Mike: Welcome to the Mike Agruss Law video podcast. We are a different kind of law firm and that’s on purpose. At Mike Agruss Law, we see you as a person and not just a client, and that makes us better at what we do. We’re not just lawyers and you’re not just a client. We’re friends, neighbors, and family. This is a show about all things legalish that friends, neighbors, and family want to know. Today, we’re talking with Azin and Steve of Team Rehab. Team Rehab is a network of therapist-owned outpatient physical therapy clinics in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Georgia. Azin is a business development manager at Team Rehab and Steve is a clinic director, partner, and regional manager at Team Rehab. Azin and Steve, how are you?
Azin: Good. Thanks. How are you?
Mike: Doing well. Thanks for coming on. This is great. I know we were talking about this for a couple of weeks, so I’m excited that both of you are here. So why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself, let our viewers know a little bit more about who you are and what you do.
Azin: So my name’s Azin, I am, as Mike mentioned, the business development manager at Team Rehab. But I focus mainly on the work comp and personal injury side of things, of business development at Team Rehab. So I’ve been in this industry for 11 years now. I’ve been at Team for five years and I mean, this is a very niche, but interesting realm of the world for me with personal injury and work comp. And yeah, that’s what I’ve been doing for the past 11 years.
Steve: Awesome. And I’m Steve Baynai. I am a physical therapist. I’m the clinic director for our clinic out in Elgin. I’ve been with Team Rehab for the past five years. We opened the Elgin clinic in 2016 and I’ve been a physical therapist for over 10 years now. I serve as the clinic director here in Elgin, but I also work as kind of a regional mentor, as Mike alluded to. I help advise a number of our clinics in the Illinois region. So our clinic, we have five therapists in our clinic. We have a great team and we see a wide range of injuries and diagnosis.
Mike: Do you live near Elgin, Steve?
Steve: I live about 25 minutes, North and West of Elgin. So we’re out in the cornfield. So pretty far outside of the city.
Mike: Well, so cornfields, tell me where.
Steve: Yeah, we live near Marengo. So between Hampshire and Marengo.
Mike: Okay.
Steve: A small little subdivision out where it’s still rural, and you have still a lot of space, so [crosstalk] we’ve got five kids, so we needed the space for them to run around.
Mike: Oh, wow. Yeah. And Azin, you’re still in the city, right?
Azin: Yep. I live in the city currently with a five month old and we’re running out of space. So we’ll see what happens there. How long we’ll be in the city.
Mike: Totally. Yeah. My wife and I moved out to Elmhurst about four and a half years ago. So we had our first kid in the city. She was pregnant with number two and we wanted a backyard and a basement. So here we are.
So before we dive in, I’ve got to tell you both a story here. So I always give lawyers a hard time. I think they earn their reputation and then they always complain about why people hate lawyers. But one thing that’s funny about lawyers is, they’re always the first one to put all of their diplomas up, their plaques up. And they’re always super proud of that. And I think I don’t want to get too far into it, but I think lawyers are, they’re an interesting group of people. And most of them I’m not a fan of, but anyway. So Steve, so I’ve just got JD after my name. And then Steve, as we were preparing, I saw, which makes me a little bit envious, you have PT, DPT, OCS, and CIMT after your name, which is impressive. I like it. So tell me what it all stands for.
Steve: A lot of tests. Totally, totally.
Mike: So what’s it all stand for?
Steve: So PT is physical therapist, DPT just signifies that I have a doctorate in physical therapy, which is the standard entry level degree, at this point, in physical therapy. OCS is an orthopedic clinical specialist. So I specialize in orthopedics. In the world of physical therapy, there’s also neurologic physical therapy specialists, there’s pediatric specialists. So I specialize in orthopedics. And then CIMT is a certification that I took in manual therapy. So I took a number of courses and a long exhausting test to just be certified as a manual therapist. So do a lot of hands-on work, a lot of manual therapy, which I’m sure we’ll talk about at some point, but yeah, that’s what the initial stand for. And again, just a lot of tests, a lot of money into that.
Mike: Nice. Totally. Well, there’s probably a lot of lawyers out there that would be jealous. So anyway, very impressive. So let’s talk about Team Rehab. How did it get started? What’s its mission?
Steve: Sure. So Team Rehab, we got our start back in the early 2000s in Michigan. We had one clinic out there that a group of actually consultants kind of jumped in to help the therapy clinic, turn things around. So from there went from one clinic to now almost 110 clinics. So we got our start in Metro Detroit. We are a company that really prides ourselves on clinic ownership. So every one of those 110 clinics is partially owned by the clinic director of that clinic and partially owned by Team Rehab. So we’re a company that values that ownership piece. And we also give all of our clinic directors a whole lot of autonomy in how those clinics run. So the clinic director gets to make the vast majority of the day-to-day decisions in those clinics. And so it’s a great model.
That’s been very successful. When you own something, you treat it very differently than if you’re just showing up to work. So the ownership has definitely been one of our core values, our key in our strategy. And from Michigan, we kind of branched out, maybe six years ago, outside of Michigan to Indiana and Illinois and slowly growing those markets. We grew up into Wisconsin and then down into Georgia. And our Georgia market is taking off quite rapidly. So the word is out in the model’s growing.
Mike: That’s awesome. It’s exciting. So is that common with physical therapy places? Some of the other ones that come to mind would be Athletico or Illinois Bone and Joint. Is Team Rehab set up in structure where they’re individually owned, is that unique to Team Rehab?
Steve: Yeah, it’s very unique. There are very few models out there that I’m aware of that give [inaudible] do a lot of profit share or bonus structures, but actually owns a piece of that. So if they were to leave at some point, they have equity to sell in their business.
Mike: Cool. So I was on the website, tell the viewers a little bit about Team Rehab’s core strategies?
Azin: So our core strategies are, I mean, it’s patient centered. Everything is about the patient. And I like how your model of Agruss Law is, they’re not a client. So at Team Rehab, especially with the ownership that Steve has in his clinic and every clinic director has, [inaudible] we don’t view patient as a patient. It is Mrs. Smith coming in for physical therapy. So it is very patient and employee focused, which was super attractive for me and I think Steve as well, because we both came from different places prior to Team Rehab that we wanted to make sure that you’re working somewhere that you don’t have to see 50 patients a day and it’s patient one, two and three. You really can spend the time.
And Steve can say, “Okay, I know that Mrs. Smith needs one-on-one attention. Or I know that she likes to spend extra time focusing on this.” He can block his schedule without anyone coming to him and saying, “No, you have to see this number of patients.” So I always like to reference it, kind of like, if you go to see a doctor at a hospital system, they’re working for the hospital, they have their schedule, they see their patients, they’re done. Versus if you go to a private practice orthopedic office, I feel like private practice orthopedic office, they spend more time with the patient. They have more autonomy to say, “I need to spend more time with this patient. I can’t rush into the next room right now.” I like to make that analogy of, we really do spend time with the patients and make them feel comfortable … Not myself, because I’m not a clinician by any means, but Steve is here to treat you and truly cares about getting you better.
Mike: Got it. Yeah. And I think that’s important. My dad retired a handful of years ago. He was a cardiologist for 40 years and he started the group he was in and then slowly over the years lost control. And then private equity bought a portion of the group and then the [inaudible] and … so it’s refreshing to hear both of you say that it’s patient-driven and it’s a different experience as opposed to, you’re just a number, get in, get out. Because I’ve talked to my dad about that extensively and I think it makes a big difference.
So anyway, it’s cool that you share that same philosophy. Let’s switch gears for a second. My clients come in, we do personal injury and always a big thing in the beginning is, someone’s injured during an accident or whatever it is. And we’re always trying to figure out, okay, do you have med pay coverage? Are we dealing with an at-fault driver’s insurance company that’s reasonable or are we dealing with someone substandard and it’s going to be a fight? So my clients are always asking me, “What am I going to do about medical bills? How am I going to pay for these things?” So along those lines, what type of insurances or what type of insurance does Team Rehab accept, as far as private health insurance companies or Medicare, Medicaid, along those lines?
Steve: Yeah, sure. We actually accept quite a few insurance providers. All our clinics are in network with Blue Cross Blue Shield and Medicare. We recently got in network with United Healthcare. There’s a couple of other insurance carriers that we’re working on getting in network with. Right now, most of our clinics are not seeing much from a Medicaid standpoint, but we do see a lot of Blue Cross and a lot of Medicare.
Mike: Okay. And let’s say someone comes to you, they were involved in a car accident. They don’t have health insurance. They went to the emergency room, saw their doctor, they got a referral to go get physical therapy and they ended up at Team Rehab. And if they don’t have health insurance, are there options, for example, could you lien the file or have some other structure where someone who needs to get physical therapy, can get it, even though they don’t have health insurance.
Azin: Absolutely. Kind of like what I mentioned, our model is really to get the patient better. So we will, there’s options. We will make it work for the patient, but we absolutely accept cases on liens.
Mike: Okay, great. That’s good to hear. We have clients who come in all the time, who are concerned about that. And so from our perspective, it’s nice to know places out there will take care of people, even though they may not have health insurance or maybe their health insurance only covers a certain amount of visits. So that’s good to know. Why don’t we get into some of the primary services or specialties that Team Rehab offers?
Steve: Sure. So most of our clinics, I mean, we do physical therapy, so we see a little bit of everything. Primarily orthopedic related, some neurologic conditions, but we see everything from neck pain to back pain. We see torn rotator cuffs, we see hip and knee replacements. We provide a lot of unique services, but it’s kind of all rooted in a manual therapy approach where we really value getting our hands on the patient. And physical therapy is really all about restoring human movement. So we have patients that come in with some sort of a movement dysfunction and they’re in pain and our job is to try to correct that and fix it. So almost all of our clinics see the orthopedic conditions. We do have some specialized clinics in Michigan. We have a pediatric clinic. We have clinics that specialize in work conditioning and [inaudible], most of our clinics do FCEs. So we really cover the gamut ,as far as the services that we offer and provide.
Mike: Okay. Why don’t we talk about for a second, Steve, this’ll likely be directed at you. Tell me a little bit about education, training. I know we joked about it in the beginning with your title that I saw on LinkedIn and copied down, but tell me what type of education training does a physical therapist go through?
Steve: Sure. So physical therapy school, you need to graduate from undergrad and have an undergraduate degree to apply to PT school. You can really have an undergraduate degree in just about anything, you just have to take the prerequisites to apply to PT school. Once you’re in PT school, it’s pretty much three years, full time study. The first couple of years are all in the classroom and the last year is a lot of clinical rotation. So you’re out in the field, working in different settings.
It’s more on the job, kind of hands on training. So after those three years, you sit for a board exam, like you do in a lot of healthcare professions. Like I mentioned in the opening, the standard kind of entry-level degree at this point is a doctorate degree. So all PT students are completing some sort of doctoral dissertation. It’s a clinical doctorate that you obtain. And from there you graduate as a generalist, you can go out and practice in sort of any field you want. And then you can specialize from there. In the world of physical therapy, we’ve really kind of shifted towards doing residencies and fellowships as well. So you can become even more specialized.
Mike: Okay. And tell me how you would describe, in a nutshell, what is physical therapy? Why is it important? And what’s the difference between a physical therapist and a chiropractor?
Steve: Sure. So physical therapy is really all about restoring human movement. And we have patients that come to see us because they’re hurting from one reason or another. We see patients who are just had surgery and they’re postoperative, or they have an acute injury like a car accident or they just have chronic pain. They have prolonged arthritis that’s causing pain in a joint. So patients come in and they have movement problems and PTs really are the experts in human movement.
So our job is to restore correct movement patterns, to decrease pain, to help really get the patient back to their optimal performance and a pain-free lifestyle. There’s actually a fair amount of similarity between chiropractors and PTs. We both see acute and chronic pain, we both really advocate a hands-on approach to treatment. So we really value kind of getting our hands on and correcting a movement pattern through different manual therapy techniques. We tend to see patients for a very definitive amount of time. Patients come to a physical therapist, typically with a prescription for therapy and we set up a case for a certain number of times per week for a certain number of weeks. And we’re really utilized in a small window of time to get patients back into their optimal point performance.
Mike: And you brought something up that’s interesting that I wanted to ask you. You said that it’s usually, they’re coming to you. They’ve got a script for, they’ve seen someone and they’ve been referred to you. Can people sometimes come to you, let’s say, for example, you got in a car accident and you go to the emergency room and they’re discharged and nothing’s broken. Pain meds, anti-inflammatories and they say, you should follow up with your doctor. Can people come straight directly to you or do they need to go a primary or an orthopod to get a referral to come see you?
Steve: Yeah, that’s a great question. And actually patients can come directly to a physical therapist now. That is through a lot of hard work a couple of years ago in the profession of physical therapy to gain what we’ve called direct access, where you can come to a physical therapist without a physician script. There are a few nuances written to the rule where physical therapists are required to refer out to a primary care doc or an orthopedic specialist. But now that the profession has moved towards a doctorate degree, therapists are really trained to be that entry-level provider. So patients can come directly to a physical therapist. We do our best to evaluate that patient. If it’s something that’s a, we would deem a musculoskeletal injury, we can treat them. And if we feel like it’s something a little bit more serious, that’s out of the practice of PT, then we have a network of people that we can try to refer them to.
Mike: Got it. And Azin, this probably is more geared towards you. We had talked in the beginning a little bit about personal injury, workers’ comp. I think you had said there was 110 locations? So do you have an idea of the percentage of patients who come in that you see, are they, is it 50-50 from a comp, personal injury or compared to someone who, maybe they had a hip replacement and they’re coming in to do post-surgical therapy. So the question is, in general, what percentage, if you have an idea of the patient’s Team Rehab sees, what are they there for? Is it injury related or is it moreso surgical related?
Azin: Yeah. So every state’s different, every clinic is even different. We have certain clinics that the percentage of car accidents or work injuries, percentages are higher. I would say overall, Team Rehab is mainly treating the soft tissue injuries, or if it’s someone that’s just having common day aches and pains. So private health insurance is probably the bulk for all states overall, if you had to combine the numbers. Again, just certain states have higher volume of auto, certain clinics have higher volume of auto just because of where they are geographically. But I don’t know the percentage is offhand. It’s really specific to specific clinics, but I would say the bulk of our business is private health insurance.
Mike: Got it. And you brought up something that I’m going to segue into because it was one of my questions, and this was probably going to be for Steve. You had mentioned soft tissue injuries. And in my field with personal injury, we were joking around about before the show started about, that’s a dirty word. Things that we were joking around about practice, whatever. Anyway, in my industry, I feel like that’s almost a dirty word where the insurance adjuster on the other end of the cases, when we’re trying to settle is like, “Oh, it’s just a soft tissue injury.” So Steve, tell me what is a soft tissue injury and why is it and I’ll give you a story about myself, because it happened to me, but people say soft tissue like it’s not a big deal. I went through something and it was, I didn’t appreciate soft tissue injuries until after it. So what is it and sort of explain why it is a big deal?
Steve: Sure. I mean, soft tissue injury and they’re very generalized term. We have a lot of soft tissue in the body. I think from muscles, to tendons, the ligaments, could classify nerve in there too. I mean, there’s just a lot of soft tissue that can be injured. So there’s various degrees of injury when it comes to the muscles and the ligaments and tendons. You can have a very simple ankle sprain or you could have something very complex that’s going on with the soft tissue. Soft tissue injuries can be some of the hardest injuries, be some of the most severe injuries. I think sometimes people think if it’s not a broken bone, it really doesn’t matter. But the tendons that attach the muscle to the bone, when those are torn, they don’t just heal themselves. A lot of times it requires a surgery to go back in and fix that. And so the soft tissue injuries can be very severe. They can impact the daily life of patients in very significant ways and limit their functional abilities.
Mike: And I think what’s interesting, and I think State Farm would say that right, in an auto case, they’d be like, “Well, it’s not a broken bone. This is just soft tissue.” So I hear that all the time, but I think what’s also interesting about soft tissue, unlike a broken bone is, it doesn’t show up on an x-ray or an MRI and oftentimes it can be trickier to treat, right?
Steve: Yeah. And then the treatment for it is oftentimes not nearly as straightforward. Sometimes if you break a bone, you put some plates and screws in there and fix it. But if you have a tendon or a muscle or ligament injury, oftentimes it’s not as straightforward of how you get that problem to resolve.
Mike: Right. So about 10 years ago, I run and I was running in the city, just typical run. And I ran off a curb or sidewalk or something. And in my mind I thought that whatever I was landing on was two inches higher or lower or whatever. But there was just some little trick in my mind. And literally I tweaked my lower back and I’d never had, what I would call, a soft tissue injury before. And I tweaked my back and the next day I woke up and I could barely get out of bed. I couldn’t get dressed. It was the craziest thing in the world. My wife went to college with someone who ended up becoming a physical therapist at Illinois Bone and Joint. I ended up seeing a doctor or getting some anti-inflammatories and I went over there for a month and it was wild how helpful it was.
So I didn’t appreciate a soft tissue injury until it happened to me. And then I was like, “Oh, I’ll just take the meds and I’ll be fine.” And I talked to my wife’s friend and she’s like, “No. You have Blue Cross Blue Shield, come in. This’ll be great.” And I went and saw her twice a week for a month. And it was incredible. I mean, it was awesome because it was like having a personal trainer, but what was also great about it too, is, I mean, she really whipped me back into shape, in the sense of, back into shape to heal this injury and yeah, it was crazy.
Steve: Yeah, that’s a good example. I mean, because one of the tissues that I didn’t mention there is the disc and the disc would be considered a soft tissue in the lumbar spine or the cervical spine. And those disc injuries, there’s a whole spectrum of problems that those can cause. Anything from just a mild ache in the low back to a patient not being able to move and having numbness and tingling running down their leg. And, like you’re saying, the treatment for that is not always straightforward.
Mike: Right. When this happened to me, I had Blue Cross Blue Shield PPO. It was great. They let me go in two times a week. I think I went for four weeks. While we’re talking about that, and we get a lot of questions too, from our clients who are going through physical therapy and maybe it lasts two months or three months and they start asking, “Hey, is insurance eventually going to stop paying?” So what do you normally see when you’re dealing with private insurance? Is there sort of a set standard like, you can go to physical therapy 30 times a year or 50 times a year, or is it more case specific or injury specific?
Steve: It’s typically insurance specific. So there’s a wide range of, I guess, allowances or limitations in terms of visit allotment. Most injuries, you’re seeing those patients for two to three times a week for four to six weeks. Some of your postoperative diagnoses like a spinal fusion or a rotator cuff repair or things like that can take a lot longer. ACL reconstruction can take three, four or five months in physical therapy. But some plans allow, I’ve seen insurance plans that allow 120 visits a year. Our plan, at Team Rehab allows for 60 visits. Some are 30 and some are less than that. So there are a lot of limitations and some insurances control those visits a lot more than others. So even though your plan might have 60 visits, the insurance company may only let you use 20 of those for a certain condition. So every plan really varies.
Mike: Got it. And I take it with a car accidents, comp, personal injury cases, you probably see a lot of soft tissue injuries and a lot of patients coming in with soft tissue injuries?
Steve: Yep. Especially with motor vehicle accidents, we see, whiplash is a very common term that’s used for soft tissue injuries in the neck. I mean, a whiplash injury can cause a lot of trauma to the soft tissue in the neck.
Mike: Yeah. And what would you recommend to people? Because I get this all the time or someone calls me and they say, “I was just involved in a car accident. I was shaken up, I was frightened. I was scared. And my neck’s a little bit sore and I don’t really think I need to go to the doctor.” And I always tell people, go somewhere so it’s documented. Oftentimes, I remember when I tweaked my back, I walked home, but I was fine. I took some Advil and I could function, but when I woke up the next morning, I was like, “This is so debilitating.”
So I always tell people who call us, they were involved in an accident. Sometimes it’s like, they just got home or that’s the next day. And I always tell them, just go see someone to get it documented, whether it’s your primary, whether it’s a urgent care facility, emergency room or whatever, because oftentimes there’s a delay from the car accident until you start seeing symptoms. And then I give them, or feeling symptoms, and I give them my firsthand experience of, hey, I tweaked my back. I was fine the rest of the day. And so why is that? Why is it where people be in a rear end car accident, they’re shaken up and they’re a little bit sore. They don’t go get treatment. And then two or three days later, they’re like, “I can’t move.” What is that? I see that often with a soft tissue cases.
Steve: Yeah. That’s very common. Almost always patients will say after an accident, they feel okay. They decline going to the hospital. They go home and it’s after a night’s sleep, they wake up the next morning and they have a hard time getting out of bed. I think part of it is attributed to the human body. It’s kind of an amazing machine that after an accident, you’ve got a lot of adrenaline and endorphins pumping that you don’t necessarily feel an injury.
And sometimes it takes a little while for the damage to that soft tissue to really settle in to the point where you feel it. And even after a night of laying down, the body, everything stops moving and a lot of the inflammatory process and things like that kick on. And and then the next day is a train wreck. So I agree with you. I mean, you should always have it documented of what happened and show that you took the step to get the care initiated. You’re better off going and not needing followup care than waiting and having to have more serious care later on down the road.
Mike: Totally. And I verbatim, I tell my clients who call me that all the time, where I say, just go get a documented. It’s much better, if you feel finding a week and you don’t pursue anything, than if you don’t go and you wait a week, because then the insurance company will say, “Well, if you were injured, you would have gone to the emergency room.” So, anyway, speaking of that advice, what would be your best advice that you would give patients who are going through physical therapy? Or if my clients were listening and on this podcast, what’s your number one advice or pointer for people who are going through physical therapy?
Steve: Yeah, I would say my best advice is every accomplishment really starts with the decision to try. If you’re going to get back to a normal lifestyle, if you’re going to get back to a healthy lifestyle, it starts day one with that commitment to trying to improve. It’s important for you to incorporate the plan of care into your life. We see patients, on average, maybe three hours a week. There’s 165 more hours in a week that you have to take care of yourself. So as much as we can do in the clinic, you also have to incorporate that into your daily routine. So you have to make the effort. You have to make the commitment. If we do our part and the patient does their part, we’ll get them back to a healthy lifestyle.
Mike: Okay, perfect. That’s really good advice. I always tell my clients, listen to what your doctor says. Listen to what your physical therapist says. When they set you up for physical therapy, go to your appointments. Not only is the idea here to get better, but if you also don’t get treatment, that’s what State Farm is going to point out. Why didn’t you get treatment if you were … so anyway, it’s sort of twofold. Okay. This has been awesome. I want to switch gears to the last topic of the podcast and we’re going to go through some rapid fire questions. And every time I say this, I get the same reaction. People get a little bit nervous because they’re like, “Wait, Mike, we asked for questions beforehand, why weren’t these on here?” These are going to be very easy. So tell me your favorite animal?
Azin: Dog for me.
Steve: Dog.
Mike: Do you guys both have dogs?
Azin: I don’t have a dog.
Steve: I don’t. I have five kids. I don’t need any more responsibility.
Mike: But it sounds like, I mean, you live in the cornfields. I’d imagine you’re on a decent amount of land. You could.
Steve: I grew up having a dog. And so for me, it’s-
Azin: Same here, I grew up having a dog, but I don’t currently have a dog. I am of the mindset, if I live in a high rise and there’s not a yard for the dog to be playing in, then for me in my mindset, it’s not fair to the animal.
Mike: Fair enough. What’s your favorite app?
Azin: Currently? It’s Hatch.
Mike: Hatch? What’s Hatch?
Azin: Hatch, it was actually on shark tank and that’s how I discovered it, but I have a six month old now and it tracks her sleeping and her feeding schedule. So if she’s starting to get grumpy or something, my app will go off and say, time for feeding within the next 30 minutes. And I’m like, “Oh, okay. She’s probably hungry.” Or it will say, it’s been a two and a half hours since the last nap. So it’s saved me from constantly looking at the clock to see, oh, when’s nap time and trying to keep her on a schedule. So currently in my current life, that is my go-to app.
Mike: And Steve?
Steve: Yeah. I’d have to say, I probably spend the most time on LinkedIn. I don’t have too many interesting apps that I use all that often, but LinkedIn, my Google Calendar is absolutely necessary. Yeah. So LinkedIn is a favorite of mine.
Mike: You like looking at all the initial titles after your name on LinkedIn? Favorite food?
Azin: Ooh. That’s a hard one. I love food. So that’s a hard one to choose from. But I’m Persian. I love Persian food. I don’t cook it very well, at all, so we go to my parent’s house every Sunday for family dinner and my mom cooks a big Persian feast and my brother and I look forward to that every single Sunday. So I would say, Persian food would be my go-to.
Steve: For me, it’s just a good burger on the grill. Especially in the summertime, just grilling out a nice burger on the grill.
Mike: Okay. What’s your perfect vacation? Let’s start with you, Steve. So you don’t have time to think.
Steve: I actually just got back from Napa last week and it was amazing.
Mike: Ah, where’d you go?
Steve: We went to six different wineries in the course of three days.
Mike: Which ones?
Steve: We went to Venge, we went to Truchard. We went to Belle, Black Stallion, went to a place called an Aonair and Pope Valley. So it was amazing. I’d love to go back. But the perfect vacation for me really is probably a mountain vacation. More of a mountain than a beach kind of guy.
Mike: Got it. Did you go to Vi Sattui by chance when you were in Napa?
Steve: We did not. No.
Mike: My wife, we got married in Napa. I love Napa. We actually got married at Vi Sattui and that’s why I was asking. So if you live in Napa or you ask people in Napa where to go, they would never say go to Vi Sattui. It would be like, the Disney World of Napa. But what’s cool about it is, it’s over a hundred years old. And as far as going to, they’re one of the few places that have a kitchen cafe, so you can do a wine tasting and then you can go pick up lunch, bottle of wine, go sit outside. It’s absolutely beautiful. But they do bus people in and so anyway, I love Napa. Where did you guys stay?
Steve: We just, we rented a house. My wife and I went with four other couples and we rented a house, kind of just outside of the town of Napa.
Mike: Okay. Do you remember what town?
Steve: It was just town Napa. We were just outside of there.
Mike: Yeah. I love it there. Oh, I haven’t been back in forever. Azin, what about you?
Azin: I would have to agree in terms of, so anytime that we plan a vacation, well, we set up a little bit of time for beach part of it. Relax the first couple of days, but then we’re always hiking, riding bikes. So we actually got engaged in Calistoga, so we’re big, we love wine, but Napa area, in Calistoga, very, very special to us. We’ve been wanting to go back. We said probably for our five-year anniversary, we’ll end up going back, but I’ll definitely keep in mind the vineyards that you guys went to and mentioned. Because I’ve never been to any of those, but yeah, perfect vacation would probably be, first couple of days of beach relaxation from the hustle and bustle of life and then to explore, visit different cities. We used to go to Europe all the time and we would go to a beach resort for a little bit and then we would train to different cities and explore hiking. All of that.
Mike: We should. So maybe for the podcast number two, we’ll do it in Napa or Calistoga.
Azin: Yeah. Done.
Mike: All right. Finish this sentence. We’ll start with you, Steve weekends are for?
Steve: Catching up.
Mike: Cool. Azin?
Azin: Weekends are for little girl. She’s in daycare throughout the week. And by the time that I pick her up, we’ve got about hour and a half to feeding, bath time, bed time. So weekends really, for me, are all about for my husband and I are all about our daughter right now.
Mike: Cool. And I just threw this one in this morning because I feel like the weather is finally warming up in Chicago, thankfully. So what’s the first thing you’re going to do now that the weather’s warming up a little bit and the city is sort of loosening their restrictions too. So, Steve?
Steve: Probably get outside and play some sports with my kids. Cooped up inside. So our son just started some soccer. So get outside and place in sports with them.
Azin: Kayaking for me.
Mike: Where are you going to go kayaking?
Azin: Probably do what we never said we would do. And do the Chicago River kayaking. We always walk the river walk and we’re like, “Why would you do that? That looks so terrible.” And these big boats are going by and causing these waves. And you’re just in a little kayak next to them, but best probably the first place we’ll go since we’re. I mean, we haven’t been traveling with her, but yeah, we would love to get to other places to go kayak, but the first place will probably be the Chicago River.
Mike: Yeah. It literally my wife and I would joke about the same thing too. We would look at people kayaking in the Chicago River and I feel like every time we would see people 30 feet away, on the shore would be foamy, weird water. And we would say like … so anyway, good luck to you.
Azin: I know I will probably get in the kayak, we’ll probably make it, I don’t know, a couple of feet away. And then I’ll ask to turn around and come back. But it’ll be good time.
Mike: I mean, I just, I picture the water being pretty dirty, but maybe that’s just me, but.
