Practicing Physiotherapy in Red Deer
 Blake Goehring, Owner and Physiotherapist

I often get asked the question: “What’s it like to work in the community you grew up in?” Well, that answer requires a great deal of context.

When my wife Jen and I decided to make the giant leap from being just physiotherapists to that plus clinic owners, it wasn’t quick. We did a lot of thinking and research as to where we wanted to be. We looked at various numbers for the potential cities we considered opening in: city population, clinic density per population, therapist density per population, and more. This is crucial criteria when determining where to open a clinic, due to wanting to achieve success. Initially, Red Deer wasn’t even an option. We respected our then-employers. In short, we did not want to be in direct competition with them. We looked at Airdrie, Canmore, Okotoks, and Cochrane, but research did not convince us that our success would be in any of those communities.

Enter: Red Deer

Back to Red Deer, then. I grew up here. Jen moved here so that we could live and be together. My family is here. A great number of my friends moved away for College or University, then moved back here. Red Deer is awesome!

Nostalgia aside, the rational voice in my head was asking the question, “Ok, what about the numbers?” The numbers didn’t look great! Red Deer took the Bronze medal for the worst numbers, falling just behind Calgary and Canmore. So, maybe Red Deer was not the best place for us to start our entrepreneurial careers. In an argument between my rational and emotional halves, my emotional half was losing.

Enter: Community

What about community? That had to count for something, right? Though Red Deer had doubled in size from when I was born, it still had a small-town feel. I know Jen appreciated that sentiment, coming from a city of 8000 residents in Ontario. She was happy to call Alberta home. Both of her brothers had also moved to Alberta and lived in Calgary. Red Deer was close enough to support the close relationship that she and her siblings built in adulthood. Consequently, we put the numbers aside. We decided that Red Deer was where we would open our clinic.

Enter: Learning the Business

At this point, Jen and I knew a great deal about the human body and next to nothing about business. Who could help our beginner business brains figure this out? The Red Deer community became our saving grace.

My accountant happened to have graduated from Notre Dame High School with me and was my defence partner on my then-hockey team. He turned our attention to a great lease space available in town, and figured out how we were going to make our finances work. My lawyer is one of my best friends and stood for me when Jen and I got married. He dealt with all of the legalities of starting a business. He offered thousands of dollars’ worth of free business advice that we gladly took! (And still owe him for!)

Enter: Money

Apparently, you need a great deal of money to renovate a space and get a business up and running. Lucky for us, a member of my current hockey team, the Red Deer Senior Rustlers, worked for ATB and worked out all the minutiae of our business loan. Once we had the funds, we contacted a contractor to do our build-out. We had already met this gentleman, who was recommended by a friend that operates an electrical company in Red Deer, from when we worked part-time at Pure Crossfit. He was incredible to work with and helped us to create the space that allowed us to begin our dream. Simply stated, Stride wouldn’t exist without the community of Red Deer!

So… What’s it Like to Work in the Community You Grew Up In?

I think you now know the answer to that question. It is better than I could have ever imagined and I can’t picture our roots anywhere else!