In this solo podcast episode, Kelly Alhooie urges physical therapists, occupational therapists, and chiropractors to expand their practices beyond traditional one‑on‑one treatment by adding wellness services. She outlines the surge in consumer demand for wellness modalities such as cold plunges, saunas, red‑light therapy, vibration plates, and guided meditation, and argues that these can be packaged as upsells or membership programs to boost patient outcomes and revenue. Kelly shares concrete examples of clinicians who have generated $200K‑plus annually from wellness add‑ons and $30K‑$40K from fitness coaching, emphasizing that clinicians already possess the expertise to own this market. She differentiates therapy from coaching, noting that coaching allows cross‑state practice and fewer regulatory constraints. The episode also covers practical implementation ideas—creating in‑house wellness spaces, hiring personal trainers or Pilates instructors, offering group classes, and delivering online services like nutrition guidance, journaling tools, and video‑based meditation. Kelly stresses that launching a successful wellness program requires a solid marketing funnel: pre‑launch audience building, launch execution, post‑launch follow‑up, and strong digital marketing skills. She warns against the naïve “just create a course” mindset, sharing her own failed COVID‑era course launches as lessons. Finally, Kelly invites listeners to contact her via PelviBiz or text for personalized help in designing and launching wellness offerings.
Chapters
How to implement a wellness business into a physical therapy/occupational therapy practice and/or a chiropractic business. So as we are traditionally going through therapy, okay, traditionally it's one-on-one. You are solving a spine issue or a musculoskeletal issue, and that is what you're mainly treating. However, we have seen in the years You know, in the past couple years, wellness trends are on the rise, especially when it comes to wearables, especially when it comes to blood work, especially when it comes to auditing what wellness things and the cold plunges and saunas are on the rise. So here's my question to you. Why have you not incorporated anything wellness into your business, even if you are online? Um, Why have you not incorporated anything wellnessy? Because that is the thing that the people want, and they can just come to you for that instead of having to go to all these other places to get their wellness in. So what I mean by that is I call these upsells. Upsells are where you are, um, maybe you have a cold plunge, a sauna, a red light therapy, dry needling. Maybe you have a vibrating plate. All those things are upsell, and you package that into a wellness membership, and that membership is an upsell to your current clients that if they want improvement faster, then they can buy into the wellness membership. Okay, have you guys thought about this? All these cold plunge— so for those that are in person, I have in-person practices, all the cold plunges, all the cold plunges, um, the um, saunas, all that stuff. Why are they having to go to another facility when we are like the experts at wellness? Bring it in-house if you have space. Maybe you create like a quiet room with like a vagus nerve stimulator, and like literally the moms can just sit there and be like zoning out. Moms sit in their cars and zone out, so why don't you just, you know, have a room that's provided for them where they can get cozier and they want to actually be in your office. Conversely, if you are online, is there a way where you could do— maybe provide them with guided meditation through videos? Maybe you could do guided imagery through videos. Maybe you can do journaling for, um, journaling for online. Like, you create an online journal where every single day they have to, like, reflect and they have to audit, like, how they're feeling and what and why they feel this way. And, like, Maybe you're working with trauma patients, right? Maybe you create an online nutrition of how to increase fiber intake and protein, protein intake so that they feel more confident with what they're eating and that they can feel that they're fuller and that they can lose weight. Okay, these are all things that are super, super important. And so if you guys aren't thinking this way of how to actually incorporate wellness into your actual business. Like, I was just on the phone with a lady and she made $200,000 extra in one year because of wellness services. $200,000, guys. Some of us are not even making that in business, like in your actual business. Okay. And also I was talking to Julia the other day and like her bodybuilding coach She, she's like making like $30,000 to $40,000 off of just fitness, teaching people how to work out. Why are we not taking over this market? It's like, it's like mind-boggling. Like, really, why are we not taking over this market? We're the experts. Oh, but wait, it's not therapy. It's not therapy, so like I can't go in that realm, guys. You have to give up your therapy title. I've made 20,000 videos on this to become a coach. These days, coaching is where it's at, not therapy. Coaching means you can go across state lines. Coaching means you can, you can actually help people and not have to worry about all the other things that us being providers have to worry about. Okay, um, and so you really need to think about how are you going to incorporate wellness into your practice. Are you going to bring on a personal trainer? Are you gonna bring a Pilates instructor on? Are you going to do group classes? Are you going to, um, do shockwave therapy? That's an add-on, right? All this is wellness to improve the patient outcome. And so if you guys are thinking like, oh, how do I incorporate this? Like, let me know, hit me up at PelviBiz, P-E-L-V-I-B-I-Z, @pelviBiz. Message me, hey Kelly, listen to your podcast and like really was thinking about incorporating wellness, but I really don't know how. Let me know. Okay. Because every single one of us should be doing that. Maybe you're creating an online course and maybe you want to couple that with people that cannot come in person. Okay, great. Well, how are you going to do that? It's not just the course. Like I had another person today reach out to me and she was like, I'm just doing like an online course. I'm like, cool. She's like, I just want to know like how to post it. I'm like, so you just want to know how to post it? That's not going to get you any clients. I'm like, there's a pre-launch, you have to do the launch to that, then you have to do the actual launch and like making sure that you get clients signed up, then you have to do the post-launch to it, then you have to be like the best digital marketer. If you're not the best digital marketer, then you're sure as heck not going to get clients. And I— it was just like mind-boggling to me that I still think people believe that you could just make a course and that like people are going to want to buy it. That's not how it works. It's not how it works, okay? Um, you have to build an audience. You have to have customers. You have to have lots of reviews. People have to know, like, and trust you. You have to have a good vibe about you. They— there's just such a process to it. More than— it's the easiest thing is to use our clinician brain and be like, let me create this course, let me put it out there. Oh wait, you want to buy it? By the way, this happened to me many times during COVID I launched 2 courses that no one bought. Taught me a lesson: don't spend time on courses and just build it out while you have people in it. Sell it first and then build it. It's key. Um, so again, things to just be mindful of when it comes to building and wellness, that you need to make sure that you know trends and that you're moving in the right direction as things start to shift and wellness is on the rise and people will pay for it. So if that's the case, how can you— I want you to leave here thinking, how can I incorporate wellness into my already— the, the business that I already have? And if you're unsure of that, then reach out and say, hey, I want to incorporate wellness, how do I do that? And I would love to discuss some ideas of, you know, where you want to go from there. Alright guys, talk soon. Thanks so much for listening, and you guys can text me at any time. It truly is my number if you feel you have questions or that you feel stuck. So text me at 703-783-2388. Text me at any time and I will respond, and yes, it is me. So So hopefully we'll talk soon so we can get you unstuck.
