The Cash-Based Practice Podcast

If you ever offer free consultations or "discovery visits" in your practice, you'd be crazy not to listen to this episode.   Have you ever offered a free consultation, only to realize the person was really just looking for a few free exercises or stretches, with zero intention of becoming a patient? If you have enough of those experiences, you might start wondering whether free consultations are even worth offering. But don't eliminate them just yet… In this episode, I share a coaching conversation from my Cash-Based Practice Mastermind about identifying potential tire kickers, setting expectations on the phone to "weed them out," and the best time and method to offer free consultations so you convert more prospective patients without wasting your team's time. And if you want some of the exact scripts I use to convert more consultations into paying patients, click HERE, scroll down to grab my free resource: Cash-Pay Consultation Closing Scripts. What You'll Learn in This Episode How to identify callers who may only want free advice What to say when someone seems unlikely to commit to treatment after a free consult. How to pre-frame free consultation clients on the phone so they are most likely to convert it to paying customers Why you shouldn't offer everyone a free consultation How to offer both free and paid appointment options, so only those who truly need a free visit in order to decide to become a patient, actually ask for them. Why 'selling' too much, too soon can hurt conversions USEFUL INFORMATION: Check out our Summit: CASH-PAY CONVERSION SUMMIT

If you've been in practice long enough, you've heard some version of this: "I already tried physical therapy… It didn't work." Sometimes you hear it during a consultation. Sometimes it even comes up on the phone. And it can be especially challenging when that person is contacting you specifically for something else, like Shockwave or Laser therapy, because the last thing you want to do is create friction by immediately trying to sell them on the very thing they believe has already failed them. But as more and more practices are incorporating these types of modalities and advertising directly for them rather than their core service, getting patient to say yes to everything they need (beyond just Shockwave, for example), is becoming a more common and costly challenge…  … Often worsened by the fact that many seeking out new treatment technologies have already tried traditional treatments like physical therapy. In this episode, I share a coaching conversation with one of my longtime Cash-Based Practice Mastermind members about how to handle this situation, how to differentiate your clinic from the treatment they've "already tried", and why the best time to overcome the "I already tried PT" objection may be much earlier than you think. And this conversation is also a great example of why general advice can only take you so far… Every practice has different services, staff, workflows, and challenges that often require very different answers to the same question. If you want coaching based on your specific situation rather than trying to piece everything together from someone else's Q&A, that's exactly what we do inside the Cash-Based Practice Mastermind. What You'll Learn in This Episode How to respond when someone says physical therapy didn't work Why you shouldn't immediately push PT when they're calling for another service How to differentiate your approach without creating resistance Why overcoming this objection starts earlier than you may think How to plant the right seeds throughout the patient journey so they don't drop off, and they ultimately say yes to the physical therapy they need. USEFUL INFORMATION: Check out our Summit: CASH-BASED PRACTICE MASTERMIND

Getting a patient to say yes to treatment isn't the end of the sale. Every time they decide whether to book another visit, follow your recommended frequency, finish their plan of care, or continue beyond a package, they're making another decision about the value of their care. That's why one of the themes that came up in a recent Cash-Based Practice Mastermind coaching call was something that can sound a little uncomfortable in healthcare: always be selling. I'm not talking about constantly pitching patients, and I'd never recommend care they don't need… I'm talking about continually connecting what you're recommending to the goals that brought them to you in the first place. In this episode, I share two common ways clinicians stop doing this without realizing it, including 1) making assumptions about what patients can afford, especially as you get further into a plan of care, and 2) relaxing once someone has pre-paid for a package. And if you recognize that your team could get better at conversations around value, cost, and patient commitment, check out the Cash-Pay Conversion Summit on November 13–14, 2026 in Austin, Texas. You'll spend 2 days with me implementing, customizing, and practicing the systems and scripts that help your team confidently convert more prospective patients into committed Cash-Pay patients. What You'll Learn in This Episode Why if you think the "sale" ended when a patient initially said yes, you're in real trouble. How YOUR assumptions about cost can negatively influence your POC recommendations - and how that can be the ultimate disservice to your patients. What changes, for both the provider and the patient,  when someone purchases a package How to keep patients focused on the outcome they're working toward USEFUL INFORMATION: Check out our course: CASH-BASED PRACTICE MASTERMIND

We routinely poll Cash-Based practice owners and ask what they think is holding their business back… what's their "biggest problem/challenge"?.. And in all our surveys over the years, 60-75% of them answer "lead generation" / "I need the phone to ring more." But after more than 15 years of tracking the patient lifecycle across hundreds of practices, and identifying all the profit leaks and missed opportunities (lead gen, phone conversions, clinic conversions, pt retention, reactivation, etc), I've found that the numbers often tell a very different story about the most common and costly problem in cash practices... The data shows that the largest, most common problem is that too many prospective patients never become paying patients… the phone is ringing enough for that practice to be booked out, but too few callers are being converted into customers....  We've found that improving phone conversions by just 10–30% usually fills the remaining gaps in your schedule without spending another dollar on marketing… and that level of improvement is not difficult with a proven phone call framework and scripts.... In this episode, I'll explain why this is one of the biggest profit leaks in Cash-Based practices and the incredibly simple first step you can take to find out if it's happening in yours. And if you discover your phone conversions aren't where they should be, save November 13–14, 2026 on your calendar. I'm hosting the Cash-Pay Conversion Summit live in Austin, Texas, where we'll spend two days implementing, customizing, and practicing the systems and scripts that can dramatically improve your conversions, so you can keep your practice's schedule full without any additional marketing or advertising. More on that below. What You'll Learn in This Episode Why most practice owners misdiagnose their biggest growth problem The first KPI I'd start tracking immediately Why more marketing usually doesn't fix an empty schedule  The conversion rate Cash-Based practices should be targeting How just a small phone conversion improvement could add $100,000+ in annual revenue to your practice How to start tracking conversions without creating another complicated system USEFUL INFORMATION: Check out our course: How to Answer "Do you take my insurance?"

One of my Mastermind members recently attended a local racket-sports tournament with a booth alongside several competing healthcare businesses. The other providers waited behind their tables, hoping people would stop by. Meanwhile, she had a steady crowd at her booth and booked 8 new patients! That difference wasn't luck. She used a clear pain-focused offer, promoted it throughout the venue, created real scarcity, provided treatment people could immediately experience, and booked their next appointment before they walked away. In this episode, you'll hear exactly how she did it. This win came from a Mastermind member implementing the event strategies we had worked through together, then bringing the results back to the group so we could improve the process even further.  That kind of practice-specific coaching and breakthrough results is exactly what happens inside the Cash-Based Practice Mastermind.… And for the next few days, you can join us and get your first month of coaching for just $1. Just click HERE, select GOLD level Mastermind. During checkout, click "Have a promo code?", enter MASTERMIND1, and "apply" to bring the first month price down to just $1. This offer ends Tuesday at midnight. What You'll Learn in This Episode How to attract more people to your booth instead of waiting for them Why pain-focused messaging usually beats injury-prevention offers How to use scarcity without creating fake urgency The offer that converted eight event attendees into booked patients How to reduce cancellations and no-shows after an event Why prepayment and first-visit videos can improve follow-through USEFUL INFORMATION: Check out our course: CASH-BASED PRACTICE MASTERMIND