How to Change Your Life as a Business Owner with Dr. Matt Shiver, PT
Meet Matt Shiver, the visionary behind the Coaches Growth Accelerator, a dynamic health coaching program dedicated to empowering aspiring coaches with the essential skills needed to excel in their entrepreneurial endeavors.
As a therapist and online coach himself, Matt's personal journey has deeply influenced the inception of his company, which specializes in guiding health professionals to successfully launch and scale their own online health coaching businesses.Â
What we're covering today:
Tell us a little bit about you, your story, your lore and what you're doing now.
Matt: I'm a physical therapist by trade. I actually graduated from Duke PT's program in 2019. As I was graduating, I knew I wanted to do something outside the box. While I was in PT school, I was already coaching online, doing strength and conditioning for CrossFitters, weightlifters, and powerlifters, helping people get jacked and strong. When it came time to graduate, I realized that a traditional 9-to-5 clinic job wasn't for me. Instead, I continued pursuing more of the online stuff because I really enjoyed coaching people online. I could still use a lot of the skill sets and problem-solving abilities that I acquired in PT school in the online realm.
After graduating in 2019, I worked at a cash-based practice as a contractor, also assisting with their marketing efforts while building an online health coaching business. I did that from 2019 through 2021. Especially in 2020 during the pandemic, the online space really took off. Around 2020, about a year or so out of PT school, I fully committed to the online stuff. I was running some Facebook ads for the PT clinic, but I wasn't treating anymore. I took that leap and have continued in that direction.
Since 2021/2022, my role has evolved more into business coaching and consulting, where I help PTs, chiropractors, strength and conditioning experts, health coaches, and even some life coaches create online offers, learn how to market them, and grow their businesses. I love business, systems, and numbers. That's why I liked PT and exercise programming, because it was all about numbers - percentages, reps, targets. I didn't realize how much I loved numbers until I started running a business and saw all the KPIs to track. I'm just a nerd who enjoys teaching other people nerdy things too.
Morgan: Oh my gosh, no, that's awesome! I'm right there with you. I definitely know that data analysis through the business is a little bit newer to me within the past couple of years. But it's so cool because it's all this objective information that you can analyze and truly see. I guess clinical outcome measures whether what you're doing is working in the business. It's not so much just praying and hoping that things keep working, but through the numbers, you can really grow the business.
Matt: Yeah, sometimes you might not know exactly what's wrong, but at least you can use our favorite scientific method, right? So, you know, my hypothesis is that this is why I'm not growing, and then you can test it, which we do in PT too. It's crazy how many - we were talking offline before this - how much PT, even strength and conditioning, going to the gym, and all that relates so much to growing a business. Yeah, it's just fun.
Morgan: I know. I feel that's the biggest thing about this whole journey and pathway, transitioning from I guess typical staff PT to learning how to work for yourself. It's obviously really hard, but it's so much fun to carve your own path and everything.
How can business emulate the world of exercise, fitness, and health?
Matt: Yeah, just such a good analogy, right? So, first off, consistency matters over everything. When we talk about fitness or someone getting out of pain and sticking to a routine, it's all about activity modification and staying consistent. So much of that applies to business too. When you start a business and have no clients, you might think, "I'm going to start posting on social media," but it might take three to six months before you start seeing any traction.
This is similar to exercise, where sometimes newbies see gains, but for the most part, it takes a long time to see significant changes. For example, in the strength sports realm where I coach Olympic weightlifting, such as snatching and cleaning, we would train for six months just to add a couple of kilos (2.2 pounds) to a lift. Sometimes these are long sessions, lasting 60 to 90 minutes, with the hope that in three to six months, I can achieve my goal. This relates to business because there are ups and downs, just like weight loss or therapy. Regardless of these fluctuations, the most important thing you can do is stay consistent, keep showing up, and keep putting yourself out there. It's about taking those actions consistently over decades to see substantial changes.
Morgan: I was telling you before, I really wanted to put out some content around the idea of business being very much like exercise, training, and any kind of fitness goal. So, I'm really happy that we're talking about this. But I think one of the biggest things that I try to remind myself of and remind my clients of when it comes to growing your business is that we worry a lot about the outcomes and the results. We worry a lot about getting the clients, losing the weight, or adding weight to the barbell. You know, we worry a lot about that end outcome goal. I think that one of the things that's really helped me, just mentally health-wise across all these domains, is worrying less about the outcome and using that as a North Star to keep me pointed in the right direction, help me stay on track, and mold the things that I'm doing so that they're in line with the intention towards that end goal. But I'm not measuring my success on the end goal anymore. It's a directional point; it's not the be-all and end-all.
Instead, what I've been trying to focus a lot more on with fitness and business stuff, and what I encourage people to do, is worry more about the progress and about your input. I've worked really hard this year to design my goals for the year based on my own input rather than the output because I will succeed because I know I will do the work, I will put in the time and effort that I need to reach the input goals, to reach the progress goals of just daily, weekly, monthly habits of things where it's just my own action is a check mark. I've completed the goal if I put in the actual effort.
So, the same thing with training. I know for me I want to deadlift 400 pounds, only 65 pounds shy, so I'm on my way. But instead of focusing so much on that, I know what I can do is practice deadlifting at least once a week. Over time, that consistency is just going to build up. So eventually, I'll get there. But the focus is just on what can I do today, what can I do this week that will get me one step further.
And the same thing with business, you know, what do you have the power to control and take action on because as long as it's related to what the end goal is, that's going to help you get there.
Matt: I love that because we're already in Q2 and my team is going to set Q2 goals. I already know what I'm doing; the process of our inputs feels so dialed in right now. I'm sure we can set goals about how many clients we sign, how much money we make. That's great, but I can't control that. What we can control is the actions we're taking. If you're new here and you're starting a business, some simple steps you can take are: posting one piece of content at least five days a week and maybe hosting a live Master Class or creating a new lead magnet once a month to provide value.
For the longest time, that was always what I did: posting at least five times a week and doing one lead magnet or live event. That's a great place to get started. As you build more systems around it, you can start to add more. You need to build a process, build a routine, and follow love the process.
In fitness, CrossFit, weightlifting, and even PT, the patients and clients that get the best results just love doing the thing. If you hated deadlifts, you probably wouldn't reach that goal. If you hate your home exercise plan, you're probably not going to do it, and then your pain is going to be persistent or come back in a couple of months. The same thing goes with business. If you hate creating content, which many people do. Why are you doing this? And they'll say, "Oh, because I want to make money and leave this job and blah, blah, blah." So, you're only doing this for the outcome. You don't actually like it. If you don't like marketing and sales, then you probably shouldn't be an entrepreneur or a business owner, and that's okay. But don't just do it for the money because you're not going to be happy.
Morgan: I couldn't have said it better myself because that's what I always talk about. I was talking to my last guest about this too. I just feel there's something internal, I know for me, where I want to live and breathe this business stuff, you know, whether it's working with the handful of patients that I do because I enjoy it or just helping other healthcare providers learn how to start businesses. I could talk about that all day. I love it, you know.
And then also marketing. We were talking about just the process of marketing is fun. That's what I love waking up every day and being like, I can't wait to just go do stuff that I like. But you were saying, if you're just doing it to get out of the job that you have, but you don't want to really do any of the work to get the end result, you're not going to be successful. It's going to make it really hard to gain any momentum if you're not interested in putting any of the beginner effort in, yeah.
Matt: You're also going to be looking for those quick wins. You'll be looking for fad diets, right? I'm looking for this quick fix, and business is a very long-term game. If you market in a short-term way, get rich/fit quick, or do this fast, it can really hurt. It can really hurt your brand and reputation. So yeah, you just got to like it. There's no quick fixes in anything in life, business, fitness. There's not, you know what I mean? So it is just falling in love with the process and the inputs and staying consistent with them long enough to see the results that you are really excited about.
Morgan: Especially if you are new to this or haven't started a business yet, there's a lot that's going to happen as you're starting a business. There's a lot that you have to do, and I think the other piece that I want to put out there, and see what you think about this, Matt. I think we kind of touched on it a little bit already, is emphasizing that you don't have to do all of it right now. You don't have to try to learn marketing all today. It's going to be a process, and it's going to take time.
For example, if you want to run a marathon and you've never run a day in your life, you have to learn how to run a mile first before you can run 26 of them. So, you know, you will have to learn how to make a post on Instagram before you can post five times a week. And yes, there are ideal, I guess, frequencies that we want to be doing our marketing, but you know, if you can't commit to that right now this week, that's okay. Pick something that you can stick to on the same frequency on the same regular basis, you know, reach that first milestone and learn how to run your first mile, then you move on to mile number two from there. And that's also another way that I approach it too.
Matt: Yeah, it's kind of like drink your water first, cool. Eating good quality foods, great. Now we can get into calories, and if you're tracking macros and stuff. You don't just start full on. I mean, I never did just. Let's get to that point where it makes sense to track those things too. It's all stepwise.
Morgan: Exactly, with just healthy habits. If you have zero health healthy habits, then you're trying to do: 100 ounces of water a day, working out once a day, walking 10,000 steps a day, you said the macro thing, making sure you're sleeping eight to nine hours a night, meditating, journaling, reading, just all these things. All of a sudden, it's a lot, it's overwhelming, and it makes it really hard to stick to. So, the same thing when you're starting your business or implementing a new marketing strategy, just simple things and one thing at a time.
I think, I'm four and a half years into working for myself, and Matt, is next year your 10-year anniversary of working for yourself?
Matt: I started my coaching business in 2015, which was before PT school. I was still in PT school during that time. In total, I've had an LLC and have been supporting clients for 10 years. That's cool. Thanks for pointing that out. I didn't realize that. I feel old.
Morgan: Yeah, you got it! I bring that up because everybody who is reading this and you're just getting started, or even if you are four or 10 years into it, you guys know it's just a learning process. It takes a lot of time. You were saying, Matt, there's no quick fixes, and if you're going to do this and start a business, lock in because you could be here for a while.
Matt: Yeah, for sure. It reminded me that I made a post recently. It took me five years before I reached my first $10,000 month. Now, knowing what I know, I could do it a lot faster. However, I had to go through all that time to learn and understand concepts. I've definitely served and worked with plenty of people who've done that in six to 12 months. I'm actually really glad and grateful that it did take me so long because I have a greater appreciation for it. I can see it in a different light. If my whole goal from day one was to make $10,000 a month and I didn't hit it in a year or two, I probably would have quit. At the time when I started it before school, I was just happy to do it, happy to pay the rent and some bills, which was super cool while I was in PT school. I was making money in PT school, but I didn't have the goal while I was in PT school or even after to make 10K a month automatically. I didn't expect that.
I think it can be really deceptive in marketing too. We're business coaches, I know I haven't been the best at setting expectations in marketing. Most business coaches share their best client wins, but that's only 10-20% of the population they work with. I think that in the online space in general, marketers make it seem easy, but it's not easy. The steps are simple, but the quality of how to actually do them well, that's where the five to 10 years of experience comes in. How do I know what a good post is? Well, you have to make a bunch of them, and a lot of them are going to bomb. Those are the ones that you're going to learn from. How did I know it's a good rep on a deadlift or not? Well, you probably deadlifted thousands of reps, and when you started, the first year or two, they probably were not good. You might have gotten hurt, maybe not, but you were probably just picking something off the ground. After a couple of years, you're like, "Oh yeah, now I get how to brace, oh, I get those cues now." But if you told someone to pick up a barbell, "Hey, flat back, do this, do this, do this," they're going to look at you like you're crazy. They're just going to pick it up. That's pretty much what somebody needs when they start, and then later you can say, "Okay, now try this."
Morgan: That's so funny because it just reminds me of specifically me. I didn't even learn to use my lats in the deadlift until probably two years ago, just not at all. I was like, "Oh, this is way easier if I use my muscles."
But like you said you have to start somewhere, and I think that kind of leads us into the next piece which I told you I wanted to talk to you about is just taking initiative and taking action and being proactive about what you're wanting to do. This is probably the reason I'm one of Matt's biggest fans because I love his marketing strategy and his approach to it. It's so proactive. You're always out there, at least from what I can see online, putting yourself out there and offering really helpful information. Then, on the back end, from what I've seen you describe, you're actively reaching out to people to talk to them, to help them, to offer your services every single day.
What are your thoughts on approaching marketing for the people out there who feel they're in a place where they're stuck and they aren't sure how to start marketing for themselves?
Matt: The old strategy is just "post and pray", right? "I'm posting five times a week. I'm doing this master class, getting people, etc." But that's step one. If you have a small following and a small audience (99% of us do), especially PTs tend to use big jargon and stuff when we're marketing. We don't have massive followings. If that's the case, then you have to be more interactive with the marketing that you do.
I'll just give an example before we get to the content. For me, when I used to host master classes a little more regularly. Right now we'll do them probably once a quarter, maybe twice a quarter. But I used to host them a lot more, and the only way that I could get people to show up was not from posting because I had a small following. I would sit on my phone and I would just go down the list and I would just send voice emails, "Hey, what's going on? I'm hosting this event. I would love for you to come because of X, Y, and Z." Next person, "Hey, I'm doing this thing." I would just spend hours trying to get enough yeses. If someone didn't respond to the first message, I'd come back the next day, "Hey, just want to swing back around. Did you get the chance to listen to that message?"
I would send so many invites because I knew, and this applies too if you're a PT owner, PT practice owner, and you want to go do workshops in gyms, it applies in so many ways. But I knew that if the industry standard for webinars and stuff is typically about 30 to 40% of the people that say yes will come. So, if I need 20 people to come, I need 60 to 75 yeses. So, I would just sit and I would rip and I would keep going. That was the only way that I could get enough people to come to an event that I was excited to host.
That's just an example of just being gritty: "All right, I don't have an audience yet. What do I need to do to get people to show up so I can provide them value?" What does that do? Yeah, sure, maybe 5-10% of those people will want to work with me, but you know, the rest of them will be, "Wow, that was super helpful. Thanks, Matt. I'm going to go tell my friends about it." It just helps you build in the beginning when you don't have anything.
But outside of the webinar master class experience, just the same thing applies to social media. If you guys have followed me on social media, you've gotten a message from me, right? Everybody who's in our space gets a message. It's just a welcome message, and our goal is just anybody that comes in, how can I connect with them and how can I help them? That's the mindset you have to go in because I know a lot of people go into it, any follower they get or any lead they get, "How can I make a sale?" That's the same mindset that we talked about earlier of just being exhausted and burnt out and only doing it for the outcome, not actually enjoying the process. If you do that, the amount of people that actually want to work with you today is, again, less than probably 5%. It's 1 to 3% is typical. Okay, so if you're sending a hundred welcome messages, you might book five calls. Let's just say, maybe it depends on the quality, but let's just say five. But what about the other 95? How can I help them? Can I send them a free YouTube video? Can I connect them with my friend Morgan who helps brick and mortar PTs? How can I be of service to this person?
That's how I really think of our "sales process". When we find out they have a problem, we'll invite them to a free strategy call. Can we provide them value and show them, "Here are the steps you need to take to get this result?" At the end, we can help you with that or you can do it on your own. You know, but how can I provide so much clarity and value to where people feel empowered by your sales process and not sleazy, slimy feeling, right?
So, that's the goal, and we're still kind of talking sales, not necessarily getting into marketing yet. But I always actually start with sales first. So, you know, what's your offer? What's your sales process, which we kind of just discovered there of being scrappy, messaging people, helping them, and a certain percentage of them are going to want support.
When it comes to marketing, there are many things you can do. But I mean, first is just how much free value can you provide to your immediate networking community? You just pick one platform and try to build up to posting five times a week. If you can do one a week, cool. Just build up to that. And then, once you're doing that consistently, honestly, what we found works really well is just boosting some of our top-performing posts as the most beginner-level strategy because it'll get you new followers every day, and you can reach out, see how can I help you today? Yeah, so that was a long, long-winded one. I think I don't know if I answered your question or not, but I just got excited and went off.
Morgan: No, I love it, and I love hearing about the really specific strategies that you're incorporating. It's just so good to hear from another expert in this field about the manual effort that you have to put in at the beginning. Highlighting the piece of there's no easy way. You're going to have to do hard work, manual work that takes time when you're first getting started. With the method that you're describing. It reminds me a lot of this mini-course that I have called The 100 Challenge. It's part of my bigger program, but it's an event, a mini-course, and a thing that I made up, in 2021, to give structure to everything that you're talking about. Where you've started your practice/business where you see clients. How do you get them? You go out and find them. That's how you get them at first.
The way that the 100 Challenge works is you essentially create a list of 100 names and their contact information. So, whether you have personal contacts or, as you said, your followers online, make a list of everybody, and then you reach out to everybody. The more reps that you do, and I guess it's kind of related to exercise again too, the less scary it is to reach out to people and own the fact that you operate a business. That's another big fear that people have to get over. They'll just sit and wait and hope that somebody calls them and wants to see them for therapy or whatever it is. But if nobody knows that you exist, nobody's going to call you. So, we just have our list of 100 reps that we're going to do. We do our 100 outreach, and successfully completing the 100 Challenge means that you attempted to contact 100 people. That's it. That's all you do.
Matt: Now when you reached out to them for PT practice, I'm curious, what does that look like? Were you offering a "Hey, I'd love to do a free session" or was it just reaching out and telling them that you started a business?
Morgan: So typically, I would say it's the first initial thing for most people of "Oh my God, I have a business, I have to tell people about," and just that fear of getting past that. So it's 100 times reaching out to whether it's personal contacts, friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, your dog walking group, just anybody that you know, and saying, "Hello, I'm Morgan Meese. I'm a physical therapist, and I am so excited that I just started my own practice where I work with athletes and help them work out without any pain." I see people one-on-one in my garage gym, and that's how it works, just owning all of it. And then also reaching out to other providers.
So I have found that to be just awesome, especially in terms of having emotional support through the process, reaching out to other PTs that are doing their own thing, other OTs, speech therapists, mental health therapists, physicians, functional medicine providers, any other health provider that also accepts direct payment from their clients are great people to reach out to. Especially if you know they are the business owner themselves. It just creates this amazing network of people who understand what you're going through. So that's kind of how it starts. Then from there, of course, as we know, once you become a little bit more comfortable talking about what you do, how it works, and what the offer specifically is to help people, you can always make more calls to action that way.
Matt: Cool! I love that. I love the baby step progression. I think that's so good.
Morgan: And it’s amazing what can happen, when you just put in this little effort of putting in just reps day after day after day. Because whether it's Matt's approach or this 100 Challenge approach. I know people who have done this challenge, which is as simple as it sounds. Somebody who did it last summer, she reached out to 100 people and got 17 clients for her practice.
Matt: That's huge, that's life-changing right there! 17 clients is a lot.
Morgan: It's just so cool to think about how all this input that we do and enough reps, the statistics are in your favor that it's going to work out. You just have to start.
Can you tell us a little bit more about how you walk people through the process of taking people from those in-person healthcare positions to offering health services online? What their offers look like?
Matt: I'll just start off by saying this is still definitely a gray area. A lot of it does come down to risk tolerance, right? Ultimately, it's your life, it's your decision. What do I really want to do with my time? I think that's the most important thing for me. I really wanted to go online, and I don't typically encourage people to practice telehealth. If they do want to do telehealth, that's great, but you do have to document and treat within your state. I'm not sure how the compact works with telehealth, so that's one way to go. If you go into telehealth, you're definitely more in the black and white zone. It's clear what you can and cannot do.
The other areas involve more health coaching or performance training. For me, I was always a training and conditioning coach before I was a physical therapist, so I was already doing all that. I'm practicing under a CSCS.
The other avenue is doing more performance training that could be more around weight loss or strength and conditioning. Those are probably the two main realms or some mindset work. It could be that. But typically health coaching online involves giving somebody a plan and holding them accountable to that plan. Where it gets gray is if you're treating for pain online, and I know there are some people that do it, and that's up to you. I don't know if I would do that. It's definitely gray, more on the red side.
And if you do treat pain, there are certain things you can do... I'm going to just drop her name because she's the person I go to for all this. I'm not an expert in this. I'm an expert in marketing and sales, so that's what I do. We do have somebody, her name is Barbara from Wellness Law, and she helps people protect their license. Every PT, chiropractor, or health professional we work with, we always send them over there, and she's able to help them create agreements and all that stuff. She's hosted a master class for us, too. So, by no means am I the expert when it comes to that, but I will share some of the stuff that she shared with me.
So, number one is if you are going to be doing a PT practice and you want to serve people online, if it's not telehealth, they actually technically want to have two separate LLCs. The reason for that is like, you know how you're not supposed to mix business and personal finances. IRS will come after you, and it's a corporate fail. Same thing happens here, right? If you're offering online services and it's under a PT business, technically there's more room for an attorney or if anything ever happened to come through that and be like "Well, it's the same business. So how do we know what it is?"
So if you want to try to cross all your Ts and dot all your Is, typically if someone comes in, we will have them separate their business out and have LLC1 and LLC2. If they're already an existing provider. Again, that's up to you. It's jumping through a lot of hoops, I know, but if you want to be more black and white and not in the gray zone, I'm always for taking the extra steps.
That's kind of logistics number one is just making sure your entities are separate, and when you're providing the online coaching service, you just need to be very clear that this is not telehealth, this is not physical therapy. I'm not providing that. I'm providing strength and conditioning, general strength and conditioning advice to help you improve, get stronger and stuff.
That's important because the biggest area where you cross into the gray zone is where if you're offering somebody an individualized assessment/evaluation and you find an impairment in that assessment or evaluation and you prescribe exercise, which is what we do as physical therapists to solve that specific ailment impairment. It's really hard to say, is this PT or is it strength conditioning?
So typically, my other rule of thumb recommendation is to have a more generalized assessment process to where everyone goes through a very similar onboarding process. That way you're not doing things that you would do in PT like joint range of motion and manual muscle testing. You're definitely in the gray zone if you do that. So yeah, general.
I hope I didn't scare everybody away, but I also want to make sure everyone is aware of this. I've seen some people market virtual physical therapy or online physical therapy, and they're teaching the health coaching model, and that's red flags all over it. From me looking in and also from what I've heard from Barbara. Again, that's just one attorney. But if you're doing virtual therapy, you're treating pain, you're doing assessments, and you're calling it coaching, I don't recommend it. I just don't.
Some of the clients we help have pain, but they know that they're doing that, and that's on them. So we'll typically help people who want to improve weight loss, strength and conditioning, or mindset work who are PTs who want to do that. That seems to be a much better progression. And typically with that, you'd have a generalized assessment they would fill out, and you would create a plan for them. A general plan. It's not treating a specific injury or area, right? And then from there, there's weekly check-ins that are done via text message or email. Then a monthly, typically one-on-one call where you're on a call just asking how things are going, what can we update? I'll give them some new exercises that'll keep progressing them towards their general health goals. So that's typically how it's designed. It's much more virtual. It's not live Zoom calls, or meeting with people on a weekly basis. It's more exercise programming and progression. Is that the answer to your question?
Morgan: Yeah, absolutely! I think that'll be really helpful for everybody. That's my approach to things. I like that you brought up the two LLCs. I think for somebody who is in practice and very much wants to be 50/50 in person and online, it makes a lot of sense to separate things. With that. is being very clear about what you're offering. What I always tell people is, if you're going to be offering Physical Therapy Services and Wellness Services, which could be anything that's not Physical Therapy, whether it's in person or online, you should write out very clear and firm definitions of what each service encompasses. Just place it in a new Google doc, call it policies and procedures, and write your definitions in there.
This way, you have it written down to refer to in the future whenever you come across a potential client interested in working with you. If they tell you what they have going on and you aren't sure which category they fall into, you can refer to your previously written definitions with clear bulleted criteria. "Physical therapy is appropriate for XYZ, not for ABC." And the same for Wellness Services. This will help you make a decision on the person in front of you, and you can operate off of that same policy every time you work with somebody.
Sometimes people get tripped up because they keep all this information in their head and try to make decisions on the fly. They can't remember which side of the gray zone they're on, and they panic. But if you have very clear-cut definitions for everything and know what buckets to put people in and what buckets your offers go into, you should be fine. Like Matt said, definitely do your own due diligence and look into it yourself. Call Barbara!
Matt: She's great, she's awesome. I've given her so much business. Everyone asks me how, because that's the number one question I get all the time. I'm not the attorney, I'm not the expert in this. I do sales, marketing, offer creation, you know. Protecting your license is your responsibility. When you get to the point where you're starting to make money, I highly recommend getting all of your documents and your business audited by an attorney, especially if you're doing six figures. You don't want to mess that up, you don't want to lose that, you know what I mean? So just make the investment when you have cash.
When you're getting started, it's okay if you think you might be in the gray zone. You're still young and you're starting a business, get some cash under you. But once you are consistently doing 10 grand a month plus, get some real trained eyes in there and make that investment because it's just going to feel so much better. You're going to feel way more confident in your product and service when you're good. I know everything's fine, I just got to market, I just got to help more people versus "Am I doing this legally?" You just don't want to be answering that question because it'll show up in your marketing and sales because you're unconfident of how am I actually helping this person.
Morgan: Yeah, absolutely. I think it also speaks to the power of having a specific offer and knowing exactly how it works, who it's for, and the exact steps that go into it. This makes it much clearer, I think, both from a marketing and sales perspective, but also from the legal aspect. Having this thing that I know I can legally sell because this is what it is, and it's not as individualized or unpredictable as traditional physical therapy can be.
Matt: For sure, and then I'm curious. I have some general questions and one around hybrid, right? Because they want the hybrid model where they come in, they get the in-person treatment, and they transition into the online space. I'm not sure either. I honestly think that would be more like telehealth unless they totally transition and are just a wellness client. At that point, I imagine it would be good to have them sign another agreement saying, "I'm now transitioning into wellness. This is the service that I'm getting, and any other service provided before that is not part of this." Do you know what I mean? I know that's lots of crossing T’s and dotting I’s, but that was the only thought I had of how that would work.
Morgan: Yeah, I think I'm right with you. I have different consent waivers for wellness and Physical Therapy Services that say, "I understand that even though the person I'm seeing has these qualifications, I am receiving this specific service that includes these specific things, not Physical Therapy..." Just making sure that is signed and understood so that it's clear. The clearer everything is, the easier your life is going to be in many facets.
That's how I think I would go about it, just being very clear about the type of service that you're offering. Even if you're seeing somebody in person and they transition to online, if they are going across state boundaries, just understanding what service you are offering and if you do require licensure to do so. Having that and keeping yourself accountable to the laws that we know of.
I think some of our laws are still catching up to technology. Ee might see clarification on the legal aspects of things within the next decade, we might not, but I think that's causing some of the issue and the friction with therapists and Healthcare Providers going online. But all we can do is review the laws ourselves, call our Barbaras, and make our best decisions possible based on our clinical judgment.
Matt: Yeah, I think so. And then also, it comes back down to what do you want to do? I've seen a lot of people decide, "I'm not going to start an online thing," or "I'm not going to do this thing because I have X, Y, and Z." I get that if that's the goal, but I also always stress: What do you want to create in your life? If you want to create an online business and the only thing that's holding you back is this, I would still encourage you to go do it. Do it smart, but don't let that be the only reason that you don't get started.
I think there's also another area that there might be some confusion on. To be an online coach, you don't really need any certifications. So when someone comes in with a DPT background and doesn't have any other certifications, they can do that. But then if they were sued or anything would happen, would it go back toward their DPT license, or will they be sued personally? What does that look like? I don't think we have an answer for that either, you know.
Morgan: Yeah, not that I'm aware of, and at the same time. I also haven't heard of that happening to anybody where a client sues them in some capacity. It goes back to, from my understanding, there would need to be some kind of report to your state board for the lure, and the board would contact you and talk to you about, "Hey, Morgan, what are you doing? What's going on?" You know, and there would be more of a discussion and all of that stuff. I don't know. You don't need a certification to do online coaching. It's one of the unprotected terms. Anybody can call themselves a coach, anybody can be a fitness coach, anybody can be a health coach, anybody can use the term personal trainer. A certified personal trainer is a thing, but anybody can say they're a personal trainer. Which is both freeing but also kind of scary at the same time.
That was one ConEd thing that I did for the CSCS. They talked about this thing of it's easy to get into personal training, but it also opens things up to where anybody can call themselves a personal trainer because there are fewer qualifications to get there. With whatever kind of coaching that you're doing, if you do have a certification, I think the positive to it is that you will receive language as to what the scope of practice is and what the services typically consist of. With my Wellness coaching certification, the CSCS, the governing bodies have language for you about what's included in the scope of practice, which you can look to help create the definitions in your business. I'm just not sure if anything crazy enough has happened to where, the FSBPT has to get involved and figure things out. So hopefully, we don't ever see anything crazy happen.
Matt: No, I don't think so either. I think as long as two things: if anything were to happen, your first couple of clients that you're going to have, period, are going to be those 100 people that you messaged. So, they're going to be your friends, family, and your near peers. You're not going to get sued or reported by those people. The chances are going to increase when you have a seven-figure plus business. But that's why when you're getting started, you don't have to worry about all this. I hope it didn't scare you either. You know, by talking about this, I feel we kind of went down a rabbit hole. I hope we didn't scare you. That to do that because when you're getting started, you don't need all that stuff. But once you're making 10K, just... I hope that the note kind of finishes that on is just go get your stuff checked out, you know, go get your stuff checked out, and you're going to be fine.
Morgan: Yeah, you're just small potatoes right now. You know there are much bigger fish to fry. There's a whole lot of stuff that goes on in corporate healthcare that when you're a small potato, nobody's looking at you wondering what exactly you're doing. So, everything will be fine for me and everything is fine, don't worry.
Can you share with us a little bit more about what you have to offer? How do you work with people?
Matt: Yeah, absolutely. So, our core flagship offer is called the Coaches Growth Accelerator, and it's a health coaching program that teaches health coaches how to grow a business. We cover a lot of what I talked about earlier in the process - what's your offer, what's the price, who's it for, how do you sell it, and then how do you market it. We start with organic methods and then move on to paid ads and all that stuff too.
It's a six-month mentorship program that's a ton of fun. You'll have one-on-one support from a coach that you'll be paired with, and you'll be part of an awesome community. I love what I do; it's so fun. My team and I have been building the team and adding some really rockstar players in the past couple of months. It's fun to market and create content for something that I'm really proud of. It's fun.
Morgan: That's awesome. For everyone reading this, this could be you. You could get started on your business and also get to do and make things that you're proud of, that you enjoy, and live your life the way that you want to live it. So just something to think about.
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