E515 | What To Do During Slow Seasons

Today's episode is somewhat of a tactical one, and it's how to handle the slow seasons you may experience within your practice. At one point or another, you're going to deal with this. It tends to be affected by the region you are in. Enjoy!

• What region are you in
• Communicating what may be the slow months to your staff
• Focus on the work, not the outcome

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Podcast Transcript

 Danny: Hey, I've got a question for you. Do you know if you're tracking the right data, the right metrics, the right key performance indicators in your practice? This is something that's huge for us and really helps us make solid decisions within our business, but the prior software that we're using to run our practice made it really challenging.

To actually get that data out and use it in reports. Since we've switched to PPG everywhere, this has actually become way, way easier for us to be able to have the right data. We have a dashboard of all the things that we actually want to see, the metrics that we want to pull, and it makes our life a lot easier to pull the information that we need to make the right decisions within our business.

So if you're running blind and you're not tracking the right things, or you're. Hard time actually pulling everything together. I highly recommend you check out our friends at PT Everywhere and see what they've got going on with their software platform. It's what we use for our practice. It's been a game changer for us.

You can check 'em [email protected]. I think you really like it. So here's the question. How do physical therapists like us who don't wanna see 30 patients a day, who don't want to work home health and have real student loans create a career and life for ourselves that we've always dreamed about?

This is the question, and this podcast is the answer. My name's Danny Mate, and welcome to the PT Entrepreneur Podcast.

Hey, what's going on guys? Doc Danny here with the PT Entrepreneur Podcast, and today this is a very tactical episode. I try to sprinkle these in, not necessarily make it all tactical, but this one is, and this is based off a question I got from one of the guys in our mastermind group about having a slow Month and what to do with, not necessarily his schedule, but with his staff.

Because, he has two other staff members now and, he is I don't know what to do. They're at like 50% of what they normally are. And let me address this by saying, first of all, Everyone is gonna have like seasonal differences in their business, and it's also regional.

It depends on where you're at. So as for an example let's say that somebody is in Arizona. Let's say they're in Phoenix. They're gonna get a lot more people that they're working with. In the seasons when people want to be there and fewer when the seasons, they don't want to be there, right?

So if you are in a place where you have that, and let's say it's Arizona, you're gonna see in the winter, you're gonna be busier because people are not gonna be in colder areas and in the. In the summer when it's super hot, they leave, they're going somewhere else. And that is, certain places you're gonna see a lot of that or vice versa.

Like we worked with a practice that was in the Hamptons area up in New York and they actually saw a ton of people that would show up over the summer whenever it was their busy season. And then it would be very limited number of people. It would see a big drop in their business in the winter when no one was wanting to be there.

So that's normal. If you're not in an area where there's a lot of population change then what you're probably gonna have is seasonal changes based on a couple things. First spring break. Spring break definitely is a time where a lot of people are leaving. They're not gonna be in your office. It's no different than any other service business, really.

You just, if you're not aware of these things, they'll catch you off guard and you think that you're doing something wrong and you're gonna go outta business. This happened to me multiple times in the first year or two that we had a business. The first Christmas I thought, for sure we're gonna have business.

In fact, I actually looked, I started looking at jobs at local hospitals, like PRN jobs. I was gonna take a part-time job to supplement the clinic. No one was coming to see me and I didn't know, and no, I didn't have anybody to ask. So don't freak out. And if you already have, you realize, oh shit, that's just seasonal.

And then the summer also we'll see a slowdown in the summer because people are traveling and that's. Like pretty normal, right? If you really think about it, are these, predictable and is there a reason then cool then I'm good. If you have no reason, no explanation for why your business is like all of a sudden tanking or just like trending the wrong direction, then yeah, there's something that you need to address.

They're obviously, and there's a reason for concern. But when we have people that travel. They're not in our office. And you can do a number of things to help offset this with recurring revenue in the business and all that. But even still, this is what service businesses deal with to some degree.

So what can you do? First of all, if you have employees or even yourself, I think it's actually one of the pros of a business like this is that it's a perfect time to. Vacation to go on a trip. You're slower, your folks are gone. Everybody's around their family a little bit more during these times, especially the holidays.

I remember being a waiter and just, I could not. I couldn't get time off around the holidays to go, home to see my family because that's like a really busy season for the restaurant. And if I wanted to have a job the next year, I had to work, during these busy times when people were with their families and they were going out to eat.

So now on the flip side, With a cash-based practice or a local practice. And it's a little different if you're insurance, by the way, because people are trying to like shove visits in to meet their deductible at the end of the year. But in a cash-based practice, not necessarily the case. You have this downtime towards the end of the year where it's a perfect time to take an extended period of time off.

Reset. Recharge your staff, do the same thing and come back ready to go. Because Q1 is typically very busy. January, February, March, or three of the busier months for a cash-based practice. So take vacation. That's the first thing you can do if you have employees. The other thing you need to do is communicate with them that there's going to be slowdowns.

Cuz here's what happens. If you're like, yeah, we expect this month's probably gonna be a little slower, just so you know. This is seasonal, it's normal. So number one, if it doesn't, They forget, they don't care. They're like, okay, whatever. I'm just as busy as I was before. If it does happen, you've already pre-framed them that it's gonna be slow.

So they're not thinking, oh, this guy's going outta business. I need to find another job. So you put yourself in a place where you are basically like, Meeting these expectations or you're setting these expectations before somebody freaks out and decides that they need to get another job. The other things you can have them do, let's say that they are sticking around.

They're not gonna take some vacation. Then there's a few things. Number one, content. Can they write blogs? They're gonna help with searchability of the website online and drive more people your way because they're learning from you. Can they make videos? Can they make content in any, form or fashion that's gonna help build the content, resources of the actual business?

Can they update systems? Are there certain systems, maybe it's your intake systems, maybe it's working on con, moving people over to ongoing offers and continuity and drilling that sort of sales side of it. It's an opportunity for you to train with your people, both clinically and on the business side.

It's an opportunity for you as a business owner to look at your own systems and see where, where are the holes that you need to improve. And what are the things you need in place to be able to grow to the stage you wanna grow to next? And work on those while you have some of this downtime.

The last thing you can do is have them start to do a little more local marketing during those times and give an opportunity to, Hey, let's, why don't reach back out to whoever it is that they have connections with? Curate that relationship is a good time to do it because we're a little bit less busy during these times.

So giving them things to do, but also just letting 'em know Hey, cool. Take the half day today. Go hang out with your family. It's just a, it's a slower week for us. No big deal. Enjoy it. Go. Enjoy that time with your family and, don't worry about it. It's a great time to be able to, really allow them to have a little more flexibility.

In particular, if you are communicating that on the front end. I think the biggest mistake you can make is not letting them know that you expect some amount of slowdown and then they're like, what is going on? Because oftentimes they have some bonus structures in conjunction with with their base salary.

So part of their compensation is from seeing visits in a lot of these comp models. So obviously they want to know what, what's going on? Maybe they need to, be able to forecast that out as well financially. So you gotta communicate that with them. Couple things they can do.

Number one, content, upgrade systems and then work on local marketing. And for you, it's a great opportunity to take vacation to spend time with your family when the season is a bit slower. It's a great time to do it. They all can get together anyway, so I think it's actually one of the silver linings of a practice like this and your employees get to benefit from that as well.

So I hope this helps. I hope that if you're going through some seasonal ups and downs, don't freak out. Communicate with your staff. Stay level-headed. Just focus on the work that you need to do and not necessarily the outcome. Cuz the work is what drives everything long term. Make sure you're doing the right work, make sure you're focused on that and you're keeping your team focused on that and communicating at a high level with them so that they are, feeling confident that they're in the right place and that you are driving.

Otherwise they're gonna think you don't know how to drive the ship, and they're about to crash and burn and they're gonna jump the hell off. So hope this helps. Take care.

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Hey, real quick before you go, I just wanna say thank you so much for listening to this podcast, and I would love it if you got involved in the conversation. So this is a one way channel. I'd love to hear back from you. I'd love to get you into the group that we have formed on Facebook. Our PT Entrepreneurs Facebook group has about.

4,000 clinicians in there that are literally changing the face of our profession. I'd love for you to join the conversation, get connected with other clinicians all over the country. I do live trainings in there with Eve Gigi every single week, and we share resources that we don't share anywhere else outside that group.

So if you're serious about being a PT entrepreneur, a clinical rainmaker, head to that group. Get signed up. Go to facebook.com/groups/pt entrepreneur or go to Facebook and just search for PT Entrepreneur, and we're gonna be the only group that pops up under that name.