About two years before we started our company, Rehabilitation & Performance Institute, the other two founders and I started the daunting process of writing a business plan. I found a template online and we ran with it. Impressively we were able to say absolutely nothing important in 96 pages of work. That’s right. We wrote a worthless 96-page business plan. So, if you’ve ever felt like you’ve spent a lot of time doing something that didn’t matter, at least you know you didn’t orchestrate this disaster.

As writing a business plan is generally an overwhelming task anyway, I’d like to help other PTs avoid making the same mistakes I made. The goal is to stimulate great thoughts about you and your business and to do it in a way that avoids wasting time and energy.

A word on general format before we get started…It is best to complete your plan as a slide deck and develop a presentation around it. One of the most important skills any PT can have is to translate your complex thoughts into something others can easily understand and follow. Shoot for a 15-20 minute business plan presentation.

Here are the 10 sections you need for your PT business plan:

Purpose

Think of this as your big picture section. The section of your business plan that helps you clarify other decision you need to make. Here you are answering, “What is the purpose of my business?” Simply put, how do you plan to leave the world a better place than you found it? And why is that something you are comfortable working incredibly hard to achieve?

This section is where you should list your mission and your values. Leave the fluffy stuff out and get straight to the point on these. Your mission and values aren’t going to impress or inspire anyone. People, both employees and customers, have been lied to about mission statements and values for a very long time. No one trusts you because you can write fancy words. They want to see you live them, and this is where you start. These words are going to help you decide how you make the rest of the decisions in your business plan.

Good examples: Southwest Airlines, TED

Target Market

You’ve defined why your business exists. Now it’s time to think about who you are trying to help. It can be tempting to say “My physical therapy business is for everyone!!! Hooray!!!” Balloons and streamers drop from the ceiling, trumpets sound in the distance, and a random stranger starts a slow clap. It’s wonderful to be adored by everyone. But the truth is businesses who try to connect with everyone, connect with no one.

If you have to consistently change your identity depending on who you are trying to please, you won’t have an identity. We all have the one friend who changes every aspect of his personality depending on who he happens to be dating at the time – let’s call him Joey. It’s not good, it can be really expensive to jump from being into travel, then motorcycles, then art, and it never ends well.  Sure, it’s amusing to watch Joey and relentlessly make fun of him while he changes his personality, wardrobe, hair, and demeanor every six months. However, it’s not healthy.  It’s bad for Joey, and it’s a sign that he doesn’t know who he really is.  The same is true for your business.  If you try to be for everyone, you’ll be for no one.

Here are some of the ways you can define your market and you can even use a combination of them:

• Geographically (usually not enough on its own)
• Activities performed (endurance athletes, baseball players, performance artists, powerlifters, etc),
• Age (pediatrics, geriatrics)
• Body parts or conditions (though I strongly advise avoiding this – you treat people, not body parts)
• Services (like work health – targeting employers as your market)

In general, you want to think about groups of people who share values and expectations.

Why You?

How do you connect to your target market? Have you already done it? What special skills, knowledge, and passion are you able to employ to help them?

Done well, physical therapy is a relationship-oriented business. Societally, we have developed some very unhealthy behaviors, thoughts, and habits. You will only be able to help people change these health issues after you have developed trusting relationships with them.  As Stephen Covey states in his book, “Change happens at the speed of trust.”

Relying solely on physician referrals in your practice is bad for patients’ health, their wallets, and your business.  A goal should be to be the primary provider of neuromusculoskeletal care for your target market. After all, there is good evidence that you are the best person for the job. There needs to be a good reason why they should trust you to do it.

Timing

I’ve written this section for you. Check out this blog post for the full details. To summarize, right now is the perfect time to start a PT practice that is designed to deliver the experience and care your target market values.

Your Winning Plan

This section is essentially your business model. No, cash-based is not a business model. Neither is insurance-based. Those describe who pays you and how, not how you deliver a service that people value.

To complete this section, you need to know your target market. What are they looking for? What are their pain points with physical therapy and the health care system in general? What do they expect, and what do they value?

Your business needs to build a service that solves pain points for your target market and does it in a way that allows them to receive maximum value. The next challenging part of this is to determine how to deliver this service in a way that is financially successful. What are you going to spend money on? Hint – spend it on things people value. Where can you save?

Generally, you should be spending your money on allowing you and your team members to establish and develop great relationships with people. Other items that may be of importance are convenience and your ability to reduce the effort of your clients.

Assemble Your Team

Don’t have to know it all – just need to know people who do

You are setting up a business because you have an expert opinion, and you feel people should pay you for it. A good start to valuing what you do is valuing what others bring to the table. You can’t and won’t know everything. Pay experts for their opinion as soon as you can afford to do so.

More business owners hold themselves back by spending their valuable time doing these things (frequently poorly). Look at it this way. Your time spent with patients is AT LEAST $120/hour work. Your time spent planning and growing your business is $500/hour work. In general, it will take you AT LEAST 2-5x as much time to do some of these things as an expert to do these things, and you probably won’t do them as well either. Again, you don’t always have to pay experts in the beginning, but you should do it as soon as you can afford to. It frees you up to work on what you are best at and allows you to learn from them in the process.

• Lawyer
• Accountant
• Credentialing/Contracting Person
• Billing Company
• Front Office Person
• Bank
• Insurance Agent
• Designer

How do these people/teams help you deliver a service that people value?

Space and Equipment

The happiest people spend their money on experiences, not things. The same can be said for PT businesses. Spend your money creating a great experience for your patients. Many new business owners put themselves in a terrible position by having incredibly high fixed expenses. This mistake forces them to safe in other areas that are more important for their customers.

For your office location, you could go as small as 600-800 sq ft. A good rule is to divide your total square footage by three. This number is the maximum patient visits you can handle in a month.  So, a 1,500 sq. ft. office should support 500 patient visits/month (about 3 clinicians depending on your business model).

In addition to the amount of space, you need to consider your location. Highly visible locations also tend to be highly expensive. It’s ok to be off the beaten path (preferred actually, based on the cost savings) as long as your office is still safe, accessible (both in terms of driving and parking), and relatively convenient.

As far as equipment goes, what do you really need? A table, some weights, a few bands. Again, the best thing you can do for your patients is listen to them and connect with them. You don’t need much stuff to do it. You need a comfortable treatment table and comfortable chairs in the lobby. That’s about it. Everything else is a luxury in most instances.

Financial Projections

Nothing makes a PT more uncomfortable than talking about money. This part isn’t that hard, I promise. If you fill out the “contact me” section on my landing page, and request an example budget, I’ll send you this section for free.

Marketing

Your marketing efforts need to be focused in two areas:

1. How do you reach new clients and help them see the value in your service?
2. Once these individuals have experienced your service (which you’ve got a plan for them to value), how do you get them to help you spread the word?

Reaching new clients can be daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. If you genuinely want to help your target market, you should already be involved with them in some way. If you want to help runners, are you involved in a local running group? If not, you should ask yourself if you really want to help them or if it just seems like you could make money doing it.

The best way to reach new people is to be helpful. It’s that simple. So, you need to make a list of AT LEAST 30 people, businesses, other medical and fitness professionals, etc. who want to help the same people and communities you do. Then ask yourself how you can help each of them do it. Finally, reach out to them and offer to help. It really should be that simple.

The next step is helping turn your new clients into brand ambassadors. If you’ve got a great service that they value, this is also much easier than it sounds. Here’s the process:

• When you’ve done something that makes a client very happy…
• Ask the client for help
• Tell them exactly how they can help

You don’t need to make it complicated. If people love you and what you’ve helped them achieve, they want to help you. Your job is to ask for it and show them precisely how to do it.

Vision

If all goes well, in 5 years, what will you have built?

Who benefits from your success?  If the only answer is you, then you have a problem

How will you give back and help your community?

How do you plan to progress to working on the business instead of in it?

Many small businesses fall apart when owners aren’t prepared for success. They end up fundamentally changing their business as they are grasping for help. Don’t let that happen to you. You started this business to be successful. Don’t neglect to plan for it.

I think the world is a better place when more PTs start a practice using these methods. I hope this post has simplified that process for you. If you’d like more information about any of these sections, don’t hesitate to contact me on my landing page.