Many physical therapists make the mistake of thinking they can hire their way to success. They want to add specialties, bring on admins, or outsource marketing, but if you don’t first master the core skills of sales, marketing, and patient experience yourself, you’re setting yourself up for failure.
In this post, we’ll break down why PT owners must get hands-on with their business before delegating, how to decide who to hire first, and why ego can be the biggest barrier to growth.
Learn It Yourself Before You Delegate
When starting out, you can’t delegate your sales philosophy, patient experience, or marketing. These are the foundations of your business.
Build and document SOPs for every process.
Understand how to convert leads, run marketing campaigns, and deliver patient experiences that work.
Only then can you effectively train someone else—whether it’s an admin, marketer, or PT.
Delegating these responsibilities too soon can waste months, years, and tens of thousands of dollars. You must first prove your processes work.
“How can you hold someone accountable if you don’t know what it actually takes to do it yourself?”
Who to Hire First: PT vs. Admin
It may seem counterintuitive, but hiring a PT before an admin is often smarter. Here’s why:
It’s easier to train a PT than it is to hire someone to handle sales/admin without experience.
If you hire someone for sales/admin before mastering it yourself, lost opportunities and inefficiencies multiply.
Air-drop yourself into the bottleneck of your business—whatever task is most critical, tackle it yourself before hiring.
The standard you set initially becomes the baseline for your team and future hires. If you can’t do it well yourself, no one else can.
Ego is the Enemy
One of the biggest reasons PT owners fail to scale is thinking they’re above certain tasks:
Answering phones
Doing sales calls
Learning marketing
Your role as CEO is to solve problems and remove bottlenecks—not pick and choose tasks based on ego.
“You are not above the biggest bottleneck in your business. Your only job is to solve problems.”
Every task, no matter how small, is an opportunity to learn and create a process that can later be delegated.
Why Marketing and Sales Matter More Than Credentials
Many PTs rely on credentials and years of schooling, assuming patients will trust them automatically. The truth? Credentials don’t pay the bills.
Personal trainers and functional medicine providers without healthcare backgrounds are thriving because they master attention, curiosity, and conversions.
PTs who refuse to learn marketing or sales waste tens of thousands of dollars hiring the “right” staff or agencies repeatedly.
“The only thing anybody cares about is if you can describe their problem well enough for them to believe that you actually solve it.”
Mastering these skills yourself allows you to:
Save money and time on hires and marketing agencies.
Train your team effectively using proven processes.
Charge higher prices and grow your practice confidently.
The 90-Day Rule: Commit to Learning
If you dedicate 90 days to mastering sales, marketing, and patient conversion, you can create:
A profitable system
SOPs for every task
A foundation to delegate effectively
This commitment saves months and years of wasted effort and positions you to hire the right people—PTs, admins, or marketers—without risk.
Key Takeaways
Learn before you delegate. Master sales, marketing, and patient experience yourself.
Hire PTs before admins to maximize growth and minimize lost opportunity.
Check your ego. No task is beneath you when it comes to solving business bottlenecks.
Document everything. SOPs and processes make delegation possible and effective.
Commit 90 days. Become proficient in core skills to save time, money, and frustration.
Watch and Listen to the Full Video
For a deeper dive into a cash physical therapists’ journeys, make sure to listen to the full video: Ready to Scale: How to Confidently Make Your First Hire Without Burning Out.
About Author:
Although the company eventually failed, it provided Jordan with invaluable learning experiences. He became passionate about designing world-class patient experiences and building efficient marketing & sales funnels for cash physical therapists. Utilizing this expertise, Jordan became the CMO of a well-known physical therapy media company, and consulted for and built marketing funnels for some of the top physical therapy business coaches.
Eventually growing tired of the typical agency and consulting grind, Jordan, alongside Max Zirbel, founded Clinical Marketer. They infused it with the hands-on support and mentorship that they benefited from in their initial venture. The company was a success from the start, aiding clinics in scaling to 6 and 7 figures in revenue. During its first launch, Jordan and his team met Dr. Ben Bagge, whom they later partnered with after helping him grow his business from $200K/year to over $1M/year in three years.
