The Best Marketing Strategy to DOUBLE Your Income | Cash-Based Physical Therapy

Show Notes

In today's episode, we are diving deep into the most effective marketing strategy that can potentially double your cash-based PT practice income. I am here to share with you a strategy that is probably not what you're expecting but has proven to be a game-changer for many. Whether you are a new physical therapist carving your path in the industry or a seasoned professional contemplating transitioning your business into a cash-based model, this episode is crafted just for you.

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Creators and Guests

Host

Dr. JJ Thomas

Master of Movement With over 20 years of experience, Dr. JJ Thomas has established herself as a highly successful clinician and educator. Her unique experiences and training have shaped her into a passionate advocate for movement and patient care. Graduated from the renowned University of Delaware, the #1 ranked physical therapy school in the nation. Holds multiple certifications in advanced specialty techniques, including dry needling, SFMA, FRC, and more. Instructs and trains clinicians nationwide in physical therapy, chiropractic, and sports medicine, both through Evidence in Motion (EIM) and independently. Expertise in movement analysis and dry needling has made her a sought-after professional in the field of sports medicine. Worked with notable organizations and athletes, including the US Field Hockey Team and professional athletes from NFL, MLB, NBA, USATF, PGA, US Squash, USPA (polo), and more. Recognized as an expert and consultant in dry needling, contributing to national legislative advancements and education standards in the field. Lives an active lifestyle, engaging in various activities like running, weight lifting, Jiu Jitsu, hiking, skiing, and more.

What is The Dr. JJ Thomas Podcast?

Welcome to The Dr. JJ Thomas Podcast! Here I'll be talking all things physical therapy, raw and unplugged, giving you the unfiltered insights you've been searching for in your cash-based physical therapy business. If you're caught in the grind of the traditional model, swamped with paperwork, or feeling like you're not reaching your full potential as a physical therapist, this podcast was created just for you.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 00:00

So here's the approach that I'm gonna ask you to take. When you're dealing with referral sources, whether that's a doctor, a chiropractor, another physical therapist, maybe a fitness professional, whoever it is, I'm going to suggest that when you go in to meet with them, you do one thing, one main thing, and that's don't talk too much. I'm doctor JJ Thomas. Thanks for joining us today. Today's episode, we're going to give you the best marketing strategy to double your cash based PT practice.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 00:37

Now it's not what you think. If you're listening to this practice. And what you're looking to learn is, hey, how do I market for myself? How do I get people in the door? That's what we're gonna share with you today.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 00:54

But be ready. It's probably not what you're expecting. Then we can all agree in a cash based world, what we really need is to bring people into us. Right? We gotta get patients in the door.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 01:06

And most of us, if we're considering a cash based practice, we know that once we get them in the door, we can get them better. We can show them our worth. We can keep them there, hopefully. But really, that first step, that strategy of that marketing strategy of how do we get these people in our door, there's lots of methods. Right?

Dr. JJ Thomas: 01:23

We can propose a really great website and hire a great SEO SEM marketer, someone who's gonna bring traffic to our website. Absolutely. That's helpful. We can do traditional advertisements in, you know, the church bulletin or, the juice place down the street. Those are visibility is great.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 01:44

Spending some money on a sign, absolutely. But the number one best marketing strategy is going to come off of your referral network. So working and spending time on referral relationships is really what's going to manifest products for you in numbers that translate into return for your company. So how do we do that? Right?

Dr. JJ Thomas: 02:09

1st, we have to remember that as cash based physical therapists, our world is different than what we had in the insurance based world. As cash based PTs, patients are coming to us. They're choosing to pay out of pocket for us because they they've they believe we have something to offer them. It's a quality game. It's not a quantity game like it was in the insurance industry.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 02:33

In the insurance world, it's like, okay. We gotta just, everywhere, get our name out there. We want recognition of our name. Yes. That's helpful in a cash based world, but what's really helpful is that you're targeting the right market for you, and that's going to yield off of quality.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 02:50

So how do we get people to know to know us? How do we get people to know that we're worth spending the money on, that we're worth spending their time and money investment on? I'm gonna refer to a quote by Teddy Roosevelt, and, this is something that really will kind of encompass the message that we want to bring to you today. And what Teddy Roosevelt said is people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Right?

Dr. JJ Thomas: 03:18

So we can't go into someone and tell them I know this technique and I know this skill and I've gotten these people better this you know, in this number of visits and blah blah blah until they first know that we actually care about them. Right? So the strategy, the marketing strategy we're gonna give you today is completely surrounded around that concept, that people don't care how much you know until you know how until they know how much you care. So here's the approach that I'm gonna ask you to take. When you're dealing with referral sources, whether that's a doctor, a chiropractor, another physical therapist, maybe a fitness professional, whoever it is, I'm going to suggest that when you go in to meet with them, you do one thing, one main thing, and that's don't talk too much.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 04:04

Don't tell them about yourself. It's gonna require a lot of patience and trust on your part, but if you can follow this lead, you're going to see the results. So how do we do that? How do we still create opportunities for us to teach them about us and about our intentions and about our worth without going in and talking about ourselves? I'm gonna give you an example.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 04:30

Example that hopefully will hit home with you guys. Think about gonna give an example that hopefully will hit home with you guys. Think about it's a non PT related example. Think about an experience you had, maybe yourself or maybe while maybe you've witnessed this experience at a bar, right, or at a public place. And there's a beautiful woman sitting at this bar.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 04:55

Maybe it's you. Maybe it's a friend. And you watch this guy walk across the room, physically attractive man, walking across the room, confident, maybe borderline overly confident. Regardless, you're not so offended yet, but he comes over. Pretty much the next words out of his mouth after inch saying his name is how great he is.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 05:15

Right? I make this much money. I work for so and so. I have this title. I bench £300.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 05:22

I have all these things. And you if you're witnessing this, you're watching this girl look at him like, who are you? I don't wanna hang out with you. You don't you haven't asked a single question about me. You don't care about me.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 05:34

There's no way. Do you think that girl is gonna go home with him? We're gonna go anywhere with him? We'll go on a date with him? No way.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 05:40

Because the the image that that guy is giving off, regardless of his physical appearance, regardless of his accomplishments, is that all he cares about is himself. He's a self serving individual. In the PT world, it's the same thing. If you go to referral networks, you go to a someone you wanna have a relationship with, and you lead off with, I went to this school, and it's the number one school in the country, and I can do this technique, and I'm an expert in this. They're gonna be like, oh my god.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 06:09

I don't know what you're saying, and I don't care what you're saying because I don't really know how this is gonna benefit me or my patients. And how do I know this? Because I did it. Right? So full confession out there.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 06:20

I came out of the gates 10 years ago, opening my cash pace cash based practice, And I was you know, I in order to do such a thing, you really have to you do have to ramp yourself up a little bit. Right? You have to be like kind of like Lightning McQueen. Like, I am fast. I am I am ready.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 06:34

You know? I am gonna do this. And so you ramp yourself up, and then you have to, be able to go out there and communicate with patients. Well or patients and referral sources. I kinda forgot about that piece of it.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 06:47

I ramped myself up, and then I was so eager to tell people, this is how I can help patients. I learned this skill. I'm a doctor in physical therapy. I have this advanced specialty technique. And what I noticed, thankfully, I noticed pretty quickly, is that the eyes the glaze I was getting was that same glaze that I've seen my friend get when the guy tried to pick her up.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 07:06

It's like, yeah. I don't I'm not hearing you. I'm not hearing you at all because you just came into my time and space and you injected yourself, and you're not really open to a relationship. So, thankfully, I backed off from there, and I started this other approach. And I'm gonna give you a very easy recipe for or very easy sequence for how to address these relationships.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 07:30

Okay? So you're gonna go into your referral source now. You're gonna do a quick intro. You're gonna say, hey. I'm JJ Thomas.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 07:36

I just opened this PT practice down the road. But then right after that, you're gonna give them 3 things. You're gonna say to them, number 1, I want you to know my sole purpose for being here is to collaborate with you and to learn about you and your practice and what your strengths are. And that, right off the bat, is gonna build your relationship with this professional. Okay?

Dr. JJ Thomas: 08:00

Right off the bat, you're gonna learn about them and about how they can help your patients. Right? That's gonna help them because as as a resource, they need to know that you trust them and that you're going to collaborate with them. So right off out of the gates, you're gonna get that out there. Hey.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 08:18

I'm my sole purpose is to learn about you. Number 2, you're gonna say to them, can you please tell me who is the best patient for me to send to you? You're putting the ball in their court. You're saying to them, listen. I wanna collaborate with you, and I wanna give you the patients that you feel are going to be best suited for your practice.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 08:39

It just puts it right out there. It makes life so much simpler, and they're gonna tell you patients, a patient type, that likely they're gonna do well with. So you're just very out of the gates putting it out there. The third thing you're gonna do in this meeting is you're gonna say, hey. You know what else?

Dr. JJ Thomas: 08:55

I would love to know what specific services you have right now that excite you. So your sole purpose for being there is collaboration. You wanna learn about them. You wanna know who they're who you should send to them, and you wanna know what services excite them. Because there, again, you're showing them, hey.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 09:12

I'm not here just for me. I'm here because I wanna help promote you. You've taken a stress off off of them. Now you've shown them in good faith that you are gonna work with them and that you value what they do. Now only after that only after you've done those three things, if they ask about you, then you can talk about you.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 09:37

Only after that. If they don't ask about you, guess what? Don't you dare try to shove it down their throat. If they don't ask about you, they've done you a favor, and they've shown you that, you know what? Maybe they're not a good fit for you to begin with.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 09:52

You move on. You say thank you very much for your time. It was great meeting you. You You decide if there's someone still worth referring to. That's another conversation.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 10:01

But don't waste your time telling someone about you if they don't wanna hear it. And then the last piece of that is if they do ask about you, which likely they will, if there's someone that wants to have a collaborative effort and you've gone and you've already shown them that you value them, they're gonna ask you about your practice, and you better be ready for an answer. And I'm not saying that you have to give them the same old elevator speech that you're gonna give everybody else about your practice. What I'm suggesting is for each referral source that you decide to network with or market with, for each referral source, you're going to come prepared with an answer to that question. Who should say who should they send to you?

Dr. JJ Thomas: 10:42

If you're meeting with an a shoulder, upper extremity, elbow specialist, then you're gonna come up with 1 or 2 diagnoses that trigger a a memory for them, that trigger, oh, JJ said she does a really great job with lateral epicondylitis, with tennis elbow, or JJ has great success with rotator cuff, reconstruction, repair. Whatever it is, you're gonna target each referral with an answer that, number 1, you know is in their is in their toolbox, is in their group of people that they work with, and number 2, you know you can deliver on. Because this meeting is just the beginning of a relationship, You're opening up a pathway that you then need to deliver on, so give them a single diagnosis. Maybe it's a patient population. I had a a great meeting with a nonsurgical sports med doc not that long ago, and we've really come to have a great relationship.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 11:39

And his answer to me when I said to him I asked him at the end. I said or, you know, number 2, who should I send to you? His answer to me, I loved it. He said, you know what? I really love working with the young athletes.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 11:52

So it may not be a diagnosis. It may be a it may be a a type of person. He said, I love those young athletes, you know, the go getter that's trying to get into college. Those are what drive him. So now whenever I have one of those young athletes that needs a nonsurgical sports med doc, you better bet they're going to see that doc.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 12:11

It's a really nice way to trigger a response for these professionals after they already respect you. They hear x diagnosis or x personality type or x, you know, type of person, and they're gonna send to you, and then you deliver on it. So that's the strategy. That's that marketing strategy. 1, 2, 3.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 12:34

And then the follow-up things, if they ask you, are if they don't ask, don't bother, and number 2, be ready for an answer. What what does all this solve? Like, if you think about it, it sounds pretty simple. Right? It solves a huge couple huge problems.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 12:48

Number 1, right out of the right out of the gates, it solves whether or not these referral sources are good fits for you. Okay? Because as we said in the beginning, in cash based practice, our efforts are quality, not quantity. So every effort that you make to have a relationship with a referral source comes down to, are they a good quality, a good fit for you and your practice, and for your patients? If they're not, you can check them off the list.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 13:15

It's not a waste of time. You've met them. They're in your community. You've gotten your name out there, and then if it's something you wanna pursue, you do. If it's something that you're like, you know what?

Dr. JJ Thomas: 13:24

I didn't get a good feel for that doc or that therapist, then you don't spend your time with them. You really want to focus on the quality. Number 2 kind of plays off that. Number 2 thing that you'll learn from this experience is you'll decide right off the bat if you respect that clinician, if you respect that doctor. And, again, just as with number 1, if you don't respect them, don't spend your time on them.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 13:48

It's if you're not gonna send your patients to them, don't expect them to send to you, and and quite honestly, you don't want them. That's your brand. Every referral network that you have is going to represent you and your brand. So if you decide to collaborate with docs that you don't really respect, it's not gonna look good on your brand. Patients are gonna be like, oh, you work with that doc, and they have a friend that, you know, didn't respect them?

Dr. JJ Thomas: 14:13

It's gonna hurt your brand. So don't waste your time on them. Focus. Use this strategy to focus on who's gonna represent your brand. The third thing it does, and we talked about this a little bit already, is it's gonna give you actionable items.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 14:27

It's getting to know your referral network is going to give you a way and a means to actually help your patients get better faster. You're gonna be like, oh, I met with this doc last week. They do PRP, and they do it in this way, which is a little bit different. They might add the 10otomy with it, which adds more value to the retention of the results. Wow.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 14:48

I really want this patient to have that. So when you arm yourself with this knowledge, you're now gonna have all these tools yourself and and an integrated network that you can say, you know what? I met with this doc, and the patients are gonna have your buy in and everyone's gonna get better faster. And the last piece of this, of what you're gonna learn from this, is that you're gonna earn their respect. So, again, this referral relationship is just it's just fits like a glove.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 15:15

You're gonna have all of these things on the table and you're gonna have better results because of it. So wrapping up, to talk about this marketing strategy, to to summarize this marketing strategy that's gonna double your returns on your cash based practice, I just want to point out it's really a networking. Right? It's what I I like to call networking with a purpose. Okay?

Dr. JJ Thomas: 15:38

So, yes, it's marketing because you're essentially getting the word out there in a positive way to make people want to come to your practice, but, really, the best marketing strategy is in networking with a purpose, and you're controlling that path in a way that's beneficial for your patients, you, and the referral source. So when you're doing this, consider, again, it's not just for docs. It's this this strategy is something that you can use when meeting with doctors, when meeting with chiropractors, meeting with other physical therapists. When I tell people that I network with other physical therapists, they're like, what? They're your competitors.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 16:16

They're not my competitors. We're all different, and we're all better at we all have our niches. So you get to know the therapists in your community. Get to know the therapists that are both cash based and insurance based. You're going to have patients that need those resources, and when you have the confidence to be able to refer to another physical therapist, it only helps your brand.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 16:38

Patients realize they go back to that concept of they don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. When you end up seeing an opportunity that a patient needs something that's out of your niche, and maybe you just met this physical therapist down the road who does this other thing that would really help them or has this specialty in pelvic floor, for example, which I don't, when you refer to another therapist, you're showing that patient how much you care, and that will last in your brand, in your reputation, and it will come back to you tenfold because people realize that you are in it for them. You are focusing on quality, not quantity. So wrapping up, in summary of this entire episode, and really the points I want you to take home here are you really only get one reputation. So everything that we talked about with this marketing strategy and building your brand and focusing on how to communicate with referral sources and how to use that communication in a way that supports your brand and supports your patients, all of that comes down to that concept of quality over quantity and making sure patients know that you care, making sure referral sources know that you you care before you start telling them how much you know.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 18:01

I hope this is helpful for you guys. If you'd like to learn more of these concepts and ideas and how to build your cash based practice and how to make your cash based practice a success, please consider, subscribing to our channel and there is an ebook, free ebook available to you if you click the link in the description. Look forward to hearing and seeing from you more.