Company: ARKINETICS Physiotherapy & Training, Reinl and Fylakos GbR
Founders: Leon Reinl, Pavlos Fylakos
Date of establishment: September 1, 2024
Industry and company: Healthcare industry, physiotherapy

What drives you? What is your motto?
To grow through challenges and try to start every day with a smile. "Take the risk or lose the chance." (Origin of quote unknown). 

What is your start-up about and what makes it special?
By founding and opening our own practice, we have fulfilled a long-awaited dream. Not only in terms of independence, but also in terms of trying to offer our patients the best possible therapy with our goals and approaches. We can incorporate our concept and expertise directly into the therapy, both spatially and personally. One of our main goals is to enable people to participate actively in everyday life. In our practice, we don't just treat local problems, but view and perceive the person as a whole. With our range of modern strength training equipment and a free weights area, we help our patients develop increased resilience and a better body image. Together, we develop a therapy plan that is individually tailored and can be implemented for each person's specific situation. The name of our practice, ARKINETICS, is derived from the words arcus (Latin for circle/arch) and kinetic (ancient Greek for "kinesis," meaning movement). This combination of words also represents our motivation. The bridge between illness and health. From reduced quality of life to increased quality of life. We offer this help and support to accompany you on your journey to a more active, healthier life. 

What are your first successes?
The first successes we had were our busy schedule. We quickly had a lot of appointments booked. We also received a lot of positive feedback, both verbally on site and via our website in the form of Google reviews.    Many patients came to us through acquaintances, friends, or family, but also through doctor referrals. We were very pleased about this and it reinforced our belief that becoming self-employed was exactly the right decision.

What is your professional background?
Leon: I came up with the idea of becoming self-employed during my training. The idea came to me when I did my first internship at a physiotherapy practice in Wiesbaden. Over the years, this thought and idea became more and more solidified. My current business partner, Pavlos Fylakos, and I have known each other since school. We both completed our physical therapy training and worked together for several years in a therapy center and a small physical therapy practice. The idea developed into a dream for both of us and became more and more concrete until we decided that it was time to open our own practice. We had already found suitable premises and attended seminars on starting a business together, until we were able to open our practice in September 2024 and fulfill our dream.

What prompted you to start your own business?
In view of our profession as physical therapists and the resulting financial constraints, we both came to the conclusion that there was no other way than to become self-employed. In terms of retirement, providing for our own families, and the dream of possibly owning our own home, there are only limited opportunities for success as a salaried physical therapist. On the other hand, our many experiences with superiors in the past, both good and bad, were a decisive factor. We wanted to make our own decisions regarding the design of our workplace, the therapy, and the working hours. These points were the main triggers for us to decide to become self-employed and open our own practice.

Who advised you, who are your helpers and mentors?
We had several discussions with other practice owners and self-employed people from other industries, and attended seminars on starting a business, specifically in physiotherapy. Our friends and families always supported us in pursuing our plans. We are also members of the Association for Self-Employed Physiotherapists (IFK), which supported us in all matters relating to opening the practice and continues to assist us. For tax issues, we have a tax advisor from Wiesbaden at our side, and we chose ApoBank as our business bank because of its industry-specific knowledge.  

How did you find the first few days as founders?
The first few days were very exciting. We were full of motivation to throw ourselves into the work, but we didn't have a high workload at the beginning. We used the "free" hours to optimize the daily processes with our systems. We also had a lot of paperwork on our desks that needed to be processed, so we were glad that we didn't have many patients at the beginning. We sometimes had slight doubts as to whether we had done enough to draw attention to ourselves. However, these doubts were dispelled after 2-3 weeks when our appointment calendars started to fill up.   

What was your biggest challenge and how did you overcome it?
The biggest challenge so far has been to consciously take breaks. In our everyday work, and especially at the beginning of our self-employment, we were very careful to offer as many appointments as possible. After all, you want to get the business up and running. However, it's important to strike a good balance that allows you to deliver consistently high quality and performance without neglecting yourself. It's good that there are two of us and we can support each other or even slow each other down when we realize we need a break.

How do you draw attention to your company? What is your best marketing idea?
As physiotherapists, we are subject to advertising restrictions, so we are naturally more limited in this regard than other industries. For us, a lot of our business comes from word of mouth. However, we haven't been idle and have introduced ourselves to local doctors. We have business cards available in our practice. We also have an Instagram account to maintain our social media presence.

How did you finance your start-up?
We were able to finance our start-up thanks to a start-up loan from ApoBank. There was also the option of applying for a start-up loan from KFW-Förderbank. However, we wanted a little more flexibility in terms of repayment, which is why we decided to take out a loan directly from ApoBank. ApoBank specializes in all kinds of healthcare professions and impressed us with its expertise in the industry. 

What dream would you still like to realize?
Our dream would be to expand the practice with additional space or open a second location at some point. Personally, each of us would like to own our own home.  

Please complete the following sentence: If we had more time, we would... cook fresh and
healthy meals for ourselves more often.

What is your special tip: What would you recommend to founders?
You should be clear in advance about what it means to be self-employed and be prepared to ask others for help and ask questions. A good professional association and the advice of a tax advisor are a great help. Self-confidence but also a little humility don't hurt either.