From Clinician to Consultant: The Business Foundations That Build a Thriving Ergonomics Practice

Most healthcare professionals who move into ergonomics consulting don't struggle with the science — they struggle with the business. In this episode, Darcie Jaremey draws on insights from a conversation with Erin, a Canadian ergonomist who left clinical rehab to build her own consulting practice, to explore the gap between clinical competence and commercial sustainability.

Darcie unpacks the current state of the global ergonomics market — valued at $900 million in 2025 and growing — and explains why the demand for qualified consultants has never been higher. From the hidden costs of workplace musculoskeletal injuries to tightening government regulations worldwide, the opportunity is real.

You'll also hear the practical business-building systems every ergonomics consultant should have in place before they're busy — including a standardized assessment template, a clear pricing structure, a simple report format, and a 60-second elevator pitch. Plus, Darcie covers the bootstrapping mindset that helps new consultants build profitability sustainably, without chasing investors or burning out on underpriced contracts.

What you'll learn in this episode:

•       Why the global ergonomics market is accelerating — and how to position yourself to capture it

•       The real cost of workplace MSDs and how to use that data in client conversations

•       What bootstrapping means for ergonomics consultants (and why it works)

•       The foundational systems to build before you land your first client

•       How affinity marketing and networking can grow your practice faster than ads

Whether you're just getting started or looking to bring more structure to an existing practice, this episode gives you a clear, grounded framework for building a consulting business that lasts.

Are you a healthcare professional curious about how office ergonomics assessments could fit into your services? I’ve got you covered with some valuable (and free!) resources at www.ergonomicshelp.com/free-training.

Transcript

Darcie 0:00

Well, hey there. Today I'm gonna talk about some key. Factors for success in business as an organist. So let's do this.

0:11

Welcome to the Business of Ergonomics podcast. I'm your host, Darcy Jeremy. I'm a board certified professional agonist with over 15 years of experience delivering ergonomics programs to employers of all different types. In this podcast, I share what other healthcare professionals are already doing and being with ergonomics assessments and how to land those clients that you dream of. Without further ado, let's jump into this episode right now.

Darcie 0:43

So I recently sat down with Erin. She is a Canadian ergonomists and she left clinical rehab to start her own consulting business. And I think. No matter where you are in the world, you can relate to a story like hers. And I have seen this many, many times as well, both as someone in that position and then training other people how to get into ergonomics from that. It's not a rags to richest tale, and it's precisely the opposite of that, which makes it so endearing and so truthful to many of our entrepreneurial journeys as healthcare professionals. And the really interesting part about this is that it's not the type of thing that you read about in school in textbooks. This is like real life stuff something that I see so commonly in healthcare professionals, and I see this in my programs, whether it's accelerate the business of Ergonomics or the ergonomics blueprint, is that there's brilliant clinicians with deep expertise who struggle not with the science of ergonomics, but with the business side of ergonomics. And that gap between clinical competence and commercial sustainability is what we're really gonna dive into today. So many healthcare professionals begin with a simple, but I think a really useful observation, and it's that sending people back to the same circumstances that led to that pain developing in the first place is. Almost like a recipe for disaster. They're gonna come back. They're gonna not be fully healed. They're gonna be in pain and, and overall, they're probably not gonna be as fulfilled in their lives because they're gonna have that egging shoulder or the lower back, and it's gonna affect their entire lives. Of course. And it's the founding story or like that hero's journey of many ergonomics practices out there. It's not unique to a certain place in the world. Literally, this is happening everywhere Many folks actually describe the same frustration. The clinical model treats symptoms. Ergonomics addresses, root causes, and yet making the leap from clinician to consultant is where most people stall. I wanna take a global look with you about the market for ergonomics. The global ergonomic consulting market was valued at about 900 million bucks in 2025, and it's projected to grow about 6% annually. The broader ergo market. For products is on a similar trajectory, and I just saw some news releases over the past quarter that also addresses this and that it's growing about 7% annually. What's driving this? There's a few things going on here, and as an ergonomics professional, getting into these global trends I think is really useful, not only to be educated with what's up, but. To address this, when we are in, sales conversations with corporate or in our presentations that we deliver to employees, let's first talk about the post pandemic normalization of hybrid and remote work. And this is created millions of unassessed home workstations. Let's be honest here. If someone is doing work duties from home then that is still a compensable injury. Meaning if they get injured at home doing work stuff, then they're gonna have to open a workers' compensation claim. Most companies have no idea just because it hasn't happened yet, Time consuming and how costly it is to manage a work related injury. The costs are ginormous. We're not just talking about the cost of the injury, like the direct costs that might be paid to insurance, whether it's workers' comp or something else. We're talking about the indirect costs on productivity. And it's huge. Not only on that person who is managing the claim, likely they're in human resources, or a supervisor in management and talking to workers' compensation, talking to the injured worker already, you're seeing the complexity of what's going on. That's not part of probably what that person is trying to get done on a normal day, but then you're talking about that person's productivity on their regular duties. That person's maybe isn't at work, so maybe it's a time loss claim, which really adds to the cost of these types of injuries. And if they're not at work, then they're probably relying on someone else to get that work done that they're trying to do, whether it's billable or not Billable So there's so many factors here, and that's why some estimates on the indirect costs of an injury that happens at work. Usually these are musculoskeletal disorders is five times. If you're familiar with that iceberg picture. That most of the costs of an injury is actually below the surface of the ice, that just like most of the volume of an iceberg is below the surface of the ice, you can't see it. You can't see the real cost of an injury. It is absolutely shocking, especially because there's so many people in the global workforce now and some sort of hybrid arrangement. Most companies, as I suggested, have no idea what the costs are. if you just look at the statistics for instance. There's been estimates that 80% of the world is going to experience back pain at some point in their time. And of all the types of injuries out there, musculoskeletal disorders are one of the top. So it's really not if it injury is gonna be happening at work, it's when, and a company has to prepare to manage these claims or. Prevent them an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And if I were to conduct a sales presentation for a corporation, you know what I would do? I would get into the local, state or provincial statistics about injuries. I would dive into workers' compensation and see what the statistics are in your place of work, whether it's a state or a province. That information is there. And then apply it to the industry that you're consulting in, whether it's office ergonomics or some sort of industry. And make it real when you're talking about the types of services that you provide. So if you're coming in and doing like a lunch and learn or a presentation like that, you're basically planting seeds for making sure that people are working with better setups, whether it's like a behavioral lift type of training thing or something else to that degree, you're planting seeds. There's other types of services that are available too. One of my favorites actually being the discomfort survey. Triage the triage of the discomfort survey. And workplaces love this too because it is a way to look for hotspots in a company while mitigating a lot of the costs. So those are just two examples, how you can frame your services in a way that makes it real for those companies. cause let's face it, most companies are in absolute denial that an injury is gonna happen at their place or their workers are in pain. And my humble opinion, so I believe it's best practice to share this information as loud and as soon as possible with the people that you are might be working with. Interesting enough, there's many governments in Europe, Australia, and parts of Asia, and they're tightening workplace health regulations, making ergonomic assessments. Not just a nice to have, but a mandatory aspect in so many sectors. And in the US as well, there are. And looking at the US there's different legislations that are around there today, There's specific ones in California. There's some specific warehouse, legislation pieces in New York as well. So look at that. If you can help workplaces ensure that they're being. Aligned with those workplace health regulations that would be so valuable. Musculoskeletal disorders remain some of the leading causes of work-related disability globally. It's literally been like this for like 40 years. Nothing has changed with the rate of musculoskeletal disorders happening. If you look in the US alone, ergonomic related injuries cost businesses over$20 billion according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. One more thing I wanna really encourage you to look at, especially when you're looking to target businesses to help with ergonomics, is look at the OSHA injury estimator. You can literally go into that website, put in carpal tunnel, and based on some standard measurements and calculations going on, on the backend, it'll tell you that it can cost upwards of 60 th$67,000 of direct and indirect fees for a carpal tunnel. Probably the worst case scenario, so we can get upwards of$67,000. So that's absolutely shocking, especially when you think about the amount of profit that company now needs to make so they can cover those costs. Lost productivity is a major, major one. I truly believe that the demand for ergonomics is not shrinking. It is accelerating. The question is whether or not your position to capture it. I work with many ergonomics entrepreneurs, and I've been working with them for over five years now. And as I mentioned, I have a couple of programs. Whether you are wanting to learn how to do office ergonomics assessments, you can check out my program called the Ergonomics Blueprint, or if you are already an ergonomists and you wanna grow your business, I have another program called Accelerate the Business of Ergonomics. What I have noticed that leads to success is that realistic aspect that it takes time to build a business. Building a business isn't like when you're an employee and you get hired and you get to collect that paycheck almost immediately. Business takes time. Over the years of working with consultants. I've definitely seen a lot of different types of. Business models when it comes to consulting. I've seen certain circumstances where consultants have jumped all in at the get go on their own business and they've had massive success and they've been able to sustain that for years. And other folks that want to grow their ergonomics business, however, they still have a full-time job. So What they end up doing is spending 10 to 15 hours a week building their ergonomics business on the side. So outside of the regular nine to five hours, you can add a complexities as other activities get into this. Children and children's sports and everything that is involved with family life and other, and other commitments that people have. And then those are other folks that I see that shift to part-time hours in their old nine to five, and then they start doing part-time hours of growing their business. There's so many different ways to go forward that, and I think it's also useful. I have a really interesting piece of research here. A 2025 Gusto study on new business formation found that nearly half of solopreneurs started their businesses with less than$5,000, yet 77% reported profitability within their first year. The key wasn't that they made their fortune immediately, but they were able to bootstrap, so they kept their costs low, they stayed lean, they reinvested their time wisely. And If you've never heard of bootstrapping before, that's okay. I got your back and I've looked it up. Bootstrapping. So bootstrapping means that you're starting and growing a business using personal funds, revenue from early sales and resourcefulness without relying on external investors or loans. It definitely emphasizes self-sufficiency, cost control, and sustainable growth. A lot of ergonomics consultants that I work with have never read a business textbook. They've never learned about bootstrapping. It makes sense when you're moving your business forward and whether or not you have the. Bandwidth to go all in on this immediately do part-time or do a side hustle. It all has some things in common. I think that the bootstrapping literature consistently shows a pattern that so many ergonomics consultants lived out without ever reading a business textbook, bootstrap businesses that prioritize financial discipline and customer focused service, they often. Outperform venture backed companies in the long term profitability and sustainability. I've seen this over and over again because it's real. It works. And if you don't figure it out in the per and, and often, if consultants aren't figuring out a sustainable way in the first six months to a year, then they've probably looked at another angle. Or methodology to grow their business. research, published in peer reviewed journals has found that while bootstrapped startups grow more slowly, initially, they develop stronger customer relationships, more sustainable unit economics and greater founder autonomy. I have come across so many ergonomics consultants that are doing this instinctively. They don't spend money on fancy websites or expensive marketing. I find that the success happens when they invest their time in the thing that actually builds a consulting business. The relationships and quality work. One of the most insightful things that Erin mentioned in our conversation in the last episode was her advice to build your systems first before you're busy, before you have 40 assessments on your plate, and no template for any of them. And all actuality, this is a bit counterintuitive for most clinicians. Who are trained to be reactive. Someone comes in with a problem and you solve it, but businesses rewards preparation. When you're first getting started, let's say you wanna get your first client and you just need somewhere to start. The first thing you wanna do is a standardized assessment template and, this is just gonna cover your core service offerings. The next thing is a clear pricing structure with defined scope boundaries. I have seen over and over again when consultants underprice their services to try to win a contract, but in reality, it doesn't help our entire field at all. Pricing your services on a downward spiral. Not only can lead to burnout for you, it really does a disservice to represent the actual skills that are necessary to do an ergonomics assessment. Another thing that I think is really useful, we talked about a standardized assessment template. We wanna also have a report template. It's very simple. It doesn't need to be crazy jargon, anything like You wanna make it easy for a non ergonomists to read, so leave the jargon out the door. Keep it simple. Put in actionable steps, maybe even with an executive summary, which is a huge win for those people to read so they understand what's going on and understand why you're recommending what you're recommending. Another thing that I think is so useful. Is mapping out your marketing strategy and part of the point of marketing is to make the sale easier. So with this is that you can design a simple intake process. How does that client first find out about you? How do they engage with you? Do they reach out to you? Do they not reach out to you? Do you reach out to them? Is there a form on your website? Do they call you? What? What do you do? How do they know that you exist? What information do you need before an assessment? How do you follow up? And I wanna encourage you to just map this out because one of the things that holds a lot of ergonomics consultants back is that people just don't understand that they don't know that you exist. Next up, refining your 62nd elevator pitch. This doesn't mean it needs to be perfect, but it does mean you need to get something started. A lot of ergonomics consultants can struggle with this early on. However, having this figured out before you talk with a prospect or a client. What your value proposition is in like under a minute is absolutely huge because that just screams confidence and your competency. Think of going to a networking event and just explaining, it just flies off the tip of your tongue, what you do and how you do it, your value proposition. Every networking opportunity that comes your way, you're gonna crush. All these systems are portable. If you move cities or change niches or scale your business, they're gonna come with you. It's the foundation of everything else that's built on. Another thing that is so useful is networking and affinity marketing. If you've never heard of Affinity marketing before, this is where you source other companies and networks, associations, you name it, other. Organizations, that also serve your, ideal client avatar. So it could be other agonists that you can work with, It could be, professions, it could be clinics, it could be showrooms. It really could be anything. It could be interior designers. Reach out personally, not with a sales pitch. Just genuinely build that relationship and see if there's anything aligned where you can help them, help their clients. Whether you offer to be like a capacity resource when another ergonomists is overwhelmed, or where you want to. Work aligned with what they're doing.

19:32

Accelerate the business of ergonomics helps healthcare professionals building their own thriving ergonomic service business, and it's opening for enrollment soon. You can register now just by going to ergonomics help.com/biz to be the first notified once we open up the doors to accelerate so that you too can tap into the strategies to build, attract customers, and raise your income with your own ergonomic services. Join the notification list to get the processes, the resources, and your future members you'll work with inside the program. You'll be the first to know about any brand new free training that I release, and you'll be the first in line when we open up the doors to accelerate the business of ergonomics. Next, all you gotta do is head to ergonomics help.com/biz to get started now.