EP85: GRIT with F Scott Feil, Professor, Learning Scientist, and Entrepreneur

About the Guest:

Dr. F Scott Feil is a passionate physical therapist, educator, and entrepreneur with a profound journey of perseverance and self-discovery. Holding a Doctorate in Physical Therapy, he transitioned from clinical practice to academia and then into a novel role training other educators. Dr. Feil's tenacity through personal and professional trials is matched by his drive to learn and share knowledge, whether through teaching, writing, or through his podcasts – the Healthcare Education Transformation Podcast and Professors of Profit. With an undying spirit to uplift others, Dr. Feil stands out as a beacon of grit in the healthcare and educational community.

Episode Summary:

In this compelling episode, Dr. F Scott Feil shares his journey through the twists and turns of pursuing a career in physical therapy and beyond. His narrative is one of resilience and determination as he navigates through personal loss, professional challenges, and the arduous path of passing the physical therapy board exam. The episode paints a vivid picture of an individual steadfast in the face of adversity, leading listeners through the transformative experiences that shape his career and outlook on life.

Dr. Feil discusses his various endeavors, including starting a side practice in mobile physical therapy and delving into the world of podcasting. His diverse interests and pursuits highlight the importance of flexibility, continuous learning, and the pursuit of one's true passion. With insight into the realities of healthcare, education, and business, Dr. Feil offers a unique perspective on how to thrive amidst obstacles and constantly evolving environments. Rich with SEO keywords like "physical therapy," "healthcare education," and "side hustles," the episode is a beacon for those in the crossroads of career and personal growth.

Transcript

[TRANSCRIPT]

0:00:00 - (F. Scott Feil): I'm in Charlotte, North Carolina, living with some buddies, studying for my board exam. I moved back in with my parents to help my dad out with his health problems, lived in their basement, worked as a PT tech at the hospital. And while I was doing that and trying to finish my capstone project, my dad got worse and ended up passing away. Just figured I would focus on trying to pass my board exam and get licensed as a physical therapist.

0:00:24 - (F. Scott Feil): And while I was working as a tech, I had to actually walk past the room where my dad passed away every day to clock in and clock out. And that really started wearing on me. I really started questioning why I was even pursuing this, why did God do this to me? And it just wasn't really meshing with my North Star and my alignment. What I wanted to do, I didn't know what I wanted to do at that point, but it was one of those things where I was like, look, your dad would have wanted you to see this through. He would have wanted you to finish. You got to put your big boy pants on and figure this out.

0:00:55 - (F. Scott Feil): And so I did. I just buckled down. I studied for three, four months, studied my tail off, and finally passed the board exam. Doctor F. Scott Feil. And I am undone.

0:01:18 - (Toby Brooks): Hey, friend. I'm glad you're here. Welcome to another episode of Becoming Undone, the podcast for those who dare bravely, risk mightily, and grow relentlessly. I'm Toby Brooks, speaker, an author and a professor. I've spent much of the last two decades working as an athletic trainer and a strength coach in the professional, collegiate, and high school sports settings. And over the years, I've grown more and more fascinated with what sets high achievers apart and how failures they can hurt in the moment can actually end up being exactly the push we needed to propel us along our path to success.

0:01:47 - (Toby Brooks): Each week or so, I invite new guests to examine how high achievers can transform from falling apart to falling into place. Y'all, I know it's been too long. It has been crazy around here. Our son Tay graduated high school last week, and we just finished welcoming guests from several states away. And now the house is pretty much empty. It's been a tough season. I'm not gonna lie. It's been hard to pack through things that have been in a house we've lived in for the past 14 years.

0:02:19 - (Toby Brooks): And honestly, I've put this show off. But I realized that it's an important part of who I've become, and it's a critical thing for me to do to keep going. So I apologize for not giving you the regular weekly show that I've been doing, and I'm resolving to do better. So hopefully, once we get settled in our new home in Waco, I'll be able to crank out at least one new show each week. I'd like to emphasize that this show is entirely separate from my current role as a professor, but it's my attempt to apply what I've learned and what I'm learning and to share with others about the mindsets of high achievers.

0:02:56 - (Toby Brooks): If you're checking out the show for the very first time, then welcome. Over this past year and a half, I've had the pleasure of interviewing some absolutely phenomenal guests, and I hope after enjoying this episode, that you'll scroll back through and pick out some previous episodes of high achievers who didn't let failure or setback stand in the way of their eventual victories. And if you're a regular, welcome back.

0:03:18 - (Toby Brooks): I hope you'll continue to find value in these conversations with high achievers, and I'm thankful for your time and for your lessons. From his earliest dreams of being a professional golfer, professor, learning scientist, and entrepreneur, F. Scott Field hasn't always followed the beaten path. An english major turned physical therapy major in grad school, FCOT's undiagnosed ADHD made grad school progressively more difficult, and when he encountered failure multiple times on his physical therapy board exams, he was forced to take a hard look at how to study and how to learn.

0:03:54 - (Toby Brooks): But today, he's leveraged those lessons learned through that tough season in life to become a learning scientist himself, with a primary focus on helping other professors learn how to best teach. I hope you'll enjoy my conversation with Professor F. Scott Field in episode 85. Great. This and the podcasting biz is what we call a home and home f. Scott Field had me on his podcast not terribly long ago, and I knew from that moment that he would be a great guest to have on my show. So, Scott, thanks for joining us.

0:04:29 - (F. Scott Feil): Yeah, Toby, thanks for having me, man. I'm really excited to dive into this crazy, messy thing we call life that I'm currently going through.

0:04:38 - (Toby Brooks): Yeah, when we last connected, you definitely had a story. You certainly fit the high achiever, but you've made a big pivot, you made a big transition. Takes a lot of courage to do what you're in the midst of. So I'm looking forward to digging into that and seeing what the underpinnings of that decision involved. But I always start off with a little bit of a softball what'd you want to be growing up and why?

0:05:00 - (F. Scott Feil): Man? Yeah. I think when I was younger, I had a decision to make. I either had to go one direction, which was going to be pro golfer on the PGA Tour, caddied for many years, got a lot of free golf in, got pretty good at it. Had my handicap down to about a 9.1 at one point, was trending in the right direction, or I had to go to grad school and ended up choosing grad school. Always wanted to be something in the medical field, but I wasn't really sure what, and ended up as a physical therapist, so it worked out.

0:05:32 - (F. Scott Feil): But there was a pit stop in there, in the middle somewhere where I was an english major, so I am a reformed english major. I honestly did not know what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I still don't. I think I'm still working through that. But for me, the healthcare field was a general feeling. I got that I could help people in, but I didn't know I wanted to be a physical therapist, probably till senior year in college.

0:05:53 - (Toby Brooks): Awesome. Many would say since you've transitioned over an administration, maybe those years on the links are going to pay off.

0:05:59 - (F. Scott Feil): I hope so, man.

0:06:01 - (Toby Brooks): So, kind of related to that, you alluded a little bit to how you transitioned into PT. And I've had a lot of athletic trainers on the show, a lot of healthcare professionals. So talk me through that decision making process and how PT became ever growing in the windshield, so to speak.

0:06:20 - (F. Scott Feil): Yeah. Again, it was a weird, wild journey for me. It was not straight and narrow. It was not cut and dry. I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. My dad was an english teacher on Long island for 30 some odd years, right? Hence the name F. Scott Feil.

0:06:33 - (Toby Brooks): Right?

0:06:33 - (F. Scott Feil): He named me after F. Scott Fitzgerald, but his first name was Francis, and he didn't want to name me Francis, so he just left it as the letter f, which is cool till you turn 16, right? Then everything's first name, middle initial, and all your legal documents get screwed up, right? So I get to this point where I'm like, senior year, I taking golf, bowling, and intro to Japan, and I've got tons of free time on my hand. And I placed that, all a bunch of english classes because I was pretty good at English as an english major. My dad got me prepped and ready for that. My AP classes took care of a couple of classes. I had so much time on my hands to either party and or figure it out, and I figured I would try to do a little bit of both. I started volunteering at the hospital and they put me in the PT department and I was like, oh, this is cool. I can do this. They're batting balloons around and they're rolling around on the mats and playing with patients. It looks fun.

0:07:25 - (F. Scott Feil): I think I could do that because I had taken a practice MCAT. It did fairly well, but the organic chemistry wrecked me. Me, because as an english major, I didn't take much chemistry and I didn't really want to do that. So I looked at the prereqs on physical therapy and I was like, nope, don't have that one. Don't have that one, don't have that one. Nope, still don't have that one. I graduated with my BA in English and then I started pursuing the prereqs for PT school because it wasn't as bad as med school. And I was like, I can still be in the medical field and help people. And I just knew I wasn't going to do anything in English, right? I wasn't going to read, write, edit, teach. I just didn't want to do any of that.

0:08:01 - (F. Scott Feil): So I continued down the path of getting all the prereqs for PT school and eventually got into East Carolina University for PT school. And that was a master's program at the time when I started doing that, and it was a two year program, and then they offered the third year transitional doctrine if we stuck around. We were the first year that they offered that and it seemed like that was the direction the profession was heading. So I said I might as well stick around and try it, right?

0:08:27 - (F. Scott Feil): While I was finishing up the masters and getting ready to transition into the doctorate, I took my first board exam and didn't study for it. I figured I'd do fine. I knew my stuff and I missed it by one question. I failed it by one question. So I'm bummed about that. I'm like, all right, no big deal. I'll just study for it next time and I'll be fine. So I'm in the middle of the doctoral program now. I'm finishing up the TDPT, and I take my second board exam. My second attempt at it.

0:08:53 - (F. Scott Feil): Failed it by five or six questions. So now I studied my tail off and I got worse. So now I start freaking out, right? I'm internally battling this and struggling with this because I wanted to work in South Carolina, where my family was. They had retired down to Charleston and they had a three strike rule where South Carolina, if you don't pass the board exam with him three times. You're out, can't practice there. This was back in the day. Now there's comp stuff where you can get a license in one state and be grandfathered into some other states.

0:09:24 - (F. Scott Feil): But I was freaked out and I was like, I never tested well. I didn't know what my issue was until recently. I found out I was diagnosed with ADHD, but that's a whole other rabbit hole. So I get ready for the third time, I take it, and I fail it again. So now I'm like, all right, my life is over. I'm ruined.

0:09:44 - (Toby Brooks): After narrowly missing passing the physical therapy board exam by just one question the first time through, F. Scott regrouped and tried again and again. After three unsuccessful attempts, his future in the profession, particularly in South Carolina, where he wants to practice, is in doubt. Making matters worse, his enrollment in a TDPT program is in jeopardy, too. Now, if you're unfamiliar, at the time, many physical therapy programs had already moved from the bachelor's level to the master's level, then the doctoral level.

0:10:14 - (Toby Brooks): Over the span of a few decades, F. Scott's program was at the master's level, and for a time, a number of transitional doctoral programs, or TDPT, sprouted up. He enrolled at East Carolina in just such a program. Additional coursework and clinical experiences in those programs would prepare grads to be better clinicians while also awarding them a doctoral degree, like the newer, freshly minted doctoral level grads coming out.

0:10:40 - (Toby Brooks): It was a way of allowing all older grads to be comparable on paper to their younger peers who were coming fresh out of school as doctors themselves. The problem was, with multiple failed attempts to pass his boards, F. Scott was not only in danger of not being able to practice, he was also facing the very real possibility of getting kicked out of his TDPT program. And then things got even worse.

0:11:05 - (F. Scott Feil): So now I'm like, all right, my life is over. I'm ruined. I can't treat people in South Carolina. I don't know what I'm going to do. And my dad was going through some health problems at the time, right? So I'm in Charlotte, North Carolina, living with some buddies, studying for my board exam. I moved back in with my parents to help my dad out with his health problems, lived in their basement, worked as a PT tech at the hospital.

0:11:29 - (F. Scott Feil): And while I was doing that and trying to finish my Capstone project, my dad got worse and ended up passing away. And so while I was working as a PT tech and studying for my board exam again, the window of opportunity closed on the TD PT at ECU, and they said, you've either got to pass the board exam and present your capstone project, or we can't help you. You're going to have to start all over again and start the three year doctoral program. I said, I'm not doing that. There's no way let that lapse. And I just figured I would focus on trying to pass my board exam and get licensed as a physical therapist.

0:12:07 - (F. Scott Feil): And while I was working as a tech, I had to actually walk past the room where my dad passed away every day to clock in and clock out. And that really started wearing on me. I really started questioning why I was even pursuing this, why did God do this to me? And it just wasn't really meshing with my north Star and my alignment. What I wanted to do, I didn't know what I wanted to do at that point, but it was one of those things where I was like, look, your dad would have wanted you to see this through. He would have wanted you to finish. You got to put your big boy pants on and figure this out.

0:12:39 - (F. Scott Feil): And so I did. I just buckled down, I studied. I caddied again for a couple months, and for three, four months, studied my tail off, and finally passed the board exam. So now I'm a licensed physical therapist, but I have this longing to go and just travel and just find myself and be by myself for a while. After losing my dad, it was like, finally passed this exam and I can take this all in. And I ended up working for a traveling physical therapy company right out of school. And my first contract was 13 weeks out in the middle of nowhere, Texas.

0:13:12 - (F. Scott Feil): And I lived in a log cabin, very Walt Whitman esque, by myself, out in the woods, and 30 miles one way to the nearest Walmart, 30 miles the other way to the nearest bank. That was it. That was me. I was just finding myself and trying to figure out the why behind life and the meaning of life, and didn't quite find it, but found enough of myself to forge ahead and luckily got into another DPT program, a transitional doctorate program at St. Augustine, where they took some of my credits from ECU, actually. So it worked out, and I was able to work full time and start the program, finished it up there. And then while I was there, the head of the EDD program approached me and said, hey, are you interested in teaching ever? And I said, no, not really. Like, my dad was an english teacher. Those kids, I've sat in on his classes, and those kids are dicks. I don't want any part of it.

0:13:59 - (F. Scott Feil): And he said, adult learning is a little different because they're paying you to be there and they have to know the knowledge to go pass the exam. When I said, all right, let me think about it, I'll talk it over with my wife and we'll see. Because my hands give out, my back goes out, my knees give out, whatever. And I can't do physical therapy anymore. Maybe I can fall back on teaching. We'll retire by some little beachside community college somewhere. I'll teach one class, and that'll be my retirement.

0:14:24 - (F. Scott Feil): So, fast forward many years now. And I've been teaching for going on my fifth year, and I just transitioned out of teaching full time into this new position, which is senior development learning specialist or whatever it is. So I haven't figured out what that is yet. Essentially, I just teach the teachers how to teach better and teach the students how to learn better. So I'm using the EDD a lot more than I ever thought I would in this new position.

0:14:47 - (F. Scott Feil): So that's been the journey, man. It's been wild and crazy. And like I said, I wish I could say it was straight and narrow and I knew exactly what I wanted to do, but that was not the case.

0:14:57 - (Toby Brooks): Right. And I think there are definitely lessons learned along that way. I know for myself I've had setbacks and things didn't go according to plan and reach this. This point, where am I going to invest further? Am I going to give this my best effort yet and pass this thing? Or is this just not meant to be? And so you went through that process more than once. And maybe that first time was a surprise because you went in relatively unprepared. It sounded like you didn't spend a lot of time the first time, and then you did, and your results were poor. So talk me through the learning process and maybe the mental gymnastics that you went through in ultimately making that decision to.

0:15:40 - (Toby Brooks): To give it your best and see it through to completion.

0:15:43 - (F. Scott Feil): Yeah. So I didn't know this at the time. It took me going through a EDD program to figure this out, an educational doctorate. But I was a rope memorizer my whole life. I was not a learner. I didn't know that wasn't exactly learning. I just thought if I read it and highlighted it and kept going a bunch of times and I memorized it, I could take the test, pass it, then dump that knowledge, then go on to the next one and memorize all the things.

0:16:09 - (F. Scott Feil): When you're taking a board exam, that is ginormous. It's 250 questions or so, four or 5 hours over two and a half, three semesters of content. And its not like street cut and dry questions, right? Its not memorization type questions. You have to connect the dots up the chain to figure out whats going on. And the question, it was a rude awakening. And I knew somewhere along the line, like between test anxiety and the ADHD stuff, which I didnt know about till recently, it makes sense, looking back, why it all went the way it did. But yeah, I was a rote memorizer early on and I just thought that was learning. I got good grades in high school, so I kept doing it in college.

0:16:50 - (F. Scott Feil): My grades got a little worse, right. I went from like straight a student to like b couple c student. Then I got into grad school and it was like couple b's, mostly c's. You got to work on this. Like I had to bust my tail just to get by in my master's program. So then by the time I got into the TDPT and the EDD, it was like a rude awakening. Wow. You've never learned your entire life. If I look at the test and I look at the board exam, it was honestly just 100% great grit and tenacity.

0:17:18 - (F. Scott Feil): It was just, I'm not a smart man, I'll tell you that. I'll admit that right up front. I'm easily the dumbest smart kid you'll ever meet. But I will tell you this, I do have grit. I do have tenacity. I have the stick to it iveness, if you will, to keep getting up every time I get knocked off the horse. And that's always just been a thing of mine. I'm not great at things, but I'll keep getting up until I learn it and I figure it out. And I think that's all it was. It was sheer willpower, grit at that point, because it took a handful of times to finally pass the thing, and it was almost just trying to give it back to the test and say, yeah, I can do this, I can beat you, I can overcome you. I'm not going to give up, thankfully, because I don't know what would happen if I did at that point.

0:17:57 - (Toby Brooks): Yeah, you know, I think there's also this, this notion, okay, you've invested time in this degree, and every time you take that test, you have to pay for it and you have to rally and get ready for it. Obviously, you would have chosen pass it on the first try. What do you think that adversity did for you as an educator that maybe is helpful for your students today or how's it impacted you as an educator?

0:18:22 - (F. Scott Feil): Yeah, I think I can definitely see the struggles that students go through because I was that student. I knew going into physical therapy school it was going to be a challenge being an english major, not being a real science guy. So I put my ego at the door a long time ago and I just opened every opportunity up as a learning opportunity. I learned from my students. I learned from mentors, I learned from professors. I try to learn from everybody. I try to take every opportunity I can as a learning opportunity because it is for me. Oh, that's interesting. Tell me more like a genuine curiosity because I struggled so much and I don't know that I believe that I was a specific type of learner, audio or visual or tactile or whatever.

0:19:07 - (F. Scott Feil): I just knew I struggled a little bit. And so I try to learn a bunch of different ways, which now probably affects the way I teach. And I try to teach the same stuff a bunch of different ways to try to hit all of the types of learning, if you will. I use the quotation marks there because a lot of the research shows that there's not a whole lot behind different styles of learning. But if you feel like you learn better one way versus the other, I'm going to try to give them all to you and hope that it works.

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0:20:34 - (Toby Brooks): Book a demo today to see how Forte can help your employees unlock their unique contributions. Visit getforte.com to learn more. That's getforte.com dot. You've been in this education space a few years, but also along the way you delved into podcasting, you now have two different shows, the Healthcare Education Transformation podcast and then professors of Profit, which you mentioned closing in on the milestone of 100 episodes. So how did that enter the equation?

0:21:05 - (Toby Brooks): And what was the motivation and the desire behind launching not only one, but two different shows?

0:21:12 - (F. Scott Feil): Yeah, so I think it goes back to my days. Even in high school, I was involved in student government. I was the president for our class or student union. I was involved in a bunch of different sports, football and golf and baseball and cross, and I was in the musicals, theatrics, and all that stuff. I was just really involved. And my parents were also very much that way. They were always involved in clubs and presidents and taking on leadership roles. So, like, at a very young age, I was always, like, trying to do things and try things and experiment and see what worked and what didn't, where I fit. And then by the time I got to college, I was actually a radio dj in college. So, little known fact there, I did some college radio djing, and I think that by the time I had graduated, it took a back burner. It wasn't that important to me.

0:22:01 - (F. Scott Feil): But coming full circle, once I got through PT school and through the board exam, I realized how bad I struggled with the program and with learning. And it wasn't the professor's fault. It wasn't the program's fault. It was me. It was my fault. I just didn't know. I wasn't truly learning. So I teamed up with another guy, Brandon Pohn, who we both struggled through our programs, and we just felt like maybe there were better ways to go about teaching this stuff or learning this stuff one way or the other.

0:22:28 - (F. Scott Feil): And it wasn't that we knew, because we didn't, we weren't experts. So we figured, let's just have the experts on talk about how healthcare education is broken, and it's a broken system that feeds into a broken system, and let's just see how they would fix it. Let's see what their best practices are. How do they teach and learn? Maybe we can learn something from them and pass that on to the next generation. And so that was 500 or so episodes ago, six, seven years now, and I still learn stuff to this day. And really, my network has grown tenfold because of the podcast. So I've got to interview and talk to some people that I probably had no business rubbing elbows with. But when you've got a podcast, it's a great way to get to know people and to bring them on, to share their gift with other people and really highlight and spotlight them, you know?

0:23:11 - (F. Scott Feil): And so that was the het podcast, and then the professors of profit podcast almost came out of a necessity, and it was just that student loan debt is bad and getting worse. Healthcare providers are not getting paid their value and what they're worth. Reimbursement from insurance is going down. Down. I don't foresee it taking a turn anytime soon. So what are we going to do to get paid the value that we're worth? And so the professors of profit podcast started as a side gig and side hustle podcast, right? I interviewed 100 people doing different side gigs in the healthcare world, and we just talked about what that side hustle looked like and how they grew it or didn't, you know, whatever their choice was.

0:23:51 - (F. Scott Feil): And just to show people what was out there, what possibilities were as far as side gigs and side hustles and starting your own business. And like I said, as that kind of now gets into the hundredth episode, that'll open up as just a general business and healthcare podcast. It's really been a fun ride for me. And for me, the biggest takeaway is that it's a creative outlet. It really is. As an english major, I love writing. I love creating. I just. My mind, obviously, ADHD stuff, it's always going. It's always on the entrepreneurial mind.

0:24:20 - (F. Scott Feil): So for me, the podcasting a. I love it. I love hearing people's stories. I love learning from all of them. And it really gives me that outlet to do things I want to do the way I want to do them and selfishly find out what I want to know, find out about. Hopefully my audience gets something from it, too. I think they do. We've been going long enough now where it seems to show that is the case, but I just selfishly ask what I want to know about. Hey, man, you're a really interesting person.

0:24:46 - (F. Scott Feil): You do this. Tell me more about that. That seems, like, wild. Tell me how I could get involved with that. How could I do that if I was interested? What do I need to know about that? Like, just the things that I think the audience would want to hear, and then very least, I get to learn something.

0:24:59 - (Toby Brooks): Yeah, that's great. I think seeing shows like the Huberman lab that have just skyrocketed up the rankings, it shows me that a lot of professors are really well positioned to be good in the space. In many ways, interviewing is a qualitative research skill, and for me, it's also made me aware of maybe some speech things that I do. The OMs the aHS, the, you knows, there's just a lot of awareness and there's just so much value added that I've really enjoyed out of this process, and I'm not nearly as far along as you, for sure, but it's really been eye opening, it's been humbling in a lot of ways, but I really feel like it's made me better in the classroom. And it also, like you said, it allows you to connect with people that you wouldn't otherwise have a reason to connect with. Congrats.

0:25:49 - (Toby Brooks): And you're certainly an inspiration. You mentioned the professor's a profit. You've really created a niche for yourself as this side hustle or this, I guess, the mentality that you can have this day job, professor position, but also have another income stream or other income stream, sometimes passive, sometimes active. So you kind of alluded to the fact that student loan debt, those kinds of things, but how did you fall into this space of being the go to person as side hustles for professors?

0:26:27 - (F. Scott Feil): Yeah, luckily for me, it's not just professors anymore. It's anywhere where healthcare, education, and business intersect. That's where you'll find me. Right? Those are the three things that tie me all together here now and bring it all together full circle, right? It started where I was a clinician, right? I was a physical therapist working full time at a moderate job. It wasnt great, wasnt bad. It just was my job.

0:26:51 - (F. Scott Feil): But my wifes a stay at home mom and a type one diabetic. Right? So after chasing the dollar and the salary year after year for many years, probably almost a decade or so, I realized that I made more money every year and every time I moved up. But it wasnt fulfilling. It didn't make me happy. I was. If anything, I was probably worse off, had more responsibility, I had more documentation. It just more patience. Like it just wasn't great. Making all that money was not fun to me. It just didn't fulfill me the way I thought it would.

0:27:20 - (F. Scott Feil): And so once I started realizing I could find a job that I liked, or at least that I tolerated better than what I was, and that was fine, as long as it had good medical benefits, I could then make the difference up doing something else on the side, right? So I started out as a mobile physical therapy practice. I had a 30 miles radius or so around Waco, Texas, where I drove around, I saw patients, and luckily for me, I got a pretty good group of business owners and c suite level execs and busy businessmen and businesswomen that they didnt really need physical therapy as much as they needed the time. So I was selling them time and convenience more than physical therapy. Obviously, I performed physical therapy. They really just like me coming to their house or their office or their gym to come treat them so they wouldn't have to waste time out of their day. And so I started that. But in the meantime, doing that, I had to learn a lot about business. Like, the physical therapy part was easy. I just showed up and did my physical therapy, set up my table. We were good to go.

0:28:16 - (F. Scott Feil): The business aspect is really where things got interesting, because I was the front desk person, I was the towel cleaner, I was the physical therapist. I was everything, right? Scheduler, you name it, I had to learn all those things. And then at some point, it stagnated and was like, all right, this is what I got patient wise. Now what? I guess I got to run ads. So I ran some Facebook ads and they failed, miserable.

0:28:37 - (F. Scott Feil): And I was like, I know it's not Facebook ads because people are using these successfully all the time, so it's got to be me. So I ended up investing in a course that was about five grand to learn Facebook ads. And people think, oh, that's crazy. Like, how would you spend that much money on a course? And I was like, I invested in myself. And after taking that course that next week, running Facebook ads, I got three new patients, and each patient was about $1,800. Plan of care, if you saw them through.

0:29:03 - (F. Scott Feil): And so it was like that course paid for itself in its first week, and then every patient I got after that was profit. So that's how I could invest in it. It just made sense to me. I didn't know how to do it. I was glad to pay somebody else to show me how. Then once I got it and I got better at it, I was like, okay, cool, I get this now. I could show some other clinics how to do it. I could sell that skill to other mobile clinics that were trying to do what I was trying to do. So I had a couple of buddies from PT school that were running their own clinics, and they reached out to me and said, hey, could you run our Facebook ads? And I was like, I can try. I was like, I only know what I know, but, yeah, let's give it a try. And those are my first two clients, and they paid me monthly to run their Facebook ads. And it worked. That worked out very well.

0:29:41 - (F. Scott Feil): And so that was a new service I learned and could now sell. And then I realized after a while, it was like I just don't like Facebook ads. I don't like this park marking. I know enough, though, to outsource it and find the right person to do it for me. And so that's what I started doing. So once I did that, I started getting into copywriting, something I actually love. I thought I would just be good at it. Turns out it's actually completely different language. Being an English major did not help any, so I had to relearn how to write again. It's totally new, but once I get into copywriting, I thought, this is really cool. I like this. I like writing like email sequences, and I like long form ads and figuring out the copy for these things. And once I learned that same thing, I could start either doing it for businesses or selling an offer where I could teach them that stuff.

0:30:25 - (F. Scott Feil): So as I started stacking these skills and learning about my business and how to do the thing I needed, in turn, I could then help others do it as well. And that's when I finally wrote the book, right? The PT educator student debt eliminator. And that was basically just here's the eight to ten side gigs and side hustles I do. I'm not saying you need to do all of them, you might only need to do one of them.

0:30:47 - (F. Scott Feil): But pick one and try it. Start it. See how it goes. Right?

0:30:54 - (Toby Brooks): This is an idea that's simple enough. However, in many circles, it's revolutionary. In the modern healthcare and higher ed world, salaries have pretty much leveled off while inflation continues to grow. I was made painfully aware of this when I plugged my starting salary when I hired in 14 years ago as an assistant professor with no extra duties or stipends into an inflation calculator. What I discovered was awful after tenure, two promotions all the way to full professor, and added duties as a program director.

0:31:27 - (Toby Brooks): As an assistant dean. In today's dollars, I managed to get about 900 extra bucks compared to what I made when I was first hired. That's just the reality, and I'm not alone. So you can either complain about it or, like f. Scott, find ways to improve your knowledge and skills and pursue some side hustles. The day job provides the recurring income and benefits, while the nights and weekends offer an opportunity to try to actually get ahead.

0:31:54 - (Toby Brooks): After all, for those of us who have been lifelong students, we're used to studying and working all day, night, weekend, holiday, whatever. Once you graduate, you simply keep that same programming and apply it to skills and services that people will pay for. And it's worked over the past four or five years. F. Scott has positioned himself as an expert in the higher ed and healthcare side hustle industry.

0:32:16 - (Toby Brooks): He is an expert because he had the grit and the tenacity to make himself into one.

0:32:22 - (F. Scott Feil): We have to know how to sell, right? That's just a human thing. Whether it's your own business, your own service, whether you're trying to sell a patient on a plan of care, whether you're trying to sell a future employer on your skill sets, we have to know how to sell. Selling is one of the most important skills that we can learn as a human, especially in the world of healthcare. Once you learn how to sell your craft, whatever it may be, again, you can start stacking as many skill sets as you want. But I'm a firm believer that as long as you have that one thing that you're really good at that zone of genius, right, everything is just repackaging and repurposing and giving it to people at different levels, wherever they're at, meeting them, where they're at, whether it's a book or a course or hands on and one on one, whatever it may be, you got that thing you're passionate about and that you love.

0:33:11 - (F. Scott Feil): It should be simple to create a business as long as it solves a problem or something like that.

0:33:15 - (Toby Brooks): So today you teach business and admin courses for a variety of healthcare professionals who are studying to become credentialed professionals in the future. Obviously some of that's based on personal experience, but you've also made it this pretty big pivot and have largely left education as the primary focus of what you do. And now you're educating educators. So talk me through that shift. That's a big pivot, from being in the classroom with aspiring professionals to being in a workshop with people who are already there.

0:33:49 - (F. Scott Feil): Yeah, so that was pretty wild, actually, the way this all kind of happened. Like when I went from clinical to academia, I still tried to keep 1ft in the boat of clinical because I wanted to show my students, hey, I'm still treating. And to this day I still do. I have my mobile practice, but it's only friends and family referral at this point because the town I live in is a population of 4000, so they don't need another pt clinic.

0:34:13 - (F. Scott Feil): It's really only if somebody really needs me, then I'll go to their home or whatever and help them out. But then when I got into academia, it was like, all right, I'm teaching mostly. I have a little bit of hands on clinical skills that I'm still working on and offering my services for. But it was about impact, right? More than anything, I felt like if I was going to have a lot of impact in the world of physical therapy, it wasn't going to be treating patients.

0:34:40 - (F. Scott Feil): So I went from one on one patient care to then educating the students that were going to go out and treat one on one patients. So now the impact has grown a little bit to all the students that I taught, they now go out and treat bundles of patients. So im having a bigger impact. And then when this position came open, it really did look like I was going to be able to use my EDD more, which is true and thankfully I love that. So now Im having even a bigger impact because Im teaching the teachers who teach the students who treat the patients. So its like the impact just keeps multiplying and thats really what I was after all along, and I didnt really know it until probably the last three to four years.

0:35:20 - (F. Scott Feil): Oh, this is why it's so important. My North Star is impacting as many people as I can in a field and profession that I love. And so because I have that, that North Star now and I'm really dialed in and focused on having the biggest impact I can and helping the most people I can, it becomes real clear and simple of what I have to say yes to and what I have to say no to. Sure, which is a blessing, because believe me, as high achievers, eventually you want to say yes to everything. It's hard to say no to opportunities, but at some point you're going to have to start saying no to the right ones.

0:35:54 - (Toby Brooks): Yeah. So it obviously hasn't been a perfectly flat, level path, and I think in the midst of it we might lament the fact that things don't go according to plan, but time has a way of giving us perspective on those things. So how would you say you're different or maybe even better as a result of the trials and the tribulations and the failures and the setbacks that you've encountered over your career?

0:36:17 - (F. Scott Feil): Yeah, I now know that I can accomplish just about anything I tell people, look, if I can pass a board exam after several tries, get two doctoral degrees and do it before I even knew I had ADHD, trust me, you can do it too. Believe me, if I can do it, anybody can do it. And again, it just shows me that, yeah, I can probably accomplish just about anything. It may not be smooth, it may not be easy, I may not get it right the first time, but as long as I stick to it and I stay dedicated and figure it out, I'll be fine. And looking back in hindsight, yeah, those times where I found and struggled, like, those sucked, right? Those were not fun. Those were not good times. But at this point, nothing phases me anymore.

0:37:01 - (F. Scott Feil): I literally, that iron forges, iron type statement. Like, at this point, I've been through so many stress tests and so many trials and tribulations in life that, like, I just handle them now. Like, I expect them to come and I just say, okay, how are we going to handle this one? All right, that's a new one. That sucks. How are we going to handle this one? So I'm much, much better under stress, and I can handle that because I've just been through so much at this point that I know that we'll figure it out and if not, we'll find the person who can.

0:37:31 - (F. Scott Feil): Yeah.

0:37:32 - (Toby Brooks): So a question I ask of pretty much every guest. I love music and the emotions that it can frequently represent. What song would you pick to play in the background if we were to watch a montage of your life and why?

0:37:44 - (F. Scott Feil): Oh, man, I thought about this one a lot because I always wanted to have walk up music at conferences. Like, as I'm taking the stage, I wish we could play walk up music, but it's that t pain song. All I do is win because literally, that's how I feel. Like at the end of the day, I love what I'm doing, both on my nine to five and my side business and like teaching and educating. Like, I am just blessed, man. I am living the dream.

0:38:12 - (F. Scott Feil): And it's literally. Yeah, it's hard. It's not easy to get to where I'm at, but I just keep winning, man, and I love it. And I hope that other people get to find that joy because I know there's people out there that just never find that. That's more painful to me than anything is, man. I am living the life. I love it. I love what I do. I just keep winning. So I'm just going to keep trying to win, help other people win.

0:38:36 - (Toby Brooks): Love it. How can listeners connect with you?

0:38:39 - (F. Scott Feil): Yeah, the easiest way at PT, educator on all the socials, very accessible. I love talking shop, so if you have questions on business or education, I'd be glad to chat you through some of that stuff. And then the website is just pteducator.com that is currently a little bit under construction, but it's just about ready for relaunch of all the things, the books and the swag and the courses and you name it, and then the podcast. The easiest way is probably YouTube Backslash, pteducator and then anywhere podcasts are listened to. If you just look up my name you'll see the two podcasts, healthcare education Transformation podcast and professors of profit podcast.

0:39:17 - (Toby Brooks): So excellent. I'll drop all the links in the show notes and hopefully people can check you out.

0:39:23 - (F. Scott Feil): Hi, I'm Doctor F. Scott Field and I am undone.

0:39:29 - (Toby Brooks): Thankful to Doctor feel for his time and in sharing his journey and I hope you found inspiration and encouragement for yours. For more info on today's episode, be sure to check it out on the web. Simply go to Undonepodcast.com episode to see the notes, links and images related to todays guest F. Scott Field I know there are great stories out there to be told and I am always on the lookout. So im serious. If you know someone or if you are someone who has a story that we can all be inspired by, I would really appreciate it. If youd Reach out id love to tell it.

0:40:03 - (Toby Brooks): Surf on over to Undonepodcast.com, click the contact tab in the top menu and drop drop me a note. Coming up I've got some great conversations with an incredible bunch of new guests including world class flute professor, doctor Lisa Garner, Santa, and one of my favorite people in the whole world, former Arizona Wildcat and japanese pro Football League wide receiver Brad Brinn. So stay tuned. This and more coming up on becoming undone.

0:40:48 - (Toby Brooks): Becoming Undone is a nitro hype creative production written and produced by me, Toby Brooks. For now, I'm a one person show relying on AI tools from descript, decipher and Opus clip to create, produce and deliver the best show I know how. Follow Sean, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn at becoming a nun pod and follow me at tobyjbrooks on X Instagram and TikTok. Check out my link tree at linktr ee tobyjbrooks thanks for listening.

0:41:14 - (Toby Brooks): Please subscribe and leave me a review at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time, keep getting better.