how_much_should_i_charge_for_my_ot_services (1)
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[00:00:00] If you're an occupational therapist and you're sitting in these Facebook groups and you're saying, oh my God, how much should I charge for my occupational therapy services? I work with X, Y, and Z, and I'm just not really sure what I should charge. Well, I'm here to answer that question because it's easier for me to create this video and hope that one day you're gonna be looking for like how I should charge for my occupational therapy services than go one by one in these Facebook groups and make comments because it takes a long time.
But I wanna share with you what I've done as an occupational therapist, no matter what you're setting. So. My name is Wong. I'm an occupational therapist and certified hand therapist, and over 10 years ago, I started my therapy clinic and over five years ago I started hand therapy secrets to help therapists develop their clinical skills.
And now I make videos on business as well. Every Wednesday I drop a new video, so if you need my help or you wanna get on my email list from that, [00:01:00] the links are all below. But I think this is a very common question. I want to help you to kind of think about what you wanna do. The thing is, when it comes to owning your own business, no one is going to tell you what to do.
Only the market will tell you what to do, meaning what's possible for being charged. So one of the comments I recently saw was like, I'm seeing prices just range between the cheapest and the most expensive, right? So what should I charge as a business person? I'm pointing my fingers at you, right? It is really directed at me.
'cause this, this happened to be when I started, 'cause I was clueless. I didn't know what the fuck I was doing and I was like, oh my God, nobody's gonna pay for me. Pause, breathe. Someone is going to pay right? Someone's gonna pay for your services. They're gonna pay you a lot more than you think is possible.
That depends on how you show up and what you tell them, [00:02:00] right? When it comes to pricing, which. I didn't really realize this until I was like way into my business, is that you want to price for profit. You want to price not for how much you want to. Make, right. So let's say you make $50 and you're like, oh my God, I'm, you know, that's our baseline, right?
That's, that should be kind of like your profit and everything else has gotta compound on top of that, right? And so when it comes to what you should charge for your occupational therapy services. Um, you have to, you have to be willing please. You have to be willing to step out of the box that we were all placed in to say that we were the cheapest and we were, you know, sufficiently low.
So everyone can pay for our services. You have to really decide who you want to work with. You know, if you wanna work with a person who's. Constantly [00:03:00] canceling, giving your hard fricking time, um, and you want a shit ton of them. Then price your services so low that you're gonna get all of those people right.
And getting all of those people you are now going to have a lot of staff to, to pay for, in order to have that kind of volume. I've made other videos just like this in terms of like, what kind of patients, how you wanna charge. I've made them before, but really, honestly, the fundamental part of your charges is what does it take?
What does it take to run your business right now? I, I see this and people are like, well, I'm only doing home health. Or, oh, I'm, I'm going to people's homes and I'm doing X, Y, Z. They still have an overhead cost, marketing costs, right. There's a marketing cost. There is just you doing your own [00:04:00] social media costs you time.
So to a certain extent, you have to build that cost in there because someday you're gonna make enough money to hire someone else to do some of the editing for you to do some of the organization for you to do, to run your marketing. You've got to pay, you've got to make enough money to be able to afford a website.
Hello. You've got to be able to afford a phone line for your business, right? So you have to start thinking beyond just this little box that we're put in of like, well, I wanna make $50 and I only want to charge $150. What are people willing to pay for in your town that then will allow you to build a business where you could not be so worried about money all the time?
Right. You're gonna make enough money to pay the bills. You can pay for an overhead, however much that overhead is, you can pay for people to [00:05:00] help you. It could be staff on site, it could be staff virtual, but everything in a business costs money. And you have to generate a certain amount of revenue in order to have a certain amount of profit.
'cause you want to make money. So that you, you yourself can live and you wanna be able to make money in a way so that you can continue to enjoyably, sustain your business. Right. I once had, um, you know, one of an acquaintance of mine, she started her pediatric business and she had this beautiful place, this beautiful space, and she had this beautiful concept and she, it cost so much money, she took out loans.
Right. She took out loans to create this space and this business, but yet she was charging so fricking cheap that year on year on year. Um, she was struggling to make ends meet. And the problem with not being able to make ends meet is [00:06:00] that you feel really frustrated. You feel like a failure. Um, you don't see that business is viable.
Right. So then you start, your mind starts thinking, oh, maybe I should go work for someone else when you really don't want to work for anyone else. So make sure you're charging appropriately. Make it more expensive than you think it is. Tack on a few dollars more. Then whatever you're comfortable saying, whatever price.
I'm not gonna even tell you that price. Right? Whatever you're comfortable saying. Add money to that. You should feel uncomfortable saying what you're saying.
That's how you're gonna make money in your business to sustain it, you know, for a long time, um, I was losing, like there was up and down in my business. I started out, I was making all this money and then I wanted to grow and I lost. All the money and then I, you know, [00:07:00] made changes. 'cause I, what I was doing was moving away from insurance and going into, you know, premium cash.
And so I took my eyes off the ball and I, I lost a lot of money and then I was like, okay, now that I've kind of generating this momentum in what I was doing, I started making money again. I started to lose money again because I started hands on therapy secrets, creating programs and stuff like that. So it's not like you're always making money, but my prices were the things that were able to help me to be able to cover all my costs, right?
It able to help me cover all my costs. It allowed me to grow. I can tell you right now. I would have therapists come, like on my program side, I would've therapists come and say, oh my God, you're so expensive. You know, I'm, I can get this for cheaper. Okay, then go get something for cheaper. But I can promise you that nobody's working on, um, behind the scenes how to make the program great.
How to make sure [00:08:00] that there's longevity in things that are created that last Right. And I, and no one's. Put in for the amount of skills that I've had to work on developing in order to be able to teach in the way that I've taught, to be able to help then foster all the other therapists that are standing on my shoulders to be able to, to have those skills, right.
You can't get better if you are not developing your skills. You can't teach better if you're not developing your own skills. So the, the price has a. It has an overhead to it that has to be covered. My clinic as well, right? I can't afford to constantly put my time in to train all my staff to make sure that they have fast and favorable outcomes for their patients if I'm not doing what I'm doing.
Right in or in order in terms of constantly [00:09:00] improving my skills on the business side and on the clinic side, so that my patients come outta here making better, faster results than, than if they went anywhere else. I, hands down guarantee you that nobody is making, um, is working and paying attention to my patients the way we are here.
Hands down, right? You have a problem. I'm dedicated to solving that problem that costs money. So my prices right, have to reflect the work that is required to get you that level of, of service and product, right? Services. In terms of therapy service. So if you're a therapist and you're looking to. You know, price your services.
Don't do yourself a disservice and make your shit cheap just because you see other occupational therapists making that shit cheap. Or just because you see insurance [00:10:00] companies don't wanna fucking pay us. We have to develop our skills all the freaking time so that we can stand out as a business and we can deliver results.
You cannot deliver results being the dumbest person. Was that not pc? To say, really honestly, you cannot deliver on results when you are not doing what you need to do to constantly develop yourself. So make sure that your prices reflect that. If you don't have the skills to market and sell your. Services and products your prices should, should build in the cost of signing up for a program, taking a class, reading some books, going to workshops, going to, you know, conventions where you can learn those skills.
Just like I have to do that. Plus, I have to develop my clinical [00:11:00] skills because if I'm going to charge premium, you better believe that I can deliver on premium results. Better than anyone else can. And I think that when you have that mindset, you can put a price, a, you can put a premium price. To your services.
So moral of the story is don't dumb down and don't cheapen your prices just because you're scared that someone will say no, just because you're scared. The other therapists are gonna talk shit about you because you are charging the highest. And they're unable to do the same. Right. Okay. I'm gonna get off my, get off my soapbox When it comes to premium pricing and how you should charge or you can charge for your occupational therapy services, don't go on those.
Stupid groups and start asking because there's a lot of multitude to your pricing that someone doesn't understand to give you the best advice. [00:12:00] People give you advice based off of their. Fears not based off of what you're, what is the best for you, right? Keep that in mind when you're asking these types of questions in groups where they don't know you and they don't know your plans.
Just a little thought. Let me know what you think. Those are my thoughts. Like it or leave it. Totally up to you, but I would love to hear your comments below and maybe some of the questions that you have around pricing, because then I could make another video on it. Gimme a little detail because that always helps.
Now you want my help or you wanna get on my email list? The links are below. All right. In the meantime, like leave a comment and of course, subscribe. All right, thanks. Until next time.
