The Pattern Hidden in Scripture That You Might Be Missing About the Temple with Mike King

In this episode of Temple Bound, host Will Humphreys sits down with Mike King, a longtime Old Testament and temple symbolism teacher, to trace this pattern from the Exodus of the children of Israel all the way to the ministry of Jesus Christ among the Nephites and the temples built in Kirtland and Nauvoo.

Mike King walks through the symbolism of the blood on the doorposts, the crossing of the Red Sea, the pillar of fire, manna and water in the wilderness, and the mountain of the Lord, showing how each step points toward faith in Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost, the sacrament, and the temple.

Topics covered in this episode includes: 

• The temple pattern in the Old Testament. 
• The symbolism of the Exodus.
• Baptism for the dead.
• The meaning of the baptismal font.
• Isaiah and the temple.
• Hebrews as a temple text.
• The Kirtland Temple and the Nauvoo Temple.
• The doctrine of celestial glory.
• The difference between going through the temple and letting the temple work on us.

If this episode helps you see scripture differently, please follow Temple Bound and leave a comment on the app you are listening from. It helps this podcast reach more people who are trying to learn, grow, and come closer to the teachings of the temple. 

Transcript

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Live From APTA CSM

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is the Willpower Podcast, live at APTA CSM. We're here with physical therapy leaders and practice owners from across the country, talking about where the industry is going and what it takes to grow in today's landscape. Today I'm joined by a dear friend and powerful leader, Neil Trickett, founder of Practice Promotions, discussing the real difference between PR, marketing, and sales, and how PT practice owners can stop leaving patience and revenue on the table by building a marketing engine that actually works. Let's get into it. Willpower Podcast, guys, thank you so much for tuning in. We're here at CSM with Neil Trickett. I am so excited, Neil, to have you on the show because you are the marketing expert in physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech. And you're here with like all these other people with some of the biggest physical therapy companies in the nation. And many of these people are clients of yours. And so let's get right into marketing, the evolution of marketing. What are the needs, what are the differences in needs from like a solopreneur to like the next stage in a company's development?

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Yeah, totally.

Marketing As The Growth Fuel

SPEAKER_01 1:10

So I think the first critical question to answer is how important is marketing in your practice? And when you cut when you look at maybe more foundational. So like because a lot of times it's an afterthought. Like, hey, we're doing, we know we need more new patients, but we're doing really well. We service our our patients really well. So they come back for care. We don't have to do, we've grown organically to a certain point. We have physician referrals, we're doing good, right? Yeah. So why do I need to put more money into marketing? Like, why do you need more effort into this area? But really the the key thing, the the first step of financial planning to grow your business is marketing. Because marketing's the gas. And there's really three critical areas in your practice, and that's going to be uh getting new business in the door, operations, and finance. So, like any one of those key areas you're working on at any one time or multiple times as a practice owner, we tend to gravitate towards operations because we love it. Yeah. We know how to treat patients, we know like getting our staff to treat patients the way that we want to, our front desk, like hiring issues that we come up with, and then we worry about the insurance billing and getting our money in, and then now we have to figure out what to do with it and make sure we have payroll and accounting and taxes and all this other stuff. But the the getting the new business in the door usually becomes the bottleneck at a certain point of the practice because you can grow organically to a certain level, but then it it needs more gasoline to go pump that engine harder to go to that next level. So as a solopreneur, as a growing practice, you'll feel it when you start to kind of reach that threshold of that organic quo.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Yeah. Right? So just by opening your doors in some places, you start growing new, and this is good for multi-location businesses as well, because as they're opening de novos or in those spaces where they're trying to expand, they're going through this exact same cycle. They open their doors, there's going to be an influx of patients. But larger companies obviously have played this game enough to where they understand how to front load some marketing. So I love what you said, Neil, that marketing is the first step in financial planning. I'd never thought of it that way. Yeah. And so I guess most solopreneurs, the biggest mistake they make is just that they don't understand that. What is could you define for everybody, even experienced multi-location owners and leaders? What's the difference between marketing and sales?

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Actually, there's three components. There's PR, PR, marketing,

PR Marketing Sales Explained

SPEAKER_01 3:30

and sales.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

Okay, right? I've never heard that. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

So and and it and it's not equal. It's like a pyramid, right? So your biggest foundation should be your PR, your public relations. And that's making your good works well known.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

Right? And that's uh your word of mouth, what people think about you when you're not in the room, what's your online presence like? You know, do you have great reviews, or are you well known in your community? Are you providing a lot back to your community? What do patients say about you? All of that is PR.

SPEAKER_00 3:59

And I guess that's a hard thing for people because that doesn't always clearly delineate return on investment. So like I'm putting a lot of Google reviews out. I'm putting a lot of like I'm sponsoring um, you know, high school events and I've got my banner places. I'm not, I mean, maybe that's overlapping marketing, but like just some of those PR elements you mentioned, they don't have a direct line into new patients, but that you're saying that's the base and the most important.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

It is the most important part, yes, and you're right. It's very hard to quantify. You will see that at the end and the the trends, the numbers of new patients, the growth of the clinic. But it's a longer return. It's not an immediate, fast return, and that's where people start to kind of falter and they don't put enough effort into their PR, their brand building. That's where brand lists is in that PR sense. So, what do people think about you? What do people consider your practice? Like, where do you fit in the community?

SPEAKER_00 4:47

Right.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

Uh, what do people's reviews say about you? All those things, right?

SPEAKER_00 4:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:53

And so that is the most critical area for the the like the and I I see this all the time when when clinics aren't getting enough traction with their marketing, it's because they really haven't put any effort into gathering testimonials or reviews or building that PR component of their business and they're expecting some advertising to fix everything. Right. And and and if you if you have that it that base of that pyramid really big, you can build upon it much easier. So then when you do you when you have a great online presence, when your reviews are really good, when people, when you have a great service that people rave about your services to others, yeah, uh, then the marketing becomes much more powerful. Your advertising works a lot better, your website works a lot better, your direct mail works even better. And then the sales component, which is actually your front desk.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

Okay, right. So so okay, got it. Sales component, front desk. I don't think people realize that. They think of it as a receptionist job, right? And so they hire at the cheapest dollar amount possible and then wonder why they don't even I don't even think they know how much business they're losing at the front desk.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

That's tremendous. I say front desk is one of the most critical positions in your company. Wow. Uh so front desk is is critical. Like, how fast do people answer the phones? How fast can you get information for the patient? How well can you get them to show up for a visit, you know, excite them about coming in, and then how do you get them to keep coming back for care? Like that, then your therapists become part of that sales cycle. Right. So your therapists have to sell their services well and the the outcome that the patient's gonna get, right, from coming in, and then the uh front desk has to reinforce that, and then your marketing follow-up has to reinforce that. So that's whole sales cycle. But that's the tip of the pyramid. So again, where we if you have a lot of patient drop-off, right? If patients come in for one or two visits and then they never come back again, look lower because your PR is probably more, and then your marketing is not so good, and then people come in like, ah, I'll give them a try. You know, I came off of a Facebook ad. Right. Yeah, give them a shot, and then you know, one or two visits, they're like, I don't know. I wasn't really sold well on this thing, and I didn't really believe it to start with. Right. And then you've got all this patient drop-off and cancellations happening.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

And then they freak out, and then they run out, and this is more of that solopreneur mindset. I think the older, the bigger companies have less of this, but I still think it happens. I think that bigger companies, because they don't know, we you know, we don't get enough training in business in general. But Neil, marketing, I have come to learn in my minimal experience with my five companies, it is the widest learning gap I think that's out there in all the business. Because even medical billing and insurance, there's defined points where you go, got it, as best as I'm gonna get it. Marketing feels like this never-ending bandwidth of things to learn. And especially as you scale, those needs change. And so if people find themselves on their heels, it's because they're not understanding the technology of how to market.

SPEAKER_01 7:41

Yeah, and I one of the traps that I see for any business owner, especially in today's age, is that we can chase the shiny object. We're looking for the one thing that's gonna save us, save our business, or take away our pain. Yeah, take away our pain, or or even just like give us the one thing that's gonna fix everything and move us forward in like an amazing direction. And you hear like the stories about those things, but they're very tiny percentage of what actually happens. Yeah. And the the businesses that really thrive and do well get the basics right, they get the fundamentals right, right? So, again, coming back to the PR, like they work hard on getting reviews for their business and they really promote that online. They work hard on getting content, they work hard, which means like your pictures, your videos. So, like clinics that spend a lot of effort on getting everybody to participate on taking pictures within the clinic, taking video within the clinic, like all of that can be used in your marketing. But clinics that like, hey, I'm too busy, I'm just gonna use a bunch of stock you know, photos here on my website, you miss out on a tremendous opportunity to connect with your audience and connect with those potential patients. So a lot of times it's just getting these fundamentals correct in your business, not only from you as a practice owner, but getting your team to buy into, hey, these are the fundamentals, these things we just gotta get right. And you'll you'll be cooking.

SPEAKER_00 9:07

I'm just so painfully aware of the lack of fundamentals that I'm doing in in Virtual Rockstar, but I'm also, you know, this podcast in particular, I never ask for reviews. And I have a spiritual podcast as well that's driving money towards African orphanages, and I don't even announce to people that I'm doing that. Wow. As you're talking to me, I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm an idiot. Like it's not I don't mean that as a self, like it is a negative way to say it, but it's it's it's encouraging. I'm like, like, dude, you could do all this other stuff, and yeah, and that's PR, and then it builds towards those elements.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Yeah, it doesn't take a lot of expense. It just takes a lot of you know, some coordination, some planning around it. And we look at why social media can work so well is because it does tie into that PR part of it. Sometimes we just kind of perceive social media to be, you know, some advertising on social media. Right. Really like build your PR on that. And it again, from a PR perspective, it's not something that's instantaneous that you're gonna see. Right. When you're working on social media and you're putting out content, for example, when you're working on getting reviews uh for Google, for example, or for uh you know, even Facebook brings, things like that, it takes some time to get some traction. So what you're gonna give up long before it starts to really, you know, go. But if you're if you persevere, you will see the fruits of your labor.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

And and it's amazing how you can learn these things, but you forget, I forget them in different domains. So, for example, you know, recruiting is one of my things that I'm talented in and I've done very well coaching other people until the virtual rock star came along. My biggest thing was just talking about what you said. I didn't know the PR angle as much. I combined marketing with PR. Yeah. But it was always this thing of like, you gotta recruit every day. When we're talking about marketing rock stars, we're talking about business development. We're talking about getting new clients to serve and recruiting. That's that's the two sides of BizDev. And so when we talk about recruiting, we're here with ATI. ATI isn't gonna listen to this podcast. They are, they don't have the greatest reputation in the industry, but they are still alive, in my opinion, because they know these concepts, especially around recruiting. No one recruits better than those guys. I'm pointing down the hall because I can see their logo. No one recruits better than those guys. They are amazing, and there's probably some unbelievably amazing people in it. I don't mean to disparage them. I'm just saying when you get that recruiting piece right and you get the new patient piece right through PR marketing and sales, you can you can go, you know, global or in their case publicly traded and still survive these storms that they're trying to weather

Recruiting Is Marketing Too

SPEAKER_00 11:30

right now.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

Well, one of the things is is you scale, if you want to scale your practice, right? And you don't even have to be a hundred location practice, even if you want to go to two, three, five, ten locations, whatever your dream is, yeah, your problems scale with you, right? Yeah. And and it always comes back to do we have enough new patients, do we have enough people to treat that are awesome, right? And are we getting paid well enough to do this and managing our money? Like that's the three things again, right? Um, but where again, this is another area where practice owners can get a little stuck because they don't they think of recruiting as an HR function. Right. They get recruiting as like, hey, I'm just gonna put an indeed out there and I'm gonna get people to apply and then I'm gonna sift through them. They don't see the PR marketing and sales component of recruiting.

SPEAKER_00 12:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:17

Right. And we're focusing a lot on that for our clients today because it's such a competitive world. We have over 12,000 PT shortfall in the industry, and that's gonna be here, you know, from the APTA's numbers, that's gonna be here for decades to come.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Right.

SPEAKER_01 12:30

Right? We cannot pump enough students out to meet the demand. And what a great, what a great position we are in as a profession where our services are gonna be in growing demand for decades to come.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Right.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Fantastic opportunity. Uh other industries would die for what we have available here. And we we complain and moan about the reimbursement and all these other challenges, but the opportunity is there. And also, I you know I'm really encouraging our clients to look beyond just the insurance model to hybrid models of different service cash service lines that it could add to their business. This is what we're seeing successful practices do. Yeah, because there's gonna be a three trillion dollar opportunity by 2030 for health and wellness. So, how are we tapping into that? But coming back to the recruiting side of it, there's a shortfall of PTs. There's gonna be a shortfall of PTs. So you have to be able to outmarket your competitors to get talent to grow your business. Yeah, we're a service business, right? We we gotta bring more people in to service more people. That's just what it is. If we're good at if we're good at marketing, if we're good at PR, then we gravitate people towards us. And that's what we see. Like the better your marketing gets, the better your PR gets, not only are you gonna attract new patients, but you start to attract top town. Yes, right, towards it.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

That's amazing. I think it's an incredible concept because when we're talking about all these elements, I'm hoping people are listening to this from a lens of how this solves all of their problems on the biz dev side long term. So let's talk about how those elements change over evolutions of companies. Because uh, you and I are both working with larger and larger companies. You and I both have companies that work with us who have um well over a hundred locations. And so what would you say? I you I don't think we have time to go through every element, yeah, but what would you say were were our key lessons that you could share with companies at those sizes so that they can understand how they can upgrade their marketing? Because, like you said, your problem scale with you, and I would say, again, marketing is the largest area of like understand needing to understand in order to keep up with with what your scale and your growth.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

Yeah. Yeah, and so sometimes we think of like the big companies like uh money fixes everything. That's a certain extent, right? But most dangerous aspects of any business, whether it's PT or any other business, is usually the one million dollar mark and the three million dollar mark.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

Right? Those are kind of like your barriers that you have to bust through, and it takes some evolution, some changes in your business at one, three, ten million dollar marks, right? So let's talk about the one to three, because that's pretty common.

SPEAKER_00 14:57

And they call that the graveyard from one of my coaching groups. They're like one to five, they're like anywhere in that space. This is where the very few ever get to a million, but the uh the the much fewer get beyond the five.

SPEAKER_01 15:07

Correct, right. Yeah. So uh usually as we're starting to get to that like you know, multi-location practice, we're tapping the one million dollar mark, and then we're starting to get close to that two to three, you know, get more and more locations going. So uh, you know, at that point, what happens is the practice owner does become the bottleneck, right? And so we're trying to do it all in our business at that million dollar mark. We we have PTs working for us, we have office managers, all that kind of stuff happening. We're trying to do a lot of the marketing ourselves, right? We might we might have like a website company, we might have someone that does a little SEO for us, you know, some local company, things like that. But we haven't truly invested in that component of our business to get it to that next level. Because we're gonna have to drive in a lot more new patients in order to be operating at a two, three, four, five million dollar business, and we have to have enough people to service that at level two. Uh so again, it comes back to that um you become the bottleneck in your practice at that point. And so you have to you are gonna have a point where your profitability is gonna have to be less to reinvest in your business. And that means you're gonna have to reinvest in marketing help. You know, you might need a marketing director in your clinic at that point. You might uh need to spend some money on like hiring an outside agency to come help you more.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

Yeah, when do you when do you this is a great question? When when do you recommend people hire an a well because agencies like that's a whole different discussion? There's different levels of agencies. Let's talk about like an internal marketing director. When at what stage does that internal marketing director make sense? Like a full-time fundamental.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

Honestly, I think when you start to get to like three, four, or five providers, okay. I think that's a great time to start looking uh for someone. And and you have to be careful at who are you looking to hire as a marketing uh you know, director.

When To Hire Marketing Help

SPEAKER_00 16:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

Um the thing that you want to look for is really a marketing coordinator.

SPEAKER_00 17:00

What's the difference?

SPEAKER_01 17:02

So what I see a lot of is that practices might hire someone who has, oh, I've done a lot of social media, I like to do social media posts, or I've done email marketing, I like to do email marketing. Like you don't want someone who does a lot of little actions for you. Because we think of those things that's marketing for that kind of stuff. You want someone who can because there's a gazillion different marketing actions that need to happen within the clinic. Got it. Right? You need to get uh you know feedback from the patients, you need to get testimonials, you need to, you know, uh coordinate events that may be happening outside the clinic, what's your website presence looked like, what's your reviews, what's your SEO, like all these different components that need to be happening from the business. So someone who's really good at project management, someone who's a great communicator, is your ideal marketing coordinator.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

Okay, right?

SPEAKER_01 17:48

They can manage a lot of projects that are going on, they can talk well, they can really build relationships with the patients to extract these amazing stories from another clinic so you can tell them out there to the world, make sure you're getting all these reviews that you're supposed to be getting within the clinic.

SPEAKER_00 18:01

So they've got like the review project going, they've got social media that they're overseeing, which do you recommend social media posting for your practices that you work with?

SPEAKER_01 18:08

Yeah, I do. I think they've got to tap into that more. Like, do you put that as a huge main focus? No, right? Like just It's all the things.

SPEAKER_00 18:14

You've got to be you've got to be doing all these elements to build that brand through through PR. Yeah. So the coordinator is just coordinating those key elements. But would you so you mentioned a couple? I want to just kind of get for people who are listening, what would be the components, almost like a job description of a marketing coordinator? So it would be like overseeing in terms of tasks, it would be like overseeing projects like uh social media management, review, aggregation, anything else come to mind?

SPEAKER_01 18:36

Yeah, uh again, like I said, testimonial gathering from that online, online presence, right? So that's going to be a lot of variety of things. They're usually gonna uh again work with uh some sort of agency, whether that's local or industry specific, because you need someone who could do the technical stuff, the the web development stuff, the SEO stuff.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

Well, and that's where you come in, right? That's what we do.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

We help support like the marketing directors, the marketing teams within the clinic.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

Let's look at that relationship out of curiosity. So practice promotions comes in and does what things with that marketing coordinator? Like what would be the things that you're doing that they're helping coordinate with?

SPEAKER_01 19:11

Yeah, so obviously website development, but then website upkey.

SPEAKER_00 19:14

What does that mean? Website development. So website is uh okay, I'll I mean that sounds pretty obvious, but I when I see that I literally like if I was a PT, I'd be like, are you because I already have a website is how I would hear that.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

Exactly. But my website was built three years ago, and it's great. I love it, you know, but that's fantastic. So bad. But people fall in love with their websites, uh and and you know, it's like this representation of your clinic, and it should be because it's your it's your biggest online uh presence. It's like your online storefront, yeah, right. But what we don't realize is that Google and and the online world changes so fast that your website you should really redevelop every three years. Okay. Now I want you to think about like, hey, I've got an iPhone 8 versus an iPhone 17.

SPEAKER_00 20:00

There's a difference. There's a difference, like it's a it's uncalculable, like it's a big thing.

SPEAKER_01 20:04

Right. So it's one of those things like it should be ongoing, right? There should be a website redevelopment happening on a three-year basis, but then on a on a continuous basis, you should be updating blogs, right, for SEO, and those blogs should go out then to your list of patients, right, to keep them informed of what you're doing. You're bringing them back there. You could be doing recruiting centers through your website.

SPEAKER_00 20:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

Right? You should be putting fresh pictures on there, right? There's a lot of things that you should be. It's not uh a set it and forget it type thing. Absolutely. Right? You gotta keep it, gotta keep it rolling, right? So that that marketing director is helping coordinate all that stuff. And then your website also is a big part of your SEO, like being found on Google for the local. It's a big deal. And so things change with Google. They make you know four or five major updates every year and they don't tell you what they're doing.

SPEAKER_00 20:47

And this is such a big thing, Rockstar, because as we start to become primary care physicians of our musculoskeletal industry, P T O T and SLP, people are starting to skip that middle person and go straight to us. This is everything. Our ability to be found online is the foundational, like connecting point of marketing. If people can go search for physical therapy near me and your practice pops up with 300 positive reviews, their likelihood of becoming a patient goes up. And I can see that's where you it's hard to calculate that direct ROI. But if you're not playing that game, you're definitely not going to scale. And you'll be frustrated going, why can't I recruit and retain people? Or why can't I seem to get more patients? This is really the common problem.

SPEAKER_01 21:27

The easiest thing just to think about is just looking at it from a you know a thousand-foot view or ten thousand-foot view is like, what is my brand presence look like online? Like how do I come across online my clinic? Right? And so that's just a great place to start because then you'll start to see holes where if I was a patient and I was Googling for you know back pain treatment near me, or even best physical therapy near me, how how am I showing up? What do I look like to a person out there who's making these surges?

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

And it'll start to give you a framework of saying, Hey, you know what? We don't really pull up in this map section, right? Yeah. Or we don't even come up in like the top ten or maybe like middle of the page. Or you know what? Like there's all these other clinics advertising on Google and they're up here or they're even in the AI searches and I'm not. Like so you start to realize that you have these holes in how people perceive you online. And then okay, if I do find you and I click on you, what's my experience like coming to your website? You've got two seconds of my attention to grab me. Do you do that? Or do I feel like, hey, this they're just talking about themselves, they're not talking about fix and meat as a patient. That's a great thing to look to. Like, does your website speak to a patient? Is it patient-centric or is it self-ended?

SPEAKER_00 22:45

So like I do this in recruiting all the time. People put job ads out there. By the way, this is a little golden nugget for those of you who are like, how do I recruit better? They're job ads. Their messaging on their website is you should join our company because we have great quality care and we do all these wonderful things. No one cares. Everyone has great quality care online. And so you commoditize your industry to being forgettable. Your job ad is, you know, like whatever. So what the great websites say, are you a physical therapist who's looking to increase your income and impact? Do you want to learn to be the best in the industry? Are you looking to join a team that's going to honor you and your goals? Like that's the you language that helps. So like those are just what's a micro component of what we're talking about.

Build A Website That Sells

SPEAKER_01 23:24

So so uh coming to recruiting, one thing that we put a lot of focus on this year for our clients is uh people don't realize that there's also Google Jobs. And Google Jobs is something I didn't know that. Yeah, it pops up automatically. You don't realize it, but it just pops up automatically. If instead of someone doing a search for physical therapy near me, if you type in physical therapy jobs near me, right, which what's up? Google Jobs comes up. Google Jobs comes up, right? And Google Jobs actually aggregates all the different listings from LinkedIn, ZipRecruiter, Indeed, Snaga Job, like all these gazillion job boards. And so what we've been able to do is actually build a recruiting center within the client's website.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

You're doing this with your client.

SPEAKER_01 24:03

Yeah, yeah. So they have job posts within their websites that Indeed will point to, for example, but those job posts themselves will actually now show up on Google because they're SEO optimized. And so now you get like free advertising for advertising and through Google Jobs when people are searching for physical therapy jobs and me. So like again, but here's the key is if I was a therapist and I'm looking for like, yeah, kind of browsing what's out there, yeah. I come across these clinics, you only they're never gonna reach out to you unless you're selling them through your website. Right. Right. And so when I click on there and I go to your careers page, right? You gotta sell me. You gotta show me your culture. So like the clinic, we do like blow ups of their careers pages. So we you know, all the events and things you do with your team, are you taking enough video or taking enough pictures of that? And then being able to put that up on your website, talk about your mentorship programs, talk about you know, uh your programs for growth, opportunities, you know, like there's there's a lot that you do to try to sell someone through your website to come work for you.

SPEAKER_00 25:05

Neil, we've been friends for over a decade. I had no idea that practice promotions did so much for recruiting.

SPEAKER_01 25:10

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, because I pivot a lot. Again, there's such a huge demand in the industry, like we made that a big priority this last couple years.

SPEAKER_00 25:17

Yeah, and I think that's why, again, people when they see like a pra practice promotions or anything marketing based, again, it's such a wide scope. But what you guys really come in on is that PR and branding slash actual marketing elements. So if they had a uh marketing coordinator, they would be assisting the owner and relaying information, just key decisions to the owner, and then that person would be putting information in your hands so you can update their website, you can make these things SEO friendly.

Track KPIs Like Evidence Based Care

SPEAKER_01 25:45

The other thing that's that's so critical is data. Like you need the metrics, you need the KPIs. And so we're thinking of KPIs like new patients, right? Okay, well, let's break that down from an online discovery because we do want to go more direct to consumer, right? Yeah. We want to be at least 50% of our business coming from direct-to-consumer referrals from other patients, and and then getting to a point where we only have maybe like 10% of our business owning from physician referrals. That puts you in a tremendous power curve for growth in your business.

SPEAKER_00 26:14

So you help them track their metrics and measure all that?

SPEAKER_01 26:16

Oh, yeah, and that's a huge thing, is because a lot of sure a lot of clinics have no idea how many people actually come to their website uh and become an interested patient from their website and actually get on the books track that all the way through. So for example, like if someone clicks from a Google ad, I want to track them all the way through, come to your website, and then how are they behaving on the website? And then if they call, do we have a tracking number through the website? So we have like dynamic phone numbers that track uh that change depend on where people are coming from in the website. Yeah. And then that can and then they go through into our patient lead CRM, which then the front desk can mark, hey, this person's actually scheduled. So that way you can track someone all the way through. And those are the the things that the marketing coordinator needs to be looking at is like, hey, what's our KDIs looking like from all of this different tracking?

SPEAKER_00 27:05

Yeah, I don't think any owners know this, but like I think especially to a certain size. I bet multi-location owners may have elements of this. They get deeper into that, but they're they're still a lot of times missing the mark.

SPEAKER_01 27:15

So they don't we look at website conversion, right? Which means like how many people come to your website and then actually become a patient? Right. Industry standards are about less than two percent. We try to get that above eight to nine percent. Wow. Which can be a massive change. Just huge ROI. People that are already coming to your website, just the way that it is designed, like with uh again, we use like AI tracking design work. So like it'll represent how someone's eyes would actually track around a page. Oh, jeez. And then you can you can get them to stay longer on your website. And guess what? The longer someone stays in your website, the higher the conversion is starting to just go up.

SPEAKER_00 27:50

So this is what this is I've had lots of friends over the years of my networking out of PT in PT who all try different marketing things, external solutions. And this is always where things fall off because for most people it's hard to track the ROI. Like I said at the beginning of the episode, for your clients, this is how you do it. Sounds like this is a great way of retaining clients, is that you can show them this is what it was, here it is now, here's your it here's your return on investment because you're measuring actual click-through rates.

SPEAKER_01 28:15

Well, we're PTs, right? We like evidence-based. Uh yeah. Well, we gotta touch on it. We gotta approach our marketing the same way. We gotta be evidence-based with our marketing, right? And when you know what is working, you feel confident that you you you're clear, right? You you have confidence, like, you know what, this is going good. Let me put some more money towards those Google ads because I see the ROI that's happening. Is when you have ambiguous information, it's hard to make the right decision. Yeah, absolutely. Or, you know what, we we got some uh some therapists through the website here that worked. Let's put some more money towards you know, some Google ads for that.

SPEAKER_00 28:48

If we don't know what's hitting, we don't know what to reinforce. Um Alex Remozzi is a big coach and his whole thing is about measuring what works. And his number one coaching philosophy is the question more.

SPEAKER_01 28:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:59

So it's like, well, if he meets with a practice like, hey, how do I grow? Well, what's the thing that's working most? Okay, if they don't know, that's the first thing they solve. But if they know, they're like, well, can we do more? Right. Is there a supply constraint? Or is it just that you're too like busy doing lots of things? And so marketing from your perspective, you guys help create the clarity as to what is the more and then resolve those barriers. So just really quickly, uh Neil, before we move on, because I want to bridge into something here, is what are the buckets that practice promotion handles? Because there's on so just kind of hit like the main things that you guys are I mean, that's uh you know what I mean. Like I'm sure just lots of things that take more time, but if there's buckets that you help a marketing coordinator hit, what would those be at?

SPEAKER_01 29:38

Yeah, so like just just big and broad, yeah, is really we we actually have a strategy called market to grow. So it's grow higher and profit. Grow higher profit. So we're looking at how can we grow online visibility, right? Is one and then how can we get patients uh who have interacted with us, have been customers in the past, yes, to keep interacting with us, right? Come back for care, send friends and family, all that good stuff, right? And then that's part of like our our kind of growing art, and then also of the recruiting actions, right? So how do we get create online visibility, brand visibility, get people to come apply for us? That's that aspect. And then the the the the the KPIs component, the tracking component, so that we can increase our profitability, right? And we want to attract higher paying patients. So how are we positioning ourselves? Uh, that's also part of marketing's positioning, brand and position. Absolutely. So, how are you positioning yourself if you want to attract uh people with a better reimbursing insurance or cash services? It takes more marketing, takes more PR, it takes more brand presence in order to attract those people. So that's part of that um the profitability part of it. So those are key buckets that we really help. Do you help them determine that strategy?

SPEAKER_00 30:47

Uh yeah, that's actually part of like what we do too. Oh my gosh. So you're helping them like they're like, because a lot of them are just generalists and they don't even know. So we might ask them questions and using metrics come back and go, hey, maybe this is where we should focus. You're not gonna like brand strategy with them, but you are gonna say, like, hey, this is working, and then that might inspire them to use you to help create.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

Here's a little nugget for everybody that that I I don't see people do enough, and that's do you put on your a website homepage the key insurances that you want to take? Right?

SPEAKER_00 31:15

So like Yeah, if I'm a patient, that's the first thing I'm looking for, is who takes my blue cross.

SPEAKER_01 31:19

Right. So if you have like, you know, maybe blue cross is your top payer, maybe Tricare is another one. Like, so if you have like your top three logos on there or uh uh and those are the best insurers that you get, guess what you're gonna get more of? You're gonna get more of those people with those kinds of insurance. So it's just like simple things like that that can actually just make a big difference in in how you're coming across. We we help people with a lot of like different service lines, like sports performance. Yeah. Uh you know that with sports performance, you've got to have be real edgy looking, right? You've got to have the right visuals for that. They they're they're expecting more out of your brand presence online to gravitate to what you're like, this is gonna be a great sports performance clinic. So it there's a lot to that nuances.

SPEAKER_00 31:59

Amazing. Well, I'm excited to hear that. So you work with that. So how is that different when you work with those services with the marketing coordinator versus someone who has 50 clinics? What should that 50 clinic owner have in place to help scale you? Because you work with all the above. Yeah. You're obviously as you're growing, you're you're growing more into these larger clinics because of your knowledge base and your niche. Um, but what would that larger company need?

SPEAKER_01 32:22

Yeah, so we have we have clients that we help that are like 180, 220 location practices, very different at that scale. Uh, it's really about they have uh marketing teams that are doing different you know actions. And so we're helping to support those different teams with kind of the back end technical stuff, whether it is ads, whether it is there's a lot more updates to the website, basically on like a weekly basis that they're wanting. Um a lot of functions tie back into recruiting, so obviously their careers, their job posts, all that kind of stuff, applicant tracking systems, APIs back from those things into their website. So there's there's a lot more of those kind of technical aspects with the larger practices. The the challenges that come with larger clinics is that you tend to have more underperforming clinics in different sporadic areas. Yeah. Right. Uh so you have some clinics that are crushing it, you have others that are underperforming. So we put we we we move the focus around depending on where the need is to those clinics that are underperforming. Maybe they need maybe their uh their SEO changed, right, in their particular community or market. Um, you know, maybe they need some more ads, maybe they need a bit more uh, you know, uh email marketing or something towards their lists. So it becomes a little bit more targeted as to where can we lift different parts of the organization to have maximum performance at that scale.

SPEAKER_00 33:44

Amazing. Amazing. You know, can you go go through that three-step uh process again? Because it it was like uh it was like higher grow. What was the first one? Yeah, so grow higher profit. So it's grow higher profit. Yeah. I love that you have hire now in your business model. That is so cool. Because again, I think that's where you're looking. I love that word, and I would I would love to see that on everything that you put out there because grow higher profit is really clear in terms of what you do to serve people. Yeah. And it's uh it's neat that that's a a huge part of what you do now as a hiring.

SPEAKER_01 34:14

Yeah, yeah. So it's it's we're ful fulfilling the need that's out there in them in the marketplace.

SPEAKER_00 34:19

So, what do you see is coming next? I mean, we've got all these technological changes that are advancing with AI and these elements. Like, how is how is practice promotions you know looking forward to the future of serving

AI Tools And Direct Mail Reality

SPEAKER_00 34:29

the industry?

SPEAKER_01 34:29

Yeah, we're doing a ton with AI. Uh so uh we're using AI the way that we have positioned ourselves with AI is there's this thought out there that AI will replace everything. Right? AI, we're gonna we're gonna replace marketing agencies with AI. We're gonna replace V8 agencies.

SPEAKER_00 34:46

I've got guys who are desperately trying to sell because they feel like writing's on the wall. No, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 34:50

I don't I don't believe that at all. What we're using AI to do is to enhance what we already do. Right? So for us, we're using AI to evaluate phone calls coming in so that we truly can skip that process of the front desks, like having a tag that this is a scheduled patient. The patient already said that in their communication on the phone, so let's AI just kind of analyze that and we mark it. All right, simple things like that. Or we're using AI to analyze different uh Google ad performance, so then that helps our team become much more efficient at spotting where we can best leverage performance.

SPEAKER_00 35:25

Right. Or like the eye tracking thing, or like all these things that are out there.

SPEAKER_01 35:28

A lot with content, right? So we have uh PT content writers on staff, but in order to do things that mass and have even more customization, what what what clients really want is being able to leverage uh AI in order to write more of the voice of that clinic, right? And the the nuances, the things that they want to say to their particular communities or audience or target audiences that they're trying to reach. So leveraging A on that component too. So I I would say like, you know, as we're as we're looking at uh AI and marketing, I think a lot of it becomes more of how can we work with it to make ourselves much more uh customized, much more efficient, um, be able to analyze things a lot easier. That's where I see our kind of the future of marketing and PC.

SPEAKER_00 36:12

Amazing, Neil. My gosh. Um, you know, it's so fun. We were clients of yours, like way back in the day. Back in the day when I had my PT practice, and that was back when physical mailers was a big and those types of elements. Do you guys do any physical products still?

SPEAKER_01 36:25

We still do, yeah. I mean it's not it's got it's gotten a lot less of what we do, but really surprisingly, we got to think about the audiences that we serve, right? So if we are and let's face it, in PT, we're traditionally working with people with broken bodies, and those bodies start to break down in our middle ages. So we're do we're dealing with like uh you know the Gen X's and the boomers, yeah, right, a lot. Yeah. And they read, they've read a lot growing up. And so what's beautiful in today's world is direct mail actually works better than ever before because if you think about going through your inbox, you've got hundreds of emails, yeah, right. But how many pieces of mail do you get in the mailbox, right? Not as much as you used to. Not as much. But it stands out.

SPEAKER_00 37:10

It really does. I it's so funny because I think I went through that phase like most people do, like, ah, we hate it. But then we find ourselves flipping through the coupons. We see the little things, you see the little real estate agent, and you're like, and then you go sell your house, and all you can think of is that one guy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:24

You got the postcard, you get the value pack, still get the catalogs. Here's a great lesson. LL Bean, you know, LL bean, yeah, yeah. All right, so I think it was like five years ago or something. They just someone had the bright idea to like, hey, we'll save about a hundred million dollars or something like that in sending out the catalog, the mailer, right? So they went all digital, they went all online, and they had the worst sales performance in history for LLB, and they quickly got their catalog back in. So that expense still had major repercussions for the business because they thought everybody would just be digital, but people really you know what the and we're looking at behaviors of people, right? So marketing is really about just people behavior and how you're how you're working with that behavior. Yeah. Uh you know, in today's world, we're got seven, ten, fifteen touch points from someone before they actually do anything, right? Right. So skeptical today. So you can't just expect to send one thing out and have it work perfectly. Like it just does that doesn't happen. That's unreal. Yeah. We have to have hit people from all angles, right? We have to be in their mailbox, we have to be in their email inbox, we have to be on their social media feed, right? We have to be when they're Google searching. Like, you've got to be everywhere today.

SPEAKER_00 38:38

Yeah, Neil, this has been so transp Um I am beyond excited about what I'm doing for my own business. Like, I know this is a great episode when honestly I forget there's even people listening. Right. And I've just got all these like lists of things I want to talk to you about after the show because of all the the work I know I want to do because of the knowledge that I was empowered with.

Free Resources Rapid Fire Closing

SPEAKER_00 38:58

So thank you so much for being on the show. If people want to get a hold of you to learn any of these elements uh or private uh or more learn more about private practice, how do they or practice promotions, how do they get a hold of you?

SPEAKER_01 39:07

Oh, we got tons of free stuff online. Uh you know, go to practicepromotions.net. You can get our our practice marketing podcast, start listening to that. We've got uh my market to grow book. So they can go. So yeah, go get uh the we'll send it to you for free on practicepromotions.net. So and we got tons of like free downloads, PT references, like free stuff. So go get it.

SPEAKER_00 39:28

Okay, absolutely. Okay, I'd like to finish with a rapid fire set of questions. Are you ready for this? Okay, I'll try it. Okay. Um what would be the one part of your marketing? What is your favorite element of marketing? If you had to pick one action that you just love, it's not necessarily the most successful action, but something you just like obsessed with. What is that?

SPEAKER_01 39:47

For me, it's when a practice center says, I've got a huge weight loss now. Okay. Right? They're like, oh man, I'm like not like it's a good problem to have. It's an outcome of them saying, Yeah, I'm working with you and now I'm flooded with patients. Yeah, yeah. So they were doing something before that just wasn't working and now that's like working and they're so happy.

unknown 40:03

Right.

SPEAKER_00 40:03

Love that. Okay. What's a book, a movie, a podcast, a uh a band, something you've seen more entertainment focused.

SPEAKER_01 40:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 40:11

More entertainment. It can't be inspiring. Like if you read a great business book, whatever, but like is there anything you've consumed recently that you're like, right, I really like that.

SPEAKER_01 40:19

Um you know, I always I always gravitate to one book I really like, which is the one thing. Oh, great book. You know, because in today's world it's so easy to get distracted and shiny object syndrome everywhere. But like he just kind of keeps you focused. Like, what's the one thing that you could do to move your business forward or your life forward?

SPEAKER_00 40:38

You know, that concept is so simple that people think it's easy.

SPEAKER_01 40:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:42

I I I've had the highest paying coach I ever hired this year. Most money I've ever spent on a coach. Uh-huh. Do you know 90% of it is saying, is that the thing? Right. Is that the thing? Yeah. First he helped me understand what the thing was. And I kind of already knew. That's the crazy part. I pay this guy a ton of money, and every time I'm like, hey, this is what I'm doing, he's like, is he's not even really coaching. He's like, is that the thing? And most of the time it's not. I think it is. That's the hard part is a lot of times these things I think I'm doing are adding value. Like, I'm gonna add this new program, I'm gonna do these different things. And some companies do that and it works, but most companies that get really big and successful, they do one thing really, really well. And then honestly, this is a little plug for both you and I. I think that's why we as PTs, going into our respective specialties, yeah, have so much to offer because we're hyper niche in the one thing called PTO T S L P. Like that's where we are thriving. Well, we um, okay, now what's a place in the world you've been that you've loved? And you and I were on a cruise together, so I know that you've been traveling. What's a place in the world that you've been that you love or somewhere you want to go?

SPEAKER_01 41:41

I love Switzerland. That's one of my favorite places.

SPEAKER_00 41:44

Most beautiful country on earth, in my opinion. Yeah. Yeah. Hands down. Did you go to Lauterbrunen by nature? Yeah, Lauter Brunen, yeah. I think that's the most beautiful spot in the most beautiful country on earth, personally.

SPEAKER_01 41:53

Yeah, that is one heck of a spot there.

SPEAKER_00 41:56

Okay. What about um this last one is just a little bit more of this idea of family history. So your kids, you know, they're growing up, they see dad doing all these things. Yeah, they have plenty of podcast episodes to listen to. Right. But maybe they never get to hear from you to them directly. Okay. What would you want your kids to know about your passion in life?

SPEAKER_01 42:16

That for me, uh, it's okay for that to evolve, right? But the core for me has always been helping other people. And no matter where I've been, whether that's being a waiter or being a physical therapist or helping other businesses now, other physical therapy businesses, it still comes back to like helping people. So for me, for like now, I'm playing a bigger game. Like, and that's another thing. Play the bigger game, uh-right.

SPEAKER_00 42:46

So let your uh passion evolve and play a bigger game.

SPEAKER_01 42:49

Yeah, so for me, uh, I could help so many people being a PT and my practice, right? So I first PT help a lot of people. Owner practice, help more people, help other practices be successful at helping other people big. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 43:04

Well, Neil, thank you so much for being on the show. It's been such a treat to have you, my friend.

SPEAKER_01 43:08

Uh, pleasure as always. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 43:10

All right, well, Rockstars, that's it for today's episode of Willpower Podcast. Thanks again for tuning in. As always, this is Will Humphreys reminding you to lead with love and never give up. Until next time.