2 Things to Make More Money For Your Clinic This Year
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[00:00:00] You have a therapy clinic. Let's make you some money this year. My name is Wong. I'm an occupational therapist and certified hand therapist, and over 10 years ago when I started my business, I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I was just hoping and praying for the best. I dove two feet in and um, I was just like, you know, people will send me their patients.
The hardest thing that I had to wrap around my head around was that. People are not just willing nilly gonna send you patients, um, your friends who say that they'll come to you or buy things from you or respect you and all that stuff. They don't always wanna pay for your services. I promise. No matter how great of a friend, they're, they don't want to because they know you at a different level.
So let's make you some money. One of the, that was number one. Number two, I had to make some. You know, I have to take some risks, right? So the risk is your time or your money. Now, business [00:01:00] requires both, right? It requires a certain amount of your time and a certain amount of money. When I first started, I was holding all the money as close to the chest as possible because.
I guess like to a certain extent, when you're starting out, you feel this, um, scarcity mindset 'cause you're just not sure when's the next time you're gonna get that paycheck. 'cause I don't know about you, but I quit my job, so I didn't have a paycheck. I was relying on like, you know, my hard work and, and, um, my husband's money.
Let's be honest. I was like, dude, you're gonna need to step it up because I need to make this shit work. So I did have to rely on, you know, some sort of income. I think you can do it if you are not married. You just have to have a different path, right? Um, just a little tweak in that. But you gotta spend your time, you gotta spend your money.
So wherever you don't have the money, you have to put in a certain amount of my, your time in order to do it. But I will [00:02:00] tell you the thing that really set me. Up to make more money was actually to spend more money. I know, I know. You're like, but how am I gonna do if I don't have any money? Well, sometimes it requires loans and it could be a small loan.
Sometimes it requires getting into a certain amount of debt, like credit card debt's not the best thing to do. But, um, you know, once you kind of use up your savings, you should have some savings, you know, if possible. Um, I use up my savings. First, and then I went into credit card debt, and then I went into a loan.
Because you can't, you actually can't get a business loan unless you're two years in, right? You can't get a business loan until you're two years in, until you, um, showcase that you can make a certain amount of money and then you can ask for a certain amount of loan based off of the credit of your business, right?
So you have to spend a certain amount of your own money. Now, I think that this is the hardest thing for therapists. I, I've seen it. I have seen it in people trying to do business. [00:03:00] I've seen it in people who do side businesses that stay really small, and it's the idea of spending money. Right? Um, I don't, I don't know why it is.
I'm sure it's in, in all career, like feels, I don't think it's just. Our field, um, you know, in terms of therapy. But I think that certain therapists have a, um, a scarcity mindset around it due to just always constantly working in that insurance field. You know, like just being inundated with insurance, always being told there isn't enough or nobody will pay.
So then we have like this crazy mindset around it, plus all our own baggage. Um, but I will tell you the thing that really. Pushed me over the edge was spending money, spending money that I had earned from the first two years of, of doing business. Now, I could have just taken that money and sat it in the bank and gone shopping and all that good [00:04:00] stuff, but I didn't.
I made the money instead of spending it, I had a small salary. Instead of taking that money, I spent it. I spent it on my business and I don't know if you're in into business and you wanna grow your business, I look at. Big companies and I, one of the shows that I really like listening to is, um, NPR, how I Built This.
One of my favorite stories in there is about a woman. It's Tate's Cookies. And if you hear like she has been baking cookies for the longest time and she, I mean, it took her decades to build this multimillion dollar brand, which then she sold off and then that got sold off. And so she made a lot of money, but she started off really small.
And I'm not saying, you know, I'm gonna grow this and sell it and whatever, but, um, I mean, if you wanna buy it, let me know. I wanna make millions. Um, but it's getting around that. That mindset of like, you know, scarcity and not having enough and [00:05:00] being able to, you know, spend a certain amount of your dollars and of your time.
But if you haven't listened to NPRs, um, how, I think how I built it, I think that's the name how I built it. There's a lot of different stories of people who started off really small and then built something really big. And the, I think the biggest thing that comes to, um, in my mind when I listen to a lot of that.
Is that they most of the time have investors. So you get a certain amount and then you start getting these investors to come in and invest in your, invest in your business. In the therapy world, I'm, I'm not sure how it would work if you had investors. Majority of the time it would. Probably be your family, right?
So one of my friends had investors and it was her parents and her family that invested in her. In my case, my husband invested in me 'cause he had to pay for everything when I didn't have anything. Um, but then at some point you have to think the money that you [00:06:00] earn. In order to make money, you have to spend money.
So one of the things that I did when I started like two years into my business, uh, once I could prove to myself that I was making some kind of money. Which is the thing that you need to give your, give yourself a certain amount of self-belief that is possible. But I started to spend money. I, um, I spent money on coaching, on business coaching.
I spent money on programs. And then the other thing that really propelled me, because I did those programs and did the coaching, was I started, uh, advertising. I started spending money advertising. So I. Stopped relying on doctor referrals. I stopped relying on word of mouth and just my friends and, oh, please, can you share this?
Oh, please. You know, if you go back over 10 years ago, like the language and how I started sharing my, my services, my therapy clinic and services and stuff like that, um, has changed through the years. But if you wanna make money, like if you wanna make money this year and you wanna [00:07:00] grow your business is.
Think about how much you have to spend in order to grow it. Um, it's something that I'm currently doing as well. So if you, the general guideline for like business spend is about 10% towards marketing. Now think about 10%, and that's, that's not necessarily like. Um, like, oh, I, I hired a va, or I hired a, a, a person to do my marketing.
Like I don't count my marketing assistant and my spend, I put that into payroll. So payroll is about 20, 30%. Like most of the time if you're in business, just put looking the shit up. Like what's the general breakdown of like business, uh, you know, expenses and stuff like that. And there's general guidelines, but.
You know, marketing's about like 10%, but it's not always 10% of what you currently make. It's 10% of what you wanna make. So again, you have to spend in order to make money. Um, and a certain amount of it [00:08:00] is towards ads, towards some form or fashion of advertising. So in the therapy clinic, I run Google ads, I run Facebook ads.
Uh, I do a certain amount of workers' comp, so I, I. Pay to sponsor events and things like that that are small. And if you have, if you're in a community and you do community events, you can sponsor a community event and get in front of that particular community. I did that a long time ago. It didn't necessarily work for me, um, and my niche and the things that I want to do.
So, um, I did try it, but for me, that wasn't the thing. And um, now I spend it more on creating my own. Like workshops, like I create a workshop for my clinic, I advertise it, I invite people and, and I bring them in for free and I talk to them. It just allows me to, to educate the, the people in my community, in my local community.
But there's a spend to that, [00:09:00] uh, in order to draw people in. So, you know, if you wanna make money this year and you wanna grow your business, your therapy business, you know, you have to work on getting yourself out of that like, scarcity mindset of like, oh my God, I have to hold onto every single dollar. Um, because it's not gonna get you anywhere.
You're gonna hold so tight that, that nothing goes out. But also nothing comes in and money is a type of energy and you have to like. You know, watch that. If you want me to talk more about that, I'm happy to share. Um, but I, I digress. But yeah, if you want me to share some of that money mindset stuff, I'm happy to share.
Just, you know, just leave me a comment and let me know if you want me to make a, a video on that. Um, but number two, if you wanna make money, uh, outside of the risks that you're taking with spending your time and spending your money, the, the other second major thing. To think about is what kind of decisions do you have to make?
So we have to make decisions that are minor, like right [00:10:00] now, okay, so how do I get this? How do I get next week, um, more patients into my, into my clinic? How do I get those patients that came in? How do I get them to come back and do two to three times more with me? Right? Something like that. Um, those are minor, those are minor decisions, but we have major decisions as well.
Major decisions requires spend. It comes back to spending, like, how much do you wanna spend? Do you wanna spend some more? So then we have to say, okay, I wanna spend some more. How much more do I wanna spend? Where do I wanna put that towards, oh, to what product or to what services do I want to put that to?
Right? So my therapy clinic have therapy and I have shockwave. Now I'm spending a lot of time on therapy and I'm not spending enough time on shockwave and I've. I have paid for this, right? I have paid for this machine. I need to fucking market the shit out of this machine, and I have it why? I was busy with this.
So these are [00:11:00] decisions I have. Put one thing on hold to, you know, spend my time and energy on another. These are major decisions that I, I'm having to make. And I think that as a business owner, these are decisions that you have to make. They can be minor decisions, they have their major decisions, but, um, you, at the end of the day, you have to make it.
AI's not gonna make it for you. Your friends are definitely not gonna make it. Your spouse will definitely not make it for you, right? Your spouse isn't, you know, unless they're in your business, they're not gonna do that much. To help you make these decisions. And the other thing is sometimes your spouse, like they want, they love you.
I mean, hopefully, right? 'cause they're your spouse, they love you, they want to protect you, and they wanna protect how the, the relationship is. So sometimes those. Those decisions that you have to make, they're, they're, the advice from them is not always the best advice because the best advice, um, is for, to protect you versus to grow you.
Right? Um, and that's just not because they're selfish. It's [00:12:00] just natural human, you know, tendency to protect the person they love. Um, so really think about getting outside resources to be able to help you make some major decisions. Um. Eight years into, no, two years into my business. So it's been over eight years.
I've, I've always retained some type and form or fashion of, um, business coaching and things like that just to make sure that I have someone that I can go and have an independent conversation with. Sometimes people who are, you know, they become your business friends and things like that. Can be a little bit skewed too.
Right? And especially they have their own thing and at, you know, at some point you can talk about it at some point. People are, are so busy, they don't, they don't have time, uh, to help you really think through all those, um, decisions that you have to make. Um, so, so yeah, there's minor decisions or major, major decisions.
Uh, I am now recording this mid-year, so we still have six months left of the year. And I'm [00:13:00] thinking about how I'm gonna make money. Um, I joke with my staff all the time because it's payroll and I'm like, it's payroll, it's rent, it's um, other major bills. And we have to, we have to bring the money in, we have to bring the revenue in in order to be able to pay all these people and all the services that we've used.
And then I still, I wanna get paid. I wanna take some money home too. Right? It would not be worth it. For all my work, all my worry to not also make money. Um, but at the end of the day, I can't blame any of those people. I, I sit at the top tier and I'm the one making the decision. I make a decision to keep 'em, I make a decision, hire them.
I make a decision on marketing. I, and I make decisions on training people. So, so yeah, I mean, I'm pretty open with my staff about it. Uh, but we gotta make some major decisions. We have, this year was the first year we started to do workshops, and the workshops that we're doing for our community have been [00:14:00] really successful.
They have been successful in my eyes. I, I just wanted, you know, I wanted to invite several people in into the business and then, um, but to be honest, like. It has just really grown my clinic. I have more cash patients this year than I've ever had before, um, in a very consistent way. And it's not because, just because I'm doing the workshop, the workshop is just one part of the puzzle.
Um, and now I have to think, okay, so for the next six months, where am I gonna put my focus? Is it only gonna be on therapy? Am I gonna do some more stuff for shockwave? How am I gonna balance that out between, you know, growing my clinic and I don't wanna even grow my clinic that much. I just wanna keep it sustained.
I, you know, small growth, um, because I wanna spend majority of my time, um, doing things for hand therapy secrets and I want to promote the book that I just wrote. I have plans for other thing, you know, other books, [00:15:00] other programs. I mean, like, my mind is. It's like there's a lot going on. Um, but at the end of the day, I'm gonna make these decisions.
I gotta back that shit up. I have to back that shit up. I have to back it up with action, and I have to back it up with money. You wanna make money this year? We gotta make some decisions. Okay, let's get on it. We gotta make some decisions and we gotta spend some money. So that we can make more money, let me know if this video is helpful.
I'm kind of just like talking and I'm talking to myself because these are things that I'm saying to myself so that I can also remember what I need to do. So if this helps you, let me know. Click the like buttons, subscribe, um, to the channel. But outside of the scribing to the channel, get on my email list.
I have one that's only for business. It's gonna be below. And if you wanna work with me personally, it's there too. Alright, I'll see you next time.
