Good morning to you, Tony.
Tony in the car.
That's like Tony mobile breakfast club.
I just pulled into the clinic like a
minute before we went live and it's a
gloomy cloudy day.
I'm like,
I'm just going to talk from the car.
Just talk from the car.
Yeah.
I mean, it's gloomy season.
We're going to deal with this.
This is what the Northeast brings.
Everybody's like, but you got seasons.
And I'm like,
I'm good with the happy seasons,
but I guess we'll take the sad.
I will.
I will always take.
I love the freezing cold because it gets
me ready for spring.
I love the burning hot because it gets
me ready for fall.
Like I was just thinking about this last
night.
Humans need adversity.
We will find it or create it if
we don't have it.
I like hot.
I like three out of four seasons.
And it's not even like I don't like
winter.
It's like upstate New York, though.
It's humid and cold.
You do winter like in Colorado,
but it's like, oh, it is nice there.
Winter's great.
There's also sun.
So this is the stuff that makes you
appreciate the good stuff.
All right.
Well,
can I just like learn that and then
have good stuff forever?
No, we can't.
We can't do that.
We have to experience the adversity.
This this should be a marketing position
for physical therapy clinics.
We should be marketing to the person who
understands.
Life is amazing.
We're in the most blessed time ever to
be a human alive on the planet earth.
We need to embrace challenge and adversity
and either we control it by paying a
therapist to make us do difficult things
or we don't control it and we let
life happen.
And usually that's not a great outcome.
But who do we market to?
Everybody.
And we try to convince the people on
the side of the bell curve that are
just going to go, well,
can you just rub it?
Yeah.
You just shoot it with a light.
Can you just like do the strap the
thing on it?
And then I'll sit here and I'll read
the magazine.
We want everybody to get to the end
or to get into that improved place.
But we spend an inordinate amount of time
on those people, I guess.
Is that right?
That's probably right.
Yeah.
No, I agree.
We try to sell convenience and ease.
I just heard somebody say the other day,
you know, the falsehood of convenience.
It was a great podcast talking about how
detrimental convenience is.
Well, what's that line?
It's like hard times make hard men,
hard men make easy times,
easy times make easy soft men,
soft men make hard times.
And it's just like, it's a loop, right?
I mean, it's the same with me.
I mean, I know you're right.
It's like, I didn't do it on purpose.
I'm wearing the shirt, been there,
done that, bought the t-shirt.
This is the shirt where I did my
first Ironman.
I will wear this shirt to the rest
of my life.
And it says, like, swim,
two point four bike,
one hundred twelve run,
twenty six point to brag,
brag about it for the rest of your
life.
But the funny part is every time I
take the shirt out, I do think like,
oh,
I got to do something now.
Like I haven't done something.
Let's look,
what have I done in a while?
Nothing like, you know,
I showed the other day.
Oh wait, well,
Jimmy's been doing something.
He's doing something on his Peloton,
but it's not consistent because there's no
thing to shoot for.
Like I'm a big, dumb animal.
I need six months from now.
You're going to be on the starting line
and you're going to look like a pile
of crap.
Unless you do something now,
like what you do now.
Um,
And I knew that even before I started
paying attention, I bought...
Don't know why.
Bought myself...
Doing an Ironman was a thing for me.
None of my friends did anything like that.
Doing a marathon was a thing for me.
None of my friends did any marathons.
But I watched the New York City Marathon
for like...
Five hours every for some reason,
I'd be a little kid, you know,
with my feetsies pajamas and the New York
City Marathon would be on NBC for five
hours the first day in November.
And I was I remember thinking as a
kid, I never said it out loud,
but I was like, I that's a thing.
That's a hill.
I would like that's a thing.
I want to accomplish that.
And then I did that.
And then it was like, well,
what's beyond what's beyond?
I bought a legitimate,
I went to a website like Street Signs
USA, like where DPWs make street signs.
And I bought a street sign that said
finish line, like a yellow,
the yellow diamond street sign,
black lettering, finish line,
seventy point three miles.
And I hung it near my apartment door
because I knew I needed to be jabbed
with a stick.
Like,
you're not bringing your workout bed to
work day?
Huh.
An entire day of not doing something.
That's not going to become closer.
And I knew I needed that.
But yeah, I guess you're right.
Like we knew we do.
We're not going to climb any hill or
cross any finish line unless we're poked
with sticks.
Yeah.
And then figuring out how to make the
person want to be poked with sticks
different or finding the person who
already knows they want to be poked with
sticks.
Like that's where we can really make the
most significant change.
So would a physical therapy clinic,
would a different type of physical therapy
clinic, and I know that are out there,
your initial evaluation,
Could be me walking you around my clinic
because I got blaze pods on one wall
and I got this.
And then I'm just like,
which one of these things looks like it
would motivate you?
I can figure out how to make it.
I can figure out how to make blaze
pods a leg exercise.
I can figure out how to make it
a vestibular exercise.
I can figure out how to make it
an arm exercise.
That's the creativity of a therapy.
That's the magic.
The big dumb animal stuff is like,
which one of these things looks great?
And you're like,
cause I'm going to put you on the
stair master.
And you're like, I hate walking stairs.
Well then don't do that.
Don't just be like, well,
that's the best thing for you for the
evidence.
It's like,
but they're not going to do it.
Like, isn't that it?
Like, do we,
do we use the gimmicks for, for good?
Yes,
but I would say let's learn from what's
working already.
You know, I remember researching this.
I don't know.
I'm going to use fake numbers.
Thirty thousand people register for the
Boston Marathon.
Right.
Twenty nine thousand nine hundred and
ninety nine of them know that they are
going to lose.
They know that they're not going to win
the race, but it is a race.
And they're paying for hotels.
They're paying for flights.
They're paying for training.
They're paying for shoes.
They're paying for all this stuff.
They're investing thousands of dollars,
hours of effort, lots of frustration,
running the risk of injury,
knowing that there's a chance they could
get injured during the training,
like all of this stuff.
Yet you cannot keep them out of it.
They're battling for a spot to lose the
race.
It's the start line.
And you take something like that and
you're like, well,
why did somebody take them through and
like figure out how to motivate them to
get them to want to do it?
No,
it was they already knew what they wanted
to do.
And then they went out and found the
resources to do it.
We don't want I don't want to convince
you, Jimmy,
that this is the most important thing or
try to figure out how to motivate you.
I want you to find my content.
full circle, find my content with me,
make the connection and say,
that is the guy that's going to get
me to what I want.
That is the guy who's going to make
the roadmap or have the resources for me
to achieve my goals.
I mean,
that that's why kids are paying hundreds
of thousands of dollars for the PT degree.
That's why people pay to go lose a
race.
That's why, you know,
you look at Spartan race and all of
these other like challenges,
people
people will put themselves through misery
because they want it.
They're seeking it and they will pay
ridiculous amounts of money for it.
Yeah.
I was pretty sure I wasn't winning any
of the New York city marathons.
I was pretty sure there is a funny
story.
It's quick.
I promise.
The morning I ran my first one,
it was a, there was a family party,
not about the marathon, but there was my,
my cousin was with my grandmother who was
probably in her nineties at the time.
And she put the marathon on TV to
be like, grandma, Jimmy,
Jimmy's running in the marathon, whatever.
And,
Now grandma's interested.
She's like, what?
He's on TV?
There he is.
My cousin got a text message.
Jimmy finished.
So she turns to my grandmother who's in
her nineties from Scotland and said,
grandma, Jimmy finished the marathon.
And grandma said, first place.
And she's, and Kara was like,
going to let her down.
And she goes, no.
And she said, second place then.
Like the optimism of grandmothers.
I think about that all the time.
That wasn't the reason I was running.
I was running to have had done it.
Yeah.
And we're all different.
Like for me,
a weightlifting competition or a
bodybuilding thing, hard, difficult,
not my jam.
Um,
I'm looking more.
I want to do like more.
I think I'm going to get back into
tries,
but I want to try some off-road stuff
like some, you know,
maybe mountain bike stuff in the woods and
let's change the terrain.
Anyway,
that's not the reason of the episode
today,
but it could be because that's how live
streams work.
All right.
You gave me some graphics.
You want to walk me through which one
you want me to show first?
Put it up and let's see what you
got.
This is the first one.
All right.
We're looking at what?
The five-year stock price of U.S.
physical therapy.
Yeah.
So U.S.
Physical Therapy announced their,
I think it was quarterly report.
You know, they beat expectation.
But still, I mean, overall, two percent,
you know, like the stock sucks.
The price sucks.
The investment sucks.
This is a five year chart.
And so I would not want to be
the person that put money into this stock.
But hey, they're doing better than ATI,
right?
They're doing better than a lot of other
big physical therapy businesses.
But then you compare this, you told me,
PPS, right?
Uh, anytime fitness,
which ironically right across the street.
So my clinic is behind me across the
street as an anytime fitness and a Nova
care.
They're in the Plaza directly across the
street from me.
If so,
I went into chat GBD and said, Hey,
give me two or three of the publicly
traded fitness companies.
Like I think I said,
planet fitness and you have that.
Oh yeah.
Yep.
And so look, on the five years,
these guys are up.
They're doing well.
They're green.
They charge a fraction of what US physical
therapy charges to the consumer.
They're more profitable.
They have more growth.
They have more opportunity.
And so this takes me to Anytime Fitness,
which had a major financial struggle
during the pandemic.
I mean, they pretty much went bankrupt.
You know,
all of their branches were up for sale.
Like,
anybody could have come in and scooped
this stuff up for pennies on the dollar.
And I think like, all right,
if I took over in Anytime Fitness and
I was a fitness-based physical therapist,
I've got people coming and paying money.
I think their price was like thirty,
forty dollars a month to work out.
So I already made like this step in
the right direction.
People are coming to exercise.
I don't have to convince people to
exercise.
I don't have to talk them into it.
I don't have to bribe them with a
back rub.
to lift a little bit of weight.
And even yesterday in my clinic,
love her to death.
One of my longtime patients,
she was mid eighties freaking out because
I expected her to lift a ten pound
bar with two hands.
I was like,
you realize this is five pounds in each
hand.
Live independently.
You know,
you've got all of these great things going
for you.
You need to be strong.
So point being,
I love that anytime fitness was at PPS,
I think it's a great opportunity.
I think this is where we see the
worlds come together.
For someone who was there,
I'd love to see if, I mean,
what are the odds someone's watching right
now live who was there,
stopped by the booth and heard the pitch.
That would be great.
That would have been something great for
us to have done yesterday to get that.
But just from seeing the booth and I
can find the photo that I shared,
Was it Planet Fitness?
Anytime.
Anytime Fitness.
Anytime was sitting there saying,
come set up shop in our fitness.
This is a flip, right?
Normally,
you'd need to knock on the door and
have your business plan and pitch and hope
and pray and cross your fingers that
they'd let you.
Now they're opening the door.
So what are we getting wrong here?
What we normally get wrong,
we're over-sciencing this and we're
charging too much to a narrow audience.
It feels like Planet Fitness or Anytime
Fitness is the loss leader
You come in because you want to have
done something.
Look, we've got a lot of toys.
Come play.
We're going to sell you the
transformation.
Then if you get hurt while you're here,
well, there's Mike over in the corner.
Go get your work done.
That's not the position I'd want.
I'd want to own the building.
You'd want to own the franchise,
and you'd want to rent out space to
a PT, a chiropractor,
and an acupuncturist.
So historically,
like when I was first introduced,
I had never heard of physical therapy
before.
I was in college.
I was working on a bachelor's degree in
kinesiology.
I was working at a YMCA doing an
internship.
They introduced me to the physical
therapist upstairs in the PT department
inside the YMCA.
And, you know,
I started doing a volunteer thing with
them as an aid.
I remember the PTs had full access to
the YMCA fitness center.
Not a single one of them came down
and did anything there.
Not a single one of them referred PT
patients to the personal trainers.
None of the personal trainers recommended
PT,
even though those clients had orthopedic
issues.
There's a territory dispute.
Well, I can do what they do.
I can do it better.
All this kind of stuff.
I remember thinking,
why aren't we offering free memberships,
trying to make this work both ways?
Fast forward, twenty five years later,
I've employed massage therapists that
never wanted to give up massage clients to
let a PT do PT with them.
PTs don't want to send clients to the
massage therapist.
There's all these turf wars and all this
garbage.
This is where it goes back to.
The only thing that I can imagine is
we control...
Everything.
The personal trainer works for me.
The massage therapist works for me.
Everybody else works for me.
Not I'm renting a room in a fitness
center.
I just,
I've never seen those relationships really
work well.
You know, like it's fine.
You can go rent a space in a
CrossFit gym anytime fitness.
You can build a practice in there.
You can make money.
But what it should be never seems to
come to fruition.
Here's that photo.
I found it.
And I know how I found this.
I've started interacting with Ocon on
LinkedIn.
He's the guy who posted this.
He's more of a business person because his
background.
Yeah, he's the business dude.
That's his background.
So it says, you know,
had the opportunity to attend PPS last
week with Anytime Fitness.
Had the opportunity to learn a lot and
see what's coming down the pike in our
industry and get a glimpse of the vision
fellow practice owners and vendors have.
And it says physical,
their booth says Anytime Fitness.
Let's get physical.
Uh-huh.
Olivia Newton-John.
And then physical therapy inside Anytime
Fitness.
They're putting it right out there.
We, I mean,
this is where you look like Ray Kroc
and McDonald's and BJ Novak.
BJ Novak's character in that movie where
he's like, you're not a burger business.
You are a real estate business.
Anytime Fitness feels a lot like
BJ Novak and,
and Michael Keaton sitting there going,
you do, what do you want?
Three tenths of a penny on a burger?
Or do you want the whole thing?
Man, I mean, that's a smart play, right?
If you're Anytime Fitness,
it's a smart play.
I think what they realized during the
pandemic is, look,
we've got a huge footprint.
We've got all this square footage.
We've got access to a database of
individuals who like fitness and working
out and all of these different things.
How do we monetize this?
How do we put people in our buildings,
in our spaces that are going to utilize
that space and pay for it?
PTs just would make sense.
PTs want to get a dollar extra out
of every patient.
Anytime fitness is looking at it,
like just absolutely crush the seesaw of
value versus cost.
And they're like this and this and this
and this.
And I bet you they've got red light
saunas.
Cause that's the thing.
And I haven't been in an anytime fitness,
but I bet you if you go to
one close to you,
they got cold dubs and you know,
the infrared stuff,
like they've got those things.
Why?
Cause they understand who they're talking
to and they want in the,
once they're in the building,
we got you right.
And there's the weights and there's the
trainer and there's this PT is trying to
find,
are we trying to find the right exact
person for the right thing to come in?
And then we give them one-on-one, right?
That's the thing.
One-on-one hands on everything.
Is that our mistake is we're being too
specific.
Yeah.
Simple answer.
Yeah.
So that's why one chart looks like one
thing and another chart looks like another
thing.
Yeah.
Just let let the market guide the
decisions.
Let the market tell us what it wants.
Like we cannot force the market to want
what we want.
I can't force you to want to work
out the way I want you to want
to work out.
You know,
so either I make something that you
already want.
or I build demand and none of us
have the budget to build demand.
None of us have the budget.
This goes back to the conversation about
do we save the name physical therapy or
do we move to something else?
If somebody had the biggest,
big enough budget,
maybe you can convince a large enough
segment of the population that no, no, no,
no,
physical therapy is what you want to do.
You need physical therapy.
You wanna pay for physical therapy.
Physical therapy is valuable beyond what
the insurance will cover.
Or we just say, Hey,
we've got this new thing.
This new thing is amazing.
We will cover, you know,
we'll do all of these things.
We can give you what you want.
We can make you feel good today and
improve your health for the future.
We can change your lifestyle.
We can, it's not called physical therapy.
It's called something else.
You won't let it go though.
Well, you paid a lot of money.
You spent two hundred thousand dollars on
the title physical therapist.
It is hard to let that go,
even though it's still part of you.
It can still be in you.
You still have the knowledge and the
experience and the information.
Well, I brought this up,
but I can show the graphic,
but I don't think it's imperative.
It's like on Tim Ferriss' podcast,
if you don't know who Tim Ferriss is,
you're not listening to us.
You already know who Tim Ferriss is if
you're listening to us, right?
Thought leader,
just a guy who does thought experiments,
four-hour work week,
and he had knees over toes guy,
Ben Patrick.
And then I had to keep – I
had to look.
I've been following Ben Patrick and – I
didn't even know what his name was,
to be honest with you.
I just knew it was knees over toes
guy.
And got good stuff, right?
But I had to do digging because before
I shared it in the group chat,
I was like, is he a PT?
And he's not.
He's not a PT.
But he's got a big enough audience that
he can affect behavior.
He can make a living doing that.
From what I see in his content,
his goal is to make a positive difference.
You can make a positive difference.
We know this as PT and make a
living.
Well,
you can do it as knees over toes
guy.
Some PTs can't do it, unfortunately,
in the climate.
But this goes to further prove that
there's a market for it.
you can make a living doing it.
And now look at knees over toes guy.
I mean, that's, I mean,
close to one of the largest shows that
you're going to get on, right?
Like whenever,
whenever someone on fitness, I love this,
like gets on like a Joe Rogan and
chops it up for three hours.
The next day I just sit there with
a bowl full of popcorn and watch
everybody.
Well, that actually, actually,
I love the actually is in the comment
section, right?
And it's great.
Everybody's pissed about what they said.
Everybody's mad that they handed a
microphone and a big audience to someone
else.
And ninety nine point nine nine nine
percent of those people are going to do
nothing to increase their audience by one
percent to potentially help thousands of
extra people and including themselves.
because you can do that and make money
doing that.
So that's a good segue into what I'm
doing, but it's not about what I'm doing.
I'm doing some, I don't know.
I made it,
I made up the title visibility and
engagement reports.
I'm essentially looking at APTA state
chapters, websites,
and then their socials and YouTubes,
whatever.
But then some people chimed in as like,
yo, I'm just a guy who's a PT.
Can I have that too?
And one of them is Sam.
Sam is...
I met him when we were working at
Fox Rehab together.
Great guy.
Funny story about Sam later.
I'll tell it later.
I'll stay on track.
I promise, Tony.
I've known he's been doing headache stuff
for a while.
He treats people with headache.
And so I go to his website.
It wasn't bad.
I wouldn't say that.
It was good.
It had the elements.
It didn't look slick.
It looked good in all the right ways.
The first thing I saw...
Sam's face treating a person.
That person was sort of cringing like
their head hurt because that's who it was.
The headline was,
I'll get to the headline,
what his perfect headline was,
but it was like your path to headache-free
days.
Look, I'm not reading it,
but I can tell you,
I can regurgitate what Sam's headline is.
That means it's a good one.
If I have a headache or someone has
a headache, I'm not Googling it.
I'm just going to go call Sam, right?
And then I tripped upon on his YouTube
channel.
And I found this gem.
Let me scroll down a little bit because
we like a little stats.
It's got seven hundred and twenty four
subscribers.
That's the beauty pageant metric, baby.
I don't care how many subscribers he has.
This one video has eleven thousand views.
This is how to place the whole video.
is six minutes long how long should my
video be long enough to answer the
question right where to place the tens
unit pads for rapid headache relief like
if you have a headache and you someone
told you to go to amazon which by
the way he has links to the tens
unit
Slow clap, Sam.
Well done.
You want to know what to do now?
Like, and Sam's like,
he doesn't start off with I'm a physical
therapist.
I've got training and blah, blah.
He's just like, okay,
if you've got a headache,
this is where you want to place it.
Okay.
Got it.
So thoughts on this, Tony,
because this is, this is, you know,
this is your area, right?
Which is like, Hey,
lead them to a solution.
Don't be cute.
Don't be clever.
Be clear.
Sam did that.
And would you look at that?
Eleven thousand people magically showed up
to watch his video.
It's not rocket science.
Yeah, I love it.
I mean,
when when you shared the thumbnail,
I didn't know Sam.
I kind of think he I know him
from LinkedIn.
Maybe he's all right.
but I saw that thumbnail,
I saw the electrodes.
I thought it was like a joke.
I thought it was, you know,
he's being silly.
I didn't make the connection between
headache or anything.
So just like any consumer,
first thing you do is you see the
image.
The image catches your attention.
You see the pads, you see, you know,
it's like, what is this?
I don't understand.
Is he, you know, like jackass?
You remember the jackass show?
They put pens unit pads like on their
scrotum and did stuff.
That's what that caught my attention with.
Then I looked at the headline,
the title of the video,
TENS pad placement,
which is a very well-known keyword.
And then I saw it go to headaches.
I clicked on the video,
started watching the video.
I was like, oh, there's a real video.
Like this is not just a gag to
get attention.
It's not clickbait.
This is for real.
Um,
I think the challenge for Sam is nobody
realizes you can use a tens unit for
headaches.
I had no idea, you know,
it's not even something I ever would have
considered.
So he is trying to cultivate an audience
out of ignorance because we don't know
that you can do this.
That's an uphill battle.
That's hard.
Um, but I definitely think, you know,
that's a two year old video.
Uh, I think with, uh,
time, placement.
I'm going to look into his channel a
little more.
The channel could probably blow up because
heading is such a massive topic and this
is a different approach.
Knees over toes.
Man, you would think nobody in the world,
if you put your knee one millimeter over
your toes during a squat,
your knee is going to explode and the
world will end.
And then this guy comes out and says,
that's total garbage.
We can do it all the time.
You know,
like this is something that I think he
can do.
He can bust a bunch of myths about
headache and the channel would explode.
And right now he does telehealth,
but just in one state.
In my mind, I'm like, Sam,
we got to get you credentialed in all
fifty, bro.
But you need the funnel to get there
to be a reason to be credentialed in
Montana to treat headaches, right?
But yeah, so a little bit of improvement.
I mean, look,
guy got eleven thousand views.
on something that he knows really well.
It was probably easy for him,
the content anyway.
I think I kept pushing him.
I'm like, turn a camera on,
but I don't know how to,
I don't care.
Turn the camera on.
And he did it.
Even without the audio.
Can you just click that and let me
see the first two, three seconds.
Let me zoom out here.
Hang on.
Oh, we've got an ad.
Of course they're monetizing Sam's Sam's
channel.
That's good.
Make a little bit of money.
Heck yeah.
I'll skip the ad, though,
so I'm not going to get you the
nickel, Sam.
So here's the first couple seconds.
Hold on.
He doesn't do a big fancy intro.
He doesn't do anything.
Boom.
Right into it.
Okay.
Nice.
Yeah.
I mean,
I would want to see the hook or
hear the hook and then go from there.
But yeah,
I think his channel obviously has enough
history, enough time,
probably poised for some real growth.
And then the question is,
is he doing this on Facebook?
Also, is he doing it on Instagram?
Where else is he going?
I still think the easiest like new
viewership is Facebook right now.
Really?
Yeah.
Why is that, do we think?
I mean,
from the experts that I listen to,
from the content that I've seen,
my understanding is, you know,
Facebook is trying to maintain relevance.
Facebook is trying to regain and rebuild
the audience.
My experience,
YouTube is struggling a little bit.
You know,
there is TikTok and there's other
platforms, obviously.
uh i i don't know it just depends
on what the platform is prioritizing and
from the people i talk to the easiest
growth right now is coming from facebook
business page interesting um we're looking
at his website if you're just listening to
the podcast uh his website is super basic
nothing flashy about it which i love
kellos physicaltherapy.com the first thing
you see headline your path to more
headache-free days if you have headaches
Lasting more than a few days, right?
Not just the transient headaches because
you're hungover or whatever.
Sam's your guy.
Your path to more headache-free days.
Yes.
I'm not even – I'm just moving on.
And then the video, front and center,
right in the middle,
the static – it should autoplay.
I would love if it autoplay.
We can work on that.
I'd also love if this video was a
YouTube embed.
It's not, it's just a native video.
I'd love if it did both of those
things,
but it's Sam looking with someone on a
plinth and it looked like the,
I screamed this person has a headache.
This is me, right?
This is me.
If I have a headache, very, very, very,
very, very, very basic.
Um,
What do you see?
What would you like to see?
He's got a call to action.
It's a different button.
Does he have a course?
Does he have a course on there?
He doesn't.
But Sam,
if you're watching this right now,
this is you will have a blueprint to
more headache free days.
Everything on your YouTube will look the
same as your website.
He's a little disjointed.
But if that's the biggest problem we have,
that's twenty minutes in Canva.
We solve that.
Yeah.
I mean,
the first thing I'd be looking at,
like if I again,
I don't deal with headaches.
I have people in the family who do.
If I landed on the page,
I love that you've got the video.
It's actually him.
It's not stock photography or any of that
stuff.
The headline more headache free days makes
total sense.
I would be watching a video and.
And then from there, I'd be like,
all right, how do I book a call?
How do I buy a course?
How do I find more information?
You know, what is this guy selling?
What is this guy offering?
So my review,
ChatGPT helped me put words to it.
I sort of knew it.
I know what Tony's talking about,
but now I have words for it.
So I was reviewing APTA chapters and Sam
came up.
ChatGPT and my auditor that I built,
we call them doors, right?
Do I know like APTA chapters?
You're like, well,
that's it's for everybody.
It's like it's not students care about
difference than clinicians care about
educators.
And you have to sort of at least
have a door.
It needs to be clear.
Oh, you're here.
Why?
Someone somehow you got here a video.
Someone told you you had to come here.
You were given membership, whatever.
When you land there,
it needs to be stunningly clear for Sam.
It should be what Tony's talking about
your headaches.
Is it the course autonomous right here?
Do you really need Sam?
It's going to cost more,
but that's the door.
So it's the self-taught course.
It's book with Sam and it's,
here's the tools Sam recommends.
I don't,
I don't think you want more than three
doors that starts to get a little,
you know,
pre two thousand Yahoo.com when it was
like forty thousand links.
Did you ever hear of a story about
Google?
I forget who was involved,
but there was someone who,
who used to write an email to the
guy in charge of Google.
And I don't know if it was like
Sergey Brin or whatever the hell the guy's
names are.
And the email would just be a number.
It'd be like Tony getting an email from
Jimmy and it would just be like, twelve.
And then a few days later,
it would be like, twenty-two.
And they're like, what the hell is this?
The guy was just sending them how many
words were on their homepage and it was
a subtle poke to be like, one, Google.
Because you look at like Ask Jeeves.
You've been to Ask Jeeves lately, Tony?
No,
that's a search engine from a billion
years ago, kids.
It was just vomit town.
It was like a classified ads.
It looked like Craigslist.
It works for Craigslist because
Craigslist, you want lots of things.
A search engine is supposed to be the
opposite of Craigslist.
But all these search engines looked like
Craigslist.
So I digress.
For me, it's, I mean, three doors, right?
Self-taught.
There's your headline,
your path to headache-free days.
How do you want to solve it?
Three options.
Take the course right now.
Book a time with Sam or,
I don't know, buy the toys.
What would you think his third door would
be?
Watch my videos.
Maybe watch my videos.
Take the course.
Book with Sam.
So what I was thinking was a community.
I don't know if he has a Facebook
group.
I don't know if he has a school
community.
Those would be the three that I would
look at just because... And I mean,
the reality is...
you know put yourself on the consumer side
once again by the time somebody actually
gets to the website like i have not
gone to a website i can't even remember
how long you know my website hardly gets
any traffic it's you go to the social
you see if they're still around you see
if they're still in business right and
then from there you go to the next
step in the funnel you go to either
book the call buy the course join the
community whatever it's going to be um
The website is is I don't know, man,
it's hard to justify putting time and
resources.
But that's also why I probably haven't
updated my website in like two or three
years, maybe five.
You know,
I just I don't ever go to it.
I was working on mine yesterday just to
like zhuzh it up.
And then like I was doing an audit
on myself before I went and did these
APTA chapters and businesses.
I was like,
maybe I should do it for myself because
we're the last person we're going to help.
It's easy for me to see other people.
But I was doing the same process on
my own.
And it was asking me to do some
things that were simple.
But my website,
it's a repository for past episodes.
I'm not trying to sell you anything.
What do you want people to do?
Listen, subscribe, like one of those two.
I want you to listen.
If you like it,
if you listen three times,
we're going to nudge you to subscribe
towards the end, right?
Or somewhere in the middle.
I think Sam's got a big opportunity here.
I would like to see him...
You know what?
No.
I would like to see him licensed in
the states that he's licensed.
I would like to see him build the
other two things we just mentioned,
which is this automated,
this self-paced course that Sam really
teaches, but he teaches once,
and then people take it thousands of
times.
And then this community,
which might cost Sam...
minutes of time a day to cultivate the
community or cherry pick people that need
help who aren't getting help from the
community and go,
sounds like this door over here.
Do you want the course or do you
want to meet Sam?
I want Sam doing community cultivation.
I think that's, man, I missed that.
That is the right answer.
Is school worth,
is the juice worth the squeeze or can
you get, you have a Facebook group.
I mean,
do you need to pay for school or?
No,
you do not need to pay for school.
School's ninety nine dollars a month.
I mean,
that's a big commitment for somebody who
doesn't have proof of concept.
You know,
the people who are using school well,
love it.
Awesome.
I use Thinkific as my course platform.
They have communities just like school
has.
They have similar tools and stuff.
But you have to go where you naturally
are led.
I spend time on Facebook.
So everything for me is going to bias
toward Facebook.
I don't even do Instagram.
I never go to Instagram.
I don't pay attention.
There's messages in there that I don't
see.
I am just naturally drawn toward Facebook.
And so that's where I tend to connect
with people best.
But that's because that's what I like.
That's what I do.
Somebody asked me yesterday, like, hey,
I don't see you on TikTok.
And I'm like, yeah, I'm not on TikTok.
But it's a huge market.
I'm like, you're not wrong.
People will start with me and go like,
I need to be on all the channels.
And I'm like, which ones do you use?
And they're like, well, just these two.
I go, let's start there.
Here's why.
You know the physics of the environment,
right?
I think you can now,
but you used to not be able to
like retweet on Instagram,
but now you can, right?
Yeah.
Well, that was like, well,
there's no real,
it's harder to share that way.
You can collaborate real well.
If we make a great reel where Tony
drops a knowledge bomb and I go, woo,
and we make a reel out of it,
we can be collaborators.
And then that video gets exposed to both
of our audiences.
That helps each other.
There's that.
That's easier to do.
But you have to know the physics of
the platform.
Again,
if you don't eat at a restaurant or
like a like,
you're not going to want to spend spend
time.
I'm not saying TikTok's wrong.
It's just I've played around with it a
few times.
And what I saw there, I was like,
doesn't doesn't feel like it's designed
for me.
And that's OK.
We drive by hundreds and hundreds of
stores, restaurants, shops.
We've never been in them.
But they still exist.
There's still people who want those.
Now, I will say...
I have learned a hard lesson,
which is I have no idea what next
year is going to be like,
what five years from now is going to
be like,
what's going to happen down the road.
And I have found that there is value
in planting seeds and letting them grow.
So I still cross post to Instagram.
I still cross post to Pinterest and TikTok
and other platforms,
even though I don't make it my focus.
My focus right now is Facebook and a
little bit of YouTube.
But it's because two years from now,
TikTok might explode again and there might
be an opportunity.
And I want to have a presence there
that I can then pick back up,
you know,
but it's not going to detract from where
my focus is today.
It's just going to be something I kind
of throw a little dirt,
throw a couple seeds.
If something grows, awesome.
I'm going to let it happen.
Yeah, I mean,
I've done maybe ten audits of APTA state
chapters and now I've got, I mean,
progress update.
I started a new company a week and
two days ago.
Four days in,
I hated the name of the company and
changed the name of the company.
I was like,
am I just stuck with this?
Did I just name my baby and now
I've got to call this child this thing
until I die?
No, you can just change the name.
So I just changed the name like three
days later.
But step one was reaching out to people
I already knew, warm relationships and go,
hey, I'm doing this thing.
I would love to see if it's a
good fit.
Here's what I'm going to do before we
meet.
I'm going to do the work.
I'm going to do an audit of your
website, your social channels,
your YouTube, your podcast,
whatever I can see from the outside.
I do not want access as a member.
I don't want behind the scenes.
I want to be dumb.
right?
A lot of these people in chapters I've
worked with and been paid by,
I've never been to their website before.
There was no reason, right?
There was no reason.
I was going to their conference or
whatever.
So I did these audits and I was
like, man, I'm going to get so granular.
I'm going to get into the weeds and
it's going to be great.
I'm going to give them insights they never
knew.
And then I did five of these things
and I was like, same thing.
It's the same thing.
Like maybe there's an ooh every once in
a while, but most of the time,
Every once in a while you find like,
whoa, what the hell is this?
But most of the time it's like, yeah,
yeah.
Okay, got it.
Act surprised.
Oh, this is bone on bone.
You tell me.
Eleven out of ten pain.
Oh, my gosh.
Like, but you've seen it.
I'm going to walk them through and be
like, yes,
you are an individual snowflake.
Here's the thing.
You're copying every other chat.
This is for state chapters.
They're copying each other.
You could show me a zoomed out snapshot
of all their photos from Facebook,
and I wouldn't be able to tell one
chapter from another.
They're all the same colors.
It's all Canva templates.
They're stock images.
And also,
it's not going to surprise anybody.
It's not going to surprise anybody.
All right, so I'm doing the audits.
Go ahead.
I was just going to say,
the problem is you're copying other
chapters that aren't successful.
They're not doing great.
If you're going to copy,
which is totally fine,
learn from the best, copy the best.
Go find something that is successful and
copy that.
Here's what I say to companies.
or chapters, doesn't matter.
They're all companies, right?
Before the meeting or after the first
meeting, before the second meeting, I say,
each of you,
I want you to do this.
In the next seven days,
we're going to meet in a week.
The next time you stop and watch a
video or stop and read a post for
more than three and a half seconds,
screenshot it.
I do not care what it is.
In fact,
I do not want it to be in
the industry we're in, right?
Whatever that is.
You do not need to give an explanation
of why you screenshot it.
Just screenshot it.
Send them all to me.
And I'm going to put it up like
a vision board.
And then I zoom out and I just
go, what's the common theme here?
Well, do you see faces?
Let's look at your thumbnails of all your
Facebook posts.
Do you see faces?
Not really.
I see Canva templates and big words.
Got it.
When we do see faces,
are they real people?
Well, yeah, they're real people.
I go, cool.
Who's that guy?
And they're like, it's a guy from Canva.
Yeah, he's a real guy.
He's just not someone you really know.
So now does this look authentic or
artificial?
This is motivational interviewing.
But I like the exercises like getting
ready with me videos.
We had to explain this to you once
before, right?
Because I don't think you had seen one
of those before, right?
That's like where like I saw the first
time I saw I was like,
this is ridiculous.
And then the thirteenth time I saw it,
I was listening to the whole damn video.
It's when someone's doing something like
putting on makeup or doing whatever and
telling you a story.
They hacked our brain again.
We're big, dumb animals.
We need visuals.
There were those videos for a while that
were telling a story and someone was
playing.
It was just a first person view of
someone playing a video game.
Yeah.
It had nothing to do with the story.
We're big dumb animals.
We need that.
So anyway, just screenshot and send it.
Why does it capture your attention?
Great.
How do you use this new information?
It's not rocket surgery.
I'm not going to ask you to make
a hundred different kinds of videos.
I want you to make three different kinds
of videos, a hundred ways.
Figure out what your three formats are and
then let's batch create the hell out of
them and call it a day.
So that's what I'm doing.
I'm doing audits.
I've got seven phone calls today.
Wow.
That's not bad.
Yeah.
Companies make sense.
I mean, the same thing I'm doing.
APTA state chapters and academies,
they're companies.
Right.
They're just volunteer.
Their membership is, you know,
comes through APTA membership.
Companies, obviously,
a little bit different.
So that's what I'm doing.
I'm walking through the results with Sam,
a couple APTA chapters,
and then having initial conversations with
some people.
How's my strategy so far?
This is me asking out loud how my
strategy.
Well, it hasn't worked yet.
Well, it doesn't matter what I say.
You have proof of concept.
The fact is you put it out there.
People said yes.
And, you know, now you go with it.
And this is where I think we,
you know,
we let back to let the market guide
what it is that you were doing.
If you put it out there and it
was crickets.
OK, nobody wants it.
No big deal.
Like, it's totally fine.
Yeah.
I want to hear,
let's discuss this publicly because this
applies to smaller providers who are
afraid to post things because what do we
do with the negative comments and feedback
and stuff?
I told you offline on the chat,
I was like, man,
every APTA post that I see,
it's all negative comments underneath it.
Now, I never see them engage.
I never see them communicate or talk or
do anything.
But it's like the only comments they
generate are negative comments,
angry people.
What do you think about this?
It doesn't stop them.
They continue to post.
Yeah.
So what do I think about it?
It's been the way...
I feel like it's been worse now.
I feel like they're taking the brunt of...
like, you know, reductions in payment.
Now there's this new thing,
which I don't understand.
Now there's a bunch of degrees that are
not professional degrees.
What does that mean?
I don't even know what that means.
We need to talk about this.
We'll talk about this in a minute.
Let's finish the conversation.
Here's the thing about APTA.
I've been a member first because I was
a student and it was just free.
It was in my tuition,
but it was free.
And then I just continued to be a
member.
Why?
Because the people around me are members
and I didn't want to be a freaking
jackass and be like not rowing the boat.
But I'm also a joiner.
I'm also a guy who's like, come on,
man.
Here's my five hundred bucks.
Let's go mess stuff up.
Let's better together.
I buy in.
I do.
I don't know if I drink the Kool-Aid.
I drink a few beers at the happy
hour,
but I watch and see what they do.
And from all I know,
because I don't know about advocacy,
I'm pretty sure they're doing a great job.
Well, they're doing what they can do.
Are the results what we want?
I don't know.
We want it better, faster, bigger.
Are they?
No.
Is that how it goes?
Probably.
I don't know how advocacy really works or
how fast things go,
but I'm glad they're doing it because I
sure as hell don't want to be doing
it or know how to do it.
APTA is going to be the lightning rod
of everything because they're like,
we're your professional association.
So they will take ninety nine percent of
the hate.
And even if they get a win,
you've seen it.
People just pile on.
This isn't a win.
This is bullshit.
It's not really a win.
This is what your billion dollar company
does.
Great.
Don't join.
Hard stop.
Don't join.
It is confusing, though,
because people do rush to the comments to
do just this.
It's a pile of Karens.
I don't know.
I guess we love to bitch.
And there's a comment section.
I mean, yeah.
Kyle Covington is a friend.
Now he's the new APTA president.
He's doing the thing we would probably
tell him to do.
Be a face.
Communicate.
Communicate little.
Communicate often.
And every time he steps onto a camera,
people just go, whack, whack, whack,
whack.
Why?
Because it feels good.
It feels, look at these thumbs.
Ah, it feels so good.
Great.
Do you feel better?
Awesome.
You're still not a member?
Great.
Moving on.
Kyle doesn't care.
He probably does care because he's a
human.
What do you think?
That would be interesting if the
positioning is, hey,
I know I'm going to get the hate.
There is plenty of entertainers and other
individuals on social media.
I swear,
I think thirty percent or more of the
tick tock like videos I see.
I don't think these are real people.
I think these are accounts just designed
to generate anger and hate.
So that's making comments,
making comments, making comments.
just everything like making comments,
generate views, generate anger.
We know that anger is a strong emotion
that gets engagement.
And they just want more money from
advertisers,
so they create videos that are artificial
that just get more views.
My thing with this,
now that you're saying it,
is I wonder if deep inside the psyche,
APTA understands it doesn't matter.
We'll take the hate.
This is our role.
We're going to get everything thrown at
us.
And again,
even going back to Joey Albert and said,
what should APTA be doing?
I don't know.
I really don't.
What's the role of a professional
organization?
What?
I don't know.
I don't think, you know,
it really matters all that much.
I guess we need one, but yeah,
just absorb the anger and let therapists
focus on their patients.
Maybe that's the role.
Maybe we get bent.
Ben is saying the thing is important.
Like the,
the professional that's a side
conversation.
We'll, we'll bring Ben.
I'll bring Ben on or something.
We'll do a live shoot.
Cause someone has to explain it to me.
Um,
Well, from the profession being,
are we professionals?
I've tried to research it.
I've tried to look at it.
Like you said, maybe Ben can educate us.
My understanding that the point that I
keep hearing is it's going to limit how
much money kids can borrow to become
physical therapists.
Isn't that a good thing?
Like,
didn't we come to a realization somewhere
that as long...
As long as government keeps pumping free
money into the market,
not free money into the market,
prices go up.
We don't want kids paying three hundred
thousand dollars for a license.
Let's bring the prices down.
Just call me whatever you want.
I don't care what you call me.
If you don't want to call me a
professional,
it doesn't affect doesn't affect how much
I earn,
doesn't affect anything except how much I
can borrow.
And we don't want kids borrowing more than
they can afford to pay back.
Because guess what?
I don't want loan forgiveness.
So let's cap loans.
People want to cap rent.
People want to cap everything.
Let's cap how much you can borrow and,
you know,
then go out there and make the money.
Yeah.
Someone had made a comment.
Again, I'm not like a big numbers guy.
I know this shocks all of you.
But yeah,
we shouldn't be making a ton of money
on our next generation through loans,
right?
Like it's like we shouldn't lose money.
I'm not saying give everybody their money
back and go, ah,
that was a bad idea,
but we're going to let you slide.
But also like seven percent interest on a
loan for an education.
Because I've said before in the hockey
locker room,
people like these guys want loan
forgiveness.
I'm like, I'm with you.
I don't think they should get it either.
But it shouldn't be like an exorbitant
interest rate.
It shouldn't be a moneymaker.
I'm not saying don't make enough to cover
your costs and maybe a little bit,
but like seven percent on a giant loan
to get the degree.
What happens if people stop becoming
doctors, nurses and PTs?
There's no one to get you out of
bed or wipe your butt in twenty years.
And you go,
these kids don't want to work.
It's like, no, they made the smart move.
You told them to make thirty years ago.
Now you're screwed.
There's no butt wipers.
There's no people to get you out of
bed.
There's no people to help you walk again.
You fucked around.
You got to find out now,
but it's too late to go jump in
the DeLorean and go back in time.
Yeah, I know.
I don't know.
But if I'm going to take the risk
on loaning somebody three hundred thousand
dollars that I think they probably can't
pay back,
I'm going to charge a lot of interest.
I was going to say three percent.
Ben says student loans for professional
degree should be capped at two percent.
The only reason I was saying three percent
is like maybe it should match.
No, never mind.
I was going to say match the housing.
That's not a good idea because that they
go.
Wow.
But it should be something.
It's like, why?
Why is somebody going to loan at two
percent?
Like this?
This goes back to we can't put in
caps.
We can't put in price controls.
We can't do this stuff.
All it does is it say.
I've got money to loan.
I'm a bank.
I'm a lender.
I'm a whatever.
I am not going to loan somebody money
at two percent when I can put it
somewhere else for four or five or ten.
Right.
You know,
like that's about let the free market do
its job.
All right,
what do you want to talk about next?
I've got a quote or I've got a
post from Seth Godin that I think I
shared with you guys.
And I felt like it matched up what
we were talking about.
Yeah,
let's use this to wrap up the show.
If you don't know who Seth Godin is,
just I don't even know.
What would you call Seth Godin?
He writes books,
but he's not really a writer because his
books are like dumb, simple,
which is brilliant, right?
But anyway,
he's posted a blog post every day for
like,
he's a thinker and then he's a sharer.
And I feel like this was important when
I shared it when we were talking about
on Tuesday, I immediately opened my email.
I have forty two emails.
I open Seth's every time.
There's a lesson in it.
Why?
Because when he sends an email,
there is at least he doesn't aim to
have a hundred nuggets in every email.
One, one great one.
But every single day,
he doesn't send boulders.
He just drops a pebble on your head
every single day.
And he's talking about what's worth more.
kind of blue from mild miles Davis.
Is that a song or is that an
album?
It's probably, I don't know.
I don't know, but it's miles Davis.
I don't even know who miles Davis.
I know who miles Davis is,
but I don't, but he's a legend, right?
Jazz or the third Boston album.
And then he didn't intentionally does
that.
Cause it's like,
what's the third Boston album?
Like, I don't know.
So the, the,
the whole breakdown of his post really is,
is like,
Clients will pay more for something useful
than something was difficult.
And I feel like this resonates with what
we were just talking about now and on
Tuesday,
which is I know you went to school
for three years and it's a doctorate and
it's hard and you got to do the
clinicals and you got to do that and
you can't work.
No one cares.
Like, I mean, I care.
I'm like, oh, my gosh,
if I had a friend going,
that sounds really rough.
But like,
I'm not going to pay you more because
it was harder to do.
I will pay you more because I can't
poop in my toilet and I need to
poop and I'm going to pay you to
come now.
That's why people get pissed when they're
like,
these plumbers are making all this money
and they didn't have to go through school.
That's not why we pay you.
We don't pay you because plumbing school
is hard.
We pay you because it's useful.
You can still do that even if your
degree was hard.
How do you shift it?
That's what Seth was trying to say.
How do you shift it to make sure
it's clear?
It is useful.
Your degree is useful.
Not how all of us are using it,
though.
I had a guy I met through a
friend the other day.
Dude's in his seventies or eighties.
And my buddy introduced me because I'm
going to be helping him out with some
communication stuff.
And he goes, Jimmy's a great communicator.
also happens to be a physical therapist.
I love how the fact that my doctor
is thrown in third in line.
I don't use it a whole lot.
My buddy doesn't really even know me as
a PT.
And the guy goes, hang on a second.
Do you come to people's houses?
I'm like, oh,
I don't actually do the PT very much.
And he's like,
I still need this because I think I'm
going to fall when I'm at a...
He understood the use, the usefulness.
He didn't ask me where my clinic was
or how many, you know, he was like,
what do I need out of it?
Hang on a second.
I know you're not.
Let me get your number.
So no one cares how hard it was
to get the thing.
What can you do with it?
That's I'm not even going to say I
have a parting shot.
That's Seth's my parting shot.
The usefulness.
I love it.
Nothing bad.
I'm just going to say, you know,
take these nuggets, like take these ideas,
use them as inspiration,
plant seeds with them.
I too,
I liked Seth Godin a lot more in
the past.
Oh, okay.
I liked, who's the find your why guy?
Simon Sinek.
Simon Sinek a lot more in the past.
There are a lot of people that,
ten, fifteen, twenty years ago,
I consumed every piece of their content.
Then as I grew, changed, developed,
what I focus on has also changed.
I don't resonate as much with Seth
anymore.
The concepts are universal.
You could have written that twenty years
ago.
Yeah.
It starts to become the personality that I
have conflict with.
But regardless...
This is what takes the conversation ten
levels deeper.
It's not just,
I'm a licensed physical therapist.
I can treat your pain.
It's, I'm Tony Meritato.
I understand these frustrations.
Let's figure out how to get past these
frustrations, whatever they are, you know?
And, and again, did that move,
did that transcend physical therapy?
Did you get a chance?
I tagged you on the Jared Hall post.
Yeah, I know Jared.
We should have him on soon.
We should.
Did you see the post, though,
that he was talking about what I think
he was saying,
what physical therapy became?
And I said, did we outgrow the profession?
He put that into chat.
It was a great summary.
It was a great perspective.
So, yeah,
let's let's see what we can do about
these conversations into the future.
Wrapping up the show now.
Is it Thursday?
It's Thursday.
Thanksgiving's in a week, dude.
It is.
We got to think about what we're thankful
for because I think Dave put it out
there.
We're going to make a show on Tuesday
about being thankful.
I thought we were just going to dress
as pilgrims.
Are you allowed to say that?
I am offended.
You've triggered me.
I don't think you're allowed to use that
word.
Oh, really?
I didn't know that.
I'll dress as a turkey because that's what
I feel like most of the time.
You saw the video about spanking a turkey
to cook it, right?
I did not.
Okay.
Wait, that's a thing?
Go to YouTube.
This is a physics video.
You can actually raise the temperature by
spanking a turkey.
Somebody created a machine that just
spanks a raw turkey until it's cooked.
Okay.
I did see a video – I did
see a post from Gary Vee the other
day, and it had two turkeys.
He's doing all these posts now where it's
like thinking and doing.
It's two boxing gloves,
and one's like pristine,
and the other is like beaten in.
It's like doing.
And there was two turkeys,
and one was burnt,
and one was like golden brown.
And it was like this is one hour
at nine hundred degrees,
or this is three hours at two
seventy-five.
And it's like sometimes great things take
time.
It's like, man,
that could be a billboard for something
like he's, you know, he drops billboards,
but that's the thing, which is like,
sometimes these things,
the worth that stuff takes time.
All right, we'll be back on Tuesday,
apparently wearing outfits.
I've got to go to my outfit closet.
I do have a box of, like,
random things.
Appreciate the comments from Bed.
David, I just saw.
I just saw David comment in there.
If you heard something or you have a
topic or you have insight,
drop us a line.
We're not hard to follow.
Tony Meritato, Dave Kittle,
who's with The Young One today,
and PT Pinecast on all the socials.
Tony, have a good weekend, man.
Oh, we'll talk soon.
I got some crazy ideas.
All right, man.
We'll be right back.