Navigating Marketing Struggles with Kyle MacMillan from Bridge Rehab and Performance

Welcome to Struggles: Navigating Challenges, Together, the podcast dedicated to every entrepreneur's journey through the turbulent seas of business. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned business owner, we provide real-world stories, expert insights, and practical solutions to help you overcome the common challenges across all industries. Each episode delves deep into the struggles entrepreneurs face—from scaling their businesses and leadership hurdles to financial management and innovative marketing strategies. Join our hosts and their inspiring guests as we dissect the obstacles and unlock the secrets to success.

In this episode host Chris Inman and his guest Kyle MacMillan, dive deep into the marketing challenges faced by Kyle, owner of Bridge Rehab and Performance. Kyle shares his journey from starting his clinic at the young age of 24 to navigating the intricate world of marketing a physical therapy business. They discuss the importance of having multiple marketing strategies, such as leveraging workshops, community events, and unique service offerings like performance-based physical therapy and post-race recovery services. Kyle emphasizes the need for niching down, especially towards active individuals like runners and CrossFit enthusiasts. The episode paints a vivid picture of the struggles and innovative solutions Kyle employed to differentiate himself in a competitive industry, ultimately highlighting the blend of passion, creativity, and strategic community engagement as key to his marketing success.


Episode Time Stamps:
- Introduction to the Episode [0:00 - 2:00]
- Kyle MacMillan's Journey into Entrepreneurship [2:00 - 6:00]
- Scaling a Business: Kyle's Expansion Story [6:00 - 8:30]
- Understanding the Marketing Landscape [8:30 - 11:40]
- Leadership Hurdles for a Young Entrepreneur [11:40 - 14:30]
- Financial Planning for Sustainable Growth [14:30 - 19:00]
- Innovative Marketing Strategies and Community Building [19:00 - 25:00]
- Real-World Examples & Lessons Learned [25:00 - 30:00]
- Conclusion and Key Takeaways [35:00 - 37:00]

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Entrepreneurship, Business Struggles, Leadership Tips, Scaling Challenges, Financial Management, Marketing Strategies, Real-World Stories, Expert Insights, Practical Solutions.

Transcript

0:02

So it's kind of the blend of techniques, and that's what I've learned the most about marketing, just having as many, like, rods in the water at one time as possible, in a way. So not everything is effective all at once, but every now and then, you may get a bite from one rod. It may be the social media one or the workshops or the events. There's having multiple things, you know, ready to catch new patients in a way. Welcome to another episode of Struggles presented by NCBI, the podcast where we navigate challenges together. Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Struggles presented by NCBI. This is Kristen with idea Cleveland. And this is Kyle Macmillan, owner of Bridge Rehab and performance. All right, Kyle, thank you so much for coming on and being a guest here on struggles. And so how long have you owned bridge rehabbing, rehab and performance? It's been about two years now. I started, like, the brick and mortar location last May, and I've just kind of gradually expanded from there, starting, like a small room, about 800, then expanded to a 1750 square foot clinic. So about a year and a half now. And how old were you when you started that? I mean, you're 20 years younger than me. Yeah, yeah, I was like 24 and a half probably when I started it up. But like I was telling you earlier, I really had the vision since high school. So I tore my ACL 9th grade, and ever since then, I've just been obsessed with, like, how to rebuild the body, how to make it perform better. And I was like, what's the nearest thing I could do to become a physical therapist while I'm waiting to get older, essentially. So I'm like, all right, personal training is pretty close. So I got that certification as soon as I could and did that throughout undergrad and grad school. And then when I graduated, I opened the clinic, and to me, it didn't seem like too soon or anything, because it's been since high school, I've been preparing, you know, taking advanced courses, certifications, training other people. So I was ready to rock right when I graduated. Yeah, but, like, you were ready to go into that field, but to be an entrepreneur and open up your own place and having the bills of an office and turning the lights on and all that, and finding your own work, like so many people work for somebody else, it's their responsibility to fill your schedule. Your employees, you fill their schedule. It's kind of on you. Yeah, yeah. That was the biggest struggle for sure, is, you know, I had a huge educational base, you know, like I said, since high school, I've just been like devouring information, just information overload, and I've been waiting for like a channel to unleash it in. And having my own business was the best way to do that. I could be creative with the knowledge I knew I could create different content pieces and do workshops and events for other companies. So right when I graduated, I had all this information in my mind, and now it's just like, how do you release it and then how do you market it and how do you build other people's schedules up? So the marketing side has definitely been the trickiest, but also the funnest in a way, because it is kind of like a game. You're just pulling together all these pieces, see what works, what doesn't, and what to focus your energy on. So today we're going to talk about the struggles of marketing for you. Yeah. All right, so what do you think is the biggest hurdle for you? Market and set yourself apart from all your competition. I'd say the biggest struggle with marketing. And it could be unique to physical therapy, too, because as therapists, you're generally trained to get someone better within a certain time frame, maybe eight weeks. And then after that you advise like, you know, that's the end of the care. Boom, you're done, which is good and bad. You know, some people, that's all they really need and all they really want is just get the pain relief, set them on their way. From a business owner perspective, that's also challenging because that's a huge amount of churn every month. You got to go fetch more people to help. But also from a quality of care perspective, it's not the best way either. If you're getting someone out of pain, that's great, but there's so much more that you can do for them. And that's what's unique about our practice and having a training background is that, yeah, getting them out of pain is good, but I want them to be able to run as fast as they were, faster than before. I want them to lift heavier, I want them to last as long as possible. A lot of people, they get through therapy, no pain, but they're still weak, they're still tight, and teach them how to manage that, how to get a sustainable program that helps them live as long as possible without those surgeries or medications. Oh, absolutely. So I came from an industry where we would bid on one project, it'd be$10,000 or more. You'd complete that project and you keep on bidding on new projects. And I completely changed my mantra, to have these contracts that are retainer contracts, because cash flow, like you said, it's so hard if you're always churning new clients, you're always working on new clients. That's exhausting. And they always say that the easiest thing is to sell to your previous clients or your current clients. Upsell them, give them more services, provide more for them. So you were saying that's one thing that was kind of a common thing in your industry. What really flipped the switch and said, hey, I need to figure this out to be different. And what makes you different in the sense of that cash flow situation compared to other physical therapists? Yeah. I think the biggest one is that blend of personal training. Like, when people come to our clinic, they're always surprised that they're, like, sweating at the end of a therapy session. Like, jeez, God, I didn't expect to sweat this much. They get on the massage table, they're always apologizing. Cause they'd leave it just, like, drenched in sweat. I'm like, no, it's fine. We treat a bunch of active people here. Everyone's working hard, which is what we want. And that's the biggest drawback of some therapy programs, is that they. They're too easy. They can underload people. You know, some people that's good for. But a lot of active people, they need to be challenged. They need to sweat. They need to do something harder than they've been used to in order to actually grow from it. So that's what really makes us unique, is that we do combine the therapy and the training kind of together in one service. And some patients, they start with me or my other therapist, Emily. They go through a physical therapy program. We call it performance based physical therapy because it's centered around getting them back to their favorite hobbies again at full strengthen. And then sometimes from that program, they end up going to training with Colin. So it's kind of a continuum of care that we can provide. You know, once they got fully out of pain, they got a strong foundation and stability built. Then they can work on, you know, speed, power, agility, endurance. Vo two max testing with Colin and kind of go from there. So that's another service that makes us unique. And then the last part is our tune up services. So that's where someone who comes in, they're not necessarily injured, but they want to just recover faster, get more mobile, really care about their joint longevity. And we use all the manual therapy skills that we have. Dry needling, cupping, different types of massage, muscle scraping, and then the cold plunge and sauna as well. So we were talking about the marketing struggle of that. How have you kind of done things, marketing? You think differently because you offer these different services, like how have you really placed yourself in the market and what do you strategically do to think about that? Yeah, I think the toughest one for me still is the whole idea of niching down, because I just love working with so many different types of athletes. So maybe that's a good enough niche, just athletes in general, just really active people. But people are always saying, focus on one specialty. And for us, it's been runners, ton of runners come through the clinic, a lot of crossfitters and gym goers, but majority runners. So focusing on that population because there's a ton we can do to prevent injuries, to ensure joint longevity long into running, and to help them recover before and after races. So that's also what makes us really unique. We're very good at treating runners, doing running analysis work, recovery work, and injury prevention therapy. So what do you do to market to those people? Yeah, the biggest thing is workshops for us. So we love community events, speaking to different clubs, teaching them about injury prevention, recovery, nutrition, sleep hydration. And we do that a lot with high schoolers, some middle schoolers, some run clubs in the area and some gyms as well. But those events are my favorite because you actually get to see and hear from the people and what they're struggling with and then answer a bunch of questions they have right after. So I think I like those the best, and they may be like the highest roI. Usually, you know, one or two patients you can particularly get for those kind of events, whereas, you know, ads, sometimes you have no clue what's going to come. Some months it may be great, other months it may be quiet from ad spend. So I do like workshops. They're just more fun. You can build a higher sense of trust through them, too, and really just share your passion and vision more. All right, so there's two ways we can learn. It's from our failures or other people's failures or successes. Is there something that you've stole from somebody else, or you saw someone else attempt to do something, you go, oh, my God, that is a disaster. I hope we never do that. I thought about doing that, but now that I see how that worked out, that's not the way I should do it. Or is there something you're like, man, I see what they're doing over there. I'm going to steal it. It's okay to steal from other people. There's no original idea. They've remade Romeo and Juliet a thousand times, in my opinion. In movies, I think what I've done is the post race recovery services. So I've been to, as a triathlete myself and runner and soccer player. Some events you go to afterwards, there's therapists on standby or massage therapists, and I guess I got that idea from them, you know, just being a high schooler or college athlete and then finishing a race and you see these booths around you and. Yeah, I guess I didn't know I was pulling from that experience, but right when I started the practice, that was one of the first marketing events I did is just reach out to race directors, see if I can help athletes with post race recovery. And, yeah, that's. That's a really effective marketing method that we've had. Just, you know, talking to people about the injuries during the race or after the race, what they struggled with, how their training's going, and any tips they need on recovery. We can kind of address that during post race recovery. So being there, you're only there. You're there a few hours on a Saturday morning, and that has turned into a good return on your investment. One of your best lead generations, would you say? Yeah. It's interesting, though. Like, initially I thought that the bigger the race, the better. But it turns out, like, with the turkey trot, we're usually like a vendor at that one. We helped out at an Ironman race in Sandusky. I was all excited going to these races. Like, you know, there's thousands of racers, but then you start getting people coming by the booth and it's like, oh, I'm from Indiana or I'm from Pennsylvania, or someone's from out of town coming in for the holiday. So, you know, and half of the people are out of town, you know, another half are just in town for a weekend, and then a few are from, like, a local area. So those aren't as effective as I thought. Still good events, but just not as effective. So little community, five ks. Yeah, those have been the best. Like, I'm from Parma, we had the Pierogi run, for example. Things like that. Yeah, there's definitely less people, but, you know, each person that comes by tends to be relatively interested. They may have some local connection that you have a connection with. You see more friends and family. You know, we usually do like the May and Bay, or like, there's a July 4 race in Bay Village and those are. Those are pretty fun. Awesome. Well, I hope you all learned something and it's been a great conversation. Kyle, thanks for joining. No problem. Thank you, Chris, and we'll catch you on the next episode of struggles presented by NCBI. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of struggles presented by NCBI, where we navigate challenges together. Don't forget to subscribe, listen, and share this podcast with others who might benefit. We'd love to hear about the struggles you're facing or have overcome, and we'd be thrilled to have you as a guest on a future episode. Let's continue this journey together.