E570 | Why You Must Dominate A Niche

Today, I wanted to discuss the importance of leaning into a niche for your business. It can be massive for your business if you can find a specific group of people and cater to their needs and is paramount if you plan to start a physical therapy clinic. In this episode, I go over some real-world examples of this. Enjoy!

• The benefits of narrowing your target market
• How to choose a niche for your PT business
• The Power of Specialization: How Knowing Your Niche Can Help You Make More Money

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: So there's all kinds of hidden fees within your business that are just part of doing business. One of those is credit card. Processing and for us, we didn't even realize how much we were paying in credit card processing with the first management software we were using for our practice. And when we switched over to PT everywhere, we just realized we were saving literally hundreds of dollars a month with credit card processing with their partner with Card point versus who we were using with our prior.

Software. This has made a massive difference. It's more than paid for itself. It allows us to decrease our overhead. It allows us to have more cash flow to reinvest in our people, in our technology, in our facility, in marketing and everything that's gonna drive the business. So don't get abused by credit card processing companies.

Make sure you're paying what you should pay. And if you're looking for a management software, I highly recommend PT Everywhere directly integrates with a. Processor makes it very easy and their rates are super, super competitive. So it's saved us a ton of money and it probably will do the same for you if you don't know what you are getting charged.

So head over to PT everywhere. Take a look at what they've got. 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 wanna 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 Matte, and welcome to the PT Entrepreneur Podcast.

What's going on guys? Doc Danny here. We're the PT Entrepreneur podcast, and today I'm coming at you with something that we talk about. With our clients all the time, and I see people make a huge mistake with their practices, especially starting out by not focusing on what I'm gonna talk about in this podcast.

And that is your niche. So if you've been listening to this or paying attention to anything that I've put out, or PT Biz shares as far as Client effectiveness in terms of the business side of running cash and hybrid practices, you should know that the emphasis of focusing on a niche is one of the core tenets that we talk about.

In fact, in the first book that I wrote, There's a whole chapter on defining your niche that the revised sort of updated book, which will come out should be February. I revise it even more, and I add added more things to it to get clarity on your niche and why it's so important. I'm gonna give you some examples of why I think you just have to focus on this, and if you don't, you're really shooting yourself in the foot and First of all, I wanna give you a couple examples.

So number one, there is a company that I've now heard about probably a dozen times on different podcasts and even someone that I know that is involved in this organization. And it's a group called Chief. And what Chief is basically a professional organization, a networking organization for women that are also executives in the corporate world.

Okay Let me drill that down a little bit more. So it is a professional organization for women that are executives. So they have to be, vice president or some high level executive position within corporate, world, within the corporate world. So think big companies. So that is so damn niche specific and you would think that.

If you niche down that you are you're limiting the number of people that could potentially work with your business. And in some ways you absolutely are. There's no doubt that you are limiting the pool of people that you could possibly work with, but what you're also doing is you are making it very appealing to the people that fit that bill.

Imagine this, you are a executive that's a female, and you're working in the corporate world. You are. Definitely in the minority of people that are sitting in the room of these boardroom meetings where it's all the executives that are coming together for whatever high level meetings they have. I dunno what the percentage is, but I'm assuming it's pretty damn small.

Now, if you look at any of these professional networking organizations they have for people like this, It's going to be a mixture of people that are in these positions, which is heavily male dominant. So the people that came along and came with Chief, they said, oh man and they're in this world, by the way.

So they were executives in corporate America for years and they decided, and we don't have a space for people like us. And they created it and it exploded. So this company grew to tens of thousands of people within their membership base in a very short period of time. And they just got valued at a billion dollars.

A billion dollars. Think about that. A billion dollars for a basically networking group. And the other really smart part about what they did is they actually allowed. The corporate companies that they work for to pay the membership for the people that are working with them. So really smart number of levels.

But the biggest takeaway is that they narrowed it down. They could have said, okay, you could be an executive and you can join this. Nope. You have to be in the corporate world, an executive, I think there's even a minimum number of years of experience associated with this. Or you have to be a certain like position title.

And you have to be a female, within this, these bigger organizations, this corporate world, and they blew up. But that's a very niche specific example of a business. That has done really well in a short period of time. Even though you would think they're alienating all these other people, what they're doing is they're just aligning themself directly with the people that they want to help.

Now, on the flip side, if we look at cash-based practices, and I've seen this now, I don't know many times, like we've worked literally with right around a thousand practices directly within our mastermind in particular over the last few years. Probably 400 people have come through that, or are still in that in, in that actual program.

And that's very, that's there's a lot of one-on-one work. There's a lot of seeing these people directly and interacting with them and working with them on their business. So it's just a lot of FaceTime and you can't this is the thing I, you can't come up with this stuff. You can't see these problems unless you're actually they in it.

It was, it's If you had an instructor that was trying to teach you about how to work with patients, but they'd never actually really worked with patients. They just went the research route right outta school. Like they don't understand what it means to actually work with another human being.

It's not black and white. It's not just research. And when we look at what's working with these businesses, this isn't theory, this isn't some research study that we did. These are people that were like, Dude, you're struggling. You need to figure this out and you need to switch what you're doing to this and here's why.

Cuz you gotta pay your fucking mortgage. You have to be able to buy food. You have to be able to, provide for your family and pay your student loans off. This isn't. Theory, this is actually how it works. This is what you need to do and that's why I'm trying to share it with you is because we get an unfair advantage of all the reps that we get to see with these practices.

And this is totally free. And that's awesome because you can listen to this and I hope you take this lesson and you apply it to your business because it's gonna help you. So now let me give you an example of a practice that we worked with, and this was, this is somebody that's been in a mastermind. For now, for I think they're going on their third year or just finishing their third year.

So we've had a chance to work with them now for quite a while. And I remember when I had a conversation with this with this clinician, she basically was struggling a little bit in terms of trying to figure out like why she couldn't get her volume to grow. She couldn't grow her revenue, and she's really stuck around like five, $6,000 a month in revenue.

And it was like that for probably the first year. She got to that point relatively fast, but then it tapered off and it just stayed there. And I remember telling her, I, I said, look, you're trying to be the clinician for everything in your area. Like you're learning about, CrossFit and how you can be this CrossFit pt, and then there's like women's specific stuff that you're interested in.

And then there's running and. When we look at what she was doing is she basically was just trying to be the right person for everyone and ended up being the wrong person for everyone because there was no alignment with a niche. And if you're gonna have a local service business, your best bet is to try to be the subject matter expert.

In that niche in your city and position yourself as such early on. The reason why is you are going to appeal to that niche on a much, much higher level than if you're trying to be. Everything for everyone, which then you just become part of the white noise in the background and no one's paying attention to it.

But if you want to be the go-to person for runners in your area, then be the go-to person for runners in your area. Don't focus on anything else. All your content, all your messaging, all your local events should be for running specific things. Now if you want to spread out and you wanna branch out into different niches after that's fine, but you gotta dominate a niche first.

And then from there it's so much easier to have lateral transfers into other things. And in fact, it's gonna happen anyway because let's say you were the go-to person for runners in your area and you work with somebody who's an avid runner and but their spouse is not. And their spouse is just let's say they just like to do like general workouts, right?

Let's say they go to, some franchise gym and, but they're struggling cuz they've got like a foot problem or they've got a hip problem or something like that. You've built so much trust with this person who's the runner, that they're gonna recommend their spouse come and see you and probably push 'em pretty hard because they know how helpful you've been for them and they know how great of a clinician you are and how great you are with the relationship side of things and being able to actually get people to buy in and do the things that you want them to do and understand how the human body actually works, that, that is how you end up building a practice is you become the go-to person for a niche and then you naturally expand out of that. But you still have to be, heavily involved in whatever the niche is that you're trying to be the best person in the city for. So once we got this person lined up, and I remember talking to her and I said, listen you're a runner.

You like to run, you run fairly competitively and. But yet you're trying to do all these other things. Why don't you just focus on being the go-to person for runners? In your area and in particular, for her, she's a female. She has she has a family. So moms who are getting back into running, there's such, so many levels of appeal there that I could never have, even though I've worked with a lot of runners, like I'm not gonna appeal to women with kids the same way that this clinician would, that are women with kids that are trying to get back to running, I should say.

That's, that's a, such a a huge advantage that is a superpower. And what happened was as soon as she started to, focus her attention more so on one specific niche and her content for that, and all her local marketing and all the things that, she was just diverting her attention.

All of a sudden she started gaining traction. And then it's from, 5,000 a month to 10,000 a month. And, fast forward, let's call it two years later for where she's at now. Now she's doing $40,000 a month in revenue with multiple clinicians in a standalone space, and she's exploded the practice 10 x the practice pretty much from where she was at just a couple years ago and struggling because she was trying to be the person for everyone, which is the, is such a common mistake.

It's something that your. If you're coming out of a clinical world that's in network, like very, most people are, like most people listening to this you probably have some amount of experience working in a big high volume clinic and you can't say in that high volume clinic okay, just put the runners on my schedule.

Everybody else can get dispersed amongst everyone else equally, but let me just have all the runners. Doesn't work that way. As awesome as that might be for you. A, you're gonna piss off all of your coworkers especially if they wanna work with an active runner, and you probably don't have enough volume to even fill someone's schedule just with runners if you did that.

So you end up seeing a gamut of many different things, which is beneficial to your skillset. But when you go out and you start to try to build your own practice, You got to shift that. You can't be a generalist to start out with and be effective, and I guess in some ways some people do a good job with like chronic pain things like that.

But even that, you still have to be very niche specific for chronic pain issues. Very, a very certain specific type of avatar that you really help. But from what we found, if you can really drill down, To a niche that you can try to dominate. And there can be other people in that same niche, by the way, in your city, you don't have to, if there's another person that works with runners, don't think, oh, somebody's already got that one.

It's not like a domain, you can't you can't buy the same domain as somebody else. If you wanna buy, google.com, good luck. But There's multiple search engines, you know what I'm saying? There's multiple people in a city that can work with CrossFitters or runners or whatever, youth, athletes, any na, any number of things.

Like you can have multiple people because the other thing is your unique appearance, your background, your personality, just you as a person is uniquely different from any everybody else. Like you're just, you're not the same. It's amazing. We're all different. That's great. Lean into that. Lean into the things that make you unique with your specific niche, because that is how you're going to start to appeal to even more people that are the right people to come in and work with you.

That's huge. So when you're looking at this, the way that you define this, Is a, you probably know who you really love to work with, right? You could probably just say, if I said, Hey, if you could just pick one type of patient to work with, who would it be? You know what? How would you describe them? But if you're struggling with your niche, it's really a couple things.

So number one, It's what do you have a unique understanding of? What do you have a unique skillset with that allows you to be better with that type of person than the average clinician? Because that's basically who you're trying to separate yourself from. The high volume corporate, PT mill sort of location that's just, they help everybody versus you and who you want to uniquely help.

So who is it that you have the skillset? To help. Now, another part of this is who do you like to work with? And this is not something that you necessarily get to pick if you work for someone else in a, in-network practice, you don't get to say, just put all the runners on my schedule because you can't.

But in this setting, you get to decide how freaking great is that. It's the best you're telling me that I get to pick who I wanna work with, only the people that I love to work with. Awesome. Yeah. Sign me up. Cuz when we look at just that alone, that your energy level, your desire to help, your enthusiasm, your ability to be an active listener.

Think about how much that changes when you have your favorite client come through the door. And I remember this when I worked in a high volume setting. I remember this is, I was in the army at the time so I spent a year in a high volume clinic while I was actually still active duty in the Army.

And it was so that we could get a lot of reps before we ended up going to our first assignment. And then from there who knows many people were, ended up getting deployed very early on, so they wanted to make sure that you had a lot of reps under your belt. So that you knew what you were treating and you had to do that in a very short period of time.

So I spent a year in a high volume clinic, where it was myself and two other people that were active duty as well, working with a senior mentor, basically as it was like a condensed fellowship for a year within this facility. And I learned a ton and it was a great experience, but I also realized what I didn't want to do, which was work in a high volume clinic and part of it was, It the people that would come through, like I remember if we had let's call it like a 40 year old runner.

We had a 40 year old runner that was like trying to get back to running five Ks. We would damn near fight over who could see that patient. Oh my god, I got dibs on this one. This one's mine. He's not 70 and he's had an active goal. This is a unicorn. This is basically a pro athlete in this setting.

And we would get so excited. This is who that person would get put on, like whose schedule that person would go to. And. Then we just have to see all these other ones that just weren't, didn't interest us as much. And that's okay cuz that's what we're interested in. It's totally okay to say, man, I prefer to work with this kind of person versus this kind of person.

Because there's plenty of people that don't feel the same way as you. And they maybe wanna work with people that are more of a geriatric population or chronic pain or post-op, whatever it is that they're into. They're into that. Not everybody is gonna have the same interests as far as patient populations are concerned.

For you. If you're in that setting, if you know what I'm talking about, where it's oh my God, I've got a 40 year old. This is amazing. And they actually have an active goal. That's your every day, that's every patient that comes through the door. That is the greatest part of being able to set a practice up like this.

It's not the money, it's not the time freedom. It's literally you love what you do for a living, you, because you're working with people that you truly have an interest in working with, and you're helping them achieve goals that they really want to achieve. And it's a win-win. It's amazing. So you get to define that.

So when you define your niche, you just, you say, Who do I have unique skillset to help? Who do I like to work with? And then the last thing, and this is what gets people with this model, the last thing is can they pay for it? Because the reality is this is a fee for service model. Now people have a lot more skin in the game than they ever did before when it comes to their premiums and their deductible.

And don't even get me started on this. Like my family in as well, like we're in the same boat. We have a high deductible. And we're out of pocket basically for everything that we do Up until we hit our, whatever it is, $6,000 personal, individual deductible, and $12,000 family deductible, which hopefully we never ever hit, but we're out of pocket until we hit that.

And there's a lot of people that are in the exact same boat way more than there were 10 years ago when my practice, whenever we got going, it's just so much different. And for cash and hybrid practices, it's a huge advantage because people know that now when they're informed consumers. But they have to still, like the niche still has to be able to.

Pay for seeing you. So I get messages and things from people and and they're like can does this work with a, Medicaid population? And you can definitely have some people that are, pedia, pediatric. Cash. BT definitely works, but if you want to really focus on low income, Medicaid pediatric physical therapy, you can't really do that in a cash model.

You have to set up what would be considered a hybrid model, so the people that can afford to pay it. Then they can pay for your services, the people that are covered by Medicaid, then they can use Medicaid to pay for those services. And it changes the mix of how you structure the business. But even still, you just have to understand how to set those things up and what's the, what is the right fit.

But let's go back to this runners example. Are there people that are runners that you know, Can't afford to be seen at one of our clinics for sure. But there's also people that are runners that can't afford to do a lot of things, and there's people that are runners that can afford to do plenty of things.

And there's a lot of people in the middle that decide what they wanna spend their money on, and they don't have unlimited resources, but they're definitely, what would anyone consider middle income middle class and or, upper middle class or. Whatever the consideration is, they have disposable income and they decide what they wanna spend it on.

If they want to buy a new tv, if they wanna buy a new iPhone, if they want to go on a snowboard trip. Then they budget for those things. If they wanna make sure their knee is healthy so they can run a marathon with their brother, then they're gonna prioritize those things. So you gotta look at it as agnostic to what someone makes or doesn't make.

This is a huge problem. I see. You would pigeonhole people. I would do the same thing, depending on what they would drive up in, they would drive up, in my to my office in a. Honda Civic. I'm like, shit, this person's not gonna buy a package. They buy. They would drive up in a Porsche. I'd be like, hell yeah.

We sell a package all day to this guy. And it's so dumb because I'll give you a great example. I taught at a, I taught at a gym down in Miami Beach. This is the bougiest damn place I've ever been. The, it's, it is the most bougie gym I've ever been to. Great facility, though. Great trainers, amazing owner anatomy 1220 is what it's called.

And I think they have multiple now, but at the time they just, they had this one and it was in South Beach. And I remember I was teaching down there. I got dropped off in an Uber. And where they dropped me off, there was somebody outside that was like valet parking, nothing but Ferrari and Porsches and G wagons.

And I'm like, what in the hell is going on? And everybody just looks like so well put together. Like they're, they got makeup on going to, go to a spin class. And I'm like, God dang, where am I? There's a whole new world for me. I'd never seen anything like this. And, The owner, I remember the, the owner his car was parked there and he had a Ford escort.

It was like an old Ford escort, a surrounded by Ferrari and Porsches and the. The interesting thing for me was like, this guy was independently wealthy. He had played football in, professionally in the nfl, has successfully owned this gym amongst now a few others. This is not a someone that's, that is not wealthy.

But they don't have to show that in what they're driving like. And so if you're, if this person wants to pull up at your office in his Ford Escort and you're like, oh shit, this guy's not buying a. Package. You're making a mistake. Huge mistake. Versus just offering people what they need based on what your diagnosis and prognosis is.

That's it. Be agnostic to anything else. The way they dress, the way they talk, the what they drive, what things they, they talk about, doesn't matter. All that matters is what they need for the outcome that they're asking to, to be helped with. That's what you have to focus on. So can they pay for it is somewhat subjective, but you definitely don't want to pick.

Niches where there's absolutely, there's just no disposable income, so if we look at niches that work really well there's a handful, but just to name a few, it's women's health is great. It's, I think I, I had an instructor one time, and I'll never forget she said this when we were in school.

She goes, if you want job security become a win a pelvic floor pt. And I was like, I remember I asked her, I said, why? And she, and not that women are the only with pelvic floors, but she was specifically talking about women's health. She goes, there's way more women that have, problems with this than there are PTs that, that solve it.

Like they're grossly outnumbered and a hundred percent That's so true. So that's a great one. Runners CrossFitters. Youth athletes. Outdoor sports is a great one We see in certain cities really does well. People that are like climbers and they're hiking and. Backpacking and stuff like that, like it's their hobbies, what they really like to do.

That stuff is great. I've seen even in certain areas, like tactical athlete work can be really good. It just depends on your area, it depends on your interests, and it depends what you're trying to do. So as you look at this, you have to really think, what's your skillset? Can you help them?

Do you like working with them and can they pay for it? And if they can do those things, You can build a business around it and do not make the mistake of trying to be the go-to person for everything because you end up being the wrong person for everyone. If you do that, you have to just say, Hey, I'm putting my flag in the ground here.

This is what I do. This is what, who I help. This is who I'm the best in the city at. And if you want to achieve these sort of outcomes for this niche, I can help you with that. If the, it doesn't sound like you, you're probably better off looking for a different person. And maybe you can even help facilitate them to, whoever that is, whatever other person is trying to be the best in that specific area should know those things as well, because it's great for you to make sure that person just ends up going to the right place.

And people remember that too. If you're like, dude I crush it with runners, but what you're asking me about is you're a baseball player. That, has an overhead, throwing problem or something like that, like a shoulder issue. Like you gotta go see my buddy over here.

He's amazing and he crushes it with baseball players. Pretty much just works with baseball players. You're gonna have a much better outcome and experience over here. I know, you refer to me, but I think you're better off over here. And think about that. That's hard to do as a business owner.

I've done that. It's hard, especially when you're just starting out and you don't have a lot of money coming in and you're like, I sure as I would I'll, I will learn how to work with your shoulder. If it comes down to that but that's not the right thing. That's not the best thing for that person.

And I tell you what, if you make decisions based on that 10 times, the amount of revenue is gonna come back to you. 10 times because people know that you are selfless, you are doing what's best for them, and that's rare, super rare. And your reputation, you only get one. Whether it's good or bad.

That's up to you. You make decisions like that, your reputation's gonna be stellar and people are gonna trust what you have to say and they're gonna recommend you even more. You just have to be patient and you have to be able to make long-term decisions. So focus on the niche this year.

Don't get distracted by all the other things that you're trying to do, dominate a niche. And as you build out your practice, here's the interesting thing, you can decide. Do you want to have little Russian dolls of yourself that are just, other runners, that are dominating the running niche in your area and you guys want to be that specialty Practice specifically for that?

Or do you want to build a little team of Avengers where I'm the running pt, but. Hey, this guy over here crushes it with CrossFitters and then we got this PT and she's Women's Health Ninja. And then, we've got this PT and it's youth Athlete Central with her. And she's amazing with youth athletes and you build this little team of Avengers that are all independently great at different niches.

And now you get to refer within. And you get to, to specialize and still have this ecosystem of excellence, but be slightly different in terms of who you work with. You can decide. It's up to you. It's exciting, cuz it doesn't have to be one size doesn't fit all. All you have to do is just focus on initially dominating that niche.

And I think if you do that, you're gonna see far more traction that you gain over the course of the next 12 months. Let's just call it 2023. It's January right now. You're gonna see so much more traction that you gain this year than you will if you try to be everything for everybody, cuz then you'll end up spinning your wheels and being the wrong person for everybody that comes your way.

Hey, Pete, entrepreneurs. We have big, exciting news, a new program that we just came out with That is our PT Biz part-time to full-time, five day challenge. Over the course of five days, we get you crystal clear on exactly how much money you need to replace by getting you. Ultra clear on how much you're actually spending.

We get you crystal clear on the number of people you're getting to see, and the average visit rate you're going to need to have in order to replace your income to be able to go full-time. We go through three different strategies that you can take to go from part-time to full-time, and you can pick the one that's the best for you based on your current situation.

Then we share with you the sales and marketing systems that we use within our mastermind that you need to have as well. If you wanna go full-time in your own practice. And then finally we help you create a one. Page business plan. That's right. Not these 15 day business plans. You wanna take the Small Business Association, a one day business plan that's gonna help you get very clear on exactly what you need to do and when you're gonna do it.

To take action if you're interested and sign up for this challenge is totally free. Head to physical therapy biz.com/challenge. Get signed up there. Please enjoy. We put a lot of energy into this. It's totally free. It's something I think is gonna help you tremendously, as long as you're willing to do the work.

If you're doing the work and you're getting. Information put down and getting yourself ready to take action in a very organized way, you will have success, which is what we want. So head to physical therapy biz.com/challenge and get signed up today. 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 Yves Gege every single week, and we share resources that we don't share anywhere else outside of 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/ptentrepreneur, or go to Facebook and just search for PT Entrepreneur. And we're gonna be the only group that pops up under that.