Want to make more money, impact more people without having to work any harder? 

If so read on because on this new patient’s secrets episode, I had Aaron LeBauer, PT on. He owns LeBauer Physical Therapy in Greensboro, NC which is 100% cash-based practice. We shared insights how we were able to make more money, impact more people without working any harder.

You see, there are two types of clinic owners. The Gary Vee and the Tim Ferris.

Gary Vee is all about working until your eyes bleed out.

Then there's Tim Ferries, he is all about, what is the least amount I can do to have 80% of the impact.

When I first started my entrepreneurial journey I was Gary. You see, I went to school for environmental engineering and all my best friends were PTs. One day they came to me and said we like your ideas, let’s buy up clinics. So I said ok! The thought to me of being a clinic owner was freedom to do what I want, when I want.

So I was working super hard like Gary Vee. Drinking Red Bull at night. Working until my eyes bleed out. But I didn’t have any freedom. I was burnt out. It was until I discovered 3 key insights that allowed me to make more money and impact more people while working less.

Once I discovered these 3 things I went on to build my physio and Chiro clinic to $83/million a year. While owning 127 clinics.

And that’s what I want to share with you in today’s blog post. 

Part of the way is having great coaches to give you the systems and processes. Then once you have those in place you need to get really good at these 3 things.

1. Marketing 
2. Sales
3. Leadership and communication

First, let's talk about marketing.

So I asked Aaron. Why is marketing so important?

He said “It's so important because that's how we get people to understand they need us because they don't know what we do. They don't really know what physical or physiotherapy is.

Because there are so many different types of physiotherapists.

Marketing is how we get in front of people and sales is getting them to understand exactly what we do and how we can help them.”

I went on to say, a lot of people make the mistake of looking at big companies like Amazon, Coke, Apple, and try to emulate them. But that doesn't work for small businesses unless you have billions of dollars to spend on marketing and willing to wait many many years to get that brand recognition.

Once your marketing gets people to call you. Whether you do physical therapy marketing, dental advertising, or chiropractor marketing.

Check out this video to learn the 2 marketing basics to get more patients:

You then have to get them to book. This is all about selling them on why they should choose you instead of another clinic down the street.

Most clinic owners feel guilty when you talk about sales. However, sales are so important to get patient buy-in so they book their full plan of care upfront. Then getting them to complete their plan of care and graduate. Which translates into more 5 star Google reviews and referrals. 

If you can’t sell then you won’t get patient buy-in and impact as many people as possible. You’ll keep seeing patients coming to you saying “I’ll do one session to see how it works.”

Plus you have to know how to sell to find good clinicians so they choose you vs all the other clinics around you. That is sales. 

Also, Aaron mentioned you have to sell them on staying so you don't have to constantly find new clinicians especially when there is a shortage.

Marketing is when you write a very good ad that attracts them to talk to you. Then you have to sell your vision to get and keep them as a patient.

Watch this video to learn The Top 5 Marketing Secrets Every Clinic Owner Should Know:

When they call your clinic your front desk has to know how to sell them on why they should choose you over everyone else in the area.

When you get good at sales, you can impact more people by educating them on what it is you do and how it can help them.

So If you want to make more money and have more impact you have to get really good at sales and marketing. Because marketing drives them to call your clinic and sales happens at the front desk when they call. Then a clinician getting them to buy into their full plan of care instead of them saying I'll try a session first and see how it goes.

How To Have More Impact and Get Staff Buy-In Without Being Salesy

Let me give you an example of how to sell for physical therapy leadership...

If you want team buy-in, the key is to make them part of the decision-making process. For example, I want my 6-year-old daughter to eat vegetables.  So I tell her “we are going to eat vegetables tonight so we’re going to the grocery store and together lets choose what vegetables you want to eat tonight.”

By doing this, I'm making her part of the decision-making process. Then once we are at the grocery store, I give her two options. Do you want to eat broccoli or kale? Then she chooses and we go home and cook dinner together. Because we spent so much effort doing all this stuff. At the very end, she will eat it because she was a part of it.

So if you want team buy-in you have to make them part of the decision-making process. 

Because I hear over and over again. I can't get my team to do anything unless I incentivize them with money or they will leave me.

Here’s how to get your team to buy-in.

Whenever there is a problem tell them to bring you two solutions because you don’t want to have to put out fires all the time. Or I'll ask them, how would you handle it? 

A lot of the time they would handle it exactly how I would. You want to empower them to be part of the process. They can bring suggestions. I may not agree with them all the time but if I want more freedom so I don’t have to do everything. I need to get over the fact that their way of doing it could be better than mine.

Give them ownership in the decision-making process.

But what if they say I don’t know what to do?

Then you can say, “If you were Rick how would you handle it?” They’ll give you an answer.

What I do with my leaders is once a week, I meet with one of them.

I review their scoreboard to see how they’re doing.

We review the goals from last quarter and get them involved in creating the goals.  What's amazing is we just review the numbers on the scoreboard and they naturally come up with the goals on how we should hit this. 

Then each week you see where everyone is at in terms of meeting the goals. Then if they are not meeting them or off track I’ll say.  “How can I help you get unstuck?”

You have to have these weekly and quarterly meetings. It took me 15 years to figure this out. 

You can do this with everyone. Your virtual assistant, front desk, and clinicians. 

I used to make the mistake of running it like a boss, I'm paying you a lot of money. Do what I say. This doesn't work!

In sports, the head coach can't tell someone like Michael Jordan what to do. It won't work.

I view myself as a coach. To coach them to be the best version of themselves. 

True freedom is not having to do everything yourself. It's about having people on your team that can do the job better than you.

What’s great about having team meetings is you're using peer pressure to get them to do things. Where the group is making decisions together.

Go around to each person. Ask them “What do you think we should do?" Do a round-robin to get them to come up with the solution. What options do we have?

It's important to let your staff fail because you learn a lot more from failure. It also gives them the confidence to try things. 

But what if you think one of the options they give is a bad option? 

Say this,  “what do you think the consequences of option A or B would be?"

Makes them think about it more. They may say “oh that would be bad.”

Once they reply back "Ok, is there another option?"

This type of leadership style will not only increase job fulfillment, loyalty, and retention. But there will be a reason for them to work at your business besides money. 

You became a clinic owner to have more freedom and this is how to get there faster.

The difference between being stuck at half a million dollar clinic and running a 2 -3 million dollar clinic is marketing, sales, and leadership.

Lastly, we talked about how to make more money by having multiple sources of income.

You want to diversify your income so if one dries up you have backup ones. Here are some ways to create extra income sources as a clinic owner.

• Sell courses
• Be a consultant. 
• Take your business income and purchase real estate from it so you have real estate income coming in.
• You could invest in stocks.

But most importantly you should reinvest your business income to give you more cash flow.

There you have it. If you want to make more money, have more impact, more freedom then you need to get good at sales, marketing, and leadership. 

Now if you want to help your front desk get good at converting even more new patients on the phones without being salesy. Then take the FREE Mystery Caller Audit. It will tell you where they’re at now and how to get the maximum amount of new patients from the calls you’re already getting. 

Plus you’ll get 9 proven phone scripts to save lost appointments that are working right now from over 2,000,000 phone calls we’ve analyzed at over 500 clinics.

To take the FREE Mystery Caller Audit Now Just Click Here

2. Rick, what is one income source you are investing in now?