E741 | Why You Should Run Your Cash-Based Practice Like A Chicken Shop

In this episode, Dr. Danny shares an engaging story about a unique taco shop that has thrived in a challenging location, serving as a metaphor for success in business, particularly in the field of physical therapy. He narrates the tale of a taco shop that focuses solely on rotisserie chicken, beans, rice, and tortillas—simplifying their menu to create a streamlined and efficient operation. Unlike the many restaurants that have come and gone in the area, this specialized approach has allowed the taco shop to flourish.

Key Takeaways:

• The Power of Niche Marketing: Dr. Danny emphasizes that, like the successful taco shop, physical therapy practices should strive to identify and serve a specific niche. Whether you work with youth athletes, runners, or another specialized group, becoming world-class in that area can significantly enhance your practice's reputation.

• Streamlined Operations: By focusing on a narrow offering, businesses can create repeatable, efficient systems. Dr. Danny discusses how this allows for quicker training and integration of new staff, as established protocols can be easily followed.

• Building Reputation and Referrals: Specializing not only helps in operational efficiency but also fosters strong word-of-mouth referrals. Dr. Danny urges listeners to hone in on their ideal patient demographic and tailor marketing efforts accordingly.

• Overcoming Common Challenges: The conversation touches on how specialization can alleviate issues related to patient acquisition, hiring, and managing the physical space of a practice, ultimately leading to sustained growth and success.

Action Steps:

1. Identify Your Niche: Reflect on which patient group you or your practice excels at serving and consider how to pivot your offerings toward that specialization.

2. Streamline Your Services: Look at your current operations and find ways to simplify and productize your services for improved efficiency.

3. Market to Your Audience: Develop targeted marketing strategies that resonate with your identified niche, and engage with that community to build strong connections. 

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: What you have to keep in mind is you cannot be, uh, the, the perfect fit for everybody. You can't be everything to everybody. Otherwise you're literally the wrong fit for everybody. You have to decide what do you want to be world class at? Who do you want to be world class at helping? Hey, are you a physical therapist looking to leverage your skill set in a way that helps you create time and financial freedom for yourself and your family?

If so, you're in the right spot. My name is Danny Matta and over the last 15 years, I've done pretty much everything you can in the profession. I've been a staff PT, I've been an active duty military officer physical therapist. I've started my own cash practice. I've sold that cash practice. And today my company physical therapy business helped over a thousand clinicians start growing scale their own cash practices.

So if this sounds like something you want to do, listen up because I'm here to help you. Hey, what's going on? Dr. Danny here with the PT entrepreneur podcast and the PT biz YouTube channel. If you're watching the video of this, thanks for watching it there. If you listen to this on the podcast, so much for listening to the podcast.

If you want to check out the video, head to YouTube. Here's what I'm gonna do today. Down the street from me, there's a restaurant and this is a restaurant that has been the only restaurant that has had the sticking power, the ability to stay open for the last few years, uh, of any restaurant that's ever been in this specific location in my neighborhood.

So let me give you a little context here. So there's a pretty busy road, um, on the other side of my neighborhood and there's a standalone building. And in that building, there has now been, since I've been here for about 10 years, there's been five restaurants. Uh, there's been an ice cream shop. There was a seafood place.

There was a, a wings place. Uh, there was something else. And then now there is a, it's basically a taco shop. So this taco shop, they only sell one thing. And it's chicken. So it's basically a variation of like rotisserie chicken with beans and rice, tortillas, and you can get a couple other things. Like you can get churros, you can get chips and guacamole, um, but not much else.

That's about it. And what's interesting is, Of all those places, this place is killing it. They're crushing it. They're always busy And they've lasted longer than any other restaurant that's been there. It's kind of a tough place to get in and out of Um, so I think the location is a is a little challenging.

This is a very busy road But what's even more interesting is these same people that own this restaurant They had a taco shop in another part of uh of atlanta close to where I live That they closed down You And at this other taco shop, they had like eight kinds of tacos. They had a bunch of stuff rotating.

So they always had different things and it closed down. And what they did was they found what's the. What's the thing that we do the best? What's the thing that, you know, if we could only sell one thing, what would it be? And they have now built a machine around this and it's awesome to watch because it's fast, it's affordable, it's great, it tastes great.

Uh, and they are world class at this one thing that they do. Whereas when they tried to do all these, you know, different variations of tacos, it didn't work out. They had to shut that location down, but they tried it again. And it, it crushes. They're, they're killing it. And what I want to talk about is a business lesson you can take from this and apply this to your clinic that you have, because what you have to keep in mind is you cannot be, uh, the, the perfect fit for everybody.

You can't be everything to everybody. Otherwise you're literally the wrong fit for everybody. You, you have to decide what do you want to be world class at? Who do you want to be world class at helping? Maybe it's youth athletes. Maybe it's CrossFit. Maybe it's runners. Uh, overhead athletes, you know swimmers, whatever.

Pick something that you want to dominate and be the best in your area at that one specific niche. You can branch on, you can add other things from there, but at the core of what you do, you want to be able to have a repeatable outcome. A repeatable, fulfillable product and service that your team understands.

And anybody else that comes into your ecosystem can get plugged into that same framework and have success. And what's, what's cool about this is once you figure out the right mix of how to deliver these things, you can have somebody that comes in and let's say that they're a golf specialist and you work with runners, and now all of a sudden you can have.

A practice that has multiple sort of specific niche disciplines with people that are really good at those things. But what you can't have is a general person that can work with anybody that will work, but it's very hard to scale is I guess the best way to put it versus if you're like the running. You know, people, you crush it with runners.

You're going to have so much more traction because it's not just your messaging is going to be so much easier, which it will, because if you're making content for runners and you're making content for CrossFitters, you're making content for swimmers and making content for tennis players and all those things have to go into the same channel that you're trying to communicate value with people on.

It's hard because you don't have enough depth in any of those to really make a difference versus if you can just focus on just runners, for instance, all the content you can build around that, whether it's injury prevention or performance, or it's, it's like reviewing gear or whatever it is that fits with that niche.

It lets you gain a lot more traction specific to that. And in real time, I'm seeing this happen with another business that closed down one business, opened another one, and they have streamlined the heck out of this operation. So when anytime somebody comes in, they have a new employee, they don't have to learn a whole menu.

They learn like one job probably. And they do that one thing. So if you have a new person come into your world, a new staff member that may say somebody turns over, you gotta bring somebody in. They come into your running clinic and they have to learn these protocols, or this is how we work with people in, you know, this stage of, uh, the injury state, or this is how we work with people on the performance side and how we program for them on a continuity basis, right?

It is a productized service. A productized service is a repeatable service that has a system built around it that's delivered as a service, but is very, very systematic. And that is where you're going to see a lot of efficiency. As you build your practice, you have to think about, What things can be repeated, what things can be systemized, and what things can we narrow down?

Not necessarily add more, but what can we narrow down to really, really get the most efficiency out of our time with people and the best results with people? Because that is what causes virality. That's what causes people to want to send their friends and family members, their friends and their running groups, in this example.

To come and see you because it is a consistent delivered product that is much easier to do whenever you narrow down than it is if you are going super, super broad. So if you're struggling to gain traction, here's my advice to you. Look at what it is that you do the best. What are you the best in the world at?

Who, who would you pick if you could only get paid? If they got the outcome that they wanted, that's the person that you need to be talking to and engaging with and building content for and going to local marketing events for and trying really hard to get those folks in your office because you're going to get the best outcome for them.

And that's going to build a massive word of mouth reputation for you as well, which runs in the background. This is important when you think about marketing. I don't necessarily think it's a good idea to live and die off a word of mouth. Uh, you know, referrals only in your business. But if you don't have any of those businesses, really hard to maintain and grow, you basically need this, this group of people that are saying positive things about you and referring people to your business in the background without you knowing about it, that only comes from you delivering an awesome product or service.

That's the only way it works. So you've got to deliver that to the right person with the right skillset that you have for that to happen in the background. But that. Makes everything easier that makes advertising paid advertising easier that makes your local marketing easier It makes your content marketing easier and all these things are layered on top of that reputation of you being world class Whatever it is that you do or whoever it is you work with That then allows you to scale your marketing up and really not have new patients be the constraint Of your practice versus most people, it gets to the point where it's higher.

It's like finding the right people, training the right people, and then space hiring in space or like the two constraints we'd rather deal with. Once we get the marketing side squared away, then we have to deal with, find the right people, train the right people, build the right space, find the right location, all of these things are good business problems to solve that everybody has to do in a service based business.

And not necessarily just try to fight to get the number of new patients in per month that you actually need. So if you're struggling with that, narrow it down. Who is it that you would, you would pick to work with if you only got paid, if they got the outcome first, focus on those people in all of your marketing.

And you're going to see your practice really start to gain a lot of momentum and move towards whatever is the future goal is that you have for your business. So hopefully you liked this one. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. And we'll catch you in the next one.

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