Aaron LeBauer argues that traditional PT conferences and marketing tactics like physician referrals and print ads are outdated and fail private practice owners. He advocates ditching scarcity thinking for digital channels like Instagram, YouTube, and SEO to position physical therapists as primary care providers and community influencers.
Chapters
We need to rise above the noise and become experts and influencers in our community and in the nation. I did what everyone told me how to go market your practice. You know, go market to physicians, get on insurance panels, do these other things, you know, etc. Like get print ads in magazines, sponsored the football, you know, stadium, you know, for the local high school, what else, etc. But that stuff doesn't work, especially marketing to physicians. It didn't work, you know, because their patients are paying them a copay. So why are they going to come pay me, the technician, more than they paid doctor? God, right? If you've had that problem where a patient was like, why am I going to come see you and, and see you eight times when I had to see my surgeon only once? And that became a problem, whether it was a price or an authority thing, like, have you ever had that problem? Because I experienced that problem a lot. I used to experience it a ton when I was trying to rely on those strategies for marketing. Like, oh, have you ever had the problem where the prescription was for three days a week for 12 weeks and you saw the person, you were like, but I only need to see you once a week to get this result. And they're like, yeah, but my doctor says I need X, Y and Z. If that's happening to you, they see you as a technician, not as the doctor and not as the decision maker or healthcare provider who's a primary care provider like you are. I tried to go learn these strategies, but I could never find a conference that was teaching me the strategies that I needed to learn to make my cash practice successful. I never found a conference where I could justify the expense of going to IT to find the other people like me to learn the things that didn't apply. Why would I go and learn things that didn't apply to my business and take time away from my business and generating revenue and helping patients? All I'm going to do is go somewhere that wasn't going to teach me what I needed to learn. They don't listen. They don't really care what you learn. They, they want you to come to the event just because of the event, for the event's sake. If they're letting their ego get in the way, then it's too big and they're not listening to you and what you need, right? Because you have very specific needs for your business. And a lot of times people aren't listening to what those needs are. So if they're letting the corporations and big money interests drive the direction of where they're going. They're not paying attention to you, private practice owner or even the small business owner. And so if they can't listen and they're not listening, they can't teach you relevant marketing strategies that are working now in 2020. What they're going to teach you is what worked 10, 15, 20 years ago. But guess what? There's. We got this thing called the Internet and Instagram and Facebook live and YouTube and your blog and search engine optimization. And patients have a choice. In order to get patients to choose you, you cannot rely on someone else to send them to you. Wouldn't you agree? They don't understand what you're going through. And a lot of times you probably felt treated like an outsider. Like, you're not in the club, right? You're not, you know, you're not part of the team. You don't know who's going, what's going on. You're not familiar. You haven't been before. And when you show up, you're like, you know what? I don't really know what to say to these people because they look like me, but they don't talk like me. And they're not talking about problems I have. All the things are about these bigger problems, like succession planning. And I don't know, like, what were the. What are the other boring things that we discuss? I can't remember, you know, like, what are those things? Like, I don't even remember because I look at the menu of the educational session to be offered, I'm like, that ain't gonna help my business. Like, in the times that I did go, it, I struggled to justify going, and then I left going, like, I didn't learn anything about my business, but I met some cool people, okay? I met a couple cool people. So wake up. I want you to understand, it's not. Now is not the time for scarcity, okay? Now is not the time. That means now is not the time to think. Like, I can't invest. I can't grow my business. There's not enough patients. The chiropractor is getting too many. The orthopedic surgeon is not referring them to me. There are too many people out there that need your skill, your healing touch. There are too many people out there that are getting the wrong information, that are getting misinformation. There's too much noise, right? We need to rise above the noise and become experts and influencers in our community and in the nation and in the world, right? And teach people that they need to get PT first. So right now is your moment to do it. You're not alone. And it's not your fault that you got this far and felt alone or felt like there was no opportunity, because that's what's right. That's. That's what they want. They don't want you to have opportunity because they want it themselves, because they're living in scarcity. And when other people you are supposed to be learning from come from a place of scarcity, it feels like that's really the truth. Right? But there is not scarcity. Scarcity means there's only one pie, there's only so many patients, and we're all fighting for the same people. What abundance means is that there are plenty of people out there with back pain. What, what, 80% of people are going to experience back pain in their life in America, Right. They aren't all coming to PT.
