How to Become Clear On Who You Help
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[00:00:00] As occupational therapists, we have a ton of really valuable skills that can help so many different people, right? But how unclear is that? Oh, what can I help you with? What are these skills? Um, and how does that play out? Skillset translate into helping someone very specifically. I'm going to talk about how to become more clear and who you help.
And the reason why I'm coming to you with this topic is because I just had a conversation with a therapist who has like 15 years of experience. She's really good at what she does. She wants to go into the entrepreneur space and as she is doing all the steps, right? She's Started an LLC. She's taken the shot, the, you know, headshot.
She's doing all of what I would consider busy work. I did this, you know, picking out the colors, creating this quote [00:01:00] unquote brand. Um, and I, I can tell you, I did this when I first started and it got me zero clients. So I'm trying to share this with you so that you can get clients in faster. The faster you get your clients or your patients in, The first sale you make is going to give you this jolt of energy that you had no idea was possible, and it's going to become your proof of concept, right?
Your proof of concept is, it's proving to you that the idea that you have, works and can work and can create an, um, an income for you, can create a lifestyle for you, but you need that first paying patient to essentially solidify to you, prove to you that you can do this business thing, right? And the way that you can do that is, is to become very clear in who you help.
So I'm going to share with [00:02:00] you my conversation. Cause I just think that, um, Like it's so important if you're starting out, right? It's just so important when you're starting out. So Here are some of the things that I shared with her. There's two main Concepts that I shared with her so that she can become more clear in who she's helping and I hope this helps you too My name is Wong by the way.
I'm an occupational therapist and certified hand therapist And I started my clinic business 10 years ago, over 10 years ago, and I started hand therapy secrets, uh, mentoring and coaching other therapists to become hand therapists and eventually do what they want to do. Business. Uh, included, right? So number one, who is your ideal client?
Who is that patient that you want? Now it's extremely easy to be like, Oh, well, I can help this [00:03:00] person. I can help this person. I can help this group of people. I can help this group of people. What happens? And this is exactly what happened with her. Um, I was like, so tell me more about your business. What are you doing?
Um, who, who is it for? Right? Who is it for? Ask yourself this question. Write this shit down. Who is this for? Who am I for? Um, and then the second question is why would they pay you? Why would they pay you? Write out your points. Why would they pay you for the services that you said that you have? Or really, I want you to think about it from a problem solution.
What is their problem and what is your solution? So write out your points. That way you can use it in your messaging and then you can use it in when you're talking to them, right? I kid you not, when I was speaking to her. [00:04:00] She had at least five to six different groups of people that she could work with.
Right. And with each one, I essentially challenged her on who would be paying for these services because you can clearly help anybody you want to, but from a business standpoint, You need to be able to bring in some income in order to cover your expenses and then in order to pay yourself. That is as simple as I can put it.
If you want to help people who are unwilling to pay for your services, your business will never take off the ground and you're going to Think that you are bad when it has nothing to do with you being bad, right? It has absolutely nothing to do with your services, you as a person, uh, the value that you can provide.
It's just some [00:05:00] pockets of people if you're trying to, um. you know, delivered to a group of people who just don't value those things, then you, you won't get off the ground, right? If I'm selling hand therapy services to people with hip pain crickets, they're not gonna Need or buy my services, right? Um, if I Provide hand therapy and I go to people with hand pain.
Oh my god, they're gonna want my services, right? So it's the same concept. It's the same ideal. So who's your client? Who is your patient? Who is that group of people who are willing to pay for your services? Right. Um, and that, you know, that is just ultimately at the end of the day, as simple as it gets, right?
It is, [00:06:00] it is very simple, but it is hard to execute. And I can tell you when I first started, I was all over the map, even within hand therapy, you can, you can niche down even further, right? So that you can, you know, One, get proof of concept for one group of people and then get more and more. Um, you can do a bunch of different people.
You can, you can create, um, like a variety of clients and then see which one sticks. Right. You can see which one sticks and then say, Hey, you know, based off of that, which one do I really want to do and who I want to work with? So she's using her OT skills to move into a coaching space. So coaching others on a specific niche on a specific topic.
Um, and so she has a bunch of different people that she could go to. And [00:07:00] my advice to her is you have to get really clear on who that person is. So if you want to go to a company and pitch your idea, then Um, you have to talk to the company because the company is paying. It's just like if you're working with kids, you're not talking to the kid, you're talking to the parent because the parent is paying.
Does that make sense? Let me know if that makes sense. If you're talking, um, specifically to like a business to a customer, like I'm talking to the patient in the adult, I'm talking directly to the patient that's adult. There's no other people. They make a decision on paying for me or not. Right. Um, so you got to get really clear.
You can try both things and see which one sticks in terms of see who wants to pay. Right. But then your attention is divided. And that's okay if you have one particular topic, one particular service. Like, for example, I'm going to give you an example. I provide Um, let me [00:08:00] give you an example from a coaching space and then I'll give you an example from a clinic space.
I provide hand therapy mentorship. I mentor other OTs that want to start in hand therapy, develop their clinical skills in hand therapy. Now I can go to big companies, right? I can go to big companies, um, and I can say, Hey, who's a hiring manager? Who's a clinical Um, uh, manager developer, I'm going to pitch my classes and my mentorship program to them and get them to pay for all the therapists.
So that's one way I can do it. My other way is I can go directly from therapist to therapist, right? My company directly to therapist. I'm going to talk to each and each individual therapist. Are you an occupational therapist? Are you physical therapist? Do you want to learn more about hand therapy? I'm your girl.
Raise my hand. I'm your girl. You want to learn? I'm your [00:09:00] girl. Right? And I could see which one works. And, um, they'll have to think about. Why would they pay for, for me? Right? Write out my points. Why would someone pay for my classes? Why would someone come and pay for my mentorship? Right? And I would list out all the points of why someone would pay for me.
Right. So from a mentorship, like I have a product, right? My specific product, the mentorship program. Well, if you work alone and you don't have anyone to discuss your cases with, you're not learning off of anyone, right? Um, uh, you don't feel really confident about like what you're doing and. You want to, you want to feel more confident.
You want to feel more comfortable and you want to feel more confident about what you're doing. You want a certain amount of autonomy with what you're doing because you're an OT and you're working amongst a [00:10:00] ton of PTs and you're tied to asking them for shit that they don't really know, but then they're going to judge you for not knowing it.
Right? So. Someone like that should come into my mentorship program because that's gonna really benefit them from XYZ right, and so I'm gonna write down all the points of like who I'm speaking to and I can use that every single I talk every single time. I talk to people Um, I can learn more about them and I can say oh well based off of where what you're telling me and where you're at This is what my my service is about provides.
This is what this program provides. Oh, that's not right for you right now. Oh, I have another program and it looks like this. But I'm very, I have become more clear in who I want to help, who I want to work with. Um, because I've done the work of sitting there and writing it down, sitting there and thinking through who I want to work with.[00:11:00]
And, um, I'm getting more clear on my message. So you have to sit there and get more clear by doing the work of thinking and doing the work of writing things down so that you can be more clear about what you're saying. I can go to a company and I can say, Hey, director of rehab, director of therapy, you know, um, you know, you hire a lot of therapists who come in and, just blindly do stuff regardless of whether they know it or not.
If you're looking for, um, you know, if you're looking for classes, if you're looking for someone who can come train and mentor these therapists, so you don't have to dedicate a whole entire person and a whole entire salary. to just training. I can help you. How many people do you have? How many of them, you know, um, do you want to promote and learn?
And this is my price to come in. And this is what I would do for you to save [00:12:00] you money. Right to save you money. You're gonna spend money to save money. And this is what I could do for you Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, right now personally, I have chosen not to go down that route and I want to go very specifically to therapists That's just my preference.
That is my preference because I know more or less how I like to work, right? That comes with time, practice, and constant implementation. You won't know unless you implement. You won't know unless you try, unless you do it over and over and over. And every single time you do it, you get better and better and better.
But you have to start somewhere. So get started with that right now. I have gotten better only because imagine I have been in business for over 10 years. [00:13:00] Right. So my first two years in the clinic, I wanted to help everyone and their mother. I wanted to just anyone with any kind of hand arm issue. I was ready.
I was like, Hey, I can help you. Right. But when I didn't get clear on was all the insurance stuff, um, how to have insurance conversations and if you want, I think there's other videos that I've done in the past, um, where I speak more about that. So. Go take a look at those. But I had to really get clear on who my patient was, who I really wanted to work with.
Um, and then I had to say, why would they pay me? Why would they pay me when they? One, don't have insurance and are price shopping me, right? Everyone price shops. You're price shopping me. You're like, Oh, Hwang's business class is this much? Well, I can get another business class for [00:14:00] 500 bucks, you know? So, you know, you're price shopping me just like everyone else is price shopping me and just like everyone else is going to price shop you, right?
So, I had to go through this patient. They don't have insurance. They're going to price me. If they have insurance, they're going to price shop me, right? They're going to be like, I can pay 50 to go here. And Huang's one session costs. You know, hundreds of dollars, right? So what are you know, why would they pay for my services?
I'm gonna get real clear on who my patient write that shit down Writing down has helped me you can go through your notes I have written things down from years ago when I go look i'm like, oh my gosh It's a way to see your progress, but, uh, but write, write it out because it's going to get more clear in your head, write out [00:15:00] who you're, who your patient, you know, who you want it to be.
And then why would that person pay you? Because here's the thing, if you write out who it is, and you find out that they won't pay you, you'll get very clear on who you can help and you'll change that, you'll make the switch, right? Um, so you can only get more clear if you practice. Please people, practice, right?
I'm going to share Three things that I told her, right? I wrote it down, me taking my notes, writing it down too, because I want to be very clear about how to help you. Here's what I told her. You have to stop talking about occupational therapy and your skills as an occupational therapist, right? Oh, I'm an occupational therapist and because I'm an occupational therapist, I have the skills to X, Y, and Z and do this and this and this.
What happens when you do that is you're trying to justify yourself to [00:16:00] other people. Right. I say that with, with, um, such care, right? Cause I want you to do well. It's to stop trying to justify the fact that you're an occupational therapist. I think in, in, in university through internship, through working in different environments, like we're constantly having to justify ourselves, um, justify our occupational therapy skills, justify, um, are, you know, explain to people about being an occupational therapist, that we are so ingrained in our brain to fucking do that.
So here's my message to you to stop fucking doing that, right? It does not help you at all to be more clear and who you can help, right? What you want to do is you want to talk about what their problems are and how your services. Right? Your services, what you're really good at, can do to help them. That's it.
You have this [00:17:00] X problem. These are the solutions, right? Um, this is how I can help you. This is what I can provide for you. These are things I can do for you. Period. Period. Right? With a T. Period. It's the, the, when you start, find yourself talking, when you go, go and tell someone about your business, go and tell someone about your business, right?
This is what she did, came, started talking to me about her business. And I, with an experienced ear was like, Oh, I don't understand what you are providing. And as soon as I was like that, Oh, as an OT, I'm like, I, I understand as an OT, what you are saying, but as a customer, as a consumer, as somebody who would, who would pay you, those words don't make sense.
They don't make [00:18:00] sense to people, right? They don't make sense to people. Cognitive training does not make sense to people, majority of the time. Right. Look at who you're talking to. If you say it's a therapist, they may understand, but if you're not talking to therapists, they're not going to understand what that shit is.
Right. But what happens is we, we fall down this path, you know, of trying to justify ourselves to people. I can't even tell you how many times I tell people that I'm a hand therapist and they don't even know that that's a specialty and what that actually includes and means. So you have to have your little, you know, thing to say, and then through talking with people, have an opportunity to explain a little bit further.
Always explain what problems you solve versus trying to explain occupational therapy. So important. Do that more and more, and you're going to get clear on who you help, [00:19:00] what your services are about, but you have to start practicing. Number two, um, you. Right? You, me, I have to get more clear in terms of who you help.
Right. I have to get, let me say that again. I have to get more clear with myself on who I help. Right. I have to do that. If I cannot do that, my business partner won't help me. The company that, that I hire won't help me. Um, AI will not help me. Right. AI is very generic. Everyone is on this AI bandwagon.
That's fine. That's fantastic. It does do certain things faster, but it only can produce based on your clarity. If you are unclear, the information you get from AI is very unclear. Um, and one of the things that I noticed, Uh, People who want to go into [00:20:00] business, um, is they'll get a business partner. I have nothing wrong with having business partners.
I believe I did another video on business partners. You have to really know why you're getting a business partner, what they come into with what you come into. But the thing is, is that if you don't get clear, It doesn't matter who you have, um, in your corner, supporting you up and all that good stuff, uh, whether you partner with them or you pay them.
If you are not clear, then they cannot do the work, right? And so you're just wasting a lot of time and a lot of opportunity. So you have to do the work of getting more clear. Do not abdicate that to someone else. Um, I try, I'm sharing this too because I have tried, I tried to abdicate it to someone else and it does not work.
It does not work because you have to get clear on it as the business person, as a business owner. You have to get more clear. [00:21:00] Number three, number three is the most important thing that I told her. You must take action. You must take action every day. The minute you. Start to make excuses for why you can't do something is the minute you should look at yourself and say, what am I scared of?
Right? She was like, well, you know, I had this time in the summer, but now my kids are going back to school and you know I'm not gonna have that much time and my business partner doesn't have much time. How the fuck is your business going to take off? Right? How is your business going to take off if you're too busy to work in your business and your partner is too busy to work in the business?
How is this business going to take off? You must take action and you must take action every single day. I take action every single day over 10 years into the business. There might [00:22:00] be some days I take off, but my point being is I take action every single fucking day. And if you are not taking action every single day to start your business, Dude, what are you doing?
Right. And my, my question to you would be, what are you scared of? What are you scared of? Because you're scared of something. You're scared of someone seeing that you're doing stuff. You're scared of someone saying to you like, Oh, you're starting a little business and judging you. You are scared to share your perspective.
You are scared what it's going to do for your life. How it's going to impact your family. I had all those fears. You have to hit them head on. She, before I started my business, I talked to my husband quite a bit about it. Cause I was like, um, how's this [00:23:00] going to impact our family life? How, how I'm going to need help and support.
Um, how, You know, money wise and time wise, you know, um, because I can't, you know, I can't do this alone, right? If I'm, if I'm partnered with someone like a, you know, I, my husband being like, like a life partner, I don't have a business partner. He's my life partner. But if we like partners, you, you're freaking helping me with something.
You're freaking helping me with something, because I'm not doing this all by myself. Right. I'm not doing life all by myself. I will not. I'm not superwoman. I do a lot of stuff. You know, I'm a mother. I'm a wife. I'm a therapist. I'm a business owner of two businesses. I'm an author. I've written a book. I'm trying to write two more books, right?
There's a lot going on. I will not do it alone. Be clear. Be clear about your fears. [00:24:00] That takes work too. The whole thing fucking takes work. The whole thing takes work. But when you said you wanted to start your business and you started to invest your money and you started to invest your time, take action every single day and don't sleep on it.
Right? Don't sleep on it. The minute you start making excuses, what am I afraid of? What's going on? Like what's happening? Right? Um, that was my conversation with her. It was hours along. Bringing down the 25 minutes. I think I did pretty good. I don't know. Let me know what you think if I did pretty good or not.
Tell me what actions you're going to take. Um, leave me a comment below. And if you like more of what I'm offering, um, definitely the links are below for you to grab some help, some guides, and, um, I'll see you on the next video. Thanks.
