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June 4, 2025By Verne Harnish
Will Humphreys went from a burned-out physical therapist to the owner of a multi-location practice, which he sold for $9 million after applying the ideas he read in Scaling Up.
Humphreys founded Rise Rehab, in Gilbert, Arizona, in 2006. As a 17-year-old, he fell 50 feet during a mountain-climbing expedition with a girl he was trying to impress and broke both arms and legs. The tragic accident led to multiple surgeries. He entered the field after his own physical therapist helped him regain his ability to walk. “I just fell in love with the profession,” he says.
But once Humphreys went into private practice, he found himself overwhelmed by the business side. Although the practice was profitable, he was working around the clock and was so depressed he considered shuttering the business.
“I was a great therapist, but very quickly realized I was a horrible business owner and got to the point where my wife found me in 2007, looking online for ways to kill myself,” he recalls.
Humphreys’ wife suggested he join the Entrepreneurs’ Organization Accelerator program to give the business one last attempt. He signed up in 2008.
After other members told him about Scaling Up, Humphreys picked up a copy in 2010. He read the book over three years, studying each section and then implementing it before he moved on.
Applying the book’s principles, under the guidance of Scaling Up Certified Coach Corwin Smith, helped him turn things around. He grew the business from one to five locations with combined revenue of $5 million by using the ideas he read in Scaling Up—and then pulled off his successful exit in 2018. At the time he sold it, it had four locations; he had closed a fifth one that was located in a hospital group that was being acquired.
“I call Scaling Up the Bible of business books,” he says.
Now he’s running several companies, including Virtual Rockstar, which hires and trains virtual assistants for the healthcare space, and is on track for $5 million in revenue for 2025. He also runs In the Black, a medical insurance billing company; a coaching practice and a business as a keynote speaker.
Here’s how he has applied Scaling Up to his life as a serial entrepreneur.
Network = net worth
When Humphreys joined EO, he found that the support and guidance he got from the other members and his mentor, health insurance entrepreneur Dave Berg, gave him the energy he needed to stick with the business. “After six months, I said, ‘I think I can do this,’” he recalls. This led to an important realization: “Your network is your net worth,” he says.
Humphreys began positioning his business to scale by tapping into the network he’d built outside of EO: professionals who had worked with him in other companies. In doing so, he found a great recruiter, marketer and salesperson.
“These were amazing people who were willing to stick with me through some hard times, who showed up at the right time, and I was just smart enough to lean on them,” he says.
Embracing a premium business model
In running his practice, Humphreys discovered he had a knack for finding great virtual assistants and deploying them to get more done. He often found himself fielding requests from friends about how to make the most of relationships with their VAs.
So, after his exit from his physical therapy practice, he started Virtual Rockstar in February 2021. He provided VAs he’d selected to two entrepreneurial friends to get proof of concept, offering their services at a markup.
After the experiment succeeded, he decided to focus on providing VAs to physical therapy practices and other outpatient medical providers. He trained the VAs in billing, patient scheduling, insurance verification and other administrative areas. Humphreys knew he was onto something when he got three acquisition offers within three months of starting the business.
In response to high demand, he expanded the company to 20 VAs by the end of 2023, and by the end of 2024, he had grown that number to 113. This year, the company is approaching the 200 mark. He’s projecting $5 million in annual revenue for 2025.

Embracing premium service
One key part of Humphreys’ strategy was to provide the best VAs available and to avoid commoditizing their services. He attracts A Players by paying competitive wages: $7 to $10 an hour. The VAs are based in the Philippines.
“I’m not going to go find someone in the Philippines for $1 to $2 an hour so I can charge you $8 to $9,” he says. “I’m not trying to race to the bottom in my pricing. That gives me access to a completely different group of people, and the demand is much higher.”
Even better, he’s not plagued by the turnover common in his field. “You’re bringing in people who are building a career with you, so they have a lot of loyalty,” he says.
Humphreys built the company around his vision for lifting the VAs out of poverty, a goal he considers the cultural foundation of the company.
“I created a strong purpose to build and strengthen families across the globe,” he says. “Our values and our vision are to bring 4,444 people out of poverty.”
Why 4,444? “It is an easy number to remember, it is a huge BHAG that inspires people and equals $100 million in annual revenue,” he says.
Keeping cash flowing
For Humphreys, executing his vision and bringing in sufficient cash to grow profitably are intertwined. He self-funded Virtual Rockstar, using the cash he was generating through his other companies to grow.
“The more cash I have, the more I can execute; the more effectively I execute, the more cash I have,” he says.
With the company thriving, Humphreys is building his career as a speaker and preparing to release his first book, “Rise, Stand Lead,” which is scheduled to be released this month.
He’s grateful to have come full circle from the dark days when his physical therapy practice was running him ragged to owning his second fast-growing scale-up. “To me, this was a gift from God,” he says.