CHAPTER 1

TAKE THE FIRST STEP

In any business venture, you’re going to get turned down and things will not work out exactly as you planned them. The key is to be willing to learn and grow past those failures in order to ultimately get where you want to go.

This cannot come from someone else. This has to be a deep desire to want to succeed. Some would call it a rage to succeed that can board on being unhealthy. But if you make up your mind and honestly believe that you can accomplish this, you’ll succeed. If overcoming fear is a problem check out this blog post.

As Yoda once famously said “Do or do not. There is no try.”

If you're ready to succeed and have a positive mental attitude, let’s get into how to start a successful side hustle.

If you aren't and need some motivation to get off the fence check out this podcast and blog post.

5-Day Challenge

The first recommendation I have in how to start a physical therapy clinic is to go through our free 5 Day Challenge.

This is full of downloads and documents to get you highly organized in your journey to a successful side hustle. It will help you create the financial clarity you need as well as creation of a one-page business plan. Again, this is totally free. All you have to do is click the link below to get signed up.

Sign-up for the 5-Day Challenge Here

Find more info on the 5 Day Challenge in this podcast or blog post!

Once you’ve done that, let’s get into one of the most important elements of your side hustle….your niche.

CHAPTER 2

YOUR NICHE

Have you heard the phrase the riches are in the niches?

This is totally true, especially with a cash-based practice.

It is very hard to gain traction in a cash physical therapy practice by being a generalist. If you want to be pretty good with all types of injuries/niches, you are going to have a pretty slow business.

You need to decide what you want to be known for in your area and build your practice around that.

Let’s say you love baseball. You played growing up and you even coach local teams.

If you want to be the baseball person in your area, you have to narrow down your efforts to that specifically.

Sure you could help swimmers and other overhead athletes with similar arm problems but if you try to do that early, you will slow yourself down.

 Avatar example:

Name/Description- Tommy John. 16 year old male. Pitcher. Huge Atlanta Braves fan. Plays in a competitive travel league and for his high school team.

Goals-
-Gain more velocity and throw harder.

-Strike more people out.

-Get a college scholarship.

-Parents- want him to stay healthy but also get a college scholarship because they’ve paid a ton of money for coaches, teams and travel up to this point.

Fears-

-Career ending injury.

-Plateauing while his peers are continuing to get bigger and stronger.

-”Wearing out his arm” and losing velocity/speed.

-Not getting a college scholarship.

-Getting cut from travel team or school. This alienates him from friend groups and decreases chances of a scholarship. 

Congregation points (aka where you can find more people like him)-

-Travel teams

-Pitching coaches

-High school coaches/ATCs

-Baseball websites

-Baseball Facebook groups

-Instagram/Tiktok for Johnny and Facebook/Instagram for his parents

-Local showcases

"Tommy John is a 16 year old male, right handed pitcher. He’s been playing baseball since he was 6 and has played year round since he was 12.

His favorite team is the Atlanta Braves and he models his pitching style after John Smoltz.
For the past year, he’s had on and off shoulder and elbow pain.

These bouts of pain have caused him to miss pitching in some important games.

His parents are his biggest fan and provide any support he needs to stay healthy and get better at his sport.

He works with a pitching coach once a week to fine tune his mechanics.

Even with this additional work, he still suffers from ongoing shoulder and elbow pain.

His parents are concerned his arm will require surgery and Tommy is concerned he will miss games if his arm keeps bothering him.

His parents spend thousands of dollars a year on coaches, travel teams and showcases to help Tommy get the most exposure to college scouts.

He’s fearful that he will get cut from his travel team if he cannot throw enough innings. Not only would this decrease his exposure to colleges but most of his friends play on this travel team."

Here’s what I want you to take away from this example. If you really know your niche, you know all the right verbiage to use and you can verbalize their fears/frustrations as good if not better than they can.

If you can explain someone’s problem better than they can, you instantly become the likely solution to their problem!

This can be true for any niche, not just baseball.

Take some time to think through and write out your avatar. (If you find yourself a little time poor check out this podcast episode.)

Everything you do from here will be tied back to the niche you decide you want to dominate in your area.

For even, check out this podcast and blog post.

 CHAPTER 5

LOCATION

We have to find a location but the location has to match up with your niche.

Think about it for a second. If you are trying to dominate the baseball niche in your area, do you want an office that’s in a pilates studio?

It might work out but I sure would prefer an office in a baseball performance facility or at least a sport training facility.

On the flip side, if you want to do performance based women’s health work, a baseball training facility is probably not the spot you want an office in. That pilates studio would work out a lot better for the women’s health niche.

Search online in your local area for facilities that are complementary to your niche.

For the baseball example, search for baseball training facilities, sports performance facilities and gyms. You may also be able to find travel teams that have their own facilities but that’s less likely.

Make a list of 3-5 options that would work for your physical location.

Once you have these, try to figure out if you have any warm connections with these facilities. Getting an introduction from someone else can dramatically help the likelihood of getting a meeting with one of these facilities.

If you don’t have any warm connections, try and message these facilities via social media or email. The goal should be to set up a meeting with as many options as possible.

You’re looking for access to equipment and ideally a closed office you can use intermittently during the week. (If you can buy your own equipment check out this strategy)

For a true side hustle, you’re really looking at 10-12 hours a week max of patient care. If you have that kind of availability, you can create a pretty solid side hustle.

Here are the keys with any space you look at:

1. The Owner/Landlord

Many side hustle cash-based practices have been ruined by poor relationships with the facility owner. You want to look for someone who is professional and views you as an asset, not just someone that can offset their rent.

Never agree to give part of your business to a facility owner in exchange for free rent. I have seen this happen on quite a few occasions so please don’t do this. Your business is valuable, do not just give it away.

2. Cheap/Free If Possible

Many people are happy to just have a clinician involved in their facility. This gives credibility to the facility and team. If you’re lucky, you might be able to get a spot with free rent.

3. Sublease or Amount Per Client

If you’re very confident in your side hustle, try and negotiate a sublease rental agreement. This will set your rent at a specific amount each month. Let’s assume $500 for subleasing an office.

The other option you have is an amount per client. Let’s assume $40 per client that you see. In this example, you would have to see about 12 clients to hit the $500 fixed sublease amount.

If you see 20 patients in a month at $40 per client, you end up paying $800 a month.

The amount per client option can be appealing but if you’re successful, you will end up paying more.

Try and go for the fixed amount if you can swing it financially.

4. Location

A location that’s convenient to your target audience can be a huge benefit. This saves them time and makes it more likely that they will come and work with you.

If you pick a location that’s hard to get to, it will decrease your patient volume.

Even if it’s more expensive, I would typically recommend picking the better location if possible.

Need More?

Do you need more insight on whether you should rent or own your clinic space? Check out this podcast and blog post!

Before we go on, you do have one other option... mobile.

I typically discourage people from this route for a few reasons.

1. You waste a lot of time driving around. (8-12 hours a week in many cases)

2. It’s hard to convince people to come see you once they are used to you coming to them.

3. It is very hard to scale a mobile practice past yourself unless you are in a very population dense area.

If you are able to, I highly recommend looking for a subleased office over going mobile.

I’ve helped enough frustrated mobile practitioners pivot to stand alone spaces and I hope I don’t have to do the same with you.

 CHAPTER 8

CONCLUSION

That’s the basics of how to start a physical therapy clinic. To summarize, here’s what you need to do.

1. Figure out who you want to help and get very clear on what problems you need to solve with them.

2. Get you business ducks in a row with an LLC, insurance, your practice act, NPI and a business license.

3. Find an office to treat patients out of that ideally aligns with your niche.

4. Start marketing with the proven simple marketing strategies I went through in that section.

5. Solve their problem and sell them into the plan of care they need to get the desired outcome.

Again, I highly recommend going through our 5 Day Challenge if you haven’t done so yet. This has a ton of great downloadable resources and video training to get you organized. Click the link below to get signed up for free.

https://www.physicaltherapybiz.com/challenge