How to Properly set up your OT Therapy Clinic
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[00:00:00] Hey there. Welcome to the OT Business Corner of Hand Therapy Secrets. My name is Hoang. I'm an occupational therapist and certified hand therapist. I've asked for some few business questions that you have, and I'm gonna be addressing them on this channel. So I got a question from Angelica asking about whatever business.
[00:00:24] Set up, I decided on whether it was an LLC or scorp, who essentially I used to set up the business. And to be honest, it really doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. I think that sometimes when things get really complex, we think that, We should take a poll and see what other people have done to potentially get like this idea of okay, if more people did this, and that's the right way.
[00:00:57] And I think that [00:01:00] over as you develop your business, you're gonna learn Hey, I need to do things that really fit me on what I need. So I think that this topic is really gonna be more about how to properly set up your therapy clinic, and then once you understand how to set up your therapy clinic, then you think about who you want to pull in to help you make decisions about how to set up your therapy clinic and.
[00:01:32] I can start just by answering that I set up my own, like I have I have a friend who's a, an attorney and I just asked him a few questions and he answered them and we pretty much just set it up. I was just like, I, I'm gonna set up an S corp, sometimes. It can be state dependent if you have to set it up a certain way.
[00:01:54] So you have to look at your state, but this is a little bit of research that's required. And then you [00:02:00] wanna think about what you want to ultimately do with your business. I decide to set up an scorp because I wanted a certain amount of growth, right? I wanted it to be more than just me, and I knew that from the get go.
[00:02:14] But I just pretty much, I just did it myself because I didn't have. If the funds to be like, let me hire an attorney to do it. Let me hire an accountant to do it. If there are some things that I felt like at the very beginning I could do myself, 'cause I had the time to look it up and research and in my state I live in the state of Florida, you just go to sun vis.com.
[00:02:38] And you set up your company and then it, you can look it up online and it's, it'll give you step by step of what you need to do. But I think more importantly, I think the conversation is really about do you wanna scorp or do you wanna l c? And really that can, again, that can be state dependent, but it is [00:03:00] 100% dependent on what you want.
[00:03:02] So I think first and foremost, what do you want? What do you want? I wanted, I knew I wanted to grow my business. I knew I wanted, I had this dream of growing it. Big, and I know that sometimes it's scary to say out loud or even share how big our dreams can be, because what if we fail?
[00:03:23] And then what if everyone knows that we failed? And I think part of the growth and part of your success is how fast can you fail? How fast can you fail so that the faster you fail, the sooner you will get to success. And it's a concept that people might talk about. You apply it in books, but it's hard to do because our ego like wants to protect us and not want it to fail.
[00:03:51] But I started my business thinking I wanted it to be really big. I wanted to have four locations. I wanted [00:04:00] to have therapists in each location. I wanted to help. OTs become CHCs. I wanted to create a center where I would hire and train and foster the growth of OTs so that they, that can become CHCs.
[00:04:22] And I think that just starting out and doing certain things made me realize that wasn't necessarily my path, right? That wasn't necessarily my path. And that's essentially what led me into hand therapy secrets and developing programs where I could help OTs become cgs. I was just helping them in a different way.
[00:04:46] So yeah. Think about. Think about that. Think about what you want, your growth. And the other thing I think that's really important to think about, which I thought about a lot when I was opening and [00:05:00] starting my own business, is do you wanna be mobile or do you wanna rent a space? I live in a really big city and it's so crowded and it gets more crowded by the minute.
[00:05:14] So the idea of driving around and being mobile just did not appeal to me at all. I. Knew I wanted to rent a space. There's risk of renting a space because when you rent a space, you lock yourself down into a particular location. You also have to sign a lease that. Puts all the responsibility on you, right?
[00:05:45] So I was willing to take that chance over being mobile. Sometimes we make decisions based on what is more painful, right? We are not always moving toward pleasure what would I like? [00:06:00] It's what do I not want? I did not want to sit in traffic for an hour getting from one patient to the next.
[00:06:08] That did not seem to appeal to me. So I think that depending on your location, mobile can work for people. I know therapists who started mobile and did amazing. I know OTs who did it. I know PTs who did it. I know people who did home health doing it. I know people like, that type of patient publish.
[00:06:29] I know people who impedes, who do it. So it's totally possible. You just have to decide like what's your pleasure or what pain do you wanna avoid? And I think that's a really important area to think about when you're setting up your clinic. Then if you were to rent space, how would you rent space?
[00:06:51] Do you rent it on your own or do you rent it from someone else? Which is like subletting their space. So if you wanted to [00:07:00] work more with a certain patient population that were all like athletic, you might consider renting space from a gym. Or I'll share with you what I looked at when I first started. So when I first started looking, I actually, gosh, how, I wonder how it happened.
[00:07:22] Now that, I'm trying to think. I don't know if they approached me or I approached them, but this one company, This one therapy company, they had therapy. They had a whole setup and they wanted to rent me a room, right? They were like, you would pay this. The space, and you would essentially have access to all of the equipment like the hot pack, the cold pack, the exercise machines, all of that.
[00:07:55] But you would have your space, and your space would be your space, [00:08:00] and you could have your table, you could have your mats, you can have whatever inside this room. This would be your space, and it would come at a cost. And then they wanted to then upcharge me, like for a fee, they would handle all of the administrative stuff.
[00:08:23] So I could have all the phone calls and all the faxes and all the authorizations done through their front desk person. And then I would just treat so and when you do that, oh, you gotta ask some really good questions. All right, people, you gotta ask some really good questions. I don't know what area you're in, what patient population you want to treat, but I specifically wanted to treat hand to shoulder problems.
[00:08:58] Like at that time I was like hand to shoulder [00:09:00] only, and I knew. If the referrals come in and you're a physical therapy clinic, how do I know that you're not going to take. That referral and say that it's yours because now you also do shoulders and you also do elbows, but you wanna say, oh, the OT can do wrist and hand.
[00:09:23] I was like, that's not the kind of business I wanna run. I run a business where I, if I'm gonna say I'm an upper extremity manage upper extremity specialist, I'm treating those areas too. How do you differentiate your referrals from my referrals? And they couldn't. Give me a full, straight answer. And I did not like that.
[00:09:45] I found that to be very not in my favor. And I decided, and I didn't even, we didn't even go any further. We didn't discuss costs. There was no, I didn't know how much they were gonna rent the [00:10:00] space to me. I was just, looking to consider different things and. I know people who've done that and been very successful.
[00:10:08] I've known PTs to do that more than OTs, but it can be really successful. So I want you to think about the plus size and the downside, the pros and cons and say, okay, can you live with the pros and cons? So I wasn't willing to live with that con because I was like, at any moment, You could totally screw me over because you can say, oh, those are our referrals.
[00:10:37] We already market to those doctors. And then they were very insurance based. And when I first started, I was very insurance based minded, just because that's all I knew. I am way beyond that now, but o I only knew that. So that was the only, my only questions because that was all I know. You don't know what you don't know.
[00:10:59] I, it [00:11:00] didn't, it did just didn't feel right to me, so that risk was much higher than me going on my own and renting a space and putting my name to a lease agreement. And I wanna say that my lease agreement. I can't remember, it was one year or three year, but you can minimize your lease if negotiate well.
[00:11:27] So I ended up finding a 300 square space in a older building. And it was in an older building, 300 square foot space. I didn't have a sign on the door. I didn't, it was like one of those buildings that you couldn't really see from the outside who was inside. And then you had to come in, walk down the hall, and then my suite number was there, and then my name was on this little tag, hands-on therapy services on this little tag.
[00:11:58] And I wanna say [00:12:00] that my lease agreement was three years. But I said I will give myself that long to either fail or be successful, right? And it was small enough, it was cost effective. I only needed, I think, I wanna say I paid less than $500 a month. I'm like, if I only got a few patients in, I would break even.
[00:12:25] Was it that much? Yeah, it was equivalent to a car payment. And I said, can I, can I do it? And I was like, yes. And if I totally failed on my ass, could I still pay it until the lease agreement broke? And I was like, yeah, I could. I could go out and get a per diem job and pay that off in two seconds and I would be fine.
[00:12:48] I could break the lease if I needed to. So I just knew that when I rented that space, there are ways for me to get out. There are things that I considered and it was less [00:13:00] risky to actually rent and sign a space by myself than it was to go into any kind of contract agreement with someone else.
[00:13:07] And I think that those are ultimately are. The decisions that you need to make for yourself. And the reason why I keep talking about like thinking through your problems or coming up with decisions, because these essentially are micro decisions. They're small decisions, your. Big decision to go out on your own, that's a big decision to go out and do your own thing.
[00:13:36] That's a big decision, right? And then you have all these micro decisions that then support this big overall arching decision that you want on your own. But at the end of the day, you want to make decisions based on your needs, your wants, and your goals that are not. [00:14:00] About polling who's doing what, because you don't always know what other people are doing or their reasons why or the resources that they have, right?
[00:14:15] When you first start out, it is expensive. So you are looking and what am I spending so that I could have a certain amount of return on the learning of that expense, right? Would I rather pay X amount of dollars to an accountant, to a lawyer to set my business up or am I able to do it on my own?
[00:14:48] If if you're able to do it on your own, in your state in your state, and then you weigh the cost, am I capable of doing it on my own? Do [00:15:00] I feel comfortable doing it on my own? Can I read all the necessary steps and do it on my own or I don't feel I more, I feel more comfortable. I have the thousand dollars to spend and I'd rather spend that on.
[00:15:13] Someone setting me up or not setting me up. So the decision ends up being your own so that you can feel comfortable in what you need to do. So that's essentially some of the three things that you can think of to set yourself up. And then once those are micro decisions, then you have other bigger decisions.
[00:15:33] And one of the biggest things that you could be doing is thinking about how am I going to attract? Customers to my clinic, how am I going to attract these patients to my clinic? So I think I did that talk at another time. So that's a bigger conversation and it also can be broken up into chunks so that it's [00:16:00] easier to, really think through and make decisions.
[00:16:02] So I hope this video has helped and if you are an occupational therapist and you are interested in. Setting up your own business, then I hope this video helps you. If you like it like share and also feel free to leave me a comment below. If you have further questions, I'd love to hear them so I can create more content just like this that can help you get started and to help you grow your business.
[00:16:29] High tide raises all boats and I think that when we help more OTs be successful, then we. As a profession are more successful. So I hope this helps. My name is Hoang Tran and I look forward to working with you soon. Thanks.
