Latest / The Heart-Led Business Show / From Flight Surgeon to Freedom with Dr. Joseph Albano

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From Flight Surgeon to Freedom with Dr. Joseph Albano · The Heart-Led Business Show

• 0:01
  Speaker: Welcome to The Heart-Led Business Show, where compassion meets commerce and leaders lead with love.
• 0:09
  Speaker: 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.
• 0:20
  Speaker: From heartfelt strategies to inspiring stories, this podcast is your compass in the world of conscious capitalism.
• 0:29
  Speaker: So buckle up and let your heart guide your business journey.
• 0:36
  Tom Jackobs: Well, welcome back to the Heart-Led Business Show, where passion and purpose take center stage.
• 0:42
  Tom Jackobs: Today, we're soaring high with Dr.
• 0:44
  Tom Jackobs: Joseph Albano, a former Air Force flight surgeon turned regenerative orthopedics visionary.
• 0:51
  Tom Jackobs: 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.
• 1:01
  Tom Jackobs: So join us as we dive into his journey of healing, hope, and the heart behind his thriving practice.
• 1:07
  Tom Jackobs: Let's get ready to unlock some wisdom, and here's Dr.
• 1:10
  Tom Jackobs: Albano.
• 1:11
  Tom Jackobs: Thanks for coming on the show today, Joe.
• 1:13
  Tom Jackobs: Really appreciate it.
• 1:14
  Joe Albano: Thanks so much for having me, Tom.
• 1:15
  Joe Albano: This is great
• 1:16
  Tom Jackobs: 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.
• 1:28
  Tom Jackobs: And I've just been watching your practice grow and kind of the iterations that you've gone through.
• 1:32
  Tom Jackobs: So I'm really, really excited to jump into your story and share that with our listeners today as well.
• 1:38
  Tom Jackobs: But first, I always ask, what's your definition of a heart-led business?
• 1:44
  Joe Albano: Yeah, that's good.
• 1:45
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 1:53
  Joe Albano: So for me, I go back to what Jesus was saying in the Bible, like in Matthew 22, for instance.
• 2:04
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 2:16
  Joe Albano: And this is the greatest and foremost commandment.
• 2:18
  Joe Albano: 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?
• 2:44
  Joe Albano: Of course, first loving God, but how do I show that to other people?
• 2:48
  Joe Albano: Well, it's really serving them is what it is.
• 2:52
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 3:07
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 3:27
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 3:51
  Joe Albano: So but it does-- Really, it starts with the heart.
• 3:54
  Joe Albano: Like, what does your heart say for people.
• 3:57
  Tom Jackobs: 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.
• 4:06
  Joe Albano: Yeah.
• 4:07
  Tom Jackobs: But where, where are you coming from as well?
• 4:09
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 4:09
  Tom Jackobs: That's beautiful.
• 4:11
  Joe Albano: Yeah, you want the best for everybody.
• 4:13
  Joe Albano: And, you know, sometimes people don't know exactly what they want, and we help them figure that out too.
• 4:18
  Joe Albano: But a lot of times my patients are pretty specific, like,"I wanna ski by February 15th," like whatever the date is.
• 4:25
  Joe Albano: Like,"I wanna do that." And they're,
• 4:27
  Tom Jackobs: When the first snowfall comes.
• 4:30
  Joe Albano: Yeah.
• 4:31
  Joe Albano: It's getting later and later lately.
• 4:33
  Tom Jackobs: Awesome.
• 4:33
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 4:33
  Tom Jackobs: So take us on your, the journey, because obviously you didn't start here.
• 4:38
  Tom Jackobs: So,
• 4:39
  Joe Albano: No.
• 4:39
  Tom Jackobs: you're in the Air Force.
• 4:40
  Tom Jackobs: Talk to us about how journey has evolved and that thought process has evolved over your career.
• 4:46
  Joe Albano: Yeah, I didn't want to be a doctor.
• 4:48
  Joe Albano: I wanted to be a fighter pilot.
• 4:49
  Tom Jackobs: Oh, wow.
• 4:49
  Joe Albano: I didn't want to do this.
• 4:50
  Tom Jackobs: Okay.
• 4:51
  Joe Albano: This is plan B, Tom.
• 4:53
  Tom Jackobs: Wow.
• 4:54
  Joe Albano: It really is.
• 4:54
  Tom Jackobs: That's great.
• 4:55
  Joe Albano: I, I wanted to be a fighter pilot.
• 4:56
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 5:06
  Joe Albano: And so every summer we'd go camping for like six weeks.
• 5:09
  Joe Albano: It was awesome.
• 5:10
  Joe Albano: We'd go all over the country.
• 5:11
  Joe Albano: It was great.
• 5:13
  Joe Albano: I can't think of anything better.
• 5:14
  Joe Albano: 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
• 5:24
  Tom Jackobs: Oh,
• 5:25
  Joe Albano: it and playing
• 5:25
  Tom Jackobs: my God.
• 5:25
  Joe Albano: On it.
• 5:26
  Joe Albano: And so the...
• 5:26
  Joe Albano: I, I have to think that's where this came from.
• 5:29
  Joe Albano: Like,"Oh, jets are cool.
• 5:30
  Joe Albano: They're fun.
• 5:31
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 5:40
  Joe Albano: At least back then you couldn't.
• 5:41
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 5:52
  Joe Albano: You got bad eyes." Like,"Oh,
• 5:54
  Tom Jackobs: Ah.
• 5:55
  Tom Jackobs: Wow.
• 5:55
  Joe Albano: crashing my dream, dude." So then I had to figure something else out.
• 5:59
  Joe Albano: So doctor was plan B.
• 6:00
  Joe Albano: Like I, I love the body, love what's going on with it.
• 6:03
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 6:12
  Joe Albano: And I said,"Oh, I'm gonna apply for that," because then I could maybe fly in jets.
• 6:18
  Joe Albano: And,
• 6:19
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 6:20
  Joe Albano: I chose the Air Force because they have more jets than the other services.
• 6:23
  Joe Albano: Like Navy was a good choice, too.
• 6:25
  Joe Albano: You get to fly off of carriers.
• 6:27
  Joe Albano: That would be pretty cool.
• 6:29
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 6:40
  Joe Albano: But you gotta be in the Army.
• 6:41
  Joe Albano: I'm like,"I don't think I can do that." And, uh, so then I applied for the...
• 6:47
  Joe Albano: Well, I actually initially applied for the Navy scholarship because it was a timing thing.
• 6:53
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 7:05
  Joe Albano: And so if you want to do that, you gotta speak French, of course.
• 7:08
  Joe Albano: So I wanna learn French.
• 7:10
  Joe Albano: And so I went, French in school and went to Paris, and actually it was a really good experience.
• 7:17
  Joe Albano: The only problem was that that's...
• 7:18
  Joe Albano: And this was back before internet and, like, cell phones and none of that stuff.
• 7:22
  Joe Albano: So you're getting interviews when I was away in Paris.
• 7:27
  Joe Albano: And my mom was great.
• 7:29
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 7:37
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 7:45
  Tom Jackobs: Ah.
• 7:46
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 7:53
  Joe Albano: So,
• 7:54
  Tom Jackobs: Awesome.
• 7:54
  Joe Albano: here's what I remember about that.
• 7:55
  Tom Jackobs: Probably the better one.
• 7:56
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 8:04
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 8:05
  Joe Albano: But
• 8:06
  Tom Jackobs: so
• 8:06
  Joe Albano: I remember this contract that they gave me.
• 8:09
  Joe Albano: 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?
• 8:18
  Joe Albano: We'll do whatever we want with you." And I'm like,"Ah, do I sign this thing?
• 8:22
  Joe Albano: Uh, you're gonna give me a chance to fly in jets.
• 8:25
  Joe Albano: I'm signing it."
• 8:26
  Tom Jackobs: Fine.
• 8:26
  Joe Albano: And so signed it, and, and yeah, then so the Air Force really was great.
• 8:32
  Joe Albano: I loved it.
• 8:33
  Joe Albano: I made a lot of great people there, men and women.
• 8:36
  Joe Albano: And, you know, I was interested in flying.
• 8:39
  Joe Albano: So, after I did my surgical internship in Ohio, I went to Korea,'cause this was back in'91.
• 8:46
  Joe Albano: And at that time, nothing been going on war-wise since Vietnam.
• 8:52
  Joe Albano: It was like 20 years of peace.
• 8:54
  Joe Albano: Like, that's unheard of nowadays, but back
• 8:56
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah,
• 8:56
  Joe Albano: then
• 8:57
  Tom Jackobs: It's like
• 8:57
  Joe Albano: we had peace.
• 8:57
  Tom Jackobs: Other weekend, right?
• 8:59
  Joe Albano: We're continuous, I know.
• 9:01
  Joe Albano: But then, like, it didn't exist.
• 9:03
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 9:09
  Joe Albano: And so I applied to go there, and I got it, and they had f-16s.
• 9:14
  Joe Albano: And,
• 9:15
  Tom Jackobs: Oh.
• 9:16
  Joe Albano: As, as I'm going there, Saddam invades Kuwait, and Korea quickly became not the hottest place in the world.
• 9:25
  Joe Albano: And you remember all that with the Gulf War, and we were in Korea
• 9:28
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 9:28
  Joe Albano: And but it, it was a good place to go for me.
• 9:31
  Joe Albano: I was there.
• 9:32
  Joe Albano: I learned what it was like to be in the military.
• 9:35
  Joe Albano: I learned what a fighter pilot was like.
• 9:38
  Joe Albano: They taught me how to fly in F-16s.
• 9:40
  Joe Albano: I was in the back seat.
• 9:42
  Joe Albano: It was great.
• 9:43
  Joe Albano: It was like the best thing ever to start out.
• 9:46
  Joe Albano: And
• 9:47
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 9:48
  Joe Albano: That was so good and
• 9:49
  Tom Jackobs: So you didn't start on a, a Cessna 152?
• 9:52
  Tom Jackobs: You went right for the F16
• 9:54
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 10:05
  Tom Jackobs: Oh, awesome.
• 10:06
  Joe Albano: It was interesting.
• 10:07
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 10:15
  Joe Albano: I was doing military stuff and it was, it was really interesting.
• 10:18
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 10:27
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 10:32
  Joe Albano: But in the summer I did.
• 10:34
  Joe Albano: And then
• 10:35
  Tom Jackobs: Nice.
• 10:36
  Joe Albano: so I remember scrambling during my internship.
• 10:38
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 10:50
  Joe Albano: So I don't know when I did it, but I did it.
• 10:52
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 10:58
  Tom Jackobs: Wow.
• 10:59
  Joe Albano: So I did know, know something about it before.
• 11:01
  Joe Albano: I was at least a little bit prescient with that.
• 11:05
  Joe Albano: Like, I can't just jump into this.
• 11:07
  Joe Albano: This is gonna be too overwhelming.
• 11:09
  Joe Albano: And it was good.
• 11:09
  Tom Jackobs: Right.
• 11:10
  Joe Albano: So then I at least knew the lingo.
• 11:11
  Joe Albano: I knew, you know, some basic rules and everything.
• 11:14
  Joe Albano: And then, you know, going from a Cessna to an F-16, you just speed everything up a lot.
• 11:20
  Tom Jackobs: A lot.
• 11:21
  Joe Albano: Yeah.
• 11:22
  Tom Jackobs: Like a thousand times.
• 11:23
  Tom Jackobs: 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
• 11:30
  Joe Albano: Yeah,
• 11:30
  Tom Jackobs: obviously not 27 years, right?
• 11:32
  Tom Jackobs: But you decided to stay there.
• 11:33
  Joe Albano: Ye I got this thing, they call it an HPSP, Health Professions Scholarship Program, still exists.
• 11:39
  Joe Albano: And I got the three-year one, so I owed them three years active duty.
• 11:43
  Joe Albano: And yeah, no, it was to pay for medical school.
• 11:47
  Joe Albano: Are you kidding me
• 11:47
  Tom Jackobs: I know, right?
• 11:48
  Tom Jackobs: It's like half a million dollars there.
• 11:50
  Tom Jackobs: That's awesome for three years.
• 11:51
  Joe Albano: Then, but now it
• 11:52
  Tom Jackobs: back then, right?
• 11:53
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 11:53
  Joe Albano: Yeah.
• 11:54
  Joe Albano: But and, and then they gave me all these great opportunities.
• 11:56
  Joe Albano: I mean, leadership kind of things, traveling all over the world.
• 12:00
  Joe Albano: And back then, too, so I was in Korea and, like, again, no internet or anything like that.
• 12:06
  Joe Albano: And, like, all I have is an internship.
• 12:08
  Joe Albano: I don't know anything, right?
• 12:10
  Joe Albano: And so I'm in halfway across the world.
• 12:12
  Joe Albano: Actually, we were in the Philippines for a month at a time a couple times then.
• 12:17
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 12:23
  Joe Albano: What do I do with this?" And I mean, you had books, but they didn't have everything in it.
• 12:28
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 12:39
  Tom Jackobs: Okay.
• 12:40
  Joe Albano: Oh, real story, yeah.
• 12:44
  Tom Jackobs: Oh, wow.
• 12:44
  Joe Albano: 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...
• 12:52
  Joe Albano: Well, for a bunch of reasons, but main one is I'm not learning any medicine.
• 12:56
  Joe Albano: These guys are too healthy, and I was taking care of their wives and their families, too, but they're all young and healthy.
• 13:03
  Joe Albano: So, I
• 13:03
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 13:04
  Joe Albano: Figured I need to go back and do more training.
• 13:07
  Joe Albano: I...
• 13:07
  Joe Albano: So I, I actually wound up doing my residency after that.
• 13:11
  Joe Albano: So I just did m- my internship before that, and then finished my residency and did a fellowship and I was in the reserves.
• 13:17
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 13:25
  Joe Albano: I mean, I've been to so many places and I really liked that part.
• 13:29
  Joe Albano: It was great.
• 13:29
  Joe Albano: My wife didn't like it too much, though.
• 13:31
  Tom Jackobs: I'm sure not.
• 13:33
  Joe Albano: But.
• 13:33
  Joe Albano: Yeah.
• 13:34
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 13:34
  Tom Jackobs: So at what point did you go into, like the medical system at some point after you retired from the military?
• 13:42
  Joe Albano: Yeah.
• 13:42
  Joe Albano: So I did my active duty payback, and I stayed like, four and a half years or so.
• 13:47
  Joe Albano: And then,
• 13:48
  Tom Jackobs: Okay.
• 13:48
  Joe Albano: Then I figured out, I had to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up.
• 13:52
  Joe Albano: 'Cause actually I'm missing one part in here.
• 13:54
  Joe Albano: I really wanted to do aerospace medicine once I was in the military.
• 13:58
  Joe Albano: I'm like,"This is so cool.
• 13:59
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 14:09
  Joe Albano: I'm like,"Ooh, I don't wanna do that." So I need another plan.
• 14:14
  Tom Jackobs: And
• 14:15
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 14:23
  Joe Albano: So I would visit this person over there.
• 14:26
  Joe Albano: I thought,"Oh, maybe I'll do PM&R." Like, oh, what a good lifestyle.
• 14:29
  Joe Albano: What would be a good lifestyle?
• 14:31
  Joe Albano: Oh, psychiatry.
• 14:32
  Joe Albano: Talked to my psychiatry buddy.
• 14:34
  Joe Albano: I'm like,"Ooh, nope, can't do that." Um,
• 14:36
  Tom Jackobs: Okay.
• 14:37
  Joe Albano: Anyway I settled on family practice and doing a fellowship in sports.
• 14:41
  Joe Albano: And,
• 14:41
  Tom Jackobs: Okay.
• 14:43
  Joe Albano: So it was...
• 14:43
  Joe Albano: yeah, that was a transition time figuring out what I wanted to be when I grew up.
• 14:48
  Tom Jackobs: So did you work in a hospital system or a private practice at some point?
• 14:53
  Joe Albano: So yeah.
• 14:53
  Joe Albano: Then what happened was, so I went back, did-- So I had an internship, didn't wanna do that again.
• 14:59
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 15:08
  Joe Albano: And you get to do more than you would in New York City area, kind of where I grew up.
• 15:11
  Joe Albano: I kind of want to do that.
• 15:13
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 15:20
  Joe Albano: Which was great.
• 15:22
  Joe Albano: And then I did a fellowship at Michigan State.
• 15:25
  Joe Albano: We went there and then came back here to Utah After that, so what, what happened was I wound up...
• 15:33
  Joe Albano: Actually, let me go back one step.
• 15:34
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 15:43
  Joe Albano: It's three hours from the nearest town.
• 15:46
  Joe Albano: 'cause one of my buddies in the Air Force, he worked up there, and he was going to Turkey.
• 15:51
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 15:57
  Joe Albano: And he knew
• 15:57
  Tom Jackobs: Wow.
• 15:58
  Joe Albano: I didn't have anything to do right then.
• 15:59
  Joe Albano: He's like,"Hey, you wanna do it?" I'm like,"Sure, I'll go there.
• 16:01
  Joe Albano: I don't...
• 16:02
  Joe Albano: What else am I gonna do?" It was the best thing ever.
• 16:05
  Joe Albano: So I was up there for a few months, and then I would go back during my residency and work on the weekends.
• 16:11
  Joe Albano: I learned more up there in the middle of nowhere Idaho medically than I did in my entire residency.
• 16:19
  Joe Albano: It was so good.
• 16:20
  Joe Albano: I mean, people up there, they're pretty tough.
• 16:23
  Joe Albano: I mean, you think about, you know
• 16:25
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 16:26
  Joe Albano: rural America and mountains.
• 16:28
  Joe Albano: Like, that's what they were, a lot of ranchers, and they're doing subsistence hunting and things like that.
• 16:34
  Joe Albano: They're not coming in because they got a snotty nose.
• 16:37
  Tom Jackobs: Right.
• 16:37
  Joe Albano: Like my first night up there, I remember, I'm, I just have an internship.
• 16:41
  Joe Albano: I don't know anything.
• 16:43
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 16:54
  Joe Albano: Like, no, you had to memorize that.
• 16:56
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 17:01
  Joe Albano: And I used it that night.
• 17:04
  Joe Albano: Somebody codes on me, me and this one nurse, and we're just working on them.
• 17:08
  Joe Albano: And, you know, thank God they, they lived, and we were able to get them out of there.
• 17:13
  Joe Albano: And this is the wintertime.
• 17:15
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 17:23
  Joe Albano: And oh yeah, that was...
• 17:26
  Joe Albano: It was such a great place.
• 17:27
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 17:35
  Joe Albano: And, I'd
• 17:37
  Tom Jackobs: Brutal.
• 17:37
  Joe Albano: make more money in a weekend than I did in my whole month of my residency.
• 17:41
  Joe Albano: It's not that they paid me a lot.
• 17:43
  Joe Albano: It's that I got paid a little in the residency.
• 17:46
  Tom Jackobs: You're right.
• 17:47
  Joe Albano: and I learned more.
• 17:48
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 17:48
  Joe Albano: Like, I have so many stories
• 17:49
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 17:49
  Joe Albano: From that, like, like what, what I saw up there.
• 17:53
  Joe Albano: Like, here's another for instance of what I saw up there was, uh- Like this is, it was kind of the Wild West.
• 17:59
  Joe Albano: There's this one bar in Salmon, it's called the Owl Bar.
• 18:04
  Joe Albano: So they have this big wood owl outside it, and there's all these arrows stuck in it.
• 18:09
  Joe Albano: Like, so what people do is they go across the street and they just shoot arrows into this thing.
• 18:14
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 18:29
  Joe Albano: I mean, he killed a guy.
• 18:30
  Joe Albano: They had a fight and came out, and that was it.
• 18:34
  Joe Albano: That's the kind of place this was.
• 18:36
  Joe Albano: And is.
• 18:37
  Joe Albano: I don't think it's that like that anymore, though.
• 18:38
  Joe Albano: So I'm, I'm really answering your question.
• 18:42
  Tom Jackobs: No, but good stories.
• 18:44
  Tom Jackobs: 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?
• 18:54
  Joe Albano: Yeah.
• 18:54
  Joe Albano: So that's the background of all this.
• 18:56
  Joe Albano: Learned this and then I'm in Salt Lake City and it's a city, right?
• 18:59
  Joe Albano: So I'm not doing those kind of things down here.
• 19:02
  Joe Albano: And, um, it's, you know, it's...
• 19:06
  Joe Albano: I'm gonna beat on our sick medical system here for a minute.
• 19:09
  Tom Jackobs: Sure.
• 19:10
  Joe Albano: But I, I didn't know this at first.
• 19:12
  Joe Albano: I knew it was possible that our medical system might not have the best interest of the patients.
• 19:20
  Joe Albano: There might be some ulterior motives of money, for instance, right?
• 19:23
  Joe Albano: I knew this possible.
• 19:25
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 19:44
  Joe Albano: And I'm doing things like, for instance, steroid injections on everybody, and nobody's getting better doing this.
• 19:51
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 19:58
  Joe Albano: And like, this is not good.
• 20:00
  Joe Albano: There's gotta be a better way.
• 20:03
  Joe Albano: And then in 2006, Alan Mishra had a paper come out, um, on PRP and tennis elbow.
• 20:09
  Joe Albano: And I saw that one.
• 20:11
  Joe Albano: I'm like,"Oh my goodness, this is so cool.
• 20:13
  Joe Albano: You can actually help people and heal them.
• 20:17
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 20:23
  Joe Albano: I had finished my fellowship by this point, still in the Air Force doing reserve stuff.
• 20:28
  Joe Albano: But medically, I'm like,"I need to learn this.
• 20:30
  Joe Albano: How do I learn this?" And then I started to learn ultrasound.
• 20:35
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 20:48
  Joe Albano: This one's a funny story too.
• 20:49
  Joe Albano: So we were, uh, me and one of my colleagues, we were at a conference.
• 20:53
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 21:03
  Joe Albano: And this is a huge conference.
• 21:04
  Joe Albano: There's like hundreds of vendors.
• 21:06
  Joe Albano: And he drags me over to this one, uh, booth and says,"Oh, this is so cool.
• 21:10
  Joe Albano: You gotta come over here." I'm like,"All right, Bob, what are we looking at?" And, uh, so it was an ultrasound machine.
• 21:17
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 21:27
  Joe Albano: But it was 25,000, I remember that.
• 21:29
  Joe Albano: And it's kinda like computers, like the first generation of computers way back when.
• 21:36
  Joe Albano: Like it's not so good, but it's the best thing you ever had.
• 21:39
  Joe Albano: And that was this too.
• 21:40
  Joe Albano: Like, like I think I can see something.
• 21:43
  Joe Albano: But, uh, I-- we saw that, and we petitioned our group to buy this thing, and they said no.
• 21:49
  Joe Albano: And I wound up leaving that group.
• 21:51
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 21:57
  Joe Albano: Oh, wait, I had to give them three credit cards to get that,
• 22:00
  Tom Jackobs: Right,
• 22:01
  Joe Albano: I hired Tom to come and teach me,'cause that's how you learned it back then.
• 22:06
  Joe Albano: He would come to my office like multiple times.
• 22:08
  Joe Albano: We'd go over things.
• 22:09
  Joe Albano: So took me a good year to really get comfortable learning things about ultrasound.
• 22:13
  Joe Albano: So then I go,"Oh my goodness, I can see stuff.
• 22:16
  Joe Albano: I can diagnose things." And then PRP was coming out at that time.
• 22:20
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 22:31
  Joe Albano: And, uh, this was in St.
• 22:33
  Joe Albano: Louis, so I went there, and there were two students, me and another person.
• 22:37
  Joe Albano: And, uh, we learned this, and it was so cool.
• 22:41
  Joe Albano: So I learned how to do PRP then.
• 22:42
  Joe Albano: That was 2007.
• 22:45
  Joe Albano: And then quickly after that, learned how to do fat, so fat as stem cells.
• 22:50
  Joe Albano: It works better.
• 22:51
  Joe Albano: Learned that from uh, plastic surgeon up in Montana, and he taught us this.
• 22:57
  Joe Albano: And then learned bone marrow right after that, and started doing all of that in 2007.
• 23:02
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 23:14
  Joe Albano: Like, you could actually heal it.
• 23:16
  Joe Albano: I was a good example of that one.
• 23:17
  Joe Albano: I, I tore my rotator cuff.
• 23:19
  Joe Albano: Oh boy, I remember the day it, it happened,'cause I was in medical school and, and I was a, I was a...
• 23:25
  Joe Albano: previously a quarterback and a pitcher and threw the javelin, so I could huck stuff.
• 23:29
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 23:35
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 23:36
  Joe Albano: "Oh, that didn't feel good." And then like a few months later, I was playing rugby, and it's my shoulder subluxed.
• 23:44
  Joe Albano: It popped out and back in.
• 23:46
  Joe Albano: And then the next year I was playing hockey and tore my biceps tendon, and that is...
• 23:51
  Joe Albano: We didn't have MRIs then either, so, um, anyway, it hurt, it hurt, it hurt.
• 23:55
  Joe Albano: So I, I wound up getting a PRP on it, uh, at this conference.
• 23:59
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 24:11
  Joe Albano: I'm sitting in a hotel room.
• 24:13
  Joe Albano: Like I can't sleep.
• 24:14
  Joe Albano: I got the sweats, and it was so bad.
• 24:18
  Joe Albano: Um, I learned my lesson on that one and, uh...
• 24:21
  Joe Albano: But anyway, it healed after doing that.
• 24:24
  Joe Albano: My shoulder is good.
• 24:25
  Joe Albano: This is awesome.
• 24:27
  Joe Albano: So I, I learned about that.
• 24:28
  Joe Albano: Like, this can work so well, and I tried doing that in my practice.
• 24:34
  Joe Albano: I was with some orthopedic guys at the time.
• 24:36
  Joe Albano: There was a bunch of us in there, and some of the orthopedic guys were great.
• 24:39
  Joe Albano: They were just supportive.
• 24:40
  Joe Albano: Some were not so much.
• 24:42
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 24:59
  Joe Albano: Not gonna happen." Have you heard of this thing called anesthesia?
• 25:02
  Joe Albano: Wait, no, you're an orthopedic guy." Sorry, my orthopedic buddies.
• 25:07
  Tom Jackobs: That's right?
• 25:08
  Joe Albano: There's a thing called anesthesia.
• 25:09
  Joe Albano: You can use it.
• 25:11
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah, right.
• 25:12
  Joe Albano: So
• 25:13
  Tom Jackobs: they
• 25:13
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 25:20
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 25:29
  Joe Albano: You know, I'm not family practice.
• 25:30
  Joe Albano: I'm an or- not an orthopedic surgeons.
• 25:32
  Joe Albano: I don't bring in mill- millions of dollars in surgery, so they don't get me.
• 25:38
  Joe Albano: And I weren't up having to leave there and go in private practice.
• 25:41
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 25:52
  Joe Albano: And I knew it was gonna be, but it was even worse than I thought.
• 25:55
  Joe Albano: Like, ooh, I can't do this again.
• 25:56
  Joe Albano: That was pretty painful.
• 25:58
  Joe Albano: And then, um, I got hired on by this group, and I deployed again, and they were actually really good.
• 26:03
  Joe Albano: They, they covered the difference in my salary from, uh, what I would normally make to what I would make less in
• 26:09
  Tom Jackobs: Oh wow
• 26:09
  Joe Albano: the military.
• 26:11
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 26:20
  Tom Jackobs: Exactly.
• 26:22
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 26:34
  Joe Albano: And that's, yeah, there's tribulations.
• 26:37
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 26:38
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah, absolutely.
• 26:38
  Tom Jackobs: So how did that feel having, making that transition and finally having your own say with your own practice?
• 26:46
  Joe Albano: Good and bad, right?
• 26:48
  Joe Albano: So good is like,"Hey, I wanna go buy a$35,000 ultrasound machine.
• 26:53
  Joe Albano: I don't have to ask anybody, and it's not gonna take four years." Like I can just go do it.
• 26:58
  Joe Albano: But oh, wait, I gotta pay for it.
• 27:01
  Tom Jackobs: And then, yeah.
• 27:02
  Joe Albano: Figure it out though, right?
• 27:03
  Joe Albano: Um, yeah, you gotta make payroll, and that's always a struggle, right?
• 27:07
  Joe Albano: You know.
• 27:08
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 27:09
  Joe Albano: People tend to wanna get paid for the work they're doing, and you gotta do it.
• 27:12
  Joe Albano: And if you don't have the money to pay you, well, then you don't get paid and they do.
• 27:17
  Tom Jackobs: That's a really good segue, actually, into, into this piece.
• 27:21
  Tom Jackobs: 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?
• 27:32
  Joe Albano: Yeah, no, the-- and I've struggled with that one.
• 27:34
  Joe Albano: It's a great question,'cause as doctors, right, we wanna help people.
• 27:36
  Joe Albano: That's why you go into this field, or should be why, and most everybody does.
• 27:41
  Joe Albano: 'Cause if you're in it to make a lot of money, you should do something different.
• 27:44
  Joe Albano: You should go into the finance world or be an attorney or something like that.
• 27:49
  Joe Albano: Um, those guys do well.
• 27:50
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 28:04
  Joe Albano: But yeah, you're right, you have to be able to pay everybody, and that is hard.
• 28:10
  Joe Albano: So I definitely struggled with this because I think I can help everybody.
• 28:16
  Joe Albano: Everybody doesn't wanna be helped, though.
• 28:18
  Joe Albano: It took me a long time to learn that.
• 28:21
  Joe Albano: And, um, after a while I figured it out, yeah, okay.
• 28:26
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 28:38
  Joe Albano: Um, but then you struggle with, okay,
• 28:41
  Tom Jackobs: I
• 28:41
  Joe Albano: have to pay my people, like what should I charge for these things?
• 28:45
  Joe Albano: So in the beginning, right, not charging a lot of money'cause I wanna help everybody, but I can't pay my bills.
• 28:54
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 29:06
  Joe Albano: 'Cause what I wanna do is want it to be an experience.
• 29:11
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 29:22
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 29:31
  Joe Albano: Like, you can't do it in seven minutes, so it takes a lot longer, that costs more money.
• 29:38
  Joe Albano: If you wanna reach more people, right, doing-- I'm working with you on webinars and seminars and things like that.
• 29:45
  Joe Albano: If you wanna reach more people that way, that costs money, so you have to be able to pay for that.
• 29:51
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 30:04
  Joe Albano: 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...
• 30:16
  Joe Albano: If you're not in business, you can't help anybody.
• 30:20
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 30:32
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 30:42
  Joe Albano: I have multiple tools in my, as one of my patients says, my Batman toolkit.
• 30:47
  Joe Albano: Like, you can whip out the different tools if you want, and not everybody needs the hammer.
• 30:52
  Joe Albano: Sometimes they need a screwdriver, right?
• 30:54
  Joe Albano: You can use different things.
• 30:56
  Joe Albano: And it's-- it take me a long time to come to the conclusion that, yeah, I, I'm valuable.
• 31:03
  Joe Albano: I need to, charge more money, but give people value for that, right?
• 31:09
  Joe Albano: I'm not just charging money because like, oh yeah, I need to pay for my boat that I don't have one anyway.
• 31:14
  Joe Albano: So no, it's not that.
• 31:16
  Joe Albano: But I do want an airplane, that I don't have.
• 31:18
  Joe Albano: How best can I serve people?
• 31:22
  Joe Albano: I wanna give them a great experience.
• 31:24
  Joe Albano: We really try and give people a 10-star experience when they come in, hire staff appropriately for that.
• 31:32
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 31:41
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 31:51
  Joe Albano: You come in and it's, it's life-changing.
• 31:53
  Joe Albano: It really is in lots of ways.
• 31:55
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 31:56
  Tom Jackobs: And it, and it sounds like that, like that, that really fills your cup as well.
• 32:01
  Tom Jackobs: So it's a very mutual...
• 32:03
  Tom Jackobs: You're, you're helping people, it feels good to help them, and you're making a good living doing it.
• 32:08
  Tom Jackobs: And so that enables you to help more people at the same time.
• 32:12
  Joe Albano: Yeah.
• 32:12
  Joe Albano: That, that is exactly it.
• 32:13
  Joe Albano: That's what it comes down to.
• 32:15
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 32:27
  Joe Albano: They'll have all they are calling it scholarship program or something like that.
• 32:31
  Joe Albano: 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?
• 32:43
  Joe Albano: So I'd love to get to that point at some, sometime.
• 32:46
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 32:46
  Tom Jackobs: No, that's, that's awesome.
• 32:48
  Tom Jackobs: 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.
• 32:57
  Tom Jackobs: But, um, you know, what, what...
• 33:01
  Tom Jackobs: 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?
• 33:15
  Tom Jackobs: What, what type of advice would you give them?
• 33:18
  Joe Albano: Yeah, I think what I'd say to them is don't let anybody tell you you can't do it.
• 33:22
  Joe Albano: Do not listen to them.
• 33:24
  Joe Albano: You can do it.
• 33:25
  Joe Albano: And it's not gonna be easy, but you can absolutely do it.
• 33:28
  Joe Albano: And if you believe in yourself and what you're doing and that you're, you have the right motivation, right?
• 33:34
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 33:41
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 33:49
  Joe Albano: But don't, don't let them tell you you can't.
• 33:54
  Joe Albano: Pull the arrows out of your back.
• 33:56
  Joe Albano: That's okay, they're gonna heal and that's happened too, right?
• 34:00
  Joe Albano: And they're gonna tell you you can't do it, you're stupid, you're an idiot.
• 34:03
  Joe Albano: Don't...
• 34:04
  Joe Albano: No, don't listen to them.
• 34:05
  Joe Albano: You can do this.
• 34:06
  Joe Albano: It's gonna be a great thing for the patients.
• 34:08
  Joe Albano: You're not constricted with these sick medicine rules.
• 34:13
  Joe Albano: It's pretty freeing because now you can do what's the right thing for the patient no matter what.
• 34:18
  Joe Albano: You don't have to worry about.
• 34:19
  Tom Jackobs: What a concept, right?
• 34:21
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 34:22
  Joe Albano: What a concept.
• 34:23
  Joe Albano: 18-year-old answering the phone telling you you can't do something.
• 34:27
  Joe Albano: Like, no, you can do it.
• 34:28
  Tom Jackobs: Which code do we put to this so that we actually can do something?
• 34:31
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah, it's crazy.
• 34:32
  Joe Albano: It's bad.
• 34:33
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 34:34
  Tom Jackobs: Well, Joe, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom, sharing your stories with us today.
• 34:38
  Tom Jackobs: I certainly appreciate it, and I know our listeners, uh, really appreciate it as well.
• 34:43
  Tom Jackobs: But tell us, how can we get, uh, how can our listeners get ahold of you and learn more about the Albano Clinic?
• 34:50
  Joe Albano: Yeah.
• 34:50
  Joe Albano: And again, thanks Tom, so much for having me on here.
• 34:53
  Joe Albano: You know, we've had relationship for a year or so now, and I appreciate all the help you've given me.
• 34:58
  Joe Albano: So yeah, if you wanna get in touch with us, you can just go to our website, albanoclinic.com.
• 35:04
  Joe Albano: That's A-L-B as in bravo, A-N-O clinic.com or our phone number is 385-220-9009.
• 35:13
  Joe Albano: 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.
• 35:27
  Tom Jackobs: Awesome.
• 35:27
  Tom Jackobs: Well, we'll put all that down into the show notes.
• 35:30
  Tom Jackobs: Um, but again, thanks so much for coming onto the show today and, uh, I really appreciate you.
• 35:36
  Joe Albano: Thanks so much for having me, Tom.
• 35:37
  Tom Jackobs: Absolutely.
• 35:39
  Tom Jackobs: And thank you show listeners for watching the show today.
• 35:42
  Tom Jackobs: We do appreciate you as well.
• 35:43
  Tom Jackobs: 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.
• 35:53
  Tom Jackobs: Especially the one on longevity, right?
• 35:55
  Tom Jackobs: That one is, uh, really a killer one, I think.
• 35:58
  Tom Jackobs: Um, so, uh, it really is.
• 36:01
  Tom Jackobs: No, I really like that one.
• 36:03
  Tom Jackobs: Uh, and it's getting better each time that it happens as well.
• 36:07
  Tom Jackobs: And really great information.
• 36:08
  Tom Jackobs: So, uh, check all that out.
• 36:10
  Tom Jackobs: 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.
• 36:26
  Tom Jackobs: So until next time, lead with your heart.
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: You've been listening to The Heart-Led Business Show, hosted by Tom Jackobs.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: Join us next time for another inspiring journey into the heart of business.