Steal This Strategy: Pizza, Challenges & the PT Clinic Growth Hack

0:18 It's a late night. I forgot to turn off repeat on the intro. Happy Tuesday morning to you, Dave. Dave, Tony is playing chaperone right now. He's probably at the Smithsonian or maybe doing a lap around Lincoln Memorial. I think he's he's on a field trip with the with the young ones. Just you and I today. How long how many years do we have before you're doing chaperone duty at like, you know, this on field? Oh, my goodness. Yeah, I'm telling you, man, it's gonna go by so fast. Oh, man. He's already thirteen months. It's crazy. It is a little while. Wow. Thirteen months. Really? Well, here's a strategy you might want to make sure that you employ. I want to bring this in from the the the interwebs.

1:00 Apparently there's a tick tock trend called adult tummy time. It's a thing. And apparently it says, here's why physical therapists like it. I love how one person gets to speak for all of us. But they're talking about this TikTok trend going on. And the idea is it's to combat tech neck, which I'm not sure how many tech neck. How many cases of tech neck are you seeing? Uh, yeah, a lot. And that adult tummy time is basically like a McKenzie extension bias. So I'm all for it. I mean, there's too many people that are sitting too much and slouched and all that. So if they're... Last night I was... I do the things that...

1:45 are in these articles, right? Last night, we're watching the Knicks versus, oh my God, who did I play? Celtics, came back, they won. The Knicks and Celtics last night, and I'm doing mobility on the living room floor, and I was literally prone on elbows watching the game. So this, what this is talking about, actually, like I do, but not everyone does it. I'm not saying like I'm a glowing citizen by any means, but like in terms of mobility and stuff, like I'm getting my tummy time, absolutely. Just good spinal health, so this is good. um so I wanted to bring that in from tick tock all right what do you want to talk about first do you want me to talk about my personalized podcast pitch um that I used that I thought we could also spin and uh and use for clinics let's do that uh you the video that you sent about dutch rojas is that kind of the theme of it or is it different Yeah, it was a similar.

2:38 Also, I'll just bring that video up. I'll hit play. I don't have to play the audio. But the idea was I was sitting around and I was looking at some different podcast guests and I was like, who, who, who have I wanted to get on the show? And maybe a cold DM or an email because maybe I know them were connected on LinkedIn, but I don't like know them, know them. Tony had given me a challenge a while ago, like start swinging for the fences. Like what are the odds someone like Alex Ramosi or Seth Godin comes on your show? Pretty small, but if they did, that would be like a complete steal, but they're not gonna come on your show unless you ask them. So I created this like personalized video I just said I was cruising on LinkedIn. I saw this guy and you followed Dutch Rojas, right?

3:20 He's sort of this like healthcare guy who just loves spitting fire and bringing facts and spreadsheets and using data and just sort of like, I don't know about like just like a lot of people will bitch about healthcare Dutch is actually just bringing like receipts and being like, Hey, why don't we do like this? How come we're not doing like that? So he's got some really great ideas. And I was like, he'd be a killer guest. Maybe I'll DM him. And then I'm like, I'm not a creative writer. Well, I'll just use text to speech or, or I'll use AI. Right. But I'm like, I don't know. That feels like everyone's going to do that. Here's something anybody could do. that I felt like felt more personal. So I sort of looked up a little bit about him. I wrote a little bit of an outline. I used an app to edit a video and then I just talked into my phone.

4:03 This is on one take. I was like, listen, you're great. I think you've got some really good views. I'd love to have you on our podcast. Let's go. I did share this publicly though. because we're friends on LinkedIn and LinkedIn's a place for business and we're talking about the healthcare business. So I shared it publicly and I was just like, listen, I'd love to have you on a podcast hosted by a former radio DJ. Oh yeah, that's me, let's do this. And the cool thing was, Dave included and a couple of other people, It chimed in. Oh, I'd see that. Oh, that'd be cool. So doing it in public allowed me to sort of say like, hey, look, I've got, you know, a little bit of street credit. A couple people would love to hear you on the show. Would you would like to join an hour or two later?

4:43 Actually, on your under your comment, he dropped an email address. I fired that out and said, all right, let's get you. Let's book you on the show. And it worked. So that's cool if you have a podcast. But this show is like for people who own PT practices or health care practices. How could you use this? I don't think I would use it in public. Like, I don't think I would just like start posting on people's or sliding into people's DMs unless they were former patients. So I wanted to take the same tactic. And I was like, I don't know. What if you made like a thirty second video and just looked into the camera and said, how you been? Anything we can help with? Do you know anybody that might need our services? Anything. And then slide that into an email or a DM if you follow them on socials.

5:27 Is that too weird? I was just going to ask. So we've done either automated or manual text messages or emails to reactivate previous patients. So we also will use things like the holiday cards, right? So we'll set a holiday card and it'll be like my family and I on it. It won't be too corporate-y. Those are reminders that we still exist. And if they have any aches or pains or whatever, like, hey, like you could contact us and reactivate, get an evaluation, continue treatment for a new thing, old thing, whatever it might be. So we've done your video that you're talking about. to reach out to previous patients. You're talking about reactivations.

6:08 So we've done automated texts, automated emails, manual texts, manual emails. We've done the physical postcards, which is kind of like goodwill. Now we've got the baby, and so we're going to get him in there, of course. And that helps with just less corporate-y, more familial, relational feel. So you're talking about sending a video like this manually or mentioning the person by name. Maybe not. Maybe we could do it not by name and you just record it once and you send it to previous people. I think some people in the New York City area might think it's maybe too much, but I think it could work. I think it could work.

6:49 I would love to hear Tony's insight on this maybe next week when he comes back. But I think it's a nice touch. And whether it's the actual physical therapist speaking into the camera, if it's the front desk person, whoever's like the most bubbly, you know, should probably do it. But if you're a person, if you're a patient who had back pain, and then now you're doing pretty good on your own, and then you get this video from your physical therapy practice where you were receiving treatment, I think it can, for the most part, continue to build goodwill. And the best part that you've even mentioned this entire time was You're reaching out to them. Hey, how's it going? Are you a hundred percent?

7:29 Are you doing well? Just, you know, we thought of you, just wanted to send this video, you know, instead of like a cold text message or an email. But then you also said asking for like reviews or referrals, which is. Yeah. This is covering all the bases. It's like, hey, we're checking on you. How are you doing? Are you a hundred percent? If not, like, hey, let's get you back in. If you are a hundred percent, wonderful. Who might you know that would benefit from our services the way that you benefited from our services? I like doing it with whoever they saw. I don't know. Like, I feel like if they saw you and you were their PT, like, I love the idea of the front desk person. And, and some places do have that person who's sort of an icon. And some, and most places have like, you know, in the middle of the bell curve, they have places who are super nice.

8:13 Hey, You know, saw you six months ago. How's it going? How'd that race turn out? I mean, I was taught like the smart health care providers will put notes in right about favorite sports teams, kids, kids, field dogs, things like that. The dog's name, the cat and dog's name. Bingo. How's Scruffaluffagus? How's Scruffaluffagus doing? Doing well? Doing good? Why don't you bring him by? I got a treat for him, you know? um you know I was thinking along the lines of again when tony had sort of challenged me I think it was a year ago um and and the prompt from tony a year ago this is podcast related but I'm twisting it back to a practice the podcast idea was take my top twenty guests that I could never get and build a website for each of them on my site and explain to the world who that person is right with a picture of them and here's why I'd want them on my show Right.

9:07 And then figure out how to reach that person ten different ways. and then have that website be sort of like the last, the call to action. Like, this is why I want you, not because you're famous, but because I think you could really bring some insight. And then one of the lines from Alex Ramosi, I don't know why it's resonating with me, probably because I work in tech sales now or tech partnerships, which is like, if you're embarrassed about reaching out, like you're gonna be hungry. Like if you're starting out on zero and you're not doing anything, Some great advice from a former boss at a radio station. Again, it's applicable to pretty much anything if you have a business. I started at a radio station in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, and the radio station was established, but my program director, Chris Lloyd, was like, here's what we have.

9:56 We have no budget. None. Not one dollar for promotion. We have a vehicle that's wrapped with our logo on it. We can use as much gas as we want because we have a gas card. And we have a photocopier. We can make as many photocopies as we want with as many different colored papers. But of course, we made funny Beastie Boys sabotage-flavored flyers. Or whatever, like we made up fake commercials or something like that. And then we're just like, we don't care. Motion creates emotion. And I feel like picking up your phone and texting someone is a thing to do. I felt like that video for me, because it fits my personality. Tony, we talked about this in a previous episode.

10:37 Tony's like, I'm not going to the Better Business Bureau and shaking hands for two hours. Not my jam. It's not his jam. Good, don't do that. He doesn't need to do it anymore. Doesn't need to, but he did do other things like Tony's idea. And I keep seeing people pop up where you accompany a patient to a follow-up video with their physician after that physician referred him to you. That is fantastic. That's like Taylor Swift playing someone's wedding because they asked, well, she's not doing it every day. Tony wasn't doing that for every patient, but doing it for a few could resonate for years. I've seen people still I've been caught in threads where people like I did that and oh, my God, it was amazing. So I think this whole theme would really be personalized touch.

11:18 And how can you make it personalized in a mass text message sort of world? and I think that resonates I think it's different I think this is why bell bottoms come in and then they go out again because everyone's doing it when everyone's doing it it gets old do the other thing so I don't know I feel like that's a way to separate yourself the the best way to truly separate yourself and to to do things that don't scale would be to say things like you're making a video per person which it takes more effort it takes more effort for that for that video to be uploaded or to be sent or whatever but if I'm going to send jimmy mckay a video I'm going to mention I don't know I'll mention podcasts I'll mention you know jimmy I know you're in a you're in a men's uh ice hockey league you just posted a story the other day with like the cage you know the mask on that you had your your helmet and mask like I would I would mention those things so that you knew it was not a canned message.

12:12 You knew it was completely made for you, just like the video you made for Dutch Rojas. It was completely for him, extremely well done. You hit on all the great points. He can't say no to come on. And like I said to you and Tony in messaging it, I sort of did it in public, too. So now he's sort of like, all right, we got to do it. Now, I want to wow the hell out of him when he shows up. So he's like, okay, this was a good idea. And you will. You will. You will. Because then you got a friend for life. Here's something I was trying to figure out this morning. You're mentioning I posted a story. I was playing men's beer hockey last night. We lost, by the way. I know. And it was until like one o'clock in the morning. But we're talking about this personalization.

12:54 I got a DM in LinkedIn from the gains gods, an Instagram account. Never heard of them. They made a comment on my post of my story. And it says from the rink to the mic, passion, grit, and a dash of chaos, beer, league, hockey vibes, and podcast wisdom coming at you. And I was like, hold on a minute. And there's no, there, there's no ask. They're not even asking. Hey guys, And then in my comments on a previous post from the Game Gods, who have more than a hundred thousand followers on Instagram, only my cast can go from beer leak intensity to dropping life lessons on selflessness in the same breath.

13:37 Love the range. Talk about a growth strategy. Two comments. right? That were both personalized. Now look at worse. Are they actually trying to build rapport? And like, this is how you build a relationship. Wow. Who would have thought at no point did they say, follow me for whatever, or like, that's the best part. If they had done that, I would have been like, I'm out. all they did was drop two comments here's the thing at worst I've got to go to who the game gods are hundred and thirty six thousand followers and I'm like you know what you earned you earned my attention I love these two phrases right pay attention spend time you earned it I had to give you five seconds to check out who you were right the game gods they're all about making videos for people you probably watch anyway teaching agencies to scale to twenty thousand dollars a month so they that It works though.

14:29 You could be a client for them that they're going to, they're going to slowly build some rapport and maybe you'll pay them for their service. Eventually. That's, would you say that that's the ultimate, like what's it for them? Yes. And you know that it's repeatable, right? Or they paid someone to do this over and over and over and over again, right? Like they're doing the quick research. Yeah, but they connected you with podcasts and ice hockey. And that takes a little more understanding. You can't outsource that to someone, you know, in another country to do a VA to do that. I mean, maybe, but you got to have a little insight into like, I'm reaching out to this dude, Jimmy McKay, and I'm connecting his range of podcasting and this ice hockey thing, which was only a twenty four hour story that you're posting.

15:13 Correct. I don't talk about ice hockey. Ninety nine point nine nine nine percent of time. It was just that story. So look at it this way. What would you, you said, what would the ultimate goal? Well, the ultimate goal is if they're like an agency, they want a client and every one of those clients can be worth a lot of money to them. That's valuable. But the, the steps, right? So you, I love, I love using this parallel of dating. So the step was not, I'm going to message and get married to Jimmy. That that's too big of a leap. Of course. For the first one is I'm going to read it and go, who is this? There's a pickup line. A pickup line should be funny and intriguing and make you want to be like, okay, you got eight seconds. I'm going to give you eight more seconds. You're leaning in. You clicked on the profile.

15:54 You're leaning in. All right. Who are you? Let me, let me. Okay. Who are you? So the pickup line leads to the first drink or the first fifteen minutes. If that goes well, you should ask for let's go get coffee or something low stakes, low investment from the other person, right? I click on their profile. Maybe I'll scroll and watch a few videos. And then after a while, the goal of watching the videos would get you to go, you know what? This is good. I don't want to miss this. So I'm going to save this phone number or make an appointment to see this person again and have a date. And then after a while, if I'm like, you know what? And I ever run into an ideal client for the games gods, How would you not suggest them? Because you're like, you know what? I watch these guys every day and they put the videos and it sounds like, just go download their guide or go follow them yourself.

16:41 So this was a really, really stupidly simple example of earning attention and rapport. And I think that because we're healthcare providers, we overlook it. And you're, you're mentioning, not that we have like the biggest audience ever, but you're mentioning it right now. Like we talk about things that are like remarkable, meaning it's worth making a remark about. Correct. And this, this is remarkable or depending on your definition of remarkable, somewhat remarkable because you're even bringing this up and there's folks watching live. There's folks that are going to watch or listen to this on the recording and gains, gains, God, what is it? Gains, God's. The gains gods like they're they're just they're getting they're getting free exposure because of their approach, which was a great human base, like natural, like little just dropping a little nugget, dropping another little nugget, not not asking for anything big, not asking for anything.

17:39 No ask, not even an ask. Like some people would say like, you need to have an ask in there. Do you? Look at the email I got this morning from a guy by the name of Seth Godin, who's written an email every day for a bajillion years, knows what he's doing. You're saying, hey, Jimmy, you've got a decent sized audience. Everybody does now. Everybody does. So Seth was getting at the fact that Sixty five million people have uploaded a video to YouTube. In nineteen eighty, there were eight movie studios producing mass market movies. Now there are kids doing, you know, Dreamweaver or whatever programs make movies. I don't know how to make crazy cool videos. More than ten million people have uploaded a song to Spotify this year, this year.

18:23 I worked in radio. There wasn't a chance in hell that you were getting your song to a record company. I mean, you could, but it's just going to be in a box at the front desk. The barrier to entry, and I've said this before in front of people, especially healthcare providers, and they're like, I don't understand. The barrier to entry, the distance between you and your ideal patient or client or audience is the thickness of the glass in your cell phone. And if you are too lazy to tap on it, if you don't knock... not going to show up so get over yourself so and it doesn't need to be these ways like I said tony was he's like I'm never going to go to the better business bureau and shake hands and hand out business cards good don't but understand what you are comfortable with and then do that you had an idea too for tony which I you shared it with me The graphic.

19:13 Should I bring that up? I want you to real quick. I wanted Tony on this, but he's busy this whole week. This is a great topic. This thing just happened in my neighborhood on Sunday. Pizza Wars. Can we bring up the graphic? This is a... Let's bring up the graphic. This is a marketing idea for your physical therapy practice, your company. It doesn't matter, PT, OT, SLP. Okay, so this just happened on Sunday in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. There were twelve different pizzerias. You pay thirty six dollars. I didn't do it, but, you know, I think I'd have to have a big appetite to actually make thirty six or forty dollars worth of pizza.

19:57 You pay thirty six bucks and you can go to all twelve places, all twelve pizzerias that are all walkable. They're on third half, fourth half, fifth half in Beverage, Brooklyn. You pay thirty six bucks, you get a wristband or whatever. You walk around, you eat pizza from any of these places, you get one plain slice from any of these places and then you vote on who's the best pizza place. Also, a couple of things, because it was the what, the third of May. it was the whole star wars theme you know like may the I'm sorry it was may fourth may the fourth be with you so it was on may fourth on this pizza wars this past sunday so a little bit up so it was we talk about technology a lot we talk about marketing and we talk about like digital ads sometimes this is obviously the physical world so the reason why I'm bringing this up I thought, could there be... All these pizza places, it was all organized by the Fifth Avenue Business Improvement District or whatever.

20:58 It included Justin Brandon and other politicians and there's other logos. There's other people that helped make this and make this graphic and support and actually bring this thing to life. But I was thinking, could there be... therapy wars could there be pain wars could there be health wars could there be something where we have patients walk around from you know well concierge pain relief we don't have an office here in in bay ridge but there's serica physical therapy there's game changer there's one-on-one or JAG. There's professional PT. There's Spear now in the area. There's PT of the City. There's a place called TLC Physical Therapy.

21:38 Millennium. I mean, there's at least twelve physical therapy places nearby. It's not going to have the same ring because you hear Pizza Wars and you understand it. It's like if Jimmy McKay and Tony Meritato were coming to Bay Ridge this past Sunday, we would have done Pizza Wars. It would have been like you get to see all the places. We get to walk around. We would have... had a great time, but all these pizza places got a whole bunch of eyeballs on their businesses. They got more foot traffic. There was multiple places on the Bay Ridge Facebook groups where they were saying, people were posting, why is there such a big line at Gino's today? What's going on? Why is there such a big line at Pepino's and Firefly Pizza?

22:19 Like, why is there like a line out the door? There's never a line out the door at this place or this place or whatever. And then people are arguing in the comments of like, no, no, like, Elegante pizza is the best. No, Vesuvio's pizza is the best. This and that. I know this is a lot easier with pizza. Could there be a community-based, so all the physical therapy, maybe chiro, maybe massage, whatever, we all team up together And we say, hey, we're going to try to, you know, we'll get people to opt in, their name, their phone number, their email. With their permission, we're going to share all their contact information, which doesn't happen with these pizza places because they don't care about leads. They don't care about actual customers. They just sell slices and they know people are going to walk by and get, you know, pizza.

23:01 Could this work, Jimmy, up near you? Could this work if you, back when you used to live in the Upper West Side, I think, How could we make this work as a community-based thing? We've got to name it. I threw out some names. Pain wars, physical therapy wars is kind of long. Health wars, which kind of sounds weird. Tony probably would say this is like a weird idea, and he wouldn't want to do it. But how could this approach be used for therapy practices? So I would take all the idea, and I would just change the name. I don't think it would be wars. I think it would be more of a scavenger hunt. This is scavenger hunt. Right. The health care providers in your neighborhood are subjectively good or bad, just like pizza places.

23:45 Like I knew where I liked Freddy and Peppers on seventy fourth and Amsterdam. That was the best pizza in the city. It was around the corner from Levain Bakery. So you get a cookie the size of your head. And I was like, boom, boom, I'm done for the night. Now there's fifty bajillion places in the city. Are any of them bad? Not not if you're in your New York. No, most of them are good, but they're not really your competition because some people like yours better than others for no other reason that they just like it. So could you combine forces with people that are your competition? So I don't like this idea anymore. I love this idea. I want someone, a group of someones to come in and be like, we did this and here's how we did it. So as you were talking about this, so let me see if I can reframe.

24:27 You paid thirty six bucks and then you could go to any of those pizza places and get a slice for a whole day. Yeah. Like if I now think this is not an expensive proposition, this is cheap. This is if you're a family, this is your whole day. Or if you have friends in town. It's probably it's probably thirty six dollars per person or per adult, though. Yeah. Yeah. In New York, though. I mean, that's you know, that's that's a meal. Yeah. But now there's the element of this is why breweries have beer flights. I'm going to be, you know, sophisticated. I want to try a little bit of this, a little bit of that. So I would say to make this work for healthcare, I'm thinking about- It always goes back to beer. Always goes back to beer with you. Always goes back to beer. Well, yeah.

25:08 So I'm thinking about in my hometown. And so I can answer on behalf of Tony, I think anyway, or at least slanted towards Tony, because I'm not in a big city right now. I'm a little upstate New York City. And I've got my buddy, John Denoyles, at Resolve Physical Therapy. And he just built like a recovery room, like a very like- rehab to perform me josh josh funk vibe recovery move red light compression how do you get them in you actually combine efforts with the massage place down the street the chiropractor that's what I'm talking about gold's gym I want to break down right now. So your buddy's place, and if there's three, four, five other places nearby, we create a name for it, whatever they agree to the name is.

25:50 We got to think of a price. With the prospective client's permission, all the practices get to share Jimmy, McKay, his phone number, his email. Everyone gets to get the lead information so that they can all contact you later. And you have to pay what price? And then you and I, we get to go to PT in the park. Okay. PT in the park. I'm thinking in this area of where I live, there's two things that are big. One is hiking. So it could be like a hike or a trail, right? Health trail. uh, exercise trail, or we have a lot of wineries up here too. So it's a tour. It always goes back to alcohol, but we do, they do wine tours up here where you like rent a limo for the day and they bring you to six and like, don't worry about it.

26:36 We provide food and we'll bring you from place to place. You don't have to worry about it. I like, originally I was going to say, make it free, but I don't want to make it free. I want, I want people to pay for a little bit, but then I want to sprinkle in some love, which is, Hey, if they're paying and they're, Now there's a little bit of money to work with. Give them something. You could give them like a free recovery room session or a physical object, a T-shirt, something. So even if this is your rotisserie chicken at Costco, you make no money on this, but you break even or even lose a little bit of money, right? You still had people. This is even better than just clicking your website. They stood in your facility. This is not what I felt.

27:16 You walk into John's Resolve Physical Therapy. This is not what you think of. There are no beige walls. Bye. He's got squat racks and he's got big heavyweights. And he's got like, you know, the stuff that you feel like, Oh, this is what's physical therapy. I didn't realize this was physical therapy. I don't know if John can pay for that. Right. Besides doing something like this. So maybe like a card that you get stamped. And when you get them all, you're entered to win the grand prize, which is something awesome from all five or six stops on the tour. This is a pub crawl iPad or whatever. Right. Bars realize this a long time ago. People don't love one bar. They'll check out bunches of bars. Look, I got beer at that bar. I got beer at that bar. Yeah. Yeah. But you don't go for the beer or the vodka. You go for the vibe. You go for the ambiance or whatever.

27:59 So Scott loves the idea. So I think you try it. I don't think you make it too complicated. Five maybe organizations make them varied. It could be two PT clinics if they're different and even better. Like how great would that be? Yeah. Right. My second idea was something we did. And I don't I've got like eighty five percent of the idea. Maybe you or someone watching can help me bring it home. In northeast Pennsylvania, when I worked in radio, we had a radio group. We there's there was also like there was always always like a Coke and a Pepsi. So there were two radio groups, two newspaper groups and two TV groups. Right. And we all had like it was access and allies. Right. Alliances. Right. So we we paired with our TV group.

28:39 They wanted to do this thing called the Million Pound Meltdown. where they said in five years, Northeast PA is gonna get healthy and we're gonna lose a million pounds together. So then the goal of the TV spots where they were always sharing like health tips or visit this physical therapist or whatever, get checked up. And the idea was you'd log into their website, boom, they already won the minute you made an account. to log how much weight you were losing, right? And then you could share how you did it. And it felt like you had, it felt very gamified. So the radio station would play the promos and we had stuff on our website and we'd have our DJs get into, you know, videos, but we'd put our own spin on them. right we were doing like we were doing uh crowd surfing right push-ups or something like ridiculous like that but to put our own spin on it I feel like if you make it in a thing nobody loses I know that you think that the person who has a pt clinic down the street is your enemy they just rift off like you obviously know them and you know what they're good at what they're not good at and hopefully they know what you're good at what you're not good at so I don't think they're your enemy I think pp wars is a great idea And ultimately the consumer, the neighborhood family or individual that's gonna bounce around to all these therapy offices, Cairo, massage, whatever, they're gonna check out all the spaces.

29:55 They're gonna check out all the offices. They're gonna meet some of the team from all the places, right? And guess what'll happen? whoever is the best that has the cleanest place, like the nice design, the welcoming people, the warm atmosphere, the best follow-ups on text and email and touching base and maybe sending them mailers or whatever, whoever does all that the best, wins that person and takes that resident and turns them into a patient client potentially for a couple months or a couple years or lifetime, because it's all about lifetime value and exchanging like the value exchange of their dollar for whatever they get. And whoever does all that the best can potentially win those new patients and clients in perpetuity as long as they're great, as long as they have a valuable offering.

30:45 Um, I'm trying to think of the timing. Would you do it? Cause where I am, like, you're not, you're not walking around in a weekend. You can't, this needs to be like a week or two, like health week. So I, I was all, I'm glad you brought this up and I was already thinking of timing. So obviously may is good. Cause it's like spring. It's like, it was kind of, it was nice out, but it, you know, it could be rainy. It could be nice. It's not going to be good. It's not going to be crazy hot. It's not going to be, you know, very cold. I thought because they did the, where you're where, by the way, I don't know if I mentioned it. they were doing the the star wars like may the fourth be with you and they also said wear your jedi robes and your sith capes and wear your costumes for star wars which I don't have any star wars costumes but there were people doing that so that made me think of what are the other things and when are physical therapy practices the slowest there's and this is not great timing this is not always great timing because it's hot and because people are traveling families are traveling but Physical therapy practices are the slowest in July and August, especially August.

31:43 So what if you did Christmas in July? But then again, it's pros and cons. It's trade-offs. Because there's some people that are traveling. There's some people that are away. Or it's going to be crazy hot. It could be ninety-two, ninety-five degrees here in Brooklyn in July. You could do Christmas in July. We bounce around all these physical therapy practices. That's the scavenger hunt, whatever it is. you give gifts you wear your santa costumes you wear your you know elf costumes whatever but it's gonna be hot so you're not gonna you're probably not gonna want to I would just throw that out as a potential reason to have it but then I mean ideally it would probably be better for like september or something I don't know well let's change what I was asking so this was one day and you were saying this was one neighborhood so the whole thing was walkable right So what I'm asking is like, would you do this if you were going to do the health trail, the town of Montgomery or the Orange County health trail?

32:36 Maybe expand it a little bit bigger where I am, make it countywide, because then you could get things like batting cages or facilities like that, CrossFit, whatever. Yeah. another angle there's an instagram account I think called battle bus this dude just drives around to parking lots outside gyms or like at five k's and he's got a pull-up bar mounted in the back like a socket of his of his van and he just takes videos of people doing pull-ups and that's his whole instagram account because some people do a lot some people don't whatever like I like that angle of making it a challenge. So there needs to be a challenge at each thing you need to have. It's almost like when you go to like a lake at like a public park and they've got that whole loop around the lake and each every couple of hundred yards, there's like an exercise station.

33:21 Be the station. What am I coming here for? It's not to check out your space. No one wants to check out your PT clinic. They want a purpose for them. So my question, my next question, going back to when, would you do this over a weekend? Would you do this over a week? Would this be month-wide? Because if it's too long, I feel like it's too ambiguous. If it's too short, the window might open and close too fast. Or do you do it once a month? Maybe a weekend, maybe Saturday, Sunday, maybe Friday through Sunday. I don't know. The thing with the different places and little mini challenges, golf driving range is one that you can objectively see. Can I hit it a certain distance?

34:02 A batting cage, you could just set up a short... temporary wall and like you just got to hit it over the wall. If you're at a physical therapy office, I think it's a little bit more challenging. I don't know. Do you do something like boring, like planks? Like how long can you hold a plank or can you hold a plank for a minute or something? So what about choose your choose your own adventure? I think I talked about the combine idea where like if you wanted to treat volleyball players, create five objective tests that volleyball players should be good at and then test them and then chart them and then rank them and make it like a combine. So maybe it could be like, you walk in like, who are you? I'm a swimmer. All right. So it's going to be something overhead, right?

34:42 Or I'm a runner. All right. It's going to be in dirt, whatever. How fast can you run a trail? I don't know. This is where you have to, have to, have to, have to be creative and actually think from their point of view, because this is hard. What's too easy and too cheesy. Don't do that. What's too impossible. I'm never even going to start. Don't do that. You got to find that Goldilocks, that middle. Yeah. I love it. What else? What did we not cover? We talked about like potential approaches and timelines and what do they get out of it? I didn't even think of a scavenger hunt or a hike or, you know, those are the things you brought to the table. So thank you for that. I love that. What else are we missing? The name, yeah.

35:23 I mean, personalize it to your area. This is where, like, being location-based, like Orange County Health Tour or something like that, you know, that where I think is being good because it feels like it's local. My former professor in Pete's... Yeah. I, something, this is personal though. Scavenger hunts. I don't like them. I like challenges. Like I, you know what I mean? Like I'd rather go on a challenge than a hunt. Like, cause I know it's cheesy. And when you do it at like at conferences, like go get your badge stamped and everything. I don't get any, I'm like, I'm out. I'm not playing your silly game. But if it was like, go when I was at, when I was at conference with blaze pods and they had a dry erase board and we were doing the same, everybody was doing the same blaze pods challenge.

36:05 And I wanted to see if I could beat the score. I did that. Like, cause that was a, I feel like I had effort versus just show up and get your badge stamped. I'm like, no, I don't like that. That's corny. But I get the reason why, but that's what I mean about being a little lazy. Well, it's a scavenger hunt. Just come stop in our office and get your badge stamp. No, you got to give me a reason to get there. And getting my badge stamped helps you, not me. So, but yeah, if I want to try out your new Norma tech boots, or I want to try out your new blaze pod, you're, you know, Oh, you're a baseball player. Oh, look, it's may check out your reaction time. We've got the, we've got our blaze pod wall. Come and see where you stack up against everybody in orange County. Like that is different. I might, I might just be like, I'll try that. I want to see where, where do I, where do I stack up?

36:46 I'll give you one more twist. I was a kid swim coach in PT school because one of my professors was like tied to the swim team. They were called the Holy Mackerels. Talk about a team that understood the assignment. Everyone's gonna be the sharks or the whales or the whatever, barracudas. They were the Holy Mackerels, best swag in Northern Virginia swimming. To do a fundraiser, she would do probably a two-hour window, amazing race challenge. So now it's not a scavenger hunt. She would sit at the final destination, which was the pool, right? And then all the teams, she'd have all their phone numbers ready to go, and she'd text the clues out to them.

37:33 Now, to make sure that they got and did the clue, they had to take a picture of them at the location. The answer was a location, a historical location somewhere around the area. So they would submit their answer. They would drive to that location and do it. There were challenges along the way, like video yourself shooting three free throws in a row and we'll take off five minutes of your time. And then ultimately, whoever could achieve getting back, you gamify it. I know it's hard. But getting people to pay attention and spend time, the low-hanging fruit's been done, right? The easy stuff's been done. Hanging a sign outside your facility is done. CJ agrees with me. Incentivize. Leaderboards, incentives. It's about recognition.

38:13 Yeah, it's about recognition. Dude, we're big, dumb animals. We like to see where we are. As kids, watch kids run a hundred yards and look at each other. Based off of what CJ just said, and you were just saying a minute or two ago about you like to do the challenge instead of the badge scanning. I agree on the same way. What percentage of the population is that way? You and I, I'm very competitive. You're, I think you're somewhat competitive in terms of you, you want to challenge, you wanted to do the blaze pod thing, but not do the passive like I'm gonna go around scan my badge plus you scan the you scan my badge and it gives you my probably my contact information then you're gonna like send me emails later so yeah it's a participation trophy I just showed up whatever what percentage of the popular and maybe a therapy practice doing this approach that's who they're looking for they're looking for active individuals not passive that's patients and clients Listen, if you aren't here to do the Sixty Second Squat Challenge, you're going to hate PT.

39:08 And I'm not going to spend my time on you. I'm not going to spend my time convincing you to like the thing that I'm really good at. Look what Pizza Wars did. We're big weirdos. We're dressing up like Wookiees and eating pizza. And that filters out ninety nine point nine percent of the population, except in a place like Manhattan or Brooklyn. You can pull that off. because there's lots of people so one percent or point one percent is a lot of people so this is where if you make it for everyone you make it for no one like that's where I think a lot of like conferences strike out where they're like just come sketch scan your badge at these five locations and you might win a prize Oh, I, when I see everybody zigging, I zag.

39:49 I think a lot of people are like, I got, I get what you're doing. It's cool, but I'm not into it because it doesn't feel like it's real. It's fake. But if you make it a real challenge, I like, I like that angle. And if the, if the things are good, I don't know, man, I'm thinking massage places too. They want to get it, get in on the action, right? They've got something. I don't like, does it need to be completely related to, to the place like the massage challenge like how relaxed can you get in like no but it could be it could be something you know what I mean like yeah I don't know it just it's it's getting it's finding the ideal client or customer in your neighborhood to come step foot into your place that's the whole point then after that it's up to you correct but you have to meet that threshold You have to meet a minimum threshold of like, is that worth me walking or driving there and spending twenty minutes and a little bit of like, you know, I know like I'm pretty outgoing, but I'm like, I'm going to walk in there like, hi, I'm here for the health tour.

40:49 I don't really know what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to walk in like make sure it's like this is where like investing is. Because if you... Okay, now let's go objectively. If you know, and you should know some of these numbers, although these numbers might be new, for every hundred people that walk in cold, how many do you get to a completed plan of care? If that's your thing. If a hundred people walk in your massage spa, A hundred walk in, how many do you get, do you walk out with a package? Like, I don't know, are you tracking that number? Because if you can, you're like, we're good at conversions. And if you are, then you need a thousand people to walk in your door. So this is the way, let's give people a reason. Existing and having a clinic and having a physical space is not reason enough to get me to walk in and check you out.

41:36 I'm very sorry. I know it feels like a lot of effort on your part, but it's not. Yeah. uh love it any either continuation or new topic for the next fourteen fifteen minutes what do you got anything else um the only thing I would say is I was asking you a question as a practice owner and this is like completely self-serving because it has to do with my job but I mean it's I'm honestly curious so if you're a practice owner Number one, I asked a question on LinkedIn, how often are you doing a financial assessment? And most people, what do you think the results would be? I was like, never, rarely, sometimes, often.

42:16 Well, are people, are therapy practice owners actually gonna answer that question honestly when they do a LinkedIn poll or not? It's the internet. What they might say is annually when they speak to their accountant, but the real answer is gonna be never. A lot of people were putting sometimes. That was the most, so it was like never. No. Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. Rarely, it was rarely. A lot of people were, so it was never, rarely, sometimes, often. A lot of people put rarely. And I was like, okay. So then that, that is absolutely a safe way of being like, I'm not saying I do it all the time. Like how often do you work out every single day? It's like sometimes rarely. Yeah. Yeah. Three times a week. Rarely.

42:57 Then my question was if someone offered for free, cause we offer this for free to Thelus, should we not be offering it for free? Should it be two hundred and fifty bucks? So it feels like it's something we offer access to. to a financial analyst who will review your last two years of finances. And they're a specific financial analyst in this area. Like they look at practices of all types. And we have a bunch of data that we can benchmark you against people that are like you. similar setting similar size similar revenue and then you can see where you stack up we had one practice who was at I don't want to say it's too many statistics because jimmy's bad at keeping secrets but they were they were they were well below average on two different categories and they were and but here and the thing was it's like we can tell you you're below average we don't know where unless we dive in a little deeper we don't know where the leak is coming from But that's important information to know.

43:51 And the final thing I'll say is, usually if people are at least open to doing a financial analysis, they know that they have a problem. They're just nervous about like, God, if I undo this can of worms, man, I'm gonna have to go all in. So my question would be, is this financial look-see here, is that valuable to someone if it was done well for free? I mean, there is effort. You gotta give them access and yada, yada, yada, but- yeah but I mean ultimately you guys are using this for lead generation to get potential candidates to sign up for othellas so correct it's a lot it's a loss leader and then you're going to convert however many to switch to othellas so you guys can map that out and you probably should because you want to have a wide open net at the top so you want to probably offer that for free or you charge something just to improve show up rates like when you when they book the actual assessment or maybe they have to like speak to someone to qualify for the assessment there's a couple like you know potential checkpoints there either way to like qualify to make sure are they legit are they serious and are you actually going to show up Because with some of this, there's like AEs, like account executive, and there's like, what is it?

45:07 The business development person that can close the account or whatever. SDR. So sales development rep. So it depends on like that flow of like from whatever you want to call this, like demo or assessment to... financial health assessment. And then they got to fully switch. Like, yeah, that's why there's like multiple touch points. So I would say you probably want to have it free on the front end. My question to you is what would you need to see or what words or image might you see as you're scrolling by? Or if you're at a conference and you never met me, but I was like, yeah, we do this for practices where we just bust. This is, this is, this is bar rescue.

45:48 Like the line in bar rescue is this bar is agreed to it. open their doors and bust open their books. It's like, we need to see the insides if you want success. And this doesn't mean, I mean, on Bar Rescue, they're always like, we're six months away from closing because we're doing so poorly. It doesn't need to mean that. It's like, we want to expand, but we can't get past this plateau. Can't figure out why. Well, it's people, according to Marcus Limonis, it's people, product, process. This could just be a process problem. but it's uncomfortable because it's money. Let's look into this money. It's like, eh, it feels a little shady. Because as soon as you do it, you're like, oh, now look, warts and all, here I am. Most of the time people know that there's a problem. I'm speaking from experience.

46:28 And we're just like, I'll look at that later. But the longer you wait with a financial issue, the deeper the boat sinks. So I'm trying to figure that out. We have pretty good conversion rates most of the time because the right people show up. Like I even, I look at them, I look at them deep in their eyes, but on a Zoom screen. And I say like, you knew this was a problem, I'm guessing. And they're like, yeah. Like now we're getting to the emotion of it. Like, yeah, I did. I didn't know where to start. And I go, that's what we're here for. Like you say, hire a physical therapist. I know there's a problem with my hip. I just didn't know where to start. You're like, that's what I'm here for. That's what a financial analyst is like. You sat around. I know you were scared. The funny thing is it's usually, not all the time, usually not as bad as they originally thought.

47:14 And that's the case with most things too, right? The big scary monster under the bed is bigger and scarier because you let them live there long enough in the dark that in your mind, they got bigger and scarier. So I'll give you my reason as to why I started an outsourced, using an outsourced out-of-network insurance billing company that takes ten percent and charges two hundred fifty dollars per month for their custom in-house electronic medical record. That is actually like it's terrible. Like it looks like Craigslist, but. Yeah, it looks like Craigslist. You have to pay two hundred fifty bucks a month for it. They take ten percent of overall billing and collections.

47:55 Why would any physical therapist ever sign up for that? Here's why. Because some of the out of network insurance payers pay two fifty, three fifty, four fifty, four hundred fifty dollars per visit for a sixty minute visit where once the individual, the insurance beneficiary, the patient, once they hit their out of network deductible, whatever that might be. Sometimes it's five hundred bucks or a thousand bucks. Sometimes it's ten grand and they're never going to hit it. So it depends on the plans. Every single plan is different. But this insurance bill are only bills for physical therapy practices that do out of network insurances. So he does not do anything in network. He does not do Medicare. Obviously, he doesn't do Medicaid. He doesn't do like eleven ninety nine and any any of these others that are the in network plans on the heat bills at network plans only.

48:42 But once the individual hits their out-of-network deductible, their cost per visit sometimes, or oftentimes, can drop down to their in-network copay. So if Jimmy's got a thousand dollar deductible for out-of-network insurance, and he's got Cigna, and we say, Jimmy, it's gonna be two hundred dollars for the first five visits, and then on the sixth visit, it's gonna be your in-network copay. You look at your insurance card, if your in-network copay is thirty dollars, on the sixth visit, your cost per visit is just thirty dollars and the same thing thirty dollars onward for the rest of that calendar year so once they hit the out of network deductible then they can actually in terms of cost and accessibility your cost per visit is going to be the same as if you were going down the street to the mill that is treating three four five patients per hour at that busy office that you said you didn't like so that's why we switched I heard from friends and colleagues that were using this biller billing company telling me exactly that they're like this company this company mckenzie google patient you know patients that work at google and linkedin all these bigger companies it pays well pays two hundred something bucks per visit whatever and I heard all this and that's why I started using them like I I didn't I didn't switch now you're working with you're speaking with practice owners that are going to switch from web pt or some other you know emr to othellas potentially Those are the things that did it for me.

50:06 It was like, those are the, when I had friends and colleagues where I knew they're showing me like EOBs or they're, they're showing me like, here's exactly what some of these plans can pay. Right. Which is more than what some cash pay self-pay practice owners can charge in most major metros out of pocket, like truly out of pocket. Does that make sense? Like why, why that was so appealing? Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. Just to be clear, you don't have to switch EMRs with what we do. So we're just doing purely finances. And we have some people who just come for the financial help. Oh, my bad. My bad. I thought Athelas was an EMR as well. We have one. You don't have to use it.

50:46 It's like Apple. You have an iPhone. It doesn't mean you have to have a MacBook. You can. You don't have to. So then if I sign up for Athelas or someone else signed up for it, you just take a percentage of the savings or what? a percentage of what you get back from insurance. So skin in the game. Yeah. So if I'm not getting back let's say I'm not getting back, let's say I'm using WebPT, but I'm not, let's say I'm using WebPT just to knock on them briefly. And Othellus plugs in, we do the financial assessment, and then let's say potentially you guys say, oh, well, you know, based off of everything you're doing, if you don't change anything else, if you don't change your coding, your billing, your documentation, whatever, whatever, you're missing out on, you know, you're missing out on, you know, you're missing out on, you know, you're missing out on, you're missing out on, you're missing out on, you're missing out on, you're missing out on, you're missing out on, you're missing out on, you're missing out on, you're missing out on, you're missing out on, you're missing out on, you're missing out on, you're missing out on, you're missing out on, you're missing out on, you're No, we take a – just like most billing organizations, we take a percentage of everything billed from the relationship forward.

51:43 So you pay – But you're going to now be my biller as well though. Correct. Correct. Because if I'm doing WebPT and TheraBill because they bought TheraBill. So if I'm using TheraBill, I no longer use TheraBill. I have to use Athelas for my billing and my revenue cycle management. Cameron, right, correct. So you can use any EMR you want. I shouldn't say any EMR you want for May the fourth. Beware of absolutes. Is Cameron on your team? He's a fellow? Cameron is one of the newest members on our team. Cameron's, I'm going to get him on the podcast. This guy, it comes from a different part of health care. Dude's wild. But he's saying what platform you grow into versus out of, which is we see some people who are like, listen, we could save you this based on our analysis, right?

52:27 We're not trying to, you know, we can only make suggestions, not decisions. But the idea is there are some people who are like, listen, we're only gonna be able to save you three percent or a little bit, we can give a number. but it's the ease and the simplicity to get there. So that's sort of what we, you know, I'm using air quotes on a podcast, what we sell, which is we might be right there with what another RCM platform is doing, but it's less work and time on your team's part. which is a hidden cost savings. I mean, I talked to so many office managers and like once the owner isn't on the call or just away from it, they're like, I'm so frustrated with this thing. This thing is such a pain.

53:08 And a lot of times it's the office manager who's actually driving the bus on this. Cause they are the ones that have to interact with it. And they're like, this thing sucks. It takes up so much of my time. Smart owners understand that their office managers sucking up too much time, getting one thing paid. Hey, we got, we got that a hundred dollars. Oh great. It took me six hours. Oh, this is why insurance companies do this. Cause they know people aren't dumb. They're big, they're big, dumb animals, but they're not stupid with their own time and effort. So it's like, even if we didn't save you any money, right? Even if it was the same, it's the simplicity. And that's what you try to sell with. That's why I always have my B to C value pyramid, right? You sell simplicity or reduces effort or avoids hassles.

53:49 It doesn't always have to reduce cost. Sometimes it does. But if you can get to that deeper thing, so that's why I brought this up. This wasn't to do just a pitch. It was what do owners need to see not to get them to switch to a Thales? That's that's getting married. That's too far down the line. It's a big commitment just to go on that first date and like, listen, let us plug into your EMR. Let us do the health assessment. We'll do it for free. If you like what you see, we'll go on the second date. If you don't, hey, shake hands. We're going to go date someone else. Keep using dating analogies. So that's my question is like, I want to know what practice owners actually care about and what words to use. I want to use their words. So that's sort of what I'm thinking about.

54:32 Before parting shots, I think it's a travesty that Jimmy McKay does not get paid per word when he mentions Othellus. So the CEO of Othellus, every time, I mean, Jimmy's got a huge following, an immense amount of trust for ten plus years of doing this. Plus, this goes out to PT Pinecats. Plus, this goes out to Learn Medicare Billing. He deserves a dollar amount per time he mentions Othellus in a positive light. And obviously, it's always mentioned in a positive light. Listen, I appreciate that. I want to get someone from Othellos on the show like These people have varied backgrounds. I was actually, this is one of our board members. This was not me plan saying this, but this guy Hamant just wrote this book on scale. You, you and Tony, if we ever did book club, which I don't think we're, I don't know.

55:15 I'm a little bit of a reader, but he, this guy's on our board. He were, I mean, and this, the cool part was this is how AI and the new generation of upstarts are creating the economy of the future. This was written a few years ago, but because I learned about Hamant when I started with Athelas, I went and read it. So it's from a few, few years ago. Cool part is, It's like I'm opening up envelopes that he sealed a few years ago and like sixty eight percent of what he said was going to happen did. That's where you're like, OK, this guy knows what's going on. Yeah. So maybe I'll get paid by the word. Daniel, there we go. I would love it. He knows I talk a lot. As a capitalist, I want to see it happen. All right, let's do parting shots. We'll go, we'll go, yeah, we'll go parting shot.

55:58 Um, the going, just going back to the pizza wars, just that's the way my brain thinks is like, how, like, how could we do a new promotion? How could we do something, you know, new marketing, new, new approach to getting in front of more patients and clients and consumers and nearby residents. Uh, that's the way I'm always thinking, like, I'm always interested in like how other businesses are advertising and Why do they wrap their vans and trucks in a certain color? Does that work or does it not work? How many times you walk by a business and there's a QR code and I'm thinking of how many times was that QR code scanned?

56:38 That's the way my brain thinks. Uh, so hopefully this was just me throwing this out. You barely had any heads up about this, the, the pizza wars. I wanted to make sure it was right before the show. I sent the screenshot, uh, for a marketing idea and you, uh, you took it and ran with it. So I think it was a good one for the audience and hopefully they got some value out of it. Yeah, that's why we could have called this whole episode Steal This Strategy, right? And that's what I want my segment to be because that's what I'm doing. That's what you should be doing. And it doesn't need to just be marketing. It's like, why is this workflow? Why is McDonald's so efficient? Well, they understand their workflow. Huh. What could I steal from that or learn? Learning is another word for stealing, knowledge.

57:18 And take this and run with it in my own business. Now, here's the hard part too, is this is where Tony might chime in and say, if you're treating, and you're a business owner, you're doing neither of those things a hundred percent of the time. And that's when things get hard. But smart people would understand to delegate. And I forget who is just doing this. I think it was Will Humphries. He said, don't just delegate tasks. Delegate authority to make those decisions. Quick example, Zappos is the Amazon of shoes online. The CEO of Zappos years ago realized that all of his employees were coming to him because the procedure was if someone needed a refund, he had to approve it.

58:02 And finally he was like, I'm approving all these things. Listen, I'm just going to give you the authority. It's less than a thousand dollars. Make people happy. Your goal is your, your, your duty is make people happy. If it's more than a thousand bucks, come to me or go to your manager. It's less, make them happy. And then explain to me, explain just here. I did this and here's why. And here's what happened. give them authority. So a business owner, I'm very sorry to have to tell you this. You have to, you are the authority on how you will communicate market and develop your business. No one's coming from you for you to help you unless you ask. And they're only showing up unless you give them something of value. We'll be back on Thursday. Tony will still be on a chaperone duty, but we'll get him a DMS and we'll think of some really good topics.

58:47 And if you have some, send them to us. What do you got Dave? We need more topics. We just need more topics between now and then. And we'll get them. We'll get them. We'll send them to each other and DM. We got it. All right. We'll see you on Thursday. Check out the Dave Kittle Show, Learn Medicare Billing, and PT Pinecast. May the sixth be with you. I don't know. That doesn't work.