Building Maine Strong — Jason Adour on Growth, Balance & Community Impact In this episode of The Boulos Beat, guest host Samantha Marinko sits down with Jason Adour, President and Founder of Maine Strong Balance Centers. Jason shares his journey from practicing physical therapy to becoming a healthcare entrepreneur, including the recent opening of his fourth clinic in Westbrook. The conversation explores the Maine Strong Balance Centers' specialized focus on balance, rehabilitation and fall risk reduction for older adults, care for individuals living with neurologic conditions, and vestibular and dizziness rehabilitation. Samantha and Jason also dive into the real estate strategy behind expanding a healthcare practice — from selecting accessible locations to building strong landlord relationships. Looking ahead, Jason outlines his thoughtful approach to growth: expanding into new communities while maintaining the personalized care, strong culture, and staff retention that define Maine Strong. Whether you’re interested in healthcare entrepreneurship, commercial real estate, or mission-driven business growth, this episode delivers valuable insight and inspiration.
Building Maine Strong — Jason Adour on Growth, Balance & Community Impact
In this episode of The Boulos Beat, guest host Samantha Marinko sits down with Jason Adour, President and Founder of Maine Strong Balance Centers. Jason shares his journey from practicing physical therapy to becoming a healthcare entrepreneur, including the recent opening of his fourth clinic in Westbrook.
The conversation explores the Maine Strong Balance Centers' specialized focus on balance, rehabilitation and fall risk reduction for older adults, care for individuals living with neurologic conditions, and vestibular and dizziness rehabilitation.
Samantha and Jason also dive into the real estate strategy behind expanding a healthcare practice — from selecting accessible locations to building strong landlord relationships. Looking ahead, Jason outlines his thoughtful approach to growth: expanding into new communities while maintaining the personalized care, strong culture, and staff retention that define Maine Strong.
Whether you’re interested in healthcare entrepreneurship, commercial real estate, or mission-driven business growth, this episode delivers valuable insight and inspiration.
MSD 25-0339 Jason Adour (1)
Mon, Mar 02, 2026 9:21AM • 1:03:10
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Maine Strong Balance Centers, physical therapy, balance and fall risk, neurological conditions, vestibular care, patient care, entrepreneurship, business growth, community involvement, real estate strategy, landlord relationships, clinical expertise, patient retention, healthcare mission, business expansion.
SPEAKERS
Jason Adour, Samantha Marinko
Samantha Marinko 00:00
I'd like to welcome our listeners to the Boulos Beat Podcast. I'm Samantha Marinko, a broker at the Boulos company, guest hosting for Greg Boulos. The Boulos company is northern New England's largest commercial real estate services firm with offices in Portland, Maine as well as Manchester and Portsmouth, New Hampshire. We've been selling and leasing real estate in Maine and New Hampshire since 1975 This podcast is designed to provide insight into Maine's leaders. It's movers and shakers. And speaking of movers and shakers, I'd like to welcome Jason Adour to the Boulos Beat. Jason Adour is the founder and president of Maine Strong Balance Centers, a growing Maine based healthcare practice focused on balance, mobility and fall prevention with a background in physical therapy and entrepreneurship. Jason has built multiple clinics across southern Maine while staying deeply connected to patient care. Today, he joins us to talk about business growth, leadership and what it's like building a mission driven company from the ground up. So Jason, thank you very much for being here. So I think right now you are in the process of launching your newest location in Westbrook. So I'm sure it's a busy time of year for you. How's that going?
Jason Adour 01:06
It's going well, the doors are open, and we started seeing patients last week. Wow.
Samantha Marinko 01:11
So how many locations does this make for you now? So this is four locations for us, four locations, all right? And is there? So it's a busy time of year in general right now. Is there a time of year that's not as busy for you in general?
Jason Adour 01:23
You know, I think there is like a cycle to the business in terms of the visits that come through the door. We're mostly working with older adults and medically complex folks, and as a result, the winter can be difficult. You know, a little bit of snow can really mess up our business operations. So ideally, we're opening in the springtime, and then we can enjoy spring through fall, which is really our best season, but you helped guide me to a period of some free rent. So we're really well positioned with this clinic, even though we prefer to start in the spring.
Samantha Marinko 02:02
Got it Okay, so I'm gonna go into a little bit of background here. One of my first questions, because I am not one, is always, are you a true Mainer? You born and raised here? I was not.
Jason Adour 02:15
I grew up in upstate New York, and then I went to school in the Boston area, and I married a true Mainer who has taken me home. So I'm glad, glad to be here and raise my kids here, for sure.
Samantha Marinko 02:28
Did you meet in college? Is that how you
Jason Adour 02:30
met after college? Okay, both professionals. My wife's a teacher, okay,
Samantha Marinko 02:34
okay, all right, so she brought you up to Maine. My husband likes to say that he brought me to Maine, but I'd been here for five years before we met. Doesn't really get to claim that either. So you went to college in the Boston area. You said, Did you study physical therapy? Was that always something that you knew you would get into?
Jason Adour 02:53
Yeah, I have a Bachelor's of Arts in English. Go figure. So I really enjoy reading and writing, and thought there might be something there for me. I think that that has actually served me well, despite some extra baggage and going to school for so long, and in that, you know, journey in undergraduate, I kind of was looking at healthcare and said, Man, I think this might be a good spot for me. And then made the transition in grad school to physical therapy.
Samantha Marinko 03:23
So did that require you getting an additional undergrad certificate in bio or something along
Jason Adour 03:29
those lines? There's a few ways to do it. For someone who really knows right off the bat what they want to do, they can go to school as an 18 year old and in six years get their clinical doctorate degree in physical therapy. For the rest of us, you go to grad school afterwards, and it's almost like a pre med where you have you need certain courses to get in.
Samantha Marinko 03:48
Okay, all right, so once you graduated, then the mission was clear. Once I graduated, the mission was clear, yeah. And did you start with another practice as just a practitioner or an employee.
Jason Adour 04:01
So I worked for five years, which isn't a lifetime, but it was enough time to see kind of how physical therapy works in different settings. So I worked in a nursing home, and I worked in outpatient sports medicine with really high level athletes, and then I worked at a brain injury clinic where people had just had brain injuries and strokes in patient. So I kind of really worked in just about every setting you can as a physical therapist, which I think was pretty foundational to kind of learning the basics, maybe some literacy in terms of how the profession works, which has served me well to found
Samantha Marinko 04:41
a company. So, yeah, you got a lot of exposure in those five years working elsewhere.
Jason Adour 04:46
I did. And I, you know, I think a lot of people move around in any type of job trying to find their footing. And again, I think that kind of like struggle to figure out what worked was helpful. So. So how
Samantha Marinko 05:00
did you decide, I feel like it's a pretty dramatic and risky, in a lot of cases, decision to go into entrepreneurship and do your own thing. Was there a catalyst to that? Or did you always know in the back of your mind it was something you wanted to do? Yeah, I didn't.
Jason Adour 05:15
I wouldn't say I always knew. I think I've always been curious about entrepreneurship. I was reflecting back that I had started a company in high school doing home repairs. So I was a lifeguard at the local pool at the community center, and just got to know people. And I started this really, you know, basic company where I would go into people's homes and do very average home improvement products, home improvements based on my skill set, which is still quite average. But it was a win win, because there might be product things that people needed, hanging pictures or fixing a railing, or even I did put a patio in which I am often curious about how that's held up over the years, but for nothing, you know. So if I was a lifeguard making minimum wage. You know, it'd be a win, win to do some of these projects together.
Samantha Marinko 06:05
Yeah. So that sort of prepared you for entrepreneurship then, right?
Jason Adour 06:09
And I lost the thread on the question as to why I went there. What was the question?
Samantha Marinko 06:13
Yeah, so Well, I mean, that was perfectly appropriate, because, you know what got you into entrepreneurship, and that seems like your first, you know, dipping your toe in.
Jason Adour 06:25
And maybe, I think what I wanted to maybe get to that's more on on brand, is each setting that I worked in, there were things that I noticed that didn't work for the patients. I mean, there's simple things, like, in the outpatient sports medicine world, it's really typical to have a few patients going at the same time, and there's things that do not work for the clinicians that are providing the health care being the clinician that did that in different settings. So I think kind of being able to take those lessons into were motivational to sort of founding a business that said, Okay, well, can we, can we do this differently? Question mark,
Samantha Marinko 07:06
and at the five year part, point in your career, was that just you, were you getting encouragement from your wife, from your colleagues? Or was this like an internal like, I think it's time you know, where were you and your your non career journey to feel like you were ready for that move.
Jason Adour 07:25
Yeah, I think I've got a super supportive wife who was kind of, you know, a rock for me, and gave me permission to do this, and, quite frankly, helped me do this, because you can't do it alone. It is all encompassing to start a business, and your family needs to be in with you, but yeah, just seeing kind of like where these things weren't working, and, man, could we do something differently? There's also a patient population that's not served that well in general. So the main patient populations that we see are older adults working on their balance, as well as people living with neurological conditions. And in the outpatient world, there's not a great home for them. Most outpatient clinics are focused on orthopedics. So it was just kind of an opportunity in the market. In addition to noticing what wasn't working that well, that kind of led to that
Samantha Marinko 08:16
got it as we're talking about family. You are now well established multiple locations. How has your family influenced other career decisions that you've made about whether it's location or who you're hiring, that sort of thing?
Jason Adour 08:31
Yeah, I think family has been influential to me in terms of, like, maybe mostly from like, a business structure standpoint, and how can a company support people throughout their careers. So one of the reasons that I moved around jobs is I needed different things at different times. I wanted to buy an engagement ring, so I took a job that paid better, or I had young kids, so I took a job where the hours were on the weekend so I could work, so I could be home with the kids during the week and thinking about what I needed in my family life, and realizing that other human beings who are working need things to support them at different points in their lives, all the way up until you're an older adult, I just kind of was thinking through maybe the different ways that work waxes and wanes and you need different things. So that's led us to come up with some creative, you know, not totally unique, but creative ways that the business can support employees, to try to hang on to people for their career. So instead of having to move jobs to do something, can what we're doing at the balance centers support people over a lifetime is kind of part of the mission. So I would say, basically, just being a father and a husband really suits me. And as such, you need different things over a lifetime. And how can the business support me and how can it support the people that I work with, who I care deeply about?
Samantha Marinko 09:53
Yeah, having met some of your employees over the last couple of years, I think that is pretty evident you've got. Got very good people, and I met people years ago when you and I first started working together, that are still there now. And I think it says a lot that you're able to maintain these people. Have them stick around and with good reason. So I think that's probably a very though you're not doing it for the purpose of business strategy. I think it I think it probably is a great business strategy as well. Those are my favorite things.
Jason Adour 10:24
When they're like, feels like the right decision and it works from a business standpoint. Those are kind of the the best places that's kind of home base, I think, yep, yep.
Samantha Marinko 10:36
And I have to mention that your wife was very accommodating with some furniture storage as well. So you definitely do have a support system on the back end. When you were displaced for six months or so and your your home was a business storage facility.
Jason Adour 10:53
Thank you for mentioning that. That will go a long way if that makes the cut, because that's an honest like, that's a pretty interesting illustrative example in terms of, you know, there's not boundaries between work and life in the way that you might like to, I might like to construct them. And one of them is, we had a whole clinic full of stuff in my garage for six months that you're alluding to. So every day, you know, opening your door and looking at this stuff, you know, yeah, it's a challenge sometimes.
Samantha Marinko 11:26
Yeah, and your, your daughter joined us on a tour once too, which was also a little bit of crossover, but probably exciting for her.
Jason Adour 11:35
I like meeting her, yeah, I think so. I think when I first started and, you know, I'm I've not been doing this forever, but it's been 10 years now or so. I really wanted to have, like, iron firm boundaries between work and life. I thought for some reason, that might be the way to do it. And boundaries are important. But I think, like, you know, there must be some permeable surface that is the boundary, because that's been really fun when the kids have come to real estate things or even to work sometimes. I mean, there's been times when they're at work doing something because School's out and I've got a clinical caseload to do. So yeah, I think that really suits me. And then it's a people that are part of our organization have the same permission within reason so that we're not, you know, compromising anything.
Samantha Marinko 12:27
Yeah. So we've talked a little bit about the vision for for hiring. Did you have initial, initial vision for main, strong balance when you founded it just as a as a whole, and if so, how has that evolved at all?
Jason Adour 12:43
Yeah, I think, I mean, I think the vision was to provide clinically excellent care, like really awesome physical therapy, to people who are traditionally underserved, and be an organization that's extremely generous to the people that work there, and to keep using the baseball analogy, I think that's home base for us. So in many ways, if we stay home there, I feel like the decisions come from that. You know, I think the reality is, is you're met with hard decisions sometimes. So you're, you know, especially financial is the most obvious one, where there are pressures where you must do something so that you can continue to exist, and that can be at odds with that mission at times, not always, but there's those moments, and those are oftentimes the hardest moments. So it hasn't necessarily evolved. It's the same mission, but I've gotten more comfortable dealing with the realities in front of us, which I mitigate in a certain way through transparency. So we have the decisions that we're making as a leadership team or I'm making, our staff knows what's going on. So there's not really some policy that comes out and they're scratching their head as why, as to why it is, if it's a policy that we're all kind of like, man, we have to do this for whatever reasons. Everybody understands the reasons behind it, and I've kind of brokered that buy in before we roll anything out as a team. Is sort of how I've mitigated that.
Samantha Marinko 14:15
Do you have you've used home base a couple of times? Do you have any, like, specific guiding principles or values, a motto, anything like that, that you kind of go to to remind yourself of where you came from.
Jason Adour 14:28
That's a really good question. I think just those words excellence and generosity just come up a lot. That's sort of what comes
Samantha Marinko 14:37
to mind. Yeah, those are, those are pretty good core values. Those will keep people sticking around. Was, was there anything in particular that led to your specialized practice? I know you mentioned them being underserved in general, the population you tend to work with, but as a novice, somebody that doesn't know a lot about you know the the physical therapy practice. In general, it seems like one of the more complex the types of
Jason Adour 15:04
PT, yeah, it definitely is. I mean, I think our tagline has evolved to specialty physical therapy. So in other words, we do all the physical therapy. We can help somebody rehab from a surgery, or we can help with pain. But our real expertise is helping people who have things that are a little more complex. So I'd say that the groups of folks that we help typically fall into three buckets. So one bucket is we help older adults with balance and fall risk. So if someone's feeling off balance, or maybe worst case scenario, they've had a number of falls and they're trying to cut this out. There's quite a bit that can be done. Some of it you might really expect, like, you know, maybe we're saying, gee, you should be, you know, not should be, but you could consider using a cane. And, you know, that's something that you might picture. Maybe something that you might not picture is we have harness systems, and we have perturbation boards. So boards basically think of a pallet that's on wheels, and one of the more interesting things that you can do to prevent someone from falling is having them do sessions on these perturbation boards where you're literally causing these near falls. People are having to step and catch themselves, and it takes time and resources and expertise in order to apply this, and you can be really effective. So with older adults and balance and fall risk, I think there's a sense that that's just normal with aging. And to a certain extent, it is balanced systems change, but to a certain extent that's totally outdated. You can make a really meaningful change with with someone's balance. So we wanted to kind of really be a place where we could change people's lives, you know, who maybe didn't realize that they could. The second bucket is neurological physical therapy. So people who have had strokes or brain injuries or Parkinson's disease or MS, these type of folks need physical therapy over a lifetime, typically. So there may be an event like a stroke and you need to rehab from but then one of the things that we've really come up with is having people come back over time. So just like they're checking in with their neurologist every six months, they're checking in with their physical therapists, and we run them through a battery of tests, physical tests, and if we notice any changes, we intervene. So as an example, if we run someone's balance test six months after their discharge, date from physical therapy and notice a change, but they haven't fallen yet, we can apply exercise before they fall. And then the third bucket is vestibular care, so people with inner ear issues and dizziness, we've got video goggles and these different positions that we use, and depending on what's causing the dizziness or imbalance, we can sometimes fix it within a session or two, if it's a crystal out of place, which is a whole other podcast. And then other people have been using these. Have been living with dizziness for long periods of time. And there are interventions that can be used. So I don't have a shorter elevator pitch on that, but we have these three buckets, all of which are served by physical therapy generally, but we are have kind of become the home based specialty spot for people locally,
Samantha Marinko 18:23
that one of the things I was that sort of struck me, and what you were saying is, like intervention and going before you know you need it is not how, again, a novice that doesn't know much about physical therapy in general, it's not how I think of it. I think that you go when you're prescribed physical therapy, when somebody says, hey, you've you've been through this trauma, or this has happened, and now, now you need to go as sort of a recovery mechanism and not a preventative mechanism. But it sounds like there are maybe benefits to going before you know you need it like, are there, are there ways of noticing that. I mean, balance is clearly one thing, but is there other things that you recommend somebody that doesn't know much about? It looks for sure.
Jason Adour 19:08
So, you know, I'm obviously very biased, because this is my profession. I think everybody could have a physical therapist on their team, just like you have a primary care physician, and that physical therapist could measure you on some ongoing basis with whatever your individual needs are and what kind of matters most to you. So you could just kind of picture in your own head. I like to do. I'll use myself. I like to swim, and I'm a dad, and my kids do X, Y and Z, you know, so maybe at my annual physical therapy visit. They're doing some standardized tests just like you're doing blood work, so you can kind of keep an eye on someone's physical abilities. And the physical therapist is looking at my shoulders and this type of thing to stay ahead and say, Okay, well, your your internal rotation is a little tight, and that could lead to an overuse injury. So I think in an ideal world, that's how it works. You. The problem is, is the payers who pay for physical therapy, so the insurance companies are not set up for that. So you can't currently just kind of walk in for no reason and have insurance pay for that. So, so that's always kind of a problem with some of the altruistic ideas. But where, what we call longitudinal care, or we partner with bu on this. They call it the dental model of care Boston University is, if you have something going on that's you're going to have for the rest of your life. So there's a medical condition and your physician is in agreement with it, you can absolutely come in every six months, every year, and have insurance pay for that. So there's kind of, it's not quite where we'd like it to be from an altruistic standpoint, but it is better than the status quo, where you can come in, provided you qualify,
Samantha Marinko 20:51
okay, and so maybe headed in the right direction in a sense. Yeah, you mentioned a couple of times that one of your buckets is working with older folks. Do you span all ages? You know, a high school kid that has a sports injury, for example, or is there a specific range that you focus on?
Jason Adour 21:10
We really span all ages? I mean, I think in those different buckets, there's, like, more common age groups. So in the, you know, balance and fall risk, that's typically folks who are older. In the neurological bucket. You know, you can be pretty young and be diagnosed with some of these, but oftentimes it's folks that are older. The vestibular bucket tends to be people in middle age. That's sometimes when those symptoms come up. But my youngest patient currently is three. I work with him in the pool, which is something cool that we've got at one of our facilities, and then I'm not sure who my oldest patient is. I'd have to look at their charts, but my guess is, you know, the ninth, you know, in their 90s at some point. But we do have people that are even older than that that come through our doors.
Samantha Marinko 21:54
So you mentioned the pool. You've got a lot of other, like, cool, interesting things. You mentioned the goggles before. Are there any other cool, you know, devices or things that you utilize in your spaces that might be a little bit unknown to people that are not well versed
Jason Adour 22:11
in PT, yeah, that's a cool question. I think you know, when you're working on balance, you're you're trying to challenge someone in a way that is beyond what they might experience in the real world. And by doing so, you are challenging systems. So they change, kind of like strengthening, where, if you you know, if you lift weights, you get stronger. Well in balance, if you are doing things that are kind of more provocative, your balance systems will change. So like, if you come into the clinic, you might see someone in the harness on that slipboard With one therapist, another therapist may have, we use these equipments that are called tidal tanks, which are tanks full of liquid. So it might weigh 20 pounds, but like as you're walking with it, the liquid moves around, so you're getting perturbed and having to kind of recover from it. You might see people doing obstacle courses with cones and hurdles. So the general idea is picking activities which are relevant to what people are having trouble with, making them harder than they have to do in the real world. And much like strengthening your balance, systems will change. I think it's more kind of you're not going to see people laying on tables getting massages. It's going to be people doing pretty interesting, dynamic stuff. At one of our clinics, we've got a balanced garden outside. One of the therapists built this garden, so it's a literal garden with flowers, and depending on you know what the patient needs, there's patients where that's on their lists of interest. So we'll physically take them outside. They'll use the wheelbarrow and water, and just make sure that they're capable of doing that if that's something that they really enjoy doing at again, a higher, more ridiculous level than they might have to do at home. There's also a balance beam, and there's two like pits that have, one has sand in it, you know, for folks who are wanting to walk on the beach, and maybe they're worried about that another one has rocks in it. So I think it's more about what you might see people doing that might be kind of fun to watch if you were, if you were to come by.
Samantha Marinko 24:14
So you're not going to main Balance Center to relax. You're going there to work.
Jason Adour 24:19
You've got to work. And I think one of the keys to balance is it's all about intensity, so you need that moderate to high intensity to make a difference. So we intend to provide that when you come over.
Samantha Marinko 24:34
So when you were first getting set up, were there any business challenges opening your first location, for example, anything that surprised you as you were opening up?
Jason Adour 24:45
You know, I think, I think it's the things that you would typically expect. You know, there's a there's, there's kind of like the intellectualizing of it all, where you're making the business plan, and I spent a ton of time really trying to be careful. And map all that out. And I would say, for the most part, things went to plan, but I'll admit that I think the emotional ride was not something that I've ever really you know, I don't know how to prepare for and I don't know how it suits everybody, but there's a difference between on the spreadsheet realizing, okay, when you start up, it's going to take you a while to break even, and you can map that out, but when you're living through that, and then there's a stretch of storms that are keeping you closed, you know, that emotional ride was one that I'll never forget. So I think that's what mostly stands out, where even if the business metrics works the way that they should, and we were right about kind of like, there being this unmet need, and we've been we're really healthy and thriving while you're emotionally living through that. That's something I'll never forget.
Samantha Marinko 25:51
Were you, were you just committed? Or were there ever points where you were like, maybe this was not the right move? Yeah.
Jason Adour 25:59
I mean, I'd say there's moments where things are at their worst. I mean, I think people are tired about hearing of covid, but, you know, that might be a moment where I was really thinking, oh my gosh, how are we going to recover from this? So there's, certainly, that's the main one that comes to mind. There's others where, you know, I think we have federal payers like Medicare, and there's times when those, you know, those, those big government things do affect us in terms of, you know, we got notice that your Medicare payments going to get turned off, but then it's going to be turned on, and there's misinformation. So I think there's things that come to mind where I'm like, man, you know, these are, there's some exposure here, and it's challenging. But in general, on average, I've really felt good about the purpose of what we've been up to, and I've gotten really good at not overreacting. You can double check with my wife, because there's always challenges, always and you know, at this point, I feel pretty comfortable about taking it one bite at a time.
Samantha Marinko 27:06
Yes, well, I can, I can vouch for you, because I have seen you overcome some challenges as it relates to real estate. So, so as a clinician turned business owner, did you find that you needed to hone in on, like, leadership or operational skills, anything like that, and is there anything specific you did, whether it was like coursework or finding a mentor, anything like that, that sort of helped you become a boss of a business?
Jason Adour 27:30
Yeah, I think that's a great question. I am I have four different mentors that I'll go to for different things, and there's more than that, but there's like, four main ones, and I am humble enough to know that I don't have all the answers, and there's people that are willing to help me who have decades of experience and have already seen this problem before. So that's something that I have really not had a hard time with, but I do have colleagues in similar positions, and they don't use the mentors at the level they could. So I found that really liberating, where if I might know the right answer, but maybe I've never done it before, and being able to go talk to somebody can really help me with some firm footing. I'd also note that I think being a clinician in some ways, sets you up well for this. The example that I'm thinking of is like in in medicine, you know what I was trained in school 15 years ago. That evolves over time. And there's no way that school prepares you for career, not it prepares you, but that, you know, it's not the coursework is not something that's finalized. It's something that's continually evolving. So I've really taken that mindset to business where, you know, when we set up a policy as an example, I'm going to do my best to kind of do the research and see what's out there and talk to experts. But I feel really comfortable, kind of, as a scientist. If that's not working, I don't feel bad about changing something. We're going to tinker with it if there's a reason to do so. So kind of looking at it is like it's never things are never finished. You're continually kind of tinkering with things and letting everybody know that that's what you're doing. You're not, you know, reversing course for some leadership failure or something like that. It's a matter of new information or that's come up. So I think in some ways, being a clinician actually gives me some flexibility and mindset about how to how to evolve as the business evolves.
Samantha Marinko 29:29
It probably makes relating to a lot of your staff easier to you understand what they're doing every day. And I think when you know a boss of a company hasn't done that job before, it can make the connection with employees a little bit more difficult.
Jason Adour 29:43
I think you're right about that. And I I clinically am not treating at the same level that I was. You know, when I first started, I would see a full case load, just like everybody else, and then, kind of like, run the business as my side hustle, as you must do to get going. And I'm fortunate. Enough to be, you know, successful enough so that I can now take some time away, but I've been really intentional that I still work one day a week with my clinical caseload, and I'm working hard that day, you know, it's not a, you know, I'm working alongside my colleagues, working the same schedule, the same caseload. The idea being that whatever policies I'm coming up with, I need to not only know what it's like, because I have that experience, but I need to live them. And I think that that's been really helpful, both as kind of like a leading by example, but also, you know, we have a new policy coming out, for example, where everybody coming through our doors is going to get a report card. So the idea being that if we're doing all these interesting tests with people, shouldn't they have improved literacy in a way, to maybe talk to their family or their health care provider, because health care providers are really siloed off. We fax things still back and forth to each other, if you can believe that. So we came up with this report card as a team, and starting in January, everyone's going to get a report card so they can, you know, like I say, they can say, Hey, these are my balance scores. And this is what I'm doing as a way to communicate with, you know, the world at large that they live in. And I'm going to have to do that at each visit, as opposed to just sort of tell the clinicians to do it. And I expect there will be some challenges and some policy reversals and things that will be born of having to do it myself, not just telling people that I think this is a good thing for our for our patients in our business practice.
Samantha Marinko 31:34
What you preach, it's probably going to be, you know, an efficiency builder too, to having have yourself go through it and live through it, you'll be able to make those tweaks not based on feedback, but on lived experience. So you mentioned bu you have, I think, other relationships with local colleges as well. Can you elaborate a little bit about what you do with them or what you get from them?
Jason Adour 31:57
Yeah, our strongest, or sort of longest relationship was with the University of New England. So we're in a clinical pairing with their physical therapy department. And what that is is basically a loose agreement that all of their students will have access to our facilities and our clinicians. So at different points in their training, they come through for different reasons. And then, in addition, our clinicians and I go into the classroom to teach. So the idea being, is that it's a it's a win, win for all parties involved. So the students get increased exposure to the clinic. The clinicians are in the classroom, so they're, you know, kind of talking about things more academically, which is good for us professionally, and also diversifies our day a bit. So if you have patients coming in all day long, but then you've got two hours of teaching, it's nice. And then, from a university standpoint, they're continually looking for ways to get that clinical expertise into the classroom, because the faculty members are all clinicians, but many of them are researchers now and don't have that real lived experience from Tuesday in terms of dealing with this particular patient. So it's been really advantageous for us, for a number of different reasons, to work with universities, specifically una
Samantha Marinko 33:16
Yeah, and from a hiring perspective, do you see that? That's a benefit that you're seeing as well.
Jason Adour 33:21
It's a huge benefit because the students know us. So I think one of the things that's really important to me, from a retention standpoint, is that obviously we have access to the students so we can, you know, that's an advantage, just an obvious advantage from a hiring standpoint, but I think from a retention standpoint, one of the lessons that I've learned earlier on is that you may sell your mission to somebody in the hiring process, but if they don't like the patient populations that you're seeing or not not that they don't like them, but if it's not what they want to do, you're not going to keep them no matter how good you're, how generous your business is. So I think one of the huge advantages is not just hiring. It's about hiring like the just right person, because there's no surprises. They know the patients that we see. And it can be some kind of an emotional person, but it can be like an emotional challenge. So in other words, if I have history working in an outpatient clinic with a high school athlete who sprained his ankle, and I've got to get him back to football. That's a huge emotional challenge in his life. But in my life, I'm not losing sleep over that. I know that he's going to be okay, and I can rehab that at the balance centers, we might be helping someone who is newly diagnosed with MS and has some balance issues, and it's heavy, you know, it's emotionally. You're invested in making sure that that person has the best health care, and you are a big part of it. So the neurologist may be helping them with certain medications they should be and would be, but then, you know, they're looking at us to kind of solve these problems in their life. And that's heavy. That can be heavy. So it's important that the. The people that work for us understand that and want to do that, because that can get tiring,
Samantha Marinko 35:07
and it sounds like not a lot of instant gratification too, which I think some people need to feel good about their day. But like you said, a lot of the people that you're going to see are going to be very long term, maybe for life, so you're not going to get that sprained ankle fixed and get them out on the field. This is field. So this is somebody that's going to be with you for a very long time. So you may not have that, you know, you know, I succeeded, and they're back out there. It's going to be, you know, smaller victories that you need to focus on. You've got it exactly.
Jason Adour 35:35
And I think if there's a spectrum in health care from like, per diem work, where, like, you're going in as a health care provider, doing something for the day and then not taking any of that with you, because you just kind of got plugged in. We're on the other end of that. We're like, you're saying, we're we're intentionally hoping to be on that theoretical patient's team for their lifetime. So that's a long term relationship, which can be a huge win. It's obviously a win from a patient standpoint, to have a clinician that knows them really well over the years, and from a clinician standpoint, it's a win, because you get to be effective and really help people the way that you probably went in the field to do. But it's not without its, you know, burden, because you care about that other person, because you've known them a long time,
Samantha Marinko 36:20
and you have some other local relationships or community involvement. I think SMAA is one that we've talked about before, the Southern Maine Agency on Aging. Do you have you want to elaborate on that, or talk about any other relationships you have in the community? Yeah, I appreciate
Jason Adour 36:37
the opportunity to do that. So I think one of the things that's I've realized is that the impact that we're making in the clinic, I think, is awesome, but a lot of these problems that we're after in healthcare are really like community based problems. There's a term called the societal determinants of health, which are like the places that we live and work and how they make us healthy or not, and those are actually more influential than I am in the clinic in terms of someone's health outcomes much of the time. So one of the things that's been really professionally interesting to me is, how do you make a difference on the community level? So if I stick with kind of a simple example of balance and fall risk, if I'm in the clinic working my, you know, with my patient to do high intensity balance training, at some point, they're leaving the clinic, and what are they doing? So one of the things that we've partnered with small or we've also developed some of our own classes, is balance specific classes so that when people are discharged from physical therapy, do they have places to go so they can continue to invest in their balance. So that's an example of where we're kind of like, okay, what's already happening in the community? Can we volunteer and strengthen that? Or, if it doesn't exist, can we provide that? Another example is all the communities that we're in, we're part of the Age Friendly committees in those cities. I'm in South Portland, I'm the most active where it's a committee member. And we're looking at, you know, what do older adults in South Portland look like? What do they need? And you know, there's no answer to that that's quite easy, because there's, you know, everybody's a human being who has different needs and things, but looking at things on a community level is extremely interesting to me. In South Portland, we developed a program called the South Portland falls intervention program, where if somebody falls in South Portland, the fire or EMS, will generate a referral to this volunteer program, and there's a few physical therapists that are a part of it, and then we give that individual a phone call to try to figure out, why did you fall? What could you do differently? And it's intentionally created to then connect people with community services. So in that particular example, maybe somebody fell, and this has happened because they didn't have a grab bar on their stairs leaving their house. Well, there's actually grant funding in the City of South Portland, and that person may have had no idea that that exists, and they would qualify. And then we kind of connect those dots. So it doesn't always work that beautifully, but that's the idea. Is, on a community level, can we connect that person with resources? Because you can imagine, if you just get that person in the clinic doing balance exercises, that matters, but if you never get that railing done, you've not actually solved that community health issue or that, you know, you've not solved the root cause for
Samantha Marinko 39:35
that person. Yeah, no, that makes sense. It when you first started explaining all of this, it made me think of like learning a foreign language. Like you can learn it, but then when you leave, if you never practice it's you know. You need to practice it in the real world to really, like retain it. It seems like the same thing. Like you need to know what they're going out and doing in their everyday life, like the gardening, for example, so that you can work on those real life things, so that they can practice these real life. Or, you know, experiences with you, and then they have those abilities once they leave your office.
Jason Adour 40:05
I'd say that's that's like, really obviously true for many of the older adults, but it's also true for like, anybody needing health care, so even, like that sprained ankle patient that I was kind of picking on. I mean, there, there may be other things that are really relevant to them in their life. And I think the more context you have about where they're living and working and what matters most to them, the more effective you can be as a healthcare provider. And you can do that both by asking questions in the clinic, and if you start to see trends that are more community level, start to poke at okay, what? What type of volunteering can I do that would be good.
Samantha Marinko 40:42
So you mentioned the grab bar about when somebody's leaving their home. So I want to talk to you a little bit about your real estate locations and how you make decisions about where you're going. So in selecting your very first location, can you tell us about the process, how you found it, what you were looking for, what you maybe learned from going into the space that you would or wouldn't do again?
Jason Adour 41:06
Yeah, there was a great question. So I've learned so much since then. So there's an interesting exercise to reflect back on that, I think from from a purely business standpoint, I looked at what are the different populations and the different cities in the area. So, you know, I think where the other physical therapy providers are matters, but because we're doing sort of a specific brand of physical therapy that is really complementary, and in fact, we oftentimes are working really closely with other awesome physical therapists in the area, I was kind of looking at, okay, where are the populations, and then where are the groups of older adults specifically, getting larger? And it turns out, in general, that's happening almost everywhere, not not everywhere like them, going back a few years. But in Portland as an example, the rates weren't changing the same as they were in Scarborough. So I try to kind of take a look at, okay, where do maybe there's not a ton of new people moving into a certain town, but where is the where are the areas getting older and expecting that I can be most impactful with some of our specialty services in those areas. From there, I've got to consider, okay, where are the convenient places for medically complex people to get to. So there needs to be a parking lot that is, you know, easily accessible. You don't want to be taking a left on a busy traffic area. Wayfinding is important, which is not something I nailed at my first location, but luckily, it's quiet enough that people can, you know, make some moves and things. Because, you know, where, where is this clinic? For some people coming to our clinics, mobility is an issue. So, you know, how far is the front door to the clinic itself? Which is something in our in our soccer location is, you know, maybe more of a challenge than it is in our Scarborough location. And then I think the one of the things that I've really learned over the years is, you know, it's you have a real relationship with the landlord in terms of how comfortable and aligned Are you in terms of the importance of their building accommodating folks like this, because everyone has kind of a different belief system in terms of what building should be doing for people. So for the first location, it was more about, where are people, almost like a business decision, where are the groups of folks, you know, where are the people that need me? Which is still obviously extremely important, but it's evolved a bit to kind of like, okay, what are the buildings? How are the buildings serving the people that are coming into them?
Samantha Marinko 43:38
You, you mentioned so many nuances that I think, don't cross people's minds that aren't having to make these decisions that are for, you know, more complex needs from a accessibility standpoint, and just, you know, distance from parking lot to door or the nearest handicap parking space. And you know, is there a curb cut there, and is there a button on the door? There are so many little complexities that I would think as a first time leaser of a space when you were first opening up would probably hit you after,
Jason Adour 44:15
yeah, that's fair. I'd say, you know, one of the reasons that I think you know, again, being a clinician and sometimes set us up for this is, I remember, in physical therapy school, one of the first things we did the first week was we got crutches. Some people had crutches and some people had wheelchairs. And I went to school in Boston and they said, Okay, go. They put us on a little scavenger hunt. Go navigate the city in this wheelchair and go navigate it even, even with crutches, which, you know, I think many even younger people are on crutches sometimes, and it stinks, you know, it's really hard, even even in really well thought out spaces to get around sometimes. And I don't, I don't mean to generalize, because people are so capable, but for most of us, at some point in our lives, you know. We're going to be in a position where we're not able to move the way we want to. For others of us, it's something that they're living with, you know, for for the rest of their lives, and just kind of recognizing, as a clinician how that matters is something I had in mind.
Samantha Marinko 45:17
Just the thought of the exercise makes me nervous, as somebody that's very familiar with, you know, real estate out there, that is something that would give me actual fear to have to go and try to do so it's great that you were forced into the exercise, but it probably gives you really good perspective now, knowing what your clients need in a more specific way. Yeah, and
Jason Adour 45:40
there's never a one size fits all, because they're, you know, you're thinking older adults. There's plenty of older adults that I know that are in their 80s and they can walk miles. So it's, you know, I don't want to generalize in terms of what people can and can't do, but just recognizing that, you know, the building matters. It's going to matter for all of us at certain times, and for others of us. It matters all the time.
Samantha Marinko 46:01
So that, are there any, you know, deal breakers when it comes to a building?
Jason Adour 46:06
Yeah, I think, you know, I think the parking lot to entrance thing is kind of, when we pull up to a building, we can kind of tell, you know, right off the bat, shoot, this isn't going to quite work. That's the main one, you know, at this point that I can kind of almost do a drive by and know whether that's going to work or not for us. There's a lot of other stuff that's modifiable. You know, I've learned how to put handicap accessible buttons on doors as an example. So there's, there's some things that are really solvable, and there's other ones that just aren't solvable in ways that are fair to, you know, even ask a landlord to do because they're doing their best with a building that may have existed long before either of us did. Sure.
Samantha Marinko 46:46
You mentioned a little bit about picking locations based on demographics in general. Is there anything else about a neighborhood that would draw you in or sort of turn you off from a location?
Jason Adour 46:57
Yeah, I think, you know, I think the, again, the type of physical therapy that we do really complements a lot of existing, you know, opportunities. So I've seen value in being in quieter spaces. I've seen value in being in busier spaces where people are. So I think we're pretty flexible. In general. Nothing else jumps out as like a neighborhood deal breaker.
Samantha Marinko 47:19
And you mentioned other physical therapists too, and even that's not necessarily a deal breaker. You've got great relationships with a lot.
Jason Adour 47:26
Yeah, I would say in some ways it's actually makes it more attractive, because you know that again, we can, we can do it all, but we understand that there's other really good clinicians in the area, and they're oftentimes using us for the patients that aren't fitting in quite right for their clinics, and then vice versa, if they have an expertise that we think our patients would benefit from, our ego is just right size. A lot of the time to know that we're we can be really comfortable sharing, which is the way I think it should be. And I think most people, once they start doing that, are really comfortable. But I think there's some like instinct before you've shared, to feel like, Oh, is there risk to sharing? But it's actually competition is, I think, mutually beneficial for both different parties, and I think the consumer as well.
Samantha Marinko 48:14
It's interesting, because I don't think most people would think that there was, like, a mutual benefit to two physical therapists being in close proximity, but it makes sense, if your ego is at the place where you're comfortable making referrals to somebody else and vice versa, it does seem like it would be a good relationship.
Jason Adour 48:33
Yeah, I think there's limits to that. But I think any you know, any of us who have had health care understand that, like there's not a one size fits all provider. So you know, if you think about primary care physician, you know what makes a good primary care physician may be very different for you than it is for me. So I think from a physical therapy standpoint, you know, there's having choice, and there's plenty of patients, is is a good thing?
Samantha Marinko 48:55
Yeah. So now, with all of the locations you've gone into, what's been your biggest commercial real estate lesson or surprise that is sort of on your radar moving forward.
Jason Adour 49:11
I think the biggest lesson is just some perspective. In terms of a landlord is not just someone you're doing business with in some abstract way, it's someone that you have a relationship with moving forward. And I think I've just gotten some color to that in terms of, you know, there's different types of landlords with different styles in terms of their business styles. I mean, some are very business like and, you know, less less communication is better. Others may have a business they're running of their own that's small, and they may have kind of a different style and presence. So I think this seems quite obvious when I'm saying it out loud, but I think initially I had always considered a landlord being someone that you negotiated certain business with, statically and. Then that was it. You know, it was kind of a deal type thing. And the deal is very important because that can affect your profitability over decades if you stay there. However, what is equally important to recognize is they are a part of what's going on ongoing. So, I mean, an example would be, you know, if there's an HVAC system issue that is technically the landlord's going to help us with that, I have a team of people looking at me to fix it. I'm then outsourcing it to the landlord, and depending on their responsiveness and how maybe they're not seeing the issue the same way, there can be a real disconnect between what people in the building are saying and feeling and maybe what's happening, and just kind of recognizing that that is something that needs to be tended to on an ongoing basis. So I'm kind of talking about it in abstract terms, but they are reluctantly, sometimes and sometimes really happily. They're a part of your team moving forward. And maybe to say your team isn't the right language, but they're they influence, kind of the some of the nuance to what it means to operate in those spaces, because it's their it's their spaces, and they all have very different styles.
Samantha Marinko 51:12
I think it's so interesting that when I asked you that question, I thought you were gonna say something about a building, and you didn't go in that direction at all. And I think that's really interesting. And you You even said it might be obvious, and I don't think it was obvious at all. I think that is a very, very like keen observation, that this is a person that you're going into business with for, likely, the long term, and it's a relationship that you are now engaged in, and your business is, in a way, dependent on that relationship. And I don't think a lot of people put that consideration into a landlord. You think, once a lease is signed, you know, this is my space, and I'm good to go. But there's so much more nuance to it, like you said, and I think your answer is so interesting. I thought you were going to say, oh, yeah, you know, Ada, accessibility, that's the thing, you know, but it's about a relationship. So that was a very interesting direction to take that I'm glad I surprised you. Yeah, you did.
Jason Adour 52:19
I've thought about an idea. You know, I'm not a landlord currently, but if I were, would, what about like, a five minute interview, like a very tight interview, and would that serve everybody in terms of, you know, because as a landlord, you want to make sure that you can count on the because you can get personal guarantees and things. But if you have, like, a tenant, that's really wild, I imagine that that's really difficult. And then as a tenant, you know, you can kind of get just a feel for how they like to operate. And I could see that being really mutually beneficial. My guess is some smart business people could see some downsides to it. But from a tenant's perspective, I'm always thinking, man, it'd be really nice just to kind of get a visual and verbal and have, like, a bit of a relationship before you're off and running. So each party could kind of have veto power in terms of, you know, yeah,
Samantha Marinko 53:10
knowing who you're going to be working with overall. This time, maybe you should implement the report cards into the landlord tenant interview process as well. That could be useful finding out a little bit more about each other. So how do you balance the long term property strategy and these relationships with the evolving needs of your clinical services? You mentioned before that, you know, the what you learn in the classroom that's evolved, and I'm sure you know with technology and other things, there's other evolution to the business. So how do you, how do you find that balance?
Jason Adour 53:43
Yeah, I think one of the things that I've always kind of come home to is some transparency. So I think the what we've done locally with each clinic is give the people who work there some insight into kind of who the landlord is and kind of how they operate, so that it creates some explanation in terms of maybe why things are a certain way, or maybe why a landlord's super responsive but they can't because they're under their own financial pressures, or maybe a landlord's not super responsive for whatever reasons. So I think transparency in terms of what I'm experiencing interfacing with the landlords to the leadership and to the staff themselves at each location has been really beneficial, so that people understand, and I think that that's kind of a scalable plan. It's part of my scalable plan where, you know, as we grow, I still want people locally to kind of understand the different pressures that we're involved in, because it's just, I think it's beneficial to all parties involved.
Samantha Marinko 54:47
Yeah, you sort of already answered my next question with that response, just about how commercial real estate decisions can impact your company culture, but that transparency sort of lends itself to answer that question. So taking into account, you know, staff feedback about other locations, does that sort of guide any decisions moving forward about what you're looking for?
Jason Adour 55:08
You know, in some ways it does. I think, you know, you try to learn from what you've learned, but that being said, there's always new angles to things. So, you know, I might have had a carpet issue in my first one, and then by the time I've done my fourth one, I've kind of solved for how to deal with carpet that's going to wear out over time. But then there's a new issue that maybe I've never, kind of seen before. So I try to let what I've learned in the past prevent us from making the same mistakes, and I try to have some information to make sure that the landlord that we're going to do business with is going to, you know, do a nice as as as excellent a job as we intend to do as tenants. But there's always new territory, and I think I'm just kind of really open to leaning on other experts, like you Sam, to kind of help navigate when those when those come up.
Samantha Marinko 56:02
So how do you balance, no pun intended, scaling a healthcare practice while maintaining your personalized patient care? Because you do have a very clear focus on one on one attention. Yeah.
Jason Adour 56:16
So I think, I think the I was afraid of this for for for a while, and I still it's still something that I tend to but I'm no longer afraid of it, because I've really come to peace with we have this incredible group of people who are willing to work with us. They've stayed with us over period of years, and our mission is to, kind of like, make the biggest impact, and the way to do that is to get bigger. So by getting bigger, we're affecting more community. So every community that we're in, you know, I humbly submit, is better off for having us there based on our community, you know, impact both on the individuals that come through our doors, who are hopefully doing better, and based on some of our interventions in the community, and I'd like to measure that. So the EMS has data on, sort of like, how often people are falling and needing help in the city. And I think over the years, it'd be interesting to kind of say, hey, if we're if we're in a particular city, that city is a little bit healthier for having us. So I think that I'm really at peace with we have really great people. If you're going to keep really great people, there has to be opportunity for upward mobility and new challenges over a career. And what's good for Scarborough may really be, not that it's a cookie cutter, but why not be impactful in Augusta and Bangor and beyond? So I think I'm really at peace with we can do some awesome things in more communities with scale, and we can take care of the people who work for us by having more opportunity to do more diverse things with size. And we need not compromise that one on one. You know, patient care that makes the kind of secret sauce that really makes us really special. We can continue to do that and make impacts that are that are bigger.
Samantha Marinko 58:06
So what advice would you give to other healthcare entrepreneurs about mixing mission, of which you have a very clear one, with margin, because you've got a ton of staff, you've also got to pay and your own family to support. So how do you, how do you, you know, focus and find the balance of maintaining those two? Yeah, I think
Jason Adour 58:24
that's a really cool question. And, you know, I'm not sure that I have an answer that is just perfect, but I think the general take home point that I would share is that you can, you can have both. I mean, it's possible. I think when we first started, there was some open ended question in terms of, you know, all the finances worked on the spreadsheet, but like, can, can this entity exist? Because why wouldn't everybody just kind of do the same thing? You know, it seems like a nice idea. And the general idea is that you can, you can have both. So I think there's some thought, certainly in our industry, and maybe it's in other industries that if you're going to kind of be altruistic and do the right thing, you're never going to make any money. And if you scale, you're never going to be able to keep people, because they're going to leave and all this type of stuff. And I think what I would share is that actually probably the best business from, like, a long term view is to try to do both. You have to tend to your margins, you have to be healthy, you have to be able to financially exist. But if you stay with that mission, things are going to happen like retention of your staff, that are going to be financially advantageous. So I guess I'm just kind of coming home to if someone felt as if that was an open ended question, I feel as if it's solvable.
Samantha Marinko 59:45
So you've grown a very successful business, you've got many locations, very good reputation in the field. Where do you see main balance centers going in five years? 10 years?
Jason Adour 59:57
Yeah, I think, you know, I think our plan. Again, is to continue to gently expand at the just right pace for us. So I would like to you know, every year to gently kind of open a new clinic and a new market that would benefit from having us there, and again, to kind of meet those goals of having upward mobility for our staff impacting a new community. And I'm interested in seeing what we can do on a statewide level for balance and fall risk, which is really my home base, but also the neurological you know, one in six people in Maine lives with a neurological condition, and vestibular conditions are very common. So for these, you know, for these buckets of people that we help, can we create an entity that is really supportive of the communities that we live in, in our state in general? Because there's a lot of people looking at these problems, to solve them in different ways. There's statewide initiatives to do things that we're kind of actually doing in healthcare, and I'm really interested in kind of like solving problems on a bigger scale in ways that are really sustainable and fun.
Samantha Marinko 1:01:08
The population of Maine is certainly the right population for a practice and a specialty, yeah,
Jason Adour 1:01:14
like this too. And I think there's also kind of, you know, we've been able to have really talented clinicians, you know. So I was trained in the Boston area, and I think, you know, a lot of times people in healthcare, there's, there's actually awesome healthcare in Portland, to be honest with you. I mean, I think the the physical therapists and the the surgeons and everything else. I mean, I think we, we have some really talented people who work here. But I think there's a prevailing sense sometimes that, you know, if you've got something, you could go to Boston, you know, and that's kind of going to somehow be better, safer, and there's examples of that, for sure. So I don't mean to disparage that, but I think for us in particular, I think the level of care that we're providing is as good at or exceeding, what you're getting in the Boston area. And to be able to do that in Maine is something that we're really proud of, and intending to kind of spread, you know, across the state where you have that high, high level of healthcare
Samantha Marinko 1:02:10
in communities, yeah, well, Maine is very lucky to have you for for that reason and others. Jason, thank you so much for coming in to talk to me today. I appreciate you taking the time. It's a very busy time of year. I hope today is not your clinical day, where you have to go work hard all day long, but thank you so much for taking the time to come in and chat with me and share with us about being strong.
Jason Adour 1:02:37
You're welcome, and thanks for thanks for taking an interest.
Samantha Marinko 1:02:39
Appreciate it, Jason, thank you for joining me today. I really appreciate you taking the time during this busy time of year to sit down with me. You can learn more about Jason, Adour and the main strong Balance Center at WWW dot, mainstrong balance center.com you can find them on LinkedIn and Facebook or on Instagram at Maine strong balance centers. And if you'd like to learn more about the Boulos company, please be sure to visit us@www.Boulos.com you can also find us at the Boulos company on Facebook and LinkedIn, and at Boulos CO on Instagram and X. You.
Guest Host Bio
Samantha Marinko joined The Boulos Company in 2016. As an Associate, she works in all areas of commercial real estate including office, retail, industrial, development, and investment properties located in Central and Southern Maine. Sam enjoys the dynamic nature of her position as Associate and getting to know new people.
Working with tenants from the start of their initial space requirements for a commercial space, throughout the evolution of their needs and growth, is a highlight of the job for Sam. In her time with The Boulos Company, Sam has worked with clients including Hannaford, Abbott Laboratories, The United Way, Spurwink, Maxim Healthcare Staffing, The Holy Donut, EIMSKIP, & Aerotek, to name a few. Sam also has extensive experience working with nonprofits and startups.
A former event planner, Sam, has exceptional organizational and communications skills which add value to her client relationships. She is a graduate of Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, where she earned a BS in Media Communications with a minor in Journalism. She also studied abroad at the University of Notre Dame Australia in Fremantle, Western Australia.
Sam is a proud New Jersey native. She moved to Maine in 2010 and currently lives in South Portland with her husband Drew and three daughters, Anna, Ella & Lana. When she’s not helping to close deals, Sam loves to spending time at local beaches and parks with her family and take advantage of all of the awesome outdoor adventures that life in Maine affords.
Professional Affiliations / Accreditations
Maine Real Estate Broker License
Maine Commercial Association of Realtors (MCAR), Member
Maine Real Estate Development Association (MEREDA), Member
Dale Carnegie Winning with Relationships Course – Sales Champion Award
Community Involvement
Vice President of the Portland Ballet Board of Directors
Olympia Snowe Women’s Leadership Institute – Olympia’s Leader Advisor
Spurwink Services – Development Committee Member
Education
Sacred Heart University – Bachelor of Science, Media Communications