Not every practice wants to be a national chain. Some of the healthiest examples of growing a local physical therapy practice come from clinics that go deep in one community instead of wide across many, and Greendale Physical Therapy is a model for exactly that.
In this episode of the Practice Marketing Podcast, host Neil Trickett, CEO of Practice Promotions, talks with Jon Dooley, founder of Greendale PT, a seven-location Massachusetts practice that lives by the tagline “You don’t have to be an Olympic athlete to be treated like one.” Jon shares how clear core values, specialized services like vestibular and aquatic therapy, deep community roots, and a therapist-first model added up to sustainable, lasting growth.
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Episode Highlights
- → The core values behind 15+ years of growth
- → Specialized services: vestibular, balance, and aquatic therapy
- → The 40-minute one-on-one model and why it aids retention
- → Community sponsorships and a lecture series
- → Turning patient wins into marketing
- → Referrals, direct-to-consumer, and the website as your hub
Guest Bio
Jon Dooley is the founder of Greendale Physical Therapy, a seven-location practice in Massachusetts known for the tagline “You don’t have to be an Olympic athlete to be treated like one.” Jon has been in practice for more than 20 years, and for the last 15 or so he has grown Greendale by pairing strong core values with specialized service lines, deep community involvement, and a therapist-first culture.
Key Takeaways for Practice Owners
- Anchor on core values. Jon wrote 10 guiding principles about 15 years ago and still goes through them with every new therapist. They shape how Greendale treats patients and its own team.
- Specialize to stand out. Fill gaps in your community’s care options. Greendale’s neurological balance and vestibular center is the only one of its kind in central Massachusetts, according to Jon.
- A therapist-first model retains talent. Moving from a half-hour to a 40-minute one-on-one model cost Jon “a little bit of a haircut,” but specialties and longer treatments were among the main reasons recent hires joined.
- Show up in your community. Sponsor events your team can join, and give local doctors and other professionals a stage. Neil adds that sponsor links back to your site can help your Google rankings.
- Let patients tell the story. Coach your team to ask for a five-star review, with their name in it, at the moment a patient has a win, and run friendly review contests between clinics.
- Diversify your patient sources. About 40% of Greendale’s new patients are past patients or referrals from them. Jon says the website is the biggest bang for the buck, bringing in roughly 20%.
Build on Core Values
Greendale’s tagline has been around for a long time, but the philosophy behind it was put on paper about 15 years ago. Jon wrote what he calls Greendale’s 10 guiding principles: ten things he felt his team needed to understand about how he thinks about the practice and about taking care of patients. The first one is the tagline in action, “we take care of people as if they’re Olympic athletes.”
For Jon, that is not only about patient care, where it means a lot of competence and a lot of respect. It also extends to how he treats his employees and how his managers take care of their own teams, and he says that philosophy trickles down into how patients are cared for.
“We take care of people as if they’re Olympic athletes.” — Jon Dooley
The principles are not a poster on the wall. Jon brings them up whenever Greendale interviews a new therapist, so candidates know what the practice is about, and he refers back to them in emails about teamwork and consistency. He says they still resonate today.
Neil points out that many owners are tempted to skip this work. When you’re focused on the day-to-day, it’s easy to wonder whether you really have to spend time writing out core values and a mission, but he says it has a big impact on the future of your business and on how everything aligns. His advice for listeners who haven’t spent much time on their own guiding principles, core values, mission, and purpose is that this time of year is a great time to map out how you want your practice to be, because it makes it much easier to operate the business once they are in place.
Diversify Services to Meet Community Needs
Greendale has added service lines over time, and Jon walks through two of them. Aquatic therapy has been part of the practice for almost, or more than, 20 years. He calls it a nice added service for patients who can really benefit from it, including people who may not do well with land therapy but do well in the pool, such as back patients, athletes, and amputees.
The second is Greendale’s neurological balance and vestibular center. Jon says it started as rolling the dice, a test of whether it would work in central Massachusetts. He says it is the only practice of its kind in central Massachusetts that primarily treats neurological balance and vestibular conditions, and that about a year in it has “taken off significantly.” It also made Greendale a more complete option when a doctor needs to refer a patient: the practice can care for a high-level athlete, a person with Parkinson’s, an amputee, or a person with vestibular problems. In Jon’s words, it has made Greendale sort of the go-to place because it takes care of a large breadth of conditions.
The center came from a space decision. Greendale had a roughly 3,000-square-foot orthopedic clinic it had outgrown, so it moved the orthopedic and sports work across the street to its main facility. Rather than give up the space, which had a decent rent, Jon noticed that many of his therapists were interested in neurological balance and vestibular care and decided to build a clinic around it. He says it serves a really underserved patient group, and that it also helped with recruiting, because many therapists want to do neuro and don’t have the chance elsewhere. It does skew toward Medicare patients, which means per-patient revenue is a little lower, but he says it still works. The clinic has a SoloStep harness system, vestibular goggles, and the other equipment therapists like to use.
“We can take care of that high-level athlete, and we can take care of that person with Parkinson’s, or that amputee, or that person with vestibular.” — Jon Dooley
Being different also pays off in referrals and patient demand. Jon says the closest similar service is about 30 miles away at Spaulding Rehabilitation, and that being unique has helped Greendale draw many patients for that care.
Neil sees a larger lesson here. Unless you go to hospital outpatient, he says, there are few neurological centers, which suggests there are untapped markets PT can be in. He points to the aging boomer population and to ideas like medically oriented gyms for cardiovascular, diabetic, and neurological conditions. His advice is to look within your community for where the opportunities and holes in the market are, plan what filling them would look like, and, if you do it, go all in and make it its own center instead of one small piece of a practice, because then it stands out and you can market it.
Recruit and Retain With a Better Model
Going into 2026, Jon says Greendale is fortunate to have plenty of patients who want to come in, which was not true when he started. The practice’s priorities are recruiting more therapists and getting more space for them to practice at their best. Neil says a wide mix of service lines helps here, because different offerings can match the different interests therapists have.
Jon had just spoken at the APTA Private Practice Section on recruiting and hiring at the time of the recording. He says the market has about a 12,000 PT shortfall and does not expect that to change for at least 12 to 15 years, so recruiting will stay super competitive for over a decade. His answer is to offer a lot within the practice, make it really desirable to work there, and then market it appropriately.
One of the biggest changes Greendale made was switching from a half-hour model to a 40-minute one-on-one model, both for better patient outcomes and for recruiting. Jon says it has been huge for recruitment. He does take a little bit of a haircut financially, but says the practice makes up for it. When Greendale surveyed the therapists it hired over roughly the past 18 months, the specialties and the 40-minute treatments were among the primary reasons they said they joined.
Neil adds that it is increasingly a buyer’s market for PTs, and that expecting two or three patients an hour from a therapist is getting harder to sustain. A business may lose a little income per therapist, he says, but retaining therapists saves a lot in the long run because you are not constantly recruiting to replace people who are unhappy or leaving for a practice that offers more.
“You want to take care of your therapist so they stick around long term.” — Jon Dooley
Jon describes his approach as hitting singles and doubles. Not every therapist has to be a home run, he says. Just be consistent, generate some income from each one, and don’t abuse them. He thinks therapists are smart when they interview and won’t choose practices that crank out 20 patients a day. The ones who chase the highest pay, in his experience, tend to last about a year and then come back to his clinic. Neil agrees that home health and hospitals can pay more but with much less longevity, and says he looks for therapists who are more purpose driven than money driven, people who want to be part of a growing team. Jon says that is what every owner hopes, and that Greendale’s culture and continuing education are part of the draw.
Neil also raises the idea of cash service lines on top of insurance as a way to raise revenue per visit and stay competitive on pay. Jon says Greendale is primarily insurance based, but it does have some cash services, such as dry needling, and some neuro balance center patients may pay out of pocket where insurance does not cover care. He sees niches like women’s health as additional income opportunities and says that is something Greendale will definitely look into in the future.
Show Up in the Community: Sponsorships and a Lecture Series
Jon says Greendale is involved with anything and everything in the community that it can be. That includes a baseball team, 5K road races, and turkey trots, but the coolest item, he says, is that Greendale is the primary sponsor of the Worcester Triple Crown, a series of three 5K races in Worcester: the Jingle 5K, the Celtic 5K, and the Cinco 5K. Jon notes that Worcester is the second largest city in New England.
The sponsorship goes beyond a name on a banner. Greendale gets free entries, so many team members run, and its wellness coordinator organizes a walk for the staff who would rather walk. Jon says it doubles as social, team-building time, especially for people from different clinics who might not otherwise know each other. Race announcers also say “Greendale Physical Therapy” and Jon’s name, in front of thousands of runners.
“Do we generate a ton of patients from it? Probably not. But it’s fun and it’s good for the team.” — Jon Dooley
Neil agrees it is hard to put an ROI on events like this, but you don’t know who saw your name and later chose you because they remembered it. He adds an SEO tip: sponsors often list their sponsors on their websites and may link back to yours, and links from nonprofits, soccer programs, your chamber of commerce, and local sports teams can help your Google rankings on top of the goodwill.
Greendale also runs a lecture series for the local health community. Jon says there is no real ulterior motive. The goal is good content for Greendale’s community, the medical community, and its own therapists. One example is a doctor just starting a direct primary care practice who gave a talk on non-surgical options for osteoarthritis, and Greendale promoted him by email, Facebook, and fax. Other speakers have included a minimally invasive spine surgeon new to town, a doctor starting prolotherapy services, a new occupational therapy program, a local sneaker store, a Parkinson’s doctor, a podiatrist, and a Greendale therapist speaking on concussions. Jon says he remembers wishing someone would promote him when he started 20-plus years ago, and he is glad to do that for young doctors now.
The lectures are in person, well promoted, and usually draw a good crowd. Greendale also videotapes them and posts them on the lecture series section of its website. Neil’s take is that physicians are businesses too, trying to get in front of audiences and show their expertise, and that offering a speaker slot builds a reciprocal relationship because you are giving back instead of only asking for referrals.
Turn Patient Wins Into Marketing
When Neil asks about Greendale’s system for collecting and sharing patient wins, Jon jokes that he is giving away his secrets. The number one secret to getting hundreds of reviews, he says, is coaching therapists and even the front desk to treat a patient’s comment as a cue. When a patient says they are doing better or that physical therapy has really helped, that is the moment to ask for a Google review. The team is coached to ask for five stars, because four stars brings the rating down, and to ask the patient to include the therapist’s name.
“That is your cue to say to them, ‘Would you mind helping me out and doing a Google review for us?’” — Jon Dooley
The second strategy is friendly competition. Greendale runs contests between its clinics, including Facebook contests and a month-long Google review contest. Smaller clinics need fewer reviews and bigger clinics need more, so the contest stays fair. Winners get something like a $50 Staples gift card, and Jon says the smallest clinic, Fitchburg, is hell-bent on beating the bigger ones and wins the Facebook and Google review contests.
Neil adds three points. First, the most powerful reviews come from within the clinic, so don’t rely only on automated requests. Second, ask when the patient has had a transformation, which could be around visit three after a pain breakthrough, rather than at discharge. Third, asking for the review for the therapist by name makes it personal, since patients know and like their therapist and want to see them do well. He also says gamifying it works because most PTs are competitive.
Know Where Your Patients Come From, and Make the Website the Hub
Asked about Greendale’s number one source of new patients, Jon says that after 20-plus years, about 40% of new patients are previous patients or are referred by previous patients. It is a strong referral base that does not depend on a single doctor who might retire or move away. Greendale also taps direct-to-consumer marketing, which Jon expects to become more and more important. He says he does not want to rely only on physicians, though Greendale still markets to and engages with them.
Neil agrees and shares his own rule of thumb: about 50% of your business should come from past patients and their referrals, with the rest from direct-to-consumer marketing such as Google, online, and social media, so that maybe 15% of the practice comes from physician referrals. Doctors get bought out, retire, or bring PT in house, he says, and it only takes one or two key referral sources stopping to hurt a practice that has no other systems in place.
On marketing, Jon says Greendale has worked with a number of agencies and tried Facebook ads, SEO, and postcards with varying success. The biggest bang for the buck has always been putting money into the website, where he estimates roughly 20% of new patients come in, though he says he would have to run the exact numbers. Greendale recently invested in a patient-facing platform that is integrated with its EMR and gives the website more scalability to get new patients onto the schedule. He calls it still-developing technology with a few bugs, but much cleaner and more organized than the old email-notification process.
“Anything we can do to invest in the website is key.” — Jon Dooley
Neil says that even with AI and new platforms, most patients, who tend to be ages 25 to 70-some, still use websites, email, text, and social media, and the website remains the hub of the decision to choose you. Whether people arrive from email, social, or Google, they will still check your reviews and what you offer there. Jon says he now wants to drive any radio or print advertising to the website as well.
Asked for final advice, Jon goes back to where the episode began. Taking care of people like Olympic athletes, he says, means taking care of your team with a lot of respect and a lot of competence. Don’t worry so much about taking care of patients, he says. Worry about taking care of your team, because they are the ones who take care of the patients, and they will market the hell out of you. Neil’s summary is to come back to the core and the fundamentals, and everything else will align to those principles.
About Greendale Physical Therapy
Greendale Physical Therapy is a physical therapy practice with seven locations in central Massachusetts, including Worcester, Shrewsbury, Clinton, Marlborough, Fitchburg, and Auburn. It was founded by Jon Dooley and offers specialized services including a neurological balance and vestibular center and aquatic therapy, alongside orthopedic and sports physical therapy.
FAQs
What is Greendale Physical Therapy’s tagline, and where did it come from? The tagline is “You don’t have to be an Olympic athlete to be treated like one.” Jon says it ties to the first of his 10 guiding principles, written about 15 years ago: “we take care of people as if they’re Olympic athletes.” It applies to patients and to how he treats his team.
How did Greendale add a neurological balance and vestibular center? Greendale outgrew a roughly 3,000-square-foot orthopedic clinic, moved its orthopedic and sports work to its main facility, and turned the old space into a neuro balance and vestibular clinic. Jon says it is the only practice of its kind in central Massachusetts, and that it also helped with recruiting.
Why did Greendale switch to a 40-minute one-on-one model? Jon says it improves outcomes and has been huge for recruitment, even though he takes a little bit of a financial haircut. In Greendale’s survey of therapists hired over about 18 months, the specialties and the 40-minute treatments were among the primary reasons they joined.
How does Greendale get hundreds of Google reviews? Jon says the team is coached to ask the moment a patient says they are doing better, to ask for five stars, and to ask the patient to mention the therapist’s name. Greendale also runs month-long Google review contests between its clinics.
Where do most of Greendale’s new patients come from? About 40% are previous patients or referrals from previous patients, according to Jon. He says roughly 20% come through the website, though he would need to run the exact numbers.
How does community involvement help a local PT practice? Jon says Greendale’s sponsorships and lecture series are good for the team and for its name in the community, but he does not claim they bring in a ton of patients. Neil adds that sponsor links from local organizations can help your Google rankings.
Related Episodes & Resources
- How JAG PT Became a Market Leader – With CMO Kayla George: brand and community growth, the closest match to this episode.
- Build a 7-Figure Practice w/ Darryl Yardley: another practice-growth story.
- 2024 State of Rehab w/ Heidi Jannenga, WebPT: the therapist retention context behind Jon’s 40-minute model.
- How I Market Our 7-Location PT Practice w/ Anna Starikov, Marketing Director: another seven-location practice, told from the marketing side.
- Search Engine Optimization for Physical Therapy: how Practice Promotions helps clinics rank locally and earn the kind of links Neil describes.
View Full Episode Transcript (click to expand)
[0:18] Neil: Hello and welcome to the Practice Marketing Podcast, highlighting successful strategies from North America’s fastest growing clinics and experts so you can learn from their wins and power your practice growth. Hi, I’m your host Neil Trickett, CEO of Practice Promotions. And today we’re going to be talking with Jon Dooley from Greendale Physical Therapy and how he turned local roots into lasting growth. He’s the founder of Greendale Physical Therapy, a seven-location clinic in Massachusetts that lives by the tagline, “You don’t have to be an Olympic athlete to be treated like one.” And we’ll dive into how Greendale has expanded through specialized services like neurological balance and vestibular centers, aquatic therapy, and built deep community roots and turned patient wins into powerful marketing. So from growing revenue to leading local events and tracking new patient metrics, Greendale PT is a great model for sustainable growth in the PT world. So Jon, welcome to the podcast.
[1:11] Jon: Yeah. Well, thank you for having me, Neil. I really appreciate it.
[1:15] Neil: Awesome. So I love your tagline, “You don’t have to be an Olympic athlete to be treated like one.” So I’m curious, how has that played into your mission and your vision for Greendale PT?
[1:24] Jon: Yeah. We’ve had this tagline for a long, long time, and it was probably about 15 years ago or so that I put together what I called our 10 guiding principles, which was 10 things that I thought were important for my team to understand: how I thought about things with the practice and how I felt about taking care of our patients. And the very first guiding principle is, we take care of people as if they’re Olympic athletes. And that’s not only from a patient care standpoint, which is obvious. You want to take care of them with a lot of competence, a lot of respect. But it also extends over into how I treat my employees and my team and how my management takes care of their team as well. We treat them with a lot of respect, a lot of competence as well. And that philosophy trickles down into how we take care of our patients.
[2:28] Neil: I love that. Sometimes it’s one of those things where, as a business owner, you’re like, “Do I really have to spend time on writing out these core values and these missions and all this kind of stuff?” You’re so focused on the day-to-day, but you don’t realize how big of an impact that really has on the future of your business and how everything aligns to it.
[2:48] Jon: Yeah. You’re absolutely right. I did this 15-some years ago and it still resonates today, and we still stick to them. I bring them up whenever we interview a new therapist. We go through the 10 guiding principles so they know what we’re about and how we view things. And we also refer to them whenever we do emails about teamwork or consistency or these types of things. So it sort of permeates how we do things, and we’ve got some cool philosophies in terms of how we do things.
[3:23] Neil: I love that. So for our audience out there, if you haven’t really spent a lot of time on your guiding principles, your core values, your mission, your purpose, it’s a great time this time of year to really get into that, right? And map how you want it to be for your practice, what you could see. It makes it so much easier just to operate the business off of that once you’ve got them in place.
[3:46] Jon: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.
[3:49] Neil: So, Jon, we’ve talked over the years, and I noticed that you’ve obviously grown your business substantially, but you’ve also added a lot more programs and features. Can you tell us a little bit about the things that you’ve brought into the practice over time? You’ve got, obviously, a neuro balance vestibular center, an aquatic center, dry needling, all these game ready services. So what’s that evolution been like for you at Greendale?
[4:14] Jon: Yeah. So take, for example, the aquatic therapy. We’ve done that for almost, or maybe more than, 20 years. And that’s just a nice added service for patients that can really benefit from it. There are a lot of patients who may not benefit from land therapy but do well in the pool, whether they’re back patients, athletes, amputees, that type of thing. So the aquatics works really well for that. And then we also have, like you mentioned, our neurological balance and vestibular center. So this was something we were rolling the dice on and thought we’d just try and see if it would work in central Massachusetts. It’s the only practice of its kind in central Massachusetts that treats neurological balance and vestibular primarily, and that has been about a year in, and it has taken off significantly. And it’s been nice because when a doctor needs to refer a patient to physical therapy, we have a very comprehensive set of services. So we can take care of that high-level athlete, and we can take care of that person with Parkinson’s, or that amputee, or that person with vestibular. So it’s really made us sort of like the go-to place, because we take care of a large breadth of conditions.
[5:40] Neil: That’s really fascinating. So did you put the programs into a current facility, or did you actually say, “Hey, this is one location. We’re just going to have this complete neurological vestibular center.” What was your thought pattern there?
[5:58] Jon: Yeah. So what we did is we had an orthopedic clinic. It was about 3,000 square feet, and we outgrew that space. We needed more space. So we moved the orthopedic sports component across the street to this master facility, where sort of our bread and butter orthopedic sports goes. And then we sort of said, what are we going to do with this 3,000? We’ve got a decent rent here and we just don’t want to abandon the space. So we had a lot of therapists that were interested in neurological balance and vestibular, and I just sort of said, “Hey, let’s try and create a clinic focused around this.” And it’s been great because it’s been able to take care of that patient that has been really underserved. Another component too is there’s a lot of therapists out there that want to do neuro that don’t have that opportunity, and it helped us from a recruitment standpoint as well. It’s been able to get a lot of therapists who are interested in that.
[6:55] Neil: That’s fascinating. So you said, “Okay, I see there’s a need in the community here, and let’s take a risk, and we’ve got the space that we can use. Let’s build out a program within this space.” And I think that’s really smart.
[7:11] Jon: Yeah. I don’t know if it’s smart or not, but it’s worked.
[7:14] Neil: If it’s working, you’re smart. [laughter]
[7:17] Jon: And this, a little bit of a sign, but it’s a higher Medicare population, so the per-patient revenue is down a little bit, but it still works. And it’s cool because I walk in there and we’ve got a SoloStep, so we have a harness system. We’ve got all the vestibular stuff, we’ve got the goggles, we’ve got all the toys and stuff like that that the therapists love using. And it’s just really serving an underserved population, and it’s a fun thing.
[7:45] Neil: Yeah, I think there’s a huge opportunity for that, because you don’t see many neurological centers. There are practices where they’ll have it as a component of what they do, right? There might be a program and there might be one neurological therapist. Unless you go to the hospital outpatient, they tend to have more of that, but as far as outpatient otherwise, there really isn’t much of that. What I think it shows is that there are a lot of untapped markets that PT can be in, and I think neurological is definitely one. We’ve got a lot of aging population, the boomer generation, right? There’s going to be much more need for those types of services. There are things like medically oriented gyms that you could operate, where there’s a huge need for cardiovascular and diabetic and, again, neurological type conditions that want to keep active. So there’s lots of… I think the key thing is just looking within your community. Where are there opportunities? Where are there holes in the market that you could fill, and obviously planning out what that would look like? And I think what you did too, which was smart, is that you saw the need there in the market. And to me, if you’re going to do something like that, go all in and make it its own center versus one little piece of a practice, because it stands out, right? You can market it.
[9:13] Jon: Yeah. We did, like I said, roll the dice to see if it would work, and it’s worked out very well. And like you mentioned, a lot of hospitals have this type of service. The closest service that’s similar to us is about 30 miles away, and it’s Spaulding Rehabilitation, which is a big-name rehabilitation hospital in Massachusetts. So we have a really unique thing, and I think by being unique we’ve been able to get a lot of patients that come to us for that.
[9:42] Neil: Yeah, I love that, because there are a lot of different PT services out there, and sometimes in the public eye, and even with physicians, right? Physician groups, it can all look the same. So you’ve got to be able to differentiate yourself in the market to stay competitive. And if you have programs like that that are pretty unique, you can stand out in the market for sure.
[9:59] Jon: Yeah. Absolutely.
[10:02] Neil: Right. And so we’re coming up on 2026 here, and there’s a lot that we know there are challenges and adversities in the industry. I’m curious, what are your priorities going into this next year for Greendale PT? Is it going to be adding more services, expanding the services that you have, growing new patients, profitability? Kind of curious what’s on your radar.
[10:26] Jon: Yeah, that’s a great question. And it changes, like any goal changes from year to year. Our goal going into 2026 is, we’ve been very fortunate that with a lot of the things that we’ve implemented, we have a lot of patients that want to come see us. So it wasn’t the case when I first started, but we do have that situation now. So we’re looking for more therapists to join us. Recruitment is a big thing for us. And the other thing is getting some more space for our therapists, so they can practice to the best of their abilities and have a good location and space to do it. So for me, next year is recruitment of therapists and adding some good space for my therapists.
[11:16] Neil: Usually the challenge, right? Get more people, get more space. Make sure we’re getting paid well. Those are the core challenges of business. But it’s interesting to hear what you’re focused on there. And I like what you said too, when you have these different service lines for your business, you can attract a wider range of therapists to you, right? Because you have different offerings for different interests that those therapists might have. So I like what you’ve focused on there.
[11:44] Jon: Yeah. And I spoke at the APTA Private Practice Section this last month on recruiting and hiring. Right now we have about a 12,000 PT shortfall in the market, and that’s not going to change for at least 12 to 15 years out. We need to produce more PTs, is the bottom line, for the demand that we have. So it’s just one of those things in the market where it’s just going to be super competitive for over a decade, and you have to be able to offer lots of things within your practice, make it really desirable to come work for you, and then market it appropriately.
[12:20] Neil: Right. So that’s what’s going to allow you to attract the best talent to come work for you in this very competitive recruiting environment. Yeah, you’re absolutely right. Again, have you found, with your sports performance programs or neurological programs, that this is helping you to differentiate with recruiting?
[12:44] Jon: Yeah. So in terms of recruitment, that’s one of the biggest focuses we’ve had over the past few years. And we made a huge change in terms of how we did things in our practice, one for our patients and for better outcomes, and two for recruitment purposes. And that was switching from the half-hour model to the 40-minute one-on-one model. And that has been huge for our recruitment. I will say from a financial standpoint, I do take a little bit of a haircut, but it’s okay because we make up for it. And when we did a survey of all the therapists that we hired over the past 18 months or so, one of the primary things that they said they joined us for was the specialties, the 40-minute treatments, and then of course that was up there as well, as it maybe should be. But those were some of the things that they joined us because of.
[13:49] Neil: Yeah, it’s great to hear. That’s interesting too, obviously, in the model, and that’s part of business, right? Adapting to the market. Right now the market is a buyer’s market for PTs out there. And so as owners, I think it’s very hard these days to operate a business where you’re expecting them to see two, three patients an hour, like that 30-minute model or double booking. It’s becoming more and more challenging to keep the therapists. And I think what you’re looking at there too is, yes, as a business we might lose a little bit of income because we can’t see as many patients in a day per therapist. But if you retain those therapists, it actually saves you a lot of money in the long run, because you’re not having to constantly replace and hire and recruit for therapists to replace people that you’re losing because they’re unhappy or going someplace that does offer it.
[14:43] Jon: You’re absolutely right, Neil. You hit the nail on the head: you want to take care of your therapist so they stick around long term. I always look at it as hitting singles and doubles. You don’t have to have home runs for every single one of your therapists. Just be consistent, generate some income from each one, but don’t abuse them. I think therapists are smart. They’re not going to those practices that are cranking them out at 20 patients a day. They’re smart when they’re interviewing clinics, and they’re not going there. And the thing that I do see is, the people that do go there, when they get paid huge bucks, they’re going to last a year and then they probably come back to my clinic. So…
[15:30] Neil: Yeah, they’ll burn out because of the high demand on them. Exactly. That’s one thing. Home health and hospitals obviously could pay a lot higher wages, but the longevity in those roles is a lot less, right? And what we’re looking for with a therapist is someone who is more purpose driven than money driven. Compensation is an important part of the conversation, don’t get me wrong, but we want people who want to be part of a team, who want to be part of a growing practice, not just hunting the money, right?
[16:04] Jon: Yeah. I mean, that’s what every practice owner hopes the people coming in are looking at. We’ve got a great culture, some great continuing education and stuff like that, and I always hope that they value that type of stuff. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t, but you always hope they do.
[16:28–17:06: Mid-episode promotion for Neil Trickett’s free Market2Grow book at practicepromotions.net/book. Not part of the interview.]
[17:06] Neil: And in this competitive environment too, if you can offer a lot of different options, that’s attractive to a therapist coming in. Maybe they do have a passion towards vestibular, for example, and you can help move them in that direction. So if you have these different offerings, it makes you much more attractive to therapists coming in. And I think where we’re at now is, we know it’s going to be very competitive for therapists for many, many years to come. And so we have to, as a business, work with what we can offer the public that they’re willing to pay for, in both traditional insurance but also going beyond that, in additional cash service lines on top of what we traditionally would do in insurance, because we need to get that dollar per patient visit up to a much higher level. And that’s through upsells and different things that we may offer within our practices. But that allows us to be competitive in our pay for therapists and attract better talent, and also be profitable at the same time. So I think that’s a big thing I’m seeing here in the industry: the growth of hybrid clinics that are bringing in people willing to pay for additional services beyond just insurance. And I’m curious on your end, since you have added things on, are you starting to have a little bit more additional cash service lines in your practice?
[18:36] Jon: It’s one of the things that I think we can explore. Primarily we’re insurance based, and that’s where the majority of our patients are, but we do have some cash stuff, like dry needling, those services where there’s an additional amount tagged on. And then with the neuro balance center, where insurance may not cover, or whatever, there are some people that are more apt to pay out of pocket for those types of services. And then there’s a lot of stuff, like, for example, women’s health. Now, I know some people are starting practices and they’re charging big bucks for a visit because they can, because there’s such a demand for it. So there are a lot of niches that you can generate some additional income from, but that’s something we definitely have to look into in the future.
[19:31] Neil: Yeah. Excellent. And so you’ve done a lot of work here to build your practice, build your reputation in the community by doing events and sponsoring different runs and events. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got involved, and the kinds of things you do now within the community?
[19:47] Jon: Oh, yeah. You get me excited, Neil. This is stuff I like to talk about. We are involved with anything and everything in the community as much as possible. We do the baseball team, the 5K road races, the turkey trots. We do everything. But the coolest thing we do, I think, is we are the Worcester Triple Crown sponsor, which is a series of 5K road races in Worcester. Worcester is the second largest city in New England, and we are the primary sponsor of these three road races: the Jingle 5K, the Celtic 5K, and the Cinco 5K. And not only is it cool because it’s Worcester based, and we like to be the biggest and best in Worcester, and I think we are, it’s Worcester-centric stuff. But it’s also nice because we can have our team participate in it. We have a lot of people that’ll run the 5K. We get free entries, by the way. People run the races, and then we also have a wellness coordinator who coordinates a walk for it. So we have people that run it, walk it, and we have a huge group that does these things. So it’s cool. We sponsor it, we make it an outing. And it’s nice because you get the clinics that know each other, and people from different clinics who get to know each other, and it’s just a nice social, team-building type situation as well.
[21:11] Neil: I love that. So you take it beyond just, “Hey, let me pay for sponsoring, put my name on a 5K banner,” right? You go way further than that, making it something that can build your team, something that can build your presence in the community. That’s really fascinating.
[21:30] Jon: Yeah. And it’s fun, it really is. And then they announce “Greendale Physical Therapy,” and they also make sure they say my name as well: “Jon Dooley, thank you for doing physical therapy.” They give us shout-outs and stuff like that. And they’ve got thousands of runners for these races. So it’s a nice little community marketing type thing. Do we generate a ton of patients from it? Probably not. But it’s fun and it’s good for the team.
[21:57] Neil: Yeah. And sometimes it’s hard to monetize those or figure out what my ROI was on these things. It’s hard to put a number on that, but you don’t know who saw your name from that and then saw their doctor and then chose to come to you, right? Because they remembered your name. It’s a branding thing for sure.
[22:14] Jon: Yeah, it’s definitely a branding thing, goodwill and community.
[22:19] Neil: I would say too, what’s really interesting I’ve seen is that if you are involved in the community and you are building sponsorships, typically those sponsors will put you on their website, right? And they might link your website back to yours. And that can actually help with your SEO. It can help you with ranking in Google if Google sees you on these other sites, especially nonprofits and things like that, or soccer programs, or whatever you might be sponsoring there in a community. So it’s always a good thing to make sure you’re on your chamber of commerce, that you can be on local sports teams, whatever you can sponsor that actually gives you a backlink to your website. It can help you on your rankings in Google as well as the goodwill, obviously, of being out there in the community.
[23:04] Jon: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. That’s definitely a benefit as well, for sure.
[23:08] Neil: And so you’ve also done something around a lecture series for local health professionals. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
[23:15] Jon: Yeah, absolutely. So we’ve done a lecture series. There’s no real ulterior motive to the lecture series. It was just something that we wanted to do to provide some good content for our Greendale community, the medical community, and our therapists and our team as well. And it’s really grown. We’ve done a bunch of these lectures, and it’s neat because, take for example, one of the doctors that did a lecture. He was just starting a direct primary care practice in Worcester, and he’s sports med and also primary care, and he’s just getting going. He did a beautiful talk on non-surgical options for osteoarthritis, and it was nice because we were able to market the heck out of him through our email, our Facebook. We did faxes. It’s no skin off my back to do these things, and it’s nice to get Greendale’s name out there. But we’re promoting the heck out of this guy who’s starting a new practice, and who knows what the return is for him, but he gets his name out there, and then when he gets busy, who’s he going to refer his patients to? But that’s not really the motive. The motive is just to get them promoted. And I know for myself, when I started 20-plus years ago, I wish I had somebody out there helping to promote me. And here I’ve got these young doctors who are looking to start their practices, and I’m able to help promote them. The other one was a minimally invasive spine surgeon who’s new to town, and we promoted him as well. We did another doctor who refers to us quite a bit but is starting up prolotherapy services, so we were able to do a lecture on prolotherapy and promote him for that as well. So one, it gets great content to my Greendale community and to my therapists, and two, I guess it helps promote people who are working with us.
[25:14] Neil: That’s awesome. So primarily with the lecture series, you invite physicians, or newer physicians in the community, to give a lecture or a webinar or something like that to your audience?
[25:28] Jon: Yeah. So it’s everybody. We’ve had newer medical doctors and the medical doctors who’ve been around for a while. We have a new occupational therapy program, which was new to us this year, and he did a nice talk. We had a local sneaker store give a talk on sneakers and the right sneakers. We had a doctor who treats Parkinson’s. We had a podiatrist. And we also had a therapist do something on concussions.
[26:08] Neil: Excellent. So just PTs, OTs, MDs, whoever wants to do it.
[26:12] Jon: We’ll take anybody.
[26:13] Neil: Love it. And so are these in-person lectures or are these online lectures? What do you typically do?
[26:20] Jon: Yeah, so we do them in person, and like I said, we market the heck out of it and we usually get a good crowd for these lectures. We get a good number of people. And then we videotape it and we throw it up on our website. So if you go to our website and go to lecture series, there’s a series of lectures, sort of like your podcast, I’m sure. You probably got to listen to all your podcasts. I don’t quite have 152 yet, but I’m working my way there.
[26:47] Neil: Okay. Love it. Love it. It’s such an important thing. We’ve got to realize that people in our community, also physicians, are businesses too, right? They’re trying to get in front of audiences and trying to show their expertise. And if we’ve been in business a while like you have, you have this tremendous asset, which is your patient list, right? These people that have followed you for a long time, and ideally you’re marketing to them consistently, but what can you give them of value? And often having an expert speaker on a particular topic is something that they would like to hear. And hey, if you can build a relationship out of that too, whether it’s with a local running store or a different physician out there, you’re not just asking for referrals all the time. You’re actually giving back, and that stimulates that reciprocal relationship with doctors. So I love that.
[27:40] Jon: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. For me, like I said, it’s not an ulterior motive to get patients, but just a mindset of what I wanted when I first started my practice. I would have loved to have that opportunity, and just giving these new docs that opportunity is great.
[27:53] Neil: Yeah, love that. Great networking mindset, right? And helping people. Now, one thing I know you do really well from your marketing perspective is collecting and communicating patient wins, right? On your outcomes pages, success videos, testimonials. So can you tell our audience a little bit about your methodology behind that, and things that you’ve been successful at with it?
[28:16] Jon: Yeah. So, Neil, you want to know my secrets? Is that right?
[28:20] Neil: Tell the secrets. Yes.
[28:22] Jon: Okay. [laughter] So here’s the secret. The number one secret to getting hundreds of reviews like we do is we coach our therapists, and even the front desk: when a patient says to them, “Hey, I’m doing better,” or “Hey, physical therapy has really helped me,” that is your cue to say to them, “Would you mind helping me out and doing a Google review for us?” And then also say to them, “Make sure it’s a five-star review, because four stars brings us lower.” And then also, “Can you put my name in there, so my boss sees my name in there so I can maybe get a raise or something?” So that’s the number one way that we’ve done it. The other strategy we’ve used is we’ve done contests between clinics. We have fun Facebook contests and different types of contests between the clinics. And we do a month-long Google review contest, and the smaller clinics will need fewer reviews, the bigger clinics need more reviews, so there’s some parity there. So it’s equal. And we just pit each clinic against each other, and they get, whatever, a $50 Staples gift card or whatever, when they win. But they work their butts off to get it. And believe it or not, our smallest clinic, our Fitchburg clinic, is just hell-bent on beating all the bigger clinics, and they win all the Facebook contests and all the Google review contests. So those are the two strategies: the cue to ask for the review, and the contests.
[30:08] Neil: Yeah. A couple of great things to unpack there. One is that you have to coach your team, right? The most powerful reviews you’ll ever get are from within the clinic. And if you’re just relying on automated systems to ask for reviews, you’re missing out on some great opportunities. And just like you said, Jon, we don’t want to ask for that review at discharge or at the end, right? We want to ask for it when the patient has a transformation, when they’re feeling really good. And that might be at visit three. They might have had a big win, right? A major pain breakthrough or whatever they had. That’s the time we want to ask for it. And then you hit the nail on the head there: you’ve got to get your therapists involved in this as a process, right? And at your level, with seven locations, you’ve got an army of therapists. So how do we make sure that everybody’s asking for this and helping understand the purpose behind it? I love what you said there about how you coach them: “Hey, put my name in there.” Because typically with our patients, we get this really good personal relationship one-on-one with a therapist, and they like their therapist. They know the name of their therapist and everything. They want to see them do well. So I think it makes it, instead of “Hey, would you give a review about our practice?”, more like “Would you give a review about me?”
[31:23] Jon: That’s a great point. Yeah.
[31:25] Neil: I love that. Makes it a little bit more personal.
[31:28] Jon: For sure. Yeah. Yeah.
[31:29] Neil: And I think too, what you said is you have to gamify it, right? Therapists are busy. It’s not always on their mind, but if you make it a competition, if you have some fun with it, it stimulates that competitive advantage, which most PTs have, let’s face it. So I think you do the right thing there with gamifying it.
[31:47] Jon: Yeah, for sure.
[31:48] Neil: And so for you, you’ve had great growth in your practice over these last, I think, 20 years you said, right? So what would you say has been your number one source of new patients into your practice? What has really helped you grow your business?
[32:06] Jon: Yeah, that’s a good question. I would say that, because we’ve been around for 20-plus years, the majority of our new patients are either previous patients or referred by previous patients. I’d say about 40% of what we get comes from that. And it’s great because it’s a strong referral base. You’re not dependent on that doctor who is going to retire, or the doctor who’s moving down south to Virginia, nice warm place. So yeah, it’s a very strong referral base, and that’s why we also tap direct-to-consumer stuff as well. And I think that’s going to be more and more important. We don’t want to be reliant on the physicians, and not to say that we don’t market to them and still engage with them and stuff like that, but I think in the future, direct to consumer is what’s going to be more important.
[33:04] Neil: Yeah, 100% spot on there. You and I both have been in the profession a long time, and it used to be that you only needed two or three solid referring doctors to get your practice pretty busy, right? But we know the landscape has evolved over time, and we’re at a point now where, to be successful in your practice, if you’re just relying on a few doctors consistently referring, you put yourself at a lot of jeopardy, because doctors get bought out. There’s a lot of acquisition happening in the healthcare field. They may be retiring, right? Or they may be bringing PT in house. So things could always change, and it may seem like, “Hey, we’re rocking and rolling today with all these great referrals from doctors,” but it only takes one or two key doctors stopping referring to challenge you in your practice if you don’t have the other systems in place. And I like what you said too. It’s something I’ve always promoted, which is I say that at least about 50% of your business should come from past patients coming back in and referrals from those patients, and the other part should also come from direct-to-consumer marketing, so how people are finding you through Google, online, social media, coming into you that way, so that by the end of the day maybe 15% of your practice is from physician referrals, which is still an important part. Like you said, make sure you’re networking with doctors. It gives you a lot, and you’re a testament to that. I can see from your growth that you’ve been able to have more organic growth from building your reputation, from those word-of-mouth referrals, from that direct-to-consumer marketing, and it gives you an opportunity to scale the business rather than being dependent on one or two referral sources.
[34:48] Jon: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. You’re absolutely right.
[34:51] Neil: Yeah. And so, I see that you do obviously different things online. I’m curious, do you have a marketing director in the clinic? Do you work with an outside marketing agency? What have you found to help you, from your website, your SEO, your Google Ads, social media, those kinds of things?
[35:08] Jon: Yeah. We’ve engaged with a number of different marketing agencies, and we’ve had varying types of success. We’ve done the Facebook ads, we’ve done the SEO, we’ve done postcards, that type of stuff. But with all that, I think the biggest bang for our buck has always been putting money into developing our website. That’s where most people come in from. This is really cool: I’d have to do the numbers on it exactly, but probably about 20% of our new patients come in through our website. We used to do a thing where you get an email notification and it goes to our new patient specialist and they call the patient and whatnot. But we’ve got this new system that we’ve invested in. I’m not sure if it’s considered a marketing system, but it’s a platform. I don’t know if I can shout out a company called Second Door that has created a dashboard that our patients go to, and it’s really cool because it’s integrated with our Prompt [EMR]. It’s still nascent technology, so they’re still developing a lot of stuff. There are a few bugs in there and whatnot, but they’re making it work, and it’ll be good in the future. But it gives a lot of scalability to the website to get new patients onto the schedule because of that platform. It’s much cleaner, much more organized. And like I said, anything we can do to invest in the website is key.
[36:42] Neil: Yeah. So that’s the methodology: people are ready to take action, and then they’re going to take that next step with online scheduling. How can we make it easier for them through the website? But I love what you said there, because we have so much technology happening today. We’ve got different AI happening, right? We’ve got all kinds of platforms coming up. But if you really look at how people are still behaving in our demographic, most of the people that we’re treating are going to be between age 25 and 70-some, right? The majority of people in there are still very used to websites, email marketing, text marketing, those kinds of things, right? Social media. So your website is still very much the hub of people’s decision-making to choose you or not. And we have all these different areas that we’re bringing them in from. Maybe they’re coming in from email marketing, maybe they’re coming from social, maybe they’re coming in from Google, but they’re still going to come and look at your reviews. They’re still going to look at what you have to offer, and that’s through your website. And then we want to take them to that next step, which is to start connecting with us, right?
[37:48] Jon: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. It’s the hub. It’s the foundation. And I know for myself, going forward, in my advertising, whether I do radio or print or whatever, I just want to drive people to that website, because that platform is just so much cleaner to drive people to. Yeah, you’re absolutely right.
[38:12] Neil: Yeah, I love that. So, Jon, thank you so much for being on the podcast and sharing your wins here. I’m curious, any final words of advice for practice owners out there to scale their businesses?
[38:25] Jon: Yeah. I don’t know that I have advice on how to scale your business. I think I go back to the guiding principles that we talked about initially: taking care of people like Olympic athletes is just taking care of your team, with a lot of respect, a lot of competence. And not so much worrying about taking care of the patients, but worry about taking care of your team, because they’re the ones that are going to take care of the patients. So put your energy into taking care of them, and they’ll market the hell out of you.
[38:54] Neil: I love that. Yeah. Come back to the core, right? Come back to those fundamentals. Have that in place. Spend the time on that. Everything else will align to making those core principles work for your practice. I love it.
[39:08] Jon: Yeah, well, absolutely. You hit the nail on the head, Neil.
[39:12] Neil: So did you, Jon. Thanks so much for being on the podcast with us and sharing your expertise. Congratulations on all your success there, Jon. And for our audience out there, thank you for following us here. I hope you got a lot out of today’s podcast. Don’t forget to like and follow us on the Practice Marketing Podcast, as well as our YouTube channel, which has all these videos as well as other marketing tips. So don’t forget to subscribe to us on YouTube and then also at practicepromotions.net. We’ve got tons of downloads and free marketing tips for you on there, so don’t forget to check that out. This is Neil Trickett from the Practice Marketing Podcast, wishing you much success in your practice.
[39:49–40:07: Outro asking listeners to leave a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Not part of the interview.]
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