Lyon grows blog into thriving online business

What started out as a blog offering personal insight on all things occupational therapy has turned into a growing online business venture for Aurora native Sarah Lyon.
Now more than 13 years after first sharing her thoughts in a blog she titled OT Potential, Lyon said she underestimated the potential of a business that still goes by that same name.
“For me, it started when I moved from New York City back here to Aurora,” Lyon recalled of her unintended entrepreneurial journey. “When I was in school (at New York University) there was such a network and so many resources pertaining to occupational therapy. Then I moved back here and for a while I was the only OT (occupational therapist) there (at Memorial Hospital) so I was really missing the connection of fellow occupational therapists.”
A product of her millennial generation, Lyon started seeing online communities and blogs pop up on a variety of topics, so she decided to start one of her own. She called her blog OT Potential, sharing thoughts and information she was hearing on her chosen profession.
“I did that for a couple of years and it started to get some traction,” she recalled of the 2011 launch. “The blog started to grow and I started to get identified as a popular OT blogger, so people started approaching me about becoming an affiliate.”
Lyon described her affiliate role as writing about a specific project, then sharing in a percentage of the revenue with that particular company or organization. It took five years, but in time she realized that she was making more money as a blogger than as an occupational therapist, so she decided to pivot into the online realm full-time.
“I started to think like, okay, there’s a future in this online world,” she said. “I didn’t want to just be an affiliate and I wanted to find something more sustainable.”
The core reason she started blogging about OT, Lyon explained, is that she was always interested in learning more about best practices in the field. That prompted her to find new research coming out and then review those articles in depth, talking about the implications for OT practitioners.
“That’s how the paid membership part of my site started,” she explained of her early business model. “We just started with journal article reviews and people were joining that. I thought people were spending so much time learning this new research that they deserved to be getting official continuing education credit for it.”
That concept took OT Potential to a whole different level, as Lyon became an approved provider for the American Occupational Therapy Association and started packaging those lessons as a podcast. Each podcast began with about 10 minutes reviewing new research coming out, followed by an interview with a guest expert who could discuss with Lyon the potential impact of that research for occupational therapists.
“So what happens is they take a test to verify that they listened to all of it, then we generate a certificate for their time,” Lyon explained. “That really became a core of our business model because there’s value there. Every OT in the United States needs continuing education hours, usually about 20 every two years, so they can join our membership and earn all those hours that way.”

‘Community feel’
Asked what makes her podcasts and business format unique, Lyon said her initial blog had a conversational type approach to the topic of the day, which she carried over into her online business.
“Our’s definitely has more of a community feel because we started with those journal article reviews and it was really driven by commenting and interaction,” she said. “Now that we’ve turned those into courses, it’s still kind of kept that community feel where people pop into our platform and they’ll ask questions about our episodes and talk about those practices on there.”
There is always plenty of content to choose from in today’s changing world of health care, Lyon said, which is part of what she enjoys about owning her own business.
“At the beginning of each year we generate a list of 100 journal articles about occupational therapy that have the most citations, the ones that have made the biggest splash in the past year,” she explained of a process in which she involves a research librarian from Indiana. “We pretty systematically go through that list and find the research that has the most concrete implications.”
For example, one of the hot topics from last year involved a new guide published on the topic of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. Several pages of that guide were devoted to occupational therapy, so Lyon read the material, did her own homework, then reached out to a guest expert to come onto her podcast and dive deep into the subject and its possible OT implications.
“The trick is to find the guests,” she admitted. “Sometimes we’ll have the author on if they’ve practiced as a clinician, but if it’s a paper that doesn’t have a clinician who helped write it I usually go find a clinician who is well respected in that area and works full-time. So for that Complex Regional Pain Syndrome I just knew an OT who works full-time at a pain center in Utah and Complex Regional Pain Syndrome is one of her specialities. She came on and we talked about these new guidelines and kind of what they look like in her practice.”
This topic is just one example, Lyon said, of why continuing education training is going online more and more these days in the medical field.
“There is really a push towards people being able to access the information when they need it,” she said. “Say I have a patient coming in tomorrow with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. I could go into this course and either listen to the full thing or just read the transcripts and try to get the high points. That’s one of the big benefits of it being online. It doesn’t take away the need for in-person continuing education. Sometimes for practicing manual skills we still have our OT state conference where people can go, but this supplements it and really helps people access the information when they need it.”
Asked if online continuing education is a growing trend in other sectors beyond OT, Lyon said most definitely.
“In each of the allied health professions, like speech therapy and physical therapy, there are similar people who do what I do,” she said. “Even in occupational therapy there are other online creators, but they tend to really specialize in one particular area, whereas I’m more of a generalist. That fits in with my time in Aurora, where I was more of a generalist, going into all kinds of different topic areas.”
Another reason the self-made entrepreneur believes there is potential for her business and others like it to grow is the vast amounts of research and information coming out in health care.
“Our old model of going to a conference every two years just doesn’t work anymore,” she said quite matter of factly. “It doesn’t work because there’s too much new information to keep up on, so we’re finding all kinds of ways in medicine to get the information in front of practitioners when they need it. I think doctors are really leading the way on that, but even for the rest of us we’re finding new models.”
From her perspective, Lyon said more information for providers leads to better patient care.
“I would say with all of healthcare there is a definite, steady improvement in the care that’s provided and a lot of that is thanks to the incredible research that comes out every year,” she continued. “The challenge of our age is to get that research into the hands of clinicians as quickly as possible.”
Historically, Lyon recalls hearing about a reported 17-year gap from when new research would come out to when it would actually make its way into practice.
“Oh my goodness, that’s obviously way too long,” she said. “That challenge was there even like back in the day when there was less research coming out, so now that there’s more research coming out it really forces us to think about new models and how to get information to patients.”
All of which bodes well for OT Potential, which is focused on that very goal. Lyon shared that she unknowingly launched her business in the COVID era, thus it took off quickly and has continued on a pace of steady growth.
“COVID was a great jumpstart for us because all the in-person continuing education got shut down,” she recalled. “We were starting out at that time so we had this great jump-start and then we’ve just grown year after year since then. You can’t script COVID, but that was the best way to get going, for sure. It grew fast and we’ve been growing like 20 percent year over year, so just some very nice growth.
“What I love about it is I get to be learning all the time,” she continued. “Even though I have this set schedule it feels like we’re always tackling new challenges. It feels like we’re always changing and I enjoy that. I like the size that it is, but I think the next phase of growth will be having more time with our contractors.”

Husband/wife team
Lyon launched OT Potential on her own, but now has a partner in husband Mitchell, who had previous experience running an online membership site. He joined the company full-time two years ago and now handles all the back-end technology, as well as producing the podcasts in their downtown business studio.
“Any development that we do on the site he spearheads that,” she said. “He also produces our podcasts, he edits it and makes sure the sound is good, so basically making sure everything works so I can focus on the content.”
Sarah and Mitchell have two boys, Jack and Walter, ages 10 and 8. Both are natives of Aurora who were excited about the opportunity to move back to their hometown, a decision that has worked out well for the entire family.
“I think part of the reason that we moved back to Aurora is we just saw it as a really great community to have this business which takes a lot of focus,” she said. “But also, I mean being in Aurora is just time-saving. It’s easy to get everywhere. Our kids have lots of freedoms. There’s a lot of help in the community raising kids, so this has been just an awesome place to own a business.”
That sense of community is especially important when you spend so much time in front of a computer, she added.
“That makes a huge difference being in Aurora because I don’t have co-workers,” she said. “But I get to see people I know every time I walk out my door and every time I go to the grocery store. That has helped it not feel so isolating.”
Add to that benefit the reliable access to high-speed internet bandwidth, which Lyon said is a must when you own an online business.
“Fiber was a huge benefit of moving to Aurora,” she said. “We were on the square, so I think we were some of the first people to have that. Actually, our internet in New York City and in Chicago was much more spotty, and then in Aurora it’s just been awesome to have the fiber to the home. ”
For more information, go to OTPotential.com.