88: 3 Ways to Make Your First $1000 as a Nature-Based Therapist
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[00:00:00] Welcome to Therapy in the Great Outdoors, the podcast where we explore the business and practice of nature based pediatric therapy of all kinds. If you're an outdoor loving pediatric practitioner in the fields of occupational, physical, or speech therapy, social work, or mental health, this podcast will help you start and grow a successful nature based practice or program.
I am the ever honest, always a hundred percent real. You'll hear it all on this podcast. Dr. Laura Park Figueroa. I'm a pediatric OT with over 20 years of experience and I run a thriving nature based practice with profitable locations in two different states and multi six figures in revenue. I also host the free online community at therapyinthegreatoutdoors.
com to help you pursue your nature based therapy dreams too. Are you ready to take action on those dreams? Let's jump [00:01:00] in.
Hello friends this week, we're going to talk about three ways to make your first thousand dollars as a nature-based pediatric therapist. I love this topic of how to actually be successful and profitable as a nature-based therapy list. So I am going to probably be doing more episodes over the coming months about business-y related topics, because that is the tagline of this podcast is the business and practice of nature-based pediatric therapy, because I love to talk about both topics and. I focus on business topics during this time of year, because I think with the start of a new year coming up, we're in quarter four.
If you're not running a business, Q4 is how we say it in the business world of the fourth quarter of the year for business. So Q4 is here. And I think a lot of us, if we want to get started doing something that new year is coming up very quickly, [00:02:00] it's going to be here in three months and. So I think if you want to get started now is a good time to start thinking about these things and to be ready to go in the new year. Every January, I opened enrollment for the business hive, which is my group business coaching program for nature-based therapy of all kinds.
So. You do not have to be running a pediatric practice to be in that program that I run. We have had a consultant in the group. We have had speech therapists and other people who are not OTs in the group. So you don't have to be a pediatric therapist, but my purpose in. Kind of marketing it to nature-based people is because there is kind of a shared understanding of the complexity and the nature of this work to use a word that has many meanings nature of nature-based therapy.
So. It is a [00:03:00] wonderful like-minded community of people. And I would really encourage you to check it out if you are. Running a nature based business or a nature related business, maybe as a therapist. And you're interested in having a community and ongoing coaching to support you, to help you to automate systems as much as possible in your business so that you free up your time as the business grows.
I want to help you guys get started from start to finish like two fully functioning business with all your systems in place and giving you good, meaningful income. Which is where I'm at right now. I do feel like it took me, I'd say it took me at least five years to get where I was making meaningful income. And I am going on year 10 now, and I am working very part-time and my business and paying myself a good salary.
So it feels really, really great to do that. And I love, love, love, love, love. It's my favorite thing to do to [00:04:00] help other therapists do the same. So this episode is going to be about. How you can get started making money. So I have some thoughts about different ways that you might structure things in order to make your first thousand dollars as a nature-based therapist.
So I want to simplify this for you so that you can do it more effectively and efficiently than me. I want you to make meaningful income. And the biggest, the biggest piece of advice that I can give you. When you are getting started is to pick one thing. And do it really well. So that means that as a therapist, you are going to have to choose the one thing that you want to do really well.
This means that you can't do. Therapy visits at home therapy visits at the park enrichment programs, baby and parent [00:05:00] groups. Like all of these different things like parent coaching, all these different things. That you might want to do eventually in your practice. My best advice to you when you are getting started is to pick one thing and do it very well. And it's hard to do that.
It's really hard to do that, but that is, that is truly the key to success. So. The way you can decide this is too. Test the market a little bit, go in some Facebook groups for parents in your community and see what's available. Poke around online, do some Google searching and find out what is available in your area. And. Really think critically about what you find.
And if that means that the one thing that you are interested in doing may be able to be successful in your market. So. First do that decide the one thing that you want to do? And make sure you do it well. So once you've decided that you want to reverse engineer your pricing. How much do you [00:06:00] need to sell to hit your first $1,000? So couple of ideas here. So the first one is you could sell a low cost offer to a lot of people. For example, you could do enrichment groups outdoors with children.
You could charge $25 a session. And have four kids enroll. And do 10 sessions. To get your thousand dollars in revenue.
That is one way to offer a service and get your first thousand dollars in revenue.
The second possibility. There's multiple. I probably should've said this before. I started. There are multiple possibilities. What I am sharing with you here are just ideas that came to mind. When I formulated notes for this episode to share with you. There are infinite numbers of ideas for ways to offer nature-based therapy for kids.
And there are also infinite ways to structure your services. So these are just some ideas to get your. [00:07:00] Your wheels turning in your brain, thinking about this. So the second thing I had written down was to sell a multi month package of therapies visits. So you could do 10 visits at a hundred dollars a visit, which I hope is the absolute minimum. If you are only charging a hundred dollars for a therapy visit. I hope that you live in a very low cost of living area because therapies should cost. A good amount of money.
You have a doctorate degree or a master's degree. You have done years of training to do the work you do, and I want you to value your services. So for this example, I'm using a hundred dollars because it's easy math. For it to get to a thousand. But you only need one client. In this example, because if you sell a 10 session package and each visit costs a hundred dollars, you've made your first thousand dollars.
So that is another way to think about it. So you could sell a higher cost offer, right? And get that [00:08:00] one client, and then you've made a thousand dollars with that one client over the 10 weeks that you are servicing them.
All right. The third idea was that you could consider going on call for a high, monthly retainer fee. So I know this isn't going to appeal to many of you, but I want you to think outside the box about what you can really do to solve parents problems. And if you're listening to this and you're not a pediatric therapist to solve your ideal client's problems. So having a therapist on call when you need them is worth a lot of money.
And there are people out there who will pay for it. You might only need one month and one client. To make a thousand dollars this way, depending on where you live. So it may not appeal to you, but I want to expand your thinking about the ways to offer different types of services in your nature-based practice. So I want to share with you that there is a another [00:09:00] episode coming and I'm going to be talking about pricing.
Your services is always a very, very popular topic. And people always want to know how you should price your services. And I have a lot of thoughts about it, and you might be surprised to know that I'm not going to say. Come out with your prices as high as possibly can be, because I don't think that's why it's actually when you're first starting.
So I'll give you some tips on that in an upcoming episode might be the next one. I will be opening enrollment for the business hive, which is my six month group coaching business program for nature-based therapy list in January.
So you should get on the waitlist right now, so that you are notified. When I open the enrollment for that program, you can go to therapy and the great outdoors.com backslash hive. And get on the waitlist there. All right, I'll see you guys next week. Bye.
Wait a second. Don't go yet. Do you want [00:10:00] 120 ways that you can take your pediatric therapy work outdoors into nature? I wrote the free, big, huge list of nature based therapy activities just for you. The Big Huge List will give you quick ideas for nature based sessions. In the Big Huge List, there are activities for gross motor, fine motor, visual perceptual, executive function, balance, group collaboration, and team building, social, emotional, and self regulation skills, as well as speech and language, and a whole section just for swing activities.
So go on and get your free Big Huge List so you can get started taking kids outdoors or have some new ideas if you've been doing this a while. You can download your free copy at therapyinthegreatoutdoors. com slash list. So until next time, get outside, connect, reflect, and enjoy therapy in the great outdoors.
