E752 | Writing A Book To Dominate Your Niche With Matt Silver

How Writing a Book Can Transform Your Physical Therapy Practice: Insights from Matt Silver

In the latest episode of the PT Entrepreneur Podcast, Dr. Danny sits down with Matt Silver, owner of Alpha Project Physio in Frederick, Maryland, to discuss his journey in writing his recent book, "Built to Run". Their conversation explores the writing process, the impact of authorship on a local health practice, and innovative strategies to market and monetize this valuable resource.

Whether you’re a healthcare professional looking to expand your presence or simply interested in the journey of publishing a book, here are some key insights from their conversation.

The Writing Journey: A Three-Year Process

Matt’s journey to write "Built to Run" was anything but quick. He dedicated small, consistent time blocks of 30-60 minutes each night for three years to complete the book. It wasn’t an easy process; he faced challenges in editing and design that tested his patience and perseverance. However, by staying committed to his vision, he was able to produce a comprehensive guide for runners, packed with insights that only someone with his experience could provide.

Takeaway: Writing a book takes time and discipline. By setting aside small, regular time blocks, you can gradually work towards completing your project.

Authority and Attracting Patients

Matt's book serves as a powerful marketing tool for his practice. By publishing a book, he established his authority in the running niche, which has helped attract new patients to Alpha Project Physio. When potential clients see that he has written a comprehensive guide on running health, they are more likely to trust him with their care.

Takeaway: A book not only positions you as an expert but also leaves a lasting impression on potential clients, setting you apart in your niche.

Embracing Virtual Services

With the rise of telehealth, Matt has used his book to facilitate virtual running assessments. This allows him to reach a broader audience beyond his local community. The trust factor that comes with being a published author makes patients more comfortable seeking remote services, knowing that they are receiving advice from a credible source.

Takeaway: Publishing a book can expand your practice’s reach, allowing you to offer virtual services to clients who may not be local.

Effective Marketing Strategies

Matt sells his book directly through his website and uses it to build an engaged email list. By offering a weekly newsletter, he provides ongoing value to his audience, keeping them connected to his practice. Additionally, he gives free copies of the book to new patients, integrating it as a part of their care.

Takeaway: A book is not just a product but a marketing tool that can help grow your email list and provide additional value to your patients.

Exploring Future Opportunities

Dr. Danny introduces the concept of a "book funnel," where the book acts as an entry point to other products or services. Inspired by this idea, Matt considers creating an online course to expand on the book’s themes, further enhancing the patient experience.

Takeaway: Your book can serve as the foundation for a variety of other offerings, such as online courses, workshops, or consulting services.

Personal Growth Through Writing

Both Matt and Dr. Danny reflect on the discipline and mental fortitude required to complete a book. The process not only helped them grow professionally but also gave them a profound sense of accomplishment. Sharing expertise in a tangible format can reignite passion for your profession and inspire others.

Takeaway: Writing a book is a journey of personal growth that requires commitment and perseverance. It allows you to share your knowledge and passion in a lasting way.

Transform Your Practice with the Power of a Book

The conversation between Dr. Danny and Matt Silver illustrates how writing a book can transform a physical therapy practice. From establishing authority to offering virtual services and expanding marketing strategies, a well-crafted book can connect you with a broader audience and open up new opportunities for growth.

If you’re considering writing a book or want to learn more about the journey, listen to the full episode and gain valuable insights into how authorship can impact your practice. And if you're interested in Matt's book, "Built to Run," you can check it out here.

Resources Mentioned:

• Matt Silver's book: "Built to Run"
• Alpha Project Physio website
• Sign up for Matt's newsletter for ongoing tips and insights

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: [00:00:00] Hey, real quick, if you're serious about starting or growing your cash based practice, I want to formally invite you to go to Facebook and join our PT entrepreneurs Facebook group. This is a group of over 6, 000 providers all over the country. And it's a pretty amazing place to start to get involved in the conversation.

Hope to see you there soon. Hey, are you a physical therapist looking to leverage your skill set in a way that helps you create time and financial freedom for yourself and your family? If so, you're in the right spot. My name is Danny Matta and over the last 15 years I've done pretty much everything you can in the profession.

I've been a staff PT I've been an active duty military officer physical therapist. I've started my own cash practice. I've sold that cash practice And today my company physical therapy business helped over a thousand clinicians start growing scale their own cash practices So if this sounds like something you want to do listen up because I'm here to help you

What's going on doc Danny here the PT entrepreneur podcast and today we've got Matt silver on here One of our longtime mastermind members one of the running ninjas that we work with he owns alpha project [00:01:00] physio Which is in Frederick, Oregon Maryland with his wife, who's a badass women's health or a pelvic floor provider.

And he wrote a book and we're going to chat about, about a running book called built to run. It's a for a first book, it is incredibly well put together coming from somebody that wrote a book. Who, it doesn't look anything like your book, the project that you went through, like the actual effort to write this book.

I was like very impressed with the information and how it was put together. I thought it was a really good job. So today we're going to chat with Matt about, Hey where's practices. And also where's a book fit in, actually. Marketing and branding a local practice as well as the offshoots that can come from that as well So matt, I know you're busy.

You got a lot going on You got your wife is pregnant We were just talking about that and this yeah life is hitting it really is speeding up for you quite a bit Which is awesome. But I appreciate your time today. I know how busy you are

Matt: Yeah, it's I we were just chatting she's due in december We have another staff pc who's due in I think march or april.

So yeah, life's crazy. But You It's, it just, the process of making a book is I, Ryan [00:02:00] Holiday described, I forgot how he described it. It was like, you're shut yourself in a room and just like slowly bleed until it's finished. Like it's, it is a process, man. It's painstaking. But I just, I see a book.

It's it's, I, if we just go into marketing, how do you market businesses and stuff a book to me is we wanna provide value and it's, to me, it's the ultimate value generator of just creating a book That's just in my opinion.

Danny: Yeah, and it's, I think it's one of the hardest things to do that I, it's one of the hardest things that I've ever done is actually complete a book like it's, it is very difficult to sit down and organize your thoughts in a way that makes sense as well as the process of getting it edited.

You write your first draft and then you have to get it edited. If you have to have any sort of images in your case, a lot of pictures. That's a whole nother level where it has to make sense. The image has to make sense with the context of the words and the chapters, and they have to build on each other in a cohesive way, so we can get into all that.

I'm interested for you because with you alpha project physio. So you, it's you and a couple of providers where you're at running a practice in its own right [00:03:00] is a challenging thing, and growing that. But. From a time standpoint, as you decided, okay I want to write this book.

Where did you carve out time to do this? And did you pro did you proactively put yourself in a place to free up some of your own schedule through hiring other folks to be able to write this? Or did you just wake up super early in the morning and actually just knock it out?

Matt: Yeah, I did. I have I need to get away from this as we're growing, but I tend to choose the hustle more side of things.

Yeah. So instead of getting up early I tend to be night owl. I just work at night. So it was actually. I actually, I think I got this from, I think I got it from Kelly's Tourette of you have to turn off the work clock of we have cutoff time at 7 p. m. Like I can't do any more work after 7 p.

m. And then we hang out. And then it's after a certain time, I'm like, Hey, I'm just gonna work on my book for 30 minutes. I believe it's 30 minutes to an hour. I did every single night of just, No excuses, if I had kids, I hopefully the kids were at bed, but I don't have kids now, but if I had kids, I'd make sure, Hey, they're in bed.

Hopefully just, you want a minimal amount of distractions where you can just dive in and just work on it. Sometimes it was, Hey, I want to hit [00:04:00] like a 500 word goal. And if I finished beforehand, cool. Or I kept going, but it was, it's just every day you chip away at it. And sometimes on the weekends I'd be like, boom, I could bump out, three, four hours.

I have some free time, but yeah, during the weekdays I know it wouldn't get done if I did. All this work on the weekend and then nothing, two days a week, five days a week. I didn't do anything. So it was, I just, no excuses. I did 30 minutes to an hour just every day working on something with the book.

Danny: Yeah. Yeah. There's a man, Steven Steven Pressfield. I don't know if you've ever read any of his stuff. Ego is the, or I use it. The war of art is one of his books. Turning pro is another one. He wrote a series of three books about being an author, becoming an author professionally and.

One of the things he talks about in turning pro is the the bookend times of the day for creativity. So for some people, they find before anybody wakes up, they're uninterrupted. They can get into a state where they can focus. And then their day starts and they, but they've knocked out whatever duration of time, let's call it an hour, what you're describing, right?

But they've [00:05:00] chipped away at this thing every day. And they do it during this window of time where they're functional person in the morning. For other people. It's the other side of it. Everyone is asleep. They're still awake uninterrupted. There's no distractions. In the middle of the day, it's tough because your life is going on and you have obviously your clinic and there's plenty of other things that happen.

But for anybody trying to do a big creative project, those are the times that I noticed myself. I woke up early and I basically the same thing you're talking about, but before anybody else woke up, I would just get up. I would make a cup of coffee. I would sit there and I would try to, I would try to make something, have something come out, of my brain on the paper.

And it wasn't always good and sometimes it was great, sometimes it sucked, but it was something every day for about an hour before everybody would wake up. And then, from like basically five to six o'clock in the morning, I was writing and then Ashley would be up and the kids were up and getting to school and I'm done.

But at least you're like. Checking the box on that. So you feel like I feel like a big project like that. It's so hard because it takes so long. There's so much that goes into it. And for it to come [00:06:00] together, you don't really feel like you're making progress on it sometimes, even though you are, but to just be like, okay, it's If you're going to run a marathon instead of 26 miles, focus on one mile at a time, and one mile down, one mile down, like that to me was much easier than just being like, all right, I'm gonna try to type for five hours or whatever on the weekend.

That seemed really daunting. So how long did it take you from start to finish to actually be able to write this book?

Matt: That's a good question. I roughly I don't know the exact timeframe, but I believe it took me about three years because I remember. Like anytime I'm on a plane, I would just bump it out.

I would just I'm just gonna work the whole time on the plane. So I, I actually, I got a lot of work done on the plane. Cause I'm on a plane flying to the mastermind events and no one's talking to me. Yeah, that's true. I believe this year I didn't do it, but or the past one, I didn't do it, but I believe it had to be like three, three and a half years.

It took to make it. Wow. And it, the one part that was like, just, I, when I remember finishing the book, Danny, and I'm like, I didn't even want to read it again. Like I had. The way I was taught to write a [00:07:00] book is like you have, you call, we call it the vomit draft. So you just get it out there. Don't edit it at all.

You just get the info. You already have you have your table of, you already have a a table of concepts and just some ideas out. You just write it out. Don't, who cares about the spelling, the punctuation. You just got to get your ideas out. And then you edit it again. And Hey, make sure the content's in there.

And then you edit it a third time. Make sure it sounds good. It flows good. And a fourth time just to make sure, and then I hired a professional editor. So like the, and then I had to read it multiple times more when the interior design. So like at the end, I'm like, dude, I don't want to read this thing.

I've read it like nine times. It's 300 pages.

Danny: It was a lot. Yeah, that's a ton. I think for anybody listening to this too if you, my, my book took me like nine months just like basically working on it almost every single day. And that to me seemed like a long time. Three plus years is much longer, obviously.

And but your book has a lot more, there's a lot more that goes into it, especially with all the pictures and the sort of taking people through different tests and things that they can do. There's nothing like that in, in my book. But even like listening to this, if you're listening to this and you're like, [00:08:00] okay, how long could a project like this take?

It might take a long time and being able to like chip away at that and stick to that. That's where most people fall off. Lots of people have these ideas for books and I do, I have ideas for multiple books that I want to write. And it's the pain of it is it's so bad. Like the pain is so uncomfortable to me that, I'm actively actually chipping away at a second one right now, but just it's just such a difficult thing to do that, it's something that people put off and they put off.

And. On that note, I think it's one of the most unique advantages you can actually have with a business like going through the discomfort to actually write a book, let alone a book like yours. It has so much visually involved in it. Not many people are going to do that. So for your practice, cause I'm interested really, how has this been layered into into your local practice how have you seen, marketing efforts and, networking efforts has, how has this helped or not helped?

Or would you say that this is something that's been beneficial? Like overall, how has the book been?

Matt: Yeah, I think on the local side of things it's, it came at a weird time [00:09:00] where I wasn't doing as many. I was still doing a lot of the marketing. I just wasn't doing as many of the, like Dr.

Rebecca was doing a lot of our like running form assessments and running screens and like running workshops. And I still did a bunch of them, but I would bring these to the events. And it's almost like you do this running workshop or this running form assessment. And then you're like, Oh, Hey, I also have this book.

People are like, Oh, shoot. You got You're the dude who wrote this whole book, and it's just the buy in is it's I don't have to, not that I don't have to sell anymore, but I don't have to I, I rarely have to like, push somebody to want to work with me, I'm like, you can work with me if you want, I honestly don't even care, I just know I can help you, and the book is just Here's this proof of we know all this stuff about runners.

We know we can help you. But I wish I had a little bit more, I, part of it is I was, I actually use more podcasts to, to get the book out there that we could talk about too, of like, how do you market books? But that helped a good amount, just Some of the podcasts I've been on have had a fairly large following like running in the running niche.

And yeah, we know people buy, we're getting the book from all over the country and even like the world, but the people [00:10:00] locally, like in Maryland, DC, Virginia, and a little bit of Pennsylvania, like we got a good amount of patients from that. So on the local side of things, Bill's rapport like just super quickly when someone comes in, they're like, Oh, shoot, you wrote this book.

And then the side of marketing it, like someone sees the book, like they're like, they get the book and they're like, Oh man, I really want to come in.

Danny: Yeah one of the first examples I saw of this, there's a podiatrist here in Atlanta's local podiatrist. He works with a ton of runners, and he wrote a book in the early nineties.

And I have in my office, just patients I've seen that he has seen. I've had probably three copies of this book come into my office and I've never met this guy at one time, but he gives a copy of this book to every single person that comes to his office. He must have stacks of them and it's much smaller than your book but it's primarily about, the foot for runners, like healthy runner foot a book. And he doesn't do anything besides this. This is literally it. If you ask anybody, if I asked anybody that's a runner in Atlanta, what podiatrists they would, have heard of that works with runners. I [00:11:00] guarantee you, this guy is like number one.

And literally it's all from a book that he wrote 30 years ago. And, so I think that it goes a long way. It establishes tons of credibility, like so much credibility. Cause you're right. Somebody sees that and they're like, Oh shit, you like wrote the book on this, right? That is actually a phrase that means there's value there.

You understand the market and you're a subject matter expert in that area. And, I think that for you, the interesting thing about it is for this guy, that really wasn't like the internet didn't really, Exists to the way it does today. So he couldn't get out there on podcasts and share it, but you can.

And have you seen more interest in working with you from a telehealth virtual standpoint because of this? And if so what does that look like as a component of the business?

Matt: Yeah it's definitely gone up. We had a good chunk of it, maybe 5%, maybe even 10 percent of, and I don't see too many other, but Rebecca's caseload was actually virtual.

It's definitely a lot of runners. We actually do a good amount of like virtual which we can include this in the eval, but like virtually essentially, it's like a virtual, you record yourself [00:12:00] running send it to us. We'll we'll look at it like, virtually, and then we'll take you through a full evaluation of obviously we can't do everything and that we could do in person.

We can still check, hip mobility, glutes, we can still track all of these things and make sure and find out, Hey, what do you actually have going on? So the virtual part has. It's definitely picked up. I don't know what the percentage is. Maybe it won't with Dr. Rebecca Outs. It's, I don't know off the top of my head what it should have, what it should be, but it's definitely gone up and the interest has gone up in.

Hey, I'd like a running from assessment or, someone who's I had a patient recently who was like, I think it was in Utah, Texas or Utah. Here's moving between the two. He had seen actually had to get use a new password for PTA workers. His older PTA was on PTA. Apparently it didn't work because you can't have.

Something got messed up in there, but he had seen like a running expert locally and it still wasn't getting better. Then we did a virtual thing and we found a bunch of stuff that we could work on for, I think it was his calf issue. So yeah, we've definitely seen I think it's definitely helps with that.

Like we're, we've established ourselves and myself as an authority and training runners. And now it's [00:13:00] we get people who they've seen probably these really good PTs that are still reaching out to me and our team, because they're like, Hey, I haven't gotten better. I still have, this X, Y, Z thing going on.

Especially the running from assessments. That's been I think that's something I want to lean more into is like virtual running form assessments.

Danny: Yeah, I noticed something interesting when I 1st went out and worked with Kelly struts team like when I was 1st. Just exposed to San Francisco CrossFit.

I was still in the military and I, I reached out to him and was like, Hey, can I come just learn from your coaches for the week? I'm trying to see how I can apply this for my, to my soldiers. And I remember I talked to him and he had somebody that had flown in from somewhere in Asia, I think it was Japan.

It was like very far away to San Francisco. And I was like, what in the heck, dude? Why would somebody like, how many physical therapists there are between, like his country. He could have a stop over in Hawaii and then get here. There's a big distance to travel. And a lot of it was, this was even before his book came out.

This was just through YouTube credibility through YouTube and sharing ideas and things. [00:14:00] And people, if they're struggling with a problem. And it's very important to them and they find somebody that seems like a solution to that. They'll travel. They'll for sure travel. And now with being able to do more telehealth, like it's easier than ever.

And what's interesting is as we look at these businesses evolve it's cool to have the fact that you have a in person service business gives you so much credibility versus somebody that's just online. And it's because Building trust just virtually is very hard. But if someone sees, Oh, Hey, Matt has a clinic and it's in this area in Maryland, Oh, and have other providers.

And, Oh, he also has a book and I can work with this person virtually. Like it's such a higher level of trust associated with that, that I'd be interested to see as you move that direction, what percent of your clinic, if you really want it to grow, it turns into that. I think it could absolutely be.

50 50 could be just as just as big of a part of your business, if not bigger, because the world is huge, right? And there's so many runners. So what are you doing right now with the book on that front that you're leaning a bit more into to try to drive more marketing to it from a virtual standpoint, as well as capitalize [00:15:00] on that.

Cause we we're talking about Amazon and if someone buys your book on Amazon. They don't share the information in the list with you, which is frustrating for you, but it gets, it's more visible. So what are you doing as far as the marketing side for that to really put yourself in position to be able to build rapport with people?

Matt: Yeah. A big thing is yeah, I think all books should probably be on Amazon. It's just so big. Like you should be on there. But a big thing for us is, and I took a deep dive into like how and just so everybody knows I wasn't like chosen or picked up by a big publishing house, right?

I think a lot of people think Oh, you have to like, you got to go through like penguin random house or like these big, just these big publishing companies. And honestly, all they care about is making money. Like they don't care about my ideas. They don't care about the value this book can bring.

They just care about, do you have a following? Can you help us sell the book? That's who they choose to be author. That's why all these famous people become authors. Cause they have this massive following or by itself. I'm like, my Instagram just started like picking up a little bit more and and me becoming a little bit more just for the book.

I became a little more, just just have a little more notoriety, but I think this was independently published. [00:16:00] So essentially it's be doing everything with it, which is actually a good thing because I own the copyright and the distribution rights, where I believe if you go through a traditional publishing company or some of the hybrid ones, you're They own the distribution, right?

So I can't just take it and then give it away for free. Yes, I believe you can't do that, but I know it might be different, but a big thing that I've been doing is is selling the book myself and giving it, like giving it away in the clinic. So when someone buys from me directly, we get, we ship it out to them and it's actually not, it doesn't take too long unless you're.

If you're in Europe or something, the shipping is insane. But in the US, the shipping is low for books. It's manageable. We can sell them at a pretty decent price where we don't really make that much money off of. We maybe make 5. It's nothing crazy. But essentially getting people's email addresses, like anyone who buys the book and I take those email addresses super fricking seriously.

And we were just talking about that Danny of at first. I'm like, yeah, I just collect people's emails. And then, Oh, that's you're supposed to do that. But the big part of how to like just create something that's going [00:17:00] to just be around for a long time and not Peter out is I have these email addresses and I treat them like gold where now every week I send out same time, same day.

Got that from Jeremy. Appreciate it. I want to send a newsletter out. But it's, I just value pack this email, this newsletter only to runners and runners who I've seen in the past and people who bought the book. And I just say, Hey, I just make this amazing email. That's just has something I expand upon.

That's talked about in the book. Something that's been on my mind, a new book. I want to write some ideas. It got flat feet. What does that mean? Like I just go over, I just pick a topic on a Sunday night and I'm like, here's what the newsletter is going to be about. And I send that out the same time every day.

And. It's just building value on top of this. So this person who's, I don't know where they are, maybe they buy another book for someone else that they know, or they give to somebody, or I get a second book that comes out and they buy that one, or they eventually come to the clinic and maybe it's a long ways for them, or they, I offer them, Hey, we get like half off a running for assessment and they take me up on that one time.

So that's a big thing. I hope that answered the question. I forgot what the question was, Danny. I got off on a tangent, but I think that's been a big [00:18:00] thing I've been implementing is Getting people's information, but treating it like gold because they'll just give out their email to everybody.

And, or they just, or they don't give out like their good email to everybody to give out like the crappy one that they never use. So that's the big thing that, that I've been working on.

Danny: The book funnel is interesting because it's a very common strategy in a digital, in the digital sort of education space.

We have a, we've run a book funnel, like the book that I wrote is one of the primary things we use to market because it adds, it is a really helpful book for someone that has a cash based practice or is looking to start a cash based practice. It's So what happens is, you have this thing that is far more valuable to them than the money that they're spending on it.

And then you, but you also get, you get some amount of money that offsets your marketing costs, and then you get this huge amount of trust to get it, to build with somebody that actually read your book and then you get a chance to follow up with them and expand on the topics you talk about, potentially even have an opportunity to, engage as far as like a client discussion and see if it's a good fit to help them with whatever they're trying to do.

For what you're doing, you're basically doing a variation of a book [00:19:00] funnel. And you're doing the most important part, which is consistently following up with people, which is what most people don't do. Like most people just don't do this in business at all, right? Whether it's local marketing efforts, digital marketing efforts, a book, whatever it is, like they basically.

Yeah. They spent all this time and effort to acquire a lead, and then they never actually do anything with it after that. They're like, oh, they didn't come in right away to become a patient. They're dead to me. It's no, dude, you're missing the whole point of this. It's, that's not how this works.

And for you, I'd be interested to see, too, the future of this for you, where You know this book being the front end of what you're doing, as well as being able to create some sort of product ties service around it that doesn't involve maybe in person, if they're not there to where you can actually bring someone through this program that is based off the book that you wrote.

And that seems to be the next like level of iteration. I see a lot of people that have success with these do a really good job of, and I'll give you a great example of this. If you look at the ready state, Mr. Ritz, like they have. Becoming a supple leopard and then they have their one on one program, which basically is [00:20:00] a a deep dive on the concepts of that in a digital format.

And then if you want to go to a one on two course and in person immersion, it is layering on top of what the book, then the one on one course. And then that information is necessary for you to then learn this additional. Deeper dive information, which is the one oh two. So it all feeds into itself, but it's really based off of education on the front end.

And this resource that is already really valuable that people can implement on their own, or if they want to go a little bit deeper, they can do that in these other ways. And I think you do something very similar in the running needs if you decide to do that. Hey, sorry to interrupt the podcast, but I have a huge favor to ask of you.

If you are a long term listener or a new listener and you're finding value in this podcast, please head over to iTunes wherever you listen to the podcast, and please leave a rating and review. This is actually very helpful for us to get this podcast and really help them develop time and financial freedom.

So if you do that, I'll greatly appreciate it. Now back to the podcast.

Matt: Yeah, no that's, I was going to bring up I've seen what Kelly's [00:21:00] done and I'm like, man, there's, I feel like there's this so many people want to have this digital footprint and do things online and I'm like, I don't want to just be another person in the noise, just.

Hey, take my course. I'm like, no, I want someone to be excited to take this course because I don't want to just make an online course to check a box that says I made an online course. I want to say, Hey, you've gotten the book, you're in a newsletter. And then you're like, I don't know how, which way I want to spin it, but whether it's like, it's a, Hey we're teaching trainers and physios and clinicians how to treat runners better.

Or it's on the other end where it could be, Hey, you're a runner and you always want a masterclass of. How can I stay healthy as a runner in a one on one course? Like here's a one on one and then maybe we have a one on two. So I don't even know what avatar do I choose? Is it the runner or is it the clinician or trainer or somebody, in between?

But I thought about it. I haven't thought too deep into it, but yeah. No, I think that's a way to go forward.

Danny: I'll tell you what, let's talk about it because , there's two avenues, right? You have business to consumer, which is runners, right? Which is massive, total adjusted market, way bigger, but [00:22:00] also, is gonna be a little bit less targeted and there's a lot of there's a lot of options with that.

Then you have, business to business or I guess would be business to clinician if you want to consider it that, but they probably are. , it's a professional service, so that's gonna be more. Teaching or coaching the coaches training, the trainers it's a very different variation than what you're talking about.

And your book is more of a self help guide. Your book is more business to consumer a little bit less of, business to clinician or a clinician to clinician the way that it's the verbiage, it's less High level language. It's more, for someone to understand that as a runner, which is, that's how it's set up.

So I would think that it would probably do better with that group, unless you have a strong passion to work with other clinicians, which is totally cool too. And there's plenty of people in that world that are doing a really good job. And there's plenty of room for more people to do a good job.

It really is depending on what you want to do. But I think for an individual, the thing that seems to be the most attractive option for these virtual programs. It's not a course, but it's actually like a product ties, some sort of like program that you put together that creates a individual feel off of something that you can that you [00:23:00] can take that sort of 80, 20 principle too.

Because we see, all right, 80 percent of the running injuries that are going to come into your office, 20 percent of the things you're going to do are probably going to get the effect that you want, right? So if you say, okay, what are those 20 percent of things, and you can build some sort of template around that to get somebody healthy and get them to whatever the running goal is that they have.

Then you can tweak the other percentage of that to get that individualization and mix in some visits virtually with a provider that can help be the guide through that program and they can modify it to make it feel very custom. That's something that people will buy for more money than you probably think.

I met a guy. I met a guy at a a mastermind event that I was at. And this was mainly for people that had, like education, resources, content creators. It was an interesting place. And I met this guy that all he did was teach people how to do handstands. So he was a handstand coach and he'd been a gymnast.

But when I started talking to him, it was like a, it was like a, I think it was a four month program. And I remember asking him what do people pay like for this? And it was like 5, 000. And I was like, what 5, 000 should teach him how to do a handstand. And he got all philosophical on me about, it's not about the handstand.

It's [00:24:00] about the process of it shows you have full overhead capacity and you have to, have discipline in the balance of this. And then by the time he was done, I was wanting to give this guy five grand and teach me how to do a handstand. And it was just like, it was, it meant so much to him.

He was so passionate about it. And also for a lot of people, like they see a lot of value in physical reinvestment at this point. I think that's something that's really cool that I'm seeing more of a trend where people are looking to invest in their vehicle in life. We see it in person, but on a digital standpoint, there's definitely a lot to be said for that.

So I think like that variation of how you put something together is easier to sell. Then a course that's hands off, very hard to sell, people like it it's not as much value. Very hard to sell complete individual. One-on-one is hard to fulfill as far as that's concerned. And honestly, it's probably gonna look pretty similar to a productized program that has, layers of of similarities.

But then you add on. individualization on top of that to make it efficient and you have coaches take people through that. So anyway, that's for me. My thoughts are, if you go to the consumer side, that seems to make more sense. If you go to the coach side, then yeah, it's an [00:25:00] education thing. You get to build a whole nother sort of a program out for how you want to teach coaches and physios how to address and deal with running injuries.

But the real question is, which one are you more passionate about? Because that's the one you're probably going to do better anyway. Yeah.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah. So I've always always geared, I've always steered towards, do I really want to treat other clinicians and have to deal with, to me, I think it's, I, my passion is more of helping runners who like, I want to get back to running and get out of pain and injuries.

Do I really want to treat other clinicians who are going to have these, very technical questions, which are fair enough, but I'm like, I'd rather just be like, man, I just want to treat runners and get them, better and be able to run again. To me, I feel like that's more fulfilling to me.

So I don't know if I'd, I don't even know if I'd go the route of treating clinicians. That's just personally,

Danny: that's just me. Dude, listen, I totally hear you. I have, I've taught other clinicians and we can be assholes, right? Like we can be content. We can bring up research that is contradictory.

Like I've had plenty of interactions where I've had clinicians that disagreed with something at a course [00:26:00] that I was teaching. Like actually bring that up in front of everybody about how they disagree and you're like, yeah, you're at my fucking course, dude. What do you like talk to me?

Why? Stand up while I'm trying to teach something, if you want to talk about research and where this fits like that's fine. But I do see in our profession, sadly, and I think a lot of people in professional world in general, sometimes it turns into a bit of a pissing contest, where they're like my, my professor said this and my, whatever this article said that.

And that's fair because we need that in the profession, but they can be a bit harder to to work with because of that. And if that's something that you don't really want to lean into, as far as the most recent evidence and staying very up to date with that, like it's a continual thing that you have to really lean into if you're going to.

Treat or if you're going to educate other clinicians in particular, but people are a bit harder to than that because it's easier to sell a clinician on professional development. They have to do it every year. Like it's a part of their kind of, they have to do it for their license versus a person.

They have to really want to do it for themselves. So sometimes [00:27:00] selling on the consumer side is harder. They don't see as much value potentially. But fulfillment on the professional side, I think can be a little bit more challenging. So they all have pros and cons and really it comes down to the thing that you like the most, which for you, it sounds like working with runners, which is great because they're constantly hurt, dude.

They literally get hurt all the time and they need so much help.

Matt: Yeah, it's I was on like I've ever talked about before, Danny, I was on a Rogers his I forgot what it's a Rogers podcast his, this kind of course. And I just, it's an example came to me as we were talking about it, I'm like, running is like the most just not high tech.

It's it's the most amount of jumping you will ever do. Like during a bout of exercise, like the amount of single leg hops that you do when running, if you run a 5, 000 meter race, I think it's like 5, 000 steps, like one step is like one meter, like it is the most amount of jumping and all that.

And so much force is going through your body. I'm like, no wonder why so many runners are injured, especially when they're doing, they're running like shit. And Oh, you have all these issues. Like running is when you think about it, running is like super dangerous, like to your body.

Danny: It is, if you don't know what you're doing, [00:28:00] right?

Like I, when I was in the military, it's dude, the running injuries are insane. It's 80 percent of my caseload was running related injuries and or rucking related injuries, which is just, obviously like you're usually not running, but you're walking as fast as you can with weight on your back.

And yeah, and you're right. What is it like three to five times body weight every time that you land, and even if you're efficient, it's three times, if you suck at it, it's fine. And not only that, but It's a skill in its own right. It's I used to tell people, golf is just hitting a ball with a stick like we can make it sound as simple as we want, but the skill of it is very hard.

Running is a skill. And if you don't understand the skill of running, if you also don't have the proper progression of how to get yourself into running shape, how to get your joints and your It's very hard. Connective tissue used to this load pattern. If you go too fast, you can end up with significant problems.

If you don't have the right dosage, if you don't have the right understanding of how the mechanics work, if no one's ever taught you how to run, if you sit at a desk all day and you have no, hip extension, you have incredibly weak legs just in general. Like you have no ankle dorsiflexion because you [00:29:00] never ever leave your house and you don't ever walk uphill or whatever.

It's There's so many factors that can lead to that. And I know it's, yeah, it's basically an epidemic. If you look at the people that get hurt training for a half marathon or a marathon, it's like the vast majority have a running related injury just in training, not even the actual rates. So it's a real problem.

And so there's definitely information out there that, people need and there's a lot of resources in general. It's just how people align with your education process, your philosophy, as well as your backstory. I think all those things. Allow people to take a big niche like that and they can carve out their little path of where they fit and they can help a lot of people by doing so, and, or this is something that if you really wanted to, you could just lean into the local side of it.

Like I think there's no downside to what you've done, like literally zero. Put yourself in a great spot for so many reasons. And I think for a lot of people it would benefit their business to write a book on whatever the niche is that they do. But the pain of it probably is what stops people from actually finishing it.

Matt: Yeah. The it's, yeah. Actually, there's this funny story about this. When I, it's, [00:30:00] when I got to the point, Danny, where the draft was, the editing was done. Like I edited it like four times. I hired a professional editor to edit it, got the manuscript back. I'm like, it's edited, it's done. And then I got a really quick wake up call about how time, like not, Actually, it wasn't me.

How time intensive it was to do the interior design, which is where did the photos go, the page layout, any illness getting illustrations made the book cover. I actually had that done early on. I'm glad I did that. That would have sucked if I didn't, but an author bio, a book description, like the interior design was, it turned into this.

Like you have to put, like the interior designer was, it's very strict, like he doesn't want to have to do any guesswork is you can't just put see photo above because that might be on the next page and it's not above obviously. So you have to like, at the first time through that, if that's off at all, it's like you want to make sure the first time through the interior design Is as close to perfect as possible because if there's something in the middle of [00:31:00] the chapter, you have to add a photo and it bumps everything back and he has to redesign it and it's just it's really expensive to get that done to that was also eye opening, but yeah, the it's, it is very time consuming, but like we, like the funny story was this, I remember I finished the editing got a deck.

I'm like, I had a celebratory, drink that night. I'm like, all right. We're all like, we're through the whole stretch. I was like, dude, I'm like 60 percent of the way done. I'm not close yet.

Danny: Yeah that's tough, man. And it is a long process and it does. And if you're going to self publish, it can, there can be some costs associated with it.

What's a ballpark for somebody to like self publish a book, like what you wrote in terms of cost. If they're thinking about doing something like this as a, as an addition to what they're doing from a marketing standpoint for their clinic.

Matt: Yeah. I'd say. If it's and I think I can make this comparison.

I think, I had a lot of inspiration for supple leopard. I think this is, it's made like that. That's like a book like this quality with photos and just the interior design is the most expensive part, but it's probably going to cost you like 10 12 grand. Like 10 or 12, 000.

Danny: Yeah, [00:32:00] that's not too bad. For a book like that, I can tell you if you write a book that is that is not so much like that, it's more tech space, for us, it was probably half that for us to sell, publish the first book that we wrote. And it depends on how much editing has to go into it and all that.

But for you, because there's so much more layout with images and just like the actual design of the inside and the editing absolutely. It seems it'd be more. And then also, then from there, it's just like the difference between the raw cost for a book and then what can sell that for, or even it's really not about even making money off the book, it's just like at cost or even less.

If you can acquire somebody, let's say the book costs you 20 bucks to print and you can give that to somebody and in exchange for. Their email and their name. And that is an interested person in your area that it would like to, potentially come in and see you as a running client.

Like people would take that exchange all day, dude. It's just it's what a great way to lead the relationship with somebody that could turn into thousands of dollars of lifetime value for your, in your clinic. If you have a good job, do a good job following up with [00:33:00] them.

Matt: No a hundred percent.

That's something I need to do a little bit better job of because it's, yeah, it costs about like 24 to print one. At first I'm like, Oh, I don't want to give it away. It's like 24. And I'm like, dude, just give the book away. It's what if you get a lead from that? That's the easiest ROI like an investment ever.

So I needed, I think I need to do I need to definitely do a better a better job of that.

Danny: Also maybe you can create an abbreviated version, like a smaller version that is less expensive. That you can give away, in a more economic way like our book.

I want to say to print if I printed a bunch of copies, let's just say I printed like 200 copies. I think it would end up costing us like 68 per copy in order for that to happen. So the unit economics of that, because it's not as big as never made pictures, it is a lot less. But in your case, maybe it's just like more of a targeted You do local marketing, education event, or you do an injury screen or something like that.

And then, those people are super interested. And then you give them a copy of your book. And then all of a sudden it's, such a better sort of like way to close that and [00:34:00] create a lot of long term value. The other thing too, is people give books to each other. So sometimes, and this has happened to me, I literally had, we've had people doing the mastermind that.

They bought my book and they just gave it to their friend after they read it. And then their friend read it and then they, it just resonated with them. And they ended up following up with our company and doing some formal work with us. And so you don't actually know like where that goes.

It's so hard to track, but you do know it's being like it's somewhere or maybe somebody sees it on somebody's, coffee table. Then it's just they live in another, like visiting, they can live in a whole nother city. Next thing you know, like they're reading through this book, whatever, like it's just so hard to tell, but something physically out in the world is very beneficial in so many ways.

Matt: Just, yeah, getting the, like I've given the book to a few patients and I'm al like, I'm like, I should do this more often. If you buy a package, I might just give everyone a book who gets a plan of care with us. I'm like, why am I not doing this? 'cause it's already opened doors. And I'm like, I need, this is gonna be a new, this is gonna be a new thing.

I'm like, you get a $2,000 plan of care. Yeah, I can take 1% of that. Here's a book, like it's 20, do like $25. I'm

Danny: telling you, listen, this guy in Atlanta, I forget his name. [00:35:00] But no kidding. No marketing. This guy has no other marketing. All he does is give his book to every single person that ever, that even walks in his damn door.

Like everybody, there's just like stacks of them everywhere. And there, who knows how many of these are circulating around the city of Atlanta, but it's so many. And I promise you this guy if you ask somebody in the city Bediarus for a runner, he's the number one person that they'll say, and they've never even been there, this guy even ended up my father in law ended up in his office, and then he heard that I was a physical therapist, he gave him a book for me to bring to, to me. I literally have I probably have a copy of his book over here somewhere. But, the reality is, it is a, It is like a big business card in a lot of ways for you or anybody that writes a book locally, and it can be on a lot of things, right?

It could be you work with ACL patients. Cool. You write a book about, how somebody can get through an ACL rehab and all the process of that, the mental side, the physical side, whatever. You work with, you're in the public health world. All right, cool.

You can write a whole book on that. You can write a book on working with baseball players, or you work with basketball players, or you work with youth soccer players, or whatever it is. There's so many different variations of a [00:36:00] book that you can write that's your unique sort of understanding of what you do and sharing that with people.

It gives you a really unfair advantage. And. The reality is not many people will do it because it's hard. It's a difficult project and there's no really hard. It's going to help do so hard. It's like one of the harder things you can do, but it's also almost impossible for somebody to compete with that.

If you have one and they don't write, it falls the same. You're a published author. You gave me a book and then somebody else I just hear good things about. I'm like I probably wrote the book.

Matt: And to put this in perspective to any of I'm not saying you can't do it. It's so hard. Anybody can do it.

You just have to put, you just have to be, you have to have a plan and to put the work in, to put it in perspective, like the, I read a book, it's called described method. I believe it's by Tucker Max of like his layouts, how to write a book. I followed it to a T, but there is a call to action at the end.

You don't have to do all this work. We can help you go, they have a business where they help business. Typically it's author entrepreneurs write a book. Yeah. But I, not that this is the impression and I think they'd probably do an amazing job, but I feel like it's definitely geared towards [00:37:00] entrepreneurs who don't have as much time on their hands, but I also feel like sometimes I don't want people to, especially PTs I don't want people to write a book just to check a box because I feel like sometimes entrepreneurs, they're very wealthy and they have money and say, I'm just going to write a book.

Cause you know, this guy has a book and I want to write a book too. Yeah, it's an ego thing. I'm like, don't write a fucking book just to check a box. This was a passion project and then I didn't imagine it being this big to begin with. But if you're gonna write a book, you like, write a book to help people.

Not because you, because I think it costs like 12 grand to do that thing, that do that go to their course or write a book for you. I don't really know if they. They could have helped me write a book like this with the interior design. I feel like those books are more just, it's all words, not a lot of pictures.

But yeah, if you're gonna write a book, like you, to me, this was in my brain for years of I want to do this. I want to do this. And eventually I was like, I'm just going to do it.

Danny: Dude if you like writing a book is very challenging and one of the reasons that it's so beneficial to do it is because it's such a hard [00:38:00] thing, like I could pay somebody to go run a marathon for me, but it's not the same thing.

Like you learn so much about yourself in the process. This is why I'm not saying that people don't need that. But the discomfort the challenge of doing this hard thing The confidence that comes from the information that you put in place and your ability to articulate that with other folks like it's such a important byproduct of the challenge of the process that You know something like that being outsourced is speed for speed that makes sense for sure.

Maybe for you, you really struggle with the writing process and and you can get people to ghostwrite things and that's totally fine. But it's such an intimate thing to me to like, to know that every word that I put in our book is it's my words. That's my thoughts. That's the, my beliefs at the time.

Not only that as a time capsule for me, I can go back, I can look at it and I don't read my own book, but let's say 20 years from now, I want to go back and read it. I'd probably go back and be like, what a dummy. I like at least I was honest at the time the best what I thought was best at the time and I'm proud of that.

And my parents aren't necessarily proud that I have a curse word that was in the [00:39:00] in the book, like it is what it is. And that's what I, that's what I wrote. And that's going to be something that, that's part of my story and, but it's mine. And I wrote that. And I think that anybody's thing about writing a book.

I think it's worth if you think it's worth it for yourself, it's not just for the business, but like for yourself, if you want to learn more about yourself, do you want to learn more about how to organize your mind and how to do something really challenging and stick to it over extended period of time?

Like mentally, it's one of the hardest things that I've ever done. I think it's a really challenging thing. It's a, it's equivalent to many physically challenging things that you have to stick to over extended period of time, but it's your mind, it's your thoughts and it's organizing that.

Especially I think people like you and I who are a bit more scattered in general, just like big idea folks pinning us down to force us to do that. Good Lord. That's even harder for us. And it's worth it because we flex this muscle that we just, it's not that strong for us.

And afterward I was able to accomplish so many more difficult things from a business standpoint because of the effort that I put into the book.

Matt: Oh yeah. Yeah. This, It like I said before it's I believe we're on holiday. I don't quote me on this exact quote But it's like he said you're going into [00:40:00] a room by yourself and every day just bleeding for an hour Just like it sucks.

It's hard. But the good once you get the zone No, I don't know if you ever noticed this Danny. I would get in the zone. I'm just like I'm just going and I'm like, this is, I actually, I, the hard part is you have to do it every day, but once you like, you're doing it, there's times where I thoroughly enjoyed writing it because it just, I felt like there was a flow.

I enjoyed it, but the beginning is always tough, but once you start doing it, it's Oh, should I have this idea? I want to put this in here. It's, that's the part that, that always excites me.

Danny: Yeah, no, you're right. There are certain days where. It would feel effortless to write for an hour.

Like I wouldn't want to stop. And then there were other days where it felt like all I had was just like the worst shit coming out of my thought. My thoughts were just like terrible. This doesn't make any sense. Is that even a word? This doesn't make, this is like completely all over the place.

And those are the days that are really hard, but I think of it like training, right? There's certain days I go to train and I feel fucking good, dude. There's certain days I go in and it's man. Like I'm killing this workout today and there's other days and it's yeah, I feel old. My knees hurt, like I [00:41:00] feel weak, I feel like I can't move and or I'm tired.

I didn't get a good night's sleep and I'm just like, just dragging ass through, a training session. But even me doing that. Like on a daily basis, like you're going to have good days, you're gonna have bad days, but it's just consistency over extended period of time. And I think that's a lesson that people learn from something like this, that, you can accomplish something really hard.

You can accomplish things that are really challenging or these big projects. If you're willing to stick to it. And that's honestly, the mental side is the hardest part. It's so hard, you 30. To write a book before anybody would wake up and, have that done before then get our kids ready to go to school with my wife and then get into the work day.

And also it's just so many days. Dude, I want to hit snooze. And I just knew if I would never like, I wouldn't keep doing it. And that mental toughness that you develop is really powerful. So I think anybody that's looking at this, if you can do something hard in other arenas, you can apply it to something like this if it makes sense.

And it's not necessarily the thing that everybody needs to do, but, I'm very thankful that I wrote a book. I think, [00:42:00] I have a lot of respect for anybody who has, because I know how hard it is to do. And, I know for you, your family probably looks at that, and they're just like, Holy shit, look at Matt.

Look at what Matt knows. And they're probably very proud of that.

Matt: That, that, I think they, my parents are definitely proud of it. My sister's oh cool, you wrote a book. Yeah. Thanks sis, I appreciate it.

Danny: Yeah, and it's hard to, it's hard to have, the context for how challenging something like that is, but I think it's awesome, man.

So if people are interested in learning more about the book, if they want to pick it up, if they're interested in working with runners, they want to learn a little bit more about. You know how to do that because a bunch of, obviously clinicians listen to this, but yeah, where would they, find out more about it?

Where can they get it?

Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Obviously it's on Amazon. You can get it there. I highly recommend if you're in the States, if you're in Europe, go to Amazon, but if you're in the States I would check out just alpha project physio dot com. It's the former slash. Yeah. Built to run, or if you Google that Alpha Project Physio built to run, it should be like the first two or links, whatever it should be.

One of the top links you can buy it from us directly. We will ship it to you. It comes with a free gift and I signed all the copies. So you'll get a, you get a signed copy.

Danny: Nice. Yeah. It's on your website. [00:43:00] So yeah, if you get to your website, there's a tab that says built to run and it's it's on there.

So yeah, pick it up. You guys want to learn how to, help more runners. You want to hear Matt's voice? philosophy on how he's assessing running and how he's helping runners get through improving the areas where they have deficiencies, totally recommend getting it. It is a great, honestly, most people's first books where they say the first pancake is always shit.

And this is a really good pancake that you put together for a first book. Like it's really impressive that. It's your first stab at at a book. It's it's the pictures are great. It's very easy to follow along with, so anybody that's actually like trying to improve their process of evaluating and treating runners.

This is a home run. It's a no brainer.

Matt: Thanks man. The first draft was crap, but then as I edit, it got better and better. So I just, the first pancake was shit, but the final pancake. Was better,

Danny: now that Matt, I appreciate your time today. Guys, as always appreciate you listening.

Hopefully you found some value in this one. And if writing a book makes sense for you, hopefully this was helpful. And I think it's a pretty unique unfair advantage locally to have something like that. Not to say it's the only way to, to really, You know focus [00:44:00] on local market and develop that but if it makes sense I think it's a very valuable thing to do personally and for your business as well.

So Anyway, thanks so much for listening. We'll catch you next week.

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