3 questions you will want to ask yourself before you start your therapy business
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[00:00:00] today I'm gonna address three questions that you'll want to ask yourself before you start your therapy business. My name is Hoang. I'm an occupational therapist and certified hand therapist, and I own two businesses. I have a therapy clinic in Miami and of course my online platform, hand therapy secrets.
[00:00:17] I really wish. I had these questions when I first started and I was just talking to a therapist about she wanted to get some insight right into what she should do, right? That conversation has led me into these three questions that I wanted to share with you because these are the three questions that I drilled her on.
[00:00:40] All right, so let's go into it. When you're starting your own business, I don't know if you have experience in your life, in your past people that you saw owning their business, but I did. I, my parents own their business. They own their business. We first started out in the flea [00:01:00] market and then they grew and grew, and they were into wholesale.
[00:01:04] Silk flowers. That was, I got to see firsthand what a small business ownership looked like. And I, for a long time, didn't wanna own my own business like I wanted it, but I didn't want it. It's like I wanted the things that people talk about. I just couldn't see it happening for myself.
[00:01:26] And I just denied it for a really long time. But when I decided to start I was really seriously toying with the idea. I wish I had these three questions. And I, and you have to ask your, I'm just gonna ask them and I'll share some of my ex my experience. But ask yourself these questions and then answer them honestly.
[00:01:48] That's the key thing. Answer them honestly. 'cause sometimes we be lying to ourselves, but it doesn't do us any service if we're lying to ourselves. Write these questions down and I would encourage you to journal [00:02:00] on it, journal on it, ask write some of these, write some of these down, and you'll be fascinated when you look back at them.
[00:02:07] All right? So ask yourself, what do I want my business to look like? If you are starting yourself out, don't ask yourself yes, no questions. Don't be like, can I do it? If you say that your brain is gonna be like I don't think so. 'cause you've never done it before, right? Don't ask yourself no questions.
[00:02:28] Ask yourself, what do I want my business to look like? We all wanna say, oh, we want a certain amount of flexibility. We want certain freedoms. Like I don't want ask someone for time off. I want, if I want to take the time off, I shall take the time off. We have this, we romanticize what owning a business looks like.
[00:02:50] And at some point you will have that I. You just might not have it at the very beginning. It might not look like that your first or two [00:03:00] years in business, but what do you ultimately want your business to look like? What kind of flexibility are you looking for? What kind of freedoms are you looking for?
[00:03:07] Most of the people want freedom of time and money, meaning they want to make a certain amount of money and they also want to have the quote, flexibility of time being off. But yeah, you want to dive into what that business looks like for you? When I first started, I wanted, I said the same thing.
[00:03:29] I want flexibility. I wanna take off whenever my kids are off. I want to, if they have a. School thing. I wanna be able to take the school thing off. In reality, it didn't work out because I had a brick and mortar business, right? I had a brick and mortar business, so I needed to see patients when they were also available.
[00:03:48] Yes, you can draw boundaries around it. Like I will only work this time to this time. But at the end of the day, if you limit your hours so much, you are gonna find that maybe people can't fit [00:04:00] into your hours because they got stuff to do too. That led me to staggering my business hours. So when I first started I was like, okay, I can do 7:00 AM because 7:00 AM was like, just like a really hot time.
[00:04:13] Like I, I always had 7:00 AM patients. I don't know why, but these people always booked my seven ams. So I said, I'm not gonna do 7:00 AM every day. I'm gonna only do 7:00 AM three days a week. And then I only, I didn't wanna work late every day, so I made Tuesdays and Thursdays my late days. Even as simple as hours, like what does your business need to look like?
[00:04:35] That's what I did, I said, what did my business need to look like? And I set those hours accordingly. And then I also told myself I wanted to, be able to take spring break off. I wanted to take certain school holidays off. Now I now, 10 years down the road, I am able to do majority of that.
[00:04:56] I'm not at the space where I can just drop everything and leave [00:05:00] everything all the time. But I did want to, have so many weeks. To have the ability to travel and to be able to take off. So I would just encourage you to do that. What does my business need to look like? And some people say give yourself a timeline of doing that.
[00:05:15] But sometimes, because we've never done business before, you don't know what that timeline looks like. I thought I was gonna have it within the first year, and actually my first two years were the hardest two years where I didn't have that time. I didn't have that time. But then after that, as I built my business, I started to have more and more of that time.
[00:05:36] So our expectations might be a little bit off, but you want to really write down what you want your business to look like. The second thing is like we are nothing without our personal lives. We are the same person, personal, like. Personal and business. We're the same people. So I would encourage you, what do you want your personal life to look like?
[00:05:58] What do I want my [00:06:00] marriage to look like? What do I want? If you're single, what does that look like? I. There's a certain amount of sacrifice. There's a certain amount of God, I hate using the word sacrifice, but there's decisions to be made around that. So I was already married when I started my business.
[00:06:18] So if you're already married, starting your business what's important to you? Is your marriage important to you or are you okay? If it, if it didn't last right? I don't say that jokingly. I say that on purpose because the statistics are real. So when you start your business, like how solid is the foundations that you're building on?
[00:06:43] So when I started my business, I needed to have the utmost support from my husband. Like I was like, dude, I need your support, not just from a rah, you can do it. While I needed his money support, I needed him to pay the bills [00:07:00] so that I could, I needed to feel financially secure so that I could go off and do this other thing, right?
[00:07:10] Not because I was gonna fuck around with the time and not make money. Like I'm a money person. I'm a metrics person. I like these numbers. I like to have goals and set them and but I needed to know that he was going to give me a certain amount of leeway and support that, that I would and trust that I would, bring a certain level of income in at some point.
[00:07:34] So that was really important to me from a from what my personal life needed to look like. I also didn't want to create a business that ruined my marriage. So I needed to create some boundaries around what that looked like. And listen, the first year or two or three, it's a lot of time you're just spending a lot of time in your business learning about business.
[00:07:57] Doing business. It's just, it requires a [00:08:00] lot of time. Your brain space is in there. So I think it's really important to have very specific conversations with your spouse, with your partner, about what. What that might look like the first couple years and what you ultimately want from your personal life.
[00:08:17] I wanted to make sure that my marriage lasted, I wanted to make sure that my kids saw a particular type of example of my work, but that I wasn't gonna neglect them. It's not perfect, but I think I have been able to achieve like my kids feeling a like that. I am still around even though I don't spend every single waking moment with them.
[00:08:43] I'm not one of those moms anyway. I was never one of those moms anyway. Being able to build the business has been very rewarding. Personally, so that I am also like such a better person, for them. If you're single, what does [00:09:00] your single life look like? So then you carry the all the financial burden of being able to take care of your bills.
[00:09:07] And those decisions might mean that you cut back a certain way. I always believe that we were able to live a certain way while we're in college, and once we start having money, somehow we can't live. L less than anymore, but you do need to do that for a certain period of time so that you can save your money.
[00:09:28] Now you can take out loans and all that good stuff, and you certainly can do that. I just chose the route of not taking out, bank loans to start my business. I cut back and I saved, and then of course being with a partner helped me to mitigate some of those. Other costs. If you're single, you have to look at what your personal life looks like.
[00:09:52] What is it gonna look like to build and are you willing to do that? Are you willing to do that if you have kids and don't have kids, [00:10:00] you want to have kids or you never want to have kids? Those are things that you, I think are important to think about and build your business around what your personal life ideally looks like.
[00:10:15] I don't think that you can build a business without those considerations. I really don't. So what do you want your business to look like? What do you want your personal life to look like? And then when you're starting out on your business, you really have to ask yourself, what am I really good at doing in terms of skills?
[00:10:34] What am I, who am I really good at helping? When I first started, I knew I, all my patients used to tell me I have like magical hands, right? And I saw a ton of post-surgical cases, post-surgical cases how do you call it? I'm making splints. I was really good at those things. Wound care. I was really good at those things.
[00:10:56] And so when I started my business, I led [00:11:00] with that. I led with the things that I was really good at, and then I started to grow and expand beyond the borders of w what I, how I started out, right? You want to start out with what am I really good at doing? What problems? Can I solve for someone else?
[00:11:25] Sometimes we think these questions are about like, oh, we communicate really well. I have really great interpersonal skills. I have really great soft skills, meaning I'm charismatic. I connect with people. People are always drawn to my energy, right? People say how easy it is for them to talk to me.
[00:11:43] These are all great skills. Thank God you have them. Because it's hard to build a business without them. But those are not hard skills that you can sell. From a therapy perspective, do [00:12:00] will it. Will it help you? Absolutely. Your ability to communicate and communicate well will absolutely help you.
[00:12:08] But what problem can you fix that people are willing to pay for? I. That ultimately is a question that you have to ask yourself and you have to be honest. So I was working with a therapist once and she was like, I wanna start this business. I wanna do some side stuff. And I asked her this question and she answered I wanna work with athletes and pro athletes.
[00:12:32] And I was like, yeah, but do you have any experience working with athletes, working with getting them back into the game? Because when athletes hurt themselves, they have a team of people that is at their disposal to get them better, faster. And pain isn't, doesn't matter. Performance matters, right?
[00:12:54] You have to be able to play. So as a therapist, you have to be able to fix them and [00:13:00] fix 'em fast, and there's no time to waste. So if you are starting out in your business and you don't have those mad skills, you don't have those past experiences, it's gonna be hard to then say, Hey, I can help you pro-athlete or whatever or your shoulder pain, right?
[00:13:23] Because you don't have those skills, right? And no one is going to pay you. To develop those skills and then get them better. They expect you to come in knowing how to fix them, period. So it is such an important question to ask yourself and to be really honest, who you know. Who am I really good at helping right now?
[00:13:50] So I started with. Post-surgical cases, and that was my thing. I was really great with fractures, tendon lacerations, rotator [00:14:00] cuff surgeries, all those post-surgical stuff. And then within a few years of being in business, I started to realize, man, there is a whole pocket of people who have chronic issues and they're looking for answers.
[00:14:16] They're looking for someone to help them and nobody's helping them. Everyone is telling them, go and do have surgery. Go and have surgery. And I used to be one of those people who was like, go and have surgery because I worked in a hospital next to surgeons who said, just go have surgeries, I myself have gone through the experience of getting injured and then everyone telling me, just go have surgery.
[00:14:35] So I knew nothing but surgery. Once I went out on my own, I started to realize, hey, there is this person. Who, they don't really need surgery. They're not a candidate for surgery. Holy moly. Why isn't? Why is everyone just offering surgeries? And then it became more and more that I started to work with people who [00:15:00] I could help that didn't need surgery.
[00:15:03] There's some people who are just not a candidate for surgery. The other thing is I was working with people with with surgeries who they were not getting the help fast enough, so they got stuck and they were at risk for a secondary surgery so I could actually help them avoid a secondary surgery.
[00:15:21] And then that became something that I. Was really good at, as you go along in business, you'll find that you're, you become really good at certain things, but when you're getting started, you need to ask yourself, what are you really good at doing? And that is the thing that you bring out to the market.
[00:15:43] That is the thing that you say, Hey, Mr. Client with the wrist pain, I can help you with that wrist pain. I'm really good at helping people with wrist pain. I'm just making that up, right? Or I am really good at helping you with wrist pain. But if that's what [00:16:00] you're really good at, that, that's what you lead with.
[00:16:02] When you start out, you need those quick wins to let you know, yes, this is a game I wanna play. This is the next step. I'm committed to I will invest in this. I see that the fruits of my labor. Will, be rewarded, so yeah, this was exactly the conversation that I had with a therapist that I'm working with that, wanting to start her own business and she's teetering along, and the thing is I value working with people who are committed, right? You can see that throughout all my programs, especially the exam prep program, it's priced a certain way. I want people who are committed because if you're not committed, you're gonna tee a totter and you're just not gonna do the thing, and then you won't be successful.
[00:16:54] And is it. The program not successful, or is it you just teeter and tottering and not being able to [00:17:00] make decisions? See why everything comes down to making decisions. See why everything comes down to problem solving and making decisions, right? And this starts your ability to make some key decisions for yourself because everything in business is about making decisions.
[00:17:19] There's a saying things happen. Things happen. And what's this saying? Let me say it correctly. Things happen and only after time passes will you figure out whether it was a good thing or a bad thing, that's essentially saying things happen and it's only until later, only until after time passes will you determine whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, right?
[00:17:49] As you think through these questions, right? You want to start learning the habit of [00:18:00] making these decisions for yourself. 'cause nobody's gonna tell you what to do. No one's gonna tell you how to run your business. You have to make decisions around how you want, what is the need to look like? But first you start with what your business needs to look like.
[00:18:16] Do you want one location? How do you wanna build it out? What kind of patients do you wanna see? Down to what kind of hours you wanna carry, right? What does my personal life need to look like as I'm running this business? I don't want to, make money and run a business and sacrifice my personal life by marriage.
[00:18:36] So how do I work to balance them out? Those are decisions. I need the sound, I need the commitment from my spouse that's not gonna. Feel some kind of way. 'cause I'm working, I need to surround, my friends, they need, my family. They need to understand sometimes they don't need to understand and you need to minimize [00:19:00] contact right.
[00:19:00] While you're building this thing. What does that need to look like for you? And the more specific you get, the better off you're going to be, the easier it is going to be to make decisions, are you gonna start off? You're gonna start off real generalized, and that's okay. Ask yourself over and then get more and more specific.
[00:19:25] They're gonna start real generalized. It's okay, I want flexibility, but what does that shit look like? What are you talking about? I want time off. Like I want this amount, I want lots of money. Get specific. How much do you actually really need right now? What am I really good at? Get specific.
[00:19:47] Don't just think it's about splinting or about manual therapy, about the techniques. It's never about the technique. It's about the problem you will solve for [00:20:00] someone who's willing to pay you, right? If you pick a group of people who are unwilling to pay you that's not a business. That's, you won't be in business very long, right?
[00:20:13] Start out grant, start out like broad. It's okay. That's why I say write it out. And then you go back to it, the next day, a week later and you get even more and more specific. I honestly wish I had this type of conversation with someone when I was starting out. I think it would've saved me a lot of time.
[00:20:33] So I hope this gets you thinking. And helps you to save some time as you start out on your business or continue to grow it. 'cause you can ask these questions all the time. It doesn't matter how many years in business you are, I still ask these questions. Being in business 10 years later, if I can do it, you can do it.
[00:20:56] All right. My name is Hoang Tran. If you like [00:21:00] this kind of video and this helps you think through. What you want. Leave me a comment. I'd really like to know if this has provided some insight. If you have any questions, leave them below. Really love to hear if this is bringing you some value.
[00:21:19] All right until next time, I'll talk to you later. Thank you.
