Why You Shouldn’t Rely on Facebook Ads with Frank Benedetto

Because guess what, AI is coming either way. And if we don't start playing with it and using it and don't dabble and experiment, guess who is the insurance companies. The big VC owned businesses. Not all of them are evil, but some of them are.

How to get smarter in business and in life. This is the question and I'm on a journey get you that answer. I'm going to interview the world's top entrepreneurs and deconstruct their winning secrets. Go to talk about everything from marketing money and living a 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. Welcome to the Clinic Boss show. So this is Frank, a DPT, right. An entrepreneur who owned and exited five clinics. Now he has a coaching business to help PTs who want to build a remote and hybrid practice. You know, co founder of Honey Badger Project. Now Frank, did I, did I get this right?

Yeah, absolutely. The only one asterisk is that we have an incubator model and not a, not a coaching program. And I know there's like, there's a nuance there, we could go into that later but it's one of those I hold dear.

Like what do you mean by incubator? Are you, are you, are you venture capital? Are you investing in businesses? Is that, is that what you meant by incubator?

You have a venture capital arm of the Honey Badger Project. So basically the high level view is that the difference between our approach is we know business that comes out of our program ever looks the same as someone else's.

Okay.

So we do more of a principle based reverse engineering of lifestyle. You want to live, the type of person you want to serve, your clinical philosophy, and then we merge that all with available technology. Everybody graduates with something really unique. So like I still have multiple patient facing businesses. I'm growing and scaling using all the same stuff that we teach. One of those is for fighters, combat athletes. And I've helped create like 20 or 30 competitors. You know, air quotes here, but they all look completely different. And that's really the difference between let's say an incubator where the goal is innovation and creativity. Yeah. And then what we have is a funnel for those clinicians who are looking to go, you know, big and really thinking more at the societal level. An avenue for us to invest and also then help them raise the funds to bring their idea to life.

That's interesting. So you use a lot of big words in here and I'm just curious if you dumb it down, like, is it like what is exactly that you kind of do for your community, Frank?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So let's take a couple of maybe some specific examples.

Yeah, yeah.

We believe in niche based care. So our fundamental to our philosophy is that there's three ways to niche down. There's either a specific problem, like acl, you know, reconstruction or postpartum C section recovery, something along those lines.

So you eat floor, right?

Yeah, yeah, all those things. Chronic low back pain, neck pain, radiculopathy, diabetes, whatever it is. Like there are some of us that get called to a specific problem and we're in love. We're like, oh, if only I could treat that one problem. It wasn't me. I don't relate to that. But there's a lot of clinicians out there who do. Okay, that's one variation. Another variation is type of person. So a type of person is usually like a psychographic profile or like the way they identify themselves. I loved working with fighters. They were my favorite type of. They come in something dislocated, they're like, could you take, can you tape this? Because I gotta fight tomorrow. Like no matter what, no matter what happens, they want to fight the next day. And I was like, these are my people, I just want to work with them. So there's the problem centric, then there's the people centric and, and then there's the location centric. So sometimes it's like not those two don't resonate, but somebody's really passionate about serving their, their, their local community. And the way we recommend that is by finding, you know, within that overarching demographic, there's usually niches within your target market. So if you're looking to work inside of a local facility or a gym, or start up a standalone clinic inside your town, I still believe in going multi niche and, and identifying like the verticals within your target market instead of just trying to be generalist to everybody. So when you, we, we start by going down one of those three roads and then we do a deep dive study on like what the problems that the, that you're going to solve. And then really where the creativity and the uniqueness part comes in is not solving those problems for your patients through just sessions alone. So there is so much readily available technology for all of us to use like instantly apps, the very basic apps that are out there. And it's a really more progressive stuff that's coming down the pipe. But looking at the problem set that you've identified and the People you're trying to help and saying, okay, how do I solve this? You look at the list of possible solutions and then try to cross reference that through like, what are more creative ways I could solve that than just meeting this person for another hour?

Okay, so this is where some of the online and hybrid like practice model kind of kicks in, right, Frank? Is that, yeah, because I, I see a lot of your Instagram and I, I, I see a lot of this. So what, what, what would that, what would that look like, you know, for a patient?

Yeah, so what, what's so cool is that all of it looks different, but I'm going to give you a couple different examples. So I pr, I, I give you that asterisk because I don't, Clinicians, we tend to like, I can't see it.

I can't see you. You're in the future right now.

Well, I'm going to give multiple examples, but for the people listening, don't latch on to the first example. Right.

Okay.

Premise of an incubator is that there's all sorts of creative ways this can manifest and it could come out differently depending on your preferences, the people you feel called to serve. So whether you're working with new moms or combat athletes, your clinic is going to look a little bit different.

What about this, Frank? Show me the model that makes the most amount of money.

The model that makes the most amount of money is what we call the evolving practice model. So the evolving practice practice model is, you know, I'll give you our, our top earning client right now. It just had 132k month with no insurance and no high ticket sessions.

Did I hear that right? 132K. Right?

132K. In the month of January of 2024. When this is being filmed, is this.

A sole practitioner or is this just like a, like a practice?

It's a, it is a practice, but it's one location and it's a small team.

Okay, and how big is the team? Like five, six people or I would.

Yeah, about five to six people. Maybe a couple more part timers, admins, interns, something along those lines. Yeah. So, so about 2pts, 2 strength coaches, nutritionists, and you know, some VAs and some assistants and some admin.

What's the square footage of that, that practice? Like 2000.

I don't want to, I don't want to misquote, but it's in Queens, you know, so it's small.

Yeah, less than a thousand square feet. Right.

I'm going to say it's somewhere between a thousand and two.

Okay, cool.

Yeah. Somewhere between 1,002. And we help this model get started from scratch from like literally zero.

Interesting.

The key here is that he never sells sessions alone. There's no way to buy sessions. There's no package of sessions you could buy.

Sell results. Right. Outcomes.

You sell outcomes and combinations of sessions with other things, which I'll give you the specifics to now. So. Yep. So like what, for example, they, they will sell an eval, right. So you come in, you buy the eval. That's the only session you could buy in theory. And then from that point forward, there's we again, depending on how who you're serving, the eval looks different and what you're selling looks different. So he has an offer suite that only he knows. It's not a menu on the wall, you know, it's. It's prescriptive care. So once somebody is evaluated, they get prescribed or recommended the plan of care that is meant for them. And that might mean a combination of sessions, online programming, habit tracking, some group sessions, some group fitness, consult, nutritionist. It could combine a whole bunch of different things, but these are all already pre thought out into standardized plans of care, usually over the course of three or six months. So that it's not that every patient coming through is getting something different because this becomes a logistical nightmare to scale. It becomes a logistical nightmare to keep track of who's getting what, what do they do. So this is why it's really critical to niche down. Because the power of niching down means that you could reliably Predict with like 80% accuracy what people need when they need it. So that you can create more of like a user journey. Modeled after the tech world.

Yeah.

Into that user journey, things like all the modalities that we have to us. That's including sessions, but not limited to sessions.

Yeah. Wow, that's interesting. And so, and then so you're saying like, it's like it's, it's, it's almost like six months. Plan of care is like the way it's kind of set up.

Usually we recommend a three or six month plan of care because let's just face it, most things don't actually get resolved in less time. And we believe in addressing root cause. So a huge part of the sales process we teach is, is essentially getting the person to say like, yeah, whatever it is, their shoulder, their neck, their back, their knee, and get linking other lifestyle changes, fitness changes, nutrition changes, things that go beyond the traditional scope of physical therapy or Chiro.

So that general orthopedic clinic. Yeah, yeah, I hear that.

So we go beyond the scope yet and this is like some of your listeners, I'm sure they're like, oh man, I'm not a nutritionist though. I don't know a nutritionist. I don't have a nutritionist on my team. Neither is any of our clients. What I recommend you do is realize that most people, they need help. Most clients, most patients, they need help with such basic shit that you don't need a practice act to cover you. They need to go for walks, they need to eat more real food, they need to go to sleep, they need to use their phones less. So if you're a practitioner on your own, what I urge you to do is just start experimenting with something like this like right away. Even if you just do it like as a beta test with a couple of clients to extend your, your lifetime value, your plans of care by moving beyond the traditional orthopedic stuff and building in these changes. The research has shown like that we get people going for walks consistently. A lot of good stuff happens. Back pain diminishes, chronic disease diminishes. I mean it's like, it's almost hard to believe how, how much gets solved from basic implementation interest.

And so for a model like this, what's your typical like for this specific model, what is the LTV on it or the, or the, the value of the carob plan?

You know, again, it depends on how deep you want to go into the fitness and prevention and the wellness world. In the people who have created LTV centric businesses, they are typically bolting on something that people can retain for around 18 months, which is the benchmark in most of the fitness world is looking for a team for 18 months. So for example, if you have a three or six month more traditional plan of care on the front end, you are then looking for another year essentially on the back end of lifetime value through your ancillary services.

Okay, cool, cool. And I'm assuming this whole model is based, it's a cash based business, not like through insurance or network and all that stuff, correct?

Yes. So the way we work with insurance based providers, we call bolt on offers and this is what I encourage all insurance providers to at least start experimenting with because I don't expect someone to drop, drop the insurance. There's a lot of cash gurus out there, like, you know, cash is the future cash. There's always going to be people who want and need to use their insurance coverage and that's okay. But I do believe that it is a. You know, you and I have both been through a moment where legislation changed the moment and parts of our business.

I feel like it's about to happen anytime right now in the U.S. right. So.

Oh yeah. You had 120 clinics. I had five. So when I, when I was at five clinics and that happened. Yeah. We had 90 days notice, 30% of our revenue gone. And we were just like, holy, like what? And that's, that's, you know, to give yourself leverage means to never depend on anyone else. Start built bolting on cash revenue streams as that grows and you, as you get reps in that, then you have the power to say which insurance companies? How do I work with them? How you know, you could start delivering exceptional care to your insurance based clients because your revenue is not dependent on your blended rate coming from just the insurers alone.

Yeah, interesting. So, so, and what would you say is like, is the best way to market this type of niche? You know, like, because like, you know, like I don't think it fits like the general population. Right. You know, so. Correct.

Yeah. So we, we teach direct to consumer marketing. And again, so the, the overarching theme is that this is called the evolving practice model. Within the evolving practice model, there's typically two starting points. It's either a remote revenue stream or hybrid revenue stream. And you have to build one at a time. Most, most clinicians are not naturally business oriented. I wasn't, I had to learn all this stuff. You learned all this stuff. I think we both learned by fire until we got mentors and you know, we got to set our clinicians up for success. So in the path, like think of each one as a gear, the remote revenue stream is a gear and your hybrid revenue stream is a gear. And then you can start to tack on all these other gears and your machine starts working, you know, more efficiently and more powerfully. So what we typically recommend is like pick one of those, those streams. And if you're a remote revenue stream, then we're going to focus more on remote marketing. If we're a hybrid revenue stream, we're going to focus more on our community marketing. But I believe in direct to consumer marketing and pulling from the direct to consumer Internet marketing world to apply to our clinician businesses.

So what is that? You're talking about Facebook ads or are you talking about Google Ads or SEO? Is there one that you've seen that works the best for, for the small niche, you know. Right.

Oh, so the, the thing that I Actually believe, again, as a form of leverage is ensuring that you never have one that the model hinges on. So especially when Zuckerberg, you know, one of my favorite analogies with Zuckerberg, you know, the Marvel movies where Thanos snaps the Zuckerberg snap. You know, so the. On the, on the, on the government side, they could change legislation or regulations, how we operate in a day. On the private side, if you depend on Facebook ads and Facebook changes one thing, tomorrow, it's compromised. So we typically recommend starting off with organic marketing, meaning non paid marketing sources, and then using the.

Was this like building your personal brand through, like social. Through Instagram and, you know, creating value and maybe even using Facebook ads to like, drive that so you own those followers. Right. And ultimately that's.

That's one angle of it. But still, just like local community marketing.

Okay.

I believe that. I believe in almost like what I would call guerrilla marketing. So I think that too many clinicians start acting like they're bigger than they are, way too.

Okay.

And just walking around like. So if you're in a local clinic, you're doing a hybrid.

Yeah.

Anytime you have downtime, you get out into the community and meet as many business owners as humanly possible, and you create as many connections as humanly possible. And you genuinely try to help as many people as possible in the local community. But you do that in a structured and systematic way. You add them to your CRM. You're not just going out and having these informal conversations. You're refining a script that feels natural to you, that you can eventually teach your clinicians to do. And through this, you know, through each of these mechanisms, say local marketing workshops, you know, brand partners with gyms and other fitness and health facilities, and also your online presence and also your ads, you now have this dynamic machine that if one gear stops turning, the rest are still turning. And organic marketing is a great way to test what actually works in the marketplace before going paid slight asterisk there. If you have a really warm audience and you have developed high social clout, sometimes the message to that group of people does not translate well to cold leads. So organic marketing to a cold audience will give you the best test to inform your paid marketing efforts in the future.

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting to say that, you know, and it's interesting what you're talking about this local marketing. I think a lot of, you know, practitioners I know, like, they just want to do the easy stuff, which is, let's just throw some money on online marketing and see what sticks. Right. You Know, and they forget that before marketing, before there was online marketing, it was actually all the, you know, local marketing, or what we call the community marketing, where like, it was the face to face, you know, where the magic actually happens with relationships. Right.

So absolutely. And the real power is when you have all of those. So the 132k month business, like Facebook ads are on and they're working. Local community relationships are on and they're working. Workshops are working. The organic social media is working. So the email campaign is working. So the reality is there's no one gatekeeper, but you can't build all of those at one time. So you have to structure that and order it and then figure out what team you could bring on to help accelerate it.

Yeah, yeah. So if you were to like, if, if I was a clinician, start from scratch, what would be the top three channels I would go for? Like, it sounds like local marketing is kind of the first thing you would do, Frank. Is that what I'm hearing?

For the hybrid model?

Yeah, for the hybrid model.

Yeah, for the hybrid model. I am going to introduce myself five days a week to five people in the community. Okay. Period. And I will, I guarantee you that we could build a sustainable scalable business, the roots of it off of that and that alone.

Yeah, interesting. So it sounds like you're, you're. It sounds like you're quite sophisticated in marketing, Frank. I'm curious, what's. Who, like, what type of marketer or marketing book or, or influencer do you like, really love?

Seth Godin is my absolute favorite. So Seth is the og in my opinion of permission based marketing. Permission based marketing is essentially always getting the opt in. So in nothing that I do personally or what I teach involves cold outreach.

I think that doesn't work.

Yeah, it doesn't work. And even if it does doesn't work.

How many email lists have you bought over the years that like, you know, that don't work? Right.

You know, so I did that once and then never again. So. But Seth Godin is, was the original mentor to me. So in 2015, when we started our first business, we had no idea what we were doing. We just launched and we accidentally found success. And the best thing happened to me is that the second location we ever had failed miserably. You know, it was in my hometown. It was named after me. It was Benedetto Sports Orthopedics. And I closed it because the, the gym that we went inside of also closed and it basically shut me down. Um, and the, the first business, though, Took off and, and it made me go, whoa, you know, okay, what's, Let me study. What. Why am I actually winning? Because the worst thing that can happen when you win is not having correct attribution to why you're winning. And then you, you go into future opportunities with a false degree of confidence. And that's where things start to break down at a certain scale. So, you know, we actually had nine locations. Four of them failed. Five of them went on to make many millions. And then we had our exit on those five. Those four, though that failed was my mba. And after failure number two, we realized, I think we need some help. Like, let's. Why are we paying through the cost of trial and error? Because there's a real, like, there's an actual financial cost to trial and error. It's not just a, like a proverb. Like when you choose to learn through trial and error, you are paying through lost revenue. Whereas when you pay for a guidance and mentorship, like there's a known cost for that. And if you choose correctly, there should be an ROI in a certain period of time. So we went through Set Godin's alt mba and that was just transformative because it really aligned with me because product creation and marketing are the same thing. So that's why my program is not really a marketing program. We teach people how to market, but what we do is we teach people how to build a remarkable product.

So yeah, like a remarkable product and an amazing patient experience. Right?

That's what we do first. That's what most. And when you do that, I'm not going to say anything markets itself because that's not true. But the marketing is built in because what makes the best problem gave the. I gave the answer. What makes the best marketing is problem centric marketing. When you speak to someone's problem, that makes for the best marketing. Not how great you are, how you know all these things that we, we see and all this like, oh, I.

Worked with like a software company, Frank.

Well, a lot, a lot of, A lot of what we've pulled from is from Silicon Valley. So a huge influence the tech world, Y Combinator and but here's what also makes the best product. Problem awareness. Right? So when you study somebody's problem. So if you're working with new moms and you study their problem, like deeply, deeply study them, you do deep dive interviews and get anonymous surveys, anonymous feedback and you spend time with them and you know, they're deepest, darkest thoughts around us and their biggest aspirations and everything in between. You could, you Use that in two ways. You build something for them so that when they look at the product and service they, you've built, they go, oh my God, this was made for me. You know, it's not. They didn't walk into this general place by this general program. They said, you made this for me. That's the feeling we want to evoke from all of our clients. The good news is that same list of problems that you use to build the product is exactly the same list you're going to refer to and evolve for the duration of that business and your marketing. So if you have this problem, this is your solution. Your solution happens to be what I build. So that Seth Godin was really the one who merged those two worlds for me and broke down a lot of the, you know, I'm a clinician first I was double board certified, ocs, scs, those are, you know, sports certified specialists, orthopedic certified specialists. And I was just trying to do the best job I could possibly do for the first seven years of my career until I couldn't do that as an employee anymore. And I started business with a lot of the same mindset issues, a lot of clinicians where like marketing felt weird and sales felt weird. That goes away when you're selling and marketing something that you put your blood, sweat, tears into building and you just know that when the right person gets their hands on it, their lives are going to change.

Yeah. Wow, cool. So what's the, you know, in your crystal ball, what is the future of this profession with like so much stuff going on? You know, we got, we got, what is it, you know, declining reimbursements, you got the student loans crisis, you know, you got this inflation, interest rates, you know, Frank, like what do you see in your crystal ball?

Yeah, I see a lot of opportunity for those who are open to evolving because we are. It's just mind boggling how many decades behind healthcare is compared to everyone else. And it's because there's a third party payer system that's incentivized to not involve, to not evolve. And for the clinicians who are willing to do the smallest innovations that almost seem like laughable, like just using basic apps and, and using technology in some way, if you do anything other than just sell your time, you will have the, the first step in the direction of evolution, that as more new products and new technology comes out to help experts like us and new types of hardware like the Apple Vision pros, which are going to fundamentally change the way we interface with technology as Future versions come out that will be able to be used inside of our clinics and our products in a way that replaces in person care to an extent. There will always be a place for in person care. I'm not someone who's like a call doomsday, like, oh, all of our clinics are going to go away. No, our clinics are going to be fine. But they will be fine and they will thrive. If we evolve and embrace technology and stop just selling our time. If all we sell is our time and there's no connection to technology, I believe that those people in the future, especially when things start to accelerate, it's going to be very difficult to evolve then. But those who have the tiniest little portal to technology, they've been messaging with clients between sessions. They're doing home exercise, program delivery. The basic stuff like this is not that crazy, but you'd be shocked how few clinicians are actually doing this.

Yeah, yeah. But I don't see a lot of clinics doing this, Frank.

What's that?

I don't see a lot of, like, clinicians or practices doing this. Right.

They're not. They are not. And there are apps for a hundred bucks a month. I'm not affiliated with any of them. There's dozens. I'm not going to list them so you could go find them. But there are dozens of apps that you could download tomorrow and just pick five clients and be like, pick your best five clients and be like, hey, I want to beta test this new program where I, you know, give you the exercises that you're supposed to do between sessions. And it's also going to be a, you know, a messenger with me. Again, you're not on call. The goal is for you not to be on call. You have to do this with boundaries and you have to do this in a way where you train your team. Like, Instead of their 9am session, they do their check ins, you know, they do their check INS at 9. They're not on call, they're not getting texts in the middle of the night. But if you just start with those basic things, then you can start to pivot that and evolve that into an actual revenue stream. Whether that's built into your core product or simply a discharge program. That's another really easy way to. For those of you with really well established practices, discharge programs to these innovative models is a great way to dip your toe in the water without feeling like you're risking anything. Like, these people are going away anyway. Don't sell them massages. Don't sell them once a Month appointments as like some sort of recurring revenue stream. Like sell them something time leveraged, either remote or hybrid so that you are, you start getting your reps in this direction. Because my, you know, if there, if there was one warning, I always forget the name of this phenomenon. But the phenomenon is that the rate of innovation speeds up over time. And it was originally, I think just based off of capacitor. The original study was like, oh, capacitors are actually exponentiating year over year.

Moore's Law. Moore's Law, Right, that's it.

Moore's Law. Moore's Law, yes. So with the advent of AI and again I know there's a lot of hype around it right now, but the hype is real. It's a tool. It's a real tool that is having real changes and impact to the world. AI is going to accelerate the, the curve of all innovation and healthcare needs to innovate alongside that. We cannot stay stagnant.

And how do you see AI like with like physical, how do you see it evolved with like physical therapy with AI?

I'll give you one example and that's something that I'm personally building right now for one of the, the patient facing businesses that we're scaling, I have three and that is creating a custom GPT to go along with our core product. So imagine giving patients the ability to instantly access, you know, a chatbot essentially for people who are not as familiar with your proprietary database. So if you work exclusively with baseball players or if you exclusively work with women post C section or if you exclusively work with people with diabetes or chronic low back pain, you build a specific data set with your philosophy so that the chapa answers the way you would answer. And now your patients have a resource where they could interface with you, a version of you 247 on demand. And there's lots of ways that could, you know, be used in the future that get really cool.

Interesting. So this is, this is patient facing, not, it's not designed to aid the therapist. Right. You know, am I right?

Well, in theory, yes. It is part of the whole user experience where ideally the conversation is one where the therapist is witnessed to and involved in so that like if you ever use like one of the better chat supports on like a tech company, it's, it's seamless between like you reach the limit of the bot and then the person steps in. Yeah, that's what I'm imagining in the, in the, in the, in the first use cases. With that being said, there are lots of ways that we're looking at using it behind the scenes. So for example, programing wise or matching clients with which program is best for them. We have been creating our programs in an algorithmic way to prepare for this since 2019. Always really tuned into where the tech industry is going. And I knew back then I didn't know it was going to be like AI and GPTs. But in 2019 I started making my proclamations that chatbots are going to be the next wave of innovation that was coming. And I was right. So since then we've been saving and anonymizing all of our patient conversations to be able to train our own GPTs and also our programming methods so that in theory when someone comes in, we could use AI to help match them with the best program based off of our previous patient data. Now we're far away from that. I don't want to misrepresent like we are, we're just like trying to figure out like how do we make this work? Like we're trying to experiment in different ways, but if we could.

Fascinating. So like in essence you're, you're uploading what like 10,000 of like patient outcomes in there and, and based on your different plans and programs to put together, I guess a GPT that in essence replaces that physical therapist so that when they're at home and they have any questions, they could just like start chatting with with Frank. Right.

Exponentiates that physical therapist. So I'm not a, a tech replacer, I am a tech exponentiator. So there are definitely people working towards a world where this is replacing. I actually don't believe that. I think it's too easy to ignore, not have human accountability as technology evolves. For anybody who's afraid of this. Maybe I'm hopeful, maybe I'm too hopeful. I believe that if technology evolves the right way, we will create more space for humaning.

Yeah.

So that humans can do what humans are best at. And let algorithms, you know, let algo anything that's an algorithmic thinking task. Let computers do to say it really like boiled down and let's just face it, like anybody going through pain, anybody going through a post operative. It is a deeply emotional human experience to which there always need to be a human involved. And if we use this technology, we are simply creating the higher likelihood of success by having the clinician leverage AI to match, let's say the best possible plan of care based off of data. And again, I want to be really clear, like this does not exist right now. We are not Actually like this is not live or functional in capacity. These are just the conversations we're having to try to say how do we create this reality? Because guess what, AI is coming either way. And if we don't start playing with it and using it and don't dabble and experiment, guess who is the insurance companies, the big VC owned businesses. Not all of them are evil, but some of them are.

And well, imagine the world, the insurance company having this where you don't even need a physical therapist. Maybe the physical therapist is the, you know, it's the last line of defense. You know, after they talk to this like, you know, this bot where they have billions of like outcome measures. Right. Based on what you submitted. Right.

They are definitely trying this and there's a couple already existing in the U.S. it's just that they've already lost our trust though. So as a consumer I would never do that, you know. So like this exists, I think it was UnitedHealthcare launched theirs a year ago and they're attempting to reroute people from medical doctor referrals. So if you have the type of insurance that requires a referral, they're attempting to place themselves in between that and say actually go do this for two or three weeks. Compliance is absolutely terrible. Nobody's actually doing it.

Yeah, cool. Hey, what's your thoughts on like just what's happening on the macro level with like private equity or the, all these pension funds, like, like rolling up or owning all these like physical therapy clinics. Right. You know what's kind of your, yeah, your thoughts or viewpoint, you know, on that.

Yeah, so the, the, every industry goes through these consolidation phases and then it gets fractured and we, we have. What's the opposite of the consolidation phase?

We have like a fragmentation.

Yeah, we have a fragmentation phase. And I remember the first time I, I realized like, oh wow, this will never stop was when I was reading a farming book to my kid. It was literally like a kid's book and it talked about how John Deere rolled everybody up and then, and then like, you know, a couple years later, then they all broke apart and all this other stuff and, and how, you know, how, how it, this is just like a cycle, cycles of all industries. And I do believe that with, with the available technology, the goal in my opinion is to create the least amount of consolidation possible. So if I don't know about you, but when, when you were buying clinics, high likelihood that they were selling because they weren't as profitable as they'd hoped and that they were selling because with the larger entity, the firepower, the systems. There's lots of benefits to being part of the bigger system that they could be more profitable. And that's not the case for everybody. Sometimes they're super profitable. They just have huge ambition. That's cool. But in my opinion, if we could equip as many clinicians as possible with the ability to use technology to become highly profitable. So the business models we teach are typically minimum 50% profit margins. If somebody is really aggressive, really leans too much on ads, or goes super big with their equipment or like space or lives in a high equipment market, like 40% is where they will, what we would say is our bottom. Whereas in most of the real world, you know, 15 is good, 20 is great, 30 is exceptional, 40% is outstanding. In our models, you know, 40, 50, 60, these are normal. And when you have that kind of profit, you have leverage. You have leverage to roll that profit into one of several different ways. Reinvesting back into your business, even in form of people or the form of technology or the form of education, it allows you to reinvest it back into yourself. I'm a big proponent of mental health. Business saved me because I finally created the bandwidth, both time and money wise, to give myself the mental health that I needed. Yeah, I had battled with drug and alcohol abuse, I had uncontrolled adhd, and the all attempts at the Churchill system failed me. The only time I started to improve was, was when I bought back my time. And I also had ancillary income to say, yeah, I am going to sign up for that $2,000, you know, mindset program, this mental health program, this retreat, this breath work, this. In the past 10 years, I was able to bring myself to this place right now. So I believe in highly profitable businesses through exploiting technology. Whereas, let's just face it, most of humanity has been built off of highly profitable businesses exploiting other humans. And we are finally at a point where the small businesses have equal access. It's been democratized. We have access to technology. There's no reason why we can't run these highly profitable businesses.

Yeah. Wow. Interesting. Yeah. So you're saying, you're saying your model generates 50%, like, like a net profit? Is that what I'm hearing? Or is that like gross margins you're talking about, Frank? Yeah. Net.

Yep.

Wow. Wow.

Yeah. When you, when you disconnect the revenue from time, everything changes. Now the, the, the negatives, right, there's this model work.

Is this model work for the soulpreneur or is this, you're talking about for the multi million dollar clinic owner. Like do you think that would work for that for a typical, you know, general orthopedic clinic? Right. You know, that introduces some of these, I guess this new revenue stream that you talk about. Right.

It's absolutely solopreneur. Because the, the reality is, is that a lot of us, when we start selling sessions, we get to a point where we, we can't work on the business anymore. Right. The old adage on the business, in the business and then you have to do something like drastic to then buy, bring yourself out to then work on the business. Whereas when you sell these hybrid and remote offers inside the evolving practice model, you are, you are now giving yourself like built in time to work on the business from the start. Now the asterisk here and like real, just like full transparency is like, yeah, you will make less cash flow earlier on if you were to sell a 20 pack of sessions at 200 bucks.

Pop.

Just use easy math like, yeah, you're going to get more cash flow that day, that month, that quarter than selling a hybrid plan of care to that person. But the compounding effect if you have the discipline to build a business around a hybrid plan of care or remote plans of care is that one you act. The actual total revenue generating potential of a single individual is significantly higher over a longer period of time.

Yeah.

So what we're seeing is that the solopreneurs are the ones who are able to do this and early, early businesses with like handfuls of employees. What we're also seeing is that we get a lot of interest from bigger companies who can't do it. They're, they're, they're, they're golden, handcuffed and they can't bring themselves to possibly say no to the cash flow. So that's where you know, if that's you, you have to start with those discharge programs like don't disrupt your cash flow. You need to bolt on something that doesn't disrupt the current flow. And then you get your reps and you prove this model and then you increase the cash flow over time through let's say your discharge program or super niche down remote programs that you're bolting onto your local business. And then as that goes up, you have to have the discipline to then say, all right, like I have another 10, 20, $30,000 of cash flow from this. Let me now start selling some of my front ends as hybrids, which will net slightly less, you know, cash flow. But in the longer term, my retention of therapists is going to go through the roof. You know, I talked to somebody the other day on 60 locations and he, he, when I, when I asked him what his core problem is, he said human capital. And I hate that word, man. I hate that word. Humans, humans are not capital. You know, like you have a, you have a hiring and retention problem like that no one wants to work for you. That you have a, no one wants to work for you problem. And you know like so, so, so how much money is lost? And there's known stats though, right? It's significant. So often half the salary is like what I've heard sometimes is that when something like.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So like when you look at that and you look at if you have a turnover problem, well, giving clinicians a bit of more of a work life balance, giving them a little bit more variety, having less of a time demand on them. Yeah, that's, that's another way to give, give yourself more of a retention for your personnel.

So what would that look like for that 60 clinic like chain? You know, like how would you, because you said like you start small work on, I think you said like the discharge patients or the ones that self discharge. Right? Like build that, build that. And what I'm hearing is like you will build a remote like hybrid, like, like plan of care. Is that, is that what I'm hearing?

I'll give you really specific. I would either have, I would prescribe, always prescriptive. So I believe the clinician always prescribes the opt option. I don't believe in like a menu of services you give to the clinician.

I want to see a menu, Frank, I want to see a menu.

So I'm going to give you the menu. But the patient never knows the menu.

Okay?

So in this situation, if I was this person, I would say I am going to implement these two offers at the end of plans of care. A once a month hybrid offer where somebody comes in for a once a month session, that session is highly consultative in nature, does the most minimal amount of manual therapy or modalities or whatever it is that you believe in. I'm clinically agnostic. As long as you're not using nocebic language and making people dependent or using, you know, bullshit just to make money. Because you don't need to do any of that to make money. You use that one hour as a way to guide what happens in the next month through the hybrid plan of care. And then everything in the hybrid plan of care is done asynchronously and remotely like you Know what exercise program they're going to do, what correctives, they're going to do what, you know, they're training for a race or if they're just trying to get into the gym or habit tracking, drink more water, go to sleep on time, put your phone away for the first hour before bed or after bed, these basic things. That's, that's one offer. And then the other offer would be fully remote. Yeah. So if there's truly no reason to, to, you know, have a, an in person relationship, I would sell a fully remote plan of care. Now ideally I would sell this in a 6 month or 12 month increment. Yeah. But the reality is, is that you always aim for the paid in full and then you settle on payment plans. The payment plans that you do have are monthly recurring revenue and that's where we try to aim for that. Let's say, you know, 12 to 18 month lifetime value after the initial plan of care.

Interesting. And so if you were to implement this process or this menu, I'm not going to call menu for like, if you implement this at a typical, you know, like orthopedic clinic, what type of conversion rates do you would see on them going to like this like whether it's like full remote or hybrid.

Yeah. 40 to 60% is, is what we would look for that range, you know.

40% of the ones at discharge or the. Is that what I correct?

Yes.

Okay.

That's what we'd be aiming for. Now it will take work to get there.

One. Because 40 to 40 to 60. Yeah, 40 to 60%. Right. So.

Yep. So again that's our goal. That's our goal. I don't believe that what's actual. Yeah, the average is likely 20 to.

40, but even 20 like 2 out of 10, like you know. Right.

But I do believe 40 to 60 is possible and our top performers do that. But the reason why though is because they've moved their front end offer to be targeted to who is ideal. So when, when you build like. So we're working backwards in this business now. Right. We built, we built the discharge program.

Yeah.

This means that you're still kind of sort of selling the front end to everyone. As you start to market and niche down and get more specific with your target market, you should be attracting people in who are more interested in this longer plan of care. And then it becomes not like this new thing, it just becomes this extension and that's when it hits that 40 to 60%. Because the, let's say the night, the 90 day or six month hybrid plan of care bleeds so naturally into the one once a month or fully remote plan of care that you know, as long as the team and the clinician has basic sales skills, they will be able to convert 40 to 60 once it's fully launched.

Wow, that'd be insane.

And what addition if you launch as hybrid, like if you're talking to the solopreneurs, your, your back end program should be 40 to 60. So if you are starting from scratch and you launch a hybrid practice to a target market, run in back end is built from the start and it naturally feeds into the next problem they they need to solve. So the client comes to you for a problem that might be knee pain or back pain. As that problem gets solved, a second problem is exposed or another set of problems are exposed. Your back end offer of in this evolving practice model of a hybrid or a remote discharge point of care solves that next set of problems that you outlined originally, just like the Seth Godin type model. So we listed all their problems. Oftentimes we can't solve all of them in the first 12 weeks or 16 weeks or six months. So we picked the biggest needle movers to solve in the front end and then the next set of problems solving the back end. And those should be at 40 to 60. If you're not, then there's a problem.

You're doing some really crazy radical stuff, Frank. I just wanna give you. It is very refreshing to hear kind of the conversation we have today, you know, so which is not happening at most practices. Right. You know, but yeah, if you could get that like and how much additional dollars do you think you add to the plan of care with like that, that discharge program you just talked about?

You know, if we're talking about bolting it onto a traditional clinic. Yeah, you know, so the pricing here really depends on how much the team is able to put into it at the higher end. Again, this is for the bolt on part of it. At the higher end we've seen 250amonth recurring revenue. On the lower end we've seen you know, 99. When it gets less than that, it starts to become, in my opinion, the juice doesn't, isn't worth the squeeze. You know, if I'm selling something for 50 bucks a month, like I really challenge people to deliver something of value where $99 feels like it's a $500, like wow, I'm getting $500 a month value. At least this if you're selling 250amonth. But you'd be amazed how much people will pay for real accountability, real personal accountability. So a huge part of that I'll give you. Can I give you one more detail here?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Wearable technology. This is an Apple Watch. Most people use this thing as a clock. Yeah, that's what it's basically used for. It collects so much data. Fitbits, whoops, Oura ring. These are all things that many consumers already have and are not using the data at all. And if they're not using one of those things, not Apple Watch, but let's say Fitbit and some of these other things, you could get them for 100 bucks. So you could say I have program, it comes with a free Fitbit. And what that's going to do is like once a week I'm going to look back at all of your data and my team is just going to message you and really give you some coaching on what to specifically do if you do this and this alone and sell like a super niche down remote program for sleep. And again, I'm not advocating for this. For those of you listening, I'm not saying just do this, but if all you do is say I'm going to help you with your sleep, I guarantee you 10 to 20% of your audience will be like holy shit, I would love that. I sleep terribly.

I would sign up for this.

Frank, you charge like 200 bucks a month or 100 to 250amonth and all you do is look at their data and say okay, we're going to focus on these five habits. When is your last caffeine intake for the day? Great, let's move that down. And a habit tracker. Did I drink caffeine before after noon or before noon? Only technology before bed. What you're going to do is pick a draw in your somewhere, your closet or somewhere outside. You're going to put your phone in there next morning. Habit tracker. Click the box. Did you put your phone away before bed? All these basic things like a shower. There's different research on like how you could get yourself to sleep better. But using the wearable technology as the jump off point for a coaching moment is so easy. Even steps, let's use a non sleep example Steps. You know, you don't need to be a trainer, you don't need your cscs, you don't need to have any of these things to get people to their 10,000 steps a day. You do not need to have to be a nutritionist to get them to eat more real food, not drink calories you know, the whole host, you know, eat three meals a day or whatever. You subscribe to a belief you subscribe to. It's like all of these things can be absolutely built in to these care. And then related to the question that inspired all of this was how much? Well, you know, how much is that worth to you? I think 250 sounds like a deal for, for, for all of that.

Yeah. Wow. Interesting. Wow. This is. Yeah, this is pretty cool, you know. So how come more clinics don't do this? Frank, welcome.

This is what keeps me up at night. Because when I hear that this is radical and crazy, I'm like, this is so common sense. Right? It's like so much, is so much common sense. But the third party payer system stifles innovation. And I believe that people, clinicians get blinders on to one game. That is how many visits per week, how much money per visit. And I'm not saying to not play that game, but just why, you know, widen your scope like you know, play.

That game because you're already very bolt on that. Every clinic should like actually add, you know, and if you're 30, if you could get even a 20 conversion rate of discharges and you know, and, and they're generating whatever, let's just say 200 bucks a month for eight months, you know. Right. Like it's a no brainer like all of a sudden I could see that EBITDA now, right. You know. Oh yeah, the way down where like, oh my gosh, like, like you said, like you now that you have more profits like you know, at the bottom now you could reinvest, you could like you could do more, you know. Right. You know, you're not just getting by running a clinic that gives you 10, 15% like profit margin. Right. So.

Yep. So I'll give you another answer to why they're not doing it. The other reason is that they've, most people have not created enough time in their schedule to even be able to think about doing something else because all they're doing is treating, selling sessions. So a lot of times my, my, my number one recommendation for anybody listening to this is to pull out your phone right now. Unless you're driving. Just you know, use Siri. Go make sure Siri doesn't turn on my phone. Now if you're whatever, wherever you are right now, pull out your phone and make a calendar appointment with yourself sometime in the next week or two that says like how will you innovate? Just put innovation as the, as the title of that innovation and in that hour, all you have to do is think, okay, put your phone away, lock it, get a piece of paper, and just think about what the first step might be to innovating. And that might be installing a messenger, you know, just giving patients a way to message. It might be playing with one of these apps, not even getting it to a patient. Might be buying some wearable technology yourself. But the key is you have to make time for this because there is some creative effort that goes into it. You have to experiment, you have to think like, you have to think through your people and what version of all these options. That's why you're an incubator, not a coaching program, because there's not a one size fits all stamp. Here's your discharge program. We help reverse engineer what that discharge program should be to set you up for the highest likelihood of success, how to market it, how to sell it based off of who you serve, your clinical beliefs, all these other variables. If you're going to do that on your own, you absolutely can. It's just, you know, it's going to take more time and effort, but you have to make time to do it. So make a time block on your schedule, innovation. Then while you do that one for the next week, you're going to make another time block that says step one. And that, baby, step one could be downloading an app, it could be buying a wearable. It could be. And any, anything. It could be relistening to this podcast.

Yeah, now I get what you're talking about, Frank. I'm going to bring back to the very beginning when you said you are not a coaching business, but you're an incubator. Now I get what you're talking about.

That makes me happy.

Cool. And so last question, Frank. If, if, if you only had $11,000, you know, if you had $1,000 spend on how would you spend it to generate sales next month? You know? Right. If, if you had, if you had a, you know, for, for like a typical practice, you know.

Right, yeah, for a typical practice. You know, I don't have a snap response because my wearable. Yeah, Buy. Buy a wearable. Yeah, I'm trying to spend it on something, then go, go introduce myself to everybody. Anyway, I'll get, I'll give you one example. It might not be the best answer, but I'm going to give you an example. There is a device called Popple. Have you heard of this? Popple is basically a wearable nvc, you know, but you know how you could tap with your Phone to pay. Yeah. Field communication and nfc.

Nfc, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's a near field communication bracelet. So that when you are out in marketing or if you're at the gym or you have somebody do it, you just have somebody tap that. You ask the person to tap you, your, your bracelet and it automatically pulls up whatever you want to pull up, and I recommend having that pull up to a landing page because if you give people your business card, they never do shit with it. Right. You have to always try to stay in control.

That's so clever, dude. Right, so the NFC goes to a landing page for some, for some type of like, sign up, right? Is that what.

Yeah, something, something free. So, you know, something, something that they get a free resource or they get a free consult or they, you know, whatever it is. And then the societal pressure of them having that on their phone in front of you, like, all right, cool. So just put your name and email in there and you know, that's going to get you into my system and you're going to get a whole ton of free resources. You're going to love it. You're going to get so much out of it. And again, fundamental, our fundamental to our marketing system is everything you do in marketing should be valuable. So this doesn't, this doesn't mean like, how to's. You don't have to demonstrate exercises, all this other crap, but it should be valuable. So whatever you're giving them, you should be like, well, that's a privilege. I can't believe you're about to get all that for just an email. Because that's what I do. If you ever enter my funnel, you are going to get literally thousands of dollars worth of trainings. And I want you to be like, wow, I got that for an email. So that's why I don't feel bad about marketing because everything I do carries value. You all should do the same. So what would that look like if somebody were to scan it? That gives you the feeling of pride. Be like, yeah, you're going to be blown away with how much stuff you're going to get. Just put your name and email in there, keep an eye on your email and follow along, reply to. You know, if you ever want to work with me more closely, just reply to any one of those emails, you know, and then slowly the net gain of that over time will blow your mind.

Wow. Wow. And how do people find out more about what you do, Frank?

You know, Instagram is always the best way to reach me personally. So it's me and the account. I still run all the accounts. Frank Underscore Benedetto, and.

Wow, you still run all your accounts. Good for you.

So I run that account. So I run Instagram account because that's me personally. It's my personal page. The business. Yeah. We have a Facebook group, we have an email list. We've got a website. But, you know, if you want to get in touch with me personally, Frank Underscore Benedetto is the way to do it.

Cool. That is freaking awesome. So, Frank, thanks for your time on the show. Like, I learned so much about, like, what you do, and you kind of remind me of the Elon Musk of our industry right now. You know, you're doing something, like, really cool.

Yeah, that's always. It's always a mixed bag.

We just gotta get in the hands of, like, more people. Based on what?

Exactly.

Right.

So 100%.

Okay. Super cool, man.

Thanks for having me, dude.

Yeah, thank you. Cool. If you found this helpful and want some free resources to help you be an even better clinic owner, head over to clinicbosstools.com we've got tons of free stuff on getting new patients, phone scripts, selling your clinic, managing clinical teams, and much more. Head over to clinicbosstools.com.