As therapists how can we diversify our practice?

How do we get more bookings - this is a question that preoccupies many of us. How will we fill our appointment slots, how many clients do we need per month to achieve our goals, what do we do when cancellations threaten our bottom line? One way we can tackle this is to diversify. 

As therapists it is vital that we focus our time and energy becoming a master of our craft. An important point to make here is that this means staying with our subject matter and learning it in greater depth so that we are confident sharing that knowledge with our clients. We aren’t encouraging therapists to feel they need to add as many different strings to their bow as quickly as possible. This will often overwhelm and inhibit a therapists confidence. 

So what do we mean when we encourage you to diversify your business? Diversifying your business can mean appealing to new target markets or offering new products or services. The benefits are that you increase revenue, spread risk and bolster your business. The key to unlocking the potential for your business lies in choosing ways to diversify that make sense and add value for you and your clients to ensure demand. 

There are a number of ways as therapists that we can diversify our business to make our work more effective and efficient. Here we share our three day favourite ways:

An easy way to approach this is to think about what you find is your bread and butter in your clinic. Do you find you are always working with rounded and protracted shoulders? Once you’ve identified this think of new markets that have similar pain points. For example desk workers and nursing mothers alike suffer rounded shoulders, there are two markets that you could approach and offer real relief to. Or are you located in an area or work within an industry that gives you access to a niche that could truly benefit from your expertise.

Related diversification means looking for products and services that fit within the same vein as your current offering. A really straightforward example of this type of transition that we see is the addition of luxury treatments to your offering. But taking this idea further perhaps if you are offering aromatherapy massage then you could blend some prescriptive products for clients to take away with them. Alternatively if you offer sports massage perhaps you could add in cupping treatments to really unlock tension from the fascia. Or blend in some holistic treatments to your sports and remedial work - imagine how your clients will feel incorporating hot and cold stone therapy into your work adding the benefits that holistic treatments can bring and vice versa. Are you working holistically and finding clients want you to work a little deeper and tackle the underlying tension.

Another great way to diversify your practice is adding specialities that enable you to see a client through more aspects of their treatment or rehabilitation. This often comes through finding a niche market in a direction that really interests you and your target market. This is a win-win option as not only can you find fulfilment in your work following your interests and building your expertise around these it is also beneficial for your clients who can get more in-depth treatments catered to their needs. From a marketing perspective too you will upsell more to your existing clients if you can provide services throughout their journey and retain clients rather than offering a more limited breadth of service and needing to continually invest time in gaining brand new business.

We love the transformations in this community and how therapists are turning side hustles into thriving businesses diversifying into some of the most dynamic treatments in the industry today. 

The successes in diversification we have seen are all borne out of therapists asking the question how can I better serve my clients. And how exciting to learn something new along the way!