Ramez Antoun on Growing a Specialist Business and Attracting Clients

In this episode, we welcome physical therapist and strength coach Ramez Antoun, founder of Spine PT University. Ramez shares his journey from private concierge PT to building a thriving B2B education business, teaching sports physical therapists how to solve sciatica and progress patients back to the gym. He discusses the challenges of shifting from insurance-based to private pay models, the importance of refining messaging, and how listening to clients transformed his marketing.

Key topics include:
- The evolution of Spine PT University and responding to market demand
- Balancing clinical work, business growth, and family life
- The power of customer listening and using client language in marketing
- Lessons learned from a failed launch and the value of embracing mistakes
- The founder’s role in marketing and messaging
- Overcoming self-doubt, rejection sensitivity, and the impact of therapy
- Practical tips for content creation, handling trolls, and building authority

Connect with Ramez on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/spine_pt_university/) or visit spineptuniversity.com. This episode is a must-listen for clinicians and entrepreneurs navigating business growth and personal development.

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Transcript

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Hi and welcome to the Authority Builder Podcast today I'm so pleased to be joined by physical therapist and strength coach RaMez Antoun, he is the founder of Spine PT University, a spine rehab education and consulting company, teaching physical therapists how to solve sciatica and then progress patients back into the gym. And I'm also really pleased to say he's one of my peers in, the Get paid marketing program. And we came in the same cohort 10 months ago now, Mez, and yeah, it was January, right. And time flies. We were part of a particularly small cohort and I feel like that led to some kind of stronger bonding and yeah, I feel like you are probably the person that I have the most had, had the most interactions within that program. So, a business pal as well, I will say. so Mez, welcome. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. This is awesome. And so Mez, for people, listening who don't know you yet, share a little bit more about who you serve and, and what kind of work you do at Spine PT University? I mean, I love the fact that it is such a literal name that you can figure it out pretty much from, from the actual business name, which you can't with mine. Everyone thinks I'm a coffee shop, but can you go into a bit more detail? Yes. So I serve, sports, physical therapists. So these are basically physical therapists who have a foot in a sports medicine clinic. Yeah. And then one foot in a strength and conditioning or athletic performance space. And, our niche is helping these clinicians learn how to evaluate, treat, and then progress patients with sciatica and or back pain from the clinic, back to strength training, back to athletic performance. So that is what I do in a nutshell at this. Which has taken years to refine, by the way. Yeah, I was gonna say, what has been the journey that's led you into this very niche niche, like helping PTs with spine rehab and sciatica in particular? So if I give you the brief version. So I started way back getting out of insurance-based physical therapy and just doing private concierge physical therapy. Right. And that was what I was doing. And back in 2014, that wasn't very popular. So I had other physical therapists know that I had done different residencies and fellowship, and strength and conditioning internships, and they were interested to learn how I put that all together. So therapists were just coming to me while I was doing this concierge private pay stuff, like, Hey, can you teach me how you put this all together? And so it really, I was basically called into it and I, at first I kind of said to these people like, listen, I don't have time to mentor anyone right now. But they persisted. And I was like, all right, fine. We'll put a curriculum together. I'll teach you. I had one guy come to my apartment twice a week for like nine months and I just taught him everything I knew. and then once 2020 hit, COVID hit, I had another clinic owner ask me to mentor him virtually 'cause he had all this extra time. And, then I basically took what I taught live years ago and then put it into this online curriculum through Zoom and then word of mouth, like the next clinician came, the next clinician came and it was very one-on-one. And now it's evolved to group coaching programs and self-paced do it yourself courses. Very good. So the people literally asked you to start your business. Yes. Basically. So, so at this point, do you still do any of the actual kind of treatment work with private clients? Yes, I do. So I have a, a 400 square foot gym space off the back of our house, and that's where I see private clients now. But my primary focus is spine PT right now. B2B training other physical therapists. So I only see private clients like once a week and mm-hmm. Yeah, I've, because before I was doing too much juggling, so I had to really start narrowing my focus, especially when I started the GPM program. Basically, I feel like I'm back in school for business and marketing and sales because I, I don't know if this is true or if this is just the story that I'm telling myself, but it feels as if I came into the program with very little marketing. Knowledge compared to everyone else. so I felt like this year I've had to do a lot of deep work with marketing and putting in all of my critiques and getting my emails and my copywriting. So it's been a lot of work. So that's why I'm not seeing as many private clients at this point. Yeah, absolutely. 'cause the thing is that the, there is like the, I call this percolating time and I never used to appreciate this, but I think when you're learning something new, there is like, there's not just the time that you're doing the learning, right, or the applying, there's all like the mental mm-hmm. CPU that is above normal as you're processing all this stuff outside of the time that you're consciously working on those things. And, and it is tiring even if you're like, but why am I so tired? Or like, why am I like brain fog? this is what I feel. I Oh no, you. This is very, you nailed it. And then like we were talking about before we started the podcast, I have a 4-year-old and a 1-year-old at home, so that. That also takes cognitive real estate and emotional bandwidth, you know? Mm-hmm. Nice. I love my kids to death, but at the end of the day, it's like I'm learning marketing and sales online. I am a committed dad. Committed husband, right. I still have private clients. I also do per diem work for a home care company to have consistent, money coming in so that I can pay for ads. You know, so there's just, again, like I said before, I'm. Juggling with all five limbs in the season of my life and by my fifth limb is my, is my head and neck, by the way. I'm not, I don't have a weird, I don't have a weird tail or anything. Just checking. Just checking. Well, you know, my, my sister-in-law who's, super got an incredible job and, we have kids pretty much the same age. She lives on the next street from me, and I'm super lucky to have her nearby. She always talks about this analogy. She, I think they had, somebody come and talk to people who are returning to work after having kids and, and somebody who's speaking to them said, look, it's a juggle and off the balls you're juggling with, some of them are plastic, some of them are glass. You've just gotta know which ones you can drop. I love that. Yeah. Isn't it great? And I can't remember, I'm stealing that. Yeah, completely. I think we spread it the more the merrier because it helps when you drop a plastic ball knowing, you know, having that permission almost from that statement. You know, that's, oh, that's so good. Okay. It's gonna happen. I've never heard that before. That is so good. Smash things. Okay. Your children. so you, so we, you mentioned in our pre-chat, and I know we've, we've obviously been speaking a lot over the past few months, but you knew that your product was strong because the people had literally asked you for it, and people were kind of saying, start this business effectively, but messaging felt like the missing piece for you. Mm-hmm. And how did you recognize that was a gap and, and what was the turning point for you on that? I mean, it, it was very obvious as soon as I created a landing page and no one clicked or signed up, right. It was like, oh, okay, this is not working. You know? So I was like, all right, I know how to deliver this service. I just don't know how to communicate it upfront to get people's attention. Mm-hmm. And I didn't just Have this realization myself, obviously at first I was like, okay, no one's clicking, no one cares. But then there's a lot of, there are a lot of business coaching coming up, business coaches coming up in our physical therapy space. 'cause a lot of physical therapists now are moving from insurance to private pay. Hmm. And the only way to do that effectively is really to get your marketing and sales shit together. Right. So I've been consuming a lot of content podcasts, reading books. I went to a couple conferences and I was just oh, there's this whole, this is what marketing is, this is my problem. Mm-hmm. And it was through just educating myself through free resources at first, that made me realize, oh, okay. I just need to really refine my communication and my messaging here. Um. And that started a very, very long journey. And I'm still on that. I feel I'm gonna be on it forever because we can always communicate better, you know? Oh, completely agree. that journey never ends. Now that I'm more well versed in market, I feel I was a white belt at the beginning of GPM. Now I'm, I feel I'm a yellow orange belt at this point. Yeah, absolutely. And I, you know, I think the, the kind of, the thought that. You're a white belt or you're oh, there's this whole thing called marketing, or Oh, now I get why nobody's clicking on that OC 10 page or whatever. To me, that is opportunity. 'cause you are not gonna be alone in that space. Right. Your peers also won't get that. So the fact that you recognize there's something different and you're willing to lean into it, it's that's the thing that's gonna give you a hand. And, and as you say, the shift from insurance to private pay, the fact that you're just slightly ahead in that journey than those peers who are starting to address it now feels a real positive thing. Even though you feel like you maybe early on in the journey, I was like, at least you started on the path. You know, like that's a totally pretty big deal. And I completely agree. I don't think that's, I don't think, and I think this is just true of marketing in general, it did a marketing degree God, nearly 20 years ago now. And, and to your point about you felt the person who in GPM when we both joined, who maybe knew, I don't wanna paraphrase you and say it wrong, but knew little compared to other people who've maybe doing super. Yeah. I felt a super newbie. I mean, I literally did a marketing degree 20 years ago and worked in marketing agencies till this point. So by rights, I, I guess I should have, I should have had the ego to think, well, I don't need any extra help with that. But I think being humble and being willing to learn is the, is the kind of important, um, trait for the people who are ambitious. And, I know that it is a journey, rather than destination. And in terms of understanding what the listening, what the messaging is, I think listening to your clients and finding kind of points of resonance, is it, I don't think that ever ends. And I often think about marketing as literally being in the market and somebody saying, Hey, I've got oranges, and someone saying I want oranges, and then going over and meeting each other and, the purchasing of the oranges and. That synapse between person who has it, person who needs it in, in this world, it is all about messaging and it's all about capturing what that person needs and the destination that they want to get to. So on that point, what shifted when you started focusing less on the process and more on the outcomes that somebody might achieve through S Spine PT University? And any examples of how that changed your marketing or sales conversations? Yes. I think what really shifted for me is when, so I have like an online branding coach as well who helps me with marketing quite a bit, and yeah, she always says, ask your people. Oh my, yeah. So she just had me s start surveying people and she was just stop making up what you think they want, or stop trying to get in their head and pretend like you know what they're trying to say. It's like. Give 'em a survey, ask them, what are you struggling with? What's the most frustrating thing for you? Just simply ask them. And so I just created a Google, form survey and then, you know, every cohort and every webinar, I would just send it out. And then eventually I had this spreadsheet and I was like, oh, okay. And I just started copying pasting phrases that they were using, and then I just would riff off of that. But I would use that as my hook or my subject email or my headline. I would use that and almost like a chef in the kitchen using different spices. I would take different bits and pieces from the responses I would get. And then that started becoming, I started to personify my avatar and their language. And that was when I started to be like, oh, okay. And then I started to refine my own talk tracks as one of my coaches used to say, my own narratives and how I spoke. and or in, in terms of your copywriting or in terms of the conversation? no, just in terms of conversations. Yeah, just in terms of conversations with, like during calls, I haven't done, I haven't been in a rhythm with sales calls yet, so I haven't done a ton of those, but just like one-on-one conversations, the group calls, webinars, emails, landing pages, it just started to become the language that I used all around. Yeah. If you will, you know? Yeah. Um, ad copy. Yeah. And every time I, I don't really know what to say and I kind of get stuck. I sometimes I'll forget and then I'm like, wait a minute, why am I not going back to the responses? You know that from the surveys and then that helps me get unstuck. So that was the shift for me for sure. I was writing kind of on that note, I was, I had to write some emails this week for a sales sequence. and I dunno why, because I literally helped people with this, but I had complete blank page syndrome and I was like, God, where do I start? You know, I sat with a coffee outside of the, yeah, outside the coffee shop opposite my daughter's school. It just didn't drop off. I was pretty sleep deprived. It's been a tumultuous weekend of sickness in this household, put it that way. And and I was like, wait, did you just say you don't know why you were on a blank page? 'cause I'm, you, you told me you have two kids at home too, right? Yeah. No, I know it takes a toll on you, Charlotte. No, but I mean, I literally do this for people. Like, do you know what I mean? I know it totally. Yeah. Like I know and I know. If it was somebody else, I'd just like, but you do X, X, and X. But I just had a complete mind blank, and I couldn't, and then after about half of the flat white, it hit my stomach and started hitting the main vein of the, the caffeine, like started doing its thing. And and I was like, oh, I know what I'll do. I'll just go to So recently, 'cause we've both been doing live webinars, very frequently as part of the program that we're both involved in. And it's quite stressful initially. And then after a while you get into, and I was speaking for both of us, but no, I'll attest to that. it, it became a lot less stressful. It just became the norm. Just like anything where you're putting the reps in, it becomes more normalized, it becomes a habit, et cetera. Through the course of all those. Live trainings, we'd had a lot of questions come in, right? And at one point in the summer, I was looking for something for my assistant to do and I was like, oh, can you go through all of those Zoom recordings and pull out all the questions that people ask from the transcript and pull out all my responses to them and just put them verbatim in a document? And then I, used a bit of AI to kind of consolidate that and, build it out into a more standardized FAQs section. And then we put it on the sales page for that. Well that was easy and so obvious and we already have the stuff. So the other day when I had this hit, was looking at this blank page, it was like, Hey, and I'm just gonna bring up the FAQs and I'm gonna reframe all of those questions 'cause it's customer listening, right? Kinda reframe all of those and then expand out on my responses by adding in stories, et cetera. It was like they were like 21 frequently asked questions and therefore I had immediately 21 so effectively sales emails that were answering objections. Probably too many for this current situation that I'm in. But I think, we, you know, often when we're being told, 'cause I tell clients a lot to do customer listing and whether it's through survey or you're getting on a call and interviewing people or you're just making notes when they talk to you about stuff. Or one of my favorite things is when you've had a call just literally. I journal inverter Commerce by just recording in Tu Loom what I thought during that call. And then saving it for a rainy day, saving the transcript for a rainy day. People are telling you all the time what their pain points and challenges are and you know, and that's a really good idea. Don't necessarily listen and then we'll hit that blank page. You'd be like, well I dunno what to say to them. And it's like, well you do actually, you've been told all the time. You just have to be better active listening and, and use the resources you have. Not to say Step Up Mez, but you know, you are doing it already, but yeah, yeah. We always have so much more than we think we do, even if we are not doing a survey. I just went on a massive rant, but, so no, no, no, that's, but that, that gave me a really good idea actually. 'cause so you, right after you get out o a call, you run a Loom video and just say what's on your mind. Yeah, like a verbal dump of notes instead of writing notes down after the call. And then like you can That's brilliant. I'm definitely doing it. Yeah. I mean, I, I, it's a rant because Yeah, there'll be something that I can see that seems really obvious or there'll be something they've said and I'll know that they weren't fully digested my answer and I'll know that's because we need to have several of those conversations for 'em to get to that point. It's just, again, it's the percolating thing. it's, it does just take hard Repetition is the mother of learning, right? Yeah, absolutely. And when something's new, it takes a while and you need to look at it. I remember. Somebody describing me like, look, hold the problem lightly and look at it from all angles, like a diamond, like a jewel or something. And I do think it is a bit like that when you're introducing somebody to a new topic, even if it's something they actively want to apply, they do kind of need to see many facets of it before they're willing to kind of take the next step. So I get frustrated sometimes in those calls because I'll know that what I've said won't have landed because I'll know that from experience, I'll need to say it several times. So in part, it starts as me just trying to, to vent some like frustration that I haven't been able to communicate that in a way that has landed fully. So yeah, just a quick kind of learn thing for me. Voice notes and, and. Recording, just saying it out loud is just so much more efficient than writing ever will be. mm-hmm. Same. But yeah. I also have, I dunno if you're on a Mac mess, but I've also, okay, so I've also changed the control button, so if I double click it, it's voice to type, which has been what you can do that. Oh my God. It's a game changer because I've been doing voice notes to myself for sure. Yeah. But you went to settings and so when you double, like when you double tap the. Oh no, I, I, well on there it's different. So if you go, so for, for the people listening on audio, Mez has his iPhone up, but like for example, if you go to WhatsApp and, actually I'm gonna leave this in because it may be useful to other people, but if you go on WhatsApp, you, you are about to type a new message. You see there's like two things. There's the one where you, your voice note one there. Yeah. Yeah. But then there's the one down here, like the Apple one on the keyboard. Can you see that? Yeah. Yeah. And if you touch it and then just talk to your phone, it does voice to type. Mm-hmm. So, you know when it's not appropriate to send a voice note. But what I've actually done is change it on my Mac studio. So when I, on this guy. I can double click control and it will, I can just open a Google doc and then just start talking at it and it will write it all out. Did you know that? So I do something actually similar and then you just reminded me of this. I haven't done it in a while. If you go to your voice, voice memos? Yeah. Voice memo app. Yeah. Did you know that after you leave a voice memo, when you click on it and then you click the three dots at the top, you can actually view or copy the transcript. I heard Claire say this the other day and I did not know that this was a thing. I dunno if I just don't have the right update to be able to do this, or whether it's just the kind of things that I've, so you're ready. So this, oh, boom. It says copy transcript. Oh my goodness. That's a good, and then I can just copy it and I can throw it right into chat. GPT. And then ask it to just outline and organize my thoughts for me. Yeah. So I, and then from there it's been whoa. Especially when I'm scatterbrained, Yeah. I, I, you just made me think of two other things. So in chat, GPTI love just doing the voice transcription thing. So I do, I just do Australian there, but then the, but it's better in voice members 'cause then you've got it organized. 'cause it's easy to lose things in ai, right? Mm-hmm. But I also, something else that, even if you don't have time to pull out a loom, um, you, and you just mentioned you're not doing as many sales calls, but you are on group calls. And so one of the things that I find really useful is just taking, so I have my fathom join all the calls I meant for a note taker. But one of the positive things about that is you can take out the transcript immediately afterwards. Mm-hmm. So sometimes if I know it's been a productive call, I will take, any, I use this for clients for another reason, but just. Like even a call like this where we're discussing things, I might now have an email that's like five ways to capture your, what your clients are saying, and just pull out the things from this. So take the transcript, put that into chat, GPT and say, Hey, I was talking about a particular thing in here that was really useful. Can you pull out everything around that and use my exact language and, uh, bullet pointer. And, and then in the future, I'm gonna format it as an email, something along those lines. Um, you know, it, I just, as somebody who's an avid note taker and list writer. The, the sad, the great sadness for me of the many kind of notebooks of just staring at a massive pile of them over there is that I write things that are very salient and important at the time that I'm never gonna look back on it. And one of the things that I love most about transcripts and AI is that I actually get to like, consolidate and build on the kind of mini breakthroughs that I have day to day, just because it's visible and it's easy to work with. Anyhow, customer listening, it's great. Also listening to yourself also. Great. So anyhow, I am, I'm gonna move on from that, but can you, um, 'cause I was gonna ask you about how you listen to your audience, but I feel like we've really fully co covered that. So let me ask you about business growth and, and bottleneck year. And I know a lot of clinicians struggle with scaling because they want to stay in the treatment room. How have you balanced being a practitioner with becoming a marketer and educator and perhaps through the lens of those. People who are making that shift now because of that shift to private pay and, uh, instead of insurance, like how are you seeing that play out? That's a really good question and I feel like I would be better able to answer it if my full focus is building the continuing education business. Yeah. Um, I feel like for me, that's how I've been, I've balanced it essentially. So to be really transparent, like my full focus is the online business. Yeah. Learning about marketing and sales for online business, selling, do it yourself courses and group programs per diem. Just working for a home physical therapy company part-time. Just to pay some bills. And then private clients paying me for concierge services. Um, so because I have made the decision that the continuing education online business is my focus, I've basically had no choice but to make marketing my focus. Mm-hmm. Naturally, from the decision I made to on what part of the business to focus on. And then actually to give everyone a little bit more of a backstory. Way back in 2020 when I was mentoring that clinician virtually during CID, he proposed, because at the time I was still doing private pay and then started doing this B2B mentorship stuff. Mm-hmm. And I didn't really know what to do with my website. I was like, I have to have a completely different website. Mm-hmm. Because I can't speak the same language to B2B direct to consumer. So at the time that student was like, well, hey Mez, why don't you see. Patients at your place in New Jersey Through my company up in Massachusetts. Now this is someone who I go way back with, like he was a couple years before me in grad school. So we had a lot of trust built up over the years. so long story short, for the last like three to four years, his business dealt with all of the intake, the sales process, the marketing, and then people would come through and book through them, and then I would just evaluate and treat and they would come to my house, right? Yeah. Yeah. So me basically outsourcing the front end of that to someone that I trust, allowed me to focus on the business and really developing my marketing skills throughout that time. And now just recently, because my podcast is, and my, marketing streams are bringing in clients. Just naturally, like physical therapists are actually coming to meet for back pain treatment. Now we're starting to basically, split like, okay, if someone comes in through my marketing channel, that's my client, people come in through your company. All right, then we'll do this split. Yeah. So I don't know. That was a very long answer to your question. No, no, no. Really. really interesting. 'cause I was just thinking of another client I'm working with at the moment. They're at that stage of business and they've got a phenomenal, innovative service, and such a, such a lovely person as well. But they have this big problem, which. They're at a crossroads, and every answer could be the right answer, but they're struggling to, you know, on a, it is easy to see objectively where you should go, and he knows that. But on a day-to-day basis, you're constantly being asked to choose which direction to go in. And as a result, being pulled too many ways and, and, you know, not being gung ho on one thing. And as you're hearing, I'm hearing you describing so smart, just being able to offload the mental load of finding clients with that side of your business and know that you're still gonna be able to find, you're still gonna be able to bring, the money in to pay the bills effectively and, and shift your mental load into learning in the other area. Because the way I see it is you're not just learning marketing, you are also learning to be an educator, right? you didn't, I mean, on the job, it's, it's, A mentor said to me, God, about 15 years ago, now you're either earning or you're learning. And at the time it was no, I can definitely do it, be doing both at the same time. But I think there is always a opportunity cost to learning and we don't always appreciate that when we're doing it 'cause we get frustrated with the lack of progress in terms of the earning. Does that make sense? And I don't. Absolutely. I, and you just described, and we haven't caught up on this real while, so I'm really thrilled to hear it. You just described how, you know, your own podcast, your own kind of marketing is bringing more clients into that business partners side of the business. So what, on, on that note, what has worked well for you finding clients recently? What is working in terms of bringing people into the spine PT University side of your business? for the B2B, yeah, for B2B. Yeah, definitely the ads. Paid ads. That's been huge. I, so before get paid marketing, I was in the lower ticket program with Claire, the absolute Facebook ads. Yeah. and you know, I went from having people signing up for my newsletter every so often to every single day. And I was just like, whoa. And I've been putting out organic content weekly for years, you know? Oh my gosh. You've got more patience than I have. So, and I still do. I just, but I love the creative side of that. I really do. So, what's working really well? Back to the question, paid ads. I think the podcast is definitely getting more popular and the combination of those two funneling into the building my list and my newsletter, those are like the three core. Pieces that have been very huge. And I think what is really important about that is two out of those three I actually enjoy doing. Which is the one you don't enjoy doing? I don't love writing emails. I am. It is starting to, I'm starting to enjoy it a little bit more. But again, I'm still on this really steep learning curve where I'll just like, I write a little bit too much fluff and so there's so much editing and you know, when you put in for critiques for your emails and your copywriting, you know, a 15 minute critique video sometimes will take me two, three hours. 'cause I'm like pausing, editing, rewinding, re-listening, you know? so I'm getting there with finding more enjoyment with writing emails. I think that will come with time. 'cause there's just something about getting your thoughts down on paper in a clear way from a writing standpoint. Yeah. but I do enjoy podcasting. I do enjoy creating organic content, and I do enjoy video editing. I didn't think I was gonna love it, but I've, I was always interested in art growing up, and I feel like it's let, this is allowing me to scratch my creative itch. Yeah. Whether it be like editing a podcast or doing some long or short form video editing. So yeah. Short answer to the question, the podcast, the newsletter and organic content on Instagram specifically has been the, and ads, paid ads, yeah. Those have been like the four core things. How are you driving traffic to the podcast? Is that people who are on your email list and then that's how you nurture them? Or are you using ads to drive people to the podcast? I actually just, right. before my last launch in, month ago, I had just started doing podcast ads, August. Leading up for a month leading up to, my launch in September. And honestly for year, I've been podcasting since 2021, I think, or 2022. Mm. I've just been posting on social media every time I have a new podcast, and then also just blasting it out to my newsletter. Mm-hmm. And along I'll have a companion podcast newsletter where it's, you know, they'll get the show notes or the outline of what the podcast talks about. Yeah. So for those people who want to read and listen, they have their notes. So that's basically how I've been rolling with that. But you've just started doing ads to the podcast? Yeah. I've only done it once, so far for a month. Leading up in the summer you said? Sorry. Yeah, August into the beginning of September. That was the first time I ran podcasts. Why did you stop it? Because to me it's, a budgetary thing or? No, I'll be totally transparent. my launch in September completely flopped and it was it was kind of devastating. 'cause based on the numbers and the history of this group program, I should have at least got five or six signups. Only one person signed up. and so I was expecting, you know, probably it was supposed to be at least a $12,000 launch. Yeah. ended up only being two grand. So yeah. At that point I just put a pause on all the spending. Yeah. And basically regrouped and I went into two weeks of just throwing in all of my assets into for critiques so that I could learn what I did wrong. And oh my God, did I, did I learn some rookie mistakes that I knew? On a cognitive level. But now that I have skin in the game and I made those mistakes going through the critiques, I was oh, okay. so yeah, that's why I stopped the podcast ads. I need to start those back up again. but yeah, but sometimes you need to feel the pain to actually listen and do the thing. Right. Not that you weren't listening before, but I, I do think 100%. You know, I just, I was also very overwhelmed by that, by that launch. 'cause I was just juggling so much stuff. Added a few different new, things to the launch that I haven't done before. Yeah. So way more email. So there's just a lot of clutter. Mm-hmm. And it also helped me realize that I need to hire a part-time VA to take some tasks off my plate so that I can focus more on high leverage stuff. 'cause there's a lot of things that. I'm doing that can be done by someone else that is probably way better at it than I am. And yeah, so I learned a lot from it, but that's essentially the reason why I stopped the podcast ads. But they're gonna, I'm gonna restart those up soon 'cause they're a pretty easy way to just promote the podcast. Yeah. And I, I think as well, I was just thinking a couple of things as you were talking. I was, I was gonna ask what is the time to, from finding you to purchase on average for a client? Because I know, for example, with my business, and this is different from many of my clients' business, depending on the, the value of the service and the, the kind of the industry that they work in and the need and the pain point of their own client. But for us, it's either somebody is immediately, oh, I can't believe this exists. I'm gonna buy it. Or it's almost 365 days precisely before they buy something. And so as as you are describing that and your expectation of what was gonna achieve, I'm just like. That, but you likely will achieve that because maybe they just needed more time and more, you know, more being talked to over a longer period of time. Yes, less than volume, for sure. So there's the average time for people to buy on my list. I'm still kind of narrowing this down 'cause I've grown my list in this program this year, like by like three to five times, right? Mm-hmm. So there have been people on my list. So let me answer the question concisely first. So three to six months usually is how long it takes someone to be on my list to buy. Yeah, and I've been growing the list all year. So there have been so many new people that have been on my my list for three to six months. So I had all of the numbers suggesting that this was going to be a decent launch based on previous launches. Right. But just to completely own my mistakes. there was so many marketing mistakes that I made through emails. there was just so much clutter, too many calls to action. There was so much that needed to be cleaned up. and I kind of sat back, I was going through my chron critiques and I was just yeah, I probably wouldn't have bought looking at this stuff. there was another rookie mistake where all of my emails, Charlotte, not until the last day I had forgotten to talk about the process and the curriculum and structure of the course. 'cause before this I was so, I was way too process oriented. way too, I was communicating too much about process and I wasn't communicating enough about outcome and using testimonials. Mm-hmm. And then for this launch, being in the learning phase and the way my brain works, I got hyperfocused on Outcome and testimonials. So it was I did this huge pendulum swing and forgot to talk about process and structure to the very last day. And then when Claire had me reach out to ask for feedback, why didn't you buy the, I only got one response back, but it was basically I don't know what, it's too pricey. Too pricey. Which I know is not right. I just didn't do a lot of things correctly, but I don't really know what I'm gonna learn in this course. And I was just all right, that's fair. That's totally fair. So I just need to balance more process, outcome, solution, problem testimonials. I just didn't have that balance, you know? Mm. Yes. Along with cluttered emails and too many call to actions, it was 'cause I was, there was an open house this time around. There was sales calls this time around. Yeah. So there was a lot of rookie mistakes. But again, you said, the pain that I felt from that flop of launch. I will never make those mistakes again. I There's no way, like, just reading some of my old emails now, I'm sitting back, I'm like, Mez, come on dude. Delete, delete, delete. This is, these are three emails in one email. Yeah. But mess, like, don't be too harsh on yourself. Like you have to make, you have to make the mistakes in order to move forward. you did something right. You did something and you put it out there. And the beauty of hearing that there were three emails in one email is like, you've got triple your value there next time, you know, you can recycle so much of this stuff. But I you, to your point about not actually talking about what the thing is, I, I think this is universal with a lot of the colors that I come across and, and myself. I think it doesn't matter what industry you're in, it almost doesn't matter what service you offer. Services are generally more complicated than products. and I know some of this is self-study, but involves some, well, this was a group program, right? So it's kind of This was a group program. Yeah. Right. but they get, they get the self-study course. Yeah. And then we go through weekly calls for it. Yeah. So the thing is, because we're in it every day, and you've created the curriculum most likely, and you've, you know, you've, there's been so much thought and process that has gone into this. Like, it just seems like it should be obvious to everybody. I did this thing in my business where the, the thing that got people most excited was the thing that I just took for granted because it's so, such a daily action for me. And actually I was skipping through to telling them, teaching them, and helping them with more advanced stuff, when actually that was really unhelpful because it was a massive disconnect. Mm. With this really basic, like the, the 1 0 1 kind of skill that I thought was, I was doing them a disservice by teaching them something that I thought was really obvious or helping them implement something that I thought was really obvious when actually not explaining that to them, nor educating 'em what that was. It was a stepping stone. And yeah, in my case I was just going into explaining really complicated things, so most people thought it wasn't relevant to them, but actually, you know, explaining the process of what that initial step looks like would've been the more valuable thing to do. So I think it, it shows up in this, for many businesses like this, and I see this especially with creative people, creative agencies, like they don't understand 'cause it's their ip and it's literally the context of their brain, like their creativity. There is no thing on the server where it exists, uh, or like thing that they can hand over. They assume that everybody's brain works like that. And the creative brain is so unique in terms of like how it makes. The leaps between different ideas and connects things together and creates it into something that is commercially, like commercially elevates a product or service. Like they completely like cannot capture the essence of that. And so they are commoditized, like people just think they don't get it. Like, you know, the people you're gonna buy into. I dunno if I really articulated that in the best way, but I, I find that really frustrating on their behalf because I feel really strongly in the, about the kind of like power of creativity to have commercial impact on businesses. And unfortunately creative people are often unable to kind of articulate that in a way that will help them have more commercial impact on other businesses, but also have commercial impact on their own business. So that's kind of, that's my mo basically. and so just wanted to ask something and you just said you acknowledge that you may need some VA support soon. Do you think that marketing and these kind of activities needs to be the lead of a company? because I hear really differing opinions about this. but how do you think this, could you have just enrolled somebody else in get paid marketing for instance, or working with your branding partner externally? Or do you think it needs to be the founder, owner? it's a bit loaded. I have a very strong opinion. Yeah. No, I'll start, I'll start by saying the expertise or the knowledge to have a strong opinion about this because obviously I'm a beginner in it, but my opinion, based on what I've gone through so far, I don't think anyone else can nail down the messaging like I can. Yeah, like I don't feel like I could have ever delegated that. And if I ever, if I did, I don't feel like it would be as solid as it can be. 'cause it, it really does have to come from, and this is gonna sound super cheesy from the heart, you have to reflect on your interactions with clients and what their struggles were and how you solve their problems. And to really understand your ideal client to really understand their pains, their struggles, like you have to have lived it and went through that journey with your people and see the transformation with them and have those emotions with them to really bring that to a landing page to really bring that energy to an email so that when people read your stuff or watch your videos, they. It's like an exchange of energy, right? So, mm-hmm. I don't think anyone can ever, not ai, not anyone. Like once the founder gets that emotion on paper and get, and it ref, it gets refined, then I feel like it can be delegated. But the founder always, I feel, needs to be an inter integral part of the marketing and the messaging. And if they don't understand it and have studied marketing and embodied it and start to identify themselves as a marketer, I don't really feel like you're ever gonna squeeze out as much juice as you can from the business. And when you bring other people on, which I have not yet. So I'll preface it with that too, is how can you transfer that, passion to your employees? If you don't know how to clearly and concisely communicate what you do in that way. Right. So it's for me, marketing is communication. it would, it doesn't make any sense for me, for a founder to be oh no, it's not important for me to learn how to communicate this better. It's what? what do you mean? You know, it's not like a SaaS company where it's just software as a service, you know? But even still, again, now I'm starting to talk about things I have no idea about, but it's especially when it's a service business and or you're educating people, I don't, it just doesn't make any sense to me how the founder wouldn't be an integral part of the marketing and the messaging. Yeah. I, yeah, I feel that, and I, I, I kind of disagree about sas. Uh, I'll come back to that in a minute, but I think that. Well, I know scientifically that in order for something to be memorable, it needs to be sticky. It needs to have a point of difference. And especially if you are a business that is ostensibly one person, whether that's like in terms of the, of the team size or you know, in terms of delivery, people are buying into mes, for example, when they come to Spine PT University, regardless of who's doing the marketing. So you need to be able to build that human connection with them in advance, in addition to being perceived as the authority in your space. I think that's super important and, and I think that that means unless you human Mez is involved. Heavily in the communication and the messaging around that. Maybe not the email scheduling or like the podcast scheduling or the, you know, all of that kind of stuff. Like customer inquiries coming in, you know, that kind of stuff. Like, but the, the center of it, like we'd call about, we talk about the waterfall. So like this kind of single source of truth being you, are you talking about one thing, not necessarily writing about it. And then everything kind of hanging off that and the hanging off the developing of those bits of content is, in my opinion, delegatable. But the, the single source of truth has to be your word on that particular topic for it, or in order for it to resonate in the way that in London, the way it needs to. But, you know, it's, it's not just human companies also, like in terms of SaaS. Like I think about the services that I, Relate to or have more of a connection with. Probably sounds like a weird thing to have with technology, but for example, Spotify I feel warmly towards, and Nike I feel warmly towards. And it is because there are attributes and ideals of those businesses that I relate to or aspire to or, and that is part of that emotional connection. That's literally what I did my dissertation on. I like inanimate objects in our emotional relationship to them and the, the brand influence of that because it was fascinating to me why I kept buying Apple products even though they kept failing on me. and look, I'm still here. Look. Yeah, like over, over 22 years on after the first MacBook. But, I think it's like an alignment of values is what is what you're suggesting. Yeah. And you're not gonna be for everybody, right? Like, right, like Mac's not gonna be for everybody. for everybody. But also Mez probably isn't gonna be for everybody. And that's good, that's for sure. It's that people identify that sooner rather than later. And unless they're listening to you, whether it be literally, or, you know, hearing your voice come through in the content that they're reading or, you know, whatever the marketing is, then they're not gonna be able to self-select in or out. And, and that costs you more money ultimately, if we're talking about on a very literal sense, because then you'd be spending money on ads. That are optimized with people that aren't gonna be your people, for example. Or there's, you're hosting people on your email list who are never gonna buy from you or you're wasting time if you ever did sales calls again on, you know, on those calls with people who are just like, actually, I don't think you're a mic cup of tea. And mm-hmm. Not only is that painful for to hear, because I know you kind of what I, I know we're slightly running out of time and I wanted to get onto kind of not necessarily rejection, but self-worth and how it's intertwined with business. But there is that I have some extra time if you do No worries. I, I do. I just have a couple more questions. That would be great. Yeah. But yeah, I think that it also, if you do verge towards what I've recently learned, the official term is rejection, sensitivity dysphoria, which is basically not wanting to be told that somebody doesn't like you, you know? Then it makes. Really practical sense to be more of yourself in the marketing. And then those people will be, you know, you won't even get on a call with them or you won't even get into the room with them. So, and that can only come from you. So I really feel strongly about that. And I work with lots of businesses where when we start working together, the, the founder owner is like, oh yeah, but I want this to be the assistant from the start. I don't wanna be involved. Like, well then it's gonna have a limited impact because it really needs to be your voice. Um, 100%. And I actually wanna just backtrack real quick when I said, need to hire a VA by no means, and do I, do I want to ever delegate out like the core marketing and the messaging? Hmm. For me, the, my first hire with the va, like I already have a hiring document crafted up it's formatting copy. Basic, like landing page design copy, like on Squarespace, sometimes you feel like it's like whack-a-mole. Like you move this over and like this thing gets in dented. And I'm like, I was like, can someone like, and I know there's people out there that can do this better than me, right? And it's like, I don't need to be doing that. So like, formatting, copying, you know, like, and then copy and pasting, like the podcast description, like those kind of things is what I'm delegating. But like, I'm actually starting to really enjoy getting into the deep work of marketing and messaging, which I never thought I would. Um, and so that's really interesting because I used to hate it and now it's yeah, I was gonna say I actually like this. It was painful, right? And you've very tested through it and you're like the good bit on the other side. It's still, it's still painful at at times. going through email critiques is but yeah, the clarity that comes on the other end of that is it's so blissful. yeah. Completely agree with you. It's worth doing the work. And then on that, through that work, you realize it is a journey and not destination, but somehow, and then you go back and you read. You go back and you read old copy from a few years ago and you're no, shit. Nobody bought. you know, I read, I was on a coaching call the other day and, I, I saw this, I was just ready to dig it out. Everybody, it feels everybody had had a really obnoxious week where they were I'm just, I'm not there enough. I'm not, it's not enough. It's not enough. And then I saw this meme the next day that said, I'm not everything I wanted to be yet, but I'm, a lot of things I wanted to be two years ago. And what a wonderful thing to realize that. And, and I think, ah, wow. The, great reframe. Yeah. The problem of the ambitious kind of small business owner is that you're not necessarily having a lot of conversations where you're patting yourself on the back about what has been achieved. as you are talking about the pain of reading those email critiques, I'm yeah, but you sent the emails and you just said, you said a lot more than usually do. You did a lot. Everything was a lot. So, and that, that's not what you were doing even six months ago, let alone two years ago. So some pats in back, please, Mez. Um, yes, for sure. Thank you for that. But there's nobody doing that when you work on your own. So yeah, there's a lot of growing up that happens throughout the process too. For sure. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Completely. And I know kind of on that note, I know we've talked a lot on our kind of, was this like private independent calls? There's none of those words are correct, but calls that we're not recording before about self-worth. Yeah. And how that affects. stepping into your authority and what have you been your biggest personal hurdles around the kind of term self-worth and work like? Yeah, it kind of ties in like the rejection. What was the, the rejection phrase you said earlier? Rejection, sensitivity, dysphoria. I down it explain so much for me. Go read, go Google that and then look at the definition. I was like, tick. Yeah. I mean that's, that's like the work, that is literally the work that I did with my therapist actually. Yeah. and then again, just to be very, transparent here. As an immigrant who almost got deported, there was a lot of belonging. That was the root cause of a lot of my, aversion towards rejection. And I think I brought this up in one of the GPM calls. It was like, for a long time, every time before I posted on social media, I would feel my heart racing. Like beating outta my chest before I posted. And it was like I was afraid to be seen. I was afraid to be out there. I was afraid to be rejected. I was afraid to not feel like I belonged. 'cause it brought up a lot of past emotions and that's where a lot of that came from. But through working with my therapist, through doing a lot of cognitive behavioral therapy through journaling, through what, Claire has us do in GPM through the model, you know, you really just start to, and for listeners who aren't familiar with that, it's basically like, okay, something happened. What thoughts are you having? How do those thoughts make you feel? And then what's the behavior that comes from that? Like, you either do something or you avoid something. And just being able to filter and categorize those different things and mm-hmm. Basically. Parse out thoughts from reality and then looking for evidence behind certain thoughts or lack thereof. And you start to just call yourself out on your own bullshit, right? On top of doing the thing. As one, as my personal branding coach says, just post, right? had I not done, had I not gone through immigration, trauma and that fear of rejection, I don't think just doing the thing would've helped. I might have been a little bit desensitized to it, but I needed to do therapy and go deep into that. Uh, so I think the combination of cognitive behavioral therapy specifically, and just doing the thing, now I'm doing the thing AKA posting and putting content out there because I really love my work. Right. And so for me, what I learned going through therapy is when I, way back in 2018, when I almost got deported by Trump, I used work as an escape and avoidance strategy hardcore, I went deep into my work. So that aspect of it wasn't healthy. However, now that I have brought that stuff into light, it's made such a big difference because now I can, I can more often parse out okay, I'm actually doing work because I love doing work, versus I'm using this as an escape and an avoidance strategy. And then I think I, I brought this up in a conversation with you months ago, but internet trolls, when you put out content and they just troll your comments, the, the work that I did around rejection. and the cognitive behavioral therapy work that I did when, when people were trolling my ads or people troll my content, there was this one night where I read a troll comment, I'm gonna call it, and then I went to sleep. And then I woke up the next morning and I realized, oh my God, I did not wake up in the middle of the night. 'cause a couple years ago, that troll comment would've made me lose sleep. And that's when I realized okay, this is where that work really comes to play. The cognitive behavioral therapy, working with my therapist, putting out content. the more content you put out, the more people that you troll. And then you realize like, oh, someone spoke badly about me on the internet and I didn't die. Right? Like my brand and my reputation didn't go down the drain, which was like one of my initial thoughts like, oh my God, if someone's gonna write me a bad review, if someone trolls me on the internet, my brand will be ruined. When I put that thought on paper, I was like, that doesn't make any fucking sense. Because for every one of those comments, there's a bunch of reviews and a bunch of people that are ranting and raving about what I do, you know? Mm-hmm. So that was in a nutshell, what helped me deal with my rejection sensitivity dysphoria. It was pretty intense. I know we've spoken before about trolls and, and just feedback just more generally. And, and for me, the way I deal with that is I just don't look otherwise I'll stop doing the thing. So denial is my strategy. And, I think I told you about this before. Sorry to interrupt you again, but, no, what I also started doing too, as to kind of like flip the script on the trolls. I wouldn't respond. I just don't respond to 'em. Yeah. Yeah. But I do use those comments. especially the ones that come from people within my industry as objection handling. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Webinars and emails. Yeah. Or like, I'll do a, I'll take a screenshot, use it in a presentation like, oh, like this is someone who trolled me and, let's talk about this. You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You weaponized it. I love it. Like, put it to use, recycle it. I love the recycling. but yeah, I don't know if a denial is necessarily the best strategy, but what I do know is it, I care so much that I take everything disproportionate. The negative stuff I take disproportionately strongly, to the extent that every time I get a positive comment. or, you know, some, something that is on the positive side. I screenshot it and I put it in a folder called good stuff on my desktop because I need, there are days where I need to go scroll through all of those things. And I have, at the moment, I've got two people, one of whom, so two people, in fact, three people that I've worked with relatively recently. I just, hit that kind of crucial moment in terms of the work that I've done with them, where the results are really starting to happen. And, they'll come back to me with like ad hoc information about that and be like, so it's working. Here's what's happened. Can we do more of this stuff? Well, what else should we do next? Can I continue to work with you? Which is great. And then I focus in on that. And then one of them is literally chasing me on email and he was like, I need you to capture a case study of what that did, you know, for my business. And he's like, he's literally chasing me to do this on behalf of my own business. I'm like, what is wrong with me that I am. And my own client is chasing me to, to do my own marketing. That feels like some real kind of like shooting yourself in the foot behavior there that I really need to learn from. but one of the things that my sister-in-law and I chat about is this term. Booze come from the cheap seats. And, you know, anybody who's been there and put their effort in is never gonna criticize you for the stage of business that you're at. Like, somebody who is much further ahead is never gonna be like, God, look at him. Look at her. They're gonna applaud you for doing the damn thing. Totally. Because they understand how hard that is to continue to show up and be visible, be doing stuff despite the discomfort, despite the fact that everything in your biological makeup is encouraging you to not stray outside the herd, not ri risk being rejected. Because historically, as cave people, right, which we have been for the majority of history, that would've meant almost certain death being rejected by the tribe. So we, we deliberately don't put ourselves in that situation. You know, I'm hearing you like when you've literally been almost rejected by the tribe of the Trump crew in the last administration. Like you have experienced that not just on a deep, deep evolutionary biological caveman sense, but also in the last seven years, and you're seeing it being repeated, so Yeah. Mm-hmm. That is a fuck ton to get your brain round and continue to do the brave thing. I don't know, I think anybody who's going through the process of that now and is like that, I know a couple of clients, for example, where they've done the hard work as in the actual creation of stuff. They're just not putting it out there and they're getting frustrated. I'm like, it's because you're not putting yourself out there and you just need to do, you've done the work, and I understand your frustration. Yeah. But actually it's just hitting the post button. Yeah. It, yeah, in whatever sense that is, it's the putting yourself out there, send, yeah. Mm-hmm. And I send the email, make the landing page live, post the social content. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm like, I can do that for you. So I'm removing it from your plate of things to do, because I don't have any attachment to that. But what your, your, where your frustration is coming from is emotional and mindset fear. It's not a practical application of a strategy kind of situation. And I think that's very hard for people who've not necessarily kind of tackled that in a work before to understand and be cognizant to and be willing to deal with. yeah. Which makes me, and I, and I strongly believe that like, even if you do it for someone, because they really don't want to, like, that's a temporary solution. And I feel like it's gonna show up some other way. Oh, for sure. You know, and it's like you gotta just face the demon. Oh God, that's so true in so many areas of life. Ugh. But I never wanna hear it, but yeah, I know, right? Well, just like, actually, just to kind of like put a bow on this, like last night, so I posted something yesterday and on Instagram, someone trolled the post that I did yesterday. And it was like, oh, fun fact. there's no evidence that these exercises are better than others. Right. And it was like completely not the point of the post. not, it was, that's not what was in the caption. That was not what the video was about or anything. And I was just like, okay, this is so dumb. 'cause they clearly, they not reading what was going. So I just got clicked on the person's profile and I go and I look at the profile and they have never posted, they have zero posts. Right. And then, so it's, when someone criticizes you or rejects you, or it's where is there, is there any credibility behind this source? Mm. Right. It's like this individual has never posted on social before, as far as I know, basically what I wanna see. So it's like there's no weight behind that, Versus if it's like someone who is putting skin in the game, to your point from earlier, if they have skin in the game and if they're doing the thing, they're most likely not going to be leaving those comments, right? Because they know completely, they know the effort that is put in behind putting out content, So it's like you kind of just let that blow in the wind. It's like, all right, dude, I hope that comment made you feel better about yourself. I'm going to bed now, like, I'm not gonna wake up. But I, I think, there's a way that somebody was, described this to me. Would you take advice from this person? And if not, why are you taking criticism from them? And I think that really sums it up. And yeah, and that doesn't mean ignore everything. It means pick where you're gonna receive, where you're gonna listen to that information from. I feel like I've just spoken a whole load of aphorisms today and quotes and stuff. It is my love language. but I, I'm conscious of time and how generous you've been with yours, Mez, can you, where can, can listeners connect with you and learn more about your courses or follow your work and, and who is best suited to that? Yeah. You can find me on Instagram Spine PT University. you can also find my podcast, find the Spine PT Podcast. and yeah, I'm very active on Instagram, so if anyone wants to reach out, they can absolutely just DM me, unless you go troll him and, yeah. Well, I welcome all the trolls. and then my website, spying pt university.com. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Mez. Thank you so much for having me. This was so much fun. I appreciate it.