Nick Houpt: 0:02

Welcome back to the Life Well Balanced Podcast. Today I get to sit down with my good friend Casey McNeil, a licensed physical therapist assistant, entrepreneur, and founder of Bold City Therapy and Wellness, right here in Jacksonville. Over the past decade, I've watched Casey grow from a guy grinding through long shifts in student loans to someone who's built a thriving business.

Casey McNeill: 0:27

So, number one, I think, is lock up your funding. Make sure you have, even if you need to pay another percent or two, have a longer have at least two years long pay.

Nick Houpt: 0:38

So that way you're not a year in and go to get more money. But today's conversation is about more than just business, it's about the cost of chasing success and how to recalibrate when your personal life starts tipping or tilting out of balance.

Casey McNeill: 0:54

And that's definitely one of my big regrets. And you know, so I think that's something that you learn along the way. Is you know, no matter how important it is for you to succeed, money isn't succeeding. You know, building a business to a certain size isn't succeeding.

Nick Houpt: 1:11

You know, who do you carry with you? In this episode, we dive into the silent toll financial stress can take on your relationships.

Casey McNeill: 1:20

Don't take out your frustrations and your money and your stress from trying to make this huge leap on the ones that you love because you will.

Nick Houpt: 1:29

What it really takes to launch a brick and mortar business and why most people underestimate it.

Casey McNeill: 1:36

If you're still truly believing and not pretending.

Nick Houpt: 1:40

No, I think it's hard to feel what is, you know, if you're not truth with truthful with yourself, and how physical therapy is quietly transforming brain injury recovery and reshaping the future of care after trauma.

Casey McNeill: 1:57

Think of your brain floating in water. Okay. If you had like a snow globe and 90% of it was an object, a really delicate object, and it was floating in water, what would happen if you just shook it really hard?

Nick Houpt: 2:13

Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur, a working professional, or just trying to find more balance between work and home, Casey's story is one you'll feel in your gut and want to hear.

Casey McNeill: 2:27

I look at a lot of things in life where, you know, pretty much everybody has 50% happiness, 50% difficulty.

Nick Houpt: 2:35

So take a breath, open your heart, and settle in. This is the Life Well Balance Podcast with Casey McNeil. And me, your host, Nick Howe. This is the Life Well Balanced Podcast with me, your host, Nick Howe.

Casey McNeill: 2:51

A life well balanced for me. For me, a life well balanced is simply life well balanced is.

Nick Houpt: 2:57

I think a life well balanced is Casey McNeil, my brother. In the flesh. Good to see you, dude. You too, man. It's great catching up. I'm happy you came and sat down with me. I I love spending time with you all the time. We've known each other for a very long time now.

Casey McNeill: 3:16

Nine years, maybe ten.

Nick Houpt: 3:17

Yeah, probably close to ten years now. Back in my day. I want to start by acknowledging you, man. I appreciate you very much. Thank you. I am super proud of the guy that you have turned into over the time we've known each other. And I I thank you for always being there as a friend for support. You were actually my first friend that purchased, pre-purchased a copy of the number one, baby.

Casey McNeill: 3:46

Number one.

Nick Houpt: 3:46

So I just appreciate the guy that you are, the things that you do, and and just really what you're all about, brother. So thank you. Thank you.

Casey McNeill: 3:54

Absolutely. And uh, you know, I think one thing is um, you know, when you get someone genuine in your life, like yourself, you know, it's easy to go out of your way to just kind of be there or talk to or meet with or do a favor for or ask a favor for. It's harder to ask for a favor than do a favor. Yeah. And I feel like um, you know, it's it's kind of easy to tell the genuineness of of yourself just as a person. Um, you know, I've gotten to meet your parents and they're genuine people, and you know, just kind of comes down the tree that way. So yeah, just want to say right back at you, thank you for nine-ish years of friendship and 90 more. Yeah, I appreciate it.

Nick Houpt: 4:33

I plan to be one 130. 130. Something like that. I mean, with the rate, we're going. Why not?

Casey McNeill: 4:39

Like Ricky Bobby said, with my salary and today's science, be 240, 250 years old.

Nick Houpt: 4:45

So what we start with is called Who, What, and Why? And it's a big question for big answers, and it lays out the foundation of where we're gonna go with this chat today. So, who has inspired you throughout your life to help you become who you are today?

Casey McNeill: 5:03

Okay.

Nick Houpt: 5:03

What experiences have you had that shaped and molded you to you, and why do you do what you do?

Casey McNeill: 5:13

Okay, so let's start with who. I mean, first off, I I was I feel like one of the, you know, the lucky ones where I had two parents that sacrificed everything for my brother and I. I know you know, on your end of things, very similar, where you know, my I look back now, I didn't realize what my parents were sacrificing. Um, and I'm talking soccer games in hour, two hours, three hours away every weekend for years. Then it went to basketball, then it, you know, high school, and then I played in college also, and trying to travel across the country and see me. And so, you know, shout out to mom and dad. Like, I the older I get, the more I realize what they gave up for not only myself, but my brother as well. Um, best big brother in the world, he always was there for me. One thing that kind of him and I have that we've always really kept each other close is golf. And you know, I'm sure we'll get into a little more golf stuff, but at the same time, you know, it's it's really cool to have something like that where every year him and I go on a golf trip and we get to spend three or four days together, and our wives are very supportive of it. You know, just knowing that brother, that brotherly time of being able to just, you know, kind of be ourselves and kind of just say, you know, let's leave everything behind. We're on our dream golf trip for three, four days. We've done um, let's see, we've done Bay Hill, we've done Stream Song, Copperhead, so it's Orlando, South of Orlando, Tampa. We did one in Jacksonville, so we just hit up about four of the really nice local courses, and then we played in my member guest, and so that's a four-day event where you're playing a two-man tournament versus five other two-man teams, all like graded by handicap, golf stone by handicap. So it's very fair matchups, and then if you win your group, you go and you play all the winners of the other groups. We didn't win, that's okay. We had a great time. Um, but it was just cool to like compete with them again. We played high school golf together. Um, and so it had been, let's see, not to age myself, but 24 years since we had competed together. So that was kind of cool to be like on the same team as him and relying on each other, having fun. Um, so definitely family is you know, two of my biggest, or my biggest probably shout out to to who has made me who I am today. I had a mentor in the physical therapy world, Karen Hartzell. She's in Ocala, Florida, um, which is where I went to high school. And my uncle was a physician and knew her pretty well, and kind of reached out to her and said, you know, can you help my nephew out? He wants to become a physical therapist. So, no questions asked. She brought me in, immediately allowed me to start shadowing, offered me a job. So, summers from I don't even know, maybe junior year of high school, senior year of high school, all the way through college, summers, Christmas breaks, things like that. I would go home, I'd work as a physical therapy tech, treating patients, helping, learning. She would kind of grab me and say, Hey, this is a really interesting interesting evaluation. Come on in this room really quick. I want you to listen and see what I do to these patients to see how I figure out what's wrong, how to help them, so on and so forth. So, physical therapy-wise, she was definitely one of my biggest, you know, biggest reasons I am who I am today. Now, I will say her biggest piece of advice to me was don't ever own your own clinic. And if you ever want to open your own clinic, come to me and buy my clinic. And I think that I kind of took that to heart. And I kind of um, I never did want to own my own business. I come from a family where we're just the hardest working employees at every place, and probably some of the more lower-paid employees at every place we go. I thought that was normal. I thought that's what life was. And my parents taught me that work ethic is gonna, you know, can take you anywhere at any time. So I use that for school sports now in real life. And uh, you know, I think that um there's a few different things that happened to get me to where I am today. I always wanted to be a doctorate of physical therapy, uh DPT, as they call it. When I finished my undergrad program, I played basketball in college, so I went up to Cleveland, Ohio, Notre Dame College on the east side of Cleveland, which is no longer a school because two years ago it went out of business. I I uh studied biology. I was a I was a pre-med undergrad. So I think I had a 3.69 GPA, 3.68 GPA, which wasn't good enough to get into DPT school. So I had a few different options. As I was back working for Karen in Ocala, she had a PTA working for her, which is a physical therapist assistant, which is what my degree is now. And speaking with him, I tried to figure out what schooling goes into this. And of course, the question, what salary do you make? And after speaking to him a bit, I kind of realized that he gets to treat all the patients. He doesn't have to do the initial evaluation and then move on to another initial evaluation, move on to it. You get to keep that patient and treat them all the way through, which is you know me, like I just like hanging out with people. So if I can help them and hang out with them and get to know them over 10, 12, 18 sessions, whatever it might be, I love my job. So I ended up going to physical therapist assistant school, um, started working for a hospital for about three years. The hospital started really losing volume, or the volume they did have became more long-term living there versus short-term rehab. Um, I know you know the health industry quite well, but um, you know, long-term is a lot less physical therapy. Short term, you're going somewhere because you can't just go directly go home. You're gonna go to the hospital two weeks, three weeks, you're gonna get a lot of therapy, and then you're gonna go home. That was our job. After about two and a half, three years, they just didn't have the volume. And I was after two and a half years, I was still the first hired, or I should say newest hired. Okay. So my hours got cut tremendously, and I ended up leaving and I found an outpatient job, in other words, like a uh what you would think of as going to an appointment versus being in a hospital and the therapist comes to you. So I went to work for an outpatient company, and they were incredible. They taught me so much about the industry, and probably more taught me business, taught me how to run a business, how to, you know, how to market, how to handle certain things. So they had a big specialty in the auto accident personal injury injury industry, and I never knew anything about it. So over those three years, I learned everything that I could. Literally went to the boss one day and I said, Who does our marketing? And she said, Well, I do, but there's just too much to do. I don't have time to get out there. In my mind, I thought that was the craziest thing I've ever heard. I now totally understand what she was saying. However, at the time, I thought that was crazy. So I said, How about I do the marketing? And they said, That's that's fine, but we can't pay you. Like, you can go do this, we'll teach you how to do it, but at least for right now, we don't have the funds to add another, you know. And I said, That's okay. If I do really well, maybe we come with come up with a bonus structure. So I started doing the marketing, started getting some contacts. And I mean, within like a month, I think I had an hour a week to market. And she was like, You might be the best marketer we've ever had. As they say, my office manager told me this morning you could sell uh a ketchup popsicle to a woman in white gloves or something like that. So I ended up loving that part of it as well. And now I kind of have, you know, a lot of the portion of what it would be needed to run your own physical therapy company. And my mother, for her whole life, was an office manager for medical clinics. So when it comes to compliance licensing, you know, billing, scheduling, all the things that I wasn't mastered at, she was. So we had a long family talk. She lived two hours away in O'Cala. I'm in Jacksonville at this point. And we come to the conclusion. Again, I think God just stepped in and said, This needs to happen. This is what I need you to do. So I think it was the day after we talked. My mom was like, you know, it's a two-hour drive there, two hour drive back. I have a job. I just don't know if this is something that, you know, I don't know. Let's think about it, let's pray about it. The next day she got let go out of absolutely nowhere. It was a sale of a company. She didn't even know about that, so on and so forth. So, before you know it, the next day she's like, Oh, she's like, I know this is a sign that I'm supposed to come help you. So, shout out to mom for two and a half years driving two hours on Monday, staying with my wife and I. Shout out to my mom for having your mother-in-law live with you for two and a half years until Thursday. Shout out to dad because he was alone by himself Monday through Thursday. Dad doesn't like being alone, he doesn't like to cook for himself, none of that stuff. So that was tough. It was tough on the whole family. Like, all joking aside, it was a really tough decision.

Nick Houpt: 14:06

Still sacrificing in their adult lives while you're in your adult life, beyond what you can imagine.

Casey McNeill: 14:10

And looking back on it, I actually think my wife and my dad suffered the most. Mom and I got to be a part of this exciting, growing thing that we get to like know that this is going to become our family's, I don't want to say our family's story, but a big piece of it. And dad's left at home, he had just retired, and my wife is trying to work full-time, come home to probably our biggest fault, come home to my mom and I talking business all night and just not having me. And that's definitely one of my big regrets. And, you know, so I think that's something that you learn along the way is, you know, no matter how important it is for you to succeed, money isn't succeeding. You know, building a business to a certain size isn't succeeding. You know, who do you carry with you? How do you treat the ones you love that are close to you, so on and so forth. So I've definitely learned from my mistakes, and uh, and I hope that I can um, you know, share that with others that are looking to build a company is, you know, if you're if you're married, have children, etc., realize that yeah, you can I I realized I could work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and it didn't affect me because I knew what I had to do to make it back to kind of that work ethic thing. That's all I knew growing up was work ethic. What I didn't know is how much it hurts specifically my wife, and how much I neglected that part of my life because I was focused focused on this part of my life. So kind of like your your entire book is about tilting the balance, where I was on a one-sided seesaw for at least three years, and I didn't know it. So I I appreciate my wife for being a you know a strong-willed woman to call me out, to call me out of my life.

Nick Houpt: 15:56

I was gonna ask how when did that shift happen? Because in and Bailey won't hesitate to Bailey will speak your mind, let you know. She will. So that's that was gonna be my question as you're talking about this stuff. Like, what shifted to make you realize that you were doing that? And once you did discover that shift, what kind of boundaries did you implement into your personal life and your business life to kind of bring that seesaw back?

Casey McNeill: 16:28

Let's be clear, I'm not great at this. Yeah, we're still bouncing all over the place. I think that most importantly, I think she mentioned a lot of things that just yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're busy, we're growing. Hey, hey, look how good we're doing. Hey, look how you know, and before you know it, it was like, stop. Like, I don't have a husband. I was like, what are you talking about? And she's like, You're not here. When you're here, you're not here. I think that was probably one of the phrases that I don't know if you use the word kind of broke me.

Nick Houpt: 16:57

Oh man, like her hurting makes me hurt. And as a man, you're like, I'm provide I'm doing this to broken. I thought I was doing everything perfect, yeah, but it was not.

Casey McNeill: 17:07

And then you look back at it, you're like, oh my gosh, what are you thinking? Exactly. When I was home, it was how do I get that next client? How do I get another referral source? How do we make enough money? Because I mean, without getting into numbers, let's just say we were six figures in the hole starting up, you know, brick and mortar companies are unbelievably difficult to start. A couple things I learned the really hard way is go after your funding before anything else. You always think like, oh, there's all these like startup business funding companies and stuff like that. And you know what the first thing they say? Like Bank of America literally has a branch called the startup business fund, you know, company, like fund or whatever. I call them, they're like, All right, we need your last two years of PL. And I was like, No, we're a startup. Like, that's why I called you. And they're like, Oh, we don't deal with anyone that's not less than two years in. That's not a startup. Why are you named startup? You should be named two years and in companies that need that need loans. Yes, a rampant. So exactly. So you learn the hard way. My wife's father was so big and kind of stepping in and assisting us with some some loans that we paid back very quickly, but without those loans, who knows what would have happened. We may not probably just run out of business and not be where we are today. So incredibly thankful for you know all the people that helped us through that process. But yeah, that was one thing I learned the hard way was while you're still working, let's say you're working a job and you want to start a new company, go get that funding to where you have all the proofs of the W-2s. And believe me, until the final paperwork is signed, they continue asking for W-2s all the way up to the day you sign. And then after you sign, then it kind of goes away in that sense. So if you're looking to quit your job in April and start the business in May, you better have the funding locked up by April while you can still prove that you have monthly funds coming in. After that, they don't really ask that.

Nick Houpt: 19:03

So if you're not looking at the bank for funding, who who do you talk to? Is it like a hard money lender, like like your father-in-law?

Casey McNeill: 19:12

I mean, I we're blessed that it my father-in-law was in the position to be able to assist us. You know, we had some small loans from a couple other family members. I think they all knew and believed in me and believed in us that we were gonna do what we needed to do. But at the same time, it's tough to go ask a family member for money.

Nick Houpt: 19:29

So and it's like too, uh you gotta make sure you have that vision, right? To where no one's gonna just give you money if you're like, well, I think I want to start a business. It's what do you want to start? What's the belief in it? What are you looking to do? How are you looking to make a difference? And when you figure that out, then people will get behind you because they can see that vision and that belief in yourself, right? You know, like we just we just got funding for the first batch of prints, and so it's all printed right now, and and it's wild how it showed up. And it happened to be a best friend of mine from college. Wow. And he just happened to be passing through from Orlando, and I he he was like, I'm gonna crash on your couch. We haven't seen each other in person in ten years. And I said, Hey, I need this much money. Do you want to give it to me?

Casey McNeill: 20:24

Right.

Nick Houpt: 20:24

And he said, You know, your timing's really good because I just talked to my CPA and he said I had to spend a bunch of money from my business. I got money sitting around. So that's what I want to talk about.

Casey McNeill: 20:35

Time out really quick. How many people have that problem that no one else in the world realizes?

Nick Houpt: 20:41

Exactly. Back to you. There's so much money out there. We have a guy we've been meeting with helping us just guidance with the podcast stuff and different things like that. Very successful, wealthy guy. And the first time we met, he said, What's your biggest struggle? And I said, Time and money. And he said, Money's easy. Time is your struggle. Find the time, the money shows up. And I didn't have this funding yet until I switched my thought process of money is easy. It is. And there's so much of it out there, and I think what people think, especially people like us, we how we grew up, my dad worked in a factory and was on disability after that. And so it was middle, lower class, middle class. And so it was very difficult to think about how much money was out there because you didn't see it every day. And there's a lot of people out there that don't see it. And I think that a belief system that a lot of us have is if you are able to get money, it's taking it away from something else, or there's not enough to go around.

Casey McNeill: 22:00

I think most people are there's just not that much money.

Nick Houpt: 22:03

They print more of it every day.

Casey McNeill: 22:04

Every day. It's literally fake. Yeah. Have you ever played Monopoly?

Nick Houpt: 22:09

I have.

Casey McNeill: 22:09

That's worth about the same as the dollar nowadays. Don't get me down that rapid hole.

Nick Houpt: 22:14

So when I mean, I I hope this brings people some hopefulness or or belief that it can happen. Now, what kind of mindset do you have to go through? Because when you're building your business, you step away from a career, you're building a business, you have some funding, you're not making any money, right? The stress and anxiety.

Casey McNeill: 22:39

I have a good story for you.

Nick Houpt: 22:40

Run it.

Casey McNeill: 22:40

Number one story. I tell this to everybody. My wife is a nurse. She's now into more what I would call like the management sales side of things, kind of upper management, probably would be a better word. But at the time she was a floor floor nurse, and which is where we met at the hospital. And floor nurses make a decent living. I wouldn't say you're gonna be rich and buying Lamborghinis, but like they make a decent living, specifically when you're in your 20s. That's pretty good money when you're in your 20s. Let's be honest. So we start the business, and I really don't know time frame, but it was sometime in the first year. And I mean, we couldn't do anything. We don't go out to eat, we don't, we don't buy anything, we don't go anywhere, we don't do anything. Everything goes in the business, and then some, and then there's not even close enough left over. Credit cards racking up, loans racking up, etc. So she bought a t-shirt from Amazon one day. And I get home and I open it up, and it's a t-shirt. I mean, 20 bucks, 15 bucks. I mean, it's not a fancy t-shirt, and I lose it. We're just buying t-shirts left and right. What do you think this is? We can't afford a t-shirt, and I lose it on her. And in that moment, I felt like I was right. Now, granted, I do our finances and I have and I knew those stress we were under and where we were. I don't know if she ever knew where we were at at the beginning, but it's a t-shirt and she was making a good living. So again, at the beginning, I wasn't thinking it's all about me, but I was thinking it's all about our business. So later it's all about us. The the one-sided seesaw can only last for so long. You can't you can't treat people and hold people to the sacrifices and what you're willing to do and expect them to do the same. So I think one of the important things is to realize don't take out your frustrations and your money and your stress from trying to make this huge leap on the ones that you love because you will. So at least hear this now and consciously think about it because I had never thought of it or heard of it prior. And that's just that's kind of the story we go to. Like, so you know, it must be nice to be where you guys are at now. Like, if you only knew, like you have no idea what we went through to get to where we are.

Nick Houpt: 25:03

People praise you in public for what you did in private.

Casey McNeill: 25:05

Yep. And so I spoke to a gentleman who has a has a similar business to mine, but probably probably 20x the income of of what we bring in, four locations massive. And he mentioned the must be nice, and he came from a pretty low-income family, and he came from a pretty low-income style of life growing up, and he's retired his parents and bought them a house and lives very comfortably. Let's just say that. And he said, You're damn right it's nice. Like, you have no idea what I did to get here. It's really nice to be here, and I think it's almost uh I look at a lot of things in life where you know, pretty much everybody has 50, 50 happiness, 50 difficulty. You have some drinks, you do some drugs, you take a whole bunch of happiness away from away from the next day. You're stealing it all the day, it goes to the staying up too late playing video games, you're stealing happiness from tomorrow. Before you know it, your whole 50-50 tilt is gone. Let's go back the other way. You get an ice bath. That's not fun. I mean, it's great. It's great for you, probably more mentally than anything, but physically also. That's just gonna give you happiness later on. Have you done an ice bath?

Nick Houpt: 26:18

I don't do ice baths, but every day I crank my shower. Freezing culture.

Casey McNeill: 26:24

I think we've talked about this for 10 years. Oh yeah, we the Ray Lewis. I call it the Ray Lewis. The Ray Lewis, and I just I forgot that we silently scream into the shower as hard as I can, especially like this morning, because that like it has a lot of you know science that goes into it. But I mean you're releasing dope. I mean, all these other things, and really what you're doing is sacrificing for a short period to have a better day.

Nick Houpt: 26:46

Yeah, I totally forgot we started that together years ago.

Casey McNeill: 26:50

So I I just I don't know, I don't know where I came up with this whole like stealing happiness from tomorrow, but it's a thing. Think about it, like it really is a thing. Whatever decisions you make today will affect tomorrow, whatever decisions you make this year will affect next year. Try to keep it on that scale. So starting a business is taking 10 years of misery and putting it into two years, and you're just living pretty much no time and no money, which typically time and money kind of bounce each other out, specifically once you start finding your niche and stuff like that. You just you deal with all the crap at first, and that's why I don't think that owning a business is for a lot of people, because if you can't mentally go to the depths for long periods of time for months, for years, I think I took my first paycheck 20 months in, 19 months in. So not only did I not take any money, but we maxed out every credit card we had, everything we had a chance to. Soon as we started bringing money in, father-in-law, parents, whoever loaned us money, credit cards, etc. So I I also think you get a feeling of like I don't deserve the money. This has to go to everything else that I borrowed from. I need to thank them for what they did for me. Um, which they don't think that. Right. They don't. And so that's something that you almost punish yourself in a way for, which you shouldn't. But it it was really cool to like to see that first paycheck.

Nick Houpt: 28:23

Yeah.

Casey McNeill: 28:24

I was gonna pin it on the wall, but we needed it too much.

Nick Houpt: 28:26

And then and then too, you get to that point of oh, I I don't even know what it's like to make money. So I don't know if I'm can't it, can I spend this? Can I buy this? What do I do with it? Like, it makes me think of a story that I heard about Eminem when he first signed his record deal and his first album hit, and he called his account accountant or whatever, and was like, Hey, I I see this watch, like I can I buy this watch, and they're like, You can buy whatever you want. And he was like, I you know, you don't know because you've been so programmed, and then going through those few years of budget, budget, budget, scarcity, I can't spend this, not even eating out, and then now you're making money, and it's like, I can't buy that because I can buy.

Casey McNeill: 29:26

Yeah.

Nick Houpt: 29:27

And let's let's talk to a specific person. Let's talk to a how old were you when you started your business?

Casey McNeill: 29:37

2017, so I was 32.

Nick Houpt: 29:41

32. Man, early 30s. Look at you now.

Casey McNeill: 29:44

Must be nice. Must be nice. 40-year-old, you got these multiple locations. You do this, you do that. Must be nice.

Nick Houpt: 29:54

So let's talk to a 32-year-old guy married for a couple years, a few years. Two years at that point. Two years, man, that's wild. 32-year-old guy married for two years. Give them three things. They're starting their business. I'm speaking to myself, but eight years ago.

Casey McNeill: 30:16

Okay. Nine years ago.

Nick Houpt: 30:17

They're starting their business. Fairly recently married. Three things. This is what you do. Okay.

Casey McNeill: 30:27

I like I said earlier. I think on a business side of things, lock up your funding before you lock up anything else. Typically, that funding is going to last for 12, 24, 36 months. It all depends on what you're doing. I mean, you can go get here's another thing. You're like, okay, well, I have $300,000 equity in my home. Go try to get that equity out if you don't have a job. They don't give you a penny.

Nick Houpt: 30:50

Oh, yeah.

Casey McNeill: 30:51

If you can't prove that you're making money to pay it back, still a loan, you get nothing. So again, go. I think the line of credit I have now is 12 months. The last one I had was 24 months. In our business, the way the personal injury world works, there's a lot of ebbs and flows, waiting for a lot of settlements, different things like that. So when it rains and it pours, there's no in between. So it's really nice to have a line of credit set up to where it's like, I don't have to worry about paying payroll this week. Two months from now, a whole bunch of stuff comes in all at once, and then you just pay that back and you keep going. So number one, I think, is lock up your funding. Make sure you have, even if you need to pay another percent or two, have a longer, have at least two years locked in. So that way you're not a year in and go to get more money. And they say, What do you make and what's your W-2? What's your mine was zero after a year? Mine was damn near zero after two years. So that's probably number one. Number two, when it comes to family, specifically in my case, my wife, but whatever your case may be. I think number one is I would have done everything the exact same way I did it, but shut work off when I get home. So I might be gone for, you know, I would leave the house at seven and I would get home at seven, and it's pretty much 12 hour days. But then I would get home and still be at work. Guess what happened with this? Guess what that? I gotta do this, I gotta do that, so on and so forth. Even worse in my case, my mom was there. She was the only other employee. All of a sudden, we're talking work, and my wife is sitting there at the table. So really focus on shutting off work and/or explaining why you need to do whatever that work is at home. And an every night explanation doesn't cut it. But hey, I have an important call tonight. They're gonna be calling between eight and nine. I know we'll probably be eating dinner. I'm sorry. That helps a lot more than hey, I got to take this call and walking off the dinner table. So that's probably number two. Number three, pretty much the advice that I give everyone is really try to sit down and make a business plan. Be really serious about it. Pretend like you're giving this business plan to the bank or to whoever you're gonna ask for money or whoever, whatever it might be, you know. In my case, we needed a a brick and mortar, you know, we needed funding for we had a doctor at the beginning that was 1099, a PT that was 1099, myself and my mother. Gotta pay them. You know, mom was pretty cool about it. We went about 12 to 16 weeks without paying her. I backpaid her for everything. But again, that's the sacrifices she was willing to make. Drive from O'Cala for four days every week, work 12 hour days, then go home. And so I just think that I just think that you gotta realize that it's gonna take twice as long and twice as much money of your best guess. I think that's probably the what should be your golden rule. So do your homework, come up with this is gonna take eight months and this is gonna take 20 grand, okay? Your answer is it's gonna take 16 months and it's gonna be 40 grand, I promise you. Wow.

Nick Houpt: 33:55

With all of that, let's talk about faith. Okay you have a lot of faith and you have always been a positive guy. If I'm someone that has started a business, I'm six months, a year in, and you're not seeing the results yet, what kind of faith do you have to have? What kind of mindset do you have to have, and what do you need to tell yourself when you're going through that?

Casey McNeill: 34:25

You know, I mean, faith is everything. Like, you know, you you need to be able to truthfully put yourself at peace, talk to God, and feel this is still the right thing to do. I think forcing becoming an entrepreneur is one of the worst things that you can do. Well, I see everyone else doing it, so I'm gonna go do it. My starting my business is because I saw a huge need. I saw a huge need. There was almost no physical therapy in the personal injury world. There was two percent of where people went when they got injured was to physical therapy.

Nick Houpt: 35:07

And we're in Florida where it's the highest percentage of car accidents.

Casey McNeill: 35:10

Exactly. So chiropractors had 98% of the business. Wow. Um, you're seeing a shift towards, I call it MDPT. It's a doctor, physical therapist. We actually just came to an agreement with a new doctor that he starts next week. Dr. Ralph Rizik is an orthopedic um board-certified surgeon. He is gonna be our supervising MD for all of our auto cases. Really exciting. We've been outsourcing this for the last six years, which has worked tremendously. But as you grow, new problems come about. All problems are problems. Sometimes your your buddy had a problem because he had too much money. That's a problem. You're gonna pay too much taxes on it, you're gonna do this, you're gonna do that, so on and so forth. Problems are problems. And I think, you know, one of the things that we ran into is is I want to be able to rely on our company for everything that's needed in the process and not have to beg and plead to a third-party company, can you do this at this time or this place? Um, which that company that we worked with for years was amazing. So that was a blessing in itself. But I uh I lost my train of thought. Where were we?

Nick Houpt: 36:18

We were talking about faith and mindset.

Casey McNeill: 36:20

Right. I think knowing in your heart that you're going down the right path, you can pretty much handle anything. You know, you can handle not having money, you can handle not having time, so on and so forth if you're still truly believing and not pretending. No, I think it's hard to feel what is, you know, if you're not truth with truthful with yourself.

Nick Houpt: 36:46

Yeah.

Casey McNeill: 36:46

You know, everything I see is after 12 months, you shouldn't give up, you should keep going. Like, well, what is your problem? You know, were you starting a clothing business and no one is buying your clothes? Or been there, done that. Or did you or did you start a landscaping business and there's no employees? You have plenty of money waiting to be given to you, but you have no one, you know, so there's different problems you run into. Start start looking into those problems and see is this solvable? Can I handle this problem? You can find more employees or you can work more hours for those projects. You can't really make people buy your your clothing, you know, like that's that's you can try harder with sponsorships, you can try harder with marketing, you can try harder with all these things, but you know, there's not people saying, I want that shirt, and you're like, I can't get it produced. That's a whole different problem, you know. So I think being truthful with yourself, what is your issue? Can you just not find your product, your service, your whatever it is people don't find a valuable? Because that's a whole different story. That's a whole different story than I can't find enough employees, I can't find a manufacturer. I have all these people waiting to give me money. I just I need to fill in these gaps because in in that sense, start looking for a mentor. If it's let's just go back to close, go into maybe a uh boutique who is in a nice part of town and just say, Hey, how did you end up finding a manufacturer? How did you don't even need to go to that manufacturer? Just say, Who did you talk to? How did you come about that? You know, it's like problem solve. Find a way to solve that problem. But if you don't have a need for what you're trying to do, let's say you're a transportation company, everyone you talk to is like, we don't really need that. What are you fighting for? There might not be anything to fight for. So maybe a little more caution of like, is your issue the product or service, or is it you can't fulfill the the product or service that you need?

Nick Houpt: 38:53

Interesting. I didn't see that coming. You you had mentioned chiropractic having you said 98% of the auto accident.

Casey McNeill: 39:02

That was about nine years ago.

Nick Houpt: 39:03

What so if I'm someone I might not know what physical therapy is. Okay. What's what's the difference between chiropractic and physical therapy? And with physical therapy, what is it that you do differently that makes you stand out from everybody else?

Casey McNeill: 39:21

So one thing that I think most people don't realize is both of our DPTs, our doctors, doctors of physical therapy, are certified in cracking necks, backs, you name it, every part of the body. I think that's something that is, you know, kind of a, oh, I need my back cracked kind of thing. Cracking a joint is not always bad if it's done in a safe way. There are professionals that don't do it in a safe way. Most do, but there are some that don't. Um, just because they have a license doesn't mean that they're doing the correct thing. I would say that most people don't realize that we do that. And another thing is really all you're doing when you're cracking your back, cracking your knuckles, cracking your neck, cracking, whatever it might be, is you're releasing gases into the surrounding tissue, which gives a couple hour kind of signals to the brain and gives a gives a calming reaction for a couple hours. You haven't solved anything, you haven't aligned anything. If someone tells you that they're realigning your spine by cracking their back, you're being lied to, which is happens every day. That's not what's happening.

Nick Houpt: 40:30

It's funny you say that to interrupt you real fast. My two and a half year old, I cracked my knuckles the other day, and she goes, What are you doing? And I said, I'm cracking my knuckles, and she goes, Why? And I go, Hmm, because it's a habit.

Casey McNeill: 40:44

That's a really good point. And I've cracked my knuckles my whole life. Pretty cool experiment a guy did. I think he went 40 years, 30 years, something like that. He was a medical professional. I don't, I don't, I don't remember what he was. He cracked all the knuckles on one hand once a day or multiple times a day, and never did the other hand. Took x-rays every six months or three months, something like that, for like 30 years, absolutely no changes between the two of them. Interesting. Again, how are you cracking your knuckles? Are you are you jamming them every time, or are you kind of safely the correct way to do it is get to end range and and just uh we call it um I'm gonna put on the spot, I'm gonna forget it. High high velocity, short amplitude. So in other words, you're you're only moving it at a very, very, very short portion. And that's the same way you should crack necks, backs, everything else, but it's at a very high velocity. So let's say I'm cracking someone's back, you get them 90% of the way down, and then it's a 10% high quick velocity and not a hundred percent, which is what most people would do, their friends or whatever it might be. Um, and then again, okay, back to the physical therapy, crack the back. Okay, now okay, I feel a little better. I can move a little better. All right, well, come back to me tomorrow, I'm gonna do it again. Come back to me tomorrow, I'm gonna do it again. Come back to me tomorrow, I'm gonna do it again. What have you done? You've done nothing. So, our main focus is how do we like long-term make this patient better? So, truthfully, the only real science behind a long-term improvement in specifically disc injuries and other spinal type injuries really goes with any part of the body, but the spine is its own animal, if you will, is by by strengthening and stabilizing around the injury. So, I always compare it to when you build a house, you can have the nicest house that you've ever seen in your life built out of concrete on sand. Good luck. It doesn't matter the first storm that comes, it's gonna start, it's gone. There's no foundation. So if you don't build the foundation, for example, if you're not building up the hips, the gluteus medius for a low back injury, you're not you're not doing your job. You're not building your cement foundation below the house to be able to let that house survive. A wood house on cement is gonna last last a lot longer than a concrete house on sand. So I think that physical therapy's main focus is a long-term, it's not a cure. That's not it's not a word I like to use because you're solving a problem and then you're educating that person on how to solve that problem, and a massive injury is gonna be there. So we deal with a lot of cervical whiplash, lower back injuries from from traumatic, um, you know, we're we're much more meant to have vertical forces, jumping, things like that, than we are horizontal forces. So we really get messed up. That's why car accidents are so awful, because everything is that quick horizontal um movement where the spine shifts, different things happen, discs bulge, herniate, so on and so forth. Um, so the main way that we get people's quality of life back is by A, by getting them strong in the areas that need to support that, and B by educating them why we're doing In and how you continue to do this. Because if you're going to have to go to a medical provider the rest of your life to continue treatment, they may not have may not. There are cases, but they may not have your best, you know, they may not have you as the most positive thing in their mind. It might be more money. That's one thing to think about. Um, you should see improvement when you're treating. If you don't have a talk with your medical professional and look for, is there another option? Can we continue this and add another option? Let's say and get a second opinion. Correct. Correct. We have a patient right now, unfortunately. She was injured by a chiropractor in a different state after a car accident because it was a very unsafe maneuver that he did on an already injured neck, and she has a spinal cord injury now. It's so dangerous, you know. And he's a professional, he has a license. He went to school, so you can't just say, Oh, his license is on the wall. I thought, you know, so do your own research, you know, really dive into Chat GPT, does pretty good these days. You know, what is the most beneficial way for me to improve after being injury my spine, so on and so forth. Long story short, we really focus on long-term improvement of a patient and how to get them understanding how they're gonna continue to thrive for the rest of their life with the injury that they've had.

Nick Houpt: 45:29

And then with car accidents and stuff too, I'd imagine there's a lot of brain injuries and head injuries. So what are some things that physical therapy or your clinic specifically help with, work with, do?

Casey McNeill: 45:45

Yeah. So traumatic pain brain injuries, TBIs, concussions, you know, pretty much any time you get in a violent, violent movement, there's there's gonna be some type of either damage or injury to the brain. Some are very minor. If I punched you in the leg right now, you're injured. In three minutes, you're fine, and you never knew you were injured again. That that's not really the worry of of most people. But the thing that most people don't realize is think of your brain floating in water. Okay. If you had like a snow globe and 90% of it was an object, a really delicate object, and it was floating in water, what would happen if you just shook it really hard? It would just bang into the sides, right? That's where most brain injuries come from. I I always hear patients say, Yeah, like I have really been having a lot of symptoms. You know, headache is is important, but that's not if someone tells me they have a headache, I don't just think you have a TBI concussion. Someone starts telling me they have difficulty with their vision, difficulty sleeping, concentrating, um, loud noises, bright lights bother them. There's a million different things, but those are some of the biggest things that we look for, short-term memory, etc. That's when, you know, kind of our light bulb goes off of like, okay, we really need to get this evaluated and start working on this. Because many, many patients think if they didn't hit their head on the steering wheel or on the back chair, or well, there's no way I could have hurt my brain because I didn't hit it on anything. There's an injury called a coup contra coup injury, and your brain is actually hitting the front and back of your skull. And that's probably more dangerous than it hitting your head on something because you're smashing into think of how hard your skull is. I know your mom told you how hard of a head you had. So that's like something that a lot of people don't realize is brain injuries are not just for people that hit their heads, just that hard rocking motion can cause that brain to hit the skull, causing that injury, causing those things like I told you the sensitivity to light, difficulty sleeping, memory, concentration, things like that. So our clinic is all all of our therapists are certified through the American Institute of Balance. It is an amazing program down in uh the Clearwater area that one of the top neurologists in Jacksonville kind of um educated us on and said, I would really like for you guys to go there so we can use you as our preferred providers. Went down there and I mean we were we were like eight years, two years, and four years, five years out of school. I mean, we had treated hundreds and thousands of patients, and 50% of what we learned down there we had never heard in our life. Wow, which is so incredible for you know licensed therapists to have no idea what's going on with this. So I think there might only be like one other clinic in Jacksonville, one other company that does the TBI concussion therapy. There's a lot that say they do. Most of them put you on a computer and have you read some things, like, okay, your therapy's up. Um, we do everything from you know working on your short-term memory, getting you to a lot of it is adapting back to being able to tolerate things. We start in a dark room, lights come on slowly. We start with really easy questions, they get more difficult. We add balance into it while we're making you answer questions. We add hand-eye coordination to it while you're having to count backwards from 30 by 3. If you did it right now, it might take you a minute, but try standing on a balance pad with one foot in front of the other, fighting for your life and then trying to count backwards. I mean, you get a lot of cool things that we do. Um, we have these new K-plates that are biofeedback sensors where you're standing on them and it tells you exactly the percentage of weight on both feet forward, backward, left, right, rocking. You can do tests on them, but then you can also train on them. You can hop on them, and all of a sudden you put the iPad in front of the patient and they're surfing on a wave and they got to dodge sharks and they gotta, you know, go around this stuff and pick up other things for more points and you know, almost like a Nintendo Wii back in the day in the day, but just way more fancy. So interesting. Yeah, a lot of cool stuff with that. I definitely can't stress enough, at least get to a neurologist if you're having any of those things that I named. Headaches, most people are gonna get because neck pain can cause headaches. Any of those other things, I would especially if you have more than one, I would definitely try to get to a neurologist um and then ask, you know, is there therapy for this? Because the vestibular therapy is what we do, and that's what I would Google. I would look up vestibular therapy in my area um and look for somebody that has certified certifications in vestibular therapy.

Nick Houpt: 50:22

Hmm. Interesting. I didn't even know you did that stuff.

Casey McNeill: 50:25

Yeah, it's what it's cool, man. We did we started about two years ago, and you know, we get students and we take students every every few months, and you forget what you didn't know before you took this class. It's so second nature to us now. And the one thing I'll say about social media, I'm not the biggest fan of social media, but the one thing I'll say is um through my business account, we follow a whole bunch of vestibular related physical therapy across the country and across the world. And it's cool because they see us post things that are like, oh man, that's so cool. Then we see them post things, and so we've been giving shout-outs and sharing videos and doing things like that. Um, the newest one I saw that we haven't even incorporated at our company yet is uh you take a deck of cars, we do a whole bunch of stuff with cards, matching games, different things. You put a you put a black card down, you have to lift your right hand. If you put a face card down, you got to lift your leg. So if it's a black face card, it's your right leg. If it's a black number card, it's your right arm, so on and so forth. And you start going through and getting the patients reacting to that. But the newest one is uh I saw is you cut the cards. You can either cut them in in fourths, is what is what we'll do. So there's the numbers in all four corners of the card. And then you just take, you know, say 10 cards, now there's 40 pieces, and you got to start matching up clubs to clubs, diamonds to diamonds, sixes to sixes, so on and so forth. That sounds easy, but when you have a brain injury, you know, it's really difficult to concentrate. Really difficult. So it's just some cool stuff that we do, um, getting patients back to, you know, to the lives that they need to live. Because I think the least known thing about brain injuries is how much improvement you can get from them. I mean, it's incredible. People come in and they can't complete sentences, they can't see bright lights, they can't handle loud noises, and they leave going back to nursing on the floor. All there is is bright lights, loud sounds, and fast, chaotic. You know, that's one of uh stories that I think of a patient that that really comes to mind about that.

Nick Houpt: 52:22

Hmm. Now we're coming to an end, so I want to be mindful of your time and everything. We didn't even get to talk about golf. Oh, which we need two more hours. That'll be like episode two. I'm not even gonna bring it up, but we'll we'll cover some stuff and and we'll we'll link all your stuff for your for your golf simulator. Birdie's at bold city, yeah. Birdie's at bold city. Is there something we didn't talk about that you want to share?

Casey McNeill: 52:53

Man, I feel like we had some good stuff. Are you sure we're not five minutes in?

Nick Houpt: 52:57

Right. I could keep going.

Casey McNeill: 53:00

Very, very, very briefly. Our locations are in the downtown riverside area, and then on San Jose down in Mandarin, south, south San Jose, South Mandarin. We have a golf simulator in the riverside and a golf simulator in San Jose. We do unlimited memberships, 24-7 employee lists, which is really fun because you come in, you meet the person, you teach them how to use everything, set it all up, and then everything is booked remotely through an app. They get codes to get in the doors, no problem, and they just get to kind of come and enjoy. You can bring two guests every time you come, work on your game. You can play courses like TPC Sawgrass, Augusta, Pebble Beach, so on and so forth. So, really cool stuff with that. Um, that's gonna be a new simulator company out of Asia that a really amazing gentleman, Jonathan Uyang. He is a uh representative for RG Golf, and they are everywhere in Asia, huge in Canada and working their way into the state. So I believe we're gonna be the only one in the state of Florida, which won't last long because this technology is incredible. So we're gonna help him out a little bit. It's as like a showcase room kind of thing where he can kind of bring people in and show them the technology. But he just worked with us amazingly to be able to get this technology, and he's engineering the the look of it and the and the padding, all the way from the padding on the walls to the LED lights to I mean, just incredible. So that would be really cool down there. One thing about that program is they have a uh fairway, rough, and bunker. So you actually have different surfaces you're hitting off of. Oh wow, which everything with the simulator is how did the ball launch, how much spin, side spin, back spin, how high, you know, so on how fast the ball was moving. And so with this one, when it comes to hitting out of a different like terrain, it spins differently, it doesn't shoot as high, it doesn't, you know, all those things change like they would in the real world, but when you're hitting off the same surface every time, you know, you don't really get that feedback. You know, you're hitting a bunker shot off of carpet, it's not the same. But all of a sudden they've come up with this technology to mimic a bunker, to mimic rough and stuff like that. So that's really, really cool stuff.

Nick Houpt: 55:10

And you guys train too. We do, yeah.

Casey McNeill: 55:13

And you're certified TPI, not to be confused with traumatic brain injury, Titleist Performance Institute, which I mean, I'm a little biased, but they are the upfront leaders in all of golf training at the moment. Almost every single leading golf teacher in the world is TPI certified. I think it's 49 of the top 50. I think there's, you know, there's always that one outlier, but they've all gone through that training because it's the understanding of how the body works in the golf swing. So I'm the master of how does your body work in that golf swing. Then you have your golf coach who we've teamed up with John Mousley and our friend Dave Myers. John Mousley is level three certified, which is the highest level of TPI certified. So he really understands the body training and really relies on me to hey, this person's right hip is not rotating, which is why they're swaying, which is why they're coming over the top, which is why they're slicing. I'll work on the body, you work on the swing. So it's this teamwork of uh just incredible that for how many years, I mean, we've come so far in technology with a lot of things, but it's really incredible to think of how people have swung and played in the past when they had no idea why. And now we realize it's because, you know, for example, Jack Nicholas had a floating elbow. Well, he didn't have the external rotation to get to where he should have been. He was an incredible athlete in other sports, all American and football, basketball, all these things. Maybe he had a lot of like damage from throwing sports and then was trying to play golf. So he didn't keep that elbow in like most people do. He had a floating elbow, and he's arguably the greatest tied for the greatest player of all time. So there's a lot of ways around injuries, and understanding why you do certain things is half the battle.

Nick Houpt: 56:59

Now, being an employee, a husband, a brother, owning your own business, going through life's craziness, having the faith that you have had, what do you define as a life well balanced?

Casey McNeill: 57:17

Start the clock over. Um, truthfully, I think just to make a really long answer short, be present in everything that you do. Don't be at work when you're at home. Don't be at home when you're at work. If you're gonna have time to go have fun with the boys, go have fun with the boys. Don't be on your phone answering phone calls and emails, Kilty, while you're doing that, because that's a very short amount of time that you have that you're not gonna get back. You can answer those emails later. So I think be present, whether it's fun, whether it's work, whether it's home, whatever it is. And the reason I say that is because I know how much I struggle with this. And so I want to A consciously think about it and B kind of put that in other people's minds of you know, you're you're gonna be most people are who they are until other outside effects come on to it. So if you're only thinking about work at home, you're no longer yourself. Well, your wife married you, she didn't marry you, not present while thinking about work because some fire came up. That fire's gonna be there tomorrow. If you're not careful, she may not be there tomorrow. Shout out to Bailey for 13 years of sticking by my side through all the ups and downs and being yelled at for buying t-shirts.

Nick Houpt: 58:38

So, where can people find you?

Casey McNeill: 58:40

Um, we are at Bold City Therapy. That'll be our our Facebook and our Instagram. www.boldcity therapy.com is our website. Like I said, we're in the downtown riverside area, is one location. San Jose Boulevard South Mandarin is another. And Birdies at Bold City is going to be our social media for the golf portion. So, um, and like I said, training, memberships, all the above. So um, those are really the easiest ways to find us there. We put some really funny, cool stuff out on social media. So I don't do it much. I don't like your social media. I don't do it myself. We try to be typical. We try to be serious, but we try to have a lot of fun. Therapists doing challenges that we should not be trying, that we're gonna get hurt at one day. But just some really cool educational, but at the same time, give you some good laughs.

Nick Houpt: 59:28

Awesome. Awesome. So we do a speed round at the end. Yeah, it's called balanced or unbalanced. So I'm gonna ask you a question. You're gonna tell me if it's balanced or if it's unbalanced. If you want to elaborate more, you can. If we want to keep moving, we'll keep moving. Cool? Yep. Balanced or unbalanced, carrying financial stress silently.

Casey McNeill: 59:51

So if I'm balanced, I'm not doing that or I am.

Nick Houpt: 59:54

So it's not about you.

Casey McNeill: 59:55

It's just oh, should you carry so yeah.

Nick Houpt: 59:58

So like carrying financial stress is unbalanced. Oh or carrying financial stresses balance.

Casey McNeill: 1:00:05

Carrying financial balance uh silently is unbalanced. Okay. And I'm very guilty of that because I do our finances and I do spend a lot of time and effort making sure that we're setting ourselves up for future. But at the same time, I know the stresses of, like I said, the first couple years, or you make an investment that doesn't go the way you want it, so on and so forth. That turns into barking at your wife when she asks you to do something simple. That turns into, you know, not being genuine or sympathetic to your patients while you're in front of them.

Nick Houpt: 1:00:40

So balanced or unbalanced, normalizing pain is a part of getting older.

Casey McNeill: 1:00:48

Oh, that's a tough question. I'm gonna say both because let's face it, getting old isn't for sissies. That is an actual quote from my grandmother. Getting old is not for sissies. Um I like to think of arthritis like rust. I think everyone understands rusts and they see rust, and we're all gonna rust. We start at about age 30, it's just gonna happen. However, if you have a whole bunch of opportunity to delay the rust and lessen that rust, arthritis, that's the unbalanced part, is the worst thing you can ever do is not move. Motion is lotion. When you don't have the joint fluid moving into there, everything breaks down, everything hurts, you move less. Now you're moving here, then it hurts more, then you move less. Now you're down here, then it hurts more, then you move less. It's a never-ending circle. Break that cycle, hurt because you are moving, and give it a month. And after that month, I guarantee you you hurt less, and then you're just gonna want to continue up that ladder.

Nick Houpt: 1:01:51

Oh man. Balanced or unbalanced, using golf as mental therapy and a business.

Casey McNeill: 1:01:57

It literally has built 50 plus percent of my business. Really? And I don't mean golf in the sense of like the sport. It's okay, you know this is better than anybody. Nick has done a ton of marketing in his day. If you get face to face with the decision maker for five minutes, would you say that that's a win?

Nick Houpt: 1:02:17

Yeah.

Casey McNeill: 1:02:18

What about four hours?

Nick Houpt: 1:02:20

That's a major win.

Casey McNeill: 1:02:21

What about four hours out of the office, potentially having a couple drinks and a good time?

Nick Houpt: 1:02:26

Well, that's what I've always tried to do with marketing is create an experience. And then that way you get the presence from that person and it's memorable because you're creating that experience and that personal touch.

Casey McNeill: 1:02:39

Yep. I mean, showing someone who you are for a four-hour period. I might talk about work for five minutes, but I think they leave realizing, all right, this is a really genuine dude. He looks like he cares, he looks like he does the right thing. I'm more than happy to work with him.

Nick Houpt: 1:02:53

People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. Exactly. Yep. Balanced or unbalanced, measuring success by stability instead of growth.

Casey McNeill: 1:03:03

Ooh. I would say that's very balanced. Okay. Um growth is growth is a huge problem. It's a great problem, but it's a huge problem. Everything changes. Everything that you thought you were gonna do forever changes. Specifically business speaking.

Nick Houpt: 1:03:23

Yeah.

Casey McNeill: 1:03:24

You start with one software, well, they can't keep up with you anymore. You move to the next software. You start with one building, that building can't keep up with anymore, you move to the next building. So stability is so important when it comes to whatever you can stabilize.

Nick Houpt: 1:03:38

Yeah. Balanced or unbalanced, feeling responsible for other people's livelihood.

Casey McNeill: 1:03:45

100% balanced. I think if you're a business owner and you don't think about your employees' livelihood, I don't think you should own a business.

Nick Houpt: 1:03:52

Yeah. Letting faith guide financial decisions.

Casey McNeill: 1:03:56

100% balanced. I don't think there's anything more important. And I definitely need to do a better job at it. I struggle. I struggle thinking that money is mine. You know, that's money is is is God's given to you. He's letting you borrow that money. It's a currency. It's a currency. Yeah. And it's his currency. And I I think going back to growing up with little and and and never having money to spend, you know, we might go out to eat once a week growing up, and that was a big financial, and that was chilies or Arby's. Um, and that was a big financial thing for my parents that you know we couldn't. And so, yeah.

Nick Houpt: 1:04:47

Balanced or unbalanced, letting go of control as the business grows.

Casey McNeill: 1:04:52

I'll never let go. I think you need to learn to delegate if you're ever gonna grow and you're ever gonna be successful. And I have delig delegated a ton and I need to delegate a lot more.

Nick Houpt: 1:05:05

Balanced or unbalanced, ignoring minor aches until they become major problems.

Casey McNeill: 1:05:12

Is this physical pain in a body? Physical pain in a body. I would say it's unbalanced, but I I do want to say, you know, we get patients that are like, my knee pops when I move it. Well, most of ours do. That's nothing to worry about. What functionally is being taken away from your life? I can't sleep anymore, I can't concentrate anymore, my neck pain gives me headaches, it's affecting my work. Those are things where you need to get on top of these things. If your knee pops when you get out of bed in the morning, that means you're a person. Everybody's does. So I'm a lot of a person. Exactly. Don't just go run into the ER because you know, like one thing hurts once. Let it be a you know, a repetitive technique.

Nick Houpt: 1:05:54

My little girl always goes, Why are you so cracky?

Casey McNeill: 1:05:57

Like the Dave Chappelle.

Nick Houpt: 1:05:59

Yeah. It's funny, Bob Wilfong, who was just here, was on he worked on the Dave Schaff. Oh my goodness, that's awesome. Balanced or unbalanced, believing pain tolerance is strength.

Casey McNeill: 1:06:10

I would say unbalanced. I think you need to listen to yourself. You need to listen to your body. You need to listen to your brain. And that's the best advice I give patients. And some people, I will say, most of the people that tell you how strong their pain tolerance is have really low pain tolerances. So that's one thing that I have learned in 15 plus years of doing physical therapy. Whoever brags about their pain tolerance typically has really low levels of pain tolerance. Interesting. And whoever doesn't say a word about it has much higher.

Nick Houpt: 1:06:40

That's like my wife, Olivia, is like her pain tolerance.

Casey McNeill: 1:06:44

She has one of the most more severe injuries that we've seen. And she just a trooper and fights.

Nick Houpt: 1:06:50

She runs it. Strong, strong. Wow. Balanced or unbalanced, coming on the Life Well Balanced podcast.

Casey McNeill: 1:07:00

Couldn't be more balanced. I love this. This was so much fun. First podcast I've ever done. So you're doing this.

Nick Houpt: 1:07:06

I was the first to buy the book.

Casey McNeill: 1:07:08

You look like you've done this before. Oh man, it was fun. I really enjoyed it. This is great. I like to talk.

Nick Houpt: 1:07:14

Thank you so much for coming out here. It has been an absolute pleasure, and it is always wonderful spending some time with you, brother.

Casey McNeill: 1:07:21

90 years more to come.

Nick Houpt: 1:07:22

Yeah, baby. The Lifewell Balance podcast is proudly supported by Cole PR software consultants. Cole PR helps small businesses, nonprofits, and government organizations bring their big ideas to life through custom software, AI-powered solutions, and seamless system integrations. Whether it's building smarter workflows, creating secure digital platforms, or scaling your technology with confidence, Cole PR combines global talent with practical delivery to make innovation accessible and affordable. Visit ColePrsc.com to learn more about future proof solutions built for today.