A few years ago, Emmanuelle was living what a lot of therapists would probably consider a successful career.
She owned her own physiotherapy clinic in France.
She had three collaborators.
Her schedule was full.
Very full.
She was working with patients all day, every day.
From the outside, everything looked like it was working.
But when we first started working together, she told me:
“I can’t hold this pace much longer.”
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And when you look at what her days actually looked like, you understand why.
She was working long days in the clinic, often from 8 in the morning until 8 at night.
She had patients booked every 30 minutes, but their rehab sessions could last an hour, sometimes an hour and a half.
So she was constantly moving between two or three patients at the same time.
There was noise.
Interruptions.
People waiting for her attention.
And an enormous amount of mental load.
By the time she got home, she was exhausted.
And here’s the part that makes this story particularly interesting:
Working harder wasn’t actually solving the problem.
Because the business model itself had a ceiling.
WHEN THE ONLY WAY TO MAKE MORE IS TO SEE MORE PATIENTS
Emmanuelle was working within the conventional French healthcare model.
At the time, she was earning about €16 gross per reimbursed physiotherapy session.
So think about the math behind that business model.
(And yes, I know — healthcare is about caring for patients, and some people might not like hearing me call it a “business model.” But let’s face it: healthcare professionals still need to earn a living. And after years of education, developing their expertise, and taking responsibility for the people they care for, they deserve to be compensated for the full value they provide.)
If one patient generates €16…how do you increase your income?
You see another patient. And then another. And then another.
There are only so many ways to make that model work.
Shorter appointments. More patients per hour. Longer days. More days.
Your income is directly tied to the volume of people you can physically see.
And eventually, you run out of hours. And energy.
The irony was that Emmanuelle wasn’t struggling because she didn’t have enough patients.
She had plenty.
The model was asking her to sacrifice more and more of herself in order to earn more.
And it was also preventing her from practicing rehab the way she actually wanted to.
She was already programming exercises for her patients.
But as she explained to me, she was essentially programming session by session.
There wasn’t any time to provide structure:
Where does this athlete need to be in 12 weeks?
What adaptations do we need to create?
How do we progressively rebuild strength, volume and sport-specific capacity?
How do we actually get them all the way back to performance?
And that was important, because that’s the work Emmanuelle actually loved.
GETTING CLEAR ON THE WORK SHE WANTED TO DO
One of the things we worked on through the Rehab Career Accelerator was not simply:
“How can Emmanuelle make more money?”
It was:
“What does Emmanuelle actually want her career to look like?”
Because those aren’t necessarily the same question.
She was a sports physiotherapist.
She had experience working with athletes.
And what she really enjoyed was performance rehab.
Not simply getting someone out of pain, but figuring out how to progressively rebuild them for the demands of their sport.
So instead of continuing to be the therapist for everyone who happened to get booked into her schedule, she started becoming much more intentional about who she wanted to work with.
Athletes.
She built a premium offer specifically for CrossFit athletes struggling with chronic low back pain.
She called the program:
Get Back in the Game.
Instead of selling individual sessions, the program is built around the entire outcome: getting an athlete back to their sport.
The model is hybrid.
There is a comprehensive assessment.
Personalized monthly rehab programming delivered online and done remotely.
Regular follow-ups.
Weekly check-ins.
Messaging for communication, feedback and adjustments.
And in-person sessions when they add value.
And that changed everything.
Because now, instead of trying to accomplish an entire rehabilitation process through a series of disconnected clinic visits, Emmanuelle can actually build the roadmap.
She can think about progression. Volume. Load. Sport-specific adaptation.
And what that particular athlete needs to progressively get back to training.
In our recent interview, she told me how much she loves sitting down at home and doing exactly that.
And she said something during our conversation that really stood out to me.
When she’s at home programming, she gets so absorbed in it that she doesn’t see the time pass.
That’s a very different feeling from watching the clock during an exhausting day in a noisy clinic.
THE BUSINESS MODEL CHANGED TOO
Of course, doing the work you love is only sustainable if the business model supports it.
And this is where the second part of her transformation happened.
Get Back in the Game isn’t priced like a physiotherapy appointment.
Her personalized programming is €250 per month per athlete.
She went from a model built around €16 sessions to one where the value comes from the entire service she is providing — assessment, programming, progression, follow-up and support.
And one of Emmanuelle’s biggest doubts initially was whether anyone would actually pay for it.
She told me she didn’t feel legitimate charging more.
And because healthcare in France is largely associated with reimbursed care, she was convinced patients wouldn’t pay out of pocket for rehab.
Especially rehab delivered partly online.
She thought: Why would someone pay me €250 a month for programming they do themselves?
But they did.
In fact, Emmanuelle sold more than 20 programs when she launched Get Back in the Game.
She was able to substantially increase her revenue while decreasing the number of conventional consultations she was doing.
That’s the part I think is important.
The goal wasn’t to replace five €16 appointments with five more appointments at a higher price.
It was to stop exchanging every euro for another unit of her physical time.
WHAT SHE REALLY BOUGHT BACK WAS HER TIME
And that’s exactly what she bought back: her time.
Because once Emmanuelle’s income wasn’t entirely dependent on how many patients she could physically fit into the clinic…she could redesign her week.
She reduced her clinic schedule.
She created dedicated time for programming.
She could do part of her work from home — or really, from anywhere.
And she eventually moved to a four-day work week, with Fridays off, for the first time in 14 years of practice.
Think about that.
For 14 years, her career dictated the structure of her life.
Now she was beginning to dictate the structure of her career.
And that extra space isn’t just “free time.”
It’s time for her relationship. Time for her hobbies. Time to play golf.
Time to actually have energy left for her own life when the workday is over.
And even during her working hours, she’s spending more time doing the part of rehab she finds genuinely interesting: programming.
She described the difference in mental load herself:
An hour spent moving between patients in the clinic and an hour spent at home, focused on building an athlete’s program, might technically both be an hour of work.
But they don’t feel remotely the same.
One drains her. The other energizes her.
And this change didn’t just benefit Emmanuelle — it improved the rehab experience for her athletes too.
With structured programming, ongoing feedback, and progressive loading over time, they are getting a more complete path back to performance.
The same model that gave her more freedom has also allowed her to deliver better rehab.
FROM “I CAN’T HOLD THIS PACE” TO A CAREER THAT FITS HER LIFE
When we first started working together, Emmanuelle was exhausted.
She had patients. She had a clinic. She had experience. She had expertise.
What she didn’t have was a business model that allowed all of those things to translate into the career she actually wanted.
Today, she works fewer hours.
She has substantially increased her revenue.
She spends more of her professional time working with athletes and programming rehab — the work she actually enjoys.
She can work remotely.
She has more time and energy for her relationship, her hobbies and her life outside of work.
And perhaps most importantly, she told me:
“I feel so much better. I’m much more aligned with my values and with my practice.”
Want to integrate more structured rehab programming into your practice?
If you’re a trainer or therapist looking to take your career to the next level, check out the Rehab Career Accelerator.
If it looks like it could be a good fit, book a quick 20-minute call with our team to discuss your goals, your practice and whether the Accelerator is right for you.
(20-minute call. No pressure, no obligation.)
Mai-Linh Dovan M.SC., CAT(C)
Certified Athletic Therapist
Founder of Rehab-U
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