Why Job Ads are Dead with Josh Funk

60% of our team is from our internship program. In those situations we get eight to 13 weeks where we are working with this person and we are getting a day to day snapshot of who they are on a regular basis.

How to get smarter in business and in life. This is the question and I'm on a journey to get you that answer. I'm going to interview the world's top entrepreneurs and deconstruct their winning secrets. Going to talk about everything from marketing money and living up bucket list life. I'm Rick Lau, healthcare entrepreneur. I grew and exited my 127 locations in my 30s. Welcome to the Clinic Boss show. So welcome back to the Clink Boss show. So today we got Josh Funk, owner of Rehab to perform in Maryland, right?

Yes sir. Maryland.

Yeah. Ten clinics, you know, this year. And, and, and you're hitting some big numbers. You're hitting eight figures this year, right. So that's pretty amazing, Josh. Right?

You know now, so it is, yeah. The, the hitting, hitting seven figure months is something that I never imagined. So yeah, pretty crazy.

And what's the first thing you did when you hit that? What did you do to celebrate for yourself?

Man, I wouldn't say anything, you know.

Oh geez. Why not yet?

Q1, I mean we had a lot of like behind the scenes stuff going on and I think I've, you know, I've been immersed in the, in the process and hopefully enjoy myself a little bit more when it gets warmer out. But yeah, I, I, I don't want to say that I try to get too focused on celebrations being tied to like personal accomplishments as much. So it's, it's a, I don't know, it's exciting. I know other people might operate differently, but for me it's just kind of another day.

You know what's interesting, I think, I think most entrepreneurs are like that, right? Yeah. Pretty hard on themselves. Like these are like massive milestones that most people don't hit. And so when you hit these massive milestones, I think it's quite common with high performers and entrepreneurs to actually not slow down and reflect. Oh my gosh, like I gotta celebrate this win, you know. Right.

Yeah. If I'm being transparent, I will have moments where I am extremely happy and I'm almost happy to the point where I'm like teary eyed and that's, that's like a very short window where I'm like incredibly thankful for where I am. But it's, it's short lived and I, I'm always a big believer Even in any situation, like negatives and positives. And we got taught this through sports growing up. But it's like 24 hour rule. Can't let anything dwell like enjoy for a 24 hour period, feel however you need to feel and then get back on track. Like let's keep going. You didn't come this far to come this far.

Yeah. Wow, well said man. Gez, you should write a book on this.

Maybe someday. Find me the time, Rick, you know.

Yeah. Or audiobook. You just have to talk.

Yeah, I'll do that while I'm driving actually.

You'll just talk into it then chatgpt will like drum it all up and you know, put together this Amazon bestsellers, you know. Right. So.

Oh yeah. In a 45 minute car ride.

Right.

It'll just roll with my ideas. I mean, who knows, who knows, who knows.

Yeah. This AI shit's going crazy. Actually on that note, are you, have you. Are you using ChatGPT or some of this AI stuff like within your day to day or within your kind of operations.

Ideas for social media I would say is probably the biggest place outlines calendaring, strategy topics. Something we, we're focusing on a ton and we're actually one hour away from it is YouTube monetization. So we've been doing a lot more with YouTube SEO and strategy there. But okay, say that it's still even. Even in moments where you're trying to almost have it copyright for you. Like it's nice to macro but we got to go in and still provide our personal touch, you know. So.

Yeah, but it is interesting.

It's nice. So you're like, it's awesome.

So you're almost using as a marketing assistant or even like an idea assistant. Right. You're kind of brainstorming in there. It's like, hey, I'm thinking of doing this. Here's my problem set. Like. Or this is kind of what I want to do. Like. Or this is my strategy. Like hey, do you see in holes in it or. Or blah blah, blah. That's kind of how you're using it.

Yes. What about you?

Similar. Yeah. Except the one thing that we've been doing is we've been doing these full rollouts within our marketing team to actually really help them with their copy to make it even better. Right. You know, and, and I agree, like if you use like Chat GPT in its current form, like there's a lot of that comes out. Right.

Very generic.

Yes, very generic. And, and you know, it's so generic or it comes off as like fake. Right? Or AI, right, that you don't want to read it.

Right.

And, and, and maybe because I'm a bit of a copy geek, so I love copy. I love like, words and how things are put together. And, and so actually what we did is, I don't know if you know about this, but in ChatGPT, you can actually create your own, like, custom GPT so you can load up your scripts or you can load up formulas, you can load up and give it instructions on what you wanted to do and make it very clear. Right? Yeah. And so like, you know, one thing we do is like, we'll load up like all the, all the formulas or headlines or hooks that we want. And, and then we make it very clear with its instructions, like, hey, we, we want you to write like this way, like, you know, or you can only use these formulas. You have to speak and write like you're in grade five. Right. You know, and so we add these, like, we add these, these kind of criterias and kind of customize it. It's actually been, it's, it's been actually surprising. Very effective, you know?

Yeah. And I, I, I think what that makes me think of is just the importance of learning how to generate a, a, a prompt that is, sometimes I will write a prompt like 11 times, and every time I'm kind of tweaking and tinkering, and then I will try to copy and paste and just make sure that I have the same prompt, you know, where, what, what is the perspective? What, what do they need to know about me? What do they need to know about the company? Who are we trying to model after? Like you said, even, like, who are, who's the audience? So really getting very, very granular. And I know it's a little bit time consuming, but once you get the flow of it and you have these longer, more descriptive prompts, it really knows how to operate in your best interest.

Well, here's the thing. So if you create your own, I, I, we're kind of geeky out, but I just want to talk about it. But if, if you, if you were to use your own prompts, then if you own your own BT and you create like those specific instructions that you want, then you don't have to recreate it every single time.

Right?

Right.

Yep.

So that's kind of the be like you're almost like customizing ChatGPT just to use like, Dosh's content. I don't use, like, I don't want to use like all the generic out there. I Just want you to use this specific content, you know. Right?

Yeah.

You know, or another use case that, you know, like we're starting to do this within our social media agency is like, you know, load up, like load up all the content of all the social media posts that you created that you really love and the copy with it. Then this ends up being that database, right. Where like, you know, within chat GPT is like, hey, I want you to create something on knee pain and golfing, but I only want you to use like the inventory of that we have already. Right. And using the same language. Not your weird, funny chatgpt language that speaks sometimes like a robot or something.

Yeah, it's. It's like written from the perspective of like a university professor that it. It's not. It's not going to work.

Cool, cool. Hey, so last time I saw it was in Florida, so it was amazing hanging out with you. You were one of our, you know, speakers as well. We talk about recruitment. I'm curious, what was kind of your favorite moments in Florida at cbs, man?

Favorite moment, honestly, was just being a part of the community and realizing how broad the community is geographically, age, practitioner, level of experience, business wise. I, I can imagine most of these people are only interacting in virtual spaces and sometimes it's awesome just to be a part of the interactions amongst people in person. I just think you get a, you get a different version of people and it's nice to kind of have the proximity, a little bit more intimacy. And I think I just enjoyed some of the conversations. Whether or not it's experienced business owner from Vancouver or somebody that was just getting started up, you know, in, in the, in Florida, Cairos, pts, ots, a little bit, everything. It was, it was awesome.

It was very diverse. Right. Was it kind of what you expected, Josh? Like, because like you are, I'm gonna say a conference. How do I say this politically, Craig, you, you go to a lot of conferences and a lot of shows, right? You know, especially within our industry and also outside industry. Like, so how do you, how would you, how would you compare kind of this event versus some of the other, like industry, you know, other events within our profession or industry?

I think that the thing that I always use when I go to your events, I use the word tactical. I still, even at the stage that I'm at. And I said the same thing when I came up to Calgary last summer. Like, I come home with notes and I sometimes go to conferences and I'm like, all right, I understand that they are trying to be a Big catch all and to reach as many people as possible. And a lot of times you're going to do that by speaking to more of the startup crowd or the solopreneurs or these small, small business owners. But I think you and your team do a good job of curating a schedule and content that is relevant regardless of size and that for even somebody like myself or we've got about 85 or 86 people and we've been doing this for almost a decade. Like I still walk away with automatic take home items and then the only other thing that I run into sometimes is you have like these big rah rah fests that are largely like motivational and mindset and I, I just think that I've left situations there where I'm like, okay, I passed that a long time ago. I'm already starting up and I come home and I, I don't need motivation at this stage of the game. I need you to tell me how to play a better game so that I can win better. And, and I get that when I go to your events.

It's interesting to see that. So you don't need a Tony Robbins or Mel Robbins rah rah event like a Brandon Bouchard, like just let's jump up and dance.

No, I don't need to jump up and dance. I don't need to walk on cold. I don't need to like remind myself of my why every morning like I'm on the journey right now. Make the journey easier for me. And that's, that's what I get from whether or not it's your micro, you know, sessions that were up in Calgary or the one, you know, the big event obviously here in Orlando.

Cool. Cool. And, and what was the one, what was the, your biggest takeaway? What's the one thing you execute after the event in, in, in January?

Yeah, I, I think the. If, if, if I'm being honest, I, I haven't got a full chance to. We just went through an EMR transition. We just had to change health prompt.

Yeah, that's a big deal.

Yeah. So, so there was a lot of things going on in the back end that I did not get to focus on nearly enough. But okay, you two. Biggest thing that we're diving into more and I will shout out so are related to student initiatives and events on the weekends that are both for students and practitioners in our community. So adding to our, and I, and I, you know, I communicated at your event but adding in some more intentionality behind the marketing funnel. So that we have a greater net of which we're developing relationships. And again, that awareness and interest aspect of the marketing funnel.

Yeah, I love it. Yeah. The stuff you talk about, which Sarosh does really well like in his state or province is he has these, it's almost like these steak dinners, right. You know, where he invites like, you know, all the, all the, all the new grads or the people in school coming in and they're learning and that ends up being his like, you know, like call it like workshop or community event to attract clinicians. Right. Know, so. And the ROI is amazing. Right? You know? Yeah. And you're just like, you're just eating, have a good time and you talk about one topic. Right.

You know.

Right. That's it. Yeah.

We're gonna do meetups for brunch, then we're gonna do like kind of like a Q a called like R2P futures. And then we're actually going to do internal con ed for our team for five hour blocks each quarter that we're going to allow DPT students at area schools and those that are interning with us to come. So. So three separate touch points. I love that. And that's the first thing that stuck out for me related to what I learned at your event.

Yeah, love it. And so let me ask you, so at this event, you know like you met a lot of like different types of practice owners, right. You know, whether they're a Cairo or a PT or an ot. Right. Or even massage therapist. And also different parts of the world, whether it's like Ireland or the US or Canada or Australia. Right. I'm curious, from your perspective, do you think running a clinic in the US is different from running a clinic like say in Canada or Australia or anywhere else?

I'm always a big believer that macro business principles are the same. We might deal with different nuances as it relates to things involving transactions or authorizations or insurance payers, but I think largely we're all operating off the same framework. I usually get asked the question in, you know, in Maryland whether or not we have insurance or cash. And that's a significantly different business. And I would argue again, the macro principles are still going to be the same. I've still got marketing, I've still got ops, I've still got a clerical front desk. That's, I've still got billing related items. I still need to focus on my conditions. There's a leadership component like.

Google. Google business use social media. So got to recruit and it's the same thing. Right. You know Right. Payer is made different and they all different rules. Right. You know, but in terms of generating like new acquisitions, however they come, you know, or retaining painting patients and staff and making sure you have a good experience, it's fundamentally the same. Right?

Agreed.

Yeah. So amazing.

So it's like no different than a rural versus an urban business. Oh, it's way different. Like you're just talking about nuance at that point in time. Like the rules are the same.

Yeah, the rules are the same. The one difference I am going to bring up, and you know me and you've had this conversation before, is that I find that outside of like clinics in the U.S. most practices are more multidisciplinary. Right. You know, so you're getting much more bigger. Like, you know, we've talked about this. Like my perfect ideal, like clinic is this three million dollar clinic where a million of that is like PT revenues. Right. Another million of that is like, I call it cash based, like massage therapy, LMTs. Right. You know, and then if you're super adventurous like in the US then another million that could be like Cairo, you and you could be done through like MSOs. Right. And that's kind of the big difference that I see between like both in terms of like the types of clinics. Right?

Yeah, I would agree. You still, it, it's still in the back of my mind.

When you, when are you gonna come over, Josh? When are you gonna come over?

The dark? No, I'm gonna come to the dark. It's like you got the green lightsaber and the red lightsaber and I just need to find a way to, to put them together.

Right.

But Cairo, Cairo is something that I regularly think about. And again, just because spinal health is such a big talking point in the health care system and I do think that there's, there's definitely synergistic ways that we could have it in our environment. I think the thing that scares me.

About the space you have the space at your clinic.

That's right.

You know? Yes.

You know, so Rick, there's no excuse. Just keep calling out and call me out on it. Some point I'm gonna say, rick, you've been right all along. I'm finally going to commit the time to it.

Do you remember our dinner or our, our drinks in Calgary where you talk about these, like, why would I do this? Like, why would I do Cairo? Right? Or why would I think about doing this? I mean now, like, what is that a year and a half later? Josh was like, I'm thinking about it now, like I'm considering it.

I, I, I think the hard part sometimes, and if I can speak to like pain points for business owners is they focus on so many things at once. And I had the same conversation with somebody earlier today that has PT and massage and neither one of them is really like taking off. And I'm like, hey, like I, I really think we need to optimize one of these. Like you get really good at one thing first and whether or not it's, you know, zero to a million, like you get to zero to a million first with a specific niche and then you run vertical or you just pour into that, we've just decided to continue to pour into the one thing without running a ton of verticals.

So.

But sometimes people are like, oh, I got to do all these like things. And it's like, I don't know a whole lot of people that have been very successful doing like three, four things all at once, all from Mode, you know, so.

Well, I don't think you're gonna start in the morning anymore, John.

Yeah, a lot of people out there that are like, oh, I gotta start PT Cairo and massage all at once.

Not enough focus on really good with like your profession, PT in this case, you know, and then once you're like, hey, that's great, then stack another one, you know. Right. You know, and get really good with that. And then here's the thing is that know this is what I see within our community, right? The ones that do it really well, typically we'll see like, like at least a 60% cross referral rate, you know? Right. So, you know, like, so imagine like, let's just say you did a million of PT. If you could get a 6% cross referral, you know, for like massage. I'm just like, you know, like, I'm just saying cash based massage. Okay. LMTs, right? Is that what they call it? Your state LMT's is that same thing? Licensed massage therapist? Yeah, half a million. So that's 600,000 of cash based, like you don't deal with all the insurance, like, you know, people paying cash. And you know what's beautiful, Josh? That is another SEO term that you do not have. And the volume on that is actually higher than pt. Right. So it's not even competing. And so then, you know, a lot of clinicals in our company use actually massage therapy as a legion to cross refer back into like, you know, pt. So that cross contamination going on like with like referrals is like, it's a very organic Way of increasing revenue and EBITDA on an incremental dollar at your clinic. So, you know, and, you know, I'm a big fan of that. And so this is my last time talking about it to you.

It's a lot of it is finding the right person who can help help us with that initiative. So, you know that first personnel, you bring them in, they work through the kinks within your organization, and then you start adding other professionals. So.

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Cool. So your biggest, you know, like, you know, one. One of the most popular talks at our event was actually recruitment talk. Right. And I remember after your talk, you had all these people, you know, like, line up and chat with you, and you were talking about your recruitment funnel. Right. You know, maybe you could describe what that is, you know, and. And. And like, what you guys do, because you guys are nailing it, you know, Like, I think. I think one of the stats you told me at the event was that, you know, in January, you had, like, an oversubscribed amount of p. DPTS that want to, like, work for you. I think you have 35 on your bench or something. Right.

So we have a pretty significant. And it's a. It's a running sheet that I have right now, a roster of potential hires. And the thing that I was talking about at your event was related to creating more awareness and interest for your organization earlier. So for a lot of young people, they're going to have exposure to PT potentially in high school, most definitely, almost in college, as they have to gain hours and then as they get into PT school. So we are doing things with sports medicine classes in high school. We are doing career days. We are hosting high school interns and actually providing them with resources, little quizzes, things that they're doing research on. Then you have your college students, they're doing a little bit more of a comprehensive program when they're with us. And then now we have 169 university contracts to host DPT students across the United States. There's almost 300 schools. The goal is to get into the two hundreds.

So you're 169 of the 300. Is that what I'm hearing?

We have 169 of. I think it's like 290 some in terms of universities that offer physical therapy. So trying to get into ecosystems earlier before a job posting. Like, a job posting is. If I got to do a lot of job postings and I'm trying to hire quickly off of job postings, I would argue that I'm probably Going to get a lot of wrong fits because I'm getting people late in the funnel. I'm getting them almost at the conversion aspect of the funnel. I'm not getting them in the engagement area a ton. Definitely not from an awareness and interest standpoint. So I'm accelerating awareness all the time. And then, you know, mentioned it on a social media thing that I think you, you posted or at least a comment on this morning. And then we're just trying to throw cash at people and we're trying to lock him in for a year or two. We're saying, hey, give you extra money if you come here for a year or two. And what a lot of PT students and there's even memes online is there's a mask in front and then behind that is the PT clinic that has horrible company culture that is just the quote, unquote mill and very, very poor working environment associated with these places with signing bonuses. So I'm not saying there's anything wrong with signing bonuses, but if the only thing that I'm doing to try to like, attract and get people into my company is throwing cash at them and locking them into a contract and saying, if you leave early, you got to pay this money back, I'm missing the. I'm probably not championing my company on mission value, core values, operating principles, things of which are tying young people to organizations now that I think you'd much rather communicate to DPT students or college students or high school students the amount of value that you're providing to them. And then they're going to also, obviously by being in your environment, seeing the amount of value that you're providing to the patients, they're seeing your community connectivity, they're saying, seeing the way that staff development is prioritized. But ideally, again, you're developing relationships. Awareness, interest and engagement in the marketing funnel is ideally creating this level of confidence and trust in the organization no different than from a patient standpoint. I'm trying to create awareness, interest, and a level of engagement that allows this person to go. I'm confident that I'm going in the right direction by converting as a patient at this company. And it's the same thing over here. I feel confident that I'm going in the right direction by working for this company.

Yeah, that's cold. Right? And, and, and let's, let's talk, let's go a little deeper than that. Because you talked about when you throw money at a clinician. Right. You know, and that, you know, just to steal a deal to get them in like. And that's like, that's a mistake. So what type of behaviors do you typically see when you know with other owners who do that? Right.

I, I think a lot of times I see the signing bonuses associated with the private equity backed PT places in our area that largely when you look at stuff online, whether or not it's in forums or social media or some of the glass door reviews you're talking about a company that's struggling with company culture, has struggling with retention and largely is just solely like productivity and people are feeling like they're overworked in those environments. So it's like oh hey take this back. But behind the scenes you're walking into a dumpster fire and instead I want people to be in a situation where they know everything going on. I want to be maximally transparent. I'd love to be able to develop a relationship with you for like at least three to six months. I'd love to have an exploratory phone call. I'd love for you to call one if not more people in our organization. I'd love for you to come shadow at our organization and then I'd love to do a formal interview before we even get to the point where we're going forth about the transaction that's about to occur, the relationship journey and them feeling like they know exactly what is going on in the organization without me saying, hey, take 5 to 10K. I'm going to lock you in for a year or two. Is it, is it something that you're signing on by Friday at 5 o'?

Clock?

If not, there's other people that I'm going to give it to. See you later. You're almost treating the people that you're trying to hire in a transactional fashion. Of course you're going to walk into a dumpster fire like it's like Wall Street. Oh it's, it's, it's crazy. So for us if we get to interact with high school, college DPT students, we get to be at industry related events, we get to go to chapter or the organizational state student conclave. Like we get to start these conversations very, very early. And I try to be an open book and you can go on and I can, I, I can show people exactly what our mentorship looks like, exactly what in services look like, exactly what's provided to you. I get to have more like in depth conversations about things involving benefits, schedule. You get to come out and literally check us out at least for, for a day if you want to come shadow so we're not in a situation where anybody's feeling rushed, they're feeling pressured and I get to sit here and I can say that I have people signed up to start work in May. I have people signed up to work June, July, August. We've done all of this. We've already locked in offer letters. They already know what's coming for them, which is a great feeling for them. And we already know what we can expect moving forward. So the fact that both sides went through that journey, awareness, interest, engagement, we both converted and it's forecasting it's not even right now. Like we both get to walk in at our own pace and ideally enter that contractual relationship together.

Yeah. Interesting. So what would you say is the average amount of like months that you. I'm going to call date with that, you know that, that clinician before you hire them, I have to say. Or the money. Yeah. Or the Mondays it takes you to close it. Data close.

Best case scenario, it's probably at least a two to three month period explored again, like, you know, you get resume or cover letter, you go through an exploratory phone call, you're tagging them in to talk to other people at the locations of which they're interested in. They get to come in and shadow the office. Then we go and do a formal interview. We've got the reference checks. Everybody's gotten the opportunity to kind of feel each other out. Maximal transparency about who both sides are and then we dive into the nuances of the offer. So, you know, if we have a situation now like, I mean 60% of our team is from our internship program in Those situations get eight to 13 weeks where we are working with this person and we are getting a day to day snapshot of who they are on a regular basis where at the end of the internship, members of our team are going, I will vouch for this person. Or they'll say not right now. Or unfortunately, sometimes they say never. Not a fit for here. So they're also our greatest hiring tool, so to speak, the people in our company, because at the end of the day they know the kind of people that they want to work with. And if the, the whole location isn't in alignment with, with regards to whether or not somebody's a yes or a no, then we won't hire.

Is that, is that a consensus like boat or is that like how do you guys do it?

Yeah, I mean exploratory phone calls and shadowing is an opportunity for them to get this person time out. Yep. The Resume and the COVID letter get shared. I mean, I hate to say it, but it's almost like you're, you're kind of distributing the HR responsibilities.

No, it's, it's the best way to do it. And I think, I think a lot of owners, success, owner, community, that's where they do it. You know, they actually get the team involved because they're the ones working with them every single day. It's not you, Josh. Right. You know, like you, you might see them once, like a quarter, once a year at a Christmas party. Right.

And I, I tell them, my job is to just support you all. You work with these people, they need to determine whether or not you're a good fit. I don't hire. I just make sure that when you're here, that you are developing and that you feel fulfilled and that what we promised you is actually what you end up getting.

Yeah. Love it. If you enjoy my content, I write a clinic owner newsletter. I share with you what's trending right now in marketing, selling your business, recruitment operations, front desk, and more. Become a better clinic owner. Join over 22,000 clinic owners who get this free newsletter each. Each week. Go to clinicowner.com to sign up today. So what do you do if, like, you know, like, you know, week one or actually your first interaction with this recruit, you know, right. Day one, and they, they want to go into the transaction, they want to talk about the money. Hey, do you offer signing bonus? Like, how much does it pay before they, they want to waste the next two, three months? Like, what do you, what do you guys do? Like, do you continue the conversation or you just end it?

We probably keep moving, to be honest.

Okay.

Yeah, it, it depends on if that's a student that's been with us or it, if that's my first impression of a brand new person, that they're asking those questions right out of the gates for the right reasons. I don't know. I don't want to say it's a red flag because I'm okay having the conversation and talking about it, but if that's all they're asking, I would say I would be less inclined to want to move forward because I would say I'm not sure why this person might be here if this is the only thing of which is of value.

To have a hundred thousand dollars of student loans, Josh, and they got to pay it, you know, and inflation and rent is getting really expensive.

I, I get it. And let me tell you how quickly people get raises in our company and Let me tell you about our structure and let me tell you about our, you know, CARES act student loan reimbursement program and let me tell you about pathways in the company. Like, we can have all of those conversations, but if that's the only reason you're going to be here, I would argue that, I think that you're going to be a teammate that everybody's going to genuinely enjoy.

Yeah, it's interesting. I think over the years, like I've seen two types of employees, right. You got one that is a mercenary, you know. Right. And then you have, you know, you know, and then you have the, you know, like I call it either your rocks or your superstar. And the mercenaries are the ones where like you see some of these yellow flags when you interview. But these are the same people where like, they're, they're constantly like, you know, will come back to you asking for money or they won't do certain things if you don't pay them more or they're not going to come to any of your staff functions or they're not going to come to these team events and they end up being that like that's that lone ranger in that corner that does, is not involved, you know. And so it's quite, how do I say this? It's quite. I hate. Yeah, I don't like transacting with mercenaries. Let's just say that.

Yeah. And, and I think some people, this is not to make a too much of an overgeneralization, but if money's the only thing for you, there are jobs in the PT world typically associated with short term contracts of which pay the best. So go travel, go do these short term contracts at the local like outpatient medical hospital or whatever. And that's, they're, they're, they're temporary, they're a little bit more transient with regards to having people in and out. And I hate to say it, probably not going to get a ton of development, probably going to get a lot, a lot of, ton of things going on with community connectivity. Probably not going to have a ton of mentorship. Like, so you're going to sacrifice, sacrifice. So you got to kind of figure out like, what do you want? What matters to you at this stage of the game? And is it more than just a money conversation? But if it is a money conversation, there are probably other avenues outside of the outpatient physical therapy world that you should be focusing on. It's not to say that we can't pay a good wage, have really, really good benefits, flexible scheduling, do a lot with regards to education, mentorship and provide you with pathways to non clinical roles and, and higher levels of compensation. But there are certainly things in the PT world of which do provide you with the bag that you're looking for.

Interesting. You know, and so all these things. Sounds great, Josh. You know, but I'm a, I'm a small clinic owner. I have one location. My, my culture is like, okay, right. I don't have a lot of resources. I seem to struggle with like, you know, recruiting. When I put a job ad out, no one really applies or it takes like three months, you know. Right. And, and like what can a clinical like for a clinical owner in this position, like what could they do, you know, because what you're talking about, like it's great if you're set up profit, but not all clinics are like that. Right. So if you're in that clinic, like what other options does this person have?

You know, I'm gonna pretend that I'm in Orlando, Florida and I'm at your event and I'm the local clinic owner that is over in Jupiter, Florida and there is a state chapter for the American Physical Therapy Association. So I'm going to go to the Florida APTA and I'm going to see what events they have going on there. I'm going to see what student conclave they have. I'm going to see what annual conference they have. I'm going to see what special interest groups they have. I'm going to look to be present. I'm going to look to support things monetarily. I'm going to also look to provide thought leadership and be connected with regards to the state American Physical Therapy association. Because oftentimes in those areas I'm going to have students connected or I'm going to have young professionals connected, which exactly what I'm looking for. Those are the demographics that are typically more involved and engaged in those spaces. Then I'm also going to look at the state of Florida. I'm going to go to the APTA website, I'm going to look at all the PT schools in the state of Florida and I'm going to reach out to the director of clinical education at each of those universities. I could probably just start with five, but I know in Florida there's significantly more. I'm going to say, hey, this is my company. This is how we are different. These are the things that we provide students from an internship experience standpoint.

And I got sucky culture. Right.

We might embellish a little bit in the beginning. We'll work on it. But I'm going to host students and I also would like to provide my thought leadership to you as well as participate in any job fairs or anything that you have going on where you're reaching out to employers. If I covered those two areas alone, I would have a significantly greater reach and a significantly greater opportunity to create awareness and interest for my company and to ideally engage people. Then if you want to get on some of the national events, that's great. If you want to find some of these smaller organizations that are new grad that new grads are in, there's stuff on Reddit, there's stuff in Facebook groups, there are certain groups and organizations that cater to this, even on Instagram. But I'm doing things to get my name out there as the owner and the company's name out there as a result of being involved with this different touch points. Marketing for people that are joining your organization takes an ecosystem and you have to look at your ecosystem based approach. Those areas are going to give you the biggest catch all and then we probably could take additional steps from there.

Yeah, I love it. You know what I love about how you do recruitment is like, it's the same way of how you nurture and do marketing. And I wish more people see that. And, and I, I, I watch your marketing, I see what you do on social. I receive your weekly email newsletters and I love how you do marketing. Josh. Right. You know, and I'm curious relating to those like email newsletters, like, you know, do they work for you? Like are you getting good engagement? Like, are you, do you get, like, do you get consults out of that? I get every single week. I read your shit.

All right, good. If you don't open it on Thursday, it's coming back to you on Sunday and you better open it. All right. Our email newsletter at this point it's kind of crazy, but we have 24,000 plus subscribers and our open rate is oftentimes it's like 45 to 60%. So, so it's a very, very good open rate. A lot of times we just try to provide value and then we will do certain campaigns associated with either free recovery sessions or free consults around the holidays. We will be, we, we have a give the gift of campaign which is an active strategy to drive word of mouth. But between social media and the email newsletter, we are doing things to actively retain and or create situations in which we're allowing people to be advocates of us, advocates of our thought leadership, advocates of our education, advocates of Our event sponsorship or involvement, advocates of the services. Because at the end of that funnel, after we convert, it is about retention and advocacy. And a lot of people will go, oh, well, just word of mouth. Like there are active ways that you can create advocacy. And advocacy should be tied to word of mouth. Make it easier for people to provide whatever it is that you do to others that's in the form of content or potentially in the form of free offerings.

Yeah. So is email dead?

Email is not dead.

Really?

Absolutely not. I think I, I think some people, I don't know what your thoughts are on this. Maybe, maybe don't take the, the right approach or strategy or they might view it as being a little bit too short term. Like this is a email newsletter, in my opinion. It's a long game. You know, what are you doing in the email? What are you doing to get subscribers? Those are two very, very simple things. But you know, we get to the point where we had a 24,000plus, like email like list overnight. We, we've been doing this for about seven years. We get a lot of comments, we get a lot of people responding just to the newsletter. Obviously you can look at like the click rates and stuff within the newsletter as well. Outside of just the open. It's a, I hate to use the word ecosystem. Again, it's a significant part of our ecosystem.

Yeah, it's. I call it omnichannel marketing. You gotta go where, you gotta go where like patients or consumers go. And they go on email, they go on social, like all different platforms, they do on a podcast, like they all view. And so if you're all in these different places, like, you know, you're just having this, call it omnichannel, you know, approach where like, it doesn't matter where they like read or consume content. They're like, oh, Josh, I see Josh again. Josh is here. Oh, Josh. I like Josh's email.

The best part about it is you can re like you're mentioning, you can repurpose it. I put it in the email. Oh, it's on the website too. Oh, it's on social media too. Oh, I pulled this from YouTube and put it in the newsletter too. So you hit people over the head with it enough times and they get it.

Yeah, I love this. And you know what, you know me, I'm a big fan of email. Like, I like everyone. Like when I think about email, email is such an important part of that ecosystem. And so when I hear people say that email doesn't work for them, it's because they're not creating a value on those emails that make people who want to read and enjoy them. Right. There's no value to. Because you might be just selling shit all the time or like what you're putting is like all chatgpt and like it just sounds like a robot. Whatever it is, it's not adding value. Right. So that they don't want consumer like.

So they have to listen better. Listen? No, like are you listening to the people you're looking to serve enough or are you doing what you want to do? And that's what you saying that makes me think of. By the way, I have your April update starred. I have not been able to read it yet, but I am on the Rick Loud newsletter and I do it enjoy it because it's valuable. It's start of my email inbox.

Wow. Amazing. Yeah, I love email, but I'm an email junkie so. But I'm curious. So you send email like four times a month. Is that kind of your rhythm?

Four times a month? That is. So we have a consumer facing email. That's the one I'm talking about. We also have a clinical facing email that goes out to the professional community. That is another option for us to continue to promote thought leadership, deliver value to people that might be prospective hires. Or again we create advocacy where somebody goes oh, you're moving to D.C. hey, I follow this newsletter from this company called Rehab. You should check them out for a job. So again, the sharing of content, the value out to people creates word of mouth amongst the professional community. That's not different than your patients doing the same thing in the community.

Yeah, I love it. And then when these for these emails going out to your consumers or patients. Right. You know, what are like how is your email set up? What are the major categories? Stories that seem to like resonate really well, you know.

Yeah, right. Right now I can say that we had something go out on mindfulness this morning that I think or yeah, this morning that was the feature. We have a nutrition component. We have something related to run R2P because we just started some run clubs. We have event involvement and I'm pretty sure we have something with regards to a body part area pain that is linking out to YouTube. I'm pretty sure it was an elbow pain video. So we have events, we have mindfulness nutrition, we have our run club right now just because it is a feature and then we have something and we have a monthly YouTube that video video that goes out related to a certain area of the body and the pain associated with it, things to look for, how to self assess, some things that we might do through the physical therapy process.

Love it, love it. And then what do you do to get people to, how do you grow your email list? Is it just through patients coming in or is it through partnerships? Like what's, what's kind of Josh's like secret?

I'd say the biggest bucket right now is definitely asking for email, asking people to opt in. You know, your people activate you, you want to retain them, they should automatically get dropped in. And then a lot of times, you know, we have partnerships and we have sponsorships at different events out in the community. There is oftentimes an email share and then we will do active asks with regards to landing pages. Sometimes that's on social media channels and sometimes it's in the clinic. With regards to QR codes, there are QR codes in our office as well just to kind of have another, another hit. Say they didn't opt in in the beginning, but give them another opportunity to opt in as well.

What, what's your current opt in rate right now? You think when a new patient comes.

In, I'd have to look at that, but I'm, I'm pretty sure it's 70 or 80%. It's high.

Pretty good. That's pretty good. And is that, is that an opt in on the EMR or is it opt in with you physically? They're physically writing on a. Like, is it through the software or is it the opt in through like a piece of paper when they, when they arrive?

Okay, first question is how do you hear about us? And then there's different triggers there. And then the second question is, would you like to receive our email newsletter? Yeah. Cool.

Cool. That's pretty good. A 70% conversion rate is. Yeah, that's great. You know, you know, it's interesting. I know when I talk about email marketing to a lot of clinics in our community, I see people that have like, they have a database of 20 or 30, 000 patients, right. But they don't have a single opt in. And I'm just like, oh gosh, oh my gosh.

You know, one like once a month. And in the beginning I remember just going into Google and like searching like for news articles and you're just sharing like things that you thought were interesting or you sign up to somebody else's email newsletter and they're linking out certain things and you go, oh, I like that.

You could curate if you don't have the content. Curate content from other people. And send it over. Whether it's like Josh's YouTube stuff, you know, or like it's like, you know, this, this cooking recipe of like nutrition is right, you know. So I think there's a lot of ways that you could like make your email newsletters work if you don't have the content, if you don't have the time to create the content. Right.

So I agree. And I think the other thing that I will mention for anybody who wants to start building out that email subscriber list and is a little bit more of a spammy way of doing it initially, but you provide people with an initial email that does allow them to opt out. There is a way for you to scroll all of the email addresses in Gmail that have ever been sent to you or that you sent out. You can get higher file and you can plug it in and you can send an introductory email. You know, for us that's a good hack. Welcome to the Rehab to perform newsletter. Yeah, you know, just so you know, we will be providing you with information on these bullet points. If you'd like to opt out, click here. And if they don't opt out, they just continue on the journey. But you've provided them with an opportunity to opt out immediately. You're introducing them to the newsletter. Welcome into the newsletter. But it is, it's a very, very easy way for people to get access to a lot of people that already have familiarity with you because they either sent you an email or you sent them an email.

Yeah, I love that. I just want to caveat. Like this works if you're in the U.S. in Canada, like we have this crazy like spam, sorry, we got the space. This crazy like spam legislation that if we were to send an email with someone that didn't click on a fucking like box. There's penalties of a million bucks per email. Right. Like so that thing that you talked about would not work in Canada. You have to legitimately be like, yeah, it's ridiculous. Right? It's one of the. Yeah, it's a very, I'm not going to talk about, I'm very upset about like they have to legitimately click or check on something, you know, Right. Otherwise like getting.

I'm sending them a very, very generic. It, it looks like a non newsletter email. So I don't know if I communicated that well. Imagine you and I are going back and forth in Gmail. It's all white text and the only link that's in there is a highlighted blue opt out. That's it. And I have everybody bcc and I can do it in micro doses. So it's not. That is a newsletter.

I'm not saying that's genius. Yes, that's genius in Canada. Sorry, that's genius in the US I'm just going to caveat. In Canada, that is still considered like within that. Like super. Yes, it's messed up. I don't want to dive into it.

Unless you have already corresponded via email. Like, we've already correspond only if you.

Have a relationship with them. This is called intent. I don't get into. But like, I think it's like two years. If you've actually had a business transaction within X amount of like, period, then what you talk about would work. But if you were to go after someone that you haven't had a transaction with, like, more than that time frame, I want to say it's like two years, right? Then, then you fit within that bucket where like they will violate that rule. And then if that person was complain, like, you know, you could be liable for the million bucks. Right. So it's just like.

Yeah, it's very draconian transaction. And it, it doesn't have to be because, like, I could go in and I could set it to the last two years. Everybody that received.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Trying to find workarounds for my Canadian friends up north.

Yeah, that, that would, that would work. But once again, I just want to say, like, whoever's going to do is in Canada, make sure you work with like a privacy person, because this is like, this is really super great shit. You know, And a lot of people's got hurt over. Right. So but in the us this. Okay, no, this would work. I just say everyone just needs to be able to go and like, just double check with our privacy thing. Right. So.

Because these are technically warm leads because they have familiarity with you.

Yeah. And I love what you're talking about. You write up like, you know, a not no logo that looks like it's just a personal email coming from Josh. And hey, you know, like, I just want to check in with you, blah, blah, blah. And then. And in that thing, like, you get them to opt in, you know, then you can send them the letter.

It's gonna have X, Y and Z. If you don't want to receive the newsletter, hit this button.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that. It's genius. Right? So last thing, last thing. You are crushing it on events, you know, because I, I, I, I, I share a lot of people with, like in our community, like what you do when you go to these like CrossFit events or these running events and use like that. You had that crazy like Norma tech, like you know, trailer. The trailer. Right. You know, can you talk about that? Because like it is like insane and I love it, you know.

Right. We came out of the pandemic and we couldn't do a lot of events for two years and we were looking for a way to just quite honestly get attention and have ourselves stand out more when being at events. And for anybody that's run a booth at events, it can be very, very touch and go. I'm going to come up and I'm going to get a pen. I'm going to come up to Rick and Daryl and one of them is going to shoot a money gun at me. Right. Or the ax. Right.

The axe with the booth girls.

And your. Yours works very, very well. But you know, you have a booth and people just kind of, they kind of walk by and there's no real conversation that's had at least on a deeper level. So we wanted to actually create a situation where we're like forcing a certain amount of intimacy and we're getting more touch points and I'll use awareness and interest again, but we create more awareness and interest in our company by having them aware of the company in the pre event email that goes out.

Yeah.

They get to see the video, they get to see our company name, our brand at the event. They see a massive bright red 20 foot trailer. So they get to come over and see that.

Dude, that's insane. That is insane. Right? You know, right.

Then a ten by two.

Who cares about the tent? You know you got the trailer.

Yes. And it's bright red. Bright red. And then there's a certain amount of curiosity. And if they sit in the boots for 15 minutes, there's also a TV in front of them with a PowerPoint slide that is providing information about our company and the services that they're seeing. In addition to two QR codes to opt into certain things while they're sitting in the boots in addition to having massage guns outside and our staff trying to have deeper level conversations. So if you need 9 to 11 impressions to convert somebody, then how many impressions am I getting? Just as a result of them spending more time with us, I might actually be taking them along the customer acquisition journey quicker.

Yeah, I love that. And so, and then how many of these normatech like chairs do you have?

Right, there's four in every. Yeah, four in the trailer.

So okay, four in the trailer. And then, and then like in there Rick.

I mean people are like, they're out.

Yeah. And then what's on the QR codes? Is it like subscribe to the newsletter or book a consult or like, or.

You have some like, okay, free consults at the clinic or a free recovery session? Just like they just received in the trailer at the clinic. Because at the end of the day we just want their, their, their habit.

Oh. So the free recovery is getting them back on the normal tech.

So, so they're in the boots there to get immersed in rehab to perform, to then get them to show up to one of our clinics to understand where the clinic is and what the clinic looks like.

Okay, so it's like a free consult, 15 minutes in there and you're trying to like, you know, convert them. Right? Is that what happens?

Yeah, we're just, we're talking, we're in there, we're. Hey, how'd things go? How'd your race ago? Did you hit a PR today? Like, hey, you had any exit pains? You've had experience with pt?

Cool. And, and what's, what type of events you find that perform the best for you? Is that the CrossFit stuff, the running events or a bit of running?

CrossFit? I'd say those probably are the, the big two. And to, to share a little bit, you know, we want to get a little bit more into the corporate wellness space. There's going to be some direct to employer initiatives that we, we roll out. That's another opportunity where, you know, you can make a significant first impression. Say you show up to somebody's corporate headquarters and again, you've got a 20 foot trailer, you're there, you're doing it.

Yeah. It's like, geez, it's amazing. Yeah. And what I like about the normal text is that it's efficient, you know, because it doesn't require like, it's not like, just like you're putting a, you're not just putting a patient on the table. Right. You know, like you're getting the machines to do the work for you. Right. You know, and the experience. Right?

Yep. And we have five of them. Pretty easy. We got a pretty easy like cleaning strategy and like it's.

Yeah. So do you also set the tables as well? Like treatment tables or you just like, it's just the, just the Normatex sometimes.

It depends if you do like a longer like some of the CrossFit events are day long events. We will set up treatment tables in those situations for the running events. We, we won't usually because it's just such a short window. People are popping in, popping out. A lot of times they're having a beer or two after and then they're leaving the CrossFit events when they're there from eight to five and there's a clearly defined event rest, event, rest. We will sit there for a longer period of time and actually do, you know, pretty much like some, some consult treats or cash pay treats.

But how do you deal with the volume? Like these running events have thousands of people, right? Like, you know, but you only got the five chairs, right, you know, or the four, four chairs. Like how do you deal with the volume of getting as much as you can or you don't, right?

You're going to get roughly 16 people every hour that are going to be able to be in the booths and then you're going to have people that use the massage guns outside in the front because we'll have yoga mats, we'll have rollers, massage guns, chairs. And you do your best. But sometimes, hey, people are going to maybe see scarcity and maybe view that as a big deal. Maybe they'll be more curious about the company and why it's so popular. Popular.

So that's fascinating. Yeah, yeah.

Don't tell me to buy a second trailer yet, Rick, if that's what you're alluding to.

Get a 40 foot container. Get a, let's upgrade to get a 40 foot.

There you go.

So, so there's there's a, there's a girl in our community called Lauren. She owns, she owns like she has a clinic that is just focused on like that niche of like running physios, right. You know, and um, every year she does this like, she does this like running event where she's like the sponsor in the booth, like and there's 8,000 people at this running event, right? And it's like insane because like, you know, she's trying to like, how can I, how can I convert to 8,000 people coming in? And, and I think like what she was told me, like, you know, the initiative that she did, very similar to yours, is that she'll end up booking 175 consults at the end of this thing, right? And like it feeds her for the next month, you know, a month into, you know, and so. But it's challenging when you're dealing with like the volume of like the volume of like participants or attendees come to this event, right?

We have three different places for QR codes. Two in the trailer, one outside. We have iPads also that are with us that are allowing people to sign up or allowing us to take in people's information. So. Yeah, and we have a free email. Obviously, the pre. Email goes out with the event, you know, with the person running the event, and then there's a post email. So there's other.

Cool, cool. Good. And Josh, how do people find out more about you?

Well, just real quick, if anybody wants to learn more about the trailer, go to rehab to perform.com forward/r2pmobile. We'll learn more about the trailer. But for me, at Dr. Josh Funk on any of the major social media channels, that probably would be best. If you want to get on the phone, just DM me and ideally, you know, suggest a couple dates and times that work best for you.

Wow. And when's the next time I'm gonna. I'm gonna hang with you, Josh.

You know, whenever you want. You are the amazing traveler that. That I've gotta kind of, kind of track down. I gotta track you down.

No, I'm come. I'm coming back to America in July. Right. Oh, and so. Yeah, yeah, so we're gonna stay put for a little bit, but I'm gonna do Washington, dc. Yes, I am. Marilyn. PPS is in Maryland this year, right?

Oh, yeah, you better come November.

I'm. Oh, you're going, right? Yeah, you better go. It's like your home state.

I got a room for you. There you go. Room for you upstairs.

All right. All right, let's do it. I'm gonna bring the entire crew.

Oh, perfect. All right. I'll get a couple air mattresses too.

And then are you going to Ascend or no?

Yeah, I am. Chicago.

Okay. Okay, cool, cool. Any other PT events you're going to like for remainder of the year?

Not that are business focused. Yeah. So I. I gotta. I gotta kind of narrow my bandwidth a little bit. There's a fair amount of weddings and other events that are popping up. I think of like six or seven weddings, so.

Really? Oh, my gosh.

Crazy. You got to mix it.

Is it first weddings or second? Those are remarriages.

There's one, one re. The rest are.

That's good then. It should be fun how it is.

When you get a little older, there's going to be more of the second timer.

Totally, Totally cool. So I will see you in Chicago and I'll also see you in Maryland.

Absolutely. Yep.

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