Top 5 things you need to know to create a highly successful mobile in-home PT and OT practice (...from scratch)

Guest Featured: Spotlight Interview In Authority Magazine

Read the full article in Authority Magazine, click here.

I had the opportunity to share the behind-the-scenes of how I transitioned from a one-person operation and scaled to a multiple-employee business that runs daily like a dream. Having the experience of creating a successful mobile in-home PT and OT practice has not only been challenging at times, but it has allowed me to gain valuable insights to help others who are looking to do the same in a more orderly way. I want to share with you my top 5 things you need to know to create a highly successful mobile PT and OT practice during this time of uncertainty and beyond.

My number one thing that I would start with when creating a thriving practice is self-development. Start having better conversations with yourself. Creating better dialogue will help you in multiple facets of a business. Improving your self-talk can lead to improved communication skills and help build up your view on self-worth. Having the self-confidence that the services you’re providing will positively impact someone’s well-being. In times of struggle or frustration, try not to dwell on how things maybe didn’t go the right way. Instead of thinking about them in the light of failures, these are lessons that you can learn from. And, once you shift your mindset to more of a positive outlook, you start to realize that you can become better, but you also start to help others become better as well around you. This is especially true in the physical therapy world. When people seek out my practice to assist in their care, mindset is one of the items we address early on in our care. In times of injury or declining function, it can negatively impact our mindset. This is a time in life where this struggle is turning into things that maybe they have no control over, or the person feels they don’t have control over. So our job as healthcare providers is to help that individual understand where they’re at and help them get over the obstacle or this struggle. And to do that, we have to start with ourselves and start to treat ourselves in a more positive light.

The second thing that I feel will help you create a thriving practice is relationship building and communication. Relationship building and communication help you connect with others around you by helping build genuine relationships. Building rapport goes a long way, especially when it’s genuine. Like when you find yourself helping individuals without the guarantee that it’s always going to be monetized. And I feel relationship building is important, especially for someone trying to build a practice that keeps giving day in and day out. Because when you build genuine relationships, people will seek you out. They will want your insight and be willing to reciprocate, especially if you’re helping them achieve something they never thought they could achieve. Building relationships is essential.

The third thing that you will need to know to create a thriving practice is how to manage your time wisely. Time management could be in other aspects of your daily tasks and schedule the most important things you need to accomplish. And this is especially important if you have a family, like me, with a young family. I have to schedule a time to do what I need to do in my everyday life to be present with my spouse with my children. Having a time management game plan will help you take control of your time to take care of tasks outside of work. You start to foster more of a work-life balance naturally. Being more protective of your time will also allow for more creative time. Taking time out to envision your short and long-term goals and reflection time on how you have come along is extremely important. Also, look to start prioritizing the things you have more passion and proficiency in, especially if it fills your energy bucket. Start brainstorming how you can do more of the things that fill your bucket and maybe either delegate or offload the things you have identified as non-proficient or do not fill your bucket. One of the things with productivity I would suggest if you haven’t already is to take a quick audit of your time and figure out the area or multiple areas you’re spending the most significant majority of your time is your time. Then identify if your time is spent on tasks that will help move your business forward, or are you spending more time on tasks inside the practice and less time on the things that will drive your business to produce high levels of achievement. Once you identify where you’re spending your time, try to hone in on the small actions you can take to help change those behaviors and create a more productive atmosphere inside your practice.

The fourth thing that you need to know is how to hire to help leverage time. Ideally, bringing in employees inside your practice to help your practice have more impact and better serve your current and future customers. If you are a solo practitioner, think about adding employees inside of your business. Hiring will help the person who’s going to work inside of your practice and the individuals you are servicing. If you are new to hiring, think about the things that you need to offload from your current workflow that will help you get more time back and help this individual coming in and create a situation that they can contribute right off the bat. When hiring, understanding where people are at in their journey, and trying to help that person further themselves, and their career can make for the most favorable situation. As a former solo provider, I would find myself knowing if I had more time to focus on necessary tasks that required my attention to be focused outside the practice. So, creating more time is essential if you are looking to grow your practice. I shifted from solo practitioner to owner of a business with employees to spend more time with my young family and have more impact on my profession and community.

The fifth. And the final thing that I feel you need to know to create a thriving practice is simply taking action. And when you’re implementing things inside a business or creating new ideas, you sometimes experience an issue where you might not succeed right away. So you have to be okay with taking action. And taking any action is better than not taking action at all. Even if it is something that doesn’t work out, it’s a lesson learned. And maybe it’s just making one small change, to create success, and being okay with not having your product or service be perfect, and having the ability to be vulnerable, and not necessarily thrive on others' opinions. Rather, what you do is you’re looking to find ways to solve problems to help people. And when you’re solving problems, what naturally happens is that you find other individuals who may seek out your services based on the fact of the problems that you’re solving. I feel success can be easily attained by having the willingness to try until you get it and not stop trying until you get it. Having clear goals and focus on completing small tasks each and every day to move you towards your ultimate goal is something I feel that has allowed me to grow quicker. And also my return on my investment is by investing in myself and my business, which in turn is priceless. If you are someone who’s looking to build a business, not only that survives just on yourself, that actually thrives on other individuals who work alongside you. You don’t need to be perfect. It’s actually better to just take some type of action, whether it’s a small step in your mind, a small step can add up and pay dividends long term, day in and day out.  

Read the full article in Authority Magazine, here.

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