The Real Reason Your Website Isn’t Bringing Patients

0:13 Welcome to another riveting episode in the series, the MBA for the DPT. Do you want to say thanks for our friends at Flagler Health using AI to engage patients, automate RTM and drive ninety nine percent clean claims. You actually get paid for the care you deliver. It's sort of why you did it. More adherence, fewer denials. fascial revenue. Most clinic owners think growth comes from referrals until referrals slow down. Today's guest helps health and wellness businesses solve a problem most don't realize they have until they have it. And that's being invisible online. She's taken her experience as a physical therapist and clinic owner and translated it into something most clinicians struggle to understand and but desperately need how patients actually find you in twenty twenty six and beyond.

1:06 She doesn't just talk about things like SEO. She builds the systems that turn websites into consistent lead generators instead of just digital brochures. And she's here to explain why more traffic isn't necessarily the answer. Better structure is. Please welcome Lex Lancaster to the show, to the class. Professor Lancaster is what we'll be calling you today. Wow, that's so official. What an intro. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here. So this isn't on the official script. We're going off script immediately because we've known each other before. I feel like what you do and what I do is similar, not the same, right? A lot of times it's a pain maybe a business owner doesn't know they have until they're neck deep in it.

1:51 Where do you start that conversation? Because most of the people listening are going to be business owners, not the people who are sort of like yourself or myself, which is building the solutions. So where do you start that conversation? Because they might be like, I sort of know I need her, but don't know where to start. So how do you start the conversation? Yeah, that's a really great question because I get folks at all stages of business. So for me, I will tell you that, you know, when I first started my business, it was a lot of, I would tell you, yes, of course you need a website. And at that point in time, I did not have the evidence that I now have for, of course, you need a website because it does this thing. And I have seen it do this thing multiple times for hundreds and hundreds, maybe even thousands of people at this point.

2:37 So for me, when I'm like, do you actually need to work with me? I will always tell people you can figure out anything you want to figure out anywhere, anytime. We all know there's YouTube University, right? And for me, it's I will say that I am the systems integrator. So oftentimes in my field of work, people specialize in one thing. They specialize in the email side. They specialize in the website. They specialize in the SEO. They specialize in the ads. The problem is that all of those things are working together all of the time. So if you are relying on word of mouth marketing, I'm going to tell you that's the gold standard. Keep going. I love it. Yes. And then the next step needs to be how else are we having revenue coming in and new patients coming in without having you go do a workshop every week?

3:22 So when we look at, you know, do you need me? I will say yes. I never will tell someone they absolutely need me. I actually push people off of calls to need me. It's more or less, are you ready to have someone have a second set of eyes, look at your processes, look at your systems, look at what's going on on your website, your ads, your SEO, and then just working with someone that can integrate all of the pieces rather than hiring one person for one piece. And then you need to hire another person for another piece. And to be blatantly honest with you, Jimmy, we've all seen it. In PT, we have clients, we have patients that just trust us. hey, you know what, Jimmy, you told me this thing and I have so much trust in you. Let's do it. When it comes to this field, I will tell you that there are so many things that are really hard to trust.

4:09 And clients will come to me and just be like, I just don't know who to trust. I don't know what to do because this is stuff I don't understand. And sometimes they've been, I use the word bamboozled, thanks to Heather McMahon, the comedian in the past. And they just don't know what to do. And for me, I really pride myself on giving people every single option so that they can then make a decision. Good decision. Yeah. I've said this to people before. You don't need to be the world's expert on how to solve a problem. I think you need to be competent to do it. And you need to be the person someone knows. Yeah. This is why when I turn to my buddy who's lived in my hometown for a million years and I say, hey man, this type of lawyer, who do you got?

4:52 And he's like, one of these two, that's it, right? But now that's word of mouth. You would say that's word of mouth. He's earned it. You can facilitate word of mouth several, many different ways. And this is where we bring you in. Now we get to tactics. First of all, I like to just take the obvious and I'm using air quotes. and make sure it's stunningly obvious. So for the clinic owners who are like, okay, I'm wading into this little river here, who hears SEO and immediately is like, yeah, I know what that, I got, I understand that. Let's go basic to the basic. What is SEO really?

5:33 Yeah. So SEO, search engine optimization, it basically means getting found on Google from, by your ideal client when they search for the service that you provide or the problem that you solve. Folks often forget that part. And that is important because more traffic does not mean more customers unless they are your actual ideal client. But I want more. But here's the problem, right? Because more might cost me more. So if it's more of the wrong person who's never going to use me, it does not care. That feels like wasted effort, time, and money. So SEO at the heart of it, how I market it and how it exists in the world, it's free.

6:16 So this is essentially free traffic. So if we compare it to something like Google ads, you're not spending money to get these leads. However, let's just think about the person who comes in your clinic. who's not your ideal client it costs a lot exactly like you just said energetically to work with someone that you don't want to work with so just getting in front of everybody doesn't matter we don't want to just get in front of everybody we want to get in front of the person that you like to help so if you're the acl specialist we're going to get you in front of folks who have you know they want that acl prevention side they want to return to sport after acl surgery right and Correct. You've said you've talked people out of working with you before.

6:57 I wind up talking more people out of working with me because I'd rather get to the know as quick as possible. Because if I convince someone, if I talk them into it, but I know from the start it's probably not a good fit, they're not going to follow through, whatever the issue is, I'd rather have that person walking around, word of mouth, saying, No, he knew his stuff. She knew her stuff. And I just wasn't a good fit. But you might be, so you should go talk to him. Or I can go deeper. No, it's not going to work. It doesn't work. And I've burned that bridge. I don't know. I also just feel morally bad about it if you know it's not a good fit. I think we can talk about this clinically or business-wise.

7:41 Clinically, we say refer out. That's the thing we're taught. I think business should be the same way. If you don't think you're a great fit and you know someone who would be a better fit... I don't know. My internal moral obligation says refer out. Absolutely. It's like someone who comes to me. I only work on the Squarespace website platform. I am proficient. I'm fast. And that is where I work. And if someone comes to me from a WordPress website, I am very happy to provide consulting. I will give you the SEO. I will consult with you. However, the implementation side... refer out. So I have some people who are like, hey, Lex, I trust your wisdom. I want to know what you have to say about my website, but I'm on WordPress. What can we do? For me, I will do the consulting side. And then if they need a referral for a WordPress folk who can implement said recommendations for me, I can refer to them.

8:29 It's an energetic exchange all the time. And for me to take on some type of work that is not what I'm proficient in, one, I don't feel good about charging you money. when I'm not proficient and fast at that thing. And it doesn't give me joy to do that either. So yes, we're referring out as much as possible whenever needed. All right. So how does SEO actually work? Now that we understand what it is, what it isn't, how does it actually work in a way also that leads to the right patients walking through the right door at the right time? Yeah. So this is where we talk about the integration side, right? So regardless, at any point in time, your website needs to be what I say, working for you.

9:13 If your website is speaking to someone who's not your ideal client, I don't care how much effort you put into SEO, you're going to bring people to your website and then they're likely not going to become patients or you're going to get patients that are not actually who you want to work with. so for seo we are bringing in traffic folks who are googling anything i'm talking about problems or solutions so folks are saying knee pain with running or they're searching for physical therapy those are two different people don't forget one person knows that they need physical therapy and they're ready to buy the other person is saying hey you know i have this problem google i am looking to solve it what is the solution and then obviously we're looking to pitch that solution with content that we're creating on our website But SEO goes back to our website structure and our website messaging, right?

9:58 Who are we talking to? What are we good at? What are we not good at? Who are we for? Which then, let's go back even further, goes back to our ideal client, right? Who are we actually wanting to work with? What problems do they have? What problems do we actually want to solve? What questions do we actually want to answer? And then take one more step back, right? That goes back to our values, right? and who we are as a human. All of that stuff leads to folks finding you on Google. Because when someone searches something on Google, the whole point of SEO is for you to come up. period. And folks will say like, you have to be number one. You have to be number one. I actually disagree. I'm a very competitive person.

10:39 I'm a very, very competitive person. I want people to be number one, but there is a lot of evidence to suggest that even if you are number two or number three, people will open up three different websites at one time and they will look at all of your websites and compare them and say, who is the best fit for me? And That's where I'm, I go back again, your website needs to do that work for you. And for physical therapists, you know, there's a common practice where PTs will say, especially in the cash-based realm, it's like, call us to book. Thing is, or let's boil it back down, people want to solve their problem when they're on your website. They want to check the box, right?

11:19 They want to do something that's solving their problem when they get there. So if it's very difficult to solve their problem when they get to your website, again, back to that website structure, your website has to be working for you. They're likely not going to convert, if you will say, because we want to talk about conversions. They're likely not going to convert because it's just difficult. Or let's just say you're not the person for them. And I think that's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing to get more traffic to your website. Be position one, two, three. Yes, one is the best. I won't disagree with that. But if you're two and three, you will still get people with you. Yes, because people will open up different websites. There are three pelvic health providers who are always going to show up in the same search. They're going to choose the one that speaks to them.

12:01 And that's your opportunity. Your website is your opportunity to be the person for who's searching. They always say the guy. If I want to have a podcast introduction, if I want someone to host my podcast, if I'm not going to do it myself, I'm going to ask Jimmy. Jimmy's the guy. You need to be the guy, if you will, proverbially, for the person that you want to work with. You've said that having a website and a Google business profile is like the floor, but it's not enough. I mean, you have to have it. You haven't filled that out. You skipped name, address on the college application, right? Yes, yes. So where do clinics, after they, of course, now listen to this, they have a website, they've filled out the business Google profile, where are clinics going wrong next?

12:47 What are the next simple steps that they are skipping over and just simply not doing? Jimmy, that's a loaded question and I love it. It's one of my favorite questions to ask or answer, I should say, answer. I love when people ask it. There are two things that I see folks, I don't want to say miss, but there's unaware, right? The first thing is a website structure. I think that when you open up your practice, guilty as charged, guilty as charged, you open up your practice, you say, my website needs to have a homepage, about page, a service page, a contact page. Love that for you. That's where we're going to start. The problem is that that does not give Google enough information to understand your business. So we actually I will speak of Google like the nervous system.

13:29 It's always living in the dark. The brain is always living in the dark. And the only information that Google knows is the information that you feed it. So, again, just like the brain and the nervous system, we have to give it information in order for it to understand and then have an output. so when it comes to our website we have to give it more information so if we think about just having a generic service pages service page that's not enough to give google an idea of what we actually do right what do you do you do physical therapy do you do pelvic health physical therapy are you a concussion specialist what do you offer right so the first part is structure if you have a basic website home about services contact the next step is going to be to develop specific service pages what services do you actually offer One page per service.

14:13 Is that your suggestion? Yeah. One page per service. Yes, exactly. So it's like, you know, we have physical therapy. Maybe we have concussion management. If we're a pelvic health provider, it's pelvic health, physical therapy, postpartum PT, pregnancy, physical therapy like that, because that is how Google is going to understand your business. Now, another step is going to be content. And we say content. Yes, of course, your website pages are content. However, the next piece is going to be the blog. We need to start blogging because people will say blogging is dead. Don't blog. No one's reading blogs. That is absolutely not true. We have to blog because one, Google is definitely going to take that into account. If you're going to be an expert and you want to say that you're an expert at treating a specific thing, then when I go to your website, prove that to me.

14:57 Show me, don't tell me. Exactly. And when Google looks at your website, show me, don't tell me is exactly what Google says. I always use the phrase of, if you talk about everything, you're going to be an expert in nothing. And that goes for Google and your ideal client. So let's just say, picture we have a blog and a blog page. If our blog mentions we have concussion blogs and we have a hundred concussion blogs, okay, we add a new service or we decide we're going to talk one day about pediatric pelvic floor physical therapy. Google's going to say, who the heck are you to talk about that? You've been talking about concussion for the last three years.

15:38 Right. So I'm not saying that you can't add a new service or you can't talk about multiple things. But when you think about Google, you have to think about it like the brain and the nervous system. The only information it knows is the information that you give it. So understand that you are starting at ground zero always when you're talking about a new topic. So if you're the ACL specialist, talk about ACLs, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. And these platforms outside of Google or social platforms, they are constantly trying to figure out who to set you up with to have a good first date. Like that's sort of their jobs. When people rage against the algorithm, it's sort of showing you, well, you're not, you don't understand why it exists.

16:18 It's not to prevent, it's not to cause you to lose. In fact, if your content is going to keep someone on that platform or be a good result, a search result for them, they want to bring you to the top. So you can get frustrated at the algorithm and say, I'm just not playing the game well. But understanding what game you're playing and being as clear, how many different ways can you show Google with words, with pictures, with videos, with profiles? What are the different things that you can do to be the answer and not have to game the system? yes exactly it's all about expertise so you know in in google it's expertise authority and trust right and that expertise part is going to be bringing in like i'm a physical therapist and i'm talking about things that physical therapists know about so at the end of the day we have to demonstrate that we have the expertise that we're saying that we have and i I'm sure you can speak to this as well, Jimmy.

17:14 It's like when I go to a new provider's website, regardless of what I'm searching for, I will always look to see what are they talking about on their website. If I'm going to someone for, I'll just say, you know, any sort of pelvic concern, pelvic pain, let's just say, but they don't talk anything about pelvic pain on their website. The first question in my mind, there's a cognitive dissonance there. I'm going to say, do they actually know how to treat me? Do they actually know how to help me? and that to me right we need to make sure we're gaining trust when folks come to our website and i also want to say that the opposite is actually the same right if i don't want to treat pelvic pain this was something that a couple i remember a woman on a call was like oh my god i don't have to talk about it if i don't want to treat it if you don't want to treat pelvic pain then don't talk about it period You don't have to talk about everything.

18:06 As a PT, you come out of school and you're like, well, I must treat every single joint. I must do everything. You don't have to do everything. You don't have to be a generalist. Well, you can ask someone, what's a schedule that when you walk in and crack open the laptop in the morning, if you had a tail, who would it be wagging for? Yes. Okay, you might not be treating a hundred percent of that now, but in six months, what are we doing to move towards that? The answer is everything we're talking about. Yeah. And that's exactly what I say in all of my courses and anything I ever present. I always go to my ideal client exercise and I say, when you're filling this out, I need you to think about the patient.

18:47 Five PM on a Friday night, you could be doing anything else in the world, but you're treating this person and you love it. Having the time of your life. Who is that person? Figure that out and work backwards. Yes, you have to. We have to. We have to, right? Think from their perspective. So you and I probably spend an inordinate amount of time on websites or on social platforms. So we look at things differently, probably. We're more like the matrix. We can look at the ones and zeros and we're like, got it. I'm seeing what you're doing and we can see through it. I see what people are trying to do on social posts or videos.

19:27 And when you start with I, I, I... i hear nails on chalkboard and i'm saying talk about them them them right probably similar to you with website which is this is a brag page or this is a this is a place for you to you know hang all your degrees or show off all your letters but a person reading that that might be your ideal anything customer client patient anybody does not is not going to spend the time burning calories to decipher that so i know it feels good to share that if you need to put it on your website do it bury it somewhere please in the corner right that's a for you thing so let's go to tactical i got a buddy who's a mechanic when i say my car is not right he checks the same three to five things he just he's like it's it's usually one of these three to five and if it's past that it's a zebra not a horse what are the first three five things that you're looking at?

20:22 Where do your eyes go? I want to know where do your eyes dart on a website? Yeah. So I will say it's different per pages. So I'm going to give you a couple different options here. So when I look at the homepage, I need to make sure that you are saying who you help, what you actually do, how you do it, and where you do it. And the where part is really important. I don't want people to come to your website and be like, well, is this person in Chicago or is this person in Florida? It's very tough to go to a website and then not know where someone is. So those are the immediate things that I look at, Jimmy. That is point yes. The other thing that I look at is, do you actually speak to the person who you want to work with?

21:04 And in that regard, I'm like, what actually matters to them? You just said it, them, them, them. I know that evidence-based care, it's very important. I get it. I know. But if you lead with, we provide evidence-based care. Mm-hmm. They just want their knee to feel better. They don't care how you do it. That's how we talk about it as providers. That's like saying a restaurant is like all of our food is okay by the FDA. Are there things that aren't? Those are table stakes and we should never mention those things. At least not in the first five hundred words.

21:45 No, absolutely not. And not on the homepage. The homepage is very much so your most visited page. And then typically it's the about page. And so if we're looking at the homepage, we need to have those specific things on there. And then laying out the difference that you can make for this person, because don't forget, position one, two, three, they're opening up three websites. At the same time, they're comparing you and your competition. You need to lead from a place of your values so that you attract people that also possess likely similar values, right? And how are you going to do that? It's yes, through your website copy, but you're going to talk about the things that you value in a way that that person's going to understand so that they then choose you or they don't choose you, right?

22:34 Equally important. So the first thing is that homepage and does it actually speak to the person? The next thing I look at is the website structure that I've mentioned. Home about services contact is not enough ever. We need to have home about services. Yes, have an all services page that I can click on and just see what do you actually offer on one page, but then have separate pages for each service that you offer. That is important for Google, but also it's important for your clients. Yeah. The messaging that you have on a pelvic health page is going to be different than an orthopedic page, right? That should make sense to everyone out there, right? And then honestly, I will say at this point in time, backstory, I know with data, when I first started doing SEO, I was like, I'm going to prove that you can rank on Google without having a blog.

23:23 I proved it. I did it. You didn't need a block. I proved that. However, I will tell you that I am the most bang for your buck type of person. And I want you to do what I call the maximized effort approach, but also in the time that you have. Because I approach all of my content, my teaching, as if you're not working with a marketing team. It's you. It's you, the clinic owner. Maybe you have an admin, whatever. We don't have a bazillion hours to do this stuff. So I will tell you the last thing I look at is do you have a blog and are you writing content? Are you writing content consistently? Are you updating Google? Don't forget, Google likes to be updated. So if Google's living in the dark, you have to kind of, I don't want to use the word poke.

24:06 I don't love that word, but we have to poke Google and say, hey, still here. Hey, still here. Still writing content, still solving problems, still helping people that I want to help. And by doing, by writing blog posts, you are doing that. So the last thing is, are you creating content? And if you're not, that is one of the lowest hanging fruits to get started. It takes effort and I might be afraid when I turn that camera on or open that phone. It's fear. We talk about this often. It's not the, what camera should I have or what microphone? Those are nice. Those are nice. I get on calls with people and they're like, hey, website, social, whatever, attention. I tell people I work in your attention department and I go, wrong question.

24:49 When I help people launch podcasts or YouTube channels, I say, whatever equipment you have right now, it just needs to be above a floor. Like the microphone you're using, I'm using probably a little overkill, but we do this a lot. You can get away with a forty five dollar microphone if it's OK. And the laptop camera. I say buy nothing until you prove to yourself, not me, that you're going to do ten of these or twenty of these. And then if you're like, well, now I want to get ten percent better mics, a mic or a camera might make you five to seven to ten percent better. You showing up, turning it on, recording it, and then also sharing it. That's going to get you to nine. That's the ninety percent of the of the effort.

25:31 And honestly, Jimmy, what I see as being a difficult thing in SEO is that it's a time game. So when you do the work, you do not get immediate ROI. That's not how it works. So let's just say I write a blog post today. I'm not going to have a new patient coming in my door tomorrow saying, hey, I read your blog post. That's not how that works. So the tough part with SEO is that you genuinely have to embrace the process. But I will also tell and look at every PT in the eyes and just be like, don't you say the same thing to your clients? You have to embrace the process that it's going to take time. And once you embrace that, I will tell you the...

26:13 The amount of people who email me, post in my course groups, send me a DM on Instagram when they see on their referral sheet that how that person found them was through a Google search or chat GPT because it is the same. That right there, the excitement that they have because the plan that they worked for six to twelve months is now here and working is It worked. Yes. It's the best. It's the best. I say it's type two fun. Type two fun? Is that what you said? Yeah, it's type two fun. Because it's a longer play? Yeah, it's type two fun.

26:54 It's more like timing something with a sundial. What is... What is a good timeframe? Is it six months? Is it a year? Like what is, you know, what is like tissue healing, right? You break a bone in your, your fifties. Hey man, just FYI, this is the, this is the scale. So what is a realistic expectation? If you are doing the things that someone like you tells them to do, what, what should they expect? I will always tell people six to eighteen months. I understand that's also a huge ballpark, but it comes down to where is your clinic located? If you are located in a small town, you're going to have way faster success than someone in midtown in New York City.

27:37 That is just how it works. So we say six to eighteen months because regardless of what you do, we also have a lot of other things at play. You also need to think about the fact that if you're in a big city or even a small town, If someone else has been putting in the effort before you started, you have an uphill climb. I'll tell you that you have an uphill climb. So at that rate, we're thinking, okay, so we're in a large city. There's other people who likely may even have a marketing team. They may be competing with a hospital based system. It's going to take time. We can't expect that to be fast. So six to eighteen months is a really safe window. I will tell you, most folks who are in a medium sized area will see success with an ROI, if you will, within six months, especially if you're a local business.

28:26 I know that we're talking to mostly PTs, but if any physical therapist had like an online business that that is watching this, I would say you need to really, you know, buckle up because it's going to be way longer than eighteen months to be an online business ranking. Like we started this conversation off with, this is a lot of times people don't know that this was a problem until they get to you and then they want it solved tomorrow. And you're like, if I could, I would. Best time to plant a tree, twenty years ago. If you want shade, second best time is right now. So in eighteen months you could be sitting in the shade or sort of reaping the benefits of actually planting those seeds.

29:09 you push organic before ads. Yeah. I'm sort of, I'm sort of with you as well, but I'll remain, I'll remain biased and shocked. Why is that the smarter move for most clinics? And, and cause I want to make sure we get explained the, how do you just, how do you describe the difference between organic and ads? Yeah. So organic traffic is SEO. And SEO... And we'll also throw word of mouth, direct traffic. Someone's typing in your website in the search bar. That's direct traffic. So if we're looking at organic search versus paid search, we're either paying money or we're not. So for organic search, we're not paying money to show up in a Google search. For paid ads, Google ads, or we can throw in meta ads there, you're paying money in order to show up in search.

29:53 So That is terrifying to me, to have someone just paying money to show up and search. One, because we need to think about our own behavior. As a client or as a potential client, do you just scroll past the ads? Because I know that there are a lot of folks on Google searches that just scroll right past the ads. We're sort of conditioned. Yes, exactly. Scroll right. You paid to be there. Like, can I trust you or can I not trust you? So that's like one thing that we have to think about. Now, when it comes to Google ads, meta ads, the more tailored you get, the more expensive it is. So we have to think about how specific are we getting in our ads and how much money are we going to spend if we take away any sort of leads that we're getting from ads?

30:39 And we just stopped paying. Suddenly, we're quiet in the clinic. That is terrifying. So that means you have to spend in order to get more. When it comes to SEO, I will not negate the fact that you have to spend money, quote unquote, in time. You have to put time in your schedule to do the tasks like write a blog post. But you're not forking out your bottom line. Your bottom line stays what it is when it comes to SEO. You're not adding more expense in an ad to get more clients. Rather, people are coming to you via a Google search for your specific service with a specific problem that you solve for free. So when I say organic before paid, the reason why is one, because it's free.

31:22 Why would we not maximize a free channel? Two, because when someone scrolls past the ad, a Cinderella story in my mind, you know, the champagne problem, I guess, is when you're showing up in the ad section, but you're also showing up organically. I love that. Most of my clients are doing that. They are showing up in the ads if they're running ads, and they're also showing up number one, two, three, mostly, you know, for organic search. So that's the best case scenario. Number three, and this is something that I don't think is talked about enough. And I can't tell you, I will say I am someone who is very much so an integrator and I'm not a silo. When it comes to messaging, I will tell you in shameless plug for Shante, messaging, if you don't maximize your organic search first, you don't know if your messaging is working.

32:12 It's a test. It's a free test. Exactly. Yes. Now, when we talk about ads, you're throwing money behind something that you don't know if it works. Imagine that. If you just sit back and think, I'm going to essentially throw money at this thing, but I don't know if it works. I don't really love risk. I'm not a huge risk taker, but I also don't see any sort of benefit in just tossing money into a fire. So when it comes to ads, I really do want people at the best case scenario for me is like, we know that your messaging is on point. We know that you have people coming to your website and either booking, filling out a form, whatever from Google, or we have tons of people, Jimmy, even coming in after they found you via word of mouth, because even word of mouth, you're probably going to go to that person's website.

33:02 They went to your website, right? And then they come in the clinic and they're like, oh my goodness, your website spoke to me. When you hear that a lot, that's when I'm like, okay, let's think about ads. But at the same time, I'm also still like, have we maximized that organic traffic though? I will always say SEO well before ads because we need all those things in place for your ads to be successful. More traffic to a website that does not convert is not going to help anyone. Yeah. All right. So after they book a call with you, right? Because that's what they're going to do. And before they get on that call, what would you suggest someone do that are already going to be the first three things that you're going to give them that they can be doing in between now and then?

33:48 So what are like the low hanging fruit? Yeah, the low hanging fruit is always going to be the ideal client exercise. I will tell everyone to start there. And I think people confuse that with what they may have received in the past. I have done many ideal client exercises and it's like, how much money do they make? Where do they live? That's not what it is. Yeah, it's a very different ideal client exercise. You're actually trying to figure out who exactly you want to treat. That is one thing. The other thing that I really like, folks, and this is part of the ideal client exercise, but I would say do it anyway. Figuring out why people or what you did for people, let's just use that as the phrase, what you actually did for people.

34:30 I find that folks in the physical therapy realm, they think they're providing a specific solution, but they don't actually know what the person got out of it in the person's words. So I oftentimes will look at testimonials. I'll have people ask their patients, hey, how did I help you? What did I do for you? Because I genuinely do not think folks know the difference that their service makes until they're explicitly given words for it. And unless you're asking for very specific feedback in a Google review, which you should do, by the way, Um, you're not going to get that from somebody because they'll just be like, Oh, like it helped me. But like, what did I help you actually do? Right. So do that type of, that type of thing.

35:11 The other thing that I will say that I tell folks to do, I need a habit. You mentioned it earlier. You were like, prove to yourself that you can build a habit. Yep. Yep. we have plenty of people i've spoken to lots of people as a pt myself i've experienced this folks come in the clinic and they say i googled it and this is what google said and then we sit there as a pt and we're like oh man like who gave you that response that is not what i would say oh i don't love it so i will tell people go become dr google Go answer all of the questions that you want to answer and create a blog post about it. The title of the blog is the question. The answer is the content. And then the content, if we're going to talk about content length, I will always tell people eight, eight hundred to a thousand words.

35:54 So go write the piece of content, answer the question that you wish that person had found when they Googled. Right. And that would be the three things that I would say are the lowest hanging fruit and the easiest to get started with. Professor Lancaster, where can people reach out and connect with you? What is your web address? I'm laughing because it just sounds so official, Jimmy. My website is www.lexlancaster.com. You can also reach out to me on social media at Lex Lancaster underscore. I am always there and it is me too. And I want to say that when you're communicating with me, it's just me in my business. It's not me and a bunch of other people. So unless Moose develops the ability to type with her thumbs, my dog Moose, it's always me.

36:40 So feel free to reach out. Parting shot. Any last words of wisdom you want to leave with the audience or the class as we dismiss? I believe you put this on the form and I was like, ooh, this is a toughie. I'm going to say that I want you to... I could spin it for you. Write the headline for this episode because that would be the parting shot, right? What do you think people would search to land on this episode? What are they? Because you want to find people who maybe they know they have a problem, but don't know how to search for you. That's a great question. Oh, God, Jimmy, there's so many.

37:20 But the biggest thing is, do I need to worry about SEO for my practice? Or how do I get found online? How do I get patients to know I exist? How do I stop running eighteen workshops and ditching time with my kids? You'll hear the strategies, right? Website blocking, social workshops. None of them are bad. No. It's just if you're only relying on one, I'd get nervous. Yes, Jimmy. Exactly. Diversify. Exactly. Diversify everything. And then what are the things I can be doing on a regular basis, right? People have asked me, how does your podcast still around? I do three episodes, four episodes a week for a decade.

38:01 Suddenly I've got good SEO because I take the transcript of every episode and it goes on my website. But it's the simple things. And I like talking to PTs about this because how does someone get stronger? How do they move better? Frequency, intensity, time, type, volume, progression. We know this. What's the cheat code? There is no cheat code in rehab. What's the cheat code to getting found? Come in for the good stuff. Yes, there is no cheat code, Jimmy. You want to buy the quick fix? I'll take your money. It just ain't going to work. That, exactly. No quick fixes. There's no quick fixes. And you really do have to put the time in. And it's an investment account. I always tell people that as well.

38:41 It's just like, I have an investment account. I wish I started that investment account when I was twenty. If I was a practice owner, I wish I would have started my SEO work, if you will, when I first opened the clinic. You don't realize how important it is until it's important. And you're like, ooh. And then my news on a call is, hey, guess what? You got to wait more months because it doesn't just happen tomorrow. It's not how it works. Good advice. Lex, appreciate you coming on. And thanks for dropping some knowledge here. The MBA for the DPT. Thank you so much, Jimmy, for having me. I appreciate you.