How many clients do you need to earn a full time living as a health professional? 

CALCULATION #1:  To find out the client base you need to earn a full-time living, you first need to know how many appointments you can accept in a year.  Multiply the number of sessions or treatments you want to perform in a day by the number of days in the week you plan to work.  For example, 5 sessions a day, 5 times a week = 25 sessions per week.  Multiply this sum by 50 weeks.  25 sessions a week X 50 weeks = 1250 sessions.  This is the maximum number of sessions or sessions you can perform in a year.  

CALCULATION #2:  How many clients do you need to fill your maximum number of sessions?  First you must know how often clients will visit you.  Do they come for a course of sessions, or just once?  Do they come regularly once a month for maintenance, or just when they need you?

Divide the number of sessions you can perform in a year by the number of times your clients visit you on average each year.  For example:  Do your clients visit you an average of once a year?  Based on the calculations above, you would need a minimum of 1250 clients to fill your sessions.  Do your clients see you once a month?  You need just 105 clients.  Do clients come once a week for an average of 6 weeks?  You would need 209 clients.

CALCULATION # 3:  Of the total number of clients you serve over the course of a year, only about 20% of these will become loyal repeat clients.  People relocate, get well, become dissatisfied, get lured away by someone else, or just want to try something new.  That means you will always have to be searching for 80% new clients.  

New clients will come from a pool of the general population.    If new clients make up 80% of your clientele, that pool will need to be at least 5 times the total number of clients you can serve each year.  So, if you need 1250 clients, you need 6250 potential clients.

To find your potential client base, divide the population in your city or area by 3 to determine 1/3 of the population.  (this is the percentage of people who now use natural health services)  Divide this sum by the total number of similar practitioners in your area.  This reveals how many people are potentially available to come to you.  For example, if Niagara Falls has a population of 79,000 with 28 RMT's, each RMT will have a potential client base of 940 people.   

By using this calculation method, you can also learn if there is room for new practitioners, or if the market is over-saturated and you need to move to another city to earn a living.