The Two Vines Problem: When to Leap Into Full-Time Ergonomics

Adam Jennings, PT and founder of Wildemont Ergonomics, gets real about the challenge every aspiring entrepreneur faces: When do you let go of the steady paycheck and grab onto your business full-time? In this candid conversation, Adam shares his consultative approach to sales, why he serves both office and industrial clients, and his strategy for scaling with limited time. We also discuss how Functional Capacity Evaluations can open new doors, the power of persistence in sales, and why your clinical degree might be your biggest asset in ergonomics.

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Transcript

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Well, hey there. Today on the show, my guest calls it the Two Vines problem. When do you let go of your steady paycheck and grab onto your business full time? Today he shares how he's doing the math and what's finally tipping the scale. Welcome to the Business of Ergonomics podcast. I'm your host, Darcy Jeremy. I'm a board certified professional agonist with over 15 years of experience delivering ergonomics programs to employers of all different types. In this podcast, I share what other healthcare professionals are already doing and being with ergonomics assessments and how to land those clients that you dream of. Without further ado, let's jump into this episode right now. Adam Jennings, PT and founder of Wild Mount Ergonomics gets real about the challenge every aspiring entrepreneur faces when do you let go of the steady paycheck and grab onto your business full time? In this candid conversation, adam shares his consultative approach to sales, why he serves both office and industrial clients, and his strategy for scaling with limited time. We also discuss how functional capacity evaluations can open new doors, the power of persistence in sales, and why your clinical degree might be your biggest asset in ergonomics.

Audio Only - All Participants: 1:32

Adam, I'm so glad that you're here on the Business of Ergonomics podcast. Welcome. Thanks, Darcy. Very nice to be here. This is going to be something that I think is gonna be so valuable to our listeners in the various stages of getting into ergonomics and scaling their business. So I'm especially pumped that you're here for that because of that value that's gonna be there. We're gonna start with. Your business really. in 2023, you launched Wild Mount Ergonomics. After years of working in health IT and organizational strategy, what pulled you back towards direct clinical and ergonomics work? Yeah. just before the pandemic, I had an opportunity to moonlight a bit in ergo, so I was a few years removed from clinical work at that point. I'm a physical therapist, and I was, fresh out of the PTC and working in healthcare it, and I had two very little ones. So the chance to get back to helping people again in a more direct way. And also, make a little bit more diaper money was very appealing. I hadn't anticipating finding so much to love about the field of industrial ergo in that opportunity, but, it really opened my eyes to the versatility that my clinical education brought. And the potential to reach more, chronically underserved segments of my immediate area, my immediate population, without having to go through the worries of health insurance reimbursement or maintaining like a brick and mortar space, a clinic space. So putting it more simply, ergonomics. Afforded a chance to provide, direct preventative interventions in a way that I really just couldn't as a pt. Yeah. You touched on so many interesting things, not only the diaper money, which is like I totally understand. Yeah. the reimbursements, what many clinicians are so shocked to hear is that you can get into ergonomics and have that without dealing with insurance. It's, much simpler. I don't know if it's. per se better. But, working directly with a business, you know, working in, B2B arrangements certainly, cuts out a lot of the complexity that you face in a typical clinical practice. Yeah, you're working with HR and you're working with that business's bottom line instead of sometimes that dwindling insurance reimbursement of trying to get it through, as quick as possible so you can get as much profit you're looking to actually make a valuable impact on that bottom line. Not to say that you're not gonna be benefiting the company when you're looking at the client, but really You're looking at that bottom line because your customer is the business, right? Yeah. And, so long as you're able to define rates that, make sense for the work that you're putting into it, mm-hmm. I think that it's a much better use of your time. Oh, that's a great point there. And I'm gonna dive more into that in this show as well. I wanted to talk a little bit more about your business because I think this can really influence a lot of listeners on the show You talk about prevention and I just love your tagline, move better, work safer, grow stronger. And when I look at your service offerings, you're doing something a lot of ergonomics consultants don't. You're serving both the office environment and the industrial setting. So can you talk to me more about. What led you to that decision? Oh, really easy decision. Just casting as wide a net as possible, honestly. the thing that I enjoy about ergonomics is that it's industry agnostic. anywhere that people do work and they do it consistently, opens the door to the possibility of overuse injury. that is, very commonly addressed in white collar work, right? Working at a desk. But, that's on any given factory line in warehousing and dentist offices. if I had a preference, it would be for larger scale and more complex challenges that you find in the, manufacturing world. But I'm very happy to weigh in on those desk assessments as well. And you're touching on the point that. There are a lot of complexities with industrial ergonomics. Not to say that you won't see that in accommodations, return to work in the office space, but specifically industrial ergonomics that really leads you to other types of services, whether it's job task analysis, lift assessments, What would you say to someone who is looking to move forward into that type of world? Good to be hesitant, I'd say. Mm-hmm. I would do a little bit of research before, attempting to sign a contract. Especially if you haven't worked in, an assembly or a production environment. I think that it would be wise to get a better sense for what you're jumping into. industrial quote unquote industrial. That's such a catchall term. Right. And in my experience, that covers, lab spaces. It covers, automotive manufacturing. It's textile, manufacturing. It's a huge array of, work venues where you might find yourself. And it can be really big and loud, and in some ways it's quite a lot riskier than office work. But all of that said, all of those caveats said, I think the fundamentals are pretty similar. At least on paper, you know, you're observing a person's work, you're asking questions, you're identifying mismatches between the person doing the job itself, and you are researching the available solutions to make more informed recommendations. the best tool in your toolkit in the office or in the industry space is your ability to listen. So if you're doing office work. that was the question, right? Like for people who are considering if you're considering broadening your services and you have an opportunity in front of you in agribusiness or in, heavy equipment manufacturing, really anything, just consider how you eat eat in it. an elephant. you don't have to start with something, hugely complex. you can start by, if you have a contract that does have some manufacturing space, maybe ask if they would be open to letting you do a few walkthroughs free of charge, just to get a sense for how they do things in that world. If that gives you a better sense for maybe there's an avenue for you to expand the scope of your contract. The other thing. I don't think ergonomics, really requires you to be an expert in a given industry, before you start helping someone in that industry. It's about learning how work gets done there and helping the people to do it safely and sustainably. so if you're already doing good work in the office, you have lots of transferable skills here. One thing I really like to say to folks who are new to ergonomics as well, and this is very much into where you're heading with that perspective, Adam, is that you're heading to a job with a new set of eyes, essentially, and that it may not actually be a bad. Option if you're going into an industry brand new, because you're gonna be pulling in these perspectives that perhaps that client would not even, have considered at that point as well. I really appreciate how your perspective is shifting from. This is something that could work for you. This is maybe how you can start to get your feet wet, before maybe diving all the way in. Because really when you're looking through the lens of a typical engagement for you, how does that change, who the buyer is, like would you be working with? Who do you have to sell ergonomics to, or functional capacity evaluations. Who's the buyer? I want to make sure it's very clear that, I'm not bringing decades of business development experience into this conversation. I'm still very much building this plane as I'm flying it. I launched wild just a couple of years ago. we're still figuring things out and finding things that work. We're very much in that growth stage, that said I am pursuing referral sources and partnerships, in 2026. That's really my focus for pipeline growth this year. I know that most people will tell you handing out business cards, walking into offices, that's gonna be the most impactful on a one-on-one basis, but. Honestly, there are only so many hours in the day for a smaller operation. So trying to, establish contact with people who have their own wide network, is the strategy that I'm employing this year to try to bring in those new clients. as far as what the ideal buyer looks like. in terms of job scope, because there are so many different industries in my region, in the Kansas City area, I can't be too picky. I'm happy to. Chat with anyone who has, even moderate buyer intent. So if they have a need for, better defining their job tasks, if they need someone to do their list assessments, if they're looking for someone to engage in, work hardening or conditioning programs. The nice thing that I'm bringing to the table is my, PT degree. so I can do it all. I'm happy to apply the ergonomics toolkits and I'm also happy, to jump in for any of those more reactive, interventions that they may require too. That's great. So you are coming at this from maybe a non-traditional angle, which is the buyer could be in your network. Right. And that building, that relationship to get into that, to help that client a very unique win. And I'm sure that's perked the ears up to, many of our listeners because cold calling and just showing up at people's doors. That can be a bit intimidating, can't it? Yeah. I've had very limited success with cold calling and I don't mean, to pretend to be the expert here in terms of pipeline generation, but, Darcy, I think your immediate region, your metropolitan area is pretty similar in size to mind in Kansas City. Have you, I mean, how did you get off the ground? Sorry to turn the microphone back at you, but I love it. How did you start getting things picked up? Wow. Let me tell you, the metropolitan area where I live right now is not like Kansas City, but when I started my business about 10 years ago this is the 10th anniversary actually, I focused on any industry that would bring me in, and I also, Was very intimidated by cold calling. I contacted companies that I would research very thoroughly and I offered them, a high impact, low cost training, which would build no and trust and get my foot into the door, so I would offer them something that they already needed. And I would do a lunch and learn. And while I'm there, I build no like and trust and that is how I built my business in a very non-traditional way. But it worked. And that has really informed you also love to talk about a good 90 day plan. My current 90 day plan that I'm working on is, really focusing on two specific industries. I've been doing a lot of research on, indoor agriculture and, that has been, really eye-opening in terms of crafting the language that I use when connecting with these decision makers and identifying specifically what I can do to make this a little bit more broadly applicable. drawing off of what you said, if you find an opportunity, you grab the coattails of an opportunity, just keep following it and learn as much as you can and see what opens up there, after a bit of research. Yeah, absolutely. I truly think that, persistence is key when you're first starting this out and it's very much a numbers game. So the first 20 companies that you contact may not be valuable, but. Number 21 may be someone that you can work with, right? focusing that in a 90 day plan gives you a timeline to get this started. So you're not pushing it off to a someday one day, but let's take some actions today and put some numbers to this, not to beat a dead horse on this topic But, on the subject of those first 20 companies, I had a gentleman reach out to me that I first contacted about a year ago before I really had a plan in mind. I've stayed in semi-regular communication with this guy. I know from, my experience working with other sales leads and other industries that, persistence is more than just hounding someone. It's just making sure that, the potential buyer remembers who you are so that when that need does arrive. They remember your card, they remember the conversations you've had. if you maintain a Rolodex, if you maintain, some kind of CRM platform where you're tracking your outreach attempts with folks, just make sure you're hitting people on a regular cadence and I think eventually some percentage of those will convert into a potential opportunity. That's really great advice. Thanks for that. One thing that you really touched on in that comment as well in that answer is that, not every client is gonna be ready to work with you at that point in time, but it doesn't mean that it's a no. It means that they're just not ready. It's not the right time. Yeah. I think that's right. And I think that, sometimes not right now is a soft way of saying no, never. But sometimes it genuinely means not right now. And you need to be able to take a soft rejection and, not treat it as a closed door. And yeah, exactly. one thing that. Healthcare practitioners bring to the table too, is the ability to look at the entire lifecycle of that worker. A ergonomic risk assessment. May just be a small little portion of the entire pie of services that workplace may need at some point in time. They may need a return to work, situation, whether that's a functional capacity evaluation or a work hardening or a return to work or a job match or looking at the physical elements of the job, A job demands description or just measuring of force that's required by that person to get the job done? Sure, yeah. So, I think that aspect that you could bring all of these services to the table as someone who has that experience as a PT is something that I think is so useful. No, don't tell too many PTs about that, but yes, it's, hugely beneficial, background you can bring. Yeah. Because, yeah, I love that idea. And, you mentioned functionally capacity evaluations, functional capacity evaluations. Yep. And for those aren't familiar with that. what does that look like and is that something that you intend to bring to the table? Actually I'm really excited there. I've just signed an agreement with a former class mate of mine, to use, some of his clinic space downtown to perform FCEs. I've been operating this little LLC out of my house now for the past year and change. And, now it looks like I'm going to have an actual physical space to start bringing folks in for a wide array of potential services, FCEs being at the top. So FCEs. For any listeners who may not be aware, these are, generally, structured as these. Job informed assessments to, measure things like material handling capacity, positional tolerance, endurance movement quality, but anchoring all of those things back to the specific job or job class that a worker is required to complete. So, more than seeing, how consistently they're able to do so. Getting a quick medical background and seeing whether their participation in these tasks, flares any symptoms. but in practice, F Cs really should be performed by, licensed healthcare professionals, like physical therapists, occupational therapists, because this involves some degree of clinical judgment, physical testing, interpretation of risk. That happens to, at least in my state in Missouri. that falls under the PT scope of practice. So having this PT degree and this licensure is all I need. I know that varies a little bit state by state. if, FCEs are a thing that you've considered, maybe you're an organist and you don't have a clinical background, if that's something that you've thought maybe a useful way to expand the breadth of your services, I would look at your state practice guidelines and see where. You know, where that falls under whose licenses, performing those activities falls? It's possible there are certifications you could obtain to qualify, but, no, it's a, Fairly rigorous assessment. Takes about an hour, and, I am of course on board. I'm fully, first response trained and first aid trained to make sure that if anything happens, I'm ready to assist. But, no, it's been, very exciting this past week or so, just having the ability to open that up, to have my own space to perform those. I'm very excited about it. That is very exciting. Congratulations to you. Thank you. Oh, yeah. Well, and it just adds a, a. Genuine of legitimacy. You know, if they can send one of their employees to an actual location, rather than just saying you know, my LLC is registered to my home address. just please don't go there. Yeah. And that also highlights, again, like you, that person comes in for a functional capacity evaluation. I wonder why they got injured in the first place and looking at that entire holistic, opportunity there. there's a whole, bevy of, potential opportunity for follow-up care. some of the services we're going to start offering, assuming we get off the ground with a larger site, is, allowing for direct, work comp pt. so, instead of needing, an employer required to go through, a larger scale physical therapy operation, their agonist is also their physical therapist and is able to treat them both on site or at, a nearby location. It'll be really interesting making sure that, all of that is done the right way. But, no, I think it's going to open up a lot of doors. It definitely will. That's very exciting. Thank you. So let's talk about measurable improvements in efficiency and, basically what I wanna dive into is like return on investment and pricing our services as well. how do you go about that? I know, I, and I'm leading into that, kind of out of the blue, but I just felt so encouraged by this functional capacity evaluation. and this next step for you, if you're gonna say one place to start when trying to price out your services, so it makes sense and You're not. Underquoting your value, What are some good indicators that you can, whether it's the scope of practice or nailing out the deliverables or planning for the future, what are some interesting things that someone might wanna consider when they're looking at this? So definitely a hard thing. And I think it's hard, for two reasons. It requires faith in yourself, first of all. And it requires faith in, the entire notion of ergonomics as a discipline. So the question is, will the organization you're servicing be better off after investing in your services? I'm gonna pay probably what, a thousand to 1400 bucks that I'd rather keep in my pocket, but in the return, I'm gonna be able to continue driving my car to work and to the grocery store. And ergo, you've gotta be able to paint a very similar ROI picture, but the data is less clear. I take a consultative approach when I talk to prospective clients because I don't want to start with the assumption that my input is the answer or is any kind of answer. Maybe they already have good processes in place. Maybe they have a really good safety culture, before I've ever arrived and walking and assuming I'm going to fix everything, isn't in alignment with their actual needs. So I mentioned at the top of this discussion that, listening is the best tool in your toolkit. Talking to the EHS officer, the buyer will allow for much better discovery and a more tailored pitch. So before you start throwing your services out there and before you start telling them how much you charge, I would listen to what their actual needs are so that you can put together an actual package that makes sense for them. do they not have a significant track record for the development of chronic injury? what about acute issues as a pt? the services that opens up, I'm happy to supply restorative interventions out of pocket. what about safe lifting techniques? Do you have. Courses there, do you onboard people and show them how to safely lift materials and transfer them? ROI, what I've learned working in the corporate space and working in sales for as long as I have now, Can be about promising a specific dollar figure. And for a lot of buyers, that's all they're interested in. And if that's what your buyer's interested in, you can look at Liberty Mutual data. There are lots of sources that you can point to, to say, this is the ROI for ergo, that's great, but frequently. it is more about aligning the interventions you can offer to actual risks and constraints. So when you tie your recommendations to reducing the variability that they can expect in a given quarter, reducing the number of disruptions, improving change acceptance to a new piece of machinery, improving the speed of return to function for somebody who's been injured. that value. Becomes much easier to communicate even if you're not painting it in a more quantifiable black and white way. Yeah. Did that answer your question? I thought that was a really great answer. Okay, great. And I think that's gonna help a lot of people. and I especially like the. pullback that you, the conversation that you have with clients into getting what they want aligned with the services that you have, and. Doing that by listening. I had a CEO once who came from a sales and marketing background. He was a really smart guy. he was full of, platitudes, right? Like little sayings he liked to drop, but one of them I think was genuinely true. he would always say that great salespeople, sell real value. The best salespeople. Sell themselves, that they sell a confidence in the person who's actually selling the product. I've heard variations of that a dozen different ways, but I think that really is true that if you were selling. The idea that you are not going to be attempting to give them services they don't need. And that you have the expertise that's needed to identify problems and provide real solutions. If they have confidence in that, it'll be much easier to sell specific services downstream of that. And it's you getting to the point that I think is really interesting success leads clues in a client's workplace. And by that success, I mean maybe lack of success or success in other areas. And the fruit might be Acute injury rates or whether or not they have regular joint occupational health and safety meetings, if they share injury data with employees at the workplace. It's all of these clues that can give you an indication of what stage they are for readiness for any aspect of ergonomics. Because what I've found, Adam, I don't know if you've seen sometimes a workplace just isn't ready for ergonomics and maybe they have all these fires that they need to put out first, but when it comes to a risk assessment and industry, they're just not ready for it. we have to look at whether it's accommodations or return to work. And then after that, we can start to look at the risk assessments. Have you seen anything similar? No. Think it's perfect? Yeah. Yeah. I think that's right. And those metrics are really hard, right? Because I mentioned that I taught for a number of years, when I was in grad school for physical therapy. I was a teaching assistant for a research methodologies course. And, I will tell you that the rigor, in industry, doesn't quite meet the rigor that you'll find in other scientific disciplines. Mm-hmm. And so it can be a bit of a struggle to, feel secure in, making informed decisions based on, industry data because it's sometimes questionable where that's coming from and what their methodology was and how complete, the scope of their sample is and how they went about testing it. But I think you're absolutely right that some data is better than no data, first of all. And I think that at the very least. The metrics that they have and they've at least attempted to gather, will give you a real sense for how serious they are about approaching questions of, safety and, human factor design. I think that's right. I think that working with any kind of, quantifiable metrics is a really good starting point. And if they're willing to share those with you, and if you're able to, take that and run with it and see if, that is a way to kind of springboard into a more comprehensive, ergonomics program, that's all the better. Shout out to the program really'cause in, stage five, I just gotta shout this. Accelerate. I have a checklist, to help you garner those conversations when you're first kicking off a meeting with a client. I'm in stage four, so I need to up my game and finish up the program. Well, it's a program where it's a buffet. So yeah, I strongly encourage you to just jump where your heart tells you to jump. I've really enjoyed, not only the program itself, the Accelerate program, but also, engaging with this little community that you built. It's been incredibly helpful, talking to all of the other folks from all around the world, about where they are and attempting to build their own businesses and, these different backgrounds people are bringing into this field. it's really fascinating being able to talk to these people. Oh, thank you for that. Ergonomics isn't a regulated health profession, compared to like PT or ot. So it's really interesting the perspectives that people bring to it and how it matches to their other service deliverables. I find it's so amazing and so interesting to see the things that people are putting together to help workplaces or at home people, or wherever that is. Yeah, no, I agree. And especially the different areas of practice, whether it's purely office or industry or wherever, they can apply their knowledge is fascinating to me. So thanks for that. Where I think what you have here in your business, whether it's the PT or the it, being able to converse on those angles is something that's really unique. So like you can talk big ideas. I love that. But, how about, when you see, a workplace or a worker who this is kind of a strange question, and I think it's more about scaling your business. you're obviously really good at sales. I think that you have, a lot of opportunity and potential there for you, but, have you considered how you're gonna be building this out? Are you gonna be hiring folks to help you with the ergonomics? No, I've thought about that a ton. Yeah. so my position is that I am balancing full-time. Like a day job. with building up something that really does not tolerate a day job in order to be built. So there's a real question about when to let go of the first vine and grab onto the second one. it's just a math problem that just has to do with how I'm able to, pay my bills and have enough coming in to grow the business itself. It's not a complicated math problem, but making the numbers work is the real challenge. And I think scaling could be a real answer there. I have, a network of folks who I think would be, really great at the data collection side. A big part in industry is going out. Talking to people, taking video, doing simple assessments. I have a few folks in mind that I might tap to start doing some hourly work to start getting boots on the ground and doing this initial data collection, but that sacrifices having FaceTime with clients myself. And, establishing relationships and making my, name known, which I think could be more valuable than just the hours that I would collect. there are a few different little calculations kind of swirling around each other, kind of orbiting. I think that the answer is going to be as soon as I get up and running, i'm going to need probably one person for the first six months to a year or so to support, a couple of Lower acuity, we'll call it sites. to just work on the data collection angle and allow me to focus on the actual report writing. These would be people who would not need to have a deep ergo background, but I would just need to trust, to do thorough work and be good at talking to blue collar folks. And, that's really the strategy I'm planning to deploy, right? Yeah. So you can always have that back and review the reports and sign off of the reports so you could charge those fees I love how you're looking at this from many different angles because there really is such an upside to this, and I'm gonna guess without a shadow of a doubt that there's probably not a lot of people doing what you wanna bring to the market in your area. There's not, it's interesting, I've talked to a couple of people in your network who are on the east coast and the west coast respectively, and I think there's much more. Of, an ergonomics culture in industry there. In the Midwest, there are safety companies, so there are a couple of organizations that are more about like OSHA standards And making sure folks are in compliance there. Very much less of an awareness of the importance of, reducing the risk of, Repetitive motion injuries of overuse injuries, which is really in my mind that is the, you know, chronic posture in positioning and overuse. Those are really the two primary through lines for ergo. But yeah, it's an interesting question and I hope that that will have. Hope I'll be able to share my answer to you in a year or so. Absolutely, How I was able to turn that into a resounding success, And we're gonna be all ears for that to see what you did to build up that business and how you got to your first X amount of dollars and serve, assessments completed and functional capacities and all that stuff, because all minds wanna know. I'll be, excited to figure out what that second vine ended up being that I was able to swing to. So, yes. Leap of faith. Right. Leap of faith. Right. I love that. Alright, so we're closing in on the end of this conversation. And, there's a lot of OTs and PTs, healthcare professionals considering taking that leap of faith. To the first vine waiting for what that sign could be for the next vine. So what was that for you and what would you encourage, people considering moving forward in this to do? I will say I had the benefit of having an opportunity. To, work in ergonomics, without a huge assumption of risk for a couple of years before, starting my own LLC. So I worked, for another organization during the pandemic, just doing second shift and, weekend work. Just moonlighting a bit, which is where I really cut my teeth on this whole industry. that provided the foundational, elements that I've been really leaning on to start to build this new enterprise. I will say though that if you are a pt, if you are an ot, ergonomics largely is likely within your practice act. And I'm sure there are CEUs out there, there are organizations out there, there are probably Facebook groups and subreddits and YouTube, collections that you can, rely on to give you at least a primer if this is something that, has piqued your interest. the number one thing that made me feel confident that this is something I could actually accomplish was your, website, Darcy. I found ergonomics help.com. I promise I'm not being paid for this plug. you have a huge library of content that you've built over the years, that I've been relying on to shore up my skills here. So I, I think that was the, the number one thing that made me feel like, yes, this is the thing I can do now. Awesome. Well, thank you for all that. Thanks for all the insights. I, I love your perspective and I love the seeing that you're, you're moving forward in your business and in your life with this. So can't wait to hear where this takes you in the next year. We'll be in touch for another interview. Awesome. Thanks Darcy.