The #1 mistake most practice owners make

[00:00:00] Hey what's up? Welcome back to The Aaron LeBauer Show. Today we're going to be talking to you about the number one mistake most physical therapy business owners make, most healthcare practitioners and clinics make. I'm coming to you from beautiful sunny Los Angeles. I've been out here for a week. Today I am visiting with my friend Josh who I met when I lived in Israel for a year and then we lived in Berkeley together for eight months and we've been good friends since.

[00:00:28] I spent the last four days in Newport Beach with the mastermind, the boardroom mastermind that I belong to learning some of the latest business sales and marketing strategies getting clear on what my next steps are for my business as well as being able to absorb the mindsets and behaviors and attitudes and patterns of even more successful business owners than myself because that's the way to level me up so I can level up my clients and we can all

[00:00:58] help more patients get better and feel better at the same time. Now today what I'm going to do is I'm going to talk about this massive mistake most physical therapy and healthcare business owners are making. Like some healthcare practices are doing these but most are not.

[00:01:13] And what I want you to understand is that business is business is business. My healthcare business, my physical therapy business, my coaching business, they are designed to solve problems for people and the better and faster and more effectively I can solve their problems, the more money I can generate, the more people I can help, the more times they'll tell other people, the less issues they're going to have. And so what are these issues? These issues are around fears, concerns,

[00:01:44] overwhelm, not knowing what to do next, whether you have back pain or you have a business pain, whether you just want to run faster or grow your business without working longer hours. There are lots of ways to get these results. There's with a chiropractor, the acupuncturist, you can go to a local business coach, you can watch YouTube, you can listen to podcasts, you can get a book, you can get my book, you can go to a Tony Robbins event.

[00:02:10] A Tony Robbins event might heal you from your back pain. I don't know, there's so many options. And so what I want you to understand is that in business, it's not always about what I do and how I serve my clients. It's about the results I can get them.

[00:02:27] And if I know that the results that I provide and the service I provide are the thing that someone needs, it's my duty to figure out ways to get it in front of them.

[00:02:35] And there's a couple ways to do this. One, there's regular marketing, there's putting up brand advertisement like Coca Cola, there's direct response marketing, like you've probably heard from me where what we want is we want people to directly respond to an ad like download my free book or opt in to get the cash PT checklist, etc.

[00:02:55] My free back pain book for my clinic. These are direct response marketing strategies. And there's a lot of strategies that we use even there's a pricing strategy. So why would I charge, you know, $199 a visit instead of 205?

[00:03:10] Well, because there's a price barrier. Why would I charge $95 and not $115? That $100 price barrier is hard to get over. So why would I go from $95 to $105? I should go from $95 to $125. And that's way too low if you're doing one on one physical therapy for an hour, even 45 minutes or even like a half hour, it's still on the low side for a half hour treatment.

[00:03:33] So think about this. If you're not running regular promotions and offers to your list, you're not getting in front of your patients enough. And this is a problem. How do I know? I'm guilty of not doing it myself. I've done these in the past and they've worked really well. But I haven't done them consistently. I haven't done them for all offers. So I just ran one for Halloween. I'm running one for Black Friday. I'm running one over Christmas and we're going to start running them monthly.

[00:03:59] And what I'm going to do is I'm going to give my promotions and the same promotions I'm running in my clinic to my clients. And so if you're interested, just hang out to the end. I'm going to talk through this, but I want you to know that there's a Black Friday deal from Aaron Labauer from Labauer Consulting. It's cashptblackfriday.com. Depending on when you're listening to this, it'll be ready. It's going to go live the Monday before Thanksgiving and we're going to make it a super special dumb deal for everyone on our list to get something that's going to help you grow your business.

[00:04:29] And help more clients because I want to give you results in advance, but also show you some of the other things that we can help you do. And I'll make it really easy.

[00:04:38] But so here's why you're going to need a Black, not, you're not going to need a Black Friday deal. You need a promotion every month. So we're running one for Black Friday. By the time you're listening to it, it's too late to run one for Black Friday.

[00:04:48] So I'm going to help you run one for Christmas and run one for New Year's. One of the best deals that we did in my clinic, a few, I mean, we did it three years in a row.

[00:04:59] And it was called the Clean Slate Challenge. Similar to the Whole30, but the Whole30 was way too hard for most patients. It's way too restrictive.

[00:05:08] It's not that restrictive, but it's no alcohol, no dairy, no added sugar, no MSG and chemicals like that. And it was really no processed foods.

[00:05:20] I think, what is it? No seed oils. And maybe there's one other thing.

[00:05:25] And it's not low carb, but it's low, basically no processed foods for 30 days. It's an elimination diet and you add things back in.

[00:05:34] And that was too hard. So we created something called the Clean Slate Challenge.

[00:05:37] Clean Slate Challenge is exercise every day for 30 days. Does it matter what kind of exercise?

[00:05:43] Stick to some kind of meal plan. But basically, if you don't have your own meal plan,

[00:05:49] it was no added sugar for 30 days and exercise daily. And we did, I had an accountability group

[00:05:56] and then Facebook. These days, I'd probably put it somewhere else, but maybe Facebook would be good.

[00:06:01] And I put up a weekly exercise of the week and a weekly like motivational post. We checked in with

[00:06:08] members, et cetera. We did 30, 40 people each year for three years at a hundred bucks a piece for the 30 days.

[00:06:17] Now, it was mainly, we designed this program around our health coaching programs, which we had when I had,

[00:06:23] when my ex-wife was part of our practice in doing health coaching. So it hasn't been something that

[00:06:28] I've done in the last few years, but I'm going to do something similar coming up. But the idea is,

[00:06:34] is it's a easy, low cost, highly incentivized way to get clients to give us a little bit of money,

[00:06:41] not a full plan of care or reactivate. Because once someone gives you a little bit of money,

[00:06:45] they're more likely to be a customer again in the future. They have this positive experience with you.

[00:06:51] So that's what is, why it's so important to market to our existing clients and existing patients.

[00:06:59] I think I did that. I talked about that on one of the prior episodes where it's easier to generate

[00:07:05] money and revenue from an existing customer than it is to find a new customer. And this is a strategy

[00:07:10] that we've run. We did it three years in a row on New Year's for our existing clients. We would bring

[00:07:17] in new customers as well, people we knew in the community. We've done multiple different variations

[00:07:22] of that over that time between 2019, 2018, and 2022. And so it's running these monthly promotions

[00:07:31] and monthly offers to your list, whether it's the PIF tsunami, it's the paid in full, like the plan of

[00:07:40] care, it's we ran a Halloween special. We're going to run a stocking stuffer in December,

[00:07:46] which is designed to generate not only some cash, but lots of referrals. So it's our patients get an

[00:07:53] opportunity to buy gift certificates to give to their friends, to bring in new people.

[00:07:59] And part of what's included in that is also, you need to know how to get the people who have the

[00:08:05] gift certificates given to them and get those recipients into the clinic. You need to make

[00:08:10] sure that they come in and they don't just sit on this gift card for years and then try to claim it

[00:08:15] later or never claim it because what good is it if people don't come in? Have you ever noticed that

[00:08:19] major retailers run specials pretty much every month? There's a New Year's special. There's like

[00:08:26] a Valentine's Day thing. There is something in Easter. There's Labor Day. There's July 4th.

[00:08:32] And sometimes there's a Martin Luther King, President's Day. There is Memorial Day. There's

[00:08:38] Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas specials. There is Thanksgiving specials and even physical therapy,

[00:08:45] Appreciation Month specials. I mean, there's a special for everything. And what does a special like

[00:08:50] that do? Well, what it does is it gives people an incentive to take action now rather than waiting

[00:08:58] till later. And what that does is it gives them an incentive to do it because of scarcity.

[00:09:02] This 20% discount only lasts through the end of the weekend or there's only 10 spots available on our

[00:09:09] summer boat cruise and, you know, at a discount. The airlines do this too. You go and book a ticket

[00:09:15] and it's like five more seats available at this price. And you're like, ooh, I better book now.

[00:09:20] The reason they do this is to get you to take action now rather than delay because, well,

[00:09:24] one, truthfully, delays kill dreams. Action beats anxiety. I learned this from Craig Ballantyne and

[00:09:31] Bedros. It's we need to take action now. But what we also need to do is encourage our prospects,

[00:09:37] our clients, and our customers to take action now as well. Because what would be the good of running a

[00:09:42] balance and falls program if your clients came in, they said it was too expensive and they waited

[00:09:46] three or four months until after they fell again to start. That's not good. We need them to take

[00:09:52] action now. We need to create an incentive. So there are five key principles to running marketing

[00:10:00] specials and programs that you need to understand. One, you need to know your customer because if I

[00:10:04] don't know my customer well enough, I can't incentivize them to take action. Or they're not going to take

[00:10:08] action if I'm offering something that they don't really want. They might have told you it's

[00:10:13] something that they want, but it's not something that they really think is valuable. So sometimes

[00:10:20] the customers and clients, they're not really going to tell you. You need to let their actions speak.

[00:10:25] So it might be something that they need. Your balance and falls program might be something

[00:10:28] you need. But you know what? Who wants to prevent falls? Nobody. Nobody wants to prevent falling.

[00:10:34] They want to fix themselves when they do fall and they can't do something else. But if they fall

[00:10:38] and just bruise themselves and they get around, they don't even really want to do something about

[00:10:42] that. Number two, you need to build rapport with them. So one of the best ways to build rapport is,

[00:10:47] hey, I'm doing this podcast with you. I'm hopefully building rapport with you on my podcast because

[00:10:52] hopefully you agree or resonate or learn something new. Maybe you're here listening and something,

[00:10:59] nothing resonates, then I don't know why you're still listening, but I'm building rapport with you.

[00:11:02] I'm building rapport with you through my emails, my daily communications, through my social media.

[00:11:07] I'm building rapport. We have to build know, love and trust and we have to build rapport because no

[00:11:13] one is really going to buy from you unless they know you and trust you and they see that.

[00:11:17] And one of the ways to trust you is the third principle is social proof. They need social proof

[00:11:23] that you are what you say you are, that you get the results that you say, because people are super,

[00:11:30] we're in like a trust recession right now. They don't trust anybody. You guys probably don't

[00:11:34] trust me yet. Maybe you do, maybe you're listening and you've been a client or customer.

[00:11:41] But it takes a while, it takes longer to build trust now. There's more offers and opportunities,

[00:11:45] more people saying, oh, this business coaching this, this business coaching that. There's 20 different

[00:11:50] ways to get a solution for your back pain now. Oh, I don't know. I've been to physical

[00:11:54] therapy. It didn't work. I can't, I don't trust that it's going to work again. I've spoken to a lot

[00:11:59] of people recently, both with the physical therapy experience and even with business coaching,

[00:12:05] a business coach let me down. I didn't get what I wanted out of the value of it. There's like no trust.

[00:12:12] And that's fine. There's a lot of information, but hopefully through knowing my customers and

[00:12:19] building rapport and social proof. So social proof is about showing you examples of things that I've

[00:12:27] done that I've helped other people do. So I can tell you about me. I can let my clients tell you

[00:12:34] about, about me and the results that they did. You can go look at the reviews. You can see social media.

[00:12:40] Social proof is I can post a picture of myself and Taki. And if you actually know who Taki is,

[00:12:45] you might be like, Oh, Aaron's pretty cool. If I trust Taki, I trust Aaron. You don't know who Taki

[00:12:50] is. So it probably works more for your trust in Taki than it does your trust in me. And if I'm

[00:12:55] have a picture next to me in the rock, you know, that elevates my status and social proof.

[00:13:02] So we need to be doing those things. We need to build that. We need to become a,

[00:13:06] the local expert, the local health expert, back pain expert, Dr. Labauer, using the term doctor for

[00:13:13] when I talk to people on, Hey, I'm Dr. Labauer and this is Dr. Chris that builds social proof and

[00:13:18] authority. And then the fourth thing we need to do is we need to provide consistent results

[00:13:23] over time. Um, it's kind of like a physics, some physics, uh, measurements is, um, acceleration is

[00:13:30] a change in speed over time, not just a change in speed. Now to change in speed over time, I've been,

[00:13:36] uh, treating patients for 25 years. I've been in business since, uh, 1999. Um, I've got patients

[00:13:44] from all the way back then telling me how I was the first person to touch them where they hurt.

[00:13:48] So I've got results over time for treating clients. I've been business coaching since 2011.

[00:13:56] Um, I took some of, I was helping people and I think I took some of my first payments back then

[00:14:00] and I sold something for the first time online in the beginning of 2013, I believe it was. Yep.

[00:14:06] And then I sold my course in 2014 and my course, the cash PT blueprint is now 10 years old and

[00:14:14] I've helped thousands of people. I've sold over 8,000 books. I've put thousands of people through my

[00:14:19] coaching programs, hundreds and hundreds of people through my, uh, our platinum mastermind program

[00:14:24] and thousands of people through some version of our software PT marketing machine and PT email engine.

[00:14:31] Now that we've been doing that over time. So if you can get people and show them results over time,

[00:14:37] that's great. And if you're brand new, just getting started out,

[00:14:41] you can provide consistent results day to day and you don't need to think, I just don't want the

[00:14:45] message to go to people who are one or two years into the profession saying, Hey, I don't have any

[00:14:49] results. I can't do this. You absolutely can. It just helps to have more results over time.

[00:14:55] You can show this like pattern of, of, uh, of trust and consistency. Okay. Maybe you don't have it going

[00:15:04] back as long as I do, but can you be consistent and do what you say you're going to do? So, Hey,

[00:15:08] I'm going to post every day between now and the end of the year you post every day. Can you show up

[00:15:14] for people consistently? And you say, Hey, I'm going to be there at five and you're there at four 55.

[00:15:18] You say, Hey, I've got you. I've got a time for you. You show up, they show up,

[00:15:22] people start to trust you and you can build consistency and consistent results. The fifth

[00:15:30] principle is the most important, especially pertaining to running a special. We have to

[00:15:35] create scarcity now. Okay. Do I really want to create scarcity and say, Hey, there's only five

[00:15:41] spots left when they're 10? Not really. And what I can say is, Hey, the first five people get this

[00:15:47] thing. Here's the deal with scarcity is, um, there are more jobs for physical therapists in our

[00:15:53] physical, they're not a physical therapist wanting to work or maybe, uh, working in jobs.

[00:15:57] That is scarcity. It is hard for people to hire a PT right now. Okay. So that is scarce. There is,

[00:16:07] time is scarce. Are you going to see a hundred people in a week? Probably not. If you're seeing

[00:16:12] people one-on-one for 45 minutes to an hour, are you going to see 30 people in a week? Maybe my body

[00:16:16] and my like lifestyle liked 24 to 26 is the max. 18 was wonderful. That's scarcity because I've limited

[00:16:25] my time. I've only got so many spots this week to help patients. When we're doing a sale, the scarcity is,

[00:16:33] um, the sale is on from Monday through Friday. And between that time, you're going to get for 20 bucks.

[00:16:39] But I guarantee you my black Friday deal. That's $20. You're not going to get that after black Friday.

[00:16:44] Even if I wanted to, I'm not because I need you to take action. If you're not willing to take action,

[00:16:50] then I don't know that I actually want to work with you because people that take action, get

[00:16:55] the fastest, get the best results. People that hem and haw and sit on the fence and consider all their

[00:17:01] options, especially when it comes to business, usually don't get good results where they take so long.

[00:17:07] It just takes a long time. The faster you can move and make decisions, the faster your business

[00:17:12] is going to succeed. And that's not because every decision is the right one. It's because you're

[00:17:17] going to make a decision, realize it's not the right one and pivot. And then you're going to make

[00:17:21] enough decisions quickly to get traction. Know, Hey, every three or four decisions I make, I make the

[00:17:27] right one. But just because you've made one bad decision doesn't mean the next one's going to be bad.

[00:17:31] You just need to go ahead and get it over with. And this, I want to turn this into a podcast of taking action.

[00:17:36] And that's why I create scarcity is because we need people to do something about it now.

[00:17:40] Otherwise they're going to continue to wait and delay their healing, their results and the change

[00:17:45] that they really want. Now, one of the reasons people don't take action is because they're not

[00:17:50] your avatar. The message doesn't match with them. They don't trust you. You haven't built rapport and

[00:17:54] they don't see consistent results over time. And then it may not even be, it may be because they

[00:18:01] don't even want the results that you're offering. And then they're not your avatar. They may think

[00:18:06] they want the results and realize after I think through it, I don't really want that.

[00:18:10] And that's okay too, because not everyone's your customer, but we have to make offers for people.

[00:18:15] And we have to make consistent offers, but not always the same offer. We have to change it up.

[00:18:19] One of the reasons we run a different marketing promotion every month is because we need to give

[00:18:24] people different reasons to say yes to changing their life. Whether that's a business result,

[00:18:30] result with your body or buying a widget from Home Depot. What I, what I want you to understand is just

[00:18:36] because we have a healthcare business, it's okay to sell. It's okay to make offers and discounts.

[00:18:42] One of the things I don't like to do is I don't like to make a discount on frequency. Like,

[00:18:46] Hey, if you're a patient and you come in three times a week instead of twice, I'm going to give you a bigger

[00:18:50] discount. What I want to do is give you discounts and incentives to buy into the plan of care,

[00:18:55] buy into the thing that I know you need versus just give me a discount to buy more physical therapy

[00:19:01] just for sport. Like that's not what we're doing. Um, and what I need to understand is with a business,

[00:19:07] you have to go to apply these principles to your business. Otherwise you're going to continue to

[00:19:12] struggle to grow. We have to be able to leverage our time and the results we provide, charge higher

[00:19:20] prices because you shoot inflation. There is this thing called inflation. We have to be able to keep

[00:19:26] up with inflation and put food on our tables so our kids can thrive and go to school and go to college.

[00:19:31] We have to be okay with running sales, charging prices. We have to be okay with talking about money

[00:19:38] and offering, um, scarce like opportunities for people to say yes to us. It doesn't mean there will never

[00:19:45] be another opportunity. One of the interesting things is every time we run a sale, um, in either

[00:19:50] business people come in outside of the sale and buy the thing at the full price because we've created

[00:19:55] momentum and traction with the sale. As a healthcare business owner, our business isn't so much more

[00:20:00] special than regular businesses. It's one of the things that we have to understand is while we're a

[00:20:05] healthcare provider and healthcare should be something that everyone has access to, it's not

[00:20:11] something that anyone can get access to. It's also not something that, um, needs to be expensive.

[00:20:19] Healthcare is not expensive. You know what's expensive is suffering and struggling without having the right

[00:20:25] care. You know what's expensive is insurance companies are fucking expensive. They are charging people so much

[00:20:31] money every month, um, to have access to free health, what they think is free healthcare. It's like,

[00:20:38] that's the racket. They're racking in billions and billions of dollars of profit every quarter,

[00:20:43] yet denying your patients and my patients access to healthcare. That's expensive. What's not expensive

[00:20:51] is my time and my ability to help diagnose a problem and quickly in 20 minutes or, you know,

[00:20:58] three sessions, help people understand what the root cause of the problem is and what they need to do to fix it.

[00:21:05] For instance, a few weeks ago I was working with Alvin Ailey Ballet and had a, one of the dancers come in

[00:21:10] and he said, every time I stand, uh, every time I jump, he said my hip hurts. My hip flexor hurts. I said, when does it happen?

[00:21:16] Every time I jump or do a thing where he stands on one leg, right? And I was like, okay, well the ceiling was too low for him to jump.

[00:21:22] I was like, well show me the other thing. And he stands on one leg and he raises his right leg and almost goes right to the ceiling.

[00:21:28] I was like, where's it hurting? He's pointing to hip flexor. I'm like, okay, I tried a couple things. I worked on it a minute.

[00:21:33] It still hurt. What, so then what I did is I took, it wasn't, it wasn't tight. This guy was super flexible, super strong,

[00:21:41] can move in every direction. I put him in a half kneeling inline lunge. The right side was great. The left side, he's like, whoa, this is harder than I thought.

[00:21:49] And he, what does he have? He's got a hip instability issue on the left. So when he stands on his left leg and raises his right,

[00:21:56] he's using his hip flexor to help raise his right leg. But his hip flexor is also asking, his body, his brain is asking his hip flexor

[00:22:04] to help stabilize his core instead of just lift. And because his left side isn't doing it. And it's like, once we stabilize that,

[00:22:11] lifting the right side didn't hurt. And that took 20 minutes. What is that worth to him if I can help him avoid

[00:22:18] that pain and issue over the rest of his career as a 26 year old dancer? That's worth a whole lot.

[00:22:26] That's worth days not having to sit out from performing or not performing to his best because every time he jumps and

[00:22:33] lands and does the, puts his foot on the ceiling, it hurts. So those things are valuable.

[00:22:39] So the five keys to marketing, know your customer, build rapport. You need to have social proof. So reviews, testimonials, etc.

[00:22:49] Provide consistent results to people and build scarcity. And number six really is you need to run offers every month.

[00:22:57] You need a monthly offer, a different monthly offer. And wouldn't it be awesome if someone could just hand you the offer that was already working?

[00:23:05] That's what I'm working on right now is Derek Nielsen and I, my first cash PT resident and PT that I hired. We've started, he's been doing this for a couple,

[00:23:14] four or five years in his own business, running it for other people. And Derek is now working with me again in 2024 and we're running these for our clients.

[00:23:21] And so, um, if you're a PT clinic owner and you've been in business for a while, you've got at least, you've seen at least a hundred people.

[00:23:30] Like if you've seen 50 people this year, like this will probably work for you. But I can say if you've, you've got a hundred people on your email list,

[00:23:37] you've got a hundred names and email addresses to upload into a software system and are ready to make an offer to get more people coming into your clinic and referring their family and friends over the holidays.

[00:23:50] Uh, our cash PT black Friday deal is going to be perfect for you. It's going to be a smoking deal. It's only going to be 20 bucks. You go to cash PT black Friday.com.

[00:23:59] If you're listening to this, the day it comes out, it probably won't be up because we start, we're going to start at the Monday before Thanksgiving.

[00:24:05] I need you to look out for that. And if you don't see it, um, all you gotta do is pay attention to my emails, uh, some of the social media on Instagram.

[00:24:15] We'll be running a special and the number one reason I'm running it is because I want to help you crush it this winter.

[00:24:19] And have a lineup of patients coming in the door in January. And if that works for you, then I'd love to help you even more in your business, give you monthly promotions,

[00:24:29] help you with your marketing, help you bring in more new patients. And so you can have a lineup of people. So you feel more comfortable raising your rates,

[00:24:35] hiring the next therapist to come work for you without feeling like you're going to turn people away or, um, have no money coming in or an empty schedule.

[00:24:43] So that's what's happening. That's the offer. I'm running it myself. Would love for you to join me and our clients in running these offers and specials

[00:24:53] over the next year. Um, it's cashptblackfriday.com. Check it out. I'll see you on the next show. Look out in your inbox in the next few days for details.

[00:25:02] Happy holidays. Happy Thanksgiving. I'll be in Arizona with my family for Thanksgiving, having a great time. Um, if you need to get in touch with me, shoot me a message and I'll see you on the next episode. Peace out.

[00:25:14] Bye.