Tim “T.J.” Loudis is not just talking T-shirts these days. He’s talking therapy. After a 31-year run with his screen-printing and apparel company, T.J. Sales, Loudis is promoting Integrity Athletic Performance & Physical Therapy as an option for workers’ compensation cases.
The New Gig “My main duties are to reach out to doctors for their referrals as well as to the workers’ compensation industry with human resources managers, safety managers and risk managers educating and marketing our physical therapy and outpatient clinic. And the key words there are educating and marketing. Although I have been in sales all my life, this is really a nonselling job, and that’s part of what makes this job intriguing.”
The Pitch “We provide physical therapy for athletic rehabilitation, for surgical and nonsurgical physical therapy, mainly dealing with orthopedic injuries, which would be knees, arms, shoulders, that type of thing. And we also do outpatient neurological physical therapy. About two-and-a-half years ago, the owners, Cory and Jill Carr, purchased the physical therapy business from Integrity Home Care. … To give an example of companies that I’ve – again I hate to use the word sold, but – sold, are Morelock-Ross Cos., Loren Cook Co. and Southern Missouri Container. Our big thing is that we will work for the employer to get the employee back to work quicker.”
Starting the Chapter “I went to (Cory Carr) for physical therapy rehab. I tore my meniscus in May on my right knee. After having my surgery in July … I went to the first four sessions, and as I was getting better, being the salesman that I am and not knowing what would happen, Cory and I started talking. When I went back for my next rehab, he said, ‘Hey, if you have a minute, I want to talk.’ He started telling me that he wanted to grow his business, and he thought I could be an integral part of that.”
Goodbye, T-Shirts “We closed almost two years ago in November 2009. In the meantime, I had a lot of open time, but I did consulting work. I had a stint with SRC company New Stream Enterprises … and I was working in business development for an eight-month period. The biggest factors in the closing were the economic downturn and the lack of institutional funding. The banks completely shut the door on not only myself, but you know, we weren’t the only ones in the paper that week – I’ll say that. It’s been tough. It’s been a stressful and learning time where I’ve started from zero and had to work my way up.”
Resonating Recollections “Having gone through what I went though, I knew my next job would be working for someone else. It’s very hard to go from being in charge of a million-dollar a year business with employees to having lost everything and then get to a point where you can start building yourself up again. To this day, there is not a week that goes by (when) there is not someone who sings my jingle to me, and that’s great.” [[In-content Ad]]
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