Scratching Our Itch

There’s a great interview available on You Tube with best selling author Tim Ferris who wrote the Four Hour Work Week and most recently the Four Hour Chef. In the interview Tim Ferris comments about the advice he provides to start-up companies, authors, or anyone for that matter building any product or service. The advice he offers is to simply “scratch your own itch.” If you’re an author, write the book that you want to read. If you’re a designer, design the product that you can’t find. If you’re a blogger, blog about the things that bother you. Effectively, build, write, or design for yourself. And, in doing so, you will address issues or concerns that are common to other people.

American journalist Po Bronson reinforced this message by suggesting that, in moments of writers block, simply write what bothers you.

Personally, I never liked sales people. I found them particularly uncomfortable and awkward to deal with. Over the many times I went for physiotherapy, I always felt that physiotherapists and their respective practices were selling something. This was typically in the form of treatments and the idea that the next treatment was essential and necessary. It seldom is either.

Also, I never liked what I call “spectator treatments.” Where the physiotherapist would hand the client an exercise sheet, observe as they perform the exercises and send them off with great expectations to complete them. This is almost always accompanied by a sales pitch to return for a weekly review and pay for new exercises.

Above all, I am most turned off at how factory-like physiotherapy clinics operate. This cookie-cutter approach where the same treatment, information and advice is delivered to each and every client. There is real danger in this. Here the physiotherapist no longer views the client or their injury as unique. And, when this occurs, the client is undoubtedly exploited.

Trillium Physiotherapy started as a response to scratch our own itch and address and correct the issues that bother us in this industry. In doing so, we hope to dissolve many of the similar concerns that people like us share.

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