Kelly Alhooie shows how to start a mobile therapy practice from your car. Pack a folding table, Clorox wipes, and supplies in a backpack. Get your first paying client before worrying about an office or EMR system.
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Now, remember I told you you had to order that table from Amazon? Great. Well, this is what we're going to do. You're going to take that table and you're going to put it in your little car. Okay, this is the wheels. You're going to put it in your car. Table goes right here in the trunk. There's your table. Okay? That's your table. You're going to have Clorox wipes in the back of your car. Let's just act like this was it. I literally would just pull out the Clorox wipes, okay, pull them out, and then I would just put the table on the floor and I'd wipe down the freaking table and then put the table back in the car. Great. So you got a car, hopefully you got a car, okay? You just start going from house to house. What I did is I brought my iPad— I have it right here— I brought my iPad in my car and I was trying to call people and schedule people and do all the things. By the way, you don't need an EMR system. You need nothing, none of that right now. You just need clients. That's how you actually have a business. Some of y'all right now think you gotta go invest in a cute facility and make it all cute before you even have a client. You don't have a business then. You do not have a business then. You do not have a business until you have clients and repeating clients, okay? So you put it in the car and then you go to people's homes. Now here's what I did, which I think really gave me a lot of confidence. I asked my sister-in-law that I lived by at the time. I said, hey, can I come over to your house and do a practice exam on you so that I know what it feels like? I had a full-on suitcase. You just need a backpack, by the way. I forgot to put a backpack on there. You just need a backpack. Okay. I had a suitcase and a full-on massive table, so I'd carry that. And I lived in these around D.C. that time, so I had to go up like down 3 stairs. It was just horrible. Don't recommend that at all. Okay. But I brought my backpack, I brought my suitcase and my table over and I videotaped it. So not only was I getting content of what it would look like for me to come to their home, that's key. People need to see what it would be like to work with you. Okay. I also got practice of what it would be like of doing an assessment on her. How would I pull out the papers? She has to sign it in person. Okay, great. I put— make a little folder for her. Um, how I would type my notes just out on my computer when I didn't have Wi-Fi at people's homes. Like all this little stuff. How I would pull out my little caboodle and basically show that I was, um, I had bands and my lotion and all that stuff there that I got from The Container Store. That was huge. That was really— it's like this really cool caboodle that had different layers and you just fold it in and out. That was really helpful. Um, so like all this stuff, I just had to practice it, and I did it one time and it gave me confidence, like, okay, I can do this. So then my first ever real client that I had, I literally had to pull out the table in the middle of her kitchen because in DC many people have small homes because there's not a lot of room. They just go up, they're narrow and they go up. So I would treat her in her kitchen, do internal exams in her kitchen, and I was just like, all right, This feels like a practical, let's just do it. And I was uncomfortable at first, but then I got used to it. And then you start going to the next, the next, the next, and it just becomes normal. Okay. But y'all need to practice on your friends. And then what you do is when you practice on them without them paying you, because you must give it away for free before people pay you. When you do that specifically, okay, ask for a review. If you're so good like you say you are, then ask for a freaking review because that review then can go on your website, it can go anywhere and everywhere. So please just say, hey, if I do a good job and you like your treatment today, do you mind leaving me a Google review? Or if you do not have Google set up, by the way, because that's part on your list is going to be to set up your Google. It's called Google My Business. Okay. If you don't have that set up, can you just write me an email with a review so that I can put that on my website? Okay, great. Yeah, no problem. Or I can put that on my social media account. Great. No problem. So that is key.
