Narrowing down your OT niche
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[00:00:00] As an occupational therapist, our topic is so broad and what we need to do as OTs going into business is to niche down even within the realm of occupational therapy. Right? My name is Hoang. I'm an occupational therapist and certified hand therapist, and I'm here to bring you some business tips. If you're an OT and you want to start your business and you're kind of struggling because man, OTs can just do so much, right?
You can. Like, I'm a certified hand therapist. I specialize in hands, right? Hands and arms. And, uh, even within the hand therapy space, you could be niche. But as an OT, we're taught, man, you could work with PEDs. And within PEDs, there's, uh, subspecialties of pediatrics. Developments with delay. Um, sensory integration, autism, like certain, certain things within executive function, you know, things like that.
[00:01:00] Um, within adult space, you know, uh, there's sports, there's hands, there's, uh, you know, within those things, there's niches of very particular types of diagnoses. that you could niche down into in geriatric. There's, uh, you know, what you may call it, staying in, staying in the home, just working with an older patient population with their aches and pains.
I mean, the it's endless and that's just providing physical therapy. When you come into the online space, I mean, you can really Right. And so this gets me really excited because, um, I do believe that OTs can't, you know, have such capacity, but here's the thing. No one knows really that much about occupational therapy.
Right. And so as you start to narrow down your [00:02:00] niche, it becomes really. It's hard as an occupational therapist because you're constantly thinking about OT and you're in realms and spaces where they're like, well, you know, OT this, OT that. And it makes it, you know, it's a struggle. I don't know about you.
You can leave me a comment below, but you never struggled with it. Even with me, I struggled with narrowing down my niche within the OT, within the hand therapy space. Right. Um, and when you're. First, first starting, you really want to narrow it down. You really want to narrow it down to the, to what you do really, really well.
So I was talking with, um, with someone who started their business, I want to say last year, like they've been doing some, um, some consulting and evaluations on the side, um, and then treatments and therapy, but, um. Always a little bit on the side [00:03:00] and always like, well, I can do this and I can do this and I can do this and I like, so because you are starting out and you have so many ideas, you just want to do everything.
I don't know about you, but I certainly had it as well. And I, it's a constant struggle for me too, because, um, I don't know. It's just, it's exciting for me, you know, and, um. You think about growth, right? So you're just like trying to, you know, think about. In my mind, I'm visualizing just money just floating everywhere and you're trying to try to sit here and grab everything, um, because it's so exciting, you know, because everything has this huge potential.
Um, so it can be really tough to just say, say, I'm going to focus on on this and I'm going to focus, you know, over here to the left, right? So I was trying to, you know, I did a. One on one coaching session with her [00:04:00] and I was just like, let's work just on narrowing it down. And I'm going to share some of that with you today.
But if it's something you are interested in working on, uh, grab the links below. I've got my OT business course, um, that's going on right now. You can grab more details about that. And also, if you're interested in any kind of one on one consultation, the link is going to be below for you as well. But here's what I'm going to share with you a little bit, because what happens is, you know, what happens is you have so much that you want to do that you do nothing, right?
And so that's the key struggle that I want to bring, bring to your attention. You know, that you need to niche down, you know, that. Um, in order to get really good at something, um, you need to niche down, but it's like, how do you niche down because there's so much stuff and I'm just so excited about everything, right?
And [00:05:00] what happens, the reason why you have to niche out is 'cause what happens is you have so many ideas, you have so many things you wanna do that sometimes it leads. Certain people to do nothing and sometimes at least people to do everything but then their Attention is all over the place. And so they never really gain traction in both cases You don't gain the traction that you need to show you That something can be successful, right?
So in this, uh, consultation that I was doing, she, it, it was really causing her to lose money because she was like, but I can do this, and I can do this, and I can do this, and I can do this, and there was like five different things that she could do, so she couldn't build her website, she Was like, well, you know, I, I want to share on social media, but I don't, you know, I don't know what to share [00:06:00] because I, so she didn't even start her channel yet.
She's just getting a little bit of work here and there via word of mouth. And the problem with that. Is you go through feast and famine. So you feast like the referrals come and, and there's so much work that you don't even know what to do yourself. And then all of a sudden it drops and then you have no system in place that keeps the work coming in.
So all of a sudden bottom drops out. People don't need the service anymore, but you have no new ones coming in. And so you create this feast or famine cycle and it makes. It makes you feel really crappy because holy crap. I now I don't have that extra income. I was, I was counting on. Right. And so then you start going out and you're like, what do I do now?
Oh, I'm going to start the business for real now. But because you haven't been able to niche down, um, uh, you, you haven't started anything. Right. [00:07:00] So. One thing that I was, you know, exploring with her was like, what are you really good at? It's not to say that when something comes to you for something else, you can't take it.
You can take it if, if, um, if you want. I'm gonna give you an example. What if you work with geriatric patients, right? Tend to work with 70s to 80s to 90s, right? That, that in itself can be a niche. I work with people in their seventies, eighties and nineties, and I work with people with, you know, arthritis, chronic, um, aging types of issues.
And all of a sudden someone in their fifties is coming to me. Can you help them? 100 percent you can help them, right? If they've got the same issues and you feel confident that you can, you can still help them, but you have narrowed yourself down to a particular age group. You [00:08:00] could maybe niche down to a particular diagnosis, right?
So, um, this therapist, you know, she is, you know, in exploring with her, um, the treatments itself can be, um, You know, can cause a lot of, um, it's very time consuming. Let's say, you know, it's very time consuming. But what we found out through the various questions, is that she's really good, she's really good at evaluations and doing essentially like an audit of what's going on, right?
And I actually had this with a psychologist as well, like when I was looking for my, for my son, um, getting diagnosed with ADHD. So the psychologist that I was working with, she only evaluated and gave an evaluation. Like she didn't do the [00:09:00] treatment. She referred her treatments out. And so as a therapist, depending on what your niche is, you know, you can.
You know, do just the one thing that you're really good at doing. Right. And so I was like, oh, you could create essentially an audit. Um, and, you know, really do a thorough evaluation. Tell somebody. Where something went wrong, um, what something is, um, you know, not just what is wrong, but why something is wrong, right?
And then you could do the how to fix it. You're just not necessarily fixing it, right? You can give them that choice later if that's something you want, but you can be really good at something. I would say I'm really good at, I'm really good at evaluations, right? So I'm really good because you're. [00:10:00] Like to me, I can, you know, when I'm working with a patient, I'm not in their body.
That's, you know, I can see from the outside all the imbalances, all the, you know, the little nuances that they're not looking at. I can see their movements. I can see where the quality is. Um, I can take a look at the whole thing because I'm outside of it looking in and, um, I can problem solve that, you know, if, if you have, you know, an imbalance on the right and on a left from a top or bottom perspective.
So I think as therapists, we can be really niched down and really good at something and it's just. It's about coming down to that one thing that you're really good at doing and then being able to put that into your marketing message into your website that says, [00:11:00] I'm really good at this one thing to get started.
And what I'm talking about is when you narrow down, it's to help you get started. Right. And even, and I say this as someone who's over a decade into business, that you're constantly doing it because sometimes your niche within your niche, um, needs to be focused. Right. So I'll give you my own example is as a certified hand therapist.
I was really good at post surgical cases because in the hospital, I had tons of wound care cases, post surgical cases. I have a lot of hospital experience. And so when I started, yeah, I could, oh my God, I could do this and I could do, um, tendinitis and I can treat the whole arm and I can treat the whole body.
It gets confusing. It gets really confusing, right? And so when it gets really confusing, you take no action. [00:12:00] So you have to really pull back and say, what am I really good at doing? If I could only do one thing, what would it be like ideally? It's not to say that you won't do other things, right? Don't, don't lock yourself out of that.
But, but really narrow it down so that you can get started. Like this therapist, she started her LLC but since then she hasn't done anything. Since then she hasn't gone out and really created her website. She hasn't started her social media channels, and that's the, that is the problem in itself when you are confused about what you're doing.
And that's why it's so important as an occupational therapist, even though we can do so much, you've got to narrow it down. And when you are In person, you can narrow it down one way. When you're online, you have to narrow it down even [00:13:00] further. What is the one thing that you could do, right? I see a lot of OTs wanting to go into the coaching space.
And I love it. I think it's really awesome, but, but narrow down. So here is my disclaimer, uh, because it's something I've seen too. When you narrow down, which is really awesome, um, also think about narrowing down within a niche that, that people know about and people have a need. I think sometimes as OTs we can, um, and I think this is a little bit more than beyond just OTs, but sometimes, um, we can try to be so different and you're like, I've never seen this done before.
I'm gonna do it. And you niche it so far to the left that there's no market for that. [00:14:00] And so to create that market can cause. can cause you to stall as well. So you want to niche down, but you want to niche down within the, I would say within the marketplace where there is an actual need and you want to identify that need because you are so different and that nobody knows about you.
Then no one's going to come, they won't even know to find you, right? If they don't know how to find you, then how do you get your business going? So those are the things that you can explore and I want to encourage you. But if you need more personalized help, um, the links are below and you can come into my OT business corner world, get on my email list where I share more tips and advice.
And [00:15:00] also if you're interested in my personalized help, the links are below. I hope you enjoyed this video. Leave me some comments and let me know, you know, was this helpful? Um, and any further questions you have so that I can create more videos just like this. All right. Until next time. Peace.
