Our Secret Sauce For Getting More Than 100 New Vestibular Referrals a Month

Are you a health care provider who enjoys the challenge of assessing and treating individuals with dizziness?

Would you like to help more patients who are dealing with dizziness?

Or, are you simply looking for a niche market?

If this is you, good call as there is so much need to provide vestibular therapy services.

Learn from others who have travelled before you

Over the years we have been intentional in marketing our services which has been key in seeing well over 100 new vestibular referrals a month. At North 49 we actually see more people with dizziness than we do with all MSK conditions combined and hope to share what we have learned with you so you can have the same success in less time.

“It’s said that a wise person learns from his mistakes. A wiser one learns from others' mistakes. But the wisest person of all learns from others's successes” John Maxwell

Now in the past we have outlined our marketing strategies in a 3 part series:

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Our secret sauce

Now in those blogs we laid out our marketing strategies, but our secret sauce to seeing the volume of vestibular patients we see is not in actual marketing. Following the Hedgehog Concept, not Sonic Hedgehog, but the Hedgehog concept has been our secret sauce.

What is the hedgehog concept?

In the book Good to Great, which is a must read, Jim Collins outlines that there are two types of businesses, the fox and the hedgehog

The fox is a cunning and sly animal that is looking for different ways to get the hedgehog. The fox comes up with many schemes to get the hedgehog. The hedgehog on the other hand simply does one thing with each attack from the fox. The hedgehog rolls up in a ball.

Business #1 - The Fox

The fox business goes from one thing to another, lacking consistency.

Business #2 - The Hedgehog

The hedgehog business displays consistency and simplicity.

You may ask which business is better off or does it make a difference? For the businesses that Collins has studied he has found that Hedgehog businesses do better in the long run as they have a simple filter in which business decisions are made.

3 filters to decision making

The 3 filters are:

• Can I be the best at it?
• Do I have a passion for it?
• Can I make money doing it?

If you can answer YES to all three questions then you are working in your sweet spot.

How this concept has affected us

Using the hedgehog concept has given us a simple framework to base decisions on. If we cannot be the best at it, make money doing it, and have a passion for it, we simply will not do it. There has been times where we have passed on business opportunities that would have been lucrative financially, but we were not interested in. Who wants to work at something they do not enjoy?

At North 49 we all have a passion for vestibular therapy and to strive to be the best by investing in continuing education. There have been other clinicians who have taken a weekend course and  advertise they provide vestibular therapy services, but they have not gotten the traction we have in this field. It is probably because they are simply not working in their sweet spot. Maybe they are not doing it because they have a passion for it or are skilled at it. 

For us keeping it simple and basing decisions through the Hedgehog concept filter has helped us grow our clinic and make an even bigger impact on our community.

I guess we cannot call it our secret sauce any longer, but we hope that this helps you find your sweet spot, create meaningful work, and improve the quality of life for those in your community.