Broadcasting way too early from three
separate Wi-Fi connections.
It's PT Breakfast Club with Tony Meritato,
Dave Kittle, and Jimmy McKay.
All right, good morning,
PT Breakfast Club.
Wow,
it feels like we took a month off,
Tony Meritato,
as you're riding in the clinic.
How's things?
They're good.
So I cannot believe how many interviews
you got done.
Every time I logged on,
you were talking to someone different.
What was the final count?
I think it was twenty nine.
Twenty nine.
Yeah.
And I didn't do I didn't do any
on day three.
So CSM is really like three days.
It's Thursday, Friday, Saturday.
There's some pre-conference stuff.
what i did was in the in years
past i would just say tell me when
you're free and i'd let people schedule
all over the place and then this time
i reached out to sort of my email
database and said hey listen i'm just free
on thursday i let thursday fill up once
thursday was getting close i opened up
friday and when friday got close i was
going to open up saturday and then i
just looked at the sheer number and i
was like i'm good i don't need to
wake up the third day so yeah twenty
nine so what day one thursday was full
I don't know, maybe six,
seven hours back to back to back to
back to back.
The next day was like three quarters of
a day.
And then Saturday,
I just I walked around and I just
looked at things and talked to people and
didn't have to carry a microphone or a
camera, any of that stuff.
So you can still hear it.
I'm burnt.
I mean, and I flew home.
I got home Tuesday.
I got home Monday at two at one
or two in the morning.
So, I mean,
I've been home for twenty four hours and
I'm crushed.
wow any what were the big takeaways for
you you know i think i said this
in the facebook group which is things show
up everybody is aghast online like ai
shows up and we talk about that ad
nauseam
The topics for CSM or any conference like
this have to be turned in like nine
months ahead of time just due to the
logistics and all those different things.
That's some things people might not
understand.
I don't understand why that is.
Like,
why are so many of these things still
operating like it's nineteen seventy two?
I don't know.
The timelines are ridiculous.
I mean, I understand it based on,
because some people are judging if they're
coming based on if they get picked or
not,
because then work will pay for it or
not.
So I get that.
I still lean back into, take an event,
like there's an event called
Technopalooza,
which is put on by the Academy of
Leadership Innovation.
Essentially, you know me,
I break everything down into like,
what is it like?
And it's antique roadshow,
but for technology and healthcare.
So they set up a room with,
you know,
thirty tables in a circle and then they
let technology, you know,
people selling technology or producing
technology or trying to get funded for
technology, bring out your wares.
It's a flea market for technology, right?
And I think that's great.
A lot of that stuff needs to be
seen and felt and touched.
It's a children's touch and play museum.
I still think, though,
with the rate of innovation,
the rate of technology,
why isn't that at the very least a
monthly live stream where two companies
can do a Zoom or a live stream?
talking about what they do.
Do Shark Tank, but do it every month.
Like,
I don't know if you want to wait
twelve months to talk about innovation at
stage.
Mathematically,
even with I think the number was sixteen
thousand PTs this year,
sixteen thousand people this year at CSM,
sixteen thousand out of three hundred
thousand physical therapists in the US
alone.
That's a fraction of the people.
I know it feels big while you're there
and it is.
There are just way, I mean,
if you had a choice,
who do you want to sell to?
Everybody at CSM or everybody not at CSM?
You know the answer.
The answer is not.
So I'm not saying don't do things at
a conference.
I'm saying don't only, in my opinion,
don't only do things at a conference.
Just what Larry Benz was saying in his
article.
Oh, I got to email him back.
He wants to do a live stream about
the article we co-wrote together.
He wrote most of it,
and I got to chime in like a
radio sidekick, which I was happy to do.
I was just like,
he had this thing all structured.
I was like, yeah, and what about this?
I just got to drop one-liners.
But you saw what he was talking about
in that article everywhere, which is...
organizations are dropping twenty five,
fifty, seventy five,
a hundred K to recruit PT students.
And I like the energy, you know,
people giving away iPads and iPods and
stress balls and pens and
things like that, that's great.
And then my question is, all right,
it's Tuesday the seventeenth.
What do you do?
You wait eleven and a half months before
you do it again?
Of course not.
Then how are you showing up outside of
Indeed?
Because that's, those are, Indeed,
that's the table, it's table stakes.
Right?
It's the same stuff, just different.
Right.
Have you been to one?
All right.
No, I've never gone.
No, I've never been.
Next year, it's in Philly.
So it's a short flight or a medium
drive for you.
I would love to hear what your take
is.
You've been to PPS.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was nice.
I like it.
I mean,
if I didn't have the media stuff that
I do,
there's no way I would have gone.
I don't feel like there's any reason for
me to go to any of those kinds
of things if I didn't want a chance
to meet people in person.
Right.
So there was a TikTok video where the
therapist was like, what are we doing?
Why are we doing this?
And, you know,
he brought up a bunch of good points.
It's like you've got a bunch of PTs
talking to each other.
It's networking,
which you've said you're getting there.
You're going to be there.
It's connecting with people.
But then connecting with people to do
what?
Right.
You're standing around all yelling about
the same things and the people who are
doing the
the problem solving or out doing the
problem solving it's.
So there's a,
remember that book I brought up six types
of working genius.
One of like the,
one of the activities is what's called
galvanizing.
It's like getting everybody together.
Hey everybody,
we got to go over here and do
this.
We're going to go down here and we're
going to do this.
And then we're going to accomplish this.
The more I dug into it,
I thought I would have been good at
galvanizing.
Cause I'm the rah-rah guy,
but that stuff's exhausting.
Cause I don't like getting people
together.
I like being together.
But then what's the point?
What are we doing here?
You feel like the people at the protest,
what do we want?
Change.
When do we want it?
Now.
What are we willing to do to get
it?
Chant.
Chant the same chant over and over.
I thought we were doing it.
We're chanting.
We're chanting for change.
It's like, no, man,
you got to go to the uncomfortable part
and you got to risk some stuff.
Decent amounts of clinical information
I don't go to that.
I mean, you could cheat.
You could just go to APTA's CSM website
and take a look at what all the
topics are.
I think by next year, their app,
their conference app will obviously have
AI integrated.
So you can put in a profile like
I'm Tony, I'm a practice owner.
These are the patients I see.
And then hit enter and it'll come up
with your suggested conference.
Okay, based on what you told me,
you should see on Thursday,
you should go to these three sessions.
On Friday, you should go to these three.
And that'll create the conference for you.
That's my guess anyway.
What was the general take on AI?
I don't know.
I might have been the worst person to
ask because I wasn't in the conference
rooms.
I was standing there talking to twenty
nine different people.
I think the people that are playing with
it every single day are the ones that
are going to be smartest with it.
Just the ones that are batting it around
like a kitten with a ball of yarn
are going to be the ones that figure
it out because they're going to be able
to suss out the companies that don't have
their stuff together and the ones that do.
The ones that really save you time and
money and the ones that don't.
Luck favors the people that play with
stuff.
Yeah.
Were there any takeaways like any of the
interviews you did or people you spoke to
that you didn't expect what they were
saying or you got a new perspective?
Yeah.
I mean,
there were a lot of AI sessions.
I didn't get to go to them.
So, again,
I might be the worst person to ask.
Not even just AI.
I just mean in general.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Things that I was shocked about.
Well, the APTA, again,
it's talk right now,
but APTA has said our new strategic plan
is, or our focus of the organization,
usually you have three focuses.
Number one for APTA going forward is
reimbursement.
Number two,
I don't even remember what they said
because they talked about how important
reimbursement was so long.
So, like, number one is reimbursement.
Number two is sixty miles that way and
we're not even going to get to it.
They're just like,
if we're not improving or working on
reimbursement,
we know we've lost the room.
And that was everywhere from APTA.
Like, look, we've been working on it,
but you've told us this is the most
important thing,
so we'll stop working on this other stuff.
Um...
Because that's how things work.
You only have a realistic amount of
bandwidth.
But if that's the biggest problem,
and I think it is,
if you fix reimbursement,
you have to worry less about the price
of education.
So you could pick one or the other.
Reimbursement is going to help students in
the future and current clinicians and
business owners.
Changing the price of education is going
to help future students,
not even current students,
just future students.
So I know which one I would go
after.
And I think that's the right one,
which is reimbursement.
How are they going to do that?
I don't know.
I'll call APT.
I'll get someone on my show to figure
that out.
I don't know.
Isn't reimbursement something they've been
working on for a decade?
Yeah.
I mean,
like the people that I know are like,
my man, bring Jimmy to work day.
We'll show you what this looks like and
what we do.
It's a boring process, but it's necessary.
Right.
All right.
Well, obviously,
I think you probably took more away from
that experience than anybody who was
there, truthfully,
between how you connected with how many
people, you know,
you built deeper relationships with.
Yeah, I think you're right.
I mean, it is fun.
And then, you know, you pushed me.
My buddy Drew has been pushing me to
do more video stuff over the last two
years.
And this isn't to sound cocky,
but more people knew who I was.
And what I want people to take away
from that is I want those people in
your community to know who you are.
So I need you to turn the phone
around and I need you to look into
it.
So when you walk down the street or
whatever,
or when people see you just online,
they go from no like to trust.
They skip past all those things.
I want businesses to do that.
I mean,
that would be an interesting case study
for like a future episode.
Somebody brought this up and said,
Tim Cook has more followers than Apple.
And I'm like, that can't be true.
And then I went and looked and it
was.
And Mark Cuban had more followers than the
Dallas Mavericks when he was the owner.
I'm like, how is that a thing, right?
And it's because people follow people.
Yeah,
there's a cool brand or I'm a fan,
so I'll follow that for updates.
But the thing that I'm looking for is
a connection to a person who's the face
of.
That's where having a CEO, I mean,
it doesn't have to be Tim Cook,
but a visible CEO is important.
Yeah.
So if you're looking to move the needle,
you should be the CEO of your brand.
You should be the face of your brand.
It shouldn't be a logo.
And for me, for the longest time,
I've always pushed the guests.
Like everything has been the guest,
but they're not consistent enough.
Yeah.
So yeah, have the guest...
But you've got to have something somebody
records.
That's why it's called an anchor,
like a news anchor.
You're the thing that holds it down and
holds it still.
And then other things can move around it.
So that was the one thing I noticed
is I would on purpose walk through the
hotel bar just to see who I saw.
I just want to see who's talking to
who.
And then who sees who.
It's the same.
Eighty six percent.
people from year to year.
Eighty six percent of people are the same.
Right.
I made that statistic up.
And then you see like a new,
you know,
fourteen percent of people showing up and
you're like, OK,
that person is you can you can spot
that person because that person has this
look on their face.
Yeah.
Bright eyed, mouth open, looking around,
still majority students,
which still amazes me.
Yeah.
I went as a third year student,
but I don't think any of my classmates
did.
So what are the students doing there?
I think they're trying to figure it out.
And they figured that a big group of
people who have it figured out,
and I'm using air quotes,
have it figured out.
Let's go bumpability.
So they go there looking for answers.
I think the thing that you actually find
there are more questions and connections.
The answers still aren't there.
The answers are later.
So if you want to connect with someone,
yeah, that's a good spot.
So is LinkedIn.
So is reaching out to five people in
the city you're in or the city you
want to be in.
Did anyone else do the kind of media
push that you did?
I don't think so.
Not that I saw.
I mean, U.S.
physical therapy was nice.
I contacted them maybe two months before
CSM and said, hey,
I want to do this.
I mean, I pitched them the moon.
I even pitched them,
you got you and Dave going.
They'd have to pay for it.
And I was like, you know,
but I shot the moon and I was
going to be okay with nothing, right?
And they were like, what do you need?
And what does this bring us?
Because again, I'm talking to a recruiter,
right?
And they're linear thinkers because
they're not linear thinkers,
but they're targeted thinkers because they
have to be.
They're like,
I have to roll in and get this
number of badge scans.
How do we get people?
They're looking at this like Maverick and
Top Gun in that bar.
It's a target-rich environment.
This bar is the only field of battle
that matters.
Nothing exists outside that room.
Where I look at it as this room
is where things are happening.
The field of battle for me is everywhere
but here.
That's why I didn't just record.
I went live.
And I don't even... I mean,
I was sort of checking the video to
make sure it wasn't grainy.
But I was on conference Wi-Fi.
And I might have got connected to a
secret Wi-Fi account that maybe everybody
didn't have access to to give me a
little bit of a boost in speed to
make sure my connection was a little
better.
But...
That's how I look at it as.
It's like,
what are we doing here that's going to
touch people not here?
Because the number of people not here is
infinitely larger than the people in the
room.
But I get it.
They're right there.
And there's that person.
And I've got a real connection.
And look at this eye contact.
Oh, we're getting somewhere.
I get it.
I'm not saying don't do this.
I'm saying don't only do this.
Because then if you look at these brands
in a week,
They're silent or they're,
I did make the conscious decision a few
years ago.
I was like, man,
when I listened to my CSM episodes,
I do,
all I talk about is the conference.
And again,
it's like talking about a baseball game
two weeks later.
It's like, no one cares.
It was like, I'm talking to you here.
Thank you.
But talk about it's the,
it's the ideas that aren't here.
We're not talking about, Ooh,
look at that.
Like,
but I was caught up in that in
the first couple of years I was at
CSM.
I was like, look,
this is where the magic happens.
Um,
I think APTA made a bigger push to
do stuff.
They're sharing more.
That's good.
But nobody was doing, I mean,
in the center of the expo hall,
they have like APTA's pavilion, right?
So, you know,
you've got booths up and down,
but APTA is like,
we have this area and around it are
like orthopedics, geriatrics,
they all get their own table, right?
Foundation for physical therapy research,
everything in like the APTA solar system,
they're next to each other with sort of
a town hall in the middle.
white carpet, right?
It's different than everything else.
Like it definitely sets the tone,
the APTA store.
So you could buy your, you know,
your coffee mug and everything like that.
My mind, damn that we, I needed,
we need to drop a sports center desk
down cameras.
Every it's, it's the red carpet, right?
I told you,
I got a buddy who works for Yahoo,
worked with him in radio.
He does Emmys, Grammys, Oscars,
Tony's like this guy's the entertainment
reporter.
And just watching him in a red carpet
is,
I'm like, that's the answer.
Just steal.
You don't have to reinvent the wheel.
It's either a news broadcast or it's a
social event broadcast.
That's what I would do.
I would do a stage,
a small stage with a sports center desk.
And who are we talking to next?
We're going live in ten.
Right.
Awesome.
I am encouraged by states and academies
now leaning into their own events and
trying to make those bigger.
So like, you know,
a lot of states have always done it.
I'm going to one in Ohio.
Yeah.
In April.
A lot of them are doing it now.
We're doing bigger ones because we're
coming up on like these big celebration
years.
Like APTA Ohio is celebrating.
Seventy five years of being an
association.
I know Illinois is the same.
So now you're going to see APTA just
turned one hundred.
when the APTA was founded,
twenty five years later, oh,
let's do state associations.
So now you're seeing the seventy fifth
anniversary for all these states.
And I think that's a great opportunity.
I keep seeing them,
a lot of them doing the same things
that we're going to throw a party.
And I'm like,
that's cool for the top ten percent who
can afford or want to go to a
party to celebrate a thing they may or
may not be attached to.
So it's a party for all the people
who are
on the board, right?
And then hopefully they're like,
why don't more people want to come?
Because there's no connection to you.
And why isn't there a connection to you?
Because you don't talk to them except for,
did you hear this?
And maybe we've talked about this before,
but difference between telling stories and
storytelling.
No.
Most organizations tell stories.
Our advocacy team is going to the hill.
That's telling a story, right?
It's like telling you what I'm doing and
what I did.
A laundry list.
That's what most newsletters are.
Most newsletters aren't news.
They're an operational update.
Most Instagram posts from organizations
aren't news.
They're not storytelling.
They're telling stories.
Look at these pictures.
Everybody downloaded CapCut three years
ago.
Everybody takes a hundred pictures.
Everybody puts it into a thing and remixes
it.
And that's their breakdown.
And the people watching it,
there's no story there.
It's a bunch of people I may or
may not know set to some dope music.
Cool.
And that gets some views so people think
it works.
but it doesn't because what's the goal be
seen or show what's going on and, and,
and storytelling and storytelling.
My friends,
even with AI takes a lot of fricking
effort.
I'll look, listen to my voice.
I'm forty eight hours later and I'm a,
I used to be a professional at this.
I am burnt.
What do you,
what did you see in your analytics?
You showed me YouTube.
Yeah.
So I was asking you,
I was showing you like the last thirty
days and I'll bring them up on screen.
I was so I was showing you the
last month and I was seeing a lot
of spikes towards the left,
which means two, three, four weeks ago.
I was expecting to see I saw more
impressions.
which means more people walking by the
store and glancing into the window.
I didn't necessarily see, not yet anyway,
because sometimes the statistics are a
little delayed two, three days.
So I'll look again.
I didn't see a giant spike in watch
time or views.
I saw impressions.
So impressions would be super superficial.
Views is a little deeper.
That's people walking into the store.
And then watch time is how long people
come into the store.
I on purpose made all these interviews in
the past.
I'd just be like, come by the booth.
Let's talk.
I was like super open ended because I
was under the impression of sort of what
the Washington Post was.
Thirty years ago,
ten thousand words is a better article
than three thousand words.
And now because of organizations like
Politico or Axios, you know,
the answer is actually the inverse.
It's like,
can you get to the point faster?
You get me all that information faster.
in a tenth of the words, that's better.
And people value that.
So I was doing ten and fifteen minute
interviews at most.
I'm like, give me the gist.
And if there's more meat on the bone,
we'll talk in a week.
We'll do it when...
Because that time was my biggest asset
that I paid for.
So I was doing... So again,
twenty-nine episodes or twenty-nine
interviews,
ten to fifteen minutes a pop at most.
What about your Facebook analytics,
though?
You showed me YouTube.
I mean,
the problem with YouTube is nobody...
like it's really hard to get therapists to
watch stuff on YouTube,
but I'm curious about Facebook.
Well, I can take a look.
Yeah.
Cause, cause I mean, why?
Because,
because YouTube isn't really a social
platform.
I don't know.
I've just never had much experience.
My Medicare channels always been like,
ten or twelve thousand views where,
you know,
I could get that on in a day
on Facebook for the same topics.
Yeah, I mean, you can see.
I mean,
I'm just an amateur at reading this,
but definitely a spike on the eighth.
That wasn't from CSM,
but then these are just slowly climbing.
So yeah, normal on the thirteenth.
So that's the thing.
Normal on the thirteenth.
The thirteenth was Friday.
I started here.
So on the twelfth, five thousand views.
So average, average, average,
above average, above average,
above average.
So maybe it's just delayed?
And those reviews,
what else can I look at?
Engagement went down.
But that could just be one engaging reel.
yeah that that causes a huge spike right
net followers followers went up that went
up to a thousand percent over the last
month which i i've put more effort into
facebook because you're putting more
effort into facebook just see if i get
the same result yeah over over the same
time period like so total followers
engagement they'll give me a couple
metrics i don't know yeah it doesn't look
Yeah.
I mean, normal, normal,
normal spike to spike yesterday and the
day before when I left.
But maybe that's how long it takes people
to react.
I don't know.
Yeah.
And I would think Facebook now is like
as they get enough information to see
who's watching,
then they can push it and put it
in front of the right people later.
Right.
Who are going to watch it.
Yeah.
So, yeah, I tuned into a bunch.
I commented,
but I'm in the middle of patient care.
So I watched twenty seconds and then I
get away from it,
which which also I have to make sure
I understand.
Right.
Like doing this stuff during the day.
I used to four or five years ago,
I would do all my interviews once going
live was a thing and easy enough to
do.
I would only do interviews at like six,
seven o'clock at night on the East Coast.
And I saw no increase in engagement
whatsoever.
I did see a decrease in engagement in
my social life because there I am sitting
there at six, seven o'clock at night.
I'd have to either do something and run
home to interview someone, which sucks,
or cut the night short, which sucks.
So I stopped doing that.
What I started doing was recording things.
And then using the program we're using
here, StreamYard,
and more programs will do it than this.
It'll go live later.
Yeah.
I've got like three interviews I got to
do today.
I don't know if I'll live stream them,
but I'll record them and then StreamYard
will then make it act.
The term in broadcast is live to tape.
So it was, it is live.
I'm not really editing anything.
It's just going to come out later.
It's like, you know,
the first time I realized David Letterman,
when he walked outside his studio to do
something weird on the street, I'm like,
it's eleven o'clock at night.
How is it?
How is it light out in Manhattan?
It's like, dude, that show, that show,
that show filmed at noon.
I'm like, oh, God,
I didn't understand that.
Recorded live, recorded live,
live to tape.
So real quick, you mentioned Larry Benz.
Yeah.
He had, and I didn't,
I don't remember much of it,
but he had talked about an accelerated DPT
program going to five years,
three years undergrad, I think.
And,
um did you guys talk about that at
all when you talked or worked with him
we haven't yet uh well we did no
sorry we did a little bit when i
had him and uh and tim flynn and
john childs on there i mean there are
programs that do three and three yeah all
they're saying is like guys there's some
stuff we can get rid of right i
mean i remember the first time you know
shout out to andrew guccioni who many
people probably don't know but he's an
interesting dude in academics
And I had just met him when I
was a student.
But again, I'm a second career student.
And this guy, Andrew Guccione,
was just walking around.
And his favorite term was bloat.
He's like,
there's just stuff in here that doesn't
need to be here.
And that was coming from an academic.
He was like, yes,
let's get all this stuff that doesn't need
to be here.
And let's spend more time working on stuff
that does need to be here.
And then when we look at the bottom,
when the nuts and bolts shake out,
is it, does it need even a three,
a three?
And I think sacred heart is a three
and three.
What they're saying is a three and two.
Yeah.
They're saying like, you know,
in five years you'll get a bachelor's
degree and a doctorate,
but you've got to know what you're doing.
You got to know you're doing that when
you walk in, which is fine.
Cause a lot of, I mean, geez,
I get DM from so many,
like I get DM from high school students.
Because now they're like,
what do I do with my life?
And their life is online.
So they Google physical therapy and they
wind up with me talking in circles.
And they're like, all right,
you're the authority.
I'm like, well, first of all, no,
I'm not.
But they're understanding what they're
looking to do.
You've seen it in Facebook groups.
I'm a freshman in college.
I'm thinking about doing this.
What I don't appreciate is when people
just start dogpiling on and just,
you know,
started like dumping on the profession or
like trying to talk the kid out of
something.
I'm like,
that's not what they're asking you.
So climb off your,
climb off your pedestal and,
and come on down and answer the question
that's actually being asked.
Well, you know, what's crazy to me, Dr.
Scott Davis.
Now I've never met him personally.
I think I've shared his name with you
before.
He's got a Tik TOK channel.
He talks about all stuff.
I believe he's been involved in academics.
I believe he's been involved in like APTA
and all of it.
His thing,
his response to the accelerated idea was
that, quote,
there isn't enough research to suggest
that we can do that.
Great.
He wants research to confirm that we can
reduce the amount of time it takes for
a therapist to get an education and start
treating.
That's insane to me.
Completely.
I have no research that going outside
today will help me have a good day,
so I'm going to stay inside all day.
Like, seriously?
Ben's saying you can choose a program like
Florida Gulf Coast,
and at least it's not crazy expensive.
I mean...
You know,
I actually was I got accepted to Florida
Gulf Coast,
but I think I choose chose FIU because
Florida Gulf Coast took summer off.
And so I could go through FIU and
get out six months quicker.
So you saw with them more people and
programs pushed towards a cash base,
the more you question why you need the
degree at all.
Yeah, a hundred percent.
We've said this, you know,
you've said this before.
And as soon as you said it,
I was like, yeah, it's like,
I know it protects the public.
I'm like, okay, take the smart, take,
take objectively and subjectively the best
physical therapist.
I know there's no such thing.
Let's pretend there is the Captain America
of PT.
This person, everything they do is right.
It's evidence-based.
Patients love them.
Everything's great.
This is Captain America plus Superman,
right?
Perfect.
we yank their license away from them for
no reason we just take it away are
they not exactly who they were three
minutes before that right are they not
they can't bill insurance okay but people
will still go out of their way to
seek that person they still follow all the
evidence
They can't bill insurance.
The reason I got my physical therapy
degree was so I can bill insurance.
I promise you, I did not know less.
I was already a business owner.
I was already involved.
So it's like,
the thing is now once insurance is going
to zero,
what is the actual benefit of having a
DPT?
What is the benefit of having the license?
What if you took seven years, five years,
uh, in, you know,
investment and you went and followed the
best clinicians out in the real world,
but not even just clinicians,
Best strength coaches,
best massage therapists,
best chiropractors.
And you said, hey,
I'll pay you twenty thousand dollars.
Let me just be your shadow for,
you know, three months.
Let me learn everything that you do,
why you do it, how you do it.
And like you would be phenomenal.
I saw Mike Reinhold for the first time
in person.
This is kind of cool when you walk
by and like sitting at the bar.
But like,
imagine that you got someone like Mike
Reinhold,
who you can't Google something really in
sports PT without landing on his page.
He's been doing live streams for close to
a decade.
Right.
he could just turn on and be like,
I'm doing a, give it a name,
give it a name.
It's common, right?
A preceptorship and apprenticeship.
And I've got three spots and you know,
it costs this or you work or it's
like how it is with a residency or
a fellowship come in with a, with a,
with a kinesiology degree or a
biomechanics degree.
Jason's saying,
wasn't there someone from the CSP?
That's the UK's APTA chartered society of
physical therapists.
Uh, there was, I didn't bump into them.
UK degrees have been four years forever
and they're really respect.
I mean, highly respected again.
Do you shake up the syllabus?
I'm not an academics though.
I get in trouble as most people do
when you start talking out of your lane,
but I'm a podcaster.
That's my lane.
Um,
But it was interesting to note that...
So Jason taught me research, by the way.
He's my research professor.
He made me understand research.
He's like, Jimmy,
and he has an Irish accent.
I can't do it,
but it sounds smarter when they say it.
He's like,
you just got to figure out what are
they saying.
so what?
What does it matter?
Now what?
What are we going to do?
Is it going to change anything?
So I was like, oh,
once you broke it down to what,
so what, now what?
I was like, oh, I got this.
But to me,
research was confusing and daunting and I
had every little nuance.
It was like, it's what, so what,
now what?
That's all that matters.
I think looking outside is probably a
great idea.
I mean,
Jason was trained overseas in Ireland.
Someone else is probably doing it more
efficiently.
In the US, we definitely do things bigger,
louder, and more expensive.
We are very, very good at bigger, louder,
more expensive.
We're very good at that.
I got a chance to talk to some
people from World Physio,
World Physiotherapy.
I found out about them during PT school.
So if APTA is our
it's the United nations.
It's like, there's a delegation from,
I think,
a hundred and twenty nine countries.
So a hundred and twenty nine different
countries have their own version of APTA
and they come together at world physio.
And that is the worldwide organization for
physical therapy.
They have a Congress every two years and
they're going to Guadalajara in twenty
seven.
So maybe we have the sports center desk
in Guadalajara.
Maybe we do it.
Maybe we do an international event before
we do an American event.
I don't know.
And then Lisbon, let's go to Portugal.
What other topics do we have?
I got nothing, man.
I mean,
I flew back on the plane and I
was going to do all this prep.
And I wound up staying awake until two
in the morning because I'm on West Coast
time still.
I'm dragging out of bed super early,
but I'm still on West Coast time.
And that's why I think I released five
or six episodes already from CSM via
podcast.
I'll do the rest throughout the week, but.
I'm burnt and I got nothing.
Dave's on vacation.
We haven't mentioned that.
Dave's in Florida, right?
Florida or something.
And Puerto Rico.
Puerto Rico.
So if you want to pull up,
if you can get it,
the screenshot I sent you this morning,
a popular topic, obviously.
And I think you mentioned I've been
working like crazy to understand Facebook
more than the other platforms right now.
Yeah.
And why?
Because it's returning higher?
Yes.
It's giving me the biggest bang for my
buck.
And I've learned some really amazing stuff
that I don't think anybody here knows.
So I was averaging,
I would say one to three,
one to three posts a day.
And what I might do is do three
posts a day,
for five days and then like nothing on
the weekends.
And so it would average one to three
over seven days.
But, um, and I was getting good growth.
I was adding five or six thousand
followers monthly.
But, um, what are you looking for?
Where, where, where am I?
Yeah, I'm trying to make it bigger.
I'll figure it out.
Keep going.
Okay.
So plus Facebook is monetized.
So they pay you ad revenue.
Plus they have bonuses.
I just got a three hundred and thirty
seven dollar bonus.
I got a bonus because I got paid
a thousand dollars in ad revenue in a
week.
Like it's a crazy thing.
But anyway,
so I've been working on figuring this out
because.
You know,
there's huge value in building a Facebook
page,
especially if you're outpatient
orthopedic.
This is your target demographic.
You know, we treat adults,
adult geriatric.
They or their adult children are on
Facebook more than other platforms.
So I increased my publishing cadence to
ten posts a day.
I added posting photos and a couple
text-only posts,
which are doing really great.
I would say right now, since February one,
we went from averaging like three million
views a month,
and that's usually because one or two
posts would take off, to we just crossed,
I think it was,
eleven million views this morning on the
last four weeks.
Those are wild numbers, man.
Yeah.
Revenue is two thousand dollars on the
last four weeks,
but that includes a three hundred and
thirty seven dollar bonus.
So no big deal.
Don't worry about it.
And like I said,
we are gaining between five and seven
thousand followers monthly.
So I think we just crossed sixty thousand
followers for reference.
January, two thousand twenty five.
We were at about two thousand followers.
So just over a year now,
a year and two months.
How many things that you've created are
amazing?
None of it.
But here's the thing.
This is what I am still scared to
fully embrace this.
So I use AI, I use ChatGPT,
I go back and forth,
I take screenshots of my analytics,
I put it into ChatGPT, I say, hey,
give me some help analyzing this,
help me develop kind of a strategy.
And one of the things that ChatGPT
continues to say is,
republish your old content yeah and i was
like wait a minute what about duplicate
content don't i thought platforms hate
duplicate content and they said well don't
publish the same video three and four
times a week
But if you go back a couple months,
you go back nine months,
and you grab a video that did well
then and publish it now,
you are going to get – there's no
penalty.
You're going to get – Are you changing
things like the title, the caption?
Are you changing the length of the –
are you trimming the video at all?
So maybe like to try to like –
Usually, I will change what I post.
So like I used to –
post a long narrative with it just to
optimize for the algorithm to understand
what the video is about.
Now it's like one sentence and that's it.
I made it really short.
Same exact video but I changed the post
that goes out with the video.
I'm going to see if I can come
in here on my desktop and
I mean, I went back.
So what I do is I go into
Meta.
I go back.
There we go.
I limit the date range to like January,
two thousand twenty five.
I look at all the videos that were
posted and then from there.
I picked the ones that did well.
I picked the ones that I want to
repost.
I download them because you can download
them.
I asked, I said,
should I unlist or hide the old videos?
And I said, no, don't do that.
Don't delete them.
Don't unlist them.
Don't hide them.
And it just said every platform is good
with you doing that.
They want the greatest hits.
Why wouldn't you?
They understand you can't get blood from a
stone if it grows the channel.
I mean,
I walked through the bar at CSM a
couple times and I got into arguments,
not arguments,
but people from that series that I did
with the Avengers.
Yeah.
And people were like arguing,
I don't think that, you know,
home care would be this.
I think they're actually, and I was like,
how cool is that?
Like people grabbed onto something enough
that they're giving their opinion.
Like they liked it enough to fight about
it.
That's when you know you're onto
something.
So I'm going to do more of that
stuff.
Don't worry about it.
So this is your total therapy focusing on
knee replacements?
Which something you said to me earlier
today in this episode,
I wonder if I should change this from
total therapy solutions,
physical therapy to just Tony Maritato,
Anthony Maritato,
like branded me the business instead of
the company.
Wouldn't you also want to put like knee
in it?
Potentially.
Yeah.
Like I wonder,
so there are several orthopedic surgeons
who focus on knee replacement and that's
what they do or have done.
It's branded to them personally.
I'll talk about that in a second.
And, uh, the, you know,
everything on the channel is knee
replacement and they've got a million
followers.
Right.
Cause you're the super you're an inch
wide, but a mile deep.
Right.
So look, this is some of the stuff.
I posted this this morning.
Yeah, I stole some of this.
I used to ask poll questions, but really,
really deep.
I'm almost like I'm a fake researcher.
And then I started asking stupid, like,
are you an APTA member currently?
That's the only question.
Yes, no.
And those things get ten X the engagement.
When people have to think,
It's so bad, though.
It's like dumbed down.
But I'm not dumbing it down.
I'm just making it simpler.
Because I'm like,
what am I actually asking for?
What am I solving for?
Right.
So here is February first.
This is when I started going to ten
posts a day.
You know,
the numbers went from three hundred and
seventy five thousand views up to seven
hundred and eighty thousand views.
Can you zoom out even for can you
can you show the last sixty days?
Yeah.
I feel like, yeah.
So this is where you could see, like,
before it was a spike from one post.
And then it would drop back down,
you know.
Now we've got a lot more blue under
that line than we did before.
Right.
Is that you?
Yeah.
Sorry.
And then I'll just show you guys a
couple that I think are really
interesting.
So I know it's kind of hard to
see here, but what I want to do,
I'm going to scroll down to some of
these,
like these are videos that were on my
YouTube channel.
I had shared them probably two or three
times already on my Facebook page,
but every time I do, you know,
Once you have something that works.
Do it again.
Keeps working.
Do it again.
Like, look, this is, I said,
was it painful to have your staples
removed?
It was a photo.
The photo got one hundred and forty seven
thousand views.
But more important,
it got one thousand one hundred eighty
five comments.
I've never had a post get over a
thousand comments.
Wow.
This was posted on the fifteenth,
so two days ago.
This is the one that really kind of
broke this paradigm for me.
This is somebody who had like a dermatitis
reaction.
I had shared this
It didn't really do much.
I had reshared it maybe six months later,
and then it blew up.
And then I reshared it again,
and I've reshared it now four times.
And every time,
I know that that's a post that's going
to get me hundreds of thousands of views.
So now,
do you look at a post like that
and think, what's going on here?
Like, what is it?
people i guess you got to pay attention
to your audience it's people who've gone
through it are going through it or about
to go through it it's before during and
after the people before want to know is
that normal people going through it want
to know is that normal people afterwards
are are knowing i didn't get that what's
the deal like so you're showing all the
ugly parts and that's what people sort of
want now it's like i want to know
the insides
Right.
So there are some common trends like this
person on the left.
She's two weeks post-op.
This was an evaluation I did yesterday.
She literally came into my clinic
yesterday.
She signed all the consent and the release
forms.
She's two weeks post-op.
I knew this was going to be a
good video.
And the reason why I knew it was
because she can bend to like a hundred
and twenty degrees and
People do not believe that this is legit.
Multiple comments down here will say,
I don't believe it.
This isn't real, whatever, you know, the,
the dermatitis, um, the staples,
like these are just things that I know
are going to get engagement.
There's going to be a little bit of
outrage, a little bit of encouragement.
Right.
But the biggest thing,
the thing that we always go back to
is go back down just a little bit.
In the comments or what?
Just scroll down on the right just a
little bit.
Reaction by type is what I want to
look at.
On the right side.
There you go.
So you're seeing... Up a little bit.
Up right there.
Eighty-one likes, two loves, one wow.
Like, I would love to see...
I would love to see if AI could
somehow scroll your comments and give you,
like, a thermostat.
Like, what are people...
calling bull like bullshit are people
agree are people saying well done like
what is the purpose of this post like
I watch a lot of because I guess
I stay on videos a lot of like
good news content like there's some people
who go out there and they'll try to
get people off the streets into rehab they
do these like sort of like sixty second
document docuseries
And the comments are all like supportive.
So like the platform likes that,
or you can go,
you can go the negative route, right?
Where you can say something crazy.
Like,
why do you think whenever they do a
sports center show, they have a topic.
And one of the anchors vehemently agrees
with the top V the thing.
And the other person vehemently disagrees.
It was like,
cause if they both agree to be a
boring show, right?
We, we,
we need someone to sort of rally against.
I think that's this,
what you're showing the dashboard is,
Five years ago,
we didn't have access to this information.
The fact that Facebook, Instagram,
YouTube is not only giving you access,
but they're making it stunningly simple.
They are playing poker with you and all
of their cards are face up.
Yeah.
All of their cards are showing you how
to be successful.
Now, here's the thing.
As soon as we found that out,
we were like, oh, my God,
it's going to be so hard to be
successful on Facebook and YouTube and all
these things still requires effort.
Right.
And most people aren't going to do it.
Do you have any people had come back?
Pull that back up.
So it's hard for people to see.
But at the bottom of the screen.
This is from the last four weeks,
that dermatitis post that I shared
February,
it has earned a hundred and seven dollars.
How long did it take you to film
that video?
I, so, and you know this,
but for people watching literally what you
are seeing is what I'm doing in the
clinic.
I'm just holding the phone and recording
all day.
When I have a good case,
I pull out my phone.
I hit record the evaluation from
yesterday.
That was – I thought I saw it.
But anyway, it doesn't take me, quote,
time.
And then once I have the video on
my phone, then I just publish it.
Right.
But you have so many different brands.
Now we'll tie it up with a bow
with CSM.
And I'm not against this.
But they're doing like TikTok trends now
on Instagram, right?
Like they're doing the –
Getting ready with me.
Follow me and my staff as we leave
our houses across the country to come to
CSM.
That's telling stories.
That's not storytelling.
Showing someone's knee that they've gone
through the surgery that your mom or you
are about to go through,
that's more storytelling.
I watched a movie on the way back
on the flight.
It was called Civil War.
It was Kirsten Dunst.
The US was in Civil War and she
was a wartime photographer.
So her whole thing was like,
you got to get the picture, man.
Like you need the nitty gritty.
Like no one's posing in a war zone.
Why are those pictures more valuable?
Because no one can get it.
You're showing the stuff that no one can
get.
That's the spoiler is like every clinic in
the country.
It's so normal and mundane to you.
It's not normal and mundane to the tens
of thousands of people who want to know
what that looks like.
Right.
It just isn't, right?
Like, whatever your weird is, show it off.
Because most people, it is not normal.
It's normal.
It's your every day.
Not every day for everybody else.
Tim Reynolds.
I'll find his account in a second.
Just like an extroverted, good...
He's got a great radio voice.
He's a professor at Ithaca.
Go Bombers.
And his students were like,
you should do a TikTok.
You should do a TikTok.
And now he's got a bajillion.
And just for the show's reference,
anything over ten thousand to Jimmy is a
bajillion.
So it's five digits.
It's a million.
It's a bajillion.
And he just he's just anatomy and
physiology questions,
lessons that are all twenty two seconds
long.
And it's sort of, who does,
is it for PT students?
Kind of.
Kinesiology students?
Yeah.
People who like to answer trivia?
Also, yes.
Like, and he does it,
his simple is stunningly, stupidly simple.
It's just,
he's got like four or five different
formats.
And then he just puts different things
through the formats.
So those are some of the newer ones
that I've been doing.
I'll get ChatGPT or Gemini to generate an
AI image.
It could be an illustration or it could
be a photorealistic image.
And I'll do somebody walking down the
stairs.
It'll show a walker at the bottom.
It'll show a walker at the top.
And I'll ask the question,
did you have two walkers,
one for upstairs, one for downstairs?
after you were discharged from knee
replacement.
Or I'll ask the question,
do you remember what the therapist told
you about how to go up the stairs,
up with the good, down with the bad?
I'll find those things that every
therapist says.
I'll find those things that patients
always kind of latch onto.
I'll ask those questions and I'll get
three hundred comments.
Because that's what people want.
They want to show what they know.
And, you know,
I'll ask questions about the anatomy of
the knee.
I'll ask questions.
People just love that stuff.
He didn't have a bajillion.
He has half a bajillion.
He's got five hundred and sixty six
thousand people.
Wow.
Don't even call him followers.
Call him people who like when he when
his when he shows up, they get excited.
Yeah.
They like look, he's quizzing people.
about anatomy and physiology and strength
and conditioning principles,
and people dig it.
But look at the view count on his
anatomy quiz, true-false edition.
Everything's five figures and six figures
and up.
Dude doesn't miss.
He understands the audience,
and he doesn't overthink it.
The parallel, I used to get yelled at.
I can't believe you play the same.
A good radio station.
Gosh,
now I'm starting to forget because it's
been so long.
The station that I was on,
we had a library.
At any one moment,
we were like three to five hundred songs.
And people were like,
but there's a thousand great songs.
People want to hear what they know.
Yeah, just they do.
There was a format fifteen years ago
called Jack FM.
And it was like,
we're going to play everything from the
nineties, the crappy songs.
There's no genre.
It was just the fact that it was
in the nineties and it wowed everybody for
twenty minutes,
because after that you were like, OK,
I need again,
sushi is probably the one of the most
popular dishes on the planet.
So therefore,
if you run McDonald's in the United
States, why aren't you serving sushi?
Because it's popular.
Yeah.
It's not what we do here.
So Tim understands full episode coming
from him, by the way,
Tim understands what he's good at.
Not even what he's good at,
what he's good at and what he likes.
I think I said in the interview,
how do you know what to post?
He was like, well, I don't know.
I guess I'm like, cause you like it.
What's your favorite X.
What's the best exercise for knee
replacement?
Uh, the one you're going to do.
And then I'll know how to make it
knee replacement D.
Don't worry about that.
That's your skill.
not reading a protocol, not reading a CPG.
Look where the world's going.
Not anybody can make a CPG,
but anybody can download it,
run it through AI and go, all right,
CPG that.
That part is not skilled anymore.
Now,
what's interesting about his channel is,
and this is what Gary Vee has been
saying,
we live in a time right now today
where he has almost six hundred thousand
followers and, you know,
multiple videos are in the six figure
views.
Yep.
I've got sixty thousand followers,
but yet I've got multiple videos in the
six figure views.
We do not need a channel that has
a million followers to get high view
counts.
You can literally start today,
get a video that people will actually want
to watch.
That's the hard part.
And you will get a million views on
that video.
It does not matter if you have zero
followers.
Look,
I'm going to pull back the curtain here.
And I don't think Tim would mind.
Look at what's on the screen right now.
What do you notice?
Super basic.
This is not a trick.
I mean,
it is a trick question because it's super
basic.
Look at this video, this video,
this video.
Look at this video and this video.
He shot them all in the same day.
Yeah.
Right?
There's blue with plaid tie.
There's checkered shirt.
There's red shirt.
There's green shirt.
Tim is not spent.
He's not doing this every look at this
five in a row with red shirt.
He's probably and we didn't talk about
this.
Maybe we'll have him on the show because
I'd love to know his process,
not for you to copy,
for you to do your own version of
it.
Right.
But what he's saying is he's probably
jotting down like, oh, you know,
he's just mimicking his class.
While he's going through the semester,
he probably taught the same thing the same
way three years in a row.
Then all of a sudden,
he thinks of a new way to teach
it in class.
And he goes, oh, that's novel.
Jot that down.
Do a video about that later.
He's not overthinking it.
Anatomy and physiology principles to him
are basic.
It's just what he taught.
It's the way the world he lives.
All he does is turns the camera around.
I don't think he owns a camera.
It's just a phone.
Tony doesn't own a fancy camera, do you?
I do,
but I haven't used it like every single
thing.
So there is my right here.
Every single thing I've done in the last
six months, all on this phone.
This phone is a twelve max pro.
And, you know,
I do use a lapel mic and I
want to do something.
We've done it before and we've got a
few minutes.
I'll tell you what's coming next and what
I'll have to report on the next week.
But I have a four hundred dollar Sony
Ace.
I always forget a six hundred or six
thousand.
It's a five hundred dollar Sony camera.
It looks pretty.
I love it.
It does the effect.
Yeah.
How often do I take this and use
it?
Never.
Want to know why?
Because I would literally have to take the
memory card out, plug it into a computer,
find the right file,
or just shoot it on my phone,
and I'm done.
I do also, whenever I shoot now,
I have the Rode lapel mics.
No pairing.
I plug it in.
I clip it on.
It's paired.
It has great audio.
So this is a three-dollar mic.
Do I need the three hundred dollar mic?
No,
I bought it after seven years of using
another microphone.
Is this three X a hundred dollar mic?
No, it's not.
It really isn't.
All right.
So a tease for the future.
Should I say the name of the company?
A very large company in the Hyperice.
Screw it.
I'm not good at hints.
Hyperice is sending me a bunch of stuff.
Eric Fernandez, by the way,
if you were walking around CSM,
I would love to know in the comments
or whatever, if you're still listening,
I can't, I don't know why,
but who did you see that had great
booths?
And what does great mean?
I don't know.
If you remember it now, three days later,
it was great.
If you can remember like one thing about
it, Hyperice's booth,
looked like an Apple store.
This is a company that knows how to
sell things.
They did not have a folding table with
a tablecloth on it.
He had black leather chairs.
He had the Nike.
I was scared to leave my extension cord
at the booth overnight.
I should have told this to Eric there.
The next morning I came back.
He's got those Nike crossover boots,
all they're charging, just laying there.
I was scared to leave my extension cord
because I'm from New York.
I'm like,
everybody's going to steal something from
me.
And extension cords are valuable.
But I'm going to do a little experiment.
Joseph Lowe also sent me a box of
stuff because I'm telling you,
I know Gary Vee,
his betting average is pretty high,
but it's not invincible, right?
We're still not buying monkey NFTs or
whatever those...
Remember those ridiculous NFTs?
I don't know.
Maybe that's still the future.
But I do still think that live selling
is going to be bananas.
Sean Stroops of Stroops... Sorry,
Sean Harker of Stroops was at...
was there too with a booth.
We'll be doing some more stuff with him.
I think everybody that sells stuff
understands this.
When your livelihood depends on you
getting the right people in front of you,
suddenly you get more creative.
Oh, we do have a question.
Who is your core audience at CSM?
Maybe that contributes to your engagement.
They had less time to watch,
but they had time to click.
Yeah, I mean,
my audience is probably at CSM and they're
doing stuff.
So they're not going to watch a video.
It's like being in the stands at a
baseball game watching the game.
They're probably not going to do it.
So that's probably a good point.
So real quick, I just shared the question.
Who had your favorite booth or who had
the best booth at CSM?
I put it on my profile and in
my group.
So we'll see what they say.
I'll do the same.
What did you say?
I'll use the exact same verbiage.
What did you say?
Best booth ever.
Who had the best booth at CSN?
Right.
So I want it super open-ended.
I'm not going to tell you what best
means.
We could do a follow-up question in a
day or two later.
Who had the best swag?
The best giveaway?
No joke.
Last thing I'll say before parting shots.
I was talking to some people from
overseas.
I talked to people from World Physio.
I talked to some people from the UK
and Portugal who were there.
And they were like, I don't understand.
When the expo hall opened,
it opened at like ten o'clock.
There were already sessions.
They were like people were lined up
outside like it was the only way I
could equate.
It was like Thanksgiving.
It was Black Friday and people were ready
to run.
People ran into the hall.
They had their mat pulled up.
They knew where to go and who had
the good stuff.
So this isn't attention in person
attention grab.
And Gary Vee is saying analog is the
next thing.
We're not doing virtual happy hours
anymore.
Thank God.
We're now doing things in person for
better or for worse.
Pay attention to that and whatever your
version of that.
So that'll be my parting shot.
Pay attention to which way the world is
shifting.
We're seeing a shift back to analog.
There's only two directions in the
pendulum, my friends, right?
Bell bottoms were the greatest thing ever.
And then they were horrendous.
And then when they were great again,
now they're horrendous.
If you could buy stock in pants,
I might put a couple dollars on bell
bottoms over the next couple of years
because that's the way the pendulum
swings.
All right, guys.
Parting shot.
If you're not doing social media just for
social media,
how would two thousand dollars a month?
change like it's a mortgage payment how
would it your life you know and and
all you're doing is capturing the stuff
you already do every single day capturing
the questions you answer every single day
yep and you don't have to hire a
full-time person to do it i mean you
don't have anybody at your clinic you're
doing approximate spend on time per day i
mean people criticize but i just do it
while the patient's there for you yeah
ballpark
Nothing there.
I don't know.
Like, okay, you're, you're my patient.
I record that.
Then you're doing something.
I post that.
How do you count that time?
You don't really.
I mean, yeah.
Yeah.
That's it.
Okay.
All right.
We'll be back on Thursday.
Maybe Dave will be back.
I do expect a full Puerto Rican.
He might never come back from play by
play.
Maybe we'll do the whole show in Spanish
and I'll just sit there because I took
French in high school back on Thursday.
We'll see.
That's it.
We're out.
What the hell are you doing?
Tony Maritato on YouTube at Total Therapy
Solution.
Find Dave Kittle at
conciergepainrelief.com and on YouTube at
The Dave Kittle Show.
And follow Jimmy McKay at PT Podcasts on
YouTube, the socials,
and wherever you binge podcasts you
pretend are for CEUs.
And hey, just a reminder,
none of this was for advice.
This was for entertainment only.
Our lawyers say that counts.
Thanks, Keith.