Broadcasting way too early from three
separate Wi-Fi connections.
It's PT Breakfast Club with Tony Maritato,
Dave Kittle, and Jimmy McKay.
All right.
Good morning, Tony Maritato.
We got a lot of things we can
talk about.
Which one do you want to do first?
Let's talk about exchanging money and
value.
Let's talk about the NBA game last night.
Yeah, I the Knicks lost, right?
Yeah, I fell asleep before the game ended.
That's I'm I fell asleep before the game
ended old now.
I'm not a betting man,
which is a total lie because I love
betting.
It can be a highly addictive behavior for
me.
Who in the world would not make the
bet that the Knicks were going to lose?
I was thinking about this.
I'm like,
you cannot tell me how much money is
generated per game.
It's a seven game best of seven.
Who thinks that they're not going to get
these guys to seven games?
I mean, that is absurd.
I would have bet everything that the Spurs
were going to win last night simply
because they already won two or Knicks
already won two.
And this is hundreds of millions of
dollars.
They're not going to let this not go
to seven games.
Right.
So ESPN does like those little stories,
little vignettes,
like the game behind the game,
the story behind the story.
And they were talking about who's even
allowed to sit on Celebrity Row.
And I never knew this was a thing.
I just thought celebrities bought
courtside seats.
But apparently there's areas where you got
to be somebody and have money to get
in.
There's a Knicks alumni section behind one
of the baskets.
I didn't realize this.
I'm not...
a big enough basketball fan to know this
which is me staying up too late to
watch try to watch the game but um
but apparently there was what there was
bidding going on someone was trying they
were they were roughly uh auctioning off a
couple of seats so you're buying status so
where does the story start
I mean, it just, you know,
I think there are lots of professional
sports teams where you can't even begin to
purchase good seats unless you've been
purchasing good seats.
You have to buy even Ferrari,
like Ferrari, the car brand,
you have to buy lower end Ferraris before
they even let you consider buying a higher
end, more specialized Ferrari.
this is the way business goes and it's
got me thinking about health care if you
want to pull up the graphic for the
the two seats that were sold for a
million dollars
Like, I still don't understand this.
I tried to talk to Dave about it
a little bit,
and I think we didn't go down the
road that I was trying to go down.
My question to you,
and we'll bring this to physical therapy
in a minute.
My question to you is,
if somebody is willing to pay a million
dollars for a pair of seats courtside,
those two seats are worth more than the
million dollars they are willing to give
up.
Have to be.
i don't understand how the conversation
and i don't need this to get too
political but the conversation has seemed
to shift to it's you know if everybody
can't afford it then nobody should get it
um we see this with the world um
Is it the World Cup?
The soccer?
You know, it's like, hey,
seats are too expensive.
Housing.
Housing is too expensive.
It wouldn't be that expensive if people
weren't buying it.
These seats wouldn't have sold for a
million dollars if somebody didn't value
it more than the million dollars in their
bank account.
So...
take this into healthcare,
I go back to any great therapist who
is spending time in the insurance system,
who is spending time treating patients who
don't need their expertise,
is effectively wasting their time and
their money.
Like,
I don't understand why a great therapist,
I am not considering myself a great
therapist, wouldn't say, hey,
I've invested this much in my education,
I've invested this much in my experience,
I've sacrificed this many years.
I'm only going to see people who have
real problems that require a higher level
of expertise and knowledge and with that
are willing to pay for the investment that
I made in myself and my experience.
You know,
there should be that level of higher cost,
higher skill, higher knowledge.
But there seems to be a resistance to
it.
Well,
I think things like sports are in higher
demand and more visible and they are
wants, not needs.
So we will pay higher for them.
We just will.
As an example of the thing on the
screen in terms of paying one,
was it one million dollars winning auction
bid?
So they were half a million dollars a
seat.
for game three right that's way more
affordable it's very affordable right
because you're getting two seats right and
then who are you sit who's on your
left and who's on your right you're
actually you're rubbing elbows um football
has done this with it are you familiar
with the psls no so it how much
does uh you live in ohio right how
much does it cost for season tickets for
the browns
We're paying the list, but yeah,
I don't know.
First, you have to buy a PSL,
a professional seat license,
which is what you're talking about.
Essentially, you have to say,
here's my down payment,
and now I'll pay for the seat.
You're paying for permission,
then you pay for the seat.
And it's just the next logical step.
I mean, PSLs have been around for years.
I look at them because to me,
I like sports.
I don't know that I love sports anymore,
that it's, you know, prime driver.
I would go to a game.
But my first question is how much?
Because if I'm going to enjoy the game,
you know,
a consumer electronic purchase for,
you know,
a seventy five inch TV is less than
parking now, probably for for two games.
Right.
And I'd rather be like,
I can have any food I want.
I can order whatever I want.
I don't have to drive.
Cool.
I'll watch it on my big screen.
So you have to ask yourself what you're
valuing.
When I lived in New York City, though,
it was more doing things because you were
there.
That was the thing.
You were there.
Everything was accessible.
You could get to Madison Square Garden
with two subway stops.
you're buying access, right?
I mean,
what were the cheapest seats in Madison
Square Garden?
Let's say they were five thousand dollars
or something like that inflated value.
You're still in the room.
Oh,
you're telling me you wanted to be close.
Not only close, can't get closer.
Jay-Z famously says in one of his songs,
I could trip a referee,
meaning his feet are on the court.
And then you're getting on TV.
And you get to say that you bought
it.
So I think it's a status thing for
basketball or football or baseball.
I think you're trying to sell a simplicity
thing or an access thing for healthcare or
for medicine.
And I think some people do value that.
And in my mind,
I feel like that's the way it's going.
It would be hard pressed to not see
that.
Why don't more, at least in our world,
PTs, OTs, SLPs,
why are they not embracing this with open
arms?
Why are they not acknowledging, hey, I,
the professional,
have invested all of this extra time,
money, effort, expense.
I should be and will be requiring more
compensation.
But in exchange,
I'm not going to waste air quotes,
waste it on easy things like let the
easy conditions,
let the easy stuff go to digital health,
go to other platforms,
which we'll talk about YouTube here in a
minute.
And you just focus on the stuff that
really requires your level of knowledge
and expertise.
Why wouldn't someone do it?
What is the resistance?
Number one,
for you to bring up the Peace Corps,
the Peace Corps gene where I have to
let everybody in and then Tony would
counter.
And I would agree,
which is so charge a PSL,
a professional seat license for your
clinic for let's say you've got.
ten slots a day times you've got fifty
slots fifty hours of working hours right
that's what you're gonna do you decided to
work ten see ten patients a day five
days a week that's fifty give a sell
thirty of them give away twenty but you
sell the you sell the thirty for enough
i heard a great line from this guy
jamie brindle he's like a coach to
freelancers they say how much how much do
you charge for a job and he says
i charge enough that i can subcontract out
all the work
and live on the margin.
Wait, what?
So he realizes if he's got to build
a website and create graphics and build an
email campaign,
because that's the sort of thing he does,
he charges enough, walk through this,
to say, well,
I know a really good email person,
a really good web person,
a really good graphics person.
It's going to cost five thousand dollars.
I'm going to charge the five thousand
dollars it costs plus whatever I need to
live.
I am the margin.
And I think that's a brilliant way to
look at it.
We won't, or I shouldn't say we won't.
People do,
but it'll be slower because we have been
trained and it is ingrained that we are
worth codes.
So we are worth time codes,
not actual value.
Maybe the greatest trick the devil ever
pulled in healthcare was sort of playing
like a casino, right?
where instead of betting money,
which would feel scary if I'm holding
money, I'm holding chips.
And the chips are, I don't know,
they're just different colors.
So we're not exchanging time for money.
We're doing our duty for time codes.
So I have to be a good little
soldier and get as many codes as I
can.
And hopefully if I build this many codes,
by the time the money comes up,
it's at least this much money to pay
for myself.
We won't, not fast enough.
And it's because of our own,
it's our own fault.
The answer is always ourselves.
I just shared an image.
If you grab it from the chat and
put it on the screen,
you hit on a topic.
I remember, you know,
thinking when I first saw my local
hospital's patient fees, I was like, oh,
my gosh,
these are like airport prices back in the
eighties.
Like,
how could somebody charge this much is so
crazy.
but you know when we look at smaller
private practices and this could be down
to a single owner operator it could be
a multi-location still we consider a small
business the pricing up on the screen
right now is two thousand twenty six
pricing for self-pay if you don't have
insurance for my local hospital and it's
it's small but basically
A couple of the ones that I always
highlight are a minimum complexity,
twenty minute evaluation code nine seven
one six one.
My hospital is charging five hundred and
eighty one dollars.
If you look at therapeutic exercise,
my hospital charges,
two hundred and ten dollars.
The best one, non wound care E-Stim,
right?
Slap those pads and turn electricity into
money.
Six hundred and twenty six dollars.
Now,
I guarantee because I've talked to them,
I guarantee the clinicians working in this
hospital outpatient clinic have no idea
what the charges are.
These are outpatient charges.
Your dad,
my grandma could go see their orthopedic,
have a little shoulder pain,
get a referral for therapy,
not know where to go,
go to the hospital because that's the safe
bet,
and end up with a two thousand dollar
bill for an evaluation, some E-STEM,
some manual therapy if they're lucky,
therapeutic exercise and some activity,
right?
Absolutely within the world of
possibility.
Now,
the people watching this are gonna say,
oh, but Tony, of course, you know,
they're not gonna get paid that much,
these are inflated prices,
this is what everybody does.
There's two arguments to that.
One,
if I go to the legal department for
this hospital and say, guys, come on,
are you seriously?
This is this is inflated, right?
You're clearly playing.
They're going to say, no,
this is what it costs because we have
to pay the bills.
We have to pay the staff.
We have to cover indigent care and all
of the stuff that we're not going to
get paid for.
This is what the actual cost of a
unit of service is.
The other side of that,
which goes to what you were saying
earlier,
is
if i want to deliver a patient visit
out there right now my average
reimbursement from medicare typical four
unit follow-up is going to be eighty five
dollars right what does it cost me to
deliver that therapy i have to pay the
therapist let's say on average the
therapist is making forty fifty bucks an
hour i have to pay an administrative
person
It's going to be another forty five to
fifty thousand a year.
I have to pay a billing person.
I have to pay somebody to just manage
the space, vacuum, clean,
clean the toilet, empty the garbage.
I have to pay somebody to manage payroll.
I have to pay somebody to do the
marketing.
I have to pay somebody to do the
accounting and the legal and compliance.
Those are eight positions.
None of them are working for under fifty
thousand a year.
The only reason why I can operate this
clinic for a hundred,
eighty to a hundred dollars an hour per
visit is because I am willing to do
all of those things.
But if you divided a hundred visits a
week across eight salaries,
How much,
a physical therapy visit would easily be a
thousand dollars a visit, right?
So it's like, okay,
we're willing to sacrifice,
I don't know for how long.
We're willing to take money out of our
bank account,
food out of our kids' mouths,
deliver the level of service that we
deliver for the pennies that we receive.
simply because of, as you mentioned,
the Peace Corps gene or our desire to
help society and help these individuals
maintain their independence?
The jump...
That would be required to change prices
from what most physical therapists charge,
not what they're worth, what they charge,
to this, what's on the screen,
is so massively huge.
And it's not a math problem.
It's an emotion problem.
Right.
Like you wouldn't be able to do it.
We've talked before.
We've had examples on this show and off
where people have said,
They've had notices they print out on
their door.
They put them a door of their clinic.
Just so you know, in eight months,
we are going to increase our prices.
Nine percent.
And you're just like, at that point,
increase in thirty percent because you're
going to make people mad.
So when you look at a price list
like this.
The initial the initial thought is
twofold.
No one's going to come.
Just like Adam Sandler would say,
they're all going to laugh at you.
They're all going to laugh at you.
Well, not everybody.
And if you actually provide something that
is better emotionally and tangibly that
the person next door,
they're just going to stay with you
because I wanted to go with the person
that I know.
I can't see it happening.
I hope it would.
I don't think anybody's going to jump to
this tomorrow.
But is there a logical reason that they
shouldn't?
Yeah, because no one else is doing it.
The ceiling is where the ceiling is in
our profession because the floor will not
move or the floor will move at less
than inflation.
So this will remain.
So this is where therapists are amazing at
finding alternative paths to achieve the
goal, right?
My patient wants a locomotive across the
room.
Okay, they don't have any legs.
I'm going to figure out a way for
them to do it, right?
This is where the assistive device comes
in.
This is where the alternative methods come
in.
And so this is where,
before we went live,
you and I were talking about the prehab
guys.
Amazing.
I mean, the size that they've grown to,
what they've achieved,
everything that they do, I just,
I'm astounded.
And they were doing this,
you know better than me,
before they were therapists, right?
Like when they were in school.
Yeah, I think they started their channel,
their Instagram channel,
the same year I started my podcast,
which was in the year of my podcast.
Yeah, and look at where they are,
where they've come.
So I look at them as a role
model, even though I could be their dad,
literally.
And I'm like, okay,
how can I monetize my time, my experience,
my expertise?
How can I get to the rates that
I need on an hourly basis without
necessarily extracting it from insurance?
Because even if insurance doubled
reimbursement tomorrow,
it makes no difference.
It makes no difference.
It's not going to get me to where
I need to be.
So the rehab guys put out their exercise
library, their app.
And I was like, that's cool.
I like the idea of that,
but nobody wants another app.
Nobody wants to log into something.
You and I have talked about their numbers.
I want to say at one point on
their website,
they had either said eleven thousand or
twenty seven thousand.
I remember those in my head of,
you know, people using it.
And I'm like, what could I do?
So, of course,
I go to right now I'm using Gemini
more than ChatGPT for this.
I'm like, hey,
here are my social media analytics,
TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram.
What can I do with this?
And I'm looking at the prehab guys.
What do you know about their business
model?
Tell me how I can put this all
together.
And one of the things that I mentioned
was creating this service,
an exercise library specific to total knee
replacement, since that's my audience.
And I said, okay.
if i create an app like they created
versus leveraging tools that already exist
What are the options like?
Don't create the app.
That's thousands of dollars,
months of work.
It's not your jam.
Yeah,
hiring developers and all that stuff.
I'm like, well,
what about the YouTube membership option?
And for those who don't know,
so if you're monetized on YouTube,
you can create a membership.
YouTube takes thirty percent,
which most therapists would go crazy
about.
uh implying that they think it's too
expensive youtube takes thirty percent the
creator gets seventy percent it's a
private membership area right you set
pricing you can set pricing tiers you can
determine what kind of access the members
have uh what kind of services they can
receive
And I'm like,
what are realistic numbers based on case
studies that have already been performed
from other professional service providers?
And YouTube basically said, you know,
you're going to look at about one to
three percent conversion rate recommended.
I set pricing at five dollars a month
for the low tier, nineteen dollars,
twenty dollars a month for the middle
tier.
And so that's what I've been working on
this morning.
So let's talk about it because there are
some aspects to this I don't think viewers
are thinking about yet.
The thing that comes up a lot for
me is people don't want another app.
They don't want another thing,
which is where you have the Googles or
the Microsoft and healthcare of the world,
the prompts of the world, which is like,
we're not,
and I never understood this term until I'm
like, oh yeah, that's what you call it.
We're not a point solution.
You don't want to have to get an
EMR and then an RTM and then a
billing,
and then you figure out how to put
them all together.
People understand what...
There's an engineering term for that.
It's called points of failure.
Every time you go from one thing to
another, well,
it's got an API and it works.
It works most of the time.
And when it doesn't work...
You're it.
There's no ID department anymore, right?
There's a helpline or a chat bot that's
going to help you.
So number one,
it either needs to be embedded in the
thing I'm already using or an app I'm
already using.
Years ago, I'll give you an example.
The idea was...
microsoft and i can't remember the name of
the app they had their own like oh
they had their own like internal social
network they're like let's look at the
rise of these social platforms let's get
colleagues to do this internally and my
first gut reaction was you want people to
download another app
to do the thing that another app already
does.
And they're like,
we're going to make them do it.
And spoiler alert, it did not work.
So you are going outside of the EMR
that people already use,
but you're doing it on an app that
they already use and they don't have to
re-understand it.
So for that reason,
I think you've got a chance.
That would be my first...
red flag, but I don't think it is.
Because if you're truly going to do this
on YouTube, I do not think that's...
I think that's staying inbounds.
No one's going to download it.
I'm not going to have to learn it.
Quite literally,
I'm not going to have to remember another
login and password to do this.
Therefore, I will do it.
Yeah, yeah.
The big things, the selling points for me,
you know,
so my channel right now has about eighty
eight thousand subscribers.
Doesn't mean anything.
It's averaging about.
What is it?
I'm trying to think of how many views
per month.
Let me pull it up real quick just
so I can give real numbers,
because these are the numbers that I put
into Gemini.
We are doing one point seven million views
per month, eleven thousand watch hours,
adding about a thousand one point six
thousand subscribers and doing about a
thousand a month in ad revenue.
So I put that in, it said,
you know, one to three percent conversion,
looking at the five dollar tier and the
twenty dollar tier and put all this this
these numbers together.
And it really said conservatively,
it should be generating three to five
thousand a month.
Which, you know,
you look at that and you're like, well,
that's not bad.
Especially when I consider I've already
got a couple thousand videos.
I'm making videos every single day.
This is nothing new for me to do.
That was after the thirty percent goes to
YouTube or Google in this case.
And I'm like, why wouldn't I?
And it increases access,
which goes back to the earlier
conversation of if I raise my rates to
what it really should be,
but I still want to have that opportunity
to help people that can't afford the rates
at the actual,
I can't buy a million dollar seats at
the Knicks game, right?
But I can watch it on TV and
it's free.
And I'm going to enjoy it just as
much with my beer and my popcorn and
my food in the fridge.
So this gives me a chance to scratch
that itch of I want everybody to have
access,
even people who can't afford several
hundred dollars a session.
Yeah,
I think the answer is the simplicity.
I also look at the...
And this will go into the actual...
I'm using air quotes here.
The quality of the video.
I think people overthink it.
You see a lot of the Alex Hormozis
of the world who are saying,
it's frequency.
It's frequency.
Okay.
I can see that.
You have no idea what the world is
going to want or react to.
Or...
what the algorithm is going to share.
So the goal is instead of creating two
videos a week and holding your breath that
one of them hits, you create a hundred.
But the other flip side is we need
a studio and we need this and we
need scripting and it's all going to be
perfect.
And I would push back and say,
go back to the prehab guys in twenty
fifteen, twenty sixteen.
And they were just sort of
running and gunning.
Like they would say,
they'd go into the lab after class with
a list of like thirty exercises and they'd
treat it like, you know, breaking rocks,
you know,
down at the quarry and they'd say,
we need these thirty videos and they'd put
them up
And they do it again the next day.
And the real magic there is the fact
that when you do that day in and
day out,
next time you look up and you realize
you have a thousand videos.
But it wasn't doing a thousand videos
perfect.
It was getting a thousand videos.
This is why I liked radio better than
TV.
TV was... They were so... They were so...
dead set on getting things perfect that I
was like,
I'd rather have a thousand B pluses than
one of your A pluses because your A
pluses, no one notices the difference.
The juice ain't worth the squeeze.
So I think doing this on YouTube and
you can figure out if this succeeds and
fails way faster.
You're going to do this for three months
and be like, dude,
the needle hasn't moved at all.
We've made one hundred and twelve dollars.
What are we doing here?
I'll give it another month and maybe it'll
pop.
But like
I think the feedback loop,
the cycle is a lot shorter.
Plus the thing,
so my people are already on YouTube.
They're already consuming the content on
YouTube.
They click a button and pay the monthly
rate.
They can cancel any time.
The platform is already there.
I went through the process this morning.
I grabbed screenshots just to chronicle
what was it like creating the membership
area.
It took me less than two minutes.
Now it goes through a review,
twenty-four hours it says on average
you'll get the approval and then you can
start uploading videos.
Where this gets really exciting to me,
you've got the three to five thousand
theoretical income I would get from the
membership.
But what about building the Peloton
version of this?
So I can do private live streaming within
the membership platforms.
If I'm going to do that,
I can start interviewing other therapists
who want to build their YouTube channel.
So there's value to them.
Michael Derry down in Jacksonville,
he's got a book, the sciatica relief book.
I want to help him grow his audience.
Tons of people who have had an ear
replacement also develop sciatica
symptoms.
I bring him on.
I do an interview.
We plug his book.
We see what kind of impact immediately it
has.
We share the Amazon link right there.
The community has access to him.
I do interviews with orthopedics.
You know,
I've done an orthopedic in Texas.
I've done local orthopedics.
Go get what you need.
Again, like this brings instant access.
It also establishes me as the expert
because I'm bringing in other experts.
But then we go to the next level
and we say, OK,
there's a couple up and coming clinicians
who are focused on knee replacement,
trying to build their audience,
sell their course.
We do lives online.
It could be a twenty minute meditation
live video.
It could be a twenty minute improve your
flexion.
It could be a twenty minute improve your
extension.
It could literally get to the point where
people are paying me to come on for
access to my audience, the clinician,
the product company, you know,
all of these other revenue sources,
not to mention the product endorsements.
Paul always writes in thoughtful questions
and Paul Fath just wrote in,
what do you think is the biggest friction
for PTs to make content?
Planning, actually making it, editing it,
and then he follows up.
And then what do you create to reduce
the friction?
I want to know Tony's answer to this
question because I wrote my answer down
and I want to see if we're on
the same wavelength.
So what do you think the biggest friction
is for PTs to make content?
I don't think it's on the list.
While we answer,
I want to know Paul's answer because Paul
is growing.
His TikTok is doing awesome.
His social media is doing awesome.
He's got his connection with Amazon.
Like Paul is the person who's trying to
manage the friction.
Paul,
Paul's forty percent ahead of who he's
asking about.
Do you know what I mean?
He's asking about the person who's going,
well,
I guess I've been hearing about this for
a while.
Paul's Paul has answered this question
already.
In my opinion.
So I want to hear Paul's answer as
well.
But what do you think is the biggest
friction for PTs to make content?
I'm almost reading this as beginning to
make content.
I have none and I'm saying it.
What do you think it is?
Well,
I'll tell you what sucks me back into
the hole every single day.
there's people not yet but they're on
their way who are coming to my clinic
who are expecting me be to be their
therapist and i'm gonna sacrifice the
upside potential of continuous revenue for
a video that i could record and publish
Because I'm going to spend an hour of
my life that I'm never going to get
back for an eighty dollar compensation.
I think we get sucked into the patient
care.
That is the biggest friction point for me.
If I'm treating a patient,
other than sneaking a couple quick videos,
I don't have time to do higher opportunity
things.
That's mine.
Twenty years ago, fifteen years ago,
my biggest friction point was insecurity
i'm gonna get judged people are gonna look
at what i'm doing and they're gonna
criticize me the is it the no like
you talked about this guy who who's the
guy on instagram no bs or no oh
yeah no bs physio or whatever yep yeah
like he just rips people apart now it's
so extreme that it's hilarious it's not
even like insulting i don't think anybody
would be insulted by him saying what he
says about them
But I think in the mind of the
therapist,
that's what they expect everybody to say
about their content.
What do you think?
Themselves?
Yeah.
You are the only limiting factor.
You could right now use AI or not
even just Google.
What camera do I buy?
How do I set it up?
What lighting?
And you could have AI generate you fifty
different topic ideas and now it could
script them.
You could give input like I want it
to sound like this person but this.
I want to be the Seth Godin of
whatever.
You could give it all these different
things and you could be creating these
things by the time this live stream is
over.
You were worried about
What if I put all this energy in
and nothing happens?
They're all going to laugh at you.
Someone's going to judge you.
I'm going to make all this stuff and
no one's going to watch it anyway,
which I would say, then who cares?
Because if no one watches it anyway,
but the answer is yourself.
Luck favors the bold.
Luck favors the person who actually showed
up and did the thing.
So I think our biggest limiting factor is
ourselves.
When companies come to me and they're
like,
we're thinking about doing this thing and
they're on the teeter-totter and I think
they respect me enough that I can push
a little bit, I go, in six months,
if someone comes along and steals this
idea, who does this exact thing?
How pissed would you be if they did
it first?
And that usually pushes them over, right?
Because this is a great idea.
So why aren't you acting on it?
I'm not good enough.
I mean, ask the people who are like,
do you know, ask Dr. Joe.
Do you know who I'm talking about on
YouTube?
Yeah, of course.
Yeah.
I don't know her.
I think if you sat her down and
said,
are you the smartest PT on the planet?
She would go, absolutely not.
Absolutely not.
She's not.
Is she competent?
Yes.
Is she good?
Yes.
Is she worth being around?
Is she engaging?
Yes.
But the biggest reason she's successful
is...
She hit record and she did it again
and again.
And then she looked at, oh,
I liked that.
The best is when what you like as
a person creating something and the
audience like the same thing.
Not I'm creating for them.
It's I'm creating something that has
value.
I like talking about this.
Who's the guy in the Facebook group who
does the Parkinson's disease channel now?
Michael... Hyland?
Yes.
Hyland.
You can tell...
that he really cares about educating
people who are going through Parkinson's
disease.
You need to spend twelve seconds watching
anything or reading anything he makes.
It is a layup.
It's a layup.
And that is gold.
I got really nervous when I was going
into radio that I'd get a job at
a radio station that I didn't like the
music.
Wouldn't be able to do it.
Couldn't do it.
Lucked out that every time I played a
song, I was like,
I am excited for this.
It's hard to fake it.
Here's the best part.
You don't have to.
because you don't have to go after the
largest audience possible.
That is not just if you're like, wow,
low back pain is covered.
I don't really care about that.
Great.
Don't do that.
Go after the thing.
But the biggest limiting factor,
in my opinion, Paul, is yourself.
Can you read it?
Yeah.
I've dipped a toe into content and social
media.
Paul saying he lost the momentum,
but working to get it back on the
horse.
Like this is common, right?
So I would say if I were like
having a therapy or a media session with
Paul, I'd say, awesome, man.
Like, what did that look like?
And what was too much for you?
Was it like I was doing it every
single day and I couldn't?
Great.
I would say, awesome.
What's three videos a week?
And what if you did them only on
Tuesday between nine and eleven a.m.?
Could you do that?
And if the answer was yes, I'd go,
great.
Do that for six months.
Because as soon as you burn out,
you've got to unplug.
You can't just dial it back.
Trust me,
I haven't done a podcast interview outside
of the live streams in a couple weeks.
Why?
Dude, I got fried.
I was on that pace to do three
hundred and sixty five episodes in three
hundred sixty five days.
Actually,
I still might be on that pace because
I was doing like...
three a day at some point.
I got fried.
The biggest limiting factor was I got
fried and I was looking at results going,
I don't know if any of this stuff
is helping anybody.
I don't know if I'm picking the right
topics.
I don't know if I care anymore, right?
So.
Take that idea into patient care.
How many of the best therapists get fried,
burn out,
not because they're doing too much,
but because they are doing so much for
people who really have no capacity to
improve.
You know,
or the improvement is going to be so
slight on the scale.
Like I can go treat a patient and
get eighty five bucks.
That's not going to move the needle for
me that the magnitude of change.
I need thousands of dollars to really make
it worth the effort in the time.
And at some point you do,
you burn out, you get tired.
And I've told Paul this before.
Like,
I am peaks and troughs all year long.
I drop a hundred videos on YouTube and
then I don't do anything for three or
four months because I burn out creating
those hundred videos.
Now, there are people, my wife,
who are going to be slow and steady.
They're not going to burn out.
They're going to continuously work and
they're going to find the pace that works
for them.
You and I tend to be more up
high and down low.
But that's just the way it is,
you know,
and that's why it's so hard for somebody
to give advice because your personality
might not match.
There's a couple of things where we got
a lot to go into here.
So, again,
this is why I went to radio,
not TV.
TV required me to like spend hours and
hours and hours and hours and hours for
one ninety second video story.
And I just that was too much for
me.
It was so much.
squeeze for so little juice where i
preferred being on the radio for five
hours a day and doing a lighter lift
but for longer periods of time and
interacting right so you and i do go
through these we go like crazy and then
we're like but where's the roi and here's
the funny part
Paul's asking,
does each person need to be on their
own island?
Because right now, if I have a channel,
I'm my own island.
And Tony's on his own island, right?
If I have a podcast,
you have a podcast.
This is where I went back to like,
I was never on my own radio station.
I was always playing off of what someone
else did.
And we as a whole,
this is where like having a TV channel
or a network like ESPN,
what the SportsCenter guys do helps the
rest of the network and vice versa, right?
So, Paul, what do you mean by that?
He says,
I always go back to Jimmy's PT agents
like sports agents.
You know, they've done this before,
like creator houses.
Have you heard about these things?
You know,
you rent a house on the beach, whatever,
and everybody gets a room and then there's
a bunch of little media stalls.
Essentially,
we're going to pool all the resources
together.
media, production, lighting, space,
overhead's a giant part of it.
And now also you have what's called
bumpability.
Where if I bring in a great guest
and I do a segment with them, well,
why don't you just stop in down the
hallway?
The radio station I worked for used to
do that.
It's actually how I met one of my
ex-girlfriends,
was the local TV news person who's
promoting a thing would come on my radio
station.
But while you're there,
there's like two doors down.
There's another thing.
Why don't you jump on there for fifteen
minutes?
But also you have things like billing or
contract negotiation.
Instead of having to take twenty percent
of twenty deals,
you can take three percent of one hundred
deals.
right so i think that's what paul's
talking about like in in terms of agents
and sports you are aimed at different
audiences but i don't think you're
competition i think you're more comrades
than you are competition you're more
you're more on the same team
So this is, you know,
we've talked about the barstool sports of
physical therapy.
There should be a centralized channel,
a centralized YouTube,
centralized Facebook.
I would imagine the APTA would be the-
I'm dumbfounded.
I'm still dumbfounded.
And that's the only reason I haven't done
anything because I'm like,
why hasn't anybody done it?
I have tried in the past to say,
hey guys, create videos.
I'll share them to my community.
I had one person create a video that
I did share to my community.
Nobody else has done it.
You would think that you could,
someone could,
one could create a YouTube channel
dedicated to physical therapy and create
silos within that channel
of you know neuro and ortho and knee
replacement and rotator cuff and you have
your specialist they still have their own
individual channels but everybody pulls
the resources into this one to get it
to a million followers to get the the
views up and then it distributes traffic
out right you have to have that way
for traffic to pay off though
Yeah.
That's why it's like...
And I've been thinking about this a lot
where it's only going to get harder.
I mean,
there's a couple of models on how to
make money with content, right?
Like Tony does it where he's like a
lot of views or less views and I'll
take a little bit of money times a
million views and I've got myself a few
nickels.
With podcasting, I go the other route,
which is like,
I'm going to sign a sponsor for no
less than seven hundred fifty bucks,
a thousand bucks a month.
But I'm going to tell you
I'm dropping three episodes a week and
you're going to spend this much time with
them.
And I know exactly who that person is
because your neighbor who's an auto
mechanic is not listening to his PT
related podcast.
And if you want to sell CEUs or
a residency or staffing to a PT,
I'm one of your guys.
So I look at what you just said
in terms of like APTA would be perfectly
leveraged.
They have the brand, they have access,
they have the facilities,
they have the staffing.
I think the next available organization
that might be able to pull that off
is an EMR.
Because there's a payoff on the back end.
The EMR company or a staffing company.
The EMR company or a staffing company can
look at that and go,
if I put fifty grand in and I
land four clients,
or if I'm a staffing company,
I put fifty grand in and I land...
Ten travel contracts.
I've paid for that self.
And also, we've talked about this before,
content compounds.
So the stuff that I paid for in
January,
I can dust that off and reshare that.
And the audience compounds.
I was saying that APTA is probably the
one organization that could pull that off,
but they haven't.
I don't know why.
They would have to be internal profession
in my mind.
They are not business to public.
So then I wonder if that's an opportunity
for a new person to come in.
It's obviously a need.
It's obviously somebody that has the
chops, somebody that has done it before,
can grow a channel, can produce it.
And it's a full time commitment.
It's okay, we're going to do this.
I'm sure the money is in it.
But who would front that money?
That's what I would say next is after
APTA,
the A- tier would be either a staffing
company, like a travel staffing company,
or an EMR.
because they're the ones that can say for
every client, for every one sale,
you're not going to make money selling
t-shirts on this.
It would be very difficult to make money
on views on this to start anyway, right?
Because you're asking for a commitment of
effort.
And if people can't see the ROI quickly,
I show up and treat a patient and
then two weeks later,
a check drops into my bank account.
That's a fast enough loop.
If someone came to me ten years ago
and said,
you're going to start a podcast and you're
going to have a significant amount of your
income be based on that, I'd go,
you're insane.
I did it because it was this new
little toy and I liked it and I
was curious.
It paid in the end.
But I get why people are like,
I don't know.
I can't be the Tony.
I think sometimes the things that you
share, Tony,
actually scare people out of starting.
Because they're like, yeah,
he's so much further than me.
Like he's look, look, look, he look,
he just he said,
I accidentally shared this video from
three years that I shot three years ago
and I forgot to share it.
It got a million views.
Oh, my God.
I look at that and I go,
I just scripted ten things out and it
got bupkis that that jacks with my
confidence.
Will saying the breakfast club might be
the closest thing we've got to that hub.
Maybe.
But even look at this.
This gets okay views.
Okay.
And we've been doing this for three years,
two years.
Here's the thing.
I don't know if we want to say
the name of the group,
but there is an EMR that out there
that is trying to do this,
had tried to do this.
I haven't been in touch with them for
a while.
I'm looking at the YouTube channel right
now.
Four hundred and forty eight subscribers
went nowhere.
they're, but I mean,
they have the money behind them.
They have high production value.
They do an amazing job.
They get a ton of guests.
They've brought in, uh, you know,
creators that people know and,
and tried to build that sports, you know,
can, can I show, can I share,
we want to say the name,
but this is an EMR company.
That tried to do exactly what we just
said.
Tried to.
Can I tell you why I think it
didn't work?
Please.
They tried to sell way too early.
You can smell it.
Yeah.
Everything drips with use us.
Everything's an ad.
Just look at the topics, right?
Everything's a close.
I've written about it on LinkedIn,
about LinkedIn posts.
If you start with this cool content that
I'm looking at, I'm like, yeah,
I'm nodding along.
And then halfway through the little
LinkedIn diatribe I'm on,
and that's why we here at Callahan Auto
Parts only use the finest auto parts.
Oh, the whole thing's an ad.
People reject it.
It drips and smells of corporate.
Look at the videos that Barstool creates.
They're created on phones, dude.
They're created...
in the offices with a bunch of twenty
thirty somethings goofing off watching
sports that's why it's real that doesn't
look real to me that drips of fake
I'm going to disagree.
I'm looking at it right now.
I just think it was too small of
an audience.
And, you know, I've got that audience,
like I've got my Learn Medicare billing
channel.
The audience is PT, OT, SLP.
It's kind of business.
This audience and you and I have had
this conversation.
This audience is too small of an audience
to really.
get out there and go viral i think
if we look at some of the big
um general physical therapy channels bob
and brad ask dr joe i always forget
his name athlean x the guy he's a
physical therapist like these are in the
tens of millions of of subscribers they
have huge channels huge reach
I think if we took the profession of
physical therapy, created the silos,
supported individual content creators on a
central location,
I think we can hit tens of millions
of followers.
I don't disagree.
Yeah, hundreds of millions of views.
And you said, who's going to fund it?
I don't really think it needs funding.
That's the thing.
I can start my YouTube membership for zero
cost.
If nobody signs, I don't lose any money.
I'm spending the time anyway.
I've always gone back to there are so
many creators out there who are creating
and nobody is watching.
Let's bring them into this ecosystem with
a little bit of education and say, hey,
this is why nobody's watching your hook,
your story.
Like, let's clean those parts up.
Let's clip all this stuff out that doesn't
need to be in there.
i do think it's still a big opportunity
for somebody who wanted to take it yeah
i think if this were to ever go
anywhere the answer would be like occam's
razor it would be the simplest solution
like whenever you're starting talking
about anything that a seven-year-old
couldn't understand that's when it would
fail so
The only thing is it's not zero dollars
because it's people's time.
And even more expensive, it's their ego.
And I don't blame them.
Do you know what I mean?
I get it.
I had a fifteen-year head start.
I used to get commended.
Oh, as a PT student,
you stepped out of your comfort zone and
started interviewing people as a student.
I was like,
I stepped into my comfort zone.
I got to play stupid but sound smart
because I asked it as a question in
an interview.
That was a life hack, right?
So I do think it's,
you have to get someone to say,
I am the Parkinson's disease PT and I'm
going to plant my flag and I'm smart
enough.
Because as soon as I say something and
five colleagues come in the comment
section,
Your ego is shot, and I don't disagree.
That is the dumbest part of human nature,
but it is the biggest limiting factor.
I mean,
this is sort of the crux of how
I started the damn podcast.
I was sitting in a presentation room with
a thousand PTs at a state conference,
and I was like, do you understand?
This is ten, eleven years ago.
I was like, wow,
how much information is just stored in the
brains of all these people sitting in this
room, and it'll never leave.
Even the presentation we were watching
wasn't being recorded.
I was like, wow,
this thing's going to be said.
It was prepared.
Effort was done.
It was prepared.
It was executed.
Most people will nod and forget.
Eighty six percent of it before they leave
the room.
And I was like,
that is a crying shame.
And now we're twenty light years past that
where we record and share like crazy.
And the good stuff I still think is
the good stuff is still out there.
I'm going to grab a screenshot and I'll
share it of the last three hundred and
sixty five days revenue from individual
videos, because now, you know,
I've noticed this trend in my life.
I'm fifty one years old now.
There's been a thirty year analysis,
but something that I've seen,
I get an idea.
I get excited, I get pumped up,
I put a bunch of resources behind it
and then I burn out and it dies
and it just sits there and it doesn't
do anything.
And then I start to get excited about
it again and I start to rethink it
again and technology has changed,
culture has changed,
other things have changed.
And a lot of these ideas,
the first time I throw them out,
they don't go anywhere and then the second
time they get a little bit of traction
and sometimes it takes three or four
efforts
But usually, you know,
at some point something clicks and it
takes root.
Yeah.
It's more me than we.
Yeah.
So if you can grab that screenshot,
this takes me back.
So people want to get monetized.
They want their YouTube channel monetized.
You know, even a dollar,
you and I have said this multiple times,
a dollar puts fuel in the tank of
our motivation.
It's validation.
Yeah.
Proof of concept, market fit.
So going back to this global idea,
There are, you know,
on my YouTube channel,
there are individual videos.
YouTube gives us revenue.
I know one video,
if you can share it,
generated four hundred and sixty six
dollars over the last three hundred and
sixty five days.
I just took this screenshot.
So this is the most up to date
ever.
Another video still struggling after your
knee replacement,
three hundred and eighty dollars.
So even something like that to say,
rebuild the channel i've got the choose pt
first youtube channel i could change the
name i could rebrand it it's already got
i don't know twelve hundred or something
subscribers i've done this before and you
make it a profession you know specific
channel
geared to the consumer.
We looked at the APTA's YouTube channel,
Facing the Consumer.
They haven't published in three years and
it was one video and then it was
five years ago.
We do that.
We invite small creators who don't have an
audience
we get the channel monetized more quickly
than they could get their individual
channel monetized.
And we could even do a revenue share
because these are objective numbers.
You know,
if they have a video that goes viral
on our platform,
we could do a revenue share based on
the actual analytics.
And then when they get their own
individual channel monetized,
they get all that additional revenue.
It's like an incubator.
where we're investing time and effort and
so are they,
but they're at least saying someone's been
there and done that.
So at least it's safer.
But they own the IP when they're done,
right?
I don't want it.
I don't want their videos, right?
I would call it a launchpad more than
an incubator, same concept.
Our return on the investment is we get
to leverage hundreds of creators to
accelerate the growth of one channel that
will then potentially distribute and
promote individual channels from there.
That channel is obviously going to have
value, generate monetary income.
And, yeah,
we would be essentially the people funding
the project with our time, our knowledge,
our history of thousands of failures
before we built anything that generated
traffic and revenue.
Yeah.
Got to get people to commit to do
this.
That goes back to this.
I need you to invest.
I need you to step out there.
I need you to trust in yourself.
I need to believe in the idea.
I don't know.
I've always been the person who's like,
I'll just try it.
What's the downside?
I remember my professor asked me,
if you start a...
What's this thing called again?
A podcast?
If you start this podcast,
what do you lose if it goes nowhere?
And I was like, well, the microphone's,
you know, and hosting is, you know,
and she's like,
Feels like a low barrier.
Now, it was also my time,
but I was also curious about that stuff
anyway, where I was like, I don't know,
I kind of want to know this stuff.
So even if I got zero listens,
I learned stuff.
So cheat code wise,
it was still worth it for me.
See, I get all pumped up.
I know.
I'm already thinking like,
what do we name it?
I wouldn't make it PT specific because I
would want to be able to include OT
and speech.
I would want to look at what else
is already out there, you know,
and
already thinking about like what are the
legal agreements look like so that if a
video does go viral I mean can does
the creator have the right to take the
video down or once it's up there is
it kind of locked in if I create
a course on a platform that course is
locked in I can stop selling it to
new people but most of the platforms won't
let you take it down because other people
have already bought that course
So it's all of this stuff.
That's the exciting stuff.
This is the dopamine rush that comes in
and like takes you away from the
commitments you already made to other
projects
This is probably why I don't end up
really taking anything to, you know,
tens of millions of dollars because I,
soon as I get a little success,
the dopamine declines.
And then I started looking at the next
thing, you know,
I've got a little success already.
I've got things that are working.
Why would I even consider moving into
something new?
Because I'm addicted to the dopamine and
the excitement more than I'm addicted to
the revenue and the actual business.
Yeah,
you and I are probably similar in that
there's this the six types of working
genius.
It's like one of those like personality
slash work tests.
And one of them is the is the
genius of tenacity,
which is like the finisher.
And I get yelled at all the time
because I start fifteen projects,
get nine of them to the halfway mark,
get three of them to the three quarter
mark, and then I'm starting six more.
That's the idea.
Yeah.
All right.
We're, we're at the top of the show.
What are you thinking for parting shot?
Parting shots is we flirted with ideas
like this.
I would love to try,
like it's almost summer.
Is that a slower time at the clinic
for you or busier?
Uh,
inconsequential busy from a family
perspective, you know,
family vacations and kids are available.
And I would say we play with the
ideas we've talked about and launch them
in the fall.
That gives us some runway.
Yeah.
And then, and then,
and then publish the results.
Would you be against if we could get
a large organization who saw this or heard
this or got pinged from enough people that
go, we want to buy in,
we want to invest.
I feel like that would add fuel to
the fire.
It would, it would account.
It would add accountability.
You know,
understanding where or what would happen
with that investment would be important.
Yeah.
All right.
My parting shot.
I'll go first.
My parting shot.
You are the biggest limiting factor to
your own success.
I say this from...
beyond more enough personal experience,
you are the biggest limiting factor to
your own success.
If you can get past that,
if you try to fail and succeed,
which have you done?
Like if you were like,
I'm just going to do this,
I'm going to do it.
It's not going to work, but on purpose,
I'm going to try to make it blow
up as big as I can.
And then what if it doesn't?
So that's my parting shot.
All right, my parting shot.
One of the things I wanted to talk
to, we didn't talk about,
Amazon Prime Day,
which is actually Amazon Prime multiple
days is coming up, about two weeks away.
Product companies are desperate for video
and content and anybody who's willing to
do it.
I've got my scripts in Gemini.
So as the emails come to me,
I'm like, yeah, no problem.
Three hundred and fifty five hundred
dollars finished video.
Sixty seconds is what I offer.
This is the deliverable.
If you want it, I'll do it.
I say no to a lot of these
companies like there's power wheelchairs
and stuff that I'm not going to say
yes to.
But.
If you're in that world at all,
understand that this is a big push for
these product companies and they're more
than happy to pay a couple hundred dollars
for sixty seconds of your finished time.
Because what they really need is authority
and access.
They understand they're at the one yard
line of making money.
But that golden mile,
as they used to call it in delivery,
that last step,
you can't buy or fake that.
You can try.
We just talked about a company that tried
to do it,
and there's something wrong with that.
All right.
We'll talk about this some more.
It needs a cool name, though.
I do like Launchpad.
That feels like there's some height to it.
All right.
We'll be back on Thursday.
We'll see you guys soon.
That's it.
We're out.
Boys, what the hell are you doing?
Follow Tony Meritato 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.