A Niche Therapy Practice Can Create Problems!

Niche therapy practiceFive years ago I wrote a post called “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” and right at this moment I am sure there are a ton of therapists out there who wish they had taken my advice.  Everyone in the industry has been continually preaching about building a niche therapy practice and being an expert in one particular area but what they aren’t telling you is if the bottom falls out of your market niche your practice and business is in big trouble. Coronavirus is now showing the weaknesses in this business approach. Everyone should have a plan A and plan B and a plan C!

I am a member of a number of therapy forums and during the last few weeks therapists out there are spotting that their businesses which have been working fine for years are suddenly getting no calls. Some have big expenses and outgoings but with no customers they can’t afford to pay them. Many are wondering how they are going to cover even their room rates.  Another therapist said they had got a job in a bar part time to tide them over. I had to break it to them that it is likely that this job will be useless in the next couple of weeks as the government is probably going to shut them down. This is a serious time for everyone not just therapists.

49 ways to market your therapy practice

Download Now

 

Weak Therapy Niches in This Market

A few weeks ago I did a Facebook live with a therapist Steve Norton in the anxiety niche. In the video streams, we talked about what was currently happening with Coronavirus and what people needed to do to try and insulate themselves from the fallout. You can watch the videos here: https://youtu.be/5tjMJsNxWc0 and here https://youtu.be/opNFZv6uOVg: It was obvious to me that anxiety was a great niche therapy practice to be in at the moment because of the turmoil and stress that everyone is experiencing but here are some that are going to suffer over the next few months:

Hypnobirthing – Pregnant women are totally freaking out at the moment at what could happen to their unborn children if they catch the virus. Many are already staying away from hospitals where possible what chance do you have of running these sessions as the virus spreads?

Weight Loss – Summer is typically a time of bikini bodies and holidays. Women especially flock to go on diets to look their best when they are away. This year they are more worried about getting some toilet roll and tins to survive so I expect this niche to suffer in the short term. (Update as lockdowns progressed comfort eating is becoming a big problem so target people who are eating to cheer themselves up).

Fear of Flying Sessions – Flights are getting cancelled every day at the moment. The airline industry is on its knees. Don’t expect a flood of calls about this when normally you would be hearing from nervous flyers all spring and summer.

Exam Hypnosis- With schools about to shut and exams put on hold it is unlikely that anyone will be looking for exam help in the near future.

Children’s Therapy – Parents are particularly worried about their children at the best of times but now that worry is in overdrive. My local town Facebook group is going crazy about the thought of Coronavirus. These people don’t want their children out and about at all never mind heading to see a therapist. My guess is unless they need urgent help these sessions will be deferred until later in the year.

Public Speaking – With firms deciding to increase social distancing and more home working starting the need to speak in public is reducing in the short term. Don’t expect to see a ton of people asking for it at the moment.

These are just some examples of weak niches in the current market and I am sure there are many others. If you are in one of these you need to be urgently thinking about what you can do in the short term to earn money whilst you wait for this to all blow over.

Building a Resilient Therapy Practice

Are you familiar with the term to hedge your bets? As a former trader, this was something that we used to think of daily on the trading floor. It simply means taking two different actions to protect your money. So if one of your trades went bad you knew that the opposing trade would come good. Therapists could learn lots from traders!

Here is the deal you do not absolutely need to go all-in on one niche and one niche only. This is a very bad idea as people are starting to see right now. What you need is to appear the expert in a number of niches. This means potentially having websites in a number of different locations or areas so that you can cover a number of bases. If one area starts to go bad you always have the others to call upon. A niche therapy practice can involve multiple niches!

You also need to have adaptability and you can only do that when you are able to:

  • Set up a therapy website fast that converts clients right now and is adaptable
  • Run pay per click ads such as Adwords or Facebook  that can be adapted in minutes to bring in the customers you need
  • Blog so that you can start to attract more business fast

These things can be learned and I teach them in my online courses. To give you an idea on how this is working for me I am currently building a new website. I blogged about Coronavirus anxiety around a month ago (before most people were really talking about it). That blog is getting me a steady stream of website visitors daily and I have only really started the site in January.  Yes of course you have to know how to blog correctly to do this but once you do you are on a roll. The techniques can be applied to any niche or product.

20 Passive Income Ideas for Therapists

Get The Guide

Passive Income and Your Therapy Practice

Now let’s talk about passive income. How many of you have bothered to create any passive income products for your website? This could make a huge difference to your income. Think about the Hypnobirthing niche which is no doubt suffering or about to crash at any second. Nobody is going to want to come into a hall or practice the techniques but what if you could offer online classes or have built a course on the topic to be sold online. Now you could sell that product worldwide and women who wanted it could be using it right now in the comfort of their own homes.  That product could insulate you from a loss of face to face income and might even surpass your current earnings as you moved from a local to a global business. You have to think bigger sometimes to make money. It isn’t always about a local niche therapy practice.

Creating products and services that can be used online can help grow your business and insulate you from problems like the ones we are currently seeing. If you find that your customers are currently drying up then go all-in on setting some up so when this is all over you will have a better and more stable business.

Finally

Nothing to do with a niche therapy practice but something I felt I had to comment on.

This is the time when professional therapists should be helping people to stay calm. We should be helping the local community and offering our mental health expertise to those who are currently not able to get to see their doctors. Don’t be the therapist that this morning created a Facebook messenger group and included me on it talking about wild conspiracy theories and asking what did I think. I tell you what I thought – that any therapist who is spouting nonsense at a time like this is one that I am immediately unfollowing (which I did). Keep your Facebook and social media pages professional be the voice of reason, not the person looking to create hysteria. Don’t start writing about unproven quackery to cure the illness, don’t sell through scaring people, don’t suggest something you know nothing about. We can get through this but keep your professional hats on.

You Might Also Want to Read:

Insulating Your Therapy Practice From Coronavirus Disruption

Don’t Set up a Therapy Practice Without Reading This

Marketing for Therapists 101 – Passive Income

 

Marketing for Therapists 101 – Passive Income

marketing for therapists passive incomeI love to keep my marketing for therapists posts topical and my latest is certainly that. It has been prompted by an illness that I experienced not just once in the past week but twice! It started with a stomach bug a week ago that floored me completely. There was no chance of me actually being able to work with clients. I just about managed to cancel all my clients before spending 24 hours on my sickbed. I rearranged all my clients slotting them into every possible available spare space I had and tried to carry on. That was until exactly one week later the same thing happened again and I was back to square one!

If you are a therapist it is only a matter of time before the same thing happens to you. You may get the flu and need to take a week off work. You might need an operation and need to recuperate for a month or two. You may break your leg and find it impossible to drive to your clinics. The question for you is what happens to your business and income while this is going on? Have you insulated yourself financially from the impact of something like this happening? In my case I was fine because I earned money even when I wasn’t seeing clients but what would happen to your mortgage payments or bills if you got sick?

Passive Income for Therapists

Before you think I am going to recommend self-employed illness insurance that isn’t what I am going to be talking about (although it is certainly worth considering if you are the only breadwinner). Instead, I really want you all to think about building a passive income stream to insulate your business from this kind of ups and downs. Marketing for therapists doesn’t simply mean finding ways to get customers to come and visit you for one to one sessions. It also involves finding ways to build a bigger income by helping clients when you are not around.

Revenue Streams for Therapists

Why is creating different revenue streams so important for your business?  Simply put it insulates from the ebbs and flows of a typical therapy business and allows you to build areas of income that are not just reliant on clients in your local vicinity. Remember as a therapist you can only see so many clients in a day.  Once you have hit your limit (whatever that may be) then your income trajectory comes to a grinding halt.

Plus I never advocate that a therapist kills themselves by seeing so many clients that they are either going to exhaust themselves or get fed up. The whole point of working for yourself was so that you got rid of the all the negative aspects of working for a company. When your job is no longer enjoyable because you are flogging yourself to death to earn as much as you can you may as well go back to the corporate world with sick pay and holidays.

Hypnotherapist Salary

I often see people ask “what does a hypnotherapist earn?” in order to see whether it is a career that might be worth considering. The answer is not straightforward because marketing for therapists makes all the difference especially if it is done smartly! An average hypnotherapist may earn a comfortable wage but a clever hypnotherapist with many passive income streams could be doing extremely well indeed.

I have created a list of twenty things that you can start to think about for your business to elevate your income. You don’t need to do them all at once. Pick on one area, do it well before moving on to the next. Start to create layers and complexity to your business so that you never have to worry about taking time off. You can download the list by following the link.

20 passive income streams for therapists hypnotherapists marketing

Advantages of Expanding Your Core Hypnosis Business

The advantages of creating a passive income are huge. Who wouldn’t want a bigger income? Yet there are many more benefits to consider. For example, if can earn more money online then you can spend considerably more time mastering something else or just enjoying your hobbies. Your family and friends will also thank you because instead of spending hours and hours working you now have free time to spend with them. Best of all you can start to pick and choose the clients that you really want to see instead of feeling obligated to see everyone because of the money. There is nothing better than having the financial freedom to call the shots.

Marketing for therapists involves working smarter but never harder! Want help to grow your business? Head on over to our online store where I have courses to help you with everything from getting more from your website to therapy blogging and pay per click advertising.

Update

I wrote this post in November 2019 only three months before the Coronavirus crisis. Talk about timing! My words were highly relevant before this event but following the virus, they make even more sense. If therapists had been working on passive income products they would have had a much easier time during the pandemic that those that didn’t. Remember to make your income diverse and stop relying on one source of revenue.