Two Variables That Separate 7-Figure PT Clinics From the Rest

In this solo episode, Doc Danny Matta breaks down data from PT Biz’s industry report across 200+ clients. He reveals the two key factors that distinguish the biggest, most successful clinics from those still struggling to grow—and how you can apply them immediately to build a more profitable, scalable practice.

Episode Summary

• The name tag system: Clinics are grouped by revenue, from white (<$100K) to gold ($1M+).

• Two game-changers: Higher revenue per session and more recurring revenue separate gold clinics from white clinics.

• The 20% difference: Larger clinics average ~$200/session vs. ~$165/session for smaller clinics.

• Mindset matters: Confidence to charge what you’re worth is more limiting than skillset or location.

• Recurring revenue advantage: Top clinics snowball faster because 30–50% of their patients return regularly.

Key Takeaways

• Charge what you’re worth: Price reflects confidence, not just location or competition.

• Profit fuels growth: Higher rates mean more reinvestment into staff, space, and culture.

• Recurring revenue compounds: Builds stability, decreases reliance on new patient volume, and accelerates clinician schedules.

• Mindset shift is critical: Undercharging is usually a belief issue, not a market one.

Pro Tips You Can Use Today

• Audit your pricing: Compare your session rates against industry leaders and adjust.

• Engineer recurring offers: Build long-term plans beyond discharge to keep patients engaged.

• Leverage peer influence: Surround yourself with clinics charging higher rates—normalize it.

• Snowball strategy: Pass new patients to junior clinicians while senior staff carry recurring clients.

Notable Quotes

“If you can have a 20% difference in what you’re generating on an hourly basis, that is huge.”

“It’s more of a mindset issue than a skillset issue. Most clinicians are fantastic—what holds them back is what they think they’re worth.”

“Recurring visits are an unfair advantage of cash practices. Insurance can’t match it.”

Action Items

• Raise your average session rate closer to $200/hr.

• Design a simple recurring service package to keep patients long-term.

• Track your recurring percentage—target 30–50% of total visits.

• Reinvest profits into team, benefits, and culture to attract talent.

Resources & Links

• PT Biz Website 

• Free 5-Day PT Biz Challenge

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: [00:00:00] Hey Danny Matta here with PT Biz and today I wanna share with you. Two variables that we found looking at an industry report with our 200 plus [00:00:10] clients that you can focus on right now to put you ahead of the rest of the pack. Internally, we've been working on a [00:00:20] industry report where. We are gathering a ton of information so that we can share best practices internally with our clients.

And as I was [00:00:30] looking this over earlier this morning, I noticed something that was interesting and. There were two things that popped out to me in particular that I noticed that [00:00:40] that sort of jumped out at me in terms of the difference of, uh, variables that the biggest businesses we have, uh, are doing.

And, uh, the ones that are smaller are doing. [00:00:50] And the way that we look at our clients is we try to group them up by. By, uh, name tag colors. And what we found is there's a couple things. Number one, [00:01:00] it's motivating to move from one name tag color to the next, but it also helps us group people together that are around the same size business so that they can focus on, you [00:01:10] know, the goals that they have and sharing those with each other and helping problem solve in more of a, a peer based, uh, environment as well with senior mentorship.

So when we look at these name tag colors, they're [00:01:20] based off gross revenue and the, the biggest businesses that we have. These are our gold name tags. These are people that are over a million dollars a year, and the smallest we have [00:01:30] are white. And uh, that would be under a hundred thousand dollars a year.

So a 10 x difference basically in, uh, in, in these two types of businesses. And when I [00:01:40] was looking at our industry report and all of the aggregated data that we're pulling together, there were two really interesting things that I noticed that not just separated the biggest businesses. [00:01:50] Uh, from the smallest businesses in terms of just those two categories, the, the white versus gold name tags, but really the, the top two or three categories from the bottom, two or three categories.

And [00:02:00] those were, number one, their revenue procession, and number two, the percent of recurring revenue that they had in comparison to, uh, [00:02:10] the, the smaller businesses. So the first thing is the price per session. So when we look at this. There was roughly a 20% [00:02:20] difference in price per session from the smaller businesses to the bigger businesses that we work with.

Now, the bigger businesses that we work with on [00:02:30] average, on average, were somewhere around $200 per uh, session. So this would be per hour. Basically, they're generating $200 per hour, and the smaller businesses, they were closer to [00:02:40] about $165. So. This is a difference of about 20%. I, I want you to think about that for a second, because.

The, the [00:02:50] difference in terms of what that does for your business is astronomical. It's massive. If you can have 20%, uh, difference in what you're generating on an [00:03:00] hourly basis, depending on how you're calculating that, that is huge. That, that could be a massive difference in your profit margins. That could be a massive difference in what you're able to pay your staff, [00:03:10] the benefits that you can provide for them.

The type of space that you can afford to, to move into and, and lease and or purchase. Uh, and the funny thing is, it's [00:03:20] sort of this chicken or the egg situation, right? Did they started, did they start to charge more money? As they got bigger and because they were a bigger, more [00:03:30] established brand, they were able to charge that.

Or did they get bigger because they were able to charge more and they had more profitability to reinvest in their people and [00:03:40] space and benefits, and building a culture that's really attractive to bring talent in? Well, you could make the case for either. In my experience working with hundreds of these [00:03:50] clinics at this point, you know, face to face, I see the people that are able to charge what they're worth early on, they tend to scale much faster, and maybe some [00:04:00] people, it takes them longer than others to get there because when we look at price points and what you're charging, frankly, there's, there's two big variables.

[00:04:10] Okay? One is location, so you know, if you're in. A tiny town of 5,000 people, you're gonna have a harder time than if you're in downtown [00:04:20] Chicago. Right. I mean, it's just, that's reality. It doesn't make as much of a difference as you think. Uh, and there's, there's pros and cons to both of those locations. But the second thing [00:04:30] is, what do they feel like they're worth?

And I've seen fantastic clinicians in real small areas that charge a premium that would be equivalent to what somebody [00:04:40] in a bigger city charges, and they tend to be the most profitable of all the clinics. Even yesterday, I had a conversation with one of our bigger clinics and their average [00:04:50] visit. Uh, was hovering closer to 250 to $260 an hour when our average for these bigger businesses is closer to 200.

So they're on the way upper end of [00:05:00] that, and that means that they can really reinvest in paying their people a high salary. And they, they can offer a lot of the benefits that you, you would want as a, as a bigger clinic, right. As, as a more established, uh, [00:05:10] clinic would, would do. And that is an unfair advantage for you in a lot of ways.

Uh, number one, it creates far more profitability, but it also allows you to really recruit [00:05:20] and, uh, retain people much better. The, the other thing, when we look at this, this one, this one variable, what are, what are you charging? In my opinion, it really comes down to what you think you're worth. [00:05:30] And this is where a lot of people struggle with the mindset of what they can charge because they don't think that they're worth it or they don't know what people will pay.

And. [00:05:40] It's more of a mindset issue than it is anything else. It's more of a mindset issue than it's a skillset issue in most cases. Most clinicians are fantastic at what they do. Otherwise, [00:05:50] they wouldn't have gone into business for themself in the first place. They wouldn't have felt confident and competent enough to do so.

So what's holding them back? Well, it's, they don't think people will pay for [00:06:00] it, or they have a sort of mental block around the fact that they don't know. They don't maybe know what they're worth or think that they're charging too much and they feel bad [00:06:10] about that, and they think that somebody's not gonna be able to buy groceries because they're, they're working with you for a visit to help them with their back pain or something like irrational like that.

We see this all the time. [00:06:20] This is. For us, the bigger variable than location, in my opinion. And that comes down to your mindset. And that's actually one of the most valuable things when we start to see people get [00:06:30] around each other and they get around other businesses. I, I see this every time that we have an event, you know, people start talking about their price points and, and with their, with their paying [00:06:40] staff and their overhead and all this stuff.

And, and, and all of a sudden we see, uh, just a massive amount of price adjustments that happen. Frankly, it needed to happen. [00:06:50] So that they can put themselves in a more competitive environment in charge of their worth. Now the second thing is the. Percent of, uh, their volume of their revenue is coming from [00:07:00] recurring visits.

So the bigger businesses had a high, much higher percentage of recurring visits than the smaller businesses. Now, again, this is a chicken or the egg thing, right? Well, they've been [00:07:10] around longer in most cases, uh, they have more people that are coming back, and, and that is very true. Obviously, the longer you're in business, the more likely it is you're gonna have recurring [00:07:20] business.

But if you engineer that incorrectly. You can sort of have a higher percentage of that from the get go. You know, it has to be a part of your sales cycle. And one of the, the, the [00:07:30] fastest sort of changes that people can, can make as far as decreasing their dependency on new volume, but also really increasing their ability to scale is to really get [00:07:40] people to stick around and work with you on an ongoing basis.

This is something that is an unfair advantage for us as cash-based clinicians. You cannot do in an insurance-based clinic and not in the same way. They're not [00:07:50] gonna pay insurance. Uh, you know, insurance is not gonna pay for it. So they, they would have to create a hybrid version, which is still the same conversation you're having.

They may start with insurance, but then they're moving [00:08:00] to cash. But in a cash clinic. We have a chance to say, Hey, what would you like to do next? Let's talk about that, right? Not, okay, [00:08:10] you've hit your visit limit discharge, right? So we get a chance to snowball these recurring visits, and that is incredibly powerful for our business because the recurring volume that we [00:08:20] have.

That percentage of your business, let's say it's 30% of people that are coming in, you know, we, we like to see anywhere between 30 and 50% of your business is, is coming back. That's [00:08:30] recurring. That's a fantastic place to be as a clinic and if, but if you get to 30%, that's 30% of your visits that you don't have to go out and find each month with, with new patients.[00:08:40]

The other thing that happens is as your clinicians snowball their schedules and have more recurring volume, they're less dependent on new patient volume. That means that they get to slide the new [00:08:50] patient. Uh, volume over to newer clinicians and their schedules build and snowball faster as well. And this is something that as you build this processing correctly, as you [00:09:00] align this with the right offer on the front end and the right recurring offer on the back end.

You build a much more efficient sales pipeline, you know, from the [00:09:10] first interaction to the, the recurring service that fits what this person's looking to do to have, you know, health and, and longevity and, uh, to do the things they wanna do, the people they wanna do [00:09:20] them with for as long as possible. And there's a lot of people like that out there.

And the people that figure out that product market fit. On the front end to the recurring side, they snowball much faster. Their [00:09:30] business grows much, much, uh, much faster as well. They have far less dependency on new patient volume. Um, and it's a much, much higher percentage in our bigger businesses than it is in our smaller [00:09:40] businesses.

So we'll see in some cases, two to three times as much, uh, as far as a percent is concerned of recurring volume in these bigger businesses versus smaller ones. So if you [00:09:50] are looking to try to grow or scale your clinic. These are two areas that you can really make a lot of progress with, and if we reverse engineer [00:10:00] what's working with some of the best cash-based clinics in the entire country, these are two areas that stick out like a sore thumb to me to say, you know what?

Any clinic, any [00:10:10] service-based business, frankly, can apply these two variables. To their business and be intentional about focusing on improving their revenue per session or [00:10:20] whatever it is that you do as far as your services, right? So your actual revenue generated per relative value unit, in this case a visit, and the number of clients that are [00:10:30] continuing to work with you in an ongoing basis.

And if you do those two things, there's no doubt. Your clinic will grow and the limitations that you are gonna have, it's gonna be [00:10:40] space that you're gonna have to move into, and you're gonna have to do that effectively and, and put yourself in a position to, to be able to grow the brand, grow the clinic, grow the culture, and, and grow the, [00:10:50] the, the team.

And the second thing is to actually hire and recruit. And we're finding those seem to be the bigger bottlenecks that we're having to deal with now. And it's not necessarily [00:11:00] volume and revenue as much, it's really these other variables that are bottlenecking people from being able to grow. Way better problem to have, frankly, than I'm not making enough money, I'm not seeing enough patients.

So [00:11:10] remember, number one, charge what you're worth. Get your price point where it needs to be. And number two, give people a reason to stick around. Make sure that you have recurring volume built in [00:11:20] from the very beginning. Let those schedules snowball. Decrease your dependency on new volume, and your clinic is gonna be a hell of a lot easier to run if you do [00:11:30] [00:11:40] that.