Speaker 0:01

Welcome to The Heart-Led Business Show, where compassion meets commerce and leaders lead with love. Join your host, Tom Jackobs, as he delves into the insightful conversations with visionary business leaders who defy the status quo, putting humanity first and profit second. From heartfelt strategies to inspiring stories, this podcast is your compass in the world of conscious capitalism. So buckle up and let your heart guide your business journey.

Meet Dr. Albano

Tom Jackobs 0:36

Well, welcome back to the Heart-Led Business Show, where passion and purpose take center stage. Today, we're soaring high with Dr. Joseph Albano, a former Air Force flight surgeon turned regenerative orthopedics visionary. With a mission to help people move better, feel better, and live better, he's the trailblazer behind introducing groundbreaking cell-based treatments in Utah. So join us as we dive into his journey of healing, hope, and the heart behind his thriving practice. Let's get ready to unlock some wisdom, and here's Dr. Albano. Thanks for coming on the show today, Joe. Really appreciate it.

Joe Albano 1:14

Thanks so much for having me, Tom. This is great

Tom Jackobs 1:16

I'm really excited to kind of jump into today's, you know, interview with you es- especially because, you know, we've been working together for, oh gosh, I think almost a year now or maybe longer. And I've just been watching your practice grow and kind of the iterations that you've gone through. So I'm really, really excited to jump into your story and share that with our listeners today as well.

What Does Heart-Led Business Mean?

Tom Jackobs 1:38

But first, I always ask, what's your definition of a heart-led business?

Joe Albano 1:44

Yeah, that's good. I-- You obviously ask everybody this question, listen to your podcast and hear the different answers, and mine is gonna be different from me here, too. So for me, I go back to what Jesus was saying in the Bible, like in Matthew 22, for instance. So there was, a teacher that asked him, "What is the greatest commandment in the law?" And Jesus said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. And this is the greatest and foremost commandment. The second is like it: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." So when you ask me that question, I'm, I'm thinking, "Oh man, this is, this is perfect because it ties right in with this," because Jesus is saying, "You should love the Lord your God with all your heart, and then love your neighbor as yourself, too." So for me, what it really means is do I love my neighbor as myself, and what does that look like, too? Of course, first loving God, but how do I show that to other people? Well, it's really serving them is what it is. So being a servant leader and helping people, and what I'm doing here now with my profession is helping them to, say, live better without surgeries, doing regenerative orthopedics and other things. But it's really helping them to be able to do the things they wanna be doing, play with their grandkids, go skiing, play pickleball, whatever it is they wanna do, and they're challenged physically because they've had some musculoskeletal problem, helping them with that through regenerative orthopedics. But lately then, I mean, it had-- that's where everything started, and we'll get into that too, but it transitioned into not just, "Hey, doc, can you help my shoulder or my back or my knee or my hip?" To like, "How do you-- How can you help me live a better life and optimize my life?" And then we got into bioidentical hormones and peptides and longevity and all these other things too. So but it does-- Really, it starts with the heart. Like, what does your heart say for people.

Tom Jackobs 3:57

And, if you're loving your neighbor as yourself, and if you have a, a good love for yourself and take care of yourself, you're gonna want that for your neighbor as well.

Joe Albano 4:06

Yeah.

Tom Jackobs 4:07

But where, where are you coming from as well? Yeah. That's beautiful.

Joe Albano 4:11

Yeah, you want the best for everybody. And, you know, sometimes people don't know exactly what they want, and we help them figure that out too. But a lot of times my patients are pretty specific, like, "I wanna ski by February 15th," like whatever the date is. Like, "I wanna do that." And they're,

Tom Jackobs 4:27

When the first snowfall comes.

Joe Albano 4:30

Yeah. It's getting later and later lately.

Tom Jackobs 4:33

Awesome. Yeah. So take us on your, the journey, because obviously you didn't start here. So,

Joe Albano 4:39

No.

Tom Jackobs 4:39

you're in the Air Force. Talk to us about how journey has evolved and that thought process has evolved over your

The Dream of Flying Jets

Tom Jackobs 4:46

career.

Joe Albano 4:46

Yeah, I didn't want to be a doctor. I wanted to be a fighter pilot.

Tom Jackobs 4:49

Oh, wow.

Joe Albano 4:49

I didn't want to do this.

Tom Jackobs 4:50

Okay.

Joe Albano 4:51

This is plan B, Tom.

Tom Jackobs 4:53

Wow.

Joe Albano 4:54

It really is.

Tom Jackobs 4:54

That's great.

Joe Albano 4:55

I, I wanted to be a fighter pilot. And I remember, like, we were camping, so my dad was a, a teacher at a community college in Brooklyn and grew up right outside of New York City. And so every summer we'd go camping for like six weeks. It was awesome. We'd go all over the country. It was great. I can't think of anything better. And I remember this one specific campground in upstate New York, I think it was in Monroe, and they had an old fighter jet with a slide on it, and you're just climbing all over

Tom Jackobs 5:24

Oh,

Joe Albano 5:25

it and playing

Tom Jackobs 5:25

my God.

Joe Albano 5:25

On it. And so the... I, I have to think that's where this came from. Like, "Oh, jets are cool. They're fun. I want to fly one of these." But then, I came to the realization that because I wear glasses, contacts, like you can't do that. At least back then you couldn't. And so I was crushed one day, I remember in high school, going to one of these job fairs and talking to one of the Air Force recruiters, and he, he goes, "You can't do that, kid. You got bad eyes." Like, "Oh,

Tom Jackobs 5:54

Ah. Wow.

Joe Albano 5:55

crashing my dream, dude." So then I had to figure something else out. So doctor was plan B. Like I, I love the body, love what's going on with it.

Scholarship, Service & the Air Force

Joe Albano 6:03

And then I realized, oh, wait, the Air Force and all of the military have a thing where they'll pay for your medical school, and it was a scholarship. And I said, "Oh, I'm gonna apply for that," because then I could maybe fly in jets. And,

Tom Jackobs 6:19

Yeah.

Joe Albano 6:20

I chose the Air Force because they have more jets than the other services. Like Navy was a good choice, too. You get to fly off of carriers. That would be pretty cool. Army, I actually checked out West Point 'cause I grew up not too far from there and one of my buddies went there, and I spent a day looking at that, and they have really cool swords, and it's a great campus. But you gotta be in the Army. I'm like, "I don't think I can do that." And, uh, so then I applied for the... Well, I actually initially applied for the Navy scholarship because it was a timing thing. In my senior year of college, I went away to Paris the fall semester 'cause, well, my, my first thing that I wanted to be, I wanted to be a professional hockey player, and 'cause I played hockey from when I was little. And so if you want to do that, you gotta speak French, of course. So I wanna learn French. And so I went, French in school and went to Paris, and actually it was a really good experience. The only problem was that that's... And this was back before internet and, like, cell phones and none of that stuff. So you're getting interviews when I was away in Paris. And my mom was great. She would, like, write me letters and say, "Hey, you got this interview." Like, I scheduled it in January when you get back, but all the slots were being taken up. And so I didn't get into med school till later, and you had to get into med school before you could apply for these scholarships.

Tom Jackobs 7:45

Ah.

Joe Albano 7:46

I was way late in the game, and I applied to the Navy, and I didn't get it that first year, but then the next year I applied to the Air Force, and I got that one. So,

Tom Jackobs 7:54

Awesome.

Joe Albano 7:54

here's what I remember about that.

Tom Jackobs 7:55

Probably the better one.

Joe Albano 7:56

It was, yeah, it would- they both would have been good, but Air Force I think, little biased after spending 27 years in, I think it's better, better service.

Tom Jackobs 8:04

Yeah.

Joe Albano 8:05

But

Tom Jackobs 8:06

so

Joe Albano 8:06

I remember this contract that they gave me. They said, "Oh, we're gonna do all these things for you." And the last paragraph said, "Hey, remember all the stuff we told you above? We'll do whatever we want with you." And I'm like, "Ah, do I sign this thing? Uh, you're gonna give me a chance to fly in jets. I'm signing it."

Tom Jackobs 8:26

Fine.

Joe Albano 8:26

And so signed it, and, and yeah, then so the Air Force really was great. I loved it. I made a lot of great people there, men and women. And, you know, I was interested in flying.

Korea & Flying in F-16s

Joe Albano 8:39

So, after I did my surgical internship in Ohio, I went to Korea, 'cause this was back in '91. And at that time, nothing been going on war-wise since Vietnam. It was like 20 years of peace. Like, that's unheard of nowadays, but back

Tom Jackobs 8:56

Yeah,

Joe Albano 8:56

then

Tom Jackobs 8:57

It's like

Joe Albano 8:57

we had peace.

Tom Jackobs 8:57

Other weekend, right?

Joe Albano 8:59

We're continuous, I know. But then, like, it didn't exist. And, you know, I was a young guy, wasn't married, and I'm like, "I want to go where all the action is," and that was Korea at the time. And so I applied to go there, and I got it, and they had f-16s. And,

Tom Jackobs 9:15

Oh.

Joe Albano 9:16

As, as I'm going there, Saddam invades Kuwait, and Korea quickly became not the hottest place in the world. And you remember all that with the Gulf War, and we were in Korea

Tom Jackobs 9:28

Yeah.

Joe Albano 9:28

And but it, it was a good place to go for me. I was there. I learned what it was like to be in the military. I learned what a fighter pilot was like. They taught me how to fly in F-16s. I was in the back seat. It was great. It was like the best thing ever to start out. And

Tom Jackobs 9:47

Yeah.

Joe Albano 9:48

That was so good and

Tom Jackobs 9:49

So you didn't start on a, a Cessna 152? You went right for the F16

Joe Albano 9:54

Well, actually I did start on a Cessna because knowing this plan, I'm like, "I gotta know something about flying before I show up." So I got my private pilot's license before that.

Tom Jackobs 10:05

Oh, awesome.

Joe Albano 10:06

It was interesting. So once I got in the military and medical school, they make you do something in the summertime with them, which was good 'cause you need money anyway. I was doing military stuff and it was, it was really interesting. And, so what I would do, I had money and time, I would go on the weekends when I was wherever I was, and, I would get flying lessons. And so it took me several years to do this 'cause I wasn't doing it in medical school 'cause I didn't have money or time. But in the summer I did. And then

Tom Jackobs 10:35

Nice.

Joe Albano 10:36

so I remember scrambling during my internship. I'm doing a surgical internship, and I had to get a bunch of hours to get my pilot's license before I left, 'cause I knew I wouldn't-- it would be very much more difficult if I didn't do it before I left. So I don't know when I did it, but I did it. Like, I remember the middle of June, I'm, taking my check ride and I, I got it right before I left, so it was good.

Tom Jackobs 10:58

Wow.

Joe Albano 10:59

So I did know, know something about it before. I was at least a little bit prescient with that. Like, I can't just jump into this. This is gonna be too overwhelming. And it was good.

Tom Jackobs 11:09

Right.

Joe Albano 11:10

So then I at least knew the lingo. I knew, you know, some basic rules and everything. And then, you know, going from a Cessna to an F-16, you just speed everything up a lot.

Tom Jackobs 11:20

A lot.

Joe Albano 11:21

Yeah.

Tom Jackobs 11:22

Like a thousand

Why He Stayed Beyond His Payback

Tom Jackobs 11:23

times. So you got your medical degree in the Air Force and in your contract you had to work for them for a certain number of years, but you

Joe Albano 11:30

Yeah,

Tom Jackobs 11:30

obviously not 27 years, right? But you decided to stay there.

Joe Albano 11:33

Ye I got this thing, they call it an HPSP, Health Professions Scholarship Program, still exists. And I got the three-year one, so I owed them three years active duty. And yeah, no, it was to pay for medical school. Are you kidding me

Tom Jackobs 11:47

I know, right? It's like half a million dollars there. That's awesome for three years.

Joe Albano 11:51

Then, but now it

Tom Jackobs 11:52

back then, right? Yeah.

Joe Albano 11:53

Yeah. But and, and then they gave me all these great opportunities. I mean, leadership kind of things, traveling all over the world. And back then, too, so I was in Korea and, like, again, no internet or anything like that. And, like, all I have is an internship. I don't know anything, right? And so I'm in halfway across the world. Actually, we were in the Philippines for a month at a time a couple times then. And you're lucky if you had a phone in some of these places to call somebody like, "Hey, I don't know what to do with this. What do I do with this?" And I mean, you had books, but they didn't have everything in it. And, and luckily, these guys are the healthiest guys on the planet, so they would usually get musculoskeletal injuries doing things like falling off roofs when they were drunk or something like that.

Tom Jackobs 12:39

Okay.

Joe Albano 12:40

Oh, real story, yeah.

Tom Jackobs 12:44

Oh, wow.

Joe Albano 12:44

It was really good, and I, I only owed them three years, but of course, I stayed longer and I transitioned to the reserves because... Well, for a bunch of reasons, but main one is I'm not learning any medicine. These guys are too healthy, and I was taking care of their wives and their families, too, but they're all young and healthy. So, I

Tom Jackobs 13:03

Yeah.

Joe Albano 13:04

Figured I need to go back and do more training. I... So I, I actually wound up doing my residency after that. So I just did m- my internship before that, and then finished my residency and did a fellowship and I was in the reserves. And that was better because I would just do it part-time and still learn real medicine and travel all around the world with them. I mean, I've been to so many places and I really liked that part. It was great. My wife didn't like it too much, though.

Tom Jackobs 13:31

I'm sure not.

Joe Albano 13:33

But. Yeah.

Finding His Medical Specialty

Tom Jackobs 13:34

Yeah. So at what point did you go into, like the medical system at some point after you retired from the military?

Joe Albano 13:42

Yeah. So I did my active duty payback, and I stayed like, four and a half years or so. And then,

Tom Jackobs 13:48

Okay.

Joe Albano 13:48

Then I figured out, I had to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. 'Cause actually I'm missing one part in here. I really wanted to do aerospace medicine once I was in the military. I'm like, "This is so cool. I wanna do this forever." And then what I realized was after I did my time in Korea, your ultimate job is to be a hospital administrator. I'm like, "Ooh, I don't wanna do that." So I need another plan.

Tom Jackobs 14:14

And

Joe Albano 14:15

so that's when all my buddies from medical school, like they're all attendings at that point, and I still only had my internship. So I would visit this person over there. I thought, "Oh, maybe I'll do PM&R." Like, oh, what a good lifestyle. What would be a good lifestyle? Oh, psychiatry. Talked to my psychiatry buddy. I'm like, "Ooh, nope, can't do that." Um,

Tom Jackobs 14:36

Okay.

Joe Albano 14:37

Anyway I settled on family practice and doing a fellowship in sports. And,

Tom Jackobs 14:41

Okay.

Joe Albano 14:43

So it was... yeah, that was a transition time figuring out what I wanted to be when I grew up.

Tom Jackobs 14:48

So did you work in a hospital system or a private practice at some point?

Joe Albano 14:53

So yeah. Then what happened was, so I went back, did-- So I had an internship, didn't wanna do that again. I started looking all over the country for family practice residencies, mostly out west 'cause I was here in Utah then, and I liked it, so wanted to stick around out here. And you get to do more than you would in New York City area, kind of where I grew up. I kind of want to do that. And, I was fortunate enough to get a second-year spot here at the University of Utah, so like, oh, good, I don't have to do my internship again. Which was great. And then I did a fellowship at Michigan State. We went there and then came back here to Utah After that, so what, what happened was I wound up... Actually, let me go

Lessons From Rural Idaho

Joe Albano 15:34

back one step. So when I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up, I wound up going to middle-of-nowhere Idaho, Salmon, Idaho. It's three hours from the nearest town. 'cause one of my buddies in the Air Force, he worked up there, and he was going to Turkey. He was getting deployed, and they only had three docs there, and one of them got sick, and he was leaving, like left one guy. And he knew

Tom Jackobs 15:57

Wow.

Joe Albano 15:58

I didn't have anything to do right then. He's like, "Hey, you wanna do it?" I'm like, "Sure, I'll go there. I don't... What else am I gonna do?" It was the best thing ever. So I was up there for a few months, and then I would go back during my residency and work on the weekends. I learned more up there in the middle of nowhere Idaho medically than I did in my entire residency. It was so good. I mean, people up there, they're pretty tough. I mean, you think about, you know

Tom Jackobs 16:25

Yeah.

Joe Albano 16:26

rural America and mountains. Like, that's what they were, a lot of ranchers, and they're doing subsistence hunting and things like that. They're not coming in because they got a snotty nose.

When You’re the Doctor on Call

Tom Jackobs 16:37

Right.

Joe Albano 16:37

Like my first night up there, I remember, I'm, I just have an internship. I don't know anything. Like, and I'm, back then, I mean, you didn't have, like, all these, like, code charts on the wall if somebody gets an MRI and, you know, their heart stops, all the things you gotta do, all the steps. Like, no, you had to memorize that. So I had these little cards, and I was driving up there, and it's like a five-hour drive, and I'm memorizing it as I go. And I used it that night. Somebody codes on me, me and this one nurse, and we're just working on them. And, you know, thank God they, they lived, and we were able to get them out of there. And this is the wintertime. And the winters in Idaho in the middle of nowhere, they could be pretty bad, and you could not have abilities to transport them out of there. And oh yeah, that was... It was such a great place. And oh wait, too, so I'd go up there during my residency, and I'd work for a weekend, you know, working 24 hours at a time. And, I'd

Tom Jackobs 17:37

Brutal.

Joe Albano 17:37

make more money in a weekend than I did in my whole month of my residency. It's not that they paid me a lot. It's that I got paid a little in the residency.

Tom Jackobs 17:46

You're right.

Joe Albano 17:47

and I learned

A Few Wild West Stories

Joe Albano 17:48

more.

Tom Jackobs 17:48

Yeah.

Joe Albano 17:48

Like, I have so many stories

Tom Jackobs 17:49

Yeah.

Joe Albano 17:49

From that, like, like what, what I saw up there. Like, here's another for instance of what I saw up there was, uh- Like this is, it was kind of the Wild West. There's this one bar in Salmon, it's called the Owl Bar. So they have this big wood owl outside it, and there's all these arrows stuck in it. Like, so what people do is they go across the street and they just shoot arrows into this thing. They had to see one guy, they, they called me up and said, "Hey, you gotta go see this guy, he's in jail." I'm like, "Okay, well, what's going on with him?" "Uh, he just shot a guy in Main Street and killed him." Like, "Okay, I'll go see him." And, and he was obviously devastated, this poor guy. I mean, he killed a guy. They had a fight and came out, and that was it. That's the kind of place this was. And is. I don't think it's that like that anymore, though. So I'm, I'm really answering your question.

Tom Jackobs 18:42

No, but good stories. At, at what point did you decide, you know, the system is not working for me, I need to go out on my own and do something a little bit differently?

Joe Albano 18:54

Yeah. So that's the background of all this.

When the Medical System Stops Making Sense

Joe Albano 18:56

Learned this and then I'm in Salt Lake City and it's a city, right? So I'm not doing those kind of things down here. And, um, it's, you know, it's... I'm gonna beat on our sick medical system here for a minute.

Tom Jackobs 19:09

Sure.

Joe Albano 19:10

But I, I didn't know this at first. I knew it was possible that our medical system might not have the best interest of the patients. There might be some ulterior motives of money, for instance, right? I knew this possible. Shocking that it's possible, but I didn't really think it was happening until like, I mean, I'd see over and over again, uh, just different things and how that money was a factor here, and I didn't like that. And I'm doing things like, for instance, steroid injections on everybody, and nobody's getting better doing this. And oh, wait, we're damaging the cartilage in there every time you do this, and it's leading to knee replacement or hip replacement. And like, this is not good. There's gotta be a better way. And then in 2006, Alan Mishra had a paper come out, um, on PRP and tennis elbow. And I saw that one. I'm like, "Oh my goodness, this is so cool. You can actually help people and heal them. You don't have to just give them steroids and break the tendon down in tennis elbow." And so nobody was teaching any of this. I had finished my fellowship by this point, still in the Air Force doing reserve stuff.

The Ultrasound Breakthrough

Joe Albano 20:28

But medically, I'm like, "I need to learn this. How do I learn this?" And then I started to learn ultrasound. So guy the name of Tom Clark, who is a chiropractor, really smart guy, knows tons about ultrasound and anatomy, I wound up getting hooked up with him. This one's a funny story too. So we were, uh, me and one of my colleagues, we were at a conference. We, um, we were in an ACSM conference, American College of Sports Medicine conference, and you know, these things, they have like lots of booths with the vendors and stuff. And this is a huge conference. There's like hundreds of vendors. And he drags me over to this one, uh, booth and says, "Oh, this is so cool. You gotta come over here." I'm like, "All right, Bob, what are we looking at?" And, uh, so it was an ultrasound machine. And at this point in time, ultrasound machines, they were like $300,000 and only in hospital departments, and like you couldn't afford one of these. But it was 25,000, I remember that. And it's kinda like computers, like the first generation of computers way back when. Like it's not so good, but it's the best thing you ever had. And that was this too. Like, like I think I can see something. But, uh, I-- we saw that, and we petitioned our group to buy this thing, and they said no. And I wound up leaving that group. This is one of the reasons why too, to go join an orthopedic group, so I could buy one of these, and I had to give them my credit card. Oh, wait, I had to give them three credit cards to get that,

Tom Jackobs 22:00

Right,

Joe Albano 22:01

I hired Tom to come and teach me, 'cause that's how you learned it back then. He would come to my office like multiple times. We'd go over things. So took me a good year to really get comfortable learning things about ultrasound. So then I go, "Oh my goodness, I can see stuff. I can diagnose things." And then PRP was coming

Discovering PRP & Stem Cell Treatments

Joe Albano 22:20

out at that time. I'm like, "I need to learn this." So through Tom, he hooked me up with, um, some guys who were teaching a course on this, so Mike Scarpone and Dave Crane. And, uh, this was in St. Louis, so I went there, and there were two students, me and another person. And, uh, we learned this, and it was so cool. So I learned how to do PRP then. That was 2007. And then quickly after that, learned how to do fat, so fat as stem cells. It works better. Learned that from uh, plastic surgeon up in Montana, and he taught us this. And then learned bone marrow right after that, and started doing all of that in 2007. And then the four of us wound up teaching conferences on this, it just was a great tool to, help people, to heal them of their, like, rotator cuff tears, for instance. Like, you could actually heal it. I was a good example of that one. I, I tore my rotator cuff. Oh boy, I remember the day it, it happened, 'cause I was in medical school and, and I was a, I was a... previously a quarterback and a pitcher and threw the javelin, so I could huck stuff. And we were just messing around one day, and I threw a football as hard as I could without warming up, which was not a good plan.

Tom Jackobs 23:35

Yeah.

Joe Albano 23:36

"Oh, that didn't feel good." And then like a few months later, I was playing rugby, and it's my shoulder subluxed. It popped out and back in. And then the next year I was playing hockey and tore my biceps tendon, and that is... We didn't have MRIs then either, so, um, anyway, it hurt, it hurt, it hurt. So I, I wound up getting a PRP on it, uh, at this conference. And back then, like, you weren't doing nerve blocks or any of this stuff, and I had calcifications, and we beat it up with an 18-gauge needle, and it was so painful that night. I'm sitting in a hotel room. Like I can't sleep. I got the sweats, and it was so bad. Um, I learned my lesson on that one and, uh... But anyway, it healed after doing that. My shoulder is good. This is awesome. So I, I learned

Pushing Back Against the Orthopedic System

Joe Albano 24:28

about that. Like, this can work so well, and I tried doing that in my practice. I was with some orthopedic guys at the time. There was a bunch of us in there, and some of the orthopedic guys were great. They were just supportive. Some were not so much. And, uh, then I started to ask to do fat and bone marrow, and when I got to the bone marrow part, like one of the guys literally, this is what he said, Tom, he's like, I'm not gonna have your patients down the hall from mine screaming in pain because you're doing that stuff on them. Not gonna happen." Have you heard of this thing called anesthesia? Wait, no, you're an orthopedic guy." Sorry, my orthopedic buddies.

Tom Jackobs 25:07

That's right?

Joe Albano 25:08

There's a thing called anesthesia. You can use it.

Tom Jackobs 25:11

Yeah, right.

Joe Albano 25:12

So

Tom Jackobs 25:13

they

Joe Albano 25:13

wouldn't let me do it there, so I left that place, joined another group, still with orthopedic guys, and I was able to do it there. And the guys were great, and, and the hospital system was good, too, but they just didn't get it, 'cause I'm a square peg in a round hole. You know, I'm not family practice. I'm an or- not an orthopedic surgeons. I don't bring in mill- millions of dollars in surgery, so they don't get me. And I weren't up having to leave there and go in private practice. But I tried that being in the reserves, and that didn't work 'cause I left for months to go away and deploy, and that's kind of a bad business model. And I knew it was gonna be, but it was even worse than I thought. Like, ooh, I can't do this again. That was pretty painful. And then, um, I got hired on by this group, and I deployed again, and they were actually really good. They, they covered the difference in my salary from, uh, what I would normally make to what I would make less in

Tom Jackobs 26:09

Oh wow

Joe Albano 26:09

the military. So they were good and supportive that way, but still, you know, you're based on your production, and your production goes down when you leave for months at a time.

Tom Jackobs 26:20

Exactly.

Taking the Leap Into Private Practice

Joe Albano 26:22

I eventually, after I retired from the reserves after 27 years, like then I could finally open my own practice, that was in 2017 is when I did that. And that's, yeah, there's tribulations.

Tom Jackobs 26:37

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So how did that feel having, making that transition and finally having your own say with your own practice?

Joe Albano 26:46

Good and bad, right? So good is like, "Hey, I wanna go buy a $35,000 ultrasound machine. I don't have to ask anybody, and it's not gonna take four years." Like I can just go do it. But oh, wait, I gotta pay for it.

Tom Jackobs 27:01

And then, yeah.

Joe Albano 27:02

Figure it out though, right? Um, yeah, you gotta make payroll, and that's always a struggle, right? You know.

Tom Jackobs 27:08

Yeah.

Joe Albano 27:09

People tend to wanna get paid for the work they're doing, and you gotta do it. And if you don't have the money to pay you, well, then you don't get paid and they do.

Tom Jackobs 27:17

That's a really good segue, actually, into, into this piece.

Can You Be Heart-Led & Profitable?

Tom Jackobs 27:21

But how do you balance then making a profit, because businesses need to make a profit no matter what, but also being heart-led at the same time?

Joe Albano 27:32

Yeah, no, the-- and I've struggled with that one. It's a great question, 'cause as doctors, right, we wanna help people. That's why you go into this field, or should be why, and most everybody does. 'Cause if you're in it to make a lot of money, you should do something different. You should go into the finance world or be an attorney or something like that. Um, those guys do well. I know, I have friends that-- And-- But if y-you're wanting to really help people and have a heart to help them and serve them, being in medicine is a good place to be. But yeah, you're right, you have to be able to pay everybody, and that is hard. So I definitely struggled with this because I think I can help everybody. Everybody doesn't wanna be helped, though. It took me a long time to learn that. And, um, after a while I figured it out, yeah, okay. And I, I still struggle with that 'cause whenever I see somebody come into my office, I'm like, "Oh, I can help them even though these other five people didn't." like, 'cause I'll do it differently, and it doesn't always work that way. Um, but then you struggle with, okay,

Tom Jackobs 28:41

I

Joe Albano 28:41

have to pay my people, like what should I charge for these things? So in the beginning, right, not charging a lot of money 'cause I wanna help everybody, but I can't pay my bills. If you wanna do this well, you-- from the office standpoint, it, it's really hard to have me and just one staff person to make everything work well and to serve them well. 'Cause what I wanna do is want it to be an experience. I definitely don't want it to be, hey, come into the doctor's office and spend seven minutes with them like the average doctor does in the traditional sick medicine system. And you can't learn anything in seven minutes, especially when you start talking about regenerative orthopedics and bioidentical hormones and other things like this. Like, you can't do it in seven minutes, so it takes a lot longer, that costs more money. If you wanna reach more people, right, doing-- I'm working with you on webinars and seminars and things like that. If you wanna reach more people that way, that costs money, so you have to be able to pay for that. And I remember, well, one of the times I was driving, um, on a long vacation trip or something, and I was listening to, um, something and, and it was addressing this topic exactly. And it's the gist of it was that, I mean, if you really wanna take care of people, I mean, you gotta take care of yourself first and be able to... If you're not in business, you can't help anybody. So I came to the conclusion that, yeah, I, I need to raise my prices for this, and I also don't wanna compete with the guy down the street that started doing PRP three weeks ago. Like, there's something valuable about my almost 20 years of experience doing this stuff, and I know what it works for, I know what it doesn't work for. I have multiple tools in my, as one of my patients says, my Batman toolkit. Like, you can whip out the different tools if you want, and not everybody needs the hammer. Sometimes they need a screwdriver, right? You can use different things. And it's-- it take me a long time to come to the conclusion that, yeah, I, I'm valuable. I need to, charge more money, but give people value for that, right? I'm not just charging money because like, oh yeah, I need to pay for my boat that I don't have one anyway. So no, it's not that. But I do want an airplane, that I don't have. How best can I serve people? I wanna give them a great experience. We really try and give people a 10-star experience when they come in, hire staff appropriately for that. And I was just down at a conference in Orlando and was on a Disney property and, oh my goodness, those people absolutely get it. Yeah, that's, that's the way I wanna treat people, and we do, and keep hiring people for that because it's not a seven-minute visit. You come in and it's, it's life-changing. It really is in lots of ways.

Tom Jackobs 31:55

Yeah. And it, and it sounds like that, like that, that really fills your cup as well. So it's a very mutual... You're, you're helping people, it feels good to help them, and you're making a good living doing it. And so that enables you to help more people at the same time.

Joe Albano 32:12

Yeah. That, that is exactly it. That's what it comes down to. And, you know, if somebody really doesn't have any money, I haven't gotten to this point yet, but I know other places do this, so they have different programs where they'll pay for it. They'll have all they are calling it scholarship program or something like that. But if, you know, other people want to contribute to it or we do, or all of the above, how do you actually help somebody who can't afford this? So I'd love to get to that point at some, sometime.

Tom Jackobs 32:46

Yeah. No, that's, that's awesome. And, and, um, just your journey through your career is just absolutely fascinating too, and I can't believe the time has gone so quickly.

Dr. Albano’s Advice for Practitioners

Tom Jackobs 32:57

But, um, you know, what, what... Before we wrap up here, but what one piece of advice would you give to another practitioner that might be struggling with being in the system and, and wanting to get out of the system, um, but just is scared to do it? What, what type of advice would you give them?

Joe Albano 33:18

Yeah, I think what I'd say to them is don't let anybody tell you you can't do it. Do not listen to them. You can do it. And it's not gonna be easy, but you can absolutely do it. And if you believe in yourself and what you're doing and that you're, you have the right motivation, right? You're heart-led trying to serve people, you're gonna be able to do it, and you'll figure out what works and what doesn't work. And, you know, I've been fortunate to work with you, and you've helped me with this, and you'll find other people along the way too. But don't, don't let them tell you you can't. Pull the arrows out of your back. That's okay, they're gonna heal and that's happened too, right? And they're gonna tell you you can't do it, you're stupid, you're an idiot. Don't... No, don't listen to them. You can do this. It's gonna be a great thing for the patients. You're not constricted with these sick medicine rules. It's pretty freeing because now you can do what's the right thing for the patient no matter what. You don't have to worry about.

Tom Jackobs 34:19

What a concept, right? Yeah.

Joe Albano 34:22

What a concept. 18-year-old answering the phone telling you you can't do something. Like, no, you can do it.

Tom Jackobs 34:28

Which code do we put to this so that we actually can do something? Yeah, it's crazy.

Joe Albano 34:32

It's bad.

Tom Jackobs 34:33

Yeah.

Contact and Wrap Up

Tom Jackobs 34:34

Well, Joe, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom, sharing your stories with us today. I certainly appreciate it, and I know our listeners, uh, really appreciate it as well. But tell us, how can we get, uh, how can our listeners get ahold of you and learn more about the Albano Clinic?

Joe Albano 34:50

Yeah. And again, thanks Tom, so much for having me on here. You know, we've had relationship for a year or so now, and I appreciate all the help you've given me. So yeah, if you wanna get in touch with us, you can just go to our website, albanoclinic.com. That's A-L-B as in bravo, A-N-O clinic.com or our phone number is 385-220-9009. And we have webinars and seminars coming up all the time here, so different topics and, uh, you can sign up for one of those as well if you wanna find out more information or just give us a call.

Tom Jackobs 35:27

Awesome. Well, we'll put all that down into the show notes. Um, but again, thanks so much for coming onto the show today and, uh, I really appreciate you.

Joe Albano 35:36

Thanks so much for having me, Tom.

Tom Jackobs 35:37

Absolutely. And thank you show listeners for watching the show today. We do appreciate you as well. So make sure you're checking out everything that, uh, Joe's doing, and we're gonna provide all that down to the show notes, so it makes it very easy to go ahead and click and check out one of his webinars. Especially the one on longevity, right? That one is, uh, really a killer one, I think. Um, so, uh, it really is. No, I really like that one. Uh, and it's getting better each time that it happens as well. And really great information. So, uh, check all that out. Um, and while you're down there, if you don't mind sharing the show with a friend or a family member that could use that information that, uh, that we shared on today's show, that really helps spread the word about heart-led businesses, and that it, it is okay to make money and have heart in doing it as well. So until next time, lead with your heart.

Speaker 2 36:30

You've been listening to The Heart-Led Business Show, hosted by Tom Jackobs. Join us next time for another inspiring journey into the heart of business.