E594 | Effectively Branding Your Practice With Jeremy Dupont

Dr. Danny introduces Jeremy Dupont, owner of Ripple Physical Therapy in Boston. Jeremy was classically trained as a massage therapist but owns a clinic that employs other healthcare professionals. He decided not to pursue physical therapy school and instead got his massage therapy degree and specialized in Active Release Technique, Functional Range Systems, and other manual therapy courses. He wanted to provide movement and manual therapy for people to help them feel better and get out of injuries.

He compared the cost of physical therapy school to the cost of massage therapy school and found that the latter was one-tenth the cost. He started his practice during the COVID-19 pandemic and has grown it over the past two years.

He has done a good job of developing a brand that is recognizable in the city, as well as automating the business so that he does not have to be directly involved with it. He has been intentional about building the Ripple brand and creating a logo, email signature, website, Instagram, and newsletter for it.

Jeremy worked with New Balance and a local running club to create a brand for his physical therapy clinic, Ripple. He pitched the idea of changing the traditional PT clinic experience and creating a story around the brand. Adam Daniel, a friend of Jeremy's, took on the branding process and created a logo, color scheme, and interior design that matches the mission and purpose of Ripple.

Technology was then used to help implement the customer experience when Jeremy is not around the clinic. The staff of Ripple have built the autonomy and systems to run the practice without needing Jeremy there, and they have been successful in creating a different experience from the traditional PT clinic. 

Jeremy talks about how they have always taken a different approach to running their business when it comes to marketing. Instead of searching for new patients, they focus on nurturing their existing patients by providing them with relevant ebooks and blog articles. However, as their list of patients grows, it becomes too big to manually manage and they lean into automation and CRMs to help with the process. They suggest that the best way to start is by setting up a free CRM and organizing the existing patients, leads, and subscribers into the system.

They suggest different types of messages to send to each population and recommend starting with a weekly newsletter. They emphasize the importance of conversational copy and using a tone that conveys their personality to attract the right people. Finally, they mention that they are the ones who usually coordinate all the marketing but now the staff is getting involved with the social media aspect.

Jeremy also discusses how he has delegated copywriting responsibilities to his staff members. He believes that a good brand comes from the founder's values and that a good brand should be able to be replicated even after the founder is no longer involved. He also explains how they can target their messaging to their customer avatars and how it doesn't matter who they are seeing, they will get the same messaging.

Jeremy's goal has been to change the narrative of how people seek out clinical care in Boston and he hopes to make Ripple a household name. He has a great team that is helping him to achieve this goal and he is grateful for them. Jeremy misses being involved in the culture of the practice but they have team activities and they all communicate via Slack and Zoom. He is open to talking shop with business owners and having conversations with other clinics about branding.

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: [00:00:00] Hey, real quick before we start the podcast episode, I want you guys to check out our new YouTube channel for PT Biz. We are putting out a weekly video on the most common questions that we get, and we are breaking those down in a way that's more engaging. Where you can learn better and really focus on one thing at a time.

So if you're interested in really learning more skills to upgrade your cash and hybrid practice, head over to YouTube. Subscribe to the PT Biz Channel and check out the weekly videos that we're coming out with to help you win in the cash-based practice game. So here's the question. How do physical therapists like us who don't wanna see 30 patients a day, who don't want to work home health and have real student loans create a career and life for ourselves that we've always dreamed about?

This is the question, and this podcast is the answer. My name's Danny Matte, and welcome to the PT Entrepreneur Podcast.[00:01:00]

What's going on guys? Dr. Danny here with the PT podcast and today we got Jeremy DuPont on from Boston, owner of Ripple Physical Therapy. Or you just call it Ripple. I like the non-specific terms. We named our practice athletes potential cuz we didn't know if we wanted to make it a gym or if we wanted to make it a physical therapy practice.

So we picked something that was vague enough that we could do whatever we wanted with it and what Jeremy's somebody who's been our mastermind now for a couple years. Somebody we've got a chance to get to know in, in a much deeper level and really respect a lot the things that he's been able to accomplish on the business side in a short period of time.

And it has a pretty cool story. So I was excited to get a chance to jump on and share that. And I even had to stop Jeremy cause he was going into all these interesting things that I wanna make sure I share with you guys about how he got where he is. Because the interesting thing with with Jeremy and what he's.

Is, and we work with a lot of different types of providers, but he's a, he's actually I guess classically trained as a massage therapist, but owns a clinic that employs other healthcare professionals within it, which we actually have quite a few people that are there. So we can talk a little bit about, The difference between practice act stuff with [00:02:00] massage therapy and chiropractic and physical therapy.

And for some of you that maybe you're on the fence of whether you even go to school, this might be a good one for you too because there are other options with this. Let me do this, man. Lemme tee it up here. Jeremy, first of all, thank you so much for your time today. I know you got a lot going on.

But tell me this. Give us your sort of like quick background as to, how you ended up becoming a physical therapist. Cause it is inter or no become, deciding not to become a physical therapist, is what I mean to say. And end up opening your .

Jeremy: Yeah, I think, we'll, first off, thanks for having me on. Danny. I'm pumped to be here. We could talk for hours on this stuff, I think. So it's good to put us into podcast format here and tighten it up a little bit. But yeah, I think my story's pretty interesting. Like along the lines of what you said there I'm a massage therapist, classically trained.

and I went to school. I grew up in New Hampshire and went to school in Maine for college. And I moved to Boston because I was going to PT school. And I think, long story short, I took a summer job in Boston, working in one of the big hospitals [00:03:00] there. and really started to understand like what the PT field looked like.

And I worked at an inpatient setting. And long story short, just was working in that setting and was just like, this is not what I thought physical therapy was gonna be like. I thought I was gonna be working with athletes or Like getting ready to go work for the M L B or something along those lines.

And here I was like, just like changing sheets and doing a bunch of documentation and it was, I, it just had a realization of this is not what I wanna do for the rest of my life. So I didn't end up going to PT school at all, and I got super lucky being in Boston. I took an internship at Harvard through their strength and conditioning program.

Which really was a really great learning opportunity. One, because I got to see like what they were doing on the strength conditioning side with their athlete. and two, it, I parlayed it into a job where I took the athletes that were coming from post-op and transitioning back into the strength conditioning world.

And a lot of those [00:04:00] athletes were always dealing with injuries too. So my role was like that liaison from post-op surgery or coming off an injury and getting them back into the strength conditioning world. They were almost doing like the physical therapy that I thought that I was getting into.

I thought this was gonna be my job as we were gonna cause I'm C S I had worked with athletes in, the college level too. And that side of the treatment is what I thought. I was gonna get into in a traditional PT clinic, which obviously I was very wrong about. And I saw what the insurance side of things looked like and but I realized, it opened my eyes to that, the insurance side of PT and care was just so bad.

But there was a way that people could learn how to move better and feel better and get out of injuries to a higher level. And I knew that's what I wanted to do. So I thought about it. I was like do I go back to PT school and go through that education process and, cause I think I really, I knew [00:05:00] how to.

Do the strength side of things really well, or the movement side of things, I guess you could say. I had taken a bunch of FRC courses, p r I courses and my, my movement knowledge I think was, just as good as a physical therapist, but I couldn't put my hands on people and I knew that was a really big missing component to it all.

So as a. Do I wanna spend $250,000 and go back to PT school for three years and potentially get put at one of those in-network clinics I didn't wanna look at, or was it, I can go get my massage therapy degree, put my hands on. People still do the exercise component, the things that I had learned.

And I think a lot of my like My motivation was like the movement as medicine guys like Kevin Carr, he works out of Boyle strength conditioning just north of Boston, but they were a massage therapist and I thought what they were doing was really cool, and I thought that they were like starting to change the game a little bit in terms of like a.

What people sought out to do [00:06:00] and they didn't go through the traditional PT clinic. Yeah, I said, screw it. I'm gonna go get my massage therapy degree. And I took active release technique, which really helped me hone in my manual therapy skills. So I became a full body provider there. The functional range systems, they have a manual therapy course too that I took all of the upper body, lower body spine courses through them and almost like I tell people, it's like I reverse engineered my education, so I didn't go the traditional route of.

D p t school. I feel like my education side of things it's not equal, right? I don't have my doctorate, I don't say I'm a physical therapist, but I think, my knowledge of treatment is a little bit more on the alternative side and where the cash based PT world is going.

Yeah. Yeah, and and make it a long story short that's how I got here.

Danny: I think what's interesting about it is in some ways. There's be, there's benefit to not having a D P T as far as the practice acts are concerned. In certain states, it can actually be a hindrance in [00:07:00] comparison to Massage therapy, unless you wanna do something like dry needling.

And I think even in some states, there's some options to order imaging, but those are things that, are, you don't really need to do in order to get outcomes. It might be part of what you want your treatment to be, but but for what you did what is, what's so interesting about it is if you look at the cost comparison of three years in school, $250,000, a lot of money like what's, what does massage therapy school.

Jeremy: That's a good question. It's a fraction of that for sure. I think I was able to like loop in some of my undergrad courses. Like I didn't have to take an A and p and I took some online courses and I basically just did, went through a 12 week program and I definitely didn't pay more than 20 grand for it for sure.

Danny: Okay. So let's say one 10th, right? Like it's Right, exactly. But what you didn't learn is the the actual. Strength conditioning movement, the training side, the therapeutic exercise side, of, of working with people. As well as, I think the big difference from what I've [00:08:00] seen with my friends are massage therapists.

And you remind me a lot of, a buddy of mine his name's Rob Wilson and he's in Virginia Beach and he's legitimately. Probably the smartest person I've ever met. And what's so interesting about him is he's what I consider an auto deck. Like he's self-taught so much. He's self-taught himself everything.

Like he reads the craziest shit like the World War II Physical Fitness manual. Like he'll just nerd out on what people were doing in the forties for training and stuff. And, but remembers like every word of it. So he actually. Ended up going to massage therapy school very early on. Mainly cuz it was the fastest way in which he could get into the industry that he wanted to get into.

And he was somebody that used to teach with me for the stretch when I was teaching for Mobility Wad. And he was just always dude, what the hell man? How do you know so much? But he was a very accomplished athlete and coach before he actually went to to go to, to massage therapy school.

So he had this deep understanding of movement and straining conditioning. That doesn't get taught in school, right? So you have to be okay with self-teaching that you're not [00:09:00] gonna get that from your instructors and have more time to get that dialed in, in mentorships. But if you have that side of it, I think it's a very viable option for people that wanna be able to do the manual side and the movement side.

And even the Braves, like I know the Braves, like two of their providers are massage therapists that are also strength coaches. So they can do in-house, hands-on stuff, get somebody. Moving better and they can utilize their skillset together, which I think is great. And there are a lot of performance-based manual therapists, like physical therapists do the same thing.

It's just, the degree is different, but the education afterward, P R I F R C A R T all, I went through all these same things, right? I just happened to do it after finishing school and you did it after finishing your school. We end up in the same place. So it's interesting how you get there, but I, the cost comparison, dude, I don't know, man.

That's a pretty good exchange not to deter anybody from going to PT school, but. If you got that side dialed in, that's the 10th of the cost.

Jeremy: It's crazy. Yeah, I think there's, and there's a, there's a scope difference with all of this too, right? There are certain things that I wouldn't feel comfortable with treating or certain things that, like certain people that would come to my plate and I, I would a hundred percent pass those people off cuz [00:10:00] they're not, it's not my scope of practice.

I don't have the traditional schooling for certain things. And I think that's why I started to lean on physical therapists and why I started hiring PTs is because, I can take my thought process and how I do things and the way that I know that, like the way I do things like patient care is above and beyond any sort of PT that I knew was doing anything, especially four years ago, five years ago.

And I think, knowing what the education is for traditional PTs and the range of what they can do from, super complex cases all the way to using their C S brain and really improving performance for people. I think if I look back on it now, like it should have gone to DPT school, like I just should have done it.

I should have just bit the bullet and figured out my entrepreneur brain afterwards. But, I think the way that. Started to think about patient care and what we can do with people, especially in an hour setting. I definitely have to contribute that to like, again, re [00:11:00] reverse engineering what my education is.

But yeah, I think PTs are like the ultimate movement providers, right? Like they, they're, they are the movement specialists and that's where I think, a physical therapist is the perfect person to be doing what I reverse engineered. And that's why I've hired.

Danny: Yeah, no, no doubt. Like I, there's just for sure you're not wasting your time while you're at school.

There's some things that are a waste of time, don't get me wrong. But I think overall, people ask me, they're like should I do this? Should I do that? Should I go to school? Unless somebody has this sort of like opportunity, he get so much good on the job training. And I've seen this with people that I've worked with too, that, like I worked with this athletic trainer out in Hawaii that was amazing.

And he was, but he was functioning as a strength coach. He was, and he turned, he basically became the strength coach for the entire division out there. And it was, but he also had. A lot of mentors at University of Hawaii high level division one strength coaches. He had a lot of guys that were in the special operations community there, there were strength coaches that he was working with.

So he got this all on the job training from these really smart people that were consolidating [00:12:00] information for him. So his traditional background as a trainer, he became one of the better strength coaches I've ever met. Mainly because he worked with people that were great and he listened and he was teachable, and he wanted to learn more.

I think that self-education is just as important, especially post-school, but and for you , the intent of this is not necessary to have a debate on whether you should go to massage therapy score, physical therapy score doesn't really matter how you get there, cuz we don't really care as long as you're helping people move better and you're teaching them how to take care of themselves long term.

We just need more people like that no matter where they're coming from. But the thing that. Always that interests me about what you've been able to do and that I think is just highlighting something that's pretty unique is you've done two things I think really well on the business side because you started your practice and you've grown it now past yourself in a fairly short period of time.

Cuz let me backtrack here cuz I almost, did you start in 2020 or was it 20?

Jeremy: I started, yeah, so I got furloughed during Covid and I went self-employed for that [00:13:00] summer and just tried to figure out what I was gonna do with all of this. And then self, self-employment went super well. I was very busy, which is great.

And then I opened up our clinic now that January. So it would be, we're, we just celebrated our two year in our clinic, so we're on our third.

Danny: That's right. Cause I remember talking to you and you were like working with people in the park, and you're like, you just sit, you bring a table and just beat somebody in the park cuz it was outside and what a wild time to be, a face-to-face job of some sort, like

It's just a crazy looking back on it. But I, yeah, I remember I was like, man, this guy's hustling. He is out in a park with a table. He is like working with people out in the grass. And and, but it hasn't been that long and let's call it a two year period roughly. You have built a very strong brand in the city, like very recognizable.

Done a really good job of actually continuing to build that brand presence and brand reputation. And the other thing is you've done a really good job of automating that business so that you don't have to be directly involved, which you don't even treat anybody [00:14:00] at this point. I want to really take some time to dive into two of those things.

Cause I think, people can learn a lot from what you've been able to do. So on the brand side, this is something. I actually didn't think was all that important, but we, I think, stumbled into developing a brand unintentionally and some of the things that we would call people and say, and it just fed into our brand.

But you're, you were very intentional about this. So tell me a little bit about your process to develop, ripple, the brand itself, and what does it mean and why, why is that so significant that you wanted to name your company? Yeah, I

Jeremy: think it was it's a whole story really. And it's a cool story.

When I started, when I got furlough and I was doing my own thing I was I need a logo or an email signature or just something that I can, like post on my Instagram or website or the email newsletters I was sending out. And so I was, following this kid on Instagram.

and I really liked what he was doing. He was like, doing some like really cool illustrations, Photoshop branding work for brands that I really liked. A [00:15:00] lot of it was like outdoor companies and he was working with New Balance and one of the local run clubs and so I just cold emailed him and was like, Hey man I see that you're doing all this really cool branding work.

You. I think that, I need something personally for my brand and I'm, I really, vibe with what you're doing and how your, your branding tells a story and it's not just a simple logo or whatever it is. And I pitched to him that I think I'm gonna start this PT clinic and I, I think I'm gonna do X, Y, and z.

I know you work with a lot bigger. Companies then just me, who's just got laid off and don't really know what I'm doing, was hoping you could help me, like whip up a logo or help me out with this. And we got to chatting and he ended up working with me. And long story now, like this kid's one of my best friends now.

I was just at his wedding and we've gotten very close and he took on the whole the whole branding process. And I started to get more and more involved as we continued building it. But I think it was really important and why he [00:16:00] started and helped me out with all of this is that I pitched to him that I wanna start a physical therapy clinic.

I don't want it to look like the traditional PT clinic cause I have this whole story and I didn't go to PT school and I'm a massage therapist and I'm really trying to change the game on how people seek out, like strength and conditioning movement and getting out of injuries. And I've been doing this on my own and at another clinic and it's been super successful.

And I think that Boston is gonna start this is gonna become the normal in Boston and I really wanna create a brand around this. And so he was all in and yeah, we , it was cool. He did everything from our color scheme all the way to naming the clinic. And he sensed like he, he did all the interior design for our clinic, and it's all based around like what our mission is for the clinic itself.

So like I, I never wanted this to be. Jeremy DuPont Physical Therapy. I don't [00:17:00] think there's anything wrong with that, but I knew my purpose and what I was trying to do with the clinic was bigger than that. And I really just, again, wanted to change how people sought out getting out of pain and getting in shape and optimizing what they're doing.

I think the brand was a really. Big part of that and it was a really cool process and I've since really got into branding side of things and how important that is because this is bigger conversation too, but I really believe that people stick around at our clinic for continuity.

And I know there's lots of talks about that, but because they feel part of this story and what Ripple is and that helps. With our sales process, it helps us with our marketing. There's a whole vibe and brand around what Ripple is, and it's not, you don't walk in and you're like, ah, I'm at physical therapy today.

It's cool, I'm going to ripple. This is the best hour of my week. I get I know what music's being played when I walk in there. I know [00:18:00] what it's gonna smell like. I know the experience that I'm gonna get. And it's just much different than like having to go to PT this week in your 30 minute session.

So that's, that was the motivation behind like creating a brand. And Adam, Daniel sends my buddy's name, like we knocked it out of the park, I think. .

Danny: I, it's an interesting logo, man. It's like a, it's almost like a little bit of throwback vibe to it. There. There's a brewery here in Atlanta that's, it's like my favorite place to go.

It's called Halfway Crooks. And they've done their branding is similar to like the font and, not the colors are different than yours, but what I really appreciate people that take the time to do this because you go in there and it's mainly all German beers.

So you know it but they also have this sort of analog, theme where there's like floppy disks that are, that they're using for your number and there's like all these like old TVs in there and everything just seems to fit, it'd be weird if you saw like a VHS.

And everything else is, new MacBook or something like that. And [00:19:00] these people have gone well past that and it's it's really cool, like the way they've set it up. So I think it takes a lot of attention and time to do but you're basically creating an experience for people is what is happening.

How do you deal about doing that and indoctrinating people into that? Aside from obviously like the logo, the visual side, the web presence, but is there like an ethos you guys have or are there like core values that. Talking about with these folks whenever they come in and it's just Hey, we're different and here's.

Jeremy: Yeah, I think it's, obviously experience and all of that. And it's funny you talk about like our our typography we've pulled that from like the old schools, like tops baseball cards, like that's the fun that's on the tops. Baseball cards, it looks like. . Yeah. So it's if you look at any of the like I was born in 91, so 98, 99 baseball cards were my jam back in the day.

And so that's like very nostalgic for me. And a lot of our demographic is in the same age group that's part of our whole brand. And you walk in, there's a little Roger Clemens, like in a Red Sox jersey, like action figure there. And there's just like very little [00:20:00] things like that.

People love it, and they just like really they really jive with it. And they understand like, again, like they're being invited into this story and this is very detail oriented and custom from them. And if we care that much about, making sure this place smells the same every time they walk in and you get that, that that, thought of oh, cool, I'm at Ripple now, then.

They know the, the clinical care side of things is gonna be above and beyond too. So I think that really plays well into what we're trying to do. And we're just trying to give like a different experience than they would get if they went to, the mill clinic across the street.

So just how do we differentiate ourselves?

Danny: I don't think it's too hard to be different than that. It's, this is kinda where I tell clinicians too, cause I, I, I. They get nervous about one, starting their own thing and what do you do? There's so many things that you have to do, so there, there is a lot when you start a business or you start a clinic or whatever, but I typically tell people, I'm like you really only have to be slightly better.

To feel [00:21:00] significantly better because the average healthcare experience sucks. No one looks forward to it. There's no it's not a fun thing to do. People are usually, they're, they show up at one and they're not seen until 30 minutes later, and it's just this redundant, boring thing.

Every drop ceilings and the lights all suck and they're doing the same things and you don't have to be that much different. You just have to. Try a little bit to make the experience better. And if you can think, man, what would I want my friends to be able to experience? Or even your family, right?

Maybe it's just man, how would I want my, like my dad to be treated if he went somewhere, right? Like it's just a start of a completely different experience. And that difference is what makes that, it makes the service business viral to other people that they want. They wanna spew on everybody, their opinion of where they should go because it gives them status.

And if you put yourself in that place because it's a different experience and you mess it up with results, then all of a sudden, people are gonna talk about you a lot. And we see a lot of speed and business develop that way. So [00:22:00] how would you say for you, when you guys started going like the, I guess the snowball effect of that, that you were able to have, how long was it before you hired that first clinician?

And was that weird for you, by the way? Was it weird for you to hire, somebody that's just traditionally massage therapists aren't hiring physical therapists other the way.

Jeremy: Yeah, I think shout out to my first hire. She definitely took a chance on it cuz I was like, Hey, I've got this space.

I know it looks cool. It was only half built out at the time really. But I I was almost selling her of I'm trying to change what. Quality of care looks like, and this is my vision and mission, and I think she was just so fed up at her traditional job. She was like, whatever.

I get 60 minutes with someone that sounds great. Like I'll take it . And yeah, so I think it was, and now she's since grown and she's a huge part of what we do. So it's, I was very lucky to have that hire. But any PPG that I talk to, I think it's. It's, it's a weird conversation for Troy because I am a massage therapist, but at the end of the day, it's like we're trying to [00:23:00] change what quality of care looks like for everyone.

It doesn't matter if you're a chiro or a strength coach or a massage therapist. I think that's really the mission behind all of this, and that's what our, that's what our brand. really represents, and that's like all of our copy behind that. It's, people see in Boston, like they associate Ripple with this, like above and beyond experience.

If you're really actually looking to get outta pain, this is the place you go to. And I think, like you said, the snowball effect there, it was really cool to see in one of my first like aha moments was a guy drove me personally, drove a lot of the business. At the beginning of it, it was like, Hey, you gotta go see.

go see Jeremy's doing this different thing. And then once I started ripple became what actually came out of people's mouths. It wasn't go see Jeremy. It was, you gotta go to Ripple. This place is cool. You get the best clinical experience that we've had. They'll get you in this week.

It's a 60 minute session, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. And once people started [00:24:00] associating Ripple with that, as opposed to me, that's when we just like really started to. I hired two PTs within a couple months of each other. They both very full schedules very quickly, and, it's now we have a repeatable process with that brand essence behind it.

It's just like a killer combination. Yeah.

Danny: Yeah. H how do you. Organize multiple different types of practitioners within the profession now or within your practice? Just say, so are they all overlapping, they're kinda doing the same thing and the, this sort of repeatable framework that you've developed for the practice?

Or do they work together in different areas where they have better depth of knowledge or subdisciplines or whatever it might be like? How's that function within the day-to.

Jeremy: Yeah, so we like all of so I've got three staff PTs on board now. And they all they have a lot of autonomy on how they treat.

We have a certain competency program that everyone that comes on board will go through and it's, it's root and that stuff. A and then if you want to go take P r I [00:25:00] or frc or you wanna expand your knowledge, then you can create this own like systematic, mindset of how you treat that's one of the big things that I think is Allowing a physical therapist to have some clinical critical thinking is very important and makes the job that much more enjoyable for them and they can do what they want.

So yeah, we stay in the realm like we are a PT clinic. I have a sports massage therapist on staff. And he does more like the traditional, if people just want like a massage, they'll come in and. But yeah, we lean into the movement, heavy physical therapy now, and it's this mix of, you start on stage one of this traditional pt, you come in and.

This is where we're gonna get you out of pain. This is the more traditional pt, and we invite them into this story of, in three months we're gonna get you to stage two, which is going to be more of this like very sports specific, physical therapy. Traditionally, this is where normal PT clinic would discharge you.

And this is where we are different because we're gonna [00:26:00] continue treating you and helping you and getting you stronger and your. when you first came in here was to just run your five mile loop. Now it's, let's go run a half marathon, or let's hike that mountain, or whatever it is. And I think that's, that's where we lean into, like changing what PTs do.

Danny: Yeah. That's cool man. I think that ongoing work is something that a lot of people are looking for now. They just don't know where to search for it. They want like a health. An advocate for like their health, someone they can work with to achieve goals. And I think for a lot of people that don't even realize, it's like at a certain age, they give up on physical goals, like achievements, right?

It's like I wanna get outta bed and not be in pain. I want to be able to whatever, pick my kids up and. Re I guess reinstating that like Athlete Mind or maybe they never really did that before, but just given in the ability to say what would you like to do? And I remember I asked a lot of patients that, and it's an interesting question to ask them, [00:27:00] if let's say you didn't have any physical invitations, like what would be something really cool that you would like to do physically?

And some of it was, just run. Yeah, run a half marathon, whatever. People come with all kinds of stuff. I had a guy and he was like, I wanna row across the Atlantic Ocean in single man. By myself. I was like, oh wow, okay. And he did it. And that's the cool thing is like then, all right, cool.

Like what's the training for this? What's this look like? And reverse engineering that with them. And I don't think a lot of people actually really, everybody asks them like, what are your goals? What would you like to do? What would be awesome for you to be able to see like your friends and your family to see you doing?

So I think that's cool. And I think it's great for the business. It's better for the business cuz you're developing more recurring revenue and people are coming back in and you're developing these really deep, long-term relationships. Don't really exist in healthcare. Most people, they see their dentist more than they're gonna go see a physical therapist or a general practitioner, right?

Is they just engineered that you don't wanna get a cavity, which is pretty smart. But for us, I think there's a huge market for that. One thing that I do want to touch base with you, and this is where I think you can really nerd out, like the experience and all that stuff, and you've been very intentional about the brand.

[00:28:00] But when I think about you, The other things that you've had success with in business or reasons why you've had a lot of success is the ability to like really think about your customer experience, which is something that, we just went over at our mastermind is it's stuff that's can be very intentional, but then be able to leverage technology to help implement that at a high level when you're not around.

Cuz I didn't even know that you didn't live near your practice until you told me before this. I was like, wait a second. You're an hour and a half away. And it's you can only do that if you have things running really, tightly. So when did you come to the conclusion that you needed to start to put your nerd brain on nerd hat on and really start getting after or understanding how you, how can you leverage technology into the practice?

Jeremy: Yeah, I think first off, I'm super lucky where I have like my staff now in clinic, like they don't need me there anyway. So they've built like the autonomy out themselves that like they're so solid on. And I think this speaks to like the systems we built out too, like that this wouldn't be possible without our systems being super solid.

But my [00:29:00] staff has they crush it in every sense of the word, which has allowed me to like fully take a step back and really, like you said, nerd out on this technology automation side of things. I think, like I've always looked at like the running the business a little bit differently than everyone else too.

And maybe this is because I'm not like traditional pt, but. , I never like, was worried about going and searching for the next new patient. Like we, we don't really run workshops, we don't really do anything along those lines. But what we do really well is nurture our our ethos of, people that are in our system.

So we're always emailing them, providing them with, certain eBooks or. Sending them blog articles that are gonna be relevant to them. And I think that's, that, that's where my thought process came into play of I really need to leverage technology and automate a lot of this stuff.

Because that's our biggest marketing scheme is to [00:30:00] just get people that are in our system, to get them to continue to come in. It's, and I've always thought about, Personal training, strength conditioning, pt, whatever you wanna call it as it's a year long thing. It's not something that you come in for 12 weeks and then you're outta here and then you're back in.

And I really built our clinic on the back of like continually reaching out to people. And every three months I've got my list of people that I reach out to. And we grew pretty quickly. So that list of people that I'm reaching out to got too big for me to just manually do. And. That's where I sought out like a CRM system.

I knew I needed to upgrade my systems and that's. Yeah, I really leaned into the automation side of things and knew how powerful it was to, reactivate an old patient and get them back in the door. And not only from a revenue wise, but like the patient was they're always so thankful that you reached out to them.

They're like, Thank you for staying on top of me. Like I've been meaning to come in, but I just haven't, and I know this is the 20th [00:31:00] time you've sent me an email, but thank you for doing that. Like my achilles is actually killing me. And so I just knew like that's more sustainable than going and finding new people doing this workshop, getting this new person in the door.

And I was like, how do I do this and how do I automate it? And that's where I landed on CRMs and automation and all those systems.

Danny: First of all, if somebody is like thinking about trying to do a better job of automating their practice, and they're, and like we're clinicians, right? Most of us are not the most technically driven people.

We just, and we shouldn't be. We're we sh we wanna be helping people get better at what you. Whatever it is that they wanna get back to get outta pain and get back to whatever that is. And there is a bit of overlap in terms of being like systematic about things because when we are evaluating and treating people, we have to be systematic to make sure that we're not missing things.

And I look at this in a very [00:32:00] similar light, except it's such a different thing because it's a completely different tool in technology and using that. So if somebody's listening to this, And they're like hey. I don't know what the hell he's talking about. C R M is customer relationship management software, basically.

So it's how do you communicate with people and keep that organized. But. What would you say the first step should be for somebody if they're, if they have a practice and they feel like they're a bit disorganized where would you recommend that they start to get that group of preexisting people, which is so valuable?

It's probably the most valuable part of your entire practice. So I'm being honest, like if somebody was to buy your practice, your list is probably worth the most out of everything that you have and your goodwill with those folks. So where would they, where would someone start this, like thinking about trying to get better organization with.

Jeremy: Yeah, it's funny. At the Mastermind event, I had this conversation a lot with people, and this is I took bigger questions that people had and how do I make this super complex? And I'm like, why don't we just start with setting up a free c r m. There's loads of different options that you can do and like just [00:33:00] putting your people in that c crm, let's just start there and take things off of your the 20 different tech stack tools that you have or the Google sheets or whatever it is, and let's just get this in one place and try to organize it to the simplest form you can.

Whether it's, people that you're currently working with, people you used to work with, and people that are just like subscribers to your email list. Let's just start there and now you have an overview of. Who's where, and what everyone's status is. And that's not a ton of upkeep to change someone from customer or, prospect to customer or whatever it is.

And now you have a general overview of where everyone's at, how many people are in each stage, and. Now you can say, I have all these leads that have come in. They haven't ever purchased a package with me. I probably should be reaching out to those people a little bit more often than not. Let's just start [00:34:00] there.

And a lot of the conversations I have with people is, are you sending a weekly newsletter out? And most people are not doing that. And it's okay, let's start there. And if you have your people organized and you're sending weekly newsletters out, , then you can start to, go a little bit deeper.

But until you're doing the foundational things and have some sense of organization, like getting super complex is not the way to go.

Danny: Just that, right? Let's say you have 200 people you've worked with and another 200 on your list as haven't come in, right? So I say, Half those people are active.

So a hundred are actually working with you. A hundred are past customers that are not coming back in and 200 that, that are on your list that have never come in. When you look at something like that What? What would you say like the biggest difference in messaging should be for people that are, because you should be communicating with everybody, but some are actively working with you.

Some ha aren't working anymore but are have already paid you. They know [00:35:00] that I can trust you and the other half don't know you to just yet. So what would you say the biggest difference is between those three populations Are.

Jeremy: Yeah. And I think that's, it's a great point of the messaging for all those people has to be different.

You can't be sending the same email to a new lead who maybe just signed up for your newsletter or downloaded an ebook or whatever who has no idea who you are and no idea what you do. And like you can't be sending the same. Copy to those people as you are with someone that just finished their package and is feeling great and probably should be continuing on with you, but decided not to purchase a continuity package or whatever it is.

That's two totally different messages. The avatar for those two people are totally different. And I think where we started to find the most success was just implementing in a very basic, Sequence to those very cold customers. As we started to gain more traction with our business, we had more and more people that were submitting forms [00:36:00] or reaching out to us or whatever it is, but they had no idea who we were and no idea what physical therapy really was, and especially not like what we were doing for physical therapy.

So by us just sending very basic five, six email sequence describing. What PT is and how we do physical therapy difference totally changed the game for our like conversion numbers, and it made our PTs lives much easier when they were coming in for evaluations. If you do make that conversion, It's like this person already knows our price points and why we're cash based and why we don't take insurance and what we do and how we do things and all of that stuff.

So that's where like the messaging for them is totally different, whereas someone that finished up their package, you should be talking more about, new goal setting or how to stay on a monthly maintenance plan or. Your hip doesn't hurt anymore, but you should be doing [00:37:00] X, y, and z strength and conditioning exercises or that you really gotta categorize that stuff.

So I think, I harp on the weekly newsletter just to stay top of mind with everyone, but that getting very specific with email campaigns is where that's where like you can really grow things really fast. I think the other

Danny: thing that people. Shy away from when it comes to email marketing is they feel like they're a nuisance to the people that they're emailing.

And we just, if you're listening to this and you're on PT Biz email newsletter or just you're, if you're in our crm, you're getting emailed. Probably three times a week. One is a content wrap up that just shares with you the, all the content we put together of the prior week. One is a client win that we send every Wednesday, and then one is basically a lesson that I've learned at some point in time that I'm sharing that has to do with business, right?

And our unsubscribe rate is very [00:38:00] low. Our open rate is very high, and it's because we. Just selling to people. Like we're sharing things that we think are gonna be helpful for a population that is interested in the stuff that we're talking about. So I think you have to keep that in mind as you're putting together content.

And then something as simple as a weekly newsletter. You can't just send a weekly newsletter together that's Hey, let us know if your knees bothering you. Come on back in. Everyone unsubscribe from that. But you could look at something as simple as, Tim Ferris has this is it I think it's called Five Line Friday.

And it's basically. Five bullet points of things that he thinks are interesting. It could be an article, it could be a quote, it could be a piece of content that he's done or whatever, but it's literally like five lines and the open rate on those emails is really high at the clickthrough rate.

Really high. and all he's doing is ba basically sharing relevant, helpful things to the people that have already raised their hand, that they're interested in those things. So [00:39:00] you gotta think of it that way. And by sending that every single week, that should be a no-brainer for everybody, even if you're just starting out, because you're starting to build that that system.

And also develop the ability to convey what you're saying in a written word, which is called copywriting, which is actually a pretty difficult skill to learn. So when you pick this stuff up, cause this. I've spent a lot of time and money on coaches for digital business stuff, and Copywriting's always been a big part of that, but it's this difficult skill to learn.

What was your transition to learn that? Because I feel like it's not easy. We're used to writing notes for physical therapy purposes for, for patient purposes, not emails that are engaging to hopefully get people to, to take.

Jeremy: Yeah, I think this it goes back to the branding conversation too.

Yeah. Part of Ripple's brand is this like we're very casual and like we have conversational coffee is like a huge thing that like works really well with us. , but that's that's the vibe and the feeling that I want people to get when interacting with Ripple. So we always say it's like you come in and it's very [00:40:00] casual, but like you're, the clinical experience you're getting is over the top.

So we take the clinical side of things very seriously. The other side of it, not so seriously . But yeah, copywriting is one of the things that I really nerded out on and I really love being able to like, like reading different, like sales copy for different branding and I could read like old, newspaper ad sales copy all day long.

I love that stuff. I think it's really interesting. So that was something that I really leaned into and there's lots of, good books out there. But I think it's just you gotta be part of those newsletters, like a Tim Ferris newsletter or a James Clear newsletter and just digest what they're putting out there and understand as you're reading it do you want to continue reading to the next line?

That's good copy. And again, like that can, I think you say all of that, right? The main thing is you just gotta do it too. You don't get bogged down and this doesn't sound good oh crap. I think it's just be yourself. I think we do, I talk about it all the time with my team of like conversational copy [00:41:00] is the most important part.

I think PT Business Newsletter does a really good job with it because you just want people to continue reading on, and I think if someone opens up a newsletter, That just has links to these like scientific articles or studies about acls. Like the normal person doesn't wanna read that probably.

Like maybe a certain percentage of your list does, but tell a story, like talk about what's going on. Like running's huge in Boston right now, so we're. Telling like kind of funny stories about people getting hurt, running, or, trying to relate to what people are doing. And I think that's the biggest thing is just, have fun with it, but also, people, you shouldn't feel like you're annoying people or think that people are gonna unsubscribe if you're providing like just provide some sort of make the person wanna open it each week.

As long as you're providing value, then they're gonna, they're gonna want to continue opening. It doesn't matter. You could email them 10 times a week. If every email they open has value behind it, [00:42:00] then they're gonna continue opening it. And I think that's a big thing that people gotta realize.

Danny: You brought up a really good point too, and it's about Like the voice that you're using, I guess is a good way to put it with writing emails and who your audience is very important.

I know one of the bigger mistakes I made early on was writing blog posts that only really made logical sense for like other clinicians to read, and I got zero patience from it. . I got a lot of clinicians that wanted to argue with me about things or tell me that I was. And and then I started realize, I was like, my audience is not other clinicians around the us.

Why am I writing this? So some of what you're people like typically make mistakes with is Yeah. They make things too complex. They're talking to other clinicians instead of patients and and they're not clearly getting across like something helpful for that population and making it really simple.

And I would say one other thing. If you're struggling with this, and he's [00:43:00] talking about conversational copy, it's if you're writing an email to your friend, write a newsletter, like you're writing an email to your friend, I think we could become so indoctrinated in documentation that's supposed to be very formal.

And our communication should be very formal, like with other clinicians. There's just an expectation that you're a profession or you're a professional and you should act that way, but you don't wanna market that way. As, as odd as that sounds like you wouldn't think that maybe you want your health and wellness professional to be less professional, but you become far more approachable when you do that.

And what, one thing that I'll never forget is somebody who joined the mastermind. He told me straight up, he was like, I decided to join your coaching program when you dropped an FBO in one of your Friday emails, and it had something to do with my kid, . And I was like and I. I, I'm like, this is crazy, who writes this?

And I just send stuff like the way I would talk to anybody. But it's just the way you should do it is this conversational approach because it just [00:44:00] shows your personality it, and it will repel the wrong people and it will really attract the right people that are gonna be the right people in your brand.

So I think for you guys it sounds like you really dialed that in. How do you leverage the other providers with that though? Are they getting involved in that with their subspecialties or are you mainly the one that's coordinating all the marketing side of. Yeah I do

Jeremy: Up till this point, at least that's been my main role is, really handling the marketing side of things.

Staff now is like getting on board with the social media things and putting more content out about that. But I think that's part of my hiring process is if you don't fit what our brand is doing, then this isn't gonna work. It's just it's another Test within my interview process.

Now, it's if you're not gonna fit with our culture and you're not gonna be able to write, even if you're not a good writer, you don't wanna do writing like your communication skills have to be similar to what we're doing here. We'll never be able to have a Super, like highly clinical person that doesn't really have any personality skills, like I don't think that works in the cash based side of things anyways, but [00:45:00] just wouldn't fit with our team and our vibe and it'd come off as really inauthentic.

So I think that I. Delegating those tasks to staff is very easy for me because I think they've seen me do it up until this point and they now are able to, write caption, copy that's very similar to what I would write. And they've been exposed to a lot of the things that I've done up until this point and, able to copy it.

And I think that's, I think that's what that's where a. Brand comes from is I think a good brand kind of stems off of the founder and what their normal, what their their values are. And a good brand can repeat that even after the founder isn't there anymore. So I think it's it's cool to see.

And I think a lot of it goes into like our customer journey too, and we're able to really figure out like where our avatars are at in space within their customer journey. And we send them very specific copy based on all that stuff. And it doesn't matter if they're seeing me or Casey or [00:46:00] Reggie or whoever, like they're still getting that same messaging and we're able to replicate that regardless of who they're seeing.

Danny: Yeah. What's the what's the vision for Ripple going forward? Yeah, I know you've you're not on the clinical side anymore, which is for a lot of people that's maybe something they always want to be involved in. For you, it's interesting. It definitely seems like you're more interested, you're like, you have more of a natural tendency to wanna learn about business stuff then clinical stuff, so as you turned your attention more to that side of it, so what are the next steps for you with the, within the.

Jeremy: Yeah, I think like I said at the beginning of all this with our brand and what we're trying to do is change the narrative of how people sought out. Clinical care in Boston.

And I think that's that's been my goal since day one. And to this day is still our goal. So really like we just wanna make Ripple a household name in Boston to be like, it's not like I gotta go to pt. It's no, you [00:47:00] gotta go to Ripple. And this is the experience that you need to go and go and have.

And so I think that's our goal. Again, I'm super lucky. I've got. Absolute killer team on staff that is like gonna continue to grow this thing without me being, even being in the fold clinically wise. , yeah, just absolute game changers in Boston, which is really cool to see. And they've sensed like taken on bigger roles as I've stepped away.

And I think the future is even brighter with them kind of leading the charge than with me. So it's cool to see. But yeah, I think, Boston's funny, it's. On every corner there's a cash-based clinic somewhere. Yeah, which is cool. Like we've got a really tight-knit group of business owners and none of us are competition.

I think we are all like, moving towards the same goal of changing care in Boston and Ripples, I think, massive part of that, just as much as all of them are too. Yeah, it's cool to see. Do you miss,

Danny: Being. More like day-to-day involved in the culture of the practice now that you're not quite there [00:48:00] as much.

Yeah,

Jeremy: I do for sure. I do miss, I don't think my staff members miss me, like just hanging out and wasting their time and just like mucking it up with them a little bit. But I definitely do miss that part of it. But we do a really good job and I think this is like good advice for any clinical owner of ensuring that we have Team activities and we're all slacking each other constantly and no one feels like they're on an island, whether they're on vacation or in Maine or wherever.

And we're always like, we are doing a huge March Madness Baracka right now. And so we're all just in my staff is awesome with that stuff too. If everyone's just trying to get involved and this is much more than clock in, clock out. This is I want people to like actually enjoy hanging out with.

Staff members. And so I definitely do miss that part of it, of just being around the team. But slack, zoom, all that stuff makes it a little bit easier.

Danny: Yeah. I think one of the best litmus tests of a team is just how Is there [00:49:00] Slack channel? And it's like it can't all be business.

There's gotta be like some sort of fun as well. And so you could probably look at most companies, their Slack channel and you know what? Slack is just an internal communication software that lets you basically internally text and send documents and stuff helps clean up some of your inbox.

But but yeah, you'll see there'll be funny stuff in there. They're like shouting out somebody about their birthday, it's just not all business. I think it's really important to see that and your culture. It's like a way to extend that for sure. Jeremy, this was fun, man. I definitely wanna be mindful of your time.

I know you got a lot going on. If people are interested in learning more about Ripple or if they're a clinician even and they're like, man, Yeah, sounds like a cool guy to work with. The company sounds cool. Where can they go to learn more about what you're doing? Yeah, so

Jeremy: the clinic itself is at Ripple, Boston.

On Instagram you'll definitely find us there. And then my, my ad is just Jeremy DuPont super easy to find both of us. But yeah, I love talking shop with business owners just in terms. Automation and all that stuff. So happy to talk more on that. And [00:50:00] then it's cool having the branding conversation with a lot of other clinics too and how to take, their, again, like X city physical therapy and change it into something that like, actually means something and has a cool feel behind it.

I love having those conversations as well.

Danny: We'll definitely have a part two we'll do that cuz I would love to dive more into the the automation of the business and we definitely we're gonna need a good bit of time to, to do that. And, but it's super fascinating.

It's something that is pretty exciting to see implemented a high level in a practice. But man, thank you again for your time. This was great and as always guys, thanks so much for listening and we'll catch you next week.

Jeremy: Thanks, Sam, appreciate it.

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So this is a one way channel. I'd love to hear back from you. I'd love to get you. Into the group that we have formed on Facebook. Our PT Entrepreneurs Facebook group has about 4,000 clinicians in there that are literally changing the face of our profession. I'd love for you to join the conversation, get connected with other clinicians all over the country.

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