The 5 things I Did To GROW My Clinic | Then & Now
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[00:00:00] Hey there. If you are an occupational therapist and you want to open your own business, or you're currently in business and you just wanna connect with other therapists, other OTs that you know are doing what you're doing or what you want to do, while my name is Hoang, I'm an occupational therapist and certified hand therapist.
[00:00:18] I'm looking to connect with more OTs out there who are diving into the world of business. I love it so much. I started 10 years ago. And it has been, so much of a game changer for me. And one of the things I hear often is OTs want to do it, but they, there's a lot of fear around it. Maybe there's not that many OTs in your community that you're seeing that are opening their own business or doing their own things that are wildly successful at either doing a business In their community or maybe even online.
[00:00:53] About 10 years ago, I opened my clinic here in Miami, Florida, and then about five years [00:01:00] ago, I opened a second business because apparently I didn't have enough to do, but I opened a second business in doing stuff online. So I'm gonna share with you five things that I did to grow my clinic and ultimately my online program as well But I'm gonna share with you what I did to grow my clinic then, and what I am currently doing now because times have changed.
[00:01:25] And though business is business, is business there's a lot of nuances that have changed throughout the years and what was available back then 10 years ago is of more abundance now. There's so much more available now. There's less of a. Restrict less of a resistance essentially to get started.
[00:01:46] And so I wanted to share a little bit about what I did then and what I did now. So what I did then you can let me know if you've already started on your own business, what have you done? I would love to hear from you, what have you done? What has [00:02:00] worked for you? What's not working for you? That way we can all learn and grow together.
[00:02:04] So back then, Number one, the one thing that I focused on when I first started was getting in network with insurance companies. When people talk about, oh, I wanna get patients and stuff like that. Some of the first things that I see and hear lies like, I need to get in network with these insurance companies.
[00:02:25] So they got automatically sent patients to me, and there's like a falseness around that, but it does make it easier, quote unquote. If you are in network when people call you, but the downside of the easy part is that the reimbursement rates can be really low and they can be actually really hard to get paid so, But that was one of the things that I did back then to really fill up my schedule.
[00:02:52] Now you can go from Medicare insurance big insurance, or you can do workers' comp insurance. And so I tried [00:03:00] to do all of those things when I first started and that was one of my big strategies to help me grow my clinic. Then my second thing that I did five things to Grow my clinic was to do a lot of marketing to doctors.
[00:03:15] So one of the things that I did was I they didn't have that much money and, but I had a lot of time, so I baked cookies and I bought, like the pretty boxes and I packaged them really nicely. And I would go door to door marketing and I would. Get inside certain offices and market to them.
[00:03:37] I remember, focus on making such amazing cookies that they would remember me and I remember going to this one big hospital based orthopedic practice and they would let me in. They would take my cookies, they would praise how great they were. And I never once. Saw a patient from them, not one fricking [00:04:00] patient.
[00:04:00] And I would go there every two weeks and then I would go I would mark it to certain doctors, every two weeks I would go and I'd knock on a doctor, a different doctor's door, and I would bring my cookies and I would hope that they would remember me and send me patients. Number three, one of the things that I did to grow my clinic back then was just to tell everyone, I just told all my friends, I was like, Hey friends, I'm occupational therapist, a certified hand therapist.
[00:04:30] If you know anyone or if you, yourself, you come in and get therapy with me. And so I would mark it to my friends. I would just tell people I was open for business. And number four, I would post on social media. So I was on Facebook at that time. Facebook was huge. Instagram wasn't as much, but it was there.
[00:04:53] And then LinkedIn was a place too. So I'd go on LinkedIn, I'd try to connect with people and I would [00:05:00] share what I was doing. So I would go on social media and I would say, Hey, my name is Huang and I'm open for business. Essentially not like that. But the idea is there, Hey, this is where I'm located.
[00:05:12] This is what I do. I. If you need my help, give me a call. And that's how I would just tell people I was open for business. So I'd post on social media and I probably would post like here and there whenever I felt like it, whenever, I had a picture or an interesting case. And then number five, what I did was I spent.
[00:05:36] A lot of money on a website. Back then, it was a lot of money for me because I didn't have any income. Like I literally went, when I started my business, I went cold Turkey, right? I went from quitting my job on a Friday, last day to Monday, starting my own business, and six months prior to that I was just working at night just learning what to do.
[00:05:59] As much as I [00:06:00] could, and I didn't. I had no concept of marketing. I had no concept of what I was gonna do to drive patients to come into my clinic that would need help. I knew that there are people who needed my help. I know. That there's a huge amount of people suffering with hand problems, wrist problems, elbow problems, shoulder problems.
[00:06:24] I just, I didn't know how to tell them that I was open for business except for, that word of mouth. Word of mouth is amazing, but it takes a lot of time and you can't make it come faster. Like it's, you can't speed it along. And it's nothing that you can control. So you can just say things to people, but you can't really control like, Are they actually sharing?
[00:06:52] So those were the five things I was doing. Insurance marketing to doctors, telling friends, posting on social media, inconsistently, [00:07:00] and then getting a really expensive website. So that's the marketing I. Efforts that I did then. And here are the marketing efforts that I do now. Wildly different.
[00:07:12] Now granted it's been 10 years, right? But if you are starting a business now, You wanna pay attention to what's happening right now. If you have started your business and you're a couple of years in and you're struggling to grow your clinic and to fill your schedule and to fill another person's schedule so that you're not the only one in your clinic, here's what I'm currently doing right now.
[00:07:38] I am doing what's called direct marketing directly to my potential customers. So from this one thing it's called direct marketing, right? There's a lot of. Aspects to direct marketing, right? There's [00:08:00] making sure you have a good website, making sure you're updating it and you're working on, creating blogs, which then help you to increase your search engine optimization.
[00:08:14] On my website, I give free guides. I give I give away free information. So what I'm trying to do is educate the public on what I do, my perspective, what they can do, right? I do a lot of that and then I'm gonna, What else? I can also do ads in newspapers. So I used to write in a local newspaper.
[00:08:39] I currently don't because they don't they don't do the newspapers weekly, and they used to do it weekly. So when it was weekly, it worked really well. When it was only monthly, it didn't work well for me and my town. I have tried a couple of different newspapers and all the newspapers that I would write for that was like [00:09:00] once a month, it just didn't do as well.
[00:09:02] It's newspapers that were going out weekly I currently don't do that, but I know a lot of people who do that. And then Yeah. So those are essentially some of the things that I am currently doing right now from a, I'm gonna speak and I go directly out to people. And then from this big part of marketing, right?
[00:09:24] I do a lot of social media. So in social media that itself can be a whole nother genre. So I post to LinkedIn. I post to Facebook, I post to Instagram, I post to YouTube. I create in YouTube. I create both long form and short form content. So that's what I currently do right now. And then in terms of social media, I'm posting consistently.[00:10:00]
[00:10:00] I'm posting daily. I went from posting inconsistently to posting five times a week to now posting daily, to sharing on. Stories like every time there's new stuff I'm up to date with, what's going on, what's happening, and what I can do to constantly improve my systems. And I.
[00:10:25] What I can do to basically give away great information so that people in my community start to, say, Hey, this person actually knows what she's talking about. So my clinic at Hands-On Therapy Services in Miami, we specialize in helping people with hand and arm injuries, whether it be post-surgical or non-surgical.
[00:10:52] So I write a lot on non-surgical types of issues, diagnosis, things that [00:11:00] they can't do now because they functionally, they're not limited. They're limited. I create a lot of blogs and talk a lot about post-surgical cases. Trying to get people to become more aware of. Like the choices and the options they have, right?
[00:11:17] So it's not always just oh, go wherever your doctor tells you. It's not just go wherever your insurance limits you to because people are finding more and more that. That there's a lot of limitations. Doctors only sending them to a certain place and they're, they're not liking where they're at.
[00:11:37] They're not seeing progress. Sometimes they don't even know that they should be going somewhere. So people are online looking and I'm looking to, impact and help people. You, when I create a lot of content for the clinic, I don't just create it for people in my area. Actually, a lot of people from other areas start reaching in and saying, Hey, Where are you located?
[00:11:57] What do you, how can you help me? And things like that. So [00:12:00] I think, I think that there's a lot of space for occupational therapists to, to come in into this online world and provide a lot of, really great information. Your perspective, the way you help people specifically. I think that there's a lot of room for you to shine your light and help people, right?
[00:12:21] So I'm doing that in my way and hopefully you can do that in your way as well as an occupational therapist. So number one, I'm marketing directly. It's probably number one, right? Ah, number one. Number two is a direct branch off of direct marketing and social media is one of 'em. Paid ads is the third thing that I am doing, and, I would recommend doing paid ads, but I think that sometimes when you work on some of the direct stuff first, that's, Organic.
[00:12:54] It could help you to hone your message better. It could help you to become a [00:13:00] better speaker, communicator, writer, and really get you to understand who you wanna help, how you wanna help them. And then once you have an understanding of that, then you're like, oh, okay. This looks good. This looks good.
[00:13:14] This is actually helping people. I'm gonna take that and I'm gonna. Pay for it to get in front of more people. So then you can do Facebook ads, you can do Instagram ads, you can do YouTube ads, you can do Google ads, right? So many different ads. You can put yourself into newspapers, magazines, all sorts of things.
[00:13:34] There's a lot of different ways to do paid ads. You can do direct mailers to people. But it's something to really consider based on the strategy of your growth. It's all based on the strategy of your growth. I'm just sharing with you what I'm currently doing now, but that doesn't mean that you necessarily should blindly copy me because you have to understand your strategy, like [00:14:00] where are you going and what are you doing with your clinic?
[00:14:03] But. I do that actually on, on all aspects of my businesses. So for the clinic, I'm doing this. And then for the program side I'm doing the same thing. So it doesn't matter if you're creating a brick and mortar space or you're creating like an online space this applies to both 'cause I'm.
[00:14:21] I'm an example. I'm doing both. I'm doing this for the clinic and I'm doing this for the program side, and I am doing certain, a amounts of it for both, but I'm doing it for both direct marketing to potential people who need my help. I'm doing, social media is a space, whether you like it or not.
[00:14:40] It's a space where people spend time, learn, look, get entertained, and it's a space that, that we all need to be in. Number three is doing paid ads. Once you get better with those things and consider spending money to make money, right? Paid ads number four kind of falls in line with a lot of [00:15:00] that.
[00:15:00] It's to a certain extent to become a content creator. Like I never thought I would be on camera as much as I am, but, with the world of AI right now, and I. You can get AI to write a blog for you. You can just ask a few questions. There's so much redundant information of just straight facts.
[00:15:28] And it's not even facts, it's just written form, right? I don't, some of it is not necessarily fact-based, but it's just written forms. It's opinions. But you wanna share your perspective, you know what actually works for your patients. For example, as a certified hand therapist, I believe in treating flexor tendon injuries in a very particular way to get the best possible outcome, right?
[00:15:58] I know that [00:16:00] on that spectrum, there is a huge. A spectrum of what you could do. Oh, you could do this protocol. There's a gazillion protocols right now. All of it. Some of it with like different names, it's the same shit. It like if you take side by side, it's literally the same shit and they tweaked it by half a week.
[00:16:23] So they can name it their own protocol and kudos to them for creating something. But what it does is it's leaving your potential patients confused. The more information that we have, the more confusion that can be created. And I would say the same in terms of starting a business. When I started 10 years ago, there was barely any information.
[00:16:53] And I would look, I was searching online, I just, maybe I didn't know where to look, how to ask. I didn't [00:17:00] know the questions asked. But nowadays, whether you're looking or you're not looking, The information is getting bombarded to all the time, and it can become confusing. And if you think that's happening to you, like you are getting confused, you're getting bamboozled all over the place with marketing messages, and you're just like, I don't know what to do.
[00:17:20] What kind of clinic should I grow? Should I do this? Should I go online? Should I create a course? Everyone's, creating a course right now, there's a right way and there's a wrong way. The same as with the clinic. There's a right way and there's a wrong way. The right way and wrong way is based on your goals, your lifestyle.
[00:17:40] What is it that you want? What I want could be different from what you want. I actually just had this conversation with my staff. Don't look at me like, don't look at me and copy me and think, whatever. You have to look at yourself and say, what is it that you want? So don't just copy blindly, right?
[00:17:57] But but be coming, becoming a content creator. [00:18:00] Coming online, sharing my perspective, sharing my stories, sharing what has really worked for me and what hasn't worked for me can help you problem solve and make decisions about what you want in your career, what you want you business to look like.
[00:18:17] Sometimes we just need to see that someone else has done it before to know that we too can do something similar. I only saw a very small handful of OTs that created their own business, but when I looked closely, they didn't have the kind of business that I necessarily wanted. They looked successful, they appeared successful, they appeared to be happy.
[00:18:50] But I don't think all the pieces were there. And I, when I saw that, I knew that I needed to [00:19:00] do things a little differently, but I did need to see that someone else had done the same thing. And I'm hoping that. If you are starting out or you are looking like you just started and you're a year or two, a couple years in, and you're feeling stuck, I just want, I hope that you see that there's someone like you in the occupational therapy space that.
[00:19:25] You can create a really successful business the way you want it how you want it, and to make the money that you want, the lifestyle that you want. All that comes with a business. Is it easy? Absolutely not. But is it doable and is it enjoyable? It absolutely can be. It actually can be.
[00:19:43] Hopefully just me sharing some of this can help you see what's possible for yourself, right? And so becoming a content creator has come with it, and I didn't really know that was going to be something that would, I. Happen, I sometimes I'm like, really? Am I a content creator?
[00:19:59] [00:20:00] But I'm out here making videos all the time. I create content, videos all sorts of things to share both on the clinic side and on the program side. And I think it's really powerful way to connect with people so that they could learn more about you and what you do and your perspective so that you can, they can see Hey this person can actually help me.
[00:20:23] It falls under a lot of the con, a lot of the direct marketing, but I essentially have become a content creator, essentially getting on camera. I think nowadays it's really important to get on camera. To show and share who you are and your perspective. So that's what I do now way differently than I ever did before.
[00:20:46] Before I was just knocking on Doctor Sores and I'm like, oh, do you wanna send me patients now? I'm like, fuck that. Not so aggressively. I love working with doctors, but I cannot solely rely on them to, to [00:21:00] feed my business. So it's really important. That's the fifth one. So I still do market to doctors.
[00:21:07] I still do market in, in the workers' comp world. In terms of insurance, I really love and enjoy working with injured workers. I feel like they are a Group or a patient population that is underserved and that is not served as well as they could be, just because a lot of them don't have or don't know about the choices and the options that are available to them.
[00:21:32] The type of people who do get hurt, they they're not as well versed in terms of what's accessible to them. And I really love working with that, with that patient population to, help them get best results because they do a lot of heavy work, a lot of them, and they deserve to, to get the best possible results.
[00:21:54] They deserve to live pain-free and, they deserve to, I think that they [00:22:00] deserve to, to live a life that isn't just about working because yes. The injured worker gets paid to get back to work, but at the end of the day, you're more than just a worker. At the end of the day. You need your hands and arms and to be pain free because you want to enjoy your life.
[00:22:19] You wanna enjoy your life outside of work. You wanna enjoy your grandkids. You wanna enjoy what retirement is gonna look like and feel like. And so I strongly believe that. Those people deserve like really great therapists to work with them. And I want to create that type of environment where they're working with skilled therapists.
[00:22:42] They're given the time and attention they so deserve. And I continue to market to that a group of people. But I would say that. Is such a small percentage of the time of what I spend on to fill my schedule and grow my clinic. [00:23:00] So those essentially are the five things that I do to grow my clinic.
[00:23:05] Now I spend a lot more time and energy and money, all focus on marketing, social media, paid ads, creating content for them. And I spent a very tiny percentage of time. Marketing to doctors. So that's what I do to grow and fill my clinic. And if you are. Just starting out. I, you know what? Whatever it takes, just start somewhere to start your therapy clinic.
[00:23:36] To start your therapy business. And if you're a year or two out and you're struggling a little bit, just know that. That it can get better. And you might be in a stage where I was, in, when I was a year, two years into my business, I started to invest in my company and in myself to learn the business skills that were required [00:24:00] to really grow and have the lifestyle that I wanted from the business that I wanted.
[00:24:05] So I hope this helps you. . And I'm gonna include the link where you can come in and join my community. I'm building a community for OTs who want to learn more and develop your skills in business and not just hand therapy.
[00:24:19] So if you like that, the link's gonna be below, and I hope to talk to you real soon. Thanks so much.
