The Profitable Myofunctional Therapist™ - Start Your Online Business; Dental Hygienist; Make Money From Home

48 I How to Start Your Myofunctional Therapy Business Without Blowing Your Budget

• Carmen Ball - Ditch Hygiene Academy™ Creator; Bored Dental Hygienist Career Pivot Coach

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Are you overthinking the tech, the tools, or the price tag of starting your myofunctional therapy business? 

In this episode, I walk you through exactly what you need—and what you absolutely don’t—to get your online myofunctional therapy business off the ground without draining your bank account. 

If you’re ready to start simple, avoid unnecessary expenses, and confidently take action toward your first (or next!) paying client, this one’s for you. 

Grab your coffee and your courage - and let’s dive in! 

Xo, 

Carmen

Join The Profitable Myofunctional Therapist™ Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1295968461846242

Want to work less, earn more, have total control of your calendar, and work from anywhere? Book an information call today: myofunctionaltherapytrainingacademy.com/discovery-call/

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SPEAKER_00:

Friend, you are absolutely going to love today's episode because you're going to learn just how easy and simply you can get your myofunctional therapy business off the ground. So many of you are nervous about the tech, and I'm gonna show you exactly what you need to start your business without having to visit the banker. If you've finished your myofunctional therapy training and feel stuck on how to start, grow, or simplify your business, welcome my friend. I'm Carmen, a dental hygienist who once sat right where you are. Trained, motivated, but totally unsure how to turn that training into a real profitable business. If you're ready to attract consistent clients, create predictable income, and simplify your business, grab your coffee and your courage, my friend. Let's make your myobusiness make sense and a whole lot of dollars. Well, hello, friend, and welcome back to the podcast. In this episode, I am going to be helping you get rid of your investment scaries or your tech scaries, whatever it is when it comes to starting your myofunctional therapy business. Now, the reason that I know you need this episode is really for a couple of reasons. Um, number one, many students that invest in my programs, they get to some point and they're like, hey, what is this gonna cost me when I'm ready to get things set up? Um, remember, I help you go from, you know, basically A to Z the fastest. So you're thinking right away, like, oh, how much am I gonna need to get my business started? So that's one of the reasons. And then also um inside the Profitable Myofunctional Therapist Facebook community, several of those members, you know, have messaged saying, I don't even know what kind of stuff that I need to have to start my business. So that's why I knew that we needed this. So when I was just starting out, I like to say ignorance is bliss, and that bless my little heart, ignorance was bliss. That that motto, that mantra was in full swing. Um, and I think really because I wanted out of dental hygiene so bad that I was just rolling with it. Okay, I put the capital U in ugly and perfect action, which is the core action that I teach in any of my programs. So I was just rolling. Okay. Well, the good news is you do not have to blow your budget to start your myofunctional therapy business. So we are going to just talk about how you can start it simply so you can done and dust, baby, um, so that you can just get rolling. Okay, so let me start by telling you the biggest mistake that I made. And it wasn't really at the beginning, it was after I started making money. I I spent money on fancy equipment that I didn't need. And the funny thing is, is the pendulum has now swung the other way. I'm back to simplicity. I like to just come in here, hop on, record, or if I'm seeing clients, I just, you know, turn my lights on and I'm good to go. So so I kind of did that. Oh, I'm making a lot of money. I should buy all the things, and now I have all the things laying around and I mostly don't even use them. So don't make that mistake. Okay, that's why you're listening to this right now. Let's talk about the bare minimum. My initial setup um was a computer. Now at the time, um I had the Mac 27-inch or whatever, the big daddy with the big screen, okay? Um, mostly because for my old eyes. Uh, but my computer had everything that it needed, okay? It had a mic, it had a camera. So that's all you need. I went a little bit above um in getting a mic and getting a camera, and we'll talk about those here in a minute. And then some sort of lighting. Okay, at the time where I was starting my practice, there was actually pretty good lighting in the room during the day. Where I found it to be a challenge was at night when I was coming home from my hygiene job and I was gonna hop on and see a couple clients. The nighttime that was the hardest time. So we'll talk about that. So you have your initial setup, super easy. If you have a camera or if you have a computer that has a camera and a mic, you're good to go. So, really beyond that, we're going to talk about the nice to haves versus the luxuries. And I go in this, um, we go into this in detail inside my upcoming profitable milefunctional therapist boot camp, but I'm gonna spill some of the tea here for you. After the bare essentials, okay, the nice to have a simple starter website. So this can be a landing page. So the difference between a landing page and a website, a website is gonna have multiple pages. Up at the top, it's gonna have links, you know, like a menu bar to go to different places, okay? A landing page has one thing that you are driving traffic there for, and that is it. They they don't know how to get off of it, okay? They they can't link to anything else. Um, and so if you have a just a simple page and you have your calendar schedule, your scheduling calendar uh embedded in it, that's gonna help with CE uh CEO. SEO. When you have a scheduling system, you want the Google Wizards, you want the powers of the universe to be able to say, oh, Susie ended up on this website and the buck stopped there. You don't want Susie to end up on your website and then to click a link to go to your scheduling software because then that tells the internet wizards that oh, acuity solved the problem, not Carmen Ball. Okay, so that's why I encourage my students and my community to embed their scheduler, okay? You want people to get on your website and stay there, you don't want them to bounce off. So, um, so after your bare minimum setup, which is just your computer with a mic and a camera, the next um nice to have is a simple starter website, okay? Um, in my programs, we always dive into how to make the website be a tool for you. And I do wholeheartedly believe that you need that pretty early on, but I don't want it to be the thing that that keeps you from making money, okay? Because you can get your myofunctional therapy education, you know who your who is, you know what your offer is, and you can be raising your hand saying, Hey, I can help you. So I don't want the website to be the thing that holds you back. And many of you do let it hold you back, okay? So simple starter website. Um, then a payment processor. So this typically is Stripe, okay? So you set it up and they are the third party go-between, between you having a charge and your bank receiving the money. They take a percentage, okay, and then, and that varies where your payments are coming from. They also sometimes charge like 30 cents per transaction plus like 2.9%. International transactions are going to be more. Um, but either way, prior to you having a payment processor, people can always send you a check. So when you're taking that ugly, imperfect action, just getting to that first client, you can say to Suzy Q, hey, send me a check. Here's my address. Okay. I mean, believe it or not, people do still send checks, and it is a way to pay for your services. But a nice to have is going to be your payment processor. And then a nice to have is um a movable camera. Okay. This, see if I can get it up here. Hopefully, you can see this since I can't exactly see what I'm doing right now. Um, this is the camera. It is the Logitech C922. This is the first thing that I purchased. So when I um when I said I started my initial setup, my computer had everything, and then I wanted to get a little bit nicer of a camera. More so I wanted to get this so it could move. So when I'm instructing somebody and I want to bring them in close so they can see, you know, what my clicks or whatever look like, then um, this is nice. Okay. All right, so those are the nice to have. So remember, we went over the bare minimum, then the nice to have. Now let's talk about the luxuries. So this comes later, only later, okay. These luxuries are for the business that you are going to have one, three, five, ten years down the down the road. Okay. Um, automated software, an advanced website that really works as a marketing tool. So I mentioned that a nice to have is just basically a simple starter website. Um, and really, if you're still working in hygiene, what's really helpful with that is because depending on the type of office you're working in, if you're in an office like I was that wasn't really supportive of what I was doing, I could tell somebody, hey, here's my website. You can explore it to see if you're interested. That way, there's no stress, there's no pressure, there's no creepy stuff. And I would just write down my website on a sticky note, okay? No pressure. That's how a lot of people would find me. Okay, so that's the nice thing about that starter website. Eventually, you want more of an advanced website that can work as a tool for you. Okay, you want to do less, you want to automate things, you want people to be able to go to your website and be able to land there and say, Hey, do I need this person's help? Okay, you want them to self-select because then you're not having to sell anything. They have already raised their hand saying, Hey, I have problem A, B, and C, and I see on your website that you help me with that. So that removes the creepiness of selling. Um, so I think that that is a luxury that should come sooner rather than later. And then another luxury is um nicer lighting, a quality mic, or even something like a second monitor that I eventually bought. So let's talk about what I started with and then we'll talk about what I have now. So I started with, I told you I had a 27-inch Mac. I started with that. I would use my iPad just, I don't have it right here to show you, but like with my phone, and I could pull up and look at things on their um their treatment plan. Okay, so I would use my iPad for that. You really could use your phone, but I got old lady eyes. Okay, and so I started with that stuff. I started with a blue Yeti mic, which I just looked on Amazon at 78 bucks, and guess what? Here it is. I'm still using it to this day. All these hundreds of thousands of dollars later and thousands of clients. Why replace it? It works great. The only thing is I have this fancy little pom pom thing on the end just because I tend to be like a lip popper, pop, pop, pop, and it just helps remove it. Okay, so Blue Yeti Mike 78 bucks. I started with. Um, I showed you the camera that I looked on Amazon as 117 bucks. Boom. Okay. Um, also I'm just looking at my notes here. Lighting. Lighting. We talked about lighting. So um I have used all sorts of different lighting. I think that this has the been the biggest thing. I mean, I've had um a big ring light. I have, I love these little things. Um, this one is from Loom Cube and it's just a little, like you have to charge it, and then it comes on. So it really is helpful when I'm doing my functional assessments. Okay. So this is really what I use. Um, mine has a little suction cup on it, and that's just so that when I'm traveling and I need to see a client with my uh with my laptop instead of my computer set up here, this just can suction onto my laptop. So that's what that's there for. I have this other little light, you guys. Depending on when you're watching this, this is close to um Black Friday. You can get some great deals, okay? You just charge them, they're ready to go. So, lighting, I think, is something that you'll that you'll mess around with. I currently do have um El Gato key lights, they're quite expensive, and I don't absolutely love them. The reason I don't love them is because they are Bluetooth and it seems like forever I I'm always having to reset them and reconnect them. Right now, as I am making this video, I'm practicing my ugly and perfect action because this light right in front of me is not on. This light's on, and so I had to set up my other light right over here. Um, but that's why I don't love them. They're expensive and they're kind of a pain in the butt. So I think you could do, I think you could do without those. Okay, so I also um added a second monitor. You guys, you can add a second monitor, I'm confident for under 150 bucks. I have uh an LG, it's probably a 30-inch because I had my big computer monitor. And so my setup here in front of me, just because I love to easily see what I'm doing, and I like to pull windows back and forth between the monitors, it's huge. I love it, which is why I don't like working away from home because I don't like doing it on my laptop because I can't see. Problems of the first world, right? Okay, so so we talked about the equipment. So then here's the other thing, you guys, because I, when I was starting, I was building the business for five to 10 years down the road, okay? I set up seven uh seven systems, and these are all systems that in my programs I teach you to set up as well. So my client intake system is 17 hats. So the reason I'm talking about this here in this uh this episode about how to start your myofunctional therapy business without blowing your budget is also you do maybe want to invest a little bit of money to make things simple for when you're busy. Okay, you absolutely do not have to have something like 17 hats to start your business. But what I think is wonderful about doing it while you're slow and have no clients or a few clients is you can get your system set up for for when you're busy, okay? So 17 hats, um, my client intake system. So they um they schedule their appointments in 17 hats, they set I send them an offer, so that's a quote in 17 hats, they accept it in 17 hats, they sign their client consent for therapy, I do my invoicing, I set up payment plans, all that stuff. They they get automated emails, all that stuff is set up in 17 hats. So client intake system is the first one, client booking system. So when I started, I started with a company called Visita and I moved to Acuity because Acuity was easier to use when it came to the time zones, and because I have a global practice that was kind of important. And I used acuity for a long, long time, and the only reason I left acuity was when I added my associate, it of course bumped up in price. But 17 hats does have online scheduling as part of their suite of products. Is it as good as Acuity? No. Can I deal with it to save the$300 a year? Yes. Okay, totally up to you. Um, client tracking. So when I was starting, I created a dashboard where I track my clients and I still use that today. My client interaction system. So setting up how and when clients can get in touch with you, um, how long they can expect a reply, basically setting those business boundaries. Do that at the beginning, okay? I used to let clients text me. Now I do not. And the reason I don't is because I had, you know, bossy pants Betty who didn't understand that she was in a different time zone as I was, and she was talking to me, and how rude of me. I went to bed and went to sleep. And then I woke up in the morning to all these messages, you know, because bossy Betty wanted an answer. And I was like, girlfriend, I was doing this thing called sleeping. So texting, no more. So my clients from the very beginning, they know what to expect, they know how to get a hold of me, they know when I check email. I have an auto-responder that goes back to that automatically sends to every person that sends me an email. And it says, if you're not a client, here's some resources, here's how you book an exam. If you are a client, we answer email once a day, Monday through Thursday at noon, and you can expect a response, you know, within a couple days. And that is because you guys, nobody's house is on fire. And if I am out of service, like typically I am for the weekends, they're not going to hear from me Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. And I will prioritize emails when I get back to town. Now, sometimes I am much faster than that, but I believe in setting your boundaries. Kind of worst case scenario, okay? So that's part of your client interaction system. Um, payment system. So this kind of goes back to that me when I talked earlier about Stripe. You absolutely can have somebody send you a check. You don't need to get your payment system set up right away, but it doesn't really cost you money to do that. Sure, they take a little bit off of your transactions, but those transactions are bringing you in money. They're the third-party person. I set that up right away because you guys, I didn't want to play bill collector. I didn't want to say to Suzy Q, hey, your exam is going to be$225. Can you pay me? No, they don't get on my schedule until they pay for said exam. The same thing with therapy. My humans, my potential clients, do not really get a lot of effort put into preparing for them until, like, I don't put the cart before the horse, until they've paid an invoice. I do not assume that they're gonna become a client. I don't assume that they're gonna pay their bill because I've had people before that say yes, they accept their therapy or they accept their quote and they never pay their invoice. Okay, so I don't do anything until they have actually paid. So having this client payment system in place takes all of that off of my plate, okay? Um, the next system I set up is financial tracking. So who's paid what, who owes what, and when, all of that stuff is automated. I set it up in the very beginning when I was building for that million-dollar business. I didn't have it, but I wanted to build for it, okay? And then last, I set up my metric. So nobody cares about likes and follows. Okay, this isn't a popularity contest. What matters most is people finding your website through you using keywords that are SEO rich, okay? Um, engaging with your content. You want people to go to your website. First, they have to find it. You want them to go there, you want them to engage with your content, you want them to stay there. You don't want them to get to your website and think that it looks like in kidnappardner threw up on our desk and bounce because that tells the universe wizards that ooh, somebody went to website abc.com, they went there, they landed, they looked around, and they bounced. Okay, you don't want that. All right, so what do I want you to do with this information? I'm gonna give you some homework. The this is something you can do right now, okay? If this is a topic that has your panties in a bundle, then you can just get that off your plate right now, today. Do you have a computer with a camera and a mic? You probably do, okay. Um, if you don't have one with a good mic, you can use your your pods. Okay. I use these all the time. And my friend, I meet with plenty of people online who are using these. I knew I know podcasters who have huge podcasts and they still use these, okay? Use them. I use I use mine all the time. Um camera. I mentioned my camera. I also mentioned if you're listening to this in real time, it's right before Thanksgiving, which means Black Friday. So for less than what you spend on maybe coffee uh every month, you could get uh a decent camera. You can do it. It's a little splurge. You could get a decent mic, okay? Then, so that's your first thing is to figure out your your text setup setup. Camera, do you need one? Put it on your Black Friday to-do list, or just go get it ordered if you're not watching, listening to this in real time. Um, next, do a little mindset work. Is this technology really the thing? Okay, is it the thing that's holding you back, or is it truly something else and you're just using this as an excuse? So many of you, so many of my coaching clients, this is they're kind of using this as the excuse, but really when we dig into it, it really isn't, okay? So do some mindset work. And then last, my friend, I want you to grab your calendar and I want you to put a cold, hard date on the calendar when you are going to have this thing launched. You have got to tear off the band-aid, you've got to get it out there in the world. It does not have to be perfect. Your business isn't going to be perfect. You are going to have several iterations of your business. Right now, you just need to get started so that you get some data. Okay, because you got to get to that first client or your next client so that you can see exactly what it took to get there and what the experience was like. Then you need to evaluate what works, uh, what didn't work, and what you're going to do differently. And then you go back to ugly and perfect action. We call this the decide and do process in my programs. And the gist of it is this: you decide, you take ugly and perfect action, you get some results, you evaluate what worked, what didn't work, what are you going to do differently, and then you do differently. You go back to take ugly and perfect action. Let me tell you what you don't do, my friend. You don't re-decide. Too many of you, something doesn't go as planned, so you just like burn the whole thing down and start over. Well, you never get data to evaluate. You've got to get your business going and you've got to get three, six months, maybe even a year of work under your belt to know what is working and what you want to repeat. Okay. Do you think that big extraordinary companies um burned it down the first time things didn't go as planned? No, no, they didn't. Okay. All right, my friend, that is a wrap. That's all I have for you today. I have given you your action items, so go get started. And more importantly, until I'm back next time, thank you for letting me be part of building a life that you are absolutely bonkers about. I hope you loved today's episode, friend. I pray that it lifted you up, motivated you, and taught you something. If so, would you stop right now and go to Apple Podcasts and leave us a review? And lastly, make sure you've joined the profitable myofunctional therapist Facebook community. Links to all the goodies can be found wherever you're listening to this podcast. That's it for now. Cheering you on, my friend, and we'll chat soon.