How to Get Through the Holiday Season: Tips for Pelvic Health Providers

Welcome to Pelle biz podcast. I'm Dr. Kelly Alhui. I've grown my pelvic health practice, orthopelvic physical therapy, and now I'm helping pelvic health professionals do the same. Each week I give you the knowledge you need to grow your practice. Let's get into today's episode.

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Today I'm going to talk about tips and tricks that you can use for your practice during the holidays. Because most of you guys are probably thinking right now, Kelly, how am I going to keep patience? This is when everyone drops off. No one wants to come in and see me during the holidays. You're going to tell yourself every false belief there possibly is. Like people are so busy they don't want to do pt. Now people have used all their deductible or method deductible so now they want to use that and they will never come and see me. And the truth is that just isn't the case. They will actually come and see you and you can actually have your best month yet. So that's number one. Okay, let's just start there. I think that's huge. Number two is setting the expectations for your patients. So your current patients that you have, when they come in the door, you've got to make sure that you are talking to them about what the expectation is. Especially during the holiday season. You must book them out on initial evaluation so that they know that their appointment is high priority with you and that it doesn't trump their mother in law coming in town or whoever coming in town okay. They have got to be high priority. So we got to talk about that. Number two, you've got to set the expectation. So if Sally's coming in the door, I'm like, hey Sally, what's going on? Yeah. So thank you so much for showing up today, Sally. So because you're here today, we're going to work on this and next time I can't wait to see you so that we can work on this. And, and you're setting the expectation of what you're going to do next time. So Sally is more than likely wanting to come next time. So that, that way she's like, oh, she told me I'm going to do this. So I can't wait. I got to go and do that. Right. So. And then you got to tell Sally, I need you committed to once a week. I need you here once a week. So how can we make that happen? Then you have to remember to also mention to people that there's a telehealth option here. We can do telehealth. I don't know if you knew that. Telehealth is amazing because we can actually see your setup in your home and we actually save you time. So when the holiday season comes around and you're wrapping those presents or you got your mother in law in the kitchen cooking a meal and you can't leave because you're helping her out, guess what? We save you time, pull up your computer and we will do a telehealth visit. We get to see your environment because here at the clinic it's a staged environment. So that's the benefit of telehealth. We'll save you time and we'll get things done in your own environment. So I think that's huge is remembering that. And also another thing is managing overwhelm during Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, all the things, okay, this can be a very stressful time for people, could also be a very sad time if they have missed a family member or you know, someone's not present during those times. And just remember that, that it could be very stressful, overwhelming. And the last thing that you want to do is bring someone come into clinic and you, you're like, here, do these 12,000 exercises. That's going to overwhelm them and they're going to be like, I can't do this, there's no way. And then they're going to be like, I'm not going to go back and see Sarah because Sarah is going to give me more exercises. And then it can't keep up. So what's the point of going? No, do not do that. Try to break down the task that they are doing every single day. Laundry, unloading the dishwasher, getting up from the floor, lifting something. Right? Those four things. And even step ups, they got to use stairs. I'm sure those five things, I would say if you can create exercises around them, I've actually come up with this. If you can create exercises around that, you win because they can do it at any time. When I'm gonna go in my shower, guys, what do you think I do? My shower has a lip to it and I do step ups. It's my exercise. While the water comes and starts to heat up the shower. Okay, that's an exercise. I think I said this before, but when I was unloading my dishwasher, the top rack. Okay, I counted. I did 17 mini deadlifts right there. There's my homework. 17 mini deadlifts from the top rack. OK, so start to think about not what more exercises I can give them. What are things that are not going to overwhelm them that they can feel confident in that they can do that's actually going to help them feel better. If you want them to stretch their pelvic floor, have them while they're working, stretch their pelvic floor. Put their leg on a freaking stool or bench next to them and sit there and have them type and stretch their pelvic floor out. It will be very beneficial for them. Okay, so think outside the box. Rather than traditional med brid med bridge exercises that, you know, everyone their mother just tries to give. You talk about gift cards like Black Friday is coming up. Black Friday, you got the holidays. See if, you know, give the gift of giving a postpartum mom and evaluation to make sure her apps are where she wants them or make sure she doesn't have leakage. Really promote that you have gift cards. People are in the buying mood. I think that's very important. Social Black Friday, everyone wants to buy everything. Okay, so when they're ready to buy, you want to put out something then because people are ready to pull out their credit cards right away and purchase. So make sure you either have a Black Friday deal going on or some kind of gift card. Now I say that, but I would probably do the opposite on Black Friday is like increase my price. So it's something different and people stop and pay attention. So, you know, again, you don't always have to follow trends. You can be a little bit different. I like being different. But we also At Christmas time last year, we gave away a peloton bike. We literally gave away a full peloton bike. So to a family that had cancer, her son had cancer. And so we did a drawing, put it out on Instagram, and that's what we did. So that was nice. It was like a really good, feel good moment. Think about maybe if you want to sponsor a charity during the holiday time, hey, guys, every single person that comes in for a visit, we will put a dollar towards charity or something like that. Or every two people that come in to visit, then we'll do this. Or you can say, hey, we're going to raise money for NICU moms in the NICU and then go on Christmas and present them with a check. Whoever wants to donate, please donate here. And then we will go and give all proceeds to the NICU moms. Something like that would be cool to gift. I always think it's fun to gift things and give back and just be really thankful. During the holiday season. Sickness is a big thing, you know, that happens between now and the end of the year. So just being prepared again with a telehealth visit. Hey, guys, did you know that we could do a telehealth visit? I would be putting out Instagram posts about telehealth. I would be showing them what a telehealth visit looks like. You know, doing a video with you at your house on a computer screen. And then, you know, someone's in the clinic doing exercises with them and what that looks like so that they have a visual of truly what a telehealth visit looks like. So I would be, you know, just preparing for all of that. So I know I kind of gave you a lot there, but those are the tips and tricks that that I'd be doing to prepare for the holiday season so that not only your clinic survives, it actually thrives. Right. So you're not just trying to make it through. We're trying to have our highest month ever in the next two months. And that's what I want for you guys, because it's the end of the year. There's a big push. Let's see what we can get to this year. And so hopefully you guys learn some stuff about how to get through the holiday season and we'll talk soon. I consider myself a business and life coach. Are you ready to live the life of your dreams as an entrepreneur? If so, let's chat. See the episode notes below and go ahead and book a call. See you all next week.