Not me.
You're listening to the PT Pinecast,
where smart people in healthcare come to
make noise.
Here's your host, Jimmy McKay.
I still stand behind the new name of
the show,
which is Welcome to Marketing Doesn't
Work,
the show where two healthcare marketing
nerds get honest about what actually
works, what's BS,
and how to keep your sanity while
promoting PT, health care,
wherever you are.
A lot of this is applicable not just
within physical therapy,
but I'm a physical therapist,
so I like to keep one foot on
the base so I don't get picked off.
If you've ever said,
we post all the time, but nothing happens,
or marketing doesn't work in my town...
This show's for you.
I've had people say that.
The market doesn't work here.
I get it, Jimmy.
Where you live, it works, but not here.
And I've seen those people in the last
two to three years.
Now they've got regular content going out
on what looks like a schedule.
And I'm like, ha, man,
the world must have changed.
Yeah.
Uh, it's very, very interesting.
All of a sudden it started working or
you started doing it regularly.
I, and I love using,
cause this is where I get to play
my, I'm, I have a,
I have a PT degree just like you
card and I use parallels.
So let me do it.
Let me do a sponsor thing before I
forget.
Cause then I'll be in and I'll be
like, Oh, I got to redo that.
Uh, do you want to thank longtime sponsor?
Brooks IHL,
they do residencies and fellowships down
in Florida,
which if you're going to do a residency
or a fellowship, I got to be honest,
we're both in the Northeast.
Be smart and go somewhere warm to do
it.
It is live, Tony.
Oh, Tony liked the last one,
so he's watching again.
Tony's a big live guy.
uh brooks ihl world-class residencies
fellowships and continuing education
designed to turn good clinicians into
great ones uh their mentors walk the walk
talk the talk the whole thing um check
out brooks ihl see how far your career
is going to go brooks ihl.org pediatrics
uh neuro geriatrics all the things um
where was i this is why andrea's here
what was i asking before i stopped um
marketing doesn't work where i live and
then it starts to work so things must
have changed
Yeah, but of course, that's not the case.
So I love doing the parallel of there's
a principle in healthcare,
really like in PT, but in healthcare,
it's called the FITVP principle,
F-I-T-T-V-P, which is frequency,
intensity, time, type, volume,
and progression.
And this is meant to be like, hey,
you want bigger beats?
muscles, frequency, intensity, time, type,
volume, and progression.
And PTs understand this innately.
And then I go,
they're marketing principles too.
And they're like, what do you mean?
I'm like, frequency, intensity, time,
type, volume, progression.
What are you doing?
So what I wanted to do was sort
of
I wanted to play a game called Stop,
Start, Continue.
Have you ever done one of these before?
It's like a big consulting thing or like
a one-on-one thing, right?
So what are some things you think people
should stop doing?
You don't have to do it in this
order either.
You just throw it out.
Stop doing in twenty twenty six marketing
wise.
Start doing in twenty twenty six marketing
wise or continue.
Let's bring sometimes it's good to bring
things from twenty twenty five into the
fray.
So what's something every health care
organization should will go with?
Start.
Where do you want to start?
You tell me.
Stop, start or continue.
You can start with stop.
And maybe you saw my post from two
hours ago on LinkedIn.
And that post is here's what I'm telling
clients to stop doing in twenty twenty
six.
I didn't look.
I love when things line up.
That wasn't on purpose.
So so a few things in no particular
order.
And it's a lot like we've talked about
in the past.
Stop spraying and praying.
So that's kind of like the patchwork
stuff.
It's like stop doing stuff and hoping it
works.
Like do stuff for a reason or don't
do it.
Yeah, I feel like that's a big one.
I love to say it like.
like when healthcare providers would be
like, well, my patient came in.
They always like,
that was a fake voice too.
Well,
my patient came in and they're just like,
did you do the exercises I gave you?
And they're like, eh, not really.
And then nothing happened.
I want to be like, well,
did you spray and pray?
Did you just randomly do some stuff and
then it didn't work?
And then you said, oh, I don't know.
This whole thing doesn't work and that
happens all the time.
When you put it in perspective that way,
it's very obvious.
Yeah.
It is.
Spraying and praying.
What do you see people doing?
What does spraying and praying look like
with organizations you've worked for?
I mean, it could be anything.
So it could be,
it's really anything you're doing that you
don't have like a strategy behind why
you're doing it.
So spraying and praying,
or you're not measuring it.
So it's kind of like throwing spaghetti at
the wall and seeing what sticks.
So you're like, oh, let's post on social.
And then you do it for two weeks
and then nothing happens.
Nothing happens,
but you don't have a strategy behind it.
You don't really have good content.
You don't know like what you're posting,
who you're posting to that sort of thing.
And you're like, well, why didn't it work?
Um, I mean,
and you could say this across the board
for any type of campaign.
If you, you know, whatever you're doing,
like it could be paid ads.
It could be anything across the gamut of
marketing.
But if you're,
if you don't know why you're doing it,
you're not measuring it.
You're really just spraying and praying.
We do that all the time.
Like when, especially this, that, um,
that phrase comes up when PTs will take
students and they'll just be like, well,
I'll just ask that student,
why are you doing that exercise?
And they won't have a good reason.
I'll be like, great.
Why are you doing that strategy?
Well, because I saw someone else doing it.
Awesome.
Why were they doing it?
Right.
I don't know.
So why are you doing it?
I don't know.
Do you know who the smartest person in
marketing, in my experience, has been?
Usually the CEO's niece.
So my niece looked at our Instagram and
said it sucked.
So could we make it better?
And I love because I'm sort of a
jerk and I'll just be like, hey,
is your niece anywhere near who we're
trying to talk to?
Well, no,
we're trying to talk to older adults.
She's nineteen.
So, huh, that's weird.
That's weird that she would have deeper
insight than the people who get paid to
do this.
And not saying that you get paid to
do it means that you're good at it.
But maybe we thought about it deeper than
because a nineteen year old could be very
good at it.
Right.
But that's typically who I love being
introduced to, CEOs, nieces.
Yes, or nephews.
And I have a few.
I had a nickel for every nephew who
said we should be on TikTok.
And maybe we should be on TikTok.
Maybe.
But let's figure it out.
I'm going to start with a stop.
You did a start.
No, you said stop.
Stop.
I'm going to do a stop as well,
which is...
It's going to sound like I'm biting off
of yours, but this is my lead,
which is doing it because the other
clinic,
either in my town or in my vertical,
is doing it.
That feels weak, I would say,
all the time.
There was a great phrase that says,
you don't go to war with what you
need,
you go to war with what you have.
Right.
And I remember in radio,
when I was back in radio,
it would be like, well,
we should start doing this.
And I'm like, number one,
do we need to do that?
Well, our competition is doing it.
Hang on.
Before we react.
Knee-jerk reaction.
Worst kind of reaction, right?
The other thing was,
let's say we do need to do it.
I would go, okay, we've decided.
We moved on from that decision stage.
Now we decided we do.
This is the thing that we need to
start doing.
Do we have the people...
the process on hand to do that well
because in six weeks if you come to
me and you're like i saw you doing
that thing again of course i'm always
talking to my boss i saw you you
started doing that thing it sucks i'm like
right you didn't give me the tools the
training or the time to empower my people
to develop a process to do that well
so when i start talking like that i
sound like a jerk
No, well, I mean,
marketers always sound like jerks, right?
When they push back, we always do,
but there's so much to unpack there.
I mean, it's so,
I've worked with so many clients and
in-house with so many CEOs, founders,
executives across the board,
because everyone has an opinion on
marketing.
We should be doing this because our
competition's doing it.
I've seen it in direct to consumer.
I've seen it in B to B.
And this is why like,
let's just go to B to B for
a minute.
When you look at a B to B,
like health tech or any tech, um,
website you see the same words and it's
like crap they're saying and it's like
well people hold on people have admitted
me to me i'm like hey uh saw
you updated the website what walk me
through the above the full design meaning
what i see this sec first two seconds
and i've literally had people say we just
copied so and so's and i'm like
What?
Why?
What?
Why?
I had a client not that long ago
say, here are three competitors.
I want you to pull their websites
together.
And that's what ours is.
And I'm like, well,
there's so many things wrong with that.
Steve, by the way,
is going to forever be this not any
real person.
This is going to be our person.
Hey, Steve,
would it be okay if I took the
crappiest parts of each of their website
and slammed them together?
No?
No, exactly.
Not a good idea?
Huh.
Just the best parts though, right?
Yeah, let's do that.
this is like filed under the marketing
marketers always need to be educating and
they end up being like the bad guy
like you said because we're sort of always
pushing back because it's like here's why
we're not doing that let's think through
what makes sense right like but do they
have the same and maybe all of the
things are are the same we really
shouldn't be copying someone else right
like i'm always like we should know what
competitors are doing we but that's not
our top priority
I would push back and say,
even if you're selling the exact same type
of widget,
that is a reason to not look like
them at all.
Because if they're looking at you,
they're probably looking at your
competition also.
And if they've bounced from one to the
other,
they are looking for something different.
That's exactly it.
And I think this goes to one of
my stop doings in twenty twenty six ties
in is like stop doing generic AI content
at scale.
Like there is a time and place.
And I I'm a fan of AI and
I think it's sort of helped us become
more efficient in so many areas.
I think if everyone's using the same
language and saying the same thing and
spitting out this generic stuff, I mean,
one of the things that's like big for
twenty twenty six is authenticity.
And we've been saying it for years.
But I think in this age of AI,
like brands need to have their own voice
and they do need to be authentic.
I feel like we should do an entire
episode on what that could look like.
That would be great.
That'd be fun.
Cause I think, uh,
I forget the name of the car.
There's some coffee shop that started
essentially posting like a real every day,
but they turned the people in the coffee
shop into essentially characters.
And it was above average production value.
But they've said,
it takes us an hour to shoot this.
And we're talking about six or seven
figure views.
And if you're a coffee shop, you're like,
well, that's a lot of effort for views.
Does that turn into coffee?
It has turned into merch.
It has turned into now you're the spot
to go to when you're on vacation in
that city.
I'll find it.
So it was like,
I go back to all the time.
I've said this to people.
I've said this to people that we've worked
together with.
If I'm ever using terms that you don't
understand, please call me on it.
I'll say,
is the juice worth a squeeze on this?
What does that mean?
I'm like,
if you don't know what that means,
we can't work it.
Is the effort and the cost worth the
outcome?
If it's not, why are we entertaining this?
Right.
So I feel like we could do an
entire episode on especially healthcare
brands, man.
How do you take some... I mean,
I've worked for organizations that had...
clinicians in them on their own time had
successful Instagram accounts.
And the organization was, was like,
how do we shut this down?
How do we, how do we,
how do we reel this in?
I'm in the room because I'm like a
junior member of the more,
I'm like a director.
I don't even know why I'm in the
C-suite meeting and people are looking
around and they're looking at me to start
nodding with them.
Like, yeah, let's reel it in.
And I literally was like, Hey, uh,
Jimmy here.
I don't
Wait, work with me here.
What if we actually helped them and our
success and their success were tied?
And they were like, absolutely not.
And do you want to know what happened?
Those two clinicians who worked together,
who had a wildly successful Instagram
account,
left this massive healthcare organization
and now are wildly successful by
themselves.
And the healthcare brand is now like,
you know what we should do?
We should turn our clinicians into
influencers.
And I'm like, that's so funny.
That's so weird that you would come up
with that idea on your own that we
had seven years ago.
That's so crazy.
And this is like in its own episode,
like this,
like the influencer in healthcare.
I mean, this is...
like this is talk about authenticity and
uh you know when you're thinking about
like how do we get out there differentiate
ourselves and also show that we are the
the clinical experts having your
clinicians be front and center but making
sure they're supported right so they're
not just like putting them out there to
like do boring things on video or low
quality or whatever it may be like the
strategy behind internal influencer
marketing is is
Now it is.
But seven years ago, it was Jimmy being,
well, that's, no, this is,
we're giving away the secret sauce here.
I'm like, I gotta be honest.
I can buy that sauce in the corner
for a dollar a gallon.
It ain't a secret, guys.
Like, what are we talking about here?
Like, what are we talking about?
I think it has a lot to do
with
No one else is doing it.
So if it were a good idea,
someone else would be doing it.
That's it.
Right.
And it's like that's in in health care,
that's in financial services.
And it's probably across the board,
depending on the founders comfort level.
What I found, you're exactly right.
Like no one else is doing this.
And so we're like, well,
this is a great reason to try it
if we've thought about it and it makes
sense to do.
And I think that's like, you know,
there's in health care,
there's like compliance and there's like
all these things.
But if you have if you have clinicians
doing this, they they know better.
Right.
And I think brands are so I think
like established health care brands,
especially or brands that look to
establish health care brands are like,
we've always done it this way and we're
very careful.
And, you know,
in one of my recent posts,
I said something about.
you know,
not like moving quickly and breaking
things in healthcare that works in some,
but it doesn't work in healthcare.
But I think there's two sides of it.
Like you need to be nimble and try
things,
but you don't want to work so quickly
that you're,
you're reckless and breaking things
because healthcare is different.
And I think that's maybe like executives
in healthcare are sort of feeling like,
Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa.
This isn't, we don't do influencer stuff.
Like we have branded images and we do
like a corporate video.
This is what
We do.
Do you know how long...
I worked for organizations that had
full-time graphic designers and they did
immaculate work.
But once you hire a graphic designer and
then your second one and then your third
one, you then fill their schedule.
Exactly.
To justify their existence.
And now when something happens that we
need to turn around today...
I need to fill out a ticket.
You're a ticket in a queue.
Exactly.
Graphic designers want to do the thing.
They turn it around quickly because they
understand what hitting the pulse and
reacting in a good way is.
And the funny part is I heard someone
say that like, uh,
essentially wow people should be running
the organization and the how people should
be running behind them trying to figure
out how to make it happen.
This is like Richard Branson.
It's like,
could you imagine if Richard Branson was
like fourth in charge at Virgin?
You wouldn't know who the fuck Virgin was.
Exactly, exactly.
If Virgin was just like,
you know what we should do?
We should buy an airline.
They'd be like, all right, sit down,
Richard.
We're going to run the numbers.
And he was like, no,
we're going to go buy an airline.
We're going to call it Virgin Atlantic and
we're going to run a record company.
We'll call it Virgin Records.
But the funny part is like, we don't.
We let how people run around and then
are confused why we aren't wowing anybody.
When I break it down like that,
it becomes real obvious, isn't it?
It does.
And I think because how people feel safe
because they are like working within these
guardrails.
And I think you need to have the
balance.
I think it's like the yin and the
yang.
But I think how people get in their
own way.
And I mean, I'm a how person also,
but I feel like I'm a different how
person.
I'm not like the...
Even where you are in the how-wow
spectrum,
like you're still on the wow end.
You're the how end of the wow spectrum.
Right.
Yeah.
And even I know how to make things
happen.
But I'm like, like,
let me give you an example.
That party that I threw,
I threw a charity party a couple years
ago at APT's big conference.
And I sat with a bunch of how
people who were like,
we need to make tickets, fifty dollars.
And I'm like,
tickets are two hundred and fifty dollars.
And they're like, that's insane.
No one's going to buy them.
And I'm like, wait for it.
And then I like took out a dry
erase board,
but we're going to make companies pay for
it.
Because here's the thing.
If we throw a party where tickets are
worth fifty dollars,
I don't want to be at that party.
That's a trash party.
That's like how many should we get paper
cups or plastic cups?
And I want to be like cups should
be made of ice.
You know what I mean?
And they should melt.
Like, we need to think outside the box.
People are like,
do we like when you think outside the
box, Jimmy?
I go, no, you don't.
You like when I paint the box blue.
And you're like, look at that.
It was never blue.
And now it is.
That's so crazy.
I'm like, no, it's not.
No, it's not.
You're being boring.
So here's my start.
Yours was stop spraying and praying?
Yes.
I'm going to twist it a little bit
to sound contrarian, but I'm not.
Which is,
I do want you to start testing things
aggressively.
I heard someone, their math was...
You should be testing out,
this is for organic content.
And here's how I look at organic and
paid.
Organic is your proving ground.
Costs you effort, right?
I like flinging things.
I like,
we're going to do ten types of content.
We're going to do face into the camera.
We're going to do day in the life.
Whatever you see in the world, good.
We're going to do our version on it.
Test it, test it, test it, test it,
test it.
But then if it doesn't work in how
long, I don't know.
We'll figure that out.
We dump it.
But if one of the ten things pings,
we're going to triple down on it.
And now that's over here.
Okay,
that's a project that's now on the regular
roster.
It now gets replaced with a new thing.
You have to have a little R&D.
And if something pings and blows up,
now that's moved on to the paid roster.
Good.
Because want to know what?
The world is going to change in ten
minutes, ten hours, ten days, ten weeks,
and we better have some new stuff backing
it up.
So I agree with don't spray and pray.
I also agree with having a lab and
R&D and testing what is working for you
specifically.
A thousand percent.
And you are,
but you're talking about it in a smart
way.
That's not spraying and praying.
Correct.
I think emotionally people like testing
things.
That sounds scary.
Or let's just fling some stuff.
And I'm like, no, one is bad.
One is good.
They sound similar.
They're not.
Right.
No, I think so.
If you're testing,
you are being strategic and maybe you're
just going like I have this wild idea,
whatever.
But like then when you're testing it,
it's controlled.
And, you know,
one of my stop doing is like focusing
only on vanity metrics.
But I'm just going to like scrap it
and go like pay attention to metrics.
And the hard thing as a marketer,
like I'm constantly preaching like
metrics, metrics, metrics.
We need to be tying things to outcomes.
But like from here to outcome,
there's a lot of gray area.
And I think marketers need to understand
that and know what that is.
That doesn't need to get to the CEO,
the CFO, the private equity company,
the board, whoever it may be.
But you need to understand it.
So if you're testing something,
you need to know like it worked or
it didn't.
Why?
Maybe why not?
Maybe you'll never understand why not.
But like if you can sort of figure
out why it's working,
what success looks like in advance,
then then you're in a good place because
you do need to be able to measure
things.
And we're not going to be able to
measure like every single thing every
single time.
And I say this about direct to consumer
health care all the time is.
It goes back to the journey.
People are doing a lot of things.
They're like seeing an ad.
They're Googling.
Their friend told them they're in this
Facebook group.
You know, they saw a Google review,
whatever it may be.
We don't know which one of those things
was more powerful than the other.
But I think when we're talking about like
content, organic content, we can say like,
yes, it was a success or no,
it flopped.
Talk about what the difference for you,
and it can be different for each type
of content, project, any of these things.
Like what are vanity metrics to you?
I was taught,
they were a different term to me in
radio.
They're the same thing.
We talked about it a lot.
What did you, beauty pageant metrics.
Yeah.
Same thing.
So it's hard, right?
Like as a marketer,
we want to know how things are performing.
So we track views and likes and shares
and, you know, all that engagement stuff.
And then on the website,
we're looking at traffic and,
you
page views and time spent on site and
all that jazz.
Um, those are vanity metrics.
So as a marketer,
you need to know what they are.
And I think, you know,
there's like lead metrics,
there's lag metrics.
You need to know what those are,
but those aren't the things you're
reporting to your CEO or your CFO or
private equity or within a board meeting,
because they are like, whatever,
what does that translate to, to revenue?
There it is.
But what is that?
What is that doing?
And so I think they're important,
but you also have to layer on.
We did these things.
We got this much attention.
Oh, by the way, in that time frame,
this is what leads or depending on the
kind of company you're working with,
like this is what it translated to like
patients or revenue or, you know,
when I look at like micro conversions or
macro conversions,
like if someone's conversions or macro
conversions.
So if I, you know,
if we're testing content and someone goes
to the website and say they're like
watching a video,
I'll call that a micro conversion.
Like we have their attention for one step.
They did like a micro thing,
but if they are scheduled,
filled out a thing, got it.
Um, but if they schedule an appointment,
that's a macro conversion.
If they buy.
If they buy, that's the conversion.
So like all these things are important
along the way,
but you don't necessarily just want to be
reporting on these.
You want to go like this drove this
much business.
And you know, whatever the timeframe is.
For healthcare providers who are maybe a
little bit earlier in their journey.
If your goal is to run an Ironman
triathlon,
I think you should lift weights.
But if you're just measuring, well,
what's your dead...
How much are you deadlifting?
I'm like, that's...
I don't know if that's the smartest thing
to be measuring.
Maybe run it maybe over my last month.
What's my mile time look like?
See what I mean?
We can measure both of those things.
But how much I'm deadlifting is cute.
That's a beauty pageant metric.
Now,
deadlifting is probably playing into...
My mile time, maybe, right?
We had to tease that out.
But if I'm just like, well,
then deadlift more,
the endurance triathlon PT is like, whoa,
there's a point when you're deadlifting
too much.
I'm like, right.
So it's like, how come everything you do,
Jimmy, doesn't go viral?
I'm like, well, first of all,
because humans are human-y.
But also, because I don't want eyeballs,
I'm teaching Instagram or YouTube,
and I've just gotten, quote, good at this,
or at least started looking at it
differently in the last year and a half.
Thanks a lot to Tony and people I
talk to, which is like,
what are you teaching?
You're teaching the algorithm.
Everybody loves to bitch about the
algorithm.
Like, dude, the algorithm is math, man.
That's physics.
What are you teaching it?
I don't want...
my grandma watching my Instagram because
that would teach Instagram, oh,
like old ladies from Oklahoma who like
cats.
Grandma doesn't like cats,
but I'll just throw it out there.
No, no, I don't want that.
I want this.
This is who I want.
So a lot of the words I'm using
and a lot of the file names,
like I'm even looking into...
Like when I'm done with this episode and
I download the MP three to share it
to the podcast,
people are now in the background going,
what you name the file name is actually
telling the internet what this is.
So instead of like, you know,
January five, nine,
thirty two dot MP three,
not a good file name.
And I'm like, are they measuring that?
They go, if they're not,
they might be soon.
Interesting.
Oh, we got to do that.
I mean,
every marketer's files are like final V
five, final, final, final, final.
Correct.
all right let's uh let's do a listener
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can send a voice memo because i would
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person say it in their own voice or
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This is from Katie.
Katie,
I'm going to leave where she works out.
Uh, Hey, Jimmy and Andrea,
I watched your last episode.
We've been posting three times a week for
a year,
but engagement is low and no new evals
in parentheses that we,
that I can measure.
How do I know if I'm doing,
and then this is quote,
how do I know if I'm doing good
marketing that just needs more time or if
it's time to change everything?
So how do you, what do you,
what would you ask her?
I mean,
like there's not enough information to
give a great answer.
What are the questions?
So she said she's posting, right?
Posting.
What does that mean?
Where are you posting?
What are you posting?
What else are you doing?
And this goes back to sort of the
like journey within like,
what are we seeing?
So we're not seeing,
we're not seeing new evals or enough new
evals.
Like what are people doing?
Are they engaging somehow?
But we would need to know.
We need to know.
We have a lot of questions for that
one.
Yeah.
So I always tell people this is where
I get to act like a petulant six-year-old.
Like, who?
Where?
What?
Why?
What are you doing?
What?
Just act dumb.
This is actually hard.
You have to play completely dumb.
But you have to erase everything.
No assumptions.
And you can't jump right to solutioning,
which is where I'm like, all right,
how do we fix it?
And I'm like, wait, no, no, no.
We can't figure out how to fix this.
I flipped this back to healthcare
providers, specifically PTs.
I'm like, so,
so far you've told me you have a
knee.
It's not doing knee things.
Like what?
Like this person might have a four million
Instagram,
like follower Instagram account.
They might have four people.
Like, I don't know,
like act completely dumb.
This is where I get to act like
my high school English teacher, Mr.
Mooney.
And I took,
you ever take technical writing?
No,
but I've done technical writing exercises.
That's an exam.
Like, explain how to write,
explain in text only how to make a
peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
And then he would do exactly what you
wrote,
which of course is not what you wanted
him to do.
The exercise was to prove words matter.
So you, so, all right.
So let's see if we can be helpful
here.
You're posting three times a week for a
year.
I got to be honest,
if you were doing an exercise or a
series of exercises for a year and you
were seeing no change,
I would say you probably should have asked
sooner.
Nine months ago.
Right, nine months, right.
I'm going to make this up.
There's no right period,
but a quarter feels like no change in
a quarter.
Come go back, refer back, right?
Yep.
Engagement is low.
I would say how low over time.
So like no general change.
That's cool.
And no new evals.
Hard red flag.
It has no macro conversions is what you're
telling me in a year.
That's not good.
um how do i know if i'm doing
good marketing needs more time uh it would
lead to because you started with a goal
the goal apparently was without you
telling me was new evals and you haven't
done it so that was that's not good
marketing why i don't know because i can't
see it yet so if you want to
share some links i would that would be
fun to do that would be yes like
if someone sent us stuff yep i would
definitely like oh let's bring this up no
judgment like those are the people who
typically would
get the most out of something like that.
How do I know if I'm doing new
marketing needs more time or if it's time
to change everything?
I don't know if it's time to change
everything, but I don't know what it is.
So I would need them to be more
specific.
But like that's even just saying that to
a person like Katie,
this is where the brain power goes and
the mindset goes.
Okay, let's shift a little bit.
We did a little bit of stop, start,
continue.
Maybe we can come back to that.
I fell for some marketing.
But I'm happy about it.
And that's the best, right?
I knew I was being marketed to.
And did I talk about this guy with
you before?
Do you know Jeffrey?
Sorry, Jesse Itzler?
I don't know.
You might know his wife.
Do you know Sarah Blakely?
Yes.
Spanx.
She married this man.
He's not.
He's weird.
He's like a runner.
They do merit like something.
I remember looking into him.
I saw him in a LinkedIn post or
something.
He's got a wild background.
He is very much like I am.
He got paid like five thousand dollars in
nineteen eighty nine to write a rap for
the New York Knicks and famously like
spent seven thousand dollars producing it
because he's like, this is my opportunity.
This is my thing.
But anyway,
he is now like one of these mindset
guys.
I'm OK with it.
I like his vibe.
So he sells this thing called the big
ass calendar.
And it's off camera right now.
It's on the wall.
But it is a large dry erase calendar.
But it's every month.
And I am very visual.
So now it's three hundred and fifty sixty
five squares.
Jesse did not invent necessarily anything
new.
Jesse spoke to my pain,
which is I use Google Calendar all the
time,
but I'm looking at one day or one
week or not really at one month because
you really can't see that.
Yep.
And he was just like,
don't you feel better when you see it
and you write it down?
And he said that.
for a year because i've been looking at
these ads for a year like i don't
know it's forty bucks for a calendar a
lot and then he four hundred times over
the last three sixty five days it's like
people are forty three percent more likely
to complete a goal if they write it
down did you know that and i'm like
i didn't know that it might not even
be true i mean i don't know if
it's true but i have heard you feel
like huh that is interesting so i i
wound up buying the the big ass calendar
twenty twenty six
It's just a piece of dry erase.
How many times did you see the ad?
More than a year.
In a hundred different formats, ways.
Eighty percent of them had Jesse.
Twenty percent had other people.
Like people,
like users or people on his team or
testimonials.
I saw a billion of them.
Here's the best part.
Jesse didn't just say, hey,
I got a calendar.
You should buy it.
Because that's how I think a lot of
people would have stopped.
Look, it's dry erase.
It comes with a marker.
It comes with stickers.
Here's what size it is.
Jesse sold Jimmy an outcome.
The outcome was this.
He's like, wouldn't it be great
If you walked away with twenty twenty six
with a year defining event.
And I was like, hang on a second.
What's a year defining event?
And he's like, well,
this is a Japanese theory called Misogi.
He's like,
it could be like climbing a mountain,
opening a business, running a marathon.
Like, what is the thing?
Everybody's got one or two.
Here's the thing.
Let's be honest.
This is how he said it.
Let's be honest.
Look deep into my eyes.
You know you're not going to get to
the starting line of the Ironman triathlon
waking up one day in June and being
like, you know what I'll do tomorrow?
I'm going to do the Ironman.
You understand that you've got to
backfill.
So that's really what a Misogi is.
So Jesse didn't just sell me the calendar.
Jesse sold me a different version of
Jimmy, which comes with one Misogi,
one Andrea.
You got to pick one big BHAG,
not lots of BHAGs, one.
Right.
Okay.
And then he goes,
you're going to get one Misogi, one,
You're going to get six mini adventures.
What's a mini adventure?
He's like, not as big as a Misogi,
but like,
I've always wanted to rock climb in the
Schwanguk Mountains near me.
I drive past them all the time.
People hang glide around where I live.
A lot of skydiving,
a lot of hang gliding and rock like
mountain climbing, like not in a gym,
like a legit like mountain climbing.
I'm like, that looks cool,
but I could never do that.
And people are like, no, there's classes.
You just go pay some guy,
and they make it real safe,
and you can just do that.
And I'm like, I could just do that.
So what he's saying is,
you have one Misogi,
You plan for all year,
six mini adventures,
one every other month.
Not crazy.
And they don't need to be expensive.
It doesn't need to fly to South America,
but it could be.
It could be whatever you want it to
be.
You have to plan for it.
Because if you don't plan for it,
it's probably mathematically not going to
happen.
And then the third one,
the third thing in my three steps to
a big-ass year is three...
winning habits, four winning habits,
one new habit every three months,
not four habits on January fricking first.
That's not going to happen.
He's like, pick one winning habit.
So I'm not going to bite my fingernails
in the first quarter of twenty twenty six.
Which for a guy who's, I'm a,
I'm a, I just like,
I'm a fingernail biter.
Why?
Because my dad was, I don't know.
But he's saying add new,
add one new habit every three months,
being realistic.
So at the end of the year,
you would have had one year defining
event,
six cool mini adventures that maybe one of
those mini adventures turns into a Misogi
next year.
Yeah,
I would like to climb fricking Everest.
And you've built four,
you've stacked four habits.
And even if twenty five percent of those
habits stick, still a pretty good year.
Yep.
Sold me a calendar, Andrea.
But he told me a story.
Yeah.
And I got to be honest,
none of this involves a million dollar ad
spend.
Right.
It just it just didn't.
But we don't do that with healthcare,
with the thing that apparently is like at
the core of everything.
We just go,
we're open from seven to three and we
bought a new MRI machine.
We're evidence-based.
Literally, someone was like,
I want to go to this place to
get an MRI.
And I go, why?
And they go,
because you can watch Netflix while you're
in there.
And I was like, holy shit.
That we have reached bottom of barrel.
That's the differentiating factor.
That place was like, we got Netflix.
Holy shit.
So anyway, I've already started.
It's on my table now.
And I am picking out my Misogi carefully
because I'm going to stick to it.
I think I'm going to do another Ironman.
I'm going to do an Ironman.
And I've got six or seven months to
prepare for it,
which is more than enough time.
But like, what are your thoughts?
Have you seen?
Well, well, he also like, this is,
this is free marketing, right?
So you are so excited.
You were delighted.
You've now become this evangelist maybe.
And you're telling people about it.
Word of mouth.
Correct.
It's so cool.
Yes.
This is the thing he didn't say.
I didn't need,
I didn't have a calendar problem.
Right.
I had a,
I had a becoming a different version of
myself problem.
He never said that.
but he did.
He had my thoughts coming out of his
mouth or his ads.
I want to have a big ass year.
Even the words.
Danny Matei is a PT who wrote a
book a number of years ago called Fuck
Insurance.
And people were like,
you can't title that.
And he was like, why?
And he's like,
because you're going to turn a lot of
people off.
And he goes, good.
They were never...
Once they signed up for whatever it is
that I'm teaching,
they were going to freaking hate me
because I drop F-bombs left and right.
That was one of his qualifying questions
without having to ask.
This guy, same thing.
It's called the big ass calendar.
Jesse's like, I don't want prudes.
They're not going to like me anyway.
Good.
Get rid of them on step one.
I don't want...
Not the brand.
Jesse knows his brand.
Jesse knew his audience.
Jesse read me like a book,
even though he's never met me.
Yep.
It's a masterclass.
It is.
That's very cool.
And I mean, pretty similar.
So the few times that I've fallen for
advertising on Instagram,
it's been like similar.
And it's like,
I've seen it a bunch of times.
They're speaking to me.
It doesn't matter what the product is.
I'm like, yes, yes, I have that.
Oh, yeah, I have that problem.
Yep.
I want to feel that way.
Yeah.
Yes, I want to feel that way.
Do you know how many times in your
lifetime that you've ever seen someone
drink a beer in a commercial in the
United States?
Ballpark, how many times you ever?
Ballpark it.
Try to be within ten thousand.
This is a trick question.
I don't know.
Zero.
I was thinking it had to be zero.
Can't show someone as far as...
I'm going to say in my lifetime,
but I'm definitely going to say since I've
been eight years old.
You can't show it.
It's a rule.
It's a law.
That's what those things are.
They're like rules, but they get enforced.
Exactly.
Think about the last...
You're holding it and it's like...
It looks good and appetizing.
It's cool.
They talk about cold.
Think about that.
Coors...
Like all their ads are like someone's,
like even in the summer,
they're like skiing or they're in the
snow.
And they're like, our beer is brewed cold.
Cold.
Like it's cold.
And I'm like, yeah,
but like as soon as it left your
brewery, somebody else's,
like your truck had to keep it cold.
Then it went to my supermarket.
They kept it cold.
Now I'm keeping it cold.
They're literally selling you cold.
But they're not.
They're selling you the feeling of what
it's like when it hits your lips.
Right,
because you know what it feels like for
a cult to drink a cold drink.
But how do we get that?
It's similar to why cologne and perfume
ads are so freaking insane.
They're like a fever dream.
They don't make any sense.
Like Leonardo DiCaprio standing there with
a shirt unbuttoned and a fan going...
coming out of the water and then there's
like a weird unicorn and yes it gets
weird like why it's like they're trying to
different like i don't understand that but
like this is what i've been told it's
like they're trying to sell image and like
sort of weird like how do you market
a smell until the tv starts spraying stuff
out in our living rooms it's not gonna
happen yep very cool about the calendar so
i got the calendar i'll let you know
if it works doesn't matter
Doesn't matter if it works.
You bought in.
But maybe it'll work and you'll do it
again next year.
Well,
that was also one of the ads that
I saw after I purchased the calendar.
The woman was like going through all her.
She's like,
I've done doing this for seven years.
So she goes, think about that.
In seven years,
I've had seven year defining events.
You could say what happened in twenty
twenty.
I'd be like, oh, I did this.
Right?
Smart marketing, right?
Because your thought might be like, yeah,
that sounds cool,
but I'm not going to use it.
I'm not going to continue.
Like, you know, that's,
that's really smart to have,
to show someone who's used it year after
year.
Correct.
Show me the future state of me.
And that's where it's like, huh,
that makes it, that makes sense.
All right.
We're going to do keep it or dump
it.
You're ready to do keep it or dump
it.
Let's do it.
Hold on.
I'm going to do the quick button.
Keep it or dump it.
This is just personal and it's going to
be hard,
but I'm going to ask you to do
like macro because like you could be for
different segments or different
businesses.
I'm going to throw a tactic at you.
So very specific.
You say whether we keep it in twenty
twenty six,
dump it forever and then justify it or
just fire off a hot take.
Patient testimonial videos on social.
Keep it or dump it.
Keep it.
Yeah.
It's just too authentic.
It's super authentic.
You don't get much better and real than
that.
But please make them real.
Real.
Yes.
Real patients.
I love the ones that look like
proof-of-life hostage videos where you're
clearly putting words in their mouth.
I'm like, that does the opposite.
That does this.
They're just saying your brand messaging.
Correct.
Or, oh, can we stop this one?
Which is patient testimonial texts on
Instagram where they literally screenshot
it or they take the ninety-three words and
put it in a Canva template.
I'm like, no one's reading that.
Take five words out of that.
felt my best ever steve whatever but just
do dot dot dot felt my best ever
dot dot dot like as long as it's
real but please don't give me sixty eight
words on instagram in an image not reading
it uh seven that's the that's the that's
the rule seven words or less keep it
or dump it uh clinic blogs for seo
Oh, so this is,
I have like a little asterisk next to
this.
Um, yes.
And so Google and search engines are
getting smarter to generic AI stuff,
right?
They're like, they are AI.
They're getting good.
So we need SEO.
We need things that we need, obviously,
keywords that people are going to find us
if they're searching for a clinical thing
in our area and there are in our
audience.
But we also now and, you know,
this is like Google's latest updates tell
us they they're looking for authentic
human words.
authentic content that's written for
humans,
whether or not that's written by humans.
It needs to be written for humans.
And so I think we need both.
We need SEO, which is pretty boring stuff,
but we also need the human stuff.
And I think we also need to make
sure we're optimizing not only for search
engines,
but we're optimizing for AI because that
is where people are looking for sure.
So I think the pendulum has swung back,
which is like,
I don't know about you spending ten grand
on fifty thousand words that is clearly
automated.
But like, yes,
this is where search engine optimization
or generative search optimization as well.
Yep.
Again, depends on who you are.
If you're a one location practice,
I don't know if that's the thing I
would be optimizing for,
but if you're a little bit larger, maybe.
Facebook ads for workshops slash events.
Would you run ads to go to it
to lead to a workshop or an event?
That's a micro conversion sound like the
event or the workshop sounds like it'd be
a micro conversion in your point of view.
Yeah, I think it's fine.
I think if you are targeting correctly and
appropriately,
I also think you shouldn't expect major
conversions from the Facebook ad because
you're probably advertising it in other
places.
But no, I think it's good.
I think it's good to run Facebook ads
because you can target at certain levels
and I think it's fine.
Yeah.
In my opinion,
if you sell a really great experience...
I was talking to a guy in the
Pacific Northwest.
And I'm like, what makes you great?
I love asking questions that sound lazy.
But I'm looking for how you answer,
not just what you're answering.
He's like, when people get in here,
we really make them feel like...
And he said something like they're a pro
athlete.
He's like, I want to work with athletes.
I work with high school and college
athletes.
And I'm like,
sounds like if you had ten...
That would be a ridiculous experience.
Like, oh my God.
Yeah.
I go,
then why don't you do a combine?
He's like, what's that?
I go,
go get a volleyball team and pick out
ten volleyball specific tests you can do
like vertical leap, overhead arm strength.
Like, I don't know.
You're the clinician who works with
volleyball players.
Can you make me feel an experience?
Then is it worth taking the volleyball
coach to ten local high schools out to
dinner?
Yes.
And be like,
I'll run all your players through each one
of these one at a time.
This two-hour block is going to be for
your fifteen players.
And then rank them in a spreadsheet.
Show them where they fell in each event.
And then do a combined graded score.
And then go here.
And then when they go, well,
how do I get better?
I go, right here.
Now, is all that effort worth it?
It is if that's who you want to,
in my opinion, if that's who you want.
So I think, yeah,
I think Facebook ads for workshop,
it's an event.
If you're actually good in person.
Right, right.
It needs to be the full experience.
Yes.
Yeah.
Reels with clinicians doing exercises.
Uh, fine.
Um, but it's fine,
but I think real patients and real people
doing exercises, if it's engaging,
that's a real tough one.
For me, this,
this begins to be manic flavors ice cream
again.
So it's like, look,
when we do exercise videos,
when we put our clinician in tights and
Lululemon and we show big muscles,
people love watching exercise videos.
I go, do they,
or is it just a six second video
that gets lots of views,
but no conversions?
Exactly.
Is it a beauty pageant metric?
And if it is, what are you doing?
So like, I don't know.
I would put my effort elsewhere instead of
real.
I think maybe showing like a patient
outcome video and then like here's like
some snippets of how we got there
potentially.
Yeah.
Two more.
Clinic email newsletters.
You're going to have more experience and a
better viewpoint than this from me.
I don't really care about newsletters,
but that's me.
I don't care about doing them,
but what are your thoughts?
Is the juice worth the squeeze,
I guess is what I'm asking, Andrea.
So I say this to every client who
wants to do an email newsletter,
which feel very productive.
If you're going to do email,
it needs to be segmented and you need
to talk about something people care about
and they need to be opted in.
And that is a behavior and that's a
technology issue.
So you need to make sure you're capturing
that they want to do it.
You need to give them a reason to
want to read this.
And I think segmentation is, like,
the biggest thing.
I've worked with so many people who have
just, like,
sent everyone the same message.
And they're like, well,
why aren't our open rates good?
Like, well, because you're sending me,
you know, or click-through rates.
Like, you're sending...
a sixteen-year-old and a seventy-year-old
the same content and it's just not
relevant i think the other thing too is
like setting expectations i think it's
important to have consistent communication
with people but i also think we need
to understand what we're getting out of it
like we're probably not getting a patient
out of a newsletter right now well the
funny part is like a lot of a
lot of practices i have no problem sending
someone an email from your emr
But as to what you just said,
it better be about them and not you.
We've worked with organizations together
who were like,
we're going to send out this email.
And I'm like,
so can you point to the news in
this newsletter?
And they're like, we opened a new clinic.
And I go, that's news to you.
Right.
That's not news.
That's an ad.
And we understand how newspapers used to
work.
It was a bunch of news with ads
between.
With ads.
Right.
Newsletters for health practices are
typically ads with ads between them.
Right.
I found what works better in healthcare
has been sending...
just very like targeted emails about so if
someone like if something this is where
you have to just get sophisticated with
both your strategy but also the technology
that you're using if a sixteen year old
is coming in like they're a sixteen year
old athlete or they're a twenty whatever
it is um they could be any age
athlete or they're a runner um you know
thirty year old it doesn't matter what it
is like sending them information that's
targeted to them that will actually help
them that's not uh just we need to
push this out and so we're going to
show you pictures of our team
doing something silly.
Yeah.
Like to use my example with Jesse and
his big ass calendar,
like his newsletter probably wouldn't be
like,
we've added purple stickers to the package
if you buy it.
Like that's not news.
Right.
This is where people like Tim Ferriss or
James Clear, their newsletters,
Mark Manson,
their newsletters take off because they're
like...
I think it was Tim Ferriss who does
like three, two, one or James Clear.
It's like three things I'm reading,
two things I'm thinking about,
one thing I'm doing or whatever.
It's like I become different even if I
skim his newsletter.
But practice owners or providers sending
out newsletters, it's like I, I, I, I,
I.
I will defend myself because I just said,
James Coy says,
here's three things I'm reading.
Here's two things I'm doing.
But it's about,
here's my suggestion to you.
I think it could benefit you.
Not just what I did.
I read a book.
It's like great, cool story, bro.
Exactly.
And I think it goes back to the
productivity thing.
It feels like we're doing something if we
send our newsletter every month.
Blast it.
And I think there's value in newsletters
if you have a targeted list who is
signing up for your newsletter.
I don't necessarily think most practices
that I've seen,
whether it's in PT or in other kind
of clinical healthcare,
they're not using newsletters the way
newsletters are intended to be used.
And then they're like,
but why isn't it resulting in anything?
Well,
not to be nitty gritty or overly critical,
stop calling it a newsletter.
You're not in the news business.
What business are you in?
We're in the exercise business.
All right,
but do I need exercises in my...
Do I need what you're in in my
inbox?
No.
What are you giving me to give me
a reason to spend ten seconds,
even ten seconds of my freaking day,
to clicking that?
Because then I've got to spend brain power
trying to decipher what the hell it is,
why it's in there.
I don't think Jesse sent me one email.
He never asked me to send up an
email, probably because he's like,
I don't have a reason to get your
email.
I don't have a reason to email you.
I mean,
I had a very recently healthcare company
here in New England that I am a
patient of send me a newsletter that was
focused on diabetes.
And I was just like, well, I don't.
So I unsubscribed.
I was like,
I don't have I don't have diabetes.
Like, why are you sending this to me?
It was it's really like it's the it's
a quick way for people to ignore you
or get annoyed with you.
This is when, you know,
someone's following a template blindly.
Exactly.
Send out an email.
Why?
Because it's Friday.
It's Friday.
Yeah.
How often should you, I was always asked,
how long should you,
how often should you post?
How often should you send out an email?
And I would go back to when I
was in radio.
How often should I turn on the microphone
when you have something to say?
And if you don't,
shut up and play some Pearl Jam.
Don't do it if you don't have anything
to, I mean, that is like,
if listeners take, you know,
viewers take nothing away,
like don't say anything if you don't have
anything to say.
Cause people will remember that.
They'll be like,
whenever the guy opens his mouth,
whenever they send out an email, it's,
it's crap.
And you only get so many opportunities
where you can't wash that image off
anymore.
Oh no, I see that name.
What do they even do?
I don't remember.
Just it's crap.
Yeah.
All right.
Um, that's it.
That's a keep it or dump it.
I will say thanks to,
I think I'm going to one of their
conferences, US Physical Therapy.
That's a big nationwide network of clinics
focused on developing clinicians and not
burning them out.
Leadership tracks, mentorship,
career growth,
and the stability to build your future in
this profession of physical therapy.
If you want to find a place that
supports how you want to practice,
that's USPH.
USPH.com.
That's USPH.com.
What...
do you want your parting shot to be
oh wait i gotta push the button we
do have a i don't know how long
this is gonna last because it's like i
gotta push buttons this is the parting
shot one last mic drop moment no pressure
just your legacy on the line
All right.
No pressure.
Just your legacy in the line.
What's your parting shot for today?
A marketing doesn't work.
I think I'll just go back to what
we were just talking about.
Don't say, you know,
if you don't have anything meaningful to
say, don't say anything.
I mean, grandma and mom's advice.
That, you know, wear clean underwear,
I think is a good one,
but I don't know if that's in my
scope.
But yeah,
but then this also sounds like we're
contradicting when we say,
make sure you're consistently frequency,
intensity, time, type, volume,
progression,
creating good paid or organic content.
But that should push you back to, oh,
why am I actually,
what could I be doing with all these
email addresses?
Right, right.
Maybe I could be doing something,
dare I say, different.
Dare I say different and better?
What are the odds different and better?
I would say that the bar is not
even on the, it's not low,
it's on the floor to differentiate
yourself from other providers.
They're not even listening to this
podcast.
And I'm not saying that this podcast is
a thing that's going to separate you from
the next.
I'm saying the mindset that this podcast
might bring you would help you do that.
Stop sending newsletters.
Why?
Because you're not in the news business.
You're in the, I don't know,
whatever business you're in business.
send that via email dot, dot, dot.
Right.
So, uh, don't, yeah.
If you have nothing good to say,
shut your damn.
That's it for this one.
We're just getting warmed up.
Smash, follow,
send it to a friend or crank up
the next episode.
Want to go deeper?
It is at PG podcast.com or find us
on YouTube and socials at PG podcast.
And legally, none of this was advice.
It's for entertainment purposes only.
See, Keith?
We read the script.
Happy now?