Full Transparency in the Health and Wellness Industry

Ari Gronich, member of the Clear Directory, joins host Justin Recla to discuss full transparency in the health and wellness industry. Ari is The Performance Therapist and brings experience working with Olympic, Paralympic, professional, and amateur athletes for almost 20 years. He has over 25,000 hours of hands on work and 5000 plus hours of training and internship. Listen in to hear him talk about what transparency in health and wellness looks like.

One of Ari’s nicknames is “Magic Hands” becuase he really works magic.
Photo by Mitchell Hollander on Unsplash

Welcome to the In The Clear Podcast. I am your host Justin Recla. Today, folks, you’re in for a treat. This man that we’re gonna introduce today, that we’re gonna be speaking with has got several nicknames. One of them is “Magic Hands” because he really works magic. What I’m excited to talk to him about is really the concept of full transparency in the health and wellness industry. And so I’d like to welcome our guest to the show. He’s the CEO of Achieve Health USA and the founder of Performance Therapy Academy. Please help me welcome to the show Ari Gronich. Ari, thank you for joining us on the show today.

Thank you for having me.

Alright so in full transparency here again I gotta let everybody know that you’ve done some work on me when I was sick and broken and you brought me back to optimal health in those situations. Literally laid up for two days and you came and worked your magic and I was back on my feet. I know that you’ve got a plethora of experience and knowledge. Can you share with our listeners exactly what it is you do?

Well it’s kind of hard to put into a box, but basically for the last 23 years I’ve been a sports and injury rehab therapist, functional medical consultant, and national educator. What I’ve done is help take injured athletes from pain and injury to gold medals and world championships. I’ve work with A-list actors and actresses in Hollywood. For the most part, most of my career has been taking people that nobody else could help and helping them get ahead. So it’s been quite an interesting career but that’s been a huge focus, is taking people that had been to other therapists, had been to doctors and were not getting the relief that they were desiring, and being able to see beyond maybe a specifically modality and into what it is that that person needed, and was able to deliver it for them.

What I love about what you do is that you, you have quite the diverse background. Everybody can into your profile at the Clear Business Directory and they could read it, read about what you’ve done and where you come from. But I love the fact that you’re not just a single modality, you’ve integrated just an enormous amount of information and expertise and experience in a wide variety of modalities. You’ve kind of broken the mold of what it means to be a, what some would deem as a massage therapist. And by all means that’s not what you are. Like you said, it’s hard to describe exactly what it is you do. What’s your take on, especially in the health and wellness industry, what’s your take on the importance of operating just in full transparency?

Well I believe that transparency is key to delivering high-end results. You’ve probably gone into very few doctors offices or therapists offices where they’ve have a book of their successes, right? It’s actually against HIPPA law, in some cases, to show client behavior and so on. How many have you actually gone in to interview before they became your doctor or before they became your therapist or trainer, right?

Exactly.

It’s very rare that people will call up a doctors office and say, “Hey, I want to interview you to see if you qualify to be my doctor.” Or “to be my therapist,” or “to be my trainer.” And it’s very rare that somebody will go to four or five places before they decide on who’s gonna be taking care of really their health and their life. We go to maybe ten places before we buy a car, right?

Yep.

But we don’t do that when we go to a therapist, to a trainer, so transparency is important. How do you know that what you’re getting is what you need? How do you know that even if that person is really great at one thing, how do you know that they’re gonna be great at what you need?

It’s so true and it’s one of the things again, the amount of experience that you bring to the table, literally to the table, is again, just absolutely amazing. And folks, Ari’s done work on me at the point where I couldn’t walk, I was laid up in bed for two days. He spend two hours with me and got it to where I was able to keep down food again, and I was walking, and of course all this happened at a business conference where I needed to be active and Ari came and worked his magic. And if you’ve ever had an opportunity to sit with Ari you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.

I’ve been to lots of different therapists, lots of different practitioners, and I can say with extreme authority that there is nobody, nobody, that has the talent and the ability to do not only hands on but actually to be able to teach the information to others to make sure that they’re doing things the right way than Ari. So Ari, I know your experiences have taken you all over the world. What are some of the best things that you’ve experienced in your last 23 years?

We had a team of 50 therapists from 18 countries.

I’ll tell you, being in Athens during the Paralympics, part of the Athens sports massage team was probably a major highlight for me. Not just because our team was so great, we had a team of 50 therapists from 18 countries. And I was one of five team captains that ended up training the whole Greek team for the Paralympics. Being there in that space and watching 6,000 or so athletes, who in come cases in their communities and countries are ostracized, they’re not allowed into the community because of their disabilities. To watch them all in one place, the smiles on their face, the amount of humbleness that what they were doing. And then this is in the home of the Olympics, right? This is in Athens, Greece so the immensity of the situation and to watch them be so humble is probably one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever gotten.

They are amazing. And they’re breaking world records, Paralympic records, Olympic records, left and right. Originally they were told you can’t be part of the Olympics because you’re disabled and now because of technology, it’s kind of funny, they’re considered to be advantaged because some of the equipment. You can power through a run with a spring on your leg faster than you can with your knee, so.

Yeah. I can only imagine that that was a life changing experience. You don’t just get there by just getting a regular certification or whatnot, you have to have some level of experience. That speaks volumes as to your background and what you do. That’s absolutely amazing, I can only imagine what that felt like to be a part of that.

Absolutely. It was a beautiful experience and for me one of the main highlights. Obviously, there’s been a lot of them. It’s funny, you get somebody in your office who can’t walk, hasn’t walked in 30 years, been to every expert in the world, wealthy family. In my case I was hired to help them be comfortable, move his joints around a little bit, keep his body from completely atrophying. In three months I had him walking. Mind you it was with arm crutches, but he could feel my fingers on his toes and wiggle his toes. He hadn’t been able to do that in 30 years.

Wow.

You get to see things like that in my world. You feel blessed to be in this industry and be in this business.

I can only imagine the gratitude that it feels like to be able to see those results instantly with clients that you’re working with. It’s absolutely a skillset that I absolutely just have mad respect for. What you do and what I’ve seen you do, not first hand but with other people that you’ve done work on, it’s just been … I’m just in utter awe every time that I see you work your magic because I know the impact that you have on people’s ability to move and mobility. Like I said, what you were able to do for me was huge. So I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that.

So folks, if you are looking for somebody that you got an issue that other people haven’t been able to fix make sure you reach out to Ari because he is definitely doing things different than a lot of people in the health and wellness industry. He’s got a solution for you, I guarantee it.

If I don’t have it then somebody I know does.

Exactly. That’s the thing is you got a huge network of people in that industry as well. And so we’re gonna take a quick break but when we get back we’re gonna talk a little bit more with Ari Gronich on full transparency in the health and wellness industry so stay tuned, we’ll be right back.

Alright well welcome back. Welcome back to the In The Clear podcast. We are speaking with Ari Gronich, he’s the CEO of Achieve Health USA. We’re talking today about full transparency in the health and wellness industry. We were talking a little bit before the break about your background, Ari, and some of the experiences of what you’ve done. What I’d like to go into a little bit now is some of that transparency piece. So what are some questions that a potential client should be asking you before they decide to hire you?

Well first of all, ask me about their specific condition and see if I know anything number one, and number two if I don’t if I’m willing to go and look for information from other experts. Because if I either don’t know or I’m not willing to learn, then I’m not the person for you, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

That would be a really basic one. So ask me about your specific condition and see what I might say that might be different from what others have told you in the past. You can find likenesses and unlikeness but you want to see if I’m gonna say something maybe that’s gonna be a little different, maybe have a different edge to it, or a different tone towards it to see if that resonates with who you are. That would be a good way of seeing if I’m the kind of therapist for you.

One of the things in transparency is everyone says, “Oh, well if you have the initials on the back of your name, MD, PT, then you must know something.” Now old joke in the industry, “What do you call the guy who graduated last in his class in medical school?”

Doctor?

Right. Exactly. And how many people do you know that say, “Oh, my doctor is wonderful. You must go see my doctor.” Right?

Yep.

Nobody has a bad doctor do they?

Yeah.

And if they did, they wouldn’t know it necessarily because they hadn’t gone to others to find out. So in transparency you don’t want to just know that they have degree, you want to know that they have a background in what you need. In my case, one of the reasons why I joined with the Clear Directory is because I don’t have a degree, I didn’t elect to go to a university and a college education and get an MD. I elected to go by kind of an older school route of education. I took a lot of courses that were very specific and I took a lot of time to intern with masters. The fine art of apprenticeship has been lost in many cases in my industry, where we really just are being trained in the field by the people who are doing it in the field.

And so transparently I wanted to be part of this because I’ve been asked. How come I should see you versus somebody who has degree? The answer is really simple. I’ve done it, I’ve been there, I’ve spent the time doing it over and over and over and over and over and over and over again and all that time that they were in school I was already in business doing it, you know what I mean?

Yeah and to that point … Your profile in the Clear Directory is probably one of the more in depth ones, just because the sheer amount of trainings, and certifications, and things that you’ve done that had to be verified. Folks, you can go take a look at all the certifications and all the training that Ari has to get a good sense of the full package of services that he offers.

Again, if you’re in pain Ari’s definitely one of the people, well, in my opinion should be the only person that you call because like he said, if he doesn’t have the answer he’s either gonna go the answer or know somebody who does. Speaking of which Ari, so what are some of the things that you’ve got going on, that you’ve got coming up right now in the near future?

I’ve been traveling around the country teaching this.

Glad you asked. I started the Performance Therapy Academy a couple years ago. What I ended up doing with that, because I’ve been called the Performance Therapist for most of my career and I wanted to start to duplicate myself. I wanted to start training and becoming what I was or what I received, I had a master who was taking me under his wing and apprenticing with him. Actually I had several, some hims and some hers. So I wanted to create that and so I’ve created a course that’s been nationally certified for continuing education credits. I’ve been traveling around the country teaching this, in this case it’s a two day workshop.

The next one is gonna be in October in Denver. It’s gonna be a business building workshop in which I’m speaking on mastery, mastering your business, mastering your life, mastering your education, et cetera. And then I’ll be teaching the next two days after that this course. The course is designed to bridge those gaps between the different modalities and the different industries. So chiropractors, massage therapists, PTs, personal trainers, athletic trainers, nutritionists, anybody in the holistic health industry can come and take this course, get continuing education credits for it which is important, and have a skillset that even if they’re not going to do some of the things that is being taught in their industry, they’ll know how to communicate and speak with people who are in complementary industry so that they can get better results with their clients.

One of the biggest issues is we’re all kind of like an island in the health industry. So if we are not all encompassing in ourselves, we don’t know who to refer to and why and where. We sometimes rely on our clients or patients to come and say, “Hey, who do I see?” or “I saw this person for this, you might want to talk to them because they were able to do this that you couldn’t do,” kind of thing. And rather than have the ego about what I can and can’t do, I’ve created this course to kind of bridge those gaps in the industry so that everybody can up level their skills, up level their results, up level their income, and really give back to the community better health results than what we’re getting now.

So that’s been my project of passion the last year and I’m really looking forward to it. Those dates are October 19th, 20th, 21st, and 22nd in Denver, Colorado. I’m happy to talk with anybody who might be interesting in coming who’s in the industry because they’ll get a huge amount of education on client and business building, as well as best practices and new practices for their increasing skillset.

Well and what I love about that is that you have the 23 years of experience in doing it and so being able to transfer that knowledge to people that are maybe just getting started, or don’t necessarily have the business know-how or business savvy to be able to create that successful practice. I think that’s essential for anybody that is in the industry, to take a look at what you’ve built and how you’ve built it because you’ve been doing it for so long that you’ve learned all the ins and outs, and all the nooks and crannies, and all those things that you should and shouldn’t do. And how to integrate that into a wide variety of things.

It’s like you said, it’s not just for therapists, it’s across the board. I think that’s huge and what I love that too is that that industry is dependent on those continuing education credits and the fact that you got that certified kills two bones with one stone. So that they’re getting all that extra value as well. Ari, where can our listeners go to find out more information about the event in October?

There’s a website Achievebizconferences.com.

Fantastic.

That’s gonna give you all the information, you can go to different event page, there’s a registration link if you are interested in coming. Although if anybody from here contacts me first, if they go to that page and they see that they’d like to attend, if they contact me I may have a couple more VIP tickets that I can give out.

Fantastic. Well how can our listeners get ahold of you?

They can e-mail me at info@performancetherapyacademy.com.

Fantastic, fantastic. Well Ari, thank you so much and folks we’re been talking to Ari Gronich of Achieve Healthy USA, we’ve been talking about full transparency in the health and wellness industry. Ari, I really appreciate you being on the show today.

Oh, it was my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. Anything that I can do to help any of the listeners or the people that are in the clear to live a healthier and more joyous life in their bodies then please do get ahold of me.

And again folks, if you have an ailment that you haven’t been able to get fixed by somebody else give Ari a call, reach out to him and see what he can do. Because again, I’ve seen him work miracles. I’ve seen him fix people and he’s fixed me, he’s definitely by all means the best of the best when it comes to working on the physical body. Again Ari, thank you so much for being on the show and we will see you soon.

Sounds good.

Until next time folks, make sure before you get involved with anybody, especially in the health and wellness industry that that business is in the clear. Take care.