How Physical Therapists Can Outmaneuver Nike (Yes, Really)

0:09 All right. Good Tuesday morning to everybody. Welcome to PT Breakfast Club. Today's episode is going to hit home for a lot of people, I think. And it's going to bother people, right? It's going to make them feel uncomfortable. Some people it won't, but the people that will make a real uncomfortable. Because here's the truth, and we're going to get into a post that Tony shared that I think some people understood and felt, and some people missed the mark completely. Being a great PT doesn't make you a great business owner. gonna say that again being a great physical therapist doesn't make you a great business owner those are two different things like you'd never look at a good business owner and be like they must be a good physical therapist if they own I don't know a store so these two things are not the same just because you think they are that being a great pt doesn't make you a great business owner and if your clinic still feels chaotic exhausting or gets stuck this might be why and just before we hit record tony had said Well, you had said it's a marketing issue.

1:06 And I'm like, I like to zoom out and go a little deeper. I don't know if they know what business they're in. Because if they don't understand that they have to market or that's part of it, that means you haven't understood the full story. So do you want me to share the post first so you can play off of it? Yeah, go ahead. And while you're putting it up there, so Dave was kind enough. Gosh, this is probably months ago now. He came into my Medicare billing course to do a full hour talking about marketing, talking about how he markets and promotes what he does. And I think so many of us, me included, I always share the story back in uh I was like I'm good I wasn't even a therapist but I had patients who wanted to see me as the tech and not the therapist because I understood like what the patient wants they don't care about strength they don't care about all this other stuff that was important to the therapist they want to feel good they want to leave feeling better than when they came in they want to have fun they want to enjoy the time that they're there So I was like, oh, a vision of grandeur.

2:08 I'm good at what I do. I'm going to go start a business. I started the business and realized being good at what I do is the tiniest part of running a successful business. And so we have patients or not patients, PTs in my group, my Facebook group saying, how do I market mobile therapy services? And I put up what you've got, top ten questions, which to me, to Dave, to Jimmy, this is second nature. You can't even think of marketing without even starting with these questions. And somebody said, no, no, no, no. How do I market to patients? I'm like, I don't even know anything about what you're doing. So where do you want to go with that graphic?

2:51 Um, well, I think it was the discussion of the, about the, the comment below, which like what you just said, like, good question. Like what marketing will work to attract patients? And what, what was the rest of these questions? Like right now I can see, and I'll read them just for the podcast audience. What specific you're, you're saying these are the questions you should start asking yourself. And then the answers that you give or an artificial intelligence or a friend or people, that will outline your strategy. So the first question is what specific services do I offer and who benefits most from them? Who is my ideal patient? Like we've heard clinicians say, oh, I got a bunch of this on my schedule and that's not who I want.

3:33 Well, you're attracting this. So maybe change it unless you don't, unless you work at a clinic where that's not your decision. But if you're creating your own business, you would want to work with the patients that you are lit up working with. So that's the second question. What makes my service different from and better than alternatives like clinics or home care? So that was the three questions, Tony. Do you remember what else was on the list? Yeah, so real quick, I'll go through. So number four, where do my ideal patients or their caregivers spend their time? Meaning like, are they on Facebook? Are they in community centers? Are they at church? Where are they? What free or low cost ways can I start marketing, making connections with these individuals?

4:16 Because I had said in the prompt, you know, these are new therapists starting a new mobile business. They don't necessarily have big budgets to put into paid ads. Number six, do I have a budget to pay for marketing? Even a couple hundred dollars or do I have to start organically? Number seven, what's the current reputation and network strength in my community? Like if you just move to an area versus if you have deep roots, if you grew up there, you played little league, you're part of the school system, the church, whatever. Uh, numbers, number eight, am I willing to consistently create educational content like articles, videos, talks? I know therapists who are like, I want patients, but I don't want to spend time on social media that puts a roadblock in front of you and makes things just a little bit harder.

5:05 Number nine, how quickly do I need results? If I'm making a mortgage payment and I don't have money in the bank, I need money today. How do I get a patient to give me money today as opposed to I can wait weeks or months before the big payday comes? Insurance, I'm waiting fifteen to thirty days. Cash, I'm collecting everything up front. Those are very different models. And then how do I or how will I track what's working or not? And I think the issue, before I kick it over to Dave, I think the issue for a lot of clinicians, me included, I'm not picking anyone out of the crowd, is you think, I need more patients.

5:48 What's the best marketing? Like, I have sciatica. What's the best stretch? And it's completely not the way to think of that problem. Like we need context. We need information. We need so much more before we can ever give you an answer. Dave, what are your thoughts when somebody says, you know, I need more patients. What do I do? Is this based off of just this post or that other one that we had messaged? That was like the mobile Medicare Part B. It was another post, but are we talking about these together or just this one with the questions you laid out and then Fred's comment? Whatever you like.

6:30 So, I don't know. I always react somewhat, I think, I don't want to say negatively. I want to say, in my opinion, like realistically, which is... when there's these questions or comments on these Facebook groups, it's people that are even before, like Tony's saying, you gotta know this, you gotta know that, you should have already done testing, you should have already figured things out, you should have already, of course, you're gonna figure things out along the way in business and entrepreneurship. That, of course, just goes without saying. But to come in and ask such either comments or questions around newbie-type questions around marketing, I don't understand it. I don't understand if someone has a mobile Medicare practice.

7:15 I don't understand why you're in a Facebook group for physical therapists asking like, hey, what marketing is working for everyone? Like Fox Rehab is what, in thirty six or something states, like soon probably every state. and like just look at like what they do so okay you can't have a person in every hospital and every nurse case manager's email and all that you can't you know but you could do it manually you can go on linkedin you could just just search linkedin and just do um hundreds of cold messages you can go to the senior center down the street you go to the library like tony said where are these people hanging out are they at pickleball courts when it's nice out are they at the library or the coffee shop when it's raining outside or whatever there's just too much of the I don't wanna do too much of a rant, but there's just too much of like the first reaction for so many therapists that are in business is I'm gonna go on Facebook or I'm gonna go into a Facebook group and I wanna like tell everyone my issues and problems and try to get some reassurance that everyone else has this problem instead of just going out and getting after it.

8:15 I just don't understand like, run like if you don't have money to run facebook ads then you should be cold calling people cold messaging people scheduling uh like doing calls doing zooms interviewing influencers people in the neighborhood politicians lawyers whoever it's really not that hard I don't understand why I'm trying to be nice here I know like I want this I want this to be helpful and I want to be helpful by saying don't do the facebook question thing because it shows like maybe you've never had a business before well if this is your first business and you're I don't know twenty nine thirty five forty five you've not been smacked in the face by life yet you have not been smacked in the face you've not been punched in the face by rejection in business and entrepreneurship yet and so when you come in and ask like where do I get medicare patients from it's like I don't know like I I just don't have time to that person needs so much help that even if you help them with getting the medicare patients they're still going to have problems Before Jimmy comes in, and I think that's the thing.

9:21 You hit it on the last sentence. It's like they don't know what they don't know. They're so, so green in this. Again, I thought I'd hang a business card in the sandwich shop and get flooded with new clients. This was me coming to business. I understand and I can empathize with what they're coming with. But just like you can't take a professional coach and get them to coach third grade football again, they're too far beyond that. I feel like you might be a little too far beyond the ability to help this person with this question because we got to go a hundred miles back. And we gotta be like, look, doesn't matter if you're a good therapist or a bad therapist.

10:01 We gotta start with what is the business you're in, which is what Jimmy's gonna talk about. Where are you starting? What do you even wanna do? Who are the people you're trying to connect to? But that person is still stuck in the idea that they don't even realize that stuff's important. They're like, no, just give me the answer. Just give me, it's Facebook ads. Put a hundred dollars a month into Facebook ads and you will be flooded. That's the answer that they want, but it's not helpful. Yeah. Well, Scott, real quick, is asking what happened. I'll tell you what happened. And by the way, Every parent's been through this, but my twelve month old son woke me up five times last night. I didn't even shave yet. I always like to shave before I even get here, you know, and I honestly I was going to just not jump on.

10:45 But that's the difference between me and a whole bunch of other folks out there is this is not even a job, but it's like I'm showing up. We do this Tuesday, Thursday morning. And here I am. I'm showing up a little maybe a little edgy, maybe a little cagey. But this is sometimes the anecdote that these therapists need. I did notice the fact that Dave has a concierge practice in New York. Tony's got a brick and mortar in Ohio. Jimmy's sort of in the middle. But we're also different because Tony's got teenagers. Dave's got a one-year-old teenager. you know, I played video games until midnight last night and woke up whatever I wanted. I do think I like how the fact that we have like the gamut there. I see what Dave's saying. I've said it before.

11:26 I've had that rant this morning since I slept well, I'm going to give that person grace, which is the things that Dave knows Dave needs to give himself credit for because the stuff that he thinks is simple isn't for everybody. But, But this is sort of ready fire aim. Like what I'm guessing is in this comment, that person has a business and is now thinking, where do I get the patients from? Like, whoa, that should have been six miles before how I would like to say, hey, Max, when you're reviewing the transcript of this episode, turn Tony's questions into a into a PDF document that we can supply the listeners with later. Now that I've said that later on, it'll do that.

12:08 But this is the same thing I do with big businesses. Of course, Jimmy loves visuals. This is the flow chart. I give this away. This is what I want people to look at. Like this is essentially what Tony just described, but in a visual format, which is who are you talking to? What are their problems? What are they looking to become? What are they looking to avoid? That's on the left side, that in yellow. On the right, what do you bring to the table? What's your unique selling proposition? And where their problems and goals and your uniqueness come and cross in a Venn diagram, which is my favorite type of diagram. That's your shared why. That's what Simon Sinek talks about. And from there, you need to do the legwork. What Dave was getting at, which is Alex Hormozy said, dude, if you're broke, you have no excuse of why you're not calling people or knocking on doors or walking around.

12:55 Like, you know, Alex Hormozy isn't great because he's brilliant. Alex Hormozy is great because he is unabashedly not shy about saying I'm not doing well right now. But if what his line was, if you're willing to be bad at something for a hundred days, you'll beat everybody. And that is true. I just started at Athelas, my day job, two months ago. And they gave me a ton of training, a ton of it. The problem is there's so much to learn, but they have a program where I can watch videos of other people doing demonstrations to get better. Do you want to know what I do when I wake up in the morning while I'm making eggs? I'm watching other demos. Is that sexy? Absolutely not. Will it make me better in a hundred days? Yes. Am I doing it? Yes. It's pushups. The problem with just doing push-ups is this guy, Fred, needs to know where to start.

13:41 If he's willing to put the comment in the Facebook group, he's got to be willing to Google it and just watch what ten other people are doing and then do the push-ups every morning. I'm very sorry. That's the truth. Well, Kendrick said, I go back and forth with my partner about always paying for certain things. Why not while not wanting to do the things that cost less cold calling, visiting offices, dropping off cards. We did at one point, you know, history, we used to do everything ourselves. My wife and I, uh, we would, we would cook the meal. We'd take the meal to the physician office. We'd set up the buffet.

14:22 We, we did all of that. We would go do drop-offs. I, I used to be so like, whatever the term is, guerrilla marketing. You guys remember that book. I would grab a bunch of free newspapers on Siesta Key. I'd stuff my flyer and brochure into it. And then I go around the neighborhood at two PM or two AM and throw those free newspapers into people's driveways around my clinic. Like I would do everything. Then we got enough money in the bank account. We did. We hired a person. She had been a patient. Then she was a retired marketing something for some company. And she was awesome. And we'd pay her a, you know, a twenty hour a week position.

15:03 She'd go to all the physician offices. And of course, I mean. I'll get canceled for this, but she was cute. She was friendly. She was good looking. She could get past the front desk because she was old enough to talk to the receptionist, but she was still young enough and appealing enough and had communication skills, air quotes, to talk to the surgeons. And she did amazing. Oh, boy. And she really, when we were at like five locations, she did a tremendous job. Sam is saying what also I'm thinking, which is they know the answer to the question, that they know what the things are, and it's psychology, which is how do I get over my fear and awkwardness of doing, I'm using air quotes, doing social media, posting, knocking.

15:55 Being hungry is a really good motivator and teacher, right? If you understand that the only difference between you and eating tomorrow is doing something awkward today, like you'll jump. So, you know, that, I don't know, maybe there's too much safety. That's the line, right? And I always screw it up. Right. When the when the pain of inaction is you only do you only do something when the pain of inaction is greater than the pain of action. I don't care if I'm out of shape and lazy if I'm on the couch until that bothers me enough that that hurts more than what pushups feel like that I do the pushups. But I will say now we have enough options. Like I still to this day will not go to like the Chamber of Commerce, you know, card exchange and go socialize and mingle.

16:42 I'm never going to do that. We have so many options. Why? Because you don't like it or you don't think the juice is worth a squeeze? The juice is always worth the squeeze. If you put the effort in, I am not comfortable going up to a stranger and trying to sell my wares. So I'm, I'm going to, it's going to be a waste of time for me, but you do something great at it, but you're doing something else. Yeah. And that's what I'm saying. So there's other options. You know, if you don't like video, you could do podcasts for voice only. If you don't like voice, you could do written content. If you don't like that, again, you could go into church groups. You can go into sports. You can go into, you know, knitting clubs.

17:23 There are so many opportunities to private Facebook groups. That's why I love this graphic, right? Because you change your who and everything else after it changes. That's why I disagree with Simon Sinek, right? When he says start with why. I say start with who. Get to why. That's why in this graphic, how, where, and when are like gray. Like they're monochromatic. You can put anything you want in there. Like it sort of doesn't matter. Do what's right for you. Like I have no problem speaking or networking, right? I'm going to one of those health to tech events again in Boston tomorrow. Dude, that's my playground. But if you asked me to write something, I'd be like, I'd sit there for three hours and get no words out.

18:03 Understand yourself first. Yeah. Your how, where, when? Dude, it's infinite. Like, look at the thing you're watching or listening to this thing on right now. Like, that's insane. I heard someone a few years ago. I don't want to give him credit because he gave it to me in private. But he said, watching physical therapists argue on smartphones and chat rooms, it's like handing someone TheraBand and they just use it as a slingshot. It's like, I gave you a powerful tool that you would have died for twenty years ago and then handed it to you for free and you're just using it like an idiot. Amen. Amen. What are you bitching about? So let's give three tangible, actionable things right now, one from each of us that play to our strengths that maybe this person will want to use or anybody who's out there.

18:50 So if I was a mobile therapist today, starting with zero, I had no connections, no networks, nothing. I would create a free YouTube account with zero subscribers. I would start reaching out to local referral sources, whether they be physicians or non-physicians, anybody, massage therapists, chiropractors, whoever. And I would literally start inviting them on to do a ten-minute interview to highlight their specialty and what they're doing. I would just ask them three questions. I would tell them you can pick from any of the ten, but I'll just do three. You could do it from your office. Here's a free Zoom link for a free Zoom account. And I would just start those interviews with my phone.

19:32 No special equipment, nothing. I would get that out there. And I'm not doing it because of the YouTube audience that doesn't exist. I'm doing it for reciprocity because that doctor is then going to say, hey, this guy, I never heard of this. What do you do again? Oh, you go to patients homes. Now that's one seed that was planted that will grow over time. So that's what I would do. But that plays to my strengths. Yeah, I would do that and I would make it, I would even lower the bar, but raise the virality is you steal what the guy from Morning Brew does, a sixty second startup. Same thing, but the whole thing isn't five minutes, it's sixty seconds, right? You're gonna pick three questions, you're gonna tell me, you're gonna tell me about you.

20:15 But it's not bragging when I'm interviewing you and I'm saying, Dave, tell me three things about concierge pain relief. Do this, do this, do this. And then you just, you can clip it together on the free apps on your phone. And the whole thing, the whole interaction is gonna be five minutes. Even if no one watches it, they walk away with a video about them. It's the ultimate door opener, right? It's why guys are supposed, it's why apparently, it's why guys buy girls drinks. It's a door opener. Hey, let me get something for you. How do I help you out? Do that ten times and you don't think you get one referral? And the only thing I would add is the mentality shift of if I told you you had to fail ten times in a row and then you could quit for the day and you don't have to work until tomorrow, you'd fail as fast as you could. Ask ten people if they'll be willing to do.

20:57 I would name it this. I will give this one one piece of tactical advice. I live in the town of Montgomery. I would say make it sixty second Montgomery and make everything about the community. Right. Because that person probably wants to be known in their community, too. They now see you as a way for them to get known. To expand on the Tony video thing, when you have the physician, the nurse case manager, whoever on the Zoom video, you start the video and then you introduce yourself. Like, all right, everyone, hey, welcome back. This is Dr. Dave Kittle. I'm the owner of Concierge Pain Relief Home Physical Therapy and we specialize in. And then, you know, today we have physician, doctor so-and-so and blah, blah, blah. And you kick it over to them. So even on the video, the person that is sitting there, they heard your little pitch on who you specialize in helping.

21:44 They've just heard it. but you're not pitching it to them. You're doing it on the video. So then they have the deliverable. Like Tony said, they have the video, they have the link you put on YouTube, whatever. They're going to play it back. They're going to listen because they want to see how they sounded and looked and all that. Then they hear you with the intro. Like we specialize in neurological conditions or aches and pains for busy professionals or whatever your thing is. then they hear it and see it again, you pitching. And so the question of this marketing thing, Tony, is someone who needs patients right away or in the near future or both? Both. All right, let's say, so if I need a patient right away, I go on LinkedIn, I look up concierge, nurse, case managers, concierge, nursing.

22:27 I DM all of them. You connect with them. Let me rephrase that. I'm not even going to say need money or need patients right away. I'm going to say needs money right away. Okay. Well, need money right away is you got to go for the right hook. You can't even do the jab, jab, jab. You got to go for the right hook. So that is you're DMing all these nurse case managers, any of these concierge nursing companies and saying, hey, we specialize in X, Y, Z. I would love to hear your current challenges or what you guys specialize in. We currently have clients in this zip code, this zip code, this zip code that have these conditions. know anyone that needs therapy for these types of issues or challenges or conditions and they might say yes now but that's a right hook so you're going to get some people that don't respond so if you did this a month ahead of time you dm them and you say hey um are you guys looking are you accepting more new patients and clients at your nursing company because we have patients even if you don't but you want to try to refer people to them but that takes more time Right, I would change your right hook into a jab.

23:36 I would yes and what you're just saying. And I heard someone who started a very, very successful practice doing this. can I help you take care of your hardest to treat clients? The ones you, the ones that are, when you see them on there, I know physician Smith, you have these really hard to deal with older adult patients. You want to get them better. It's like almost not an ask. Cause what you're doing is you're saying, can I, can I take out your garbage? Like, can I do the task you don't want to do? And that's a jab to them, but it's a right hook to you. And just to be clear, Dave is using Gary V vernacular where a jab is a give and Like I'm going to give you thirty second videos for a year when you watch on Instagram. And by the time I come out with a book for twenty two dollars, you're like, that's the ask by my book.

24:16 That's the right hook because it's something about me. But by the time you hear that right hook or you get pitched that right hook, you feel like you owe that person. That if you had to turn it around quickly, if I, if you said I had to make a thousand dollars tomorrow, I would DM people like, who were your hardest to treat patients? I'd love to, I'd love to assist you in taking care of them. Cause that's like, okay. Yeah. Instead of, cause what people are, it's a pattern disruption. What people are normally hearing is like, how can I have the easy thing? And that's easy, right? I got fifty people competing for the easy thing. You're the only person competing for the hard thing. Funny thing is, if you do the hard thing ten times, they'll hand you the easy thing because they feel like they owe you. There's that word reciprocity.

24:57 So that's how we got established. When we first moved to Ohio, I had no direct referral relationships. My wife had a big family locally, but I had nothing. I went to the local rheumatologist. He had just come to town also. I said, hey, send me all your fibromyalgia referrals. Nobody else wants to treat them. Nobody else wants them. Send them my way. I will take good care of them. I guarantee I won't make them worse. I probably won't make them better. But I guarantee I want to make them worse. That's a great line. I guarantee. Think about that because the average person is I'm the best. I'll make them better in three visits. So real. So real. And it's honest. And people that it's honesty. So damn rare.

25:38 The bar is so low. So my first one about the video interviews, that's more long-term. If I needed money today, I've been working on these graphics. So this is a graphic I prompted ChatGPT and one of the image generators within it. I said, give me an image of an older man. I think I said seventy five who fell, clearly slid out of his bed. Now, these are important words because this is what's happening. This is what happened to my dad, my my family members. He was getting in bed, slid out of his bed, got on the floor. Give me an image. He's a little bit overweight. He's fully, I specifically said fully dressed, pajamas, head to toe.

26:21 I said, put his wife next to him, also older. She's consoling him, but she's unable to get him off the ground. He is clearly stressed and uncomfortable. She feels terrible because she can't help him generate this image for me. This is the image that comes up. Beautiful image. I think it's great. Now I need money in my bank account today, tomorrow, this week. I put this along with a long form copy. of, you know, the story about the person, the person who they, they, it was a non-emergency fall. You guys know, I've shared this before, non-emergency. They're embarrassed to call the paramedics or the firefighters.

27:02 They've called them three times this month already. They, they know they have adult children locally, but if they call them again, they're going to feel bad. They have their own jobs, their own kids. Dave was up all night with his baby. This is the reality of life. If I'm Dave's dad stuck on the floor, I am not going to call Dave because I know he's too busy. But if there was a solution that I could call somebody in for three hundred, five hundred dollars in the middle of the night, they were willing to come over and help me discreetly, quietly, without making a big deal out of it. I'm going to do it. And so these are the kinds of high urgency. There is a guy named Victor Antonio.

27:42 I found his YouTube videos years ago. He had an acronym. One of the letters was U for urgency. And I said, we're too obsessed trying to fix long-term problems. Parkinson's, neurodegenerative change, arthritis, all this stuff, like decades. Give me something that is high urgency right now. Somebody cuts your leg off and sews it back together. You get a knee replacement. That's high urgency. Those patients never cancel. They always show up. They will do anything to get into the clinic. You show me a geriatric who's on the floor, who's embarrassed to call the paramedics again. but they have the money and the resources they're going to pay to get a discreet help to come over to their house.

28:25 Like these are the things that if I needed money today that I would put out into the community. So this is the difference, in my opinion, of understanding this is again, this is why my graphic here starts with who understanding your audience and it understands the psychographic of an individual or individuals versus the demographic and demographic is very objective. It is male, female. age geography zip code whatever condition that's still psychographic right and then you get into sorry that's still demographic you get into psychographic it's like what are the emotions that are underlying those things Right. I bet you if you AB tested a bunch of ads and said, if you're between the ages of seventy five and ninety five and this and this zip code and you have, you know, sign up for physical therapy, that would get minimal response.

29:17 But if you said, are you afraid of falling? We have something that could discreetly help. You've identified a fear, afraid of falling and also a reason you might not call because of urgency, which is discretion. I don't want to make a big deal. Oh, don't worry about it. What happens when someone, doesn't matter their age, falls in public? The first thing they do before they actually assess themselves to see if they're okay, they say, I'm okay. Because people don't want to meet the center of attention negatively. They don't want, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. Before they even assess themselves, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. What happens when your kid falls? You're fine, you're fine. Because we don't want it to happen because we know what it feels like.

30:00 There is a solution in Manhattan, in most buildings, for when people that are, you know, seventy, eighty, whatever, and slide out of bed and fall on the ground like this. Do you guys know? Doorman? Can you guess? Doorman. Exactly, the doorman. In so many buildings, over the years they will just call down to their front desk their doorman and so I don't think that this would work in manhattan unless unless they live in a building in manhattan or brooklyn or whatever that didn't have a concierge front desk doorman because these doormen they you know they tip them in you know in december and there's a you know a relationship with most of these folks and they give them you know christmas cards and holiday gifts and all that type of stuff so if they have a doorman I know for sure like I've I've had like between one visit the next visit over the years they're like oh yeah you know someone so yeah he's you know he slipped out of bed last night and you know so you know johnny at the front desk you know came up and he was nice enough to you know help him up so look at that the the the the primary function of a doorman is not to open the door it's to be there You know what I mean?

31:03 It's like I need someone to do all the things that would be a dollar charge each time, but they just say, well, we, everybody in this building needs someone, so why don't we just all pool the resources? And then we've got Johnny at the front door, and I don't think his job is to open the door. I think it's to be there with exactly that. So how would you expound on that? It would only work in cities with doormen. Be Johnny's best friend and go, if it ever gets too much for you to handle, this is my card you call mine. Because I'm sure they don't want to do it. I'm sure the front desk – They want to do enough, but once they realize it's true, listen, if it's not the emergency room, but if it's above what you think you need to handle, but not an ambulance, that's where I live.

31:44 You call Dave. But this is the perfect reason why just giving a marketing strategy does not work. Correct. Because like I've never lived in an apartment building. I've never even considered a doorman. This is something that is so foreign and different to me. What works for me here is, Small community, lots of houses close together. I even think back to when I was in Sarasota, lots of mobile home parks, lots of geriatrics. You know, they have the three steps to entry. I mean, each mobile home park is a goldmine. I could walk from trailer to trailer to trailer. If I was a mobile therapist, I would make a full business on one mobile home park. Um, these are things that you have to understand the context of the situation.

32:27 You can't just give blanket advice. It doesn't work. Yeah. Um, in my community, there is, I'm trying to think of what the official name for it is, but it's a, it's a shed. It's a little shed next to the community center. A lean-to? It's a little more beefy than a lean-to. It's got a door with a lock on it. But essentially, if you have a walker, if you have crutches, if you have a bedside commode and you don't need it anymore, you donate it there. It's like give a penny, take a penny, right? So that's the physical structure. Because again, I don't have any doormen in my area. But who is the person who's responsible for that? Can that person become the... eight hundred number call at any hour.

33:08 Right. For for help. There's too many. I mean, again, my community is pretty is like probably similar to more similar to Tony's where it's more suburban. Who who who is our doorman at two in the morning that, you know, you could call. It's not an issue. Don't listen if you don't. I tell people all the time when I have family members, if you don't call me at three in the morning and then I find out tomorrow morning at nine a.m. that you were thinking about it, I will be pissed at you. You sort of have to impart on people. And that's where the doorman comes in. They're like, well, we pay you. Yes, I'm on call. I'm downstairs. You know me. You walk by me all the time. So that's a good question. Who would be the doorman in a trailer, in a mobile home park? I don't know the answer.

33:48 That's why it has to be discreet because if the kids find out, you're going to get in trouble. Final thought on this, with these Manhattan buildings with the concierge, if it happens too often, I have heard where the family or the client, the front doorman, they kind of probably get frustrated or that they're not helping enough or whatever. They call the paramedics, like an ambulance shows up and the EMTs come in and two or three of them help the patient up And now talk about discrete. That is the opposite of discrete. Now all your neighbors know that you need an ambulance. And now that pressure could result in someone paying three to five hundred bucks for that service that Tony was talking about, even in Manhattan when they have a doorman.

34:30 So there are ways to, depending on the situation, potentially, Tony, could have a solution there what is going in my ad that is going in my ad the ambulance the fire truck pulling up to your house even if it's free you're paying not to have that happen what if you could flip it what if you could use psychology and say listen for three hundred bucks you got three visits like you have like give three in your holster you got three bullets in your holster so you're not paying every time you call I can pay out front three hundred paid out front Now burn one of your, burn one of your calls. Like just, you got it. Use it. You paid for it. It's already, you might as well use it. It's not going to do you any good in the bank. Cause if it gets any further, it could cost you a hundred grand.

35:12 So burn that call. So move the payment earlier. And then you, I owe you. If you don't use it in a year, I'll give you the money back. Before we go to Jimmy's segment, Samuel said, sell the building lift chair that I talk about a hundred percent. I was that one. Huh? Which, which one was that? Which is the building chair? No, sell the lift chair that helps people get off the floor. Sell the building, like Dave's building. His doorman gets the building owner to buy the lift chair. I get the twenty five percent commission on it. This is an interesting one, though. Good morning, PT Pinecast. You all talk about PT business. Do you talk about things for recently licensed PTs and what you wish you would have done?

35:57 while looking for a PT job. This could be, I don't know if you guys want to talk about it today or next episode, but I would love to talk about interview and stuff like that. Yeah. Next time. Okay. That's good. So max, put that on the, um, put that on the agenda for, uh, for Thursday, producer max win forever. Come back. Yeah. So I have something that I want to talk about. I have a new segment and it is called steal this strategy. All right, steal this strategy. It's where I find marketing or communications things. And I'm like, ah, Wish I had that. Wish I thought of it. Wish I stole it. This is one of those things that's going to anger physical therapists. And we get this like tribal mentality.

36:40 Somebody was in a Facebook group. I don't know. I don't think it was yours, Tony. But they were like, look at this trainer advertising that they can help people with osteoporosis. And my comment was like, do we have some proprietary ownership of people with osteoporosis? We don't. Kudos to the trainer doing that. But now the, the steel of the strategy today is a little bit bigger than a personal trainer. It's a little company called, I believe it's pronounced Nike. Is it Nike? Oh, it's Nike. That's right. So Nike is moving in on our stuff, but I would rather you just take a look at their strategy because if this takes off in a year, you're going to be pissed. You didn't just do it. It was sitting right there the whole time. So here's the breakdown. It's a new boutique, brick and mortar.

37:20 Nike is now outside of stores. Brick and mortar strength boutique. Nike strength studio, right? It's exactly the kind of hybrid performance model PT clinics. Some of them are, but more, in my opinion, should be already running. But here's how to do it better, right? Nike just launched this thing, and here's their pitch. Ten squat racks, one coach, twenty people. Let's say they're paying... Three hundred bucks a month. Math that for me. Right. No, no way. No way. Wait, you don't like it or you don't. No, I don't think they're going to charge that much. Or I'm just saying for membership, three hundred bucks to drop in as many times as you want or something.

38:00 Unlimited for the month. Yeah, but but not unlimited because there's only twenty slots. because there's ten racks and two spots per rack, right? So the strategy, they're not selling workouts. They're selling community, culture, identity. I have a Nike Run Club shirt that I got ten years ago because it's a nice, well-designed shirt. But that's the thing. They're doing, I am an athlete, and Nike understands we sell to athletes. We do not really care what sport you're in. We're athletes. Small class size is a higher perceived value. Built-in scarcity that we just talked about. One coach, many people, scale of revenue per hour. I know, I'm a doctor of physical therapy. One-on-one care for sixty minutes is the epitome.

38:41 Is it though? Smart use of space, you're not gonna need a lot of equipment. I just said, ten squat racks, one coach, twenty people. That's two people per squat rack. You're gonna cover your overhead in a couple of weeks. Here's the thing. It's a missed opportunity for PT clinics, and it should sting a little if you're not doing this. I know some PTs are, and drop below in the comments or whatever. Reach out after. I know some of you are. I'm not saying none of you are. More should be. PTs already have trust. We already have space, and we have the expertise to do this. We have the ingredients. We just decided not to make the tacos with the ingredients that we're sitting there with. It's sitting right there. So tactical ways to steal and beat this strategy, use underutilized space during what Tony would say, off hours.

39:25 Don't do it during your highest billing time. No. Crazy athletes love to work at five o'clock in the morning because they get jobs. I would launch a multi-branded small group return to performance class, almost like an on-ramp from wherever you are, couch to ten K sort of angle, but with strength is how you could steal this. And now you build your own in-house strength identity and instead of just saying physical therapy rubs butts and we help people after knee surgery, this is flipping the script. We are equipped to do this in most settings. Nike made it cool. You already make it clinical. Imagine if you were able to combine clinical and cool and you stopped waiting for someone else to do it first.

40:06 What a tagline there. What a pitch. Yeah, steal it. Steal that strategy because this is how you beat Nike. They just tipped their hand and showed you their cards. You're already in the community. Nike is an international brand, but you are stronger in your community because they know you. So I hope people steal this strategy. That's still the strategy this week. So what are we talking about? So with this, I like the setup. It's like semi-private group training, right? It's basically like that's what that is. It's Orange Theory. It's Orange Theory. Yeah. And so Annie does Orange Theory. And they have a ton of technology in terms of tracking each individual.

40:49 But they also have a dynamic waiting list, which is pretty interesting. I don't know how they do it, but... She could be on the waiting list the night before, and there's a bunch of people at one or two a.m. that they're in the class, and then they drop out right before they would get banged with a cancellation fee. Jerry Durham, they charge a cancellation fee, and it absolutely works, even though the cancellation fee is thirty-five bucks. They've got enough demand, and it's digital. Right, but they actually enforce the cancel. So if you cancel, you're in. You're locked in because there's a set number of seats, like you said, a certain amount of people per class.

41:29 but it just works. But I love this steal the strategy. And I'm not sure like when you originally pitching it, I thought you were kind of saying like, you know, physical therapy practices should consider, you know, doing it like with Nike, but then it's like, then you got to play by Nike's rules, all that. But you're talking about like, yeah, Nike's never going to call you back. And I want to, the last thing I said was Nike is an international brand. It's probably like Nike, Disney, Amazon in terms of recognizable logos, even if you do not, even if you are not from the United States, right? Here's something that... It was hard for me to wrap my head around when someone first told me. Let's pick a band. Foo Fighters. Large rock band, right?

42:11 Been around for a million years, right? They have more... And I ran a radio station in Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, Pennsylvania, right? And someone... explain this to me the foo fighters have more fans worldwide but I bet you if you broke the numbers down your little radio station in northeast pennsylvania has more listeners in northeast pennsylvania than the foo fighters has fans in northeast pennsylvania so which is why they have to play all the songs not just foo fighters Correct, correct. But what they're getting at is the Foo Fighters, they're a mega international brand. But when they come to Northeast Pennsylvania, the reason Dave Grohl does the interview with me is he understands I have connections to more people that aren't his fans.

42:56 The hardcore fans were already coming to the Foo Fighters show because they get the text and the emails. The difference maker for them to actually make that profitable is he needs the middle of the bell curve, the people who kind of know who they are, but maybe don't, but want to rock show. And he understood. So now change radio station to your personal clinic. Nike's got an international brand, but you have a stronger connection to people in your community. I mean, let's be honest. I mean, I live in an hour north of New York City. There's no Nike strength studio coming to my town. So you could eat there. Nike is never going to be a competitor to you. Maybe in Manhattan, maybe in L.A., maybe in Chicago. But could you steal that strategy? It's their cards are showing to you. You don't need a million dollar ad campaign.

43:37 Solve my problem and I'll show up. So what do you see the strategy being in your words? Yeah. So I see the strategy being, could you create this environment and talk to the psychographic similar to that graphic that Tony just shared, right? That older adult laying on the floor, turn it. And who do you want to be serving for this? Who would be a perfect, let's, let's play it out. Who's the perfect person coming to that Nike strength class, someone. Twenty-five to fifty-four, right? Who was an athlete. Who's like, You know, when it was it was easier when I was on the swim team or the baseball team in high school because there was practice and it was a team environment. I mean, steal the playbook of Orange Theory.

44:18 It's group related. I want to be an athlete again. And by showing up, just paying and showing up, I am an athlete again. But now there's the sense of, hey, where were you this morning at the seven a.m. class? You know, we missed you, dude. Like there's that environment. So you're you're selling exercise, but you're selling the feeling. of actually being an athlete again. So I would try to find those people who were already in the community, maybe the Walmart method. Do you ever hear how Sam Walton got cool? He used to hire the cool ex-prom queen, but now she's ten years out of high school. He'd hire her at Walmart to work there, and then the whole town, the small enough town, would know, oh, well, they work there. You can co-op cool. So, I mean, the model's been used for a long time.

45:00 I've always seen most clinics do it poorly. I've always seen most clinics fail. I'm seeing some do it now. There's a guy in Lexington, Kentucky. I wanted to get down there to check out their clinic. He teaches for evidence in motion. I can't think of his name right now. He and a partner, they're doing a really cool group fitness thing. I know we've had our non-covered maintenance slash wellness slash independent program for a long time. Mike Chua does an amazing job. Beautiful design, beautiful decor. I think where we fall flat, I'm going to share an image. It's hard to see because they're tiny pictures, but I asked Google to show me pictures of the inside of physical therapy clinics.

45:45 Think of what Nike would create. Seth Godin talks about if Nike created a hotel, what would the hotel look like? This is what physical therapy clinics look like. They are not designed for cool. Can I ask a serious question? Yeah. When we graduate, do we get a discount on that color beige? No one wants it, so physical therapists will just paint their clinics. Look at one, two, three. They're all that just like... It's pea soup mixed with khaki. What is that? It's what it is. It's the culture of PT. So trying to make something cool in that environment. Plus, I think the resistance of the clinicians, the employed therapists where, you know, I shared this in a post the other day.

46:30 I'm like, look, me and me and Jeremy right now, we're the last two people treating patients, PT and PTA. Yeah. We could handle twenty people in a group in a heartbeat. Thirty minute sessions. We'd make it fun. The place would be hop and everybody would have a great time. And we could still have one on one therapy with a Medicare covered patient in the same session like we could do that. I've rarely been able to hire a therapist, PT or PTA, who was willing and or capable to do something like that also. So then you say, well, wait a minute, if I'm not going to hire a PT to do it, do I go outside of PT, hire a fitness instructor or something like that?

47:13 Yeah. But then, you know, now you're starting to get away. Is this a fitness business or a therapy business? And I think brings confusion into it. And then you're like, well, shoot, if I'm going to pay this person fifty bucks an hour, I could hire a PT for fifty bucks an hour. Like, I just don't see it ever being done. Well, I love it. I wish it happened more. Joe is saying, in New York City, Motive New York seems to be doing it well. So, of course, I went and got Motive's website. Look, right off the bat, Marathon Prep Guide. In New York, if you're an athlete, it's April. This is crazy that they're promoting a marathon. The marathon's in November. This is when you start training for the marathon. This is when you poke that emotional course.

47:53 I went to their website. It's the first thing that popped up. Unlock your running potential marathon prep guide. The only thing I would say, I've been clicking around. Like, this looks like what we're describing. Group, this is a physical therapy clinic. Bing! And the pictures that I'm seeing, oh, there's people with kettlebells and people on wall. Look at that. Look, there's no beige on that. What's up? They painted it white and gray and trendy. The only thing I would say is like more pictures of the group. Like, I want to see the club. I want to see like, but it looks like they're doing this exact thing at Motive, M-O-T-I-V, NewYork.com. Yeah, shout out to one of their co-founders, David Joe. Also, since you have your web browser up, can you also pull up RechargeXBit.com?

48:34 So you guys know Gene Chirac abroad. They've been doing this for years down in Maryland. Recharge, where they have, there is no beige. Their walls are orange and black. Orange and black. and so they have now I know I know what tony just said of like you're you know what are you are you a fitness business are you a physical therapy business um but you can see all the media he does they have a podcast they have youtube videos they they have small group fitness classes and then if someone gets dinged and banged up or whatever they have some injury they have I think they have a couple private rooms or they treat out in the open I'm not sure but they'll do hands-on physical therapy one-on-one visits And then assuming they discharge those episodic cares of patient injuries and plans of care, and then they continue in the group fitness class.

49:23 So it's kind of like their own CrossFit in a way. They might have been a CrossFit. Maybe they're not now. I'm not sure. But Gene could maybe come on in the future. But this model does allow for... the members to stay he calls the members so they they stay as long as they don't cancel but you know I hope they obviously say he's got a community they moved to a bigger location somewhat recently and um the folks stay with them continue to pay monthly then if they have an injury or whatever they'll pay separately for that uh but I like that model in terms of the recurring model and that's the best component of the whole group fitness class but again you know tony I like to put I do like the pushback of like what is this is this Is this, you know, fitness, is this fitness forward, physical therapy, whatever that is like, you know, like, and maybe, maybe it's okay.

50:13 Maybe like, you know, other people are fine with it, but yeah, it's, it's not traditional physical therapy. One other, you know, just because everything we've shown so far is like good looking, sweaty, like young, healthy. You can build a model around anything. Now, if you guys remember curves, curves was designed for women. who didn't feel comfortable exercising around other people, you know, hydraulic resistance, I mean, minimal improvement, like anybody with any reasonable expectation of strength gains or fitness, it's never gonna happen in this environment, but that's not what they were selling. They were selling community, they were selling the connection and I would love to see, and I'm shocked that I haven't seen this more, Places they used to call something a mog, a medical oriented gym.

51:07 I hate that word. I hate mog. But but a place like that specifically for people using adaptive equipment, for amputees, for all sorts of stuff. I think there's a huge opportunity in the neuro space. I don't do any neuro rehab, but I've got it. Yeah, that that community needs something like that to make neuro rehab cool, kind of bring an edginess to it, bring masculinity to it, bring something that it's like, hey, just because you had a stroke doesn't mean you can't feel this way again. You played sports as a as a college athlete. You've done hard things. This is the hardest thing you're ever going to do. Let's make it cool to do hard things.

51:48 Yanni Corey, former Georgetown college athlete, dove headfirst into a sandbar, was paralyzed, went to get rehab. Of course, his rehab for neurologic PT ran out after X number of visits or time. And he's looking around going, where's the gym, bro? Where's the gym for people like me? I'm still this. Couldn't find it. Yanni's like, screw that. I'll just make it. So his goal, if you go to Next Step Fitness, He wants to have these organizations. He's got L.A., Atlanta, Kansas City, Orlando, Raleigh, Las Vegas, Nashville, Pittsburgh, New Zealand and Ukraine. His goal is to have one in every single state and eventually every single city.

52:30 And his gripe or his thing, that's Yanni right there actually working out in the video. His thing was the problem was PTs were too expensive. So he's like he eliminated them. Like that was the barrier. Because if he went through in traditional PT, he was like, you're out. I got the equipment. What he would have to, because he loved PTs. He was just like, you're too, that's Yanni. You're just too expensive. So he had physical therapists train trainers and then go back to your PT clinic. The trainers can take it from here, right? We're not going to make it any worse. Just make sure you don't make it any worse. So Yanni's got all those locations. I mean, you want to talk about franchise opportunity. I have heard unofficially that these things print money. They print money and they do amazing things.

53:12 Oh my God, there should be a red flag on that. There's enough people, unfortunately, who have these problems that would pay you money outside of their insurance to work out. Why are we not making more of the next step fitness? Well, yeah, because it must be cheaper than physical therapy because people are going to say, do you take my insurance? They're going to say no, because we don't have physical therapists. It's got to be cheaper than a copay. So I don't know how that's possible. But yeah, membership. CrossFit's not cheaper than a copay. CrossFit's not cheaper than a copay. They have a master's division. It's incredible. They are doing it the best, I mean, from what I've seen. Now, I don't know if you guys remember, I had shared a video. I think it was a video.

53:53 of a man uh I think it was an upper extremity amputee I don't even remember I'm gonna say doing a snatch or a clean and jerk or something like that and it was labeled as motivation porn and it was like yeah just a whole bunch of negative stuff said about it because we were celebrating this person's ability to do something incredible that I can't do so I I don't know if that plays an element in all of this Tony got a pushback real quick on the cost CrossFit copay thing. Isn't CrossFit like two hundred bucks a month? Is it more? Is it three hundred? Yeah, it depends on where you are here. Here it's about two seventy five for unlimited access to the classes.

54:33 Nothing personal training wise. OK, two hundred seventy five bucks per month. People go how often? Twice a week, three times a week to CrossFit. Okay, if we're talking per unit. On average, on average. Yeah, I was doing three or four days a week. Yeah, Bo snapped in with that. Deanne's saying that she thinks that. So, twelve visits a month? Yeah. That's twenty-two dollars and ninety-two cents. That is a copay. You're paying twenty two ninety two twenty two dollars. If you're going three times, if you're paying two seventy five a month and you're going three times a week, how is that not a copay comparing the cost of physical therapy versus CrossFit? I think we're paying attention. I think we're paying attention to the wrong side of the of the seesaw, which is stop talking about the price.

55:16 Start talking about what what people get out of it. The value. There's community there. If you can build a PT clinic like Tony's where there is community, people will overlook the costs. right? Hang on. I don't want to, I don't want to pass this up. DM was saying they have a neuro fitness gym here in Dallas, Fort worth. Awesome. I wish there was more. The gyms like next step, which we also have in Dallas can be dangerous. In my opinion, they bring in the bucks. Why is it dangerous? Like, because let's be honest, just because you're a PT does not mean you're a good PT. I'm very sorry. So just because it's under the label of physical therapy does not mean a trainer couldn't kick that person's ass. You can't just say there's no hierarchy. You have to look at it like flat. So you'd have to qualify that statement.

55:56 I'm not saying you're wrong, Deanne. I do know Yanni, but I will take your gripe of why they are dangerous, but you have to back it up with the facts. Well, there was one little gif or whatever video of someone, you know, some person there moving the elbow and the arm and the shoulder of Deanne. a patient that had some neurological condition. So if they have, I don't know, some flaccid shoulder muscles or rotator cuff and you're, you know, the trainers are doing that. Could they sublux a shoulder? Cause they don't have the full understanding of it. Yes, it could happen. It absolutely could happen. Can you hook up, can you hook up, you know, Yanni to the FES bike or whatever? And then, then he does his thing. Then there's low risk in that.

56:36 Hold on. They don't have PTs. They don't understand pressure injury. That's an assumption. You do not know what they understand unless you know them. Now I'll play lawyer now. Don't realize when they're putting a patient at risk. I would agree with the end, just based off not knowing anything else. But you have to qualify by saying, I think that they don't know what they're doing. They most likely don't. Come on. They don't understand proper technique. I would love to see. So I will walk into ten PT clinics that this is going on. And if I see any of it, then I'm right. Then, oh, then PTs do it, too, because I saw it happen. Listen, man, I've been to some PT clinics that were painted beige. They weren't a lot of beige, a lot of beige going on. All right, we got three minutes left.

57:17 Time for parting shots. Or Dave, do you have a- No, I'll save. I have that social media thing, that Instagram account, I think would be good for stealing strategy. The rapper guy? Yeah. That's funny. No, well, the fake social media influencer guy. We could share it as like a stealing strategy. Just getting more eyeballs on your physical therapy practice. Hey, gang. Hey, gang. That's what he starts every video. All right, party shots. What do you got? Go ahead, Dave, you start. Let's go back to the marketing. I mean, just seriously get more serious. Seriously get more serious about whatever your approach is. Do like, I don't know, one or two things and just annihilate it.

58:00 Like really get after it. Whether it's contacting every physician in your area, contacting every nursing company, contact every personal trainer, yoga, Pilates, whatever, acupuncture, hit them up. Hey, are you guys looking for more new patients and clients? I would love to send folks to you. And if you have zero patients, let's say you're just starting your practice, you have zero patients, then you go hit up your neighbors and your friends and your family and say, hey, go check out this place. I met Mary at the acupuncture studio. I met John at the massage studio, whatever. And send people to them first. And then they will send people to you. Like, it's just magical. But it takes effort. So it takes time and effort or it takes money with paid ads.

58:41 But either way, pick one or two of these strategies. Just get after it. Fully do it. Go all in on it with time or effort and money or whatever. One of those two or three. That's all I have for today. Yeah, I'm going to go through in my Facebook group. I'm going to go through a cycle of posts, just helping people that are brand new to business. They're probably amazing therapists, but they're brand new to business. Just start their mind thinking about, oh, I never thought of it that way. I never looked at that question. That's what I need to see. So if you're not already in learn Medicare billing for mostly cash based PTO, TSLP, go check it out. It's a free Facebook group. but I'm gonna run a series of posts focused on helping people start marketing.

59:24 Yeah, how bad do you want it, right? Like, did you guys ever sell, were you guys ever Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts? I sold Tom Watt. which was the greatest scam in the world. Essentially, each Cub Scout got like a cardboard suitcase filled with tchotchkes. And to be able to go on our annual Boy Scout trip, we had to earn, I don't know, three hundred bucks or something. And my parents, my parents, a good life lesson. They were just like, listen, you can't go on the trip unless you walk around the neighborhood dragging this cardboard suitcase and sell picture frames and pens and tchotchkes to your to your neighbors. They put they put the goal at the end. So we're just like, walk around, knock on the door.

1:00:04 They didn't show me. I didn't watch a video on how to sell. It was like, hi, I'm a boy scout. I can't go on my trip. Do you want to look at some of this stuff? And so unless you're wearing out a pair of shoes or a keyboard like every single month, I don't feel bad for you because you're not trying enough. We'll be back on Thursday. I'll be live from Boston. I'm going to another one of those health to tech events in Boston. So if you're in Boston and you like healthcare and technology, DM me and I'll get you into that event. It's a cool mixer. It puts a bunch of interesting people in the room. And then I'm going to Chicago on Thursday for another mixer. I drive around. I shake hands. I kiss babies. I buy drinks. That's what I do for my job now.

1:00:46 We'll see you guys on Thursday at eight thirty a.m. Eastern. Have a good day, guys. See you.