Why Starting Small Is the Key to Success in Ergonomics Consulting (And the 90-Day Plan That Makes It Real)

Most healthcare professionals who dream of building an ergonomics practice don't fail because they lack skill. They fail because they never had a plan broken down into pieces small enough to actually act on.

In this episode, Darcie shares the single tool that has kept her on track more consistently than anything else in building her own business: the 90-Day Goal and Action Plan. It's not complicated. But it works, and in this episode you'll find out exactly why.

You'll also hear the honest truth about what gets in the way when healthcare professionals try to launch ergonomics services, why consistency beats intensity every time, and how to reverse-engineer a real income goal so you're never guessing what to do next.

What you'll take away from this episode:

•       Why starting small is not a compromise, it's the actual strategy

•       The three types of goals you need: safe, hairy scary, and baseline

•       How to break a $100k/year goal into a $270/day action plan

•       The minimum viable service for ergonomics consultants, and why it's not a website

•       Learn-Execute-Learn: the loop that builds skill and business at the same time

•       Affinity marketing and why it beats cold calling every time in this field

•       Why the comparison trap kills momentum faster than anything else

•       The step-by-step 90-day reverse engineering process you can use today

•       The honest take on AI and why there are no shortcuts in ergonomics assessment

Whether you're thinking about ergonomics as a side hustle, a part-time pivot, or a full-time business, this episode gives you the framework to stop waiting and start moving.

Want to go deeper with mentorship, tools, and a community of ergonomics professionals building their practices together? Learn more about Accelerate: The Business of Ergonomics at ergonomicshelp.com/biz

If you're a healthcare professional and this episode got your wheels turning about office ergonomics - good. I've got free resources to help you take the next step at ergonomicshelp.com/resources. 

Transcript

Darcie J's video recording 0:00

Welcome to the Business of Ergonomics Podcast. I'm your host, Darcie Jaremey, a board-certified professional ergonomist. Today's episode is one I think I've been wanting to record for a while, because I wanna talk about something that I think gets in the way of more healthcare professionals building successful ergo practices than almost anything else. And it's not lack of skill, it's not lack of opportunity, 'cause you know this is an in-demand service with a very low demand of ergonomics professionals who can do the skills. The opportunity for healthcare professionals to move into ergonomics assessments, whether you wanna do it as a side hustle, part-time, or full-time, has genuinely never been bigger. What's the best way to eat an elephant? One bite at a time. And the same is true with getting started with ergonomic services. Whether you're learning how to do an office ergonomic assessment because let's face it, it's a low-hanging fruit to get in. You don't need any equipment really to get started, and you can get started within a week of learning the skill, as long as you put in the time and you get your practice in, right? So What really is the barrier between healthcare professionals getting started and always dreaming of it? What gets in the way is the absence of a plan, and specifically, the absence of a plan broken down into pieces small enough to actually act on. Today, I wanna share something that has kept me on track more consistently than almost any other tool I've used building my own business. This is something that I teach other healthcare professionals and ergonomics professionals in my program, Accelerate the Business of Ergonomics.

1:51

Welcome to The Business of Ergonomics podcast. I'm your host, Darcy Jeremy. I'm a board certified professional ergonomist 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 J's video recording 2:25

Honestly, I wish that I had discovered it years before I did, and this is something as simple as a ninety-day goal and action plan. This is what puts those go-getters apart from those people who are wishing someday, one day to get started. And the reason why I'm talking about this today on the show is that no more, my friend, are you gonna be waiting till the perfect time to get started. If you have ever gone through any sort of process to get where you are today, then you probably know, my friend, that the perfect time doesn't exist that's the real pill that we're gonna be talking about today. So if we know that the perfect time doesn't exist, what can we do to get started today that will get us in action? we're gonna be talking today about why starting small is the key to success in ergonomics consulting. I say this because I see the opposite pattern constantly. Someone finishes their training, they're pumped, they're excited, and then they try to build the whole business in one month. The website, the logo, the business cards, the full suite of services, the complicated pricing structure, you know, you name it. They're trying to figure it out in a month. But you know what? They usually fail, not because they don't have the tenacity. It's that they're exhausted, okay? Because you're trying to do everything immediately without breaking it down into more manageable pieces. And here's the truth that I think that it doesn't get said enough. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Have you ever heard of this idea that hope is not a strategy? My friends, the same is key here. Without a plan, you're not failing because you're not capable. You're failing because you never gave yourself a structure to succeed with. And here's why consistency matters more than intensity. Consistency is wildly underrated in this field. A ninety-day plan keeps you in action and keeps you committed to your goals even on the days when the motivation is low. Small steps, repeated reliably, create meaningful progress in a way that occasional bursts of big effort, They never do. Showing up for your business and showing up for yourself, as cliché as that sounds, I'm still saying it, is often the first and most important step towards achieving anything worth talking about. And successful entrepreneurs, whether you're looking to do this as a side hustle, part-time or full-time, they aren't successful because they had a perfect plan. They're successful because they took the time repeatedly to do the things that move their business forward, even when it was inconvenient, even when they didn't feel ready. That's the foundation of what we're talking about today Have you ever worked on an annual goal? Like, this year is gonna be the year. Six figures, no problem. The 90-day kinda turns that on its head, because most people start with where they are right now and then try to figure out the whole year whereas the 90-day goal starts at where you wanna be and then works backward. Yeah, we're talking about reverse engineering. Think about it logically. If you don't know your destination, how exactly are you going to get there? You can be busy, you can be active, you can fill your calendar with tasks, but busy is not the same as effective, and activity without a destination tends to wander. And that's the key to success here, your success. By following this 90-day technique that I'm sharing with you today, you can stay in action and stay committed because every single thing you do connects back to the specific outcome you defined in advance. So it's all about cultivating that goal mindset. It keeps you focused in a field that has a thousand directions you could go in any given moment. Now let's make this practical. Your goal has to be tangible, not, "I want more clients," something specific. "I'm going to have two hundred people on my email list," or, "I'm going to complete fifteen paid office ergonomics assessments." Specificity is what makes a goal actionable. Vague goals produce vague effort. Let's talk about the types of goals that you should be making. When you make your 90-day goal, and I want you to think of something by the end of our time together here, I want you to actually set three versions of it. First is your safe goal. This is achievable and realistic based on where you are right now. It's the goal you're confident you can hit if you simply execute the plan. The second goal is your hairy, scary goal. This is the ambitious, slightly uncomfortable version, the one that makes you a little nervous to say out loud. This goal exists to stretch your thinking about what's actually possible. Even if you don't fully hit it, aiming at it pulls your results further than aiming only at the safe version the third thing I want you to look at making is your baseline goal. This is the number you need to hit your minimal financial commitments, not your dream outcome, just like your floor. The number that tells you whether or not your business is sustaining itself. Having all three gives you a real picture. You're not just hoping. You know what success looks like and it feels like at every level, and then you have, like, your minimum amount that you need to be bringing in to be financially sustainable. And here's something I want to say directly. It's incredibly easy to compare yourself to other ergonomics consultants. I see it all the time. You have FOMO, you have all these other emotions going out, because many times we're stepping out into something that we've never done before. They don't teach you marketing or business in healthcare professional school, whether you're a PT or an OT. So I truly believe you have to give yourself grace in this so looking at our community, whether you are a part of the Accelerate Business of Ergonomics group or you're planning to be in the future, you know where you're at. I think that being part of a community like that gives us a bigger version of, of ourselves so that we can see where other ergonomics professionals are at, and we can say, "Hey, this is where I'm going to be. I love what this person is doing. I'm gonna use that to generate ideas for my 90-day goal because that person over there just proved that it's possible." What is that person doing day to day? I'm gonna get on a call with them, I'm gonna email them, I'm gonna connect with them, I'm gonna ask them a question in our next coaching call. All of this is possible if you don't get into that comparison trap. Because I have found that comparison trap will derail more momentum than almost anything else I see from an ergonomics professional's standpoint. And having that grace with yourself, with your journey, with your plan, and simply putting one foot in front of the other going forward is going to maximize your results in 90 days. In fact, most people discredit what they can get done in 90 days and put way more emphasis on what they can get done in a year. But In reality, you have four 90-day periods in a year to get to that big old goal that you're dreaming of. However, the way that I like to look at 90-day planning goals is that you have 90 days to look at a plan, figure out if that's the way you wanna take your business, if that marketing idea works, if that type of business that you wanna work with is right for you. You have 90-day periods to do a test, see if you're getting results, and then if you don't get results, modify that plan in the next 90 days. As an ergonomics business owner, this is where the stuff really works So let's talk numbers here because this, as business owners, you know it's all about dollars and cents. Let's get concrete Say your goal is $100,000 in a year in your ergonomics practice, So you can break down $100,000 in a year. That's $8,300 a month. Broken down further, that's $270 a day, right? It's just simple math. There are many different ways that you can get $270 a day. One comprehensive assessment every few days maybe, or maybe a handful of smaller engagements per week, a reoccurring contract with a mid-sized employer, you name it, right? I hope that the lights are going off in your brain, and you're looking at how many different ways that I can generate this income. There's more than one path here, and it's all based on reverse engineering that income goal to figure out what you need to be generating on a daily and a monthly basis, so it's not a total surprise at the end of the year, and you're like, "Ugh, why didn't I make any money? Oh, b- it's because I didn't put the daily plan into action." So in knowing that idea, let's talk about what won't get you there and really what will First of all, these are things that I have seen from other ergonomics entrepreneurs, small business owners building up their kingdom, so to speak. The first thing that I have seen is that over-planning won't get you there. Waiting until you feel ready won't get you there either. Thinking you need to know everything before you start also won't get you there. I see so many talented, well-trained healthcare professionals and ergonomics professionals stuck in this exact loop. They keep refining their plan, kinda touching their toe in the water and being like, "Ugh, I don't know if this is gonna work." And maybe they don't hit a plan because they're not fully committed. However, they internalize that, that feedback instead of a lesson. They think they absolutely have to quit everything, go back to their nine-to-five, or just take an entirely different path. So don't get trapped into that loop. I've seen so many competent people get stuck in that failure loop when really there's a lesson about what they need to change in their trajectory. Here's what will actually move you forward. first, you need to have a minimum viable service. As I mentioned in the beginning of this episode, I think office ergonomics assessments are something that is minimal, it is viable, and it is a service. It checks all three boxes here. Focus on what you truly need to get started, and let me be clear, this is not business cards. That's not a beautifully designed website. It's the smallest version of your service that you can deliver and get paid for. So it's one service type. What does that mean for you? Does it mean an office ergonomic assessment? Does it mean contacting certain companies to do, a presentation about office ergonomics? We know that clients need, want, and desire office ergonomics services. Often, people just don't know you exist. So come up with a minimum viable service, figure out who you wanna work with, and start taking consistent action. That's it. One clear offer. What are you gonna do to be helping these businesses? You can expand, and you can really refine this later. That's for later. But to get forward, you just gotta pick something, and you can't expand something that doesn't exist yet The second thing is to learn to execute and to learn. Take action. Learn from what happened. Adjust. Take action again. This loop repeated builds both your skill and your business simultaneously. Waiting until you've learned absolutely everything before you execute anything is a guarantee that you will never start. I have seen this so many times with healthcare professionals. Starting a business is not the same thing as cramming for an exam. The opposite is true when you wanna get started with office ergonomics assessments. First of all, when you think of everything that you need to have ready at your disposal as a business owner and compare that with what the client really wants, like an office ergonomic assessment, focus on one thing at a time. Everything will get done eventually as a small business ow-owner. However, thinking that you need to have all of these checks in the boxes before you can get out there and start offering your services to businesses, that is the wrong way to do it because that will leave you in procrastination, and procrastination is a really smart way to be like, "Hey, I know I have to be doing this, but I have to do A, B, C, D, and E, F" instead of let's just keep it simple. Let's keep this manageable goal to what the client needs. And a client will need an office ergonomic assessment, so let's do that. We'll figure out everything else as it comes. The next thing I want to talk about is affinity marketing. Cold calling is not the only path, and frankly, it's rarely the most effective one in our field. Have you ever heard of affinity marketing? Friend, I'm so happy that you're listening to this because this could be the secret that sets you apart from your competition. Affinity marketing means building trust and relationships through marketing to your ideal clients, showing up where they already are, contributing value, and letting the relationship develop naturally. This is a hack that nobody talks about, but there is so much opportunity here. Why? Because this is one of the ways that I built my business. It works. The short version of this is that people buy from people they know and trust. How can you get into that circle? The fourth piece of advice here is the know and trust factor. Yep. This is the relationship engine that drives almost all service-based businesses. People buy from people, and sometimes we can forget who we are working with when we are talking to these medium-sized businesses. It's not a corporation. People wanna work with people that they know, they like, and they trust. Especially relevant for ergonomics professionals is that they don't wanna get screwed over by expensive sit-stand desks or an injury or all this stuff that you don't truly want. It's a huge cost, right? So they wanna make sure that you know your stuff Even if a lead doesn't buy from you immediately, which is especially important for ergonomic services, that lead still has value. And working with businesses, you have to be aware that they have different cycles that they will be able to work with you in. And of course, if someone's injured, they can kind of jump, scoot into your arena immediately. But if there's no injuries, it almost needs to be planned out into whether it's budgets or seasons or plans. They can't just drop everything and work with you next week unless they are in need. That's the difference for service-based businesses in the ergonomics world. So that lead, that prospect, that business still has value, and this is where, like, the game-changing information comes in, and I... Maybe I see 5%, maybe less than 5%, of ergonomics professionals who are nurturing that lead. That's huge opportunity that most ergonomics professionals are consistently just refusing to look at You can nurture that relationship over time through email marketing and consistent, useful content. The sale today is not the only outcome that matters. The relationship that you're building is an asset So I wanna pivot here because this is something that I have heard over and over. It's confusing for ergonomics professionals, especially for new healthcare professionals just getting into this field. There's no such thing as shortcuts. AI cannot replace your expertise. This is something I'm so passionate about. Starting small, it's not a compromise. It is the strategy. A clear 90-day goal reverse engineered into weekly action executed consistently will outperform a perfect plan that never gets started. And while you're building that momentum on the business side, never cut corners on the actual skill of doing a proper ergonomics assessment. That competence is the foundation everything else stands on. To help you get started, not only with the mentorship and the accountability, but with the actual tools that make your practice more efficient without compromising your judgment, if that's something that you wanna get into, I can help you. I wanna invite you to be the newest member of Accelerate the Business of Ergonomics. Details are on the website