Meet Rick McMullen | Founder, AlleviateTherapy.com

We had the good fortune of connecting with Rick McMullen and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Rick, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
I think I used to think that entrepreneurs are natural risk-takers. I’ve since learned that that’s probably an over-generalization. Certainly my own experience reflects that. I do know that by the standards of others, I have the appearance of someone who is comfortable with risk. Early in my career, I turned down high-paying jobs to take lower-paying ones. More recently, I left a pretty lucrative, stable corporate role to found my own business. I think that could be perceived as risky behavior; yet I perceive myself as extremely risk-averse.

I guess if I were to try to compare the way I think about risk to the way I think many other people think about risk there are two key differences:
1. I think of economics as a satisficing problem, not an optimization problem.
2. I think of money as a renewable resource, and I think of time as a non-renewable resource.

What that means in practice is that as long as I have ENOUGH money, I don’t perceive sacrificing opportunities to make more as terribly risky. It almost goes without saying that lots of people in this country and the world truly don’t have enough. If that described me, I might not pursue an entrepreneurial career path. Or I would have waited longer. Or I would have pursued a different entrepreneurial career path, like owning a franchise of an established company for example. But there’s a whole other group, who regardless of how much they have, they don’t FEEL they had enough. And that makes them feel that “not maximizing their wealth” is risky. If I know how much “enough” is, and I know I have it, then taking financial risks with the money that’s above that basic amount isn’t really all that risky.

And to the second point — I am extremely sensitive to feeling like I’m not spending my time in ways that help others and make me happy. And during the portion of my career that was spent “in corporate,” I felt that a pretty substantial portion of my time was spent doing things that didn’t serve customers, didn’t serve my employees or coworkers, and didn’t serve society in general. And that affected my own perception of living a full-hearted life. So to me, THAT felt risky.

But it’s not lost on me that’s a luxury choice that probably only applies to people with educational opportunities like the ones I’ve had (or … people who are truly much, much braver than I am)

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
My company is called Alleviate — I am a co-founder along with a physical therapist who used to work with the pro rugby teams in New Zealand and a prominent performance product designer. Our first product is a self-guided treatment system for Plantar Fasciitis, which is this miserable chronic injury that happens to some people’s feet. It’s an alternative to traditional physical therapy based on practice methods they use in New Zealand that haven’t caught on so much in the US (….yet).

Our customers are really cool people — most of them have been struggling with pain for years, but just refuse to accept that their lives need to be limited. Our product isn’t a “quick fix,” and our customers are special because they’re not looking for one — they’re looking for something that’s going to get them back to their sport, job, or other activity they love, and they’re willing to put in 5-10 mins a day for a few weeks to make that happen.

Luke, Sean and I originally teamed up because we saw this problem that drove us all crazy — that there are really good treatment methodologies out there for certain injuries, but as a patient it’s really, really, really hard to know what to look for. Luke runs a PT practice in the Boston area, and there’s just no way to treat all the people who need help the way he wants to treat them. We’d be able to help more people, better, faster by making a product that helped them treat themselves than for Luke to grow his practice to meet demand.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Oh no! I’m not from Arizona!

But I’ve been to Arizona a bunch of times, and for someone who was visiting from the Northeast, I’d have to say the thing that completely blew my mind is that you guys have bars and restaurants that have little mist machines that keep people cool during the summer so they can eat outside. In New England, it never gets that hot and it’s impossible to believe that it CAN get that hot that it would make sense for a restaurant to do that. So I’d show them that.

I’d also have to show them some of your rock formations. Like basically any of them. It’s just such a different landscape and style of natural beauty than we have back in Boston where I’m from.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
My shoutout has to go to my parents and grandparents. 2 generations ago, no one on either side of my family would have been able to make the career choices I’ve been able to make. My dad went into the military because he couldn’t afford to take the full ride he got to college. That even if tuition was paid for, he couldn’t make the living expenses happen. My grandfather on my mom’s side got a bachelor’s, masters, and PhD all in a 4 year period because his scholarship didn’t cover anything beyond that. I can’t even put into a sentence what my mom has done to give me opportunities — but the short version is she’s instilled in me a very deep sense of gratitude for what prior generations have had to do so I could have the freedom to make choices. And that that freedom comes with a responsibility to make good use of those choices and “pay it forward” to others.

Website: alleviatetherapy.com

Instagram: @alleviate_therapy

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Alleviate-109661164522870