E419 | Three Profit Centers To Add To Your Cash-Based Practice

On this episode, we are talking about ways to improve profitability in your cash-based practice that don't involve seeing more patients.

One of the huge values of a cash-based practice is that it allows you to have a relationship with your client in a way that they know you are going to get them the absolute best outcome that you can.

As long as you do the right things in terms of engaging with them and making sure they are clear on the goals you are wanting them to achieve, you will have successful outcomes in your practice.  Enjoy!

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: So I remember the days of me answering all the calls, returning all the emails, seeing everybody, being the admin and the practitioner. And when you're in practice by yourself. That's all you got. Just yourself, right? As you're growing and you're scaling to bring other people on. And one thing that I always found so challenging was rescheduling people.

And it starts to add up the more people that you have. So one thing that has saved us a ton of time recently and really increased our conversion percentages a. Online to new patients is making the switch over to PT everywhere from my local practice athletes potential. We actually saw our new patients that were booking online numbers double in the time that we've actually implemented utilizing their platform.

And the reason why it's so much easier to book online, many times people have to create accounts and it's difficult for them to actually save an appointment. And as we switched over what we saw, These numbers jump for us, and we got more people online, which saved our administrative resources. It allowed them to pick a time that worked for them.

And overall, it's been a very seamless transition. So if you're looking to leverage a platform to help get some of your time back, I would recommend PT everywhere. It'll save you a ton of time on the admin side and help get more people in the door. Head over to pt everywhere.com and check out their platform and how it can.

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 Matte, and welcome to the PT Entrepreneur Podcast.

What's going on guys? Doug, Danny here with a PT Entrepreneur podcast, and today we're talking about waste improved profitability in your cash-based practice that don't involve just seeing more cash BT clients, so more patients. And I think number one, this is the place that we all have to focus on initially because it is going to be the primary driver in a business like this.

And as well as you should, really enjoy working with people in this capacity. I think the, it's one of the things that is a underlying, huge value of a cash-based practice is it allows a clinician to have a relationship. With a client, a patient in a way that they know that person is going to get the best outcome that they possibly can.

So for you, you get a chance to really help change that person's life and know that they're going to be for the vast majority of people you work with, very compliant, very bought in. If you do the right things in terms of engaging with them, your sales process, making sure they're clear on the goals they're trying to achieve.

So one of the biggest values is actually the people. I can't say that about most businesses. I've got some friends that own like a bunch of laundromats. They don't care about the people that are doing laundry in their laundromats. It's just a, it's a money play for them, right?

That's all it is. These can be so much more than that. That being said, we do want to also have a profitable business, so I'm gonna talk to you about a couple other profit centers you can add into your business. And these are ones that we're seeing from people actively within our mastermind.

I try to share lessons learned with you guys in this podcast, not just from our own business, but from, our mastermind has over a hundred practice owners at this point internationally. And one of the coolest parts about this is just being able to have so much information, data, seeing things that are working, trends in real time.

That most people individually probably wouldn't see for, I don't know, 12 months. To really be able to see what's going on within the industry. And because we have so much information, so many people and we have them submit so much data on their businesses to help keep them organized, that we definitely see a lot of things that are happening that are positive for businesses as well as negatives.

So to help avoid mistakes. Obviously just as important as as doing something positive. So as far as these profit centers go, the thing that we're seeing that, that are working really well really have to do with. Including more continuity based offers into a business. So I've talked about this before.

These are ongoing reoccurring or reoccurring however you want to classify it. Charges that are services that are gonna directly help somebody that we're working with move on in the next step of their health and wellness journey, whatever that might be. They come to us, their knee hurts, right?

And maybe it's cuz they were trying to get into running. Maybe they don't know what they should do for running, so they need maybe some help on the coaching side, or maybe they don't know what they should do on the strength conditioning side to help support their running. So if you have a unique skillset in these areas, you can absolutely build something in to help them long term.

And all this does is it helps increase the likelihood they're gonna hit the health and wellness goal they have and it's going to increase the lifetime value of this client. To your business. The lifetime value of a client is, how much are on average is a client spending with your business over the duration of time that you have that relationship with them.

It's a little difficult to calculate, especially early on. But let's just use this as an example. Let's say that you have somebody that, on average you charge $200 a visit and I, on average, they see you five times. Physical therapies, so that's a thousand dollars, right? Assuming that they don't come back or send anybody else your way to keep it really simple.

What's a thousand dollars lifetime value for this person? Let's say that maybe you do, run coaching or you do remote coaching for training, conditioning for runners, and you charge $200 a month and they work with you for another five months after that You've just added another thousand dollars to the lifetime value of that client.

So they're now worth $2,000 instead of $1,000. And the reason this is important is because you want a business where you are going to be able to have the most amount of lifetime value from a client, because the hardest part is acquisition of a client. So you don't want to just get rid of 'em really quickly or not solve a problem with them or not maybe have anything to offer them that's gonna help benefit them long term.

So when you can do that, it increases the lifetime value dramatically, which allows you to pay more for marketing, to pay more for getting people in the door or inherently to be more profitable. Overall, because your cost to acquire can now be higher to get that same person in the door.

So if you can double your lifetime value with somebody, that's a huge win for your business because the alternative would be you'd have to double the number of new people you're getting in your door, which is the hardest part in these cash-based practices to really sustain volume, long term.

So it's better to have as many people that pay twice as much than try to find twice as many. That is a key distinction you need to really keep in mind with these types of businesses. This is not an in-network practice. This isn't a, hey, I have an unlimited number of post-ops that are coming my way because I get dog crap reimbursement from United.

It, it's, it is very different and you have to run it much more with this kind of lifetime value concept in mind versus just how many new clients am I getting? How many sessions per month? Like it's a different business model. So the areas that we're seeing that people are doing really well in are, there's three of them.

One would be virtual programming. Virtual coaching, which is what I just brought up with this running example, right? So having something you can offer people on an exit that they can do on their own time with some support virtually, where they're not spending time in your office. This actually got insanely easier or more acceptable, I guess should say, after last.

A lot of people didn't go to gyms, they trained at home, they trained on their own. Maybe they started running for the first time, whatever it might be. And we saw a lot of people that were looking for these remote options because of necessity of not wanting to be in person. So this is something that we added directly to our business, last year and has been a phenomenal addition as far as remote coaching goes from a reoccurring or reoccurring revenue standpoint.

And, the average time that we're seeing that people are sticking around is really. About 10 months maybe a little bit longer depending on the client, but about 10 months. Again, we're adding additional, a couple thousand dollars of lifetime value to these folks and helping them with a problem what they have, which they don't know what to do for training, right?

So you're adding value in a way. You're just adding a service that stacks on to what their add, their initial goal is anyway. So virtual programming, that can be many different things, right? That could lit literally be you. Program everything for them. So maybe they're into CrossFit and you're doing that for them.

Maybe they're into CrossFit and you're doing accessory and mobility work for them. So you're helping augment their training with customized accessory mobility work. This is something that we see people in our community that are doing successfully as well. So it could be specific to their sport.

Maybe you're a triathlete coach, a running coach, a swimming coach maybe you're doing work with a specific youth sport group. Like we have people that work with baseball players, soccer players. Youth athletes in there building out specific programs for them, for things like ARM care or acl prevention programs, lower extremity strength, agility, mobility, all these things that, that whatever their unique skillset is, if they can help a certain audience, they can build that into something that's remote which is great, which could be a monthly thing, it could be a package you put together.

There's a number of different ways to do it, but it's a great profit center you can add in to help increase the lifetime value of your clients. The next one is in-person small group or semi-private training. This is something that, that I actually brought up recently on the podcast, and it's something where we're seeing.

A lot of our clients that we work with in our mastermind, they have a background, strength condition. Vast majority of them do. So they were a trainer, they were a coach, they were a strength coach. They currently coach to some degree or they have an extensive knowledge in training conditioning.

So you know, when somebody works with you and you help them with their chronic problem, whatever it might be, and they find out, oh man, like this person really knows how to like, help people move better. They're knowledgeable about how not to get hurt. It's very natural for them. You to to train them.

Now, I think the exchange of your time at a certain point can be leveraged a lot better than a one-on-one personal training session as well as there's a small percentage of people that are going to really pay, 200 plus dollars an hour for personal training twice a week or whatever, right?

Because if they're doing that, they're really spending like $1,200 a month on, on personal training, which there's definitely people doing that. I know people that do that and pay significantly more than that for personal training. But you. I think from what we're seeing, the better alternative sort of option for this is to spread the cost across a couple people and be able to work with them in a small group, right?

So this could be anywhere between. Two and six people. Depends on what you're doing. It depends on the population, their knowledge level, whether they know anything about training or not. That, that can change it pretty dramatically. But from what we're seeing, our individuals that we work with are really getting anywhere between 50.

To $80 per person per hour in a small group. So do the math on that. If you have four people and let's just say it's 75 bucks per person, that's a $300 hour for that training session, right? Which is gonna be better. For you than your $200 an hour that you're seeing a PT client with.

And it's better for everybody else because, they're getting to meet each other. They have a little bit of camaraderie, misery loves company. We're seeing it actually work really well as a exit strategy for people that are apprehensive to get back into traditional gyms. I think that is a sub, a subset of people that are really, across the gym, scares the crap out of 'em.

They want more individualization. They want more attention. They want somebody that's knowledgeable so they don't hurt them. As they're just coming off of an injury, most likely. So there's definitely a unique place there for people to be able to slide that in as a recurring service on the back end.

And, if you have a few of these per week that you're running, all of a sudden you're starting your month off with, a few grand. In the bank from a recurring charge, with these types of memberships and or, however you're billing it whether it's a package or a monthly fee.

But these are really solid profit center you can add in. And again, it's all about increasing the lifetime value of a client. You can also, you could outsource this. You could you could hire an employee, you could hire a trainer to do this. We're seeing some unique kind of, Proposition, selling propositions with clinicians teaching these classes, you can definitely charge more.

There's definitely a population, a percentage of population that really values that. And they're like, whoa, this person is my trainer, has a doctorate. That's pretty damn rare. And they're intimately familiar with the back problem that I had that they helped me with.

So it's, there's definitely more value there. You can have a higher price point because of some of the unique knowledge and relationships that you have with somebody versus somebody that's just. A trainer that they're gonna go see that they've never worked with, and that's gonna maybe do some sort of model that's similar.

So there's unique selling proposition there. The other thing that we're seeing is nutrition being a really good additional profit center, something that a lot of people struggle with. They can bring, a dietician in-house, they can partner with one they can outsource and have a referral commission.

Or honestly hire and have a recurring. Where they're fulfilling on it. You're doing the sort of sales and marketing side, you're bringing people in the door for them. They're fulfilling. And it's a pretty solid return on time, return on investment when you're bringing somebody in house that's doing that or partnering with somebody because many people have a very hard time with.

Food. Like they, they don't know how much they should eat. They don't know what they should or shouldn't eat. They know they wanna look a certain way, but they don't know how to get there. And a lot, there's a lot of psychology around it as well. So finding a really good, sports, nutrition, dietician somebody that's gonna be able to help somebody, really make the change that they're looking for on.

Highest or lowest level? Most of these are gonna be just pretty straightforward. I wanna look better, I wanna have less fat. I want to, I wanna be leaner. It's a weight loss play in many cases for most people. Some people it's like they wanna add muscle or whatever. It's more training related, but less majority of people are general population.

They just want to, to know what to eat better, to feel better, and to look better, so that is an area that is very sticky. It's very sticky. And the price points that we're seeing are really similar to like virtual programming building out, training conditioning programs for people.

So again, this is a, thing you can plug somebody into. You can actually link it up even with the in-person training or the virtual pro training depending on how you wanna put these packages together. But there's definitely. A market for it. There's a market for it. There's a lot of people, especially that are in this, middle-aged, active individual sort of population between, I would say like 35 and 55.

And the area that we're seeing most of these individuals come from that are looking for more indivi, individual individualization, more knowledge level they're less price sensitive. They're very time sensitive. They wanna work with an expert, they don't want anybody wasting their time.

And that's a population you can really, grow these practices off of that. That honestly is just becoming bigger and bigger. So anyway, these are the three areas that we're seeing that hopefully will benefit you. Let's take a look at your business, see if it's, viable for you to plug any of these things in.

And if you've got a cash-based practice or a hybrid practice and you're really looking to try to grow, And you want some support on implementing some of these things and getting looped into this community, that's essentially an unfair advantage at this point. And really, having this direct mentorship and information and community and coaching, it's something that we're very proud of and we're amazed that we have a group the size that we do, but also the quality of the people is just on another level.

If this is something that sounds like it could be helpful to you and you're at a point in your business where you really wanna grow, or you want to be able to add additional elements to the business that aren't as simple as just, Hey, let me just get more patients in the door.

We'd love to have a conversation about that. You can head to physical therapy biz.com/apply. That's really straightforward. Fill out a couple questions so we kinda know a little bit more about you. We jump on a totally free call with you and take a deep dive on your business.

We're trying to figure out what are you doing, what are you working on? And can we help you? And if we can't, then our goal is to try to refer you to the right place. If we can, then we can tell you a little bit about what that might look like if there's a mutual fit. So it's pretty straightforward.

So if you have a business, we'd love to chat with you, physical therapy biz.com/apply. Couple questions and then, set up a time to, to chat with one of our team members. So anyway, guys, hope you enjoy this one. I hope this one helps add some increased lifetime value to your business with your clients.

It's definitely better to play the. Having people pay you twice as much than buying twice as many people. And these are things I think are very tactical that can implement your business. So hopefully this helps, and as always, we will catch you next week. Have a good weekend. Talk to you soon.

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 of 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.