Episode 80: Reaching the Apex: PT as a Primary Care Profession with Angie McGilvrey

Join us this week as Angie McGilvrey, a leading visionary in physical therapy and founder of Apex, discusses the business of PT as a primary care provider and how Apex is redefining what success looks like in the industry.

In this episode, we will discuss:

• – How physical therapy can be a “Primary Care Profession” when adding diagnostics to effective treatment.
• – Strategies for effective marketing on social media and in the local community (including their Tech Truck).
• – Why Apex “fired” insurance companies to prioritize autonomy and provide better access and value for patients.
• – Work with the US Gymnastics Team in preparation for the Summer Olympics.
• – The heartwarming story of their rescue pup, PT the Dog

Tune in now to learn how you can take your physical therapy practice to the next level in the primary care arena.

Learn more about Angie’s work and what Apex’s is up to on the Apex Instagram page.

Garrett Salpeter(00:01.02)
Welcome back to the undercurrent podcast. And today we have on for the second time, Angie McGilvery, the co -founder and co -owner along with her husband, Joe of Apex physical therapy in Southwest Florida. They have two locations in Fort Myers and Cape Coral, Florida. And she, you know, you may remember her actually from our earlier episodes or seeing her on our social media, cause she has already been on episode nine of the podcast. And in that episode, we talked a lot about.

their pain to performance model. We talked about how they have built their business around this target avatar of the CrossFit or obstacle course race, Spartan race type of athlete, how they’re able to help them get out of pain, recover faster from injuries, and then continue to train them and help them with optimal performance, with recovery, with maintenance, performance enhancement, all these other things. And talked about, of course, about how they’re using the newbie all throughout that entire continuum of care.

So if you haven’t heard that yet, we encourage you to go back and listen to episode nine to get a sense of what Angie’s up to. And we’ll start today with just a little quick overview of her practice and give you a sense of what’s going on so you have the context. And then we’re gonna talk about some more elements of what they’re doing because I really see getting to interact with clinicians and practice owners all around the country. I see Apex as…

really the apex, no pun intended, of what is possible for a physical therapy clinic. And I hope this inspires you listening to give you some ideas of what private practice outpatient physical therapy can possibly be, because they’re doing some really exciting stuff at Apex. So now finally, Angie, welcome.

Angie McGilvrey (01:45.791)
Hi Garrett, thank you so much. It’s so exciting to be back on again. Thank you for the opportunity.

Garrett Salpeter (01:52.316)
Yes, wonderful to have you here. Of course, we just got to connect again recently, you and Joe and a few Leo and Ben from your team, a couple of your staff clinicians were here in Austin for our center of excellence training. So we’re very excited. I mentioned how I think Apex can be an example, an inspiring example for people to see what’s possible. And we see that at New Fay too, which is why we are proud to have Apex as one of our first regional centers of excellence. And.

It’s a place where, you know, for people listening who it’s a new program for us that Angie actually, you know, has provided a lot of input and helped us create. But these are facilities that are doing excellent work with the newbie where people can go to observe and get training, you know, in different regions of the country, making it easier than necessarily having to travel to Austin. So we’re very proud, Angie. Thank you for your input on that program and very proud to be working with you on that and have you be a part of it.

Angie McGilvrey (02:49.087)
us our pleasure and super excited to have anybody come and share in a day at Apex and just anything that we can pour into them in our experience. You know, since 2018, we’ve been utilizing the new fit in our practice. And so we would just love to be able to share those experiences and the wins and some of the obstacles that we’ve already been through and just, you know, really set other

Practitioners up for success.

Garrett Salpeter (03:19.772)
Awesome. I really appreciate that. You are a go -giver. You and Joe and your team, you’ve instilled that culture in your team too. So it’s great. And in terms of, you know, I’m excited to touch on all these different elements. And I think that unifying theme is going to be this inspiring example of what is possible for outpatient, private practice, physical therapy. I want to talk about your, you know, how you’re marketing locally, stuff you’re doing on social media.

But before we get into that general concept, I want to ask you about one specific thing that has been on your social media where you did some posts where you were actually signing termination letters with third party insurance payers. And it was exciting. It was a little bit controversial, but can you talk to us about what you did and even more importantly, why you did it?

Angie McGilvrey (04:04.575)
Yes.

Angie McGilvrey (04:13.951)
So, you know, Garrett, you had said…

what is possible, right, in the world of physical therapy. And right now there are a lot of, there’s a lot of attention on some of the negative. You know, we hear about declining reimbursements. We hear about the shortage of physical therapists across the country. We hear about the raising salaries that are becoming just disproportionate, again, to what insurance companies are valuing physical therapists’ care at. And so,

But on the other side of the coin, I believe that there is so much opportunity out there in the world of physical therapy. I also believe that our profession is key in being the primary care provider for neuromusculoskeletal pain, injury, and prevention. And so,

That is my overarching purpose is to establish APEX as that practice model. That requires autonomy is like is a huge ingredients there. So with that being said, what was one of the most restrictive things in our pursuit of autonomy? And that was third party payers. Most most significantly.

We fired UnitedHealthcare, we fired Cigna, and we fired Humana. Those three gave us the most burden for our patients with regards to access of care. I think that was one of the primary things. Again, when I go back to…

Angie McGilvrey (06:01.855)
listening to my patients, right? What do my patients value? What is it that my community wants? The number one overarching theme that came up was access or availability.

When they have an ache, a pain, something doesn’t feel right, I’m concerned, I don’t know if I should compete tomorrow, you know, everything from I just rolled my ankle to I don’t know if I should, you know, do this high level competition tomorrow, they want an answer and they want us to be available and accessible to them. And…

That’s the value that they see us providing. If I have to wait 72 hours, two weeks sometimes for an authorization in order to provide the patient that value, I’m failing that patient. I’m failing my community. So…

that was really one of the biggest drivers. There’s several burdens that we could talk about that these carriers put on us that we weren’t allowed to meet the expectation and the value that our patients were looking for. So yeah, we’ve moved on and are continuing in the pursuit of autonomy.

Garrett Salpeter (07:28.124)
I love how you framed that up. I also love, that’s a great sound bite, you know, saying how you fired UHC, you fired Humana. That’s awesome. And you also said something in there that I wanna pull out and discuss a little further. You mentioned, you know, PT as a primary care profession for any musculoskeletal injuries, issues, et cetera. So part of that, you know,

of course you just touched on is access, right? You think about who your primary care physician would be. That could be sort of the first line of defense that you would go to and they would tell you to see a specialist or do this or do that, or in a traditional medical system model. So can you tell us more about what you mean by that? Obviously access is part of it. What does that whole picture look like? What does it look like for PT to be a primary care profession?

Angie McGilvrey (08:24.639)
Yeah, so access is definitely, you know, definitely a piece of it. The other side is excellence or expertise in our profession, right? So we have to also be able to quickly and accurately and safely triage and diagnose what’s happening with our patients. You know, they’re coming to us as their primary care. So ankle sprain, right? It’s very interesting.

because just as a side note, my colleague Danica and I were just looking at an article that surveyed over 800 ,000 lateral ankle sprains and only 6 .8 % of that population saw a PT within 30 days of their care. Like, if that doesn’t drive us to be better,

Garrett Salpeter (09:17.916)
Wow, that’s astonishing. Wow.

Angie McGilvrey (09:23.455)
Like, holy cow, it’s crazy. But yeah, anyways, it’s expertise. So one of the other pieces that we’ve brought into our practice that really helps guide that expertise is diagnostics.

Garrett Salpeter (09:24.06)
you

Angie McGilvrey (09:42.111)
And we utilize diagnostics in a couple of different ways. We utilize musculoskeletal ultrasound, where we’re actually able to take a look inside and see all of the soft tissues, look at things dynamically while they’re moving, how does that ankle move, even do some stress testing, some ligamentous testing, and watch what’s happening. We also do EMG nerve conduction studies, looking at the…

the actual nerve tissue, right, and the degree of damage that the amplitude versus or the axon versus the myelin and, you know, all of that dysfunction, which I’m super excited to later have Joe talk to you about on a subsequent episode. So stay tuned. That’s super exciting. And then newbie, what’s that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Garrett Salpeter (10:30.044)
Good fortune out there.

Good foreshadowing there, it’s a cliffhanger for the future episode.

Angie McGilvrey (10:38.623)
And the newbie device, newbie has a fantastic diagnostic capability to it as well in determining what’s happening in our neurological system. So by incorporating all three of those technologies, we really feel that that’s helped us make sure that we are providing the most safe, accurate, the fastest.

value for our patient and after that access they really want to know what’s wrong, how do we fix it? Right? And so once they get to us, like tell me what’s wrong, tell me you can fix it and now they have hope.

I can’t tell you how many times that I’ve had the privilege of hearing a patient tell me after they’ve come in day one, we take them through an ultrasound, we tell them what’s going on with their ankle, we take them through New Fit in their rehab that day one and they walk out 80 % better than when they walked in and they tell me, you gave me hope. Like that.

that value, like that’s what they want. They wanted the plan, they wanted to know that they can get better and that hope. So to me, 80 % better day one versus never seeing them for 30 days. You know, that’s the mission that we’re trying to push across the country and hopefully motivate and inspire others to take on this model.

Garrett Salpeter (12:23.644)
I love that. I feel inspired. And I imagine everyone else listening to this will as well. In terms of, so, you know, I love that access, excellence, diagnostic capabilities and treatment capabilities. So you’re handling, you know, the breadth of anything non -surgical that people have in the musculoskeletal realm. And then also to give people just, you know, a sense of the breadth of what you’re offering, you also,

right next door to Apex have your adjacent sister business that is also providing other types of services for ongoing health optimization. And can you talk a little bit about Live Resilient?

Angie McGilvrey (13:09.247)
Yes, thank you. You know, another piece of primary care model, right, is that, again, when you think about when you establish a primary care physician, this is somebody that that’s like your go -to expert, right? It’s not like you go see them one time, you get discharged and you don’t go back.

and see them, right? Like that’s like your person. And so in establishing your primary care physical therapist, we should be your person for, again, musculoskeletal, not only pain and injury, but prevention and optimization. And that’s the other side of our scope of practice that not only has New Fit allowed us to step into through strengthening, conditioning, athletic performance, but

but also the other side where we look at optimization. And through Live Resilient, we do some pretty cool modalities like infrared sauna, cold plunge, a sensory deprivation, salt tank, some nutritional counseling that’s stacked on with some DNA testing. So trying to look at that holistic.

view of our patient, again, as a primary care provider and yet still what remains under our scope of practice as physical therapists.

Garrett Salpeter (14:34.812)
And that is that’s a new development in the time since since we recorded episode 9, you know a few years ago and that what was the story behind that it was was it the sweet next door to your existing apex office came available and What was the back story?

Angie McGilvrey (14:43.103)
Yeah.

Angie McGilvrey (14:52.575)
Yeah, that’s pretty cool because in episode nine it was myself and Jason Wins. He is my certified strength and conditioning specialist who we, when we began this transition into the whole performance side, like he was my guy, he’s my right hand, you know? And…

He’s also, I have to, like will always hold a special place in Apex’s heart because he was the one who one day, him and I were wrapping up after taking care of some patients and clients. And he looked at me and he just said, change in lives. And I was like, that’s it. That’s our purpose. That’s our why, right there. That’s it. And so,

That was probably 2018, 2019. And literally, as you said, Garrett, in 20, I think it was 2021, 2022, the space next door became available. And me and Jason, again, just happened to be talking and he looks at me and he’s like, maybe I should rent the space next door. What are you going to do there? I don’t know. Let’s treat holistically. Let’s do all the other things. We’re really good at getting people to move better.

Now let’s like give them to live better. Let’s do the other things. And so we really honed in on the live better piece of move better, feel better, live better. And we said, okay, let’s stack on live better. Let’s really expand this whole kind of prevention optimization side of the practice.

Garrett Salpeter (16:31.644)
I love it. And you touched on there that sense of purpose, changing lives, having that why. I think that’s very important. And I love how you have infused that into your culture. I mean, you’re your people, you know, I talked to people on your team and they will say that we’re here to change lives. We’re here to disrupt the status quo. We’re here, you know, they’re saying these things. So just another good example.

to call out for everyone listening here is having these simple phrases like Angie does and repeating them often so they really sink in. It’s not having a good purpose or mission statement isn’t in complexity, it’s actually in simplicity because it has to be able to land with everybody and be meaningful, be inspiring, have an emotional effect. So I love what you’ve done there and you’re truly leading by example. And, you know.

So we’ve gotten a sense of the practice now and how you’re leading by example there. Let’s shift to a slightly different aspect in terms of how you are marketing that practice now, because I know you’re doing some unique things on social media, digitally and in person in the community. And can you tell us a little bit about your marketing strategy and marketing efforts? You can start wherever you like, whether you start in person, start with social media, wherever you’d like to go, you may go.

Angie McGilvrey (18:00.511)
Permission granted. Okay. Well, I think, Garrett, you beautifully segued into that because the marketing platform has to start with your why, right? And so…

I encourage other owners or other practices, other providers listening, knowing that why and being able to very clearly articulate that is the foundation for where your marketing strategy begins. And…

Also looking at, I think it’s important for us to understand, because I didn’t get any of this in PT school, right? I didn’t learn how to market or how to run a business. This has been through the 20 -something years that I’ve been trying to navigate this course. And the thing that I’ve learned and taken away is the difference between marketing and sales. And…

That is a foundational piece when we start to look at how do you market your practice? How do you market? Marketing is all of the wonderful things that you get to do that leads to a sale, right? That leads to that transaction. And in my world, a sale is a life changed, right? So what are all of the things that I’m gonna do from a marketing perspective that are gonna allow me to change a life?

And so we can start diving into social media, because I think that that’s probably the place that a lot of other, I know, PT practices struggle is social media. Because you hear every other like CKANED or whatever it is, and it’s like, how to get more new patients, social media marketing. And if you hear that, like,

Angie McGilvrey (20:03.103)
Like you don’t, how to get more new patients is selling, right? Like new patients selling, social media marketing, no, no, no. Marketing is social media, is building your brand. It’s telling your story. It’s allowing people into your world of what’s happening in your practice, in your community. What are you, what do you stand for? What’s your purpose? And so,

That’s where I challenge, and I know a lot of people are like, I just don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to start. You’re already doing it. I promise you’re already doing it. You do it every single day in the four walls of your practice. You just now have to start telling the world about it. And so some of the small little finite strategies that we use, I have…

to amazing people on my team that one of their roles is to go through the clinic and video on their phones. You know, it’s nothing fancy, nothing that costs a ton of money. And they video what’s happening. And a lot of it is, again, you’re going back to changing lives, right? Look at patients whose lives were changed today. Just capture that.

Right? Build the brand.

Garrett Salpeter (21:29.18)
Let me interrupt you for one second. I think that’s excellent, brilliant, highly recommended. Some people might be listening to that and thinking, well, what about HIPAA? Do I have permission from people to do that? Can I just go around? Just in case that’s jumping out for people and they might have trouble registering that if that’s on their minds, how do you address that?

Angie McGilvrey (21:45.023)
Yeah.

Angie McGilvrey (21:53.343)
Yes, so when we first started doing that, we…

Of course, we have a waiver that they signed. And so when we first started doing that, that waiver was something that for every new patient that would come into the practice, we would actually physically sit there with them and have them sign it. Now it’s just part of our intake paperwork. It’s so natural. It’s also a very natural thing because people many times are coming to me because they’ve seen us on social media so many times. So now the expectation is,

is kind of there, but in the beginning, especially, I would recommend you just have that conversation like, by the way, Meg is gonna record your story today. Is that okay with you? And even though they may have signed the thing, I’ll typically say that to them first too, or have my providers even just like say that to make them comfortable. And then on the way out, they’ll have you sign the form.

So that’s kind of how it started and now it’s just turned into kind of a natural vibe.

Garrett Salpeter (23:01.244)
Awesome. I know you had a good system and that’s essentially the same thing we do at our clinic in Austin as well. We have it in our intake paperwork and then just sort of verbally confirm with people before something’s happening. So yeah, I love those social media posts. I talk to people around the country in different practices, some in corporate practices, some in private practices like yours.

and they’ll say, I saw APEC. I always hear, I saw APEC on social media. I love what they’re doing. I saw this. of course people, I saw them signing these termination notices with insurance carriers, right? So of course we already got to cover that, but it’s cool to see. One of the things that I like the most about that is just how real and authentic it is. I mean, there’s, people appreciate.

Angie McGilvrey (23:35.391)
Aw, thank you.

Angie McGilvrey (23:44.351)
Yeah.

Garrett Salpeter (23:53.852)
production quality in some things and there’s times where it’s worth it and then there’s also you know people the truth that people appreciate authentic and real and unedited and behind -the -scenes sort of things and so you know when people are following you around and You just have a little you’re just mic’d up and treating patients and stuff like that That seems like some of the content that really lands best with people and like you said, you know A lot of times people expect it because they’ve already seen you on social media before they come in. It’s helped

It’s been a big part of your marketing, right? I mean, has, I don’t know, can you quantify, do you have a sense of how much your social media efforts have actually translated to getting more patients in the door and making a tangible, objective benefit into your business growth?

Angie McGilvrey (24:39.647)
Yeah, that’s a great question because that’s the hardest thing to measure, right? And again, I think I go back to that’s probably why a lot of PTs, why we don’t necessarily like to do it because we can’t see that immediate ROI to it, you know, right? Like I put up five posts, why don’t I have five new patients? What’s going on, right? So instead, like you have to listen to a lot of factors like,

I watch the engagement on social media platforms as well. So you can start to see your followers, your likes, your all of that. You start to see that increase so you know you’re getting over a wider spectrum. I also listen when patients will come in and they’ll say to me something about, or to one of my other providers, something about, am I gonna do that electric thing? Am I gonna do that thing with the pads on? I wanna do that today.

Am I gonna do dry needling? Like I want to do that. We haven’t even talked about that. So I know they’re getting it from what makes you want to do that. I saw my friend so -and -so in here on your story. They did it. So I want to do it.

Right? So it’s more in the feedback and in listening to our patients as consumers, right? Okay, again, what do they value? They value the opinion and the experience of their friend or family member as they see it through our social media channel, that they really see the trust and the safety in that. So.

Garrett Salpeter (26:11.292)
That’s awesome. Very, very well said. And it’s very consistent also with my understanding where there’s these statistics that people say it takes an average of seven touches or interactions for someone to finally feel confident enough, safe enough to become a customer of yours. So they can have to hear it from someone, see it on social media, look at the website.

see it again somewhere else, there’s all these different, so that is a great way to have, if you have to accumulate seven or somewhere between five and 10 interactions on average with somebody, that is a great way for them to interact with you. It’s low risk to them, they can observe, but as they get a sense of your brand and start to develop these positive associations, you’ll be top of mind when they have a musculoskeletal issue, especially if they see.

you’re doing diagnostics and they would have previously thought, I need to go see an orthopedic surgeon first or something. They’re like, well, I, you know, if it’s something like this, it looks like they can even diagnose me there. So it’s, you know, it’s education, developing that sense of safety and comfort with you. And there’s, and like you said, building a brand, building a brand is a, a long -term strategy. The rock and his tequila company, you know, he didn’t, he didn’t do a lot of,

you know, paid advertising and stuff like that. He spent all these years building a persona, building a huge following on social media. And then, and, and he drank tequila, you know, and every one out of every five to 10 posts. And so when he came out with a tequila company, he already had this brand established and he could transfer all that value and build it immediately, like, you know, into a billion dollar company like that. So building a brand is a long game and it establishes a lot of value.

Angie McGilvrey (27:41.695)
Mm.

Angie McGilvrey (27:52.223)
Yes.

Garrett Salpeter (28:05.212)
that can potentially be captured in a variety of ways. So just try to elaborate a little more on what you said, but I think what you said is excellent.

Angie McGilvrey (28:10.495)
Yes.

Angie McGilvrey (28:14.431)
That’s a great example on how, again, it leads to expansion. So that’s a great example.

Garrett Salpeter (28:20.376)
Yeah, for sure, for sure. So we talked a little, you know, in this concept of marketing, I also love your definition of marketing. I just want to highlight that one more time of all the activities that lead up to a sale. Is that, what’d you say? All the activities that proceed or lead up to a sale, right? So that was good. And then in terms of social media, I’ve gotten to talk about that. Can you talk to us about some of the other…

Angie McGilvrey (28:37.919)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Garrett Salpeter (28:49.884)
marketing that you’re doing, you know, the pounding the pavement, getting out there in the community. I know you’ve got the tech truck, you know, you’re going and offering services at events. What’s, what have been the most impactful, you know, in -person community -based marketing strategies and events and different things you’ve done there.

Angie McGilvrey (29:08.255)
Yes. So again, if we go back to that primary care PT model, right? We need to get in front of our community and we need to be able to educate them what we can do as physical therapists, especially in this primary care role. And we look at, you know, who is our practices avatar. I think, you know, Garrett, you touched on that in the beginning. You know, we, we started with a very niche of CrossFit athlete.

and Spartan Race obstacle course athlete and that has really turned into athletes. And so one of the biggest things that we do is attend a lot of the various athletic events that are going on here, especially CrossFit competitions. And so we have a pretty cool tech truck that’s fitted with

We have a newbie in there and we have, you know, things like cupping and we have some Normatec boots and just some other like recovery, some ASTIM scraping, some other recovery tools in there. And we take the truck, we go to the CrossFit events and we will provide a complimentary

services to any of the competitors. And so this really allows us to immerse ourselves in that community, allows us to show them what we can do and how we treat this population. So if you remember, I’m from Southwest Florida.

and our demographic is predominantly Medicare. That is when I started the practice back in 2005 and kind of up until we made our big switch into the athlete community, practice was probably anywhere between 70 and 80 percent Medicare. And

Angie McGilvrey (31:10.303)
We identified that there was a huge gap and a huge need for an underserved population, which was the athletic community. Everybody thought you’re in Southwest Florida. You treat the Medicare demographic. That’s just what you do. And so being able to provide services to a group of people who didn’t even know that physical therapy was something that could help them.

throughout their journey of pain, injury, wellness, optimization has been, I mean, that’s just been an awesome experience. The persona here, again, in Southwest Florida is, no, that’s just when grandpa breaks his hip. That’s when we go to physical therapy. Maybe it’s after an athlete had an ACL surgery, maybe. But other than that, we didn’t have that privilege. So by putting ourselves in…

where the athletes are, putting ourselves in their environment and supporting them, taking care of them. That’s been a huge win for us.

Garrett Salpeter (32:18.716)
That’s awesome. And a big part of that growth and movement towards a primary care model and marketing and all these things that we’ve been talking about so far really is that, you know, letting them know that PT can help them because yeah, there are a lot of athletes who would think, you know, yeah, PT is for my grandpa. That’s what you get in the hospital to help you learn how to walk, how to transfer.

Angie McGilvrey (32:45.791)
Mm -hmm. Yep.

Garrett Salpeter (32:47.996)
or stuff like that. So really helping to clarify, I wouldn’t say, well, I guess redefine the perception in some people’s minds, but clarify, help them get a real appropriate understanding of what physical therapy can do. And I love that tech truck because you can go out and set up shop and really show people what you can do. And it also was a catalyst that enabled,

you and us, I mean, we’re grateful to be involved in this partnership, but enabled you to work with the United States men’s gymnastics team, the Olympic team. And as we record this, we’re a couple of months away from the Paris gymnastics coming up summer of 2024. So can you talk about, first of all, a little bit how that relationship came to be, TechDirect being part of it, and then the extent to which Apex is…

Angie McGilvrey (33:26.719)
Mm -hmm.

Garrett Salpeter (33:47.452)
supporting the men’s gymnasts.

Angie McGilvrey (33:51.487)
Yes.

Thank you for bringing that up, Garrett. It’s really a full circle conversation because the way that that partnership came to be was through a social media connection. So when we think about expansion and that side of it, so it was a classmate of ours that reached out to me on LinkedIn.

Mind you, I’m an old PT. I graduated a long time ago. And so this was, you know, a PT reaching out to me over LinkedIn that I have not, I hadn’t even heard from in 20 years and said, hey, I, the men’s USA gymnastics team was training in Indianapolis, which is where I went to school and where he was practicing. And they’re moving to Sarasota.

They asked if I knew anybody that did sports in Florida and I thought of you and you were the closest so can I give them your contact? Bam! Like how cool is that, right? So we exchanged contacts, whatever, and we said okay yeah we would love to come up to you. They have a training facility in Sarasota.

And we said, yeah, we would love to come up and talk to you about what we can do to serve your athletes with not only rehab, but also their recovery. And so this is again, where the tech truck came into place, again, getting out of the community and outside of the four walls, right? So got to drive the truck up to Sarasota, had all the cool things inside.

Angie McGilvrey (35:39.743)
They already, their space was outfitted pretty cool with like sauna, cold plunge, red light.

Garrett Salpeter (35:43.068)
Thank you.

Angie McGilvrey (35:46.591)
And we were able to come in and say, all right, now this is what we can do. We were able to show them what the new fit was able to provide most significantly from a diagnostic and preventative standpoint. So we did some sample mapping and screening on the athletes that day when we went up there. And we said, hey, we’re just going to show you what we would do. And we said, this would be part of a routine assessment that we would be checking in all the time. Because we

our goal would be to stop anything and prevent any injuries or prevent any breakdown before it would happen. We also incorporated HRV technology, which we said, this is something that we want you guys to be consistently looking at and monitoring. Also, again, this is all from a preventative standpoint, very high level elite athletes. And literally, I think Joe was there for like four hours and they were like,

We don’t want to talk to anybody else. Like we want you guys to come back. How do we do this? And we want one of those machines here. How do we make this all happen? So it’s a pretty cool, pretty cool story. We have one PT that spends all of his time up in Sarasota and he is devoted to the men’s US gymnastics hopefuls. And so yeah, he’s, he’s with them five days a week. And in that he’s also

been able to like where they train at there’s also you know the public can come and train there on off hours you know this this huge gymnastics arena and so he’s also been able to educate.

these other younger kids that are up and coming on the benefits of this. And so we also started a program with them. So the hours after the Olympians are training, he provides services to the other, to the members of the community that are also training there and see what the Olympians do and really want to be just like them. So if they’re doing it, then I want to do it. And so again, we’re just really…

Angie McGilvrey (37:55.775)
broadening the horizon of what physical therapy can do in the community as, again, that primary care piece.

Garrett Salpeter (38:05.084)
That’s awesome. And it’s been, been very cool. Apex, you know, as you mentioned, has been the main leaders established in relationship and taking care of the athletes and doing all the wonderful things there in Sarasota. I also got to go to that facility and spend some, you know, actually work with some of the athletes, you know, many months ago around the, around the beginning of this partnership also.

Angie McGilvrey (38:27.615)
Mm -hmm.

Garrett Salpeter (38:31.516)
And I’ve gotten to talk with the physical therapist who’s there on site and different things. And it’s been, it’s been very cool to see it adds a lot of value. I mean, they’re really excited about it because they, they have this primary care person for all the stuff that comes up, the tweaks, the injuries, the stuff they have to deal with to have that primary care resource on site. There is so valuable to them. You know, they love being able to work through those little, those little nagging, those little aches and pains that.

could become more serious injuries. They can work through them so much more quickly and efficiently so they don’t become the more serious things that can derail a career or derail an Olympic cycle. So it adds a ton of value and it’s a really cool facility and I’m super excited about the whole team that they’ve put together there. The coaches, Kevin Mazika, the head coach, the last time the US men medaled in the Olympics.

two decades ago, Sam Michalak, who was on the team previously as coach. They’ve got a great staff, a great culture there, and I can feel some apex infused into it as well. Very, very collaborative, excellent, and we’re of course honored to be able to collaborate with you and them on that too. I’m really excited to watch this summer Olympics in Paris.

Angie McGilvrey (39:35.647)
Okay.

Angie McGilvrey (39:59.743)
Yes, yes.

Garrett Salpeter (40:02.173)
So it’s good. As we wind down here, let’s see, is there anything more to say on the marketing front in terms of in -person things, social media things? I want to make sure we cover all the bases there.

Angie McGilvrey (40:23.359)
I think the…

I think in just closing the, kind of tying the bow around the marketing piece, I’m in a stage in my business where many other practice owners might be, they might be here as well, or possibly getting ready to be into this piece where I’m really.

taking on more of a CEO leadership role and really trying to build the leaders beneath me and really trying to focus more of my time on working on the business as opposed to in the business.

I still have the privilege of treating patients one day a week just because I absolutely love it. And I want to be able to still immerse myself into that community and know what it is that my patients are valuing so I can make sure that on the other end, right, that I’m driving that into whatever our business expansion is. But in that, I came across one of the…

books that I’ve been referencing is Scaling Up by Vern Harnasch. And there’s a quote in here that really stuck to me the other day when I was going through it. And it said, the number one functional barrier to scaling up is the lack of an effective or an affecting marketing department separate from sales.

Angie McGilvrey (41:59.615)
And so I thought that that was again, just super eye opening in looking at where as the leader of my company, where I need to be making sure that I’m putting, you know, my attention, making sure that I have the processes, the systems, the messaging, the branding that I’m leading that front in, in that market doesn’t mean I’m doing all of it. I have three amazing people.

Joe, Megan and Marissa who all assist in that, but in just making sure that that is the gas pedal, you know, the foot does not come off the gas pedal on that.

Garrett Salpeter (42:40.412)
That’s great. Vern, Vern Harnish is great actually. I met him recently at a Mastermind event in this group called Genius.

Angie McGilvrey (42:48.095)
You know everybody. I need to hang out with you more, Garrett.

Garrett Salpeter (42:51.708)
I got to talk to him for a few minutes. I wouldn’t say we’re best friends yet, but he’s a great guy. And so that book is excellent scaling up. I think at least, at least in my circle, this could be a limited perspective. I think more people are more familiar with traction, which is another book. So they’re both scaling up attraction or books on essentially how to operate a business effectively. So in traction, they talk about EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system. So it’s how you.

structure your team and assign roles and responsibilities and accountability and how you hold meetings and do strategic planning and make sure everyone is aligned towards implementing that strategic plan and how you do metrics. And, you know, I mean, so it literally is like a recipe how to run a business. And so scaling up is an even more robust version of that. And the guy that wrote traction used to be a coach for Vern Harnish and work for the scaling up organization. And so if you read the two,

Angie McGilvrey (43:45.791)
Garrett Salpeter (43:49.756)
or if you’re familiar with them or trying to kind of understand the lay of the land, that’s an, it’s just sort of a context. There’s the traction EOS is sort of a subset of every, all the tools that are in scaling up. And so some of it depends on the level of sophistication of the business and different things like that. But that’s a great book. So highly recommended. And Verne Harnes is, you know, my limited experience was also very, very intelligent, very gracious. And.

Angie McGilvrey (44:07.839)
Sure.

Garrett Salpeter (44:19.324)
definitely definitely knows his stuff there. So yes, a great, a great book and you are, you’re implementing it. You’re doing it.

Angie McGilvrey (44:28.351)
You gotta take the actions, right? You just gotta do it.

Garrett Salpeter (44:30.396)
Knowledge is not power, it’s potential power.

Angie McGilvrey (44:36.351)
very, very well said from from Mr. Newfit himself.

Garrett Salpeter (44:43.644)
just knowing you can read a book and you can know it, but if you don’t actually implement it, then same thing. You can listen to a podcast and think, that’s a great idea, but implement implementing your version of it is, is the thing that’s actually going to move the needle. And I think that’s, that’s one, you know, we talked about the business model, the strategies that you’re using can be inspiring. I think we should also call out the fact that you’re actually taking action and doing it, you know, the work that goes into.

Angie McGilvrey (44:58.687)
Yes.

Garrett Salpeter (45:12.124)
just regularly putting out content on social media, the work that goes into the people on your team who have gotten the training in MSK ultrasound and electro diagnostics and those done those other things, you know, so you’ve, you’ve, you’re really committed and gone deep in these areas and it’s made a difference. And I do feel very optimistic that everyone listening to this is going to find, you know, many pieces of inspiration, but at least one thing that will be able to move the needle for their business. And so I,

invite everyone listening to, to take action, figure out at least the one thing from this episode that they’re doing at Apex that you feel like you could do more of in your own business. And Angie, do you have any, any parting words, anything else that you feel like we should, should get across before saying goodbye here?

Angie McGilvrey (46:00.863)
I love that the action potential that you talked about there, right? I love that and I think that that’s a great place to end because it doesn’t have to be the things, the specific actions that we’ve taken. Like…

brought in that scope and one of the things that the newbie and being a partner with New Fit had done for our practice was it did allow us to take action with our avatar patient. So the newbie can be whatever you want it to be. Who is it that you really want to serve and that newbie or that whatever that action like, like.

it can do that for, it did it for athletes for me, but it can do that for a whole world of so many different people, right? So I think that you and I have talked about, Garrett, that like really isn’t every injury kind of stemmed from neurology? Like, is it there, is it, isn’t everything neuro? Like everything is neuro. So when we think about it from that standpoint, like it is,

Garrett Salpeter (47:05.052)
Thanks for watching.

Angie McGilvrey (47:10.911)
And there’s other tools, as Garrett said, you know, there’s ultrasound, there’s, you know, the other things that we’ve brought into practice, but just use that as knowing that, you know, it’s that action step that you can make whatever you want to make it. We made it for athletes, you can make it whatever you want to make it for who you want to serve.

Garrett Salpeter (47:32.924)
That’s right. Every patient is a neuro patient and you can help them in some way, if not many ways. So that’s a good, excellent note on which to. And hopefully everybody listening to this already follows you on social media and everything, but can you just, just in case they’re not and they want to look you up, what channels are you on? What are the best places to find you? What’s your Instagram handle, et cetera. Just let us know where to follow along on the Apex journey.

Angie McGilvrey (47:36.223)
Yes.

Angie McGilvrey (48:04.063)
Instagram you.

Garrett Salpeter (48:04.7)
I can tell you. She’s asking. So it’s…

Angie McGilvrey (48:08.447)
I’m sure there’s a lot of therapies out there for you.

Garrett Salpeter (48:12.272)
It’s at I’ll answer my own question Angie. It’s at apex physical therapy SWFL for Southwest Florida apex physical therapy SWFL And you’ll see both my personal page and the new fit page are are following following along there and then That’s where I interact with you and see both of your content also linked in to any other

Angie McGilvrey (48:16.351)
Okay, very good.

Angie McGilvrey (48:26.303)
There we go.

Angie McGilvrey (48:35.231)
Hahaha!

Angie McGilvrey (48:41.247)
Yes.

Garrett Salpeter (48:42.204)
channels or platforms. I don’t even know. Do you have a YouTube page or you haven’t ventured into that yet?

Angie McGilvrey (48:47.263)
That is in our, one of our priorities for this year is to really delve into that piece of the marketing that we haven’t, that we have not done yet. So yes, look for us on YouTube. Yeah, my LinkedIn is just my name, Angie McIlvery. If I can just one other social media is,

dog and his name is PT of course and his his Instagram is it’s PT underscore the underscore dog and

He’s our three -legged mascot and we actually utilized New Fit on him when he was rehabbing his only back leg from ACL surgery. But even more so, he has a children’s book and his children’s book is all about never giving up and the power of being kind.

teaching kids kindness to all beings and all of the proceeds from his book go to animal rescue. So if that’s something that touches your heart like it does ours, then we appreciate you following PT the dog and spreading his message. Sorry, Garen, I had to do the shameless plug there.

Garrett Salpeter (50:04.092)
And I will share a testimony for the.

Garrett Salpeter (50:09.756)
the book. I’ve read the book. I ordered it on Amazon, read it to my children. It’s fabulous. And I also got a signed copy with we put some ink on on PT’s paw and see. We have a second copy that’s signed also is wonderful. So I highly I’m glad you mentioned it. I’m disappointed in myself for forgetting to bring it up to.

Angie McGilvrey (50:21.855)
Yes, yes.

Angie McGilvrey (50:32.223)
No, no, no. Thank you for the opportunity.

Garrett Salpeter (50:38.044)
So definitely, yes, PT runs free. Is that the title? PT runs free. Yes. Well, that’s good. So thank you, Angie, for coming on the show here and sharing what you’re doing at Apex. And I already have said and definitely will close by saying again that I hope people find inspiration in some or all of what you’re doing there and that as you continue to push forward,

Angie McGilvrey (50:43.039)
Yes, yes, yes, PT runs free.

Garrett Salpeter (51:06.108)
You’re lighting the path for other people to expand what the profession can do, what a private practice physical therapy clinic can be. And you are just, you’re a bright shining light example. So thank you for doing what you’re doing. It’s an honor to be able to call you a friend and a colleague. And please, please send my best to Joe as well. And the whole team. We actually love the whole team there at APEC. So thank you. Thank you, Benji.

Angie McGilvrey (51:22.335)
Aww.

Angie McGilvrey (51:28.095)
Yes, absolutely, absolutely. A pleasure is all mine. Thank you, Garrett.

Garrett Salpeter (51:37.628)
And thank you everybody for tuning in. We will see you on the next episode of the Undercurrent Podcast. Please like, subscribe, and all that good stuff. Bye bye.

Angie McGilvrey (51:41.407)
Get a picture of it.