• OSR
• Paul Wright – Previous episode
• Karen Eckardt
• Survival Strategies
• Breakthrough PT
• Impact Imperative
• The Coaching Habit
• Change Your Questions, Change Your Life
• Christina@Panetta.com
• Instagram – Panetta Physical Therapy
• Facebook – Panetta Physical Therapy

About Christina Panetta

Christina graduated from Stony Brook University with a Bachelor’s of Science in Physical Therapy in 1985. When it comes to helping those in critical circumstances, Christina wastes very little time – in fact, just after graduating from Stony Brook, Christina began working at the Brunswick Rehabilitation Center. During her tour at the Rehabilitation Center, Christina worked closely with patients that were recovering from extreme physical injuries; these injuries include patients with spinal cord injuries, traumatic brain injuries, amputees and burn victims. Christina eventually went on to open her own Physical Therapy clinic, and never strayed from her calling to help those in need.

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