From Mount Everest to Building One of the UK’s Largest Physio Groups | Tim Allardyce #47

In this episode of The Business of a Clinic, Jared speaks with Tim Allardyce, UK-based physiotherapist, osteopath, founder of Surrey Physio Group, and clinical director of Rehab My Patient.

Tim’s story moves from private practice and clinic ownership to software, AI, property, NHS work, and most recently, summiting Mount Everest. He shares how a chance meeting with a Sherpa in Scotland planted the idea of Everest, why it took years of preparation, and what climbing at altitude teaches about discipline, resilience, and preparation.

The conversation then moves into the business of MSK. Tim explains how he started his first clinic after failing to find the right job, why his entrepreneurial mindset began long before healthcare, and what it really feels like to build, buy, grow, and survive clinics over time.

Jared and Tim discuss the hard parts of clinic ownership: landlords, leases, staff betrayal, sleepless nights, buying property, building senior teams, and learning how to move from doing everything yourself to building infrastructure that can scale.

They also go deep on technology and AI in physiotherapy. Tim explains how Rehab My Patient evolved into an AI-powered exercise prescription platform, where AI is genuinely useful today, where the hype gets ahead of reality, and why private practice physiotherapy is still fundamentally safe because patients still want human care, human touch, and human judgement.

In this episode

• How Tim went from physiotherapist to clinic owner
• The story behind summiting Mount Everest
• Why Everest takes years of preparation
• Starting a clinic after failed job applications
• The mindset behind becoming the boss
• The realities of buying and growing clinics
• Landlords, leases, property, and clinic ownership risk
• Why Tim started buying clinic premises
• Moving from chaos to stability as a clinic owner
• Why “it’s always something” in healthcare business
• Building a senior team that reduces founder stress
• Hiring the right managers and trusting the right people
• The rise of private equity in physiotherapy
• Building Rehab My Patient
• AI-powered exercise prescription
• Where AI is useful in physiotherapy today
• Why AI still needs human checking
• The risks of AI receptionists and broken booking flows
• Why private practice physio is not being replaced by AI
• What Tim would do differently if he started again

Key idea

Clinic growth is not just about more sites, more patients, or more technology. It is about resilience, infrastructure, people, property, systems, and knowing where human care still matters most.

About the show

The Business of a Clinic explores how private healthcare clinics can grow by improving patient relationships, patient engagement, clinic operations, retention, follow-up, commercial systems, and the overall patient experience. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

A lot of people do dream of climbing Everest. I never dreamed of it. And getting above six thousand meters is hard. It's very, very hard. People don't realize how hard it is. It's very hard on your body. It's very hard on your lungs. It's very hard on your brain. I applied for for a couple of jobs and didn't get them. And I thought, do you know what? If if I apply for one more job and not get it, I'm gonna set up my own clinic. And so I did. You know, we started building our own software, and we built several software, lots of software, and a lot of things failed, but some things worked. Uh and that's how I got onto developing Rehab My Patient, the exercise prescription software. You've got to have the right mindset. I've only ever been technically employed, properly employed by one job, and that was a glass collector in a pub. And I remember thinking, my boss is doing a bad job. I could run this pub better than my boss. Okay, and that's the start of mindset that I think you've got to start thinking about. And if you have that feeling like I could do a better job than my boss, then you go and be the boss. And that was devastating because that's the first clinic I'd I'd properly bought. That was Subby Physio Partnership. That kept me awake at night. That really did because we had no clinic location, nowhere to go, and I realised a couple of my staff had stabbed me in the back. So AI has a limitation right now, and it will always have a limitation in that it's not human and it doesn't have human interaction. People will want to see a human and be treated by a human. In our industry, they will. We're safe for the future.

SPEAKER_02 1:56

More recently, uh summiting Mount Everest. So I think Tim, we'd love to get a quick introduction, but we'd also love to start on the Mount Everest side, uh, because that's probably not something that any other uh episode will start with. So maybe give us the quick intro and then tell us where the Everest motivation came from.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Hi guys, my name is Tim Allardyce. I'm a UK-based physiotherapist and osteopath. I run the Surrey Physio Group and Rehab My Patient clinical software, where I'm clinical director at both. Um and uh we do a lot of tech, we do a lot of physio, um, and we provide uh physiotherapy across London, Southeast England. Um, and uh and yes, I have recently just got back from summiting the amazing Mount Everest.

SPEAKER_02 2:42

So so um having never done that myself, uh although maybe now feeling slightly inspired to, what what is uh like you just wake up one morning and you say today is the day we're gonna we're gonna start training for Mount Everest. A long long-standing dream. What was the what was motivation to get into that?

SPEAKER_00 3:01

I never a lot of people do dream of climbing Everest. I never dreamed of it. What happened was a few years ago um we went on a road trip. My wife and family, we hired a motorhome and we drove around the west coast of Scotland. Um, and um it was an amazing trip. Uh, and we met in on an island in Scotland off in the Hebrides. We met a Sherpa who summited Mount Everest six times, a guy called Fandom Sherpa, and he was running an exhibition in a church with prayer flags and Nepalese stuff he was selling to raise money for his family back at home. Um, he was a really interesting guy, and we asked him, Would you like to come and summit Ben Nevis with us? Because we were planning to summit Ben Nevis with our kids. So we were doing Ben Nevis and other mountains, we'd done a few mountains with the kids, uh, and he said, Yeah, I'll come along with you. So he we took a ferry with him over to the mainland, we summited Ben Nevis. My little girl was just five years old at the time, and she made it all the way up on her own. She's an amazing climber. Uh, and that started me thinking, and he said to me, You know what? You could you could do Everest, you could you should go over there. And it got me thinking, he planted the seed, and then I think that sparked off Everest popping up on my social media. So the next thing is, you know, as soon as something listens out of the phone listens to you, but next thing I was getting feeds on Everest, and then I thought, you know what? I can do this. Let's let's start that journey. And sort of journey involves climbing smaller mountains first, and then going on to the bigger ones.

SPEAKER_02 4:38

What is the um it's completely unrelated to running a healthcare practice, by the way, but uh personal curiosity, for someone who uh it sounds like you were already outdoorsy climbing, you're already doing you know sort of mountaineering. How much if if someone's going from standing start, they want to go climb Everest? 12-month lead-in, six-month lead-in, eighteen-month lead, like what's the zero to hero scale? Five years.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Five to five years from zero to hero. Five years. So you need a lot of time. You know, you this stuff is complex. Climbing, it's it's complex mountaineering. You need to learn a lot about it, you need to get your your your your boots on, and you need to get up mountains. You start with thousand-meter mountains, you progress to two thousand meter mountains, you progress to four thousand meter mountains, and then you hit the six thousanders, and then you go from eight thousand, and that's the route we all take. You know, um, it it's very hard to just jump in because you know you've got to learn about ropes and equipment and gear, and and you've got to be trained and fit and mountain ready. Um, you know, it it's just specifically my training for Everest took 18 months. Uh, that was when I started thinking I hadn't said I 100% I'm going for Everest, but I I I started the process 18 months of training, hard training. Um, and that involved, you know, I did 460 days of running every day, covering over 2,200 kilometers, cycled everywhere, altitude trained. You know, I worked with professionals in altitude training. I went to the altitude centre, I slept in an altitude chamber in my spare bedroom for five months. I started doing a cloud uh cold training, so I'd do ice barves every day. I did 165 days of ice barving every day through the winter. Um, and if I was on holiday, I'd go in the sea. Sometimes it was absolutely freezing cold, hit five minutes every day. I'd do grip training, I'd do breathing training, obviously an enormous amount of cardio training, uh, and climbing mountains. And I was pretty much ready. Uh I was very, very fit. Um, my VO2 max was very, very good, or my predicted VO2 max. I I did it for a chart, I didn't do it the full-on mask. Um, and uh I was I was in good shape. Um and then you start climbing mountains, you know, you you climb small mountains first and then you climb bigger mountains. So, you know, when you start getting to climb Everest, you need to have been in the six to seven thousand meter territory. You know, you gotta get high. And getting above six thousand meters is hard. It's very, very hard. People don't realize how hard it is, it is very hard. It's very hard on your body, it's very hard on your on your on your lungs, it's very hard on your brain, it's very, very tough. Uh so anything over six thousand meters is a serious mountain.

SPEAKER_02 7:33

You didn't do that with your five-year-old, did you?

SPEAKER_00 7:35

No, so my five-year-old, she's now eight, has summited, I think, nine mountains, and she's so fast, she's faster than all of us. She's so fast, it's unbelievable. When she was five, she summited Ben Nevis, but I carried her down on my back. So I had a backpack and one of those baby backpack she put the kids in. She was quite a small five-year-old, I had a backpack, stuck on the backpack, she summited it all on her own. I took her down. But my little boy was seven at the time, he summited it on his own and got back down on his own. Uh so we've done a lot of hiking with the kids. You know, we walked all over all around the south coast of England um just after COVID. You know, we've done a lot of walking with the kids, our kids are super fit, and we love being outdoors, we love being away from screens.

SPEAKER_02 8:19

Got it. So that's maybe there's the transition moment. So we love being outdoors, we love being away from the screens, and and and yet you're also uh in addition to running uh a large MSK group, you're also uh building software, uh, which puts you right up against the screens quite a lot. So um now we understand the the uh the focus, the the requirements, the five-year lead-in, which I think already is gonna be a disqualifier for a lot of people, but the five-year lead-in to scaling Everest, and now uh in the day job when you're not uh in specialized sleep chambers and you're not in ice baths, you're running uh a multi-site uh MSK group and you're also um building and and developing software for MSK leadership. So just sort of paint us a picture, if you don't mind, uh, which one came first, which one came next? Like what are the sort of different hats that you wear in your day job?

SPEAKER_00 9:11

Uh so the first came setting up clinics. Um so I I I guess you know what? I only fell into setting up physio clinics because I I applied for a couple of jobs and didn't get them. And I thought, do you know what? If I apply for one more job and not get it, I'm gonna set up my own clinic. Uh yeah, I applied for two jobs, and one job I did get. I got I applied for a couple of jobs, didn't get them, applied for another job, so uh I was really keen to be a lecturer, I applied for a job doing some lecturing and clinic tutoring, I didn't get that. I applied for another job in a clinic in Crawley, I didn't get that. And I said I'm gonna do one more job, and I applied for it. I lasted one week and I was basically told not to come back because apparently I'd done something which had somehow upset the receptionist. I have no idea what, but she moved my patients. Uh I had four patients booked in, she moved them to another practitioner, and the clinic owner didn't know what was going on and said, I'm not sure this is gonna work out to him. I have no idea, I still to this day have no idea what I did. Um, anyway, so I I I that job disappeared, and that was a real shame. And um and and I said, right, sod this, I'm gonna set up my own clinic, and so I did. Um, and uh and then the rest is like, you know, I could have been in education my whole life. If I'd got that job at a university that I applied for, which I was desperately hoping to get, I'd have been in education my whole life. Probably, possibly, I don't know. Uh, and so it's funny how when one door closes, potentially it provides an opportunity. So sometimes you think that things happen, maybe they happen for a reason, or maybe you can turn a negative into a positive. So I couldn't get a job, I was fed up with the system, I thought I'm gonna set up my own clinic. It was easier back in those days to set up, there was less competition. Um and I, you know, I set up set up in 2005, you know, and and that that was the these days, but you know, we were like the first physio setup clinic in Croydon, you know, the first decent-sized clinic in Croydon. You know, so we had a great opportunity, um, and things were easier. They, you know, the the the tax system, the the the support for businesses, the the growth, it was easier, um, I think. Um, and uh, and then you know, and then we got involved in tech, you know, we started building our own software, and we built several software, lots of software. I mean, I built apps, I built websites, uh, you know, I own hundreds of domain names, and um, and I built websites, a lot of them failed. Um, I've wrote ebooks, they all failed. You know, we were trying everything techie, um, and a lot of things failed, but some things worked. Uh, and that's how I got onto developing Rehab My Patient, the exercise prescription software. I'm now clinical director of Rehab My Patient, um, and um so it's an exercise prescription software that Survey Physio created, um, and um and and we now use nationally you know across a lot of clinics. Um we used a large number of NHS trusts ranging from Southern to Devon to Gloucester to Somerset to you know up to as far north as Lanarkshire and Forth and up in Scotland. So um yeah, you know, we've got a wide footprint on Rehab My Patient, and you know it's absolutely amazing, brilliant, now AI-powered exercise software. So we have an AI in there, so you can literally type a prompt and it'll create an exercise program. And it's really cool.

SPEAKER_02 12:44

Okay, so there's a lot, there's a lot to to work with there. So I guess uh I I am uh I'm sort of curious because it's actually not the first time I've heard the believe it, well, actually, this is probably very believable, not the first time I've heard the story of um as a as a what I call like a clinician entrepreneur, right? The the person who tries to go work in someone else's clinic and says, I the shoe does not fit, and so I'm gonna go do this myself. We we hear this story a lot from from clinic entrepreneurs or clinician entrepreneurs who um just sort of get to that point where they say, you know what, I I I just can't, I I can do it better, I can do it faster, I can do it differently, and I'm not finding the fit elsewhere. So I guess take us into the the emotional backdrop, like when when you are starting that that first site, like day one, uh building for the city.

SPEAKER_00 13:35

Right, is you've got you've got to have the right mindset. So look at the thing is this I've only ever been employed, technically employed, properly employed by one job, and that was a glass collector in a pub. Okay, so my first job, I was I think 17 or 18 years old in in a pub in Bromley, and I was a glass collector, and I can't remember, I think I earned three pounds an hour or something like that. And and anyway, and I remember thinking my boss is doing a bad job, I could run this pub better than my boss, okay? And that's the start of mindset that I think you've got to start thinking about. And if you have that feeling like I could do a better job than my boss, I don't think my boss is great, I don't think he's doing a good job, then you go and be the boss. Right? Go and go and set up your own.

SPEAKER_02 14:24

So this is a DNA thing. Go and do it better. This is this is this is a DNA thing for you. You're 17 or 18 year olds, you're working your first job, yeah, unrelated to healthcare, you've got this sense of something doesn't feel right, we're not gonna be able to do that. I've got the solution.

SPEAKER_00 14:39

I can do better than what my boss is doing.

SPEAKER_02 14:41

We're we're I I can raise the bar on the right.

SPEAKER_00 14:47

You can do a better job, and and you don't like how the how the in this case the pub was being run, yeah, then then then either either sit sit down, shut up, and accept it, or go and do it. If you think you can do a better job, go and do it. And that's what I did. So when I I I left, and then I I was starting in this mindset of actually, you know, maybe I should be running my business.

SPEAKER_02 15:10

So that that okay, got it. I understand the genesis, I understand the the mindset which predated your work in healthcare. There was this sense of, okay, I'm I'm I can do it better, I can do it differently. Now you're opening doors, you're starting that journey, it's the very beginning. What keeps you up at night? What what's the emotional role of cursor? I mean, a lot of I think a lot of people who have either started or who have been part of senior teams that have gone on to build big healthcare provider organizations, either in MSK specialty care or at private hospital level, whatever it might be, they will have those things that they can't sleep because of, the things that keep them up at night. What are your I mean, they maybe they've changed now, but what were your I can't sleep because of this in day one and maybe now, day one thousand, day ten thousand? What what has the journey been like of I can't sleep because of this?

SPEAKER_00 15:57

Well, right now I never have a problem sleeping. Um except when I'm at 7,900 metres on Everest. That's a dumb that's a different story. Just show you my little someone at school gave me this uh beautiful gift um for doing a prize giving a couple of weeks ago. I've just put it up on my wall, it's so beautiful. It's a signed a signature from Sir Edmund Hillary, the first person to summit Mount Everest. Um look, so um nothing keeps me awake at night. I sleep like a baby, uh, and I have no stress and no worries about anything that's happening, but it wasn't always that case. I remember one time when um one of took over my clinic from his premises, it was a really bad situation. He basically set up his own clinic. We we issued notice on our lease because we felt it was being far too much, expected he would negotiate, um, and he didn't. He went behind my back, spoke to some of our physios, agreed to take up and set up a new clinic with with a couple of my physios that we were employing, um, and um and then wouldn't negotiate. And when we I thought something's wrong, something's really wrong here. Um I start a couple of my staff were acting a bit odd, and um and they went behind my back and set up a new clinic from the same site with the same phone number, same address, and they had a patient list. Uh and and that was devastating because that was the first clinic I'd I'd properly bought. That was Survey Physio Partnership, and and the and that kept me awake at night. That really did, because we had no clinic location, nowhere to go, and I realized a couple of my staff had stabbed me, part stabbed me in the back. Um and that that was really, really upsetting, and and I and I remember I couldn't sleep properly for three to six months, and I had a really horrible pain in my stomach, a stress pain, like a deep stomach ache that I just didn't want to eat properly. I don't know what it was. I don't think it was depression, but I think it was just stress. Um and and that's that's the last time I remember not being able to sleep properly. Uh, and that's the growth you go through as a clinic owners, there's always issues with landlords. So that issue of a landlord is a horrible situation. Um, I tried to sell the clinic back to him for 18,000 pounds that I bought for 85,000 pounds, and he said no. And I thought, why wouldn't you do that? Uh I said, I'll get out, you you can have the clinic, but but could please give us some money for it, and he said no. You know, he he was a very um entrepreneurial guy himself, and um, but again that provided an opportunity because at that point I said I don't want to be a la uh a a leaseholder again, I don't want to keep leasing properties, so I'll start buying my own properties. Uh so we leased the next one, made it successful, and then I started buying properties. You know, and now we own I think six of our own clinic premises. Um five or six. Hard to I think six, maybe six. So we bought the buildings, and so now I have a property portfolio. So no one can take those properties off us. It's completely secure because I got stitched up by a landlord and I said, never again, I'm never going through that feeling again. I'm gonna buy our own properties.

SPEAKER_02 19:12

It's interesting. I I hear you tell that story, and and so I'm thinking back to when I was opening clinic. We opened uh first clinic in in London, middle of COVID, uh, which was a terrible time to open a clinic. Yeah, and the clinic that we uh the the premises that we took over used to be a fish store, like a pet store. And so, you know, fish store has a lot of humidity, obviously, the tanks and everything running, and so everything was rot. The shopfront was rot, the timber was rot, it was all just rot, rot, rot, rot, rot. Which we only obviously discovered in full when we started ripping things open and pulling things off. And it's I you you you mentioned landlord, and I I can I I remember with many, many short four-letter words the number of conversations that I had with our landlord at the time about the fact that they had uh misrepresented the quality of the demise, and there was all this you know sort of tenant improvement stuff that we needed to do that they did. I think buying the property outright was definitely that would have been a much better decision. So I think that's very cool that you guys have almost McDonald's uh style your you know, you some of your facilities where you actually own you own and operate. And so obviously uh that that's gonna be much stronger. I imagine the economics are obviously much better as well because you don't have this rent component and you're able to appreciate the asset value and all that stuff goes in in the same way, which is really nice.

SPEAKER_00 20:30

Yeah, it's it there's pros and cons of owning your own commercial properties. Um the pros are you can do what you want, and when you redo the property, it's yours, uh, and you get the increase in asset value, you don't have to pay rent. Um or uh but the downside is you know you need a new parking. We had to put new parking in one of my premises. You pay for it. Yeah, you need a new roof, you have to pay for it. And so, you know, so you have capital expenses, you have a large capital expenses that suddenly pop up out of nowhere. That's the downside. There are pros and cons like anything, but it's worked out well for us because it's stability, and that's the key thing. Landlords can't chap you out because they decide to convert it to flats. Um so yeah, it was a bad situation. I didn't say it well, but it turned into something really good.

SPEAKER_02 21:21

Uh you use the word stability, and it's interesting. I I think um one of the transitions I think a lot of clinic owners go through is house on fire to stability, right? And and and it's that early growing pains. I think it's probably different for every practice. Uh sometimes it sets in around a million pounds turnover, maybe it sets in around 20 staff members, but you start to have tomorrow feels a little bit more like yesterday, and the day after feels a little bit more like yesterday, and you start to get into like business as usual, which I think is probably the foundation for growth. Do you remember that that like change for you in terms of so you had this challenging experience up front? Then started building, you know, again almost from zero, maybe even from negative five, depending on how you look at it, because you have to learn. When did things start feeling like I'm gonna wake up tomorrow and I know what to expect? I'm not gonna get you know punched in the side of the head when I'm not looking. It's starting to feel a little bit more consistent. When did that transition start to happen for you?

SPEAKER_00 22:22

Um it's funny you say getting punched in the side of the head because it reminds me uh of um of something that Captain Paul Watson said at Runs Sea Shepherds, the brilliant organization Saving Wales, which which I which I I loved, I hadn't followed it for a couple years, but I used to love it. And he always said, and he wrote a brilliant article saying it's always something. And that's when it's a clinic owner, it's always something. And when you're small, it's the internet stops working, your computer breaks down, your printer stops working, you know, these sort of issues, and then when you're big, it's always something you're getting sued by someone, you're getting threatened to be sued, you're getting complaints, and you know, I mean, we get threatened to be sued uh regularly, you know, it happens, you know. Right now, you know, we are being threatened to be sued again, you know. And and and actually what happens is you know, when you're small, these things ruin your life, but when you're big, you just say you you take it with you, you're much more experienced in how to deal with it and how to process it. Um, and so it's it's always something, there's always something, right? But I'd say when you start getting to a point where you have managers to run things, is when you can start thinking, okay, the stress is really off. Because most clinics are run by the clinical lead. Yeah, the clinic owner works as a clinician and manages the practice, kind of the overall kind of running of practice, like you but once you start getting managers in, whether that be a finance director, CEO, you know, we have a CEO, we have a finance manager, you know, we have a recruitment manager, and so all of these people can take off stress. Whereas I used to do all the recruitment, I've now got recruitment manager. Whereas I used to do all the finance, I've now got a finance manager. Yeah? We've got a CEO, we've got group managers, we've got area managers, so we have a setup, and that's when you can start saying, okay, this is we can take the stress off.

SPEAKER_02 24:18

It's interesting. Uh the um we ran an event uh a couple weeks ago called Is Your Clinic Exit Ready? It was for uh buyers, operators, builders on the acquisition side, on the on the selling side. And one of the um one of the big takeaways from uh a group that we work with actually in the medical aesthetics space was uh you, if you can, obviously there's always the if from a cash flow perspective, if you can, building out that senior team, that management team slightly ahead of when it needs to come into place will pay dividends. Uh he was talking about an experience of exactly what you were saying, you know, two people at the top, and there was there were two of them as a partnership. They'd acquired, I think, four or five sites, they were growing very quickly, and they said they were just getting absolutely hammered on all of the administration around the business. Uh, exactly as you're saying, the recruiting pieces, the data, the compliance piece, the finance piece. You just can't think about growth when you start taking this like cement truck, you know, sort of coming off the back and landing on top of you. So that's interesting to hear so it's like a similar experience. Can I am sort of curious? So when you start to build out that management team, and I think that's a lot of people sort of get burned on that making the wrong hires first, um, or making one or two of the wrong hires. Did you were you were you sort of do you have your own scars on your back from the wrong people uh and then figuring out what the right people look like? Did you get it right first time around? Like what what makes the right management team for you when you think about scaling your time?

SPEAKER_00 25:50

Oh, I'm sure there's some process in it. I mean, we just got very, very lucky. Uh you know, um it it just turned out that you know my now group manager that's been with me for probably just under 20 years, you know, she was working at a uh a clinic in uh Katerum and I had this amazing manager. She said I I I'm uh at a local clinic and you know 10 miles away, and and I sat down and um and we hired her straight away, and uh and she's played stayed with me almost 20 years, and we're great family friends, you know, and she's amazing. She's still with us, even so she's retired, she still does three days a week of us, and she's still my great manager, woman, wonderful woman. Um, and um I got lucky, yeah. And you know, you you just build a team, hopefully, that that works for you. And so, you know, yeah, we got a great manager, and then we took on a business development manager, amazing guy, great guy, and and and then he was the the catalyst to really growth because he took on my ideas and I said, Look, I got this concept, can you make this happen? So he was our business development manager, he took the business and developed it, and then became our CEO. Um, and and and he stayed with me and he's been incredible, just uh just become probably one of my best friends. Um, and uh so I think you can get very, very lucky. Uh in and if you get great people you you really can fly. And I've equally I've seen businesses get absolutely ruined by home the wrong people. Um and um and it it can completely ruin, destroy your business. So it's really, really tricky. Um you just hope those people move on.

SPEAKER_02 27:22

It's it's it's interesting. You the way you talk about um the way you talk about some of your senior team. In both cases, you said we've become friends, like we've become great friends, we've become great family friends, they've been with me for many, many years. Yeah, it's interesting. I remember my own experience running clinic. You I I differ story for a different time, but I I spent some time working in like commercial food retail early in my early in my life, and I remember um working alongside the kitchen, right? And the kitchen in a commercial kitchen is a very high-pressure um setting, is very hands-on, uh, and and there's a real thing about like collective flow. Um, it's a r you really feel it in a kitchen. When the kitchen is moving as one, you can have 20 people in there, 30 people in there, but it works like a factory line, and and it's it's almost like 30 people, like a sports team, like 30 people moving in in one direction. I remember in clinic, I unfortunately did not have the experience you just had. We made a few very wrong hires. We got really burned by that, and then we made some great hires afterwards. So we got very lucky, but it took one or two rounds to get there. And I think when we got there, I think I would probably have said, actually, I do say many things that you just said about your senior team, which was these are people that I like, I'd give them the keys to my house, I'd give them the keys to my car, I'd let them go pick up my kids from school. It there's a tr there's a level of trust that you have when you're working physically with people in a healthcare setting, much like a kids, that you just don't have when you have like purely office-based job. You're not, I just think it's very different. And it's interesting to hear you say that you have that sort of depth of relationship with some of your senior team because you you've got to wake up and trust that they're gonna keep the lights on. And like it sounds like that's exactly the team that you've brought together.

SPEAKER_00 29:02

Yeah, absolutely. You know, trust is so important if you just get the right team, you know, it makes such a difference, but it is hard. I mean, we just honestly we did just get lucky. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:12

Yeah, interesting. Where does them so you've got the team now, you've got you've got the base, the infrastructure, the the the growth. You said it was earlier, easier in the earlier days, the market is more competitive now, but obviously you're you're a really nice size. You're saying earlier, you know, I think it's 150 plus or minus staff across different parts of business. It's like a big I mean it's a big business. Where if we speak together, we get on a call in five years' time. What where's the business?

SPEAKER_00 29:44

Uh I don't know. Hopefully bigger, hopefully we'll grow more tech. Um, and I I I think that what's changing in physiotherapy is the introduction of private equity. Uh, so we are probably one of the last bigger chains now that haven't sold to private equity. I think almost all of them have now had private equity investment. Uh, and so what we're seeing is private equity moving into the physiotherapy space. So it's done dentistry, it's done vets, it's done childcare, and they're now looking at physiotherapy. You know, so what's happening is that the private equity coming in buying the bigger groups, um, and um, and that's what we've seen with you know Cora and Ascenti and Vita and and and Cora been Connect and HealthShare, you know, and so you know we we we've seen this this this this emergence of private equity-owned groups, um, and that's interesting. Um I I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, but I think that it's uh it's it's the way that the the the what water's flowing at the moment. Um so I don't know where we'll be in five years' time, but what one thing we do have is we have a great infrastructure. So owning our own properties, having our own software, having a great leadership team means that we've got a lot of positive things going for us. Um and you know, I think that hopefully we'll grow more, we'll do more NHS work. Uh ultimately, I'd love to have clinics that don't charge patients or have some sort of charitable status would be amazing. Um, but but that's not a reality financially at this stage. Uh that requires you know you to have significant capital to be able to run clinics like that at a loss, basically. Um, so yeah, I mean I think we just keep going, and that's um we'll just keep doing our tech. Uh, RehabMyPatient is still growing really, really strongly. So a lot of clinics are using Rehab MyPatient for exercise prescription software. You know, back in the day people used to draw stick men, now they're using digital, and now they're using AI, and we cover all of those things. So this is uh AI, we're seeing AI as as a big growth area in terms of a big risk area as well for NHS 3CF, but a big opportunity as well. Um, so yeah, that's where we go in five years.

SPEAKER_02 32:06

Can we uh I'm gonna be provocative for a second? So everyone's favorite two letters right now are AI. Uh we have our own views of exactly as you said, opportunity and risk. Um, and and I think that right now our view of the world is that uh what's that great saying? When when the water goes out, you'll see who's swimming without their pants on.

SPEAKER_00 32:31

And I think one buffet there said that.

SPEAKER_02 32:34

Yeah, exactly. And and and and our our our sense is that there's a lot of hype training right now. Um, and and we are we are seeing in many ways, many ways, because we obviously we build a lot uh of tech in-house, and and AI is a big part of that, but we are very aware of its limitations. We are very aware of the fact that uh there need to be guardrails, there need to be backstops, there need to be human interventions. We we do not yet believe, and we could very well be wrong, but our view of the world is that um the human is still very much an important part of the loop. Uh you can have AI firing, uh, but as soon as you put that in front of a patient uh in terms of patient experience, patient engagement, is the tech ready yet to offload that entirely? And our view, and again, we could be wrong, is that it's not yet there. I am curious, in terms of, I guess, wearing the two hats that you have, the healthcare provider hat and the the technologist hat, how do you see uh where is AI in the readiness, in the readiness spectrum of ready to be self-driving, right? Like the the Tesla example, like is it the roadster or is it self-driving car? Where where is it right now in your view?

SPEAKER_00 33:48

We're development right now. And actually, you know what? AI is not completely ready. It's not uh it does make mistakes, it doesn't solve every problem, it can't run your clinic for you, it can't even, I think, do a good job as a as a pick-your phone up admin receptionist, you know. It's it is very it is limited, but it does have its place, you know. So so so yes, we we it's it's developmental, it's develop it's developing its beta. It's uh we're seeing uh um we're seeing how to create software now that uses AI that doesn't replace a clinician but supports a clinician. So with Rehab MyPatient, you can put a prompt in that says create me an exercise program for an 80-year-old patient with knee pain, and it will create you an exercise program, put all the sets and reps in and name your plan. Okay, but you still need to check it because it will put a stupid exercise in, and you're like, Why would you put that exercise in? I would never choose that exercise. Well, of course you wouldn't, because you're a human and this is a computer. So computers do do things differently from humans, um, and you know, uh and and we live in a in a in a system where the AI makes mistakes and doesn't do a great job in some cases, so you need a human to do it. Um, however, it will improve and it will have better use case as as it goes on and as it gets developed, um, and and we will use it more and more in everyday world and everyday clinic processes. For example, in our clinic, we use AI for our complaints processes, um, and it works brilliantly. Would I use it to pick up the phone and book a patient appointment? No, we just wouldn't do it, it couldn't handle that. Um, and you know, an impossible.

SPEAKER_02 35:33

The A receptionist one is an interesting thing. I mean, we have a lot of clinics that we uh we sort of have this view of the world that um there are gonna be some healthcare providers who want a solution that's done for them, and then there'll be some healthcare providers who want to do it themselves, and most of the people who want to do it themselves, perhaps with the exception of folks like yourself who have a technology background, most of the folks who want to do it themselves will eventually become people who want something to be done for them because they will come to realize that standing up an AI receptionist or using some off-the-shelf plug-it-in AI receptionist might seem like it's a great 300 pounds a month, but actually you're losing 50% of your new inquiries because they can't get their booking flow. Um so I I think what you're we share your belief that pointed at the right problem in the right scope, it moves mountains. But you really need to set that uh that that train track down. You really need to make sure that it is clear, the expectations, the guard was the proof points are there because it turns out patient operation is not easy. Uh it's not a not not a returning your shoes on an online purchase, you know, where you just send it back and get a new code. So I think that's interesting to hear that even with your knowledge and upfrontness in the technology into the technology you're building, you're so in some ways you're sort of a front runner and saying we're building our own tech, and you're also saying, but hold on a minute, let's be clear on where this thing actually can move the needle, and it sounds like the the jury is still out for you.

SPEAKER_00 36:57

I mean, the the key question to ask yourself is tell tell me the real clinical use cases of AI right now. I can only think of two, right, for physios and osteographs and cardios and source nostalgia. Number one, clinical dictation software that writes your notes. It's not perfect, but it's pretty good. Okay? And number two, exercise prescription. Five, rehab my patient. I'm not sure anyone else has done it, but rehab my patient does AI. So you can put a prompt in and it will create you an exercise plan. Right? Or you can put your own exercise in and click a button and it will put in the sets and reps. So it just saves you time. Right? I can't think of any other use cases for a clinician. Are there any other use cases for a physio uh using AI?

SPEAKER_02 37:44

I'm not a physio, I don't know if I'm the right person to comment or the other.

SPEAKER_00 37:46

I don't think so. So so so even so so we ha it's not replacing physio yet. And it's certainly not replacing private practice physio, and it never will. It may have an impact and support or replace NHS physio, um, which is less therapeutic, it's less hands-on. Um, but private physio is going to be absolutely fine. So um so AI has a limitation right now, um, and it will always have a limitation, in that it's not human, um, and it doesn't have human interaction, and um and people will want to see see a human and be treated by a human. Um some won't, but but in our industry they will. So we're we're safe, we're we're we're safe for the future. We'll be a private practice to be a slight net game of AI, i.e., it will help us support our businesses, but it won't replace our jobs in private practice.

SPEAKER_02 38:40

Tim, it almost feels like that's a good ending line, but I'm gonna ask you one more question, one more question before I before I wrap up. One of the things I'm always interested in is if you could go back and do it all again from zero, knowing what you know now. If you had to make one thing, it sounds like it might be that first landlord, but let's assume it's not that. Pick another thing, a different thing. If you had to pick one thing that you would do differently, what would be the one thing that you would change anywhere in the journey, last 15 years plus? What what is the one thing you would change?

SPEAKER_01 39:13

I'd have probably gone into finance. Uh I'd have probably gone into finance and being a financier and created financial software and I'd have done way better.

SPEAKER_00 39:23

Uh no, uh physio's been great, honestly, it's a feel-good job. Uh, it is a feel is a great job. Uh, I wouldn't change much. I think I probably would have I I would have capitalized and grown harder on opportunities in the NHS. We we held back too much. When an opportunity came in the NHS, we held back hard, probably pushed harder. That's one thing I would have changed um 15 years ago. We were always a bit cautious and a bit, you know. And when these opportunities appear, you know, you have um growth risk. Uh you know, as you grow, you have cash flow problems, you have hiring problems. So we were we all, you know, we we we went to go in time, and probably I could have gone stronger and pushed harder, but that's probably the only thing I'd probably change. But um, other than that, no, I've been pretty happy with how it's gone.

SPEAKER_02 40:08

Great. Um, Tim, thank you so much for everyone who's listening. I really appreciate your joining. Um, this is uh Tim, technologist, uh clinic leader, clinical director, and let's not forget also Everest Summitur, alongside his children, who are also uh I think gonna put shame if we ended up end up doing mountaineering together. Really appreciate your time. Um I'm gonna I'm gonna stop recording now. Thank you so much for joining us.

SPEAKER_00 40:33

Thanks a lot for having me on, appreciate it.