Marketing to Patients Who Actually Want PT (Here’s How)

0:08 Happy. I almost said Tuesday. I almost lost two days there. Happy Thursday. We're closer to the weekend. I promise. I promise. I promise. Happy Thursday here at PT Breakfast Club. Jimmy and Tony minus Dave. Rumor is he either fell off Niagara Falls or he partied so hard in Niagara Falls that he does not have a voice right now. I was watching for a barrel. I thought for sure Dave was going to go in a barrel over the falls. Do you remember? I think it was Woody Woodpecker in some of the old cartoons. That was like a thing. It was like – and stunt people. That was like how they wanted to put their mark on the world. I was in Niagara Falls two weeks ago, and that was the second time I was ever there. It was the first time I was ever there during the day.

0:49 And at night, I got to be honest, man, waterfall, not that impressive. During the day, very impressive. I'm kind of a daredevil kind of guy, a little bit of an adrenaline – I wouldn't call me an adrenaline junkie, maybe an adrenaline seeker. Nothing about that said we should jump off of this. Nothing. So I remember, um, you know, there, there's still people that will do it. There's like modern versions of the, of the, um, what, what was I saying? The barrel? What is it? What were they going over in? In a barrel. Yeah, in a barrel. Yeah. Anyway, this was really all about attention, right? It's all about doing something to garner attention, to get eyeballs appropriate for today's topic.

1:35 I want to talk about marketing. I want to talk about attention. And if I go back probably a decade, if Jerry Durham is listening, he probably remembers this. He and I were some of the only therapists that were saying, you probably don't need more new patients. You probably have enough patients in your history, in your database. What you need is to get those patients to complete your plans of care. You need those patients to become lifetime patients, never quit, never stop coming. They always have a need. They always have a problem. And this is something... that while I still maintain, you know, we don't spend a penny on marketing because we have a database of tens of thousands of past patients.

2:19 I can always flip a switch and fill my clinic tomorrow if I needed to. There are therapists out there who do need patients. They're going from zero to one. They're going from one to ten, ten to one hundred. So I was hoping we could dedicate today to talking about different marketing ideas, some strategies. I threw some stuff in the private chat. Yeah. But let's start with the resources that people probably already have. Past patients, what are you thinking? Right. Well, I want to set this up with – uh a line from alex hormozy and it's like those things that you know I don't know there's got to be a word for them it's probably a german word for them there's always a german word for everything which is something when someone put words to something that you're like yeah I knew that but you gave me like this so hormozy said listen look let me break it down for you and he like does it in this form of the way where he like looks right in the camera and he's like there's only three ways to make money he's he essentially said You get the people, you get more customers.

3:20 There's your zero to a hundred percent of your capacity. Then you get those people, right? Who you've already got to spend more money, right? Get them to spend twenty dollars on an upsell or you get those people to come back more frequently. That's it. And he said, if you can figure out more ways to do that, I'll give you a million dollars. I want you to come and teach me. So I want that to be in people's mindset because I think the first one is constantly on people's mindset, which is I need to get more new people. And we had this mindset in radio. Because the idea was if you piss someone off with your radio station, they're not really growing new people here. Like in our geographic area, right? And when I was in radio, it was in Northeast Pennsylvania.

4:01 Now, some people leave and some people move in. But let's just pretend that rate is always the same. It's always the same amount of people. So don't piss those people off. But since we only have those people at our disposal, right? The idea was how to get them to listen more frequently or how to get them listen longer. That's it. I know it's radio to health care or radio to business. Same thing. I want you to have those three things in mindset. So where do you want to go first? Just kind of what are some things that you're seeing right now on the media side garnering attention that seems to be working? I can tell everybody, and I'm happy to share, for me right now across all social media, Facebook business page is outperforming everything else.

4:46 It's the simplest thing. I'm still doing a little bit of paid ads just because it's fun and I want to figure this out. But the vast majority, well over a million views a month, all comes from organic content. Now, I know that this is organic spread across the whole country. It's not local. These aren't people that are coming into my clinic. But from an attention perspective, I just ran a report. I think over the last ninety days I did around four million views, all organic, all totally TikTok, Instagram, YouTube. They're all still growing. But like by a mile, organic Facebook business pages is my best reach.

5:29 The thing I noticed was a downtrend on a different platform. And I think this was about three to six months ago. LinkedIn was going real, real heavy on video. They were putting videos in different ways. And I feel like all of a sudden I just noticed it's sort of gone. Like they were like, we're video too, everybody. And. So I took the strategy of, well, everything that I was producing really for Instagram and YouTube Shorts, I'll just put it on LinkedIn. And it has gone nowhere. So I just, I stopped, to be honest. Like, I'd rather not. If you're not going to be doing something well, like, don't do it at all. And it didn't mean the video content wasn't good. and then it wasn't playing there well. So what I did notice, I'll end it with a good thing I noticed on LinkedIn is that polls and asking a really, really poke the bear sort of question does get people talking.

6:17 And when people do, I see the impressions go way, way up. I'm seeing like some single post with a question or a setup, you know, sort of a context and then a question like, well, what do you think? That'll get five figure impressions. And a little trick that I do, and I don't know if this is like like bad strategy or great strategy is I'll notice someone will comment on it. Like someone will drop a comment. I'll see it in my feed. And I'm like, what post is that from? And it's something from two or three months ago. And I'm like, oh, that's cool. They found that thing from two or three months ago and they're interacting with it. I'll repost that. That's like my cue. Like, oh, someone found it valuable. Someone found it like maybe of the moment. I repost it and usually I see five or six other pings on it, either an interaction or someone actually reposting dropping their two cents on those things.

7:05 So that's the LinkedIn strategy that isn't working. And then the LinkedIn strategy that I saw that was working. You know, I never consider reposting my own stuff. That's a great idea because they're old posts that did really well on LinkedIn and they're completely gone. Like, I don't even think about it, but reposting it, that's something I should do. How are you changing or adapting to the audience across the different profiles? Are you doing anything different? Because you're more... direct PT to PT, whereas I've got the PT to consumer and then separately I've got PT to PT. Yeah.

7:46 It's funny you mentioned that. So I just took a cross country flight for six hours and then I took the cross country flight back for six hours. So the good thing was I had like no wifi or limited wifi or crappy wifi. So I did a lot of thinking and I started noticing like, Hey, take a look at what's doing well. And what do you like to create and what's doing well? And where that crosses over was a smaller part of that Venn diagram. Then why are you doing the other stuff? So I started looking like that Pareto principle, eighty, twenty. And I was like, okay, I got six hours on this plane. What is it? So it's funny that you mentioned this because I was actually texting someone else that I'm helping do this similar thing. I was like, take my paradigm, what I'm finding here and play around with it yourself. I gave her actually the GPT I was playing with and said, run your thoughts through this and see what it says.

8:31 So the short form strategy I used to have was do lots of podcast interviews and then find the great moments and share them. And those perform pretty okay. When the Opus clips of the world and the AI editors first came out, I was like, I turned to my editor, I'm like, we're gonna get like, twenty clips per episode and we're gonna flood the market with short form video and we're gonna dominate. And then I realized that I was honest. I was like, are there twenty great moments in a thirty-five minute long podcast interview? No. So I did two things. One, I changed the questions I was asking to get those better moments. So towards the end of some newer episodes, if you've listened, I'll play a quick game, essentially rapid fire questions, all based on the topic or the area of expertise of the guest.

9:18 Really, that's a short form video question session, but I leave it in because it's pretty good. So I'll give them a question, sink or swim, like it or flush it, whatever I'm doing, I twist it to them. And I just say, answer, is it like it or like it or flush it? And then why? One sentence, why? So I'm taking those short form clips because you can share now up to ninety seconds or something, one hundred twenty seconds. And I'm saying those are great. But I don't know if I have a hundred and twenty seconds of great. I'd rather have fifteen seconds of awesome than forty five seconds of OK and fifteen seconds of terrible. They're not listening. So I'm parsing everything down and I'm seeing the short, short form.

10:00 is doing really well. So what I'm doing is normally you see those videos where Jimmy looks into the camera and Jimmy ruins healthcare. I'm coming up with those ideas on the spot and then saying, oh, let me shoot a video. I'm very reactive. So on the plane, I decided to get proactive. So I went into ChatGPT and found five pillars that I either want to be an expert in, or I just like learning about. And I figure while I learn, I'll learn and teach right so I've the five pillars I came up with a hundred concepts each so that's five hundred and I'm gonna create five hundred short form videos and share those and I'm not a math major but when you create five hundred short form videos a hundred each across the five pillars that's more than if I shared a video a day for a year so in theory I can start to now see what did well in january and maybe now start to do two videos a day or three videos a day three to six months into that strategy and replay, taking a nod from SportsCenter, the greatest hits and start to recycle the ones that resonated.

11:02 So I'm going to try this strategy. I'm going to dedicate a long weekend to... writing and recording these things and then pass them off to someone who's better than editing than me and really give it the judge. And then the hardest task, I think, would be scheduling these damn things because you've got to now do manually or as manually as you can schedule those things. So that's my short form, my long term short form strategy in the next three to six weeks. I'd like to have that done and started. So I wonder, I'm thinking about how we can take that idea, bring it into somebody who wants to attract new patients. And I remember years ago, I mean, this has been common knowledge.

11:43 When you first get on YouTube, you think, oh, what video am I going to make? And then you realize the people who are successful on YouTube, they have the video topic already. They have the thumbnail. They don't even record the video until they think about the thumbnail and the title first. Then they record the video. You basically did the same thing. You're like, okay, these are the things that need to be shared. I find myself when I'm looking at patient care, I understand there's value in patient care when I'm treating a patient right there in that moment. But I also want to curate that patient care experience to extract the maximum value, both for me and my patient.

12:25 My patient gets the benefit of working with me as a therapist. I shared a post, and I want to hear your perspective. When do you stop treating simple cases if you want to be a great therapist and you want to make more money and you want to do more challenging things? That's a separate topic, but... Now I find myself in the middle of patient care thinking, okay, I'm going to do this blaze pods clip. It's going to be good for the patient. It's going to be good for my media. This is something I'm going to share. I shared a little bit of ad copy last night where I said, hey, I'm getting a lot of patients who don't want to do the pain meds after a knee replacement or minimize pain meds after a knee replacement.

13:09 Okay. I try to tell everybody, look, you don't need to take pain meds an hour before therapy like everybody tells you to because I'm not going to force the knee. I'm not going to make this a painful experience. Now I've got NuFit, the newbies in the clinic. I've got an alternative way to modulate pain. that doesn't require pharmaceuticals. So I'm like, why am I not leveraging this? Why am I not talking to the person who says, every time I take pain meds, I get sick, I get nauseous, I get constipated, I don't think clearly, I don't want to take pain meds. Now I should be communicating that message. So the social media content is kind of curating some of the things that I'm doing in the clinic with actual patients.

13:56 I do think it benefits everybody. I'm not sacrificing patient care to get the content. The two work together. And this is probably part of the reason why that content is doing so well on social media, because real people, real experiences, real problems that they're dealing with, that even if they're never going to be my patient, they want to see what people are doing. So just the only thing I would change out of that little explanation is you said it would be really good in the moment. You're saying I'm going to I'm going to do this explanation. It's going to be really good for the patient. It's going to be really good for my social media. Just change that phrase social media. It's good for any potential patient who's not in the room. Yeah, that's it.

14:36 That's why it works. That's why that one knee post you shared has a million views. It was people are curious enough because as narrow as total knee replacements are, you either are someone or know someone who is about to is going through or just went through those things. It's the six degrees of Kevin Bacon. Yeah. And it's curious, like, well, what is this, right? I mean, I get sucked into, like, these random corners of social media, these videos that I don't have any interest in, and yet it's interesting because it's weird. It's something I don't do or know, and therefore you've got me. So you had just said something, shoot. And I was like, oh, yeah.

15:17 So going back to Think Media and a lot of the OG YouTube channels that just grew, they said, stop thinking about the algorithm. Stop thinking about how to game the system and think of the audience. Think of the person, the person who wants to watch the video. What does that person want to see? What is going to keep that person's attention? And even for myself, you know, when I reverse engineer my consumption of media, the second there's a half a second pause, it's gone. Like I'm not I'm not waiting for that person to take their breath. to think about what they're going to say, to then start with some long-winded explanation.

16:00 I want the content right this second. And that's changed for me over the last ten years. My media consumption, it has to be a little quicker. It has to be more succinct. It has to be immediate gratification or I'm off to the next video because there are just so many videos out there. I know you're a fan of The Corner Office, right? You watch that. We were just, I was watching it this morning. He was talking about engaging the audience in the behind the scenes. And you and I have talked about this a ton. If I was starting a mobile practice today, we told Dave the other week, go do a day in the life of video.

16:40 But like, let's talk about how we can potentially bring new clients into our ecosystem by showing them what we're doing Even if we don't have any clients, like even if I don't have my first patient yet, I'm thinking about a problem. That's a common question. I'm answering that question in real time. I'm sharing that information with the audience. What are some ideas that somebody could be doing right now if they want to move into the space of... Direct access, primary care, musculoskeletal. I'll share some things that have been popping up on my side, but any thoughts about like, how does somebody start from zero?

17:20 What can they start sharing? You start and then I'll chime in. I've got a few ideas. So I always used to get these questions, right? Well, if I want to lose weight, what do I do? Lift weights or do cardio? If I have an acute injury, what do I do? Heat or ice? I mean, I just got this question three times yesterday in the clinic. My shoulder hurts. My back hurts. My knee hurts. Should I put heat on it or ice on it? It doesn't matter. Like pick something. You can be me, which is I'm going to say it doesn't matter. It's all about sensation. Use whatever feels good. You can pick a side. Oh, it's an acute injury. You have to put ice because ice supposedly reduces inflammation or you go the opposite.

18:02 You go counterculture and you say, don't you dare put ice on an acute injury because we want the inflammatory process to happen like that. You pick something, but you find those questions that you know the consumers are asking and they're searching for. And then you can also go down the road. And I shared this yesterday. We have three patients on caseload right now. They were sent to the hospital outpatient clinic. They couldn't get in for six weeks. They either knew us or didn't know us, but we're looking for an alternative. And from the minute they called, they were in my clinic the same day. The hospital six weeks.

18:42 You can see me this afternoon, you know, and the part that surprised me was. which we should talk about. When we get a new patient, we're very patient focused. We're like, so what works best for you? What would you like to do? You can do twice a week, three times a week. This is what I would recommend. The hospital doesn't do any of that. I just realized the hospital books, twelve sessions, doesn't even ask if those days and times are good for the patient. The patient comes to me and shows me these are the appointments they gave me six weeks from now. I don't want to do any of these. So you could address that. You know, hey, if you're in pain, you're suffering and you don't want to wait six weeks, we can get you in today.

19:26 If you're dealing with acute sciatica, this is what I would do right now. Yeah, it was funny because we had just shared, you had just shared, I think, a video of some commercials where it was like McDonald's versus Burger King. And back in the day, and every once in a while, people will go, brands will go head to head. This happens a lot in sports marketing, like throwing shade, right? And trying to roast the other brand. But could you, as an outpatient therapist, essentially highlight the problem of long wait times? Yeah. um I think you could you could do it in a playful way which is throwing fun like that's super narrow though I'm just worried that like you have to meet that person at the right time and here's what I mean because you aren't the only person talking about this I feel like maybe you started it and a bunch of people chimed in which is I go to the hospital for something and next thing you know I'm just scheduled for twelve visits at the outpatient clinic because this is what my insurance said I have to do, or my doctor said I have, I do not know that there are any options.

20:26 So I just go. And that's really smart. If you're work for the hospital, like, I mean, you can be mad at them, but like, that's smart. They have a patient right there in front of them. They have an outpatient clinic and they go, I got you scheduled. And they're like, Oh, okay. I'll just go along. Right. That's going to work a lot. So how do you wedge yourself in there? Oh, that's tough because you have to hit that person at the right time before they go to that first appointment. outpatient hospital site visit, right? I mean, that's a timing thing. Or that's your whole thing. Or that's an ongoing pillar of we can get you in whenever you need it. It needs to be a big enough problem that that's your Avis, we try harder.

21:07 things so take a look at lucas's comment here but um somebody mentioned something kind of similar to that yesterday and basically somebody was saying why are patients so passive why do they just let that stuff happen and my perspective is because most of them don't really care most of them don't want to go to therapy Most of them are happy to wait six weeks because maybe they'll save some money. Maybe the problem is going to go away. Maybe something else will happen. I always joke with my wife and I'm like, you know what? Yes, I could stay and do all of the documentation for today. But you know what would break my heart? If I stayed an extra two hours, did all of my documentation, if I wasn't using an AI scribe.

21:52 And I got in my car and got hit by a semi truck on the highway and died. If I died and all my notes were done, that would be devastating to me because on his tombstone died with seventy five outstanding notes unsigned. Keep going. I just I can't I can't bear to think that I could have been doing something with my kids, with my family, with whatever. Or, hey, if I wouldn't have stayed in the clinic to do my notes, I wouldn't have got hit by the semi truck. Right. Yeah. So point being. I think most outpatient referrals, most, just don't really want to go. They don't have the urgency. They don't have the need. It's kind of a nuisance problem. It's on the back burner.

22:33 Now, the three that I have in the clinic right now that were sent to the hospital and then came to me, these are genuine problems. These are individuals that had acute... urgency. They had real problems. They could not wait, would not wait. And they needed to see somebody right now. Ironically, these are the best patients. These are the patients that don't cancel or no show. These are the patients that are more than happy to pay toward their deductible or the co-insurance or copay. These are the patients that I can have a genuine impact right now on the acute symptoms they're dealing with, as opposed to so many of the other people that they'll come if it's covered, they'll come if it's not interfering with the hair appointment.

23:15 So we market the high urgency. And to your point, is there a big enough audience? Maybe not for somebody who's got twenty clinicians to keep busy. Right. But for a small provider, how many clinician or how many patient visits can I even do in a day? You know, like, yeah, there's plenty of audience. Social media will get my content in front of the right people at the right time. I just need to put the content out there. So Lucas, let's read Lucas's post, his comment as he's live. Thanks, Lucas. Lucas is coming up on the podcast pretty soon, too. Looking forward to that. Lucas says perhaps two in the weeds for the topic. First of all, Lucas, never, never to never too much in the weeds. That's where the fun stuff happens. But he says, I interpret our current culture as being relatively skeptical of medicines and more interested in alternative options.

24:02 It'd be very difficult to disagree with that. People are always looking for the thing that can do it faster, cheaper. The weirder it looks, the more it hurts, the more expensive it is, it must be better. That's sort of coming true. Making the community prime to look for new ideas. What are your thoughts on current attitudes guiding some of our guiding some of our outreach ideas, where does EBP fit into it? This is also like a roller coaster. When I first graduated, anything that wasn't like a hundred percent proven and locked in, I would take a dump on and I'd be like, that's dumb. I would look at people and be like, you're stupid. Maybe I wouldn't say you're stupid, but that would definitely be the thought in my head. And now I have like, I don't know if I've completely flopped or flipped, which is, does it make you feel better?

24:45 And if people are like, yes, I'm like, is it hurt? Is it the potential to hurt you? Like, no. All right, well, let's add that. Yes. And what else are we doing to that? So to Lucas's point, I think I'm right. I think I'm interpreting this right, which is like, if someone says, I've got shoulder pain, I'm trying this cupping thing, and maybe cupping doesn't have the evidence-based practice, the robust literature behind it to say that it's going to get the outcome it should, I'd say... Old Jimmy would say, that's garbage. That's actually – Michael Phelps was doing it on the Olympics. That's why it's so popular. But other than that, it's just garbage. I would say, how does it feel? Do you like it? How are you experiencing it now? Awesome.

25:26 What else are we doing? Are we also strengthening that shoulder? Are we also getting more range in that shoulder? So I think people are very much primed for looking for – the yes. And the tech, I mean, technology's everywhere. How are we adding the end to your, to your point, you know, bringing in shockwave, bringing in a bunch of technology is satisfying that itch of saying, but I want to feel like this is something different than just someone rubbing butts or ranging a shoulder. And we know, we know from psychological literature that we make decisions emotionally and And then back them up with logic. I really like your shirt, Susie. I got it on sale.

26:06 Like I just said an emotional thing that I liked your shirt. And it's weird because females do this. Then they automatically go back to a logic. Like, well, I bought it because it was cheap. I made a good financial decision, right? Like it's funny how we do that. So why aren't we playing into that? Why aren't we saying I noticed this? How do I yes and this? And I think the issue is, yeah, we as a culture are generally more distrustful than we probably ever have been, likely because we have access to more information, both good and bad, positive and negative. I mean, I always say like Instagram is a cesspool of interventions. The stuff that I see floating across Instagram is just disheartening, borderline disgusting with what are you watching?

26:54 Promoting and pushing. Well, that's a problem. The more crazy stuff you watch, the more crazy stuff you get. Right. We should do an episode where we all open our Instagram and then we open our For You pages. Just open them and then show them to the camera. What's on your For You page? But keep going. Well, now that my kids are old enough to get on the computer, I have to curate my, you know, I need to watch a bunch more nature stuff to make sure my kids aren't seeing... They're over here watching landscape and duck videos just to get that to scrub your for your page. On my Facebook across the top, there are the whatever stories and stuff. I'm like, I never watched this. And this is what Facebook is pushing my way.

27:35 Clearly Facebook knows more about me than I know about me. But anyway, going back to evidence-based practice, it's like, well, what evidence are we looking for? To your point, there's evidence in marketing, there's evidence in psychology and how we consume our behavior. The evidence in, quote, physical therapy, I think it's pretty weak. We can look at so many interventions that have been disproven. We can look at surgical interventions that have been no better than sham. We bring in some of the behavioral stuff. If I make a big enough, you know, theatrical event around an intervention, it's going to be more powerful.

28:16 We look at placebo studies. We look at all of those things. So I think we want to say, oh, well, very clearly the evidence suggests you do this and this and this and you will be fixed. But there's more evidence about, do you like your therapist? Do you trust your therapist? How much did this intervention cost? Was it free? Because it's free, probably not going to be as effective as if I have to pay a thousand dollars for this. One of my favorite, I can't think of her name right now. She is a researcher. She's got a ton of research on tendinopathy. Maybe her last name was Cook. Anyway, She says, look, if I charge a thousand dollars for therapeutic exercise prescription, it is going to be more effective than if I give it away for free.

29:02 You know, so what evidence are we choosing to support the decisions we're making in in the clinic? Because we can probably find evidence to support whatever we want to do. The funny part is this parallels several different conversations that we're having at once in a couple different Facebook groups that we're in, which is, one, should PTs only be doing evaluations? Well, I'm angry I'm not making more money, but I know the more I do these things, the less money I make. So what I'll do is keep doing those things, keep getting mad, and keep posting on Facebook about how angry I am at the insurance company. I got news for you. Thank you. They're not, the insurance company is not in your Facebook group and they don't care and they're not going to care.

29:44 So it's funny how people will bitch about the same thing over and over again and not change anything to get there while treating patients that are bitching about the same problem and not getting anywhere while you're telling them this. So while I see those therapists bitching about patients who don't do anything to get anywhere while they're bitching about not getting paid but not doing anything different, this is a hamster wheel. And it's the people who do the different things that leave and we never hear from those people again we assume they drop off nope they found they listened took the advice found a different way are doing a different way and now they have wait for it nothing to bitch about that's why they're not in their bitching and they're not in those conversations because they understand what's the phrase from uh is it ben franklin I don't know it's one of those old guys where it's it's um hard it's It's harder to convince someone that they've been fooled.

30:34 Like once, once you've been fooled, it's really hard to unconvinced. Someone's going to drop it in the quotes, ask chat GBT, but it's E it's easy to, it's easy to fool someone. It's super hard to convince them that they've been fooled because they have to emotionally admit they fell for something. or they're not willing to change. And that's hard because you have to admit. Scott is asking about a treatment thing. Do you think that's why cold laser treatment has never really exploded since patients don't feel anything happening? Oh, I see what you mean. Like if cold laser had a setting where it could feel colder, I was just in a doctor's office every day. He had an entire like part of his like part of his facility based on one of those cryo chambers.

31:17 And I was like, how's this doing for you? And he goes, oh, it paid for itself six years ago. He goes, now it's just it's there. And I and I brought up we talked about low ride out before. Right. No, I don't think so. So low ride out is a concept that I learned from Disney. Let's say Disney has a hundred acres in his park, right? Do you ever, you've been to Disney world or you've been to a park like that? Yeah. So you pay one price, you ride as many rides as you want. You're only limited by your time and how long you want to stand on a ride. You can go ride fifty crappy rides or you could ride six really good rides. That's just how time works. So ask yourself why before you get on every ride at Disney World or Disneyland, there's those three prong things, the turnstiles.

31:58 Like, why are they there? Is it crowd control? Like, no, they're counting. This is consumer behavior in plain sight. So what Disney said was every year we look at the counts on all the rides and we don't keep the teacups around because we've always had the teacups. We take the lowest ride and it's gone. We take the ride down and now we have, I don't know, five thousand square feet to put a new ride in. So the idea is the lowest ride is always out because something new has to come in or else Disney World stays stale. This is that same question. Like if you replace a board on a ship, you keep replacing boards.

32:38 Is it the same ship or is it a brand new ship? Right. You want it to be a brand new ship that looks like the old ship, but you want to make sure it's modernized. And I don't know if our profession does that well enough. We keep hold like that. If we were if we were on monkey bars as a profession. You have to reach forward. I think we try to do that a lot. We do a lot of reaching forward. We want to progress. The problem is in monkey bars is you have to let go of the backhand and swing forward. We do a lot of the reaching forward. We don't do a lot of the letting go, and I think that's why we just stay still and we swing back and forth. I called it the monkey humping the football. A whole lot of moving around, but not a lot happening. That's what we do in our profession. We look like we're doing a lot of things, but we're not letting go, so we can't move forward.

33:22 Yeah, and to Scott's point, you know, whether it be cold laser or just therapeutic exercise, we know from plenty of history, if we add elements, if we add gamification into it, if we add, you know, that variable reward into it, if we add these things into it, it becomes more effective, period. Like there is zero doubt in my mind. So the question is, Are we doing things that we want to do and only we want to do? This, of course, leads into the one-on-one therapy argument. Or are we building an experience that our patients, our consumers want to experience?

34:05 I think that... there's different kinds of practice owners. They're going in different directions. Um, but bottom line is the evidence air quotes, evidence isn't just coming out of physical therapy, research journals. The evidence should come out of education. The evidence should come out of sales. The evidence should come out of marketing. It should come from anything out there that helps us improve our patient experience and move our patient toward their goal. So, um, A quick one that I wanted to mention going back to some of the ideas. the whole kind of mobile physical therapy movement, right? PT, OT, SOP, going into the patient's home, like they're struggling because they don't have a physical location.

34:51 They don't have brick and mortar to lean on. And so I was talking to chat GPT the other day, and I was thinking about, again, what other professions outside of healthcare kind of do this, you know? And we talked about lawn care. We talked about home services, plumbers and electricians and things like that. But I was like, well, what about old school Tupperware parties, pampered chef parties? How can we leverage some of those networks for a mobile therapist who wants to step into that space? I think that there's a huge opportunity because there are still I'm going to I'm going to say there are women. It seems to be more popular for women who are doing house parties.

35:32 but they're getting stale and they're looking for new ways to do this. So is there an opportunity for a mobile clinician to step into, you know, whether it's the essential oils or any of that stuff, bring what we do, combine it with the physical product sales, generate that house party, and now start to generate clients and new leads from that. What are you thinking? it's weird that you bring that up I am listening to dr robert cialdini's book influence are you familiar with that one essentially he's like the psychologist um who essentially figured out like the levers that make people make decisions and I'm listening to that book and he's got such a great voice like late night radio dj voice like super chill sounds like the coolest professor you ever do and he brings up tupperware parties so here are the reasons and and I guess we need to explain so tupperware parties we need to be important so according to cialdini according to tupperware There is a new Tupperware party starting every like, fifteen seconds somewhere in the world, twenty four hours a day.

36:39 That's how effective these things are. They had to stop selling Tupperware at Target. They stopped because Tupperware party, it was affecting the Tupperware parties because the Tupperware parties are just better at it. So instead of buying one thing, the average consumer was buying like, ten X the amount of Tupperware, Tupperware parties. So a Tupperware party essentially is if Jimmy was like the New York Tupperware or the Ohio Tupperware rep, I work for Tupperware. And I find Tony and I go, Tony, you're a good guy. You're connected in your town. Everybody loves Tony in Ohio. You're gonna throw a Tupperware party and here's how it works. I'm gonna bring all the Tupperware. I'm gonna bring a gift for everybody that you bring. So Tony's throws the party. Tony brings the people to the party.

37:22 I'll help you structure the party. I'm going to show you how to make this party great, but it's going to be based on Tony. I'm in the background. I'm just here. I'm in the background. This is Tony's show. And then everybody walks away with a gift. It's a lot like a – I haven't been to a Tupperware party. I'm just going on Dr. Cialdini. But it's a lot like a bridal shower or a baby shower. They're structured. It's games, right? They bring out the products and have fun with them. Everybody walks away with something. The party is about the people who are at the party. The party is actually not about Tupperware. The party is about the people. But now instead of buying or not buying from Tupperware, I'm buying or not buying from Tony. And the reason I'm at the party is I either know Tony or I was dragged there kicking and screaming by someone who does know Tony.

38:08 So here's why it works. And then we'll flip it to how a mobile therapist could take advantage of it. Here are the psychological influences that are involved. Liking. Like if I like someone, I'm more apt to do something that they're asking me to do. Social proof, I'm in a room full of people watching them who are similar to me do something. Do you think Tupperware maybe puts a plant in a party every once in a while to say, I'll take this or I'll take that? Abso-freaking-lutely. Reciprocity is a psychological lever. I was invited to a party. I got snacks. I had time and fun and attention. Now I sort of feel like I owe the host something.

38:48 The psychological ideas of commitment and consistency. I RSVP'd. I showed up. I smiled. I nodded. I ate the wheat thins. I'm subtly committing slowly and small steps. So I'm in the mode of saying yes to things. Yes, I'm at the party. Yes, I would like to sit down. Yes, I would like a drink, drink, drink. And the final is scarcity. They finally say, I've only got three of these left. Or if you order by the end of the month, I'll be able to get you a better price on this. So there's a lot of levers. So as dumb as a Tupperware party looks, it is most of their business as a worldwide brand. And I don't know if you can name another food container brand.

39:34 It is... It's Tupperware. It's Kleenex. It's Cadillac. It is the thing of. So after I throw those ideas out there, the psychological levers, I have a few ideas. But how do you think a mobile therapist will focus on that market, could use those theories of a Tupperware party to leverage their business? Yeah. So I think you identify, you know, OK, where where are my biases? What do I enjoy? To Kendrick's point, I hated those parties. You couldn't hate the party if you didn't know they existed. So it had an impact whether you were there or not. And there's lots of things that I hate that they still got my money, you know, and so I'm a big foodie.

40:16 I love food. So when I when I put this idea together in my mind, I'd be like, OK, I would combine. food element to it. If I'm going to do healthy lifestyle, healthy eating, exercise, things that I do as a physical therapist, I'm going to have Blue Apron or some sort of food delivery service that I have an affiliate relationship with. I'm going to have my exercise component, maybe the manual therapy component. Maybe I'm bringing a NuFit or a shockwave on site and delivering these kinds of treatments right then and there. If I was Scott, I'd bring a cold laser and But the key here is I would have my partner, whoever that person is that I'm partnering with, who then does the other side of it.

41:01 They have the Tupperware. They have the Pampered Chef. They have whatever. And if I wanted to move into, and nobody ever talks about this, move into different areas, I've got patients that we're talking about going to a gun show this weekend, right? Why don't we have gun show house parties? Yeah, not that kind of gun show. Gun show house parties. Oh no. Do they have these or you're inventing this? Yeah. Yeah. Like hunting, you know, there are so many hunting things that they could do fishing. Like my boys, I dropped my boys off at the lake this morning on my way to work and they're going to be fishing all day. There are so many different directions we could take it. If Kendrick hated Tupperware, there's a million things.

41:44 And of course, you've got the whole pelvic floor world where there are therapists that are coming into the pelvic floor. They're doing house parties for that. It's a small private group. There's just so many things we could do with that. I think the idea is the Tupperware party is mislabeled, right? It's not a Tupperware party. It's a food problem. Because Tupperware sells food storage, but also like platters and presentations. So it understood that the party was about- It's all about the burp. It was about the burp, right? It was all about the people and what problems they had wait for it create some space create a literal and figurative space in someone else's living room for this party and then you trot out the solutions in a group like this works so what would what would the what would the problems need to be because I'm trying to identify like the problems that that a tupperware party solves are food storage, you know, parties and platters and those types of things.

42:48 It's everything around the kitchen. Ironically, most of the time, Tupperware parties take place in the living room too. But the idea is like, so what would it be? How would you identify that if you were a mobile therapist? So grab me a group of forty and fifty year old guys. Tell me that the bulk of them are not going to have stiff backs, are not going to have sore knees. Tell me that the bulk of them are not going to have issues with blood pressure, elevated blood sugar levels like we're going to have a collection of pathology that you can pretty much throw a dart and hit one of the targets with any of that stuff. And I'm sure there's going to be a collection for the ladies. There's going to be a collection for... You can break it down by demographic.

43:30 You can break it down through couples. There's always a collection of problems that these individuals have. That is what we are solving for. Like you said, it's not about... For Tupperware, it's about not wasting food, not feeling guilty, even though you're probably still going to throw it away after a couple of days. The idea... is, oh, well, I'm going to buy this, but I'm going to save money because I'm not wasting food. In our world, it's, oh, well, if I do this, I'm not going to have to go see the chiropractor or go to whatever or do something else. I'm going to feel better. I'm going to lose weight. And then, of course, you get into the more physical products, compression boots, things that people could buy at that like three hundred to a thousand dollar price point, walking pads, all of these things.

44:21 People want to spend that money. They want to spend that money. And if you can help direct them to something that at least gives them a chance of feeling better, I think it's money well spent. Yeah. How would you frame it? I'm playing around with the GPT right now. How does... Like Tupperware just has says Tony's having a party. Come. It's a Tupperware party, yada, yada. But it's not like come solve your back pain in thirty minutes or less. It's not a webinar hook. It's a very much like come and hang out. That's what it is. It's a let's get together. My buddy Tony is going to be bringing his shockwave device over. You know, let's feel better.

45:01 Drink some wine. Have some fun. Laugh a little bit. That's what it is. It's the social gathering of it. The reciprocity helps cover the bill. And then out of that, you've got emails, you've got contacts, you've got people who know you. And then this is where, you know, I would take it and you start looking at kind of different approaches. So if if somebody hasn't started a local Facebook group. I think there's a huge opportunity just within that Middletown, Ohio, Facebook group for people with back pain or just a consumer group. You know, hey, let's talk about referrals. Like, who's the dentist you're going to?

45:41 That kind of stuff. If I was a mobile therapist going, even if I wasn't going to a client, if I was like, hey, this is a neighborhood I want to work for. I want to help people in this neighborhood. I would start a direct mail campaign there. just to those houses, maybe within a two or three block radius. I go on the property tax property appraisers website. I grab a list of addresses manually. I'm not buying a list. I'm manually getting these addresses. Go to Zillow. What's the most expensive house in the neighborhood? OK, I'm going to get addresses for the ten houses around that house and I'm going to send a specific mailer to those houses.

46:22 Hey, this is me. I'm in the neighborhood where this is what I do. You know, while I'm here, if you have any needs for this, that or the other. Just let me know. I think we can use this stuff to go from zero to one, one to ten. Then we have different strategies to go from ten to one hundred when we're talking about clients. I think you could do this if you have a standalone clinic, too. I would never have it in the clinic. I think as soon as you have it in the clinic, it loses the let's come. I think the antithesis to this, look at that antithesis, multi-syllabic words here at nine, six in the morning. I think the antithesis to this is a free class or a lunch and learn.

47:08 I think a lunch and learn looks like a Tupperware party, but it's not because everyone knows they're gonna get pitched a timeshare at a timeshare pitch. Like they get it. So they're just waiting, they're bracing for it. But if it's more party, if it's ninety percent party, ten percent. Well, if you wanted to, you could take it home. I was always I was always confused. As like a twenty year old, why I couldn't just QR. Well, there weren't QR codes twenty years ago. But if I really like the robe or the pillow at a hotel and I how do I buy this? And like I remember this was now you can. But twenty five years ago, I remember being like this feels like a really stupidly simple thing to do and no one's doing it.

47:50 And now you can't. So, you know, that was one of the I think I shared this in a video a couple of years ago. And I want to talk about Ray's mentioning the workshop real quick. Right. But I said, why doesn't every piece of my equipment have a QR code that you can scan that takes you straight to my affiliate link on Amazon that allows you to buy that piece of equipment while you're using it for home? And we end up getting referral links for little things like the QB, the compression boots, ice packs. The Chattanooga ice pack is amazing. People love it. Instantly, you hit that QR code. You go to it. Now, this goes along with Joseph Lowe and Pure PT Supply.

48:36 We should be facilitating that, making it easier to make those purchases. You scan it and add it to your account. And then even if we're the ones facilitating the order, yeah, like all of that stuff, there are so many things that patients want to spend their money on. Money has no value until it is spent, until it moves on to the next person. So Ray was talking about workshops in the clinic. My issue is too many therapists still think the reason you do a workshop is to convert the attendees of the workshop. That is not why you do the workshop. The only reason why I've ever done a workshop is because I feature a physician, a referral source who is the headliner of the show.

49:22 that physician comes in. We talk about specifically what they want to talk about. I promote the procedure that they want to promote. I make them the headliner, but before they talk, they have to listen to me talk for just a couple minutes. Hey, this is what we do. This is how we do it. This is what's going on. Okay. Enough about me. Now, the reason why we're all here, let's introduce Dr. Scott Albright, non-surgical orthopedic, who's doing amazing things with stem cells. He comes in, he gives his spiel. Maybe he gets a couple of referrals from the audience. I don't care if I don't get any because now the reciprocity, I did something nice for him. I guarantee I'm going to get referrals from him now.

50:05 And he's seeing hundreds of people a week who need my services. That's why you do the workshop. You do the workshop to get the referrals from the featured physician or referral source that you're promoting. You are the stage. You are the amphitheater. I want people to start thinking of that. You now can be the amphitheater that puts the headliner on stage. And I know this is counterproductive, but I want to be featured. I want to be the one in lights. I don't know. I think I'd rather own Ticketmaster than be a rock band because Ticketmaster is going to be everywhere. I've got to steal this strategy. Can I share it with you? Yeah, please. Let's do it. Excuse to play the funny intro.

50:45 Okay. Steal the strategy is going to be, I know this is going to shock you, but it came from me being in a bar. And have you ever been in a bar, Tony, and seen a wall of mugs or mugs hanging up from the ceiling, either with names or with numbers on them? Okay. Yeah, a hundred percent. So this is a, this is a pattern interruption because this is not in every bar, but it's in a lot of bars. It's a lot of college town bars where they're going to get repeat customers, right? The students are going to come back or like a local bar, right? So this is a mug club. So some bars have them, you pay a fee and then you get a number. I was in a mug club where like twenty three was like Michael Jordan or ninety nine.

51:25 Like that was a that was a number you couldn't get it. You had to put your name on a list so I could have twelve until I was a senior until someone gave up ninety nine. Right. So that's the idea is every time you come in, you get to you get to say. uh I'm jimmy here's my idea I'm number uh that's me pull that down so your mug gets pulled down and now you have this cool social proof because I'm one of the people now there's one missing here I am I paid for that but maybe I get like a buck or two off of beers where do you think I'm gonna go over and over again if I paid my membership and now I sort of feel like a little bit like norm. Yeah. He's George went, I feel a little bit like norm and I get like perks. Maybe I can, maybe I get a free Uber ride for every a hundred bucks I spend, or maybe I get led in the bar an hour early or I get a free nachos or something like that.

52:13 So it's not about the drink. It's about belonging. It's about where everybody knows your name, or at least you feel like everybody knows your name because your, your bug is on the wall. Here's why it works, according to Dr. Cialdini and his ideas on influence and levers scarcity. If I were to do this, I would do ninety nine mugs. Ninety nine bottles of beer on the wall. Right. We play with the ninety nine. Plus you still get Wayne Gretzky's number in their status, your mug, your name or your number. Quite literally visible prestige right there. Identity. Once you're a mug club member, you act like one. Like once you're a member, you act like one, not the other way around. Like first you have to make me feel something. This is the same way with children.

52:54 When you start complimenting on a little behavior, when you say that's who they are, hopefully they start to make it part of their identity. And consistency. You paid for this. You have to show up to sort of justify that logical reason of why you dropped a hundred bucks to be in a mug club. It's also the same reason that a lot of bars will have softball teams or dart leagues. Consistency. And then unity. I'm in the club. You're in the club too. This is like the members only jacket, right? Concept. So how would I use this? I don't know. I think, Tony, you're doing this right now, right? Like you have not only therapy sessions, but you have like movement members, like almost like a gym membership. Monthly, annual, or wellness plan alumni club.

53:36 Discounted performance visits or tune-ups if you're a member. You pay in, right? This is Amazon's idea, right? Free shipping. You're paying for it, like you're paying for it. We know this, I know this, but I'm not giving up my Amazon Prime membership because it just feels really, really good. And then how about recognition? How could a therapist or a clinic use this? Social media shout outs, exclusive gear, like the visuals say everything. I got this because I'm a member. You can't buy this anywhere. So I saw the mug club and I was like, I feel like there's too many psychological levers not to pull on in healthcare. And we're, and, and the bar is so low in healthcare in terms of innovation in marketing and something like this, that if you did a little bit of it, I think it would go a long way.

54:17 And that's my steal this strategy. man, I love this. I'm trying to think of like, what is the thing that replaces the mug in our clinic? You know, if, if we were more of like a strength based club, I could see having, I see it on, on Facebook and stuff that like thick handle, uh, dumbbell or things that people have to be able to grip and lift. Um, I love the idea from a streak perspective, like protecting the streak, maintaining the streak. You have to keep coming in order to protect your place on the wall, protect your whatever it is. If you quit, if you stop, you know, you lose that opportunity.

54:59 There are so many elements in this. The question is, what's it going to be like typical physical therapy? Are you going to get a yellow TheraBand? Yeah. Are we going to are we going to go Martial Arts Academy and be like you go from the yellow TheraBand to the red TheraBand to the black TheraBand? And it's like a system. I don't know. There's got to be something there. So I thought about this and I thought about names on the wall of everybody, like a plaque, right? So there's your name, member since, because I want to show Streak how long this person's been a member. And then I would do something where everybody's name would be reset on the first of the month. And then if you visited, you have to at least come once, obviously, right?

55:41 And now it's like visited in June, whatever the month is. And then if you've done ten, Now you get moved over. Not only have you come once this month, it's ten. Did you come all thirty days or whatever actually is possible? And now you're the member of the month. Like, how do I beat that streak? I was at a clinic where they would always have a challenge. There would be two different challenges. It was a strength challenge and a mobility challenge. It was just written on a dry erase board. But who else? the fastest time or the most, whatever per capita, like it wasn't just a straight up lift. It was per capita. Um, they had their name on the wall and it was like, even if you're, so if you're in the gym and you're working out, you're like, Oh, what's the worm challenge? Like, Oh, okay. And the therapist would show it like, well, I could do that. Well, here's the stopwatch. There's your content right there.

56:21 Right? Yeah. Okay, well, we're going to take a video of this because we've got to be able to prove it. Do you mind if we share it, right? So now you're gamifying and you're making it fun. I can get cheaper beer and cheaper vodka at home. I go to a bar for everything else because I want people to know my name. I want to be seen in places. So how do you take that? So I like where Scott's head is at as a t-shirt. I don't know that I'm wearing the same shirt every time. I think you give out gear, but there's got to be something when I walk in every time that pulling the mug down or I'm checking in and your front desk person moves the name over to they're in the house or they've been in the house or there's some play there.

57:03 And it could be a hundred different ones, whatever one works for you. And that's my steal this strategy. yeah I I love it there's there it's got to be up on the wall it's got to be visible you know I'm thinking of some of the old stuff where like you have patient success stories up on the wall but again those are people that have succeeded and left we want somebody who's succeeding right now every single day um I love the idea of the buy-in but I I prefer the buy-in to be a physical accomplishment You lifted this much weight. You did this many reps. You attended this many sessions. Whatever it is, it can match the culture of your business, but the buy-in and the commitment has to be there so that, again, if they stop, they lose the streak.

57:53 You want to protect that streak. How many days did I attend? How many reps did I do? And then- Go ahead. There was a world of beers near where we went to PT school. We went like there like three days before PT school started. And if you had, I don't know, a hundred or a thousand pints or whatever, you actually got your name on a plaque on the bar. And I joined that club and I paid my whatever. And I was like, I'm going to come here all the time. And then I never went back, but they got my money because the beers are too damn expensive at the world of beers. I was like, dude, man, I want a Miller lighter. I want a Corona right now. Like, I don't want to spend, you know, nine dollars on an IPA that, oh, you had to have different beers every single time. So they were trying to move their inventory, too.

58:33 So they understood the game and they got my twenty five bucks or whatever. But then I stopped. So I love the Versa climber. That was one piece of equipment I always wanted, but I knew nobody would ever use it. Um, real quick. So I'm going to say this is my parting shot because I know we're running out of time. You mentioned moving inventory. I was listening. I think it was corner office again. They were no, no, it was somebody else. They were talking about a stock market for beers. Did you see that? Yeah. I've been in one of those bars. Okay, I've never heard of this. This is fascinating to me. So basically, the more people were ordering a certain beer, the price of that beer would go up, but then there would be less popular beers that had a lower price.

59:15 You could purchase different beers at different price points any time of day. Again, I don't know how you bring that into our world, but it's a gamification strategy that makes it more fun, more exciting. And if we're going to talk about research, evidence-based practice, this is the evidence I want to follow. I want to follow how do I get people to want to move more? That's the only thing I care about. How do I get people to want to move more? that research is not in physical therapy or it is, it's, it's this small that research is in psychology. That's Pokemon go. Like we do a masterclass on Pokemon go and go, how do I figure that out? Or how do I get Pokemon go?

59:56 The funny part is with, so my parting shot will be, uh, the monkey bars as I make this monkey bar motion is I know you want to gamify and I know you want to move forward. The only way to do that to truly move forward is you got to let go of some of the old things you have to do low ride out the only way for Disney to put in a new ride so people would go I've got to come back Disney understood I got some freak Disney people I love you but going like three times a year as an adult is a little weird for me but those people are always going to come Right. So you're getting new people to come. Or how do you get those people to come back and spend more? Disney had to get rid of the teacups eventually or something because he only had a hundred thousand acres, whatever it was.

1:00:40 So he let the audience tell him not with the survey. They voted with their time. The whatever ride got the fewest turnstile spins. is gone. And it just, poof, it disappeared. And people were pissed emotionally, but then why didn't they write it? They would have told you they love the teacups, but it's boring. So they had to move that out so they could get the new Star Wars right in there. We're back on Tuesday. Dave Kittle will most likely be here unless he's still got that voice issue or he's gone over the falls in Niagara Falls. uh take a listen to the dave kittel show learn medicare billing uh and we should probably start growing the facebook group or do a side I was just thinking like we just talked about creating community around a mobile therapist or whatever maybe we want I know we we capped that one facebook group we're at a thousand people I like that scarcity maybe we have a different one or maybe we let we only let a hundred people in if they can prove they somehow did something right we'll talk about that on tuesday have a great weekend guys