Jack O'Brien: G'day, good people. Welcome to the Grow Your Clinic podcast by Clinic Mastery. Here's what's coming up in today's episode. This episode will be right up your Allie if you're looking to start or improve how your clinic does content and shows up online. And trust me, you will want to hear Mick's take on what it takes to go viral. Plus, stick around for when we discuss the practical content pieces that you can film today as you consume this podcast episode.

Michael Rizk: For those who don't know Pokemon, Magikarp is the most useless Pokemon and he just splashes around. And the caption says, you don't need to go viral, you just need to start and evolve.

Bec Clare: Our social media is heavily weighted towards recruitment.

Jack O'Brien: How do you encourage clinic owners to think about themselves creating content for the practice versus team members?

Michael Rizk: We're in a niche profession. The goal really isn't to go viral. We've mentioned that word a lot. The goal is to speak to the hundred physios who might want to work for you in the next two or three years. How do you handle regret? Because I'd imagine there's a bunch of clinic owners who feel the same. They're like, I've missed the boat. I've missed the train. You used to have to have a big following for your video to do well. Very practically, the algorithms changed.

SPEAKER_02: Before we dive in, today's episode is brought to you by AllieClinics.com. If you're the kind of clinic owner who loves to feel organized and stay ahead of the chaos, you'll love Allie. Think of it as your digital clone. It's the single source of truth for all your clinic's policies, systems, and training. Test it for free at AllieClinics.com. And in other news, applications are now open to work with us one-on-one at Clinic Mastery. If you want support to grow your clinic and bring your vision to life, just email hello@clinicmastery.com with the subject line podcast, and we'll line up a time to chat. All right, let's get into the episode.

Jack O'Brien: Well, welcome back to another episode of the Grow Your Clinic podcast. I am Jack O'Brien, your only host today. Ben Lynch is off gallivanting around the Victorian countryside somewhere on the border, on the river, who knows, doing holiday things. But I have with me my esteemed co-host, co-owner of Physio West in Adelaide, Bec Clare. Welcome. How are you? Great.

Bec Clare: Thank you, Jack. Good to be here. Taking over the mantle as your co-host from Ben Lynch. We'll get some of those more expressos. Yes, I did mispronounce that today on purpose.

Jack O'Brien: Oh, folks, if you haven't heard that faux pas, please go back to a previous episode. I'm still getting over my offense. Joining us today to unpack one of the highlight keynotes at the Grow Your Clinic Summit a couple of weeks ago, the man who needs no introduction. He is niche famous on all the social platforms and I can't wait to hear from him today, Michael Rizk. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Very good. Well, before we get started, folks, we are going to dive into all things marketing and social media and content, unpack, mix, talk, blow by blow from the summit. Before we get there, just a little bit of housekeeping. If you love this podcast, I have three requests for you. Number one, subscribe. It makes a big difference for us. Number two, please leave a review or a rating wherever you watch or listen to this. And number three, share it with a colleague. If you have another clinic owner, another allied health professional or team member that you think would get benefit from these conversations, please do share it, whether that's on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or the YouTubes. We would really, really appreciate that. Housekeeping number two, what a bunch of clinic owners to welcome to the community. Across Allie specifically, it is just going crazy at the moment with clinic owners signing up for Allie, both to connect their practice management software and dashboard their data, as well as a place to house their resources and playlists to be able to mentor their practitioners and create consistency across their practice. So, welcome to Jeremy. We have Rob, we have Ben, we have Praswal, and we have George. Just in the last 48 hours, there's a whole bunch more. We've got Christina here, Shane, Jessica, and Sean. So welcome to the Allie community. And folks, if you want to try Allie, no credit card required, 30 days, head to a11yclinics.com is the place to set up a trial there. Would also love to welcome a bunch of clinic owners to the Business Academy and Elevate. So Richard, welcome to Elevate. Cara Lee has joined the Business Academy. George has joined Elevate. Welcome, welcome, welcome. We're excited to help you fill your books, grow your team, optimize your operations, and ultimately grow your clinic. Out of all of that, we today are talking about filling your books, content, social media. Mick Rysk, let's tee this up. At the summit, you had how many slides to get through in how many minutes? Do you remember that stat? Was it 57 in 10 minutes? 57 slides in 12 minutes, I think we gave you, but it was an impressive feat nonetheless and you opened with a bit of a Pokemon story. So I'm going to let you set the scene and paint us the Pokemon picture that you spoke to at the summit.

Michael Rizk: I have been chasing a Pokemon card. I'm an avid Pokemon fan and cards are the latest thing. And it's probably a Gary Vee-ism of always being on the latest social media and acting early, which is what got me started on TikTok. I actually missed Instagram. My first ever group was Facebook 12 years ago and it grew very quickly. And I didn't get on Instagram. I was really late to Instagram. I still find it hard to use like where the right buttons are. So I skipped that generation, went on to TikTok on Gary V's advice, saw a clip of Gary talking about Whatnot, which is apparently the fastest growing social media app right now, which is live online shopping. So people are streaming and selling products as they do it. And for those of you who use eBay, if you sign into eBay, you'll see a tab that says eBay Live, and it's actually people streaming live on eBay about the product they're selling. So by virtue of me listening to Gary Vee and getting onto WhatNot early, I found my dream Pokemon card, which was a Magikarp on WhatNot. Now, I thought I'd be able to promote my Physio brand on there, but it has nothing to do with Physio, but I found my Pokemon card.

Jack O'Brien: That was it. Yes, that was it. Before we get into the talk, you mentioned there Instagram doesn't come naturally to you. That took my breath away.

Michael Rizk: Say more about that. What do you mean? I think what's probably a feeling that resonates with most clinic owners now, it's overwhelming. If you're not native to producing videos and then if you're not native to the platform and you're in a season of your life where you're busy or there's things moving, I know it's easy for me to say just start social media, which is what I said in the talk many times, but there's many barriers, small barriers that make it hard. And I think at that point in time, it was the challenge for me. I was doing Facebook well. There were things going on and I didn't make the leap to Instagram, which I regret every single day because I'm good at producing content. It's natural to me. It's easy to me. That's not my push effort. I just ignored this platform that was booming, and it's a big regret I have. Then to see the growth on TikTok, I've basically missed this middle generation. I would say that's where most of our market is, that 25 to 35-year-old physiotherapist. They're on Instagram. That's how it played out for me.

Jack O'Brien: How do you handle regret? Because I'd imagine there's a bunch of clinic owners who feel the same. They're like, I've missed the boat. I've missed the train. It's too late. It's futile. Why bother? What do you say to that?

Michael Rizk: Very practically, the algorithms changed. So this is something that can be helpful. You used to have to have a big following for your video to do well. So at some point in time, you might've looked at social media and said, Oh, well, it's easy for them. They've got 10,000 followers. They've been doing it for five years. It makes sense for them to produce a video, but not for us. The algorithms actually changed in the sense that new accounts and people who are relatively unknown, your video has just as much chance as going niche viral than anyone with 10 million views and vice versa. The person with 10 million views, their content is not guaranteed to go viral. I don't know what you would call that in a political sense, but it's more even, more fair playing field. There'd be a word for that.

Bec Clare: I almost like reset the marketplace in that they've gone, okay, it's great, but we want more new users to be coming onto the platform and therefore we need to reward the fact that they're contributing to the platform by allowing their videos to go viral. I mean, I love the lens that you've just used there, Mick, in that you might go, it's regret or there's a missed opportunity, but Instagram, Meta, they're always changing the algorithm. Google are always changing the algorithm. So there's almost never a too late. timeframe, it's just like, get on board and learn what is now. And that's our biggest opportunity.

Jack O'Brien: The best content wins regardless of follower size. And I think, uh, the notion of best is quite challenging to define. It doesn't always mean the most highly produced or even the most informative or perhaps the most entertaining. So there's this, uh, this is real lottery. to social media or to the content game, I find, that you really have to throw everything at it, throw the educational stuff, throw the entertaining stuff, do the trending things, and you don't know what's going to work. And that's the fun of the game, right? But Mick, you mentioned a line towards the end of your talk that content is uncertain but unlimited upside. And that probably speaks to this unpredictability of it all. Can you say a bit more about that? It's an uncertain game, but there's unlimited upside. What do you mean?

Michael Rizk: If we reframed it, it's probably the easiest, smallest step that an owner could do every single day that only takes two or three minutes. If you can get over the mental challenges and barriers, because there's, I know that that plays out for a lot of us, but effectively every morning at 7am, you could turn your camera on and record a one minute video every single day. And that's the downside. So it's a limited downside. It takes you a little bit of talking yourself into it and maybe two to three minutes of time. But the upside of doing that, if you just did that once a week, twice a week, three times a week, every day from this podcast, the upside could be unlimited. And what I mean by that is it absolutely can bring you patience. It will absolutely start building your brand. And in our case, it's probably been stronger on our recruitment front. It's, it's made, it's made a recruitment funnel for us. And then we can dig into this, but I've been thinking a lot lately about Recruitment funnel as an owner can be your most powerful tool to hold your standards and your standards is what filters through everything in the clinic. The owners that struggle to hold their standards are scared to hold their standards because they're scared to lose someone because if they lose someone, they don't have someone readily available to go. And then I can bring all that back to if you were producing great content, showing off your clinic, you'd have all these people reaching out to you. So I've been thinking a lot about that lately.

Jack O'Brien: Beck, I'll get your opinion on that. I'm going to share my screen here. Folks who are listening along, you can join us over on YouTube where this is obviously video recorded and we share screen. We're going to share some slides from Mick's talk, but Beck, I'm going to actually share your Instagram first from PhysioWest. And what I can see here is some posts that are really targeted to team members, right? We're talking about our values, we're congratulating team members, we've got positions available, we've got team days. Maybe talk us through how you think about content and social media for your practice, specifically as it relates to recruitment, building physio interest, etc.

Bec Clare: What we try to do is go a little bit niche and go, okay, what is our main goal for our socials? And for us it's recruitment. And then the trickle down is that we're showing off our brand and we're showcasing our team in a way that makes clients, if they're wanting to get a level of trust or a bit of an indicator about whether we're the right clinic for them, we're showcasing the people behind our brand. But first and foremost for us, our social media is heavily weighted towards recruitment. That's almost everything that we produce. Jack, it's really interesting. This one line from you rings true so often. It's years ago that you said this to me. It was, how long does it take to take a 60-second social media video? responded, well, 60 seconds. Because what we see is clinic owners time block, and I'm guilty of this too, time block 30 minutes, an hour for their socials content, which is a one minute video. Or you might have team members who are asking to block out their diary to create content. That is the most common thing that I even get in the clinic. It's like, okay, well, what are you producing? Oh, I need a 60 second clip. Great. 60 seconds, um, and some padding in and around that we don't need 30 minutes. We don't need 60 minutes to produce what is a short snippet. Um, and so that's been, how can we create really simple but purposeful social media that really speaks to the type of people we want to bring into our community? And that's, that's other therapists.

Jack O'Brien: Okay, so this is a good little segue, Beck. You're talking about team members and content. Mick, I know you touched on this in your talk at the summit as well. Mick, how do you encourage clinic owners to think about themselves creating content for the practice versus team members creating content? Owner content, team member content, pros, cons, common arguments.

Michael Rizk: Talk to us about that. I'd love to get all your perspectives on it. I think maybe it's the season you're in. I think if you're still super active in your clinic, if I was starting a clinic or I was still treating and it was me and one, two or three team members, I feel like I would be a big piece of the content. As an owner who is stepped away from the clinics and now a way away from the clinics, Even I sometimes think, should I still be doing content for my brand because patients don't get to see me anymore? My answer would be yes, if you're still treating and you want to help grow your clinic in that way. If you're away from your clinic, maybe you're not doing the pathology videos, like this is how you get a shoulder better. Maybe you're doing the more team videos, or maybe it's outward facing. You're still contributing to content. Like Beck says, a seven-second video of the team day, that could be the owner contribution.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, that was my experience around, I would still do a lot of the clinical content for our practice. So there were four years where I didn't see a patient was still running the clinic and was still very much the face of the practice. But ultimately, the community knew that they weren't able to see me. And so that still works. But Mick, what about What about that argument of like, oh, but if I let my team do content and then they resign or move on or they no longer work at the practice, then I've got their face on my grid or they build their own personal brand and I don't want that because they'll become too big. Can you speak to some of those concerns?

Michael Rizk: Yeah, I feel like content is super fleeting as well. It's super short term, which is also good because if you do a video that only gets two views or you're a bit embarrassed by what you said, it's gone tomorrow. The feed is so fast now. In other words, to set another way, no one's going to really scroll back six months and look at the video from the team member. We give our team members the option to remove any content or blogs that they've produced if they want. I know some clinics, it's in a contract that that's IP of the clinic now. I've seen no downside to that. Have you guys had any downsides or horror stories attached to that?

Bec Clare: particularly, I mean, we, we take the stance or the view that for all of our social media and even our collateral in clinic, we want it to be real people who are on our team. And sometimes like there's probably, there's a poster in this room that I'm sitting in that has a former team member in it. And really, it just happens. They're part of the fabric that has been our clinic. We like to do our exits quite well if someone's moving on, so I can still look at that picture and know that that person was a really awesome human that we had for a period of time. I'm okay with that. And as you say, Mick, people tend not to scroll back a whole, like, what, six months or whatever. It just, it does. It moves so, so quickly.

Jack O'Brien: I think you're both spot on and for mine, it really speaks to a scarcity or abundance mindset in a clinic owner. And so this, was it maybe Richard Branson? Yeah, quote of like, well, what if I train them and I leave? Yeah, but what if I don't train them and they stay? The same I think is true for their personal brand. What if I help my team build their own brand and they leave? Yeah, but what if they stay and nobody knows them? That's a worst-case scenario. Mick, I think about some of the physios on your team that I've known become as a niche famous in their own right. If you want, feel welcome to name him. Paddy Mac comes to mind for me. He's built a wonderful brand in his own right and I'm sure that served iMove, your clinic, for a long time. He moves overseas or whatever the case is, travels around Australia and that's fine. His brand goes but it was very mutually beneficial along the way, right?

Michael Rizk: Yeah, you're fishing and you've got many hooks in the ocean, right? So imagine in today's algorithm where we said any video can go viral. Imagine if you have 15 team members and they all have their own page, you've got now 15 opportunities a day to go viral. And a very practical point is while they're working with us, we will do a collaborated post, which means it goes on their page, goes on our page, increases the reach. provided that in their link, they're linking back to us. So that's a very practical thing that we do. So exactly as you said, Jack, whilst they're with us and whilst they're building, they're also building for us and we're using our brand to promote their personal brand too. So it's win-win. And yeah, when they go, I'm sure they'll have patients that both stay with us and there'll be some patients that go with them too. And that's all okay, right?

Bec Clare: I also just figure as a business owner, there are a number of things that can keep you awake at night and worrying about who's actually the face on your social media and could they move on. Gee, I've got other things I want to think about than that. I just, just do the video and post it and let's see if it goes, well, you don't need to go viral. You don't need to go niche, don't you Mick?

Jack O'Brien: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Spot on. Okay. I'm going to share some slides here from your talk, Mick, and get you to talk through them again for the folks who are listening, but perhaps can't see. You mentioned this earlier, we've already spoken to this, you know, you can't hold your standards. And so the point was when we have a consistent pipeline of essentially recruitment leads watching our content, it makes it much easier. Do you want to perhaps describe this slide for us, Mick, for those listening?

Michael Rizk: I've been a clinic owner for 12 years now. And I like to think about what's contributed to my success, what's contributed to my failures, and what are some things that I might not have thought about before. And I think one of my big strengths has been the ability to recruit. And I didn't really know why, and it might sound obvious to others, but that very first Facebook page I created, which was called iMoveU, that was just because I was passionate about helping you grad physios. There was no intention behind it. But eventually that grew into a Facebook page that had a lot of new grad physios around Australia, something like 5,000 people.

Jack O'Brien: The preeminent Facebook group for new grad physios.

Michael Rizk: Yeah, right. And that was just because I would turn the camera on and I would talk about the common issues in physio. Are we burnt out? Do we need to see 60 patients a week? Do we do manual therapy? Do we do exercise? Just all the common issues. And that was a happy accident that meant five years later, all these new grad physios who are now experienced clinicians. knew my name and knew my face and knew the brand. Um, so now when I put a job ad up, we're looking at the, my Gmail folder called I move job apps and there's 300, uh, 300 emails there. Let's call it 150 people. There might be one or two emails each. So whenever we put a job ad up, we've instantly got. 10, 12 great candidates. And we compare that to someone who's brewing you in business and they feel like they're wasting their money every time they put a seek out up and it's $800. So that was a happy accident, but it speaks to that unlimited upside of, you know, if we start today, if you start posting today, even if you're just talking to new grads, two to three years later, those new grads will be your experienced clinicians and eight to 10 years later, they're going to be your senior, your clinical leads. So if you're a clinic owner and you think you will be in business for the next 5 to 10 years, it's something to think about like how can we build your recruitment funnel.

Jack O'Brien: And of those, let's call it 150 applications for a job. These aren't just randoms from overseas on seek clicking a button so that they get paid their dole check this week. These are 150 high-class physios that know you, know what you stand for, resonate with your clinic. There's a deep level of trust here where effectively you can hire whoever you want that is a great fit for your team. I love that example. Another little cluster of slides here that you spoke to this quote of, it doesn't have to be hard, but it just could be unreasonable. And then you shared a screenshot of your databases of Facebook groups. Can you speak to that point around unreasonableness, please?

Michael Rizk: Yeah, something I did, again, this was a happy accident. Every uni group created their own Facebook group. So as an example, there was Sydney Uni Physio Society Facebook group, and that had all the grad physios in that Facebook group. And as I was building the podcast and the Facebook group, I would document all those groups on a spreadsheet, which I thought was normal. But someone told me that's a pretty special thing to do or an unreasonable thing to do. So now I've got this spreadsheet with 10 tabs of all the unis in it and there's something like 50-odd uni Facebook groups in there. And that wasn't a hard thing to do. That literally took 30 seconds. I just documented all the groups in a spreadsheet and I was posting in all of those groups whenever I did a podcast or a post or whenever I would go to speak to the unis or a Zoom call for the unis. I just had all those groups there. It probably speaks to the other point about Instagram is that was very powerful. I could have sold that sheet for $1,000 a pop 10 years ago. Yes. Now almost no one's on Facebook groups and they've all transitioned to Instagram. A lot of them have those Instagram pages where I don't have the same network. So yeah, it's a little unreasonable thing. And if you're a clinic owner listening, posting to social media daily or every second or third day, it probably isn't hard, but it might feel like, oh, it's a little bit of a challenge. It's a little bit unreasonable. But what could that be in five or 10 years?

Jack O'Brien: And here's the thing when it comes to content, we say it's not hard, the reality is it's not complex, but the hard or the challenge is in the consistency, is in showing up, is in quieting that voice, the scarcity voice, the crocodile brain at the back and opening your mind to consistently putting out content, doing the work, showing up, building the conversations and not necessarily expecting to see results in the first couple of weeks or couple of months, but compound that over months and months and years and years, and you end up living in the shade of the tree that you planted five years ago. Mick, I know you use the bamboo analogy quite a lot in different contexts, but can you speak to that notion of the bamboo analogy?

Michael Rizk: Yeah. The bamboo tree on YouTube is my favourite video. Definitely go and watch it if you haven't. But what does he say in the video? You have to water the tree for five years and there's no growth and everyone's laughing at you and nothing's happening and your video's stuck on 300 views and then it grows 90 feet tall in how long? I should know this by heart now. It's fast. Let's go 90 feet tall in three days. And that's what happens. It all happens at once. It's not even that anymore. The algorithms favouring short term wins. If you were to post. you know, for the next month or two, you will have a video that reaches much, much more people than all the other ones. This is, this is not even something you have to do for five to 10 years. I reckon if you posted for the next two months, you'll get a video that just goes that five or six people shared that. And then all of a sudden it got 10,000 views instead of 300 views. And that's what we call about niche rather than viral 10,000 views. If you're speaking to physios in Australia, That's a large percentage of the physios in Australia. And Bex experienced this with the Clinic Mastery Podcast.

Jack O'Brien: We've gone niche viral, folks, if you're unaware. We'll let them go back through the feed and see if they can find it. Mick, in just a moment, we're going to go super practical. We're going to speak to condition videos or using local geography in the background, so just prep yourself for that, Mick. But before we move on, Beck, I want to speak to that mindset and the psychology piece of overcoming that internal resistance, overcoming the barriers. When I think about your journey, Beck, there's that confidence to even call yourself a clinic owner initially through to then, you know, you were emceeing and hosting AgroClinic Summit and getting on stages. You've invested in yourself and your public speaking. You're now the co-host. of the Grow Your Clinic podcast. I'm sure there's been a lot of internal resistance to overcome and I want to publicly acknowledge you. You've worked so hard at overcoming those and now you stand out so much. You've created your own brand and it's someone I feel really proud to work alongside and to champion and cheer on. What's that been like for you?

Bec Clare: Firstly, I'm just going to sit and enjoy that compliment. Thank you, Jack. It means a lot because I have, I've actively worked on it. And where I got to was that I did a couple of things. Firstly, I channelled my nerves. And so what I mean by that is it's normal to get nervous before you turn on your camera. It's normal to get nervous before you step on the stage. It's normal to get nervous every time I jump on this podcast. The nerves, however, are a sign that I care.

Jack O'Brien: Yes.

Bec Clare: And the moment I don't get nervous with these things anymore, I know I should be doing something different. So I've just actively channelled, yes, I'm nervous because I care about the message that I'm delivering and I'm going to channel that. And second is I just decided to surround myself with people that I admired who are really good in this space. Listen to podcasts, watch yourself, Jack, and watch you, Mick, jump up on the stage and present and what you did before, what you did during, what you did after. Tune into Mick's socials and just start to see what other people are doing and go, I admire that. I'm going to try that. And it's, it's worked for me. And ultimately, what is it that you've got to, the five people that you spend your most time with will become a reflection of who you are as well. So I'm being really purposeful about who is in my circle, who's going to help me develop those skills and potentially unlock some opportunities, um, to just continue to learn and grow. And I've learned so much by being just surrounded by all of you.

Jack O'Brien: Appreciate that. You just got to get out there, right? Start. Andrew told me in a recent episode, talk about that notion of going pro and overcoming the resistance. It's having that mindset of like, yeah, I'm going to approach this like a scientist and test and measure and tweak and evolve, but I'm a content creator. is an identity that I now have. I am on Instagram. I do create reels. It is an identity shift that we need to own. Mick, let's talk practical. In the last segment of this podcast, I'd really love clinic owners to walk away with something that they can action and implement. And again, I'll share my screen here. You spoke at the summit around a couple of different ways that maybe clinic owners can think about starting to create content. You spoke to some welcome videos, you spoke to condition videos, you spoke to having local landmarks or geography as trust signals in the background. Can you speak to some of those elements and how clinic owners can get started this week?

Michael Rizk: Yeah, I think if you're starting from scratch, make it easy. And the first thing I'll do is just bouncing off what Beck said is go and find five to 10 pages that you like and you'll get ideas from them. And we still do this in our clinics. I'm like, hey, this clinic's popped up on my feed. I really love the look of their content. And then we just go and try and emulate that for a season. Simple videos would be outward facing. Because if we're starting from zero and if one of the barriers is you being on camera and you're not sure what to say, that doesn't need to be a barrier. Outward facing videos do just as well. That can be going for a walk down the local main street of your clinic and highlighting some of the things that you notice. It can be just seven seconds of walking into your clinic. It can be seven to 10 seconds of someone treating a patient. And a lot of the magic can happen in the copy. So you might want to describe exactly what your clinic does for a knee condition in the copy. And that is a very easy video. You walked into your clinic, you captured 7 to 10 seconds of someone treating a knee, and then you're spending 1 or 2 minutes writing the caption. That video has just as much chance to get a big amount of reach as a very prepared piece-to-camera video.

Jack O'Brien: And so just specifically, they call that B-roll in the game, and really what you're saying is there's no faces or words being spoken in this 5, 7, 10 second clip. It's just a 7 second clip that plays on repeat and all the information is in the text that goes over the video or is in the text in the caption. We call that copy in the marketing world but it's the text that does the heavy lifting and there's just a 7 second kind of background clip playing behind it, right?

Michael Rizk: And so here's what I'd do. I'd walk into my clinic. I'd film someone doing a squat in my gym or getting some manual therapy around their knee. That's the video. On the video, I would say something like, what I wish you knew about your knee pain. So when you're looking at the video, there's a caption over the video that says, what I wish you knew about your knee pain. Now, if you're a patient sitting at home and you've got knee pain, that's pretty catchy. You're going to go, Oh, but you know, what, what don't I know about my knee? And then you as the clinician or the owner, you've probably got some pretty cool thoughts or unique thoughts about how you treat knee pain or how your clinic does that. And you can put that in the written word. So if you're someone who's more comfortable with the written word, that can absolutely still serve you really well.

Bec Clare: A couple of the posts that I've really enjoyed off of your feed recently is a simple photo of a team member and all the conditions that they've seen for that day. What I love is that it tells clients that you're experienced about treating these clinicians and it also, I think, attracts like-minded physios to be like, oh, I may be working in an industry where I'm not getting to see that runner's knee and I would love to do that. They're so simple and I just love it.

Michael Rizk: Yeah, thank you. And I'm challenging my team now to go deeper with that post. So it's like, rather than putting the seven conditions, yeah, it might be what I just described as like, tell me more about what you uniquely did for that person's knee or shoulder pain. And one step further is like, describe the person. It's like, today I treated a 50-year-old painter who's getting shoulder pain, and this is what we did differently. That's going to really speak to young health professionals about how you're treating your values, but it's also going to speak directly to that patient. Imagine if you're a 50-year-old painter with shoulder pain and they're like, oh, that's the person to see. Isn't that too niche though, like 50-year-old painters? Yeah, it is niche, but I think we're in a niche profession. The goal really isn't to go viral, we've mentioned that word a lot, and it's cool if you do. A lot of clinics in our circles have had videos that have done 1, 2, 10 million views and that's exciting. But it's probably not the goal. The goal is to speak to the 100 physios who might want to work for you in the next two or three years or the 10 people in your suburb who know the coffee shop you just walked past that have knee pain. That's very practical. Speak to that.

Jack O'Brien: What do you mean, the coffee shop you walk past or we shared a screenshot there of you doing a piece of content or one of your team doing a piece of content in front of a local bridge. Why is that useful? Talk to us about that.

Michael Rizk: It's social media being about trust and if you were to start a video saying something like, hey, are you a, insert suburbs, I'll just use Roselle, our suburb, are you a Roselle local? in the background is the bay run at Roselle, which is a seven kilometer loop around the bay that everyone in Roselle does every morning. So, it's just like, I trust this person, they run where I run, they live where I live, and they've said, hey, do you live in Roselle? And then if they speak to my condition, do you have knee pain? It's like, oh my God, you're speaking right to me. And then that's a trust signal, which is more likely to invoke the next step. which is like, you know, download our guide, book in for a consult, drop us a DM. Define trust signal. It's a good challenge for me because it sounds obvious in my brain. Trust is… A trust signal is… probably a faster way to build trust than having to do a thousand videos, right? Trust can take a long time. Maybe it's a way of accelerating trust. I know this person, I trust this person, they're like me. We trust people like us who live where we live.

Jack O'Brien: It's a non-verbal Easter egg or a cue or a subtle hint in the background that people can resonate with, that builds affinity. To your point, I actually recently heard someone speak about the power of doing content in front of train stations. because it really clearly states the suburb. It's actually hard to find a sign with a suburb on it, street signs, but it's very tricky. But in front of a train station, it has the suburb right there. To your point of like walking past a cafe or having a really well-known landmark in the background. Perhaps it then even extends into collaborations where we work with other gym owners or preschool centers, daycare centers for those in the speech and OT and paediatrics world. Maybe there's a particular keynote speaker at a conference that you can partner with and it builds this credibility and knowability because there's We've used the, I don't know what the technical term is, but we've talked about Muppets on Instagram with massive followings that don't know what they're talking about. But conversely, you can find people who are really well-known and trusted on Instagram that you can partner with, do a collab with. and it garners some of the trust that people have in them, it flows over to us. Super powerful, those trust signals. Again, Mick, you spoke to that unknown and unlimited upside. What are some other non-obvious upsides that have come from content. Can I double-click on the trust thing? Please, before, but don't, you've got to come back to the unknown and unlimited upside. But yes, content.

Michael Rizk: Our highest performing paid ad for our clinic that is in a lower socioeconomic suburb that struggles to grow like our other clinics grow is the one in front of the train station. And it's got the Padania sign out the front. And the best comment we ever got is, why are you physios always hanging out at the train station? Because we've done so many videos.

Jack O'Brien: I can see my feed next week with all the physios in front of all the train stations.

Michael Rizk: Yeah. And I'm like, maybe these guys aren't that successful if they're always at the train station. I really like that. So yeah, no, it was good. The non-obvious upsides. Well, maybe the non-obvious one is the trust. It's like the obvious one is it turns into clinicians that want to work for you and patients. The non-obvious one, you touched on it earlier, Jack, is the level of connection before they've even started with you. So a non-obvious one would be, I reckon it increases your PVA. Because your patients have seen you for a while, there's trust that's built. They're more likely to stick with you if it gets a bit messy or there's any uncertainty or they're not getting better as quick as they thought. So there's probably a non-obvious upstream effect, which is patients probably stay longer. Clinicians probably perform higher because they know your standards because you speak to them on your social media page. Non-obvious ones have been like brand deals and collaborations that have happened with other gyms or run clubs. As rightly or wrongly, I kind of, it's weird, I disagree with this principle, but I leverage it at the same time. It's like, I want to work with you because I've seen a few of your videos. I don't think we should trust people just because we've seen a few of their videos, but that's kind of what happens. We're just like, oh, you're in the same space as me. I'm on Instagram too. I saw your video. It's like an automatic bond that feels weird to me, but it's led to a lot of successful partnerships. What about you, Beck? Anything non-obvious come to mind?

Bec Clare: It's actually going to ask Mick a question about jumping on the bandwagon. I'm happy to come back to that one, Mick. Jack, can I ask Mick, if you're seeing things out there that are being spoken about, so say you're a dietician in our environment and things like the Ozempic drugs are really – they're spoken about a lot. Would you leverage and jump on the bandwagon? Similarly, if you're paediatric clinic in the NDIS space, and there's a lot of chatter at the moment in the news about NDIS. Would you leverage any of what's being spoken about in your socials?

Michael Rizk: Yeah, yeah. Be part of the conversation. I'm going to lean on Gary Vee again, and if you are interested in starting your socials journey, you need to follow these people, right? Like, start with Gary Vee. He said that it's interest media, not social media now, which in a way you have permission to talk about funny things like playing Mario Kart, like playing the board game Catan, like the NRL team you support or the AFL team you support. I was speaking about the Ashes when the Ashes were on, on iMove Physio page, and those videos did quite well. And again, that's trust. If you're a 40-year-old who loves cricket, and you're a tradie as well and you're like, oh, that physio is talking about cricket. You're going to want to see that person over the stuffy post that's just about shoulder pain with no trust signals. Um, so yeah, I think that's powerful. The second thing with Gary V, he said, set up chat GPT or Claude to just send you the five to 10 trending articles in your industry in the morning. And then you wake up and you've got the articles and you can do a green screen video. So just going back to the practical that Jack wanted. Now you've got 10 articles that might open up on a website. You screenshot the article, you go to Instagram, you tap the green screen button, and it's just you talking in front of a background on the latest article on Ozempic and you give your opinion. And it feels like a news article and that's interest media. It's combining what you do as a profession with interest. So yes, I would do that.

Bec Clare: I love that. Mick, I actually remember some really old Instagram and Facebook videos that your team were doing on a Friday where they would do plant care. This is going back a little while, but I absolutely loved those. My plants at home are now alive because of that team member who was looking after the plants. But you can see here, you're in Sydney, I'm in Adelaide, and I was tuning into these Friday videos about plants. It's nothing to do with physio.

Michael Rizk: Yeah, yeah. It's stickiness and it's relationship. Our patients would come in laughing with Laura about the previous plant care video. And that's trust and stickiness. And if something goes wrong, you're more willing to have a harder conversation. And if the patient's not getting better as quick, there's a relationship that's been built on interest. And that's the stickiness and the upside of potentially PVA, if we got practical again. Super practical.

Jack O'Brien: I guess to get specific in some of the marketing theory of top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel, when people first come into your ecosystem, they don't need your five tips on advanced stage three rehab for this surgery. It's the entertainment stuff and the character building stuff. The clinics that do this really well build characters in their practice. There's someone who's the super nerd and there's someone who's a little bit more relatable, edgy or funny. And so playing the character game, playing the entertaining game, jumping on some of the trends, This is top of funnel. It builds the audience and then over time, that audience can start to, they'll start to binge on your, you know, injury prevention things or how to help your toddler with their development or whatever the case may be. So, you know, the different styles of content for different parts of your audience's journey towards you. It's interesting, Mick, you mentioned, and we opened this podcast with the comments around Pokemon and you finished with this final slide here. I'll share my screen as we do this. Do you want to maybe describe this slide for those who are listening along and then speak to the key message here, what you're trying to get across?

Michael Rizk: Yeah, so the slide is the Magikarp card that I've been looking for for a long time, that I eventually bought. And the caption says, you don't need to go viral. You just need to start and evolve. And that's, for those who don't know Pokemon, Magikarp is the most useless Pokemon and he just splashes around. And then one day he evolves to the most powerful Pokemon called Gyarados. So a bit of nerd trivia for you. And that's why I like Magikarp. It's a great analogy for business. And it also relates to the thousand pot story, which you guys have probably heard, but you get two groups. They need to make the perfect pot. One group plans it for months and months and months and makes one. And the other group just starts and does a thousand pots and they eventually get to the perfect pot because they've done the thousand. So it's the same for content. I think if you can be brave and maybe you get some energy from the podcast, start with a seven second video, start with you in front of the train station and see what it turns into. Amazing.

Jack O'Brien: Thank you, Mick. Now, if people want to connect with you, obviously, you coach through Clinic Mastery. If you're interested, folks, in getting some help to grow your clinic, to fill your books, to learn marketing, to understand what it means to build a brand and build a business, you can email me, jack@clinicmastery.com. We'll make sure you're a good fit. And if it all lines up, then there's an opportunity to work with Mick or Beck or any of the coaches on our team. But that's how to get Mick. Mick, you also work with young teams, well not just young, young and old teams with your network. So can you describe how clinic owners can look into that a little bit more?

Michael Rizk: Yeah, you can follow me on Instagram. I eventually got there to that physio guy. And in the link tree is all the things that I do, but you'll be able to get a feeling of the content journey as well. I just turn the camera on and speak to young physios. And for clinic owners, we have the Private Practice Apprenticeship, which is a school platform where I help young new grads with their consult, their consult pacing, their structure, and it ultimately leads to better rebooking and a higher PVA.

Bec Clare: I love that you continue to talk to the fact that it's for young physios. Our entire team are in there, which range from team members who have been out for six weeks to 16 years, and they're still gold nuggets that they pick up. They've just come off a session with you now, and the energy in the clinic's amazing, so I appreciate you.

Michael Rizk: Thank you. I have to work on my pitch for all physios.

Bec Clare: For all physios.

Jack O'Brien: Never too old to be an apprentice. Awesome. We'll make sure, folks, we link that up in the show notes, which are over at clinicmastery.com/podcast. But specifically, that would be Instagram, thatphysioguy over on Instagram is the place to connect with Mick. Well, this has been wonderful, super practical, a lot of mindset shifts and Mick, we just Really grateful for your contribution to Clinic Mastery, to the summit a couple of weeks ago, and ultimately to our professions all across allied health. A rising tide lifts all boats and you are a key driver of that rising tide. So we honour you, appreciate you, and thank you so much for joining us today, Mick. Thank you. And Bec, thank you for joining me. Shall we invite Ben Lynch back?

Bec Clare: As if he can help me with my Italian.

Jack O'Brien: Well, maybe you can, maybe you can't. However, we do have another Summit speaker, keynote speaker joining us on the next episode. Pete Flynn is joining myself and Hannah on the next episode. So if you're listening to this when it's released, then make sure you come back in a couple of days' time to catch up with Peter Flynn talking all things marketing, Google Ads, AI, and maybe some Taylor Swift. If Nick, Beck, you recall, there was a little bit of karaoke happening.

Bec Clare: I can't believe we're giving Pete the mic again.

Jack O'Brien: Maybe we'll get him to put his karaoke skills on record for the general public. We shall see. Again, as always, folks, clinicmastery.com/podcast. For all the notes, links, that physio guy on Instagram to find Mick. And if you want to know anything about how Clinic Mastery helps you to grow your clinic, email jack at clinicmastery.com. There is no AI in my inbox. I'll be there ready to go. We look forward to seeing you on another episode again really soon. Bye for now.