I am at all in.
Broadcasting way too early from three
separate Wi-Fi connections.
It's PT Breakfast Club with Tony Meritato,
Dave Kittle, and Jimmy McKay.
I feel like the Better Business Bureau or
like the Tourism Bureau from wherever Tony
is now and from wherever – Dave,
where do you go again when you sit
on the front porch on the cabin?
Where is that?
Tennessee?
And the Blue Ridge Mountains, Georgia.
North West Georgia.
I feel like that's the thing.
Micro-influencers, right?
It's like –
know give me a hot thirty in your
live stream and if it pans i don't
know it's too hard to track i got
one i got one uh yesterday yesterday and
i'll share the website with you guys
offline but the idea is
they're doing micro-influencer campaigns.
So they're offering me like,
three hundred bucks for like a video about
my experience and it has to do with
like, NPTE study prep.
And the way it's set up,
I was like, yeah, I'd do that.
Like, I don't know,
fifteen minutes of work?
But you're not paying for the fifteen
minutes of work,
you're paying for the reach of where this
campaign actually goes.
Yeah, Kevin,
who's the guy from Shark Tank?
Kevin O'Leary.
He has like a micro, nano,
I think nano is smaller than micro,
influencer business.
And so, you know, I mean,
the numbers can,
I think they average like a hundred bucks,
a hundred bucks for a shout out or
different things,
but they can go lower if you don't
have an audience.
So someone taught me this and it like,
it makes sense, right?
So
Foo Fighters is a huge band, right?
Foo Fighters has more fans in the world
than my little radio station did in
Northeast Pennsylvania.
That math is unquestionable.
But Foo Fighters still ran ads and did
press and did an interview, yada yada,
at my radio station because we had more
listeners than
in Northeast Pennsylvania than they did
fans in Northeast Pennsylvania.
So that's where you start to get into
these micro niches where you're like, oh,
it's economies of scale.
And if you can simplify that,
the audience, when you combine it,
it gets faster, it gets bigger,
can get bigger,
but the message gets through faster
because a random person with budget
the message might not land, which is why,
like,
Dave having a catch in Central Park makes
sense on his videos.
I've seen two of those.
Are there more?
We got more coming, baby.
We got a whole bunch of unique content
coming every angle.
You know my rule.
It's got to have, like, glove talk.
We didn't name it.
Here's what Dave's doing, I think anyway.
I'm like,
these two guys are having a catch in
the middle of the day in Central Park.
Why aren't they doing notes?
Why aren't they rushing between two
people?
Why aren't they worried?
They don't look worried.
Besides you guys taking your shoes off and
putting your foot in a pond and just
sitting there,
I don't know a more leisure time activity
than just like, what do you do?
First of all,
you're walking around with your glove.
Who does that?
Someone who expects to have some time off.
So you're selling, using air quotes there,
sort of freedom or flexibility without
selling freedom and flexibility.
Somebody who trips across that is going to
get that.
I don't know if I'm going to be
this open or nice with future employees.
This was Ethan bugging me nicely,
urging to, hey, let's have a catch,
whatever.
And I could see how fast his caseload
was growing.
Already in the second and third week,
he was hitting his weekly bonus.
So he was nudging me to do it.
It was nice.
We did this.
Now he's in his
So this was like three weeks ago,
but that's when we recorded it.
So I knew that he's going to get
busier and eventually we're not going to
have time for it.
So I was like, you know what?
Cool.
Let's do it.
Like he used to play competitively.
Let's schedule a time.
You bring your glove in.
I'll bring my glove in.
We'll, you know, have a change of clothes,
that type of thing.
And I was like, well,
if we're going to do it,
then I'm going to record it.
Right.
And we're going to we're going to talk
about it.
So I have other videos coming out where
he or I are in front of the
camera.
But yes, at the same time,
it is legit during business hours.
So you tell that.
Yeah.
And so the idea was like, all right,
I'm going to record this.
But then now I'm able to show like
this is like who who like think of
tick tocking of Instagram,
like who wouldn't.
like want to see views of central park.
And then it's like a baseball field.
You don't usually see that view baseball
field with like the skyline in the
background.
Perfect.
Perfectly sunny day.
We got the lapel mics on.
Thank you, Jimmy, for the nudge and,
and the, the link to get those.
Um,
So the idea is like, all right,
if we're going to do any of this
stuff now, we need to be recording it.
I've done a bad job with not recording
any of the restaurants and the places that
I take my therapist,
which Tony has only been telling me for
two, three years to do that.
But eventually we'll do it.
And I just need to be recording more
often and sharing more of the content.
So are you editing those when they're
done?
Cause that's the lift, man.
I mean, doing the thing.
Well, I'm not doing,
I am following the Tony Meritato playbook
guys.
Listen, don't overcomplicate it.
Just hit, hit record.
And then stop and then maybe chop the
video down from, you know,
fifteen seconds to seven or from thirty to
fourteen seconds or whatever.
And so I'm not doing any editing at
all.
I'm going I'm using the edit app from
Meta and I'm using the captions from there
and just posting like like hardly any
cuts.
There's some videos I posted where it's
like two or three little clips in between.
But that's so easy.
Like that's not even really like editing,
in my opinion.
Right.
Another thing we talked about micro
influencers and campaigns like that.
Another is a complete industry that did
not exist three years ago,
which is clipping.
Instead of you paying an editor a flat
fee, you pay for results.
It's like value based care.
Yeah, I love that.
I'm going to give you a pile of
stuff.
And this is my rate per thousand views.
So you're incentivized not to just get it
done.
I mean,
I've worked with people who are like,
it's done.
I'm like, it's a C minus.
What am I going to do with this?
But it's done.
You pay for it.
This is teams of people working around the
world who are given a Google Drive full
of whatever.
And their job is to spend,
they decide if what you have is going
to be worth their time,
if it's going to be
if they're going to be able to get
enough views to make it worth their while.
So you both sit on the same side
of the table in that regard,
in my mind.
And that is an industry.
I saw an interview with a guy.
Again, all these things are,
I make a million dollars.
My industry makes, you know,
everybody's a CEO.
Everybody's got,
everybody's five X and ten X.
But people that I respect enough are like,
yeah, this is legit.
If you can,
if then you become in the structure
business,
then your job is to
Organize those people to create those
campaigns and connect those people who
want them.
So maybe we're talking a lot about
attention and social media.
Maybe this is a good prompt for you
guys since we've got a shortened,
I've got a shortened window today.
I'm going to Colorado tomorrow.
There's an APTA Colorado student event and
they asked me to speak on whatever.
And then they pushed them and they asked
for communication.
I mean, for me,
what else am I going to do?
Am I going to talk about shoulders?
I'm not going to talk about shoulders.
So what would you tell students?
If you were talking to yourselves,
if you were about to graduate in a
year or two,
What would you tell yourself?
Would it be like what Dave just said,
communicate more?
Like that shouldn't be the part of the
equation you leave out?
Or what would the advice be for someone
who wants to either work at a clinic
for someone else?
I still think you should probably build
your own brand or open a clinic.
What would your advice be to these
students?
Dave, go first.
I was going to kick it back to
you.
I was going to say, well,
I would want to model some of the
top physical therapists or the top
physical therapy practices accounts
on social media starting with either tony
maritato or total therapy solutions of
what he posts and why and knowing and
seeing that it's not overly edited or or
produced uh and it's just like quick
little i mean you could if you have
no patience uh you could be doing that
with your family members of like different
treatment techniques and why does the knee
move this way or look at the skin
on
you know,
this old total knee replacement scar or
whatever.
Um,
I've probably saved a ton of money by
just following what Tony does and just
filming from my own iPhone.
Cause if it weren't for Tony,
I think I probably would have already
spent way more money on like, uh,
like a videographer thinking that I'm like
Gary V and then paying somebody else to
edit them.
Cause I definitely don't want to learn
editing.
And I,
I just don't want to get into that
whole thing.
And so that's one thing I would say
is look out,
look at what's on Tik TOK, Instagram,
Facebook, maybe YouTube, uh, and see what,
see what practices are doing.
And if you're a student,
the easiest way is to follow what Tony
Maritato is doing.
And it just happens to be that he
gets results,
but it takes effort and volume.
Yeah, I agree.
I think it's one of those things where
students coming out today,
they're coming into an environment very
different than the environment that their
professors came out into.
They're coming into an economy that's very
different than their professors came into.
And so just like twenty five years ago,
you would expect to come out into an
insurance based model.
You were working for the insurance
company.
Now they're coming out.
potentially into a cash-based model like
Dave's doing.
They're coming out into a media-based
model like I'm doing.
They're coming out into a different world.
And so start getting the reps,
start doing the recording.
I'm still shocked.
For these kids, and I say kids loosely,
for these kids that grew up with mom
and dad videoing everything,
recording everything with social media
since birth,
I'm still surprised at how uncomfortable
so many of them are in front of
a camera.
And so like I reached out.
I'm not because,
because most people are more afraid of
public speaking than death.
Yes.
But you would think you, I mean, I,
I was, you know,
not a public speaker when I was a
student.
Um, but anyway.
So hold on a second.
Don't skip past that.
What got both of you over it?
Was it repetition?
I always share the story.
I'm like, yeah, I was just,
I saw the value,
the future value in being able to speak
to a camera.
And in twenty seventeen,
I remember sitting in my exam room,
terrified to hit record little balls of
spit in the corner of my mouth,
my face getting tense.
But I pushed through it just like you
push through any exercise to get better at
whatever you're trying to do.
With thousands and thousands and thousands
of repetitions until it got to the point
where that little dot,
right now it's a green dot on my
iPhone,
but it's just like talking to a human.
Yeah.
You know,
and I knew there was some value in
that, so I had to push through it.
That's where I think the kids coming out
today, they need to realize,
and I shared pictures,
if you want to pull up some of
the screenshots of, like Dave said,
we went from highly overproduced to less
produced, like, um,
Tai Lopez in his garage, you know,
like let's just hit record,
make it real kind of easy.
Now we're going to full circle.
Facebook is paying for text only posts.
Facebook is paying for images that are
literally just screenshots pulled out of a
video that I had sitting on my iPhone.
And so, you know,
These are generating twenty, twenty five,
fifty, seventy five dollars.
And today I think I shared a post
on my personal profile.
I'm like,
this is like finding a fifty dollar bill
for Dave.
It'd be a hundred dollar bill in your
pants pocket that you had completely
forgotten about.
You put it through the washing machine.
You reach in there.
You grab it like, oh, I got money.
You know,
it's just you don't even remember.
OK, so.
Real context for somebody.
This comes from Gary Vee.
Gary Vee shared a post-it note with what
looks handwritten with a message.
My message was,
and I knew this was going to resonate,
something I can't see it,
but when did intimacy return after a total
knee replacement?
How many views did it generate?
One hundred twenty three K.
So one hundred and twenty three thousand
views.
This one was mostly Facebook.
How much money did I get?
Twenty two dollars.
Twenty two bucks, you know, but again,
but again,
this screenshot was from July fifth or
sixth.
What does that say?
And now we're at July sixteenth.
So, yeah,
but most of this happened in the first
twenty four to forty eight hours.
Yeah.
And then it just kind of dies on
the vine.
This was a video.
So I had recorded a video in the
clinic.
I grabbed a screenshot from that video.
I looked at that and I was like,
oh, this could be an appealing visual.
I used to be an artist.
Don't forget,
I went to a fine arts high school.
I could never take a photo and sell
a photo as an art piece and make
seventy five dollars.
But I grabbed that screenshot.
I found a twenty in my back pocket.
I grabbed that screenshot from a video
that was sitting on my camera roll.
I was like, oh yeah,
people talk about numbness.
I put it on Facebook.
Almost half a million views.
I had no idea.
This, you know,
this might have been one out of twenty,
but still half a million views.
Same picture.
Run it through AI, chat GPT.
Hey, some people have warmth.
Some people have numbness.
Turn this into an image.
Use the reference image I provided.
Another fifty bucks, forty seven bucks,
whatever that is, another almost,
you know, three hundred thousand.
And then just text.
I've been sharing just text for like ten,
fifteen years, not monetizing any of it.
But now I'm sharing what patients tell me
every single day.
And it turns into, you know,
we hit a million.
It was actually one point one million
views yesterday while I'm on vacation.
Right.
And just periodically throughout the day,
I jump on my phone.
I grab a screenshot.
I think of something that I've shared
before.
Put it out there.
Two thousand dollars from ad revenue over
the last twenty eight days.
Like that covers a portion of the vacation
trip.
Right.
And we can just chill out and relax.
How is it?
I need to ask both of you this.
How is it possible with the amount of
volume of social media posts that you both
have posted over the years?
And, and Tony, maybe it's, it's more,
you know,
clinical total knee replacement in
general,
some of the Medicare billing stuff, uh,
Jimmy kind of like more physical therapy,
APTA type stuff, uh, kind of broadly how,
knowing how much volume that you guys have
both
produced like you've you've made a post
and then you posted it and then you've
gotten feedback on it over all these years
how is it possible that you're still
sometimes surprised like when you have a
gut feeling like something's gonna pop and
it doesn't and then something like you're
not you know like you know throw it
out there and then like it does really
well does that still surprise you guys
like how is that possible that you still
and I'm not saying against you guys,
obviously, like,
cause it's still like the,
all these platforms are,
are evolving and the audiences are
evolving and like what resonates with
them.
And I guess maybe we truly don't know,
but what,
what comes to mind when I ask you
guys that.
Jamie humans are human.
Uh, so does it surprise me?
Yeah.
I mean, even just hearing Tony talk now,
I'm overthinking most of these things.
Like some of the content I recorded when
I was out in, in Portland, um,
the less I thought about it or the
less we tried,
the better it sort of came out.
Like,
it's because we're probably more likely
overthinking than underthinking.
And I would say, you know,
computers are computer eat.
It's not just human nature,
but it's also the timing of the algorithm,
what other content is available,
how tight is your niche.
I basically gave up the Learn Medicare
Billing channel because I'm trying to talk
to too small of an audience.
I don't have the opportunity to scale to
a million subscriber channel
talking to PTs, even expanding out to PT,
OT, SLP.
So I'm like, all right,
I learned my lessons.
I got benefit from it.
I'm going to kind of set that on
the back burner.
I'm way less active in my own clinical
groups for the same reasons.
I'm like, the opportunity isn't there.
I can't drag this dead horse to water
and expect it to take a drink.
I'm stepping away and moving more toward
consumer.
And I get it, I'm sure,
I know Jimmy gets it too,
but what you just showed was making two
thousand, whatever,
one hundred dollars a month in the last
twenty eight days on Facebook from posting
this stuff on either Facebook or Meta or
just Facebook only.
But if you were running a webinar for
LearnMedicare Billing every single week
and you had like a new cohort every
two to four weeks or something,
couldn't you be making five,
ten K
twenty k thirty k a month like way
more than what facebook is paying you for
these posts yes it's a smaller total
market uh total like addressable market of
just therapists that would buy learn
medicare billing i've said it before i
think your learn medicare billing course
should be like five thousand dollars and
it's like five hundred dollars or
something so couldn't you make way more on
the learn medicare billing stuff from even
also incorporating the social media
It's the same theme you and I experienced
in patient care.
You would rather take somebody who's very
serious,
who's willing to pay a lot more to
a higher level.
I would rather stay.
I would rather stay in a bigger pool
of water,
helping more people for like higher
volume, lower revenue per person.
Just because to me, it's so much easier.
It's so much easier to throw up a
quick screenshot,
to throw up a quick text post,
to let the advertisers monetize my time,
my effort across a bigger pool than to
have ten therapists,
which is totally true.
I could have.
I used to have ten therapists in a
cohort that would pay, you know,
five hundred, a thousand,
five thousand dollars.
Yes,
it would make me more money per unit,
but I believe there's a bigger opportunity
just a little bit further down the road.
And I talked to these guys that are
doing a thousand dollars a day.
I did a hundred dollars,
a hundred and fifty dollars yesterday on
Facebook from ad revenue.
These guys are doing a thousand dollars a
day.
And again, it's being paid by Facebook,
not paid by the individual.
Right.
so it's just my comfort zone that's just
where i feel like i do better it's
b to b or b to c and
then you get to decide who the b
is and who the c is right so
like someone might look at my podcast and
be like how big are you topped out
like how many pts can i get listening
to other pts talk well yes except i
shifted about two years ago with this show
and and sort of direction i started
talking about clinical stuff four or five
years ago and started talking about this
stuff
And by this stuff, I mean, business,
explain it to me.
Communications, marketing,
how is it going to help you?
That's still a very small total
addressable market.
But if I can partner...
Why do I work for an organization like
Prompt now?
A hundred people connecting
B to B is worth a lot.
It's worth more than a hundred views.
That's where we get tied up in the
vanity metrics of views.
But if you're going to get Facebook to
pay for it, have at it.
That's where the economies of scale in a
large audience make sense.
So I look at the social media the
way I look at insurance.
Dave is working for the patient.
The patient is paying Dave.
In my clinic,
I work for the insurance company.
The insurance company is paying me.
I deliver what the insurance is paying me
to do kind of more than what the
patient necessarily wants.
A lot of my patients just want a
back rub.
The insurance doesn't pay me enough to do
a back rub.
So the patient abdicates that
responsibility to the insurance.
The patient says, hey,
I will come to therapy as long as
my insurance pays.
So I, the consumer,
deliver what the insurance is paying for.
Same thing in media.
I am delivering.
I'm optimizing for what the algorithm is
paying for more than I'm optimizing
necessarily for what the viewer needs or
wants or would benefit from.
And over the last month or two,
I look at all of these personal trainers
and
that are have million following million
followers on facebook they've got to be
doing you know x what i'm doing so
let's say twenty thousand a month i'm
doing two thousand a month and the stuff
they're putting out is optimized for the
algorithm more than anything else it's
nothing great it's nothing fancy it's
standing in which i did this video
standing in front of the oven
Ten heel raises, ten knee flexion,
ten hip abduction, you know,
and maybe a single leg balance.
And they hit a million views with videos
that we stopped producing a decade ago.
It's crazy to me,
but that's what the algorithm wants right
now.
All right.
I got to dip in a few minutes.
I'll be out in Colorado Saturday without
prep.
I'll take the next clip from each of
you talking directly to the students in
the audience.
What would you tell them if the topic
was just you and communicating with the
world?
Because that's what the focus will be.
All right, I'll go first.
I'll go first.
If you got into physical therapy because
you want to help people,
you have an opportunity that none of the
rest of us, none of your educators,
none of the working professionals that
have been in the business more than a
decade,
we didn't have this opportunity before.
You could speak to a million people,
a billion people around the world right
now to help them
You could speak to people that you never,
a president, a prime minister,
you will reach people that you never could
have reached ten or fifteen years ago.
Harness the power of that reach.
Practice.
Get your reps.
Talk to a camera like it's a human
because that will get your message out to
more people.
You will help more people than you ever
could in real person in a clinic or
in a patient's home.
Dave, what do you got?
I like that.
I agree with that.
And I would say record all of your
patient encounters,
get your patients to agree to it.
Treat your neighbors, your family members,
get it on video, put it out there.
But with the focus of using that to
get you more patients and clients in the
future,
or you can go and take that and
go to your first or second full-time job
and say, hey,
I can do this for you, Mr.
and Mrs. Practice Owner.
We can do this together.
I don't like relying on Facebook to pay
for the views because tomorrow Facebook
could just say to Tony Maritato,
we're not going to pay you anymore.
The two thousand dollars you just made
last month,
now it's zero dollars and the CPM now
is crushed versus you have the skills,
but you're using those skills.
Yes, you can talk to a billion people,
but if you can get that in front
of the local five or ten thousand people
to know about your physical therapy
practice or know about your job where
you're starting to work.
Now you can use that to leverage either
make more income for yourself or have
patients coming into the front desk
calling in specifically for you,
which then you could say to your boss,
hey,
I believe I should have a raise and
make more money here because I'm bringing
in more new patients because of my social
media footprint online.
Well done.
All right.
I'll let those be your parting shots for
today.
I'll say again, hey, enjoy.
Oh, Megan's saying, why only students?
We can all benefit from those clips.
Yeah,
that was your parting shot for the day.
Tony, enjoy the beach.
Dave, enjoy playing catch in Central Park.
And we'll see you guys on Tuesday.
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.