E477 | The Difficult Part Of Charging What You're Worth

A common reservation we see with Physical Therapists looking to venture into Cash-PT is being nervous about charging over $100 based on their current outcomes with insurance. I wanted to reassure some of you today on why you are in fact well worth charging what your unique skill-set is worth. Enjoy!

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: So one of the best ways to improve your customer experience, which we know will dramatically improve your business, is to have clear lines of communication with your clients. And that's something that can be really hard with these multiple channels between email and text. And what you really need is to centralize that in one place.

And that's something that we've been able to do as we switched over to PT everywhere within our client's accounts. We can actually message right back and forth with them. They can manage their home exercise plan within there, and it allows us to really compartmentalize the communi. That we have with those clients, instead of losing an email in the inbox or missing a text and then you're, it's very hard to dig yourself outta that hole because they feel like you're not very responsive, with them.

And for us, it's made a really big difference. It helps make our staff more efficient. It helps us not miss things as much with the volume of people that we're working with. And it's a really smart way of really compartmentalizing your communication with your clients so it doesn't interfere with the rest of the channels.

You have communication with family and friends and things like that. So I think it'd. Huge for your practice to centralize it the way we have. Head over to pt everywhere.com. Check out what our friends are doing over there. I think it's really cool and I think you really. So here's the question. How do physical therapists like us who don't wanna see 30 patients a day, who don't wanna work home health and have real student loans create a career and life for ourselves that we've always dreamed about?

This is the question, and this podcast is the answer. My name's Danny Mate, and welcome to the PT Entrepreneur Podcast.

What's going on guys? Dr. Danny here with the PT Entrepreneur Podcast, and today I'm answering a question. I'm answering a question from the PT Entrepreneurs Facebook group. If you're not in that group I highly recommend going to Facebook and searching for PT entrepreneurs and request to join.

There's about 5,000 other clinicians in that group. We're actually pretty strict about who we let in. We vet everybody make sure that you. They're actually clinicians and that they're not just in their spamming people. So it's a safe place for people to learn. And I haven't done this in a while, but I will go around the group and look at different questions, and I find something I think is pretty pretty good one. I'll try to answer it in a sort of longer form response in a podcast. So this one comes from I got named Kevin and I'm not gonna read the whole thing. It's actually pretty long.

But he had a pretty good question that I think is probably relevant to a lot of you. And he basically said he's two years out of from graduating from school when he's in the completion phase of starting. PT practice at a CrossFit gym. But he's having some reservations about jumping into it.

One of those being that he's currently working in a one-on-one setting for 45 minute treatment blocks at an outpatient hospital setting. I seeing mainly Medicare, Medicaid patient populations and he's struggling with how he's gonna justify charging or being worth paying over a hundred dollars a session.

If currently he feels like his current outcomes aren't that great and it makes him nervous about charging a hundred dollars plus to work with somebody in in a different setting. This is something that we see. Quite a bit of reservation with and so Kevin, I hope that you listen to this podcast cuz I think this will help you.

And it's the fact that the setting that we find ourself in. Whether it be high volume, this is a hospital out, out of network clinic, which is mainly Medicaid, Medicare, which you're not gonna see either of those in your cash-based practice. Keep in mind these are settings that are settings in which we're seeing people not in the subspecialty that we have unique knowledge in and can really help those populations.

If you are opening. Practicing a CrossFit gym, the assumption is you probably know how to, tr treat CrossFitters and or active people that are, younger trying to get back to higher level activities, especially more so than somebody that is Medicare age or solving different problems than somebody that is Medicaid age.

Imagine that you have this unique skillset and you're not even able to use it in those settings because you're solving much more generalized problems, whether they're progressed or regressed based on where those people are at on that spectrum. And maybe their goals are just very different, right?

In terms of, Medicare, maybe they just wanna get back to just some activities of daily living and things that they like to do. Maybe they just want to use their visits cuz they want to go and talk to. I want to hang out somewhere and be in a social environment. I should see that a lot in the out patient clinic that I worked in.

They just, They're lonely on some cases, and they want to have a place to go and interact with people. And honestly, I think there's something very healthy to that as well. Now, you may not be having the greatest outcomes that you want to have, but it's also because your skillset isn't necessarily matched up with the right people that are gonna be ultra compliant and they want to get the outcomes that you can uniquely help them get.

So right now you're functioning in very much a general general generalized practice setting with a skill set that doesn't. Like those populations very well. Now, if you're one of the few people in your area that can really work with this active population and you really enjoy that gray area of sort of performance, training and rehab and.

And where they come together. That's a pretty unique person. The difference is equivalent to, getting a vehicle worked on that's specialized versus a general, vehicle. Let's say for instance let's say I have I had a Honda Civic for years, great car. And I could take that sucker basically anywhere and I could get.

Worked on, everybody works on Hondas. Like it's just this easy vehicle n not much specialization needed. So it was pretty cheap. Now I have a Toyota Tacoma, but it's modified. It has a racing like suspension lift on it. And not that I race it around Atlanta, but it looks cool.

And now I have to take this thing to a mechanic that They'll be booked out like two months and it's three times as expensive for them to do some basic stuff that I need done versus when I had my Honda Civic and I would take it to just any garage. And the difference is the people that work on my truck have a unique.

Skillset, unique understanding of a vehicle that requires, a higher level of understanding with those types of components versus the people that are working on more general problems with general types of vehicles. So I have to pay more for that because there's less of them. They solve a more unique problem.

So if you solve a more unique problem, And you have a unique skillset that allows those people to get back to the thing that they want to do, people will pay for that and they'll drive from very far away to work with you. I remember one of the first patients I had, I don't even know how this guy found out about you.

I guess. I guess it's. Through our website. I wrote a lot of blog posts when I was still in the Army and I was like just putting a bunch of blog posts out before I even opened our practice. And I had this guy and he drove from new Orleans to Atlanta. This was like the second or third week that I was in practice.

And he drove in to see me. Because he had back problems. And one of, sadly for him, one of his ad rating factors was driving, sitting in his car cuz when he drove all the way to see me, and then he drove all the way back the next day. And I was just shocked. I was like, why this, how many clinicians did this guy drive by?

Just on the way to see me, like how many places could he have stopped and gotten help with his back. And I just didn't have a understanding and value of what I was doing. I didn't value what I did as much as this guy valued what I did. And he really helped me with that quite a bit because, I realized, what I had was resonating with him.

It was an understanding of his problem. It was an understanding of he was frustrated because people were telling him all these things that he shouldn't do. And I was trying to help him figure out how to do things again and create a path forward and a plan and educate him and teach him things and he wanted to learn and he wasn't getting that other places.

So I think it's natural and very normal for us to. Be apprehensive about charging money for something that we've never really charged money for and didn't go to school to do that either. Like most of us don't want to do this. I didn't want to start a practice. I just wanted to be a clinician, period.

Like it's that. Damn simple. I wouldn't have started a business if I would've just been left alone in the position that I was in the Army when I was at my brigade. I probably never would've gotten out. Cause I loved it. It was a great job. I got to do a lot of performance work. I got to see a lower volume of people.

I got to just have variance in my day and work with the population that I really liked. I really liked that. And, but I couldn't stay. For my entire career. So when I end up getting in hospital situations and back in traditional clinics and higher volume, and I just started to slowly die inside in these settings I didn't want to be in.

And eventually I just decided I had to go do something on my own. But I didn't want to do that. Like I, that wasn't my grand plan. I'm very reluctant about. Having to go that route. And so that being said, it's not like I had this plan of knowing sales and marketing and all these other things that we need to learn to be effective business owners.

And it sounds like you probably. Didn't either, and you've probably found yourself in a place where you realize, Hey, I'm gonna be happier over here if I can learn these things. One of those is learning how to value yourself and how to sell that. And I think one thing you can keep in mind is just the more unique your knowledge level is, the more money you'll make.

You go to a general practitioner, it's gonna be a certain build rate or amount. They're gonna make a certain amount. You go to a brain surgeon and it's different because there's fewer of them. They have a very unique skillset. And they get compensated because of that. So your niche, your ability to focus on your niche and get great outcomes on your niche, which is not Medicaid in Medicare, otherwise you'd be staying where you're at.

It is. Active people, it's people that are trying to get, back to more functional activities and or maybe it is CrossFitters, right? Being able to speak their language and help them get in and stay in the environment that they enjoy being in. That's worth a lot to them. So make sure that you're looking at this not from the perspective of what are you worth to the place that you're at now?

What kind of outcomes are you getting with the place that you're in now with the population that you're not super probably. Excited about working with, in comparison to a younger, more athletic person or a person that's middle-aged is trying to get back to more athletic things that that really is like there to learn and is like ultra compliant and puts a lot of effort in because they're very bought in on their own health.

That's a different kind of person. That you're gonna have a chance to work with and they're going to l like gladly give you a hundred bucks a visit. I, it is, it's, if you help them get the outcome that they want it's a easy thing to do to have that transition and you start to realize just how much you're worth and how much other people value more than you value yourself.

And I think it's very normal to, to start. Position, but to be able to move to a point where you realize that you're worth a lot, you're comfortable with it and you still provide amazing outcomes. Like you have to get to that point to be able to have a healthy business to be able to then, if you want to grow past yourself and build an actual business around that, instead of just replacing your job, which I think a lot of people take that trade off, Hey, if you could replace, if you could replace your salary, just replace your salary, but work with this ideal population you wanna work with when work with them one-on-one and have pretty low volume.

Let's say see 15, maybe 20 visits a week, and then you would never get any better than that but you had to pick one of the other, one of the two. You stay at the hospital, you make X amount and you see that population, or you go do your own thing and you work with X number of people and you make the same amount, which would you.

Like most people are gonna choose to work with the population that they really and to have some flexibility and say over what their day-to-day looks like and control over what they're doing. Even if the net outcome as far as financially goes is the same, like they'll take the trade off and the trade off could be significantly more financially.

But even if it was just the same, I think it's worth. From a career satisfaction standpoint, from just a mental stimulation standpoint of being with the people that you enjoy working with, I think it's very challenging to just constantly be around people that, you don't feel much satisfaction from.

From working with, and some people get an absolute ton of satisfaction with working with Medicare and Medicaid populations. They love it. They love those populations. That's awesome. I know people that love, accounting and doing bookkeeping. I'm not one of them, but they love it and they're called accountants and bookkeepers and they're super happy in their job and you just gotta figure out what niche what.

Element of your profession, do you get fired up about that? You want to go and work on and work with every single day? And if you find that and you realize, man, I am unique with this and I'm helping people get amazing outcomes, like you're gonna realize just how valuable you are. And honestly, it's a lot more than a hundred dollars a visit.

What's up, PT Entrepreneurs? We have a new exciting challenge for you guys. It's our five day PT biz part-time to full-time challenge where we help you get crystal clear on how to actually go from a side hustle to a full-time clinic. Even if you haven't started yet. This is a great way to get yourself organized in preparation for eventually going full-time into your business.

So we actually help you get crystal clear on how much money you're actually gonna need. Replace with your business to be able to make a lateral transfer. How many people you're actually gonna need to see based on what you should be charging. We're gonna tell you three different strategies you can take to go from part-time to full-time, and you get to pick the one that seems like the best fit for you for your current situation.

We even show you all the sales and marketing systems that we teach within our Mastermind for people that are scaling to multiple clinicians, past themself that you need to have in your business to be able to go full-time. And the last thing is we help you create a one page business. This is a plan that's gonna help you get very clear on exactly what you need to do and drive action.

That's what this is all about. We want you to win. We want you to take action, and in order to do you have to get really clear on what you need to do next. So go to physical therapy biz.com/challenge. Get signed up for the challenge today. It's totally free. We think this is gonna be a game changer for you and are excited to go through.

Hey, real quick before you go, I just wanna say thank you so much for listening to this podcast, and I would love it if you got involved in the conversation. So this is a one way channel. I'd love to hear back from you. I'd love to get you into the group that we have formed on Facebook. Our PT Entrepreneurs Facebook group has about.

4,000 clinicians in there that are literally changing the face of our profession. I'd love for you to join the conversation, get connected with other clinicians all over the country. I do live trainings in there with Eve Gigi every single week, and we share resources that we don't share anywhere else outside that group.

So if you're serious about being a PT entrepreneur, a clinical rainmaker, head to that group. Get signed up. Go to facebook.com/groups/ptentrepreneur, or go to Facebook and just search for PT Entrepreneur. And we're gonna be the only group that pops up under that.