PT Pintcast - Physical Therapy

PT Breakfast Club | October 8, 2026

Featuring Jimmy McKay, Dave Kittle, and Tony Maritato

What if your physical therapy clinic's best marketing research is already sitting on Google?

Most clinic owners focus on accumulating five-star reviews. But those reviews contain something potentially more valuable: the language patients use to explain their problems, frustrations, experiences, and results.

In this episode of PT Breakfast Club, Jimmy, Dave, and Tony explore how clinic owners can use Google reviews, AI tools, and competitor research to make smarter decisions about marketing, recruiting, and operations.

And that's just where the conversation lands.

The show opens with a provocative discussion about the future of physical therapy conferences. Are associations giving PTs a reason to attend, or are they simply recreating the classroom experience at a hotel?

Then the hosts turn to artificial intelligence, including a new Utah program allowing AI-generated prescriptions for certain acne medications under a phased physician-oversight pilot.

They also debate the economics of reimbursement, hospital-insurer negotiations, cash-pay care, and why changing healthcare often requires confronting the incentives that keep things the same.

1. The Conference Problem

Why professional conferences should create more opportunities for genuine conversations, peer learning, and meaningful connections.

2. AI Prescribing and Healthcare Access

Could AI handle certain routine healthcare tasks, and what happens when technology challenges traditional professional boundaries?

3. The Reimbursement Reality

Why payment negotiations are complicated, how insurers and healthcare organizations influence costs, and why small private practices face difficult economics.

4. The PT Recruiting Problem

If every physical therapy job posting promises competitive pay, a great culture, and growth opportunities, how is anyone supposed to stand out?

5. Google Reviews as Business Intelligence

Learn how to use patient feedback to identify recurring themes, clarify marketing messages, recognize operational problems, and create content that speaks to real concerns.

6. Creating More With AI

How AI can support content creation, reusable brand standards, and audience research without replacing the need for good judgment.

Jimmy offers a simple starting point:

1. Collect 20–50 recent public reviews and remove identifying or sensitive details.
2. Look for repeated themes, praise, complaints, and emotionally charged language.
3. Turn the findings into three categories: what to say, what to fix, and what to post.

Use positive feedback to understand what patients value.

Use negative feedback to identify potential improvements.

Use the language people naturally choose to inspire clearer, more relevant communication.

• Google Reviews and Google Business Profile
• ChatGPT and AI-assisted feedback analysis
• Google Sheets
• Canva
• APTA Private Practice Section (PPS) events
• APTA state chapters and academies
• Utah's Nolla Health AI acne-prescribing pilot
• Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield and Kettering Health contract negotiations
• Cash-pay and concierge physical therapy
• The Operator podcast with Larry Benz

Apple Podcasts:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pt-pintcast-physical-therapy/id1000443325

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/show/3LmMUT64yrUc2iGo9Emafc

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@PTPintcast

Website:

https://www.ptpintcast.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/ptpintcast

Question for clinic owners:

What's one thing you've learned from a Google review that actually changed how your clinic operates?

Have fun. Learn stuff.

PT Breakfast Club | Jimmy McKay, Dave Kittle & Tony Maritato

Finding and hiring great physical therapists is one of the biggest challenges facing clinic owners.

Dave Kittle decided to experiment.

Rather than relying solely on job boards and traditional recruiting, Dave took six of his best-performing organic LinkedIn posts and invested approximately $6,000–$7,000 to get them in front of more physical therapists.

A candidate saw two of those posts, visited his website, applied, interviewed, and accepted a full-time position.

The result sparked a bigger conversation.

What if physical therapy recruiting isn't just a staffing problem?

What if it's also a communication problem?

The Real Cost of Recruiting

Dave explains his LinkedIn advertising experiment, why he considered the expense comparable to other recruiting costs, and how he learned which posts his newest hire had encountered.

What Makes a Great Physical Therapist?

The hosts discuss professionalism, curiosity, confidence, communication skills, and the differences between clinical knowledge and the ability to connect with patients.

Growth Isn't Always Bigger

Tony shares why he has consolidated his practice, sold a building, and focused on improving revenue and profitability while operating at a smaller scale.

Why Job Advertisements Don't Work

Jimmy challenges clinic owners to stop relying on vague promises such as competitive salary, flexible schedules, and great culture.

If those benefits are genuinely different, show people what they mean.

The Recruiting Message That Worked

Dave's posts focused on fewer patients, fewer notes, and greater earning potential.

Jimmy explains why those benefits may attract the right candidate more effectively than a long list of job responsibilities.

BLUF: Bottom Line Up Front

The hosts use ChatGPT to rewrite an actual physical therapy job posting, bringing essential information forward and making it easier to scan.

Recruiting People Who Aren't Job Hunting

Dave shares an unconventional strategy: sending personalized recruiting letters directly to physical therapists at their current workplaces.

The hosts debate the effectiveness of the message, its presentation, and why reaching employed clinicians may require something beyond traditional job boards.

• Hiring requires more than posting another vacancy.
• Specific benefits communicate more than generic promises.
• The best message won't appeal to everyone, and that's the point.
• Candidates assess employers just as employers assess candidates.
• Recruiting investments should be evaluated against actual results.
• Better communication starts by answering the questions people genuinely care about.

• LinkedIn boosted posts and recruiting campaigns
• Indeed job advertisements
• ChatGPT
• BLUF communication framework
• Vistaprint
• Concierge Pain Relief
• Sturdy McKee's recruiting approach

For clinic owners: What's the most effective thing you've done to recruit a physical therapist?

For clinicians: What would make you leave a job where you're currently comfortable?

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PTPintcast

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pt-pintcast-physical-therapy/id1000443325

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3LmMUT64yrUc2iGo9Emafc

Website: https://www.ptpintcast.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ptpintcast

Jimmy McKay:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmy-mckay-pt-dpt-a4207659/

Dave Kittle:

https://www.youtube.com/@thedavekittleshow/featured

Concierge Pain Relief:

https://conciergepainrelief.com/

Tony Maritato:

https://www.youtube.com/c/MedicareBilling

Have fun. Learn stuff.

Physical therapy is for everyone.

But if your marketing is for everyone, who exactly are you talking to?

On the first day of Physical Therapy Month, Jimmy McKay, Tony Meritato and Dave Kittle dig into APTA’s public-facing messaging, “PT for future me,” the role of professional associations, and one of the biggest communication problems in physical therapy:

We keep trying to say everything at once.

The episode explores the difference between representing the entire profession and creating communication that actually resonates with an individual person.

Jimmy argues that broad messaging often becomes bland messaging. Tony and Dave push into what APTA membership should actually provide, whether professional associations should offer more structure and accountability, and why peer-to-peer groups may create more tangible value than another webpage full of resources.

Then the conversation turns practical.

Tony shares recent social media numbers and explains what kinds of images are generating hundreds of thousands or even millions of views. Dave breaks down how he turned a simple comment into a reaction video in minutes. Jimmy explains why most clinicians already have a massive content library sitting on their phones.

And eventually the conversation lands on the biggest obstacle:

Fear.

Fear of looking stupid.

Fear of being criticized by another clinician.

Fear of posting something that flops.

Fear that the work won’t be worth the effort.

The technology is already available.

The barrier may simply be hitting publish.

KEY THEMES:

• Physical Therapy Month

• APTA’s “PT for future me” campaign

• Why broad marketing can fail

• Targeting one specific audience

• “Aim small, miss small”

• APTA membership value

• Professional associations

• Peer-to-peer groups and masterminds

• Information versus structure

• Accountability

• Content creation for PTs

• Facebook, Instagram and TikTok

• Reaction videos

• Repurposing old content

• Using existing photos and video

• Fear of criticism

• The 28-day content challenge

FEATURED:

Jimmy McKay

Tony Meritato

Dave Kittle

Tony Meritato:

https://www.youtube.com/c/MedicareBilling

Dave Kittle:

https://www.youtube.com/@thedavekittleshow/featured

FOLLOW PT PINTCAST:

Apple Podcasts:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pt-pintcast-physical-therapy/id1000443325

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/show/3LmMUT64yrUc2iGo9Emafc

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@PTPintcast

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/ptpintcast

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmy-mckay-pt-dpt-a4207659/

Website:

https://www.ptpintcast.com/

X:

https://x.com/PTPintcast

What does Barnes & Noble have to do with the future of physical therapy?

More than you might think.

Barnes & Noble couldn't compete with Amazon by simply offering more books. So the company changed what a bookstore could be: experience, discovery, community, events, gifts, toys, coffee, and local relevance.

That launches Jimmy McKay, Tony Meritato, and Dave Kittle into a much bigger PT Breakfast Club conversation:

What game is physical therapy actually playing?

The guys explore what PT clinics might learn from businesses forced to adapt, including whether clinics need revenue beyond traditional reimbursement, why “selling” remains such an uncomfortable word in physical therapy, and why simply making more people aware of PT may not solve the profession’s problems.

Then things get bigger.

What exactly will a physical therapist be ten years from now?

Tony makes the case that AI and digital healthcare could absorb much of the simpler end of physical therapy. Dave pushes back on how quickly the profession's identity and title will change. Jimmy questions whether our current professional labels, licenses, and marketing strategies help clinicians compete or sometimes constrain them.

The conversation also explores the distinction between PT as a license and DPT as a degree, digital versus human care, AI-assisted clinicians, healthcare consumer behavior, and whether the future belongs not to AI or humans, but to humans who learn how to use AI well.

And underneath all of it is one question:

What game are you actually playing?

KEY THEMES

• Barnes & Noble as a model for adapting instead of competing head-on

• Experience, community and alternative revenue

• Cash-pay physical therapy

• Why PTs struggle with the idea of selling

• Marketing through repetition and useful communication

• Whether physical therapy really has an awareness problem

• The future value of the PT license

• PT versus DPT

• Digital physical therapy and AI

• Hinge Health and Sword Health

• Human clinicians handling increasingly complex cases

• AI as a clinical tool rather than a replacement

• Cory Doctorow’s “reverse centaur” concept

• Understanding the business you're actually in

FEATURED VOICES

Jimmy McKay

Tony Meritato

Dave Kittle

WATCH TONY:

https://www.youtube.com/c/MedicareBilling

WATCH DAVE:

https://www.youtube.com/@thedavekittleshow/featured

FOLLOW PT PINTCAST:

Apple Podcasts:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pt-pintcast-physical-therapy/id1000443325

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/show/3LmMUT64yrUc2iGo9Emafc

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@PTPintcast

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/ptpintcast

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmy-mckay-pt-dpt-a4207659/

Website:

https://www.ptpintcast.com/

X:

https://x.com/PTPintcast

You probably don’t need another camera.

You probably don’t need a better microphone.

And you definitely don’t need to wait until your content is perfect.

You need reps.

On this episode of PT Breakfast Club, Jimmy McKay, Tony Maritato and Dave Kittle launch the Content Dojo, a 28-day experiment designed to help physical therapists stop overthinking content and actually start creating it.

The guys break down why consistency beats perfection, how Tony turns simple ideas into massive engagement, why Dave finally stopped outsourcing the process, and how clinicians can turn everyday conversations with patients into useful content.

They also dig into the real barriers nobody talks about: fear of posting, lack of time, annoying workflows, tiny audiences, slow early results and the temptation to spend money solving a problem that may actually require practice.

The challenge uses a martial-arts belt system so everyone can participate. Your goal might be one post a week. Tony’s might be 20 pieces a day. The point isn’t matching somebody else’s volume.

The point is moving up one belt.

Because the people who get good at content aren’t necessarily the people with the best equipment.

They’re the people who keep hitting record.

What if the biggest thing holding your clinic back isn’t a lack of ideas?

It’s waiting until the idea feels safe.

Jimmy McKay, Tony Maritato and Dave Kittle bounce from Airbnb cereal to physical therapy marketing, hiring, recruiting, content creation and virtual assistants in an episode that keeps arriving at the same conclusion:

Take the shot. Learn. Adjust.

Dave breaks down the five levels of customer awareness and why most clinic marketing tries to move people from attention directly to a purchase before earning enough trust.

Jimmy takes a painfully traditional physical therapy job posting and attacks it through a Ryan Reynolds-style lens: stop trying to appeal to everybody and start making the RIGHT person lean in.

That leads to an even harder problem: how do you recruit a certified hand therapist to Alaska?

Then Tony finds a fascinating social-media example involving an 88-year-old aspiring basketball player and asks whether physical therapy clinics are missing an enormous content opportunity by making themselves the hero instead of their patients.

The conversation also covers:

• Marketing to different levels of awareness

• Attention → Trust → Action

• Why six to twelve exposures may matter more than one great ad

• Recruiting for difficult PT positions

• Using social media instead of relying entirely on Indeed

• Making geography part of the recruiting pitch

• Patient-led storytelling

• Building recurring content series

• Creating content buckets that reduce mental load

• Why expertise starts to look automatic

• Delegating lead follow-up and scheduling

• Using offshore virtual assistants

• Testing inexpensive solutions before scaling them

• Why imperfect action beats analysis paralysis

PT Breakfast Club is hosted by Jimmy McKay, Tony Maritato and Dave Kittle.

Follow Tony Maritato on YouTube at Total Therapy Solution.

Find Dave Kittle at ConciergePainRelief.com and on YouTube at The Dave Kittle Show.

Follow Jimmy McKay and PT Pintcast wherever you listen to podcasts and across social media.

This conversation is for entertainment and discussion only, not medical, legal, billing or business advice.

What if the goal of your next physical therapy job ad wasn’t to attract more people?

What if it was to repel almost everyone except the few clinicians who would actually love working for you?

Jimmy McKay and Tony Maritato dig into recruiting, advertising, AI and psychology after Tony asks a fascinating question:

What would advertising legend David Ogilvy want to know before writing a job ad for a physical therapist?

That question produces a 12-part framework clinic owners can use to evaluate their own recruiting.

The conversation starts with the basics: Who exactly are you trying to hire? What does the employment model look like? How much control does the therapist have over their schedule? What does compensation actually look like?

Then it gets more interesting.

Jimmy and Tony argue that employers should explain not only what clinicians GET to do, but also what they DON'T have to do.

Scheduling.

Insurance verification.

Marketing.

Faxing plans of care.

Administrative work.

Whatever creates friction in that particular clinic.

They also make the case for showing candidates the imperfect parts of the job instead of hiding them.

The goal isn’t hundreds of applicants.

The goal is a handful of people who understand the offer and think:

“That sounds exactly like me.”

The episode also explores how Josh Funk and Rehab 2 Perform use media as a recruiting tool, why simply spending more money on traditional job boards may not fix a hiring problem, and why short-form video could be an underused recruiting strategy in physical therapy.

Later, the conversation expands into communication and content creation.

How do you take one useful idea and package it as video, audio, images and text?

Why do some pieces of content explode on one platform and disappear on another?

And why do healthcare professionals spend years creating valuable information only to publish it as an unreadable screenshot?

Finally, Jimmy and Tony tackle another uncomfortable idea: information has become incredibly cheap.

People often aren’t paying coaches, consultants, courses or even clinicians purely for information.

They may be paying for guidance, accountability, confidence and someone to help them take the next step.

That leads to Jimmy’s warning about a $9,000 YouTube growth course and Tony’s story about spending roughly $33,000 on business education years ago.

The episode closes with perhaps the simplest idea of the entire conversation:

Before adding another form, another question, another feature or another step…

Ask what you can remove.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Recruit a specific person, not “everybody”

• Transparency filters candidates instead of scaring them away

• Explain the negatives before applicants discover them themselves

• Sell what clinicians DON’T have to do

• Make the next step conversational instead of bureaucratic

• Great recruiting media can show what working somewhere feels like

• One idea can become multiple kinds of media

• Information and implementation are different products

• Better experiences often come from subtraction

FEATURED:

Tony Maritato

Tony on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/c/MedicareBilling

FOLLOW PT PINTCAST:

Apple Podcasts:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pt-pintcast-physical-therapy/id1000443325

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/show/3LmMUT64yrUc2iGo9Emafc

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@PTPintcast

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmy-mckay-pt-dpt-a4207659/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/ptpintcast

Website:

https://www.ptpintcast.com/

Twitter/X:

https://x.com/PTPintcast

Most physical therapy practice owners think about selling their business when they’re ready to sell.

Paul Martin thinks that’s already too late.

Paul is a physical therapist, founder of Martin Healthcare Advisors, and former clinic owner who helped grow a three-clinic operation into 21 locations.

After decades working with PT practice owners, he says one mistake appears again and again:

Owners treat selling their practice like an event.

It isn’t.

It’s a process.

And according to Paul, the owners who begin preparing several years before a transaction have far more opportunities to improve the company, reduce risk and increase its potential value.

Jimmy and Paul unpack what buyers actually look for when evaluating a PT business.

They discuss:

• Why buyers care about cash flow
• What EBITDA means in a PT practice
• Why historical success alone doesn’t determine value
• The importance of demonstrating future growth
• How financial preparation affects a transaction
• Why leadership alignment matters
• The operational KPIs buyers examine
• Charge capture and proper coding
• Productivity versus compliance
• Schedule management
• PT/PTA team models
• The danger of a practice depending entirely on its owner
• Paul’s “30-day test”
• Why larger practices often command higher multiples
• How Paul went from three clinics to 21
• Why systems and processes allow businesses to scale
• The difference between an owner’s perceived valuation and actual valuation
• Why Paul believes PT continues to provide extraordinary healthcare value

Imagine telling your staff:

“I’m leaving tomorrow. I’ll be gone for 30 days, and you cannot contact me.”

What happens?

If the clinic falls apart, Paul argues that you may not own a transferable business yet.

You may own a job.

Founder, Martin Healthcare Advisors

Website:

https://www.martinhealthcareadvisors.com/

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulmartinsview/

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@martinhealthcareadvisors

Built to Sell

John Warrillow

Are physical therapists spending too much time optimizing things that barely matter?

Jimmy McKay and Tony Maritato start with the growing backlash against AI-generated content and quickly uncover a much bigger question: Are we arguing about the tool, the output, or just something we don't like?

That same tendency shows up everywhere in physical therapy.

We obsess over perfect exercise form.

We debate tiny biomechanical details.

We search for the perfect posting time.

We chase follower counts.

We optimize before we've done enough reps to have anything worth optimizing.

Tony shares how his thinking around exercise prescription changed with experience, including why an imperfect row may still be an entirely useful row.

Then the conversation takes a sharp turn into a fascinating idea for the PT workforce:

Could physical therapists eventually negotiate something resembling NIL deals?

Instead of compensation being limited to salary and clinical productivity, what happens when a clinician's audience, reputation, content, expertise and ability to attract attention create measurable value for an employer?

Jimmy and Tony explore what that could mean for:

• PT recruitment

• clinician compensation

• DPT and PTA programs

• personal branding

• recruiters acting more like talent agents

• incentive-based compensation

• employee-generated content

They also break down an overlooked social media problem: more followers aren't automatically better.

If the people following you don't care about what you actually create, a bigger audience can become a community of lukewarm people instead of the audience you actually need.

Finally, Tony unveils a 28-day content challenge built around an aggressive idea: create at scale, build the system first and let repetition do the heavy lifting.

Because eventually, the exciting part isn't the secret.

The boring part is.

Jimmy's closing thought:

“The results that you're not getting are hiding in work that you're not doing.”

PT Breakfast Club features conversations about physical therapy, private practice, careers, business, technology, marketing and the future of the profession.

Follow:

Tony Maritato — Total Therapy Solution on YouTube

Dave Kittle — The Dave Kittle Show / conciergepainrelief.com

Jimmy McKay — PT Pintcast / PT Podcasts

On this episode of PT Breakfast Club, Jimmy McKay and Tony Maritato start with the debate over AI in education and end up somewhere much bigger: what happens to physical therapy when the cost of learning, creating, testing, building, and iterating drops dramatically?

Tony walks through using AI to build a new website, generate social content, create viral knee-replacement imagery, analyze information, and explore business ideas that would have required significantly more time or money only a few years ago.

Jimmy connects that to a familiar media principle:

Attention → Trust → Action.

The goal isn't simply to “make content.” It's to understand whose attention you're earning, why they should keep giving it to you, and what eventually happens because of that trust.

The guys also dig into some surprisingly practical opportunities around PT.

AI as a learning tool

Instead of assuming AI eliminates thinking, what if educators taught students how to question outputs, find blind spots, compare perspectives, and apply information?

The economics of experimentation

If creating a website, image, script, campaign, or prototype costs a fraction of what it once did, the number of experiments businesses can run should increase dramatically.

Identity beats generic content

Tony explains why his knee-replacement tattoo images exploded online, while Jimmy breaks down how the same idea can translate into PT specialties, dogs, sneakers, ice cream, and other identity-driven concepts.

Attention isn't the end goal

Attention earns an opportunity to build trust. Trust eventually creates action, whether that means a patient choosing your clinic, someone listening to your podcast, buying something, or simply remembering you.

Your customers are already giving you market research

Google Reviews can reveal repeated language, beloved employees, missing services, hidden strengths, and opportunities that businesses may never mention in their own marketing.

Does Facebook still work for PT clinics?

Yes, if Facebook solves the problem you're actually trying to solve. The tool matters less than understanding the audience, objective, and platform.

Tony also pitches several businesses hiding in plain sight:

1. A transparent rehab reimbursement database

Take publicly available hospital and insurance pricing information and make it understandable and usable for PT, OT, and SLP professionals.

2. A physical therapy discount membership network

A DentalPlans-style model where consumers pay for access to transparent discounted rates at participating clinics.

3. A healthcare buyer's agent

Think real estate buyer's agent, but for healthcare: someone helping patients understand pricing, benefits, providers, options, and complex healthcare decisions.

The conversation closes with a deceptively simple question:

When AI gives you access to expertise, comparison, analysis, and second opinions almost instantly, are you irresponsible for using it?

Or are you irresponsible for refusing to learn how?