There should be a video.
There it is.
Look at that.
A little time lapse.
Is there a camera?
That was me.
We're live.
That's later.
I'll be riding the...
Are you going to go to Disney?
no i was thinking about going to i
don't think i realized how close disney
world land sorry to the disney people
let's go disney disney how close disney
was it's like a hundred yards away yeah
as we're live at csm uh eric fernandez
from hyper ice appreciate you taking time
out appreciate you having me your booth is
never slow because you've got great
touchable wearable tryable things that's
for sure uh less than a year ago
i never got to really ask this but
you have the hyper ice nike crossover
collab should i like run with the camera
yeah we'll bring it back a little late
for that huh
People have seen it.
I'll put the link on there.
If you haven't seen it,
just Google Nike hyper ice shoe shoe.
Yeah.
And I think you told me about how
long does something like Nike doesn't let
the swoosh go anywhere unless like seventy
eight steps are checked and cross checked.
And yeah, there's a lot of steps.
So how long does something like that?
I mean,
it was about three years in development.
Okay, that's even longer than I thought.
For anyone who doesn't know,
it's a high-top shoe that has Normatex
dynamic air compression therapy built into
it,
along with an electric heating technology.
So you get heat and compression therapy on
the ankle and Achilles complex.
On a wearable shoe.
On a wearable.
You can go, you can dance,
you can run,
you can do whatever you want.
It's awesome.
It is very much like a performance,
wellness, self-care product.
You'll never see it in a clinic.
That's not what it's meant for, of course.
But really cool piece of tech.
And funny aside,
I almost shouldn't say this,
but it's a live stream.
We're having fun.
So you want to know the origin.
Forever we wanted to build a performance,
tech-enabled shoe with Nike.
And for a long time,
I think they were like,
I don't think we want that.
And they had something else they wanted us
to build, a heating and cooling vest,
temperature controlling for their
athletes.
And we were like, we can do it,
but we really want to do this shoe.
We went to this very small,
intimate prototype meeting with like a
couple of their highest end athletes and
their innovation people, private summit.
And we had mocked up the shoe.
We almost weren't supposed to have like
brought it.
It was so like the battery pack was
like taped to the back of the calf,
like earlier.
It's just got to hang on for the
meeting.
And the shoe stole the show.
Like athletes wouldn't give it back.
They were obsessed.
And then it was just iteration and
iteration after that.
And three years later, now we have it.
And then like, what do you do?
You wait a year and then you come
out with like color or something.
Like you got to do a twist.
Like we got more stuff coming.
We're not done.
I was on the ramp getting on the
airplane to fly here.
And the guy in front of me had
high top Nike's Wu-Tang clan,
like limited.
And I literally,
I'm not a sneaker head or anything,
but I respect.
And I was like, my man,
those must not have been easy to get.
Like those had to be insane to get.
That's what you want.
Now, I just saw the other day,
you have the orange.
Yep, that was an Olympic special product.
I don't know why I want them more,
but I do because they're orange.
And because you can't get them.
Because you can't get them.
There is no amount of money you could
offer me, man,
that will get you a pair.
Oh, so it's just Olympic athletes.
Just for like fifty Olympic athletes.
That's cool.
Limited run, special edition.
That's fun.
All right, so let's get spicy.
Okay, spicy.
You're the last live stream of the day.
Okay,
so you've behaved yourself long enough,
and now we can just be ourselves.
I'm four steps away from the hotel bar
and going to dinner.
And then I'll come back tomorrow and we'll
do it all again.
We'll do it all again.
Everything's great.
Isn't that lovely?
Why is outpatient PT in a race to
the bottom right now?
Oh, all right.
That's a loaded question.
Shots fired.
So here's the thing, right?
Outpatient is one of the most
cost-effective ways to manage your
long-term care.
We know that.
The data is so clear.
All over.
Yet it's like the bottom of the funnel.
It's kicked to the side.
There's so many challenges.
Everybody knows the X, right?
Reimbursements are going down.
Cost of doing business is going up.
And I think the challenge is nobody wants
to break out of the model.
So we're all looking for efficiencies,
right?
So AI, everything in your life these days.
And AI is amazing.
There are so many things that it's
bringing to the space in terms of
efficiency of your notes and documentation
and being more personalized.
There's so many things.
But all we're doing is squeezing
efficiency into a model that doesn't work.
So in my mind,
it's like we're changing the band-aid
versus actually triaging and fixing the
problem.
And so it has its place.
But if we just think we can keep
hammering in the same direction we've
always been going,
that's the definition of insanity, right?
How do we expect the equation to change?
So what would or what could or what
should the clinic,
the outpatient ortho clinic in ten years
look like?
And then spoiler alert,
whoever does that now has the first mover
advantage.
But what do you envision a clinic in
five or ten years looking like?
Look,
I think there's always going to be
diversity, right?
Like a hospital-based system,
a large corporate PT,
your private practice,
they're all going to be different,
of course.
But I think at the end of the
day, there's high-level changes.
And the first one is,
let's stop calling them patients.
They're consumers.
At the end of the day,
your patients are consumers, right?
And it's like,
we all choose to spend our money where
we perceive value.
And how many times have you heard from
the therapist,
my patient can barely afford their co-pay
or X, Y, and Z.
And I never want to minimize people's
individual financial situations.
Hardship is real.
But people invest their time and their
money,
typically their two most precious
resources, where they perceive value.
And I think if we don't start thinking
about them as consumers and looking at
consumer behavior and consumer choice,
we're not gonna solve the equation.
A lot of people now are talking about
PT being the primary care of MSK.
I believe in that model.
That's how I interact with my therapist
and my trusted care team.
There's no reason why your PT shouldn't be
the quarterback.
But I think if you're going to be
the quarterback, one,
you have to figure out how to interact
with the other disciplines and the other
areas of health and wellness.
And I think you have to provide services
and solutions to consistently meet the
patient's need.
I've said this a lot lately,
but like my need is a forty one
year old who still tries to play men's
league hockey with a bunch of twenty two
year old.
You know what I mean?
Like and everything else I do,
like my needs are going to go up
and down over time,
but it's consistent and it's going to go
up.
Sure.
And I think too often you see clinics
that are really,
really good at providing care.
They care terribly.
They're great at the pinnacle of need,
right at the peak of the wave.
And as we go down to the trough,
that's where we fall off.
That's where patients don't complete.
They don't come to their last couple
visits.
They don't stick with maintenance
programs.
We also haven't designed,
for the most part,
services to give them a way to stay
connected.
A life cycle.
Right.
But I think if we can crack that
trough, then you've won.
And I think it's just like,
You need cash-based revenue.
You need retail services.
You need to be really efficient on
billing.
You need the remote monitoring.
You need all of it.
You know what I mean?
There's not one silver bullet.
But if we don't start moving in that
direction, I don't know.
It's like DME.
It's a race to the bottom.
Is this a good moment?
I feel like we go through cycles.
We go through eras, like Taylor Swift.
feel like are we in now the getting
married era right but i feel like the
the era is like and we always take
it to the extreme right we're doing you
know we're shoving coffee where coffee
doesn't belong uh to feel better i know
what that is there's a name for that
there is a name for that i'm not
sure we're putting coffee there but we're
in the moment where people are like decaf
right but we're in the moment now where
people are like okay i'm gonna invest the
health and wellness era and of course
there's good bad and indifferent but we're
in that
Isn't PT, like, sort of poised to, like,
be a good beacon for that?
We have the real estate.
We have clinics in your communities.
We have relationships.
Isn't it the best position?
Yes.
I would say yes.
The best, like, the skill set?
So are we just medicalizing this instead
of leaning into it?
Or are we saying, well, actually,
which is the worst two words?
No one wants to hear, well, actually.
Allegedly, apparently.
According to the literature.
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.
No, I mean, I think that's the challenge,
right?
And there's a challenge in terms of like
educating our therapists in terms of,
you know, what is the continuum of care,
right?
What is like the more holistic approach?
I think it's what are your services?
But I mean, look, the trend is really,
really clear on wellness.
The money just keeps going up.
People are pouring more and more money
into it.
And like,
why is somebody spending a hundred and
twenty bucks for a stretch session?
Why is somebody paying, personally,
a whole lot of money for my lifetime
fitness membership?
I prioritize it.
It helps in the health and wellness.
We also have to remember, I'm forty-one,
I'm getting older.
My younger cousins, the next generation,
they're coming up.
They want this.
You know what I mean?
So I think if we base our model
around what worked ten years ago,
that community's aging out.
Understand what people value.
We mentioned before,
you vote with your time and your money.
You know this because you sell things,
you listen to,
Hyper is not gonna create something for it
to sit on a shelf.
It's not how you work.
I mean,
what amount of time worth of research is
done before you even make a new anything
or a change to something or add a
feature?
You're not doing that, you know,
in no time,
you're putting time and effort into
understanding what people are looking for.
Totally.
And I think what you're seeing from like
a health and wellness trend, you see this,
like that's the other thing, right?
We have to look outside of what has
been our narrow focus.
If we ignore learnings from the fitness
industry, from hospitality, right?
If we think cryotherapy is just this weird
thing or stretch is this weird,
like we can't.
One,
we have to learn from those to see
what people are responding to and what
people are asking for.
I took heat because I asked a question
because Stretch Labs, right,
which is a franchise or other things or
spinoffs and PTs were saying, well,
actually, and I remember just saying,
I asked a question.
I was like,
are you mad they're doing it or are
you mad they're doing it better than you?
Right.
Are you mad that they thought about it?
Well, they're just buying this thing.
I'm like,
they are super transparent on what they're
selling.
You will be stretched for forty five
minutes.
You will pay me this and people show
up.
Well, actually, no, my man.
The expectation and the reality are met.
And that's when people walk out feeling
great that they just gave someone money
because they got more than they put in.
And it's ambiguous when you go to a
PT.
What it'll cost?
What am I getting?
Am I here for a week or is
this an ongoing thing forever?
Expectation meets reality.
And if it's misaligned,
that's when people feel robbed.
That's when people don't show up back up
because they don't understand.
Where am I on this journey?
Totally.
I mean,
like one of the best PT experiences I
ever had was with this guy, Mike Silva,
who's like come Mike's amazing, right?
Like patient experience, guru,
amazing therapist,
amazing business leader, growth coach,
et cetera.
But like I was running into some knee
pain issues.
I was training for a half marathon and
he invited me down to his house and
like treated me in his private treatment
space.
And sure, he was doing me a favor.
He took like an hour and a half
of his time,
but I have never been so thoroughly
diagnosed.
He knew what I was in for,
but he looked at the whole body.
He looked at everything.
And he clearly said,
here's what we need to do to get
you back on track.
But here's what you need to be thinking
about for six and twelve months down the
road.
Here's what you need to be thinking about
for the next five years based off your
age.
Like, it was amazing.
It gave me such a clear roadmap.
You understood.
That was a good.
It's a way to understand and make sure
that there.
I always say my one of my soapboxes
is the goal of communication is not to
have communicated.
It's to achieve understanding.
Yes.
And just because I said something one way,
Michael could have said, well,
you're going to need this.
If he saw the look in your eye,
like, I don't think he gets it.
Or do you understand that?
Say it back to me.
Like, explain that to me.
I just want to help.
I'm gonna make sure I'm the same page.
If you walked out of there without being
clear, it's everything's ambiguous.
And there's no there's no wonder people
don't.
If I hear it again,
people don't understand what we do.
How good are you explaining it?
Well, it's the APTA's job.
I got news for you.
The APTA is a professional association
where professionals associate.
We're the profession.
That's not outside.
Someone the other day was arguing on
Facebook how APTA needs to do a national
ad campaign to get patients.
And I was like,
I don't think they should.
That's not what they're built for.
They're not built for that.
They're built for professional
associations.
That's what they are.
Understand what that is.
Right, yeah, no, I mean, look,
there's so many challenges there we can
unpack.
There's also just so many opportunities,
but you said something there that's key,
right?
If I'm gonna wait for somebody else to
solve the problem for me,
I'm gonna be the last thing that can
work out.
There's more patients out there than the
industry will ever have the bandwidth to
care for.
And so if we actually think about that
for a second,
then let's think about who we're going
after.
I get it.
As a healthcare professional,
therapists wanna help everybody.
They don't care about demographics,
they don't care about income levels,
ability to pay, et cetera.
but you can't deliver care unless the
dollar and cents works.
And if your P&L is in the red,
you're going out of business.
And so you have to be comfortable charging
what your value is and setting a value
and creating a value.
That's the other thing too, right?
Like is a forty five minute stretch worth
one hundred twenty bucks?
Depends on who's doing it and how I
feel when I'm leaving.
They put the money up and people will
come for it, you know?
And so, again,
I just I think it's like we have
to challenge everything appropriately
because the existing model, man,
It's not working for a lot of people.
Look how many companies are here trying to
recruit every possible kid they could
coming out of school.
Nobody can attract, retention, burnout,
all the buzzwords.
You know what I mean?
It's not that people are doing bad
business.
It's not that leaders don't care.
The model needs to be rebuilt.
The system is perfectly designed to get
the result it gets.
If you don't like the result of getting,
it's not the world.
It's the system you're in.
And I know it's bad and it's hard
to change.
But if you don't,
you're not going to have a job or
a clinic in, I don't know,
three to five years.
A lot of these things aren't going to
exist.
You know,
there's people out there doing it well.
There's models that are working.
There's people making that change.
You know, who's going to be first?
Who's going to follow?
Who's going to figure out how to adapt
to a system level?
Those are all...
The one that hurts is when someone told
me,
there are people stupider than you making
more money than you.
And I'm like, well, shit.
It doesn't even hurt because I know it's
true.
It is true.
As soon as you go, no, it's not.
I go, dude, someone invented a pet rock,
dude.
Like, it's dumb.
Remember the Chia Pet?
Chia Pet.
I mean, all of them.
Snap bracelets.
You're more likely to overthink it than
you are to underthink it.
And what's the worst that happens?
try again because if you do nothing you
it's inevitable that this will not work
out yeah uh last thing i'll ask what's
an uncomfortable truth owners need to hear
right now in twenty twenty six an
uncomfortable truth we said some
uncomfortable yeah i feel like we've said
some uncomfortable truth um
I mean,
I think it really is that the model
is not working.
You can yell at insurance companies all
you want.
I got news for you.
They're not listening.
They don't care.
They're not going to change.
Facebook comment section is not where
things get changed.
You either do it differently or you die.
I'm very sorry.
You'd be blunt.
That's what I think.
Don't get me wrong.
I just think, look, here we go.
You're absolutely undervaluing yourself
and your services,
and you're not willing to change.
And if you're not willing to change,
what do you expect to happen?
And you're gonna get what you deserve.
Look, change can be scary.
Or change can be exciting, right?
Like,
every problem is actually an opportunity.
It's the mindset.
It's how we approach it.
It's how we attack the problem.
It doesn't have to be perfect.
Just take a step.
Like, you know,
we say this all the time, right?
There's not a silver bullet.
There's not one hyperized solution you can
buy or a solution from any company in
this room that you can buy that's going
to fix it.
But take a step, man.
Try something different.
Fall on your face.
Like, again,
you just got to get out there and
do it.
All right.
Last thing we do on the show,
we call it the parting shot.
This is the Parting Shot.
One last mic drop moment.
No pressure.
Just your legacy on the line.
Pressure here, Eric.
What do you want to leave with the
audience?
Parting Shot, what do you got?
Hawaiian pizza is the best pizza on the
planet.
Oh, yeah, we didn't even talk about that.
Hawaiian pizza is the best pizza on the
planet.
I agree with you.
I like it.
Also, I think it's a Canadian invention.
So then there's maybe some geopolitical
angles there.
I don't think the best bagels come from
New York City.
All right.
Where do they come from?
I think North Jersey, Bergen County.
Okay.
Close, but different.
Yeah.
Okay.
And if you have heard of Hyperice,
a percussion gun, Normatech,
any of our stuff,
or even stuff that looks like us,
and you think it doesn't belong in your
PT clinic...
Come find me.
All right.
Let me prove you wrong or prove me
wrong.
You can prove me wrong.
I will absolutely buy you a Hyperice tool
you're choosing.
There we go.
Eric Fernandez, Hyperice.
Thank you for stopping by the live stream
studio.