The Master The Art Of Recruiting Webinar: How To Out-Recruit Hospital Systems Without Matching Their Salaries With Adam Robin, Brian Weidner, And Nathan Shields

The Master The Art Of Recruiting Webinar: How To Out-Recruit Hospital Systems Without Matching Their Salaries With Adam Robin, Brian Weidner, And Nathan Shields

Introduction Of Speakers & Context Setting 

Welcome, everybody, to the Master of the Art of Recruiting in 2026 webinar brought by the Private Practice Owners Club. I’m going to be the host and moderator, Nathan Shields. Welcome to all those who are joining us now and also in the future. With me is my partner within the Private Practice Owners Club, Adam Robin. Adam, go ahead and introduce yourself a little bit.

My name is Adam. I’m a Physical Therapist. For those of you who might have tuned into the show or might have seen me on the Facebook Group, I started my practice in 2019. I started working with Nathan at the end of 2020 or early 2021, one or the other, as a coach. That was a huge transformation for me personally and professionally. I’ve also worked with Brian. Brian has helped us recruit in our practice quite a few times. I’m grateful to be here. Now, I have the pleasure of being a partner with Nathan and helping other practice owners. That’s a little bit about me.

We got Brian Weidner of Career Tree Network. Go ahead and introduce yourself a little bit, Brian.

I’m not a PT by background, but my wife is. I got into this through her. In 2007, we started our company to help PTs research and connect with employers. We’re based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and work with clients nationwide. We focus on PT recruitment, helping clinics with hiring, and helping PTs research and explore options. We do a lot of work with new grads. It’s been fun.

It’s good to have you guys. We did advertise that my friend Bart McDonald of Superior Physical Therapy in Idaho is going to be with us as well. Bart had some family physical issues come up and had to drive to Salt Lake City to help out some family members. He’s unfortunately unable to join us. He brings a great perspective to recruiting, especially bringing people onto his team.

Since he’s not going to be with us, I’m going to share prior episodes that he has been a part of. One of them is related to how to help new grads and join your team specifically. Also, I might as well throw this one in there. One thing that he does that is unique and drives people to his practice is that he is certified in musculoskeletal ultrasound. That is a big part of his practices. In fact, all the providers are expected to be trained in musculoskeletal ultrasound. That’s the way their practice operates. It is a recruiting method that he uses to have people join his team. Since he can’t be here, check those episodes out on your own time.

We’ll go ahead and get started. Let’s dive into it right away. The first question I want to start with and ask both Adam and Brian specifically is, how is the state of recruiting in 2026 different from what you’ve experienced over the past couple of years? Is it getting harder? Is it getting easier? What are some of the barriers that maybe you’re seeing in the last few months or the last quarter of 2025 that are relatively new for you? I’ll start with Brian.

The State Of Recruiting In 2026: Challenges & Decreasing Labor Force 

The challenges of recruitment in 2026 continue to persist as we’ve seen in the last few years. It’s not getting any easier. If you look at the data, the demand for PT services is very high, yet the labor force is decreasing. There are a few reasons why I think that’s happening. In the last couple of months, I’ve heard of two of our clients who are closing some of their clinic locations, not because of lack of patient interest, but a lack of staff, which is something that I haven’t heard before.

We continue to see candidates having very high leverage in terms of what they’re looking for and the ability to advocate for their career path. With all groups, we recruit for hospitals and skilled nursing facilities. We do a lot of work with private practice as well, but it seems like the private practice setting has seen the most challenge in terms of recruiting.

I’d like to dig deeper on that, but I also want to get Adam’s take on that before we get into any tangents.

I would echo that. Brian probably understands recruiting from a national perspective. You mentioned a little bit more data. I don’t necessarily have that type of perspective. I just know based on my experience. I’m also the person who loves to recruit. It’s one of the things that I enjoy doing. In 2024, I had a great year recruiting. We grew our team exponentially. We hired eighteen therapists in 2024, which was such a huge win for us, but I didn’t feel that momentum carry into 2025. For whatever reason, it slowed down.

You were doing the same things at the same volume, and you weren’t getting the traction that you were before.

Adapting Recruiting Strategy: Shifting From Volume To Value & Offer Enhancement 

We weren’t getting the traction. That caused a little bit of concern for me, a little bit of pain, and a little bit of like, “This isn’t going to work.” I started feeling a little worried about, “How are we going to do this? How are we going to continue to keep the company afloat if we can’t hire?” That pain drove me into diving into a lot more about how to get better at recruiting and how to not just hit the volume and the outbound numbers that I need, but how to get better at recruiting. Echoing what Brian mentioned, candidates have more leverage. Finding even better ways to separate ourselves and create valuable, competitive offers that weren’t only tied to money was what we had to learn how to do. I see it as a more and more competitive landscape.

You’re having to change some of the things that you’re doing a little bit compared to what was successful in 2024.

We had to get better.

It’s not necessarily getting easier is what we’re hearing. It’s getting even tighter. We’ve got to approach things differently. I will tease that towards the end of our call, Adam is going to share an opportunity for you to work with us, and especially him, on creating your own recruiting strategy. He’s going to talk a little bit about that later on. Make sure you stick on for the entirety of the call because he’s going to share an opportunity to help you create your own strategy where you walk away with your own recruiting playbook. We’re going to talk about that a little bit later on.

You have, though, been a little bit more successful in 2026. What wasn’t working in 2025, you had to alter in 2026. You’re doing something a little bit different. Do you want to share a little bit about what you’re doing then? Tell me about the process. You figured out, “I need to do something different.” Where did your mind take you after that?

In ‘25, we had several interviews. For the first time in a long time, we had candidates telling us no. We had candidates telling us, “That’s not enough. We need more.” I was like, “What do you mean? We’re awesome. What are you, Crazy? What’s going on?” You can only get so many noes before you start thinking to yourself, “Maybe we can get a little bit better. Maybe there’s something we can do.”

Overall, my strategy in 2024 was to be loud. I was getting in front of as many people as I possibly could, going to all the career day events, sending out emails, and promoting. I was doing as much as I possibly could. I was creating a volume of noise in the marketplace that would make me undeniably present, and that worked.

If you haven’t listened to anything Adam has done, he’s serious when he’s talking about volume. He punches out volume on social media, DM-ing people, and chasing people down. We call it semi-stalking. He is reaching out to people on a volume that you wouldn’t imagine. We’ve talked about it many times on the show, so please reference the show. Look for Adam talking about marketing. It is volume-based. It’s hard not to see Adam if you are an available physical therapist or occupational therapist, or speech therapist that he’s trying to recruit.

The game was volume. As I’m talking through this, I’m good at sales as well. If there’s a candidate that I can get in front of, I usually convince them to at least hear me out. One of the things that I wanted to focus on in 2025 was learning how to remove myself from the process. How do I not have to be in so many interviews? How do I train my team on how to recruit without me being president? I started to see the numbers flatlined.

A lot of it required me to dive in a little bit deeper and play not just the volume game, but get clear on how we’re extracting value from our offer and maximizing the value of our offer. Using very specific language that highlights the value of our offer in our outbound attempts, marketing, and promotion to maximize conversions, and then training our team on how to sell our culture, vision, and values in a strategic way has started to help people convert a lot better going into 2026.

Leveraging Unique Strengths To Create An Irresistible Offer 

You dove back into what makes your clinic unique, what makes it special, and what its strengths are. For some people, that can be hard. As I’ve said before, when you’re in the picture, it’s hard to see it from the inside. People talk about how it’s hard to find the strengths within their organization. As an outside party, I can look at their clinics and say, “You’re in an amazing area. You might be in a small town, but there are plenty of people out there that want a small-town atmosphere. You are not in suburbia,” where your clinics are. You can speak to that.

You doubled down on focusing on the strengths and benefits of working in your company. That could be culture, the environment, and the opportunities. You focused on those. It sounds like you doubled down on your ads. You call them your offer. That offer extends past just the ad for it. It also speaks to the verbiage and the things that you’re highlighting in your communications with those people.

I love how you said you can’t see the painting if you’re in the painting. It’s so true. We see this in our teams when we’re building our leaders. A lot of the people on our team don’t understand their own strengths. If it’s a strength, that means you’re good at it. That means you do it all the time, and you’ve normalized it to yourself.

It becomes natural. It’s nothing extraordinary.

You naturally start to devalue your normal strength because it’s normal to you. We normalize it, thinking, “I’m a physical therapist,” but there’s so much you can extract from being a physical therapist. There’s so much value that, for the right person, it is extremely valuable. Part of it is getting excited again about your offer. When I say your offer, it’s what you are offering these candidates. Why should they choose you? Why should they choose you over the hospital, home health, or whatever?

We have to define the why. It’s usually found in the unique strengths and attributes of your company that you have normalized, and are hard to see. It takes a little bit of mindset work to extract that value. It might be worth working with a coach or doing some reflection exercises. Once you start putting some language to it, you’re like, “We’re in a pretty cool place.” That can get you excited about going to the marketplace and sharing that with the world.

Brian, don’t be afraid to jump in anytime here. When someone comes to you, how do you help them do that? How do you help them see what their strengths are? You’re a third party trying to promote these clinics. You’ve got to find out what those strengths are. How do you go about helping them extract those things so they can best promote themselves?

One thing that Adam said that I liked is that focus on areas of strength. A lot of our clients tell me, “I can’t compete with the hospitals. I can’t compete with X, Y, and Z.” You’re probably right. If you’re competing, it’s like, “Where are my areas of strength? Where am I unique? What can I provide as an employer that the big employer can’t?” There are things that you can do better than a larger employer. For example, more flexible work schedules.

We had one client who was offering a Tesla as a sign-on bonus for their company. Another client had a condo in Hawaii. They were offering that as a benefit to join the team and have access to this shared condo. These are examples of things, but there are areas as a small company that you can excel in, versus the larger companies that have to be more strict and uniform in terms of how they approach things. That’s key. It’s to recognize where your strength is and where you’re unique, play into that, and then find your tribe of candidates who are looking for that.

In reality, a lot of PTs and a lot of new grads are gravitating towards the larger companies. I heard some stats from our PT school partners, where a large percentage of PT students are never hitting the open job market. They’re accepting a job from one of their clinical sites. That’s been a change that’s happened. We used to see a big bump in the new grads’ season of new grads hitting the job market. All of a sudden, influx of new grads is all eager to talk to different employers. A lot of students are accepting a job from clinicals and then never hitting the open job market.

Importance Of School/Student Involvement (Clinical Sites, Career Fairs) 

That’s important to highlight. That tells me that if part of your recruiting strategy does not include your involvement with the therapy programs that are around you within your state, or maybe your alumni program where you graduated from. You might be out of luck if you’re waiting for me to come around and talk to the graduates. You need to be at the career fairs. You need to be taking interns. You need to be taking students. Otherwise, you’re never going to see them, is what it sounds like.

That’s true. Also, the percentage of students who already have a job at this point is quite high. A lot of PT programs graduate in May of each year. Even in November 2025, we hosted a career fair at a PT school. We had 2 or 3 students there who are graduating in May, but in November, they already had their jobs lined up. They already decided where they were going to go.

It’s faulty thinking to believe that we can go to a career fair in April and hire someone in May. We need to start those relationships super early. The larger companies have whole teams of college outreach professionals who are helping navigate that process. I don’t think you need to necessarily do that as a private practice, but you should have your eyes on the schools for sure and how you can add value and be a resource for students.

The other thing we have to be clear about is you have to accept the fact that you can’t compete with these hospital systems on salary and benefit. If you’re talking about what we traditionally call benefits, such as health insurance and salary. You probably won’t win that game. Adam, you probably accepted that fact.

Brian, I had this visual where you were talking a little bit about competing with hospital systems. If you were trying to compete with a fish in a swimming contest. You’re not going to win. I am never going to win that game, but I can run and get a fishing pole. I can do other things that a fish can’t. The truth is, we overemphasize the significance of money to these candidates.

I’m not saying that it’s not important because it is important. It’s of great importance, but the truth is that there is real value in other areas of your offer that people would be willing to sacrifice if you could explain it to them and tie it to other needs. It’s not about getting every single candidate possible. It’s about getting the right people who find value in the things that you offer.

That can take your pie from 0% to 6%, and that 6% is your lane. You can become good at that 6% every year with every new grad class. That could be enough to keep you going. It is getting clear on where your competition is and then also getting clear on where your competition is not. Your job isn’t to necessarily pull everyone in. Your job is also to push away the people who don’t fit your company.

If somebody comes to you, Brian, as an example, and they’re like, “I’m looking to make $100,000.” My next line is, “You’re not going to make that here. I want to be clear. If that’s your primary thing, you can’t make that.” I’m pushing those people away. I’m disqualifying them. I’m like, “You’re not going to make that here because here are the other pieces of value that we like to emphasize. If you feel like those aren’t important, then you probably are better off at the hospital system.”

Equipping yourself as an owner with that clarity is key because you get to serve that person. That person was never going to work out anyway. Guess what they’re going to do? They’re going to go tell all their friends about the other thing that you have, and they’re going to invite them to interview with you. It’s two things. It is getting clear on what game you are competing on, getting clear on what game you’re not competing on, and being bold and explicit about that.

To provide some social proof, you’ve changed your offer a little bit. You’ve doubled down on what your strengths are at your clinic. Adam, what has been the result of that over the first couple of months of 2026?

Five therapists.

In two months?

In 2 months, 5 therapists. To be clear, one of them is a PT. I didn’t start recruiting on January 1st, 2025. The new rollout started in Q4 of 2025. It took a little while to get the pipeline full. It was a lot of relationships that I had invested in 90 days prior that led to the result. It has given me so much more excitement. I don’t have to worry about recruiting now. I can focus on marketing and getting more patients in the door, or something else. That is a burden that is off my shoulders. It’s very freeing to know that that doesn’t have to be the restraint for me in 2026. That’s what I’m most excited about.

Kevin asked a good question. What was the exact change in your message that took you from 0 to 5 from quarter four to now?

It’s going back to pulling the value out. For me, my business, and my practice, we have PT, OT, and Speech. We have a multidisciplinary practice. That may sound like a normal thing, but wouldn’t you love an opportunity to work alongside in an outpatient clinic with not just PTs? You get to collaborate with OTs and speech therapists who are serving your patients as well. I’m adding value to it. That’s number one.

Not only that, but we have a pediatric team and an adult outpatient team. You get to treat patients from birth to the end of life. You have a dynamic opportunity. We’re going to work with you to build the caseload that you like. You’re not going to get stuck with a bunch of pediatrics. We have options for you. How cool to be able to provide that level of autonomy?

That is another value add. Not only that, but we’ve integrated an AI scribe where you get to walk out every day with notes completed. Evals are done in five minutes because we value work-life balance. That’s what you can get here. Kevin, that’s a little bit of language that a lot of you probably have. Positioning it in a place of value is the only thing.

It sounds like that’s what you’re doing. You’re taking characteristics that your clinic already has. You’re not creating something new. You’re taking what you’re already doing and repackaging it. I think that’s great.

The interesting thing about it is you present that to me and I’m like, “I don’t care about any of that stuff.”

You’re not going to work for me.

I’m not that avatar, but there’s going to be someone who is. There’s got to be someone who would fall in love with that opportunity.

Sometimes, people have a hard time tapping into their value. We have a new grad twelve-month mentorship program where we will meet with you every week to help you clarify your twelve-month goals. You’ll meet with a mentor to work through your first year as a new grad. Highlighting that is another thing. A lot of you guys have very cool programs like that in your business. There’s real value there.

A lot of people who are tuning in have expertise that they are willing to coach and share. I’m pretty certain, Adam, that your “mentorship program” was built out quite significantly with the help of AI, if I’m not mistaken. You put a lot of your language into AI of what you want to see in your mentorship program. It probably built out that twelve-month program for you. I don’t know your answer, but I’m assuming that’s what you do because I know you.

It doesn’t have to be complicated. Here’s the thing. If you meet with a new grad twenty times a year, one-on-one for an hour. Is that worth $5,000? It’s got to be worth $5,000. You’re lowering the gap by $5,000 against the hospital offer. It’s got to be worth $5,000. There’s real value there.

Other benefits that could stand out, especially compared to some of those larger entities, are leadership opportunities, a path to leadership, and growth in the organization. If you can show leadership development program over a period of time and give them examples like, “So-and-so started with us two years ago. Now, they’re a clinic director and are overseeing this many people.”

I wish Bart were on because he has been able to leverage a student loan repayment program, which is super valuable for anybody coming out of school. Under IRS codes, you can pay up to $5,250 per year towards someone’s student loans tax-free to them. You could pay more. You could pay $10,000 or $20,000 on some schedule, but the first $5,250 is tax-free.

There are some stipulations. You have to have some written program, and it has to be available to all providers. You can’t discriminate only to higher paid ones. It has to be available. I know Bart uses that quite a bit as another benefit that anyone could offer. Thinking about things like that, Brian, do you want to add on maybe other benefits that you might see that traditional owners could share with their new hires?

Alternative Benefits Beyond Salary (Stipends, Transparency, Loan Repayment) 

A flexible schedule is key. Professional development and CEUs mentorship. A lot of newer grads are interested in a residency program, so that might be something. It seems like there’s a push from some of the PT schools to consider residency as an option for a new grad. If you can explore that and see if that fits in, that would be an area worth exploring. Structured mentorship is key.

We talked about student loan support. You could do anything as a benefit. You could have a wellness stipend where on each paycheck you have an extra $100 that’s earmarked for wellness. We’ve had clients who take money that they would have as regular pay, and then they have the stipends listed out on the paycheck, so that you’re having that as a benefit. There's a technology stipend. You can use this money to pay for your cell phone. It’s regular pay, but when you call it out on the paycheck in these different buckets, it gives you an opportunity to sell that to candidates as a benefit.

Also, it gives you the chance to address where you may be weak. For example, a lot of our smaller clients don’t have their own health insurance or group health plan. They’re like, “We don’t have a health insurance plan.” That’s what they tell me. I’m like, “Would you consider adding a stipend on your paycheck that says Health Wellness Benefit? All of a sudden, you don’t have a group health plan, but you have a health wellness stipend that is on your paycheck. You’re able to check that box.

One other benefit that is possible, but that a lot of larger companies are afraid to do, is transparency and compensation models. This could be an area that we might want to talk further about. A lot of larger companies are very afraid of wage equity and where people are getting job offers. There’s a lot of secrecy in compensation. If you look at jobs that are posted, you often see a wide range. It could be something like, “This PT position pays anywhere from $70,000 to $110,000.” It’s like, “Thank you for sharing that wide range.” What if you looked at doing something different? What if you were more transparent in your compensation?

I had a client with whom I spoke. She pays all of her PTs a flat rate. Every single PT earns the same amount of money, but then there’s incentive pay based on performance. In some ways, I like that model because from a recruiting standpoint, it’s easier if you can be transparent on the compensation side. That could be a huge benefit that would travel throughout your company. It’s like, “We’re going to be the most transparent company that you know of.” A lot of newer grads are especially looking for that.

You’re going to attract those people who aren’t afraid of being busy or productive. To Adam’s point, not everyone needs to be aligned with you. You’re focused on the people who are aligned with you, and you want to talk specifically to them. I could see that. I’d assume there’s plenty of opportunity to maybe have some more flexible bonus systems and whatnot that a larger company couldn’t do. I don’t have much exposure to hospital programs, but I’m assuming that smaller clinics have bonus opportunities that might not be available at the larger facilities.

There’s certainly more creativity as well among the smaller companies.

Adam, in your offer, you brought up leveraging AI for documentation purposes. I saw a post on LinkedIn. They had come back from a combined sections meeting of the APTA in California. That conference tends to have a lot of students and academia present. What one person noticed was that there were a lot of students asking at the different booths about how they are leveraging AI in their companies.

Brian, you talk to a number of people who are coming to you. As you’re trying to connect them with owners, are you seeing that? Are people asking just yet? I’m assuming, with AI being a buzzword, that especially college graduates are going to be looking for places that are a little bit more on the leading edge of leveraging AI for the benefit of their company.

Honestly, that sounds like a good question that a candidate would want to ask an employer, but I haven’t seen that. It almost seems like when you’re interviewing for jobs, and you’re supposed to have a set of questions that you ask the employers. It’s like, “Tell me about your culture. Tell me about X, Y, and Z. Tell me your mission statement.” It sounds like a good buzz question like, “How are you using AI to enhance patient care?” To me, it sounds like a fluff question.

The biggest benefit that I’ve seen, and we’ve had clinicians ask us about this, is the AI documentation. That is taking off quite a bit in terms of time saving. The thing is, with students, they haven’t had the drudgery of doing documentation. They don’t necessarily know why AI documentation is so much better. It could be a selling point, but we haven’t seen it like that.

I could see where not just using AI documentation to support doing those notes, but also leveraging AI to make sure that your notes are compliant. It could be something that people want or appreciate the confidence that that gives them. Their notes aren’t going to be brought under certain scrutiny because they’ve leveraged these kinds of AI programs.

Addressing Productivity Expectations & The Role of AI In Documentation 

The biggest concern among new grads is productivity, which we haven’t spoken about yet. Using AI and implementing it for time savings could help with balancing your day and being productive. If it’s positioned in that regard, that’d be helpful.

Tell me about your conversations, maybe not just with new grads, but also with other people. What are they asking about in terms of productivity? Is there fear there? What are they asking? What are they saying?

PTs of all experience levels are looking for quality time with patients. The gold standard for that is one patient per hour. No double bookings, no aids, and no assistance. It’s 8 hours of work, and you have 8 patients a day. That’s what the most comfortable model is, at least what people think it is. On average, we see our clients for an eight-hour day. We usually have 55 patients per week full-time. That’s approximately what we see. We see that from small companies and even large companies. We work with very large employers, and they’re saying that’s what the average is as well.

In reality, with reimbursement and different factors, we have some clients who are seeing a lot more like in California or New York. There is some localization in terms of what candidates are finding acceptable. Ultimately, because of the number of jobs that are out there, PTs have lots of choices, and they can be very specific about what they want and who they’re willing to spend time with within the interview process. If you’re able to share your documentation process, share your expectation for productivity in the job advertisement, and be transparent with that, it can be a big help.

Adam, what has been your experience as you’re talking to people, whether it’s about the leveraging of AI and/or productivity during those conversations?

I’ll piggyback off of Brian. Most of them don’t even realize that AI is a real thing. They’re not fully aware. For instance, I interviewed a new grad, and she was blown away by the AI. She had never heard of it. She was like, “What is that? I’ve never seen that before.” That was a cool experience to be like, “We’re cool.” For most people, that’s not a leading thing, at least from where I’m at.

As far as production goes, we’re right there on the average that Brian mentioned. In our practice, we’re at 55 a week. Most candidates that we talk to feel like that’s fair and appropriate, at least the ones that we attract. We don’t have a ton of pushback. Every now and then, we may have a little bit of pushback. This goes back to having clarity around who belongs in your business and who doesn’t. I love it when I hear people, especially our clients saying, “If you have a problem with that number, then you’re probably not going to be a good fit here because this is what it is.”

When your team tells them that?

When I even hear some of our clients push back against candidates. I think that is needed. That is our way of balancing out the market a little bit. It’s like dropping the low-paying insurance. I don’t mean to make that weird, but you’re not built for everyone. Have clarity around the types of clinicians that do well in your practice, not just from a value perspective, but from a productivity expectation, and be clear on it. Define what that is, and then don’t go below it. It’s either that or help them find somewhere else to go. Maybe they need a move to do a cash pay practice or something like that.

I see a lot of owners get in trouble when they start to make emotional decisions around hiring. They try to bend a little bit on productivity expectations and give them a little bit more money. They’re like, “Hopefully, somebody will work for me,” and they end up getting in financial situations that they can’t dig themselves out of. That’s where the clarity comes in.

We had someone post about that in the Facebook group. It was, “I gave this person what they wanted financially. It was a little bit more than I expected to pay, but I was anxious to bring them in. Lo and behold, after training them for four weeks, they found another place that paid more and left. All the training and time went down the drain.” If it’s going to be about a numbers game, like strictly, “How much money do I make?” You can’t win that game.

You can never satisfy them.

They’re either going to keep coming back to you for more money or they’re going to find another place that’s going to pay them more. You can’t appease everybody.

That is so important. It doesn’t mean you’re mean or a bad person. It means you’re a responsible owner, and you are clear around the finances. To give you guys a quick example, I appreciate candidates who are willing to come in, negotiate, strengthen their position, and try to get the best offer that they possibly can. I love that. Also, there’s a budget for that, and it’s my responsibility to know what that is. I had a PTA that we hired. We made an offer, and she wanted more money. She came back and said, “I want more money.” It was significantly more money.

I simply told her, “No. This is it. I’d like to know within the next 24 hours if this is a good fit. If not, then we have other candidates that we can interview. Please let me know the best way to proceed.” The next day, she was like, “I’ll take it.” She’s awesome. We love her. I’m going to help her try to earn more money with us. It’s important to start that relationship off on a very clear, transparent start. It’s how to build your culture, not to get on a tangent. The clarity around the offer is important.

That’s a good lead. It might be a good time for people who might have to get off at the hour mark to talk about what we’re doing in April 2026. What Adam described is that he’s not afraid to have that conversation with that person because he has this recruiting engine. He has leads and candidates that are always there. It puts you in a position of power to have that conversation with a person that’s coming at you, or have a conversation with someone who’s not aligned with you value-wise. They’re maybe a cancer in the company.

You’re afraid to let them go because you don’t know how you’re going to replace them, or that means that you’re going to have to step in and see patients. You have business things to do, and not see patients. You withhold having those conversations and holding them accountable because you don’t have this bench to pull from. That’s where the power comes from, having a bench and having a recruiting plan and strategy in place. Talk to us quickly before people take off at the hour mark, Adam, about what we’re doing in April 2026 regarding recruiting.

If there’s one thing that you can do to go to work every day and lead your company from a place of insecurity and fear, it’s not knowing when your next candidate is going to come. You need your team more than they need you. That’s hard. It’s not that we don’t value the team, but if you’re in that position and you feel like the next time somebody quits, you’re going to be buried in the business. You want to try to avoid that and I would love to help.

On April 17th, 2026, we’re going to be running a one-day full virtual event. It’s going to be the first time we do a virtual event. It’s going to be called the Clinician Magnet Intensive. This is not going to be another webinar. This is a webinar. This is more of a general conversation. What we want to do is help you walk away with a custom, specific playbook for your practice.

We’re going to help you have a very clear avatar that fits inside your practice and help you build an irresistible offer for them. That’s numbers one and two. Number three is we’re going to show you what it’s like to build that outbound system. How do you get excited about what you’re offering and get it in front of as many people as possible through emails and DMs? How do you automate that process? That’s building the outbound process.

Number three, I’m going to give you some AI tools that you can use to help you build scripts, email campaigns, sequences, and everything you need to plug and play all of your outreach to these candidates. We’re going to give you an interview framework to help you close the deal. We’re going to give you a practice branded playbook that is very specific to you.

All of that to say, the goal is for you to be able to walk away from the webinar with the full playbook. You can go up to your admin team on Monday and say, “Here’s my playbook. Start it.” They should be able to run it internally for you. We’re doing that on April 17th, 2026. There are early bird tickets. Early bird tickets are going to be $397 if you register early. After that, tickets are going to go up to $597. You can also order just the recording. If you don’t want to attend live in person, you can order the recording for $259.

Here’s the guarantee. I’m putting a ton of energy into this. This is exactly what we’re doing in my practice. If you guys can’t tell, I’m super passionate about recruiting. I want to help you guys win. You can solve this problem. I want to make sure that there’s value here. If, during the webinar or by the end of the workshop, you feel like you don’t have a specific playbook that you feel very confident about that you can run internally without blowing up your time. Email me before the end of the workshop. I’ll give you all your money back, and you keep the playbook. I want to make this a no-brainer for you. If you’re interested, we’d love to have you in there and show you how to win the game of recruiting.

We’re excited about it. Not because it’s our first virtual event, but because we’ve done these smaller workshops in the past. If you’ve been a member of those, those have been super valuable. For this, we wanted to provide an opportunity where people didn’t have to travel to get the value out of it. It’s an all-day event. We’re starting at 8:00 AM and going until 3:30 PM. That's probably mountain time, depending on where you’re at time zone-wise.

At the same time, this is going to be a lot of handholding by Adam. It is going to be, “This is what I do. I’m going to open up my computer screen. This is my CRM. This is how I track all my leads. Let’s go to LinkedIn. This is how I message people on LinkedIn. This is how I find people on Facebook.” There’s going to be a ton of handholding because talking about it in this webinar can give you some ideas and some inspiration. Some people still want the like, “How do I do it?” That’s what April 17th is going to be all about.

If your State accepts it, we did get 5.5 contact hours approved by the Louisiana Physical Therapy Board. I’m sorry to my OTs and speech folks out there. I’ve had a hard time getting approval from your other boards, but it’s not for lack of trying. If you have any help that you can give me in getting a continuing education approval for something like this through the speech and OT boards, I’d appreciate your help.

Adam is going to do a lot of handholding. There’s going to be a walk away like, “This is what I need to do as of Monday. Step one, do this.” It’s going to be step by step. We’ll work you through that so you have your individual playbooks. We are excited about it. Brian, I wanted to ask you. Where are you finding candidates. At what scale are you having to promote positions that are available to start generating a lot of leads?

Strategic Sourcing: Optimizing For Inquiries, Resume Databases, & Geotargeting 

What we’re doing is trying something different and we’re shifting from optimizing for job applications to optimizing for candidate inquiries. I’m working with my clients to understand the difference there as well. From a recruiting standpoint, it has always been optimizing for job applications from candidates who are submitting their resume and a cover letter. With the shortage of PTs and the challenges with recruitment, we’re looking at how we can optimize for candidate inquiries and have that be the goal. Inquiries are the first stage in having a candidate who’s interested.

From a sourcing standpoint, there are two different sides in terms of where candidates are coming from. One is that they're coming from job ads that we’re posting. When you look at job ads, for better or for worse, Indeed is the primary platform where candidates are coming from. As a secondary source, we see LinkedIn, Google, and ZipRecruiter. Beyond those, Indeed is the primary one. We’re not seeing much with candidate sourcing coming in from ads.

The other side of the coin, and I know Adam has done a lot of this as well. We can post the job and hope that the right people see it or we can get more strategic around figuring out, “Who are the PTs that live near my work location? How do I contact them?” In reality, when you’re posting a job, you’re hoping that those qualified PTs near you see the job ad.

PTs are not typically relocating for jobs. They’re relocating for personal reasons, and then they find a job as a secondary factor. The idea of a PT relocating to your community specifically to work for you, and that’s the main reason why they’re moving, is not something that we typically see. The idea is to figure out who those local PTs are.

We’re doing that based on geotargeting from the licensure data. We have all 50 States. If you’re a PT, we probably already have you in our database. We’re figuring out, “These are the PTs that live near the work location. How do we go about contacting them via phone, email, text message, or social media?” We’re paying a lot of attention to resume databases as well. Candidates with a resume posted are career-minded. Whether or not they posted it yesterday or three months ago, they’re someone who is open to career opportunities. Resume databases have a huge potential as well.

I love that you brought up the fact that they’re out there, but there are a lot of people who are moving positions within their cities and their states. It’s imperative for us to know who those people are. Back in the day, we had our list of all the licensed therapists that were in the State of Arizona. We could get that from the Arizona board.

Depending on the state, you can get the email address or the physical address. Either way, we were leveraging it. We got email addresses. That was part of our recruiting method, to reach out to the state therapy license holders every month or every six weeks. It was part of our recruiting strategy. We wanted everyone in the state to know who we were and that we were around.

The posts weren’t, “We’ve got a position open.” They were usually more valuable, like what we saw happening in the industry, what we see happening in the state, and what we see happening amongst our clientele and our patients that seem to be valuable. Occasionally, at the bottom, it might say, “If you’re interested in working with us, this is our contact information.” I’m imagining, Adam, you probably know all the licensees in your area pretty well. You probably either connected with him on social media or you have their lists and numbers somewhere

You’d be surprised, though. It’s not uncommon for me to find a new person, even locally. I do a lot.

You usually find them on social media.

I wrote down three things when I heard Brian talk. Let’s start there. Number one is job ads. Do you know what makes job ads work? A good offer. At the end of the day, nobody’s going to click on a boring job ad with no value. I know that there’s a large percentage of people on this call who have posted a job ad on Indeed, spent $1,000 on a sponsored ad, and didn’t get a single click on it, and were like, “Indeed is such a scam.” It’s like, “No, your ad sucks.” There’s a skill to that. If you can get good at crafting your offer, not only will you get applicants, you can put some real money behind them and get even more because they’re converting. I wanted to highlight that.

I don’t have any information in front of it, but we posted 4 or 5 job ads between January and mid-February. We probably spent around $2,000 on sponsoring them. We got 12 to 15 applicants between PT, OT, and speech. It was good, which was not what I was doing in 2024. When you get good at the offer, your job ads become much more convertible. That’s number one.

Number two is sourcing. Brian mentioned, “Where do you find these people?” There’s a skill to that as well. Number one is resume databases and your state board list. LinkedIn is huge. You are owners. There’s a cool site called the NPI Registry. Look it up. You are doing it to make sure that people have active licenses. Go to it and type in your state, and there they are. There’s their name. You can start building a database of people to reach out to. List building in itself is a skill that you’ll learn in the workshop on April 17th. There’s a routine and a cadence to that.

Lastly is relocation. I agree with what Brian mentioned. Most people relocate for personal reasons. However, there is a smaller group of people who are drifters. They’re adventurers. They’re single, and they like to go to new places. They’re open to the idea of relocating to a new place that they’d never lived in for the right offer.

We’ve hired several people who were like, “I’ve never been to Picayune, Mississippi. I see you guys are close to New Orleans. I know you guys have Mardi Gras. I’d love to experience that for a couple of years. What do you get?” They’ll hear me out and move to the area. Highlighting the value that’s within your area is important to be able to attract those people to you. I wanted to make sure I covered those three things because those are three big important things that I have learned from experience that have helped me with my recruiting.

I have two examples. I hope I remember the second one after I finish my first one. Someone in our coaching program was desperate to find an experienced therapist in her very small town in Northern Idaho. I believe it was through her social media efforts after working with us that she connected with another therapist in her small town and developed a social media relationship. It was not to say that, “I’ve got an ad. I want to connect, especially with other like-minded therapists in our town.”

That person reached out to her and said, “Do you have something available at your company? I’m not seeing a path for growth at mine. I’m stuck, and I’ve maxed out. Would you happen to have that?” That was exactly what she wanted at the time. It worked out. She brought her over and was able to move her business forward in a way that she couldn’t do before. She never even considered that some other therapist in her small town would be looking for another opportunity that was unique to her clinic. That’s one thing.

The second thing was that I have a friend who started doing a lot of work. He was connecting on LinkedIn and posting on LinkedIn about his clinic and whatnot. After doing that for a year, someone whom he had connected with on LinkedIn reached out to him and said, “I’ve been watching you for the past year, knowing that I’m going to move to Arizona eventually. I would love to come and talk to you when I come into town about the opportunities that you have.”

That’s the power of social media. Those are anecdotal, but I think they represent working locally, knowing all of the licensees, talking amongst them, and also staying on social media for a prolonged period of time to have your presence shown there. That leads to the second part of my question. At what scale are you pushing information out? How often are you trying to reach out on a daily basis? Adam, do you want to start with that?

It depends on the need.

You’re never stopping.

The answer is as many as it takes. There’s no right formula. Maybe Brian can add some. Brian and mine’s recruiting style is a little different. He might have had a different flavor. Assuming that the offer is good enough, at least above average, and your outbound messaging, meaning what you push out to the world, aligns with the offer in some meaningful way. The only parameter at that point that directly correlates to hiring somebody is how many times you do it. That’s the only other thing you can adjust.

If you commit to, “I’m going to reach out to ten people a day,” and do that for a month and still haven’t booked an interview, you probably should double it. If you do that for another month and still haven’t booked an interview, you probably should triple it. I would continue to go up until I started booking interviews. That’s the best answer that I could give. If I’m hiring for multiple clinics and I have multiple roles, it might be 100 a day. I’d be sending 100 a day. As a low-level maintenance, I would say at least 10 to 15 a week, even if you’re not hiring. I don’t know if that’s a good answer, but that’s the way that I think about it.

Scaling Outreach: Automation Tools & The Balance Between Volume & Authenticity 

For me, 10 or 15 a week is heavy lifting on social media.

I want to pass it over to Brian because I know him and I are different on this. That doesn’t mean that I’m doing it, number one, because I’m not sending 100 DMs a day. Number two, that doesn’t mean that I’m not using automation. This isn’t about, “How do I add more things to my plate?” This is, “How do I build the system that allows me to hit the outbound requirements without sacrificing my time and my energy?” It’s about building the system of leverage that leads to the result, not about working harder. Getting interviews booked isn’t a hard work problem. It’s a systems problem. Follow the system, and then you’ll start booking interviews.

I’ll pull back the curtain a little bit. What kind of tools are you using to offload your time and energy?

There are levels to that game, too. There’s a tech stack you can use. At a basic level, you can use ChatGPT with some templates and a copy-and-paste framework. You want to make sure that it’s not spammy and that it has some specificity in it. That’s the lowest level. CRM, and copy and paste.

You’re not doing the copy-pasting.

I’m going to approve the offer, the outbound script, and the outbound cadence. I’m going to approve the thing that represents our company. I don’t want to make people mad. I don’t want to irritate them with a bunch of spammy things. I don’t want to irritate the market or burn my list up. That’s basic. There are some automation tools that you can use. There are some tools, such as an example for your LinkedIn profile, to automatically send DMs on your behalf. You can leverage a CRM, MailChimp, or some type of email outbound platform that can help you drip out campaigns.

Are you still using Dripify?

Dripify is a very common tool that you can hook up on LinkedIn. Look up LinkedIn Automation Tools. That will keep you satisfied for the next month. There are tons of them out there. They’re very available. You can use those to automate some things.

You can hook up your virtual assistant to do that.

You can get a VA. We’re starting to think of this as more of a systems approach and not like a, “I got to work harder,” approach.

What can you add to that, Brian?

I’ve thought about this a lot and tried as much as we can try in terms of different approaches over the years. In general, the response rate from proactive outbound recruitment messaging is on the decline quite a bit. Back when I started in 2007 recruiting PTs, we would be doing the outreach and the calls. We weren’t doing texts in 2007, but we were doing everything else. We would see a decent response rate. In fact, we would have a ratio where we would have to have 300 people on the list, and then we would be able to get a slate of 3 candidates surfacing from the outbound activity.

As times have changed, my thinking is that people are not responding to that outbound messaging but there are some. I’m more in favor of paying attention to those people who are showing signs of interest. If you have a resume posted, you’re someone that I’m going to be following up with quite a bit because you’re showing me, “I’m interested. My resume is posted online.” Your hand is up in the air waving.

If you’re a PT who’s using LinkedIn, why would you use LinkedIn if you’re a staff PT? Maybe you signed up for it in PT school, but why do you keep it active and updated? It tells me that you’re career-minded. You’re looking to advance your career. If you’re a PT on LinkedIn and you’re actively using it somewhat, I’m going to pay attention to you and follow up with you more often. For the vast majority of people who are on these lists, they’re not responding. There’s nothing that we’ve found that works to get a large number of people responding. It is a numbers game, but it’s about where I can spend more of my time.

I am concerned with spam, like sending out unsolicited emails, sending out unsolicited texts, and calling people who haven’t requested to be on a phone list. Those kinds of things are things that I think about, which I didn’t think about a couple of years ago. That quality of the communication and the smaller tribe of people who are high potentials is much more valuable.

You could automate things. You could have your LinkedIn sending out this, that, and the other. Maybe that would be good because there’s a balance between it being a numbers game, but then also having it be authentic and getting through to people. It’s challenging. That’s where the biggest struggle is. I could email you with a list of 100 PTs in your community, and then you’re going to be like, “Where do I go? What do I do?”

That’s the interesting piece. How we go about capturing people’s attention but doing it in a way that is authentic and also provides value is key. Could you invite people to your clinic and have them do a CEU course? Could you host a Happy Hour in your community and be like, “We’re doing a PT Happy Hour. Come on down, and we’ll buy you an appetizer?” That stuff is awesome that you could do and add some value.

One of our clients did a Happy Hour for some of the PT students in their area. She invited a few different classes to come to their clinic for a Happy Hour. She was going to do a presentation about her specific specialty, so it wasn’t all about hors d’oeuvres and drinks. There was also some value there as well. She was able to coordinate that.

In the same vein, you could host continuing education courses at your place, or maybe even an opportunity for people to come and hang out. I know another friend of mine in New York who gets together every month or every two months with other owners in the area. They go to dinner somewhere. They sit down for drinks at a Happy Hour and talk.

It’s not necessarily to recruit, but the point is to get out, socialize, and get your name out. Find other creative ways to get people to know and like your clinic. We’re coming to the end of it. Is there anything you want to share? Are there any final words that you want to share, Brian, like words of encouragement or things that we might not have covered?

Final Recommendations: Speed Of Hiring & The Importance Of Action 

We didn’t talk about this. Adam mentioned the emotional side of hiring briefly earlier. Here is one piece of closing thought that I would give. When I look at the difference between a smaller practice and our larger clients, like a hospital system, for example. I look at their hiring process and how they approach it. The people at the larger organizations are not emotionally driven with their recruiting process. They’re not as concerned about making a bad hire. They’re able to move through that process with more confidence because they don’t operate from that same fear.

The fear that a lot of us have is the process moving at a slow pace. That’s slow hiring process. We didn’t talk about interviewing and that kind of stuff. That slow pace of hiring is what’s causing a lot of candidates to go and accept a job somewhere else. We’re missing out on candidates because we can’t move through that process more quickly. That’d be one piece of encouragement. Think about what your interview process is. When you’ve used Adam’s tools, you have everything in place, and you have someone interested. Think like, “How do I move them forward from that point of inquiry to the job offer, and how do I do it as quickly as possible?”

How do you shrink that time? If it’s a week between connection and job offer, they’ve probably received 2 or 3 offers in the meantime. How do you get that down to 24 hours?

We never know what stage the candidate is at when they surface to us. They may already have 2 or 3 companies that are waiting to get back to them.

It’s more than likely. In this environment, you have to expect that they’re getting multiple offers at the same time that you’re talking to them. Speed is imperative. Adam, what do you want to share?

Get in the game. There’s no perfect way to do this. The best way to do it is to start, figure it out, and make some mistakes. Get in the game and start learning because this challenge isn’t going away. It’s just going to get more and more competitive. The people who have real recruiting strategies that work are going to survive, and those that don’t are going to close.

I would recommend learning. It’s a big learning curve, but you’ll be surprised at how fast you can learn if you get in the game and start. That’s my big message. Don’t be so afraid to make a mistake. Spam some people, and then fix it next time and do it a little bit better. Over time, you get better at it. You have to make some mistakes. The next thing is to extract the value from your offer. Focus there. Start there. Get good at your offer.

The last thing that I thought Brian made an incredibly good point about was the difference between cold outreach and high-intent outreach. That’s an incredible idea. Make sure that you’re finding ways to extract high-intent leads, whether that’s from active resumes, active LinkedIn profiles, people in Facebook groups, or whatever that is, so that you can reach out to the right people. Finally, I promise you that if you come to the April workshop, I’ll make it valuable for you. If you want to solve this problem, I would love to help. Hopefully, we’ll see you there. Some of you have already signed up. I appreciate it. I’ll see you there.

I’ll throw this out there. If you’re not part of our Facebook group, where there are a ton of other private practice owners, then you need to join that as well. We don’t have time here to go into your question, Lisa, because you’re asking about credentialing and how long it takes. That can be nuanced between states, and how to pay them when credentialing takes a lot of time.

What I’d recommend is to post that same question on the Facebook group. I’ll make sure to give you my two cents. Adam will as well, I’m sure. You’ll get a lot more feedback from a lot more owners with their experience in the Facebook group. I’ll direct you that way since we don’t have a lot of time left to talk about that.

I highly recommend everyone look into the April workshop. We’ll see you there. If recruiting is an issue for you, then it’s a no-brainer. You’ve got to be there. In fact, we’re going to be doing it virtually from Scottsdale, Arizona. If you are in Arizona, there are seats to be in person. If you want to travel to Arizona and you like Scottsdale, because it is a super cool place, and you probably need to golf there once or twice in your life, there are in-person tickets available there as well.

Reach out to Adam or me if you want to be in person versus virtual, and maybe write it off on the business, which would be a pretty cool idea. Brian and Adam, thanks for joining. It was a great conversation. Hopefully, we can see more of you guys in April at the recruiting conference. I’ll talk to you guys later.

Bye.

Thank you.

Important Links

• Brian Weidner on LinkedIn
• Career Tree Network
• Adam Robin on LinkedIn
• Superior Physical Therapy
• Clinician Magnet Intensive
• Louisiana Physical Therapy Board
• Dripify
• NPPES NPI Registry
• Private Practice Owners Club on Facebook
• Clinician Magnet Intensive - A Private Practice Owners Club Workshop
• The Biggest Issue Facing New PT’s That Owners Need to Be Aware Of With Bart McDonald, PT – Previous Episode
• Using Diagnostic Ultrasound (MSKUS) To Take Your Clinic To Next Level Care With Bart McDonald, PT, DPT – Previous Episode

About Brian Weidner